I picked up Tales of Vesperia the other day and I'm already 9 hours into it. So far I have mixed feelings about the game. It isn't bad or anything, I'm just not so sure if it's as good as previous Tales games. That isn't to say the game is without it's charms. No, in fact it has a lot good going for it - the grapics for example - I think the game looks amazing. Not quite the level of Eternal Sonata, but still really pretty. Another perk would be that the game has some pretty cool character designs.
I can't speak much about the story yet, since the game seems pretty slow to start things up, but it seems like typical Tales fare at this point. One of the new features, skills - allows your characters to learn abilities from different weapons and you can equip this abilities on your characters by allocating skill points. This system is similar to the Star Ocean series, so I'm pretty comfortable with it.
Aside from that, things stay pretty true to the Tales formula. Except, the game seems to have gone backwards instead of forwards. While Tales of Symphonia is my favorite Tales game, Tales of the Abyss redefined the series in a number of ways. Most notable were the cores that you could equip on your characters to manipulate their stat growth. And the combat system was easily the best in the series. Not only did it flow smoothly, with just the right level of difficulty - but the inclusion of the elemental areas really added a lot of depth to the combat. All of these factors are missing in Vesperia - and honestly, I have to wonder why.
While we're on the subject of combat - the combat in Vesperia feels too slow. You'll also find yourself getting interrupted constantly by enemy attacks. It's really quite annoying and often times frustrating. Another annoying thing is that the Boss fights are extremely unbalanced. You will go from owning enemies in a given area, to completely wiping on the bosses. It makes no sense.
Another thing that has been annoying me is that titles are in the game - as per usual - but I don't know what they do. The game doesn't give any indication to wether or not they affect stat growth, and if so - how the affect it. I assume there must be a reason behind the titles other than just displaying them in your status screen. So I dunno, that's really bugging me.
Gameplay issues aside, I have a few problems with some of the characters. First off is Rita, who is in all fairness, pretty hot. The problem is she's a fucking bitch. She never appears to come off as nice in any situation other than when she's taking care of blastia. Which is some sort of magical item in the game that gives people powers. As far as I can tell they're just machines of some sort. So she falls into that category of person that favors objects over human beings - and that shit always annoys me. She even complains about shit in battle while no other characters do that. If she gets attacked while casting she bitches, if you use too much TP she bitches. I want to like her, but it's hard.
Flynn is another character who comes off as annoying. He's some super tight ass upstanding soldier who holds justice above all else. We haven't seen much of him yet, but he comes off as a fucking douche. And finally theres Zagi - seemingly one of the main antagonist in the game - he looks like a fucking faggot and acts like some goth 14 year old who's obsessed with killing and death. Yeah - lame fucking villain.
Another thing that's annoying me is I don't have a guide for this game. Yes, I like using guides when I play games. I like the feeling of completion and efficiency. I'm sorely lacking that at the moment since there are no guides out online or off. Funny that I wrote a guide for Symphonia though.
Saturday, August 30, 2008
Tuesday, August 26, 2008
Too Human
I started writing a rather lengthy rant about Too Human, one that was more rational and collected than my previous outburst. However I realized I was repeating a lot of what I've already said, and the thing was just too damn long for a game I don't really give a shit about. So instead, I'm going to do a review similar to the Kotaku format and least the pros and cons of the game. That way I'll be able to properly address all the bullshit in the game in a more organized and much shorter manner. Let us begin.
Pros
Hall of Heroes and Helheim - These are the first and last levels of the game respectively. These, in my opinion, are the only levels in the game where you are capable of having a fun times playing the game. That isn't to say they're great by any stretch of the imagination, nor are they without flaw (see: Bosses) However I found myself actually enjoying the combat in these areas. The enemies are fun to kill, they don't pull off bullshit moves, they don't take forever to kill, and honestly the whole game should've just been like this. It wouldn't make it a great game, but it'd certainly be a start.
The Setting - The idea of a Sci-Fi Norse Mythology settings is appealing to me to say in the least. I can't fault Too Human for that. Would that the game actually featured an appealing art style, characters that I cared about, and a half-way decent story and I might've given Too Human a little more credit. Silicon Knights can be creative if nothing else (ex: Insanity Effects)
That's all I can think of, I've sat here for five minutes thinking about every part of the game, and I honestly can't think of another positive thing to say about this game. I'm sorry, it's bad.
Cons
The Ice Forest - This is the second level in the game, it also happens to be one of the worst levels I have ever played in a game. It's laughable that Denis Dyack attempted to defend this level on the epic 1UPYours Poolside podcast where Garnett slammed it for being the worst level in the game. Funny, Denis couldn't come up with an answer for what is the worst level in the game. The Ice Forest is full of some of the most annoying encounters in the game. You will be met with waves of enemies that are nearly impossible to kill without dying several times. You will encounter difficult enemies, packed in with more difficult enemies, packed in with annoying enemies. Generally in a game like this, say Phantasy Star Online/Universe/Portable for example - you will encounter a tough enemy by itself, or paired up with another one of the same enemy. Not combinations of many enemies making for a maddening encounter. The lay of the level is terrible too, nothing but similar looking fields peppered with "man-cannons" for reasons unknown. If you can make it past this level, than you've suffered the worst Too Human has to offer - but really, why bother?
The Combat - This "innovative" stick combat is nothing more than a replacement for button mashing. You hold the right stick in one direction until the enemy dies instead of mashing A. It's nothing new, or exciting. It's just frustrating. There's even less depth to Too Human's combat than many of the other games in it's genre - thanks largely in due to the nearly useless skill tree system. You will have at your disposal a whopping number of four abilities you can use during combat. And guess what? They're pretty much the same skills for every class. You have a battle cry buff, a spider drone that'll blow up, shoot stuff, or slow enemies, an AoE Ruiner ability, and Sentient Weapons which fight for you. It should also be noted that some of these abilities take a while to cool down, so you'll rarely see them in combat. Another thing worth noting about the combat is that it's really buggy at times, and the animation looks terrible. Your character will jerk around from enemy to enemy, than clumsily swing his weapon at the enemy in a really awkward fashion. That's not the worst of it though, the moment you attempt to perform "air combat" you'll notice how unresponsive the controls are, and you'll get stuck in the air while over a hoard of enemies. This is the core of the game we're talking about here folks.
The Loot - Another vital part of the game is all the loot you'll get along your travels. Problem is the loot system sucks. For starters, the inventory system is terrible. You can hold a max number of items, not too surprising. The catch though? If you're inventory gets full, you'll waste items you try and collect. Sound familiar? Yeah it was one of the most glaring problems people had with Mass Effect which released late 2007. Luckily Bioware fixed Mass Effect's inventory system in the PC release of the game. Too late for Silicon Knights to fix Too Human though. You'll spend a good portion of your time wading through crap that you'll never equip, only bothering with equipment that'll last you a maximum of two or three levels. Yeah, that Elite item you just got? Totally going to be replaced by some random blue in about 30 minutes. Finally, the loot doesn't look appealing either. The most important part of a loot game is to get cool shit. None of this shit is cool, it's very bland and never changes much from the gear you start with. And since the stats on equipment don't matter for very long, there's really no reason to get attached to anything.
The Bosses - The game has five bosses in total. One for Levels 1-3, and two on the last level. They're all really fucking stupid. I haven't touched on this yet, but most of the enemies in the game are either resistant to melee or ranged attacks. Most every single enemy in the game will shrug off any ranged attack save for the easiest of peons... and the bosses. So one whole class is fucked right there - The Commando class which specializes in firearms. Sucks for him, so why not pick one of the other four characters? That's still the smart thing to do, but once you encounter a boss you'll quickly realize that your primary method of killing shit doesn't work anymore, at all. The first boss requires you to walk backwards around a large open arena full of fire traps, aiming at the bosses' weak points with your shitty ranged weapon for about 20 minutes. If you get close to him, he'll pick you up and grind you against his... uh grinders. Oh and those fire traps? They play no part in the game whatsoever. The second boss requires you to shoot a series of five platforms.... four times. So that's 20 platforms that you can ONLY attack by shooting. Meanwhile he blowing you away with his amazing gun. Fun, and fair! The Third Boss requires you to drain 6 or so weak points with ranged attacks, and the fourth boss has the same deal. Notice the pattern? You will die on these bosses, several times before you chip away all their health. The only exception to this rule is the final boss encounter. The big epic battle that will floor you for all of the three minutes it takes you to melee the shit out of the bitch. Most disappointing final boss battle EVER.
The Death - Dying in a game usually presents you with a penalty of sorts. Too Human is no exception. However Too Human's death penalty is unlike anything I've ever been forced to experience 87 times before. When you die in Too Human, a Valkyrie will descend from the sky, and drag your worthless corpse to Valhalla - or back to the last check point. The problem is - this scene takes 25 seconds, Twenty Five fucking Seconds. And you know what else? You CAN'T skip it, ever. So that means I spent 36 minutes of my total 11 hours of playing this game, watching the fucking death animation that I'm sure Denis Dyack is so god damn proud of. 36 minutes? Are you fucking serious? I guarantee if you took this shit out the game would be presentable for fans of the genre to play around with once. As it stands, it just made me hate video games. Oh, and your armor breaks.
Characters, Art, Graphics, Story, Ending, Etc - Everything else about the game is equally shit. The game looks ugly, it's too bad you guys were too dumb to figure out how to use the Unreal engine, because at least than your game would be a pretty brown and gray like every other next gen game on the market. The art style, character designs, enemies, and environments are all equally appalling to look at. It's a real shame, because as I mentioned earlier - the setting is pretty cool. The characters themselves are very boring, or just plain retarded. Thor is supposed to be some super bad ass tough guy, and Loki is supposed to be diabolically evil - but they both come across as cheesy and uninteresting. The story is far from epic, and is in all honesty pretty cliche at this point in time. And the ending? What ending? Halo 2 says Hi.
The Hype - Assuming they fixed the death animation, the placement of enemies in the Ice Forest, and made melee combat a viable option for Boss Fights - if we could turn back the clock, and cut Denis Dyack's tongue out - Too Human would be a decent game. I think fans of the genre would be able to enjoy it, especially with their friends, and most people would be able to overlook it's other short comings. Thanks to Denis Dyack though, that's impossible at this point. The man just doesn't know how to keep his fat fucking mouth shut. He has gone on and on at lengths about how revolutionary this game is, how it'll change the industry, and redefine gaming. He has started flame wars with members of the video game community, and tried to justify it as a social experiment. He has claimed that people that give Too Human a bad rating "just don't get it". The game is out, the verdict is in, the game is average at best - Yet the man keeps on talking! Shut Up Denis, Shut the fuck up. It's over, you lost. NeoGAF owned you, people weren't amazed with your game, you haven't changed gaming, and the industry will go on without you. Throw in the god damn towel and get to work on your next project which will hopefully redeem the sullied Silicon Knights name. Above all else, it's the hype that has killed this game. When it comes down to it - Denis should've just kept quiet.
Pros
Hall of Heroes and Helheim - These are the first and last levels of the game respectively. These, in my opinion, are the only levels in the game where you are capable of having a fun times playing the game. That isn't to say they're great by any stretch of the imagination, nor are they without flaw (see: Bosses) However I found myself actually enjoying the combat in these areas. The enemies are fun to kill, they don't pull off bullshit moves, they don't take forever to kill, and honestly the whole game should've just been like this. It wouldn't make it a great game, but it'd certainly be a start.
The Setting - The idea of a Sci-Fi Norse Mythology settings is appealing to me to say in the least. I can't fault Too Human for that. Would that the game actually featured an appealing art style, characters that I cared about, and a half-way decent story and I might've given Too Human a little more credit. Silicon Knights can be creative if nothing else (ex: Insanity Effects)
That's all I can think of, I've sat here for five minutes thinking about every part of the game, and I honestly can't think of another positive thing to say about this game. I'm sorry, it's bad.
Cons
The Ice Forest - This is the second level in the game, it also happens to be one of the worst levels I have ever played in a game. It's laughable that Denis Dyack attempted to defend this level on the epic 1UPYours Poolside podcast where Garnett slammed it for being the worst level in the game. Funny, Denis couldn't come up with an answer for what is the worst level in the game. The Ice Forest is full of some of the most annoying encounters in the game. You will be met with waves of enemies that are nearly impossible to kill without dying several times. You will encounter difficult enemies, packed in with more difficult enemies, packed in with annoying enemies. Generally in a game like this, say Phantasy Star Online/Universe/Portable for example - you will encounter a tough enemy by itself, or paired up with another one of the same enemy. Not combinations of many enemies making for a maddening encounter. The lay of the level is terrible too, nothing but similar looking fields peppered with "man-cannons" for reasons unknown. If you can make it past this level, than you've suffered the worst Too Human has to offer - but really, why bother?
The Combat - This "innovative" stick combat is nothing more than a replacement for button mashing. You hold the right stick in one direction until the enemy dies instead of mashing A. It's nothing new, or exciting. It's just frustrating. There's even less depth to Too Human's combat than many of the other games in it's genre - thanks largely in due to the nearly useless skill tree system. You will have at your disposal a whopping number of four abilities you can use during combat. And guess what? They're pretty much the same skills for every class. You have a battle cry buff, a spider drone that'll blow up, shoot stuff, or slow enemies, an AoE Ruiner ability, and Sentient Weapons which fight for you. It should also be noted that some of these abilities take a while to cool down, so you'll rarely see them in combat. Another thing worth noting about the combat is that it's really buggy at times, and the animation looks terrible. Your character will jerk around from enemy to enemy, than clumsily swing his weapon at the enemy in a really awkward fashion. That's not the worst of it though, the moment you attempt to perform "air combat" you'll notice how unresponsive the controls are, and you'll get stuck in the air while over a hoard of enemies. This is the core of the game we're talking about here folks.
The Loot - Another vital part of the game is all the loot you'll get along your travels. Problem is the loot system sucks. For starters, the inventory system is terrible. You can hold a max number of items, not too surprising. The catch though? If you're inventory gets full, you'll waste items you try and collect. Sound familiar? Yeah it was one of the most glaring problems people had with Mass Effect which released late 2007. Luckily Bioware fixed Mass Effect's inventory system in the PC release of the game. Too late for Silicon Knights to fix Too Human though. You'll spend a good portion of your time wading through crap that you'll never equip, only bothering with equipment that'll last you a maximum of two or three levels. Yeah, that Elite item you just got? Totally going to be replaced by some random blue in about 30 minutes. Finally, the loot doesn't look appealing either. The most important part of a loot game is to get cool shit. None of this shit is cool, it's very bland and never changes much from the gear you start with. And since the stats on equipment don't matter for very long, there's really no reason to get attached to anything.
The Bosses - The game has five bosses in total. One for Levels 1-3, and two on the last level. They're all really fucking stupid. I haven't touched on this yet, but most of the enemies in the game are either resistant to melee or ranged attacks. Most every single enemy in the game will shrug off any ranged attack save for the easiest of peons... and the bosses. So one whole class is fucked right there - The Commando class which specializes in firearms. Sucks for him, so why not pick one of the other four characters? That's still the smart thing to do, but once you encounter a boss you'll quickly realize that your primary method of killing shit doesn't work anymore, at all. The first boss requires you to walk backwards around a large open arena full of fire traps, aiming at the bosses' weak points with your shitty ranged weapon for about 20 minutes. If you get close to him, he'll pick you up and grind you against his... uh grinders. Oh and those fire traps? They play no part in the game whatsoever. The second boss requires you to shoot a series of five platforms.... four times. So that's 20 platforms that you can ONLY attack by shooting. Meanwhile he blowing you away with his amazing gun. Fun, and fair! The Third Boss requires you to drain 6 or so weak points with ranged attacks, and the fourth boss has the same deal. Notice the pattern? You will die on these bosses, several times before you chip away all their health. The only exception to this rule is the final boss encounter. The big epic battle that will floor you for all of the three minutes it takes you to melee the shit out of the bitch. Most disappointing final boss battle EVER.
The Death - Dying in a game usually presents you with a penalty of sorts. Too Human is no exception. However Too Human's death penalty is unlike anything I've ever been forced to experience 87 times before. When you die in Too Human, a Valkyrie will descend from the sky, and drag your worthless corpse to Valhalla - or back to the last check point. The problem is - this scene takes 25 seconds, Twenty Five fucking Seconds. And you know what else? You CAN'T skip it, ever. So that means I spent 36 minutes of my total 11 hours of playing this game, watching the fucking death animation that I'm sure Denis Dyack is so god damn proud of. 36 minutes? Are you fucking serious? I guarantee if you took this shit out the game would be presentable for fans of the genre to play around with once. As it stands, it just made me hate video games. Oh, and your armor breaks.
Characters, Art, Graphics, Story, Ending, Etc - Everything else about the game is equally shit. The game looks ugly, it's too bad you guys were too dumb to figure out how to use the Unreal engine, because at least than your game would be a pretty brown and gray like every other next gen game on the market. The art style, character designs, enemies, and environments are all equally appalling to look at. It's a real shame, because as I mentioned earlier - the setting is pretty cool. The characters themselves are very boring, or just plain retarded. Thor is supposed to be some super bad ass tough guy, and Loki is supposed to be diabolically evil - but they both come across as cheesy and uninteresting. The story is far from epic, and is in all honesty pretty cliche at this point in time. And the ending? What ending? Halo 2 says Hi.
The Hype - Assuming they fixed the death animation, the placement of enemies in the Ice Forest, and made melee combat a viable option for Boss Fights - if we could turn back the clock, and cut Denis Dyack's tongue out - Too Human would be a decent game. I think fans of the genre would be able to enjoy it, especially with their friends, and most people would be able to overlook it's other short comings. Thanks to Denis Dyack though, that's impossible at this point. The man just doesn't know how to keep his fat fucking mouth shut. He has gone on and on at lengths about how revolutionary this game is, how it'll change the industry, and redefine gaming. He has started flame wars with members of the video game community, and tried to justify it as a social experiment. He has claimed that people that give Too Human a bad rating "just don't get it". The game is out, the verdict is in, the game is average at best - Yet the man keeps on talking! Shut Up Denis, Shut the fuck up. It's over, you lost. NeoGAF owned you, people weren't amazed with your game, you haven't changed gaming, and the industry will go on without you. Throw in the god damn towel and get to work on your next project which will hopefully redeem the sullied Silicon Knights name. Above all else, it's the hype that has killed this game. When it comes down to it - Denis should've just kept quiet.
Saturday, August 9, 2008
Braids and Grimoires
These are the games I am playing.
First off is Braid, the new X-box Live Arcade time based puzzle platformer. I found this game to be charming since I first checked out the demo the day it was released. However I didn't buy it up right away because I was scared off by the prospect of having to complete a series of difficult jumps and other staple platformer objectives. However after researching some more I found out that the game isn't really a platformer at all per say - in fact platforming only plays a small role in the game, and the main difficulty can be found in trying to solve the game's various puzzles.
Your goal in the game is seemingly to find the mysterious Princess whom the main character seems to have a relationship with. In order to accomplish your goal you have to make your way through 7 worlds that are each broken up into little puzzles. Inside of these puzzles you have to find jigsaw puzzle pieces, similar to stars in Mario 64. Most of the puzzles in the game involve you using your ability to rewind time. Also, in each world theres a new mechanic thrown in to keep things fresh.
For example, theres one world where whenever you rewind time there will be a shadow form of your character that will act out everything you just did before you rewound time. These little elements make each world a little more complicated than the next, and some of these puzzles are really fucking hard.
I'm not sure how many puzzle pieces I have in total right now, but it seems like there's already at least 5185 people who have all 60 pieces. I'll probably go back and try to solve the rest of the puzzles I haven't completed yet, but chances are I won't be getting all the pieces until an FAQ of sorts is released. Sadly, I'm not much better at puzzle games than I am at platformers.
The other game I've been playing is Final Fantasy Tactics A2 Grimoire of The Rift. I was hesitant to get started on it, even though I enjoyed Tactics Advance. As far as I can tell A2 is better than the original Advance, but still falls short of being a better game than the original Tactics. I've been pretty addicted to the game though, so if you're a fan of the series at all I'd highly recommend it.
Most of the things that I liked about Tactics Advance have made their way into this iteration. These include the variety of races and job classes, the art style, the "sweet spot" in terms of difficulty, and the overall depth of the game. That isn't to say everything in the Advanced series is great. I still find the childish story and characters lacking when compared to the original game's more mature theme. The music could also be better, and I'm not sure if I prefer learning skills from items or buying them with job points.
One of the things that has been improved over the previous game is the Judge system. It was pretty fucking annoying in the first game not being able to do certain actions. While these rules still apply to every battle in A2 - they don't seem to be near as bad, and best of all - it doesn't really matter if you uphold the law or not. You get a bonus for not breaking the law, but it isn't required for you to do so. And besides - the bonuses are pretty lacking as you progress farther into the game.
There are a ton of side missions, similar to Crisis Core. However, for whatever reason they don't really strike me as being too grindy. Seeing as how random encounters are gone, these missions are pretty much the only way you're going to level up. So instead of doing random encounters over and over again, you just do more side missions. You get nice rewards for completing these missions, as well as experience, money, and ability points to boot.
Not much else to say about that. I'm really enjoying both games, in fact I'm going to go play some more A2 right now.
First off is Braid, the new X-box Live Arcade time based puzzle platformer. I found this game to be charming since I first checked out the demo the day it was released. However I didn't buy it up right away because I was scared off by the prospect of having to complete a series of difficult jumps and other staple platformer objectives. However after researching some more I found out that the game isn't really a platformer at all per say - in fact platforming only plays a small role in the game, and the main difficulty can be found in trying to solve the game's various puzzles.
Your goal in the game is seemingly to find the mysterious Princess whom the main character seems to have a relationship with. In order to accomplish your goal you have to make your way through 7 worlds that are each broken up into little puzzles. Inside of these puzzles you have to find jigsaw puzzle pieces, similar to stars in Mario 64. Most of the puzzles in the game involve you using your ability to rewind time. Also, in each world theres a new mechanic thrown in to keep things fresh.
For example, theres one world where whenever you rewind time there will be a shadow form of your character that will act out everything you just did before you rewound time. These little elements make each world a little more complicated than the next, and some of these puzzles are really fucking hard.
I'm not sure how many puzzle pieces I have in total right now, but it seems like there's already at least 5185 people who have all 60 pieces. I'll probably go back and try to solve the rest of the puzzles I haven't completed yet, but chances are I won't be getting all the pieces until an FAQ of sorts is released. Sadly, I'm not much better at puzzle games than I am at platformers.
The other game I've been playing is Final Fantasy Tactics A2 Grimoire of The Rift. I was hesitant to get started on it, even though I enjoyed Tactics Advance. As far as I can tell A2 is better than the original Advance, but still falls short of being a better game than the original Tactics. I've been pretty addicted to the game though, so if you're a fan of the series at all I'd highly recommend it.
Most of the things that I liked about Tactics Advance have made their way into this iteration. These include the variety of races and job classes, the art style, the "sweet spot" in terms of difficulty, and the overall depth of the game. That isn't to say everything in the Advanced series is great. I still find the childish story and characters lacking when compared to the original game's more mature theme. The music could also be better, and I'm not sure if I prefer learning skills from items or buying them with job points.
One of the things that has been improved over the previous game is the Judge system. It was pretty fucking annoying in the first game not being able to do certain actions. While these rules still apply to every battle in A2 - they don't seem to be near as bad, and best of all - it doesn't really matter if you uphold the law or not. You get a bonus for not breaking the law, but it isn't required for you to do so. And besides - the bonuses are pretty lacking as you progress farther into the game.
There are a ton of side missions, similar to Crisis Core. However, for whatever reason they don't really strike me as being too grindy. Seeing as how random encounters are gone, these missions are pretty much the only way you're going to level up. So instead of doing random encounters over and over again, you just do more side missions. You get nice rewards for completing these missions, as well as experience, money, and ability points to boot.
Not much else to say about that. I'm really enjoying both games, in fact I'm going to go play some more A2 right now.
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