PRESS EVERSE BUTTON TO LEARN HOW TO USE A SPELL CHECK!

Eversion (PC)
Released December 29, 2008 by Zaratustra Productions
Genre: Platformer, horror (sorta)

If you believe everything the Internet tells you, as statistics posted on the Internet indicate that about 107% of Americans do and "There are other countries?"% of people from other countries do, it's pretty likely that you know Eversion inside and out without ever having played a second of it, and you probably have been led to believe that it's the best, most Lovecraftian, most terrifying-despite-looking-like-it-was-made-for-children game out there, particularly in the platforming genre.

Well, not quite, but you're on the right track, I guess.

Facts about Eversion: Eversion is a horror-ish platformer for the PC released in late 2008 made by a fella named Guilherme S. Tows (according to the Steam application) for a company named Zaratustra Productions (according to Zaratustra's web site). It's a fun game sure to give you hours of enjoyment, at least going one way. The game was inspired by a quotation, at least, by Lovecraft, which, I guess, is more than most folks know of the man's work, which probably extends no farther than throwing the word "Cthulhu" around as a name describing a particular class of squid-faced horror (think "Mindflayer appearance, Godzilla stature"). In that respect, I have to give the creators credit. It makes a game that's actually pretty cool to watch and read about, and not because it becomes surprisingly gory for something with such a cutesy outward appearance. It is actually a legitimately cool concept! Once. It's kind of like how "Persona 4.5" would probably be ever-lovin' terrible. Not to make predictions about the new updated rerelease of that game.

Basically, the game plays like an old-timey eight-bit platformer. You play a flower-like creature in a cheery, colorful world and you have to collect gems and save a princess. At times, though, your progress will be impeded. To get ahead, you'll have to "evert" (or "everse," according to the incorrect original version) to a different layer. Doing this will modify what you can and can't go through, how you interact with blocks, and what can hurt you. The game uses two world numbers, then, to tell which of the eight layers you're on and what level you are in.

The dual level number in action. Left is before everting, right is after.

Soon enough, though, things start to get... weird. Which is quite appropriate, because "to evert" means to turn something inside-out. The cheerful world was just a lie and eventually you can see strings holding up the clouds, the hills growing hellish mouths, etc. Basically, unsettling things rather than outright horror. Though, I've played a fair few horror games, so maybe I'm just numb to shit like that. At least the scares aren't cheap, mostly. You get a few new traps over time, too, like giant hands that make Sonic Screwdriver noises and walls of shoddy, monochrome special effects.

I don't even want to know what's going on here.

At the end, you, the flowery protagonist, save the princess. Except not. In every ending, you fail, in some way, to save the princess. Yeah, that's it. It's not that hopeless, though.

Now, to the more subjective parts:

Storyline Development: Miniscule

This is the story: You're a flower. You have a princess to save. The world gets creepier and creepier as you go. The spoilers could fit in that much space. You aren't playing this for it's gripping, Pulitzer Prize-ready storyline.

Gameplay: Very solid

The controls are simple but effective: arrow keys move you and let you jump, space bar everts. Very easy, and the controls are basically more than responsive enough that, if something goes awry in your character's movement, it's probably your fault. I do have a few errors with hit detection in some cases; for instance, at the end-of-level flag, it is possible to jump over it entirely and not clear a level until you go back and actually touch it. Usually, this is not a problem, but in the "wall of black stuff level" which I screencapped above, and a similar level later, you can get killed if you're slow enough. This is possibly not a legitimate error, but it is still very irritating. It can also be hard to get through thin gaps in floors and ceilings, often slowing down your progress, as in the second "wall o' shit" level. It's artificial difficulty, really.

Music and sound: Excruciatingly acceptable!

Make no mistake: I don't really like most 8-bit music, and I certainly will not give bonus points to someone for making an 8-bit tune when something that doesn't sound like Mr. Game and Watch threw up a game of NetHack on a Game Boy Pocket would not only have been quite possible to make, but would have sounded better. Thankfully, though, at least in the Steam version, Eversion's music, composed by Matthew Steele and Miroslav Malesevic, includes some legitimate instrumentation in between its beeps and boops. I can't fault the music for usually at least trying to create a disturbing atmosphere. As for the sound effects, they're not too bad, but aren't very memorable. The sounds associated with the hands are a bit worthy of mention, though -- they're a bit on the unsettling side the first time, but later just become comical.

Graphics: I'll give them these

Though the Steam version boasts enhanced graphics with, in my opinion, way better backgrounds, it changes the effect the old graphics had of a cutesy, 8-bit, 2D platformer with horrifying secrets. The newer foreground graphics are alright, but a lot of them just feel like someone chucked them together with MS paint and added a little shading later. You could do worse, especially for something that looks unambitious, but it just doesn't feel the same. Also, the wall traps and the blood explosions are monochrome and use very intense colors, too -- they look extremely out of place with everything else. But it looks decent, for a game of its type.

Difficulty curve: Decently fair

While the game is pretty tough sometimes, it's generally very fair and increases its difficulty at a perfectly reasonable rate, particularly if you just take your brain out of the dusty old box you keep it in when you're not using it. The last level, though, can be balls hard, and the level before it requires a good bit of memorizing. So, it can be a pain in the ass sometimes, but it's nothing you can't handle, probably.

But how is it as a member of its genre?

As far as platforming games go, Eversion is a fun, relatively rewarding experience that doesn't bring anything new to the table, and probably wouldn't if it even could, but at least tries to put a unique spin on the old, venerable genre. A nice thing about this game is that the two "fixed scrolling" segments in this game really aren't, and considering how slowly they move, that's definitely very good. It would be nice to see that in other platformers, but since it's strictly horizontal in this case, I guess it's doubtful that that'll happen in the new Yoshi's Island anytime soon. So, that's out of the way, but what about the horror aspects? The game doesn't live up very well to the Lovecraftian horror hype to the extent that I'd prefer, but it can't be helped. The game does have it as an atmospheric element, but that pretty much seems to be all, unless that ending is supposed to remind of e.g. the film Dagon (hopefully this doesn't spoil anything, but I don't think most of my reader base has seen Dagon). The blood explosions that I mentioned earlier are so excessive and miscolored that it is perhaps a parody on the overuse of such blood-and-bleeding tropes in horror. The game doesn't remain scary for long after the first play, sadly, and the game does have a sequence of massively cheap shock scares in the start-of-level screens toward the end of the game. It's a cheap trick and it wouldn't endear me to the genre if this was my first horror themed game.

The verdict?

Steam/HD version: 3.5/5
Non-HD version: 3/5

I haven't had a chance to play the other games from the competition that spawned Eversion, like the white chamber, but they are on my list. I'll get to those later. As it stands, though, Eversion is a relatively solid title for an indie game that, to be frank, didn't live up to its intent. I can understand way too well why this is so beloved by folks on the internet, the same folks who love Persona 4 to death and read only Medaka Box.

Buy it on Steam! It's only $5.
For reference, my crappy Steam recommendation.

"Appalling" just isn't strong enough.

Rammstein - Liebe ist fuer alle da

Release: October 16, 2009
Genre: Neue Deutche Härte
Label: Universal Records, Vagrant Records
Length: 46:07

Nick's Rating: 2/5


Earlier today, I was listening to Emerson, Lake & Palmer's Black Moon, wondering why "Paper Blood" from that album and "Knife Edge," its obvious ancestor, from their self-titled, didn't get covered by many bands. Then I found a cover of "Knife Edge" by a doom-metal band and learned why. The use of doom tones and death metal vocals killed the whole thing. Bands like Dream Theater seem like they could really make it come to life. Or maybe Lyriel. I'd suggest Nightwish, but no. Lyriel could probably handle that better. They do use legitimate stringed instruments and not Disney-inflected keyboards. I kind of thought about the idea of the song in the hands of Rammstein, then, who might be able to pull it off with a little more temperance in the vocals. You know things are bad when you think of Till Lindemann as the more tempered, refined, restrained, etc. voice of two voices.

So, uh, Liebe ist fuer alle da. Except for this album.

So, I guess I'll get right down to it. Two out of five is more than enough for this album. If this were a proportion of songs I like vs. songs I don't, that'd be a massive overestimate. Okay, not really massive, but you get the idea. This album sucks out loud (please wait to shoot me until after the review).

I think I'll tackle this in list form, since it'll be more fun that way. The appropriate place to start is with #1, which brings us straight to almost the end of the album.

My favorite song on this record is "Mehr" -- those playing the home game may recognize this as being German (no shit!) for "More." I dunno what the lyrics mean or have to do with anything, and don't really have it in me to look up what they say or what they mean. I think it's generally the arrangement and vocals on this song that make it enjoyable for me -- after having spend much of the album, and even my favorite songs, comparatively monotone, Till proves that he does actually have some vocal range in him! A tiny, insignificant amount of vocal range! Isn't it a cute little vocal range? As far as the rest, the song is drenched in keyboards, and very obvious keyboards at that, harking back to earlier albums a little, albeit not entirely (because, of course, that would be REGRESSIVE and that's not cool for a band like Rammstein -- I consider them "stealth prog," or I would had I not just made up that term right now). Is Till showing some emotion in the song's lyrics? Maybe he's just trolling us. Rammstein seem like the closest thing to a band of trolls in some time while (probably) not actually being one.

Really, it's the two (to my ears, which are pretty shoddy, I guess, probably from listening to this album too much in headphones -- it is mastered loud, which makes sense, but it's just painful) most-keyboard-heavy tracks are my favorites, because, while you can accuse the rhythms of "Haifisch" of being too poppy, it does have a sound that reminds me more of my childhood glimpses of Rammstein (which I may or may not have described in my review of Porcelain and the Tramps' quasi-real EP: English, if I recall correctly, and imported in the era of Nine Inch Nails and Marilyn Manson), which is food enough as far as I'm concerned. "Haifisch" means "Shark" in German. The lyrics basically state, if I recall correctly (the chorus, anyway; the verses are just a bit odd and slightly posturing-focused), that even sharks cry, but nobody notices this because they live in the water (and I think that the rest says something about this being where the salt in the ocean comes from). Another fun note: those chorus lyrics are based on the lyrics to "The Ballad of Mack the Knife" from The Threepenny Opera! No, really! I think this makes Rammstein's lyrics more "Brechtian" than the Dresden Dolls', but I'm not much of a Brecht expert, so I don't know worth a crap. I should try explaining this to my mother, who once described "Du hast" as resembling "a wedding march for the Third Reich," but I'm not sure what she'd say. I would call this somewhat intelligent in its own way (with a fair bit of bullshit philosophy thrown in for good measure), even if it's not to the point of borrowing from writers/etc. like Ayn Rand. In fact, let's not have them do Rand; Rammstein honestly don't need more shit piled on them after the infamous "music to invade Poland to" jab and everything else.

So, on the rockier side, there's "Waidmanns Heil" and the title track to cover that. Despite how overly energetic and noisy the former is, it's actually one of the less noise-encrusted rockers on this album, which is pretty depressing. Just so we're clear, I'm okay with noise music sometimes. However, it doesn't fit in Rammstein's Œuvre very well, as in songs like "B********" -- which apparently means "Buckstabu," some made-up word by the band, which is the first step to turning into a shittier version of Magma.

To be fair, this may be an improvement.

But, anyway. The title track is more stropped-down and a lot less noisy, but still loud and, now that I think about it, also with a fair bit of keyboard to it and is just generally very catchy, something that every other song on here lacks, because most of that is buried in noise out the ass. Which is unfortunate, because most of them could probably be rearranged into something slightly decent if they weren't plagued by so much horrific crap.

I guess, besides those, there's only one notable track, that being called "Pussy." That should already bring up red flags. The song had a pornographic video released for it and featured perhaps easily the bands raunchiest, least subtle, and dumbest lyrics ever. Is this a parody or something? I was always led to believe that parody needed to be a little smart.

I guess "Ich tu dir weh" is a little important, too, but it's not a very good song. I like the single cover, though.

So, in the end, that's four decent songs, one that's a TRUE piece of shit, and six that are so shoddily produced that I can't tell if they're good. Even the four I like don't really stack up among Rammstein's best. But when that list includes songs like "Sonne," "Moskau," "Spring," "Der Meister," and "Spiel mit mir," how can they? In my very first review of this, never published, written aroung the time of the relieas,e I'd suggested, jokingly, that listeners invest instead of Love Is All Around, an LP by War recorded in the late 60s and featuring Eric Burdon on lead vocals. Now that I get a chance to really think about it, I was being completely serious then. By the way, at the time of the release it was somewhat common to compare the album to Mutter. That's complete bullshit. Even though Mutter took the longest time for me to get to like, I can absolutely recognize that album as great, and having a very different sound from, this abomination -- it has quality, where this... doesn't. To say the very least. What's worse is hwo this album seems to get really good reviews. This thing is almost more overrated than Skyrim!

Lastly, here's a picture of a singer whose band released a way better album in the same way that was, by an "amusing" coincidence, that band's worst album ever, too.

You could have spent the time reading this review listening to "The Glass Prison."