Recent reviews by FabioSooner

***Short version***
The only reason I don't recommend this is the fact that it's a bundle. The Mage game isn't really an interactive 'story', it's an interactive political manifesto in fake fiction format - and even as an elaborate pamphlet, it borders on the extreme and pretty much goes nowhere. So go get We Eat Blood on a phone - it's totally worth the asking price there - but don't waste a cent or a second on the Mage game.

...

***Long version***
If this is the new direction the World of Darkness is going, I'm a tiny bit worried. To explain that, first let's take a very popular book such as 1984 by Orwell as an example. While it's widely known the story is a warning about the dangers of a Stalinesque totalitarian society, its character portrayals are elaborate and realistic enough (in relation to the dystopian world imagined therein) to entertain and, at the same time, express some very universal dangers to liberty, no matter where in the political spectrum the reader is. That's a case where a politically charged book goes beyond politics, where literature is on the forefront and in turn makes the political side of it even more thought-provoking.

What I'm saying is that there is no problem with fiction that touches politics. The problem starts when politics dwarf the fiction.

The Mage 'story' is not fiction, it's a checklist drafted by a first-year college student in a 'safe space' with "Imagine" playing on the background while the smell of incense fills the room. If you find this mental image to be too stereotypical, ask anyone who read/played the Mage story if this scenario seems unfitting to the game's protagonist in any way, shape or form. Even those who do find this scene appealing or comforting would certainly be hard-pressed to utter 'yes'. In other words: if there's stereotyping in play here, it's on the game itself, not me. I'm just being descriptive.

Think of anything this college student would do or express 'to make the world a better place' and it's there on the 'story'. The protagonist works on a bookstore, uses a bike to commute, volunteers at a refugee center after work, and goes to secret raves on Friday night. While there's no problem at all for fiction to portray people who do exist in the world out there, when the stereotype goes *that far*, it firmly enters caricature or parody territory - except that this 'story' is clearly not meant to feature either. The dissonance is palpable.

That overtly cliché protagonist still wouldn't be a problem if the 'story' progressed in unexpected ways, twisting expectations for her, or if the world portrayed had some variety on its characters and what they do. It doesn't. At all. The world is supposedly our own, but it's entirely built on that checklist mentioned above. And that list has all the 'right' points: all middle-aged men are pigs; all people who apparently 'don't care about others' wear suits and expensive stuff; everyone who disagrees with the protagonist is white; the protagonist can't hear critique on political correctness without 'retreating to a happy place' in her mind and screaming into a pillow shortly after; and there's even mention of how someone 'should not be allowed to speak' just for his dissenting opinions. Heck, at some point there's even a half-naked, nature-lover woman bleeding down her legs for no real reason other than the obvious radfem stereotype.

Note that this isn't even a critique on these positions or ideals, but on boring stereotypes. The Vampire story has a trans character who proudly says voters of a certain president do deserve to be killed. The thing is, there's a bit more to her than just that remark - at the very least she's just a minor character built for comical relief; meanwhile, the Mage PROTAGONIST only exists as a political pamphlet. Even her boyfriend only rears his head as an accessory to her ideals.

Worse yet, this 'approach' to characters is the norm in Mage. While the Vampire trans character is not defined by a single harsh opinion - no matter what you think of her set of morals thanks to that opinion - *everyone* and *everything* in Mage is defined by clear-cut stereotypes on the authors' heads. Every single one, every single thing. Right after encountering any new character in the Mage 'story', you can take a handful of well educated guesses on everything that character will say and do for the rest of the game, all based on your first impressions, and all such guesses will be 101% accurate when the whole thing ends.

Even the quick, tiny attempt to be 'impartial' at one the main issues in the 'story' - the Syrian refugee crisis - is feeble and rings very hollow and, again, stereotypical. One single refugee tries to fondle the protagonist at some point, but she never feels really angered about it, just 'sad'. At that point the reader had already seen tons of colorful descriptions of what the refugees endured to get there, and it becomes clear both the authors and the protagonist are just making excuses in advance for what is undoubtedly abhorrent behavior they can't pretend not to exist. And guess what: that tidbit goes nowhere. Yeah, the touchy-feely refugee never gets even a name, was never mentioned before that scene, and never appears again. It's just a token.

And it gets worse. Even if you manage to block out all the unrealistic world, characters and attitudes lifted out of that political checklist, the 'magick' side of the 'story' is nothing to write home about. You've seen tons of better descriptions, crazier situations and more elaborate plots in Mage: The Ascension and The Awakening before, including ones about the awakening of a new mage. The game has a nice presentation and appropriate BGM, but that's about it. The choices are so devoid of nuance that you can see very early what the end game is: you're steering the protagonist to a faction, and pretty much nothing else. You see, making a stand is way more important here than a mere 'story'.

Meanwhile, the Vampire game does not fare much better in terms of how choices affect the story - too many of them lead to unexpected quick deaths, for example, while you apparently can't 'die' on the Mage one - but at least they do have lots of room for thought. The Vampire game is also structured as a bunch of text chats on a smartphone, and uses this to full effect: pictures are sent, multiple messages may arrive at the same time and so on. There's even a tiny more interactivity to it as you toggle between chat windows according to your personal attachment to certain characters.

And most of all, the Vampire story is longer, better written and... fresh. In fact, I don't remember reading such approach to 'thinbloodness' before - and believe me, I've read a lof of Vampire: The Masquerade and Vampire: The Requiem. There are at least a couple of 'vampire-y' concepts I've never thought of in there, and I wish I had such ideas at hand while I played the tabletop game back in the day. The story goes places, sweeps your feet more than once, and it's tense as hell.

The funny thing is that I wouldn't be surprised to discover that the authors from both games do share the exact same ideas on politics, which just makes the Mage 'story' even worse by comparison. Imagine this: you're not into sports, but two of your friens are. One just watches some matches on TV and never bugs you about it - in fact, only you and a few close friends know what team that friend supports. The other is always wearing sports regalia, always tries to drag you to the stadium, and got into more than a couple of fights - physical ones - with supporters of rival teams. When you try to reason with friend 2, you're called a nerd and left alone, worrying about that friend's life and well-being.

Swap sports for politics - no matter which politics - and friend 1 is the Vampire game, friend 2 is the Mage game. It's simple as that. Except that the Mage game is not your friend, so... Just skip it and move on.

Esse jogo está para o primeiro Bit.Trip Runner como Uncharted 2 está para o primeiro Uncharted, ou Street Fighter IV para Street Fighter II: todo básico que importa está lá, a apresentação está MUITO avançada, e tem coisas novas o bastante para fazer você se empolgar. È um salto de qualidade geral ENORME. Quem gostou do primeiro tem que comprar Runner 2 AGORA.

Uma das grandes surpresas dos últimos anos, Spec Ops: The Line é um jogo que usa as convenções de jogos de tiro militares em 3ª pessoa para "enganar" o jogador, passar por "genérico" e de repente, puxar o tapete e pegar o jogador de surpresa com decisões fortes, uma narrativa psicológica e uma crítica direta aos outros jogos de tiro militares modernos. É um jogo *sobre* guerra, não *de guerra*; é o Apocalypse Now dos videogames, e não um filme do Michael Bay como Call of Duty. Já virou um clássico cult, e todo mundo que gosta de games precisa experimentá-lo, mesmo que não goste de jogos de tiro.

Um dos melhores RPGs que já joguei, apesar dos bugs. Também um dos raros casos em videogames em que a escolha do tipo de personagem *realmente* afeta como você trafega pelo jogo: Nosferatus não podem aparecer em público, Malkavianos têm surtos de loucura e escolhas de diálogo únicas, e assim por diante. Se você não ligar pra gráficos de última geração e quiser ver de onde vieram algumas ideias de Fallout 3 e outros RPGs de console atuais, jogue Bloodlines sem medo!