Quick Review: Vampire: The Masquerade - Coteries of New York

Oh hey, nice coincidence covering this game in October.

I went for the artist. Didn't even know he was gay.
As an outsider, I'll say, I do appreciate VtM having
decent LGBTQ+ representation, and general diversity.

Developed by Draw Distance, published by Dear Villagers, and released on December 11th, 2019, Vampire: The Masquerade – Coteries of New York is set in the universe of the Vampire: The Masquerade RPG. I’m not too knowledgeable with most tabletop game universes, including this one, so I’m learning and discovering that world as the game progresses. This is a visual novel, so there’s little “game” to speak of, aside from getting to choose how some interactions go and the order in which to do the quests.

Feels like I'm  being kidnapped by Vampire John Wick.

You pick one of three protagonists – they have preset names, but you can change them. A good chunk of the visual novel remains the same, but elements will differ, such as the inciting incident and specific personal elements. The three are [Eric], a hot-blooded Asian American; [Amanda], a businesswoman; and [Lamar], a gay African American artist. One way or another, they are bitten by a stranger and transformed into a vampire (a kindred, as the secret society calls it). The character is then found and taken to the Camarilla, the leading caste of vampires in NYC, and forced into this new life. Not that they have a choice; it’s not like there’s a cure. You character is basically a dead person walking.

Again, not much of a choice. You can leave this room
undead, or dead dead.

The Camarilla have a strict set of rules regarding the Embrace (the act of turning someone into a vampire); if the act was not permitted by the Camarilla, final death (since vampires are already undead) for both the childe (the newly created vampire) and their sire (the one that transformed them). However, before your character is executed, they beg for mercy and are taken under the wing of Sophie Langley, a member of the Camarilla that advocates for this childe to stay and become a valuable member of the secret society.

Welp. Gotta pick someone to assault for blood.
Just gotta hope we don't run into another secret vampire here.

Your character will need to learn to control their thirst for blood (the Hunger). They’ll learn to hunt; they’ll have to keep themselves in check by feeding regularly, but never to the point of overfeeding, as both it and underfeeding have dire consequences. Once the character is settled into this unsettling new life, they’ll be told by Sophie to assemble a team, a “Coterie”; basically, go out and make friends. Her suggestions involve four vampires from other clans; there’s 13 such clans, of varying levels of threat and trustworthiness. Create your friend group, prove your worth, learn about all the inner politics of this society. Still, through all this, one question will remain: Who turned the protagonist into a vampire… and why?

It takes a while before you finally have your entire
nights to yourself, with a lot of possible quests to take on.

You can worry about vampire nicknames later.

As you can see from this plot-heavy description, there’s a lot to take in. This game is more of an interactive story with moments where you can occasionally pick the course of the plot. Your choices do matter in the long run; it all depends on how you interact with the other characters. The story is set over a specific number of nights, one that makes it impossible to recruit all four potential members of the Coterie in one playthrough; thus, you have an incentive to play through the game multiple times.

You will often need to use your character’s new abilities to turn events to your favor, but this may cause their Hunger to grow and they’ll need to suck blood from a prey – however, the chances you have for feeding are limited depending on the current scene and which options pop up. It’s limited to very specific points, with only your character’s first “hunt” being the one time they have freedom to choose a “victim”. It hardly comes up otherwise, aside from dialogue options that either close or open depending on whether they feel the Hunger or not.

Yep, I needed that dictionary to properly write some of the
paragraphs in this article. Hey, it served its purpose!

If this priest truly knew who he was talking to, our character
would be on the receiving end of a Vade Retro Satana.

You even have access to an in-game dictionary of terms specific to this world, since they add up over time. Once you can choose what you do each night, you get more freedom, with occasional quests adding themselves on top of your search for a Coterie. Some nights you’ll be able to pick two plotlines to follow, but usually you’ll have one mandatory plot event and then just one of your choosing. Hey, nights are short, and you can’t stay up till dawn. And, well, as soon as you finish one character’s story and begin a new one, you’ll notice just how similar all three end up being – you have some agency in what you can do, but everything builds up towards the same climax, even if the events leading up to it, and its resolution, can differ based on your choices.

This guy looks intense, but then again, most vampires do.
But don't worry, gathon is a good dude, if you can disregard
that he's basically a wizard doing blood magic.
Hey man, wanna join a Coterie?

That said, there were two DLCs added that I’m told diverge a lot more from the base game’s three scenarios. Personally? I might do one scenario and be satisfied with it. If you already like this TTRPG series, or are intrigued by it, I could see this as an interesting purchase, since it has a good story, and explains a lot for beginners.

Vampire: The Masquerade – Coteries of New York is available on Steam on sale for 3.99$ till the end of October!

Alright, gonna be back to regular-sized reviews soon enough – I might take a week off, these Quick Reviews took a lot out of me.

Quick Review: Transistor

Review()

These things don't look friendly.

Created by Supergiant Games and released on May 20th, 2014, Transistor is the story of Red, a singer in the futuristic city of Cloudbank, where the population can vote to change everything, up to and including the color of the sky. One night, Red is attacked during a performance but is saved by her bodyguard, who takes a mysterious sword to the chest. That night, Red awakens only to realize that her ability to speak is gone, and the soul of the man has been transferred within the sword, the titular Transistor, which has bizarre properties related to computing. Something very wrong is going on in the city. It's infested by robots known as the Process, which are dead-set on “processing” everything and everyone into data. They were seemingly unleashed by a mysterious group known as the Camerata. With the city almost deserted, it’s up to Red and her companion to fight the threat and, if possible, restore Cloudbank…

Nope, not friendly. Good thing I have this big magic sword
that draws from the powers of souls!

Red moves around with the arrows, or you can give her a location to run to with the mouse on the grid-like maps. When she encounters enemies, she can fight using one of up to four Functions (keys 1 to 4), pre-set among the ones unlocked, and chosen at Access Points. (Some of these functions are collected from dead bodies, also taken into the Transistor.)

Let's see if these robots still stand after these next seconds.

The true interest, however, is the Turn() feature the Transistor has, which allows Red to go execute a series of commands in a split second. In that moment, you can move around, which costs time, and then use your Functions in any order. There’s a limit to how much you can do, but said limit will increase each time you level up. Still be careful; a fully used-up Turn() will have to cool down for five seconds, potentially leaving you in harm’s way.

And that's just early into the game, imagine all the
things you'll be able to do down the line.

At the access terminals, you can do far more than just set up your functions. You’ll unlock many over time, as well as new slots to use them. Each main function can be further enhanced with two more that will apply extra effects when used. Beyond that, you can unlock extra slots granting passive bonuses when filled. Every single function has uses programmed in when used as a main action, as an enhancement, or as a bonus – so, experiment! Oh, and every function has a cost in Memory (MEM), which means that you will have to choose wisely how you mix-and-match everything. (The level-up system can occasionally grant you additional MEM, giving you more options. It can also unlock Limiters, which will grant you more experience after each victory at the cost of making the game harder in some way, and yes, you can have all of them activated at the same time for the most challenging experience.)

In fact, some of these Process things are really strong.
Even this first boss is nothing compared to later ones.

In fact, you ARE encouraged to experiment, especially if things don’t go your way. When Red’s health bar is depleted, it will refill at the cost of losing your function that’s taking up the most MEM. You’ll continue the fight with three functions left, and losing one more if your health hits zero again. A Game Over is seen only if Red loses them all, so you basically have four health bars. Lost functions are broken and aren’t restored right away, either; it takes visiting two access terminals to repair a broken function so you can equip it again, which means that you’ll have to resort to new tactics for a moment afterwards if a battle didn’t go your way.

Learn to plan against every Process machine's eccentricity.
No need to smash a Younglady twice, they teleport after
you hit them once.

Robots that can obscure the screen with photos of Red, all
while shooting at her, and other robots whose entire goal
is to protect other Process on the battlefield. Oof!

The game is story-heavy, even if most of it has Red and her companion traveling the increasingly blocky “processed” surroundings of Cloudbank and reading reports of the worsening situation. However, progress is very linear, with nothing but the occasional reveal interspersed with battles against the Process. That said, you can find Backdoors that lead to a beach-like area from which Red can access challenges testing her speed, endurance, puzzle-solving skill, all through more battles. Also of interest is the New Game unlocked after beating the game once, which allows you to keep everything you've unlocked, while all battles (aside from bosses, of course) are now randomized.

The cutscenes look so damn great, too, even with their
limited animation. So much style through the entire game.

The Process even has chicken-like robots? Weeeeird.

I was a bit disappointed by the rigid linearity, but everything else is spot-on. The music is nice, the story is excellent, the environments are varied and impressive, and there are tons of inventive ideas to find here. I love the massive number of options in battle – once you learn to use them effectively, every one can become overpowered and tear through everything quickly. Some enemies and bosses have abilities that complement and challenge your skills in ways that could only happen with this system (the final boss is chef’s kiss). Worth playing, since it cemented Supergiant Games’ reputation for stylish titles packed with powerful storytelling, as the studio has done before with Bastion and would do later with both Hades games.

Transistor is available on Steam for 19.99$ USD.

Quick Review: Toonstruck

Completely loony!

Toonstruck was developed by Burst Studios, first published by Virgin Interactive Entertainment in October 1996, and then re-published to Steam by Interplay Entertainment Corp. on November 15th, 2016. I rarely covered Full Motion Video (FMV) games before, so this could be interesting! Especially since it stars Christopher Lloyd. (The low video quality isn’t great, but it's okay for computers of the time!)

"Drew?" "Flux? ...I gotta lay off the bourbon."

Hey, it's not every day you get to visit a cartoon castle.

The story: Drew Blanc (Lloyd) is a struggling animator so caught up in his job that he forgets to care for himself, while at the same time being behind on assignments. He hopes to see his wacky creation Flux Wildly get a show of his own someday, but for now, he must draw for an unbearably child-friendly show starring bunnies. One night, while he’s behind on the latest project forced upon him by his boss (played by Ben Stein), he falls asleep on his drawing board and dreams that he gets sucked into a nearby television by a UFO-like device. He lands in Cutopia, a world that combines the show he works for and his own creations. Its monarch, King Hugh, would like to help; but first, Drew will have to defend it from the dangerous overlord Count Nefarious, who plans to make everything in that world ugly and dangerous through his Malevolator.

And yes, Lloyd remains in live action throughout. Like in Cool World. Or maybe Who Framed Roger Rabbit?, but reversed. At least, this time around, he’s not talking just… like… this!!!

Every single line of dialogue is voice-acted, by the way.
It's awesome.

We start with one item: Sugar to counter the Count's spice.
What's next? Against the bolts, we need... nuts. Against a
 bow, we need... an arrow. Against a polish, we need...
a spit. It's a very tricky puzzle, especially for those who
aren't native English speakers.

This is a point-and-click; almost everything is done with the mouse (though you can skip dialogues with Space, save with F5, load a game with F6, and turn off the game with alt+F4). Drew and Flux walk around, talk with the varied and bizarre inhabitants of this world, and solve their problems to progress. The plan to restore Cutopia involves creating a machine that counters Nefarious’ Malevolator, which functions with 12 items – thus, we embark on a quest for 12 opposite items. Upon meeting the royal scientist, you receive a blueprint of the Malevolator (to roughly know what to look for) and a bottomless bag to carry anything you’ll find. You can access the bag from the bottom left of the screen. On a few occasions, events during animations still allow you to point and click at items, like when dancing royal guards accidentally drop a key to a locked room in the Castle. Other times, actions can only be done when a character is looking away.

"WACME?" "Sure, if you say so!" *pulls out huge mallet*

Flux travels along Drew for a good part of the game, and the snarky weirdo voiced by Dan Castellaneta can be used to solve puzzles. Click him, then click at something to interact with, and see if something happens. On the topic of roles, we hear several names among the most famous cartoon voice actors of the '90s across this adventure: Jeff Bennett, Corey Burton, Jim Cummings, Tim Curry, Dom DeLuise, Tress MacNeille, David Ogden Stiers, Rob Paulsen, Frank Welker, April Winchell… Now that’s my kind of nostalgia! But don’t mistake this for a child-friendly game; there’s blood here and there, and sooooo many innuendos. All over the place. This game proudly sports its T rating.

Let's see... which of these things could we mix together...
Meat and the poison? Do we need to kill someone?
(The answer is probably yes.)

How many uses can there be for a fly costume?
...Well, at least two or three.

Although this is an excellent point and click with funny moments and many animated cutscenes, I did notice a few issues. Act 2, set entirely within Count Nefarious’ Castle, is a lot shorter than Act 1, as though a lot of elements had to be cut from it. The original plans were for Toonstruck to be double its size and split across four acts, one disc for each, while the finished product only has two, with everything else cut out due to budget constraints. (The game's poor original sales didn't help. A Toonstruck 2 allegedly exists unreleased, but we have yet to see anything about that.) As a result, this game ends on a cliffhanger. And it shows, as even at the end we can think of quite a few unresolved plot threads. There are a few moments where the game shows its age; there’s the use of some stereotypes that are outdated nowadays, like the blatantly gay “carecrow” met during the story. Also the game crashed near the very end when I hadn’t saved in a while, and it took me 30 minutes to get back to that point, but – that’s partly on me, and unlike another game I covered recently, it only happened once.

I doubt this fortune-telling cat lady is to be trusted.

Still, great game with clever puzzles and many memorable characters. Yeah, not every solution makes sense, but that’s common in a point-and-click, plus we’re in a cartoon world so the silliness is entirely excusable. If you like point-and-click games, it’s one you absolutely should try.

Toonstruck is available on Steam for 9.99$ USD. (Also, finish and release Toonstruck 2 dammit! A guy can dream.)

Quick Review: Three Heroes

No thanks, I stopped at two heroes. I just… I just couldn’t.

Boars, wolves, bandits... the usual, really.

A creation from Cats Who Play released on September 17th, 2015, Three Heroes (often known as Fairy Tales: Three Heroes) is the story of Alesha, Dobrynya and Ilya, the titular characters. After their original years of heroism, the three grew apart. Alesha is one day assaulted by bandits at home. After he kills all of them but one, the last opens up about thievery having grown completely rampant in the area. There are more troubles further, there’s even talk of some sort of sea monster attacking people in the east! And Novgorod is being assaulted from two sides! …Okay, this is a very Russian game, I see. Not that a game’s geographical origins has anything to do with its quality.

Get yourself ready, 'cause you're gonna fight a lot of
enemies.

You start with Alesha, the archer. You later gain Dobrynya, who wields the handle of a spear to beat down enemies with; and, at last, Ilya, who has the classic sword and shield getup. Characters move with WASD, can turn with Q and E, attack with the left mouse button, and use special moves with the right button. You can switch to a different hero at will once they’re unlocked (pressing F1 for Ilya, F2 for Dobrynya, F3 for Alesha). The characters you don’t control will follow the one you play as, but you can ask them to stay in one place by pressing C, or make them run back to your hero with Z. You can focus on a specific opponent with the tab key. Need help? Open the advice menu with G! Finally, you can use items by pressing Enter and move between items with the [ and ] keys.

Okay, okay... shooting multiple arrows at once? Sure.
We can also steal stronger bows from enemies, that's cool.

You can open the special moves menu with T, and switch between special moves with the number keys (1 to 7). The game includes an EXP and level-up system, and each level grants a skill point to be used to unlock a new move or upgrade one that was already unlocked. All moves can be upgraded to up to three stars, which boosts their attack power, efficiency, and often reduces their cost in Heroic resolve points (a gauge that takes a moment to refill). Some moves can be practical outside of battle, like Dobrynya’s pole vault, which lets him jump over water.

Pole vault! And no horizontal bar to smash against!

Do I even need a spear? Just the stick beats down everything
in Dobrynya's way!

Now, onto gameplay proper! The game is split into maps. Like a long stage, each map has story quests that must be completed to progress, and side-quests that can yield rewards. On the first map, Alesha helps a traveling merchant whose guards ran off in fear after they were attacked, first by retrieving said guards, and then attacking the bandits’ camp as a team. Then he meets Dobrynya, and on the second map, they rescue villagers taken as captives by more bandits. This ploy involves poisoning the thieves’ well to weaken them, and using their own traps against them. It's a decent idea to make each hero’s unique skills necessary for progression, and strategizing can be useful against hordes of enemies.

Yeah, we aren't playing Hawkere or Greeen Arrow here.

But here’s where things go downhill. For starters, combat could have been refined. Alesha’s archery fucking sucks, and the further away an opponent is, the more his so-called skill comes down to sheer dumb luck and hoping you hit. Aiming is for losera, apparently. You can focus on that enemy alright; doesn’t help the aim, though! The first skill you unlock for him does allow you to aim for a specific spot, but the game’s hitboxes are so screwed up that even with that crosshair, you can still miss.

The crosshair does help. But still.

Okay, fine. Seeing bandits get tossed around can be
satisfying. They deserve it, anyway.

The game does NOT save automatically; you must press Esc, open the save menu, save, then come back. And if even one of your three heroes dies, it’s Game Over; go back to the last save point. I started saving obsessively to ensure I wouldn't lose the smallest bit of progress. And I was right to do this, because on several occasions, I got a Game Over for no apparent reason! This was fun, especially when it made me lose ten minutes of progress because I wasn’t yet saving at every hundred feet walked! And, oh yeah – if you don’t carefully follow the plot as it is requested (ex. If you go someplace you weren’t supposed to, or fail to execute a specific action), that can ALSO trigger a sudden Game Over.

I can't show you a screenshot of when the game crashed, since
I had to log out to undo it. Instead, have this memory of me
doing a side-quest and then dying due to failing to jump
over water on bthe way back, having to restart the previous
10 minutes. Fun. /s

But the death blow was the game working fine for an hour at a time, and then crashing afterwards. Badly, at that, superimposing its final frame over my entire computer screen, impossible to dislodge even with the task manager, and forcing me to literally log out and back into my session to make the damn thing disappear. Good freaking thing that OBS saved my playthroughs even when it had to get turned off by force like this! I quit trying to give this one a chance before I even met the third hero, Ilya.

Honestly? Don’t play this one. It had decent ideas, gameplay-wise, and felt overall promising. I like the possibility of following three heroes and switching between them, even if the plot is weak and the characters speak like their lines were shoddily translated from Russian to English. I could have taken that. But the saving issues, the sudden deaths, the constant bothers, the utter jank of controls and aiming, and of course the crashing… yep. I REALLY don’t recommend this one.

…But hey, if you want to risk it anyway, it’s cheap. Three Heroes is available on Steam for 3.99$ USD.

Quick Review: Storm of Spears

Time for the mandatory RPG Maker game of the year! And, uh, I have thoughts.

The first of many major fights.

Developed by Warfare Studios, published by Senpai Industrial Studios (which publishes a lot of RPG Maker games), and released on June 17th, 2016, Storm of Spears is set the fantasy world of Gallagar, led by a tyrannical queen. Rebellion is usually squashed fast. We follow a group of four mercenaries known as the Night Swords, led by Sura. When talks of plans of a true, widespread rebellion comes to them, they are thrown into action, at great cost. Sura’s younger brother is mortally wounded during the liberation of their home town, which leaves her determined to see this to the end, no matter what it takes.

This RPG is simple, with- whoooooah there! Okay, I must address this before everything else.

...These both look uncomfortable.

For some reason, the "serious, complex story" and
"boobs out portraits" combo makes me REALLY
uncomfortable. Like those elements are so
diametrically opposite, they shouldn't be mixed.

Compared to NPCs who get just a headshot next to their text, we get full-body art of the four main characters: Sura, Edryan, Valeese and Gyorg. Fine for Gyorg, he’s an older man; Edryan has his six-pack abs uncovered, not very practical for action. Sura and Valeese, the two women of the team, are wearing stuff you’d expect on strippers, not action heroines! I know the chainmail bikini trope has been mocked to Hell and back already – these outfits don’t even count, they're not chainmail! My issue isn’t so much about the outfits themselves, it’s how gratuitous and out-of-place this near-nudity feels, ESPECIALLY with everything else in the game. The main character’s younger brother just died? Let’s have a body shot of her with her breasts practically bursting from her top!

Okay. Bad first impression. How’s the rest of the game? Well, combat itself is about as basic as it gets for an RPG, with everything you have come to expect; physical attacks, special spells to cast, characters with different classes (which means specific types of armor and weapons for each), and a level-up system with new attacks or spells learned periodically. It’s almost cookie-cutter in that way.

I love that the environments have plenty of detail.
And I realize I only say that 'cause I saw many RPG Maker
games that didn't bother putting in the extra effort.

They're two, we're four. I like these odds.

One difference with other RPG Maker games is that the game opens with a difficulty selection screen. Casual, Normal or Hard. I’m playing on Normal difficulty, and the game is way too easy. Very few battles proved troublesome. Most enemies go down in two hits. Even the bosses were laughable, with just two maybe putting on a fight. Most random encounters only have two enemies, so you can often finish them before they even have time to strike. You’re warned at the start of the game that some side-quests may be too hard when you receive them and you may need to come back to them later – but I never ran into that issue! On the contrary, everything was too easy!

Also, I kept thinking spells would work with typing
advantages and weaknesses, but Holy Light never did
anything against ghosts, demons, and monsters.

Another issue I noticed was that all four characters could get equipped with the best gear, which made them strong in battle; however, it meant that I rarely, if ever, needed to use any magic spells. The team wizard’s offensive spells paled compared to the damage he dealt by attacking physically, which turned all fights into spamming the attack button for all characters, knowing it would work better than creating a strategy.

The world’s design is good; lots of detail, lots of creative map-building with variety and set-dressing. You can easily tell when the work was put in based on the look of the maps. It's much nicer than some RPG Maker games I've played where the maps were large, but empty, barren, and boring. In all fairness, all the dungeon areas are a bit lacking in enemies; there are no random encounters with invisible opponents here, only roaming ones. An enemy battle is engaged when you make contact with those.

Setting up a Quests section in RPG Maker isn't
simple, so I appreciate this game doing it.

Beyond the story, there’s plenty to do. The pause menu includes a section tracking your ongoing quests; this includes the main plotline (where you can kepe track of what to do next to progress the plot), but also a decent quantity of side-quests to find across the world map. Two quests are larger; the first involves defeating eight elemental lords imprisoned in spires (those bosses have a lot of fanfare but have mostly turned out easy). The second is all about finding fifteen Frozen Tears, hidden all over the kingdom; finding them all unlocks the fight against the final elemental lord. Four more bosses can be encountered, the Golath Souls.

Sure, the big bosses look cool and impressive. But they
fold like marginally-stronger enemies.

As for the story itself? I was surprised at how much it pulled me in. This plot is well-written, with unexpected twists and turns. There are plenty of little scenes for worldbuilding and stuff to read about. There’s never too much backtracking necessary, aside from a few moments related to story events. The characters are well-rounded and interesting, and we often explore their deeper motivations.

In short: A better game than I would have expected from just the first impression, with those full-body portraits. Great story, but the difficulty could have been kicked up several notches, and some specific elements related to combat, like magic spells, could have been fine-tuned so that they’re worth using. Maybe someday I’ll try the hard mode to see if it makes a significant difference…

Storm of Spears is available on Steam for 1.99$ USD.