Recent reviews by sycopat

Let me tell you the tale of Melbil Nitigzefon, Axe Lord of Cilobinod.

When we set out to establish Cilobinod, Melbil came with us. A competent axedwarf, I selected him to provide early security for our colony. Once we were well established, he became our first militia commander, responsible for training others in the way of the steel battleaxe.

As he grew into his potential, he trained many others, eventually leading a mighty military of steel clad dwarfs. Melbil led our military to defense of our colony multiple times. He fought troglodyte raiders from below, mighty Draltha and invading bat people. Twice the goblins of Bunionterror laid seige to our fortress, and twice Melbil handed them crushing defeats.

We thrived under Melbils guardianship. We were made a barony! None dared encroach our territory.

Until Úrer came.

Cursed Úrer, forgotten beast of legend. A giant hairy ladybug, with horns on it's gaunt head and poisonous vapors swirling around it. It attacked indiscriminately, killing anything it could get close to, but always moving towards our fortress.

Melbil donned his steel helm and led his squad against the beast.

He cornered it outside our walls, steel axes glinting in the caverns gloom. He swung, he parried, he struck. Moving faster than any dwarf had a right to. Úrer could not touch him. But his squad were not as lucky, not as skilled. Úrer twisted the head off one, tore the arms from another.

Melbil had had enough. No more dwarfs would fall to Úrer. He swung his axe and lodged it deep into Úrers flank. Pinning the beast in place! It reared above the disarmed dwarf, poised to strike the Axe Lord down.

Weaponless, the enraged Melbil attacked first! He launched himself up towards the beast and bit it!

His mighty dwarven jaws tore through the chitinous shell of Úrer and with his teeth, Melbil ripped out Úrers heart.

As the beast crashed before him, dead, at the very moment of ultimate victory, Melbil slumped to the ground. Dead.

Alas, the cursed beast was poisonous, and Melbil had no defense against it's pestilential petulance.

So passed our greatest hero. He lies now in a rock coffin, at the very peak of our mountain home, his tomb plated with silver and engraved with masterworks.

The king has come. Cilobinod is our capital city. And our children are raised to sing the praises of Melbil Nitigzefon.

Stardew valley, like the harvest moon series it is descended from is a 2d action rpg. Only instead of setting off to save a princess, or to collect four crystals, your goal is to save a farm and build a community. The game is an excellent example of how simple mechanics can be used to give very different experiences. Calling it an action rpg will probably cause some heads to swivel, but the basic mechanics have been with us since the legend of zelda.

Where stardew valley succeeds for me is in the heart it has. Every one of it's characters is crafted with strengths and flaws. The town is lovingly realised, peoples relationships aren't always smooth, and a lot of the interpersonal conflicts are products of lack of communication and emotional reaction. This means that the town feels alive and present, the stories that occur there have a little more depth than the cutesy presentation might initially insinuate, and that cutesy presentation itself is lovingly realised, speaking to an immense amount of care poured into crafting the game.

The farm and your ambitions for it put limits on how much time you have for other aspects of the game and this allows a player to find the balance that's right for them, and no matter how it balances the other parts of the game are present enough that it can constantly feel like the player is juggling different demands. This makes the urge to play "one more day" quite compelling.

If you've never played a game like this, Stardew Valley is probably the best in the genre. A great place to start if you're interested. If you played and enjoyed old harvest moon games, this will be very familiar and enjoyable.

No spoilers.

Undertale is a video game.

You should buy it.

Gone Home is an interesting game to review, largely because as a story driven game revelation of too much plot detail is likely to spoil it. As a game, it's simple enough. It takes the exploration methods of first person games, rpg and shooter, scatteredd notes and audio logs, and builds from them a game reminiscient in play style of a point and click adventure. It's a very nice synthesis and one which works extremely well, but at it's core there's nothing new about picking up notes and piecing together the story for oneself. The elder scrolls has been doing it for ages now. Gone home's real breakthrough is to prove that such a game is possible as a game in it's own right and not as a hidden segment of an elder scrolls or bioshock game only the determined and curious will ever really find or finish.

The plot itself is interesting. Video games are so often a bastion of bizarre plots which exist to justify the game that a game which exists as purely an exploration of a drama is still refreshing and surprising. That the drama in question is often extremely mundane, the type of general fiction which games rarely explore, marks a subtle but important expansion of the types of stories games are capable of telling and the types of experiences games are able to share.

Overall, I don't think the game is for everyone. At less than two hours long it's certainly not for the type of person who worries about the hardcore and the casual as divisions of gamer, nor will it suit someone who cannot sit through and appreciate the occasional cinematic drama. But I still think it's an interesting game and would recommend it to anyone who feels that games are capable of being more than their stereotypes, and can explore more themes than those of interest specifically to straight male adolescents.