In all honesty, I’m not sure what to write about Richard and Alice. On one hand, I dig this game because it spins a compelling, complex yarn that you’ll want to see through to the end. On the other hand, I hate it because that yarn hits too close to home for my liking. As a seasoned writer and critic, I should be able to keep my personal biases and issues out of a professional review but, in this case, I cannot.
I’m human and things affect me. So it goes.
Hmm, there’s a ladder in this church. I wonder if that’ll come in handy?
The story of Richard and Alice revolves around two prisoners and/or guinea pigs who are imprisoned neighboring cells in an underground facility, The Typhon Project, as the snowy, apocalyptic world above them slips further and further way from any semblance of civilization. Why the world above has become a frozen wasteland is only hinted at and is irrelevant in the grand scheme of things. What is relevant is the relationship between the two prisoners, the eponymous Richard and Alice, who are both guarding some rather big secrets. One character’s terrible secret is revealed in gameplay flashbacks, if you will, and the other character’s is only revealed as the endgame plays out to its morbid, yet satisfying, conclusion. (As it turns out, there are three possible endings to the game. I happened to get the “special,” alternate ending…which is the most bleak of the three. Yay me. That’s what I get for being good at these types of games. )
In terms of gameplay and graphics, this experience is definitely kickin’ it old school. It’s a point-and-click puzzler with 16-bit era graphics. This is not a detriment in any way, it definitely works for Richard and Alice and, if anything, this style of game makes you focus more on the story, which is this title’s strongest element by far.
There’s a metric fuckton of snow in Richard and Alice’s world.
The puzzles are logical and well thought out for the most part…nothing Myst or Riven-like here, thank Christ. There was only one puzzle near the end of the game that gave me any real trouble. But again, its solution is entirely realistic and had me smacking my head while saying, “Fucking duh. I should have thought of that sooner!”
The closest comparison I can make here, and you can take this as you will, is that Richard and Alice reminds me of the best film I saw that I will never watch again, Grave of the Fireflies. Grave of the Goddamn Fucking Asshole Fireflies, man. That movie stayed with me for some time, and not in a good way. Watch it only if you enjoy getting repeatedly punched in the gut and revel in sadness and misery. But, it is a well-crafted, highly artistic film that I’d love to recommend…but I just can’t and I won’t.
That exact same sentiment goes for Richard and Alice as well; I’d like to recommend it…but I can’t and I won’t. So it goes, my friends, so it goes.
For $5.99, Richard and Alice will make you feel really real feels and nobody wants that, right? Go take a couple Zoloft, have a nice lie down and forget those bothersome feelings and emotions ever existed.
The Incredible Adventures of Van Helsing is one of those games that makes me feel like I’m in a bad relationship; the kind where your head says, “Fool, forget her,” and your heart says, “Don’t let go. Hold on to the end.” Yes, that is a Grease reference there. Deal with it.
This action/RPG experience casts the player in the role of the famous Dr. Abraham Van Helsing’s (the destroyer of Dracula) son. It’s your task to traverse this steampunk version of 19th century Eastern Europe, find your father and rid the fictional land of Borgovia of a mad scientist who is just fucking things up for everybody in general.
I WILL POINT AND CLICK THE SHIT OUT OF YOU!!
The Incredible Adventures of Van Helsing does so many things I don’t, or shouldn’t, like yet I kept coming back to it. I was having fun…until my computer threw a Windows inspired hissy fit, the game crashed when I was two-thirds of the way through and I lost my save file (about 15 hours of progress). It seems that Fate, that cruel, cruel mistress, did not want Van Helsing and I to be together for all of eternity. Such is life.
First and foremost on “The Things I Shouldn’t Like” list is that The Incredible Adventures of Van Helsing is a shameless Diablo clone (i.e. the playfield is seen from a 3D, isometric, top down view and the gameplay entails pointing-and-clicking at things until they explode in a bloody flash and drop all kinds of goodies which you then rush to collect like the greedy fucker you are). Now, I’ve played Diablo clones in the past that I’ve truly enjoyed: Torchlight 1 and 2, Marvel Ultimate Alliance and Baldur’s Gate: Dark Alliance, just to name a few. But, with Van Helsing, it just feels more shameless somehow. Playing it felt, to me, like those early Sunday morning “strolls” though my college campus after a Saturday night filled with debauchery and naughty young ladies who I had no intention of bringing home to Mother. Yes, that is a Rick James reference. Deal with that one too.
Collect that loot and upgrade those stats…
Secondly, there is almost zero strategy to the combat. The monsters literally rush at you in droves the instant they see you. It’s fucking insane. It gets to the point where you barely even know what the hell is happening and you can’t even see your poor, overwhelmed character there is so much outrageous activity happening on-screen. I’ve never seen another game do this to the extent that Van Helsing does…and it happens almost right out of the gate as well. There’s very little hand holding here; your index finger and mouse are going to get a good workout playing this game, know that now. But, to its credit, you do get quite a visceral rush when a battle is done, you are victorious and there are piles of beastly corpses (and treasure…don’t forget the treasure!) at your feet.
Thirdly, the presentation is lacking in comparison to the games Van Helsing attempts to emulate, the Diablos and the Torchlights of the world. I know this is an indie game developed by a relatively small team in Hungary, Neocore Games, but if you aspire to dance in the ring with the big boys, you have to measure up against them, ultimately. And while Van Helsing isn’t awful to look at by any means, it just lacks that “next level” of polish that those other games definitely have. I should also mention here that the voice acting is all over the place; some performances are spot on while others are quite amateurish. And, for some reason which I couldn’t seem to shake, the actor who voices the main character sounded a good deal like Maurice Moss from the IT Crowd to me…and if you know anything about Moss, you know he’s certainly not a badass monster hunter.
“I was BORN to slay monsters, Roy!”
Taking all that into account, I still kept coming back to play Van Helsing and would have beaten it if my save file wasn’t corrupted. It is a fun and addictive game to play, with tons of loot to collect and some cool magic and combat customization options. I know I said “almost zero strategy to the combat” above and I stick by that because once the creatures start coming at you thick and fast, all those custom options you set up will go right out the window and you’ll be screaming, “Fuck it, it’s hack and slash time, bitches!” On top of that, I’m just a sucker for humorous, B-grade-horror-shlock when it comes to a story and Van Helsing’s narrative is certainly that.
There is also an option to play The Incredible Adventures of Van Helsing online with a few friends, which I didn’t get to try because, as I mentioned, my save file fell down and went BOOM and I lost the character I spent 15 hours building up. That being said, I could definitely see this game being a blast to play online with some likeminded pals, as long as there were no technical or latency issues to speak of.
Mad skills to pay those bills…
Since this review is peppered with a few musical references and I began it with one, I think it’s only fitting that I wrap it up with another one. The Incredible Adventures of Van Helsing reminds me of the heartbreakingly pensive love songs that Prince used to write back in the day (Nothing Compares 2 U, Why U Wanna Treat Me So Bad, Automatic, et al.), difficult to get through at times but when they are over, you can’t help but go back and listen to them again and again and again because, well, they just hurt so damn good.
And it’s for that reason that The Incredible Adventures of Van Helsing is INDIE GAMER GUYAPPROVED. This isn’t a resounding approval like Gunpoint was, but this is a game that I definitely had a good time playing and others should too. If Neocore gets around to making a sequel at some point and addresses the issues I mention above they could have a truly great franchise on their hands.
The Incredible Adventures of Van Helsing was developed by Neocore Games.
For $14.99, The Incredible Adventures of Van Helsing will let you point-and-click the holy shit out of some polygonal, gothic monsters. Good times!
The Incredible Adventures of Van Helsing is available on Steam.
The Incredible Adventures of Van Helsing is Indie Gamer Guy Approved, but it just squeaks on to the Leaderboard and will probably be point-and-clicked right off at some point down the line.
There are those who define insanity as: “Doing the same thing over and over and, at some point, expecting a different result.” That pithy aphorism pretty much sums up my time with SpookySquid’s They Bleed Pixels. And the “same thing” I was doing over and over and over was dying. After dying almost 100 times (no joke) on the third level, I had enough. I just wasn’t having fun anymore. I play games to have fun and when I stop having fun, I stop playing the fucking game. Period.
The basic premise behind They Bleed Pixels is, essentially, what if early 20th century horror novelist, H.P. Lovecraft, had the resources and wherewithal to design a punishing, NES-hard platformer? What would that be like? Well, I’m assuming, along with the creators of this pain-in-the-ass disguised as a game, it would be a lot like They Bleed Pixels. From what I understand, Lovecraft himself was a rather uptight, prickly and difficult man, so this makes perfect sense in the grand scheme of things. Good job there, SpookySquid! You managed to distill the essence of fucking weird-ass New Englander (weird, yes, but still a great writer) and put it into video game form. Bravo, I say!
The girl on fire…or…? Wait, wrong thing.
The story is pretty straightforward: a young girl is sent to a creepy boarding school, The Lafcadio Academy for Troubled Young Ladies, where she comes across a Necronomicon-like tome that turns her into a human/monster hybrid each night. Her dreams (or are they…?) are the levels she must conquer to see the dawn once again and regain her human form.
In terms of actual gameplay, it’s pretty standard stuff. One button jumps, the other button attacks as you progress through the macabre levels that are riddled with pitfalls, spikes and random, whirling saw blades. The female protagonist can do double jumps and cling to the walls, as long as they aren’t “slippery” walls, mind you. She can also unleash some rather nasty attack combos on her bland and far-too-similar enemies.
I really wanted to like this game. I’ve been looking forward to playing it since it came out at the end of last August… and reviewing it (finally) gave me an excuse to play it. I think it is easy to tell that I AM DISAPPOINT with They Bleed Pixels overall. To its credit, it does have some nice stylized, 8-bit pixel graphics (with some sweet, bloody flourishes to boot) and the music by DJ Finish Him is very cool as well. One other thing I dug was the innovative checkpoint system that saves the player (some) frustration by allowing you save almost anywhere you want…if you play your cards right.
Does Satan have an unlimted supply of these random, spinny saw blades lying about? Just curious…
At the end of day, if I want to be frustrated and punished I’ll go to work at my real job. When I play a video game, I want to relax, have fun and get “lost” in the experience. They Bleed Pixels drove me to brink of madness…to the point of questioning my own sanity, I daresay. I feared for the very life of my gamepad because after dying countless deaths, I wanted to smash it to bits against the wall…to end its horrible, unending misery and my own, by God!
And let me just say this in closing: back in the day, I beat the majority of “hard” punishing, platform games, so it isn’t that I’m not good at them or don’t like them as a whole. I guess it’s just that I don’t have the patience and/or time for this style of game any longer; I have better things to do now…
…like not die 100 fucking times on a single level.
Gunpoint is a game that I’ve had a keen eye on for a few years now. Longtime PC Gamer scribe Tom Francis and his small team of five others, have been hard at work on this labor of video gaming love for three years. The videos and screenshots that have trickled out to the internet over those long years were tantalizing to say the least. The game footage itself reminded me of a mishmash of two old-school games that I was rather fond of: Epyx’s Impossible Mission and Mindscape’s Deja-Vu and, most of all, that footage left me in a frenzied state, as if I was a tubby knuckle-dragger with an empty sack of Cheetos…the scant footage left me wanting more, more, MORE!
Guard + Spy + Crash Through Window = BIG FUN!
Typically, almost anything that I’ve been waiting on for this long never comes close to living up to my grandiose expectations. I’m quite happy (and utterly relieved) to report that Gunpoint is the exception rather than the rule here. Beyond one major, and two minor, quibbles this game is the bees fucking knees to be quite frank. The small, but detailed, graphics, the jazzy, noir-inspired music, the well-crafted storyline and puzzle based gameplay all comes together nicely to form a top-notch interactive entertainment experience.
Gunpoint weaves a fairly complex pulp/crime yarn that’ll keep you guessing until the bitter end. You are cast in the role of Richard Conway, a private dick in the fictional town of East Point. Richard is thrust into a proverbial “web of intrigue” that involves two of East Point’s biggest weapon manufacturers and, oddly enough, the East Point police department as well. The game’s narrative and dialogue mainly plays out via text messages, with various clients blowing up your phone with jobs, requests and updates. Francis’ skill as a writer shows through in these text messages, as there are many pithy exchanges that struck me as rather amusing.
Witty repartee…check.
For each mission you complete, you are rewarded with cash and skill points. Cash allows you to buy new espionage items and skill points upgrade your jumping abilities and item/battery charges. Pretty standard stuff.
But, to unravel this intricate web of corporate lies, deceit and double talk, Richard has a plethora of spy gadgets at his disposal; the main two being the Crosslink and the Wirejack. You can almost complete the game using only these two items, as only the very last level requires you to buy two other gadgets. The Crosslink/Wirejack combination makes up the core gameplay mechanic of Gunpoint, and it is sublime in its implementation and usage. The potent Crosslink/Wirejack combo allows you to tap into and rewire a building’s various electronic devices (switches, lights, doors, motion detectors, etc.) to suit the needs of a top-notch reconnoiter such as yourself. A quick example of how this works would be: say you needed to get into a building, but all the first floor doors are locked tighter than some douchebag hipster’s drainpipe jeans. You see on the second floor that there is a motion detector and a guard patrolling past that motion detector. Using the Crosslink, you quickly rewire the motion detector to the door, bypassing the hand panel activation of said door, and once the unsuspecting guard walks past the motion sensor again, viola’, the door springs open and you now have access to the building. Pretty damn cool, right? Let me tell you, that just scratches the surface of all the bad ass spy shenanigans you can get up to with the Crosslink system. You’ll find yourself scoping out the building layouts for exploits for a good ten minutes before you even take a step toward the building…at least, I know that’s how I played the majority of the later, more challenging, levels.
Using the Crosslink system is intuitive and super sweet.
On to my issues with Gunpoint; they are few, as I mentioned, but important to note. First and foremost, I greatly dislike how this game fucks you over with your own firearm, called “The Resolver,” which is a wicked name but a total misnomer because it doesn’t “resolve” jack shit. In fact, it complicates things greatly. Maybe that’s point, as this is more of a “use your brains,” puzzle-type game, but these kinds of design decisions and/or limitations truly irk me.
You can obtain the gun fairly early on in the game but, beyond one instance at the very end of game, you cannot realistically use it to shoot anyone and complete the mission at hand. You can use your gun to intimidate most guards at “gunpoint” (get it?) and they will back down, but get too close and they will have absolutely no qualms in blowing your dumb ass away.
If you do discharge your weapon, a countdown starts (a little over 20 seconds) and you have that scant time to get the hell out of Dodge. If you don’t, a SUPER SNIPER appears and blocks your exit from the level. There is no way that I found to kill, or get past, the SUPER SNIPER because he can see as far as the Eye-of-Goddamn-Sauron and has the aim of fucking Legolas Greenleaf on a heavy dose of Ritalin. Now, maybe I could rationalize this bullshit if it only happened when you shot and killed a guard; you killed a person and you are being punished for that dastardly act. Fine. Still kind of crap, but OK, I get it. But no, no, no…the asshole SUPER SNIPER appears even when you shoot the walls or at nothing at all! Is the game mad at me because I killed the wall? Did the wall have a Mrs. Wall and three little wallings at home, so I should feel like a terrible person for shooting the stupid fucking wall?
Beyond the jokes, this is an issue with me because it limits the options you have while playing. There are sound based puzzles in the game and the first time I encountered a sound sensor, I figured I could use the gun to set it off since there were no guards around. BANG! I fire my gun and it triggers the sensor which, in turn, triggers the door I Crosslinked the sensor to. Easy peasey. But not so fast, my good man, because I had the temerity to discharge my gun into the wall, the SUPER SNIPER countdown begins. Why? If guard fires his gun, the SUPER SNIPER doesn’t appear. How does the SUPER SNIPER know the difference between the sound of my gun and their guns? He doesn’t. The game (and by extension it’s designer) is just trying to force you to play the way it/he wants you to…by using the clattering of the elevator to activate the sound sensor instead of a gun report.
The gun play in Gunpoint leaves much to be desired…
To expand upon this SUPER SNIPER countdown nonsense, what if I want to play the game in a run-and-gun fashion? I’m a very direct person and that style of play suits me, much like Mr. Pink in Reservoir Dogs, who memorably quipped: “I don’t wanna kill anybody. But if I gotta get out that door, and you’re standing in my way, one way or the other, you’re gettin’ outta my way.” I guess Mr. Pink and I are shit out of luck because Gunpoint just won’t let us shoot someone who is standing in our way and complete our mission in a reasonable manner.
I had a similar issue with, Dishonored, another very cool game that punishes you unfairly for playing a certain way. Why make Corvo, the main character, an awesome-steampunk-whale-powered-ninja-man if you are going to shit all over me at the end of the game for actually using my awesome-steampunk-whale-powered-ninja-man powers? The same goes for Gunpoint: why even include a gun in the damn game if you are going to punish me for using it and, on top of that, I can really only use it the way it’s meant to be used in one spot on the final level!?
The other two issues I have are minor, so I’ll address them as succinctly as possible because the length of this review is getting way out of hand.
I beat Gunpoint in five hours, which included a good amount of “thinking” time (i.e. studying the layout of a building for the best possible route/plan of attack before even setting foot in said building). Put simply, I wanted more because I was enjoying myself a great deal here. But, five hours is still a bit too short, even for a $10 game. There is a level editor included with Gunpoint so, hopefully, I’ll be able to play other people’s uploaded levels in the not too distant future.
I’m going to be honest here, beyond an FPS game, I dislike using mouse and keyboard controls. There are times in Gunpoint when this interface totally failed me. Also, Conway felt too “sticky” to me at times and he wouldn’t get off the wall or ceiling when I wanted/needed him to. This could be an extension of the mouse/keyboard control scheme, but I’m not sure. Maybe I just suck?
The overall coolness and playability of Gunpoint outweighs its flaws by a longshot, though. I’m really looking forward to what Tom Francis and his team come up with next. If you are any kind of gamer, this is a game you need to buy and play immediately. And, most of all, it is the very first INDIE GAMER GUY APPROVED title!
One final note, Gunpoint has another other cool, little feature that pops up at the end of the game and, quite honestly, I’ve never seen something like this implemented in a video game before. It lets you write a blog post in the “voice” of the main character, summing up your adventure, through various point and click options. I’ll share mine with you here:
A Case of Crossed Wires
24 dead. 18 injured. 20 jobs. $13,000. The week echoed in my mind like something that happened in the last week.
They don’t let me name names on this blog, but the person behind the hit I was investigating is dead now.
He played a dangerous game: insulting my hat.
I didn’t get the trigger man. It was the only play I could stomach. Wish I could say it was the right one.
I don’t know.
I guess I picked the least shitty of two incredibly shitty sides.
Maybe that doesn’t matter. Maybe all that matters is that I now have the ability to kick down doors.
For $9.99 Gunpoint will throw you out of a 30-story high plate-glass window and leave your broken ass in the pouring rain in the making of this review.
I wanted my first time here to be special, ya know? I wanted it to be EPIC; I wanted it to mean something but, unfortunately, it was just entirely “meh.”
I really thought Beast Boxing Turbo wasn’t going to be like all the other games. It was soooo sweet to me, when I added it to my shopping cart and plunked down my cash for it. Its sexy screenshots and promises of a Punch-Out meets an upgradable, RPG-like experience really had me fooled, ya know? HA! What a stupid assclown I am! Turns out this game is more like a rehash of an early 90’s Genesis title calledDeath Duel and it’s just like all the other clones and pretenders: awesome up front but fucking dissatisfying when it comes down to the brass tacks.
I mean, the first couple hours or so are OK. It looks, sounds and controls (use a gamepad rather than the computer keyboard; trust me on this) pretty nice and all but, I mean, this is a boxing game, right? So, why can’t I punch any of the monsters in the body? Why are all my shots to the head? Even Wii-Fucking-Boxing lets me punch to the body, right? And then…and then…this bastard game just started getting lazy on me by throwing the same damn opponents my way but just re-skinning them to look like Santa Claus (no joke) and a zombie. I stuck it out for a little longer to see if things would improve in the Ultra League but this is where your opponents just get cheap as hell and almost unbeatable. To its credit, the game did ask me if I wanted to try it on an easier setting, but I just wasn’t having any fun by then. Better to break it off clean there and move on down the road, ya know? No one likes a “Stage 5 Clinger,” that’s for sure.
Why you wanna treat me so bad, Piglas?
UGH!!! Why does this keep happening to me? Did I have a brain tumor for breakfast or something? All my friends find really great games that make them feel happy and content. When will it be my turn? When will I find the game that’s just FOR ME? And loves me for me and fulfills all my needs?? I’ve tried and I’ve tried and I’ve tried and they just all let me down in the end. Maybe it’s me. Maybe my standards are too high? I’ve been hurt before, I mean, really fucking devastated (first Assassin’s Creed…hello?), by games before, so maybe my defenses were up and I really didn’t try to let Beast Boxing Turbo into my heart?
No. It wasn’t me this time. This is all Beast Boxing Turbo’s fault with its crazy difficulty, recycled opponents and dumbed down fighting system (it ain’t boxing if I can’t go to the body). All those things had nothing to do with me. And I tried, I really did, but when you stop having fun it’s just better to walk away. It totally is.
Stupid, jerky douchebag of a game, ruining my first time and all!! Oh, I’ll remember you, Beast Boxing Turbo, but, rest assured, it will not be fondly!
Richard and Alice was developed by Owl Cave.
Indie Gamer Chick 
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