Belltow3r Gaming is done... but my new website is just beginning

Hey everyone. Review territory has been looking pretty sparse lately, and I apologize for that. Lots going on in my personal life, and blogger is giving me grief. And so I must announce that Belltow3r Gaming is over. It was an incredible seven months; I got thousands of views and a ton of support and comments from everyone who is as interested and passionate about this discussion as I am, and a few not so passionate, but whatever, discussion is great.

Though this website is over... I've started another one! Art as Games is my newest project, and I'll be posting new content regularly from now 'till... for a long, long time, rest assured :D. I'm keeping this page up for everyone to read, but you can find new reviews and material here (artasgames.wordpress.com). Your readership is what inspired me to keep going with this project of mine, so I thank you immensely. I'm also going to catalog this website's reviews on the new one, so all your favorites will be there. Thanks again everyone!

Love,

Ian, a.k.a Belltow3r

Slender: The Arrival

Search for your childhood friend and elude a terrifying, merciless being

Release: March 26, 2013 (Mac, PC)

By Ian Coppock

I could take up loads of time explaining that the past month has been pockmarked by illness, job hunts, and moving out of my apartment, but these reasons seems mundane in the face of another reason I've been away from Belltow3r Gaming for over three weeks: mainstream games aren't exciting me right now. I hate to say it, but this next generation of console games is about the most soulless and unexciting lineup of "genericism" I've ever seen. Mindless polished shooter after mindless polished shooter. Where's the atmosphere? The enriching stories? Give me a terrain I can traverse, not just stare at from a fixed linear path.

With nothing interesting coming out this summer, I've been reaching back further and further for games that actually present something tangibly atmospheric. I then came to the stunning realization that I'd not yet played Slender: The Arrival, a new horror game that came out this spring. I've probably overlooked it because BioShock Infinite came out on the same day this one did. Needless to say, I've since rectified my gross negligence and am now prepared to spew story and artwork-speak.

The Story

The Arrival is the highly anticipated sequel to Slender, a short indie horror game that came out about a year ago. I reviewed it as part of the Short Horror Week lineup in February for its simple, powerful horror mechanics. I've been playing it as much to get scared as to reduce my body temperature (it's goddamn hot out there). 

In the game, players have to navigate a pitch-black forest, armed only with a flashlight. The goal is to collect eight notebook pages scattered around the environment while avoiding the Slender Men, a tall, faceless creature that will kill you if you look at him for too long.

This game is still the toast of indie horror. Parsec Productions should consider marketing it to the constipated.

Slender: The Arrival takes place sometime after that blood-chilling midnight forest adventure. You are Lauren, a silent protagonist who pops in to visit her close friend Kate, who's just sold a house on the edge of a spooky forest. Upon arriving, Lauren finds the house wrecked and abandoned.

AAAAH! Okay, okay, channel Bob Ross: "Happy little trees there, man..." (sob)

As Lauren searches the house, she begins hearing strange noises and catches glimpses of someone outside. She ignores these, as horror heroines have an unfortunate habit of doing. I have to say that this was an excellent start to creating a spooky atmosphere. Signs of a hasty departure, swinging doors, the sound of crunching leaves... I tensed up so much that you could've taken away my computer chair and I would have kept that pose.

Seriously, don't just shrug that off as nothing. I feel like a tall, pale, faceless dude blocking your exit is SOMETHING.

Lauren is forced to flee the house and search for Kate in the nearby woods, where she must find eight pages hinting at Kate's whereabouts. She gets followed and attacked by an increasingly aggressive Slender Man, who tries to prevent her from learning the truth; he's been tailing and haunting Kate her entire life.

Lauren's search for Kate takes her through some conveniently stringed together and scary environments, including a cavern, a mine shaft, an abandoned radio tower and a park. Players who explore the area thoroughly can find notes of correspondence between Kate and a childhood friend only known as "CR". The pair have bonded over their being followed by the Slender Man. The exchange is hauntingly beautiful and sad. It reminded me of the letters read aloud in Dear Esther.

CR's identity is a mystery, but the letters shed light on the Slender Man and Kate's efforts to avoid him.

Part way through the journey, Lauren is attacked by another antagonist, whom I will call the Masked Man, due to his resemblance to the character of the same name from the Marble Hornets video series. Unlike the stoic Slender Man, who rarely moves and can only attack when being looked at, the Masked Man is a frenzied psychopath who physically chases Lauren. He attempts to beat her to death and relentlessly pursues her. His connection to Kate and the Slender Man is shrouded in mystery... at first. 

Oh this is bullcrap. I paid my ticket at that Marilyn Manson concert, what's his beef with me?

As with all things good and intriguing, there's a lot of spoilable material here that I can't get into. I will say that The Arrival refers to a singular, important event, and that the game hints at the origins of the Slender Man. Until now, all the media concerning him have been pretty quiet on that question.

Lauren's search for Kate while repelling multiple terrible foes makes for an interesting premise, but overall I was disappointed with The Arrival. The game is split across seven very short levels, one of which is a glitzy remake of the original Eight Pages adventure. I beat the game in about an hour and was left grasping for more.

Terrifying, right? I wish Blue Isle had put as much effort into Slender Man as they did the rest of the game.

In addition to being short, the game is repetitive. Each level is essentially a repetition of finding the eight pages, they just swap it out for finding six generators or closing eight windows... or finding eight more pages. There's some exploration involved, but most of the environments are pretty linear and confining.

Frankly, I expected a lot more from a studio that not only promised to be narrative-heavy, but even hired the Marble Hornets boys to write the script. These dudes face off against Slendy in their own Youtube series, and the videos are pretty well done. Because they wrote the story, the game can't not be compared to the story-rich series, and it's a comparison that falls flat.

HEY! Reveal yourself! So that I can care about the characters!

I hate to keep pulling punches on a game I want to really love, but Blue Isle Studios also went too vague on the characters. I know that part of what makes horror horror is keeping everything blurry, but I need some reason to care about these characters. I know next to nothing about this girl I'm supposed to be looking for and I know nothing about my own character except her name. Just a little more to go off of? Please? If you give me more backstory, I'll have more reason to care... and therefore be more terrified. Everyone wins.

Finally, the gameplay is little changed from that of the original Slender. In fact, Slendy is less dangerous than he was in the original. If you look away just as he hoves into view, you're fine. To be fair, they did shake things up by letting him teleport in front of you and, terrifyingly, allowing him to move.

Slender: The Arrival is by all means scary and disconcerting, but the game feels too short, half-finished and skeletal. I think Parsec and Blue Isle saw how well Slender was received and decided little needed to change for the sequel, but all that did was make the game feel shallow. I know too little about these characters. The gameplay is essentially the same level over and over again. Bleh.

The Artwork

Blue Isle Studios designed some beautiful environments for this game. It's not the most elegant mapping I've ever seen, but it gets the job done. The environments do a good job of creating atmosphere; Lauren traverses abandoned and nighttime areas in her search for Kate, and the emptiness of these places piles on the spooky.

Neato! Still do not want to go the hell in there!

I also found the music to be particularly noteworthy. It's slow and mournful, with quick violins and ramping energy whenever you encounter the Slender Man. This combines with the environments to create a sour, scary taste that I really liked. It's just a shame the gameplay and story were so shallow.

Should I get it?

As with Amnesia, I can only recommend this game to horror fans. The Arrival is still a tense and scary game, despite its shortfalls. The Slender Man is a merciless, unknowable fiend, and the Masked Man adds some much-needed flavor to a formula that gets a little much about halfway through the game. It could have been longer, it could have been deeper, but for $10, you could do a lot worse. I guess what I'm trying to say is give this game a miss unless you're a diehard Slender fan. It throws some interesting concepts at the Slender mythos, but stops short of being a satisfying narrative.

Thanks, everyone, for reading. I know it's been a while since I last posted and I'm going to keep going. I've got a lot of other stuff going on, but you can expect at least one review a week from here on out.

Aces of the Galaxy

Battle fleets of aliens in a cutting-edge spaceship

Release: June 4, 2008 (PC, Xbox 360)

By Ian Coppock

Getting into games that came out years ago has helped me forget the ones that have come out recently, not that they needed much help. In total, I've played four games released this year that I thought were worth the attention of the gaming world, and I've already reviewed three of them. My assuredly smug-sounding assertion is based on a combination of subjective personal cynicism and the fact that game sales took a dip for the first time in history this spring. Hopefully, the mainstream gaming world will find a new creative oasis, but I'm today I'm sticking with older games.

So, yeah... Aces of the Galaxy :D

The Gameplay

Like a few other games I've reviewed recently, Aces has no true narrative. The reader who sent me the request asked me to consider the game from the same angle as Minecraft, in that it pulls off other aspects of gameplay so well that narrative becomes unnecessary. We'll see if this game can pull that off.

The game takes place in a space-age war between humanity and a group of aliens called the Skurgian Empire. You play a nameless human fighting against the Skurgians and their leader, Vrax. Aces has a tongue-in-cheek approach to such a conventional space setting, using ridiculous names and cliches to make its premise look all cool and post-modern.

Supreme Overlord Vrax is the primary salivating amphibian of Aces.

The game opens with you stealing a prototype Skurgian fighter from a military lab, and then making your escape from the alien fleet. Like the Star Fox games and more than a few arcade shoot-em-ups, Aces is a rail shooter. Your spaceship is guided along an invisible path in each level.

En route, it's your job to shoot into oblivion as many alien spacecraft as possible, both to rack up high scores and to avoid getting obliterated yourself. The aliens are pissed that you stole their precious spaceship, so they unleash all hell upon you as you make your escape.

I wasn't being disingenuous with that "all hell" example. The game's dogfights are quite chaotic.

With Aces, you don't have to be a hyper-reflexive fighter jockey in order to be good at it. I just flew my ship about wildly while firing nonstop and that pretty much did the job. The game requires no prior skills, really, other than the ability to move a joystick or mouse around in an anarchic manner. The game does only give you three lives, though, for all nine levels of mayhem.

As you fly, the Skurgians will throw patterned fleets of alien spaceships at you. You have to manage dodging their fire while firing back. You have a variety of weapons at your disposal to make this happen, including laser cannons, torpedo launchers and cluster missiles.

You have lots of weapon options in Aces, which comes in handy when the aliens pull out the big guns.

Aces is split into nine levels of spaceborne dogfighting that make for an hour or so of gameplay. What I found rather neato about this game is that after completing a couple of levels in one setting, you get to choose where the next few levels will take place. Granted, there's only three choices (ice field, Earth's orbit, and a star going supernova) but I thought that was a neat little feature. You can pick the same consecutive setting for the whole round or switch it up every chance you get.

In each level, you'll also face off with a Skurgian boss flying an enhanced ship. The aforementioned Vrax is your first nemesis, but if you can shoot him down before the game is over, he'll be replaced by another antagonist leading the aliens in his stead. That antagonist will be replaced upon his death, and so on and so forth. Each enemy will yell at you in a pre-level briefing filled with humorous cliches.

The Skurgian Garbage-Smashers were some of my favorite antagonists. Aces deliberately fills the dialogue screens with cliches to make for humor and references. 

Aces does a lot of things well. It encapsulates the best of old-school rail shooters and keeps the gameplay simple, not simplistic. The game does have a few flaws, some of which are just endemic to rail shooters. The first and most obvious is the lack of freedom. Rail shooters are fun but the inability to deviate from the pre-determined path took away my sense of freedom. I always prefer space shooters in which I can fly around a big map (any Rogue Squadron fans out there?) but this is an issue native to all rail shooters, not just Aces.

There are also a few control issues. The dodging mechanic is... well, dodgy, to be perfectly honest. The idea is to barrel-roll your way out of the path of fire, but sometimes my ship just barrel-rolled without moving anywhere. Unless my barrel-rolling is so badass that the lasers just explode upon touching me (it isn't), the dodging was problematic. There's also a mechanic for scanning invisible ships, but I only used it once, when the game prompted me to. I'm sure that there were some invisible ships in other levels but their threat to me was so minimal that I never needed the scanner. 

The Artwork

Aces is the first game I've reviewed wherein I can safely say that the graphics are average. None of my fancy-dancy sub-mediocre or quasi-lacking-detail jargon, just average. Nothing great, nothing terrible. Yep. Don't really feel like I need to expand on that.

I will say that the game has a great framerate (60 fps), which is handy for when I'm being swarmed by three hundred vessels on the same damn screen. 

Aces does framerate well. Which is awesome, because I'm being teleported through a warp gate alongside an entire alien fleet.

Aces has no spoken dialogue outside of the clicky, raspy sounds of the Skurgians or the beep-boops of robots. The music combines old-school synths with a heroic, 'MURICA-style orchestra that reminded me of old NASA footage. The disconnect between this two styles is evident but hardly a deal-breaker.

The environments in this game are of a massive scale, but because you can't go anywhere other than the rail path, the epicness is more about spectacle than substance. Indeed, much of this game is. You'll soar past huge worlds, giant alien ships and through fields of asteroids, but it's all nothing more than stage props.

AWESOME! I wish I could actually visit! ...

Should I get it?

Aces does enough of what it's going for well enough, so it's not getting out of here without a recommendation. It doesn't make any ballsy leaps, but rather, assimilates all the good about rail shooters and some of the inevitable bad. It takes about an hour to play through all the levels successfully, and the shifting settings equals replay value. For $5, that's not bad.

And now, a special message from the pile of CD cases and Pringles cans that is Ian's desk

I hope you guys know how much I appreciate your readership, and your recommendations. Lately I've been taking nothing but recommendations from everyone, and stopped making a weak narrative a decisive deal-breaker. With that approach, though, I feel like I may be starting to lose focus. I want to return purely to games with strong narratives and characters.

Don't get me wrong. I don't want you to feel bad or resentful if what you see as a great game doesn't fit my idea of a strong narrative. Indeed, such a term is subjective, and if you think a game is beautiful and fun, no one can take that away from you, not even silly critics like me. 

I want you to continue emailing me your ideas. I prefer talking about strong stories because I think those almost always make the best games, and they go a long way towards everyone accepting video games as art. Again, don't take this message as me telling you your games are weak and you shouldn't read. Just because I focus on story doesn't mean your game lacks that for everyone. I think that everyone should play games, and strong stories are a gameplay element everyone can appreciate, which is why I prioritize it.

Thanks for reading! And speaking of strong narratives, the next two reviews are going to be a special double-feature of a psychological thriller series. Some of you will instantly recognize these games, others may not, but check back on Thursday so that we can all enjoy some blood-chilling awesomeness.

Assassin's Creed

Save the Holy Land, and yourself, by assassinating its enemies

Release: November 13, 2007 (PlayStation 3, Xbox 360)

                April 8, 2008 (PC)

By Ian Coppock

I was scrolling through my reviews the other day and brought myself back to Assassin's Creed III, which I believe is the first review I ever did. I then realized that I haven't reviewed the four games leading up to that one, and thought it would be a good idea to bring you all up to speed.

Long before the adventures of Connor, the Mohawk assassin, the series began in another time and with another protagonist. Assassin's Creed takes us to the Middle East, and not because we're playing Call of Duty and have been dropped in to shoot the brown people. Rather, the game is a historical fiction narrative. My friend Bret introduced me to this series a few years ago. It's not perfect, but it's more than worthy of a review and our time.

The Story

Assassin's Creed operates on a pair of interlocked storylines. The first takes place in 2012 and follows Desmond Miles, a bartender. Desmond has been kidnapped by the shadowy Abstergo corporation for reasons he can only guess at, until Warren Vidic, a cruel scientist and his captor, reveals that human DNA contains the memories of our ancestors.

Desmond is locked into a machine, the Animus, that can scan those memories and render them as a virtual simulation. He doesn't know what Vidic or the scientist's colleague Lucy are looking for, but it's locked in his head somewhere.

Abstergo makes Disney look innocent. Desmond is a captive guest of the company and treated harshly by Warren, but he finds friendship of a sort in the other Abstergo scientist, Lucy Stillman, who is empathetic to his imprisonment.

In the Animus, Desmond follows the story of his ancestor, Altair Ibn-La Ahad, a Syrian assassin who was active during the Crusades in the late 1100's. The story begins as Altair and two fellow assassins enter the Dome of the Rock in Jerusalem. Aloof and overconfident, Altair breaks the assassins' tenets left and right in order to be more "efficient", killing an innocent man and exposing his position to enemies.

His arrogance costs the group dearly when they encounter Christian knights exploring the Dome. He barely escapes with his life, and not the treasure he'd been sent to get. He returns to his clan's fortress empty-handed, infuriating the assassins' master, Al Mualim. To make matters worse, the knights follow Altair to the fortress and lay siege, killing many innocents.

Altair's hubris endangers all of the assassins. He's good at what he does, but his arrogance earns him contempt from the assassins and their master, Al Mualim (pictured right).

Though the knights are fought off and Altair's friends return with the treasure, he is berated in front of his brothers and demoted from master to novice. Al Mualim offers him a path to redemption: kill nine men who threaten the peace of the Holy Land. He begrudgingly takes the assignment and departs the fortress.

From there, Altair must kill nine targets dispersed across the cities of Damascus, Jerusalem, and Acre (pronounced Ah-kah). The game does a good job of portraying Altair's changing character, as he becomes less aloof and more willing to follow the tenets of the Assassin's Creed. As he travels between cities and makes his kills, Altair begins to suspect that the nine men are working in concert, despite being on opposite sides of the war.

Altair's journey takes him across the ancient Middle East. As he goes, he begins to think there's more to his kills than just working back up to the top.

Oh boy, here come the inklings of conspiracy.

Altair begins to change his perception among his peers and to himself with his journey. He explores the themes of murder and humanity. Though the assassin order's work is dark, they encourage themselves to stick to the guilt that comes with taking a life, as it makes them human. He is also guided in his quest by the gentle mentoring of Al Mualim, who still sees potential in his fallen pupil.

In the modern-day, Desmond is given breaks between memory sessions and attempts to escape from Abstergo. Though he initially believes Altair's conspiracy to be only in the past, connections start to get drawn between his ancestor's targets and the company now holding him hostage. Desmond begins sneaking into places he shouldn't go, and discovers the company's sinister scheme for world domination. All of it, it seems, is linked to whatever Altair discovered at the end of that journey centuries ago.

Desmond has no choice but to play ball with his captors. You spend much of the game looking for a way out. 

Assassin's Creed is an open-world game, in which Altair can roam freely in massive, gorgeously detailed ancient cities. He can ride horses through the desert to reach his destination, and can explore dozens of city blocks, open-air markets, mosques, churches and synagogues.

The game does a good job of portraying the Christian-Muslim warhole that was the Crusades from a neutral standpoint, even going so far as to state that the game was developed by a multicultural team. Altair encounters citizens and soldiers from both groups, each hawking their idea of a peaceful Middle East.

Altair explores Damascus looking for clues as to his target's whereabouts. The game lets you roam the cities freely. Each one is sizeable.

The game is played from a third-person viewpoint. Altair's gameplay mechanics are built around stealth and hiding in plain sight. Though he has a sword for getting out of hairy situations, Altair can assassinate enemies with a retractable hidden blade on his right hand. You must manually push past people, hide, and look inconspicuous in order to succeed.

Altair also has options if the guards have the jump on him. Players can elude local law enforcement by breaking the enemy's line of sight, but must then sit on benches or hide in groups of people until the danger passes. Altair can also take shelter at the local assassins HQ, but only if he's not being hounded by a pack of snarly guards.

Altair is an expert swordsman, but you can only fight so many swarms of guards. The game rewards discretion.

The game's health mechanic is really interesting; it's portrayed as synchronization with the actual events of the memory. For example, if you, the player, kill an innocent civilian, you lose health because Altair didn't actually do that. Similarly, you lose synch if you get beat up in a swordfight because the real Altair is obviously way more badass then you are. You regain synch by completing a memory or by hiding from danger.

The actual assassinations require planning and skill. Altair must gather clues on each target through investigations across the cities. These include pickpocketing intel from unsuspecting guards, eavesdropping on conversations, or just beating info out of an enemy. You only need so much info in order to start the assassination, but the more you have, the better prepared you'll be.

Being a good assassin is all about detective work.

Now that we've got all the cool stuff out of the way, I have to do my job and tell you what's wrong with Assassin's Creed. The game is very repetitive. All nine assassination segments begin, operate and end in the exact same way. Go to city, gather info, kill target, go home for a pat on the head, do it all again the next day. Not once does the game deviate from this formula, and by kill five or six I was getting rather sick of it.

The game's controls are silky smooth, but they have a few problems. By holding down the run button, Altair can seamlessly parkour over obstacles, run along walls, and perform other acrobatic feats. The problem is that the jump and run buttons are the same; I lost count of how many times I ran near a parkour-able object and did a feat on it, not meaning to do so. This can make chase sequences extremely frustrating.

NO! I only wanted to go for a morning jog, not ballet-hop across the rafters!!

The combat is fun but most fights can end immediately if you counter-attack. When an enemy swings in with his sword, Altair can usually just shank the dude when he gets too close, ending the fight in mere seconds.

Perhaps the most annoying feature of this game is the beggars. Not in that I hate poor people, but in that they ask for money, and there is no money mechanic in the game. As my friend Bret and I have discussed numerous times, it's not that I don't want to give you money, lady, it's that I literally CAN'T give you money.

Altair doesn't carry cash, and you get dogged mercilessly by beggars throughout most of the game. Assassin's Creed has no economy, else I'd be paying beggars left and right.

These features weren't a deal-breaker for me, but I won't judge you if they are for you.

The Art

Assassin Creed's environments are wonderfully designed and beautiful. Each city is painstakingly detailed down to the orange vines on the merchant's villa. As in other AC games, commoners and soldiers go about their business. This doesn't just give Altair plenty of hiding spots; it makes the environments very convincing.

Altair's outfit is purposefully designed to make him resemble a reclusive monk, but that won't stop you from getting preached to by priests and imams, and it won't stop awesomely bearded carpet merchants from insisting that their prices are the best in the Holy Land. There's a big, beautiful desert environment linking the cities together called the Kingdom. It has no missions or objectives in it, which makes me wonder why it exists, but it's still beautiful and fun to explore.

The Kingdom connecting the three cities is amazingly pretty.

Assassin's Creed has decent character animations but  nothing special, especially by 2013 standards. The voice acting is convincing, but I hate that they hired an American to voice Altair, especially when all of his compatriots have, as one might expect, Syrian accents. A lot of fans love that feature but I find it kind of ridiculous. It certainly has a tendency to break immersion.

The music of the game is beautifully done as well, incorporating traditional western music with middle eastern drums and chants. Brazen horns sound when you arrive to each city, which made me feel like a goddamn sultan, and the combat music is especially notable for hastening me to run the hell faster.

The environments in this game are great. The music fits the game well. Insert more end-of-article euphamisms here.

Should I get it?

Like a baby learning to crawl, this first chapter in the Assassin's Creed series is not without some struggles and speed bumps, but it's a good start to a great series. I can't vouch for your feelings on the issues up top, but I can vouch for the game's decent narrative and immersive environments. This game sells for $10-15 on Amazon if you're interested.

Alright, have a good weekend everyone! Next week we're kicking things off with an indie game that hearkens to old-school rail shooters and brings the best of those games to the table. GET STOKED FOR IT :D

Two of my friends started a gaming site called P1/P2 and it's awesome.

Did you know that I have two friends who like to play video games together and discuss them on a website they just started? Well, I have two friends who like to play video games together and discuss them on a website they just started. Jacob and Melody Van De Graaf are two dear friends of mine and they've started a site dedicated to gaming and reviewing together (hence that adorable logo). Their website is awesome and the reviews they've done so far are very much worth a read (trust me, I'm a critic). You can check out P1/P2 right here.

Minecraft

Explore, gather and fight your way through a massive, cubey world

Release: November 18, 2011 (Linux, Mac and PC)
                May 9, 2012 (Xbox 360)

                October 7, 2011 (Android)

                November 17, 2011 (iOS)

                TBA (Xbox One)

By Ian Coppock

In case it hasn't yet become apparent, I love narratives. I love strong characters, I love interesting locations and I love a beginning, climax and ending. Every so often, though, I'm willing to completely throw all of that out the window if the alternative is enticing enough. Games with weak narratives are in no way enticing, but some games have such remarkable strength in other areas of game development as to cause me to forsake narrative entirely. Minecraft, perhaps the most popular indie game ever made, is one such title.

The Gameplay

Wait, what the hell did you just do, Ian? Where's the "Story" header? Well, truth be told, Minecraft has no story. It has no spoken dialogue, no written narrative, nothing. And yet, each Minecraft experience is one-of-a-kind. Players assume the role of a blocky, nameless man, and are immediately dropped into one of thousands of massive worlds in which every object, animal and even the sun are rendered as cubes. 

The 8-bit-ness of Minecraft's worlds adds a retro element to the whole thing, but they are quite beautiful.

From here, the player is free to do whatever the hell he or she desires. "Primary objective" becomes "primary subjective". The idea behind Minecraft is the freedom to build a dwelling or just be a nomad. Most materials can be gathered when the player strikes them, allowing the player to pick up blocks of dirt, oak wood, and other substances. Some stuff, like stone, can only be gathered using tools. 

Once you have your materials, you can stack them atop each other to make a structure. You can also use a workbench to build everything from swords to armor to pickaxes.Your character has a bar of hearts and hunger to manage, meaning that you must hunt animals or gather plants. Most worlds have various regions from which resources are more or less available, such as forests, mountains and deserts. A few newer maps feature jungles.

Even if you take a tree down bottom-up, the rest will float in mid-air. Minecraft  ignores gravity.

I imagine that my first experience with Minecraft is pretty typical of most everyone's. I was dumped into a friendly-looking forest, minus a lava pit off to my left, and immediately set out to build myself a home and life. My brother Grayson, a Minecraft master, gawked when I found a cluster of stone-and-wood houses, an apparently rare find. With no one home, I saw fit to building passageways between all the houses to make myself a super-fortress.

After hunting a few pigs to subside my hunger meter, and cooking the pork chops in my furnace, I decided to go to bed. I woke up in the middle of the night to find a giant spider attacking me! AAAAAAAH!!!

OH GOD KILL IT KILL IT!!!!!

"Ian, you two-faced bastard!" I can hear some of you cry out. "You enticed us with a nice-looking game and it's actually another one of your disgusting horror fests! Ew!"

That was the same line of thought I was about to assault my brother with, but don't worry. Creepies and nasties only come out at night, after the sunset. My brother even told me beforehand to be careful, so I guess that makes me a dumbass. In either case, as long as you close your doors and put down some torches, you're fine. The only enemy you have to watch out for all the time is the Creeper, a totally silent zombie thing that will explode if it gets close enough, taking out your internal organs and a chunk of the landscape. They're pretty rare in the daytime, though.

Creepers have become one of the most notorious foes in all of gamedom.

If your character has a bed, you can sleep 'till dawn. From there, I spent my time gathering resources and building my superhouse. Minecraft steals the hearts of the creative. You can build weapons and tools, but you can also bake cakes, make candles and paint paintings. You can construct furniture and plant crops. I soon had a sprawling compound complete with a private library, banqueting hall, greenhouse and kickass writer's tower.

If you're feeling like creating a true colossus, Minecraft features Creative Mode, in which your character is invincible, can fly, and has access to unlimited amounts of every resource in the game. It's fun to build gigantic citadels and palaces in this mode, but part of the satisfaction I get out of constructing things is putting time and effort into gathering the materials for them. You also can't get achievements in Creative Mode, which... sorry, I forgot why that's a bad thing.

Minecraft's creative mode has allowed for some of the most breathtaking creations in all of game art, including this castle town.

So yeah, Minecraft kicks ass. It provides an acutely personal experience, being alone in this gigantic world of resources, free to do what you wish and fend off monsters. You can adventure across the land or even underground, traverse the oceans in a ship or tunnels in a mine cart. You can build a lakeside shack or have your own private forest. To sum up, Minecraft is only limited by your imagination.

The Artwork

Some people have called Minecraft's artwork boring and simplistic, but I think it's quite vibrant. The 8-bit style hearkens back to older games, but it also gives the world an immersive feel.

You can get lost in this picture if you stare at it long enough.

The artwork also reflects the game's creative possibilities. You can explore dozens of randomly assorted environments in questing for your character's livelihood. Your weapons and items are similarly 8-bit in appearance.

My first weapon, a sword! Let's go hit some dirt with it :D

The game has quiet, contemplative music that makes for quite nice background noise when you're building your home or exploring the terrain. I'm told that the PC version has more music and environments, as is often the case with games in general.

You can't look at that and not be at least a little excited.

Should I get it?

Absolutely. I cannot recommend this game highly enough. It has no skill or experience requirements and is extremely user-friendly, so those of you out there who just want to make a neat house are just as welcome as the veteran CoD boys. If you do get this game, I recommend getting it over the Xbox version for the same reason I recommend PC games over console games in general: mods. People have modded Minecraft to include new weapons and features, and many of these downloads are free. One person even made a mod featuring Weeping Angels from BBC's Doctor Who sci-fi series.

Don't blink!

Most of these mods are free. The game itself is like $15. No narrative? No problem. Minecraft excels so much in what it attempts to accomplish that I waive its narrativeless-ness entirely. GET THIS GAME :D

This Friday we're going back into heavy narratives with an interesting take on history, and in locations not usually visited by games. Friday's game features a war within a war, and what you're willing to do to bring peace to all.

Bayonetta

Rediscover your identity and halt a plot to remake mankind

Release: November 5, 2010 (PlayStation 3, Xbox 360)

By Ian Coppock

Like many self-respecting video game critics, I try my best to break out of the usual game genres and find things I'm not very familiar with. This journey is a double-edged sword, because just as I might find something awesome, I may also find something that is just too weird or too controversial for me to handle. Bayonetta incorporates elements of both; it's awesome, but it's also weird and controversial.

The Story

As detailed in the game's excruciatingly long opening cinematic, the world of Bayonetta has for millennia been a battleground between the Umbra Witches and the Lumen Sages. The cults consist of evil women and upstanding men, respectively (and isn't that a lovely commentary on gender politics).

These groups seek to control the world but eventually agree to a truce a few centuries before modern times. However, the truce breaks and they destroy each other in a massive war. Flash-forward to modern times and we meet the title character Bayonetta, an ass-kicking but amnesiatic witch who woke up at the bottom of a lake twenty years ago.

Are you with me so far? Because this isn't getting any less complicated.

Sexualized much? Some may say that it's only fair to call her stylized. Me? No.

Bayonetta is an Umbra Witch, apparently the last one alive. She spends her days searching for a magical stone that she thinks contains her memories, all the while fending off legions of angels who've come to drag her off to Paradiso (heaven) for the unholy crime of wielding demonic powers. She's aided in this endeavor by Rodin, a demonic gun-runner who operates out of a classy bar, and Enzo, an unforgivably annoying underworld errand boy.

As you can probably infer from these screenshots, the sexualization and outright fetishism going into this character couldn't be more obvious if it was wearing Christmas lights and screaming "LOOKIELOOKIE!" Nearly everything Bayonetta has to say contains a dirty double-meaning, as does sucking on her lollipop and even holding a gun. Her legs are disproportionately long, and she wears a thin suit made of her own hair. Coy is too nice a word for the look and mannerisms of this character.

I can't even imagine how tasty that lollipop must be. That's why she's making that face, right?

Anyway, Enzo tells Bayonetta that he's found the stone she's after, and she rides off to Europe to look for it in the fictional city-state of Vigrid. She encounters increasingly large numbers of enemies as she looks around, and Rodin comments that the whole place seems too close to Paradiso.

Bayonetta exists in Purgatorio, meaning that she moves around in the real world but no one sees her. In addition to angels, Bayonetta is also pursued by some dude named Luka, who seems torn between wanting to kill Bayonetta and wanting to date her.

These two are interesting. Luka is still annoying as hell.

Everything takes a turn for the weird when Bayonetta finds a little girl who claims to be her daughter. Recalling no such progeny, Bayonetta reluctantly decides to watch over her and let her tag along into ridiculous battles. The trio form an unlikely partnership as they advance closer to the heart of Vigrid, and the truth behind the witch's identity.

The relationship between Bayonetta and Cereza, the little girl, is actually quite amusing.

Though saying that Bayonetta is sexualized is the understatement of the century, the character does have a few redeeming qualities that I found tolerable. The game does a good job of portraying an inner loss of confidence and a yearning to be whole again. I laughed out loud at some of her dialogue, and not just because it was awkwardly written and badly conveyed Japanese screenwriting. The other characters are vacuous and largely forgettable, which I guess helps to keep the spotlight focused on Bayonetta.

Bayonetta's character isn't without some deeper qualities, but let's just say that if Platinum Games had focused on that instead of her cleavage...

The main reason I like Bayonetta is because the gameplay is actually really fun. The game is a hack-and-slash adventure that eschews the very best of old-school Japanese beat-em-ups. You can build up magical power to crush angelic enemies, and the controls are quite fluid. Bayonetta can switch effortlessly between melee and gun attacks, and quickly dodge would-be-decapitation. Time also slows down every time Bayonetta dodges an attack, which makes for satisfying vengeance. You can also unlock some pretty kickass powers, like turning into a panther.

Bayonetta's gameplay is very well-designed. This is also the first time I've ever kicked someone with a giant heel.

True, this game has a bit of a learning curve, but if I can surmount it, any of you certainly can do it. The loading screens also feature a practice room where you can try out different combos before hitting the actual mission. Bayonetta faces off against hordes of angelic creatures with different weapons and attributes, as well as truly gigantic bosses that have six or so health bars (don't worry, checkpoints are frequent).

I don't know if you'll find these depictions of angels in the Bible, but they make for challenging enemies.

Overall, the gameplay is extremely solid and made this game fun (which is great, because the story is so ridiculous and hard to follow that I'd get frustrated otherwise). Though Bayonetta is fighting angels, she's less a villain and more a hard-hitting anti-hero. The angels are also up to something that is only debatably good for mankind. I really respect this game for taking something traditionally black-and-white and graying it up a bit.

The Artwork

Bayonetta shines well in the artistic department. Platinum Games created a visually intriguing world when designing this game, fusing cutting-edge modernity with ideas of paradise and inferno. The city of Vigrid is a gleaming angelic citadel that incorporates modern-day life into its graceful arches and cathedrals.

Vigrid is a strikingly beautiful setting, and very appropriate for a game combining this many motifs.

As much as I liked Vigrid, I liked Paradiso even more. Bayonetta finds herself in the homeland of her enemies more than once, and these environments were breathtaking. When complimented with gentle music and a few angels to boot, it made for a very immersive environment.

I loved the levels set in Paradiso. They were strangely relaxing, even with the hordes of angelic enemies.

Overall, Platinum's environments are beautifully designed but they also rang a bit sterile. Similar to Call of Duty, everything was really shiny and well-kept, which sometimes made me feel like I was in an art museum and not a breathing world. The music isn't anything special, but it works, and the character animations are just fine.

Should I get it?

I don't know. Bayonetta is a fun game with good gameplay, but the story line is pretty weak and purchasing it means supporting one of the most sexualized portrayals of women in the video gaming industry, and isn't that a sobering thought. This game was a gift to me, and I'm not sure I would have picked it up on my own. You decide. If you can swallow principle for about 8 hours of hack-and-slash fun, then nothing's holding you back, but the progressives out there who take issue with feeding money into games like this might reconsider.

Thank you so much, everyone, for your patience. I hope this review was to your liking and will kick off a series of high-energy reviews after too long away. Thanks for reading :D

On Monday I'm reviewing one of the greatest games ever made. For those of who unfamiliar with this picture, prepare for one hell of a wake-up call.