Machinarium First Impressions
Playtime: 1.75 hours (1.75 hours total)
Personal Rating This Session: 10 - The graphical style and charm of this game melted me from the beginning...the puzzles are appropriately difficult, require clever thought, and have not yet delved into illogical cheap crap.
Machinarium is another one of those games I started ages ago and never finished, probably because I got distracted by something sparkly in the house. It's a puzzle-adventure game with an incredibly unique hand-drawn art style, and absolutely no story. Literally, none -- I got dumped into a junkyard in pieces and start marching off with no idea why. There are bits of characterization and story woven in as I progressed through -- all done completely without dialogue, relying instead on thought balloons of the main character remembering things (usually someone beating the shit out of him), or someone with a speech balloon showing a picture of something they want. All in all, this makes one of the most atmospheric and gorgeous games I've played.
Dark Sector
Playtime: 8.5 hours (8.5 hours total)
I got Dark Sector as a gift; it was extraordinarily cheap ($7.05, which is less than a drink at Starbucks) and it got a not-terrible aggregated score of 72 on Metacritic. Now that I finished it, I'm not sure how I feel...I hated it in the middle, but I have a weird sort of nostalgia, like when you're living with someone you can't stand and keep fantasizing about the day you'll finally be rid of them and never have to hear from them again...then the day finally comes and as you watch them pack their filthy belongings into their car and paddle off you can't help but remember the really awesome waffles they made.
Waffles, in this case, are decapitations.
Mafia II – Complete
Playtime: 6.5 hours (14 hours total)
Personal Rating This Session: 3 - The last few missions of the game are a complete bitch, with sparse checkpoints and unreasonable difficulty. The game ends sadly, but I had too much of a migraine to really care.
As you can see from this chart, the game started out strongly and ended really weakly for me. Mostly because 3-4 of the last 6.5 hour play session was spent retrying entire missions over and over and over because I either died, or an NPC bugged out. By the end, the only thing that made me keep trying was that I knew I was so close to finishing it, and I didn't want to add this to a pile of games I almost finished.
There's still DLC to play, and though I started one of them, I'll have to give Mafia II a bit of a rest before I pick them back up.
This game confused me a lot; there seemed to be a lot of elements that didn't exist for any logical reason, now that all's said and done. Money, for one. I amassed a huge amount of wealth, and lost it all, and amassed it again, and I didn't really find anything to spend it on except sometimes repairing my vehicle. Most of the time I just stole the nearest car, or took a car an NPC wanted me to take, so upgrading/repairing/painting cars I was attached to was a nice one-time thrill, but that's it. When only 10% of the game is driving, and there are only 2-3 garages to retrieve saved vehicles, I realized it's way quicker to just steal a car and be done with it.
There's no point to buying guns in the game because all the guns I could possibly want are giving to me in the missions. On top of that, they took away my guns every chapter or two. There was no point in customizing my cars, because I could never access them easily. There's no point in eating, because I could really only eat at home, and if I was home I was going to sleep soon, which fully recharged my health. There's even absolutely no point to half the map, which is a separate island that has exactly one mission on it.
I liked the sandbox-lite feel of the game for its focus, and there's a couple story twists that are pretty cool. But this is all overshadowed by a complete lack of understanding on basic checkpoint principles, and an overly empty feel of the game mechanics.
Mafia II – 2
Playtime: 3 hours (7.5 hours total)
Personal Rating This Session: 6 - The story is still so-so; I'm not a fan of the latest narrative transition and I ran into a lot more issues this session. Still fun to play, though.
Not much has happened in the past 3 hours other than story-based missions, so this post is going to be shorter. First, the good bit: it's refreshing to see a game's neutral-tone objective ticker have some personality.
Mafia II
Playtime: 4.5 hours (4.5 hours total)
Personal Rating This Session: 8 - I really enjoy the narrative style and sandbox-lite feel, but if you have a game so dependent on its story, it has to be really good. The story is all right, but the atmosphere is the real lifesaver here.
Mafia II is one of those games I wanted to play on Xbox, but it's always been too pricey. When Steam ran an insane holiday deal during Christmas that included the full game and all DLC for a sickeningly low price, I had to snap it up. I've heard all kinds of things about the game - mostly negative, and mostly regarding the fact that it isn't really a sandbox game, even though it kinda pretends to be, like the scrawny kid in school that stuffs his t-shirt to look bigger so he doesn't get picked on (not that I would know anything about that).
Bulletstorm Demo
I heard this game could be the next Borderlands; since that was one of my favorite games of 2009 (and 2010, really), I was instantly interested. Despite the fact that it's co-developed by Epic (the same lovely people who made Gears of War, the most mind-numbingly machismo-filled brown pile of crap that took 3 complete product cycles to get out of the schoolyard mentality of 'girls are poopy and don't exist'), I still had to give it a try.
The opening screen featuring two thick-necked 'roid monkeys did not fill me with confidence.
Alan Wake: The Writer
Playtime: 1.5 hours (1.5 hours total)
Personal Rating This Session: 9 - Although this DLC has only a tad more story than the previous, the gameplay, level design, and ideas they've put in this episode stand above anything they've ever done.
I was not very impressed with The Signal, the first piece of DLC for Alan Wake, but I still bought The Writer without even a second thought. I also didn't know it was the last piece of content they were releasing, but I after finishing this one, it was obvious there couldn't be anymore. Everything is wrapped up so well, the only possible follow-up would be a sequel (which they are doing, thankfully).
Alan Wake: The Signal
Playtime: 1.75 hours (1.75 hours total)
Personal Rating This Session: 6 - Almost no story is present here, though the atmosphere is still great. Combat has gotten far harder, and is definitely the biggest part of this DLC
I was excited that this episode took place immediately after the end of Alan Wake, since I thought it would provide some nice story bits, considering they left the ending (forcibly) open. Sadly, there really are no revelations at all - the whole thing has the lore of the world put on hold as Alan works out his inner feelings. It starts out with a whole lot of promise, but doesn't end with much.
Alan Wake – 4
Playtime: 4.25 hours (14.25 hours total)
Personal Rating This Session: 9 - Though the last chapter is pure 'go here' travel gameplay, the ending is great, and raises great questions.
Massive spoilers, from the entire game below. Beware.
Alan Wake – 3
Playtime: 3 hours (10 hours total)
Personal Rating This Session: 9 - Probably the best chapter I've played so far; the standard trudging through the forest was offset by a ton of story reveals, and a very epic ending.
Chapter 4 was pretty great. As always, spoilers on Chapters 1-4 ahead, so beware.
