Brainpipe is the latest offering from Digital Eel, the fine folks who brought you the world- (or at least geek-) renowned Weird Worlds: Return to Infinite Space.
And this time, they may have brought you the weirdest world of all.
This is a game, like Space Giraffe, where psychedelia is the key between a rather humdrum game and an experience. Unlike Space Giraffe however, in Brainpipe it works. (Opinions do not necessarily reflect those of the SysOp.)
The game is simplicity itself. You go down a long tube, supposedly a twisting maze of neural pathways in your own brain, leading deeper into consciousness itself, ultimately reaching a level of awareness which allows you to transcend humanity and consciously choose your own next evolutionary paradigm. Or some shit. The story and atmosphere is as bizarre as you’re likely to find in a game this well put together. But really, with your mouse and your left mouse button, your job is just:
1. Avoid the obstacles. 2. Gather some little good things which give you points.
You steer with the mouse, and can slow down periodically with the mouse button, should you need to pull in the reins a little. That’s it. Without the trippy-dippy graphics and sounds, this is dullness epitomized.
Whether the sound and fury which accompany the basic game mechanics work on you or not, you’ll just have to try the demo to find out. Me, I was enthralled. The game is not difficult in any real sense — I got my high score, and completed all ten levels of the game, on my very first try. You can always go back to get a better score, and there is a terribly difficult “bonus level” awaiting you at the end, but a consistent challenge, this game will likely not provide for too long.
What it will provide at length, and what keeps me going back to play (and starting on level 1, intentionally) is just the visceral experience of playing it. It is some sort of frantic meditative exercise, mixing swirling lights and shapes with eerie, echoing sound effects, spacey music, fractured dialogue snippets spinning around your ears like a nightmare…
There are subtle touches here too, though. As your “ship” (or whatever it is) delves deeper into your mind, level after level, the sounds — ostensibly reflections of memories and thoughts swimming past you — become more and more lucid, more urgent, more specific. At the beginning, random sounds and rudimentary tones, but as you get closer and closer to the root of your own consciousness, echoes of Broadway showtunes make their appearance. Slot machines ringing in symphony. Hysterical screaming. A rambling Timothy Leary type exhorting you to flush your mind. Musings on death and fear. Discord. Cacaphony.
All the while, you are still just dodging obstacles and collecting the little whatsits.
It has neither the depth nor staying power of Weird Worlds, but if you ever use games as a short-term injection of surreality and escape, even just for 15 minutes, Brainpipe might be right up your alley.
The demo offers two of the 10 levels, though it will let you go into a third level (“Coma”) which is so brutally difficult that it essentially functions as a “demo over” indication. A cute, if confusing way of doing it.
Fallout 3 is the first game I’ve been determined to play through to some sort of ending since BioShock, and unlike BioShock, this game is not a six-hour venture that even I can knock off in a week. Oh no. Bethesda makes video games like Oppenheimer makes bombs: glorious, expansive, and filled with a lifetime of pain for the consumers. Fallout 3 will be taking me straight through Halloween, right through Thanksgiving and into Christmas, and but for the grace of God do I not succumb to the dismal horrors presented every second in the Wasteland.
I can’t even adequately explain how depressing this game is, so let’s start off as to whether or not it’s fucking awesome. Here’s a quick Fallout 3 FAQ:
Q: Is Fallout 3, the third Fallout game, completely fucking awe- A: IMMA ADDICTED TO STIMS
Q: … A: I have a negATIVE ONE TO INT AND CHAR WHOops
Q: … Can you attach a screenshot that shows some of the – A: STIMS
That screenshot doesn’t even do the combat system justice. Bethseda have outdone themselves with the thing they are calling “V.A.T.S.” — essentially, you enter this mode to target some of the freaks in the Wasteland, and then the game adopts a sort of slow motion, pseudocinematronic delight of the camera, to show what should be the absolute horrors of war, but what instead comes off as the greatest combat engine that’s ever existed.
I can’t even write straight right now. I’m just filled with all the cool things in this game – how you can detonate a nuclear weapon in one of the cities, how this is the first game where “repairing” a weapon doesn’t make me want to get the game disc in a state where it itself needs to be “repaired,” how one time my player was shooting a Raider in the chest with an assault rifle, and she JUMPED IN THE AIR to get the angle right as she unloaded a burst of weaponry into the poor bastard.
I’ve purchased Wasteland, Fallout 1, Fallout 2, the Brotherhood of Steel games and so on and so forth, but the most fun I’ve ever had was actually with the original (Wasteland). I actually think that it is just as true to Wasteland as it is (or isn’t, according to many of the posters at No Mutants Allowed) to Fallout. the VATS system really does seem to translate the original turn-based combat of Wasteland… and I love it.
Really, the nice little details in this game have me hooked. The unit of currency is bottle caps. There is a healing object in the game called Nuka Cola. If you drink some cola… a bottle cap is added to your inventory. I just love that someone thought of that, went, “a-ha!” and they were able to put it into the game.
The intro to Fallout 3 is terrible, but once you get past that, it really does pick up. The graphics are drop-dead gorgeous, and it has a perfect balance of ammo, money and enemies. They also resisted the monster closet issue that plagued Doom 3 – when you secure an area in Fallout 3, it seems to stay secure.
I do apologize for not updating my website the last week… but honestly, this is where I was.
Pinback: Robb? Gravitar, Robb? Fan?
ICJ: Yeah, I am a fan ICJ: At first I wasn’t? But I am totally a fan now ICJ: Half of the reason why is because of the technology involved ICJ: COLOR ICJ: FUCKING ICJ: VECTOR
Pinback: Cuz Gravitron 2 is out, and it’s $5, and if you say you’re a Gravitar fan, I’ll fucking buy it, spend the rest of the fucking day playing it, and then fucking write a review of it.
ICJ: Wait – What? Gravitron? Or Gravitar?
Pinback: GRAVITRON 2 is a game released two weeks ago, which is a total retro throwback to Gravitar. Pinback: But with modern-day sensibilities. Pinback: It’s either this, or I buy chips at Full Tilt Poker.
ICJ: Here is the thing with Gravatar: that is a 10-minute game ICJ: You have seen it all in ten minutes ICJ: If they added stuff to this… Gravitron 2, then OK.
Pinback: Have you seen it all with GRAVITRON 2?? Pinback: Look, it’s five bucks. Either that, or I lose $100 on Full Tilt which I do not have to spare.
ICJ: Where is the web page for this? Pinback: http://xout.blackened-interactive.com/Gravitron2.html ICJ: … I will be getting that tonight.
Pinback: SHIT YEAH Pinback: Then I am getting it right now.
ICJ: 40 stages! There’s like 3 in real Gravitar? Pinback: And dude Pinback: It has a whole “blow the thing up then get 60 seconds to escape” thing, like Major Havoc. Pinback: AND it’s got a “rescue the little guys” thing, like Choplifter. Pinback: IT IS EVERY GAME COMBINED INTO ONE.
ICJ: … ICJ: … ICJ: I must possess this game
Pinback: Fucking BOUGHT. Pinback: Which is to say, I paid money. Pinback: I don’t technically “have” the “full copy” yes.
ICJ: Yeah, these things take time… Still less of a pain in the ass than going to Gamestop.
Editor’s note: I purchased Gravitron 2 later that evening, and yes – it is amazing. It is amazing piece of work. Vector-style graphics done in raster will never, EVER cease to be amazing to me, and the fact that they took a nice retro game and expanded it perfectly means this thing is a steal for five bucks. Five bucks! It’s worth more than five bucks.
I think the only way this game could be better would be if you were able to rescue and redeem tokens at Full Tilt Poker, which would normally not even be on the table, but seeing how Gravitron 2 merges Choplifter, Thrust, Gravitar and Major Havoc into one delightful package, what’s one more game?
I am counting down my ten favorite indie games in this thread over at Caltrops.Â
I have reduced my gameplaying activities to virtually nothing but “galactic conquest games”.
Last time, you heard me speak about Mayhem Intergalactic, a small indie title which takes the space 4X game and reduces it to its base elements, providing a galactic conquest experience in under 30 minutes, sometimes even under 15. A far cry from the hours-long commitments required by “deeper”, more complex 4X games.
Today I present to you a game that takes the experience offered by Mayhem Intergalactic, removes the “Next Turn” button, cranks it up to real-time, and distills the 4X experience even further, down to an explosion of action and, yes, strategy which takes less than 5 minutes, and often much less than that.
That game is: GALCON!
The description of the game is not unlike that of Mayhem Intergalactic, or of any other space 4X game. You start with a planet, and try to expand your empire to other planets, each of which offers a different production potential, building a space army of space ships and space lasers to send to your enemy’s space planets to try to conquer them. But whereas 30 seconds into your normal 4X game you would still be scrolling around the screen, getting your bearings, your first tenuous thoughts of overall strategy just barely forming in your mind, and maybe you’ve moved your cursor over to your home planet and are considering pressing the “build a ship” button.
30 seconds into a game of GALCON, the screen will be engulfed in the FIERY FLAMES OF SPACE ARMAGEDDON, with hundreds of little Asteroids mans coursing through the galaxy, exploding in droves as they attempt to conquer the opposing players’ empires.
It’s often exhilirating and even hilarious to watch, as it embraces glorious excess, and the “explosion” sound (which is the sound of someone making an “explosion sound” into a microphone) rattles around as the rhythmic undertone of the whole undertaking.
It sounds, and often feels, ridiculous. But really, when you get down to it, it still manages to be a strategy game, even as your mouse is flitting frantically around the screen trying to launch your armadas one second to the next.
When you win, you really feel like you executed a superior strategy, not that you just were able to drag and drop ships faster. And when you lose, you feel like you could do better the next time, not by mousing quicker, but by making better decisions.
So either it’s a tremendously strategic action game, or just the most frantic damn strategy game you’ll ever see.
It offers online multiplayer play, so if you happen to try the single player version out and are as charmed by it as I was, and want to try it online, I will meet you there.
Note from Ice Cream Jonsey:
Friend,
Long have I awaited thy coming of age. Our town of Detroit doth slowly wither under the cursed sorcery of Mangar, spawn of demons. Many hath challenged his power, only to encounter their doom.
One man didst nearly succeed. Matt Millen, the former general manager of the Detroit Lions, became imprisoned here through Mangar’s evil spell of winter. He failed, but in his failure lies the way to thy victory. Millen did keepeth a journal, and Mangar is either unaware of its existence, or believes it to have perished along with the impudent viscount. But the tome didst survive, and came into my keeping.
The path thou must follow doth with danger abound. Go, and take with thee the journal of a brave knight, and the prayers of an old man.
(signed) the dark and gritty… Ice Cream Jonsey!
-=[oooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo]=-
From the Journal of Matt Millen
It is not to be tolerated! I refuse to kneel to the evil that has made its home in Detroit.
All of the brave knights who protect this town have vanished, leaving frightened serfs, women and children to face unprotected the hordes of strange beasts and ruffians that now inhabit the streets. My brave party and I can do little to reduce their seemingly infinite numbers.
We must destroy the wizard Mangar, surely the source of the evil invasion, and of the ungodly and impenetrable winter that imprisons Detroit.
The Sewer  We are in a muck-drenched stinking sewer, and the beasts and blackguards who attack us here are too numerous to be described. Here we gain much wealth, and our skills are honed like fine steel blades. As we explore, we discover strange writings on the walls of this foul hole. I will record them faithfully here — their value will perhaps become clear later in our travels.
       “Pass the light at night.” A cryptic verse indeed. I believe I will take this advice to heart, and embrace my recent hirelings: Charles Rogers, Mike Williams, and Joey Harrington. We shall pass much, indeed.
       “YM EBD SI A RCAERAC.” I am no scholar, but neither am I a stranger to lore and letters. I can perceive no sense here.
       “Golems are made of stone.” Is this meant to lighten our hearts against a fear of encountering a golem made from the draft picks I could have received for trading the mentally-defeated Barry Sanders while he could still perform, instead of stubbornly holding on and robbing America of the joy of watching him play?
We shall venture further into the maze.
Harkyn’s Castle, Level Three We encountered a doddering old fool who barred our path until we told him the name of the tavern on Archer Street. The answer, Naked Tavern, was found to be disquieting to some members of our party, though not Joe Cullen.
Ah, pride before a fall. Once again we are challenged to the utmost of our abilities, and emerge not unscathed. The Internet trolls! They attacked in an endless flowing stream, to slay them akin to holding back the tide with a bottomless bucket. We found out (too late!) that our recently abandoned green robes my own seppuku, my own life taken from my own hands using a sword that I alone pushed into my wheezing abdomen, would have rendered us immune to attack. At last we stumbled, blind with weariness, over hundreds of corpses, four of our, proud, slain warriors (Robert Porcher, Roy Williams, Jon Kitna and Jason Hanson) lying hidden beneath stinking mounds of Baron Harkyn’s dead legions. We can spare no time to hunt for them — may the gods forgive us.
Mangar’s Dungeon, Level Five
We are defeated at the last. The silver shapes were the key to entering the main chamber wherein resides a gloating Mangar. We are trapped like rats in a tiny room where even now the wizard sends his minions to storm the door.
But we are given wise counsel by Charles Rogers, who advises us to try to get this journal to Clark Hunt, owner of the Kansas City Chiefs, and an expert in the futility of a general manager in his own right… in the hope that he will pass on the experiences written here to one capable of defeating Mangar and firing Carl Peterson. One final spell, cast by Mike Williams, using the life forces of Charles Rogers, Marty Mornhinweg, Kevin Jones and myself, will render Joey Harrington invisible for a time, enabling him to escape this place with the journal. Yet it is evil magic. Everything we have accomplished will be rent from the fabric of time and destroyed, and as the spell burns itself out, Joey will be consumed.
I embrace my companions, and taste the salt of Joey’s tears. Mike Williams has asked for my dagger — he has no wish to be captured alive. As he prepares the spell, I can but reflect that no man could wish to die in better company.
Mike begins. They come.
Given our experience with the game the past few weeks, obviously it was a horrendous oversight that DEFCON was left out of both my Top 10 Games of All Time list, and Jonsey’s Top 100 Games lists.Â
Let’s figure out where it belongs!
Here’s my original top 10 list:
10. Pyro II 9. NetHack 8. Super Mario 64 7. Grand Theft Auto III 6. Infocom Game 5. Warcraft III 4. Asteroids 3. Far Cry 2. Rollercoaster Tycoon 1. Civilization IV / GalCiv 2
Where do you put DEFCON, a stylistically brilliant, flawless execution of a fast, simple, yet deceptively deep and engrossing strategy game that anyone can play and enjoy, particularly if you were young and impressionable circa 1983?
I look at #4 and I realize, no, I can’t put anything else above Asteroids at this phase of the game. So, that’s the “ceiling”.
Would I trade my experience with WC3 (or the upcoming SC2, which will immediately go to the top of this list) for DEFCON? Ehh. No. WC3 had such a great feel to it, and was so entertaining for so long, that I just don’t think a game as simple as DEFCON can beat it, no matter how unbelievably cool it is.
I’d take it over Pyro II, so it’s up to 10 at least. FUCK YOU PYRO II.
I’d never play Nethack again if I could keep my precious DEFCON. You’re out, HACK!
Super Mario? An amazing experience! That’s a tough one. It basically comes down to who would win in a fight, Mario or Matthew Broderick. Gotta go with Brods. LATER MARIO.
Man. I’m so sick of the fucking GTA games that I really feel like knocking it down too. But until you get sick of them, wow, right? Hmm. Sprawling, unlimited freedom, or a strategy game with like 3 buildings and 5 other units. Know what? Hooray for the little guy. GRAND THEFT FUCK OFF.
So, Infocom or DEFCON? Eh. I can’t deny my roots like that. ‘Com beats ‘CON.
So there you have it.
DEFCON is the 7th best game of all time.
On Jonsey’s list it should be #23.
Castle Crashes is a new little beat-em-up for the Xbox 360. And I would totally get it. There are only two real problems. The first is that I now have a 360 backlog. I want to finish Braid. I want to get… er, farther in Space Giraffe. I haven’t even seen 5% of what there is in Dead Rising. I also purchased Bionic Commando: Rearmed, because people over at Caltrops seemed to be having fun with it.
A backlog! On a system I just bought. This is in addition to the non-gaming backlog around there, which involves getting a vacuum cleaner that works more than three times (seriously, it’s easier to fucking kill Dracula than it is to buy a reliable vacuum cleaner in this country) addressing the fact that my cat has turned every wooden surface into his own personal scratching post (if we did kill Dracula at home, this cat would be disintegrating the stake in like two minutes) and finding a permanent solution to the orb spider-brimming hedges in the front lawn (orb spiders attract bats, which, well, you can see where I am going with this).
I don’t think that there is a chance that the Castle Crashers devs are reading this, but if they do encounter this post, I’d just like to say that the game is adorable, is a very amusing button masher in a world it never knew, and — from the demo – it definitely seems to be worth fifteen bucks. No question. Â
There’s been some discussion about the higher prices for Xbox Live Arcade games, and honestly, since I purchase the “points” in $25 blocks, as long as the games aren’t costing more than that, I don’t care. If they get to be like $30, then I — the gamer! — have to step up and buy fifty bucks worth of Xbox Points, and I’d like to start a family someday. That ain’t going to happen if I find myself having long conversations about “Xbox Points,” for Christ’s sake. So, anyway, when I get sick of one of the other 360 games I have, Castle Crashers is next, and that’s the highest praise I can give a demo. (There are also some problems with on-line play, so this gives me and them some time to work on our issues.)
The other thing I had for this post, which isn’t specific to CC (which lets you play a long time in demo mode) was regarding just how little time you get in the demo for Robotron 2084. Maybe it’s just because the game is ridiculously addicting, but it stops after the second level, which even a hoof-handed sped like me can get through. I can’t keep going back to the demo because I am going to drop five bucks on the game “just to have it” on the 360. Yet, the 360 gamepad’s analog controllers are frigging primed for Robotron. I must have ten systems that will play Robotron. If they had let you play a couple more levels into it, I’d remember how terrible I am at the game and this feeling would deflate, but they are far too clever for that. So, good, although evil, work with that demo, too.
Is it “Risk in space”, or is it the 4X genre stripped down to its core? Ultimately, you may wind up asking yourself if those two aren’t the same questions.
Here is an indie gem which presents a game that is both too simple and yet too rewarding to resist. If you are a Risk fan (which I generally am not) you will feel right at home, as the dynamic of capturing territory with each territory providing more units with which to capture more territory is essentially the core of the gameplay. Likewise, if you are a fan of Master of Orion or Galactic Civilizations, you will also find yourself in comfortable environs, and after you come to grips with the fact that it doesn’t have any (any) of the complexity that comes with those gargantuan undertakings, gosh it sure does feel familiar.
The fact is, this is 4X reduced as far as it can be reduced. Lookit:
You have explore: the planets DO have a relative value to be discovered, in terms of how many base units they create.
You have expand: you use your spaceships to conquer neighboring (or not so neighboring) planets.
You have exploit: use your empire to build up an unstoppable force.
You have exterminate: you kill everyone else to win.
Christ, you even have technology upgrades, but in Mayhem Intergalactic, as you might expect, there’s only one upgrade you can make. But it’s there!
And is the joy of winning a 15-minute game of MI really that much less than the satisfaction of tearing around the universe in a 20-hour GC marathon? Try it for yourself, but I sure wasn’t convinced.
On top of that, this is just one of those indie titles that you want to get behind. Developed by one guy, put out there, priced maybe a little too high, but he’s right there, developing updates, doing beta test programs, responding to every request and suggestion that comes his way — dude cares, man. And though he didn’t pick the most challenging of all genres to tackle, he at least cared enough to get it right, and to keep working on it.
I dunno, it’s just a “feel good” title to me. And even if you’re scoffing the whole time, don’t tell me after playing the demo for a half hour or so that you didn’t have a good time.
I begrudgingly purchased Tiger ’09, still smarting from the horrid experience that was Tiger ’08, but hoping against hope that at least some of the “this one is much better than the last one” reviews weren’t just corporate buttsucking.
With about six hours of playtime under the rapidly-expanding waistline, then, I will now present to you my preliminary review of Tiger ’09, played on an Xbox 360.
Here are the things that are better than last years! - The little bubble that shows you how you’re actually moving the joystick in “real swing” mode or whatever it’s called.
- The graphics are a little better.
- The player stats, although suspicious, are “dynamic”, in that your abilities (distance/short game/putting, etc.) go up and down based on your performance, rather than however it worked before, which I forget, but which I think was a lot more static — you’d build your stats in the training section, and those’d be your stats.
- You can’t tell whether you miss or make a putt based on the camera angle it immediately switches to. I can’t tell you how annoying this was. In ’08, if it went to the “behind the golfer” view, you knew you’d missed, and if it went to “behind the cup” view, you knew you’d made it. Now at least there’s a little tension as the ball rolls to the cup.
- I like the new Tiger Challenge mode. In ’08, you’d have to complete a specific set of tasks to get to a “boss” match. Now you can pick and choose among a bunch of tasks, each of which has a point value, so as long as you collect enough points, you get to the boss, regardless of how you collect those points.
- Thusfar it has yet to alter history.
- Seems some of the courses have been replaced with other ones, and a couple of the new ones seem pretty money.
Here are the things that are worse than last year! - Gary McCord and David Feherty have been replaced by the deadly dull Sam Torrance and the racist lesbian Kelly Tilghman. However, since the announcers are completely useless anyway (see below), you’re almost relieved that the good names of McCord and Feherty need suffer no more indignities in the name of this godforsaken franchise.
- The Hank Haney training system, where the personality-less Haney suggests training exercises to give you a temporary skill boost, seems completely pointless at best, and totally boring at worst. Or the other way around. Anyway, the training exercises are so painfully dull that the minor temporary boost you’d get in skill is never, ever worth it, and it becomes just another screen to skip.
- Seems even slower than last year, which was already very slow, in terms of loading times.
Here are the things that are just as bad as last year - The announcers still appear to have no idea what is going on on the course. Moreover, when they are spouting their nonsense which has no apparent relationship to what’s going on on the screen, their grammar now appears to be suffering on top of it.
- Opponent golfers still suffer unbelievable lapses in concentration, and will intentionally line up directly at a tree, fire a ball at it and hit it square, as if they thought the goal of the game was to kill as many woodpeckers as possible within a certain time limit.
- You, yourself, appear to have no idea what is going on either. You will wildly celebrate one-inch putts, and flail around disgustedly when your 280-yard 3 wood misses the green by a foot. You also complain about par a lot.
These three, listed above, continue to amaze me. With all of the advanced technology and multi-zillion dollars that go into these things, for some reason they STILL can’t figure out how to interpret what is going on. I don’t see how it’s that hard. if (distance to pin < previous_distance * .04) celebrate(); if (putt_goes_in and putt_length > 8 feet) fist_pump();. This is NOT DIFFICULT LOGIC TO IMPLEMENT. if (shot_is_really_close_to_green and shot_length_was_over_200_yards) do_not_whine_and_penalize_your_short_game_stats_for_fucks_sake();
I just don’t see why they can’t, or won’t, fix this.
- Still way, WAY too easy. On hard, I’m already breaking 60, and have won every tournament I’ve entered, by a decent margin.
… So, that’s it, at least for now. As a “hardcore golf simulation” (as which some article or another laughably referred to the Tiger EA franchise) it still sucks moose tits. It is still a bad golf game. But it is a better bad golf game than last years, which was horrendous and inexcusable.
So, you know. I guess it’s fine. And ultimately, it’s as good as we’re gonna get.
=(
