A Few Thoughts On Pinstripe

It's October, so I decided to take this opportunity to catch up on a few scary games I've been planning to play. These articles won't be full blown reviews - more like rants, really.

So, let's talk about Pinstripe. Pinstripe is a short puzzle platformer about a minister called Ted whose daughter is abducted, and he has to journey through a hellish winter landscape to save her.

Pinstripe's greatest virtue is obvious from the get-go: its presentation. It has a distinctive style with simple shapes like you'd see in a children's book, but the images depicted are disturbing to say the least. You could call it 'Burtonesque.'

The environments are visually powerful, but so are the characters. There are several characters - some of which are voiced by YouTube celebrities like PewDiePie and JackSepticEye. The game's antagonist, Pinstripe, is the standout character - a man with a sophisticated, polite air who seems to fly into random bouts of swearing and aggression when questioned or challenged in any way.

The story itself is another of Pinstripe's strengths. Who Pinstripe is and why he kidnaps Ted's daughter - there's enjoyment to be had in figuring out the clues as you explore the world. I don't want to give away too much beyond that - the game is pretty short, so it's best experienced for yourself.

It's sad to say, but I think Pinstripe's weakest part is probably its gameplay. That isn't to say it's really terrible; it's just rather basic and a bit rough around the edges. It has quite a few puzzles, many of which are rather fun to figure out. The game controls in 2D, but you can examine the clues you find in 3D much like in a detective type game. There's something to be said for finding a note, turning it around and finding a hidden message on the back. The puzzles never get terribly complex, however, usually requiring a simple number code, hitting switches in a certain order or playing a game of 'spot the differences' with two paintings. Complex or not, though, it's entertaining enough thanks to the way the puzzles are presented.

The game also requires you to do some platform challenges - and there is some polish missing there. More than once, Ted got his feet stuck on a small outcropping or nothing. Ted has very little sense of momentum, just starting and stopping instantly. The general issues with collision and physics were pretty minor all in all, but noticeable.

Later in a game, you are asked to backtrack through the world to acquire a large number of the game's signature collectible, frozen oil drops. There are a few new interesting puzzles on this return trip, but in most of the areas you'll be performing the exact same action - fire your slingshot through the fire onto flammable mushrooms so they explode and yield more collectibles for you. Considering it was required to progress the story, I felt this amount of backtracking was a little unnecessary for so short a game - but since the world was also pretty small, I can't say it was a huge bother.

Speaking of the slingshot, it is your primary means of self defense and environmental puzzle solving. It's basic enough, you aim the cursor and release to shoot a pellet where you aimed - and you can do this while moving as well. Beyond using fire to ignite your ammunition, the slingshot wasn't really expanded upon, but perhaps it's unfair to ask when you consider the game's length. You can acquire a better weapon and some neat extras on a second playthrough and some new areas can be accessed, so there is replayability in that regard.

Minor gameplay missteps aside, though, I had a great time with Pinstripe. Minor gameplay problems couldn't stop me from enjoying its story and presentation to the fullest, and I'm not going to lie, the ending made me feel some feelings. My overall impression of the game is positive, in spite of the prior rant - it's just nitpicking, really. So, in conclusion:

Pinstripe is a beautiful, short-and-sweet indie puzzle platformer. Its presentation and writing are excellent and supported by simple but fun puzzle gameplay and serviceable platforming. If you really like what you see, don't hesitate to get it. If you're not sure, wait for a sale and give it a shot then. 

A Few Thoughts on Oxenfree

It's October, so I decided to take this opportunity to catch up on a few scary games I've been planning to play. These articles won't be full blown reviews - more like rants, really.

We discussed SOMA earlier, so now I'd like to talk a bit about Oxenfree. Because my overall impression is basically completely positive, I don't have that much to say, but let's see if I can get my thoughts out.

Oxenfree is a game about a few teenagers who visit an island they're really not supposed to be after dark. The protagonist is a girl called Alex. By tuning into radio signals, Alex and her friends end up encountering supernatural phenomena that I don't want to elaborate on in case you're planning to play the game.

The developers wanted to make a 'walking and talking' game, and in that regard, they succeeded. The sheer amount of dialogue options is baffling, and the voice acting is stellar across the board. Most of the plot progression and consequences don't depend on binary choice, either, but an accumulation of how you treat certain people. It also has good music and gorgeous visuals.

That's really about all I have to say about the game's quality. If you're into narrative games, give it a go. The reason I personally felt it necessary to write an article about it does get into spoiler territory, so...

SPOILERS START HERE 

I don't usually "like" my own articles, but if I had to pick a favorite in terms of theme, I really enjoyed writing the one about "meta narrative" after experiencing Doki Doki Literature Club. The reason I'm bringing it up here is because I would've included Oxenfree in that article if I had played it at that point. You see, at three key points in the story, a mirror image of the main character speaks to you and chooses one of three dialogue options outside your control. This mirror image will have the name of a person from your Steam friendlist above its head and the reason becomes apparent at the very end. You yourself become the mirror image in those scenes and offer advice to a friend who will play the game in the future. The mirror image will actually pick the dialogue option that the person in your friend list picked, so their playthrough "echoes" into yours.

I think it's genuinely brilliant that the game doesn't just break the fourth wall, it also involves the choices other players made in your playthrough. And then you get to make those choices, which will consequently impact another player's playthrough in the future.

So, that's all I had to say. I'm not sure if I'll get to finish another scary game this month, but we'll see. If I don't write anything else, happy Halloween! 

A Few Thoughts on SOMA

It's October, so I decided to take this opportunity to catch up on a few scary games I've been planning to play. These articles won't be full blown reviews - more like rants, really.

First up is SOMA by Frictional Games, the creators of the famous Amnesia: The Dark Descent. Amnesia played a major role in bringing horror games back into the scene but its sequel, developed by The Chinese Room, disappointed a lot of fans. Now that Frictional itself has taken the reigns again, can they measure up to their prior achievement? 

I won't leave you in suspense - the answer's no.

I don't always agree with the general consensus, but in SOMA's case, I think the critics' and audience's overall impressions are pretty spot-on: The game has great writing and visuals and deals with some powerful uncomfortable themes, but it's bogged down by problems with its gameplay. 

I won't get too deep into spoiler territory, but as its marketing material shows, SOMA is set in a more futuristic time era. In your journey, you'll be met with robots and AIs, some of which believe they are human, and others were human once. As the border between an AI and a human being becomes more and more blurred, you're presented with the notion of copying someone's "brain" leading to two "instances" of a person. Is the copy a real person? Is it the same person? For the questions and uncomfortable scenarios it presents, SOMA is well worth checking out. It also has varied and beautiful setpieces, with a lot of time spent on the ocean floor to my surprise. In those regards, I'd say it's ahead of Amnesia.

But that's about the only thing it has over Amnesia.

Amnesia and SOMA both include large areas to explore with the threat of monsters, but the exploration in SOMA is endlessly more frustrating and less rewarding. It all starts with the mechanics. Amnesia and SOMA both have a 'sanity' mechanic, but only Amnesia has real 'health.' You could check out your menu at any time to observe both in Amnesia. Additionally, you had much more influence on your sanity in Amnesia as well. How? The answer is light. To contextualize, standing in the dark slowly drained your sanity and the game offered tools to combat this:
Tinderboxes and lamp oil. A tinderbox would allow you to ignite a light source like a candle permanently, but it was fixed in place. Lamp oil gave you a mobile light, but the oil would run out eventually. This added a dynamic where light would protect you from the dark, but it would also allow monsters to see you more easily.

Not only did the sanity mechanic allow for many interesting risk/reward considerations, it also made the exploration more rewarding. Exploring the sprawling, huge areas before making progress could improve your chances of survival by finding precious medicine, tinderboxes or lamp oil. To bring it back to SOMA, there's none of that. You have a flashlight which never runs out, and although you can suffer some kind of sanity damage, you can only repair it by single use interactable objects placed in significant areas. This also takes away the elegant logic of Daniel (from Amnesia) recovering his sanity because he solved a puzzle or made significant progress, though I can't get into exactly how SOMA justifies it without spoilers. But the point here is that there's only one reward for thorough exploration: more story. It's not an insignificant reward if you're hooked on the world of SOMA, but the lack of immediate connection with the gameplay made it less impactful than finding a few tinderboxes and a note detailing Daniel's backstory.

But having just story as a reward for exploration isn't necessarily a flaw, if only the exploration itself wasn't so frustrating. Where SOMA really falls flat on its face is the monsters. Though their designs are cool and they'll certainly give you a fright the first few times you see them, the means to avoid them will soon turn them into nuisances. The rules for the monsters are generally:

1. Don't look at them.
2. Don't make any noise around them.

That's really scary at first, but the monsters are mobile enough - some of them teleport - that you'll encounter them very often. The charm of hiding in a corner for a minute until a monster passes wears off really fast. SOMA doesn't offer dedicated hiding spots or doors that need to be broken down like Amnesia, and most monsters will catch you if they're after you, so it feels like there's little to no room for strategy beyond just quietly waiting. This turns a thorough search of a complex area from a tense rewarding experience into a frustrating waiting game. Additionally, when you're caught, the monster usually leaves you for dead, giving you a second chance to escape. You only die if you're caught twice in a short time or at certain story moments. This might remove even more of the tension for some players, though it was ironically probably implemented to prevent frustration.

That about sums it up, I think! Ignoring the frustrating monsters, the game has plenty of interesting puzzles and cool areas to explore. The game actually has a version that excludes the monsters, which you may want to try. That doesn't really solve the problem, though; with no looming threat at all, the tension is completely gone. SOMA does need monsters, it just needs better ones.

To summarize this incoherent rant, SOMA is a horror game with interesting themes, beautiful setpieces and interesting puzzles, but the experience is ruined in part by obnoxious monsters who will initially scare you but eventually do nothing but slow you down and block your progress. The monsters and exploration are a huge step down from its predecessor Amnesia: The Dark Descent, even if it is the latter's superior in terms of story and themes.