PixlBit

Souls-less

There’s been a lot of talk of Dark Souls lately. It seems like you can’t read a review without tripping over some reference to the series or a game being compared to it. However, Sinner: Sacrifice for Redemption fully invites the comparison, and was absolutely cast in the mold of Dark Souls. It very clearly tries to ape its gameplay and rather than copy the experience wholesale, boil it down to a boss rush mode game with a few unique twists. But in excising everything else that makes Dark Souls, Dark Souls, it loses what makes that series special.

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You may need a master's degree in literature before you play this one.

Have you ever finished a book or a movie and been left trying to puzzle out the meaning of what you just experienced? Likely it was a frustrating feeling, as if you were on the cusp of understanding what the creator of the work was trying to tell you, but you were unable to make the connection in your head. Such was my experience with a little game called Virginia, which left me feeling mentally lacking at the best of times, and needlessly aggravated at the worst of times.

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Rolling Deep

A plucky thief with a heart of gold arrives outside a small village. Using her companion, a scraggly mutt, she distracts the guards at the gate and sneaks into the nearby sewer entrance. Upon her arrival, she picks a few pockets to gather what she needs, and prepares to leave when a drunken man in plate mail being harassed by the henchmen of the town butcher, a local crime boss of sorts, stumbles onto the scene. A few backstabs later, and our thief now has a new partner, but her canine companion has been kidnapped by the butcher’s men, and they’re off to liberate him.

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Floating platforms with a touch of absinthe.

For better or worse, games like Braid, Limbo, and other 2.5D “masterpieces” have reconfigured what a platformer can be.  Spate, developed by Eric Provan and his development team at Ayyo, is not as complete a package as these games, but is still an astoundingly beautiful work of art, with truly arresting imagery, an interesting story, and a unique and moody soundtrack.  However, with its tired mechanics, inconsistent controls, and sloppy (yet forgiving) physics, it is hard to quantify, or to even categorize. It is a conundrum, as it stretches between these two poles – one of artistic genius; and the other of uninspired game design. 

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