Pandora's Boxes.

[tablesaw]

So, since buying The City Beneath (which is still available through the links in my last post), it's consumed my every waking thought. I hadn't planned on making it a Beyond Tetris article, but I may have to, simply because I won't have time to prepare anything else. It's really incredible. There are so many new elements, and the game has an amazing amount of polish.

Also, I've been listening to Pandora at work again. If I understand things correctly, you can listen to my stations at my profile. My favorite is generally "WBE Select," which I seeded using insteresting tracks from the KCRW show Weekend Becomes Eclectic (now The A Track), though I use the others when I want to guarantee a more fast-paced sound.

Comments

[akkanvader.livejournal.com]

so how is the city beneath? i played through the demo yesterday, and it felt like i was just playing with switch states rather than monster behavior. i'm also a little sad that cutscenes and extended dialogue has replaced the elegant storytelling of journey to rooted hold.

[tablesaw]

I should probably look at the demo before I write the article. I don't know what's in it, but if it's just the first few levels, I'm sure the game would seem disappointing.

The game starts slow. Not easy, just slow. The first two levels have no monsters, and the first level of monsters was pretty simple. I don't think there was anything really interesting until the Uncturage, and the game doesn't really get going until the Deep Uncturage. And the game doesn't really hit its stride until you get Under the Library, where the levels get really hard, really fast.

Many of the mandatory cutscenes have been a bit inelegant, but there have been some excellent uses of it in later levels. Mostly, I'm bugged that I can't let the vocal track continue while in a different window.

[akkanvader.livejournal.com]

the demo ends the moment you reach the deep uncturage.

i'm sort of curious about where the game goes but i'm still only halfway through journey to rooted hold.

[fuldu.livejournal.com]

I'm quite pleased with TCB so far. Many of the player-developed levels of JtRH were just excruciating. Some were still marvelous and fascinating despite that, but they were too hard by several orders of magnitude. I had concerns that TBC might have the same problem, but so far, I've reached several points where I thought "I'm never going to solve this," but came back a few hours later and did. If I have any complaints, it's that there are a couple of places in the "learning new mechanisms" puzzles where you have to try something that doesn't seem like there's any reason it to expect it to work in order to discover that it does, in fact, work.