Friday, October 26, 2012
Honorable Discharge: Dishonored (360)
I didn’t know if I liked Dishonored until the last third of the game. Leveraging the Unreal Engine, and set to the default brightness settings as directed in the initial startup, Dishonored is a washed-out low resolution mess. Individual pixels can be discerned within groups of shaded art making up a wall in a mess of greys and browns. I dropped the brightness down a few notches to create deep black shadows, hiding the transitional colors.
The art style is distinctive and inspired, but initial off-pointing. Thick angular extremities taper towards the body, with odd features over-emphasized as they jut from a character’s head. Turn of the century architecture of brick and glass reaches for the gloomy sky as steampunk technology inspired by a world run on whale oil provides energy weapons and barriers. A terrible plague burdens the city/state of Dunwall, leaving the poor to be dumped into quarantine zones as they transform into walking shuddering wretches that vomit black clouds on the unwary.
Playing as Corvo, the titular bodyguard framed for the death of the body he was guarding, Dishonored initially guides the player through a linear path of escape. Only as Corvo mutely joins a merry band of insurgents within a hub level of sorts does the game open up. Environments are reused to good effect though the scale of the game seems small until the final map, a sprawling island fortress. Until that point, four or five of the base levels are visited at least twice, allowing Corvo to stretch any newly acquired abilities gather along the way.
Blink is a fundamental necessity in Dishonored and as a mechanism fixes the single largest issue facing first-person platforming, traversal. Functioning as a nearly instantaneous teleport, Blink allows Corvo to zoom from perch to perch, ascending or descending the environment at will. Only the highest heights are unreachable, though the indicator of what is scalable can often be confusing. Other abilities include stopping time and possessing animals and people, and all of them can be leveled by gather charms and runes within the environments. More a scavenger hunt than the chore many games make of collectibles, it offers opportunity for multiple play-throughs, as does upgradable equipment. Upgrade paths taken can determine possible strategies, but this concept is not communicated well by the game. Only by finishing it does one fully realize the depth of the paths not taken.
What is unfortunate about Dishonored is the empty shell of a narrative that is offered. Borrowing from Bioshock 2, a surrogate daughter learns from how Corvo conducts himself in the world. Play as a violent murderer, killing everything in sight and the girl becomes ruthless in her world view. Practice mercy and stealth, she become benevolent. An excellent mechanic is robbed entirely of meaning as there is no emotional connection to the girl or to any character in the game. Drowning in bad writing delivered in a vacuum by bored or confused celebrity voices, Dishonored is done a disservice, rendering the game an exercise in strategy rather than an experience to become immersed in.
Heady with upgraded powers I raced through the final moments of the game, skipping an environment entirely and accidentally triggering a scripted event. I chased the event and when presented with an ultimatum I simply executed a multi-power combo that resulted in the enemy killing himself literally in a blink. By this point the game I was so highly leveled the final encounter was a trifle, and that is a shame.
Dishonored is a fine successor to Thief and Deus Ex, offering player agency, and open environmental puzzles but is ultimately hollow.
Thursday, October 11, 2012
You say you want a revolution: Darksiders & Darksiders 2 (360)
When I last spoke of Darksiders, I was preparing myself to re-engage with this enormous game, starting anew on the 360 after abandoning the PS3 to a horrible spider-boss. A horrible, horrible spider-boss.
I had forgotten how far I had made it into the game when I rounded to that point again a full 20 hours into a 35 hour game. With a lowered difficulty and a deeper understanding of the game’s mechanics (and a youtube video or two) as well as some minor experience with Dark Souls, recognizing and avoiding the boss patterns was easier this time around, but still frustrating.
Darksiders is very much a collage of gaming’s greatest hits, wrapped in comic book inspired art and story. War, one of the four Horsemen, is tricked into a battle that devastates Earth and destroys humanity, despite the Seventh Seal remaining unbroken. Heaven and Hell use the ruined planet as a battleground as War is resurrected and sent, much-diminished, to set things right. A ghastly specter is chained to his wrist functioning as a guide through the game and a narrative driver, pushing War through the story.
Essentially nothing more than a series of fetch quests, Darksiders embraces whole-heartedly it’s homage of Zelda/Castlevania style RPG’s stitched to God of War style combat. As abilities unlock, previous areas become more accessible, allowing for more abilities to unlock. Homage becomes flat-out theft when blue-orange portals appear in the late game, allowing War to traverse increasing complex puzzles without incorporating Portal’s more sophisticated mechanics. Like most of the lifts in the game, the idea is sound, the implementation is unpolished.
Despite its Frankenstein nature, Darksiders results in far more than the sum of its parts. The combat is endlessly entertaining, as are the increasing abilities including a hookshot. The story is compelling enough to recommend finishing the game and while some of the boss fights are brutally pointless the final battle is extremely satisfying, especially as it leads to an epic ending promising so much more to come…
…a promise Darksiders II fails to address much less keep.
Told concurrently with Darksiders, DII feels like do-over, an attempt to make the game originally planned but not built. The narrative is empty as little is done to tie the two games together other than the story’s initial spark: Death seeks to clear War of blame in the destruction as earth.
Playing the games back to back was a revelatory and unsettling experience. Without the separation of time between them, the differences are stark. Darksiders had an overly complex and plodding menu system, while the menus in D II are direct and functional, without any style. This clarity is much needed, as D II is literally an RPG, combining the GoW combat with Prince of Persia traversal and Diablo style damage and loot.
Unlike the first game, weapons are named and given stats, and leveling occurs both at the character and the weapon level. Cursed weapons are rare, and can be fed other weapons to level them further. In an embarrassment of riches, the economy of the game is insanely generous, and I finished with nearly $500,000 unused. Leveling weapons becomes unnecessary as there is always a better weapon not far away.
Floating hit points flare off everything, muddling the screen as abilities animations pop off filling the world with sparkly effects. There were moments where literally nothing was visible but smears of color and numbers in group or boss battles.
Fetch quests dominate the game, and Death is virtually impotent against the forces of these worlds, to the point that the character himself voices his annoyance with being lead around by the nose.
Graphically denser, D II improves on the art style with far more impressive and expressive animations and a far more vibrant color palette. Each world is massive and MMO like, but eventually funnels down into dark dungeons and linear paths. Abilities are unlocked, but back-tracking is far less encouraged than in Darksiders, including a throw-back level on a destroyed earth. Improvements are far more apparent in this familiar backdrop as this earth is far denser with detail, as a back-drop to a Gears of War third person shooter inspired section.
Darksiders II is iteration not evolution of the series, essentially a retelling or addendum to the original game. With an ending that is entirely meaningless to the larger story and in fact negates itself instantly, it feels like a side-step in preparation for a much larger experience. Unfortunately with low sales to date, that experience may never come.
I had forgotten how far I had made it into the game when I rounded to that point again a full 20 hours into a 35 hour game. With a lowered difficulty and a deeper understanding of the game’s mechanics (and a youtube video or two) as well as some minor experience with Dark Souls, recognizing and avoiding the boss patterns was easier this time around, but still frustrating.
Darksiders is very much a collage of gaming’s greatest hits, wrapped in comic book inspired art and story. War, one of the four Horsemen, is tricked into a battle that devastates Earth and destroys humanity, despite the Seventh Seal remaining unbroken. Heaven and Hell use the ruined planet as a battleground as War is resurrected and sent, much-diminished, to set things right. A ghastly specter is chained to his wrist functioning as a guide through the game and a narrative driver, pushing War through the story.
Essentially nothing more than a series of fetch quests, Darksiders embraces whole-heartedly it’s homage of Zelda/Castlevania style RPG’s stitched to God of War style combat. As abilities unlock, previous areas become more accessible, allowing for more abilities to unlock. Homage becomes flat-out theft when blue-orange portals appear in the late game, allowing War to traverse increasing complex puzzles without incorporating Portal’s more sophisticated mechanics. Like most of the lifts in the game, the idea is sound, the implementation is unpolished.
Despite its Frankenstein nature, Darksiders results in far more than the sum of its parts. The combat is endlessly entertaining, as are the increasing abilities including a hookshot. The story is compelling enough to recommend finishing the game and while some of the boss fights are brutally pointless the final battle is extremely satisfying, especially as it leads to an epic ending promising so much more to come…
…a promise Darksiders II fails to address much less keep.
Told concurrently with Darksiders, DII feels like do-over, an attempt to make the game originally planned but not built. The narrative is empty as little is done to tie the two games together other than the story’s initial spark: Death seeks to clear War of blame in the destruction as earth.
Playing the games back to back was a revelatory and unsettling experience. Without the separation of time between them, the differences are stark. Darksiders had an overly complex and plodding menu system, while the menus in D II are direct and functional, without any style. This clarity is much needed, as D II is literally an RPG, combining the GoW combat with Prince of Persia traversal and Diablo style damage and loot.
Unlike the first game, weapons are named and given stats, and leveling occurs both at the character and the weapon level. Cursed weapons are rare, and can be fed other weapons to level them further. In an embarrassment of riches, the economy of the game is insanely generous, and I finished with nearly $500,000 unused. Leveling weapons becomes unnecessary as there is always a better weapon not far away.
Floating hit points flare off everything, muddling the screen as abilities animations pop off filling the world with sparkly effects. There were moments where literally nothing was visible but smears of color and numbers in group or boss battles.
Fetch quests dominate the game, and Death is virtually impotent against the forces of these worlds, to the point that the character himself voices his annoyance with being lead around by the nose.
Graphically denser, D II improves on the art style with far more impressive and expressive animations and a far more vibrant color palette. Each world is massive and MMO like, but eventually funnels down into dark dungeons and linear paths. Abilities are unlocked, but back-tracking is far less encouraged than in Darksiders, including a throw-back level on a destroyed earth. Improvements are far more apparent in this familiar backdrop as this earth is far denser with detail, as a back-drop to a Gears of War third person shooter inspired section.
Darksiders II is iteration not evolution of the series, essentially a retelling or addendum to the original game. With an ending that is entirely meaningless to the larger story and in fact negates itself instantly, it feels like a side-step in preparation for a much larger experience. Unfortunately with low sales to date, that experience may never come.
Monday, October 1, 2012
A Tale of Two Douches: Infamous 2 and Prototype 2 (PS3 & 360)
I never finished Prototype 2. In fact, I only got about 4 hours into it before I quietly but firmly said “Enough.” and even more firmly stood and strode not walked to the xbox, whilst commanding it to eject the disc like a pile of Bieber vomit.
I never finished Infamous The First either but I did finish Protoype the prototypical Prototype game AND I finished Infamous 2:More Infamous’r, so it all evens out.
Prototype 2 introduces Heller, a man give’n’er’ Hell so to speak. Apparently Alex Mercer, the sentient virus-that-walks-like-douche from the prototype Prototype caused the death of Heller’s wife and child. Heller sets out for revenge in an Uncharted inspired entirely linear sequence, only to find that he, not unlike every other soldier in the world, does not have enough bang-bang to annoy much less kill Mercer. So Mercer does what every creature annoyed by a gnat does: he gives Heller super powers. The same powers Mercer himself has, only more particley and prettified if you can call stringing the guts of a severed corpse between two buildings pretty.
Prototype the Second suffers from two major issues: Heller is an unrelenting stereotypical angry black man that fails to maintain the slight empathy generated by the setup and his gameplay centers entirely around doing horrible things to innocent people. As much as a cipher as Alex Mercer is there is no question he is not a GOOD DUDE. Heller is presented as a man seeking revenge for the death of his innocent family by killing lots of innocent families which is oxymoronic at best.
The greater crime is that P2:Judgement Day is a carbon copy of P1 with a shiny coat of paint. The UI is still brutally complex, though simplified from the first, and the jank is untouched but looks better. Players still have the ability to run straight up a building until something juts out from the building to cause them do a mid-air backflip and try to run up the building again. Lock-on is still mired with a hopeless camera that sways like a drunken cheerleader who strips on weekends on a party cruise during a tsunami. Everything troublesome and wrong about the first attempt is presented in its unvarnished glory, only with colors outside of red, pink and grey.
Infamous 2:The Messenger is a different shade of douche entirely. Cole the literal Messenger boy returns from the first game in time to see the city he and you worked so hard to save burn to the ground under the fiery fingers of The Beast. Weakened, he takes a slow boat, literally, to a post-Katrina New Orleans knock-off. Gifted with a new voice and some markedly better writing, Cole awakens into a whole new world, where super-powers are a new religion and bad people abuse that religion.
Unlike Prototype 2, Infamous 2 resolves many of the mechanical issues that plagued the first game as well as resolved many of the character issues that plagued the first game. Zeke, the annoying sidekick from the original is tolerably less annoying and there are even love interests that play into Cole’s gained (in)famy towards the end.
Cole still remains a gruff snarky douche, less a man chasing his destiny than a dog chasing its tail. Events happen around him as he follows endless radio directions guiding him through the ostensibly open world but hopelessly linear story. Both franchises draw from the strengths of each other, with Prototype 2 creating a populated and lived in New York under military quarantine, while Infamous 2 has a broader leveling system and some borrowed EFX from other Sony developers.
Heller’s master class in douche kept me from playing more than a couple hours of Prototype. Cole’s understated douche wasn’t enough to keep me from finishing Infamous 2.
Your taste for douche may vary.
I never finished Infamous The First either but I did finish Protoype the prototypical Prototype game AND I finished Infamous 2:More Infamous’r, so it all evens out.
Prototype 2 introduces Heller, a man give’n’er’ Hell so to speak. Apparently Alex Mercer, the sentient virus-that-walks-like-douche from the prototype Prototype caused the death of Heller’s wife and child. Heller sets out for revenge in an Uncharted inspired entirely linear sequence, only to find that he, not unlike every other soldier in the world, does not have enough bang-bang to annoy much less kill Mercer. So Mercer does what every creature annoyed by a gnat does: he gives Heller super powers. The same powers Mercer himself has, only more particley and prettified if you can call stringing the guts of a severed corpse between two buildings pretty.
Prototype the Second suffers from two major issues: Heller is an unrelenting stereotypical angry black man that fails to maintain the slight empathy generated by the setup and his gameplay centers entirely around doing horrible things to innocent people. As much as a cipher as Alex Mercer is there is no question he is not a GOOD DUDE. Heller is presented as a man seeking revenge for the death of his innocent family by killing lots of innocent families which is oxymoronic at best.
The greater crime is that P2:Judgement Day is a carbon copy of P1 with a shiny coat of paint. The UI is still brutally complex, though simplified from the first, and the jank is untouched but looks better. Players still have the ability to run straight up a building until something juts out from the building to cause them do a mid-air backflip and try to run up the building again. Lock-on is still mired with a hopeless camera that sways like a drunken cheerleader who strips on weekends on a party cruise during a tsunami. Everything troublesome and wrong about the first attempt is presented in its unvarnished glory, only with colors outside of red, pink and grey.
Infamous 2:The Messenger is a different shade of douche entirely. Cole the literal Messenger boy returns from the first game in time to see the city he and you worked so hard to save burn to the ground under the fiery fingers of The Beast. Weakened, he takes a slow boat, literally, to a post-Katrina New Orleans knock-off. Gifted with a new voice and some markedly better writing, Cole awakens into a whole new world, where super-powers are a new religion and bad people abuse that religion.
Unlike Prototype 2, Infamous 2 resolves many of the mechanical issues that plagued the first game as well as resolved many of the character issues that plagued the first game. Zeke, the annoying sidekick from the original is tolerably less annoying and there are even love interests that play into Cole’s gained (in)famy towards the end.
Cole still remains a gruff snarky douche, less a man chasing his destiny than a dog chasing its tail. Events happen around him as he follows endless radio directions guiding him through the ostensibly open world but hopelessly linear story. Both franchises draw from the strengths of each other, with Prototype 2 creating a populated and lived in New York under military quarantine, while Infamous 2 has a broader leveling system and some borrowed EFX from other Sony developers.
Heller’s master class in douche kept me from playing more than a couple hours of Prototype. Cole’s understated douche wasn’t enough to keep me from finishing Infamous 2.
Your taste for douche may vary.
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