Over the past week or so Steam has been running a sale on Halloween/horror themed games. One game, oddly, was Train Simulator 2012 with its Trains vs. Zombies DLC. (No, really.) I had seen Train Simulator before but had mostly been aware of it as that game that had about 150 pieces of DLC on Steam. (It appears that every single train car and locomotive ever made is available separately as DLC.) But for some reason the concept of “Trains vs Zombies” was weird enough that (along with the 50% discount) it convinced me to pick it up and actually look at it. So marketing successful, I suppose. Having played with the game a bit, I have to say that I am disappointed with it. I’m not sure what I was expecting actually but the game has for me failed to deliver, though I’m not sure if that is the fault of the game or not. As the title states the game is a train simulator. A train simulator has to be different from just about any other simulator out there in that you don’t have full freedom in where you go. A plane, boat or even farming simulator should let you wander around more or less freely within the simulation area but trains by their nature are confined to their rails. You don’t steer a train, you just manage the speed to keep it from falling off the rails on a curve and to make sure you stop at
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Review – Train Simulator 2012
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Echo Bazaar – Wandering the Paths of Wilmot’s End
So I’m wandering the paths of Wimot’s End. I know them well by now. I stop by the man with the bowler and tell him why I am here. I then spy on the faithful functionary to see what is in his paperwork. I then go back to the man with the bowler to promise not to kill anyone then swap a duffel bag for a different duffel bag five times before checking in with the woman feeding the fish. After I complete this sequence three times, she gives me a set of Collated Research. Yes, I am still playing Echo Bazaar. Sadly, I have reached the current limit on the story, my stats are all currently maxed out at 120 and I am just grinding out the storylets necessary to get the next item out of the Bazaar Side Streets. Right now I am working on collecting Collated Research in order to join God’s Editors. I need 12. It takes 11 actions in Wilmot’s End to raise my “Dramatic Tension” by 1 point. I need to raise it to 2 (three points) to get one set of research. So 33 actions plus one more to collect the research means I can get (almost) 3 per day if I do nothing else. That’s 4 days to get the 12 I need. Sadly, that’s all I really have to do right now. Before this I ground out War of Assassins missions in the Forgotten Quarter in order to get enough “Use
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Review – Kerbal Space Program
Ground control to Major Tom. Ground control to Major Tom. Take your protein pills and put your helmet on. Lately I’ve been playing a bit of an independent game called Kerbal Space Program. The game is a spaceflight simulator in which you design a rocket, put it out on the pad, launch it and attempt to get it into space and successfully return it to Kearth. The game starts in the vertical assembly building where you build your rocket from a series of predefined components. You can choose from a variety of solid and liquid fueled rockets, fuel tanks and motors as well as structural components like stage connectors and stabilizers. You put together one or more stages of the rocket then put the capsule containing your Kerbals, the inhabitants of the planet, on top. Then it’s off to the launch pad. There you can fire off the first stage of the rocket and see if it lifts off or if it simply falls over and explodes. Once off the ground you are responsible for controlling the rocket, jettisoning stages as they burn out and adjusting its pitch, roll and yaw and the thrust of the liquid fueled engines in an attempt to successfully gain altitude and get into orbit. Once there (assuming you managed to make it) you can burn your engines again to cause the capsule to re-enter the atmosphere and descend by parachute to a safe landing. The game is harder than it looks. It is easily
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Review – Singularity
Singularity came out around a year ago but I didn’t get around to picking it up until the Steam sale earlier this summer. In the game you play Special Forces operative Captain Nathanial Renko. You and your partner are sent to the island of Kotorga-12, located off the coast of Russia, to investigate the source of an electromagnetic pulse which disabled an American spy satellite. A second pulse disables the helicopter in which you are riding and you must find your way through the island and uncover the mysteries there in order to escape. For the most part the game is a standard FPS. You run through a more-or-less linear collection of corridors and rooms while fighting enemies and the occasional boss. The game attempts to set itself apart through its story and through a series of puzzles involving something called a “Temporal Manipulation Device” or TMD. The story is interesting. After making your way to shore you soon find that during the Cold War the Soviet Union discovered a substance known as “Element 99” on Katorga-12 and a research installation was built there to uncover its properties. You do this by reading notes and listening to voice logs (left on large reel-to-reel tape recorders) as you make your way through the base. This is probably the most atmospheric part of the game, as you make your way though ruined labs and classrooms. You learn that even though Katorga-12 was presented as a workers paradise, in reality there was a
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Review – Amnesia: The Dark Descent
The oldest and strongest emotion of mankind is fear, and the oldest and strongest kind of fear is fear of the unknown. — H.P. Lovecraft – Supernatural Horror in Literature Amnesia: The Dark Descent is a survival horror/adventure game from Frictional Games. However, unlike most “survival horror” you do not spend time fighting the creatures you encounter. In fact, you are not even capable of fighting them. All you can do is run and this, combined with the unsettling aspects of the world you find yourself in, creates a horror game that is truly about horror as opposed to being just another shooter with a handful of disturbing moments. Starting the Descent I commit these words to paper as I fear that neither I nor my sanity will survive this night, yet I am more afraid that my story will perish with me. Know that I have, for purely selfish reasons, committed many crimes against both man and nature. But also know that I am now attempting to set right a chain of circumstances started by myself through my own fear and ignorance. May the blind gods have mercy on me. In Amnesia you take on the role of Daniel, a man suffering from the amnesia of the title. While the concept of the amnesiac protagonist has been (over)used time and time again, Amnesia manages to introduce a new twist by revealing quite early on that you induced the amnesia in yourself deliberately. You discover this quite early on in
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Review – Borderlands
Pandora. I have used the last of my savings to travel to this world. There are no regular transports here and the crew of the tramp freighter that dropped me off seem surprised when I told them I would be staying. And looking around I can see why; the starport is nothing more than a cleared area in what looks to be a junkyard, the local wildlife has already attacked me twice and the place smells like a landfill. But, if the rumors are true, it is also the location of a vault of lost, Eridian technology. If I can find the Vault, I can sell it’s location and contents for enough credits to let me travel to the core worlds and live the rest of my life in luxury. I just have to find it first. I have used the last of my credit reserves to take a bus to a town in wastelands near where the Vault is said to be located. From there I can start my search. Borderlands came out around a year ago but I ignored it at the time because I was somehow under the impression that it was a multi-player only game. I have since learned that while it does have multi-player support it is primarily a single-player game and I picked it up earlier this year during a Steam sale. And I am glad I did because I discovered that it is actually quite a fun shooter. Welcome to Pandora I have
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Review – Minecraft
I have found myself on the shores of a strange land. I do not remember how I came to be here or know where I am. There are no signs of other people or habitation as far as I can see. I will explore, and see if I can find some indication as to where I am. Minecraft is an open sandbox style game being produced by Mojang Specifications. Players are dropped in an uninhabited world where they can explore to find resources they need to build tools and shelter to protect them from the hostile enemies that come out at night. That’s pretty much it. But despite what sounds like a very basic premise, the game offers a surprising amount of depth, detail and fun. I have managed to fashion a few simple tools for myself from the trees growing in this land and have used them to excavate a small cave for myself in the side of a rock wall. I had to do this because I have discovered that I am not alone in this strange place. Strange creatures walk the land at night and they have proven their hostility towards me. For now I crouch in this dark hole, but when the morning sun rises I will began my search for more resources with which to build weapons and armor for myself. To do this I will have to establish a safe base of operations and start mining for the materials I will need. When you
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Review – F.E.A.R. (First Encounter Assault Recon)
I was making my way slowly though the basement of the building, trying to find a way up to the main floor, when I found the first bodies. I’ve been in enough combat that bodies shouldn’t bother me anymore, but these did. Not because they were bodies, but because it looked like they had been partially eaten. And not by rats like the one I had shot earlier. These bites looked human. F.E.A.R. came out several years ago when I had an older machine that couldn’t handle it. Later I got a machine that could and looked for the game but by that point it was gone off the shelves. As a fan of survival horror games I was still interested in playing it and so was pleasantly surprised last month when Steam suddenly put the original F.E.A.R. and its expansions on sale. So I finally got the chance to play it. Even though the game has been out for five years now I still wanted to give my Paleogamer impressions of it. I finally got up to the main floor. The doors have been locked from the inside, so either things happened too fast for anyone here to escape or for some reason they didn’t want to. I’m going to… What was that? Strange… I could have sworn I just saw a child run down the corridor. Why would a child be here in the midst of this carnage? If she is here, I need to find her and
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Review – Hull Zero Three
Hull Zero Three by Greg Bear A man awakens in a dark room to find a child pulling him to his feet and telling him to hurry. The room is freezing. There are bodies everywhere. He follows the girl who awakened him only to see her apparently killed my some sort of creature. He is alone, he does not know where he is or even what his name is. He only knows that he is a Teacher. So begins Hull Zero Three, the latest novel by Greg Bear. We and Teacher soon find out that he is on a starship, traveling slower than light and on a centuries-long voyage to another star system, and that something has gone very badly wrong. We also learn that “Teacher” is not unique. There have been other Teachers before him and all of them are dead. Will his fate be different. In many ways Hull Zero Three is about discovery and exploration. At the start, Teacher knows no more about what is going on than we the readers do. He even has trouble remembering basic words and concepts (like what those tiny points of light outside the ship are). He learns about the situation on the ship as we do. And the situation is complicated. It becomes apparently quite rapidly that the ship is damaged. Less rapidly we learn that a war has taken place, and perhaps is still underway. Teacher and the companions he finds along the way must both determine what happened
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Review – Echo Bazaar – Fallen London
I have been given a commission by the Department of Menace Eradication to get rid of an infestation of Sorrow-Spiders that has overrun a building in Watchmaker’s Hill. I step around the blind beggar who is chanting outside the building and enter. The smell of rotten fruit is overwhelming. I look around the dimly-lit interior and see nothing but moldering furniture. In an earlier part of my life I would have opened the curtains to let some light in, but of course that would be useless here. Sorrow-spiders are the size of a small cat, and both armored and poisonous. The best way to deal with them, although not the tidiest approach, is to hit them as hard as you can with a hammer. I take a tighter grip on mine and step forward cautiously. Lately I have been playing quite a bit of Echo Bazaar, aka Fallen London. Echo Bazaar is a web-based, story-based game set in the city of London, which has been stolen by bats and carried far below the surface of the Earth to the Neath. It now sits just across the Underzee, a vast underground sea, from Hell and is home to the Echo Bazzar. The Bazzar and its strange masters have stolen other cities through the ages and London is the fifth city where they have made their home. The Bazaar is located at the heart of Fallen London, in the Neath, a cavern of impossible size, by the Unterzee, a tremendous saltwater lake.
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