So, AI: The Somnium Files is a game I've recently played through. I'm not really sure how in the world I'm going to write about it though, as it was freakin' nuts. Oh well, here goes...

A few years back, I was watching a gaming podcast where this somewhat fascinating game got mentioned. It seemed like something I would like to play, being a murder mystery where the main character has a fake eye which contains an artificial intelligence. This AI helps the protagonist investigate crime scenes by offering suggestions and bestowing different vision modes such as heat and x-ray.

So when I saw it cheap-ish a couple of years back, I picked it up, only for it to promptly get lost somewhere in my mountain of other games.

After that, maybe about a year ago now, I watched a couple of different streamers play a game called 999. This game was also bonkers, with strange puzzles and a host of alternate timeline wibbly-wobbliness. It seemed like a game that would be hell to play, but as something to put on in the background while doing other things, it was quite fun to experience through someone else's eyes.

Something I didn't know going into this, was that AI is made by the same devs that made 999. There was a slightly painful realisation, when I heard some familiar sound effects, and saw that there was a flowchart that was going to keep track of the alternate timelines. I really didn't want to play a game where I had to finish it multiple times to get the true ending. But I sighed, and plodded on.

And plodded on is an accurate way to describe my actions in this game. I simply can not understand how it was such a drag to play a game where so much crazy shit happens.

The protagonist of the game is Kaname Date (pronounced Kanarmay Dartay), a cop who lost his memory and left eye six years ago. Instead of a normal prosthetic, Date's eye socket instead houses an eyeball-shaped artificial intelligence named Aiba, who can telepathically talk to him and assist him on his missions.

Most of the game's narrative is told through very lengthy visual novel segments, while what little gameplay there is happens in sections called "psyncs". In a psync, Date and Aiba enter the mind of a suspect or witness in order to search for clues to the case. These sections involve wondering around the other person's subconscious in a dream-like landscape, where "puzzles" must be solved in order to progress. It is in these psync sections that different actions can be performed that will split the story off into its different timelines.

As I've alluded to above, I didn't really like playing this game. I would have much preferred to do something else while having footage of it from Youtube or Twitch playing in the background, like I did with 999.

The number one issue with it was that it is simply too long. If you want to do everything in the game, and also depending on how long you spend in the psync sections, the game can easily last 25-30 hours. And here's the thing - it could have easily been half that.

Because of the way the narrative is structured, a great deal of the dialogue and events are repeated in alternate timelines. In addition, many conversations contain at least one moment where a character will remind you of something that was said earlier. Then the game will flash back and show you when that earlier conversation happened. These recaps were happening all the time, and it was annoying. It was like talking to an elderly relative, who tells you the same story they've already told you a dozen times.

The gameplay itself didn't help. While it was always refreshing to get to freely move around an environment after listening to characters talk for an hour, the setting of the puzzle sections ruined them completely. This was because the puzzle sections are set in what are essentially people's dreams. And dreams don't make sense. This made the puzzles less about logic and more about trial and error, hit and hope, suck it and see. Key word here being suck.

While the basic idea of the game is an interesting one, I didn't find it was executed in a good enough way to really recommend the game to anyone else. Maybe they were rushed, or didn't have enough money, or whatever. But with more care and attention, and maybe if it was any other genre except visual novel, the game could have been really good.

There are a few things that I was more positive about, though. Yes, some of the characters are annoying as hell, this being an anime game after all. But some of the characters were actually pretty cool and fun. In typical fashion for me, I would say the best character was actually Aiba, the AI, who was quirky and an absolute sweetie pie.

The voice acting in the game varied quite wildly in both quality and volume, for some reason. While most of it was pretty good, there were a few really cringe moments, and the actress that voiced Hitomi should never do a crying scene again. Oh dear.

The humour in the game also helps it be less boring, but the constant tone shifting between really silly and really serious is enough to give you whiplash at times.

Overall, the basic plot of the game was quite interesting. However, take a step back and you will see a million and one plot holes and other things that don't make sense.

Minor spoiler here, but for example, there is a dead body hidden in a warehouse. This body has not only been there the entire game, it has actually been there for years. At the point of its discovery, we have already been to this warehouse several times earlier in the game. But because that the plot now demands it, Aiba can now somehow detect it with her fancy detecting skills, when she couldn't earlier. It was so dumb.

I think it's safe to say I won't be touching this ever again. I was hoping for so much more.

A few years ago I tried to get an old copy of Resident Evil 4 up and running, but couldn't get it to work the way I wanted it to, which was basically to have mouse support. For whatever reason, the mouse patch just wouldn't have it.

More recently, I'd been having plans to try and install an older Windows on one of my more modern machines, to see if the mouse patch would work on that, while still having enough grunt to run the game with the HD patch.

Luckily, before I started mucking around with all that, I learned that the HD version of the game from 2014 already has mouse support built in. Unfortunately, it meant having to buy it again on Steam. Again, I got some luck, as when I went to check how much it cost, a sale was in full effect and I swiped it for a few quid.

With the remake coming out soon, I thought it was about time I got through this at last, so I can at least see what is the same and what has changed about the new game.

Though it has to be stated, I'm pretty annoyed that Code: Veronica is not getting a remake, when it needs it the most.

Even though I could finally use my mouse to tackle this, I also used the re4_tweaks add on, which pumped the raw mouse input into the game, without any of that acceleration crap. As well as this, it allows the mouse to turn the character in addition to turning the camera, so it would feel like a much more modern game. The only thing that was missing was strafe, and it felt weird moving around with what are essentially still tank controls.

I was much more comfortable being able to aim this way, but there were still a few little weird issues with the control scheme. Firstly, whenever I went in and out of aim mode, the camera would point in a different direction. Though I found some options in re4_tweaks that were supposed to fix this, they only partially relieved the issue. And when using the rifle, the problem was worse than with any other gun. For example, if I wanted to target an enemy who was up on a ledge, or down on a lower level, I would point my camera roughly in that direction, then activate aim mode. Rather than already be pointing in the desired direction, the camera would always reset to point straight ahead, no matter what. Annoying, but this is what we have to put up with when a game that was never meant to have mouse support gets it added at a later date.

The other slight issue with the mouse is that the activation button, in this case E, would not work at all if there was even the slightest movement on the mouse. The amount of times I would have to press that button sometimes just to open a door or pick up an item. I quickly learned to just spam the damn thing any time I needed it.

Back in the day, this game marked a big change for the franchise. Not only did it switch from a fixed camera perspective to an over the shoulder one, it also switched the franchise away from a more tense, "scary" feel, to a more action oriented one. Whereas in the past, you could learn to slip by enemies and conserve ammo, here the game makes you fight. There are so many times where a door will lock and it's only possible to open it again if you kill everyone. I've not watched anyone speed run this, but I bet it pisses some runners off having to do this all the time.

This constant need to fight brought up another problem, and this was available ammo. In old games, if you hunted for it all, there was more than enough ammo to kill every enemy in the game and have tons to spare. And in those games, you didn't even need to fight most of the time. In this game, I always felt low on ammo. I never fully ran out entirely, but there were always moments where I only had ammo in a single gun and the others were empty. I even ended up with something like an 82% accuracy over the whole game, which is not great on a mouse, but would have been much worse on a controller. I just would not have had enough ammo to get through this if I had not been able to aim the way I did.

The prime example of this ammo issue was a boss fight against two giants, which I got through with a single shotgun shell remaining. And this was after dumping the first giant into a pit of molten steel. I don't know if the game is designed this way, to just about give you enough ammo to get through things, but I didn't like it.

It didn't help that I often saw items dropping while I was in the middle of a big fight. But when I'd killed everyone and turned around to look for the items, they had all disappeared. The fact that this happened so many times fucking sucked. What the hell, game?

The other main thing that made this so different from earlier games was the step away from zombies and Umbrella. I guess Capcom thought those games were getting old, but I really missed them here. This game, with all of its differences, just doesn't feel like Resident Evil to me, and that's at least partially why I found it so tiresome to get through.

Games in this series have always had really strange settings, but this one was the most bizarre of any I've played. The puzzles and locks in this game made no sense. For example, there's one point where a villain runs away from you out of the room and sets a trap. Then when you escape the trap and follow them, the next door is locked. But it's not locked from the other side. Instead there's a pad lock on this side that you have to shoot off. How the hell did they get out then put that lock on?

There are also multiple times where you have to go through a maze of rooms and enemies to find an item that will open a door somewhere else. But the villains, Ada, and the merchant for that matter, can seemingly just waltz through these doors whenever they want.

There's one point where you emerge from a castle, to see two little islands, each with their own buildings on them. You, as Leon, pick up some binoculars to see Ashley being led away into the building on the second island. Now, the method of crossing onto these islands is a swing bridge, which can pivot around from its anchor point on the first island to reach either the main castle or the second island. For some reason, even though the villains and Ashley must have just crossed the bridge from the first to second island, the bridge is now back pointing towards us as we emerge from the castle. That was very thoughtful of the bad guys, don't you think? I mean, if they'd not sent the bridge back to me, I wouldn't have been able to cross, and the game would be over.
What's doubly confusing is, going into the first island's building, we see that the villains have tried to stop us from using the bridge by jamming wood into all the gears that operate it. Can't lie. I face palmed. Nearly knocked my glasses off too.

And holy crap, the game was so long and tedious. I don't even think I spent as long making all those maps for Resident Evil 2 as I did just playing through this one a single time. Fair enough, if you're a fan of this game you'd probably be happy to keep playing it, but I was fed up with the constant cycle of saving Ashley, only for the next villain in line to capture her again, and so I would have to save her again, and so on...

Urgh.

I know I probably should have played this years ago, but I guess it makes sense that I'm so late when you think I didn't even fully complete the original game until 2011.

One thing's for sure: I won't be playing it again any time soon. Talk about a drag.

The first game of 2023 is all done, as I just got finished with South Park: The Stick Of Truth on the PS4.

It was pretty strange being back in this world. When it first came out, I used to watch the show every week without fail. I even owned the first season or two on VHS. But for some reason, after the movie came out, I completely went off it, and have never watched a second since. So not only was I catching up with all of the original characters after more than 20 years away, but also meeting a hell of a lot of new characters for the first time, my favourite of which was probably Jimmy. Seriously, his Maiden From Stonebury Hollow song is going to be in my head for quite a while.

The story is that the kids are playing a game of their own, set in a fantasy land, where some of the kids are elves, and some are humans. These two factions are fighting back and forth over "The Stick Of Truth", for whoever controls the stick controls the universe. Your character, or "the new kid", gets dragged into this conflict when your parents insist you go outside and make friends. This sees you teaming up with any one of several buddies from the show, as you head out into the town to try and win the day for your team.

Of course, this is South Park, so all kinds of crazy shit happens as the stakes continue to rise. By the end of the story, we see our adventurers having to travel to Canada, contesting with Gnomes who want to steal their underpants, getting abducted by aliens, and even fighting off a horde of Nazi zombies.

The whole plot lends itself well to the gameplay, which is in the form of a turn-based RPG. Characters arm themselves with all kinds of different cosplay-inspired weapons, as well as use special abilities like fireworks, or "spells" in the form of farts.

I was really into it at first, but near to the end of the game, I felt like it was starting to drag on a bit and had overstayed its welcome. Unfortunately, its one of those games that keeps throwing a different end boss at you. Once you think you're near the end of the game, the story changes and now there's a new villain. Even the end, end, end boss fight sees you having to beat them several times.
So while the game is fun, and definitely funny, I sure was glad when the credits finally rolled.

My main bugbear without doubt was when I got hit with the censorship screens. Turns out, no less than seven sections of the game are censored in Europe. This censorship is in the form of a blue screen with some snarky comments by Trey and Matt, that basically stop you from playing through those sections. This pissed me off no end, as I'm staunchly against censorship, and would not have bought the game had I known.
Now, these sections are no doubt kinda gross, like when some characters get anally probed by aliens, but who the fuck decided these parts should be removed in Europe? This needed some extra research.

Turns out, the game was censored in both Europe and Australia. Now, I've no idea what went down in Australia, but their censors are mad with power, and crazy with the ban-hammer, so it makes sense.
But in Europe, for some reason it was only censored on consoles, and not on PC. Even then, it turns out PEGI rated the game 18 before anything was removed, meaning the censored version is pointless as it is also rated 18. It is assumed that the cuts were made by Ubisoft on purpose, for what is assumed to be a publicity stunt.

Makes absolutely no sense.

Man, Ubisoft suck.

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Local 4-player games are a luxury I do not often get to indulge in. In fact, the only times I can remember doing this are with Micro Machines on the Sega Mega Drive, the first Worms game on my very first PC, and Fifa 09 in the Nintendo Wii era.

But over the Christmas break, I got the chance to do just this.

Up first was a game that I'd owned since Humble Indie Bundle 15 back in 2015, but I'd never bothered with because of its multiplayer requirement. This was the insanity that is Gang Beasts.

This is a silly party game where players get together to beat each other up, and throw each other from buildings or into incinerators, with whoever is left standing at the end becoming the winner.

However, we were in more of a co-operative mood, so after a little muck about, and a game of rather violent football, we elected to play the wave mode. Here we would go up against several progressively harder waves of AI enemies, to see if we could hold out.

It took a little while to get used the controls, and even then it was still awkward to get the strange little floppy avatars to do anything like what we wanted them to. But damn this thing was fun.

The main tactic is to knock out the enemies using punches, kicks and headbutts, then lift them overhead and throw them to their doom. Of course, the opponents are trying to do the same. And as we were noobs, the AI was far more accurate and dangerous than we were.

But still, after a few attempts we were able to reign supreme, and threw all those Donald Trump-looking weirdos to their deaths.

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This next game is called Overcooked! Rushing against a time limit, players in this game have to work together in chaotic kitchens to prepare as many meals as possible for their patrons.

To excel, we would need to have really good communication and be really coordinated. With us being full of holiday food and drink, what could possibly go wrong?

There's only one word that can describe our time with this game: stress.

Yes it was fun in it's own way, and we enjoyed it. But the stress levels really were through the roof. Maybe our heads weren't exactly in the right mode for this, after being a bunch of idiots for a couple of hours on Gang Beasts.

It looks like there are only 6 levels in the game, each with a number of stages. We only got to the second stage of the third level, and could get nowhere near even the one star required to progress. I'm pretty sure on all the other stages we got 2 or 3 stars, so why there was such a steep difficulty spike on this one I'm not sure.

I've had a quick check online, and it looks like other players find the stage very hard with four players also, and for whatever reason it seems to be way easier with just two.

Oh well. Maybe we will come back to it one day, in the far future, and give it another go. I'm just happy I got some play out of it.

Just recently, a fun-looking side-scroller came out set in the Warhammer 40K universe called Shootas, Blood & Teef. It reminded me of a game I already owned called Guns, Gore & Cannoli, and upon further research I discovered they are by the same studio.

It made sense for Scoob and I to give the first game a try before trying out its newer, sillier and Orkier big brother.

In this game, you play as gangsters who are going through a city which has been infected by a zombie plague. Along the way, you also have to fight against other gangsters and even the army, who are trying to stop anyone from leaving the city. A variety of more powerful weapons can be found as you progress, allowing you to mow down, incinerate, and explode enemies faster.

At first, we were both using controllers, but I was frustrated with the default binds, and wanted to change them to something more typical of an action platformer. So off I popped to the menu to rebind the buttons, when I found I could not. More confusion arose when we discovered we could rebind Scoob's player 2 controller.

So I re-started the game with just 1 controller plugged in, and saw I could now rebind. So I rebound, then restarted the game with 2 controllers plugged in, only to find both controllers had been rebound to the new buttons. No problem, I thought, as we knew we could rebind player 2's controller. So that's exactly what I did, and put it back to default, only to soon find this had also returned player 1's buttons to default.

So for some stupid fucking reason, this game will simply not let you use different button configurations on your controllers. Really pissed me off.

Scoob then volunteered to use the keyboard, so that we could continue without me getting really annoyed.

The rebinds weren't the only issue we had with this game's controls, as we also suffered from a little bit of input lag. Looking back now, I'm wondering if vsync was on and causing issues, but I didn't think to check while playing. Anyway, it wasn't a huge deal, just a slight annoyance.

There was one other main problem I had, which was that it's impossible to aim up or down in this game, so all the shots always go horizontal. I think this is fairly typical for this kind of game, but it probably shouldn't happen these days, especially when there's a lot of verticality in the game, like jumping up and down onto other levels, and going up and down a lot of stairs. It's pretty annoying when you're stuck on some stairs, and a blob of enemies is running up them right towards you, and you can't shoot them until they're at point blank range.

I guess it says quite a lot that even with these annoyances, the game was still quite fun to play, with the only other little bugbear being the fairly long reload times on the weapons. The premise and plot were also entertaining. I mean, who wouldn't want to see ridiculously over the top mobsters going up against zombies? They should make a film of that.

And the game didn't take all that long, despite having to replay several sections a bunch of times near the end of the game as the difficulty increased. I'd say it was fun and worth it for what it was, but with a bit more care and attention, the game could have been pretty damn awesome.