Review: Car Mechanic Simulator 2015 (PC)

When a game title includes the word “Simulator” there's a justified expectation that there will be an exhaustive tutorial or at least an extensive manual to consult. Imagine dropping into a Jane's flight simulator or even something older like Falcon 3.0. Put in control of a jet at the end of a runway or on the deck of an aircraft carrier, and 99% of us would like explode or eject before getting the wheels off the ground. That's what Car Mechanic Simulator 2015 is for the narrow field of car mechanic simulators.

Review: Convoy (PC)

Convoy's biggest problem is that every time I think about it I get a glimpse of The Simpsons episode “Maximum Homerdrive.” Through a cartoonish series of events, Homer winds up hauling cargo in an 18-wheeler. At one point a version of the diddy, “Convoy!” (or at least a version of it) is repeated.

“We're gonna drive this convoy...!”

And that little excerpt of song spins through my brain every time Convoy – the game – starts. It's really annoying.

Playing Through The Longest Journey Pt. 1 - Talking Dragons and Burned Out Hippies

Warning: This post will have spoilers. If that's a problem, do not proceed.

Point-and-click adventure games are a genre that I never really sunk my teeth into. Growing up, the only game of that I ever went out and got was King's Quest VI. I think it was partly that the family computer wasn't all that great, thus limiting the selection of games that could actually run on it, and also in part due to how wholeheartedly I embraced RPGs at the time. As such, adventure games fell by the wayside.

In recent years, I've found myself wanting to actually spend some time with the genre, so I've decided to fire up The Longest Journey (TLJ). It certainly has a good reputation and seemed like as reasonable of a starting point as any for venturing into this area of gaming that I've neglected until now. At this point, I've just finished up the first chapter, so will be focusing on the events up to there. Hopefully I'll be able to make it to the end of the game. It's had the occasional time where it has completely frozen my computer, forcing me to alt-tab and restart. It hasn't happened often, but it is a thing, so fingers crossed it doesn't get too obnoxious and prevent me from finishing TLJ.

One thing that struck me while wander the streets of Venice (I'm guessing it's supposed to be in California) was how the game juxtaposes vastly different world. We start out with the main character, April, having a dream where she's on a cliff in some strange realm with unusual mountains off in the distance. Before long she's having a conversation with a tree, then meets a talking dragon. It's all very surreal, and more than a little prophetic. Suddenly, she wakes up to find herself in the boarding house where she lives, and we learn that April is a college art student with an important assignment due soon. She's a bit bothered by the dream and the fact she's been having a lot of odd ones lately, but shakes it off as she needs to get cracking on that project. It's all very typical fair. The sort of thing any college student will have to do. She went from talking with dragons to plain ol' reality. However, when walking to the art academy players are shown a cut scene of impossibly huge buildings jutting into the sky and flying cars. Now, April's simple college life doesn't seem so mundane anymore. She lives in the future.

A trip to the park.

With that, we can see that the game is actually balancing two very different worlds that tend to inhabit opposite ends of the fiction spectrum. This in and of itself has peaked my interest, as I am quite curious how this will play out. All the while, we have April and her friends keeping things grounded with their day-to-day goings ons. While talking dragons and flying cars aren't exactly relateable on a personal level, college life certainly is. Walking around, learning more about April and her friends, on more than a few occasions I found myself thinking, "Yeah, I remember someone like that back when I was in school." Even Cortez. I dunno, maybe that was just something from the 90s, invariably meeting an old, burned out hippy in college.

Actually getting to know all of the characters and learn a bit about April's background has felt somewhat awkward, though. Just walking around and striking up conversations with people, they'll go into a bit of a back and forth with the usual niceties, maybe giving a hint of some of what's going on in the world while they're at it. Once this is done, players get a number of conversation options, many of them questions. I understand that from a gameplay perspective this is meant as a sort of data dump. It's there to help us understand the world we're in and the people in April's circle of friends. Nonetheless, the sheer volume of questions comes off as a bit unnatural. If one of my friends came up to me asking all sorts of questions about myself, our friends, and themselves, I'd be a little weirded out. When did they become Hercule Poirot? In the end, it's something that I can let slide, but as I went from Fiona, to Charlie, and finally to Emma, it did feel a little strange grilling them so much. They didn't mind, though, and humoured April with her questions.

Heading to the cafe to meet Emma.

Back to wandering Venice, I had to find Cortez. He's an older, eccentric sort that usually hangs out near the boarding house where April and her friends live. Most people don't really have a problem. He seems a bit off, but not crazy, and he's extremely well-read with a pension for classic movies. The guy also knows about April's nightmares, and how the things she's seen in her dreams are starting to manifest in the waking world. Call me crazy, but Cortez may be important.

Between going to school to get April's assignment done, popping by the cafe where she works so she can pick up her pay, and playing cat and mouse trying to track down Cortez in hopes that he can explain what's going on, I got to see a fair amount of the city. It was during this time that it really became noticeable just how much effort goes into each location in an adventure game. Plodding through action games or an RPG there are, of course, moments when the player comes upon an area that really stands out. Maybe it's a castle, or an idyllic garden, maybe some hidden star system with gas clouds and colourful moons everywhere, whatever the case it's something that is impressive to have come upon. That being said, one usually has to travel through some relatively uninteresting areas before they get there for the big payoff. By comparison, adventure games feel like one area after the next of big payoffs, or, in the very least, less filler. A lot of thought goes into each location, making good use of every square inch of the screen. There tends to be a lot more little details tucked away everywhere, some of it functional, and some of it purely aesthetic.

While admiring these places, it got me thinking that for being in the future, Venice feels surprisingly contemporary in a lot of ways from what I've seen of the place so far. There are a lot of brick buildings, a park not unlike something I'd expect to see around where I live, a cozy cafe like something that might be tucked away on a Parisienne side street, and even the art school looks as though it could have been constructed in the mid 20th century. The major difference is the sheer amount of metal everywhere: girders, pipes, valves, and the like. It's obviously not our era, but at the same time it doesn't feel terribly removed from it. Inside the buildings as well, furnishings and interior design is more akin to something of our own time, doing away with futuristic tropes of what homes a few hundred years from now might look like. Again, it feels as though the environments are acting like an anchor to a reality that the player is far more familiar with, while the fantastic and the futurist hover at the peripheries. There are hints of these worlds, be it April's occasional hallucinations, or subtle pepperings of advanced technology throughout the neighborhood, but it has all been very subtle up until now.

Talking with Charlie at the cafe.

Granted, Venice does seem like a bit of a rundown part of town and from what I've been told, it may be a home to the downtrodden with the homeless and starving artists comprising a large proportion of the town's population. All of that being said, one thing that caught my attention is the hints of the socio-economic situation in the game world. It goes for a more corporatist view of the future where huge conglomerates are highly influential and a permanent fixture in people's minds. This isn't anything new. Plenty of films and books have made similarly cynical predictions as to the direction our society might go in. What stood out to me about this is that Venice wasn't the dark, neon-lit, crime-ridden stereotype that often gets presented in these sorts of stories. The city is still a little dingy as rusted metal structures mingling with the brick buildings, and the polluted canals are pretty disgusting, but on the whole, Venice feels far more bright and hopeful. Maybe it's the youthful vigor of all the young artists there bringing life to their surroundings, but whatever it is there's much more of an easygoing, almost optimistic ambience to the town. I really appreciate this as things can often veer hard and fast toward the realm of cyberpunk when we're talking about a future where corporations are running the show. That's not to say I have anything against cyberpunk, but it's an intriguing choice to try and sidestep some of its tropes while maintaining such a socio-economic setup.

At this point, despite exploring the city, I feel like I've barely dipped my toe in TLJ. April still has a lot of questions that need answering, and I have a feeling that it's only a matter of time before we see more of this fantasy realm that has been haunting her. For now, though, it's off to talk with Cortez again. He seems to know something. Now, if only he'd be a little bit less cryptic about what he's getting at.

The Longest Journey Playthrough Index:

Part One - Talking Dragons and Burned Out Hippies
Part Two - From Arcadia to Police HQ

The Frustrating Case of Koei Tecmo PC Ports

Toukiden: Kiwami is the latest example of Koei Tecmo's inability to make
decent PC ports.

From a fairly young age, I developed an interest in series like Nobunaga's Ambition and Romance of the Three Kingdoms. It was probably some time in the late 80s when I picked up the former on a whim at the video rental place near my house.  Something about it just looked interesting, managing a small pocket of Japan and trying to expand, hopefully conquering the entire country. Over the following years, I made a point of familiarizing myself with Koei, trying out subsequent games in these series, and other offerings they brought to the West over the years like Gemfire.

So, when discussion came about a few years back that Koei Tecmo were thinking of making an effort to bring their games to PC on these shores, I was pretty excited. Their strategy games have been released on the platform in Asian markets for years, and the company was even looking at bringing their action games from Tecmo over this way as well.  It was something that I'd always hoped for, but was a bit skeptical that it would ever happen.

The mighty legions of the Dynasty Warrior cult will ensure
the series is a moderate success on PC at least.

Then the games started to make landfall here...and their quality was consistently poor to mediocre with a cringe-worthy price tag slapped on them for good measure. It's flabbergasting that this company has done such a poor job of porting these games and made all the more galling since these are often games that should otherwise be pretty fun, have a decent fan base, and could do quite well for themselves on PC if only they ran better on the platform.

By now, publishers and developers should know full well that a sizable number of PC gamers have certain technical expectations of games, and 60 FPS is one of them. Just look at the amount of backlash a game will get if its locked at 30 when it comes out on something like Steam. The game gets inundated with thumbs down ratings and angry comments which can sometimes damage a game's reputation for the long term even if the developers turn around and patch it to support the higher frame rate. Even then, we're lucky to get that as it often comes down to fans making patches of their own in order to deal with it. If the game's speed is fixed to its frame rate, well, good luck with that!

On top of this, it's not fair to assume that everyone with a PC is going to run out and get a gamepad, let alone an Xbox 360-styled one. There are a lot of people out there who are quite content to stick with their keyboard and mouse setup, yet we see countless ports come along with incredibly half-assed support for these.  It may say that the game can be played via kb/m, but it often turns into an unintuitive, and sometimes unresponsive mess. In particularly frustrating cases, the on-screen key prompts for actions and menu options will actually show the 360 controller buttons instead of their keyboard and mouse equivalents. It's like the game is saying to players, "We didn't actually think you guys would really use a keyboard..."

It may surprise you to learn that
fighting game fans like playing online.

Sadly, Koei Tecmo has been guilty of both of these issues and more. Dead or Alive 5 had no online multiplayer at launch, which is pretty darn important for a fighting game in this day and age. The company is apparently working to fix this, but in all likelihood, the game's player-base is gone and it's not coming back. Even more shocking is that the company has been releasing some of the recent Nobunaga games on Steam's North American store without even bothering to translate them into English. It's just insulting to see something like that. Why even release it here if you can't be bothered to localize it.

Still more outrageous is that the company thinks we're willing to pay top dollar for these games, as they regularly debut on Steam at around $60US, maybe with a 10 percent pre-order discount. Who do these people think they are? There are very few games that justify that price point as it is, and mediocre ports aren't among them.

Admittedly, there have been a decent number of cases where Japanese publishers have stumbled while making their way onto the PC platform, and I think the majority of PC gamers have been pretty understanding about the whole thing. It's something that these companies haven't really done before, and in a lot of cases they've been learning as they go. In the case of some companies we've seen steady, albeit gradual, improvement as they release more and more games on the platform.

Not even bothering to translate a game getting a Western release into
English has to be a new low.

Not so with Koei Tecmo. The consistently substandard quality of their PC ports has been truly disappointing to such an extent that I think they may irreparably poison their brand in PC gaming circles if they don't sit down and seriously look at improving quality when bringing games to the platform. There comes a point when goodwill runs out, and that time may be coming soon for this company. They've been fortunate to have a small, dedicated group of die hard fans shouting that we're lucky to be seeing these games come to PC at all, but who wants to listen to a bunch of people suffering from Stockholm Syndrome?

I genuinely feel bad for the people who have to promote the company's games in the West. They must surely know that these ports just aren't very good, and the price Koei Tecmo is asking for them is way too high. Nonetheless, they still have to crack a smile and tell people these games are good buys. Sadly, they are not. PC gamers have certain expectations and they aren't being met. In this day and age, publishers should be well aware that they'll be crucified if they don't at least get the frame rate up to 60, and have decent keyboard and mouse controls. It would also be nice if games released in North America were actually in English. I mean come on. Koei Tecmo can't seem to do any of this. It's unacceptable, and, even worse, very frustrating because they actually are capable of making some very good games, and I think a lot of people would have quite a bit of fun with them if only the ports were handled with a bit more respect.

Review: Codename: S.T.E.A.M. (3DS)

If you like Valkyria Chronicles, you are going to like this game. Maybe Fire Emblem or Advance Wars are more your thing? Codename: S.T.E.A.M. might be a good fit. Even if you have never played or heard of those games, keep reading because it still might be the kind of game you like.

S.T.E.A.M. stands for Strike Team to Eliminate the Alien Menace. That pretty much sums up what you need to do.

Instead of a top down view of a map in many traditional turn-based strategy games, Codename S.T.E.A.M. lets you view the game world from on the ground which is unique and refreshing.

The single player campaign in this game is great and balanced (much like the rest of the game). There are all kinds of missions and new aliens are doled out to you at a reasonable rate.

Review: Mario Party 10 (Wii U)

If you haven't played a Mario Party game I would be surprised. Starting out with three releases on the Nintendo 64, four on the GameCube and two on the Wii, Mario Party has seen a consistent release schedule since 1998. I'm not even counting the portable releases over the years on the Game Boy Advance, Nintendo DS and Nintendo 3DS. There was even Mario Party-e for the e-Reader, but that's more obscure than finding game cheat codes in modern games.

Review: Splatoon (Wii U)

Splatoon is the new property from Nintendo with a cute premise: anthropomorphic squid kids participating in an ink fight. The colored ink you shoot, spray, and splatter actually paints the terrain of the combat area. Your character is able to "swim" in your ink color to not only fast-traverse across the map but refill your ink ammunition. This basic game control makes for a very different experience compared to other games where proper ground control will dominate lone-wolf or sniping tactics.

Doing All the Things: Skyrim Edition Pt. 6 - Doing All the Things Was a Terrible Idea

Sometimes I wonder just how much initiative the average inhabitant of Skyrim has. Sure, they get up, got to work, and stop by the tavern on their way home before turning in for the night. However, when they have some sort of problem they come running to me for help. I can't be bothered to count the number of times I've been asked to retrieve something from some ruins, deliver a doodad halfway across the realm, or deal with the town drunk. Surely these people can do at least some of these things on their own. It's enough to make me wish one of the perks in Speechcraft was Motivational Speaker. Then I could ditch my armor and bow, dawn my finest clothes, and embark on a tour of self improvement, encouraging the locals to better themselves, and not just pester the first adventurer they see to do the work for them. Who knows. Maybe it would catch on, and a century or two later some thief would be stealing one of my self help books from a local noble along side copies of The Cake and the Diamond and The Lusty Argonian.

A Trio of Triple A Games from the Triple E Show that Made Me Go "Ooo!"

Normally I'm not the sort who gets terribly worked up when E3 comes along. The thick corporate veneer, lingering stench of focus groups, fake smiles, and cacophony of talking points are enough to make me want to flip tables, kick puppies, or in the very least pen a strongly worded introduction to an article discussing the event. This year was actually a bit of a surprise. There were three games that I actually thought were interesting enough to set aside my unbridled hatred for big business, and start to drift ever so slightly towards actually being excited about something.

Review: The Witcher III: Wild Hunt (PC)

Everything you've read or heard about The Witcher III: Wild Hunt is true.

Those weird bugs, game-crashing or otherwise, you heard about from your second cousin; the glowing reviews by the vast majority of players and the enthusiast press (groups often on opposing fronts); the nudity from that weird guys you shared a bus ride with through a questionable part of town; the gritty violence of careful rolling and parrying; storytelling that actually weaves the world and it's inhabitants into an interesting whole; alchemy and magic; and the sweeping vistas of a game that packs a "Wow!" Factor of at least 70 when it comes to detail and texture.

Review: Slow Down, Bull (PC)

I have to say, I was pretty bummed out that Slow Down, Bull l had absolutely nothing to do with a Night Court reboot. If you'll recall -- if you're old enough -- Night Court was a sitcom that ran on NBC for 9 seasons starting in the mid 1980s and Nostradamus "Bull" Shannon was the towering bailiff that featured prominently in nearly every episode I can remember.

However, once clear of that particular "Hurdle of Disappointment," I was pleasantly surprised that a game so "cutesy" and obviously designed for mobile devices or touch screens could be so engrossing for quick play sessions.

Doing All the Things: Skyrim Edition Pt. 5 - Parenthood

Earlier today, I finished off the Thieves' Guild main quest line, and with that was leader of of the Companions, the College of Winterhold, and now heading up this group as well. I was feeling pretty good, with a swagger in my step. Figuring it high time to head to my homestead, I made my way there. While dumping an ungodly amount of gems and ebony items into one of the nearby chests, my adopted daughter Lucia ran up shouting, "Mama, you're home!" She does this every time I swing by, and on this occasion she wanted to give me a flower she'd found. Such a sweet girl. It was while she was beaming at me, radiating an aura of unconditional love that a rather unsettling thought occurred to me: Am I an absentee parent?

Review: Guilty Gear XX Λ Core Plus R (PC)

Any fighting game that asks you to "Solve for R" is generally a video game that is a pantless hobo doing a jig on a piece of cardboard while strumming a handmade banjo and reciting recipes from "Mastering the Art of French Cooking" (just volume 2). That is to say, entirely nuts but not without its own charm and sophistication. Guilty Gear XX Λ Core Plus R is one of those pantless hobos. (The "Λ" is stands for "Accent" in case you're looking for this one on Steam.)

Review: The Incredible Adventures of Van Helsing III (PC)

The Incredible Adventures of Van Hellsing III is the final game in a trilogy of action adventure games utilizing the isometric view of combat that the Diablo series has perfected. The respect and reverence that Hellsing III holds up Diablo is quite evident with the frequent "homages" and downright borrowings in some places. Besides some rather hot and furious combat in places, the game writers definitely did their best to keep themselves entertained by including a ton of horror/gaming/nerd jokes and Easter Eggs for those amongst us who have to click every imaginable surface or game texture. Myself, I averaged about one third of the available "surprises" in each area.

Review: Shovel Knight (Xbox One)

I bought Shovel Knight originally on PC in the Summer Steam Sale last year in the midst of a purchasing orgy of akin to Shark Week. It quickly supplanted not only the games bought at the same time, but became my sole focus. There are very few games that can keep my attention for any appreciable amount of time, as the majority will get played for a stretch until they get unceremoniously dumped into the "to be finished later" pile. Having a very "pun"-ny sense of humor and an appreciation for odd visual choices in both character and level designs makes it a stand-out when compared against the typical battle for higher fidelity in all things.

...and Thanks for All the Fish!

It's a hell of thing to look back on 15 years of the Armchair Empire (AE) but I'm ready to turn my gaze forward and leave it behind.

For the last few years it has become increasingly evident – first in little hints then in crushing blows – that I'd gone as far as could with AE. What got me excited in the early days – creating the site, making contacts (when I got press kits in the mail), playing video games sent to my house, the metric ton of action figures, that feeling of endless possibilities – is the exact thing that has worn me down.

Without trying to sound too much like a question from the Riddler, all of it takes Time and once that Time is gone there's no getting it back and I just didn't ever seem to have enough of it.

Review: Evolve (PS4)

Welcome to the planet Shear. It's a roughly Earth-sized world containing a wide variety of flora and fauna, all of it inimical to human life. It's like Australia stretched out over an entire globe. Everything is either going to kill you deliberately or circumstantially.

So what could possibly be worth coming to such a choice hellhole of the Universe? Simple. Big game hunting. And we do mean BIG game.

Doing All the Things: Skyrim Edition Pt. 4 - The F Words

As far as I'm concerned, there are two F Words in Skyrim: Falmer and Forsworn. While I may have spent a good amount of time railing against the terrible spider menace threatening Tamriel, at least the creatures add an element of tension to the game. Any time a dungeon starts showing signs of webbing gathering on the walls, a sense of dread begins to well inside me. Meanwhile, coming upon a Forsworn occupied fort, or spotting the tell tale signs of a Falmer encampment elicits a bored sigh as I prepare for a good 20-30 minutes of tedium, clearing an uninteresting area of uninteresting enemies carrying uninteresting equipment.

What got me thinking this is a quest that I did while finishing up the Dawnguard arch. Before facing off with the vampire lord Harkon for a final showdown, players need to find a legendary weapon called Auriel's Bow in order to prevent the prophecy he wants to fulfill from ever reaching fruition. This requires exploring a cave containing some ancient ruins which are guarded by a Snow Elf, one of the last in Tamriel. He goes on to explain how his people were tricked thousands of years ago, and twisted into what are now known as the Falmer. It seemed a tad out of place. Here was the game giving me a vaguely interesting back story to a race that often times feels like filler meant to add padding to a dungeon.

Doing All the Things: Skyrim Edition Pt. 3 - Of Werewolves and Vampires

Here we are, another week has passed, and I can't believe how much content I've managed to play through since last I popped by to chat about Skyrim, not just for the sheer amount of things I did, but for how I managed to find the time to do them. The laundry list of adventures I went on include going to the Soul Cairn, helping the Companions with all their troubles, joining the Thieves Guild, and I even built my own house.