Dreams: Splinters of the Mind's Eye

Note: this blog has been migrated to Medium, with the articles here available to preserve permalinks. Please see this post at https://medium.com/@ianrbuck/dreams-splinters-of-the-mind-s-eye-f5ee18ca8f83#.up10r52iy

Dreams are easiest to remember and make sense of right after you wake up, so I usually try to write them down in detail right away. Sometimes I don't have time though, and so I end up quickly jotting something down before going to breakfast. I have several of these stacked up, and I present them here as they were worded by my half-asleep mind.

Video Game Idea
Medieval poverty simulator-the game gives you practically nothing, throws you out in a world that is not easy to live in for a peasant.

Sure, it can be a social commentary on current economic crappiness.

A Normal Day at Camp
I was with a bunch of camp staff, playing games together (such as hiding two people in a barrel and making someone who didn't know what was going on look for them). I could bounce up onto the roof to oversee everything. Some guy came to do some construction work or something. He found what appeared to be some take-out boxes, but they actually contained a couple of talking crickets that were our pets. Somehow he mistook them for food. I tried to stop him, but another staff (who looked a lot like the neighbor in Captain America Winter Soldier) was into him and told him that the rest of us were crazy to make herself look good.

Cast in Doctor Who
I was cast in Doctor Who as the Master (apparently he was going to make a return in the next season). My family was really excited and supportive, and it didn't seem odd to anyone that BBC was casting an American.

I Have No Idea
Midnight chicken nugget run turns into time travel, expose another time traveler.

Worst Podcast Ever
We were recording an episode of the podcast at +Dominick Benedetto's house. +Rachel Wolters was on the show as well. We were using my phone to record it and all of the show notes were handwritten. There were lots of errant noises that were loud and unacceptable. I kept my enthusiasm up though.

Hammurabi's Borderlands
Note: I was a passive observer in this dream.
The characters from Borderlands 2 were sitting around reminiscing over all of the glorious bloodshed they have caused. It comes back to bite them in the butt when someone comes and pays them back eye for an eye. In particular I got to watch Krieg get cut open with his own hacksaw. His insides looked cartoony, like the Heavy when you operate on him in Surgeon Simulator 2013.

The Walking Dead
Again, passive observer
The characters from the first season of The Walking Dead (the game, not the show) were all running from Larry. They split up, and Larry started chasing Mark down this weird set of stairs.

The Grumpster
Passive Observer
A movie about a group of aliens who have disguised themselves as a family going to summer camp. The part that stuck out at me was not the aliens. One of the other parents was played by Jeff Goldblum. One of the children called him a "Big ol' grumpster." He got all indignant and said with the grumpiest face you ever did see "Who you callin' a grumpster? I'm not a grumpster." And he proceeded to grumble for a good long while.

The Wolf Among Us Episode 3 Review

Note: this blog has been migrated to Medium, with the articles here available to preserve permalinks. Please see this post at https://medium.com/@ianrbuck/the-wolf-among-us-episode-3-review-ea31fd41e8a#.2szy481k8

You should probably read my reviews of episodes one and two to get a sense of what the game is about and how it plays. I will focus on the story in this review because the gameplay is familiar by now.

The plot of The Wolf Among Us seems to be falling into a pattern; the majority of each episode is spent dealing with whatever shocking revelation was the cliffhanger of the previous episode, then they turn around and give us a new cliffhanger. The end of A Crooked Mile wasn't quite as shocking because they hinted at it a couple of times throughout the episode.

I have been trying to have Bigby be as good a person as possible, which has been pretty difficult up until now because violence is a pretty natural shortcut. I believe I succeeded this time, mostly due to the fact that Telltale had Snow White present for many of the scenes. She has taken on the role of the moral compass the way Clementine did in The Walking Dead. The difference is that Clementine was a moral compass because Lee wanted to teach her right and wrong, while Snow White is a moral compass because Bigby is romantically interested in her.

I can tell that I am doing a good job because there are several characters who used to be quite hostile towards Bigby who are now rather amiable. Now that I think about it there were a few people that I pissed off more. But they were people I didn't like anyway.

A Crooked Mile is the first time I have seen Telltale make a self-referential joke. Conversations in their games will often have messages that say "So-and-so will remember that" when you have backed them up or opposed them. One scene involved a character who was on painkillers and decided to have a few drinks. After a while he passed out and the game said "He won't remember this." I was laughing so hard I was too late to take a good screenshot.

Overall I think this was my favorite episode so far, especially since the end scene suggests that we are much closer to getting to the bottom of the whole thing. If you've been on the fence about The Wolf Among Us, I feel confident in recommending it now.

Burial at Sea Ep 2 Review

Note: this blog has been migrated to Medium, with the articles here available to preserve permalinks. Please see this post at https://medium.com/@ianrbuck/burial-at-sea-ep-2-review-6a364062228b#.7kzfpqjry

This is the biggest departure from the established Bioshock formula that we have ever seen; don't worry, in this case that is a very good thing. And don't get me wrong, I loved the rest of the Bioshock games.

Let's get right into it: in Burial at Sea Episode 2 we play as Elizabeth, which is the first time we have played as a woman in the series. I believe this is why Irrational chose to mix up the gameplay as well. This episode is very stealth-oriented, taking some queues from the recently released Thief. The only weapon that I used throughout the game was the crossbow, which can shoot tranquilizers, smoke bombs, or noisemakers.

Being able to sneak up behind people and knock them out is handy. And because it is extremely important to be aware of your surroundings when playing a stealth game, they introduced the "Peeping Tom" plasmid, which lets you see people through walls. In order to encourage players to take the stealth approach, the rest of the weapons are extremely underpowered; I can see this being annoying to some, but I prefer stealth anyway.

In terms of story I thought this was the easiest to follow story we have seen in Bioshock, and that gives it a lot of strength. The previous games reveled in being vague to keep us wondering, and then throwing a huge curveball at the last possible moment. The core story of Bioshock Infinite and the first episode of Burial at Sea were especially guilty of this. As long as you are familiar with the previous stories of the Bioshock series you will understand what is going on the whole time. That's not to say that you won't be surprised, but you will understand what is happening, which makes these moments all the more powerful.

One moment in particular was probably the most disturbing scene I have ever witnessed in a video game. Let's just say that transorbital lobotomies are pretty effective as a torture method.

I'm really glad that Bioshock is ending on such a strong note. Playing through Burial at Sea only makes sense if you have played the rest of the Bioshock games. Buying both episodes together as part of the season pass is definitely the way to go, and they are worth $10 each for sure. And don't forget to grab the songs from the episode. The pie song was my personal favorite.

Dream: The Computers are Messed Up

Note: this blog has been migrated to Medium, with the articles here available to preserve permalinks. Please see this post at https://medium.com/@ianrbuck/dream-the-computers-are-messed-up-15341d1a3fb3#.525oh6w1h

I had this dream this morning in that stage where I had already woken up once, decided not to get out of bed, and went back to sleep. Weird dreams tend to come out of that stage of sleep.

In my dream my roommate +Declan Mccrory came in and woke me up by turning on our computers. He managed to log in to mine (no idea how he knew my password,) but then goes "What is going on here??" That got my attention so I jump up and have a look. At first I thought he just changed the wallpaper to mess with me, but I noticed that the taskbar went off the screen, the user settings were all gibberish, and I couldn't figure anything out. I do remember trying to update the graphics driver to see if that fixed anything.

Then I suddenly realized that there were toddlers in the apartment because our apartment mate +Brenan Cain was babysitting for someone. I remember thinking that we really should have vacuumed before agreeing to babysit.

Then +Nic McPhee showed up for no reason complaining about the weather (he said it was snowing again.) I took out my phone to check the weather and I noticed that my phone was acting strange as well; it was as though Project Hera had suddenly come out overnight and changed everything about how the phone worked. I couldn't even figure out how to look up the weather. At this point I started really freaking out because nothing was working the way it was supposed to. Luckily I woke up, and my computer and phone are working like they should.

Yeah, I have hardcore nightmares.

Amnesia Fortnight 2014

Note: this blog has been migrated to Medium, with the articles here available to preserve permalinks. Please see this post at https://medium.com/@ianrbuck/amnesia-fortnight-2014-bf8e841b2ae0#.qfrgkei91

Double Fine's Amnesia Fortnight is a two-week period where they drop everything they are working on, get into small teams, and make four or five prototype games. Last year's Amnesia Fortnight resulted in a couple of games that will have full releases: Spacebase DF-9 and Hack n' Slash.

This year they made four prototypes: Dear Leader, Mnemonic, Steed, and Little Pink Best Buds. By contributing through Humble I got access to those prototypes when they were completed, as well as their soundtracks.

Dear Leader sets the player as the new dictator of a soviet nation that has just gone through a revolution. You have to make decisions and hand down edicts as you see fit. The game was created in the same engine as Broken Age, which makes a lot of sense because the art played a big role in the inspiration for the game and everything that you do is accomplished by clicking on things on your desk. I had a lot of fun with the prototype, spending over an hour leading my country and giving them slogans like "having fun isn't hard when you've got a library card" to support my five-year plan for education. I could definitely see this getting made into a full game.

Mnemonic deals with memories in a curious fashion; you start in a hub with doors leading to different memories. Each memory will pause at a particular point because your character cannot remember what happened next. In order to progress you find items in other memories that allow him to remember what happened next. It is an interesting concept, but I got stuck for a long time, which was frustrating because the game only took half an hour. It is an interesting idea, but it would need to be handled carefully if they made a game out of it.

Steed takes the trope of a boy and his horse and flips it around: you play as the horse, and the human is mostly along for the ride. Pun intended. I was really curious to see what kinds of interesting stories they could explore this way, but unfortunately the demo was extremely short; it only took me 10 minutes to play through it. With an idea as unique as this I was hoping to have a more interesting control scheme than "you can kick backwards as well as forwards!" I did amuse myself by pooping a few times though.

Little Pink Best Buds is easily the strangest of the bunch, which isn't too surprising considering it comes straight from the mind of Pendleton Ward. Actually I think the best way for you to get a sense of what the game is about would be to watch his pitch video:

I was definitely expecting to be able to pick which Little Pink Dude becomes my best friend, but apparently they didn't have enough time to implement all of that. The only one you can choose is Big Leg, and the whole thing is pretty scripted. This idea would require a lot of work to become fully realized in a game, but I really want to see it happen because it was hilarious. Oh, and the voice acting was simply the best.

Captain America: The Winter Soldier Review

Note: this blog has been migrated to Medium, with the articles here available to preserve permalinks. Please see this post at https://medium.com/@ianrbuck/captain-america-the-winter-soldier-review-55152daef6da#.xf1nr61x5

The Marvel Cinematic Universe has become my biggest ongoing fandom this year, mostly thanks to the excellent show Agents of SHIELD that serves to whet my appetite between movie releases. As they have demonstrated before, they are very good at making sequels that are better than their predecessors, and Captain America: The Winter Soldier continues that trend. Granted, the first Captain America movie was inherently limited because it was an origin story; even so, The Winter Soldier blew it out of the water. I'll even go so far as to say that it is my favorite apart from The Avengers.

Part of the reason that I like it so much is because it ties into the grander story they are telling more than any of the other individual heroes' movies. Thor tends to deal with large cosmic threats, but doesn't have as much bearing on the lay of the land here on Earth. Even the Iron Man movies only deal with adversaries that matter to Tony Stark. With The Winter Soldier however, I don't think the world will ever be the same. I'm kind of worried about watching the next episode of SHIELD because I'm not sure how the show will change as a result of this movie. Bottom line: if you are invested in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, this is a must-see.

The two main twists in the story were executed well, though I figured out one of them before it happened.
Because of the nature of the way the Cinematic Universe takes concepts from the comic books and reapplies them to this new context, it would be very easy to accidentally spoil things for yourself by looking up things that already exist but we have not yet seen in the movies. Luckily I managed to avoid anything like that.

The dialogue was spot-on (I laughed obnoxiously loud at more than a few jokes) and the action was so good that Sonja had to hold my hand to stop me from getting too riled up. There weren't even any secondary characters that I hated. Man, everything about this movie was good.

Obviously this is Captain America's movie, but Black Widow has a large part to play as well. I was really glad to see this, because I think that she and Hawkeye deserve more screentime than they have been given so far. I wish they could have a movie all to themselves, but that probably isn't going to happen. Honestly though, why does Ant-Man get a movie and they don't?

Dream: Aliens Invade a Board Game

Note: this blog has been migrated to Medium, with the articles here available to preserve permalinks. Please see this post at https://medium.com/@ianrbuck/dream-aliens-invade-a-board-game-8a6da3a6ff6c#.7ivpbjmam

The really interesting thing about this dream is that nothing happens that I can't see happening in real life.

I walk in to find several of my friends playing a variation of the board game Axis and Allies. Now the traditional Axis and Allies is a strategy game that takes place in the middle of World War II. It appears that +Ian Decker had come up with a version that introduces an alien invasion in the middle of the whole thing, and the human nations have to start working together to fight them off. Wait, haven't I read a book with that premise?

I believe that +Caleb Buck and +Jonas Buck were controlling the human factions, and +Anna Haslow was controlling the aliens. Since I didn't have any units to control, I decided to create a civilian unit for me to essentially play an RPG with. My goal was to avoid the alien forces as they took over the world, which means that I was trying to get to Alaska.

I kind of want to try this out in real life, probably minus the RPG part.

Dream: I Am (Almost) Iron Man

Note: this blog has been migrated to Medium, with the articles here available to preserve permalinks. Please see this post at https://medium.com/@ianrbuck/dream-i-am-almost-iron-man-4c859b8aabde#.4g14gkmp9

At the beginning of this dream I was basically a pilot in Titanfall: I could run endlessly, double jump, wall run, and generally just be awesome. The only thing missing was a weapon.

As I ran around it became pretty obvious that I was being chased, so I tried to speed up a bit. Unfortunately it wasn't enough, and someone grabbed me from behind. I tumbled to the ground as he landed on his feet in front of me. Luckily I suddenly realized that I had Jango Fett's jetpack on as well as the jump pack. I lined myself up and activated the jetpack, slamming into the guy and carrying him up a ways before dropping him.

I knew that there were still others chasing me, so I kept going along the path I had been following before (it looked suspiciously like a linear video game map.) To conserve fuel I used the jetpack sparingly and started gliding with the wingsuit I was apparently wearing. I think I even had small jets attached to my feet to make navigational adjustments. Then a voice started talking to me, which turned out to be the wingsuit's artificial intelligence. At that point I was basically Iron Man without the iron, but I woke up before I got that far.

Indie Game: The Movie Review

Note: this blog has been migrated to Medium, with the articles here available to preserve permalinks. Please see this post at https://medium.com/@ianrbuck/indie-game-the-movie-review-b920d4048e91#.q6dx8s94m

The struggling artist is a trope that we're all familiar with, but most of us don't associate it with video game developers. That is pretty understandable because until 2009 or so the only games we saw were big-budget games being put out by large corporations. With the indie game scene exploding in the last few years, it became much more obvious that there were people making games purely out of passion; people who put their financial stability and reputations on the line to create something beautiful. And that's art.

Enter Indie Game: The Movie, a documentary that sets out to tell a few of these developers' stories. It focuses on Jonathan Blow (Braid), Phil Fish (Fez), and Edmund McMillen and Tommy Refenes (Super Meat Boy). In the case of Fez and Super Meat Boy, they interview the developers at several important points during the creation of their games. Fez faced a very long development and legal issues that drained Fish. McMillen and Refenes had to crunch to get Super Meat Boy out in time for an Xbox promotion. For all of them, the failure of their games would mean they would probably be finished with game development. Braid was already out by the time the movie was filmed, so Blow mostly talked about what is important to him about independent development. It wasn't nearly as emotionally intense as the other developers' stories, but it helped to frame them.

Even the music was indie game related. Most of it was by Jim Guthrie, and a lot of it was taken straight from Superbrothers: Sword and Sworcery. Being that I listen to that soundtrack on a fairly regular basis, it was pretty cool to hear them using the music in such an effecting way.

I was hoping that Indie Game: The Movie would be the kind of documentary I could show my parents to convince them that game development is an art form, but I'm not sure it would work for that. The best audience are definitely gamers; those of us who are already invested in the indie scene will get a lot out of the movie, and gamers who have previously only been exposed to AAA games could be encouraged to expand their horizons. Obviously all three games that were featured have been successful and are very well-known, but during the credits they show many other indie games; even I hadn't heard of most of them, and you can bet I will be looking into them.

This movie is definitely worth a look for anyone who is remotely interested in video games.

Stargate SG-1: Unleashed Review

Note: this blog has been migrated to Medium, with the articles here available to preserve permalinks. Please see this post at https://medium.com/@ianrbuck/stargate-sg-1-unleashed-review-d177863b72bc#.60m3pctc6

The Stargate franchise has had a pretty tumultuous relationship with the video game world. I remember hearing about an MMO called Stargate Worlds in development years ago, but their money ran out and the game was never released. A third-person shooter called Stargate: Resistance came out in 2010, but less than a year later they pulled the game from stores and shut down the servers. I was really disappointed that I missed out on it, but Stargate SG-1: Unleashed looks like it is here to stay.

Unleashed is a third-person adventure game for iOS and Android. I can understand the desire to bring console-grade gaming to mobile devices, but despite the fact that the power in our phones is increasing at an incredible rate I don't think this will ever be a viable option.

One very obvious reason is graphics. Unleashed tried to go for photorealism, and as you can see it's pretty bad. This could easily have been avoided if they went with a different art style; for example, some nice cel shading could have given it a comic book feel similar to The Walking Dead. My Nexus 5's Snapdragon 800 is about as high-end as they come right now, so the game ran smooth as butter. Even so, it drained my battery pretty fast so I usually only played when I knew I had access to a charger.

The other big reason that console-like gaming doesn't work on mobile is the way the game is consumed. When I play something on my computer, I have probably made sure that I have a decent chunk of time available. I play mobile games when I am out and about and I have a few minutes to kill. Unleashed acts like a console game in this area, expecting me to sit down and play it for an extended period of time. It doesn't let you save manually, instead relying on checkpoints. I ended up replaying quite a few sections because I had to step away before hitting the next checkpoint.

Gameplay and controls is another area where third-person mobile games struggle. Unleashed uses the expected twin-stick emulation in most areas where you move around, and it works pretty well. Combat is pretty simple: you are crouched behind cover and have to strategically decide when to pop out and shoot at enemies. If you get hit you can just stay behind cover until your character stops panting. Almost everything else in the game is based on quick time events. Seriously. Shimmying along a ledge? Quick time event. Taking out a guard from behind? Quick time event. Drawing a bucket of water out of a freaking well? You'd better be ready for a quick time event, my friend! Ugh.

Let's talk about some positive stuff! The story was well-written and interesting. Most of the voice acting was by the actors from the show, so it was both congruent with my expectations and it was quality voice acting. If the story or acting had been worse you can bet that I would not have finished the game.

Ultimately Stargate SG-1: Unleashed is only worth playing if you are a super fan of Stargate. I am interested in the story enough to get the second episode, but I am seriously disappointed in its quality as a game.

The Walking Dead 2 Episode 2 Review

Note: this blog has been migrated to Medium, with the articles here available to preserve permalinks. Please see this post at https://medium.com/@ianrbuck/the-walking-dead-2-episode-2-review-de7a0325c8f#.ab6ac56ny

I wasn't really sure what to expect from the second episode of The Walking Dead 2 because the first episode didn't have much going on in it. I didn't know enough about the group of people I met to make predictions about what was going to happen. Luckily the second episode picks things up; well, it's not lucky for the characters in the game, but you know what I mean.

The most important thing that happens in this episode is the people in your new group get fleshed out more in a big way. The Walking Dead would fail completely if it didn't have strong characters that you care about. I found myself drawn to the people in the group to varying degrees, much as I would in real life.

The biggest challenge Telltale faces in this game is finding ways to give the player agency in ways that make sense for an 11 year old girl. For the most part I think they succeeded, though there were a few exceptions; for example, who would leave Clementine alone to figure out how to turn off a wind turbine?

Unfortunately I cannot go into the best things about this episode without spoiling everything, but trust me: The Walking Dead 2 is officially now worth getting. There were a lot of surprises, which I was not expecting. I thought I was prepared for anything that Telltale could throw at me, but I was very wrong.

Much like the first episode, they end with a huge cliffhanger. If you hate dealing with those, you might want to wait until the third episode comes out, but that will probably end on a cliffhanger as well. I'm enjoying playing it one episode at a time, but I wish I had somebody I could discuss things with.

Fives Review

Fives is a mobile game that's all about combining like numbers. Numbers are arranged on a 4x4 grid, and your score is determined by how many you can combine before you have no more moves left. Here is an example of what the board might look like at the end of a game:

That might look a little confusing until you understand what you do in the game. On each turn you can slide the board up, down, left, or right. Every number on the board will move in that direction if it can (they will not slide off the end of the board). Twos will combine with threes to make fives, and every number after that will combine with like numbers (fives with fives, tens with tens, etc). When numbers combine the new number is the addition of the two old numbers. Also when you make your move a new number will slide in on the side of the board you are pulling from. So if you slide everything down, a new number will appear in one of the slots at the top of the board. As you can see above, there were no more moves I could make because there were no numbers adjacent to numbers they could combine with.

The board starts out will all twos and threes, and your score is determined by how many moves you made and how large the numbers are on the board by the end. It is a very good idea to pay attention to what the next number is, so that you can pull in a direction that will place it near other numbers like it. Otherwise the board fills up very quickly. Take the below screenshot as an example: Although pulling left here only allows me to combine one pair of numbers, they are the largest numbers on the board, and on the next turn I will be able to pull down and combine three numbers at once. Furthermore, I know that the next number is a twenty, so I am positioning it near several tens that will soon become twenties.

Fives has several monetization models; you can play the game for free with ads. These ads show up in a small banner below the next number indicator, and a large ad pops up after each game. You can get rid of these ads by paying $2, which I did. You also have a limited number of undos and chances to change the next number. You can earn these by scoring over 10,000 points (which takes a long time) or you can buy them for $1 a piece. This is not worth it in my mind, and I am sure that some of the global high scores exist because people spent a lot more money than they should have in order to get up there. Fives appears to only be available on Android.

I've enjoyed playing Fives but other than +Ryan Rampersad I don't know anyone who plays it, and he will never get anywhere near my high score. Much like Dots, I think I am done with this game.

Update: Fives is most certainly a clone of Threes! which is now available on Android, so I recommend checking that out instead.

The Walking Dead 2 Episode 1 Review

Note: this blog has been migrated to Medium, with the articles here available to preserve permalinks. Please see this post at https://medium.com/@ianrbuck/the-walking-dead-2-episode-1-review-7a0116f9e389#.tdybqwvi9

If you have not played The Walking Dead Season 1 yet, you probably shouldn't read this. I reserve the right to spoil things that you would know by the time you play Season 2.

Sometimes we do things even though we know they will cause us strife. That is the only reason I can think of for why I started playing Season 2 of The Walking Dead. I knew that nothing good could come of it, but darn it I was not going to miss out on the rest of Clementine's story.

One of the things that I was most excited about was the fact that the decisions I made during Season 1 would carry over and have an impact in Season 2. And indeed, the game found my save files and imported them properly, but I didn't notice anything during the first episode that had anything to do with what I had done during Season 1. That includes the 400 Days DLC. The story didn't suffer as a result, but I spent most of the episode waiting for one of the characters to show up or some fallout from a decision I had made earlier to bite me in the butt. Nothing of the sort happened.

Being that Clementine is a lot smaller than Lee, the combat played out much differently. Instead of struggling with the zombies and trying to bash their heads in, Clementine usually runs and dodges away from whatever is chasing her. There were also far fewer puzzles, and those that were present were fairly straightforward. Honestly most of the episode was a continuous push forward, with few hub areas to simply explore and talk to people.

Overall I would call this episode a setup episode. Telling you what it is setting up would be a spoiler, but it might be in your best interest to wait and find out how good the next episode is before deciding whether or not to buy the whole season.

Interactively making a 10 year old give themselves stitches was quite the experience though.

EDIT: You can now read my review of Episode 2.

The Walking Dead: 400 Days Review

Note: this blog has been migrated to Medium, with the articles here available to preserve permalinks. Please see this post at https://medium.com/@ianrbuck/the-walking-dead-400-days-review-cd640258253f#.ceepbv72p

It seems a little odd for an episodic game to get an extra chapter after its final episode is released. The Walking Dead: 400 Days is a DLC that serves to bridge the gap between the original game and Season 2. It introduces several new characters who will appear in Season 2; they are playable in this DLC, but I do not think that they will be playable in Season 2.

There are five characters, and you can play their stories in any order. They all take place within a couple hundred days of the zombie outbreak. They also occur relatively close together, so some common characters and locations appear in multiple chapters.

Notably this pit stop diner

The decisions you make in each person's story determines the decision they make at the end of the episode. This in turn will affect where they are and who they trust during Season 2. Interestingly, almost none of the decisions from Season 1 have an impact in 400 Days, though they will undoubtedly have a greater impact in Season 2.

Obviously it only makes sense to buy this DLC if you are planning on playing Season 2. If you are as invested in The Walking Dead as I am though, it's pretty much a no-brainer and well worth the $5. I leave you now with some assorted screenshots.

Broken Age Act 1 Review

Note: this blog has been migrated to Medium, with the articles here available to preserve permalinks. Please see this post at https://medium.com/@ianrbuck/broken-age-act-1-review-3fe08301b54e#.4j8etbqfv

If you've ever heard of a game being Kickstarted, you can thank Broken Age for it. It was almost two years ago when Tim Schafer decided that he wanted to make another point-and-click adventure game, and he wanted the internet to fund it. Needless to say, it was a resounding success, and for a while all we wanted to talk about was games on Kickstarter. The first half of Broken Age is out now, with the second half coming later this year.

The game is split into two different stories, with two different protagonists: Vella on the left, and Shay on the right. Once you choose one of them, you start their story, but you can switch between them at any time. I used this once when I got frustrated with a puzzle I was having trouble with.

Vella's story starts off in her village, which is made up entirely of bakers. Every generation they have the Maidens' Feast, where several young women are offered up to a big monster called Mog Chothra so it won't destroy the village. Needless to say, Vella is not thrilled about this and decides to fight back. Her adventure takes her to a couple of other villages, one that just had their Maidens' Feast, and another getting ready for its Maidens' Feast.

Shay on the other hand lives a pretty boring life: he's been living on a spaceship his whole life, and the simulation missions the ship throws at him have gotten pretty boring because they were designed for a toddler. Eventually he breaks out of this rut and discovers a whole new part of the ship that he has never seen before, and some real missions to embark on.

Visually the game is gorgeous. Everything looks hand painted, and in typical point-and-click fashion the camera is usually fixed, at most moving left or right as you move around the environment. There were a few places where I thought the textures looked low-resolution, but honestly it wouldn't have made much of a difference because of the art style.

Mechanically it plays almost exactly like a point-and-click from the 90's. Or at least that's what I assume because I wasn't doing much video gaming in the 90's. All of the "puzzles" involved finding a specific item or combination of items to use in a particular way in a particular place to solve a problem. Most times it was pretty clear what needed to be done, and failing that just a little snooping around would uncover the solution. There was that one time though where the solution involved going back and forth through several areas to get different items, and I completely did not understand what I was supposed to do. Yeah, I looked up the solution to that one.

One of my favorite things about Broken Age is the voice cast. Having people like Elijah Wood, Jennifer Hale, and Jack Black in the same game is delightful to my nerd brain. And Wil Wheaton playing a hipster lumberjack hiding from the talking trees was the best moment of my week.

It took me just over four hours to complete Act 1, and they left us on quite the cliffhanger. It's definitely worth getting now, because Act 1 is a good length to finish in one or two sittings. This is one of the few games I have played that is appropriate for both adults and kids, so if you are a parent check it out. It's a little hard to name a good price because I have no idea how good Act 2 will be; if it keeps up the quality that Act 1 had, I would say that $20 is a good price.

Dream: Thief Meets Outlast

Note: this blog has been migrated to Medium, with the articles here available to preserve permalinks. Please see this post at https://medium.com/@ianrbuck/dream-thief-meets-outlast-fcd0c66a90f0#.93lj3mohd

This dream pulls pretty prominently from several games, but not games that I have played a lot of.

It started off as a pretty close approximation of the upcoming Thief. I was sneaking around a large building, stealing coins that I found. I wasn't finding much in the way of valuable jewelry, and I soon found out why: this was a building where a group of slavers held people before taking them to market. Unfortunately I knew that I had no chance of freeing them, so I decided to make sure that their business wouldn't be profitable.

While I was snooping around I heard someone coming. I tried to hide behind a rack of supplies, but it just so happened that she needed to grab something from that very same rack. Luckily she didn't sound the alarm because she hates the place as much as I do (don't ask me why she works there) and we discussed what we should do next. Just then a bunch of workers started filing in, getting in line for food. I suggested that we join the line to remain inconspicuous.

When the line reached another room, everything seemed different. Instead of wood floors and walls, everything was covered in tiles and there were computers. While everyone went over to see what the computers had on them, I continued down the corridor until I found a door. This lead to a room with an empty swimming pool, pretty creepy.

The next corridor was very narrow and had no branches. I suddenly got the feeling that I was being followed, but I didn't look over my shoulder to see what it was. I just started running, and I didn't stop until the corridor ended and I got to a room that looked more familiar: wood floors and walls, candles on the table, etc.

I'm glad that my body waited until I wasn't terrified out of my mind to wake up.

The Wolf Among Us Episode 2 Review

Note: this blog has been migrated to Medium, with the articles here available to preserve permalinks. Please see this post at https://medium.com/@ianrbuck/the-wolf-among-us-episode-2-review-3901281a0924

It's been quite a while since the first episode of The Wolf Among Us came out, but I didn't mind much because the holiday season was right in the middle of that wait, and Assassin's Creed IV happened. On the other hand that cliffhanger was killing me.

This episode played quite differently from the first one. In Episode 1 the player was confronted with several binary choices that were clearly presented as important moments. Episode 2's choices were much more dynamic, taking the form of "how far are you willing to go to get the information you need?" situations. I prefer this new approach to player choice because it is less gamey and doesn't take you out of the scene to make your decision. They were pretty tough decisions too, because I was trying really hard to redeem Bigby but at the same time I really needed to solve the case. And some of the other characters pissed me off.

Another difference is that there are fewer fights in Episode 2. I suspect that this depends on the choices you make, but the way I played I only had to fight one person.

The focus of Episode 2 is gathering information and following leads, but it hardly ever had me looking around a room for clues. The information was usually gathered in conversation with other people, oftentimes in some form of interrogation. In terms of actual story, not much new happened; it was mostly piecing together what had already happened.

That said. the very end left us on another cliffhanger, one that will almost assuredly have a large impact on the story moving forward. I can't wait for Episode 3, and I hope they don't make us wait four months this time.

EDIT: you can now read my review of Episode 3.

The Lego Movie Review

Note: this blog has been migrated to Medium, with the articles here available to preserve permalinks. Please see this post at https://medium.com/@ianrbuck/the-lego-movie-review-72f7dbe877e7

I wasn't expecting to see The Lego Movie because the trailers for it made it look like another generic kid's movie. In a word, they were terrible. However, some of my friends who had seen it came back gushing about it being the best movie they had seen in years. My impression of the movie was somewhere in between: it is definitely worth seeing, but in no way is it a must-see.

The beginning of the movie was pretty bland, and I found myself wondering how long until we were going to get to those emotional moments I had been told about (hint: those obviously come in the second half of the movie). I did appreciate the way that it made fun of the way people seem to mindlessly follow pop culture, listening to whatever songs are on the radio and watching the same TV shows as everyone else. It was like a hipster's worst nightmare.

The plot set itself up as a classic good-vs-evil story, but it ended up becoming an argument over how people should play with their Legos. The movie sets up the concept of following the instructions as the way the bad guys do it, while the "master builders" who take the pieces and come up with their own creations as the good guys. This left me pretty conflicted because I have taken great care to keep my Lego sets preserved over the years. Granted, I didn't just leave them on my shelf for my whole childhood, but after every battle I made sure to put everything back together the way they were supposed to be. Speaking of which, almost all of the Legos that I have are Star Wars sets, and I was pretty disappointed when they only received a small cameo in the movie.

Most of the movie was computer animated, but they went to great lengths to imitate the style and aesthetics of brickfilms. They even went so far as to make it seem like it was stop-motion and used miniature versions of sets to simulate distant shots, both of which were great touches. Because physics was a complete non-issue the action sequences were very over-the-top and a little hard to follow because everything moved so fast.

The thing that I got the most out of the movie was its great sense of humor. I laughed my way through most of the movie, and even the serious parts had just that little touch of silliness to keep my attention from wandering. The voice acting was also phenomenal, but with a cast like that I would expect nothing less.

Ultimately you will get the most out of The Lego Movie if you have a history with Legos. It was a good movie, but I'm not planning on seeing it again soon.