I don’t utilise my Steam account as much as I should, after all the press that Her Story was getting I made my third steam purchase and it almost instantly became my favourite. A hard game to describe, even harder to describe while keeping it as vague as it should remain before playing. Your given a database which has been damaged by a combination of water and the new millennium and are tasked with sifting through it to find as much as you can about a murder. The way you do this is search keywords in a task bar, murder is the first thread given to you and then your on your own. Another fly in the ointment is that only 5 entries will show up per search, so you can’t cast your net too wide. The results you get back are FMVs of a number of interviews with a woman, her performance is as fantastic as a game which lives and dies by one characters performance should be, its laced with glances to the camera and clues which can get you closer to the solution or further into the labyrinth of video clips with no idea of whats going on. So thats it, I found myself searching locations, dates, objects and more, sometimes coming up with nothing but the occasions where I picked up on the narrative of what actually happened felt organic and that i’d deserved it (although I could see someone stumbling upon massive plot points). There is an end game, or at least credits roll at a point, but it remains ambiguous enough that I wanted to delve back into it. I’ve now started taking notes on the game, externally, it seems the watermarked dates to the videos are a handy tool, there are some other visual clues I found are telling too. Theres not much more to say about it without getting into details of what should remain mysterious, there seems to be debate whether it constitutes a game or not, I’d argue it is, a puzzle box which can infuriate at times but keeps giving you enough thread to keep coming back to it. I really enjoyed it, and its one of the most memorable things i’ve played in a long time.
Yoshi’s Wooly World (WiiU) is two things at the moment, predictably cute and surprisingly brutal. To get the negative stuff out of the way, I can’t stand the noises Yoshi makes these days, the strained baby sound is never anything but irritating. In comparison to Kirby’s Epic Yarn (a game which precedes it purely in style) its very much a Yoshi platformer re-skinned with a wooly texture, rather than Kirby’s more original take on a fabric world. Yoshi’s ability to consume enemies and throw them as eggs has just been replaced with balls of wool, other quirks of earlier games have been fudged in less elegantly, he still turns into other forms for short periods of time (with little reason apart from a wooly version of a motorbike or umbrella) for example. Setting this game in the Mario universe also sees a more conservative story than the oddly fantastic Prince Fluff filled Kirby adventure, the premise is Kamek has stolen all the Yoshis and turned them into balls of wool, getting past all this though its still well polished, great fun game. When Nintendo go all in with HD graphics they’re games still look as good, if not better than anything on the other home consoles at the moment, imagine the Ballon Trip game from Nintendoland at a more relaxed pace, so you can take in the environment and thats what this game looks like, the colours are vibrant and familiar foes from other games have all been knitted to perfection. The adorable look of this game is in contrast to what can be taxing gameplay, there isn’t a limit on lives so attempts at a level can be infinite but levels are structured with few checkpoints, and collectables are often placed in tantalising positions, meaning I’m risking and loosing everything quite often just to dress Yoshi up as a cow. The gameplay is fun and familiar, Yoshi platformers tend to be more forgiving and reward exploration more than the frantic Mario and Donkey Kong Country games of this world. Its not that there isn’t precision to the platforming, there is in places, but you’ve always got the flutter jump to help you out of a tight spot (if you can stomach the annoying noise Yoshi makes). Light puzzles litter levels, but usually involve throwing balls of wall at outlines to reveal something, and boss fights, despite being gorgeous to look at, have defaulted to three rounds of throwing balls and unraveling my opponent (so far anyway). I do really like what i’ve played of this game, and i’ll finish it for sure, I was just hoping for a little bit more from it. One other quick point is the loading screens are uncharacteristically long. Sorry Yoshi.
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