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Aug 8th, 2013 at 11:19:07 - Oddworld: Stranger's Wrath (PC) |
Played about 3 hours over the last few days and this one isn't gelling. Reminds me a bit of Beyond Good & Evil, in which I quit partly because I didn't like the controls or the camera. This camera is often a little wonky, and I really dislike when the Stranger runs, and then runs into an object, because he stops and can't move for just long enough for it to be annoying. I just found a number of things that bugged me. You can't heal when you're taking damage, which in my opinion forced a stealthier approach. Problem is I didn't want to take a stealthier approach because that means strategically using different ammo types. The ammo types are fine in and of themselves, but switching ammo is a pain, and the ammo hunting, while innovative, I disliked. Therefore, I don't like to use a lot of ammo. Not liking to use ammo in a platformer/FPS is a death sentence.
I guess I should say why I do think the ammo system is sorta neat. In the Oddworld world, or this game at least (this was my first Oddworld game), your ammunition is live animals that you have to hunt. They are wacky, like bats that explode like grenades, bees that fire like machine gun bullets, little furball things that act like mines, some electricity bug that stuns enemies and triggers electronic locks and things in the world, and so on. I think the hunting ammo would be more enjoyable if you actually had to think about hunting it and do more than shoot it with the electricity bug. You just shoot it, then walk over it. As it is, I think it just adds an unnecessary step to what would otherwise be...walking over ammo pickups like in every other game. But, if they fleshed it out, like made you actually track and hunt creatures, that might be more interesting.
You can load two ammo types at the same time, one for left click and one for right click. There are like 9 ammo types, so any time you want to switch you have to hit up/down arrows, cycle to the one you want, and push left/right to assign it to the left/right mouse buttons. Since you want to change up ammo types strategically for different situations and enemies, a lot of time is spent cycling through that ammo menu. I really didn't like it either. I think you should have been able to load more types, or switch between them easier. I mean this game was ported to PC. It should be using 1,2,3,4,etc. hotkeys to switch weapons.
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Aug 5th, 2013 at 02:04:09 - Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine (PC) |
Pretty much what I expected from reading reviews. I got this for free in some THQ pack and I like Warhammer, so I figured I'd try anyway. I found it definitely a fun game overall, but it was still very basic and drab. Quite a feat to maintain a fun factor in such a dull world.
I'll start with the pros. The "feel" of being an Ultramarine was fantastic. When you run, you hear the clank, clank, clank of metal boots on steel ground, and the screen shakes slightly. I loved that touch. The Ultramarines and the other characters also looked great. The armor, especially that of the last boss, wow, was detailed and authentic looking. Your character also gets nice blood spatter on his during battle.
The other thing I really liked was the jetpack. The jetpack segments were hands down the best in the game, but waaaay too few and far between. If I remember, you get a jetpack three times. The first time you lose it, it's because you're going into some tunnels and can't use the jetpack. I accepted that. Then it was like 5 chapters before getting it again, for a sweet sweet 10 minutes or so, and then Tidus discards it after "it's out of fuel." What?! The last time you get the jetpack "it's out of fuel" too. That's such a crappy excuse for making you get rid of the jetpack! I actually got mad the second time. "It's out of fuel? Bullshit! Find some more fuel! You're on a planet designed to manufacture war machines. There is definitely fuel nearby!" Anyway, despite having it rudely taken from me every time, I cherished our time together. You can fly around a little bit, and the best part is that you get a slam attack. You drop from the sky like a meteor crashing into enemies below, killing or stunning them. It was so. much. fun. to do. And it actually didn't feel overpowered because in the jetpack segments, they put lots of shooters on roofs and ledges, and used the psykers to fire at you and warp in more enemies and things. Those parts were nice because they ramped up the challenge and gave you the tools to deal with it.
So those were the great things - the feel of being an Ultramarine and the jetpack.
The not-so-great things were greater in number. The first one is sort of pro/con, which was the combat. I realized immediately when looking at my "move list" that all four melee weapons had about 7 or 8 moves (good) but that they were all the same buttons (bad). For example, every weapon you attacked with X and stunned with Y, and combinations included X, XX, XXX, XY, XXY, or XXXY. One weapon had an additional XXXX. Well, it took me about 2 minutes to master melee combat, and the prospect of repeating XXXY for 8 hours wasn't sounding like much fun. Luckily, you gain access to a number of guns as well, and there is a bit more variety there. You get your bolt pistol, your repeaters, plasma guns with charge, sticky bombs, grenades, sniper rifles, and a couple others. Not a huge variety, but the interplay of melee and ranged combat was enjoyable and spiced things up, especially as more and more enemy types were introduced requiring more than just XXXY and bolt pistol. Still, it was a lot of button mashing and lacked the finesse I've come to appreciate from more better combat-oriented games like Devil May Cry and Bayonetta.
The game is completely linear. There's nothing optional, no exploration, no secrets, no nothing besides "go here, shoot that, watch this cut scene." It's a shame that the Ultramarines themselves and the Orks and Chaos were so detailed because comparatively the world was utterly devoid of life. Sure, there was an invasion going on, but the environments were dead and gray, there wasn't a lot happening in the background besides the occasional ship flying past, and there were hardly any humans anywhere. The ones that were there (besides the ones fighting) just sat on the ground and didn't move. There were no homes, no one doing anything like they would in daily life. It was just dead and dull and a stark contrast to the color and attention paid to the Ultramarines, Orks and Chaos.
Actually I realized that there is a lot of 'dead space' in the game too. When you play, you will get used to running to your destination and going through A LOT of doors with green lights guiding your way. Almost all of these rooms are plain empty, and by the end of the game I was just running through battles looking for the green light to move on to the next place to find the next green light, through all the empty rooms. Toward the end I was getting a little annoyed because I would find the obvious elevator or doorway or green light, but I would have to kill all the enemies first before my AI companion would announce something like "Over there! An exit!" And I'm like, "Yes, I found that 5 minutes ago and it was open. Why couldn't we go then?" Which brings me to my next point - there is just so much killing. Hordes and hordes you have to slice through, waves and waves of enemies you have to kill before the game will let you move forward. More and more and more little objectives that pop up requiring you to go to some other place before you can do the main thing you set out to do. I get that most of that is necessary for the narrative and to keep things rolling, but man, it got repetitive.
I could have used more boss battles. There were two. The first was alright. The second was really bad. I'll rag on the second one a bit. If, by the end of the game, you hadn't had enough of waves and waves and waves and waves of enemies, prepare to fight four more waves of enemies before getting to fight the final boss. These last waves of enemies suck so much. There is one wave of a bunch of the imp demons, another wave of Chaos soldiers and tough chaos marines, a wave of psykers with more demons and a final wave of imp demons and really really deadly chaos ultramarines. I died so much. I started out with the Thunder Hammer, which I eventually discarded for the Power Axe so that I could use more powerful guns, which I needed to take out the psykers and the chaos ultramarines. The first wave was ok, just kite the demons around killing them slowly. The second wave was alright, just move behind cover and take out the regular soldiers, then the more powerful ones one by one and execute the powerful ones for health. The third wave killed me the most because those psykers' energy ray laser things just burrrn through armor and health if you get caught in the open. Unfortunately though you have to run in the open because of the horde of demons chasing you. I tried a long time and finally figured I needed to take out a psyker ASAP with the laser sniper gun, then thin the demons, then take out the other psyker. The final wave was hard because of those chaos ultramarines, which were beasts. They took forever to kill, and I died a lot because I kept getting stuck in corners, which was the one big problem with the controls. You'd get your bulky self stuck in corners by big enemies and not be able to roll out of the way and you'd die, quite frustrating especially at this last battle.
Waves defeated, you get to take on the final boss, which was a complete letdown and a crappy quick-time event. I am not exaggerating when I say the quick-time event largely involved pressing XXY about 15 times in a row. Why didn't they use other combinations for the quick-time event? "Let's make it more fun and change things up." "Nah, let's just have the player tap XXY 15 times." Also, the on-screen prompts didn't indicate whether you needed to press the button once or tap it repeatedly. That cost me a couple lives, which was irritating. I guess I learned when to tap and when to press by dying, but those prompts should have been clear. And then, the end, which I liked.
And so goes Space Marine. Recommended only for hardcore Warhammer fans or if you really enjoy mashing XXY a lot. It was fun enough, short, ultimately forgettable.
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Aug 5th, 2013 at 01:10:00 - Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War II - Retribution (PC) |
Retribution changed up a couple things from the original DoW2 and from Chaos Rising. It introduced a multiplayer mode, which I haven't tried. The multiplayer mode "Last Stand" is supposed to be outstanding and I will try it at some point. Retribution also brings in resources and squads. Instead of only controlling your 4 heroes and their associated squads, you can choose to bench the heroes and bring squads instead.
Heroes level up the same as in the other games, boosting attributes and learning skills related to health, power or energy. In a nice symbiosis with the squad option, many skills you learn affect squads in some beneficial way if you bench the hero. So say I learn "Heal" for a hero. The tooltip might say something like, "If the hero is not in use, then all melee infantry heal when they attack" or something like that. So your squads are actually beefy special ones rather than cannon fodder. But the heroes are totally badass and have some pretty awesome abilities. For instance, I played the Ork campaign and the ranged unit, Mr. Nailbrain, gained the ability to teleport and to explode (hilarious every time). So I'd teleport in the middle of like 30 enemies and explode and they'd scatter and die. It was a great combo.
That said, I played Retribution the same way as the others, without using any squads. My reasoning is very practical and has to do with the still mind-boggling decision by the designers to not let you reassign new hotkeys or group hotkeys. There is NO reason why I shouldn't be able to create a hotkey to select all my units at once (or any combination I set a hotkey for). This feature, present in practically all RTSs, is one of the most useful ever created for the genre and it is just ridiculous that players cannot change or create hotkeys in the DoW2 series. So, I played with just my four heroes instead of like eight squads mostly because I then had to click only half as often. Every time I wanted to select all, I only had to drag a box around four things instead of eight, which is still irritating when they are spread out, but way simpler than doing it for eight.
There are six races in Retribution, each of which supposedly has a slightly different campaign. I played the Ork campaign, which I thought was rather silly. The Orks sound English/Scottish, which was a little weird, and they really dive deep into their way of talking with heavy accents. "Dis here's gunna git da lootz fer da boyz!" and lots more words I had to learn. That's one thing about Warhammer. I'll never understand how Orks are a force to be reckoned with. They're idiots! Maybe I just haven't read enough Warhammer stuff, but from all the games I've played, Orks are always just jokes. How are they smart enough to use teleporters and build spaceships and stuff? Anyway, I see how all the campaigns intersect and play around the larger Space Marine campaign. There were several maps where there was pretty much a big melee going on with a bunch of different races. My guess is that a lot of the maps are the same among races, just with some different objectives. The Orks seemed to just be going around looting and being a general nuisance to the other races who were actually doing consequential things in the world. To get the story proper I think I should have played the Space Marines, Imperial Guard or Chaos campaigns, but whatever. Orks were silly but entertaining enough. I won't play through anymore campaigns.
Like with the others in the DoW2 series, all the maps quickly start feeling the same. There's little variation (actually there was more variety in Chaos Rising) from just moving from A to B and killing everything very methodically. One annoying thing in this campaign was that a lot of times you go from A to B, then get a new objective requiring you to go back to A. Lots of backtracking. If I recall, there was one level where I had to beat a timer getting from A to B and that was intense. I think all the rest were pretty much the same. I suppose if you play more campaigns, you'd find some more interesting maps, but like I said, I won't find out.
I do miss a sort of meta system from the other two games. DoW2 had the Tyranid infestation where you had to keep planets from being overrun by Tyranid, and Chaos Rising had the corruption system where the Space Marines could become corrupted by chaos depending on their choices and if they wore corrupted wargear. That in particular was a lot of fun to try and balance corruption level while still trying to meet the requirements to wear the awesome corrupted wargear. Retribution was just completely straightforward in this regard. Nothing special, just level up and go forward in the story. No asides to think about. The extra campaigns and the multiplayer make up for it in the broad sense, but as far as my play style goes, I really wish there'd been something extra to manage in the campaign I played.
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Jul 29th, 2013 at 05:15:41 - Mark of the Ninja (PC) |
I keep reading that Mark of the Ninja is peoples' favorite stealth game ever. I wouldn't go *quite* that far, as it doesn't top the Metal Gear series, or even Assassin's Creed for its stealth bits, but it is still pretty incredible.
Premise: You're a ninja. Someone dishonored your clan. Go kill them. Find out something else is afoot. Kill the person responsible. You get tattoos that mark you as the vengeance of the clan. Turns out the tattoo ink bestows madness. Story twists. Have you gone insane or not? What's real and what isn't? Who can you trust?
There wasn't a single thing about the game that I didn't like. All the requisite stealth game stuff is there -- fun little items to use like smoke bombs, darts and plague beetles (my favorite), character has incredible agility, artwork and sound design are fantastic, very stylized. The controls are amazing. You are in total command of the ninja. Every level has tons of paths and tons of ways to reach your goal. There are a zillion different ways to kill enemies, and you can always sneak up on them some way or another, by using distractions, by coming out an air vent, assassinating them through a door, choking them with poison gas, and more. You can terrify enemies, which is fun, by stringing up dead bodies, letting one see another get killed (with the beetles or in a spike trap, for instance) and more. Terrified enemies shoot anything that moves and cower and get real jumpy.
The enemies and levels are quite challenging, but never impossible. You'll die plenty, but you'll always figure it out because the game tells you what you need to know and never feels cheap. You see the sound radius of everything that makes a sound, see all the lighted areas from headlights, light bulbs, night vision goggles, and so on so that you always know where enemies can see and hear. I would get into a nice rhythm of assassinating, sneaking, grappling, creeping, setting traps...there are a lot of little achievements and extra challenges, pick ups and points for unlocking abilities and more. New enemy types and environmental hazards continue to be introduced right up to the end which makes each level feel like something new and exciting. The puzzles are good, the challenge rooms are fun and take a little thought sometimes, and are a little easy sometimes to be called challenge rooms. When you beat it, there's a new game plus. I hope I can get someone to play this in the future so I can watch. Hell, this'll be near the top of my list of games to replay or go achievement hunting in.
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