Homefront: The Revolution, a total reboot done right

 [Introduction]

Remember Homefront?
Well, I hope you don't, because the developers have left it in the dirt quite literally in all but name. Homefront: The Revolution is a story-driven open world first-person shooter with some focus on exploration. All it has in common with its predecessor is a name and a basic premise, except this time it's actually well-implemented.

[First Impressions]

Wow.
This feels a lot like Far Cry 3.
The zone control, the weapon modification, the crafting, the story focus, it's kind of uncanny. It's also an unfair comparison, because the games are quite different from eachother, but chances are, if you've played Far Cry 3, then you'll recognise quite a few gameplay elements.
Also, if you've played Homefront, then you'll probably notice an immediate increase in quality.

[Development]

As you may recall, Kaos Studios was shut down following the release of Homefront. So who made Homefront: The Revolution? I'll tell you: Dambuster Studios. If you've never heard of them, there's a reason for it, namely that this is the first game they ever made. It's also the only game they've ever made, although Chorus is supposed to release in 2021 and Dead Island 2 is allegedly in development.

There have been some fairly substantial changes, the foremost of which is a change from the Unreal Engine to the CryEngine, which might further contribute to any Far Cry 3 vibes you might get. Other substantial changes is... everything else.

Also, this originally being a THQ title, there's a clusterfuck of a development process that I'm not even sure where to begin with. If you've read any of our other reviews featuring THQ games, then you already know how it goes, and as of writing, I'm looking at a mess I barely even want to touch.

Anyway, following the release of Homefront, THQ announced that a sequel was in the makes. This is back in 2011, which is the same year the original development studio was shut down. And, as we know, a year later THQ went bankrupt. Then in 2013, as part of this bankruptcy, they started auctioning off their IPs, including Homefront.

Crytek bought the rights to Homefront for half a million dollars, and in 2014 they decided to co-publish Homefront: The Revolution with Deep Silver, who had acquired other, unrelated IPs from THQ. Crucially, the change in both developer and publisher allowed for a total reboot of the game. In many ways, the final product ended up being pretty much everything the first game should have been.

And speaking of change in publisher, also in 2014, Crytek decided to dip out of the project by selling the IP to Koch Media, parent company of Deep Silver, a decision that was likely due to financial issues. This is when Dambuster Studios took over for Crytek, literally the same month the studio had opened its doors. Release was also pushed back to 2016, which gave Dambuster a mere 2 years total to actually work on the game.

So considering that this is almost a Frankenstein of a game, what with the juggling act performed by developers and publishers, it's pretty impressive.

[Game Mechanics]

Resistance good, KPA bad.
Help resistance, shoot KPA.
A simple premise that goes back as far as there have been shooters. Depending on your definition, this might even include old carnival games, but I digress. My point is that it's a tried and true method of interacting with the world, namely shooting bad guys.

To help you accomplish this, Homefront: The Revolution gives you a surprisingly large arsenal, although you're initially limited to carrying only one weapon and your sidearm. This is later expanded to two weapons and your sidearm. The thing is, this is deceptive, because your weapons can be modified. More specifically, they can be modified on the fly, and modifications can be extensive.

It probably goes without saying that switching out a firearm receiver on the fly without some kind of workbench or any tools at all is... not very realistic at all. If you're expecting realism, you're in the wrong part of town, because of the 6 weapons available to the player, 5 of them can be customised to 3 variants each. So, down to defaults, you get a pistol, a crossbow, an assault rifle, a battle rifle, a shotgun and a rocket launcher.

These can be converted into an SMG and a pneumatic pistol; a blunderbuss and a flamethrower; an LMG and a mine launcher; a marksman rifle and a fireworks launcher; an automatic shotgun and a napalm launcher respectively. Some of these, like the fireworks launcher and blunderbuss, get kinda silly. I mean, one is a fireworks launcher and the other is just a gigantic 4-barreled shotgun that always fires 2 barrels at a time.

Then there's your throwable items, which boils down to molotovs (no revolution without molotovs), hack tools, pipe bombs and firecrackers. But, as before, this is deceptive, because there are variations of each one. Every throwable item can also be turned into a remotely activated item. Or a proximity mine version. Or you can mount it to a fucking RC toy car and drive pipe bombs under KPA vehicles.

BUT WAIT, THERE'S MORE: you also have various gear available to you, which represent improvements to your capabilities. More carry capacity, faster reloads, better stealth, improved damage resistance, that sorta stuff. It's all generally quite useful, but to be fair, if you're not sneaking around a lot, some of it might strike you as unnecessary.

Now, how do you afford all this? The resistance is on a shoestring budget and everything is home made. There has to be some kind of barter system, and there is: the American dollar. Gather up valuables, complete jobs, participate in flashpoints and progress the story. These will all give you more money, particularly in the late game. It might sound a bit grindy, and very early on it can be, but by the end, you won't be missing a lot.

This might be a good time to mention some of the bugs I've encountered, because one of them is about flashpoints: they're supposed to be missions that kind of ad hoc just appear in the game world. The KPA attacking an outpost is the most common one, but sometimes it's supply stashes instead. Nothing fancy, but they do have an annoying habit of popping up right as I capture a new area. This is a problem, because capturing an area skips time forward and basically resets the game world in terms of NPCs and flashpoints.

Other than that, bugs are fairly minor, and I never ran into anything gamebreaking. Mostly it's been graphical bugs, like a door guard standing like he's holding up a gun, but it's just his empty hand. To his credit, he was maintaining good trigger discipline, although all that accomplished without a gun is pointing at the ceiling. Silly, but nothing really impactful.

I think that's about it. Kill norks, get money, upgrade your stuff, kill more norks. Rinse and repeat until you've liberated the United States.

[Graphics]

This is not a bad looking game by any stretch of the imagination.
But, at the same time, something feels kinda... off about it. I wish I had the words to describe exactly what it is, but I'm just not sure. Maybe its the quality of animations, maybe it's the way the models were rigged, maybe it's something about how motion capture translated to cutscenes, I just don't know, but it sometimes gets a sort of uncanny vibe.

[Story]

You are ETHAN BRADY, newly inducted resistance fighter and protagonist. Also, when I say newly inducted, I do mean newly inducted, because when the game starts you've been in the resistance for all of 3 god damn days. This is the first similarity to the first Homefront game, but by no means the last.

It's established early on that the digital revolution of the real world's Silicon Valley in the 1970s didn't happen in America, but in North Korea. We're gonna ignore the fact that North Korea is an insane Communist dictatorship presently stuck somewhere in the 60s, because in this world, that isn't the case. On the contrary, North Korea actually had a normal revolution in addition to the technological one and has become a capitalist country.

This lead to a frankly insane leap of development, to the point that they became the leading technological superpower in the entire world. We're talking "everyone's buying our stuff"-levels of development here. And it's not crappy knockoffs being sold abroad either, it's some legitimately advanced stuff.

And the world eats it up, particularly the United States. The company behind all this development, APEX, even has an arms research division that designs and builds firearms and various types of military equipment, including autonomous AI-controlled fighting vehicles that would pretty much be tanks if they had treads.

Unfortunately, because everything was made by APEX, North Korea effectively has a backdoor into the entire US military, and when the US refuses to pay off its monstrously huge debt, they just kinda turn off the American armed forces. And then they pull a Russia and "send emergency disaster relief" which is actually an occupation force. All those rations? They were military rations. For the KPA, not US citizens.

So, shit's fucked. How fucked is the shit? The shit's so fucked that APEX even shut down the guns the military had. As in, because APEX guns have biometric scanners and such built into them, they could just block any recognition of the soldier that was issued the weapon. This means that ALL military hardware is now useless. Any resistance movement literally has to build its own guns from scratch or scraps.

Anyway, Brady joins the resistance and is part of a cell due to receive a visit from the reigning orangutan of the movement, one Benjamin Walker. Unfortunately, the KPA cracks down on the cell right as Walker arrives, and although he manages to save Brady, he gets captured. Brady instead heads to the resistance HQ.

Here, he's assumed to be a spy and ends up in the torture chair face-to-face with Dana Moore, one of the resistance leaders. From this point on, Dana is mostly characterised as a frankly psychotic individual whom the resistance can barely control, but they keep her around because she's a talented interrogator. And because her tendency toward sudden bursts of extreme violence makes her ideal for ambushes.

Fortunately, Jack Parrish shows up and stops her with all the nonchalance in the world, barely registering that Brady has been tied up and nearly tortured. This is just a thing Dana does. Parrish, meanwhile, is introduced and continuously characterised as a good man and a good fighter, but not a particularly charismatic fellow. He's the first to advocate rescuing Walker, because if he has to do any talking or hold any speeches himself, they're screwed.

Eventually they're joined by Sam Burnett, a doctor whose primary concern is providing a foil to both Dana's psychotic nature and Parrish's willingness to do whatever it takes. Burnett largely only involves himself with the resistance in order to provide medical care via his network of clinics and to talk them out of some of their more drastic plans that might result in collateral damage.

So we have a decent core of characters, with others on the side. This is a big win over the first game, because there's very frequent chatter, particularly over the radio. In addition to this, the story is often told through cutscenes with tertiary information provided through journal entries that can be found throughout the game world.

Honestly? It's compelling. You really do get the feeling that these are very different people who, ordinarily, might never have met eachother, let alone gotten along. It's also solidly established that some of them, such as Parrish and Burnett, would have been in entirely different situations if not for the ongoing war, and Dana most definitely would never have been given any position of authority if not for her usefulness in the current SHTF scenario.

It should also be mentioned that there is a DLC that explores the events following the main game, but I never played it. The DLC apparently also features a voice actor for Brady, which I think is fitting. In retrospect, he probably shouldn't have been made a silent protagonist, especially considering how chatty everybody else is.

[SPOILERS]

I'll try and make this short:
Walker breaks under torture, prompting Parrish to step up and try to fill his shoes despite his self-avowed lack of charisma or oratory skills. He gets shot up pretty badly, but he survives and ends up in a wheelchair.

Dana learns empathy from her involvement in the resistance and from witnessing the sacrifices of others. She gives up her life to destroy a goliath blocking the advance of the resistance in the final act of the game, effectively redeeming her previously psychotic personality and behavior.

Burnett eventually leaves the resistance due to conflicting ideologies and opinions on how best to resist the Korean occupation of America. He instead focuses his efforts on evacuating people from danger zones and continuing to set up clinics for both combatants and civilians.

In the end, KPA air superiority is broken. Also, from what I can tell, the aforementioned DLC features a rescue operation of Walker as well as the destruction of the KPA satellite network and subsequent NATO involvement in the conflict.

[Pros]

- Solid FPS experience

- Flat improvement across the board over its predecessor

- The story is fairly decent

- The revolution actually feels like a revolution

- The KPA feels like a credible threat

[Cons]

- It can be a bit janky

- Certain elements are introduced or hinted at but not used to their fullest extent

- The story is, frankly, a little silly, even if it tries to play itself off as serious

- If you're North Korean, this is not the game for you

- Multiplayer is dead and should never have been added in the first place

[Conclusion]

Homefront: The Revolution is absolutely worth your time. It's not the longest game in the world, even if you go for 100% completion, but it's a solid little experience that'll draw you in if you give it a chance. And I'd be lying if it wasn't a little cathartic getting to play a game of "hippity hoppity get off my property" with the KPA.
If you want out of this hell, we're gonna have to fight our way out. Moral compass optional.

[Score]

7/10

/DUX

Homefront AKA Blandfront

 [Introduction]

Homefront is a 2011 FPS. Here's how it sells itself:
- Discover a terrifyingly plausible near-future world
- Fight for a cause
- Witness the human cost of war
- Experience explosive FPS gameplay
- Take the battle online
It sounds exciting, right?

[First Impressions]

Well, it's not all that exciting. Turns out that was all mostly just marketing clout. The "terrifyingly plausible" setting strikes me as extraordinarily unlikely, although I guess they were right about the global pandemic originating in Asia. You don't really get a good sense of your cause beyond "FREE MURICA," the gameplay is hardly explosive and the multiplayer is dead. I guess you do witness the human cost of war though, but don't expect Spec Ops: The Line here.

[Development]

Homefront was developed by Kaos Studios and published by THQ. It's supposedly largely based on Kaos' previous game, Frontlines: Fuel of War, but was intended to be more cinematic and character-driven, with greater focus on telling a story. More on how that went later. Additionally, Kaos has claimed that the gameplay was at least partially inspired by Half-Life 2, but I find that hard to believe given the final product.

Most curiously, a unified Korea wasn't even the original antagonist. It was supposed to be China. However, the risk of being excluded from the Chinese market was deemed undesirable, so the story was changed. That, and one other thing:

It was decided that China, due to the mutual interdependence of the American and Chinese economies, it wouldn't be "scary enough" to have China be the enemy. This sounds kinda weak to me. China, interdependent economy or no, strikes me as a far more believable threat than a unified Korea. Just admit you didn't wanna lose out on Chinese revenue, Kaos, come on.

Of course, Kaos can't exactly admit that anymore, given that the studio shut down following the release of Homefront. Some have even argued that Homefront directly caused a 26% drop in THQ's stock, resulting in THQ shutting them down.

[Game Mechanics]

Grab gun, shoot bad man. Occasionally use targeting device for Goliath to shoot rockets at enemy vehicles or use your own vehicle to shoot bad man. That's about the extent of Homefront's gameplay.

It's a bog standard FPS of its era. You have 2 guns and regenerating health. You do also have a selection of various guns, but frankly they all feel the same. Any SMG is like any other SMG. Any assault rifle is like any other assault rifle. Pistols get used like twice and only because the game forces you to, otherwise there's literally no reason to keep one handy.

Some weapons have secondary fire modes, like underslung grenade launchers or shotguns, but those are rare. The Goliath targeter only becomes available when Goliath is around, and Goliath is only around when enemy vehicles appear and only for about half the game.

It's serviceable, but bland. If you've played literally any modern FPS in a similar vein to, say, Battlefield or Call of Duty, then you've already experienced Homefront in all but name.

Vehicle sections are either on rails or in the air, and there's only one section in the air. If you expect that section to be anything like actually flying a helicopter, you'll be disappointed, because it handles more like a flying car that can look in any direction. Hell, you can look down while hovering in the air. Also, turning feels like the helicopter is drunk.

[Graphics]

The game really hasn't aged particularly well.
It wasn't all that impressive for a 2011 title. I'd say it's about on par with CoD4 (which was released 4 years prior), but honestly, it might be a bit worse. Point is, it was more or less passable on release, but it's not gonna be winning any beauty pageants today.

Also, you might notice a lack of attention to detail sometimes. For example, after Hopper gives you the targeting device for Goliath, he still has it strapped to his backpack for some reason. Probably an oversight, but still.

[Story]

Here's the rundown establishing the setting:
North Korea tests more nukes. The UN places sanctions on North Korea. Kim Jong-Il dies in 2011 and his son, Kim Jong-Un takes over. Incidentally, this game was released before he actually did die in December of 2011.

In 2013, Kim Jong-Un somehow manages to unite North and South Korea, forming the Greater Korean Republic. 2015, Saudi Arabia and Iran are at war, which causes collateral damage to oil pipelines, directly resulting in a global fuel shortage, hitting the United States particularly hard. Gas prices rise beyond 20 dollars per gallon.

2017, the US dollar crashes hard, resulting in widespread civil unrest. Concurrently, a war in Asia is going very poorly, and after the US retreats, Japan surrenders to Korea. Fast forward to 2022, and the economical situation in the US is now so bad that the federal government has ordered a freeze on all bank withdrawals.

Incidentally, around this time, an Asian bird flu epidemic goes global and spreads across the world, killing at least 6 million in the United States alone. Ironically, this prompts Mexico to close the border. Onward to 2024 and Korea has been steadily annexing countries in Asia along the Pacific coast.

And then Korea launches a satellite.
A satellite armed with an EMP device.
An EMP device aimed squarely at the continental United States.
Needless to say, the ensuing total destruction of the electrical grid results in total societal collapse.

Afterwards, Korea invades Hawaii, followed by San Francisco. From here on out, they spread across the rest of the US, sweeping across the nation from coast to coast. The US military is reduced to fighting what amounts to a guerrilla war against the Korean occupation forces.

This is all just in the game's intro, of course. The rest of the game is spent as Robert Jacobs, a former pilot for the USMC, who gets drafted by the Resistance. They do this by ramming a prison bus, killing everyone inside except for Jacobs himself. This includes other American pilots and marks the beginning of the game throwing god-awful plans at the player and expecting us to just accept them.

Other nonsensical moments is resistance fighters running into friendly artillery fire, attacking heavily guarded strongholds and apparently not expecting correspondingly heavy casualties and, perhaps most egregiously, planning to take out enemy AA guns... by flying in with unarmored helicopters. This is not an exhaustive list, but consider yourself warned.

The resistance cell is composed of Connor, Rianna, Hopper and Boone. There are others, but few of them have names and none of them really matter. Boone is a former police officer, Hopper is a Korean-American hackerman, Rianna is a woman and Connor is a rabidly patriotic American with a Gadsden Flag shirt.

Most of them aren't really particularly well-characterised. Boone doesn't have much screen time, but there is a sort of hamfisted attempt to make him appear like the voice of reason, a foil to Connor's aggression. Hopper just comes across as a nerd with zero situational awareness. Rianna swings between being opposed to the use of stuff like white phosphorus and not really caring.

And then there's Connor. Connor is a very angry man. He also seems to be the only one who's really emotionally involved in the resistance movement. His character isn't exactly deep, but given that he's the most vocal of your little resistance club, he does get established much better than the others. He's reckless, he's proud and his only real concern is the liberation of the United States, no matter the cost.

It gets established fairly early on that your goal is to get fuel for the US military. The plan to acquire this fuel involves Jacobs, hence why the resistance broke him out. Don't think that this is really part of any greater story though, because all that really happens is that you acquire the fuel and get it to the military. It all happens in about 3-4 hours of playtime, and that's including the frequent attempts by the game to slow you down.

[SPOILERS]

Boone dies in a Korean raid despite having previously survived being shot in the gut by a 20mm rotary cannon. Frankly, I'm surprised anything could kill him at all. The idyllic little settlement that you were introduced to in the briefest of moments is gone, but it's hard to care, because you were there only once and only for all of 5 minutes.

Hopper, miraculously, never gets killed by angry Americans for being Korean, despite allusions to the fact that it has happened elsewhere.

Rianna survives unscathed and just as uninteresting as she was before.

Connor, pretty fittingly, commits a suicide bombing by proxy when he runs into a Korean tank column with a flare, providing a target for an airstrike.

In the end, the game fades to black with an American victory in the battle, if not the war. There are implications that Europe will help the United States and that this marks a turning point.

[Pros]

- As an FPS, it works perfectly fine

- There's a few moments that might stand out as exciting and engaging

[Cons]

- As an FPS, it does literally nothing to innovate or stand out in any way

- The vast majority of the game is pretty uninteresting

- The story makes absolutely no sense whatsoever

- Attempts at banter and characterisation largely fall flat

- Very linear gameplay, may as well be on rails

- It's very short; chances are you won't spend more than 3-4 hours on it

- Multiplayer is deader than Kim Il-Sung and Kim Jong-Il combined

- May have killed its developers

[Conclusion]

What we have here is a perfectly bland and inoffensive FPS. Well, unless you're North Korean, then you might take issue with dozens upon dozens of your countrymen, who are actual professional soldiers, being killed in droves by a handful plebs with guns.
Get it on sale, if you must. Moral compass optional.

[Score]

4/10

/DUX

Endless Space 2, the dust must flow

 [Introduction]

Another 4X game, you know the drill. You're gonna be exploring, expanding, exploiting and exterminating. Unlike Stellaris, neither expansion nor extermination are really optional this time, because playing tall isn't viable and conflict is inevitable. Incidentally, you shouldn't expect this to be an experience similar to Stellaris. It'll probably hamstring your learning curve pretty badly.

[First Impressions]

Wow, this isn't Stellaris!
That might be painfully obvious to some, but unlike you, I didn't have someone around to tell me that I shouldn't expect this to be an experience similar to Stellaris and that it'll probably hamstring my learning curve pretty badly. Instead, I ended up not liking the game very much, and it took several tries for me to actually get into it.

[Development]

There's not much to say.

To the extent of my knowledge, Endless Space 2 had a pretty uneventful development cycle. The only really noteworthy element is that the developers have continually improved the game for 4 years. 5 if you count its initial year in early access.

Good job, Amplitude.

[Game Mechanics]

The game plays fairly simply. More simply than you'd think, really. You select a race, set up a galaxy and you start the game. You start off with 1 colonized planet in a randomized solar system at a random location in the galaxy. You might be able to colonize some of the other planets in the system if you're lucky, but this will frequently not be the case.

From here, you send out ships to explore the systems connected to yours. Eventually, you will be sending ships into other constellations as well. Generally speaking, depending on your galaxy setup, you'll most likely have 2 factions per constellation. Whether or not you'll get along with them is up to whether or not they're a warlike faction like cravers, but make no mistake, even the lumeris will stab you in the back if it benefits them.

As you explore, you'll want to colonize. As you colonize, you'll want to improve infrastructure. As you build, you'll want to keep the economy balanced and healthy. This should be fairly easy to grasp, it's not rocket science. Positive income good. Negative income bad.

Exploration may also yield the discovery of minor factions in addition to player or AI factions. These minor factions will never expand beyond their system, or even the single colonized planet in that system, and largely exist to serve as allies or beneficiaries of players and AI. In broad strokes, you have 3 choices: befriend them, absorb them or destroy them, although do bear in mind that simply keeping them as friends leaves them open to being absorbed by others.

To acquire new ships and planetary colonization, you need to research technology first. The same is true for ship components and planetary infrastructure, not to mention diplomatic options and even additional research. Also, the more tech you research, the more research points are required to unlock the next one, so keep those eggheads funded.

Speaking of funding, to carry out research (and do anything at all) your empire mainly relies on 5 things: food, industry, dust, science and influence. FIDSI, for short. Food obviously feeds your people and helps population growth. Industry represents your industrial output. Dust is your money. Science is a measure of your sum total nerd power. And, finally, influence represents your galactic hype and political clout. The more influence you have, the more complex laws you can pass and the more diplomatic decisions you can make.

Diplomacy is fairly straight forward. You can form science agreements, trade agreements, alliances, peace treaties, that sort of stuff. It's not terribly advanced, but it's encompassing enough that there's nothing vital missing from there. You can even trade systems if you so desire, which always struck me as a necessary option in a game like this.

Going back a bit, laws are faction modifiers that affect your entire empire. They cost influence to maintain, but can also provide some serious buffs. The bigger the buff, the more influence it costs. Which laws are available depends on the political makeup of your government and how long the parties have been in charge. For example, a pacifist government that has been in power for 3 election cycles will have more advanced legislation available than an industrialist government that has only recently been elected.

Other boosts to your empire come from heroes. Heroes are people who have somehow deliberately or accidentally been exposed to dust. Yeah, remember dust, the currency of the setting? It's actually a self-replicating swarm of nanomachines that can also drastically improve the physical and mental capabilities of anyone infused with it. Wild stuff.

Anyway, heroes can be assigned to fleets or systems. As they level up, they gain access to a fairly wide array of skills. The skills are always divided into 3 sections, 1 of which is available to all heroes. The remaining 2 depend on the hero's class and background. For example, a united empire guardian will have different skillsets than a lumeris overseer. Depending on their political affiliation, they might also provide additional bonuses if their party is in power.

Speaking of power: power is usually projected via fleets. Fleets are, of course, made up of ships, all of which are customisable to a satisfactory extent. Don't get too excited, however, because combat is pretty simple and uninvolving. All you really do is choose fleet composition, ship loadout and what strategy to use in battle. The same is true for ground combat, except you only get to decide army composition and strategy.

This is getting lengthy, so I'll wrap up this section the same way the game does: victory. What is victory? Victory is a multiple choice quiz. How would you like to win? Amass a staggering amount of wealth? Uncover the secrets of the Endless? Just be the last man standing? Simply be the best? There's a variety of options open to you, and some factions are better suited for certain goals. Cravers, for instance, are uniquely well-suited for killing all opposition, while the lumeris have an edge in terms of an economic victory.

[Graphics]

It's quite a pretty game.
The battles may not be very engaging, but the environment they take place in certainly tends to be. It's kind of a shame that there's no real point to watch battles take place unless you just wanna take some screenshots.

Other than that, the game is gifted with a fairly intuitive UI that never really got confusing for me. Good job all around. The only thing really worth noting is that the animation, due to having been animated from a still picture, sometimes looks a bit silly.

It also warrants mentioning that, gorgeous artwork aside, there's some real interesting designs in here when it comes to characters, factions and races.

Oh, and the explosions in combat kinda just... look like ships are exploding into wood splinters.

[Story]

Long story short short story short, the Endless were a precursor species who used to inhabit the galaxy. As in, all of it. They were everywhere. Until they weren't. What happened to them? We're not sure, but it involved a civil war between the Virtual Endless and the Concrete Endless.

Apparently the Virtual Endless figured out how to upload their consciousness to machines, which the Concrete Endless found repulsive. So naturally their entire society split down these partisan lines and a war broke out.

Now, being the ultra advanced aliens that they were, the Endless had access to a ridiculously huge arsenal of insane weaponry. Entire planets were scoured of life as bio-weapons and WMDs were unleashed en masse with the same casual disregard one might have when stepping on an ant. The Virtual Endless even created the cravers, a cyborg hive mind whose sole purpose was to strip planets for resources, turn those resources into ships and use those ships to transit between hostile systems and blow up anything stopping them from consuming more worlds.

But this was so long ago that the Endless are, at best, a weird myth to most people. Instead, the game's story is largely player-dependent. Each faction gets to go through its own special questline during which a variety of choices will become available, each of which provide different outcomes both in terms of reward and story progression.

Eventually the leader of a place called The Academy, Isyander, will start getting involved. His involvement works similarly, except only a few factions can reap the rewards, but each quest will reveal more of Isyander's agenda regardless of outcome.

Eventually, Isyander's true goal becomes clear and the player must choose to either side with him or stand against him. What exactly occurs at the end of it all is left pretty vague, but is heavily implied to either maintain the current existential status quo of the galaxy or change everything, although it's unknown whether it's for better or for worse. Isyander doesn't seem to care. Either way, which ending you get to Isyander's story is entirely dependent on who wins the conflict he began.

[SPOILERS]

There really aren't any to speak of.

I guess it was kinda surprising to me that the Endless aren't all gone. During the craver questline, you end up finding one of the Virtual Endless. It's actually a pretty neat interaction. It was interesting seeing how the cravers deal with the presence of one of their old masters, and how they react to his initial powerlessness.

There's your spoiler.

[Pros]

- Fairly easy to get into

- Game pace is modifiable; in fact the game is highly customisable in general

- Killer soundtrack

- Gorgeous artwork

- Active developers

- DLC is largely optional

- Compelling 4X gameplay, although some might consider it bog standard

[Cons]

- There's a very real risk you might become a simp for the fish waifu

- If you expect something similar to Stellaris, you'll be disappointed

- Replay value can be limited unless you're looking for competitive play

- DLC is largely optional

- There's an entire DLC that makes the game worse; >>DO NOT BUY AWAKENING!<<

[Conclusion]

It should be noted that I played this without any DLC. The game is perfectly fine in its vanilla state, but whatever you do, do not get Awakening. I'm not being facetious. It's about 13 bucks you can pay to make the game worse. The Academy becomes a faction and it's very hostile and very powerful from the get go. If you fight them, you'll face pretty significant disadvantages, because Isyander will hate you.
DO NOT BUY AWAKENING. Moral compass optional.

[Score]

8/10

/DUX, loyal subject of Emperor Zelevas

The Stanley Parable, a parable about narratives and subversion of expectations

 [Introduction]

The Stanley Parable sells itself as a "first person exploration game," while others have described it as both an interactive drama and a walking simulator. I suppose the former is true, albeit ironically overdramatic, while the latter just strikes me as derisive. Let's call it an experience.
The Stanley Parable is an experience.

[First Impressions]

Taken at face value, this is a fairly short game in which you follow a short sequence of instructions leading you along a narrative path. However, it won't take long to notice the presence of choices. Sure, the narrator will tell you to take a certain path, but what if you choose a different path?
Therein lies the first spark of intrigue: the introduction of options. This may seem fairly mundane, particularly these days, but once you realise the narrator is a character with whom you can disagree, things start getting interesting.

[Development]

Released in 2013, what would become The Stanley Parable (the game) actually started out as The Stanley Parable (the mod). More specifically, it was a Half-Life 2 mod which was made back in 2011, and while that's already long enough ago to make you ponder the fact that 10 years have passed since then and now, the idea for the mod was born as early as 2008.

Back then, Davey Wreden played a bunch of games and considered how story elements would typically be implemented. By and large, things were really rather linear insofar as storytelling was concerned, and he decided to not only change that, but turn it on its head entirely. So much so that his design document was centered around the concept of messing with the player's head.

So he did. Inspired at least in part by the somewhat more complicated story presentation of BioShock, where nothing should be taken at face value, Wreden began working on a mod for Half-Life. A little thing like knowing precisely diddly squat about the Source Engine didn't stop him; he just taught himself, albeit with the assistance of wikis and forums.

Considering that the finished product was entirely born from his own labor, with the sole exception of Kevan Brighting's outstanding voice acting, it turned out to be an impressive mod, if short. In fact, the shortness was deliberate, so as to promote exploration of the many endings available to the player. Avoiding a lengthy experience makes it far more feasible to see them all.

Eventually, due to the staggering success of the mod, it even became a full-fledged standalone game. How? Through the magic of player contribution. Specifically the player contribution of one William Pugh, who had not only played and enjoyed The Stanley Parable, but also won a Saxxy Award.

Combining their talents, Wreden and Pugh set about collaborating to create the aforementioned standalone game. While the intent was initially to just recreate the mod as a game, it evolved into something more when they began adding more content to the game, including a variety of new endings. They even threw the previous deliberate shortness out of the window for the Art ending, which takes round about 4 hours to get. I'd just watch the ordeal on Youtube if I were you.

At the end of the day, it's a wonderful little story of a thought becoming a mod, which in turn became a game. It's one of the good things coming out of Steam Greenlight, and stuff like this made that experiment worth all the other dross we got. Like diamonds in a stream of sewage.

[Game Mechanics]

It's really rather simple.
After the intro cutscene, you take control of Stanley in his office and you're prompted by the narrator to go look for your missing coworkers. You walk using the WASD keys and interact with objects with E or left clicking. You can crouch with control, but frankly there's no real point to doing so. There's no jumping or anything else of the sort. Beyond moving around and clicking on stuff, you've got nothing, which is really rather appropriate for a character like Stanley.

The only other game mechanic to speak of is making choices. At various intersections in the story's narrative, you'll be presented with choices, usually two, but sometimes more, and they're not always readily apparent.

[Graphics]

It looks fine.
It's a 2013 Source Engine title.
There's no likelihood of the game winning any awards for being stunningly beautiful, but neither is it gonna get hung out for being hideous. It's passable. It's okay. You're not here for the visual feast.

[Story]

This is a story about you.
This is a story about Stanley.
Stanley goes to work, sits in his office, presses buttons and goes home. Until he doesn't. One day, his coworkers disappear, and the narrator prompts him to investigate, which he does. Until he doesn't.

Depending on your choices, a variety of things can happen. Maybe Stanley follows along with the narrator's story. Maybe Stanley doesn't. Maybe Stanley starts interacting directly with the narrator while the story breaks down. Maybe Stanley ditches the narrator entirely.

The story is neither long nor complicated, but it is interesting. The fact that the player, Stanley and the narrator (and the other narrator, I guess) are the only characters with any real presence in the game means that every interaction in the game usually revolves around them in some way, shape or form.

Chances are you won't be blown away by the story, certainly not today, but rest assured that there are some fairly groundbreaking concepts on display here, considering it was conceptualised before 2011. Even today, I'd still say it provides an unusual enough experience to warrant a closer look.

The most common theme is subversion of expectations, as well as the exploration of the nature of narratives. There are indirect questions about what makes a proper story, what makes a proper game, what constitutes a choice. Does it have to be meaningful to count as a choice, or can meaningless choices be thrown to the wayside?

It even dips into a rather philosophical examination of Stanley's life at one point, which might be used as a context for examining the notion of whether working a stable but boring 9-5 job is a fulfilling life.

[SPOILERS]

Curiously, one of the endings indicates that the narrator never expected there to be a player at all, instead being unaware that anyone was controlling Stanley. Another ending introduces a second narrator, who serves a more expositional role, where it's established that the narrator needs Stanley as much as Stanley needs the narrator.

There appears to be an implication that neither can function without the other, and both are oblivious to the presence of the third party, namely the player. It gets sorta meta, but one interpretation could be that for a game to be a game, there must be at least 3 elements: the narrator to provide a story, the character to provide a means of interaction, and the player to use the character to interact with the story.

The first of the aforementioned endings even shows us what happens when the player is taken out of the loop: Stanley just stands there, motionless, while the narrator attempts to get him to do something.

[Pros]

- Fighting the narrator is an interesting addition

- It's a fun little game

- Decent replayability that doesn't require much commitment

[Cons]

- Fairly short

- Bit pricey

- Something of a niche experience

[Conclusion]

For what it is, it's a little pricey at 15 bucks on Steam, so unless you're dead set on experiencing The Stanley Parable, you might want to wait for a sale. Until a sale happens, you can always try the free demo; it can be found on the game's Steam store page. 
Come, Stanley, our destiny awaits! Moral compass optional.

[Score]

8/10

/DUX