Tag Archives: Ghost Trick

corruptedsave Games of 2011

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This article was written as a contribution for “The First Ever SMPS.Net Games of the Year 2011 Thing” which you should really go and check out for a broad range of well-written lists covering many games, old and new. This article has had a typo corrected, screenshot captions added, and uses some different screenshots than it originally included, as well as a link to new a video of me playing Dark Souls.

A Possible Glimpse of Things to Come

Deus Ex: Human Revolution has great references sprinkled everywhere, rewarding exploration.

Deus Ex: Human Revolution doesn’t quite live up to the original game, but it was a respectable, thoughtful effort. While boss fights fell flat, the hacking, sneaking, and upgrading of abilities made for an enjoyable experience that could be a glimpse of bright, promising future for the franchise and gamers alike.

A non-tea-bag taunt in Monday Night Combat.

To say that Monday Night Combat is an intelligent game is an understatement as it mixed personality and gameplay to create a fun, balanced, and unique competitive multi-player game. Using sound to balance an invisibility cloak, or rewarding players for doing a scripted, non-offensive taunt to earn some money instead of tea-bagging are ideas that will hopefully permeate game design in the coming years.

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Review: Ghost Trick (DS)

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Ghost Trick is the Inception of videogames; it creates a concept of hopping from objects and going back in time for a few minutes and then bases the whole of the game and everything the player does around these simple concepts, while exploring them from multiple, sensible angles to keep things fresh and fun. The mastery of how the system developed for Ghost Trick works, and coupled with an engaging mystery that raises more questions as the game progresses makes Ghost Trick a fun experience that feels just right in terms of difficulty, if not a tad too short.

Compared to the previously developed Phoenix Wright series, Ghost Trick makes several necessary improvements to the adventure game formula. The biggest structural change is that the player is actively participating in events instead of trying to recreate them from evidence and witness testimony. Playing as a ghost detective and saving somebody’s life by modifying a sequence of events is much more satisfying than merely bringing their killer to justice. Additionally, there’s no “life bar” that punishes the player for experimenting differently than the game designers intended or freely guessing. Instead, failure is often times a learning experience and restarting a sequence is simple, painless, and built into the system of the game itself.

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