Category: First Impression

Come on, do I need to even say anything? Haven’t you every wanted to build your very own Power Rangers team? Do you have a heart? Do you even breathe? It’s freakin’~~

 

 

Chroma Squad seems pretty darn interesting. The game starts at a pretty normal movie studio where 5 typical-colored Power Ranger stuntmen are doing the shoot for a new episode of ~CHROMA SQUAD!~ The movie studio and footage shooting serves as a clever tutorial, with the movie director shouting things at the actors that he wants you to do for the show, which teaches you how to play the game. As the pictures here will show you, we’re working with a grid-based tactical RPG, wherein you control your 5-member Chroma Squad team in combat. Each member of the team has a stat perk indicative of the role traditionally held by the first cast of Power Rangers; the Red Ranger holds the team together with a 50% HP bonus, the Blue Ranger is the techie with bonus skill-regen, The Black Ranger is the most offensive with an attack boost, The Yellow Ranger is the fastest with a +1 movement bonus and the Pink Ranger is set up for support with a bonus to game’s Teamwork mechanic.

 

 

By the end of the shoot, the Chroma Squad stuntmen have had it up to “here” with the director, and all agree that leaving the studio to open up their own studio would be much more fun. They inadvertently steal the Chroma Squad suits, encounter a (Mother Brain?) Zordon-esque prop to use as their mentor and enthusiastically set up shop to begin filming.

 

 

So, uh… I’m not gonna lie? This is where I stopped making progression within the game. I mean, I’m sure that Chroma Squad has some great combat mechanics and everything. I’m sure eventually I would encounter some cool villains. I don’t know, It’s probably good outside the tutorial. Ultimately though… I wouldn’t know. For the next hour and a half, I could not stop myself from doing anything but building an unnecessary number of Chroma Squad teams. As far as I’m concerned, if someone came up to me right now and said that Chroma Squad wasn’t finished, and that what I played was the extent of the game, I couldn’t even be mad. If I had anyone to blame, it would be myself for being so stupidly entertained by text-boxes and pallete swaps. I guess any game where it lets me choose pixelated mockeries of 80’s actors, name them whatever I want, change what color Ranger they are and then completely script all their catch phrases is just what does it for me. I don’t even think I need the rest of the game to be happy.

 

I mean, it all started out so innocently. I thought, “I’ll make a team based on some of my favorite fantasy characters,” so I went with Teddie, Greg Universe, Cyborg 009, Tifa Lockheart, and Cassidy Williams…

But then I went with video game characters only. Then Philosophers. Then different kinds of candy. For the sake of trying to move past this section of the game, I forcefully convinced myself that it would be amusing if I named them all the Rangers after friends in my D&D group, led (of course) by the great Chezni-bot 9000. I thought “Ah, this will be nice, I can finally start playing the game.” Oh how wrong I was.

 

There was a shop, some recording equipment I could purchase but then I stumbled upon the default team name and catch phrases. Well, no, this won’t do at all. It shouldn’t take that long to change these….

 

Well here, why don’t we go with this.

 

…but why limit our creativity?

 

Wait, what if I did this?

 

…err… wasn’t I playing a game or something?

… can’t remember… what I was doing here…

 

*mumble mumble* Tier 1 *mumble mumble*

Steam Link

 

Completed Review

Sometimes you just want to cut things. Sometimes you want to enter Faerun without strategizing your brains out. Sometimes you just want to play a game that is bold enough to use no less than one letter “D” in each word of its title. Sometimes you just want to play…

 

 

(PS: If you want to get straight to the review, just skip the next 3 paragraphs.)

So let me set something up before I get into D&D:D. Good hack & slash games are hard to find. Like, really hard to find. I’m no connoisseur of the genre, but I have played no small number of them over the last 25+ years and most them suck hard. It may not seem like it, but making a good hack & slash is a crisp art. The game needs to be refreshingly simple, yet contain enough complexity to warrant hours of progressional gameplay. It needs to look pretty and run smooth–but also needs to display its content so that the player can identify all the necessary pieces within a split-second glance. If there are RPG elements to it, it needs to allow the player complete freedom over the manner in which they build their character and fight while still maintaining a crisp distinction amongst all the classes’ skills (i.e. skills need to be more than damage, damage or damage) and also keeping the game somewhat balanced. Lastly, while the player ultimately knows that the game is a power trip, there needs to be just enough of a hint of story, a reason for conquest and world-building to mask the power-trip facade while not being so convoluted and gameplay-bogging that it slows the game down in any way. On their surface level, a hack & slash game may seem simple, but accomplishing these feats in tandem is almost akin to miracle-working.

 

 

There are generally 3 approaches to this kind of style.

Diabloesque: Initiated by the original Diablo, nowadays this genre generally means a fixed top-down view of a character chosen from a selection of preset classes. The gameplay of a Diabloesque involves hacking through hordes of monsters that spill items, gold and equipment out like piñata candy, grinding through (often randomly generated) maps to get better gear and upon appeasing the EXP gods, you can choose where to put your next skill point, among a set of tiered skills, or oftentimes a complicated skill tree. Path of Exile,  Grim Dawn, and the wonderful Torchlight II are examples of this subsection.

Real-Time Fantasy Adaptation: Sorry, I don’t have a fancy title to give this one. I’m tempted to call it the “Dark Alliance” category, but I feel there must have been a title released with similar gameplay that predated Dark Alliance that I’m just not aware of. Regardless, this category encompasses games that have taken an already-existing fantasy element and tried to transpose it into a real-time hack and slash with RPG elements. You can sort of look at it as falling between the two other categories listed here. Typically it focuses less on massive skill-trees and is oftentimes (although not always) less gear-grind/level-grind intensive. More structure is put into world-building in these games, and oftentimes you will have more camera control than a Diabloesque in order to make it feel more like an adventure game. Games like a The Bard’s Tale, X-Men Legends, and Lord of the Rings: War in the North are examples of this style.

Gauntletesque: Created by the success of the first Gauntlet, these games focus much less on the leveling-up aspects of RPGs and much more on the hacking and slashing of the hack & slash genre. Typically you’ll get to choose among 4+ classes, but class choice is not as impactful as the previous 2 genres and sometimes all classes will even play out the same. Equipment is often foregone, or it only exists in the form of time/use-limited powerups. A big tell if you’re playing a Gauntletesque is if enemies spawn continuously from “spawners” that must be destroyed to stop the flow of foes. Leveling up may or may not exist within the game, but typically it does nothing more than grant more health, damage, armor and/or speed–unlockable skills in this subsection is almost unheard of. A big appeal to these kinds of games is that they are 4-player. Magicka, Hammerwatch and of course the newest Gauntlet, Gauntlet Slayer Edition fall into this category.

 

 

So why did I explain all this and what of D&D:D? Well, to answer the first question, it’s because it tempers what our expectations for the series should be. It would be unfair to expect a Gauntletesque to provide heavy skill trees, just as it would be unfair to expect a Diabloesque to provide the feeling of an fantasy-adapted adventure game. As it happens and to answer the second question, D&D:D falls into our “Real-Time Fantasy Adaptation,” which means we can expect it to have the feel of a fantasy adventure game, with some of the leveling and grinding of a Diabloesque. So after all that ado, after setting the foundation of expectation that the majority of hack & slash games that I’ve played from any of the three previous subsections are crap, I’m elated to say that my first impression of D&D:D is extremely positive.

 

 

D&D:D start off at its weakest point in the character selection screen. My first impression was worrisome–only 4 classes? I can’t choose gender or race? ONLY ONE HUMAN!?! (I’ll admit, I’m a complete racist when it comes to the fantasy universe). Regardless, clicking past this screen will bring delight, as you’ll find enough talents, skills and exciting feats to temper your chosen character to your desired mold that it’s quickly forgiven. What’s even better is that it’s all D&D themed, which gives it a believable sensation from an immersion standpoint, but also a well-balanced feel at a glance. It sort of feels like I stepped back in time to the day so of 3rd edition as well–seeing as how through enough feat manipulation, you can get most any class to equip and be proficient in any armor or weapon that you want. Ultimately, there’s enough selection to create distinction with enough simplicity that I didn’t spend more than 15 minutes choosing and creating a character. Sighing in resignation, with no desire to play the slack-jawed fighter and even less inclination to play anything shorter than 5 feet tall, I went with our rogue-elf.

 

 

The first thing that struck me when I began playing was how good player and camera movement felt. The character is quick and responsive and the camera allows viewpoints from any reasonable angle. The HUD is clean and easily understood as well (a must for these kinds of games) and even before I ran into the brief tutorial, I had already figured out all the buttons. Fighting enemies was just as rewarding as I had hoped for a kiting-rogue; no need to manage the annoyance of consumable ammunition and you even start out with a fresh animation cancel in the form of the rogue’s class ability to roll–something that made the game feel much more dynamic and skill-based, which often lacks in the more stat-heavy hack & slashes.

 

 

Don’t get me wrong–the game is still linear, you still pick up quests that act like you have a choice whether to accept them or not (why on earth would I *not* accept free exp for killing everything in the dungeon that I’m going to be going into anyway?) and the story is very simple (Wizard bad, you good, go kill) but that’s exactly what you want in this kind of game. Even the destructables and loot are held up to a manageable level–just enough to give you something to do, not so much that you feel like a vandal swimming through heaps of garbage. Funnily enough, I was just thinking about the peculiarity of only being able to break barrels when I ran into this fellow. Poor guy.

 

 

The level designs are fun as well, liberating themselves from the stale blocked-out isometric dungeon view and instead being hand-crafted and (in spite of their general linearity) feeling open due to paths wrapping around and the ability to move in 3-Dimensions, such as “jumping off cliffs” (although one cannot truly jump, something that for whatever reason was driving me nuts).

 

 

 

Overall, the game just feels good and exciting and moves along at a great pace without feeling cheap or strictly mechanical. I’m very much looking forward to extending my power-fantasy trip into D&D:D and should the fun continue I may even swallow my pride enough to test out the Halfling wizard. (I know your race is akin to thieving, but did you have to steal my favorite class?). For now, this game rests in Tier 1 and I have hopes that it will maintain this position in the future.

Steam Link

These games combine much of what makes playing games fun.  In both (and the second one, The Metal Age – but I didn’t play that one), you play as a thief (shocking, I know).  You’re given a simple heist mission and the ability to accomplish it however you like.  From there, story grows in bits and pieces between the missions.  But then, the story isn’t really why you’re here.  The reason you’re here is to steal everything.  And steal everything of value you can.

One of my favorite features of these games is the adaptable objective system – more so in the first (but still present in the third), the difficulty level you choose doesn’t really change how the game plays – it changes what you need to accomplish.  Lower difficulties just have you surviving and accomplishing the goal.  Higher difficulties have you not killing civilians and stealing everything that isn’t tied down.  And I think that’s fantastic.  That’s how difficulty should feel.  Giving the player more health or the enemies less damage doesn’t mean anything but changing some numbers.  Giving you new challenges forces you to grow as a player, rather than just execute the same thing more and more perfectly.

I would be remiss if I didn’t also mention the fantastic level design and worldbuilding.  Each level has multiple approaches. The guards walk their shifts while humming to themselves (which is amusing even if it does make for some of the noisiest guards I’ve ever seen).  Everything feels like a guarded place you’re not supposed to be, but that you’re going to rob blind anyway.  Even so, it never feels cheap – when guards see you, you deserve it.  Even better, the game doesn’t automatically end if you’re spotted.  You have a chance to recover and stop the guard before he raises the alarm and kills you.  In other words, this is the kind of gameplay I would have hoped for from Assassin’s Creed.

The last thing I should mention is that these games still have a modding community.  For The Dark Project, there are fixes and resolution upgrades.  For Deadly Shadows, there’s a meta-mod of sorts that fixes everything from resolution to enemy difficulty to map backgrounds.  Both of these are practically essential with modern hardware, but come with the bonus that they also improve both games dramatically from a technical standpoint.  With these mods, both these games come in at a solid Tier One.

Steam link

A few weeks ago, I looked at This is The Police – a game where you act as a police chief three months from retirement.  There was a lot of polish in that game, but it was all overshadowed by a lack of any real choice or any event randomization.  You are forced to work for the Mafia, and actually trying to help your town (instead of just working solely for yourself) is just going to lead to disappointment or death.  Still, there were a few interesting moral options (not that they mattered, which was the problem) and a bunch of interesting features (like being able to collect LPs and playing them while you dispatch).  I would have liked it they just hadn’t tried to have an “interactive” story¹ – which, coincidentally enough, is exactly where 911 Operator comes in.

911 Operator is what happens if you took only the mechanical bits of This is The Police and made it into a game.  And it’s almost exactly what I was hoping for from This is The Police.  I’ll admit, it is a little disappointing to not have to try to deal with the outrageous demands from City Hall.  I also think This is The Police had better staff management mechanics and a bit better interface.  But overall, 911 Operator is the way to go for actually feeling the pressure of trying to help people with limited resources.  Similar to This is The Police, you manage the day-to-day happenings in your corner of a city – dispatching police, fire, and ambulances where necessary.  The primary distinction is that here, you actually answer 911 calls and determine if action needs to be taken for many events – which is pretty cool.  The calls are quasi-randomized – in just the right way – to keep them unique (at least for a few hours), with a few scripted events sprinkled in.  For example, when I got to the second city of Albuquerque, I was surprised by a call that sounded like suspiciously familiar story:

But this is where the trouble comes in as well.  Randomization is hard, and you need a massive pool to keep things fresh over long periods – otherwise these Easter eggs or scripted events will stick out too much.  911 Operator is quite good, but it could definitely stand to have about twice as many voice actors and randomizable lines – though I suppose that’s a complaint that can be leveled at any semi-random game.  Having a choice of Operator voice would have been nice as well, but the voice actor is good enough that it isn’t too much of an issue.  I do wish the 911 Operator developers had had twice the time or budget to expand on their concept, but the game that they made is still quite worth it, I think.  And hopefully, since it is on version 1.0, the developers may be able to do just that in updates or DLC (and quash a few bugs along the way).

My bottom line is this: This is The Police feels like the grimdark faux-noir that leeches into so many films and games due to its contrived and unavoidable plot.  911 Operator feels like Sim City 2000 or Sim Tower – games that were just plain fun mechanical toys: so, to Tier One it goes.

Addendum: I’ve also realized this is an educational game.  Being a 911 Operator means you have to talk people though bad situations – and making the wrong choices makes things worse.  You don’t throw water on oil or electrical fires, you prevent people from moving impaled people, and YOU ALWAYS SAY WHERE YOU ARE AND WHAT THE PROBLEM IS FIRST.  It’s fantastic.

Steam link

¹Actually, if you’ll permit me a moment to complain about This is The Police: You know what is a moral choice?  Being forced by the Mafia to either work for them or let your best friend be killed.  You know what isn’t a moral choice (or even a choice at all)?  Being forced by the Mafia to either work for them or let your best be killed…and you still have to work for them.  If you aren’t giving me a choice, don’t act like you are – that will just anger me and make me hate your game.  Make my choices (moral or otherwise) alter my game experience.  That would have been good game design: working for the Mafia makes things easier and keeps your friend alive.  Not working for them makes your work a bunch harder and means your friend dies, but it gives you the chance at a “good” ending.

 

It’s Baldur’s Gate. Wait–no, it’s Diablo. Wait–no, it’s…

 

Okay, so let’s get down to it. I’m a mechanics/immersion guy. I want my mechanics to build the foundation for immersion and I want my immersion to flow seamlessly into my mechanics. While immersion is a bit trickier to pin down, mechanics oftentimes make themselves known through combat and thus a stellar combat system is oftentimes a prerequisite for a game to have before I’ll consider it to be good. I’m confident that Divine Divinity is a Tier 1 game… but I can only conclude that I must have been tricked into thinking this, for in a time-span of over an hour I got into combat once and only once. A revenant in a whine cellar sprinted towards me and hit me for about a third of my health. I ran away from it, it hit me again, and I successfully fled through the cellar door. That was it. I’m baffled. How did a game–and not just a game, but essentially a Diablo-esque Baldur’s Gate-esque RPG game–captivate my attention with almost no emphasis on combat whatsoever?

 

 

I think it’s because DD and other games like it have a slow powerful burning that isn’t flashy or stylish. As a cohesive whole, it grips the player in a manner that respects the player and the world that they’ve created at the same time. Sometimes it seems if people think that great RPGs have to start off slow. I wonder if this is because so many great RPGs both present and past often do start off slow. I think what may be misunderstood is that this is not a case of A creates B, but a case where C creates B with the side effect of A. In other words, good RPGs often start off slow, but a slow RPG is not necessarily a good one. Too many RPGs begin with 10 minute-long unskippable cinematics that try to play up the world as something so epic that it’s beyond the scale of grand. Tutorials and introductions take 1 to 2 hours before the uncomfortable grip of the devs are released and the player is actually allowed to begin the game. Things like this are often justified with “the game gets good later,” or “it starts out slow because it’s building something up.” While these things can be said about a game, it’s not true that the game needs to be boring or restrictive.

 

 

DD starts you out with noting. NOTHING! And it’s slow as heck. And it doesn’t matter. Why? Because the game let’s the player do everything. I wake up in some creepy dungeon-like room on a bed. I figure out how to pick up items. I discover that light sources are interactable. I familiarize myself the menus because I’m curious about the game and I’m not an idiot. I climb out of the dungeon and find that it’s a cellar. Some guy talks to me–I choose a few dialogue options and talk back. He tells me something interesting, but doesn’t force me to go look into it. I walk around the town at my own pace. I have no idea where I am, but slowly piece things together. I talk to a fountain. You heard me. I find a weird key next to a graveyard. Because I’m curious, I read the grave and can deduce that the husband of the body beneath me is happy to be rid of her. This is something interesting that I log away in the back of my head. A guy gets frozen. I meet some sick people. I talk to a lizard. I break into a house through a well. I get a mystery and a clue about catacombs. I discover that I can move objects in the world by clicking and dragging them. I run into a grumpy dwarf who yells at me for picking herbs. I uncover a cellar hidden underneath stacks of “packages.” I explore the cellar and run away when a corpse talks to me and kicks my ass. I move some dragon statues around. I uncover a secret catacomb. At no point did the game tell me what to do, give me a tutorial, or force me to do anything. It moved slowly–it wasn’t flashy. It wasn’t filled with combat. I was engaged the entire time.

 

 

I want to play more of this game, because it’s letting me play it. It’s not telling me I’m a hero, it’s letting me decide to be one. It’s not telling me to help townspeople, I’m choosing to become involved in what they’re doing because they are interesting to me. The game isn’t hooking me in with artificial excitement, it’s drawing me in because it feels deep, like it has a story to tell, a mystery to reveal and an adventure to unfold–and not one that it’s going to force me to experience. I get the feeling that I could go through the game with my eyes closed (so to say) and get very little out of it if I chose, or I could study the details of everything presented to me and receive a rewarding experience. I suppose I could be wrong. I did after all only play the game for a little while. If I’m right though, the game will be well worth the time put into it.

Steam Link