Video Games

Review – House MD (the Game) (PC)

Legacy Interactive | Released: 5.26.2011

NOTE: This review mostly concerns itself with Chapter 1, I plan to go through at least one more chapter and if there are significant game play changes I’ll note them but otherwise it can be assumed to be more of the same. Also this review is image heavy because I had too many good shots to narrow it down.

Occasionally something that seems slightly ridiculous shows up on my radar and I just can’t help but give it a try. House MD the Game falls into this category. The company behind this isn’t one I’ve ever heard of but judging by their website they specialize in this sort of point and click mini game based adventure game. They also have some games based on other popular prime time shows available.

I am a fan of the show, sort of. I really enjoyed it up through the end of Season 3. After they broke up the original team and started adding other subordinates things started slowly moving downhill. I can’t say I’ve watched much past maybe halfway through Season 4. This game features most of the more current characters so it is at least based on the what’s relevant now as far as the show goes. Everyone is there, House, Wilson, Cuddy, Thirteen, Foreman, Cameron, Chase, and Taub. The graphics on this are good enough that everyone is easily recognizable. I won’t go so far as to say they are great though only because some of the facial expressions House gives are a little… odd…

The game itself does a decent job of replicating the general aspects of the show. There are 5 Chapters or cases to solve which must be solved in order. There is the basic set up, some inconspicuous situation leads to a person landing in the hospital. House and his team brainstorm and test for various illnesses. There’s even the “side patient” clinic side of House’s job that shows up. Eventually after several failed diagnosis, House has an epiphany moment (through the use of a bouncing ball mini game) and the solution presents itself to the world more or less out of nowhere.

This plot aspect actually annoys me but it’s consistent with the show and much of modern television these days. They throw so many Red Herrings at you that there isn’t any way to actually piece together the mystery even if you’re paying attention. There is just an “ah-hah” moment and it’s done. Not a complaint against the game mind you but that gimmick reeks of annoying writing.

The game play itself involves reading through the narrative and solving several tasks presented to you. These tasks are timed mini games. You do procedural tasks which are, slightly annoyingly, spelled out step by step, so no real challenge. These involve things like “whip the area with sponge, stick the needle in the arm, no slide up to insert the needle, put the vial on to the end of the needle”.

There are also search and find the clues games. These involve panning around a scene looking for clues as to what may have caused the illness. These are a little weak because you mostly pick up random objects, none of which end up having much to do with anything. The third of the more common puzzles is the brainstorming sessions. Several different diseases float around on the screen. You must select the correct one to move on. As you select answers, letters that match will be revealed helping you to sole the answer. Also letters are revealed over time slowly. Generally you’ll do 4 or 5 of these in a row as House tells you all the reasons you’re wrong.

The whole thing reminds me a lot of the Pet Care style games my kids play. Basic mouse movement based tasks presented to the player with no true threat of loss. This is a very casual game in that it’s meant to appeal to people who don’t really play games. The type who don’t want to get a game over screen ever, they just want play a house episode.

Much of the game is very dialogue heavy. I can’t really decide if it’s good or bad or just off. I have not really paid attention to the show the last few seasons so maybe house has turned into a “Sex one liner every other sentence kinda guy” but I don’t remember him being quite this randomly nuts on the show. The worst comes from the clinic patient. House more or less mocks her the entire time telling her she needs to fatten up repeatedly only considerably more rudely. House is an ass but he’s not really all that flat out MEAN. I’ve included several choice selections in the screenshots, you’ll want to enlarge them to read it though.

The simplicity will probably turn off a lot of more hardcore gamer types. It’ll likely turn off people who just like more action in their game. It’s not real terrible for a mostly text based narrative style adventure game.

Here are some extra images I didn’t have room for…. Click to make them larger…

Review – Forza Horizon 4 (PC, Xbox One)

Jan 8th, 2019

by Ramen Junkie.

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Microsoft – 2018

The Good

Stunning Visuals
Gameplay has a ton of variety and courses and cars
The car Livery system is pretty great

The Bad

The PC version is a pretty mediocre port of the console version
There are a lot of bugs.
The Online Scene isn’t great

Racing is a genre of games that I don’t really obsess over but I often come back to. It’s quite possibly my secret favorite genre. I bought an N64 so I could play Cruisin USA, I played a ton of Gran Turismo 2 on my Playstation, I played a bunch of Need for Speed games. the only X-Box 360 title I have played with any amount of play time was Forza Motorsport 4.

I’d been kind of looking at trying one of the Forza games in the Windows 10 store, though I was a little apprehensive early on because, well, it’s the Windows 10 store. I’ve used Windows 10 enough that I can say I’m ok with keeping it around some so I went ahead and decided to dive into Forza Horizon 4, which is the newest title in the series. It was on sale and I had a bunch of Bing Rewards credit so I picked up the Ultimate Edition for a steal and have been playing it pretty regularly since.

So, Forza consists of two core series. The Forza Motorsport Series is a more traditional “Pick a race and run it” style game, the Forza Horizon series is a more open world experience. Each of the Horizon games take place in an approximation of a different real world region, Forza Horizon 4 takes place in the countryside of the UK near Edinburgh. It centers around the Horizon Festival, which is a sort of gathering for racers to show off their skills in different types of racing. The point is, there is some sort of vague plot to this game, you meet with some of the organizers and they give little cut scenes occasionally. Each race type culminates in a longer showcase event, that one of the characters has been building up to. It’s not going to win any writing awards, but it’s there. There are sub stories as well, though it all amounts to an excuse to drive a car and win some sort of race.

For example, one of the sub stories is a series of events hosted by a Vlogger who is showing off cars that appeared in video games over the years. Like the Ferrari from Outrun or the
Lamborghini Countach from Test Drive. Another has you participating in a series of outlandish stunts as you work do some side work for a filmmaker as a Stunt Driver. There are a series of special event races which culminates in a Halo themed run driving a Warthog. Another has you race a massive hovercraft as it storms over the terrain.

These are all in addition to the more standard races that make up the core Horizon Festival series. The Horizon races are broken up into types you might expect, Off-road racing with trucks, Street races with lots of tight corners and turns, Road races which are a little more forgiving than street races and have a few more straightaways. You start off with only a handful of events available but unlock more as you level up your skill in each type of race. Eventually the entire map is essentially covered in events.

The map itself is pretty good size. It can take a pretty good while to circle the entire area, and even just traveling across it can take five to ten minutes, depending on how much you go off road or what car you’re driving. In addition to race events, there are all sorts of activities on the map itself. Speed Trap challenges to achieve a high speed at a certain point, Drift Zones where you accumulate points by drifting around a series of turns, or Danger Signs where the object is to see how far you can jump your car. Like regular races and mini stories, doing these activities, unlocks other activities.

When all of this gets old, there’s also the hourly Forzathon events, which are sort of impromptu gatherings of players who all work to do the world activities for accumulated points. These, admittedly, get a little old, they last 10-15 minutes and it involves doing the same speed trap or danger sign jump over and over and over and over while a meter inches upwards for the group. It really feels like these could be given some more variety, maybe a series of checkpoints for everyone to race through that span the map or something. These events give special Forzathon Points which can be used to buy special weekly exclusive items.

Thinking of buying, the game’s other progression system is through accumulating cars and player outfits. You can’t exit your vehicle but your avatar appears on race start and completion screens and shows up in your car driving. You earn clothes and cars through a variety of methods, winning races and leveling up the different race types is one. You can outright buy cars with your winnings. You can also win prizes through Wheelspins which are earned from victories and leveling up your character. These are pretty much what they sound like. A big prize wheel spins and you get an item afterwards.

It’s notable to add that there is no real world cash shop. You buy the game, and that’s it. The Wheelspins especially feel like something that would normally be a “pay $1.99 and get a wheelspin” item but there is no way to buy extra wheelspins. They must be earned by racing. This is good because frankly, micro transactions are kind of hurting the game industry. It’s a little frustrating since it means you get a loot box that you can’t control and may get some garbage emote out of it instead of that rare car that happened to show up as an option. Fortunately the game pretty much showers you with Wheelspins.

So, while there aren’t any micro transactions, this does lead into my first complaint. I purchased the Ultimate Edition on sale, so it didn’t seem too bad, but the game kind of feels like it almost needs the $99 Ultimate Edition package, for anyone who has any intention of seriously playing the game and the expansions. In addition to including the current (Fortune Island) and unknown second expansion, the Ultimate Edition comes with a ton of cars and the VIP Pass, which includes a bunch of perks like double experience and free wheelspins and whatnot, all things that make the progression of the game fly by.

My other major problem comes from how shoddy the PC port itself feels. The game itself plays well and looks great and on the whole, I am happy, but it has a lot of weird quirks and a lot of bugs that feels like they stem from the whole “Windows 10 Cross Play Xbox experience” or whatever it’s called. For example, there is an elaborate and nice Photo Mode in the game, but the only way to get the photos into a useful sharable format is to first share them to your Forza Profile on the Forza website. I mean you can print screen them, but the actual export produces a much nicer quality image.

I also feel like the lack of a user defined radio stems from this weird Xbox wrapper. The in game radio is all right but gets a little old after a while, having the ability to point a user radio station to a folder of MP3s would be amazing. You can play whatever music you want of course on something else, but the game is really bad about auto turning to a new radio station during races and the console version apparently doesn’t have a way to permanently mute the radio at all on the volume slider. Between this missing feature and the lack of screen shots saving to the drive, it’s like the game just doesn’t have access to the file system. It’s more of a Windows 10 problem than a Game problem, but it’s kind of a problem.

On Windows 10 problems, I have also had problems getting updates to take and the game to launch, a problem others have had as well. Sometimes it just doesn’t launch with no helpful errors. I also had to do a complete reinstall to get the Fortune Island DLC to take.

I also kind of hate the complete lack of in game chat, which i understand is also a side effect of the cross play aspects with the Xbox One. The text chat is all done via these little emote meme phrases and you can only “equip” 4 at a time.

Most of these problems, aside from the literal game breaking updating issue, aren’t game breaking. The pluses really outweigh those negatives. Racing games aren’t for everyone, but this one is pretty awesome. It’s visually amazing and the lack of micro transactions despite how easy it would have been to add them is really great. I’d definitely recommend the game, especially if it’s on sale.

Review – The Binding of Isaac (PC)

Jan 1st, 2019

by Ramen Junkie.

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So, the makers of Super Meat Boy, Team Meat, apparently have an old school Nintendo Fetish of the worst kind. First you have Super Meat Boy, which has vague connotations of Super Mario Brothers. Though the reality is the name is all it really has in common with Super Mario Brothers, that and being a side scrolling platform game. The Binding of Isaac is sort of like this, only with The Legend of Zelda. It sort of has the same cadence and style in name and shares a lot of game play style.

The reality is, other than the basic interface design, The Binding of Isaac shares very little with The Legend of Zelda. The presentation is similar but the game itself is a rogue-like. This game’s primary gimmick, and the source of it’s possible lone flaw, is it’s randomness. It can be extremely cruel at times. The ability to complete the higher levels tends to be closely associated with the items and upgrades you find. These upgrades tend to be pretty random and are also often dependent on if you have enough coins to buy them. This can lead to some rounds where you manage to become an overpowered juggernaut and others where you’re essentially the same guy on Level 3 as you started out.

Assuming you can even make it to level 3 without upgrades. There is also the problem of keeping yourself alive in this random mess. Some rounds, enemies will almost always drop hearts and coins, others you’ll get nothing. There does seem to be some level of algorithm in place to keep things fair, it just could use a bit of tweaking. The game does do a pretty good job of keeping the earlier enemies easier and the later enemies more difficult.

It also is surprisingly not as frustrating as it seems like it should be. This was a trait shared by Super Meat Boy. It also becomes easier as you become accustomed to how the enemies act and move. Now, granted it does start to shove curveballs at you like nobody’s business later in the game, like having the laser blasting aliens with small corridors to navigate, and swarms of flying spitting creatures in a room full or rocks.

Despite the frustration, the gameplay is pretty solid, and decent.

The real likely turn off to some people is the game’s somewhat grotesque nature and it’s somewhat mocking of religion gameplay. The Binding of Isaac is a story from the Bible where God asks Abraham to sacrifice his son Isaac. The basic plot of the story is that Isaac’s mother is told by a mysterious voice that her son has become corrupted and he must be taught humility, or something along those lines. There are numerous references to biblical elements. This is mixed in with what is essentially a horror house of bloody enemies often based on bodily organs. Often enemies spew blood pellets or drop piles of shit on the floor. It’s generally something that people who have a more sensitive disposition will probably find offensive.

This game has one final really great point going for it, it’s cheap. It’s almost like some sort of experiment in marketing but the game is only $5, which is hard to pass up. It’s frustrating as hell but it’s fun enough that it’ll keep you coming back, assuming you’re not turned off by the slightly disturbing imagery involved.

The Binding of Isaac is available on Steam here.

Review – Castlevania: Harmony of Dissonance (GBA)

Oct 24th, 2018

by Ramen Junkie.

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Konami – GBA- 1 Player

Itching for more Game Boy Castlevania action after completing Circle of the Moon, I set out to find a copy of the Castlevania Double Pack. This is a repackaging of Harmony of Dissonance and Aria of Sorrow onto one Game Boy Advance cart. Both games are complete and there isn’t any extras so I’lm just going to review them as separate games.

Since Harmony comes first in release order, I’ll start with it. It is however the third game I played through. I started it second but after about five minutes of play I couldn’t stand it and decided to give Aria of Sorrow a go. I can’t really place why, but I just don’t care much for this game. One major gripe is the controls. Most Symphony style Castlevania games have a “Back dash” button. This one has a “Dash Left” and “Dash Right” via the L and R buttons. While this almost seems intuitive since it means always dashing in one direction, when you’re used to always dashing backwards with one button no matter which direction your sprite is facing, it becomes a problem.

That seems a bit confusing. Ok, traditionally, if you’re facing “left” and press “back dash”, you slide backwards, to the right. This is regardless of which button is assigned to back dash. With the new system, if you’re facing left, and press the L button, you dash forward, press the R button and dash backwards, if you’re facing right, L makes you dash backwards, and R makes you dash forwards. Anyway, it really screws with your head when you’re just trying to dash somewhere and you keep changing direction.

The next issue is the graphics. They are just plain huge and ugly. They tried to make them colorful and flashy but it just ends up being kind of a mess. Also, many of the enemies have different looks than one might expect them to. First rule of sequels, if you’re recycling enemies, make them resemble the same type of enemy from previous games. You can update the look somewhat but a previously fat heavily armored “Armor” enemy shouldn’t suddenly be tall and lanky.

Also what’s up with Juste’s constant glow. He’s also too huge for the screen. Actually it’s possible he’s not any larger than our other protagonists but I just found he seems slightly too large, especially for the small GBA screen.

Anyway, this game uses a new magic system as well. You gain magic books based on elemental properties as you progress. These books combine with your traditional sub weapons (knife, axe etc) to create a more powerful “Item Crush” style attack. The problem with this system is that you’re limited to one type of sub item at a time. Finding the better items isn’t always easy and occasionally you can accidentally pick up another item and loose your useful one. The result is that you’ll pretty much just end up using one or two of these abilities ever (generally the most useful are the rotating shield ones).

Also, your only weapon is the whip. While this was also true in CotM, it would have been nice to see the return of Symphony’s multi weapon system. Instead of new weapons, you equip your whip with various stones to give it additional powers. Essentially it makes the whip a little stronger.

The primary saving grace for this game is the plot, which is actually pretty decent, even if it does come off as a rehash of Castlevania 2. There is a bit of a twist fairly early in the game involving the castle itself that is pretty well done. Also the plot points surrounding Maxim are rather intrigue, though really obvious once you realize what’s going on.

As far as new school Castlevania goes, I’m going to have to rank this one at the bottom of the barrel. It’s fun for many of the reasons Symphony and Circle were fun, but at the same time it all around feels like a huge rip off from lots of previous Castlevania games. While I wouldn’t go out of my way to find a copy of this game, if you can get the Double Pack with Aria then it’s well worth it.

Review – Castlevania: Circle of the Moon (GBA)

Oct 17th, 2018

by Ramen Junkie.

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Konami – GBA – 1 Player

Castlevania is a game series I haven’t always cared much for. The early games were just plain too difficult for my tastes. If I was going to play a tough platform game I’d play something fun and fast like Blaster Master or Ninja Gaiden. After many recommendations I picked up a copy of Symphony of the Night. It languished for years, un-played, on my game shelf. I’d never been a big fan of the whole “horror/gothic” thing, why would I want to play a game full of it?

I then of course played Symphony and loved every minute of it. This sort of side scrolling action game just isn’t made anymore on these next-gen systems. It’s all about 3D! Sadly, Symphony left me wanting more. Armed with my trusty Game Boy Advance, I managed to find more with Castlevania: Circle of the Moon. 2D is all but dead on the home console but it’s still pushing it self out on the Portable system.

Fortunately, Konami realized the popularity of the new format used in Symphony and continued the new exploration and RPG style elements from SotN into its Game Boy series of Castlevania games. This installment takes us back to the whip thrashing heroes of the older games with out hero, Nathan Belmont, err… Nathan Graves. Nathan sets out with his companions Morris and Hugh Baldwin (No relation to the actor) to slay the newly resurrected Dracula. There’s pretty much only one staple for the Castlevania series, and that’s the fact that Dracula is always pulling the strings SOMEHOW and is pretty much always the final boss. If you didn’t finish by killing Dracula, you’re probably not done yet or you got a “bad ending”.

Gameplay is pretty comparable to Symphony. In this game you’re stuck with using the whip for the entire game however. To help out though you collect DSS (Duel Setup System) cards. These cards are themed around mythical animals and gods and are combined for varying themed effects. For example, combining a Flame based Salamander card with the whip enhancing Mercury card will give you a flaming whip. The Earth based Golum card with Mercury gives an longer earth based whip. At the same time combining either of these animal cards with say, the Jupiter based recovery card will cause Fire or Earth damage to heal you. Only two cards, one from each set, can be used at a time though so you’ll find yourself often switching and strategizing. The cards are obtained randomly from enemies and can be a bit of a challenge to collect.

Still, you’ll end up using the same half dozen combinations for most of the game. A lot of them are mostly useless, especially the projectiles and special whips. I found only the Earth whip to be of any true use since it has a longer reach. This lets you hit many enemies before they get too close and start attacking. Hit, not kill, mind you. Most of the enemies take about twice as many hits as should really be necessary to kill them. I find the hits tended to decrease by one for each level gained but near the end of the game the experience necessary to level becomes astronomically too high. I believe while I was “power leveling” I figured up having to pass through the entire Coliseum bonus areas (filled with the toughest monsters) something like 2-3 times before gaining a level. This is not a small task and the Coliseum enemies are tough and give more exp than normal enemies. Still, with a few DSS exploits the final boss was still relatively easy to defeat at my finishing level.

At least there is a fair variety of enemies to keep you entertained in your times of leveling need. Even basic color swaps (like the armors) have completely different attack patterns. The castle is also expansive and varied enough to keep things interesting the whole trip through. You’ll do some backtracking, but it’s backtracking that makes some level of sense.

In comparison to Symphony of the Night, which is a game that all three GBA Castlevania games try to emulate to varying degrees, I’d say it’s a decent follow-up. It’s not quite as polished overall but it has its own merits and methods. A game doesn’t have to be an exact copy of its great predecessor in order to be worthwhile.