This is a sort of a companion piece to the "Games I've Beaten" list, to create the full picture of what I've played this year. I share Vinny's unfortunate condition of needing to 100% each game I start, which usually means I'll stick with an otherwise sub-par game just to see it through to the end (hence the many clunkers on the "Games I've Beaten" list). Of course, there are games that are either so terrible, so long or so not my bag that I can't even bring myself to play them beyond a certain point. This is their story.
This is clearly Squeenix's attempt to get in the nostalgia-based brawler market that Nintendo have managed to corner with their Smash Bros franchise. While it doesn't spare on the fanservice, with full micromanagement of equipment, signature moves and bonus material in an RPG-esque XP system, the actual combat is so dull and unappealing it kind of renders the whole ordeal moot. It's like those Nickelodeon Guts! challenges where they rummaged around a big vat of slime for the occasional shiny object.
A little unfair, since I decided halfway through that I wasn't really into another 100+ hour dungeon-crawler. Even so, it's a little insipid. I wasn't really familiar with the Sacred franchise, but it always strikes me as a little trite when you add sci-fi elements like cyborgs and laser guns to fantasy RPG settings. It feels like you're disappointing two entire nerd factions at once.
Didn't have anything to offer in the 5 hours or so I played it. Just generic-as-hell turn-based RPGing, but with horrible design decisions like degradable weapons and consecutive maze-based dungeons. It really felt like a 20 year old game. I don't object to mazes so much, since the linear approach is often even less interesting, but having a constant stream of them just starts to grate after a while. Best to have a mix, or a better map system, or to just blow your entire puzzle/maze dungeon wad on one huge bonus dungeon at the end.
The issue with older games is if they had nothing original to offer, or if that originality did not remain intact over the years, they've been done better since. This isn't always true of course: The Metroidvania system is always being exploited yet hasn't really been bettered since Super Metroid and Symphony of the Night. Usually though, the persistent evolution of games - and I mean design-wise, not just graphical superficiality - renders many older games almost unbearable to play, like using a 28.8k dial-up connection in the world of super-fast broadband speeds. Breath of Fire is unfortunately no exception, having several annoying features that would be removed from future sequels for convenience's sake or because they were unpopular with the fans. It's sad that either I or the world of gaming has outgrown BoF's original entry (I'd like to think I was a fan of this series, having beaten 3 and 5), but sometimes it's best to look forward rather than back, especially when games are constantly improving.
Though to counter the point made in the previous blurb, often games take a giant step backwards when attempting to improve on a successful franchise. The Pro Skater series, the origin point for many of today's extreme sports games, were often frustrating but ultimately fast-paced, arcade-styled skateboarders with oodles of charm and a knack for coaxing extra game time out of you by setting up opportunities for fantastic chains of tricks, or the thrill of discovering and landing a new "gap" in the varied and imaginative worlds that comprised the game. Skate 2 feels so much like a giant step backwards, with one rather dull sandbox city and the abilities of your chosen skater regressing to an unfortunately "realistic" degree - they rarely "snap" to verts and rails and seem to fall over at the slightest provocation. Moves are no longer set to specific buttons, which allowed your Pro Skater chap to easily switch between grabs, flips and manuals on the fly, now resorting to finnicky and imprecise snaps of the R-stick, making it close to impossible to recreate the mindblowing chains of tricks that were the norm in the Pro Skater games. Add to that a difficulty curve that goes straight from simple "jump over three staircases with flip tricks" to a horrible assault course of verts and pipes that you need to score some impossibly high number of flawless tricks on to beat a local pro's score and the game just becomes a nightmare to play. I hadn't played a new skateboard game since THPS4, but if this is what they're all like these days I don't think I'll bother. I probably still have that copy of THPS4 around, actually...
After a few neat sequences, the game kind of opened up into a linear crawl where you slowly meander from one area to the next, all the while opening chests and defeating monsters which would all be back the moment you left (and occasionally while you were still there). There was a whole pervasive atmosphere of pointlessness, and I got so bored from running on the spot I couldn't even be bothered to see the slight story through to its end. I bet it was thrilling though!
Nothing against the game, it just keeps going and going and it's starting to lose any charm or novel appeal it once had. Sort of similar to my experience with Scribblenauts, though that had the added detriment of each mission eventually becoming an identical "get item A to location B" set-up, which quickly got repetitive and tiresome. This game is the only item on this list that I might eventually beat, should I have 300 hours spare to tell a tiny blond hero, a tiny beautiful undead guy and a tiny bossy princess how to save the world a bajillion times over.
Nothing against this game either, I was just playing it up until New Year's hit. It's not something I can blitz all the way to end in one go. My thumbs would never forgive me. Maybe it'll be my first "beaten" game of 2011 (though I doubt it). 1 Comments
This is essentially what Nier is like, narratively:
"I have to save my daughter or she's going to die! Of a disease/curse! I'm not sure which yet!" (sad violin) (moments later) "Dude, isn't it weird how fetch quests are everywhere? Especially early on?" "I know rite?" (moments later) "MY WHOLE FAMILY WAS KILL BY DEMONS. AVENGE THEM WHILE I KILL MYSELF." (sad violin) (moments later) "Hey, that kid gave us the same sword as a reward again." "Oh you did not just break the 4th wall about this second playthrough you rapscallion hahaha!" (moments later) [Harrowing text description of little boy dying in a hospital as part of a puzzle] (moments later) "Hey man, text adventures are old and kind of suck, am I right?" "Yep." (moments later) [Equally harrowing account of Kaine getting killed by a giant monster and then getting possessed by someone who can only be kindly referred to as a fucking psychopath] (moments later) "Hey, the chick in the gothic lolita set-up is swearing again." "She's such a card, ho ho."
And it just goes on like that. I played Drakengard and was thoroughly uneasy throughout, so either Cavia are just geniuses at how to make games for serial killers to enjoy, or they're fucking around with my head for no discernible reason. If anything, Nier is making fun of the heaps of melodrama proffered by Drakengard's story about love, loss and omnivorous giant demon babies, and then in the next breath following its example with some of the darkest and weirdest storytelling told straight that I've seen this side of a survival horror.
Basically, if you like guilt/sadness porn (and provided Lost Odyssey isn't available), you'd do well to get Nier. And make sure you stick around for the second playthrough, where you find out all the bosses you're fated to murder horribly all have beautiful, touching backstories that rub in how much more lovable and peaceful they are compared to the main characters. Because Cavia hates you.
If anyone cares (no-one [hell, I shouldn't]), the games I got are over on Backloggery. I got the same name over there so use your internets, people.
This is largely due to the fact that I don't feel like transferring the 1000+ names over to this here website. Besides, the fine owners of this internet site needs that room to point out whenever a dog appears in a video game. So I'm exercising some brevity for all our sakes.
I may be posting a list of PS2 games I have sitting around to beat, because there's that Martin Luther quest after all.
Log in to comment