Risen 3 suffers from what I like to call the "Chrono Cross syndrome" - it's technically an acceptable game, but even at its best moments, it's a disappointment when taken in the context of earlier games in the series. It ultimately fails to reproduce the engrossing elements that captured my attention when playing the original Risen, despite giving a smoother experience.
First, the good news: The mechanics of Risen 3 are easily the best of the series so far. It's still a third-person action RPG, and the gameplay has the same general feel, but the whole thing is much more natural and fluid.
The biggest improvement is the addition of a dodge ability. Instead of being stuck blocking attacks while your enemies dance around you, your character can now dive to the side to avoid taking damage. While the game still gets frustrating in a few places, this simple addition makes combat a hell of a lot less tedious.
Most of the other basics come straight from Risen 2. You are again playing as a pirate (a new protagonist this time, though still nameless), and early on you'll get a ship that will let you travel between the game's different areas. The ship travel is little more than a gimmick for transitioning between otherwise similar regions, but it certainly doesn't get in the way. You'll also assemble a crew, then you can take a single shipmate with you as you go adventuring inland, and you'll earn experience that you can apply directly to improving your major attributes.
Another nice change is that Risen 3 merges the previous games' magic systems. You can build a character strong in Voodoo (Risen 2's only source of magic) or you can focus on traditional elemental magic from the first Risen game. Of course, you could forgo magic altogether and instead develop a strong melee or ranged fighter, or you could grab some skills in each category for a more balanced character. Those choices didn't strike me as hugely important, but they were a little better fleshed out than in the past.
On the gameplay side of things, that's pretty much it - nearly all the quests are trivially straightforward with in-game quest markers, and you don't get many interesting choices along the way. Despite the lack of depth, it's as entertaining as any other RPG with decent real-time combat. A couple boss fights break up the pace a bit, but the main appeal will be fighting monsters and following the story.
And that's where the disappointment sets in.
At the end of the introductory area, the player character dies. A couple weeks later, a mostly-crazy mystic revives you, but your soul has been lost to the spirit world.
From (nearly) the start, your main motivation is retrieving your soul. Along the way, you'll have to make deals and help members of various factions, all while trying to figure out how to restore yourself.
That got me all excited because it was reminiscent of Risen's plot, where everything stemmed from the protagonist's desire to survive following a shipwreck. The letdown, made worse by my anticipation from similarities to the first game, is that the major plot points slip away from that initial motivation.
The latter half of the game is filled with sudden problems you'll have to solve (and at least one bait-and-switch) that don't fit smoothly into the narrative of finding your lost soul. These random plot points destroyed my immersion in the game world, and the last third of the story felt more like a chore than an epic conclusion.
In short, the storyline starts strong but fizzles near the game's midpoint. After seeing how well a similar sort of story played out in Risen, it's sad to see this one flail around in the final acts.
Add some awkward glitches (like the game hanging every time I tried to save in the final area, resulting in corrupted save files), and you have a game that is solidly in the range of mediocrity - it's decently amusing for a good chunk of it's 20 hour length, but it will likely bore you well before its lackluster conclusion.
My Rating: 4/10 - mediocre.
Thursday, April 9, 2015
Tuesday, March 10, 2015
Game Review - Risen 2: Dark Waters (Xbox 360, 2012)
While a generally enjoyable experience, Risen's gameplay was riddled with flaws. Its sequel, Risen 2: Dark Waters, inherits nearly all of those flaws, but it also loses many of the features that made its predecessor engrossing and satisfying.
Risen 2 picks up a few years after the events of the first game, opening with the nameless protagonist awaking from a drunken stupor. Between the two games, he became a member of the Inquisition forces, relocated to the capital city, and donned an eyepatch (though the latter is never discussed).
It turns out that there are still some Titans wreaking havoc on the world in various ways. The protagonist's commanding officer sends him on a mission to find a magical artifact capable of defeating the most pressing of these mystical threats to humanity - the one whose krakens keep sinking Inquisition ships.
To make things a bit more convoluted, the Inquisition has no information about this mythical weapon except that some pirates may possess it. Naturally, the pirates won't deal with the Inquisition directly, so the player character is formally discharged from the Inquisition (but not really, wink wink) and left to work with Patty (the daughter of a pirate from the first game) to find and secure the necessary weapons.
Oh, yeah, and somewhere between the two games, "traditional" magic was outlawed and the mages exiled, leaving Voodoo as the only viable source of magic in the game. And the protagonist naturally forgot all the non-magic skills he acquired over the course of the first game.
I've described the basic plot in some detail (though all that I mentioned is revealed in the first half hour of play) because I think it's a little ridiculous for the sequel to Risen. Between the games, the narrative transitions from fantasy to sea shanty, and it feels really weird coming off the heels of the first game.
Your character starts with nothing and must earn NPCs' respect in order to progress the plot. While a nice idea, it doesn't feel very organic because the whole thing is tinted with the "but I'm really just using you to get what I want vibe." In Risen, you got to choose your alliances before getting the game's most important tasks, and then those tasks were colored by your choices; here, the task is set in front of you from the start, and your only opportunities to make choices seem insignificant by comparison.
My point is just that this storyline is neither interesting nor engrossing. And the script and voice acting are pretty bad at times, which doesn't do the game any favors.
It's worth noting, however, that the story probably isn't too bad if taken in isolation. Seeing that I played Risen 2 shortly after completing the first game, however, the whole thing is laughably inappropriate. It's clear that the storyline is a slave to certain gameplay mechanics (more on that in a moment) and a desperate attempt to recreate the feeling of exploration and discovery that made the first game so much fun.
It wasn't worth it.
The basic gameplay is the same as in Risen. You'll control the anonymous hero from a third-person perspective, you'll interact with NPCs and try to solve their problems, and you'll fight off monsters (primarily large birds, monkeys, and humans - this is a pirate's tale, after all).
The questing aspect is fine, though most of the quests don't require any real exploration or insight. Instead, you just need to talk to the relevant NPCs and follow quest markers on your map. Standard RPG fare these days. A handful of quests are a bit more interesting, giving only cryptic descriptions of relevant information, but they make up a small fraction of the available content.
Combat, on the other hand, is hideous. My biggest complaints from Risen persist here: enemies almost always have the upper hand because your attacks won't cause them to falter, but a single blow against you will interrupt whatever you're doing. They're also generally blocking masters or more agile than you, making most encounters frustrating and tedious. Surprisingly, your blocks aren't nearly as effective as they were in the first game; it seemed that creatures are always able to attack through your blocks, so those fights always devolved into button mashing affairs in the hopes of overwhelming my opponents.
Furthermore, Voodoo is your only form of magic (there's that plot sneaking in), but it doesn't have any direct damage spells like fireballs or lightning bolts, as far as I could tell. As a result, your combat options are limited to melee attacks and guns (guns!), though the latter tends to be dangerous due to relatively low damage output and long reload times.
The result is very little diversity in ways to approach combat successfully.
On the bright side, the developers managed to resolve one potential frustration from the previous game. You can invest experience points you earn directly into your 5 primary attributes (swords, guns, toughness, cunning, and voodoo), and there's no limit to how much you can earn. Trainers will teach additional skills, but those skills don't require and XP - you just have to meet the requisite level of the related attribute and pay the fee. This system makes it easier to change skill paths if you decide you've done something wrong, so it's hard to get stuck fighting powerful monsters with nothing but high charisma.
That said, most of the secondary skills aren't very interesting, as they just boost statistic values in some way as opposed to unlocking new abilities.
Risen 2's big new addition is really just a gimmick based on the pirate theme: The game spans several small islands and coastal regions instead of one contiguous area. Once you get your very own ship, you can sail back and forth between these areas at will. While thematically appropriate, it limits exploration (particularly early, before you have a ship) and makes the whole thing feel like there's not a lot going on.
Part of the reason this setup feels restricting is that the individual areas don't have a whole lot to offer. In Risen, you could wander through (almost) the entire map right at the start. Sure, you could end up in a temple with demons that could easily defeat you, but that possibility was part of the fun.
In Risen 2, each island has 3 or 4 major areas and a lot of dead space. They are much bigger than they need to be, with tons of forest paths or beaches that do nothing beyond adding area to the map. It gets to a point where the exploration is as tedious as the combat, so the game doesn't offer much worth experiencing.
To top it all off, a few glitches may further compound the frustration. Some are holdovers from the first game, like lag after every kill and lag when loading a save, but some are also new, as my game crashed occasionally at apparently random times.
The presentation is a bit of a mixed bag. The voice acting and character models (particularly faces) get pretty awkward, but the soundtrack does a fantastic job creating the right kind of pirate-y atmosphere. The various environments look pretty good, especially distant landscapes, in part due to lots of details like foliage.
When you put it all together, Risen 2 is clearly more technically advanced than its predecessor (most obviously evidenced by the graphical quality), but it doesn't apply those advancements where they are needed the most. The gameplay is tedious at best, and the story is solidly mediocre. It's not really worth playing unless you're desperate to continue the Risen saga, and even then, it might be better to pretend this one doesn't exist.
My Rating: 3/10 - bad.
Risen 2 picks up a few years after the events of the first game, opening with the nameless protagonist awaking from a drunken stupor. Between the two games, he became a member of the Inquisition forces, relocated to the capital city, and donned an eyepatch (though the latter is never discussed).
It turns out that there are still some Titans wreaking havoc on the world in various ways. The protagonist's commanding officer sends him on a mission to find a magical artifact capable of defeating the most pressing of these mystical threats to humanity - the one whose krakens keep sinking Inquisition ships.
To make things a bit more convoluted, the Inquisition has no information about this mythical weapon except that some pirates may possess it. Naturally, the pirates won't deal with the Inquisition directly, so the player character is formally discharged from the Inquisition (but not really, wink wink) and left to work with Patty (the daughter of a pirate from the first game) to find and secure the necessary weapons.
Oh, yeah, and somewhere between the two games, "traditional" magic was outlawed and the mages exiled, leaving Voodoo as the only viable source of magic in the game. And the protagonist naturally forgot all the non-magic skills he acquired over the course of the first game.
I've described the basic plot in some detail (though all that I mentioned is revealed in the first half hour of play) because I think it's a little ridiculous for the sequel to Risen. Between the games, the narrative transitions from fantasy to sea shanty, and it feels really weird coming off the heels of the first game.
Your character starts with nothing and must earn NPCs' respect in order to progress the plot. While a nice idea, it doesn't feel very organic because the whole thing is tinted with the "but I'm really just using you to get what I want vibe." In Risen, you got to choose your alliances before getting the game's most important tasks, and then those tasks were colored by your choices; here, the task is set in front of you from the start, and your only opportunities to make choices seem insignificant by comparison.
My point is just that this storyline is neither interesting nor engrossing. And the script and voice acting are pretty bad at times, which doesn't do the game any favors.
It's worth noting, however, that the story probably isn't too bad if taken in isolation. Seeing that I played Risen 2 shortly after completing the first game, however, the whole thing is laughably inappropriate. It's clear that the storyline is a slave to certain gameplay mechanics (more on that in a moment) and a desperate attempt to recreate the feeling of exploration and discovery that made the first game so much fun.
It wasn't worth it.
The basic gameplay is the same as in Risen. You'll control the anonymous hero from a third-person perspective, you'll interact with NPCs and try to solve their problems, and you'll fight off monsters (primarily large birds, monkeys, and humans - this is a pirate's tale, after all).
The questing aspect is fine, though most of the quests don't require any real exploration or insight. Instead, you just need to talk to the relevant NPCs and follow quest markers on your map. Standard RPG fare these days. A handful of quests are a bit more interesting, giving only cryptic descriptions of relevant information, but they make up a small fraction of the available content.
Combat, on the other hand, is hideous. My biggest complaints from Risen persist here: enemies almost always have the upper hand because your attacks won't cause them to falter, but a single blow against you will interrupt whatever you're doing. They're also generally blocking masters or more agile than you, making most encounters frustrating and tedious. Surprisingly, your blocks aren't nearly as effective as they were in the first game; it seemed that creatures are always able to attack through your blocks, so those fights always devolved into button mashing affairs in the hopes of overwhelming my opponents.
Furthermore, Voodoo is your only form of magic (there's that plot sneaking in), but it doesn't have any direct damage spells like fireballs or lightning bolts, as far as I could tell. As a result, your combat options are limited to melee attacks and guns (guns!), though the latter tends to be dangerous due to relatively low damage output and long reload times.
The result is very little diversity in ways to approach combat successfully.
On the bright side, the developers managed to resolve one potential frustration from the previous game. You can invest experience points you earn directly into your 5 primary attributes (swords, guns, toughness, cunning, and voodoo), and there's no limit to how much you can earn. Trainers will teach additional skills, but those skills don't require and XP - you just have to meet the requisite level of the related attribute and pay the fee. This system makes it easier to change skill paths if you decide you've done something wrong, so it's hard to get stuck fighting powerful monsters with nothing but high charisma.
That said, most of the secondary skills aren't very interesting, as they just boost statistic values in some way as opposed to unlocking new abilities.
Risen 2's big new addition is really just a gimmick based on the pirate theme: The game spans several small islands and coastal regions instead of one contiguous area. Once you get your very own ship, you can sail back and forth between these areas at will. While thematically appropriate, it limits exploration (particularly early, before you have a ship) and makes the whole thing feel like there's not a lot going on.
Part of the reason this setup feels restricting is that the individual areas don't have a whole lot to offer. In Risen, you could wander through (almost) the entire map right at the start. Sure, you could end up in a temple with demons that could easily defeat you, but that possibility was part of the fun.
In Risen 2, each island has 3 or 4 major areas and a lot of dead space. They are much bigger than they need to be, with tons of forest paths or beaches that do nothing beyond adding area to the map. It gets to a point where the exploration is as tedious as the combat, so the game doesn't offer much worth experiencing.
To top it all off, a few glitches may further compound the frustration. Some are holdovers from the first game, like lag after every kill and lag when loading a save, but some are also new, as my game crashed occasionally at apparently random times.
The presentation is a bit of a mixed bag. The voice acting and character models (particularly faces) get pretty awkward, but the soundtrack does a fantastic job creating the right kind of pirate-y atmosphere. The various environments look pretty good, especially distant landscapes, in part due to lots of details like foliage.
When you put it all together, Risen 2 is clearly more technically advanced than its predecessor (most obviously evidenced by the graphical quality), but it doesn't apply those advancements where they are needed the most. The gameplay is tedious at best, and the story is solidly mediocre. It's not really worth playing unless you're desperate to continue the Risen saga, and even then, it might be better to pretend this one doesn't exist.
My Rating: 3/10 - bad.
Thursday, February 26, 2015
Game Review: Risen (Xbox 360, 2010)
I really want to give Risen a glowing recommendation. It's one of the only a few games that have made me feel like I was truly playing a role instead of mindlessly following waypoints. As I explored the world and searched for clues, I was invested in the story.
It's a shame that the mechanics are terrible.
But we'll get to that. First, the good:
Risen's nameless protagonist begins the game shipwrecked on an unknown island. Along with the only other survivor, he sets out to find signs of civilization and ends up neck deep in a plot with apocalyptic potential.
While the transition from lowly stowaway to key player in epic events is cliche these days, I think Risen does it in the best possible way. Your character is looking for help, but everyone wants something in return. As a result, it never feels like the weight of the world is dropped on you; instead, you slowly work your way towards the game's conclusion by earning favor with increasingly influential NPCs. The whole thing feels very natural and subtle.
And the island gives a lot to explore. You can ally yourself with one of two opposing factions, the Don's gang and the Inquisition, but neither is explicitly good or evil; they both fall in a moral grey area, which makes their conflict more compelling. You can also investigate a number of ruins and caverns, and there are tons of quests to complete and goodies to discover.
The quests are easily the best part of the game. Unlike most modern games where you're beaten over the head with quest markers, Risen forces you to find everything yourself. You may have to locate particular NPCs as they go about their day, or you might need to navigate a dungeon to find a particular bit of treasure. Either way, the most guidance you'll get (outside of the quest description) is a vague dot on an imprecise map.
It makes for a very satisfying experience. In some cases, I found myself searching for an available path for a long while or trying to figure out how to use my spells and abilities to cross apparently impassable obstacles. You're left to your own devices at nearly all the key moments, so I usually felt like I was actually contributing to the game rather than just following the developers' intended route.
I'm honestly not sure if I've ever had that kind of engrossing gaming experience before. It was awesome!
And if the game were limited to exploration and interacting with friendly NPCs, it would be a blast through and through. Sadly, everything else is terrible.
The combat is by far the worst offender. You encounter a nice variety of monsters over the course of the game, but no matter the enemy, fights are tedious and frustrating at best. For one thing, your opponents are always more nimble than you. In damn near every fight, I'd start to swing my sword, and my enemy would immediately jump back beyond my reach or block all of my blows. This process repeated until I could pin them against a wall or they initiated a counter attack (which always interrupted my offense, though my attacks never interrupted theirs).
And that's it. That's every fight in the game (except for the last boss, who plays by completely different rules). Some enemies block more often, others focus more on the dodging thing; some will attempt to stun lock you with long attack chains, others will seem to block forever.
It just isn't fun.
There are also a few other weird flaws. The game always lagged a bit after dispatching a monster. The context never mattered; the game freezes for a second after every single kill.
The lag has other effects, too. Any time you load a save, the game will begin playing a second or two before the load screen disappears, so if you saved in a perilous situation, you may find yourself dying whenever you try to load. Sometimes the game won't register your inputs, but at other times, it'll queue them up, executing several commands in succession with no way to interrupt it; which one happens seemed random to me.
Thankfully, it's not all bad. While the underlying RPG elements aren't anything more than decent, they do a great job of enhancing immersion into the game. As you kill monsters and complete quests, you'll earn "learning points" that can increase your primary attributes or unlock new skills or abilities. Whatever your choice, you'll have to find an appropriate skill trainer. It's a cool system because it fits nicely with the "shipwrecked dude just trying to survive" vibe, as your character needs experts to help him along the way.
On the superficial side, Risen doesn't do anything to stand out, good or bad. The graphics haven't aged particularly well, but it's really only noticeable during the big cutscenes and closeups on faces; during gameplay, character models and textures look pretty good. The title theme is great (it evokes memories of Fallout), but most of the soundtrack fades into the background. While there are a few awkward spots, the voice acting is generally pretty good. It's overall pretty mediocre with nothing in the extremes.
Risen is flawed in bizarre ways. It hits the "role-playing" part of an RPG almost perfectly, but all the pieces in between are tedious and frustrating. RPG enthusiasts may find it hard to put down, but it may be too much of a grind for everybody else.
My Rating: 6/10 - decent.
It's a shame that the mechanics are terrible.
But we'll get to that. First, the good:
Risen's nameless protagonist begins the game shipwrecked on an unknown island. Along with the only other survivor, he sets out to find signs of civilization and ends up neck deep in a plot with apocalyptic potential.
While the transition from lowly stowaway to key player in epic events is cliche these days, I think Risen does it in the best possible way. Your character is looking for help, but everyone wants something in return. As a result, it never feels like the weight of the world is dropped on you; instead, you slowly work your way towards the game's conclusion by earning favor with increasingly influential NPCs. The whole thing feels very natural and subtle.
And the island gives a lot to explore. You can ally yourself with one of two opposing factions, the Don's gang and the Inquisition, but neither is explicitly good or evil; they both fall in a moral grey area, which makes their conflict more compelling. You can also investigate a number of ruins and caverns, and there are tons of quests to complete and goodies to discover.
The quests are easily the best part of the game. Unlike most modern games where you're beaten over the head with quest markers, Risen forces you to find everything yourself. You may have to locate particular NPCs as they go about their day, or you might need to navigate a dungeon to find a particular bit of treasure. Either way, the most guidance you'll get (outside of the quest description) is a vague dot on an imprecise map.
It makes for a very satisfying experience. In some cases, I found myself searching for an available path for a long while or trying to figure out how to use my spells and abilities to cross apparently impassable obstacles. You're left to your own devices at nearly all the key moments, so I usually felt like I was actually contributing to the game rather than just following the developers' intended route.
I'm honestly not sure if I've ever had that kind of engrossing gaming experience before. It was awesome!
And if the game were limited to exploration and interacting with friendly NPCs, it would be a blast through and through. Sadly, everything else is terrible.
The combat is by far the worst offender. You encounter a nice variety of monsters over the course of the game, but no matter the enemy, fights are tedious and frustrating at best. For one thing, your opponents are always more nimble than you. In damn near every fight, I'd start to swing my sword, and my enemy would immediately jump back beyond my reach or block all of my blows. This process repeated until I could pin them against a wall or they initiated a counter attack (which always interrupted my offense, though my attacks never interrupted theirs).
And that's it. That's every fight in the game (except for the last boss, who plays by completely different rules). Some enemies block more often, others focus more on the dodging thing; some will attempt to stun lock you with long attack chains, others will seem to block forever.
It just isn't fun.
There are also a few other weird flaws. The game always lagged a bit after dispatching a monster. The context never mattered; the game freezes for a second after every single kill.
The lag has other effects, too. Any time you load a save, the game will begin playing a second or two before the load screen disappears, so if you saved in a perilous situation, you may find yourself dying whenever you try to load. Sometimes the game won't register your inputs, but at other times, it'll queue them up, executing several commands in succession with no way to interrupt it; which one happens seemed random to me.
Thankfully, it's not all bad. While the underlying RPG elements aren't anything more than decent, they do a great job of enhancing immersion into the game. As you kill monsters and complete quests, you'll earn "learning points" that can increase your primary attributes or unlock new skills or abilities. Whatever your choice, you'll have to find an appropriate skill trainer. It's a cool system because it fits nicely with the "shipwrecked dude just trying to survive" vibe, as your character needs experts to help him along the way.
On the superficial side, Risen doesn't do anything to stand out, good or bad. The graphics haven't aged particularly well, but it's really only noticeable during the big cutscenes and closeups on faces; during gameplay, character models and textures look pretty good. The title theme is great (it evokes memories of Fallout), but most of the soundtrack fades into the background. While there are a few awkward spots, the voice acting is generally pretty good. It's overall pretty mediocre with nothing in the extremes.
Risen is flawed in bizarre ways. It hits the "role-playing" part of an RPG almost perfectly, but all the pieces in between are tedious and frustrating. RPG enthusiasts may find it hard to put down, but it may be too much of a grind for everybody else.
My Rating: 6/10 - decent.
Thursday, February 12, 2015
Game Review - Murdered: Soul Suspect (Xbox 360, 2014)
I love adventure games, but almost every game based on exploring and solving riddles falls victim to a common flaw - when every interaction in the world is carefully programmed, you have to be able to anticipate the designer's intended solution path to solve a puzzle. At the same time, the designer tries to obscure that path to make more challenging and satisfying puzzles. It's a delicate balance, and only the best of the best are able to strike it consistently.
Murdered: Soul Suspsect's premise puts it on track to be a member of the highest echelon of adventure games. It opens with a serial killer murdering Ronan, a detective in Salem, Massachusetts. His spirit leaves his body, stuck in limbo until he can resolve his unfinished business (solving his own murder), which is when you take control.
What follows is a fascinating story in a brilliantly-crafted universe. Ronan's disembodiment comes with some interesting advantages, like the ability to walk through most physical objects and possess the living and read their thoughts.
Ronan also encounters a variety of other tormented souls and reflections of particularly strong historical events, which fleshes out a detailed world. Many characters you meet have little if any impact on the main story, but they still seem to have unique personalities and desires. There are also a lot collectibles that reveal detailed backstories. It makes for a fabulously engrossing experience.
That said, there are disappointingly few side quests to complete. You can help a few of the ghosts that you meet, which provide some cool diversions from the main quest, but the small handful of side quests are all available right at the start. It's a lot of failed potential in my mind.
Fortunately, the story itself is one of the more intriguing I've seen in quite a while. The supernatural elements are effectively integrated into a believable modern-day world without becoming the dominant theme - the focus of the game is always the serial killer case.
The visuals, writing, and voice acting are all solid. There are minor flaws here and there, like an occasional awkward line or odd animation, but the details usually enhance the overall experience of the story.
In summary, it's an awesome, nearly cinematic experience, even if it is a little on the short side (it took me about 10 hours), though that's partly due to lack of side quests. With such a strong base, the usual problems with adventure games become exceptionally depressing.
The gameplay is basically split into two broad genres, adventure and stealth.
The adventure portions consist of collecting clues, interviewing (or, more often, mind-reading) witnesses, and figuring out how everything connects together. The game's major areas are self-contained, so you never have to wander too far to find important details. Most of the challenge of these segments is therefore found in finding collectible items (the clues) and getting around obstacles that block Ronan's path.
When you think you've collected enough clues to solve the next piece of the puzzle, you can bring up a screen that shows all the potentially relevant bits of information. This is where several of the puzzles become frustratingly opaque - I often felt that it was pretty clear what was going on in any particular scene, whether the focus was determining what happened at a crime scene or deciding what will motivate a particular character to act the way you want. It wasn't always clear which of the puzzle pieces the game wanted me to choose, though.
Granted, the cost of failure is exceptionally low, as it just reduces your rating for that scene (and rating doesn't seem to be tied to anything else in-game), but it's annoying to feel like you screwed up because the intended solution was excessively vague.
The adventure bits aren't very difficult, but that's ok because the exploration and investigation itself is reasonably fun.
The stealth sections are just bad. You'll occasionally come across demons roaming certain rooms, and if they catch you, they'll devour Ronan's spirit (but the cost of failure is again minimal - checkpoints are very forgiving). Your best bet is to dispatch them from behind, but if they see you, they'll hound you until you can hide for a while.
That's all fine; the implementation is the let down. It's mostly that the hiding mechanics are awkward. If you're spotted, you have to dive into various spectral hiding places scattered throughout the area. The demons will attack hiding spots after they lose sight of you, so you have to bounce from spot to spot to avoid detection. Jumping is disorienting and somewhat imprecise - it can often difficult to get the command to slide into a new hiding spot to pop up.
That's actually a general problem with the game: you have to be standing in the right place with the right orientation to be able to collect many of the important objects. Most of the time, that's a minor annoyance, but during the stealth sections when quick reflexes matter, it can get really frustrating.
Fortunately, there aren't many stealth segments, and when they do happen, they aren't very long. It could have been a cool way to add some tension, but it falls well short.
That's it in a nutshell - a beautifully detailed world to explore punctuated by some frustrating gameplay elements and design decisions. I definitely recommend it, though if you're looking for some smooth action, you'll have to look elsewhere.
My Rating: 7/10 - good.
Murdered: Soul Suspsect's premise puts it on track to be a member of the highest echelon of adventure games. It opens with a serial killer murdering Ronan, a detective in Salem, Massachusetts. His spirit leaves his body, stuck in limbo until he can resolve his unfinished business (solving his own murder), which is when you take control.
What follows is a fascinating story in a brilliantly-crafted universe. Ronan's disembodiment comes with some interesting advantages, like the ability to walk through most physical objects and possess the living and read their thoughts.
Ronan also encounters a variety of other tormented souls and reflections of particularly strong historical events, which fleshes out a detailed world. Many characters you meet have little if any impact on the main story, but they still seem to have unique personalities and desires. There are also a lot collectibles that reveal detailed backstories. It makes for a fabulously engrossing experience.
That said, there are disappointingly few side quests to complete. You can help a few of the ghosts that you meet, which provide some cool diversions from the main quest, but the small handful of side quests are all available right at the start. It's a lot of failed potential in my mind.
Fortunately, the story itself is one of the more intriguing I've seen in quite a while. The supernatural elements are effectively integrated into a believable modern-day world without becoming the dominant theme - the focus of the game is always the serial killer case.
The visuals, writing, and voice acting are all solid. There are minor flaws here and there, like an occasional awkward line or odd animation, but the details usually enhance the overall experience of the story.
In summary, it's an awesome, nearly cinematic experience, even if it is a little on the short side (it took me about 10 hours), though that's partly due to lack of side quests. With such a strong base, the usual problems with adventure games become exceptionally depressing.
The gameplay is basically split into two broad genres, adventure and stealth.
The adventure portions consist of collecting clues, interviewing (or, more often, mind-reading) witnesses, and figuring out how everything connects together. The game's major areas are self-contained, so you never have to wander too far to find important details. Most of the challenge of these segments is therefore found in finding collectible items (the clues) and getting around obstacles that block Ronan's path.
When you think you've collected enough clues to solve the next piece of the puzzle, you can bring up a screen that shows all the potentially relevant bits of information. This is where several of the puzzles become frustratingly opaque - I often felt that it was pretty clear what was going on in any particular scene, whether the focus was determining what happened at a crime scene or deciding what will motivate a particular character to act the way you want. It wasn't always clear which of the puzzle pieces the game wanted me to choose, though.
Granted, the cost of failure is exceptionally low, as it just reduces your rating for that scene (and rating doesn't seem to be tied to anything else in-game), but it's annoying to feel like you screwed up because the intended solution was excessively vague.
The adventure bits aren't very difficult, but that's ok because the exploration and investigation itself is reasonably fun.
The stealth sections are just bad. You'll occasionally come across demons roaming certain rooms, and if they catch you, they'll devour Ronan's spirit (but the cost of failure is again minimal - checkpoints are very forgiving). Your best bet is to dispatch them from behind, but if they see you, they'll hound you until you can hide for a while.
That's all fine; the implementation is the let down. It's mostly that the hiding mechanics are awkward. If you're spotted, you have to dive into various spectral hiding places scattered throughout the area. The demons will attack hiding spots after they lose sight of you, so you have to bounce from spot to spot to avoid detection. Jumping is disorienting and somewhat imprecise - it can often difficult to get the command to slide into a new hiding spot to pop up.
That's actually a general problem with the game: you have to be standing in the right place with the right orientation to be able to collect many of the important objects. Most of the time, that's a minor annoyance, but during the stealth sections when quick reflexes matter, it can get really frustrating.
Fortunately, there aren't many stealth segments, and when they do happen, they aren't very long. It could have been a cool way to add some tension, but it falls well short.
That's it in a nutshell - a beautifully detailed world to explore punctuated by some frustrating gameplay elements and design decisions. I definitely recommend it, though if you're looking for some smooth action, you'll have to look elsewhere.
My Rating: 7/10 - good.
Monday, February 9, 2015
Game Review: Dead Island: Riptide (Xbox 360, 2013)
In my mind, Dead Island was a fantastic example of a game left in mediocrity when a fabulous premise met repetitive execution. Exploring a beautifully rendered resort during a zombie apocalypse is a brilliant proposition, but the game wears on for much too long and every battle with undead hordes feels the same, making for a mindless grind after the first few hours of play.
Being a direct sequel, it's unsurprising that Dead Island: Riptide is similar. Sadly, those similarities make it feel like a disappointing expansion pack to an already borderline disappointing game. Here's why:
Riptide picks up right where Dead Island left off. The four survivors of the first zombie outbreak escape only to get thrust right back into it on a new island with a few new zombies and one new playable character It's basically the same plot: the heroes are just trying to escape, and they'll do whatever they need to earn the help of other survivors.
Where story is concerned, Riptide doesn't do a whole lot. Yes, you'll meet a bunch of characters along the way, but none of them are very interesting and the major conflicts feel more like tedious tasks than plot points.
To make matters worse, the script and voice acting are bland. Some of the lines feel forced, the main characters seem pretty dumb at times, and the voice actors don't anything to bring life to the game.
But the worst offender may be in the game's graphics. During normal gameplay, everything looks great - zombies are diverse and appropriately creepy, environments are reasonably populated with various doodads, and distant terrain reveals a beautiful world. The problem lies with the human characters; their reasonably expressive faces keep them from falling totally into the uncanny valley, but their eyes are completely lifeless. It makes cutscenes and conversations feel off, and I found it to be a surprisingly jarring distraction from the narrative.
It's a pretty disappointing attempt at a story.
The gameplay brings similar disappointments. It is built on the solid premise of 4-player coop zombie stomping and plays a lot like a first-person shooter, although there is heavier emphasis on melee weapons than your typical FPS. You'll run through zombie hordes, shooting, slicing, and beating your way to your next objective.
For the most part, the control scheme is pretty fluid, though there are a few hiccups. I felt that the game ate my inputs pretty often while sprinting (and occasionally at other times), so there were times that I was frustrated because I couldn't complete some precise maneuver. There are also lots of waist-high obstacles that you can't pass despite being able to jump. Even after completing the game (which took me a little over 15 hours), I never had a good intuition for which obstacles I could scale and which ones I couldn't.
On top of that, melee combat can get a little disorienting, with the camera swaying wildly as you swing your weapon; that one's a little more forgivable, though, as it may be an added layer of realism. The sound effects are a little frustrating, too. You'll often be able to hear zombies growling, but their volume doesn't change with distance, so you can't tell if they're right behind you or 30 feet away.
Aside from those annoyances, though, the basics are as advertised, and the zombie crushing can be a lot of fun.
Like Dead Island, Riptide also has some RPG elements. You earn experience by destroying zombies and completing quests, which allows you to upgrade three skill trees. Most of the skills just buff damage with certain types of weapons or enhance consumable items; the only really unique bit is that each character has a special activated ability, like a brief bloodrush that allows you to rapidly stab enemies. Those abilities definitely set the different playable characters apart, but they still feel like relatively minor differences in the grand scheme of things.
While the leveling system provides some degree of customization, it mostly just forces you to upgrade your weapons occasionally as the game progresses, as weapons have level requirements. It ends up being a lot like a loot-based dungeon crawler with very simplistic skill trees.
Of course, that's not necessarily a bad thing, and I think it works with the horror premise pretty well. I just wish that some of the skills had more impactful effects.
For Dead Island veterans, there's not much new here. You can import your Dead Island characters, which will only bring over their skill trees. Riptide introduces a few new skills and pushes the level cap to 70, but there's nothing game changing; it's really just more of the same.
In fact, Riptide is even more repetitive than its predecessor - there are lots of areas to explore, but they aren't nearly as varied or interesting as the areas in Dead Island; there are a couple new breeds of zombies, but they don't require different tactics than all the others; there are numerous quests to complete, but the vast majority have you go through the same motions as quests in Dead Island.
The one notable "innovation" in Riptide is the hub defense. Several times throughout the story, your band of survivors will need to defend their base of operations from waves of zombies. Your NPC allies will help dispatch monsters until the helpful "horde strength" indicator on the screen falls to zero.
These defense sequences are a cool idea, but the implementation is awful. First off, I found the NPCs to be almost totally worthless. Yeah, they'd fight, and they'd do some damage, but they rarely defeated even the most basic walkers without my help. As a result, these sequences felt incredibly tedious, as I had to wander around the area to clean up after each wave. (I admittedly did this with an imported character from Dead Island, so maybe this wouldn't be as much of an issue with a fresh one).
Second, these defenses are incredibly easy. I never failed one, and I actually never felt like I ever came close to failing one. That was largely due to the incredibly forgiving death mechanic - anytime you die, you're resurrected nearby within ten seconds; the only cost is a fraction of the cash you have on hand. There was never any tension during these hub defenses because I knew death wasn't permanent.
The ease combined with the tedium make these parts of the game feel much longer than they needed to be.
A third disappointment comes in the form of optional quests to aid your allies. Each NPC has three related fetch quests to improve their weapons or the stock in their stores. While these quests improved merchants quite a bit, it seemed like they only had cosmetic effects for the ones that actually fight. The improvement quests hint really cool design possibilities (like optional quests that may change base layouts or add different types of obstacles for you to use), but as it stands, they feel pointless.
I could certainly ramble on about the rest of the failed potential, but you probably get the gist: Riptide feels just like the original Dead Island, but its world is more limited, it has mind-numbing defense sections, and the story falls completely flat. Slaying zombies is often a lot of fun (though it, too, can get tedious), but pretty much everything else disappoints.
If you enjoyed Dead Island and you're looking for more of the same, you'll find it in Riptide; otherwise, you're much better off playing the original.
My Rating: 4/10 - mediocre.
Being a direct sequel, it's unsurprising that Dead Island: Riptide is similar. Sadly, those similarities make it feel like a disappointing expansion pack to an already borderline disappointing game. Here's why:
Riptide picks up right where Dead Island left off. The four survivors of the first zombie outbreak escape only to get thrust right back into it on a new island with a few new zombies and one new playable character It's basically the same plot: the heroes are just trying to escape, and they'll do whatever they need to earn the help of other survivors.
Where story is concerned, Riptide doesn't do a whole lot. Yes, you'll meet a bunch of characters along the way, but none of them are very interesting and the major conflicts feel more like tedious tasks than plot points.
To make matters worse, the script and voice acting are bland. Some of the lines feel forced, the main characters seem pretty dumb at times, and the voice actors don't anything to bring life to the game.
But the worst offender may be in the game's graphics. During normal gameplay, everything looks great - zombies are diverse and appropriately creepy, environments are reasonably populated with various doodads, and distant terrain reveals a beautiful world. The problem lies with the human characters; their reasonably expressive faces keep them from falling totally into the uncanny valley, but their eyes are completely lifeless. It makes cutscenes and conversations feel off, and I found it to be a surprisingly jarring distraction from the narrative.
It's a pretty disappointing attempt at a story.
The gameplay brings similar disappointments. It is built on the solid premise of 4-player coop zombie stomping and plays a lot like a first-person shooter, although there is heavier emphasis on melee weapons than your typical FPS. You'll run through zombie hordes, shooting, slicing, and beating your way to your next objective.
For the most part, the control scheme is pretty fluid, though there are a few hiccups. I felt that the game ate my inputs pretty often while sprinting (and occasionally at other times), so there were times that I was frustrated because I couldn't complete some precise maneuver. There are also lots of waist-high obstacles that you can't pass despite being able to jump. Even after completing the game (which took me a little over 15 hours), I never had a good intuition for which obstacles I could scale and which ones I couldn't.
On top of that, melee combat can get a little disorienting, with the camera swaying wildly as you swing your weapon; that one's a little more forgivable, though, as it may be an added layer of realism. The sound effects are a little frustrating, too. You'll often be able to hear zombies growling, but their volume doesn't change with distance, so you can't tell if they're right behind you or 30 feet away.
Aside from those annoyances, though, the basics are as advertised, and the zombie crushing can be a lot of fun.
Like Dead Island, Riptide also has some RPG elements. You earn experience by destroying zombies and completing quests, which allows you to upgrade three skill trees. Most of the skills just buff damage with certain types of weapons or enhance consumable items; the only really unique bit is that each character has a special activated ability, like a brief bloodrush that allows you to rapidly stab enemies. Those abilities definitely set the different playable characters apart, but they still feel like relatively minor differences in the grand scheme of things.
While the leveling system provides some degree of customization, it mostly just forces you to upgrade your weapons occasionally as the game progresses, as weapons have level requirements. It ends up being a lot like a loot-based dungeon crawler with very simplistic skill trees.
Of course, that's not necessarily a bad thing, and I think it works with the horror premise pretty well. I just wish that some of the skills had more impactful effects.
For Dead Island veterans, there's not much new here. You can import your Dead Island characters, which will only bring over their skill trees. Riptide introduces a few new skills and pushes the level cap to 70, but there's nothing game changing; it's really just more of the same.
In fact, Riptide is even more repetitive than its predecessor - there are lots of areas to explore, but they aren't nearly as varied or interesting as the areas in Dead Island; there are a couple new breeds of zombies, but they don't require different tactics than all the others; there are numerous quests to complete, but the vast majority have you go through the same motions as quests in Dead Island.
The one notable "innovation" in Riptide is the hub defense. Several times throughout the story, your band of survivors will need to defend their base of operations from waves of zombies. Your NPC allies will help dispatch monsters until the helpful "horde strength" indicator on the screen falls to zero.
These defense sequences are a cool idea, but the implementation is awful. First off, I found the NPCs to be almost totally worthless. Yeah, they'd fight, and they'd do some damage, but they rarely defeated even the most basic walkers without my help. As a result, these sequences felt incredibly tedious, as I had to wander around the area to clean up after each wave. (I admittedly did this with an imported character from Dead Island, so maybe this wouldn't be as much of an issue with a fresh one).
Second, these defenses are incredibly easy. I never failed one, and I actually never felt like I ever came close to failing one. That was largely due to the incredibly forgiving death mechanic - anytime you die, you're resurrected nearby within ten seconds; the only cost is a fraction of the cash you have on hand. There was never any tension during these hub defenses because I knew death wasn't permanent.
The ease combined with the tedium make these parts of the game feel much longer than they needed to be.
A third disappointment comes in the form of optional quests to aid your allies. Each NPC has three related fetch quests to improve their weapons or the stock in their stores. While these quests improved merchants quite a bit, it seemed like they only had cosmetic effects for the ones that actually fight. The improvement quests hint really cool design possibilities (like optional quests that may change base layouts or add different types of obstacles for you to use), but as it stands, they feel pointless.
I could certainly ramble on about the rest of the failed potential, but you probably get the gist: Riptide feels just like the original Dead Island, but its world is more limited, it has mind-numbing defense sections, and the story falls completely flat. Slaying zombies is often a lot of fun (though it, too, can get tedious), but pretty much everything else disappoints.
If you enjoyed Dead Island and you're looking for more of the same, you'll find it in Riptide; otherwise, you're much better off playing the original.
My Rating: 4/10 - mediocre.
Thursday, January 22, 2015
Game Review - Adventure Time: The Secret of the Nameless Kingdom (Xbox 360, 2014)
There aren't a whole lot of top-down action-adventure games on the market these days, and many of the good ones are part of the Legend of Zelda franchise. As a result, I'm always excited to see a new one pop up, and combining it with a popular series like Adventure Time seems like a recipe for success.
And the Secret of the Nameless Kingdom would be a success if it had more depth and wasn't riddled with small flaws.
Let's start with the obvious: being an Adventure Time game, many established characters appear, and the overall style is reminiscent of the series as a whole. It looks great, with still images during dialogue that could have been taken straight from the show, and a sort of pixelated appearance during gameplay that presents a smooth update to classic gaming aesthetics. The soundtrack is also fantastic, though there are only a few major songs, so it gets repetitive after a while. But those features are probably the game's biggest strengths.
The story follows Finn and Jake (the main protagonists of the Adventure Time universe for the uninitiated) on a mission to the "Nameless Kingdom." The kingdom's three princesses disappeared the day before one would be chosen to rule; Finn and Jake are there to rescue them and set the kingdom straight.
The whole thing is sprinkled with the kind of silliness you'd expect from Adventure Time. The dialogue is very well written, and the voice actors do a fantastic job with their lines, but there's just not much there. The storyline is really thin for this kind of game, giving very little beyond a flimsy excuse to visit the major dungeons. It's really just "go here, then here, then here, then you're done."
It ultimately feels like a squandered opportunity to apply and expand on the Adventure Time universe, and for that it's pretty disappointing.
Sadly, the gameplay doesn't do any better. You'll guide Finn through an overworld and a few dungeons, dispatching monsters and discovering treasures along the way. There are a few important items to collect, each unlocking new areas of the world (by enabling you to pass obstacles) and aiding in fights against big bosses.
It evokes a "Link to the Past" vibe, borrowing heavily from classic 2D Zelda games, but the details don't push it beyond a mediocre experience.
The biggest problem is the scale of the game. The overworld isn't very big, and there are few side areas to explore, stripping a large part of the "adventure" side of the game.
That said, the "adventure" isn't completely gone: Nameless Kingdom suffers from a common problem in adventure games. For a relatively short game (it took me about 8 hours to complete the story and get all the optional upgrades and collectibles), I found myself in a surprising number of situations where I had no idea what the game what the game wanted me to do. I couldn't progress because the proper combination of items was far from apparent, and that makes for a horribly frustrating experience.
And the frustrations keep coming. The general lack of overworld space is somewhat mitigated by increasingly lengthy dungeons, with the final dungeon alone taking well over an hour to complete. To be fair, some of that length is a product of terrible design (for example, locked doors in many rooms will open after you defeat all the monsters in the room, but backtracking will often reset those rooms, so you'll have to do it again), but it was kind of refreshing to see such intricate dungeons.
If that were all there was to it, I'd say it's a decent game worth checking out. Unfortunately, I was annoyed by lots of little things over the course of the game:
There aren't very many items to collect, and most of the puzzles are tedious instead of, well, puzzling. The controls can be a little clunky at times, because you'll get stuck on walls if you push the control stick even slightly towards them, and it takes very little to propel Finn into pits (except, of course, when you want to fall in a pit; then the game makes you work for it). Hit boxes don't make any sense in some places. You are surprisingly vulnerable after using items, making it almost universally safer not to use items during combat (making some bosses pretty frustrating), and many items don't work in places where it really seems like they should. You can occasionally glitch enemies into walls or through spikes, trapping you inside some rooms...
You get the idea.
It's particularly sad because the positives aren't even that good in an absolute sense. The bright spots only shine through because everything around them is so dark.
And that's the real disappointment with Nameless Kingdom - there aren't any truly egregious flaws (except maybe the overall size of the game), but it drowns in a sea of small mistakes. Few items, boring puzzles, insensitive controls, and a lazy plot all combine to make this game mediocre from start to finish. You could do a lot worse, but it's probably not worth your money unless you're a die-hard Adventure Time or top-down action-adventure fan (and it's questionable even then).
My Rating: 3/10 - bad.
And the Secret of the Nameless Kingdom would be a success if it had more depth and wasn't riddled with small flaws.
Let's start with the obvious: being an Adventure Time game, many established characters appear, and the overall style is reminiscent of the series as a whole. It looks great, with still images during dialogue that could have been taken straight from the show, and a sort of pixelated appearance during gameplay that presents a smooth update to classic gaming aesthetics. The soundtrack is also fantastic, though there are only a few major songs, so it gets repetitive after a while. But those features are probably the game's biggest strengths.
The story follows Finn and Jake (the main protagonists of the Adventure Time universe for the uninitiated) on a mission to the "Nameless Kingdom." The kingdom's three princesses disappeared the day before one would be chosen to rule; Finn and Jake are there to rescue them and set the kingdom straight.
The whole thing is sprinkled with the kind of silliness you'd expect from Adventure Time. The dialogue is very well written, and the voice actors do a fantastic job with their lines, but there's just not much there. The storyline is really thin for this kind of game, giving very little beyond a flimsy excuse to visit the major dungeons. It's really just "go here, then here, then here, then you're done."
It ultimately feels like a squandered opportunity to apply and expand on the Adventure Time universe, and for that it's pretty disappointing.
Sadly, the gameplay doesn't do any better. You'll guide Finn through an overworld and a few dungeons, dispatching monsters and discovering treasures along the way. There are a few important items to collect, each unlocking new areas of the world (by enabling you to pass obstacles) and aiding in fights against big bosses.
It evokes a "Link to the Past" vibe, borrowing heavily from classic 2D Zelda games, but the details don't push it beyond a mediocre experience.
The biggest problem is the scale of the game. The overworld isn't very big, and there are few side areas to explore, stripping a large part of the "adventure" side of the game.
That said, the "adventure" isn't completely gone: Nameless Kingdom suffers from a common problem in adventure games. For a relatively short game (it took me about 8 hours to complete the story and get all the optional upgrades and collectibles), I found myself in a surprising number of situations where I had no idea what the game what the game wanted me to do. I couldn't progress because the proper combination of items was far from apparent, and that makes for a horribly frustrating experience.
And the frustrations keep coming. The general lack of overworld space is somewhat mitigated by increasingly lengthy dungeons, with the final dungeon alone taking well over an hour to complete. To be fair, some of that length is a product of terrible design (for example, locked doors in many rooms will open after you defeat all the monsters in the room, but backtracking will often reset those rooms, so you'll have to do it again), but it was kind of refreshing to see such intricate dungeons.
If that were all there was to it, I'd say it's a decent game worth checking out. Unfortunately, I was annoyed by lots of little things over the course of the game:
There aren't very many items to collect, and most of the puzzles are tedious instead of, well, puzzling. The controls can be a little clunky at times, because you'll get stuck on walls if you push the control stick even slightly towards them, and it takes very little to propel Finn into pits (except, of course, when you want to fall in a pit; then the game makes you work for it). Hit boxes don't make any sense in some places. You are surprisingly vulnerable after using items, making it almost universally safer not to use items during combat (making some bosses pretty frustrating), and many items don't work in places where it really seems like they should. You can occasionally glitch enemies into walls or through spikes, trapping you inside some rooms...
You get the idea.
It's particularly sad because the positives aren't even that good in an absolute sense. The bright spots only shine through because everything around them is so dark.
And that's the real disappointment with Nameless Kingdom - there aren't any truly egregious flaws (except maybe the overall size of the game), but it drowns in a sea of small mistakes. Few items, boring puzzles, insensitive controls, and a lazy plot all combine to make this game mediocre from start to finish. You could do a lot worse, but it's probably not worth your money unless you're a die-hard Adventure Time or top-down action-adventure fan (and it's questionable even then).
My Rating: 3/10 - bad.
Monday, December 29, 2014
Game Review - DmC: Devil May Cry (Xbox 360, 2013)
On the list of franchises I expected to get a gritty, real-world reboot, Devil May Cry was pretty far from the top. It does make some sense in retrospect: there's always a market for good third-person action games, and if you remove some of the the cheesy lines and smarmy protagonist and tie the plot more closely to the real world, you just might have a quality title all around.
In the end, I think DmC does a great job in both respects. It's an impressively fun hack and slash game, and the story is a nice re-imagining of the Devil May Cry premise. Here's why:
DmC follows Dante, handsome rogue and lady-killer, as he is drawn into a demonic plot to destroy the world. You know, pretty basic stuff.
There are two pretty good reasons that the story is worth experiencing, though:
First, the demonic plane, Limbo, exists parallel to the world we all know and love. The locations are similar, with Limbo being a generally perverted version of the same landscape, and changes in one world affect the other. This setup allows for some interesting dynamics and plot points along the way (though nothing that has a significant impact on gameplay).
Second, the overall visual style is breathtaking. Locations range from mundane warehouses to hopping clubs to molten hellscapes, and each has a distinct and impressive style. Characters and monsters are similarly detailed, and while things can get a little weird at times, it's always fantastic to see.
Aside from those broad categories, nothing in the game's plot really stands out, good or bad. It's a different take on the Devil May Cry storyline (with much of the character backstories carried over from the original), which I found cool as a longtime fan of the franchise. For others, the storyline leaves a bit to be desired in a few places, but it was still interesting enough to keep me from getting bored during brief cutscenes between gameplay segments.
Speaking of gameplay, the real reason you should play DmC is the opportunity to slaughter thousands of demons in the most stylish of ways.
The basic gameplay of other Devil May Cry titles remains intact: fluid combat with a variety of weapons and combos for dispatching enemies. As you progress, you'll unlock more weapons and related combat abilities, allowing for more complex combinations of moves. You can even switch between weapons very easily during a fight, which lets you chain cool attacks together in exciting ways.
The combat system is really deep and executed very well. It's incredibly satisfying.
I really only have two complaints. First, the camera can be a huge pain in the ass. There's this lock-on system the focuses your view on one enemy. It's really nice most of the time, but when you're fighting half a dozen demons and need to change targets on the fly, it can get really awkward.
Second, I found some of the combos to be rather hard to pull off. I'd love that added difficulty if they were more powerful or beneficial in some other way, but that didn't seem to be the case. The result is that I ended up using the same set of combos pretty frequently for most enemies. It was still a pretty diverse set of combos (using only one combos for each of the five melee weapons still yields a nice spectrum of attacks), but there was really no incentive to explore the rest of Dante's combat skills.
Still, it was tons of fun fighting my way through the game, which took me around 7-8 hours to complete.
Like previous Devil May Cry games, however, there are many additional difficulty modes to tackle once completing the story the first time.
Two of the additional modes increase the difficulty, but not just by making monsters stronger. Instead, they change the composition of enemy groups. These changes require you to change tactics instead of just becoming more precise, which makes playing these difficulties a different experience than your first playthrough. It's the best kind of replay value.
The other two additional modes provide a unique twist. In "Heaven or Hell" mode, Dante and all enemies die in a single hit, changing the dynamic of the game considerably. It's much easier than the main game, but it's another unique experience.
"Hell and Hell" makes Dante as fragile as in "Heaven or Hell" but leaves his foes at their normal power level - you'll die in one hit, but the demons won't. It's definitely the biggest challenge the game has to offer and yet another new perspective on DmC's gameplay.
All told, running through the additional game modes can bring the game clock up to 30+ hours, with a fair number of challenges, if you're up to it.
DmC is overall a great game with tons of replay value. There's nothing groundbreaking, but its smooth execution makes for a very entertaining game with more longevity than most single-player games on the market these days. It's definitely worth a look.
My Rating: 9/10 - awesome.
In the end, I think DmC does a great job in both respects. It's an impressively fun hack and slash game, and the story is a nice re-imagining of the Devil May Cry premise. Here's why:
DmC follows Dante, handsome rogue and lady-killer, as he is drawn into a demonic plot to destroy the world. You know, pretty basic stuff.
There are two pretty good reasons that the story is worth experiencing, though:
First, the demonic plane, Limbo, exists parallel to the world we all know and love. The locations are similar, with Limbo being a generally perverted version of the same landscape, and changes in one world affect the other. This setup allows for some interesting dynamics and plot points along the way (though nothing that has a significant impact on gameplay).
Second, the overall visual style is breathtaking. Locations range from mundane warehouses to hopping clubs to molten hellscapes, and each has a distinct and impressive style. Characters and monsters are similarly detailed, and while things can get a little weird at times, it's always fantastic to see.
Aside from those broad categories, nothing in the game's plot really stands out, good or bad. It's a different take on the Devil May Cry storyline (with much of the character backstories carried over from the original), which I found cool as a longtime fan of the franchise. For others, the storyline leaves a bit to be desired in a few places, but it was still interesting enough to keep me from getting bored during brief cutscenes between gameplay segments.
Speaking of gameplay, the real reason you should play DmC is the opportunity to slaughter thousands of demons in the most stylish of ways.
The basic gameplay of other Devil May Cry titles remains intact: fluid combat with a variety of weapons and combos for dispatching enemies. As you progress, you'll unlock more weapons and related combat abilities, allowing for more complex combinations of moves. You can even switch between weapons very easily during a fight, which lets you chain cool attacks together in exciting ways.
The combat system is really deep and executed very well. It's incredibly satisfying.
I really only have two complaints. First, the camera can be a huge pain in the ass. There's this lock-on system the focuses your view on one enemy. It's really nice most of the time, but when you're fighting half a dozen demons and need to change targets on the fly, it can get really awkward.
Second, I found some of the combos to be rather hard to pull off. I'd love that added difficulty if they were more powerful or beneficial in some other way, but that didn't seem to be the case. The result is that I ended up using the same set of combos pretty frequently for most enemies. It was still a pretty diverse set of combos (using only one combos for each of the five melee weapons still yields a nice spectrum of attacks), but there was really no incentive to explore the rest of Dante's combat skills.
Still, it was tons of fun fighting my way through the game, which took me around 7-8 hours to complete.
Like previous Devil May Cry games, however, there are many additional difficulty modes to tackle once completing the story the first time.
Two of the additional modes increase the difficulty, but not just by making monsters stronger. Instead, they change the composition of enemy groups. These changes require you to change tactics instead of just becoming more precise, which makes playing these difficulties a different experience than your first playthrough. It's the best kind of replay value.
The other two additional modes provide a unique twist. In "Heaven or Hell" mode, Dante and all enemies die in a single hit, changing the dynamic of the game considerably. It's much easier than the main game, but it's another unique experience.
"Hell and Hell" makes Dante as fragile as in "Heaven or Hell" but leaves his foes at their normal power level - you'll die in one hit, but the demons won't. It's definitely the biggest challenge the game has to offer and yet another new perspective on DmC's gameplay.
All told, running through the additional game modes can bring the game clock up to 30+ hours, with a fair number of challenges, if you're up to it.
DmC is overall a great game with tons of replay value. There's nothing groundbreaking, but its smooth execution makes for a very entertaining game with more longevity than most single-player games on the market these days. It's definitely worth a look.
My Rating: 9/10 - awesome.
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