A Review of Machinarium, by Amanita Design

Review by Adam Fimio

Amanita Design, creators of Samarost and Samarost 2 have released their latest title.  Machinarium is an all new adventure, making use of the same point-and-click mechanics, but taking place in a metropolis inhabited by robots.

The art design follows the tradition of Machinarium’s spiritual predecessors and exceeds both titles notably.  Every screen appears to be hand drawn, and lovingly detailed.  Amanita has constructed an ancient clockwork world for a collection of forgotten automatons.  The robot denizens are whimsical and endearing: if ASIMO had this much it-factor going for him, there would be one under every Christmas tree this holiday season.

Drop Right In

As you start the game, you’re dropped in a trash heap.  You’ll need to move your cursor around the screen to find points you can interact with.  First things first:  Get back your missing limbs!  There is no immediate explanation of what led to your being deposited out the back of a flying refuse bin, nor is any reason to progress presented to you (other than wanting your limbs back) at first.  To proceed to the next screen, figure out the one you’re on.  Get used to that setup!

Riddle Me This…

The game is one giant string of puzzles.  Some of them are deceptively straightforward.  Others will have you banging your head on the wall.  Fortunately, the game offers you one hint per screen (which tells you what you need to accomplish, if not how to make it happen).  If you really get stuck, play through the hint book mini-game located at the top-right of the screen.  Make sure to study the diagrams well:  once you close the book, you’ll need to play through the mini-game again to see those same hints, which can get a little tedious.  The ability to carry items seems like a good idea, but any items you collect will eventually be expended in pursuit of conquering the latest head-scratcher.  No trophies for you!

Out, Damn Plot!

Once you’ve cleared a few areas, you encounter the story’s antagonists.  They are three school-yard bullies who used to enjoy tormenting your character when he was young, stealing trinkets, smashing musical instruments, etc, but have now made the logical leap to plotting to blow up city hall (??).  All you need to know is that they are jerk-bots, and must be stopped.  Along the way, you must save the damsel.  Even robots gotta save the damsel.  The pictorial explanation animations that come from other characters are adorable and enjoyable to watch, but sadly, there isn’t a lot of depth to be found in this tale.

And I…Am…Outta Here!

The game is certainly longer than any of Amanita’s previous creations, but its overall length is totally determined by your ability to figure out the various puzzles in the game (most of which are really ingenious).  The ending just sort of…happens.  It fits the rest of the story’s tone, but lacks enough oomph to feel like you’ve been rewarded for your efforts.  There are no bonus items to be found (at least to my knowledge) and as the puzzles and solutions are mainly static, there is little reason to play the game again, save for revisiting the astounding visuals.

This is a great game for puzzle fanatics!  They will be rewarded with the next gorgeous stage, and the next frustrating quandary.  However, if you’re the type who has ever managed to get stuck in a Chinese finger trap, you might want to pass on Machinarium.

Machinarium – created by Amanita Design

Try out the demo

or

• Get Machinarium for PC Now
• Get Machinarium for Mac Now

Cost – $19.99 USD

Editor’s Note: Today we bust out a two-handed weapon for reviewing Runic Games’ highly anticipated release “Torchlight,” one of the critical darlings from the last E3 Games Expo. One opinion, in this case, just couldn’t be enough, so check out the back-to-back first impressions below:

Torchlight – developed by Runic Games

Impressions –by Adam Fimio@IndieGameReviewer.com

Torchlight is a single-player hack, slash and blast adventure that has already turned a few heads.  At E3 2009 people raved about its pick-up-and-go gameplay, and its slick and stylish graphics. So how does the finished game play?

Check Out All The Fabulous Looking Creepy Stuff!

The art design is easily one of the more appealing features of this game.  The town is colorful, yet heavily shaded and moody.  The dungeons (randomly generated, I might add) start off twisted, ragged and weird, only to get more bizarre as the secrets of the great mine start to unravel. Even the title screen and character creation interfaces are highly sleek, with crisp, steampunk-esque artwork that seems to come from a place between World of Warcraft and Open Realms.

Torchlight Screenshots and Concept Art:

To Slam, To Scram, or To Alakazam?

Players can select from three character classes at the start of the game.  Destroyers are large, brutish warriors who speak with their fists and weapons.  Vanquishers are quick and lithe, using ranged attacks and setting traps for their foes.  Alchemists use powerful magical blasts to strike from afar, and can summon creatures to fight alongside them.

I started my campaign into the world of Torchlight, selecting an Alchemist as my hero (being a big fan of the Elric Brothers).  I selected a dog as my faithful companion (because cats have their own agendas) and ventured into the hapless burg.

Welcome!  Say, Did You Happen to Bring an Army?

Torchlight is a mining town built over the largest deposit of Ember (a magical and deadly substance) ever to be found.  The town is aptly named, seemingly shrouded with a ghastly pall that never quite lets in the daylight.  It sets the mood of the game nicely.  You’re not 10 steps in before you’ve met with your first quest-giving NPC.

He won’t be the last either.  Torchlight is inhabited by numerous troubled denizens, each promising rewards for completing the tasks they can’t take on themselves.  The main quest will take you about 20 hours to complete, but there are side-quests galore, including an “Infinite Dungeon” to tackle, for those who just can’t stop leveling.

Lemon Squeezy

Once you enter the mines, the fight is on.  You’ll encounter enemies in almost no time.  You can root yourself in place by holding down the Shift key, and by moving the cursor over enemies, you can dispatch them with your weapons or skills (by clicking the left or right mouse mutton, respectively).  It’s deceptively easy.  The first few mobs are little threat, but before long you’ll be surrounded by swarms of ghouls and spiders.  Throw in some gigantic baddies and some notorious monsters (with notorious loot to boot!) and you’d better make sure all of your many buckles are fastened, because this is going be a bumpy ride.  Familiarize yourself with the quick cast slots at the bottom of the interface.  Learn to heal yourself on the fly or you’ll find yourself flat on your back before long.

Stuffing Your Stuff

The character menus are simple to use.  Switching equipment is a snap, and the ability to send your pet to town with excess items to sell at market is a nice touch that will save you from using too many Town Portal spells.  Just be cautious when you decide to send your pet off!  You could find yourself surrounded by goblins, and short two able sets of claws.  Take advantage of companion NPC’s, but try to avoid opening menus until you’re sure there are no nearby threats.  Companions like to run ahead to the next visible mob without provocation, and there’s nothing worse than getting clubbed in the middle of allocating your latest skill point.

Even in my brief time with the game, I discovered a wealth of enchanted weapons, and even encountered a couple of rare items.  My one complaint is that the armor items all looked identical, although I imagine they will change up later in the adventure when more powerful items are discovered.  Socketed weapons and armor will allow you to add crystals, bestowing magical effects on the selected item.  If you find a fishing hole on your journey, take some time out from hacking and slashing to stock up on tasty fish.  Your catches will have buff effects for you and many for your pet as well.

What’s Your Game?

Torchlight will strike Diablo players as instantly familiar, and with good reason:  Many of the developers and leads from Diablo and Diablo 2 have lent their talents to the single-player game.  Easy to jump into, with customization methods and challenges to satisfy the über-grinder  for hours on end, Torchlight will prove to be a fun time-waster for some, and a richly rewarding challenge for more dedicated players.

Here is the PAX Trailer for Torchlight

A Second Opinion of Torchlight

By Indie-Game-Freak

Here to Please
From the outset it is is easy to see that the developers of Torchlight set out to create the ultimate fantasy action game, drawing on the three quarter top-down view of Baldur’s Gate, Diablo or Heroes of Might and Magic to the familiar HUD of World of Warcraft, with spells assignable to a row of ten slots that can be triggered by their corresponding numbers on the keyboard.  They have added the idea of Fame to the mix – another word for renown – that accumulates as you complete certain quests and heroic deeds.  Also there is the ever addictive option to visit Duran the Transmuter who will combine items and fashion them into a resultant new treat, something that from my memory recalls Oblivion’s item combination scheme.  Although the increasingly ubiquitous Steampunk aesthetic can be felt in the character design, it isn’t clear why; there are no references to mechanical men, or steam machines or even and Conan Doyle-ish society.  Here it probably makes an appearance because it just looks cool.

Take A Good Look Around, Or Not

The graphics are terrific, so much so that the constraints of the camera angle feel a bit claustrophobic at first as you crane your neck around in vain in order to see it all.  Eventually, as I suspected, you just get used to it and go with the flow, but not being able to circle the camera around to check into obscured corners is a bit of a letdown.  Instead the designers elected to created an X-Ray view of your character when back into an invisible section of the map.

Starting out the game at the normal difficulty level proves a little too easy.  A single hit from your character send pretty much anything it encounters within the first five levels of the dungeon into an explosion of red.  But when the monsters do start piling on the game starts to get fun, even if only for a moment.

Load times between zones feels a little slow, even on a Quad Core with 4 gigs of RAM.  Interestingly enough, there is a switch in the settings window for Netbook compatibility – a rather forward-thinking feature for which Runic gets brownie points.  The author wonders, however, what a such a graphics-loving game might look like on a three-hundred dollar Asus.

What Is All This Stuff?

Dealing with inventory in Torchlight, is also a bit frustrating; items with rather a broad range of stats too often use identical graphics and so it is hard to determine which is which.  The pathfinding for player NPCs can get a little squirrelly, and you companion NPCs, over which you have no control, like to barge into battle, when they aren’t getting stuck behind objects in an attempt to get back to you.  Similarly line of sight issues can become a nuisance as you try to blast baddies only to find that your attacks are merely repainting the corner of a wall.

This could be solved by making enemies targetable, perhaps in the same way that you could TAB between targets in WoW, but here, the TAB key (which is not customizable) toggles between a selectable attack function.  Battles themselves are essentially point and click affairs, with the exception of selecting what spell to cast or what weapon to use.  But to be fair, this is an action game and not an RTS.  It will be very interesting to see how this feels as a multiplayer experience.  A nice touch, however, is that the distance to your target makes a notable difference in the amount of damage dealt.  You can also graze a target as opposed to always making a direct hit, and the closer you get, the bigger the bloodsplosion can be.

Fishing is another thing to do in the World of Torchlight, and feels very similar to doing the same in WoW – you cast your line, wait for a nibble and yank the line only to be rewarded with one of a wide variety of fish, each of which can be fed to your pet and grant it brief but powerful new abilities for example catching an electric eel gives your pet an Electric Elemental bump.

I wrote to the devs about a few small things that didn’t seem to work or be present.  For example, it is rumored that when your pet’s inventory (essentially your pet is a saddle bag with teeth) is full, you can click a green arrow to send it back to town and dump your stuff.  I could never locate said green arrow, although apparently, my compatriot, who wrote the review above, found it without difficulty.  I even went back to double check it but could not find said feature.

Certain items, like magic and healing potions are stackable, but I couldn’t find a way to split stacks.

Where Have I Heard That Before?

Finally, I must talk about the music: Matt Uelmen’s score is actually a standout in the game although at times I could swear I heard the theme song to the Batman series that starred Adam West and other times the main theme from Twin peaks by Angelo Badalamenti.  Not that either of these, especially when paired together, is a bad thing.  Ambient, eerie and seductive it is a strong point of the package.

Torchlight is a great looking game, with smooth gameplay that tries to take the best of the genre, but where it succeeds in design, it lacks in mythology.  Beyond the quest for Ember – the source of magic – there is no real telling why you are there nor why should you care.  The multiplayer experience could prove to be quite fun, but nothing really sets this world apart in any new way.  I would recommend it as a new-and-improved version of a very old trick that adds some of the cooler elements of other very successful games, but in so doing only reminds us, by virtue of going only part of the way, that it is a jack of all trades and master of none.

~~~

A few final words about the upcoming massively multiplayer online version of Torchlight, based on notes from the developer:

Key Additions In the MMO Version of Torchlight:

• Expansive World – Large overland areas and deep, randomly generated dungeons offer a
• variety of exploration and adventuring opportunities.
• Customization – The level of character customization is upped significantly in the MMO, with more class choices, looks, and options which allow a truly personalized character.
• Territory Wars – Torchlight will take advantage of precedent set by other Perfect World MMOs and offer weekly battles for territory, with winners receiving significant rewards.
• Mounts – Large variety of mounts to assist in navigating the world.
• PvP – Torchlight will give PvP fans a variety of constructs to determine just who the mightiest warrior in the land is.

Runic has not yet set a release date for the MMO version.

Title: Torchlight
Developer: Runic Games
Available now at Direct2Drive ($19.99 USD).

By Adam Fimio for IndieGameReviewer.com

In 2007, Naughty Dog, makers of Crash Bandicoot (PS) and Jak and Daxter (PS2) released their first title for the Playstation 3 in the way of Uncharted: Drake’s Fortune, and it quickly became recognized as one of the best games that the system had to offer. The game combined the acrobatics and puzzle solving of Tomb Raider with the run-and-gun third person shooter aspects of Gears of War. Many reviews declared that it was the first “killer app” for the console. Two years later, Naughty Dog has released a sequel, even adding a multi-player component (which, admittedly, I haven’t spent any time with). Does this new chapter measure up to its ancestor?

I’d call Uncharted 2: Among Thieves a roller-coaster ride, but I’d be doing the game a grave disservice. Uncharted 2 is more like trying to infiltrate, and then escape a twisted amusement park. It starts as a roller-coaster ride, but at the crest of the first steep hill, heavily armed mercenaries open fire on you. You dispatch most of them, but one gets off a lucky shot, knocking loose one of the bolts holding the wheels on the coaster, forcing you to leap from the car hundreds of feet above the ground. On the way down you barely manage to grasp the railing of the Ferris wheel, thwarting death for a few precious moments. And then the railing gives way. This game makes the giant coasters at Six Flags look like the wheelchair ramps in a retirement community.

Good Lookin’ Out

Without hyperbole, the graphics in Uncharted 2 are among the best on any current generation console. While there is no actual amusement park in the game, the locales are nothing shy of stunning. You will be clambering your way through lush, organic jungles rich in vibrantly colored reactive flora, scaling the sides of immaculately detailed ancient ruins, and ducking for cover in the decimated building edifices amongst the war-torn streets of Nepal.

Drake’s clothing will get wet in accordance with what parts of him touch water (like in Uncharted: Drake’s Fortune), but Naughty Dog has added some highly effective little touches that only help to hammer home the experience of a wild treasure-hunt-gone-wrong. Rotate the camera in on Drake when he’s standing on the top of a building, and you can see his hair blowing in the breeze. Stay standing out in a blizzard and the character model will amass snow that will continue to build up until you can get to cover, and which point the snow will slowly start to melt. Walk up too close to a fire, and Drake will raise his arms to shield his eyes from the heat and the glare.

The game is rife with cinematic sequences, and though some of the transitions aren’t seamless, they are minimal enough to not significantly break up the action. In many instances, you be running to a point in the distance only to be knocked backwards by an explosion or to find a helicopter rising menacingly about the rooftops. These sequences occur with absolutely no break in the flow to speak of.

The story itself is nothing revolutionary: This time around, Nathan Drake has set his sights on the famed Cintamani Stone, which he’s convinced he can find with the help of the ancient writings of Marco Polo, and a couple of stealthy ne’er-do-wells to back him up. Stories say that the stone has mysterious powers, but Drake only cares about its power to make him filthy rich (at first). And as anyone who has ever watched a heist movie knows, any job that looks easy seldom is.

At the same time, another powerful figure is seeking the fabled abilities of the stone for his twisted ideals. So let’s do the rundown:

• Dashing thieves/treasure-hunters.
• Mythical gem worth millions that also houses awesome power.
• Crazed ideologue hoping to use the stone to bolster his savage, expansionist methodology.
• Our hero MUST get to the stone before the villain!!

Tobey Maguire Need Not Apply

Laid out like that, it might seem like the idea has been done to death, but the writers and actors manage to breathe new life into the idiom in Uncharted 2. The dialogue throughout the game is inspired, and there isn’t a single weak link in the vocal cast. Drake, (brilliantly voiced once again by Nolan North) is ever more winsome than in his last adventure. Elena re-appears, and new characters Chloe and Flynn are equally charming and vile, depending on the situation. Sully also returns, and his banter with Nate is nothing shy of uproariously funny.

Sully: “How much you want to bet we’ll find the camp if we follow this hose?”
Drake: “You’re all about following the hose, aren’t you Sully? Remember Montreal?”
Sully: “You’re never gonna let me forget that, are ya?”

Gone are the days when voice actors treat a script for a video game as a second-billing contractual obligation (I’m looking at you, Tobey MacGuire). This is a fantastic cast that helps to create a truly gripping tale of adventure, bravery, romance, deception and even heartache. You won’t know when to gasp and when to laugh. By the end of the game, you’ll be doing both simultaneously (don’t worry…it only hurts at first). Wrap all of this up in a positively inspired musical score, and you’ll be hard pressed to keep yourself from welling up as the end credits roll.

Gameplay

The gameplay is fluid and satisfying. Climbing is remarkably fast-paced and it both looks and feels incredibly natural to see Nate scampering up walls and leaping from roof to roof. The tacked-on Sixaxis balance beam technique from UDF has been nixed, and will not be missed at all. Taking cover behind objects is still highly intuitive, and the ability to upend tables to hide behind when enemies open fire was a nice addition.

There aren’t a great deal of puzzles to solve in Among Thieves, and the ones that are there didn’t hold me up all that long. Marco Polo’s notebook is sort of rammed down your throat when faced with a puzzle, and opening the book goes right to the page containing the cipher required to solve it. The puzzles still look amazing as they’re being solved, but I doubt most players will lose any sleep over solving them.

The companion AI is solid as ever. If you have a partner in tow, they won’t let you do all the dirty work, and you’ll be happy to have them along for some of the larger gun battles. They shoot to kill, and will bring down a few enemy characters, leaving the ammo for you to collect (awwww!) Not that your targets are pushovers by any means! Even in my play-through on medium difficulty, the enemies proved to be resourceful and responsive. I’d find myself focusing in on a cluster of peons I’d pinned down, only to be flanked by an elite mercenary that I didn’t see until it was too late. Later enemies prove to be bullet sponges at times, but at least Naughty Dog has them sporting mercenary armor, making the concept less hard to swallow. Trying to take them out while on the back of a moving train is just plain wicked, but it’s wicked good fun. Oh, and bring a wig, because the final confrontation will likely have you pulling out your hair.

Multiplays and Multiplayer

Uncharted 2 is definitely worthy of multiple replays. It is stacked with a ton of trophies to attain. The treasure hunt is back on again, and there are 100 of them hidden throughout the landscape (101 if you count the Strange Relic, which I TOTALLY stumbled upon by accident). Each one nets you a monetary bonus, and each fifth one nets you a new trophy. After the game is completed once, you can use your bonuses to purchase single-player character skins, specialized weapons, tweaks, cheats, and visual filters. Beating the game on Hard difficulty will unlock Crushing difficulty. I’ve not tried it myself, but considering I only completed the single player campaign on medium, I can only imagine it is not a trek for the faint of heart.

Did I mention that this game has multi-player? Again, it’s not something I’ve yet tried myself, but some have said that the multi-player on its own would have been worthy of a retail release. Once I dive in and tackle this part of the game, I’ll be writing a separate review.

Uncharted 2: Among Thieves builds upon an already amazing title. Everything that made the prequel great is here, and has been expanded upon. I don’t know how Naughty Dog made it possible to better a game like Drake’s Fortune, but they did, and they did so quite handily. My theory is that they used the space reserved by the crappy jet-ski level in the first title. They have created a title that every PS3 owner should pay attention to, because it displays what the guts of the console is capable of. It also gets a tip of the hat from me for being the first game in a LONG time to cause me to utter the words “just one more level” over and over until exhaustion finally got the better of me.

If for whatever reason, you have been on the fence about Uncharted 2, my recommendation is to hop over that fence on the side nearest your local video game store and secure a copy, pronto. If you’ve never played the original, give it a go. It still holds its own as a wonderful adventure game, and will make the backstory in Among Thieves a lot less jarring. If you have played and enjoyed Uncharted: Drake’s Fortune, chances are you have your copy already. For everyone else: this title should not be missed!

Uncharted 2: Among Thieves is available now for the Playstation 3 console