(Brace yourselves, I've been playing a Bethesda game).
As of late, a lot of my entries have opened by immediately picking on a developer or publisher in order to adequately pad out my reviews and look slightly more intelligent and professional – or at the best get a cheap laugh or two. Whether it’s been working or not is entirely up to you, but nethertheless; puppies. Puppies are a perfect way to decide how much of a miserable bastard someone is by asking them if puppies are cute, adorable and generally some of the nicest things in the known universe (considering for a moment that caramel doesn’t exist), or if they realise that as cute as they may be, they’ll still piss and shit all over your favourite material possessions and inevitably grow up to be vicious figures of teeth and muscle.
Should you have read any of my previous work ever, you’ll know I’m the latter, which is why I know what Bethesda Games Studios is, and that getting my hopes up for anything they’ve ever played part in is about as wise as calling a grizzly bear a great big, lazy, two-bit puff. Take Star Trek Legacy; then place it carefully in the middle of a busy road and wait until someone eventually runs it over, because as pretty as everything looks, that’s all it’s really good for. Then there’s Oblivion, which you can use to test belt-sanders with in order to indulge in the delicious irony of teaching it how things really get damaged when you rub them together.
I’ll admit, I nearly did call a big furry killing machine gay in a manner of speaking by initially thinking that Fallout 3 could be one of the best games of the year, overlooking the fact that it was being made by people who don’t know what “fun” means. Eventually I saw the light before launch, spotting the Oblivion engine a mile off and decided Fallout 3 could disappear down a toilet somewhere along with Bethesda and go fuck itself. After a lot of badgering I decided the best thing I could do was play some games I was still actually looking forward to and then burn some money on an almost completely unnecessary RAM upgrade.
My world didn’t get turned completely on its head until I watched the Fallout 3 Zero Punctuation video. Surely Fallout 3 must be worth my attention if the only other person on Earth who knows what’s wrong with Oblivion likes it? I swallowed my pride, did a wee bit of research and decided to try justifying my shiny new computer.
Something I should say about the original Fallout is that it’s an idea that interests me immensely for some reason and also that anyone who complained about the difficulty curve of Dead Rising is a great big sissy and would literally die if they ever came into contact with a copy of Fallout 1. Sure, I was murdered time and time again and never actually got anywhere because I was continually stalked by giant scorpions and Lady Luck, but that’s ok because I fear I wouldn’t survive longer than 3 breaths in a post-nuclear apocalyptic wasteland before splitting into two separate and very physical personalities and redefining the words “killing oneself”.
From my understanding, Fallout 3 shouldn’t really have the “3” at all, considering I’m pretty certain it’s basically a remake of the original but apparently no one else gives a shit.
Research ends, review begins; God help me.
I give immediate credit to Fallout 3 for having probably one of the weirdest openings to a game ever (and I’ve played Rez) in which you start the game literally straight after you’ve been born. So instantaneously in fact, that no one’s actually managed to clean the afterbirth off you yet. And I must also say that for once I believe the NPCs who say I’m destined for great things on the basis that my character seems to have been born with a higher IQ then his father resulting in him picking his own gender, name and future physical appearance. Well, after dicking around with the appearance options for a while, I realised I was pretty limited to more or less the same very tired looking drifter with different styles of hair. And that’s about it, which isn’t necessarily a bad thing considering I’m sick of having to build my own character from scratch in every motherfucking game I’ve played for the last 2 years. You see, this is why I like Fable 2 so much: you can pick your wife and your clothes but you can’t pick your nose. Some divine force picks your nose for you depending on how much you eat, who you rob and who you kill, leaving you with just your hair and hair colour at your disposal.
Having decided that Oblivion was the most unforgiving, stuck up pile of wank I’ve ever wasted time on, I decided that with Fallout I was going to turn my back on the gallant hero for once and play my first playthrough of a game as the coldest and most badass bastard a possible. I was impressed at how often Fallout presented me with the opportunity to insult, threaten and swear at NPCs, then allow me to rip their faces off with a plank of wood full of rusty, irradiated nails. As such, I decided to do all of the aforementioned to anyone who met the following criteria:
- they weren’t going to fuck up the story if they died
- they didn’t have bigger weapons than me
Having run my character’s evil arse down to the point of exhaustion from all the murdering and bullying, I decided it was time to grow up and play the game properly. Or at least commit genocide properly. After wandering into the town of Megaton, I cocked an eyebrow to the thought that this being a post-apocalyptic nuclear wasteland, there was surely an obvious reason for it. Of course, I was right and did everything I could to rig the big bastard nuclear bomb to explode – completely ignoring the reasoning of the guy who gave me the tools to do it, instead following my own reason: I wanted to blow shit up. After much hard work and procrastination, I found my way to a safe distance, detonated the bomb and watched the most awesome explosion I’ve ever seen.
It was probably because I’d just annihilated one of the larger cities in Fallout that resulted in me spending the rest of my time with the game scrounging around for ammo and having my pure evil arse used as a gun rack for super mutants. Whatever the reason, I struggled to survive in the Fallout world yet again, but at least it was for a reason that allowed me to forget Bethesda had anything to do with it and it left me getting sucked in and appropriately neglect my friends who wanted me to join them in Team Fortress 2.
I guess what I’m trying to do is cause a quantum singularity that will destroy the universe by saying Fallout 3 is a good game and each line of the conversations was recorded in the same day, as opposed to in Oblivion, in which I’m pretty certain the voice actors had a habit of dying after each line. Laser guns are fun, and any game that allows me to fire a mini nuke deserves merit. Then there’s the fact that when you’re getting your arse handed to you, you can usually use the VATS system to pause time and drop a grenade directly under your aggressor’s testicles bouncing-betty style.
Showing posts with label rpg. Show all posts
Showing posts with label rpg. Show all posts
Tuesday, 9 December 2008
Wednesday, 12 November 2008
Fable 2
I very nearly posted this review as nothing short of what I suspect is the longest letter ever to finish off kissing Peter Molyneux’s arse, then I spent a while longer playing Fable 2 some more, and also cover the good and evil bases. And so, having spent another week or so going through the ins and outs of it, I’ve decided that the bit I can salvage from my original draft is the bit where I said,
“As I’ve said a number of times already, I’ve recently started a group on Facebook threatening Peter Molyneux’s dog should that great jabbering bastard make a hash of the sequel to my overall favourite Xbox game.”
That, and the fact the dog lives. BUT.
While I find something intoxicating about Fable and Fable 2, there are a number of issues, starting with the worrying fact of how similar – sorry, exactly the same – Fable 2 as the original in some areas. As is to be expected with sequels, the set pieces are becoming apparent, but the problem is that no one should be able to click onto this until the third or four iteration of a game, certainly not the fucking second.
Childhood – tragedy – Heroes’ Guild – arena – prison – antagonist dies.
That isn’t the entire quest, but worryingly, there isn’t actually that much more to it. Yeah, there are side quests and such, but for some reason there aren’t as many as in the Lost Chapters re-release. Fair enough, they’re probably going to release more quests as downloadable content (unless Peter Molyneux isn’t the genius I thought he was, and is in fact a blithering idiot), but someone decided that what we really wanted instead of side quests was a bunch of collectables. I’ll admit I liked the gargoyles, but FUCK ME; even if you buy the fact that the Heroes of old turned into a bunch of mercenaries that everyone happily ridded themselves of in favour of guns, you’d assume that there’d be more people looking for help off someone brandishing superpowers. Instead, the best anyone can offer is a job in pest control, bartending, blacksmithing, kidnapping or murdering. Considering you’re allowed to kill whoever or whatever you want, then if you have any brains you’ll either kill the guards too or agree to do the community service, then go shag some hookers instead, half of those jobs go out the window straight away.
There is a lot that is fun about Fable 2 – anyone who spotted the achievement “The Menace to Society” and didn’t immediately pursue it has no soul – and if you can be bothered to look, you can find some interesting Easter Eggs (ranging from The Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Galaxy to Anchorman). Need an example of something fun? How about fucking with your family by doing everything you can to be good, then renting out the house across the road and shagging 8 hookers in someone else’s bed while they’re threatening you to leave. Or going on a killing spree dressed as an 80’s action hero.
To its credit, Fable 2 is impressive. There’s a massive sense of freedom in the fact that even after a few weeks of playing, I can still get lost sometimes, and believe it or not, the world does actually grow, change and expand while you play. If you want to complain about the customisation in Fable 2, can I advise that you kindly go outside and play hide and go fuck yourself. Oh, heaven forbid, an RPG game in which you don’t have 7 sliders for customising your character’s nose. FUCK OFF. No human being can play with those sliders and come out with what they actually wanted. “Bridge Depth”? WHAT THE FUCK? What I love about the Fable games is the fact that your character’s looks take care of themselves depending on what you do. My good hero looks like he – sorry, she, you’ll understand if you buy Castle Fairfax – ascended down from heaven then crushed a few rugby players into meat-scented cubes while occasionally stopping in order to tear a couple of phonebooks in half. My evil hero looks like Davey Jones from Pirates of the Caribbean with a normal beard instead of tentacles, and then someone ran him through a cheese grater face first.
The death system sucks something rotten, and I’ll never understand the new fad in the gaming world of having no noticeable consequence for being shit. The original idea of “having people surround your broken body, beat seven shades out of what was left while you get up while scarring the shit out you” to me personally was a good idea. It sounded like it had a good balance of “be shit, get punished”, but no, it seems some fuckwit found his way into the test groups and whinged someone to death. I suspect this was someone close to Peter Molyneux because this idea was immediately pulled as a mark of respect for the souls lost during the development of Fable 2.
The combat is piss-easy, but that’s ok because it a) works and b) flows brilliantly once you start thinking “timing”; but because the HUD has been raped almost completely out of existence you can’t make the amusing mistake of running out of manna after you use a slow time spell while staring an angry troll’s boulder hurtling to your face and instead of pressing the button to replenish you manna bar, pressing the button that makes your character say “shhhhhiiiit”. Instead you have to play around with a bunch of macros in order to stick up your middle finger. Foolproof, but not funny anymore. Speaking of which, some of the menus may be better organised, but are frankly a monumental pain in the arse – the kind best compared to being violated by a freight train.
Whatever, considering everything else coming out in the near future is some form of first person shooter, I’m inclined to enjoy Fable 2 and imagine fantastic things available for download in the future and as such Peter Molyneux’s dog may live.
If any of you even dare try telling me that Fallout 3 is out, then kindly meet up in a room then send me the address so I can destroy you all using explosives, because clearly you’re too immune to your dangerous levels of stupidity to be harmed by anything short of rapid expansion and fire. It’s made by Bethesda. It’s blatantly obvious that it’s made by Bethesda because it looks pretty, but like everything else they’ve ever made, I can guarantee that it’ll be too open for its own good and everything will move like it’s in Robot Wars. Yes, I’m still sore from the abomination that was Star Trek Legacy and Oblivion can simply fuck off.
“As I’ve said a number of times already, I’ve recently started a group on Facebook threatening Peter Molyneux’s dog should that great jabbering bastard make a hash of the sequel to my overall favourite Xbox game.”
That, and the fact the dog lives. BUT.
While I find something intoxicating about Fable and Fable 2, there are a number of issues, starting with the worrying fact of how similar – sorry, exactly the same – Fable 2 as the original in some areas. As is to be expected with sequels, the set pieces are becoming apparent, but the problem is that no one should be able to click onto this until the third or four iteration of a game, certainly not the fucking second.
Childhood – tragedy – Heroes’ Guild – arena – prison – antagonist dies.
That isn’t the entire quest, but worryingly, there isn’t actually that much more to it. Yeah, there are side quests and such, but for some reason there aren’t as many as in the Lost Chapters re-release. Fair enough, they’re probably going to release more quests as downloadable content (unless Peter Molyneux isn’t the genius I thought he was, and is in fact a blithering idiot), but someone decided that what we really wanted instead of side quests was a bunch of collectables. I’ll admit I liked the gargoyles, but FUCK ME; even if you buy the fact that the Heroes of old turned into a bunch of mercenaries that everyone happily ridded themselves of in favour of guns, you’d assume that there’d be more people looking for help off someone brandishing superpowers. Instead, the best anyone can offer is a job in pest control, bartending, blacksmithing, kidnapping or murdering. Considering you’re allowed to kill whoever or whatever you want, then if you have any brains you’ll either kill the guards too or agree to do the community service, then go shag some hookers instead, half of those jobs go out the window straight away.
There is a lot that is fun about Fable 2 – anyone who spotted the achievement “The Menace to Society” and didn’t immediately pursue it has no soul – and if you can be bothered to look, you can find some interesting Easter Eggs (ranging from The Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Galaxy to Anchorman). Need an example of something fun? How about fucking with your family by doing everything you can to be good, then renting out the house across the road and shagging 8 hookers in someone else’s bed while they’re threatening you to leave. Or going on a killing spree dressed as an 80’s action hero.
To its credit, Fable 2 is impressive. There’s a massive sense of freedom in the fact that even after a few weeks of playing, I can still get lost sometimes, and believe it or not, the world does actually grow, change and expand while you play. If you want to complain about the customisation in Fable 2, can I advise that you kindly go outside and play hide and go fuck yourself. Oh, heaven forbid, an RPG game in which you don’t have 7 sliders for customising your character’s nose. FUCK OFF. No human being can play with those sliders and come out with what they actually wanted. “Bridge Depth”? WHAT THE FUCK? What I love about the Fable games is the fact that your character’s looks take care of themselves depending on what you do. My good hero looks like he – sorry, she, you’ll understand if you buy Castle Fairfax – ascended down from heaven then crushed a few rugby players into meat-scented cubes while occasionally stopping in order to tear a couple of phonebooks in half. My evil hero looks like Davey Jones from Pirates of the Caribbean with a normal beard instead of tentacles, and then someone ran him through a cheese grater face first.
The death system sucks something rotten, and I’ll never understand the new fad in the gaming world of having no noticeable consequence for being shit. The original idea of “having people surround your broken body, beat seven shades out of what was left while you get up while scarring the shit out you” to me personally was a good idea. It sounded like it had a good balance of “be shit, get punished”, but no, it seems some fuckwit found his way into the test groups and whinged someone to death. I suspect this was someone close to Peter Molyneux because this idea was immediately pulled as a mark of respect for the souls lost during the development of Fable 2.
The combat is piss-easy, but that’s ok because it a) works and b) flows brilliantly once you start thinking “timing”; but because the HUD has been raped almost completely out of existence you can’t make the amusing mistake of running out of manna after you use a slow time spell while staring an angry troll’s boulder hurtling to your face and instead of pressing the button to replenish you manna bar, pressing the button that makes your character say “shhhhhiiiit”. Instead you have to play around with a bunch of macros in order to stick up your middle finger. Foolproof, but not funny anymore. Speaking of which, some of the menus may be better organised, but are frankly a monumental pain in the arse – the kind best compared to being violated by a freight train.
Whatever, considering everything else coming out in the near future is some form of first person shooter, I’m inclined to enjoy Fable 2 and imagine fantastic things available for download in the future and as such Peter Molyneux’s dog may live.
If any of you even dare try telling me that Fallout 3 is out, then kindly meet up in a room then send me the address so I can destroy you all using explosives, because clearly you’re too immune to your dangerous levels of stupidity to be harmed by anything short of rapid expansion and fire. It’s made by Bethesda. It’s blatantly obvious that it’s made by Bethesda because it looks pretty, but like everything else they’ve ever made, I can guarantee that it’ll be too open for its own good and everything will move like it’s in Robot Wars. Yes, I’m still sore from the abomination that was Star Trek Legacy and Oblivion can simply fuck off.
Friday, 13 June 2008
Orcs & Elves
With my plans for world domination foiled once again, I find myself resenting being British due to Uncle Sam (and Harmonix) taking a recent opportunity to thoroughly roger me over the frankly bloody extortionate price for Rock Band. As such, I find myself at a loss as to what this week’s review was going to be; I really think my PS3 deserves attention off something that isn’t Gran Tourismo, but Haze appears to have been about as well received as the American Pie direct-to-DVD sequels, while Nintendo have been embracing the summer by once more choosing to release absolutely nothing interesting for the Wii (with the possible exception of Smash Bros Brawl, but due to the aforementioned rogering, it wont be out here for another fortnight or so).
This of course leaves me with the choice of pulling another fashionably late review (Mass Effect comes to mind) out of my arse, when brother dearest came to my rescue, bubbling with excitement over something for the DS by the name of Orcs & Elves. Having mistaken this for Pixar’s latest attempt at milking the Shrek franchise to a very fine and equally dry powder of it’s former cash cow, I decided I’d rather join Uncle Sam and rummage around with both hands for something to write about this week. Having achieved nothing but a very dodgy walk, I stopped screening my calls and agreed to give Orcs & Elves a try; full well in the knowledge that I’d only ever be a bottle of Tequila away from convincing myself I never laid a finger on the blasted thing. It worked with Kane and Lynch.
Now that I’ve managed to put all that childishness behind me, I can crack on with the act
ual review, rather than my misadventures of the week. In Orcs & Elves, you play as Elli, the um, Elf, who for some bizarre reason never says a word but gets along just fine thanks to his talking wand; who has a name, but also has a habit of boring me to tears so much that I dare not remember it. The game begins in some generic dungeon with no explanation or even half-arsed attempt at a back story, but everyone keeps talking about some Dwarf king you’re apparently here to talk to about… I don’t know, the legal age one can work for a games developer?
Orcs & Elves looks similar to Doom, which about 15 years ago would make it the dog’s pride (always left) and joy (by default, right). Unfortunately, this isn’t 15 years ago, and so the dog’s bollocks it is not. There’s some reference to the apparently “award winning” Doom RPG being made by the same people, but if I had to guess, I’d say said award was probably “biggest commercial challenge” – I sure as hell haven’t heard of it. Never mind that, though, Orcs & Elves is more than capable of letting itself down. For a start it’s a turn based RPG, that also happens to be first person. In this situation, I usually end up decided that the game may have its good points, but is let down by the ‘press a button and wait a long time for death’ combat (with the exception of Mario RPG on the SNES).
However, my problem with Orcs & Elves isn’t that the combat is turn based, oh no, the combat is generally very quick but can still leave you with enough time to rustle up some wine, and even a good vintage at that, while you plough through potions and spells, decided the fate of your foe while they sit there very politely waiting for death. The absolutely massive, completely unbearable irritation in Orcs & Elves is that the whole mother-fucking thing is turn based. When I rule this world, I’ll see to it that someone embodies the turn based method (of everything), and then are to be thrown out of the highest window of my evil lair then skullfucked when they land for good measure.
If KOTOR 2 and Mass Effect proved anything, it was that – well, that film grain sucks – and that everything’s better without a turn based system. Including darts. This leaves me wondering how the holy shitting hell we’ve made it to 2008 while still carrying the haemorrhoid that is turn based gameplay. All the turn based system in Orcs & Elves achieves is turning a videogame back into a board game, only replacing the undisputable dice mechanic in favour of “randomly” generated chance/turn/bollocks, I don’t care. By turning Orcs & Elves into essentially a board game (with every step counting as a turn), it is completely impossible to ignore the fact that it’s Dungeons & Dragons, only without friends to play with.
Somehow EA managed to take the epitome of social suicide, and then wrap its skull around a very antisocial bollard shaped like an appendix and covered in glue and poison. With the very worst that classical music has to offer playing incredibly loudly to boot. As a human being who doesn’t see the world in tiles and dice rolls, I have vowed to never play Dungeons & Dragons, and only played the rip off because I was mislead. Then again, it was probably my own fault for believing something to be interesting, by taking the word of someone who actually enjoys Myst.
The end result is something that has a vendetta against social life as a concept, looks almost impressively out-dated and still only has about 4 character models, and just as many hours of gameplay. Adding to that, there’s the fact that the final boss battle is about as fair as being sent to Guantanamo Bay, via Alcatraz, for peeing behind a bush in the middle of a the countryside. With that combination, I wish I’d rather sold a kidney or so to pay for Rock Band.
I’m not going to stop kicking the shit out of Orcs & Elves yet though, I’ve got plenty to say about boss battles in general, and Orcs & Elves pretty much volunteers itself as a punching bag for the subject. Off the top of my head, Orcs & Elves is the best at demonstrating how not to do a final boss battle, with Twilight Princess being a shining example on how it should be done.
Rule one: make the final boss someone you’ve spent the biggest portion of the game wanting dead.
This isn’t exactly hard; just introduce the antagonist early on. If said antagonist hasn’t already been portrayed as the bastard to end all bastards, then after an hour, have him punch a puppy in the face or something. For some reason, games of late seem misguided in attempts at plot twists, so I’ll spell it out. It doesn’t mean change the bad guy 10 minutes before the end of the game.
Rule two: make the boss battle epic.
Another trick modern games seem to be missing. In the old days, boss battles were epic by, despite looking shite, being long but by no means artificially lengthened by perpetually respawning peons who you’d have to mow down one by one before continuing the fight. The only time it’s even remotely acceptable to ignore the rest of that is when you introduce some awesome cut scenes or at least utilise the power of modern consoles and make everything look awesome.
Rule three: make the boss feel like you can kill him.
This one could be two separate rules if you just place the stress in different places. First, you should be able to go into a boss battle knowing that it’s possible for the fucker to die. Second, the boss shouldn’t feel like a strong breeze will cause him or her to bite it, otherwise it just raises the question: how could such a wussbag become the bane of everything and anything? Is the world populated entirely by the inbred and retarded?
I seriously doubt that anyone is going to read that, then take it on board and make a game, there’s obviously far too much money to be found ripping off everything else.
Next week I’ll be trying my hand at innovation, so expect pain and suffering. Until then, remember you can still get hold of me at the usual place:
phill_j@hotmail.co.uk
This of course leaves me with the choice of pulling another fashionably late review (Mass Effect comes to mind) out of my arse, when brother dearest came to my rescue, bubbling with excitement over something for the DS by the name of Orcs & Elves. Having mistaken this for Pixar’s latest attempt at milking the Shrek franchise to a very fine and equally dry powder of it’s former cash cow, I decided I’d rather join Uncle Sam and rummage around with both hands for something to write about this week. Having achieved nothing but a very dodgy walk, I stopped screening my calls and agreed to give Orcs & Elves a try; full well in the knowledge that I’d only ever be a bottle of Tequila away from convincing myself I never laid a finger on the blasted thing. It worked with Kane and Lynch.
Now that I’ve managed to put all that childishness behind me, I can crack on with the act
ual review, rather than my misadventures of the week. In Orcs & Elves, you play as Elli, the um, Elf, who for some bizarre reason never says a word but gets along just fine thanks to his talking wand; who has a name, but also has a habit of boring me to tears so much that I dare not remember it. The game begins in some generic dungeon with no explanation or even half-arsed attempt at a back story, but everyone keeps talking about some Dwarf king you’re apparently here to talk to about… I don’t know, the legal age one can work for a games developer?Orcs & Elves looks similar to Doom, which about 15 years ago would make it the dog’s pride (always left) and joy (by default, right). Unfortunately, this isn’t 15 years ago, and so the dog’s bollocks it is not. There’s some reference to the apparently “award winning” Doom RPG being made by the same people, but if I had to guess, I’d say said award was probably “biggest commercial challenge” – I sure as hell haven’t heard of it. Never mind that, though, Orcs & Elves is more than capable of letting itself down. For a start it’s a turn based RPG, that also happens to be first person. In this situation, I usually end up decided that the game may have its good points, but is let down by the ‘press a button and wait a long time for death’ combat (with the exception of Mario RPG on the SNES).
However, my problem with Orcs & Elves isn’t that the combat is turn based, oh no, the combat is generally very quick but can still leave you with enough time to rustle up some wine, and even a good vintage at that, while you plough through potions and spells, decided the fate of your foe while they sit there very politely waiting for death. The absolutely massive, completely unbearable irritation in Orcs & Elves is that the whole mother-fucking thing is turn based. When I rule this world, I’ll see to it that someone embodies the turn based method (of everything), and then are to be thrown out of the highest window of my evil lair then skullfucked when they land for good measure.
If KOTOR 2 and Mass Effect proved anything, it was that – well, that film grain sucks – and that everything’s better without a turn based system. Including darts. This leaves me wondering how the holy shitting hell we’ve made it to 2008 while still carrying the haemorrhoid that is turn based gameplay. All the turn based system in Orcs & Elves achieves is turning a videogame back into a board game, only replacing the undisputable dice mechanic in favour of “randomly” generated chance/turn/bollocks, I don’t care. By turning Orcs & Elves into essentially a board game (with every step counting as a turn), it is completely impossible to ignore the fact that it’s Dungeons & Dragons, only without friends to play with.
Somehow EA managed to take the epitome of social suicide, and then wrap its skull around a very antisocial bollard shaped like an appendix and covered in glue and poison. With the very worst that classical music has to offer playing incredibly loudly to boot. As a human being who doesn’t see the world in tiles and dice rolls, I have vowed to never play Dungeons & Dragons, and only played the rip off because I was mislead. Then again, it was probably my own fault for believing something to be interesting, by taking the word of someone who actually enjoys Myst.The end result is something that has a vendetta against social life as a concept, looks almost impressively out-dated and still only has about 4 character models, and just as many hours of gameplay. Adding to that, there’s the fact that the final boss battle is about as fair as being sent to Guantanamo Bay, via Alcatraz, for peeing behind a bush in the middle of a the countryside. With that combination, I wish I’d rather sold a kidney or so to pay for Rock Band.
I’m not going to stop kicking the shit out of Orcs & Elves yet though, I’ve got plenty to say about boss battles in general, and Orcs & Elves pretty much volunteers itself as a punching bag for the subject. Off the top of my head, Orcs & Elves is the best at demonstrating how not to do a final boss battle, with Twilight Princess being a shining example on how it should be done.
Rule one: make the final boss someone you’ve spent the biggest portion of the game wanting dead.
This isn’t exactly hard; just introduce the antagonist early on. If said antagonist hasn’t already been portrayed as the bastard to end all bastards, then after an hour, have him punch a puppy in the face or something. For some reason, games of late seem misguided in attempts at plot twists, so I’ll spell it out. It doesn’t mean change the bad guy 10 minutes before the end of the game.
Rule two: make the boss battle epic.
Another trick modern games seem to be missing. In the old days, boss battles were epic by, despite looking shite, being long but by no means artificially lengthened by perpetually respawning peons who you’d have to mow down one by one before continuing the fight. The only time it’s even remotely acceptable to ignore the rest of that is when you introduce some awesome cut scenes or at least utilise the power of modern consoles and make everything look awesome.
Rule three: make the boss feel like you can kill him.
This one could be two separate rules if you just place the stress in different places. First, you should be able to go into a boss battle knowing that it’s possible for the fucker to die. Second, the boss shouldn’t feel like a strong breeze will cause him or her to bite it, otherwise it just raises the question: how could such a wussbag become the bane of everything and anything? Is the world populated entirely by the inbred and retarded?
I seriously doubt that anyone is going to read that, then take it on board and make a game, there’s obviously far too much money to be found ripping off everything else.
Next week I’ll be trying my hand at innovation, so expect pain and suffering. Until then, remember you can still get hold of me at the usual place:
phill_j@hotmail.co.uk
(Just be glad you got any pictures this week, I was seconds away from burning myself a CD with GIMP on it, then eating the blasted thing).
Tuesday, 8 April 2008
Lost Odyssey - First Impressions
Due to the beige trickle of variation in new games for the 360 recently, I've been left reviewing a constant stream of samey shooters, while trying to avoid Turok. As a result I've been driven to trying out the latest JRPG for the 360. Blame it on laziness or my embarrassing bout of chicken pox that I'm currently suffering from, but this week's review is just going to be first impressions. If you read my Circle of Doom or Kane and Lynch reviews, you'll find it rather odd for me to bother mentioning that this is a first impressions, but in my defence any game with four discs is going to be long for the time it comes out. Enough talking about the size of Lost Odyssey (and therefore no longer contradicting my recent post on the size of modern games), and let's get down to the good stuff.
Actually, for no apparent reason I feel like teasing a bit more, in a similar manner to a hired stripper getting caught in traffic - although not exactly the same because I'll be really concerned should you imagine me in a latex police uniform. What the hell, it's something we have to get out of the way early as to not break flow later, and to bulk up my word count, but I'll start by outlining the story for you all, in my best understanding.
God knows what year it is, but Lost Odyssey is set in a parallel universe where instead of discovering fire, the human race is descended from David Blaine, and therefore had no industrial revolution, but instead a - seriously, this is the exact term - magical revolution. Rather than causing a civilisation of sharply-dressed men with interesting facial hair and top hats, using magic as a form of fuel seems to work a lot like nuclear power. Which, come to think of it, begs the question, why didn't they do that instead? That way attacking enemies with magic would be more interesting. The magic works like nuclear power in the way that it creates lots of power, some people are opposed to it and when something goes wrong at one of the power stations, a lot of very weird looking things show up and start attacking people without warning; only because it's magic, they're completely invisible until they start attacking you. The story starts with a lot of promise, with an awesome opening cutscene with lots of lovely violence and action. Enter Kaim, your ugly, broody character, who kills lots of soldiers very quickly, then hands the reigns over to you till kill a tank thing with just a sword.
Kaim's story is that he's supposedly immortal (supported by the fact he survives a meteor to the face) and has lost all his memory (probably something to do with surviving a meteor to the face too) aside from his name and awesome fighting technique. After you've wondered around enough, you're ordered to go to the council named by the space marines from the Alien movies (Urah... Hoo-rah... really? Nothing?) and told to investigate a power station with an equally silly name, because the local Greenpeace blame the meteor crash on it.
Finally, we get onto the gameplay itself! Some of you will be happy to know it's "from the creator of Final Fantasy", and had I noticed that on the cover beforehand, I wouldn't have bothered to pick it up. You see, there are only 3 games I believe turn based combat ever worked on and they are Worms games, Risk and Super Mario RPG - because it was simple and more interactive than anything else I've seen to date. The thing is, turn based combat became very redundant when games consoles started growing extra control ports and that's why I always have, and always will, have a problem with turn based combat.
Official Xbox Magazine describes it as having "one of the deepest stories we've seen on the Xbox 360", which is probably true, if it could keep on track of the damned thing with some form of consistency. Every 5 or so seconds of running around in the field causes you to trip over a group of angry, and previously invisible enemies, with no way to avoid them or even leg it like the true coward you are, this gets annoying very quickly. So, even though you get dragged as far away from the story as possible every few seconds, the effort to compensate is downright dull. You see, Kaim gradually recovers his memories in dreams, but not the fun kind of dreams where you jump off a cliff, take to the air and land in a lap dancing college. No, Kaim dreams in very, very long passages of very dull text. After reading the first five pages of the first dream, I realised there was no need to do so, and after skipping through the next 20 I was allowed to carry on with the game again. And the unavoidable fights every few seconds.
I'm pretty sure that if they'd decided to just display the message saying "Kaim recovered some more of his memory", rather than going into every last detail of how he made toast with David Cameron for the entire conservative party before their weekly game of polo, they could have quite easily cut the game down to one disc rather than four. Maybe Mr Final Fantasy really likes silly numbers of discs? Who knows? All I know on that matter is I don't much care.
Anyway, the Greenpeace council decided to send you on your merry way with another supposed immortal person and the worst attempt at a comic relief since soaps tried developing a sense of humour. And that neatly brings me down to my next issue with the game. By playing as an immortal, surely there is no need for a health meter, and as such running teeth first into a very large, very pissed off Griffin would bear even fewer consequences than running around Rapture on Bioshock blindfolded occasionally firing your shotgun. With the story being broken up the way it is, this would cause Lost Odyssey to be completely uninteresting, and briefly tempted me to go out and buy a pack of Ryvitas in protest. Instead, Mr Final Fantasy decided that your character is immortal and can never die, only he isn't and he can. But only if it's your mistake. While being able to survive a meteor dental, a few slaps by a big blue worm will leave Kaim twitching in a pool of his own blood before leaving this world for something with bigger guns, presumably.
I'm sorry, but if you're going to let a character take damage until the point when he DIES, then don't bother saying he's IMMORTAL. Make up something better, like he has the potential to live forever, as long as he doesn't push his look, otherwise God will get pissed and exact painful revenge in the form of death.
To Lost Odyssey's credit, everything generally looks rather good, with clever transitions between FMVs and the game engine which confuse you enough to think everything looks better than it does for a few seconds at least. There's also the interesting fact that rather than using the conventional "search" action when looting something like a pot on the floor, someone down the line decided to shove in the word "probe", which gave me a giggle every time writing came up saying "probe" and was followed by Kaim getting shoulder deep in the thing being searched. You can call me immature, but it's always funny watching someone who's pissed you off artificially inseminating a cow because you know just by looking that it's unpleasant. Yeah, that's what I got from "probe".
What else can I say about Lost Odyssey? It's a JRPG, so it's going to be really long, ramble on for a long time while frequently soiling itself with annoying turn based fights every few seconds. I could mention the fact that the level up / experience system makes about as much sense as wanting to jump off a giant waterfall in a barrel, but people enjoy that little mystery too.
Actually, for no apparent reason I feel like teasing a bit more, in a similar manner to a hired stripper getting caught in traffic - although not exactly the same because I'll be really concerned should you imagine me in a latex police uniform. What the hell, it's something we have to get out of the way early as to not break flow later, and to bulk up my word count, but I'll start by outlining the story for you all, in my best understanding.
God knows what year it is, but Lost Odyssey is set in a parallel universe where instead of discovering fire, the human race is descended from David Blaine, and therefore had no industrial revolution, but instead a - seriously, this is the exact term - magical revolution. Rather than causing a civilisation of sharply-dressed men with interesting facial hair and top hats, using magic as a form of fuel seems to work a lot like nuclear power. Which, come to think of it, begs the question, why didn't they do that instead? That way attacking enemies with magic would be more interesting. The magic works like nuclear power in the way that it creates lots of power, some people are opposed to it and when something goes wrong at one of the power stations, a lot of very weird looking things show up and start attacking people without warning; only because it's magic, they're completely invisible until they start attacking you. The story starts with a lot of promise, with an awesome opening cutscene with lots of lovely violence and action. Enter Kaim, your ugly, broody character, who kills lots of soldiers very quickly, then hands the reigns over to you till kill a tank thing with just a sword.
Kaim's story is that he's supposedly immortal (supported by the fact he survives a meteor to the face) and has lost all his memory (probably something to do with surviving a meteor to the face too) aside from his name and awesome fighting technique. After you've wondered around enough, you're ordered to go to the council named by the space marines from the Alien movies (Urah... Hoo-rah... really? Nothing?) and told to investigate a power station with an equally silly name, because the local Greenpeace blame the meteor crash on it.
Finally, we get onto the gameplay itself! Some of you will be happy to know it's "from the creator of Final Fantasy", and had I noticed that on the cover beforehand, I wouldn't have bothered to pick it up. You see, there are only 3 games I believe turn based combat ever worked on and they are Worms games, Risk and Super Mario RPG - because it was simple and more interactive than anything else I've seen to date. The thing is, turn based combat became very redundant when games consoles started growing extra control ports and that's why I always have, and always will, have a problem with turn based combat.
Official Xbox Magazine describes it as having "one of the deepest stories we've seen on the Xbox 360", which is probably true, if it could keep on track of the damned thing with some form of consistency. Every 5 or so seconds of running around in the field causes you to trip over a group of angry, and previously invisible enemies, with no way to avoid them or even leg it like the true coward you are, this gets annoying very quickly. So, even though you get dragged as far away from the story as possible every few seconds, the effort to compensate is downright dull. You see, Kaim gradually recovers his memories in dreams, but not the fun kind of dreams where you jump off a cliff, take to the air and land in a lap dancing college. No, Kaim dreams in very, very long passages of very dull text. After reading the first five pages of the first dream, I realised there was no need to do so, and after skipping through the next 20 I was allowed to carry on with the game again. And the unavoidable fights every few seconds.
I'm pretty sure that if they'd decided to just display the message saying "Kaim recovered some more of his memory", rather than going into every last detail of how he made toast with David Cameron for the entire conservative party before their weekly game of polo, they could have quite easily cut the game down to one disc rather than four. Maybe Mr Final Fantasy really likes silly numbers of discs? Who knows? All I know on that matter is I don't much care.
Anyway, the Greenpeace council decided to send you on your merry way with another supposed immortal person and the worst attempt at a comic relief since soaps tried developing a sense of humour. And that neatly brings me down to my next issue with the game. By playing as an immortal, surely there is no need for a health meter, and as such running teeth first into a very large, very pissed off Griffin would bear even fewer consequences than running around Rapture on Bioshock blindfolded occasionally firing your shotgun. With the story being broken up the way it is, this would cause Lost Odyssey to be completely uninteresting, and briefly tempted me to go out and buy a pack of Ryvitas in protest. Instead, Mr Final Fantasy decided that your character is immortal and can never die, only he isn't and he can. But only if it's your mistake. While being able to survive a meteor dental, a few slaps by a big blue worm will leave Kaim twitching in a pool of his own blood before leaving this world for something with bigger guns, presumably.
I'm sorry, but if you're going to let a character take damage until the point when he DIES, then don't bother saying he's IMMORTAL. Make up something better, like he has the potential to live forever, as long as he doesn't push his look, otherwise God will get pissed and exact painful revenge in the form of death.
To Lost Odyssey's credit, everything generally looks rather good, with clever transitions between FMVs and the game engine which confuse you enough to think everything looks better than it does for a few seconds at least. There's also the interesting fact that rather than using the conventional "search" action when looting something like a pot on the floor, someone down the line decided to shove in the word "probe", which gave me a giggle every time writing came up saying "probe" and was followed by Kaim getting shoulder deep in the thing being searched. You can call me immature, but it's always funny watching someone who's pissed you off artificially inseminating a cow because you know just by looking that it's unpleasant. Yeah, that's what I got from "probe".
What else can I say about Lost Odyssey? It's a JRPG, so it's going to be really long, ramble on for a long time while frequently soiling itself with annoying turn based fights every few seconds. I could mention the fact that the level up / experience system makes about as much sense as wanting to jump off a giant waterfall in a barrel, but people enjoy that little mystery too.
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