If you play the PC version, download the Anniversary Edition. It fixes some bugs and also serves as a mod manager: https://wiki.oni2.net/Anniversary_Edition
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Maybe best to approach this with a certain greybox appreciation. I don’t think there’s any level here that totally works, no vertical slice akin to "The Silent Cartographer," but there are a lot of cool ideas. Stuff like being able to slide over items to pick them up, thereby skipping a lengthy animation, or being able to go into an overcharge mode where your attack and defense are increased, are the kinds of nuances that an action game thrives on- encouraging you to play well, and, more importantly, to play stylishly.
It’s rare when it all comes together though, and aside from the obvious signs of a rough development, such as the barren levels and disjointed story, (inadvertently being the best tribute to anime and manga of the time, like we’re playing through the only translated portion of some massive series), I don’t know if the combat ever finds a real identity for itself. A lot of the encounters can feel sporadic, fighting an enemy every few minutes or so, in kind of awkward bouts that get very grab-heavy, often spending more time waiting for them to get up than actually fighting them. Feels like the sweet spot is two or three enemies, enough that you’re forced to manage the group with a few well-timed hits, but not so many that you can’t get any moves out. The potential for melee combat is also complicated by its interplay with ranged weapons- which is to say, guns render the melee combat nonexistent.
Well, it’s not entirely true, there are some great looking disarming animations, and because of the arsenal seeming to have been balanced around the axed multiplayer mode, you’re mainly avoiding weird projectile weapons that practically demand you to weave between shots to knock out the shooter. But when you get a gun, especially the power-weapons that litter the endgame, enemies have little in the way of a response, so the last few levels devolve into backpedaling around, firing away as Syndicate goons blithely run toward you.
(Wondering if it’s a problem of the style as much as anything else, the spartan environments and pragmatism of combat clashing with a game that’s trying to evoke Ghost in the Shell and The Matrix. Now I'm thinking reception to the gameplay might’ve been warmer if the game adopted a different aesthetic.)
After beating the game, I replayed some of the older levels to make sure my problems weren’t just a failure to understand it- and there was an appreciable sense of having improved. Had a surplus of health, armor, and weapons to mess around with, and was more consistently pulling off some of the moves that had given me trouble earlier, but it never gelled. There was always a bit of tension on its most basic level, gunplay invalidating much of the promise of the melee combat, and melee combat itself often failing to find value in your massive move list, boiling down to rolling around and trying to find a window of oppurtunity to pull off one of your high-damage grabs.
So I’m not hugely surprised that the game never got a sequel, but I am surprised some of its best ideas never caught on. The few occasions where everything clicked- where I’d slide into a guy, grab his gun, and then floor his buddy with a well-placed sidekick- they felt like Bungie tapping into some of the core appeals of the character-action genre years before anyone else. There’s something great yet to be made with the foundations of the gameplay here, just don’t know quite what it is.
___
Maybe best to approach this with a certain greybox appreciation. I don’t think there’s any level here that totally works, no vertical slice akin to "The Silent Cartographer," but there are a lot of cool ideas. Stuff like being able to slide over items to pick them up, thereby skipping a lengthy animation, or being able to go into an overcharge mode where your attack and defense are increased, are the kinds of nuances that an action game thrives on- encouraging you to play well, and, more importantly, to play stylishly.
It’s rare when it all comes together though, and aside from the obvious signs of a rough development, such as the barren levels and disjointed story, (inadvertently being the best tribute to anime and manga of the time, like we’re playing through the only translated portion of some massive series), I don’t know if the combat ever finds a real identity for itself. A lot of the encounters can feel sporadic, fighting an enemy every few minutes or so, in kind of awkward bouts that get very grab-heavy, often spending more time waiting for them to get up than actually fighting them. Feels like the sweet spot is two or three enemies, enough that you’re forced to manage the group with a few well-timed hits, but not so many that you can’t get any moves out. The potential for melee combat is also complicated by its interplay with ranged weapons- which is to say, guns render the melee combat nonexistent.
Well, it’s not entirely true, there are some great looking disarming animations, and because of the arsenal seeming to have been balanced around the axed multiplayer mode, you’re mainly avoiding weird projectile weapons that practically demand you to weave between shots to knock out the shooter. But when you get a gun, especially the power-weapons that litter the endgame, enemies have little in the way of a response, so the last few levels devolve into backpedaling around, firing away as Syndicate goons blithely run toward you.
(Wondering if it’s a problem of the style as much as anything else, the spartan environments and pragmatism of combat clashing with a game that’s trying to evoke Ghost in the Shell and The Matrix. Now I'm thinking reception to the gameplay might’ve been warmer if the game adopted a different aesthetic.)
After beating the game, I replayed some of the older levels to make sure my problems weren’t just a failure to understand it- and there was an appreciable sense of having improved. Had a surplus of health, armor, and weapons to mess around with, and was more consistently pulling off some of the moves that had given me trouble earlier, but it never gelled. There was always a bit of tension on its most basic level, gunplay invalidating much of the promise of the melee combat, and melee combat itself often failing to find value in your massive move list, boiling down to rolling around and trying to find a window of oppurtunity to pull off one of your high-damage grabs.
So I’m not hugely surprised that the game never got a sequel, but I am surprised some of its best ideas never caught on. The few occasions where everything clicked- where I’d slide into a guy, grab his gun, and then floor his buddy with a well-placed sidekick- they felt like Bungie tapping into some of the core appeals of the character-action genre years before anyone else. There’s something great yet to be made with the foundations of the gameplay here, just don’t know quite what it is.
JohnHarrelson
2 years ago
- A lot of parallels with Combat Evolved, which I guess should be obvious, but it’s a bit of a trip seeing some of the same systems and mechanics here: friendly NPCs, a sneaking mechanic- even has the same power ups in the form of a cloak and a shield.
- Also has a really good camera. Does that thing where it goes transparent when you’re looking through a wall, and moves seamlessly through the terrain. A little visually jarring at first, but the clarity it gives is tremendous. For my many (many) problems with the game, understanding what was happening during fights was never one of them. Might be the thing that I want in other games now.