One of the reasons I really like Ascension is that its flavor takes some time to appreciate. This is a game that simmers instead of pops. You won’t recognize these cards as your standard fantasy tropes. For instance, the game’s four factions might look vaguely familiar, but how familiar are they? They’re called Enlightment, Void, Mechana, and Lifebound. A look at the artwork and a basic understanding of each faction’s dynamics might lead to certain conclusions. So, uh, priests, evil, machines, and fairies? White, purple, brown, and green? Paladins, necromancers, engineers, and rangers? Humans, demons, dwarves, and elves? Religion, obfuscation, science, and nature? Knowledge, power, technology, and peace? Who knows.
After the jump, WWTBD Continue reading →
As much as I admire the lush graphics and puzzle design (i.e. how the character abilities interact with the world) in Trine, and as clearly as they’re carried over into Trine 2, complete with a new RPG system that lets you unlock new skills for each of the characters, I suspect this isn’t a game for me. Anytime I come upon a situation in which I have to try a jump more than five times, I’m pretty much done with a game. Life is too short to finesse the timing in a jumping sequence.
(Note that you can invoke the “life is too short” opt-out for nearly any skill based videogaming pursuit. That I choose to say this about jumping sequences is as arbitrary as someone else saying it about a build order in an RTS, a lap time in a driving game, or a high score on a pinball table. One man’s tedium is another man’s treasure.)
But one thing I love about Trine 2 is how the developers at Frozenbyte approach achievements. Every achievement is based on playing with their cool gameplay systems. For instance, there’s an achievement for firing three arrows into the air as the thief, and then swapping to the knight and catching all three arrows on your shield. Another achievement rewards you for using the wizard’s levitation power to make a stack of eight objects and then stand on top of the stack. There isn’t a single “beat a level”, “finish the game”, or “gather collectibles” achievement. You play the game for the game’s sake. You play the achievements for the achievement’s sake.
When you meet the big purple man at the end of the story mode in Marvel vs. Capcom 3, he summons silver versions of the game’s characters to help him. They look like T-1000s. I guess they’re “heralds”, because if you select the herald faction in the Heroes and Heralds DLC for Ultimate Marvel vs. Capcom, all your dudes will be silver. Since the two factions are otherwise identical, this automatically makes me want to play the other faction. Who wants to play as Spiderman and whatnot wearing a costume leached of all color?
After the jump, enough about the costumes already. What’s the deal with the game? Continue reading →
