Reinventing the Wheel

I just started playing Folklore. It's remarkably fun. You play 2 characters and alternate between them, playing through the same level and story chapter twice, but with different abilities and different conversations with the NPCs. That should feel repetitive, but it's a mystery story, so the added info is necessary to get to the next level.

The premise is actually sort of similar to Silent Hill: one of the characters recieves a letter from her (17 years deceased) mother, summoning her to the Village o'Creepy in Ireland where, supposedly, you can speak with the dead. You then run into a whole bunch of other (living) people who just felt the need to visit, for whatever reason. (They all have reasons, and they're all somewhat bogus.)

Doolin, the village, is fairly normal during the day. The people are a bit weird, though, and nobody goes out at night. During the night, spirits take over. For whatever reason, they tend to congregate in the pub. (Being dead doesn't make you any less Irish, apparently.)

I'm not sure entirely why I'm so charmed by this game. It's very artistic in places -- all the cut scenes are viewed as if you're watching them through a proscenium stage arch decked out for a production of "A Midsummer Night's Dream", for example -- and has a decent plot. The characters are decent, but no more, even though the ghosts are a riot.

The plot, though, is pretty cool. Imagine a cross between Dante's Divine Comedy, Ye Olde Various Irish Folktales, and The Nightmare Before Christmas. Once you get into the meat of the story, your characters begin exploring the Netherworld. Turns out, the Netherworld is several different planes of existence, each representing a set of dead/nonhuman creatures and one essential flaw/failing. You get sucked into a different realm, depending on the person you're investigating.

I'm currently on the "sudden, violent death" realm, which is a cross between a demolished, burning Greek ruin and WW1 trenches. There are guys wielding bayonnettes and machine guns, wearing gas masks, running around collapsing ampitheaters. The whole place is populated by people who were not ready to die, and the level boss deals with the human fear of death. Other realms are more cheerful -- the Faery Realm is pretty cool -- but I'm really digging the idea of themed levels revolving around specific fears and foibles.

The designers have a Wii-ish thing going on with the battle system, though. I didn't realize PS3 controllers had motion sensors. The game designers decided to utilize this. Consequently, you need to shake the controller, or wave it in patterns, in order to rip enemies' souls out and absorb their powers. The game is pretty engrossing, but every now and then, I get a bad case of the giggles as I find myself doing an idiotic hula-like dance with the controller, completely unaware of how moronic I look. I'm waiting for Alex to play this, so I may watch his antics and LOL. :)

In personal news, I'm administering round 2 of finals tomorrow, grades go in Monday...and I theoretically teach until the 12th. The kids know that grades go in, though, so here's hoping they all do the smart thing and skip. :) Then...I'm unemployed and relocated and all that good stuff. I can say with some honestly that I am not yet panicking...at least, depending very heavily on your definition of "panic".