This is a bored office worker.
…or, why Thea cannot seem to finish a game to review. In the weeks leading up to Diablo III, I have been scrambling for a game to tide me over. The little tidbits and snacks fed to us by Blizzard in the countdown to May 15th only go so far. It is a bit like eating one Hershey’s kiss: One is never quite enough, but in this particular instant there are no remaining kisses and only dollar-store chocolate made mostly of plastic.
I snacked on two games recently, neither of which I was able to finish. I set out fully intending to complete the titles and share my wealth of knowledge with all of our faithful readers in the form of reviews. Instead, I’ll leave you with these bite-sized impressions of Closure and Legend of Grimrock.
Closure is a puzzle platformer whose key gameplay mechanic is the play between light and dark. Step out of the light and players will plunge to their deaths. The graphics are what drew me to this game, and the dark mood set by both the ink-like illustrations and spooky tunes were right up my alley. That is, until I started working my way through the puzzles. Fair warning. This game is incredibly difficult. It is more about the puzzles than it is the platforms, so if you like logic games and incredibly challenging word problems, you will probably like this game. For my part, I will probably pick this up every now and again to attempt a puzzle but I can hardly see myself ever getting to the end.
Legend of Grimrock is a first-person dungeoun crawler. This game has a very old-school feel. Players control a party of four criminals who are thrown into a mountain and told to survive. The puzzles, here, are well intigrated but again this game poses some difficulty to players. The controls are at times incredibly frustrating– character motions are controlled with the W-A-S-D keys and the characters attack with mouse clicks. It makes for challenging and frustrating battles. Save points are few and far between, so if one party member bites the dust players are pretty much fucked. Word of advice? Save, and save often. Still, this is a game I do plan on finishing and despite its downfalls has won me over with its old-school charm.
So, there it is. Two bite-sized snacks as we count down the days to May 15th and Diablo III.
