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Yesterday I finished some obscure adventure game called Dracula: Resurrection, remembering some videos from back in the day of that backwater village full of hostile locals. Turns out to be shit that continues the novel with the story and writing that's at best. With that difficulty it also basically plays itself except for some parts when you miss the hotspot and is done after two hours. What a half-assed mess. Same goes for Necronomicon: The Dawning of Darkness, which I downloaded for the same reason.
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BROS Any suggestions regarding games (or movies, whatever) from thriller/horror genre with that suspense of "a stranger in some backwater town with unsettling, terrifying mystery and increasingly violent, twisted locals"? Sort of like the beginning of A Shadow Over Innsmouth/Call of Cthulhu: DCotE; maybe even Deliverance or Straw Dogs, when lacking something more sinister and supernatural. Any genuinely unsettling suspense and fear is welcome.
Now in the shadow of the upcoming decline from Square Enix - Thief: Gold The Dark Project.
Don't know about the locals, but the first part fits the Blair Witch Volume 1 : Rustin Parr. Very good atmosphere, from Terminal Reality who made Nocturne (this is the same engine that Blair it's working on).
Thanks, I'll check it out, since I'm in mood for adventure games recently. TV Tropes are helpful as well, but they didn't suggest it in particular so far.
Anyway, "what game are you wasting time on", Anchorhead
>go east
(opening the real estate office door first) It seems to be locked.
In the distance, you can hear the lonesome keening of a train whistle drifting on the wind.
>listen You hear nothing unexpected.
>go southeast
Alley This narrow aperture between two buildings is nearly blocked with piles of rotting cardboard boxes and overstuffed garbage cans. Ugly, half-crumbling brick walls to either side totter oppressively over you. The alley ends here at a tall, wooden fence.
High up on the wall of the northern building there is a narrow, transom-style window.
>open (the sky) How optimistic of you.
>climb boxes The boxes are too flimsy to support your weight.
>climb cans You clamber onto the wobbling garbage can, precariously balanced.
>climb window Hmm. You still can't quite reach, because the garbage can is too far away from the wall. Perhaps if you pushed it closer...
>push garbage You'll have to get off the garbage can first.
>go down Carefully, you descend.
>push garbage You push the garbage cans around aimlessly.
>push garbage east I only understood you as far as wanting to push the garbage can. >go west (opening the real estate office door first) It seems to be locked.
You can hear a fly buzzing around, somewhere in the next room.
>pick lockWhat do you want to pick the lock with?
>answering machine(first taking the answering machine) You're not here to burglarize the place.
>why not?That's not a verb I recognise.
>telephoneWhat do you want to telephone?
>mother(on the telephone) You start to dial out, but you can't get anything but a busy signal no matter how much you jiggle the receiver. Frustrated, you hang up.
Played some Heroes of Might and Magic III with my brother over hamachi. It ended with me fending off a ton of AI while my brothers main hero landed on my island with 2 cities as the defenders just staved off yet another attack and when my main hero was exterminating one of the AI cunts responsible while a secondary one was reclaiming a lost capital (AI got lucky as fuck in that battle, the cunt mixed endgame troops of different cities and suffered no lost turns from morale barely taking the city).
Well actually it ended with him murdering all my secondary heroes, the AI sneakingly taking my best-defended backup city and him counterattacking after I took his capital. Nearly murdered his main army despite being at a severe disadvantage because he forgot how to remove blindness until all he had left were 40-ish minotaurs and ranged troops which I almost murdered. The bad thing was it was his minotaurs vs my beholders still left standing.
Still I murdered his doomstack of black dragons which was 60% larger than mine, about 60 chimeras (or manticores? which one was the upgraded version?) while I had maybe 18. Then again he could have equipped that artifact that prevents casting any spells and I would be totally fucked as blindness was the only thing that made that so close. Suffered too much attrition. We need to play again on a smaller map with less popamole AI next time. Also it wouldn't take like half of the damn day to actually play it.
I did just finish my first playthrough through The Royal Trap, Hanako Games' latest visual novel. Along with Long Live The Queen it is the closest a western developer did come so far to the quality of the best among japanese otome visual novels, which is not to say a lot but still does make it deserve a lot of praise here and there. The art is however not one of those things: While the CGs do come close to be comparable with some medium-to-high budget japanese visual novels the backgrounds are attrocious and the character portraits are kind of a mixed bag. The music is so-so. There are no voices.
Yet the story is not half bad even when it is really short.
You are the prince of someplace or another's assistant and overseer, and for most of your life you have been taking care of him and trying to polish him into a proper young prince befit to marry a princess, play the courtly games, and some day be a cappable king. As the game does start you are with him on some far away kingdom for the local princess' debut in society and her first meeting with princes who could one day become suitors, among them your own. After the formal introduction and just before the royal ball the prince does send you to read a letter he did leave for you and in which he does confess his love for you even if he does not expect it to come to anything. Before long, however, the prince, who did actually manage to do it pretty well with the princess, is attacked and knocked unconscious and the princess herself abducted. From here on the story spirals into a weird tale of mystery and courtly intrigue which is not bad even when it is VERY short. I did play otome visual novels on which by the time I was done with The Royal Trap I would have still be nearing the end of the prologue.
The general premise of the game did remind me of the fabulous Crimson Empire. This is not to say it does come even close to Crimson Empire's awesomeness: The game not nearly as bloody or twisted as Crimson Empire and both the protagonist and the hotties are not a bunch of total assholes. And you do not need to solve sidequests, murder enemies in JRPG combat, or mind the actual mechanics behind being a kingmaker so that you do not get a bad end or, well, an even worse end. You do just have to navigate the story by choices and such, and if you are not a moron you will pretty much make someone become king: Halfway through the game you do get to pick whom will you throw your allegiances which and get into many different routes each with their own choices and potential endings depending both on what you did earlier and on what you do from then on.
The story is weird. Bleeping so. And while they do never reach the level of twisted assholeness the characters from Crimson Empire did reach they do still have their own motivations, personalities, and at least some are only out for themselves. Both of those thingies do make the endings as well be weird, so I guess it is not nearly as good as the crème de la crème of visual novels but it does still rate higher than many otome games do by not allowing you to just get a fairy tale ending where everything does tie into a nice bow and that's it, you live happily ever after. Or at least it is so if the first ending I got is any indication. And just like in Crimson Empire while you are the main character and all that but you do never go beyond being someone else's right hand: You can be this guy's assistant or that guy's assistant but from what I have seen you are never the main player. The guys are. You are just a mixture of confident, spy, and lover. In that order. In the route I did play I did never stop feeling like I was a convenient tool and nothing else.
I did spend the first half of the game pretty much playing for my prince to fall heads over heels for me and being as much of a cocktease as I was able to be. Then I did throw my lot with the twisted and cold prince of some other place (originally because, well, bleep was going down and to get my prince involved could have pretty serious repercutions for him) and did become his co-conspirator and assistant instead. By the end the game had been pretty clear about how my character was screwed being the second daughter of a very lesser noble family and that once her prince was married she would have outlived her usefulness and was pretty much doomed to a life of poverty and being a total nugu who at beast could use her experience to become a tutor or a personal servant so even when my character was quite in love with him I did pretty much betray my original prince to become the mistress and right hand (or would that be left hand?) of the second prince who would then go on to become a king after marrying for power and convenience a, uhm, sweet and innocent girl who could bear him no offspring and as so I would do it for her, whose parents did come to see the deal a convenient one just because as we had discovered their hand they were in no situation to bargain and as we were a bunch of immoral assholes we had the potential to be an awesome royal family. And then the game did imply I did become the best friend of his, ahem, queen and it did all develop into a WTF love triangle between the three of us, framed in comments about how all me and the prince did was to see the opportunities that did appear and seize the day for our own gain or something and about how my character was really happy with this new life and power that would have otherwise be outside of her reach as the lowliest of nobilty.
And it is FAR more WTF when you do know the proper context.
Then HAPPY END did appear on the screen.
What? I do not know either but it did make me feel dirty and awful about myself.
All in all I would rate it quite below stuff like Crimson Empire, Hakuouki, etc, and not nearly as wicked and twisted as truly psycho stuff like Queen of Darkness but still better than the kitsch bull about you actually being a hot, nubile, charming little princess with a dark but in practice awesome secret and all the hot guys who do find you irresistible willing to throw away their lives for you.
Currently playing Alpha Protocol. Holy shit why haven't I played this before, this game is fucking amazing. (Especially the sneaking and walking animations)
Currently playing Alpha Protocol. Holy shit why haven't I played this before, this game is fucking amazing. (Especially the sneaking and walking animations)
Thanks, I'll check it out, since I'm in mood for adventure games recently. TV Tropes are helpful as well, but they didn't suggest it in particular so far.
Anyway, "what game are you wasting time on", Anchorhead
Thanks for the link. Had fun playing it at work, especially since it happened to be raining like blood pouring from the rent throat of some eldritch leviathan.
at best. With that difficulty it also basically plays itself except for some parts when you miss the hotspot and is done after two hours. What a half-assed mess. Same goes for Necronomicon: The Dawning of Darkness, which I downloaded for the same reason.
