Ratings and Reviews by Lazarus Long
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An exercise in frustration., February 14, 2012I want to like When Help Collides. Honestly, I do. But it goes far out of its way to make itself unlikeable. I realize that this is largely my problem. The game is well-written, for what it is. It wasn't game-killing bugs or boredom that kept me from finishing. It was the simple fact that the entire game is essentially a puzzle. Figuring out what you're meant to do and how to do it seems to be the primary challenge.
There's nothing intrinsically wrong with that. It just frustrates me as a player when a game plants its feet and adamantly refuses to give any indication of... well, anything, really. At the beginning, at least, you can't even get a complete description of the room you're in without bullying the parser.
An example, spoiling only the very beginning: (Spoiler - click to show)You start, after a turn or two of half-exposition, in a TARDIS-like ship, as an anthropomorphized IF help feature. The game tracks your approval rating, based on feedback from the stock adventure characters you can provide hints to with your automated help dispenser. Only there's something wrong with your equipment, making it only give out banal, nonsensical self-help advice.
Each disappointed character lowers your rating, and at less than 40%, game over. The uncooperative PC gets more frantic about the plummeting rating, growing more insistent that something must be done to fix things.
I played through this sequence three times, running out the timer looking for something, anything to indicate what needed to be done, fighting with the PC for something as simple as a thorough room description. Bear in mind, this is not lazy writing or coding, it's an intentional part of the puzzle.
After giving up and consulting a walkthrough, I discovered that the answer to my problem? (Spoiler - click to show)Exit the ship. The PC refuses to do so, twice. This leads you to an entirely new, but equally unintuitive part of the story.
My first timer-based death in that bit was as far as I got. I have no interest in typing in a walkthrough.
Despite all my frustrations, When Help Collides does have some things going for it. The writing is interesting, and the concept is fantastic. I just wish the gameplay was not as experimental as the idea behind it.
The bottom line: Well worth looking into if you're patient, or perhaps just better at thinking like the author than I am. If you want a game that makes Hitchhiker's Guide look downright friendly, you could do a hell of a lot worse.
The zombie IF I have been searching for., February 12, 2012I must admit to a hefty bias coming into this: I do loves me some zombies. I get the feeling, reading other reviews, that people are generally tired of the shambling, hungry dead. I suppose the IF zombie over-saturation was before my time, then. I can barely find any of the stuff. Nevertheless, if you promise to keep an open mind concerning the children of Romero, I promise to be as objective as possible reviewing this little gem. Deal?
First off, this particular zombie apocalypse puts its emphasis squarely on the "apocalypse" part. The horror comes more from solitude, atmosphere, and despair than from "Oh crap that dead guy totally wants to eat me." The prose is tight, and efficient, never letting you forget that you are (almost) alone in a dead world, balancing on the brink of joining the uncountable tally of the dead.
But it's not as oppressive and fatalist as that sounds. Dally wisely (and expertly, I believe) straddles the line between levity and horror, never letting the game slip too far in either direction. Think Evil Dead 2, as opposed to its trilogy-neighbors.
So as a story, I dig Divis Mortis, and I hope you will too. As a game? It succeeded for me. The puzzles were intuitive, with no Insane Troll Logic. I only needed the thorough built-in hint system once, for a bit near the end. I knew what needed to be done, I just expected it to be more complicated than it was.
The bottom line: Play this game now, even if you're sick of zombies.
The seed of a great game., February 11, 2012Bliss plays like the first draft of something really special. A great idea sleeps in the heart of it, but the outside is a coarse, unattractive thing. The plot is necessarily simple: pseudo-medieval D&D-style hero must break out of his cell in the evil wizard's Orc-staffed dungeon to slay the dragon terrorizing the yada yada...
Needless to say, that's not the great idea. I love stories, in any medium, that play around with one's expectations of classic tropes, and Bliss plays enthusiastically. To say more would spoil the fun, of course.
The game has its problems, however. I'm glad that a walkthrough is provided (at Baf's, at least), because without it, I might have gotten frustrated and quit before leaving the first room. The puzzles are unintuitive, and the writing, while technically proficient for the most part, could use a coat or two of polish.
The bottom line: Bliss shows a lot of promise, and with a bit more love, would be an easy 4 or 5 star entry. Give it a go, just keep that walkthrough handy.
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