Tag: PC

#WeeklyGameMusic: Lone Survivor (Lone Survivor)

Posted on by Taro Omiya

It’s been a couple of weeks now since you’ve locked down in your own apartment. How long can you go like this? To ease your mind, you turn on your favorite music collection, “#WeeklyGameMusic.” Superflat Games’ melancholic theme song for their game, Lone Survivor, plays. A fitting theme by composer and game designer, Jasper Byrne.

As you settle down, you think to yourself, where does it all begin? It started with a contagious infection. At first, it was just on the news. But you then hear a friend of a friend catch it. Then your neighbors. And now it’s just you. You, a lone man with a surgeon mask on at all times so as to not catch the virus. All of your friends, now violent monsters…

You snap yourself out. No! Focus on surviving through this terrifying apocalypse! What do I need to do? Well, obviously, you need to collect some food. With monsters infesting your neighborhood, that’ll mean stealthily crawling through every nook and cranny to find what limited resources you can find. Fortunately, you have a pistol to incapacitate the monsters. It’s not much, since you’re a bit short on bullets…and said monsters are probably your friends…and you’ll probably lose your sanity shooting them…but it should help.

Well, you have to start somewhere. Saving at the bed all day isn’t going to get you anywhere. Time to open the door, to the sanity-slipping outside world…

Lone Survivor is available on PC and Mac via Steam. It’s also downloadable on Playstation 3, 4, Vita, and Wii U.

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#WeeklyGameMusic: The Sims Theme (Junkie XL Remix) (The Sims 2: Nightlife)

Posted on by Taro Omiya

Going back a little into retro classics, this week’s #WeeklyGameMusic highlights Junkie XL again with The Sims Theme, composed for Maxis’ The Sims 2: Nightlife.

Continuing off the ever-popular The Sims series, The Sims 2: Nightlife is the second expansion to The Sims 2. Much like the prior games, the game allows the player to design houses and even its denizens to react to the world at large. Nightlife, of course, adds more elements related to…night life and after parties to the base game.

While “creativity” and “simulation” is often synonymous with this series, a more interesting aspect is its resource-management aspect: the game requires keeping your household family happy to gain more money to purchase more customization (some quite essential) tools. In a way, it’s pretty similar to idle games like Cookie Clicker: the player buys more, to make more.

The Sims 2: Nightlife was released for the PC and Mac.

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#WeeklyGameMusic: Blue Sky Town – Dol Dona (.hack//G.U.)

Posted on by Taro Omiya

#WeeklyGameMusic: New week, new music. Today’s track is Blue Sky Town – Dol Dona, composed by Chikayo Fukuda. It’s a pleasant town music from Bandai Namco’s mega-long multi-media series, .hack, specifically, the .hack//G.U. trilogy.

Before there was Sword Art Online (SAO), there was .hack. That’s right, this game, manga, and anime series all takes place in the fictional MMO Action-RPG, The World. Dull naming aside, much like SAO, players start falling into a comatose state, both in-game and in real-life. Unlike SAO, the devs blame it to a computer virus, presumably spread by malicious players. The G.U. trilogy stars Haseo, who seeks for revenge after his close friend catches this comatose spell.

.hack//G.U. is a single-player action-JRPG series. Unlike, you know, real MMORPGs, .hack//G.U. is a story-driven game with no character customization, and A.I.-controlled party members. The party explores randomly-generated dungeons: battle initiates when a monster gets close to the party, constraining them into a tight circle. Perhaps the more unique side of the game is how narrative plays: there are email logs, marriage simulation, and other MMORPG-like communication methods to suck the player into its universe.

.hack//G.U. is available on PC via Steam, PS4, and PS2.

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#WeeklyGameMusic: Men’s Hair Club (LISA: The Painful RPG)

Posted on by Taro Omiya

#WeeklyGameMusic: New week, new music.

So, quick note: I’m going to be holding off on posting #WeeklyGameMusic, as I’m now hard at work on finishing Not a Clone. So today is a special treat: Men’s Hair Club by Widdly 2 Diddly is a bizarre chiptune composition that sounds awfully like dubstep. Sounds weird? Oh, man, you’ve seen nothing, yet! The game the composition is for, LISA: The Painful RPG, is an incredibly surreal, Earthbound-inspired adventure that has frequent mood changes, absurd scenarios, and a very, very disturbing set of unavoidable situations.

LISA: The Painful RPG stars Brad, a gruff, middle-aged man adept in martial arts, and with a broken past. One day, Brad wakes up from his pain-killing drug trip (aptly named “joy”) to suddenly find a crying baby girl. Claiming it’s his “second chance,” Brad brings the girl back home with his friends and raises her in secret. Did I also mention that Brad lives in a post-apocalyptic world where all women has died? Right when his adoptive daughter, Buddy, grows to her tweens, a breakout occurs, with Buddy kidnapped and one of his friend slaughtered. Angered, Brad immediately ventures out to find who kidnapped Buddy, while a confused tipster Terry follows along.

There’s a good reason why “Painful RPG” is in the title of LISA: The Painful RPG. The game starts off as a side-scrolling adventure, where Brad can jump up or down cliffs. Unlike most platformers, Brad can not initially jump across gaps; the ability is later unlocked with an item. Walking into other grown men or monstrous abominations will often initiate a turn-based RPG battle, where Brad can use his martial arts via WASD while Terry…does something. Unpleasant decision-making is this game’s main jam, though, as Brad is frequently forced into making some terrifying choices. Would you sacrifice an arm to keep a vital party member alive? Would you go through a Russian Roulette just to get a powerful ally? The world Brad lives in is vast, darkly funny, and absolutely brutal.

LISA: The Painful RPGis available on Steam for Windows, Mac, and Linux.

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#WeeklyGameMusic: 陽の当たる場所 (水平線まで何マイル? -Deep Blue Sky & Pure White Wings-)

Posted on by Taro Omiya

#WeeklyGameMusic: New week, new music.

Cover Art
Cover art from https://vndb.org/v972

Note: sadly, the music file has been taken down, and I’m unable to locate another source yet.

With love up in the air, I had to look for something special.  And now, I’ve found it…in a obscure Japanese visual novel called Suiheisen Made Nan Mile? – Deep Blue Sky & Pure White Wings –!?  Regardless of its hentai origins, this week’s music is incredibly catchy.  I’ll forgive you if the moment you’ve played Where the Sun Shines, a lovely tune by Yasuhisa Watanabe, you started dancing.

So, forgive me for the scarce information, but this is what I can gather about Suiheisen Made Nan Mile? through a few Google searches.  The game is a regular visual novel that focuses on a simple slice-of-life of an average Japanese high school club.  You play as Sorata, an average student and a member in astronomy club.  As it turns out, the student council deems the club unworthy (which, unfortunately for the lazy club members, is a logical conclusion), forcing the members to come up with a ridiculous plan to redeem themselves: compete with the aviation club to pilot electric gliders for a world competition.  And so, their flight begins…

Unfortunately, I was not able to gather what kind of visual novel Suiheisen Made Nan Mile? is.  That is, typically, visual novels can be divided into one of the two categories: choose-your-own-adventure like Katawa Shoujo, or stat building like Long Live the Queen and Hatoful Boyfriend.  Given the (very) few reviews out there that mentions that honing in on which girl (and a guy) to date tends to be easy lends me to believe it’s the former type of game, but I can’t be too sure.  What I can confirm is that, yes, this is another erotic Japanese game (unlike Long Live the Queen and Hatoful Boyfriend), though a tame one at that.  Much like Katawa Shoujo, sex scenes are treated as an end reward rather than a pornographic journey.  Additionally, since the settings is set firmly in a non-magical world, there aren’t any tentacle monsters or other bizarre fetishes.  Lastly, replaying the game with the same starting choices actually leads to new branches in the story as well, increasing the replay value.  This does, yes, include more sex scenes.

Suiheisen Made Nan Mile? – Deep Blue Sky & Pure White Wings – was released on the Playstation Portable and PC.  It is, as far as I can tell, a Japan-only game.

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#WeeklyGameMusic: Miller House (The Witch’s House)

Posted on by Taro Omiya

#WeeklyGameMusic: New week, new music.

What better way to start a romantic month with an RPGMaker horror game? Accelerated heart rate is easily mistaken for love and all that. Anyway, this week’s music is a free music called Miller House, composed by Presence of Music.  It’s used effectively during a shocking plot twist from a Japanese horror game called The Witch’s House. A twist so good, it makes every M. Night Shyamalan plot-line boring.

The plot of The Witch’s House is deceptively simple. A young blond-haired girl named Viola wakes up in an opening of a forest, and finds herself stuck in a very unfortunate situation.  The forest itself is too thick to pass through, and the passage that it creates only leads to one of two dead ends. One end is blocked by an enchanted and stubborn set of rose bushes that can’t be cut by a machete; the other leads directly to a haunted house. Without much else to do (and being encouraged by a creepy, talking black cat), Viola dives right into the house.

It’s worth noting that for most first-time players, the house will kill Viola within the second room she enters. Yup, it’s that kind of game. As a defenseless girl, Viola will very frequently get hanged, poisoned, crushed, decapitated, eaten, fall, and other wonderful ways to die in this surprisingly detailed game. This game relies on a trial-and-death mechanic to solve every puzzle, although the majority of the puzzles do provide cryptic hints. Similar to other RPGMaker horror games, The Witch’s House also has a few chase moments that, due to its rarity, is shockingly effective at making the player’s hair stand on its ends. It’s rare to find a game that utilizes jump scares well, yet still feel fair and possible to beat. Just be prepared for all the blood and gore: this game does not compromise.

The Witch’s House is a freeware PC game originally developed in Japanese by Fummy (ふみー). An English translation of it exists as a free download at:
http://www.vgperson.com/games/witchhouse.htm

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