Titanfall 2 is the second game from Respawn Entertainment. The original Titanfall planned to have a single-player mode but it was cut for a focus on multiplayer, so with its sequel, Respawn wanted to give players the full experience.
This time around Titanfall 2 contains the same impressive multiplayer but also a single-player campaign focused on a green pilot and his Titan. With this being their first single-player experience since the team left Infinity Ward, a question would be if they still have the same magic.
Castlevania: Lords of Shadow – Mirror of Fate was originally a 3DS title but has since been released for the Xbox 360 and Playstation 3 (7 months after launch), and since I’m talking about it, Steam (1 year after launch). It’s a middle title that fits between Castlevania: Lords of Shadow and the sequel Lords of Shadows 2.
There’s a lot of different Castlevanias out there, and unfortunately, Mirror of Fate is going to be compared to many of them, especially considering what the story involves. Any game in a franchise that has been around since the days of the NES will have a long lineage to live up to.
Assassin’s Creed has gone through a lot of changes over the year, but one of the last traditional Assassin’s Creed was Assassin’s Creed Rogue, which came out at the same time as Assassin’s Creed Unity. Rogue was a follow up to Assassin’s Creed IV: Black Flag, that was left on the previous generation of consoles while Unity attempted to wow audiences. Both games were released in the same year, and it certainly shows.
It’s not that the team helming Assassin’s Creed Rogue didn’t try, in fact, I would say Assassin’s Creed Rogue’s team may have actually had the most chance to create something special and meaningful and in some ways have. However, the fact that this was created at the same time as Assassin’s Creed Unity, meant that there was always going to be a primary team and a secondary team, and it’s very clear that Assassin’s Creed Rogue being on the previous generation consoles was always going to be it.
Thomas Was Alone was the first game by Mike Bithell. It looks like a simplistic platformer where the player just moves simple geometric shapes around and the second they reach an outline of that shape the level is over, and that actually is pretty much it.
But that simplistic description, while truthful misses so much of why Thomas Was Alone is a major game. The obvious place is the story, and the meaning of the title, which is just the opening words of an amazing narration. The story begins with Thomas being alone and looking for friends, and from there the player will run into multiple different shapes to join Thomas on an adventure through the nameless space.
Delores: A Thimbleweed Park Mini-Adventure is a followup to the point and click adventure game, Thimbleweed Park. It was created during the ongoing (as of the time of this writing) COVID-19 pandemic and released as a way to test Ron Gilbert’s new gameplay engine.
With that said, this should be treated more like a tech demo, rather than even a demo, as this is not intended to be an upcoming game. It’s just “a little more Thimbleweed Park.” for fans of that game and for what it is, it works.
Thimbleweed Park is a brand new point and click adventure from the minds who created Maniac Mansion including Ron Gilbert, Gary Winnick, and David Fox.
Thimbleweed Park starts with a simple tutorial which shows a mysterious murder, from there the player takes control of two characters, Agent Ray and Reyes. The two characters feel based on X-Files’ Scully and Mulder, and it’s hardly the only reference in the game.
The Shapeshifting Detective is an FMV game. This is from the same studio as The Infectious Madness of Doctor Dekker and is the followup title.
An FMV game is mostly about having a live actor talk directly to the camera and player and act out their role, then the player has some level of interactivity. In The Infectious Madness of Doctor Dekker, it was a complex language system where it tries to parse questions from the viewer and respond, though that system didn’t work exactly as promised. The Shapeshifting Detective took a step back from that and created a better framework, and it’s a huge improvement.
The Infectious Madness of Doctor Dekker is an FMV game where players take on the role of a psychiatrist and sees several patients.
Oddly on the first day, the player finds out that the previous psychiatrist was brutally murdered potentially by one of his patients, strange because that seems to be something that probably should have come up during the interview process.
The Infectious Madness of Doctor Dekker focuses on the player having sessions with multiple patients and through them learning about the patient’s lives and previous doctor, the titular Doctor Dekker. The core of the experience is to try to solve who murdered Doctor Dekker and try to steer the lives of the patients.
The Infectious Madness of Doctor Dekker is an FMV game and what that means is everything is a video, so similar to Her Story or Telling Lies, every response to a question will be a video. There are several actors in The Infectious Madness of Doctor Dekker, and they all do a very good job with the material. Their acting and the presentation of the responses are what drew me into the game and the story keeps me interested in finding out what would happen next.
Doctor Dekker’s patients are not typical of psychiatrists, in fact of the five initial patients, each has a unique and interesting story claiming some supernatural ability. These abilities are quite reasonable, one character claims he gets an extra hour each day, and another claims she can charm people. There’s nothing outlandish as a typical comic book superpower, but instead realistic powers that could also be forms of mental illness.
What’s interesting though is that Doctor Dekker starts this process by playing it very ambiguous with characters just presenting their problems and their initial thoughts of Doctor Dekker. Over time though the story continued and I saw more and more of .. well the madness promised by the game. The Infectious Madness of Doctor Dekker has some clever scenes that will make players wonder what they just saw. I’m quite impressed with the experience and fell in love with the game as I played.
There are a few issues with the experience. While the game pushes the idea of natural discussion between you and patients, it’s very clear that the game has very specific ideas about what you would be asking. If the patent says “I hope you’re not a psycho” You could respond “Psycho” “I’m not a psycho” “you are a Psycho” or more, and the game will take each response as if you said the keyword “Psycho”.
Your spelling will also matter and there are a few words that are a bit particular even to someone who loves the written word. The game also has a decent amount of Britishisms, such as the word lorry for a truck that comes up early in one character’s story. It’s not a huge problem, but American players will feel this game is clearly from another country from some of the phrases the characters use.
What’s interesting is that players can make a few choices along the way in their responses to players, perhaps suggesting patients push their powers to the limits or avoid using their powers. These choices appear to mostly focus on minor changes during the next day’s session, which is a bit of a shame because the actual results are underwhelming. The game uses these choices to summarize the entire story at the end, but sadly, I found these to be lacking.
At the end of the game you’re expected to have found the killer, while this is random in each game, the choice in my game was a bit obvious. She was the only killer who made sense. The experience of the randomized killer is acceptable if a bit gimmicky. From there though, the player gets follow-up videos on each character.
Much of The Infectious Madness of Doctor Dekker hinges on the ambiguous nature of the story. While all the characters may have powers beyond what we consider normal, it’s also possible some of them may have other issues masquerading as these powers, and that’s what made the story interesting for me.
The issue I have with the ending is rather than leave the story open, it tries to strip the ambiguous nature of the story away, so players feel they have a definitive ending. There are two endings per character, but neither improves the story. There’s also a generic ending for the character you’re playing and those don’t make a lot of sense.
The fact is if I was to consider the game before the finale, I’d probably give this game a 9 or even higher because the experience was so well handled and delivered, and at the end of the game I wanted more.
The problem is these finales end the experience and leaves the player with too much closer. Your story is done, there are no questions to ask. Time to go play something else.
It’s a game that probably could have been 10 minutes shorter and been a whole lot more enjoyable.
Because of the endings, I give The Infectious Madness of Doctor Dekker a
7/10
I still recommend this for fans of Visual Novels or anyone who enjoyed Her Story or Telling Lies, but I would recommend both of those games over this.
If you want more of my opinions on The Infectious Madness of Doctor Dekker, you can find that on a video I recently did comparing this game to Her Story that is available here:
Telling Lies is from Sam Barlow who previously made Her Story, a very popular indie game that is worthy of quite a bit of praise. Telling Lies is promised to be bigger, better, and more in-depth and it has succeeded at that.
Telling Lies focuses on David Smith, as he has moved across the country for work… ok that’s not exactly it, the problem with Telling Lies is similar to Her Story’s issue. The entire game is driven by the narrative and ultimately the discovery of that narrative is crucial to the game. There’s not a huge gameplay system or a separate puzzle, it’s about how the player discovers and learns about the story and the slow reveal of it, and thus much of the story is a spoiler.
Magrunner: Dark Pulse is a first-person puzzle game that has a gun that has two fire modes. If it sounds like I am trying to make Magrunner: Dark Pulse sound like Portal, that’s because I am. If you think that comparison is unfair, give me another paragraph.
Similar to Portal, the main player is placed in a number of tests where they have to solve the puzzle to exit the room. The game starts to move away from the test chamber progression in the second Act and ultimately has the player fighting… well in this case it appears to be Cthulhu.
So not everything is Portal here, and it is lacking some of the best parts of that comparison, having neither a charismatic villain such as Glados or a focused and humorous story, but Magrunner has clearly learned about game design from Portal as it tries very hard to imitate that formula that still remains one of the strongest puzzle games ever made.
Kinglink Reviews 