Atelier Ayesha. A young woman with blond hair, a green and gold dress, and a staff topped with a pink flower.
Let’s have our regular weekly question session:
- What games are you playing this week?
- Would you recommend those games to other Border House readers?
- What games have you ranting?
- Are any of those games listed ones that you want to see covered on the site?
This past week I have spent all of my gaming time with Atelier Ayesha: The Alchemist of Dusk. I have some mixed feelings about parts of the game, but overall I have really been enjoying my time with it.
So, what have you been playing?
This week’s been all Etrian Odyssey IV all the time. Last night I beat the final boss. Now to see how far I can get in the post-game stuff this time. From previous experience with EO games, I’d guess ‘not very far’.
I’ve just started playing old-school graphic adventure Beneath A Steel Sky, well over a decade after I first read about it. (The game now comes free with any GOG account.) It’s too early in the game to make any real value judgements. But if you like the idea of a SCUMM type game with a post-apocalyptic rust-punk aesthetic, then it’s probably worth a look.
I’m also trying out Half The Sky Movement: The Game on Facebook, as a follow-up to my post on Emergent Players about Half The Sky’s mobile games aimed at young women in developing countries. Unlike the mobile games, the Facebook app seems to be aimed squarely at more affluent users, and it seems to have many of the same issues raised by Patricia Hernandez in her Kotaku piece about the problematics of Serious games: how player agency is framed; reducing systemic/institutional problems to simple arcade-type quests, etc.
Plus, it seems to reward players for charitable microtransactions that support transnational NGO partners via “in-app donations”, which itself raises a different set of issues — yes, it appears to be a “freemium” Serious game. It’s decidedly not pay-to-win, and it’s possible to advance without spending a cent, but it uses de facto power boosts as incentives to encourage donation. Mixed feelings about that.
As an oldschool point&click adventure game, Beneath A Steel Sky is pretty good, with out-of-the-box puzzles and funny dialogue.
From an inclusiveness perspective though, it’s pretty terrible. Nearly all the characters are white men. Of the few female characters, only one shows any agency. Guess which one of them is fridged?
While I don’t disagree with you on the game’s treatment of race and gender, I have a possibly interesting observation: when I played the game, I assumed that the protagonist Rob was a POC.
In the cutscene art, he’s clearly white, though. (And somehow has brown hair, rather than black as in-game.)
Comparison:
In-game shot: http://www.revfans.com/media/images/screenshots/bass-screenshot25.jpg
Cutscene: http://static.giantbomb.com/uploads/square_small/1/13084/377059-foster.png
I’ve been slowly working my way towards the end of FFXIII-2, which I bought at the start of the year. Fun, so far, though I do miss Lightning and Fang as playable characters!
Other than that, I’ve just downloaded Darkstalkers Resurrection from xbox live arcade. It’s a game I’ve not had a chance to devote much time to in the past, so I can’t really play it on its own level – I’m very much playing it like I do Street Fighter. Looking forward to working through the trials and getting into the mechanics and such, as I love the characters, and it brims with charisma.
Though it could REALLY do without all the dodgy objectifying Morrigan stuff (I wish she was a better design as it’s so good to have a Scottish character), and the extremely dubious Lilith character.
Now that just makes me curious if anybody has ever come up with alternative character designs for Morrigan.
As for Lilith, I think a lot of the character’s baggage comes with the backstory of her mythical namesake. Which begs the question: how could her legend be re-framed in a more well-rounded or nuanced way, especially given the constraints of the medium and the genre?
Also, why single out those two, but not Felicia?
I would prefer if Morrigan’s usual costume were the one she wears in some win poses, where she’s wearing leather trousers and a blouse, though I get that then she wouldn’t be as cartoony and o.t.t. (though I do still wonder why she has to look like a terrible 90s ‘bad girl’ superheroine). I get she’s a succubus, and there’s going to be a sexual element, but I’m sure there’s a way for the game makers/artists/whoever to handle a succubus character without her being little more than male-gaze titillation.
I feel a lot of the Lilith stuff I perceive as ‘dodgy’ may be to do with how fandom often portrays her, and the over-sexualisation of a character who appears to be pre-pubescent, and this may not be in the game itself (I can’t really remember!).
And speaking of not remembering, I confess I’d forgotten all about Felicia!
I’m actually going to be getting Darkstalkers Resurrection also (though on PSN, as my 360 died). Have been playing the arcade games of it a bit lately but I’d like to figure out what I’m doing XD I do find them fun, though. Growing up, I was mostly into Street Fighter games, and later a bit of BlazBlue.
I am currently dipping in and out of Torchlight II with the Synergies mod. Is anybody else playing this?
I am also finishing up all the collectible items for the new Tomb Raider game which I completed over the weekend. I enjoyed this game a lot more than I thought I might after *that* early incident of questionable PR.
I’ve played Torchlight II a little here and there. That genre is more of an occasional bite-sized diversion for me than something I really get into, but it was fun enough. Haven’t tried any mods though.
Since my computer decided to die on me yesterday (or at least the RAM, as far as I can tell), I’m going to be stuck with my mom’s old laptop for the rest of the week. Was planning an upgrade “soon” anyway, so I not quite as pissed off as I might otherwise be, but it’s still annoying. This old thing runs DOSBox and little else. I’m going to see how it does with ToME4 and UnReal World as I’m still in a roguelike mood. Has anyone here played the latter?
I’ve played a bit of UnReal World, but never got very far. I had one game that was going well until I got the movement keys mixed up, fell into a trap pit I’d dug, and broke both my legs.
Its features and gameplay are pretty unique. There’s lots to do, and you need to do a lot to survive. Movement is different from most roguelikes in that your facing matters–you turn with the right and left keys and move forward or backward with up or down. Facing also affects line-of-sight.
You can play as male or female; as far as I can tell it’s purely cosmetic and basically changes your choice of character portraits. A lot of the status and other images are fixed, so e.g. you’ll have the same picture of a guy for “Walking” regardless of what portrait you picked.
Turns out the old laptop has a problem with UnReal World, it never finishes switching map views when I hit enter.
The survival aspect is what attracted me, so I do look forward to having to put effort into it for once. And from what I’ve read, falling into one’s own pit trap isn’t too rare.
But ouch, two broken legs sound like really bad luck.
The “LARPers in the forest” pics are a bit amusing. I do wish it’d just use the player portrait instead of say the fixed “walking” picture. Still, I guess it helps set the game apart, visually.
I’ve been playing Torchlight II vanilla, how does the Synergies mod change things?
My gaming hiatus has ended. I am about 4 missions into Aliens: Colonial Marines. If you play this game, please note that the flamethrower and smartgun will not be added to your weapon wheel even if you find the legendary guns.
I am excited about the DLC for Scott Pilgrim Vs. the World. You can now play as his queer roommate who is hilarious.
Next week Isaac Clarke of Dead Space comes to PlayStation All-Stars. Sweetness!
Are you enjoying A:CM?
That’s awesome about Scott Pilgrim. I played it with local co-op with Ike and we had a lot of fun, but we were both disappointed that we couldn’t choose the roommate. Really nice to see they’re still doing stuff to improve their game XD
My inner Alien fanboy is excited to play it, but as a gamer, I am rather underwhelmed. I know you can fly through the story, but I am searching for dog tags and legendary weapons. I look forward to slamming out the rest of the game this weekend.
What are your thoughts on A:CM?
The dog tags were annoying to find, so we didn’t bother as there didn’t seem to be any sort of story or fun gameplay reward for doing so (though we did find all of the audio logs, because they weren’t ridiculously hidden and because they added some flavor to the dull environments).
The story was silly, and the plot holes involving a certain character showing up late-ish in the game were not well-written.
The gameplay was pretty standard, but with really crappy AI for the enemies. Sadly, the aliens never felt like much of a threat, even on Ultimate Badass difficulty, and the humans were more of a bother to deal with throughout the game (and there were too many of them).
Had a bit of fun, either way, but I wouldn’t have finished the campaign without co-op. About all the game had really going for it is the franchise name, and as much as I love the franchise, a cash-in stain like this leaves a sour taste.
Battle Realms. The game is ten years old but still fun. Not that many female units (only a healer and a tower saboteur, who are the only units of that type in each faction) and heroines (each faction has some, but only one or two) but a good rts by itself. All units are useful and can be upgraded in a number of ways. Only problem is that it requires quite a bit of micromanagement.
Still plowing through Final Fantasy III, having just gotten the water crystal. I know it’s a 23-year-old game that was barely updated (other than graphically) for the DS version, but it’s still jarring and infuriating to have Sara go from a badass princess who rescued herself and went on adventures to “oh I’m sad you’re leaving Ingus I will just stay here and be sad because I am not a hero.” (Also infuriating: Refia as token girl–get rid of Luneth and put Sara in there!–and Aria, for spoiler reasons.) I’m still enjoying it, though, despite the infinite grind of infinity.
Also still working on Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning, in which I’ve just completed the Theatre of Fate and am running around doing Important Side Quests rather than saving the world. I have decided that Agarth is a toolbox and Alyn Shir is awesome, though I wish she had more clothes (but she does at least appear to be written tolerably well, and dokkalfar solidarity 5eva.)
I also got thoroughly addicted to “Eighty-Eight” on iOS, which is a number- and block-matching game. It’s difficult to describe but incredibly fun to play.
Totally agree on the FFIII comments. Though i did have a fun time making Refia my Knight and Luneth my summoner.
Yes! That is roughly the route I am taking; Refia started as a thief and will be a Dragoon when I get there; Luneth is a White Mage who’ll be a Devout. Ingus is a knight, always and forever. Arc gets whatever magic jobs are left over. XD
Mostly I am….happy they added more personality and such, but I wish they’d had more awesome ladies. ;_;
That’s what I like about the Final Fantasys with job systems; you can make the characters who you want them to be
I’ve got a bit of money left on a gift card and I keep seeing you mention Eighty-Eight. I love numbers, puzzles, and iOS gaming… yep, gonna pick this one up!
I hope you enjoy it! I have found the game really easy to play, and really challenging to be good at. On the other hand, that keeps me coming back!
Frozen Synapse. That’s about it – busy at work and at home, but I can still find 5-10 minutes a day to play my turns for a Frozen Synapse tournament.
Did anyone catch the LGBT gaming event held in NYC sponsored by EA, HRC and Ford Foundation? It is good to see these conversations happening. Just like the Feminist Frequency video series. Hopefully, we can move the needle on these issues in gaming.
This week, I decided to work on some of the older games in my backlog, and I’m quite excited to continue playing a lot of these older games in the coming months.
I created a backloggery to help keep track of my progress, username Llamaentity. I imagine it will take me ages to fill in older stuff, so for now I have only put stuff I’ve played in the last week. I guess I might slowly fill in random older stuff, but I have played so many games in my life that the list will likely always remain incomplete.
Does anyone else use this? I recall a few people mentioning it before, and I would be interested in adding people to my multitap or however it works.
Anyway, this past week, I mostly played Donkey Kong Country 2, Donkey Kong Country 3, Paracute, Tomba!, Rayman, Bobbing, Dungeon Plunder, Danmaku Unlimited 2, and Gigawing.
- Donkey Kong Country 2: finished this co-op with a friend. We finished all of the lost levels and collected every single DK coin! Was a lot of fun, and at times quite challenging. An excellent platformer, easily one of the best on the SNES.
- Donkey Kong Country 3: playing this co-op with the same friend. Just started yesterday but looking forward to playing through it.
- Paracute: three-starred all levels in this super cute and fun game in which you are a parachuting teddy bear that must grab as many hearts as possible before landing safely on a pillow.
- Tomba!: about three and a half hours into this sort of Metroidvania-styled platformer. There are tons of quests, some of which are easy to miss, and I am constantly torn between wanting to do them all and wanting to just try to beat the game without worrying about all of the extra stuff. So far I’m going with the former, so it looks like it’ll be a while before I finish this.
- Rayman: playing the original, at long last. Pretty fun platformer, and the art still looks great.
- Bobbing: my main go-to game for when I don’t really feel like playing anything else. Really loving the music and the wonderful level design in this auto-running platformer.
Hoping to mostly work on these games this coming week, and then I shall continue with more games from years long past that I missed throughout the years. I am primarily looking for more games on SNES, GBA, and Genesis to play soonish, any type of game that’s single-player. I played a lot on these systems, but there were so many games that I know I missed some.
Does anyone have any suggestions for maybe not very well-known single-player SNES, GBA, and Genesis games?
oh hi, new devotee of Bak’laag! I’m Lassarina there, as well.
I love that site.
I have many fond memories of DKC2. Right up until I hit Windy Well and lost my temper completely. (As did my dad, who is as a rule the most chill of people.) He eventually made it through, but we both agreed there were some atrocious bits of level design.
Added!
Yeah, the floaty mechanics in that level were obnoxious at best.
One of the lost levels had a windy section where you’re the parrot and surrounded by bees and thorny walls… yeah I hated that section XD But for the most part, some really nice level design in the game
I quite agree–the DKC games had some absolutely glorious level design, and then a few that were like “no, my masochism does not extend this far.” I never investigated the lost levels, but the parrot + bees + thorns sounds like a special kind of hell.
Added you both!
I use my first name on Backloggery too. I’ve added you as a friend. Welcome
For GBA, I would recommend the Summon Night: Swordcraft Story games.
Cool, I added everyone that left their backloggery names XD
Thanks for the suggestion, Kimiko… first item added to my wishlist
I looked it up just now and it looks fun ^.^ How’s the story, and does it require much grinding?
Hmm, I guess the games are a bit grindy. The stories are decent.
I’m bookzombie on backloggery!
Thanks for suggesting Backloggery, Llamaentity. I have set up my account. Now the whole world can see the shame that is my backlog.
I cannot think of any rare old school games.
If you like RPGs and you’re looking at older games, you might want to check out “Great Greed” for the original Game Boy. It’s one of the more obscure games for the system, so getting an actual cartridge may be difficult.
You’ve mentioned playing several platformers. May I suggest “Plok” for the SNES?
My Backloggery name is CronoDAS, incidentally.
Cool, added Great Greed to my wishlist, and added you to my Backloggery list
I actually have a copy of Plok, and loved it. I actually never was able to beat it, though, and haven’t tried since I was much younger. It would be a good idea for me to go back to it and see what I can do! It’s always cool running into someone else that appreciates Plok, as it was indeed overlooked by most.
I’ve never beaten Plok either, actually. Some of those bosses were really, really hard.
One more word about Great Greed: it has an interesting Easter Egg. There’s a scene in the ending in which you’re asked if you want to marry one of the people you’ve met during the game. If you say yes, you’re asked to talk to the person you want to marry. At this point, with enough persistence, you can actually become engaged to anyone in the room, regardless of age, gender, or marital status; in addition to the princesses, your choices include the elderly female court wizard, two male court officials, the Queen, and even the King himself! (And this game was released in 1993!)
Beat Bioshock and started straight away with Bioshock 2. Bioshock probably had the best stylization, lore, economy and story I have played in a long time. I can partly understand why Bioshock 2 did not get the same love,but the underwater sections are a nice change of pace and the new enemies introduced are a fun challenge. And it is so beautiful. A few things are improved on (hacking, slight change to control layout for heals/eve, new plasmids and tonics to experiment with) so I’m having as much fun and clearly past the initial terror I felt with the first game. Downloaded the new Star Wars tables on XBox Arcade, they are good though there seems to be a problem with the upper left flipper on the Boba Fett table, seems to kick it out for me more than keep the ball in play. I think we’re close to finishing Borderlands 2 as well, and wow, the story has taken a much darker turn that was unexpected. I’m glad we still have the DLC to look forward to, I can’t imagine evenings without co-op in the Borderlands with my sweetie. Sounds like some DLC to be released for Dishonored, I’m looking forward to that.
I’ve been playing a lot of Civilization V this week. I’ve got a lot of very stressful things going on in my life at the moment so its relaxing pace suits me. I wish there were more female leaders though. I don’t have the Gods and Kings expansion which corrected that.
I’ve been playing the new Tomb Raider! I think I’m about 80% done with the game (maybe? I’m 16 hours in) and I’ve really really been enjoying it. I’m kind of a collect-a-holic, so finding all the little trinkets and GPS caches and salvages is right up my alley. It’s a bit uncomfortable to play at times, notably because of the violence that Lara is constantly enduring (mostly from the environment, but also from enemies) and also the quick reaction times (many, many QTEs) could make the game somewhat inaccessible to some players. However, the game is absolutely gorgeous, and I love feeling triumphant over the puzzles and I’m enjoying the exploration.
I rented Tomb Raider over the weekend and I was really surprised by how much I liked it so far. I found that the stuff that made me uncomfortable when watching videos of the game was less noticeable when I was actually playing, since it felt more like I WAS Lara rather than watching her. And I’ve found myself really rooting for her, to the point of actually saying out loud “You can do it, Lara!!” haha. Especially during the radio tower part (that’s about as far as I got, which I think is maybe 1/3rd through?).
I think the thing I found most distressing about the scenes I found uncomfortable was that I had to sit through each of them more than once due to being part of an unexpected QTE.
Aside from that I really enjoyed playing this game.
One of the things I found most interesting about my experience was that I had heard the game was it’s most fun when you strayed from the path to go back to older areas to collect all the shinies. Contrarily, I found that once I finished the main game and went back to do more exploring that without the tension of the narrative I felt much less involved in the game. I’m looking forward to playing it again from the beginning though!
I’m late to the Theatrhythm party. Got enough Rhythmia to encounter Chaos and beat him, now trying to unlock some of the bonus characters.
The game is a lot of fun, although it makes me feel like I’m not a big enough Final Fantasy fan (of all the Final Fantasies) to really appreciate it.
I just started replaying Assassin’s Creed III, because I kind of rushed it the first time (mostly because it was so buggy and nonsensical, in my defense). I’m gonna take more time with it this time around, doing all the homestead missions, etc., because I’ve heard that most of Ratonhnhaké:ton’s personality, which I don’t like what I’ve seen of very much, comes from those optional missions.
Replaying it, I do like a lot of the opening missions, but the game is still very buggy (lots of cutscene weirdness) and nonsensical: why is Ratonhnhaké:ton not surprised to learn his father’s role, and why does Achilles act like this isn’t new information to him? Why do the modern characters react to the plot twist at the end of Sequence 3 the way they do when they should have figured it out long before it’s revealed to the audience? Why does the in-game map refer to Ratonhnhaké:ton as Connor years before Achilles actually starts calling him that?
I’m gonna keep going, but it’s frustrating how slapdash and lazy the game feels in comparison to the rest of the series.
I started playing Mass Effect 3. Just barely into it. But damn does shit hit the fan!
still working my way through Final Fantasy Dimensions as well. I think I’m at the last dungeon. I did some job grinding and am not totally OP. Boss fights take only a few rounds to kill. Its kinda sad actually. I’m now looking forward to the post game stuffs where they have the ubber bosses which might give me a challenge.
The FFD final boss is definitely not a pushover (I didn’t have too much trouble with the Angst Collective, which is my personal nickname for the final-dungeon bosses), but I got through on my first go, so you’re probably right that it won’t take too long. Overall, I really loved FFD. Nostalgic in the right places and all grown up where it needed to be.
Still on Ni No Kuni. Actually enjoying it more now that the various systems have opened up. Still a long, long way to go though!
Playing Phoenix Wright on my iPhone. Enjoying it a lot so far; I had played the second and third games on the DS already, borrowed from my sister, but this is my first chance at playing the first installment.
I’m finding I really enjoy this style of multiple-choice gameplay that you get with visual novels or certain hyperfiction games. Phoenix Wright, Cinders, Christine Love’s Ren’py games, the Choice Of Games series… can anyone recommend more of this kind of story game? Especially for iOS or Android? I’ve hunted for visual novels on both platforms, but most of what I’ve found so far appears to be really awkwardly translated dating sims. Bleah.
“Ghost Trick: Phantom Detective” is from the creators of Phoenix Wright and has an iOS port.
The “When They Cry” visual novel series also has an iOS port. I haven’t played it myself so I can’t comment on the quality of the translation, but I do know that it’s much more like a murder mystery than a dating sim.
I’ve been playing Final Fantasy 8 of all things…