Is it me, or is the big release period starting
to pull a reverse Christmas, that is to say,
getting later every year?
If all you want is ports of stuff we already
know is good then you're quids in right now,
Lieutenant Lagsbehind - Resident Evil 4, Dead
Rising 1 & 2 and the Bioshock collection are
all out on Xbone and Pisspoor this week, you'd
almost think AAA publishers have become a
bit risk-averse.
Surely not, they've always seemed like such
sprightly and adventurous enormous bloated
mounds of fat and bloodstained money.
There's that new World of Warcraft expansion
that Youtube ads seem to think it's terribly
important I hear about every hour of the fucking
day, but frankly I feel like I could have
a more profitable time stacking coins on a
railroad track.
So as always we turn to Steam, the ever-flowing
cornucopia of RPG Maker games and pixel art.
And this week we'll be looking at two newborns
that have cut their mouths on the jagged edges
of the pixel art pacifier, starting with The
Curious Expedition, a procedural explore-em-up
developed by two blokes who worked on Spec
Ops The Line.
Which doesn't count for much as a selling
point 'cos a fly that buzzed into the office
and shat on the gold master technically worked
on Spec Ops The Line.
It also shouldn't be taken as an indicator
of content, because while sharing the loose
theme of barging into someone else's country
to, in academic terms, shit it the fuck up,
there's much less horrifying gazes into the
abyss of the human soul and far more gleeful
nicking valuables from primitive natives in
the jolly spirit of 19th century colonialism.
You play one of a selection of real-life Victorian
figures - and incidentally I've learned to
be slightly wary of any game in which Nikola
Tesla is a character, the patron saint of
socially awkward tech nerds - as they compete
with their peers to map out unexplored lands
and loot the place.
And I did find it slightly hilarious that
one of the playable characters is H.P.
Lovecraft.
That dude never left the house and thought
Jews and black people evolved from jumping
spiders and dog turds, so casting him as an
explorer is like casting 50 Cent as Miss Marple.
So what we have is the kind of roguelike that
has the feel of a pen and paper role playing
session conducted by a DM with very little
imagination.
You have found a village of natives.
They dress and act identically to the natives
you met in your last expedition to an entirely
different continent and seem to be aware of
what a bunch of dicks you were to them, but
then darkest Africa gets a surprisingly good
wifi signal.
You might find the Curious Expedition a wee
bit uninvolving, since most of the action
is described with pure text, except for the
combat, where the characters are on screen,
far away in the distance in tiny winy pixel-vision
where every single action from attacking to
being attacked to having an earnest conversation
about the excesses of European colonialism
is conveyed by having the character hop into
the air a bit.
But isn't that in keeping with the spirit
of things, our sense of distance from proceedings
echoing the sense of detachment our adventuring
heroes have from their own actions as they
steal treasure and corrupt the natives in
arbitrary pursuit of personal glory?
Probably not, actually.
Have you noticed that this game is called
The Curious Expedition rather than The Curious
ExpeditionS?
Which might have been more honest since a
standard campaign involves locking yourself
into six successive adventures.
But it turns out the title was accurate all
along, since this is really six repeats of
the same adventure.
You land, you collect a few colourful diseases
and you find a golden pyramid.
It's like reading King Solomon's Mines six
times with the pages slightly shuffled around,
and while we're on the subject, surely Rider
Haggard would've been a more fitting novelist
character than Lovecraft.
But then I suppose we wouldn't have gotten
the instant nerd cred one gets from mouthing
'Cthulhu' and chummily waggling your eyebrows.
There's yet to exist a game with truly infinite
replayability, except that one game where
you fire an electrode into the pleasure centre
of your brain until you starve to death, but
sadly that hasn't yet been ported from laboratory
rats, the lucky bastards.
In the meantime the lastability of a procedural
game lives or dies on variety, especially
if the focus is on story over gameplay challenge,
and I just don't think there's enough.
"You have desecrated my temple!
Now I shall scourge the land with -" "Oh,
floods or volcanoes this time?
Yawn-o-rama.
Freshen up your material, Tezcatlipoca mate."
So let's turn our back on going to foreign
countries and shitting them the fuck up and
for a nice change of scene play a game about
going to one specific foreign country and
shitting it the fuck up in Mother Russia Bleeds,
a new game published by Devolver Digital which
is best summarised by saying "It is a Devolver
Digital game".
It has the quintessence of such, in that it's
horrifying gore and extremity depicted in
brightly coloured pixel art, like getting
bloodily raped to death in the prison showers
by an enormous skinhead made of lego.
Mother Russia Bleeds is a retro-style arcade
beat 'em up in the Final Street Fights of
Rage mould where half the challenge is not
standing one pixel too far north of your intended
target so that your frenzied punches upset
naught but passing moths, and the other half
is mashing buttons in the vain, superstitious
hope that it'll somehow make you stand up
faster.
You are part of a Roma community in 1980's
Russia whose simple, carefree life of brutal
cage fighting with the homeless is shattered
when you're kidnapped and subjected to drug
experiments by Russian gangsters, prompting
a quest for revenge, which is a bit of an
overreaction, there are Westerners who'd pay
good money for weekend breaks like that.
Eventually you get caught up in revolution
against the corrupt government, because that's
all that ever happens in Russia, isn't it;
drug crime, government corruption and revolutions.
Why don't we ever hear about the positive
things, like their lovely beetroot soup?
Anyway, in the grand tradition of arcade beat
'em ups you have four characters to choose
from - the fast weak one, the slow strong
one, the in betweeny one and the other one
for when your mum says you have to let your
little brother join in.
Not that it makes much difference, they all
have the same moves and dialogue, which feels
like a missed opportunity.
Maybe I want to know if the dude in workout
gear with bandaged fists and starey eyes has
a more nuanced attitude to proceedings than
the girl in workout gear with bandaged fists
and starey eyes.
But we're not here for story, which is probably
for the best because the dialogue's consistently
as stiff and redundant as a beached whale
at optimal surfing time.
As I say the combat's pretty basic and I did
get rather overreliant on the sliding tackle,
spending more time on my back than a nymphomaniac
skirting board inspector, but the challenge
is meaty enough and it's certainly cathartic.
Blows land with the satisfying crunch of a
big-bottomed lady sitting down on a taco platter
and with roughly the same effect upon the
face of the target, and enough broken teeth
litter the ground that the council won't need
to grit the pavement next time there's icy
weather.
I appreciate the subversive joke inherent
in depicting such unflinching grittiness as
something as comparatively wholesome as an
80's arcade brawler, it's like the Saturday
morning cartoon version of Hobo With A Shotgun.
And it's the extremes it goes to that make
it fun.
If we're gonna smash the few remaining teeth
out of a drug addicted whore, might as well
do it with a severed cock sticking out of
an overdue library book.
''
here we very deliberately do not say the word
'Miami' or the word 'Hotline'
