Genre: Beat-'em-up; Sub-genre: Stealth
ESRB: M (dismemberment and gore, profanity)
Estimated hours of gameplay (thorough play/quick play): 8/4
Developer: Platinum Games
Last week I ascended the lofty heights of The Last of Us only to be treated to that much higher a fall when I played this game. Looking back on this and considering other reviews on it, I do wonder if I was too harsh. But then I think about the fact that this game caused me so much pain that I wanted to quit on several occasions and was happy to be RID of it when it ended. Also, I kept a list of all the design choices I disagreed with while playing. Within a few minutes of starting this game up, I knew I was going to need to do so. I don't think I even need to go that far, but I'll provide my list at the bottom anyway just for fun. I should point out that I've never played any of the Metal Gear games. Crazy, I know. But I'm not that big on stealth (and this isn't a stealth game, so I figured I'd try it).
 |
| Note this game did not come out for Wii, but it sports a decidedly Wii-like main feature. |
I really feel like I don't even need to justify much. One design decision immediately gets in your face and ruins the entire game: blocking. To block, you press towards the enemy and attack. Because Raiden, the main character, fights with a sword, most of the time this means he'll interpret your attempt to block by moving forward and attacking. Furthermore, because Raiden fights with a melee weapon, this means you'll ALWAYS be pressing toward the enemy and attacking. This is because that is the entire point of the game. The fact that they made one command perform completely adverse moves is completely beyond any kind of logic. AND Raiden doesn't clash swords when you do it either. He just holds his sword up like he's waiting for the blow to come to him. It makes no sense. I seriously feel like ending the article right here on just how mind-blowingly stupid this concept is. You might be saying, "Well, every button is already assigned. There's no more room." Oh yeah? How about B? B is used to perform Zandatsu while in Sword Mode and to perform Ninja Kills in stealth. These are two modes that are entirely separate from normal combat. It works perfectly to just press B to do this. Duh! Of course you don't have to do that, Platinum Games, you could have reworked the controls to be less stupid in general. Another solution would be to program the camera to be less stupid (like in the Batman: Arkham games) and then remove the lock-on button. The lock-on button isn't useful most of the time and when it is, it's only marginally better than the alternative of never knowing where your lightning-fast enemies have run off to. This paragraph is getting too big, so I'll just summarize by saying that this game brings nothing good to the beat-'em-up genre (unlike the Batman: Arkham games, which everyone should copy rather than crap something like this out) and the new ideas it does bring (this crappy block and Sword Mode) are not interesting to begin with and only serve to make the game frustrating.
 |
| The combat feels more like THIS Batman iteration. That feeling being PURE HATRED. |
Having not played any of the previous games, I am at a large loss when talking about the story. I saw some of Metal Gear Solid 4's cutscenes, and that seemed like some kind of incomprehensible acid trip so I didn't bother to look further. No worries, though, this game is designed for newbies to be able to pick up! What they did for us was they injected a ton of exposition and awkward inhuman dialogue where the characters discuss things they already know very well. Like Raiden will sometimes discuss with Kevin how Private Military Companies are bad, and then Kevin will retort that the PMC they are in is more morally responsible. To which Raiden will agree, being that's why he joined in the first place. Then there's discussions of current and past events where each person is forced to say, "Yeah, I know that." It's unfortunate that there's so much information to dole out, but really this game is so simple it's just unnecessary. Luckily the player is saved from hours of dialogue because the NPC's are all tucked away in a menu that never needs to be looked at. I tried talking to them, but I just got bored from these weird discussions that often involved a ton of techno-babble (many of the discussions are PURELY about techno-babble). Also... the writing is very Japanese. I just have to say that, man. Despite all this, the story (eventually) was what kept me chugging through the terrible combat. There's even one scene in particular I found philosophically deep and touching. And then there's this part where Doktor informs Raiden that Mistral's breasts are not fake. That conversation feels more appropriate for a game about chopping up robots while heavy metal music blasts into your ears. So the tone is... genuinely video game-y. It's so something that would only happen in a (Japanese) video game that there's no other way to describe it. Without getting into spoilers, the last boss is some kind of parody of how ridiculous this game is. At least, I think he is. I don't know how else to interpret the tone of this game.
 |
| I think Mistral is leftover from Platinum Games' Bayonetta. |
The one additional feature this game has are VR missions. They are bonus challenges that earn you extra experience that for some reason can only be played during the campaign mode (an added dumbness to this is that starting a VR mission sends you back to your most recent checkpoint in the campaign). Every mission involves the same combat and stealth as in the campaign only with more fighting and less level design and story. These help further illustrate how weak both of those areas are in the game, so I do not find them a worthwhile addition. I actually did not complete all of them because they are unlocked with hidden collectables. You know, I try to play each game thoroughly but this game apparently didn't want me to. So I didn't. I only played like half of 'em. They pissed me off anyway, screw 'em.
Conclusion:
I don't know who this game is for. It's nothing like the other Metal Gear games and it's not even the same developer. The hack and slash elements are awful and the story is too dense for newbies. I can only say that by itself this game is not worth the frustration.
Itemized Whining!
1. Game is instantly frustrating
2. Sword Mode is disorienting every time. Have to press forward to get near enemies but forward becomes "look up" once entered. This means you look up when entering Sword Mode.
3. Range of sword attacks is unforgiving. And yet an early cut scene shows Raiden slicing things a mile away from him.
4. Block move is same button as attack. This is IDIOTIC.
5. Raiden is WAY more powerful in cut scenes than in-game. Also, Raiden is capable of much more interesting things while in cut scenes that would have made amazing gameplay if he could ever call on them in combat at will.
6. Difficulty of challenges makes no sense. Challenge 4 simply involves running forward.
7. Raiden stops in place when he attacks while running over things with Ninja Run.
8. Raiden cannot cleanly run through things while slashing them (IE a gate). This makes sequences where Raiden has to run through gates oddly clumsy because he gets stuck on the gate.
9. "Zandatsu" is not an english word. Also, the prompt for the player to do so at an opportune moment is in Japanese letters. This is incomprehensible AND is vital to playing the game correctly.
10. The ability to do the better block by waiting longer is never explained.
11. Slicing people apart is absolutely NOT precise at all. It is entirely random at times when you slice people apart in the ways you want, unless you slowly spend all your time lining up a single hit.
12. X and Y can be used during sword mode. This is never offered to the player.
13. Enemies cannot be figured out naturally. The best way to understand an enemy is to find them in a VR mission and fight them over and over by trying EVERYTHING on them.
14. The targeting for Raiden's slash during sword mode is not easy enough to see.
15. D pad becomes locked out while moving. Raiden has to calmly stand perfectly still for a second before it will work. Why?
16. There is a red flash to indicate when a move can be blocked, yet there are blockable moves that do not flash.
17. Raiden can be easily hit stunned to death. EASILY.
18. VR mission 8 says to eliminate all enemies with ninja kill. It does NOT specify that being spotted is an auto-fail.
19. Raiden cannot simply move in the direction pressed when running. He has to make a very slow U-turn
20. Game has NO concept of difficulty curve.
21. Raiden has no method of dodging or recovery once staggered.
22. Camera is absolutely terrible. This is 2013.
23. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t-iQpLT92RY even players getting "top" scores look clumsy.
24. Targeting in this game is both unnecessary and causes Raiden to hit the wrong target. Furthermore, when actually selecting a target this makes the game more disorienting at times.
25. The sai attack that pulls Raiden towards his enemy has CONSTANT pathing errors.
26. Every enemy has a combo that hits multiple times. Every hit of such combo leads into the other hits with no way of escaping it. This means they intentionally coded into the game several points where the player is frustrated and unable to play.
27. Every single move in the game locks onto Raiden; curving in 270 degree curves to connect on him. None of Raiden's even come close to having this much leniency in their targeting. This is incredibly frustrating.
28. Enemies can hit Raiden even when he is 12 feet in the air and CLEARLY out of range of the move's arc.
29. Last boss fight is LONG with NO CHECKPOINTS in its longest phase.
30. On the longest phase of last boss fight, there seems to be no thought in terms of how much the screen can be filled with fire. Because his moves are chosen randomly, damage can become unavoidable and cause Raiden to bounce around between wafts of fire.
31. Last boss has a dash move which he can instantly interrupt with a combo AND has inexplicable invincibility frames when he doesn't choose to take a free combo.
32. Ripper mode doesn't work on bosses.
33. Management of super meter irrelevant on boss fights.
34. Very possible to make game "unbeatable" if player is caught on a hard section with low healing items up.
35. Item menu too slow to be relied on in intense situations.
36. Too many combos syndrome; there are a million combos but they are way too long to ever complete or too complicated and numerous to bother to remember. The usefulness of each combo is questionable, too, so I just use the most basic stuff. It would be better to focus the combos into a short list where each one is useful for a specific situation. Or just be like Batman and have no combos.
37. Ninja Run is not as clean at parkour as the guy from Prototype 2. Try again.
No comments:
Post a Comment