vainglory
In my continuing efforts to catch the blog up by pinpointing highlights (and possibly low points) of the last year’s gaming experiences, today we’re going to take time to revisit our womanizing friend, Geralt the White Wolf, hero of the Witcher — a game based on a series of short stories by Polish author Andrzej Sapkowski. And how is Geralt, you ask?
Poor Isaac Clarke. He’s probably the unluckiest engineer in the universe; the guy just cannot seem to catch a break. After surviving the bloody nightmare of the first game, he escapes the planetcracker starship USG Ishimura…only to begin the second game by experiencing what may be the rudest awakening in the history of rude awakenings. From almost moment on, the game promises serious intensity — and in almost all cases delivers on that intensity, to Isaac’s detriment. Thusly thrust unceremoniously back into The Shit, Dead Space 2 follows the unfolding action…and though the gameplay is completely familiar and the action so relentless that it becomes predictable even in its unpredictability, overall it’s a smooth, highly-polished experience with significant improvements over the first title.
One of my biggest gripes with the first Dead Space was that the PC version was such a half-assed console port that I was forced to use a 360 controller to navigate most of the game with anything like success. Dead Space 2 seems to have addressed those issues, with better responsiveness and streamlined features such as the waypoint navigation system, which allows you to use the first game’s glowing line on the floor for more than just directions to your objective — it now allows you to use that same feature to direct you to the nearest store, save point, or workbench, too, saving you a lot of time that you’d have spent squinting at the holographic map in the first Dead Space, tilting it one way and then the other and trying to figure out your route. The rest of your menu interface is still excellently represented in-game by holographic panels brought up from Isaac’s suit rather than an external menu, and seems more easily navigable than it used to be for PC users.
Visually, the second game is leaps and bounds more beautiful than the first. Does it make sense to call something so incredibly gory and often grotesque ‘beautiful’? If one is willing to make an allowance for that, then I’d assert that it is, top to bottom, a beautiful game (with a male protagonist that isn’t half-bad looking, either, when the mask comes off. Finally, games industry! A main character who isn’t completely beefcake thickneck, with bigger boobs than mine! Keep up the good work). While you’ll still have a lot of dark and bloody corridors to navigate to get from one place to the next on Titan station, they’ve done a better job of making those corridors look different depending on where it is that you are, and the actual areas between these corridors all stand uniquely apart from one another, with the possible exception of several residential areas. The Unitologist Church area that you encounter early in the game gives you the first good look at how delicious the lighting, architecture, and atmosphere of the game can be.
Nowhere is this more apparent than when you’re navigating one of the game’s many set pieces, particularly those involving zero gravity and Isaac’s propulsion boots. Much of the game is conducted in claustrophobic, cluttered environments, which heightens the feeling of awe and dizzyness you’ll get when you step out of the ship and launch yourself into wide open space, employing air jets in Isaac’s boots to zip around from one zero-g objective to the next, or dodge chunks of deadly debris as you streak from one place to the other.
Another significant improvement for DS2 over the original game is the use of Isaac’s telekinesis. As a means to conserve ammunition, it works much more cleanly this time around; it’s hard to properly convey just how satisfying it is to rip the pointy appendages off of a xeno you’ve just slaughtered, from across the room, and then turn to blast it into one of its buddies, thereby pinning said buddy to the wall of the ship like the world’s ugliest butterfly. The station is littered with endless objects to pick up and fire telekinetically at the incoming hordes.
Upgrading your telekinesis and other equipment still involves the use of nodes, which can be discovered around various levels in out of the way places (my tendency to explore every inch of a map was usually rewarded with one of these) and also purchased from the vendor for 10k in credits. There’s a lot of equipment to upgrade, so spending these wisely is critical. While DS2 includes several new weapons that are fun to play with, I completed my game almost exclusively using the good ol’ plasma cutter. For backup situations I carried the javelin gun and the ripper. Of those two, the javelin gun is my preference by a wide margin. The alt-fire is hilariously good. Word on the street is that the Pulse Rifle isn’t entirely useless anymore, but I didn’t spend much time putting that theory to the test.
The action — and the encounters — are relentless, but paced well. Despite the fact that you’ll be swimming upstream in a river of bad guys for the duration of the game, you progress through areas and learn bits of the story quickly enough to generate constant interest in what lies around that next corner, and thus avoid the tedium that constant alien-battling could otherwise cause. Adding to the reprieve of changing, polished environments you’ll encounter is the smooth, atmospheric audio — especially the really excellent voicework of the game’s various NPC’s. All of them are solid, but Stross in particular stood out for me as being really fascinating to listen to.
The aggressive pacing never really breaks, and culminates in a truly epic finale with a spectacular, atmospheric finish that had me squirming in my chair, singing the praises of my headphones. I won’t get specific, but you’ll know it when you see (and hear) it.
I didn’t go into playing Dead Space 2 expecting much, after the first shoddy console port. I was more than pleasantly surprised: it’s the kind of game I might actually enjoy replaying.
Wow. Been a while since I wrote one of these, eh? About a year, in fact. A year of game releases have come and gone, and I’m the first to admit it: I’m way behind. Not just behind on writing these reviews but behind on playing the games in question; the very same things that have kept me from blogging have kept me from completing new titles, with the added difficulty of a dead PS3 to top it all off.
Still, I’ve managed to tackle a few things since then — some new, some old — and there have been some stand-out moments worthy of checking out. Somewhere near the top of the list, if not at the top of the list, is the most frightening game I have ever played: Amnesia: The Dark Descent.
For some of us — the geeks who love this kind of thing — this is definitely old information, but I’m sure there are some of you who are wondering…what is that completely bizarre ASCII image, and what does it have to do with Portal? It’s only the most awesome fan-provoking cleverness ever, I say, and something worth examining again, with Portal 2 on the not-so-very-distant horizon.
Oh hell yes.
Finally with time enough to sit down and play through the second installation of Bioware’s epic space opera, I have only recently resurfaced from the powerful vortex of time-and-attention-sucking awesomeness that is ME2, and from distant worlds full of strange beings, I bring words of optimism for the future…or something.
There aren’t many games coming out these days that make me genuinely regret reaching their conclusion and running out of things to do, but this is officially one of them. Not since Portal have I played such a well-executed game of such short length and been so sorry to see the end credits roll.
Bioshock, Two Worlds, Blue Dragon, and More. Sep. 3, 2007. You get Bioshock artwork because I like it best. Special Feature: six metric tons of spam, proof that I can find redeeming features in even the most terrible of game titles ever, and the ‘and more’ almost turns out to be a lie.
Dungeon Crawlers, Zombies, and Hobbits, Oh My. Jan 28, 2007. Finding a single picture with all three of those things represented was impossible, so I have given you a terribly photoshopped picture of a flying pig that I found with google. Enjoy.
I guess I was getting lazy, combining blurbs. This ‘covers’ Fate (the game that would go on to evolve into Torchlight), Resident Evil 4 (sort-of), and LOTRO (also sort-of). No special features here, really, except that I’m left wondering how it is that a my long history of loving survival horror petered out so rapidly. I guess I need to go back and entrench myself in the RE games that I never got around to.
Okay, so I lied. I like the pictures. Every post is getting one. And not JUST because I get to post one of my favorite abuses of photoshop ever, but I’d be lying if I said it weren’t incentive (hi Joe!).
This post was for Gears of War, and was written on Nov. 16, 2006. Special Features: my promising to write a bunch of reviews for games that I never get around to writing (some things apparently never change), and a baffling decision to use the word ‘cyberpunk’ with reference to a game that isn’t particularly cyberpunk in any way. Go figure.
They don’t all need pictures, do they? I didn’t think so. This one was called Doom 3, or: My Love Affair with Survival Horror. 25 July, 2005. Special Feature: foolhardy, youthful optimism about the Silent Hill movie. Sigh.
So, yeah. I’m still down south in Florida, and I’m still recovering from having my wisdom teeth extracted, and this means I’m basically bedlocked until I head out of here on Monday to return to the frozen north. I’ve been putting off porting some old pieces about video games that I wrote waaaay back when on myspace (not least because they’re…well, they’re kind of shit), but now I don’t have a whole hell of a lot to do, so I may as well get it over with. If nothing else, it can make me feel better about the distance I have ostensibly come in writing English sentences. Cheers to that. This first one is from the 21st of July, 2005, and concerns the pull of GTA: San Andreas from the shelves over the Hot Coffee debacle.
I want to play through Baldur’s Gate. I decided this, after beating the pants off of DA, halfway through my second playthrough. I needed a break, but I was in the mood for more RPG-oriented goodness, and since I don’t even remember Baldur’s Gate at this point I figured that would be a good place to start, as we’re still months out from the repeatedly-pushed-back Mass Effect 2 release. I was kind of excited about the prospect: the best jewel in Bioware’s gem-studded crown, according to some (I think the other half probably cast their votes for KOTOR instead), and I would get to experience it fresh. I installed 1 and 2 along with their respective expansions. I installed BGTutu, which lets you play the first game using the superior engine of the second game. I installed widescreen support for both games. I patched everything. I was ready to go.
Why is it, then, that I am having such a hard time actually playing this game?
I think the problem is manifold. The games are old. There’s still a fair amount of coverage on forums about BG2 classes and builds, but for BG1, there’s very little. The question of how BG2 handles the port of characters from BG1 isn’t answered in full detail, once you add in BGTutu and the possibility of using class kits from the second game in the first game.
The biggest problem, though, is that I think I just don’t like D&D. Probably this gets me a black mark somewhere in the gamer hall of fame, but I suppose that’s one I’m more than willing to take. D&D (at least 2ed, which is what I believe these games use) is convoluted and confusing. Who the hell came up with the idea of thac0, anyway? What a crap concept. I take issue with the ‘you can only cast a spell once a day because when you cast it your caster’s brain fizzles into a useless puddle of arcane brain damage’ mechanic, too. I get confused about proficiencies and HLAs, especially when you start tossing dual-classing or multiclassing into the mix. I get confused about xp gain rate. Why is it that some characters need 3-million xp to hit a certain level, and some only need a few hundred thousand, and then what if you multiclass them and they get weaker, but if you dual-class them you’ll spend forever trying to reactivate your first class if the second one needs more xp to get there and ghrhrhgh&*#^@%!
I am just not cut out to try and play that game. Plus? It’s intensely fucking nerdy. That’s right, I said it. I’m a gamer geek and I think it’s geeky. If I wanted to do spreadsheets I would be doing goddamn spreadsheets and probably getting paid for it.
I suspect that my issue may be completionist-paralysis, at the heart of it. All of the aforementioned crap only matters if you’re not content to pick Beefy McFighterslots, max his first three abilities at 18, take a 2h sword, and go poke holes into things until they die, on normal difficulty. I’ve never been that gamer, though. I want to have an interesting build. I like to get my jollies working out tactics and strategies…for my char, and for the party. I like the puzzle-oriented thinking involved when a baddie has certain abilities that need to be managed in order to succeed. Without that, gaming — RPG gaming — is just not the same for me. There are other games that do ‘stab it until it dies’ much better, after all. I still have Assassin’s Creed 2 sitting next to me, untapped and begging to be played. And yet, here I am, scouring the net for rewarding builds with concepts that appeal to me, starting BG1 up and dropping into the game only to have a fit of indecision about the class I picked, fret, check the internet, get overwhelmed, and quit again, thinking I’ll go do something else. I’ve done this probably ten times now. I know that I should play these two games. I know that I’ll be glad to get to the second one after the first due to the improvements in party interactions, and other things. I know. I keep trying to convince myself that I should just slog through it and not care about getting the most out of the guts under the hood, but I keep failing.
On a related note, if anybody really enjoyed these games and knew wtf they were doing building an interesting class with some fun utility, then I’m taking recommendations. BG2 class kits count.
Uhm…lol?
Apparently I ordered the premium version, or something? I sort of wish they had let me know that when I paid for the pre-order. Did I really need an 8” figurine of Ezio? He’s actually pretty detailed, though, I guess, if a bit more…poufy…than Altair.
Anywho, review incoming sometime soon.
Of the games I’ve played lately this one has sucked up the most hours of my life, and this one has been the one I’ve liked best. Why is it, then, that this is the game that I’m having the most trouble writing about? I should have reams upon reams of things to say about it, shouldn’t I?
I suppose I do at that, or could. The truth of the matter is that I don’t want to ruin the experience of playing it for anyone who hasn’t touched it yet, and that limits me to some extent as to what I’m able to write here.
It is in every way the sort of polished, quality story that one expects from a title released by Bioware, and while I’m not sure that die-hard Baldur’s Gate fans agree with the company’s decision to trumpet it as the ‘spiritual successor’ to that series, it has the same epic feeling and depth of character that I mentally associate with BG…though I haven’t played that in years (perhaps it’s time for a revisitation!). More after the jump.
If you’re one of those mysterious holdovers from my old blog, and you’ve ever read a single thing I posted there, then you already know that I’m a gigantic fan of the Diablo series of ARPGs. I love them. I love random loot. I love games that can go from brainless, gleeful wholesale destruction to hair-pulling, keyboard-snapping difficulty, dropping ever-increasingly better loot along the way to feed my desire for instant gratification. It was for similar reasons that I was able, amidst much wailing and gnashing of teeth on the part of everyone else, to find a few redeeming qualities in one of the most shoddily-crafted games in the last few years, Two Worlds. That game sold itself completely wrong. An Oblivion-killer? Really? When it failed so spectacularly at doing virtually everything that Oblivion did well? Really, it was a shame that the people who made it didn’t promote the things it did well that Oblivion hadn’t…such as letting you fuse multiple iterations of the same type of item together to improve the statistics on the piece, be it a sword or breastplate or anything in between. No more hauling backpacks full of the same kind of item back to town to sell, trying to figure out if your stack of 3 swords of THIS type is worth more or less than your stack of 2 spears of THAT type, because suddenly you’re out of inventory space. Brilliant. Combine that with several hundred different sets of armor, and I was capable of finding something to like even from that game…though I’ll be the first to tell you I didn’t finish it. (The rest of it was dross. Let’s not sugar-coat things beyond all reason.)
It should come as no surprise, then, that I like Torchlight, as the CEO of Runic Games was a co-creator of Diablo, and its President worked on the little unknown title I reviewed a few years ago called Fate.
That’s just it though…I only like it. It’s…okay. I wanted to love it, and maybe it just needs time to grow on me, but there are a few reasons that this game probably isn’t going to satisfy me the way Diablo did. See why after the jump.
