Encounter - Girls Don't Play Games

A couple of my friends and I were reminiscing about my fights with gamers over the past years, and one gem in particular came up. It still makes me rage and laugh enough that I want it to start my Encounter section.

My corner of upstate NY doesn’t have a lot, but it does have a small game store that sells all kinds of retro goodness. I credit them for 90% of my game cabinet, especially my horror collection. I’ve been there enough that the guys behind the counter know my name and are quick to give me an updated inventory of what they have. I’ve even been asked to recommend games to other people while browsing the shelves. If I could marry an inanimate object, it would be this store.

Of course, it’s also located near the local high school. This means that depending on when you go, it can be flooded with testosterone and Call of Duty maniacs. I’ve had my fair share of encounters with teenage boys who either think God has gifted them with a woman in the store or think that I have no business being there. It’s been an even split so far. Because of this, you’d think that I would be used to all kinds of abuse about being a female gamer.

Nope, I still had one recently that caught me off guard.

About a year ago, I called ahead to make sure they had a replacement copy of Clock Tower 3 (mine had died a tragic death). As I was talking to the cashier about the theme of schoolgirls in horror, a dad and his two sons walked in to make trades. I stepped aside to let my friend work while the kids ran around to look for games.

A few minutes later, I overheard one of the kids complaining that the used copies of Halo 3 looked like garbage. The cashier told the kid that it didn’t matter because he was too young to play it anyway. What followed is a conversation that truly needs to be read fully to be believed.

Kid: What about her? She’s, like, 12! I bet you’d let her buy it. (Note: I’m the ‘her’.)

Me: I’m actually 13. And I’ve played it. It blows.

Kid: Obviously you’ve never played anything of quality.

Me: Obviously you’ve never played a Mario game in your life.

Kid: (picks up Call of Duty): Whatever. Hey dude, tell me what the back of this says.

Cashier: Um, no. You can read.

Kid: No I can’t.

Me: That’s why you can’t play Halo. Reading is a requirement.

Kid: Shut up, bitch!

Cashier: Sir, tell your son to stop harassing my other customer.

Dad: *mumblebumblemumble*

Kid: She’s not buying anything. Girls can’t play video games.

Me: Okay, wrong button to be pushing. I’ve been playing video games since before you were even a thought in Mom and Dad’s head.

Kid: Whatever. Games were made for boys and girls who play are just trying to impress someone.

Me: Of course! How could I be so stupid! What have I been thinking, playing Prince of Persia and Dynasty Warriors alone in my room? I could have been impressing my soul mate or future strip club boss!

Kid: (stares for a few seconds) Dynasty Warriors doesn’t exist, you idiot.

Me: (goes to shelf and picks up DW 2, 3, and 4 XL) Clearly you’re a paragon of wisdom. I will buy you a copy of Halo 3 if you can prove that the book doesn’t exist either.

Kid: What game are you holding?

Me: Clock Tower 3. It stars a female character with super powers who is slightly older than me.

Kid: You’re totally trying to get with the cashier.

Me: Yep, the way to a man’s heart is with serial killers and underage girls. You’ll learn this some day.

Kid: Whatever, asshole. Dude, I said read this to me.

Cashier: No.

Me: I think I’m done here. I’ll be back later this week for Extermination and possibly The Darkness.

Cashier: *whispers* Don’t leave me.

Kid: Dude, stop making games up.

Me: Learn to read and maybe you’ll be able to find them in this store.

Kid: Why are you being a bitch? You can’t accept that guys are better than girls?

Me: I’d debate this with you, but your sexist brain can’t handle it.

Kid: Stop making up words!

Me: Learn to read words! Oh, and you should really try Mario Kart. Princess Peach is one of the best characters for beginners. And by the way, I lied. I’m totally 23. (Hands cashier a $10 and leaves.)

Yeah. I’ve gotten this a lot from teenage boys, although they don’t give me bullshit about making up games. Apparently they learn to read by the time they reach puberty. But this one blew me away. Not only was this kid giving me lip and swearing at me, but his dad was just looking on like nothing was wrong. The other kid disappeared as soon as his brother started talking to me. That makes me wonder how confrontational this kid is at home.

I’ll admit that I probably could’ve handled the situation like a mature adult, but I can’t let a statement like “girls don’t play games” go. Obviously we do. As of the last survey by the ESRB in 2011, girls make up nearly half of the gaming population.

I’d have mentioned this to my young friend, but I’m not convinced he’s any better with numbers.

Review - Catherine

I’ll say this up-front: You have to be in a certain frame of mind to get through Catherine. A game surrounded with images of sex and alcohol and sheep might lower your expectations and put you in a relaxed, frivolous frame of mind. You cannot be this way with Catherine. And if you take it seriously and push yourself out of your comfort zone, you will truly see everything this game has to offer.

On the surface, Catherine plays like a reality television show. Vincent, our humble hero, is in danger of losing his comfortable life to his girlfriend Katherine’s need for change. Any chance of normalcy disappears when a leggy blonde named Catherine shows up in his favorite bar and then in his bed one night. Vincent, a very non-confrontational and unassuming man, must now balance two relationships while keeping his sanity and his balls.

Simple, right? It is until you throw in a raging case of nightmares. As soon as the insanity starts, Vincent begins to have dreams in which he must scale a tower or risk falling and dying. Oh, and the catch? If he dies in his dream, he dies in real life. To add to the distress, young men have been dying left and right in the real world with no clear reasoning behind it. Connected? You bet your boxers it is.

The story in Catherine is enough to make any player antsy. The game play only adds to the tension. The only way for Vincent to scale these towers is to move blocks and form stairs. He can only climb one block at a time and, with few exceptions, these blocks must be connected. As he progresses, he finds that some blocks break and cannot be moved, some of them have spikes, some of them will make him slide right off the tower, and some will, uh, lick him to death. You’ll want to laugh at the absurdity until you actually come across these blocks and need forty tries to get past them.

To make matters worse, Vincent is on a time limit. As he climbs, the bottom parts of the tower begin to collapse. If he takes too much time he’ll fall to his doom. Then there are the bosses. If you weren’t having nightmares yet, you’ll start having them just as much as Vincent. These abominations are big, fast, and they want our hero dead. They’ll attack him with forks, temper tantrums, chainsaws, and anything else they can get their limbs on. Just their presence is enough to make Vincent push the wrong blocks or slip from his ledge in a mad dash to reach the top.

This is where Catherine really shines. The level of panic it induces puts horror gems like Siren (a game known for raising stress levels to the max) to shame. You need to focus and you need to plan your routes, but you need to do it quickly and efficiently. One wrong move can ruin your entire climb. With falling blocks, bloodthirsty bosses, and even other sheep trying to hinder your progress, you’ll feel the fear and stress even if you’re a seasoned horror or puzzle game veteran.

So, you need to take this game seriously and you need to be ready for failure. Yes, you will fail. You’ll die over and over again, especially after you reach the mid-point. This should not, however, deter you from playing Catherine. There are plenty of positive points that make this game worth pushing through.

First of all, the story is one of the most compelling to hit shelves in the last few years. Vincent’s plight is one that, if we haven’t experienced it ourselves, we know someone who has been in that position. The characters are fleshed out and easy to connect with. You’ll find yourself concerned about them and sympathize with their feelings. Even the sheep from Vincent’s dream, who share eerily similar characteristics with the bar patrons, will earn your sympathy.

Don’t believe me? Let me put it to you this way: there are 8 possible endings you can earn, and only the most callous gamers won’t be trying for the True Lovers Ending by Stage 3. And it won’t be based on how well you’ve been doing with your climbs.

Second, you learn very quickly what patterns work, what patters to avoid, and what items and tricks work best to get you to the top. With a few exceptions, you will play through a few sub-levels that act as trial runs. During these portions, Vincent is introduced to new block types, enemy sheep, and different climbing techniques. The game is cruel, but not cruel enough to throw you immediately into a boss fight when you’re still recovering from the last one.

There’s a lot of trial-and-error, which accounts for the failure you’ll deal with. Catherine compensates you for your work, however. There are things like money to buy weapons and items, and pillows to add lives that Vincent collects to aid him. But more importantly, there is the sense of accomplishment and relief both you and Vincent will get at the top of the towers. Think back to those levels or bosses in other games that drove you bananas, and how excited you were when you finally cleared them. Now multiply that feeling by 100 and you’ll understand how beating a boss level in Catherine will make you feel.

Finally, this is a game that will get under your skin in a way that draws you in and holds you hostage. The law vs. chaos meter can be fun to play with, but most of the time you’ll find yourself answering honestly. Catherine makes you consider the consequences of your actions. How much you drink determines how fast Vincent moves in the dream world. How compassionate you feel determines how Vincent deals with the sheep-men. How you answer the voice’s questions determine what ending Vincent get. By the time you realize what’s going on, you’ve put yourself in Vincent’s place and handled the situation that way you would have in real life. And you’ll love every second of it.

Not every game is perfect, and Catherine suffers from its own flaws. There are points where it will feel like a chore. You’ll do the same things over and over again, especially in the last few levels, finely tuning your climb until you eventually make it to the top. The controls are wound so tightly that it makes precise movement difficult. You’ll direct Vincent to turn only to find him impaled on the spikes he was facing. Or worse, you’ll tell him to move one block over and watch helplessly as he slides across the entire tower and right off the edge. The challenge modes need to be unlocked, which can be frustrating if you’re having trouble with Normal of Hard Mode. Finally, the lack of checkpoints in the later levels are irritating. After clearing numerous towers with a handful of checkpoints, it’s disheartening to reach a later level with 100 trap blocks, a case of “holy s**t what the hell is chasing me?!” and only one checkpoint near the bottom.

Despite the problems, this is a game that any hardcore or story-driven gamer should pick up. Casual gamers will likely be turned off by the difficulty and the puzzles themselves, but the story and the characters will be enough to draw in even skeptics. It’s a game that stays with you long after you put the controller down.

Bottom line: Catherine is unlike anything on the market right now. It will challenge you, it will frustrate you, it will crawl into your brain and build a summer home there. Only the most persistent players will make it out alive, but I can promise you that the sense of accomplishment will be unlike anything you’ve ever felt.

Review - Warriors: Legends of Troy

Warriors: Legends of Troy seemed doomed to fail from the very beginning. Wracked by delays, poor reviews and terrible marketing, it’s a miracle this game was even released. Luckily for us it made it, because it’s a solid game with a good story, challenging game play, beautiful graphics and (surprisingly) decent voice acting.

Legends of Troy is set during the Trojan War and features a number of characters from Homer’s beloved epics. It switches perspectives back and forth between the Greeks and the Trojans, explaining what happened to start the war between them a little at a time. Despite the odd order of the cut scenes, each chapter moves in sequence with the actual events of the story. The characters are predetermined and all items carry over between chapters.

Unlike other entries in Koei’s Warriors series, there is no Free Mode. The player may choose to play the main story, replay cleared chapters or try out several challenges with unlocked characters. There is also an Extras section where unlocked concept art, music and cut scenes are stored.

Now, for the game play. Ladies and gentlemen, this is not your average hack-and-slash. Blindly pressing the same attack button is the quickest way to get yourself killed. Some enemies require you to stun them, parry their attacks or roll and attack from behind in order to do any damage. Boss battles against the gods require whole new strategies to defeat them, and all of them have multiple forms that can be a challenge to anyone who isn’t cautious.

The controls present a little bit of a challenge as well. The camera locks itself in awkward places at times. The finishing moves, while insanely cool, often have a small window in which to perform them, and even then the attacks don’t always connect because you’re not facing the right direction needed. Stun attacks are tricky to pull off until upgrades can be purchased and they don’t work on bosses or heroes. Fury looks cool and speeds you up for maximum damage, but you can still take damage while in this mode and you cannot stop it once it’s started. This game could also really use a jump button.

There are a few saving graces with the controls, however. Most enemy weapons can be picked up and used, and throwing them at enemies will almost always take them down. This can be a lifesaver when up against more powerful goons (like the Brute or the Guardian) because you can take them out in one hit as opposed to thirty. Each character has unique finishing moves that can knock nearby enemies over, allowing for more instant kills. There are also items that can be equipped to make attacks stronger or last longer.

Another, major positive point goes to the character designs. There are very few chiseled and beautiful men here. Even the handsome ones have flaws to make them seem less like game characters and more like real people. Achilles suffers from greasy hair, constant stubble and a jaw that could cut rock. Paris looks like a wet noodle when standing next to heroes like Hektor. Even Penthesilea has facial expressions that would turn Medusa to stone. The cast as a whole, however, looks stunning and sounds amazing. Achilles and Ajax in particular have great voices that fit their looks and their personalities. The graphics in general have a cell-shaded feel to them at times. Still, the levels look beautiful and oddly realistic. Only a few design flaws really popped out and all of those were present only in a couple of cut scenes.

While there is no leveling up in Legends of Troy, there are several Challenges where players can try to earn Kleos (the game’s currency), which is used to purchase more inventory space and a wide variety of items. Completing objectives during the challenges will also unlock unique items. The challenges themselves are difficult but fun and should provide hours of entertainment in between chapters.

A special mention should also go to the Trophy names for this game. Some memorable ones include “I’m Too Old For This Shi…P,” “They See Me Rollin’, They Hatin’,” “Zombie Homicider,” and “It’s Over 9000!!!”

Overall, this is a solid action game backed by an excellent story and a strong cast of characters. Fans of Koei’s other Warriors games will certainly enjoy this addition. For those who are still unsure about the sometimes-clumsy controls and the occasional quick-time events, it’s at least worth a rental.