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#Adventure
Puzzles spiked with emotions.
Valiant Hearts is about one of the more horrendous moments in 20th century history, a moment seldom portrayed in movies, TV, games, or other media -- probably because it is not pleasant to relive. While World War II can be fun, despite its carnage, in pretending to do battle against a true, villainous evil – the first World War lacks such black and white delineations, and for lack of a better word, was simply insane.
Shipwrecked.
PolyPusher Studios, the Irish developer behind Montague’s Mount, describes its latest project as a “psychological rollercoaster ride through isolation, desolation, and one man’s tortured mind.” Its perception of the game it created doesn’t quite align with the game it actually released, where the rollercoaster is more like rush hour traffic, and the only tortured mind is my own. Montague's Mount is a first-person adventure/puzzle game about a man who awakens on the beach of a deserted fishing island, unable to remember who he is or why he’s there. Promising although the concept sounds, concept only goes so far without the execution to back it up.
“Amnesia? Again?!?”
There’s a special place in hell for JRPG fans. Their sin? Playing the same game with the same story over and over without complaining once. I suppose there are worse crimes than this, but there is a sort of masochistic glee in which JRPG fans partake in their vice. Perhaps we love grinding and crafting so much that we don’t really care about the story too much – despite our claims that we play these games for the tales they tell. Perhaps it’s the newness of the dungeons or the shiny equipment that makes the tedium of saving the world over and over remain novel. But, despite these tropes, this genre seems to continue on, and sometimes even with some of the most loathed archetypes and clichés, JRPGs can rise to heights other genres can’t.
Another Kickstarter darling finally sees the light of day.
Say what you want about Kickstarter, but it has breathed games into existence that otherwise wouldn’t have had a chance, and allowed artists to construct personal expressions without having to resort to eating dog food to survive. The end results may not always be extraordinary, but sometimes they are still triumphant, as with Lilly Looking Through, a Kickstarter success that asked for $18,000 and ended up with $33,000+ for a point-and-click adventure starring a little girl with time-traveling goggles. The game is beautiful, but brief, with amazing art direction and sublime animation.
