wiptw

[wiptw]

Banjo-Tooie

Nintendo 64 - Rare Ltd. - 2000

                Okay so I swear I play games other than Nintendo 64/Nintendo games in general and I play games made after 2003 for sure, but I the worms in my head chant the games I want to rant about online and until I do as they say I can’t progress forward with anything else like some sort of Ratatouille situation.  Except instead of an adorable cartoon rat, it’s my own ADHD riddled brain

                So, video game culture is fun because you could be a dyed-in-the-wool Gamer™ like myself, spend decades of your life playing video games, keep up with whatever gaming rag is sold at the local news stand, and you’ll still be blindsided by the most out of pocket weird ass bullshit you’ve ever seen.  And I’m not talking about things that are considered culturally weird here in the states like the Katamari series or Cubivore, I’m talking about those weird rental store finds and obscure games that leave you wondering who could’ve thought up this one.  Like ‘Mr. Mosquito’, a game about harassing a Japanese family as a small flying insect until they all mentally break or ‘Hide and Sneak’, a Disney game developed by Capcom (Specifically Capcom Production Studio 3, makers of Clocktower 3 and several Resi games) for the Gamecube.

                Which means that little baby me in the Hollywood Video grabbing ‘Banjo-Tooie’ with the bright box art and bear/bird combo front and center could be forgiven for not knowing somehow that the game was a sequel to ‘Banjo-Kazooie’ despite the fact the box clearly states “The bear and bird are BACK!” on it in big violet letters.

                It's not even really subtle about it

Yes, I will spend three paragraphs of preamble and apologetics to say roughly that I didn’t play Game 1 first.  Banjo-Tooie, the sequel to Banjo-Kazooie, is a collect-a-thon platformer developed by British studio Rare about anthropomorphic bear Banjo and less Anthro bird Kazooie embarking on a journey to defeat Gruntilda after she’s saved by her sisters (neither of whom are the pink fairy one from Kazooie) and zombifies Jinjo royalty in an attempt to become more than just the grungiest skeleton of the 2000s.  Traversing the Isle O’ Hags and its eight main stages you’ll find a wide cast of characters new and old, levels distinctly unique from Kazooie, and new abilities that will further build upon the ones established in Kazooie

                That’s right, as anyone who has even tangentially heard of this game may already be aware of you start the game with every ability from Banjo-Kazooie unlocked.  One of the main features that gets brought up anytime this game is dissected in articles or video essays, but with good reason; as to this day it’s not exactly a common practice in the industry. Metroid, Zelda, many other franchises either contrive ways to deprive you of the gear you got in previous games or just plain pretended they don’t exist since these upgrades typically act as keys to puzzles.

Some powers let you slay fierce bosses, some let you play the game like it's Goldeneye, this one lets you do both.

                This is true for Banjo-Kazooie as well.  Getting the ability to fire eggs unlocks the ability to solve any challenge that requires eggs; likewise getting the ability to fly, run up steep slopes, or wear different types of shoes will solve puzzles with those required materials so how do you keep the game interesting? Easy, you just make more locks and keys.

                Really that just describes Tooie overall.  More moves which leads to more eggs, more spacious worlds with more sub-areas and more collectibles. It’s more refined than Kazooie sure, but it’s also much larger in ways that make me wonder how much space Kazooie takes up on a game cartridge vs Tooie given how radically different the games are.

More references! Rare hid references to many different properties throughout the game, like this Donkey Kong plushie!

                The larger size, however, doesn’t wholly work to the games benefit. The two most commonly brought up negatives for the game are the size of the levels and game world, and backtracking (exacerbated by the size of the game worlds). These are both valid criticisms, almost every level from Mayahem Temple to (especially) Grunty Industries has at least one jiggy that requires you to come back when you’ve unlocked a gate or earned a new power in a future stage. In the case of Grunty Industries, you need to even enter the level to hit a switch, then leave and come back through one of the game’s fast travels ‘Chuffy the Train’ to actually play the level.

                I can’t argue against either point really, the backtracking is inoffensive at best and infuriatingly tedious at worst and the stages all at least feel substantially larger than any stage in Kazooie, but that feel is why I don’t mind it too much.  Because in Kazooie, the smaller stages and Grunty’s Lair overall feel like a theme park; like I’m wandering through a more dangerous but still family friendly amusement park, a deranged witchy version of Disney world.

Despite having a literal theme park, the worlds of Banjo-Tooie feel like part of a large, actual world.

                In Kazooie, I don’t feel like I’m on an epic quest to free my sister from a witch obsessed with the beauty of someone worryingly young; I feel like I’m on a journey through Epcot. I’m wandering from point to point in a witch themed thoroughfare until I end up at Beach Zone or Christmas Zone or Halloween Zone, with each level wrapped around a central weenie (large prop usable as a landmark for orienting yourself).  The worlds of Tooie while no less cartoony are not only larger but interconnected through trains and tunnels except for Cloud Cuckooland; which itself is still connected by being the location for two different backtrack jiggies in the game.

                Worlds and the game overall also feel darker than Kazooie.  From the start exploring the destroyed remains of Spiral Mountain and Grunty’s old lair and all throughout the game events are tinged with more death and sour notes.  Even the very start of the game features Bottles the mole, your mentor in Kazooie, getting blasted and remaining a ghost throughout the game. Death is mentioned several times, you even get to murder a side character (don’t worry, it’s funny!) creating a more dour mood than the previous game, while not being so gloomy it becomes unenjoyable. After all, one of the levels is set in a wacky cloud world with giant garbage cans and jello buildings.

Rated E, because even if he talks he's still just a pile of coal.

                As annoying as those flaws are though, I feel that the benefits vastly outweigh even the worst levels. My least favorite world in the game is Terrydactyland as it’s overly large, empty for it’s size, and has some of the worst backtrack jiggies in the game; but the distaste I feel for this world is overwhelmed by my love for all the refinements Rare put into this game versus the previous one.  Best Note Score (BNS) is removed, with notes now being a grand total carried across all worlds.  Eggs, feathers, and notes are all in bundles now instead of being scattered individually; with eggs and feathers cycling through their different types (allowing you to just wait patiently for whatever you need instead of hunting for them).

                Sure things are bigger, but the controls are just as tight if not tighter than they were in Kazooie and the additions of Mumbo (the first games shaman) as a playable character for some parts and the transformations being in every level now thanks to Humba Wumba (It was 2000, it was a different time) the Native American shaman keep things feeling fresh.  The new moves bring on new challenges, and the inclusion of minigames (while sometimes overplayed) allowed the developers at Rare to have jiggies that were different and fresh (except kickball, fuck kickball).

Humba Wumba takes over the role of transformations from Mumbo Jumbo, while he transforms aspects of the game world instead.

                Overall, Banjo-Tooie was a gem.  It’s one of the few games I’ll replay on a semi-regular basis and one of the even fewer games I’ve 100%’d.  It’s a great platformer that didn’t try to copy Super Mario 64’s homework too closely, has plenty of charm, built upon the previous game’s foundation expertly, and offered so much new content compared to the previous game that I’m still baffled both games came out on the same 64-bit console. 

Every collectible collected, every world scene, at least one night where I forgot to exit the emulator before bed.

                It’s an evergreen platformer in my eyes, and with ports to the Xbox consoles it’s one of the few retro platformers you can still play easily to this day. Definitely no Tonic Trouble or Earthworm Jim 3D on Nintendo Switch Online. But unlike those games, if you haven’t played this and you have an interest in game design or level design you should at some point.

Overall Score: 10/10 Memorable Moment: Destroying Grunty once and for all after about six tries.

[wiptw]

Pokémon Stadium Series

Nintendo 64 - Nintendo - 2000 to 2001

You as a Pokémon fan are absolutely fucking spoiled these days. Aside from the mainline games you have spinoffs and fangames offering different experiences, you have entire websites dedicated to documenting everything down to the internal maths of the series, there's no end to the free content you can access with an internet connection between emulators and battle sites like 'Showdown!', and it's now socially acceptable in most circles to be older than 13 and have something with Pikachu's face plastered on it (especially if you're female presenting, especially if your friend group is also infected with the Pokémon hype). Back in my day™ you had almost none of this. You had the anime on Saturday mornings, you had the early run Pokémon licensed merch which WOULD get you called a baby if you continued buying past 10-12, and you had the games. Those sweet, sweet games that indoctrinated a generation of young people into being gamers and awoke a horde of JRPG addicts.

Literally Me

So remember this when I tell you that Pokémon Stadium, both one and two, aren't great games because they do something back then that you can't get today; they're great for what they did back then. So Pokemon Stadium 1&2 were a duology of games from 2000 and 2001 respectively that allowed players to battle Pokemon in 3D, with the addition of some side content such as minigames included to prevent the game from being 100% Pokemon battles. Because otherwise, the game is in fact navigating a series of menus and completing Pokémon battles with 3D models.

Whether it's taking on the gym gauntlets, the marathon of battles in the Pokémon cups, or just free battles with friends and loved ones, 98% of the experience is either selecting Pokémon from a roster of pre-built 'rentals' or transferring them from a saved game using the Transfer Pak, then fighting them in a series of 3D environments. An experience which you can definitely do today using web apps but as I said earlier, we didn't have that.

The peak of Pokémon battles in 2000

So if you're buying Pokémon Stadium (either version really) you're already probably a Pokémon fan right? So that means you have Red/Blue/Yellow/Gold/Silver/Crystal, so why not just play that game and get the full experience? The fun of exploring, talking to NPCs, discovering new and exotic locations? Simple, because in those games battles looked like this

While in Stadium, battles looked like this

If you grew up watching the anime while playing the Gameboy games, there was this special kind of dissonance where you might find yourself saying "Yeah, (for the time) these graphics are RADICAL but I wish I had something closer to these cool Pokémon Battles they had in the anime." As you hide under the covers with your Gameboy Color worm light, nestled in your Ash Ketchum pajamas while you attempt for the 100th time to capture a ditto. Pokémon Stadium was the answer to this dissonance, providing you with vibrant 3D graphics unlike anything you'd ever seen before; bringing Pokémon to life in a way that would be unmatched until Colosseum came out during the Gamecube era.

So, to actual mechanics, you play both games pretty similarly; by building a team of Pokémon (either on your handheld or by using the rental mons the game provides) and take part in a series of battles to become the ultimate battle master. To use your own Pokémon, you'd need to use the aforementioned 'Transfer Pak' to plug in a copy of Red/Blue/Yellow (for 1) or Gold/Silver/Crystal (for 2) with a game saved to the cartridge; otherwise the rental Pokémon covered all released Pokémon (except for some hidden ones) allowing you to build your dream team, sans a few caveats here and there.

Evolved Pokémon have better stats but worse moves, while weaker Pokémon tend to have better moves to compensate

In terms of WHERE you can battle, there's two choices: Either in the Gym Leader Castle, or the Tournaments held in the center of the map on either game. Either way, the game will then have you battle through a series of 3v3 matches versus a set number of trainers who will also select 3 random mons from their full team of six.

A bit bare bones, but there's some spice to how things are run. For one, the rental system was a huge thing for us younger players back in the day. Even if you had the games some Pokémon were hard to catch, had evolution requirements some players couldn't complete (like the trade-mons), or were locked to a version you didn't have. The rental mons give you a list of every Pokémon (some exceptions, but not many) and then lets you build your dream team. Sure, you can't set their moves, EVs, IVs, and it's the era before abilities and natures but I CAN HAVE A MEOWTH/PERSIAN ON MY TEAM. Do you know what I had to do as a child to have this Pokémon outside of Stadium? I had to find someone in the American South who also enjoyed Pokémon, hoped they had Blue instead of Red, hoped they had a link cable, then get them to agree to a trade despite both of us being children (and therefore, objectively terrible) which likely meant giving away a rare Pokémon in exchange for what amounted to common garbage in their game because it was Version fucking Exclusivity™ and everyone seemed to know that meant you'd do anything to get that one fucking Pokémon you wanted.

In the handheld games, if you wanted to build your dream team then likely you'd have to put in some more effort than other games of the time would've required of you. With Stadium, your dreams come true, and if you already have that dream team you can just import them to fight in glorious 3D. Circumventing the fact that rental Pokémon are kinda terrible overall.

Don't feel like building? The challenge cup mode that gives you randomized team comps that has it's own charm (for masochists)

Not to say all of them were bad but construct a normal distribution of 'Good' to 'Bad' picks then that graph is gonna skew left so hard you'd be forgiven for thinking it was just a straight line. To keep every choice 'viable' Pokémon rentals were balanced around stats and moves. More powerful evolved Pokémon and Pokémon with high Base Stat Totals (BST) were given weaker moves and first form and low BST Pokémon were given generally better moves. Charizard might have better stats than Charmeleon and Charmander but his only fire type move is going to be something like Fire Spin. Conversely, Charmander might have Fire Blast but his stats are gonna make him an easy target for the computer's pokemon, which are not bound to the same builds as the rental mons you're using.

Once your team is assembled, then you're off to battle trainer after trainer after trainer with beautifully scored (for the Nintendo 64) soundtracks giving you an unearned sense of importance every step of the way. Battles themselves are conducted with a weird, but functional control layout where A and B access sub menus you then check with the R button before finalizing with the c-buttons, which on original hardware or a USB N64 controller is fine but on emulation with a more modern controller like Logitech, can be a little nerve wracking as you worry about whether your 'up' input on the control stick was up enough for the game or if you accidentally drifted right or left using an unintended move.

fun fact: the name of imported Pokémon affects their coloration in Stadium

Battles are also largely regulated by (at the time) tournament standard rules. Little and Pokecup have level restrictions, and all three non-random cups include clauses for sleep, held items, and repeat Pokémon. Additionally, in any cup if you win the round with all 3 Pokémon still in tact, you're granted a continue; meaning you can retry the battle if you lose. Additionally, there is no 'draw' outcome in these games. Use a move like Explosion or Selfdestruct and the game will register it as your loss on your final Pokémon, regardless of whether you took down the opposing fighter with you or not.

You'll be doing a LOT of back-to-back fights here against trainers with varied team comps, but even with over 246 Pokémon in the available potential lineup you'll get tired fast of fighting. This is, however, slightly mitigated by the 3v3 nature of the matches but even so be ready to here the same Pokémon noises, watch the same effects play out, and wait for the same health bars to tick down over and over as you claw your way to the spot of Pokémon Master.

The art style of non-battle scenes like the main map and minigame plaza have that nice, 90's charm to them as well.

If you do get tired of battling it out, then Stadium 1 and 2 both offer minigames for players to partake in. Either in a tournament format or by using the free-play browser, players are able to take part in a multitude of different Mario Party-esque (without the hand burning) minigames featuring the Pokémon as stars. Minigames consist of stick twirling, button mashing, and point collecting all while controlling fan favorite Pokémon such as Togepi, Eevee, Scyther, and Pichu with no real rhyme or reason behind why these game exist aside from a amusement park theming the minigame zones have for their icons and menus.

You won't get a real explanation as to why you're racing Donphans, cutting logs as Scythers and Pinsirs, or playing Simon Says with a bunch of Clefairy, but you don't really need that either. The games are fun, the models are charming, and watching Clefairy get smacked in the head for each wrong input brings me a level of joy I should probably talk about with my therapist. You won't likely spend hours in this mode, but it's a nice breather from the onslaught of battles otherwise.

fun fact: I still won't talk to some people because of the outcomes to Rampage Rollout over two decades ago. You know who you are.

Additionally there's a quiz minigame separate from the main selection of minigames with easy/normal/hard difficulty selections. Players compete to see who can be the first to get a number of questions correct before anyone else based on facts about the Pokémon (typing, size, silhouette, etc) or facts about the game (where you can find things in the game, names of routes and towns, names of figures in the game).

It's not the most challenging on easy or normal, but playing on hard the game will try to screw you with trick questions so playing with others becomes a balance of "do I let the question play out, or attempt to steal it before someone else can answer correctly?"

Sometimes even playing the game won't prepare you for how out of pocket the questions can get

The real advantage of 2 over 1 is that, in addition to minigames, the game has the trainer academy; a kind of in-depth battle tutorial to teach players not only the basics of Pokémon fighting, but also some secrets as well

You can learn about held items, a feature new to the second generation, as well as participate in mock battles to demonstrate the materials you've been reading and quizzed on. Some of this information for the time too was obscure or hidden knowledge, like the fact that using Defense Curl before using Rollout would boost the damage significantly or that using Stomp on an opponent who used minimize would double the damage.

Some type matchups just make sense, like Ground v Electric.

Overall though what really makes this game is the presentation. The soundtrack does a great job selling the feeling Nintendo wants you to experience, climbing the ladder in a tournament or the Gym Leaders Castle makes you feel powerful, and the little details on top of it all just tie it together in a nice package.

The fights, for example, are also narrated by "The Announcer". A bombastic voice shouting over every detail of a fight. When you score a crit, when you apply a status effect, even using certain moves will get the announcer loudly narrating each detail like a Pokémon prize fight. Seeing the ground rip apart when you use Earthquake is only half the charm, the other half comes from that man yelling in your ears "A DEVESTATING EARTHQUAKE ATTACK!". Clearing gyms or clearing opponents in one of the cups grants you gym badges, a dream for any child growing up on the handheld classics or watching the anime who wished they too could earn shiny bits of metal that gave them an inflated sense of importance.

I would literally kill everyone I came across if it'd get me a real life Zephyr Badge.

Stadium 1 and 2 aren't evergreen classics. They're stuck in Gens 1 and 2 respectively, the roster of Pokémon while impressive is largely useless and makes collecting trophies way harder than it has to be, and the games were made before things like abilities and double battles were introduced, leading to the Pokémon battling game missing out on the generation of Pokémon that made battling more fun (Revolution doesn't count, Revolution is dead to me and disappoints me more than I disappoint myself.)

But for the time especially, it gave fans an opportunity to experience a form of Pokémon more advanced than what the handhelds could output. It was a window into a world of potential that wouldn't be truly fulfilled until arguably the 3DS era of Pokémon released, and gave fans a fun little romp handcrafted for them at every twist and turn. Whether you were a gamer or you enjoyed the anime, there was something here for you.

Overall: 7/10 Sound: 8/10 (for the time) Graphics: 9/10 (for the time) Memorable Moments: Stadium 1: Hearing about Mewtwo, thinking he was an urban legend, then finding out he wasn't Stadium 2: Finally beating the elite 4 using only rental mons.

[wiptw]

WIPTW scoreguide

A handy guide about how I rank games in the overall category, and a reminder that the sound and graphic design boxes are purely subjective and will probably be removed later because I feel kinda meh on them.

Scores are delivered in whole numbers because screw that 1/2 or .75 bull.  All fractional scoring does is confuse readers and let journos pretend they calculated some exact science of fun

10/10:  It’s great, duh.  Perfection or near it at least, the game is fun to play and has a wide range of appeal.  I could recommend this to anyone and they’d probably come back and tell me how much they enjoyed it; but I’d probably be less asking and more demanding they dedicate time to it.  

Example:  “Divinity: Original Sin 2″

9/10:  Great, but flawed. A lot of the same as above, but there’d probably be a few people upset at me if I ranted about it and then they didn’t enjoy it, or it has themes/mechanics that could be considered divisive or simply unfun

Example:  “Don’t Feed the Monkeys”

8/10:  Great, with a wide variety of appeal but more sever mechanical issues, bugs, or other factors prevent it from being anything more.  Things like game length, mechanical depth, and other factors can influence a game that’d normally be a 9 down to an 8

Example: “Superhot”

7/10:  Firmly good.  Too many glitches/bugs/crashes/problems to ever be great, but you can get dozens or maybe even over 100 hours on steam with a game like this if  you’re really digging it, but no more than 1 if you’re not.  

Example:  “Vanilla Skyrim”

6/10: early disclaimer, this is NOT a bad score in my book.  This is where things do start to get iffy, but a 6/10 game can still be fun and enjoyable; but it does mark where player opinions can differ greatly.  A good game, but one that’s not for everyone.  It fills a niche, does something new, or tries to appeal to a certain audience but other factors, like overall quality, could hold it from being higher

A game I consider 6/10 has the highest probability of being a 10/10 to someone who’s really into whatever the game’s trying to do or someone who enjoys the topic the game addresses.

Example:  “Windows Solitaire”

5/10:  Not good, but not bad either.  I could see someone liking this but it’s a lot more situational and will probably rub me and others the wrong way. Still decent enough though that some people may like it, the kind of game where you tell a buddy about it and see how they like playing it before you rent it.

Example:  “Yu-Gi-Oh!  Reshef of Destruction” “Pixel Puzzles Series”

4/10:  Oh wow, super niche AND it’s not very good.  starts becoming less favorable around here, the game has a solid premise but fucks it up in some fun way.  The pain comes less from what it is, but knowing what it could’ve been

Example:  “Valhalla Hills”

3/10:  You’d recommend this to your friend if they pranked you by pouring a little bit of salt in your milk.  The “So bad, it’s good” of video games where yeah, it sucks; but at least you guys can laugh about how bad it is.  If it’s a sequel to a game you liked, then you can cry together in solidarity instead.

Example:  “House Party”

2/10:  You’d recommend this game to your friend if they pranked you by sleeping with your girlfriend and sending you the vid on Snapchat.  This is just bad, absolutely terrible with no redeeming qualities.  The only enjoyment that could be had is if you riff on it, but that’d require spending money on it.  It’s not broken, but it sure needs fixing.

Example:  “Command and Conquer 4″

1/10:  Pure garbage.  You send this to someone as a meme and then feel bad you spent money on it at all when linguine-ing their knees with a baseball bat is cheaper and would probably have inflicted less pain.  It’s glitchy, it’s bad, it’s ugly, and it probably mines your switch for bitcoin while spreading deepstate rumors on a dubious twitter page followed by 4chan idiots and facebook boomers.  Avoid, do not distribute, and check to make sure the devs aren’t running some sort of tax haven scam through steam. 

Example:  “Bad Rats” “Command and Conquer 4″

0/10:  I refuse. It took something I loved and turned it into a cheap whore turning tricks for it’s publisher.  I will never look at it the same way, and will likely be dubious of any and all future releases, because even if I somehow got that game for free I’d be mad that I overpaid.

Examples:  “Command and Conquer fucking 4″ 

[wiptw]

Sagebrush:  Exploring a Cult Compound

Sagebrush

PC – Redact Games – 2018

           Narratively driven exploration games, or ‘walking simulators’ as some corners of the internet will call them, are a fairly subjective branch of the classic Adventure Game genre. There’s a larger focus on the story being told, usually chopping out things like game mechanics and NPCs to focus entirely on guiding players through the story via notes, flashbacks, or other storytelling devices.  In other words, if a game like Super Mario Bros. is like a carnival shooting gallery, this is like the carnival dark ride; an on rails experience that only changes slightly (if at all) on repeat rides.

           Sagebrush is one such game, focusing on a mysterious player character exploring the abandoned “Black Sage Ranch”; a former cult compound based out of Arizona that recruited a number of people looking for meaning in their lives. Throughout the game you’ll explore the dirty, rotting remains of a compound looking for clues as to who was living here, what happened in the final days of the cult, and of course why you’re there in the first place.

                         Creepy colors lend to the creepy atmosphere

           Over the course of the game, you’ll find notes and tape recorders to learn more about the history and people who lived here; but more importantly they’ll let you know whether or not you’re in the right place.  

           Sagebrush focuses heavily on realism and grounded logic in order to immerse the player and make later twists in the game more shocking (which won’t be spoiled here).  So of course, this means no magic map marker but also that you need a light source to read or examine most objects in the dark.  For the most part, this works decently enough with an ambient soundtrack only ever occasionally interrupted by a musical sting or sound effect. Crickets chirping in the evening, wooden floors creaking and clunking beneath your feet, and your own sighs and breathing create a world that feels real, but empty.  

               Day to Night transitions help lend a bit of realism to the setting

           Adding to this, the notes are written from the perspective of various cultists.  These notes act as worldbuilding, but also point you in the direction for finding the next bit of major narrative; which is usually delivered through an audio recording.  

           Through these notes, you’ll learn secrets like the combination to the compound’s rectory, and where to find the items you’ll need to full explore Black Sage Ranch; but you’ll also discover the answer to questions you’ll likely have while exploring.  Questions like “why is there a bunch of cereal locked up in the farm shed” and “Whose pregnancy test is sticking out of the toilet?”

           The audio logs function similarly, providing you details while also pointing you to the next clue; but they also act as checkpoints.  Listening to an audio log locks you into a black and white version of whatever room you’re in, and saves your game after you’ve finished listening.  They’re less frequent than the notes, 12 audio logs in total are scattered throughout the ranch, but it’s clear that there was a lot of care put into the messages these logs delivered.

           That’s why it’s a shame I have to admit of the two, I preferred the notes. The audio logs often felt intrusive, although an end game spoiler explains that fairly decently, and all but a few of them are from the same point of view; which is delivered by someone with a very flat line delivery.  Not all of them were terrible, but there were at least three or four tapes where the director should’ve definitely asked for a different take.  

           Aside from the story though, the other main draw of this game and many others like it is the environment you’re exploring.  Black Sage Ranch is a large, empty, and menacing place that does an excellent job of building tension through looks alone.  From the rusty trailers everyone (except of course the cult leader) lives in, to the bloodstained exterior of the cleansing room, the ranch is painted in this sort of realistic horror; the kind where being there is less ‘creepy’ and more ‘uncomfortable’.

           The game uses pseudo-playstation graphics to give the game a retro vibe, but it doesn’t usually diminish from the surroundings.  Objects, textures, and videos in game might be a little muddy as a result, but you’ll never have any trouble knowing what’s what or what you’re supposed to be looking at, which means you’ll probably also not have any trouble with any of the games two puzzles.

           In most games of this type, the walking simulator variety, there’s usually very little else outside of walking and listening.  Games like Gone Home and Stanley Parable are known for making this sort of game more mainstream, and had very minimal mechanics attached to them; but in Sagebrush you’ll need to solve a number of small puzzles

           These puzzles all work the same, except for one; find the object you need to advance, then use said object.  So, for instance, you need to find a generator key in the first area to be able to use the light switches in the community building. You find the key, find the generator, then turn on the generator and the puzzle is done.  It never gets more advanced than this, and the only other puzzle involves simply finding the padlock combination on two different locks.  

           I don’t begrudge the devs for recycling a basic puzzle structure, I want to make that perfectly clear.  Game design is hard, and puzzle design is even harder, but after seeing the first few puzzles in the game it felt less like puzzles and more like chores before the game would let me have more story.  I don’t see a chained-up door and think “Oh, I wonder what I’ll use to get that open” or “Wow, I wonder what could possibly be in there”, I end up thinking “Oh, great.  I wonder when I’ll be allowed to go in there”.

                           Not helping is the fact most of the items are keys

           Even if you stumble on a puzzle or two though, it’s a very short game.  I beat the entire game in around an hour and a half; and most of that time was spent listening to audio logs.   It’s not the best narratively driven adventure you’ll play this year, and it’s not even the best from the year it was released, but at the very least it’s a fun distraction for an hour or two when you’ve got nothing better going on.  You can find copies on Steam and Itch.io, and as of writing this you can also get it as part of itch.io ‘s $5 game bundle; which I’d recommend since you get over a thousand other games and because the money will go towards a cause that really needs it at the moment.  

 Overall: 6/10

Sound: 8/10

Graphics: 7/10

Memorable Moments:  Finding the audio log in the chapel, and the cutscene that occurs during it