Cognition An Erica Reed Thriller Episode 3 : The Oracle Review
Erica Reed is back for the third episode of Cognition: An Erica Reed Thriller, The Oracle. By now, you should probably understand why type of game Cognition is. If you want a more in depth review of the mechanics and game play of Cognition, check out my review on Episode 1: The Wise Monkey, or my review on Episode 2: The Hangman.
After The Hangman, we were left with Erica starting to piece together the bigger picture that was being created. Everything from Erica’s brothers death, to her friends being targeted, none of it was a coincidence. Somebody is after Erica, and this someone has a bigger plan that Erica never thought was possible.
The Oracle is easily the most story focused episode so far of the Cognition saga. From the first couple scenes of the episode, you learn some new things about characters that turn the story upside down. You learn that another character Erica has been talking with, has Cognition powers similar to those of her own. This revelation becomes the main focus for Erica, since she can now view important memories right before her eyes, instead of sometimes getting little pieces of a much bigger puzzle.
Omerta: City of Gangsters Review
Omerta: City of Gangsters gets the presentation spot on, but falls short in every other area.
Omerta: City of Gangsters has you attempting to achieve one goal: become the biggest crime lord in America. It’s an idea for a game that would seem to be easy to execute. By making tons of dirty money and shooting your way to the top, it should be quite a ride getting to the top, but sadly that is not the case with Omerta.
The game play is split into two parts. A majority of the game play is an isometric strategy title. Players will recruit different gangsters to join your squad, and send them to different buildings to complete tasks and take over the city one building at a time. The second part plays out like a turn based strategy title. Each mobster has their own unique set of skills, such as being able to shoot two guns at once or being able to heal their wounds for a single turn.
Cognition An Erica Reed Thriller Episode 2: The Wise Monkey Review
Cognition Episode 2: The Wise Monkey fixes a lot of issues The Hangman had, and starts to build a story that is truly interesting.
Last time we saw Erica Reed she was hot on the case of The Hangman, but in the end she ended up having to deal with even more death and mysteries than before. Now Erica has a new case she must figure out known as The Wise Monkey. This time Erica’s personal life is being invaded, and if she doesn’t act quick enough, she will lose yet another person she is close to.
The first Episode of Cognition suffered from a few growing pains. With a new story characters need to be introduced, but when you have episodic content, it can be hard to fit a lot of information in a single episode. The issue then became information overload, and Erica never felt like the star of story. It also had a few issues with pacing and home some trouble keeping the story interesting before the curtain closed on The Hangman. Overall, it was a decent start to Cognition, but there was definitely some room for improvement.
Luckily, Episode 2 of Cognition, The Wise Monkey, improves a lot upon the first episode.
The Cave Review: An Enjoyable Trip Down Repressed Memory Lane
The Cave is like “Are You Afraid of the Dark” with better narration and more violence!
The Cave is a new platform, puzzle, adventure title developed by Double Fine studios and published by Sega; following some of their previous wacky titles, such as Stacking, Psychonauts, and Costume Quest. The Cave follows the obscure misadventures of seven wrongdoers who must face the skeletons in their closets whilst spelunking in a seemingly bottomless cave. However, this cave is no ordinary cave. This cave is self-aware, well educated, and has one of those deep sensual radio voices (Think Vincent Price meets Bastion’s narrator) which he uses to narrate your adventures as you delve deeper and deeper into his madcap depths.
You begin your adventure on the surface where you are given a choice of what three characters you will be taking on your expedition. You have seven choices of characters: the Monk, Adventurer, Hillbilly, Scientist, the Twins, Knight, and finally, the Time-Traveler. Each character has his or her own back-story which focuses on the evil in their hearts and their past; it is this evil that the Cave is feeding upon. The Cave uses the object of an individual’s deepest, darkest desires to attract them into its depths, but first, that individual must relive their darkest moments.
Cognition An Erica Reed Thriller: Episode 1 The Hangman Review
Episode 1 of Cognition: An Erica Reed Thriller offers a compelling story, but is a little rough around the edges.
Detective style games like CSI have always been a guilty pleasure of mine. I have always been fascinated by mystery novels and games, and have continued to play games of the genre since the 90’s. Cognition: An Erica Reed Thriller is a new title in the genre from Phoenix Online Studios, and is the first part of a four part episodic adventure.
Cognition put the player in control of Erica Reed. A detective with a haunting pass which continues to drive her every day as a detective. Players get a brief look in the tutorial to Erica’s past, and learn that she lost her brother to a murderer who was never caught, and discover Erica has somehow developed post cognition powers. Erica has a gift that allows her to touch an object, and learn of its historic past. These powers end up playing a huge role for Erica. Cases that might have been impossible to solve, suddenly become clear due to her powers.
Intrusion 2 Review: Sidescrolling in a Winter Wonderland
Intrusion 2 is a very intense ride in a historically difficult genre.
Intrusion 2 is an action side scroller developed and published by VAP games which is the solo effort of Aleksey Abramenko. Other than the music, Aleksey spent three years developing Intrusion from the ground up; reminiscent of games like Metal Slug, Contra, and Mega Man, it contains a very enjoyable physics engine and variety of weapons which make for a very entertaining experience. Continue reading
FTL: Faster Than Light Review: A Unique and In-Depth Jump Through Space
FTL: Faster Than Light takes you to infinite and beyond. Then it hunts you down. Like Heroine.
Faster Than Light is a Rogue-like space ship RTS, developed by Subset Games; it is so unique, addicting and magnificently developed that my review may not do it justice. The Kickstarter that funded FTL had nearly 10,000 backers and received 2000% of its pledged goal. Why is this game so amazing? Prepare to be en-light-ened… Forget I said that. Continue reading
‘Agent’ was a spy game being developed by BioWare
Eurogamer has reported that in 2009 BioWare was working on a spy RPG game called ‘Agent’, the game was going to be a PS3 exclusive but EA didn’t approve of the game’s concept. Trent Oster had this to say about the concept:
“The concept was to do the other half of GoldenEye, the idea being that James Bond isn’t just a gun that walks around the world and shoots people. He’s a suave manipulator, he’s a talented martial artist, he’s a secret agent. We wanted to cross that 007 with Jason Bourne, where he’s been modified in some way; you’re not sure what, but he’s definitely deadly.
“We really wanted to push the acting side, the digital acting. We really wanted to be very high drama, very intense scenes. I always think of the scene in the second Bourne movie where Jason Bourne’s choking the guy out with a book and he’s right in his face and it’s this very intense moment. That was one of the key things we wanted to carry off.”
Sounds like a solid concept, especially coming from the studio that created the memorable original IP Jade Empire, so why wouldn’t EA try the game and trust BioWare? According to Trent it was because the game “failed to survive the recession.”
Maybe we’ll see ‘Agent’ down the road one day, maybe as a multiplatform game? Only time and EA’s trust in BioWare will tell.
