Day Two

• Game: OlliOlli
• Source: The Humble Indie Bundle 13
• Started: 02/12

I definitely like the idea of OlliOlli, Roll7's Indie throwback to the glory days of skateboard simulators, in which the player's sk8r av8r performs tricks with the merest of button taps while rolling down a 2D side-scrolling course filled with steps, grind rails and other skating game fixtures. It's streamlined in such a way that many of even the more complex tricks require simply performing some variant of a hadoken maneuver with the analog stick (or the D-pad in my case, if we're doing fighter game gestures anyway). The key is to land these tricks accurately, however, which involves pressing the lower face button on your preferred controller just before hitting the ground, which is easily forgotten in the heat of the moment. Any combos that the player pulls off are greatly devalued if the landing isn't performed correctly, generating a "Sloppy!" exclamation and a score that is several magnitudes smaller than it may have otherwise been. Conversely, pinpoint accurate landings (both on the ground, and when crossing to a rail) greatly boosts the player's score instead. Most skater games ask that you risk the most daredevil flips and kicks and holds and then simply land them satisfactorily for the points they accrue, while OlliOlli demands that landing the trick is everything and the rest might as well be showing off.

I feel this philosophy, and the analog stick-focused control scheme in general, is more an homage to EA's Skate series rather than to Neversoft's Tony Hawk's Pro Skater. It's easy to mistake OlliOlli for a game based on the latter, given its vaguely cartoonish presentation (one that reminds me a lot of Semi Secret Software's Canabalt, or Konami's Tomena Sanner, which are other endless runner types with pseudo-rotoscoped faceless protagonists, albeit ones in sharper suits), but its emphasis on meticulousness firmly puts it closer to the "simulation" side of the skateboarding genre scale (the other side possibly labelled "fart jokes, Bam Margera and hassling vagrants for some reason"). As someone who didn't particularly care for either Skate's focus on realism (excepting any mission that involved hurting yourself for money) nor its weird stick-flicking ollie controls, that antipathy has passed over to OlliOlli in turn. Maybe we'll see a true pretender to Tony Hawk's Pro Skater crown further down the road, but it's unfortunately not here.

Goddammit, I just want tricks assigned to face buttons and manuals on the D-pad, and maybe not to fall over so much. Is that so wrong? Then again, I'm someone who still thinks the best racing game ever made is Diddy Kong Racing, so I appreciate that not everyone shares my viewpoint on any genre that involves wheels.

• Game: Mind: Path to Thalamus
• Source: Remute's "Rewind Your Mind" bundle (Groupees)
• Started: 02/12

If Jazzpunk was a first-person adventure game that was a little out of the ordinary, Mind: Path to Thalamus is quite usual indeed. One of the more recent entries in an endless series of thoughtful, narratively dry and absurdly picturesque "walking simulators" evidently inspired by ancient forerunner Myst, Mind: Path to Thalamus has you walking around locations of natural beauty while solving general environment puzzles involving spheres and mirrors. Specifically, a neuron-shaped ball is necessary for a lot of the game's puzzles, as they can be placed in areas where the game shifts in some way: whether that's spreading out a thick gaseous barrier to make it passable, or making it night so certain hidden details become apparent in the moonlight, or making it rain to raise floating wooden bridges. Finding these neuron balls and the right place to put them makes the meteorological shift permanent, and is the impetus for much of the early game. Well, with the exception of a neat reflection puzzle involving mirrors that was shown off in the game's Quick Look that occurs before the title drop.

Unfortunately, and maybe this is an issue specific to this not particularly great office PC and underwhelming computers like it, the sphere carrying element can get awful glitchy. Frequently I'd find myself moving faster than the ball I was holding, letting it simply drop to the ground until I hit a glacial pace that allowed me to hang onto it. Add to that the game's apparent lack of a run button and you have a game that's far less palatable than it should be, especially when it makes its various zones so unnecessarily expansive. I can understand that a leisurely gait is preferred in these meditative first-person adventure games where you're delving into the trauma of a lost loved one in some metaphysical and highly symbolic realm, but it sure does get tiring if you're spending an hour trying to complete a puzzle you figured out 57 minutes ago.

I'm afraid I'm going to have to relegate this one to my "Not On This PC" folder on Steam, reserved for games I feel I can't do right by with the hardware I currently have. A particular puzzle early on involving carrying the neuron balls across precarious underwater platforms is frustratingly impossible with the juddery awkwardness with which my computer runs the scenario. It might get better later on, but considering how grating the lead character's occasionally awful delivery can be as he narrates his deep musings while throwing brainballs around, I'm going to surmise that I'm not missing out on some vital last-second GOTY list entry.

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