Category: First Impression

Kingdoms Rise
by Chezni

 

More like Kingdoms Fall, AMIRITE?

 

I’m not going to waste your time on this one. Kingdoms Rise is unfinished and generally abandoned. It once held the potential to be an exciting PvP Sword/Magicplay combat game with an emphasis on melee combat. It has a slew of weapons, spells and skills and enough depth to be regarded with some interest by PvP enthusiasts. While the graphics are unpolished, they’re quite pretty in their raw form and feel big. Character creation is fun and you are able to customize a lot of pieces of your character’s outfit–including things like right and left shoulder pads individually and even the codpiece.

 

 

So why the bum review? Well, there’s a couple different ways to approach it, but here’s the list: 1. Early Access. 2. Nature of PvP. 3. Microtransactions.

  1. Early Access: at this point we’ve probably all been burned by Early Access games on Steam. We’ve all felt like we’ve been scammed, tricked or generally had our money taken and not given something that was promised by a game. Kingdoms Rise is one of those games. It’s been in “Early Access” for 4+ years, but the devs have been largely inattentive of the product for the last 2. While it should be on the buyer’s shoulders to understand that if if they pay money for an early access game that they are not guaranteed to have anything more than what is present in the game when it is purchased–but it still sucks that the product seems to have no intention of being finished.
  2. Nature of PvP: Player vs. Player games are tricky business for both the player and the creator. In my opinion, they are the hardest games for the devs to make and the most risky games for the players to invest in. If a dev makes a PvP game, they must be willing to constantly upkeep the game essentially until the end of time–if they don’t the game will die. Likewise, the player base must be willing to play the game and invest in it (both time and money) continually, or the game will die. Kingdoms Rise seems to be a mix of both–a stagnant player based combined with devs who have left the game. As it stands, there are no available games being hosted for Kingdoms Rise, essentially making the game completely unplayable.
  3. Microtransactions: the most sure-fire way to tell if a PvP game is failing is the introduction of heavy microtransactions and “Pay to Win” bonuses. It’s a sign that the game owner is trying to squeeze the last cash (and life) out of a product when they are willing to accept bribes to let another player win. As I read up on the game,  I came across the somewhat frequent comment that “pay to win microtransactions are ruining the game.” It’s hard to determine the accuracy of these kinds of statements since oftentimes they are made by an ignorant player who is just upset that someone beat them with a tool that they don’t understand. What I can tell however, is that there is a DLC section for this game. DLC. For a game that is unfinished. That feels icky just saying it.

 


 

Also, I don’t know what “Event Begins” in 6 days and at this point I’m afraid to ask. Maybe it’s like the Midnight Channel in Persona 4?

 

 

Sometimes good PvP games fall flat and it’s not really anyone’s fault. Sometimes there just isn’t a big enough player base to support the game. In the case of Kingdoms Rise however, records seem to point to a large part of the blame being on the shoulders of the devs. This disregard for the spirit of gaming as well as the player base itself angers me, and would normally lead me to relegate the game to Tier 4 except… I just can’t. What’s present in the game is really cool. The customization (both visual and combative) seems like it had a lot of potential. At some point in this games development, someone must have been putting their heart into the content. I’m not sure why they stopped. Motivation is a hard thing to maintain; that I understand. I lose passion for many of my hobbies and it becomes difficult to continue them. However, when a product is being sold, it must be treated completely different than a hobby–it becomes a job. It was the dev’s job to keep up with this game. It was their job to ensure the game’s success, for better or for worse. In light of this, Kingdoms Rise barely escapes Tier 4 by the skin of its teeth and nestles in the dredges of the Tier 3 category.

Steam Link

 

Divine Divinity
by Chezni

 

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

 

 

 

Retro City Rampage DX
by Chezni

 

Ugh… would like a heaping serving of pointless game design matched with a bigger scoop of nonstop 80’s references? Well then you must have a hankering for…

 

Okay, so when I bought this game, I expected it to be a little shallow. I expected it to not be the most revolutionary mechanical masterpiece of the century filled with surprising twist after twist. Gameplay is something like a 2-D GTA, involving the theft of vehicles and the squishing of many civilians and cops under said vehicle’s wheels. What I didn’t expect it to be though was a consequence-less coagulation of never, ending, ceaseless, REFERENCES supported by weak gameplay.

 

 

 

The game seems to start off well, in perfect parody to any NES game from the 80’s. It’s all here, from the music, to the graphics to the menu progressions–it matches 80’s gaming perfectly. At first it seemed to promise a good return on investment of time… until you get to the actual game itself. Games from the 80’s were more than just a look and feel; they were about brutal mechanics and difficult enemies. While I certainly understand that in the name of player accessibility you would not wish to create something quite as brutal as your average 80’s NES game, I also didn’t expect to play a near challenge-less, near infinite-health adventure that feels so spastic that it would be guaranteed to grab the attention of even the most inattentive tree-dwelling park-rodent. That’s not even the worst though. The worst, as you might have gathered, are the constant bombardment of 80’s references. After I got through the first “level,” was when they swarmed in.

 

A Megaman II reference.

 

A Duck Hun Reference.


A Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles NES game reference combined with a Mario reference…


A Duck Tales reference.


 

It doesn’t stop there either. There’s a Frogger reference, a Sonic reference, another Sonic reference, a Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure reference, a Back to the Future reference,  a Ghost Busters reference, an A-Team reference with the obligatory Mr. T reference and a Mario 2 reference. All of this happens within the span of about 10 minutes, and those were just the references that I noticed. I’m sure there were plenty that I didn’t catch or just didn’t know about. Look, references are funny from time to time and can be clever if done correctly. They’re a great way for the developer to bring attention to something that they love and presumably what their audience loves. It can be used for a quick laugh or if done subtly can make the player feel like they’re “in” on a secret joke. When they’re just shoved in the player’s face one right after another like this, it feels much less like references and much more like some mook from the 80’s waving his metaphorical genitalia in your face whilst giving you a history lesson of 80’s pop-culture.

 

 

I gave the game about 20 minutes after this to change its ways, but it just doesn’t. There’s really not much of a game here and what is present is spastic at best. It doesn’t deserve to try to make these references solely on the fact that you need to have an entertaining form of media (in this case the game itself) before you can start making them in the first place. Make sure your cake is good before you start piling on a massive amount of icing and sprinkles. Even though it does visually and audibly nail an 80’s gaming, it relies on cheap references and gimmicky subtexts that just aren’t worth a true gamer’s time–just give this one a pass.

Steam Link

NEO Scavenger
by Chezni

 

Bro, do you even survive in a post-apocalyptic, turn-based, crafting, exploring, fog-of-war, character-creating, text-heavy, role-play world? Oh, you must have played NEO Scavenger too then!

 

NEO Scavenger is a game that has been done before. Something similar to the character creation skill-choice has been done in the Fallout series. Zombie-infested sector-based scavenging games have been done in games like the Rebuild series on Kongregate and countless others. Survival crafting games have been made so often that it’s a fully recognized game genre under the same name. So, if it’s not unique, what makes NEO Scavenger worthy of Tier 1?

 

 

Well, it’s because NEO Scavenger does all these things very well. Skill selection is unique, clear, and has meaningful impact upon what the player can do, both in and out of dialogue choices. The mechanics of the world are detailed and usually have a menu screen associated with them to display to the player what information they need to know–right down to things like where your character was wounded and how bad the wound is. Crafting allows for experimentation without being completely obtuse. Inventory management is harsh but realistically challenged–unless you find a knapsack or want to sacrifice a precious sleeping bag to make one, your carrying capacity is nearly limited to only what you can hold in your two hands. Add to this that you must manage exposure, fatigue, pain, and other bodily needs, the game is a well-built mesh of survival elements.

 

 

You won’t find flashy graphics or dynamic visual assets in this game but it doesn’t need it. Any time something important happens, there is a paragraph of text to give you the needed flavor. The theater of the mind plays a pretty big role in all of this–something that is often lacking in the gaming world today and as such getting to experience it here is refreshing. That’s not to say that our modern day “high-falootin’ high resolution polygonal graphics are evil,” but it is to say that not all games need them–NEO Scavenger being a fine example of this.

 

 

My only complaint the game’s UI. While it’s clear that some effort was put into user friendliness, overall it’s kind of cluttered and at times confusing how to get things working. Take for instance the idea of camping. There is a campsite menu, but you don’t actually camp there. Instead, the campsite menu is used for selecting where you want to rest. While there is a sleep option, you actually just want to click “End turn” if you want to rest for a bit, and not sleep for several hours. It doesn’t stop there though, for if you have a sleeping bag (most often carried in one of your hands since you probably don’t have a backpack) you must unequip the sleeping bag, go to the “inventory” of the location that you are visiting, and throw the bag on the ground so that you can benefit from its warmth when ending your turn, and not die of hypothermia. No, this kind of thing isn’t a game-breaker for me, but it’s a bit tough to get used to.

 

 

All in all, I still like NEO Scavenger and I look forward increasing my chances of survival in it through skill and familiarity. Currently my record is a whopping 1.13 days, ending when I was tracked down by a swarm of ravenous zombie dogs (right, did I forget to mention that enemies can track you if you leave a trail?). I’m not sure what I’ll find out there in the Neo world, but as I’ve said before about roguelikes, the journey there into the unknown  is what makes it all worth it.

Steam Link

 

 

100% Orange Juice
by Chezni

It’s like Mario Party, only with robots, little girls and seagulls. Actually, that may be more like Mario Party than I remember. I’m of course, talking about…

 

Okay, not gonna lie, I might have met my match here. I like to consider myself a well-seasoned gamer. I’ve survived games that were terrible, games that were incredibly difficult and games that were just plain unfair… but 100% OJ reaches an entirely new level. Of insanity. Complete and utter insanity. And little girls that steal things. The closest thing I can compare it to is Mario Party, but even that doesn’t do it justice. Sure, similar to our lovable Italian’s favorite party game, 100% OJ is played on a board, you roll dice, you gain a currency for committing acts of felony, and it is undoubtedly the place where friendships go to die (if I had any friends to play this with me). Unlike Mario Party though, there are no mini-games after each round, there is a pseudo RPG-combat system, you can murder people, and play cards as if it was one of the crazy half-baked games a villainous henchman invented in an episode of Yugioh. I would say that these things make it the Japanese version of Mario Party except… yeah… the old plumber is already Japanese.

 

 

In regards to about half the things happening in the game, I have no ability to explain them. I chose a character that I liked, partially based on the fact that I thought she seemed cool and partially because she looked about as clueless as I was, which comforted me somehow. I think the goal of the game was to achieve five “Normas” which come in the form of two kinds of quests–murder stuff or get stuff (stars). Along the way, a little dog girl kept stealing money from the only boy on the board. I kept drawing cards that had neat pictures, but for some reason was never allowed to use any of them. To this day, my inability to play anything I drew haunts me. At some point a giant boss robot appeared and murdered everyone. Then the boy who’s wallet was stolen punched me out. It was around chapter (round) 40 that I was convinced the game was a satirical commentary about Marxism and how it connected with the social injustices concerning the youth of modern day Japan. I’m not entirely convinced that I’m wrong.

 

 

Eventually the dog-girl won. Apparently, most of my opponents were as clueless as I was, considering that I somehow got second place. In the end, I’m not convinced that this is a bad game. There’s clearly a large selection of wacky effects and strategies that can be implemented through use of the game’s numerous cards. If you’re willing to shell out a bit for the DLC, there are quite a few characters. A quick flip through the game’s community artwork will show you that there’s clearly a large group of people who embrace the game’s wild chance, zaniness, and ridiculous combination of adorable sinister-like qualities. There’s online play for those who want to be social, and even a rather wide selection of things you can unlock.

 

 

If I was younger, had more time and/or had a group of friends to play this game with, I think I would enjoy it quite a bit more. As it stands that I have none of these things, I am willing to take a step back and recognize that it may simply not be something I can get into. I love the art, humor and considering the somewhat stale nature of Mario games as of late, this game could be a great way to fill the niche of those who have fond memories of the old Mario Party games. For now though, I place it in Tier 2, putting it gently in a corner of the closet, praying that we leave each other on good terms–an attempt to respectfully avoid bending my mind around its madness any longer.

Steam Link

Legionwood 2: Rise of the Eternal’s Realm
by Chezni

The number of RPG Maker games with “2” in the title that I’m reviewing is beginning to concern me. This time it’s…

 

Unlike Deadly Sin 2 Legionwood 2 is pretty damn-well made. Whereas Deadly Sin focused on unique visual assets and dropped the ball on design, Legionwood’s game design is great. The pacing is far better, the mechanics are much more exciting and the overall design of the game feels way better built. To be honest, I was a little worried at first when “GAIA STUDIOS” sat on my screen during the introduction for what felt like an eternity, followed by an equally dull and lingering “LEGIONWOOD2.” As it turns out though, the dev studio had a pretty good grasp on the fact that a lot of people aren’t going to be interested in something moving as slow as molasses, especially before they have any context for what the game is about. I greatly appreciated that they offered a clean out for people like me as shown in the bottom pic.

 

 

Hey, it might seem silly, but at least they were open about it and didn’t make me feel like I had to sit through 10 minutes of boring crap I don’t care about yet. Mechanically, it’s roughly your standard take-turn combat system with a “wait” ATB system. In other words, if your characters have a higher agility, overall they’ll take more turns than their opponents but you have as much time as you want to choose your character’s actions. What really struck gold for me though was the ability to freely select and change not just one class, but two classes for your characters. It didn’t take me long to set myself up as a Gun-Mage which made pleased me probably more than it should have. (Just saying the word “Gun Mage” makes me feel awesome for some reason.) Apparently, if the NPC I talked to is to be trusted, there are many other classes that you’ll get as you play the game, which gave me a great tug to keep playing to not only discover them but also the wacky combinations I could set my party up as. In addition to classes, there’s even a morality rating that sets the party down the “good” or “bad” path which changes certain events within the story. True, it’s binary, but it’s a lot more than most tileset RPGs give you.


 

A majority of Legionwood 2’s assets are taken straight from RPG Maker but given how well they are used in combination with the believably written dialogue, characters that are at least trying to be distinct from one another, decent music and aforementioned design, this game nets a high Tier 2 for me. It’s definitely something I want to check back into after I’ve cleared out my Tier 1’s–it might be the best RPG Maker game that I’ve seen yet.

Steam Link

Savant – Ascent (Completed)
by Chezni

DUB THE WUB. Don’t blink or your might miss it, it’s Savant – Ascent!

 

Savant – Ascent is a rockin’ game that comes out of the gate swinging. You play the role of a V for Vendetta cosplayer (the Savant?) who gets blown out of his wizard’s tower after some kind of magical sphere goes haywire. The Savant wastes no time bursting right back into his tower, fights his way up a crazy elevator ride and destroys the magical orb and the evil glitch Vario that is possessing it. That’s it–the game ends. No, I’m not kidding. Even as a beginner, it’ll take you about 30 minutes to play from start to finish. So you might be wondering, “Chezni, why on Earth did you put this in Tier 1?” Well, truly I have spent $2 and 30 minutes of my life doing much less valuable things and for those 30 minutes you feel like a badass. So just what do you get for those 30 minutes?


 

Combat in the game involves blasting incoming enemies in a radius around you, using the analog stick (or mouse). Special enemies drop pieces of a CD which grant momentary invulnerability when you pick them up. You can hop between one of two sections on each level to avoid attacks and death is met with the acquisition of new powerups and songs in the form of completed CDs that you’ve picked up and yes, the music is primarily dubstep. It’s not the most amazing dubstep that I’ve ever heard (I tend to listen to it more than a person of my age and standing probably should) but I must admit that it’s the first time I’ve played a game that used it as its primary soundtrack and it was pretty fun to rock out to it while blasting some drones away.

 

The drones themselves spill in perfectly–first you get the common quarter notes (ones that move every beat) but then you get the more durable half-notes. I was disappointed that this is where the music-synced baddies stopped since it really made the game feel cohesive to see them moving in beat, but there are only 4 enemy types in the game. Aside from the music though, the graphics are quick and crisp and fun to look at.

 

 

True, there’s an endless mode, a time attack mode a Vario mode–but really, there’s no need to play the game after you beat it. You’ve already seen everything by then and it’s just a rehash of what was already extremely light content. I think if I were to find an apt comparison, this game is like the chocolate mint on your pillow at a hotel. No, not wholesome, lasting or even that impressionable in any way but you’re still going to eat it. It’s a freaking chocolate mint, how can you resist it? Admittedly if you don’t like to dub the wub (or if you don’t like chocolate mints if you’re stuck in the metaphor) then you probably won’t like this game. Otherwise, I fully recommend just trying this out for a bit–it really won’t take you that long either way.

Steam Link

 

Deadly Sin 2
by Chezni

There’s a difference between a game that is needed to satisfy an idea, and an idea that is made to satisfy the need for a game. Deadly Sin 2, is the latter.

 

It’s always a bit hard to critique a RPG Maker game. My gut impulse is to reject the game as being a recycled collection of frankensprites, visual effects and coded plugins scavenged from the deepest ends of the internet. This opinion is not entirely non-subjective either, as many poorly made RPG Maker games that I’ve played fit this bill. In the spirit of fairness however, I always try to remind myself that reused assets and codes should not stop me from discovering a game that might really enjoy. Even with this mindset I can say that Deadly Sin 2 isn’t worth playing.

 

 

You can forgive a lot from an indie game, but there has to something–some spark or unique shine–that makes pushing past the game’s roughness worth it. The problem is that Deadly Sin 2 just doesn’t have anything like that. The opening is generic, the party members are super generic, quests are generic, story is unbearably generic–on top of being made up of a mishmash of sprites and tilesets. Now, I do feel a tad bad saying this because there are some parts of the game that are worth pointing out as being moderately decent. For instance:

 

 

All your characters in combat are animated with some pretty sweet pixel-work. They ready their weapons and attack, or do a special animation for their skills or magic. It’s tight, looks nice and flows really well–and is completely unique to this game. The combat is a little more advanced than your typical take-turn combat as well, with the addition of a threat mechanic which influnces who an enemy will attack. I also appreciate the way that you can increase character’s skills through the use of skill points that you find throughout the world. It’s nice to have customization over your characters and reading up on the skills is fun.

 

 

These things alone though aren’t strong enough to create anything worth trying. The Threat mechanic is nice but isn’t that profound. The animations are nice, but since the combat is weak, they’re just something flashy and distracting instead of being the icing on the cake. Combat feels imbalanced in more ways than just the stats themselves (although that is part of the issue)–the pacing feels wrong. Having access to all the skills right off the bat leaves little to work towards. Enemies feel random and aren’t really introduced in a way that allows the player to understand the world that they exist in–the monsters don’t tell a story or fit in, they’re just “there.” Treasure is littered everywhere, making its discovery a chore instead of something exciting. Seriously; after the game’s introduction, I played about 10 minutes and found this…

This…

 

And this…

 

And that’s not even all of them. When there’s treasure everywhere, it’s stops being treasure and just becomes junk. Add to this that I’m not being facetious when I say that everything about the world, story and characters are so uninspiring. The mage in the party refers to enemies as “scrubs.” “Scrub” is a word that was invented by the online gaming community somewhat recently to refer to someone is is of a “lower tier” than them. A “scrub” is someone of such a lower skill level than you, that they aren’t worth your time. To hear one of my party members uses this word breaks all immersion of what I assume is supposed to be a high fantasy world. Add to this that the two “main character’s” introductions both generically involve their sweethearts, both look like generic warriors, both have no personality whatsoever, the hero’s castle at the beginning is burned down, there’s some vague and super boring political “intrigue” involving invading kingdoms and political tension that after a short-while I was ready to quietly pack this one away for good. I wasn’t really insulted by this one, but it still belongs in Tier 3, since I would never recommend it to anyone.

Steam Link

BIT.TRIP RUNNER and Perfection in Video Games
by LepcisMagna

Perfection is a tricky thing in video games, and perfection is what BIT.TRIP RUNNER (or, BTR) demands of you.  The best way I can describe this is by saying that BTR feels like an arcade machine; but it feels like an arcade machine that was designed to eat your quarters rather than to be fun (even though there are no lives and no Game Over-s).  It attracts you with colorful lights and interesting sounds tied together by a well-thought-out pixel art aesthetic.  There is a simple control scheme – press space bar to jump and use the arrow keys to execute maneuvers while the screen scrolls ever forward toward the finish line.  It seems straightforward and quite possibly fun.

The problem arises that in BTR, any failure means restarting the level.  The levels are short enough that this isn’t an immediate problem, but as the difficulty ramps, you find yourself playing the exact same parts of levels for 90% of your time to try the tough bits 10% of the time.  This just becomes grinding, since the levels require the exact same set of inputs to get to the point where you failed before.  Aside: there are technically alternate paths for brief sections, but those alternate routes give you no advantage so there is no reason to memorize them.

To figure out why this is a problem, I’d like to talk about perfection for a bit.

Perfection

Let me be up front: I think games that demand constant perfection are taking shortcuts to difficulty and are generally not worth my time.  Take Dark Souls or Legend of Grimrock II, for example.  Dark Souls does not require perfection.  It asks for excellence and an understanding of the rules, but it lets you make mistakes, and few mistakes (well, except in Blighttown) are immediately fatal.  I think this design philosophy becomes clear when, in the progression from the Dark Souls I to III, you’ll die less frequently from stun-lock.  In LoG, the only time you’ll really find yourself in a place that means almost certain death is if you let two tough enemies get on either side of you.

This is not to say that having segments that require perfection is bad or that rewarding perfection would be bad.  Guitar Hero (or my favored knock-off, Super Crazy Guitar Maniac Deluxe 4) is difficult and complex enough that perfection is a worthy goal, but you aren’t required to be immediately perfect.  Beyond that, perfection in the context of music makes sense (and the problems of requiring perfection in music is even the subject of a movie).  In other sorts of games, a segment that requires perfection can be a way to increase tension, as long as it isn’t extensive or represent a fundamental change to the game mechanics (like QTEs).  Speedrunning a game perfectly can show an incredible mastery, but it shouldn’t be the only way to beat a game.

The trouble only arises when perfection is your only path to progress or when using an unfamiliar set of mechanics.  I’ve tried figuring this out with Chezni, and the best thing we came up with was this: perfection is not human.  Failure is a part of learning and growth, and requiring perfection eliminates the possibility of learning anything valuable from a mistake.  This view ties back in to BTR nicely: when I play perfection games, it makes me feel like I should just write a script to beat the game for me.  There is an exact set of inputs that I must enter to progress, and no other set will lead to success – so why should I bother if I have no meaningful input?  (Aside: this is also the reason I stopped playing Klondike: it’s only winnable 80% of the time and even a perfect algorithm can’t save you)  If I watched a YouTube Let’s Play, I would see the exact same thing as if I had played it.  The obvious exception here is that in puzzle games, it’s a challenge that I would have to solve before I could tell a computer to do it – which is the very growth that other such games lack.

Back to BIT.TRIP RUNNER

I couldn’t find any place to put this, but I thought it important to include: the audio cues in BTR take place as the event happens, rather than when you need to hit the button.  In other words, the audio for the rhythm game doesn’t actually help you.  As you may imagine, this becomes quickly frustrating as the screen fills with sprites and makes it hard to tell precisely when you should jump.

The entire challenge in BTR lies in learning the mechanics and then implementing them.  There’s no motivation to do so – you’re learning the mechanics so you can learn more mechanics.  You’re implementing the mechanics so you can implement the mechanics.  In Tetris you’re seeing how far you can get and trying to beat the top score.  In SCGMD4, you want some participation in some good music.  In an RPG you want to hear more of the story.  But in BTR, the exact same game has been played in the exact same way hundreds of times and all you’re doing is retreading the same path as everyone before you.  BTR functions and has a good aesthetic which saves it from Tier Four, but it is firmly in Tier Three for its constant, unyielding requirement of perfection.

Steam link

Serious Sam Franchise
by Chezni

Lepcis’s First Impression of SSHD:FE

Lepcis’s First Impression of the SS Franchise

 

As I sat down and took a serious look at the Serious Sam franchise, I couldn’t help but continually think, “What a wreck.” Having read Lepcis’s reviews, I knew what was coming and I wasn’t looking forward to it. You can read the reviews for yourself by using the links above if you like, but one line he wrote sums the whole thing up. “Croteam made 1.5 good Serious Sam games […] and have just been repeating the same game ever since.” I can’t find a better way to describe this mess. There are 9 Serious Sam games loaded in my Steam folder. 2 of them are disjointed outsourced spin-offs. 1 is a terrible sequel. 1 is the original game and 5 are remakes of the original game. Let that sink in. There are 5 remakes of the same game. As much as I dislike the franchise, at least each Call of Duty game has a new Single-Player story (the caveat being that I’ve never really played a COD game). But Serious Sam? Naw, why try? Why use creativity? Just re-hash the same damn thing that achieved pseudo-popularity years ago. I’m not even kidding. Take these 6 games and put them in a pile: 1 is the original game, one is an expansion of the original game, one is an HD remake of the original game, one is an HD remake of the expansion of the original game, 1 is an unfinished fan-made remake of the original game and the last is a prequel of the original game that reuses many of the same jokes and monsters. What. The. Hell.

 

In spite of my strong feelings of anger, insult and disgust associated with a company that feels so confident that the stupidity of their intended audience is so intense that the won’t even notice that they’re just buying the same game 6 times, I can’t really say anything that Lepcis hasn’t said already. So I’ll try not to. What follows instead is a brief comparison of one game to another built up from the original seed of the first Serious Sam game–short and sweet. You’ll still be able to find the Tier that I believe the game belongs to but I will forego the usual lengthy explanation. Without further ado, let’s get into the excrement deluge that is the Serious Sam series.

 

Serious Sam Classic: The First Encounter: Tier 3

Floaty. Poor level design exasperated by bland enemy AI and non-existent enemy placement due to “teleport-spawning” enemies. Strategy against every enemy is exactly the same–kite and shoot. Instead of quality you get quantity–hoards of enemies, but none of them create a need for intelligent play since they die as fast as they teleport in. Might as well be a point-and-click adventure. Enemy visual design is creative and unique and the game is very fast paced with relative smoothness. Sam has a few interesting one-liners that are cringy, but that’s the point.  Large levels, but no motivation to explore them and little meaningful player interaction with them while fighting enemies due to simplistic designs and teleport-spawning. No need to even fight enemies either, just run through the levels until the developers force you to fight a hoard through use of a locked door or raised wall because their game isn’t well-developed enough otherwise to create meaningful confrontation between the player and enemies otherwise. For its time, mediocre. Nowadays, it’s forgettable. The original Timesplitters, a game with smaller worlds and fewer enemies, was more fun to play, and it came out a year before this.

 

Serious Sam Classic: The Second Encounter: Tier 2

A huge improvement over the original. Yes, it uses the same engine, assets, monsters etc. The biggest difference is that the level design in this blows the first’s out of the water. There are far fewer enemies that just teleport-spawn out of nowhere. Level designs create meaningful play without boxing the player in all the time and forcing them to fight arena style. When you are boxed in, it feels acceptable and isn’t overdone. Level pacing feels much better as well, not to mention more interesting looking. It just goes to show you, it’s not how pretty your graphics are, or how many enemies you’ve designed–it’s how you use them.

 

Serious Sam HD: The First Encounter: Tier 2

A direct remake but many improvements over the original. Floatiness is nearly gone. Weapon animations are more believable (there actually is animation for the pistol now). AI is still bland and arena fighting problem still exists. Teleport-spawning still exists, and level design is still relatively poor. Teleport-spawning has been altered so that enemies no longer fall into cliffs from the sky and clip to solid ground. Gone is the headless bomber riding the bull monster (or at least I didn’t see him). You can still just run through the level fighting a minimal amount of enemies. Barely nets T2, but overall just feels better.

 

 

Serious Sam HD: The Second Encounter: Tier 2

Once again, a strong improvement over the First Encounter. Contains much more content. Seems to contain several campaigns (including the levels from FE) as well as a survival mode. Makes me wonder why they didn’t just release FE and SE as one game. Biggest complaint is that they’re just recycling the old Sam voice clips, which I didn’t think were that great to begin with. He barely passes as being some sort of troll or ogre–definitely doesn’t pass off as being human. Otherwise, this is the strongest one yet. Definitely would suggest just playing this one and skipping the previous 3. They are, after all, just the same game repeated.

 

Serious Sam Classic: Revolution: Tier 3

Sorry, I know I said I wouldn’t repeat what Lepcis said, but I have to for this. Why does this exist? Just, why? Literally another remake of FE and SE, only with the original textures and physics.  Does Croteam think it’s really worth it sell this fan project? The only advantage to this existing at all is that the old mods that worked with the SS Classics games will work with this since it it’s got the same framework. Otherwise, this is just waste of space. It runs smoother than the Classics versions and that’s about it. It’s not even finished. Don’t even waste your time.

 

Serious Sam 2: Tier 3

Identity of the game is completely confused. You’d think that a game where you ride dinosaurs, shoot giant monsters and have a sexy blue-skinned assistant would be awesome but… it’s not. Not really. The pacing of the game is severely dropped from previous installments. Enemies are completely new and feel very different from before; the staple headless monster is replaced by a sort of space-ogre. I’ll give them one thing, and that’s that they tried something new. I don’t know if it was a step in the wrong direction, but I do know it just isn’t implemented well. It feels like a strange mix between Halo and Banjo Kazooie, but not in a good way.

 

Serious Sam 3: BFE: Tier 2

Once you get past the familiar enemies and repeated jokes from the previous installments, this one’s not that bad. I think I’d still rather play SS HD SE, but mechanically speaking this is the stronger title. Finally, there’s a new VA for Sam in a game that also contains the headless monsters. Not a fan of the instant-kill melee attack that Sam always possesses, but DOOM needs to take a leaf out of BFE’s book–you’re not invulnerable while you do it and health doesn’t spurt out of an enemy when you kill them with it, meaning that there’s a bit more strategy to it (but only a bit). I approve of infinite handgun bullets–it allows the devs to create levels that aren’t cluttered with ammo constantly, and it makes the bullets you get for the other weapons a bit more meaningful, since you’re expected early on to use the handgun quite a bit. Sam talks a bit more but isn’t quite as cringy–the VA still sounds like an ogre but it’s a little cleaner so it’s easier on the ears. Level design is pretty solid with plenty of secrets. Enemies have been re-balanced in meaningful ways. For example, the headless bombers now flinch when you shoot them, and explode on the second shot, meaning that you can point blank shoot one that is right next to you and still have time to back away before the final exploding shot. I no longer feel like the devs are just throwing swarms of enemies at you pointlessly–enemies are well-placed, don’t teleport-spawn in and make the levels fun.

 

Serious Sam: The Random Encounter: Tier 3 (Completed)

I beat this one a while back and… it just is not worth it. It’s buggy as hell but that’s not even the worst of it. It passes off as a flash game, but I’ve played flash games that are better. The first time you play, it might take you 2 hours to beat. If you knew what you were doing, it would probably take less than an hour. Guns and enemies are not really balanced, and the niches that each gun is supposed to fill is obsolete in the face of the need for constant AOE DPS. There’s a few lame jokes that might get a small “guffaw,” here and there but nothing that Duke Nukem’s or Shadow Warrior’s humor doesn’t put to shame. It barely escapes Tier 4 because I like the concept of the game–it’s just that this is a horrible representation of it. If you want to know something weird, I met one of the guys who worked on this game at PAX. The game he was advertising at the convention wasn’t that great either.  I felt a little embarrassed for him.

 

Serious Sam Double D XXL: Tier 4

Nope. I’m not playing this game. The game’s title, immediate sexualization of your female sidekick and the way that Sam portrait looks like a pile of shit tells me everything I need to know about this game–but even then, I was willing to give it a go. Surprisingly, it was the screenshot below that was the final nail in the coffin. “My programmers wanted me to remind you that instant enemy spawning is totally acceptable. That’s the way things are supposed to work.” Nope. Just because you have one of your characters blatantly state that I’m supposed to treat a big pile of steaming excrement as something acceptable does not mean that I’ll do so–so when you tell me that teleport-spawning enemies is how “things are supposed to work,” then I’m even less inclined to accept it. Because you’re too ignorant to understand it Mr. Dev, I’ll spell it out for you. Teleport-spawning enemies changes the rules of the game in a bad way. A few enemies teleport-spawning is sometimes ok. A certain kind of enemy who’s calling card is to teleport-spawn is also ok. However, when all enemies can teleport spawn, you’re building your game’s “difficulty” based upon lies, with no reasonable counterplay. You are telling the player one thing, and then doing another. Your player can receive input visually and audibly that “you cleared out this room” which becomes false when he gets killed from behind by a hoard that immediately spawns in. There is no reasonable counterplay, since you did nothing to communicate to the player that there was danger. You’re too lazy to make a game that gives the player meaningful input so instead you design a game that requires prior knowledge. It’s the equivalent of blindfolding someone and then punching them in the face and when they don’t block it you tell them “well this is how it’s supposed to work.” Just because you told them you were going to do it does not somehow make it better. If you’re reading this, just leave this piece of refuse be and move on to something, anything more meaningful. It won’t be hard at all to find.