So, I've been hearing rave reviews for this game, since it came out. I finally got it thanks to a friend, as a Christmas gift. I've been playing it on PC. And... Well, let's get on to the review.
First, I have to say. The game started out feeling brilliant - Each character plays different and brings something different to the team, and the physics seem tight. Then you realize that the Knight, the character meant to be used in combat, is useless and outshined by the thief entirely when it comes to combat. And then that the physics isn't nearly as tight as they should be. Wait until you hit something based on rotation and you'll see proof of that one. Or have your boxes start to fall through the floor. Or... And so on. The game oscillates between making you feel brilliant by solving a puzzle, feeling frustrated by bad camera work or the physics engine working in unexpected ways (the game is *horrible* at weight), and not knowing how to feel, as you solve something by things breaking in the right way, at the right time. The clever moments are worth it, though.
Each character gets new abilities as you go along - The thief just gets better at slaughtering things, the Knight, with his last upgrade, gets something useful (a very upgraded weapon), and the Wizard gets physics toys. So, the roles go to Thief being mobile, Wizard being physics breaker/puzzle solver, and Knight is meat shield.
The game gets... tedious and annoying, more than anything else. The enemies come in larger waves and are harder to kill, but are never really a threat. that, and there's roughly 5 enemies, if I'm being generous. Skeletons, giant skeleton, giant ogre... thing, bats, and spiders. Combat just got kinda boring. The enemies are just thrown at you as fodder, instead of being used as strategic obstacles.
Also, the final level is horribly designed, and made of frustration, which could have been easily alleviated without even making it easier - It has a classic case of forcing you to watch the level's intro every time you fail. But, it's ... badly done, in my opinion, besides that, for reasons I'd rather not get into because of spoilers.
And a final note: The music in this game was fairly outstandingly boring. It was boring ambient music at its worst. It barely seemed to follow the theme of the levels, and, as a note of how bad it could be: The music in the background of the final level, during the climax, was ... something I'd expect to hear in the background of a medieval ball scene, in a movie. Uhm... Okay? That's just bad.
Evaluated without regard to amount of time and fun for the money spent, this game is fairly mediocre. Not horrible, but not amazing, either. Given how cheap it is, though, that's a few bonus points. Wait for it to be on sale on Steam for $5 and its definitely worth it, but be prepared for frustration.
Saturday, February 13, 2010
Tuesday, February 09, 2010
Half Minute Hero
Occasionally, I play a game that turns a genre on its head and makes me think about things in a totally new way. Half Minute Hero is one of those games.
The basic premise of this game is that you have to save the world in 30 seconds. And then, again. Many, many times. In the main game mode, Hero 30, there are 51 levels. In each one, you have to kill an Evil Lord who is casting a spell to end the world. You have, in each level, 30 seconds before the spell goes off, and game over. And yet, each one contains... most of the elements of a standard JRPG. Dialogue, combat, equipment, items, inns, treasure, and, in some, even gaining party members. So, how the hell does that work?! Well, first, on normal, time is stopped in towns, letting you have a bit of breathing time to buy items, equipment, and get quest hooks. Yep, quest hooks. Secondly, you can actually rewind time back to 30 seconds left, IF you have the money. Yeah, you're working with the Goddess of Time to save the world. But, she's greedy, so you have to pay up. Most levels are well designed enough such that going for the strictest time possible is a challenge, rather than what's expected of the average player, though the levels are still tough.
Finally, the coolest thing, I thought, about Hero 30 was that many of the levels had multiple ways to finish them, some even leading to branching level paths. In some ways, this is the least linear JRPG I've ever played. Some levels are beatable in clever ways and also grindy ways, etc. The game warns you about branching paths, and tends to indicate different ways of doing things via the titles you can earn for each map.
Then, there are 3 other modes that have different mechanics - Princess 30, which is SHMUPlike, Evil Lord 30, which is RTSlike, and Knight 30, which is actionlike. Each one is 30 levels, where you have a 30 second time limit, though, for Knight 30, you're fighting *for* the time to run out. Each level is short, sweet, and challenging. And, as in Hero 30, there are ways to give yourself a bit more time.
Finally, the game ends with 2 more Hero modes. Hero 300 and Hero 3. The former is the story's epic climax, the latter is a balls hard challenge where you have, well, what it says on the tin... 3 seconds before the world ends. That was a fun mode ... in both a sarcastic, dear god, why and in a ... wow, that was fun to work out sort of way. The game, via takikng out the random, makes each level a bit of a puzzle, though one that involves reflexes to do well. An RPG that requires reflexes is an amusing thing, too.
It's an amazingly well done deconstruction of RPGs, and I loved it.
The basic premise of this game is that you have to save the world in 30 seconds. And then, again. Many, many times. In the main game mode, Hero 30, there are 51 levels. In each one, you have to kill an Evil Lord who is casting a spell to end the world. You have, in each level, 30 seconds before the spell goes off, and game over. And yet, each one contains... most of the elements of a standard JRPG. Dialogue, combat, equipment, items, inns, treasure, and, in some, even gaining party members. So, how the hell does that work?! Well, first, on normal, time is stopped in towns, letting you have a bit of breathing time to buy items, equipment, and get quest hooks. Yep, quest hooks. Secondly, you can actually rewind time back to 30 seconds left, IF you have the money. Yeah, you're working with the Goddess of Time to save the world. But, she's greedy, so you have to pay up. Most levels are well designed enough such that going for the strictest time possible is a challenge, rather than what's expected of the average player, though the levels are still tough.
Finally, the coolest thing, I thought, about Hero 30 was that many of the levels had multiple ways to finish them, some even leading to branching level paths. In some ways, this is the least linear JRPG I've ever played. Some levels are beatable in clever ways and also grindy ways, etc. The game warns you about branching paths, and tends to indicate different ways of doing things via the titles you can earn for each map.
Then, there are 3 other modes that have different mechanics - Princess 30, which is SHMUPlike, Evil Lord 30, which is RTSlike, and Knight 30, which is actionlike. Each one is 30 levels, where you have a 30 second time limit, though, for Knight 30, you're fighting *for* the time to run out. Each level is short, sweet, and challenging. And, as in Hero 30, there are ways to give yourself a bit more time.
Finally, the game ends with 2 more Hero modes. Hero 300 and Hero 3. The former is the story's epic climax, the latter is a balls hard challenge where you have, well, what it says on the tin... 3 seconds before the world ends. That was a fun mode ... in both a sarcastic, dear god, why and in a ... wow, that was fun to work out sort of way. The game, via takikng out the random, makes each level a bit of a puzzle, though one that involves reflexes to do well. An RPG that requires reflexes is an amusing thing, too.
It's an amazingly well done deconstruction of RPGs, and I loved it.
Monday, February 08, 2010
Dissida: Final Fantasy
Or, the worst designed game that I put ~80 hours in.
See, I love competitive games. I've had so much fun going 0-30 in a fighting game, because it's going up against another person, not an AI. I love that. I know people that play Dissidia, and I wanted to play against them.
Then... I found out just how much effort it took to actually max characters out in Dissidia, to be able to play it against other people. At 80 hours in, I didn't have a character that was at maxed out strength. Or even near to.
Now, let me digress. There's a large amount of customization available in this game. Abilities are your attacks, that you can choose from and set the activation input for, based on what direction you're holding, relative to your opponent. Bravery attacks lower your enemy's bravery and raise yours, and are triggered by square. Bravery is the amount of damage you do on a successful HP attack, which are mapped to circle. Each character has a varied number of these. Abilities also include increasing your speed, jump height, number of jumps, and ways to conditionally increase how often you critical hit (to deal more brave damage).
There are 4 equipment slots, which each character able to equip a subset of each one, which... I dislike as an idea, as it cuts options to characters in a fairly arbitrary manner.
Accessories increase your damage or defense, how long you stay in EX Mode, how quickly you can get into EX Mode, etc. and there are 10 accessory slots... once you earn up to that number, via grindy methods.
EX Mode being this game's version of supers. You build up a meter, via picking up EX Core that randomly spawn and EX Force balls that get generated by clashes between the fighters. Once you get full bar, you can activate EX Mode, which typically makes your character's attacks better, and allows you to deal more damage on your HP attacks.
Strength, for this, includes fairly optimal accessories and equips. This game is, to put it nicely, FUCKING STUPIDLY grindy. I just got tired of it. Any game that requires you to play it that long to get to the point where you can start playing against other people is just *dumb*. Levels in a fighting game aren't an inherently bad idea and neither is customization, via like how accessories and equipment and the abilities in this game work. Hell, I think they're amazing ideas, if not incredibly hard to balance. However, the equipment in this game isn't typically a customization vector - It's the standard Final Fantasy obsession with numbers. All the majority of the equipment does is raise your stats. Now that is an inherently bad idea in a fighting game. A few do give you abilities, however, but in some cases, the best choice is static to each character... taking away customization. Though, it does help make the system a bit more transparent, the implementation here is just a barrier to entrance.
Same, really, are accessories. There are tiers of accessories, with the best one requiring hours of grinding to get. Sigh.
Now, to get to a customization vector that's really just... bad. Summons! They're the equivalent of a bad SNK boss, an ability to just destroy your opponent or boost you, through no fault of theirs or no skill on your part
Now, as another design thing, EX Mode entrance automatically breaks you out of a combo you're in, and puts your opponent into stun. This... is, in my opinion, dumb. It means that, if you have a full bar, you can break out almost any attack that's close range and immediately hit with an HP attack. There's changing things up due to your opponent having stock, and then there's making it impossible to attack you. It allows you to punish perfectly acceptable play. And, if this is how the person wants to use EX Mode, it would be next to impossible to bait it out of a smart player. Gah.
Now, to be fair - The game does do a lot of things I really liked. The game is mostly very fun. The characters are very different playing from each other, giving each matchup a fairly different feel to it, and there's a large cast of characters, 22, with no clones. For a fighting game, that's very impressive. The customization is a great idea, in theory. As a single player experience, it's fun until you, inevitably, get really bored with it, as there's an insane amount of content density. Getting everything would take, probably, another 100 hours on top of my play time, to say nothing about maxing out each character. So, fun single player in a fighting game is a pretty insane thing. The AI, though, I do have to say... it's fairly obvious that they cheese you by reacting to your button presses, to do things that no human could ever do. They're stupid, in their own time, though, as well. I mean, I did put 80 hours into the game, and they were fun, if not... stale, towards the end.
Competitively... if you can find people willing to fight on terms that are fair to everyone (so, you know, not via Adhoc online play), then it could be fun. But, really, only under that idea. And then, that takes some of the fun out of the game, as it destroys customization aspects. So... blech.
So, the game was designed to be amazingly grindy. For a fighting game, that's just a bad idea. I liked some of where Square was going with this, but overall, bad design decisions just made me... stop. Abruptly and suddenly. My annoyance just went over the top, in the end.
See, I love competitive games. I've had so much fun going 0-30 in a fighting game, because it's going up against another person, not an AI. I love that. I know people that play Dissidia, and I wanted to play against them.
Then... I found out just how much effort it took to actually max characters out in Dissidia, to be able to play it against other people. At 80 hours in, I didn't have a character that was at maxed out strength. Or even near to.
Now, let me digress. There's a large amount of customization available in this game. Abilities are your attacks, that you can choose from and set the activation input for, based on what direction you're holding, relative to your opponent. Bravery attacks lower your enemy's bravery and raise yours, and are triggered by square. Bravery is the amount of damage you do on a successful HP attack, which are mapped to circle. Each character has a varied number of these. Abilities also include increasing your speed, jump height, number of jumps, and ways to conditionally increase how often you critical hit (to deal more brave damage).
There are 4 equipment slots, which each character able to equip a subset of each one, which... I dislike as an idea, as it cuts options to characters in a fairly arbitrary manner.
Accessories increase your damage or defense, how long you stay in EX Mode, how quickly you can get into EX Mode, etc. and there are 10 accessory slots... once you earn up to that number, via grindy methods.
EX Mode being this game's version of supers. You build up a meter, via picking up EX Core that randomly spawn and EX Force balls that get generated by clashes between the fighters. Once you get full bar, you can activate EX Mode, which typically makes your character's attacks better, and allows you to deal more damage on your HP attacks.
Strength, for this, includes fairly optimal accessories and equips. This game is, to put it nicely, FUCKING STUPIDLY grindy. I just got tired of it. Any game that requires you to play it that long to get to the point where you can start playing against other people is just *dumb*. Levels in a fighting game aren't an inherently bad idea and neither is customization, via like how accessories and equipment and the abilities in this game work. Hell, I think they're amazing ideas, if not incredibly hard to balance. However, the equipment in this game isn't typically a customization vector - It's the standard Final Fantasy obsession with numbers. All the majority of the equipment does is raise your stats. Now that is an inherently bad idea in a fighting game. A few do give you abilities, however, but in some cases, the best choice is static to each character... taking away customization. Though, it does help make the system a bit more transparent, the implementation here is just a barrier to entrance.
Same, really, are accessories. There are tiers of accessories, with the best one requiring hours of grinding to get. Sigh.
Now, to get to a customization vector that's really just... bad. Summons! They're the equivalent of a bad SNK boss, an ability to just destroy your opponent or boost you, through no fault of theirs or no skill on your part
Now, as another design thing, EX Mode entrance automatically breaks you out of a combo you're in, and puts your opponent into stun. This... is, in my opinion, dumb. It means that, if you have a full bar, you can break out almost any attack that's close range and immediately hit with an HP attack. There's changing things up due to your opponent having stock, and then there's making it impossible to attack you. It allows you to punish perfectly acceptable play. And, if this is how the person wants to use EX Mode, it would be next to impossible to bait it out of a smart player. Gah.
Now, to be fair - The game does do a lot of things I really liked. The game is mostly very fun. The characters are very different playing from each other, giving each matchup a fairly different feel to it, and there's a large cast of characters, 22, with no clones. For a fighting game, that's very impressive. The customization is a great idea, in theory. As a single player experience, it's fun until you, inevitably, get really bored with it, as there's an insane amount of content density. Getting everything would take, probably, another 100 hours on top of my play time, to say nothing about maxing out each character. So, fun single player in a fighting game is a pretty insane thing. The AI, though, I do have to say... it's fairly obvious that they cheese you by reacting to your button presses, to do things that no human could ever do. They're stupid, in their own time, though, as well. I mean, I did put 80 hours into the game, and they were fun, if not... stale, towards the end.
Competitively... if you can find people willing to fight on terms that are fair to everyone (so, you know, not via Adhoc online play), then it could be fun. But, really, only under that idea. And then, that takes some of the fun out of the game, as it destroys customization aspects. So... blech.
So, the game was designed to be amazingly grindy. For a fighting game, that's just a bad idea. I liked some of where Square was going with this, but overall, bad design decisions just made me... stop. Abruptly and suddenly. My annoyance just went over the top, in the end.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)