I am not a hardcore gamer. I don’t play FPS games for fear of throwing up my soul, I’m no good at RTS games (I do <3 me some StarCraft though), and I have approximately 5 games for my PS2. I much prefer to watch someone else play long-form games unless it’s some sort of point-and-click puzzle/adventure or Killer7. It’s that Kon Smith. He’s so cool.
On the other hand, I spend a portion of nearly every day playing casual games. I love these things. They are great diversions, and occasionally I run across one that turns out to be much more than I had expected. The other day I was poking around Kongregate when I discovered a new game called ImmorTall. I’ve played Hunted Forever and Alter, other games by Pixelante and I was already in it just to see some more of this developer’s artistic style. I clicked, the music started, I was ready to find out what that extra “l” in the title is for.
True to Pixelante’s style, the art is gorgeous. It’s got a retro feel, not too detailed but looking instead like something from a retro-futuristic war poster. The coloring is mostly primary with black and white. I loved the sounds: guitar punctuates every game happening as well as providing a moody musical backdrop to the action.
You begin the game as a little inchwormy alien who has emerged from a crashed ship. Over the course of the next few minutes you meet people, get snacks, grow tall, and then become a human alien shield. There isn’t a lot to figure out and when you need to do something instructions appear on the screen to guide you. This could be said to be a linear game, in that there is a single ending which really cannot be prevented, only staved off. I won’t pull any punches here: I played this game several times to see how much I could influence the ending and I cried my eyes out every single time.
My impression of ImmorTall is that it’s a very well done tiny story about any number of things including our fear of the unknown, the ways humans are willing to harm one another “for their own good”, and -depending on the circumstances at the ending- sacrifice.
It’s brilliant in that there’s just enough there to nudge you toward some understanding of what the game means, though it might be very different from the interpretations of other players. It made me think, and according to Pixelante’s Twitter feed there are a lot of varying opinions as to its meaning. That is, I think, as it should be. Art is interpreted by the one who experiences it.
I recommend this game for anyone who’s got about 5 minutes and a little thought power to spare. From beginning to end it’s a tiny masterpiece and the newest of my favorites. It’s games like this that show me the strength of play as a vehicle for storytelling and inspire me to want to make my own.
Rated 5 momspiders - A perfect score
Yes, the videogame. Been playing around with this latest sandbox game. It does a lot of things right. And it looks pretty… but…
This is a game for killing Nazis from the point of view of an Irish race driver and mechanic helping out the french resistance. Seriously. You get to run around laying dynamite and evading patrols in a sort of reverse terrorism, because it’s to give the good people of France hope, restoring color to the world.
The actual gameplay is rather straightforward. It’s a GTA style game with wall-climbing, because that’s the new thing these days. In this environment, the Nazi army has established rather a large number of guard towers. You get to remove them with dynamite. It’s a bit of civic cleanup… rather literally, as the work is akin to picking up trash off the roadside.
Fortunately, once you clear the streets and rooftops of these eyesores, the game rewards you by not actually having any of them respawn. The major benefit is obvious! Uh… well, you get paid for it. A little. And when you run away from Nazi alerts, it’s easier to lose them in an area where you’ve destroyed all watchtowers.
About the only thing that’s really new here (since transforming a landscape’s color pattern is as fresh as Prince of Persia and as old as Q*Bert) is the “Perk” system. The game has a few skills and upgrades unlocked not by amassing loot and buying them, but by achievements. Each is a line of 3 tiers, unlocking the potential to finish the next, and giving progressively more game-changing rewards. In many cases, the work is really its own reward, as you can upgrade your ability to throw folks around in melee simply by throwing a few Nazis off their towers. Or not just getting some practice in with a sniper rifle, but by lining up shots where you cap 2 soldiers with one bullet. The abilities unlocked vary a bit from minimizing recoil to letting you summon a vehicle driven by a shopkeeper. Important, as, well, even with upgraded storage for multiple types of explosives, you are only one man, and you are trying to blow up several hundred structures.
Part of me really wants to enjoy this game, for the spectacle, and the unlockables. But I’m already most of the way through them, and… realizing about all the game has to offer from here is combat and sneaking around to eliminate a gigantic number of minor obstacles. Not that this is a bad thing, but I would be far more involved in the game itself if this realization had been delayed by another layer of accomplishments.
Playing this game on the PC of course provides another layer of fun in the form of crashes. Thank god for quicksave. That feature alone has made the game go from impossible to reasonable, due to a tendency to crash after 20-50 minutes playing at anything higher than minimum resolution. Whether this represents a holdover from the console editions or my computer’s shoddy design… the world may never know. I will, however, not forgive the game for having no quick way to access the full map. You can only enter the menu, select map, and then select Full Map. Which is ridiculous, because you only ever want the full map on that screen.
Most recently, in an event that probably sums up my impression of the game, I found a spot to drive downhill through a park, hitting a few ramps to jump the vehicle for profit. The game only requires that you get the car over the ramp, not to manage to land something you cannot adequately control. It is functional, and less frustrating than many GTAs, but a bit tedious for the rewards offered. Still, a bit of fun to take care of before moving on.
Recently I was watching my friend play Mass Effect 2, and noticed that he had come across an obstacle (a raised section of land) but seeing as the game has no JUMPING, he had to take the scenic route, walking up a ramped section of land for 2 minutes while being shot at. Something he could have avoided had the game included jumping. This seems to be a major fucking flaw with RPGs and even a few 3rd Person Shooters. Why the fuck can’t I just jump over this obstacle? Why was it so fucking difficult to include a jumping button, instead of making me run the fuck around things, and get stuck on sections of land raised 10cm. Notorious fuck-ups in jumping include Mass Effect (and ME2), The Witcher, MMORPG The Saga of Ryzom, Gears of War, and Star Wars Knights Of The Old Republic (and KOTOR2). Apparently Jedi’s have no fucking idea how to jump. Suddenly they’re robbed of one of the powers everyone knows they have – Force Jump. Well done Bioware, you fucking dropped the ball on this one.
Who in the FUCK decides to not include a jumping action for these games? It certainly takes a bit of fun out of the game when you have to walk around every object in your path rather than hopping over them without any difficulty. Mass Effect 2 advertises the fact that it has a shitload of hours worth of gameplay. About half of that must be walking around obstacles you could easily JUMP THE FUCK OVER. Another fuckup is that you CAN jump over cover objects, but you first need to take cover behind them, like some sort of fucking retard. The Witcher also suffers this, making you walk around low fences and getting you stuck on slightly raised objects. Its fucking irritating to the extreme.
Anyway, thats my rant for the day.
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