Unmechanical

Unmechanical is a sweet indie puzzler that is pretty darn gorgeous on the eyes too. It combines a variety of different puzzles (physics, logic, memory) on your quest for freedom through an underground labyrinth designed to feel at once organic and mechanical. You are a little blue helicopter thing that’s been abducted from the surface world and dropped into this maze. You can fly, and you have a tractor beam, but aside from bumping into things like a confused bee there’s not much else you can do. The way you navigate and solve puzzles relies on your interactions with stimuli around you, pulling levers and lifting rocks with your tractor beam to get the desired result. The puzzles range from the fairly familiar – like the remember-the-pattern puzzle involving four different coloured bulbs that make different noises – to the far-reaching and complicated. It’s great fun and a well-composed title – there’s a neat bit of thinking alongside the Aww-Factor -and it’s available through a variety of digital content platforms (Steam, Gog, Gamersgate & OnLive plus it’ll soon be coming to the AppStore (for those of you that use Apple products). Free demos are also out there on the aforementioned platforms or straight from the site.

Sometimes it can get lonely, as a little blue helicopter adrift in an underground maze…

Team Fortress: Mann vs Machine

Mann vs Machine is the new Co-op mode for Team Fortress 2 and yet another sizeable update/announcement coming from the Valve camp (could it be all a distraction to disguise a lacking of Half Life 3?). In keeping with TF2 Free to Play mantra, you can play these new Co-op maps on community servers in what is called “Boot Camp” – but, should you so desire to, you can also pay to enter “Mann Up Mode” in which you can get the chance to win rare items as a reward for completing missions and the Tour of Duty. Currently there’s only one Tour of Duty (“Steel Trap”) consisting of six missions; in Mann Up Mode you have to pay with a Tour of Duty Ticket for each mission, and these are 59p/99c each from the Mann Co Store.

Lured by the promise of rare items, I paid to get into Mann Up Mode and completed a Tour. Unlike my partner, who has now completed three Tours and hasn’t had any SuperCoolRares, I got a rare item at the end of my Tour. Woo! That’s not the best thing I want to talk about, though. The Co-op mode itself is pretty awesome, and a great addition to TF2, because for once you all have to work together, even if you aren’t Pro, with a bunch of people you have been allocated. It can create a really fun atmosphere if you get a good – and nice – team. The robot army you have to defeat presents a challenge if you don’t learn quickly how to coordinate and function as a team. Normal multiplayer doesn’t tend to require this much interaction with other humans (unless you’re a pre-formed team who know what they’re doing) and so the update has successfully added a new dimension to the experience of TF2. Needless to say, however, if you get a rubbish team with too many ill-informed egomaniacs, you won’t get far.

Unfortunately, Valve encountered some problems with this update. At times the servers die, you can’t access Multi-player or Co-op because the allocator has crashed, the store shuts and everyone gets grumpy. These issues seem to be being worked on so just have a little patience.

Other Stuff

I’ve also been playing Borderlands again, in preparation for Borderlands 2 (release date 17/09/12), but I was a bit disappointed by the ‘Girlfriend Mode’ gaffe. Borderlands is very fun, very entertaining and pretty in-yer-face; while it would be easy to criticise some of their portrayal of women in the game I think it’d also be fairly misguided. The game isn’t one to be taken seriously: it makes a mockery out of pretty much everything, so it’s a fair assumption that they’re probably poking fun when it comes to female characters too. I tell myself they’re doing it to make a point; satirise the gaming status quo, if you like.

So, with that in mind, I was disappointed to see someone from the developers being stupid enough to utter the phrase “Girlfriend Mode” in reference to the I’m New To First Person Shooters and Don’t Know What To Do mode. I admit, I take it personally when these things come up: I’ve played FPS games longer than my boyfriend (and a lot of male gamers I know) so it really does hack me off when it is assumed no female gamer ever likes FPS of their own volition. I like shooting things! What’s so weird about that?

Despite this foolishness, I haven’t cancelled my pre-order of Borderlands 2. Why? Well, there’s the reasons I’ve mentioned above, plus the fact there are more female characters – and they do look amazingly kickass. I want to get to know them. In turn, so will you, as that’s pretty much the only thing I expect to play in September – yay!

In contrast with the irritating ‘Girlfriend Mode’ story, I’d like to bring you a little Well Done story. Guild Wars 2 has gone live and ArenaNet have tried, it seems, to make the most welcoming community possible – and they’ve caught a lot of flack for it. They’ve been suspending people. Oh no! you say, why ever would they do that? Because they’re actually sticking to their own rules and upholding them for the benefit of the majority of gamers who don’t feel the need to be odious.

Let me explain. ArenaNet are upholding their Naming Policy on characters, which is pretty commendable (both the list and sticking to it), but some gamers felt the need to whine when they got banned. Admittedly, some banned-users’ names weren’t in contravention of the policy so ArenaNet took to Reddit and told them all (and in doing so shamed the perpetrators publicly) that their ban was due to their inappropriate chat, which I warn you isn’t nice. So, I say Well Done to ArenaNet for keeping horrible arsebags out of the community (even if the suspensions are only 72 hours) and trying to make Guild Wars 2 a welcoming and inclusive experience for all its gamers.

I’ve also had a bit of a TF2 revival this month, and that’s been fun, but what more can be said about TF2?  There are no female characters (yet), although there are plenty of female gamers.  I personally haven’t seen much SexistFail in chat but I know it does happen on some servers (you do, however, get a lot of childish insults and obscene ‘sprays’ on some servers).  It’s a fun, team-based game that’s F2P (Free2Play), and Valve just hired an economist to help with the ever expanding Mannconomy and the inter-game economies as they grow further still.  That’s interesting, right?  Plus PYROMANIA has landed.

Bastion’s protag, “the Kid”, looking a bit moody.

To Bastion!  This is a very curious indie title that offers a considerable amount of play-time compared to other indie offerings.  It’s described as “…an action role-playing experience that redefines storytelling in games, with a reactive narrator who marks your every move”.  I’ve heard similar claims before and ended up disappointed, but Bastion really delivers on this concept.  Admittedly, the narrator’s voice does get on my nerves but it really does react to what you do.  I’m sure there’s an inventory of quips and comments that are selected according to specific trigger events in the game but it’s still pretty cool.

The art is lovely and it isn’t just the simple damsel-in-distress format that I have encountered in a lot of other indie titles (LIMBO, Braid, for example), which is a nice change of pace.  Although the main active characters are all male and the one female (so far) has been pretty passive, there’s still a good bit of joy to be taken from this game.  It’s simple enough to grasp and you can make it harder in a variety of ways, so for gameplay and originality it gets a thumbs-up from me.  Unfortunately, if you didn’t get lucky and snap up the Humble Bundle, Bastion as a standalone is £11.49 on Steam but is currently going for under £9 on Green Man Gaming (sort of an alternative to Steam).

The one last thing that I will mention about Bastion is the soundtrack, which is beautiful, and I bring this up because I also want to make a special note of Torchlight’s soundtrack.  While playing Torchlight I am constantly finding myself with the urge to go and watch Sunshine again.  This is because the generic background twinkling of Torchlight often hits some of the same chords or sequences that the piece ‘Sunshine (Adagio in D Minor)’ features.  Now, that piece (composed by John Murphy) makes me all soft and wibbly on the inside every time I hear it.  As does watching Sunshine.  But, alas, ’tis presently packed in a box somewhere.

Torchlight only features 3 classes and only one gender and set appearance for each… HEY LOOK more boobs that don’t require proper armour; that really is magic.

Music aside, Torchlight (yes, it’s 3 years old, sorry!) is a great little RPG offering.  I have it because I pre-ordered Torchlight II via Steam and got Torchlight to play with in the meantime.  Torchlight II is making some people in RPG land a bit excited after the numerous issues people have had with Diablo III.  The first game is charming, easy to use and offers some features bigger RPGs haven’t, such as sending your pet to town to sell items from your backpack – meaning you’ll end up with a huge surplus of Town Portal Scrolls as you never need to use them!  It does, regrettably, fall foul of the tediously standard female-armour-fail… do all these women seriously have bullet/arrow/sword/magic proof tits and navels?  That’s the only negative so far, but this looks like it might be halfway rectified, at least, in Torchlight II: go and check out the character classes on their site (only one of the 4 female figures has cleavage showing!).

Now for something released in 2012; I know, incredible, right?  Max Payne 3 has amazing visuals, even on low-spec PCs, and great mechanisms for exciting gameplay.  It showcases the new Rockstar engine that will be used in next year’s Grand Theft Auto V; not a franchise I’m fond of, but with this engine, it’ll look stunning and run spectacularly.  Max Payne 3 has kept fairly faithful to the originals and the basic ‘essence’ of Max, which is a relief for the old fans, but offers plenty for those new to the series.

Max Payne 3 has refined and capitalised on the Shootdodge mechanic of previous games

As an observer (not the sinister Fringe kind) to Max Payne it’s a little different to discuss than if I’d been the player.  I was hoping to get my partner to contribute something here, but the house-moving saga has put paid to that plan.  Max Payne does play with some damsel-in-distress themes and always has, but it also manages to twist them around.  Originally, Max becomes an avenging angel, fallen-from-grace figure after his wife and infant daughter are murdered.  He tears up NYC seeking revenge, but finds conspiracies abound, and then his moral compass takes over and he kills all the baddies.

In MP3, he’s given up being a cop and is playing the private security game.  Although the game starts out with the feel that Max is off saving, and I quote, “fallen women” all over again, it swiftly changes tack in the brutal underworld of Brazil and Max, in the middle of an identity crisis, isn’t sure whether he’s a good guy, a bad guy, or a magical pixie putting the world to rights.  I’m not sure if he ever really ‘finds himself’, but he shoots all the baddies and conquers another conspiracy in typical grim, noir style.  The combat mechanics set this game apart and offer a truly varied way of kickin’ ass.  As, I say, the graphics are gorgeous, the engine is shiny and the music is atmospheric (not to mention nostalgic) the whole way through.

Still pretty spry for an old guy: Ezio takes in the view of Constantinople.

Here I am, talking so much about music and mechanics, you thought I’d forgotten AC:Rev, didn’t you?  Well, let me squeeze it in now.  I have yet to complete the game because I’ve been purposefully dawdling in order to enjoy sandboxing in such a magnificent environment.  Constantinople looks great, and you get to train up your Assassins right from the get-go, as well as the usual bits and pieces around the city with added stalkers who occasionally try to stab you right when you’re supposed to be tailing someone.  The main storyline, so far, hasn’t been too riveting, which is a shame.  I’m sure – after I’ve finished unpacking – that I’ll charge through the story and update you all next month.

What else can you expect in July’s end-of-month post?  I’ve got a couple of new games to play with (actually new, i.e. newly released!) and I’m always keeping an eye out for things to play, but summer tends to be time for the blockbuster films until autumn brings gaming back into focus again…