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I didn't think I'd have more news for you so soon, but they've released the first coupel chapters for their next release already.
The next "Vampires: the Masquerade" title is coming out on the 29th. "Out for Blood." This one is standalone and you play a young vampire hunter in a suburb of Chicago who can hunt, befriend some of the vampires, or even become a vampire yourself.
They've pre-released the first few chapters for those who want them, so just thought I'd share it with you.
That one is by Jim D, the guy who wrote the Zombie Exodus games and A Wise Use of Time. I'm not really into vampires, but I'm probably going to check it out just based on him writing it.
If the depth of the game is anything like in ZESH, I am definetely going to play that vampire game once it's fully released.
Hello all,
It's been quite a while since I brought you a review of a Cog title but I have one for you today of the second installment in the "hero's Rise" trilogy. This one has the character continuing their career and getting involved in a reality show to try and get a place on a national hero team. But there are other things afoot that I will try not to spoil too much.
genre: this game combines the action of superheroes with the drama of reality TV, and also has a bit of intrigue and mystery in it as you weave through relationships and try to figure out what is really going on at the show. This game is exactly what it advertises itself to be so you shouldn't be surprised.
writing: I really liked "The Prodigy" and if you liked that title, you'll like this one. The game has an enormous number of characters and every contestant in the competition, judge, villain, and even several side characters is very destinct and memorable. I find it quite fascinating that in most cases, I remember characters because of their personalities more than their powers. I still don't have a good idea of what the Bear, Stage Show, Fumble, or Wintrigue exactly do, and I didn't feel the need at most times to look into the files to check on it.
The drama of the game is pretty solid too. You are in a volitile political climate as this show is going on, you have to deal with alliances and relationships with other contestants, as well as the judges, and if you choose, you can also work on an investigation to see what is at the heart of the "Hero Project" show. I'm not so thrilled with the debate at "The Meek" debate, the Meek being an anti-powered sentiment political force as it made my character say things that I did not think my character would want to say and made him more of a social gorilla in that scene than I wanted, but that is one of the few flaws here.
One of the criticisms I have heard of this work is that the author can get rather preachy about his social agenda in his works. The only area I really saw it coming out, (no pun intended) is in a heated argument between the LGBT characters in one scene, however, if this is the "preach scene" I think few of you have anything to worry about. I actually welcomed what that scene did. LGBTQ people are different and there are fierce debates within the community about what rights they want to have and how they should present themselves to the world, which is largely what the argument in the story is about. Presenting the argument and showing that the LGBTQAI+ community is not a monolithic group I think was both reasonable and it was something I liked seeing.
The one thing I will say though is there is much less action in this story than there is in "The Prodigy" Most of your meaningful actions involve you creating a persona, such as "Team Player" or "hero" and you are expected to stay with that persona to be successful in the game, whichever one you select. I'd say there are really only 3 or four action scenes in the story and a couple of them are rather short. This is, in my opinion, not a problem with the game, it is just a different focus.
mechanics: This story has most of the same stats as "The Prodigy" and like the Prodigy, they are easy to follow and understand. You have rocker stats between things like solo and team player, control and unleashed regarding your powers, loved and hated, and underdog v popular. The stats that are most important to the story are largely your stats as to how the public perceives you and stats related to your values and personality. There aren't really any surprises hereor areas where they aren't clearly defined in choices you make in the story. This one is nice and clear.
Railroading: although you have to go through the schedule and such of a reality show, You have a pretty wide-open view of the kind of person you want to be which means you have a wide variety of ways to interact with the story. I know from the legend guide and also something that happened to me that some choices you make are extremely big deals. I was eliminated earlier in the competition because of some choices I made, but the story went on even so. I could've fallen out of the story even sooner, but I didn't and I'm guessing the story goes on even if you are eliminated in that first place. I only played once but it seems there is a lot of room, just from what I saw.
Romance: There are two romantic options in this story that I know of. One of them is Black Magic from the first game and one is a new character. The angles they have in this story don't make either of them very appealing, though I made the switch and ended my relationship with Black Magic in favor of the new love interest. The stuff going on with them though is boring and more fan service. Neither of them are real winners and unless you like cheap thrills, neither offer much in this story.
Closing remarks: I have heard some people say "The Prodigy" is the best Hero's Rise title while others have said that this title is the best. I hold with the second. "The Prodigy" is indeed good and especially because you can gain advantages by surviving the first game in the second, but "The Hero Project" has better writing, better intrigue, and better characters. I highly recommend those of you who have not tried it to give it a try, as it deserves its popularity.
Hello all,
just wanted to stop on by and say that there are two new titles in Hosted games I wanted to tell you about.
The first one of these is Dinosaur Island escape. In this one you are on an isolated island that is supposedly a sandbox where you have multiple routes off the island, and numerous ways to increase your stats and find items and a fairly free-roaming style. I don't know if that is true, but I am saying what the ad said.
The second of these is "Pirates of Donkey Island" This one is a mix of the old Monkey island games and classic pirate adventures. You're cursed into the body of your pirate grandfather and go on wacky adventures with your crew which includes a voodoo crone and a gorilla as you sail the seas and try to lift your curse as well as find treasure.
Neither of these titles look too good to me, but I'm very willing to be told I'm wrong, and I've been very wrong before.
Hello all,
just a quick short little blurb for you guys to let you know that the full release of "Vampires the Masquerade: Out for Blood" is now out. I describe it a few posts back and have nothing to add other than that the whole thing is out now.
I don't know if you have mentioned it, but on hosted games, there is a fun one called "pirates of donkey island".
I played it yesterday and although I died, I can say it's quite fun. I think it is still listed as new.
Sorry, didn't see that. The game is quite fun to play. It's not amazing, but also not bad.
Hello all,
a New Choiceofgames title is out "Battlemage: magic by mail" In this game you play a young squire who gets information on how to learn battle magic through the mail. That's good considering squires aren't supposed to study magic. Master things like necromancy or illusion while also honing your skills in archery and other knightly pursuits.
Fight the strange invading battlemage and their armor, serve the land loyall, or sieze the crown for yourself.
This seems like a fun fantasy magic adventure. It doesn't seem to have anything really special to it but I definitely think it looks fun.
Just wanted to tell you guys it is out and available, and as usual with choiceofgames titles, buy it early and it costs less.
Hello all,
just wanted to tell I'm continuing to plod throughthe Choiceofgames titles. And probably in a week or two I'll have "The Orpheus Ruse" out to you.
in the meantime. I want to tell you of the latest hosted game, "Blood for Poppies." This is a ghothic horror novel where you play a being with useless fleshy wings that has been experimented on by an evil scientist. You are trapped up on a high floor of a hospital with several others and you can try to escape, become the mad scientist's heir, or find love among some of the paint/test subjects on your floor. The game features heavy manipulation as an option and it is mentioned to be a horror story.
I'm not sure how I feel about this one but thought I'd share it with you so you could make your own choices about and it and know about it.
Hello all,
finally it seems Choiceofgames is getting back to a major release schedule that doesn't include huge gaps with nothing happening with their titles. Just yesterday, they released a new fantasy-romance title for the main line called "The play's the thing."
In this one, you play a playwright in a magical theater that uses enchantments in their performances. There have been accidents on the set and the city is full of intrigues with "The Raven" the city's tyrannical leader and their evil actions, shadowwy monsters stalking in the night, and the threats of the nobles and other factions. You can use your dramatic skills to save the city from a terrible curse, manipulate events to put you in charge, bring peace to the city, and many other things while you have many love opportunities along the way.
Not sure how this one will go but it does look like one of the more interesting titles they are throwing out there, so eager to play it when my reviews get me there in 2044 or so hee hee.
Hello all, it has been a while since my last review but I am bringing "The Orpheus Ruse" to you today. I am aware after a single playthrough that I will definitely need to write more reviews when I play through it again.
Disclaimer: I only played through the game once and that means I didn't see all of the possibilities (see Railroading below) and I also did quite badly, getting the "Spy School reject" rank at the end of the story.
genre: The game portrays itself as a sci-fi psychic espionage story, and it really sticks to its stated genre and you really get the felling you are in a cloak and dagger adventure with a bunch of psychics.
writing: The game really excells at conveying the mood it wants to give you. It often spells out choices you'd like to make such as things like what the compassionate, but what the smart choice might be or giving you backgrounds on characters you have met before in your past missions that happen before the scope of this story to help you make informed decisions. The game often presents choices for you and one of the great things about the writing was for me, many of them were tough choices, that according to how the story ended for me, I chose wrong in many places. furthermore, the game has a lot of suspense and intrigue, which score a lot of points for me. A bunch of characters are morally-gray enough that making choices really taxes the player's brain, but in a good way.
As I've already mentioned, the characters are truly characters in this story, many of them fitting several spy archetypes. What is impressive about the characters in this story is their depth that is conveyed with only a few lines. in the game, you have the power to move your consciousness into other peoples' bodies, but you get their thoughts mixed up in the process and every host you take, even in the opening chapter, has more than what you'd expect going on and each host feels truly unique besides their stats. I played a jogger with a strong love of her family and an aspiring actress as well as a guy who felt crushed by guilt over an accident he caused.
the action is definitely good too and you feel the suspense most of the time, and while you are expecting twists, others come up all the time. I know I have only taken one path through the game and so I haven't seen the whole workings of the plot in detail but I'm eager to play again.
this is also probably one of the dgiest Choiceofgames games I've played, with more swearing, references to sex, and generally just a grittier story than you generally see elsewhere. That didn't bother me but it is definitely more mature than many of the other titles, though not so much that many would be offended or anything.
mechanics: the mechanics of this game are extremely easy to master and have no real surprises. Deadliness, hacking, social, and trickery are pretty easy to understand as are some of the sliders like discression and notoriety and other stats like individuality and compassion. What is neat is your choice of hosts changes a couple of your stats depending on who you take. I took a woman at one point who had a very high physical stat and then jumped into one who was very pretty. The real gameplay in this story relies more on the player making the right choices than stats, which are pretty straight-forward.
Romance: There are two romance achievements, one for an Opera singer who I did not meet and one for Annica which she did not survive to complete when I played. Annica was a little fireball but she had a lot of inner character and did much to move the story and action forward without being just sex appeal. I do not know exactly what quality the opera singer had as a love interest. The fact that Annica has sex appeal but does more than just act sexy is a definite positive here.
railroading: Of all the Choiceofgames titles I have played, this one is the most open. Although I have only played through once, I see a number of branching paths. I did not interact with the opera singer because I refused to be a jerk to her and I was captured several times where it seems I honestly had a chance of getting away. I think at one point when I was interacting with a super-psychic about halfway through the story if I had been smarter, I would've gotten a better ending as it came to bite me in the butt near the end. I'm betting there are a lot of branching chapters in this one.
achievements: I got literally no achievements when I played through my first time except for one I got automatically, but there are quite a few. They include several that are alternate endings such as preserving the foundation's goals or unmasking psychics to the wider world. There are also a few related to your espionage rating, of which I was not good enough to even get the lowest one. that said, the achievements, if you are into that sort of thing, will keep you coming back.
Closing remarks: I don't like psychic powers, and sometimes making the right choices on my playthrough was really hard, and something I did badly. which probably has me rating the game lower than I otherwise would. But the obviously-branching storyline, deep characters, and the intrigues and cloak and dagger stuff I love let me know that I really like this one anyway. I know this will not be my last review of the game as I have so much more to explore and this one is almost certain to improve on a replay.
okay guys, here to let you know of a sale that is out this week. Zachary Sergei, who has brought us such titles as the "hero's Rise" series has released his own interactive novel or something "Major Detours" somewhere else. What I do know however is that for the next week, all his games throughout the Choiceofgames lines are on sale. I don't know about all of them, but the first two Hero's rise titles are good enough that if you want those two, it might be a good idea to grab one of them when you can do it for less money.
Hello all!
Just 2 new Hosted Games titles that just got relased to tell you about.
The First is "The Vampire Regent." In this game you play as a ruler of a community of vampires in a midwestern US town. Using your powers and political machinations, you can do the best for your kind or yourself and will have to face the consquences of your choices. The story is listed as dark fantasy but among things they told you about in the ad are things like getting rid of your rivals, distracting from your kind's existence by letting crime spiral out of control, or keeping crime down to make the town look more orderly than it actually is.
This one's a nice and hefty 140k words so I'm expecting that this might have some real substance to it.
the second title is "The Soulstone war: Behind the Scenes" and with its relatively low word count for what sounds like a large amount of content, I'm expecting "behind the scenes" is a good way to think about this one.
This is just a few extra little somethings where your character from "The Soulstone war" can have romantica encounters with the 9 interactable characters from the original Soulstone war, after the conflict of that story, including the antagonist. With the word count at 40k and covering multiple interactins with what sounds like 9 characters, that leaves less than 5k words to cover each character. I'd view this one more as an expanded extra than a story in its own right, but it might be a fun one, I am in no position to judge.
It's weird that the second one was released as its own thing rather than just bolted onto the original game like they do with, for example, subsequent parts of Zombie Exodus or Safe Haven.
hello all,
bit of a surprise announcement for you as I didn't realize that this was even an upcoming Choice of Games title. This one is called "Wraiths of Sentinel." In this one, you play as an undead wraith with many supernatural powers that works for Sentinel, a secret government organization and you are out to fight a far-right-wing terrorist domestic group and the crooked politicians they are allied with. You can use your immense power to fight off the evil that threatens the nature, regain your life, or even seize the power to crush America yourself if you so choose.
Working with other wraiths, mediums, and spellcasters, this seems to be in the vein of "The Orpheus Ruse" which I reviewed above, but with the horror-undead angle to the espionage rather than psionics, this one strikes my fancy more at first glance just from what it presents.
It's on sale until middle of next week if you are an impulse shopper. It will probably be around 2030 when I get to this one.
hello all,
little update as there is a new release in the hosted games line called "Rain King."
This title is a 50k story with future sci-fi where you live in a dystopic future theoretically as the leader where you live in a world of super-scientific advancement with medieval laws. You are supposed to think about your own life or care for others, pursue love, decide what truths to believe as you construct your own prism of reality and hope it doesn't shatter.
I wish I could tell you more but this is perhaps the vaguest ad for a hosted games or choice-of-games title I have ever seen. The main entry is more vague than a lot of the bullet points for most other games.
I can't say how I feel about this one because even after reading the ad carefully, I don't know anything about it.
50k is quite short for these games. That either means there is very little branching resulting in a linear story that could've just been written as a traditional novel, or there is branching and the length of each playthrough is only 15k-20k words.
If this is paid, it's a damn joke. I don't think I would pay for a choice-based game this short.
In other news, the next part of zombie exodus, safe haven has been delayed until next year, according to Jim Dattilo's Twitter account.
Does anyone know when the next part in the breached series (the continuation of breached: the archangel job) will be released?
Yeah, Safe haven part 3 is delayed for a while because of hosted games. I'll probably play it before it's released either when/if he releases the entire thing as a public beta (he's released up to chapter 11 right now I believe) or I'll just pay for his patreon for a month.
And the next archangel game? I have heard somewhere it is in public beta, but that was a few months ago...
Not sure about that one, but it's not in the upcoming hosted games topic yet so the game files have not even been submitted to hosted games. That means probably next may at the earliest since that's how far the topic goes right now, but I'm not actually sure.
Hello all,
I think the next and I believe final of the three "Vampires: The masquerade" games is coming out. They had a big show-off of the demo at a steam thing a couple days ago.
Not a fan of vampires but from what I've heard, these games are pretty good and so "parliament of knives" might very well be worth it. I'll keep you informed about it as it enters actual release and if anyone has tried the other "Masquerade" games, let me know.
Also, you won't have to wait long for me to post back here, I'm reviewing "Showdown at Willow Creek" tomorrow.
Hello all, or should I say y'all. This time I've gone and played through "Showdown at Willow Creak." If you can put up with ads, this one is a freebie and you can play it for nothing.
biases: I like the old west and westerns, so I was rather facinated by this one.
genre: this game advertises itself as a western and a mystery, and it is both. I will say the mystery is rather predictable and you'll see the solution coming from a long way away, but the mystery is there and the game does stay true to the western feel it advertises.
Writing: "Showdown at Willow Creek" is a typical western, with a train robbery, a rough and tumble town, trouble with indigenous people, struggling with how the town will deal with the encroaching modern world, a crooked businessman, a less-than-trustworthy sheriff, and a number of other hallmarks of the western Genre. I will say that the game delivers on the western faire it promises, but it gives you little else. As you go through the game, you can have a little list of check boxes for western stereotypes and you'll have them all checked by the time you finish. Even with the "mystery" element to it, there aren't any real surprises here.
I will say that the characters were indeed interesting and nicely written, but like everything else in the setting, there aren't any big surprises. I did like though that the ute people were shown as being just people without being mystical, savage, or superstitious and on the Fry farm, Mr. Gordon is a non-stereotyped black cowboy that is actually really fun in the brief interactions you have with him.
The plot pacing is a bit off and I don't like the way it ran in this story. the story is 72k words, but I think I've seen most of the game's content already just by the way I played. In each chapter, you largely have as much time as you want to do almost anything you want in your investigations. you seem to be able to keep asking questions and doing things until you decide on your own that you want to stop. Based on the crisis the game is trying to make you think is there, it really hurts the urgency in the story. A chapter generally goes (interogate and investigat" "hazard and your reaction" "move on to the next location in the story."
all and all, the writing is well-executed but the story delivers a standard western and nothing more.
mechanics: The mechanics in this game are pretty easy to understand, with stats like "shootin'" "investigatin'" "sweet-talkin'" and the like it is very easy to know what is what. In the game when your main stats come into play, it is very easy to know what choices use which stats too, as the choices often even use the name of the stat in them.
In regards to the main stats that all end in "in'" I would say this game is almost too transparent on what stats do as the lining up stats to choices is almost insulting to the readers' intelligence.
Other stats didn't seem to have much play in my game like "outlaw" vs "lawman" and the relationships stats with the different factions. Although my sweet-talkin' stat was extremely high and I used it a lot, it seemed to be effective whether I used it on people who had very good relations with me or those that didn't.
Romance: There are a few romantic interests in the setting and you get to pick one at the beginning, two men and two women though I'm wondering if Tess Albertson is an option after you meet her. The romantic angle at least with the one I chose was rather flat and really only came into play in a couple sentences over the course of the story and I don't expect much from the other options. What I do like about the romantic interests though is that every single one of them plays a major role in the story that has nothing to do with you being in love with them or not. I chose Amelia but I can tell by the way the story is written she still would've played most of her role even if I didn't say I liked her.
Railroading: It's normal for a lot of choiceofgames titles to put you in a series of events that you go through making choices but on a relative track of events. This is not always bad. However, except in the final chapter I played, every chapter was "talk and investigate as much as you like" "deal with a hazard" "use what you know to go to the next location in the story and repeat." Even this would not be so bad but the game is super-transparent and doesn't do a good job hiding its formulaic structure. I will say the one surprise in the game, while still on rails came in the last chapter. My showdown went down without a single bullet being fired. If I had constructed my character differently I probably could have done it violently but I tried a non-violent option and it worked.
Achievements: none. This game couldn't benefit too much from them but options for completing the game different ways or making a particular stat massive might be good ideas and might keep me coming back.
closing remarks: "Showdown at Willow Creek" is free, and as a free game, it's worth a playthrough or two. The game gives you a typical western, and nothing more. The western is fun but if you are looking for originality or surprises, this isn't the game for you. It also has a very forulaic style that detracts from its own sense of urgency it is trying to make you feel. That said, this is nowhere near either the best or the worst game I've played. There are a lot of games that are better but a lot of games are much worse than this one and overall I say this game was fun, but not one of the shining stars of the Choice of Games line, hence probably why they made it free.
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