PixlBit

I played almost all of The Turing Test on XBO on Monday and a lot of Deadly Premonition today. 

Turing Test: I think I only had six puzzle rooms left when I got fed up with it. These puzzle games wear me out. It's a very similar game to Portal in gameplay and story; only, there are no actual portals. The mechanic is grabing energy orbs and shoving them in sockets to open doors and power up magnets and other mechanisms.

I like that it's set on Jupiter's moon Europa. You get some current astronomy info and I'm into that.

The story follows Portal very closely; only, there's a different motive for the villain. It all sounded pretty derivative to me. It's 2001: A Space Odyssey all over again. Well, from the first part of that movie anyway. Despite that, I got interested in exactly what would happen. I tried to make it to the end but I burned out on those last half dozen, incredibly complex puzzle rooms. Even with a walkthrough, the solutions were so convoluted, I just couldn't bear it anymore. But that's me and puzzle games. I did the same with Portal, left it near the end. Using portals to do similar actions that you'd find in a platformer really pissed me off.

Oh well. I watched Mark play the game today and hoped that he'd finish it so I could hear the story's ending. He got to just about where I left off before we ran out of time. I hope he'll complete it in my presence. 

Deadly Premonition: I got this 360 game on a lark because it just became backwards compatible on XBO. It's a third person horror game with a lot of quirky humor. It's not as strange as people said it was when it came out though.

You are a city born FBI agent come to a small rural town to investigate a strange ritualistic murder. All the town folk are quirky like Fargo or Twin Peaks. You yourself is strange too. You keep talking to some alter ego, or second personality.

It's an open world game. You drive around this rural town and visit shops and diners and such, talking to suspects and gathering information. Then you come to crime scenes and things get weird. You go into a kind of alternate reality where you fight undead and get stalked by the supernatural killer. The killer is a real person, apparently, and it's your job to reveal him/her.

The third person action is similar to RE4 and the supernatural nature of these sequences remind me of Silent Hill. It's not a great action game, maybe purposely so. It's scarier when you can't move quickly, change weapons fast, or aim very accurately. I got the hang of it after a while though, making it through on normal difficulty.  

I'm finding the game more and more interesting as I play. The voice work and writing is pretty good. Also, there are a variety of gameplay techniques thrown into action scenes. Sometimes the screen splits and you have to run from the villain. Other times you have to hide from him in the envronment, or avoid him with timed button presses. Most of the time though, you are roaming the town, smoking to make time pass faster, talking to townfolk, exploring the wilderness, and doing side activities like racing and fishing.

It's a quite ambitious game with a lot of content. It's a perfect kind of Halloween game. I'm giving Mark nightmares by playing it. It doesn't affect me at all though. I rarely dream about games, even ones I put a lot of time into. I don't know why. 

So, after 15 hours of DP, I'm only at Episode 2, part 2. Somehow I feel like I'm only half way done. I don't really want to know how far I'm in, though. It's unfolding nicely not having any prior knowelge of the story details or game length, and I'm happy about that.