If nothing else, Crackdown 2 speaks to the strength of the original Crackdown formula. Collecting orbs, Hulk-jumping rooftops, firing absurd ordinance, and generally acting like a wreckless super freak has never been funner. The problem is, every new decision Ruffian Games has made is shortsighted, ineffectual and in many cases outright dumb. You could probably say this is our fault for putting Crackdown 1's pedigree on such a shameless pedestal, but that'd be like blaming the weather man for predicting lightning would strike twice.
The open world formula has never been facilitative to a scripted narrative, and the original Crackdown took a beating for having almost none whatsoever. CD2 takes that failure to the next level by not only sidestepping narrative, but concealing what little back-story it has into 40 or so audio logs randomly strewn about the map. The only story you'll be spoon fed is the incessant orders from The Agency about murdering everything in sight and not asking questions. Near the end some rogue transmissions make it seem like maybe there's some sort of good / bad ending choice coming up, but it never pans out and the game always ends the same way. They did have the decency to tack on an ending cinematic, but its just a needless and unsatisfactory lead in to an unlikely sequel. And we all know, seeding your next effort is the best way to reward people for supporting your current effort.
Unfortunately, progressing through said non-existent narrative is an equally uninspired affair. Your virtually directionless objective is to eradicate the mindless zombie menace that plagues the city, and stop the terrorists who are getting in your way. It seems the only way Ruffian could come up with to present this act is with two of the industries worst gameplay mechanics; mob hunts and escort missions. Every one of the games "missions" involves running, climbing or falling into a static area of the city and then hunting down every enemy in the immediate area, protecting a target from every enemy in the immediate area, or worse, both. No real targets, no story, no planning, no stealth, no strategy. You do have a variety of guns, explosives and even melee options at your disposal, but you're not going to need any of it. Even at game start you're leagues ahead of your opposition in capability and long after you've come up with every way to abuse your enemies, the game will continue to throw them at you over and over again. As though that somehow justifies the general lack of content.
As an additional middle finger to people who bought the first game, the games map is virtually the same as before. Some buildings have been slightly changed in the ten years since the last game, none of it makes a huge amount of difference in play. No effort has been made to make the tedious process of window scaling skyscrapers any easier, and you will still frequently find yourself surrounded by concealed targets with crack shot rocket launcher aim. You may occasionally get a kick out of seeing a classic location slightly changed (the old car sales place is particularly amusing), but whether you've if you've already taken the super human tour in CD1 or not, there's really nothing interesting going on in Pacific City.
Now the tricky part here is that the entire experience, limited and shortsighted though it may be is not entirely unfun. Frequently, its exceedingly fun. Using your super cop powers to establish dominance is awesome, even moreso when accompanied by 2 or 3 other super cops via co-op. But its an awesome every Crackdown 1 player has already experienced, and this time there's no point or payoff to any of it. Without a story, bosses, or even creative locations to explore, there's no motivation to actually participate in the boring activities that make up the games "core" except to perform the extras along the way. Sure, you'll be powering up your agent the entire time, but not because you need them to beat the game, only because it will make life easier when you decide to hunt down all of the games extras.
Extras are of course are the main replay value in any sandbox game, but with Ruffian's poor understanding of what is actually fun it feels like this sandbox has no real toys in it just more chores. Remember those 800 orbs you had to collect in the last game? Now there's even more (the number of collectibles is up over 1000 all said and done), including some that run away from you when you get close to them, and some that are only available within close proximity to other online players. And that's on top of the timed races, the stunt markers, the car collecting, and everything else we already did in Crackdown 1 or Grand Theft Auto or Spider-Man or every other sandbox game. Its not that any of these activities are inherently bad, but there's just way too many of them and way too little motivation unless you have absolutely got to have that 1K on your gamercard.
Sadly, the whole game stinks of some "if it ain't broke don't fix it" logic, but its not like Crackdown 1 was perfect to begin with. Instead of fixing the first games issues and expanding on the gameplay, Ruffian has chosen to simply flip the record over and play it again, twice. Now I like B-sides just as much as the next guy, but mixing comfortable awesome with questionable decisions does very little but tarnish the integrity of the original especially when its so needlessly padded out to fill an entire game. There's no reason the content presented here couldn't have been done as an expansion pack or at least some sort of re-release that includes the original content. Crackdown 2 isn't so much bad as it is unneccessary and kind of insulting to the people whose wallets made it possible by supporting the first. In contrast to the original, CD2 is worthy of a rental at best.
-F.
Showing posts with label 360. Show all posts
Showing posts with label 360. Show all posts
Friday, July 30, 2010
Wednesday, April 28, 2010
The Legend of God Reaver May Cry if The Cake is a Lie (Darksiders)
It will be my eternal regret that I nearly passed on Darksiders. First it was the THQ logo. Then it was the lack of advertising. Then it was the reviewers. Now that I've played it, though, Darksiders is easily the best games I've played since Batman. Like I did with Dante, I will do it the courtesy of omitting any comparisons to that other game reviewers can't seem to get enough of comparing it to, pretentious as that sounds, if only because at this point that's a like kicking Vigil games when they're down. Do you really think they didn't know that other guy has a hood and hookshot, guys?
So what you need to know is this, Darksiders is a hack and slash action adventure (and you can actually call it adventure, thank god) full of violence and Gothic imagery. The premise was cooked up by Joe Madureira, and even though it has nothing to do with Battle Chasers, the same style permeates the game. Everything is big and exaggerated and jagged and dark, there's no sense of haste or "stylish" to it at all. Just a big guy with a big sword and a big chip on his shoulder. The entire setting is very deliberate and obvious, but compared to all the wishy washy mood swingy nonsense that has cluttered up the industry as of late, its nice to have a world of people you can legitimately get behind or hate.
The story is about War (and only War), one of The Four Horsemen of The Apocalypse. At some point, The Apocalypse happens but only War shows up. Despite his efforts (exactly what he was supposed to do is never really clarified) Hell beats Heaven and humanity gets wiped out. Now The Horsemen are charged with maintaining the balance, so the fact that War was on scene and the balance went kablooey looks real bad for him, specially considering his co-riders aren't answering their phones. So, a hundred years of healing later, War gets a chance to go back to an earth ravaged by hot demon on angel action and figure out just what went wrong, with extreme prejudice. He's got a babysitter holding his leash, and he'll need to run a few favors for the angels and demons along the way, but sooner or later he'll get there. The good news is you get to drive.
Now War is supposed to be one of the biggest bad asses in documented lore, so the fact that you start with nothing but a basic combo and an area effect spell is an early stumbling block. You do get some nifty (QTE-less, thank god) finishing moves to play with but despite a launcher and some aerial options, combat is a pretty bland affair in the beginning. There IS a wealth of stuff to buy even from the first opportunity to do so, but you'll be broke and bored for a while before and after, a factor only frustrated if you don't buy your secondary weapon right off the bat. Thankfully, once the game opens up and you're making currency souls pretty steadily the pace picks up. There's still a lot of room to make poor choices and hate your "build", but the prices and gains are measured such that you're never too far from heading back to ole' Vulgrim for more.
The meat of the game is housed in the five or six dungeons full of enemies and puzzles you'll need to familiarize yourself with as War climbs, kills, and collects his way to justice. Each one is decked out with a shiny new toy, a mini boss or two, and then a big boss encounter that requires more use of said new toy than raw brawn. In-between the dungeons you'll be traipsing about an Overworld-like arrangement of smaller connecting zones that present you with plenty of combat practice and places to use your acquired toys in the hunt for additional power ups. You'll occasionally bump into a surprise boss fight or some other action event in the open areas too, but mostly its just a lot of satisfactory slash and traveling. Best of all, you're never locked out of any of it, even up to the last boss fight, save the limitations of the items in your inventory. You can always go anywhere and do anything you already did, in case you missed something or forgot something. The only thing its really missing in that regard is a Shadow of the Colossus style "Reminiscence" for old boss battles.
What does suck? Well, there's the obligatory end of game busy work treasure hunt. Tiny carrots dangled in front of you throughout the entire game. You can see them, even touch some of them, but you can't have them. Not until the end of the game when they make you go back and get them. Then there's the horse, Ruin. War is constantly referred to as The Horseman and Rider of the Red Horse. But where is his horse for the first 60% of the game? He's not there in the opening before War gets stripped of his powers, and when you do find Ruin, somebody else is riding him. Not somebody important, just a nobody that you promptly dispatch and then forget about. Even once you "have" Ruin, the places you're allowed to ride are limited, so did they just think "moving quickly" would hinder the first half of game? Also, the game is too easy. Figuring out some of the bosses and puzzles will take you a minute, but you are going to sleepwalk 90% of the combat without a second thought. Committing to anything other than basic sword combos often makes life more difficult, so all your toys and bought abilities are pretty superfluous. There is an Apocalyptic difficulty that tunes the numbers to a place where the world is almost dangerous, but even then you just block and dodge more, no real strategy change.
Finally, I had a big problem with War's final power up; the Mask of Shadows. When active, the mask makes the screen looks a little weird and you can see "hidden objects" like treasure chests and grapple points, but you can't open ordinary treasure chests anymore. You can still see them, you just can't open them. Despite the fact that you can still slay monsters, platform, and otherwise interact with the environment (wield cars, smash statues,etc) as necessary. What reason does this serve except to annoy the player? Maybe they thought just making a bunch of stuff appear on the maps at the end was too stupid (and it is), maybe they thought players wouldn't want a permanent yellow haze on their screen (they don't), maybe they just thought Arkham Asylum's "Detective Vision" was a good idea (it wasn't). Maybe if there were enemies more or less vulnerable in Mask of Shadows mode, puzzles that require you to switch back and forth, or at least different moves available, it would be on, but all it really accomplishes is enabling the aforementioned obnoxious treasure hunt.
Still, those are all very niggling complaints in a very solid game whose sins are just as borrowed as its features. Sure, you can legitimately knock it for originality, what with the boomerang and portal gun, but they have done a far better job of borrowing to create a new experience than just ape-ing other formulas and calling it original. Of course, it is entirely possible that I am just being a huge apologist because it reminds me of the Next Gen Legacy of Kain game we are all still desperately waiting to happen, but that's not its only charm. Needless cliffhanger aside, It manages to traverse its entire narrative without tripping over confused plot twisted feet (Bad guys actually get killed when you kill them! Imagine that, Metal Gear!), its not an exercise in boredom or futility achievement-wise and it certainly doesn't hurt to have another functional 3d member of the action-ADVENTURE game family.
Kudos, Vigil.
-F.
So what you need to know is this, Darksiders is a hack and slash action adventure (and you can actually call it adventure, thank god) full of violence and Gothic imagery. The premise was cooked up by Joe Madureira, and even though it has nothing to do with Battle Chasers, the same style permeates the game. Everything is big and exaggerated and jagged and dark, there's no sense of haste or "stylish" to it at all. Just a big guy with a big sword and a big chip on his shoulder. The entire setting is very deliberate and obvious, but compared to all the wishy washy mood swingy nonsense that has cluttered up the industry as of late, its nice to have a world of people you can legitimately get behind or hate.
The story is about War (and only War), one of The Four Horsemen of The Apocalypse. At some point, The Apocalypse happens but only War shows up. Despite his efforts (exactly what he was supposed to do is never really clarified) Hell beats Heaven and humanity gets wiped out. Now The Horsemen are charged with maintaining the balance, so the fact that War was on scene and the balance went kablooey looks real bad for him, specially considering his co-riders aren't answering their phones. So, a hundred years of healing later, War gets a chance to go back to an earth ravaged by hot demon on angel action and figure out just what went wrong, with extreme prejudice. He's got a babysitter holding his leash, and he'll need to run a few favors for the angels and demons along the way, but sooner or later he'll get there. The good news is you get to drive.
Now War is supposed to be one of the biggest bad asses in documented lore, so the fact that you start with nothing but a basic combo and an area effect spell is an early stumbling block. You do get some nifty (QTE-less, thank god) finishing moves to play with but despite a launcher and some aerial options, combat is a pretty bland affair in the beginning. There IS a wealth of stuff to buy even from the first opportunity to do so, but you'll be broke and bored for a while before and after, a factor only frustrated if you don't buy your secondary weapon right off the bat. Thankfully, once the game opens up and you're making currency souls pretty steadily the pace picks up. There's still a lot of room to make poor choices and hate your "build", but the prices and gains are measured such that you're never too far from heading back to ole' Vulgrim for more.
The meat of the game is housed in the five or six dungeons full of enemies and puzzles you'll need to familiarize yourself with as War climbs, kills, and collects his way to justice. Each one is decked out with a shiny new toy, a mini boss or two, and then a big boss encounter that requires more use of said new toy than raw brawn. In-between the dungeons you'll be traipsing about an Overworld-like arrangement of smaller connecting zones that present you with plenty of combat practice and places to use your acquired toys in the hunt for additional power ups. You'll occasionally bump into a surprise boss fight or some other action event in the open areas too, but mostly its just a lot of satisfactory slash and traveling. Best of all, you're never locked out of any of it, even up to the last boss fight, save the limitations of the items in your inventory. You can always go anywhere and do anything you already did, in case you missed something or forgot something. The only thing its really missing in that regard is a Shadow of the Colossus style "Reminiscence" for old boss battles.
What does suck? Well, there's the obligatory end of game busy work treasure hunt. Tiny carrots dangled in front of you throughout the entire game. You can see them, even touch some of them, but you can't have them. Not until the end of the game when they make you go back and get them. Then there's the horse, Ruin. War is constantly referred to as The Horseman and Rider of the Red Horse. But where is his horse for the first 60% of the game? He's not there in the opening before War gets stripped of his powers, and when you do find Ruin, somebody else is riding him. Not somebody important, just a nobody that you promptly dispatch and then forget about. Even once you "have" Ruin, the places you're allowed to ride are limited, so did they just think "moving quickly" would hinder the first half of game? Also, the game is too easy. Figuring out some of the bosses and puzzles will take you a minute, but you are going to sleepwalk 90% of the combat without a second thought. Committing to anything other than basic sword combos often makes life more difficult, so all your toys and bought abilities are pretty superfluous. There is an Apocalyptic difficulty that tunes the numbers to a place where the world is almost dangerous, but even then you just block and dodge more, no real strategy change.
Finally, I had a big problem with War's final power up; the Mask of Shadows. When active, the mask makes the screen looks a little weird and you can see "hidden objects" like treasure chests and grapple points, but you can't open ordinary treasure chests anymore. You can still see them, you just can't open them. Despite the fact that you can still slay monsters, platform, and otherwise interact with the environment (wield cars, smash statues,etc) as necessary. What reason does this serve except to annoy the player? Maybe they thought just making a bunch of stuff appear on the maps at the end was too stupid (and it is), maybe they thought players wouldn't want a permanent yellow haze on their screen (they don't), maybe they just thought Arkham Asylum's "Detective Vision" was a good idea (it wasn't). Maybe if there were enemies more or less vulnerable in Mask of Shadows mode, puzzles that require you to switch back and forth, or at least different moves available, it would be on, but all it really accomplishes is enabling the aforementioned obnoxious treasure hunt.
Still, those are all very niggling complaints in a very solid game whose sins are just as borrowed as its features. Sure, you can legitimately knock it for originality, what with the boomerang and portal gun, but they have done a far better job of borrowing to create a new experience than just ape-ing other formulas and calling it original. Of course, it is entirely possible that I am just being a huge apologist because it reminds me of the Next Gen Legacy of Kain game we are all still desperately waiting to happen, but that's not its only charm. Needless cliffhanger aside, It manages to traverse its entire narrative without tripping over confused plot twisted feet (Bad guys actually get killed when you kill them! Imagine that, Metal Gear!), its not an exercise in boredom or futility achievement-wise and it certainly doesn't hurt to have another functional 3d member of the action-ADVENTURE game family.
Kudos, Vigil.
-F.
Friday, March 5, 2010
Doing The Lord's Work (Dante's Inferno)
The question I've been asking myself since I first picked up the controller is whether Visceral should be (to use the game's jargon) punished or absolved for expertly remaking another game. On the one hand, they could easily be labeled as thieves or copycats or just plain lazy for having no more aspirations than doing what someone else already did. Yet, in this landscape of terrible, terrible sequels, homages, satires, and just plain rip offs, can there be no commendation for a mirroring a game people are literally salivating for sequels to, and doing so exceedingly well? It would be easy to burn paragraphs contrasting Dante and its progenitor, but that seems more like an exhaustive "dig" than a real review to me. So just know that every little thing I highlight (and rip on) here has already been highlighted (and ripped on) in another better known title.
"Based" on the poem of the same name, Inferno documents one man's descent through the 9 Circles of Hell. Being charged with Christian mythology the tale is quite obviously open to interpretation, done so in this case as an action packed tale of revenge (maybe), love (probably) and violence (definately) chronicling one man's quest to rescue his wife. You see its hard to classify Dante as a hero or his task as just in any way, because he is in almost no way a good guy. The gameplay has him brutally and savagely slaughtering everything in his path including former friends and family members, while the plot gradually paints him a sinner by every single definition the canon has to offer. Truth be told I haven't finished the games entire narrative, but it has become increasingly difficult to get behind Dante's whining to Lucifer about how unfair stealing his wife is when he just finished raping someone else after murdering their true love. His brutal single minded sense of valor seems more intune with those demons he seeks to defy than the dainty innocent flower he's so desperately trying to get back to.
The good news is, plot sensibility is not Inferno's business, killing is. And business is good. With a scythe for close up killing, a magic cross to fire from afar, a smattering of increasingly destructive spells, and a massive tree of abilities to unlock for it all, there is no shortage of mayhem at your disposal. You won't need half of it to undo the legions of hell, and you won't really need ANY of it once you discover the brain dead infinite combo that somehow slipped through play testing, but at least the option for varied combat is there. 100+ hit combos, aerial raves, timed counter attacks, quick time event finishing moves, and all the other modern action game cliches are at Dante's disposal and executing them is just as easy and satisfying as they should be. There is of course a catch to all the awesome hyper violent action, and that is the limp wristed attempt to add depth to the ability unlocking system.
Basically, by absolving or punishing enemies when you finish them, you can advance the holy/unholy levels that govern just what you can buy with your kill points. I find it neat that this also governs which stat modifying relics you can equip, but the actual combat abilities are pretty poorly distributed between the two. For instance, the health up unlocks are on the opposite sides of all the scythe power ups and abilities (because health is good and the scythe is evil, I guess), so if you do decide to focus on close combat (which I always do), you're going to do so with either a child sized lifebar or a pathetically weak set of scythe attacks. You can try and mitigate this by spending an equal amount of time being holy / unholy, but even if it were possible to max out both sides by the end of the game (which I doubt), that practice will keep you from unlocking any of the really good abilities until the end of the game when you don't need them or even want them anymore.
The whole Un/Holy thing attempts to permeat the entire thing, but its all executed very flat and superfluous. In addition to most enemies being disposable via punishment/absolution, Dante will occasionally be presented with a prominent character from the poem who can be used similarly for massive points in either direction. Still, outside of the points and note in your "journal", they don't effect the narrative and you never hear about them ever again. I am sure there's some totally black and white good / bad ending selection process at work that will force me to go through the game twice, but the net result of being Holy / Unholy is just whether or not I prefer to use the blue button or the yellow button on my controller while I do it. I'm still going to kill the same procession of "bad guys" in the same ways getting there, and that seems like kind of a waste.
Still, I cannot in good conscience call Dante's Inferno a bad game by any really sense of the term. Its based in a universe you certainly don't see games about every day, it looks, sounds, and plays like someone actually put some thought into it, and its damned fun. Fate has kept me from a complete play through of Visceral's previous effort, Dead Space, but my experience with both has made it clear that they know their way around both game design and execution, even if all they seem to be able to come up with is other peoples ideas. Dante's Inferno is filled with spectacle, style, and above all else violence, so if any of that is your thing, I sincerely recommend you "Go To Hell". And if by some chance you've missed out on that other game series where all the mythology gets brutally murdered by a morally gray anti-hero (or you just don't own a PS3), you pretty much have no excuse.
-F.
"Based" on the poem of the same name, Inferno documents one man's descent through the 9 Circles of Hell. Being charged with Christian mythology the tale is quite obviously open to interpretation, done so in this case as an action packed tale of revenge (maybe), love (probably) and violence (definately) chronicling one man's quest to rescue his wife. You see its hard to classify Dante as a hero or his task as just in any way, because he is in almost no way a good guy. The gameplay has him brutally and savagely slaughtering everything in his path including former friends and family members, while the plot gradually paints him a sinner by every single definition the canon has to offer. Truth be told I haven't finished the games entire narrative, but it has become increasingly difficult to get behind Dante's whining to Lucifer about how unfair stealing his wife is when he just finished raping someone else after murdering their true love. His brutal single minded sense of valor seems more intune with those demons he seeks to defy than the dainty innocent flower he's so desperately trying to get back to.
The good news is, plot sensibility is not Inferno's business, killing is. And business is good. With a scythe for close up killing, a magic cross to fire from afar, a smattering of increasingly destructive spells, and a massive tree of abilities to unlock for it all, there is no shortage of mayhem at your disposal. You won't need half of it to undo the legions of hell, and you won't really need ANY of it once you discover the brain dead infinite combo that somehow slipped through play testing, but at least the option for varied combat is there. 100+ hit combos, aerial raves, timed counter attacks, quick time event finishing moves, and all the other modern action game cliches are at Dante's disposal and executing them is just as easy and satisfying as they should be. There is of course a catch to all the awesome hyper violent action, and that is the limp wristed attempt to add depth to the ability unlocking system.
Basically, by absolving or punishing enemies when you finish them, you can advance the holy/unholy levels that govern just what you can buy with your kill points. I find it neat that this also governs which stat modifying relics you can equip, but the actual combat abilities are pretty poorly distributed between the two. For instance, the health up unlocks are on the opposite sides of all the scythe power ups and abilities (because health is good and the scythe is evil, I guess), so if you do decide to focus on close combat (which I always do), you're going to do so with either a child sized lifebar or a pathetically weak set of scythe attacks. You can try and mitigate this by spending an equal amount of time being holy / unholy, but even if it were possible to max out both sides by the end of the game (which I doubt), that practice will keep you from unlocking any of the really good abilities until the end of the game when you don't need them or even want them anymore.
The whole Un/Holy thing attempts to permeat the entire thing, but its all executed very flat and superfluous. In addition to most enemies being disposable via punishment/absolution, Dante will occasionally be presented with a prominent character from the poem who can be used similarly for massive points in either direction. Still, outside of the points and note in your "journal", they don't effect the narrative and you never hear about them ever again. I am sure there's some totally black and white good / bad ending selection process at work that will force me to go through the game twice, but the net result of being Holy / Unholy is just whether or not I prefer to use the blue button or the yellow button on my controller while I do it. I'm still going to kill the same procession of "bad guys" in the same ways getting there, and that seems like kind of a waste.
Still, I cannot in good conscience call Dante's Inferno a bad game by any really sense of the term. Its based in a universe you certainly don't see games about every day, it looks, sounds, and plays like someone actually put some thought into it, and its damned fun. Fate has kept me from a complete play through of Visceral's previous effort, Dead Space, but my experience with both has made it clear that they know their way around both game design and execution, even if all they seem to be able to come up with is other peoples ideas. Dante's Inferno is filled with spectacle, style, and above all else violence, so if any of that is your thing, I sincerely recommend you "Go To Hell". And if by some chance you've missed out on that other game series where all the mythology gets brutally murdered by a morally gray anti-hero (or you just don't own a PS3), you pretty much have no excuse.
-F.
Wednesday, November 19, 2008
First Impressions: Fallout 3
It appears that Blogger and Firefox have decided I'm making this post wether I want to or not, so here goes.
The 10/10, 95%, 5 star reviews would have you believe that Fallout is perfect, but its not. (yes, I said it). Its good, VERY good, but like all good games (especially rpgs), it has some dumb problems. The trick here is that the parts that are good are SO good, the sub par parts are easily forgotten or ignored. This sort of review / reception dichotomy is usually reserved for painfully average games that try desperately to achieve greatness with a few innovative ideas (can't wait to write this Conan review!), but somehow Fallout 3 is this kind of magnificent game that inexplicably makes a half-hearted effort to be mediocre.
For instance, from first person view you can run, jump, fight, talk, and everything just fine, but they also included a clunky pointless 3rd person camera. It's obvious the gameplay was designed with first person in mind, but somewhere along the lines a 3rd person view was shoehorned in, probably to make the clothing guys stop cutting themselves. Seriously. If all you want to do is stand there in the sun, pan the camera 'round, and check out the clever hats and shirts you pick up off of corpses, fine. Otherwise, leave the Left Bumper alone. In third person, jumping, manipulating objects, and (realtime) combat are horrendous. The camera could give a damn what you want to look at (much less what you're shooting or swinging at) and all your animations are just terrible. By constrast, playing this game in first person (like Bioshock) gives you the impression you're actually there, in the wasteland, fighting hell and high water for your survival. Third person reminds you constantly that this is just a video game, and your character is just some blue screened puppet on a map, barely responding to your button presses.
Then there's the Pipboy 3000 / menuing system (and this probably has a lot to do with trimming keyboard PC controls down to joystick face buttons and triggers). The Pipboy 3k is a one stop shop for mapping, questing, equipping, you name it. But you wouldn't believe the number of times I've dropped a gun or important food because the buttons are stupid, or how many times I've accidentally rested for an hour instead of reading my map because its press B, then Right Trigger twice, then left analog once, then right analog stick to zoom out just to see where you're at in the wasteland.
Last but not least, there's the whole "this is still a c rpg underneath all the console fluff" learning curve. All the boring character creation stuff is presented during the games opening chapter, with a nice little narrative and some interesting sequences wrapped around it to keep you entertained, but all the stuff you really want to know (how to converse, get quests, equip things, heal yourself, read maps) is presented by cold text crawls that pop up one time when circumstance happens upon them, then never return. The reality is, you're going to have 20 opportunities (experience levels) to undo your poor understanding of the Agility or Perception attributes, but if you weren't paying attention to the random on screen text during that one radroach segment in the vault basement, may god have mercy on your soul because they are never going to explain how to use a gun again.
That said, it is a safe estimation (even at only a couple hours in) that a shitty third person cam, crappy menus, and a constant need for the instruction manual are the worst sins this game is going to commit. The design of the thing is dynamite, the aesthetic appeal is immaculate, and outside of its throw you to the wolves tutorial mentality, the gameplay systems work like charms once you wrap your head around them. Last night I wasted 3 or 4 hours of my life, just wandering around the desolation, shooting people in the face and hitting dogs with a baseball bat. There were some quests done here and there, some small purposes to all the wandering, but it all boiled down to one trepidatious man, one hostile untapped world, and a ton of bullets. At this point, I wouldn't have it any other way.
-F.
The 10/10, 95%, 5 star reviews would have you believe that Fallout is perfect, but its not. (yes, I said it). Its good, VERY good, but like all good games (especially rpgs), it has some dumb problems. The trick here is that the parts that are good are SO good, the sub par parts are easily forgotten or ignored. This sort of review / reception dichotomy is usually reserved for painfully average games that try desperately to achieve greatness with a few innovative ideas (can't wait to write this Conan review!), but somehow Fallout 3 is this kind of magnificent game that inexplicably makes a half-hearted effort to be mediocre.
For instance, from first person view you can run, jump, fight, talk, and everything just fine, but they also included a clunky pointless 3rd person camera. It's obvious the gameplay was designed with first person in mind, but somewhere along the lines a 3rd person view was shoehorned in, probably to make the clothing guys stop cutting themselves. Seriously. If all you want to do is stand there in the sun, pan the camera 'round, and check out the clever hats and shirts you pick up off of corpses, fine. Otherwise, leave the Left Bumper alone. In third person, jumping, manipulating objects, and (realtime) combat are horrendous. The camera could give a damn what you want to look at (much less what you're shooting or swinging at) and all your animations are just terrible. By constrast, playing this game in first person (like Bioshock) gives you the impression you're actually there, in the wasteland, fighting hell and high water for your survival. Third person reminds you constantly that this is just a video game, and your character is just some blue screened puppet on a map, barely responding to your button presses.
Then there's the Pipboy 3000 / menuing system (and this probably has a lot to do with trimming keyboard PC controls down to joystick face buttons and triggers). The Pipboy 3k is a one stop shop for mapping, questing, equipping, you name it. But you wouldn't believe the number of times I've dropped a gun or important food because the buttons are stupid, or how many times I've accidentally rested for an hour instead of reading my map because its press B, then Right Trigger twice, then left analog once, then right analog stick to zoom out just to see where you're at in the wasteland.
Last but not least, there's the whole "this is still a c rpg underneath all the console fluff" learning curve. All the boring character creation stuff is presented during the games opening chapter, with a nice little narrative and some interesting sequences wrapped around it to keep you entertained, but all the stuff you really want to know (how to converse, get quests, equip things, heal yourself, read maps) is presented by cold text crawls that pop up one time when circumstance happens upon them, then never return. The reality is, you're going to have 20 opportunities (experience levels) to undo your poor understanding of the Agility or Perception attributes, but if you weren't paying attention to the random on screen text during that one radroach segment in the vault basement, may god have mercy on your soul because they are never going to explain how to use a gun again.
That said, it is a safe estimation (even at only a couple hours in) that a shitty third person cam, crappy menus, and a constant need for the instruction manual are the worst sins this game is going to commit. The design of the thing is dynamite, the aesthetic appeal is immaculate, and outside of its throw you to the wolves tutorial mentality, the gameplay systems work like charms once you wrap your head around them. Last night I wasted 3 or 4 hours of my life, just wandering around the desolation, shooting people in the face and hitting dogs with a baseball bat. There were some quests done here and there, some small purposes to all the wandering, but it all boiled down to one trepidatious man, one hostile untapped world, and a ton of bullets. At this point, I wouldn't have it any other way.
-F.
Friday, November 7, 2008
First Impressions: Spiderman "Web of Shadows"
Is there anyone out there who can tell me the proper usage of colons, semi colons, hyphens, and parantheseses (?!) when it comes to titles of things? Because Super Street Fighter 2 Turbo HD Remix is practically a sentence, but Super Street Fighter 2: Turbo "HD Remix" just looks gay.
ANYWAYS.
I asked myself this morning if I really wanted to move everything I did (or rather, intended to do) on that other gaming blog I started over here, or if I wanted to try and keep them separate or if I just wanted to give some of this shit up entirely because it was inappropriate or not per-brand (thank you, John Edwards) or some-other-meaningless-literary-construct to this blog. In the end, I decided; Fuck it, I'll write whatever I want. I'm doing this collaboration with my friend and that gives me a warm fuzzy feeling inside which makes honesty a little more forth coming. Plus the cleverness of our subtitle is sure to draw a few more random internet searches so somebody might actually read them here. So, with that said, guess what game I got to pop my new (read: refurbished) 360s cherry with last night?
Now I'm not going to bore you with the typical Spiderman 2 vs Spiderman 3 vs Ultimate Spiderman vs Spiderman Friend or Foe rhetoric, because its tired and everybody already knows that Spiderman 2 is the best spiderman game ever made and Spiderman 3 was a trainwreck and anyone who disagrees is wrong. If you really want the gritty details, go read any other spiderman video game related article on the internet anywhere, seriously. We can't get enough of it.
So Web of Shadows is the latest and is trying desperately to be the greatest. From where I sat (with a pounding headache and healthy amount of angst towards the Cleveland Browns, so excuse the lack of enthusiasm) it seems Shaba Games have taken great lengths to infuse the game with something new and not just make Spiderman 2 again which sadly, is what the fanboys (myself included) have been clammoring for the hardest. Honestly, I applaud it, but the hour or so I put into it last night was not enough to decide if it will pay off.
The so far so good of the thing is this. The game appears to have a story, which is important to me, and not just a bad guy shows up spider-man beats him, then bigger bad guy shows up and spider-man beats him one either. This one starts with a taste of a chaotic New York with spider-man hinted as both cause (by way of the black suit) and solution (by way of being spider-man) then Tarantino's its way back to days before when Spidey first gets the suit and things are still normal. It wets the appetite for whats coming and serves as a decent vehicle for the 'this button punches, this button swings, and this button throws fucking cars at people' tutorial that it bookends.
Which is important because that is the meat and potatoes of the thing. The fighting, I mean. Spider-man has perpetual access to both suits from the beginning and for once actual appear to function differently. Not to the point where one can swing and one can't, but their differences in combat are obvious even at this early stage. Best of all, the on the fly switching is so well integrated that you can actually switch suits in between individual hits of your canned combos. At this point I don't have the upgrades necessary to really call one better or worse and it will probably boil down to use this suit for the following enemies and use this one for others, but the tailoring and application of them to your playstyle is obviously going to be a big part of this.
The mission structure I am less thrilled about as so far it used GTA style "Mr. Johnson hunts" and akward dialogue trees to get a reason to fight and then go and fight. Granted, 'fight' means use your tendril arm to yank people off the top of buildings or throw a car down the street, but every time I beat up a bunch of guys for Luke Cage, he simply asks me to do it again, only do it twice as much. Why not just tell me to beat up 200 guys to start with, Luke? Why 15, then 30, then 150? The reality is these dumb missions say [OPTIONAL] in big bold letters next to the conversation selections, and I could probably just ignore them and advance the story, but the old school gamer in me knows (or at least has been deluded in to believing) that nothing is truly optional when you're trying desperately to justify the $70 you just spent on something. We both know that if I don't see every single ounce of content this game has to offer then Activision wins.
At this point, one can only hope the awesome move list can keep up with the tedious optional missions and that the main story can cash the check its opening has written. The current presentation and promise have already projected its quality light years beyond Ultimate and 3, but that will be meaningless if its way too short or face plants on these [OPTIONAL] missions. Even then, if all goes as I hope, it will still take some serious direction to top the rose tinted bias aura that Spider-man 2 still projects in my heart.
-F.
ANYWAYS.
I asked myself this morning if I really wanted to move everything I did (or rather, intended to do) on that other gaming blog I started over here, or if I wanted to try and keep them separate or if I just wanted to give some of this shit up entirely because it was inappropriate or not per-brand (thank you, John Edwards) or some-other-meaningless-literary-construct to this blog. In the end, I decided; Fuck it, I'll write whatever I want. I'm doing this collaboration with my friend and that gives me a warm fuzzy feeling inside which makes honesty a little more forth coming. Plus the cleverness of our subtitle is sure to draw a few more random internet searches so somebody might actually read them here. So, with that said, guess what game I got to pop my new (read: refurbished) 360s cherry with last night?
Now I'm not going to bore you with the typical Spiderman 2 vs Spiderman 3 vs Ultimate Spiderman vs Spiderman Friend or Foe rhetoric, because its tired and everybody already knows that Spiderman 2 is the best spiderman game ever made and Spiderman 3 was a trainwreck and anyone who disagrees is wrong. If you really want the gritty details, go read any other spiderman video game related article on the internet anywhere, seriously. We can't get enough of it.
So Web of Shadows is the latest and is trying desperately to be the greatest. From where I sat (with a pounding headache and healthy amount of angst towards the Cleveland Browns, so excuse the lack of enthusiasm) it seems Shaba Games have taken great lengths to infuse the game with something new and not just make Spiderman 2 again which sadly, is what the fanboys (myself included) have been clammoring for the hardest. Honestly, I applaud it, but the hour or so I put into it last night was not enough to decide if it will pay off.
The so far so good of the thing is this. The game appears to have a story, which is important to me, and not just a bad guy shows up spider-man beats him, then bigger bad guy shows up and spider-man beats him one either. This one starts with a taste of a chaotic New York with spider-man hinted as both cause (by way of the black suit) and solution (by way of being spider-man) then Tarantino's its way back to days before when Spidey first gets the suit and things are still normal. It wets the appetite for whats coming and serves as a decent vehicle for the 'this button punches, this button swings, and this button throws fucking cars at people' tutorial that it bookends.
Which is important because that is the meat and potatoes of the thing. The fighting, I mean. Spider-man has perpetual access to both suits from the beginning and for once actual appear to function differently. Not to the point where one can swing and one can't, but their differences in combat are obvious even at this early stage. Best of all, the on the fly switching is so well integrated that you can actually switch suits in between individual hits of your canned combos. At this point I don't have the upgrades necessary to really call one better or worse and it will probably boil down to use this suit for the following enemies and use this one for others, but the tailoring and application of them to your playstyle is obviously going to be a big part of this.
The mission structure I am less thrilled about as so far it used GTA style "Mr. Johnson hunts" and akward dialogue trees to get a reason to fight and then go and fight. Granted, 'fight' means use your tendril arm to yank people off the top of buildings or throw a car down the street, but every time I beat up a bunch of guys for Luke Cage, he simply asks me to do it again, only do it twice as much. Why not just tell me to beat up 200 guys to start with, Luke? Why 15, then 30, then 150? The reality is these dumb missions say [OPTIONAL] in big bold letters next to the conversation selections, and I could probably just ignore them and advance the story, but the old school gamer in me knows (or at least has been deluded in to believing) that nothing is truly optional when you're trying desperately to justify the $70 you just spent on something. We both know that if I don't see every single ounce of content this game has to offer then Activision wins.
At this point, one can only hope the awesome move list can keep up with the tedious optional missions and that the main story can cash the check its opening has written. The current presentation and promise have already projected its quality light years beyond Ultimate and 3, but that will be meaningless if its way too short or face plants on these [OPTIONAL] missions. Even then, if all goes as I hope, it will still take some serious direction to top the rose tinted bias aura that Spider-man 2 still projects in my heart.
-F.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)