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.
Wednesday, March 12, 2014
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
Thursday, December 12, 2013
The Walking Dead - Haircut Simulator
I was skeptical when I first heard about this game. I'm not a fan of the extremely popular zombie genre. I don't like going around massacring zombies, I don't like how cliche zombie games, movies, anything are. But it was telltale games, and they did some great adventure games. With a lot of people recommending and multiple positive reviews I decided I'll give it a try. Hopefully it won't be as bad as I think it is. Oh was I wrong. This is the best zombie game I have ever played. Instead of focusing on bashing zombie heads and running around collecting bullets or whatever, this game is more of a interactive movie where it focuses more on character development than actual zombie bashing.
You start off as Lee Everett, a criminal wanted for murder of a senator on his way to prison. The cop who is driving you starts chatting to you and you can answer however you like. At this time you notice that anything you say will affect how the story is played out. If you're going to lie, you better keep up the lie because its going to bite you in the ass if its found out. Your responses are also timed. Some are shorter some are longer. If you take too long to decide on a response your character will automatically stay silent. If two people are arguing you can butt in earlier, take longer to decide, or some are actually shorter like you see someone standing in the middle of the road while in the backseat of the cop car and you have to yell to stop the car. There is only a split second to pick the option. You'll quickly meet the first few survivors which will join you in your little group. People don't get along all the time, there is arguing, there are tough choices, and there will be times where you have to pick a side. Its not like other games where you and your party is immune to disease and catastrophe. People die, people turn on each other, and people leave.
One thing that is lacking is puzzle solving is at a minimum.While I like adventure games with a little bit of puzzle solving I think it just wouldn't make sense for a super serious game for the main character to hold 50 objects in his pants and create some kind of door opening machine with a spoon, a bottle of shampoo, and a tire iron. Shit like that just doesn't happen in the real world. There are also times where you have a time limit while solving things. Stuff doesn't wait for you in the real world. You don't get to walk around while the evil ghostly being is charging up his super attack and try to mix items. You take your time then zombies will eat your brains.
The story is very dark ,and very human. People will do anything to survive. Sometimes the hardest choices are the best choices. Some characters you will hate at first and then grow on you, others seem normal and then snap. Sometimes you have to step back and stop. Who are you to judge someone for murder when you are a murderer too. They accepted you into their group knowing you are a convicted criminal. Do you get to kick someone out too because of something he or she committed? You are not the leader, you get to vote but how you have treated people and what things you have said will affect who will be on your side as shit starts hitting the fan. Do you side with the man who abandoned a man to die to zombies to save his own son and will do anything even sacrificing the safety of the group to save his own family first, or would you side with the woman who puts the safety of the group first but wants absolute control of the group and sends people away to die when they come for help. Remember, your decisions must be made on the spot. You don't get time to think things over. You don't get that luxury in a zombie apocalypse when people have guns pointed at each other.
If you like character development, if you like survival stories, and if you just plain like zombie stuff then give this game a try. Even if you're not a zombie fan and just want a good story this game is also for you.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fhL776xz9YU
You start off as Lee Everett, a criminal wanted for murder of a senator on his way to prison. The cop who is driving you starts chatting to you and you can answer however you like. At this time you notice that anything you say will affect how the story is played out. If you're going to lie, you better keep up the lie because its going to bite you in the ass if its found out. Your responses are also timed. Some are shorter some are longer. If you take too long to decide on a response your character will automatically stay silent. If two people are arguing you can butt in earlier, take longer to decide, or some are actually shorter like you see someone standing in the middle of the road while in the backseat of the cop car and you have to yell to stop the car. There is only a split second to pick the option. You'll quickly meet the first few survivors which will join you in your little group. People don't get along all the time, there is arguing, there are tough choices, and there will be times where you have to pick a side. Its not like other games where you and your party is immune to disease and catastrophe. People die, people turn on each other, and people leave.
One thing that is lacking is puzzle solving is at a minimum.While I like adventure games with a little bit of puzzle solving I think it just wouldn't make sense for a super serious game for the main character to hold 50 objects in his pants and create some kind of door opening machine with a spoon, a bottle of shampoo, and a tire iron. Shit like that just doesn't happen in the real world. There are also times where you have a time limit while solving things. Stuff doesn't wait for you in the real world. You don't get to walk around while the evil ghostly being is charging up his super attack and try to mix items. You take your time then zombies will eat your brains.
The story is very dark ,and very human. People will do anything to survive. Sometimes the hardest choices are the best choices. Some characters you will hate at first and then grow on you, others seem normal and then snap. Sometimes you have to step back and stop. Who are you to judge someone for murder when you are a murderer too. They accepted you into their group knowing you are a convicted criminal. Do you get to kick someone out too because of something he or she committed? You are not the leader, you get to vote but how you have treated people and what things you have said will affect who will be on your side as shit starts hitting the fan. Do you side with the man who abandoned a man to die to zombies to save his own son and will do anything even sacrificing the safety of the group to save his own family first, or would you side with the woman who puts the safety of the group first but wants absolute control of the group and sends people away to die when they come for help. Remember, your decisions must be made on the spot. You don't get time to think things over. You don't get that luxury in a zombie apocalypse when people have guns pointed at each other.
If you like character development, if you like survival stories, and if you just plain like zombie stuff then give this game a try. Even if you're not a zombie fan and just want a good story this game is also for you.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fhL776xz9YU
Wednesday, October 9, 2013
Rune Factory: Tides of Destiny - Fishing Poles, Scarves and Monster Slavery
What exactly is rune factory? Well the creator basically called it, "Harvest Moon with a sword." Its basically Harvest Moon meets action RPG. Its highly praised and many people have suggested the game to me. I haven't played any of the other rune factories but everyone seems to enjoy the game a lot so I picked one on the Wii rather than the handheld. Was it a bad choice? I heard the hand held versions are superior however I didn't find the game horrifyingly bad except for some really terrible decisions.
You first start off the game with you going around beating up random monsters then suddenly a bright light appears while you're in town with your BFF. Suddenly you're sucked 200 years into the future and shes now stuck inside your body. You play as both people and she can take control of your body and talk with others. Its really bizzare but you'll get used to the weirdness, as will the rest of the people in the future town. Like all other harvest moon games you go around farming and planting stuff and selling for money. Theres one difference in this game in that farming is secondary. It felt tacked on and you don't even get to farm it yourself. You can capture monsters by scrubbing them with a brush then force them to work on your farm. You cannot grow plants by yourself, you need a monster to grow it for you. All you can do is place a marker on the ground where a monster will come and then stomp the ground and then the marker will bloom. You feed your monster slaves monster cookies everyday. Each monster eats one a day. The bad part about this? You never get to choose what you want to plant. You really want a Pom Pom Flower for that hat? Too bad. You need a strawberry for some jam or a quest? Pray your monsters plant them. If you forget to feed your monsters its fine they won't starve to death or anything they'll just become unable to work. I also want to point out that you can choose to kill your monsters. In the game quests will often tell you to "return the monster to the forest of beginnings" by killing them or NPCs will talk about sending the monsters back there by slashing it to death with a sword. By talking to your monster slaves at your farm you can pick an option to "return the monster to the forest of beginnings." If you select that option they will die and their spirit will float away.
The main focus about this game however is the combat. You can pick from a variety of weapons and poke, stab, slash, smack, and smash your way to victory. Combat for the most part is fairly responsive and fluid. However, using skills requires a huge cast time and will lock you in animation. Some weapons are also very slow that basically gets you stunlocked from 100% to 0% when surrounded. Every monster hit will stagger you no matter the damage. Even if its a 100 hits doing 5 damage a hit you will get staggered and basically just go grab a drink because you'll be stuck getting hit for the next 5 minutes until you die. This only becomes a problem near the end of the game when they start throwing in large masses of enemies with projectiles. The game itself doesn't have many dungeons. In fact there are four dungeons total in the whole game and 5 bosses. These dungeons are super spread out and you must get there by walking on your golem through the sea. You might be thinking this game must be really short. Yes it is short, but they pad it with the most stupid shit ever.
You do not buy gear in this game. Nothing in the store is useful except to buy materials to craft your own stuff. Crafting starts off alright, collect some materials, make the item, then kick some monster butt. Sounds simple. Then suddenly BAM you hit a wall. You need to raise your crafting skill to craft the new stuff. If you don't craft these you are stuck in progression because you cannot fight against the new stronger monsters. So what do you do? You grind. You sit down and you grind the fucking thing. You make millions of scarves and fishing poles. I am not fucking joking. You will sit down and waste at least two hours of your life spamming the craft button until you are bored out of your mind. Now that you got that out of your way its time to spend a few hours farming rare drops from monsters until you get it. I wouldn't mind if the crafting was optional. If it gave you stronger items or super powerful items. Like have the shops sell some decent gear when you reach the next dungeon, with crafting letting you create stronger ones than the ones in the shop. But no they force people to craft these. Also to get crafting recipes, you first have to make friends with the villagers. By completing quests and raising friendship they will give you recipes. So it takes even longer.
The worst part in all of this? Like harvest moon games, there is a stamina meter. In this game its called RP or Rune Power. Everything you do uses rune power. Crafting, fighting, planting, etc. If you run out of RP it will start draining your health until you die. If you are fighting monsters and you run out of RP then you're shit out of luck. To bypass this you need to buy a shit load of food to eat. Food will recover some RP and you're basically crafting, eating, crafting, eating, crafting, eating every day. In dungeons you will be killing, then eating, kill, eat, kill, eat, kill, eat, kill, eat. This might sound tedious, and it is. The worst part is how much money you'll be draining on food. You cannot possibly afford that at the start so you'll be spending days fighting a couple of monsters and going back to sleep. Is there a reason why RP is so intrusive? You can easily drain your entire RP pool killing one to two enemies with a weak weapon. Thats fucking bullshit. If this game wants to play like an action RPG then don't add something like this. If they want it to be a farming simulator, then let us plant our own fucking plants instead of making us create fishing poles and scarves for fucking hours.
Last and not least the villagers are the craziest people you'll ever meet. Father Gerad, a priest, is probably the worst depiction of a homosexual person I have ever seen. The villagers describe him as a character and he's over the top flamboyant. Then you have the most boring people like Seirra who never wants to man the fucking shop so you have to wait around all day for her to walk inside rather than standing at the door. You cannot buy stuff unless shes indoors. Her whole existence is to complain about work, to avoid work, and to piss off her twin brother off. The brother isn't much better either, he is super shy and can't talk to girls. Then you have people who drug you because she loves you, and people who is in love with their little sister. Basically crazy people and you're stuck with them. The game lets you play as a male or female but only at the very end after you beat the game. When you split apart from the same body you can choose to play as yourself or as your BFF. However, playing as a female is an afterthought. The entire game you are playing as Aden, the guy.
There are 9 bachelorettes and 3 bachelors. That number itself is indicative of how much effort they put into making the female counterpart of the main character. Basically the list of characters are:
Bachelorettes
Odette - The normal girl who loves to cook and works at the inn. The first person you meet.
Lily - The older sister of Odette. She is incredibly clumsy and ditzy and often falls face first on the floor.
Violet - Younger sister of Odette. She is incredibly shy and softspoken. She falls in love with you at first sight and drugs you.
Electra - Mayor's daughter who really likes housework and being a housewife *groan*
Maerwen - A dark elf. A token dark skin character. She works as a maid for Electra. She acts really cold and has a sharp tongue but is really nice underneath it all.
Sierra - The tomboy active girl who hates work and complains about it everyday and is the most boring and annoying character in the game.
Mikoto - The token asian character in every single harvest moon/rune factory game for the xenophobes that play the game. Shes a cross dressing samurai.
Pandora - The evil sorcresses out for world domination. She calls you her minion and bosses you around all day long.
Elena - A golem crazy inventor/blacksmith/childish person who sleeps until 4pm every day.
Bachelors
Bismark - Sierra's super serious and super shy girl fearing twin brother.
James - Elena's older brother who has a girlfriend already and who cannot stop talking about "his cute little sister" because "her cute face lets him get through the day." Incest alert.
Joe - A giant idiot surfer dude. So very stupid.
So as you can see, girls get the short end of the stick with three of the most depressing people you can ever find. Guys at least have more choice although most of them are terrible. However, all this only appears after you beat the main game. You cannot raise friendship of NPCs over 6 until you beat the game.
The game started off fine at the start, fun in fact, then it became one of the most tedious grinds I ever seen in a game. And I grinded a lot in Disgaea. The difference is, it was somewhat enjoyable there, and for this game its just crafting fishing poles and eating ice cream cones until you take a break from boredom. The farming element is an afterthought in the game and do not expect to spend much time farming. Except to spend in game days just traveling from one place to another and many in game days trying to clear a little bit further in the dungeon because of your limited RP. Although its much easier to just run past all the enemies because it wastes too much RP to fight them. Only fight them when you need drops after that just keep running to the end and buy a stack of food and fight the boss while downing as much food as you can to keep your RP up. Other than these giant flaws, the game itself feels like harvest moon. The combat is fun when you have enough RP to fight. Its decent but not good enough.
You first start off the game with you going around beating up random monsters then suddenly a bright light appears while you're in town with your BFF. Suddenly you're sucked 200 years into the future and shes now stuck inside your body. You play as both people and she can take control of your body and talk with others. Its really bizzare but you'll get used to the weirdness, as will the rest of the people in the future town. Like all other harvest moon games you go around farming and planting stuff and selling for money. Theres one difference in this game in that farming is secondary. It felt tacked on and you don't even get to farm it yourself. You can capture monsters by scrubbing them with a brush then force them to work on your farm. You cannot grow plants by yourself, you need a monster to grow it for you. All you can do is place a marker on the ground where a monster will come and then stomp the ground and then the marker will bloom. You feed your monster slaves monster cookies everyday. Each monster eats one a day. The bad part about this? You never get to choose what you want to plant. You really want a Pom Pom Flower for that hat? Too bad. You need a strawberry for some jam or a quest? Pray your monsters plant them. If you forget to feed your monsters its fine they won't starve to death or anything they'll just become unable to work. I also want to point out that you can choose to kill your monsters. In the game quests will often tell you to "return the monster to the forest of beginnings" by killing them or NPCs will talk about sending the monsters back there by slashing it to death with a sword. By talking to your monster slaves at your farm you can pick an option to "return the monster to the forest of beginnings." If you select that option they will die and their spirit will float away.
The main focus about this game however is the combat. You can pick from a variety of weapons and poke, stab, slash, smack, and smash your way to victory. Combat for the most part is fairly responsive and fluid. However, using skills requires a huge cast time and will lock you in animation. Some weapons are also very slow that basically gets you stunlocked from 100% to 0% when surrounded. Every monster hit will stagger you no matter the damage. Even if its a 100 hits doing 5 damage a hit you will get staggered and basically just go grab a drink because you'll be stuck getting hit for the next 5 minutes until you die. This only becomes a problem near the end of the game when they start throwing in large masses of enemies with projectiles. The game itself doesn't have many dungeons. In fact there are four dungeons total in the whole game and 5 bosses. These dungeons are super spread out and you must get there by walking on your golem through the sea. You might be thinking this game must be really short. Yes it is short, but they pad it with the most stupid shit ever.
You do not buy gear in this game. Nothing in the store is useful except to buy materials to craft your own stuff. Crafting starts off alright, collect some materials, make the item, then kick some monster butt. Sounds simple. Then suddenly BAM you hit a wall. You need to raise your crafting skill to craft the new stuff. If you don't craft these you are stuck in progression because you cannot fight against the new stronger monsters. So what do you do? You grind. You sit down and you grind the fucking thing. You make millions of scarves and fishing poles. I am not fucking joking. You will sit down and waste at least two hours of your life spamming the craft button until you are bored out of your mind. Now that you got that out of your way its time to spend a few hours farming rare drops from monsters until you get it. I wouldn't mind if the crafting was optional. If it gave you stronger items or super powerful items. Like have the shops sell some decent gear when you reach the next dungeon, with crafting letting you create stronger ones than the ones in the shop. But no they force people to craft these. Also to get crafting recipes, you first have to make friends with the villagers. By completing quests and raising friendship they will give you recipes. So it takes even longer.
The worst part in all of this? Like harvest moon games, there is a stamina meter. In this game its called RP or Rune Power. Everything you do uses rune power. Crafting, fighting, planting, etc. If you run out of RP it will start draining your health until you die. If you are fighting monsters and you run out of RP then you're shit out of luck. To bypass this you need to buy a shit load of food to eat. Food will recover some RP and you're basically crafting, eating, crafting, eating, crafting, eating every day. In dungeons you will be killing, then eating, kill, eat, kill, eat, kill, eat, kill, eat. This might sound tedious, and it is. The worst part is how much money you'll be draining on food. You cannot possibly afford that at the start so you'll be spending days fighting a couple of monsters and going back to sleep. Is there a reason why RP is so intrusive? You can easily drain your entire RP pool killing one to two enemies with a weak weapon. Thats fucking bullshit. If this game wants to play like an action RPG then don't add something like this. If they want it to be a farming simulator, then let us plant our own fucking plants instead of making us create fishing poles and scarves for fucking hours.
Last and not least the villagers are the craziest people you'll ever meet. Father Gerad, a priest, is probably the worst depiction of a homosexual person I have ever seen. The villagers describe him as a character and he's over the top flamboyant. Then you have the most boring people like Seirra who never wants to man the fucking shop so you have to wait around all day for her to walk inside rather than standing at the door. You cannot buy stuff unless shes indoors. Her whole existence is to complain about work, to avoid work, and to piss off her twin brother off. The brother isn't much better either, he is super shy and can't talk to girls. Then you have people who drug you because she loves you, and people who is in love with their little sister. Basically crazy people and you're stuck with them. The game lets you play as a male or female but only at the very end after you beat the game. When you split apart from the same body you can choose to play as yourself or as your BFF. However, playing as a female is an afterthought. The entire game you are playing as Aden, the guy.
There are 9 bachelorettes and 3 bachelors. That number itself is indicative of how much effort they put into making the female counterpart of the main character. Basically the list of characters are:
Bachelorettes
Odette - The normal girl who loves to cook and works at the inn. The first person you meet.
Lily - The older sister of Odette. She is incredibly clumsy and ditzy and often falls face first on the floor.
Violet - Younger sister of Odette. She is incredibly shy and softspoken. She falls in love with you at first sight and drugs you.
Electra - Mayor's daughter who really likes housework and being a housewife *groan*
Maerwen - A dark elf. A token dark skin character. She works as a maid for Electra. She acts really cold and has a sharp tongue but is really nice underneath it all.
Sierra - The tomboy active girl who hates work and complains about it everyday and is the most boring and annoying character in the game.
Mikoto - The token asian character in every single harvest moon/rune factory game for the xenophobes that play the game. Shes a cross dressing samurai.
Pandora - The evil sorcresses out for world domination. She calls you her minion and bosses you around all day long.
Elena - A golem crazy inventor/blacksmith/childish person who sleeps until 4pm every day.
Bachelors
Bismark - Sierra's super serious and super shy girl fearing twin brother.
James - Elena's older brother who has a girlfriend already and who cannot stop talking about "his cute little sister" because "her cute face lets him get through the day." Incest alert.
Joe - A giant idiot surfer dude. So very stupid.
So as you can see, girls get the short end of the stick with three of the most depressing people you can ever find. Guys at least have more choice although most of them are terrible. However, all this only appears after you beat the main game. You cannot raise friendship of NPCs over 6 until you beat the game.
The game started off fine at the start, fun in fact, then it became one of the most tedious grinds I ever seen in a game. And I grinded a lot in Disgaea. The difference is, it was somewhat enjoyable there, and for this game its just crafting fishing poles and eating ice cream cones until you take a break from boredom. The farming element is an afterthought in the game and do not expect to spend much time farming. Except to spend in game days just traveling from one place to another and many in game days trying to clear a little bit further in the dungeon because of your limited RP. Although its much easier to just run past all the enemies because it wastes too much RP to fight them. Only fight them when you need drops after that just keep running to the end and buy a stack of food and fight the boss while downing as much food as you can to keep your RP up. Other than these giant flaws, the game itself feels like harvest moon. The combat is fun when you have enough RP to fight. Its decent but not good enough.
Saturday, August 17, 2013
Gone Home - Fridge opening simulator
What is Gone Home exactly? Well, if you know of Dear Esther then you should have an idea of what the game is about. It tells a story and its up to you to explore and find and piece together the story for yourself. Thats all, theres no combat, theres no exp, theres nothing but just exploring. That said you will miss a lot of stuff. Unless you scour through everything picking up every single thing, look under the tables, flip open every single folder. You will miss something. Even if you do all that, there is no guarantee that you will get the entire story. Its up to you to piece together the story, some parts are purposely vague, while others are obvious. I think that is pretty cool. I missed a big portion of a subplot in the story and going back I was able to piece it together.
What is the story about anyways? Well there really isn't any way to explain without spoiling the story so it basically is just you coming home to the home your family recently moved to while you were at Europe. There you find that the place is a mess and no one is home. You must walk around and interact with the world to progress with the story and find out what happens. You will read journal entires, you will find things that give clues, and you find that the empty house is really quite alive. The people that live there felt real and believable, it felt like they were still there and could come home at any second. At the back of your head it will keep nagging at you, thinking of the worst possible situations. After the story you become emotionally attached, you find yourself running to your destinations praying you're not too late, that what you're thinking is just a fantasy.
The best part would the the ambiance of the house. The dark corners, the flickering lights, the creaks as you step on the old wooden floors, and just the sound of the thunderstorm would keep you immersed for the entire time. Your mind plays games on you as well, seeing the plant in the corner of your eye, the red dye in the bath tub, the messy bedrooms and the feeling of dread creeping up from your stomach. This game is Dear Esther done better. However there is a $20 price tag which caused a lot of complaining. Is it worth it? If you think of it as a movie then the price tag isn't that much different. I enjoyed this game tremendously.
This proves that "art games" can work and there may potentially be more of these games in the future. Dear Esther started it, Gone Home perfected it. Now I can't wait to see what else other people can create.
What is the story about anyways? Well there really isn't any way to explain without spoiling the story so it basically is just you coming home to the home your family recently moved to while you were at Europe. There you find that the place is a mess and no one is home. You must walk around and interact with the world to progress with the story and find out what happens. You will read journal entires, you will find things that give clues, and you find that the empty house is really quite alive. The people that live there felt real and believable, it felt like they were still there and could come home at any second. At the back of your head it will keep nagging at you, thinking of the worst possible situations. After the story you become emotionally attached, you find yourself running to your destinations praying you're not too late, that what you're thinking is just a fantasy.
The best part would the the ambiance of the house. The dark corners, the flickering lights, the creaks as you step on the old wooden floors, and just the sound of the thunderstorm would keep you immersed for the entire time. Your mind plays games on you as well, seeing the plant in the corner of your eye, the red dye in the bath tub, the messy bedrooms and the feeling of dread creeping up from your stomach. This game is Dear Esther done better. However there is a $20 price tag which caused a lot of complaining. Is it worth it? If you think of it as a movie then the price tag isn't that much different. I enjoyed this game tremendously.
This proves that "art games" can work and there may potentially be more of these games in the future. Dear Esther started it, Gone Home perfected it. Now I can't wait to see what else other people can create.
Thursday, August 1, 2013
Remember Me - I hope you're playing on a controller
Let me start with this. Quick time events are bullshit. Whats worse are quick time events optimized for a controller on a PC game. Thats my biggest problem with this game. Its not the stupid boring game play, its not the repetitive combat, its not the clichéd stupid story, no its quick time events. How bad are they you ask? Well on a controller you're supposed to spin the analogue stick, on the mouse and keyboard combo you need to spin your mouse around. This just does not work the same way, as you circle your mouse around it keeps fucking up and going backwards and rewinding what you are trying to do.
To start from the beginning, this is a third person "action" game. By action I mean walk in a straight line for 5 hours and button mash the left and right mouse buttons repeatedly until it breaks down. The combos are there for you to use but its completely worthless. You always meet a group of enemies so you'll never be able to pull it off before you need to dodge. Thats not all there will be assholes climbing up walls so you need to hold shift to lock-on and then left click to shoot them down so you can punch them to death. Then there are the giant assholes who suck up all the power of the little assholes so you can't kill the big asshole until you take out the small assholes first all while the big asshole is chasing you around. Then there are invisible assholes where you have to constantly shift and left click a light button every 10 seconds so they are revealed. Combat is stupidly repetitive and boring. Having all these "combos" you can customize doesn't do shit. You are forced to take a punch move in this part of the combo string, forced to take a kick move in this part etc etc. It just gives you the illusion you can customize. Are some attacks faster or slower? No I don't notice it. Do some hurt more than the other? No it doesn't. So whats the point. Nothing. Not like you'll ever pull off a full string unless you're fighting one on one anyways. You'll be hitting the space bar every two seconds to dodge an incoming attack. Dodge can be used at any time to get out of anything. Theres no getting locked inside a combo theres no fear of needing to dodge, theres no fear of not seeing an attack coming as a giant ! will appear and the world slows down waiting for you to hit the dodge button.
What do you do when not fighting in combat? You climb. That sounds fun! Thats like Mirror's Edge right? No. Not even close. Saying its like Mirror's Edge is like saying Solitaire is a real game. All you do is walk in a single path. And along the path will have yellow arrows telling you to go here go there. You just hop and hop and hop and hop and hop and hop and hop some more. The worst part of hopping is the controls. Its completely unoptimized for mouse and keyboards. Not to mention the camera jerks around when you're trying to do look to the side. Occasionally you stop to shift left click something, which is probably the worst part because it wastes your time having to search around and you just want to get out of this part because its stupid and boring, then continue your hopping. Every few hops you take enemies appear and you can't continue until you punch them all to death. After that you hop some more. THEN SUDDENLY OUT OF THE BLUE YOU GET SOMETHING DIFFERENT! There are gray spots you can stand on to press E to access stolen memories to see how to get past these areas. What it usually does is let you know where the "safe" areas are in a minefield or something of that sort. You basically get one second to watch the thing then it disappears. Honestly it does shit to help but state the obvious. Its easier to just keep running. After hopping for what feels like an hour you get to the very end of the path which is a boss. Bosses are easy as all hell but also a very long endurance fight with your attention span. Its boring. Its like fighting the same as a normal enemy but you punch longer. Then when it gets close to dying you need to suddenly do a quick time event. If you screw up you have to redo it again after you bring it back down to that health (it regenerates slightly.) You get a split second to click a button then it shows a circle button with an arrow from the left circling to the top then to the right. Oh it must be to spin the mouse like the memory mixing I just did a little while ago right? NO. I did that fight for 30 fucking minutes before I realized that was a the dodge key. WHAT?
Theres also memory mixing. I've only seen it once so far so its not very common basically you go through someone's memory and then go back and change parts of the memory so it plays out differently. The one I had to do was I had to kill the man instead of letting the doctor save him. You watch a cut scene then you have to constantly turn your mouse in a clockwise circle to go forward in time and counterclockwise to go back in time. Press E at certain times to ruin someone's memories until the right combination works out. Then we get to the story of the game. Basically its the most cliché story. You lost your memory, the evil corporation Memorex controls everyone's memory and then tried to remove yours but you resisted because as a video game protagonist you're badass like that. Now you've lost most of your memory and is on a quest for revenge against the big evil corporation while some random seedy guy is helping you who obviously sounds like a bad guy who believes the end justifies the means and you're obviously going to have to fight him along the way or he might be the true villain after all. Fortunately I didn't get very far into the game probably about 25%-30% of the game before I ran into a bug. I used the Sensen DDOS and it bugged out one enemy and it wouldn't die and I couldn't die so I was in limbo because unless you kill every enemy you cannot move on.
I didn't feel like starting over at the last checkpoint because theres no save button you have to go back to a checkpoint every time you die or turn off the game. And if you decide to quit after watching cut scene or something important. For the love of god don't turn off your game because the next time you start it you have to sit through the whole thing again. It'll take like 5 minutes to watch and there is no way to skip it. All in all its a very mediocre game with a cliché story, bad combat, boring and tedious game play, and worst of all the most unoptimized controller to mouse and keyboard port ever.
To start from the beginning, this is a third person "action" game. By action I mean walk in a straight line for 5 hours and button mash the left and right mouse buttons repeatedly until it breaks down. The combos are there for you to use but its completely worthless. You always meet a group of enemies so you'll never be able to pull it off before you need to dodge. Thats not all there will be assholes climbing up walls so you need to hold shift to lock-on and then left click to shoot them down so you can punch them to death. Then there are the giant assholes who suck up all the power of the little assholes so you can't kill the big asshole until you take out the small assholes first all while the big asshole is chasing you around. Then there are invisible assholes where you have to constantly shift and left click a light button every 10 seconds so they are revealed. Combat is stupidly repetitive and boring. Having all these "combos" you can customize doesn't do shit. You are forced to take a punch move in this part of the combo string, forced to take a kick move in this part etc etc. It just gives you the illusion you can customize. Are some attacks faster or slower? No I don't notice it. Do some hurt more than the other? No it doesn't. So whats the point. Nothing. Not like you'll ever pull off a full string unless you're fighting one on one anyways. You'll be hitting the space bar every two seconds to dodge an incoming attack. Dodge can be used at any time to get out of anything. Theres no getting locked inside a combo theres no fear of needing to dodge, theres no fear of not seeing an attack coming as a giant ! will appear and the world slows down waiting for you to hit the dodge button.
What do you do when not fighting in combat? You climb. That sounds fun! Thats like Mirror's Edge right? No. Not even close. Saying its like Mirror's Edge is like saying Solitaire is a real game. All you do is walk in a single path. And along the path will have yellow arrows telling you to go here go there. You just hop and hop and hop and hop and hop and hop and hop some more. The worst part of hopping is the controls. Its completely unoptimized for mouse and keyboards. Not to mention the camera jerks around when you're trying to do look to the side. Occasionally you stop to shift left click something, which is probably the worst part because it wastes your time having to search around and you just want to get out of this part because its stupid and boring, then continue your hopping. Every few hops you take enemies appear and you can't continue until you punch them all to death. After that you hop some more. THEN SUDDENLY OUT OF THE BLUE YOU GET SOMETHING DIFFERENT! There are gray spots you can stand on to press E to access stolen memories to see how to get past these areas. What it usually does is let you know where the "safe" areas are in a minefield or something of that sort. You basically get one second to watch the thing then it disappears. Honestly it does shit to help but state the obvious. Its easier to just keep running. After hopping for what feels like an hour you get to the very end of the path which is a boss. Bosses are easy as all hell but also a very long endurance fight with your attention span. Its boring. Its like fighting the same as a normal enemy but you punch longer. Then when it gets close to dying you need to suddenly do a quick time event. If you screw up you have to redo it again after you bring it back down to that health (it regenerates slightly.) You get a split second to click a button then it shows a circle button with an arrow from the left circling to the top then to the right. Oh it must be to spin the mouse like the memory mixing I just did a little while ago right? NO. I did that fight for 30 fucking minutes before I realized that was a the dodge key. WHAT?
Theres also memory mixing. I've only seen it once so far so its not very common basically you go through someone's memory and then go back and change parts of the memory so it plays out differently. The one I had to do was I had to kill the man instead of letting the doctor save him. You watch a cut scene then you have to constantly turn your mouse in a clockwise circle to go forward in time and counterclockwise to go back in time. Press E at certain times to ruin someone's memories until the right combination works out. Then we get to the story of the game. Basically its the most cliché story. You lost your memory, the evil corporation Memorex controls everyone's memory and then tried to remove yours but you resisted because as a video game protagonist you're badass like that. Now you've lost most of your memory and is on a quest for revenge against the big evil corporation while some random seedy guy is helping you who obviously sounds like a bad guy who believes the end justifies the means and you're obviously going to have to fight him along the way or he might be the true villain after all. Fortunately I didn't get very far into the game probably about 25%-30% of the game before I ran into a bug. I used the Sensen DDOS and it bugged out one enemy and it wouldn't die and I couldn't die so I was in limbo because unless you kill every enemy you cannot move on.
I didn't feel like starting over at the last checkpoint because theres no save button you have to go back to a checkpoint every time you die or turn off the game. And if you decide to quit after watching cut scene or something important. For the love of god don't turn off your game because the next time you start it you have to sit through the whole thing again. It'll take like 5 minutes to watch and there is no way to skip it. All in all its a very mediocre game with a cliché story, bad combat, boring and tedious game play, and worst of all the most unoptimized controller to mouse and keyboard port ever.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
