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FOR SCIENCE!!!
Ilan14- 06/26/2015 12:27 PM
- 2175 views
THE GAMEMAKER PRESENTS THE REVIEW OF:
NOTE: This review only reflects my personal opinion, and people may differ from what I think of the game. Some people may think that this is the best game ever, some people may think that this is a piece of crap that must be burned to ashes immediately. If you, the developer, agree with the points in my review or not, it's up to you.
I've been meaning to make a review of this game for a long time now, but for some reason (most likely, laziness :P), I ended up postponing it until I forgot about wanting to make this review in the first place. During one of my roamings in the Games section I came across this game and it hooked me up inmediatly.(Altough to be honest, any game that has a branching story and multiple endings has my instant attention...) So then I played it... and it was great! Because of that, I found strange the low level of attention this game had, which motivated me to make a review.
(I recently discovered that there was already a rewiew of this game two months ago. (Thank you very much, piano... :/) Still, makerscore is makerscore.) :)
But well, the thing I said at the beginning happened and I didn't touched the subject for a while. And then, the So Jelly! Review Event started, and I found a new motivation to make this review.
So, let's get this thing rolling!
Zombies. Well, this game doesn't call them Zombies, it calls them Skins, but they behave pretty much the same way, the only difference being that the virus affecting the Skins leaves them... well, without skin, but more on that later. Anyways, ever since George Romero popularized Zombies, many other pieces of fiction tried to imitate Romero's sucess, some were sucessful, others... not so much. And all of these stories have one thing in common, the main characters are usually a bunch of civilians that are trying to survive the apocalypse at all cost.
But in COATS, we don't take control of a common civilian, we take control of a scientist, one of the brillant minds tasked with the hard mission to find a cure for the virus. And that's excactly what we're going to do in this game, attempt to find a cure for the virus! While making sure our facility doesn't get overrun by the Skins, of course...
So it's time to put on our lab coats and accompany me to go and see if this game manages to live to it's premise! (SPOILER ALERT: It does.)
WARNING: There are high chances of finding bad jokes in the screenshots below.
As always, let's start of with the story. We take control of Randal (or whatever we want to call him, as long as it has a maximum of 6 letters), a scientist that during 5 years has been doing the same thankless job and living the same boring life, until the day his boss promotes him, making him the head of the team tasked with investigating a possible cure for the Skin Disease, an epidemic disease product of a virus that tears off the skin of people and turns then into mindless creatures that, just as the zombies, only look to devour human flesh.
From that moment, he'll have to work to progress his investigation while trying to mantain the security of the facility he works in, and assuring the well-being of his team. All of this while trying to deal with his own past and trying to come to terms with the person he is and the life he chose to live. Yeah... Randal's mission is not an easy one. :(
The plot of COATS is divided in three Acts (Research, Engineering and Implementation), in which you, while progressing through the creation of the cure, you will get to know better your team partners, and maybe finding the future Mrs. Randal in four different candidates while you're are it... And! You will have to make choices that will effect on how the story progress. For example, at the end of Act 1, you'll have to make a choice between three approaches to a cure which are esentially: A pacific, a scientific (neutral), and a violent approach. These and other decisions will determine which members of the team stay and which leave, which live and which die, Randal's attitude and ideology, and more importantly, the ending and the epilogue of the story.
The plot in general is one of the best I seen in an RPG Maker game. In fact, this and the characters are probably what will motivate you to keep going through the game due to the gameplay which I will talk about later. Back to the plot, it obvious that a lot of blood, sweat and tears went in the creation of this plot, and it really shows. It potrays the athmosphere of aZombieSkin Apocalypse really well, and with the VX Ace generator faces, that can be quite hard. XD
As for the characters, the developer has made a great job fleshing them out during the three acts of the game. All of them are very great each one on their own way, and in adittion, they have equally interesting backstories that help to their characterization. Every time you get bored of the gameplay, you'll be looking foward to talk to them. The dialogue really helps in this by not sucking, since aside from a loose typo here and there, there are practically no grammatical errors.
So yeah, the writing in COATS is that good.
And now, onto the gameplay. But this time, my opinions are divided here, but first I want to say that I really like the way the gameplay is designed, since from what I saw, everything in the game is evented. And this is really admirable since these events, common events, switches and variables must have been handled in a way that I'm not even close to reach. So kudos to the developer for that. ^_^)b
The thing is, when this design comes into practice, it makes the gameplay lean towards the easy side, because once you understand how all of the metagames and minigames work, advancing through the game becomes a walk in the park, and for some moments you'll feel that the story and characters are the only thing that will motivate you to continue this game, since a game that's too easy, gets boring too fast. Well, the minigames are actually quite fun despite of their easiness, is in the main game that lies the problem.
To have an understanding of what I mean, I'll make an explanation without spoilers of the mechanics and minigames found on each act:
Phase One - Research
This is the phase in which you investigate the posibility of a cure. In your facility, your first task will be to assign the security forces to look for a Skin specimen to start your investigation. The main goal in this phase is to have a 100% rate of investigation in both the biological and the psicological aspect of the disease. Investigating the specimen will add a value between 1% and 3% to one of both aspects of the investigation, and since you can only do this once per day, getting through this phase will take a while...
(Not to mention that the specimen gets damaged, and from time to time, you will have to spend a whole day healing the subject.)
Eventually, you will find out that this method won't work forever, and you will have to resort to other methods (two of which are minigames) such as: Sending your scavenger to look for items with Skin DNA, watching videotapes of the treatment of a Skin, and going outside either to take photos of the enviroment or to kill Skins in order to examinate their corpses.
But you will not only have to investigate, you will also have to ensure the security of the facility and it's inhabitants. Each day, the Skins will attempt to roam the facility, so you will have to prepare accordingly, and make last the three resources you have: Security, Ammo and Food. If any of these resources reach a critically low level (ESPECIALLY Security!), you're doomed.
The things you can do during the day include: Reinforcing your defenses and restocking your ammo (but you cannot do both in the same day), sending your scavenger for food, with a risk of drawing Skins to the facility, regulate how much food will be consumed, talk with the rest of the facility crew to get to know them better, and of course, investigate. When you're done for the day, you can go to sleep and you will be informed of how much resources you have left, and how much of the security of the facility was breached, among other things.
While all of this may sound like the foundation of a cool management mechanic, the truth is that once I learned how everything worked (which it didn't took very long), the rest of the phase was a breeze. I never had to ration my food, my security levels were above 100% most of the time (even more my ammo!), and considering the time it takes to get 100% in both biological and psicological investigation, every day eventually turns into a work routine. And that is not fun. :(
Phase Two - Engineering
This is the phase in which you develop the cure. For plot reasons, during the beginning of the phase, you will be separated from most of the members of your facility crew, having then to search in the field from them. Introducing you to a Skin combat mechanic, which was probably one of the best sequences of the game.
Short story: You have to kill every Skin on screen before they get close enough to you to tear you to pieces.
Long story: To accomplish this, you will have to manage three elements: Integrity (how many Skins are left), Speed (the speed at which the Skins move) and Distance (the distance that separates the Skins from your group). During your turn, you will have to choose one of four commands which affect these three elements:
- The first command, which deals more damage to the Skin horde and reduces little of their speed, but will draw more Skins in a few turns.
- The second command, which works pretty much as an intermediate type of attack.
- The third command, which deals little damage to the horde, but slows them a lot, and draws very little Skins in a few turns.
- And the fourth command, which increases the effect of the next command you choose.
After your turn, the Skins move as much distance as their speed allows them to. Rinse and repeat until the horde is eliminated or it kills your party.
Honestly, it was simple but it was actually pretty fun, in my opinion at least. That was, until we reach a new facility and the beginning of yet another managment section. The objective is pretty much the same as in the Phase One, which is to fill an engineering rate to 100%, but this time without a second variable to fill aditionally. The catch is that after certain percentages are reached, you will be unable to progress further untill you trigger a certain event. It's not hard to trigger these events, but it increases the length of this section.
This time you will have to manage four resources: Security, Food, Materials, and Lab Equipment. And to increase these resources, you will have the choice to assign one of the following jobs to the facility members: Engineering, Lab Equipment, Scavenging, Farming, Trapping and the Security Units. That said, each member will only be especialized in two of these jobs, so you'll be only be able to asign said member to one job, or the other. I don't think it's necessary to say that the more members are assigned to a single job, the more you will gain from said job.
You know what Security and Food do, but what Materials and Lab Equipment do? Well, essentially, Materials are used for the guys in Lab Equipment to produce the resource that gives the name to the job, and Lab Equipment is used by the people in Engineering to progress the cure engineering.
Aditionally you will be able to trade resources and items like antibiotics and fertilizer with the neighboring town, and once you advanced more in the phase, you will be able to partake in a simple minigame that involves collecting Skin corpses while avoiding other Skins in order to inspect them and get instant engineering progress. (Yes, just like in Phase One, but this time the ammount of progress you get is determinated by how much Materials you spend.)
All of this is more complex than in Phase One, but in the end is just as easy and doesn't offer any major challenge.
Phase Three - Implementation
This is the final phase of the game in which you implement and distribute the cure around the world. In this phase, you will have to travel in car to the only place in which you can distribute the cure around the globe. This will be done in an overworld-like map which is an actual drawn map! XD
(You had to explore an overworld map before in Phase Two, but this time this composes the major part of this phase.)
But the travel won't be easy, since the road to your destination is pretty long and you'll have to manage once again, four resources: Food, Water, Fuel, and Car Health. If any of these resources reach zero, is Game Over. During the trip, Randal will be accompanied by five of his facility co-workers which you can choose (five including Randal's love interest if you decided to pair him with someone), each member you choose has the passive ability to make one of the four resources last longer.
During the trip, you will be shown a HUD in the upper-left corner of the screen that shows how much of the four resources you have left. While you move in the map, the four resouces will be slowly consumed, so while you advance, you will have to go to places marked with an "!" on the map in which you can either collect Food and Water, or Fuel and Car Health. Sometimes you will also come across places with an "!!" in which you can collect every resource, or places with an "?" which will trigger an event in which depending on a choice you make, you can collect a certain resource.
But have in account that I said COLLECT, not REFILL, so you won't be able to travel all day, once you note you have few resources left, you will have to Camp, which can be done at any moment by pressing a button on the map. In the camp, you will be able to talk with your travelling companions for some final character development, and of course, sleep and refill the resources with the stuff you collected afterwards.
(It should be noted that supposedly, the more you camp, the more the travelling difficulty increases. Altough I don't know how, because I honestly never noticed the difference... :/)
Eventually in your trip you will reach one of the four Stops (which are marked with an "i" on the map) of the map, which refill all of your resources at 100%, and in which you'll enter to a place where a story event will happen, usually with a choice that you'll have to make and that will affect how the rest of the story develops.
After finally reaching your destination, the only thing left for you to do will be to play a Skin shooting minigame (that also was available in Phase One), watch the final cutscenes... And that, is the end of that! The car sequence in general, was a nice change of pace from the usually slow managment sequences, and the story event happening in the Stops were a great preparation for the ending. Whatever ending is the one you got, that is. :)
And that's pretty much the summatory (more like extensive explanation, but anyways...) of the gameplay in COATS. To sum it up, it wasn't that bad, but if the difficulty in the management sequences had been increased, the game would have certainly gotten a better score. Now that that's finally taken care of, let's move on onto something more lighter...
Regarding the aesthetic part of the game, we can see what is basically a mash-up of custom, borrowed, edited, and RTP resources. But it's a really well done mash-up, since those resources are used in a way that you will rarely feel that they clash negatively.
Let's talk first about the pictures. There are lots of custom pictures in COATS, all of them well designed, fitting their propouse adequately, this is especially true for the CG's appearing in many important points of the story, which are drawn in a beautiful style that suits the game perfectly.
(As a personal note, I would really have liked that they were special CG's that appeared during the development of a relationship with any of the 4 love interests. Just saying...)
In regards to the tilesets, the ones I can recognize being used in this game are the RTP plus the Modern and the Futuristic Tile Packs, they blend and are used in a great way, resulting in a mostly excellent mapping, for both interior and exterior maps, aside from the ocassional passability error. (And if you're asking, the rest of the game is practically bug-ridden! :D)
Finally, we got the charsets and facesets, which both are made through the VX Ace generator, and altough it would have been nice that the facesets shared the same art style as the CG's, the work made with the edits in both the faces and characters is admirable, and helps to compensate for that.
A special mention goes for the videos made for the intro, the chapter transitions and the ending which are really cool looking. ;)
At last, we're here. The section of the review that always takes me less than the others to analyze! And that's because there's not much to say about this part, the music is borrowed from another source (altough I don't know what source), and it's used pretty well. It's not the best soundtrack in the world, but it does what it has to do, which is to complement the athmosphere of the game. So I don't really have any complains about this.
So, what else can I say? COATS is a great game. It may be not exactly for everyone, but it's worth the try just for it's compelling story and characters. This was the project of just two people, so you have to imagine the amount of time and effort that was put in it's production. And it really shows that point during the eight hours that lasts the game. The only reason why this game doesn't get a perfect note, it's because of the mentioned easiness of the management sections.
Again, this may have been just me, but during those sections I rarely felt that there was any chance of losing the game. And given the slow progression of the game in general, those sections started to become boring to play, and the game a little harder to bear.
Then why I'm giving this game such a high note, you ask? Because I'm one of the believers that a good story can save (to a certain extent) a bad gameplay. And how! So, if you're looking for a good story, with interesting characters and an inmersive setting, COATS won't dissapoint you.
- A great and exciting plot with lots of interesting characters.
- A well achieved athmosphere of a zombie-esque apocalypse.
- An admirable design of the general gameplay and minigames using only events. And the minigames are kind of fun, too.
- Nice combination of custom, edited, borrowed and RTP graphics, all of it coupled with really good mapping.
- The music used makes a good job adding to the game's athmosphere.
- The minigames are fun, but one you learned your way about the mechanics, the game becomes boringly easy.
- It would have been nice if the facesets had been custom with the same style as the CG's.
(Plus, the already mentioned romantic CG's... XD)
Final Rating: 4 Stars
For future reference, here's a list showing what I consider the stars to mean:
NOTE: This review only reflects my personal opinion, and people may differ from what I think of the game. Some people may think that this is the best game ever, some people may think that this is a piece of crap that must be burned to ashes immediately. If you, the developer, agree with the points in my review or not, it's up to you.
I've been meaning to make a review of this game for a long time now, but for some reason (most likely, laziness :P), I ended up postponing it until I forgot about wanting to make this review in the first place. During one of my roamings in the Games section I came across this game and it hooked me up inmediatly.(Altough to be honest, any game that has a branching story and multiple endings has my instant attention...) So then I played it... and it was great! Because of that, I found strange the low level of attention this game had, which motivated me to make a review.
(I recently discovered that there was already a rewiew of this game two months ago. (Thank you very much, piano... :/) Still, makerscore is makerscore.) :)
But well, the thing I said at the beginning happened and I didn't touched the subject for a while. And then, the So Jelly! Review Event started, and I found a new motivation to make this review.
So, let's get this thing rolling!
Zombies. Well, this game doesn't call them Zombies, it calls them Skins, but they behave pretty much the same way, the only difference being that the virus affecting the Skins leaves them... well, without skin, but more on that later. Anyways, ever since George Romero popularized Zombies, many other pieces of fiction tried to imitate Romero's sucess, some were sucessful, others... not so much. And all of these stories have one thing in common, the main characters are usually a bunch of civilians that are trying to survive the apocalypse at all cost.
But in COATS, we don't take control of a common civilian, we take control of a scientist, one of the brillant minds tasked with the hard mission to find a cure for the virus. And that's excactly what we're going to do in this game, attempt to find a cure for the virus! While making sure our facility doesn't get overrun by the Skins, of course...
So it's time to put on our lab coats and accompany me to go and see if this game manages to live to it's premise! (SPOILER ALERT: It does.)
WARNING: There are high chances of finding bad jokes in the screenshots below.
As always, let's start of with the story. We take control of Randal (or whatever we want to call him, as long as it has a maximum of 6 letters), a scientist that during 5 years has been doing the same thankless job and living the same boring life, until the day his boss promotes him, making him the head of the team tasked with investigating a possible cure for the Skin Disease, an epidemic disease product of a virus that tears off the skin of people and turns then into mindless creatures that, just as the zombies, only look to devour human flesh.
From that moment, he'll have to work to progress his investigation while trying to mantain the security of the facility he works in, and assuring the well-being of his team. All of this while trying to deal with his own past and trying to come to terms with the person he is and the life he chose to live. Yeah... Randal's mission is not an easy one. :(
The plot of COATS is divided in three Acts (Research, Engineering and Implementation), in which you, while progressing through the creation of the cure, you will get to know better your team partners, and maybe finding the future Mrs. Randal in four different candidates while you're are it... And! You will have to make choices that will effect on how the story progress. For example, at the end of Act 1, you'll have to make a choice between three approaches to a cure which are esentially: A pacific, a scientific (neutral), and a violent approach. These and other decisions will determine which members of the team stay and which leave, which live and which die, Randal's attitude and ideology, and more importantly, the ending and the epilogue of the story.
The plot in general is one of the best I seen in an RPG Maker game. In fact, this and the characters are probably what will motivate you to keep going through the game due to the gameplay which I will talk about later. Back to the plot, it obvious that a lot of blood, sweat and tears went in the creation of this plot, and it really shows. It potrays the athmosphere of a
As for the characters, the developer has made a great job fleshing them out during the three acts of the game. All of them are very great each one on their own way, and in adittion, they have equally interesting backstories that help to their characterization. Every time you get bored of the gameplay, you'll be looking foward to talk to them. The dialogue really helps in this by not sucking, since aside from a loose typo here and there, there are practically no grammatical errors.
So yeah, the writing in COATS is that good.
Trust me Randal, that's not the worst thing you'll have to go trough in this game...
And now, onto the gameplay. But this time, my opinions are divided here, but first I want to say that I really like the way the gameplay is designed, since from what I saw, everything in the game is evented. And this is really admirable since these events, common events, switches and variables must have been handled in a way that I'm not even close to reach. So kudos to the developer for that. ^_^)b
The thing is, when this design comes into practice, it makes the gameplay lean towards the easy side, because once you understand how all of the metagames and minigames work, advancing through the game becomes a walk in the park, and for some moments you'll feel that the story and characters are the only thing that will motivate you to continue this game, since a game that's too easy, gets boring too fast. Well, the minigames are actually quite fun despite of their easiness, is in the main game that lies the problem.
To have an understanding of what I mean, I'll make an explanation without spoilers of the mechanics and minigames found on each act:
Phase One - Research
This is the phase in which you investigate the posibility of a cure. In your facility, your first task will be to assign the security forces to look for a Skin specimen to start your investigation. The main goal in this phase is to have a 100% rate of investigation in both the biological and the psicological aspect of the disease. Investigating the specimen will add a value between 1% and 3% to one of both aspects of the investigation, and since you can only do this once per day, getting through this phase will take a while...
(Not to mention that the specimen gets damaged, and from time to time, you will have to spend a whole day healing the subject.)
Eventually, you will find out that this method won't work forever, and you will have to resort to other methods (two of which are minigames) such as: Sending your scavenger to look for items with Skin DNA, watching videotapes of the treatment of a Skin, and going outside either to take photos of the enviroment or to kill Skins in order to examinate their corpses.
But you will not only have to investigate, you will also have to ensure the security of the facility and it's inhabitants. Each day, the Skins will attempt to roam the facility, so you will have to prepare accordingly, and make last the three resources you have: Security, Ammo and Food. If any of these resources reach a critically low level (ESPECIALLY Security!), you're doomed.
The things you can do during the day include: Reinforcing your defenses and restocking your ammo (but you cannot do both in the same day), sending your scavenger for food, with a risk of drawing Skins to the facility, regulate how much food will be consumed, talk with the rest of the facility crew to get to know them better, and of course, investigate. When you're done for the day, you can go to sleep and you will be informed of how much resources you have left, and how much of the security of the facility was breached, among other things.
While all of this may sound like the foundation of a cool management mechanic, the truth is that once I learned how everything worked (which it didn't took very long), the rest of the phase was a breeze. I never had to ration my food, my security levels were above 100% most of the time (even more my ammo!), and considering the time it takes to get 100% in both biological and psicological investigation, every day eventually turns into a work routine. And that is not fun. :(
Phase Two - Engineering
This is the phase in which you develop the cure. For plot reasons, during the beginning of the phase, you will be separated from most of the members of your facility crew, having then to search in the field from them. Introducing you to a Skin combat mechanic, which was probably one of the best sequences of the game.
Short story: You have to kill every Skin on screen before they get close enough to you to tear you to pieces.
Long story: To accomplish this, you will have to manage three elements: Integrity (how many Skins are left), Speed (the speed at which the Skins move) and Distance (the distance that separates the Skins from your group). During your turn, you will have to choose one of four commands which affect these three elements:
- The first command, which deals more damage to the Skin horde and reduces little of their speed, but will draw more Skins in a few turns.
- The second command, which works pretty much as an intermediate type of attack.
- The third command, which deals little damage to the horde, but slows them a lot, and draws very little Skins in a few turns.
- And the fourth command, which increases the effect of the next command you choose.
After your turn, the Skins move as much distance as their speed allows them to. Rinse and repeat until the horde is eliminated or it kills your party.
Honestly, it was simple but it was actually pretty fun, in my opinion at least. That was, until we reach a new facility and the beginning of yet another managment section. The objective is pretty much the same as in the Phase One, which is to fill an engineering rate to 100%, but this time without a second variable to fill aditionally. The catch is that after certain percentages are reached, you will be unable to progress further untill you trigger a certain event. It's not hard to trigger these events, but it increases the length of this section.
This time you will have to manage four resources: Security, Food, Materials, and Lab Equipment. And to increase these resources, you will have the choice to assign one of the following jobs to the facility members: Engineering, Lab Equipment, Scavenging, Farming, Trapping and the Security Units. That said, each member will only be especialized in two of these jobs, so you'll be only be able to asign said member to one job, or the other. I don't think it's necessary to say that the more members are assigned to a single job, the more you will gain from said job.
You know what Security and Food do, but what Materials and Lab Equipment do? Well, essentially, Materials are used for the guys in Lab Equipment to produce the resource that gives the name to the job, and Lab Equipment is used by the people in Engineering to progress the cure engineering.
Aditionally you will be able to trade resources and items like antibiotics and fertilizer with the neighboring town, and once you advanced more in the phase, you will be able to partake in a simple minigame that involves collecting Skin corpses while avoiding other Skins in order to inspect them and get instant engineering progress. (Yes, just like in Phase One, but this time the ammount of progress you get is determinated by how much Materials you spend.)
All of this is more complex than in Phase One, but in the end is just as easy and doesn't offer any major challenge.
Phase Three - Implementation
This is the final phase of the game in which you implement and distribute the cure around the world. In this phase, you will have to travel in car to the only place in which you can distribute the cure around the globe. This will be done in an overworld-like map which is an actual drawn map! XD
(You had to explore an overworld map before in Phase Two, but this time this composes the major part of this phase.)
But the travel won't be easy, since the road to your destination is pretty long and you'll have to manage once again, four resources: Food, Water, Fuel, and Car Health. If any of these resources reach zero, is Game Over. During the trip, Randal will be accompanied by five of his facility co-workers which you can choose (five including Randal's love interest if you decided to pair him with someone), each member you choose has the passive ability to make one of the four resources last longer.
During the trip, you will be shown a HUD in the upper-left corner of the screen that shows how much of the four resources you have left. While you move in the map, the four resouces will be slowly consumed, so while you advance, you will have to go to places marked with an "!" on the map in which you can either collect Food and Water, or Fuel and Car Health. Sometimes you will also come across places with an "!!" in which you can collect every resource, or places with an "?" which will trigger an event in which depending on a choice you make, you can collect a certain resource.
But have in account that I said COLLECT, not REFILL, so you won't be able to travel all day, once you note you have few resources left, you will have to Camp, which can be done at any moment by pressing a button on the map. In the camp, you will be able to talk with your travelling companions for some final character development, and of course, sleep and refill the resources with the stuff you collected afterwards.
(It should be noted that supposedly, the more you camp, the more the travelling difficulty increases. Altough I don't know how, because I honestly never noticed the difference... :/)
Eventually in your trip you will reach one of the four Stops (which are marked with an "i" on the map) of the map, which refill all of your resources at 100%, and in which you'll enter to a place where a story event will happen, usually with a choice that you'll have to make and that will affect how the rest of the story develops.
After finally reaching your destination, the only thing left for you to do will be to play a Skin shooting minigame (that also was available in Phase One), watch the final cutscenes... And that, is the end of that! The car sequence in general, was a nice change of pace from the usually slow managment sequences, and the story event happening in the Stops were a great preparation for the ending. Whatever ending is the one you got, that is. :)
And that's pretty much the summatory (more like extensive explanation, but anyways...) of the gameplay in COATS. To sum it up, it wasn't that bad, but if the difficulty in the management sequences had been increased, the game would have certainly gotten a better score. Now that that's finally taken care of, let's move on onto something more lighter...
Damnit! I should have known this was not the best time for a walk...
Regarding the aesthetic part of the game, we can see what is basically a mash-up of custom, borrowed, edited, and RTP resources. But it's a really well done mash-up, since those resources are used in a way that you will rarely feel that they clash negatively.
Let's talk first about the pictures. There are lots of custom pictures in COATS, all of them well designed, fitting their propouse adequately, this is especially true for the CG's appearing in many important points of the story, which are drawn in a beautiful style that suits the game perfectly.
(As a personal note, I would really have liked that they were special CG's that appeared during the development of a relationship with any of the 4 love interests. Just saying...)
In regards to the tilesets, the ones I can recognize being used in this game are the RTP plus the Modern and the Futuristic Tile Packs, they blend and are used in a great way, resulting in a mostly excellent mapping, for both interior and exterior maps, aside from the ocassional passability error. (And if you're asking, the rest of the game is practically bug-ridden! :D)
Finally, we got the charsets and facesets, which both are made through the VX Ace generator, and altough it would have been nice that the facesets shared the same art style as the CG's, the work made with the edits in both the faces and characters is admirable, and helps to compensate for that.
A special mention goes for the videos made for the intro, the chapter transitions and the ending which are really cool looking. ;)
Randal's Office. His personal refuge from the rest of the human society.
At last, we're here. The section of the review that always takes me less than the others to analyze! And that's because there's not much to say about this part, the music is borrowed from another source (altough I don't know what source), and it's used pretty well. It's not the best soundtrack in the world, but it does what it has to do, which is to complement the athmosphere of the game. So I don't really have any complains about this.
So, what else can I say? COATS is a great game. It may be not exactly for everyone, but it's worth the try just for it's compelling story and characters. This was the project of just two people, so you have to imagine the amount of time and effort that was put in it's production. And it really shows that point during the eight hours that lasts the game. The only reason why this game doesn't get a perfect note, it's because of the mentioned easiness of the management sections.
Again, this may have been just me, but during those sections I rarely felt that there was any chance of losing the game. And given the slow progression of the game in general, those sections started to become boring to play, and the game a little harder to bear.
Then why I'm giving this game such a high note, you ask? Because I'm one of the believers that a good story can save (to a certain extent) a bad gameplay. And how! So, if you're looking for a good story, with interesting characters and an inmersive setting, COATS won't dissapoint you.
Oh boy, here we go... :(
- A great and exciting plot with lots of interesting characters.
- A well achieved athmosphere of a zombie-esque apocalypse.
- An admirable design of the general gameplay and minigames using only events. And the minigames are kind of fun, too.
- Nice combination of custom, edited, borrowed and RTP graphics, all of it coupled with really good mapping.
- The music used makes a good job adding to the game's athmosphere.
- The minigames are fun, but one you learned your way about the mechanics, the game becomes boringly easy.
- It would have been nice if the facesets had been custom with the same style as the CG's.
(Plus, the already mentioned romantic CG's... XD)
Final Rating: 4 Stars
For future reference, here's a list showing what I consider the stars to mean:
N/A - Not Available: This game has not a note. This is probably because either the game is a demo, is a joke game, or the game is simply sooooo horrible that giving it a note would be doing it a favor...
0.5 - Abysmal: The lowest grade possible in an RMN review. For a game to get this note, it must have failed in absolutely every aspect that makes a game to the point of not having any redeemable qualities. I wouldn't give this game even to my worst enemy.
1 - Terrible: This game sucks badly. Whatever it was trying to accomplish gets lost in a sea of badly designed and/or implemented game elements. It may have very few good qualities which is what saves it from being Abysmal.
1.5 - Bad: This game has some good qualities, but sadly, these end up overweighted by the many flaws that surround it. You may find some enjoyment in this game, but don't expect it to last much.
2 - Mediocre: There was a clear potential for this game, but it ended up failing to live up to it's premise. Only recommended if you like the game's genre.
2.5 - Subpar: While this game isn't exactly bad, there were a few important flaws that leave this game below the average standards. It's still enjoyable, but only to a certain extent.
3 - Average: Basically, a game that has a fair share of pros and cons. It could be better, but is still worth a shot.
3.5 - Good: A game that with a couple of good qualities, manages to stand up between the Average games. It still has a long way to go, but it's a step on the right direction.
4 - Great: This game gets a lot of things right and manages to be an enjoyable experience. It's still not exempt of cons though, which deprives it from getting a higher score.
4.5 - Awesome: A game that regardless of the genre, it's totally worth the play. You'll have fun with it from beginning to end, and the memories of it will remain fresh in your head for a long while. It doesn't get the perfect score by this much.
5 - Epic (Win): The perfect score. This game is sooooo great that you probably won't believe me until you play it. So, no matter what you're doing right now, stop it, download the game, and PLAY IT! Trust me, you won't regret it... :)
0.5 - Abysmal: The lowest grade possible in an RMN review. For a game to get this note, it must have failed in absolutely every aspect that makes a game to the point of not having any redeemable qualities. I wouldn't give this game even to my worst enemy.
1 - Terrible: This game sucks badly. Whatever it was trying to accomplish gets lost in a sea of badly designed and/or implemented game elements. It may have very few good qualities which is what saves it from being Abysmal.
1.5 - Bad: This game has some good qualities, but sadly, these end up overweighted by the many flaws that surround it. You may find some enjoyment in this game, but don't expect it to last much.
2 - Mediocre: There was a clear potential for this game, but it ended up failing to live up to it's premise. Only recommended if you like the game's genre.
2.5 - Subpar: While this game isn't exactly bad, there were a few important flaws that leave this game below the average standards. It's still enjoyable, but only to a certain extent.
3 - Average: Basically, a game that has a fair share of pros and cons. It could be better, but is still worth a shot.
3.5 - Good: A game that with a couple of good qualities, manages to stand up between the Average games. It still has a long way to go, but it's a step on the right direction.
4 - Great: This game gets a lot of things right and manages to be an enjoyable experience. It's still not exempt of cons though, which deprives it from getting a higher score.
4.5 - Awesome: A game that regardless of the genre, it's totally worth the play. You'll have fun with it from beginning to end, and the memories of it will remain fresh in your head for a long while. It doesn't get the perfect score by this much.
5 - Epic (Win): The perfect score. This game is sooooo great that you probably won't believe me until you play it. So, no matter what you're doing right now, stop it, download the game, and PLAY IT! Trust me, you won't regret it... :)
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CloseThis is an amazing and thorough review, and I felt like I had to comment on it. First off, thank you so much for investing your time and effort into this; I really appreciate it. It shows that you haven't hand-waved it off to try and get some cheap points, you've considered the source material and given an honest opinion. I appreciate it.
For starters, here's a little something about the Skins: I've made TONS of notes about them. I wanted to make a game inspired by classic Romero zombie movies, but I wanted it to have an aura of mystery. Everyone knows how zombies work, and there are similarities with Skins, but I wanted something more. The Skins are the result, having some slight variations for the player and the characters to discover.
I'm so glad you enjoyed the writing. There is an enormous amount of possible dialogue, so to see it go appreciated is very validating. I didn't want to make all my characters into cardboard cut-outs, so even those who are somewhat stereotypical (at first glance) is usually something more than meets the eye; or so I intended, at least. I blame the occasional missing letter and typo on my crappy keyboard and RPG Maker's inability to tell me when I've written too much (so that it goes outside the dialogue window and disappears).
The difficulty factor was my biggest balance issues. Some people never grasped the concept of the different phases, so I wanted to give them a bigger chance to understand. The game gets consecutively harder, in all phases, and someone lagging behind early could mean a slow, frustrating death. The compromise was to make things easier in the beginning, at the cost of having skilled players get a big head start that could last them through the phase. It was a tough decision, but I felt like I made the right one. The shooting minigame in phase two wasn't a very long addition, since there is a technique to it that can auto-win pretty much anything. I didn't want people to discover it and grind their way through something boring.
Glad you liked the artwork, my illustrator worked very hard. We wanted to add more, but she just didn't have the time. Instead, I made the call to make as many scenes as possible into in-game animations rather than CG images, but yes, it'd be awesome to see more of her work. And in regards to custom facesets: yes, it'd been awesome, but with over 140-ish faces, it would have taken us at least another year to finish the artwork. I made the call to have my illustrator focus on CG instead.
The audio is from several different packs, but also from a composer who contributed with the main theme! Also, the end credits theme is made by me, playing the piano. I can't play the piano though. But still, I did it.
I'm a bit sad you didn't like the gameplay, but I'm hoping to make up for it in future projects. But a 4 / 5 isn't bad. Just imagine what I could do with an actual budget!
So thank you for the feedback, it's been a pleasure reading and reflecting on. I might link to it in future blog posts.
Oh, but before I go, I gotta ask; Who's the superior waifu? :D (For science)
For starters, here's a little something about the Skins: I've made TONS of notes about them. I wanted to make a game inspired by classic Romero zombie movies, but I wanted it to have an aura of mystery. Everyone knows how zombies work, and there are similarities with Skins, but I wanted something more. The Skins are the result, having some slight variations for the player and the characters to discover.
I'm so glad you enjoyed the writing. There is an enormous amount of possible dialogue, so to see it go appreciated is very validating. I didn't want to make all my characters into cardboard cut-outs, so even those who are somewhat stereotypical (at first glance) is usually something more than meets the eye; or so I intended, at least. I blame the occasional missing letter and typo on my crappy keyboard and RPG Maker's inability to tell me when I've written too much (so that it goes outside the dialogue window and disappears).
The difficulty factor was my biggest balance issues. Some people never grasped the concept of the different phases, so I wanted to give them a bigger chance to understand. The game gets consecutively harder, in all phases, and someone lagging behind early could mean a slow, frustrating death. The compromise was to make things easier in the beginning, at the cost of having skilled players get a big head start that could last them through the phase. It was a tough decision, but I felt like I made the right one. The shooting minigame in phase two wasn't a very long addition, since there is a technique to it that can auto-win pretty much anything. I didn't want people to discover it and grind their way through something boring.
Glad you liked the artwork, my illustrator worked very hard. We wanted to add more, but she just didn't have the time. Instead, I made the call to make as many scenes as possible into in-game animations rather than CG images, but yes, it'd be awesome to see more of her work. And in regards to custom facesets: yes, it'd been awesome, but with over 140-ish faces, it would have taken us at least another year to finish the artwork. I made the call to have my illustrator focus on CG instead.
The audio is from several different packs, but also from a composer who contributed with the main theme! Also, the end credits theme is made by me, playing the piano. I can't play the piano though. But still, I did it.
I'm a bit sad you didn't like the gameplay, but I'm hoping to make up for it in future projects. But a 4 / 5 isn't bad. Just imagine what I could do with an actual budget!
So thank you for the feedback, it's been a pleasure reading and reflecting on. I might link to it in future blog posts.
Oh, but before I go, I gotta ask; Who's the superior waifu? :D (For science)
Glad you liked my review!
-Again, the gameplay is not that bad, I really liked the concept behind them, and I had actually fun with it at some points, and the minigames were quite fun too, but the difficulty just made it a little hard to enjoy. But honestly, I don't blame you, difficulty in games is tough to handle. I still can't get the hand of balancing enemies when trying to make RPG'S... XD
-You know, I thought for a moment that the piano song at the end was just an RTP theme. Guess I wasn't paying attention enough! :P
-Yeah, the concept behind the Skins was really fascinating. It must have took a lot for you to think of all of that, and also thinking of the characters, story, etc. You really made something good with that. :)
-I understand the issue with the artist. Still, for the time she had, she did one hell of a job here! :D
-The supreme waifu is Karen. Definetly. She's just adorable! ^_^
Thanks for the response and I wish you good luck with CRACKERJACK!
-Again, the gameplay is not that bad, I really liked the concept behind them, and I had actually fun with it at some points, and the minigames were quite fun too, but the difficulty just made it a little hard to enjoy. But honestly, I don't blame you, difficulty in games is tough to handle. I still can't get the hand of balancing enemies when trying to make RPG'S... XD
-You know, I thought for a moment that the piano song at the end was just an RTP theme. Guess I wasn't paying attention enough! :P
-Yeah, the concept behind the Skins was really fascinating. It must have took a lot for you to think of all of that, and also thinking of the characters, story, etc. You really made something good with that. :)
-I understand the issue with the artist. Still, for the time she had, she did one hell of a job here! :D
-The supreme waifu is Karen. Definetly. She's just adorable! ^_^
Thanks for the response and I wish you good luck with CRACKERJACK!
Wikimon
953
There's actually a lot of thought behind the Skins. I looked up all kinds of conditions that can cause a person to lose their skin and, surprisingly, such things exist. They may not turn people into cannibals, but yes, there are diseases and conditions that make people lose their skin. Creepy.
Karen is one of my favorites as well. I didn't intend for her to be an option at first, but after making her dialogue, I realized she was the kind of person Randal would go for. She is, in a way, his opposite. She got her head in the clouds, while he's constantly "all business". Kinda fun dynamic.
Crackerjack is gonna be great. Or at least I hope so. It feels like it should be.
Karen is one of my favorites as well. I didn't intend for her to be an option at first, but after making her dialogue, I realized she was the kind of person Randal would go for. She is, in a way, his opposite. She got her head in the clouds, while he's constantly "all business". Kinda fun dynamic.
Crackerjack is gonna be great. Or at least I hope so. It feels like it should be.
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