Halloween Horrors: My Laptop Fried Itself

In the midst of a fun-filled night of playing through Frictional Games' Penumbra: Overture, an indie horror game to match the theme of the holiday, my laptop froze up as if the display drivers had crashed and then failed to recover thereafter. Every time I try to boot up the laptop, I'm stuck with a glitched-out display, and no evidence suggests that it's even making it to the Windows loading screen (I never hear the startup sound).

I tried hooking up two different external monitors to no avail, and can't even boot up in safe mode. Which leaves me concerned that something is totally fried, maybe the GPU or the motherboard---perhaps meaning that the entire laptop is beyond repair.

This is sad news, especially since I don't have the money to replace it; I'll have to revert back to my seven year old desktop and relive the good old days of block-model characters with permanent fist-hands, blob shadows, and static lighting. It might seem too rough for me to handle, but I'm comforted by the knowledge that games were better back then. 

Great Games You Never Played: Lineage 2

"Fine, obscure gems." Part of a periodical series: Great Games You Never Played.

Lineage 2 may have been fated for obscurity from the beginning, if only for carrying the dreaded stigma of being a "Korean MMO," but it also didn't help that EverQuest 2 and World of Warcraft were just around the corner. Either way, L2 never achieved mainstream popularity in the West. If you were too busy playing some kind of sissy MMO, then you missed out on the most hardcore online game of them all: PVP everywhere, clan wars and politics, 400-person castle sieges, and a huge, huge level cap.

Unlike some other great games that you never played, where you can still go back and experience their glory, this one is too late to get into, as the online community is almost assuredly dead. If not, then the player-base is assuredly well over level 80 and it'll take you way too long to catch up. But L2 was an excellent MMO in its time, and deserves a retrospective spotlight for its unique gameplay accomplishments.

Right on Time: A Very Killing Floor Halloween

Just the other day I was complaining to a friend about there not being a "Halloween Event" for Killing Floor, the 6-player online cooperative zombie-killing first-person shooter. Considering that they've already done a Christmas event and a summer event, you'd think that Halloween would be the perfect holiday for a survival-horror game. Well it looks like the good folks at Tripwire Interactive heard my complaints and managed to put out a Halloween event after all. Huzzahs all around!

But is it any good? Does it capitalize on the vast potential of the season? Does it rekindle my interest in the online community, full of compelling desire to decapitate specimens and to be destroyed by raging fleshpounds?  Find out after the jump.

Don't Forget to Play Amnesia: The Dark Descent

Amnesia: The Dark Descent, by Frictional Games (they of the Penumbra series), may be the scariest game ever. So scary that I've forgotten my own name. Fortunately for me, it's printed at the bottom of each of these articles, so I can easily solve the mystery of my forgotten identity. But the rest of you will have to do it the hard way by risking your sanity in the dark abyss. 

Amnesia is an intelligent game that has a firm grasp of what makes horror scary. Making the player defenseless gives you reason to be anxious about your environment; the less you see of a monster, the more your imagination takes over; climactic moments work best with a slow and steady build-up. On top of the well-crafted horror, Amnesia boasts intelligent puzzles, interesting scenery, and a fairly intriguing story. 

Seriously, this is one of those games that comes along and changes everything. You may forget your own name, but don't forget to play this game. 

Video Games in TV: Killer Instinct

"Some TV shows just don't get it." Part of a periodical series: Video Games in TV. 

No, not the video game. This comes from an obscure television series that I never even heard of until it was randomly referenced in a google hit. Killer Instinct is a typical crime drama that only lasted a single season. This seventh episode, "Game Over," follows the typical formula of "psychotic gamers start playing a violent video game for real," complete with the typical stereotyping I've come to expect from these kinds of episodes. 

This episode doesn't display a lot of actual gameplay footage that I can make fun of, but the way the cops perceive gamers is pathetic, and the way they handle the investigation is almost equally absurd. All of the dialogue reeks of nonsense, and it even goes for the "video game violence causes real world violence" angle, which only further inhibits my ability to take it seriously. So let's get into the specifics and have a good laugh, shall we?

Don't Drink the Kool-Aid: Super Cult Tycoon 2

Here's a free indie game by Eddie Cameron and Robert Yang (now of Altercation). In Super Cult Tycoon 2, your mission is to start a religious cult and summon the mothership before the FBI can shut you down. This creative idea blends elements of tower defense, tycoon, and real-time strategy with you using resources (Kool-Aid, manpower, and money) to build your society. The bigger your cult grows, the more suspicious the feds get, requiring you to spend more of your resources diverting their attention and fending them off until the final count-down.

Super Cult Tycoon 2 has some technical and design problems that leave it far from perfection, but the gameplay proves to be pretty fun, and that makes it worth checking out. 

Nature Treks: Healing with Bloom and Saturation

Feeling a little stressed out? Anxious about that big event tomorrow morning? Tired of looking at the same slate-gray city sidewalks all the time? Can't remember the last time you saw an honest-to-goodness tree? Then it might be time for you to go on a calm, relaxing walk through a mountain pasture.

Nature Treks: Healing with Color is a free Unity-based project by John Carline (of Greener Games) that aims to offer a relaxing, therapeutic gameplay experience. Its current build features two gameplay modes: a "trek" where you walk around collecting colored orbs, and an "auto trek" that lets you sit back and watch as the camera moves through the environment on its own.

As an interactive "game," Nature Treks leaves quite a lot to be desired, but taken as an interactive "therapy device," it shows some promise. If nothing else, the audio and visual experience is certainly quite relaxing and might be worth checking out.