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Death Stranding: Director’s Cut

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Developer: Kojima Productions | Released: 2022 | Genre: 3PS, Adventure

This game was essentially Hideo Kojima discovering walking simulators and then saying:

Let’s make an AAA game out of that!

The human characters models and their facial animations were out of this world in this game. Probably the best I have seen so far. The pimples, the eye colors, the perfect lip sync. Really amazing work.

If anything, the camera was often too close to their faces.

Being late to the party as always, I actually didn’t want to play this for the longest time. It looked like it could be frustrating. While it was certainly not devoid of enemies and boss fights, it had enough interesting treks across Icelandic landscapes to warrant me spending some time with it.

Another reason I liked the game was how refreshingly different it was. In a world dominated by hackneyed tropes such as fantasy games with sword-wielding warriors and wizards with fireballs, first person shooters with reloading guns and bullet sponge enemies, and point-and-click adventures with object-combining inventories and dialog choices, this AAA game dared to try something entirely different.

A package delivery simulator. A more apt definition than walking simulator.

Chordian's Balanced Review
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Eternal Threads

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8/10Developer: Cosmonaut Studios | Released: 2022 | Genre: Adventure, First Person

In this first person adventure game, I was an observing rubber suit guy manipulating time in a house with two floors, trying to save the lives of six young adults after a fire in a fuse box.

Using a tool held in my right hand, I could start an event somewhere in the house. It typically lasted a few minutes and showed some of the young adults talking together as ghostly figures that I could walk around. A bit like in Tacoma, but with much clearer character models – and I couldn’t fast forward an event.

The events themselves had a separate overview screen that scrolled far to the right. It was overwhelming at first, with hundreds of dots available on a timeline. Some dots could be selected immediately, and after watching it was no longer a question mark. Most events were solely observing some dialog, but sometimes I was given a opportunity to alter time by making a person change their mind and react differently.

This had a butterfly effect and could change what events were available after that point.

Chordian's Balanced Review
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Whispers of a Machine

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7/10Developer: Clifftop Games | Released: 2019 | Genre: Adventure, Point & Click

A solid retro adventure game much in the same vein as Technobabylon and Primordia. I was in a control of a female cop trying to solve a few murders in a small city located on a raised disc.

The developers called it a sci-fi nordic noir.

As the blonde protagonist, Vera Englund – still moaning the loss of her boyfriend – the game immediately started with her arriving at the first murder scene. There were just two screens to navigate here until I had reached a milestone. Then most of the city was available to me.

Apart from the classic point-and-click features with an inventory that can combine objects, there was a triangle for steering towards one of three paths depending on what dialog options where chosen along the way. Since I only played the game once, it didn’t feel like this affected the gameplay all that much.

My guess is it probably did affect what augmentations I was given.

Augmentations? Sure. This was a pretty cool feature and most unexpected to find in this type of game. It felt like it was inspired by Deus Ex. I had a few to begin with, and more were added during the game.

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I’m Changing my Mind

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I have to talk about reviewing PC games again on this blog.

For a while I have tried different kinds of posts about the PC games I play. First I tried barely describing the game and then only have personal notes in a spoiler section. At first I had five reviews in a post, but I really wanted most games to have their own post. But when I tried that, the format felt too confined.

Then I changed to a format I used a few years ago, before I started doing the balanced reviews. A little more text and pictures, and sometimes a spoiler section with my observations. It was better, but I was still not satisfied. It felt like rolling back to an obsolete format.

I started reading my balanced reviews again, and it hit me how much I liked writing the pros and cons in the end. Not only was it fun coming up with those, I also felt I could often write more interesting pros and cons than many professional review sites. Typically other reviews just mention that the graphics is good and the gameplay is great. I usually tried to go into the finer details there.

A line about unique game features, things that might annoy certain kinds of gamers, balancing issues, about devices and mini-games, you name it. This is not the place to just jot down a few bland lines so the review can be published. This is the valuable stuff that I like to read at the end of game reviews.

I’d like to think you feel the same way too about these pros and cons?

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Anthill

I found this anthill the other day while I was on vacation. There was one ant barely alive on it. When I blew on it, it moved 1 mm and then stopped. The temperature was probably around 5°C.

Last ant standing.

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Shinkansen 0 | 新幹線 0号

Developer: Chilla’s Art | Released: 2024 | Genre: Adventure, First Person

That sure was one weird ass game. I went in completely blind, not reading any user reviews on what it was about. I think I chose wisely, as my worried feeling about what I should expect worked well for this game. The premise was actually quite simple. I was in the bullet train of Shinkansen heading for Tokyo, and I needed to walk through passenger cars, looking for any anomalies.

It’s worth a try if you’re into weird and eerie adventure games, but know it’s not long – and you don’t get to see anything else than the interior of a passenger car and the toilets in between them.

Spoiler: Click

After some experimentation it dawned on me that I needed to reach the front of the train and press the button to stop the train. Walking through the passenger cars had a floor sticker telling me to walk back if I spotted an anomaly among the passenger seats. If I got this right, the number of the car decreased each time I opened a new passenger car. If I missed too many anomalies in a row, a can dropped and a ghost would start chasing me down. I always managed to outrun it.

The passenger cars were exactly the same in both directions, adding to the weirdness of the game.

Anomalies could be hands somewhere, someone hugging a seat, even all passenger seats missing or plant growth all over the place. It was usually more strange and out of place than actually horrific.

Solving the first set of passenger cars revealed to be just one of two train sets. I then had to do another, with different color seats, a lady selling food and candy, one guy frozen as he put his luggage away above him, and even a dark guy with a green light as one of his eyes. Those were the normal things. Oh, and the rules were swapped. If I spotted an anomaly here, I needed to go forward instead of back.

A shame I couldn’t see the landscape rushing by fast through the train windows. They were just completely black. What I did see in the reflection of the windows was myself. A thin guy with a white shirt and a tie.

I got the first ending in less than an hour.

6/10

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Jusant

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Developer: Dontnod Entertainment | Released: 2023 | Genre: Platform, Third Person

Just like Submerged, this was solely a climbing game. Borrowing the atmosphere from ICO, it started with a kid walking on the sandy bottom of what was once an ocean. He arrived at a dried out coral mountain and started climbing it to the top, a daunting task since it was exceptionally tall. It turns out there were once a civilization living there, but now it was empty habitats and boats hanging on the side.

Apart from climbing and exploring, I could also find abandoned letters.

The climbing was a lot more sophisticated than in Submerged, and also considerably more challenging. I had a rope with me and could attach it to the wall at up to three spots during a climbing session. The game didn’t allow me to fall to my death, but falling to the end of the rope meant having to redo a lot of climbing. It was also possible to lower the rope and swing it to the sides for reaching a handhold.

Borrowing the hand swapping style from Crazy Climber, I had to alternate left and right hand gripping with each hotkey. I also had a small creature with me that could discharge a magical effect for making plants grow, creating more handholds for me to climb.

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Ghost on the Shore

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Developer: like Charlie | Released: 2022 | Genre: Adventure, Facile

This was a walking simulator across three islands, following a sad story about a dad leaving his wife and child behind. It was first person and I never saw any faces up close, except for a few ghosts on the islands. As the protagonist Riley, I also had the ghost Josh speaking to me, panning between loudspeakers.

The 3D art was simple yet created a nice atmosphere. There was a lot of talking between Riley and the ghost, Josh. The walking was excessive and made it abundantly clear this was truly a walking simulator. In fact, some of the strolling on the islands reminded me a little of Dear Esther.

At times, a dream-like cutscene showed a few ghost figures talking together in the past.

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Still Wakes the Deep

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I’m trying something different again as I wasn’t quite satisfied with the game notes format. I’ll try a more relaxed format now, just writing my thoughts about the game. Just like I used to before the balanced reviews.

Developer: The Chinese Room | Released: 2024 | Genre: Adventure, Horror

An adventure game trying to escape an oil rig after a disaster hit it. It was made by the same developer that also made Dear Esther, Amnesia: A Machine for Pigs, and Everybody’s Gone to the Rapture.

Excellent experience. The lighting, filthy details and the profanic Scottish voice acting from the protagonist and the crew was spot on. Things like a convincing rough sea and water drops sailing down windows made it clear this was a game the developer really cared about. The game was also very dynamic in a way that reminded me of Half-Life. The ceiling crashing down, water rushing in, something grabbing you, etc.

The gameplay was not groundbreaking. Jumping, crawling, answering wall phones, using (a lot of) ladders, running jumps, a few QTE – that sort of stuff. Later there were also stealth sequences, sneaking between cover and throwing objects to lure a monster away.

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Game Notes: NUTS

Developer: Joon, Pol, Muutsch, Char & Torfi | Released: 2021 | Genre: Adventure, First Person

A first person adventure a little bit like Firewatch, placing cameras during the day and watching the footage at night, tracking the movements of squirrels. And yes, the game really use colors like that.

Spoiler: Notes

I didn’t play this for long until it occurred to me that this wasn’t as much a first person adventure game, as it was a “Squirrel Photography Simulator” in essence. I’m rarely all that keen on simulators and so I was close to abandoning the game right there.

But there was something alluring by the game, so I returned and completed it anyway.

Sure, figuring out where to place cameras judging by the direction a squirrel ran on the footage of last night was the prevailing game play, and by itself it could get old fast.

But the later levels really did try to branch it out.

The was a level where I had to film a squirrel at specific intervals within a minute to track its route, then send the interval photos using the fax machine. In another level, my standard cameras were destroyed and I had to place a nut and then follow a squirrel and snapshot it with my handheld camera.

My trip back to the caravan to record footage was frequently interrupted by a phone call of my female overseer. This was the only voice acting. I didn’t have a voice of my own and there were no dialogue trees. The only way I could respond was by sending photos or messages on a fax machine.

Then she would immediately call me up and comment on that.

I giggled a little when I found a squirrel nest with sticks of dynamite. A shame the game didn’t let me light a fuse and run out of there real fast.

The use of colors mostly felt like the developers really wanted to stand out and look different. It was slightly annoying to begin with but I quickly got used to it.

I can certainly understand why some players would hate it.

The end game took place after falling down a rock slide and a squirrel took off with my journal. Since it had the important evidence, I had to track it down. I found another caravan nearby a automobile graveyard with cameras to be conveniently found. The squirrel met up with other squirrels and crossed a river by going out on a branch. I tried the same thing and came crashing down on the shore. The squirrels then led me directly to a stranded ship where they had all their stashes of nuts – and even my journal.

7/10