So Amnesia is by the same people that made the relatively unknown ‘Penumbra’ series, a game known for its unique engine and inability to fightback against the world around you.

I heard about it initially from a kotaku post on ‘scariest games’, Amnesia was listed multiple times as THE scariest game ever made, and being that its halloween – I wanted to have a little scare, unfortunately I got slightly more than a ‘little’ scare. Being a complete wuss in these types of games, I figured id be more compelled to play through if I had someone else playing with me, hence I made cross get the game and we played together, without him I probably would have gotten to about 20 minutes into the game before closing it and never wanting to play again.

You wake up in a castle and have amnesia and stuff, there is a plotline with lots of diaries and allsorts but I sort of didnt care about that, instead placing priority on my survival.

The main game mechanics which distinguish this game from others is the ‘hand control’ system, which basically means you have to turn cranks yourself, and open doors or drawers by pushing or pulling on them, its a weird feature at first but becomes natural pretty fast and it definately adds to the tension in the game – being able to peek around doors before you open them fully, or having to quickly spin around and close a door if something is chasing you – is much more intense than pressing F and having the door fly open/close shut.

Another pretty key feature in the game is light and your sanity, the latter of which relying on the former, and the former relying on you checking every crevase for lantern oil or tinderboxes to light torches to illuminate rooms, without light your sanity will begin to falter, your vision will blur, your senses will dull, your reactions will fail and in general you’ll just feel all sorts of nasty. Lantern oil thus turns into the only thing you ever want to see when you look around an area.

What you dont want to see (or in some cases, wont see) are the monsters, which are genuinely terrifying. These guys may lumber around initially but instantly turn into world class sprinters upon spotting you – and its fucking horrible.

The graphics, what you can see of them, are pretty fantastic and the atmosphere, the music, sounds and set pieces are perfectly done.

Its without a doubt the best genuine survival horror game ive ever played, and i’ve never screamed so loud at…. anything… before…

And here is audio proof – http://soundcloud.com/mengplex/mengandcrossamnesia

We basically recorded ourselves whilst we were playing, these are the highlights – TURN YOUR SOUND DOWN.

So Cladun asis a Nippon Ichi RPG, anyone who has played a few nippon ichi games knows what this basically leads to… Level and equipment grinding , create a char and random dungeons!
The game sort of gives you some form of story, but it could probably be summarized in a 10 minute TV show, I paid really little attention to it – whatever.
The core of the game then is going through the dungeons presented to find treasure, there are proper dungeons which have been constructed well and usually have mechanics to them (almost like mini zelda dungeons, hit switch, kill monsters… little flags like that) and then theres the random dungeon (ran-geon), which has ~100 floors, clearing 20 floors takes me about half an hour, sound tedious? I should mention this half an hour feels like around 10 minutes – and its a fun 10 minutes too. Realistically you’ll be spending majority of your time grinding the rangeons, which operate in a ‘take the money and run’ or progress further style – every few floors you’ll find an exit which will let you keep 100% exp gained, money and all the items you’ve found – or you can keep going and get more of all the former listed – the catch being if you die, you only recieve half exp and no items (i cant remember about money).

The character creator is pretty much what you see in the trailer below, its kinda cool and the way their stats pan out is always intresting but there arent any massive benefits to doing so (other than being able to model the character yourself – i personally made a hatsune miku because it was easy, but other people have made some really sweet stuff).
The ‘magic circle’ , sort of explained in the trailer below, is the main driving force of the game, and what will probably be driving your grinding of rangeons, leveling gives chars more mana, which lets them power up with more items, which makes your main character kick more ass, which lets you get further in the rangeon, which lets you level up and get better items, which gives your characters more levels, which gives them more mana, which lets them power up wi…….. you get the idea. Its addictive.

The below trailer should really start at 1:25, I advise you skip to that bit so that you miss out all the boring stuff at the beginning.

All in all, this is Cladun. an RPG!
And its a good one too, as long as you like dungeon grinding.
The game shares alot of similarity with Disgaea and dungeon crawling games, However its unique and charming – im a sucker for 8bit though.

For anyone that didnt know, one of the sonic fan games has had a demo released. Check it out and be amazed at how much better it is than Sonic 4

http://www.sonicretro.org/2010/10/sonic-fan-remix-available-for-download/

Ive given it a playthrough, and its pretty awesome. Some things look a little weird, and its a bit bizarre playing Sonic with a keyboard (I couldnt get my 360 pad to work), but overall its beautiful and the physics feel right. Its really awesome stuff considering it was made by only 2 guys (one artist and one programmer).

Who knows, maybe some fans will eventually make a good streets of rage fangame too..

So it doesnt quite comply with the ‘Sonic Cycle’ , Sonic really does seem to be the only character in the game, and the reviews havent been too bad yet, And from my playthrough I wouldnt really say i endured ‘Massive disapointment’ , although that may be because I never really raised my hopes in the first place.

Ima break it down right hurrrr…

Graphics:

Fine, I like the background layering technique, im not too keen on the animations of sonic himself but they could be worse i suppose.

Gameplay (Core) :

Ehhhhh…….. Mixed opinions. For starters the physics are off, sonic accelerates at odd speeds and airbrakes like a monster.

The airdash/lockon thing which has been put in works fine however, coming in useful to speed up gameplay and keep you moving in the right direction with bursts of speed. The gameplay is for the most part classic sonic though, its a shame the physics make it feel like it isnt.

Gameplay (Level design) :

There are 4 zones

a green hill/emerald hill ripoff ,

a casino night/carnival night ripoff ,

a Labyrinth zone / aquatic ruin / sandopolis 2 ripoff ,

and a chemical plant / scrap brain ripoff

There is a SHOCKING lack of originality, they straight up use parts of the unique things about the copied zones and shamelessly incorporate it into the level. Examples are the spiral bridges from emerald hill, the slot machines from casino night and rotating cylinders from carnival night , the water slides from labyrinth zone, the arrow spitters and spears from aquatic ruin, the darkness from sandopolis, the teleporters from chemical plant………

They even copy paste bosses from previous sonic games, the boss from green hill zone that we’ve all seen a dozen times is fucking back, why? So is the electroclaw boss from Carnival night. They both have a new berserk mode but the core of the boss is the exact same. its silly.

I’d also like to add that the  vines in (i think it was…) splash hill 3? or 2? are fucking stupid and should never have made it past beta. At least make shit work if you’re going to put it in, i spent about 2 minutes swinging around on vines unable to make a particular jump because the mechanic is too precise.

Audio:

The biggest disapointment in my opinion, the entire soundtrack was leaked a while ago but its only when you hear it in game whilst playing do you realise just how horrible it is. I cant believe a company as big as sega can’t find someone good to make Sonic music for a sonic game. Can you not rehire howard drossin or Masato nakamura? or hell, even Hideki Naganuma would have made far superior music to the shit thats currently in the game.

Summary:

A reasonable sonic game, completely let down by a lack of originality, terrible music and odd engine/physics.

I can only describe it as a sonic fan game as opposed to an actual sonic sequel.

I dont understand how fans somehow manage to make much better looking games than they do….

Examples of such fanwork….

Dead Rising 2

Havent quite finished it yet, actually.. that makes it sound like im close mind you. They really seem to have fixed everything wrong with the original Dead Rising though, although the lack of the photography system ala frank west is kind of lame.
Psychopaths are challenging as before, and there seem to be plenty of survivors around to save for dat longevity, and thats not even getting into the huge puzzle game of working out what items you can combine – half of which are just bizarre (battery + garden rake anyone?). Special mention also for the blanka mask and battery pack – fucking genius capcom.

Civilization V

Better than Civ IV. By a mile.
I actually hated Civilization 4  but Civ 5 just seems way easier to play, way easier to understand and…. just… better…
my only gripe with the game is that you turn it on, and 3 hours of your life are missing.