August of Games: Day 10 - FEZ

FEZ
Developer: Polytron (Phil Fish)
Genre (Setting): Retro, Surreal
Genre (Gameplay): Platformer
What is this game: This is a game where you play as a blocky little guy who lives in a 2D world. At the beginning of the game you recieve a hat that lets you rotate the world, revealing the 3D structure of the world for the first time. You then proceed to accidently tear a hole in the universe. You then explore the newly-exposed 3D world to find the pieces to fill the gap. There are 32 normal cubes, mostly shattered to smaller bits, that you can collect through puzzle platforming. There are also 32 anti-cubes, which are guarded by significantly more difficult puzzles that involve inventive solutions.
You rotate the world left or right to leap around and platform around a pixel-art environment that wears its Tetris inspiration on its sleeve.
FEZ was in development for an exceptionally long time, and Fish has been very vocal (and often obnoxious) in the media, both leading up to and after the release. FEZ is one of the main games chronicled in Indie Game: The Movie, which, if I haven't said this enough, you should go watch.
 
What's great about it: FEZ is beyond brilliant. This is the best thing to happen to puzzle games in a good long while. FEZ takes a basic puzzle platformer and adds a twist to it that makes play interesting, but the real strength comes from the Anti-Cube puzzles. Most are based on interpreting the Tetris codes seen around the world into button sequences, but others are even crazier, such as the tuning fork puzzles or the insane Telescope puzzle (see flashing red stars, convert their patterns to binary, convert that to hex, convert that to ASCII and you'll have a button sequence to press to reveal the anti-cube - sorry if that spoiled it for you, but seriously that's crazy). They are so absurdly intricate at times that there's one puzzle in the game that the community came together and brute-forced the game for the solution, and even with the solution no one has yet figured out how you're supposed to figure it out in-game. There are puzzles that have yet to even be solved. They require outside thinking, sometimes outside technology, and an abundance of creativity. Put simply, it takes the existing formula for puzzle games and pushes the envelope constantly.
Visaully, the game is a dream. I don't know if Fish did the pixel art himself, but whoever did is very skilled. And very dedicated. Its all put together well, with constant visual themes (Tetris stuff mostly, but the other areas have their own unique visual identities as well). The music, done by Disasterpiece, is charming and classic.
This game has pretty much no real flaws. The biggest complaints people have with the game are basically juts character assaults on Phil Fish, who is kind of an ass, but that doesn't make his game less brilliant. If you like games that make you think, you owe it to yourslef to play FEZ.

How do I get it: You buy it on Steam! It's also available on Xbox Live Arcade, and it's easier if you have a Gamepad, but regular old Steam is the most accessible method. It costs $10.

Avatar World: The Airbender Moves, Other Moves Revisions

Bro made me a CD with a bunch of Vicetone stuff on it and it's pretty good. Especially for driving. This song is great for active listening too though! The original is surprisingly not very inspiring at all, despite Zedd generally being pretty good (he did the song I featured in the Now You See Me sunday songs update a while back).

So I've finally got the last playbook done! I was very not happy with The Airbender and now I'm not unhappy with it! I haven't quite gotten to "very awesome" about it but I feel decent and I've stagnated long enough  on it that I'm just going to show it.

So I've got six moves.

Airbending: When you begin moving and manipulating the air in battle, roll+Natural. On a 10+, you gain 2 Momentum. On a 7-9, you gain 1 Momentum. Spend Momentum 1-for-1 to:
     * Reposition the battlefield,
     * Reduce harm you take by 1,
     * Gain +1 Forward to a roll involving great speed or acrobatics.
If you stop moving you lose all Momentum.

I dropped the harm option! You can work the Forward into doing harm to stuff through Commit Open Violence, but doing harm isn't the primary use of Momentum. Also, the Forward option is now tied to fictional things which makes me 150% more comfortable. I also dropped the overall Momentum you get per move.

Acceleration: Whenever you have Momentum, you have +1 to further Airbending rolls.

This concept I still like, despite a complete lack of fiction-informing mechanisms.

Soundbending: You can manipulate sound as if it were air. When you do, roll+Keen. On a 10+, you can convincingly replicate any sound. On a 7-9, the sound is fairly convincing, and you are exposed to danger.

I'm...on the fence about whether this is the right way to handle this or not. I'm also on the fence about +Keen rather than +Fluid. But I'm not too unhappy about it, just hesitant.

Attuned: You have +1 Natural (max +3).

Dead simple. Rounds out the set.

Nomad: When you Meditate about some facet of the world (natural or Spirit), on a hit you may also ask the MC one question about the world that they must answer.

Basically the only way I could think of to amp up the Meditate move, but I think it's pretty appropriate. Heck, even minus the "Air Nomad" connection, "Nomads" go all over the world so they've seen a lot of stuff.

Redirection: When you would take Harm, ask how much Harm would be dealt. If you have at least that much Momentum, spend all of your Momentum to change the attack's target.

That includes "the attacker". This is a more powerful all-or-nothing variant on the -1 harm Momentum option, but has a lot more versatility. Slam enemy attack into other enemies, into the environment, into your friends >:). Heck, after two 10+ airbends you can redirect LIGHTNING. This is the last move to fall into place, and it's the perfect thing for the list I think.

So that's airbending. Oh, also:

Once you've trained with a master airbender, whenever you Move With Intention, you also get 1 Momentum on a hit.

That jumped out of my brain a couple hours ago.

I also revised a couple of other moves that troubled me. Or, more accurately, a revised a couple and noted what I'd need to do later for others.

Earthbender:
Defender: This move now provides 2-armor total, not additional. +2-armor anytime is pretty much crazy powerful, and I lose no fictional power from it.
Metalbending: This move needs some kind of mechanical weight attached, but I genuinely have no idea what to do with it.
Firebender:
Conductive: Same thing as Metalbending, it needs something, I dunno, more. It might actually need to be replaced entirely, which is sad, because other than this I'm really incredibly satisfied with the Firebender.
Monk:
Calm Stability: Possibly altered into something like "Pacifict's Aura," with the addition to the trigger "Until you first show aggression toward an opponent,..." which would allow you to be a pacifist character without being very vulnerable and let you do support stuff still.
Rivers of Energy: This will probably need work, but I won't really have a good feeling for what's broken until it gets played.
Ninja:
Like, a whole half of the moves need power reduction. Ambush, Dim Mak, maybe Environment Master.
Samurai:
Untouchable: This is crazy. And yet I think I'm going to keep it for now.
Peerless Swordmaster: I'm gonna go with Option 1 for now, but tuck Option 2 into the spare moves section.
Waterbender:
Stances: Option 1 for sure for now. Option 2 is being tucked away as a safety - if Op1 is too strong I have it in reserve.

And that sounds right.

My big questions are:
* What do you think of the Airbender's moves?
* Are there any other moves I've done that still need to be looked over? Before playtesting I mean, anything that obviously still needs work.
* Is there a need for a newly-designed playbook style? I don't want to reinvent just to be different if booklet-style or trifold-style would work just as good. If I had some style that reinforced the theme or tropes of the game I'd use that, but I don't have anything of the sort in mind.

Thanks folks!
End Recording,
Ego.

August of Games: Day 9 - Team Fortress 2

The music in the game generally is very subtle during play - mostly you hear the soundtrack on the menu screen, or in the Meet The ____ series of videos.

Team Fortress 2
Developer: Valve
Genre (Setting): Modern
Genre (Gameplay): First Person Shooter, Multiplayer
What is this game: This is a game where you play as a garishly colored dude with a weapon and work with a team of other similarly-colored dudes with weapons to beat the other team of opposite-colored dudes with weapons. There is also a co-op mode where one team of people fights waves of computer-controlled bots that you kill. It is a free-to-play first-person shooter that has been hugely-praised. It's a 2007 game that remains a king of the multiplayer shooter world through its constant updates.
 
What's great about it: It's balanced incredibly well, there's a good sense of humor, a variety of characters with very distinct personalities and playstyles, and a much friendlier graphical style than boring stuff like Call of Duty.
Two things are the real benefits though. The first is that it is utterly free. I have a pay copy from before, but it doesn't really give me any concrete benefit. You can buy things on the microtransaction market, but you don't actually gain an edge over anyone who hasn't so there's no pay-to-win going on. the other thing is that the community, by and large, is incredibly friendly! Everyone is very tolerant of newbies, and there's none of the absurd raging or vitriol-spewing that gives the Call of Duty community a bad reputation.
I 100% recommend watching Valve's series of videos titled "Meet the [Class Name]", they're extremely funny and do a good job of further cementing the sense of personality in each character.

Oh, I should mention that this is the ONLY game I play Online Multiplayer with (other than, on the rare occasion, Mass Effect 3). I dislike online multiplayer, but this game is strong enough to bring me in.

How do I get it: In The Orange Box for Windows and 360, or for the PS3, but really you want it on Steam because it's free.

August of Games: Day 8 - Borderlands

The soundtrack to Borderlands is a collaboration between several artists, including Raison Varner, Tim Larkin, and the creator of this song (and Tuesday's song), Jesper Kyd. Kyd remains incredible. The general soundtrack to BL1 is good, very well-built to deliver that atmospheric "middle-of-nowhere bandits-everywhere" feeling. BL2's soundtrack is a slicker affair, but as I discuss below, runs itself into the ground by obsessing over being "in-touch" with popular culture - as you might expect by that description, it's weighed down by an abundance of dubstep, to the game's detriment. That's not to say it isn't good, it just isn't the beast the BL1 soundtrack is.
You might notice that this song isn't Ain't No Rest For The Wicked. I want it to be. This game single-handedly put Cage The Elephant on the map thanks to providing the absolutely most-perfect song possible for the job. Short Change Hero doesn't do even half as good a job as ANRftW and the BL1 intro. So why isn't it here? Well, because I've used it twice already on the blog (the only song I did that with!), once on a post and again during September/Historical Songaday.
BUT I'LL LINK TO IT ANWAY, GO LISTEN PLEASE

Borderlands
Developer: Gearbox Studios (2K Games)
Genre (Setting): Post-apocalyptic
Genre (Gameplay): First-person shooter, RPG
What is this game: You are a gun-toting ruffian who is scouring the blasted wasteland Pandora for a legendary alien treasure trove called the Vault, and god damn you are going to murder the fuck out of everything that stands in your general field of view. You want tons and tons of loot and are going to sell so many guns to vending machines. There is a level-up system and you do an absurd number of sidequests. The writing is humorous and often referential, playing with all sorts of tropes from the genre.

What's great about it: It's generally a very tight experience built for the co-op experience, and playing it split-screen with my brother was a hugely fun experience. It's adaptive to a lot of playstyles, with four fairly distinct player characters with their own interesting skill trees. The graphics are this weird cel-shadey thing that actually worked out really well for being weird as well. There's just a sense of style. If you like post-apocalypse stuff, FPS stuff, or loot stuff like Diablo II, this is a good game and you should go play it.

How do I get it: Xbox 360, PS3, Steam. $20.

I can't just not talk about the sequel on this one. Borderlands 2 is a game where you play one of the next batch of Vault Hunters after an evil corporation has taken over the planet, and you're trying to free it. There are more guns and better graphics and it's really good-looking and sounding, but the humor decided to step past being referential and trope-aware to straight-up entering pandering territory - we have a bro for a Claptrap, a steampunk british gentleman, a dubsteppy soundtrack, and overall just responds too strongly to its own public image as the "aware" game. Handsome Jack is well written, Zed and Markus are decently written, Scooter is amazingly over-written to the point of absurdity, and, uh, frankly I'd rather all the other characters would just shut the hell up. But it looks and plays better and as a piece of gameplay it's superior. But the overblown fan-pandering aesthetic just stings it for me (not enough to not like the game, of course).
And now I've talked more about the sequel than the feature. Damn.

EDIT: Oh yeah, I should mention that this is the game that actually cemented Apocalypse World in my mind - it's filled with the right amount of post-apocalyptic tropes that it made everything click.

End Recording,
Ego.

August of Games: Day 7 - Nightsky

Nightsky's soundtrack is simple and soothing, evoking atmosphere rather than excitement. It's smooth and calming and the perfect fit for a game like Nightsky.

Indie day!

Nightsky
Developer: Nicalis
Genre (Setting): Modern, Retro
Genre (Gameplay): Puzzle
What is this game: In this game you are a small sphere. You have the power to move left, to move right, to put on the brakes, and to activate a special power that depends on the stage. Each stage is a puzzle based upon their physics engine and your reflexes.

What's great about it: The game is calm and thoughtful, and the puzzles can be pretty tough. There's also quite a lot of them. Aesthetically, the game uses the black-objects-against-colored/cloudy-backdrop style that was driven to widespread recognition in LIMBO the following year. It's a simple, calming, mentally-challenging exercise, and is thoroughly enjoyable.
 
How do I get it: Steam, for $10.

End Recording,
Ego.

August of Games: Day 6 - Assassin's Creed II

Jesper Kyd's soundtrack for Assassin's Creed II is one of the best out there. It is significantly responsible for the immersing power of the game, and functions strongly on its own outside of the game. This song became a motif running through all three of Ezio's games, but especially II and Brotherhood.

Assassin's Creed II
Developer: Ubisoft Montreal
Genre (Setting): Modern sci-fi, Historical Fiction
Genre (Gameplay): Third-person action-adventure, heavy platforming
What is this game: In this game you play as a guy who is strapped into a chair that lets him relive the memories of his Renaissance ancestor, Ezio. As Ezio you become an Assassin, a paragon of freedom and justice, going on a quest for revenge against the corrupt noble who killed his family. You jump and climb through painstakingly recreated Italian cities in the late 1400s, stabbing men and gathering information. The game is also filled up with lots of historical data about the actual Italian Renaissance and the people and places around for it. In the rest of the series you play as the same guy in a chair living through his memories of different ancestors looking for clues on how to stop a world-controlling secret society from enslaving the populace - these ancestors involve an original Assassin from the Third Crusade and a half-Native American in the Revolutionary War (and soon to join the list is a notorious pirate in the Age of Expansion).

What's great about it: Torn (a friend on the forum I frequent) and I have the exact reverse opinion on what makes this series great, though we both agree that we love it. I love the intense historical detail they put into it (and you should really take a listen to Geop's extraordinary Let's Plays of ACI and ACII, with Brotherhood soon to come - they reveal just how accurate the games are, and are very informative when the game isn't), even in ACI where there wasn't a database pointing it all out. I love the intricate way the control system allows for all sorts of approaches to combat, both in stealth and in melee, though the system only became excellent in Brotherhood and was nearly-perfected in Revelations, though ACIII is a step down in that regard for me. I love the exploration and running and climbing and stealth. In terms of gameplay, Revelations is probably the peak. Brotherhood is my favorite, with the gameplay being nearly as good as Revelations but with a much more fun setting (I like Constantinople, but the different sectors all felt the same). Why am I talking about ACII then? Because ACII has the most powerful FEELING. It grabbed me and immersed me into Italy, it dragged me all across the varied locales of Florence and Venice and Tuscany, each distinct but connected, with their own visual identities. Jesper Kyd provided a soundtrack that I listen to regularly as regular music, and not only completes the atmosphere, but promotes it. Sure, ACII has gameplay issues, and Ezio just ignores your button inputs like a fourth of the time, and combat is boring if you spam counter-kills, but by the pure feeling of it it stands out as the series highlight.
To be absolutely clear about this: It was almost single-handedly ACI and ACII and Geop's LPs of them that got me interested at all in history, and I'm now planning to declare History as a formal Minor for my degree. It has had that much influence on me.

How do I get it: It's on Xbox 360, PS3, and Steam. The Deluxe Edition on Steam (with three additional exploration and platforming maps to explore) is $20, while the others you will likely need to get used.

August of Games: Day 5 - Mirror's Edge

Heat is my favorite level of the game. I love all of them, but there's something about Heat - a feeling of overwhelmingly bright sun and intense color and height. It's also a really interesting level with a lot of hidden little tricks you can do to speed up your time. It also has what it probably the most iconic ending in the games, the crane jump. God I love this game, I think I'm gonna go play this game. The entire soundtrack, done by Solar Fields, is among my top video game soundtracks next to TWEWY, No More Heroes 1/2, and Bastion.

Mirror's Edge
Developer: DICE (of EA)
Genre (Setting): Dystopian future, modern technology levels
Genre (Gameplay): First-person platformer and shooter.
What is this game: Play as a lady who likes to run and break the law, trying to get your sister free after she's been wrongfully imprisoned and help unravel a corporate conspiracy. Do cool parkour and run fast through various environements, finding your way through and beating up, shooting, or avoiding all the policemen who get in your way.

What's great about it: Absolutely stunning visual aesthetics. The brightest, most saturated dystopian future around, everything just looks great. The music, by Solar Fields and a main theme sung by Lisa Miskovsky, is atmospheric and amazing. Thrilling as hell, and the levels are absolutely loaded with various paths you can take depending on the moves you use. Speedrunning is a lot of the point to replaying, and it's fun, if frustrating when the controls caused your demise rather than any lack of skill. However, I bust this game out any time I have a few spare hours and feel like having some fun, just blitzing through the campaign. Thanks to the developer's great sense of style, the flaws simply don't matter, leading the game to be one of my absolute favorites.

How do I get it: On Xbox 360, PS3, and Steam and Origin. It costs $20 on those PC platforms, and I recommend those if your computer can handle it.
The game's sequel was finally announced at E3 this year, nearly five years after the original's release and rumors popping up intermittently every few months for the whole period. They gave a snippy but appropriate release date of "When it's ready", but short trailer looks so gorgeous that I'm chomping at the bit. Coming to next-gen consoles, if I don't have one already then I will buy a PS4 just to get this on release day.

End Recording,
Ego.