User Notice 44 Posts Found by Sowong
10-18-15 04:48 AM
| ID: 1212424 | 43 Words
| ID: 1212424 | 43 Words
I wanna put the new Mad Max game up for this title, it might be a little repetitive and it isn't a new concept, but it does a lot of new things that I didn't expect from a game based on a movie. |
Member
Affected by 'Laziness Syndrome'
Registered: 12-11-12
Last Post: 3120 days
Last Active: 2774 days
Affected by 'Laziness Syndrome'
Registered: 12-11-12
Last Post: 3120 days
Last Active: 2774 days
Member
Affected by 'Laziness Syndrome'
Registered: 12-11-12
Last Post: 3120 days
Last Active: 2774 days
Affected by 'Laziness Syndrome'
Registered: 12-11-12
Last Post: 3120 days
Last Active: 2774 days
Sowong
Level: 16
POSTS: 42/44
POST EXP: 36914
LVL EXP: 18827
CP: 2739.3
VIZ: 107122
POSTS: 42/44
POST EXP: 36914
LVL EXP: 18827
CP: 2739.3
VIZ: 107122
Likes: 2 Dislikes: 0
Mad Max What I fully expected was to find Mel Gibson charging through the wastes in an old rust-bucket, chewing dog food and giving meaningful glares to his dog. What I got instead was the reboot version of Mad Max, with a new surly Aussie actor eating dog food and maggots while exchanging meaningful glares with his dog, and a hunchback mechanic. The game opens with an extensive road battle where we see Max's 'Black on Black' car stolen from him, as he fights off an army of half-naked wasteland punks, and murder their leader with a chainsaw to the skull, sets the tone and story of the game. Max is a no-good renegade stealing from the empire of Lord Scrotus (Actual name) and eking out a living from scraps and scrapes. The dog that tried to kill him is now his friend, and his car is ruined, so he finds himself stuck with a crippled dog, is taken in by a fearful, but resourceful hunchback mechanic who has a religious love of cars and believes Max to be a saint of this self-made religion. Max, however, does not. A lot of the story is easily missed if you just play the game and don't read any of the bios or information which crops up from time to time. Max is looking for a place of peace and believes he needs a fast car to get there. The Hunchback was given the plans from 'the angle of combustion' to build the Magnum Opus, the wasteland's 'greatest' car. There are also a bunch of minor characters, leaders of strongholds and enemies who are also just eking out their last days on earth during the apocalypse. The story of humanity's downfall is explained through the collection of relics, to which Max adds his depressing anecdotes, and Max's story is told by a mysterious stranger who blows dust in his face and gives max abilities. The long and short of it is that this game is Jak 3 with realistic violence and swearing. You get upgrades for the car, you help out the strongholds and you bring down Scrotus' legacy around the wastes. Mad Max 2 Graphically this reboot game is better than the previous Mad Max games, but since they were made when 3D was just a pipe dream that's not a massive shock to the system. On the Xbox One the graphics are scenic, by which I mean, standing on a high peak you will see far into the distance, with fantastic views of the crumbling world, amazing horizons, factories spewing fire and smoke into the air with impressive realism. This is also the first game, I have noticed, to have real wind physics where sand particles are blown around along with plastic bottles, adding an air of realism to the world I've never experienced before in a game. Cars also spill sand and dust into the air violently, adding much to the explosive mayhem that is high-octane, metal bashing, car burning road battles. There is a price to all this graphical wonder, however, and that's the occasional burst of lag, most often when there's too many particles flying around, but the spectacular array of the elements and combustion combined are worth this once in a blue-moon affair. One of my favourite aspects of this weather system are the storms which occasionally strike the world. There's two which I have experienced, in the form of blue lightening strikes and the other being gale-force winds casting chunks of metal at you. Both are survivable, but just barely. The mix of dark colours, sudden bursts of brightness and the oppressive noise of wind and static explosions make for a challenging engagement, especially at night when you can't see anything for the billowing dust. The sound used for the whole game is just right with nothing seemingly out of place and no irritating recurring sounds. The music is kept to a minimum, so it's just you and your engine for most of the game, bashing into objects gives a satisfying crunch of metal, explosions are fun without being overbearing, and the shotgun blast is overly loud which appeals with it's one-shot, instant-kill ability. Throwing punches give satisfying smacks, but, and this is perhaps the only thing, using weapons don't have a lovely 'shwing' noise or clatter when they land, so no perfect score here. Mad Max: Beyond Thunderdome In terms of Gameplay there's a difficulty arc in the form of knowing what parts to use to better your car for battle, as well as different upgrades for Max when fighting in melees. Enemies range from weak to overpowered, with reoccurring boss fights which are pretty much the same battle fought over and over again with one different weakness. At times the fighting can be overwhelming and since there's no Assassin's Creed-esque defense system where pressing Y automatically blocks no matter what you're doing you tend to find that a punch will knock you off balance as the horde of baddies don't fight fairly en mass. Using the shotgun during a fistfight feels like cheating, but it will quickly clear the way, the fighting will eventually become repetitive as you realize strengths and weaknesses and since there's only three types of enemy camps to attack you feel like you're just doing the same thing. Sometimes the greater difficulty in areas allows for a good challenge. The main difference between camps are their defenses, which vary from snipers, explosive throwers, catapult flame towers, flaming torches, different mix-ups of each and each location has environmental differences and exploits which make things interesting (Like this one bridge camp where there's a secret entrance where you jump from hanging platforms to hanging platforms). One aspect I loved about the violence was the convoy battles. Groups of cars with a forerunner full of fuel, different weapons and skills, with guys jumping from car to car, flames spilling from vehicles, explosives, harpoons, bashing and crashing... around an endless track through desert, mountains and acid swamps. These were amazing, and I wish there were more in the game. Main missions, however, were the most interesting part of the game for me, the story is more or less disjointed trash, but the missions themselves have each been different enough to make progressing through the game interesting (If that's your thing, I prefer completing the secondary stuff first). Races let you cheat by killing opponents, their are different kinds for more depth and challenge, several wasteland challenges abound for Mad Max to test his metal and a bunch of Scrotus horde defenses to tear down. Plenty to fill up at least a week worth of wastelanding. Mad Max: Fury Road So lets conclude this thing without explaining why I titled the different sections names of Mad Max movies without any context to what was said in those paragraphs. At least the Beyond Thunderdome one kinda works because that was a combat gladiator sort of movie and you talked about violence a lot in that part, yeah... anyway. I liked this game, more than most other games that have came out for the Xbox One this year. For a game based on a movie it's actually playable, it doesn't feel rushed, even if it is disconnected in parts, and the gameplay is fabby dabby for something I expected to be sub-par at best. While Max's story is a disjointed mess of gruesome reality and mind-bending spirituality, I actually found his quest to regain his humanity, and some of his sanity, over the loss of his wife and kid, to be endearing. It made revisiting the mysterious stranger interesting, it made me understand Max's character better, and without the subtly implied need for redemption I wouldn't have been half as interested in the game as I am. For people who simply wanna smash the cars, you'll get hours of pleasure reliving those childhood moments with your Hot Wheels collection as you lined them up on the floor and proceeded to smack one off of the other. For those of you with a interest in death and dismemberment, there's tons of violence, shooting and violent shooting to be explored. And for those of you who are really morbid, the main character eats maggots fresh off the corpse. What's not to love about that?! Childish tongue and cheek humor is also implied throughout the game, Max being his deadpan self in a world of people who have embraced the chaos and live life to its fullest... There's a guy named Scrotus. Have fun! Mad Max What I fully expected was to find Mel Gibson charging through the wastes in an old rust-bucket, chewing dog food and giving meaningful glares to his dog. What I got instead was the reboot version of Mad Max, with a new surly Aussie actor eating dog food and maggots while exchanging meaningful glares with his dog, and a hunchback mechanic. The game opens with an extensive road battle where we see Max's 'Black on Black' car stolen from him, as he fights off an army of half-naked wasteland punks, and murder their leader with a chainsaw to the skull, sets the tone and story of the game. Max is a no-good renegade stealing from the empire of Lord Scrotus (Actual name) and eking out a living from scraps and scrapes. The dog that tried to kill him is now his friend, and his car is ruined, so he finds himself stuck with a crippled dog, is taken in by a fearful, but resourceful hunchback mechanic who has a religious love of cars and believes Max to be a saint of this self-made religion. Max, however, does not. A lot of the story is easily missed if you just play the game and don't read any of the bios or information which crops up from time to time. Max is looking for a place of peace and believes he needs a fast car to get there. The Hunchback was given the plans from 'the angle of combustion' to build the Magnum Opus, the wasteland's 'greatest' car. There are also a bunch of minor characters, leaders of strongholds and enemies who are also just eking out their last days on earth during the apocalypse. The story of humanity's downfall is explained through the collection of relics, to which Max adds his depressing anecdotes, and Max's story is told by a mysterious stranger who blows dust in his face and gives max abilities. The long and short of it is that this game is Jak 3 with realistic violence and swearing. You get upgrades for the car, you help out the strongholds and you bring down Scrotus' legacy around the wastes. Mad Max 2 Graphically this reboot game is better than the previous Mad Max games, but since they were made when 3D was just a pipe dream that's not a massive shock to the system. On the Xbox One the graphics are scenic, by which I mean, standing on a high peak you will see far into the distance, with fantastic views of the crumbling world, amazing horizons, factories spewing fire and smoke into the air with impressive realism. This is also the first game, I have noticed, to have real wind physics where sand particles are blown around along with plastic bottles, adding an air of realism to the world I've never experienced before in a game. Cars also spill sand and dust into the air violently, adding much to the explosive mayhem that is high-octane, metal bashing, car burning road battles. There is a price to all this graphical wonder, however, and that's the occasional burst of lag, most often when there's too many particles flying around, but the spectacular array of the elements and combustion combined are worth this once in a blue-moon affair. One of my favourite aspects of this weather system are the storms which occasionally strike the world. There's two which I have experienced, in the form of blue lightening strikes and the other being gale-force winds casting chunks of metal at you. Both are survivable, but just barely. The mix of dark colours, sudden bursts of brightness and the oppressive noise of wind and static explosions make for a challenging engagement, especially at night when you can't see anything for the billowing dust. The sound used for the whole game is just right with nothing seemingly out of place and no irritating recurring sounds. The music is kept to a minimum, so it's just you and your engine for most of the game, bashing into objects gives a satisfying crunch of metal, explosions are fun without being overbearing, and the shotgun blast is overly loud which appeals with it's one-shot, instant-kill ability. Throwing punches give satisfying smacks, but, and this is perhaps the only thing, using weapons don't have a lovely 'shwing' noise or clatter when they land, so no perfect score here. Mad Max: Beyond Thunderdome In terms of Gameplay there's a difficulty arc in the form of knowing what parts to use to better your car for battle, as well as different upgrades for Max when fighting in melees. Enemies range from weak to overpowered, with reoccurring boss fights which are pretty much the same battle fought over and over again with one different weakness. At times the fighting can be overwhelming and since there's no Assassin's Creed-esque defense system where pressing Y automatically blocks no matter what you're doing you tend to find that a punch will knock you off balance as the horde of baddies don't fight fairly en mass. Using the shotgun during a fistfight feels like cheating, but it will quickly clear the way, the fighting will eventually become repetitive as you realize strengths and weaknesses and since there's only three types of enemy camps to attack you feel like you're just doing the same thing. Sometimes the greater difficulty in areas allows for a good challenge. The main difference between camps are their defenses, which vary from snipers, explosive throwers, catapult flame towers, flaming torches, different mix-ups of each and each location has environmental differences and exploits which make things interesting (Like this one bridge camp where there's a secret entrance where you jump from hanging platforms to hanging platforms). One aspect I loved about the violence was the convoy battles. Groups of cars with a forerunner full of fuel, different weapons and skills, with guys jumping from car to car, flames spilling from vehicles, explosives, harpoons, bashing and crashing... around an endless track through desert, mountains and acid swamps. These were amazing, and I wish there were more in the game. Main missions, however, were the most interesting part of the game for me, the story is more or less disjointed trash, but the missions themselves have each been different enough to make progressing through the game interesting (If that's your thing, I prefer completing the secondary stuff first). Races let you cheat by killing opponents, their are different kinds for more depth and challenge, several wasteland challenges abound for Mad Max to test his metal and a bunch of Scrotus horde defenses to tear down. Plenty to fill up at least a week worth of wastelanding. Mad Max: Fury Road So lets conclude this thing without explaining why I titled the different sections names of Mad Max movies without any context to what was said in those paragraphs. At least the Beyond Thunderdome one kinda works because that was a combat gladiator sort of movie and you talked about violence a lot in that part, yeah... anyway. I liked this game, more than most other games that have came out for the Xbox One this year. For a game based on a movie it's actually playable, it doesn't feel rushed, even if it is disconnected in parts, and the gameplay is fabby dabby for something I expected to be sub-par at best. While Max's story is a disjointed mess of gruesome reality and mind-bending spirituality, I actually found his quest to regain his humanity, and some of his sanity, over the loss of his wife and kid, to be endearing. It made revisiting the mysterious stranger interesting, it made me understand Max's character better, and without the subtly implied need for redemption I wouldn't have been half as interested in the game as I am. For people who simply wanna smash the cars, you'll get hours of pleasure reliving those childhood moments with your Hot Wheels collection as you lined them up on the floor and proceeded to smack one off of the other. For those of you with a interest in death and dismemberment, there's tons of violence, shooting and violent shooting to be explored. And for those of you who are really morbid, the main character eats maggots fresh off the corpse. What's not to love about that?! Childish tongue and cheek humor is also implied throughout the game, Max being his deadpan self in a world of people who have embraced the chaos and live life to its fullest... There's a guy named Scrotus. Have fun! |
Member
Affected by 'Laziness Syndrome'
Registered: 12-11-12
Last Post: 3120 days
Last Active: 2774 days
Affected by 'Laziness Syndrome'
Registered: 12-11-12
Last Post: 3120 days
Last Active: 2774 days
10-04-15 02:25 PM
| ID: 1207623 | 34 Words
| ID: 1207623 | 34 Words
janus : Yes I'm a keen reader of Terry Pratchett so I tend to use commas the same way other people would use opened and closed brackets. Thanks for the review of my review.  |
Member
Affected by 'Laziness Syndrome'
Registered: 12-11-12
Last Post: 3120 days
Last Active: 2774 days
Affected by 'Laziness Syndrome'
Registered: 12-11-12
Last Post: 3120 days
Last Active: 2774 days
09-07-15 05:13 PM
| ID: 1200675 | 2796 Words
| ID: 1200675 | 2796 Words
Introduction Dark Cloud 2, known as Dark Chronicle to us Brits, is an RPG adventure set in a steampunk world following the story of a young inventor and his red haired princess companion. This game was released in 2002-2003 following the success of Dark Cloud in 2000 and immediately received a 9 out of 10 from IGN. On the Playstation there simply hasn't been another game like Dark Cloud 2, with the possible exception of NEIR, but the least said about that comparison the better. Dark Cloud has a more childish, playful attitude with cartoon violence and a progressive leveling up system which is comprehensive enough to be enjoyed by a range of age groups. Here we are seven years after its release and I'm still the proud owner of this game. Having played the game to completion I still crave more and was so disappointed that the PS3 wouldn't be continuing with the series that I switched to Xbox. Overall I've never found a bug in this game, I've rarely crashed, but that doesn't mean it's not frustrating for other reasons. This new version of the game introduced voice acting and while it was nice to avoid reading text throughout the whole game, the voice acting was never good, and the emotional moments are played out with sighing voices and monotonous monologues which don't fit the bill. The game also introduced new elements to a Playstation game which at the time were quite unique, except to Nintendo games, such as photography, invention, crafting, higher difficulty fishing, fish competitions, mini-quests and golf! I'd recommend this game to anyone who'll listen. Gameplay This game revolves around the same ideas as the first: The world has been destroyed and through the power of the atlamallia stones you have to rebuild the world. Rebuilding the world, it seems, involves a lot of running around, photography, inventing, recruiting followers and time travel! So lets brake down the many game elements there are to enjoy and hope it doesn't ramble on for too long. There are four main areas in the world, the overworld which is just a map with the different locations you unlock by visiting them, the town areas where you craft objects with the Carpenterion and place them within certain goals to change the future, the dungeons where you fight monsters and discover Geostones which contain the plans for objects and goals, and the future, which is accessed by portals, and the power of the atlamallia, so you can get advice and more powers from the people you are helping to restore in the future. Upgrading weapons is a big part of the game as your character can be improved by finding their favourite foods, which help with defence and health, but these are unlocked and found in the future and some town areas. Upgrading weapons is the real leveling up, and grinding away on their Abs is the key to upgrading, building new weapons from old ones, and killing different monsters. There's fishing and golf challenges within the dungeons as well, which allow you to win medals which can be used to purchase rare clothing and items. Fishing competitions exist to allow you to show of the speed of your trained fish, or to show off the fact that you've caught the world's biggest fish, often in exchange for a better fishing rod, or money. Photography is used to capture unique attacks, different items and then use these photographs as inspiration for ideas and inventions. Inventions can be crafted by using items collected in the dungeons, or bought, and can produce items for your giant robot, new weapons, bombs, healing food, clothing and fishing equipment. Rebuilding towns is another big part of the game, which lets you be creative, relax a little, and build up a town to your standards, seeking to fit them to the parameters set out by the game, of course, to improve the future and advance the game's story. To rebuild towns you also have to recruit people, the first man you recruit is needed for his ability to grow trees, and these mundane 'everyday heroes' contribute to changes in the future, but each one requires a mini-quest of sorts, collecting an item, running errands, racing, photography, beating them at fishing, there's quite a lot packed in. In terms of overall gameplay, everything about this game is time consuming but fun, there are actual rewards for doing things right, and the grind can be annoying, such as leveling up your fishing rod to catch better fish, but you soon start to see the changes, and there's little in the way of pointless challenges. You don't need to play the golf or fishing mini-games to progress, you don't have to make the future perfect, but all these things add up to decent rewards, powerful weapons, gold, and new stores. Farming for gold is about the only annoying thing Fighting is challenging, and sometimes too difficult, but the game will always give you something to use to your own advantage, the slicing motions, clubbing attacks and hits are satisfying, with a decent difficulty incline which requires only some grinding. There is a problem of ignoring one weapon, because really you can only level one up at a time, and finding out later on that what you really needed was an impressive gun or magic armband, but all you have is a hammer and a sword. At least in this game the swords don't break forever when they run out of durability. Being able to switch between two characters Max and Monica, also allows you to play according to their different strengths and abilities, such as Max's Robot or Monica's Monster Transformations. Graphics For the Dark Cloud series a cartoonish style was applied to characters, with thick black outlines and touched-up features such as crows feet and scars equally highlighted with the flick of a black marker pen style which you may be familiar with in modern games like Borderlands. Just like Borderlands, this creates a bright, playful atmosphere for you to explore with wacky buildings, well designed (Astro Boy-Like) characters to meet and generally a jolly and upbeat adventure. Wacky shaped buildings, jaunty signs, roads and objects are used mostly in the non-dungeon areas, the towns that you visit and build, making them more interesting than the simple objects you just have to navigate around, or build, bringing an actual artistic feel to some of the gameplay where you have to rebuild ruined towns and villages. Within dungeons the graphics take on a more serious tone, characters and creatures are still given this 'drawn' look making them appear slightly less sinister, but the seriousness is portrayed in the strict design of the dungeons, each one randomized each time you visit. The fist dungeon is a waterworks, featuring pipes, wooden floors and gratings, the second is a forest without any playful features, flowers or anything friendly, the third is a flooded cave, and another is a strict, cathedral-like castle. This creates a somewhat tense environment which makes the playful nature of the cartoon design suddenly more sinister when balloons monsters, clowns and frogs bear down on you. Each monster is designed in a cartoonish style, with some making a repeat appearance from the first game, there is a mix of silly, fun, and evil creatures for you to battle and the cartoon style doesn't distract from their evil appearance, with Giant Mimics being one of the scariest things to pop out at you. Overall, the graphics are fun, but don't ruin the seriousness of some levels, or create an unplayable game, the soft tones and bright colours are actually a treat from all the bleak, grey games I find myself playing these days. Sound Addictiveness This is a highly addictive game. It's the kind of game you start playing in the morning and stop playing at six in the morning. The gameplay elements, each, can become an all consuming passion; whether it's fishing to improve your rod, trying to upgrade your weapons or breeding the world's fastest fish. It's always, just one more level, or, just one more try, when it comes down to it. The more difficult the challenge the more rewarding it is when you've finished the golf round, caught a big enough fish or killed enough bad guys to win a medal. The photography challenges are what usually get me, this is my fifth time trying the game from the beginning to get all the 'scoops' which are are unique photo opportunities, but I usually miss the boss ones by accident. One problem, however, is that you're not really invested in the chracters. Unlike the first game there was a real reason to go out there are stop the genie, but in this game there's no strong tie for Max to venture out of his town, other than being pursued by clowns, and trying to find out why the world has been destroyed. This is different for Monica, but, she is presented almost like a side character, with her plot-line mostly ignored and the real focus laying with Max and his search for his mother. Trouble is I don't particularly care about Max's Mother, whereas in the first game we were given a real reason to care about Toan helping his village, protecting his loved ones, and then given a true reason in each village, with the introduction of a new playable character with strong ties to their destroyed village. So the real addictive nature of the game isn't within its story, but within the gameplay itself. The gameplay and challenges are so addictive you won't think twice about spending two or three hours on just one problem goal. Story I covered a little of this in addictiveness but we'll go through it here again. I gave a quite low score of 6 for story because, well, the game is poorly scr Along the way, however, we're helped along with our motivation through the introduction of minor stories, each one connected with the places you visit. The initial story being Max chased from his town and pursued by a clown troop lead by the sinister Flotsam. The clown, which his robots, beach buggy and army of knife throwing entertainers chases Max out of the city, he is then soon dispatched by Monica and it's unclear what happens to Flotsam's troop after Monica blew him up. We then immediately visit Sindain, a quiet forest village where a giant talking tree who remembers everything about the world. Unfortunately Griffen, the bad guy running the whole future ruining thing I mentioned, has killed Jurak (the tree) by destroying his origin point, aka, Max's time. The gang must restore the tree, but to do so need the help of Seven Firbits (Essentially Snow White's Dwarves) who have lost a woman they cared for, who you must find, and in the process restore Jurak. The next area follows the story of a Great Sage, Crest, who has also been killed, but his Apprentice, Lin, is struggling with an illness and saving her could lead to saving Crest. So there has been a great deal of effort to provide a good amount of story, and most of it works, but overall the poor voice acting, repetition of cliques and pointless conversations ruins the development of the plot. Depth I've shown you all I can in the Addictiveness part of this review, but I'll write a bit more here. Even if you rebuild every village, even if you upgrade to the most powerful weapon, collect every medal, build the most powerful robot, complete the fishing challenges, win every competition, create a perfect future, find every set of clothing, upgrade your characters fully, photograph every idea and scoop, upgrade Monica's Monster Transformations to 100, win every golf medal, build every robot part, collect every character, settle them somewhere, invent every item and complete the game by defeating Griffen... you're still not finished: Because there's a final dungeon more difficult than all those you've faced before with 100 levels, the most difficult enemies and revamped bosses such as 'Metal Flotsam' and that Ultimate Evil from the first Dark Cloud, the Dark Genie, still to defeat! So yes, there's a heck of a lot to do in this game, and this review doesn't even come close to explaining just how in-depth each of these challenges actually are, for example, it took me one whole day to complete five rounds of the golf mini-game. It's just that difficult and frustrating, but the completionist in me demands it! Difficulty Depending on what aspect of the game you're referring to the game ranges from easy to pretty damn difficult. It can take hours to complete simple tasks and if both characters die, you get a game over and have to start from your last save, each level is about 5-10 minutes long to finish, golf is difficult, fishing slightly easier, but rare fishes hard to find, and difficult to catch. The storyline gameplay has a decent arc of difficulty, with new areas being hard, and old areas getting easier one you upgrade health and defense by finding the related items in the non-dungeon worlds. Leveling weapons is actually a lot easier than some people lead on, but with higher leveled weapons the less Abs there is around. Some challenges are needlessly difficult, and make acquiring unique items more difficult than need be. The invention side of the game is fun and easy, but photography challenges can also be needlessly difficult. Boss battles are also not immediately obvious, like to kill one monster you have to attack what you'd see as a part of the environment first, which only makes sense if you read the Helpful Tips that pop up, but if you miss these by accident then you're not going to win. Some parts of the game are overly complicated and this can make the game frustrating, but really the randomness of dungeons make everything fun, and no single challenge ever plays out the same way twice. Buying things is too expensive, and finding money is too difficult, even with fishing exploits, it can take too long to get the right amount of money. So the game is very difficult, but not impossible... except for the final dungeon. Conclusion There's a reason this game still sells for £20 to £25 preowned, it's a classic, it's wonderful and challenging and doesn't feel like a waste of time. I hate how undervalued it has been, with too few people playing past the initial levels, or simply not caring about the game at all. I find it amazing that some people have never heard of Dark Cloud, it's practically unique, and not something that's usually seen within the Playstation game formats. The story and graphics appear childish, but the game deals with some heavy issues, with a magical flair, such as murder, genocide, true love, hatred and depression. The gameplay is varied, and the challenges are attractive, there's some hand-holding, but the game lets you play to your own style, once elements have been introduced you rarely have to go back to them. The game lets you play things your way, and if that means hitting things with a hammer, a robot or a spell then that's just dandy. Dark Cloud 2, known as Dark Chronicle to us Brits, is an RPG adventure set in a steampunk world following the story of a young inventor and his red haired princess companion. This game was released in 2002-2003 following the success of Dark Cloud in 2000 and immediately received a 9 out of 10 from IGN. On the Playstation there simply hasn't been another game like Dark Cloud 2, with the possible exception of NEIR, but the least said about that comparison the better. Dark Cloud has a more childish, playful attitude with cartoon violence and a progressive leveling up system which is comprehensive enough to be enjoyed by a range of age groups. Here we are seven years after its release and I'm still the proud owner of this game. Having played the game to completion I still crave more and was so disappointed that the PS3 wouldn't be continuing with the series that I switched to Xbox. Overall I've never found a bug in this game, I've rarely crashed, but that doesn't mean it's not frustrating for other reasons. This new version of the game introduced voice acting and while it was nice to avoid reading text throughout the whole game, the voice acting was never good, and the emotional moments are played out with sighing voices and monotonous monologues which don't fit the bill. The game also introduced new elements to a Playstation game which at the time were quite unique, except to Nintendo games, such as photography, invention, crafting, higher difficulty fishing, fish competitions, mini-quests and golf! I'd recommend this game to anyone who'll listen. Gameplay This game revolves around the same ideas as the first: The world has been destroyed and through the power of the atlamallia stones you have to rebuild the world. Rebuilding the world, it seems, involves a lot of running around, photography, inventing, recruiting followers and time travel! So lets brake down the many game elements there are to enjoy and hope it doesn't ramble on for too long. There are four main areas in the world, the overworld which is just a map with the different locations you unlock by visiting them, the town areas where you craft objects with the Carpenterion and place them within certain goals to change the future, the dungeons where you fight monsters and discover Geostones which contain the plans for objects and goals, and the future, which is accessed by portals, and the power of the atlamallia, so you can get advice and more powers from the people you are helping to restore in the future. Upgrading weapons is a big part of the game as your character can be improved by finding their favourite foods, which help with defence and health, but these are unlocked and found in the future and some town areas. Upgrading weapons is the real leveling up, and grinding away on their Abs is the key to upgrading, building new weapons from old ones, and killing different monsters. There's fishing and golf challenges within the dungeons as well, which allow you to win medals which can be used to purchase rare clothing and items. Fishing competitions exist to allow you to show of the speed of your trained fish, or to show off the fact that you've caught the world's biggest fish, often in exchange for a better fishing rod, or money. Photography is used to capture unique attacks, different items and then use these photographs as inspiration for ideas and inventions. Inventions can be crafted by using items collected in the dungeons, or bought, and can produce items for your giant robot, new weapons, bombs, healing food, clothing and fishing equipment. Rebuilding towns is another big part of the game, which lets you be creative, relax a little, and build up a town to your standards, seeking to fit them to the parameters set out by the game, of course, to improve the future and advance the game's story. To rebuild towns you also have to recruit people, the first man you recruit is needed for his ability to grow trees, and these mundane 'everyday heroes' contribute to changes in the future, but each one requires a mini-quest of sorts, collecting an item, running errands, racing, photography, beating them at fishing, there's quite a lot packed in. In terms of overall gameplay, everything about this game is time consuming but fun, there are actual rewards for doing things right, and the grind can be annoying, such as leveling up your fishing rod to catch better fish, but you soon start to see the changes, and there's little in the way of pointless challenges. You don't need to play the golf or fishing mini-games to progress, you don't have to make the future perfect, but all these things add up to decent rewards, powerful weapons, gold, and new stores. Farming for gold is about the only annoying thing Fighting is challenging, and sometimes too difficult, but the game will always give you something to use to your own advantage, the slicing motions, clubbing attacks and hits are satisfying, with a decent difficulty incline which requires only some grinding. There is a problem of ignoring one weapon, because really you can only level one up at a time, and finding out later on that what you really needed was an impressive gun or magic armband, but all you have is a hammer and a sword. At least in this game the swords don't break forever when they run out of durability. Being able to switch between two characters Max and Monica, also allows you to play according to their different strengths and abilities, such as Max's Robot or Monica's Monster Transformations. Graphics For the Dark Cloud series a cartoonish style was applied to characters, with thick black outlines and touched-up features such as crows feet and scars equally highlighted with the flick of a black marker pen style which you may be familiar with in modern games like Borderlands. Just like Borderlands, this creates a bright, playful atmosphere for you to explore with wacky buildings, well designed (Astro Boy-Like) characters to meet and generally a jolly and upbeat adventure. Wacky shaped buildings, jaunty signs, roads and objects are used mostly in the non-dungeon areas, the towns that you visit and build, making them more interesting than the simple objects you just have to navigate around, or build, bringing an actual artistic feel to some of the gameplay where you have to rebuild ruined towns and villages. Within dungeons the graphics take on a more serious tone, characters and creatures are still given this 'drawn' look making them appear slightly less sinister, but the seriousness is portrayed in the strict design of the dungeons, each one randomized each time you visit. The fist dungeon is a waterworks, featuring pipes, wooden floors and gratings, the second is a forest without any playful features, flowers or anything friendly, the third is a flooded cave, and another is a strict, cathedral-like castle. This creates a somewhat tense environment which makes the playful nature of the cartoon design suddenly more sinister when balloons monsters, clowns and frogs bear down on you. Each monster is designed in a cartoonish style, with some making a repeat appearance from the first game, there is a mix of silly, fun, and evil creatures for you to battle and the cartoon style doesn't distract from their evil appearance, with Giant Mimics being one of the scariest things to pop out at you. Overall, the graphics are fun, but don't ruin the seriousness of some levels, or create an unplayable game, the soft tones and bright colours are actually a treat from all the bleak, grey games I find myself playing these days. Sound Addictiveness This is a highly addictive game. It's the kind of game you start playing in the morning and stop playing at six in the morning. The gameplay elements, each, can become an all consuming passion; whether it's fishing to improve your rod, trying to upgrade your weapons or breeding the world's fastest fish. It's always, just one more level, or, just one more try, when it comes down to it. The more difficult the challenge the more rewarding it is when you've finished the golf round, caught a big enough fish or killed enough bad guys to win a medal. The photography challenges are what usually get me, this is my fifth time trying the game from the beginning to get all the 'scoops' which are are unique photo opportunities, but I usually miss the boss ones by accident. One problem, however, is that you're not really invested in the chracters. Unlike the first game there was a real reason to go out there are stop the genie, but in this game there's no strong tie for Max to venture out of his town, other than being pursued by clowns, and trying to find out why the world has been destroyed. This is different for Monica, but, she is presented almost like a side character, with her plot-line mostly ignored and the real focus laying with Max and his search for his mother. Trouble is I don't particularly care about Max's Mother, whereas in the first game we were given a real reason to care about Toan helping his village, protecting his loved ones, and then given a true reason in each village, with the introduction of a new playable character with strong ties to their destroyed village. So the real addictive nature of the game isn't within its story, but within the gameplay itself. The gameplay and challenges are so addictive you won't think twice about spending two or three hours on just one problem goal. Story I covered a little of this in addictiveness but we'll go through it here again. I gave a quite low score of 6 for story because, well, the game is poorly scr Along the way, however, we're helped along with our motivation through the introduction of minor stories, each one connected with the places you visit. The initial story being Max chased from his town and pursued by a clown troop lead by the sinister Flotsam. The clown, which his robots, beach buggy and army of knife throwing entertainers chases Max out of the city, he is then soon dispatched by Monica and it's unclear what happens to Flotsam's troop after Monica blew him up. We then immediately visit Sindain, a quiet forest village where a giant talking tree who remembers everything about the world. Unfortunately Griffen, the bad guy running the whole future ruining thing I mentioned, has killed Jurak (the tree) by destroying his origin point, aka, Max's time. The gang must restore the tree, but to do so need the help of Seven Firbits (Essentially Snow White's Dwarves) who have lost a woman they cared for, who you must find, and in the process restore Jurak. The next area follows the story of a Great Sage, Crest, who has also been killed, but his Apprentice, Lin, is struggling with an illness and saving her could lead to saving Crest. So there has been a great deal of effort to provide a good amount of story, and most of it works, but overall the poor voice acting, repetition of cliques and pointless conversations ruins the development of the plot. Depth I've shown you all I can in the Addictiveness part of this review, but I'll write a bit more here. Even if you rebuild every village, even if you upgrade to the most powerful weapon, collect every medal, build the most powerful robot, complete the fishing challenges, win every competition, create a perfect future, find every set of clothing, upgrade your characters fully, photograph every idea and scoop, upgrade Monica's Monster Transformations to 100, win every golf medal, build every robot part, collect every character, settle them somewhere, invent every item and complete the game by defeating Griffen... you're still not finished: Because there's a final dungeon more difficult than all those you've faced before with 100 levels, the most difficult enemies and revamped bosses such as 'Metal Flotsam' and that Ultimate Evil from the first Dark Cloud, the Dark Genie, still to defeat! So yes, there's a heck of a lot to do in this game, and this review doesn't even come close to explaining just how in-depth each of these challenges actually are, for example, it took me one whole day to complete five rounds of the golf mini-game. It's just that difficult and frustrating, but the completionist in me demands it! Difficulty Depending on what aspect of the game you're referring to the game ranges from easy to pretty damn difficult. It can take hours to complete simple tasks and if both characters die, you get a game over and have to start from your last save, each level is about 5-10 minutes long to finish, golf is difficult, fishing slightly easier, but rare fishes hard to find, and difficult to catch. The storyline gameplay has a decent arc of difficulty, with new areas being hard, and old areas getting easier one you upgrade health and defense by finding the related items in the non-dungeon worlds. Leveling weapons is actually a lot easier than some people lead on, but with higher leveled weapons the less Abs there is around. Some challenges are needlessly difficult, and make acquiring unique items more difficult than need be. The invention side of the game is fun and easy, but photography challenges can also be needlessly difficult. Boss battles are also not immediately obvious, like to kill one monster you have to attack what you'd see as a part of the environment first, which only makes sense if you read the Helpful Tips that pop up, but if you miss these by accident then you're not going to win. Some parts of the game are overly complicated and this can make the game frustrating, but really the randomness of dungeons make everything fun, and no single challenge ever plays out the same way twice. Buying things is too expensive, and finding money is too difficult, even with fishing exploits, it can take too long to get the right amount of money. So the game is very difficult, but not impossible... except for the final dungeon. Conclusion There's a reason this game still sells for £20 to £25 preowned, it's a classic, it's wonderful and challenging and doesn't feel like a waste of time. I hate how undervalued it has been, with too few people playing past the initial levels, or simply not caring about the game at all. I find it amazing that some people have never heard of Dark Cloud, it's practically unique, and not something that's usually seen within the Playstation game formats. The story and graphics appear childish, but the game deals with some heavy issues, with a magical flair, such as murder, genocide, true love, hatred and depression. The gameplay is varied, and the challenges are attractive, there's some hand-holding, but the game lets you play to your own style, once elements have been introduced you rarely have to go back to them. The game lets you play things your way, and if that means hitting things with a hammer, a robot or a spell then that's just dandy. |
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07-23-15 03:35 PM
| ID: 1189545 | 2259 Words
| ID: 1189545 | 2259 Words
"Urban Chaos throws you into the heart of a modern urban jungle at the turn of the millennium. To succeed you'll need a lethal combination of stealth, physical agility and martial art skills as you interact with the city around you. "Urban Chaos throws you into the heart of a modern urban jungle at the turn of the millennium. To succeed you'll need a lethal combination of stealth, physical agility and martial art skills as you interact with the city around you. |
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Affected by 'Laziness Syndrome'
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Affected by 'Laziness Syndrome'
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11-08-14 05:56 PM
| ID: 1102742 | 48 Words
| ID: 1102742 | 48 Words
No worries, I got it, thank you. And I'll stop answering questions and give the next person a shot, assuming there's more questions and prizes. This has been a nice little pick me up after a hard day helping move things out of my parent's tenant's old apartment. |
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Affected by 'Laziness Syndrome'
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11-08-14 03:21 PM
| ID: 1102671 | 1 Words
| ID: 1102671 | 1 Words
11-05-14 05:24 AM
| ID: 1101533 | 209 Words
| ID: 1101533 | 209 Words
Silent Hill: The Room, I know this because out of all the horror games this is the only one where I physically could not move past the first horrific moment, the part with the first Scream almost made me drop the game completely, but when the zombie came out the wall I was done. The psychological nature of the game basically did not work well with my overactive imagination. I mean I've played Dead Space 1 through 3, Resident Evil, Fallout 3 and New Vegas, and a whole lot of games that you could put in the horror category, but I have never seen anything else as mentally and physically taxing as Silent Hill: The Room. I suppose it comes from the unnatural element, that very few games manage to capture. There wasn't as much gore as seen in Dead Space, there wasn't the sense of 'I can do this if I try enough times' you get in Dark Souls, there was just this fear brought on by the fact that you knew there was something out there, and you had to go there, but since it was a game you didn't have to go through it, so I didn't, and I put something fluffy and cute on instead. Silent Hill: The Room, I know this because out of all the horror games this is the only one where I physically could not move past the first horrific moment, the part with the first Scream almost made me drop the game completely, but when the zombie came out the wall I was done. The psychological nature of the game basically did not work well with my overactive imagination. I mean I've played Dead Space 1 through 3, Resident Evil, Fallout 3 and New Vegas, and a whole lot of games that you could put in the horror category, but I have never seen anything else as mentally and physically taxing as Silent Hill: The Room. I suppose it comes from the unnatural element, that very few games manage to capture. There wasn't as much gore as seen in Dead Space, there wasn't the sense of 'I can do this if I try enough times' you get in Dark Souls, there was just this fear brought on by the fact that you knew there was something out there, and you had to go there, but since it was a game you didn't have to go through it, so I didn't, and I put something fluffy and cute on instead. |
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Affected by 'Laziness Syndrome'
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11-05-14 05:15 AM
| ID: 1101532 | 150 Words
| ID: 1101532 | 150 Words
If you were to ask me what I play a lot most recently, in terms of log-ins, it would be either Titanfall or Destiny. Over the last few years I've probably played the Assassin's Creed series the most. In my entire life? I suppose World of Warcraft, Final Fantasy 9 and the Jak and Daxter series have taken up a lot of my attention, to the point that I suppose I've played all of them for about the same length of time. On the PC it's between World of Warcraft, Starcraft and Age of Empires. On the Xbox One I think I've played Titanfall the most. On the Xbox 360 I think I've played Assassin's Creed the most. On the PS2 I think it would be Jak 2: Renegade. On the PS1 I think it would be Final Fantasy 9. On the Sega it would be Zombies: Ate my Neighbours. Over the last few years I've probably played the Assassin's Creed series the most. In my entire life? I suppose World of Warcraft, Final Fantasy 9 and the Jak and Daxter series have taken up a lot of my attention, to the point that I suppose I've played all of them for about the same length of time. On the PC it's between World of Warcraft, Starcraft and Age of Empires. On the Xbox One I think I've played Titanfall the most. On the Xbox 360 I think I've played Assassin's Creed the most. On the PS2 I think it would be Jak 2: Renegade. On the PS1 I think it would be Final Fantasy 9. On the Sega it would be Zombies: Ate my Neighbours. |
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Affected by 'Laziness Syndrome'
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10-29-14 05:19 PM
| ID: 1098585 | 110 Words
| ID: 1098585 | 110 Words
Sowong
Level: 16
POSTS: 34/44
POST EXP: 36914
LVL EXP: 18827
CP: 2739.3
VIZ: 107122
POSTS: 34/44
POST EXP: 36914
LVL EXP: 18827
CP: 2739.3
VIZ: 107122
Likes: 1 Dislikes: 0
imamonster : Well those types of games are called Visual novels and they are very popular. RPGs are also a very popular way of telling a story through game-play, and before the computer these types of games existed as table-top roleplay where you sat around with friends and imagined the world as you threw dice, which are also popular and continue to be so. But there are also games with no story-line what-so-ever and they continue to be popular, so perhaps I'm being a little narrow-minded in my approach and should consider farming simulators, flight simulators, bubble-popping games, maze games and quiz games when I do my reviews in the future. But there are also games with no story-line what-so-ever and they continue to be popular, so perhaps I'm being a little narrow-minded in my approach and should consider farming simulators, flight simulators, bubble-popping games, maze games and quiz games when I do my reviews in the future. |
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Affected by 'Laziness Syndrome'
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Affected by 'Laziness Syndrome'
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10-29-14 09:23 AM
| ID: 1098432 | 2585 Words
| ID: 1098432 | 2585 Words
Sowong
Level: 16
POSTS: 33/44
POST EXP: 36914
LVL EXP: 18827
CP: 2739.3
VIZ: 107122
POSTS: 33/44
POST EXP: 36914
LVL EXP: 18827
CP: 2739.3
VIZ: 107122
Likes: 1 Dislikes: 0
Introduction This is my first review of a Digimon Game, I've done Pokemon, I've done YuGiOh, I've even done Monster Rancher (Not on this site) but this is the first time I've sat myself down to think about Digimon World in a long time. "Digimon? What's that? Some kind of Pokemon knock off?!", I hear you scream from the top of your lungs. No, Digimon is a program slash addiction in it's own right, similar to pokemon in many ways, even had it's own card game, and was also a cartoon plot to essentially sell merchandise along the lines of key chains, digivices, cards, neck chains, etc. Digimon appeared at a time when the cartoon market was rife with similar products, I already named a few, in the form of Pokemon, Monster Rancher, YuGiOh, Medabots, Card Captor Sakura, Ultimate Muscle, Dragonball Z each one having an anime edge and the goal of corrupting the minds of children by using the power of love to convince their parents they really needed another card pack. Why am I telling you this? So that you won't think that this is a knock-off version of Pokemon and dismiss the game entirely. You need to understand that when Digimon World was developed it was considered one of the most popular things you could own for your Playstation. Still not convinced? Well how about I put it another way; Did you even wonder what playing Pokemon would be like in a 3-D, free-roaming world? Well this is the closest you'll get... (I know there's a 3-D version of Pokemon, but this one has the Monsters running around when they fight) The game was developed by Bandai and released in 1999, Bandai are a corporation who spend a lot of time developing games for kids, but without ruining the story lines, they've done, surprisingly, Dragonball Z, Ultimate Muscle, Card Captor Sakura, Gundam Wing, Sailor Moon, One Piece and even Ben 10 games for various consoles. At the time of publication, if you saw Bandai on the cover, you know you were getting a decent game. Bandai often tried to put innovative elements into their older titles, Digimon World for example, despite being very similar to pokemon, wound up being very different due to the Tamagotchi element the producers added to the game. Even Digimon World 2, with it's loss of the Tamagotchi element, had it's own distinct, if less involving, style. That's enough history, however, lets get down to the review. Gameplay "What's this? You're starting with gameplay? Don't you always say that the story is the most important element and that's why you always start your reviews with the story?!" I hear you ask. Well yes, I do agree that the story is usually more important to a game than the actual gameplay, but the gameplay in Digimon world is so unique to any game I've ever played that I had to start here, because the gameplay, more or less, is the story in Digimon World. Well maybe that's going a little too far. The gameplay is unique, it's wonderful, but it's also difficult, difficult, difficult. Digimon World is an RPG, it's a pet simulator, it has turn based battles, it has automated battles, it had micromanagement and macro management, it's a city building game, it's a game of conversations, and it's also about exploration, time management, friendship, money and expecting the unexpected. Also your pet digivolves into weird things. I'll start with the overall gameplay. Your character has to build a city to stop the Digimon from going feral, to do this you need to seek out as many Digimon who aren't insane, in doing so you change the city and the island. The differences could mean more food for your digimon, more places to shop, less chances of dying and better gym equipment for your montages (You'll need them). But not every Digimon you meet in the wilds will be friendly, and most won't want to come back to the city. Finding as many Digimon as possible gives you better odds at being able to travel farther and finding more places and people as you do because you only have a certain amount of days to get everything done in time, because some elements of the game happen on set days but you might have problems getting to them on time, because of another game element. Your Digimon needs to train to get stronger, it needs to eat, Fighting is different, it's turn based, like Pokemon, but much more like a modern Final Fantasy game, where your character can run around, dodge attacks and attack back, but still on a time-based, turn-based system. You can tell your Digimon what to do, which depends on it's intelligence, and you can give it new attacks that it's learned, or just let it do it's own thing. The Digimon will dodge, attack, block and run around, more often than not it'll be multiple Digimon against your lone pet, so you're likely to get into a lot of bother if you haven't trained. There are also special moves for each Digimon, including Agumon's Pepper Breath, which power up over time and then require you to press the correct button. Sometimes it misses, which can be frustrating, actually if they took out most of the fighting elements the game would probably be a whole lot better, if somewhat boring. In terms of the other elements, there's so many. You do get a sense of achievement that few other games give you when your little village expands from a toilet, a bank, Jijimon's house and a tiny farm, to a bigger farm, a hospital, shopping market, gym and all the other little things that you wouldn't think would happen in a game this old. Defeating the bigger nastier monsters if always a bonus, but whenever I find a new digimon who'll expand the farm and get an extra portion of meat for my digimon, well, that's a better feeling than bringing down a drillmogimon with Agumon's pepper breath. Story The story isn't all that different from Season Three, where the kid wishes for Guilmon to appear, although what actually happens is that instead of a digimon showing up out of no where, a bullied kid gets dragged into the Digiworld to become the tamer he always wanted to be. Jijimon did this, because apparently the original Digi-Destined were busy or something, and now it's down to you and your Digimon to save File Island. The Digimon have spread out, becoming feral, and there's a dark threat behind it all, only by building the city and creating unity and harmony, can the hero possibly save the Digital World. Okay it's not Hamlet, but it's convincing enough, especially when you go out into the world and find out that most of the Digimon have gone insane, feral or have forgotten to speak completely. However, not everyone is evil, or made evil, and sometimes a simple conversation will get you a new friend in your village. Each newcomer adds a new element to the city, and some of them can even change the world by building new tunnels, cutting down trees and helping in various other ways. Each Digimon has it's own story, no matter how small, some want to test you, others want to make sure they'll be save in the city, and others are just out to make money. The story isn't great, but it's the connections that you make in the world that develop the real story. The Drillmogimon, for example, have a great progressing story about their trials and tribulations moving the earth and digging deeper into the mountain, which then creates a new Meramon storyline where he's gone mental and wants to flood the world in lava, but you stop and befriend him, creating the best Curry House in town, in the process... And there's many more stories like that in the game. They're short, but they're sweet. The overall story isn't much explained, but I've never gotten far enough in the game to actually find out what's driving everyone mental, the game always had to be back in the library at the end of the week, and someone always had it reserved when I wanted to take it out longer. Depth There's a lot to do, and so very little time to do it in, you're gonna make a lot of mistakes, even with a walkthrough. There's more Digimon to find than you would have through possible, there's creatures lurking in unexpected places and every time you think you've found the last area to explore there's another one just waiting to be opened up. You're gonna have to learn how to do a lot of different things to find new people, and there's gonna be more than a few jobs to do, people to fight and problems to solve. There's a maze, there's a tunnel to dig, there's a shop to run, there's a digimon to train, feed, protect, teach and evolve. Some areas are normal, others have crazy effects, one ages your Digimon faster than normal and another has traps. You'll have to learn who is important and who's just another feral digimon, and eventually you're going to have to push your limits and activate some of the most dangerous places in the Digital World. It doesn't sound like a whole lot, but remember than each day has a morning, noon, evening and night. Your Digimon will need to be fed, it will get bored and tired, stressed and hungry. So you've got a whole lot of time devoted to taking care of the strange little lizard. The game probably wouldn't last quite so long if it wasn't for the fact that the Digimon will die of old age, causing you to need to train it up again, making it's personality change, it's evolution tree change and more likely than not you'll never see it progress past the Champion stage. I've only even trained one Ultra, but that was a Skull Greymon, and not exactly the best result... Addictiveness Hard to tell how addictive this game is, because there's no element which is repeatedly enjoyable. The battles are fun, building the city is cute and addictive, finding more friends is also cool. I suppose I rated the addictiveness high because it's been fifteen years and I'm still talking about it, wanting to pay it and annoyed that I don't currently own it. Digimon World offers something that other games don't. It doesn't quite fit into a neat genre, there's multiple facets to it's character and the Digimon themselves are fun to train and add collections to their evolution trees. It's easy to be good at this game, but it's difficult to be amazing. The techniques are hard to come by, becoming an Ultra is almost impossible, or possibly just boring, the time constraints can be rather disappointing as well, but you don't need to find every person in the game to complete it, heck, I'm not even sure if you can complete this game. Maybe you should just look at it as a fun choose your own adventure, you can be the completist, the casual gamer, the battler, the trainer or the collector. There's a lot of satisfying elements in this gorgeous little piece of gaming history. Sound The sounds are good, I think some of the music if misplaced and the sound effects are a little dull. The most special moves in the cartoon are represented with little growls, digitalised sounds and some pathetic splashing noises. Some sounds don't even sound like what they're supposed to represent. I suppose it can't be helped and it doesn't distracted too much from the game. The sounds made by some of the baby Digimon is very loud and annoying, and I don't think there's a single Digimon that makes a noise that is made in the cartoon itself. However it doesn't distract too much from the game. Graphics The Graphics could be better but for the time they were pretty good, especially considering that there were few games of this size. I like the cute styles used for the Digimon, it distracts slightly from the seriousness of the game and the larger digimon are dwarfed and made awkward looking to fit the pre-rendered one-view scenes that are your only option in the game. This form of camera style also means that you cannot see what's going on in half of the battle scenes, but that doesn't always matter, unless you can't tell your Digimon's status. Conclusion This is a great game to sink your teeth into if you have a spare few hours. It's involving and micromanaging, so it's great if you enjoy taking care of others, battling and developing a world for your own ends. The lack of control over the game is a little annoying, the almost random way in which your Digimon Evolves can be possibly the worst aspect in the game because you might love your Agumon, Koromon or whatever, and then it evolves into your most hated Digimon from the series and you just want to stop taking care of it and let it die, or something. The time consuming nature of training your Digimon can be rewarding but I think the best part of the game is the exploration and the short story lines each new character develops. Perhaps it's not the greatest game ever made and if it were up to me the Digimon pet system would be downplayed a little more, but not as much as in Digimon World 2 where it was more or less removed, and you wouldn't have to worry about it dying of old age, it would be nicer if there were more in-game hints towards where to find Digimon as well. In the end, I would recommend that if you want to play this game you should make sure you have a walkthrough sitting ready. This is my first review of a Digimon Game, I've done Pokemon, I've done YuGiOh, I've even done Monster Rancher (Not on this site) but this is the first time I've sat myself down to think about Digimon World in a long time. "Digimon? What's that? Some kind of Pokemon knock off?!", I hear you scream from the top of your lungs. No, Digimon is a program slash addiction in it's own right, similar to pokemon in many ways, even had it's own card game, and was also a cartoon plot to essentially sell merchandise along the lines of key chains, digivices, cards, neck chains, etc. Digimon appeared at a time when the cartoon market was rife with similar products, I already named a few, in the form of Pokemon, Monster Rancher, YuGiOh, Medabots, Card Captor Sakura, Ultimate Muscle, Dragonball Z each one having an anime edge and the goal of corrupting the minds of children by using the power of love to convince their parents they really needed another card pack. Why am I telling you this? So that you won't think that this is a knock-off version of Pokemon and dismiss the game entirely. You need to understand that when Digimon World was developed it was considered one of the most popular things you could own for your Playstation. Still not convinced? Well how about I put it another way; Did you even wonder what playing Pokemon would be like in a 3-D, free-roaming world? Well this is the closest you'll get... (I know there's a 3-D version of Pokemon, but this one has the Monsters running around when they fight) The game was developed by Bandai and released in 1999, Bandai are a corporation who spend a lot of time developing games for kids, but without ruining the story lines, they've done, surprisingly, Dragonball Z, Ultimate Muscle, Card Captor Sakura, Gundam Wing, Sailor Moon, One Piece and even Ben 10 games for various consoles. At the time of publication, if you saw Bandai on the cover, you know you were getting a decent game. Bandai often tried to put innovative elements into their older titles, Digimon World for example, despite being very similar to pokemon, wound up being very different due to the Tamagotchi element the producers added to the game. Even Digimon World 2, with it's loss of the Tamagotchi element, had it's own distinct, if less involving, style. That's enough history, however, lets get down to the review. Gameplay "What's this? You're starting with gameplay? Don't you always say that the story is the most important element and that's why you always start your reviews with the story?!" I hear you ask. Well yes, I do agree that the story is usually more important to a game than the actual gameplay, but the gameplay in Digimon world is so unique to any game I've ever played that I had to start here, because the gameplay, more or less, is the story in Digimon World. Well maybe that's going a little too far. The gameplay is unique, it's wonderful, but it's also difficult, difficult, difficult. Digimon World is an RPG, it's a pet simulator, it has turn based battles, it has automated battles, it had micromanagement and macro management, it's a city building game, it's a game of conversations, and it's also about exploration, time management, friendship, money and expecting the unexpected. Also your pet digivolves into weird things. I'll start with the overall gameplay. Your character has to build a city to stop the Digimon from going feral, to do this you need to seek out as many Digimon who aren't insane, in doing so you change the city and the island. The differences could mean more food for your digimon, more places to shop, less chances of dying and better gym equipment for your montages (You'll need them). But not every Digimon you meet in the wilds will be friendly, and most won't want to come back to the city. Finding as many Digimon as possible gives you better odds at being able to travel farther and finding more places and people as you do because you only have a certain amount of days to get everything done in time, because some elements of the game happen on set days but you might have problems getting to them on time, because of another game element. Your Digimon needs to train to get stronger, it needs to eat, Fighting is different, it's turn based, like Pokemon, but much more like a modern Final Fantasy game, where your character can run around, dodge attacks and attack back, but still on a time-based, turn-based system. You can tell your Digimon what to do, which depends on it's intelligence, and you can give it new attacks that it's learned, or just let it do it's own thing. The Digimon will dodge, attack, block and run around, more often than not it'll be multiple Digimon against your lone pet, so you're likely to get into a lot of bother if you haven't trained. There are also special moves for each Digimon, including Agumon's Pepper Breath, which power up over time and then require you to press the correct button. Sometimes it misses, which can be frustrating, actually if they took out most of the fighting elements the game would probably be a whole lot better, if somewhat boring. In terms of the other elements, there's so many. You do get a sense of achievement that few other games give you when your little village expands from a toilet, a bank, Jijimon's house and a tiny farm, to a bigger farm, a hospital, shopping market, gym and all the other little things that you wouldn't think would happen in a game this old. Defeating the bigger nastier monsters if always a bonus, but whenever I find a new digimon who'll expand the farm and get an extra portion of meat for my digimon, well, that's a better feeling than bringing down a drillmogimon with Agumon's pepper breath. Story The story isn't all that different from Season Three, where the kid wishes for Guilmon to appear, although what actually happens is that instead of a digimon showing up out of no where, a bullied kid gets dragged into the Digiworld to become the tamer he always wanted to be. Jijimon did this, because apparently the original Digi-Destined were busy or something, and now it's down to you and your Digimon to save File Island. The Digimon have spread out, becoming feral, and there's a dark threat behind it all, only by building the city and creating unity and harmony, can the hero possibly save the Digital World. Okay it's not Hamlet, but it's convincing enough, especially when you go out into the world and find out that most of the Digimon have gone insane, feral or have forgotten to speak completely. However, not everyone is evil, or made evil, and sometimes a simple conversation will get you a new friend in your village. Each newcomer adds a new element to the city, and some of them can even change the world by building new tunnels, cutting down trees and helping in various other ways. Each Digimon has it's own story, no matter how small, some want to test you, others want to make sure they'll be save in the city, and others are just out to make money. The story isn't great, but it's the connections that you make in the world that develop the real story. The Drillmogimon, for example, have a great progressing story about their trials and tribulations moving the earth and digging deeper into the mountain, which then creates a new Meramon storyline where he's gone mental and wants to flood the world in lava, but you stop and befriend him, creating the best Curry House in town, in the process... And there's many more stories like that in the game. They're short, but they're sweet. The overall story isn't much explained, but I've never gotten far enough in the game to actually find out what's driving everyone mental, the game always had to be back in the library at the end of the week, and someone always had it reserved when I wanted to take it out longer. Depth There's a lot to do, and so very little time to do it in, you're gonna make a lot of mistakes, even with a walkthrough. There's more Digimon to find than you would have through possible, there's creatures lurking in unexpected places and every time you think you've found the last area to explore there's another one just waiting to be opened up. You're gonna have to learn how to do a lot of different things to find new people, and there's gonna be more than a few jobs to do, people to fight and problems to solve. There's a maze, there's a tunnel to dig, there's a shop to run, there's a digimon to train, feed, protect, teach and evolve. Some areas are normal, others have crazy effects, one ages your Digimon faster than normal and another has traps. You'll have to learn who is important and who's just another feral digimon, and eventually you're going to have to push your limits and activate some of the most dangerous places in the Digital World. It doesn't sound like a whole lot, but remember than each day has a morning, noon, evening and night. Your Digimon will need to be fed, it will get bored and tired, stressed and hungry. So you've got a whole lot of time devoted to taking care of the strange little lizard. The game probably wouldn't last quite so long if it wasn't for the fact that the Digimon will die of old age, causing you to need to train it up again, making it's personality change, it's evolution tree change and more likely than not you'll never see it progress past the Champion stage. I've only even trained one Ultra, but that was a Skull Greymon, and not exactly the best result... Addictiveness Hard to tell how addictive this game is, because there's no element which is repeatedly enjoyable. The battles are fun, building the city is cute and addictive, finding more friends is also cool. I suppose I rated the addictiveness high because it's been fifteen years and I'm still talking about it, wanting to pay it and annoyed that I don't currently own it. Digimon World offers something that other games don't. It doesn't quite fit into a neat genre, there's multiple facets to it's character and the Digimon themselves are fun to train and add collections to their evolution trees. It's easy to be good at this game, but it's difficult to be amazing. The techniques are hard to come by, becoming an Ultra is almost impossible, or possibly just boring, the time constraints can be rather disappointing as well, but you don't need to find every person in the game to complete it, heck, I'm not even sure if you can complete this game. Maybe you should just look at it as a fun choose your own adventure, you can be the completist, the casual gamer, the battler, the trainer or the collector. There's a lot of satisfying elements in this gorgeous little piece of gaming history. Sound The sounds are good, I think some of the music if misplaced and the sound effects are a little dull. The most special moves in the cartoon are represented with little growls, digitalised sounds and some pathetic splashing noises. Some sounds don't even sound like what they're supposed to represent. I suppose it can't be helped and it doesn't distracted too much from the game. The sounds made by some of the baby Digimon is very loud and annoying, and I don't think there's a single Digimon that makes a noise that is made in the cartoon itself. However it doesn't distract too much from the game. Graphics The Graphics could be better but for the time they were pretty good, especially considering that there were few games of this size. I like the cute styles used for the Digimon, it distracts slightly from the seriousness of the game and the larger digimon are dwarfed and made awkward looking to fit the pre-rendered one-view scenes that are your only option in the game. This form of camera style also means that you cannot see what's going on in half of the battle scenes, but that doesn't always matter, unless you can't tell your Digimon's status. Conclusion This is a great game to sink your teeth into if you have a spare few hours. It's involving and micromanaging, so it's great if you enjoy taking care of others, battling and developing a world for your own ends. The lack of control over the game is a little annoying, the almost random way in which your Digimon Evolves can be possibly the worst aspect in the game because you might love your Agumon, Koromon or whatever, and then it evolves into your most hated Digimon from the series and you just want to stop taking care of it and let it die, or something. The time consuming nature of training your Digimon can be rewarding but I think the best part of the game is the exploration and the short story lines each new character develops. Perhaps it's not the greatest game ever made and if it were up to me the Digimon pet system would be downplayed a little more, but not as much as in Digimon World 2 where it was more or less removed, and you wouldn't have to worry about it dying of old age, it would be nicer if there were more in-game hints towards where to find Digimon as well. In the end, I would recommend that if you want to play this game you should make sure you have a walkthrough sitting ready. |
Member
Affected by 'Laziness Syndrome'
Registered: 12-11-12
Last Post: 3120 days
Last Active: 2774 days
Affected by 'Laziness Syndrome'
Registered: 12-11-12
Last Post: 3120 days
Last Active: 2774 days
06-19-14 08:02 AM
| ID: 1037928 | 208 Words
| ID: 1037928 | 208 Words
Darkpower508 : I like this review, it addresses a lot of the issues I had when playing the game, and like you I was trasitioning from the older style in FFIX to the new one in X. The begining didn't make a lot of sense, there seemed to be a lot of running around and the fact that the story is a real slow burner was a bit annoying. Especially at the 'laughing' scene... Which I require a full brain scrub to remove. I thought you could have spent a little more time on the 'world' aspect, as an rpg the Final Fantasy series has a lot of emphasis on creating new and unique world, which is something they're failing at in the modern games. I feel that in X there was a well developed world even if that doesn't come across until mid-way throught he game. I do realise though that your review was one that focused on the story. There was perhaps a little too much detail when you were describing the start of the game, maybe you could have talked about the villains as well since they're the part of the game which compells you to keep on playing, to see them put into their place. I like this review, it addresses a lot of the issues I had when playing the game, and like you I was trasitioning from the older style in FFIX to the new one in X. The begining didn't make a lot of sense, there seemed to be a lot of running around and the fact that the story is a real slow burner was a bit annoying. Especially at the 'laughing' scene... Which I require a full brain scrub to remove. I thought you could have spent a little more time on the 'world' aspect, as an rpg the Final Fantasy series has a lot of emphasis on creating new and unique world, which is something they're failing at in the modern games. I feel that in X there was a well developed world even if that doesn't come across until mid-way throught he game. I do realise though that your review was one that focused on the story. There was perhaps a little too much detail when you were describing the start of the game, maybe you could have talked about the villains as well since they're the part of the game which compells you to keep on playing, to see them put into their place. |
Member
Affected by 'Laziness Syndrome'
Registered: 12-11-12
Last Post: 3120 days
Last Active: 2774 days
Affected by 'Laziness Syndrome'
Registered: 12-11-12
Last Post: 3120 days
Last Active: 2774 days
06-19-14 07:30 AM
| ID: 1037923 | 2103 Words
| ID: 1037923 | 2103 Words
Introduction: I suppose it's my own fault really, I expected too much from this game when I bought it without researching what I was actually buying. So instead of the paranormal L.A. Noire I was expecting I instead wound up with 3D Midnight Murders. I don't know how many of you have played anything like Midnight Murders, but probably at some point or another you've picked up a Nancy Drew game, a point & click mystery crime game or have played something like Professor Clayton. I haven't played the latter but I imagine it has a lot in common with Murdered: Soul Suspect. I had been hoping for gun fights, supernatural powers, murder investigations, ghosts, demons, difficult and inventive investigations and a compelling storyline... but I only got a couple of these things. The cover art, and the price, doesn't really reflect the lack of innovation, simplistic gameplay and bad story telling in Murdered: Soul Suspect. Story: Ronan was dead, to begin with. And that must be understood or else this story will seem mundane. He's dead, killed by some guy known as the Bell Killer, but wait his shattered soul has a few seconds to get back into it's body... oh no he's been shot seven times in the chest, what a shame, he's dead. We then learn Ronan has a bitter rivalry with another cop, his brother-in-law is a cop, his wife is dead and in heaven, or whatever vague version they called it, and Ronan must clear up his unfinished business, hand-in-hand with Casper while protecting the town from the ghostly trio: just kidding. He discovers that his powers in life are now stronger in death, these powers apparently all being analytical and he must use them plus a variety of common powers to track down and... something... the bell killer. The story isn't too involved, there's a psychic side-kick because there's always at least one in every supernatural game. There's people to protect, unforseen deaths, twists and a vague nondescr Gameplay: At first I enjoyed the game. I mean it was interesting to be able to run through walls, cars, people and fences and the ghost buildings (Or memory buildings) were a nice addition that made for some interesting obstacles. The demons were frightening, and a nice scary opponent but once you realise they can't see through walls, but somehow you can, they lose their fear factor, and are really just annoying things that are in the way. The demons are very difficult to just run past, and due to the fact they can quickly kill you help to balance out the slow, easy gameplay with short bursts of action, hiding and strategy. The investigation side of things, however, was just laughable. For £30+ I expect a challenge, I expect having to think, I expect multiple answers and the ability to get things wrong and accuse the wrong people on my terms. I did not expect to have, say, a room full of objects with lights shining on all the important ones with impossibly easy solutions to the occasional puzzles. The reason I got anything wrong on the first try was because I over-thought every single one. The first 'puzzle' is to influence a woman to think about the Bell Killer, and the answer is to As you progress through the game you pick up powers, randomly, more or less just up off the floor. There's no test, no power-up, no upgrades, no cinematic to show that you've achieved something... really you just get them by walking forwards and not dying. It shouldn't be annoying but the lack of ceremony just got to me, there's not even a ghostly sensei to teach you how to be a ghost, everyone in the spirit world lets you get on with it with very little interaction. Also the powers are quite limiting and once you get the teleportation ability a number of the puzzles involving using cats to get around become pointless and makes you wonder why you can't just teleport up instead of needing to possess poor kitties. After a while being able to walk through walls gets boring as a means to avoid demon pits, there are a few interesting hidden objects obtained through this means but walking through walls isn't as well implemented as it could have been, in fact most of the powers aren't as well implemented as they could have been. I really liked the ghost train part and having to use teleportation to travel between safe zones. This is something that could have been used throughout the game, with more obstacles through the different levels incorporating the powers. I was disappointed with the absence of gun battles, or ranged combat, you're given a character with an awesome backstory, tattoos covering his body in a gangster style and seven bullet holes in his chest. I would have thought these aspects would have had some effect on the game play. You know, gain an ability, gain a glowing ghost tattoo, or a different colour of bullet hole... it seems like most of the game budget was spent on designing the main character, with everything else getting downsized so they could slap on another tattoo. The glowing yellow bullet holes apparently do nothing more than give a bit of colour to your otherwise grey character. It felt like there was more that could be done, a bit of adventure among all the... non-adventure. Depth: There's not a lot to do and a simple sweep of the game levels will reveal all the collectables you could want, not that you're going to bother with them much, they're not interesting. The history of Salem isn't something I would turn to a game to look for, facts on witch burnings might be interesting and the cinematics of other murders are somewhat interesting but not anything to get excited about. There are 2D indie games which are more in-depth than Murdered: Soul Suspect. If they had embedded clues or had facts or interesting hints in the collectable histories I might have bothered to give them a look, or at least a glance, but there's nothing in them other than things the researchers learned about Salem. There's not even the option for an end-game mode where you go around and collect anything that you missed. Sound: Right in some places but overall terrible, we are talking about the music. Throughout the game plays a very creepy violin score that gets the fear factor up... when there's nothing to be scared about. You're walking around a room, with no danger, and nothing frightening happening... so what was the point of all that fear mongering? I know the main character is dead and he's in the realm of the dead but that by itself is not frightening and therefore doesn't require scary violin music. They should have used an ambient sound, like jazz or natural noises rather than relying on the violins and acting scary. There literally is no danger in the 'city' area of Salem but the music creates tension like there's about to be and I just can't understand why. Graphics: I can't really fault the graphics, some moments are brilliant, the demons especially are wonderfully designed with everything about them being demonic, horrible and frightening. They're like twitchy Dementors, and are possibly the only reason to play this game, just to see a well animated horror, they're so terrifying to look at they don't lose their fear factor and tension generating ability even if you've been staring at one through a wall circling a room for the past twenty minutes. There's nothing pretty though, and everything is in darkness with ghost buildings here and there making everything which isn't a dull black a dull grey. There needed to be a bit more colour, I feel, possibly a daylight level where you had to keep in the shade. Addiction: There's nothing here that will make you long to play this game several years down the line. Most likely Murdered: Soul Suspect will become a forgotten game, or one no one will admit to have ever playing. The gameplay is listless, the story is obvious, the characters don't really react to things like proper humans and there's a sense that being dead and seeing ghosts is a rather mundane, everyday thing that happens all the time in Salem. You might go back and play it once more just to get the collectables and maybe some achievements but I don't see that happening, I just don't. I just wish the stories would have been more involving, or that the murders and death investigations would have been that bit more mysterious. Difficulty: There's very little difficulty, to be honest, if it wasn't for the fact there's swearing and violence in this game I would recommend it for five year olds. The puzzles aren't at all difficult, the demons are easy to avoid once you've got the trick of it, you rarely have to use your acquired powers in the main game and there's no obstacle in the way of getting to new levels. Even when you have to get the psychic from A to B without being seen she'll only move once you've satisfied the conditions perfectly, removing the challenge once more. If you don't bother with the collectables you could complete this game in a few hours. £30+ well spent you say? Conclusion: Don't buy this game. Don't, there's several games just like it on Steam; without 3D interfaces and a moveable character but still more or less the same thing. There's free games on your kindle or phone that have the same depth to them and there's not even a good story for you to sink your teeth into. This game is a waste of money, with only one or two good points and that's not worth wasting any amount of money on. It's seriously annoying that this game is no good because it is such an interesting premise and one which is so rarely explored from the viewpoint of the ghost. I wish they had done a better job in every aspect, but it seems unfinished, rushed and that they had ran out of money. I mean... the final battle in the game is a linear interview where you can't go wrong. If you want a good ghost/murder/investigation game then I suggest you look into the Blackwell series that's available on steam. It's a 2D point and click game but you're more or less getting the same, if not much more compelling, gameplay and story to engage with. It's even got a ghost and a psychic medium in it; runs around the idea of persecution, murders across generations, helping spirits to cross over, information puzzles aaaand historical figures (Occasionally). I suppose it's my own fault really, I expected too much from this game when I bought it without researching what I was actually buying. So instead of the paranormal L.A. Noire I was expecting I instead wound up with 3D Midnight Murders. I don't know how many of you have played anything like Midnight Murders, but probably at some point or another you've picked up a Nancy Drew game, a point & click mystery crime game or have played something like Professor Clayton. I haven't played the latter but I imagine it has a lot in common with Murdered: Soul Suspect. I had been hoping for gun fights, supernatural powers, murder investigations, ghosts, demons, difficult and inventive investigations and a compelling storyline... but I only got a couple of these things. The cover art, and the price, doesn't really reflect the lack of innovation, simplistic gameplay and bad story telling in Murdered: Soul Suspect. Story: Ronan was dead, to begin with. And that must be understood or else this story will seem mundane. He's dead, killed by some guy known as the Bell Killer, but wait his shattered soul has a few seconds to get back into it's body... oh no he's been shot seven times in the chest, what a shame, he's dead. We then learn Ronan has a bitter rivalry with another cop, his brother-in-law is a cop, his wife is dead and in heaven, or whatever vague version they called it, and Ronan must clear up his unfinished business, hand-in-hand with Casper while protecting the town from the ghostly trio: just kidding. He discovers that his powers in life are now stronger in death, these powers apparently all being analytical and he must use them plus a variety of common powers to track down and... something... the bell killer. The story isn't too involved, there's a psychic side-kick because there's always at least one in every supernatural game. There's people to protect, unforseen deaths, twists and a vague nondescr Gameplay: At first I enjoyed the game. I mean it was interesting to be able to run through walls, cars, people and fences and the ghost buildings (Or memory buildings) were a nice addition that made for some interesting obstacles. The demons were frightening, and a nice scary opponent but once you realise they can't see through walls, but somehow you can, they lose their fear factor, and are really just annoying things that are in the way. The demons are very difficult to just run past, and due to the fact they can quickly kill you help to balance out the slow, easy gameplay with short bursts of action, hiding and strategy. The investigation side of things, however, was just laughable. For £30+ I expect a challenge, I expect having to think, I expect multiple answers and the ability to get things wrong and accuse the wrong people on my terms. I did not expect to have, say, a room full of objects with lights shining on all the important ones with impossibly easy solutions to the occasional puzzles. The reason I got anything wrong on the first try was because I over-thought every single one. The first 'puzzle' is to influence a woman to think about the Bell Killer, and the answer is to As you progress through the game you pick up powers, randomly, more or less just up off the floor. There's no test, no power-up, no upgrades, no cinematic to show that you've achieved something... really you just get them by walking forwards and not dying. It shouldn't be annoying but the lack of ceremony just got to me, there's not even a ghostly sensei to teach you how to be a ghost, everyone in the spirit world lets you get on with it with very little interaction. Also the powers are quite limiting and once you get the teleportation ability a number of the puzzles involving using cats to get around become pointless and makes you wonder why you can't just teleport up instead of needing to possess poor kitties. After a while being able to walk through walls gets boring as a means to avoid demon pits, there are a few interesting hidden objects obtained through this means but walking through walls isn't as well implemented as it could have been, in fact most of the powers aren't as well implemented as they could have been. I really liked the ghost train part and having to use teleportation to travel between safe zones. This is something that could have been used throughout the game, with more obstacles through the different levels incorporating the powers. I was disappointed with the absence of gun battles, or ranged combat, you're given a character with an awesome backstory, tattoos covering his body in a gangster style and seven bullet holes in his chest. I would have thought these aspects would have had some effect on the game play. You know, gain an ability, gain a glowing ghost tattoo, or a different colour of bullet hole... it seems like most of the game budget was spent on designing the main character, with everything else getting downsized so they could slap on another tattoo. The glowing yellow bullet holes apparently do nothing more than give a bit of colour to your otherwise grey character. It felt like there was more that could be done, a bit of adventure among all the... non-adventure. Depth: There's not a lot to do and a simple sweep of the game levels will reveal all the collectables you could want, not that you're going to bother with them much, they're not interesting. The history of Salem isn't something I would turn to a game to look for, facts on witch burnings might be interesting and the cinematics of other murders are somewhat interesting but not anything to get excited about. There are 2D indie games which are more in-depth than Murdered: Soul Suspect. If they had embedded clues or had facts or interesting hints in the collectable histories I might have bothered to give them a look, or at least a glance, but there's nothing in them other than things the researchers learned about Salem. There's not even the option for an end-game mode where you go around and collect anything that you missed. Sound: Right in some places but overall terrible, we are talking about the music. Throughout the game plays a very creepy violin score that gets the fear factor up... when there's nothing to be scared about. You're walking around a room, with no danger, and nothing frightening happening... so what was the point of all that fear mongering? I know the main character is dead and he's in the realm of the dead but that by itself is not frightening and therefore doesn't require scary violin music. They should have used an ambient sound, like jazz or natural noises rather than relying on the violins and acting scary. There literally is no danger in the 'city' area of Salem but the music creates tension like there's about to be and I just can't understand why. Graphics: I can't really fault the graphics, some moments are brilliant, the demons especially are wonderfully designed with everything about them being demonic, horrible and frightening. They're like twitchy Dementors, and are possibly the only reason to play this game, just to see a well animated horror, they're so terrifying to look at they don't lose their fear factor and tension generating ability even if you've been staring at one through a wall circling a room for the past twenty minutes. There's nothing pretty though, and everything is in darkness with ghost buildings here and there making everything which isn't a dull black a dull grey. There needed to be a bit more colour, I feel, possibly a daylight level where you had to keep in the shade. Addiction: There's nothing here that will make you long to play this game several years down the line. Most likely Murdered: Soul Suspect will become a forgotten game, or one no one will admit to have ever playing. The gameplay is listless, the story is obvious, the characters don't really react to things like proper humans and there's a sense that being dead and seeing ghosts is a rather mundane, everyday thing that happens all the time in Salem. You might go back and play it once more just to get the collectables and maybe some achievements but I don't see that happening, I just don't. I just wish the stories would have been more involving, or that the murders and death investigations would have been that bit more mysterious. Difficulty: There's very little difficulty, to be honest, if it wasn't for the fact there's swearing and violence in this game I would recommend it for five year olds. The puzzles aren't at all difficult, the demons are easy to avoid once you've got the trick of it, you rarely have to use your acquired powers in the main game and there's no obstacle in the way of getting to new levels. Even when you have to get the psychic from A to B without being seen she'll only move once you've satisfied the conditions perfectly, removing the challenge once more. If you don't bother with the collectables you could complete this game in a few hours. £30+ well spent you say? Conclusion: Don't buy this game. Don't, there's several games just like it on Steam; without 3D interfaces and a moveable character but still more or less the same thing. There's free games on your kindle or phone that have the same depth to them and there's not even a good story for you to sink your teeth into. This game is a waste of money, with only one or two good points and that's not worth wasting any amount of money on. It's seriously annoying that this game is no good because it is such an interesting premise and one which is so rarely explored from the viewpoint of the ghost. I wish they had done a better job in every aspect, but it seems unfinished, rushed and that they had ran out of money. I mean... the final battle in the game is a linear interview where you can't go wrong. If you want a good ghost/murder/investigation game then I suggest you look into the Blackwell series that's available on steam. It's a 2D point and click game but you're more or less getting the same, if not much more compelling, gameplay and story to engage with. It's even got a ghost and a psychic medium in it; runs around the idea of persecution, murders across generations, helping spirits to cross over, information puzzles aaaand historical figures (Occasionally). |
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Affected by 'Laziness Syndrome'
Registered: 12-11-12
Last Post: 3120 days
Last Active: 2774 days
Affected by 'Laziness Syndrome'
Registered: 12-11-12
Last Post: 3120 days
Last Active: 2774 days
06-19-14 02:56 AM
| ID: 1037901 | 4290 Words
| ID: 1037901 | 4290 Words
Necroduction: So it looks like I went a little overboard in this review, and I just wanted to say that you should probably stop reading now if you don't want spoilers because I'm pretty extensive and more or less cover everything that is in the game in too much detail. Kay, thanks. So by now you've all probably played Dead Space and Dead Space 2 and if you haven't then stop reading this now, put your head down on a pillow, Gory Line: Hey, there's a lot of spoilers here so stop what you're reading now and skip on over to the next bit. So what's the story you ask? Or I'm assuming that you are, you are aren't you? I hope so... otherwise what am I doing with my life? The story begins with a recap, which I hate, to me recaps are for people with goldfish memories and a good story should be able to use reminders through the course of the game. Dead Space 3, however, seems to want to distance itself from the first two games as much as possible, while keeping the core concepts. The core concepts being necromorphs, markers, Unitology and humans being their general diabolical selves. The initial story is just terrible, I'm afraid. Issac has gotten over his dead girlfriend from the last two games, but has new girl troubles as his new girl Ellie has run off as Issac once more spiraled into hopelessness. He's suddenly confronted with two soldiers, in his apartment, who tell him he's humanity's last hope, and must come to a far off planet to kill the necromorphs, also Ellie happens to be there too, which is good incentive. There's also the problem of Unitology, which has since become the greatest religion in the universe, and has also overthrown the government and also want Clark dead because he's the only one who can stop convergence... even though everyone is fully aware of what that is, I assume, I mean the last game was... oh wait there was only two survivors and the government probably covered up the disappearance of millions of people, which is lucky. There's a slight struggle, then we're whisked off to the other side of the universe where Ellie happens to be, to find the source of the Marker signal and destroy it, plus save Ellie, and avoid convergence, if at all possible. At this point the story sort of dies, one of the soldiers turns out to be Ellie's boyfriend, and everything revolves around that little love-triangle for a while. The necromorphs and the end of all humanity takes a backseat to the fact that two guys love one girl, I suppose zombies, an alien race and a suicide cult just isn't as interesting as who gets to home with Ellie at the end of the day. There's also the 200 year old remnants of a confederate-like space army to navigate around... but who cares about that when Ellie's involved with some other man! Remember Nicole? No, Issac doesn't either. She isn't even mentioned in the game despite her necrotic soul stalking Issac for most of his damn life. In fact the whole psychological aspect of the necromorph is dropped, except for one Sauronesque moment. Meaning that there's no breakdown of the mental states of our friends, or enemies, which should have been the route for the imminent betrayal, but instead everyone was logical and normal to the bitter end, meaning all the stupid and evil things they did was of their own volition, only the 200 year old soldiers seemed to be effected by the psychological effects. This could possibly be explained by the fact there is no marker, but as we know the signal in this area is the 'source' of the marker's power so therefore the psychological effects should be at their greatest. Really the story just doesn't have that much effort in it, and it feels like the game is trying to make up for that in action, but the trouble there is that the action isn't even as compelling as it should be, which is a shame because I really like this franchise. Maimplay: The gameplay should be similar to the last two games, right? Wrong. You'd have thought they would have kept everything the way it's always been, but nope. Universal ammo makes a return, destroying the need to maintain your inventory, and weapons have been changed from standardised weaponry with mods to non-standard weapons that you create yourself, with mods. The trouble is that it's all experimental and there's a good chance that you'll end up making weapons that are terrible for the next situation, it's annoying really because you can only hold two weapons and sometimes the distances between benches is too far with inferior weapons. The weapons themselves aren't as strong as they claim to be, even high powered weapons will take their sweet time when it comes to chopping limbs and as a result they've lost some of that iconic Dead Space strategy and feeling. The other problem is the layout of the levels, someone clearly had a thing for cramped conditions and tight spaces, because there's not a single moment I can recall where I had a lot of room to move around, apart from one boss fight. I understand part of the excitement is quick thinking and fast reactions, but when every fight is in obscured hallways where's the challenge or the variation? The only possible point was the open areas of the ice fields but they ruined that chance by having the necromorphs burrow up towards you and then jump out at close range... I mean that's something new, but seems like a waste of all that space. The other annoying new gameplay aspect they've provided is things appearing out of nowhere, running up behind and stabbing you in the back. I mean I know the last two games didn't allow you to stand still in a room, but rooms were at least sometimes wide enough to give you a chance to move, and the weapons were useful for different situations. The third bad thing about the game is the loss of it's linear storyline for a somewhat sandboxesque part in the beginning and secondary missions. In the first two games you didn't have time to waste, you had to get to the next checkpoint or repair the next part because people were dying and you only had so much oxygen and the necromorphs were behind you and ammo is low! Deadspace 3 is more; 'Hey, I know humanity is dying, the government's been overthrown, a suicide cult is out to get us, there's zombie aliens everywhere, we only have so much time before all our enemies get to the Marker source but... would you mind going to this place we have no need to go to, because I'm getting some sort of binging noise on my radio.' Don't get me wrong the secondary missions are pretty cool, but I don't know why they couldn't have all taken place on the one ship, as slight detours of the main mission, rather than being on ships, or places, that we didn't really need to explore. You know, exactly like they did in the first and second game, or even as they did in Bioshock. These are things we should have stumbled onto ourselves, rather than getting told to go out of out way while the zombies wake up and the cultists get their snipers into position. The game doesn't even start to feel like Dead Space until you get onto the planet, defeating the purpose of even having set half the game in space in the first place. I mean if you can't keep the game's namesake nice and interesting for the players why do you think throwing them down onto a ice planet is going to make the dull repetitive gameplay anymore interesting? You just ripped several cool game mechanics right out; oxygen hazards, zero gravity, unpredictability of necromorph movements and entry points, plus the possibility of shooting glass and shooting monsters out into space, saving your own hide. In fact, even as I'm writing this, I just realised that it doesn't matter anyway, because the game ignored these core mechanics throughout this section of the game. And when they were used they were just repeating the same elements that we're used to, you would think with zero gravity they could come up with something more interesting than rotating fan blades. If I had realised that the game would spend most of its time on a planet I would have never bothered to upgrade my oxygen capacity. So what do we get? You wonder, aloud, so aloud I can hear you across the internet. Well we get a nice icy planet with a new hazard in the form of coldness, to begin with, but like half an hour later you'll be wearing a new suit that completely nullifies this problem, you'll never go cold again, despite all the icy goodness we still have to go through. There will also be new necromorphs, sorta (I'll get to this later), falling rocks, a few puzzles, more cramped spaces, a reoccurring boss monster (because that's always fun) and another new hazard in the form of acid. The problems with all these new things are many, and mostly these problems are caused by the fact that while many interesting new elements have been added they have been limited down to so very few instances in the game I wonder why they even bothered adding them in in the first place. For example, the acid appears for two scenes in the game, once as not a hazard and then again as a real hazard and only if you accidently step on it for the three minutes of game time that it's actually in the way. There's a laser grid that appears for one simple puzzle. There's these awesome pads that power up your stasis module... at the very end of the game. There's three, maybe four simple obstacles you need to avoid, using your stasis module, and you really don't even need to time it... and... that's really about it, well not all of it, there's some really excellent boss fights (Not the drill one, that was stupid) and some really cool areas to explore (Like a chest cavity) and we learn some interesting facts about necromorphs (also available in a badly written book, I mean so bad that I haven't even finished it, it was just terrible, I got to the bit where things were about to kick off and that's near the end of the book so I just gave up... in fact I think the writer for that book might have came up with the story for Dead Space 3 because both of their stories really take place at the friggin' end). The problem isn't that the game has nothing new to offer, it has tonnes of new things to offer those who might be jaded and bored of the series, the problem is that these new elements aren't used to great effect, at least not in the main game. The side missions probably use the new hazards in brilliant ways, and the few that I have done did have some seriously good, enjoyable moments... but that's not the Dead Space way. The side missions being more enjoyable than the main mission is a serious problem, and they should have been instead incorporated into the main game. The engine that you need should have been crashed straight through the Greely's hull, and that is why Issac should have to consider landing on that ship. The rigged to explode mid section of that other ship, the side mission with the hillbilly, should have been a real issue for Issac to have to clear, rather than to just skip past on his way to the front of the ship. He's being pursued by regenerative necromorphs but he has time to saunter around a hillbilly deathtrap because there's a chance there might be something good at the other end? That's not Issac, that's not Clark, in the past two games he's defined himself as a man who will not take stupid risks unless the stupid risk is the only way to save himself or others. The bosses, if you could call them that, were proper traditional Dead Space nemesis, worthy of Issac's attention. I had no problem with these guys, other than the reoccurring flesh spider, but the only thing I could fault the game on is the lack of boss monster becoming normal monster. Like the big shelled guys, or the regenerating monsters were in the first and second games. It would have broken up the repetitive string of necromorph forms coming at us if, say, the Spider was killed on it's first encounter, and then smaller weaker ones appeared from time to time with the mobs. So now we come to my next bugbear, yep, the new necromorphs. So far every game has introduced a new type of necromorph, the first game had a steady supply of the base model of praying mantis-like human zombies, as well as baby monsters, big armed shelled things, reaper like monsters, giant arms, screaming wall creatures, regenerative necromorphs, thin men that turned out to be hundreds of little critters and things that explode as well. The second game took all of these things, made them into something slightly different, and also brought out new, frustrating models. The hide-and-go-seek horsed faced men, the jumping around wall critters, the three legged horrors and new and improved wall monsters... on the ceiling! Not much, but these new things did offer challenging new gameplay and a need to watch the ceiling a little more closely. Dead Space 3 has three new monsters; alien necromorphs, humans that split in two and hungry humans. Initially the hungry humans were an awesome addition, a swarming necromorph... but then the swarms just got bigger and bigger then very boring, very fast. The fact that they're just husks borrowed from Mass Effect only increases my hatred for them. They really should have been one shot kill monsters but no it takes a few shots to the chest to kill them and you can't really aim because now there's ten on you and what once was an arm is now a stomachhandlegchest. The splitting humans were annoying from the word go and essentially are just the parasite Spanish zombies from Resident Evil 4, except instead of their heads sprouting tendrils it's their waists and the results are either a torso dragging itself over to you, or a pair of legs walking backwards to stab at thee. They're just an annoying addition that wouldn't even be annoying if we had the original weapons and not the new, difficult to aim, terrible at cutting multiple limbs weapons. The alien necromorphs were kinda cool... but stupid because they appear at the very end of the game, don't have a cool or even ominous introduction and are not frightening. Sure they're big, have a wild cry and are probably very strong (never got close enough to find out) but they're slow, easy to shoot with stasis, and since we have no real idea of what the aliens should look like we don't understand just how twisted and mutilated this necromorph is, I mean, the statues of the real aliens look more frightening than this thing. Depth Space: All that being said, a lot of my concerns and anger management issues have been addressed. There's several modes in the game that allows for replayability, and a few more things for you to unlock as well. There's a version that allows you to play with the traditional weaponry, for example, which makes you wonder why that wasn't available in the main game if they realised that's what people want. There are side quests too, some of them obvious and others which need to be discovered via text or audio messages. Side quests do lead to resources and weapon parts, which you may or may not want, but also lead to new unlockable suits, which don't increase battle readiness but look a lot better than the initial costume. And while I do complain about it, I do like the customisable weapons and the ability to create a multi situational gun, for example, my rivet handgun that also lobbed fireballs, was very useful against the head necromorphs... but my rivet shotgun with electro attachment turned out to be ineffective against everything. I just wish so much wasn't left out the main game for the 'end-game', that the stasis panels at the end were more extensive, or that they had made an area toxic for your oxygen meter, or used acid and reverse-grav plates more extensively... mostly I just wish they had fired their layout designer. Scenes of a Graphic Nature: The graphics were good, no complaints. The animations believable and scary, as shown by the fact whenever I see something vaguely poked around from a corner I jump and assume it's a horse-faced hide-and-go-seek necromorph... and have been doing so for that past three days. My only real concern was the constant use of darkness and poor lightening, which makes me wonder what they were trying to hide, possibly the repetition of certain sets pieces and items, and while there is a lot of 'different' areas on the planet that look exactly the same as the other bunkers, I don't mind that so much because it's an army base, you would expect some amount of regimental uniformity. This doesen't so much come under graphics as it does layout though, but since the layout needs graphic's I'm adding in my grievance on the subject right here right now. I Hate The Layouts For This Game. I really believe that if they had opened up just one or two of the areas, tossed in a few mobbing necromorphs, or dodging necromorphs and let me have some space to run around shooting wildly in the direction of limbs, I would have been a happier gamer. Someone really though cramped conditions were the way to go, and I understand that on a military ship that would be the case, but why did they do the same for the planet? Why did they do the same in a city built by giant, Giant, space aliens as well? Do the space aliens feel nice and cosy in their tiny, itty, bitty spaces? Maybe that's why they went extinct... There was a boss fight with a MASSIVE drill and swarming necromorphs with enough space to not even dodge in, or you were drill meat. Layouts Bad. Bad Layouts. What is amazing, and I will say this for every Dead Space game, is the way props are used. A spacesuit, a lampshade, a hat... these are just ordinary objects to you and I but in the hands of a Dead Space designer they're suddenly the necromorph of your nightmares. The designers must have spent a lot of time at Monster University because they certainly know how to take everyday items and make them startle you as you catch them in the corner of your eye. No one can Hear you: The sound was outright horror, I mean it was perfect for the scenes and kept a constant pitch of terror in the air. Scary violins are getting a little annoying though, it's getting to the point were we're hearing them in every horror flick, game and cartoon, but until someone can make a xylophone sound scary I guess we're stuck with jumping everytime there's a furious violinist. And once more I have to show my utter amazement at the ability of the game designers to turn simple noises, like a door shutting, into the gutteral growl of a undead, mutated human. I will say that they have gone for some cheap shots by adding the occasional jumpy moment in the form of an advertisement doll and a pinball machine, these are something I expect from a bad horror movie, I want my Dead Space fear to come from soul wrenching moments and obscene screams of the damned. Diffi-Cult-y: I liked the difficulty on Dead Space and Dead Space 2, Dead Space 3 however seems to have decreased it's difficulty level by removing more or less all of the instant kill moments. The only instant kills come in the obvious forms, with the necromorphs being less of a hazard than usual, this eventually becomes clear when you look at the new game modes, one of which will restart you at the very beginning if you die... so it seems that they've dulled the edge of the necromorphs, and therefore what makes them scary, just to introduce what we would used to have called a mini-game or arcade version. "House of the Dead Space 3" must be very difficult, I imagine, assuming you can't get past the drill in one go... or are very slow at shutting off your xbox before an auto-save. Seeing how my character died twice from falling through the world, I can tell this will be a very frustrating experience. Turn It Off: I wouldn't say this is a very addictive game, I imagine most people will want to power through so they can get their answers to the big questions in the series, but I can spoil that in the conclusion if you want to read on. I mean I understand that people will want to play the different game modes and play co-op with their friends, look for evey audio and text log and maybe even try to finish the impossible mode but, to be honest, I really think people will play this realise how much better the first two versions were and go back and play them. Dead Space 3 is a good starter, but it's not the main course that Dead Space 1 and 2 had on offer. There's bigger and better games to get addicted to... and smaller and weaker games as well. Convergence: In conclusion, I hate this game. There I said it, I didn't like it, I hate that it'll probably wind up being the gateway for more and more bad quality Dead Space games and likely ruin the franchise. Dead Space had it's own humour and way of doing things that was systematically attacked and ripped out during the course of Dead Space 3. Sure Dead Space 2 had some rough edges and rebelled against it's father, but Dead Space 3 feels like the work of a pragmatist who had a lot of great ideas worked on those parts and then hired a guy to connect them all up, with cramped layouts. This is mostly felt in the way that, despite being on two discs, there feels like there less content than what was available in the previous games. Despite a few new interesting elements the game doesn't seem to know how to deliver it's unique abilities to it's audience and relies on the hope that it's name alone might be enough to keep it's players interested... Now that I think about it this is typical of this game developer's pattern. The first game is amazing (Mass Effect, DragonAge, Dead Space), the second game is okay or at least interesting, carrying on the promises and actions in the first game (Mass Effect 2, Dead Space 2) and then the final game ignores everything up to that point, changes the gameplay massively and then tries to pretend this is the interesting story conclusion it was aiming for the whole time (Mass Effect 3, Dead Space 3, Dragonage 2). So it looks like I went a little overboard in this review, and I just wanted to say that you should probably stop reading now if you don't want spoilers because I'm pretty extensive and more or less cover everything that is in the game in too much detail. Kay, thanks. So by now you've all probably played Dead Space and Dead Space 2 and if you haven't then stop reading this now, put your head down on a pillow, Gory Line: Hey, there's a lot of spoilers here so stop what you're reading now and skip on over to the next bit. So what's the story you ask? Or I'm assuming that you are, you are aren't you? I hope so... otherwise what am I doing with my life? The story begins with a recap, which I hate, to me recaps are for people with goldfish memories and a good story should be able to use reminders through the course of the game. Dead Space 3, however, seems to want to distance itself from the first two games as much as possible, while keeping the core concepts. The core concepts being necromorphs, markers, Unitology and humans being their general diabolical selves. The initial story is just terrible, I'm afraid. Issac has gotten over his dead girlfriend from the last two games, but has new girl troubles as his new girl Ellie has run off as Issac once more spiraled into hopelessness. He's suddenly confronted with two soldiers, in his apartment, who tell him he's humanity's last hope, and must come to a far off planet to kill the necromorphs, also Ellie happens to be there too, which is good incentive. There's also the problem of Unitology, which has since become the greatest religion in the universe, and has also overthrown the government and also want Clark dead because he's the only one who can stop convergence... even though everyone is fully aware of what that is, I assume, I mean the last game was... oh wait there was only two survivors and the government probably covered up the disappearance of millions of people, which is lucky. There's a slight struggle, then we're whisked off to the other side of the universe where Ellie happens to be, to find the source of the Marker signal and destroy it, plus save Ellie, and avoid convergence, if at all possible. At this point the story sort of dies, one of the soldiers turns out to be Ellie's boyfriend, and everything revolves around that little love-triangle for a while. The necromorphs and the end of all humanity takes a backseat to the fact that two guys love one girl, I suppose zombies, an alien race and a suicide cult just isn't as interesting as who gets to home with Ellie at the end of the day. There's also the 200 year old remnants of a confederate-like space army to navigate around... but who cares about that when Ellie's involved with some other man! Remember Nicole? No, Issac doesn't either. She isn't even mentioned in the game despite her necrotic soul stalking Issac for most of his damn life. In fact the whole psychological aspect of the necromorph is dropped, except for one Sauronesque moment. Meaning that there's no breakdown of the mental states of our friends, or enemies, which should have been the route for the imminent betrayal, but instead everyone was logical and normal to the bitter end, meaning all the stupid and evil things they did was of their own volition, only the 200 year old soldiers seemed to be effected by the psychological effects. This could possibly be explained by the fact there is no marker, but as we know the signal in this area is the 'source' of the marker's power so therefore the psychological effects should be at their greatest. Really the story just doesn't have that much effort in it, and it feels like the game is trying to make up for that in action, but the trouble there is that the action isn't even as compelling as it should be, which is a shame because I really like this franchise. Maimplay: The gameplay should be similar to the last two games, right? Wrong. You'd have thought they would have kept everything the way it's always been, but nope. Universal ammo makes a return, destroying the need to maintain your inventory, and weapons have been changed from standardised weaponry with mods to non-standard weapons that you create yourself, with mods. The trouble is that it's all experimental and there's a good chance that you'll end up making weapons that are terrible for the next situation, it's annoying really because you can only hold two weapons and sometimes the distances between benches is too far with inferior weapons. The weapons themselves aren't as strong as they claim to be, even high powered weapons will take their sweet time when it comes to chopping limbs and as a result they've lost some of that iconic Dead Space strategy and feeling. The other problem is the layout of the levels, someone clearly had a thing for cramped conditions and tight spaces, because there's not a single moment I can recall where I had a lot of room to move around, apart from one boss fight. I understand part of the excitement is quick thinking and fast reactions, but when every fight is in obscured hallways where's the challenge or the variation? The only possible point was the open areas of the ice fields but they ruined that chance by having the necromorphs burrow up towards you and then jump out at close range... I mean that's something new, but seems like a waste of all that space. The other annoying new gameplay aspect they've provided is things appearing out of nowhere, running up behind and stabbing you in the back. I mean I know the last two games didn't allow you to stand still in a room, but rooms were at least sometimes wide enough to give you a chance to move, and the weapons were useful for different situations. The third bad thing about the game is the loss of it's linear storyline for a somewhat sandboxesque part in the beginning and secondary missions. In the first two games you didn't have time to waste, you had to get to the next checkpoint or repair the next part because people were dying and you only had so much oxygen and the necromorphs were behind you and ammo is low! Deadspace 3 is more; 'Hey, I know humanity is dying, the government's been overthrown, a suicide cult is out to get us, there's zombie aliens everywhere, we only have so much time before all our enemies get to the Marker source but... would you mind going to this place we have no need to go to, because I'm getting some sort of binging noise on my radio.' Don't get me wrong the secondary missions are pretty cool, but I don't know why they couldn't have all taken place on the one ship, as slight detours of the main mission, rather than being on ships, or places, that we didn't really need to explore. You know, exactly like they did in the first and second game, or even as they did in Bioshock. These are things we should have stumbled onto ourselves, rather than getting told to go out of out way while the zombies wake up and the cultists get their snipers into position. The game doesn't even start to feel like Dead Space until you get onto the planet, defeating the purpose of even having set half the game in space in the first place. I mean if you can't keep the game's namesake nice and interesting for the players why do you think throwing them down onto a ice planet is going to make the dull repetitive gameplay anymore interesting? You just ripped several cool game mechanics right out; oxygen hazards, zero gravity, unpredictability of necromorph movements and entry points, plus the possibility of shooting glass and shooting monsters out into space, saving your own hide. In fact, even as I'm writing this, I just realised that it doesn't matter anyway, because the game ignored these core mechanics throughout this section of the game. And when they were used they were just repeating the same elements that we're used to, you would think with zero gravity they could come up with something more interesting than rotating fan blades. If I had realised that the game would spend most of its time on a planet I would have never bothered to upgrade my oxygen capacity. So what do we get? You wonder, aloud, so aloud I can hear you across the internet. Well we get a nice icy planet with a new hazard in the form of coldness, to begin with, but like half an hour later you'll be wearing a new suit that completely nullifies this problem, you'll never go cold again, despite all the icy goodness we still have to go through. There will also be new necromorphs, sorta (I'll get to this later), falling rocks, a few puzzles, more cramped spaces, a reoccurring boss monster (because that's always fun) and another new hazard in the form of acid. The problems with all these new things are many, and mostly these problems are caused by the fact that while many interesting new elements have been added they have been limited down to so very few instances in the game I wonder why they even bothered adding them in in the first place. For example, the acid appears for two scenes in the game, once as not a hazard and then again as a real hazard and only if you accidently step on it for the three minutes of game time that it's actually in the way. There's a laser grid that appears for one simple puzzle. There's these awesome pads that power up your stasis module... at the very end of the game. There's three, maybe four simple obstacles you need to avoid, using your stasis module, and you really don't even need to time it... and... that's really about it, well not all of it, there's some really excellent boss fights (Not the drill one, that was stupid) and some really cool areas to explore (Like a chest cavity) and we learn some interesting facts about necromorphs (also available in a badly written book, I mean so bad that I haven't even finished it, it was just terrible, I got to the bit where things were about to kick off and that's near the end of the book so I just gave up... in fact I think the writer for that book might have came up with the story for Dead Space 3 because both of their stories really take place at the friggin' end). The problem isn't that the game has nothing new to offer, it has tonnes of new things to offer those who might be jaded and bored of the series, the problem is that these new elements aren't used to great effect, at least not in the main game. The side missions probably use the new hazards in brilliant ways, and the few that I have done did have some seriously good, enjoyable moments... but that's not the Dead Space way. The side missions being more enjoyable than the main mission is a serious problem, and they should have been instead incorporated into the main game. The engine that you need should have been crashed straight through the Greely's hull, and that is why Issac should have to consider landing on that ship. The rigged to explode mid section of that other ship, the side mission with the hillbilly, should have been a real issue for Issac to have to clear, rather than to just skip past on his way to the front of the ship. He's being pursued by regenerative necromorphs but he has time to saunter around a hillbilly deathtrap because there's a chance there might be something good at the other end? That's not Issac, that's not Clark, in the past two games he's defined himself as a man who will not take stupid risks unless the stupid risk is the only way to save himself or others. The bosses, if you could call them that, were proper traditional Dead Space nemesis, worthy of Issac's attention. I had no problem with these guys, other than the reoccurring flesh spider, but the only thing I could fault the game on is the lack of boss monster becoming normal monster. Like the big shelled guys, or the regenerating monsters were in the first and second games. It would have broken up the repetitive string of necromorph forms coming at us if, say, the Spider was killed on it's first encounter, and then smaller weaker ones appeared from time to time with the mobs. So now we come to my next bugbear, yep, the new necromorphs. So far every game has introduced a new type of necromorph, the first game had a steady supply of the base model of praying mantis-like human zombies, as well as baby monsters, big armed shelled things, reaper like monsters, giant arms, screaming wall creatures, regenerative necromorphs, thin men that turned out to be hundreds of little critters and things that explode as well. The second game took all of these things, made them into something slightly different, and also brought out new, frustrating models. The hide-and-go-seek horsed faced men, the jumping around wall critters, the three legged horrors and new and improved wall monsters... on the ceiling! Not much, but these new things did offer challenging new gameplay and a need to watch the ceiling a little more closely. Dead Space 3 has three new monsters; alien necromorphs, humans that split in two and hungry humans. Initially the hungry humans were an awesome addition, a swarming necromorph... but then the swarms just got bigger and bigger then very boring, very fast. The fact that they're just husks borrowed from Mass Effect only increases my hatred for them. They really should have been one shot kill monsters but no it takes a few shots to the chest to kill them and you can't really aim because now there's ten on you and what once was an arm is now a stomachhandlegchest. The splitting humans were annoying from the word go and essentially are just the parasite Spanish zombies from Resident Evil 4, except instead of their heads sprouting tendrils it's their waists and the results are either a torso dragging itself over to you, or a pair of legs walking backwards to stab at thee. They're just an annoying addition that wouldn't even be annoying if we had the original weapons and not the new, difficult to aim, terrible at cutting multiple limbs weapons. The alien necromorphs were kinda cool... but stupid because they appear at the very end of the game, don't have a cool or even ominous introduction and are not frightening. Sure they're big, have a wild cry and are probably very strong (never got close enough to find out) but they're slow, easy to shoot with stasis, and since we have no real idea of what the aliens should look like we don't understand just how twisted and mutilated this necromorph is, I mean, the statues of the real aliens look more frightening than this thing. Depth Space: All that being said, a lot of my concerns and anger management issues have been addressed. There's several modes in the game that allows for replayability, and a few more things for you to unlock as well. There's a version that allows you to play with the traditional weaponry, for example, which makes you wonder why that wasn't available in the main game if they realised that's what people want. There are side quests too, some of them obvious and others which need to be discovered via text or audio messages. Side quests do lead to resources and weapon parts, which you may or may not want, but also lead to new unlockable suits, which don't increase battle readiness but look a lot better than the initial costume. And while I do complain about it, I do like the customisable weapons and the ability to create a multi situational gun, for example, my rivet handgun that also lobbed fireballs, was very useful against the head necromorphs... but my rivet shotgun with electro attachment turned out to be ineffective against everything. I just wish so much wasn't left out the main game for the 'end-game', that the stasis panels at the end were more extensive, or that they had made an area toxic for your oxygen meter, or used acid and reverse-grav plates more extensively... mostly I just wish they had fired their layout designer. Scenes of a Graphic Nature: The graphics were good, no complaints. The animations believable and scary, as shown by the fact whenever I see something vaguely poked around from a corner I jump and assume it's a horse-faced hide-and-go-seek necromorph... and have been doing so for that past three days. My only real concern was the constant use of darkness and poor lightening, which makes me wonder what they were trying to hide, possibly the repetition of certain sets pieces and items, and while there is a lot of 'different' areas on the planet that look exactly the same as the other bunkers, I don't mind that so much because it's an army base, you would expect some amount of regimental uniformity. This doesen't so much come under graphics as it does layout though, but since the layout needs graphic's I'm adding in my grievance on the subject right here right now. I Hate The Layouts For This Game. I really believe that if they had opened up just one or two of the areas, tossed in a few mobbing necromorphs, or dodging necromorphs and let me have some space to run around shooting wildly in the direction of limbs, I would have been a happier gamer. Someone really though cramped conditions were the way to go, and I understand that on a military ship that would be the case, but why did they do the same for the planet? Why did they do the same in a city built by giant, Giant, space aliens as well? Do the space aliens feel nice and cosy in their tiny, itty, bitty spaces? Maybe that's why they went extinct... There was a boss fight with a MASSIVE drill and swarming necromorphs with enough space to not even dodge in, or you were drill meat. Layouts Bad. Bad Layouts. What is amazing, and I will say this for every Dead Space game, is the way props are used. A spacesuit, a lampshade, a hat... these are just ordinary objects to you and I but in the hands of a Dead Space designer they're suddenly the necromorph of your nightmares. The designers must have spent a lot of time at Monster University because they certainly know how to take everyday items and make them startle you as you catch them in the corner of your eye. No one can Hear you: The sound was outright horror, I mean it was perfect for the scenes and kept a constant pitch of terror in the air. Scary violins are getting a little annoying though, it's getting to the point were we're hearing them in every horror flick, game and cartoon, but until someone can make a xylophone sound scary I guess we're stuck with jumping everytime there's a furious violinist. And once more I have to show my utter amazement at the ability of the game designers to turn simple noises, like a door shutting, into the gutteral growl of a undead, mutated human. I will say that they have gone for some cheap shots by adding the occasional jumpy moment in the form of an advertisement doll and a pinball machine, these are something I expect from a bad horror movie, I want my Dead Space fear to come from soul wrenching moments and obscene screams of the damned. Diffi-Cult-y: I liked the difficulty on Dead Space and Dead Space 2, Dead Space 3 however seems to have decreased it's difficulty level by removing more or less all of the instant kill moments. The only instant kills come in the obvious forms, with the necromorphs being less of a hazard than usual, this eventually becomes clear when you look at the new game modes, one of which will restart you at the very beginning if you die... so it seems that they've dulled the edge of the necromorphs, and therefore what makes them scary, just to introduce what we would used to have called a mini-game or arcade version. "House of the Dead Space 3" must be very difficult, I imagine, assuming you can't get past the drill in one go... or are very slow at shutting off your xbox before an auto-save. Seeing how my character died twice from falling through the world, I can tell this will be a very frustrating experience. Turn It Off: I wouldn't say this is a very addictive game, I imagine most people will want to power through so they can get their answers to the big questions in the series, but I can spoil that in the conclusion if you want to read on. I mean I understand that people will want to play the different game modes and play co-op with their friends, look for evey audio and text log and maybe even try to finish the impossible mode but, to be honest, I really think people will play this realise how much better the first two versions were and go back and play them. Dead Space 3 is a good starter, but it's not the main course that Dead Space 1 and 2 had on offer. There's bigger and better games to get addicted to... and smaller and weaker games as well. Convergence: In conclusion, I hate this game. There I said it, I didn't like it, I hate that it'll probably wind up being the gateway for more and more bad quality Dead Space games and likely ruin the franchise. Dead Space had it's own humour and way of doing things that was systematically attacked and ripped out during the course of Dead Space 3. Sure Dead Space 2 had some rough edges and rebelled against it's father, but Dead Space 3 feels like the work of a pragmatist who had a lot of great ideas worked on those parts and then hired a guy to connect them all up, with cramped layouts. This is mostly felt in the way that, despite being on two discs, there feels like there less content than what was available in the previous games. Despite a few new interesting elements the game doesn't seem to know how to deliver it's unique abilities to it's audience and relies on the hope that it's name alone might be enough to keep it's players interested... Now that I think about it this is typical of this game developer's pattern. The first game is amazing (Mass Effect, DragonAge, Dead Space), the second game is okay or at least interesting, carrying on the promises and actions in the first game (Mass Effect 2, Dead Space 2) and then the final game ignores everything up to that point, changes the gameplay massively and then tries to pretend this is the interesting story conclusion it was aiming for the whole time (Mass Effect 3, Dead Space 3, Dragonage 2). |
Member
Affected by 'Laziness Syndrome'
Registered: 12-11-12
Last Post: 3120 days
Last Active: 2774 days
Affected by 'Laziness Syndrome'
Registered: 12-11-12
Last Post: 3120 days
Last Active: 2774 days
05-31-14 02:30 PM
| ID: 1028198 | 1935 Words
| ID: 1028198 | 1935 Words
TimeSplitter 2: The Review With out a doubt TimeSplitter 2 was the best first person shooter available for PS2, and was essentially the Golden Eye of it's time. There was so much that was just innovative at the time it's difficult to believe it's not as well known or as popular as it should have been, possibly because of the wacky humour and cartoonish styles used throughout the series. I came to TimeSplitters via the second game, which is probably for the best because the first game was terrible and the third game, although still to come out, just wasn't as fantastic as the second. There was just so much available in the game, a pleasing sense of motion and the animations used throughout were simply realistic for the time. There was also the option to turn off blood which appealed to my younger Asterix and Tin Tin loving self. I can't say for sure which particular aspect about the game I liked the most, it wasn't the story, although story is important to me, because the story was fragmented but worked well once you understood it was a collection of mini-tales that made up a whole, which would later be explained in the next game. There was just unexpected enjoyment to be had, so much so I've broken my way through three copies of the game thus far. Well then, lets begin the review and give praise unto Free Radical. I should probably also add that when this game was released it got 10/10 from Playstation 2 magazine, not bad, eh? Story: My favourite place to start, the storyline; "Out of the darkness they came with the hateful will to destroy humanity." The first line uttered in the game, isn't it just a chilling phrase? Possibly, nowadays, it's easy to be critical of a game which was developed on a 'relatively' limited scale, although at the time was probably considered cutting-edge. The story is condensed into a few short lines at the beginning of the game, and soon overtaken by an action-packed cinematic. What is essentially shown is a bunch of tusk-mouthed, claw armed aliens have attacked earth, and are now invading the past to wipe out humanity at it's roots. A cool concept when you think about it, but not much is really explained in terms of who the aliens are, what they want, and all that guff that we really take seriously now, instead of enjoying the game... or is that just me? At the time it was difficult to understand, now I get it, your character has taken over the alien ship with his comrade, they're pinned down in the 'time machine' room and are jumping back in time to fix the problems the aliens are causing. With every jump the leading man, Cortez, phases into the body of a man from the time period, possibly a time paradox solution there, and will perform the mission as if he is that man, with his memories and attitudes, while still destroying the enemy aliens who cause all sorts of problems from Zombies to Magical Golems, Monkeys to Spacemen and a whole bunch of time related error. All the characters in the game are unique, while events and time zones (obviously) are taken from real history. Nothing major, but the occasional Soviet Spy, a 70's styled secret agent and since the main character is set in the far distant future, some Buck Rodger's styled spacemen get to grapple with the alien foe. The story, while not exactly Shakespeare, is pleasing enough with no major plot holes, but since you only get one character per mission/level, it's hard to find a favourite plot or character in this game. On the bright side if you hate this part of the story, or that character, you won't have long with him. The story has a co-op mode where the second defender on the station, Hart, will become a playable character who takes on the female forms in the story. Depth: If you can't find something to do on this game then you're playing wrong, there's a story mode with it's own co-op, an arcade free-for-all, challenge maps and a mapmaker. The story has three difficulty settings which really change the gameplay, hard adds more bad guys and cameras, as well as mines and extra things you wouldn't expect, which makes things trick for those who want to do things stealthy. That's right, there's stealth in this game, as well as brute force and fun weapons you get super little gadgets to help you sneak through the 10 different worlds you'll visit. The Arcade is, well, an arcade version of the game. Kill as many people in a certain amount of time, with different types of villains for each killground, and three different leagues with their own ladders for you to climb. The challenge mode is different again, using the basic settings of course, but adding something different each time. It might be something boring like shooting a certain number of zombies in the head, or something interesting and different, like chucking bricks through windows, infiltration, and a card board shoot-out. The mapmaker is quite robust as well, allowing you to make anything from basic arenas to full on races, basically a simpler version of the Halo mapmaker. The multiplayer is customisable as well, allowing you to pick loadouts and kill limit. There's so much to do it's impressive, and due to the lack of repetition in the main game you're never disappointed with the new environment to explore, and the interesting people to kill. Sound: Sound in the game is arightish, I mean considering they didn't have all the modern fancy items we have, like dubstep and HDmi enhanced surround sound, the game does pretty well. A lot of the music is annoying and repetitive but in most levels the game's soundtrack works well with the environment and allows you to feel like you're working at the right pace whether you're sneaking or charging in. However, there's some missions where the quasi-futuristic music doesn't fit in and you feel like the game is trying to speed you through a mission as quick as it can. Other times the near cartoonish type of sound effects can be quite off putting, for example the sound of a punch is somewhat similar to a heavy sack of branches being swiped into the side of a tree, and makes a very unsatisfactory noise, that gets annoying, especially if fists are your only weapon. The guns, however, are just plain fun to shoot with realistic effects and somewhat overdramatic explosive noises. The sound effects, as well as the music is a bit of a hit and miss, annoying but not game destroying. Graphics: At the time TimeSplitters 2 had amazing graphics, especially in their cinematics where emotions and expressions came across very well, especially the emotion of fear, as seen in the Siberian Introduction. This ability to make the characters look realistic was a real boost for the game, fine, maybe realistic is the wrong word, but this was the L.A. Noire of it's day in terms of facial animation. In game the expressions are stern and unmoving, but the animation of the character's movements, especially when getting shot, are quite realistic in themselves with how one would react to a punch. This doesn't subtract from the game however, if anything it enhances their cartoony standpoint and helps to keep a light hearted element when you're pumping people full of lead. The game manages to keep its settings unique, I think weaponry is the only thing that gets reused, but each set is different, and brilliantly so, to the point that you can never really expect what's going to come next and are guaranteed a new place to explore with each new mission. The fact that enemies, mostly, change as well helps to create robust environments and shows that the developers really cared about giving their customers bang for their buck. Addictiveness: I've gone through three copies of this game and I am now on my fourth. I searched through cat boot, charities and game shops to get a hold of my latest copy, as I have done with the last two. The first was a library copy that was damaged through overuse, the second was lost by my father, and the first was the subject to a glitch in my PS2 that burned a line right across the disc. The amount of trouble I have been through to continue to play this game shows just how addictive it is, at least in regards to myself... Perhaps in regards to normal people, like yourselves, I should talk about the addictive qualities of the game play. Well, it's smooth and agile, with fun moments abound and creative, funny elements that will have you interested and laughing at the same time. The sheer volume of challenges in this PS2 game is staggering, compared to the fact that some modern shooters struggle to give anything extra than a multi-player, with zombies. Well TimeSplitters has zombies too, and their in the main game, not just slapped on the end because that's what we apparently do these days... Difficulty: Yeah, it's pretty difficult. I would end there but I'm sure I should elaborate. There's certain elements of the game that are easy, and certain others that are not. The Splitters themselves are overpowered and very difficult, while the majority of opponents can be downed with a single headshot, sometimes two, and about six body shots. Considering the amount of Splitters increases as you go through the game this makes life difficult and so the main game is about a 5-6 on the difficulty level. The rest of the game adds a farther 2 difficulty points because completing the challenges and getting gold on everyone is a frustrating experience I wouldn't wish on anyone. I've managed it before, but I doubt I'll ever try again, except for fun. Conclusion: This is the positive conclusion that ends on a positive note, with not much nitpicking... well actually there's not really any nits to pick in this game. It has elements that work and others that don't but the overall appeal is that the game is satisfying on many levels. One minor thing I would mention, and it's quite a petty thing to even say, it that the game is remarkably similar in gameplay and feel to Goldeneye for the Nintendo 64. So much so that a petty arguer could say that the game effectively takes the good parts of Goldeneye and then simply gives it a cartoony make-over to hide the similarities. While there is a similar motion to the gun control and movements of the characters TimeSplitters 2 has it's own unique style, and simply so much extra content that it differs from Goldeneye too much to be called the same, but there is familiar elements. One other, minor, problem is something I've seen happen in three copies of the game. The sound in the first level often gets corrupted, it will either stop completely or overlap itself, this is a problem in clean and unharmed discs, but only seems to effect one or two levels. If you're lucky it'll only effect the opening cinematic for Siberia. TimeSplitters 2 is one of the best games for the PS2 and should be in any PS2 collection, I suggest the next time you see it in your local charity shop buy it, even if you end up not liking it, you'll have done your good deed for the day. With out a doubt TimeSplitter 2 was the best first person shooter available for PS2, and was essentially the Golden Eye of it's time. There was so much that was just innovative at the time it's difficult to believe it's not as well known or as popular as it should have been, possibly because of the wacky humour and cartoonish styles used throughout the series. I came to TimeSplitters via the second game, which is probably for the best because the first game was terrible and the third game, although still to come out, just wasn't as fantastic as the second. There was just so much available in the game, a pleasing sense of motion and the animations used throughout were simply realistic for the time. There was also the option to turn off blood which appealed to my younger Asterix and Tin Tin loving self. I can't say for sure which particular aspect about the game I liked the most, it wasn't the story, although story is important to me, because the story was fragmented but worked well once you understood it was a collection of mini-tales that made up a whole, which would later be explained in the next game. There was just unexpected enjoyment to be had, so much so I've broken my way through three copies of the game thus far. Well then, lets begin the review and give praise unto Free Radical. I should probably also add that when this game was released it got 10/10 from Playstation 2 magazine, not bad, eh? Story: My favourite place to start, the storyline; "Out of the darkness they came with the hateful will to destroy humanity." The first line uttered in the game, isn't it just a chilling phrase? Possibly, nowadays, it's easy to be critical of a game which was developed on a 'relatively' limited scale, although at the time was probably considered cutting-edge. The story is condensed into a few short lines at the beginning of the game, and soon overtaken by an action-packed cinematic. What is essentially shown is a bunch of tusk-mouthed, claw armed aliens have attacked earth, and are now invading the past to wipe out humanity at it's roots. A cool concept when you think about it, but not much is really explained in terms of who the aliens are, what they want, and all that guff that we really take seriously now, instead of enjoying the game... or is that just me? At the time it was difficult to understand, now I get it, your character has taken over the alien ship with his comrade, they're pinned down in the 'time machine' room and are jumping back in time to fix the problems the aliens are causing. With every jump the leading man, Cortez, phases into the body of a man from the time period, possibly a time paradox solution there, and will perform the mission as if he is that man, with his memories and attitudes, while still destroying the enemy aliens who cause all sorts of problems from Zombies to Magical Golems, Monkeys to Spacemen and a whole bunch of time related error. All the characters in the game are unique, while events and time zones (obviously) are taken from real history. Nothing major, but the occasional Soviet Spy, a 70's styled secret agent and since the main character is set in the far distant future, some Buck Rodger's styled spacemen get to grapple with the alien foe. The story, while not exactly Shakespeare, is pleasing enough with no major plot holes, but since you only get one character per mission/level, it's hard to find a favourite plot or character in this game. On the bright side if you hate this part of the story, or that character, you won't have long with him. The story has a co-op mode where the second defender on the station, Hart, will become a playable character who takes on the female forms in the story. Depth: If you can't find something to do on this game then you're playing wrong, there's a story mode with it's own co-op, an arcade free-for-all, challenge maps and a mapmaker. The story has three difficulty settings which really change the gameplay, hard adds more bad guys and cameras, as well as mines and extra things you wouldn't expect, which makes things trick for those who want to do things stealthy. That's right, there's stealth in this game, as well as brute force and fun weapons you get super little gadgets to help you sneak through the 10 different worlds you'll visit. The Arcade is, well, an arcade version of the game. Kill as many people in a certain amount of time, with different types of villains for each killground, and three different leagues with their own ladders for you to climb. The challenge mode is different again, using the basic settings of course, but adding something different each time. It might be something boring like shooting a certain number of zombies in the head, or something interesting and different, like chucking bricks through windows, infiltration, and a card board shoot-out. The mapmaker is quite robust as well, allowing you to make anything from basic arenas to full on races, basically a simpler version of the Halo mapmaker. The multiplayer is customisable as well, allowing you to pick loadouts and kill limit. There's so much to do it's impressive, and due to the lack of repetition in the main game you're never disappointed with the new environment to explore, and the interesting people to kill. Sound: Sound in the game is arightish, I mean considering they didn't have all the modern fancy items we have, like dubstep and HDmi enhanced surround sound, the game does pretty well. A lot of the music is annoying and repetitive but in most levels the game's soundtrack works well with the environment and allows you to feel like you're working at the right pace whether you're sneaking or charging in. However, there's some missions where the quasi-futuristic music doesn't fit in and you feel like the game is trying to speed you through a mission as quick as it can. Other times the near cartoonish type of sound effects can be quite off putting, for example the sound of a punch is somewhat similar to a heavy sack of branches being swiped into the side of a tree, and makes a very unsatisfactory noise, that gets annoying, especially if fists are your only weapon. The guns, however, are just plain fun to shoot with realistic effects and somewhat overdramatic explosive noises. The sound effects, as well as the music is a bit of a hit and miss, annoying but not game destroying. Graphics: At the time TimeSplitters 2 had amazing graphics, especially in their cinematics where emotions and expressions came across very well, especially the emotion of fear, as seen in the Siberian Introduction. This ability to make the characters look realistic was a real boost for the game, fine, maybe realistic is the wrong word, but this was the L.A. Noire of it's day in terms of facial animation. In game the expressions are stern and unmoving, but the animation of the character's movements, especially when getting shot, are quite realistic in themselves with how one would react to a punch. This doesn't subtract from the game however, if anything it enhances their cartoony standpoint and helps to keep a light hearted element when you're pumping people full of lead. The game manages to keep its settings unique, I think weaponry is the only thing that gets reused, but each set is different, and brilliantly so, to the point that you can never really expect what's going to come next and are guaranteed a new place to explore with each new mission. The fact that enemies, mostly, change as well helps to create robust environments and shows that the developers really cared about giving their customers bang for their buck. Addictiveness: I've gone through three copies of this game and I am now on my fourth. I searched through cat boot, charities and game shops to get a hold of my latest copy, as I have done with the last two. The first was a library copy that was damaged through overuse, the second was lost by my father, and the first was the subject to a glitch in my PS2 that burned a line right across the disc. The amount of trouble I have been through to continue to play this game shows just how addictive it is, at least in regards to myself... Perhaps in regards to normal people, like yourselves, I should talk about the addictive qualities of the game play. Well, it's smooth and agile, with fun moments abound and creative, funny elements that will have you interested and laughing at the same time. The sheer volume of challenges in this PS2 game is staggering, compared to the fact that some modern shooters struggle to give anything extra than a multi-player, with zombies. Well TimeSplitters has zombies too, and their in the main game, not just slapped on the end because that's what we apparently do these days... Difficulty: Yeah, it's pretty difficult. I would end there but I'm sure I should elaborate. There's certain elements of the game that are easy, and certain others that are not. The Splitters themselves are overpowered and very difficult, while the majority of opponents can be downed with a single headshot, sometimes two, and about six body shots. Considering the amount of Splitters increases as you go through the game this makes life difficult and so the main game is about a 5-6 on the difficulty level. The rest of the game adds a farther 2 difficulty points because completing the challenges and getting gold on everyone is a frustrating experience I wouldn't wish on anyone. I've managed it before, but I doubt I'll ever try again, except for fun. Conclusion: This is the positive conclusion that ends on a positive note, with not much nitpicking... well actually there's not really any nits to pick in this game. It has elements that work and others that don't but the overall appeal is that the game is satisfying on many levels. One minor thing I would mention, and it's quite a petty thing to even say, it that the game is remarkably similar in gameplay and feel to Goldeneye for the Nintendo 64. So much so that a petty arguer could say that the game effectively takes the good parts of Goldeneye and then simply gives it a cartoony make-over to hide the similarities. While there is a similar motion to the gun control and movements of the characters TimeSplitters 2 has it's own unique style, and simply so much extra content that it differs from Goldeneye too much to be called the same, but there is familiar elements. One other, minor, problem is something I've seen happen in three copies of the game. The sound in the first level often gets corrupted, it will either stop completely or overlap itself, this is a problem in clean and unharmed discs, but only seems to effect one or two levels. If you're lucky it'll only effect the opening cinematic for Siberia. TimeSplitters 2 is one of the best games for the PS2 and should be in any PS2 collection, I suggest the next time you see it in your local charity shop buy it, even if you end up not liking it, you'll have done your good deed for the day. |
Member
Affected by 'Laziness Syndrome'
Registered: 12-11-12
Last Post: 3120 days
Last Active: 2774 days
Affected by 'Laziness Syndrome'
Registered: 12-11-12
Last Post: 3120 days
Last Active: 2774 days
05-31-14 12:59 AM
| ID: 1027999 | 2440 Words
| ID: 1027999 | 2440 Words
Welcome to my Borderlands 2 review, I hope you like it more than I disliked this game. I know I'm 'Mister Positive' when it comes to the games I review but this time I'm giving my honest opinion. I've played games that I thought I would hate and wound up loving them. I found games that I thought would be brilliant and they were boring. This just so happens to be one of those times when I expected to get more of the same from a game I enjoyed and wound up with exactly what I wanted, but the trouble with getting what you want is that you never really wanted it in the first place. The first Borderlands, hitherto known as Borderlands 1, was a game full of promise and fancy new shiny things which, while they had existed for some time, had never existed in this fashion. Here was a new spin on the MMORPG, a first person shooter with randomised weapons which randomly dropped with increasing randomness, meaning that you never got the same gun twice and each one was even more cooler than the last. I remember with the correct skills and right modifications my character could fire 300 bullets in two seconds, and that was awesomely inaccurate but cool. Bosses were satisfactorily menacing, bugs made their squishing noises when your gun popped them on the sweet spot, and you could spend hours at a time online with your friends shooting, grinding, leveling and all that noise but in the mush more personal way that your Xbox provided... Borderlands 2 was a disappointment, don't get me wrong the review gets more positive towards the end of this dull game but we have to trod through the analysis of the dull before we get to that wonderful part. We'll be going through this in the usual method, with each bit broken down into story, depth, blah, blah, blah, but you know I kinda wanna freestyle, and I just might. Essentially though, this is two reviews, one of the main game and a second of the DLC or Downloadable Content to you not in the know, or Expansion Packs to you golden oldies. The Story of Borderlands 2's Story: Was there one? I seem to remember a very stylishly produced cinematic in which the main characters defended themselves from a guy who was killing them despite the fact he had hired them? Which makes no sense, why bring more people to the place you don't want them to be? So instead of playing our old favourites; Mordecai, Brick, Roland and Lilith; we have four newbies, and a bunch of later characters who I don't care about nor have I downloaded yet, with talents and abilities we're not used to, and whose skills seem to rely on a bunch of scientific science-like mathematics, rules and regulations that I couldn't work out... so I went the guy who can carry two guns, occasionally. The names of these new four doesn't really matter because they aren't anything to do with the story, so we'll call them Gun Guy, New Girl, Zero (His name sticks in the mind) and Soldier Boy. These folks find themselves in the same situation as the last group, on a hostile planet, full of bandits and psychos out to kill them because they're different. They must survive in order to get to Sanctuary, or whatever it's called, which is a big wonderful place free from tyranny and Hyperion Robots. Hyperion is the bad guy, they're a massive corporation and you know how much massive corporations like to be bad guys. They are, however, not a faceless corporation, but the guy in charge just might be. He's called Handsome Jack and he hates you, because [ So the missions are the real story and the real driving force throughout the game, we get cosy little reminders of the places we used to be, and the people we knew, but we also get a lot of jokes which just aren't funny. There's a lot of 'poking jokes at one's expense' were the developers make fun of the fact that this is a MMORPG and results in the collection of a lot of items, or kills, for no reason at all, which just kills the mood. The first game did this as well but had the decency to be subtle. Blunt, in your face, jokes about flaws and practises in the game doesn't cut it. Do you remember Shank's Prison? Where he often made comments defying the fact he was gay, even though there was heavy emphasis that he was gay, the joke so blunt by the second comment you even wonder why they bothered repeating it 3000 times. Picture that, but all the way through the game and DLC. Really it just ends up annoying and comes across as unimaginative and like the producers really didn't care about their audience's entertainment. Blown up by their own Depth charge: There was no depth, none at all, they blew it with the storyline and the mission descr Graphics & Sound: I'm lumping these together because I have little to say about them both. Mostly the sounds are the same as the first game, the car goes vroom, the bugs splat when they explode and the main characters grunt and scream when they get shot. I think there's slightly more realistic blood splatter, screams and voices are cut short as you shoot these people dead and all these things are generally better than in the first game while being somewhat the same. The robot voices are pretty cool, but the explosions could be more explosive and there could have been some improvement on the enemy animals, graphically. There just seems to be more emphasis on the robots, like it doesn't matter if you killed dog-thing we know you're not gonna be looking at it for too long. The animation quality has improved for the majority of the creatures and people in the game, with almost realistic movements, especially in the walking boxes. Addictiveness: I didn't know what to say for addictiveness, to be honest, I suppose the level for it varies. If you're playing the game by yourself the difficulty will be enough for you to feel like giving up the game entirely, but with friends the experience, and all my little grievances, is tempered by the fact you're sharing an experience, making your own inside jokes and generally having fun with friends. Alone you start to see the problems and get annoyed by the unfunny jokes, and miss out on the funnyside because there's no one there to remind you about it. There's also the gambling aspect of the game, which is annoyingly hard to ignore, and really pointless because you never win anything good and it's just an excuse to get Iridium earlier. I wouldn't say, however, that there is any other aspect with is addictive, except perhaps shooting the backsides off the ant monsters, that's a pretty good feeling when you hit the target just right. The only thing which kept me playing this game, I must admit, was the fact that I bought the season pass early on, but bear in mind I hated this game so much that I traded it in, left it for two years, then came back to it just to get my money's worth of the DLC. Difficulty: Why have I put it so high as ten? Because the difficulty varies depending on how man people are in your party, and if you attempt half of the missions alone you'll end up dying a lot, unless you've got all the best gear. That's another thing, grinding is a pain, and more often than not you'll wind up with the worst items, and it can sometimes be ages before you find a gun that's better than the one you currently own. I mean there's been times in the game where it's taken 8 missions before you get a slight increase in weapon attack, but still not enough to be helpful. Even if you kill the end boss endlessly, you'll be lucky to find 2 very rare items. DLC: Okay, time to put on the positive smile of sincerity. I liked the DLC for Borderlands 2 because they actually introduced something new. The main game seems like a cobble-together of Jak Renegade, Jak 3 and RAGE. Remember RAGE? Nope, because it was terrible. The DLC allows for fun either alone, or with friends, you get introduced to new insanity, get to be a pirate and an explorer, heck, you even get to blow stuff up and listen to a guy be EXTREEEEEMMMMMEEEE. The DLC brings back the new and unusual, it removes the tried and tested with characters, events and settings that 'might not work' but actually end up improving the experience because you're not sure what to expect next... while in the main game what to expect next was just a bigger robot. The worlds offered by the DLC are actually quite big as well, and new vehicles are brought in such as flying ships and fanboats, which makes for new, terrible, driving and awesome new vehicle weaponry mayhem. I for one spent hours harpooning sand worms, and blowing up giant daddy long-legs. The DLC does what the main game should have done, introducing the unfamiliar but with familiar mechanics, just like Portal did in Portal 2. The same type of game, the same type of scenarios and the same method of navigating these areas, but with a everything else being different. Games should try to knock us off balance but give us a steady platform to pick ourselves up afterwards. Fallout: New Vegas managed this by offering civilisation and creating poor scavenging as a result, meaning the player had to focus on different means to survive than they had done in Fallout 3. Skyrim shifted the focus of the gameplay from small scale monsters to massive scaled monsters, with superior flexibility when compared to any creature faced before in the Elder Scrolls, and while Borderlands 2 attempted the same: their jokes backfired and their evolving insects just weren't enough to alter the feel of the game. Conclusion: I didn't like this game as much as the first game, which is bad. I wish I did, there were elements that I liked and characters I found hysterical. There were a few strong characters who we got to know a little better, but their lack of input in the game was annoying. Not to mention brief cameos of the old Main characters who also had a limited impact on the world and didn't do enough fighting, I feel. I can't say there was anything wrong with the delivery, it had that Borderlands feel, it had the right amount of action, it had cool guns, big bosses, and new enemies... but it didn't have enough different elements or even a different focus to make it feel like a new game worthy of our attention. You're still a vault hunter, fighting a corporation, but now with some people you're supposed to care about even though this is your first time meeting them. It almost feels like the best ideas were held back for the dlc, just so they could get more money out of their players. Really all the best elements in this game comes from the DLC, and the worst part is that these brilliant parts don't move into the main game, at all. You get a flying ship... like an actual Pirate frigate, but can only use it in that one part of the world... I wanted to fly it in the main game areas, I wanted to harpoon Skags. So, in conclusion, not impressed, not a bit. I know I'm 'Mister Positive' when it comes to the games I review but this time I'm giving my honest opinion. I've played games that I thought I would hate and wound up loving them. I found games that I thought would be brilliant and they were boring. This just so happens to be one of those times when I expected to get more of the same from a game I enjoyed and wound up with exactly what I wanted, but the trouble with getting what you want is that you never really wanted it in the first place. The first Borderlands, hitherto known as Borderlands 1, was a game full of promise and fancy new shiny things which, while they had existed for some time, had never existed in this fashion. Here was a new spin on the MMORPG, a first person shooter with randomised weapons which randomly dropped with increasing randomness, meaning that you never got the same gun twice and each one was even more cooler than the last. I remember with the correct skills and right modifications my character could fire 300 bullets in two seconds, and that was awesomely inaccurate but cool. Bosses were satisfactorily menacing, bugs made their squishing noises when your gun popped them on the sweet spot, and you could spend hours at a time online with your friends shooting, grinding, leveling and all that noise but in the mush more personal way that your Xbox provided... Borderlands 2 was a disappointment, don't get me wrong the review gets more positive towards the end of this dull game but we have to trod through the analysis of the dull before we get to that wonderful part. We'll be going through this in the usual method, with each bit broken down into story, depth, blah, blah, blah, but you know I kinda wanna freestyle, and I just might. Essentially though, this is two reviews, one of the main game and a second of the DLC or Downloadable Content to you not in the know, or Expansion Packs to you golden oldies. The Story of Borderlands 2's Story: Was there one? I seem to remember a very stylishly produced cinematic in which the main characters defended themselves from a guy who was killing them despite the fact he had hired them? Which makes no sense, why bring more people to the place you don't want them to be? So instead of playing our old favourites; Mordecai, Brick, Roland and Lilith; we have four newbies, and a bunch of later characters who I don't care about nor have I downloaded yet, with talents and abilities we're not used to, and whose skills seem to rely on a bunch of scientific science-like mathematics, rules and regulations that I couldn't work out... so I went the guy who can carry two guns, occasionally. The names of these new four doesn't really matter because they aren't anything to do with the story, so we'll call them Gun Guy, New Girl, Zero (His name sticks in the mind) and Soldier Boy. These folks find themselves in the same situation as the last group, on a hostile planet, full of bandits and psychos out to kill them because they're different. They must survive in order to get to Sanctuary, or whatever it's called, which is a big wonderful place free from tyranny and Hyperion Robots. Hyperion is the bad guy, they're a massive corporation and you know how much massive corporations like to be bad guys. They are, however, not a faceless corporation, but the guy in charge just might be. He's called Handsome Jack and he hates you, because [ So the missions are the real story and the real driving force throughout the game, we get cosy little reminders of the places we used to be, and the people we knew, but we also get a lot of jokes which just aren't funny. There's a lot of 'poking jokes at one's expense' were the developers make fun of the fact that this is a MMORPG and results in the collection of a lot of items, or kills, for no reason at all, which just kills the mood. The first game did this as well but had the decency to be subtle. Blunt, in your face, jokes about flaws and practises in the game doesn't cut it. Do you remember Shank's Prison? Where he often made comments defying the fact he was gay, even though there was heavy emphasis that he was gay, the joke so blunt by the second comment you even wonder why they bothered repeating it 3000 times. Picture that, but all the way through the game and DLC. Really it just ends up annoying and comes across as unimaginative and like the producers really didn't care about their audience's entertainment. Blown up by their own Depth charge: There was no depth, none at all, they blew it with the storyline and the mission descr Graphics & Sound: I'm lumping these together because I have little to say about them both. Mostly the sounds are the same as the first game, the car goes vroom, the bugs splat when they explode and the main characters grunt and scream when they get shot. I think there's slightly more realistic blood splatter, screams and voices are cut short as you shoot these people dead and all these things are generally better than in the first game while being somewhat the same. The robot voices are pretty cool, but the explosions could be more explosive and there could have been some improvement on the enemy animals, graphically. There just seems to be more emphasis on the robots, like it doesn't matter if you killed dog-thing we know you're not gonna be looking at it for too long. The animation quality has improved for the majority of the creatures and people in the game, with almost realistic movements, especially in the walking boxes. Addictiveness: I didn't know what to say for addictiveness, to be honest, I suppose the level for it varies. If you're playing the game by yourself the difficulty will be enough for you to feel like giving up the game entirely, but with friends the experience, and all my little grievances, is tempered by the fact you're sharing an experience, making your own inside jokes and generally having fun with friends. Alone you start to see the problems and get annoyed by the unfunny jokes, and miss out on the funnyside because there's no one there to remind you about it. There's also the gambling aspect of the game, which is annoyingly hard to ignore, and really pointless because you never win anything good and it's just an excuse to get Iridium earlier. I wouldn't say, however, that there is any other aspect with is addictive, except perhaps shooting the backsides off the ant monsters, that's a pretty good feeling when you hit the target just right. The only thing which kept me playing this game, I must admit, was the fact that I bought the season pass early on, but bear in mind I hated this game so much that I traded it in, left it for two years, then came back to it just to get my money's worth of the DLC. Difficulty: Why have I put it so high as ten? Because the difficulty varies depending on how man people are in your party, and if you attempt half of the missions alone you'll end up dying a lot, unless you've got all the best gear. That's another thing, grinding is a pain, and more often than not you'll wind up with the worst items, and it can sometimes be ages before you find a gun that's better than the one you currently own. I mean there's been times in the game where it's taken 8 missions before you get a slight increase in weapon attack, but still not enough to be helpful. Even if you kill the end boss endlessly, you'll be lucky to find 2 very rare items. DLC: Okay, time to put on the positive smile of sincerity. I liked the DLC for Borderlands 2 because they actually introduced something new. The main game seems like a cobble-together of Jak Renegade, Jak 3 and RAGE. Remember RAGE? Nope, because it was terrible. The DLC allows for fun either alone, or with friends, you get introduced to new insanity, get to be a pirate and an explorer, heck, you even get to blow stuff up and listen to a guy be EXTREEEEEMMMMMEEEE. The DLC brings back the new and unusual, it removes the tried and tested with characters, events and settings that 'might not work' but actually end up improving the experience because you're not sure what to expect next... while in the main game what to expect next was just a bigger robot. The worlds offered by the DLC are actually quite big as well, and new vehicles are brought in such as flying ships and fanboats, which makes for new, terrible, driving and awesome new vehicle weaponry mayhem. I for one spent hours harpooning sand worms, and blowing up giant daddy long-legs. The DLC does what the main game should have done, introducing the unfamiliar but with familiar mechanics, just like Portal did in Portal 2. The same type of game, the same type of scenarios and the same method of navigating these areas, but with a everything else being different. Games should try to knock us off balance but give us a steady platform to pick ourselves up afterwards. Fallout: New Vegas managed this by offering civilisation and creating poor scavenging as a result, meaning the player had to focus on different means to survive than they had done in Fallout 3. Skyrim shifted the focus of the gameplay from small scale monsters to massive scaled monsters, with superior flexibility when compared to any creature faced before in the Elder Scrolls, and while Borderlands 2 attempted the same: their jokes backfired and their evolving insects just weren't enough to alter the feel of the game. Conclusion: I didn't like this game as much as the first game, which is bad. I wish I did, there were elements that I liked and characters I found hysterical. There were a few strong characters who we got to know a little better, but their lack of input in the game was annoying. Not to mention brief cameos of the old Main characters who also had a limited impact on the world and didn't do enough fighting, I feel. I can't say there was anything wrong with the delivery, it had that Borderlands feel, it had the right amount of action, it had cool guns, big bosses, and new enemies... but it didn't have enough different elements or even a different focus to make it feel like a new game worthy of our attention. You're still a vault hunter, fighting a corporation, but now with some people you're supposed to care about even though this is your first time meeting them. It almost feels like the best ideas were held back for the dlc, just so they could get more money out of their players. Really all the best elements in this game comes from the DLC, and the worst part is that these brilliant parts don't move into the main game, at all. You get a flying ship... like an actual Pirate frigate, but can only use it in that one part of the world... I wanted to fly it in the main game areas, I wanted to harpoon Skags. So, in conclusion, not impressed, not a bit. |
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Affected by 'Laziness Syndrome'
Registered: 12-11-12
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Affected by 'Laziness Syndrome'
Registered: 12-11-12
Last Post: 3120 days
Last Active: 2774 days
10-26-13 08:27 PM
| ID: 916088 | 2208 Words
| ID: 916088 | 2208 Words
Enslaved: Odyssey to the west is a modern platform game comparable, to a certain extent, with games such as Beyond Good and Evil, God of War, and Jak: Renegade. The story was written by Alex Garland (The Beach) with voice acting from Andy Serkis (Lord of the Rings), and developed for Xbox 360 and PS3 by Ninja Theory. Namco were the publishers. I have a love hate relationship when it comes to the modern platformer. Even back when Spyro first started to roam around a 3D environment it was difficult pushing away from the idea of platformers being 2D or stuck to set paths like in Crash Bandicoot. So when games like Enslaved crop up I find myself wanting to tear them apart before I've even looked at them, but I cannot deny, that I love a good story, and the journey is just a small part of that. I'd like to talk about all the aspects of this game, but I'll limit myself to just two thousand words, otherwise you'd be getting all my crazy crackpot theories. I'm too critical when it comes to certain games being similar and too quick to say, 'they've stolen that from...' when really I should be saying, 'that's an interesting way of using that.' Story: We're starting with the tale told because I feel that story should come first before any other aspect of the game. Enslaved is lucky because two active and interested artists wanted to make something special, something that wasn't just a game but an experience. Most people are familiar with the tale of Monkey, especially those of my parent's generation. The Monkey with a Bo-Staff that can fly on a cloud who teams up with a pig, a water demon and travels to discover a new land and his purpose. And if you're not familiar with Monkey, then you're more likely to know Goku and Dragonball. The tale is an old Chinese legend which Enslaved has gladly adapted into a futuristic apocalypse set in a crumbling, jungle New York. The monsters and enemies have been Monkey becomes enslaved by the female protagonist Trip, who he must defend and obey. If he move too far away, he dies, if he attacks her, he dies and if she dies... he dies. At first this seems like a terrible game mechanic but rarely gets in the way, but she will end up getting you killed more than the Mechs, in the end it helps you to feel the same bond that Monkey might. Stockholm syndrome, perhaps, but still creates a strong and valid relationship which we see smoothly running together, rather than being simply hacked together like some films do to get cheap drama and motivation for their stories. The two begin at odds with one another. Trip does have Monkey's life in her hands, and she put him in that situation, but the relationship makes sense, especially given the landscape they live in. The slavers and the Mechs make a strange sort of sense too, certainly the number of these bestial robots is not up for question, they are recycled, remade, and simply ancient rusting hulks that have functioned for centuries. What perhaps doesn't make sense is the length of time it took to introduce the character Pigsy. Almost halfway though the game he makes an appearance, and suddenly is revealed, not only as a major part of Trip's past, but as a potential love rival. Strange since he was never mentioned up until a few moments before he needed to be found. Of course anyone who knows the tale of Monkey would be expecting a pig at some point, but I feel he was introduced just a little too late. That said, the relationship between Monkey and Pigsy is established quickly as a love triangle with Trip. With Pigsy keen to show off his superior survival abilities, and mostly getting himself into pain. It's clear, after an emotional point in the game, that Pigsy was introduced so late as a comedic ploy to help ease the tension away, but also to advance the final part of the game in a more realistic way. He is a mechanical expert after all. The main theme throughout the game is movement. Most scenes require constant movement to complete goals, most areas are falling and Monkey has to move if he's gonna live, the most dangerous opponents are too strong to simply stand still and bash away at and even when things seem to calm down and come to a rest, the crew are forced to move on again and again. Survival, keeping on the move, never stopping, never resting. In the end the story is tragically beautiful and has a surprising, difficult but satisfying ending. Graphics: The character Monkey was well designed. Even if his shape is somewhat oddly proportioned he at least has a look which makes you think Ape, if not Monkey, his crouched stance, fidgeting movements are familiar to out simian cousins, but the truly amazing aspect to his design is the little sash around his waist which flicks and twists in the wind much like a monkey's tail. Even his hair is styled in a way reminiscent to a Spider Monkey's. Trip is actually well created for a female protagonist. It's remarkable that they managed to withhold the standard theme in games to dress them provocatively, enhance their attributes to impossible sizes and then make then super-confident, ultra-women. Trip is normal, sane, and a little naive. She isn't as worldly as Monkey, and it shows, she is also more vulnerable and this aspect of her design comes across well. She has dressed to survive, not to impress. Her collection of gadgets are delicate and pretty, which adds to her vulnerable attributes. Pigsy is an exact opposite to Monkey. He's more direct, less thoughtful, prefers long distance to head on attacks and is short of stature and wide of stomach. His design is a little less subtle, but this works well because there's nothing subtle about this character; even his approach with Trip was direct. He has various wounds on his body which has resulted in mechanical enhancements. For some reason he decided to shape his missing nose and right ear into the same shape as a pig's. Obviously this has been done to keep in line with the original tale of Monkey, but even if I knew nothing about that story, I'd still be happy with the theme of animal attributes defining body shape and personality. However I don't think pigs are quite as perverse as Pigsy. To suit the tragically beautiful story the game has some wonderful, sad areas for the characters to explore. My favorite had to be the abandoned theatre. There was something about the decaying glamor which seemed to suit the world the creators were trying to build. Everything which was once meaningful to the old society was now just a useless rotting building. No one sat in the hundreds of seats to watch plays, no one entered the building for there was no food or drink, the joy of acting, hearing stories of art was lost in this world. Other areas, such as the Mech Graveyard became another story all together, an unspoken story shown in the surroundings; If I look back at the game I would probably see that each area was made to tell a story in itself. Be that the destruction of the ecosystem, man's causing it's own downfall, life finding a way and the hazard of closed ecosystems. Sound: The soundtrack is mostly otherworldly, gentle and soothing in some places, course and harsh in others. I don't have the vocabulary to describe how sounds make me feel but in this game I would say that the music is used to convey certain emotions to the player. I know that's the general reason music is used in games and films, but I don't think I've ever heard music which instills the feeling of curiosity so well as some of the scenes in Enslaved. The absence of music was also used well, sometimes to show safety, other times to enhance the feeling of dread, or suspense. I do remember a great feeling of joy the first time the game lets you properly ride the cloud, the music accenting the experience in ways I can't describe. It's not even complex music either, simple chords and the occasional rocking piece, there was no cop out, get a hip-hop track here, put some heavy metal in this part to make it seem scary and action packed, just well chosen, well placed music. Sound effects are much easier to describe because, lets face it, they're a small but important part of the experience. What else can I say other than there's no glaring problems, no unexpected use of wooden noises when you expect a metal clunk. Pigsy's sniper rifle sound realistic, Monkey's Bo-staff makes satisfying smacking noises as it beats against the head of a Mech, and the Dragonfly has a distinctive sound that could only be described as somewhere between a camera and an insect, as one would imagine. The fact that Mechs don't make much of a sound when you beat them, is also a good thing. There's no repetitive cries, no last spoken words or annoying phrases being yelled at your character. Just almost silent assassins attempting to kill the player, the way you'd expect a robot to be. Addictiveness: I would say there's very little addictiveness in this game. Not because it's terrible, not because combat is rotten and certainly not because the game is boring; because none of that would be true. The problem is that the story is too memorable and satisfying that you'll remember it even if you've left the game alone for a while. The lack of difficulty is also a problem, most players will be able to breeze through this game once they discover all the little tricks for each enemy. The fact that the game's upgrade mechanic is based on collectibles, which can be lost as you progress, means that it can be frustrating when you can't upgrade something later because you missed one or two orbs in a 'race' mission a while back. Really when it comes down to it, if you ever want to replay this game it'll be the same sort of feeling as when you want to reread a good book, or watch a favored movie again. Difficulty: I wouldn't call this a hard game, perhaps a little difficult to begin with, but later quite easy once you're used to the attack modes the Mech offer, however the difficultly does progress at a decent level, while at first the environment offers little in the way of danger, later on it becomes just as equally problematic as the Mech hordes. The fluid motion of battle, which can be achieved with practice, really allows for this difficulty level to be stomped flat, however. I will say that boss battles are varied, but somewhat repetitive. Depth: I cam to this game skeptical. Even though I had played the demo. The only reason I bought it was because it was in a 3 for £15 offer. I thought I was going to hate it, I never thought I'd find myself immersed in a slow burning, but gripping tale, of two people and their fat, loyal friend. The story is basically based on Monkey and Trip's relationship turning from Capture and Captive to friends and then... something more. The apocalyptic backdrop is just a setting to this story and not explained much. However there is a vibrant history, and hidden story, in each and every landscape. Even with the limited information given by the characters you're soon able to understand, or at least guess, what happened in the past, what caused the end of days. The environments draw you in just like the story. You find yourself wanting to explore, and getting benefits for doing so in the shape of experience and ammo. The characters too bring us deeper into the world, waiting for that moment when Pigsy will show up, wondering just what Trip's home will look like, and if Monkey will have the strength to get her there. I recommend this game for anyone who's interested in Eastern history, good stories and Andy Serkis. This game is a brilliant blend of action and adventure, mystery and technology. This is a truly wonderful retelling of Monkey's tale, with a few happy surprises and brilliantly introduced aspects of the old story. There are wonderful visuals, the music is used to great effect and the characters have appealing traits that make you want to see their stories though. The environments and mechanical apocalypse make for an interesting back story to the main story. The creatures are well designed to instill fear, or aggression, depending on their use. While the game might be a slow burner, and maybe a little too slow for some, I still think Enslaved has a little something for everyone.
Enslaved: Odyssey to the west is a modern platform game comparable, to a certain extent, with games such as Beyond Good and Evil, God of War, and Jak: Renegade. The story was written by Alex Garland (The Beach) with voice acting from Andy Serkis (Lord of the Rings), and developed for Xbox 360 and PS3 by Ninja Theory. Namco were the publishers. I have a love hate relationship when it comes to the modern platformer. Even back when Spyro first started to roam around a 3D environment it was difficult pushing away from the idea of platformers being 2D or stuck to set paths like in Crash Bandicoot. So when games like Enslaved crop up I find myself wanting to tear them apart before I've even looked at them, but I cannot deny, that I love a good story, and the journey is just a small part of that. I'd like to talk about all the aspects of this game, but I'll limit myself to just two thousand words, otherwise you'd be getting all my crazy crackpot theories. I'm too critical when it comes to certain games being similar and too quick to say, 'they've stolen that from...' when really I should be saying, 'that's an interesting way of using that.' Story: We're starting with the tale told because I feel that story should come first before any other aspect of the game. Enslaved is lucky because two active and interested artists wanted to make something special, something that wasn't just a game but an experience. Most people are familiar with the tale of Monkey, especially those of my parent's generation. The Monkey with a Bo-Staff that can fly on a cloud who teams up with a pig, a water demon and travels to discover a new land and his purpose. And if you're not familiar with Monkey, then you're more likely to know Goku and Dragonball. The tale is an old Chinese legend which Enslaved has gladly adapted into a futuristic apocalypse set in a crumbling, jungle New York. The monsters and enemies have been Monkey becomes enslaved by the female protagonist Trip, who he must defend and obey. If he move too far away, he dies, if he attacks her, he dies and if she dies... he dies. At first this seems like a terrible game mechanic but rarely gets in the way, but she will end up getting you killed more than the Mechs, in the end it helps you to feel the same bond that Monkey might. Stockholm syndrome, perhaps, but still creates a strong and valid relationship which we see smoothly running together, rather than being simply hacked together like some films do to get cheap drama and motivation for their stories. The two begin at odds with one another. Trip does have Monkey's life in her hands, and she put him in that situation, but the relationship makes sense, especially given the landscape they live in. The slavers and the Mechs make a strange sort of sense too, certainly the number of these bestial robots is not up for question, they are recycled, remade, and simply ancient rusting hulks that have functioned for centuries. What perhaps doesn't make sense is the length of time it took to introduce the character Pigsy. Almost halfway though the game he makes an appearance, and suddenly is revealed, not only as a major part of Trip's past, but as a potential love rival. Strange since he was never mentioned up until a few moments before he needed to be found. Of course anyone who knows the tale of Monkey would be expecting a pig at some point, but I feel he was introduced just a little too late. That said, the relationship between Monkey and Pigsy is established quickly as a love triangle with Trip. With Pigsy keen to show off his superior survival abilities, and mostly getting himself into pain. It's clear, after an emotional point in the game, that Pigsy was introduced so late as a comedic ploy to help ease the tension away, but also to advance the final part of the game in a more realistic way. He is a mechanical expert after all. The main theme throughout the game is movement. Most scenes require constant movement to complete goals, most areas are falling and Monkey has to move if he's gonna live, the most dangerous opponents are too strong to simply stand still and bash away at and even when things seem to calm down and come to a rest, the crew are forced to move on again and again. Survival, keeping on the move, never stopping, never resting. In the end the story is tragically beautiful and has a surprising, difficult but satisfying ending. Graphics: The character Monkey was well designed. Even if his shape is somewhat oddly proportioned he at least has a look which makes you think Ape, if not Monkey, his crouched stance, fidgeting movements are familiar to out simian cousins, but the truly amazing aspect to his design is the little sash around his waist which flicks and twists in the wind much like a monkey's tail. Even his hair is styled in a way reminiscent to a Spider Monkey's. Trip is actually well created for a female protagonist. It's remarkable that they managed to withhold the standard theme in games to dress them provocatively, enhance their attributes to impossible sizes and then make then super-confident, ultra-women. Trip is normal, sane, and a little naive. She isn't as worldly as Monkey, and it shows, she is also more vulnerable and this aspect of her design comes across well. She has dressed to survive, not to impress. Her collection of gadgets are delicate and pretty, which adds to her vulnerable attributes. Pigsy is an exact opposite to Monkey. He's more direct, less thoughtful, prefers long distance to head on attacks and is short of stature and wide of stomach. His design is a little less subtle, but this works well because there's nothing subtle about this character; even his approach with Trip was direct. He has various wounds on his body which has resulted in mechanical enhancements. For some reason he decided to shape his missing nose and right ear into the same shape as a pig's. Obviously this has been done to keep in line with the original tale of Monkey, but even if I knew nothing about that story, I'd still be happy with the theme of animal attributes defining body shape and personality. However I don't think pigs are quite as perverse as Pigsy. To suit the tragically beautiful story the game has some wonderful, sad areas for the characters to explore. My favorite had to be the abandoned theatre. There was something about the decaying glamor which seemed to suit the world the creators were trying to build. Everything which was once meaningful to the old society was now just a useless rotting building. No one sat in the hundreds of seats to watch plays, no one entered the building for there was no food or drink, the joy of acting, hearing stories of art was lost in this world. Other areas, such as the Mech Graveyard became another story all together, an unspoken story shown in the surroundings; If I look back at the game I would probably see that each area was made to tell a story in itself. Be that the destruction of the ecosystem, man's causing it's own downfall, life finding a way and the hazard of closed ecosystems. Sound: The soundtrack is mostly otherworldly, gentle and soothing in some places, course and harsh in others. I don't have the vocabulary to describe how sounds make me feel but in this game I would say that the music is used to convey certain emotions to the player. I know that's the general reason music is used in games and films, but I don't think I've ever heard music which instills the feeling of curiosity so well as some of the scenes in Enslaved. The absence of music was also used well, sometimes to show safety, other times to enhance the feeling of dread, or suspense. I do remember a great feeling of joy the first time the game lets you properly ride the cloud, the music accenting the experience in ways I can't describe. It's not even complex music either, simple chords and the occasional rocking piece, there was no cop out, get a hip-hop track here, put some heavy metal in this part to make it seem scary and action packed, just well chosen, well placed music. Sound effects are much easier to describe because, lets face it, they're a small but important part of the experience. What else can I say other than there's no glaring problems, no unexpected use of wooden noises when you expect a metal clunk. Pigsy's sniper rifle sound realistic, Monkey's Bo-staff makes satisfying smacking noises as it beats against the head of a Mech, and the Dragonfly has a distinctive sound that could only be described as somewhere between a camera and an insect, as one would imagine. The fact that Mechs don't make much of a sound when you beat them, is also a good thing. There's no repetitive cries, no last spoken words or annoying phrases being yelled at your character. Just almost silent assassins attempting to kill the player, the way you'd expect a robot to be. Addictiveness: I would say there's very little addictiveness in this game. Not because it's terrible, not because combat is rotten and certainly not because the game is boring; because none of that would be true. The problem is that the story is too memorable and satisfying that you'll remember it even if you've left the game alone for a while. The lack of difficulty is also a problem, most players will be able to breeze through this game once they discover all the little tricks for each enemy. The fact that the game's upgrade mechanic is based on collectibles, which can be lost as you progress, means that it can be frustrating when you can't upgrade something later because you missed one or two orbs in a 'race' mission a while back. Really when it comes down to it, if you ever want to replay this game it'll be the same sort of feeling as when you want to reread a good book, or watch a favored movie again. Difficulty: I wouldn't call this a hard game, perhaps a little difficult to begin with, but later quite easy once you're used to the attack modes the Mech offer, however the difficultly does progress at a decent level, while at first the environment offers little in the way of danger, later on it becomes just as equally problematic as the Mech hordes. The fluid motion of battle, which can be achieved with practice, really allows for this difficulty level to be stomped flat, however. I will say that boss battles are varied, but somewhat repetitive. Depth: I cam to this game skeptical. Even though I had played the demo. The only reason I bought it was because it was in a 3 for £15 offer. I thought I was going to hate it, I never thought I'd find myself immersed in a slow burning, but gripping tale, of two people and their fat, loyal friend. The story is basically based on Monkey and Trip's relationship turning from Capture and Captive to friends and then... something more. The apocalyptic backdrop is just a setting to this story and not explained much. However there is a vibrant history, and hidden story, in each and every landscape. Even with the limited information given by the characters you're soon able to understand, or at least guess, what happened in the past, what caused the end of days. The environments draw you in just like the story. You find yourself wanting to explore, and getting benefits for doing so in the shape of experience and ammo. The characters too bring us deeper into the world, waiting for that moment when Pigsy will show up, wondering just what Trip's home will look like, and if Monkey will have the strength to get her there. I recommend this game for anyone who's interested in Eastern history, good stories and Andy Serkis. This game is a brilliant blend of action and adventure, mystery and technology. This is a truly wonderful retelling of Monkey's tale, with a few happy surprises and brilliantly introduced aspects of the old story. There are wonderful visuals, the music is used to great effect and the characters have appealing traits that make you want to see their stories though. The environments and mechanical apocalypse make for an interesting back story to the main story. The creatures are well designed to instill fear, or aggression, depending on their use. While the game might be a slow burner, and maybe a little too slow for some, I still think Enslaved has a little something for everyone.
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Member
Affected by 'Laziness Syndrome'
Registered: 12-11-12
Last Post: 3120 days
Last Active: 2774 days
Affected by 'Laziness Syndrome'
Registered: 12-11-12
Last Post: 3120 days
Last Active: 2774 days
10-26-13 06:16 PM
| ID: 915903 | 48 Words
| ID: 915903 | 48 Words
Barathemos: I typed it out using the application given on this site. I suppose I need to work on spacing, like you say, but really I should be double checking the preview button before submitting. I just don't know what's causing so many spaces to jump in there.
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Member
Affected by 'Laziness Syndrome'
Registered: 12-11-12
Last Post: 3120 days
Last Active: 2774 days
Affected by 'Laziness Syndrome'
Registered: 12-11-12
Last Post: 3120 days
Last Active: 2774 days
10-21-13 03:16 PM
| ID: 911766 | 1224 Words
| ID: 911766 | 1224 Words
Shadow of the Colossus is an almost entirely unique concept when it comes to games. You're given a huge world, on par with Zelda's Twilight Princess, a horse and a sword, and from then on every foe you come across is a monstrous, looming giant with not even a single shred of humanity in them. And it's not simply their scale that's impressive, it's the fact that, to most of them, you are no bigger than a cockroach and yet you're expected, no, determined to wipe out every last one of them. Team Ico are well known by those who loved it, for creating Ico which was yet another interesting, unique experience which experimented with lighting effects, the traditional platformer game and telling a story without words. Both games have a emotive aspect to them which often draws you in, makes you fall in love with one or two characters, or at the very least, feel so very sorry for them. In Ico it was the trial of the little horned boy and his bond with the caged girl which drew the story forward, protecting her and a sense of mystery drove you onward through the ruined castle. Here, in Shadow of the Colossus, a sense of duty is what draws you onward, to kill every one of the monsters, but there's a sense of wrongness, darkness and cruelty with every kill. As the Colossus whine and cry out in pain you feel like you shouldn't be harming them with one or two exceptions. In this review I'll be giving an explanation on my choices for rating this game. When people say things like, "Games are an art form." They're talking about games like Shadow of the Colossus. Graphics: When it came out on PS2 in October between late 2005 and early 2006, there were few examples of games which really impressed with their graphics. Sure there were some visual stunners like God of War, and Nintendo has always managed to do something new and interesting with their game graphics but there was nothing as atmospheric, surreal or gritty as Shadow of the Colossus. The main protagonist was designed with a waifish figure. Tall, handsome but small. His horse, in comparison, is big, bulky and designed after a Clydesdale. This interesting contrast allows for an effect which makes the protagonist appear smaller than he is, a useful technique to make the fights seem tougher and even more daunting. The surroundings are often called, dull, too big and plain. But I feel the reason for this is in order to make the area appear abandoned, desolate and like it's at the end of the world. The, for lack of a better phrase, Overworld between each colossus is the area I'm describing. It's large, there's not much to do but hunt tiny lizards and move to the next area. There's a few scattered shrines here and there, but nothing to distract you from the feeling of isolation the landscape inspires. Each colossus is designed differently and some are so huge they act as their own environments for many of the battles. The mix of realistic looking stone, shaggy dirty fur and their distinctive green hue gives each one a menacing, supernatural look which matches well with the whole mix of surreal horror the game hopes to inspire. The downside, of course, if that we're so used to games being more visually stunning these days, that most can't appreciate a limited palette. Some areas of the game do blend together, and the lack of color can, at times, make areas seem far to similar to the last. Sound: Booming noises, the sound of rock giving way to impressive weight, the crack of lightning as a blow connects with rock or steel. The whistles of the arrows as they fly through the air has a pleasing ring to the ear too. The game's sound effects were well utilized, and performed well under the pressure of making these colossus sound big. In later levels when the difficulty increases and the monsters become more and more threatening, the sound effects continue to keep up the volume and bring terror into the mix, especially with the last colossus who just simply expels terror. Of character voice there's very little. The game's story is told by action, not by dialogue. The protagonist does cry out with strain and exhaustion when climbing and attacking the monsters and this does it's part. The true voice acting, however, is done by the colossus themselves. Their screams and cries make it difficult to keep on attacking. If we weren't all cold, heartless monsters we'd probably stop at the first, second or third colossus before we realized what kind of pain we were causing these creatures. They sound and act like mutilated, twisted animals, rather than dark, feral beasts. Addictiveness: The game is very addictive, and even once completed, you can go on and on, killing as you please. With each kill you gain in strength and can go climbing for longer. Like RPGs, Shadow of the Colossus has a game plus feature when completed, and you can go on and on around again and again murdering giants as you please. Even though they scream in pain as they're stabbed and hacked, it's oddly pleasing to bring down a monster of their size, considering you're just a speck to them. Story: Your love, is dead or under a curse, and a ritual must be performed to bring her back to life. There's only so much time, but you must kill all colossus in the lonely valley to break her curse and being her back to the world of the living. Or so much as I can tell. There's no dialogue and action controls most of the story. There's just a simple set up, and then it's up to you and your horse, to kill your way to save your love. Just like Ico is a dark retelling of Rapunzel, there's a feeling of Depth: You'll be drawn into this game, you'll love every moment of it and find yourself galloping as fast as possible to the next colossus. The skill needed is different for each monster, sometimes getting to them is half the battle and each one offers a unique new challenge. The fact that there's a beautiful woman to save, a horse with a wonderful personality and a shade of mystery around the whole ordeal only adds to the whole Colossus killing depth the game seeks to bring to the gaming world. It's truly an artistic game, a sheer dream to play, with the difficulty one would expect. Shadow of the Colossus is an almost entirely unique concept when it comes to games. You're given a huge world, on par with Zelda's Twilight Princess, a horse and a sword, and from then on every foe you come across is a monstrous, looming giant with not even a single shred of humanity in them. And it's not simply their scale that's impressive, it's the fact that, to most of them, you are no bigger than a cockroach and yet you're expected, no, determined to wipe out every last one of them. Team Ico are well known by those who loved it, for creating Ico which was yet another interesting, unique experience which experimented with lighting effects, the traditional platformer game and telling a story without words. Both games have a emotive aspect to them which often draws you in, makes you fall in love with one or two characters, or at the very least, feel so very sorry for them. In Ico it was the trial of the little horned boy and his bond with the caged girl which drew the story forward, protecting her and a sense of mystery drove you onward through the ruined castle. Here, in Shadow of the Colossus, a sense of duty is what draws you onward, to kill every one of the monsters, but there's a sense of wrongness, darkness and cruelty with every kill. As the Colossus whine and cry out in pain you feel like you shouldn't be harming them with one or two exceptions. In this review I'll be giving an explanation on my choices for rating this game. When people say things like, "Games are an art form." They're talking about games like Shadow of the Colossus. Graphics: When it came out on PS2 in October between late 2005 and early 2006, there were few examples of games which really impressed with their graphics. Sure there were some visual stunners like God of War, and Nintendo has always managed to do something new and interesting with their game graphics but there was nothing as atmospheric, surreal or gritty as Shadow of the Colossus. The main protagonist was designed with a waifish figure. Tall, handsome but small. His horse, in comparison, is big, bulky and designed after a Clydesdale. This interesting contrast allows for an effect which makes the protagonist appear smaller than he is, a useful technique to make the fights seem tougher and even more daunting. The surroundings are often called, dull, too big and plain. But I feel the reason for this is in order to make the area appear abandoned, desolate and like it's at the end of the world. The, for lack of a better phrase, Overworld between each colossus is the area I'm describing. It's large, there's not much to do but hunt tiny lizards and move to the next area. There's a few scattered shrines here and there, but nothing to distract you from the feeling of isolation the landscape inspires. Each colossus is designed differently and some are so huge they act as their own environments for many of the battles. The mix of realistic looking stone, shaggy dirty fur and their distinctive green hue gives each one a menacing, supernatural look which matches well with the whole mix of surreal horror the game hopes to inspire. The downside, of course, if that we're so used to games being more visually stunning these days, that most can't appreciate a limited palette. Some areas of the game do blend together, and the lack of color can, at times, make areas seem far to similar to the last. Sound: Booming noises, the sound of rock giving way to impressive weight, the crack of lightning as a blow connects with rock or steel. The whistles of the arrows as they fly through the air has a pleasing ring to the ear too. The game's sound effects were well utilized, and performed well under the pressure of making these colossus sound big. In later levels when the difficulty increases and the monsters become more and more threatening, the sound effects continue to keep up the volume and bring terror into the mix, especially with the last colossus who just simply expels terror. Of character voice there's very little. The game's story is told by action, not by dialogue. The protagonist does cry out with strain and exhaustion when climbing and attacking the monsters and this does it's part. The true voice acting, however, is done by the colossus themselves. Their screams and cries make it difficult to keep on attacking. If we weren't all cold, heartless monsters we'd probably stop at the first, second or third colossus before we realized what kind of pain we were causing these creatures. They sound and act like mutilated, twisted animals, rather than dark, feral beasts. Addictiveness: The game is very addictive, and even once completed, you can go on and on, killing as you please. With each kill you gain in strength and can go climbing for longer. Like RPGs, Shadow of the Colossus has a game plus feature when completed, and you can go on and on around again and again murdering giants as you please. Even though they scream in pain as they're stabbed and hacked, it's oddly pleasing to bring down a monster of their size, considering you're just a speck to them. Story: Your love, is dead or under a curse, and a ritual must be performed to bring her back to life. There's only so much time, but you must kill all colossus in the lonely valley to break her curse and being her back to the world of the living. Or so much as I can tell. There's no dialogue and action controls most of the story. There's just a simple set up, and then it's up to you and your horse, to kill your way to save your love. Just like Ico is a dark retelling of Rapunzel, there's a feeling of Depth: You'll be drawn into this game, you'll love every moment of it and find yourself galloping as fast as possible to the next colossus. The skill needed is different for each monster, sometimes getting to them is half the battle and each one offers a unique new challenge. The fact that there's a beautiful woman to save, a horse with a wonderful personality and a shade of mystery around the whole ordeal only adds to the whole Colossus killing depth the game seeks to bring to the gaming world. It's truly an artistic game, a sheer dream to play, with the difficulty one would expect. |
Member
Affected by 'Laziness Syndrome'
Registered: 12-11-12
Last Post: 3120 days
Last Active: 2774 days
Affected by 'Laziness Syndrome'
Registered: 12-11-12
Last Post: 3120 days
Last Active: 2774 days
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