After knowing how bad Dragon Age 2 was, why would I ever want to try the third one? I've been asking myself that question every single time I write another one of these. Like Dragon Age 2, it has the same questionable writing, human race bias, shitty romance, and major plot holes. And like Dragon Age 2, it also has almost nothing to do with darkspawn. Isn't the reason for Dragon Age to exist is because of the blight? An army of darkspawn led by the archdemon, a dragon, and the gray wardens that stand against them. Its like imagine if Nintendo releases Super Mario Bros 4 and there was no Mario, or Luigi, or Bowser, or even the mushroom kingdom. Instead you play as a random guy called Wolfe and he goes around doing chores for random people and the game ends like that.
Like the first two Dragon Age games, this one is heavily human biased. The first one is not biased as much. You can play all races and there was a good representation of all races. Romances however, is only humans and elves. David Gaider, lead writer of Bioware states "I don't find dwarves attractive and I generally hate them so I won't write romances for them." Its not word by word but it exactly what he meant. So the only romances you have in all three of the Dragon Age series are humans or elves, with the exception being Iron Bull for DA:I. Most of the romances are locked out unless you are human or elf too, with the exception being Iron Bull. In DA2 you were only able to play as a human too, and the story centered around humans. DA:I, although you could play any race, mostly centered around humans too. I played a Elf and I have to point out that all the mage gear are locked out for me. I found a robe and it says "Human trained only." What the fuck is human trained? You fucking racists. My mage is sitting around with level one gear while the entire party is decked out in level 10 gear. How the fuck do I find gear that fits Elves?
So human bias aside, its nice that you are able to play as any race again. Even the Qunari is available this time around. The story focuses around you randomly showing up and causing the big bad guy's plan to go wrong and blow up the sky. You somehow magically stole his powers and are able to close the rifts that ripped across the world causing demons to travel through from another dimension. Then people started calling you the Herald of Andraste. Next thing you know the inquisition started and you have to go around closing rifts while the mages and templars are fighting each other and everyone else. Sounds very Dragon Age right? One thing I do like is the war room. You basically have three advisers that you can pick for certain missions. Should you send your spymaster to deal with this mission? or send your commander? Different advisers will give different results, and rewards. The missions are updated in real time. So if you look at the clock and its 4pm, the mission says 4 hours. You can fuck around with side quests for four hours or turn off the game and come back at 8pm to continue the mission. Missions also cost power to unlock, which is gained from side quests. Which brings us to another issue.
There are way too many side quests. I don't mind doing side quests if they are interesting. Like Skyrim I could wander around until I find something interesting and suddenly I'm exploring some ruins and find some quest. The majority of the quests I've seen you get from running across dead bodies on the floor or an NPC asks you to hunt ram for meat. The bodies always have a note and it always either leads to a loved one, a random chest, or to the killer. After coming across the hundredth body you start to wonder what the fuck you are doing in this game. This is boring. I don't want to go scavenger hunting for corpses. I want to fucking continue the story. Then head back to the war room and start a mission. I spent 7 hours fucking around with side quests in the first zone and barely finished a quarter of the area. I gave up and used all the power I got saved up and continued the main story. I opened up 3 more zones but I haven't bothered going there. Whats the point its just boring side quests that does shit for the main story. I don't want to fucking hunt bodies. But you have to because the power cost for mission start racking up quickly. What a way to pad game length. Side quests aren't the only thing you can or have to do though. You can claim landmarks or areas by running up and slamming a flag onto the floor like manifest destiny. A settler camp? a village? some castle? FUCK THAT. SLAM THAT FLAG DOWN. Its yours now. By claiming stuff you gain influence. With influence you can level up the inquisition rank and get more bonuses.
If you played the previous Dragon Ages you'll find that the combat in this one is more like DA2 than the first. Its more actiony and you focus more one one character while the AI controls everyone else. Unlike the second one though you can swap to the mode the first one uses. The one that gives you an overhead view and preplan out commands for the team. However all this is unnecessary because the AI is clearly balanced around playing a single person and having your three other teammates ram into the enemy with their faces until they die. Perhaps in the hardest difficulty you may need to plan things out. For this version, combat is mostly about holding down your autoattack button. If you are on PC that is the right mouse button, which is also the camera button. The camera is janky and chances are you'll end up fucking around with how you perfection positioned it by targetting an enemy. That is where you go to the options, plug in your controller, and select gamepad mode. Now things are looking better. You can use the right analog stick to position the camera, the left analog to move and the right back button to attack. This game feels like its intended to be played on a controller. However playing on the controller the jump button and the talk/action button is the same one so you end up hopping around when trying to open doors or get the attention of an NPC. Back to the combat, your mana or stamina pool is very small but it regenerates very quickly. A simple fire spell drains 80% of your mana so the rest of the time you are just holding down the button shooting ice shards from your staff. Every 10 seconds or so you click another button and hold down that autoattack! At least make it a toggle or something. Another thing I need to point out is that healing skills are removed from the game. There is also no natural regeneration. The only way to regenerate health is to drink healing potions. At the start you are able to carry 8 of them and they are automatically refilled everytime you go back to town. This is a giant pain in the ass. Its impossible to completely avoid damage so you're constantly going back to town. Whats worse is if you're like halfway into a dungeon and you're low or out of healing potions. Do you spend 20 minutes to walk back or you carry on and reload when things go wrong.
Exploration is a pain the ass from the issue mentioned above but there are more. I've mentioned how bad the quests are but getting to where you are supposed to get to is a pain in the ass too. The map screen is an ugly piece of shit where you can't tell what is what. Is this a mountain? Do I climb up somewhere? Is this underground? I'm supposed to find someone/something but the quest shows a giant ass circle, am I doing this right? One thing I have to point out, what is the fucking point of a jump button when there is nothing you can jump over. You see a rock in front of you and you decided to just jump over it instead of wasting a second to circle around. You jump get stuck, try again, get stuck, fiddle around and give up and walk around the damn thing. You just wasted a minute of your time. What the fuck is this piddly jump. Your feet barely lifts itself off the ground. You want to try climbing a hill for the quest? Don't bother jumping it doesn't do shit! The only way to climb up a fairly flat hill is to find the only path available up. Basically don't bother jumping just circle around stuff and pretend anything that's not flat ground to be an obstacle. Some quests appear on the mini map as a big purple circle meaning that the objective is somewhere inside there and you have to find it yourself. Its usually not that hard to find but I find it funny how big some of the circles can get. Its three times bigger than the town you were in and all you wanted to find was a NPC. Other quests are so long and tedious you look at it for one second and go "fuck this shit." Collect 8 caches hidden around all over the zone. Can you spread them out more? I find wasting 30 minutes traveling around on a single side quest very enjoyable. You do get a horse near the start of the game by doing a side quest. However the horse is slow as shit and you're constantly getting on and off to fight random enemies on the field or picking up stuff you run by. If it gets hit it magically disappears into nowhere and you have to resummon it again. Wait for it to show up, and then get back on. I find that the horse slows me down more than the tiny bonus speed it gives when you hold down the run button while mounted. Yes you need to hold the analog button down while moving to get it to run. The last issue I have with exploration is that the areas are badly balanced. You never know what is too high level until you die. The entire area of the zone could be level 4 but this single camp in the middle of it is super high leveled that one shots you the second you start combat. You run around kill a few monsters and gear drop for levels 8 and above. What? I'm here too early?
I haven't gotten very far into the story but so far its the same Bioware style writing. Everything is black or white and into the extremes. For example, during the mage path on the main quest, spoilers ahead, you basically get three choices. You free all the mages from the circle (pisses off your companions), you basically make them into your slaves (pisses off your other companions), or you basically leave them to their fate and die (pisses off the rest of your companions.) It uses the same chat wheel circle where the top right button is the nice response, the middle right button is the neutral response and the bottom right button is the rude response. This can also translate to good and evil choices as well. Do you give a man all your money with the top right button, or do you kill him and all his family and feed it to his dog with the bottom right button. One thing though, is when talking to romance-able companions is that a heart button will appear on the top left occasionally. This is like a get out of jail free card when it pops up. You're arguing with Cullen about freeing the mages when you are at the point where there is no way to move on without dropping his reputation for you, you click that fucking button. You can go from murder, death and angry arguing to "you're so handsome blah blah blah" and then you get bonus reputation. These buttons always show up at the oddest times. What kind of person in the middle of talking about enslaving mages suddenly decide to flirt. Its also the most awkward responses too. The only companion romance that seems interesting is Dorian, the gay Tevinter mage. He's a little arrogant but he's the least awkward of everyone. While Cassandra will babble on like shes stupid, Josephine will completely misinterpret, Greywall will tell you that you shouldn't pursue him, I want to puke when I talk to the racist Cullen, Sera is a pain in the ass, Solas hates me because I'm too elfy for him, Iron Bull doesn't give a fuck about what you are, and Vivienne the worst character ever. She completely hates my guts because I helped the mages and hates me because I'm a elf mage and its just been a huge hate war. I like to point out that you cannot kick companions out after recruiting them with the exception of Sera. I don't know what makes her special but from all the comments I've read about her and hundreds of pages of discussions about her. I can see why people really hate her and they gave us the option to kick her out.
This game is a mess. I'm not even trying to pick out the worst parts of the game because this is the entirety of the game. Everything about the game is bad or lacking in some way. I hold this game to high standards because I'm comparing it to the original Dragon Age and to other open world games like Skyrim. The thing is I really liked Dragon Age Origins. I wanted this game to succeed but it let me down more than Mass Effect 3 did. The game never jumps out to wow you its just mediocre. Everything feels generic and some of the decisions made for this game are questionable. Instead of making it an open world and filling it up with the most boring quests that makes grindy MMO quests look amazing, they could focus more on polishing the main story. The open world is just padding anyways.
Tuesday, December 23, 2014
Wednesday, December 10, 2014
Lords of Xulima - You Missed Your Attack
What is Lords of Xulima? I had no clue when I saw this name. There was no review sites talking about it, no one on any major forums knew what it was but apparently there were some random people praising this game. What better game to try than some nameless game that some random people tell you to. First of all I want to mention that this game is very old school. Like Might and Magic X Legacy level of old, and you know how much I hated that game. So what makes this different? For starters, its not fucking boring, and there is an actual story to the game.
When you first start the game you are brought into the character creation screen where you have to make 5 additional party members to your main character, Gaulen the Explorer, a unique class. You can choose their portraits, name them, pick a god and then that is about all you can do. There are 9 classes you can choose from and you can pick the same class if you like. You can have a team of 5 mages no one is going to stop you but you won't get very far. Your party has a formation. There are 8 slots in the party screen, 4 in the front row, and 4 in the back row. You cannot place a member in the back row if there is no one in the front row. Melee attacks cannot be used in the back row unless they are using a polearm. Melee classes are naturally more durable so you are going to put them in the front rows anyways. The usual teams are 3 melee and 3 in the back, or 4 melee and 2 in the back. After you have all this done its time to start playing the game.
When you enter the game you listen to some text on the screen. I want to point out this is probably the worst voice acting I have ever heard. Worse than Persona 3's robot voice acting. I know this is an indie game and they probably don't have the funds for professional voice acting but I can still criticize it. Its so awkward that you can't even follow the story. When you finally finish the back story you start off at a beach where you ship capsized on. Its a top down game and you move by clicking your mouse on the location and your character will walk towards it. The biggest issue about this is that there are two speeds in this game. SLOW AS FUCK or FAST AS SHIT. When I first started I didn't know you had a "run" toggle. I limped around at a snail's pace until I realized you can press the Alt key to toggle run. Running makes you go faster, but drains your food faster so there's no difference between walking or running. Just hit the fucking Alt key and play the game. However, there is a problem. If you're running you usually can't see whats ahead of you in your vision. There is a fog where everything is blacked out except the vision near your party. So you could be running around and suddenly stumble into a pack of high level monsters. You fucked up. Now restart the game.
Before we get into monsters and combat and such lets focus on the world map first. You have a food meter. This is reduced by walking/running around the world map as well as camping. You can camp anytime as long as you are not near hostiles. You may rest for 4 hours which will clear most wounds, 8 hours which will clear fatal wounds, or rest until full. Get used to this screen because you'll be clicking the camp button after every single battle. EVERY SINGLE BATTLE. Food can be gathered from bushes or trees on the world or bought at the Food NPC. Food is cheap but you'll be going back to town very often to restock because of camping in the wild. Enemies show up in two ways. In dangerous areas they will randomly attack you. But usually you can see the monster on the world map, if you mouse over them you can see their aggro circle. Walking into that circle will automatically start combat. Different monsters have different sized circles. You can also see what their party consists of and there will be a difficulty description such as Easy, Balanced, Difficult, Titanic. Difficult is doable with a well built party. You may lose a few party members during the fight but you can do it. Titanic is the highest difficulty I've seen so far. Going into these battles will basically wipe your entire party in a single turn. This can get annoying when you are forced to go through areas where its a fucking maze full of Titanic monsters. You have to slowly walk through by avoiding aggro circles. So you have to keep mousing over them to see their area and taking a step or two. If you have run on you'll end up dying a few times. And just to make it worse during the mazes you cannot save so you'll have to go back to the beginning every time. So this is finally a time for walk, but its so fucking slow. So you take multiple tries by overshooting your step or waste your time walking slow as fuck. Either way it both takes way too long so pick your poison.
In combat enemies have a party with the same formation setup as you, 4 slots in the front 4 slots in the back. Melee can only hit targets adjacent to them. With the exception of spears where you can hit one slot further. This means you can poke an enemy from the back row or poke an enemy hiding in their back row when you are in the front row. A melee on the corner slot cannot attack the enemies on the other sides. So you must be thinking, lets get some range and not worry about this formation bullshit. Unfortunately there are no archer type class. The closest you have are bards and thieves. Bards are buffers, they don't hit hard at all, and thieves are built to be front liners with daggers or swords. Bows are pretty shit and no one uses them. The exception is Gaulen who could use bows but he's the sturdiest character in the game so you want him in the front row. Not just as a tank but because he's the weakest character in the game and you might as well use him as a meat shield. So bows are out so I guess its up to magic! The three pure casters in the game are the Mage, the Cleric, and the Divine Summoner. The cleric is a healer so it doesn't have any damage. The Divine Summoner is basically what it sounds a summoner. Once you drop your summons you don't do anything. So I guess its up to the mage. They must be good right? Well to be honest, they are great when you first start. Spells have a 100% accuracy, they can hit any target anywhere, and they hit hard. However once you get to mid game you'll get into a big issue. Your PP drains in just a few spells. You can literally cast 3-5 spells before you run out and is are forced to drink a potion or stand there doing nothing. At least your damage is high for now. When you reach late game your damage starts petering out and your PP costs are so high you run out in 1-2 casts. So this is a game for melee! Melee characters start off with the most pitiful damage in the game and the worst accuracy I've ever seen in any game. You miss your attacks 75% of the time and against fast enemies like wasps expect a 10% hit rate at best. You can see the % when you mouse over a target. However once you get over the hump that is early game you start doing more damage than mages without the limiting factor of PP and you can actually take a hit. Some classes are also really shitty and worthless. Balance is a big issue.
Leveling is very old school. There are 5 attributes and every level you can spend one point in two of them. Strength increases your damage, Constitution increases your health, Agility increases something I don't care about, Speed increases the frequency of your turns, and Energy increases your PP. Basically the only stats that matter are STR, CON, and SPD. You only want enough Agility to wear weapons. Stack the crap out of speed so you can move multiple times before the enemy moves once. Energy sucks because you get 2 PP a level so say you are level 80 and you put one in it every level that is 160 bonus PP. That may look like a big number but you have to remember high level spells cost 200 PP a cast. You also get 5 skill points to drop into a pool of like 40 different skills. Each one takes like 80 levels to max out. The skills include stuff like different weapon masteries that increase accuracy/damage when using that weapon or Learning, which increases the % of exp gained. You might be wondering why you want that. Its because enemies don't respawn. Once you kill them they're gone forever. Even the ones that randomly attack you. Once they die they don't come back. There are many spells to learn as well depending on your class, skills that increases critical chances, non combat skills like Perception that lets you detect higher level traps, Exploration that slows down food consumption when walking, to Mercantile that increases money made from selling. Depending on the class the points required will be different. For example you want Gaulen to learn lock picking you need 3 skill points per level. On a thief, that same skill is only 1 skill point per level. Its overwhelming at first and you have no idea what to do, but its fairly straightforward after thinking about it. Just make Gaulen learn all the non combat garbage and be a meat shield and have the rest of your party learn combat skills.
Overall the game while having a few issues, is quite fun to play. Its not particularly difficult if you have a decent party. I had a Barbarian, a Thief, two Mages, and a Cleric as my party members. I haven't run into any problems so far. The story writing isn't bad. Its quite enjoyable but be prepared for some fairly bad voice acting. Give it a try if you like old school RPGS but don't expect a perfect game.
When you first start the game you are brought into the character creation screen where you have to make 5 additional party members to your main character, Gaulen the Explorer, a unique class. You can choose their portraits, name them, pick a god and then that is about all you can do. There are 9 classes you can choose from and you can pick the same class if you like. You can have a team of 5 mages no one is going to stop you but you won't get very far. Your party has a formation. There are 8 slots in the party screen, 4 in the front row, and 4 in the back row. You cannot place a member in the back row if there is no one in the front row. Melee attacks cannot be used in the back row unless they are using a polearm. Melee classes are naturally more durable so you are going to put them in the front rows anyways. The usual teams are 3 melee and 3 in the back, or 4 melee and 2 in the back. After you have all this done its time to start playing the game.
When you enter the game you listen to some text on the screen. I want to point out this is probably the worst voice acting I have ever heard. Worse than Persona 3's robot voice acting. I know this is an indie game and they probably don't have the funds for professional voice acting but I can still criticize it. Its so awkward that you can't even follow the story. When you finally finish the back story you start off at a beach where you ship capsized on. Its a top down game and you move by clicking your mouse on the location and your character will walk towards it. The biggest issue about this is that there are two speeds in this game. SLOW AS FUCK or FAST AS SHIT. When I first started I didn't know you had a "run" toggle. I limped around at a snail's pace until I realized you can press the Alt key to toggle run. Running makes you go faster, but drains your food faster so there's no difference between walking or running. Just hit the fucking Alt key and play the game. However, there is a problem. If you're running you usually can't see whats ahead of you in your vision. There is a fog where everything is blacked out except the vision near your party. So you could be running around and suddenly stumble into a pack of high level monsters. You fucked up. Now restart the game.
Before we get into monsters and combat and such lets focus on the world map first. You have a food meter. This is reduced by walking/running around the world map as well as camping. You can camp anytime as long as you are not near hostiles. You may rest for 4 hours which will clear most wounds, 8 hours which will clear fatal wounds, or rest until full. Get used to this screen because you'll be clicking the camp button after every single battle. EVERY SINGLE BATTLE. Food can be gathered from bushes or trees on the world or bought at the Food NPC. Food is cheap but you'll be going back to town very often to restock because of camping in the wild. Enemies show up in two ways. In dangerous areas they will randomly attack you. But usually you can see the monster on the world map, if you mouse over them you can see their aggro circle. Walking into that circle will automatically start combat. Different monsters have different sized circles. You can also see what their party consists of and there will be a difficulty description such as Easy, Balanced, Difficult, Titanic. Difficult is doable with a well built party. You may lose a few party members during the fight but you can do it. Titanic is the highest difficulty I've seen so far. Going into these battles will basically wipe your entire party in a single turn. This can get annoying when you are forced to go through areas where its a fucking maze full of Titanic monsters. You have to slowly walk through by avoiding aggro circles. So you have to keep mousing over them to see their area and taking a step or two. If you have run on you'll end up dying a few times. And just to make it worse during the mazes you cannot save so you'll have to go back to the beginning every time. So this is finally a time for walk, but its so fucking slow. So you take multiple tries by overshooting your step or waste your time walking slow as fuck. Either way it both takes way too long so pick your poison.
In combat enemies have a party with the same formation setup as you, 4 slots in the front 4 slots in the back. Melee can only hit targets adjacent to them. With the exception of spears where you can hit one slot further. This means you can poke an enemy from the back row or poke an enemy hiding in their back row when you are in the front row. A melee on the corner slot cannot attack the enemies on the other sides. So you must be thinking, lets get some range and not worry about this formation bullshit. Unfortunately there are no archer type class. The closest you have are bards and thieves. Bards are buffers, they don't hit hard at all, and thieves are built to be front liners with daggers or swords. Bows are pretty shit and no one uses them. The exception is Gaulen who could use bows but he's the sturdiest character in the game so you want him in the front row. Not just as a tank but because he's the weakest character in the game and you might as well use him as a meat shield. So bows are out so I guess its up to magic! The three pure casters in the game are the Mage, the Cleric, and the Divine Summoner. The cleric is a healer so it doesn't have any damage. The Divine Summoner is basically what it sounds a summoner. Once you drop your summons you don't do anything. So I guess its up to the mage. They must be good right? Well to be honest, they are great when you first start. Spells have a 100% accuracy, they can hit any target anywhere, and they hit hard. However once you get to mid game you'll get into a big issue. Your PP drains in just a few spells. You can literally cast 3-5 spells before you run out and is are forced to drink a potion or stand there doing nothing. At least your damage is high for now. When you reach late game your damage starts petering out and your PP costs are so high you run out in 1-2 casts. So this is a game for melee! Melee characters start off with the most pitiful damage in the game and the worst accuracy I've ever seen in any game. You miss your attacks 75% of the time and against fast enemies like wasps expect a 10% hit rate at best. You can see the % when you mouse over a target. However once you get over the hump that is early game you start doing more damage than mages without the limiting factor of PP and you can actually take a hit. Some classes are also really shitty and worthless. Balance is a big issue.
Leveling is very old school. There are 5 attributes and every level you can spend one point in two of them. Strength increases your damage, Constitution increases your health, Agility increases something I don't care about, Speed increases the frequency of your turns, and Energy increases your PP. Basically the only stats that matter are STR, CON, and SPD. You only want enough Agility to wear weapons. Stack the crap out of speed so you can move multiple times before the enemy moves once. Energy sucks because you get 2 PP a level so say you are level 80 and you put one in it every level that is 160 bonus PP. That may look like a big number but you have to remember high level spells cost 200 PP a cast. You also get 5 skill points to drop into a pool of like 40 different skills. Each one takes like 80 levels to max out. The skills include stuff like different weapon masteries that increase accuracy/damage when using that weapon or Learning, which increases the % of exp gained. You might be wondering why you want that. Its because enemies don't respawn. Once you kill them they're gone forever. Even the ones that randomly attack you. Once they die they don't come back. There are many spells to learn as well depending on your class, skills that increases critical chances, non combat skills like Perception that lets you detect higher level traps, Exploration that slows down food consumption when walking, to Mercantile that increases money made from selling. Depending on the class the points required will be different. For example you want Gaulen to learn lock picking you need 3 skill points per level. On a thief, that same skill is only 1 skill point per level. Its overwhelming at first and you have no idea what to do, but its fairly straightforward after thinking about it. Just make Gaulen learn all the non combat garbage and be a meat shield and have the rest of your party learn combat skills.
Overall the game while having a few issues, is quite fun to play. Its not particularly difficult if you have a decent party. I had a Barbarian, a Thief, two Mages, and a Cleric as my party members. I haven't run into any problems so far. The story writing isn't bad. Its quite enjoyable but be prepared for some fairly bad voice acting. Give it a try if you like old school RPGS but don't expect a perfect game.
Wednesday, August 6, 2014
Divinity: Original Sin - No one has as many friends as the man with many cheeses
No one has as many friends as the man with many cheeses. Did you read that? Let me repeat it again. No one has as many friends as the man with many cheeses. One more time? No one has as many friends as the man with many cheeses. Now you're sitting here going what the fuck is going on. Well that was what I said when I first stepped into the market place and this sentence would repeat itself every five seconds. I don't know who the voice actor for the NPC is but I'm sure he's having nightmares now haunted by the monstrosity he has created. This game is a cheese simulator. You go around town listening to NPCs trying to sell their cheese and cheese products.
To be serious, this is probably the best RPG I have played in years. Its very old school but at the same time its been updated with the more recent quality of life changes in video games. Remember when I talked about Might and Magic X? I said it was old school but it was also very outdated. This game you get the same old school feeling but it feels like a game made in this decade. Its an isometric sandbox RPG with tactical turn based combat. It can be played single player, where you control both main characters, or played in Co-op where each player controls one of the main characters. This is probably the coolest thing. You can each get your own henchmen or companion and customize your own character/inventory and then wander around the map. One person can be doing a quest, while another person can be in a dungeon fighting a pack of monsters. There are also decisions where it can affect both characters. For example, you come across a pack of bandits you can kill them or let them live. Each character can pick a decision and if you both disagree. You can try and argue against each other to reach a conclusion. This also affects your personality for example you want to help someone the other guy wants to kill them. You will gain a point in altruism while the other guy gets a point in heartless.
I know what you're going to ask next. What if I don't have any friends. Well don't worry! Larian made AIs for people like you. You can preset a personality for your characters or you can set nothing and just RP both of them yourself. The game also comes with two unique companions and a bunch of no personality henchmen. There will be more companions added later on as only two were shipped with the launch version of the game. So all in all, even if you're not playing co-op it will be enjoyable. But if you can find someone to play with you it will change how the game feels dramatically.
You start the game by customizing your character. There are many skills and talents to add and its pretty hard to run out of options. There is so much to pick it makes your head spin. I saw a talent called Pet Pal which lets you talk to animals. I knew I had to get it. Who wouldn't want to talk to animals!? It does exactly what you think it does. And yes dogs talk exactly how you think they'll talk. You then go into town and try to solve the murder of Councillor Jake. There are a variety of ways depending on how you want to do it and what skills/talents you have. If you have Pet Pal, you can talk to his dog who will tell you to bring items to him for him to smell if it smells like the murderer. Or you can break into houses and steal their stuff and do it that way. Or you can murder everyone in the town because you're an asshole! Its really up to you.
Combat is fairly difficult at first. It doesn't help that you don't know where to go at the start and can accidentally go into an area too difficult for you. You will die often and die a lot. Eventually you start getting more skills and you are able to fight on somewhat even footing. One tip to remember to win you every battle. Disables are better than damage. If you can do a disable versus doing big damage on an enemy that turn, use a disable. Enemies have resistances but almost every enemy can be disabled by a spell. Summons are also great, if not game breaking. There are plenty of quests, a lot of dialogue, and tons of secrets to find. When the game said it has over 100+ hours of gameplay, it wasn't lying.
The game isn't all sunshine and awesomepuffs. For example, the cheese vendor would not shut up. Going into the marketplace is like blowing your ears out from a hundred people shouting at the top of their lungs to get you to buy their cheese. If you're too far from your friend during co-op you won't be able to hear their conversations with NPCs and won't be able to contribute to arguments. If you want to change major maps like teleport to your homestead, you need both people standing near each other to jump dimensions. The world is split into four major maps with lots of sub areas in each one. Only one person can be talking to an NPC at a time. However, talking to NPCs will force them to turn towards you, moving their cone of vision so someone else can swipe something off their desk while you distract with conversation. Inventory is extremely messy and most of the time you have no idea if this item is important or not and it sits there taking up room because if you lose it getting it back will be a bitch.
If you like RPGs this game is for you. If you like tactical turn based combat this game is for you. And if you love the heck out of co-op games. Do not ignore this and go get it right now.
To be serious, this is probably the best RPG I have played in years. Its very old school but at the same time its been updated with the more recent quality of life changes in video games. Remember when I talked about Might and Magic X? I said it was old school but it was also very outdated. This game you get the same old school feeling but it feels like a game made in this decade. Its an isometric sandbox RPG with tactical turn based combat. It can be played single player, where you control both main characters, or played in Co-op where each player controls one of the main characters. This is probably the coolest thing. You can each get your own henchmen or companion and customize your own character/inventory and then wander around the map. One person can be doing a quest, while another person can be in a dungeon fighting a pack of monsters. There are also decisions where it can affect both characters. For example, you come across a pack of bandits you can kill them or let them live. Each character can pick a decision and if you both disagree. You can try and argue against each other to reach a conclusion. This also affects your personality for example you want to help someone the other guy wants to kill them. You will gain a point in altruism while the other guy gets a point in heartless.
I know what you're going to ask next. What if I don't have any friends. Well don't worry! Larian made AIs for people like you. You can preset a personality for your characters or you can set nothing and just RP both of them yourself. The game also comes with two unique companions and a bunch of no personality henchmen. There will be more companions added later on as only two were shipped with the launch version of the game. So all in all, even if you're not playing co-op it will be enjoyable. But if you can find someone to play with you it will change how the game feels dramatically.
You start the game by customizing your character. There are many skills and talents to add and its pretty hard to run out of options. There is so much to pick it makes your head spin. I saw a talent called Pet Pal which lets you talk to animals. I knew I had to get it. Who wouldn't want to talk to animals!? It does exactly what you think it does. And yes dogs talk exactly how you think they'll talk. You then go into town and try to solve the murder of Councillor Jake. There are a variety of ways depending on how you want to do it and what skills/talents you have. If you have Pet Pal, you can talk to his dog who will tell you to bring items to him for him to smell if it smells like the murderer. Or you can break into houses and steal their stuff and do it that way. Or you can murder everyone in the town because you're an asshole! Its really up to you.
Combat is fairly difficult at first. It doesn't help that you don't know where to go at the start and can accidentally go into an area too difficult for you. You will die often and die a lot. Eventually you start getting more skills and you are able to fight on somewhat even footing. One tip to remember to win you every battle. Disables are better than damage. If you can do a disable versus doing big damage on an enemy that turn, use a disable. Enemies have resistances but almost every enemy can be disabled by a spell. Summons are also great, if not game breaking. There are plenty of quests, a lot of dialogue, and tons of secrets to find. When the game said it has over 100+ hours of gameplay, it wasn't lying.
The game isn't all sunshine and awesomepuffs. For example, the cheese vendor would not shut up. Going into the marketplace is like blowing your ears out from a hundred people shouting at the top of their lungs to get you to buy their cheese. If you're too far from your friend during co-op you won't be able to hear their conversations with NPCs and won't be able to contribute to arguments. If you want to change major maps like teleport to your homestead, you need both people standing near each other to jump dimensions. The world is split into four major maps with lots of sub areas in each one. Only one person can be talking to an NPC at a time. However, talking to NPCs will force them to turn towards you, moving their cone of vision so someone else can swipe something off their desk while you distract with conversation. Inventory is extremely messy and most of the time you have no idea if this item is important or not and it sits there taking up room because if you lose it getting it back will be a bitch.
If you like RPGs this game is for you. If you like tactical turn based combat this game is for you. And if you love the heck out of co-op games. Do not ignore this and go get it right now.
Wednesday, June 25, 2014
Bastion - Fuck the Narrator
I don't know why this game is so popular. It was an indie game that no one had heard of that suddenly gained a ton of popularity. The developers seeing that it was getting a lot of attention started dumping into ads. Next thing you know everyone is talking about this game. All the game is, is a shitty action RPG with neither a lot of action nor RPG. You're some nameless kid walking around smacking the shit out of these ghost things minding their own business with the most boring weapons and combat.
Basically the game involves you wandering around on floating platforms on the sky. Most of the time they will drop down as you get near the edge of a platform. The art style isn't bad but the world seems tiny. I know its supposed to be small because the world exploded and all that's left of civilization are on thee floating platforms. If it takes like two steps to reach the end of a platform, its too small. You also get to fight with a melee weapon and a ranged weapon. You don't have many choices so you pick the one that is the least shitty to play with. None of the weapons feel fun to use. The last slot you can use is a skill. It could be a melee skill, a ranged skill, or even a skill that isn't tied to a weapon, like a summon. Combat is just brainless mashing and nothing really feels special about it. From the first minute into the game to the middle of the game, you're still smacking the same stuff with the same hammer in the same platforms in the same world with the same narrator being an asshole.
One thing everyone praised is the narrator's voice. Some claimed he is better than Morgan Freeman and everyone knows that just isn't true. He was so popular they even have a Dota2 announcer pack using his voice. What the hell? I wasn't a fan of the narrator nor his "humor." First of all, why the fuck was he being such a dickhead sending you around fighting then saying something along the lines of "Yeah I'm just using the kid, so what." I haven't finished the game but I don't know what the big deal with the narrator. Everyone shitting in their panties about his voice and saying the reason this game is good is because of him. Maybe its because the rest of the game just isn't fun and they are desperately trying to grab onto something to like.
The combat is repetitive, the story is weak, the narrator is annoying, and the kid who although is somewhat interesting doesn't do shit for the game. The art isn't bad but the level design is pretty shitty from a gameplay perspective. I don't play games for art, I play games for gameplay. Any kind of art is bonus like Child of Light.
Basically the game involves you wandering around on floating platforms on the sky. Most of the time they will drop down as you get near the edge of a platform. The art style isn't bad but the world seems tiny. I know its supposed to be small because the world exploded and all that's left of civilization are on thee floating platforms. If it takes like two steps to reach the end of a platform, its too small. You also get to fight with a melee weapon and a ranged weapon. You don't have many choices so you pick the one that is the least shitty to play with. None of the weapons feel fun to use. The last slot you can use is a skill. It could be a melee skill, a ranged skill, or even a skill that isn't tied to a weapon, like a summon. Combat is just brainless mashing and nothing really feels special about it. From the first minute into the game to the middle of the game, you're still smacking the same stuff with the same hammer in the same platforms in the same world with the same narrator being an asshole.
One thing everyone praised is the narrator's voice. Some claimed he is better than Morgan Freeman and everyone knows that just isn't true. He was so popular they even have a Dota2 announcer pack using his voice. What the hell? I wasn't a fan of the narrator nor his "humor." First of all, why the fuck was he being such a dickhead sending you around fighting then saying something along the lines of "Yeah I'm just using the kid, so what." I haven't finished the game but I don't know what the big deal with the narrator. Everyone shitting in their panties about his voice and saying the reason this game is good is because of him. Maybe its because the rest of the game just isn't fun and they are desperately trying to grab onto something to like.
The combat is repetitive, the story is weak, the narrator is annoying, and the kid who although is somewhat interesting doesn't do shit for the game. The art isn't bad but the level design is pretty shitty from a gameplay perspective. I don't play games for art, I play games for gameplay. Any kind of art is bonus like Child of Light.
Monday, May 26, 2014
Jeanne d'Arc - An Anime Butchering
For some reason this game was getting a lot of praise. People really liked it and considered it a really good Tactical TBS RPG with a decent storyline. Well those people lied because none of it was true. The game is loosely based off of the story of Joan of Arc. And by loosely I mean the only thing in common with the story is their names. For those not familiar with the Joan of Arc, basically you are playing the game as Jeanne who finds a bag off a dead guy in the forest and inside it was a magical bracelet that told her to fight the English and when demons started attacking the town she put it on the bracelet then transforms into a magical shining warrior with magical armor and killed off the demons. It turns out the demons are being controlled by the English and you must save France by killing all the English/Demons. What? That doesn't sound like Joan of Arc? That's too bad I did try to warn you. However I really wanted to give this game a shot because it was made by Level-5, the creators of the Dark Cloud and Rogue Galaxy series and the more recent Ni No Kuni.
This game has a lot of cutscenes. If that is your thing then you probably wouldn't be bothered with it, but having to sit through long boring cutscenes isn't my idea of fun. If I wanted to watch a movie then I'd watch a fucking movie. The thing is, if the cutscenes were actually interesting then I wouldn't be bothered with it but when its like five minutes of scenery then finally a guy appears who fucking looks like a Disney villain, but everyone is oblivious. Like the first person you see has a pale ghoulish white face, wearing a giant black pointy horned hood, with black robes and long bony fingers with long painted fingernails and talk in the most asshole way. You know this guy is evil. He wants to save the king and then does some evil magical ritual that takes like another 5 minutes to set up. Then all of a fucking sudden from nowhere an old guy pops up and starts attacking evilwizardman with a sword and then gets his ass kicked in less than a second. Then the cutscene is over and you move over to Jeanne in a town wandering around then suddenly evil demons attack. Oh god this shit won't stop. Long story short, the cutscenes are boring, the voice acting is bearable at best, and the story is just ridiculous.
Combat itself is simple, like any Tactical RPG really. Attacking enemy from the sides or behind deals more damage, attacking with an element its weak against will hit harder, etc etc. Only problem I find is that stuff hits really hard and you die often and your characters outside of a few do almost minimal damage. So the strong get stronger and the weak remain useless. Well you only need a few good people to win battles anyways. Every battle has a time limit. EVERY SINGLE BATTLE. You have to finish the objective in say 18 turns or you lose. So you're always rushing. Beat the big boss guy, get to the exit on the other side of the bridge, survive for 18 turns, etc etc. This basically forces you to charge stupidly into battle just to get there faster rather than setting up. Fighting bosses basically has you sacrificing your weaker members to stall for time on the other enemies while your strongest ones goes over to beat up the boss before the timer runs out. Ones where you need to reach the other side? Yeah fuck that just run you don't have time to stop and kill. If you do you lose the game anyways so keep running and a few will die but eventually you'll get there.
Outside of combat there is basically nothing to do. You can walk around the world map like Final Fantasy Tactics. Revisit old areas where you fought and it either becomes a town or a field. You can grind exp or buy items. There are no classes and everyone can only use one weapon they started off with. Jeanne can transform into a magical warrior once every battle for a limited amount of time and is stupidly overpowered. The only way to win is to have her transform then run across the map killing half the enemies all by herself then have the rest of the party move in to clean up. Later on you're supposed to meet more magical bracelet wearers but I've only gotten one other guy and he looks evil already. Evil mascara and talks like an asshole, I'm 99% sure he's going to betray me at some point.
Its not the most horrifying game ever. The combat is pretty boring yet very annoying because of the turn limit. This coming from someone who actually was ok with the dumb combat of Rhapsody. But that game has charm this game has nothing. You can't possibly like any of the characters. Everyone is either really mopey, a giant jerk, or just plain useless. I hate Jeanne. And I hate Jeanne d'Arc. The storyline is the weakest part of the game. It makes absolutely zero sense. You randomly show up at a war camp and tells everyone to attack the English and the generals are like fuck off little girl go home. Then some asshole evil mascara dude starts talking in his boring monotone evilguy voice and tells everyone to attack and they do and then you charge in and kill everyone and then you're like they'll listen to me! Then you got an arrow into the chest. The generals don't give a shit about you and your friends are "worried" about you now because you're all hurt and shit. Then the other guy gets some like some evil magical powers and cures you with some black mist and he falls sick because he's evil or something. I need to stop trying to make sense of this game. Basically, don't play it.
This game has a lot of cutscenes. If that is your thing then you probably wouldn't be bothered with it, but having to sit through long boring cutscenes isn't my idea of fun. If I wanted to watch a movie then I'd watch a fucking movie. The thing is, if the cutscenes were actually interesting then I wouldn't be bothered with it but when its like five minutes of scenery then finally a guy appears who fucking looks like a Disney villain, but everyone is oblivious. Like the first person you see has a pale ghoulish white face, wearing a giant black pointy horned hood, with black robes and long bony fingers with long painted fingernails and talk in the most asshole way. You know this guy is evil. He wants to save the king and then does some evil magical ritual that takes like another 5 minutes to set up. Then all of a fucking sudden from nowhere an old guy pops up and starts attacking evilwizardman with a sword and then gets his ass kicked in less than a second. Then the cutscene is over and you move over to Jeanne in a town wandering around then suddenly evil demons attack. Oh god this shit won't stop. Long story short, the cutscenes are boring, the voice acting is bearable at best, and the story is just ridiculous.
Combat itself is simple, like any Tactical RPG really. Attacking enemy from the sides or behind deals more damage, attacking with an element its weak against will hit harder, etc etc. Only problem I find is that stuff hits really hard and you die often and your characters outside of a few do almost minimal damage. So the strong get stronger and the weak remain useless. Well you only need a few good people to win battles anyways. Every battle has a time limit. EVERY SINGLE BATTLE. You have to finish the objective in say 18 turns or you lose. So you're always rushing. Beat the big boss guy, get to the exit on the other side of the bridge, survive for 18 turns, etc etc. This basically forces you to charge stupidly into battle just to get there faster rather than setting up. Fighting bosses basically has you sacrificing your weaker members to stall for time on the other enemies while your strongest ones goes over to beat up the boss before the timer runs out. Ones where you need to reach the other side? Yeah fuck that just run you don't have time to stop and kill. If you do you lose the game anyways so keep running and a few will die but eventually you'll get there.
Outside of combat there is basically nothing to do. You can walk around the world map like Final Fantasy Tactics. Revisit old areas where you fought and it either becomes a town or a field. You can grind exp or buy items. There are no classes and everyone can only use one weapon they started off with. Jeanne can transform into a magical warrior once every battle for a limited amount of time and is stupidly overpowered. The only way to win is to have her transform then run across the map killing half the enemies all by herself then have the rest of the party move in to clean up. Later on you're supposed to meet more magical bracelet wearers but I've only gotten one other guy and he looks evil already. Evil mascara and talks like an asshole, I'm 99% sure he's going to betray me at some point.
Its not the most horrifying game ever. The combat is pretty boring yet very annoying because of the turn limit. This coming from someone who actually was ok with the dumb combat of Rhapsody. But that game has charm this game has nothing. You can't possibly like any of the characters. Everyone is either really mopey, a giant jerk, or just plain useless. I hate Jeanne. And I hate Jeanne d'Arc. The storyline is the weakest part of the game. It makes absolutely zero sense. You randomly show up at a war camp and tells everyone to attack the English and the generals are like fuck off little girl go home. Then some asshole evil mascara dude starts talking in his boring monotone evilguy voice and tells everyone to attack and they do and then you charge in and kill everyone and then you're like they'll listen to me! Then you got an arrow into the chest. The generals don't give a shit about you and your friends are "worried" about you now because you're all hurt and shit. Then the other guy gets some like some evil magical powers and cures you with some black mist and he falls sick because he's evil or something. I need to stop trying to make sense of this game. Basically, don't play it.
Wednesday, May 7, 2014
Child of Light - A Playable Poem
When I first saw a trailer for this game I knew right ahead I would love this game and it would be amazing. Was I right? Hell yes I was right. This may be the best game I've played in awhile. Although that isn't saying much when all I have to play is terrible games lately. But I would put this up there on my most memorable games played. What originally drew me to the game was just the backgrounds and character art. It just oozes this creative style not often seen in games. The only other game on the top of my head that I have felt that way was Okami, which was also a great game. It may have perked my interest with the art style, but it definitely held my interest with its gorgeous music and whimsical rhymes. Yes, the entire game is spoken in rhyme. Yes, its as charming as it sounds.
Outside of that, the game play isn't bad at all. In fact, its one of the harder RPGs I've played in awhile. From what I hear, normal is more casual for everyone to beat and hard mode you'll actually get smacked around often. I started on hard and it is indeed quite difficult. I've died numerous times, and not just on boss battles but regular encounters can get you killed if you don't fight optimally. The combat reminds me a lot like Grandia, or Mana Khemia. Throughout the game you'll get many characters but you're only able to bring two with you at a time. Each character has different skills for the situation. For example, Rubella the first character you meet, has a fast physical attack with heals and is a supportive character. Finn the next person you meet shortly after has magic attacks for pesky monsters with high physical defense. You yourself is a pure offensive character with high physical power and magical burst damage. Along the way you'll meet more people like Norah, your sister with amazing debuffs like slowing the enemy by 50% and paralyzing skills that stops them for 10 seconds.
When I compared this game to Grandia I am mostly talking about the combat turn bar. Combat is turn based but all the characters will show up on a bar showing when they will attack. You move faster on the bar based on your speed until you reach the attack cutoff section where it will be based on the speed of the move you selected. During this attack portion, any damage you take will interrupt your attack sending you back in time on the bar. You can do this to the enemy as well. So combat becomes a juggle with trying to interrupt them, or blocking to avoid getting interrupted. However, some monsters or bosses will have special moves when they are interrupted like stabbing you back for lots of damage or paralyzing your team. This is to punish you for interrupt spamming. It reminds me of Mana Khemia because you are always constantly switching characters. You have all your party members with you at all times but you can only bring two of them into the field. You may switch members when its your turn to act and will not end your turn unless you are using one character to switch the secondary character with a character that is off screen. That will end your turn and the off screen character will show up at the same location on the bar as your secondary character. For long boss fights, expect to switch constantly to put up debuffs, buffs, different abilities, etc.
Outside of the combat, the game plays like a sidescroller. There are secrets to find, quests to do, chests to open, and monsters to fight. There are puzzles to solve, but they're not very difficult to do. Most of them involves using your firefly. In fact, the game can be played in co-op with another player controlling the firefly. The firefly also helps in combat by healing your allies or slowing down enemies. You start the game waking up in the mysterious land of Lemuria and must find your way home. On your way you meet a seer who tells you the story of Lemuria. Where the Queen of the Light was banished by the Queen of the Night. How the land became overrun by creatures of the night. And how a legendary princess will save them by returning the power of the Moon, the Sun, and the Stars. You'll receive your wings early on and it becomes a whole new game where you can fly around. The writers of this game wanted a fairy tale story told as an epic poem. Like the stories mothers would read to their children. I think they managed to do that perfectly.
If RPGs are your thing then don't pass up this game. The combat is really fun once you start meeting more people, the art and the music will remain gorgeous throughout the game, and the people you meet along the way will start to grow on you. You can't help but laugh when the jester says a sentence that didn't end up rhyming and another character will finish it for her.
Fiddlesticks. Left here to...fester
Pardon me Madame, but are you a jester?
Take a glance at this...note. Perhaps you mean "Letter"?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=45SIsoPg8K4
Outside of that, the game play isn't bad at all. In fact, its one of the harder RPGs I've played in awhile. From what I hear, normal is more casual for everyone to beat and hard mode you'll actually get smacked around often. I started on hard and it is indeed quite difficult. I've died numerous times, and not just on boss battles but regular encounters can get you killed if you don't fight optimally. The combat reminds me a lot like Grandia, or Mana Khemia. Throughout the game you'll get many characters but you're only able to bring two with you at a time. Each character has different skills for the situation. For example, Rubella the first character you meet, has a fast physical attack with heals and is a supportive character. Finn the next person you meet shortly after has magic attacks for pesky monsters with high physical defense. You yourself is a pure offensive character with high physical power and magical burst damage. Along the way you'll meet more people like Norah, your sister with amazing debuffs like slowing the enemy by 50% and paralyzing skills that stops them for 10 seconds.
When I compared this game to Grandia I am mostly talking about the combat turn bar. Combat is turn based but all the characters will show up on a bar showing when they will attack. You move faster on the bar based on your speed until you reach the attack cutoff section where it will be based on the speed of the move you selected. During this attack portion, any damage you take will interrupt your attack sending you back in time on the bar. You can do this to the enemy as well. So combat becomes a juggle with trying to interrupt them, or blocking to avoid getting interrupted. However, some monsters or bosses will have special moves when they are interrupted like stabbing you back for lots of damage or paralyzing your team. This is to punish you for interrupt spamming. It reminds me of Mana Khemia because you are always constantly switching characters. You have all your party members with you at all times but you can only bring two of them into the field. You may switch members when its your turn to act and will not end your turn unless you are using one character to switch the secondary character with a character that is off screen. That will end your turn and the off screen character will show up at the same location on the bar as your secondary character. For long boss fights, expect to switch constantly to put up debuffs, buffs, different abilities, etc.
Outside of the combat, the game plays like a sidescroller. There are secrets to find, quests to do, chests to open, and monsters to fight. There are puzzles to solve, but they're not very difficult to do. Most of them involves using your firefly. In fact, the game can be played in co-op with another player controlling the firefly. The firefly also helps in combat by healing your allies or slowing down enemies. You start the game waking up in the mysterious land of Lemuria and must find your way home. On your way you meet a seer who tells you the story of Lemuria. Where the Queen of the Light was banished by the Queen of the Night. How the land became overrun by creatures of the night. And how a legendary princess will save them by returning the power of the Moon, the Sun, and the Stars. You'll receive your wings early on and it becomes a whole new game where you can fly around. The writers of this game wanted a fairy tale story told as an epic poem. Like the stories mothers would read to their children. I think they managed to do that perfectly.
If RPGs are your thing then don't pass up this game. The combat is really fun once you start meeting more people, the art and the music will remain gorgeous throughout the game, and the people you meet along the way will start to grow on you. You can't help but laugh when the jester says a sentence that didn't end up rhyming and another character will finish it for her.
Fiddlesticks. Left here to...fester
Pardon me Madame, but are you a jester?
Take a glance at this...note. Perhaps you mean "Letter"?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=45SIsoPg8K4
Thursday, May 1, 2014
Blackwell Series - Detectives, Mediums, and Ghosts
About eight years ago the first Blackwell game was released called The Blackwell Legacy. However a few years before that a smaller version of the game was released as freeware. It gained so much popularity that they made it into a commercial product, and an entire series. The series just ended with the fifth game and was released a week ago. Its written by Dave Gilbert who made games like The Shivah, Gemini Rue, and Primordia. However the Blackwell series is what he's most known for. If you're a fan of detective work, mysteries, and the occult this will be right up your alley.
You start the series as a confused woman called Rosangela Blackwell, or Rosa for short, dumping the ashes of her deceased aunt off of a bridge. Rosa is a socially awkward writer of sorts for a small paper. You get a job from your boss telling you to fill in for one of the reporters who can't come in. You have to investigate and get the story about the suicide of a college girl. Around this same time, you meet the family ghost, Joey Mallone who worked with your aunt before you. Together the two of you must unravel the mystery and save lost spirits wandering the world. You start off reluctant to take up the role as a spirit medium to send lost spirits to the afterlife but eventually you start to feel like this is your true calling and grow as a person. No longer are you that scared and confused person.
Like all adventure games there are puzzles. Unlike the more common ones where you have to combine items and try weird combinations of objects on doors or fountains and other weird crap, this one is all purely information puzzles. You need information on who this lost spirit is, you then need to somehow convince this lost spirit he or she is dead, and lastly you send them off to the afterlife when you're done. You can find information from anything and it will link you to the next clue and so on. For example you could find a photograph and in the photograph will be a word, or date written on it or in the background. You can then go on the browser in game and type it in to find your next clue. Which leads you to a person. You will have all your clues written down in your trusty notebook and can select clues to combine if you think there is a link. Of course the technology also changes as it changed in real life. While playing as your aunt, you don't get a computer and have to look through a phone book, and in the earlier series you had to go home to search on your computer, while in the later series you get a smart phone to get all your clues and browsing done.
In the series, you not only control Rosa but also your trusty ghost guide Joey Mallone. He cannot actually interact with people or objects but he can pass through doors, walls, objects to look at things. Sometimes you have to send him in a room to spy on the conversation of others for clues, other times you have him look inside drawers or locked houses. Other times there would be ghosts that refuses to respond to Rosa and you must send in Joey to talk to them. Rosa cannot physically touch ghosts so you may need Joey to grab a ghost to get their attention. The duo is nice. If the game just involved Rosa everyone would be bored to death. With the inclusion of Joey the game feels much more entertaining.
Even with all the good points, a good game does have its faults. The game play of the entire series is almost exactly the same. It might not be a bad thing but it almost always involve solving a mystery of a random ghost that has almost no involvement to the story at the very start as a tutorial. Then the credits roll in, then you can go around and do whatever you want. After solving a few mysteries you realize its part of a bigger conspiracy and you solve whatever problem you have and move onto the next game of the series until the finale. The thing is, the conspiracy was never solved at all. There are plot holes that were never explained as well. From what I understand Dave Gilbert didn't want the story to be about the conspiracy, he wanted it to be about the Blackwell women and Joey Mallone. Its their story, not the story of the great conspiracy. Other than that, the story is probably the best I've ever read/played in an adventure game.
If you're a fan of adventure games, you have to try this game out. Even if you aren't you should try this out. It uses a retro graphic style that some people might be turned off from but it does get better as the series progresses, slightly better.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=knpNvbbqCQE
You start the series as a confused woman called Rosangela Blackwell, or Rosa for short, dumping the ashes of her deceased aunt off of a bridge. Rosa is a socially awkward writer of sorts for a small paper. You get a job from your boss telling you to fill in for one of the reporters who can't come in. You have to investigate and get the story about the suicide of a college girl. Around this same time, you meet the family ghost, Joey Mallone who worked with your aunt before you. Together the two of you must unravel the mystery and save lost spirits wandering the world. You start off reluctant to take up the role as a spirit medium to send lost spirits to the afterlife but eventually you start to feel like this is your true calling and grow as a person. No longer are you that scared and confused person.
Like all adventure games there are puzzles. Unlike the more common ones where you have to combine items and try weird combinations of objects on doors or fountains and other weird crap, this one is all purely information puzzles. You need information on who this lost spirit is, you then need to somehow convince this lost spirit he or she is dead, and lastly you send them off to the afterlife when you're done. You can find information from anything and it will link you to the next clue and so on. For example you could find a photograph and in the photograph will be a word, or date written on it or in the background. You can then go on the browser in game and type it in to find your next clue. Which leads you to a person. You will have all your clues written down in your trusty notebook and can select clues to combine if you think there is a link. Of course the technology also changes as it changed in real life. While playing as your aunt, you don't get a computer and have to look through a phone book, and in the earlier series you had to go home to search on your computer, while in the later series you get a smart phone to get all your clues and browsing done.
In the series, you not only control Rosa but also your trusty ghost guide Joey Mallone. He cannot actually interact with people or objects but he can pass through doors, walls, objects to look at things. Sometimes you have to send him in a room to spy on the conversation of others for clues, other times you have him look inside drawers or locked houses. Other times there would be ghosts that refuses to respond to Rosa and you must send in Joey to talk to them. Rosa cannot physically touch ghosts so you may need Joey to grab a ghost to get their attention. The duo is nice. If the game just involved Rosa everyone would be bored to death. With the inclusion of Joey the game feels much more entertaining.
Even with all the good points, a good game does have its faults. The game play of the entire series is almost exactly the same. It might not be a bad thing but it almost always involve solving a mystery of a random ghost that has almost no involvement to the story at the very start as a tutorial. Then the credits roll in, then you can go around and do whatever you want. After solving a few mysteries you realize its part of a bigger conspiracy and you solve whatever problem you have and move onto the next game of the series until the finale. The thing is, the conspiracy was never solved at all. There are plot holes that were never explained as well. From what I understand Dave Gilbert didn't want the story to be about the conspiracy, he wanted it to be about the Blackwell women and Joey Mallone. Its their story, not the story of the great conspiracy. Other than that, the story is probably the best I've ever read/played in an adventure game.
If you're a fan of adventure games, you have to try this game out. Even if you aren't you should try this out. It uses a retro graphic style that some people might be turned off from but it does get better as the series progresses, slightly better.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=knpNvbbqCQE
Wednesday, March 12, 2014
South Park: The Stick of Truth - What Did You Expect?
What do anal probing and abortions have in common? They're both scenes from South Park: The Stick of Truth that was censored in the non North American versions of the game. Like the TV show, there are a lot of offensive material, a lot of toilet humor, and of course there are some laughs now and then. I'm not a big fan of South Park as I only watched a bit of the episodes. But about 10 minutes into the game and I am already going "what the fuck!?" Then again, this is a South Park game. Did I really expect something else? The game is like watching an episode of South Park. The cut scenes look straight out of the TV show and the voice actors are all there. All the memorable characters are in the game, all the familiar places on the show are there, and there are millions of references to the show. Its actually very well done.
You start off the game as a nameless mute kid. You never get a name and you don't have any memory of what happened before but your parents moved you to this small town because "it'll be good for you." They tell you to make some friends so you walk around and meet Butters who take you to Cartman to join up the humans on their fight against the Elves. The entire game is about a live action role play of dungeon and dragons. You join up with Cartman and get a new name, Douchebag, because you don't talk then you get to pick between four classes, the fights, the mage, the thief, and the Jew. Yes, the Jew. You get skills like Circum-Scythe where you attack the penis of the target and its followed up with lots of blood and screaming. Anyways you go around doing quests and even the adults get swept along with the kids. Basically the humans and the elves are after the stick of truth because whoever controls the stick controls the universe.
The combat is actually pretty fun. Its not particularly hard when you finally get all the timings down but before then you could get killed easily. For every attack, skill, or defend you need to do different things to get it to work. For example, attacking with your weapon you need to click as the weapon flashes to attack or you will miss, when an enemy attacks you can click at the right time to block the attack. sometimes they throw a bunch of shit at you and you have to click a bunch of times. Then some skills where you spin around with your sword you have to twirl the analogue stick around before your sword shines then you click the attack button. Later on in the game, if you miss a block you basically just die. So there is not much room for error. On the bright side, if you get a perfect block you can do a counter attack!
You are able to bring along a follower with you like Butters the Paladin, Kenny the Princess, Stan the Ranger, Jimmy the Bard, and many more. They bring different abilities with them such as Butters able to "heal" wounded people, Kenny able to distract enemies by flashing his boobs, Stan getting his dog to piss on stuff, and Jimmy letting you get past handicapped areas. You can switch them at any time and you need to do that to get through some of the puzzles in the game. The only problem I have with this is it barely comes up. You use a follower maybe once or twice in the game and that's it. Its like its nice that we can do this but the times where we can use it is so limited it might as well not be there. These followers also join you in combat and have their own abilities.
You know whats surprising? The game actually has a lot of depth. You can bring with you a melee weapon, a range weapon, helmet, body, gloves. Each of these have different effects like, Bar Darts you picked up doing the quest for the bartender to kill rats in the cellar. It has the special effects of scatter. You can hit up to 3 times with it if you click it correctly, and with scatter it will randomly target enemies. It also has the effect of jagged which lets you apply a bleed if you do a perfect strike, which means hitting all the buttons. That shit is amazing for spreading effects around. While say the alien ray gun lets you hit everything in a row. A great sword can hit everything in a column. Then you have strap-ons which are basically bonus effects you can add onto your gear. Some gear has more slots some have none. Its really quite fun. You can mix and match like inflicting burn and combine that with Bar Darts to spread it around. Weapons that leech health when you hit a bleeding target. Strap ons that gain PP when you stun an enemy letting you spam your stun skill over and over.
However, you have to remember this is South Park. As fun as the game is you will eventually run into stuff like anal probing. I'm not a fan of it, in fact its really disturbing. You have Stan's dad strapped down on a chair while the alien anal probe is thrusting into his ass. You need to click the buttons correctly like in Simon Says. But one part it purposely goes so fast and difficult that you cannot follow it. If you get it wrong you can hear Stan's dad screaming in pain yelling to stop while it violently rapes his ass. What the fuck? The worst part is it goes on so long that if it was funny for the first 5 seconds it sure as hell isn't funny the next 5 minutes while you sit through that shit. Then there is the part where you and Stan's dad snuck into an abortion clinic and when people question if you're a real doctor you need to perform an abortion on Stan's dad's ass. There are explosions of blood as you tear his ass open. Really South Park? Not to mention you have to kill giant zombie fetuses later.
Overall, if you like South Park humor, and is a fan of RPGs this is the perfect game for you. If you are turned off by disgusting South Park humor then turn away from this game. If you're indifferent and just want an RPG then you might still enjoy it. It may be a giant South Park episode but it doesn't mean the game itself isn't fun. Just don't yell at me if you end up vomiting on the floor.
You start off the game as a nameless mute kid. You never get a name and you don't have any memory of what happened before but your parents moved you to this small town because "it'll be good for you." They tell you to make some friends so you walk around and meet Butters who take you to Cartman to join up the humans on their fight against the Elves. The entire game is about a live action role play of dungeon and dragons. You join up with Cartman and get a new name, Douchebag, because you don't talk then you get to pick between four classes, the fights, the mage, the thief, and the Jew. Yes, the Jew. You get skills like Circum-Scythe where you attack the penis of the target and its followed up with lots of blood and screaming. Anyways you go around doing quests and even the adults get swept along with the kids. Basically the humans and the elves are after the stick of truth because whoever controls the stick controls the universe.
The combat is actually pretty fun. Its not particularly hard when you finally get all the timings down but before then you could get killed easily. For every attack, skill, or defend you need to do different things to get it to work. For example, attacking with your weapon you need to click as the weapon flashes to attack or you will miss, when an enemy attacks you can click at the right time to block the attack. sometimes they throw a bunch of shit at you and you have to click a bunch of times. Then some skills where you spin around with your sword you have to twirl the analogue stick around before your sword shines then you click the attack button. Later on in the game, if you miss a block you basically just die. So there is not much room for error. On the bright side, if you get a perfect block you can do a counter attack!
You are able to bring along a follower with you like Butters the Paladin, Kenny the Princess, Stan the Ranger, Jimmy the Bard, and many more. They bring different abilities with them such as Butters able to "heal" wounded people, Kenny able to distract enemies by flashing his boobs, Stan getting his dog to piss on stuff, and Jimmy letting you get past handicapped areas. You can switch them at any time and you need to do that to get through some of the puzzles in the game. The only problem I have with this is it barely comes up. You use a follower maybe once or twice in the game and that's it. Its like its nice that we can do this but the times where we can use it is so limited it might as well not be there. These followers also join you in combat and have their own abilities.
You know whats surprising? The game actually has a lot of depth. You can bring with you a melee weapon, a range weapon, helmet, body, gloves. Each of these have different effects like, Bar Darts you picked up doing the quest for the bartender to kill rats in the cellar. It has the special effects of scatter. You can hit up to 3 times with it if you click it correctly, and with scatter it will randomly target enemies. It also has the effect of jagged which lets you apply a bleed if you do a perfect strike, which means hitting all the buttons. That shit is amazing for spreading effects around. While say the alien ray gun lets you hit everything in a row. A great sword can hit everything in a column. Then you have strap-ons which are basically bonus effects you can add onto your gear. Some gear has more slots some have none. Its really quite fun. You can mix and match like inflicting burn and combine that with Bar Darts to spread it around. Weapons that leech health when you hit a bleeding target. Strap ons that gain PP when you stun an enemy letting you spam your stun skill over and over.
However, you have to remember this is South Park. As fun as the game is you will eventually run into stuff like anal probing. I'm not a fan of it, in fact its really disturbing. You have Stan's dad strapped down on a chair while the alien anal probe is thrusting into his ass. You need to click the buttons correctly like in Simon Says. But one part it purposely goes so fast and difficult that you cannot follow it. If you get it wrong you can hear Stan's dad screaming in pain yelling to stop while it violently rapes his ass. What the fuck? The worst part is it goes on so long that if it was funny for the first 5 seconds it sure as hell isn't funny the next 5 minutes while you sit through that shit. Then there is the part where you and Stan's dad snuck into an abortion clinic and when people question if you're a real doctor you need to perform an abortion on Stan's dad's ass. There are explosions of blood as you tear his ass open. Really South Park? Not to mention you have to kill giant zombie fetuses later.
Overall, if you like South Park humor, and is a fan of RPGs this is the perfect game for you. If you are turned off by disgusting South Park humor then turn away from this game. If you're indifferent and just want an RPG then you might still enjoy it. It may be a giant South Park episode but it doesn't mean the game itself isn't fun. Just don't yell at me if you end up vomiting on the floor.
Sunday, February 23, 2014
Might and Magic X Legacy - Old School, Old Problems
I have never played any of the old Might and Magic series, and this would be my first one. Having heard this game was very faithful to the old series I gave it a try. They decided to start over with a new story and giving up all the sci-fi elements and made it pure fantasy. That is fine by me I don't really mind. This game is very old school as in, moving around you need to take one tedious step at a time. You move with WASD and turn the camera with Q and E. The game is in first person and you have your four characters at the start and the entire game is turn based. You move one step, the enemy moves one step. That itself isn't so bad but when you start adding very tedious things like moving around the world to find shit it really grates on your patience.
I'll start it off with this. The game is unforgiving. That was what old school games were like. You mess up a character you are doomed forever. You forget to bring antidotes, you're doomed forever. You wander somewhere you're not supposed to go, you're dead. One good thing I like about the game is the challenge isn't too hard. You have to use all your spells and you need to attack strategically. However, one big flaw in the game is how long it takes to do anything. Combat speed is slow as heck. When you see a ranged bandit shooting his bow at you, you can shoot him back with your range guy, but your melee guys need to select guard for their turn. If you want to walk you go slowly towards him while he pelts you with arrows. You cannot move and heal either so you can only pick one. If one person heals the other three has to guard or shoot. Then you get to the part where enemies are walking towards you. While you're busy fighting enemy groups will show up shuffle their legs and walk one step. This drags the combat out even longer because you need to wait for their animations to finish which can take around 15 to 20 seconds for some odd reason.
Then there are parts where you need to find where you have to go. The game doesn't tell you where to go nor does it give you a straight path to go. Hell half the time the quests doesn't even make sense because you're not supposed to do them yet. You're supposed to go explore. But watch out! If you explore too much you might run into somewhere you're not supposed to and die instantly causing you to lose hours of play. Remember to save often. You are constantly going back and forth walking slowly on the blocky world trying to figure out where you're supposed to go. One part has you clearing out ruins but you're only supposed to go to floors 1, 2, and 4 because the third floor just kills you. How are you supposed to know that the first time? You don't. Anyways the quest ends after killing a guy on the second floor. You either already know what you have to do or if you're playing through the first time have to know to wander around to the fourth and avoid the third. There is no quest pointing you towards the fourth. You just have to explore. When you are there you don't know what you have to do there either you just fight and eventually open a random chest that looks like every other chest and then pay attention because when you open a text will appear saying you found the water key. It doesn't show up on the list of items to grab it just flashes on the screen for a second. You then take that key to open a door somewhere else and then gain the ability to walk on water letting you access other areas that eventually gets you killed 50 times over because you don't know which area you're supposed to go to first.
Then there is the whole trainer thing. You have to learn skills but you don't know where trainers may be hiding. There are 4 levels, Novice, Expert, Master and Grandmaster. The game is very reliant on gear and some gear requires say a expert level of daggers. You have to find that elusive expert dagger trainer. You can't go up to a master dagger trainer and learn daggers. No that would be too easy. You need to look all over the world. They could be hiding in the alley of a town. They could be in a building, they could even be in the 4th floor of the fucking ruins you just went to. You look up a guide and find out that the master dagger trainer is in the last fucking town you go to and then realize your blade master is going to be pure shit for the majority of the game because you chose daggers instead of swords. While the sword master trainer is in the second town as well as the shops all selling swords and no daggers. Things like this will happen.
Last but not least this game is filled with bugs. At one part I was unable to progress through the storyline because the NPC was bugged. I had to go and edit the NPC to let me pass. Then later on I found out a NPC that was blocking the way was bugged too. So I can never cross the bridge and have to take a horse to take me to the next town every time. There are also bugs where you stay stuck in combat forever, bugs that cause weird shit to happen on your screen. A shit load of bugs.
The game itself isn't bad. The story is kinda non existent and stupid though. The biggest problems are the ones I pointed out. These are how games were like back in the "good old days" where people have to go up a hill in the snow both ways to get to school. Maybe I'm not used to games like this, maybe I just suck at this game, or maybe this is something they should've changed. Just because a game is old school, doesn't mean it needs to keep all the old frustrating things about the games. The game could be fun but I end up running around trying to find out what the fuck I'm supposed to do most of the time and end up getting bored and stopping. I wish I could enjoy it but I really couldn't stand the boredom of hunting every square.
I'll start it off with this. The game is unforgiving. That was what old school games were like. You mess up a character you are doomed forever. You forget to bring antidotes, you're doomed forever. You wander somewhere you're not supposed to go, you're dead. One good thing I like about the game is the challenge isn't too hard. You have to use all your spells and you need to attack strategically. However, one big flaw in the game is how long it takes to do anything. Combat speed is slow as heck. When you see a ranged bandit shooting his bow at you, you can shoot him back with your range guy, but your melee guys need to select guard for their turn. If you want to walk you go slowly towards him while he pelts you with arrows. You cannot move and heal either so you can only pick one. If one person heals the other three has to guard or shoot. Then you get to the part where enemies are walking towards you. While you're busy fighting enemy groups will show up shuffle their legs and walk one step. This drags the combat out even longer because you need to wait for their animations to finish which can take around 15 to 20 seconds for some odd reason.
Then there are parts where you need to find where you have to go. The game doesn't tell you where to go nor does it give you a straight path to go. Hell half the time the quests doesn't even make sense because you're not supposed to do them yet. You're supposed to go explore. But watch out! If you explore too much you might run into somewhere you're not supposed to and die instantly causing you to lose hours of play. Remember to save often. You are constantly going back and forth walking slowly on the blocky world trying to figure out where you're supposed to go. One part has you clearing out ruins but you're only supposed to go to floors 1, 2, and 4 because the third floor just kills you. How are you supposed to know that the first time? You don't. Anyways the quest ends after killing a guy on the second floor. You either already know what you have to do or if you're playing through the first time have to know to wander around to the fourth and avoid the third. There is no quest pointing you towards the fourth. You just have to explore. When you are there you don't know what you have to do there either you just fight and eventually open a random chest that looks like every other chest and then pay attention because when you open a text will appear saying you found the water key. It doesn't show up on the list of items to grab it just flashes on the screen for a second. You then take that key to open a door somewhere else and then gain the ability to walk on water letting you access other areas that eventually gets you killed 50 times over because you don't know which area you're supposed to go to first.
Then there is the whole trainer thing. You have to learn skills but you don't know where trainers may be hiding. There are 4 levels, Novice, Expert, Master and Grandmaster. The game is very reliant on gear and some gear requires say a expert level of daggers. You have to find that elusive expert dagger trainer. You can't go up to a master dagger trainer and learn daggers. No that would be too easy. You need to look all over the world. They could be hiding in the alley of a town. They could be in a building, they could even be in the 4th floor of the fucking ruins you just went to. You look up a guide and find out that the master dagger trainer is in the last fucking town you go to and then realize your blade master is going to be pure shit for the majority of the game because you chose daggers instead of swords. While the sword master trainer is in the second town as well as the shops all selling swords and no daggers. Things like this will happen.
Last but not least this game is filled with bugs. At one part I was unable to progress through the storyline because the NPC was bugged. I had to go and edit the NPC to let me pass. Then later on I found out a NPC that was blocking the way was bugged too. So I can never cross the bridge and have to take a horse to take me to the next town every time. There are also bugs where you stay stuck in combat forever, bugs that cause weird shit to happen on your screen. A shit load of bugs.
The game itself isn't bad. The story is kinda non existent and stupid though. The biggest problems are the ones I pointed out. These are how games were like back in the "good old days" where people have to go up a hill in the snow both ways to get to school. Maybe I'm not used to games like this, maybe I just suck at this game, or maybe this is something they should've changed. Just because a game is old school, doesn't mean it needs to keep all the old frustrating things about the games. The game could be fun but I end up running around trying to find out what the fuck I'm supposed to do most of the time and end up getting bored and stopping. I wish I could enjoy it but I really couldn't stand the boredom of hunting every square.
Sunday, February 2, 2014
Octodad: Dadliest Catch - Where did the kids come from?
I don't even know where to begin. Basically, you're an octopus pretending to be human. You are married, you have a wife and two kids and you must keep up the act of being a human. You have to do chores, pick up groceries, and avoid evil cooks from turning you into octopus sushi. Basically its some kind of octopus-human simulator game. Its awkward, its funny, and its incredibly frustrating at times.
The first thing you notice about the game is how hard it is to control. You can control Octodad's arms and legs (technically more arms but we'll call them legs since he walks on two) individually. Left click controls the left leg and right click controls the right. You then drag your mouse to make Octodad walk, or in this case wobble around kicking everything in sight because of the impossible controls. Its made this way on purpose to imitate an octopus trying to imitate a human. However, you have to remember that you must not let people know you're an octopus. So you can't fling around your legs and kick your daughter on the face (too often) when you bring her the milk because the controls messed up. Kicking her once or twice is fine. There is a suspicion meter at the bottom and when it fills up they will know you are an octopus. So stop kicking her in the face.
The characters are all fun and likable. You have the mom who is really suspicious of you, yet at the same time incredibly gullible. The sporty son who thinks you're the coolest. The bratty daughter who is somehow not annoying. Then you have you the gurgling octopus pretending to be a human. One messed up family that is entertaining to watch. The game is fun but there are a few parts that completely piss you off. Once you get to the aquarium stage, you need to play a bunch of mini games. Trying to play these games with the worst controls in a game is frustrating as shit. But at least, its doable. Then you get to the part where the elevator breaks down and you have to go UP an escalator that's going down. NOW YOU'RE IN SOME SHIT. You have to keep dragging your mouse up to walk while you keep getting dragged down. If you miss a single step you're going down to the bottom. This whole time your daughter is screaming at you to hurry up because she's trapped in the darkness and a monster is going to come and eat her. After fifteen minutes you finally reach the top and hit the reverse escalator button so your daughter can get up. You turn the corner and you fucking punch the screen. ITS ANOTHER ESCALATOR THAT'S EVEN FASTER THAN THE PREVIOUS ONE. You son of a bitch. Now you have to go turn the sensitivity all the way up to even have a remote chance of passing this part with a mouse.
Frustrating parts aside, its a short quirky game about an octopus pretending to be a human. If that's your thing check it out. If not I don't blame you.
The first thing you notice about the game is how hard it is to control. You can control Octodad's arms and legs (technically more arms but we'll call them legs since he walks on two) individually. Left click controls the left leg and right click controls the right. You then drag your mouse to make Octodad walk, or in this case wobble around kicking everything in sight because of the impossible controls. Its made this way on purpose to imitate an octopus trying to imitate a human. However, you have to remember that you must not let people know you're an octopus. So you can't fling around your legs and kick your daughter on the face (too often) when you bring her the milk because the controls messed up. Kicking her once or twice is fine. There is a suspicion meter at the bottom and when it fills up they will know you are an octopus. So stop kicking her in the face.
The characters are all fun and likable. You have the mom who is really suspicious of you, yet at the same time incredibly gullible. The sporty son who thinks you're the coolest. The bratty daughter who is somehow not annoying. Then you have you the gurgling octopus pretending to be a human. One messed up family that is entertaining to watch. The game is fun but there are a few parts that completely piss you off. Once you get to the aquarium stage, you need to play a bunch of mini games. Trying to play these games with the worst controls in a game is frustrating as shit. But at least, its doable. Then you get to the part where the elevator breaks down and you have to go UP an escalator that's going down. NOW YOU'RE IN SOME SHIT. You have to keep dragging your mouse up to walk while you keep getting dragged down. If you miss a single step you're going down to the bottom. This whole time your daughter is screaming at you to hurry up because she's trapped in the darkness and a monster is going to come and eat her. After fifteen minutes you finally reach the top and hit the reverse escalator button so your daughter can get up. You turn the corner and you fucking punch the screen. ITS ANOTHER ESCALATOR THAT'S EVEN FASTER THAN THE PREVIOUS ONE. You son of a bitch. Now you have to go turn the sensitivity all the way up to even have a remote chance of passing this part with a mouse.
Frustrating parts aside, its a short quirky game about an octopus pretending to be a human. If that's your thing check it out. If not I don't blame you.
Thursday, January 16, 2014
The Banner Saga - Cannibal Caravan
The Banner Saga, according to the developers, is Oregon Trail meets Fire Emblem. The game has you walking around with your caravan. You are the leader and you travel from one place to another. Although the main storyline doesn't change much, almost all the events are randomized. You don't know what is going to happen and you are often biting your nails thinking what you should do in this situation. This is a time of war, the naive will end up being stabbed over and over in the back until they learn. I did. At the start I was helpful and shared my supplies with suffering people. After I get to the later parts of the game where food becomes scarce, people stab me in the back, rob my caravan, kill my people, and people starving everyday. I learned quickly to start accepting bribes, to take what I want, to look out for my own caravan first, and ignore people begging for help. I don't have food to spare anymore.
People dying can be the most brutal. Heroes you train up and level up and even gear with items, they could fall off a cliff, they could get stabbed in the back, or they could just leave if they don't agree with your decisions. You will never get them back, you might lose your most leveled hero, and you don't get the items you lost. They disappear from the storyline too so it starts becoming more and more empty. However, some people might join you depending on your choices. Its pretty hard to tell which decision is the best and you will always end up regretting your decision. However, people in your caravan will often die and/or leave. If you run out of food, a portion of your caravan starts dying every day and the rest sort of cannibalize them so you can keep living (that is what I assume at least. How else do they survive another day.) The number of people in your caravan decides the outcome of a war. If you have higher numbers the enemies are easier, if they're lower the enemies are stronger. You can charge in to fight stronger enemies to save more lives from your caravan, or you can stay back and fight weaker enemies at the cost of sacrificing more lives.
The art and the animation is gorgeous. Its part of the reason I wanted to try this game in the first place. The story and the random event elements are also entertaining. However there are a few problems with the game and most of them is in the combat system. Its a tactical TBS combat but every turn you alternate between you and your enemy. This is a very big problem because, if there is a big threat on the battlefield and it has a really high armour and strength pool, you can't kill it fast enough you'll decide to kill off the small guys around it first. WRONG. If you do that you will die because the big guy is moving more often now and will one shot your heroes one by one. In this game the stats are armour which will reduce damage taken, and strength which is equal to your health and your damage. If you are low on strength you will deal less damage. If their armour is too high you won't be able to hit through to their strength and you have to choose to break their armour first. So the strategy here is to leave everything on low health, then kill the big guy, then go back and kill the small guys. This is very tedious and stupid. You are penalized for killing enemies.
After winning battles you will get renown points for everything you kill. Heroes who score the last hit will get exp. You use that exp along with renown to promote them. Each promotion gets you more stat points, allows higher level items to be worn and may level up your skills depending on the level. You can customize where you want to put your stats. However another big problem occurs. You have to purchase food with renown points. Why? I don't have a clue but you do. Eventually your caravan will be starving if you spend all your renown on promotions. That or you feed your caravan and your heroes suffer from lack of levels. Its a lose lose situation here.
Another thing I have to point out is the lack of representation of women in the game. Its all about men, talking with other men, fighting with men against other men. The only women I've seen so far is your daughter and Oddleif, the wife of the chieftain, whose husband gets killed about 5 minutes of meeting him so you take over the spot of leader for the caravan. She won't lead the caravan because, "She's a woman. People won't follow a woman chieftain and other groups would attack them because their chieftain is a woman." Well that sounds like a perfectly reasonable explanation! No it isn't. Later on she asks if its ok to train some of the women who want to in archery. If you agree then the men in the caravan starts getting uppity saying they won't want to fight alongside their wives, sisters, daughters. I did get a response from the developer about this.
There will be more women in the next game. It was actually more a limitation of money more than anything- each new class was fairly expensive to create, but I feel like we did as much as we could to represent them well.
I was thinking more about how women could be included into the storyline. Instead of just men flexing at each other proving to each other who has the bigger penis. But that brings me to another point. All the classes in the game except one are male. The only class women can be are archers.
If you like a beautifully animated Tactical RPG with random elements that screw you over at every point possible. This is the game for you. There are some flaws, but the game itself is enjoyable despite those flaws. The flaws are pretty big but its all contained in the combat itself. If you really hate it you could turn down the difficulty.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FbIH0vS9AG4
People dying can be the most brutal. Heroes you train up and level up and even gear with items, they could fall off a cliff, they could get stabbed in the back, or they could just leave if they don't agree with your decisions. You will never get them back, you might lose your most leveled hero, and you don't get the items you lost. They disappear from the storyline too so it starts becoming more and more empty. However, some people might join you depending on your choices. Its pretty hard to tell which decision is the best and you will always end up regretting your decision. However, people in your caravan will often die and/or leave. If you run out of food, a portion of your caravan starts dying every day and the rest sort of cannibalize them so you can keep living (that is what I assume at least. How else do they survive another day.) The number of people in your caravan decides the outcome of a war. If you have higher numbers the enemies are easier, if they're lower the enemies are stronger. You can charge in to fight stronger enemies to save more lives from your caravan, or you can stay back and fight weaker enemies at the cost of sacrificing more lives.
The art and the animation is gorgeous. Its part of the reason I wanted to try this game in the first place. The story and the random event elements are also entertaining. However there are a few problems with the game and most of them is in the combat system. Its a tactical TBS combat but every turn you alternate between you and your enemy. This is a very big problem because, if there is a big threat on the battlefield and it has a really high armour and strength pool, you can't kill it fast enough you'll decide to kill off the small guys around it first. WRONG. If you do that you will die because the big guy is moving more often now and will one shot your heroes one by one. In this game the stats are armour which will reduce damage taken, and strength which is equal to your health and your damage. If you are low on strength you will deal less damage. If their armour is too high you won't be able to hit through to their strength and you have to choose to break their armour first. So the strategy here is to leave everything on low health, then kill the big guy, then go back and kill the small guys. This is very tedious and stupid. You are penalized for killing enemies.
After winning battles you will get renown points for everything you kill. Heroes who score the last hit will get exp. You use that exp along with renown to promote them. Each promotion gets you more stat points, allows higher level items to be worn and may level up your skills depending on the level. You can customize where you want to put your stats. However another big problem occurs. You have to purchase food with renown points. Why? I don't have a clue but you do. Eventually your caravan will be starving if you spend all your renown on promotions. That or you feed your caravan and your heroes suffer from lack of levels. Its a lose lose situation here.
Another thing I have to point out is the lack of representation of women in the game. Its all about men, talking with other men, fighting with men against other men. The only women I've seen so far is your daughter and Oddleif, the wife of the chieftain, whose husband gets killed about 5 minutes of meeting him so you take over the spot of leader for the caravan. She won't lead the caravan because, "She's a woman. People won't follow a woman chieftain and other groups would attack them because their chieftain is a woman." Well that sounds like a perfectly reasonable explanation! No it isn't. Later on she asks if its ok to train some of the women who want to in archery. If you agree then the men in the caravan starts getting uppity saying they won't want to fight alongside their wives, sisters, daughters. I did get a response from the developer about this.
There will be more women in the next game. It was actually more a limitation of money more than anything- each new class was fairly expensive to create, but I feel like we did as much as we could to represent them well.
I was thinking more about how women could be included into the storyline. Instead of just men flexing at each other proving to each other who has the bigger penis. But that brings me to another point. All the classes in the game except one are male. The only class women can be are archers.
If you like a beautifully animated Tactical RPG with random elements that screw you over at every point possible. This is the game for you. There are some flaws, but the game itself is enjoyable despite those flaws. The flaws are pretty big but its all contained in the combat itself. If you really hate it you could turn down the difficulty.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FbIH0vS9AG4
Wednesday, January 15, 2014
Choose your own (inevitable) adventure.
Haven't been as prolific as I should be around here for quite some time. Thanks to Kittydog for holding down the fort. On to business...
Reading Kittydog's post on The Walking Dead spurred a long time discomfort with modern games with a prominent element of 'choice'. That is to say, you have none at all. And nobody seems to notice, or mind, whichever is more appalling to you. Games like Mass Effect, Walking Dead, Deus Ex: HR or dare I say, even Bethesda's Fallouts and Elder Scrolls are praised for their storytelling and emphasis on player decisions having meaningful impact on the progression of the game, but they are all overstated.
What does it mean to have CHOICE in a game? That the next three lines of witty, snarky dialogue will be different? That you'll be graced with a slightly different ending slide? Maybe that a few NPCs later on may regard you with disdain. I can sum up my feelings easily: apathy. These choices barely incentivize me to reload a save to satisfy my curiousity, let alone replay the game for a new experience. Everything is so predictable, and it's still the same game, with some minor flavorful tweaks. Inevitably, you will still finish the game, you will still get more or less the same main-story ending, and you will still be YOU. Even juvenile Choose Your Own Adventure books had less predictability and wider variance in outcomes. Even 'choice' games a decade ago had more branching, where your specific dialogue choice mattered less compared to how you carried about in the game world.Instead of leaving the outcome a result of wordplay, the manner in which you appeased them in terms of timeliness, worth and effort was more important.
1. People don't like variance and unpredictability. A consistent and stable universe is more immersive, and less abrupt and jarring when unexpected things happen. Also, modern audiences don't tolerate sudden deaths and unforeseen consequences very well, which is typical of a spoonfed era.
2. People don't want to be punished, and feel like they've wasted their time, even if they've committed to poor choices. Choices can be made casually and on a whim, and should decisions have too much weight in them, the players may feel regret. Instead of stopping the players to heavily deliberate their decisions, developers have reduced their impacts and supplemented them in quantity.
3. People want the story to not end. Even after a terrible decision, the developers want to retain a steady pace and flow of the plot and action. So the story cannot come screeching to a halt even if the player consistently demonstrates he's a mouthbreathing fool who is incapable of making reasonable decisions on behalf of his role-played character. The best way to curb this, is again, to limit the extremities of decisions and their impacts.
4. Devs want all their content to be seen. Nowadays, games are judged immediately and quickly. Too much so, and it pressures devs to make a player's first playthrough, or even first impression, to be as best as it possibly can be, regardless of how the experience of repeated playthroughs suffer. This has created a diorama effect, where the player is shuffled from theatre to theatre, experiencing each set piece and respective characters, but is mostly a linear experience. Adding a few dialogue branches suddenly seems like freedom for what has become an on-rails theme park game. Mass Effect has side missions that you can do before your linear main-story missions to distract you into thinking it's not a linear game. But replays quickly disappoint and show you didn't miss much that a 30 second Youtube video would not have demonstrated. Developers have masked their games so that the first playthrough is as deceptive as possible.
5. Extra content costs money. Publishers may be largely to blame, but regardless, time, money and effort are restrictive constraints. Creating content that players may not see, or discover for years is no longer the norm for games. Anything that is missed by the player scores no points, so developers have been forcibly making sure unperceptive gamers see everything that happens, even to the detriment of immersion. Explosions are huge and flashy, flashing icons popup to tell you something is happening, and camera control is forced to look directly at events. Players have no incentive to try to be perceptive or on guard, since they can just lazily wait until the game tells them something will happen. It's no surprise then, when developers don't want to create player choice branches that branch out too far. It will be content that will potentially be missed, and the further branches go, the more exponentially different the rest of the game becomes, requiring more potentially unseen work.
Walking Dead is entirely linear with dialogue choices that ultimately land you in the same place, with different characters that are all substitutes for each other. Eventually, when the devs feel like it's time to wrap up loose ends, these characters are quickly cut off so they can still produce a similar ending for all branches.
These traits, partially the result of the complacent and spoiled characteristics of the modern gamer, have led the appeal of these games to ruin. There's no challenge of making the right choice. One either gets an ending with all the characters satisfied and a short slideshow of congratulations, or gets something slightly more bleak. How about a completely different ending where the player fails and is tormented in oblivion instead? Or maybe someone he jeered way earlier comes back and cripples him in vengeance and robs him without resistance? These games should be about making one of the dozen right choices, amongst hundreds of bad choices. Start by slamming the player in the face and reminding him that he needs to WORK for the good endings, and that nothing will be happily given to one without deep contemplation for his choices. As it stands, such games are dead, and though adventure games from the past are returning, sadly, their traditional brutal choice mechanics are not.
Reading Kittydog's post on The Walking Dead spurred a long time discomfort with modern games with a prominent element of 'choice'. That is to say, you have none at all. And nobody seems to notice, or mind, whichever is more appalling to you. Games like Mass Effect, Walking Dead, Deus Ex: HR or dare I say, even Bethesda's Fallouts and Elder Scrolls are praised for their storytelling and emphasis on player decisions having meaningful impact on the progression of the game, but they are all overstated.
What does it mean to have CHOICE in a game? That the next three lines of witty, snarky dialogue will be different? That you'll be graced with a slightly different ending slide? Maybe that a few NPCs later on may regard you with disdain. I can sum up my feelings easily: apathy. These choices barely incentivize me to reload a save to satisfy my curiousity, let alone replay the game for a new experience. Everything is so predictable, and it's still the same game, with some minor flavorful tweaks. Inevitably, you will still finish the game, you will still get more or less the same main-story ending, and you will still be YOU. Even juvenile Choose Your Own Adventure books had less predictability and wider variance in outcomes. Even 'choice' games a decade ago had more branching, where your specific dialogue choice mattered less compared to how you carried about in the game world.Instead of leaving the outcome a result of wordplay, the manner in which you appeased them in terms of timeliness, worth and effort was more important.
1. People don't like variance and unpredictability. A consistent and stable universe is more immersive, and less abrupt and jarring when unexpected things happen. Also, modern audiences don't tolerate sudden deaths and unforeseen consequences very well, which is typical of a spoonfed era.
2. People don't want to be punished, and feel like they've wasted their time, even if they've committed to poor choices. Choices can be made casually and on a whim, and should decisions have too much weight in them, the players may feel regret. Instead of stopping the players to heavily deliberate their decisions, developers have reduced their impacts and supplemented them in quantity.
3. People want the story to not end. Even after a terrible decision, the developers want to retain a steady pace and flow of the plot and action. So the story cannot come screeching to a halt even if the player consistently demonstrates he's a mouthbreathing fool who is incapable of making reasonable decisions on behalf of his role-played character. The best way to curb this, is again, to limit the extremities of decisions and their impacts.
4. Devs want all their content to be seen. Nowadays, games are judged immediately and quickly. Too much so, and it pressures devs to make a player's first playthrough, or even first impression, to be as best as it possibly can be, regardless of how the experience of repeated playthroughs suffer. This has created a diorama effect, where the player is shuffled from theatre to theatre, experiencing each set piece and respective characters, but is mostly a linear experience. Adding a few dialogue branches suddenly seems like freedom for what has become an on-rails theme park game. Mass Effect has side missions that you can do before your linear main-story missions to distract you into thinking it's not a linear game. But replays quickly disappoint and show you didn't miss much that a 30 second Youtube video would not have demonstrated. Developers have masked their games so that the first playthrough is as deceptive as possible.
5. Extra content costs money. Publishers may be largely to blame, but regardless, time, money and effort are restrictive constraints. Creating content that players may not see, or discover for years is no longer the norm for games. Anything that is missed by the player scores no points, so developers have been forcibly making sure unperceptive gamers see everything that happens, even to the detriment of immersion. Explosions are huge and flashy, flashing icons popup to tell you something is happening, and camera control is forced to look directly at events. Players have no incentive to try to be perceptive or on guard, since they can just lazily wait until the game tells them something will happen. It's no surprise then, when developers don't want to create player choice branches that branch out too far. It will be content that will potentially be missed, and the further branches go, the more exponentially different the rest of the game becomes, requiring more potentially unseen work.
Walking Dead is entirely linear with dialogue choices that ultimately land you in the same place, with different characters that are all substitutes for each other. Eventually, when the devs feel like it's time to wrap up loose ends, these characters are quickly cut off so they can still produce a similar ending for all branches.
These traits, partially the result of the complacent and spoiled characteristics of the modern gamer, have led the appeal of these games to ruin. There's no challenge of making the right choice. One either gets an ending with all the characters satisfied and a short slideshow of congratulations, or gets something slightly more bleak. How about a completely different ending where the player fails and is tormented in oblivion instead? Or maybe someone he jeered way earlier comes back and cripples him in vengeance and robs him without resistance? These games should be about making one of the dozen right choices, amongst hundreds of bad choices. Start by slamming the player in the face and reminding him that he needs to WORK for the good endings, and that nothing will be happily given to one without deep contemplation for his choices. As it stands, such games are dead, and though adventure games from the past are returning, sadly, their traditional brutal choice mechanics are not.
Sunday, January 12, 2014
Freedom Fall - Psychopathic Princess Simulator
To start things off. I like how this game you're not going around trying to rescue a helpless princess. No, its quite the opposite. The princess is out to kill you. Freedom fall is a platformer where you have to avoid all sort of obstacles like traps, fires, pitfalls, electricity, etc. You are a prisoner trapped in a prison tower where if you can escape, you are granted freedom. You might as well give it a shot since you're on death row right? This entire tower was created by a haughty psychopathic princess who constantly write messages on the wall mocking you and the other dead prisoners. Its kinda cute actually. All she wants is to watch you die because shes bored and has no friends.
Difficulty wise, the game isn't very hard. The game isn't very long either but its still an enjoyable game while it lasted. The art is pretty good. Its similar to Bastion, and every time you die it goes splat then covers the spikes with blood. There isn't much of a story though. Then again this is a platformer and there really isn't any text/dialogue in the game outside of the writings on the walls. The princess is mute. Shes also quirky as all hell and it shows in her writing. Really not much else to say about this game. You should get it if you like platformers.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_o4ma4ki8sE
Difficulty wise, the game isn't very hard. The game isn't very long either but its still an enjoyable game while it lasted. The art is pretty good. Its similar to Bastion, and every time you die it goes splat then covers the spikes with blood. There isn't much of a story though. Then again this is a platformer and there really isn't any text/dialogue in the game outside of the writings on the walls. The princess is mute. Shes also quirky as all hell and it shows in her writing. Really not much else to say about this game. You should get it if you like platformers.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_o4ma4ki8sE
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