Assassin's Creed: Unity (2014) - Review

 The Assassins Creed franchise has been actively lingering in the back of my brain ever since the first one was released in 2007. For some reason I never really got into it, even though the gameplay looked like something that I would enjoy - stealth and parkour. Since the first game came out the series has grown to a veritable smorgasbord of games and maybe it's taken me so long to get into it because I didn't know where to start. My hesitation has only added more games to the list.

Do I start from the beginning? The first games can be full of dubious gameplay and game design choices that make them difficult to enjoy with modern eyes and quality of life-wants.

50 shades of brown

Do I start in the middle? Where did they iron out the most kinks, where did they nail the story? 

Do I start with the latest? Who knows what good games I miss jumping the line all the way to the end? I could've made the smart thing and checked some list of "best games in the Assassins Creed series". But instead I did a pick of a handful with cool sounding names from a Steam sale a while ago, and decided to start with the oldest one out of that bunch. That game was Assassins Creed: Unity.

While I didn't know much about the game going in, I knew enough to have a general idea and expectation. The game largely fulfilled those expectations. The game is mostly about stealthing and parkouring. What I didn't expect however were how badly designed the game would be in those core areas specifically.

It seems clear that Unity expects you to be a returning AC player as it doesn't explain much about the premise of the AC game series. Because of this I can't really say much about it either - you play as a guy named Arno during French Revolution Paris. From being a sort of nobody you somehow become part of an assassinations guild, it is never explained where Arno gets his superhuman capabilities of climbing buildings. In actuality however, you're some guy in present time, hooked up to some machine that allows you to control Arno in a sort of virtual reality time travel. Some evil corporation is after you in this virtual world, though during my 20 hours with the game that never came to matter. Some of the quests and stages are centered around this fact that the world you run around in is actually inside a computer, or something like it, but that's the most you'll ever notice. Mostly you spend your time running up and down the streets of 18th century Paris, scaling walls and trying to complete different quests and tasks given to you.

And this is both one of the best and the worst things about AC: Unity. I love the detail of Paris and as someone who is quite interested in history it was fun to just run around and pretend to be there. I've heard that Ubisoft overall has tried to be as historically accurate as possible, while also trying to make a fun game and on one of these things I find that the game excels. Even though the game is now 11 years old it's beautiful and feels alive. They've made a lot of nice little scripts running throughout the city that make it feel like all the NPCs moving about are minding their own business, or mostly reacting appropriately to your often weird behaviour.

The story also has the potential to be interesting. It starts with a sequence about the Templars in the 12th century (or something like it) and this is continued in a struggle between the assassinations guild and somewhat unclear antagonists in the 18th century. There is a lot of optional information about things you come across and they were always a delight to read, with in-depth texts about characters, locations or situations. Some of the quests are quite interesting, like the murder mystery ones where you have to figure out who is the culprit and accuse the right person to receive the best reward.

A lot to do, not much of it fun though.

Combat is serviceable, with a possibility to block or dodge enemies and use different tools like smoke bombs and arrows to increase your advantage. Being able to jump people from above and stealth kill multiple targets is fun and useful.

Unfortunately it is all ruined by the one thing that needed to really work, the controls. If you're going to make a game that is so much about handling yourself, jumping from one building to the next, climbing up the side of clock towers and hiding from evil guards, those things need to not constantly be what you fail to do.

After having played other games that have some element of climbing, stealthing and jumping through hoops (Shadows of Mordor, Dishonored) I can say this game is by far the most poorly executed. In fact so bad that after 20 hours of playing, and a particularly frustrating sequence trying to kill the Beggar King but having to restart the mission around ten times because Arno wouldn't do what I wanted him to, I decided I didn't want to play this anymore.

It is clear that Ubisoft bit off more than they could chew. Or maybe the game was just exceptionally poorly optimized to my setup. I played it with keyboard on PC, and I toyed with the idea of trying to use a controller. But the problems I had with the controls didn't seem to stem from the control scheme, but how Arno interpreted my input and interacted with the world around him. It seemed almost arbitrary whether he would jump on to the next object or just randomly hurl himself off the wall and onto the street. Hiding behind objects to avoid being discovered I often ended up being stuck. Don't get me started on trying to get through windows, which was practically impossible. This quickly gets extremely frustrating when you have a handful of guards behind you shooting you in the backside.

And it doesn't end there;

• The menu system is incredibly obtuse, trying to find information about the quest I was on was way harder than it should be. 
• The minimap is littered with symbols indicating things you can do, but the overview map doesn't always correspond or contain the same symbols (I am aware you can filter), making it confusing to use. 
• It's way too unclear how you gain currency to unlock skills or improve your weapons.
• Even though it is supposed to be a stealth game, it is in no way clear how visible you are at any given time. While you get a good tool in the "hightened senses" that allows you to see enemies through walls, it was impossible to judge if someone was going to spot you based on light sources or distances. Some times I crept around in a fully lit church having absolutely no idea why some guards spotted me and some didn't.
• I really don't like Ubisoft Connect...

I just felt like for every moment I got to enjoy, the game had to give me two moments where I was extremely annoyed. That is just not a good enough ratio. It also doesn't help that a lot of the side quests got repetitive and I decided to try to get through the game quickly by focusing on the main story. But after the above mentioned harrowing experience of a complete communication failure between me and Arno I knew that it wasn't about me getting comfortable with the controls and it wasn't going to get any better.

This doesn't mean I am giving up on the AC series however, I still have a few games from that sale to check out eventually.

Day of the Tentacle Remastered (2016) - Review

Deciding to revisit some childhood memories by replaying old Point & Click (P&C) Adventure games with my kids has turned out to be a blessing and a curse. I'm always happy to see them enjoy "real" games, as I like to think of anything that isn't just clicking and combining random stuff (wait a minute, that describes the average P&C game).

But it turns out they enjoy them a lot more than I expected them to. Maybe more than I ever did when I originally played them, probably fueled by the fact that we get to complete the games unlike what I managed on my ownsome. Especially my 6yo daughter loves the experience of sitting together and trying to figure out the puzzles. Now she nags me every day for us to play some more. A blessing and a curse.

Unlike my memories of Secret of Monkey Island, I remember clearly not getting very far into Day of the Tentacle as a kid. Having replayed it now as an adult, I really can't blame my child-self for failing at this. Day of the Tentacle epitomizes everything that I worry about when playing a P&C game i.e the puzzles being obscure to the point of almost being impossible to solve. Day of the Tentacle requires some next level out-of-the-box-thinking to finish without a guide and there are puzzles in there that will haunt me forever. Oh and just a warning here, I will give some examples of these puzzles so if you haven't played the game and don't want any tips, beware.

Day of the Tentacle is technically a sequel to Maniac Mansion, a game I have never played. Fortunately it only vaguely references that game (at least to my knowledge) and it doesn't feel like you need to know anything about Maniac Mansion to fully enjoy this game. Because even though Day of the Tentacle is a P&C game that is hard as nails, it is very fun and probably one of the best examples of the comedy from writers Tim Schafer, Dave Grossman and Ron Gilbert who also made the beforementioned Monkey Island game and the sequel to that.

The original Day of the Tentacle was released in 1993 and the remastered version adds some updated graphics and a very enjoyable commentary track that runs throughout the game as you play it. This style of updated graphics worked so much better than the one they used in The Secret of Monkey Island, as they've basically kept the original style but smoothed out the pixelated edges which makes things a bit easier to see.

You control friends Bernard, Hoagie and Laverne as they get thrown across time to stop the evil purple tentacle from taking over the world. Hoagie gets stuck 200 years in the past and Laverne 200 years in the future, while Bernard stays in the present. A big part of the gameplay is adjusting the timeline so that whatever Hoagie does in the past changes conditions in Bernard's or Laverne's timeline. This is a very fun concept and used brilliantly throughout the game, it also ups the ante for your guesses on how to solve different problems. One of my favorites is when Bernard puts a sweater in the tumble dryer for 200 years so that when Laverne gets it in the future she can use it to warm up a hamster that has been frozen for 200 years. 

The controls are the good old SCUMM controls with the option to use different verbs with different objects in your surroundings, verbs like "push", "open" or "pick up". In the remastered version you get a wheel of options that works very well, much better than solution they went with in the remastered version of the Secret of Monkey Island.

When I played it as a kid I never got further than getting Laverne out of the tree. Finally getting to play through the game properly was exciting and fun. I remembered some puzzles in the beginning but very quickly we got stuck and we pretty much had to use a walkthrough for 80% of the puzzles in the latter 3/4 of the game. 

Like any good game, a good P&C game needs both a good story and good gameplay. Day of the Tentacle delivers. I usually get annoyed when I constantly have to consult a walkthrough, but the characters and the story of Day of the Tentacle kept me curious and I didn't mind checking lists. 

But how hard are the puzzles anyway, you might wonder? Let me give you one example...

*deep breath* In the future, Laverne needs a tentacle to move from the place he is guarding. To make him move she needs to make him chase after some humans. To let the humans out of the prison you need to remove the prison guard. To remove the prison guard you need to give him a dinner invite. To get the dinner invite you need to win the human exhibition contest. But Laverne has no human to compete with. So you get a mummy in an upstairs room and put roller skaters on him so you can roll him around. You also need a name tag that you get from one of the other guys. Then you need Hoagie to send you pasta that he finds in a cupboard, use it as hair on the mummy and comb it with a fork. All this is to win one of the three competitions needed.

There are definitely puzzles in this game I would've never been able to figure out or even guess at.  Maybe not even figure out with the old and tried tactic of just combining everything in your inventory with everything you see. Since you play as three different characters, in three different setting and with three different inventories, it just makes the variables so much larger. I don't feel dumb playing this game, I just accept the whackiness of it.

But fortunately everything else about the game is so well done and written, you forgive it and you want to continue trying. I definitely did as a kid, I threw myself at the problems many, many times and I even managed to figure out that you needed to paint the Kumquat tree fruits red so that Washington will think it's a cherry tree and chop it down, meaning it disappears in the future and Laverne falls down.

But then I couldn't figure out that Laverne needs to send the diagram of a tentacle to Hoagie so that he can give it to the woman who creates the American flag, turning a flag in Laverne's timeline into a tentacle costume so that she can move around freely. Yeah... I never got past that part. Until now.

If you tell me you've played through Day of the Tentacle entirely without help, you have my eternal respect. It is probably the most difficult P&C game I have played, simply because of the somewhat random and jokey nature of the puzzles.

But the game is full of memorable characters and gaming moments that will make it worth your time and frustration. The game manages to stump you but make it all the more rewarding when you figure something out. It deserves its place as one of P&C games finest, especially considering when it was released. There have been many good P&C games since then, but few as fun and funny as this one.

Grape Escape - Board Game Review

What's in a name? That which we call a board game, by any other name would be as fun.

Or would it? I am guessing I am not the only one who has once or twice pondered, what even counts as a board game? In Swedish we make a distinction between games played with a board, i.e literally board games (brädspel), games played with cards (kortspel) and other type of table top games (sällskapsspel). My brother was annoyed when I called Arboretum a board game, because even though you'd might think it would count as a card game he thought of it as a table top game.

Semantics, one could say. And one would be correct, in a way.  In the end all that matters is that it is fun. But maybe not, because when I tell my family I want to play a board game and we end up playing Mouse Trap, I feel cheated. Not because it is bad, and it is quite bad, but because it doesn't feel like a board game to me, but more like a toy.

I realize a lot of the board games I wanted as a kid were actually these semi-toys like Mouse Trap and Ghost Castle. And Grape Escape. For some reason I never really got to play them. They were always out of reach. Some friend might have had them, maybe I saw the ad for them. They seemed to so cool, like so much fun. So when I saw Grape Escape in a Second Hand store I had the opportunity to give in to my inner 10- year old. Of course I had to do it.

I should've known better though, having tried Mouse Trap and knowing what a disaster that is.  Mouse Trap is neither fun as a game nor as a toy. While the idea of a Rube Goldberg machine that you can set off to trap your fellow players is an interesting one, the execution is extremely poor. The slightest cough or vibration sets off the trap meaning you spend a lot more time trying to set everything up than actually playing, or having fun. I guess this explains why I never got to play them as a kid, adults around me felt the same way then as I do about it now. When my kids asked to play Mouse Trap I had to work really hard not to let out a huge sigh of boredom. I am glad they did not ask for it often.

Grape Escape, released in 1992 (this Swedish version in 1993) has a simpler machine, for better or worse, and instead you get to cut, saw, crush and mangle little grape figures made out of clay. The game itself is beyond simple - roll a dice and move on 1-4. One side allows you to jump ahead on the board and one side lets you operate the grape crushing machine. Getting through the board takes no time at all and often you just end up trying out the different ways of maiming your grape instead of actually playing the game - forget teaching your kids right from wrong with this game, it's just about having fun destroying things.

Once you've done that though, there isn't much more to it. Yet again it is way more hassle setting up the machine than you'll end up having fun, and I doubt that there is much longevity in the concept even for the most evil little child. One of the main issues is the instability of the structure itself. It's probably not an easy thing to design something that is supposed to work with some few plastic parts and be able to cut through clay grapes without harming any actual fingers. But it's also not easy enough to put together for young kids to play with it on their own, unless they literally just play with the parts. Putting the whole machine together and making sure things don't pop off every three seconds takes some brain power and steady hands. Kids get just as frustrated as adults trying to operate the thing.

The end result is something that is prone to fall apart and not really good at the one thing it is supposed to do - smash grapes. But it does it somewhat well enough, especially if you give it a helping hand here and there and so it provides some 20 minutes of chuckles. 

Is it worth keeping around the huge box for though? Definitely not, like Mouse Trap this game is not a keeper.

The Secret of Monkey Island: Special Edition (2009) - Review

You've probably had the experience of watching a movie and realizing half-way through that you've already seen that movie and just completely forgot about it. Have you ever had the opposite though? Where you are certain you've already played a game and realize you definitely haven't, half-way through? No? Just me then I guess.

The original The Secret of Monkey Island was released all the way back in 1990, and while I am old now I was too young then to play it at launch. No matter, I definitely got around to playing it at some point while growing up. I remember the bar with all the pirates, the word-fencing, the annoying boat salesman. Yeah I pretty much remember finishing The Secret of Monkey Island.

So when I decided to introduce my kids (6 and 11 yo) to this little gem I thought I basically knew most of the puzzles and we would breeze through. I felt like I remembered all of the game even though many years had passed since I last properly played it, though my memory of the actual ending was a bit hazy. True enough, we got through all the way to Stan without much trouble - sneaking through the forest, getting shot through a cannon and feeding rabid poodles rancid meat (don't worry, they're not dead, just sleeping).

The game puts you in the shoes of Guybrush Threepwood, an up-and-coming wannabe pirate. As he goes around trying to prove to the real pirates that he has what is needed to be one of them, the bad guy LeChuck (the meanest pirate and also a ghost) kidnaps Threepwood's newfound love Governor Marley. The story might be whacky (in all the good ways!), but the gameplay is straightforward. While this wasn't the first game to use Lucasarts famous SCUMM system (Script Creation Utility for Maniac Mansion) it works great here. Maybe some young-uns don't like the idea of having to choose a verb with an item to solve puzzles (which was a novelty then, before this you had to type the verb yourself which was a guesswork in and of itself), I personally quite enjoy this system. Newer P&C games will automatically choose the right verb, but that is making things a bit too easy I find.

You can't beat the original. Can you?

Ok, it's probably more of a time consuming gimmick nowadays, but I like it, ok? Unfortunately the version we were playing was the Special Edition, which means they added voice acting and completely revamped graphics. Unfortunately because, old trout that I am, I also definitely prefer the original graphics. My kids did not however, and two against one the revamped graphics won out. 

They're ok and in some parts, in all honesty, they make it easier to make out which things you can interact with. But they're just... ugly... compared to the lovely pixels of the original. The Special Edition also provides background music, which was quite nice, I must admit. While the voice acting was perfectly serviceable, a character like Stan works best as a silent antagonist if you ask me. He really grates after 10 seconds. The Special Edition also keeps the verbs, but hides them and your inventory behind buttons ("I" for things in your inventory and "Ctrl" for using verbs), clearing out your screen. I actually found this less user-friendly, but maybe that is just me.

The revamped graphics adds quite a touch.

After we had dealt with Stan and Guybrush leaves the island with his ragtag team I slowly start to realize something. As he sets foot on the beach of Monkey Island it hits home. I don't recognize any of this! I am having a proper Berenstain Moment as we start to make our way through the jungle and make friends with Bob and the Cannibals. 

I knew that the game takes place on Mêlée Island and never thought to question why the game was called Monkey Island. But half the game actually takes place on Monkey Island, a half that I don't have any memory of playing. The memory I have of playing and finishing the game, is actually of me playing the first half over and over. I never actually made it to Monkey Island as a kid!

So while the first half of the game went swimmingly and I still knew most of the puzzles, I had no clue what to do once we got to Monkey Island. Me and the kids managed to figure out quite a lot of the puzzles on our own, otherwise we resorted to a walkthrough for some of the trickier ones (both the boat sections for example).

Actually getting to Monkey Island felt... wrong. It felt out of place. It felt like it was tacked on and didn't fit the atmosphere of the rest of the game. While Mêlée Island is dusky, moody and piratey, Monkey Island is its polar opposite with sunny beaches and literal monkeys running around eating bananas. I always loved the perpetual night time of Mêlée Island and didn't feel comfortable running around getting a sun tan on Monkey Island. Most importantly, it didn't fit the internal feeling I had of the game. An image I now have had to severely revise.

This doesn't mean I think The Secret of Monkey Island: Special Edition is a bad game. I still think it is one of the best P&C experiences I've had and probably one of the best P&C games there is. The writing is just superb, Lucasarts at its height of funny and whacky. There are many memorably characters, scenes and puzzles in this game and I thoroughly recommend it.

But the Secret of Monkey Island from my childhood memory is gone. And that stings a bit.

Maize (2016) - Review

Are "weird games " a genre? Maybe they should be. It's hardly a new phenomenon, just look at that fish person game for the Dreamcast. I think games just allow themselves better for exploring some really odd ideas, for me the interactivity of the game medium seems to mean I have a lot more patience with the shenanigans of other people's minds. I am the complete opposite with literature and film, where I find whacky or seemingly arbitrary story beats tiresome. But there is something about being part of the crazy, not just observing it, that makes it a lot more interesting to me. Suddenly I am ok with whacky and seemingly arbitrary.

You'll see a lot of corn, and a lot of gags.

Coincidentally (?) I've ended up playing two fairly weird games simultaneously, Saint's Row IV and Maize. But where Saint's Row IV is shock full of crazy things to do, Maize is a much more straightforward and simple game, I'd even like to call it a walking simulator in how scaled-down it is in its gameplay elements. In that way it has been interesting to play these two games side by side, since they've chosen to approach the idea of whimsical from opposite ends of the gaming spectrum, and both have succeeded with that goal in their own ways.

In Maize you wake up in a corn field and make your way around. You initially find and explore areas like a farm house, a silo and a barn. The atmosphere is suitably creepy, you have no idea where you are, who you are or why you're doing what you're doing. In the initial part, before you find your choleric side-kick, you feel like it could go either way and just as well be the setup for another Resident Evil game. 

But it doesn't take long before you realize that the theme of the game seems to be "stupid", you will hear and read a lot about it. Almost everyone you encounter, either directly or indirectly, are referred to as stupid or idiotic at several points in the game and none more than yourself.

You'll end up picking up the oddest things,  like a cut-off hand, a chair or a water cooler, some times just to collect them or put on your head, some times to put them in places and/or combining them with things to advance the story. The game blocks your path when needed in not very subtle ways (perfectly fitting with the theme though) so you won't spend much time running the wrong ways and it is by no means a difficult game. 

You rarely pick up things that make sense.

It's probably easy to think it's barely worth your time - the puzzles are rarely more difficult than finding an item and putting it in the right place, and the right item and right place are always very clearly marked. There is no danger at any point, nor risk to fail. There are almost no mini games that require timing or anything that requires much of any thinking - maybe this is also intentional to fit the theme of the game.

So what's left is the writing - the story and the characters. And it's a story so charmingly odd it keeps you curious and smiling the entire time. Or not. I feel this game could probably go either or with most people. Either you go along for the ride, or you find the humour neither funny nor interesting. I guess it was my kind of chuckles however, and definitely that of my kids (6 and 11 yo) who ended up loving this game.

The game seems to be set in the 80's.

The character roster is small, you won't come across many... things... to talk to. But your side-kick Vladdy makes up for that, a smart choice to not make the game feel too lonely and silent as you mostly run through areas that seem to have been abandoned not too long ago. Figuring out what has happened and what was going on in these abandoned rooms and corridors is part of the mystery, and it will keep you interested throughout the roughly 4-5 hours the game takes to play. The less said the better, this is one of those games where you want to go in knowing as little as possible for the best experience.

I just got to respect a game where the creators had an idea and decided to run with it even though it probably made little sense on paper. It's one of those "you get it once you see it" kind of things. The end result is entertaining enough, and worth your time if you want something unexpected that might give you a chuckle.