I've finally finished The Eldar Scrolls IV: Oblivion.
I've been urged countless times to finish this game, reassured by others it would get better the more involved I became with the storyline, the further along I got, and you know what? I'd love to say that I was washed away in a sea of classic fantasy and loved every minute of it, but my actual experience was one of boredom, frustration and anger at the fact people not only accept this drivel but hail it as one of the greatest RPG experiences of all time.
To call me inexperienced in the realm of RPGs would be to insult me, i've been there since the release of games someone my age should barely even know about, let alone have played inside out, such as Baldurs Gate, Planescape Torment, Fallout, Divine Divinity, several Ultima games, i've played and enjoyed many many JRPGs and other classic CPRGs from a time before I could even read, including previous entries in the Elder Scrolls series.
Yet somehow, I still cannot get it together, I still absolutely hate Oblivion with a passion that burns as hot as the sun. Everything about it just seems wrong, devoid of life or emotion, i'm completely unable to care for anyone or anything in this shiny, randomly generated, lifeless world. I finally got it together to complete the main storyline and i'm just as hopelessly out of place as I was at the beginning of the storyline, on the very last leg I found myself not even reading the text anymore, just skipping it, I mean if I didn't care about the story by the time I had closed the great gate, I certainly wasn't going to care after that abominable ending. I go through all that trouble to find and protect the little shit and he goes and sacrifices himself? Not only is that as predictable as the sunrise, but it's utterly infuriating.
Basicly, the short of the long is that after 6 arduous hours swinging a sword without strategy or poise, i've finally got it out of the way and I can indeed confirm I still dislike every portion of the game. But hey, at least it's an easy 1000 achievement points, right? That's right, I did all the boring ass side quests too, guess how many times I contracted Porphyric Hemophilia? Yeah, a fuckton, worst decision ever to put that in a game in my opinion. If I wanted all the fun (assuming I was having any in the first place at least) sucked out of my game, I would flush the disc down the toilet or break my analogue sticks, or remove every key from my keyboard. If I want to play a vampire, I will get out my copy of Vampire: The Masquerade: Bloodlines. I don't need either of those things, so don't fucking turn me into a vampire K?
Disclaimer: You've every right to love the game, please continue doing so :) It just seems that I hold the same opinion as the majority of Oblivion fans yet in reverse, I fucking hated Oblivion, but loved Fallout 3 to bits for it's vibrance, sense of life and varied quest structure. Whereas a lot of Oblivion fans decry Fallout 3 for being lifeless and devoid of satisfaction.
So yeah, basicly, I just cannot enjoy this game at all, i've tried god knows i've tried, I guess it's just one of thosr things eh?
Edit: Also, Porphyric Hemophilia is not a bit like the lore surrounding becoming a Vampire, you become delirious, get lots of blood clots and then die. You do not gain super strength, speed, and an almighty fear of sunlight.
There has been a lot of back and forth on the forums lately about ripoffs, and of course a lot of people are of the opinion that everything should be new and innovative. Now, I argue that you can ask for one, or the other but not both. The very concept of innovation requires a pre-existing idea before it can be innovated upon, whereas something completely fresh and original, is new and cannot be innovated upon in any way.
Now, I am a supporter of the theory that nothing is new, therefore innovation is the path to follow, not originality. In my opinion, true originality is like the golden egg, or the Holy Grail, sure, it might be out there somewhere but it's so rare if it is that your effort would be better invested following the path we know can get us results.
If a product is copied to such a high degree that people deem it a 'ripoff' then the market will not accept that product, so to get worked up about it seems like a pointless agenda to me, the game won't make a profit and the developers will realise (hopefully) why, and learn from that before they attempt it again. Whereas in order to innovate, it is necessary to take some ideas or styles from the inspirational product in order to innovate upon them. But who is to determine how much is ripoff, and how much is inspiration? It's a constantly moving line, so I feel it should be abandoned. Innovation, after-all, is not a purely positive concept, innovations can be bad but they are innovations nonetheless, so if a game looks, plays and feels exactly like Team Fortress 2, but with anime dolls, that is still innovation. It's a bad one, but it is inarguably an innovation.
Anyway, I bring you 5 ideas that were outright stolen (or forgotten, and thought up again indepentantly, who's to prove either way?) that we are better off for in my opinion. Regardless of whether you would view them as a ripoff or not.
#5: The Cover Mechanic:
Not the best pic to illustrate my point, but a pic nonetheless.The cover mechanic that people loved so much, re-introduced in Gears of War to much critical acclaim was in fact used in an almost identical fashion years previous on the Nintendo 64 (although the game did not get a release in Europe, I don't know about the rest of the world) and later re-released on the Playstation 2. Operation Winback features a cover system that is almost identical, the only difference aside from the obvious difference in quality, is that you cannot move along a piece of cover, nor jump over a piece of low cover.
Now, i'm not arguing at all that the idea was 'ripped off' i'm arguing that regardless of your opinion, the fact that this concept was returned is a good thing for video games, in combination with the control style introduced in Resident Evil 4, it completely revamped the Third Person Shooter genre, one that up until then had been fumbling around with different control methods, unable to settle on one that fans would accept.
#4: Movie Tie-In's
US Box ArtNow, this might seem like a controversial choice but there is logic behind it. Browse any forum that has a videogame section and you will soon realise that whenever the topic of movie franchise tie ins comes up, you will get a few pages of hate, and some foolhardy reminiscing. It seems all too often people will imply, if not flat out state that "Things were better in the olden days", "Before publishers were all about money" and other misinformed comments. Well, i'll have you know that movie tie-ins have been around since the dawn of the videogame industry, and more often than not they've been terrible, just like nowadays.
If anything, movie videogames are actually infinately more bearable today than they were during the NES/SNES era, I mean honestly, you've all seen Angry Videogame Nerd videos, can you honestly tell me you'd rather pay $70 for one of those game than $60 for one of todays movie based games? I didn't think so. Now, I know what you're thinking "That's all well and good, but how in the hell is this a good thing?" and again, I agree, there is no defending terrible games whether they were made 20 minutes ago or 20 years ago. However, these franchises bring in a hell of a lot of money (usually) and I would like to think that at least some of that money goes towards investing in other games, games we might enjoy such as EA's Dead Space and Mirrors Edge, no doubt funded by yearly excursions into James Bond-land.
#3: Downloadable Content and Online Co-Op/Versus
It's not a fair fight unless you have a friend.Again, this might seem like a fairly obvious or inane choice, but a lot of people forget how enourmously popular online gaming was, even before the internet as we know it today existed. And I don't mean two guys playing chess on a tight-rope.
Many peoples first experiences with gaming were by downloading shareware or freeware software from newsgroups, or by recieving a floppy-disk from a friend containing a trial version of Doom or some 2d side scroller. Equally, online gaming absolutely exploded with Doom, co-op play as well as deathmatch style competative play became instantly popular. Although the internet was a rarity back in those days, and complicated too, you can't tell me you never experienced Doom Co-Op over a LAN connection? You've lived an even more sheltered life than me if you havn't.
Modern day products are just an innovation of that original concept, giving users more ease of access, more options, more content, and centralised hubs from which to view that content (Steam, GFWL, Xbox Live, PSN, etc) and interact with others. Without outright stealing the concept from those first few games that popularised online gaming and downloadable content (whether intentionally or unintentionally) we wouldn't have half the amount of gaming awesomeness we have today, not would we be able to experience it so readily with friends, family, and total strangers. Now, other than the insult spewing 12 years olds, I think we can all agree that generally, this is a good thing.
#2: Control Schemes
Now, I hear a lot of noise being made all over the place when one game comes out that controls too similarly from another. Again, i'll refer back to the Resident Evil 4 example here because it's still fresh in peoples minds. Gears of War, Uncharted, etc etc were held by some in contempt for unashamedly taking Resident Evil 4's control scheme and making it their own. But any sane person should realise that this is one of the best things that could ever have happened. Not only is this good for developers, they have access to a control scheme that was almost flawless, and easily adaptable to almost any product, but gamers are familiar with the control scheme and can pick up and play games as quickly as they would First Person Shooters. Why do you think platformers and first person shooters are the two most popular genres in the 2D and 3D gaming world? Because they are familiar, if they don't play exactly the same they all play incredibly similar to each other, it's the content that distinguishes them. That's good for everyone, I mean who honestly relishes having to learn a whole new control scheme each time they pick up a game? No thanks.
Even before Resident Evil 4, developers routinely take any control scheme that works and that gamers embrace and build products around it, because it makes everybodies job easier, from the developer, to the gamer, heck, even the guy in the shop has an easier job recomending a product because he can pick up on the similarities and reccomend appropriately. Besides, Resident Evil 4 was billed as the revolutionary product, despite a game using exactly the same control scheme being developed almost in tandem, Cold Fear was released just 2 months later. It's just another example that proves the point, many similar control schemes had been used in the past, Resident Evil 4 just took the most succesful aspects of each and combined them.
#1: Dead Space
What does this look like?This is the only game specific example on this list, but again, it's to prove the overall point. Dead Space is one of my favorite games of this generation, and one i've had many hours of enjoyment out of (played it twice in the past four days alone) however, upon completing the game for the first time, I noted several similarities in both gameplay, enemy and weapon design, plot, and mechanics to a game I had played many years prior.
Blue Stinger, was a game on the Sega Dreamcast, it featured the main character, and one other survivor witnissing an meteor colliding with the island the main character was vacationing on, after teaming up with 2 other survivors, he begins investigating the island. Now, it turns out that an alien being is twisting the inhabitants of the islan into monsters, who look suspiciously like necomorphs, and other horrible things. Completely cut-off from the outside world, you must begin preparing an escape method once determining that there are no survivors. Now, that doesn't sound too familiar, but you also have to take into account that the game features a similar shop mechanic, from which the player can buy items and equipment, it features several makeshift weapons, tentacle sprouting enemies, hallucinations, and other things you could swear had been ripped directly out of this game and inserted into Dead Space.
Now, i'm not insinuating that Dead Space is a complete hack of Blue Stinger, not for a second as that would be foolish (after all, we all know it's a complete rip-off of Event Horizon anyway ;) ). What I am saying, is that in any given product, almost every tiny piece of design work, gameplay, game mechanics, plot, etc can all be sourced as having been used before whether the developers realised that, or used them intentionally because they felt it would give their product what it needed to compete in the marketplace. The market will then determine whether or not that particular product borrows too much from another, and whether or not that is acceptable.
Basicly, I feel people hold originality in too high a regard, it's an unobtainable goal, the impossible dream if you will. What we should instead value and strive for is innovation, the process of re-using and refining succesful ideas as that is what will lead to a better gameplay experience, more engaging storylines, more refined game mechanics etc, not wasting time striving for something we cannot achieve. We certainly should not be taking offense to products that cannot reach this impossible expectation, by refusing to play a game because it's 'unoriginal' what you are in fact doing for the most part is denying yourself a quality product. You aren't helping anybody, all you're doing is sending developers the wrong message, that they have to strive harder and harder for the impossible, the cost to product a game nowadays is reaching critical mass, and the harder these guys try the quicker they get burned out and quit, or worse are fired due to the economic climate. They shouldnt be trying to do the impossible, we're sending them the same signals the fashion industry is sending it's models "THINNER!! THINNER!! THINNER!!!", "More original, more!! MOARRR!!!!" all it leads to is dissapointment.
So be happy with what you have, be happy that games like Dead Space and The Club play incredibly well, and that while it's all been done before, games like Oblivion and Fallout 3 offer hours and hours of exploration, etc etc. Be thankful that we have as many high quality, innovative games as we do, and enjoy them for what they are.
Unintentionally, as i've not been rooting for achievements so much as I used to lately, I just hit 45k :D Next stop, 50k, then the world mwuuhahahahaaa!!!
Some people were showing off their collections a while back and we had some fun talking, and I don't remember who but someone suggested I do a video walkthrough of my own collection. While i'm far too camera shy (and lacking an actual camera to film with) to do that, I have in fact been wanting to do a blog post about my collection for a long time. The problem is, it's too darn big! For a single post anyhow, so i'm going to split it into either 3 or 5 pieces, depending on how it goes. Now, I don't have a lot of money, never have, so building this collection has taken best part of 7 or so years and a lot of nabbing up deals when I see them and waiting for games to go cheap second hand, and i'm certainly not here to brag about how many games I own, it's not like I own over 1000 PS2 games. I'm just here because a few people might find this interesting, they might not! :D
Anyway, first up, Miscellanious Goodies. I don't have an aweful lot in the way of misc crap, i'd like some more but I just plain don't have the room for it (I'm literally stuffed into the corner standing behind my television in the above pic and the room still looks hella small, it's even small for realz yo) but I do have some, positioned around in true tacky knick-knack style.
Misc Junk! Hooray!First up, we have a bunch of crap above the smaller shelf units, mostly Xbox 360 collectors editions, the huge 12 inch Assassins Creed figurine, with Edward Carnby statue standing on top of him. Just to the left is the Fallout 3 lunchbox (with bobblehead inside) and to the right, Street Fighter IV collectors figurines, with a Tetley Tea monkey sitting on top brandishing my spare DS stylus and wearing the Ninja Gaiden Dragon Sword DS stylus that came from play.com with Ninja Gaiden DS. A little further along are some Resident Evil Umbrella dog tags in the little black box, some Shin Megami Tensei poltergeists, and a couple of Gears of Wars figures scattered about the place. There is also FarCry 2 Special Edition box, but it's broken ;_; A shelf fell on it while we were moving and though it looks fine from the front, the back is completely smashed in. Oh well, shit happens. SFIV TE stick and a bunch more thingsUp in themiddle is Napalm Bomb Megaman, given to me by a friend as a joke present. Never even heard of Napalm Bomb variant of Megaman, 10 points to anyone who tells me what Megaman game he spawned from lol. There is also boxes for GHII and III behind there, and some more misc figurines, a PS2 Chainsaw Controller, PS2 Chun-Li 15th Anniversary controller and a Legend of the Five Rings CCG thermos mug. Which is also, huge. I also have a 360 Bioshock Big Daddy figurine, with intact drill tip.
It's Huge. Dude Huge....'s Gun.Finally, the mother of all expensive, needless pieces of plastic, the golden Gears of War 2 Lancer. It's big, and I mean really big (life size, over 3 foot long) and it's pretty eavy too. The handhold is incredibly uncomfortable, it looks like they've take the 3D model and stretched it out a bit to better proportion it as a rifle. They've failed though because they stretched the handhold too much and now it grates against your knuckles. Still, it's a kickass piece to have lying around the room though.
Next we move onto the Wii, if only to get it out of the way. Now, before anyone jumps to Nintendo's defence, i'm not a hater, i'm not here to insult your precious little console. But my collection only happens to feature around 15 Wii games, and a light gun remote holder. As well as the classic controller and a bunch of VC purchases. The game selection is pretty standard, I have Trauma Centre, some light gun shooters including HoTD 2 and 3 Return, Ghost Squad, and HoTD Overkill which was one of the better Wii experiences for me. And a bunch of other cool stuff like Opoona, Manhunt 2, Mario Galaxy and Metroid Prime 3. Theres more but it's all standard Wii stuff, nothing special to see here unfortunately.
Which brings us to the Xbox 360. As I said, I used to work at a second hand store, and I got my 360 18 months late, so I managed to pick up nearly all of the first 18 months worth of games super cheap which gave me an awful lot to play when I first got the 360, which was fantastic, just the reason I needed to buy a new console. Indluding all the special editions mentioned above, I have something like 115 Xbox 360 games as well as 45 or so XBLA games.
Lotta games here, games, and uni notes.As with the Wii above, a lot of the stuff here is fairly standard, Dead Space, GTAIV, Mirrors Edge, Assasins Creed, Dead Rising, GH 2 and 3, Rock Band 1, 2 and AC/DC, CoD 2 and 4, Mass Effect, GRiD, PGR3, etc etc. Theres not a lot that stands out but i'll talk briefly about some of them anyway. First up, the only oen that does actually stand out would be Sneak King, if only because I had to import it it was never available here unfortunately, it's nothing spectacular but i've never seen another in the UK.
Some of the games i've aquired a lot of people would consider awful and never purchase, things like Bullet Witch, Vampire Rain, Call of Juarez, Turning Point: Fall of Liberty, Prey, Spiderman 3 etc etc, but let me tell you, if you pick games up cheap enough it's surprising how much fun you can have even with the most truly awful of games. Although that said, theres always an exception, Too Human, even though I only paid £7.50 for it, I regret that a lot. One thing I will advise people to look for in second hand stores is the two XBLA compilation discs, even if you own some of the games already, for me the upgraded version of Pac Man, Boom Boom Rocket and Texas Hold em was worth the super cheap price I got them for (Couldnt even get 1000 MSP for what I paid for both discs) even though I already owned Uno and Geometry Wars.
In the way of hardware, I have a standard Xbox 360 Elite, one controller, one black play n charge kit, and one white, I have an X-Plorer guitar, the GHIII Les Paul, and the Rock Band kit (Drums, Guitar and mic, the hub is broken though, cheaply made EA piece of shit, I picked up an official rock band branded replacement on sale though which was cool, didn't even know they existed. It's much nicer looking than the original one too)
Next time, i'll be looking at all my retro stuff, and my handheld stuff. If that doesn't take up an entire blog post, i'll chuck in some more miscellaneous crap, i'm sure theres some more around somewhere.
Edit: A pic of my 360 setup, for the hell of it :)
Nothing special, but it's a wonderful budget setup for HD. A cheapo PC monitor 1440x900, would have cost me like £90 but I traded in my shitty old tv/monitor hybrid and got it almost for nothing. Good quality speakers, but i've no idea where they came from, found them in the outhouse and everyone in my family was like "They ain't mine, chuck em in the bin if they don't work" but they work a trick, best replacement ever for my old shitty speakers. Of course you need the 360 VGA cable for this setup, but paying 20 quid beats shelling out for an HDTV if you don't need one :)
I don't normally blog about my personal life, it's just not something I do. However, tommorow is a rather different occasion.
I am going into hospital to have an operation, it's only a small one mind, really very minor, but I have a phobia of needles, so the local aneasthetic is likely to be the worst part of the whole event for me, i'm literally going to freak out, I was stressing over it so much yesterday that I erupted into the worst stress induced stomach ache of my entire life (you know, the horrible ones with the sulpher belches and everything gets worse from there)
So anyways, i'll be around but forgive me in advance if i'm not myself the next few days, although if I get my way, i'll be right back home (like I said, the op itself really is very minor they aren't keeping me in hospital, but I freak out about medical procedures) and relaxing by playing Duke 3D, and I might even treat myself to something new, maybe Castle Crashers or the Outrun remake.
Anyhows, wish me luck :D I'll probably be a little hepped up when I return so if I start posting anything completely illegible, just point and laugh and i'm sure i'll leave you a venomous comment when I return to my normal self :)
Peace out.
UPDATE:
It's over and done with! Well, some of it lol.
As I said before it's only such a minor operation that I really have no right to complain, but i'm going to. It freaked me the fuck out so much I nearly puked on the operating table, and after they removed the first lump and stitched me up, I asked them not to continue with the second one, and they stopped the operation. (I think I offended the surgeon, but the guy was a complete prick throughout the entire process, and obviously had never heard of bedside manner, and flat out insulted me several times during the whole process) I don't care what the surgeon said, telling me I could feel nothing didn't alleviate the fact I could indeed feel some things. Perhaps the aneasthetic was not working as it should have, perhaps it's area of effect was too small, whatever, all I know is it was fucking horrible, I went from feeling nothing in some areas, to intense pain right next to it. But it's over and done with now and once it's healed I will be able to sit in a chair without excruciating back pain.
Hooray! :D Minirant over and done with, by all standards it probably went quite well, my opinion is obviously skewed being the one on the table nervous as all hell and with a dodgy stomach that morning to boot. In short i'm back! :D
I'm sure (in fact, I know) plenty of other people have been through things much worse than this and complained probably far less, but i'm not as strong as those people :) Medical procedures scare me lol, and this experience didn't change that.
It seems my last list blog was pretty succsessfull, we got some good discussion going in there, so here we go again.
Five games that I feel really should have a release over XBLA, or PSN, and that I would buy in a heartbeat, feel free to debate and/or add your own :D While the previous blog was a little more tongue in cheek, this subject isn't quite as touchy so i'll just go ahead and say that everything I suggest here, I would in fact buy, so I guess you can say this is all serious baby!
5. The Adventures of Alundra
Serious face, epic game.I really enjoyed this game on the Playstation, I feel that in the same way Gears of War took Resident Evil 4's gameplay and more or less perfected it, Alundra took the top down Zelda games play style and absolutely refined it close to perfection. The game is incredibly fun to play, gives you a huge area to explore, some epic boss battles and some brain bending puzzles (along with some insanely obvious ones) and a fantastic storyline. The only problem is, the game is pretty hard to get hold of nowadays and while I am blessed with 2 copies of it, most people are not and I suspect that given the chance a lot of people would enjoy this game. I have no idea who owns the rights however, so for now i'm just gonna say this would most likely be a PSN release.
4. Turok: Dinosaur Hunter:
Shoot this guy, he'll scream and die.We've seen a lot of retro classics released over PSN/XBLA/VC recently, Doom, Wolfenstein, Duke Nukem, Marathon, and more on the way. If the rumors are indeed true (i've not been keeping up with them) and we are indeed getting Goldeneye and Perfect Dark, why not add Turok to the mix, another classic N64 shooter and while it was highly praised in it's day, I feel it was hugely underappreciated. The game features a vast area to explore, for an FPS of the time, and some interesting and even completely insane weapons and enemies, and some huge-ass boss fights. Slap 200 achievement points on it, and you've got my money.
3. Heart of Darkness:
Shadow creature! Run!While it has a goofy-ass story, and an insane difficulty level, this is one of those slower paced, puzzle/platformer hybrids I love so much (See: Abe's Oddysee, Flashback and similar) Heart of Darkness has such a charming art style, and interesting characters, as a small boy who's dog has been kidnapped by monstrous aliens seemingly made of pure shadow, you are tasked with launching a rescue mission. you are soon parted from your laser gun and protective collander helmet, and must use your wits and climbing skills to make your way around this hostile planet. Gameplay is very simple, and unfortunately features a lot of trial and error, but for me the sheer style of it wins over, and either XBLA or PSN, this would be a definite purchase for me.
2. Marvel Vs Capcom 2: A New Age of Heroes
PSYCHE!! Already happening! Oh yeah!
2. Unreal
Creepy alien temples, woot!I never managed to finish the original Unreal, but I had a blast of what I did play. While I could settle for any other classic FPS, Half - Life, Unreal Tournament, SiN, Counter Strike, anything like that I would still love to see the original Unreal given another release, I felt it was pretty underappreciated the first time around and I would relish the chance to sit in front of my Xbox/PS3 and play through it, and finish it this time.
1. Another World: 15th Anniversary Edition
No game is complete without a giant tank... In a similar vein as #3, a slower paces platformer with puzzle solving elements, Another World really opened my eyes to these kinds of games back on the SNES, and although I played it to death I never managed to finish it, this game is hella difficult. After an accident with some experimental equipment, your character is transported to an alien world, and quickly captured by an alien civilization, you quickly make a new friend and being an escape attempt, the rest of the game consists of running, jumping, shooting and fighting your way through the huge alien city in order to find a way out. One important factor to note with Another World (Out of This World in the US) is that it was made by one single man, although the music was composed by a friend of his. It was also quite revolutionary for it's time, as it was one of the first games to emphasize cinematic sequences and communication through action and facial expression alone (you cannot communicate with these guys after-all, they don't speak the same language as you)
In addition to that, the 15th anniversary edition features redrawn graphics by the original creator himself that support up to 1440x900 on the PC, I see no reason why we couldn't get this scaled up to 1080p, or at least ported over as is.
Anyhow, that's my wishlist for XBLA/PSN games, do you agree? Disagree? How about your wishlist? Until next time, laters!
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For better or for worse, love them or hate them Achievements/Trophies/etc are here to stay, and they have a large and dedicated following, and are always a hot topic of debate on the GiantBomb forums and elsewhere.
Personally, i'm a huge fan of them and I feel they've helped me to try games I would have otherwise avoided, and have helped me get hundreds of hours extra playtime out of games I would have normaly played until the credits rolled and simply shelved forever. So I owe them a lot of thanks, some of them at least, not all of them are well thought out...
Cabela's Alaskan Adventures
This is going to seem like a rather odd choice, given how poorly recieved the game itself was (Trust me on this one, it's truly awful) I bought it because I was curious about the series and wondered if it was at least playable. How wrong I was. However, that is testemant to it's achievement structure (full list here)
While the achievements may seem fairly standard, each section of the game (on each difficulty) as well as awards for hunting each animal and hunting 10 animals with each weapon. As well as one odd achievement for bagging 3 different Trophy Legend bears. They are actually more cleverly designed than it might seem at first, each achievement you get brings you one step closer to another one on the list. For example, by the time you've hunted a couple of animals, you've already gained something like 15 points, and ordinarily by this point i'd be thinking "Wow, this game sucks balls, i'll play something else now" instead, what I was thinking was "Hmmm, 7 more animals and i've got the rifle achievement"
My train of thought continued along this path and before I knew it, I was struggling to get the very last achievement, and oddly enough despite the game being truly awful, I had a lot of fun because the achievements were laid out in a fashion that while I had to work hard to get them, were flowing at an even enough pace as to hold my interest with an iron grip. Sadly I could not get the last achievement, the duck hunt style sections of the game are just too unplayable for me to get the gold medal on the last one. So I ended up calling it a game after something like 10 hours of gameplay and 970 points. Something I would never have given the game ordinarily.
8/10
Clive Barker's Jericho
Despite a huge array of flaws, I rather enjoyed the game itself. It's achievements on the other hand, were almost nonexistant. Full list here, as you can see it's almost impossible to miss any of those achievements, especially if you are aiming to get them. Even if you played through the game oblivious to them you would still come out the other end with something like 900 points at least. None of them are worthy of being called an 'achievement' really.
The game itself is not particularly difficult, and the achievement list shows very little imagination, it appears as if the developers almost begrudged putting them in and so went to as little effort as possible. You have standard achievements for finishing each chapter, and the game, and achievements for using each characters special abilities and for killing a certain amount of enemies in different ways. As well as this, there are achievements for finishing each chapter on hard without becoming incapacitated (which is much much easier than it sounds) so, by playing the game on hard, and making proper use of saves, you can get something like 70 points per chapter, ontop of this the game is quite short, even with the extra effort required for a couple of the achievements it takes no more than a half hour or so ontop of the regular amount of time it takes to play through the game. A thoroughly dissapointing list in my opinion.
2/10
Bionic Commando: Rearmed
For an XBLA game, Bionic Commando: Rearmed manages to include a large amount of variety with it's achievements, while you have the standard achievements for clearing the game on the hardest difficulty, finding hidden objects, and performing a certain action a large number of times (in this case quite a difficult one, blocking projectiles with your claw) you also have a number of level specific achievements varying greatly in difficulty and objective, such as clearing a stage quickly, or clearing a stage without touching some of the goo found on that stage.
Overall, the only problem with this list, is that they flow quite slowly and sporadically, and you must put a lot of effort in to see some of them, but then isn't that the point?
9/10
Duke Nukem 3D
While Duke Nukem 3D's achievements aren't particularly a departure from the norm for the most part (100, 250 and 500 multiplayer kills, finish each chapter) they do offer a degree of flexibility that you don't always see. For example, the chapter specific achievements can be played on any difficulty or even co-op, and it uses the remainder of it's achievement allocation for a bit of a laugh. While these achievements don't even try to be difficult (Tip and exotic dancer, step in a pile of excrement) they are certainly very Duke-like and deserve a chuckle.
Overall though, the game itself can be quite difficult, so even some of the generic achievements become a tough challenge even on normal difficulty settings, so overall i'd say it's a pretty good list, a nice balance of funny and challenging.
7/10
Well that's all for this time folks, i'll leave you with a story. As some of you know, I recently played through Afro Samurai, and while the game itself isn't particularly great, and it's achievements are pretty brutal in their difficulty (I left the game with about 300 as I had no more time with it, and lacked the patience to attempt hard mode) I am truly grateful for having played it simply for this one segment, what I consider to be one of the most epic boss fights ever envisioned.
This week I have been getting to grips with a new game, and (what some people consider) a timeless classic, side by side i've been playing them both quite a lot in order to relax, so far i'm enjoying both of them and their ends draw near. These are my opinions :)
One Piece: Unlimited Cruise 1: The Treasure Beneath the Waves
Once destined for release sometime in 2008, but held back because of legal issues, One Piece: Unlimited Cruise finally makes it's way to western shores (Unlike it's predecessor, Unlimited Adventure, which was promised as a release title for the Wii, held back by similar legal issues, and eventually cancelled in the west) and (here at least) at a wonderful budget price of £24.99.
Presumably this is because very little has been done to the game, it has gone through a simple translation and otherwise features the same content seen in the Japanese version (They havn't even changed the screenshots in the manual, you can clearly see the japanese version of the game in the screenshots)
Now, while others might be annoyed by this, I was incredibly relieved because it meant that I would not have to suffer any of the 4Kids bullshit name changes or censorship and could enjoy the franchise as it was originally intended, this pleased me greatly as although several One Piece games have made it to the west, they had all been under the 4Kids flag and featured the same horrible voice actors and name changes as the western dub of the show. As well as having several characters removed (either because 4Kids cut them from the series too, or because they had not been introduced yet)
Anyhow, ranting aside the game plays rather well, a simple third person action adventure that sees you running about 4 different islands gathering items, fishing, fighting enemies and simply larking about as is traditional for the Straw Hat crew. Every item you find on your travels serves a particular use, you can cook, craft weapons and upgrades, as well as medicinal items. In addition to this you have to find or make certain items in order to progress in the storyline, this is the only part that particularly irks me, although (so far) it does not seem quite as bad as Wario Land: The Shake Dimension, it can still be pretty jarring to make it to a new island only to discover that you need to spend the next couple hours grinding out items in order to open up the next boss fight.
Which brings me to the bosses themselves, most of the enemies from the manga/series return here (with a decent enough excuse as well, they appear in the context of the storyline without breaking the universe) and they are all true to their original characters (and voiced by the same actors too) and for the most part, the fights are difficult but not frustratingly so. Although they can be somewhat unfair, Moria for example will send his shadow bats, and his own shadow to attack you and there seems to be no way of avoiding them. Likewise you must fight Don Krieg and Captain Kuro at the same time, which can be an incredibly frustrating fight unless you level up your skills. Each character has a series of skills they can learn which range from button presses to motion controls (or a waggle) and special moves which have different effects for each of the characters, most of the key moves from the series are intact although i've not unlocked them all yet I doubt any of the ridiculously destructive moves are present as they might break the game. Brooks moveset seems a little dead though, but then so is he! SKULL JOKE!!! YO HO HO HO!!!... *clears throat* Uhh, sorry.
Fortunately as I intended to spend most of my time adventuring and exploring, i've not yet become tired of collecting and producing items, and having just unlocked the fishing rod (because i'm a dunce and missed it earlier haha!) i'm having a blast and would reccomend the game to fans of the series and/or fans of action/adventure games, however if you don't know the series at all you may not get some of the jokes, and may find some of the character interactions a little odd, especially the villains the game gives them no introduction and you are expected to know who they are.
Phantasy Star II
I've been meaning to play this for the longest time, it's been reccomended to me by almost every JRPG fan I know and the opportunity has arisen to play it multiple times but until now i'd never made the leap. When it reared its head for 400 points, with achievements on XBLA I snapped it up with the points remaining after (the dissapointing, imo) Fallout 3 DLC Point Lookout.
At first glance the game seems unplayable by todays standards, even the games "How to Play" section that XBLA games are required to have gives you no information about an of the different skills or items, or how to navigate the menu system or other useful hints. However, this has often been the case with JRPGs in particular, they can be rather punishing and it is often something their fans (including myself) relish on occasion. So I stuck to it, I loaded up an FAQ so I could see what all my new skills did (because the game doesnt tell you) and I marched on through the first few dungeons.
I have to say so far i'm enjoying myself quite a lot, for such an old game the animations and sprite detail are quite high, the enemies are interesting and incredibly varied, and the storyline is quite an interesting one, i've been spending a lot of time levelling up as I find it quite therapeutic so as a result i'm finding the game rather easy, although having gotten used to not seeing them (last game I played with them was Lost Odyssey) random battles are beginning to fray the nerves a little, which is odd as I quite like them. Though, not when exploring.
The game features a large variety of characters and skills, and as a result offers a large degree of party customisation, unfortunately each new character you gain begins at level 1, so you have to spend a long time levelling them up if you wish to use them.
For 400 points, i've already put something like 10 hours into the game and even if I don't finish it i'd say it was well worth the cash and having enjoyed it so much I now intend to put some time into other Genesis/Mega Drive RPGs I missed (Which would be all of them except Shining Force II)
I've played a handful of other things this week, Point Lookout for example, some more HD Remix/SFIV, and some Bully: Scholarship Edition (which i'm also enjoying, but doubt I will go back to now i'm enjoying these two so much) but none of them I felt compelled to write about. So how about you, what are you enjoying this week? Or not enjoying?
I'm afraid I Review Stupid Things #3 is going to have to wait a little longer, without a scanner I can't show you the wonders of videogame manuals, as i've been unable to track down the ones I want to talk about online. Shame.
For now, i'm going to talk about some recent experiences in attempting to enjoy the Nintendo Wii.
Now, as we all know, so called 'hardcore' games such as Street Fighter 4, Halo, Gears of War, Counter Strike, Soul Calibur, MMO games high level content etc are often reffered to as being stuck behind an impenetrable wall of execution, and inaccesable by the majority who lack the time or skill to dedicate themselves fully to the experience and up their game to its highest level. Now, i'm fine with that, and even enjoy a lot of high level play myself. But it brings me to the point of this article, I'm ok with pressing buttons, and I thought I was fine with motion controls, but it turns out. I'm not, sort of.
These guys have steadier hands than I doI'm attempting to play Trauma Center: Second Opinion on Wii, after failing miserably to play the DS version. And it has come to my attention that no matter what I thought my opinion was, I loathe complex motion controls, now I know what it feels like for someone who wants to play Street Fighter against me but can only button mash, or Shoryuken over and over. So I can't progress to the next level and see the rest of the game because I can't draw a fucking star in the air fast enough? Holy shit that's harsh. I don't remember a game frustrating me in this same manner since Metropolis Street Racer (which most of you will know as Project Gotham, but with an insanely strict kudos system that governed progression)
I thought this might be a one off case, but when I began to think about it I realised that I had a similar experience with Castlevania DS, I was fine at the game itself, but unable to get past the later bosses because my giant man-hands couldnt draw a complex pattern on the screen in time to 'seal' the boss away. And again had a similar experience with certain aspects of Manhunt 2 and No More Heroes, certain aspects of the control scheme I could not get to register properly because I was not thrusting the controller accurately enough for the games liking.
Now, I love the Wii, and the DS and have had hours and hours of fun on each, but I fear to enjoy future Wii games I will have to break this wall of execution, something I didn't know I would have to do for a casual game system (supposedly) anytime soon. But unfortunately, it's not just one game, or one game mechanic hidden behind this seemingly unbreakable wall, it's an entire consoles library trapped behind this transparent overlord of frustration. For now I have moved on to something simpler, I've just finished House of the Dead: Overkill, because i'm fairly decent at light gun games without having to worry about odd motion controls throwing me off. I really enjoyed it, much more than I thought I would, definately reccomended to anyone who hasn't played it and is looking for a short burst of entertainment on their Nintendo Wii.
I will be returning to Trauma Center though, i'm determined not to let that stupid star pattern win.
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