IF Comp '08 Review - Eric Eve's Nightfall!
Last one, and it’s supposed to be a good one. Might as well get right into it.
[spoilers start here - if you haven’t played the game yet, be warned that the Big Reveal is plunked down pretty much verbatim near the end of this review, so watch the hell out]
Oh, shit, the Enemy is coming. That can’t be good.
Looks like I have to find a girl. I was thinking about that recently, the use of The Girl as ultimate reward in games. Why am I jumping on all these mushroom dudes when I could be safe at home eating linguini? Why am I fistfighting huge burly guys with faces like cookies? The Girl, of course. If I win, I get The Girl. Oh, I remember why I was thinking about that now. Braid. Jonathan Blow, you are supposed to be our savior, to deliver us from the game equivalents of those cinnamon twisty things from Taco Bell. You should really come up with a better impetus than The Girl.
Oh, right, Nightfall. And people think I don’t care about the RSS feed.
I really like it when games try to make up for the fact that the player doesn’t know the environment as well as their character is supposed to. Piracy 2.0 came with a map of the ship, and Nightfall gives us a GO TO command. I like that. That earns points.
This game is definitely absorbing, and knowing there’s a time limit makes me genuinely nervous, which is exactly right. I am having issues with my character’s taste in women, though, as she seems like a stone cold bitch.
Who locks their wardrobe? I don’t even have a wardrobe.
Well, I’m certainly getting some exercise.
I don’t know what’s up with this Enemy, but I’m positive it’s going to be one of those creepy Twilight Zone things.
The poor kid might’ve not been good with apostrophes, but that is no reason to break his neck. Far kinder to fire a warning shot into his kneecaps.
No, Emma, I don’t trust you, actually. I don’t trust you at all. But I’m sure David here does. He’s in love with you. More fool him.
Hmm. Well, I was right not to trust her, and, thanks to UNDO, I have saved the city. I’m not sure I would’ve been able to save it without UNDO, though, despite having been suspicious of her fairly early on. Then again, I didn’t find everything. I never listened to the cassette, and I’m not sure why she had to kill poor apostrophe boy, nor did I ever make it to the depot. And why did she go to all that trouble to get me to run her errands for her? Ego? Plus, I mean, if I had a key to a bomb, I’d be really friggin’ careful not to lose that key. (Was that key to the bomb? I glazed over at some point, which wasn’t the game’s fault at all.)
I can see why everyone thought this was a good game, because this was in fact a good game. It was atmospheric as anything, GO TO and THINK are awesome commands to have, the writing was simple but effective, the town was large and well-realized, and nothing was broken. I have to say, though, that I was expecting more of a payoff somehow. “Oh, hi, David, guess who’s the Enemy? I am. Also I killed Kate. I’m going to blow up the town now. Unless of course you - oh damn you stopped me. Well, poop.” I’m sort of relieved that the ending wasn’t creepier, but I can’t help thinking it should have been.
Torn between an eight and a nine on this one. My heart says eight. My fairness valve says “but but GO TO and THINK, and all that time you spent actually playing it instead of blogging about how terrible it was,” to which my heart answers “Yes, but nothing about it really delighted me the way Affliction and Everybody Dies did, and also David is such a tool.“ Going with my heart on this one. Eight.
12 months ago