Blue Ϟ Lightning

Soma is great

I’ll be completely honest here I’m not a big horror fan.
But Soma is more than a simple shock value joke littered with jump scares.
If I had to explain the experience it would be a well crafted sci-fi narrative glued onto a B-horror movie
its glued on and incorporated into it but the sci fi story could stand alone quite easily if removed from the horror elements.
They horror subplot was even resolved as…well on the way to finish the main plot you’re (nearly literally) pulled aside to deal with the monster subplot and then continue on to the end to deal with the main story.
I’m only slightly exaggerating in that.
The monsters are set up “as game-play” cause without them it would just be a walking simulator and who likes those wew.
and I guess I’m being a little to harsh cause the monster subplot helped set up some of the main sci-fi parts like explain how you were made/give an excuse for why you can hear the dead by datamineing their black boxes and I really like the aesthetic/lovecraftian sort of background
However Its kinda annoying being interested in the lore and backstory to places and have all sorts of cool stuff you can explore only to be stalked by a creepy ass monster that can hear you (and can sense you looking at it? so you’re not allowed looking at the monsters…or moving and have to hide looking at the wall waiting for it to go away/jump and eat your face.

Anyways a bit more rambling if you don't care about spoilers

So one of the issues this game brings up is the whole cloning phenomena. When the researcher’s copy themselves into the arc they immediately commit suicide in the name of “continuity” basically they believe “human consciousness as an entity that transcends a physical body.” and start “mass suicideing” with cyanide gum etc…so they can “transfer their soul to their copy” or whatever…fucking nuts…

while playing the game you copy your mind into a different body only to realize theirs another you in the old body still freak out and kill it… your dense ass also has the exact same reaction at the end ugg.
one part of the monster subplot is the WAU/all encompassing AI responsible for making all the monsters including you doesn’t see life so narrowly…its decided each copy is a separate human (no matter how failed or disfigured it is) and deserves to be treated as such…
and at the end of the day its slowly learning and improving and based on how the main character turned out well on its way to re creating life.
also why I ended up not killing the WAU…

(if anyone’s played the game and reads this I’m interested to know if you killed the WAU or not and your reasoning behind it)

Also based on how much I liked it I'm actually considering trying a few more horror games. Observer looks like it might be intresting can anyone confirm? as a cyberpunk horror thing...

Scanner Sombre

0.4 hours, no achievements

Play or Pay


The other POP game I played this past period was Scanner somber…dropped after a half hour when I fell into a hole and couldn’t get out and was jumping around and then realized…I could be having more fun doing anything else.


DISTRAINT: Deluxe Edition

2.0 hours, 16 of 16 achievements
Challenge Me


DISTRAINT Another horror game :3
this one is a side scrolling pixelated gem…and really nice in many ways.
Not too scary but definitely creepy as it deals with the main characters guilt and unstable mental state.
slight tangent-

I read this psychological horror novel by orson scott card years ago called lost boys.
basically a suburban style thingy about a father who’s a game programmer and him dealing with his unethical boss trying to undermine him and a co worker he finds out is a child molester (who wants to babysit for him) and the horrors of being a parent which ends with him finding out the nice elderly father of the owner of his rented house is a child murderer and all the missing children from the past however many years are cause of him. It didn’t have any monsters and wasn’t (too) graphic with parts but it was downright creepy.

…and that novel is completely different from DISTRAINT but the creepy sense of dread it gave me was almost the same… somehow.
but maybe I’m just weird.
either way I enjoyed it and would totally recommend it to those it might interest.



Evoland is not as good as its successor I nearly quit it after the turn based rpg combat appeared and only pushed through cause it was short and I was moving almost on autopilot through it spamming keys and glazed over.
I really liked Evoland 2 and spent ages exploring it and getting 100% but I can’t bring myself to do that for this…I’ll reach the final really shitty boss fight and toss it into the beaten category.

Finally this game is a challenge me but from a older month I just finally finished now…


HIVESWAP: ACT 1

6.3 hours, 23 of 44 achievements
Challenge Me


I’ve never Read Homstruck… and I enjoyed this game but still have no interest in touching Homestruck :3. HIVESWAP is cute and great… Its full of references to random things and has humor and feels cute idk.
wew
slightly off topic but I figured out how I like writing updates.
I used to write stuff here previewing often then copy the source code to notpad++ and fiddle around with it...
this time I wrote everything in stackedit a random online markdown editor that showed me everything in real time (same site I was using to format a md file for github actually) and then exported that to html and added in the formatting from that :3
aka was lazy and couldn't bother writing anything myself and just used the generator :3

super easy \o/
stef

It’s nice to see Distraint get some love. I won it on SG and it was perfect for a big wimp like me who doesn’t take horror well. I haven’t played Soma yet because I heard that the combat (or stealth?) is actually very hard. Can you confirm or deny that? I didn’t read all your review because I was trying to avoid spoilers. I’m usually bad at stealth in horror games and the repetitive dying usually puts me off

Blue Ϟ Lightning

I hide most of the spoilers in the special dropdown section? its pretty safe to read (story wise)
you can of course play on wuss mode like tsuper and just play it as a puzzley walking simulator with creepy things and you might even enjoy it more!

buttt the stealth isn’t that bad
okay heres the thing I’m a wuss with horror as well. Most of the monsters you could get around by throwing something into a room to get thire attention that way or just running like hell (and I found my self running once or twice and just running as far as I could/closing doors behind me.
and you can totally rambo monsters if you like just rushing stuff…BUT
I’m a wuss
so I was hiding a lot.
and syncing myself up to get past monsters. (part of my excessive playtime was me going “nope nope nope” and hideing for tons of time
and the worst moment was when the monster saw me and I ran to the security room closed the door then rushed to a computer and the monster opend the door behind me then I closed it using the computer and locked it and sat in that lil room for like 30 minutes before I was brave enough to unlock it and go back out side.

that was terrifying

I didn’t die alot though so you might want to give it a shot

stef

lol! that sounds exactly like how I play horror games.

Thanks for explaining it to me. I’ll definitely pick this up next sale or bundle since I’ve had my eye on it for a while

Deleted

This comment was deleted over 5 years ago.

MaxBedlam

I got both Evoland games, but didn’t quite like the first one so I dropped it. I thought Evoland 2 probably isn’t much better so I never tried it. Considering what I just read from you on those two I guess I’ll have to give the second one a try. I’ll probably force myself to beat the first one before that though.

Guess I might try Distraint as well, since both you and stef seem to have liked it and I already own it (it was given for free I think?).

Blue Ϟ Lightning

Evoland 2 has a set story. it progresses and there are key moments everything goes forwards and the reason it goes forwards has a backstory.
It varies between different genres dabbling in a platformer at one point a topdown another and Its not perfect but its a hell of a lot funner than the first game.

first game I was just running through the map opening chests one after another and it became 3d really quickly and then spent the rest of the game making small changes to the graphics…also I hate that kind of jrpg combat its just spam attack/heal once you fall bellow 50% spam attack…

no clue if it was given for free or not and I can’t remember when I got it but I think its also been super cheap before so idk.

skanda

The senpai noticed you!

Vito

Played through all of Scanner Sombre. Not worth it.

Blue Ϟ Lightning

beautiful I can safely uninstall and forget about it :3

Vito

Glad that my “suffering” was good for something ^.^

tsupertsundere

I did enjoy SOMA, but I definitely agree the monster-bits felt very tacked on because then otherwise they’d be a dreaded OH NO WALKING SIM. Your take on it is very solid. I can’t remember if I killed the WAU or not. I may have left it alive. I think the MC killing himself because he was the copy that was left behind made sense because the quality of life he would have at the very very bottom of the ocean floor would be… well… very bad.

Also reading your comment to stef was ADORABLE. THAT’S WHY I DON’T PLAY SCARY GAMES I PLAY IT ON BABY MODE because I too would just sit for long stretches of time and not move.

I’m glad you liked Hiveswap without ever playing Homestuck! It’s good to know it can stand on its own two feet.

Blue Ϟ Lightning

aahhhh tsuper I like reading your replies -I SHOULD HAVE PLAYED BABY MODE I WAS KICKING MYSELF HALFWAYTHROUGH WHEN I WAS HIDING IN A ROOM
I opened the door saw the monster and closed it again going nope nope nope. and out of game I had unplugged the lamp to charge my phone and it (wasn’t dark when I started but it became) dark and I was sitting there in the dark and the light wasn’t working and :aaa:

tsupertsundere

Oh my god I’m laughing so hard. Oh, Blue!!! Blueeee, I feel u Blue. It’s like that sometimes, Blue!

But you persevered! You’re a Big Brave Bulldog! A Rougie Toughie Commando!*

*(when I get really scared I try to make myself laugh by calling myself all the dumb shit my parents used to call me to try to get me to do scary things as a child. Somehow it still works!)

skanda

Trying to imagine Blue as a big brave bulldog is the best thing ever. :)

Blue Ϟ Lightning

seeing as how your stalking old posts you could look at tsupers post :3<
Postu

Bangledeschler

Not that you would have a huge reason to replay SOMA again (It felt very much of a one and done game to me), but there is a mod/patch that removes all the monster sequences so that you can fully explore without having to avoid sight and contact with the beasts. Otherwise, I really enjoyed the game myself, despite it being walking Sim, it provided a neat concept of what it is to be alive, human, and an individual. Whether or not the choices affected anything wasn’t the point as much as to serve to question these ideas, and define how you perceive them.
Sorry to drag on, great update and looking forward to future posts! ^_^

Blue Ϟ Lightning

theres actually a gamemode built right in called safe mode that includes all the monsters but makes them non aggressive…

Bangledeschler

Ah, I think that’s what I meant. It has been a while since I have heard about it. Thanks for the update. ^_^