Papers, Please - Brief Review

Anyone who has ever worked retail, customer service, customs, or any job that requires you to interact with and follow a procedure with dozens of strangers on a daily basis knows the issues that can arise when the urge to help your fellow man conflicts with a need to follow the rules of your job. A few years ago, I played Papers, Please and thoroughly enjoyed it - recently though, after working retail for a bit, I was reminded of how good a game this was.

Papers, Please puts the player in the shoes of a border inspector controlling entrance into the communist state of Arstotzka. Every day, the player is supposed to follow the rules and let in people with valid passports, while keeping up with sets of new rules that reflect the shifting political atmosphere of the game world. One day, because of a terrorist threat, I was instructed to simply bar entry to all people from a certain country. Every correct processing of a person you do (for some odd reason in a communist state) earns you money. Incorrect processings can get you warned, fined, or worse. At the end of the day, you can use your money to keep your family warm and fed, maybe upgrade your workstation if you have extra dough.

I mentioned the retail job I had because Papers, Please makes you feel the pressure of balancing speed, accuracy, and appeals to humanity. The shame I felt at work when I incorrectly processed a return and held up a customer several minutes was similar to the shame I felt when I got lazy with my checks and let a suicide bomber into Arstotzka. Sometimes customers want returns when they don't have any form of proof of purchase or they're barely outside the return policy date. Sometimes people need to flee to Arstotzka without valid paperwork or die. In either case, you're just doing your job.

As far as gameplay goes, border inspection makes for a surprisingly entertaining and challenging experience. Every day, the difficulty slowly mounts as you keep up with changing regulations. You have limited desk space to inspect each person's documents. I was constantly trying to make my methods more efficient, less error-prone. Every new rule meant that I'd make less money unless I improved my speed without compromising accuracy too much. 

The story the game tells is also really interesting, though I won't really say anything about it other than that there are about twenty endings so players should replay Papers, Please to get more than one ending. It is a very thoughtful commentary on many themes: doing what you're told, breaking the rules for another person, stereotyping, fear and paranoia over terrorism, and totalitarian society.

Papers, Please is well worth it at $10. Additionally, it has very low system requirements - I'd only recommend a decent mouse over a touchpad. I highly recommend Papers, Please

Buying Games on Steam

Steam is my go-to client of choice when playing any game on my PC.  I love how games can be purchased, organized, and played off the same client, with very little difficulty.  This week, I'm writing a short article on my thought process of discovering random indie games, or buying recommended games.

The Consuming Shadow, A spoiler free review

The consuming shadow is a project spearheaded entirely by Ben Croshaw, better know by his nickname Yahtzee, creator of the show zero punctuation on The Escapist. Before I begin, I should mention that I have long been a fan of Yahtzee work though I will try to remain as objective as possible.

Apparently Scotland was spared from the shadow

The Consuming Shadow takes place in an alternate version modern England that is under attack by an otherworld being attempting to invade the world within a 60 hour time limit. Your job is find out which of the so called gods is invading, and discover the banishment ritual to prevent the invasion. This requires you to drive to towns claimed by the shadow, and fight all manner of fearsome creatures to find clues that allow you find out which god is invading, and the correct runes to banish it. You then go through a dungeon from one of 5 archetypes (garden, office building, wear house tenement housing, or residential building) completing an objective that will allow you to gather information that will allow you to banish the correct god.

My character needs a better flashlight

The main meat of the game consists of entering dungeons, and fighting Lovecraft inspired monsters. The game punishes you for running from enemies by lowering your sanity, so learning patterns of your enemies is important. Ammo is annoyingly limited (most likely because this game is set in the UK and not the USA) so you will need to rely on pistol wiping the tar out of the fleshy sacks of awfulness you encounter.

But is it scary? The black text on red background and mysterious runes in the background promises several stained undergarments. The answer sort of, the consuming shadow is more unnerving that it is scary. The game has several ways that it messes with it's the player when your characters sanity bar drops low (and it will), effects such as illusionary enemies, causing your character to go invisible, and suddenly swapping options you are choosing from to a "kill yourself" button will occur. This along with the dark tone of the game, creates a sense of dread and uneasiness similar to venturing into a public restroom that is a departure from a standard jump scare riddled horror game.

One click in and there already is a kill yourself button

The main strength of the game is in it's writing everything from the text messages you receive in your car, to the random events, and the description of towns you are about to enter all add to the games atmosphere. There are also journal pages that you can
recover in the dungeons that give some back story to the game and are a gripping read.

The main weakness of the game is in its presentation, while this is, for the most part, a one man project most of the other indy games on the market look much better than The Consuming Shadow. Also, the controls for keyboard and mouse are difficult to get used to, I recommend a controller since the controls are nonrebindable.

If you are looking for a game with a unique experience and are in to Lovecraftian style horror then The Consuming Shadow is for you. Even as someone who doesn't like Horror games I still enjoyed it, and would recommend it to anyone who finds the concept to be interesting.

Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain in-progress review

It has been three days since the release of Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain. In this time, I have put 22 hours into it and yet have only achieved about 18% completion (and I did a lot of side questing). I still clearly have quite a ways to go towards finishing the game; however, I couldn’t quite contain myself so I will make an exception for MGS V and do a review in-progress. I feel as though I’ve formed enough of an opinion on the game having sampled it for 22 hours.

Though I played through MGS 1 and 4, I admittedly couldn’t stomach the controls and camera system of 2 and 3 (which were a repeat of 1’s, which I barely managed to get through). I am by no means a diehard MGS fan, so I'm hoping my perspective on the series will entice newcomers to try out the games. I will refrain from giving away any plot details of MGS V, save for those mentioned in Ground Zeroes, the prologue to The Phantom Pain (which I highly recommend playing, especially if you feel like you need a taste of what TPP is like before purchasing it for the hefty release price of $59.99.)

For the gameplay, I have nothing but the highest of praise. The Metal Gear series is an icon of tactical stealth games, and The Phantom Pain is Kojima’s crown jewel in the series. Right away, when playing Ground Zeroes, what impressed me most was the way Snake controlled. Very few games nail movement, but in Ground Zeroes Snake’s movements were all believable; they carried weight, and yet were at the same time very responsive and easy to direct. The details in the animations, from the way Snake stands with whichever foot forward that his walking animation ended on, to the way Snake scoots himself forward regardless of stance when you tap the control stick a bit, are truly a sight to behold and a testament to how far animation technology has come since the early days of 3D gaming. A personal favorite touch of mine is the way Snake reacts to the player changing stances from prone to crouch while moving backwards - instead of getting up in the way he faces and then awkwardly turning around, Snake fluidly transitions from prone to crouchwalking using his hands and knees to maintain movement in the direction of input. In The Phantom Pain, there are even small improvements to movement - now there are continuously variable crawl and crouchwalk speeds, and Snake does a neat somersault if you quick dive off of a height instead of landing painfully on his stomach like in Ground Zeroes.

I can't help but drool.

A stealth game gets its challenge and replay value out of its AI - and thankfully TPP’s AI is no slouch. It isn’t amazing and can get a tad predictable after a while, but it is kept fresh by the fact that the AI counters over-reliance on a single tactic by arming itself against that tactic the more it is used - early on, my favored approach was to take out guards by headshotting them with a suppressed weapon if they were in my way. Soon though, a majority of the guards began wearing helmets as word got out of me leaving a wake of porous heads behind me. I then found myself resorting to other methods such as CQC or simply pure stealth.

The game offers a rich and satisfying customization system for your loadout. Almost anything you bring with you can be customized to a certain degree - even the camouflage I took on missions with me I would preselect in order to best match the area I was in (and since camouflage effectiveness is an explicit game mechanic in previous MGS games, I’m pretty sure it still matters in TPP.) You have a set of “buddies” you can bring into missions with you, the first of which is the D-Horse. I thought a horse would only hinder me in a stealth game, but surprisingly I grew to like the horse a lot and developed a lot of gear for it.

My faithful steed, D-Horse.

On top of all this customization comes a level of freedom unheard of in previous MGS games - TPP is open-world. And it suits Metal Gear, so well. You can come in at any angle you want, in whatever style you want, equipped with whatever you want, and at whatever time of the day you want. I’m already thinking of what my next playthrough will be like. I’m thinking I go Mongol warrior style and stay mounted on the D-Horse for as long as possible. The weather system in the game also delivers an appreciable impact on gameplay; rain covers the sound of your footsteps, and sandstorms obscure visibility beyond a very short distance for both player and enemy. Navigating the open world can be a little tedious because of its sheer size, but luckily the game has a fast travel system and also affords you mobility with D-Horse at the very least.

The game does fall short in a few areas. For big MGS fans, the voice of Snake this time around is Kiefer Sutherland instead of David Hayter. Not only does he deliver a much different Snake, Snake also has a lot fewer lines compared to previous entries in the series - it could be an attempt by Kojima to make the player place themselves in Snake’s shoes, but it is a bit jarring considering how much personality Snake previously had. The majority of Snake’s dialogue is contained in a bunch of backstory tapes which the player can listen to at their leisure - however, unlike Bioshock where interruptions to this experience were unlikely, the player can frequently be interrupted while listening to a cassette tape by story dialogue over the radio, and the tape will not pause. The only other major gripe I have with TPP so far is the lack of fluidity between changing locations. I spent a lot of time moving between home base, to the Aerial Command Center, to the field of operations, and much of this time was spent just watching Snake fly in the chopper. An option to skip the inconsequential fly-in portion of some of the missions would be great. You can warp to the ACC while in the field, but you must manually call in a chopper pickup if you are at your home base so that got annoying after a while.

My comrades in arms, at the ready. You almost make the boring chopper ride over here worth it.

Graphically, the game is great. I am not so much amazed by the graphical fidelity (which is great in its own right), but by how well-optimized the game is. A lot of games that look this good would make my rig struggle a bit. TPP runs at near max with no hiccups at all, 60 FPS. It’s refreshing to not have to fiddle with configuring a game’s settings to get optimal performance. It also cooperates pretty well with being alt-tabbed, a definite plus in my book.

Overall, I would be surprised if TPP didn’t go on to be my personal GOTY. I am biased since I love stealth action, but currently it is my favorite game this year (sorry Witcher III - I still love you.) If you’ve got any love for stealth games and can excuse the objectionable business practices of Konami one last time, I highly recommend Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain.