D4: Dark Dreams Don’t Die -Season One-
D4: Dark Dreams Don’t Die is a true hidden gem. I consider it to be a masterpiece. It is among my favourite games, and one of the finest examples of the interactive movie subgenre. It’s also among the most immersive games, both overall and specifically due to how great it is with giving you a lot of different emotions. It’s sad, mysterious, weird, funny, and somewhat scary. It has a great balance of brightness and darkness, and not because it only plays on contrasts, but because it has bright, dark, and in-between moments, and they are placed appropriately, as well as equally good at what their purposes are. While some might claim the game is unfinished, it’s not exactly so, it’s more of a somewhat unfinished game, but worth it without a doubt. You can see it this way - even if a truly beautiful painting is unfinished to some degree, it still remains beautiful. Now let’s talk about the essential video game aspects.
– Real player with 27.0 hrs in game
Read More: Best Adventure Mystery Games.
8.5/10
My likes include 100% de Agave tequila. My dislikes are mainly drugs… And chewing gum.
Overview
D4: Dark Dreams Don’t Die -Season one- is the first part of a planned episodic adventure games series developed by Access Games in the same vein as Telltale’s cinematic titles. D4 is a crazy story filled with wacky characters and ridiculous situations somehow fittingly wrapped into a serious, moody detective crime story.
Story
D4 follows the tale of David Young, middle-aged ex-cop and widower turned private detective in order to find D, a mysterious individual whose only known initial was Little Peggy’s (Young’s wife) dying breath.
– Real player with 16.1 hrs in game
Dragon’s Lair 2: Time Warp
NOTE: Scroll down for summary and rating
If you haven’t played Dragon’s Lair 2, or any of the Don Bluth games in general, imagine a cartoon animation fused with Geometry Dash. Highly difficult, fast reactions, trial and error, and memory. Dragon’s Lair 2 is a challenging full motion video game where you must push the arrow keys and space bar at the right moment.
The story continues from the first Dragon’s Lair. After the protagonist Dirk the Daring freed Princess Daphnie from the dark magic of the Dragon’s Lair, she gets kidnapped by the evil wizard Mordoc, and must use a time machine, which is oddly the nicer brother of Mordoc and talks. He must travel through different time zones and worlds to save Daphnie once again.
– Real player with 10.6 hrs in game
Read More: Best Adventure Action Games.
The ambitious sequel to the innovative arcade game by Don Bluth and his team. The squeaky eye-candy princess Daphne has been kidnapped by the evil Mordroc, who apparently wants to marry her for some unknown reason. While the entire first game took place in the castle, in this one, you travel through 6 different timelines by using a unique flying time machine.
Another change is this game plays more like an interactive movie; inputing the correct commands to progress through the level as it goes. I am not entirely sure what the difficulty was on the first game, but this one is pretty difficult, especially when you turn off the move guides which serve as the game’s training wheels. Then you have to solely rely on the yellow flashes to figure out what direction to go or when to use your sword. To make matters worse, except in the first level, if you mess up, you will restart to the beginning of the level. So you’ll need good memorization skills in order to succeed, especially when turning off the move guide to get two achievements.
– Real player with 8.9 hrs in game
Fahrenheit: Indigo Prophecy Remastered
A cult classic with a unique approach to storytelling and a polarizing third act.
2005’s “Fahrenheit” or “Indigo Prophecy” (the latter was the name given to the censored version released in the USA and other countries) was marketed as the first interactive film. At a time where few games dared to be like movies, David Cage (who was lead director and writer) aimed to bridge the gap and show that video games can also tell deep and meaningful stories. Whether Fahrenheit actually did this successfully is up for debate, but what’s known for certain is that David Cage changed the landscape of video games in a huge way.
– Real player with 32.0 hrs in game
Read More: Best Adventure Story Rich Games.
Information
Title: Fahrenheit: Indigo Prophecy Remastered
Developer(s): Quantic Dream, Aspyr
Publisher(s): Aspyr
Genre(s): Interactive movie, action-adventure
Release Date: 29 Jan, 2015
Mode(s): Single-player
Review
+ Merits:
When it comes to combining the cinematic media with the interactive storytelling genre, Quantic Dream unequivocally wins the gold medal. Instead of watching a movie and being constrained by what the writer intends, you are the one who pulls the strings of its events. Back in 2005, Indigo Prophecy was way ahead of its time in capturing the dramatic, pictorial elements of a film and implementing these elements in an atmospheric game that’s driven by a thrilling crime story to create a unique experience of cinematic gameplay.
– Real player with 15.2 hrs in game
Space Ace
Welcome to the game that made me poor as a kid!!!
It was originally released in 1984 a year after ‘dragon lair’ and followed the same principle that being a laser disc arcade. ‘Laser Disc’ technology was like the ‘future’ back then and playing a game like this would make a kid feel like he was time travelling into the future of gaming. Oh what little we knew!
Like its predecessor its art style was all thanks to Don Bluth who worked on masterpiece animation films such as ‘The American Tale’ and the ‘Land before time’ amongst other great works. Like FMV games today, the novelty of controlling a cartoon by moving a hero around the screen away from incoming danger was a popular trend. However ‘Space Ace’ added another dynamic which ‘Dragon’s Lair’ did not have. Not only was the objective to move your main character in the direction of provisional yellow flashes, or to hit the shoot button when the heroes gun flashed yellow, but now you could also occasionally change the main character to an older version of himself changing the dynamics and pathway of that adventure which provided even more animation fun and a very large number of novelty death scenes.
– Real player with 4.6 hrs in game
This is a really fun game, and it is definetly a game I’m glad I own.
However:
If you are new to Space Ace/Dragon Lair, these games are basically just a bunch of QTE’s with good animation. The gameplay is fun, with the problem of it being short. At this time, when I have approx. 3.5 hours, I have beaten the game multiple times. The game is pretty short. If you think you’ll replay it alot, I can recommend this game. On the other side, if you want to have a game with more hours of gameplay, I cannot really recommend this.
– Real player with 4.3 hrs in game
Dragon’s Lair
The 1980s. Ronald Reagan, Rubik’s Cube, MTV, and in the arcades, games like Pac-Man, Centipede, Space Invaders, Defender and others are eating up the quarters of America. Jump ahead in time a little and a new technology, the laser disc player, is brought into the arcade in the form of a game/animated movie called ‘Dragon’s Lair’. In this game, the player ‘plays’ the movie, that is, at certain points in the game the player is given the option to choose how the character moves. Choose the right option and the story continues, choose wrong, and the character faces a gruesome demise.
– Real player with 19.0 hrs in game
Back in ‘83 when this game first came out, we had a single arcade in our small city (that’s not so small now) that had Dragon’s Lair. Many of us fell in love with the game and a new challenge was present in our community arcade… to beat the dragon and save the princess. I dumped way too many quarter’s into this game and came back late from lunch on more than one occassion. The owner of the arcade had installed a monitor above the machine so others could watch while you played. In time I had developed quite a few followers that I think figured I was most likely to complete the game. Some would even let me play ahead of them even though they had their quarters lined up. A couple of times other people even paid for me to play the game. One afternoon, it finally happened. Amidst a small crowd of people surrounding the machine I reached the Dragon’s Lair. Of course I didn’t beat it the first time, but I played again and much to the enjoyment of the crowd, I defeated the dragon and we all saw the end of the game. I was very proud to have been the first person in our city to have defeated the game.
– Real player with 3.9 hrs in game
Hyper Treasure - The Legend of Macaron
I always appreciate a good game that is different than others, which this was.
– Real player with 6.9 hrs in game
Very fun to play through
– Real player with 1.3 hrs in game
The Battle of Visby
First off, this is a one-man production, and as that it is very impressive. The environments are well-made and detailed and sets a good mood throughout. Knowing the history that is being portrayed I immediately noticed the accuracy of the town. I wanted to explore more interiors because the one you sleep in is lovely. The beach is gorgeous and I especially like the wasd sequences which brakes up the fps gameplay in a nice way. A few things could be improved imo; faster sprint speed, an optimization-pass on graphics, proper voice-over and more stuff to explore. Overall a nice indie game and I want to see more from this developer.
– Real player with 1.6 hrs in game
The Battle of Visby starts out as a sweet little snapshot of a moment in time as the town of Visby prepares to be assaulted by Vlademar IV of Denmark in 1361. I love medieval history games and I enjoyed walking through the small section of town and feeling like I was getting a 3D history lesson. The way the characters talked was fun and the music was fitting and pleasing. There is plenty of build-up to the impending siege across multiple characters. Then the attack happens and the game makes no assumptions that it’s any kind of action game and the combat is limited to hitting WASD at the right time. For a game created by one person, I was quite thrilled to play it. Then, just as I’m thinking I’m having a good time, the game just ends. I hardly got a full hour out of it. No conclusions were presented for any of the characters that were introduced. A quick text note of history was added with a screenshot of modern Visby, and the end. So even though this was only $2.11 for me to play, I felt that the game could have had at least a few more minutes of story added for the characters and for the general history of Visby. What was accomplished here was well done, it just wasn’t enough to market on Steam as a game. This could have easily been made as a history lesson on YouTube and been received just as well. I can’t recommend this game but I do hope the developer continues on to create bigger and better things.
– Real player with 1.3 hrs in game
Batman - The Telltale Series
I have some friends and people-I-know who like to judge me. All these judgement comes from their inability to accept that people can be different and their tastes can vary, it highly depends on what kinda person you are, your lifestyle and your education.
Telltale Games are always a reason for discussions and some weird talks like “what do you exactly call a game in there?” and every time I hear it I start to get mad. Truth be told, I never understood why people like to judge the genres they don’t like and people who play them, ‘cause it’s never been a big problem for me. If I don’t like the game or genre, I just don’t play it, easy as that.
– Real player with 67.9 hrs in game
By now, Batman is a well known character who’s had probably the largest exposure among comic book characters. Across the years there have been many interpretations of the character, some focusing on the hero, others on the darker aspects of his personallity and most of them on his growth. They’ve all been done to death. How does Telltale’s Batman fare? Do you need to know his character to enjoy this game? Is this a cashgrab or is there some worth to it, something that make the game shine ? Telltale’s catalogue is formed of both kinds. Batman season 1 is an interesting one. It starts as the former and ends as the latter. Before I go on with the narrative and technical details, I’ll get something out of the way: If you intend to play it on a low-tier device, better stay away! The engine of the game served as a prototype and therefore not many things could be fixed. To this day, the framerate can drop to the half of your display, there’s some stuttering in few moments on high-end machines, but it’s much worse on lower-ends. With that out, here’s the actual review:
– Real player with 35.3 hrs in game
A Very Bad Christmas Eve
It has cozy Christmas atmosphere. Something about the music reminds me of Harry Potter. The challenges are fun and I enjoyed playing the game. It was perfect for Sunday afternoon.
– Real player with 1.6 hrs in game
Actually I like this game very much. I absolutely love the visuals and their details, the Christmas atmosphere. The music is amazing. The falling snow. It gives me a dreamy, cozy, Christmas mood. The gameplay is challenging and fun. Totally recommend it, has nothing in common with all of the seasonal bullsh*t games.
– Real player with 1.2 hrs in game
Castlevania: Lords of Shadow – Ultimate Edition
First off, I’m a huge fan of the Castlevania series. So that foundation may color my opinion of this game and it’s ensuing interquel and sequel (which I’m currently in the midst of). Something about medieval through Enlightment era Europe with a heavy gothic/baroque aesthetic, corrupted through dark forces that threaten the world? Awesome. Tons of monsters pulling on a multitude of inspiration from the myth cycles of antiquity through the modern Universal monsters? Yes, please.
Konami struck gold initially by creating these dark adventures that took a quite serious tone for the early Nintendo systems, offering a beefy challenge of vintage Nintendo difficulty through several increasingly impressive platformer games. They then evolved into the famed Metroidvanias with the release of Symphony of the Night on the Playstation - trading a bit of the reflex-intensive difficulty for massive sprawling environments that took forever to explore and fully unlock - and followed this formula with several excellent installments on Nintendo’s handhelds where they found their most sustainable home and success through the late 2000’s. Then Konami, sensing the increasingly stagnant nature of the series as it became mired in repeated iterations of SotN’s sprawling platformer/RPG hybrid, started searching for a way to revitalize the series again, just as SotN ignited a sort of Golden Age for the series.
– Real player with 98.7 hrs in game
(Important note: This game, for whatever reason, doesn’t like being set to fullscreen + max res on a display other than that which Windows / your video card identifies as Display 1, regardless if it’s your primary display or not. Weird bug but easy to fix.)
Lords of Shadow is a flawed but polished masterpiece and a triumph of artistic direction. It’s shortcomings are forgivable. That said, since you can expect to sink upwards of 40hrs into this, I’ll go into some more detail.
Presentation wise, this game is stunning. Masterful visuals paired with smooth and optimized 4K performance make for an eye-popping experience. The art team went all out on this and it shows. I’ve never taken so many screenshots of a game before. Two major detractors though: 1. Some of the cutscenes were pre-rendered for console are unimproved by modern hardware (they still look passable but they’re jaggy af); 2. Godrays are a weak point. The score is powerful but not iconic; you’ll love it in the moment but try to recall the music later and you’ll likely struggle, for the most part. This isn’t objectively a bad thing, as it simply means it’s enhancing the experience without overpowering it but I was disappointed by the lack of iconic singles and the abscence of a Bloody Tears revamp.
– Real player with 47.4 hrs in game