(Double-check the date in the topic? Check.)

I really shouldn't be able to notice the difference in a single-day,
but having 29 days in February really feels longer than a mere 28. I
mean, it /is/ longer but you wouldn't expect the month to feel so much
more robust just because of the addition of 24 hours. But everything
feels less rushed because its' there. There's not that sense of 'wait,
the month is over already?' that I usually get from February. It's
probably just me.

Wait, what were we talking about? Oh yeah, what games we played in
February. Let's get to that, then.

The List, It Is Already Done
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* The Callisto Protocol
* Superliminal
* Star Wars: Jedi Survivor
* Star Wars: Dark Forces II: Jedi Knight

It Keeps Going and Going and Going...
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* The Callisto Protocol
You know that meme?
"Mom! Buy me Frosties!"
"Now, kiddo, we have Frosties at home!"
At home: store brand frosted-flake cereal.
The Callisto Protocol is the store-brand version of "Dead Space".

That might be selling "The Callisto Protocol" a bit short, though. The
implication of the meme is that the 'at home' version is an extremely
sub-par version of the desired product: the store brand compared to
the name brand, a 'Romex' watch compared to a Rolex. And, in the case
of "The Callisto Protocol", that's only half true. It's a very, /very/
obvious clone of "Dead Space", but sub-par? No; not in the least.
Which isn't to say "The Callisto Protocol" is as good as "Dead Space"
because, in all honesty, it's not. But it's still a very good game.
It's just not /as good/.

The comparison between the two is one between a good title and a great
title. "Dead Space" is undoubtedly great; it's spawned sequels - and
remakes, and comics, and novels, and even movies! - for a reason. It
has extremely tight and satisfying gameplay, terrific atmosphere, a
convincing setting and excellent pacing. It's a masterful example of
how to write a horror game, with a good mix of suspense, terror and
action. "The Callisto Protocol" comes close - darn close - but never
quite matches it.

It's littlest, subtlest things. It's how the levels are so extremely
linear, for instance. Because you're given so little opportunity to
determine your own path, the game feels too much like a funhouse ride;
you can spot the scares before they jump out at you. It's how the game
relies just /a bit/ too heavily on monsters that attack you before you
can react, forcing you into a quicktime event to escape. Once or twice
is fine ("Dead Space" used the mechanic too) but "The Callisto
Protocol" doesn't /quite/ have the necessary moderation. It's the
weapons that never really stand out, even from one another. Picking up
a new boomstick should be exciting, but all "The Callisto Protocol"
weapons are unimaginative and undifferentiated.

But mostly, "The Callisto Protocol" falls behind because it /is/ such
an obvious clone. If you've ever played "Dead Space" before (or even
similar games in the genre), you'll find little new with this one.
Horror works best when it shocks and surprises, and "The Callisto
Protocol's" reliance on tropes - and especially "Dead Space" tropes -
steals a lot of its thunder.

That said, the game is well made. The combat is fun, the visuals are
impressive and the action is reasonably paced. It's not quite got the
same atmosphere as "Dead Space" - it's weaker story and flatter
characters makes it harder to immerse yourself in the world - but if
you can forgive a bit of ham in your horror sandwich, it's fine. There
are a lot worse horror games out there, up to and including "Resident
Evil". I'd put "The Callisto Protocol" ahead of the lot of them.

I'm not upset that I grabbed this game over the "Dead Space" remake.
Even as much of a clone as it is, I prefer playing a new game rather
than a remake. And "The Callisto Project" is a fine game. It's just
not quite as good as "Dead Space".

* Superliminal
"Superliminal" is what I would call a 'gimmick game'. It's a game
wrapped around exploring a really neat idea, but beyond that initial
concept there's really not much too it. A lot of 'first-person
puzzlers' - or 'Portal-clones', as they're sometimes unfairly called -
fall into this trap. The problem with these gimmick games is that -
because they're so mono-focused on their one idea, they overuse it
until the game's 'gimmick' loses it sense of wonder and novelty, and
there's little else in the game to fall back upon.

Admittedly, "Superliminal's" 'gimmick' is clever than most, and they
explore it in a number of ways. The way you perceive things has actual
effects on the reality of the world; the game uses perspective, depth
perception, and darkness to trick you in lots of inventive ways. Is
that object tiny because it's far away or because it's actually small?
In this game, it's both. Is that a shadow on the ground or a dark pit?
Yes. Is that a picture on the wall or a 3D object? Depending on where
you're standing, it's one or the other. Manipulating how you perceive
things is the key to puzzling your way through the game, and it's fun
seeing how they developers mess around with a player's expectations.

But once you get past the novelty of it all, there's very little to
this game. It's puzzles are ridiculously easy once you understand the
basics. The game is incredibly short; you can finish it in a single
hour. There's very little world building, no real characters, and the
messaging is trite. Not to mention, the whole point of the game is to
"reshape your perceptions" so you can "think outside the box"...
except you can't do anything EXCEPT for what is intended by the
developers. You'll NEVER be outside the box in this game.

The end result is that "Superliminal" feels very much like a
tech-demo. It's got terrific ideas, but not enough content to make it
an easy recommendation for anyone to play, much less pay for. Were it
a bit more fleshed out, this would be an awesome experience, but right
now it's a bit shallow for my taste.

* Star Wars: Jedi Survivor
This is another of those games that's hard for me to rate.

"Survivor" is, arguably, a better game in almost every regard than its
predecessor, "Fallen Order". It's got superior production values, a
larger game world, a more mature story, and more intricate mechanics.
It's got more enemies and more things to do overall. It's not without
its flaws but overall "Survivor" is the more polished game.

So why don't I like it as much?

Maybe it's the fact that its story seems sort of pointless; it's a
tale answering a question that didn't really need to be asked. "Fallen
Order" told an interesting tale of a lost Jedi trainee trying to find
his place in the New Order (a.k.a the evil Galactic Empire). For all
its space-fantasy bombast and operatic ridiculousness, it was a
relatable tale; who am I now that my guardians (whether they are elder
Jedi or parents) have left me in the wild and dangerous world?
"Survivor's" quest was more mundane, seemingly intended to answer a
question of canon: if Luke Skywalker was the last Jedi, what happened
to all the other Jedi survivors (answer: the game's hero, Cal Kestis,
found them a bolt-hole beyond the reach of the Empire). It's an
interesting quest, but lacks the impact of the original.

It could be the overly-large open world, too. "Fallen Order" also had
fairly large maps to explore, but most of the maps were dedicated to
the main quest, and you'd visit most areas simply by playing through
the main campaign. "Survivor's" worlds are much, much less linear, and
have a good number of side-quests and hidden-treasures to unearth.
This gives the player a lot more to do, but absolutely destroys the
pacing of the story. So much time is wasted searching for plants, or
'Force echoes' or solving puzzle-like challenge rooms... or simply
running through regions previously explored to get to the new bits.

It could be the sometimes lackluster game design. There were a number
of times when the solution to the problem wasn't as obvious as it
could be; an interactable object hidden up on the ceiling that only
became usable if you were /just/ at the right distance, or a climbable
wall that wasn't obviously climbable. Some of the new combat skills
felt a bit pointless, added more to increase the skill-count than for
any real utility. A lot of the new things-to-do (locating fish for
your base's fishtank, or seeds for the rooftop garden) seemed
unnecessary grind that offered no real benefit except to increment the
completion percentage.

There were a few minor technical snafus too. The fact that the game
had to recompile its shaders on every startup seemed wasteful. There
were a couple bugs and crashes too. It all felt a bit sloppy and
unfinished.

"Survivor" is a good game; do not mistake these issues for serious
flaws. If you liked the original game of the series, you will almost
certainly enjoy this one. But for whatever reason, I'm just not sure
that you'll like it MORE.

* Star Wars: Dark Forces II: Jedi Knight
I guess I'm in a Star Warsy mood this month.

Of course, the real reason I installed this was to check out the "Jedi
Knight Remastered" https://www.moddb.com/mods/jedi-knight-remastered
mod I mentioned earlier this month. And... it's fine. It does what it
advertised, improving many of the models, upscaling the textures, and
working magic with the original game's old, creaky lighting model. The
Stormtroopers are now recognizably Stormtroopers, and not some
nightmarish amalgamation of triangles that - if you squint and hope -
sort of resemble a Stormtrooper. The rest of the game itself remains
the same. Which is both its strength and undoing.

"Jedi Knight" is oh-so-very-much a game released in 1997. Caught in
that turbulent period between the release of "Quake" and the release
of "Half Life", it shares qualities of both games and is a satisfying
clone of neither.

Its "Quake" lineage (in style, not engine) are obvious. There was, at
the time, an impetus to push FPS games out of the narrow corridors and
abstract locations of Doom into ever-larger, ever-more detailed maps.
The desire for scale overcame almost every other consideration,
including whether all this added space actually added to the FUN of
the game. "Jedi Knight's" maps are impressively large, especially for
a game released in 1997, but they're often tedious to traverse, with
gigantic rooms that are often devoid of all but a handful of enemies.
The remastered mod helps with this a bit; it was a lot worse in 1997,
when the tiny textures made everything muddy and grey. There's also a
lot of back-n-forth across areas previously visited; a reminder of the
mazelike design that was common to games of that era. Oh, and let's
not forget the ever-present hunt for the colored keycards necessary to
progress to the next area of the map. Yes, this is very much a game
born in an era when Quake was still held up as the king of FPS games.

But you can also see the inklings of "Half Life" peeking through.
There are random NPCs sprinkled throughout. Many of the maps have a
visibly recognizable purpose in the game-world, even if the technology
wasn't quite up to the 'environmental storytelling' that "Half Life"
would later perfect. Story progression was still limited to cutscenes,
other than a few comments made by the characters. But, oh, what
terrific cutscenes! Live-action Star Wars, two years before "The
Phantom Menace" released; it was an oasis in a drought of all things
Star Wars! Jason Court does a wonderful job of portraying the hero
Kyle Katarn, and Christopher Neame hams it up as villain Jerec.

You can also see the lineage of the original "Dark Forces" game too,
which spiced up the original "Doom" formula with a variety of puzzles.
'More is better' seemed to be the watchword during "Jedi Knight's"
development, and while some of the puzzles were interesting and
well-integrated into the world, a good number unnecessarily dragged
down the gameplay and ruined the pacing. I could have done with less
puzzles... but I get why they were there. They were part of the
franchise's genetics from the start.

I could have done with a lot less of the platforming too. "Jedi
Knight's" weird jump mechanics meant you'd often bounce off objects if
you didn't completely clear them with your leap, which made some jumps
a lot harder than they should have been. I personally found the
lightsaber combat to be more aggravating than fun, too... although
having just come from playing "Jedi: Survivor" (which had excellent
lightsaber combat) that is probably to be expected. When I could, I
stuck with guns; "Jedi Knight" is a lot better as a Star Wars shooter
than a sword-fighting game.

I honestly can't say if I actually enjoyed playing "Jedi Knight". It
was entrancing to revisit and analyze the title as a snapshot of
gaming trends of the late 90s. The cutscenes were quite enjoyable. I
was impressed by how much improved the visuals were thanks to the
Remaster mod. But the gameplay? I struggled to keep playing the game
at times. It's got neither the smooth style of earlier FPS
'Doom-clones' nor the well-paced design of later 'Half-Life alikes'.
It's the awkward teenage years of the franchise; not quite lovable yet
sharing qualities we loved from when it was younger and showing signs
of becoming something great. Fun? Not really. But definitely
interesting.

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And that's it for me. February may be a short month, but my lists
never are! And you?

What Have You Been Playing... in FEBRUARY 2024?