Silver-Lining
Latest
Silver Lining: Sins and punishment in Deadlight
'Silver Lining' is a column from freelancer Taylor Cocke dedicated to highlighting moments of real potential in less than perfect games. This week he examines Tequila Works' Deadlight. The following may contain story spoilers. Scrawled on the wall in a frenzied font a warning reads "The Inferno Begins Here." Just in case you weren't positive the opening scenes of Deadlight from developer Tequila Works were referencing Dante's Inferno, a nearby collectible journal directly quotes the epic poem: "Through me the way into the suffering city, Through me the way to the eternal pain, Through me the way that runs among the lost." In other words, protagonist Randall Wayne will soon be suffering through his own version of Hell.The scene isn't exactly subtle, and is indicative of a large problem with the rest of the game. Rather than allowing events to play out and ask players to draw their own conclusions about them, Deadlight practically tells you what to feel through a series of notes, diary entries, and flashbacks. Randall's story is a tragic one, to be sure, but it'd be much more powerful if it had been given more room to breathe within the player's own mind.%Gallery-161497%
Silver Lining: Lollipop Chainsaw and the failure of satire
'Silver Lining' is a column from freelancer Taylor Cocke dedicated to highlighting moments of real potential in less than perfect games. This week he examines Grasshopper Manufacture's Lollipop Chainsaw. The following may contain story spoilers. There's an idea on the Internet called Poe's Law. Basically, it states that if a satirical piece is indistinguishable from the subject it is trying to mock, then it's a failure. It was designed to relate to extremist ideologies like those of the Westboro Baptist Church, but the idea can be extrapolated to just about any attempt at satire. And in the case of Lollipop Chainsaw, it's absolutely applicable.On its face, Lollipop Chainsaw has all the makings of a solid parody title. First off, it's a Suda51 joint, meaning it has a certain lighthearted over-the-top attitude that lends itself well to parody. It was also penned by James Gunn, who has made his career mocking movie tropes with films like Dawn of the Dead, Super, and the vastly underrated Slither. These are guys experienced in making weird, hilarious stuff.The game itself obviously doesn't take itself seriously. Just take a look at the cover: a scantily clad young woman carrying around a chainsaw while the head of her boyfriend hangs off her belt. It's an undeniably silly image, and one that seems to be making fun of the roles women traditionally inhabit in games. Here's a clearly over-sexualized young woman, carrying a massive chainsaw, and essentially dehumanizing her male counterpart.But it never quite makes the turn that satire must make to work. In a gaming landscape that involves a whole lot of problematic images of women, pointing out the absurdity of these portrayals could have been something incredibly valuable. Instead, we get the same old tired jokes about sexuality that we've been hearing for years and years.%Gallery-130904%
Silver Lining: Inversion and the fear of the great beyond
'Silver Lining' is a column from freelancer Taylor Cocke dedicated to highlighting moments of real potential in less than perfect games. This week he examines Saber Interactive's Inversion. The following may contain story spoilers. Inversion's opening sequence is rather affecting. Protagonist Davis Russel is tied to a pole as a monstrous Lutadore priest babbles on in a difficult to understand tone, preparing to sacrifice the former police officer. In his ostensibly final moments, he begins to remember how he got into the spot he's in. He's lost his family, his city, and soon, his life. It feels like a man reading his own suicide note – he's given up hope and is ready to die.It certainly sets a tone for the rest of the game, which is mostly told as a flashback. Humanity has lost the war against the invading aliens. The people of Vanguard City have been broken down by the relentless invasion of the monstrous Lutadores. And, if the opening sequence establishes anything, it was a war that they were destined to lose. Davis is on a game-long search for his daughter, and the possibility of saving her seems to be the only thing keeping him going.%Gallery-130923%
Silver Lining: Steel Battalion Heavy Armor and humanity within the mech
'Silver Lining' is a column from freelancer Taylor Cocke dedicated to highlighting moments of real potential in less than perfect games. This week he examines From Software's Steel Battalion: Heavy Armor. An interesting thing happened to me within the first hours of Steel Battalion: Heavy Armor. I started to actually care about the computer controlled soldiers confined to the chassis of my hulking Vertical Tank. Natch and Parker's voices would have been out of place as bad 80s stereotypes. But as the pair reloaded our tank's weapons, spewed tactical advice in my ear, and repaired our VT from encounters, I came to know them as more than chatty computer characters. They were compatriots.And then I'd aim down the sites to see enemy tanks, and do my absolute best to keep myself and my team alive – a difficult feat due to Steel Battalion's atrocious Kinect controls. My enemies were mechanical monsters, sent to destroy everything that I held dear. In early cinematics, they were shown as faceless killing machines, slaughtering men, women, and children indiscriminately.In war, one of the most powerful motivational techniques is dehumanizing your enemy. Dehumanization can also be accomplished through the use of technology. Aiming down a long-range rifle's night vision scope doesn't exactly focus on the human elements at the end of the crosshairs. Drone strikes do away with even having to look at the person being shot at. And in Steel Battalion: Heavy Armor, the player is literally separated from enemy combatants by walls of steel. There is no defining human factor on the battlefield, only the game of war.%Gallery-158612%
Silver Lining: Hydrophobia and the fearless mingling of ideas
'Silver Lining' is a column from freelancer Taylor Cocke dedicated to highlighting moments of real potential in less than perfect games. This week he examines Hydrophobia from (the now defunct) developer Dark Energy. Hydrophobia has all the makings of a great game, but where it fails is commitment. The Dark Energy Digital-developed game attempts to do too many things at once, but never succeeds at any of them. What's frustrating is the clear potential each idea had, and the huge divide between what its characters are ostensibly feeling and the gameplay itself.Exemplifying this lack of commitment is the amount of times Hydrophobia shifts between genres in the first act alone. Opening with a dream about drowning, Hydrophobia transitions from a platforming section drawing heavily from the Uncharted series, into a physics puzzler, before finally settling into a cover-based shooter.Hydrophobia doesn't execute any of its selected genres well enough to warrant the middling amount of time a player will spend to learn each. In some cases, the design decisions made in some sections undermine some of the game's good ideas, which only led to disappointing critical reception.%Gallery-103404%
Silver Lining: I Am Alive's unfeeling world
'Silver Lining' is an ongoing column from freelancer Taylor Cocke, dedicated to examining the hidden potential in recently released, critically panned games. Even in the mediocre, we can find a silver lining. As I began my time with Ubisoft's downloadable title I Am Alive, the most striking aspect of the game's art style was the high-contrast, almost black and white way it depicted the destroyed city it takes place in. The world feels dead, as it should. The lack of color depicts a space devoid of life, dotted by humanity huddled around the bright oranges and yellows of occasional makeshift fires. At least initially, there's a sharp, distinct difference between the world and those who struggle to live within it. Very quickly, though, it becomes apparent that the distinction exists purely between the protagonist Adam and, well, everything else.I Am Alive's greatest failures don't lay in its shoddy controls or dated visuals. For me, it was never able to establish a feeling of desperately fighting for survival. At least, not in the same way the non-playable characters are very clearly struggling. Very early, Adam runs into a man sitting next to a fire, who immediately draws his weapon and demands Adam back away. Right away, I Am Alive establishes that its world is one that you shouldn't trust anyone if you value your safety.Soon after that, Adam comes across a mother and son, the latter of which has been harmed by roving bandits and needs help to survive. Unable to move, they need Adam's help to survive. You can give them a medkit, perhaps forsaking your own safety later on, or simply move on. Again, this pair does its best to show that this world is a frightening, dangerous one.%Gallery-145458%
Silver Lining: NeverDead's transforming man
'Silver Lining' is a new column from freelancer Taylor Cocke dedicated to pointing to the pieces that showed the most potential in recently released, bad games. Even in the mediocre, we can find a silver lining. Games tend to take death rather lightly. Characters die constantly, extra lives are collected and wasted, and respawns are regularly infinite. NeverDead eschews it (almost) entirely, adding an interesting layer to core convention of death in games. As a whole, however, NeverDead is mostly a mess. Combat leans toward the tedious, and the dismemberment mechanic is poorly implemented and clunky. Even the story is paper-thin and mostly unfunny, in a genre not generally lauded for well-crafted narratives.But it could have worked. The concept of playing as the immortal Bryce Boltzmann is one that's fascinating, especially if he's unhappy with his blessing and/or curse. He's able to lose and reattach his limbs and head at will, even if it causes him a good amount of pain. He's bitter. Plus, the same demon that literally immortalized Boltzmann killed his wife in the process. With all the free time he has, it's understandable that he may be a little whacked in the head.We could have gotten a story about a man forced to abandon all hope, even if he does not have the means to do so physically. Instead, we got the story of a snarky, sneering jerk with no redeeming qualities.%Gallery-145558%
