The Blair Witch game is as fun as getting lost in the woods
Games Features What Are You Playing This Weekend?
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It’s around the fifth time I pass the same campsite by the same spooky tree with the same ominous markings that I start to wonder if the game is fucking with me, or if this is just run-of-the-abandoned-saw-mill bad level design. Maybe it’s both. When it was announced that they were making a video game based on The Blair Witch Project, I joked on Twitter that a truly faithful one would just be hours of you wandering aimlessly through a nondescript forest, maybe with a single button that allowed you to scream at your useless travel-mates, and a confusing map that you’re forced to chuck into the stream on level three. A year later, joke’s on me. For such a linear game, Bloober Team’s Blair Witch really does amount to a lot of walking in circles, having no damn idea where you’re going or what you’re supposed to be doing. Feature or bug, a part of me has to abstractly admire the fidelity to the source material, while another, more sensible part wonders what masochistic impulse would drive me, or anyone, to play a game that’s this deliberately or accidentally tedious. You can’t even throw your map away in a fit of petulant frustration, because you never get one!
In Blair Witch, you assume control of Ellis, a former police officer with a Troubled Past who goes looking for a little boy who’s disappeared in the Black Hills forest of Burkittsville, Maryland, just like the three intrepid, doomed documentarians of the movie. You have a radio, and a flashlight, and a loyal companion: Bullet, your pet Belgian Malinois. That this first-person survival horror game doubles as a dog-owner simulator is about the most novel thing about it, though Bullet’s actual utility is somewhat limited: He’ll sniff out some of the items and clues and doohickies you’re tasked with collecting, hence cutting down on the frankly wearying amount of time you spend squinting into the digital dirt, and also point his snout at the film’s half-assed enemy threat, shimmering light-based phantoms that you (easily) kill by shining your flashlight at them. You control Bullet with a menu of commands, which includes a “reprimand” option I can never bring myself to select, even when he’s rolling around randomly in a pile of leaves during our urgent search for a missing child. (I usually just toggle to “pet.” I should not own a dog.)
Again, a little perverse respect must be paid: They’ve made a Blair Witch game that’s every bit as fun as actually being lost in the woods. When not slogging through fetch quests, the player consults a digital camcorder that, in addition to progressing the investigation, also allows Ellis to supernaturally alter his environment, removing obstacles in his path and materializing objects out of thin air. Oh, how I despised this technological anomaly, and how frequently Ellis is forced to consult it! During one exasperating stretch, you trudge through fog so thick that you can’t see five feet in front of you, and have to use the tiny screen within the screen to follow a lightly marked white trail on the ground, bumping into trees and clumsily repositioning the camera. At a certain point, I start to envy Heather, Josh, and Mike, who could at least die in peace without having to solve a bunch of crappy puzzles first.
All of this would be forgivable if the game was scary. But like all Blair Witch sequels, it fundamentally misunderstands the power of that seminal found-footage experiment. This version fancies itself a psychological thriller: The landscape keeps warping through hallucinations that transport Ellis, a combat veteran, back to the battlefield, besetting him with manifestations of his unresolved guilt. Look, I love Silent Hill 2 as much as the next survival horror geek, but it has to shoulder some of the blame for a game that turns the Blair Witch into a pushy therapist, forcing you to confront your demons—and not one but two traumatic episodes from your backstory—by running in circles inside a dilapidated old house. The Blair Witch, as originally conceived by the original movie, didn’t give a hot damn about anyone’s personal issues. She was an agent of pure dread: a personification of our fear of the dark and of nature and of getting hopelessly lost far from the safety of civilization. This Blair Witch may recreate some of the patience-testing illogic of a forest that seems to loop back in on itself, but it’s actually too rational to ever get under your skin. The movie cast an unforgettable spell because it never felt like a normal movie. The game is always just a game. A really annoying one, at that.
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Look, I love Silent Hill 2 as much as the next survival horror geek, but it has to shoulder some of the blame for a game that turns the Blair Witch into a pushy therapist, forcing you to confront your demons—and not one but two traumatic episodes from your backstory—by running in circles inside a dilapidated old house.In network is in network.
“I told you we should’ve gone with the PPO!”
The house part was one of the only stand-out parts of that game, IMO. At least, for the first 15-20 minutes or so. Then it just goes on, and on, and on, until it gets to its dumb ending.
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Well, I always thought that was fun, to some extent, especially on hallucinogens.
At a certain point, I start to envy Heather, Josh, and Mike, who could at least die in peace without having to solve a bunch of crappy puzzles first.Thank you for this review and specifically this little gem. It was a great read.Video Games
Still enjoying Spiritfarer. Grinding resources is becoming a little tiresome, but the prospect of opening up a new area soon is keeping me motivated. Also recently kicking a very annoting spirit through the Everdoor has improved my enjoyment profoundly. Board GamesWe lifted the Icy Maze curse in 7th Continent, yay. It was a very different experience than Voracious Goddess and Offering to the Guardians. I think I liked Voracious Goddess more because there was more thinking involved instead of just the survival part. We didn’t even die this time! It was still fun though. I read up on 7th Citadel, the next project by the creators of Continent, but I don’t think it’s going to go on my list.
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I finished Knights and Bikes and it was terrific. Easily one of the best games of 2019. The way it captures childhood make-believe and that sense of being a bit overwhelmed by everything, it’s just great. I cannot recommend this highly enough. Pure joy. Missing it already.I did pick up Hades and that’s a lot of fun. They put a lot of work into the core gameplay loops, but also designed a lot of fun goofy stuff around it that makes you want to keep playing just to see more- new characters get introduced, you discover new abilities and enemies, etc. The writing’s also way better than it needs to be for this, and they apparently just lucked out having the perfect voice actor for Zagreus on staff (he did the music and sound too.)
I’ve been playing Hades non-stop. Instantly my Game of the Year. Though I’m a bit biased cause I’ve always loved Greek Mythology. It really hits it out of the park. The music is incredible. Writing smart and funny. I just can’t put it down.
Huh, I made practically the same joke. I told my friend that I imagined the goal of a Blair Witch game being to make your way out of the forest before you died. You’ve got food/water/energy meters and meager rations. You’ve got a compass and a map that somehow don’t seem to help at all; the forest seeming infinite and entirely uninhabited, save the spooky noises and bizarre decorations you keep hearing/seeing.
Eventually, you run into a creepy abandoned building you can hear someone calling you from. You then get the choice to go in or not.
If you pick yes, you get killed by an unseen force and get game over. If you pick no, you keep ending up at the same creepy abandoned building no matter which direction you walk, until you die of dehydration and get game over.
It would be the worst game ever.
I hated the movie, and the game sounds equally as despise-able
I actually really like the movie; it’s just that sticking to the same idea (you never see the villain, the protagonists’ situation is hopeless, and there’s nothing for them to do except walk in circles and bicker) would make for a really crappy game.
Your description of what that game would be reminded me of both Gone Home or What Remains of Edith Finch? but I like walking simulators, and I don’t think Blair Witch would work as one.
I want to play Gone Home and have heard great things about both it and Edith Finch, but as I understand it, the focus of both was heavily on the story and characters.
That’s why The Blair Witch Project wouldn’t work as a walking simulator, I think – there wasn’t much in the way of characterization, and even less in the way of story. If you didn’t find the movie scary, there was basically nothing in it for you.
Apparently this game tried to add more characterization and plot, and according to Dowd, did so poorly.
I have been blasting my way through THPS1&2 and it’s occurred to me that I can’t think of many other games where they got the mechanics so right on the first attempt that change has basically remained unnecessary for 25 years.It’s still blisteringly fun (and infuriating – PIZZA-GUY FASTER YOU IDIOT, TONY!) It’s almost like Tetris levels of good game design.
I’m also wandering my way through Ghost of Tsushima in film-ponce mode and I like it.
I LIKE IT VERY MUCH
“He has defeated us numerous times, what makes him think he can do it again?”
It definitely helps that they roped in the gameplay tweaks from THPS 3 and 4, and added the manual to 1. By THPS 3 they had basically perfected what they had started with THPS 1, and the spine transfer button from 4 made it even easier to keep a combo going, if you knew what you were doing.
It’s like they took the worst parts of the movie and made them into a video game. That’s…well, it’s an idea anyhow.
The movie was all worst parts.
The only good part of the movie was the pre release marketing and webpage dealie as I remember so yeah, you’re right on there.
I finished Sonic Generations last Friday and have been just dipping my toes into the water on a few games to see what I want to play next. Played through Jotun in a couple sessions. I liked the feel at first, and the achievements really encouraged mastery of the fights, but the last of the five minor gods I played was an RNG nightmare, and the final boss was utter bullshit even using all of my god powers. The gigantic warm-up for the strong attack was grating, and even the quick attack feels slow with how much dodging you have to do in the more intense fights. I was salty by the time I finished.Overall, I like games that have a major focus on big, hard boss fights, exemplified better by Shadow of the Colossus (which I now want to replay… put that one on the list), but with only 6 bosses and a bunch of atmospheric but ultimately tedious, forgettable levels in between, the only way to extract more than a few hours out of the experience is to focus on the achievements, and the achievements are miserable. There’s a fine line between satisfying challenge and self-torture, and whoever decided on the achievement list sprinted right past it. Still, it might be fun to replay in a couple years, freely using god powers and not gunning for damageless fights.I was eying Super Mario 35 streams last night. It’s the kind of game where I watch someone cleaning up, earning wins left and right, and I think to myself, “Why isn’t he _____ing? I could take this guy.” It looks like a good reason to dust off the Switch while I work out whether I want to jump right into Final Fantasy XIII or find another action-oriented game to space out my RPGs with.
I 100% agree with you about Jotun. I liked the art style and generally like Soulsbourne games with long windups, but the strong attack in that game is just too long. It also takes an boringly long time to trudge back to bosses after you die. I stopped playing maybe 50% of the way through the game. I gave it up for Blasphemous, which I liked a lot better, despite being on the “punishing” end of the hard scale. Finishing that made me want to replay Hollow Knight, and I’m towards the endgame of that. Will probably play Hades or the new Ori game once I’m done with HK.
I only played the original Dark Souls, but I think, beyond the more reasonable charge time for the strong attack, the inclusion of a parry/riposte mechanic and the ability to change your loadout if you were struggling and wanted to try a build with less armor and more speed made it a more robust and enjoyable combat system. Like… if what you were doing wasn’t working, you had options. You could be agile, you could be a tank, you could learn the parry timing windows on every attack, or you could strike and dodge, strike and dodge.It was a difficult game, but after finishing it once, I had to go back through it immediately to see how much easier it was when you understood the flow of the game and had strategies for every fight, and at one point I spent an hour camping out in front of the O&S door so I could help others through the fight as a ghost. Vs Jotun, which I uninstalled within 5 minutes of finishing the game.
Dark Souls 2 is well worth your time, if you fancy revisiting the series.
I’ve definitely mulled over playing DS2 in the 6 years since I finished the first, but I’ve just been in the mood for other types of games. I haven’t ruled it out, but just haven’t felt like returning to that universe yet.
Fair. I just make a point of stanning it ‘cos I see a lot of people say it’s skippable 😛
I’ve heard mixed opinions about it, and much more consistently positive reviews of 3 and Bloodborne, but I tend to be fairly open-minded about the oddball game in any given series, and I tend to play every entry in a series in order, even when people want to give me a road map of which games are high points and which ones I wouldn’t miss.
It has a coupla gotchas that caught a lot of people out (level ADP!); and the last-gen version had some compromises compared to trailers/demos. I actually prefer it over 3, it’s much more chill and has some great dungeon-crawling. I’m on team “play them in order” too, for the Dark trilogy anyway (the stellar Bloodborne being standalone).
I agree with the entire review, however, my biggest complaint is that the main character Ellis, just isn’t likeable. Say what you will about the movies, but each of them has at least one character that you can root for despite all that’s going on.Ellis, on the other hand, even considering the story justification for his attitude, just isn’t sympathetic at all. Disobeying orders, relationship with his gf, and other spoilery traits. You’re just kind of going through the motions to get to end of the story, hoping something sticks.
I’ve been playing Red Dead Redemption 2 for a while now. When I was first getting used to the controls I’d accidentally pull out my gun at NPC’s when I was trying to talk with them. I once even unloaded my shotgun into The Trapper when I was trying to sell some furs. I now have to consciously make sure that I have fist selected in the weapon wheel before I even think about talking to someone.
No one cares. You’re a fucking loser
Last week I mentioned how I had just picked up 13 Sentinels: Aegis Rim but hadn’t had a chance to play it yet, and now that I have hoo boy is the west sleeping on this gonzo masterpiece. It’s definitely not for everyone, being 70% visual novel by volume, but if a hybrid point-and-click adventure/RTS is something you’d remotely be interested in, I can’t recommend it highly enough.Also Crash Bandicoot 4 comes out this weekend.
Am slowly finishing to mop up the Riddler’s trophies in Batman: Arhkam Knight Rider, and it turned out a more enjoyable game than I expected. I’m surprisingly not too irritated by the batmobile parts, and I don’t take Batman seriously enough to be irritated by how dumb it is (street thugs keep commenting on the batmobile canon’s non-lethal projectiles in case you’d have doubts on batman’s policies as he runs them down and explodes them).This game doesn’t deserve its bad rep. Maybe it used to, when it was more buggy, but I didn’t get any issue, and I don’t see any difference between this game and the two first Arkham ones. Maybe it’s precisely a matter of expectations. I had very low ones, and it turned out full of good surprises, and clever-ish little puzzles, even those that involve the car.Still, what I adore in open worlds (the gratuitousness of all the carefuly crafted areas that few players will ever visit) is a bit spoiled by the trophies hunt, which force you to visit all these remote corners, and isn’t a mere sidequest for psychotic completionists but actually a requirement for a plot’s denouement. So, not the poetic gratuitousness of Mad Max or Watch Dog’s 3D environment. I see it less as artificial gamelength padding than designer vanity.And of course, every now and then, a short Cold Waters campaign. This will accompany me a long time.
I don’t get my new glasses until next weekend, so I don’t know how much gaming I’ll even be doing; but if the stars are right, I’ve got a Terraria session tomorrow and an ongoing Civ 5 game on Sunday. In between I might binge some Hades.If if the stars *aren’t* right, I’ll be pretty much avoiding screens altogether, and likely staying in bed. Stupid eyes.
Weren’t all the Blair Witch games pretty much already done with that trilogy years back? I remember I got them in a pack that included the three games, the two movies (at the time) and a stick figure necklace. The games were fine and spooky, but I think I only made it through the one that was set right after the Civil War. This game doesn’t sound like any kind of improvement.
I went back to Skyrim and started to play a pacifist run. Not truly pacifist, but a zero kills run. Basically a lot of Muffle and Invisibility to avoid being noticed, Calm to stop things from attacking me, and some Fury or Frenzy to turn bandits and necromancers against each other. Plus some of the Apocalypse mod spells make Illusion spells almost deadly.It turns out you can go through the whole game without being directly responsible for any death except Alduin, the final boss dragon. You have to fudge the “directly” part a bit because some things must die for you to continue the story, but if they die from being led into traps or residual fire or bleeding to death or being pushed/Shouted off a ledge, you technically didn’t kill them. Like bashing a wounded draugr with a torch. The bash didn’t hurt him, but the fire just might kill him.It’s challenging in a different way than just killing every enemy.
Backlogged: Funklord Edition
This week in my ongoing quest to experience all the games I’ve missed out on over the years, I strapped on my rocket skates for a jammin’ trip through Sega’s Toejam & Earl.
I didn’t know a lot about this one going in, but it didn’t take long for T&E to leave an impression. The game oozes style from the moment you boot it up, with the titular protagonists posing in front of an array of distinctive geometric backgrounds as a funky baseline plays. It feels almost stereotypically ‘90s, but then the actual game begins and things start getting weirder.The story is pretty straightforward – salvage the missing pieces of your damaged ship so you can return home; certainly wasn’t expecting to draw parallels to Pikmin while I played this one, but here we are – but in terms of genre and gameplay, T&E is a little harder to pin down. I played as Toejam (no co-op for me, unfortunately), but even with his slightly faster walking speed, I spent most of the game feeling sluggish and vulnerable, and frequently at the mercy of the game’s enemies, a twisted collection of stereotypes that are equal parts amusing and nightmarish (the dentist, my god).The player’s best defense are the presents scattered throughout each level, but they come with a couple of catches: not all of them are helpful, and the contents of each present type are randomised, allowing a lot of opportunity for risk vs reward gameplay. Unfortunately, it’s here that I have to note that what has become my standard practice for these retro adventures (i.e. use save states early and often) undeniably undercut this randomness. (I also played the fixed map, rather than subjecting myself to the whims of the roguelike-like ‘random’ option.) But while it might have been nice to have been left to the mercies of RNG for a truly authentic experience, I was glad for the safety net. For all its style and idiosyncracies, T&E does suffer a little from repetition as it goes on, and some of the later enemies (ambulances ahoy) seem brutally unfair. Still, I found it to be a memorable experiment in style and genre, and it isn’t hard to see how it achieved cult classic status.Anyway, that’s it from me this week. Next up is another Sega title, Shining in the Darkness. See you folks next time!
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I’m playing 50 Cent: Blood in the Sand, which is weirdly good for a game about 50 Cent blowing up half a country because a shitty promoter didn’t pay him for a concert.
Well, thanks to pandemic supply chain issues, my new PC is never going to materialize, so I’ve deleted everything off of both PCPartPicker and NewEgg. I’ll get one eventually, I swear. Until then, I’m stuck on my potato laptop for the foreseeable future, so I’m kind of in a gaming funk since I’ve had tomorrow circled on my calendar as build/delivery day for literally months.Yeah, I know it’s the epitome of first world problems, but damn it, I’ve been looking at this build since November 2018…So, of course, I slipped into my comfort food of videogaming, Star Wars: The Old Republic yet again. As I’ve mentioned before, I’m playing through the third of the eight class stories on the free-to-play tier, as a Jedi Knight. I think last time I talked about it, I said I had finished up on the planet Quesh and was heading to Hoth for the next session.That turned out to be a big old lie. I stayed on Quesh instead and did all the planetary side quests, which mostly involved breaking into “adrenal” (read “drug”) labs and sabotaging Empire efforts. This did seem a little futile when one of my Republic contacts, a Zabrak General named Treeg defected to the Empire thanks to the manipulations of a Sith Lord known as Magras. Thanks to some simple lightsaber therapy, this was resolved in favor of the Republic and the Jedi Council.Also, like every other human being on the planet, I gave in and purchased Among Us on Steam. It seems fun, but I’ve only played it with strangers so far, and it definitely needs to be a friendly party to get the most out of the game , as is normal with Werewolf/Mafia type social interaction games. Also, i have yet to be an Impostor in any of the games I’ve played.But my big game this week has been Inkle’s Pendragon. It’s a “narrative rogue-like” with an Arthurian theme , and plays more like a very weird low-piece chess game. But the key to the game is the narrative that emerges from each run-through, which is why I like the way the game does summaries of each run-through:That’s from my most recent run, where I played on Theatrical (second-easiest) difficulty, which I had recently unlocked, with Morgana La Fey, also recently unlocked.
Unlike my runs with both Guinevere and Lancelot, Morgana didn’t recruit any followers, which might be a reflection on how toxic her personality is. She also didn’t find any rations in any of the locations, which did mean I had to conserve her magic and attacks slightly more than before. I think ration drops are entirely random though.Morgana was also a much more lethal character than either Guinevere or Lancelot, but that might be because I’m getting better at the game. She had no problem dispatching creatures, and I think she has now killed more of Mordred’s vassals in game than Lancelot and Sir Kay combined.Here’s an early kill:And as I said, the biggest thing with this game is the narrative, so we get dialog choices like this when Morgana is confronting an impudent merchant who’s clearly afraid of her.
Not that he shouldn’t be:
Back in the tabletop world, It was two more sessions of Dungeons & Dragons 5th Edition. The first was supposed to be a one-shot, but has mow expanded into a mini campaign known as Disney & Dragons. The DM, Moria, is a super Disney fan-girl, so our characters are Disney themed. I’m playing as Kaa from the Junge Book, who’s statted out as a Yuang-Ti Pureblood who is a College of Lore Bard with a lot of mind-manipulation type spells. He’s going to be something of a hypnotist, Trussssst in Me…
The first session was set at a carnival/theme park in the mysterious city of Orl’nddo during a fall festival and mostly involved the party splitting up and playing various carnival games and visiting a fortune teller. Kaa basically spent his time slithering around and attempting to swallow food. The first turkey leg was swallowed whole thanks to a natural 20. The second snack a “mickey bar” stick got stuck in his throat thanks to a natural 1. Which lead to the somewhat absurd visual image of Alice (of Wonderland fame) attempting to perform the Heimlich maneuver on a snake, whilst Wall-E watched.The session ended with us being confronted by a mysterious headless horseman and a bunch of pumpkin mimics.The other session was our second one in the Icewind Dale: Rime of the Frostmaiden campaign. Once again, since this is a recently published official Wizards of the Coast campaign, I don’t want to give too many details since it would be a lot of potential spoilers. We carried on tracking down a suspect traveling with a trade caravan, which resulted in visiting a few of the Ten Towns: specifically leaving Bryn Shander to visit Targos (where we were bothered by a busybody who insisted that we should have investigated a potential murder scene from six months earlier. Our Paladin managed to calm her and pump her for information over a cup of tea, which upset my Brabaran who’s plan was to sneak up on her from behind and headbutt her unconscious. Stor’s not too bright.), and Termalaine, where we held a conversation with a mayor that won a contentious election. Apparently a nearby mind has a Kobold problem…
Inkle’s PendragonI’m intrigued. I love arthurian novels (I mean the genuine medieval ones, Chrétien de Troyes, etc), and the style looks charming in a fitting illumination genre. Plus, we owe Inkle the excellent Sorcery! adaptation.I hope it isn’t just yet-another-banner-saga.
They should make a game in which you survive all of Werner Herzog’s scripts only to find you are actually in a movie by Roland Joffe.
I can only watch the first 30 minutes and the last 10 minutes. Everything in between is just time spent being annoyed by a bunch of kids who are freaking the fuck out in a forest.
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