Recent reviews by Dungeon Master Jo

Right, to pre-face this review I'd just like to point out that I have fully explored and completed the game. This review may have some bias because A) I like thrillers and horrors and B) I'm human. Humans are basically greedy pigeons in people-form and go after things they're most likely to like. That said, I do try to make constructive and honest criticism.

(minor spoilers, nothing not given away by it's description)

You are a struggling architect called out to a prospective clients place at night. Whereupon you must solve puzzles in order to get through the house and leave. Is this really a client? Is it some elaborate set-up by a killer? Hasn't the owner ever heard of DIY or basic tidying up? Only you will ever be able to guess.

Primarily it is a guess. You solve puzzles by using items in the environment, occasionally on other items. That is it.

The Good, the bad and the just plain odd

* The sound design is actually very accomplished, with materials sounds, effects in the environment and the odd sound from your character being incredibly close to perfect.
*Understated but charming music, a bit light on horror in some areas but still good and enjoyable.
*Voice acting - in-game speech is pretty good, the character reactions are believable.
*Good use of assets and the game areas are nice and consistent.
*Opening and closing cutscenes are very much 'tell' not 'show' and, in my opinion, tell too much.
*The story is basic. There's some tantalising ideas there, real stuff that could be fascinating, but they're not delved into leaving it as little more than a 3d escape the room game.
*Load times can be awful. The game seems to struggle to load from a continue in a timely fashion.
*Still buggy too. Should maybe have spent some time in Early Access to get more issues worked out before release but the dev is approachable, fixes bugs and crashes as quickly as humanly possible and engages with their community. With so many Indie and triple-A developers treating player communities as a personal Fiefdom this is a genuinely refreshing change and one that deserves recognition.
*Oh my goodness the voiceacting. In-game is good but the two cutscene ones bounce between a ponderous bedtime story and a poorly done police cliche. I laughed so hard.


Clues as to what is going on are hidden around the house but nothing is baby-fed to you with the exception of the opening and closing scenes. This I like. It feels, despite being a short and simplistic puzzle game, like the developers actually trust that gamers have brains and can think for themselves. The opening and closing scenes are exposition shotguns, with a lot of telling rather than showing but you can get a good sense of what the developer was going for - black and white stills are done alongside a narration from the main character. Dumping some of the information and getting 3d models or much more stylistic imagery to do parts of it would improve the immersion as well as the sense of dread.

There's little in the way of a threat but there is an almost palpable sense of something being wrong or out to get you. This is often due to the really quite nice sound design - the soundtrack is good too. Graphically, it looks very 'Unity' or 'FPS Maker' but the use of lighting effects and well-placed assets that look as if they fit together, so it may not be beautiful but it is functional and is by no means ugly. Pacing is good in regards to the set events although I would have liked a bit more tension and orchestral stress-building music prior to them.

Controls are the standard ones for a first person game. WADS for movement, F for flashlight, C for crouching and Shift for running. Mouse for looking around and investigating. They're responsive though it is possible to pick items up through the walls (rarely, but it can happen) and the head-bob is only slight - a boon for those of us who find it irritating and over-used. When you move it feels like there's some weight to your character, they're not too floaty and the sound design helps with that.

Bugs and glitches are being sorted as they're reported and quickly too. The only ones I came across were the flashlight being held oddly by the character, rending it nearly useless (you don't really need it), being able to pick up some slabs from outside whilst looking at a cupboard in the shed and an odd tendency to crash if I attempted to move during the first autosave. The dev is approachable, reaches out to players and does seem to be listening to their community to make this short experience as good as possible. EA and certain other teams (like non-terrestrial murder (I know, a joke for all the Jim Sterling fans there - I really don't want to be sued because of telling the truth) could genuinely learn a thing or two about player engagement and making the community feel involved.



I recommend this game. Yes, it's short, has issues and has nothing on games like The Room when it comes to puzzles. However, it has a spark of something and I hope the dev continues to work on this concept and improve. So much is right or nearly there that I am pleased I played this very short game. I feel that it was worth a few minutes of my time in spite of its issues. Yes, it's free but it still costs time and that isn't enough to give a game a free ride. This feels like an old-school demo for something greater, and I would not mind that at all. Particularly as there's so many developers who sell an even shorter or non-functional game for ridiculous sums when the demo route has more honesty to it, in general. For a first release everyone involved should be proud - first releases are often awful, this one may hedge on the mediocre at times but by no means is it bad.

This is a great program, but the recent update appears to have caused major issues, particularly for Windows 10 users so I can no longer recommend it. The site that ran alongside it providing tutorials that could run inside the program has also closed so one of it's biggest selling points - as a learning tool - is now moot.

In regards to the program itself, the interface is simple and flexible and if you've used Paint or Photoshop you should find your way around easily. It has some basic filters but does allow more to be added pretty simply.

I'm not entirely certain why I bother to play this game. That's less of an insult than you'd think - the storyline is interesting, although predictable, but it does have some nice twists. Graphically it has a nice anime look and a pop-up-book aesthetic. Character design is good and you can find yourself caring for the odd few of them.

Unfortunately, the controls for keyboard and mouse are horrendously slow, the mini-games are annoying and break the flow of the court sections and the ability to tell the difference between logic and lateral thinking is sorely lacking. A few tweaks and this could have been fantastic - it's got the components but the execution is ultimately a letdown. It feels like you're pushing a lever to trigger events and it's over-written to the point that it breaks the consistency of the game and feels like a chore to play.

Play it with a controller and the mini-games are slightly more responsive but still rather pointless. I recommend this one but only to those who want a text-driven narrative and can put up with the controls and iffy-at-best court puzzles.

It's been a while since I felt that rising chill as the hairs on the back of my neck stood on end. A while since every floor boards creak made my heart leap into my throat and stop, waiting for the unknown to bring itself forth. But it doesn't. Not yet.

Layers of Fear is currently an extremely highly polished, almost complete early access offering. It has overtones of P.T. and in some regards the twisting of the visuals surpasses it. A wonderful example of the Unity engine used to the best of its ability. The presentation is beautiful - darkness in very few places the rooms brim with light and colour but this can often make them even more terrifying as you feel like there is nowhere to hide. The sound direction and scant voice acting adds to a feeling of isolation and every sound feels like it has meaning or is a warning.

As you explore the stunning victorian-era house, unravelling your characters sordid, bitter past through notes, art, newspapers and the detritus of his life you start to understand more of what is happening and it tests your empathy as a player and makes the game more frightening - you may not be able to stop this, you may only make it better, or worse and the only way to know is to continue on.

Currently, the completed game is due for release in the first quarter of 2016, though additional content, such as the extra Halloween story, updates and patches are made available regularly and the developers are easy to reach via the forums.

I run a quite high spec rig and had no issues with running this on full high settings at a stable framerate, although some users seem to have issues. It does seem to depend on system setups. Personally, really loved playing this would be happy to consider it an 8/10 as it stands. Completed, I expect that to potentially rise, but we'll see.

This is a game that really hits you in the feels. It's a game about the experience, the emotion and seeing the sights. There's an excellent story to explore here, but the keyword is "explore". There's absolutely no handholding and you can miss several sections that, whilst not necessary to the story, help to give a bit of background and depth to the characters and scenario that you wander through. It's also an extremely difficult one to review without spoilers, so I'm splitting the review into two sections - info regarding graphics, handling and such at the top and the main issues and points people have raised and what to look for lower down.

So, here we go:

GRAPHICS

It is stunning. The design team apparently created everything from real world textures and it shows, the places you go through are beautiful. They look like a real woodland or a real mine or a real Churchyard from Northern Scotland or anywhere in the North of Europe. The water moves so realistically you could almost think it was a video, rather than a model. It's phenomenal what they have done and I hope more teams adopt this practice, even though it is intense work at high levels for most PCs. It is worth it.

SOUND

It's a refreshing change to play a First Person exploration game where I'm NOT a silent protagonist. The voice acting is excellent, though occasionally the dialogue sounds a little hackneyed although that fits in with the story content. Other characters, who you interact with indirectly are realistically portrayed, with well-written dialogue and good voices.

Environmental sounds are well suited too. Birds have a selection of calls, bugs can be heard and the sounds from water, fire and the creaking of trees and rustling of grass are all very accurate.


CONTROLS

Keyboard and mouse controls are simple but serviceable, personally I would have liked a bit more control options for the mouse as I have a gaming mouse and the game is lacking in sensitivity settings and programming settings for those. I didn't play using a controller so cannot give a review of those, sorry!


EXTRAS

There are some nice hidden bits in-game, little touches that help to build the game world and characterisations and there are also some acheivements to get on Steam, though a guide will help with a couple of the more obscure ones.


***POSSIBLE SPOILERS IN SUMMARY***


I loved this game. It's a great detective story and the twist ending had me in tears. Nothing in it is especially difficult, apart from one section in the mines and that can be completed through trial and error. The mine section is irritating and feels out of place, but it is in keeping with the running theme of the game - a childs' imagination and memories.

The biggest issue most people have is that they don't know what to do to start with. It doesn't hold your hand, it doesn't tell you where to go, it just sets you loose and lets you explore in the hope that you can find out what happened to Ethan Carter. Look at everything, run through the woods, explore the houses and realise that, as free-form as the game seems, it has been carefully crafted to push you towards the right direction.

If you want a game where you can take your time, think and enjoy the journey, then I recommend this game.

#joymachinejo

Having just completed this, I decided to pop a quick review on Steam just so anyone considering purchasing this can get a flavour of what to expect from the game. As with all game reviews, please note that this is based on my own experience and is therefore subjective - I quite enjoy puzzle games, if you don't, you may not like this game.

You play as a silent protagonist, responding to a letter from a friend who has gone missing. Their behaviour has been increasingly erratic and secretive and you fear for their well-being, so upon arrival at their home you start to search for them, a search which leads you to the attic room with a small puzzle box in the centre of it.

That's the basic set-up. There is no exploration, everything takes place with a focus on the puzzle box as it is the key to finding out what has happened to your friend and it is entirely mouse controlled. You manipulate different parts of the box using the mouse and this gradually unlocks to become something that is visually surprisingly impressive - graphically the game is no slouch, despite being able to run on a modest XP setup, when put on my AMD Black/720 graphics card set up and cranked up it looks superb. Sharp, detailed and with wonderfful animations.

Sound is good, with a nice soundtrack, but I found it could be repetitive particularly when interspersed with sound-effects. It does change slightly over the course of the game and the overall quality of music is high. You do have the option to turn volume completely off and to window the game by altering the resolution using the options menu in-game or from the start menu, so you can stream music or video whilst you play if the in-game sound isn't your thing (or there's something else you want to watch).

Now to the main problems of the game, and these are two-fold: the length of the game is short and the puzzles vary wildly in difficulty. This is compounded further by some of them having slightly off controls or moments when an animation is repeated even though it isn't necessary. Moments like this feel like they've been left in as a result of padding to help fill out a very short game (I've finished it twice in 5 hours) or are the result of poor programming decisions. Later in the game some puzzles were understandly much more difficult but a few felt VERY easy and almost out of place in comparison to where I was in the game. The difficulty curve affects the game length as you can whizz through the easier puzzles once you've got the mindset for it and are used to the games logic.

The promise of further installments in the series, either as sequels or as DLC are something that I am looking forward to and I fully recommend buying this if you are a fan of puzzle games. If you want to test the water and are curious and a fan of a bit of Lovecraftian horror then you may also find a lot to like in this highly-polished, challenging but short entry to the puzzle genre.

The Joy Machine
#joymachinejo

This game. This. RUDDY. GAME.

Should you play it? Yes, absolutely.

Can you play it? Possibly not.

Let me explain, (briefly, I promise) this was originally a console game, following the adventures of FBI Investigator and friendly neighbourhood schizophrenic Francis York Morgan who is a walking mix of cliche and man as he attempts to solve a savage murder in a small town in America. It has some driving and fighting elements but is mostly investigating and talking until you get to do these bits. It has great atmosphere, is immensely cheesy and there was apparently a court case against it from Twin Peaks for plagiarism. It feels like Twin Peaks' and Swery65 had an illicit trist and Deadly Premonition was the inbred offspring - perfectly normal until closer inspection. As soon as the console game, which was a lot of fun if you like a disturbed American comedy murder, was brought to PC, things went wrong.

And oh so wrong. The graphic quality was hampered to allow it to play on lower settings but the settings were not made accessible to the player so we can't ramp them back up. The glitches like walking and falling through walls and floors and tipping over vehicles are just the tip of the iceberg. Crashes are horribly frequent with some players reporting a crash every hour of play, like clockwork, others getting crashes at certain points like when the camera is on a female characters legs and then again randomly in car parks. And other points when it simply switches off for no apparent reason but doesn't allow itself to be switched back on without a full restart.

Two full patches later and these problems are still occuring - there are also external patches that can fix the graphics issue. It's pretty much unplayable but the game itself is FANTASTIC. It's fun and strange and shocking in places and I recommend the game itself.

But can I recommend getting it on STEAM? Probably not. I've been playing for about 33 hours now and I still haven't completed the second episode, purely because crashes and bugs have made me restart 5 times. If you can get it on a console, do so, though it's expensive.

Alternatively, here's some quick tips to help make it a little easier:

• Run the game in Admin mode (right click the game icon and click "Run as administrator")
  Run in compatibility mode in Windows 98 if you have Windows 7 (WindowsXP Sv1 if you have Windows 8) that should fix the problem with aiming up and down
  
• Search for DPfix.ini in Google - it's a graphical fix patch, follow the creators instructions (not necessary and only useful if you have a really good PC)
  
• Use a controller - it will make your life easier, especially forthe driving sections, which are hilariously bad

Murdered: Soul Suspect - Spoiler Free Review

First off, I'd like to point out that I like both pulp noir and ghost stories both of which are heavy influences on the general feel of this game. If you do not like either the cinematography stylings of pulp noir (in which case, you won't like the cut-scenes and may dislike the characters on occassion) or think ghost stories are dull, then this is not the game for you.

For those of you still with me and looking at potentially buying this game a bit of background is in order. The studio that released M:SS closed down despite really ploughing everything into this game. Part of it is odd in places, which I'll get to, but mostly they'd been struggling for a while due to releasing a couple of games which were bombs a while back. Any future updates to the game will have to be community driven but that at least is one piece of good news - after multiple playthroughs I only came across one minor glitch, once, and it was a graphical one that I couldn't replicate. The game runs really well so future patching should not be necessary.

So, where to start? How about the story. It's pretty standard fair, almost straight out of a "Randall & Hopkirk: Deceased" episode. You're a detective in Salem when a call is put in about a strange hooded man breaking into an apartment building. As you are an emotional loose cannon after your wifes' death (it's actually nice to play a character who's irrational behaviour gets some explanation for once) you chase after him alone only to find that he's too strong for you, the eventual fight resulting in your death. Your purpose is to stop the killer from beyond the grave so that your spirit can move on and be reunited with your wife.

This opening is actually really impressive as it's almost entirely done using the in-game engine and graphically looks superb, the sweeping camera shots and the slow-motion work really well giving a strong movie quality feel but rather than just have you as a passenger watching the opening the developer makes you take part in it, trying to first catch the killer and even trying to survive the attack. The sound is excellent too and is nicely understated, something that carries throughout the whole game.

After this you're left, dead, in Salem trying to figure out how you can stop this killer. There's a tutorial which covers the controls and then you're given objectives to complete but you are left to wander through reasonably large parts of Salem without being stopped. As you're dead you come across other spirits and left over memories of Salem in it's past, which just helps to make the world more interesting and full and the contrast in design is really well realised, especially when it ties in with the sidequests and main stories. The more you progress the more of Salem opens up to you, allowing you to find out more about Salems past and revisit areas you have already explored. The team have been as historically accurate as possible, considering that the game is a work of fiction, and you'll get to pick up on a real flavour of Salems darker past as you wander town.

Character design suits the mood of the town too and there are characters in period dress in certain areas, although they are very few and far between, I'd have liked to have seen more of them. They are reasonably realistic to look at - not ultra-real - which would feel out of place in a ghost story, but real anyway with very good motion capture and facial expressions especially on the main ones. One that stood out to me is a point where a character manages to pretty much lie with just their face for a split second near the end, you'll know it when you see it, but the technology is well utilised without being overdone, it does not take you out of the story or gameplay very much if ever.

As a ghost you get to travel through walls but presumably due to hardware limitations this pretty much is only really used within enclosed spaces, though this is explained within the game-worlds mythos itself well enough and it can be quite good fun. These sections really can make you feel like a running, screaming spirit. I felt less like a spirit and more like I was going to have a seizure due to swoosh noise everytime you select a conversation topic. It's fine in short conversations but they can be long and a little grating if you want to find out everything.

There's some disturbing bits in this game too. Some pretty nasty deaths of young women, some ghosts have some surprisingly harrowing and well-acted lines, almost mini-stories, of their own if you come across them and there are collectables that unlock urban legends, a couple of which are genuinely quite creepy. There are places with a lot of extra details added in which build up a wonderful sense of dread and oppression too, a lot of which can easily be missed and overlooked as it is just there for scene-setting.

Controls are pretty tight, the camera is good but can be a bit awkward when you are possessing something or trying to get through a wall slowly. But there are two elephants in the room and these are what most reviewers scored the game so harshly on.

1) Pointless Sort-of Forced Combat/Stealth Sections.

You do combat, you either have to go for it whole-heartedly or just don't do it. In for a penny, in for a pound! M:SS feels like it's dipping it's fingers into the collection bowl and wondering if it can get away with giving a two Christmas old chocolate coin. You get an enforced stealth section, taking you out of the more interesting portion of the game which feels jarring, so you can try to sneak past these demon-monsters which look like the Nozghul if they'd been drinking sheep-dip. It hardly ever works so you have to try to stealth kill them, which is only a temporary fix.

2) Escort Mission

The escort is at least useful but these are really badly designed - it barely matters if you get spotted because the spotter sub-routine is so badly programmed.

Both of these things feel tacked on and out of place. I have a sneaking suspicion that they received orders from their publisher that if they wanted a Triple A advertising budget then it had to have those things in it because they feel completely at odds with the rest of the game. And yes, I will be doing a video rant I am that annoyed about it.

Mercifully, there's only a handful of those sections and apart from that and one point with a truly stupid portrayal of mental illness (completely different to an earlier scene with a ghost in a bath), the rest of the game is pretty much excellent. If you can stick out those few parts you will find a good to look at, engaging murder mystery, with an excellent twist and interesting backdrop and characters.

I recommend it, but have to dock it marks for 1) & 2)

Total Score: 7.5/10

Well above average and definitely worth a play if you want a murder mystery that's a little different or a slowly paced adventure game.