Betrayer

[DANGERMAN]

I thought I'd only heard of Betrayer 2 days ago when it launched on Steam, but when I was getting killed by a conquistador and his entire face was a black shadow except his eyes, I remembered it from some list of indie games (I presume) Radiofloyd posted.

It looks great, the default is that it's black & white with splashes of red on important objects, be that items or enemies. It's set in the 1600s, you've sailed over from England to join up with a colony, only every one appears to be dead, or undead. I'm telling you this because the game doesn't, there's information to find but at no point does it spell out who you are and why you're there, you'd have thought there'd be at least something to set the scene.

Betrayer is almost more like a detective game, you hunt for clues and that leads you to question people (spirits) who then give you more information. You have to swap between the light world and the dark world, and the first time that happens it's pretty unsettling. Which is the best thing about the game, for a while having no clue what's going on or what's expected of you is really interesting, it makes the game drip with atmosphere. Unfortunately when you're either stick or dying repeatedly, and I guess this is a problem with a lot of horror games, it neuters everything, you get familiar with the world and a bit more comfortable with what's around you.

It's also hugely frustrating at points, because the way you locate things is to hit the X key and then centre in on the sound, once you need more than just a general direction it's not hugely helpful, and if it's guiding you through an enemy laden area it actually starts to feel dickish. That's largely because the game gets hard, the conquistadors can and will fuck you up, in the night world the skeletons have laser precision accuracy, and later on there's enemies who are basically invisible in the default colour scheme. Oh, and it has the Dark Souls mechanic of if you die you drop all your loot, if you die again before you recover it, it's gone forever.

For a brief bit Betrayer was both fun and really interesting, the point I'm at now there's too many enemies to make exploring viable, so it's not interesting, and I'm so underpowered compared to the enemies, and so at a disadvantage in terms of spotting some of them, that it's not fun either.

It also looks way better than this video makes it look, youtube has compressed it loads

[DANGERMAN]

I was really down on this but they've released a patch that has made it better. Actually it's made me realise that it's not that it's better, it's just easier. You can stand toe to toe with enemies now if you put it on the easiest setting, and they've done a few other things like make it so you don't drop your loot when you die (unless you select to in the options) and the direction indicator on the compass is on by default now I think. The thing is it's just made me realise I don't like the combat that much, I quite liked the challenge to some extent, I just think the mechanic of having 1600s era weapons isn't all that fun given how long they take to reload.

The stealth early on was the highlight of the combat for me, the changes haven't encouraged that to come back in the latter stages, there's still invisible natives and giant spaniards. When I lost my save last week I thought I was pretty near the end, it turns out there was at least another couple of areas to go. The thing is I feel like it's not started wrapping up the story yet at the same time like I've solved it. I know what the ash figures are, I think I know why, I know what the totems are (I think), and I know why the natives are aggressive. I'm ready for it to be done but instead I have to trudge through the same mechanics for another couple of areas