Blueberry Garden

So, I just tried out the demo to "Blueberry Garden", a five-euro game on The game nexus (No, not phil) known as "Steam". If you don't have steam, I highly reccomend you get it, it's free, has some demos, and games for cheaper than usual, plus, it's better for the enviornment! Plus, Me and Nexus have it, I'll add you if you get it, and I'm sure we can hassle Nexus as well. :P

But onto Blueberry Garden. It's a really different kind of game, not in a revolutionary, change-the-industry kinda way, but in a humble, original kind of way. It won "Best independant game" at the Independant games festival, and I can see why! The gameplay revolves around you, a toucan-penguin-thing running around, exploring this little world into which you have been thrust, eating berries to gain temporary abilities, well, it's all quite simple, download the demo on steam to see what I mean! But one of the best things going for this game is atmosphere. It has some really beautiful piano pieces in it, almost haunting, very in tune with the setting, of a lonely, expansive, empty area to explore. I'm probably gonna buy the full version, but I need a few things first.

I've ordered myself a 3V card, which is like a temporary credit card, and this will allow me to create a paypal account, ideally, and from there I should be able to buy the game off steam! I am slightly hesitant to allow myself free reign to buy whatever I want on the interwubs, I fear I may go slightly mad at first and buy a load of crap I don't need off eBay first. Ah well, I trust I will have some measure of self-controll. God help me if there's retro video games on there though.

Onto more things about videogames. A Bizzare thing happened to me a while back when I decided to re-install Bioshock. Now, the crux of the game's morality choice is the choice of a little girl's life. When you rescue a "Little sister", you have two choices: 1: Harvest her. This kills her, but you recieve far more power and strength in turn, allowing you to stay alive much easier.
2: Rescue her. This saves her life, freeing her from her previous indenture to the Big Daddy, however, you recieve far less power for this, and staying alive is much more difficult.

Now, I never really could play a game style where you harvested the little sisters. I did try it once, it was... terrible. There was no noise. Total silence. When you rescue them, there is a little, helpless girl standing in front of you, thanking you for saving her life. When you harvest them, there is nothing, nothing but silence. So this seemed like the obvious choice, and it was, for me. 

The freakiest thing happened the other day though. I re-installed Bioshock, (I tend to uninstall games once I'm done with them), and thought I'd take a whack at hard mode. Loaded it up, went to Rapture, killed some mooks, and then approached the splicer guarding my next weapon. She was standing over a baby's carriage, and was singing "Mocking Bird" to it, she then started sobbing, asking "Why? why aren't you warm anymore? Why don't you speak? Why can't mommy feel your teeth feeding from her breast? Where did you go, baby?" sobbing like crazy. I can't really capture the moment as you look upon this wretched human being. Inside the pram, is a pistol. The moment you get too close to her, she devolves into any other enemy, with only one goal in mind: Killing you. I watched from afar, and I just could not bring myself to kill her. It was bizzare. It's what you do in games. She's just data, but tip of the hat to 2K studios, she was just so real, I just couldn't kill her. I tried to sneak past her, maybe get a pistol somewhere else. Unfortunately, she noticed me, and started screaming "NOBODY BUT BABY AND ME!" at the top of her lungs, swinging a wrench at my face. I ran and ran, and eventually came to a large pool of water. I thought I would electro-shock the water, stun her, and then run off. No such luck. Shocked the water, and her body just collapsed onto the floor, dead. Another splicer started spriniting at me, and I just turned off the game. I don't know what to think about killing people in games these days, go figure.