I play games for the internet

So anyway, I'm James, and I play games. I'm a Let's Player and have a YouTube and a Twitch that I sometimes use, but I'm more active on YouTube, because streaming on Twitch to 0 viewers is not good for my mental health. At least with YouTube, I actually get a few people to watch my videos sometimes. I wish more people would like what I do, but hey, maybe trying to establish a presence on Tumblr, the super-popular and super-active social media platform, will get me that recognition for my efforts that I crave.

I really do like all genres of games and am willing to try almost anything, but I shy away from modern AAA games for a number of reasons. The companies are openly engaging in awful and abusive practices, the games are rushed and unpolished, and the push into live services can eat my butt (not flirting). Still, once the dust has settled and a game is actually in a playable state, if I'm not knowingly and actively supporting a shitty company or brand, I'm down to check something out. But yeah, this means my main focus on gaming is retro and indie, because I think those are better and more interesting experiences.

I like blind playthroughs, and being able to capture and share my unspoiled experiences with people. But I do also like to show that I can actually be kinda good at games sometimes, so there'll be the occasional practiced playthrough or challenge I put myself through.

I also do gaming-related videos that aren't full Let's Plays. For almost all the playthroughs I do, I have a "Part 0" introduction to the game that will give some background on the game or the playthrough, or I may do a deeper dive into the development history or inspiration for the game. I also sometimes do other random videos, like the time I did a score challenge in Mortal Kombat based off of a throwaway line in a Carrot Top movie.

HORSES received a bit of attention prior to its release, as news outlets reported on how Steam would not allow the game to be sold on its storefront (this is how I heard about it). The developers sought out communication with Valve, hoping to determine what changes could be made to the game to make it compliant with their guidelines, hoping to get the game re-assessed and approved, but did not receive any helpful responses toward such a resolution. Without being able to sell their game on what is probably the largest digital storefront, the studio expressed expectations that they would not recoup the funds needed to continue operations post-release.

Then a day before the game was set to launch, the Epic Games Store, despite having rated and approved the game for release on their platform, would change their minds. This hurt the game’s prospects even further, leaving it only available to purchase on itch.io, Humble, and GOG.

I like indie games, I like weird games, and I like horror games. So with HORSES available for only $5, I decided to go ahead and buy it. I wanted to see what the game “Too hot for Steam and Epic” had to offer.

HORSES is a relatively short game about a young man being sent to help out on a farm for a couple weeks. However, it turns out that this is not your typical farm.

The best description I could offer for the game’s presentation, is that it’s like a silent film; everything is in black and white, and dialogue is done with the use of intertitles. As if you were watching a silent film without the live musical accompaniment, the only sound you hear for most of the game is the rattling of film being fed through a projector, though the game does bend the rules with occasional sound effects or light music for some scenes.

Side Note: When looking up some information on silent films, I was reminded of the photographic work of Eadweard Muybridge, who might be best known for his photography series on horses in motion. The techniques for these photographs would help to pave the way for motion pictures, and I wonder if any of that had any relevance or influence on the game’s design.

This presentation goes a long way toward lessening the impact of it’s potentially-shocking content. There are no sickening sounds to listen to when violence takes place, and blood is seen as a dark grey rather than the red it should be. You’d be exposed to far worse in many other titles, many of which are sold on Steam and Epic.

Along the same lines, HORSES plays more with imagination, rather than depicting the content it warns of. Things are often implied to be happening, instead of being explicitly shown, letting you fill in the blanks with your own imagination. Even the nudity in the game is covered up with mosaic censors. Many of the animations for potentially upsetting moments are done in very stiff, mechanically-looped movements that might reduce how strong your reaction is to them. Seeing two “horses” having sex looks far less sexual or gratuitous than many other titles that, again, you can find for sale on the same storefronts that decided HORSES was too inappropriate to sell.

There’re also many little things in the game that can distract you from what’s actually taking place: The way the characters awkwardly animate. The way ragtime music plays for the couple sections of the game where you’re riding a “horse.” The way the game is intercut with live-action videos for mundane things. The way you eat food like a vending machine accepting cash. Maybe all these were meant to be unsettling in their strangeness, but it really felt more like a way to keep the game’s darker elements from feeling too heavy.

So yeah, in my playthrough of this game, I really didn’t see any content that I felt should have resulted in a ban on those platforms. I believe there’s nothing here that you can’t find in other games being sold on Steam right now (I don’t know enough about Epic Games Store to make a conclusion about them). And, unlike many of those games, HORSES does not promote or glorify its alarming content. It’s intended to shock and disturb.

And, in my opinion, it fails.

As I said, the game does a lot to limit the impact of its content, which seems counter-productive to the intention. As such, there was very little in the game that got a reaction from me. Admittedly, I might be a bit desensitized because of how much horror I actually expose myself to. But at the same time, I can still be shocked and disturbed. There’s even some media where the impact is still just as strong as the first time I experienced it.

Now the problem here, is that HORSES really doesn’t have much going for it beyond these concepts, so it lives, and dies, entirely based on your reaction to it. It’s all very surface-level, as the story is extremely light. During the two in-game weeks you spend at the farm, you do learn a little bit more about the farmer, what he’s doing, and why he’s doing it, and you also encounter a few other characters that are all too happy to contribute to the heinous activities at the farm. But there really isn’t a whole lot that the game is actually saying in the process. It’s mostly just presenting these ideas to you and hoping you’ll be freaked out by them, but for me, I was mostly bored.

This is made all the more uninteresting because of the gameplay. Each day, you’ll have two or three tasks to complete, but none of them are really anything more than walking to a place and clicking on a thing. Maybe you will need to walk to another place and click on another thing. There’s no strategy, skill, technique, or brain power to anything you’re asked to do in the game. There is a slight puzzle element toward the end, however, where you need to figure out a code to unlock a door, but it felt so wildly out-of-place. After such a mind-numbing experience, I wasn’t in any mood to try and start thinking now, so I just looked up the answer and moved on.

Oh, and there’s also something else really annoying, in regards to the tasks you’re supposed to do; the farmer tells you that you’ll need to do certain things every day, or that there are certain rules you must follow. Considering this is a crazy man who enslaves people and makes them act like animals, you’d think it’d be very important to follow a strict routine. But the routine doesn’t exist. You won’t be feeding the dog every day. You won’t have to worry about returning tools to the shed. You won’t be tracking every time you catch the “horses” having sex. You’re given the impression that the stuff you’re doing or not doing is going to matter, and then the game can’t even be bothered to reinforce that in any way.

There are also moments where you are presented the illusion of choice. You’re asked questions, or given the option to carry out certain tasks, but no matter what you do, everything will play out the exact same way. The game doesn’t actually care what you think or want, even though it pretends to. The illusion of choice could actually be used quite well to deliver on interesting themes, but that’s not what it’s doing here. All any of this is doing is the bare minimum to qualify this as a video game.

This really shouldn’t be a game. It doesn’t explore anything in a way that takes advantage of the interactive medium. I don’t even think it takes advantage of the audio/visual medium. And I feel bad being so harsh, because I want to see more good in this game than I do. I feel like I’m kicking Santa Ragione while they’re down. In fact, I feel so guilty, I went and bought two other horror games put out by this studio (they were $15, so I wasn’t breaking the bank here). I dunno… I guess I’m just not ready to give up on these guys.

I got this game way back in November of 2019, through Humble Choice (formerly known as Humble Monthly). If you don’t know what Humble Choice is, it’s a subscription service that gives you an assortment of games each month, usually redeemable via Steam. It’s a great value and a great way to be introduced to a bunch of interesting games, and a portion of your subscription payment goes to charity. Wins all around.

Of course, seeing how it took me over 6 years to finally play the thing, you might be thinking I’m just throwing money away each month for the privilege of adding more titles to my already-massive backlog. And to that, I say… let’s- let’s just pretend that’s not true, OK?

Anyway, over on Discord, fellow Let’s Player “theenglishman” recently played through the game themself and praised it enough that I decided to finally get around to playing it for myself.

So, the first thing about that game that I want to talk about, is what you’re probably already noticing - the game’s distinct look. A filter is being applied to the game in real time to make the visuals look like a moving Impressionist painting. I do really like this style, and I think it even makes thematic sense, but when I say “moving,” I need to clarify that I do mean “moving.”

I believe the way the brush stroke effect is overlaid onto the graphics causes them to be in constant motion, and it can feel a bit weird at times. I would have preferred that the look had been done in a more direct fashion, that maybe wouldn’t have made the game look like it’s pulsing and squirming all the time. That said, you don’t really notice it much while playing, but I did think it was something that should be pointed out to help you decide your own feelings on it.

11-11 is a narrative-driven game, where the primary gameplay is going to be you walking around, exploring, and interacting with people and things to progress the story. If you’re looking for a big action-heavy war game where you’re running around shooting the “bad guys,” this isn’t it. The characters you play as have non-violent roles in the war; Harry is a photographer, and Kurt is an engineer. The story you’re playing through, while taking place during the war, doesn’t make the battles of the war its focus. The focus remains on these two characters, and their experiences in Europe during the final two years of the war.

Looking at the unlockable behind-the-scenes videos, this game is clearly a labor of love by people who recognize the massive impact that war – any war – has on people. The intention of the game is to deliver a story that hopes to grab you, and make you feel that impact as well. While I’m sure we all know that war sucks and is bad, I don’t think there’s anything wrong with a reminder, or a desire to make people feel more empathy and sensitivity for their fellow humans.

For the most part, I think the story succeeds. We get to see perspectives from two people on opposing sides of the conflict, both treated with kindness and understanding. Harry and Kurt are also excellently voiced by phenomenal actors – Elijah Wood and Sebastian Koch – who really bring the characters to life. Neither Harry nor Kurt are the “bad guy” of the story; they’re both just people who happen to be doing what they think they should be doing at that point in time. The story never tries to tell you to pick a side, or what side to pick. Instead, it’s trying to show you how people are just people. We’re complicated and messy, but generally speaking, we lean towards kindness when given the opportunity, and unfortunately, war doesn’t offer many such opportunities.

But I do think some elements of the story undermine this a bit. As I said, Harry and Kurt have non-combat roles in the war. They enlist for reasons unrelated to political views, exercising a choice that most people didn’t get at the time. This lets them maintain a certain “innocence” that feels a bit disingenuous, in my opinion. Like, the player wouldn't be able to empathize with them otherwise, and we'd fail to connect with the game in a meaningful way because our protagonists in a war story had to actually take part in war.

Now for the “game” aspects of this narrative-driven game. As I said, you spend much of the time walking around, exploring, and interacting with people and things to progress the story, but there are a variety of other bits of gameplay peppered in here and there to break this up. None of it is really fleshed out with any depth, however, and there are some things that I wish were utilized more to enhance the experience.

For example, as Harry, you have access to his camera. At times, you’re tasked with taking photos of certain things, but you’re also free to take pictures of other stuff along the way. You’ll have moments during the game where you can mail a photo back home, and receive a response from your lady friend based on the picture you sent. The game even suggests that the photos you choose to send will determine how she feels about you.

But as far as I could tell, there are only two times you get to send pictures, and I don’t believe they really have any impact on her affection for Harry. With Harry’s entire motivation for going to war being that he wants to impress this girl, it feels like a missed opportunity that we don’t get to explore this in a more meaningful way.

Similarly, Kurt also gets to send letters back home, and you can choose what to write to your young daughter based on keywords you pick up through your interactions and explorations. Again, a really neat concept, but one that doesn’t appear to have the payoff that the game wants you to believe. Perhaps they intended to do more with these things, but had to scrap it during development.

There are also some very simple puzzles, a recurring rudimentary card game, and stealth segments that never overstay their welcome, but also never feel particularly valuable. They’re just there to vary things up a little bit without straying too far from the game’s focus for too long.

One last bit of gameplay I want to talk about is the collectibles. Throughout the game, both Kurt and Harry will find floating pieces of paper to pick up, but there will also be some times where collectibles are unlocked by taking certain actions. I wanted to hate this; it screws up the pacing of the story to spend time seeking these out, the visual style can make it hard to see them even when they’re right in front of you, and the ones that require actions require you to know there are actions to be taken to begin with.

But I think this became my favorite part of the game. The collectibles are divided up into sets, and when you collect a full set, you unlock an image of actual WW1 memorabilia, like photographs, documents, posters, and more. And each piece is accompanied with informational text about what you’re looking at. It’s educational and interesting, and enhanced my experience by providing more context and information that I wouldn’t have had otherwise. And if you get all the collectables across a set number of chapters, you unlock short videos showing you the behind-the-scenes for making the game, which was also really cool. I definitely think if you play the game, you should strive to pick up these collectibles, but I also suggest you use a guide to help you do so.

Surprisingly, this game has DLC, the purpose of which is to add more collectibles and unlockable videos to the game. But these don’t pertain to the story or setting. Rather, this is used to promote War Child, an international organization which helps support and protect children in areas affected by war. I did not play with this DLC, but I checked a little of it out after I finished my playthrough. It seems that the collectibles are real letters written by children about the conditions they deal with in these areas, and the videos showcase War Child’s efforts to help. I think originally, a portion of the sales of this DLC went to the charity, but it was available for free on Steam. I don’t really know what else to say here about it.

Putting together my review here, I was expecting to be much more positive and glowing, as I left the game feeling extremely good about it. I even completed all the achievements and explored all 7 different endings. I did, and do, really like this game, and would absolutely recommend it. I think it’s a beautiful game with a great story and memorable moments throughout. Great characters, great performances, great music. It sets out to pull an emotional response from the player and it did exactly that. But for almost every thing I like about the game, in my analysis, I found something to criticize: I like this, but I think it could have been done better. I didn’t mind this, but I think it could have been done better.

First, let’s talk about the differences between the PS1 and N64 versions of the game; there’s virtually none. The only notable difference between playing the two version, is that the PS1 version has some delightfully-hammy live-action cutscenes, while the N64 version only has still images taken from those cutscenes. Playing one feels exactly like playing the other, and the achievement sets for both versions are identical as well, so if you only play one version, the PS1 is the way to go.

For the achievements, they can be separated into different categories, and I think that’s the best way to look at them:

1. Just Play The Game Just a normal playthrough of the game, and I think my earlier write-up pretty much covers this category pretty well, in regards to what you can expect.

2. Just Play The Game… On The Hardest Difficulty Playing on Very Hard has only three differences that I could notice: First, as previously mentioned, the higher the difficulty, the harder it is to deal with the AI. Second, the boss of the Earth Temple can be damaged significantly by dropping a platform on its head, but the amount of damage this deals varies depending on difficulty.

The last difference I observed was also in the Earth Temple. There will be sections where you’re using ropes to climb up and down shafts. On Very Hard, there will be spikes that come out of the walls as you climb, requiring you to time your movement and switch position on the rope to avoid damage. If there are any other differences, I never noticed.

I struggled a lot playing through on Very Hard, but most of that was because I jumped right into that difficulty for my first playthrough. There was still so much I didn’t know, and I would have struggled regardless. That said, I do think that’s the best way to go about it, as you get the regular progression achievements alongside the ones for playing on Very Hard, meaning one less playthrough of the game is needed. Using the 1,000 lives cheat gives you plenty of opportunity to more comfortably throw yourself at this game’s bullshit and learn how to deal with it.

Side Note: Apparently, some achievements will not properly track unless you go into the Options after activating the cheat, and removing 1 life from the count.

3. Beat Bosses Without Taking Damage This may sound like a horrible challenge, but it’s much simpler than you may think. For all the problems I have with the game’s AI, you can find strategies to deal with it pretty consistently. There will still be moments of bad luck, but then you can just die and try again right away (Hooray, 1,000 lives cheat). This can be done on any difficulty, and if you’re so inclined, you can play through the first five levels on Very Easy, which means five very easy boss fights.

The other thing you can do to make this easier, is to collect the two items in the game that grant temporary invulnerability – one in the third level, and one in the fifth. With these in hand, you can consume them during a boss fight to prevent any damage, hopefully defeating the boss before they wear off (Wait for the first item’s effect to expire before using the second one. Otherwise, it gets wasted). After that, reload your save to regain your items and hold onto them for the next boss you need to beat damageless. It may sound tedious, especially for the final level and its four bosses, but it’s how I did these achievements for the PS1 version.

For my N64 playthrough, however, I chose to beat all the bosses flawlessly on Very Hard (except the Earth Temple boss, for reasons explained above), and without using the invulnerability items. What can I say? I hurt myself because I feel like I don’t deserve happiness.

4. Beat Levels Without Dying As I said in my previous write-up, cheap deaths to traps and falls will be the main cause of losing lives in this game. You can learn how to reduce the chances of something going bad, but the chances are never zero.

As such, these were the more nerve-wracking achievements for me to obtain. You never feel safe. But with practice, patience, and luck, I was able to do these without too many retries needed.

5. Miscellaneous There’s an achievement for deliberately jumping to your death at the start of the Wind Temple level. There’s an achievement for backtracking to a secret platform after reaching the end of the Bridge of Immortality Level. There are achievements related to the two times in the game where you can perform fatalities, and the resulting differences based on if you do them or not. There’s an achievement for using one of the powers you obtain to shatter an enemy after freezing them.

And finally, there’s an achievement for dealing with the game’s final encounter in an alternate way, easily doable by using a couple cheats to warp right to that encounter with an inventory full of power-ups. Very simple stuff.