Fucking boring game
Deleted in an hour
Best decision made
Saturday, November 7, 2009
Friday, October 2, 2009
Eternal Poison - Gothic Fetishists Beware!
Well to start things off. Its another Atlus game, not that Atlus games are bad but it just happens that they have a lot of shitty games. This game isn't very well known and I don't even know why I bothered with it. I found it by accident and I thought that if they made Disgea it couldn't be that bad right? They can't screw up tactic games that bad right? Its like valve making a shitty fps. Oh wait. Well the game itself isn't that bad but extremely frustrating at times. Hey don't take it from me, the only guide I managed to find online to beat this shitty game happens to have an introduction from the writer. To quote her.
Yeah sounds kinda familiar. It sounds like me! Except I'm not finishing to write a guide I'm finishing so I can bitch about it here. Well, I didn't finish but I don't plan on finishing. Its just way too repetitive and boring.
You start off the game with an introduction where this chick is running away from majins (demons) and then this wolf jumps out of nowhere and saves her. Then the screen shifts and you see some Gothic chick in black frilly clothing. Then its over. That was disappointing. Well get used to it. Well you start with some "training stage" where you play as the wolf, Raki, and Thage the Gothic witch. When you start playing you'll notice how fucking long the combat takes. I know I constantly complain how much time is wasted on loading for some games, this one takes the cake. Every time you go into combat with an enemy the screen goes black for about 10-15 seconds then you load your characters in 3d and higher graphics and if it happens to be the first time you meet this specific target on the map he/she will often sing if its a majin or talk if its a human, then the combat animation begins. You run over and wack them on the head with a book and the damage shows and then you wait another 10-15 seconds of blackout before you go back onto the tactic screen. Every single time.
That is not all. You can hit the button and cancel the combat animation but you have no indication of how much damage you did or took. But that doesn't stop the blackout you have to sit though. It may save 10-15 seconds of the combat animation but not the loading. So what do you want, to sit and wait 10-15 seconds to see the damage or hit the button save 10-15 seconds and have no idea what happened. Fortunately I found that you can set an option to turn off all this shit. THANK GOD. Because half the time you're waiting for loading during combat. The other half is useless stupid bullshit being spoken by your characters. Here is an example of the combat chatter you are forced to listen to.
Thage: Where is the eternal poison?
Majin: Die humans!
Raki: Be careful these majin are stronger than the ones we fought before
Thage: Don't worry I'll trap them all in my librum and then grind them into dust
Majin: eieieieieieieieie give me the book
Majin2: eeieieieiei you die human
Majin3: eieieie book
Retica: Why do they go crazy when they see Thage's book?
Majin: eieieiei die heretic
What the hell? Every battle has stupid boring talks like this. Most of the time its even worse. Well after the "training stage" you go into the main start up screen again and now you can start a new game, which lets you pick three out of the five possible characters. The first three that are open are Thage, which you saw already some knight named Olifen and the priestess Ashley. After you beat one, the legendary hero Rondenimium is open and after that the asshole guy. So I picked Thage just to continue where the training left me off at and they started talking in terrible voice acting. Some are decent, most are retarded. Luckily, Thage's route has some nice voice actors. Can't say the same for Olifen though but we'll get to that later. The story all takes place in Besek which is kinda like Castlevania. Its the homeland of the majin which appears randomly in the world and every time it appears its different.
Well to start off Thage's route, you (Thage) and Raki (wolf) are wandering around when you see a boy. What do you do when you see a boy? Obviously you fucking cast a spell of servitude and make him your slave. Just to show off your dominance over him you nearly break his skull and send into into a shivering pile of pain. I wanna point out that Thage is one of the cooler characters in any game. Its not often you see in a Jrpg, a female caster that's not soft spoken. In fact, her ego is bigger than the moon. She goes around acting all high and mighty and doesn't take shit from no one. If someone tries to go against her she fucking locks them into the Librium then takes them into a giant grinding pot and release them in there and listen to their screams.
So you start walking around in Besek capturing every majin you see. This leads to another thing. In combat, you will often be forced to capture majin. How do you do this? By overkilling them. This is a very annoying thing to do. Half the time when you try to overkill you fail and when you don't want to overkill you do. This is how it works. Say a majin with 100 health for simplicity has an overkill amount of 30. This means if you do over 130 damage its an overkill but if you do 100-129 its not. Say you bring it down to 20. The next hit you do 60 damage that's a 40 damage overkill. You've captured it. But it doesn't just get captured no it gets impaled onto a pink cross on the tactic map. You have to waste a characters turn by walking next to it and hitting capture. If you did say 30 damage instead of 60 damage that's only a 10 damage overkill and it disappears instead of being captured.
I have a few complaints about this overkill thing but I'll start with the most basic one. Not letting us decide if we want to overkill it or not. Say you overkilled it, and you end your turn. But another enemy's turn happens to be next what does he do? He walks over and frees the captured majin healing him to full health. What the shit is that about? If I knew his turn was next then I wouldn't have overkilled the shitty majin. But here is the problem, try as you might, but your damage is way too high that you cannot kill it without possibly overkilling. What do you do? Leave it alive until you are sure your party member can finish it off and let it deal damage to you? Also I like to point out that enemy damage in this game is ridiculously high. You don't get many healers or healing skills and if you die you're dead for the entire fight. That's pretty normal in a tactic game, but when two hits from two different majins kill you that's not normal. If you blindly charge in half your party will die. If you stay back and pick them off one by one then your melee don't get exp and end up being completely useless in the end.
Magic in this game is ridiculously powerful. Compare it to other tactic games. Whats magic like? Usually medium-high damage multi-target but a long cast time or slow moving mages. In this game though casters are fast, high damage usually single handily killing or over killing majins in one single shot. Lets take the common tactic characters.
-Slow moving heavily armored melee that hits like a truck but at the speed of a snail
-Fast moving lightly armored melee that packs a punch but takes hits like a wet paper bag
-Horribly overpowered archers that can shoot down enemies from range without ever getting hit
-Mages that suck because by the time the spells cast the enemies are already dead or nearly dead.
In this games mages are the best followed by light melee then archers than the heavy melee. Why? Because melee don't get skills/spells so they can only normal attack for around say 40-50 damage and they are also going to take many hits. Heavy ones can probably do 60-70 damage but good luck getting them over being being blasted to death by mages. Archers do pitiful 10-20 damage and they cannot shoot diagonally only in a straight line but they also get magic but that magic also does a pitiful 20-30 damage. Now mages, they do around 200-300 damage a hit and can hit up to 5 targets at once. They also have high magic defense so they don't get blasted to death by enemy mages and could also heal themselves with magical spells. Even with the massive health pool that a slow ass heavy melee has the magic will completely destroy them in a single hit because they don't have any magic defense at all making them completely useless except for maps which is heavily melee oriented. But good luck getting them to a high level for those maps.
Leveling is bullshit. To gain exp you must do one of the following, hit something, kill something, capture something, heal someone. Hitting an enemy may give you a dinky 5 exp, while healing an ally gives you 15 exp. Capturing gives you maybe 20 exp. Now killing something gives you like 200 exp. Which happens to be all your mages. So near the end of the game, I was purposely sending all my melee in to get slaughtered while my mages picked them off one by one and my archers were my healers and buffers since they were low level and couldn't do anything. Its not like you can pick and choose a bunch of mages and have many heroes to call into battle. No for every route all the heros you can get are exactly the same. All the things they say are nearly exactly the same and all the skills are nearly the same(will get into that). There are around ten heroes in the game that you can hire. You may only bring a maximum of eight heroes into combat, which includes your main story characters for example Thage's route is Thage, Raki and Reticus the slave boy, this gives you five slots to pick characters from.
Horrible combat, horrible leveling, horrible character interactions. What else could be next. A lot. Lets get back to the story. Thage's route you are on a quest of world domination with your two slaves. Every time you finish a map you go back to town to talk to people, play mini games and other useless shit. Buy your gear and get out. When you leave the town you go into the map selection screen. I like to point out that you can only keep going forward and can never backtrack or repeat a stage. This means that if some characters are too low leveled they are screwed forever because they cannot get exp. Besek is split into three stratum's. The first stratum varies from the chosen storyline hero. The first stratum changes based on the memories of the hero. Which helps introduce the character a bit. Then you reach the second stratum which is the same for every hero. The second stratum is divided into three large branching paths each leading to a gate. Each path is laid out like a column and you can jump from column to column at specific maps on the paths. Jumping usually doesn't do anything so there is no reason to do that. Once you pick it stick with it to the end. The last stratum is two columns leading into two different gates. Behind that is the ending. I thought it was pretty cool at first being able to pick and choose the path you want to take. Until I realized you cannot beat the game without the good ending. The gate on the third stratum will remain closed and you game over and start all over from the beginning.
Yes at the beginning as in you lose everything and it automatically saves you to New Game+. Now start climbing and pick another path because the one you took before is wrong! Here's the kick in the crotch. To get the good ending you must follow a very very specific path AND satisfy some very specific criteria. No point spoiling it or explaining it because its too specific and hard to understand. In other words, if you don't have a guide you'd be playing the same character over and over again just to find out what that path is. There is no clear indication telling you where to go which path to take as there are way too many maps. There are say about two-three smaller in every large column. So if there are three columns in the second stratum threes around maybe 20-26 maps in total. You probably take 5-6 maps to get to a gate. To walk in the correct order to the end is fucking impossible. That's not all. On some maps the only way to summon the "secret" boss is to satisfy some conditions. The first condition is actually calling them out. For example one boss you must capture both golems on the map. This means if you accidentally killed one instead of overkilling then the boss failed to get called out and if that boss is needed for your route then you get locked into going to the bad end. Some of them are ridiculously hard to satisfy as well. Like one you have to capture a jade sylph and a thiefler but every time you overkill the enemies will kill them when they are impaled so you can never capture them. While others you must kill every enemy and leave a specific one alive. That is hard as hell because it'll keep running towards you blasting you with magic.
Now that we got all that covered its onto the inventory! Your characters can equip up to three weapons an armor and two accessories. What is the point of equipping those weapons? Not much. You can use a slash weapon, a pierce weapon, a blunt weapon but most characters can't equip more than one so its wasted. You can equip skills that's drawn out from grinding up majin in the grinder but that's locked onto your weapon. I still don't get how it works and the game never bothered to explain it. Neither did they explain how to summon a majin and it wasn't until my second play though and searching online that I found out how to do that. Sometimes one character from one hero's route can wear some equipment and then suddenly they can't. For example there was a light fighter, Ares who in Thage's route was one of the stronger melee. Shes fast and can run twice as far as anyone and has could use a spear which has a two cell range and could hit two targets at once by piercing them. But in Olifen's route she can only use a sword which sucks. Nena from Thage's route is a massive spellcaster but in Olifen's route her magic can't do anything. Infact, everyone in Olifen's route sucks. Olifen sucks too.
Now if you equip three weapons and say you want to use a combo. The combo won't let you select what weapon to use. Say a majin is weak to strike but resistant to pierce. If you have a spear and a hammer and you used a spear on another majin earlier using the combo will force you to use the last weapon you used. Also for characters that can use say a book and a sword. The book adds int and the sword adds damage. If you use the sword you are locked into using the sword until you hit with a book. This means if you use magic the damage is severely reduced. I think. I don't even fucking know because the game never explains it to you. Even with a book the magic of a melee fighter does nothing. Is it better to equip three books? No your stats never increase more than your first book. The levels of the gear are too far apart as well. Say you buy a sword for a lv 8. The next sword is at say lv 14. The sword does decent damage at 8, start sucking at 9 and at 10 you can barely kill anything and you're stuck at lv 11 while the mages are lv 25. Great.
Magic also sucks shit. There are a few elements, Fire, Dark, Earth, Holy, Wind, and Water. The only ones that matter are Fire, Dark, and Wind. These are the three elements that actually do damage and your characters have the "mastery" to use. Mastery as in, even if you equip a spell that you have extracted from a Majin say a water magic attack may still only do 50 damage even if it was Water4 and you're using Dark1. If it doesn't fit your character its garbage. Unfortunatly the only mages you seem to get are Fire, Dark and Wind. And the skills the enemies cast are that as well. Then you get the deal with the bosses. They start off with a "Demon Aura" that you have to break. This is completely random. Some are easy like "hit it with a strike attack" even though he has no weakness to strike. Until you hit it with a strike attack it is immune to damage. Then there are the more annoying ones like "Use skill from boss that you captured many maps back. Oh wait you didn't overkill him? Well too bad its game over start new game+." Then you get annoying bosses that need "earth magic" to break. The hell? You barely even get earth magic in this game.
I like to point out that this game has a really gothic feel to it. You get people in black frilly clothes, too much mascara and guys that look like chicks and chicks that look like guys and all that shit. And everyone talks all twisted and evil or incredibly cheery. The english dub doesn't help because its just terrible. This is getting very long and there is much more to say about this game but since I haven't finished I can't really judge them yet. Maybe if I finish it one day. But that day probably won't be happening in this lifetime. Maybe in the future someone will dig up this CD from some ancient dig site from the past, find a playstation, a TV and put this in. Then the whole civilization collapses because everyone commits mass suicide. So until then, this will be the last you hear of this shit. Game sucks, if you want to play tactic games theres way more. Try Disgaea by Atlus its not that good but its decent. Lets end it with one more quote from our FAQ writer.
There you go this game cheats
You know, I'd love to do one of those introductions that says "This is such a
great game, I love it, blah, blah, blah" but I can't. This game drove me
absolutely crazy. The only reason I finished was because I was writing this
FAQ for it. It's not the worst game out there, the story and characters are
good, but it's really the same thing OVER and OVER and OVER. Maybe this FAQ
will make it so the game drives all you reading it less crazy than it drove me.
Yeah sounds kinda familiar. It sounds like me! Except I'm not finishing to write a guide I'm finishing so I can bitch about it here. Well, I didn't finish but I don't plan on finishing. Its just way too repetitive and boring.
You start off the game with an introduction where this chick is running away from majins (demons) and then this wolf jumps out of nowhere and saves her. Then the screen shifts and you see some Gothic chick in black frilly clothing. Then its over. That was disappointing. Well get used to it. Well you start with some "training stage" where you play as the wolf, Raki, and Thage the Gothic witch. When you start playing you'll notice how fucking long the combat takes. I know I constantly complain how much time is wasted on loading for some games, this one takes the cake. Every time you go into combat with an enemy the screen goes black for about 10-15 seconds then you load your characters in 3d and higher graphics and if it happens to be the first time you meet this specific target on the map he/she will often sing if its a majin or talk if its a human, then the combat animation begins. You run over and wack them on the head with a book and the damage shows and then you wait another 10-15 seconds of blackout before you go back onto the tactic screen. Every single time.
That is not all. You can hit the button and cancel the combat animation but you have no indication of how much damage you did or took. But that doesn't stop the blackout you have to sit though. It may save 10-15 seconds of the combat animation but not the loading. So what do you want, to sit and wait 10-15 seconds to see the damage or hit the button save 10-15 seconds and have no idea what happened. Fortunately I found that you can set an option to turn off all this shit. THANK GOD. Because half the time you're waiting for loading during combat. The other half is useless stupid bullshit being spoken by your characters. Here is an example of the combat chatter you are forced to listen to.
Thage: Where is the eternal poison?
Majin: Die humans!
Raki: Be careful these majin are stronger than the ones we fought before
Thage: Don't worry I'll trap them all in my librum and then grind them into dust
Majin: eieieieieieieieie give me the book
Majin2: eeieieieiei you die human
Majin3: eieieie book
Retica: Why do they go crazy when they see Thage's book?
Majin: eieieiei die heretic
What the hell? Every battle has stupid boring talks like this. Most of the time its even worse. Well after the "training stage" you go into the main start up screen again and now you can start a new game, which lets you pick three out of the five possible characters. The first three that are open are Thage, which you saw already some knight named Olifen and the priestess Ashley. After you beat one, the legendary hero Rondenimium is open and after that the asshole guy. So I picked Thage just to continue where the training left me off at and they started talking in terrible voice acting. Some are decent, most are retarded. Luckily, Thage's route has some nice voice actors. Can't say the same for Olifen though but we'll get to that later. The story all takes place in Besek which is kinda like Castlevania. Its the homeland of the majin which appears randomly in the world and every time it appears its different.
Well to start off Thage's route, you (Thage) and Raki (wolf) are wandering around when you see a boy. What do you do when you see a boy? Obviously you fucking cast a spell of servitude and make him your slave. Just to show off your dominance over him you nearly break his skull and send into into a shivering pile of pain. I wanna point out that Thage is one of the cooler characters in any game. Its not often you see in a Jrpg, a female caster that's not soft spoken. In fact, her ego is bigger than the moon. She goes around acting all high and mighty and doesn't take shit from no one. If someone tries to go against her she fucking locks them into the Librium then takes them into a giant grinding pot and release them in there and listen to their screams.
So you start walking around in Besek capturing every majin you see. This leads to another thing. In combat, you will often be forced to capture majin. How do you do this? By overkilling them. This is a very annoying thing to do. Half the time when you try to overkill you fail and when you don't want to overkill you do. This is how it works. Say a majin with 100 health for simplicity has an overkill amount of 30. This means if you do over 130 damage its an overkill but if you do 100-129 its not. Say you bring it down to 20. The next hit you do 60 damage that's a 40 damage overkill. You've captured it. But it doesn't just get captured no it gets impaled onto a pink cross on the tactic map. You have to waste a characters turn by walking next to it and hitting capture. If you did say 30 damage instead of 60 damage that's only a 10 damage overkill and it disappears instead of being captured.
I have a few complaints about this overkill thing but I'll start with the most basic one. Not letting us decide if we want to overkill it or not. Say you overkilled it, and you end your turn. But another enemy's turn happens to be next what does he do? He walks over and frees the captured majin healing him to full health. What the shit is that about? If I knew his turn was next then I wouldn't have overkilled the shitty majin. But here is the problem, try as you might, but your damage is way too high that you cannot kill it without possibly overkilling. What do you do? Leave it alive until you are sure your party member can finish it off and let it deal damage to you? Also I like to point out that enemy damage in this game is ridiculously high. You don't get many healers or healing skills and if you die you're dead for the entire fight. That's pretty normal in a tactic game, but when two hits from two different majins kill you that's not normal. If you blindly charge in half your party will die. If you stay back and pick them off one by one then your melee don't get exp and end up being completely useless in the end.
Magic in this game is ridiculously powerful. Compare it to other tactic games. Whats magic like? Usually medium-high damage multi-target but a long cast time or slow moving mages. In this game though casters are fast, high damage usually single handily killing or over killing majins in one single shot. Lets take the common tactic characters.
-Slow moving heavily armored melee that hits like a truck but at the speed of a snail
-Fast moving lightly armored melee that packs a punch but takes hits like a wet paper bag
-Horribly overpowered archers that can shoot down enemies from range without ever getting hit
-Mages that suck because by the time the spells cast the enemies are already dead or nearly dead.
In this games mages are the best followed by light melee then archers than the heavy melee. Why? Because melee don't get skills/spells so they can only normal attack for around say 40-50 damage and they are also going to take many hits. Heavy ones can probably do 60-70 damage but good luck getting them over being being blasted to death by mages. Archers do pitiful 10-20 damage and they cannot shoot diagonally only in a straight line but they also get magic but that magic also does a pitiful 20-30 damage. Now mages, they do around 200-300 damage a hit and can hit up to 5 targets at once. They also have high magic defense so they don't get blasted to death by enemy mages and could also heal themselves with magical spells. Even with the massive health pool that a slow ass heavy melee has the magic will completely destroy them in a single hit because they don't have any magic defense at all making them completely useless except for maps which is heavily melee oriented. But good luck getting them to a high level for those maps.
Leveling is bullshit. To gain exp you must do one of the following, hit something, kill something, capture something, heal someone. Hitting an enemy may give you a dinky 5 exp, while healing an ally gives you 15 exp. Capturing gives you maybe 20 exp. Now killing something gives you like 200 exp. Which happens to be all your mages. So near the end of the game, I was purposely sending all my melee in to get slaughtered while my mages picked them off one by one and my archers were my healers and buffers since they were low level and couldn't do anything. Its not like you can pick and choose a bunch of mages and have many heroes to call into battle. No for every route all the heros you can get are exactly the same. All the things they say are nearly exactly the same and all the skills are nearly the same(will get into that). There are around ten heroes in the game that you can hire. You may only bring a maximum of eight heroes into combat, which includes your main story characters for example Thage's route is Thage, Raki and Reticus the slave boy, this gives you five slots to pick characters from.
Horrible combat, horrible leveling, horrible character interactions. What else could be next. A lot. Lets get back to the story. Thage's route you are on a quest of world domination with your two slaves. Every time you finish a map you go back to town to talk to people, play mini games and other useless shit. Buy your gear and get out. When you leave the town you go into the map selection screen. I like to point out that you can only keep going forward and can never backtrack or repeat a stage. This means that if some characters are too low leveled they are screwed forever because they cannot get exp. Besek is split into three stratum's. The first stratum varies from the chosen storyline hero. The first stratum changes based on the memories of the hero. Which helps introduce the character a bit. Then you reach the second stratum which is the same for every hero. The second stratum is divided into three large branching paths each leading to a gate. Each path is laid out like a column and you can jump from column to column at specific maps on the paths. Jumping usually doesn't do anything so there is no reason to do that. Once you pick it stick with it to the end. The last stratum is two columns leading into two different gates. Behind that is the ending. I thought it was pretty cool at first being able to pick and choose the path you want to take. Until I realized you cannot beat the game without the good ending. The gate on the third stratum will remain closed and you game over and start all over from the beginning.
Yes at the beginning as in you lose everything and it automatically saves you to New Game+. Now start climbing and pick another path because the one you took before is wrong! Here's the kick in the crotch. To get the good ending you must follow a very very specific path AND satisfy some very specific criteria. No point spoiling it or explaining it because its too specific and hard to understand. In other words, if you don't have a guide you'd be playing the same character over and over again just to find out what that path is. There is no clear indication telling you where to go which path to take as there are way too many maps. There are say about two-three smaller in every large column. So if there are three columns in the second stratum threes around maybe 20-26 maps in total. You probably take 5-6 maps to get to a gate. To walk in the correct order to the end is fucking impossible. That's not all. On some maps the only way to summon the "secret" boss is to satisfy some conditions. The first condition is actually calling them out. For example one boss you must capture both golems on the map. This means if you accidentally killed one instead of overkilling then the boss failed to get called out and if that boss is needed for your route then you get locked into going to the bad end. Some of them are ridiculously hard to satisfy as well. Like one you have to capture a jade sylph and a thiefler but every time you overkill the enemies will kill them when they are impaled so you can never capture them. While others you must kill every enemy and leave a specific one alive. That is hard as hell because it'll keep running towards you blasting you with magic.
Now that we got all that covered its onto the inventory! Your characters can equip up to three weapons an armor and two accessories. What is the point of equipping those weapons? Not much. You can use a slash weapon, a pierce weapon, a blunt weapon but most characters can't equip more than one so its wasted. You can equip skills that's drawn out from grinding up majin in the grinder but that's locked onto your weapon. I still don't get how it works and the game never bothered to explain it. Neither did they explain how to summon a majin and it wasn't until my second play though and searching online that I found out how to do that. Sometimes one character from one hero's route can wear some equipment and then suddenly they can't. For example there was a light fighter, Ares who in Thage's route was one of the stronger melee. Shes fast and can run twice as far as anyone and has could use a spear which has a two cell range and could hit two targets at once by piercing them. But in Olifen's route she can only use a sword which sucks. Nena from Thage's route is a massive spellcaster but in Olifen's route her magic can't do anything. Infact, everyone in Olifen's route sucks. Olifen sucks too.
Now if you equip three weapons and say you want to use a combo. The combo won't let you select what weapon to use. Say a majin is weak to strike but resistant to pierce. If you have a spear and a hammer and you used a spear on another majin earlier using the combo will force you to use the last weapon you used. Also for characters that can use say a book and a sword. The book adds int and the sword adds damage. If you use the sword you are locked into using the sword until you hit with a book. This means if you use magic the damage is severely reduced. I think. I don't even fucking know because the game never explains it to you. Even with a book the magic of a melee fighter does nothing. Is it better to equip three books? No your stats never increase more than your first book. The levels of the gear are too far apart as well. Say you buy a sword for a lv 8. The next sword is at say lv 14. The sword does decent damage at 8, start sucking at 9 and at 10 you can barely kill anything and you're stuck at lv 11 while the mages are lv 25. Great.
Magic also sucks shit. There are a few elements, Fire, Dark, Earth, Holy, Wind, and Water. The only ones that matter are Fire, Dark, and Wind. These are the three elements that actually do damage and your characters have the "mastery" to use. Mastery as in, even if you equip a spell that you have extracted from a Majin say a water magic attack may still only do 50 damage even if it was Water4 and you're using Dark1. If it doesn't fit your character its garbage. Unfortunatly the only mages you seem to get are Fire, Dark and Wind. And the skills the enemies cast are that as well. Then you get the deal with the bosses. They start off with a "Demon Aura" that you have to break. This is completely random. Some are easy like "hit it with a strike attack" even though he has no weakness to strike. Until you hit it with a strike attack it is immune to damage. Then there are the more annoying ones like "Use skill from boss that you captured many maps back. Oh wait you didn't overkill him? Well too bad its game over start new game+." Then you get annoying bosses that need "earth magic" to break. The hell? You barely even get earth magic in this game.
I like to point out that this game has a really gothic feel to it. You get people in black frilly clothes, too much mascara and guys that look like chicks and chicks that look like guys and all that shit. And everyone talks all twisted and evil or incredibly cheery. The english dub doesn't help because its just terrible. This is getting very long and there is much more to say about this game but since I haven't finished I can't really judge them yet. Maybe if I finish it one day. But that day probably won't be happening in this lifetime. Maybe in the future someone will dig up this CD from some ancient dig site from the past, find a playstation, a TV and put this in. Then the whole civilization collapses because everyone commits mass suicide. So until then, this will be the last you hear of this shit. Game sucks, if you want to play tactic games theres way more. Try Disgaea by Atlus its not that good but its decent. Lets end it with one more quote from our FAQ writer.
For some reason I don't understand, to clear the first story you need to see
both the good and bad endings, but after that a story is cleared by seeing
either the good or bad ending. This game just keeps making up rules as it goes
along...
There you go this game cheats
Friday, September 4, 2009
Persona 4 - The cure for insomnia
If you haven't read my Persona 3 post its right here:
http://theorycrafting.blogspot.com/2009/04/persona-3-destroying-world-with-apathy.html
First thing you are wondering is. If I hated persona 3 so much, why the hell would I want to play persona 4? Well, I'm asking the same question. I guess I'm just a masochist or I'm messed up and like to torture myself. I wasn't lied to this time to play this game. Where did I hear of this game? Well, I was telling someone about the horrible game that is Persona 3 when I saw Persona 4. I was laughing going what kind of horrible game has a sequel. Read the review saw a 9/10 and I was like what the hell? Well, if it makes you feel better, everyone who wrote that review is dead. They died of cancer from playing the game. Good going Persona 4.
Well it starts off just like Persona 3, in fact the whole game is exactly like Persona 3. It has the same cut-scenes, a whole new interface layout but very nicely done as usual. Probably the only good thing about Persona is the interface layout. Very artistic. Since I already have a Persona 3 post up and there is a lot of similarities I will not go into too much detail. The start is about the same you have someone sign a contract with you and you end up in the velvet room when you dream and you blah blah blah. Typical Persona stuff. One major thing you will notice at the very start of the game is that there is no lunar cycle for the calendar, instead its replaced with a forecast of the week. NOW THIS FORECAST THIS IS COMPLETELY RETARDED. Its confusing, It doesn't follow any pattern. They say when it rains, and you don't save the person in the midnight channel, they die and the game is over. Well it rains. A LOT. So what the hell? Do they die or not die? Well apparently, its only if it rains THROUGH THE NIGHT. which you have no idea of because in the afternoon/night you go out its still raining but once you go to sleep the rain suddenly stops? What?
Yeah about the story, you're this kid who came from the big city into a small town and you meet your uncle (detective) and cousin (elementary schooler) who you have to live with for an year for some unknown reason other than your uncle saying your mother insisted he take you in. There you meet a few people, Youske, which is like Junpei from persona 3. The comic relief guy. He happens to have a habit of getting hit in the balls. Ouch. Probably won't be having any kids in the future. Then you meet the two girls, Chie the tomboy who has a habit of kicking people in the balls, usually Youske, and Yukiko the quiet girl. And like Yukari in Persona 4, while everyone is wearing black school uniform these two wear red and green. So they really really stand out. No one else is wearing another color just those two. Why the inconsistencies?
Anyways right away you get thrown into a murder mystery. Wow! Isn't that great! A good story! Well, to tell you the truth. Yeah the story isn't half bad. MUCH better than Persona 3 and there aren't any emo things in the game at all. The whole game you're trying to solve a murder mystery while saving the victims and going to school at the same time. Unlike Persona 3 there isn't a tartarus or a big dungeon where there is like 300 floors to climb with 50 bosses. That's a major improvement because you won't have stupid stuff like going inside a dungeon dying and having to re-climb 20 floors and waste an hour of grinding. Instead you get small dungeon where you can leave and continue at where you left off anytime. Big improvement. The combat also is much better. Instead of you only controlling the main character, you can control your whole party now like any other jrpg.
Although combat is way better than in Persona 3 and the story is way better, the focus on the story and combat is less than in Persona 3. It seems like you have so much more free time to do whatever you want. Usually that means social links and raising your stats, (which there is 5 now instead of 3 by the way). This means you rescue someone early you will have like 20 more days until the next event. The date varies but its usually less than a month like persona 3 which is every 30 days on the spot. You will get a event and for the next few days you'll find another victim and you have to rescue them before they get murdered. While at the same time you're looking for clues to pinpoint the motive and the murderer. There are lots of fake clues and stuff and near the end if you pick the wrong choices you'll go into a bad ending.
Its a shame that they left so much free time. Like persona 3 you are just skipping days go to school come home go to sleep repeat for the week. Like come on, that's not playing the game. I know I just want to get to the end but is it so repetitive. Its like real life. Hell you know what I feel like when I play this game? I feel like if I was sitting in my Accounting class first thing in the morning. I can't keep my eyes open and I want to fall asleep so bad. THIS GAME IS THE CURE FOR INSOMNIA!
Instead of buying items this time, you get the shitty system of finding items drops from creatures and selling it to the shop to forge items with. Why the hell are all the games doing this nowadays? What happened to just going to a shop and buying an item? And who the hell sells swords, steel fans, metal claws, daggers, guns, metal chairs, steel boots to kids? And what kind of weapon is a fan? And how the hell do you make say a gun out of wooden parts you found from a table monster. Or a snake monster dropping body parts which turns into a giant katana. What the hell? Next time I'm going to a metalwork store and handing them chopped giant beetle parts and asking them to make a steel fan for me.
The characters are way better than Persona 3. Better development, no annoying voices and everything but there also seems to be a lot less focus on the characters. They did a better job but why do they have to keep everything to social links. I know a part of the game is to "date" people but half the time its annoying trying to find the right persona to have with you to gain better points and finding the right day so you can see that guy. One positive thing in Persona 4 though, is that the girls are much more aggressive. Good, I like aggressive girls. But they also don't give a crap when you date more than one girl at a time. Really? In persona 3 just talking to another girl while you're dating pisses them off to hell, but here you can be dating one girl and another girl invades on your date and chases the other one off and force you to go on a date with her instead. Damn, what a bitch. Anyways its pretty dumb and they focused on that way too much instead of the main game. The guys though, like persona 3 don't give a crap about anything.
Like persona 3, there is also some gay innuendo for your male social links. There's no guy telling you he dreams of you when he goes to sleep and when he closes his eyes its you he sees. What he hell, it reminds me of that Michelle Branch song. Anyways they seem to have changed it around. Now you get a "gay" guy (party memeber) running in a bath towel in a steamy bathhouse (dungeon) with lots of guys making gay sounds in the back and muscle men doing very gay poses with weird moaning. You know I think the Japanese has some kind of fetish of moaning muscle men. In Godhand you had to fight a pair of gay muscle men on your way into Elvis' club. These guys they seemed weak at the start but holy hell are they tough. Butt slam you and then crotch hump the air. And when you kick them in the balls they don't go apeshit like other male mobs they just continue beating you. Assholes. Back to persona 4, there is also a cross dressing contest. Yeah...
Sigh, it has the stupid school system and tests and quizzes and everything. Its exactly like persona 3. The questions are just as hard and you'll still need google to get the right answers. But just to turn up the shittiness, they decide that you will have annoying quests and cooking! Cooking isn't that hard if its something easy. Like for example Croquettes, and California rolls. You pretty much have to pick the right order on how to do things that's pretty easy. But once you get a food that's pure gibberish in Japanese you know you're fucked. Quests are annoying. Most quests involve, talking to someone who only shows up on certain days at certain places so you usually forget you have that quest unless you wander around the town EVERY SINGLE DAY talking to everyone. Then you have the collection quests where they want something but they can't find it. So they ask you who happens to be able to go into the other world and collect items from magical places. For example, a guy wants a crystal ball. Why? who knows. He will also say, "You might find one from some statue maybe in an area with an adult atmosphere?" Ok so you know where it is. It must be from the relic statues in Markuyu Stiptease. Yeah a striptease, I won't get into it so just use your imagination. So you go back and fight endless monsters until it appears and kill it hoping it'll drop. You go back give it to the guy now what. "Oh I want some blah blah blah you might find it from a table, maybe in a secret base?" WELL? HOW ABOUT FUCK YOU? Stupid quests.
One thing I also like to point out is a lot of options you can't pick because you don't have the stats to on your first play through. Like for example, you get to ask Chie and Yukiko for their numbers if you have a high enough courage if you started a second play through. But on your first you can't. WHY NOT!? Geez how much courage do you need to ask for their number. Not like it makes a difference because you can get their numbers from Youske later anyways. All you get is them being shy and then they give you. Another thing. Whats the deal with your cousin. She's like being modeled into a freaking housewife. I hate housewives. Freaking scary people.
Last but not least, you have riddle quests. These riddle quests are completely retarded. You get two groups, group a and group b. and the guy will give you 2 items in each group and give you a 5th item where you must guess which group it goes into and why.
Protractor is in group A
Alarm Clock is in group B
Basketball is in group A
Eggbeater is in group B
What group does Running shoes go into? and why?
Obviously this isn't the riddle but its similar. The answer is A and its human motion. What!?
Other than that its pretty much the same game repackaged into Persona 4. The persona are almost exactly the same. Some have different skills, some got rebalanced some changed Arcana entirely but 90% of them are exactly the same. Also they use the same creatures you find in Persona 3 in Persona 4. Exactly the same sprites but different names and colors. And some mini bosses are repeated as well. You fight the exact same boss in Persona 3 in Persona 4. The annoying table boss that does shit loads of damage. Except this time its way easier because of the better AI. Talking about difficulty, Persona 4 is MUCH easier than Persona 3. MUCH easier. Boss battles may be annoying but unlike Persona 3 there really isn't much strategy than keep your 3 turn defense/attack/hit/dodge buffs up the whole time and heal when low. Really? I know Persona 3 is hard but they made Persona 4 into a time wasting joke. But the thing is it may be easy but the fight isn't any shorter. It takes like half an hour each time you fight a boss. Annoying as all hell.
Don't get me started on the last boss. Its a joke in Persona 4. It doesn't do anything but spam the same moves over and over and over. Unlike Persona 3, it only took about an hour-ish to finally kill it. And it has 2 forms? Persona 3 you had to fight through like 13 forms before you reach the real one and each form has different skills and weakness/immunity and strategies. Took hours to kill that guy. I know it wasn't worth it but do they have to drag it on forever? Also they went WAY overboard with instant death in Persona 4. There is one dungeon where every mob spams instant death you enter combat you see 6 mobs each of them spams instant death. It works 100% of the time as well and once your main character dies its game over. So I kept dying and dying the second I get into combat. Also you can't just escape from combat. When you click escape, they go "ok let me find you an exit," and by the time you can escape, you are dead or your enemies are dead already so what is the point? So I ran past every single creature and went directly for the boss. I was 10 levels under the recommended level and I still beat him after many many tries. God. That place makes me sick. Heaven my ass, more like hell. Yeah the dungeon was Heaven.
Anyways, to summarize everything. This game sucks. Its like persona 3. It did better than persona 3 but that's not saying much. Anything can be better than persona 3. This is the type of game you should be ashamed of playing. Like you secretly play it alone without letting people know and people ask if you heard of persona you go "huh whats persona?" Yeah one of those games. Rhapsody: A musical adventure was one of those but unlike that, this game isn't cute, it isn't funny, it isn't fun at all! Once you play it you're infected with cancer as well! The end and I hope the cancer kills me fast.
http://theorycrafting.blogspot.com/2009/04/persona-3-destroying-world-with-apathy.html
First thing you are wondering is. If I hated persona 3 so much, why the hell would I want to play persona 4? Well, I'm asking the same question. I guess I'm just a masochist or I'm messed up and like to torture myself. I wasn't lied to this time to play this game. Where did I hear of this game? Well, I was telling someone about the horrible game that is Persona 3 when I saw Persona 4. I was laughing going what kind of horrible game has a sequel. Read the review saw a 9/10 and I was like what the hell? Well, if it makes you feel better, everyone who wrote that review is dead. They died of cancer from playing the game. Good going Persona 4.
Well it starts off just like Persona 3, in fact the whole game is exactly like Persona 3. It has the same cut-scenes, a whole new interface layout but very nicely done as usual. Probably the only good thing about Persona is the interface layout. Very artistic. Since I already have a Persona 3 post up and there is a lot of similarities I will not go into too much detail. The start is about the same you have someone sign a contract with you and you end up in the velvet room when you dream and you blah blah blah. Typical Persona stuff. One major thing you will notice at the very start of the game is that there is no lunar cycle for the calendar, instead its replaced with a forecast of the week. NOW THIS FORECAST THIS IS COMPLETELY RETARDED. Its confusing, It doesn't follow any pattern. They say when it rains, and you don't save the person in the midnight channel, they die and the game is over. Well it rains. A LOT. So what the hell? Do they die or not die? Well apparently, its only if it rains THROUGH THE NIGHT. which you have no idea of because in the afternoon/night you go out its still raining but once you go to sleep the rain suddenly stops? What?
Yeah about the story, you're this kid who came from the big city into a small town and you meet your uncle (detective) and cousin (elementary schooler) who you have to live with for an year for some unknown reason other than your uncle saying your mother insisted he take you in. There you meet a few people, Youske, which is like Junpei from persona 3. The comic relief guy. He happens to have a habit of getting hit in the balls. Ouch. Probably won't be having any kids in the future. Then you meet the two girls, Chie the tomboy who has a habit of kicking people in the balls, usually Youske, and Yukiko the quiet girl. And like Yukari in Persona 4, while everyone is wearing black school uniform these two wear red and green. So they really really stand out. No one else is wearing another color just those two. Why the inconsistencies?
Anyways right away you get thrown into a murder mystery. Wow! Isn't that great! A good story! Well, to tell you the truth. Yeah the story isn't half bad. MUCH better than Persona 3 and there aren't any emo things in the game at all. The whole game you're trying to solve a murder mystery while saving the victims and going to school at the same time. Unlike Persona 3 there isn't a tartarus or a big dungeon where there is like 300 floors to climb with 50 bosses. That's a major improvement because you won't have stupid stuff like going inside a dungeon dying and having to re-climb 20 floors and waste an hour of grinding. Instead you get small dungeon where you can leave and continue at where you left off anytime. Big improvement. The combat also is much better. Instead of you only controlling the main character, you can control your whole party now like any other jrpg.
Although combat is way better than in Persona 3 and the story is way better, the focus on the story and combat is less than in Persona 3. It seems like you have so much more free time to do whatever you want. Usually that means social links and raising your stats, (which there is 5 now instead of 3 by the way). This means you rescue someone early you will have like 20 more days until the next event. The date varies but its usually less than a month like persona 3 which is every 30 days on the spot. You will get a event and for the next few days you'll find another victim and you have to rescue them before they get murdered. While at the same time you're looking for clues to pinpoint the motive and the murderer. There are lots of fake clues and stuff and near the end if you pick the wrong choices you'll go into a bad ending.
Its a shame that they left so much free time. Like persona 3 you are just skipping days go to school come home go to sleep repeat for the week. Like come on, that's not playing the game. I know I just want to get to the end but is it so repetitive. Its like real life. Hell you know what I feel like when I play this game? I feel like if I was sitting in my Accounting class first thing in the morning. I can't keep my eyes open and I want to fall asleep so bad. THIS GAME IS THE CURE FOR INSOMNIA!
Instead of buying items this time, you get the shitty system of finding items drops from creatures and selling it to the shop to forge items with. Why the hell are all the games doing this nowadays? What happened to just going to a shop and buying an item? And who the hell sells swords, steel fans, metal claws, daggers, guns, metal chairs, steel boots to kids? And what kind of weapon is a fan? And how the hell do you make say a gun out of wooden parts you found from a table monster. Or a snake monster dropping body parts which turns into a giant katana. What the hell? Next time I'm going to a metalwork store and handing them chopped giant beetle parts and asking them to make a steel fan for me.
The characters are way better than Persona 3. Better development, no annoying voices and everything but there also seems to be a lot less focus on the characters. They did a better job but why do they have to keep everything to social links. I know a part of the game is to "date" people but half the time its annoying trying to find the right persona to have with you to gain better points and finding the right day so you can see that guy. One positive thing in Persona 4 though, is that the girls are much more aggressive. Good, I like aggressive girls. But they also don't give a crap when you date more than one girl at a time. Really? In persona 3 just talking to another girl while you're dating pisses them off to hell, but here you can be dating one girl and another girl invades on your date and chases the other one off and force you to go on a date with her instead. Damn, what a bitch. Anyways its pretty dumb and they focused on that way too much instead of the main game. The guys though, like persona 3 don't give a crap about anything.
Like persona 3, there is also some gay innuendo for your male social links. There's no guy telling you he dreams of you when he goes to sleep and when he closes his eyes its you he sees. What he hell, it reminds me of that Michelle Branch song. Anyways they seem to have changed it around. Now you get a "gay" guy (party memeber) running in a bath towel in a steamy bathhouse (dungeon) with lots of guys making gay sounds in the back and muscle men doing very gay poses with weird moaning. You know I think the Japanese has some kind of fetish of moaning muscle men. In Godhand you had to fight a pair of gay muscle men on your way into Elvis' club. These guys they seemed weak at the start but holy hell are they tough. Butt slam you and then crotch hump the air. And when you kick them in the balls they don't go apeshit like other male mobs they just continue beating you. Assholes. Back to persona 4, there is also a cross dressing contest. Yeah...
Sigh, it has the stupid school system and tests and quizzes and everything. Its exactly like persona 3. The questions are just as hard and you'll still need google to get the right answers. But just to turn up the shittiness, they decide that you will have annoying quests and cooking! Cooking isn't that hard if its something easy. Like for example Croquettes, and California rolls. You pretty much have to pick the right order on how to do things that's pretty easy. But once you get a food that's pure gibberish in Japanese you know you're fucked. Quests are annoying. Most quests involve, talking to someone who only shows up on certain days at certain places so you usually forget you have that quest unless you wander around the town EVERY SINGLE DAY talking to everyone. Then you have the collection quests where they want something but they can't find it. So they ask you who happens to be able to go into the other world and collect items from magical places. For example, a guy wants a crystal ball. Why? who knows. He will also say, "You might find one from some statue maybe in an area with an adult atmosphere?" Ok so you know where it is. It must be from the relic statues in Markuyu Stiptease. Yeah a striptease, I won't get into it so just use your imagination. So you go back and fight endless monsters until it appears and kill it hoping it'll drop. You go back give it to the guy now what. "Oh I want some blah blah blah you might find it from a table, maybe in a secret base?" WELL? HOW ABOUT FUCK YOU? Stupid quests.
One thing I also like to point out is a lot of options you can't pick because you don't have the stats to on your first play through. Like for example, you get to ask Chie and Yukiko for their numbers if you have a high enough courage if you started a second play through. But on your first you can't. WHY NOT!? Geez how much courage do you need to ask for their number. Not like it makes a difference because you can get their numbers from Youske later anyways. All you get is them being shy and then they give you. Another thing. Whats the deal with your cousin. She's like being modeled into a freaking housewife. I hate housewives. Freaking scary people.
Last but not least, you have riddle quests. These riddle quests are completely retarded. You get two groups, group a and group b. and the guy will give you 2 items in each group and give you a 5th item where you must guess which group it goes into and why.
Protractor is in group A
Alarm Clock is in group B
Basketball is in group A
Eggbeater is in group B
What group does Running shoes go into? and why?
Obviously this isn't the riddle but its similar. The answer is A and its human motion. What!?
Other than that its pretty much the same game repackaged into Persona 4. The persona are almost exactly the same. Some have different skills, some got rebalanced some changed Arcana entirely but 90% of them are exactly the same. Also they use the same creatures you find in Persona 3 in Persona 4. Exactly the same sprites but different names and colors. And some mini bosses are repeated as well. You fight the exact same boss in Persona 3 in Persona 4. The annoying table boss that does shit loads of damage. Except this time its way easier because of the better AI. Talking about difficulty, Persona 4 is MUCH easier than Persona 3. MUCH easier. Boss battles may be annoying but unlike Persona 3 there really isn't much strategy than keep your 3 turn defense/attack/hit/dodge buffs up the whole time and heal when low. Really? I know Persona 3 is hard but they made Persona 4 into a time wasting joke. But the thing is it may be easy but the fight isn't any shorter. It takes like half an hour each time you fight a boss. Annoying as all hell.
Don't get me started on the last boss. Its a joke in Persona 4. It doesn't do anything but spam the same moves over and over and over. Unlike Persona 3, it only took about an hour-ish to finally kill it. And it has 2 forms? Persona 3 you had to fight through like 13 forms before you reach the real one and each form has different skills and weakness/immunity and strategies. Took hours to kill that guy. I know it wasn't worth it but do they have to drag it on forever? Also they went WAY overboard with instant death in Persona 4. There is one dungeon where every mob spams instant death you enter combat you see 6 mobs each of them spams instant death. It works 100% of the time as well and once your main character dies its game over. So I kept dying and dying the second I get into combat. Also you can't just escape from combat. When you click escape, they go "ok let me find you an exit," and by the time you can escape, you are dead or your enemies are dead already so what is the point? So I ran past every single creature and went directly for the boss. I was 10 levels under the recommended level and I still beat him after many many tries. God. That place makes me sick. Heaven my ass, more like hell. Yeah the dungeon was Heaven.
Anyways, to summarize everything. This game sucks. Its like persona 3. It did better than persona 3 but that's not saying much. Anything can be better than persona 3. This is the type of game you should be ashamed of playing. Like you secretly play it alone without letting people know and people ask if you heard of persona you go "huh whats persona?" Yeah one of those games. Rhapsody: A musical adventure was one of those but unlike that, this game isn't cute, it isn't funny, it isn't fun at all! Once you play it you're infected with cancer as well! The end and I hope the cancer kills me fast.
Saturday, August 15, 2009
Dark Messiah - Conveniently placed spiked walls and ledges
When you see a swarm of enemies come towards you what is your first reaction? Blast them with magic? Shoot them with your bow? Stab them in the face with your sword or daggers? NO! You kick them. The kick isn't like the wimpy stomp in Dead Space. When you kick someone they fly back 20 feet as if they got rammed by a truck usually into a conveniently placed spiked wall or ledge. What the hell? Yes, exactly. Dark Messiah is an action game by Ubisoft. You follow the adventures of Sareth, the orphan apprentice to the mage Phenrig to uncover your past and fulfill the prophecy of the dark messiah.
Here is a trailer - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZegsGlGvtAU
Doesn't sound too bad. We'll get there. First of all. Why the hell would there be so many spiked walls? Do people actually put spiked walls in their garden, their study, the streets of a city, the sides of a boat, even the sides of a mountain. Who would build spiked walls everywhere. If it was me I'd probably hold back on building all those just in case some crazed guy walks over and kicks you towards it instantly impaling you to death. And you don't need to send them flying with a kick to impale them, its as if they have some sort of magnetic pull against flesh and bone that you just get near and BAM your head is on the spikes.
The whole game involves doing some crazy platforming jumps, solving riddles, and murdering hordes of enemies. These jumps are frustrating. Its not hard to do a jump yeah, you can do it, but what you don't realize is some kind of trap that sends you over the ledge. A enemy you didn't see that kills you in two hits because you picked an assassin. Yeah that's another thing. If you don't want to suffer while playing this game, don't pick an assassin. Its fun when you're able to stealth and do some back stab instant kills and silent kills with arrows. The thing is 80% of the time you are unable to stealth. Most of the time I'm just running in and strafing around hitting my mouse key as fast as I can to cut stuff up.
Another part of the platforming jumps is that you have to use something called the "Rope Bow." Its a bow where you shoot an arrow with a rope attached. A rope will drop from the arrow towards the ground until it hits something then swings back and forth for a few seconds. DO NO JUMP ONTO THE ROPE WHILE IT SWINGS. I've got my character stuck in so many things because I was impatient. And how the hell does a full grown man hang on a rope attached to an arrow attached to a piece of wood? And how does the Rope Bow have unlimited ammunition? You can get endless ammunition for your normal bow if you find the secret item the unlimited quiver but that is besides the point. I guess they don't want you stuck because you're shooting it everywhere like a dumb ass because there is no clear indication on where you have to go.
YOU ARE GOING TO DIE A LOT. And whenever you load your last save, your character does an attack and most likely it'll hit something alerting all the guards and kicking your ass because you can't sneak up on them to do a back stab. Not only this, auto saving while fighting a enemy will cause your weapons to lock up. In other words, your weapons turn invisible and you cannot open your item menu or use your hot keys or even switch weapons. Even doing a load back to your last save will continue to have this bug since that was where the bug occurred. So the only way is to load back another save earlier.
Some creatures to kill are inconsistent as well. Kicking a human down like 5 feet will cause them to die, but some creatures don't. For example spiders. You'll be seeing these A LOT. Now you don't fuck with giant spiders. These things will kick your ass. They have a poisonous bite that will drain your health unless you use an antidote. Its not like oh 1 heath per few seconds. No, it drains like 10% of your health per second. Second they come in swarms. And when you try to kick them off a huge ass cliff they just land on their backs and start climbing the cliff back. I kicked them off over and over and they kept climbing up. Eventually they got pissed or something and started crawling through the ground. I was getting bit I looked around saw nothing moved back and a spider was crawling out of the bricks. One thing I learned about spiders. Don't kick them off cliffs or they get angry. And you won't like it when they get angry.
Here is an example of the kicks - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tg8h0VAhnYw
As hard as it is to do the crazy jumps and fight impossible creatures. The bosses are incredibly easy. Most bosses can be exploited or they have some kind of event where they just die instantly if you do so and so. For example, you're wandering around the temple and a Pao Kai (dragon) flies down and starts breathing lightning on you. You run to a tunnel and he sticks his head in. You hit the lever and the gate falls down and kills him. Its not like its hard either. Leanna (the bitch) even tells you to run over there and hit the switch while she stands in the center in clear line of sight of the dragon and watches the dragon chase you. What the hell? Even the last boss, you are able to back stab him while he's busy looking away instantly killing him. At first I didn't even realize he was the last boss until the events started to happen.
Last boss, that leads me to something else. The story is terrible. The only saving grace is Xana who accompanies you since the beginning adding jealous comments against Leanna or evil whisperings to congratulate you on what you have done or telling you what you should do. The storyline automatically points you towards the good ending, and you have to constantly do the opposite just to get the bad ending. Sareth automatically chose to not listen to Xana and listen to Leanna. Xana was annoying at the start but gets a bit likable. The ending is terrible. Its about 20 seconds of cut scenes and its over. Pretty much showing you either, banishing the evil demon lord or saving the evil demon lord. With no explanation of what is going on or whats going to happen or whatever.
You can also be an asshole and start abusing things with your bow. If you can't beat them, shoot a rope arrow climb up and start shooting at them out of melee range. This is what usually happens....
"Show some skill before I kill you" - bad guy
*bad guy starts charging the wall*
*fires arrow*
"Show some skill before I kill you" - bad guy
*bad guy starts charging the wall*
*fires arrow*
"Show some skill before I kill you" - bad guy
*bad guy starts charging the wall*
*fires arrow*
"Show some skill before I kill you" - bad guy
*bad guy starts charging the wall*
*fires arrow*
"Help me!" - bad guy
*bad guy starts running away*
*fires arrow*
*bad guy dies*
This works on bosses as well. I just stand there lobbing arrows with my endless quiver until they die. Not because I wanted to be cheap but because I can't do any damage to them. I chose not to learn magic or to wear heavy armor with a huge sword. I wanted to be an assassin, and this is what I got. As long as they are dead, the job is done right? Who cares about honor or cheapness. I guess they did do a good job on designing the assassin after all. Worked out pretty well.
To sum it all up, this game is short, but frustrating as hell. Its shitty but hilarious at the same time. If you like say, oblivion then you wouldn't like this game. It reminded me of oblivion when I started but holy hell the stages just keep going on and on and on and on. It takes forever and how many freaking jumps are there? Well If I said it was completely horrible I'd be lying. It was still decently fun. Still "fun" enough to finish the game I suppose. Its not like Persona 3 where I was only finishing the game to get the ending and to see how much torture I can give myself.
By the way here's Xana for you - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3DYm8j3cAxk
In German so you don't get spoiled. No there's no hot succubus sex you fucking pervert.
Here is a trailer - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZegsGlGvtAU
Doesn't sound too bad. We'll get there. First of all. Why the hell would there be so many spiked walls? Do people actually put spiked walls in their garden, their study, the streets of a city, the sides of a boat, even the sides of a mountain. Who would build spiked walls everywhere. If it was me I'd probably hold back on building all those just in case some crazed guy walks over and kicks you towards it instantly impaling you to death. And you don't need to send them flying with a kick to impale them, its as if they have some sort of magnetic pull against flesh and bone that you just get near and BAM your head is on the spikes.
The whole game involves doing some crazy platforming jumps, solving riddles, and murdering hordes of enemies. These jumps are frustrating. Its not hard to do a jump yeah, you can do it, but what you don't realize is some kind of trap that sends you over the ledge. A enemy you didn't see that kills you in two hits because you picked an assassin. Yeah that's another thing. If you don't want to suffer while playing this game, don't pick an assassin. Its fun when you're able to stealth and do some back stab instant kills and silent kills with arrows. The thing is 80% of the time you are unable to stealth. Most of the time I'm just running in and strafing around hitting my mouse key as fast as I can to cut stuff up.
Another part of the platforming jumps is that you have to use something called the "Rope Bow." Its a bow where you shoot an arrow with a rope attached. A rope will drop from the arrow towards the ground until it hits something then swings back and forth for a few seconds. DO NO JUMP ONTO THE ROPE WHILE IT SWINGS. I've got my character stuck in so many things because I was impatient. And how the hell does a full grown man hang on a rope attached to an arrow attached to a piece of wood? And how does the Rope Bow have unlimited ammunition? You can get endless ammunition for your normal bow if you find the secret item the unlimited quiver but that is besides the point. I guess they don't want you stuck because you're shooting it everywhere like a dumb ass because there is no clear indication on where you have to go.
YOU ARE GOING TO DIE A LOT. And whenever you load your last save, your character does an attack and most likely it'll hit something alerting all the guards and kicking your ass because you can't sneak up on them to do a back stab. Not only this, auto saving while fighting a enemy will cause your weapons to lock up. In other words, your weapons turn invisible and you cannot open your item menu or use your hot keys or even switch weapons. Even doing a load back to your last save will continue to have this bug since that was where the bug occurred. So the only way is to load back another save earlier.
Some creatures to kill are inconsistent as well. Kicking a human down like 5 feet will cause them to die, but some creatures don't. For example spiders. You'll be seeing these A LOT. Now you don't fuck with giant spiders. These things will kick your ass. They have a poisonous bite that will drain your health unless you use an antidote. Its not like oh 1 heath per few seconds. No, it drains like 10% of your health per second. Second they come in swarms. And when you try to kick them off a huge ass cliff they just land on their backs and start climbing the cliff back. I kicked them off over and over and they kept climbing up. Eventually they got pissed or something and started crawling through the ground. I was getting bit I looked around saw nothing moved back and a spider was crawling out of the bricks. One thing I learned about spiders. Don't kick them off cliffs or they get angry. And you won't like it when they get angry.
Here is an example of the kicks - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tg8h0VAhnYw
As hard as it is to do the crazy jumps and fight impossible creatures. The bosses are incredibly easy. Most bosses can be exploited or they have some kind of event where they just die instantly if you do so and so. For example, you're wandering around the temple and a Pao Kai (dragon) flies down and starts breathing lightning on you. You run to a tunnel and he sticks his head in. You hit the lever and the gate falls down and kills him. Its not like its hard either. Leanna (the bitch) even tells you to run over there and hit the switch while she stands in the center in clear line of sight of the dragon and watches the dragon chase you. What the hell? Even the last boss, you are able to back stab him while he's busy looking away instantly killing him. At first I didn't even realize he was the last boss until the events started to happen.
Last boss, that leads me to something else. The story is terrible. The only saving grace is Xana who accompanies you since the beginning adding jealous comments against Leanna or evil whisperings to congratulate you on what you have done or telling you what you should do. The storyline automatically points you towards the good ending, and you have to constantly do the opposite just to get the bad ending. Sareth automatically chose to not listen to Xana and listen to Leanna. Xana was annoying at the start but gets a bit likable. The ending is terrible. Its about 20 seconds of cut scenes and its over. Pretty much showing you either, banishing the evil demon lord or saving the evil demon lord. With no explanation of what is going on or whats going to happen or whatever.
You can also be an asshole and start abusing things with your bow. If you can't beat them, shoot a rope arrow climb up and start shooting at them out of melee range. This is what usually happens....
"Show some skill before I kill you" - bad guy
*bad guy starts charging the wall*
*fires arrow*
"Show some skill before I kill you" - bad guy
*bad guy starts charging the wall*
*fires arrow*
"Show some skill before I kill you" - bad guy
*bad guy starts charging the wall*
*fires arrow*
"Show some skill before I kill you" - bad guy
*bad guy starts charging the wall*
*fires arrow*
"Help me!" - bad guy
*bad guy starts running away*
*fires arrow*
*bad guy dies*
This works on bosses as well. I just stand there lobbing arrows with my endless quiver until they die. Not because I wanted to be cheap but because I can't do any damage to them. I chose not to learn magic or to wear heavy armor with a huge sword. I wanted to be an assassin, and this is what I got. As long as they are dead, the job is done right? Who cares about honor or cheapness. I guess they did do a good job on designing the assassin after all. Worked out pretty well.
To sum it all up, this game is short, but frustrating as hell. Its shitty but hilarious at the same time. If you like say, oblivion then you wouldn't like this game. It reminded me of oblivion when I started but holy hell the stages just keep going on and on and on and on. It takes forever and how many freaking jumps are there? Well If I said it was completely horrible I'd be lying. It was still decently fun. Still "fun" enough to finish the game I suppose. Its not like Persona 3 where I was only finishing the game to get the ending and to see how much torture I can give myself.
By the way here's Xana for you - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3DYm8j3cAxk
In German so you don't get spoiled. No there's no hot succubus sex you fucking pervert.
Friday, August 14, 2009
Monkey Island - Take a Caribbean cruise away from the shitty games
Lets take a break from the shit. Think back to when it was 1990 and a brand new lucasarts game came out. That game was called Monkey Island. Its an adventure game where you follow Guybrush Threepwood on his quest to become a mighty pirate. Really nothing more I can elaborate on. Whats special is its humor and witty comments and choices. Many of them also break the fourth wall. If you really want to know you can check up on youtube.
Why am I writing this? Well it is because Telltale games and Lucasarts are making a sequel called "Tales of Monkey Island." It will be released in parts each month. The first part is out but I've yet to check it out. I'll wait until all of them are out before I'll play them. But from what people are saying, it looks promising and the gameplay trailer looks decent enough.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jP5uDNhOiPg
I like how it uses a mouse again. The first three used a mouse, until the fourth of the series which suddenly changed to keyboard/controller. It made things difficult as hell but the game itself was still fun to play. How will Telltale games do on Monkey Island? Better be damn good.
Why am I writing this? Well it is because Telltale games and Lucasarts are making a sequel called "Tales of Monkey Island." It will be released in parts each month. The first part is out but I've yet to check it out. I'll wait until all of them are out before I'll play them. But from what people are saying, it looks promising and the gameplay trailer looks decent enough.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jP5uDNhOiPg
I like how it uses a mouse again. The first three used a mouse, until the fourth of the series which suddenly changed to keyboard/controller. It made things difficult as hell but the game itself was still fun to play. How will Telltale games do on Monkey Island? Better be damn good.
Thursday, August 13, 2009
I Fucking Knew It.
http://forums.commandandconquer.com/jforum/posts/list/19892.page
http://forums.commandandconquer.com/jforum/posts/list/19952.page
So, EA admitted that they stole their innovative RTS ideas from other games. I kind of already went over all that bullshit a few posts back here though, so I'm really not surprised in any way. The EA boards probably has more skeptics than fanboys, but the naive defiance of the latter generally makes the atmosphere too stifling to follow.
First you have fanboys who fiercely defend the franchise for being innovative, but then change gears when evidence says otherwise. Now they're justifying the borrowing of gameplay ideas, claiming that many games borrow inspiration from the others before them, but they heavily gloss over the fact that the 'borrowed' ideas aside, CNC4 has nothing innovative of its own. As the PC gamer podcast (second link) says, EA's 'first ever RTS with mobile bases' appeal is ridiculous, as they must have never played another RTS in their life. It makes sense though, EA has always been a company lagging behind their competitive developers, with blinders over their eyes and plugs in their ears.
http://forums.commandandconquer.com/jforum/posts/list/19952.page
So, EA admitted that they stole their innovative RTS ideas from other games. I kind of already went over all that bullshit a few posts back here though, so I'm really not surprised in any way. The EA boards probably has more skeptics than fanboys, but the naive defiance of the latter generally makes the atmosphere too stifling to follow.
First you have fanboys who fiercely defend the franchise for being innovative, but then change gears when evidence says otherwise. Now they're justifying the borrowing of gameplay ideas, claiming that many games borrow inspiration from the others before them, but they heavily gloss over the fact that the 'borrowed' ideas aside, CNC4 has nothing innovative of its own. As the PC gamer podcast (second link) says, EA's 'first ever RTS with mobile bases' appeal is ridiculous, as they must have never played another RTS in their life. It makes sense though, EA has always been a company lagging behind their competitive developers, with blinders over their eyes and plugs in their ears.
Sunday, August 9, 2009
EA - Shitty marketing
I'm sure you heard about BioWare. They are the ones who made Mass Effect, Jade Empire, Neverwinter Nights, Bauldur's Gate, KOTOR and more. I never played all of them but I've played some and they were some pretty decent games. You'd probably rememeber back in 2007 when EA bought out BioWare. Yeah... But what's the big deal. Well Dragon Age: Origins is coming out soon, and they kept going on about how it is a "spiritual sucessor" to bauldur's gate. What's that you ask? Well its apparently BioWare's most famous game, I've yet to play it longer than 20 mins though. Well that doesn't sound too bad.
It sorta reminds me of The Witcher, where you play in a fantasy world where you have to keep picking the lesser of two evils as you continue the game. It showed some pretty good stuff decent story/choices etc etc. Then suddenly a change of marketing. ITS ALL ABOUT BLOOD AND TITS. What the shit? I haven't been following the whole thing. Back when I first heard about it then fast forward to a couple of months ago, then a couple of weeks ago. My god has the whole thing shifted.
http://www.facebook.com/video/video.php?v=659507958654&ref=mf
Thats the E3 demo where it was showed at. Holy shit the voices are bad and the script horrible.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AcyR9adOuMI
The hell? What are they trying now? God of War? Because that game was an awesome action game and this doesn't look like much of an RPG. In their interviews they keep saying how the game is "dark mature fantasy." Literally repeat it like 6 times a sentence. Funny thing is they keep calling it a "spiritual sucessor" to bauldur's gate. What does it really mean exactly. Well, it means its a game that has nothing to do with bauldurs gate but we'll add spiritual sucessor to it so we can milk as much money out of the bauldur's gate fans. I can imagine it now.
"Hey we need a new game" - developer 1
"Well, we're already working on Mass Effect 2, maybe we'll develop a new game something oriental" - developer 2
"We have Jade Empire ass dick" - developer 1
"How about a medival fantasy game?" - developer 3
"Nice idea but what can we do?" - developer 2
"Well lets have some non inspired evil demons who want nothing other than to destroy the world" - developer 3
"How would that accomplish anything? What is the point of destroying the world? What would they gain?" - developer 2
"..." - developer 3
"Fuck it lets just add bloods and tits then call it the spiritual sucessor to bauldurs gate and everyone will buy it" - developer 1
"Fucking genius" - developer 2
That is how DA:O was made.
It sorta reminds me of The Witcher, where you play in a fantasy world where you have to keep picking the lesser of two evils as you continue the game. It showed some pretty good stuff decent story/choices etc etc. Then suddenly a change of marketing. ITS ALL ABOUT BLOOD AND TITS. What the shit? I haven't been following the whole thing. Back when I first heard about it then fast forward to a couple of months ago, then a couple of weeks ago. My god has the whole thing shifted.
http://www.facebook.com/video/video.php?v=659507958654&ref=mf
Thats the E3 demo where it was showed at. Holy shit the voices are bad and the script horrible.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AcyR9adOuMI
The hell? What are they trying now? God of War? Because that game was an awesome action game and this doesn't look like much of an RPG. In their interviews they keep saying how the game is "dark mature fantasy." Literally repeat it like 6 times a sentence. Funny thing is they keep calling it a "spiritual sucessor" to bauldur's gate. What does it really mean exactly. Well, it means its a game that has nothing to do with bauldurs gate but we'll add spiritual sucessor to it so we can milk as much money out of the bauldur's gate fans. I can imagine it now.
"Hey we need a new game" - developer 1
"Well, we're already working on Mass Effect 2, maybe we'll develop a new game something oriental" - developer 2
"We have Jade Empire ass dick" - developer 1
"How about a medival fantasy game?" - developer 3
"Nice idea but what can we do?" - developer 2
"Well lets have some non inspired evil demons who want nothing other than to destroy the world" - developer 3
"How would that accomplish anything? What is the point of destroying the world? What would they gain?" - developer 2
"..." - developer 3
"Fuck it lets just add bloods and tits then call it the spiritual sucessor to bauldurs gate and everyone will buy it" - developer 1
"Fucking genius" - developer 2
That is how DA:O was made.
Thursday, August 6, 2009
CNC4 Subtitles
Lmao. In my previous post, I mentioned how terrible EA was at creating their subtitles for the CNC series, continually relying on some of the most trite and overused phrases in the entertainment industry, but there has been some new development. EA has been made aware to their inadequacies in the naming department... And is now asking fans to name the game for them through submissions. >_>
Wow. Well. Considering how terrible EA is at making games, maybe next time they'll ask fans to make the game for them too. This can only be a good thing.
Edit:
CNC4's subtitle is now Tiberian Twilight, as per fan requests, reverting back to the original naming scheme established by Westwood (in line with Tiberian Dawn, Tiberian Sun). It's a little odd now since CNC3 is named Tiberium Wars, a discontinuation of the trend... But what's done is done. Tiberian Twilight would have been alright as a subtitle, but I'm not that excited this time around, as:
1. CNC4 will play nothing like the previous CNCs, and thus, does not deserve the name Tiberian Twilight
2. This subtitle was originally intended as the name for CNC3 (when it was still being made by Westwood) so really, now they're just resurrecting an old title.
3. The title shows no EA ingenuity at all... Although this time it's not really EA's fault, as they left in the hands of the fans. Sorry to say, but the fans suck at making subtitles too, just not as much; they just copied Westwood's dead title.
Wow. Well. Considering how terrible EA is at making games, maybe next time they'll ask fans to make the game for them too. This can only be a good thing.
Edit:
CNC4's subtitle is now Tiberian Twilight, as per fan requests, reverting back to the original naming scheme established by Westwood (in line with Tiberian Dawn, Tiberian Sun). It's a little odd now since CNC3 is named Tiberium Wars, a discontinuation of the trend... But what's done is done. Tiberian Twilight would have been alright as a subtitle, but I'm not that excited this time around, as:
1. CNC4 will play nothing like the previous CNCs, and thus, does not deserve the name Tiberian Twilight
2. This subtitle was originally intended as the name for CNC3 (when it was still being made by Westwood) so really, now they're just resurrecting an old title.
3. The title shows no EA ingenuity at all... Although this time it's not really EA's fault, as they left in the hands of the fans. Sorry to say, but the fans suck at making subtitles too, just not as much; they just copied Westwood's dead title.
Tuesday, August 4, 2009
Context Sensitive. Not what you think it means.
I get increasingly frustrated nowadays with developers who are trying to do too much with their simplistic control scheme. While they tote keeping things simple and easy to remember as being a selling point, there comes a time when more complex controls give better precision to a player's gaming experience.
When pressing E in a combo does a super move, thats fine... But E also does 50 other damn things, and will basically screw you out of a combo chance if there happens to be a gun or some shit on the ground that you pick up instead.
Let's take Prototype for an example. Very much a console game ported to PC. Here's where E can be used.
E picks up weapons when you are not moving.
E throws away weapons when you are not moving.
E grabs other people.
E grabs other people while moving.
Holding your primary attack key and pressing E will trigger a small AOE attack.
Holding your primary attack key and pressing E will trigger a long range cone super move if you have enough HP.
Holding your primary attack key and pressing E while in the air will cannonball you towards your target.
Holding your primary attack key and pressing E will trigger a long range cone super move if you have enough HP if you are in the air.
Holding your secondary attack key and pressing E will trigger a different small AOE attack.
Holding your secondary attack key and pressing E will trigger a huge AOE super attack if you have enough HP.
Holding your secondary attack key and pressing E will trigger an air AOE attack if you are in the air.
Holding your secondary attack key and pressing E will trigger an air super AOE attack if you are in the air and have enough HP.
Pressing E when you have your whipfist out will hookshot you to your target.
Pressing E when you have your whipfist out will hookshot you to your target while you are in the air.
Pressing E while holding a person will slam them into the ground.
Pressing F and then E will do a stealth consume.
Standing close to a tank or helicopter and pressing E will allow you to enter the vehicle.
Standing or moving close to a vehicle or any object and pressing E will pick up the vehicle provided you have enough strength to do so, and that the vehicle is non enterable. You cannot pick up objects when you already have something picked up, like a weapon.
So fuck that, E isn't even an attack key, and it is already used everywhere as if it was a key you press in a combination string in a Street Fighter game. If I was to compile a list of all the different moves that requires you to press primary attack or secondary attack, it would be basically every move in the game. Press left mouse button, then right, then left again to do one combo. Or left left right. Or left and right at once. Or hold right then left. Or hold right, hold left, release right, tap left. FUCK THAT.
Considering how the game plays, where you're running frantically, and facing not only a horde of infected beings in downtown New York, but also the relentless attacks of military soldiers, tanks, and attack choppers... You don't have time to be precise with controls. Considering how your character does different things when you're in the air than when you're on the ground, sometimes you're really just spending all your concentration on staying rooted to the floor while keeping your health high enough to do a super attack. The second you start running, you'll start auto-hopping over obstacles or running up walls or blasted into the air with an explosive that you'll no longer be on the ground. It gets worse that your character will do different things with the same commands depending on what weapon he has out. Considering that a lot of these moves above require you to hold or click primary or secondary fire at the start, that usually puts you into the animation for a completely different move, and you won't be able to execute the final move you wanted to do.
Consider this:
Holding your secondary attack key and pressing E will trigger a huge AOE super attack if you have enough HP.
I want to hit a boss with this attack in the small window that it is vulnerable.
I hold the right mouse button, but that already puts me into a charge kick attack that I cannot cancel. Pressing E now does fucking nothing. So how do you access this super AOE attack? First, find a target you don't care about that is outside the range of the boss. Hold down right mouse button and you will do a flying kick and kill said target. Then, without ever releasing your mouse button (preventing you from doing any further attacking or defending) you must wait until the window of opportunity shows up, all the while dodging any attacks. Run forward to the boss, and hold down E. If you are EVER knocked down while doing any of this, you must start all over, as your right mouse button is no longer considered to be held down after a knockdown. Unless your window is large enough such that you can do a flying kick animation and still have time left over to pull off the stationary AOE attack without being knocked down... Then this is the tedious method you must repeat.
I don't mean to harp on a single game, as this isn't a Prototype article, but it just so happens to be the most recent example on my mind. Many games on Gamecube have frustrated me to no end by trying to map as many different keys as possible to the same buttons or even the same sort of action. Mario Power Tennis is a prime example, mapping 5-7 different kinds of actions to the same two buttons. Depending on the sequence in which the two are pushed, the number of times they are pressed, the duration for which the button is held down, and the current alignment of the stars, these buttons will execute completely different actions. The Wii version is even worse, mapping all of those swings to movements of the remote. Considering that the Wii is a console based off of a barely functioning gimmick, trying to make the remote understand the difference between your topspin and flatspin is nigh impossible. The Wii has the same interface problem with many of the games in its library where the game tries to map too many different controls to the remote motions. In fact, it is easier to say that the rule is the only good games on the Wii are those that map only a single action to the remote movement, like Twilight Princess.
There are some controller devices that are just weird. But often, they are weird because they try to make a new type of controller that does something different... from pistol-mice, to glove controllers, to Novint Falcons, etc. That's not at all what I'm talking about though. I'm talking about having plenty of buttons to map your actions to... Yet persisting in mapping these controls to only a select few of the buttons available, resulting in an unusable control scheme that fails to translate the gamers' intent to the actions of the character. That's not the fault of the controller, it's the fault of the developers who have tried to put too much in too little. It's like capturing an amazing panoramic picture but cropping it down to a tiny photo frame. That's what these games are doing: taking a potentially great game, but crippling it with terrible controls so that your experience is just confined by frustration and exasperation.
When pressing E in a combo does a super move, thats fine... But E also does 50 other damn things, and will basically screw you out of a combo chance if there happens to be a gun or some shit on the ground that you pick up instead.
Let's take Prototype for an example. Very much a console game ported to PC. Here's where E can be used.
E picks up weapons when you are not moving.
E throws away weapons when you are not moving.
E grabs other people.
E grabs other people while moving.
Holding your primary attack key and pressing E will trigger a small AOE attack.
Holding your primary attack key and pressing E will trigger a long range cone super move if you have enough HP.
Holding your primary attack key and pressing E while in the air will cannonball you towards your target.
Holding your primary attack key and pressing E will trigger a long range cone super move if you have enough HP if you are in the air.
Holding your secondary attack key and pressing E will trigger a different small AOE attack.
Holding your secondary attack key and pressing E will trigger a huge AOE super attack if you have enough HP.
Holding your secondary attack key and pressing E will trigger an air AOE attack if you are in the air.
Holding your secondary attack key and pressing E will trigger an air super AOE attack if you are in the air and have enough HP.
Pressing E when you have your whipfist out will hookshot you to your target.
Pressing E when you have your whipfist out will hookshot you to your target while you are in the air.
Pressing E while holding a person will slam them into the ground.
Pressing F and then E will do a stealth consume.
Standing close to a tank or helicopter and pressing E will allow you to enter the vehicle.
Standing or moving close to a vehicle or any object and pressing E will pick up the vehicle provided you have enough strength to do so, and that the vehicle is non enterable. You cannot pick up objects when you already have something picked up, like a weapon.
So fuck that, E isn't even an attack key, and it is already used everywhere as if it was a key you press in a combination string in a Street Fighter game. If I was to compile a list of all the different moves that requires you to press primary attack or secondary attack, it would be basically every move in the game. Press left mouse button, then right, then left again to do one combo. Or left left right. Or left and right at once. Or hold right then left. Or hold right, hold left, release right, tap left. FUCK THAT.
Considering how the game plays, where you're running frantically, and facing not only a horde of infected beings in downtown New York, but also the relentless attacks of military soldiers, tanks, and attack choppers... You don't have time to be precise with controls. Considering how your character does different things when you're in the air than when you're on the ground, sometimes you're really just spending all your concentration on staying rooted to the floor while keeping your health high enough to do a super attack. The second you start running, you'll start auto-hopping over obstacles or running up walls or blasted into the air with an explosive that you'll no longer be on the ground. It gets worse that your character will do different things with the same commands depending on what weapon he has out. Considering that a lot of these moves above require you to hold or click primary or secondary fire at the start, that usually puts you into the animation for a completely different move, and you won't be able to execute the final move you wanted to do.
Consider this:
Holding your secondary attack key and pressing E will trigger a huge AOE super attack if you have enough HP.
I want to hit a boss with this attack in the small window that it is vulnerable.
I hold the right mouse button, but that already puts me into a charge kick attack that I cannot cancel. Pressing E now does fucking nothing. So how do you access this super AOE attack? First, find a target you don't care about that is outside the range of the boss. Hold down right mouse button and you will do a flying kick and kill said target. Then, without ever releasing your mouse button (preventing you from doing any further attacking or defending) you must wait until the window of opportunity shows up, all the while dodging any attacks. Run forward to the boss, and hold down E. If you are EVER knocked down while doing any of this, you must start all over, as your right mouse button is no longer considered to be held down after a knockdown. Unless your window is large enough such that you can do a flying kick animation and still have time left over to pull off the stationary AOE attack without being knocked down... Then this is the tedious method you must repeat.
I don't mean to harp on a single game, as this isn't a Prototype article, but it just so happens to be the most recent example on my mind. Many games on Gamecube have frustrated me to no end by trying to map as many different keys as possible to the same buttons or even the same sort of action. Mario Power Tennis is a prime example, mapping 5-7 different kinds of actions to the same two buttons. Depending on the sequence in which the two are pushed, the number of times they are pressed, the duration for which the button is held down, and the current alignment of the stars, these buttons will execute completely different actions. The Wii version is even worse, mapping all of those swings to movements of the remote. Considering that the Wii is a console based off of a barely functioning gimmick, trying to make the remote understand the difference between your topspin and flatspin is nigh impossible. The Wii has the same interface problem with many of the games in its library where the game tries to map too many different controls to the remote motions. In fact, it is easier to say that the rule is the only good games on the Wii are those that map only a single action to the remote movement, like Twilight Princess.
There are some controller devices that are just weird. But often, they are weird because they try to make a new type of controller that does something different... from pistol-mice, to glove controllers, to Novint Falcons, etc. That's not at all what I'm talking about though. I'm talking about having plenty of buttons to map your actions to... Yet persisting in mapping these controls to only a select few of the buttons available, resulting in an unusable control scheme that fails to translate the gamers' intent to the actions of the character. That's not the fault of the controller, it's the fault of the developers who have tried to put too much in too little. It's like capturing an amazing panoramic picture but cropping it down to a tiny photo frame. That's what these games are doing: taking a potentially great game, but crippling it with terrible controls so that your experience is just confined by frustration and exasperation.
Wednesday, July 22, 2009
Mechwarrior 5 - FEUDALISM. IN SPACE.
The game is just called Mechwarrior, since its a series reboot. It still isn't too clear to me why a series reboot is justified in having a name that allows it to be easily confused with the original Mechwarrior game. That just sounds stupid to me.
"Hey lets reboot Spiderman and give him a new image that will rejuvenate the franchise"
"Alright, so we want to make it different from the original Spiderman right?"
"Yea, for sure. The old Spiderman is too boring, so we're making him different. This way fans can't even complain about inconsistencies."
"Uh okay. So what do we call it, if we want to make it differentiable?"
"How about... Spiderman?"
"..."
Seriously, that must be the conversation that occurs in Hollywood or wherever reboots may be made. Only God knows what is wrong with these people... And how they should be punished in hell accordingly.
So anyway, I will be referring to this new upcoming 2009 game as Mechwarrior 5, since it makes far more sense. Here is a trailer:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sl4eI3htAuA
It uses the UT3 engine. Cool that they were able to adapt the UT3 engine; it looks good. Not so cool that I can already bet that many sacrifices to gameplay were made to cater to this engine. Also, when a developer reuses an engine, they save development time and money. I fully expect that these resources are reinvested to the game itself, and the game should be even better than if it had its own engine. So, the bar has been raised, even though the game hasn't even been released. Well, they brought it upon themselves.
So whats the problem?
There is no problem! Yea! What a surprise, coming from me, the pessimist of the century. I am actually glad they are doing this game, as I am a big fan of Mechwarrior, and although I hate unfaithful adaptations, Mechwarrior's franchise was dead because its original IP holder, FASA had been liquidated. Microsoft held the rights, but they weren't going to touch the money-losing franchise with a 10 feet pole. Basically, the Mech fans had lost hope of having another game for ages... And here we have an opportunity to restart it... And its on PC! Man that sounds great way to bring back some old memories. Considering how I've been waiting on a MW mod that has been in development for years (and still is)... You can see how eager I am to play MechWarrior again.
With my optimism though, there are some things that bother me, although I won't really mind either way. Just think of it as a wishlist.
- I don't think that MW5 will support fully customizable mechs like in MW4. It may be following more of the boardgame rules in this sense, and only allow pre-set variants. That's a shame, because it makes it a little less fun, but it comes with the benefit of cutting out cheap variants that can abuse certain aspects. The gameplay will be more well balanced instead. I can appreciate both results in this case, although having full-customization for unranked or offline play would be the best of both worlds.
- The date in the trailer says 3015. The clans invaded in 3050 (late 3049 if you're really anal) so clan tech will probably not be in the game. That's a shame, since a lot of my favorite mech designs were from clans, and some of the best weapons in the game were also clan weapons. While this is alright from a lore perspective, clan weapons have always been plain superior upgrades relative to standard weapons. It made standard weapons instantly obsolete and redundant. I can understand the advantages to having clan weapons in the game, but also not having them. Like I said above, having the option in unranked/singleplayer would be amazing. However, I doubt clan chassis will be in, since that requires a lot more work for the developers. A friend though notes that the Atlas-C in the trailer is a variant made in 3080, so it could be possible that the reboot cheats the standard lore a little bit, and clans could be in anyway. How's that for geekdom?
That's really it for my wishlist. I'm really excited about this game, like I have not been for a game in a long time. I hope it'll have a larger and more tightly knit multiplayer community than the previous games.
Edit: Apparently the game is being called MechWarrior 3015 by the community. Fair enough.
"Hey lets reboot Spiderman and give him a new image that will rejuvenate the franchise"
"Alright, so we want to make it different from the original Spiderman right?"
"Yea, for sure. The old Spiderman is too boring, so we're making him different. This way fans can't even complain about inconsistencies."
"Uh okay. So what do we call it, if we want to make it differentiable?"
"How about... Spiderman?"
"..."
Seriously, that must be the conversation that occurs in Hollywood or wherever reboots may be made. Only God knows what is wrong with these people... And how they should be punished in hell accordingly.
So anyway, I will be referring to this new upcoming 2009 game as Mechwarrior 5, since it makes far more sense. Here is a trailer:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sl4eI3htAuA
It uses the UT3 engine. Cool that they were able to adapt the UT3 engine; it looks good. Not so cool that I can already bet that many sacrifices to gameplay were made to cater to this engine. Also, when a developer reuses an engine, they save development time and money. I fully expect that these resources are reinvested to the game itself, and the game should be even better than if it had its own engine. So, the bar has been raised, even though the game hasn't even been released. Well, they brought it upon themselves.
So whats the problem?
There is no problem! Yea! What a surprise, coming from me, the pessimist of the century. I am actually glad they are doing this game, as I am a big fan of Mechwarrior, and although I hate unfaithful adaptations, Mechwarrior's franchise was dead because its original IP holder, FASA had been liquidated. Microsoft held the rights, but they weren't going to touch the money-losing franchise with a 10 feet pole. Basically, the Mech fans had lost hope of having another game for ages... And here we have an opportunity to restart it... And its on PC! Man that sounds great way to bring back some old memories. Considering how I've been waiting on a MW mod that has been in development for years (and still is)... You can see how eager I am to play MechWarrior again.
With my optimism though, there are some things that bother me, although I won't really mind either way. Just think of it as a wishlist.
- I don't think that MW5 will support fully customizable mechs like in MW4. It may be following more of the boardgame rules in this sense, and only allow pre-set variants. That's a shame, because it makes it a little less fun, but it comes with the benefit of cutting out cheap variants that can abuse certain aspects. The gameplay will be more well balanced instead. I can appreciate both results in this case, although having full-customization for unranked or offline play would be the best of both worlds.
- The date in the trailer says 3015. The clans invaded in 3050 (late 3049 if you're really anal) so clan tech will probably not be in the game. That's a shame, since a lot of my favorite mech designs were from clans, and some of the best weapons in the game were also clan weapons. While this is alright from a lore perspective, clan weapons have always been plain superior upgrades relative to standard weapons. It made standard weapons instantly obsolete and redundant. I can understand the advantages to having clan weapons in the game, but also not having them. Like I said above, having the option in unranked/singleplayer would be amazing. However, I doubt clan chassis will be in, since that requires a lot more work for the developers. A friend though notes that the Atlas-C in the trailer is a variant made in 3080, so it could be possible that the reboot cheats the standard lore a little bit, and clans could be in anyway. How's that for geekdom?
That's really it for my wishlist. I'm really excited about this game, like I have not been for a game in a long time. I hope it'll have a larger and more tightly knit multiplayer community than the previous games.
Edit: Apparently the game is being called MechWarrior 3015 by the community. Fair enough.
Command and Conquer 4: The Revenge of Tiberium!
Well, I admit. EA is just better than I am.
AT MAKING SHITTY SUBTITLES.
Yeah, considering their previous publications - BFME2: Rise of the Witch King, CNC3: Tiberium Wars, CNC3: Kane's Wrath, then RA3: Uprising, and just Tiberium (for their first person shooter title) - EA has me beaten by a mile when it comes to cliche, angry and spiteful underdog avenger titles. Ooh. So scary.
So, no. CNC4 isn't called the Revenge of Tiberium. I'm sure it'll be much worse though, so just stay tuned. But it'll be pretty hard for Tiberium to have revenge on anybody... You know why? Tiberium is now a tame and easily accessible resource that has no infringement on human health or lifestyle. What the fuck.
For those who don't know the lore being Tiberium, I will do a quick recap, as the story was revealed by Westwood, the original developers. Not long ago, a meteor fell from space and crashed in Italy. It brought with it a strange biological plant growth called Tiberium that leeched minerals out of the ground and sprouted it as a green plant on the surface. While this made harvesting the plant quite lucrative, the plant emitted poisonous gases and rapidly spread, destroying Earth's habitat, killing off other plants and animals. Tiberium's growth was so dramatic that much of the world was covered in it, even the seas were clogged with it, and the only places that could slow its growth were icy artic regions or areas with steep rocky terrain. The world was being split into two factions, GDI and Nod, the former trying to restore peace and order and quell the advance of Tiberium, and the latter trying to undermine GDI (and the current world order) to embrace Tiberium, the secrets it may hold, and usher forward a new race of enhanced beings. While GDI and Nod slugged it out with each other, they stumbled upon the bizarre. Some wild animals, humans and even plants adapted with excessive exposure to Tiberium, becoming much stronger and more resilient. Furthermore, Tiberium was obviously alien, but unnervingly hinted at the existence of an invading intelligent alien race.
Unfortunately, as Westwood's rights to the franchise were passed to EA, the story began to crumble in inconsistency. Tiberium became some crystalline lifeform, and resembled the minerals in Starcraft. Alien artifacts that were found in earlier games were 'refound' at an even earlier date. Alien arrivals were poorly explained, and Nod's enigmatic and visionary leader, Kane, began to operate in a questionable manner with incomprehensible objectives. But worse... Tiberium is no longer the plague that is encompassing the globe. It is now of no threat to anyone, safely locked away underground, and mined by large vertical drilling shafts. Tiberium no longer is on the surface to destroy civilian respiratory systems, give severe skin burns and cancers, corrode the armor off of vehicles, mutate biosystems, or uproot and level cities. What's going on? The main element of the game... The resource you NAMED the game after, has been so drastically altered, there is really no point in trying to continue this franchise. Worse, EA drops the guillotine: they claim they will be concluding the story and wrap up loose ends with this final installment. Considering how they bullshitted the story for both CNC3 and the expansion pack, they have so many plot holes and loose ends that they will never be able to piece the thing back together in just a single game.
EA tried to write the story as it pleased them in CNC3, and it lead to inconsistencies and fans asking well-deserved questions, often about the characters or incomplete events from the previous titles. But since it was plainly obvious that EA did not even play the previous games themselves, they had no idea who or what the fans were talking about. So... what did they do? They made an expansion pack to try fill in the gaps. So the fans received 5 second explanations during FMVs, often just saying that so-and-so died before the game events occurred, or that Tiberium underwent a mysterious overnight transformation and that researchers could not come up with any answers. Wow. Lame. If by 'filling the gaps' they meant just acknowledging their poorly written inconsistencies in an official FMV... then EA sure succeeded. And worse, they tried to bring back old characters and factions to do fanservice... even when these things had no right to return. Now with factions like Cabal, a previously rogue AI commander, back in his throne, EA has plot holes the size of dump trucks to fill. And yet they think they can complete a convincing story in just ONE game? Get over yourself, EA.
So that's enough about the plot. They fucked it up, and it isn't going to get unfucked any time soon. But what really pisses me off is that they're selling the same fucking rehash gameplay and engine. This engine has been used for 11 games, not including expansions! 5 of these games were ancient, and used a very very old basic version of this engine, fair enough... But the earliest one was from 2001! Way to milk a dry cow. Or in this case, a dry and half-eaten-by-vultures carcass. Now just reusing engine code isn't bad... But its the way it is used is important. Some games show noticable engine upgrades and improvements that make the engine recycling well justified... But EA does not make that sort of game. Currently, the CNC4 screenshots look like a game from 2004... But I will give them the benefit of the doubt since it's still in alpha: CNC4 at release will look about as sharp and clean as CNC3, but no better. Why is this? Because EA has no incentive to improve it past that, and CNC3 already consumed a ton of memory in high-res textures. On top of that, RA3, based on the same engine, showed diminishing graphics relative to CNC3, a game that is its predecessor.
Graphics aside, CNC4 doesn't have any gameplay innovations to speak of, only concepts borrowed from other games. Instead of having a construction yard and building around it like other CNC games, you have a walking mega unit that is pretty much your base all in one package. Not only has this been done before in Universe at War, and Dawn of War, but it isn't anything like what the franchise is like. Instead of harvesting fields of rapidly growing Tiberium, you capture and hold Tiberium control points that give you a steady stream of income. Done by Dawn of War and other capture-point based RTSes like Demigod, Company of Heroes, and World in Conflict. This is not anything like any CNC game either. They've introduced a population cap. If I wanted to play a Blizzard game, I'd play a Blizzard game. There's also no more base building, another feature taken from modern tactical RTSes. Everything that made CNC unique is gone, we only have some pathetic trend following, courtesy of sloppy and uninspired EA developers. Instead of unlocking units by teching up to new tech tiers, you level up your commander level by killing or losing units. Your commander level is a consistent stat that carries across games. Not only is this RPG element completely unnecessary, but it is so poorly integrated that it will throw a wrench in any RTS mechanic that remains in the game. Players will be limited to what units they can build because of their level. That limits build orders, strategies and even the opponents they can fairly fight and counter. Why even bother? This is a terrible idea just at conception. Scrap the damn thing.
Now someone may ask... The game isn't out, why are you so harsh and so certain it will fail? These words were spoken to me every single time a EA CNC game was on the horizon. It came about for CNC3, for KW, and for RA3. Yet unsurprisingly, every time, I was justified in my criticism. EA is truly a company that you cannot let out of your sight, as when they are given creative freedom, they are bound to failure and disappointment. So, I know without a doubt that EA will screw up CNC4, and like their previous releases, I refuse to purchase it. And you know what is sad? I was happy when EA announced the cancellation of Tiberium, their first person shooter rendition of the CNC universe. I thought they came to their senses and decided to not pursue developing a genre and universe that they did not understand and instead moved their investment to something they do better... Like sports or something. But no. They put their money here, in this other abomination of a RPG-Squadbased-Tactical-RTS game. Jumping from one sinking ship to another. There is no doubt that EA will fuck up. The only question on my mind is between the unfinished Tiberium project and CNC4, which one would have been the lesser of two evils? Ultimately, the answer to this is moot; both of them are destined to be a shit stain on gaming.
AT MAKING SHITTY SUBTITLES.
Yeah, considering their previous publications - BFME2: Rise of the Witch King, CNC3: Tiberium Wars, CNC3: Kane's Wrath, then RA3: Uprising, and just Tiberium (for their first person shooter title) - EA has me beaten by a mile when it comes to cliche, angry and spiteful underdog avenger titles. Ooh. So scary.
So, no. CNC4 isn't called the Revenge of Tiberium. I'm sure it'll be much worse though, so just stay tuned. But it'll be pretty hard for Tiberium to have revenge on anybody... You know why? Tiberium is now a tame and easily accessible resource that has no infringement on human health or lifestyle. What the fuck.
For those who don't know the lore being Tiberium, I will do a quick recap, as the story was revealed by Westwood, the original developers. Not long ago, a meteor fell from space and crashed in Italy. It brought with it a strange biological plant growth called Tiberium that leeched minerals out of the ground and sprouted it as a green plant on the surface. While this made harvesting the plant quite lucrative, the plant emitted poisonous gases and rapidly spread, destroying Earth's habitat, killing off other plants and animals. Tiberium's growth was so dramatic that much of the world was covered in it, even the seas were clogged with it, and the only places that could slow its growth were icy artic regions or areas with steep rocky terrain. The world was being split into two factions, GDI and Nod, the former trying to restore peace and order and quell the advance of Tiberium, and the latter trying to undermine GDI (and the current world order) to embrace Tiberium, the secrets it may hold, and usher forward a new race of enhanced beings. While GDI and Nod slugged it out with each other, they stumbled upon the bizarre. Some wild animals, humans and even plants adapted with excessive exposure to Tiberium, becoming much stronger and more resilient. Furthermore, Tiberium was obviously alien, but unnervingly hinted at the existence of an invading intelligent alien race.
Unfortunately, as Westwood's rights to the franchise were passed to EA, the story began to crumble in inconsistency. Tiberium became some crystalline lifeform, and resembled the minerals in Starcraft. Alien artifacts that were found in earlier games were 'refound' at an even earlier date. Alien arrivals were poorly explained, and Nod's enigmatic and visionary leader, Kane, began to operate in a questionable manner with incomprehensible objectives. But worse... Tiberium is no longer the plague that is encompassing the globe. It is now of no threat to anyone, safely locked away underground, and mined by large vertical drilling shafts. Tiberium no longer is on the surface to destroy civilian respiratory systems, give severe skin burns and cancers, corrode the armor off of vehicles, mutate biosystems, or uproot and level cities. What's going on? The main element of the game... The resource you NAMED the game after, has been so drastically altered, there is really no point in trying to continue this franchise. Worse, EA drops the guillotine: they claim they will be concluding the story and wrap up loose ends with this final installment. Considering how they bullshitted the story for both CNC3 and the expansion pack, they have so many plot holes and loose ends that they will never be able to piece the thing back together in just a single game.
EA tried to write the story as it pleased them in CNC3, and it lead to inconsistencies and fans asking well-deserved questions, often about the characters or incomplete events from the previous titles. But since it was plainly obvious that EA did not even play the previous games themselves, they had no idea who or what the fans were talking about. So... what did they do? They made an expansion pack to try fill in the gaps. So the fans received 5 second explanations during FMVs, often just saying that so-and-so died before the game events occurred, or that Tiberium underwent a mysterious overnight transformation and that researchers could not come up with any answers. Wow. Lame. If by 'filling the gaps' they meant just acknowledging their poorly written inconsistencies in an official FMV... then EA sure succeeded. And worse, they tried to bring back old characters and factions to do fanservice... even when these things had no right to return. Now with factions like Cabal, a previously rogue AI commander, back in his throne, EA has plot holes the size of dump trucks to fill. And yet they think they can complete a convincing story in just ONE game? Get over yourself, EA.
So that's enough about the plot. They fucked it up, and it isn't going to get unfucked any time soon. But what really pisses me off is that they're selling the same fucking rehash gameplay and engine. This engine has been used for 11 games, not including expansions! 5 of these games were ancient, and used a very very old basic version of this engine, fair enough... But the earliest one was from 2001! Way to milk a dry cow. Or in this case, a dry and half-eaten-by-vultures carcass. Now just reusing engine code isn't bad... But its the way it is used is important. Some games show noticable engine upgrades and improvements that make the engine recycling well justified... But EA does not make that sort of game. Currently, the CNC4 screenshots look like a game from 2004... But I will give them the benefit of the doubt since it's still in alpha: CNC4 at release will look about as sharp and clean as CNC3, but no better. Why is this? Because EA has no incentive to improve it past that, and CNC3 already consumed a ton of memory in high-res textures. On top of that, RA3, based on the same engine, showed diminishing graphics relative to CNC3, a game that is its predecessor.
Graphics aside, CNC4 doesn't have any gameplay innovations to speak of, only concepts borrowed from other games. Instead of having a construction yard and building around it like other CNC games, you have a walking mega unit that is pretty much your base all in one package. Not only has this been done before in Universe at War, and Dawn of War, but it isn't anything like what the franchise is like. Instead of harvesting fields of rapidly growing Tiberium, you capture and hold Tiberium control points that give you a steady stream of income. Done by Dawn of War and other capture-point based RTSes like Demigod, Company of Heroes, and World in Conflict. This is not anything like any CNC game either. They've introduced a population cap. If I wanted to play a Blizzard game, I'd play a Blizzard game. There's also no more base building, another feature taken from modern tactical RTSes. Everything that made CNC unique is gone, we only have some pathetic trend following, courtesy of sloppy and uninspired EA developers. Instead of unlocking units by teching up to new tech tiers, you level up your commander level by killing or losing units. Your commander level is a consistent stat that carries across games. Not only is this RPG element completely unnecessary, but it is so poorly integrated that it will throw a wrench in any RTS mechanic that remains in the game. Players will be limited to what units they can build because of their level. That limits build orders, strategies and even the opponents they can fairly fight and counter. Why even bother? This is a terrible idea just at conception. Scrap the damn thing.
Now someone may ask... The game isn't out, why are you so harsh and so certain it will fail? These words were spoken to me every single time a EA CNC game was on the horizon. It came about for CNC3, for KW, and for RA3. Yet unsurprisingly, every time, I was justified in my criticism. EA is truly a company that you cannot let out of your sight, as when they are given creative freedom, they are bound to failure and disappointment. So, I know without a doubt that EA will screw up CNC4, and like their previous releases, I refuse to purchase it. And you know what is sad? I was happy when EA announced the cancellation of Tiberium, their first person shooter rendition of the CNC universe. I thought they came to their senses and decided to not pursue developing a genre and universe that they did not understand and instead moved their investment to something they do better... Like sports or something. But no. They put their money here, in this other abomination of a RPG-Squadbased-Tactical-RTS game. Jumping from one sinking ship to another. There is no doubt that EA will fuck up. The only question on my mind is between the unfinished Tiberium project and CNC4, which one would have been the lesser of two evils? Ultimately, the answer to this is moot; both of them are destined to be a shit stain on gaming.
Monday, July 20, 2009
Velvet Assassin - I CAN'T OPEN DOORS!
I haven't finished this game. I don't intend to. What is Velvet Assassin exactly? Well, its a stealth game where you play as Violette Summers, a British spy in WWII. When you first start the game you see Violette lying on a hospital bed from a "mission gone wrong" and is stuck in some kind of coma. Then you start replaying missions based on her memories. It doesn't sound so bad right? Except the entire stealth system is flawed. Not a minor flaw, but huge flaws like how the enemies won't open the door and shoot you.
The first mission you start off by sneaking into a base. Pretty standard stuff. You get a purple glow when you are in the shadows meaning, no one can see you. But you step into the light or touch broken glass then people see you. You get a knife and a pistol with a silencer with 6 rounds. Once these rounds are gone you don't get any more. Shooting a guy in the head means he dies in a single shot anywhere else, nope. So this means you need good aim. Which is fairly easy and most of the enemies in this game stand around being retarded. So you're going around sneaking in the shadows and when they turn their back you sneak over and silent kill them with a knife.
Simple stuff. Then you get to parts and Violette will suddenly point out "I remember, I had to turn off the electricity here. This is an electric fence." Thanks... Like I can't tell with the high voltage signs plastered all over the walls. So you sneak over and break the power. Then OH SHIT THE ENEMY SAW ME WHAT DO I DO? Well if you get caught you have two options. Fight or Run. Running is the easiest. Once you hide in the shadows the enemy will walk over and look straight at you but you're glowing purple right? Yeah. So you pull out your gun, point that thing at his head and bang he's dead. Or if you're too lazy to do that you can hit MORPHINE MODE. What is morphine mode? Well the thing is Violette is struggling in her hospital bed and the nurse gives her a shot of morphine. Morphine must be found throughout the stage and it has a one time use. Using it the whole world slows down, kinda like F.E.A.R. You run around in your undergarments and the whole world is pink with fluffy flowers floating everywhere. And if you get close to an enemy you get a instant kill move. After killing someone. The morphine wears out and the other guy beside him will kill you.
The stages are pretty straightforward. Violette explains the situation at the start of every stage. Then you get thrown in and you finish it. Sneaking around you shoot a guy then the other guy comes over looks at the body goes "oh shit he's dead!" and walk back to his spot and smokes a cigarette to ease the pain of a dead comrade and then you stab him in the back. I also like to point out that after each stage your ammo and health magically replenishes itself. I understand if its like a whole different time and you get to restock but if its like a sub-stage you still get ammo. Then you keep going and you go into a room. Oh crap bad mistake! There's like four guys standing around. You take your gun you shoot one in the head and quickly run out the room. You then look through the keyhole and you see three guys walk up the door and starts yelling in German. Then they go "she went behind the door! I CAN'T OPEN DOORS!" and then they go back to the spots and you go in and shoot them all and continue forward.
Climbing up the bell tower you meet your first boss Colonel Schnitzel or whatever aka the butcher of Paris. You grab a bulletproof vest and a shotgun which happens to be lying there for no apparent reason. Then you climb up. You start hearing the guy start yelling "GET THE BITCH. TURN ON THE LIGHTS AND FORCE THE BITCH TO COME OUT" and then all the lights are open and you take out your shotgun and blast all the guards in the face. You then see Schnitzel and he pulls out a pistol. NOT SO FAST ASSHOLE! You point your shotgun in his face point blank and BAM RIGHT IN THE FACE BITCH. But wait! He's not dead! So he shoots at you and you go BAM RIGHT IN THE FACE BITCH AGAIN! Wait, he's not dead yet! THEN AGAIN YOU GO BAM RIGHT IN THE FACE BITCH. And finally he dies but not before a cutscene where you see Schnitzel lie on the ground with a bloody nose and Violette walks over points a shotgun to his head then the screen changes and you hear a BAM and all the birds fly away.
I don't know about you but I'd love to be able to take a shot or three in the face and walk away with just a bloody nose. Isn't this supposed to be realistic? Like you're actually stealthing around killing people? Not watching retarded enemies run around and blasting people in the face with shotguns which doesn't kill them. That was were I stopped. It sucks. That is all.
The first mission you start off by sneaking into a base. Pretty standard stuff. You get a purple glow when you are in the shadows meaning, no one can see you. But you step into the light or touch broken glass then people see you. You get a knife and a pistol with a silencer with 6 rounds. Once these rounds are gone you don't get any more. Shooting a guy in the head means he dies in a single shot anywhere else, nope. So this means you need good aim. Which is fairly easy and most of the enemies in this game stand around being retarded. So you're going around sneaking in the shadows and when they turn their back you sneak over and silent kill them with a knife.
Simple stuff. Then you get to parts and Violette will suddenly point out "I remember, I had to turn off the electricity here. This is an electric fence." Thanks... Like I can't tell with the high voltage signs plastered all over the walls. So you sneak over and break the power. Then OH SHIT THE ENEMY SAW ME WHAT DO I DO? Well if you get caught you have two options. Fight or Run. Running is the easiest. Once you hide in the shadows the enemy will walk over and look straight at you but you're glowing purple right? Yeah. So you pull out your gun, point that thing at his head and bang he's dead. Or if you're too lazy to do that you can hit MORPHINE MODE. What is morphine mode? Well the thing is Violette is struggling in her hospital bed and the nurse gives her a shot of morphine. Morphine must be found throughout the stage and it has a one time use. Using it the whole world slows down, kinda like F.E.A.R. You run around in your undergarments and the whole world is pink with fluffy flowers floating everywhere. And if you get close to an enemy you get a instant kill move. After killing someone. The morphine wears out and the other guy beside him will kill you.
The stages are pretty straightforward. Violette explains the situation at the start of every stage. Then you get thrown in and you finish it. Sneaking around you shoot a guy then the other guy comes over looks at the body goes "oh shit he's dead!" and walk back to his spot and smokes a cigarette to ease the pain of a dead comrade and then you stab him in the back. I also like to point out that after each stage your ammo and health magically replenishes itself. I understand if its like a whole different time and you get to restock but if its like a sub-stage you still get ammo. Then you keep going and you go into a room. Oh crap bad mistake! There's like four guys standing around. You take your gun you shoot one in the head and quickly run out the room. You then look through the keyhole and you see three guys walk up the door and starts yelling in German. Then they go "she went behind the door! I CAN'T OPEN DOORS!" and then they go back to the spots and you go in and shoot them all and continue forward.
Climbing up the bell tower you meet your first boss Colonel Schnitzel or whatever aka the butcher of Paris. You grab a bulletproof vest and a shotgun which happens to be lying there for no apparent reason. Then you climb up. You start hearing the guy start yelling "GET THE BITCH. TURN ON THE LIGHTS AND FORCE THE BITCH TO COME OUT" and then all the lights are open and you take out your shotgun and blast all the guards in the face. You then see Schnitzel and he pulls out a pistol. NOT SO FAST ASSHOLE! You point your shotgun in his face point blank and BAM RIGHT IN THE FACE BITCH. But wait! He's not dead! So he shoots at you and you go BAM RIGHT IN THE FACE BITCH AGAIN! Wait, he's not dead yet! THEN AGAIN YOU GO BAM RIGHT IN THE FACE BITCH. And finally he dies but not before a cutscene where you see Schnitzel lie on the ground with a bloody nose and Violette walks over points a shotgun to his head then the screen changes and you hear a BAM and all the birds fly away.
I don't know about you but I'd love to be able to take a shot or three in the face and walk away with just a bloody nose. Isn't this supposed to be realistic? Like you're actually stealthing around killing people? Not watching retarded enemies run around and blasting people in the face with shotguns which doesn't kill them. That was were I stopped. It sucks. That is all.
Friday, July 3, 2009
Fahrenheit - 9/11 was better than this shit
I didn't want to talk about this game because it was so bad but, since I just heard someone talk about how it was awesome I had to write this. First of all you probably never heard of this game, and that's a good thing. Its name was changed to Indigo Prophecy in the US because of the documentary called Fahrenheit 9/11. It is supposedly an action game, made by a french company about a series of murders in NY. And I use game loosely here because according to Quantic Dream, the creator of this monstrosity, it is actually an "interactive film." You're probably thinking what the hell is an interactive film? I want a game not a film. Well that's what I said as well.
You start off the game with the developer appearing in front of you and start bragging his face off about how great his game is and how everyone should make a solid gold statue of him to worship him for the rest of humanity. This guy starts talking and there is no way to just skip this. He goes on and on and then he tells you to do something. If you do it wrong you'll hear "No, no, no, try again" or something like that in his french accent. After about 20 minutes of that you'll finally begin playing the game. Oh wait no, you watch a movie. Then after the 6 hour opening you find yourself standing in a diner bathroom with blood over your hands holding a knife with a dead guy on the floor. All right! Action! Or... wait...
Well it looked promising at the beginning. It reminded me of Hitman, and that is a good thing. You have a load of options to do. You can just run out the building, clean up the mess drag the body away ditch the weapon, even clean up pay your bills and leave normally. There is also the split screen thing like in Hitman where when someone comes close you can see. Yeah a cop is making his way into the washroom to take a leak and you're fighting the clock. I hate to say, but this is the only part in the game where this happens. So enjoy the first 5 minutes of the game because that'll be the most fun you will get. After getting out of the diner and taking a cab home you switch to the point of view of someone else.
You get a black cop, Tyler, and his white cop partner, Carla, who has to walk around finding clues that you have or have not hidden as Lucas Kane. Also no matter what action you do, the story will still follow its linear line. There will be no difference in the end no matter what action you choose. You have to get all the clues before you can move on. Half the time though, the characters are talking to themselves, aka you. So you can know a little of what they are thinking and you can do stuff depending on what they are thinking. Tyler and Carla will always be together so you'll have to switch between them to get things done. For example, Tyler could be at the office and you need to call Carla, then you hit the switch button and have Carla pick up the phone from her house. Yes it is very annoying. Yes you have to do this everytime. No if you don't switch the guy won't hang up.
So you keep doing stupid things like this. You control Lucas and choose to screw him over or let him remain innocent a bit longer. In the end, he has to get caught so there is no difference. As the story progresses the storyline starts turning into a train wreck. Not that it wasn't a train wreck before but now its like they know there is a wreck so they send more trains in to see what happens. So you keep having visions of a weird little girl, kind of like F.E.A.R but without the "scary" aspect. Not that F.E.A.R is scary at all but this is about Fahrenheit so that's for another time. Then Lucas Kane starts seeing things like giant bugs appear everywhere and starts going ape shit. NOW YOU SEE ACTION RIGHT? No. You start playing Simon Says with the keyboard. If you don't know what simon says then here's a link for you.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KVzZVYtt64I
That is literally what you do for all the action scenes in the game. It's long, its tedious, and its boring. Its also more corny and lame than the commercial.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DYEHtFVLqzk
Yeah... I wish I youtubed it before I started playing it. Anyways the story goes on and it sorta pulls a Xenogears where the second half you don't get to play though it you just hear what goes on. Then you find out about the "oracle" who is a mayan oracle who controls you to kill people. The "indigo child" which is the little autistic girl who will speak and say something that will give the person the power to rule the world. The orange clan who is after the indigo child for over 2000 years. They know every thing in the world and what everyone is doing, kinda like big brother. Then theres the purple clan made up of A.I from the internet who is after the indigo child as well to gain world domination over humans. Then theres the invisibles who are homeless bums who are fighting against the other clans. Yeah homeless people... Theres like 5 of them... yeah....
Anyways the whole game is about mini games. And by mini games I mean annoying pointless shit that gives you high blood pressure. Watch a few scenes then you have a mini game such as Carla having claustrophobia and must go into the dark lonely basement to find tapes. She will have a panic attack and you must control her breathing by pressing left and right constantly or she'll go crazy and you game over. Its not over in like 2 minutes. No. It takes 15 minutes to finish that not counting the times you screw up and have to start over. After that you get a few scenes then you get another mini game! Now you're Tyler and you have to find a book in the library. Holy shit is the library huge. Theres four floors with like three sections and you can only take one book off the shelf at a time and give it to the dude and if its wrong he sends you back. Since I didn't give a shit about the stupid riddle which was impossible, I just ran around and found the book by accident. It was on the top floor in the corner by the way. So this just repeats endlessly until the second half of the game.
The second half reveals that Lucas Kane is the "chosen one" or whatever the shit it is. They pull a matrix and he turns into some super god. The Carla meets him and bangs him in the amount of time it takes to read this sentence. And you find out Lucas Kane is dead and he was revived by the AI to trick him into their side but he has the "Chroma" which was leftover by UFO's or some shit and he was able to fight back and the game ends he becomes a god and Carla is pregnant with his child. He just sits there on a rock going "I know all the answers to the universe. Carla is pregnant. I am going to kill myself for being in this piece of shit game."
He said that last sentence. Or at least in my mind he said that. Thats it. This is the shittiest game that is ever created. Do. Not. Play. This. Shit. Ever. If you want to play a less shitty game I'd start with Persona 3 and make your way down here. If you play this game you'll never want to game again in your life. It's that shitty.
You start off the game with the developer appearing in front of you and start bragging his face off about how great his game is and how everyone should make a solid gold statue of him to worship him for the rest of humanity. This guy starts talking and there is no way to just skip this. He goes on and on and then he tells you to do something. If you do it wrong you'll hear "No, no, no, try again" or something like that in his french accent. After about 20 minutes of that you'll finally begin playing the game. Oh wait no, you watch a movie. Then after the 6 hour opening you find yourself standing in a diner bathroom with blood over your hands holding a knife with a dead guy on the floor. All right! Action! Or... wait...
Well it looked promising at the beginning. It reminded me of Hitman, and that is a good thing. You have a load of options to do. You can just run out the building, clean up the mess drag the body away ditch the weapon, even clean up pay your bills and leave normally. There is also the split screen thing like in Hitman where when someone comes close you can see. Yeah a cop is making his way into the washroom to take a leak and you're fighting the clock. I hate to say, but this is the only part in the game where this happens. So enjoy the first 5 minutes of the game because that'll be the most fun you will get. After getting out of the diner and taking a cab home you switch to the point of view of someone else.
You get a black cop, Tyler, and his white cop partner, Carla, who has to walk around finding clues that you have or have not hidden as Lucas Kane. Also no matter what action you do, the story will still follow its linear line. There will be no difference in the end no matter what action you choose. You have to get all the clues before you can move on. Half the time though, the characters are talking to themselves, aka you. So you can know a little of what they are thinking and you can do stuff depending on what they are thinking. Tyler and Carla will always be together so you'll have to switch between them to get things done. For example, Tyler could be at the office and you need to call Carla, then you hit the switch button and have Carla pick up the phone from her house. Yes it is very annoying. Yes you have to do this everytime. No if you don't switch the guy won't hang up.
So you keep doing stupid things like this. You control Lucas and choose to screw him over or let him remain innocent a bit longer. In the end, he has to get caught so there is no difference. As the story progresses the storyline starts turning into a train wreck. Not that it wasn't a train wreck before but now its like they know there is a wreck so they send more trains in to see what happens. So you keep having visions of a weird little girl, kind of like F.E.A.R but without the "scary" aspect. Not that F.E.A.R is scary at all but this is about Fahrenheit so that's for another time. Then Lucas Kane starts seeing things like giant bugs appear everywhere and starts going ape shit. NOW YOU SEE ACTION RIGHT? No. You start playing Simon Says with the keyboard. If you don't know what simon says then here's a link for you.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KVzZVYtt64I
That is literally what you do for all the action scenes in the game. It's long, its tedious, and its boring. Its also more corny and lame than the commercial.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DYEHtFVLqzk
Yeah... I wish I youtubed it before I started playing it. Anyways the story goes on and it sorta pulls a Xenogears where the second half you don't get to play though it you just hear what goes on. Then you find out about the "oracle" who is a mayan oracle who controls you to kill people. The "indigo child" which is the little autistic girl who will speak and say something that will give the person the power to rule the world. The orange clan who is after the indigo child for over 2000 years. They know every thing in the world and what everyone is doing, kinda like big brother. Then theres the purple clan made up of A.I from the internet who is after the indigo child as well to gain world domination over humans. Then theres the invisibles who are homeless bums who are fighting against the other clans. Yeah homeless people... Theres like 5 of them... yeah....
Anyways the whole game is about mini games. And by mini games I mean annoying pointless shit that gives you high blood pressure. Watch a few scenes then you have a mini game such as Carla having claustrophobia and must go into the dark lonely basement to find tapes. She will have a panic attack and you must control her breathing by pressing left and right constantly or she'll go crazy and you game over. Its not over in like 2 minutes. No. It takes 15 minutes to finish that not counting the times you screw up and have to start over. After that you get a few scenes then you get another mini game! Now you're Tyler and you have to find a book in the library. Holy shit is the library huge. Theres four floors with like three sections and you can only take one book off the shelf at a time and give it to the dude and if its wrong he sends you back. Since I didn't give a shit about the stupid riddle which was impossible, I just ran around and found the book by accident. It was on the top floor in the corner by the way. So this just repeats endlessly until the second half of the game.
The second half reveals that Lucas Kane is the "chosen one" or whatever the shit it is. They pull a matrix and he turns into some super god. The Carla meets him and bangs him in the amount of time it takes to read this sentence. And you find out Lucas Kane is dead and he was revived by the AI to trick him into their side but he has the "Chroma" which was leftover by UFO's or some shit and he was able to fight back and the game ends he becomes a god and Carla is pregnant with his child. He just sits there on a rock going "I know all the answers to the universe. Carla is pregnant. I am going to kill myself for being in this piece of shit game."
He said that last sentence. Or at least in my mind he said that. Thats it. This is the shittiest game that is ever created. Do. Not. Play. This. Shit. Ever. If you want to play a less shitty game I'd start with Persona 3 and make your way down here. If you play this game you'll never want to game again in your life. It's that shitty.
Thursday, June 18, 2009
I'm a genius.
I'll keep this one pretty short.
http://liti4.wordpress.com/2009/06/17/kid-couldnt-tell-the-difference-between-re-spawn-and-reality/
The article is nothing new though; its another gamer/writer (or more likely... a writer pretending to understand gamers) with the same repeated message: don't blame games, blame the lack of medication/supervision/love for screwed up children. Oh how very trite. Certainly writing something that has already been written thousands of times before for Columbine-related incidents is very brave and ground-breaking, no? It doesn't matter that the stereotype persists-further 'supportive' writing won't do anything but dilute what is already a strong argument. I'm sick of hearing about how its not gaming's fault, especially when the same article tries to pin the blame on another factor of which they know nothing about. Is this a game of hot potato, where the participants are any member of society that COULD have had any remote relationship with the kid? Let's blame The Muppets. He must have watched those as a kid. Those things are evil and sow the seeds of destruction into the minds of children at an impressionable age, and their lessons cannot be uprooted by anything but capital punishment. No, it's far too boring to try to round-robin blame onto someone.
Instead, I have a better idea. The kid didn't realise that people couldn't respawn in real life. This is such an easy problem to remedy. Ban respawning in all games. Why not? Diablo had hardcore mode... And that was awesome! Not only do we prevent the deaths of real people by the hands of morons, but we also improve gaming experiences everywhere! If that's not win-win, I don't know what is. I'm a genius.
http://liti4.wordpress.com/2009/06/17/kid-couldnt-tell-the-difference-between-re-spawn-and-reality/
The article is nothing new though; its another gamer/writer (or more likely... a writer pretending to understand gamers) with the same repeated message: don't blame games, blame the lack of medication/supervision/love for screwed up children. Oh how very trite. Certainly writing something that has already been written thousands of times before for Columbine-related incidents is very brave and ground-breaking, no? It doesn't matter that the stereotype persists-further 'supportive' writing won't do anything but dilute what is already a strong argument. I'm sick of hearing about how its not gaming's fault, especially when the same article tries to pin the blame on another factor of which they know nothing about. Is this a game of hot potato, where the participants are any member of society that COULD have had any remote relationship with the kid? Let's blame The Muppets. He must have watched those as a kid. Those things are evil and sow the seeds of destruction into the minds of children at an impressionable age, and their lessons cannot be uprooted by anything but capital punishment. No, it's far too boring to try to round-robin blame onto someone.
Instead, I have a better idea. The kid didn't realise that people couldn't respawn in real life. This is such an easy problem to remedy. Ban respawning in all games. Why not? Diablo had hardcore mode... And that was awesome! Not only do we prevent the deaths of real people by the hands of morons, but we also improve gaming experiences everywhere! If that's not win-win, I don't know what is. I'm a genius.
Saturday, May 23, 2009
Herding Gold and Item Farmers into FPS Games.
Lately, many of my recently played FPS games have notoriously capitalized on RPG-like elements, such as the strengthening of your character over time with acquisition of experience and collected items; statistically represented progression in specific objectives, usually in the form of achievements.
Now I'm not against the evolution of gaming, but a particular question keeps me from embracing the changes: are gamers having more fun when they have steady and statistical representation of their accumulation of experience and skill?
Optimistically, gamers play games for entertainment, but it is necessary to see the darker side of gaming as well: competition and egoism - gamers play to get better. Undeniably, much fun is derived from getting and being better. Achievements, milestones and levels certainly give gamers a better reflection of their current strength and ability, rather than a nebulous idea of where they stand, and often reward the gamer with a boost of extra strength for attaining said accomplishments. While statistics don't necessarily mean the player is better, it does give them confidence and a definite ego boost.
RPG leveling elements can help counterbalance the gaps of player skill, as it rewards a skilled level 20 player and an unskilled level 20 player by the same indiscriminate amount, as opposed to a traditional method where a better player can quickly amass and horde all the best weapons and vehicles on the map, denying others of the opportunity. It also lets players feel rewarded for spending a great deal of time and effort in a game, even if they were often losing and having an unpleasant experience while playing. The achievements give the player a sense of accomplishment that would let the player know not all their time was wasted, and the hope that with enough time, they too would reach greater milestones that will award new bonuses.
However, would adding something like achievements to a real life sport, like tennis result in tennis players having more fun? Certainly people play sports to have fun, but they also do it to better themselves at the game. Would they benefit from having a statistical measurement of their estimated ability, outside of tournament ranking systems? What do you say to them? "Congrats, you have reached the 200 hour milestone for tennis training"... Or maybe, "You have earned achievement: Rocket ball straight into opponent's face." Or perhaps, on low random chance of defeating an opponent, you obtain rare purple tennis shoes, that adds +3 to your dash speed. Is this going to make tennis more fun? Would that even make a tennis VIDEO GAME more fun?
When we isolate the RPG elements to their core, we can see that they can help smoothen out a game experience... But there is a proper method of when and where to use it. The problem that is cropping up in the game industry is that developers are starting to use RPG elements as a cure-all to bolster their game and give it a new shine without contemplating how they could actually IMPROVE the genre of their existing game. Just adding a new leveling feature or touting an achievement pack is not worthy of being mentioned as a selling enticement. Not all games need to be like a RTS, and in fact, it will be soon a breath of fresh air to not have to think about leveling in our games. FPSes were always great for being a game where you could jump in and play, and there were no levels to think about that would inhibit your ability to kick ass. Developers should focus on how to build on the current aspects of their games, while introducing new exciting concepts that were not just hastily borrowed from other genres. Not only are these ideas often poorly translated across genres, but they also do not match the current gameplay, are not forays of originality, and alienate the original player base. And think about it this way: As soon as people have to start grinding for levels or items in whatever game it is, you're going to have the same band of notorious gold-farmers or botters that follow in the wake of every evil RPG. Only this time, the developers are inexperienced with RPG dilemmas and have no idea of what proper countermeasures to employ to safeguard against these corrupters, and the problem only spreads from there. Bottom line: don't play with fire.
Addendum:
Recently, Command and Conquer 4, a RTS in development by EALA, was announced... Yet one of its main features is commanders gaining experience from their battles and leveling up after matches regardless of the outcome, and slowly unlock units and abilities in their arsenal in a manner identical to Call of Duty 4. This is an example of where leveling elements were entirely unnecessary, but as the game was revealed much after the majority of this article was composed, I will save my comments related to it for another time.
Now I'm not against the evolution of gaming, but a particular question keeps me from embracing the changes: are gamers having more fun when they have steady and statistical representation of their accumulation of experience and skill?
Optimistically, gamers play games for entertainment, but it is necessary to see the darker side of gaming as well: competition and egoism - gamers play to get better. Undeniably, much fun is derived from getting and being better. Achievements, milestones and levels certainly give gamers a better reflection of their current strength and ability, rather than a nebulous idea of where they stand, and often reward the gamer with a boost of extra strength for attaining said accomplishments. While statistics don't necessarily mean the player is better, it does give them confidence and a definite ego boost.
RPG leveling elements can help counterbalance the gaps of player skill, as it rewards a skilled level 20 player and an unskilled level 20 player by the same indiscriminate amount, as opposed to a traditional method where a better player can quickly amass and horde all the best weapons and vehicles on the map, denying others of the opportunity. It also lets players feel rewarded for spending a great deal of time and effort in a game, even if they were often losing and having an unpleasant experience while playing. The achievements give the player a sense of accomplishment that would let the player know not all their time was wasted, and the hope that with enough time, they too would reach greater milestones that will award new bonuses.
However, would adding something like achievements to a real life sport, like tennis result in tennis players having more fun? Certainly people play sports to have fun, but they also do it to better themselves at the game. Would they benefit from having a statistical measurement of their estimated ability, outside of tournament ranking systems? What do you say to them? "Congrats, you have reached the 200 hour milestone for tennis training"... Or maybe, "You have earned achievement: Rocket ball straight into opponent's face." Or perhaps, on low random chance of defeating an opponent, you obtain rare purple tennis shoes, that adds +3 to your dash speed. Is this going to make tennis more fun? Would that even make a tennis VIDEO GAME more fun?
When we isolate the RPG elements to their core, we can see that they can help smoothen out a game experience... But there is a proper method of when and where to use it. The problem that is cropping up in the game industry is that developers are starting to use RPG elements as a cure-all to bolster their game and give it a new shine without contemplating how they could actually IMPROVE the genre of their existing game. Just adding a new leveling feature or touting an achievement pack is not worthy of being mentioned as a selling enticement. Not all games need to be like a RTS, and in fact, it will be soon a breath of fresh air to not have to think about leveling in our games. FPSes were always great for being a game where you could jump in and play, and there were no levels to think about that would inhibit your ability to kick ass. Developers should focus on how to build on the current aspects of their games, while introducing new exciting concepts that were not just hastily borrowed from other genres. Not only are these ideas often poorly translated across genres, but they also do not match the current gameplay, are not forays of originality, and alienate the original player base. And think about it this way: As soon as people have to start grinding for levels or items in whatever game it is, you're going to have the same band of notorious gold-farmers or botters that follow in the wake of every evil RPG. Only this time, the developers are inexperienced with RPG dilemmas and have no idea of what proper countermeasures to employ to safeguard against these corrupters, and the problem only spreads from there. Bottom line: don't play with fire.
Addendum:
Recently, Command and Conquer 4, a RTS in development by EALA, was announced... Yet one of its main features is commanders gaining experience from their battles and leveling up after matches regardless of the outcome, and slowly unlock units and abilities in their arsenal in a manner identical to Call of Duty 4. This is an example of where leveling elements were entirely unnecessary, but as the game was revealed much after the majority of this article was composed, I will save my comments related to it for another time.
Tuesday, April 21, 2009
Rule of Rose - If virtual scavenger hunt was a game, this would be it
You've probably not heard of Rule of Rose but you know it was banned. Why was it banned? Well I wasn't really sure until I did some research for the sake of this post. It was banned in the UK along with some other countries. I was thinking "This must be the scariest game in the world!" But I was wrong. It was banned for Psychological torture. You're thinking what the hell is that supposed to mean? Violence and torture by kids towards other kids. Also underage lesbianism as well. The psychological torture isn't the game characters, its on you for playing this game. Its torturing you with its boring running around.
Rule of Rose is a very short horror game by Atlus, yes another Atlus game. I'm not bashing on Atlus games or anything it just happen to be Atlus that made these games. For example, I thought Disgaea to be fairly fun even though the story was crazy and the council system stupid and the whole thing was annoying as hell. You know what, that game sucked. How about Rhapsody: A musical adventure then? Your a girl rescuing the prince with an army of stuffed animals. Cutest game in the world. Not something you'd want to admit to playing though. Anyways enough about Atlus games.
Its one of those horror games where you are a helpless girl instead of someone with a gun shooting hordes of zombies. Only exception is that those games you're actually scared. The difference between those games is that there is something chasing you. You're actually running away. You're in a panic. In rule of rose it has none of that. If its a horror game without horror then what exactly is it? It can't be something and not something at the same time. If I had to describe it as something else then I'll say its like a virtual scavenger hunt and a fairy tale. Doesn't' sound very scary does it. Its not meant to be scary.
The game is set in the 1930's somewhere in Europe. It's made for people with European fetishes. I don't blame them because Europeans are hot, but since this is Japan most of them are 12. You start off the game as Jennifer, a 19 year old young woman on a bus and some boy asks you to read him a story. Then he runs off and you chase him for some odd reason and end up at a orphanage. Off the start you can see some kids with paper bags on their head bashing an animal tied in a bag to death with sticks. Sets the mood of the game because that's you in the bag and those sticks are the game play and those kids are the developers. After you get past the bloody mess you open the door and its mysteriously locked. I was thinking "Ohh typical haunted house game?" No you just wander around and start digging at a grave and some girls come and pour water all over you and push you inside the coffin. Now you wake up on an airship and the kids ask you to join the "Aristocrats club" Every month you need to give them a gift or they kill you.
I just want to point out how much I hate Jennifer. She's absolutely frightened of everything. She'll faint randomly or get scared and start shaking and scream all the time and break down crying. Everything makes her yelp and everything scares her to the point of going insane. She's probably already insane.
The story is divided into chapters and each chapter is a different month. The chapters are not always chronological either. Now you're untied you get to walk around the airship that is like four times the size of Russia. You go to the Aristocrat Club door and the poster says "This month's gift is a butterfly." Now you have to find a butterfly. You walk around the huge airship looking for a butterfly but half the doors are locked or unopenable. Eventually though as you talk to people or see scenes more of these doors will be open. But you have no indication of what will be opened and what will be locked next. So you'll have to keep looking around. If you have a bad sense of direction you'll probably be stuck lost running around in circles. The good thing is 90% of the game you are in the airship. Its just different sections are open and closed during different months and people move around. Eventually even if you suck at directions you'll memorize it since you'll be bashing the walls with your fist if you can't find a door or room.
Near the start you'll find your pet dog "Brown" and the game gets much easier. You are able to let him search for items by looking at your inventory. If the item says "Find ??????" Then you can let brown smell it and he'll go looking for the ?????? item. Nothing is in plain sight. If you know where it is, you can't find it unless brown smells it and barks. But at least you have a dog now right? Well sometimes it wants to go into locked rooms so you're stuck finding things out yourselves. Unfortunately Brown isn't of much use in combat. In fact he just stands there blocking your way.
Combat in this game sucks. I know they are trying to make the game a little realistic with you being a helpless girl. I thought something like Clock Tower series made it right where when you run your panic meter rises and you start running more and more wildly. In here you pretty much just "run" around and when you attack its slow and awkward. Jennifer closes her eyes and turns the other way while waving whatever weapon she finds in front of her. I don't know about you, but I wouldn't be closing my eyes while waving whatever I have in front of me hoping it'll fall dead. Because chances are they'll miss if I'm not looking and I'm dead. Well that's exactly what happens. You're accuracy is terrible. If you miss it takes a long time for you to stop the attack and "run" away. And by running I mean walking. You don't exactly run even though the animation shows you running. Its like someone trying to run as slow as they can. Your weapons can be anything you find. For example the first combat you see is a weird child and you're armed with a fork. You stab the thing to death with your fork.
Another thing is that items have no indicator on how powerful it might be. You would have to guess the lethality on the weapon and then actually test it out. Combat is awkward as your goal is to walk behind them and stab them then run away. This pretty much is the only way to fight as getting hit about 2-4 times means you are dead and you'll need to hit them around 6-8 times to kill something. Most things come in packs and when you get hit you're stuck which means if you get ganged up on you're dead by just one hit. Bosses are different. It's much easier because they are alone but they are an endurance fight. It'll take you five minutes just to kill something repeating the same thing over and over again. Most combat can be avoided though, until you get to ones where its like a pack of mobs inside a small room. The room is locked until you clear the enemies. That's the hardest part of the game. The game itself is confusing as there is not a lot of combat and there is no scare at all. You're just mindlessly running around talking to people finding items. At the end of every chapter though you'll get tortured.
The game itself is about you remembering a lost memory. Everything is something that happened in the past and all the people are ones you knew. It starts to build up slowly and slowly until you get to the ending. Its like a suspense movie that stopped halfway and said "hey movie is over! Haha suck it up we're not telling you the rest go home and bitch." It never really explained what happened. The enemies are things from your past that comes back to haunt you. The whole game has a fairy tale vibe from the very beginning with the chapter Once upon a time... to the enemies and even the narration. If you're looking for horror this is not it. If you are looking for combat this is not it. If you're looking for a story this is not it. What is it then? What exactly is it?
The story might be the main point of the game but the combat and the searching is so frustrating it really grates on your sanity. Not only that its a slap in the face as it ends without telling you anything at all. You're still lost in the end as everything is just a messed up fairy tale like Alice in Wonderland. I love fairy tales. But this story is like a hole in your head being filled with vomit. Also if you happen to finish the game you get a special key that lets you go into a room where you can change your costume. You can switch to things such as, nurse costume, tennis costume, gothic lolita costume, octopus costume, and even a chair. Yes a chair. Your dog brown also changes too and you get matching weapons that are super powerful. For example as a Octopus your dog becomes a crab and you get to wield a frozen tuna. Check it out on youtube if you don't believe me. It's completely stupid though. Who'd want to play it a second time?
A good thing about the game is the graphics, the music, and the feel. The graphics you can set to have a grainy effect. I especially like this effect. It feels like you're in a old movie. The music is amazing. I can sit there and listen to it all day. Its mostly string instruments and piano. The feel of the game with the music and the graphics makes it really feel like the 1930's. Unfortunately, this is all that is good about the game. If you like to be tortured by playing a boring game then go ahead.
Rule of Rose is a very short horror game by Atlus, yes another Atlus game. I'm not bashing on Atlus games or anything it just happen to be Atlus that made these games. For example, I thought Disgaea to be fairly fun even though the story was crazy and the council system stupid and the whole thing was annoying as hell. You know what, that game sucked. How about Rhapsody: A musical adventure then? Your a girl rescuing the prince with an army of stuffed animals. Cutest game in the world. Not something you'd want to admit to playing though. Anyways enough about Atlus games.
Its one of those horror games where you are a helpless girl instead of someone with a gun shooting hordes of zombies. Only exception is that those games you're actually scared. The difference between those games is that there is something chasing you. You're actually running away. You're in a panic. In rule of rose it has none of that. If its a horror game without horror then what exactly is it? It can't be something and not something at the same time. If I had to describe it as something else then I'll say its like a virtual scavenger hunt and a fairy tale. Doesn't' sound very scary does it. Its not meant to be scary.
The game is set in the 1930's somewhere in Europe. It's made for people with European fetishes. I don't blame them because Europeans are hot, but since this is Japan most of them are 12. You start off the game as Jennifer, a 19 year old young woman on a bus and some boy asks you to read him a story. Then he runs off and you chase him for some odd reason and end up at a orphanage. Off the start you can see some kids with paper bags on their head bashing an animal tied in a bag to death with sticks. Sets the mood of the game because that's you in the bag and those sticks are the game play and those kids are the developers. After you get past the bloody mess you open the door and its mysteriously locked. I was thinking "Ohh typical haunted house game?" No you just wander around and start digging at a grave and some girls come and pour water all over you and push you inside the coffin. Now you wake up on an airship and the kids ask you to join the "Aristocrats club" Every month you need to give them a gift or they kill you.
I just want to point out how much I hate Jennifer. She's absolutely frightened of everything. She'll faint randomly or get scared and start shaking and scream all the time and break down crying. Everything makes her yelp and everything scares her to the point of going insane. She's probably already insane.
The story is divided into chapters and each chapter is a different month. The chapters are not always chronological either. Now you're untied you get to walk around the airship that is like four times the size of Russia. You go to the Aristocrat Club door and the poster says "This month's gift is a butterfly." Now you have to find a butterfly. You walk around the huge airship looking for a butterfly but half the doors are locked or unopenable. Eventually though as you talk to people or see scenes more of these doors will be open. But you have no indication of what will be opened and what will be locked next. So you'll have to keep looking around. If you have a bad sense of direction you'll probably be stuck lost running around in circles. The good thing is 90% of the game you are in the airship. Its just different sections are open and closed during different months and people move around. Eventually even if you suck at directions you'll memorize it since you'll be bashing the walls with your fist if you can't find a door or room.
Near the start you'll find your pet dog "Brown" and the game gets much easier. You are able to let him search for items by looking at your inventory. If the item says "Find ??????" Then you can let brown smell it and he'll go looking for the ?????? item. Nothing is in plain sight. If you know where it is, you can't find it unless brown smells it and barks. But at least you have a dog now right? Well sometimes it wants to go into locked rooms so you're stuck finding things out yourselves. Unfortunately Brown isn't of much use in combat. In fact he just stands there blocking your way.
Combat in this game sucks. I know they are trying to make the game a little realistic with you being a helpless girl. I thought something like Clock Tower series made it right where when you run your panic meter rises and you start running more and more wildly. In here you pretty much just "run" around and when you attack its slow and awkward. Jennifer closes her eyes and turns the other way while waving whatever weapon she finds in front of her. I don't know about you, but I wouldn't be closing my eyes while waving whatever I have in front of me hoping it'll fall dead. Because chances are they'll miss if I'm not looking and I'm dead. Well that's exactly what happens. You're accuracy is terrible. If you miss it takes a long time for you to stop the attack and "run" away. And by running I mean walking. You don't exactly run even though the animation shows you running. Its like someone trying to run as slow as they can. Your weapons can be anything you find. For example the first combat you see is a weird child and you're armed with a fork. You stab the thing to death with your fork.
Another thing is that items have no indicator on how powerful it might be. You would have to guess the lethality on the weapon and then actually test it out. Combat is awkward as your goal is to walk behind them and stab them then run away. This pretty much is the only way to fight as getting hit about 2-4 times means you are dead and you'll need to hit them around 6-8 times to kill something. Most things come in packs and when you get hit you're stuck which means if you get ganged up on you're dead by just one hit. Bosses are different. It's much easier because they are alone but they are an endurance fight. It'll take you five minutes just to kill something repeating the same thing over and over again. Most combat can be avoided though, until you get to ones where its like a pack of mobs inside a small room. The room is locked until you clear the enemies. That's the hardest part of the game. The game itself is confusing as there is not a lot of combat and there is no scare at all. You're just mindlessly running around talking to people finding items. At the end of every chapter though you'll get tortured.
The game itself is about you remembering a lost memory. Everything is something that happened in the past and all the people are ones you knew. It starts to build up slowly and slowly until you get to the ending. Its like a suspense movie that stopped halfway and said "hey movie is over! Haha suck it up we're not telling you the rest go home and bitch." It never really explained what happened. The enemies are things from your past that comes back to haunt you. The whole game has a fairy tale vibe from the very beginning with the chapter Once upon a time... to the enemies and even the narration. If you're looking for horror this is not it. If you are looking for combat this is not it. If you're looking for a story this is not it. What is it then? What exactly is it?
The story might be the main point of the game but the combat and the searching is so frustrating it really grates on your sanity. Not only that its a slap in the face as it ends without telling you anything at all. You're still lost in the end as everything is just a messed up fairy tale like Alice in Wonderland. I love fairy tales. But this story is like a hole in your head being filled with vomit. Also if you happen to finish the game you get a special key that lets you go into a room where you can change your costume. You can switch to things such as, nurse costume, tennis costume, gothic lolita costume, octopus costume, and even a chair. Yes a chair. Your dog brown also changes too and you get matching weapons that are super powerful. For example as a Octopus your dog becomes a crab and you get to wield a frozen tuna. Check it out on youtube if you don't believe me. It's completely stupid though. Who'd want to play it a second time?
A good thing about the game is the graphics, the music, and the feel. The graphics you can set to have a grainy effect. I especially like this effect. It feels like you're in a old movie. The music is amazing. I can sit there and listen to it all day. Its mostly string instruments and piano. The feel of the game with the music and the graphics makes it really feel like the 1930's. Unfortunately, this is all that is good about the game. If you like to be tortured by playing a boring game then go ahead.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
