Re: Bookrage's choiceofgames reviews
Bookrage's Review of "To the City in the Clouds"
Hello all, Today I am bringing you "To the City in the Clouds" Which I just happened to finish for the first time yesterday.
Biasses: I got a rather sudden unhappy ending from this one and thus some of what I say might come from me being a sore loser.
Genre: This title tries to be an archeological, supernatural adventure game. It doesn't really take your academics seriously, is rather crasse at times with how it talks, and also, although it has the "supernatural" tag, the way I played it showed that it had a lot less supernatural stuff to it than it claims. Everything that happened to me could be explained with non-supernatural explanations. The game is often crasse and crude as well, which is unfortunate.
Writing: Initially, I was thoroughly repulsed by this game by the content and tone of the first few chapters. It had rather crude and nasty humor, and threw sex at me a little too much. I admittedly gave my guy the flaw that he well... liked the ladies, but the way they sent it at me was thoroughly unpleasant to read. Also, the actual time you spend in the city is disappointing and the amount of detail given to it. You really only spend one chapter there, though admittedly, the game only has a few chapters. The tone as I have said is raw and uncomfortably blunt and rough, and much of the story I found pretty hard to read.
But I will say what this game has going for it as well. The second half of the story gets significantly better. It by no means gets good, but there is nothing particularly nasty about the back half of the story. Also, the game frequently makes you have to think about what you're going to do. It also inserts the FARC in a way I like rather than just having generic Columbian guerillas or something, which gives it a little authenticity and realism.
All and all, I can't say I enjoyed the writing because of the first half of the story though.
mechanics: Interesting and something worth a much better game. Rather than having percentages or numbers as many titles do, descriptors were used almost exclusively to describe your stats, which is something i have not seen done before. It even keeps track of your appearance and such and the items you get along the way to the city. (more on that on the Railroading section.) This sometimes made things much easier to understand, and because slang is frequently used and some slang I am not good with, it made some thing murkier. This is a good instructive stat screen though if you'd want to do it this way to see what works and what does not.
Romance: Very little in the way of Romance on the playthrough I did, but a lot of sex, and a lot of sex rather brutishly thrust in your face by the author. I like romance and getting my hero with a pretty girl at some point, but a lot of this looked like a bad prno movie to me (no actual description of the acts, but a lot of female characters and my characters acting like the actors in such films just having a bare-bones interaction before sex or casually having sex with anyone.) If I play this again, if I can avoid romantic interests at all, I will. Also, when I did choose a woman I liked at the one point where you get to choose what she looks like, I didn't even get the choice on whether I wanted to make love to her or not, the same happened earlier in the story in just some casual mentions too.
Railroading: Most of the time, not too bad. In terms of nature of many of your items, you get some customization options and you even get to choose pretty heavily what you look like. When you do get to pick if you have a lover back home, you get to say which kind, and you get to pick from a few options later for what passes for a sex interest/object in this story too. There's a few points where I made a choice, such as one with an artifact, where they essentially said "This will never fly back home and pass academic muster." but for the most part, I felt that my decisions mattered. They even ask a decent number of "how do you feel" questions to help work the mood, and for the most part, they are responsive to what you say. They even ask several times what the threat seems to be. With only one playthrough, I can't say exactly whether that changes the nature of the threats or whether that is just for your opinion.
Achievements: none: Even if this game did have them, not sure how happy I'd be to run through this thing multiple times to get them. but presumably some could be created for dealing with various threats or succeeding or failing with or without various items or skills.
Closing Remarks: I once believed that "For Rent: Haunted House" was an exceptionally bad game, but the bar has been significantly lowered by this one. Choices really matter, the mechanics are intresting, and the back half of the story isn't bad. However, the crass and blunt tone, with no subtlety or style to this game completely ruined it for me and made it a thoroughly unpleasant gaming experience. Also, you spend almost no time actually interacting with the mysterious Incan city, which is found extremely disappointing. If you're thinking of making a hosted game or even a choiceofgames title, this might be worth checking out as the mechanics in it are quite interesting and instructive. However, for general joy of play, this is not really worth it.
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