Recent reviews by OneHandedSquire

Indeed. Now that I've fulfilled the bargain I've made with the entity representing the platonic ideal of childish gutter humor, let's talk about Fingered.

Ever play that board game, Guess Who? Of course you have. Just open up your mental filing cabinet, flip past all the childhood trauma that's made you the lovable misanthropic troglodyte you are today (just me?), and find the spot you put all the things that happened but have had as much impact on your development as a fruit fly's flaccid anatomy brushing past your ear. Look next to the troll dolls, subsection: gradeschool recess rainouts. Trust me, that's when you played Guess Who.

If for some reason, you never played Guess Who and were greatly affected by troll dolls:

1. Please don't message me, you poof-haired freak.

2. You weren't missing much. Guess Who is a formalized version of 20 questions, where you and an opponent have a gallery of charicatures and you each have to deduce a specific portrait from the lineup by asking yes or no questions of your opponent to narrow down the pool.

Anyway, Fingered is the computer version of that except you're playing against an opponent that is somehow even more unreliable than a five year-old you.

So why am I still giving Fingered my best Fonzie hands? Well, the whole game has a grimy surrealism about it, like a drunk hobo telling you about the time he was abducted by aliens. It's totally unreliable, and near impossible to make out any truth that might be in there, but entertaining all the same.

Unreliability is an important concept to Fingered. See, the hint-givers in Fingered treat the game as fairly as I treat troll doll aficionados. Some of their statments will be absolutely true, others only possibly true, some hints can never be repeated, and some are delivered by means of putting the English language through a blender and just passing you whatever tasty looking chitlins the witness gloms onto.

Combine these and other logical peculiarities with the weird art style you'll recognize from The Binding of Isaac and you'll find fingering others is a challenging but pleasurable experience. (And now my dark pact is complete)

So why did I almost thumb this one down?

Yes, yes I did so almost throw Fingered into the deep, dark hole with the others. (That's a bonus manual stimulation joke for those of you keeping score at home)

Because it's a short and very simple game that could've been a flash game? No. Those are points in its favor as far as I'm concerned. It's a good game to play when you need to kill ten minutes. It's like Minesweeper but visually interesting. And that's why it gets more cred than a flash game. That and its macabre humor is enough to keep me smiling so that I feel it's earned its two bucks. I mean, come on. You have power of life and death over a bunch of troll-doll looking wierdos dependent upon your mad Guess Who cred.

No. What makes me want to thumb this down is how broken and rushed the game feels. Almost all of the levels can be solved once you figure out what statements apply to which randomly generated portrait features. However, I've had moments where clearly bald people were the guilty party when given "not bald" as a reliable clue, a thin guilty party with a fat clue, etc. Likewise, even as exaggerated as it is, the art style fails to communicate some important things. For instance, it's almost impossible to tell whether a short character is thin or fat because their face and arms completely obscure their body type.

I guess you're supposed to overlook these things as quirks of the random generation. But it gets my goat every time I have to restart because the game decides its relation to logic is about as firm as a house made of noodles in a boiling rain storm.

And I say it feels rushed, not just because of these logical incongruities, but also because it's lacking some very basic features I expect in a paid release. (For the record, that's not a manual stimulation joke, but it's certainly hanging around the same skeevy hotel room)

The game only runs windowed in a set resolution, which is some nasty sweaty balls, that is. Also, I'm always a bit peeved when I have to adjust my Windows volume instead of having an in-game option.

Fingered: you will experience brief pleasure as well as some disappointment and shame. Just like all my first dates.

Goodnight everyone!

Have you ever seen the Disney movie, Pocahontas? Be prepared to be led on a magical journey through the wilderness surrounding early English settlement in Virginia. You will learn to appreciate the things you take for granted and about the life altering passions of human nature.

"Quit jerkin' me around, reviewer," I hear you saying. "This is a horror game about exploring a black and white world filled with scary monsters. There is no way Betrayer is at all like Pocahontas!"

Betrayer is like Pocahontas; not because they share a setting but because they are both stories of outsiders coming to understand and appreciate the world around them by introduction to a foreign culture. You, the player, are the outsider. You are learning to appreciate the world of sound design. The culture that will teach it to you is the setting Betrayer presents.

Okay, I'm jerkin' ya around a bit. I'm sure as a clever reader who enjoys my long-form reviews, you already appreciate what good sound design can mean for horror and stealth games. But Betrayer has built its sound design into its every aspect to create the perfect study.

The stealth elements of Betrayer are entirely sound focused and are essential to your ability to remain hidden and to detect enemies. Those enemies have a very small vision range. However, if you run or use a firearm, they'll spot you in the dead of night, through a blizzard, in a concrete bunker, on another planet. You'll need to move slowly or run in short bursts while gusts of wind cover the sound of your movement.

You won't hear the wolf cry to the blue corn moon. But you may learn which animal calls are made by an enemy that's just a silhouette hiding in pure, black shadow. Only by identifying the calls they make will you pinpoint their position and save yourself from a deadly ambush.

It's like Marco Polo for keeps.

Likewise, sound contributes more to the game's tension and atmosphere than the visuals ever could. Oh yes, the conquistador enemies you encounter early are unsettling for their hunched posture and the segmented movements of their armor. But it's the bear roaring that makes them frightening. The use of animal sounds for humanoid enemies lends them that elusive otherness that makes them horrifying. It also characterizes the savagery of their nature brought to life by the cursed land.

While stealth and combat are important parts of Betrayer, I would say the core gameplay is about exploration and investigation. And like the others, sound is key. Objects of interest give off directional sounds to help you locate them and you can press a button to hear a directional sound leading you to your next main objective.

Your goal is to find physical evidence of the events that transpired and a bell to ring to visit a dark world haunted by ghosts. You'll need to use your evidence and their testimonies to put together the story of the colony. You won't paint with all the colors of the wind, no. You will paint yourself a picture of racism, murder, rape, betrayal, and all the other destructive passions of a people unleashed by a wild land they weren't prepared for.

There is a map and visual cues so that the hearing impaired might enjoy the game. However, Betrayer has all kinds of new and exciting ways to diddle your ear-hole, so you should lean back, put on headphones, and enjoy the ride.

Combat is fitting for the game's time period and tone. You'll have access to a variety of bows, pistols, and muskets. The latter hit - you and your enemies - for deadly amounts of damage, but make noise sure to give you away. And you might as well go for a coffee while they reload.

Bows are silent, but the early bows you find only do deadly damage if you can fire them with precision while hidden. And as everyone knows, an arrow bouncing harmlessly off your armor is the universal greeting for people who would like to be unceremoniously shot.

The game flow is similar to Bioshock: you start poorly equipped and combat is hazardous and resource depleting. By the end of the game, though, you'll have found powerful weapons that reload stupidly fast and have tons of health restoring items and ammo. Fortunately, combat never stops being deadly where groups of enemies are concerned and the last segments of the game put your resources to use in large, difficult fights.

Like that adventure under the sea, Betrayer's narrative is similar. Take it from me. (What is it with me and Disney films today?)

You play as an outsider washed ashore and left to discover the fate of a fallen society after the fact. Unlike Bioshock (you didn't think I was talking about The Little Mermaid?), Betrayer takes place in the very real setting of Virginia in the early seventeenth century.

Can you imagine being dropped into a proper wilderness with nothing to help you survive? Try to imagine it without all the cabin building karate ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ of recent survival games. What I'm getting at here is that Blackpowder Games chose a naturally scary setting. Life as an early American colonist couldn't have been anything other than piss-terrifying.

They nailed that fear of being isolated in a very alive land you don't know anything about and threw in some monsters for good measure. You'll find this Virginia's abandoned forts swarming with wraiths, Indians made of ash, and growly shambling conquistadors.

The only living thing not trying to kill you seems to be a lady with a pragmatic attitude who nevertheless wears her best sexy Little Red Riding Hood Halloween costume. Like the ghosts, her past is a mystery to be solved and tied into the omnipresent curse.

Wait, what? I haven't talked visuals, yet? Sing with all the voices of the mountain, indeed. The sound design here is that good. But Betrayer also looks good. Everything is in a stylish black and white with touches of bright red that direct your focus. The wind effects through the dense foliage of your surroundings look great and the enemy animations strike a nice balance between natural and surreal.

The game also gives you the option to play the game in full color in the light world. And the game looks just as good that way. The only notable weakness is that the contrast is turned up to eye-gouging degrees. I think the purpose was to try and give the light world a sense of hyper-real vibrancy, which it kind of does. But its biggest success was giving me a headache and making some things really hard to see. That might be by design, but it's too much in my opinion. I turned the contrast down halfway through and felt no shame whatsoever. Fortunately, the option is there.

There are some other minor criticisms to be made.

The in game map is at-odds with using sound to navigate. If you only use the map, you'll get confused about events that only trigger in a sequence that the sound navigation would unveil. The sound navigation will disappoint your Nazi robot-like need to follow the most efficient course through all the treasures and objects of interest. And you will have that need because the pattern for each area - explore light world, ring bell, find ghosts - becomes routine. So neither method is ideal.

And if you want a pure stealth game, this isn't it. Stealth is a tool that you can and should use, but even early enemies are designed so that they will ambush you. There are several big fights that are unavoidable. In the dark world enemies pop out of the ground right in front of you. And, worst of all for stealth-lovers, there's no way to run away and hide. Once enemies have found you, they will follow you to the ends of the map (barring the perfect storm of big cover objects, wind gusts, and timing). It's not terrible that Betrayer isn't a stealth game, but I'd sure love to see a proper stealth game use some of the ideas here.

Worth ten bucks? Well, I know good sound design and horror has a life, has a spirit, has a name. It's Betrayer.

I am less than affluent (i.e. broke), therefore I will wait for anything and everything I want to play to go on sale. Yes, even already cheap, obscure indie titles go on my wishlist until I see old man Steam is having one of his episodes and will trade me games for the unnamed contents of my pockets. It also doesn't help that the obscure titles are less reliable in their overall ratings, so that I find myself owning games that give Steam refunds their raison d'etre.

The Desolate Hope, however, is not one of these. The Desolate Hope is a game that, after playing it, I felt guilty for not kicking a couple bucks to before it became free. To wish I had paid money for a thing I got for free is easily the highest praise a cheap bastard like me can give.

Alright, so what is The Desolate Hope? Every time I try to explain its premise to someone, I come off sounding like a kid that's upended a forty of Pixy Stix. So here goes:

Imagine that you are playing as Minesweeper. No, not playing Minesweeper. You are the computer program, Minesweeper. You came preinstalled and have been idling in memory for someone to enjoy your frustrating trial-and-error gameplay. Finally, you are activated; not by an eager player, but by a greater intelligence, the likes of which you can barely begin to circumscribe with your puny Minesweeper brain: the AI for a robotic coffee pot.

Your new coffee pot overlord has downloaded you into its body, while it oversees the vital functions of the space base you both occupy. Your mission is to explore the base (long abandoned by humanity), gain the trust of several derelict robots that were once in charge of terraforming the planet, and seek out and eliminate a virus stealing data from the simulations they are running. And you must do all of this before the station runs out of power in only a few days time.

During the day, you will explore the Derelicts' dream worlds, the visualization of their efforts to build a home for humanity: their simulations. At night, you will roam the barren wasteland of the forgotten planet the base rests on, looking for lost artifacts of humanity to offer up to the Derelicts so that they might offer their help to fight the virus.

You will face challenges that lesser coffee pots would buckle before and uncover the hidden secrets of the base, for all is not as it seems. Also, there's a magic wrench and a spider named Sigfried.

Truly, a tale as old as time.

The visual aesthetic is quite impressive. Though it does have that Sega CD/Saturn era pre-rendered style that looks kind of old and janky now, I hadn't realized that I do have some nostalgia for that.

Regardless, the character models and environments in the simulations are very imaginative. The Derelicts and viruses appear almost like something out of Aztec or Hindu mythology; towering over their private realms that are certainly science fiction, but have a magical feel about them. But it wasn't until I was walking on the planet's surface as a tiny, lone silhouette against the void of space that it really hit me what a beautiful game this is.

Of course, you want to talk gameplay. Like the premise, it's hard to describe the gameplay without sounding like I'm vomiting up the product of a the orgy between a big pile of ideas (eww). I have a feeling the game design document reads something like this:

"Yo dawg, I heard you like video games. So we put some video games in your video game so you can play video games while you game."

Outside the simulations, the game is at its most reserved. Your coffee pot body is exceptional in that it can move around. But that's all. At this level, the game is an adventure game where you explore and collect items... and play Space Invaders at certain times, but that's neither here nor there.

Inside of the simulations, you are playing a free-roaming platformer where you can jump and shoot energy blasts and other such feats of percolation heretofore unknown to coffee pots. You can dive into sub-simulations where the game becomes a top down vector-based shooter where you kill enemies to gain cabbages. Makes sense? What if I told you a vector rabbit follows you around and translates them into free memory you can use to upgrade yourself?

When you locate the virus, the screen swirls into a disco wonderland and the game becomes real-time JRPG style combat where you control the four Derelicts against the virus. And if that wasn't enough, we can go one deeper. Within the real-time JRPG combats, one of the best moves for each Derelict is to call up a mini-game (each of the four gets a different one and you can have them all running simultaneously) that you can play to get buffs.

Some would say that sounds schizophrenic. Normally, I'd agree, but the Deolate Hope manages to take these disparate gameplay styles and use them to inform, further, and juxtapose the others. It creates complexity, where I would label something else randomness.

Your lonely sojourns on the planet's surface are quiet, somber, and low on action. It gives the player a break from the intensity of the platforming and RPG combat while also giving us a stark "real" world to stand against the fantastic dreamscapes of the Derelicts and the psychedelic fury of the RPG segments. And "leveling-up" the Derelicts is a matter of earning their trust so they will dedicate more system resources to your task.

Gathering free memory in the sub-simulations will allow you to purchase upgrades from vendors you find by exploring the main simulations. And these upgrades and other power-ups you find are your ticket to success in the menu-driven battles against the virus. You will need to gather every resource and have a full understanding of all systems to have any hope of success when suing the 1% - err, defeating the late game bosses

Unlike some computer RPGs where combat is a placeholder for action until the boss fights, The Desolate Hope's RPG combat is fixture of strategy and challenge. You will need to master buffs, debuffs, status effects, running mini-games, storing points, using hack items, and a slew of other systems before taking on the later bosses.

In fact, this is one of the few complaints I have. I do love that I'm being challenged, when other titles in the genre often don't. However, there is so much going on in these RPG segments that are the center pieces of the game and no explanation to guide you through them. It becomes overwhelming. I felt like an outsider taking a journey to the depths of superhero fandom message boards: just one incomprehensible wall of text describing powers and systems and the interconnectedness of it all that made me want to back out slowly and cry.

Here's a tip: you won't figure it out for yourself. Go get a guide. There's a lovely one in the Steam Community pages.

My only other criticism is that the game is badly lacking in polish. It's clear that this is Scott Cawthon's early work and there are some things missing that I expect in a paid release. The game doesn't adjust itself to suit my native resolation, but rather resets my resolution to make itself fullscreen. And there's no volume control or pause button. Pressing escape just instantly closes the entire game. You get the idea.

Still, I obviously really like The Desolate Hope and would have been almost as enthusiastic if I had paid. There's nothing game-breaking missing, though it would have been nice to see this one get just a little bit more love before being published.

Edit: So, it turns out Scott Cawthon is a religious bigot. That's a shame, since I still like the Desolate Hope. Although it does give some context to the odd feeling I got from the ending of the game. Do I still recommend playing it? That depends on how you feel about separating the art from the artist. It certainly helps that the game is free, so it isn't necessary to financially support Cawthon's fundamentalism.

Spy Chameleon - RGB Agent is stealthy in much the same way taking a sack full of hammers to the face is stealthy; while the perpetrator announces his assault beforehand with a vuvuzela blast. That is to say, it's not stealthy at all.

Wow, that's a pretty rough opener for a supposed stealth game, eh? But you'll notice I still gave this one a thumbs up.

To continue my metaphor, the stitching on the bag was just exquisite, the sound of the hammers crashing together was a tour de force, and the bits of my skull moved in ways that frankly astounded medical experts. Fortunately, I am the kind of guy who can appreciate these things. Though I'd have appreciated them more if they'd happened to somebody else.

You see, as the living, breathing reason banks feel compelled to keep their pens attached to chains, I think of myself as something of an expert on stealth games. There's nothing I love more than stealth done right in video games. But what is a stealth game and why doesn't Spy Chameleon qualify?

Well, a stealth game has you move through an area, usually attempting to accomplish some objective (say, take everything not nailed down) and leave without being seen. There's a danger of being caught and that requires some intelligence on the part of the challenges standing between you and your objectives. For a game to be a stealth game, it needs reactive enemies, otherwise it's just an obstacle course. And that's what Spy Chameleon is: a time trial, obstacle course, collect-a-thon game.

Yes, it has the trappings of stealth. You play as the titular chameleon spy, you are told briefly that your goal is to steal a thing and shown a picture of the thing at the end of several levels, and the obstacles take the form of "enemies" with vision cones. But everything moves in perfect clockwork without reaction to your presence. Changing your color to "hide" is just another form of dodging a static obstacle.

You'll notice stealth is even a Steam user tag. The devs themselves describe Spy Chameleon as: "a challenging arcade-puzzle game where the player needs to avoid being spotted thanks to the color-changing mechanisms of the main character."

So, yeah, Spy Chameleon fails as a stealth game. But, now that that bone has been picked, if we judge it as an "arcade-puzzle game" or by my own moniker, "run-aroundy, collecty, obstacle torture time," then Spy Chameleon is an excellent example of its kind. Personally, I couldn't stand playing it, since I don't much care for time trial obstacle courses that play to my OCD desires to collect all the bits. But I have to admit, there's a Rube-Goldberg machine-like complexity to the levels and the timing required to solve them that makes them satisfying to complete.

Like the sack of hammers, it's fundamentally solid in its design and its presentation is surprisingly nice. Spy Chameleon's soundtrack makes up for the game's lack of true infiltration by seeping it's bassy post-modern jazz into that part of your brain designed for looping catchy tunes. And thanks to the artists, my favorite part of the game was failing the levels (which is good because I failed a lot).

Each failure shows you an image of the hazard that caught you: giant staring gold fish, trash-can robots spewing bold japanese writing, and the spy chameleon with a look of soul-wrenching embarassment for being caught about his naughty voyeuristic business. The art assets manage to convey a ton of character, and - as you'd expect for a game called RGB Agent - it's all in bright eye-catching primaries. Even the rather thematically dull environments: lab, office, storage rooms; are bright and good looking.

It's just a shame the art designer's theory seems to stop at the visuals. The game looks like it has a ton of character. Even the very premise that we're specifically playing a chameleon who is a spy is appealing. But it never really goes anywhere with it. There's no narrative to speak of.

Oh, you're told that you're trying to get a photo of some celebrity with their paramour or steal a work of art, but you just run 15 levels of obstacles and then see a picture of the thing you got. I'm not necessarily asking for War and Peace, or even any dialogue or text, but it feels like an opportunity was missed to tie all the whimsical characters together into some sort of cohesive story. That might have gotten me to love the game despite not enjoying the gameplay.

And to better explain the gameplay: You control the chameleon from a top down view and you navigate a room full of hazards: field-of-view cones attached to enemies that move in a set pattern. If you touch a cone, you lose. In addition to just dodging the cones as they move, you can stand against colored objects in the background and not be "seen." Naturally, you've got the primary colors and the chameleon's natural green (i.e. 360 controller colors). Along the way you collect flies and ladybugs strewn about the level for points and to unlock more levels. You are, of course, challenged to beat a certain time. There are a few variations to these basic mechanics: switches to open doors, movable obstacles to block vision cones, etc. It is best to think about the levels as a puzzle, where the solution is where you move and finding the proper timing.

The game has a sort of phone-game sensibility to it. You play a series of very short levels and get ranked at the end of them. It's clearly not a mobile port. It just has that arrangement.

It's mostly flawless in its implementation. The only mechanical problem is that the chameleon's model obscures the parts of his body that are vulnerable to being seen. Only the trunk of his body seems to trigger a failure and his bulbous head and tail make it hard to see the exact point you can safely stand.

That might seem a fussy complaint, but Spy Chameleon is a harsh time-trial collection hell. The difference between you getting your lovely leaderboard/completionist cheese and a big fat shock for losers in this particular rat maze is literally measured in thousandths of a second. Well, okay, it is measured in that, but just getting through will probably require you to operate on the scale of hundredths of a second.

No big deal for you speed-run, obstacle course aficionados, I'm sure.

That does lead to my other complaint. I found there's not really a good balance for the difficulty. It's a minor complaint since the game includes an easier mode and you can even skip levels that are giving you trouble, but it still stands. On the "normal" difficutly I found the game to be a really boring exercise in just going from point A to point B. Like connect-the-dots in full, glorious 3D.

On hard, though, (which is the only difficulty that counts according to the game and its lusty achievements) I found the timing to be just outside of human reaction speed at points and my success was basically a matter of luck and treating my controller in a manner that would no doubt have it taken away from me by the authorities if they only knew.

And that's Spy Chameleon: terrible stealth game. Good speed-run, puzzle, collection thing.

I suppose it's been mislabeled since there aren't a lot of games that marry stealth and speed well and somebody's gonna want that. The only one I can think of is The Marvelous Miss Take (which looks a bit like Spy Chameleon, actually). If you want stealth and speed, play that. But don't overlook Spy Chameleon because it doesn't do stealth. Just be sure you're the kind of person that enjoys a sack of hammers to the face.

Er, "challenging arcade-puzzle" game.

What's the first thing you think of when you think of ancient Greece? No, not that! Get your mind out the gutter, you degenerate! Okay, what's the second thing? Right! The awesome myths of heroes and gods! You think of Odysseus blinding the cyclops, Zeus overthrowing the titans, and... uh, Heracles mucking out some stables! Yeah, that's the ticket.

With all these feats of heroism wouldn't it be sweet if there was a video game that took place in ancient Greece, so that we too could test our mettle against these gods and monsters? What's that? God of War? No, no. That won't do at all. I'm talking about something that wasn't pushed through the filter of what thirteen year old boys think is cool. Something that's got fun gameplay, sure. But something that keeps it classical, you know? Preserves the tone and character of the myths. Fortunately for us, we've got Apotheon.

Assuming you've at least looked at the screen shots, I don't need to sell you on Apotheon's visual aesthetic. It just looks great. Bold black character models, flattened in profile, placed on warm background colors and intricate patterns do an excellent job of making you feel like you're playing an ancient Greek vase come to life.

It's clear a lot of work was put into Apotheon's visuals, but I'll admit, I almost passed on Apotheon, since I was concerned there might not be any substance behind the style and very little was said about it when I first had a look. It's too easy to fall into the "art game" trap, these days.

I grew still more concerned in a different way when some of the voice acting for the early game's enemies intruded on the stately visuals with an out of place cockney sounding accent. And still more worried when it introduced the main conceit of the game as "the gods have taken their gifts from man and it's up to you to overthrow them one by one."

Ugh. Groan. Spit. We're really doing the God of War thing? We're really giong to treat the Olympians as one big boss rush? No concern for all the gods' benevolent qualities? No mention of the heroes they helped, the customs they preserved? Just gonna treat them as absolute ♥♥♥♥♥ all the time? Ladies and gentlemen, I will confess that I was genuinely worried that upon my descent into Hades I would find the big man himself putting on his best James Woods playing Hades-as-the-Christian-devil before a meat-head slam down as the hero against an irredeemable evil.

But, mercifully, for its couple of worrisome first impressions, Apotheon never went that route. Yes, you do play as the mortal hero, Nikandreos, on his quest to conquer Olympus and steal the gods' powers. And, yeah, that concept's a little off-base from the mythology, but Apotheon always manages to treat the source material with a great deal of knowledge and respect and it gets all of the points for that. Aside from the odd intro enemies, the voice acting is good and, I would say, necessary for presenting the extreme personalities of the Greek gods. Most importantly, their characters are preserved.

Oh yes, your encounter with Ares will be a slaughter-fest bordering on supernatural Hulkamania, but that's befitting the charcter of Ares. Your meeting with Hades on the other hand is one of a number that pass without violence and with a lot of understanding for your plight.

And just to ensure that the fight-the-gods premise is pulled off with panache, Apotheon makes sure to vary its gameplay to suit the gods' realms and keep each climactic encounter with the gods themselves true to their characters. I knew, for instance, that I was in for something special when my showdown against Artemis took the form of a demented game of tag, with the role of hunter and prey switching as I navigated the level.

In Poseidon's realm you get to ride a ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ horse! People who know about mythology just came!

Sorry, I got excited there. The fundamental gameplay for Apotheon is fairly simple. You can attack with an absurd variety of ancient weapons: spears, swords, axes, pitchforks, bows, javelins, rocks, the power of love, an arrow that's three arrows, a flying saucer, a sword on fire.... Look, it's a big list, okay? And you can block with a shield if you have one equipped. You can adjust the angle of your attack with melee as well as ranged weapons to sneak blows past enemy shields. But despite the extreme variety of weaponry, your equipment will break on you mid-battle. Normally, I'd question the setting's decision to make equipment out of paper mache, but it was the bronze age, I guess. Combat gets fairly frantic as you and your opponents are smashing each others' shields and you dodge roll around like Sonic the effin' Hedgehog while you scramble to pull out your next favored weapon.

It's gets a bit metroidvania-ish with you being able to explore large areas of Olympus right out of the gate. There are lots of secrets to find and reasons to backtrack, athough the game is about as good at rewarding the player as someone saying "open your mouth and close your eyes." More on that later. It's also a bit step platformer-y, with movement focused on jumping and climbing around on your environment. Nothing really unique, but it works.

There are some RPG elements where you can buy upgrades to speed and damage with various weapon types, but it's minimal. You start with everything you need right out of the box.

But it wouldn't be like an ancient urn without some cracks in it, would it? The core gameplay is weak when it comes to precision. I found that the arrow telling me where I was aiming with my ranged weapons only had a token resemblance to where my attack was actually going and that made a few puzzles that relied on that precision tedious. The sheer volume of weapons can also quickly become a hindrance. Yes, you will need a lot of weapons since they break quickly. But it sucks to cycle through your huge inventory looking for the next spear weapon in the heat of the fight, especially since they aren't placed next to each other for some reason. It also makes one wonder why Nikandreos can't drop some swords and axes to hold more spears if you happen to have been giving him more proficiency with them.

On the huge inventory note, there's also a crafting system that feels a bit gratuitous. Yes, the potions and things you can make are useful. But so often, I found myself overburdened with materials that only had one or two specific uses, I couldn't help but wonder, "Is this necessary? Could you maybe have just given me the final product instead of making me go through this extra flow-breaking step."

And as I've briefly mentioned, Apotheon doesn't seem to know how to reward questing and exploration. I did one side-quest for an optional god and ended up with something that increased the duration of poison damage. There aren't any weapons that do poison damage. No, really, I didn't find any and I found everything. You also get a grappling hook for another elaborate sidequest that allows you to explore absolutely ♥♥♥♥-all you couldn't without it. Generally, there's very little reason to go after all the secret treasures. Odds are you've found one or two weapons you really like and that chest is going to contain those special sling bullets you are already maxed out on because you never use them or a backstabbing dagger in a game without real stealth mechanics.

But for its flaws, Apotheon's gameplay feels shield-shatteringly epic and suits the mythology well. I'm always happy to pick some nits, but the broad strokes are exactly what they need to be.

Indeed, short of including butt-stuff mechanics, I'd say that Apotheon has everything you need to get the full experience of epic Greek mythology. It's certainly the best take on the subject material I've seen to date and it's just good fun.

Another hard night in Steam Town. I peer into the streets looking for a little fun, but the sight hits me like a Mack Truck full of garbage: Boss Activision has the city tonight. A hundred Call of Duty hatchet men; the gunfire's so thick you'd barely be able to see the movie tie-ins pimping their wares if they didn't swarm like the bugs under a June streetlight. Distinguished old names walk with 'em, but I shake my head in disgust. I see the bruises and I know old man Activision already bought their souls.

Crows will come to eat Activision's buffet. But me? I just pour myself a glass of the hard stuff. That's when she comes through my door: all black dress and ivory skin like something out of an old movie or a graphic novel. Looks to kill for. The whisky burns my guts like a lit molotov and I know I'm going to play this game. She says she's got a job for me, "survival horror just like the good old days." I take another drink and think to myself, good old days or bad hard times? I ask for her name and she tells me through a sly smile, "White Night."

Another hard night in Steam Town.

Before you wretch at the prospect of another horror game on Steam, know that White Night is pretty cool. Okay, so it's got a lot of questionable gameplay elements we knew weren't very good in 1996, a story that's handicapped by its reliance on cliche, and the old cardinal sin of scrapping the visual-interactive medium to tell a story through document collection. Wait! Don't leave yet! You'll notice I still gave this one a thumbs up. And it's not even a half-hearted "this game is inoffensive but completely mediocre, so my thumb is really dead center but I'm in a good mood today" thumbs up.

White Night opens up with a sequence where you control a period 1930's car driving down an empty New England road in the middle of the night. Your headlights illuminate billboards along the road with the game's credits while a mournful jazz song plays. Something like this tells me the developers made something special and they know it. It sets the tone for a detective horror story with a 1930's noir style with aplomb and lets you really drink in the game's visual aesthetic.

Breathe in. Exhale. This game rules atmosphere and it doesn't let up after that strong intro. The main character peppers his inner monologue with metaphors as colorful as the game is monochrome. His lines are read with the steady sort of grim determination you'd expect from a noir hero. The fixed camera angles work artistically, if not necessarily gameplay-wise, with each area having strong framing that lends to the comic-book feel. The rooms of the mansion the game is set in couldn't do a better job of conveying an increasing feeling of decay and confinement - motifs central to the story - supported by the Depression-era setting. And the collectible documents bring forth all the history and insanity you need to tie the package together. It's good. Damn good.

As a story, though, White Night has some pretty damning weaknesses. I've already mentioned that it relies on a cliche. I saw the obligatory twist coming before I was an hour in, less than halfway done exploring the first floor. And the game did disappoint by doing exactly what I expected. Seeing where the game was going so early, took a good chunk of the magic out of it for me. Yeah, the game's tone was strong enough to sock me through the plate-glass window of my imagination, but I didn't tell it to stop!

White Night is a ghost story and the ghosts as antagonists really lack the sort of visceral weight I want from a noir thriller. Seeing my guy swarmed by flailing ghosts just doesn't have the impact of knowing he could end up with his skull caved in by a blunt object. In fact, the occult elements of the story really fall flat (not unlike a skull caved in by a blunt object). There's a lot of metaphysical B.S. involving alchemy that clashes with the very believable letters and diary entries. A Depression-era noir thriller could definitely make good use of occult motifs, but here I think they mostly serve to disconnect the story from the gritty tone the game set up so well.

Even though story and atmosphere are where it's at for a game like this, let's talk gameplay before you guys turn to hard drinking and fistfighting just to get some action in. White Night has stolen its clothes from Resident Evil and Silent Hill, if not quite gone so far as to disembowel them and wear their skin. I don't need to tell you guys about tank controls and fixed camera angles. This game's got them and has all the gameplay problems associated with them. You'll experience cheap deaths and confusion from blind angles and getting turned around between screens, make no mistake.

The game doesn't really have combat, unlike its predecessors. Instead, your main resource is matches, which allow you to explore the dark areas of the house without mysteriously dying. Interestingly, the matches behave a bit like real matches in that you might randomly get a dud. Combine this with fixed save points and White Night makes safety an uncertain proposition, which is good for horror. However, it can quickly get frustrating if you have to redo long sequences between checkpoints or go running back to refill your small supply of matches because you got a bunch of duds in a row.

Match light won't kill or even fend off the ghosts that can instantly kill you, only switching on electric lights will do the job. Once again this can make things tense, or it can be very frustrating when you have to run a gauntlet of ghosts randomly moving around in the dark. Yeah, the stakes have been raised, but during these sequences I died so many times trying to navigate them, that I just ended up getting irritated by the futility of it rather than horrified. It's also worth noting that you can't run past any ghost. Ghosts meant to block your way until you solve a puzzle will block your way until you solve a puzzle and it's not often clear which ghosts are which.

So the gameplay walks a razor's edge between tension and frustration. That razor's edge cuts impressively when it works, but when you're juggling it among so many balls, your balls won't feel good when it misses. And I found it to be pretty hit-or-miss.

Puzzle solving is about what you'd expect from a game with White Night's roots. There's a lot of find-odd-shaped-key-for-door puzzles, as well as some weird contraption based puzzles that have that contrived "puzzle" feel. The former have the problem of being too straightforward and the latter tend toward the cryptic, even if there are far fewer of them. The thing to take away from this is that it isn't a puzzle game. It's a horror game.

Alright, after all that why do I still recommend White Night? Can I really sell it to you on the art style alone if it has so many weaknesses? Damn skippy, I can! But more importantly, White Night does something great. Yeah, you'll be brought in by janky, nostalgic controls and those crisp black and white graphics (which could admittedly use better anti-aliasing), but what White Night does best is make you feel like you're an investigator using a hard nose for secrets to fight back the dark. It does this with its atmosphere and its superlative pacing. From staggering into a mysterious mansion, to meeting your first ghost with little fanfare, to pressing forward to the darker and more sinister sections of the mansion; from ground floor, to top floor, attic, and basement; White Night keeps getting darker and more dangerous. It's not a great story, no. But it's very well told. It stood out like a muzzle flash in a pitch black room during the Activision Weekend when I picked it up. I definitely recommend you give it a try if horror is your bag and it's on sale. For fifteen bucks, though? Maybe wait.

Start here and proceed downward to read the review! (Psst. Yeah, you. Just play along. I'm going somewhere with this)
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And with apologies, the review:

So what was that all about, you ask? I just disrespected a small chunk of your time and insulted your intelligence for my arbitrary punishments. And that's just horrible. As you might expect, this is a metaphor for Squishy the Suicidal Pig's gameplay. Let's look:

Okay, so a puzzle platformer about a pig who has made a bet with the devil that's left him with a bunch of extra lives and the challenge is to burn them all up to earn a "Get Out of Hell Free" card. That's a premise that's got a ton of charm and potential. I'm guessing it's that premise that's drawn you in for a closer look. I expected some free-form puzzling that poked fun at the platforming genre where deaths are easy and so often cheap.

Unfortunately, no. It's not that. It's just another "ragequit"-pandering frustration platformer, schizophrenically mixed with some janky pseudo physics and guess-what-the-designer-is-thinking puzzles. But make no mistake. Squishy isn't bad for not being the game I would have liked. If you've got the platforms and the fireballs, I'll dodge 'em. And you desperately need a better HVAC guy. Point is: like the contents of several shot glasses, hard can be fun. Although in both cases, if I end up falling into a pit, it had better be because of my own miscalculations in what I can handle.

This is not the case with Squishy. Arbitrary is really the watchword for this game. To tie it to the platforming: on the levels where it switches for no particular reason to a "not die" level, sometimes there are checkpoints. The checkpoints only work once and then you restart the whole level. Why? Arbitrary punishment! To prove that you're willing to put in the man hours and really prove that you've nailed the level up until the brand new mechanic that will definitely kill you a half dozen times before you can possibly suss out a feel for it. Or perhaps the developer just thought you'd be really pleased with seeing your indistinct hit box in action as you die from a deadly pendulum coming somewhat near your sprite. Time for a side-scrolling shooter level! Wait. What?

I'm sure I could easily point out a dozen more examples of peculiar and unfair design, but ultimately Squishy breaks the two rules anybody out to make a precision platformer needs to put in big black text on a stark white background and set as their desktop wallpaper until the end of time:

1. You must hold your game to the same standard of precision you demand from the player.

You want super responsive jumping that isn't competing with other animations. A sense of weight and speed is also welcome if you're going to ask the player to pass within a hair's breadth of hazards. The hit boxes must not extend outside the visible sprite. And even then that's the minimum. One pixel of toe touching a hazard should probably be forgiven. Look at how bullet-hell shooters do it by only making the player's center mass vulnerable. (Now look at what you've done, Squishy: you've got me calling bullet-hell shooters sensible)

2. The player is going to fail a lot. Respect their time and get them back in the action quickly.

Put a checkpoint after a lengthy segment and don't make it a limited use thing. Really, we're supposed to be making fun of the idea of a limited resource representing your number of tries, right Squishy? If the player dies after something like that, the only thing you're challenging is their patience. To its credit, Squishy does have a dedicated "reload the level" button that helps with this, but any good will gained from that is instantly lost with every boss that has to waste around 10 seconds of my time with its unskippable intro dialogue every single time I restart. Don't do that. Especially don't do that if your boss is hard enough you might be dead in less than that amount of time. And double-extra don't do that if it's a throwaway line that does nothing to characterize the boss outside of a generic bad-guy line. Thanks, I think I got that much from them being the level boss and/or the devil.

Better yet, forget the wallpaper thing. Tattoo these on yourself in mirror-writing Memento style so you never lose sight of your redemption.

So now that my mighty tirade against Squishy's platforming has thundered across the primeval plains devouring lesser megafauna, let's ask: could Squishy be saved from a negative review by clever puzzling, a strong visual aesthetic, or its narrative elements? Nope.

Back to the word arbitrary that I seem to be hung up on; Squishy's puzzles are that. Most of the puzzles are variants on get-box-in-air-and-get-crushed-by-it, but almost all the others are one-off tricks where you have to discover some completely unsignposted rule. There's one level where you jump and don't fall, another where you have to try and wrap around the level, and one where you have to seemingly glitch your way through a fan that blows you upwards, just to name a few. Oh, and there's blue and orange portals in some levels. Because of course there are.

Can we please stop paying homage to Portal in our puzzle games? I know every game would like to strive for the same level of wit, character, and solid design, but if you had those things in spades, then the ref would only hold you back.

On that note, the whole Squishy the Pig, deal with the pig devil, etc narrative that drew you in really doesn't go beyond just that much as a framing device at the beginning and end. Don't expect to see Squishy or any of the antagonists portrayed beyond one or two sentences a pop. Of course, I've been platforming since the dawn of the 90s so I can accept a back-of-the-box type story. Still, strong character can save an otherwise mediocre game, especially if it proves a draw in the first place.

The art style's a bit of a mixed bag. The game is pleasantly colorful and some of the sprites are appealing. Squishy's idle animation does make him look nervous and sweaty, for instance. But then you've got a slew of boxes and platforms and buttons that look very MS Painty. The art's not going to carry this one, but it's not offensive overall.

What is a bit offensive is how buggy the game is. During my first run through - before the latest patch - I found the exterminator's bonanza, but even during a quick refresher run of a couple levels before this review I got stuck in a wall, missing assets stopped me from beating a level, and the final boss looped forever outside of my reach. Now, the dev is passionate enough about the game to keep patching it, but then again, should it be on sale on Steam if it still needs that much work?

Of course, if you're just getting this game because it goes on sale for less money than you'll get for selling the digital trading cards then Squishy will live up to all your desires! And why did you read this review anyway? 10/10, etc

But yeah, it is cheap this one. I guess as one last point in its favor before the damning post: it's not like it will cost you much to try. Mostly your time. And that's the big reason why I can't thumb this one up: it's just too damn smug about wasting my time when it can't see fit to fix its own issues. That's what all that fooling with you up top was about.

Again, sorry about that. I actually think you are discerning and very smart for reading my review.

There are two reasons to name drop Nikola Tesla. 1) You want to get some sweet nerd cred. 2) As a shorthand for electricity-based science magic. Since this game features monsters that run around in the dark and kill you called "grues" I think we can safely assume this game has all the nerd cred it needs and we're looking at the latter use of Tesla's name. Now don't take that as some snarling criticism of Teslagrad. Despite having nothing else to do with Tesla, dropping his name in the title does set you up for abusing wondrous electricity and magnetism based powers amidst an oppressive Eastern European backdrop. It certainly delivers on that count.

I'm going to assume you've already watched the trailer and been wowed by how good looking this game is with its smooth, forceful, hand-drawn animations. It's certainly a beautiful game, but don't let that vibrant animation fool you. This is a grim game about grim Eastern European seeming people doing grim Eastern European things with lightning! And as somebody with a grim Eastern European family, I knows from grim Eastern European things (not with lightning though, that's new). Teslagrad tells a basic story, but it does it elegantly without a single word of spoken dialogue or cumbersome written exposition. Once again, this game is a stone-faced immigrant staring you down, and made all the more unsettling by inhabiting a world that looks like it was drawn by Walt Disney.

You've seen the trailer, though (or you need to just go do that already), and are already sold on the aesthetic of this game. So let's talk gameplay. Teslagrad is a bit of a Metroid game and a bit of a puzzle game and a bit of a precision (i.e. frustration) platformer. You'll notice I said Metroid and not metroidvania. The Castlevania games have always been a bit more combat oriented and Teslagrad features almost no combat. There's a tiny bit toward the end and you kill some bosses in round-about ways, but for the most part Teslagrad is all about exploration and evading hazards. And, remember, this is a grim Eastern European game with ligthning so everything including the floors want you dead. And don't think they will go light on you because you are playing an adorable child! There is no food for adorable children, only being lightninged into ashes!

When I said frustration platformer up there, I do mean that. Teslagrad is absolutely unforgiving with the timing you require to navigate its many hazards, and not just for optional secrets. Combine this with some imprecise mechanics (especially when magnetizing yourself to float), and I will bet many boiled cabbages you will not be able to beat this game without sighing, growling, or outright screaming "BS!" So before you pick up Teslagrad, best make sure you're strong like bull and smart like tractor, or at least possess adult reflexes and patience. That said, the game is pretty liberal with checkpoints. Stick an incinerator on the end of your most barf-inducing carnival ride and you'll have an idea of the speed with which your ashes will be scattered. But then you just pop right back up at the start of the room or right after the last ridiculous challenge you overcame.

Overall, Teslagrad is a great looking game with a large environment to explore and a wide variety of puzzles that make use of simple, elegant mechanics. It would be nice to see an easy mode where the timing on some of the challenges is relaxed, but hey, in mother Teslagrad you must work hard at pixel forge for many achievement.

In other words, it's difficult, but satisfying. Go play it if exploration-precision-puzzle-platformer sounds good to you.

Usually, if a game prominently features balls, my review is going to contain a lot of puerile humor. I cannot promise you I will make it through this review without discussing smacking balls, handling balls, cradling balls, being swarmed by balls, having your balls sucked down the hole.... You get the idea. I am apparently still ten years old and there's just no helping that sort of thing when a game is fundamentally about how well it treats your balls.

I want to try and start this review on a sober note, though. I am deadly serious about pinball. I love pinball. And, let's be honest, you do too or you wouldn't be reading a review about simulated pinball. In the realm of games pinball is like a sharpened stick compared to the large hard-on colliders that are video games today. But I still remember playing this one wicked old machine about a million years ago in my friend's aunt's basement. We played that ♥♥♥♥ all night long, stomping the old high score into the dirt. It was an old cowboy themed table, with no story or complex goals to achieve. It was just a silver ball, a couple paddles, some targets, bumpers, and a ramp. Your only goal was to keep the ball in the air, letting it cause as much chaos as possible while the score rolled up. That ball was so ♥♥♥♥♥♥' heroic. And I don't mean like kids with cancer or a flower growing up through a crack in the sidewalk. This was like the guy from "They Live!" on a completely hopeless mission that he's got to do anyway because he's a badass.

That got rambly. But you know what? I don't care! I measure every pinball experience I have against that cowboy table and the other pinball games I've played. Come on, you do it too with your own tables. Pinball's a nostalgia thing. That's just how it is. So to review Pinball FX2, I've got ask myself: how does this compare to the cowboy table? How 'bout all the other real and simulated tables I've played?

The answer, like the game's protagonist, is gray and all over the place. What Pinball FX2 does well, it does really well. What it does badly is just inexcusable. (And I played most of the non-free tables outside of my Steam account so my play time is higher)

What does it do well? Well, there are visually interesting tables, with goals that pantomime simple stories and give you huge bonuses if you manage to meet certain conditions. They're very much like the pinball machines I remember from arcades in the 90s. I very much appreciate that the aesthetic of the boards is kept artificial and mechanical like a real table, but they aren't bound to that rule. There are some imaginative, organic models and they use lighting and particle effects as you'd expect from a modern game. It doesn't ruin the pinball experience, but justifies a pinball video game because you can do impossible things you could only dream of doing with your balls in real life! And such variety! Break out a new table, load your balls in the shaft, and enjoy shooting them all over such beloved characters as Spider-Man, Princess Leia, and King Arthur.

The music is fairly engaging and, for the most part, the sound effects are satisfyingly weighty. The game makes a good effort putting the camera how you want it with several different perspectives, from zoomed in on the ball, to hovering above the entire table. It's not perfect, though, because it can't be. Let's face it, boys, in real life when there are some perfectly formed spheres in front of you, all your focus is on them even though you're keeping the periphs on everything else that's going on. But while it's all flattened out on your monitor that's just not possible. Still, they did the best they could. And, as playing pinball is like making love, they give you options to adjust the angle of the table and thus the speed of the ball. Though, as in making love, doing so will disqualify you from the leaderboards.

So what does it do so badly? Well, a few things. The physics feel a bit off. Woah! That is seriously bad! That is the one thing you need to be correct for a pinball game. Yeah, but they're not too off. I'll freely admit it might even be my imagination, but I swear the ball doesn't always behave consistently when I trap and shoot it from the same part of the flipper. The gravity feels about right, but once in awhile you'd definitely hear me screaming "BS!" at the screen. Granted, I might do that with a real pinball machine and I might just suck from not having played enough pinball. However, despite having controller support for nice modern pads like the 360 controller that has those nice analog shoulder buttons, you can only smack the paddle at full strength. Now that might be great if you have children acting up, but pinball requires a gentler touch: floating your ball from one flipper to the other, releasing your balls as if gently kissed by an angel. That's pinball, baby! And while that might seem really petty to you guys, remember I'm putting Pinball FX2 against the cowboy machine and that is a serious failure. At least other computer pinball I've played has been aware of placing different force upon the ball depending on what area of the paddle it's leaving, and Pinball FX2 doesn't roll that way. When you hit your balls that hard all the time it just doesn't feel good, man.

Alright, so that's bad. Damning I would say. But a couple of you might just shrug and say "what do you really expect from computer pinball?" or even, "You're only noticing those faults because Pinball FX2 is actually sort of close to real pinball unlike other computer games!" Fair enough. But let Pinball FX2, who is about to die, salute you, because I am about to signal the end of its days in this arena. It succeeds somewhat by having a variety of tables, but that variety is superficial. Every table is ultimately a 90s table with complicated goals, LED readouts, and animatronic trickery (animated trickery here). Nowhere to be found is the simple cowboy table, where just keeping the ball in the air and maybe trying to get a whole group of targets down is all you need. There's a purity in that experience, where a silver ball crashing around uncontrolled is still a win condition, from smashing the spinner out of the gate to careening off the last ill-fated bumper and down the drain. Those tables aren't here, nor is anything in that minimal, old timey vain. It's all the same glut of particles and complex models. And remember, a Pinball game can only be about nostalgia, so leaving that out is real bad.

I'm sure hard work goes into designing these tables, but I can't help but see them as just a reskin of the same free table. I remember when I got "Take a Break! Pinball" on my Windows 3.0 computer. It was awful, but for the couple of bucks I spent, I got half a dozen tables with distinct character. When I was in middle school, I got a free pinball CD with three tables from a cereal box that had good graphics for the age and played satifyingly if not like the real thing. (It was probably not a cereal box. It would be dumb to have a CD in a cereal box.) Point is: the business model for this game is just deplorable. They'd ultimately charge you one hundred sixty US dollars for pinball reskins. That makes me mad. Now, I know, you're saying "just buy the ones you really want and leave the rest, dingus!"

Yeah, well, sorry. I get a lot of games on Steam and I occaisionally get full triple A releases courtesy of my buddy Abe Lincoln. That's five smackeroos for everybody keeping score. For something that's so niche, so living on nostalgia, even for a perfect version (which this isn't), that's not okay. For $10 I expect a full release (zing) for that sort of thing, not three skins.

Bottom line: if you can overcome that sizable problem or just play the free table, then Pinball FX2 might be as close as it gets to real pinball. Otherwise, can't recommend.

W4MM - Looking to play! Want to chase me around an art gallery with dogs and alarms? (London)

You:

• A bunch of chunky goons; 6ft+ only
  
• Must be radiating a translucent cone from your eyes to indicate your field of vision
  
• Men in uniform with random patrol paths

Me:

• A lithe, classy redhead in a hat (you'll know me when I drop the hat and run when you spot me)
  
• Into toys :) and I will bring them (glue, cat noise makers, teleporters; that's how I like it)
  
• The stealthiest fun you will ever have!

;) Catch me while you can, boys!

If you're into pure stealth experiences The Marvellous Miss Take certainly knows how to please. I myself am often found crouched in the shadows, stuffing things into my pockets, being the creep that I am. And, as such, I can tell you what makes a great stealth game. An adequate stealth game gives you steady feedback on how visible you are at any given time and makes it clear how alert your opponents are. A good stealth game is all about cunning movement, where actively removing threats is impossible or undesirable. A great stealth game takes all of the above, adds a heap of character, and then does something you've never quite seen before. Miss Take is a great stealth game.

Like spitting into the hair of a tall guy a couple rows in front of you in a dark and crowded movie theater, The Marvelous Miss Take is a pure stealth experience. You cannot incapacitate guards and your goal is to get the loot and get out without being caught. If you get caught, you lose.

However, where Miss Take really shines is in its focus on getting into and fleeing from danger. You could take your time on every level and get through the game easily. But if you want to get through well, you'll have to beat the par times for each level. This might sound awful to old stealth hats, but the game doesn't punish you for being seen as long you can get away. And as anyone who has run naked down a public street of a major city knows, that has some veracity (provided you have no obvious tattoos or weird scars). In fact, being seen is a great way to get the guards to stop patrolling near the loot and come stomping to where you decided to give them a show (as most fellows will). At least this is how it plays for two of the characters.

What!? Multiple characters and playstyles? Take a minute to collect your popped monocle, reader. Yes, Miss Take has three characters that play quite differently. With the eponymous Miss Take you have to collect all the paintings in each level and you are usually given some sort of tool to help: smoke bombs to hide, noise makers to distract guards, a teleporter to move quickly to where you throw it, etc. However, if somebody notices you and you run for it, she'll drop her hat, which you have to get back before you exit, making drastic evasion riskier. Her extra goals are to beat a par time and collect loot behind display cases you have to smash (alerting anyone nearby).

Your first ally is a more traditional thief, who can't run but has no par time to beat. Your optional goal is to take your time and not be seen. His inclusion was especially nice, since that's the sort of trimming-a-bonzai-tree, patient experience I play stealth games for and lets aficionados of the genre feel like they can ease out of their comfort zone.

And finally, the third is a teenage pick-pocket who has to get up close to a guard, stay there for long enough to snatch a key and then unlock a safe that will set off a blaring alarm. She has no tools, but she doesn't drop her hat when she springs into action like a kangaroo wearing moon shoes. Once again, the goal is to do it quick (certainly not what she said).

This plays out over 25 levels, which you will go through once for each character with minor changes for each one. Much like the interiors of our protagonists' purses, it's an impressive amount of content. And the difficulty most certainly rises to meet your mounting skills (oh my!), with later levels adding threats like security cameras, dogs that will pick up your scent, and lasers that will limit your movement. Add these to the basic threat of guards with random movement patterns, and you have yourself a challenge, sir.

Fortunately, the game also gives you tools to deal with the rising chaos. Miss Take's tools are obvious, but each character can make a sound to draw guards to the area; controlling their movement for a time (and without breaking the stealth bonus for our traditional thief). This is essential, since while random patrols provide a pleasant risk, it would be terrible if you had to wait for them to move into or out of the ideal position for half an hour while the RNG has declared the order of the day is back and forth like the ping pong savants' international tournament for obsessive compulsives.

And if this extensive love letter to Miss Take isn't enough, the aesthetic of the game is perfectly fitting a game about art and the acquisition thereof. The soundtrack is stellar, with a good selection of lovely hard bop jazz. The models are fairly simple, but the animation is good looking and lively and the use of bright colors make sure Miss Take looks timeless rather than basic. The characterization of our heroes is strong and - despite their seemingly misanthropic profession - they're made quite likable, like a bunch of posh Robin Hoods, in comparison to the completely deplorable villain. The game isn't terribly verbose (unlike me), but the dialogue that is there is often witty and enjoyable.

Miss Take does have her worts, they're just small and mostly out of sight (like behind the knee or something). Despite the quantity of levels and the small efforts to make differences between them for each of the characters, the setting for every level is the same style of art gallery. Only the layout and time of day changes. Graphics options are pretty solid, but it gets a little funny about the resolution when alt+tabbing out of the game. You can't fine tune the volume controls or rebind keys. I found using pure mouse control to be less than smooth, but using the keyboard to walk fixed that (the 360 controller also works). And the glue tool has some problems. For some reason glued enemies would stay alert and constantly aware of my position until the glue ended, causing some problems. But really, if Miss Take were a painting, the stain of these would only amount to a single drop of coffee from the spit-take at how otherwise amazing it is.

So, yeah, The Marvelous Miss Take is easily the best stealth game I have played in some time. Worth twenty dollars? Maybe, if you just need your skulking in shadows fix. I'd probably recommend waiting until it goes on sale for ten bucks. But absolutely get it then. If stealth is your thing, you won't be disappointed. If stealth isn't your thing? Well, Miss Take won't go out of her way to court you, but if you meet her halfway, she might provide you a chance to get into it (ba-zing).