You are a boy trapped somewhere, and must escape. Escaping is not easy, there are things that want to stop you. All the puzzles are beautifully crafted and varied, some of which will involve timing and trial and error. After some of the more difficult puzzles, there’s a sense of achievement.

Taking control of the boy is easy, there is no complexity involved, you move, you jump, you action. In a way, I feel like it’s a darker version of sack boy.

The Mac version is coming soon – but can be emulated with the right know how. It is available on steam, and there is a demo. Well worth a play through. Gameplay video below.

Metacritic | Steam
 

The narrative seems dynamic and great device for storytelling. Every action is told in story form, and it compels you to play on. It merges the lines between online entertainment and storytelling further, if only there was a PDF at the end of the game. The level seems to be dynamically created to, as the level builds around you as you walk around (they’re not), but it adds to the story telling. It would be great if the levels are generated through random seeds, a different game each time you play. Whilst the narrative is a strong point, the storyline is not, but that’s okay, it’s only a sub-20 dollar indie game and it was a lot of fun.

Worth checking out.

I’ve got a lot of feelings invested in this game, mainly because during highschool, I would run back home from school, switch on my father’s computer and play a good session of the original title. It blew my mind. The first game didn’t have the greatest graphics, or UI, and the voice acting wasn’t great (from what I remember), but what stood out were the choices you could make, how the game progression forked at different points to the choices, how the knowledge you gain in-game really affected how you made the decisions in the first place: not only in dialogue choices in the game, but outside the game you thought about who your real friends were, and whom to trust. I think maybe nostalgia got the better of me, but nothing of the predecessor feels the same in the prequel.

Choices you make in DXHR doesn’t really matter. There’s only 2 memorable choices in this game, the first is when you pilot gets shot down; you have a choice to save her or to use the crash a decoy to sneak into the warehouse. The outcome of saving her is that later on when she comes to pick up the hostages, she shoots down the guys. If she dies, the ‘new’ pilot (who has no face or name) comes in, picks up the hostages, but leaves you to kill the guys. That’s it. For that emotional investment, it should come down to more than that. I personally felt bad the first time not saving her, so I reloaded it to save her, because I formed an emotional connection to the character. The other situation is where you have the option to install a new chip, which affects your augmentations later on in a boss battle. Without your superhuman strength, the fights quiet hard, I had to do the boss fight in an ingenius way (which is also why I love the game) by carrying a hacked turret through the elevator and place it before the fight, then quickly run and hide behind it while it decimates the boss.

Boss fights felt really out of place. You had no option but to fight one on one – no kill switches like in the first DX, and if you built your character for stealth or hacking, combat one to one isn’t going to be that fun. Luckily the game ships with an overpowered ability (Typhoon weapon system) which does massive AOE damage, just spam it and get some easy kills. The second boss fight was about 5 seconds long. I think this really breaks the game from being that 10/10 to at 8/10, boss fights seems like an afterthought and out of place. The third fight was incredibly difficult had it not been for that deliciously placed turret just before the fight, I would have no chance taking him one on one without augmentations (by that I mean typhoon).

Combat is standard, nothing shines here. I started playing as a non-lethal stealthy style – but you soon learn that there’s was never enough traq darts made and everyone carries rifles, so you are in abundance in rifle ammo. It’s a good design decision in a sense because you have to shoot who you want to take down non-lethally at range, keep in mind you pretty much have unlimited stunning power through one of your close combat moves. Towards the end of the game you get so many weapon choices which is never a bad thing, but carrying the weapon and ammo takes too much room, and you tend to favour guns you’ve had from the start and invested in upgrade with laser sights and what not. Unlike the first DX, the opportunities for sniping isn’t that great due to fact that I could never one shot one kill through the head on people with helmets (even though one traq dart to the head would take them out). The combat rifle upgrade with the homing bullets was pretty fun, and the laser rifle too as you can shoot it through grass and hit people as light goes through glass with full power. This is one of the ways you can kill the final boss, instead of trying to unlock her glass fortress you can just shoot through it (I found that out much later so I never got to try).

Some of the level designs were great, especially for those like me who like to explore everything. Finding a vent behind the crate was always rewarding, they really had the idea of having many options – shoot from the front, or sneak from the back, or hack turrets/robots to clear a path. There’s also some hidden parts that you can discover through dialogue and PDA’s that lead you to some nice items, eg. at the start you can talk to an old police informer talking about a sniper on the roof when the riots happened, and if you find a way up there, you can find his stuff.

Besides some of the flaws, it’s a very solid game. The world is engaging, and each city has got it’s charm and character about it, especially China. It’s worth picking up and having a go if you like shooters, but it’s a lengthy investment of time. There’s also a lot of management of items and levelling so if you’re a bit trigger happy, it’s maybe not for you. I throughly enjoyed the game, lived up to expectations, and it’s a darn fine prequel. Trailer below.

We chose little red riding hood, a classic fairy tale, set in a modern day city. We were both quite new at Flash but I think the final product was a good job by two newbies, 10 weeks with no experience.

Enjoy.

Script (txt) | Animation (swf)

Ashmolean Student Documentary 2009 from Eric H. Song on Vimeo.

In 2009, I did International Exchange from University of Technology, Sydney to Oxford Brookes, UK. During this time I studied electronics, film production, and film studies. This documentary is about the reopening of the Ashmolean Museum.

Group members: Jess Eggleston, Eric H. Song, David Brookes, Augustin Bascoulergue

A random walk through a foreign city, a message written in an unfamiliar language – but the message is clear.