Day Three

After two somewhat disappointing days to start this project off, I wanted to play a game I knew I'd enjoy. I kicked around possibly playing SpaceChem, but that one's a bit taxing on the old noggin and I didn't feel up to it tonight. I considered Peggle, but wanted to think a bit harder than that. Yeah, I play Peggle. All three versions. What of it? There's nothing wrong with an incredibly manly man enjoying a game with rainbows and unicorns all over it. I settled on Frozen Synapse. It's got shotguns and rocket launchers. Probably a hidden level full of naked chicks too. So there.

I fell madly and deeply in love with Frozen Synapse after watching Total Biscuit's WTF is Frozen Synapse. The game instantly reminded me of the original Rainbow Six PC game planning phase and the Shadowrun universe. I played gobs of Shadowrun pen a paper RPG in middle and high school and this is, minus the magic/fantasy elements of Shadowrun, is exactly how I pictured the missions. This game, fifteen years later and completely out of the blue, was giving me flashbacks to games I played with my best friends during my formative years. My wallet didn't stand a chance. The game could have been $60 bucks and I would have paid it with a smile. It was only $24.99, but that's full price and I never pay full price. As a cool bonus/network effect marketing strategy, the game always comes with a free copy to give away to a friend. I sent my best friend and the GM of those Shadowrun sessions the free copy.

Contrary to my experience yesterday with S.T.A.L.K.E.R., Frozen synapse is very well written. It has very little voice acting and therefore you must read the text all by yourself. Despite that, in this case it's not a chore or something I wish to skip past. In between sets of of missions there are even news bits about the impact your actions are having in the game world. Not at all required to play the game, but they add a bit of fun and immersion to it.

The game has another key feature I'm a big fan: moral ambiguity. Clearly the side I'm fighting for thinks they're the good guys, but the writing makes it clear that your side is certainly no white knight. Practical if distasteful alliances are formed. People are blackmailed into cooperation. Civilians are killed. It's very much shades of grey. I love it. It explores all of this grey area through storytelling. There are no Fable or Fallout style ethics you can apply to the game play; it is very much linear. You will fail the missions if you don't meet the predefined objectives. But the story is so well told that I don't really care and I just want to play more to watch it unfold.

I could wax on about this game all night really, but I'll save some things for future posts. I'm heading back to play the game a bit more now.

Below is a short video of one of the levels I played tonight. The game has an easy to use video export feature, so even my lazy ass can post game play without any fancy software to do the capture.

CAUTION: This video may contain spoilers since there are named characters in it. They are not killed (thanks to my undeniably incredible combat planning skill) and just sort of stand there, so there's nothing really spoiled by watching it, but I'd hate to unnecessarily bunch someone's panties over it. Probably best to watch it in 1080 full screen so as not to miss all the detail in the blood splatters.

Games Played:
Frozen Synapse

Achievements:
The game has them, I didn't earn any today