Red Dead Redemption

Hunt down your former outlaws-in-arms at the government's behest

Release: May 18, 2010 (PlayStation 3, Xbox 360)

By Ian Coppock

The gaming world is like school. A frenzied, hard-to-keep-up-with burst of activity throughout the fall and spring lulls into nothingness with the onset of summer. I was planning on buying and reviewing Dead Island: Riptide, but I learned that Techland did absolutely nothing to fix the numerous bugs plaguing the original Dead Island. I don't pay $50 for game developers to give me the finger, so I shall gleefully glide over Riptide in favor of an older but much better game that deserves attention instead: Red Dead Redemption.

The Story

My childhood was plagued with numerous trips to wild west museums so that my dad could memorize every diorama plaque while the rest of us starved to death waiting for him outside. I built up a consequent dislike of anything wild west, so the fact that Red Dead Redemption managed to undo 22 years of hunger-fueled resentment is pretty impressive. The game takes place in 1911 in the fictional state of New Austin, which is Texas in everything but name. You are John Marston, a former outlaw-turned-rancher whose wife and son get kidnapped by the federal government.  They're perfectly happy to give John back his loved ones if he hunts down the vagabonds he used to rob banks and kill innocents with. John puts together a checklist of the checkered rogues he once called friends and skips town to do justice's bidding.

John Marston is one of the most grizzled protagonists I've ever played, in a similarly disheveled portrait of the old west.

John arrives to the hideout of his first target easily enough, and, shockingly, gets shot in the side when his former gun pal says no to the prospect of imprisonment. The easy route thus closed off, John must work with characters of all stripes in a harsh and unforgiving landscape. He teams up first with Bonnie MacFarlane, a charming and tough-as-nails rancher, and Leigh Johnson, the local lawman.

For a while I was under the impression that I'd be working solely with hard-working, law-abiding peeps, but found myself also teaming up with sketchy individuals a la Grand Theft Auto. John befriends and helps out the marshal easily enough, but must also join forces with a demented graverobber, an alcoholic gunrunner and a remarkably pathetic con man.

Nigel West Dickens, the aforementioned con man, was a character I hated because of his excuses but loved because he was so well-written.

Red Dead was developed by Rockstar, who are best known for the Grand Theft Auto series, in which characters usually have a shorter expiration date than three-day-old milk. It's refreshing to see a Rockstar game with such deep and beautifully written characters and dialogue. Though the people John works with are rolling dirty more often than not, their dialogue and mannerisms made them weirdly endearing. I found myself most attached to Irish, a gun dealer who gave me absolutely no reason for attachment whatsoever. Even the dudes I was sent to kill, like the bloodthirsty outlaw Bill Williamson, had personality quirks that I didn't necessarily resonate with but still found immersive for the sake of the plot.

Bonnie MacFarlane is one of my favorite Red Dead characters. Unlike most of the cast, she sees honesty a way of life, not a liability.

Anyway, as these things often go, John finds that hunting down and killing outlaws is no small task, and must expand his grisly reunion party into several other regions. From gunning down outlaws in ghost towns to fighting alongside revolutionaries in Mexico, John takes a varied and quite immersive journey in his quest to reclaim his family. The game also examines the theme that John is a relic of a bygone era, as the old west is becoming rapidly transformed by modernity. What I liked is that most of the characters saw modernity as a scourge; there's a tongue-in-cheek mission where John rides in a car that breaks down and nearly explodes. "Give me a horse any day," he says.

The game pokes fun at the incompatibility of the old west and modern technology. Marshal Johnson tries and fails to learn how to use a telephone, the latest doohickey from back east.

This might be me being jaded about the old west after those museum death marches, but I liked how the game didn't romanticize it. Not once is there a relaxing ride into the sunset. The game portrays the west as it probably was: a savage, brutal and lawless landscape that was anything but poignant. 

There are several stomach-churning missions in which John must stop bloodthirsty outlaws from burning houses and attacking women, all of which reinforced the notion that the old west was not a nice place, to put it lightly. Realism is a difficult line to walk, but this attention to detail and the human condition made the game's atmosphere more believable.

The odds that someone in Red Dead will say hi rather than shoot at you are about 1 in 300.

Gameplay in Red Dead is your typical third-person, health-regenerating, cover-based shooting. The game doesn't really break any new ground in that regard. You can buy guns and health salves, but ammo is ridiculously plentiful and John's health regenerates, so I never needed to visit a shop or make money. This made the game's moneymaking minigames, like bounty hunting and poker, obsolete.

The poker minigame is well-done and quite fun, but money and ammo are so easy to get that it serves no practical purpose.

A massive sticking point this game threw at me was one instance when I saw a would-be rapist attacking a woman outside a saloon. I immediately punched the dude in the face, only for the girl to run away screaming that I'd hurt an innocent bystander. WHAT??? I didn't stop gaping at that spectacle until long after I'd eluded law enforcement and posted bail for the assault charge. It could have all been a bug, but then again, in GTA you can kill hookers with baseball bats, so maybe I'm not cynical enough about Rockstar's attitude towards sexual violence.

The Artwork

Red Dead Redemption is one of the most detailed games I've ever played. It's another nice change of pace for Rockstar, who usually plonk down samey blocks of cityscape in GTA. Getting to my next objective usually meant a half hour or so of fun riding through the desert landscape. Sagebrush sways in the desert breeze, birds roost atop cacti and tumbleweed lazily crosses the horse trails before your feet. 

Red Dead's artwork and lighting are very well done. This is a shot from John's foray into Texan river-rafting.

I can tell you from years of visiting pioneer museums (alright, I'll shut up about that) that the environments are pretty realistic for the time period. John visits bustling train stations, as well as ghost towns, sprawling ranches, and verdant Mexican estates. 

The journey to Mexico was one of my favorite parts of the game, especially visually.

The developers also paid attentive detail to the people. At any moment you can tip John's hat at a passing woman or gracefully sidestep the town drunk stumbling out of the saloon. The environments are detailed pretty much everywhere you go, which helps the game feel big. I'd guess the game's environment is at least 40 square miles, so thank God for trains and horses. The sprawling landscape also reinforces the sense of enormity that comes with John's task.

Later in the game, John visits Blackwater, a bustling city. The variety of environments is surprising, at least to anyone expecting tropes of the old west.

Should I get it?

Red Dead Redemption is not without its flaws and frustrations. Rockstar's always been better with car and horse controls than people, and some of the missions are repetitive, but I think the game's story and visuals should garner forgiveness for these potholes. The dialogue and idioms are true to the times, the voice acting and character development are deep and continuous, and John's journey for redemption is worthy of any high-caliber old west story collection. If any of these things catch your fancy, then go wilder than a warm lizard on a hot rock. 

I read that in a museum.

The portrayal of women in video games

More women than ever are playing games. But the industry risks alienating them through sexualized and demeaning portrayals of female characters.

By Ian Coppock

A few years ago, I took a college course on the portrayal of women and minorities in western media. After a few minutes of discussion, I decided to ask a question I'd never thought of before.

"How many women in here carry pepper spray or knives?"

Almost every girl's hand went up. The revelation blew my mind. I'm a dude, and a tall one at that, so rarely does the question of self-defense occur to me. Beyond that, though, I was a little angry that I'd never born witness to such discussions before. I don't blame women for never bringing it up, though. I blame the media, and our society's staggering inability to discuss female inequality.

Sooner or later, every question I ask applies to video games. I spent a few months conducting my own research into how women are portrayed in video games and gaming magazines, and the results were pretty disappointing. My purpose with this piece is not to evoke a THOU ART SHAMEFUL-esque condemnation of games, but to demonstrate an opportunity that all of us stand to gain from.

How many women and girls play video games?

Want to hear a mind-blowing statistic? According to the Entertainment Software Association, as of 2012, 47% of all video game players are women and girls. When I began the research, I thought the number would be something like 20%, but nope. Nearly half of the national gaming audience is female. There are more 18-and-older women playing games than boys 17 or younger.

What's interesting is that each gender also prefers different genres of games. Generally, men prefer faster-paced and intenser games like Call of Duty or Mass Effect, while women prefer open-world adventure games like World of Warcraft and The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim.

My research shows that women prefer open-world adventure games to titles like Call of Duty.

There are exceptions to this rule, though. Open-world games are one of my favorite genres, and I know a few girls who love shooters. In the grand scheme of things, though, preferred genres are somewhat irrelevant. The more pressing concern in the video gaming world is how women are portrayed in games.

And how, pray tell, are they portrayed in video games?

I conducted a ton of research on a bunch of different games and gaming magazines from all genres and publishers. I came to a rather disappointing conclusion: I could only find two female characters that were not portrayed in a sexualized or demeaning manner, out of the 150 games or so I have in my apartment. Portrayals in magazines were similarly disappointing: female characters were either portrayed in skimpy clothing or as subservient and shielded by a strong male character.

Case in point: Bioshock Infinite. Note how the female character seems helpless, scared, and almost childlike, cowering behind the male character.

Even if certain games have strong or interesting female characters, they are still demeaned through the outfits designed for them. Some of these characters and costumes are just weird.

Bayonetta, a character from the game of the same name. Would anyone really wear that into battle?

Because it totally makes sense to have ridiculous cleavage armor in combat, right? This is Samara, a character from the Mass Effect series.

I don't... I can't...

The sexualization with Bioshock Infinite's Elizabeth is more subtle. Aside from her obvious cleavage, her eyes have been enlarged to make her seem more helpless and childlike.

Wow. So why are women portrayed this way?

I think part of the issue is that the gaming industry is overwhelmingly male. Designers, composers and programmers are almost always men. The only big-name female game designer I can think of is Jane Jensen, who put out Gray Matter. Some staffs at certain gaming companies, such as Valve, are slowly recruiting more women, but the industry's culture is very masculine. The fewer jobs that are offered to women, the fewer career opportunities will be open for additional women in the future.

Aren't you overreacting a bit? I don't hear female gamers bashing down the industry's doors demanding jobs and better characters.

My counter-point for the people who say that I and female gamers are overreacting and reading into the situation too much is, first of all, to go back and look at the images I posted. Second, consider the following: what do we as gamers and game producers have to lose by improving our portrayals of women in video games and magazines? If you don't believe that strong female characters don't sell, look at Half-Life 2. It's one of the biggest-selling games in history, has a legion of bloodthirsty fanboys, and produced a character who's received dozens of accolades, including a spot on numerous gaming magazines' lists of top 10 characters: Alyx Vance. Alyx is a strongly written character who's not sexualized, and the fans absolutely love her.

Alyx might be the industry's exemplar for strong female characters.

Another example is Mirror's Edge's Faith Connors. Though the story of the game wasn't particularly strong, Faith stands out in my mind as an example of a tough female character. The game sold lotsa copies, by the way. Both of these games disprove the notion that titles with strong female characters can't sell.

Faith can outrun helicopters and beat up legions of SWAT. Mirror's Edge did very well.

So, what do we do?

We reduce the sexualization of female characters. It's a win-win for everyone: female gamers feel more included and represented, and the gaming industry makes more money by including those consumers. They also write better, more immersive stories because the characters are more believable. If you oppose reducing the sexualization of female characters, I guess that's your call, but consider the benefits. Wouldn't you rather have a story with stronger, more realistic characters and stories, especially with how expensive games are these days? I'm sure female gamers would like to feel more included in this wonderful story and artwork world of ours. If you like sexualized characters, that's what porn and creepy fan fiction are for. The gaming industry can do better than this, and I believe reducing the sexualization of female characters will move games ever closer to being widely accepted as art.

Mass Effect 2

Investigate and stop the harvesting of human space colonies

Release: January 26, 2010 (Windows, Xbox 360)
                January 18, 2011 (PlayStation 3)

By Ian Coppock

Good Lord! That was the hardest headline I've ever written. 

Usually when I'm thinking of an attention-grabbing line, I try to not make it sound generic. When I have trouble coming up with something besides "save mankind from an evil threat" I start to feel like the waters of mainstream gaming are becoming a little too still (high-brow hipster joke). The same can't necessarily be said of Mass Effect 2, thankfully, but I really had to work to come up with that line. In any case, we're back with the second installment of Bioware's most venerable series.

The Story

Like its predecessor, which I reviewed about two months ago, Mass Effect 2 takes place in a sci-fi setting where humans and aliens get around on giant space slingshots called mass relays. Spaceships use a neato substance called eezo that can raise or lower mass with an electric current. 

What's cool about Mass Effect 2 is how literally it takes narrative continuation. Players can transplant their save files from Mass Effect directly into the sequel, thus transferring their own unique Commander Shepard and all the choices made in the first game. Your Shepard retains all the features you picked, from her eyebrows to her preferring dark chocolate over Skittles. The choices you made in Mass Effect carry over to Mass Effect 2 and directly influence the storyline. People you saved from dying in the first game may show up in the second game, and the cool aliens you ran with will either remember your love and friendship or resent you for being a douchebag. But I digress. The point is that this is an amazing little mechanic for making a sequel feel familiar and organic. By transferring the Shepard we've been adventuring with, we're already very connected to the next installment in the story.

Mass Effect 2 lets you transport your Shepard from the first game's save file over to the new one.

Now that I'm done drooling over narrative service, we can move on to the actual tale. Mass Effect 2 takes place two years after Commander Shepard stopped some rather unpleasant fellows from destroying all life as we know it, and sees him or her team up with a pseudo-terrorist organization to save it all again. After an intense and rather heartbreaking prologue, Shepard wakes up on an operating table and is swiftly recruited into a mission to save mankind from giant bugs with guns.

Now we're getting somewhere!

The story is significantly darker than the first installment, which is telltale of setting the stage for an end-all be-all third installment, but Mass Effect 2 is way more than a springboard. The story and dialogue are beautifully written, and unlike the first game, the characters develop significantly as the story goes on.

Mass Effect 2 expands and refines the series' epic beauty.

Shepard falls in with an organization called Cerberus, a survivalist organization that considers the preservation and advancement of humanity a goal without price. They were introduced in a minor way in the first game and are implied to be behind a lot of nefarious business, like assassinations and sabotage, all in the name of mankind's well-being. My Shepard was a little grumpy at the prospect of working with terrorists, but then they gave me a shiny new spaceship, and I kinda left that train of thought.

Cerberus is led by the Illusive Man, an enigmatic glowy-eyed dude who has impeccable taste in space-age formal wear.

One of the new characters central to the plot is the Illusive Man, Cerberus' leader, voiced by and modeled after none other than Martin Sheen. As his name implies, the Illusive Man's identity is a total mystery, but what's not a mystery is his peerless devotion to mankind's advancement. He tells Shepard that entire human space colonies have been vanishing instantly and without warning, and tasks him or her to find the pricks responsible and get the innocent humans back.

I found the Illusive Man to be a fascinating character, because he's one of those people who thinks that the ends justify the means. Little else is revealed, even where he is, but he controls major events from behind the scenes. I had a hard time deciding whether or not I could trust him. This contention makes the story a lot more interesting. It was a hard change from the honor and comfort of Alliance soldiery, but it definitely reinforced the game's dark theme of having no one to trust.

Working for a secret organization rather than the military is kind of badass. I wanted to be a field agent when I was little and now I can live my dream! Sort of.

Shepard soon discovers that a group of insect aliens are behind the abductions, and sets off to recruit a team of badasses for some serious pest control. In stark contrast to the law-abiding and duty-bound squadmates of the first game, most of Shepard's second dream team comprises mad scientists, assassins and outright psychotics. One dude inflicted genocide on an entire race of aliens, and another one was a drug-washed telepath who could punch holes through space stations. A little scary, but for saving the entire human race, I needed the most capable.

(From left to right): Miranda Lawson, Cerberus operative and your right-hand woman, Mordin Solus, a scientist who makes new species one day and headshots the next, and Thane Krios, an assassin who waxes poetic from time to time.

I liked the different aliens and teammates that I picked up from planet to planet, but I wish I could've gotten a little more story out of them. You recruit 9-10 squadmates in total, plus two more with downloadable content, and Bioware only wrote so much conversation material to be spread across that many people. The two bonus characters don't even converse; not really. They just spout trivia at you when you come to visit them.You can also interact with other characters aboard Shepard's ship, the Normandy, and Bioware finally answered my prayers by including a redheaded personal assistant! Woohoo!

Mass Effect 2's story is well-written, but I feel like the emphasis shifted from stopping the big bad bugs to field trips to find new friends. Much of the game is spent recruiting people for your all-star pesticide squad, which is okay, but fighting the insect aliens sort of fell by the wayside. This is reinforced when your squadmates learn that killing the bugs may be a suicide mission, and you have to help them find closure through a long round of missions totally unrelated to the major narrative. 

The other thing that disappointed me is that they took out the exploration mechanic they had in the first game with the Mako buggy tank. You can buy a few bonus missions where you putt around in this kickass speeder-tank thing, but it's not quite the same. I liked driving around in the Mako because it made the galaxy feel big, and Mass Effect 2 feels more like a string of enclosed areas.

Mass Effect 2 has a ton of cool bonus content, if you can spare some extra dough. Luckily, some of it is free, including a few missions with the Mako's successor, the Hammerhead.

I don't want to give you the impression that Mass Effect 2 is bad. Despite some rather glaring narrative pitfalls, the game is a worthy sequel to the original Mass Effect and is also worthy of your time. One of the areas that the sequel improved tremendously from the first game is combat. The cover-based shooting is smooth as asscheeks, and aiming, powers and switching weapons have all been simplified and hammered out from the workable but rather rough combat of Mass Effect. That game's combat was sandpaper to Mass Effect 2's cotton towel. Mmmmm.

The Artwork

Mass Effect 2's graphics remain impressive three years after its release, and the game makes use of bold contrast and stark, strong colors. Facial and body animations have improved dramatically since Mass Effect, and the environments have a lot of added details. The artwork also reinforces the darkness of the game. Shepard's journey from shining soldier to undercover operative is subtly strengthened through the visuals.

Shepard goes from capitols and military bases to seedy space stations and lawless wastelands. Omega, a pirate haven, reinforces Shepard's journey from the halls of power to the fringes of galactic civilization.

Like I mentioned, the facial animations of the characters have gotten a lot better. In the first game, characters had like three different body motions, but they refined that in the sequel, which is nice, because it got weird watching 100 different characters walk away from me in the exact same way. It's like a choreography conspiracy. The sequel also seems to have done away with the long loading times that plagued Mass Effect's environmental textures, and the entire thing looks really polished.

Mass Effect 2's environments are darkly beautiful, in contrast to the stately and brightly lit environments of the original.

I found most of the game's environments to be quite absorbing. It wasn't quite as immersive as, say BioShock (which is an inherently unfair comparison because BioShock is to me what Christ is to a believer), but the level design was competently done, if a bit unimaginative at times. The presence of clusters of cover walls also made it really obvious when a battle was about to go down, so the creepiness of certain creepy areas was sabotaged from the start. Overall, though, Mass Effect 2 is a good game, perhaps even great.

Kelly Chambers. I love you, your red hair and your love of building animal shelters. Everyone's allowed at least one fictional character crush, right?

  

Should I get it?

...I just said it was a good game, didn't I? I give Mass Effect 2 a recommendation on the basis of the material provided, but it's more than just a continuation of the first installment. The narrative stands up on its own, which is something a lot of sequels can't pull off, so this made me love it all the more. The atmosphere and gameplay make it feel different from the first game, but the good, improvement kind of different. Get to Amazon and go crazy. It's been a while since release so you could probably find a copy for $15-20.

Hotline Miami

Massacre hordes of gangsters in a drug-washed, 1980's Miami

Release: October 23, 2012

Platform: Windows

By Ian Coppock

I think it's fair to say that a lot of major developers are afraid to experiment. Some of them certainly have the cash for it, but a lot of mainstream games on consoles and computers alike exhibit a somewhat formulaic approach that improves earning chance at the cost of originality. Get guns, run to cover, point them at baddies, blah de blah. Not so with Hotline Miami, a gory and psychotic top-down shooter that shouts out to the 80's in both appearance and sound. This is one of those great games developed by people who knew that it would be ridiculous. The payoff is a highly original, arcade-esque adventure with pacing and subject matter that would make Hunter S. Thompson proud.

The Story

Hotline Miami's narrative roughly encapsulates April 'till July of 1989. Players take on the role of a nameless hitman who accepts anonymous contracts from messages left on his answering machine. Each assignment is disguised with metaphors like "show the audience a good time tonight" and sees the player off to massacre hordes of enemies with bricks, beer bottles, shotguns, and assault rifles, among other things. Your targets are members of an unknown crime syndicate, presumably an enemy of the player's employer. You also take on police, homeless people, drug addicts and innocent bystanders.

This game is relentless in its violence. I kind of want to report the developers to a psychiatrist.

Hotline Miami is divided into fifteen missions that usually began with me leaving my crummy downtown apartment and ended with me standing in a sea of crushed skulls and bullet-riddled corpses. The game is psychotically violent even by modern standards, and probably would've gotten a tougher rating if not for the stylized, pixelated graphics. Before each mission, the player puts on one of several dozen animal masks that each grant a different power. My personal favorite was Don Juan, a horse mask that made my bashing door attacks lethal instead of 'just' knock enemies out. From there, each level is a top-down maze of rooms in which you must strategically and systematically murder all the occupants. Both you and the enemies die after only one injury, so timing and planning are crucial to a successful massacre. Weapons are strewn throughout the locales the hitman visits, so killing power isn't usually a problem.

It's hinted that some of the game's content is imagined, while the rest is real but possibly jumbled. Confusing much?

It's heavily implied that your guy is into drugs; periodically, you wake up in an alternate reality where your apartment is full of bugs, blood and vomit, and you're interrogated by a panel of anthropomorphic animals led by Richard, a humanoid chicken. Your character also encounters talking corpses and flashes of static before and after the actual missions. It is revealed in the beginning of the game that the hitman's girlfriend was killed recently, implying a motive for his murderous crusades across Miami. Not to worry, though; the hitman rescues a prostitute from a drug den and the two begin a relationship. Your character doesn't speak, unless you consider searing an enemy's face with a frying pan a form of communication, so character development is out the door. It is implied that some of the missions and storyline are presented out of chronological order. 

So basically... this game is what someone sees after mixing steroids with mushrooms. The narrative is soaked in surreal, gory wash and various hints at a larger conspiracy are presented. There's no question, though, that story takes backseat to slamming people's skulls into counters and bisecting henchmen with swords.

The Artwork

Hotline Miami hearkens to 80's-style graphics and presentation. The game is shown in a top-down format, and the entire production is saturated with zany, flashing colors. Rainbows of color and sound explode across the screen during missions, and the game's soundtrack encompasses hazy synths and dance anthem-like tracks. The graphics are heavily pixelated but not the point that all detail is washed out of the production. Certain items and facial expressions are still distinct. Cutscenes feature talking heads with creepy facial features and harsh dialogue, hardening the game's drug-infused edge. 

Hotline Miami's look and feel is awesomely retro. 

I found the presentation appropriate for such a violent game. It would've been much worse had the designers opted for realism. In addition, the game's music is shamelessly 80's in its composition and addiction to synthesizers, which enhanced the retro feeling all the more. The game's environments are brightly colored, and each level exists in a hyperactive ocean of flashing pink and orange. All of this made playing the game a little uncomfortable after the third or fourth consecutive hour, so I wouldn't recommend playing for extended periods of time if you get headaches (or seizures) from ridiculous light patterns.

Color overloads and talking owls? Seems legit.

Should I get it?

Hotline Miami is strangely cathartic. I'm not sure what about a game this violent should be cathartic (nothing that's not worrying, anyway). If you're up for a good old-fashioned arcade mashup of brutal violence and combos, then this game is for you. Ten bucks on Steam. If you're not into ridiculous violence or your tastes have moved past the capacity for retro graphics, then give it a miss.... if you must... but I want more searing frying pan.

SCP: Containment Breach

Escape a shadowy facility teeming with dangerous monsters

Release: Beta Version (development ongoing)

By Ian Coppock

SCP: Containment Breach has given me an excuse to jump back into the guilty pleasure zone that is indie horror gaming. Quite frankly, the ingenuity that indie developers have put into creating something scary has proven more effective than big-budget horror fests like Dead Space 3, though that one had its moments. This week, I decided to put on the shoes of a reluctant test subject and go play with some less than sociable creatures and objects. SCP: Containment Breach is still in development, though this beta version was certainly unsettling enough.

The Story

SCP (secure, contain, protect): Containment Breach is a game based on the SCP Foundation mythos, a shadowy organization that studies creatures and objects with mysterious powers. You are D-9341, a death row inmate who was spared the electric chair in exchange for a month of work for the Foundation. Though your character was quick to trade certain death for a chance at freedom, he or she knows almost nothing about the SCP Foundation or its... inmates.

The SCP Foundation is full of wondrous and disturbing creatures, most of which have strange powers.

D-9341 is introduced to the Foundation by a parade of masked, tight-lipped guards and scientists. He or she inhabits a small, murky dormitory and must follow any and all orders without question. I began realizing that this place was not much better than prison, and D-9341's fellow test subjects were similarly morose.

Shortly after arriving, D-9341 and two workmates are assigned to conduct tests on SCP-173, a statue that is quite motionless when looked at but instantly strangulates people the second they look away. When a power outage drowns 173's chamber in darkness, D-9341 has just enough time to escape the cell as a larger containment breach shuts down the entire facility, releasing its terrifying contents.

SCP-173 will kill you the second you look away. The statue is one of many monsters D-9341 must elude.

Though SCP-173 can only kill you if you don't look at it, Containment Breach features a blinking mechanic. A surprisingly obvious facet of daily life not often featured in games, D-9341's blinking forces him or her to be more creative than just staring indefinitely at the statue. The game's other major antagonist is SCP-106, a creature that looks like Rupert Murdoch got caught in an oil spill. Unlike 173, 106 can run after the player and phase through solid walls, leading to several highly intense chase sequences throughout the facility.

If SCP-106 grabs you, he hauls you to a "mini-dimension" where you die a slow, horrifying death.

As if D-9341's life wasn't in enough danger, the former inmate must also face several enemies in one-on-one encounters, including a monster that freaks out at you if you look at its face, a sentient coffin that screams at you through facility TV sets, a pair of books that emit deadly bacteria, and a massive reptilian monster immune to all forms of damage. After spending several hours evading monsters and accessing restricted exit areas, 9341 is contacted by SCP-079, an artificial intelligence. 079 offers to let 9341 escape if it can have control over the facility. This and several other choices determine the course of the game and unlock one of three possible endings.

SCP: Containment Breach is terrifying. Between the statue and oily Murdoch, I was having a tough time keeping a consistent pulse. The game is paced in such a way that the danger reappears right as you think it's gone, and the level design is tight and claustrophobic. Most areas are also very dark; 9341 has tools at his or her disposal for navigating the environment, but the atmosphere is blatantly unfriendly. The shadows are thick and the sound is slightly muffled, which made me feel like I was walking underwater. There are a few jump scares but the game really concentrates its horror in the sheer creativity of its creatures, especially the coffin that drives you insane or the books of disease. The sick bastards who made this game state that they plan to add more monsters once the game is completely finished. 9341 is a silent protagonist, so there's not much in the way of character development, but hints are given as to the Foundation's unknown roots and their ultimate goal in harvesting and studying these life-forms.

The Artwork

Yup. You're expected to gallivant into that totally friendly hallway.

Because it's still in development, SCP: Containment Breach's environments are bare and unrefined. The graphics are second-rate and the animations are extremely cut and dry; I mistook my testing partners for crash-test dummies because their animations were so stiff and uncomfortable. But, the graphics' poorness actually added an element of horror to the game for me; with the environment being so bare and foreboding, the facility felt scarier than some of the ridiculously-detailed places I've seen in big-budget games.

Some of the environments reminded me of Portal... at least until the lights went out.

Most of this game's environments consist of tight corridors and wide rooms swathed in thick shadows. Monsters can be lurking in any of these environments, so caution and moving quietly are highly recommended. Some of the environments have shock-white textures, such as the testing chamber up top, but the rest are swathed in murky shadows. The game is not without its Easter eggs and moments of humor. At one point, I was hiding in a bathroom and, ironically enough, nearly wet myself when the toilet behind me began talking. It was some sort of self-proclaimed butt-eating monster, though it didn't move or attack me. The entire episode was so ridiculous that I had to clear the bathroom and keep moving. Peace out, butt-munching toilet.

What I really like about this game is the creativity that went into the monsters. This is a universe where anything is possible; a monster could be a sentient, self-aware book or a scary grabber. They didn't settle for any sort of archetype when making the monsters, going instead with self-aware objects and creatures that had bizarre powers, such as moving when looking away. This was something that I found quite refreshing; too often horror games get trapped in a quagmire of running away from unbeatable enemies. That was certainly the case here, but fleeing didn't just consist of running. It consisted of being extremely careful. I feel like that reflects survival more realistically, but I am a critic, not a drill sergeant.

Should I get it?

Right now, SCP: Containment Breach is a little rough-hewn and not quite finished. If you're up for a visually raw and still scary video game, then I recommend it, but there's no shame in waiting for the finished version to come out... if it ever does. Indie developers are notorious for delays, but the effort put into this project makes me confident that it's in good hands.

Download SCP: Containment Breach

Disney shuts down LucasArts, cancels Star Wars 1313

R.I.P.

By Ian Coppock

I found out a few minutes ago that Disney, which now owns the Star Wars franchise, has given the ax to LucasArts, which makes most Star Wars games. They're best known for the Battlefront, Jedi Knight and Knights of the Old Republic series, all of which I love. About 150 game designers are out of work, and the promising-looking Star Wars 1313 game has been cancelled.

What the hell?

It's not exactly a secret that LucasArts hasn't been doing well these last few years, so I can understand if that's the reason Disney shut them down. Regardless of Disney's motive, it's sad to see this veteran game developer go. For how much of a mediocre job Lucasfilm did with the prequel trilogy, the games that LucasArts put out were usually pretty good. Disney has stated that they're restructuring the company and will likely let third-party developers make Star Wars games.

This isn't the end of Star Wars games, but I'm very skeptical that an out-of-house developer will be able to capture the essence of Star Wars as well as LucasArts did. Of course, Star Wars 1313, a gritty third-person shooter and the best-looking Star Wars game in a few years, has also been cancelled. I feel like that game was LucasArt's chance to regain profitability, but we'll never know now. Hopefully this series will jump back onto the saddle sometime soon, but until then, I'm a little depressed. Ug.