Sunday 2 December 2012

Schuld and Cry

At the risk of sounding like a stuck up guy who only plays indie games I'm going to talk about Schuld today. I do play mainstream games too, but everyone talks about the new Assassin's Creed or Call of Duty and personally I find indie games to be much more interesting...the good ones anyway.

I think it is probably the focus on story over gameplay in indie games which appeals to me as I have always been big on games with stories, hence why the Final Fantasy series is still home to some of my favourite games ever. I'm now wondering why I haven't done a blog post of Final Fantasy, maybe sometime soon.

Back on topic, I recently watched Cry play Schuld over on his Youtube Channel. Cry is another amazing youtuber who does lets play videos and while he isn't as downright hilarious as PewDiePie he brings a totally different quality to his videos. He has the best narrating / acting voice I've heard on youtube and he brings an air of seriousness to the game, but always stops to have fun along the way. Watching him play a game like Schuld is perfect as he carries the weight of the serious story but still lightens the tone with the odd comment or two.

As for the game. It's once again a story based puzzle game similar to The Witch's House although I don't think the story is as strong as during certain parts of the game the character suddenly decides to do something drastic and often out of character to advance the story. But the dark themes and the things it forces the player to come across along their journey are interesting and horrifying in equal measure.

The ending seems particularly abrupt. Suddenly changing setting and introducing new characters which are essential to the story and you are supposed to have strong feelings towards them, which is difficult when all you have to go on is the word of the confused player character and this blank slate of a character you have just been handed. During the ending sequence I also got the feeling that the player character is as bad as the enemy, although the game never really explored that and just assumed you were still the good guy which I think is a massive shame as an ending which took such concepts on board could have had a more powerful ending than The Witch's House.

I'm aware that all I have said is it's like The Witch's House but not as good, but trust me it is still a good game and one that everyone should at least check out even if it's not your kind of game.

No comments:

Post a Comment