Dear Esther

With Dear Esther being part of Humble Bundle 8 and my friend SimoensS already owning a digital copy, I was gifted this game and was keen to find out what it is all about. Never having heard anything about Dear Esther before, I went in blind when starting it up for the first time. My first impression was just a what the fuck, what the hell is going on, what am I supposed to do feeling. I quit the game because it just didn't feel like the right time to play something like... well, like Dear Esther.

The second time starting the game, I had to restart all over again because I abruptly quit my playthrough the first time without saving. I wasn't even aware you could save but since the total duration isn't that long, saving doesn't need to be promoted. The game, I feel, needs to be played in one time to keep the story coherent and the experience in one piece. There are four chapters you could play one at a time, but if you would do so, I feel you'd miss out on the experience the game was designed to be. 

It shouldn't take too long for the player to find out this isn't a game the average gamer is used to. From the get-go, there is an atmosphere set in place by the unique combination of amazing graphics, incredible sounds and a near-perfectly chosen narrator that no other game that I know comes near to. This atmosphere is only strengthened by the fact you can only look and move around. There is no jumping, no running, no picking things up, no nothing you are used to in a game that can be played as a game. There is only walking, looking and listening, and believe me, you will need to get used to these limitations.

The confined setting you'll find yourself in, is both annoying in the beginning and more and more enjoyable as the game progresses. I found myself frustrated with the slow pace the game presented when I started the first time, making me unknowingly skip sections in the path the game lays out for you just to avoid going to some dead end and having to return. I found out this was the wrong approach thanks to me not saving. A mistake that turned out to be a blessing in disguise. Without having made this mistake, I wouldn't have known there is a story to be told in Dear Esther that consists of you passing multiple points, and that these points can be skipped without you even realizing it. You skipping these story triggers will result in a weird story getting even weirder and narration suffering from non sequential playback, making for a chopped up feeling that makes the story much less enjoyable.

The most gratifying part of Dear Esther are the surroundings. They are simply stunning. The amount of time that will have gone into designing this 3D world must amount to multiple months, maybe even years. Something that, in hindsight of the 77 minutes I spent in the game both the first and the second time combined, seems somewhat out of place. The game needs these surroundings to shine as it does, but for my taste, it's too short compared to its incredible look and feel! The current Steam price of 7.99 € isn't way up there considering the time spent developing, but with a playthrough time of 55 minutes, I find it just to high. 

Overall Dear Esther is a game that isn't really a game. You will like or dislike it and it is up to you to decide if you're willing to pay the price. With Dear Esther currently being part of the Humble Bundle 8, I would probably pay for it, but on Steam, it just seems a bit overpriced. Then again, since I got this one as gift my value for money meter is going in function-overload so i'm more than happy.

The Hunter

I got pointed toward this film while searching for movies with Willem Dafoe after watching him shine in The Boondog Saints. Never having heard of 'The Hunter' before and seeing as it was released quite recently (2011) I made myself ready with a drink, some crackers and placed myself in a comfy chair ready to enjoy some Dafoe magic. Before starting it up, the only thing I knew was that a hunter, obviously, was going to Tasmania to find, kill and collect the last Thylacine, more commonly known and referred to as the Tasmanian tiger. I heard the names Tasmanian tiger and Tasmanian devil before and going into this movie I foolishly thought they were one and the same thing. The opening scenes made it clear that, in the movie, the infamous tiger is all but extinct and the last tiger DNA material is needed for the survival of the species trough, what is to be suspected, cloning technology.

Martin (Willem Dafoe) arrives in what appears to be a village full of woodcutters who are close to or about to lose their jobs because of environmental issues. From the get-go the locals don't hide the fact they don't like Martin at all. After all he is suspected to be a scientist with a "green" agenda, the very thing threatening their job. This whole situation gives of a real Steaven Seagal movie feel that luckily wears of before the plot thickens. Martin finds out he is not the first to have been sent over to Tasmania with the same objective. Luckily his apparent experience as a hunter gets him out of this complicated mess.

During the first two thirds of the movie, there is an almost constant build-up with nice music and beautiful scenes of far stretching forests and wildlife from the region. It's a pity that whole crescendo gets a bit lost in the close off part when the story seems to come in just a tad short in comparison to the start and the nucleus. Before the end I anticipated for an epic finale worthy of what I saw up to then, something I personally did not get. Don't get me wrong, the summation isn't bad at all, it's good even, but for me it's just not fitting the accretion seen up until then. Overall this movie has a good feel when it could have been great.

Mirror's Edge

I bought Mirror's Edge (ME) during the 2012 Steam Holiday Sale the 21st of December for only 2,49 €. Thinking about this before even playing it I knew I'd get true value for money with this purchase. I knew this mainly because, before having bought it myself, I heard about it through my personal friend SimoensS who owns it on his Xbox 360. Having engaged in this game before with friends, I never played it from the very beginning nor did I pay attention to the story or the graphics. The few times I played it, the controller got handed to me after a friend died during a run that lasted maybe five or ten seconds. Not doing much better myself, the controller got grabbed from my hands just to see the next guy fail just as hard as me or the one before me.

I installed the game on my pc when I ran into some technical difficulties while starting the game concerning black screens. After twenty minutes of googling I finally found a solution to this infuriating problem. Having fixed it, I was psyched to finally play the shit out of it! I wanted to be prepared for the next time the controller landed into my palms, little did I know there is no mastering the edge. Even during the tutorial I had a feeling I might not complete this game without putting an enormous amount of time in it, but with a totaling time of just a little over five hours I'm quite satisfied.

The difficulty slope of the game goes up rather fast, but I quickly figured out ME needs this to keep the constant pressure it exhorts on its player to keep him/her motivated to keep going. This constant drive made the game both majorly enjoyable and at times enormously infuriating. Pushing you into unwanted corners, forcing you to make mistakes over and over again. I couldn't endure more than two chapters of this rush at a time, just because I would start shaking like I was hopped up on caffeine, wanting to get out, get away from or get into some building. After day one of playing ME my brain started noticing everything flashy red. After day three, during a car drive to the local hardware store, taking a route I've passed over a hundred times, I saw a red pipe on a building and nearly missed a turn just staring at it thinking "I can get up there". Not a single game adapted my way of thinking in such a profound way over such a short period of in-game time. This whole brain altering experience tells me something about how strongly we are influenced by fight-or-flight reactions in our daily life without even noticing it. A strange conclusion after playing any game and a very strong accomplishment for this very game!

During my time playing ME I never felt like the surroundings were insufficiently rendered nor did I ever get sidetracked looking at some glitch which, for me, means the graphics are a success. The cutscene art is drawn in what I personally think is an awesome art style making the story extremely watchable, only adding to the game in total. It's a pity the endscene leaves the main protagonist on a roof admiring the city around her when that same roof was crawling with bad guys armed to the teeth only seconds before that. A small error that should not have such a big impact, but for some reason, I just can't overcome. It leaves me with this misplaced feeling of incompleteness that the game doesn't deserve.