T w e n t y S i d e d

Scarlet is the oldest of the girls. Her bio from the website:

You can’t? What’s the alternative?

Scarlet is serious, neat, and tight-laced. Most of her interactions and comments on the world around her reflect a need for order. Her personality seems very likely to clash with Ginger and Carmen. But she also has a lot of unfulfilled needs. She’s lonely (probably for a man) burdened, overworked, and under-appreciated.

Scarlet is a personality I’ve met before and I’ve always found her impact on the people around her to be really interesting. Imagine everyone has a couple of Sims-style sliders: One is their desire for order, and the other is their initiative and ability to do work without external prompting. A Scarlet has both of those sliders near the top. Her need for neatness and organization forms an interesting pattern of behavior. (If you’re down with the Keirsey Temperament Sorter, a Scarlet is a massive SJ.) In college, she’s the roommate who keeps doing the dishes and cleaning every day when everyone else can’t be bothered. But she’ll naturally start to resent how everyone else will leave their messes for her to clean up. But the sloppier roommates might not be actually taking advantage of her. They just don’t have the same standards of cleanliness. They can go to bed at the end of the day with dirty dishes in the sink and they don’t think about doing the dishes until they start to run out. But a Scarlet can’t bear to leave something like this go. She does the dishes, and then grumbles to herself that they ALWAYS leave her to do the dishes. She feels used and unappreciated, and becomes prickly with her roommates. She thinks they’re lazy jerks. They think she’s a rude bitch.

Continue reading ⟩⟩ “The Path: Scarlet”

Shamus Young is a programmer, an author, and nearly a composer. He works on this site full time. If you'd like to support him, you can do so via Patreon or PayPal.

Well, it’s a $7 game. You might argue that I can’t complain too much. But we are bound by our purpose in this life, and my purpose is to nitpick videogames. Ergo, if there are flaws, they will be noticed and remarked on. Starting with…

Velvet Assassin is the story of Violette Summer, with special guest-star: Her ass.

I set up the controls. What is it with console ports? Do they just choose to omit a couple of keyboard keys at random? I always use numpad DEL for crouch / sneak, and to Velvet Assassin that key doesn’t exist. On the upside, I can use numpad enter, which most console ports manage to screw up. Still, DEL is the key I usually assign to STEALTH MODE, and I’m betting that is a thing I’ll be doing a lot in this game. Now I’ll have over a decade of muscle memory telling me to hit the wrong button when I want to sneak. Didn’t you guys have to USE a keyboard at some point during making this game? How do these basic details escape you?

The opening cutscene is right out of lazy storytelling 101: Voice-over exposition with montage images. It makes no effort to tell me who the main character is or establish the stakes. Okay, it’s a given that we’re playing a WWII game and the player is going to be predisposed to wanting the Allies to win, but it seems that an opportunity was missed here to make things personal or to hook the player with a few interesting questions. Violette’s voice is well-delivered, but clinical and detached. This may be appropriate for the character, but it makes the introduction that much more sterile. This is supposed to the the opening hook, and it’s basically got the same level of emotional investment as the opening of Wolfenstein 3D. The only reason we care at all is because we’re against Nazis and Nazis are bad.

Continue reading ⟩⟩ “Velvet Assassin: First Impressions”

Shamus Young is a programmer, an author, and nearly a composer. He works on this site full time. If you'd like to support him, you can do so via Patreon or PayPal.

Robin is the youngest of the girls. Here is her bio from the website:

The “nine years old” thing confuses me. She looks and acts much younger. I would put her in the six or seven range, myself. At any rate, Robin’s journey is really interesting because it contrasts her perception of the world with our own. She encounters the wolf in the graveyard. Her wolf is an actual wolf, or a wolf-man. At one point in her journey she comments that “Wolves are just dogs.” In another she comments that she wants something “big and cuddly”. This desire becomes dangerous when mixed with the earlier misconception.

Continue reading ⟩⟩ “The Path: Robin”

Shamus Young is a programmer, an author, and nearly a composer. He works on this site full time. If you'd like to support him, you can do so via Patreon or PayPal.