Deadlight (PC) Review

If you've been even slightly informed about video games in the last few years, you'll know that there has been one theme that has been done to death and literally back again: Zombies. From Left 4 Dead to Plants vs Zombies, zombies have touched almost literally every single genre of gaming that has ever existed, the first-person shooter by far the worst offender. One genre that has seen a recent resurgence is 2D platformers and Tequila Works gives its take on the zombie craze with Deadlight.

Is it a bird? Is it a plane? No, it's the title of the game!

Deadlight is essentially a 2D platformer with some adventure and action aspects thrown in too. The side scrolling gameplay is refreshing take to zombie games of recent times that have focussed too much on the frenetic side of combat rather than survival and quick thinking which Deadlight has attempted to do.

The story is comprised of what is mostly a monologue from Randall White who assumes the role of brooding, socially awkward anti-hero. Cut-scenes are artistically conveyed through comicbook stills while dialogue is delivered, before switching to the actual gameplay. This can occasionally be quite impressive, seeing the story conveyed in vague, artistic cartoon before cutting to fully rendered environments that show the described surroundings in much more detail. However, other times this is extremely jarring to be brought in and out of these cutscenes when you were previously frantically escaping the grasp of zombies.

Randall's journey attempts to reunite Randall with his wife and daughter, and while his past is alluded to very little in the dialogue, his life before the zombies (or 'shadows' as they are referred to) is detailed in a diary which you can peruse at your own leisure. The diary is missing several pages which you can pick up over the course of the game which shed more light on the thoughts of the troubled Randall. All-in-all a cute effort at story-weaving, however by game's end (SPOILER!) had you collected all the book fragments, Randall would only seem even less of a hero than he seemed throughout the early game.

Randall describing how normal he was before everything got less normal

Stylistically, the 2D plarformer actually worked for this attempt of a zombie game. The foreground where the action all occurs is actually blacked out so Randall and the environment you interact with is in complete darkness. The environment behind this plane is visible and zombies are even able to saunter from the background into the foreground, adding another literally level of strategy to consider. This effect is actually very impressive, giving the environment more character and relevance than any other 2D platformer, though at first it can be jarring that you can only traverse in the foreground plane while everything else can do otherwise.

As mentioned earlier, Deadlight also possesses platforming aspects and for long stretches of the game you will be putting Randal through his platforming paces. The platforming feels like it should be a pseudo-2D version of Assassin's Creed and generally does quite a good job of the running, jumping and climbing mechanics. Compared to what I believe is the pinnacle of platforming, Super Meat Boy, though, Deadlight's controls feel clunky and unresponsive. Too often Randall would be stuck in the middle of an animation and wouldn't be able to complete a second jump, or missing a wall jump completely, falling to his death. This normally wouldn't be a big issue, however I feel that if a player believes he has done everything perfectly to avoid the obstacles before him, he shouldn't then be rewarded with repeating the task ten times just to pass that stage exactly as the developer envisaged. And please, please play Deadlight with a game controller; I think it would be far too frustrating without it.

For those wondering where the action comes in, Deadlight also has guns and melee weapons available. The gun mechanics are a very simple point-in-the-right-direction-and-shoot, and the scarcity of ammo in the game really makes it feel like you are scrounging to survive. Melee weapons however leave a lot to be desired; there is a stamina bar in this game, however it will run out in three to four swings. Whether this was intentional to suggest that running is the best defence against the zombies, but if this were the case they should have been removed completely. Deadlight does however promote one aspect of zombie games that has more recently become more prominent and I applaud this, and this is the concept of survival and constantly escaping by the skin of your teeth. The Walking Dead has done it and now Deadlight has and exploited this to create action, rather than throw waves at zombies at you and expect you decimate every last one. It creates a much more emotional, exhaustive experience which I feel generally makes a game seem far longer than it really was (in a good way); Deadlight will probably see you through in about 4 hours.

Probably not hazardous... right?

The world of Deadlight is very detailed and conveys the level of destruction and scarcity you'd expect from a world decimated by the undead. It is also a very pretty game; from the detailed background to the glowing eyes of the 'shadows', Deadlight is a beautifully presented game and you can see the extra effort gone to creating a believable environment for Randall to explore. The contrast between the dark of the foreground and the light in the background makes for a very different and unique take on the 2D platformer, one which I hope is explored more in other games in the future.

Deadlight is a very good game; a fresh take on zombie themed games, a emotional (if confusing and dark) story and interesting mix of genres means Deadlight will be one of my sentimental favourites for a long time. I hope Tequila Works explores this genre more in a similar style and gets rid of all the niggling issues that could have made Deadlight one of the memorable games for the wider games community.

Deadlight (PC) review - Scuba Score 8/10

Spec Ops: The Line (PC) Review

Spec Ops: The Line (SOTL) is one of those games from 2012 that garnered a lot of attention due to its story. So naturally, I had to play it.

First and foremost, if you want my general comments about the game without any spoilers, this is my suggestion: go play Gears of War. And if you're still hell bent on finishing SOTL, then set the difficulty to Easy so you can steam roll the pedestrian gameplay.

Now, onto the review! Once again, because the story is the one thing in this review I can rant about forever, I'll leave it till the end. SOTL is a third-person shooter much in the same way my beloved Gears of War is. The levels are linear, the level design is ordinary (despite all the sand mechanics) and the guns are so-so (until the last 10 minutes of the game). If you thought that sentence was boring, then you've got the general idea; SOTL is not going to win accolades on game design. It is your stock-standard third-person shooter which by 2012, has already been done by everybody and done much better from a design point of view.

The gameplay likewise is not awe-inspiring. The AI leaves much to be desired and the gun play is simple.  There is nothing groundbreaking about SOTL gameplay, except that for once you shoot the Americans. The highly touted sand mechanics factored very little in the single player. I haven't had a chance to play the multiplayer in SOTL, but I can see how the sand mechanics might bring something slightly different to competitive multiplayer; that is, the ever elusive environmental mechanic. But I feel too much effort has been made to make this one mechanic work instead of innovating on the other mechanics, like gun play or AI, which made the game jarring and unimpressive.

Game presentation is commendable: Small nuances such as the flag gradually disintegrating on the title screen as you progress through the story line are a nice touch. The environments look believable, from the lavish lobbies of Dubai hotels, to the refugee slums in the streets. However, these environments are recycled far too much and don't even get me started on all the convenient chest-high objects littering civilian areas. As mentioned before, the sand mechanics are well made and when the sand comes crashing through the freshly destroyed window, it looks believably destructive. What confused me is when you would seemingly be walking in the middle of the desert, drop into a ditch, which was apparently the balcony of one of the tallest buildings in Dubai. I feel this was a wasted opportunity to explicitly showcase the destructive nature of the sandstorm that engulfed Dubai rather than doing so implicitly.

Now, the story. And be warned, from this point on there will be spoilers. Firstly, let me just say that if Fight Club had not become such a cult classic, SOTL would be winning Best Story awards left, right and centre. Unfortunately, it did so in 1999, and I most definitely still remember what happened at the end. I think I'm right in saying the exact same thing happened to Captain Walker, however it isn't alluded to whether this is brought on my mental instability, or caused by the intense Dubai environment.

The story in SOTL is structured so you have a series of choices to make, and your bumbling sidekicks are naturally at polar opposites of the moral and ethical scale, giving them lots to argue about along the way. Unfortunately, the choices seem to have little long term effects as they only serve to drive the story or to effect a moral response from the player. Regarding these choices, I respect what Yager has tried to achieve in this game; the idea of the anti-hero is thoroughly explored in the game, whether it's trying to make the hard choice that will save more people or choosing between which captive to kill judged on their crimes. This is a refreshing twist on the standard "heroes make hero choices", however I think it takes this a step too far.

There is a point in the game where you have a "choice" to use white phosphorus to destroy a battalion on troops which are blocking your progression. However, this is not actually a choice; you must use white phosphorus to progress. Using white silhouettes as references, you commence bombing the living hell out of anything that moves. What appears to be "one last Humvee" is also situated next to a large concentration of white dots that you can identify as human. Now I'm not stupid; I can work out that these are probably refugees. There is no way to voluntarily stop bombing, so I tried to bomb next to the Humvee, to no avail; only a direct hit would suffice. So I hit it, in the process roasting 40-50 helpless civilians, as the in game characters work out shortly after. And this is my peeve: there was no choice there. If the civilians were inside the Humvee, it would have been a surprise, but I think it would have been the reaction Yager was looking for. However, having to knowingly kill those civilians for no good reason was horrifying and gave me a horrible taste in my mouth afterwards. It's comparable to the controversial level in Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 where the player has a choice whether or not to shoot civilians in the Russian airport. Except there is no choice.

The ending to the game is pleasantly well presented, with the story reaching its drawn out conclusion. Admittedly I felt the story was insanely one dimensional up till this point, so this was a nice surprise. And thinking back on everything you went through in the game, it does give you that Fight Club "oh yeah!" moment. But unfortunately, it was exactly the same "oh yeah!" moment with exactly the same flashback and that for me sums up SOTL; a game comprised of moments and components from different games and movies which culminate in a less than stellar game.

Spec Ops: The Line (PC) Review - Scuba Score 4/10