Ancient Greece? Abandon All Hope!

Never before has such an historical pairing of ancient Greek mythology and retro-style video gaming come together in such a clash of titans!
Until now...

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Revisit the infamous torment meted out to the unlucky by the fickle and vain gods.
Struggle fruitlessly! Labour endlessly! Learn something!

Let's Play: Ancient Greek Punishment

Gamer Cliques

Hardcore? Casual? FPS Twitch Kiddy? PC? Console?

"How is anyone supposed to know whose “gang” they belong to or who they’re going to be jovially disparaging towards on any given day? What about if you’re given a label by the industry (or the community) which you dislike or don’t really feel encompasses everything about gaming you love? Take heart dear friend. At least you’re not a “female gamer”."

(By Pippa Hall)

Read the full article here....

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Project KARA - Quantum Dream

"Kara, a disturbing short film about a self-aware robot, was made by games studio Quantic Dream to demonstrate the "expressive power" of the PS3's graphics. In order to sidestep the limitations of animating human characters (the so-called, contentious "uncanny valley"), the creators made a story about a newborn, intelligent robot -- a character that is supposed to be subtly unconvincing in its humanity." (BoingBoing.net)

Wow.

My Take: Rise of Nightmares

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"Rise of Nightmares is a survival horror video game developed and published by Sega for the Xbox 360  [...] and is designed specifically for Kinect. It is the first M-rated Kinect game released."
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I was gifted Rise of Nightmares for Christmas (after demanding it loudly and greedily) and have only now gotten around to playing it.

I actually don't mind using the Kinect. While the 'we track your every movement' thing is a little disconcerting, especially with facial and body recognition, I, for one, welcome my robot overlords because the Kinect is actually something that people have been dreaming of since video games began.

No controller? Body movements? Physical interaction in the game world? Swinging swords and throwing knives? YES YES YES!

I've used the Wii-mote controller before and found it very 'meh'. It doesn't really do exactly what I want it to do, and I preferred the Kinect's 'hands free' feeling. And anything is certainly preferable to being seen with a Playstation Move controller - "Hi, I'm going to stand here holding an 8 inch shaft in my hand which I'll be waggling at people. Don't be put off by the swollen knob at the end. That's very normal."

Should this be used in public? (source)

If you're not familiar with the Kinect, here is a nauseating video of happy family play time.
Also, here's a video of all the really inspiring ways this  technology will play a good role in our lives. (I'm being forced by the robot overlords to post this propaganda! SEND HELP!)

But enough selling Xbox! This is about my take on the first mature rated game they released for the dang thing. I was getting so sick of Kinectimals!  X(

"Unashamedly mature" is how Nightmares is described. Think again, developers! You should be very ashamed. And 'mature' is not really how I'd describe the content. For adults? Not really. It seems to be aimed at the same group of slavering teenagers that flock to near-snuff films like Hostel or Saw.
I'm no puritan, but I do go for more suspenseful psychological horror like found in the works of Hitchcock, or especially the cult hit indie game Amnesia: The Dark Descent.



Plot: You're a drunken slob. You have a wife. She gets abducted by a hilarious monster. YOU MUST SAVE WIFE.
There is an attempt to weave in a spooky storyline with train wrecks and Romanian monsters and gypsy fortune tellers and marital strife and mad scientists and sexy nurses, but it all kind of falls flat after you meet the monster and the hordes of zombies that seem really out of place in the setting. It's like "Silent Hill" meets "Island of Dr. Moreau" meets the old arcade "House of the Dead" (not surprisingly, as Sega developed HotD as well).

 As you can see here, Dr. Moreau is VASTLY scarier than anything in Rise of Nightmares.

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Gameplay:

Thankfully, the secondary characters don't last long. (source)

Oh, that reminds me. For some reason the game portrays all Europeans as assholes.
They shake their heads and mutter about 'f-ing Americans' continuously. AND they don't even speak American. How is he supposed to know what's going on? He's in Romania! Why are they speaking Romanian??
I'm starting to get the feeling that Sega writers have MAJOR inferiority complexes.

A monster sporting a silly cravat and stealing your wife. Understandably, those hideous soccer-mom capri pants made her a target to be eliminated. Learn from her fail, kids.  (source)

The scary monster has tiny hydraulics that open his mask up like a dainty butterfly... (source)

Slow zombies. The way I like em.  (source)

I think having the main character be an alcoholic was probably a good choice. That nicely explains his staggering, lurching movements as you pilot the meat puppet around awkwardly.
Which leads us to the controls.

To walk you have to place your foot forward (only after standing nearly 100 yards away from the screen - Kinect keeps prompting you to get back. Futher! FURTHER!). To turn in game you have to move your shoulders in the direction you wish to go. It took me a few levels to really achieve a flow and stop face-planting into stone walls.
The best part (and the reason anyone buys the game) is the hacking and slashing. You do as you would imagine: raise your hands and hack and slash or punch and pummel. It's very satisfying. ^.^

Opening doors, picking up items and activating switches is fiddly, frustrating, and time consuming, and the novelty of kicking down doors in your cowboy boots wears off after the first few "I'M CHUCK NORRIS BITCHES" *BOOM*

From the playthroughs I've seen, and from my own experience, players often get stuck at one part of the game where you're required to run. Because, incredibly, there's no clear instructions on HOW to run in the game, most people just naturally stick their foot out further than the 'walking' gesture. But when no running occurs (and you die for the 10th time), you'll probably feel compelled to look up how to run on the internet.

The only way to run, or swim, in the game is not to actually make running or swimming motions as you might presume - but to flail around like a madman having a violent seizure during a horrific earthquake.
You could probably be in great danger of harming yourself if you're not normally the physical type.
It's as unintuitive and crazy as it is hilarious (especially when spectating).
To climb ladders in game, I'm forced to disco dance. Whatever works. 



At the end of the day, I would have been happier were there simply more waves of things to hack and slash instead of attempts and failures at suspense and intrigue and lame puzzle solving. I think however, some leeway should be given to a game that seems to be largely an experiment in gaming and the Kinect tech as it is now.

I would call it a success. While rudimentary, I think this type of gaming holds much promise, and I'd like to see more adult/mature titles added to the Kinect menu.

One review called Rise of Nightmares "hackneyed at best and nonsensical at worst."
HA! Very true. But I'm still going to play it right now because it's fun! ;)