Dungeon Siege 3

Rating: 1 out of 3 Stars (why only 3 possible stars?)
Genre: Dungeon Crawler RPG
ESRB: T (for swinging swords and sparkles)
Estimated hours of gameplay (thorough play/quick play): 12/10
Developer: Obsidian
Wiki page

Despite the fact that I've never been a fan of either Dungeon Siege or Obsidian, I had high hopes for this game. Mostly because I had played the demo, and it showed a potential for re-working dungeon crawler mechanics into a new era. Which was a bit surprising, since the franchise is basically a clone of Diablo, and Obsidian is a parody of a video game company. You know, since their games come with more glitches than gameplay. But I do notice they seem to try, but then stop trying at some point. Maybe every publisher pushes them to make games too fast... I have no idea. The end result is called "half-baked", and it regrettably shows its ugly head here, too.

Did you play this one? I did.

Stupidly, one strong point of this game is the amazing lack of bugs. Any bugs I ran into were generally nominal. In fact, they were so unnoticeable that I forgot what they were. I really just have to assume there must have been bugs because this is a damn Obsidian game. You know, the makers of "Fallout: New Glitchland" or whatever it was called. There were three things that stuck out, though, that may count more as "lack of polish" than bugs. Here they are:

1. Character freezes briefly between menus and dialogue. Every. Time.
2. After rolling, it is possible to accidentally roll a second time if you move the stick too quickly.
3. Level up menu arrives ONLY at end of combat. There seems to be no convenient or logical way to actually get to this screen otherwise.

Just a "normal" day in New Glitchland.

Talking about "lack of polish" brings me to my first major issue with the game, which is one that presents a large deal-breaker to many players: the shit-tacular multiplayer. The multiplayer in this game is so poorly designed they may as well have not included it at all! My God... it's unreal. I was playing as the warrior class, who relies a lot on dashing around the screen since he's obviously a melee guy. So immediately the camera became completely useless. Why? Because despite being an online multiplayer game, ALL PLAYERS SHARE THE SAME CAMERA. Holy shit! If you thought New Super Mario Brothers Wii was frustrating, try playing a top-down game where all players can move the camera individually. What the hell! So basically I was the world's most effective Player Killer just by playing my class normally because it completely fucked up the camera for everyone. Did... did they test this out? Like, ever? Do they know that each player has their own XBox (or another system, I guess) to render the graphics on? I don't understand!

Accidentally killing your friends: funny... until you actually try to play the game.

Also, the multiplayer is treated like a "drop in, drop out" style where new players can come and go as they please. BUT the save system in the game is restricted to specific save points rather than some manner of consistent saving system. It also does not feature "graveyards" like an MMO which would allow you to keep playing once you die. So what does this mean for a party wipe? Well, it breaks your fucking game. No joke. I think with time it might try to load players into the party leader's last save, but every game I played ended the same way: people looked at their fucked up screen and just quit the game. Again, I really can't believe they didn't notice this glaring lack of functionality. Really, Obsidian?

Imagine if wiping in WoW meant retarting the raid and re-forming all the parties. Fun!

And lastly, the game lets you have a companion when playing in single player. Well, actually it FORCES you to have a companion. This second character is always one of the other playable characters, which you unlock at various points during the story. For some strange reason, the game implants whoever the "second slot" of your multiplayer game is into your companion slot. Once that person leaves, you forever have a copy of that character for your companion. This means they can spend all the character's skills in ways you hate and screw up all the gear you have worked towards. This is pretty unbelievable, but that's not even the silliest thing. No, the silliest thing caused me to laugh out loud for real. Remember how I said companions unlock during the course of the story? Well, if the second player uses a character you haven't unlocked yet... that character is now unlocked! Furthermore, you can't switch your companion out. Forever, I think. I don't know because I quit my fighter in disgust.

Here's a game with a more sophisticated co-op system.

You can play the game with another controller on the same screen. I read something about the loot system being completely absurd. And since I already had enough bullshit from this game's multiplayer, I automatically decided I didn't want to bother any one with attempting the multiplayer with me.

My last complaint is the game's replay-ability: there is none. Yup, once you beat the game it just says "Good job, buddy!" and sends you to the title screen. Well, obviously there's a proper ending, but I expected some kind of new game+ mode or maybe a higher difficulty or infinite dungeon mode.... but no! Nothing! I tried loading that character and it simply sent me to the last boss fight. What! That's not how dungeon crawlers work! Son of a bitch!

There are worse endings. Here's the end of Mass Effect 3. I think. I'm remembering people's reactions, not the actual ending.

So is there anything good about this game? Quite a bit. No, really. If all you want is to play through an RPG once, this is rather nice. It uses dungeon crawler mechanics, but introduces a lot of new combat changes from the norm. And it doesn't just fling a bunch of useless abilities that look cool, unlike some other dungeon crawlers (wink, wink). It only gives each character nine. While not every ability is perfectly balanced, it can be easily said that there was some thought going into creating a playstyle for each class. And each class wants to juggle two stances to weave their abilities around in a given situation. For example, in my single player playthrough (where I did play through the whole game) I used the "gun lady" class. I don't remember what she was called. Whatever. Anyway, one stance was a long range rifle, and the other was dual-wielded shotguns. The shotguns were quick and allowed the player to frantically spray around at melee attackers, while the long range offered superior damage-per-second for when proper range could be acquired. See how those work in different situations instead of overlapping? Very nice. And every character can both block and dodge, giving more decisions and ways to avoid damage rather than simply walking away slowly.

Walking was just fine back in my day. All you kids and your fancy "running", bah!

The story is fine, too. Not too investing, but the dialogue is so matter-of-fact and the actors read it in a matter-of-fact manner so that holds it back. It would help if the characters were more interesting, although they try to be later on by having these things called "character flaws" show up. There's also a bunch of lore and politics thrown at the player, but by the end of the game I got the gist of it. Unfortunately,  there's no real difference in the story if you play as another character, which, again, hurts the re-playability.

Conclusion:
Something of a refreshing take on a dungeon crawler when played through single player once. But the game offers nothing more from a genre that is supposed to offer a lot more. Don't get this unless you really freaking love dungeon crawlers.

And don't watch the Uwe Boll movie. It's an Uwe Boll movie, for fuck's sake.

Too Human

Rating: 1 out of 3 Stars (why only 3 possible stars?)
Genre: Dungeon Crawler RPG 
ESRB: T (violence against dumb robots, although the cut scenes are almost gory enough for M)
Estimated hours of gameplay (thorough play/quick play): 16/12
Developer: Silicon Knights
Wiki page

This is another retro review as this game came out in 2008. But it's so fun to talk about and I will also be bringing it up in future reviews as an example, so I figured I had to cover it at some point. This game is about Norse mythology as told through some kind of futuristic setting. The premise, while arguably not original, is incredibly enticing. How Goddamn ridiculous it is. Man. In the game you play as Baldur. For those in the know, he's not as beautiful as the myths suggest, but I think Crispin Freeman's voice makes up for that. Also, those in the know might think this is an odd choice for main character, since someone like Thor, Tyr, or Sigfried would make for a more typical video game character. Well, I don't want to ruin the story with spoilers, but it has a lot to do with avoiding Ragnorok and fate and such. The game then has Baldur fighting a bunch of goblins, elves, and trolls, but they are all depicted as robots. You may have guessed by looking at it that this is a God of War clone, but you'd be sort of wrong.

This is probably the same game. I forget.

The game actually does something that I wish Dynasty Warriors and God of War did in that it has fully separated classes, itemization, and actual talent trees for developing your character. But that just means the "RPG elements" are less watered down. The actual combat does NOT use the standard X/Y combinations. Not even X like in the Batman Arkham games. No, in this game you use the freaking right analog stick. You hold it in the direction you want to attack, and Baldur auto-attacks. This actually makes the game more of a dungeon crawler. I know it sounds terribly weird, but it actually is a welcome deviation from the usual button masher. Baldur also slides to meet enemies, reducing the times you will awkwardly misjudge the distance of his melee. He also has more variety in his combat that does not rely on idiotic memorization of long combos. For example, you can click both sticks in the same direction at the same time to do a "fierce attack". This is a long range attack using your melee weapon. If something is in melee range, Baldur will instead perform a finisher using that same command. He also carries a ranged weapon regardless of class that is rather powerful, and not just some combo extender. There are also three cooldown abilities and a "super meter" to manage, so his combat tends to feel more varied than most beat-em-up's and dungeon crawlers. And he can roll with glorious invincibility frames.

No, I started rolling! I'm invincible! Nyah!

So why does this game get one star? Well, it's a horrible mess. It was first announced back in 1999 as a game for the original Playstation. It was in development hell for a long ass time and didn't get released until 2008. During that time, the entire game changed around a lot. It went from platform to platform as Nintendo snatched it up to be a GameCube exclusive at one point. It changed game engines which resulted in legal troubles. On and on. I don't know if this is obvious, but being in development hell tends to automatically produce ruined art.

Heaven help you if it takes 30 years to get your art finished.

That said, I can't be entirely sure what were the overall effects of this hell. I will say that the game is uneven in a lot of ways: class imbalance, higher levels mean instant death, healing is not frequent enough, etc. It seems pretty clear they didn't get much of a chance to polish the gameplay experience, but rather managed to get the game to just work. What's also unfortunate is that in the 4 years the game has been around, I don't think there has been a single patch. Silicon Knights has had no second chances to fix the awkward bits. I had to replay the game to write this review. While I did notice some fond things, I was also pretty quickly reminded of its poor choices. I kept dying from Damage Over Time debuffs because the duration of these DoT's was roughly three times the length of my health bar. With no means of healing or removing the debuff, death is inevitable. And the camera has very limited functionality. That would be fine IF they took the time to make sure it would be perfectly positioned in every level. And while the enemies are randomized (more so on a new game+), there are very few enemy types. There are also only four levels. They are very long levels, but still. The biggest thing for me was that melee combat is better than ranged simply because there are creatures that seem to be 99% resistant to ranged damage, but at the same time 100% of the bosses are best fought with ranged attacks. This is so binary and directly fucks up your choice of build.

Every time you die, a Valkyrie flies down and retrieves your body. It's super slow and unskippable.

Multiplayer is laughable as well. It is limited to just two people. You'd think it'd support larger groups, what with having "tank" and "healer" classes, but no. And even then, there's not even a way to know what class your partner is. I don't remember all the details like how it handles loot and level disparity, and right now replaying seems impossible. But I do remember giving up all hope on it pretty much immediately. Also, there is no split screen mode. Bullshit!

Conclusion:
This one is probably in the bargain bin by now, so you could potentially get your money's worth. But with the pile up of problems this game has you'd need to be more than a little curious to be able to put up with it. Unless you just really love space Vikings.

By the way, Thor has jaundice for some reason.

Space Marine

Rating: 2 out of 3 Stars (why only 3 possible stars?)
Genre: Third person shooter; Sub-genre: Beat-'em-up
ESRB: M (gore... slightly cartoony, but still a bit of gore)
Estimated hours of gameplay (thorough play/quick play): 10/6
Developer: Relic Entertainment
Wiki page

Don't worry, I know that Warhammer 40K existed before Starcraft, Halo, and Gears of War. I know that. However, that doesn't mean this game isn't derivative. For starters, "Space Marine" is a very generic title. And all the non-Warhammer fans knew this. It doesn't matter that that is what they are called, that's just "marketing", man. This would be like if the original Call of Duty was called "World War II: The Video Game"; it just sounds too obvious. Furthermore, as far as THIS game is concerned, why are they called Space Marines? Approximately zero percent of the levels are in space. Furthermore, are there specific regimens of marines? Like... non-Space Marines? Why don't they just call them "Marines"? Isn't space travel just part of normal life in this universe? What if they were called "Future Marines"? It sounds just as stupid as that.

Launchpad McQuack knows what I'm talking about: "Duh, this is the future?"

But maybe there are specific regimens of the Marines. I have no idea, because this game never bothers to explain its setting. It seems the developers freely assumed that only people familiar with the franchise would play the game, and anyone else would just not care about story at all. One complaint I've heard is that the voice acting is too matter-of-fact and lacks emotion. I think I heard that the reason is because Space Marines have their emotions removed... or something. Who fucking knows! The game certainly doesn't care to explain it. And if that's even true, then why are the other characters so bland? There's an obligatory female character who pops in from time to time who seems pretty laissez-faire about everything, even when the Space Marines make decisions that potentially turn her troops into cannon fodder. What's her deal?

Maybe she's so traumatized by war that she doesn't know how to feel?

"Whatever. It's a hack-n-slash/third person shooter. Just kill shit, yo. Don't ask questions." I might be able to see that, but unfortunately since I know this is a well-loved and well-developed franchise I can't escape the feeling that everything should be more flushed out. One of the main things contributing to the Dynasty Warriors mentality is the enemy: the Orks. They run at you in large numbers and you mash X at them. Which... makes me bring up another question! Son of a bitch! Yeah, I started thinking that the Ultra Marines (Oh, right these are Ultra... Space Marines. Something.) were the bad guys. Why? Well, the Orks generally just have cloth armor and crappy little axes to use against your bio-engineered-soldier-encased-in-super-armor. They bravely throw their lives away against an invincible super enemy. And they're also kinda dumb. In some stories, a stupid person makes a good underdog for the audience to root for. It just depends on if their idiocy is a result of willful ignorance or just lower IQ. More importantly, it matters what their motives are. And the motives of the Orks aren't explained. When I Google'd my question, the answer seems to be that there are "no definitive bad guys" in Warhammer. But if I were to just go off of this game, what would make me think that? Because the Space Marines constantly spout off crap about being honorable? How about all the times when they mock their enemies, relishing in wanton violence? Or when they come across a super weapon to use on the Orks, not only do they agree- without hesitation- to wipe out all the Orks, but when told the weapon could destroy the whole planet their attitude is something like, "Yeah, that's fine." Plus they refer to Orks as "green skins". Uh, racist? I don't know. Should I want to beat up the stupid Orks?

Do audiences want to see dumb characters get beat up?

I'll talk about the combat, and take the chance to return to how I described this as "derivative". It could be considered a bold move to make this game a hack-n-slash/third person shooter as that is a departure from the usual genres that Warhammer games use. The thing is, "Space Marines" are very popular in video games right now as are both hack-n-slash (like God of War) and third-person shooters (Mass Effect). So this seems little more than saying, "Oh, yeah? We got that, too!" To say Warhammer did these things first would only be correct for one of those three things. I do give credit that they tried to merge both of them together into a new genre. Tried. I spent the whole game using guns because melee weapons are fucking stupid. Titus, the main character, is a big oaf. His dodge move doesn't help too much and his regenerating shields are beefy... just not beefy enough to withstand getting swarmed (as well as taking too long to regenerate). At best, this can encourage the player to weave melee and ranged combat together. But engaging in melee combat usually means throwing away any work you've done to get some space from your opponent. Avoiding damage also assists in avoiding taking health damage (which occurs when shields are depleted, of course). And taking health damage means you have to perform an "execute" move on a stunned enemy to ...uh, Dracula out his blood? I don't understand why it heals you (again, not explained). Anyway, the execute itself is very slow and leaves the player open to damage and actually stunning an enemy feels oddly random. Naturally, I tried to avoid needing healing as much as Goddamn possible.

YOU PRESSED THE EXECUTE BUTTON LOOK HOW AWESOME YOU ARE

I found myself thinking nit-picky things about this game, too. Not nearly as bad as Witcher 2, but there are still several things I wanted changed. It's short and doesn't require spoilers, so I'll list them here:

-Execute can fail to target when only one stunned enemy directly in front of you. WHY?
-Enemies move forward when attacking and stagger Titus. I can't help but feel this means they are better at melee combat than him, yet he is better trained and stronger.
-Friendlies have collision. Considering Ultra Marines are roughly the same size as a small apartment, this is annoying.
-Explosive barrels! Why are these still in video games! AGH!
-Mega buster too effective, Assault Rifle too ineffective. Considering how crappy the AR is, it feels like it would be the "backup with infinite ammo". If not given a damage buff, it should reload faster or instantly or have a bigger magazine...SOMETHING.
-At some point the game gives you a new Assault Rifle. Instead of being a gun you can swap around, like switching the sniper rifle for a grenade launcher, it's just a flat out upgrade. Kinda cheap. Probably should have made the AR that powerful to begin with...
-Zoom levels of Lascannon feel inappropriate. There's "far enough for everything in the game" and "way too far". Might be nice for a lower zoom to use the thing at closer range instead of that second one? It's accurate when fired from the hip so.... yeah.
-The "Turret level" is stupid and boring. Just a bunch of turrets... one at a time.
-The levels with big indoor battles have obvious aggro triggers. Basically I'd be walking around in a quiet hall, and then once I turned a corner there'd suddenly be this big battle that instantly starts up. Probably could have used some ambient sound effects while walking through those halls.

Maybe that was more than I thought, but the Witcher list was 60 items. So this is fine by comparison. For my personal design tastes I found myself wishing there were more RPG elements. The game has none as it is all action. I also didn't care for the level design/settings. Every level was some kind of destroyed building or city; just a bunch of slabs of orange concrete sticking out of the ground with big, open hallways. Boring! I guess I'm a sucker for pretty forests, waterfalls, cyberpunk, snow levels, etc.

Pretty much the whole game right here.

Multiplayer:
I did get a chance to take on the multiplayer! I tried to play the "versus" mode, but it looks like nobody plays that any more. I gave up trying to find a game after a few minutes. It's just as well. With instant-killing sniper rifles and wacky jetpacks, I pretty much assumed it would be a horribly imbalanced mess.

Exterminatus, on the other hand, still had plenty of players. Which is probably because this mode is fun. Basically this is another Horde mode (like Gears of War of Mass Effect 3). Four players can choose from 3 basic classes and can further customize those classes with different weapons: regular guy, heavy weapons guy, and jetpack guy. While I do feel the choices are a bit imbalanced again (not sure what the regular guy is really for), this mode offers very quick matches with a shitload of wanton violence. Personally, I had a bit of trouble getting into it since I enjoy Mass Effect 3's MP so much. That's sort of funny, since ME3's MP is sloppily put together and has a painful amount of load screens. The big things for me were match duration and the "lives" system. In ME3, matches last from 15 minutes to 25 minutes depending on difficulty, size of the level, and player competence. In Space Marine, they last 45+ minutes. Every time. This might be fine, but with people coming and going and the decreasing player base, you'll find yourself on teams with less than 4 people quite often. In ME3, when you die you start to bleed out. You can use a consumable to revive yourself, or a teammate can use *nothing* and revive you (unless a Banshee is corpse camping you or something). In Space Marine, you have 5 lives. If you die, you lose a life and respawn. If you die 5 times, the whole team loses. This means you can lose a match even if the rest of the team is great. That just sucks.

I didn't even try capture the flag or whatever else because objective games with randoms is just masochism. I'm not that big on masochism, man.

Customization: just like painting the figurines... right? Nah, probably not.

Conclusion:
While a fairly competent game that blends hack-n-slash with shooting into a somewhat unique game, it simply does not try to please non-Warhammer fans at all. This is a weaker two star rating, but might be higher for Warhammer fans.

Deus Ex: Human Revolution

Rating: 3 out of 3 Stars (why only 3 possible stars?)
Genre: First person cover shooter; Sub-genre: Stealth/RPG
ESRB: M (shooting, drinking, and profanity)
Estimated hours of gameplay (thorough play/quick play): 40/16
Developer: Eidos Montreal
Wiki page

I tinted the picture (slightly) more yellow so that it lined up with my memory.

I prefer to call this Deus Ex 3 (although it's actually Deus Ex Zero) because it's easier. Also, while I'm being upfront, I played this game when it first came out. The thing is, I try to do a complete playthrough of an entire game before I review it. Right now I'm working on Space Marine and there's a multiplayer section I want to give additional time. And I had class on the day I normally write these. So whatever, man. I don't get paid to do this. Deadlines! Bah!

I picked this game because I have a lot of respect for it. I don't think it's better than the original, but it certainly is miles ahead of the previous sequel. And this is a franchise that was resurrected by a completely different developer. It also updates the game to modern standards while keeping bits of its original quirkiness. That's pretty slick.

I should also point out that this game tends to feel like a weaker three-star rating. Most of its strengths come from things that appeal directly to me, so that makes it harder to recommend. And it's a shooter with no multiplayer, which some people frown upon. It also has a "lot of talking" which to this day remains something of a controversy in design choices. But hey, the main character (Adam Jensen) talks like Clint Eastwood. You could listen to him all day! I know because everyone either loves Clint or they fearfully submit to him.

If I was committing a crime and Clint showed up, I'd call that "unlucky".

So how does a game that was originally a PC shooter that uses the entire keyboard work on a modern console? Pretty damn well, apparently. Instead of relying on a dozen F keys to use powers, there are simply fewer of them. And typing on a pop-up keyboard is fine since there really isn't any need to type at 40+ words a minute to quickly enter a password. The controls are rather funky and cannot be changed, but they work. They're not as bad as the controls for Killzone, don't worry.  Killzone also reminds me of another thing: the addition of "cover based" controls in a first person shooter. Fortunately, Deus Ex is again smarter than Killzone by switching to third person when cover is used. This works incredibly well, especially as it assists in playing the game stealthily.

This franchise sucks, in case I didn't make that clear.

Something I'm a little bitter about is the watering down of the RPG elements. Adam does have a talent tree that offers advantages to different play styles (mostly either stealth or action hero), but he automatically is a master of all guns. Further problems come from the ability to upgrade your weapons. While making a super weapon out of your favorite gun is always nice, it makes it so that finding a new weapon is pointless as it can't possibly compare to whatever you've spent the whole game refining. Upgrades are limited in supply so you can't just throw them around willy nilly. I carried a sniper rifle with me for most of the game and fired it maybe twice. And the armor piercing mod for the pistol is stupidly god-like.

In all fairness, having a god-pistol could be considered tradition.

The game does retain a lot of important elements: big levels with a lot of exploration, sneaking through air ducts, hacking computers, wearing sunglasses at night, etc. To me, I did feel like these new developers did a sufficient job making this new game feel like the original from 11 years prior. All the modernizations don't really get in the way, and they also allow me to play the game on a console. Most importantly, the story lines up! While there are problems here and there (the ending is very abrupt and laid out in a silly way) it does seem Eidos has done some of their homework here. The timeline is sound enough, and there are mentions of events that lead into the original. All the conspiracies and cyber-punk setting keep the game's tone and theme at appropriate places.

Wearing sunglasses at night = cool.

I did find the game to be a bit easy. While becoming super powerful through upgrades is definitely part of the game (and the original as well), it seemed like I was a bit too capable all throughout my play time. This may be because I play RPG games very thoroughly. This will always lead to a stronger character in these types of games, but this one seems to have had a heavy mindset of letting less thorough players be able to complete it. While I understand this mentality as it is becoming more prevalent in modern games, I probably should have turned up the difficulty. If you are like me, I absolutely recommend you do the same.

Conclusion:
For anyone looking for an RPG/stealth/shooter with some open-ended levels to explore and sneak around, hacking everything you find in order to solve problems (or to just rob people) this really is the best place to look! Just watch out: all the yellow tinting might hurt your eyes.

At least it doesn't look like Mad World (this is an actual video game, not a Rorschach test).