Rune Hunt

Link to game

Merry Christmas.

No, seriously, I'm not playing some Christmas themed game that I know is going to be crap because, seriously, Christmas Mythos is crap, and at best a developer can only do some clone of a past game skinned with Santa shit.

So, here's a game that has shit that resembles an ice cave.  So, awesome I guess.  As you will see, it's a Christmas present about as passive agressive as End of Time but it will do.

Anyways, In Rune Hunt, you play the role of a child, I little boy I assume, but its kinda hard to tell.



Pictured: you

You are sent into a cave by your asshole Dad to be shown something awesome (and help him with his scientific findings) when... tradgedy strikes!  Strange creatures whom fear the light show up and great evil happens!

Pictured: great evil

So, you spend the remainder of the game gathering runes

... and avoiding the vash de narada.

So clearly this game has that Limbo thing going where you are a small child, alone, in a dark place where everything is trying to kill you, and you lose your innocences at some point.  However, there is more than that, which I find interesting.

There was a shitload of commentary in this game about the nature of death in video games.

Lets start with the savepoint.

During the game, if you get eaten by the vash de narada you get teleported back either to that point or to the portals at the start of every... level I guess.

Pictured: oh nom nom nom

The morning after

Every time your character makes a quip about how he he had died and came back to life, and that it was a nightmarish experience.  Here's the best part: you can revisit your corpse, wherethen your character quips about it being him and how he died that time, and how horrible it is that he can't escape through death.

The game has a fair challenge curve, and it is quite engrossing.  Its creeping and I have jumped out of my skin a couple of times because I thought I could walk that close to the shadows without the vash de narada eating me, or in later levels with a few other villian types.  Course, its a good thing there are glowing butterflies, rocks, shrooms, and bulbs off plants to help you along the way.

Overall this game is so much fun and it is really worth ones time to play it.  Mind you, it isn't really related to Yuletide, but seriously, this game is worth playing to the end.

Merry Fucking Christmas.

Reincarnation: Riley's Out Again

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Many of you might be familiar with Christopher Gianelloni's baby the Reincarnation series.  A series where you play a nameless demon from hell who is sent to reclaim souls that have escaped hell and thus are "reincarnated" back into living humans... by rekilling them so the reaper will take them back to hell.  The catch is that these souls have to be still evil, and the demon has to find evidence to prove their evilness before he can kill them.  After all, if the soul has redeemed themselves, they'll just go to heaven instead.

Its a departure from other 'kill the people' point and click games like The Visitor or Foreign Creature in that your character is not a mindless killing machine and the people he kills deserved whatever fate they get.  Its not to say that you aren't playing an anti-hero though, I mean the demon is not interested in delivering justice but in dragging a soul back to hell under orders of his boss Lucifer.

Do you have any idea what the demons do to souls in hell?  Look at that poor fuck who was made to swallow a magnetic key and was fucked with by a magnet!

So, the burning question on some of your minds might be "Why pick on Reincarnation 2?  Why not a more resent installment like The Unholy Clergy?"  Well, I have in fact played all the them, or at least up to The Unholy Clergy and I'm going to say that Riley just bugs me.

Its not because I think he's that vile.  I mean, in my opinion, Father Saul, the bartender, Madam Reaux and the hillbilly were the exceptionally vile ones, and they don't bug me in the same way as Riley does.

Let me explain this.  I warn you, its spoilertastic, and seeing that the trope doesn't work now we know all about it, a picture of Dr. Song isn't going to be put up anymore.

You see, Madam Reaux commited mass murder through an agent, the proof of corpses in crates.  She did it to clear out the building.  A pretty nasty way to do it, but she had herself set as a crime lord, and knew how to get away with it.  Father Saul's proof of evil was a drugged alter boy in his bedchambers, an act that he could have gotten away with over and over again if he knew how to be descrete about and threaten poor little Jimmy with enough fire and brimestone for squealing... if our friend the imp didn't get to him first.

Further more, proof of the bartender was a screenshot of him putting pills in the prostitute's drink... which, again, if he played his cards right, it would amount to a he-said she-said, and is a cop going to believe a prostitute over a bartender?  Than the hillbilly, who had a woman, bound and gaged, in his outhouse, and if no one things he had a shot of getting away with it, well, google "Vancouver Pig Farmer."

Now, the others weren't quite as dispicable.  Christopher has figured that the easiest way to show the player that the reincarny is still evil is to put them in proximity with a corpse or dismenbered person.  Course, the body(ies) were also cleverly hidden away for our demon player to find.

Course, there's always the fry-cook, whose proof of evil was taking a shit in the deep fryer.  Compared to everyone else, that isn't so evil. Disgusting? Fucking hell yes, but at least... what is the chance of him getting caught?

Which brings us back to Riley.  His proof that he's still evil?

aka the Product

Riley is trafficking children on the black market to... whoever wants a child slave I guess.  Now, here's my problem with it: its stupid.

Not stupid in the sense that its just too silly... I'm a Whovian for fucks sake I can handle shit that's overtly silly.  This game series is overtly silly.  I mean stupid in the sense that... if the PC didn't get to him the police will.

Why?  First of all, it looks like Riley is teaching in a classroom somewhere in North America or Western Europe.  I can't think of a neighbourhood in either place that is so depressed that no one would miss a kid.  I mean, when he was talking about Product at first I thought he was dealing drugs to the children: a very real thing that can, and has, happened, and he could do it for a while before getting caught.  But selling kids on the black market?  Do you have any idea how quickly the police are going to respond to a missing child case?  And how much investigating they would have to do before they find out that Riley was involved in the disappearance of little Jimmy?  Its not like these are teenagers, where there would be a grace period to account for the fact they are teenagers.  This is a elementary school.  Amber Alert shit goes up in the first five hours of a young child's disappearance, and there would have been an exhaustive investigation prior to, mainly to ensure that the kid is genuinely gone.  Selling a kid in the given circumstances would be a one time thing he wouldn't be able to do twice.

Riley would be soooh screwed.

That's why he bugs me: he's stupid evil.  He's dumber than the fry-cook now that I think about it.

So, that out of the way, something I would like Chris to consider in a future installment.  He doesn't have to do it, but it would interesting if he at least attempted it.

All the reincarnies up to The Unholy Clergy have all been indisputably evil in some way.  I'm thinking, have one who is either morally ambiguous (where the demon has a tough decision to make about whether the reincarny is still evil) or has actually reformed themselves, leaving the demon in a tough spot of having to return to hell soulless but is offered a soul elsewhere by the reincarny whom is vile enough for hell to get Lucifer 'a' soul at least<gasp>.

I'm just sayin'.