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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.