Free and Worth Every Penny - Issue 57: RPG Double Feature

Holiday weekends are for RPGs.  Having three days off instead of the usual, far-too-short two is a perfect excuse to dive deep into level grinding, loot collecting, dungeon crawling bliss.

But what kind?  Single-character or party-focused?  Real-time or turn-based?  Plot-driven or randomized?  There are a lot of choices out there, and a lot of good free options whichever way you go.  Let's keep things simple this time, and cut plot out of the equation - if you wanted to spend your weekend reading you'd go pick up a good book.  Allow me to present you with two options I've become thoroughly hooked on over the last couple of weeks in a Labor Day Weekend...

The Enchanted Cave

First up, credit goes to Phil Kollar for pointing me to The Enchanted Cave in his recent free games feature for Game Informer (which you should also go read - he gets paid for this stuff.  How do I get in on that?).  Enchanted Cave is a turn-based RPG that bears more than a little similarity on first glace to the previously-featured Desktop Dungeons, though it develops in a very different way once you start playing.

You'll start out as an unimpressive weakling...

Most of the gameplay is straightforward turn-based hack & slashing.  Static enemies litter the screen, and moving into them triggers a battle.  Any spells that you find can be dragged onto your character during the fight to help turn the tide, and you'll gain some gold for your trouble every time you defeat an enemy.  Where Enchanted Cave differentiates itself is in its progression mechanic - you don't gain experience or levels.  Instead, you pick up permanent stat bonuses in the form of gems as you go deeper into the dungeon, and the occasional golden-colored artifact that is much more powerful than your standard items.  When you are forced to flee via a pair of escape wings - and you will need to flee regularly in the early game - you get to keep those stat gems and artifacts, making your next trip down that much easier.

If you've played any of the Shiren the Wanderer games, it's a very similar design, though considerably easier here as you get going than in that series.  If I have a complaint about Enchanted Cave, it's that the difficulty level drops off sharply in the latter half of the dungeon - there are 99 floors, and every 10 floors you find a shop to barter items with and a new checkpoint from which to start your next run.  Eventually, you have enough gold and artifacts that the escape wings almost become an afterthought, because surviving to the next checkpoint is an almost certain event.

But with a little perseverance, nothing will stand in your way.

Still, it managed to be a fun ride for me the whole way through, and I'd say I spent 2 to 3 hours exploring Enchanted Cave before I definitively put it to bed.  The stat system and loot drops are diverse enough to serve as a solid "one more turn, let me see what I get next" carrot, and Kongregate's achievement system is at play here as well, so there's a little bit of extra incentive to keep going even after floor 99 if you're into that sort of thing.  (You can make repeat trips into the dungeon after winning, and I did.)  It'll also save your game for you, so you don't have to finish it in one run.  Go give it a spin and see if you can beat it into submission faster than I did.

Shoot First

If you find yourself disappointed that The Enchanted Cave quickly becomes a walk in the park, don't worry.  I promise there will be no complaints about this game being too easy.

From the same team that brought us the exceptional Action Fist, Shoot First plays like the frenetic child of the roguelike genre and Robotron.  Moving your tiny monochrome adventurer with the WASD keys and aiming with the mouse, you'll go as deep as you can through randomized levels, shooting everything that moves and running from the stuff you can't shoot.  "As deep as you can", by the way, may be Level Two.  Three if you're lucky.

Theoretically this screenshot shows Level 6. I cannot confirm that it exists.

Where Shoot First triumphs - aside from being an extremely challenging top-down shooter cast in an RPG mold - is in aesthetics and tightly focused design.  Much like Action Fist, there's so much love for games of yesteryear in here that it hurts.  The game "boots up" with a DOS command each time you run it, and (optional) scanlines evoke memories of grainy adventures on the tiny CRTs of my youth.  A superb soundtrack and great sound effects round out the package, making this feel like a lost classic you might have stumbled across in somebody's shoebox of 5.25" floppies.

And yet, from a gameplay standpoint, it couldn't have been done back in the 80's;  it's too much informed by the ideas and technology of the time since.  Thrown back by the force of your shots, monsters blow apart into piles of coins (synonymous here with experience) when defeated.  Cover is destructible, and crumbles under enemy fire or your own.  A surprisingly large variety of weapons - of which you may only carry one - forces you to choose a combat style and master it, while item pickups - of which you can only hold three - help you even the odds a bit.  An automap helps you keep track of where you've been and where you need to go.

If I have a complaint about Shoot First, it's the opposite of my problem with The Enchanted Cave...  this game seriously, but seriously wants to kill you.  Your character has precious little health to begin with, and there are so many ways to take it from you.  Trap rooms lock you in with swarms of enemies.  Boulders roll at you down innocent-looking hallways.  Floor tiles fall away to reveal deadly spikes.  Powerful bosses threaten to crush you in moments.  It's malicious.  It's like the most tense moments of Spelunky, all the time.

But it's also a hell of a lot of fun.  Oh, and it has co-op!  I didn't get to try that, but hopefully one of you will, and you'll let me know how it goes.  Shoot First is Windows-only, and is available as a free download (under 10MB) here.   You'll also find at the bottom of that page a "Donate With Incentive" button - if you like the game, any amount you want to give will get you a version with a new environment and two new weapons to play with.  I ponied up some dough even though I'll probably never get to the Ice Level.  It's worth it anyway.

That's it for this week, kids.  Have fun, and we'll see you back here again soon.

"Free And Worth Every Penny" is a column I collaborate on with Mike Bellmore at Colony of Gamers.  This piece also appears there.

A Little Time With Metroid: Other M

I'm not usually a Day One purchaser of a lot of games, but for high-profile Nintendo releases I'll sometimes make an exception, and I had a $15 gift card to Toys R' Us sitting around doing nothing from when I picked up Dragon Quest IX last month, so over the lunch hour today I ran out and got a copy of Metroid: Other M.  It wouldn't be true to say I'm fanatical about the Metroid series - like most gamers who grew up in the 80's and early 90's I view Super Metroid as a truly awesome classic, but I didn't have a SNES as a kid so I didn't play it until years later.  I never played Metroid II at all, never finished the original Metroid, and while I own the Metroid Prime Collection on the Wii (and it's really good), I haven't finished those games either.  So I'm a casual fan of the series at best; I love the atmosphere of Metroid games, I think Samus Aran is a great character, but I don't spend hours doing speedruns or getting 100% of the secrets.

So why pick up Other M on release day (aside from being able to get a discount, which I admit helped)?  Honestly, it was largely because of the controversy it's generating.  Reviews are sharply divided, and while they're trending towards good scores, there are some surprisingly low scores in there from big review sites.  6.25 out of 10 from Game Informer.  3 out of 5 from Gamespy.  Contrast those to 9 / 10 and 8 / 10 scores from sites like Eurogamer and Gametrailers.

Now, I've said before that I'm not really interested in writing scored reviews here, and I don't intend to start with this one.  But the wide range of reactions did make me more interested in trying the game for myself.  This is the first core Nintendo game to generate any serious controversy and division of critical opinion since Wind Waker, and that was almost entirely about art style, not character, story or gameplay.  Before that, I'm not even sure I know what the last one would have been.  I'd say Metroid Prime, but there was very little division over that - pretty much everyone loved it.  So it's nice to see the Big N being willing to take a step outside their comfort zone with one of their flagships, even if it ends up being a stumbling step.  Obviously Metroid was a good candidate for that, since they'd already done it once before with Prime.  I'd like to see them give other franchises a taste of the same diversity.

How do I think it turned out?  After about two hours, I'm really enjoying it.  A lot, actually, considering how harsh some of the reviews were.  It absolutely feels like Metroid to me, however much as I'm qualified to say that.  Is it the Metroid we know?  No, probably not quite.  But I don't think that necessarily means it can't be a Metroid we love.

Story Stuff:

Unfortunately, I think that the complaints about story delivery that many reviews have levied at the game are spot on.  It's stilted, it's awkward, and it goes on far too long.  The voice acting is (charitably) adequate, but the writing is flat-out bad.  I disagree, however, with the claim some people have made that Nintendo and Team Ninja have somehow destroyed the character of Samus - at least so far I do.  Let me offer my take on this, with the understanding that there will be spoilers, but only from the first two hours because that's all I've played.  If you don't want to know anything about the story, just skip down to "Gameplay Stuff."

A lot of heavy exposition is front-loaded at the beginning of Other M about Samus' past in the army, and how she constantly felt bitter and resentful because everybody treated her like a delicate flower, couldn't see past her being a woman, etc.  It doesn't exactly match the independent badass characterization she's had in other games - she comes off as a bit whiny - but it's all clearly portrayed as ancient history... from before she became a bounty hunter, before Metroid 1.  Some unspecified bad turn of events takes place, and she leaves the army to strike out on her own, clearly pissing off her commanding officer Adam in doing so.  All of that seems true to character, and I have no trouble buying young Samus as a rebellious outcast in the army, even if the "thumbs down" thing (you'll see) is silly and way overplayed.

At the point of Other M, the events of Metroid, Metroid II and Super Metroid have transpired.  Samus has spent all of that time effectively alone, fighting space pirates, fighting Metroids, fighting Ridley, and getting the occasional handshake from the Federation for her trouble.  The beginning of Other M is the first time she re-encounters the folks who used to be her old comrades, and she accidentally walks in on their mission.  She's stepping on their toes but they clearly need her help, so she agrees to assist.  Her old commander obviously still has a chip on his shoulder about her leaving, though, so she also agrees to follow orders to keep everything calm.

I really don't have issue with any of the above.  The "following orders" bit to restrict your weaponry is contrived, yes, but no moreso than their usual way of doing it by just taking all your powers away in the first 5 minutes and scattering them around the planet for you to collect.  The only place the story starts to get weird is where she delivers an overwrought "I viewed Adam as a father figure" monologue, and starts apparently longing to have that male authority back in her life.  I can see how this could come off as sexist, especially seeing the sort of figure Samus has been cast as in the past, but I honestly don't think it was consciously written that way.  She's been out in space alone for years, and this team was the last human camaraderie she knew.  She's a loner reconsidering her solitude, reaching for what used to be familiar.  Viewed in that light, her wistful recollection of a simpler time in her life seems easier to swallow.

Besides (actual spoiler here, skip this paragraph if you don't want to know), Metroid Fusion - the GBA Advance game that is the "last" piece of the Metroid story so far - tells the player that Samus' commander Adam sacrificed himself to save her.  I can pretty much guarantee that's going to happen in this game, and it'll probably be where she reaffirms that it isn't safe for her to have friends, reclaims her solitude, and strikes out on her own to be gaming's most independent woman again.  In order to have that moment work, the Adam / Samus relationship has to go from tension to reconciliation over the course of the game... or at least, that's my guess.  I may be giving them more credit than they deserve, but it's the only reason I can think of to start the story this way.

Gameplay Stuff:

This part will be shorter, because it's good!  I like it!  It doesn't require any arguably-stretched excuses like the story does!  The auto-aiming works fine, and the fact that you need to be Ninja Gaiden-dodging and powering up shots while you do it keeps it from being an Easy Button.  Targeting the screen for firing off missiles and scanning things is a little awkward to get used to, but I'm already feeling comfortable with it.  The sense of speed and mobility is really, really good, and they definitely have the "keep your eye out for hidden stuff" motif going on strong;  I already found one missile pack that wasn't indicated at all by a blip on my radar (because it was behind a hidden enemy), and there's all sorts of places I'm noticing that I'll have to backtrack to later in order to pick up things I can't reach yet.

I also like that they balanced out the missile auto-recharge by having each missile pack only add one missile to your total instead of the standard 5.  Nice choice.

Long story short (too late!), it's Metroid.  It's a different spin on it for sure, but if you like Metroid I feel confident in saying you should give this a spin, even if it's only with a rental.  Personally, I'm eager to keep going.

Free and Worth Every Penny - Issue 55: Solipskier

Speed and elegance are two of the most addictive qualities a game can have, for me;  largely, I think, because those are qualities I know to be lacking in myself.  I'm not a nimble person - I'm nonathletic, I'm a little overweight, etc - and while I possess some verbal grace, physical grace is not a trait I'm burdened with.  So when a game allows me to take the role of a character who exhibits these characteristics with ease and style, I get hooked pretty easily.  All of which is to say, as of this last weekend I had the 7th highest global score at this week's Free and Worth Every Penny installment, with over 60 million points.  Yeah.  Little bit hooked.

A slick combination of ideas from Canabalt and Line Rider, Solipskier challenges you to keep a tiny skier alive as long as possible, hitting targets, avoiding obstacles, and pulling off sweet tricks to rack up points as you go.  You don't control the skier himself, though - you draw the world on which he will ski.  As you paint the ground in front of him, he zips along from left to right, speeding down or climbing up hills as you make them, leaping off ramps you create, and plummeting to his doom should you fail to catch him when he comes back down.

It's an extremely simple premise, but the solid execution makes it a completely addicting experience.  The scoring mechanic is straightforward:  you earn more points the longer your skier stays alive, and earning multiplier bonuses scores those points much faster.  Multiplier bonuses can be earned by hitting randomized gates, traveling through "tunnels" (rapid gate sequences), and pulling off mid-air tricks.  Hit a gate in mid-air, and it's an extra bonus.  Jump so high over a gate that you're off the screen, and it's an extra bonus.  Basically, the game rewards you for doing stuff that feels awesome, which is a fine design principle in my book.

Ski like the wind, little skier man.

Of course, it wouldn't be much of a game if reward didn't carry risk.  The higher your multiplier, the faster you go, up to truly insane speeds.  Two types of obstacles pose the constant threat of failure:  blocked gates, which will instantly kill your skier if he runs into them;  and "jumps", areas of the track where you won't be able to draw ground, so you must make sure to get your skier safely in the air with enough speed to clear the jump before coming up on one.  The game does a great job of giving you advance warnings for both beneficial and harmful elements, by popping up distance indicators on the right-hand side of the screen, but when you're going 90kmh it's hard to react in time.

Aesthetically, Solipskier is a delight, with a simple but effective visual style that pulls your attention right where it needs to be at every moment and gives you lots of visual feedback when you're doing well.  The music is a great touch - when you start, you'll be accompanied by a fast, energetic soundtrack to get your heart racing, but go fast enough, and your skier's headphones will blow off, leaving you with only the rush of the wind (and allowing you to concentrate just a little bit more).  Gentle classical piano music serves as a eulogy after each death, and then it's back to try again.

If you want to see it in action, here's someone having a very good run.

We've seen a lot of these distance-based randomized games hit the web in the last year, with titles like Canabalt and Robot Unicorn Attack taking the lion's share of the attention, but Solipskier may just be my favorite of all the ones I've played.  The control scheme takes a little getting used to, but once you do, controlling your skier becomes an almost effortless dance of deciding what you want him to do and willing those actions into being.  Just use a gentle hand and have a little patience, and you'll be leaping through gates perfectly in no time.  Then the only trouble will be making yourself stop.

Solipskier is...

• a very stylish and polished presentation of a simple concept.
• extremely pleasant to look at and listen to.
• one of the best-controlling webgames I've played in a long time.
• occupying far too much of my free time.  And some of my not free time.

Should you enjoy the game as much as I do and have an iPhone / iPad, it's available in the App Store for $2.99, which is where I marked my 60 million point high score.  Either way, though, it's totally free on the web, so go play!

EDIT:  Turns out, if you're using Internet Explorer, that second link will also take you straight to the Apple iTunes Store instead of to the game.  Apparently the developers are redirecting all IE users there, rather than letting them play the game on their site.  Which is pretty awful.

The game is still great, and if you'd like to play it in IE, this link to Kongregate should work fine, but shame on them for pulling a trick like that without disclosing what they're doing.

"Free And Worth Every Penny" is a column I collaborate on with Mike Bellmore at Colony of Gamers.  This piece also appears there.

Interesting Deal - Machinarium for $5

Machinarium is a visually gorgeous, very slow-paced point and click adventure game, somewhat in the vein of old-school LucasArts games like Maniac Mansion or The Dig.  You'll wander around alien-looking landscapes, solving puzzles, combining inventory items, and generally clicking on everything until you find the right combination of doodads and actions to let you proceed.  Clicking the link above will take you directly to a demo - the whole game is done in Flash, so you can get a very good sense of how the game plays right there in your browser.

Your strange little robot must navigate a strange world full of other strange robots.
It sure is pretty, though.

You'll notice on the front page that Machinarium's price has been knocked down substantially, from $20 to only $5 for the next week, in what they're calling a "Pirate Amnesty Sale."  According to their blog, the DRM-free Machinarium has been pirated by somewhere between 85 and 95 percent of the people who played it, and so they want to entice those people to come buy a legal copy with a deeply discounted price.

I'm not entirely sure how I feel about their stated numbers or their response, as I mention in the comments below the blog post.  I played the demo for Machinarium when it first came out, and while I didn't buy it, I didn't then go pirate it either.  I just didn't play it.  It frankly didn't seem like something I wanted to pay $20 for - it was a visually remarkable game, but not all that much more so than Amanita's two previous games, Samorost and Samorost 2, which were entirely free and $5 respectively.  It was also hampered by a rather cumbersome interface - you need to walk your character next to an object before you learn whether or not you can interact with it, for instance, and the walking speed is quite slow.

I have no idea how Amanita came up with the 85-95% piracy number for Machinarium (the blog calls it their "estimate from the feedback", which could mean almost anything), but I'm skeptical of it.  I'm a little bit skeptical that there are that many people who want to play through a slow-paced point and click adventure game at all anymore, and I'm more skeptical that those who really do would choose to steal rather than pay for one of the very few ones that gets made these days.  And given that my initial response to the game was, "It's very pretty and neat, but it's not worth $20 to me," I'm naturally inclined to blame their poor sales on overpricing their game rather than on too many people stealing it.

That said, I think $5 is a fine price ($10 also would have been reasonable) for a great-looking independently produced adventure game with a lot of charm, and Machinarium certainly is that.  I wish the undertone of "obviously you pirated it before and now we're guilting you into buying it" wasn't there, but I did pick up a copy, and if it looks like it might be up your alley, I'd recommend trying the demo and if you like it, buying a copy as well.  They obviously could use the extra sales.

Free and Worth Every Penny - Issue 53: Nostalgia Wave

Let me get this out of the way up front: this is not a post about abandonware.  I know that there are umpteen sites where you can go and download DOS and Windows classic games for the low, low price of $0, under circumstances that some folks consider A-okay and others consider more dubious.  This is not the place for that argument, or links to those sites.  We all have Google and know how to use it, yes?  Okay, cool.

That said, though, sometimes publishers give us the gift of a piece of our youth - repackaged, or just as it was - free of charge.  Over the last few years we've seen several instances of this:  Rockstar with their Classics Collection and Mektek's recent re-release of Mechwarrior 4 come most readily to mind.  It was recommended by one of the forum members over at Colony Of Gamers (thank you!) that I do a writeup of the free Star Control 2 remake The Ur-quan Masters, and I decided I'd do one better and just do a round-up of all the totally legal, totally free old games I could think of.  So brace yourselves, it's a...

#1. The Ur-Quan Masters

Let's start where CoG member NotJeff suggested, with the open-source remake of 1992 classic Star Control 2.  Bringing the galactic adventure of Star Control 2 into a slightly more modern era, The Ur-Quan Masters is essentially an enhanced port blessed by the original developers that's been underway since 2002.  Version 0.6.2 was released in 2007, and adds online multiplayer to the already considerable content of the original game.

If you aren't familiar, it's a little bit of a 4X game, a little bit adventure game, a little bit top-down combat, and a whole lot wacky.  I didn't get to play a lot of Star Control 2 as a kid, but what I remember is the extremely strong characterization of the alien races - you will laugh at some, and tremble at others - the fun of hunting for minerals on planet surfaces, and the great music.  All of that has been preserved here, including optional updates to the music if you prefer them.

If you fondly remember Star Control 2, it's all waiting for you just as you remember it.  If you've never tried it, now's a great time to give it a whirl.

#2. Sierra Adventure Games

Next up, some games that I do have a much deeper personal connection with - Sierra adventure games.  These were quite literally my introduction to gaming, playing King's Quest I through IV on a Tandy 1000 EX in the mid-80's with my parents.  A fair bit of noise has been made (and rightly so) about the long-awaited successful release of The Silver Lining, but those guys aren't the only ones who are keeping Sierra's legacy alive.

For starters, AGD Interactive has been lovingly re-creating Sierra's adventures for years now - I first remember coming across their work on the original King's Quest sometime in college.  They've now done three full games - the first two in the King's Quest series, and Quest for Glory II - and the scope of their work is difficult to overstate.  Entirely new VGA graphics, music, voicework for both of the KQ games...  truly, I think of these as the definitive versions of the games I loved as a kid.  It's wonderful work, and if you have any love for adventure games, you need to check it out.

Quite apart from them, Infamous Adventures released a similarly complete graphic, music and speech overhaul of King's Quest III back in 2006, and while I confess to not having played it myself yet, it certainly looks excellent.   Between AGD and Infamous Adventures, revisiting memories of Sierra games is easier - and better - than anyone could reasonably expect.

#3. ScummVM Adventure Games

Let's stay on the adventure kick for a moment and point out how great ScummVM is.  If you've never used it, it's basically a modern player for all the classic SCUMM adventure games, of which there were a metric ton.  Almost every classic LucasArts adventure (Monkey Island 1 and 2, Sam & Max, Loom, two Indiana Jones games, The Dig, Full Throttle) can be plugged into ScummVM, which runs on damn near anything, and they'll run like a dream.  Many of the classic Sierra games will work as well.  Of course, those games you need to legally own before playing them in ScummVM, so that's not the purview of this article, but there are three classic adventures you can download completely free that will work right out of the box.

Remarkably, this image with monkeys in pirate hats is not from a LucasArts game. I was shocked too.

Beneath a Steel Sky, Flight of the Amazon Queen and Lure of the Temptress are all now freeware, and are only a click away.  BaSS is a classic post-apocalyptic tale of a man on the run (and in addition to being a great game has the distinction of being animated by Dave Gibbons of Watchmen fame).  Flight of the Amazon Queen, pictured above, is a much more light-hearted Indiana Jones-style jungle adventure.  Lure of the Temptress I'm not familiar with, but is apparently fantasy-themed.  But hey, it's free, so if you like adventure games, hop to!

#4. Rockstar Classics Collection

I feel like there isn't a whole lot to say here, because it's GTA, right?  I mean, we all know what GTA is about.  If you've never played the first two, it's hard to say that they hold up tremendously well in a world where GTA IV and its expansions can both be had for well under $20 in a sale, but they're still pretty good top-down fun and perfect for gaming on a laptop if you're on the go.  They also had great multiplayer long before the 3D GTA games figured out how to do that.

Wild Metal, I confess, I have not played.  It won't cost me anything but time, so maybe I should get on that?  If you've played it, leave a comment and let me know if I should.

#5. Mechwarrior 4

This one probably isn't news to many of you, since it was a big deal a few months back, but MekTek has released Mechwarrior 4 for free, one assumes at least partly to drum up interest for their new Mechwarrior game, which is coming...  someday.

That's the good news - and don't get me wrong, it IS good news.  Mech 4 is a pretty great game and not a whole lot of people played it at release (myself included).  The bad news is, MekTek kind of stealth-bundled the whole thing with their own Impulse-esque delivery service, MTX, and that didn't go so well.  A lot of people weren't able to download the game at all, and those who were able still sometimes had problems with MTX as a launcher.

MekTek promised quickly that they would release a downoad free of MTX, but as far as I can see they have not yet done so.  The community has come up with workarounds, which you can feel free to try if you're so inclined, but it's unfortunate that this game comes with a side of either a lousy delivery client or required back-end tinkering.

#6. A Whole Lot More

We're only scratching the surface here, really;  for all that we PC gamers complain (and rightly so) about restrictive DRM and fear of not being able to play our games down the road, there are still a lot of publishers happy to create goodwill by giving away older wares.  The original Railroad Tycoon is free now, if you feel like building trains across the country.  If you want to play through the predecessors to Halo, all three Marathon games are completely free.  For strategy buffs, Command & Conquer Gold can be had gratis, and one of my favorite strategy games as a kid, Defender of the Crown, is free now too.  M.U.L.E. has been completely overhauled and is available with online multiplayer, and the classic text adventure version of Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy is playable as a webgame provided by the BBC.

And there's probably a lot more I don't know about.  If you do, leave a comment and share it with everyone.  And here's hoping that more publishers in the future go through their back catalogs and choose to donate some of their older work to the public good.  These games aren't just good for nostalgia, after all;  they're part of our history, and helped build the industry we care so much about.  It's great to see them kept alive.

"Free And Worth Every Penny" is a column I collaborate on with Mike Bellmore at Colony of Gamers.  This piece also appears there.