Undead Nightmare is .... Interesting?

I wasn't very impressed with Red Dead Redemption, but since I bought the Game of the Year edition which comes with the DLC expansion Undead Nightmare, I figured I may as well give it a shot. Besides, the concept of taking a familiar game and turning it into a zombie survival scenario was just too interesting to pass up. "Interesting" is the key word with this DLC, because I'm not sure whether to call Undead Nightmare good or bad. On the one hand, it's really cool to see how different everything is, but on the other hand, Undead Nightmare proves almost as tedious and repetitive as the base game. 

Undead Nightmare picks up between the ending moments of the base game, after John Marston is reunited with his family, but before he's murdered by the government agents. After a serious storm hits, John's wife and son are bitten by the undead, zombified "Uncle," leaving John to tie them up in the house while he sets out to find out what's going on as well as a way to cure them. Along the way he reunites with familiar characters in familiar locations, while rescuing survivors and cleansing graveyards of the undead. 

Dragon's Crown: Good, But Not Great

Side-scrolling beat-em-ups are not usually my cup of tea, but Dragon's Crown looked interesting nonetheless. With its classic western-fantasy theme, evocative hand-drawn visuals, and randomized loot and skill trees, it seemed like it had the potential to transcend the typical shallowness I often experience when playing side-scrolling beat-em-ups. As it turns out, there's quite a lot of unique charm and variety in Dragon's Crown's presentation and gameplay, making it a generally satisfying experience, but it still seems lacking in overall cohesion. 

After spending 20 hours in the first playthrough, the game tried encouraging me to do it all over again in a sort of "hard mode new game plus." I said "no thank you" and was content to be finished with it. As much promise and potential as there is within Dragon's Crown's formula, it just didn't compel me to keep playing.

Red Dead Redemption is Not That Great

I remember walking into a GameStop in the spring of 2010, intending to browse through their collection of old PS2 games in search of rare gems. When one of the employees saw me reading the back of the box for Gun, a western-themed shooter, he immediately launched into a sales pitch on Red Dead Redemption, Rockstar's latest western-themed sandbox game. I told him I wasn't interested, and even after explaining that I didn't even own a PS3 or Xbox 360, he continued on his rant, hyping up all its minigames and trying to get me to pre-order it.

A few months later, Red Dead Redemption was released to immense critical acclaim and went on to win numerous "Game of the Year" awards. It's currently the sixth and seventh-highest rated game on PS3 and Xbox 360, respectively. At the time, the allure of a western-themed sandbox game with tight action, tons of content, a great story, and a complex morality system was certainly very strong and had me seriously considering buying one of the consoles to be able to play RDR (among other console exclusives).

Three years later, I've finally played Red Dead Redemption, and as seems to be the case with nearly every critically-hyped mainstream game, I wasn't very impressed with it. Sure, RDR is a decently enjoyable experience with some good qualities in its favor, but it came far short of living up to its grand hype. The introductory area and missions were all quite good and really drew me into its world and atmosphere, but after a while the gameplay grew stale, boring, and tedious, while certain aspects of its overall design proved downright disappointing or outright frustrating.

Narrating The New Stanley Parable, 2013 Edition

What can I say about Galactic Cafe's retail release of The Stanley Parable that I haven't already said in my previous article on its original, free source mod? The problem now, as it was then, is that any kind of description of what The Stanley Parable is, or why it's absolutely worth playing, would spoil its mystique and ruin many of the pleasant surprises in store for gamers unfamiliar with its premise. So the best I can do is attempt to describe its setup as basically as possible, and to describe its allure as vaguely as possible.

The Stanley Parable is a first-person adventure game of sorts, albeit one far from the typical adventure game formula. The Stanley Parable fits in with the crowd of games originally popularized by Dear Esther, wherein you simply walk around a setting and experience an unfolding narrative. Where TSP distinguishes itself from the crowd is the way it embraces freedom of choice and player agency; whereas games like Dear Esther force a rigid storyline upon you, TSP allows you to explore off the beaten path and shape its very course, all in terms of how you choose to react to the narrator.

You play as a man named Stanley, a droning office worker whose job is to sit at a computer terminal pressing buttons on a keyboard as commands stream in through the monitor. Stanley relishes this job and feels contentedly satisfied with life pointlessly typing away at the string of commands. But one day, the commands stopped coming in, and Stanley faces a choice: does he get up to investigate, or does he stay at his post and wait for the problem to solve itself?

Folklore: Such a Folking Disappointment

Folklore hails from the early days of PS3 exclusives -- back when the console cost $600, was the size of the monolith from 2001: A Space Odyssey, and sported that slick, stylish stupid-looking Spider-Man 3 font -- back before trophies even existed. Good exclusives were a little hard to come by back then, and when Folklore was released back in 2007 it seemed to fly largely under the radar. Given its relatively obscure status, interesting premise, and promising beginning, I was ready to feature Folklore as the next entry in my "Great Games You Never Played" series, but the more I played it the more I became disappointed with it.

Folklore stars two playable protagonists, both of whom arrive at the quaint town of Doolin at the behest of mysterious messengers. Ellen, a young college student, receives a letter from her supposedly dead mother urging her to meet at a cliffside in Doolin; Keats, a journalist for an occult magazine, receives a phone call from a woman in fear of being murdered by magical creatures called faeries. Unable to find their respective contacts when they arrive in Doolin, they witness an apparent murder and become key figures in uncovering the mystery of a few deaths that have been looming over the towns' surviving residents for 17 years.

Dragon's Dogma is Pretty Damn Good

Dragon's Dogma is an open-world hack-n-slash action-adventure role-playing game by members of Capcom who had previously worked on games in the Resident Evil, Devil May Cry, and Breath of Fire series. To me, Dragon's Dogma feels more like a cross between Skyrim (in terms of its open-world exploration and quest structure) and Dark Souls (in terms of its combat and its dungeon-crawling feel), which pretty much makes Dragon's Dogma the best of both worlds. After sinking 128 hours and counting into a single playthrough, I feel confident in saying that Dragon's Dogma is one of the most compelling games I've ever played in this genre.

Dragon's Dogma begins with the resurrection of a dragon prophesied to bring about the end of the world. After emerging from a hole in the sky, it sets its sights on the small fishing village of Cassardis, the hometown of the player's self-created avatar. While attempting to fend off the dragon, the player becomes marked as the "Arisen," the hero destined to slay the dragon when his heart gets ripped from his own chest, creating a bond between the Arisen and the dragon. The dragon flies off in possession of the Arisen's heart, while the resurrected Arisen begins his epic journey to fight the dragon and reclaim his heart atop the Tainted Mountain.

Outlast: Over-hyped and Overrated

If you believe the hype, Outlast is the scariest game to hit the market since Amnesia: The Dark Descent. In case you somehow missed it, Amnesia is the game that basically set the new standard for horror games back in 2010. I was extremely impressed with Amnesia when I played it and still consider it one of the best horror games ever made. Outlast takes a lot of lessons from Amnesia, and indeed it even feels a lot like Amnesia (which is perhaps reason enough to play it), but unfortunately my high hopes were dashed by what turned out to be a simplistic, repetitive survival experience. Instead of being the new heralded champion of horror games, Outlast feels more like a merely "average" horror game.

The game begins with you as Miles Upshur driving up to the front gate of the Mount Massive Asylum. You're a journalist who received an anonymous tip warning of illegal activities at the psychiatric hospital; you're there to document evidence and expose the story. The only thing you bring with you is a battery-powered video recorder, capable of recording in complete darkness thanks to night vision. In the beginning, Outlast seems to get the formula right, with this introduction sequence emphasizing a slow, atmospheric build-up before your adventure descends into madness. It's calm, creepy, and foreboding with the lightest sprinkling of jump scares to keep you wary of what you might encounter up ahead.