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Orc purging in video games at its finest

Hands down the weakest and most confusing title from The Chinese Room studio thus far.

“Confusing” might initially seem like an inappropriate choice of word here, since The Chinese Room was never known for the approachability of their artistic vision. However, in the case of Little Orpheus, the confusion arises not from the audience’s receiving end, where one tries to see through the fog of obscurity, to analyze its artistic motivation, to deduce the message it conveys, etc. No, this time, the confusion stems from figuring out how this game came to be in the first place, and how it ended up like this – A supposable manifestation of the studio’s identity crisis?

Little Orpheus was first released in 2020 as an Apple Arcade exclusive, then two years later did this re-release on other big screen platforms. Judging from this business decision, it is apparently a side hustle project aimed at reaching a broader audience. Which is also the first time on record that they stepped out of their comfort zone - the First Person “Walking Simulator” - a once niche now ubiquitous genre in which they pioneered over a decade ago. Just don’t get me wrong, by no means Little Orpheus is a market-oriented cash grab, it is nevertheless a genuine product. They managed to carry this cinematic platformer out without compromising too much of their artistic integrity: albeit cloaked in a thick layer of seemingly goofy slapstick, you can still discern their signature nihilistic undertone underneath, somehow (if you squint hard enough).

Unfortunately, all of these were buried under another overarching layer of faeces mountain: the mind-numbingly monotonous level design. Neither the platforming nor the puzzle sequences ever went beyond the difficulty level of those shape sorter toys for toddlers. The overall experience is plainly hypnotic, and this is not just a figure of speech, I literally fell asleep multiple times during my play sessions. For such a well-explored genre, the design philosophy they adopted this time is unbelievably obsolete, even by ‘90s standards. Most of my playtime I was in a half-awake autopilot mode, driven by the delusion that they may still got one last twist up their sleeve to redeem all these disappointments. After all, I just can’t persuade myself to believe that a pioneering and experienced studio like The Chinese Room would take such a conservative approach to their new business venture.

Although the story took place in a rather specific setting: a post-Soviet backwater "closed town"[en.wikipedia.org] in the mid-90s, which only bears minimal resemblance to the environment I grew up in.

Nonetheless, I found the sentiments it conveys extremely relatable, under the present circumstances. No artistic work, so far, has done a better job of delivering this particular nostalgia - the nostalgia of the pre-2019 era - with such precision and accuracy.

"A previous life, a previous incarnation."

Paradise Killer is arguably the most Suda51 game that Suda51 never made.

It has embodied all the signature trademarks of its source of inspiration: an overwhelmingly lethal dose of the imagery of Luna, a series of out-of-context conversations in a whisky bar, a ridiculously clunky user interface design, an omnipresent and recurring “Kill the Past” vibe, etc.

Except, WITHOUT all those lengthy absurd mansplaining and grotesque exhibitions of weeaboo fetishes.

AND is actually fun to play (unlike most Suda51 games)…

I had never dumped on a game for technical reasons before, not even once. As a fellow gamedev, I consider myself rather tolerant of technical issues. But this one is just too much.

Awful optimization, save corruption, memory leak, progress softlock, random crashes, and bugged achievements - this game had them all. Remember, this is a relatively shorter game, a non-completionist playthrough takes only about 2 hours. Even so, you could easily encounter all of them in such a short time frame according to some. If you are anything like me who heeds no warning and aims to 100% it, be prepared, you are in for a mentally exhausting ride. The devteam seems to have abandoned maintenance of the game, leaving it in an awkardly buggier state than its older iterations. I even had to resort to Steam client's console commands to roll the game back to a previous version in order to unlock a few remaining achievements...

Overall, a could-have-been interesting indie title with a somewhat unique atmosphere and artstyle, completely hampered by its overwhelming amount of technical flaws.




An extra sticking sore thumb: H3O4P is marked as Sulfuric Acid in one of the puzzles, still hasn’t been corrected after years.

I have been cigarette free for almost 7 years now and haven’t regretted it for one moment.
Yet, nevertheless, I kept having this certain je ne sais quoi of “I could use a smoke” thoughts playing this.
The vibe is just that Immaculate.

I’m sorry, but this game, Apsulov: End of Gods, is possibly the worst commercially released video game I’ve played in 2019. How it received such a positive rating on Steam is beyond me. I tried to look at other positive reviews in pursuit of an answer, only to find that most of the positive things others have mentioned, did not match my experience whatsoever. Therefore, I decide to share my unpopular opinion here, just to provide a different voice.

The biggest issue with Apsulov: End of Gods is its heavily stretched length. An average first playthrough would take 6 hours, give or take 2 hours or so, depending on your playstyle and selected difficulty (took me 7.7 hours on the highest selectable difficulty + all collectibles), which doesn’t sound too long, you say? The problem is, nearly half the playtime will be spent on vents-crawling (the #1 sin in video game design, mark my words), backtracking and traversing through linear, identical pitch-black corridors, without any point of interest to explore or even look at.

Truth be told, I had my false hope up at some point, that’s when I first entered a multi-floored huge hub section, right after I’m about to ask for a refund after struggling through its uninspiring, vents-crawling infested opening. My naïveté kicked in at the time and I thought to myself “oh cool, maybe this game will improve from this point on, and even evolve into the old classic Resident Evil style of exploration?” Only hours later did I realize all those side rooms were just for show, they either contain a mere collectible or nothing at all. The rest of the game stays exactly the same, or even worse: near the end of the game, you’ll be backtracking the same half-hour-long route, three times back and forth! Successively!! Sadly, at that time, I already missed the refund period.

Apsulov: End of Gods could have been a better game (compared to its current state), if only they could compress it into a 3-hour-long journey by cutting all the lackluster padding parts. But they won’t, and this is exactly what you’ll get when a majority of players these days believed in so-called “length justifies price” ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥.

Another thing that bugged me a lot is the graphic, which praised by many other reviewers. Sure, speaking of production value, its 3d modelling and texturing - albeit nothing impressive - is on par with industrial standard. And most of its monochrome scenes (such as Helheim) and well-lit areas (laboratory interior) are well done, I’ll give it that. But whenever it comes to dark areas – which consist the majority of the game, you’ll just get overly saturated Red/Green/Blue dotting a black screen, the overall palette is simply painful to watch, check the screenshot down below for a taste. To add insult to injury, an in-game mechanic, consider it as a night vision-esque visual filter which you’ll need to navigate 90% of the maps, adds a constantly shifting rainbow shade onto basically everything… The graphic quality is there, but the style just seemed cheap. What they truly lack, is a competent art director.
https://gtm.steamproxy.vip/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1937770022

And what are we talking about when we talk about horror games? It’s undeniable that the enemy design plays a huge part in it, they need to be gruesome, unsettling and threatening, both visually and psychologically. Just look at Silent Hill or The Evil Within (just the 1st, the sequel is garbage) for some good examples. Unfortunately, the enemy design of Apsulov: End of Gods missed the mark severely. You only have to deal with 4 types of enemies through the entire game, including a monkey-sized creature that looks just like a monkey… as well as a man-sized caterpillar (what caterpillar has to do with Norse mythology?). As you can see, there is nothing horrid about them (except one) visually, psychologically or even mechanically, they just don’t feel threatening at all. How is someone supposed to be scared by this?

Well, at least the sound design is decent, that’s the one thing I’d give them credit for. While traversing through all those boring identical pitch-black corridors, you always get some random ambient noises around you, making you constantly turning around to check if something sneaked up on you. It makes up the lack of sense of tension and danger, which the rest aspects of the game failed to deliver. However, it loses its magic prematurely whenever you get accustomed to its formula, realizing it’s just a design trick.

To sum it up, if by any chance you share a similar mindset with me, I would strongly recommend against this game. There are just so many other better games of this genre out there that’s worth your money and effort.

I have been aware of this game since it first released, but at that time, I gave it a pass without a second thought the moment I saw it was from the same developer who made MIND: Path to Thalamus. Indeed, that game is nowhere near a good one in my standards, I even wrote a negative review about it with some harsh words. So what made me give it a second chance this time? Well, simply because the low price point (80% off) it was at and I happened across a review highly praising it.

Naturally, I dived into it with a really low expectation. And oh boy, I ended up mesmerized.

Now I’m completely engulfed in regrets for two things: 1) Dear developer, please forgive me for my harsh words and prejudice before, I apologize sincerely. 2) Purchasing it at such a low price (roughly 2.5USD), is literally a steal.

So the moral to this is: Never let your prejudice towards people misleads your judgement.

Infernium is a game best experienced without knowing much about it, I’ll just have to keep my description as simple as I could: It gave me a similar vibe that I had when first playing Dark Souls, mind you, not just any Dark Souls, but the Dark Souls 1.

Remember the time when you were thrown into a strange world without knowing anything about it, only seeing a huge vista in front of you expands infinitely towards all directions? You had no idea of its inhabitant, its whereabout, and its purpose. Hell, you didn’t even know who yourself was and what you were supposed to do. (kinda like being born, innit? Except without your parents holding your hands.) As you carried on with your adventure, you blended into the world little by little. Like the realization that those light dots scattering at the horizon you saw at the very beginning, were not just background skybox, but actual levels you can march to… By unlocking shortcuts, you started to realize how this world was made, and how levels interconnect with each other on such a large scale… And how many secrets were hidden at every nook and cranny etcetera, etcetera.

For me, these are the reasons why Dark Souls 1 earned a special place in my heart, not its lore, not its combat system, not its misconceived difficulty. I simply rejoiced with excitement that I got the chance to relive all those experiences, once more. For Infernium, possibly provided the most genuine vibe among all souls-like games I’ve played, without even trying to be a souls-like by ripping off every formula that made the souls franchise successful. (Yes, I'm referring to games like Salt and Sanctuary, shame on you!)


I know, those are some bold words, you might as well lower your expectation a little bit. After all, Infernium is a really low-budget production (it’s mostly made by one person), and it has those low-budget feelings (you know what cheap unreal engine games are like) all over the place. Nevertheless, if you’re a lenient person with an open mind who can tolerate rough edges and some amateur design choices, missing this title might be a big mistake you’ll regret at some point.

To be honest, I used to despise puzzle games that incline to emphasize difficulty onto “reading the puzzle” instead of “solving the puzzle”, for complicating the presentation of a puzzle is way easier than designing a complicated puzzle itself. At least to me, puzzle games which took the former approach is plainly lackluster and simply not fun. IMO, puzzles should be all about the eureka moment after scratching your head for hours only to find out the solution is that simple, not spending most of the time figuring out what the puzzle actually is about. To achieve that, the objectives, the obstacles it presents and the methods you got at your disposal, everything should be clear at a glance.

How wrong was I.

With hindsight after playing through Mirror Drop, I realized that It’s not that this approach is inferior, it’s just the majority of them failed to make “reading the puzzle” fun.

As you can see, Mirror Drop had a completely opposite approach towards what I used to think as superior. In its case, most of the time spent will be on reading the puzzle, understanding the puzzle, navigating through the puzzle, and even “exiting” the puzzle. However, this dynamic process alone is mind-boggling enough for me to overlook the fact that the actual puzzle solving part has been pushed to a minor role.

On a retrospect, I can safely presume the redemption of Mirror Drop came from two trump cards: 1) the awe-inspiring audiovisual experience of course. 2) each level got its own genuine gimmick, sometimes it’s the infinite mirror maze that frustrates the most, sometimes it’s the Non-Euclidean space, and sometime it’s the color palette. Despite being confusing as hell, they successfully delivered an impressive psychedelic trance, and an enjoyable amount of challenge as well.



One last thing, this game sure as hell needs a lot of warnings beforehand. Since they are absent from both in-game and the store page, I’ll just post it here to prevent you from having any bad trip.

• Seizure Warning (For obvious reasons)
  
• Motion Sickness Warning (The control is on a 6-DOF basis)
  
• Hardware Meltdown Warning (It’s literally a ray tracing inferno! My PC is powerful enough to run every current day triple-A title smoothly on max setting with 2k resolution, yet this game, it makes my GPU fan scream like a howling banshee.)

I never expected the storytelling to be the most intriguing aspect of Hand of Fate 2 (needless to say, the combat part sucks, just like its prequel... Luckily, the ingenious level design this time redeemed it somehow). This is a good example of meta-narrative done right.

Additionally, a must-have textbook for every tabletop gamemaster.