PsychoticCoast

Don't let the yellow circle around the number fool you into thinking this game is only okay; Until Dawn is quite good, it just isn't good enough to warrant a $60 purchase. After reading some of the other reviews, I feel the need to mention a one thing before getting to the review proper: Until Dawn was meant to be a love letter to the horror film genre. To clarify, the characters, the different types of villains, and the setting as a whole were meant to feel familiar and stereotypical. Not unlike Joss Whedon's Cabin in the Woods, Until Dawn isn't really meant to be a standalone experience - you won't enjoy what you're seeing to its fullest if you haven't also seen at least some of the substantial source material. So the player controls 8 teenagers (portrayed by actors who most certainly are not teenagers) as they wander around a spooky house, a sanatorium, and the forest and such surrounding the two locations, picking up things and piecing together what happened at varying points of the mountain's past. The game jumps you from character to character to try and keep the narrative going. The characters have set attributes, as well as relationship meters with all of their friends, and your actions as each character alter how the others perceive you. Choices you make as one character resonate with the others, and change the story. On that note, the "butterfly effect" system the game is so proud of (it even gets its own intro cutscene), isn't as robust as the ones found in the Telltale games, or even that of Chrono Trigger. Supposed recaps of certain situations happened differently during my playthrough than they had when I was playing them. While the consequences were the same, there was an odd disconnect in seeing things that I didn't do work out the same way as the things I actually did. Similar problems arose regarding lines of dialogue that didn't make sense in the context of my actions. Gameplay-wise, most of the game is walking around looking at things and flipping them over. If you've played L.A. Noire, that's honestly the best way to describe it - right down to the over-the-shoulder camera when you pick something up and use the right stick to rotate it. Here, however, is where the most noticeable problem of Until Dawn shows itself: it doesn't control well at nearly any point in time. The game operates on a nearly fixed camera (think Resident Evil, or a Telltale game again), but the right stick is still used to move your character's light source around. Everyone turns too slowly, and the light sources, whatever they may be, are difficult to control, because it's hard to tell whether the game wants you to move the right stick in relation to the camera or the character. I'm pretty sure it changed sometimes, as well. But that's tolerable; the real problem is once the right trigger comes into play. Players use the right trigger (R2) to pick up objects, push buttons, open cabinets, and so on. To push a button, you must hold R2 until the character's finger presses the button, then release R2. To pick up an object and perform an action with it, you must hold R2 to pick it up, and keep R2 held while doing whatever else is required; releasing R2 will cause your character to place the object right where they found it and then just hold their hand in front of it, like they're trying to manipulate it with the Force. Furthermore, for some strange reason, all of the actions that involve movement in one of these R2 sections translate that movement to the right stick, not the left. Anyone who's played just about any 3D game will understand that the right stick is used for camera control, and that this is wrong. These sections appear often, but thankfully aren't usually time-sensitive. In all honesty, however, the thing that really lowered my opinion of the game was the lack of a consistent story in this story-based game. In trying to wrangle all of the horror subgenres into one game, the developers made a story with far too much going on at once; as though they were aware of this, they then sliced away every plot point previously mentioned, and put an entire new one in for the game's last third. With more than half the game involving a series of red herrings, the final, much more action-packed hours lack the tension and interest that was built up for the majority of the game. Furthermore, Until Dawn is, like the horror films it so lovingly emulates, predictable to the extreme. Every plot twist is foreseeable, even after the radical shift in subject matter in the last section of the game. And, as a side note, most of this horror game's "scares" are jump scares that have no context nor significance to the plot at all. Despite these concerns, I still enjoyed Until Dawn, as did my family and girlfriend who all sat down to watch the story unfold. But I think I enjoyed it more than some because I got it for about $30, rather than the full price. Like a bad horror film, rent it, or buy it on sale, and you'll have a good time.

Zenonia is a relatively straightforward RPG for the DSi with some noticeable additions (both good and bad). You play a character named Regret (side note: two-thirds of your primary characters have names that are simply English words, which can make dialog sound a bit bizarre at times), who is searching for his father. Along the way he'll meet the usual host of companions and save the world in the process in some fashion. Visually, this game is well above average (admittedly, I would've thought it more impressive if I hadn't been playing Shantae: Risky's Revenge moments before), however "regret"ably, our main character's sprites during dialog sequences are at best average, at worst atrocious, and occasionally ill-suited to what's being spoken. On a related note, the dialog itself gets the job done, although evidently the writers thoroughly studied the comedic elements of FullMetal Alchemist. For those not in the know, the entire series had an ongoing "Ed is short" joke that was funny the first and MAYBE second time but that reared it's ugly head until maybe the third-to-last episode. What I'm saying is that the humor during the conversations is for the most part like watching a comedy in Latin; you can see the characters making funny (in this case, disturbing) faces, but you have no idea what anybody's saying, so it all just kind of leaves you confused and annoyed that it took that much longer to get a quest. Speaking of which, one of the game's big selling points is quests, and how there's a main quest line along with a side quest. Yes, ONE side quest, because every single quest you get is just "go kill 'x' to get 'y' and bring 'y' back here." Every one of them is a fetch quest (well, not EVERY one of them; some of them just have the "go kill 'x'" part). That said, the quests are fun, and you'll need the money. "Why do you need the money?" You ask? Well, the obvious answer is, "To buy weapons, armor, and potions." But that's not all! Another of the game's little additions (by far the most annoying) is the hunger system. Basically, Regret gets hungry every now and then, so you need to carry food (overpriced food) to feed him, or you "get tired" and can't use skills. Unfortunately, as I soon noticed, Regret appears to have a disorder where the instant he tastes food he gets hungry. I went for almost an hour before my SP bar started shrinking, so I gave my character an apple. Five minutes later, it goes back down again. There is no exact counter for hunger, so I'm not sure if feeding Regret when the SP bar is full will lengthen the time I have or just waste precious food. Furthermore, Regret eats food in real time, so pray he's not hungry during a fight (incidentally, food doesn't restore health--what's with that?) Aside from the hunger system, gameplay in Zenonia is fairly simple. This is good, because it's never explained. You attack with the A button, and you use any skills you've quick-linked (hotkeyed) by holding down L and then pressing either A, Y, B, or X. Pressing X by itself opens your menu (this switches off the music, which can be annoying when just opening it to use a potion--even though the music itself is dull), and start opens the map (virtually useless, as you have a minimap on the bottom screen). The best thing about Zenonia (and the only thing keeping me from giving it a 5) is the clever morality system. Most RPGs nowadays have a morality system (and thus at least two endings), but the moral choices are usually along the lines "Save the orphan baby," or "Take a dump on the orphan baby." Some of the other ones have this immersion-breaking thing where they TELL you just how evil or good your action was (maybe its just me, but in WWII, did a devil-horned frowny-face next to a "+300" appear over a **** head whenever they killed someone?) Zenonia steers clear of both of these and in turn makes, in my opinion, one of the best morality system's I've ever seen. There's one point early-on where one main character is about to kill another main character, and Regret has the choice of saving the latter of the two. I chose to save the main character, and then, later on, discovered she was evil. Checking my morality later, I saw that I was now evil as well. True, there are some "'Save the village' vs. 'Burn it to the ground and laugh'" moments (one particular side-quest asks you to kill some Holy Knights for a demon--guess how that affects your morality?), but, for the most part, I just acted on how I thought was best and went from there. The game doesn't actually tell you if your decision was good or bad, either; you have to check for yourself, which is a plus in my book. All in all, Zenonia is a dish with average meat with bad and good sauces. However, I have to say that overall, it is a surprisingly satisfactory meal.