Asinine
Reviews
LEGO Pirates of the Caribbean: The Video Game (Nintendo DS)
Best Lego game ever, but keep in mind Lego games aren't that great
The Good
I will admit that the style of Lego games is very charming and cute and it's pretty funny how characters and items explode into a dozen tiny blocks if you hit them enough. This is a style that is obviously for all ages because it's fun for the little children while it also stays interesting for the older people like me. It might have something to do with great nostalgic memories since I, like many other people, grew up playing with Lego and the likes. I do wonder if the toys will make a come-back someday...
Rather then blindly ripping-off the movies and copying every scene this game does take some liberty with the material; a lot of new jokes are added, you can take your time to explore areas like ships and we get to do some side-quests as well. At the same time it still follows the same story and has the same "feel" as the movies did. I especially liked some of the new jokes because they were pretty good and sometimes they made you think they used a joke from the movies, only to surprise you with something they came up with themselves.
Unlike other Lego games I played, there was no reason to ever be in the HUB-world, in this case Tortuga, because there was just nothing you actually needed there. I remember that in Star Wars you could buy a ton of important items that really helped a lot, but here everything I ran into was cosmetic or just for giggles. I also liked how you could just play through an entire movie without returning to Tortuga after every mission to enter the next one.
After you completed a mission once you can do it again in a special mode that allows you to play it with any character you want, this allows you to mess with the story in weird ways (such as fighting Davy Jones with Elizabeth), but more importantly it allows you to enter areas you couldn't enter before because it required the help of a character you didn't have around. In these areas you can find bonus items and collectibles which can come in handy,
The music was of course awesome, this is Pirates of the Caribbean we are talking about after all. It doesn't matter how often you hear the main theme, it just sounds so adventurous and epic that it will stun you every time, even if you know Jack is just making a fool out of himself. My favorite sound though is "Davy Jones theme" which is a very sad, yet still dramatic and loud song that always gets me in the right mood to keep on fighting hordes of enemies (in the game of course).
The Bad
There is barely any challenge to this game and that goes for both the puzzles as well as the combat, I know this game is supposed to be playable by kids, but that doesn't mean you can't challenge them a little to avoid making the game boring. Every fight can be won by simply spamming the attack button without any tactics at all and most of the puzzles required the same five or six possible solutions to solve. I got through this game in less than a day without rushing at all, just because it required no thought or skill for me to complete it.
The game completely fails to tell the story properly, so you pretty much have to watch the movies if you want to know what the game is about. The first problem is that none of the characters have a voice, so a lot dialogue is just gibberish while characters point at things or make faces, this doesn't work and makes the characters very forgettable. The second problem are the cut-scenes which show a bunch of weird images while having no narration, I know the movies and I still couldn't figure out what the game was trying to tell me.
The Bottom Line
This could have been an amazing game, a 9/10 even, if it wasn't for the mistakes I have seen in every Lego game I have ever played (which is two games in total): repetitive gameplay and a serious problem with the storytelling. This leads me to believe that the game is just in the hands of the wrong development team and probably needs one that does know how to stitch and adventure game together and tell a story. You might argue that this is just part of the Lego-style, but that's my point, this studio seems to make the exact same game all the time and just add whatever movie they want to add to the mix.
If you can ignore the fact that this game is very short and easy, an adult fan of the movies might enjoy this game, kids will probably be all over this and whether or not they know the movies is not very important in this case if you are too old to be consider a kid and you haven't seen the movies you should either watch them or just pass on the game as well. Personally I liked the game for as long as it lasted, but it was the same kind of fun I have when I play Garry's Mod and I spawn NPC's in the middle of a minefield.
By Asinine on March 2, 2016
Star Wars: Battlefront II (PlayStation 2)
I hate droidekas.
The Good
Large battlegrounds with plenty of AI walking around.
Story mode presented through the eyes of a soldier.
Galactic Conquest is a surprising addition.
The Bad
Weapons handle like ass.
Some game mechanics feel unfinished or under-explained.
Space combat doesn't quite work yet.
CIS is too overpowered.
The Bottom Line
It was recently announced that Dice was developing a new Star Wars: Battlefront game on the Frostbite engine, which was enough to make me call E3 2013 a success. I never watched the Star Wars movies, tv show or breakfast cereal, but this particular series is very dear to me.
The game is all about reenacting the famous battles from the movies, starting out with war against the CIS and extending all the way to the events of the original trilogy. You are a member of the 501st clone army and your brigade is unfortunate enough to be shipped from one battleground to the other. On these battlegrounds, you get to pick a class and will have to fulfill objectives with the help of the AI soldiers.
What I like about this setup is that you aren't some kind of superhuman, bullet-absorbing powerhouse, but rather a petty private slogging through the mud along with your equally mortal friends. If you run into enemies, then you rely on your superior skills at firing and dodging to get you through the encounter, since five or six bullets are enough to kill you. It gives a lot more epic feel to the battles, when you realize you are only a part of the war machine and actually need your fellow clones to survive the day.
Most battles revolve around capturing control points, which allow you, and your allies, to respawn at that point. If you have all control points, then you win the battle, unless the enemy can recapture a point within 20 seconds. You can, however, lose the battle if the enemy manages to drain your reinforcements pool before you get all the points (or, in some cases, before you can do the same to them).
The game also has vehicles, space-battles and co-op in it, which at least means that it has plenty of content for your average title. The space-battles can be slightly annoying, though, as the points system is very poorly set up and can lead to situations where the enemy has a completely wrecked main ship, but still wins because the AI was doing nothing to prevent them from shooting down your gunships. Flight control works for the most part, but it's very easy to overshoot when you're performing acrobatics to get an enemy in view, which is made worse by the lack of a slow-down function.
All other aspects of the gameplay work very well and are generally fun to use, even if I do think that most weapons handle like ass. Vehicles handle like you would expect from them, the control scheme is very adequate for a shooter and everything is balanced. I do however feel like the CIS is way too overpowered, since they have the droideka as an additional unit, which moves faster, has more health and can call upon a one-way shield for complete immunity. They also have an insane gunship, which pretty much excels in all fields, excluding maneuverability, making it excellent at taking down frigates, smaller ships, other gunships and, if you hold out for long enough, you'll get a repair bonus that makes it impossible for anybody to destroy the gunship.
There is also Galactic Conquest, which is a soft-strategy game in which you and a friend can fight over domination of the galaxy. It's remarkably solid for an alternate mode hidden inside a third-person shooter, though the bonuses you can purchase completely break some of the battles, such as the ridiculous reinforcements boost. There used to be online support for this game, but it has since then been dropped.
A recommendation for this title goes out to all Star Wars fans, though I doubt that will surprise anybody. If you are not a fan, then this game is still pretty good if you can forgive the lack of a proper story and just want to enjoy some hectic battlegrounds with sci-fi weapons in it. Admittedly, it is rather rough around the edges, but it's also a very varied and rich game that is certain to please most gamers.
By Asinine on June 15, 2013
Gears of War: Judgment (Xbox 360)
Innocent, for now.
The Good
The game cleverly implements narrative through the additional challenges and remarks of Kilo Squad.
Two new characters added to the roster.
Same quality of gameplay we've come to expect from this series.
The Bad
Missions are very short and not particularly memorable; the Aftermath campaign also feels like a pointless inclusion.
I preferred the old Horde mode.
Area-design is very poor.
The Bottom Line
Gears of War games are generally considered to be the most difficult to review, since most entries are functional cover-based shooting games with no stand-out features or obvious flaws. Judgement, in many ways, continues this proud tradition for the most part, but now that the quirky developers from People Can Fly joined the team, there are finally some shimmers of actual creativity to be found in the game, some of which I'll be praising and others I'll be pounding into the ground.
The title "Judgement" is not just a conventional video game title meant to break up the tedium of numerical sequels, as the game is actually about a court session in which the protagonists are questioned. The missions you play are actually the four members of Kilo Squad explaining, in great detail, how the events that led to their imprisonment really happened. It doesn't sound like a remarkably interesting story, but the writers did some really clever things with it, such as optional challenges that will make the story more heroic.
As is to be expected from this series, the characters, dialogue and overally story aren't really that noteworthy. You'll still spend 8 to 9 hours between marines shouting every line of dialogue and exchanging sarcastic banter, but after all these years it has started to feel pretty generic. For the first time, though, the lead-singer of this screaming orchestra is notably absent and instead the squad is led by engineer Baird. Cole is also present, but we also get two new marines: Paduk, a marine from a Russian faction, and girl, who is a bit boring and generic.
It's a bit of a shame that the levels are very short; most of the missions take between 3 and 10 minutes tops before they move on to the next locale. The environments are also very dull and leave you with very little room to explore; the game also has a curious habit of putting a lot of work into designing rooms that contain nothing for the player to interact with.
The set-pieces are pretty nice, though, and especially a mission which was pretty much a futuristic reenactment of D-Day was fun. A lot of them, however, do end being very sub-par, such as the many times you'll have to fight in a dark or dusty area, or the ones in which you must protect the bot from enemies for a set amount of time. The entirety of the "Aftermath" campaign also feels very pointless, as it is completely separated from the whole trial and instead focuses on telling a side-story based on the events of Gears of War 3.
Gameplay has remained practically unchanged and veterans of the series will not see many surprises here. By tapping the A-button you stick your character to the closest cover he or she can find and you can then pop out and shoot at enemies who are also in cover. The winners are usually the people that still have a head after a minute. It all works pretty well, which is unsurprising, since the developers have been perfecting these mechanics for years already.
There is also a large roster of enemies to fight and one feature I liked was that each set-piece in the campaign would randomly decide what combination of foes would attack the player. I only found one type to be really obnoxious, which was the guy that would get enraged when shot and starts to charge you relentlessly. Aside from that bastard, the enemies have never being as varied or enjoyable.
The new Invasion mode is not really enjoyable, though, as it is pretty much the old horde mode, but with an escort quest attached to it; an escort that can't move or defend itself, since the escort is a generator. Endless waves of enemies are fun to fight in a standard horde mode, but not so much when the corpsers show up and dig underneath all your defenses, straight to your generator. It genuinely feels unfair when you are racking up kills like a pro, but suddenly bloodmounts and corpsers launch a cooperative attack and instant-kill your last generator before you even realize they have spawned.
Judgement is, based on quality alone, the worst entry in this franchise, but when you take into account that it does some very interesting things with the standard narrative, you might not care for that whole, overrated quality stuff. If you still do, then Judgement is still the same, old, decent shooter that, while starting to get stale and problematic, is still better than most of the other sludge that tries to emulate it. I recommend getting a friend and playing this game through together if you're still interested in the franchise.
By Asinine on June 13, 2013
UnEpic (Windows)
A nice game for when you're away from the table(top)
The Good
Zeratul is a very fun partner-character and the way he's implemented into the story makes for a fun chemistry with the protagonist.
The quests are generally decent and often require problem-solving skills to overcome.
The castle is very much drenched into tabletop logic.
A very fair challenge with plenty of difficulty settings to tune the experience.
Bosses are very fun to beat.
The Bad
There is no real freedom of progression.
The writing is obnoxiously horrible with many spelling/grammar errors.
Main character is an obnoxious douche whose every line involves drugs, sex or a pop-culture reference.
Random loot doesn't work at all.
The Bottom Line
I play a lot of tabletop RPG in my spare time; a friend of mine runs a custom game that, despite using plenty of fantasy conventions, has a very rich lore and plenty of political intrigue. It's a very story-driven game, but I've also played different games that were more about the combat, the loot and the quests. The latter is the type of tabletop game UnEpic seeks to emulate, though it's methods are, admittedly, a bit odd.
In UnEpic you take on the role of Daniel, a terrible tabletop gamer who leaves the game for a piss and is magically transported to a castle. He concludes that his friends must have drugged him and decides to play out the adventure before him, which quickly results in a phantom trying (and failing) to posses him and getting stuck in Daniel's body. Daniel quickly learns that, in order to return home, he must defeat the lord of the castle and that his hallucination might be a little more real than he initially thought.
What I like most about the story is the inclusion of the phantom and, to be quite honest, he is more interesting than the main character could ever hope to be. He takes on a sort of Navi-esque role where he advises Daniel throughout the adventure, but often his words are outright lies and deceptions. As the story progresses, though, he also develops in a very interesting way, based on whether or not the player has triggered certain events to occur.
The main character, on the other hand, is an obnoxious douchebag from start to finish. Part of the fun of a tabletop RPG lies in abandoning everything you know about luxury and technology and simply losing yourself in the world created by the host, but Daniel instead chooses to go through this fantasy casually referencing all kinds of video games, movies and science fiction. This makes it difficult to really immerse yourself in the world and it just feels out of place for a game that laments the tabletop genre.
Aside from the main story, you can also choose to pick up several quests as you venture through the castle. These are usually pretty fun and never demand you to go too far out of your way to complete them. Most quests also reward you with items or gold, instead of experience points, which is nice, since it means you aren't punished for skipping them too much. I can especially recommend the Pure Spirit quests, as they really influence the story in a major way.
The second most-important part of a tabletop is, of course, the statistics. This is the part of the game that is very disappointing, though, as the game doesn't really offer a great amount of skills to play around with. You got your basic set of skills that govern all your physical weapons and then another set of skills for all magic schools; that is all there is. A real tabletop would offer skills like: sneaking, lock-picking, cunning (disabling traps) and smithing, which would also open up a lot of new play-styles AND increase the replay-value of the game. A real tabletop RPG also wouldn't lock all the magic schools and have you unlock them one by one through the story, as that means a player can't possibly focus on becoming a mage of any sort; if you were planning on playing a necromancer, for example, then I hope you don't mind hoarding points, because the associated magic school isn't unlocked until the very end of the game.
It also feels very pointless to specialize in any skill, since each enemy has weaknesses and strengths, but they are also generally limited to certain areas. For example, once you reach the catacombs, it suddenly becomes very useful to have leveled up your skill in maces, as they do tons of damage to skeletons. However, maces are almost always weaker than swords in any other part of the game, which are, in turn, useless against skeletons. Skeletons, subsequently, do appear outside of the catacombs section, but not in any numbers great enough to be worth the skill points you'd have to put into maces. It's a very obnoxious problem that I can only really attribute to the designer's inexperience.
The game also boasts randomized loot, which is true, but this isn't something like Borderlands where all the data for weapons and armor could fill up a decent hard drive. UnEpic has a very short list of weapons and the differences between them are in effect alone, i.e. they all use the same few sprites. Aside from one or two exceptions, I found most of these weapons to be quite pointless, like a scimitar that did 20% more damage against plants, which dropped two levels after I finished the freaking garden stage. You'll probably end up using the standard items from the store most of the time.
The presentation is pretty spot-on, however, and I am not just talking about the serviceable pixelated art-style. The game has some very useful audio and visual ques that help out very well in the gameplay. An enemy that spots you, for example, receives a large exclamation mark over his head, Metal Gear Solid style. A sound-effect also briefly plays over the background music to let you know that you've been spotted and may have to defend yourself. An equally fitting sound-effect plays whenever you activate a trap, which plays just soon enough for you to potentially step backwards, but also with a timing that makes you say "oh crap" whenever you hear it. The standard noises that indicate low health are also present, but instead of repeatedly playing these constantly, there is enough time in-between beeps to give your ears some rest, and the pitch is also not too high.
Sprites are also very nice, though nothing to be truly impressed by. One little touch I did enjoy was that Daniel goes naked if you choose to unequip or drop his armor.
Overall, UnEpic is not a great RPG, but since the indie genre is particularly starving for decent role-playing games at this point, and it comes at a pretty low price, it's probably worth your time if you're looking for a less-complex RPG or a distraction from more conventional games.
By Asinine on June 10, 2013
Tenchu: Fatal Shadows (PlayStation 2)
Hello there, glitch. Having a fine da-AAARGH!
The Good
Revenge story is simple, but pretty enjoyable.
Dialogue seems to be written for an anime, which I found to be entertaining.
Levels allow for some exploration and reward doing so with hidden items.
Pulling off fancy-looking assassinations is easy as long as you stay hidden.
The Bad
Glitches galore!
Controls feels very stiff and constricting, which leads to unfair situations.
Story never explains who anybody is and is too busy being pretentious to go into any depth.
Graphics are dull and unimaginative.
The Bottom Line
Recently my favorite game store closed, which meant I suddenly had to spend 53 euros of in-store credit. Since the store hadn't stocked up on new releases and most decent games were nowhere to be found, I had to spend all of that money on PS2 games, which I've since then being tearing a new asshole one by one. I used to play Tenchu as a kid, however, so I had assumed this one would at least be able to entertain me. I was wrong...
The story kicks off with Rin, a female ninja, discovering that some assholes burned down her village and killed everyone she knows. She instantly fights her way to the center of the village where we witness another ninja arriving at the scene to find the elder dead, unfortunately Rin arrives at that moment and blames her for the crime. Rin loses a battle against the ninja, known as Ayame, and then swears an oath of vengeance.
It's a very simple revenge plot, but I initially believed it had some great potential, as the game showed us that the person she chases is not responsible at all, and it was instead the doing of another organization. The plot however derailed very soon after, as it got stuck in various random side-missions instead of developing the cast of characters. Most of the people the game introduced in the first mission disappeared from the plot entirely and I learned pretty much nothing about the few that remained. Maybe the game assumes I have played some of the other Tenchu games, but upon picking this up at the store, I had assumed it was the first of the series or at the very least a self-contained story, as the title contained no numbers.
The story instead started to revolve more around Rin and Ayame doing various missions and occasionally meeting, which was a shame, since they were the only characters I couldn't stand; Rin due to the script and voice that made her sound like a 16 year old American girl demanding a new car from her father and Ayame because I had no idea what she was doing in the plot. Each mission also starts with a cut-scene that consists of concept art being flashed before a camera while a man dramatically narrates bits of lore with acoustic music in the background. Those cut-scenes got almost as annoying as the end-chapter preview clips in which a man screams dramatically about the events of the next chapter.
As for the sneaking in this game, it's actually not all that bad. You have a meter that displays how close enemies are to you and, if they have seen you at some point, how aware they are of your presence. As long as an enemy is not aware of you (green), you can instantly kill them with a simple tap of the square button, which will have Rin or Ayame doing a flashy assassination. These increase your score and give you scrolls, which unlock new abilities as you collect enough of them. Along with a wide arsenal of items that can help you out, this makes the sneaking a lot of fun.
The controls tend to be a little too stiff, though. Both Ayame and Rin control like tanks, with slow turns and limited view. I was at one point detected by an enemy, simply because the camera would not move in any direction and the position it was aimed at was a top-down view of Ayame and the floor. I've also used the term "sneaking" loosely, as you can't really move from a crouched position and have to either roll constantly or run, which sometimes alerts enemies instantly and sometimes doesn't; consistency is for losers, after all.
I think the controls are appropriate for the combat part of the game, since the stiffness makes it feel like a punishment for getting caught in the first place. This makes it kind of stupid that the game has forced boss battles, but we'll let that one slide, since staying hidden is a bigger issue from time to time. The AI is downright horrible and, again, inconsistent. Sometimes it would detect me from across a room and sometimes I could dance around it with no reaction at all. When it does detect you and you try to make an escape, all tension and immersion will be shattered when you witness the pathetic nature of the enemies. They barely chase you, but when they try, they generally get themselves stuck on scenery or endlessly fall off the same ledges. They also don't investigate anything; at one point there was an enemy almost in front of me, so I threw a knive at him; he became alerted, but didn't move from his spot, allowing me to easily kill him with my remaining knives.
Glitches also run rampant throughout the game and the most hilarious of them was an instance where I assassinated a guy, but the roles somehow got reversed and it showed him instantly killing Rin. It would have been more fun if it was more comically timed. I also witnessed the AI walking themselves into a torch at one point, which apparently made it realize I was somewhere close to him.
I do, however, appreciate the level-design, which is very open and allows for multiple different approaches. Most levels even advertised in the hints that there were many different ways to reach my target and I should just explore. Exploration is also nicely encouraged, as there are many items scattered around that can help you on your journey. It's a bit of a shame that the designers went with such a dull art-style, though, as the game would have benefited from more vibrant colors. Everything just tends to blend together in a brown and gray mess. It's also very difficult to figure out where the borders lie, which sometimes meant the game would prevent me from climbing a certain roof that would allow me to surprise a guard, forcing me instead to take a riskier route to appease the programmers.
At the end of the day, I am simply disappointed. The Playstation 2 was a very rich console with many different kind of games on it that you couldn't find anywhere else, but this also means it has more crap than any other system out there. Tenchu keeps putting itself in situations where, at the core, it is entertaining and functional, but everything simply falls apart as it goes on. The story is unfocused and messy, the controls are too stiff and the visuals ugly. Maybe I could have forgiven it if this really was the first installment and it just had trouble getting its ideas realized, but no, this was the sixth installment in the franchise and the second title specifically for the PS2.
By Asinine on June 4, 2013
Paper Mario (Nintendo 64)
Paper? Yes. Mario? Yes. RPG? nonononono
The Good
The paper art-style is really cut and they made clever use of it.
Reaction commands make the combat a little more involved.
Dialogue is well-written and I found myself laughing at some of the lines.
Story as a whole is pretty fun.
The adult jokes are not too frequent or in-your-face.
The Bad
Leveling system is poorly designed.
Combat starts to wear on you after a few days.
Many badges are useless.
Barely any challenge at all.
Only 1 companion at a time.
The Bottom Line
Paper Mario is the spiritual sequel to Super Mario RPG on the Super Nintendo, in the sense that it's a spin-off RPG with a unique art-style. The story goes that Mario and Luigi are both invited by the princess for a party, but upon arrival Bowser shows up and lifts the castle up into the sky. As it turns out, Bowser has stolen the "Star Rod", a magical artifact that grants wishes, with which he is finally able to beat Mario. After his initial failure, Mario sets out to free the imprisoned protectors of the Star Rod and discover a way to beat Bowser.
The large wheel of fortune, or in this case "wheel of quirky art-styles", that I imagine is housed within the Nintendo headquarters, landed on paper this time around, so everything in the game is themed as if it were made out of paper cut-outs. I've never really gotten into the recent yarn craze, but this style is actually pretty neat, since there is a lot of detail to it. One of my favorite touches occurs when characters fall, since they slowly dawdle in the air instead of plummeting straight downwards.
Being that this is an RPG, you of course team up with a variety of party-members. I really appreciate it that the designers chose to team Mario up with a new cast of characters, as opposed to something more predictable like Luigi. Most of these characters are actually pretty entertaining and fun to have around, especially Goombario, whose special ability provides Mario with insight on areas and enemies.
The overall story does tend to be a little dull and it has the same problem as Mario Galaxy, where it's too childish for older players and it has too much exposition for a younger audience. Side-quests are much more entertaining, though, as there is a wide variety of characters to interact with. The writers cleverly decided to imply that races commonly known to serve under Bowser are not all bad, so you get locations like Koopa Town and Goomba Town, where the inhabitants are peaceful and you can do quests for them.
During your travels, you'll often run into enemies that will charge towards you; once you make contact with the enemy, it will teleport you to a battle-screen where you can fight that foe. This allows you to get in a preemptive strike if you hurt the foe upon making contact, but it also works the other way around. Battles are pretty standard; you select your move and Mario does it, however, each attack has a special condition that allows it to do more damage. If you press A before jumping on an enemy, for example, it will have Mario jump a second time. These reaction commands do actually help to make the combat more involved and some special abilities make clever use of them.
There is however one huge problem with the game and that is the fact that it can't really be called an "RPG" in terms of mechanics. Mario can level up, but doing so doesn't necessarily increase his raw power. Instead, you get to pick between leveling up either health, FP (mana), or badge-points (more about those later). As a result, Mario doesn't actually become any stronger throughout the game. You do 1 damage when jumping on an enemy at level 1 and you'll do 1 damage to an enemy when jumping on him at level 10 too, nothing changes in that regard. Your companions don't level up at all, so as a result it never feels like you are progressing as a character.
There is also no equipment to manage, aside from badges; these badges require badge-points and give Mario some special abilities that vary in usefulness. I like to compare them to the perks from Fallout 3, but that would be too kind, since the perks had more creativity and you had more room to use them. Most badges eat so many points that equipping them becomes very costly, especially since leveling up in this game takes forever.
This leaves the combat as the only real "RPG" mechanic, but since there is no progression, the difficulty is completely planned out and geared towards the easy side of things. With no way to change this, the game relies on being an "experience". That's alright, I like experiences, but games like Earthbound (which are also called "experiences") often have the player move from event to event at a pretty fast pace, whereas Paper Mario often bogs the player down with long journeys from one location to another.
So yes, aside from the art-style, which is very nice and detailed, the game has very little to offer. The story, while entertaining, moves to slowly and the gameplay lacks any kind of substance. Super Mario RPG and Mario & Luigi: Superstar Saga are both a lot better, so if you are interested in playing a Mario RPG, I would recommend either of those two.
By Asinine on June 2, 2013
Oni (PlayStation 2)
Interacting with terminals: the game!
The Good
It's a creative idea.
I found myself taking a liking to the hand-to-hand combat.
Dialogue is reliably entertaining.
The Bad
Graphics are very "meh".
There is not a whole lot of anime to be found in this game.
Guns are absolute ass.
As are the rest of the controls.
Story is not very engaging.
Quality and the style of the drawings is very inconsistent.
The Bottom Line
Oni is one of the first games ever created by Bungie, back before they grew popular with the Halo series. It has been on my radar for a while, not just because it is a Bungie game, which as a studio usually produces pretty good shooters, but also because it was advertised as an "anime action game". I like to pretend that I am immune to hype, but when those three words are named in one sentence, even my jaded hearth suddenly jumps back to life.
It sounded to good to be true and sadly it was. Oni is a game, I can confirm that. It also has a decent amount of action in it, though I'd argue that the majority of the gameplay consists of pressing X in front of computer screens. However, the anime influences are somewhat difficult to trace down. Aside from a pretty nice animated opening, the game relies mostly on in-game graphics, which aren't very stylized or colorful at all. In fact, most of the levels seemed to have been made in the Doom Builder, considering all the gray walls and perfectly square rooms. The only real anime influences I can detect are related to the design of the characters (which all have unnaturally colored hair) and the fact that enemies tend to scream the name of their attack. Apparently the brainstorming sessions consisted of a Digimon marathon and a collection of Tenchi Muyo fanart.
Of course visual design isn't the only element that makes an anime; the story is also important. The story of this game is heavily inspired by Ghost in the Shell, since both works are about a special task-force operating in a cyberpunk city. Players take on the role of Konoko, a female agent, who is fresh from the academy. She is tasked with taking out an evil syndicate that specialize in cyber-crime and contraband. That is the extent of the plot that I could decipher, since the game is written in medias res and I couldn't be bothered playing it for more than three hours.
Konoko and the rest of the cast I was introduced too were actually pretty entertaining and some of the dialogue had me smiling. Voice-acting is also pretty good and I would have continued playing the game if I could.
The real problem with the game is the gameplay. It boasts that the player is free to choose between fighting enemies with hand-to-hand combat or guns. This is true, but I dare you to run up to an enemy and punch him in the face when that enemy wields a freaking rocket launcher. Ammo is also very scarce, so you are encouraged to save it up for when you really need it, so there is not really a choice at all. Deus Ex did this way better, allowing the player to sneak up on enemies and knock them unconscious very easily. You can sneak in Oni, but you lack the means to take out a guard stealthily, so once you're behind him, all you can do is start punching him anyway, which will instantly attract all other nearby guards as well.
The worst part, however, are the legendarily poor controls. I am not lying when I say that this is the most uncontrollable game I've ever played, it far surpasses the likes of Conker's Bad Fur Day. Let me give you an example, a very basic one: In most games you run as fast as you can by pressing the analog stick all the way forward, but in Oni you press it all the way forward two times. Yes, it has three states of movement speed; walking, running and dashing.
The controls also tend to fail you at the worst possible times. Stuff like grabs, sliding or even just moving forward glitch out at the worst possible times. Pulling off grabs is especially random and I lost count of how often I desperately needed one to happen, but couldn't trigger it no matter how hard I tried.
Gunplay is equally useless, praise the lord for the auto-target, because it would be impossible to hit anything otherwise. There are two types of guns, pistols and rifles, whose only real differences are that one uses red ammo and the other green ammo. There is no point in devising a strategy of any sorts, since you'll always be using whatever weapon you happen to find ammo for, which itself is a rare occurrence. The scarcity of the ammunition saps all satisfaction out of the shooting mechanics, because you will always find yourself running out and having to make do without for long periods of time. Also lovely are the many times when the game gives you green ammo while you are wielding a red gun or vice versa. Especially when you then finally find a damn green gun, but can't pick it up, because the "Press R3 to pick up" prompt doesn't show up.
Oni is a game that had so much potential to be mind-blowing, but it's ultimately crippled by some very amateur design. From controls that assign important functions to unreliable buttons like R3 to boxy and colorless level-design, Oni reeks of incompetence. In a world where anime games are almost exclusively dominated by overly long RPGs and fighting games, Oni had a chance to introduce a new sub-genre, perfect for people like me who have too little time for RPGs and are terrible at tournament fighters. A failure of this magnitude must have set off a lot of alarms, because no similar games have been released since, or at least that I know if. If I am wrong, then by all means, please send me a pm.
By Asinine on May 29, 2013
Tony Hawk's Underground (PlayStation 2)
Very average
The Good
Simple controls make the game easy to learn, but hard to master.
Levels are designed with skating in mind and thus everything is placed to keep combos going.
Plenty of customization.
The Bad
Missions are very short and don't allow you to stay after getting enough points.
Maps are way too large and the settings aren't very memorable.
Not as crazy and over-the-top as its sequel.
Story is not very interesting or inspired.
The Bottom Line
In Tony Hawk's Underground you take control over a skateboarder from New Jersey. After a celebrity visited the slums, you manage to impress him with your tricks and are advised to pursue a sponsorship. After this initial success, you quickly find yourself in the skateboarding industry, posing for magazine ads and partaking in tournaments.
Each chapter starts with a cut-scene that progresses the story, after which you are dropped in a new map and are free to explore it as much as you like. In order to move the story forward, you will have to perform missions for various non-player characters. For the first Tony Hawk game to have a career mode, I must say that I am very underwhelmed. The sequel to this game was all about the "World Destruction Tour", which was a tournament in which two teams had to travel around the world and score points by creating as much chaos as possible. A generic adventure to become a professional skateboarder feels very lazy and uninspired by comparison.
At least the game still has very tight controls to make up for that. A game about skateboarding has the potential to be an unplayable mess, see also the Skate series, but Tony Hawk kept it nice and simple by categorizing the various moves. You use Circle for grabs, Square for flips, Triangle to grind and X to jump. What kind of grab, flip, grind or jump that you do is then decided by what directions you push on the D-pad or control stick. This makes the game very easy to learn once a player familiarizes themselves with the physics, but it also has a lot of depth to it, allowing them to keep getting better and better as they play.
The physics can get a bit wonky, though. Very early on in the game, heck, in the first tutorial objective of the game, it will teach you how to get off your skateboard. This will allow you to climb more effectively and pull yourself up ledges. You'll however quickly notice that the game doesn't care whether you are on a board or not, so walking around feels like your gliding around at high speeds. I can't even confirm that it helps with the climbing; you easily jump a meter into the sky, that much is true, but whether or not you'll grab a ledge or not is a gamble.
Objectives in the game are somewhat varied, but most of them are either about getting a set amount of points, finding items on the map or doing specific tricks. They are all very much alright, but I don't like having to look for NPCs on the maps, since the maps are quite large and the models relatively small. I definitely prefer the sequel's approach; just give me a list with objectives and a picture of where I have to be. There is also something wrong with the pacing, since you only need to do two or three objectives before the game moves on to the next chapter.
This has the added effect that none of the maps are particularly memorable. They're are very nicely designed; most scenery is positioned in a way that allows you to string together beautiful combos and there is enough variation, but the size, combined with how little time you get to spend in them, makes none really stand out. I can still perfectly detail the entire layout of Boston, Australia, Berlin, Barcelona and the final level from the sequel, but wouldn't even be able to name any locations from this game by name.
I am also not really a fan of how the skate-culture (skalture?) is presented in this game. In Thug 2 you were doing the same thing as in this game, but the over-the-top destructive theme made it into more of a parody. In this game you are just being an asshole all day long, knocking down plants and skating on graves to boost your fucking ego. The kick-ass soundtrack is still present, though, which is a relief.
At the end of the day, I'd say that most of my problems with this game come from it being geared too much towards skaters, which I suppose I can't really blame anyone for. The story about a complete unknown working himself up to stardom is probably a lot more interesting if you yourself spend your days grinding away in the local park. The glorification of obnoxious behavior and the control scheme that is easy to understand for those unfamiliar with games further support this hypothesis. The game can still be very entertaining for those outside of the skating scene, but personally I'd recommend Tony Hawk's Underground 2 for those people.
By Asinine on May 28, 2013
Kingdom Hearts (PlayStation 2)
It's all about the adventure!
The Good
Visiting Disney Worlds and interacting with the characters who live there is very entertaining.
The real-time combat is a lot of fun and often very challenging.
Visuals are nice and colorful. Enough variation to keep you interested.
The bits of Final Fantasy spread throughout the game are fun to keep an eye out for.
Lots of exploration to be done and secrets to be found.
The Bad
The exposition and overarching story can be embarrassingly poor at times.
Flying to each level is very repetitive and dull.
I recommend grinding as much as you can, or else you will get really stuck on some parts.
The pacing could really have been better.
The Bottom Line
In Kingdom Hearts the player takes on the role of Sora, a young boy who spends his days playing on an island with his friends Riku and Kairi. They do typical kid stuff, like play-fighting and racing, but their true wish is to build a raft and explore what lies beyond the horizon. This wish is partly granted when the island is attacked by shadows and Sora is teleported to a city he has never seen. As it turns out, an evil force known as "The Heartless" has been invading worlds and making them vanish, just like what happened to Sora's island. Furthermore, a mystical weapon known as the "The keyblade" has chosen Sora as its master and thus he teams up with Donald and Goofy to try and stop the world-vanishing shenanigans of The Heartless and their masters.
As everybody probably knows by know, these worlds are all themed after famous Disney movies, with the exclusion of some later stages and Traverse Town, which serves as a shopping district. These worlds are the game's biggest selling points, as they have the player meddle in the affairs of well-known Disney characters and thus become part of their stories. It's very entertaining to do stuff like training with Hercules or proving Alice's innocence before the unfair rule of the Queen of Hearts. The progression of each stage is also designed to give the game an adventurous and varied feel, often relying on having the player explore areas in order to progress.
There is an overarching plot where famous Disney villains, acting in service of Maleficant, are trying to capture the princesses. This may seem like juvenile villainy, but instead of locking them up in a tower, they wish to use their hearths to open a way into a vaguely explained paradise that is said to grant wishes. This overall plot is alright for the most part, but it gets very cheesy in later stages, when words like "heart(s)" and "destiny" become more common than commas. Most people also played this game at a young age and, like me at the time, didn't really give two fucks about all that shit. Since this game is a cross-over between Disney and Squaresoft, I naturally expected some Final Fantasy influences, but please keep that stuff limited to side-plots, will ya?
Gameplay is also somewhat of a mixed bag. It's really fun and challenging when you're fighting bosses, but when casually exploring levels or grinding, you start to notice how unpolished it is. Sora can attack enemies with his keyblade by hammering the X-button, but the trick is that, in true Final Fantasy fashion, you have to select your spells, items and abilities from a menu. Since the game is real-time, this means that you have to stop attacking in order to navigate the menu via the arrows or right analog stick. If the right analog stick has to serve menu-duty, then that means camera controls are bound to the shoulder-buttons, leaving you at the mercy of an auto-target function with a serious grudge against crates and barrels.
That's not even the worst part; the AI for Goofy and Donald is very poor and usually only serves to get in the way. I've lost count of how many times Donald wasted all his mana casting the useless Gravira spell on every enemy on the field, or how often Goofy would die by pursuing a single flying enemy while ground-based Heartless pummeled him mercilessly. Even when taking matters in my own hand, I often noticed the two would cheekily knock an enemy out of my combo or block my view while playing charades with the White Mushroom enemy.
Furthermore, enemies are usually designed to be as obnoxious as possible. One very common trick a lot of them pull is vanishing whenever they want and reappearing somewhere else. This often comes with a brief moment of invincibility, which often caused me to swing at the air before taking an undodgable hit right into the face. Other filthy tricks include jumping around, flying too high for me to see or constantly creating distance while preparing charge-attacks. It's a shame, because the visual design on enemies is very creative and varied, with lots of cute creatures to face off against.
Visual design as a whole is a very strong point. The graphics look nice, characters are modeled very well, there is plenty of color and the level-design is, once again, very good. The music also brilliantly matches the style and feel of each world and it always changes into something more exciting when combat starts, which is a nice inclusion. Facial animations on side-characters is, perhaps, the only visual flaw I could point out.
Of all the Kingdom Hearts games out there nowadays, I think this one would be the best to start and stick with. It's the only title in the now long-running franchise which actually succeeded in marrying the two cooperating studios in a happy marriage, whereas later entries would reveal the dominating nature of Square (Enix). The story may sometimes be cheesy and the gameplay is not very refined, but fans of Disney will love it and the exploration-heavy stages are going to make a lot of veteran gamers very happy.
By Asinine on May 27, 2013
Katawa Shoujo (Windows)
Mobygames: Now with more softcore pornography.
The Good
Story filled with surprises and twists.
The story is remarkably respectful towards the subject matter and never goes "lol, you no have legs" or anything along those lines.
Amazing visuals with a number of full-motion animations.
Simulation that is not afraid to display the commitment that comes with having a relationship.
A total of five different girls to pursue.
The Bad
Incomprehensible choices that can completely make or break your relationship.
Characters tend to disappear from the story.
The Bottom Line
Story
Katawa (and I am going to keep calling it that, since I always misspell the whole title) is a visual novel in which you play through, or at least experience, a few weeks of the life of Hisao Nakai. The introduction shows him briefly meeting with a girl until the situation becomes too romantic and his hearth-rate propels. This wakes up a dormant disability that leaves him bound to a hospital for some weeks. Once he has recovered, however, he is told he won’t be able to function on a normal school and thus has to be transferred to a school for handicapped children.
This is a setup the writers created to present us with a cast of characters that are immediately interesting. Have you ever been in a class where one of the students suddenly comes in with a wheelchair or stilts? The first thing you or somebody else does is ask what happened, you are naturally curious as to why they have slightly stepped outside our perception of how a normal person functions. I’ll however also admit that the writers did a genuinely good job at characterizing their various anime school girls and it becomes very clear early on that a person’s handicap doesn’t have to define their personality.
The game also deserves some respect for tackling the subjects it does with a sense of respect and dignity, I even think it’s safe to assume that the designers thoroughly researched the material they were working with prior to writing (unlike what I am doing here). The story I ended up following first was Emi’s and it has to be said that, for a Dating Sim, it displays a shocking level of detail that is not just related to the positive side of a relationship. I am hardly an expert in the field, but I deduced from logic that a Dating Sim would seek to give the player a feeling of accomplishing social interaction without the commitment and risks that come with that. Some scenes however genuinely start to feel heavy when you take a moment to absorb all the events that happen around you. Heck, the game even features Bad Endings!
I have an immense amount of respect for a simulation that actually dares to show the whole picture and, without mentioning which character this involves, I was surprised when one relationship ended up feeling like both participants were upholding a façade of wholesomeness; the various compliments, jokes and acts of romance slowly descending into generic pleasantries and procedures with no actual meaning until the issue was resolved. That example is just one of the many different storylines available to you and after replaying it multiple times I noticed that almost every scene would be altered in a subtle way, which does a lot of wonders for the replayability.
The first of my only two complaints with the story is that the choices are difficult to interpret when looking at the game as a whole. You see, in the first act of the game it determines which of the many fine ladies you will end up pursuing based on a series of dialogue choices. This act is very long, but the tree that determines how this all plays out is difficult to grasp. For the particular girl I was interested in, I had to replay the game three times just because she is only available if you didn’t have to good a standing with two other characters and make some specific choices that can even end up killing you. Along with getting the good endings, I wouldn’t blame anybody for turning this simulation into just a visual novel by keeping a walkthrough close at all times.
The second problem is that, after the intro, the story starts to focus on just a single person and all the other interesting people fall by the wayside. It was five hours into my first playthrough that I suddenly ran into one of the core characters that I hadn’t seen in the past three hours of gameplay and after a brief conversation she disappeared from the remaining three hours of the story. The only real excuse for this is that, besides binding you to different girls, the various plotlines also develop vastly different versions of Hisao. It’s kind of neat that in one session he can become a star pupil and in the other an isolationists without any of it feeling forced or unnatural, but I would still have preferred to see a more active cast of side-characters.
To summarize my feelings toward the story, I’d say that it’s very interesting and absorbing to read, though not always pleasurable. Especially the Rin storyline is enormously depressing and if you go into this game expecting a lighthearted dating sim, then you are likely to come out crying. I was one of those people myself, but even after letting it rest for a while, I still think the game could have benefited from slightly toning down the depressing themes and emphasizing humor a little more (which was the reason I initially thought the Rin storyline would be the most hilarious).
Gameplay
The gameplay aspect is naturally shallow for this game, though I would argue that the dialogue options are at least a form of player interaction. Sadly I already explained my position on these, so this aspect of the review doesn’t count.
Presentation
The game uses a very standard setup for visual novels; dialogue boxes at the bottom of the screen and sprite-art over backgrounds that help visualize the events of the story. As far as visual novels go, however, this game is downright revolutionary in its visual aid. Not only does the game use basic animations and scrolling backgrounds, but also full-motion animation sequences that are remarkably beautiful. I am not exaggerating when stating that the animated sequences are some of the highlights of this entire game.
Just like with Persona 4, however, these are extremely rare and thus the game tends to rely on the sprites to get the job done most of the time. Unlike Persona 4, however, the game pulls this off marvelously. I am, once again, not lying when I say that there were images I just paused on for minutes while I observed the art on screen. It’s safe to say that Katawa takes you all over the place in terms of emotions, from joyful conversations to the most shocking of breakdowns.
Replay-Value
There are a total of five different characters who you can become romantically involved with and among those there are a number of different endings with different levels of romantic success. Combine that with the fact that each dialogue options alters the plot-line ever so slightly and you got a game you will find yourself wanting to replay a few times.
However, I did find that only the best endings really gave me an incentive to return to this game, since the Bad Endings are just that. Katawa does a great job at drawing you into the story and characters, so you really want to see them become as happy as possible, making it difficult for the player to consciously sabotage this for the sake of seeing a scene or two. Five is not a bad number however and this should increase the time spend with this game from 8 hours to roughly 40.
Why should you get it?
Because the game is not only absolutely free, but it’s also a very interesting experience, even if you are not invested in either Japanese anime or dating simulations. The game vastly surpasses the status of jerk-off program and becomes a downright gripping tale that is guaranteed to immerse you. Each individual storyline is also good for 7-10 hours, which means it never quite overstays its welcome nor feels too short.
Why should you skip it?
The game is deceptive in its appearance, like any good predator. From the outside it looks like a cheery and quirky story, but on the inside it is confronting and serious. Going into this if you are in need of something lighthearted is unadvised. Additionally, it comes recommended that you find one of the many maps that detail the choices you’ll be making, as you are unlikely to achieve the desired result solely on your own.
By Asinine on May 23, 2013
Tera (Windows)
Unimpressive, but good for some PvE fun.
The Good
The combat is based around tactfully dodging, blocking and avoiding.
Bosses are designed to be large in size, but manageable in tactics.
Character design is very creative and doesn't follow the stale Tolkien Fantasy formula.
The Bad
Most mechanics that are introduced are entirely pointless.
They are also introduced too soon in the game, overloading the player with information they won't need.
The game is VERY easy.
Writing and design of the quests are both very outdated.
Community fails to impress.
The menus are obnoxiously designed and some, again, serve no purpose.
The Bottom Line
It's difficult to review an MMO like Tera, since there will always be large chunks of content that I simply missed. I played the game for the first 25 levels, so for all I know, the amazing parts were all hidden in the very next zone. From what I played, however, the game appeared to me like the designers came up with a fun mechanic, but didn't know how to back it up with other features.
Tera takes place in a world with two continents in it, similar in design to the original World of Warcraft. All the races of the world have organised in a single alliance called "The Valkyon Federation" in order to beat back the constant presence of demons. As the player, you are the latest rising star within the ranks of the federation.
It's a very basic setup for an MMO story, but where it falls short is its delivery. All the quests are structured in the old "kill 12 boars" or "Find 7 flowers" structure that World of Warcraft popularized in 2004. That was nine years ago, and since then Blizzard has put in a lot of effort to refine the quests. Burning Crusade introduced items that can be used during quests, Wrath of the Lich King introduced vehicles that gave you a different move-set, and Cataclysm went all-out with area-copies that changed the world as you progressed through story-lines. By comparison, Tera feels lazily stitched together.
The combat makes up for a lot of this, though, since it allows you to have full control over your character. What this means, is that you can map dodges, blocks and parries to your hotkeys and use them to stop enemy attacks. This mechanic allowed me to tackle a group quests alone, simply because I could skillfully avoid the enemy attacks while slowly depleting their health. In other words: this is an MMORPG in which your own skill actually counts for something. Rejoice!
It's however a shame that the designers decided to make the game insanely easy. As an archer, I was hitting enemies with arrows that took down 25% of their health at a very quick pace, while they in return usually hit me for 3% of my health and were relatively slow; even most mini-bosses do damage that I could easily tank. During the 25 levels that I played, the only times I died were moments where I purposefully did something I knew to be stupid.
The game also a problem with its pacing of mechanics, with which I mean to say it never knows when to introduce new features. The tutorial island, for example, forced me to partake in quests that introduced bombs, seals, campfires, repeatable quests, boss-fights and climbing, most of which are mechanics that either vanished from the game entirely or didn't come back into play until level 20 and beyond. On the other side of the problem, the game is very slow in making PvE and PvP available to the players. The first dungeon doesn't unlock until level 20 and PvP is apparently only available outside of duels after you reach level 60. Additionally, the second dungeon opens at 26, followed by the next one remaining locked until 35. There is simply no flow in the content, what are you supposed to do if you decided to level through PvE and find out you have to cross 9 levels in one dungeon? Hopping back into the questing scene feels like giving up at that point.
The game does demand a lot from your computer, since it quite clearly had a lot of artists working on it. The world of Tera looks amazing, even on the lowest settings. It has a few issues with textures vanishing and animations glitching, but the piece as a whole is nothing to scoff at. Characters are also very open to customization, which is a welcome change for an MMO. I did have some issues with the females in this game, however, since it seems you can never make them look decently clothed, no matter what you try. Even the Elin, a race of children who live in the forest (pretty much a direct copy of the Kokiri from Ocarina of Time) always seem to have half their skin exposed. This led to a very unfortunate moment where I had to climb up some vines with an Elin right above me, proudly displaying her underwear. Please don't call the cops on me.
Overall, I feel like Tera could have seriously used another year or two of work. The overall story is fine, but the quests needed some dire restructuring, the combat is great, but everything around it falls apart and the visuals were beautiful, but rather sexist. I am fully aware that an MMO is never truly finished, so there is still hope for Tera somewhere in the future.
By Asinine on May 21, 2013
Crash Bash (PlayStation)
Nostalgia betrays me
The Good
Graphics and music are both of the quality we expect from Crash games.
Co-Op campaign mode is a lot of fun.
The pacing is very nice; the percentage completion goes up a lot faster than you would think.
Controls work very well.
The game keeps the mini-games interesting enough to replay by introducing variations on the rules.
The Bad
AI is downright unfair.
While the controls work, the camera angle makes it difficult to play.
No consistent theme to the levels.
Each games has to be replayed way too often.
Story is pointless.
The Bottom Line
Story
One of the problems with many party-games that want to compete with Mario Party is that they try to have a story. This simply doesn't work, since a group of players who just want to play some mini-games are not going to give two fucks about the faith of Sonic Shuffle's imaginary land or indeed the struggles of two masks in Crash Bash.
The opening sequence depicts the two entities arguing about who is the best, but instead of fighting it out like the two flying planks that they are, they decide to settle their differences with a contest between the heroes and villains of the Crash Bandicoot universe. This setup was apparently so weak that whoever added this game to the database didn't even bother to acknowledge it, which I can totally understand.
From there on out, the bits of stories are limited to short cut-scenes that precede each boss-fight. Even that is too much, though, since it's nothing but boring exposition that most people are going to skip. Admittedly, Crash Bash isn't the biggest offender in this regard, but it would still have benefited from cutting down the story further.
Gameplay
To progress through this game, the player has to collect a set number of trophies, diamonds and crystals to unlock boss-fights. These spoils are earned by completing the mini-games on each floor; at first you play the regular game for the trophy, then the diamond and crystals can be pursued by playing it again with altered or extra rules. The game starts out on a floor with 4 games and a boss, but each time you beat a boss and go to the next floor, it adds an additional game to the line-up.
The controls for the mini-games are all responsive enough, but my gripe with most of them is that they play in a 3-dimensional space, while the camera is more suited for something 2-dimensional. This makes it very difficult to perceive where your character is located. For example: in one mini-game you are on a polar bear and have to push your opponent off the field with charges, but half the time, you charge right past your foes and fall in yourself. The Mario Party equivalent of this mini-game would be "Bumper Balls", and that mini-game was more playable since the camera was placed higher, which offered a better overview of the playing field.
I also don't really appreciate the fact that when the game introduces new rules, they often don't affect the AI. For example: the polar bear game introduced a cloud that randomly released stunning thundershocks upon the field. This would have been alright, but when the AI is hit by the thunder, it simply doesn't affect them in any way. It even gets more unfair in one variation on the Pong mini-game, when the AI gets an ability that makes balls not count and instant-kill the player if they touch the "fake" ball. These two examples highlight two problems with the AI, they are either not programmed to deal with the special rules in the game or they just turn the game into an unplayable mess.
Playing this game alone is therefore a controller-breaking exercise in frustration. However, when played with a friend, the mini-games provide some enjoyment. I also appreciate that the game automatically teams you up with your friend in campaign and uses different rules to account for that. The 4-player multiplayer also kills any issues you may have with the AI, though the campaign limits the amount of players to just 2.
Presentation
Graphically, the game looks very good. It has the same style and quality as the initial trilogy of Crash Bandicoot games. I however do think that the HUB-world of the game is pretty useless; it's the exact same room over and over again, but with a different environmental theme that doesn't really carry over in the mini-games you'll be playing on that floor. The room is small, there is no real content to be found, so I fail to see the point in having it. A menu would have definitely sufficed.
Replay-Value
Getting a 100% score in this game is very tough, since some of the Crystal challenges are unforgivably difficult. I wouldn't blame anybody for giving up on it.
Replaying this game would be somewhat silly, though, since it's not an adventure game like the others in the series. Once you have unlocked all the mini-games, there is no drive to experience them again from the start and you'd be better off just going back to replay the ones you like from an existing save-file.
Why should you get it?
If you have an urge to play a challenging party-game with a friend, then this would be your solution. The mini-games are made to be more difficult than your average, casual Mario Party.
Why should you skip on it
Alone, the broken nature of the mini-games really get to you and this will be frustrating. Even when having a friend around, most of the fun will come from joking about the poor quality of the game.
By Asinine on May 14, 2013
DLC Quest (Windows)
No DLC can improve this game.
The Good
The music is alright? I guess.
Graphical quality is not bad.
Some jokes are pretty clever.
The Bad
The game is hypocritical.
There is no story worth mentioning.
The gameplay lacks substance.
Very short.
100% completion can be achieved in 2 hours.
The Steam achievements glitched out.
The Bottom Line
Story
The story in DLC Quest is very basic: you are a hero, the princess got abducted by a bad guy, and you are going to save her. As the game starts, however, you lack the skills and equipment to take on such a task and thus you need to buy skills from the Shopkeeper with in-game money and seek out various tools and people in the world.
Zero effort has been put into making the story in any way interesting, which I think is a waste of potential. You could argue that the cliche 'save the princess' story is used for the purpose of parody here, but there is a difference between making fun of a trope and including a trope. Braid is an example of a game that uses the princess plot in an original way, which it does by never stating that the princess was abducted, but rather that she became the victim of something the main character did and that he now seeks forgiveness.
In short: DLC Quest has lazy writing. Moving on.
Gameplay
Whenever I analyze a game, I first distill the gameplay down to its most basic form, in order to determine what the core engagement should be. In Mario games you navigate through levels via series of platforms, Tetris asks you try to form rows of blocks and in Resident Evil you fight zombies with limited resources. All of those are good ways to engage the player and most of these games have additional mechanics backing it up. In DLC Quest you have to gather coins and that is literally all there is to it.
The gameplay is built entirely around gathering coins that lie around the overworld. These coins are then spend on new abilities that allow you to enter previously unreachable areas with more coins in it. it goes without saying that this isn't very engaging, since it's basically the opening to Ocarina of Time put on infinite repeat.
There are some opportunities to explore as well, but hidden passageways are blatantly obvious and as long as you pay attention you'll never miss any of the collectibles. Throughout the shallow two hours it took me to complete this game 100%, there was only one collectible that took me some time to find, which was hidden on a platform you could never see (a leap of faith).
Presentation
DLC Quest is a parody that mocks the downloadable-content practices of companies like Electronic Arts and Activision. It does this by exaggerating the concept to its extreme; starting the player of with little more than the ability to move to the right and having them pay in-game money for basic stuff like moving left, jumping, animations and the ability to progress the story. The philosophy is that companies shouldn't be allowed to charge money for stuff that should've been included in the game from the start.
The game also mocks the humor present in a lot of games, more specifically the inclusion of memes and references like "All your bases are belong to us". This is however where it falls flat, since the game uses the exact same humor that it seeks to mock. For example, a character whose sole purpose is referencing phrases like that (and who is used to mock them via the bored reactions of the game main character) at one point made a "calibrations" joke, which references the character of Garrus from the Mass Effect franchise. However, minutes earlier, the game referenced Mass Effect as a joke without any parody surrounding it at all. It is downright hypocritical and that severely hampers the enjoyment that you'll get from the humor.
I am usually not very fond of comedies, but the few that I can stomach always have subtle humor and never let it lead the game. Psychonauts has a lot of jokes in it, but it uses the jokes to give more depth to the cast of characters. No More Heroes is another example, and again, it uses the humor to say something about the characters and the world they live in.
Replay-value
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Why should you get it?
The game highlights a very big issue in the current industry, namely the fact that companies hold parts of their games to ransom. It is very unethical and worth criticizing.
Why should you skip on it?
The game is content with just been a parody and puts no effort in actually being engaging itself. The gameplay is dull, the story doesn't exist and the humor is rarely subtle. As much as DLC is being misused nowadays, it isn't worth paying 3 dollars for a game that protests this practice. Instead, why not protest for real and just stop buying $60 games that release DLC almost immediately after launching?
By Asinine on May 8, 2013
Recettear: An Item Shop's Tale (Windows)
Better sell this game at a 10% discount
The Good
Running the shop in an RPG is a very fun idea.
Visuals are very pretty.
The Bad
Mechanics flat-out don't work well enough.
Action-RPG stages are too unforgiving.
Putting players on a timer is never comfortable.
Too few different customers.
Too much talking.
The Bottom Line
Story
In most of our favorite role-playing games we take on the role of the stalwart hero of the land; we play as the daring men and women who venture out into the unknown to perform quests and wage wars against evil. However, we never seem to keep in mind what kind of impact rushing off on adventure has on our character's friends and family. What will Uncle Bob do now that his farmhand traded in the boring pitchfork for a mighty blade?
Recettear seeks to answer that question by putting the player in the role of a hero's little daughter. Players take on the role of Recette, a young girl from the city whose dad left on an adventure and never returned. Even worse, our "hero" in this story had to get a loan, and now that he is presumed dead, paying back all that dough falls upon his daughter. In order to cough up the money, Recette teams up with the sympathetic loan shark "Tear" to open an item shop.
Recette and Tear make for a very entertaining partnership; Recette is a ditsy and energetic girl and Tear is a fairy who wants to stay focused on business. It would have been a very standard setup (two characters whose personalities clash), but the fact that Tear is occasionally presented as a genuinely sympathetic person makes up for that. The rest of the cast of characters is more one-dimensional, such as the amateur adventurer Louis who is always hungry or the entitled daughter of a rich family who shows up as a competitor to Recette.
The story in management games/simulators is usually not that interesting, which makes this setup a nice change of pace. What I didn't appreciate, though, is the fact that most of the story comes from optional events that continuously appear on the town map. As the player, you want to discover as much of the story as possible, but going out of your way to seek out these optional bits means leaving the store. In other words: in order to experience the story, you have to handicap your progress.
Gameplay
The most interesting part of the game is, of course, the store that you are supposed to run. What I like most about the store is that new mechanics are constantly being introduced once the game has reason to believe that you have grown familiar with the older ones. At first you can only sell items and put them up on display, but as the game goes on you'll also learn how to buy items, redecorate the store, take orders, fuse items together and more. These new mechanics usually come into play once your "Merchant Level" increases, which you can achieve by successfully dealing with customers (stringing together successes gives you more experience points).
In an ideal situation, this would mean that the game has a lot of depth, but after unlocking most of the mechanics, the game literally broke on me. I very clearly recall the moment when it happened; a single man got stuck in a loop of selling me an item and immediately buying it back, dozens of orders came in at the exact same moment and the items I had on display were all seemingly ignored as every customer suddenly wanted stuff I never advertised. Suffice it to say, it was pure unplayable madness and for that reason alone I would deduct some serious points from the game. It's a shame too, because I was having a lot of fun before everything went bananas, but after that I couldn't enjoy the game anymore.
Aside from working in the store, there is also an action-RPG side to the gameplay. The idea is that you can hire an adventurer to take you into a dungeon and use him to gather loot for you. Since monsters don't charge money for being killed, it allows you to get some pretty neat stuff for free and sell it at an attractive price. You unlock more adventurers as you play, but they all have one basic attack and one special move that consumes mana. Additionally, the dungeons are randomly generated and contain a number of random events that vary from traps to entire bits of story.
Sounds pretty damn awesome, right? Well, you're wrong.
There seems to be a very obnoxious glitch that keeps respawning enemies randomly throughout each dungeon floor, so if you're like me and you want to get all the experience and loot possible, then you'll find yourself running around the same floor for way too long. It also has the Secret of Mana problem where 50% of the chests turn out to be traps, which is just downright mean. Also, your adventurer doesn't regenerate health unless you feed him stuff, and once he dies, you'll have to bail on the dungeon and can only take one of the items you found back with you. This also includes items you borrowed to the adventurer, so if you gave him valuable armor and a sword, then one of those will have to be left behind along with the rest of the loot.
Of those three problems, I'd say the dying is probably the worst, since you are put on a timer in this game. Each week you have to pay back a part of the loan and the amount increases drastically each time. I think that timers are almost always a poor idea for a game, since it puts stress on your players and that is something they can definitely do without. In Majora's Mask however, you can reset the timer whenever you want and in other Tycoon games you usually have several years to reach your goal, which greatly reduce the stress. Recettear's weekly milestones only serve to encourage save-scumming, since failing dungeons and poor business decisions are just too much to deal with when you're still 10,000 Pix short and the clock is ticking.
Presentation
The game combines a classic 2D top-down perspective with modern sprite-art and it look pretty damn nice. I believe there is a serious lack of top-down role-playing games nowadays and titles like Recettear and Evoland thus dominate the entire niche. I know that engines have improved over the years, but since these games are easier to make, it allows the art-style to be a lot more developed. The atmosphere is furthered improved with the soundtrack that actually consists almost entirely out of shop themes. Everything has a very uplifting tone to it; It's also cute that the designers decided to implement brief conversations in the ARPG part of the game, that are entirely in Japanese. Without spoiling too much of the surprise, Recette's voice is exactly what you think it would be.
There is, however, too little variety. Aside from specific characters that are introduced through the story, there are only four different customers that will appear in your store; a man, a woman, a little girl and an old man. This means that on some days you will have four of the exact same grandfathers walk into the store. Enemy variety is a little better, but the game relies heavily on recoloring enemies without actually changing the tactics for beating them, which makes the action part of the game feel even more stale.
Replay-value
Oddly enough, this game tries to be a rogue-like by increasing the difficulty to levels where you are likely to fail on your first time playing. When this happens, the game then allows you to start over, but with your previous merchant level and items. It's a nice way to give you a boost after failing, that I admit, but the mere act of failing alone is enough to remove any will to keep playing, especially when you keep the depressive Game Over cut-scene in mind.
Why should you get it?
The idea of running an item shop in an RPG is very intriguing and it's worth owning for the novelty alone. Selling and buying items are both very engaging mechanics and the game knows how to pace itself. If you can forgive some of the larger flaws and soldier through it, then you are left with an experience like no other.
Why should you skip on it?
Parts of the core-gameplay just don't work or are prone to breaking, which is inexcusable. Losing the game because I only get customers who want to sell things for three days straight is downright unfair and I feel the game would have benefited greatly from just giving me a financial milestone to reach and having me build towards that myself. It would have created a better management game in which I make the decisions I want to make, instead of one where I diligently save every few minutes in fear of making a slight mistake.
By Asinine on May 6, 2013
Dynasty Warriors 5: Empires (PlayStation 2)
Xu Chu should be emperor!
The Good
- Satisfying tactical gameplay.
- Battles are very alive and never feel like you're just repeating the same tactics over and over again.
- Difficulty can be tuned nicely.
- Quirky atmosphere keeps it interesting.
- Tangential learning is nicely implemented.
The Bad
- Combat is very underdeveloped.
- Lacking presentation.
- Voice-acting made me want to poor acid down my ears.
The Bottom Line
Story
Beats me.
Dynasty Warriors 5: Empires is based entirely around romanticized (and fantasized) Chinese history, a subject I am very much unfamiliar with. The game features a large number of historical figures and cities, as well as numerous campaigns based on events that occurred in the many chapters of China’s rich past. All of which is stuff that passes me by completely.
The game clearly tries its hand at tangential learning, meaning that the player witnesses events in the game and becomes fascinated by them, which prompts them to further research the material themselves. This works to some degree, I did find myself scouring Google for information on some of my favorite characters each time I finished a campaign, but it also backfires somewhat since there is simply too much to take in to begin with. Even when I did want to self-educate, I had a hard time recalling which of the several similar-looking and often similarly named characters I took a liking to again.
If you are not interested in learning any history, then remember this shorthand: “everybody wants to rule China”. Doesn't matter who it is, which faction he belongs to or what motivation he briefly mentions at the start of the campaign, each ruler is out for domination. Each campaign has some mild variations, but that is the gist of the entire game. From that, you'll probably conclude that the story isn't that fascinating and you'd be correct. It isn't really interesting itself, but the quirky atmosphere and the obvious butchering of historical figures is enough to put some meat around the RTS-skeleton of the game.
Gameplay
Talking about the RTS-skeleton of this game, it is actually remarkably solid. I have been told that this series is primarily a hack&slash, action-game affair and that this is a spin-off game. You wouldn't know that just by playing it, though, since the RTS part doesn’t feel like an afterthought and functions just as well as the actual fighting. The strategy is based around political policies that you must order, such as recruiting new troops, encouraging economic development or suggesting an alliance. The more land you possess, the more policies you can execute each turn. Alternatively, you can follow the suggested policies from one of your officers or not even ask him anything and just delegate the matter to your appointed officer entirely.
As for the tactical warfare, you got a map of China with all of its regions. Each region counts as a land and if you own it, then you can station officers on it (3 generals and 3 officers max). Each officer/general has an army that they command, which has a finite number of troops that the player can increase or replenish through policies. To take over more land, you must end the policy/station phase and enter the battle-phase. You then select invade and choose a region you wish to take over, a screen will then pop up detailing which officers are in connected regions and can participate in the battle. If you are been assaulted yourself, then you can come to the defense by selecting “defend” instead of “invade”. You can also choose to side with any of your allies to send them one officer and help them defend or capture an area they want.
My only real problem with the setup so far is that officers all level separately and only if you actually play as them. This means that you either need to constantly switch between characters in order to keep them all averagely leveled or you must make absolutely sure that you never ever have to defend a front with weak characters on it. None of these options are very fun and I don’t see why officers don’t get experience from partaking in battles with you. I ended up employing a tactic where I would just hire enemy generals after a number of battles and throw out all five officers I had previously used to support the one character I played with and with whom I captured everything.
The actual fighting is also very entertaining, if a little simplistic. Battles involve taking over a number of camps that are placed around the map, you then win if you take over the enemy’s main camp from which they stage their attack. The problem is that you can’t just waltz over their main camp and take it over, you first need to control a direct line of camps from your base to theirs. To take over any base, you first need to kill all the “guard captains” that are present in it, which are slightly more sturdy versions of the basic AI-controlled soldiers. If an enemy officer is present, then you also need to capture him or at least make sure he legs it. The base will then be captured and become yours.
What I enjoyed the most about the combat was that it too had a tactical layer, as you had to adapt to enemy movements and retreat when necessary. You can also issue orders to your troops, but the effects are somewhat minimal and you never really know where they are or what they are doing. The fighting itself is also really simplistic, just keep hitting the square button and everything will die. You can end a string of attacks with triangle for a “combo” and once the meter at the bottom is filled you can press circle for a special attack, but these become just as routine as spamming the main attack.
Presentation
Because the game has to render so many models at the same time, the graphical aspect is not entirely up to par. Dozens of characters are forced to share the same models and even then they are fairly pixelated and bland. The combat also wasn’t as flashy as I was made to belief, which was very disappointing, as that was the main reason for why I got this title to begin with.
The voice-acting is also very underwhelming for pretty much every character, which becomes twice as annoying when you keep in mind that characters never shut up. They spout dialogue so often that sometimes matches suffer from delay as they try to catch up with everything the AI wants to say.
Replay-value
The campaigns in this game are entertaining enough to replay from time to time, especially since different factions have different policies and units. Each one also introduces some new characters and usually these are some of the more entertaining ones, such as Xu Chu. It’s not much, but the gameplay is something you really get into, just like with Civilization. Before you know it, three hours have passed and you missed that important meeting, so you just keep playing instead.
Why should you get it?
Very addicting tactical gameplay, a quirky atmosphere and nicely paced campaigns all make sure that Dynasty Warriors is a blast to play. It’s not as deep and involving as March of the Eagles or even Civilization, but it’s a lot more casual, which in turn makes it easier to pick up and play. Also, Civilization doesn’t allow you to mount an elephant and plow through Chinese infantry.
Why should you skip on it?
The lack of proper localization is rather shameful when you take into account how long this series has been around. If you can’t get quality voice-acting for all your characters, then that is fine, but at least don’t subject us to a constant stream of dialogue. The combat is also very underwhelming and some of the battles don’t support multiplayer, so one player just has to
By Asinine on April 21, 2013
No More Heroes 2: Desperate Struggle (Wii)
Not as good as the first one.
The Good
Money is less important.
No more upgrades that only serve to confuse you.
Levels are nicely designed.
Very replayable.
The Bad
Rehashing of old bosses.
Obnoxious story.
Very little innovation.
Fights that are entirely broken or too easy.
Endless fights with generic mobs that keep respawning.
The Bottom Line
Story
No More Heroes 2 picks up three years after the last game with Travis Touchdown, world’s greatest nerd, been confronted by an unknown man on a rooftop. After defeating the stranger, Travis is notified that he is now ranked 51st in the assassin tournament that he left after beating it in the first game. Becoming the best is not entirely on Travis’ schedule and after been screwed over by his agent in the first game, he is not very inclined to do her any favors either, but matters are further complicated when Travis discovers that his best friend was murdered. Since the #1 assassin is responsible, Travis decides to roll with the tournament in order to get to him.
It seems like a very neat setup, but one problem that continued to bother me all throughout it is that the story interrupts you way too often. There is this ongoing narration where, every once in a while, we see a cut-scene in a dimly lit room that consists of just Sylvia talking about what kind of enemy we’ll be fighting in the next ranked battle. I know it is easy to critique something, so let me offer an alternative to these cut-scenes: Why don’t you have her narrate these bits of information during or after each wave of enemies that we fight in the approach to the boss she is talking about. That way the narration becomes a reward for participating in the otherwise monotonous fights.
I also didn’t like how some of the bosses were thrown at you without any kind of backstory or hype to them, which is devastating for a game like this. The first title was drenched in symbolism and every boss either represented a part of Travis’ behavior or served as a warning for what he was throwing himself at, regardless of which of the two it was, each boss at least left an impression on both Travis and the player. As a direct result, Travis becomes kind of a Conker – a character with no consistent personality or traits – as he stumbles around between wanting blind revenge, been viewed as human and hating what he has to do. Overall, it is a decent setup for a story that does unravel nicely, aside from a few giant smears.
Gameplay
I would say that gameplay has remained unchanged since No More Heroes 1, but doing so would technically be a lie, since plenty of stuff has been removed since then. Remember how people were mad about the Overworld? Maybe you recall hearing complaints about the handling of your vehicle? Or do you maybe remember that people disliked the assassination side-jobs? Well, Suda 51 solved all of that in the most childish way by flat-out removing all of it instead of fixing it. Travel is now entirely menu-driven, the motorcycle is largely absent and mini-games are the only means of grinding money now. I am not sure what this is supposed to illustrate, but it makes the game feel rather bare-bones, since not much is added to compensate; there is a running side-story where you do micro-games to help your cat lose weight and the aforementioned 8-bit mini-games are present instead of the old jobs.
That is all sandbox stuff, though, what you are probably actually wondering about is the combat in this game. This has (again) been left largely unchanged, aside from a few minor tweaks and failures. For the sake of remaining positive, let’s start with what has been successfully implemented; namely the weapons and special powers. The new swords you can obtain all feel different when you use them, there is the standard beam-sword, a katana for faster attacks, a powerful two-handed sword that swings very slowly and grows through repeated use and a dual-wield set for insanely fast combos. The power-ups from the first game now also trigger more regularly and are partly influenced by the ecstasy-meter that builds up as you kill enemies and dodge attacks. It’s also nice that they never seem to trigger on the last enemy in the room and automatically stop if the wave is over, so that you can leave the area without waiting for the effect to wade off.
On the more negative side however, I noticed how some of the regular enemies tend to have insane amounts of health and how waves can sometimes last up to twenty minutes. Really game, the core of what makes you fun are the boss-fights, stop trying to keep me away from them… It’s also unbelievably annoying how easily everybody can get stunned, including you. There were various combinations of enemies and even some bosses whose entire challenge was based on a rapid succession of attacks that can instantly knock (and keep) down on the ground. Wrestling moves also return, but are unreliable since you often have to break a combo to execute one and even then they often don’t connect, so it’s easier and better to just keep slashing away at foes. I am actually a supporter of staggering out the boss-fights, as it lengthens the game-time and makes you value them more when they do show up, but combat is now the only method of doing so and that really starts to get boring.
The worst part is yet to come, namely the fact that besides not been memorable, most of the bosses are also plain bad to play through. Some like Cloe Walsh, Alice Twilight and Matt Helms were just plain easy (I defeated both Matt and Cloe without taking a single hit), some are downright broken like Ryuji (who literally killed himself) and the Million Gunman who requires you to do platforming (it’s about as pleasurable as it sounds) and some are unfairly difficult like Batt Jr. or Charlie Mcfuckingunbreakablecombomove. All in all, the only boss that I’d argue holds up compared to the roster of the first game is Margaret Moonlight, who has a back-story, memorable presentation, build-up and combines figuring out a tactic with close-combat maneuvering. That is exactly what I like in a boss-fight, dodging each other’s attacks and occasionally getting a hit in while the boss often breaks away to trouble you further with a special-move. I wish we got more of that and less of Captain Vladimir.
Presentation
No More Heroes 2 retains most of the design quirks of the original when it comes to presentation, such as straightforward levels and deliberately retro special-effects. Nothing has really changed in this regard and it’s still very entertaining to look at. The designers did put a little effort in improving the design of the levels themselves to avoid endless corridors, but that is pretty much it. The same goes for the music, sound-effects and graphical quality.
There is one stand-out music track in the entire game (those who have played it know which one I mean), but other than that no real effort has been put into making advances in this field.
Replay Value
This is the only field where the game has changed in a positive way without any exceptions; the replay value is now very high for this game. This can be credited to the fact that there is less reliance on money and thus also less grinding keeping you away the combat and actually having fun. There are only two swords to purchase, no upgrades and no mandatory money-sinks (like the entry fees from last time). This all works towards the game flowing a lot better, which I think we can all agree upon, is a good thing.
Why should you get it?
The No More Heroes series is very unique; a satirical action series that heavily relies on symbolism and creativity to entertain the player. This second entry might not be of the same quality as the first game, but it most certainly comes close. Because of this, I can highly recommend this game to those who’ve played and enjoyed the first game and would like to see the story continue or do some more beamsword-fencing.
Why should you skip it?
The game has some major issues that relate to lazy design, such as rehashed fights or utterly forgettable characters. The narrative gets in the way constantly too, so there will be many times when you will sit back in your chair and let out of a sigh. New players may also find themselves disliking this game because of this and missing out on the superior predecessor.
By Asinine on April 21, 2013
Mass Effect (Windows)
An alright game, Earth-Clan
The Good
Very detailed landscapes and spacescapes
Plenty of lore and fun races to interact with
Main story is not the most difficult to follow
Surface exploration is pretty cool.
The codex has been nicely organized and is voiced.
The Bad
All menus are terribly designed and unintuitive.
More tutorials would have been nice or at least tutorials that don't disappear instantly when you press a button.
Dialogue options are often incorrect; Shephard just says whatever the hell he wants.
Too much managing to do between two team-mates and yourself because you always wield four different weapons with mods.
Economy is broken.
The AI is terrible.
The Bottom Line
Story
Mass Effect tells the story of Commander Shepherd, a human working aboard a revolutionary spaceship called the “Normandy”. As the game starts you are prompted to select a background story for him and then you’re ready for the first mission. What seems like a routine pick-up goes horribly wrong however when a special agent commits treason and jeopardizes the mission. Upon reporting back to the alien council with proof, Shepherd is promoted to the rank of “Spectre”, meaning he’s an intergalactic agent with no rules keeping him tied. Naturally, the next course of action is to pursue the man who ruined your mission before his evil plans can be realized.
This is one of your typical Bioware stories, which is both a blessing and a curse. On the positive side it gives you a very well-crafted world with different races and a good sense of uniqueness. On the other hand, though, it also suffers from some of the very common Bioware clichés. What I really liked was that all the races were very originally written and also in a way that didn’t require me to read codex entries or a wikia page. Everything is explained in-game over the course of several events and it does a really good job at keeping you interested. For all its’ flaws, it was seeing the story through to the end that kept me hooked to this game.
The game is also riddled with several moments where you need to make choices based on how you want your version of Shepherd to develop. These can be very contained, such as how you want to respond to the dialogue of a crew-mate or affect galactic peace, such as the one on which the game ends. What makes this even more intriguing is the premise of loading up your old save-file when you get the sequel (and the one after that) and see your choices return to pay off or bite you in the ass once more. It’s a very revolutionary way of dealing with an RPG-series and makes sure that people stay hooked for future installments.
On the negative side, though, the story has some of the generic elements that always make it into Bioware games lately. First of all, the story revolves largely around racism, but in the most bland and uninformed way possible. Most of the time it just gets down to humans going “lol aliens” and the various alien species saying the same vice versa. Every situation Shepherd comes across is also portrayed unrealistically negative, such as every distress signal been a trap or every colony been destroyed. It’s supposed to raise the stakes, but you’re more likely to start wondering how poorly defended everything is. Finally, I am somewhat disappointed with the role-playing aspect of this game. There are plenty of times where you must choose the dialogue for Shepherd, but he never says the exact line and instead says something that would be close to it on the moral spectrum. You won’t accidentally say something evil when playing as a good Shepherd, but one situation that stands out was early on when an alien backed up his arguments during a court-session with insults towards humanity. The option “Insults, typical” came up, which obviously sounded like I discredited his argument and made him look like a whiny little kid, but instead Shepherd started rambling about other things that were way less to-the-point and stingy.
Gameplay
Mass Effect largely consists of navigating through levels while landing in cover-based combat at every turn and bend. The combat itself is adequate, but also very unremarkable and simplistic. You always have four weapon equipped: a pistol, an assault rifle, a shotgun and a sniper. With those you can aim and shoot and if you shoot enough, the enemies will eventually go down. There are also grenades involved in this, but the enemies don’t seem to know that yet and you usually won’t either. A few tweaks I do like is that there is no ammo, but instead weapons fire plasma and continuous fire will eventually overheat the gun. This forces you to take breaks during combat to cool down the systems, so fights turn into both shoot-outs and hide ‘n’ seek at the same time. You can also use a variety of skills which you learn by investing points in the talent trees, such as force push or resurrection ability. Finally, looting enemies has been made easier; all you have to do is open the inventory after combat and you will get a load of toys.
This doesn’t mean the combat is good either, though, because the game suffers from an AI that is about as broken as it gets. I was playing a sniper throughout the game and eventually came to a point where a load of enemies were in a hallway, ripe for the picking off. I took cover behind a wall, prepared my aim, and then my two team-mates ran past me and stood right in the opening. Way too many enemies also seem to rely on blindly charging towards me and then standing right in front of my face while shooting. Fighting is also not made any easier what with the terrible tutorials that might have glitched out for all I know. I was explained maybe half of the mechanics and the rest I was left to figure out for myself, such as that exiting the vehicle is done with the Q-button, which is used for that and absolutely nothing else while the ever-so-loyal F and E keys only do nothing while in a vehicle.
Shoot enough enemies, though, and you will eventually level up and get to select how to invest your points. There are a number of skill trees, which are based on what class you picked at the start of the game. You unlock some more if you get far enough in a single skill and there are milestones scattered around that give you new abilities or strengthen your existing ones. It sounds easy enough, but it’s also remarkably simplistic for a studio that should be capable of creating systems with more depth. Pouring points in Decryption and Electronics doesn’t make hacking or retrieving any easier, it just unlocks the higher difficulties. This means that a fully skilled Decrypter has just as much trouble with a simple lock as he had at the start of the game.
The game also calculates your damage based on your weapons, armor and mods, but this is just as broken as the stats-mechanic. Figuring out which weapon is statically better is easy enough, but the game throws way too many of them at you. Opening a random chest might yield between two and five items and a few combat-sequences can easily yield up to twenty of them nearing the end. All of these you will end up selling, which is a boring chore and comes with very little reward. I ended up with almost 10 million credits, but there was not a single thing to spend it on because all my weapons severely outclassed the ones offered in the store.
To end on a positive note, I am one of the few players who enjoyed the space exploration sequences. You can find these small planets with a few resources and secrets to trace down, but to get to those you need to drive around the landscape with the most uncontrollable jeep ever seen in video games. The dang thing bounces around like a tennis ball in a centrifuge, but it’s a hell of a lot of fun to use. Whenever you discover one of the secrets, it’s also very rewarding to dig up, especially since you are slowly working towards the completion of some overarching side-quests.
Presentation
I’ve said before in my review of Dead Space that setting a game in space allows the designers to do a ton of beautiful stuff with the presentation and it’s sad to once again see that potential gone to waste. There is one amazingly beautiful area in the game, which is The Citadel that serves as a seat of power for the races of the galaxy. It’s gigantic, it’s imaginative, it looks alien and even when you’re inside the place there’s still a lot to see and enjoy. All other areas however have the tendency to lock you up in generic, often grey areas that consist largely of tight corridors. I do very much enjoy the design of the spacesuits everyone walks around in. It’s generic and unrealistic, but that colorful and flashy spandex just looks so… spacey.
I also admire the character design itself, which for most races looks pretty good. Some species just look a lot like each other, but on others you can clearly see they bothered to make different models for various NPC’s. Each line of dialogue is also voiced, which makes conversations sound more lively and real. I however can’t forgive the game for the really poor side-quest areas it made, or didn’t make as the case may be. There are maybe six areas and the only changes they make with each side-quest is where the boxes are stacked. Same 2 spaceships, same 2 bunkers and same 2 science centers, it wouldn’t be too big of a deal if it wasn’t done so shamelessly. Then there are also the planet surfaces, which also have this copy & paste problem, but this time in the sense that each planet has exactly 1 anomaly, 1 stash of items, 3 resources and 1 mission-critical area.
Replay-value
Mass Effect offers the premise of choosing how certain events play out, so the most basic answer would be that you replay the game to see how else your adventure could have ended. However, Mass Effect also offers numerous different sets of skills and abilities. Not only are there six classes available from the get-go, but you also get to specialize further at a later level. These two combined can make for some good replaying. However, the story is also the game’s biggest handicap, since players will not take kindly to handling the same dialogue all over again. The second problem is that there is little fun to be found it having to do the surveying of random planets all over again, which is an alright grind the first time around, but can get very grating when done all over again a second time.
Why should you get it?
Mass Effect comes with the promise of been able to enjoy a trilogy of games based on your own choices, without having to start over with each installment. The universe Bioware painted is also a joy to explore and learn about, due to the interesting characters and races you come across. Gameplay is generally sufficient to string together the story and most of the flaws that are present start to fall by the wayside as you progress through the game.
Why should you leave it?
The story is just about the only thing Bioware put any real effort in and most of the other content just feels lazy; areas are endlessly copy/pasted, tutorials are left unfinished, AI is barely present and even the most generic cut-scenes that play every time you fly somewhere can’t be skipped. The game needed a bit more polish, so if you aren’t particularly into sci-fi or don’t see anything in the story’s premise, then it’s better to let this one go.
By Asinine on February 7, 2013
Cave Story (Windows)
o.O... Wow...
The Good
Simple story that still manages to suck you in.
Funny characters that manage to endear themselves.
Fantastic controls that leave nothing to chance.
Unmatched flow thanks to the great level-design.
Music straight from the Gods of Goodness.
The Bad
Christmas theme thoroughly confused me when I got this game around December.
Some alternative paths in the story are unreasonably obscure.
True final boss is impossible. No discussion possible.
The Bottom Line
Story
Oh boy, I did not see this one coming. This title has been on my radar for a while now, but some bad experiences with other Indie games that received similar praise kept me from getting it earlier. I was very wrong...
Cave Story tells the story of "Quote", a humanoid robot that awakes in a mysterious cave. The cave eventually leads him to a small village filled with small rabbit-like creatures who call themselves "Mimiga". Here you learn that an evil doctor has been kidnapping their kind for some evil purpose and that a girl called Sue is probably the reason for it. After finding Sue, though, you discover that the doctor has bigger plans than just experimenting on cute animals. Naturally, you team up with a handful of others who seek to oppose him and set out on adventure.
What really sells the story is just how subtly it gets you emotionally invested. The Mimiga are all friendly, polite and cute, causing your cuteness-gland to explode into a loud "Awwww". The cast of main characters is also very varied and likable, such as the Amnesiac robot "Curly" or the excitable villain "Balrog". Most of the crew also gets plenty of screen-time and dialogue, so you get plenty of enjoyment out of them. There is nothing truly bothersome about the story either; no offensive material, no dragging cut-scenes, no obnoxious exposition... It just all works so well.
There are also three different endings that you can pursue, but not by the Deus Ex: Human Revolution way of just pushing a button. The ending you get is based entirely on your own actions, but never in a way that punishes you or leaves you paranoid about messing up in decisive situations. The "bad" ending also genuinely feels like you skipped out on content, while the "neutral" ending is nice while still making you feel guilty about some of the feats you couldn't achieve.
Gameplay
Cave Story is a lot like Super Metroid, in the sense that it's a 2-dimensional shooter with RPG elements. Over the course of the game you unlock various weapons and discover secrets that give you more health or ammunition. You use all of these against a variety of enemies while platforming through the many themed stages. Like many other Metroidvania titles, this game prioritizes boss-fights. The only major difference is that Cave Story puts more emphasis on the story than either Metroid or Castlevania.
There are also a few twists too: Most enemies drop experience points when killed, which you can pick up to level up your weapons. Doing so increases their power, speed, firing-mode or a combination of those. However, receiving damage decreases the experience of your weapons (depending on the enemy), so this means you are not just running&gunning, but also dodging like crazy. Naturally, this game is also as challenging as they get, even on the easiest difficulty, which is a common trait in the indie market. There is however never a moment where you feel that the controls are the source of your deaths. Quote controls very satisfyingly and responsive, which is further helped by high jumps that give you enough time to perform a good landing and consistent physics that never betray you.
The game generally maintains a reasonable challenge, but it goes a little too overboard when you want to get the Good Ending. The player is asked to make it through a maze of instant-kill traps (that can only be done with the otherwise useless jetpack), a hallway filled with enemies, a mini-boss that constantly spawns small enemies and then the final boss all on the same live and with no health-refills anywhere in-between. Kind of a dick-move, but again, it's the only flaw in an otherwise solid gem.
Presentation
The second I booted this game, I knew it was going to be something truly special. The music on the title screen was absolutely glorious and the rest of the soundtrack is on the same level (every damn tune in it). The music is exciting when it needs to be, emotional when the situation demands it and sometimes even silent when the imagery says enough. Most tunes focus on creating a solid rhythm above the instruments, which results in that classic kind of songs that you can easily remember and end up humming.
The visuals are kept deliberately retro, as with most other indie titles that seek to evoke the feeling of the good ol' days. Even with that now overused aesthetic, Cave Story manages to look nice and original, whereas titles like Super Meat Boy just looked lazily generic. This can be attributed to the variety found in each level and the amount of detail placed in each sprite and texture. I also grant extra points to the game for not getting its head trapped in pretentious Super Nintendo references. Instead of that the game allows itself to be enjoyed by both gaming veterans and younger audiences, since the story and humor are completely contained in the context of just this one game.
One minor flaw would be that the game had some kind of seasonal theme going on when I got it this December, so I have no idea how it actually looks when all the snow and knitted caps are removed.
Replay-Value
The game will last you a good ten to fifteen hours on your first playthrough and nearing the end of that the game drops a few hints about the existence of a special ending. Getting that ending requires you to play the game again and make a few obscure decisions, which will likely require you to keep Gamefaqs open in the background. The second shot at the game will last you maybe five to six hours, though the final stage will undoubtedly give you a lot of trouble.
For the completionists out there, there is option to collect all the health and ammo upgrades, a "bad" ending and a bunch of fun secrets for you to discover. Overall, you are certain to get your money's worth in terms of content.
Verdict
I do not believe that I ever handed out a full 5/5, but this game truly deserves it. Reading over this review made me realize that my words don't do justice to how much fun I had with this and how many emotions it awakened within my sour, rotten body. You will almost certainly grow to love this title for how well the gameplay flows and aargh! I give up on trying to explain it!
Get it if you have the chance. No exceptions.
By Asinine on January 29, 2013
Dead Space (Windows)
In space, nobody can hear you yawn...
The Good
Good character-design.
Inventory is pretty clever.
Good scares are actually pretty common in this game.
You always know where to go.
The Bad
All enemies are killed in exactly the same way.
Chapters drag on for way too long.
Plot is not interesting in the slightest.
Level-design is very monotone.
Very little challenge.
The Bottom Line
Story
The story starts off with engineer Isaac on a spaceship with a small crew. The ship has been send to check up on a so-called planet-cracker vessel whose communication went completely silent. It doesn't take very long to realize that it's not just an unplugged telephone causing the trouble, as the ship has been infected with a mysterious alien race and most of the crew has been killed already. Isaac gets separated from his pals and has to find a way to escape the Ishimura (as the ship is called) with his life in tact, along the way he is also looking for his wife who was stationed at the ship.
It sounds like a pretty good setup and the Alien franchise has proven to us before that been trapped on a spaceship with alien lifeforms is frightening as all hell. The story itself is not very fantastic, but it does a good job at putting our hero in the worst places imaginable and is thus sufficient. My only gripe lies with the ever-so-important pacing, which is very bad in this title. There are a total of twelve chapters, but I stopped caring around the fifth, simply because each level drags on for eternities and just keeps getting longer and longer with every second. Every time you think you're done with a chapter, some plot-event demands you to travel halfway across the sector again to fix some broken computer or do some other engineer business.
I also briefly mentioned the side-story involving Isaac's missing wife, which might have seemed a bit too relevant to skim over. The intro features a brief message from her, but then it's not brought up again for almost half the game. It's a shame, because with such little narrative, it becomes even more obvious that most of the game consists of running through the same metal corridors for long amounts of time.
Gameplay
Since Isaac is an engineer, he is naturally not very familiar with the working of guns. What he does know, however, is how to use sharp objects and that's fortunate since the alien lifeforms are full of limps. This is what makes the combat in this game work, unlike a Resident Evil or Left 4 Dead, enemies can't just be killed by regular gunfire. The most effective way is to cut off their limbs, since that not only kills them faster, but also makes sure that they are less effective when they are brought back to life by some other foe. The combat also feels gratifying because of the great impact each weapon has, it genuinely feels like you have a power-tool in your hands and are mowing through fleshy foes.
Besides fighting your way through enemies, Isaac also has to do a lot of running around. Since this is a horror game, much of the emphasis lies on building atmosphere. This is however handicapped by the fact that all enemies are very weak. You might be shocked when an enemy jumps through a vent in front of you, but one good shot at their tentacles will stun them and a second shot will break them completely. All enemies succumb to this tactic: just aim for whatever limbs you see and cut them off. This eventually resulted in me still using the starting pistol several hours into the game and all the fancy tools in the shop just went completely by me.
The rest of the gameplay is very basic: missions consist of Isaac running around an area of the Ishimura looking for items to open up a path or a way to fix some broken systems. It's nice that it sorta sticks with the whole Engineering gag, but the events lack any sort of fun-factor. Sometimes you have to do a short puzzle, but the mechanics usually limit this to either picking something up or slowing it down, since that is all Isaac can really do. Sometimes you're in zero-gravity getting absolutely lost, but not in an engaging or interesting way and at other times you have to do little mini-games to progress, but these all control like absolute shit.
Presentation
The first hour or so was really frightening for me, since I had to run away from fucked-up monstrosities with no means of defense. Even when I found the pistol, it seemed very weak to me and I refrained from exploring too much. The sighing and breathing I heard coming from the other side of walls kept me on edge and, dang it, I was having a load of fun. As described in the Gameplay section of the review, though, it wasn't meant to last. When I realized just how feeble enemies were it sucked all the horror from the presentation and the few times the game did present me with a new foe, I could just freeze it with stasis and fire away at whatever obvious weak-spot we were using this time around.
When frightening the player no longer works, then trying to amaze them with jaw-dropping scenery is a good road to take. This should not be too difficult in practice, since we are already in space anyway. Just show us some awesome stars, planets and spaceships and you should be good. However, the game rarely goes outside and when it does, the view is often too limited to allow any kind of sightseeing. You also can't breath, which is quite logical when you think about it. A real waste, but at least the gory presentation during combat makes up for some of it. I just love the sounds of limbs been cut off...
Replay-value
Not recommended. The game is pretty long and lack the variety needed to justify a second run through it. You could make it a big interesting by using different weapons than before, picking a higher difficulty or taking different routes in the upgrade trees, but it's definitely limited to the fans only.
Verdict
I couldn't be bothered to make it to the end of Dead Space, simply because the pacing is just so bad. Spending hours tracking through various similarly-looking hallways with little to no combat or narrative to keep you engaged is pretty boring. It could have worked if the atmosphere they were trying to present worked well with the enemies they used, but it really doesn't work. It's like greeting your new neighbor every day, the first few times are interesting and you might feel the need to strike up a conversation, but after a few days you are just going to say "hi" and mozy along to work. That's my relationship with the necromorphs in a nutshell, except the greeting is a saw-blade.
If you are easier to scare than me, then the atmosphere might really get to you and if that happens, then I can recommend it to you. Ask yourself just how easily you lose yourself in a horrifying setpiece (a Silent Hill, perhaps) and you will know whether or not you should get this game.
By Asinine on January 29, 2013
Saints Row: The Third (Windows)
Third-person Dildo Adventure
The Good
A perfect amount of content that does not overwhelm or leave you bored.
Insane action.
Colorful visuals.
The Bad
Story discards a lot of established plot-points.
A few other plot-points are downright copy&paste work.
Not a lot else...
The Bottom Line
story
Saints Row: The Third picks up some years after the events of Saints Row 2. The Saints are the only gang left after their previous exploits and have used their newfound powers to release a brand of gang-themed products. They have essentially sold out and gone soft, but they quickly get back in touch with their roots when a robbery goes wrong and a series of events gets the crew stuck in the city of Steelport. To make matters worse: the Saints lose access to all their money and are thus forced to gain it back by defeating the three local gangs.
A lot of people complained about the story’s pacing, often citing how strange it is that you quickly gain access to all kinds of powerful tools. I however thought this was somewhat fitting, since the game wants you to feel like an overpowered one-man-army. What I will complaint about is that the story has a very “been there, done that” feel to it, with which I mean to say that it’s a little too familiar. Fighting three rival gangs is fine by me, but when a rich organization starts funding a PMC to take down all of the gangs simultaneously, then the plot starts to feel an uncomfortable lot like copy/paste-work.
What also bothers me is that the game retcons a few facts from the previous entries for relatively weak reasons. The most obvious one is that Shaundi – the once dreadlocked and reckless gangster – has been transformed into a much cleaner and generic version of herself. The game wanted to have a sexier appearance, so they just threw it out and made her a lot less interesting in the process. “The boss” also says at one point that his name is secret and tells an ally who found it to keep it for herself, but the player-character was a regular citizen before all of this and thus registered. Overall the story isn’t fantastic, but for a game that just wants to be extreme, it is somewhat fitting and doesn’t get in the way of the fun.
Gameplay
This game is a sandbox that a lot of Grand Theft Auto fans will find immediately recognizable, but with a few twists. All the regular stuff is here: driving, shooting, flying and beating up people, but it all flows a lot better. All your missions and menus are stored in a smartphone, which you can access with the tab-key. From there you can quickly set everything up before heading out on your next adventure, for example: calling up a few homies to help out in an upcoming battle or transferring the money from your stores to your bank account before going shopping. The phone has been a major feature since the first game, but never has it had so many useful functions that were as easy to access.
Missions are the most important part of the game and one nice change is that you no longer need to get “respect” before starting them. Previous games in the series would force players to fill a bar before they could start another mission, but here you can start any mission at any time. Respect instead serves as a means of unlocking new skills that you can then purchase with in-game money. The upgrades are very varied and allow you to specialize in specific fighting-styles. I invested a lot of cash in melee with rifles as a fall-back strategy, which worked very well. Later on you might acquire enough money to get pretty much everything, but by then the game is probably reaching a climax already.
One final way in which Saints Row differs from other games in the genre are the specialists, which are the strongest units in the game. These vary from subtle snipers to the not-so-subtle brutes and just generally serve to make combat a lot tougher. All in all the gameplay will feel familiar to most people, but it does a very good job at introducing improvements and especially the removal of the respect-barrier between missions helps the game feel like a more enjoyable whole.
Presentation
Most modern games go with a realistic setting and thus choose to use gray and brown colors a lot, but Saints Row instead uses a lot of purple. Purple is the color of the Saints, so as you move through the city of Steelport, you’ll see plenty of neon-signs that emit bright, purple lights on the screen. It makes the game a little more colorful, but it’s far from the only visual wonder. As you progress through the story certain events will cause permanent damage to the city, such as a green gas hanging above part of the city or the bridges been raised. These changes are best observed from the sky and luckily there are plenty of chances to do so. When driving a car, though, the city feels a little generic.
Voice-acting is also a big part of the series, as it has always been. The series is especially fond of having celebrities voice characters and they are also present in this title: Burt Reynolds voices the mayor of Steelport, Hulk Hogan voices ally “Angel de la Muerte” and former pornography star Sasha Grey (don’t ask me how I know this) voices a character as well. All of the actors, both well-known and obscure, manage to make their characters come to life and I easily found myself been pulled into the story by them.
The graphics are also very nice and colorful, which caused a GTA-loving friend of mine to constantly comment on it been “fake”. This aesthetic nicely compliments the surreal gameplay and it almost becomes a firework display when the laser-spewing jets join the fray. A little more could have been done with it, but I am not disappointed overall.
End-game content
After the story, which will take about 10 hours to complete, there is still a lot to be done in Steelport. There are several events that the player can complete (which have been cut down to 3 levels per series), gang operations to be cleared out and property to be claimed. Doing all of this will eventually give the players a 100% City Takeover score, which pretty much means they own it all. Afterwards the player can still entertain themselves with some of the vehicle theft and assassination missions, as well as the challenges, but these will offer very little incentive to keep playing.
The sad fact is that after clearing out the gangs, Steelport becomes rather lifeless and the player is left with very little to play with. You can pick fights with the police if you please, but by that point you are ridiculously overpowered, so picking fights with the pistol-wielding authority offers very little challenge. There is plenty of DLC sold separately, but the content in these varies and is a little pricey if you want all of it.
Verdict
Saints Row: The Third is a game all about driving the player from amazing set-piece to amazing set-piece, but it forgets to string these events together with a story the player wishes to explore. It’s a shame to see a series with a once interesting plot discard it in favor of showing off, but at least the gameplay is solid enough to make playing through it enjoyable. There is also a genuinely good sense of humor and everything is well-presented, so you are likely to find yourself replaying this game from time to time. I recommend getting this game for a maximum of 40 euros, preferably 30 or lower. This item goes on sales often, so be sure to check that out!
By Asinine on January 20, 2013
Deus Ex: Human Revolution (Windows)
The pinnacle of "meh"
The Good
The story and characters are top notch.
Hacking involves a fun mini-game.
Above-average voice-acting.
The Bad
Too much reading to get any context.
Gameplay is not as enjoyable as previous entries.
Unimpressive visuals.
No lock-picking!!!
Level-design straight from the Doom mapmaker.
The Bottom Line
Story:
The plot in Deus Ex: Human Revolution is centered around a moral question, which it explores from all possible angles. The question is “should humanity control its own evolution” and it’s an issue that we might have to deal with ourselves very soon. People can already replace parts of their body with artificial ones, but how long will it take before we can not only replace, but also improve?
At the start of the game we are in an office and we learn about Sarif Industries. The protagonist is Adam Jensen, a security officer for the corporation and a very regular person. The company is about to present the latest developments in technology to a congress when augmented mercenaries attack the building and destroy most of it, including Adam. The character is restored over the course of six months, which involves implanting a number of mechanical parts in his body. When Adam returns he is send out to discover what happened to the science team and how to get their company back on track.
The plot itself is rather intriguing and the pace is very fantastic, so you are constantly discovering new secrets and plot-threads as you play. Each character you meet is also fairly interesting and has his or her own ideas about the main question that hovers over the story. What makes this work, though, is that the game never forces an opinion on you and instead allows you to come to your own conclusions. It could be used to indoctrinate the audience, but instead serves as an informative tool that presents us with a very plausible future. There were a few moments where the game felt a little too much like Syndicate to me (i.e. having me run errands for a global corporation), but it will definitely keep you interested more than the sometimes easily-distracted original Deus Ex.
Gameplay:
The main feature of the franchise has always been the premise of been able to resolve each issue in different ways, the core mechanics been sneaking, hacking and fighting. If you need to get inside a building, for example, then it’s possible to do so by killing soldiers for a key, hacking the terminal next to the door or finding a secret entrance. This means that you can freely invest in any set of skills and never truly get stuck on anything, but I do fear that this entry misses the point somewhat. While moving through the levels, the old formula applies perfectly, but a number of boss-fights will instantly force you into fighting. The original would also contain boss-fights, but it was easily possible to sneak past most of them, run away or even persuade them into becoming friendly. No such luck this time around.
Combat itself is about what you’d expect from a decent first-person shooter and thus not terribly interesting. Each weapon can be upgraded with certain kits, though, so you can make some really overpowered toys for yourself. Sneaking is largely cover-based and functions by holding the right mouse-button when close to any kind of wall, from this position you can then poke your head out for some tactical overview, move around and even roll to cover distances between walls. There is however a lack of execution moves that you can perform from in cover, so in order to get rid of approaching guards, you’ll have to kneel down manually and hope the random AI doesn’t detect you too early. Hacking is done with a little mini-game that has you making your way through a network by capturing virtual nodes. I found this to be the most interesting approach, since there are extras to pick up and it can be really challenging when you are detected too early and quickly need to capture the right points.
On the more negative side, lock-picking has been removed entirely, as well the spy drone and some other features. Instead of the very limited and focused set of skills you would get in the original, you know get to choose any upgrade after each level up or by finding special items. This is such a fast progress that you’ll pretty much end up been able to handle any situation in every way, which makes it both less challenging and less worthwhile. It’s also a slow process to clear out an area, hack every stupid computer, move through every vent and then finish you’re actual mission just to get all the upgrade points. There was a point at which I just stopped upgrading because I had almost everything that was useful already; this point was two hours before the final mission even started.
Presentation:
This part of the game left me rather stumped, because I now feel like I am completely missing out on something. People have called this game beautiful and stunning, but all I see is a decently looking modern game that occasionally pisses itself. The focus on yellow is somewhat interesting, but often the game uses blocky imagery (probably on purpose), which is severely out-of-place in an otherwise realistic game. During some conversations with female characters, the upper-body also seemed unfinished. I did enjoy the fact that Jensen always wears sunglasses in order to display the HUD, it’s a simple touch, but it fit the game well and made for some entertaining scenes where his sensors got jammed.
Voice-acting has always been a big miss with the franchise, but this one pulls it off relatively well. Actors give another layer of personality to the characters they are voicing and put in genuine effort to make even the smaller characters come to life. Adam himself is a bit of a boring twat, though, which neatly resembles the level-design. Each area is made through a checklist, which makes sure each section has enough chest-high walls surrounding the flanks and a few vents that lead the player around enemies. The presentation is shaky at best and aggravating at worst.
End-game content:
Deus Ex is typically a game that simply ends after the last mission, but this one has some points that make it worth replaying. For one: it’s entertaining to see how different choices throughout the game can change the dialogue and events you run into. Some choices also ascend past the binary “good” or “bad” choices, which fits well with the game’s focus on morality. That doesn’t mean I didn't instantly uninstall the game after finishing it once, though, so replays are optional for the die-hard fans and financially weak.
Verdict:
You play Human Revolution for the story and atmosphere, but the lacking gameplay does show up a little too often. A lot of players will find themselves getting stuck on bosses even when playing on Easy, which goes directly against the premise of the game. If you can find this game on sale or at about 15 euros/20 dollars, then it’s worth a purchase for the plotline alone. Veterans of the franchise will probably feel a little betrayed, though.
By Asinine on January 20, 2013
FTL: Faster Than Light (Windows)
Not quite fast enough.
The Good
Plenty of customization
Quite challenging
Engaging tactical combat
Inventory management
Quite addicting
The Bad
Lack of resources
scenarios start repeating soon
Fire spreads way too fast
Progression is too rough.
The Bottom Line
Story
FTL takes place at an undetermined year somewhere in the future; space travel has been mastered already and several alien races have been discovered too. The Federation that rules over everything space is threatened by an emerging army of rebels. The players is appointed command over a ship and has to deliver vital information to the capital of the Federation before the enemy fleet arrives. This journey takes you through several galaxies with randomized features and population, you'll encounter people in need of help and interact with all sorts of alien species along the way.
It's a decent setup, but there is one severe handicap: there isn't enough content to effectively randomize the game. I think that in total there are 5 races, 8 types of galaxies and roughly thirty different events, this means that a second playthrough will almost certainly match the first one about 50% of the time. Compare that to Binding of Isaac, which has so many power-ups and so many items that each session feels different. Even after clocking over eighty hours with that game, I still find new combinations and play-styles. In FTL I started seeing the same scenarios over and over again; after a few hours of play I already knew each solution to each situation that I could run into and I had gotten so used to combat that experimentation was worthless after obtaining the right weapons.
After having played the latest Xcom, it also feels lazy not to give characters a degree of personality. The staff working at Xcom did a decent job at making the story feel somewhat alive. By comparison, FTL feels like you waging a war between menu-screens.
Gameplay
FTL is a very addicting game that has some amazingly satisfying combat. Your goal is to make it to the end of the galaxies by tactically deciding your next destination, this happens when you select the "Jump" button at the top of the screen. The map has a lot of ways you can go and each location can have a different event, however, you can't just check everything in one shot because the enemy fleets draws nearer with every turn. Each location gives you a few text-windows explaining what is going on down there, upon which you can react by selecting a dialogue-option. You'll unlock more options when you raise your skills.
When you engage in combat, you must direct your men to their individual positions and activate the ship's weapons. Weapons have to charge, so a good balance and timing can make a huge difference. When a weapon is ready to fire you must select it and then click on the specific sector of the enemy ship that you wish to assault. Allowing the player to pick off individual sections allows for a lot of tactical diversity, since you can destroy their air-pumps and deplete their oxygen, or maybe bomb their shields and then fire on their weapons. Your soldiers can also delve into combat themselves if either your or the enemy decides to board the enemy ship.
There are a few problems that sour the fun though, as is always the case. The most glaringly obvious is that fire spreads way too fast, regardless of whether you are suppressing it or not. If you can't get rid off fire by opening airlocks, then you might as well restart the game because you are screwed already. Shields also regenerate way too fast and are way too relevant in combat. If your weapons can't penetrate an enemy shield, then you pretty much have no chance at all. Fuel is also way too scarce, so even on easy I had several moments where I just barely made it to a store. These issues might seem minor, but they are real annoyances that shouldn't be too difficult to fix.
Presentation
I already mentioned that this game feels too much like you are constantly interacting with a menu before and I think the problem might lie in the boring presentation. You are pretty much staring at still images for most of the ride and not much ever happens: you click around a menu, see a short animation, get numerical feedback and that's it. The art is not very amazing either and it would have been entertaining to see drawings of the races we are interacting with, instead of just the minuscule sprites that we have now.
Replay-value
Despite of the lacking randomization mentioned earlier, I still feel that FTL is fairly replayable. The tight arcade action is very enjoyable and finding new parts to stick to your ship feels like seeing a son grow up after a while. It's however limited to maybe two weeks, after which the fun while gradually die out and you decide to let it rest for a few patches. The repeating scenarios are just a bit dull and when I mentioned in my Spore review that I wanted a more focused space-adventure, I didn't quite mean this. In many ways Spore's space-phase was even better than FTL, since it had more freedom and the difficulty was more appropriate.
Extras
You can get new designs for your ship by unlocking the in-game achievements, but I didn't unlock enough to know if it has a lot of impact to gameplay. If done right, then this feature might keep the game alive for a while longer, but the one ship I did unlock wasn't that spectacular.
Verdict
FTL is equally challenging and frustrating, but both of those qualities work towards making the game more addicting. You want to finish the story just once, you want to get good at it and you want to max out your crew. There are some major annoyances spread throughout the gameplay and the randomized content is not quite a success, but overall the premise is interesting and pretty well done.
The game doesn't quite justify the 10 euros price-tag for me though, especially since I paid half of that for much more substantial games. If you can pick it up in a sale though (Christmas sales incoming!!!), then this is a purchase you won't feel too bad about afterwards.
By Asinine on October 18, 2012
Shin Megami Tensei: Persona 4 (PlayStation 2)
Great for fans of the genre, but too tedious and difficult for others.
The Good
Game mixes anime with video games brilliantly, especially in the insanely beautiful cut-scenes.
The amount of time you'll spend reading dialogue or watching scenes unfold actually does make the story rather fun. It feels like a show without commercial breaks.
Characters can be related to.
Voice-acting.
You have to carefully manage how you spend each day.
Building social links is a pretty entertaining feature.
The Bad
Two hours of playing, five minutes of actual gameplay.
Game takes a very sudden leap of difficulty that doesn't match well with the timed narrative.
Even after gameplay starts becoming more present, I still feel like the game drags me through most of the time.
The main character
Very tedious and monotonous.
The Bottom Line
Story
Persona 4 is a very story-heavy RPG in which you take control of a transfer student in modern Japan. You arrive in the new town and move in with your uncle and younger niece, the former of which is a detective. Soon after your arrival the town is struck by a series of murders, leaving the townsfolk shocked and the police confused. Your character is however told through a dream that he has the power to solve these murders, power in this case meaning that he can go pass through any television and arrive in a different world. The world within the TV turns out to be connected to the murders, so you are forced to team up with a cast of different characters and solve the mystery yourself.
What really sets this game apart from other JRPG-games is the timed narrative and characters. The long-term goal is to solve the mystery and prevent characters from been killed in the TV-world, but you also need to maintain a social and school life at the same time. This means that your short-term and long-term goals conflict and you are occasionally forced to make choices. For example: you have four days to save a character from the TV-world, but you also have to attend to your clubs on two of those days. In that scenario your social needs cut down on the time you have to save the character. You could of course skip on going to your clubs, but going there improves your “social links” which allows you to create new personas (read: attack styles). Even if you don’t have to save anybody, then you still need to decide between improving your social links (going to clubs and hanging out with friends), your own skills (which give new dialogue options) or just grinding your attack-styles to higher levels. At this point the timed narrative can get a bit frustrating, as the game has the tendency to throw events into your direction. This means that your plans on doing a specific task are halted by the chance to attend a one-time event. This wouldn’t be too bad, if it didn’t happen constantly.
The aforementioned characters are also a joy to behold because they are so well-written. Most of the time I feel very cold towards anime, solely because they usually involve people with such elaborate backstories and personalities. It makes it impossible for me, as the audience, to relate to the character on-screen and thus I’ll lose interest much faster or get frustrated over smaller issues. The characters in Persona however do have interesting stories behind them, but they are just regular kids. This game takes ordinary and relatable traits and manages to make them fascinating. I even felt like I knew what the characters were going through from time to time. The world inside the TV is also themed after whatever character is trapped there at the moment, so this title also serves as an exploration of each person’s deepest thoughts and wishes, which is another thing I really like and would love to see done more often. In the midst of all this is you, the player, and sadly you are boring as all hell. It really strikes me as odd that Atlus decided to make a blank-slate because that only works in games like Doom or Half-Life where we can imagine ourselves how the character would react to situations. This guy simply gives too much away because we can see him react to certain situations, such as his natural poses when talking to people or the way he motions while speaking. He also falls very flat because there are more interesting people surrounding him, quite literally turning him into a third wheel wherever he goes.
Gameplay
Persona 4 has a fantastic story and one that I would love to see develop, but that desire is instantly put to rest when you notice what the core gameplay is made out of. During each rescue mission you’ll be placed inside a labyrinth themed after the character that is imprisoned there. Your goal is to fight your way through dozens of enemies and eventually reach the final room.Tthis wouldn’t be too big an issue, if the final room wasn’t eleven floors higher than you are. Each floor of the maze also consists of randomized hallways and rooms, but all of them have the exact same scenery and pattern, so not only is the maze boring, but it also starts to wear on you very fast. Because of the randomized nature, you can never really get a feel for the logic either. Sometimes the staircase was right around the corner and sometimes at the end of eight branching paths. Each time you leave the maze it gets shuffled again too, which is another annoying feature.
Aside from been in no way compelling, making your way through the maze can also be ridiculously difficult. I made sure that I was always three levels above the recommended and I had to reload a save about three or four times per level (boss-fights included). As you make your way through the maze you’ll be harassed by a number of enemies, you can try to hit them in the back in order to get a preemptive strike (if they hit you in the back, then the fight will start with them). This is a useless feature because the fights start with you by default, so you might as well run into them and not risk giving them the first strike. Each enemy has a set of elemental strengths and weaknesses, if you hit a weakness then the enemy is stunned, but if you hit a strength, then the attack can be absorbed, heal or even deflect back at you. It sounds tactical, but the problem is that the game constantly switches to new enemies or even old ones with a different name. This meant that there was no real way to create a set of tactics or even an ideal team, unless you’d go back to grind later on. The boss-fights are also terrible and already the very first real one spawned additional enemies to help her and those enemies also used healing abilities. That would be cruel to put in nearing the end of the game, let alone the first boss.
Things are a lot better outside of the TV where most of the social side-stories are going on. You have to find a way to spend each of your days in the town of Inaba, so this means discovering its secrets, picking up mini-quests or improving your aforementioned social skills (characteristics). The mini-quests reminded me a lot of Fallout 3, just because they aren’t marked and you’ll actually have to ask around and search for them. I found some of them to fairly entertaining, but the real joy still comes from seeing the main story or social links advance. You can also stock up for your next journey by buying items and weapons in the shopping district or visit a special room where you can combine your personas and create newer, more powerful ones.
Presentation
Persona 4 has two different sets of graphics: one of them is the downright amazing animated cut-scenes and the other is the somewhat underwhelming gameplay graphics. During cut-scenes you’ll be shown visuals that could instantly be lifted and placed into an anime instead, even some more modern cartoons I have seen don’t look as great as this Playstation 2 title. It’s therefore kind of a shame that the game uses these scenes very sparsely and more often than not relies on the actual graphics, even during non-playable dialogue. These visuals are certainly not bad by any means, but they don’t really impress either. The problem is that characters don’t really emote well; they just get some animations like a pulsating # or a tacked-on blush. Movements are also very stiff, so most of the time I found myself staring at the pictures that accompany the dialogue instead of what was actually happening on the other 85% of the screen.
Luckily the voice-acting compensates for a lot of the presentation’s flaws and I’d even say that it was part of the reason I stayed hooked to the game. Unlike Kingdom Hearts, Persona always uses voice-acting, except for repetitive lines and the social-links’ dialogue-trees (whereas Kingdom Hearts randomly turned the voice-acting on and off). The voices of the actors perfectly matches the characters we see on-screen and they are almost all done professional, which is especially nice for a Japanese title. It also makes me really happy that this great voice-acting hasn’t been wasted on a terrible script either.
I have already talked about the level-design, but I think it’s worth repeating that it’s really bad. All the levels consist of the exact same hallways and rooms that get copy-pasted in a random order, so there is nothing engaging about the design at all. Only a few set rooms have something related to the story going on, but the rest of the time it’s literally a monotone maze. It’s not really encouraging to the player when the only difference between level 1 and 2 (besides a change of theme) is that level 2 had three more floors to deal with.
Replay-value
While playing this game I got a bit interested in how long this game lasted other players and I was shocked to find that players reported hours ranging from 75 to 110. I am going to be honest with you and say that I have NEVER played a game that lasted this long (aside from sandbox titles). It would take a true fan to ever willingly play through an entire ninety-hour long, semi-linear RPG twice. I am not one of those.
While the story would definitely warrant another playthrough, it’s the gameplay that really ruins it. I once again can’t stress enough that making each level a multi-layered maze (with randomized paths and the exact same scenery all throughout) was just stupid and I can’t believe that nobody at Atlus opposed this horrible design. If there is one thing that kills replay-value, then it would be dull repetition. Would you replay a game if you knew it consisted roughly fifty hours of navigating obnoxiously designed mazes after you have gone through it already? No amount of atmosphere, story or free pancakes can convince you to sit through THAT again.
It’s a shame about the story though. As I played through this game for the first time, I already started fantasizing about what I could see if I had taken my character in a different direction. I barely spent any time with the character of Yukiko or Doshima, so I wondered what I could have discover about them if the tight time-schedule didn’t limit the amount of time I could spend on developing social links. What would happen if I pursued a different relationship, club or job? It even goes into the statistics, because having a courageous character can offer you completely different dialogue options than when you have an understanding character. It far surpasses games like Skyrim or Oblivion where the RPG-elements are mostly built around achieving the same goals in different ways. Instead of that Persona 4 offers completely different story-lines, which is a much better incentive than knowing you could have persuaded a character in giving you the key that you just pickpocketed.
Extras
I have no idea.
Verdict
Persona 4 reminded me a lot of Deadly Premonition while I was playing it: You either see the game as a work of absolute art that renders all its flaws meaningless or you see it as wasted potential. Sadly I have to take up residence in the latter camp, because Persona 4 is flawed at the very core of its gameplay design and not just all-around rough. The very foundation of how the programmers decided to make this game was just flat-out wrong and because of that, all the story and characters that the writers poured their soul into are wasted. I’ll definitely take a peek at that anime I hear a lot about, but as a game Persona 4 is an intriguing visual novel that occasionally pisses itself for three hours straight.
If it were just a series of dialogue trees with minimal player-involvement, then that would have been fun, if a little weird for a Playstation 2 game. Perhaps they could have done more with the animated cut-scenes we occasionally get to see or maybe they could have actually made the Beginner difficulty for beginners (why don’t we have cheats in videogames anymore?). It’s too late to complain though, so my final word will be that Persona 4 is an excellent game for veterans of the genre, but not for anybody else.
By Asinine on October 9, 2012
Darklands (DOS)
Time to kill the mood!
The Good
People seem somewhat excited about it.
Map of Germany is somewhat entertaining and cities are accurately named.
The Bad
Almost everything else.
The Bottom Line
I recently purchased this game for 99 cents on Good Old Games, figuring it would be a very nice distraction from my usual schedule. I downloaded the installer, ran it and was ready for the greatest open-world adventure of my entire life!!! Then I installed Mount&Blade again, because this game is the most overrated crap I have ever seen. I usually refrain from flat-out calling a game crap in my reviews, but here there is just no other way to describe it. Seldom have I felt this much hatred for a game, let alone one that is so humble in nature.
Let's start at the beginning...
Upon booting the game I was given three options: Quick Play, Start a New Adventure and Continue. I wanted my own adventure, so I selected the New Game option and started making my own party. This is where my first problem comes in: YOU CAN NEVER READ ANYTHING! Aside from been just downright pixelated, the letters are also written in a front that just blends together even more. It also does the same thing as Fallout 3, where the names of stats are abbreviated to fit in a smaller window. A lot of people praised the customization, but frankly I can't get very excited about pouring points in stats like "wffl" or "Strw". I decided to put points into whatever I could decipher and clicked next, whereupon the game politely reloaded the exact same menu and told me to add even more points to my character. I picked up somewhere along the line that this moves the character through the phases of his life, but I got so sick and tired of the mere idea that I just saved the character and added him to the pre-made party. Ready to start my adventure, I clicked the Go button and went off!
Sadly the button did nothing, as did half the other buttons located in the menu. I returned to the main menu after that and just selected Quick Game. This lead me to a text-screen that filled me in on what amounts to a story. I was to take control of a group of knights devoted to good, so my previous efforts in making a sneaky thief were utterly worthless right off the bat. Things got worse when the conversation ended and nobody had said a single word in regards to what we had to do, they offered some suggestions, but no direction. Some suspicions started to arise within me, so I left the inn and 'lo and behold, I was offered a dozen options to go to places.
It's not that I don't like text-based games, but this genre doesn't mix at all with sandbox features. In this scenario all that's going to happen is that the player will do something and the game will always follow a success up with "What do you want to do now". It carries no weight to the overall narrative, nor to the player's emotions, it's just a collection of meaningless screens. I was devoted to try and get into it though, so I pursued all my leads in search of a story. After ten minutes of play I had a vague hint that their might be a quest hidden somewhere in the city, but with nighttime approaching I decided to get one quick glance of what the local shops offered.
The answer turned out to be... incomprehensible menus! I could not figure any of it out, but knowing people were going to flame me for saying this, I decided to check out the manual... It has over 100 pages! I have always stood by the notion that if you can't explain something simply, then you yourself simply don't understand it. 108 pages is therefore a clear sign of NOT UNDERSTANDING it, not even the producers knew what they were doing. I know I can just look at the first few pages to look for a page I need, but this is just so overwhelming that I'd rather just fire up anything else. By the way, doesn't it seem logical to give a few quick hints in-game, seeing as how we are already spending the entire game looking at text anyway? Games like Zork also had built-in commands that you could call upon for some quick help, so why doesn't Darklands have any?
It was now night and I was still at a loss, so as a last hope I randomly wandered around town until bandits attacked me. This was literally what pushed me over the edge, the combat is HORRENDOUS. The idea is that the fights are real-time, but you can pause the action to issue commands. I tried this, but using the mouse is so jittery that I couldn't manage to do anything, most of the time the game just beeped loudly and my guys stood perfectly still. That was the point where I force-closed the game, this was the breaking point. After I submitted my review though, I was approached by Unicorn Lynx who suggested I might not have given the game a fair chance. After having given it some rest, I decided to try once more and I found that if you are willing to dig through that enormous manual than the game can be at least playable. It doesn't fix issues with readability, the plot that doesn't exist or the obtuse menus, but I at least managed to skip town and head somewhere. I was almost starting to get into it when I walked out of a random gate and the game suddenly told me I had died, followed by a cut-scene and the game freezing on me.
I have no idea how people can get so excited over this on Mobygames, I read claims like "Darklands is an RPG that would kick the living day-lights out of today's games!" and this forced me to ask: "Really?".
You would REALLY rather play Darklands than Dragon Age: Origins.
You would rather play Darklands than World of Warcraft?
You would rather play Darklands than Deus Ex: Human Revolution?
Even if we are too place ourselves in the mindset of a gamer from 1992 it falls very flat. Zelda II was already kicking around, Ultima was already dominating the genre since 1980 and... what is supposed to be revolutionary about this game? Text-based game were around before and after this game and the combat is a massive downgrade compared to the already mediocre Ultima IV combat.
Before people bring it up, no I am not trolling anyone. I like both RPG-games and text-adventures, I have played a lot of each and also some games that combined both these genres. Darklands is just bad. It's the worst game I have ever played, in fact. The end.
By Asinine on September 30, 2012