Flash Game Reviews: Don't Look Back

Don’t Look Back is a flash game by Terry Cavanagh of Distractionware. I played this game a few years back when it first came out and loved it. Revisiting it today has made me realise why I loved it. This game is just a brilliant piece of work.

The game tells the story of a guy going to the underworld to rescue what can only be presumed to be his wife. It’s fairly obvious this is an adaptation of the Greek myth of Orpheus travelling to the underworld to get his wife, Eurydice, who recently died. The story of the game isn’t the same as this, with the main character blasting his way through the depths of Hades rather than using beautiful music to charm the god of the underworld.

The story is well told, but this is done simplistically and in a minimalistic style. This simplistic storytelling is especially effective when reaching the end of the game, which comes around abruptly, with an empty feeling. This seems to suit the game tonally, with no ultimate conclusion, leaving the ending up to the player’s interpretation.

The actual gameplay is frustrating as hell. This is due to its Megaman style platforming, requiring precise timing and jumps. You may repeat the same screen twenty times, but you persevere, pushing forwards. On top of this, on the final stretch of the game you are not allowed to turn around, so moving forwards has to be an exact science otherwise you’ll have to play that section again.

Though frustrating, the game isn’t unforgiving. The most you really have to replay when dying is around 2 screens, which is no large feat. Also, whilst some bosses are difficult at first there is a trick to each one that is fairly easy to figure out (though the comments on Kongregate make it seem the people are incapable of understanding how to defeat the Cerberus boss).

With fun, but frustrating, gameplay and a gripping and emotional story, Don’t Look Back is a game I don’t even hesitate to recommend. It’s absolutely beautiful, with an amazing aesthetic and brilliant sound design (I have now downloaded the soundtrack). Play this game when you can. It isn’t very long, so won’t require a massive commitment, but the time you spend on it is totally worth it.

Indie Games: Pilot Light

Another Blendo Games project, Pilot Light is a point-and-click adventure that is a simple homage to the old Sierra and LucasArts games. The game follows our hero as she delivers a package across space. That’s pretty much the plot of the game and I’m OK with that. Point-and-click adventures don’t need any in-depth plot, they just need fun pointy clicky gameplay.

Indeed, the gameplay is pointy, clicky and fun. It’s a fairly basic affair, however, with you combining objects or using them on other things to get to attain your goal. Whilst it is fun it is too simplistic, with things pretty much being laid out for you with very little challenge. No crazy thinking is required, just put this in that and you win.

However, most of the fun comes from the writing. There’s no real story, but there are lots of events that take place. Whether it’s stopping someone robbing a space fuel depot or trying to get a man’s engine back from a monkey, the game has a lot of laughs and an enjoyment factor outside of the core gameplay. I found myself chuckling a fair few times, which made up, I feel, for the lack of challenge.

The art for the game is also pretty good. The rough around the edges style is cohesive with the gameplay and writing and really helps you get a feel for the world. This art style also works well with the animation, which I have to admit I really liked and would liked to have seen more of.

Something that could have improved this game, however, would have been better sound design. The only sounds are these little sound effects that only really play when you pick something up. Having some music in the background or sound effects during the cutscenes, or when doing other things, would have improved how the game felt. The lack of sound made it feel somewhat vacuous at times, which was disappointing.

Overall I’d say give this game a go. It’s pretty short, but it’s a nice little diversion if you have some time to spare. Whilst the gameplay is something to be desired, the writing will keep you going through it.

Rambling Thoughts: "Catching Fire" by Suzanne Collins

As with my The Hunger Games post, this originally appeared on The Book Club Forum and states  my thoughts on Catching Fire, the second book in The Hunger Games trilogy.  This was written as soon as I finished the book. 

So, I just finished Catching Fire and do you know what I did when I finished it? I threw the book away. Not in a bin, but I literally threw the book away. I tossed it aside because that book was not at all to my liking. Seriously, I was bored throughout the majority of the book, but forced myself through it because I have already got the third book and I have got this far, so I may as well continue.

So, what were my issues with the book? Well, there’s a few things. Content-wise I found the book bland and dull. I spent the first two thirds of the book guessing most of the twists the books tried to set up, but they were all so obvious, and when the twist at the end of the second third came along I had already guessed it nearly 100 pages ago.

Things did pick up by the last third, but that didn’t help too much. The dynamic of having all of the characters did make things a lot more interesting, but it didn’t help too well as I definitely think Collins has a big issue with the book’s pacing. I noticed the book was rapidly coming to a close and nothing had exactly happened.

The semi-love triangle business near the start irritated me to no end and made me think Katniss was now more concerned with what the boys will be thinking. The boys are both so bland that it’s hard to care about any of them.

Oh, and I have absolutely no idea why the Capitol would put someone who causes the rumblings of revolution is the public eye so consistently. I could understand if they did it with strict regulations and complete and utter control, but they don't. How the Capitol became this powerful I will never know as they make some of the worst decisions to control their populous.

But what irked me the most about this book has to be what happened to Katniss. Oh, Katniss, you were, for the most part, a strong female lead. What happened to you?

Throughout the entire book Katniss doesn’t do anything for herself. As I said, she constantly seemed to be concerned with what the guy’s thought of her. On top of that, she doesn’t actually make any decisions, just has everyone do everything for her. I feel this may have been thematic, that she is a pawn in everyone else’s fight, but it came across as a sight-seeing tour. We weren’t following what the character is doing, just being shown what they see.

I really feel that Collins messed up big time with this book. It was dull and made me lament for the death of characterisation. Things happened, but there was no emotional weight to it. In my previous post you will notice I asked a lot of questions. Well this time I haven’t asked any non-rhetorical questions because there’s nothing to ask. It all felt like it was going through motions rather than telling the deep, insightful story it thinks it is telling.

I really hope Mockingjay does something different, because the familiarity of the last third of the book left me irritated. Give me something to care about and I might enjoy the last book, because, as you can probably tell, I didn’t enjoy Catching Fire at all.

Indie Games: Grotto King

Recently I’ve been playing through a fair few independently made games. When playing these indie games you often find you play a fair few from a certain developer. One such developer is Brendon Chung, lead of award-winning independent games company Blendo Games.

Grotto King is a free game that comes from this company. The game is pretty short, coming at maybe 8 minutes overall. You are on a quest to kill a monster in its lair and your reward is a massive bounty. So you venture forth, into the dungeon/well. Glory awaits!

The actual gameplay mechanics are fine. The inability to look up or down I found to be irritating, but there really isn’t any need to look up or down. The gameplay at the very least is built around this limitation. You fire arrows at the three monsters in this game (or four birds that will explode) and at targets. The targets are there to trigger moving blocks or doors to open, but there are no real puzzle elements.

That’s about it for the game, actually. There’s nothing specifically interesting about the game other than exploding wildlife. You kill a few beholders/eye-monsters in simplistic fights, and then it finishes. The ending to the game is abrupt and somewhat disappointing and the gameplay is adequate, but nothing spectacular. There’s no specific story to speak of to carry you through, so nothing really shines through.

Saying that, though, the general aesthetic is great. I did like the look of the game, though the eyeball monsters were somewhat disappointing. The environment was very good, yes, but it was nothing to really make the game great. 

Overall, the game is fairly bland, but I can tell work definitely went into it. If there were better fights or maybe a better/funny ending then I could enjoy it more, but all I can do right now is say “Meh...”

Rambling Thoughts: "The Hunger Games" by Suzanne Collins

This was originally written as a post on The Book Club Forum, simply to go through my thoughts on the first book of the Hunger Games trilogy. This was written when I was about 7 chapters into the second book, Catching Fire, whilst tired and without any regard for structure. There are big spoilers for the book, too. If you have any answers for my randomly placed questions then please comment and let me know what you thought.

Can't help but say I was kind of underwhelmed by The Hunger Games. I enjoyed the stuff at the beginning. The first chapter made me fall in love with the book with how I came to understand the entire world within such a short period of time, and as it went on I was enjoying myself. I have to admit I was starting to get a bit bored with how everything was dragging out before the actual Hunger Games but I knew I'd get Battle Royale-esque escapades coming up.

And then the Hunger Games started and I just found everything a bit dull. Everything happened far too quickly, with too much bad stuff happening to Katniss within a few chapters. It started getting ridiculous the amount of times she had stuff flying at her.

It seemed that Collins tried getting all of the horrible things out of the way to build up a bland (possible) romance with some bland guy, creating a bland love triangle which appears out of place, especially at the beginning of Catching Fire. The love stuff is just so out of place, in my eyes, and ruins the strong character of Katniss and the pacing of the book. But Collins seems to have some issue with pacing, going from super speedy to boringly.

Regardless, I did kind of enjoy it, but I found it so dull at times. I was constantly wishing for things to happen.

One of the things I think that could have been improved is a bit more focus on the action. I didn't really feel the tension as most of the time she was on her own. Keep more people alive, have more encounters, increase the dread. Instead I was just thinking "Yeah, she'll be fine!" which, in a book like this, should not be what I am thinking. I should be wanting her to be fine against all odds. Instead, she has fire thrown at her and is poisoned but comes out all OK!

The lack of threat could have been due to the fact that we didn't spend much time with other characters. Cato never seemed to be enough of a threat, just kind of there looking for her and not doing much. Thresh was nothing, Foxface had a couple of cameos, the Careers... existed, I guess, and everyone else didn't matter. Deaths had no real impact. This, of course, comes from the fact that the book is written in first person, which meant Katniss couldn’t see everything else. But if maybe we heard about what awful things happened then maybe I could care more.

Thresh’s death seemed to cheat us of a good fight scene as it was done off screen. Did it take its toll on Cato? Did Thresh fight valiantly? Was he overcome with rage? What happened?!

And the ending was all kind of... what? I mean... what? What was with the muttations? I hope they get explained later in the books, because that bit seemed to completely jump the shark. Not that anyone questioned it, really.

Though, it’s not like anyone questioned anything. So often I thought Katniss would ask questions, to find things out (mostly asking Peeta why the hell he was with the Careers) but nope. She doesn’t. Instead she just blindly goes along with everything in ignorance, not even caring to wonder after Collins is done with that bit of the book.

Oh, and am I the only one who thinks Rue didn’t get enough time in the book for us to form an emotional attachment to her? She was just there one minute, then she was gone.

But yeah, those are my rambling thoughts on it. No editing done there, bar spoilers, to really make this make sense, but hopefully it does. So tired, so it probably reads horribly. Like I said, I still enjoyed the book, I just have a lot of issues with the latter parts of the book.

Book Review: The Song of Achilles by Madeline Miller

Greece in the age of heroes. Patroclus, an awkward young prince, has been exiled to the court of King Peleus and his perfect son Achilles. Despite their differences, Achilles befriends the shamed prince, and as they grow into young men skilled in the arts of war and medicine, their bon blossoms into something deeper – despite the displeasure of Achilles’ mother Thetis, a cruel sea goddess. But when word comes that Helen of Sparta has been kidnapped, Achilles must go to war in distant Troy and fulfil his destiny. Torn between love and fear for his friend, Patroclus goes with him, little knowing that the years to follow will test everything they hold dear.

The Song of Achilles was a book I was wary to even touch. I did Classical Civilisations at A Level and because of this I like anything referring to classical literature to be somewhat accurate. I can’t watch Disney’s Hercules thanks to this and whilst O Brother, Where Art Thou? is a great film but I couldn’t shake off the fact that it was too loosely based on the Odyssey. So when I saw that Madeline Miller BA and MA in Latin and Ancient Greek I thought I should give it a go.

To my pleasant surprise I found that the novel is actually fairly accurate to the original Homeric epics. Events, for the most part, take place how and when they should. Some liberties are taken with the story, such as Patroclus’ back story being tweaked, but this is artistic license that I can completely understand.

You see, Patroclus doesn’t really have much written about him. He’s mostly known just because of Achilles and that is all, whilst Achilles has more tales about him prior to Troy. Miller uses this well and uses his story to generate sympathy for the character, who has had a difficult childhood in the book – and it works!

The character of Patroclus is very sympathetic at first, being unloved by his father, then accidently killing some kid, leading him to be exiled. This is all pretty damn tragic, so when he starts getting on with Achilles you feel happy for him. I mean, he deserves some happiness.

But then we get a massive issue with this book: the characters. See, it’s all well and good having the characters be sympathetic at the beginning but not have too much character. They are just kids; they should grow and develop throughout the story. But they don’t. Both Patroclus and Achilles are so bland that they could give Aeneas a run for his money in the “Blandest Classical Character” competition (I jest! I love you, Aeneas!).

This utter blandness stretches further than the main two characters, though. Most characters are bland and dull. The ones who aren’t are usually made up of single emotions, such as Agamemnon, who is just rage, or Pyrrhus, who reminds me a lot of Joffrey from Game of Thrones. The only characters I could say I liked were Odysseus, possibly due to my love of him from the Odyssey, and Briseis, who actually had emotions.

Characters are obviously not Miller’s strong point, and this carries over in the dialogue. Conversations can be hard to follow if speech has no name beside it as no character has personality to distinguish themselves, aside from Odysseus. On top of this, it seems Miller at times actively attempts to avoid dialogue, which becomes quite evident later on.

However, Miller does have a strong point in her description. At times she can beautifully describe certain areas or people. The book is narrated by Patroclus, so the world is described from his point of view. Because of this, however, it seems that some description can be lacking. She can brilliantly tell you about Achilles’ naked body over and over, but when it gets to battle she seems to have no way of making the fighting flow.

I had other issues with the narrative. On many occasions the structure of “If he was (insert emotion) then he did not show it.” I believe that formula may have been used at least ten times throughout the novel, maybe even more. This just felt clunky later on when it happened in quick succession. Furthermore, Miller would spend a long time describing a few days, then suddenly skip through 5 years for no apparent reason, which happened to be quite jarring. Nonetheless, for the most part the description is fairly strong and is important for carrying the plot forwards.

But then we have another issue: the plot. The start of the novel eases you in to understanding Patroclus, the situation he’s in, et cetera. He befriends Achilles, falls in love with him, and then they head off to get trained by a centaur for a bit. Then the book kind of stalls for a while, with nothing in particular happening.

Without the in depth and interesting characters we don’t have anything to really help us through this period. I nearly completely abandoned the book, but I was waiting for Troy to start. When I thought Troy was on the horizon the book stalled a bit more, had a few interesting parts at Troy and then ended with what seemed like an incredibly rushed ending.

My biggest issue with the plot had to be that the homosexual relationship between Achilles and Patroclus seemed incredibly forced. There seemed to be no romance, no real love. Just lust. Patroclus constantly comments on how Achilles looks, not his personality. But when hints at heterosexuality come along at times there is focus upon personality, which confused me. Did Miller have a kind of agenda, or am I looking into things a bit too much? Probably the latter... definitely the latter, but it still concerned me.

Despite all of this, though, I have to say I did enjoy the book. Well, to an extent. It is definitely an easy to read book and does have a lot to offer people who don’t know the origins of the tale. The writing is somewhat simplistic and not necessarily deep, so is hard to put down. But, as I’ve said before, there are many issues I found with the plot and narrative structure.

The Song of Achilles won the Orange Prize for Fiction in 2012. I don’t mean to be too harsh on the book because it wasn’t bad, but I think the other books in the running for the prize money must have been kind of bad, otherwise I don’t see how this won. Maybe it’s because it has its roots in the Iliad, the influence of the Homeric epic pushing it through to win. For me the book was pretty average. Readable, but nothing to get excited about.