Game Quicky: Mystik Belle – Enchanted Edition (Switch) ~ The Metroidvania Witchschool Adventure

Nintendo.com microsite – Wikipedia entry

So, I was browsing the Nintendo Switch eShop one day and I came across this game. Without doing a lot of research, I bought it since it looked like an interesting indie Metroidvania game. I didn’t know that a big studio like WayForward helped the developers Last Dimension in publishing this game to the Nintendo Switch. For some reason, I didn’t realize that this game is a port either. Even with the subtitle “Enchanted Edition”. In any case, I was also surprised to learn that this game is created in GameMaker Studio. A tool I used to learn about game development when I was younger. But, with that said, how is the actual game? Is it worth your money or should you rather focus on the original edition or is this a game you could skip without hesitation? Well, I’m here to give you my opinion and while I invite you to leave a comment in the comment section with your thoughts and/or opinions on the game and/or the content of this article.

Witchschool

Usually, I write something myself to explain the story. But, the way the developers described the story is so good, I’m going to quote it here:

Being a student of mysterious art is a daunting task, doubly if you are Bell McFay – a freshman at the Hugmore Magic School. The teachers and staff are mean, I have few friends, and my grades are poor. Worst of all – Bell tends to be in the wrong place at worst. When she stayed up late to practice the magic of fire, for example tonight, but was instead assembled to confuse ancient rituals. And is there a better way to punish the unlucky first-grader than to prosecute her for an impossible job on the worst night of the year? Reproduce or exile Walpurgisnacht Brew. The sound of expulsion is beginning to improve as all types of spies hijack the school.

Official story on the eShop page

There is no voice acting in this game, so the story is told through text boxes and the environment design. Overall, the writing in this game is good. It sets up the arc of the game nicely without a lot of technobabble to pull you out of the experience. It’s quite difficult to review the story of this game because this game is somewhat short. This game takes around 5-ish hours to beat.

Usually, in these short games, I expect the story to grip me and focus more on telling a good story with interesting mechanics like Super Liminal or There Is No Game. Yet, this game doesn’t do that. I’m not saying that the story is bad, it’s just that this game focuses more on the gameplay and it’s puzzles than the overall story. This isn’t such a big negative in my eyes. While, yes, the setting and the atmosphere gives the story a lot of potential… I’m just extremely happy that it’s not bloated or is just filler to make the game longer. It’s to the point and quite enjoyable.

This game almost plays like your typical Metroidvania game. If you don’t know what a Metroidvania game is, compare it to games like Monster Tale, Blossom Tales, Lenna’s Inception amongst others. You explore large area’s where you learn new skills and abilities to help you on the way and discover secrets. Now, what this game does special is that this game has also a focus on puzzle elements and a whole inventory mechanic. In extremely rough terms, this game is a giant fetch quest in a Metroidvania game.

And it’s a lot of fun. I love exploring the school and trying to figure out which abilities I’m going to get to explore more of the castle. The responsive controls were so easy to learn that I was able to get the hang of the mechanics quite easily. The only thing that is different compared to your typical Metroidvania games is that there are no save rooms in this game. The game autosave when you change rooms. But that’s anything but a negative, to be honest.

Now, there are two ways to play this game. You can play through this game with warp chests, that help you with your inventory and makes the game a bit easier. It also gives you the option to choose if you restart the room or start from the counsel room. Or you have the harder difficulty, where you don’t have: warp chests, restart the room and the enemies hit harder. So, you can play on the difficulty you enjoy.

I really love shooting my fire spell around and leveling it up when I killed more enemies. I really liked running around this school with the amazing pixel art and animation. The game looks amazing, and the level design is well done for a Metroidvania game. While the level design makes the school feel less like a school since you don’t see a lot of classrooms and weird architecture, the pixel art is so good-looking and well-designed that it doesn’t bother me at all. (Only my really harsh critic side, tho.)

Not only does the game have amazing visuals and animations, the music is a jam. It’s amazing chiptune by Dan Rogers. I have listened to it while writing this article and I liked it so much that I decided to buy the whole soundtrack from Dan Roger’s Bandcamp I linked earlier.

Something that’s quite impressive is that this game is the love child of Andrew Bado. He placed so much love and care into the game. I mean, he even made an option where the dialogue is child-friendly in the PC version. Yes, an option! That’s something I can applaud. If only this came to the Switch version.

Almost there, Bell

I have thrown quite a lot of praise towards this game, but I’m sad to say that this game does make a few mistakes or things I don’t like. Let me first talk about the health system. There is one thing I didn’t like at all. That’s the way you heal. To heal, you have to pick up hearts that can randomly drop from enemies. The hearts drop where you kill the enemy. So, if you kill the enemy while it’s in the wall, since your projectiles go through into the wall… Your health pick-up is going to be stuck in the wall. And those don’t get attracted when you get close.

Also, there is no “quick heal” method or room. The health you have is the health you start with when you respawn or restart the room. So, when you are low on health, you better find a room where you can grind enemies to grind the health drops to get back to full health. This is one of the few moments where the game just stopped in its tracks, to be honest. Granted, you could restart at the counsel room with full health, but then you have to backtrack all the way… That isn’t fun.

Now, here is something I really found annoying. This game has an amazing mini-map, but why can’t I look at it with more detail? In this game, you have to gather and manage a lot of items. Around 60 in fact. And they are spread out over the whole map. But, remembering which item goes where is a real pain. Either having a quest list and/or which character is where it could have helped so much. Thankfully, the map is rather small, so going through all of it and trying out which item goes where wasn’t such a pain. Yet, I really missed a feature a like that in this game.

Sadly enough, there is actually a second thing I don’t like about the health system. There is this mechanic where you are able to kill enemies by just colliding with them. But this costs health. Now here is the issue with that, the sound effect and visual feedback is so similar to normally killing enemies it’s confusing. Something to improve this would be another sound effect if Belle gets hit compared to when she kills an enemy. Since, overall, the sound effects are excellent.

One of the final things I want to talk about is the pacing. In this game, you need to get three ingredients and something that really surprised me is that the second act is short. But this is an extremely minor complaint, a nitpick even. As big as a nitpick as the I find it a shame that some nice designs like statues go to waste since they are mostly in the dark. But, then again, it adds to the atmosphere and gives off a slightly creepy vibe.

Now, I think it’s high time for the conclusion, don’t you think? A summary of what I think in general about this game and trying to answer the questions I asked in the introduction of this article.

Let’s play or let’s play?

Is this game worth your time? Yes, yes it is! While the game has some annoying things like I talked about in the previous section, I really think that the positives highly outweigh the negatives for this game.

Now, if you would ask me… Which version should I play? Then, I have to answer the enchanted edition on Switch. It’s quite difficult to answer what’s new in this version since you don’t have an official change log but reading from the Twitter feeds of the developers it seems that it’s mostly a graphical upgrade and various tweaks to make the experience more enjoyable.

It also looks like this game is going to have a sequel or expansion from what I’m reading on the developers twitter feed.

I’m so glad that I gave this game a chance, since because of this game I discovered a very passionate developer that loves creating charming games like this one. I really enjoyed my time with this game, trying to figure out which item goes where. While it’s tempting to use a walkthrough, I highly advise that you don’t. There is barely any moon logic in this game, and it feels so much more rewarding to play it blind.

The charm of this game is just amazing. Mystik Belle is a hidden gem that more people should know of and play. This game has so much potential even while I haven’t finished the original, I’m already hyped for new content that’s upcoming.

And with that said, I want to thank you for reading this article and I hope you enjoyed reading it as much as I enjoyed writing it. I hope to be able to welcome you in another article but until then, have a great rest of your day and take care!

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Game Quicky: All You Can Eat (Steam) ~ Are You Hungry?

Official website – Steam page

Some time ago, I published a press kit about a game that GameChunk is developing. This Croatian indie developer is creating a title called Trip the Ark Fantastic. Now, I discovered that this isn’t the first game developed by the studio. They created an adventure game called “All You Can Eat”. And that’s what this review is going to be about. The developers provided me with a press code for the game. And of course, in this review, you will get my 100% honest opinion on the game. In any case, let’s dive right into the comic game that’s “All You Can Eat”. And as usual, feel free to leave a comment in the comment section with your opinion on the game and/or the content of this article.

The good meal.

In this game, you play as a lazy slob that is living in a diner. A few years ago, the diner started doing an all-you-can-eat buffet for the low price of 2 bucks. The idea is that he can keep eating for free unless he leaves the diner. But after some peaceful time, disaster strikes and the chef Luigi gets an offer he can’t refuse. He is going to sell the diner for a million bucks to build a parking lot on it. So, now you have to get into action to try and save your precious diner from closing by collecting a million dollars as quickly as possible.

The humor and story of this game is spot on. It’s quite enjoyable and fun. There aren’t too many characters and they don’t get a lot of character development but the chosen stereotypes are just great. Now, after you have beaten the game for the first time, you get a new game plus. Here two of the developers explain a lot about the decisions that they took in creating this game and they tell a lot of interesting details I didn’t pick up in my playthrough.

You might have already picked this up from the screenshots in this article but the visual style is something unique. The developers tried to mimic the way that newspaper comics worked. Those three-panel comics you see in the newspaper. In the end, you can also print out your playthrough as a sort of comic book you can print out. This is an amazing feature that really surprised me. This also explains the reason why there isn’t any animation in the game. Otherwise, the whole printable comic idea wouldn’t work.

Now, this game is really short. You can finish this game in a few minutes. It’s possible to see and do everything in one or two hours of play. While you can argue that this is negative, I honestly think that this isn’t such a bad thing. Since the developers actually explained in their commentary that this game was a sort of taste test, to see if people were interested in this style of game.

Now, this game has been translated into German, Russian and Chinese. Thank you to the translators that made this possible. In addition to that, the additional options you have in the options menu to stop the camera shake, colorblind mode, mute the game and such are great additions. But I wonder why the colorblind mode was added since the whole game is in black/white. So, if somebody can explain this to me in the comments that would be amazing.

The controls of the game are quite simple. The only thing you will need to play this game is the mouse. You can use the left mouse button to interact, speak and combine items. When you use the right mouse button, the main character gives you his opinion on the object in question. This is also a very helpful hint system if you are stuck or new in the adventure game genre.

That funny bad aftertaste

The sound design of this game is decent. Since this game didn’t have a big budget, the game doesn’t have any music and doesn’t have a lot of sound effects. Now, this in itself isn’t such a bad thing. Remember, you can print the story as a comic at the end and if the game relied on music or sound effects, the comic wouldn’t work at all. The negative part is that I wished there were a bit more ambient sound effects. Like some sizzling in the kitchen or some police radio noise in the police office.

The printable PDF is a cool feature but I had my mess up with my first playthrough. I was going to send it to the developers but something happened. I started the playthrough of new game plus for this review and that pdf overwrote my broken pdf. So, it’s possible that your comic printout gets a bit corrupted.

And if I’m allowed to nitpick, the fact that the game hangs and seems frozen when the pdf is being created is a bit annoying. From a programmer standpoint, I totally understand what’s happening. The game is creating the pdf in the background and it freezes the game to make sure there are no additional variables that can interfere with the creation. Now, I would have moved the screen to the visual of “please wait while your PDF is printed” while the PDF is being printed. Not after. At first, I was going to ALT+F4 the game since I thought it had completely frozen.

Now, one other minor nitpick is that the game didn’t close right away when I exited the game. Steam kept saying that I was playing the game while I was unable to find anything running while using the task manager. Maybe it takes a long time to shut down the PDF engine in the background?

There is one minor thing that I dislike about the printable PDF. And that is the fact you don’t see which question or reply was picked by the player. This makes that some jokes like the name of the dinner chef looses a bit of their impact.

Sadly enough, there is one somewhat game-breaking bug in the game. Thankfully, it doesn’t ruin your save file but it confuses the game enough you get into a loop of empty screens. This can be achieved when you use the right mouse button on the empty sign in the MegaSlime Corp. I think this might be caused by a conflict in the code. But, when you move on to a blank square… The best action is to pause the game and resume with the continue option. That seems to fix it. Thankfully, it’s the only location where it happens.

And that brings me to the last nitpick of the game. There is no clickable button to pause the game. You have to use the “ESC” key to get to the pause menu. But, I totally understand why this decision has been made. Since, if you create a button that’s always on screen, I don’t want to imagine the effort that needs to go make sure that it doesn’t appear on the printable pdf.

The rating in the newspaper

This game is short and it’s possible to get all the achievements in 1 or 2 hours if you are familiar with point-and-click adventure games. But, this game is a big breath of fresh air in my opinion. I really enjoyed the references and throwbacks of the plot. The story made me laugh several times.

Visually, this game reminds me of a simpler time. When I was drawing story ideas in my textbooks in the study hall or during a boring class. Or when I was reading comics on a rainy Sunday afternoon. I think my weakness for nostalgia really made this game even better for me.

It’s a shame that there I have a few minor nitpicks with the game. Most of them I can totally understand why the decision has been made. Expect the game-breaking bug, that’s something I wish was fixed.

Even with the game-breaking bug, I still fully recommend this game. It’s an amazing demonstration of what this style of game can do. The potential for this concept is endless. Imagine being able to share your adventures with other players or creating your own comic book. It’s the ultimate merchandising.

It was quite difficult to find things I didn’t like about this game apart from the extremely short length. I want to play more games in this style and I’m happy that I can talk about this game and spread the word. Since there is another game announced called “The Heist” that looks extremely promising.

So yeah, I think this game is totally worth your 2 bucks and with that, you get a coupon to an amazing concept that gives the taste for more. Thank you GameChunk for bringing this game to Steam! I can’t wait to see what your other projects are going to bring us.

And with that, I have said everything I wanted to say about this game. Thank you so much for reading this game and I hope you enjoyed reading this article as much as I enjoyed writing it. I hope to be able to welcome you in another article but until then, have a great rest of your day and take care!

Score: 90/100

Editorial note: The developers of this game got a draft of this review and might fix the game-breaking bug in the future.

Review: Corpse Party – Book Of Shadows (PSP) ~ This Isn’t Right…

Official website – First impressions

Am I safe here? This darn school man. It’s haunting me. I’m trying to relax on my hiatus and getting my real life work done, but this school is stopping me from progressing in my goal. I simply don’t understand. Furthermore, I have to fight this. The creepy ghost children aren’t helping. Wait, wait, wait… Haven’t I seen this before? Like some first impression I have written a some time ago. About Corpse Party – Book Of Shadows: First Impression. Nah, that can’t be. This must be an unlucky coincidence. Otherwise, I could simply say that people could leave a comment with their opinion on the game and or this article. Hah! That would make life a lot easier. But no, I have to be trapped down here in this school. Again. Maybe my fate is different. Since I haven’t found the secrets. (Read, I haven’t played the secret episode. But I have finished the rest of the game.) So, I’m going to try to make a fair attempt here. Deep breaths. Avoiding spoilers and here we go!

Story

Now I’m quite sure I have … seen this before. This has an amazing story. Plot twists around every corner. This game actually got me off guard a few times and made me actually feel somewhat scared. And scared, as in it crawled under my skin.

It’s for sure better than the original. I feel that it has more depth and more interesting use of character. As if it were a sort of expansion pack for the original. You explore this hell forsaken school once more with different characters and their backstory gets more fleshed out. But where I truly applaud the creators here, is how one chapter actually took place outside this Heavenly Host Elementary.

One remark has to be made though, some story parts are way too long. It asked nearly one full hour from me before I could start playing. While I adore long stories, this game could have dosed it a ton better. But with a healthy dose of humor, horror, heartwarming and thrilling parts… It’s forgiven.

The fact that you see unanswered questions get answered and how the characters are used to their full potential is just  mind-blowing to see.  I said it before, and I’ll say it again. This here, it nailed the story perfectly. I have barely any remarks to the story. And even if you have experienced the previous installment… This will have some quite unexpected turns.

Wait, what was that?

Son of a gun! I’m quite sure I heard something. Maybe it was one of the amazing music tracks from the amazing soundtrack. Too bad that some of them are quite short.

Or might it be one of the voices? Like the stunning voice acting some have. Which brings incredible atmosphere to the table. What am I talking about? Reviewing voices? Am I going insane?

But those sounds, they are crisp and clear. Yes, they make me feel extremely scared. I’m afraid to move. It’s almost like the sounds got me extremely drawn into the game…

Damn, I saw a ghost.

Potentially I’m seeing things. Possibly I’m not trapped in this school! Perhaps I’m too drawn into this game. That might be it. It was such an unbelievable entry into the series.

And the visuals in this game blew me truly off my socks. Creepy hallways and “nicely” decorated classrooms. Every place was nicely designed.

None of the places felt unfinished. Every location had such attention to detail and some had some neat additional dialogue.

The cutscenes, are underused. The game has only a nice cutscene at the start where there are a lot of images used. Here is the hard part, I barely can’t say anything about the animation of this game. Unless you take one new element into a count. The “corruption” level shall we say to avoid spoilers.

The more wrong moves you do, the longer you do to escape (a dangerous situation), the more red your screen becomes. It’s almost like you see a wave of blood passing in front of your face. And that is an amazing touch.

Gameplay

I think I’m safe. Thankfully. I knew that writing this article would have helped me. Now I’m sure that I’m a big fan of the Corpse Party series. And I waited on purpose with this article to give this game a special number.

And the gameplay of this entry didn’t disappoint one bit. Where you have a big limitation how you can move, you can explore every single bit of the school. Thanks to the new investigation system. It was truly such a nice thing to see.

There were also many tweaks to the game. Like the ability to replay voice acting! Yes, when you’re inside the menu, you can let the characters say their lines again in the “history” menu.

In addition to that, the amount of save slots. My lords, are there a lot of save slots. Maybe a bit too much, but I’m not complaining that much since you will need it. With the addition I mentioned earlier, you will need to save on certain locations since a screw-up can be easily made.

The game can be a bit hard, but exploring each and every room to make sure you haven’t missed anything is a great way to progress. Another helpful tip I give is, explore the previous game also extremely well. If you do that, there will be additional content waiting for you in this game.

The length of this game is just mind-blowing. I’m not going to lie that I was able to play this game for nearly a month. Admitted, I played various other stuff in that month in order to write some interesting articles for my blog. But to have it completed just recently, is just a great sign.

Where I have to applaud the developers here is the fascinating addition of the bonus content. There are no extra chapters this time around, apart from one, when you have seen ALL the endings; including the wrong ones. You can listen to all in game music, with a sort of clunky player, and you can hear some behind the scenes’ commentary from the voice actors.

And with that, I’m going to leave it here for this article. While I realize that I have been vague on certain parts, I encourage you guys to play this game to find out how big of a masterpiece this game truly is!

Conclusion

The bad:

– Sometimes story parts are a bit too long.

– Some music tracks should have been a bit longer.

The good:

+ Amazing story.

+ Epic audio work in both the music and sound parts that will really draw you in.

+ An amazing game with stellar visuals.

+ Great voice acting.

+ Nice bonus content.

+ Challenging.

+ ….

Final words:

This game truly held me in its grip. I can’t wait to replay the original Corpse Party in order to unlock everything in this gem. While I tried something different to present this 20th review of mine, I had a tough time reviewing this one. This game was perfect in my eyes and I could only nitpick.

I truly cross my fingers that XSeed games ships more of these developers overseas since they are truly worth the time and money. Since these two games were spot on classics for me. It even got me into watching anime and reading manga again. Something I stopped doing because of games.

This game series is one of my favorites. It deserves a spot on “my most influencing games of my lifetime” list. And pretty high on this list!

Anyway, it’s how I said before my conclusion, play it for yourself, and you will understand that this game is made with the gamers in mind. This adventure is one that will grab you and don’t let you loose until the end!

Score: 99/100

Top 10 games I played in 2013

Alright, let’s do this. I have my favorite music playing in the background and it’s time to write some articles. 2013 is nearly over and I need to study. A lot even. But anyways, in this top 10 I’ll write about the games I played this year. There is one catch though. I’m not allowed to list games I have played before 2012. So, games I have finished and I’m now replaying don’t count. Anyways, I want for lay-out sake that this introduction is as long as the image here. And since that’s the case already, let’s start with the list. Leave me a comment from your thoughts of the games I have choosen. And try make a list yourself. I’m quite curious. 

#10: Delver (Steam)

This game. It took me by storm. I bought it on Steam because it caught my eye. And seriously, I don’t regret it in the slightest. I even wrote a review on it. I love playing this game because it’s simple.

You can pick it up from time to time and continue where you left off. I also get the feeling of freedom I get from Minecraft. It’s just mindblowing.

There is a similar game out on Steam, called Eldrich. Yet, I think Delver is clearly the better game.

#9: Pokémon Y (3DS)

Oh yes, this might piss off some people. Why is Pokémon X & Y on such a low spot. I think I might see a rage incoming.

Yet, while I haven’t written an article about it yet, I do think that this game has some flaws that made this game not the extremely nice title it’s supposed to be.

I have to give it to Nintendo. They did a lot of things right with this game. The improvements they made are well placed and work perfectly. Yet, there are some parts I think that they should have presented differently.

I’m not really done just yet with this entry in the series but when I’m done I’ll review this game. Although that the planned co-op won’t be happening since college got in the way and I was unable to finish the article in time and I delayed it and I started to be distracted by other games…

#8: Legend Of Heroes – Trails In The Sky

This game is my favorite RPG on PSP. I’m so glad I discovered it. I’m nearly playing this game non-stop as soon as I start my PSP.

The writing in this game is excellent. The story is interesting and the gameplay is just great. The story comes close to a story I was writing on my forum in the past. I sometimes miss those days. Oh well, I’m glad I can write here on my blog and write for other things as well.

In the last months of 2013, I have been looking for games to play. And when I saw this game on the shelves, I was so glad I picked it up.

I even mentioned this game in my previous music article. The music is even worth listing to. Yet, it isn’t my favorite PSP game. I’ll talk about that one later.

It pains me to put this excellent game so low on the list, but oh well. I’m happy that I can include it. I would be ashamed if I forgot it.

#7: Broken Sword 5 – The Serpents Curse (PC – Steam)

Okay, this game was fully fan-funded. And I haven’t beaten it yet. I’ll soon though. I’m trying to finish a lot of games now. And I’m replaying a lot of games to write an article on my blog for.

This game got some recent updates as well. Yet, there are some things that should still be worked on. Like I told in my first impression.

This point and click game proves that Revolution Software has still the making of these style of games mastered. Their way of coming out to their fans is just excellent. I love how they made this game happen.

I’m enjoying this game quite a lot and I’m ashamed that I don’t give this game the love it deserves. And I secretly hope that I get the collectors edition for Christmas so that my whole collection of this series is complete.

Next year, the second episode will be posted. When I finished that, I’ll surely write a full review about it!

#6: Tomb Raider (PC)

This game. It’s the game I used to come back at the world of blogging and reviewing. Read my review about it here.

I still play the game here and there to make sure I’ll reach the 100% one day. And I’ll also replay this game next year in order to try and beat this game on hard.

This game was such a blast from start to finish and I was so sad when I had beaten it. It went by a bit too quick for me.

But thanks to this game, I have discovered my love for a bit more creepy games and I learned to play games I thought I would have hated.

Still, my urge to replay some old Tomb Raiders is big now. And I might start playing some old classic Tomb Raiders in the near future.

#5: The Legend Of Zelda – Link Between Worlds (3DS)

Wow! Hold your horses. NekoJonez is such a big Zelda fan and he doesn’t put the latest Zelda title on the number one spot?

Yes, I don’t. Since there are some games that changed my gaming life for good and this game didn’t do that.

While it’s one of the best Zelda titles to date, I have my doubts about some things in this game. And when I beat it, I’ll talk about it in my review. But I talked about my opinion already in this article.

Still, this game takes the spot for best game that didn’t change my gaming life. And congrats on winning the award of “Game Of The Year” on Gamespot guys. It was such a surprise!

#4: Phoenix Wright – Ace Attorney 5 – Dual Destinies (3DS – eShop)

This game changed my gaming life. It changed my views on DLC for good. I might have talked about it in a bad way in my review and my first impression. Shame on me for thinking all DLC is bad.

The additional case really added a nice case that makes this game worthy of a higher score. I wish there is a new case in the make for this game. One where we don’t have Simon as the opponent. Please, another one would be great!

If you haven’t played this title, it’s a great way to start the series. I restarted Miles Edgeworth actually after playing this and I might just write a review of that game soon.

#3: Pokémon Mystery Dungeon – Gates To Infinity (3DS)

This game is just worthy of a review. Oh wait, I already wrote that article. I finished this game already. And I wrote that long review off it.

Yup, this game got a more lengthy review from me and I think it was worth it. It learned me how a sequel can be both disappointing yet fun as well. There were some parts I thought they shouldn’t have cut out but hey, they gave us some great other options as well.

I still have to finish the post game. But you know me, other games that start to distract me. But what didn’t distract me was the ending of the game. I succeeded in making me cry once more.

Even when I could predict the ending of this story, I still ran into the trap of the ending being such a hit on my “FEELS”. Aw man, I wish I could restart this game without knowing what happened to experience that feeling once more.

#2: Corpse Party (PSP)

Without a doubt, this is the best PSP game ever made in my opinion. Although I might have lazily placed the box-art of the sequel here, I think it’s worthy to mention it as well.

As I’m nearly done with finishing the last chapter of the sequel, the original game made me start my first impression series. The article is here. And I reviewed it as well. That review can be found here.

This game is surely worth of a playthrough. This text adventure is actually scary. And yes, it’s even a freaking 2D game. It’s written in such a way it’s pretty scary. And I even had moments where I regretted playing this in the dark.

Even playing this game in full light, this game has the power to make people piss their pants. It once came to a close encounter for me.

But the sequel is on the list to review once I finished it. Man, I have a lot of games I want to play but I kind of refuse to play this game since I don’t want to end my adventure with this game.

#1: Alan Wake (PC)

Looking back on 2013, I have played a lot of games. 2013 was such a weird year for me. I had new experiences and learned a lot. But there was one game that made me love my passion of writing stories even more.

Alan Wake. It’s simply one of the best PC games ever made. The adventure is extremely well made and it even made me reading books again. And what a blast it is to read the novel based on this game.

It made me want to play the game without stopping. I have written two articles about it. My first impression and my review.

I’m so glad that I got this game as a gift from somebody of my forum. And yes, that’s a reason why this game might got the first spot on my list.

I’m playing the sequel now and I’m curious how the story will wrap up. I’ll keep you guys up-to-date.

Final words

This may or may not be my last article of 2013. Busy times are ahead. I’ll try to write a few new articles. I have some planned. And I hope that they get past the planning stage this time.

Anyways, I am glad that I finally was able to write this article. Since it was such a challenge to write this list. I played so many games, I didn’t want to exclude some games, but I had to not list some of my favorites.

I’m quite sure that there are a lot of games you guys haven’t played or never heard of. I hope you enjoyed reading this article as much I had writing it. But before I leave, let’s list the games that just didn’t made the cut for the list.

Elebits (DS), Tales Of Monkey Island (PC), NickTunes Fight For Vulcano Island (PS2), The Stanley Parable (PC), The Novelist (PC), Animal Crossing – New Leaf (3DS), Ape Escape (PSP), Fragile Dreams (Wii) and various others.

Well, I might just wish you guys happy holidays. Since I’m sure that makes me cover everything you possibly could celebrate. And I hope to catch you in one of my further articles!

 

First Impression: Corpse Party – Book Of Shadows (PSP) ~ It’s not over just yet.

Link to the official website

You thought it was over after Corpse Party? Well, think again, Corpse Party Book Of Shadows shows the tale extremely different. With the opening of this game, you get the impression that this game is a sequel but once you actually start with the game, it’s clearly far from a sequel. Corpse Party was an excellent visual novel horror adventure game for the PSP, I truly enjoyed playing it and directly got myself the sequel. And I have been playing it often. The game is extremely different from the original and in this article I’ll talk if those changes are for the good or for the bad. Be warned, this article is about my first impressions of the game. I have only played a major part of the first chapter. I’m also finishing up the bonus chapters in the original, since you can unlock content with it in this game. But enough talking in this introduction, let’s dive right into Corpse Party – Book Of Shadows.

Deeper story.

In the original game I would go far if I told you that the characters weren’t developed. While it’s true that you don’t get a lot of information about the characters themselves, the actions of the characters easily shape a picture of them. But this game takes it a step further. In the first part I played of this game, I have already gasped several times.

In this game, things that you could suspect in the original return. What’s Seiko’s deal with Naomi’s ass anyways? Well, you get the answer in this game.

This game seems to have a deeper story. You can always check back on the previous conversations by the touch of a button. And here, it’s getting in the right direction. You can scroll up and down and get to the top and bottom rather easily.

A major improvement is the ability to save anywhere you want and there are even more then just one save file! The save system is greatly improved since the original.

One thing I didn’t like is that you have to watch the introduction movie if you start the game for the first time. I honestly admit that I forgot to save the game after the first time I played it and I couldn’t skip the long introduction. Before you can get to some gameplay you will have to go through huge parts of text. I’m sure that this first part took me more then a hour to get through. Man, I wish I had a speed-up button.

The original is a joke

Yes, the original is almost like a joke to this game. The visuals are kicked up a big notch. You now run in a sort of 3D world. The graphics are extremely nice made for this game. You can see the cursed school from all it’s 3D glory. And this get a thumbs up from me.

The voice acting is extremely well done too. I have had the annoying part where you tapped the confirm button way to fast that the voices couldn’t follow. Yes, the original had that slight problem. This game doesn’t have that issue.

Also, the more the cure gets to you, the more blurry your screen gets. And this is such a nice addition. I actually don’t understand the mechanics of that just yet, but I’m sure that’s just a matter of time.

The controls aren’t explained but they are straight forward non-the-less. You can search each room easily and when you can get information about something, you cursor will turn blue. Also, the parts that are timed, don’t interrupt the gameplay at all. But those didn’t interrupt in the original game either.

Time to turn up the amazing dial. 

I gave the original game already a high score, but this game seems to run past it with ease. And I have only played the first chapter. The music is tense, and memorable.

With hints to the first game everywhere, in the music and story, this game is an improvement of the first game. I can’t repeat that enough. With the save files you can now see when and what time you made that save file.

There is one step back though, with the name tags list, they were better organised in the original. There it was per chapter and you had a little picture for each corpse. Now, both aren’t there. Oh well, that’s a minor nitpick anyways.

I realize that my thoughts in this article are all over the place but what I forgot to mention with the story is that thoughts are now no longer simply between brackets. Oh no, they are now in a different colored box. That’s great for newcomers to the genre. What’s also better is that there are more visual pictures to look at while the story is unfolding. There is less use of a black screen with a box in this game.

Have I mentioned that this game is slowly growing towards my list of most influential games in my life of all time? Only my favorites get  on that list and this game is a big blast to play. I don’t mind the long waiting times between gameplay since the story is extremely well written. The voice acting draws you in even more. The sound design is one of the better ones I have heard in a game for a while.

Music that I want to listen daily too, memorable characters, great design and a challenge for every gamer. This game is getting a high score from me already, but is the game going to keep it this game throughout the whole game. That you will read in the review, when I am done with the game. But for now, NekoJonez signing out.