This time, I’ll be talking about 3 games that are somehow connected to seas or oceans. More specifically: Song of the Deep, The Sea Will Claim Everything and ABZÛ.
Tag: great soundtrack
Dreamfall Chapters. End of the Journey
Ahh, The Longest Journey… Despite the original and Dreamfall being pretty flawed adventure games in their own ways, there was nothing like it in terms of stories. Mix of cyberpunk and fantasy in such a magical way that feeds your imagination. A tale that feels so unique, doing “it’s own thing” and in such a good way too, despite some clear influences. These worlds of Stark and Arcadia, technology and magic, were always something I wanted to see more of. Besides, Dreamfall: The Longest Journey didn’t really have a proper ending, with Dreamfall Chapters being planned from the start to continue from when that game left of. But those plans were shelved for… how long was it? Almost 8 years? And if you count the release of the final chapter (released just a few months before me writing this), it’s been 10 years since Dreamfall was released. And it’s such a strange feeling that this continuation is a tighter budget, community funded (via Kickstarter) project too… So, then, how is it? Is it a proper ending to all the story threads that were started before? Let’s find out.
Revisiting Deadly Premonition: The Director’s Cut
It’s been a while since I’ve played Deadly Premonition. Funny story – I was actually one of the seemingly few, who were waiting for the game to get released way before it was named Deadly Premonition. Originally it was announced as “Rainy Woods” in 2007, was even more Twin Peaks influenced and for me, a huge survival horror fan with soft spot for that David Lynch series, it was enough to get excited. But then the game just kinda dropped off my radar until suddenly popping up in a Destructoid review by Jim Sterling in early 2010, who loved the hell out of it. I didn’t even recognize the game back that from the start, since it has changed the title and even the looks (and name) of the main protagonist (the original name went to the next Swery’s game – D4). But when I finally did I knew – I need this game in my life. I never had an Xbox 360, but my friend did, so he grabbed the game, lent me the console for few weeks and I found a new game to put in the list of absolute favorites. But it was flawed. It needed a remaster. Is The Director’s Cut here to do the job? I’m going to spoil it right away – it isn’t in the slightest.
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Thoughts on: Axiom Verge
A lot of people seem to call this game a love letter to “metroidvania”, and I can’t fault them for that. This is one person’s attempt to create a truly modern 2D Metroid-like game, using all the lessons learned from the best of the best in genre and adding new elements, that weren’t tried in the genre before. This game has exciting exploration, varied locales, fantastic soundtrack, unique visuals that mix old-school 8bit and 16bit era art with subtle modern effects, surprisingly good challenge for the most part and a very interesting atmosphere that can probably be summarized as “sci-fi adventure as if Another World/Out of This World was designed by H.R. Giger”.
Loving the: Alien: Isolation
Ridley Scott’s Alien is still an amazing movie. 36 years later its “future technology” has aged. Computers slowly render the information in 2 colours on a CRT monitor while their hard drives make lots of noises – this feels like it has no place in space flight of the future, even though space flight is usually planned to have cheaper more durable hardware installed. Yet, so many people grew up on the sci-fi with this technology, myself included. And the costume and set designers tried their damnedest to create something tangible, something real, something one would want to visit. If if that beautiful and outdated set is populated by a terrible alien creature which is as much a cultural icon as this type of sci-fi itself. How many games tried to do Alien. How many failed. And most aimed to be something closer to Aliens anyway, something action heavy and lighter on horror theme, not a pure chilling horror in space where no one can hear you scream. Alien: Isolation is hear to fix this unfortunate error.
Psyched about: Wolfenstein: The New Order
MachineGames – is a game developer studio founded by some of the key people from Starbreeze Studios. Who worked on Riddick and Darkness. And you can feel it in this game. Which is already a pretty high praise for the new Wolfenstein.
Quick thoughts on: Castlevania: Lords of Shadow 2
Well, this was quite a waste of potential. Dracula vs Satan in the fantastic/futuristic modern day setting among the apocalypse – sounds exciting. Plays boring.
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![Remember me. Forget-me[-not]](https://klardendum.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/09/rememberme-1-629x131.jpg)
Remember me. Forget-me[-not]
I expected nothing of Remember me. Later I looked at it again and acknowledged that it looked nice, but it still felt boring. When it came out all reviews were showing that my predictons were right and I almost forgot that it existed. But then I heard several excited opinions on the game and it got me curious. When I learned that the soundtrack was done by Olivier Derivière I got even more interested, since his soundtracks never disappoint and are consistently beautiful. Then i played the game and it wasn’t particularly great. Then I completed it.
Metro 2033 Redux. Better in most things edition
4A has recently released Metro Redux – a pack of two remastered games, Metro 2033 from 2010 and Metro: Last Light from last year. Both games were moved to an updated engine with updated lighting, both games have new distinct modes of playing them – Survival (closer to 2033) or Spartan (closer to Last Light). Both games got updated voice acting, with the same voice actor for Artyom in all main languages and new localisations including the Ukrainian. I’ve already told what I think of the Metro: Last Light Redux, which was less affected by this remaster. Metro 2033, on the other hand, looks very different now, several levels were combined, some scenes and sections were redone, at times completely, the weapons were redesigned to be closer to how they work in the second game (so you modify weapons now instead of exchanging different weapons with different modifications), controls were updated as well. Most of these changes were welcome and make the game far more fun to play. Yet, there are a couple of changes that are questionable at best and outright dumb at worst.
Thoughts on: Castlevania: Lords of Shadow – Mirror of Fate HD
Mirror of Fate is a curious beast. While I didn’t like first Lords of Shadow all that much, apart from the stunning visual design and an intriguing, but poorly told story, its 2D sequel/side-story feels an improvement in almost every way. It’s like most of the best things and few of the bad things from LoS put together in a 2D action adventure RPG platformer.
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