Okay, Imma gonna early-bird this. I've seen what happens if I wait too
long*. ;-)

So... free games? Why yes, free games! On the Epic Games Store of all
places. I'm shocked, shocked, I tell you! Well, maybe not that
shocked.

This week we get:

Amnesia Rebirth
https://store.epicgames.com/en-US/p/amnesia-rebirth
and
Riverbond
https://store.epicgames.com/en-US/p/riverbond-782aa4

"Amnesia: Rebirth" is a welcome addition. Well, more welcome than many
of Epic's recent offerings. Honestly, I've never been entirely fond of
the Amnesia games -- the whole 'horror-survival' genre where the game
enforces a powerless helplessness upon the player never was that
entertaining to me. But the "Amenesia" games have always been /good/
games, even if they aren't entirely to my taste. It's got pretty
graphics, refined gameplay (even if it mostly consists of running and
hiding) and good atmosphere. I can't say anything too specific about
"Rebirth" - not having played it - but it's gotten positive reviews
and the developers have good reputation. Definitely one I'm happy to
add to my EGS library.

Riverbond, on the other hand...

Look, I'm sure it's a great game, but it looks like "Minecraft"
crossed with "Wreckit Ralph", and a shooter-slash-dungeon crawler mix
just doesn't seem all that appealing to me. It just looks too
cartoony, too hyper-frenetic for me to want to engage with it. It's
probably a great game - it has 'mostly positive' reviews on Steam -
and if I gave it a try, I might even enjoy it. But with thousands of
other games waiting for me to play them, this one needs to do better
to move up on the list. I'll take it (of course) but it's likely to
sit forgotten for years.

And that's this week's haul. You have until April 28th to make up your
mind about these games, at which point we'll start all over again with
new goodies. Oh, such troubled lives we live!

----------------------------
* also, I'm going to be out for the next few hours and won't get a
chance until much later.

>"Amnesia: Rebirth" is a welcome addition.

I *bought* Rebirth on Epic! Not long after it came out, during a sale;
and it is the first of the Frictional line of games I've played since the
original Penumbra series (there were originally 4 Penumbra games released in
an episodic fashion -- I played Overture, and I think the next installment,
before nopeing out when the stealth mechanic got tiresome, and never
returned). Rebirth is somewhat split into two halves (I'll try to avoid
extreme spoilers): The first half is focused on African desert ambiance and
exploration, and succeeds well in atmosphere and a sense of place and time,
with a good build-up of tension and simple puzzles. If the developers had
continued with this desert mythology and period environment I'd have been
happy, but the second half breaks with this and introduces an entirely
different sci-fi environment that doesn't jibe well with the first half.

rms

On Thu, 21 Apr 2022 09:28:21 -0600, "rms"
<rsquiresMOO@MOOflashMOO.net> wrote:

>>"Amnesia: Rebirth" is a welcome addition.
>
> I *bought* Rebirth on Epic! Not long after it came out, during a sale;
>and it is the first of the Frictional line of games I've played since the
>original Penumbra series (there were originally 4 Penumbra games released in
>an episodic fashion -- I played Overture, and I think the next installment,
>before nopeing out when the stealth mechanic got tiresome, and never
>returned). Rebirth is somewhat split into two halves (I'll try to avoid
>extreme spoilers): The first half is focused on African desert ambiance and
>exploration, and succeeds well in atmosphere and a sense of place and time,
>with a good build-up of tension and simple puzzles. If the developers had
>continued with this desert mythology and period environment I'd have been
>happy, but the second half breaks with this and introduces an entirely
>different sci-fi environment that doesn't jibe well with the first half.

That's a shame. Like you, I started with the Penumbra series but -
unlike you - I stuck through all the games (more out of my need to
complete the games than any great satisfaction from the gameplay). It
was, IIRC, also one of the earliest games to utilize the PhysX engine,
which alone made the game somewhat interesting.* "Amnesia" - their
next game - didn't improve the mechanics very much, but had far better
story, level design and atmosphere. I still didn't enjoy playing game,
but I admired both the developers tenacity and improvement.

I greatly struggled with "Amnesia: A Machine for Pigs", though;
despite some minor tweaks and advancements, the game was largely 'more
of the same'. The same tired sneak-n-hide mechanics, the same
unimpressive graphics, the same vaguely-Lovecraftian horrors. The
franchise no longer felt fresh, and it no longer felt like the
developers were taking chances. Meanwhile, other developers were
either trying new things, or doing the same as Frictional, but better.

Still, I'd hope when I saw "Rebirth". The desert setting - which seems
to be the only bit shown in the marketing - looked intriguing, and the
visuals were no longer quite as much an eyesore as earlier games. As I
indicated in my earlier post, I still wasn't expecting the game to
become a sudden favorite, but it LOOKED like a move in the right
direction...

.... Now, I'm not so sure.

I wonder if the turn to sci-fi is a reaction to the success of their
earlier game, SOMA, which had a significant futuristic bent.
Mechanically, that game was as dissatisfying as all the rest,** but it
had great atmosphere and a story somewhat deeper than "a man meddles
in things he shouldn't and attracts the attention of an ancient
horror" which makes up to much of the rest of their corpus.

---------------------------
* simpler times, simpler times...
** Interestingly, SOMA allowed you to disable the monster AI, which
turned the game from survival-horror to a very atmospheric walking sim
with some mild puzzling, which I enjoyed far more.