American Mc Gee's Grimm

[vimes]

The first episode and the second are out on Gametap : A Boy Learns What Fear Is is free and Little Red Riding Hood will be free for 24 hours after its release.

Judging on the first episode, it's a very derivative project ... which doesn't mean it's all bad. The art design is very reminiscent of Katamari and Flipside. The obvious Katamari influence is the one that annoys me most as I think it's possible to create a naive environment without using the same palette or cubist approach.

On the gameplay front - and if this episode represents the whole 'depth' of it - we are treated to the exact intersection of the PC version of De Blob and Katamari : you run around corrupting the environment (De Blob), raising your nastiness in the process and the higher your nastiness the purer things you can corrupt (Katamari). It's amazing as it is not any simpler or any more complex than that.

It turns out to be a very laid back mechanism with no challenge whatsoever, even though uncorrupted people are supposed to give you a hard time by cleaning the mess you created. In reality they are forgettable and if the game wasn't constructed in short bursts of ever growing power, it'd be pretty boring : with no puzzles or gameplay diversity you can pretty much turn your brain off for the half hour it takes to complete the game.

The presentation is however a pure delight : the design is grand, the animations are top notch and the music is excellent. It is pretty remarkable how, in this instance, the episodic format didn't seem to undermine any of McGee's ambition in this area : the audio and graphical effects triggered upon corruption are really up there in terms of fluidity, timing and originality. The writing is good, if sometimes a bit heavy on the fart jokes, but is surprisingly minimal for a game that tackles the tale genre.

What's most striking about McGee's Grimm is that, outside of the darkest picks of its tone, it is a very conservative game : you've got a timer, hidden treasures, a completion percentage, some mandatory platforming section ... it gathers known element without ever adding the innovating or risky aspects that would help the title create is own gameplay identity. It even is old fashioned in the way the reward comes : at the end of it all Grimm tells the corrupted version of the tale in an FMV. It is very enjoyable but I though that kind of thing was now secluded to the adventure genre. Oh well.

So but maybe the second episode will bring a bit more flesh in terms of gameplay to the table, making American McGee's Grimm one more successfull episodic project to follow. For the time being, it's a tad bland.

[vimes]

Downloaded and finished the second episode in the time between my original post and this one. Basically, it's a total conversion of the first episode for the Little Red Riding Hood tale : it's not bad but it's pretty unsurprising.

Apparently all the following episodes will be free for 24 hours after their release. If you're able the finish them in 30 minutes (finding the bonus included), I wonder how Gametap is going to make money out of this.

NB : the 'nice' visuals are not as similar to Katamari as I described them. Loading panels in-between levels evoke power ups for Grimm but they can't be found in these ...

[ThunderPeel2001]

Does the episode "expire" in 24 hours?

[DanJW]

I'm finding it impossible to play. Once I have turned most of the scene 'dark' the framerate drops to unplayable levels. This shouldn't happen in a game with such basic graphics.

[elmuerte]

played the first episode last week...

it's quite forgettable

edit: meh... second episode is the same shit... nothing new

Edited August 7, 2008 by elmuerte

[Tanukitsune]

I actually think Little Red Riding Hood was a little better, the controls seemed a bit better and there was more plataforming too!

I don't mind playing it an hour a week, but I'm sure I'd get bored if I played them all in a row...

I do like the message of the whole saga: "Fairy tales were originally much darker".

I'm not sure people will actually buy the individual episodes, but many might actually subscribe to GameTap in case they can't play them the day it's free?

Now that Turner no longer wants GameTap, I'm worried about the future of GameTap and Grimm! I hope whoever buys it doesn't mess everything up!

[DanJW]

Damn I missed the chance to play Little Red Riding Hood.

I too appreciate the sentiment - Like MArican McGee I love the dark side of fairy tales.

Still, I bet even his version of Red Riding Hood was more sanitized than the original folk version - which included rape and a very unhappy ending.

[vimes]

The issue is that this project isn't about the original version of the fairytale and how they were more meaningful; or how the mutation from Grimm's to Perrault's version of the same story tells something about the era they were crafted in or the writers... it's just about a nasty little gnome pissing around to make the story naughtier (while not regaining their original form I think) and more violent. It's entertaining for a while but disappointing seeing how interesting fairytales are in that regard and how McGee's Alice was successul in the same domain

[LOPcagney]

I played the first episode, completely pessimistic and ready to bash it, and it wasn't as bad as I had expected. It felt, all in all, like a sold-out Alice. The combat was replaced with accessible arcade-style play, the deep storyline replaced with short, easy-to-swallow episodes, and the darkness replaced with a Saturday-morning-cartoonish immaturity. I liked the art style, and American McGee definitely has a distinct feel to his games, as well as interesting level-design.

I'd play it for free but I'd never pay for it, and Alice is still his magnum opus.

[elmuerte]

And Bad Day LA is magnum piece of shit.

[Erkki]

Slightly off topic: holy shit, I've never used gametap before and thank god because their software is a real piece of shit. Firstly, the download of Grimm fails (and goes to paused state) every 10 to 20 seconds, requiring me to resume it manually. Hurray! I guess it's a little better than having to accept an EULA for each individual bit downloaded. Secondly, the interface is a little too overwhelming. Steam looks much clearer.

[edit] oh wait, actually it isn't that much better than accepting an EULA for each bit, if you have the game's screen open. See attached screenshot, you have to close an error dialog and then click resume (still happens about every 10-20 seconds, but 49% done now).

It almost seems like they haven't taken into account the nature of the internet (some packets might not arrive).

[Tanukitsune]

I've used GameTap before and it only fails to download occasionally, and when it does fail I just close and reopen GameTap it seems to be better then just telling it to retry the download.

[elmuerte]

didn't have any downloading problems

actually, I'm amazed how fast it was, it took only a couple of seconds (speeds up to 4MB/s)

[vimes]

So the new episode 'A Fisherman & His Wide' is out - it's free for the next 24hours - and while McGee's promised in his blog new gameplay mechanisms using power-ups, you've got only one of these and it has a useless dash effect. They've planned 3 seasons of 6 episodes but I hope they didn't dilute the gameplay across all of these, because it's going to be a long walk until we're getting something really meaty.

[Tanukitsune]

The "finale" of the last episode is actually pretty fun!