RedBackLoggd
2009
Played as part of the God of War Collection on PS3
ALERT - if interested, please play this game through any [LEGAL] method but the HD Collection as this port contains 1-2 game breaking bugs that occur after obtaining Pandora’s Box wherein the MacGuffin either goes missing or wherein the cutscene of Kratos bringing it out of the dungeon doesn’t load and consequently freezes up the game. I experienced the latter and, as a result, was unable to complete God of War (and I have no intention of buying and replaying it in its entirety at a later date). As a result of this annoyance, I have knocked down .5 star from the final tally.
Despite playing the vast majority of the game, my inability to finish it does mean you should not take this as a serious review, but more-so a set of observations
Long before the 2018 reboot(+), God of War was best known as a pioneer in the hack-and-slash genre: a hyperviolent excursion built around fluid combat, epic visuals, and a loosely mythological story.
As such, when I booted it up, I went in expecting another poorly-aged release from the PS2’s dark-and-edgy era best left forgotten by contemporary audiences. And yet, to my delight, the opposite nearly happened; God of War won’t win any awards for its storytelling, however solid frays and a surprising amount of gameplay variety make the whole greater than the sum of its parts.
As stated earlier, God of War was instrumental in the mainstreaming of slash ‘em ups, and it should thus come as no surprise that its melee fighting, to this day, remains the strongest facet. Kratos only has access to two weapons (the famed Chains of Chaos for long-range hits and, later, the Blade of Artemis for close-quarters dicing), yet both are excellent, equipped with unique animations in addition to their own set of hard/light combos. However, where God of War truly excels is in its enemy gravitation, or the movement between thugs. What I mean is, we’ve all played games where it was a bit of a chore to swap between multiple foes, and a lot of that has to do with the game having trouble recognizing player input vs camera direction. Well, whatever spell Santa Monica worked has done wonders as you’ll never run into that issue here whilst slaughtering monster-upon-monster.
Unfortunately, I can’t say everything is great, starting with the airborne wrangles. Maybe I was just doing something wrong, but I found most attempts to transition from ground-to-aerial combat to be especially cumbersome as Kratos would often not move in-sync with any bodies sent up for dispatching. Next, God of War throws in quick-time events for a number of finishers that not only distract from what is occurring on-screen, but can be unnecessarily vexing by way of short margins for error, either time or input-based (regular creature QTEs may be ignored, but the same leeway is not available for bosses). Third, the integration of spellcasting is sloppy: the powers themselves are pretty sweet, however, they don’t lend themselves organically to whatever dance you’re engaged in, forcing you to awkwardly discharge any in the midst of a combo. Finally, I was not a fan of the stun lock that occurs whenever a bigger enemy knocks you over- I get this was done to discourage, you know, getting hit, but I felt the damage inflicted should’ve been enough of a deterrent.
Like I mentioned before, God of War surprised me with its implementation of other genre fare, namely platforming and puzzle elements. If you’re going into this game wanting a pure action romp you’ll be sorely disappointed as at least one third of the final product involves Kratos having to deftly maneuver his way through a mini-course and/or resolve some long-dormant enigma. The quality of them definitely varies: some can be excellent, others exercises in tedium -- one of the worst parts of the game, for example, occurs in the very beginning wherein you’re tasked with kicking a fragile box across a deck whilst being swarmed with arrows; yet one of the best has you rebuild a wall using specially-carved columns.
Regardless, I ended up enjoying each version to one extent or another due to them breaking-up the combat monotony that flooded every other part of the story. Seriously, as much fun as it is spilling senseless blood, God of War can get really tiring courtesy of the sheer amount of enemies thrown your way, and while a fair chunk of these sparrings are optional(++), it doesn’t stop their cretins from being potential hindrances on your path to victory -- you’ll frequently run into foes on stairways, in front of ladders, scrummaging on climbable walls, etc….and it becomes annoying having to cheese around them just to avoid a pointless fight.
There is a bit of an RPG system here in terms of gathering experience orbs to funnel into your numerous offensive schemes, though, all cards on the table, I found swords to be the only rewarding investment as your mana meter runs out too quickly to make sorcery worth relying on (+++).
Regardless of my qualms, God of War was a thoroughly-addicting affair: for the first time in a while, I found myself wanting to do multiple sessions in a single day, and I recommend playing it solely for those gameplay quirks as the story itself is not very good. On the surface you’ve got a typical Greek tragedy involving a mortal’s manipulation at the hands of the Twelve Olympians, yet even this premise is botched through an easily-avoidable mistake: making Kratos an @sshole. I don’t know who on the development team thought this was a good idea, but it boggles my mind that it ended up being accepted as standard operating procedure. The idea of an anti-heroic or even outright evil protagonist isn’t inherently wrong, but it requires charisma and affability, two things far removed from the Ghost of Sparta. Kratos is definitely a victim of the gods, but not once did I feel sympathy for him on account of his vile backstory and present-day immoral actions. Throughout your quest you’ll either kill innocents and/or let them die, and without a proper justification for such transgressions (or at least a sense of remorse), Kratos is left inherently unlikable; an ugly vessel for the player to indulge in hapless violence.
By ugly, I’m of course speaking in metaphorical terms as, visually, God of War is a stunning title. Although I only played an HD port, such a remaster demonstrates the vast power gap that existed between the PS2 and PS3 eras via its sharpened polygons, looming vistas, limited loading screens, and fully-realized models. Gone are those awkward triangles/blocks you’d often see on sixth generation appendages/material respectively, rendering the innumerable sites you visit, from Athens to the Underworld, gorgeous hollows. In particular, I was especially impressed by the sharp shadow mapping for weaponry, as well as the incorporation of reflective surfaces on marble floors: two aspects that were reportedly hard to program back-in-the-day.
Cutscenes are hit-or-miss in quality; similar to Darksiders, any pre-rendered cinematics remain pristine; however, the original in-game ones do look overly grainy owing to the inability of the devs to boost them (meaning the standard gameplay honestly appears better). Besides that, though, it’s hard to find faults in God of War considering the hardware the OG version was built-on. You can tell Sony put a ton of money into this exclusive on the basis of the sheer amount of mileage Santa Monica stretched from its Kinetica Engine: the suffocating winds of a desert, lumberings of the titan Kronos, spawning of multiple enemies/large devices on a single screen (with little lag!)- all remain points of awe for what is ultimately a 2005 release.
If I had to harp on one negative, it’d be the minimal amount of finishers. Enemies are beautifully designed, yet generally only have 1-2 methods of pre-scripted execution, the second only opening itself up mid-flight (a tactic that, per the aforestated complaints, is hard to achieve), meaning you’re going to be seeing the same scene per a monster type again and again and again. More particular effects from strikes would’ve also been welcome as you primarily get the same generic blood splatter whenever an enemy (or Kratos for that matter) is gored.
Speaking of the leading chump, he’s brought to life by Terrence C. Carson, a man who does a mixed job (and who would go on to be screwed by Santa Monica during their reboot++++). When Kratos is vocalizing softer speech or subtle anger, Carson excels; when he’s being a loud pr!ck, Carson can’t help sounding like a stereotypical angry black man over vengeful hellenist.
The rest of the voice acting is surprisingly good; a game like God of War could’ve easily fallen prey to hackneyed portrayals of thespian actors, but Santa Monica evidently wanted to go the serious route here and they largely succeeded courtesy of some solid castings for all the bit parts. Tragically, where they dropped the ball is with Ares, and it’ll come as a great shock when you learn the person behind the titular antagonist: the great Steve Blum. I don’t know what Blum was going for here, but his choice of accent/inflections is half-growly/half-stereotypical angry white man, making the God of Courage sound like a garbled Wolverine. It brings me no pleasure to state this given my love of Blum, but let’s just say you’ll be glad he only speaks in the final part of the game.
Luckily, the music has no such pitfalls, with the seven(!) credited composers filtering Greek-styled melodies (lutes, lyres, drums) through an adrenaline junkie motif endemic to action titles of this nature. It’s not an OST you’ll be listening to post-game, but it does befit Kratos’s adventure as a whole.
SFX is hard to discern in a title like God of War due to its indulgence in loud dins that mask the micro sonority. For instance, a lot of the spells and puzzle-based machinery are vividly aural, as beseems their deific origins; however, I honestly couldn’t tell you whether there were any audible differences programmed into your weapons on enemy impact.
For what it’s worth, nothing was distracting and I had a good time, which is a great way to summarize God of War as a whole. This is a really fun game that’s aged uncommonly well, both visually and playably. It’s a shame I experienced that game-breaking bug as I would’ve loved to have completed Kratos’s peregrination towards revenge (and experienced the infamous Spiked Columns!).
Don’t mistake me- there are times when you will get frustrated and want to bite your controller to bits! But with an astute checkpoint system and sense of progression, they weren’t enough to bring down the product as a whole (particularly on easy mode!).
NOTES
-Speaking of easy mode, there is no way to change the difficulty. When you die enough times, a prompt appears allowing you to switch to said easy mode; however, you cannot change back. A bizarre decision, as was the one where upgrade orbs are slowly siphoned into their respective port instead of all-at-once (like most normal video games).
-No subtitles
-Whoever decided to map opening doors to mashing the right back bumper on the DualShock 3 deserves a swift kick in the groin. For the uninitiated, the DualShock 3 had notoriously awful bumpers, which made one puzzle, in particular, infuriating (you’ll know it when you see it).
-The absence of armor for Kratos is pretty disappointing, especially given his Spartan background and the consistent emphasis on him being a mere mortal (though even that wouldn’t have mattered considering Greek Gods could be hurt by manmade weapons, at least in the Iliad). While the physics for the loin cloth are on-point, I do feel his model is an example of hypocritical male objectification that wouldn’t have been tolerated had it been a female MC instead.
+To clarify, it was a soft reboot, meaning the events of the previous games are canon.
++Yes, I know killing anyone yields the aforementioned upgrade points but, unless you’re playing on the higher difficulties (which I do not recommend), you really don’t have to go out of your way to farm them.
+++Yes, I know you can upgrade it through collecting feathers. However, not only will most gamers not find them all, but the majority of spells still drain a significant chunk of mana, leaving a few outright unusable even with a decently-filled bar.
++++Kratos was recast with Christopher Judge, which was fine given the mocap cinematography Santa Monica wanted to go with. However, to not grant Carson a cameo, let alone inform him he was being recast, is completely disrespectful.
ALERT - if interested, please play this game through any [LEGAL] method but the HD Collection as this port contains 1-2 game breaking bugs that occur after obtaining Pandora’s Box wherein the MacGuffin either goes missing or wherein the cutscene of Kratos bringing it out of the dungeon doesn’t load and consequently freezes up the game. I experienced the latter and, as a result, was unable to complete God of War (and I have no intention of buying and replaying it in its entirety at a later date). As a result of this annoyance, I have knocked down .5 star from the final tally.
Despite playing the vast majority of the game, my inability to finish it does mean you should not take this as a serious review, but more-so a set of observations
Long before the 2018 reboot(+), God of War was best known as a pioneer in the hack-and-slash genre: a hyperviolent excursion built around fluid combat, epic visuals, and a loosely mythological story.
As such, when I booted it up, I went in expecting another poorly-aged release from the PS2’s dark-and-edgy era best left forgotten by contemporary audiences. And yet, to my delight, the opposite nearly happened; God of War won’t win any awards for its storytelling, however solid frays and a surprising amount of gameplay variety make the whole greater than the sum of its parts.
As stated earlier, God of War was instrumental in the mainstreaming of slash ‘em ups, and it should thus come as no surprise that its melee fighting, to this day, remains the strongest facet. Kratos only has access to two weapons (the famed Chains of Chaos for long-range hits and, later, the Blade of Artemis for close-quarters dicing), yet both are excellent, equipped with unique animations in addition to their own set of hard/light combos. However, where God of War truly excels is in its enemy gravitation, or the movement between thugs. What I mean is, we’ve all played games where it was a bit of a chore to swap between multiple foes, and a lot of that has to do with the game having trouble recognizing player input vs camera direction. Well, whatever spell Santa Monica worked has done wonders as you’ll never run into that issue here whilst slaughtering monster-upon-monster.
Unfortunately, I can’t say everything is great, starting with the airborne wrangles. Maybe I was just doing something wrong, but I found most attempts to transition from ground-to-aerial combat to be especially cumbersome as Kratos would often not move in-sync with any bodies sent up for dispatching. Next, God of War throws in quick-time events for a number of finishers that not only distract from what is occurring on-screen, but can be unnecessarily vexing by way of short margins for error, either time or input-based (regular creature QTEs may be ignored, but the same leeway is not available for bosses). Third, the integration of spellcasting is sloppy: the powers themselves are pretty sweet, however, they don’t lend themselves organically to whatever dance you’re engaged in, forcing you to awkwardly discharge any in the midst of a combo. Finally, I was not a fan of the stun lock that occurs whenever a bigger enemy knocks you over- I get this was done to discourage, you know, getting hit, but I felt the damage inflicted should’ve been enough of a deterrent.
Like I mentioned before, God of War surprised me with its implementation of other genre fare, namely platforming and puzzle elements. If you’re going into this game wanting a pure action romp you’ll be sorely disappointed as at least one third of the final product involves Kratos having to deftly maneuver his way through a mini-course and/or resolve some long-dormant enigma. The quality of them definitely varies: some can be excellent, others exercises in tedium -- one of the worst parts of the game, for example, occurs in the very beginning wherein you’re tasked with kicking a fragile box across a deck whilst being swarmed with arrows; yet one of the best has you rebuild a wall using specially-carved columns.
Regardless, I ended up enjoying each version to one extent or another due to them breaking-up the combat monotony that flooded every other part of the story. Seriously, as much fun as it is spilling senseless blood, God of War can get really tiring courtesy of the sheer amount of enemies thrown your way, and while a fair chunk of these sparrings are optional(++), it doesn’t stop their cretins from being potential hindrances on your path to victory -- you’ll frequently run into foes on stairways, in front of ladders, scrummaging on climbable walls, etc….and it becomes annoying having to cheese around them just to avoid a pointless fight.
There is a bit of an RPG system here in terms of gathering experience orbs to funnel into your numerous offensive schemes, though, all cards on the table, I found swords to be the only rewarding investment as your mana meter runs out too quickly to make sorcery worth relying on (+++).
Regardless of my qualms, God of War was a thoroughly-addicting affair: for the first time in a while, I found myself wanting to do multiple sessions in a single day, and I recommend playing it solely for those gameplay quirks as the story itself is not very good. On the surface you’ve got a typical Greek tragedy involving a mortal’s manipulation at the hands of the Twelve Olympians, yet even this premise is botched through an easily-avoidable mistake: making Kratos an @sshole. I don’t know who on the development team thought this was a good idea, but it boggles my mind that it ended up being accepted as standard operating procedure. The idea of an anti-heroic or even outright evil protagonist isn’t inherently wrong, but it requires charisma and affability, two things far removed from the Ghost of Sparta. Kratos is definitely a victim of the gods, but not once did I feel sympathy for him on account of his vile backstory and present-day immoral actions. Throughout your quest you’ll either kill innocents and/or let them die, and without a proper justification for such transgressions (or at least a sense of remorse), Kratos is left inherently unlikable; an ugly vessel for the player to indulge in hapless violence.
By ugly, I’m of course speaking in metaphorical terms as, visually, God of War is a stunning title. Although I only played an HD port, such a remaster demonstrates the vast power gap that existed between the PS2 and PS3 eras via its sharpened polygons, looming vistas, limited loading screens, and fully-realized models. Gone are those awkward triangles/blocks you’d often see on sixth generation appendages/material respectively, rendering the innumerable sites you visit, from Athens to the Underworld, gorgeous hollows. In particular, I was especially impressed by the sharp shadow mapping for weaponry, as well as the incorporation of reflective surfaces on marble floors: two aspects that were reportedly hard to program back-in-the-day.
Cutscenes are hit-or-miss in quality; similar to Darksiders, any pre-rendered cinematics remain pristine; however, the original in-game ones do look overly grainy owing to the inability of the devs to boost them (meaning the standard gameplay honestly appears better). Besides that, though, it’s hard to find faults in God of War considering the hardware the OG version was built-on. You can tell Sony put a ton of money into this exclusive on the basis of the sheer amount of mileage Santa Monica stretched from its Kinetica Engine: the suffocating winds of a desert, lumberings of the titan Kronos, spawning of multiple enemies/large devices on a single screen (with little lag!)- all remain points of awe for what is ultimately a 2005 release.
If I had to harp on one negative, it’d be the minimal amount of finishers. Enemies are beautifully designed, yet generally only have 1-2 methods of pre-scripted execution, the second only opening itself up mid-flight (a tactic that, per the aforestated complaints, is hard to achieve), meaning you’re going to be seeing the same scene per a monster type again and again and again. More particular effects from strikes would’ve also been welcome as you primarily get the same generic blood splatter whenever an enemy (or Kratos for that matter) is gored.
Speaking of the leading chump, he’s brought to life by Terrence C. Carson, a man who does a mixed job (and who would go on to be screwed by Santa Monica during their reboot++++). When Kratos is vocalizing softer speech or subtle anger, Carson excels; when he’s being a loud pr!ck, Carson can’t help sounding like a stereotypical angry black man over vengeful hellenist.
The rest of the voice acting is surprisingly good; a game like God of War could’ve easily fallen prey to hackneyed portrayals of thespian actors, but Santa Monica evidently wanted to go the serious route here and they largely succeeded courtesy of some solid castings for all the bit parts. Tragically, where they dropped the ball is with Ares, and it’ll come as a great shock when you learn the person behind the titular antagonist: the great Steve Blum. I don’t know what Blum was going for here, but his choice of accent/inflections is half-growly/half-stereotypical angry white man, making the God of Courage sound like a garbled Wolverine. It brings me no pleasure to state this given my love of Blum, but let’s just say you’ll be glad he only speaks in the final part of the game.
Luckily, the music has no such pitfalls, with the seven(!) credited composers filtering Greek-styled melodies (lutes, lyres, drums) through an adrenaline junkie motif endemic to action titles of this nature. It’s not an OST you’ll be listening to post-game, but it does befit Kratos’s adventure as a whole.
SFX is hard to discern in a title like God of War due to its indulgence in loud dins that mask the micro sonority. For instance, a lot of the spells and puzzle-based machinery are vividly aural, as beseems their deific origins; however, I honestly couldn’t tell you whether there were any audible differences programmed into your weapons on enemy impact.
For what it’s worth, nothing was distracting and I had a good time, which is a great way to summarize God of War as a whole. This is a really fun game that’s aged uncommonly well, both visually and playably. It’s a shame I experienced that game-breaking bug as I would’ve loved to have completed Kratos’s peregrination towards revenge (and experienced the infamous Spiked Columns!).
Don’t mistake me- there are times when you will get frustrated and want to bite your controller to bits! But with an astute checkpoint system and sense of progression, they weren’t enough to bring down the product as a whole (particularly on easy mode!).
NOTES
-Speaking of easy mode, there is no way to change the difficulty. When you die enough times, a prompt appears allowing you to switch to said easy mode; however, you cannot change back. A bizarre decision, as was the one where upgrade orbs are slowly siphoned into their respective port instead of all-at-once (like most normal video games).
-No subtitles
-Whoever decided to map opening doors to mashing the right back bumper on the DualShock 3 deserves a swift kick in the groin. For the uninitiated, the DualShock 3 had notoriously awful bumpers, which made one puzzle, in particular, infuriating (you’ll know it when you see it).
-The absence of armor for Kratos is pretty disappointing, especially given his Spartan background and the consistent emphasis on him being a mere mortal (though even that wouldn’t have mattered considering Greek Gods could be hurt by manmade weapons, at least in the Iliad). While the physics for the loin cloth are on-point, I do feel his model is an example of hypocritical male objectification that wouldn’t have been tolerated had it been a female MC instead.
+To clarify, it was a soft reboot, meaning the events of the previous games are canon.
++Yes, I know killing anyone yields the aforementioned upgrade points but, unless you’re playing on the higher difficulties (which I do not recommend), you really don’t have to go out of your way to farm them.
+++Yes, I know you can upgrade it through collecting feathers. However, not only will most gamers not find them all, but the majority of spells still drain a significant chunk of mana, leaving a few outright unusable even with a decently-filled bar.
++++Kratos was recast with Christopher Judge, which was fine given the mocap cinematography Santa Monica wanted to go with. However, to not grant Carson a cameo, let alone inform him he was being recast, is completely disrespectful.
2009
This review contains spoilers
I’m sorry, I thought I could write a review without spoilers, but quickly found that to be an impossible task. That said, the story is so godawful (pun intended) you aren’t missing out on much learning about the presence of certain characters/events beforehand
NOTE - though a direct sequel to God of War 1, this game references events that occurred in Ghost of Sparta, and while not necessary to play it, you may end-up confused by one scene
Played as part of the God of War Collection for PS3
Every now and then, you’ll come across a work of fiction that really annoys you: whether it’s a video game, movie, or TV series, I guarantee you’ll find a project that's so vexing, you’ll want to nitpick every bone in its body till it’s laden on the ground in a puddle of splinters: deadly to the touch to anyone who would dare follow-up your diatribe.
Yes, God of War 2 provoked that kind of response in me. While I had enjoyed the first one quite a bit, it’s clear Santa Monica took the wrong lessons from its success: the end product here doubling-down on all its worst aspects, the worst being the story. In the first game, Kratos was, without a doubt, one of the most unlikeable a$$holes ever conceived in gaming: a sociopathic, screaming dipsh!t who was so unpleasant, I genuinely didn’t know if I was meant to be rooting for or against him. Still, there was an element of Greek Tragedy to his arc, and the idea of someone successfully subverting the oppression of the gods had a tinge of deconstructionism to it.
Unfortunately, you don’t get any such nuances here. God of War II had the perfect opportunity to tell a cogent tale about the wrongdoings of the Greek Pantheon, yet opts to forgo that in favor of a highly-generic revenge story made all the rottener by its protagonist being a reprehensible piece of sh!t. The premise is Zeus has betrayed Kratos out of fears the man will usurp him on Olympus, castigating him to the depths of the Underworld whilst taking away his divinity in the process.
Right off the bat, this synopsis reeks of plotholes, its conception indicating not a single second was spent on basic script oversight. For starters, why does Zeus suddenly feel this way? And if he was so scared of Kratos’s potential, why let Athena turn him into Ares's replacement in the first place? Worse yet, Kratos’s whole plea at the end of GoW1 was to die so his nightmares could end, so why not just approach the man and offer him the relief he desires?
But no, to answer these questions would require, you know, effort, something the team at Santa Monica evidently wouldn't learn until 2018.
Oh we’re not done yet - heeding the words of the Titan Gaia, Kratos climbs out of the Underworld to begin his journey towards vengeance….only, hold-up, how in the world did he accomplish this? We just saw Zeus take away his godhood, yet you’re telling me he’s still capable of clawing his way out of a (literal) hellish pit like it's a casual Sunday? This is a problem you’ll see constantly plagues the game: the notion that Kratos is capable of accomplishing inhuman feats despite being rendered a mere mortal by Zeus. During your odyssey, you’ll consistently come across a situation or monster that should have the upperhand on the deposed god, yet falter for reasons that can only be described as @sspulls.
Now I know there’ll be two counterarguments to this, the first that Kratos is granted blessings by the Titans akin to the ones he received from the Olympians (the same ones that allowed him to beat Ares), and that’d be a valid point were it not for a couple of setbacks: one, Kratos does a fair amount of crazy stuff before he even gets his first power; and two, some of the bosses he faces should be insurmountable even with such gifts. During the fight with the Sisters of Fate, for example, they repeatedly state how they can easily sabotage his past, so WHY THE F#CK DON’T THEY (one of them literally spends the game bitch-slapping Kratos like a silly nanny instead of using her “vast” power)? Another moment sees Kratos reencounter the barbarian nemesis who bested him before (and who claims to have gotten much stronger since), so why is this brute casually riding around on his horse instead of fighting mano y mano? Don’t even get me started on the final scrum with Zeus, nor the game’s comical (plot hole-ridden) take on time travel. Seriously, the amount of nonsense you have to put up with to justify Kratos’s “badassery” here is beyond laughable at times.
The second argument pertains to a twist reveal at the end, and no, it doesn’t resolve anything either (+).
Of course, overpowered protagonists aren’t inherently bad - we’ve all played titles that indulged in the power fantasy, and God of War certainly gained fame for popularizing that motif for western audiences. However, the MC needs to be somewhat affable; have a trait that makes them worth investing in for the long haul, and not only does Kratos not have that, the writers literally went out of their way to make him insufferable. There are several instances where he’ll just kill an innocent person without remorse, or do some heinous action(++), and what’s amusing is how it’s all played straight. Like, if the game had at least adopted a darkly humorous tone towards its violence ala Quentin Tarantino I could maybe see myself enjoying the man’s antics, but no, everything’s treated like Oedipus Rex and rendered worse as a result.
I think what makes GoW2 particularly irksome is there was so much potential here for a better tale. The idea of a human witnessing the horrors of the gods and choosing to do something about it could’ve been the source for an invigorating yarn. One scene early-on, for instance, has you meeting Prometheus (the Titan who gave mankind fire), and beholding the excruciating fate Zeus deemed fit for him was tough to stomach (no pun intended): imagine a game where such incidents formed the backbone for Kratos’s motivation over the stupid sh%t he brought upon himself (that’s right, never forget, Kratos is responsible for his own nightmares). But no, you don’t get that, the writers instead preferring to concoct ridiculously idiotic scenarios that genuinely feel like someone had a bone to pick with Greek Mythology.
No seriously, what’s up with sheer venom on-display towards the Greek World? Such lore has been home to some of the most powerful myths in human history, yet the lion’s share of them here have been stripped of their bearings in a pathetic attempt to provide Kratos with fodder to chew on: classical heroes like Theseus and Perseus are rendered lame boss fights (more on that later), the Phoenix needlessly tortured, and Typhon literally turned into a worse version of Temari from Naruto. When you put even a modicum of thought into things, the macro events underscoring every beat become thoroughly unpleasant.
And that’s really the perfect word to describe God of War II’s narrative as a whole - unpleasant. I didn’t feel like an antihero on a semi-justifiable excursion, but a complete jack@ss acting out like a toddler on steroids. While I’ll never judge anyone for liking something I don’t, Kratos’s rise to popularity does say a lot about the kind of pop culture we’ve cultivated in western society.
But look, it’s the gameplay everyone will care most about, and on that front God of War II is still a step down from its predecessor. One of the things I enjoyed most about the first game was its incorporation of puzzles - yes, a few were outright frustrating (the collapsing floor comes to mind), but overall they were nice and helped break-up the pace of the game.
Well, in designing the ones here, the artisans at Santa Monica evidently thought it better to indulge in pure annoyance -- do you guys remember that scene in GoW1 where you had to kick that stupid box across the ship deck? Well, not only does God of War II have its own version of it, but they somehow managed to make it worse via spamming the field with fire and enemies who can counter you. Another moment saw me wasting a good 10 minutes trying to deduce how to redirect light to this flame-spewing effigy, only for the solution to be to climb up a specific section of the wall to free loose sunbeams from the roof (and no, there was barely any visual distinction between the ascendable & unascendable sections of said wall, with the final icicle being hidden in a lanky corner).
I’m not saying everything is bad (there was a time puzzle later on that I kind of enjoyed), but when the quality, as a whole, is at a diminished value, it makes these moments aggravating to partake in.
Luckily, the combat remains as fun as ever, with Santa Monica programming so many new combinations, you can literally button mash to your heart’s content and STILL come away with a fresh move each time. God of War popularized the modern hack-and-slash template back in the day, and I’m proud to say it more than holds up here amidst its countless inspirees.
That said, no improvements were made to the base formula, with Santa Monica, in many cases, outright doubling-down on its prequel’s worst elements: magic attacks remain sharp bursts inorganically woven into the mainframe, executions are the same rehashed finishers you saw aplenty in 1, heavy enemies still boast vexing stunlocks, and, worse of all, quicktime events galore have been shoved into every major encounter. I genuinely don’t understand who thought these minigames would be a good idea as they are incredibly infuriating - you often only have a second to hit their respective prompt, and failing to do so will result in heavy damage (or, in the case of the final fight with Zeus, death). While nowhere near as intrusive as Fahrenheit’s, they definitely took away from any on-screen action, and I guarantee they’ll be the cause of your demise every now-and-then (ESPECIALLY during that Zeus brawl).
Speaking of Zeus, bosses make a return and they’re as mediocre as I hinted at above. True, the first game’s weren’t the greatest thing ever, but they still had a sense of grandeur and logic to their composition. GoW 2’s, au contraire, are tedious and boring, their tactics largely coming down to avoiding a stunlock-inducing attack as you wear down the enemy health bar in order to trigger a, you guessed, QTE! Out of all the clashes, the only ones I truly ended-up enjoying were Lakhesis and Atropos during the third act.
Minibosses, to their credit, fare much better, but one thing I disliked in II was whenever the game would introduce a brand new version, have you slay it, only to then immediately follow-up said encounter with the SAME boss x2 or 3 or 10(!). It begged the question of why they even designed a unique wrangle if they were just going to subvert it with a repetitive montage the second it was complete.
Lastly in the gameplay department, II brings over the upgrade system from afore at the expense of my favorite weapon the Blade of Artemis, replacing it with two slow-swinging clubs you're better off ignoring in favor of the default chains. Ditto with the magic -- sure, you're given a fair amount of spells to play with, but you're better off saving your orbs for the lighting-based Chronos Rage.
For all my harping, the one area God of War II has unilaterally improved upon its forebearer in is the graphics. Once again, I played the PS3 remaster, and once again I was blown away by the sheer crispness of the visuals: you got non-blocky 3D models, top-notch anti-aliasing, reflective surfaces that actually bend light, and some of the best artistry I’ve ever witnessed in gaming. When Santa Monica began development, I have a feeling they really wanted to take players to places they had never dreamed about before, and on that front they more than succeeded: from the fiery heat of the Great Chasm’s interiors to a sprawling flesh-composed dungeon to the streams of blue thread that adorn the Loom Chamber, this is a diverse and thoroughly-awesome treat for your eyes. Even places commonly-used in video games like marshlands and lavapits are often transfused here with some additional element that bears them apart from the crowd, such as blood red swamp water and spiderweb meshing respectively. And for all my harping about the story, the artists clearly did their research on Greek architecture, resulting in those gorgeous columns, bricks, and painted murals commonly-associated with said culture (every temple is a stunning masterwork).
Unlike GoW1, where the developers were unable to boost the cutscene files, here Santa Monica must’ve found the corresponding folder cause these babies look consistent with the base game, their resolution easily rivaling early-7th gen prospects whilst providing expansive grand spectacle….in some cases too grand. See, like I said in my review of the first game, the God of War series was always used by Sony to push the boundaries of their console, and while they certainly achieved this task, a lot of the cinematics you’ll witness on-hand can’t help coming across as self-indulgent to a fault: each scene seemingly showcasing a new physics-rendering capability of the Kinetica. You’ve got the naturalistic flow of liquids, collapsing of buildings, movement of the Titans, surging of velocious air -- one of the best feats I ever saw entails you witnessing the actual regrowth of Prometheus’s innards as he heals overnight. And yet, such pageantry can’t help coming across like someone at Santa Monica did this purely out of an initiative to pat themselves on the back.
Other miscellaneous graphical bits I liked included the Chains of Athena changing color as you upgraded them (more on that later), the lightsaber-hued orbs found in chests, and the incredibly-fast loading times.
The only derogatory hit on the whole system has to do with any depictions of penetration. The PS2 simply was not capable of accurately generating this for weapons, and given that many of Kratos’s executions rely on it, you’re going to be noticing a lot of haphazard merging that walks the line between clipping and blended simulacra.
Sound is where the game dips the most in stature, starting with the music - it is bombastic to a fault. Once again the work was outsourced to a bunch of composers, yet unlike before where they managed to create something unified and cohesive, here it’s just loud for loudness sake. 90 percent of the tracks employ horns and vocals to mimic that stereotypical brashness typically associated with Greek Hymns, but the boisterous volume combined with the repetitive melodies ends-up making it all unnecessarily overbearing. This is the only time I’ve had to constantly pause an OST while listening to it, and that speaks to the score’s inherent obnoxiousness.
Voice acting continues that trend, with TC Carson giving a headache-inducing performance as the titular character. Yeah, as if I needed to tell you guys, God of War II emphasizes Kratos’s angrier-side, meaning you get A LOT moreb!tching yelling from the ousted deity than before, and it is painful to listen to. It truly is a shame because Carson is a talented actor: there’s a part in the back-half that lasts all of 10 seconds, but which showcases the kind of dramatic delivery the man is capable of doing, yet the simple fact is he’s just not granted many chances to do so. To pour salt in the wounds, the devs rehashed some of his dumber grunts instead of re-recording them, meaning you’ll be hearing a lot of mooing while moving stuff.
Despite his limited screen-time, Zeus is somehow worse, and just like with Ares, you’ll be shocked to learn his voice actor is a noted thespian in the form of Corey Burton. Fans of DC-based works know Burton’s given plenty of wonderful performances elsewhere, yet here comes across like a senior resident whose cords have been clogged from smoking too much weed.
The others are fine, serving their roles well-enough, but the overarching quality does feel like a step down from 1 where it truly came across like a cast of Royal Shakespeareans doing their best job according credence to the project.
SFX has its good-and-bad: slicing enemies never gets tiring, and I appreciated the spark-chinking that resounded whenever you hit boulders and walls, but none of the non-singing monsters were memorable, and there were times where the developers outright faltered in terms of synchronizing appropriate noises. For example, one scene has you walking along a giant chain that sways like a fiber rope; another has you facing dog-like beasts that bark like a regular ole hound. Overall it’s sufficient, but could’ve been more.
Unfortunately, that sentiment isn’t applicable to the entire game as I did not enjoy it. It’s a technical marvel done at the expense of the most important tenets of a video game, and while it did a lot for the industry and PS2’s legacy, it’s best left forgotten.
NOTES
+Kratos is revealed at the end to be Zeus’s son and, consequently, a demigod. This is no doubt an instance of the writersripping-off paying homage to other popular figures like Herakles, but the problem is they clearly didn’t do their research as even those individuals with divine heritage were severely handicapped compared to their Olympian parent.
++Using the Argonaut to stop the cog, torturing/murdering the Priests, tearing off Icarus’s wings (honestly, can we just take a second to observe how stupid it was to turn Icarus of all people into a boss fight? This is a guy whose wings were famously burned to a crisp and died, yet here he’s somehow alive and actually able to hold his own against Kratos? There are so many discourses throughout the game which indicate the writers studied past Greek myths, so why they outright sabotaged them with worse retellings is beyond me).
-There is a challenge mode for you completionists out there.
-No subtitles (again), but at least they sped-up the orb procession.
-Thank the lord they moved the door opening button to O instead of the right bumper! It alleviated my fingers tremendously.
-There’s an awful sex minigame early-on that’s both narratively-intrusive and built on QTEs (worst part is you don’t even get to see any of the action).
-Hated how slow Kratos became whenever he carried bodies. I get this was done to make some of the boss fights artificially-hard, but the man is literally capable of moving giant cinder blocks yet somehow gets encumbered by a mere corpse?
-There’s a track from the OST that literally sounds like a Diet Coke version of the famous trailer song Preliator by Globus.
NOTE - though a direct sequel to God of War 1, this game references events that occurred in Ghost of Sparta, and while not necessary to play it, you may end-up confused by one scene
Played as part of the God of War Collection for PS3
Every now and then, you’ll come across a work of fiction that really annoys you: whether it’s a video game, movie, or TV series, I guarantee you’ll find a project that's so vexing, you’ll want to nitpick every bone in its body till it’s laden on the ground in a puddle of splinters: deadly to the touch to anyone who would dare follow-up your diatribe.
Yes, God of War 2 provoked that kind of response in me. While I had enjoyed the first one quite a bit, it’s clear Santa Monica took the wrong lessons from its success: the end product here doubling-down on all its worst aspects, the worst being the story. In the first game, Kratos was, without a doubt, one of the most unlikeable a$$holes ever conceived in gaming: a sociopathic, screaming dipsh!t who was so unpleasant, I genuinely didn’t know if I was meant to be rooting for or against him. Still, there was an element of Greek Tragedy to his arc, and the idea of someone successfully subverting the oppression of the gods had a tinge of deconstructionism to it.
Unfortunately, you don’t get any such nuances here. God of War II had the perfect opportunity to tell a cogent tale about the wrongdoings of the Greek Pantheon, yet opts to forgo that in favor of a highly-generic revenge story made all the rottener by its protagonist being a reprehensible piece of sh!t. The premise is Zeus has betrayed Kratos out of fears the man will usurp him on Olympus, castigating him to the depths of the Underworld whilst taking away his divinity in the process.
Right off the bat, this synopsis reeks of plotholes, its conception indicating not a single second was spent on basic script oversight. For starters, why does Zeus suddenly feel this way? And if he was so scared of Kratos’s potential, why let Athena turn him into Ares's replacement in the first place? Worse yet, Kratos’s whole plea at the end of GoW1 was to die so his nightmares could end, so why not just approach the man and offer him the relief he desires?
But no, to answer these questions would require, you know, effort, something the team at Santa Monica evidently wouldn't learn until 2018.
Oh we’re not done yet - heeding the words of the Titan Gaia, Kratos climbs out of the Underworld to begin his journey towards vengeance….only, hold-up, how in the world did he accomplish this? We just saw Zeus take away his godhood, yet you’re telling me he’s still capable of clawing his way out of a (literal) hellish pit like it's a casual Sunday? This is a problem you’ll see constantly plagues the game: the notion that Kratos is capable of accomplishing inhuman feats despite being rendered a mere mortal by Zeus. During your odyssey, you’ll consistently come across a situation or monster that should have the upperhand on the deposed god, yet falter for reasons that can only be described as @sspulls.
Now I know there’ll be two counterarguments to this, the first that Kratos is granted blessings by the Titans akin to the ones he received from the Olympians (the same ones that allowed him to beat Ares), and that’d be a valid point were it not for a couple of setbacks: one, Kratos does a fair amount of crazy stuff before he even gets his first power; and two, some of the bosses he faces should be insurmountable even with such gifts. During the fight with the Sisters of Fate, for example, they repeatedly state how they can easily sabotage his past, so WHY THE F#CK DON’T THEY (one of them literally spends the game bitch-slapping Kratos like a silly nanny instead of using her “vast” power)? Another moment sees Kratos reencounter the barbarian nemesis who bested him before (and who claims to have gotten much stronger since), so why is this brute casually riding around on his horse instead of fighting mano y mano? Don’t even get me started on the final scrum with Zeus, nor the game’s comical (plot hole-ridden) take on time travel. Seriously, the amount of nonsense you have to put up with to justify Kratos’s “badassery” here is beyond laughable at times.
The second argument pertains to a twist reveal at the end, and no, it doesn’t resolve anything either (+).
Of course, overpowered protagonists aren’t inherently bad - we’ve all played titles that indulged in the power fantasy, and God of War certainly gained fame for popularizing that motif for western audiences. However, the MC needs to be somewhat affable; have a trait that makes them worth investing in for the long haul, and not only does Kratos not have that, the writers literally went out of their way to make him insufferable. There are several instances where he’ll just kill an innocent person without remorse, or do some heinous action(++), and what’s amusing is how it’s all played straight. Like, if the game had at least adopted a darkly humorous tone towards its violence ala Quentin Tarantino I could maybe see myself enjoying the man’s antics, but no, everything’s treated like Oedipus Rex and rendered worse as a result.
I think what makes GoW2 particularly irksome is there was so much potential here for a better tale. The idea of a human witnessing the horrors of the gods and choosing to do something about it could’ve been the source for an invigorating yarn. One scene early-on, for instance, has you meeting Prometheus (the Titan who gave mankind fire), and beholding the excruciating fate Zeus deemed fit for him was tough to stomach (no pun intended): imagine a game where such incidents formed the backbone for Kratos’s motivation over the stupid sh%t he brought upon himself (that’s right, never forget, Kratos is responsible for his own nightmares). But no, you don’t get that, the writers instead preferring to concoct ridiculously idiotic scenarios that genuinely feel like someone had a bone to pick with Greek Mythology.
No seriously, what’s up with sheer venom on-display towards the Greek World? Such lore has been home to some of the most powerful myths in human history, yet the lion’s share of them here have been stripped of their bearings in a pathetic attempt to provide Kratos with fodder to chew on: classical heroes like Theseus and Perseus are rendered lame boss fights (more on that later), the Phoenix needlessly tortured, and Typhon literally turned into a worse version of Temari from Naruto. When you put even a modicum of thought into things, the macro events underscoring every beat become thoroughly unpleasant.
And that’s really the perfect word to describe God of War II’s narrative as a whole - unpleasant. I didn’t feel like an antihero on a semi-justifiable excursion, but a complete jack@ss acting out like a toddler on steroids. While I’ll never judge anyone for liking something I don’t, Kratos’s rise to popularity does say a lot about the kind of pop culture we’ve cultivated in western society.
But look, it’s the gameplay everyone will care most about, and on that front God of War II is still a step down from its predecessor. One of the things I enjoyed most about the first game was its incorporation of puzzles - yes, a few were outright frustrating (the collapsing floor comes to mind), but overall they were nice and helped break-up the pace of the game.
Well, in designing the ones here, the artisans at Santa Monica evidently thought it better to indulge in pure annoyance -- do you guys remember that scene in GoW1 where you had to kick that stupid box across the ship deck? Well, not only does God of War II have its own version of it, but they somehow managed to make it worse via spamming the field with fire and enemies who can counter you. Another moment saw me wasting a good 10 minutes trying to deduce how to redirect light to this flame-spewing effigy, only for the solution to be to climb up a specific section of the wall to free loose sunbeams from the roof (and no, there was barely any visual distinction between the ascendable & unascendable sections of said wall, with the final icicle being hidden in a lanky corner).
I’m not saying everything is bad (there was a time puzzle later on that I kind of enjoyed), but when the quality, as a whole, is at a diminished value, it makes these moments aggravating to partake in.
Luckily, the combat remains as fun as ever, with Santa Monica programming so many new combinations, you can literally button mash to your heart’s content and STILL come away with a fresh move each time. God of War popularized the modern hack-and-slash template back in the day, and I’m proud to say it more than holds up here amidst its countless inspirees.
That said, no improvements were made to the base formula, with Santa Monica, in many cases, outright doubling-down on its prequel’s worst elements: magic attacks remain sharp bursts inorganically woven into the mainframe, executions are the same rehashed finishers you saw aplenty in 1, heavy enemies still boast vexing stunlocks, and, worse of all, quicktime events galore have been shoved into every major encounter. I genuinely don’t understand who thought these minigames would be a good idea as they are incredibly infuriating - you often only have a second to hit their respective prompt, and failing to do so will result in heavy damage (or, in the case of the final fight with Zeus, death). While nowhere near as intrusive as Fahrenheit’s, they definitely took away from any on-screen action, and I guarantee they’ll be the cause of your demise every now-and-then (ESPECIALLY during that Zeus brawl).
Speaking of Zeus, bosses make a return and they’re as mediocre as I hinted at above. True, the first game’s weren’t the greatest thing ever, but they still had a sense of grandeur and logic to their composition. GoW 2’s, au contraire, are tedious and boring, their tactics largely coming down to avoiding a stunlock-inducing attack as you wear down the enemy health bar in order to trigger a, you guessed, QTE! Out of all the clashes, the only ones I truly ended-up enjoying were Lakhesis and Atropos during the third act.
Minibosses, to their credit, fare much better, but one thing I disliked in II was whenever the game would introduce a brand new version, have you slay it, only to then immediately follow-up said encounter with the SAME boss x2 or 3 or 10(!). It begged the question of why they even designed a unique wrangle if they were just going to subvert it with a repetitive montage the second it was complete.
Lastly in the gameplay department, II brings over the upgrade system from afore at the expense of my favorite weapon the Blade of Artemis, replacing it with two slow-swinging clubs you're better off ignoring in favor of the default chains. Ditto with the magic -- sure, you're given a fair amount of spells to play with, but you're better off saving your orbs for the lighting-based Chronos Rage.
For all my harping, the one area God of War II has unilaterally improved upon its forebearer in is the graphics. Once again, I played the PS3 remaster, and once again I was blown away by the sheer crispness of the visuals: you got non-blocky 3D models, top-notch anti-aliasing, reflective surfaces that actually bend light, and some of the best artistry I’ve ever witnessed in gaming. When Santa Monica began development, I have a feeling they really wanted to take players to places they had never dreamed about before, and on that front they more than succeeded: from the fiery heat of the Great Chasm’s interiors to a sprawling flesh-composed dungeon to the streams of blue thread that adorn the Loom Chamber, this is a diverse and thoroughly-awesome treat for your eyes. Even places commonly-used in video games like marshlands and lavapits are often transfused here with some additional element that bears them apart from the crowd, such as blood red swamp water and spiderweb meshing respectively. And for all my harping about the story, the artists clearly did their research on Greek architecture, resulting in those gorgeous columns, bricks, and painted murals commonly-associated with said culture (every temple is a stunning masterwork).
Unlike GoW1, where the developers were unable to boost the cutscene files, here Santa Monica must’ve found the corresponding folder cause these babies look consistent with the base game, their resolution easily rivaling early-7th gen prospects whilst providing expansive grand spectacle….in some cases too grand. See, like I said in my review of the first game, the God of War series was always used by Sony to push the boundaries of their console, and while they certainly achieved this task, a lot of the cinematics you’ll witness on-hand can’t help coming across as self-indulgent to a fault: each scene seemingly showcasing a new physics-rendering capability of the Kinetica. You’ve got the naturalistic flow of liquids, collapsing of buildings, movement of the Titans, surging of velocious air -- one of the best feats I ever saw entails you witnessing the actual regrowth of Prometheus’s innards as he heals overnight. And yet, such pageantry can’t help coming across like someone at Santa Monica did this purely out of an initiative to pat themselves on the back.
Other miscellaneous graphical bits I liked included the Chains of Athena changing color as you upgraded them (more on that later), the lightsaber-hued orbs found in chests, and the incredibly-fast loading times.
The only derogatory hit on the whole system has to do with any depictions of penetration. The PS2 simply was not capable of accurately generating this for weapons, and given that many of Kratos’s executions rely on it, you’re going to be noticing a lot of haphazard merging that walks the line between clipping and blended simulacra.
Sound is where the game dips the most in stature, starting with the music - it is bombastic to a fault. Once again the work was outsourced to a bunch of composers, yet unlike before where they managed to create something unified and cohesive, here it’s just loud for loudness sake. 90 percent of the tracks employ horns and vocals to mimic that stereotypical brashness typically associated with Greek Hymns, but the boisterous volume combined with the repetitive melodies ends-up making it all unnecessarily overbearing. This is the only time I’ve had to constantly pause an OST while listening to it, and that speaks to the score’s inherent obnoxiousness.
Voice acting continues that trend, with TC Carson giving a headache-inducing performance as the titular character. Yeah, as if I needed to tell you guys, God of War II emphasizes Kratos’s angrier-side, meaning you get A LOT more
Despite his limited screen-time, Zeus is somehow worse, and just like with Ares, you’ll be shocked to learn his voice actor is a noted thespian in the form of Corey Burton. Fans of DC-based works know Burton’s given plenty of wonderful performances elsewhere, yet here comes across like a senior resident whose cords have been clogged from smoking too much weed.
The others are fine, serving their roles well-enough, but the overarching quality does feel like a step down from 1 where it truly came across like a cast of Royal Shakespeareans doing their best job according credence to the project.
SFX has its good-and-bad: slicing enemies never gets tiring, and I appreciated the spark-chinking that resounded whenever you hit boulders and walls, but none of the non-singing monsters were memorable, and there were times where the developers outright faltered in terms of synchronizing appropriate noises. For example, one scene has you walking along a giant chain that sways like a fiber rope; another has you facing dog-like beasts that bark like a regular ole hound. Overall it’s sufficient, but could’ve been more.
Unfortunately, that sentiment isn’t applicable to the entire game as I did not enjoy it. It’s a technical marvel done at the expense of the most important tenets of a video game, and while it did a lot for the industry and PS2’s legacy, it’s best left forgotten.
NOTES
+Kratos is revealed at the end to be Zeus’s son and, consequently, a demigod. This is no doubt an instance of the writers
++Using the Argonaut to stop the cog, torturing/murdering the Priests, tearing off Icarus’s wings (honestly, can we just take a second to observe how stupid it was to turn Icarus of all people into a boss fight? This is a guy whose wings were famously burned to a crisp and died, yet here he’s somehow alive and actually able to hold his own against Kratos? There are so many discourses throughout the game which indicate the writers studied past Greek myths, so why they outright sabotaged them with worse retellings is beyond me).
-There is a challenge mode for you completionists out there.
-No subtitles (again), but at least they sped-up the orb procession.
-Thank the lord they moved the door opening button to O instead of the right bumper! It alleviated my fingers tremendously.
-There’s an awful sex minigame early-on that’s both narratively-intrusive and built on QTEs (worst part is you don’t even get to see any of the action).
-Hated how slow Kratos became whenever he carried bodies. I get this was done to make some of the boss fights artificially-hard, but the man is literally capable of moving giant cinder blocks yet somehow gets encumbered by a mere corpse?
-There’s a track from the OST that literally sounds like a Diet Coke version of the famous trailer song Preliator by Globus.
1996
Note - as I did not beat this game, this write-up should be taken more as a set of observations than a genuine review
Played on the Wii U Virtual Console
Farm simulators may be a dime-a-dozen these days, but back in the 90s they were actually pretty risky: as Toy Story, of all things, duly-showed, agrarian aesthetics were dying in the public eye -- the Internet was growing, Space Camp rising, and even Clint Eastwood had finished his cowboy tenure with Unforgiven.
Yet in 1996, a little company called Amccus burst onto the scene, debuting the first entry in what would eventually be called the Story of Seasons franchise. Dubbed Harvest Moon (or Farm Story in Japan), the premise was somewhat similar to popular JRPGs at the time in that you played as a blank slate tasked with restoring a piece of the world, that piece, here, being your family’s dilapidated ranch.
Unfortunately, despite not featuring an experience system, Harvest Moon feels too adjacent to those aforementioned role-playing games, its contents regurgitating their grindy schematic into a unique, though ultimately elongated, reskin. See, instead of levels, you’ve got monetary thresholds; instead of fighting, you’ve got ploughing; and instead of journeying across a foreign land, you’ve got backtracking galore along the same routes.
Anyone who’s played the myriad of spiritual successors out there knows how things go: you start off with a big plot, till the soil, plant seeds, water them till ripe, sell ‘em, use the profits to either buy more seeds or animals, and rinse & repeat. The problem is, whereas those aforementioned sequels built upon the formula and added diversity, you get no such changes here - progression is built on repetition, meaning you’ll end-up going through the same motions as though you’re grinding for exp ala Final Fantasy/Pokemon/insert_JRPG_of_your_choice. And I know it isn’t fair to criticize a game for lacking something its sequels have, but in determining whether or not a classic holds-up, such comparisons are necessary for deducing if those subsequent additions were common sense supplements or outright genuine innovation (the former, of course, being derogatory in nature towards the progeniting classic in question).
But even on its own merits, Harvest Moon stumbles due to its deliberately-lethargic scheme: you’re all but made to start out with crops because they’re the cheapest commodity available (chicks are $1000; cows $5000!), and after planting them you’re forced to hydrate them square by square by square -> after they maturate, you got to pluck them square by square by square and drop them into the shipping crate piece by piece by piece -> once you get animals that yield produce, you’ll need to pick each egg up yolk by yolk by yolk, or milk every cow, udder by udder….by udder.
Yeah, if it isn’t obvious, this is tedious work. On the plus side, I suppose Amccus successfully recreated 19th century rural farm-life; on the negative side, though, it doesn’t make for a fun time. Harvest Moon has frequently been described as relaxing, but I often found myself more bored than serendipic throughout my 10+ hour runtime, and what’s particularly grating is how the game goes out of its way to make things worse than they should be: you can’t navigate through plants because apparently stems are as thick as stone; you can’t water your middle crop (harvests are grown in a 9x9 grid) until the rest have been reaped, you have limited stamina that can only be replenished through protracted trips to a hot spring ayonder, there’s no rucksack for storing more than one-good at a time, dropping something insta-destroys it, you can’t put stuff for shipping overnight lest it auto-rots, and, perhaps worst of all, you can’t upgrade most of your tools manually. With the exception of the watering can, you’ll have to wait for pre-scripted events in order to acquire your next gear, and arriving at those points requires trudging through hours-and-hours of content: content that I’m not sure many people will willingly stick with.
None of this is even getting into the shortness of the days, which is egregious even by abridged standards: it’s not 5 or 4 or even 3, but 2.75 measly minutes. That’s right, in the time it takes you to microwave a burrito, you’ve got to complete all your daily chores, which yes becomes problematic the larger your grange grows. True, you’re not going to be handling crops every day, but treating(+) your animals, selling their staples, running to town to purchase/peddle additional goods, and successfully serenading your date (more on that later) all take time that the game simply doesn’t give you enough of.
Now, to be fair, some alleviants have been thrown-in to help make things more palatable: you’re able to purchase a horse that acts as a mobile shipping box, grass (in non-winter seasons) constantly regrows/doesn’t need water, chicken eggs can be used to conceive an unlimited supply of hens without needing to procure new ones, chicks don’t have to be fed, wood (for upgrading your house) is auto-stored, you don’t collapse from exhaustion, and, best of all, you’re not penalized for nighttime labor: so long as you irrigate your land and put feed in the stables before heading to bed, the game will count it as having been conducted for that day. Unfortunately, the fact that you’re basically strong-armed into working consecutive nights is doubly indicative of the excessively-swift pacing of the days.
There’s more I could harp on, like how slight movement resets the breakage counter on a boulder/log, how you only have two spaces on your tool belt, or how chickens are automatically killed by wolves if you leave them outside (defeating the whole purpose of setting-up a pen), but to go into all that detail would drag out this review pointlessly. I get that some of Harvest Moon’s prolixity was purposely implemented for the sake of realism, but when taken in conjunction with everything else, it ultimately brings down the product as a whole.
As stated earlier, Harvest Moon incorporated a bit of a dating sim into its framework via the ability to charm a girl and get married (sorry hetero-women, no choices for you), and, in fairness to the writing team, they actually crafted a decent amount of dialogue (granted, a lot of it has to be unraveled over the course of the game, but it is there). Sadly, this aspect is even more simplified than Mass Effect’s due to it purely coming down to you talking to them and giving them gifts tied to their personality. Such a quid pro quo system would be tolerable on its own merits, but the problem, once again, comes down to that everlooming hourglass: with less than three minutes, it becomes a pain in the @ss to balance your duties whilst concurrently running down to the village, talking to them, and/or bringing them a present, a task you have to repeat near-everyday should you wish to (eventually) have a spouse.
Graphically, things are pretty outstanding. Being a SNES release, Harvest Moon naturally boasts sharp pixel art, with NPCs textiles, in particular, doing a phenomenal job conveying their respective characters’ personality (your MC’s farmerwear, Ann’s tomboyish attire, Nina’s more-modest churchgoing garb, etc…). Seasons, as I said before, exist in the game, and effort was thankfully put into their visualization beyond a standard repaint ala Super Mario Bros: footprints in the snow, dead leaves in Autumn, brighter fields in summer, etc….etc….
The real standout, however, has to be the animations programmed for each action: from tools to golden tools to even dancing, you’ll discover a series of special movements coded exclusively for your character.
My only complaints had to do with three foibles: one, your main character’s eyes look permanently dead and depressed (no seriously, at first I thought he was just tired, but that’s his default visage); two, rainfall and extraneous cows in the barn (I believe more than 4) result in a noticeable framerate drop; and three, there’s this ugly yellow/brown filter they put over the camera lens. I get that family-owned farming is often associated with the past, but this discount sepia aesthetic felt unnecessary and honestly diminished the inherent vividness Harvest Moon’s canvas otherwise possessed.
Sound falls along the same wavelength as those aforementioned animations due to the engineers at Amccus synchronizing each with an appropriate din. 2D-based games never invested heavily in sound, but what you get here is a solid auralscape even by those standards. That said, there is a defect in the form of a screechy robot beep donned for the text bubbles (I have no idea what Amccus was thinking with this annoyance, but you’ll be glad to speed through it).
Music is where the game truly drops the ball as, much like A Link to the Past, there’s an insufficient amount of it. You’ve got a single tune for each season, in addition to the town, mountains, and festivals. There are some miscellaneous ones crafted for certain areas (like the chapel), but given that you’ll barely spend any time in those places, you’re liable to primarily hearing the other songs again and again and again. Having a single track/season, in particular, was boneheaded because the game allocates 30 days/quadrant, meaning you’ll hear the same music on repeat for an extended period of time. Composer Tsuyoshi Tanaka is a talented musician as, with the exception of Spring, I liked every leitmotif he crafted here (especially the town’s), making me wonder what led to him shortchanging the score as a whole.
Ultimately, I gave-up on completion due to the grind for cash being too much. I fully concede I may have been playing the game wrong as Harvest Moon is often cited as a relaxing enterprise by most fans; that said, its formula has, objectively-speaking, been improved upon by succeeding ventures (most notably Stardew Valley), meaning you won’t get anything here that you can’t garner from other ventures.
NOTES
+Treating = feeding, selling their bodily products, and (in the case of cows) brushing them.
-It’s pretty interesting to see how little information there is about Amccus online: not only do they lack a Wikipedia page, but they didn’t even go on to develop any of the other Story of Seasons entries, making me wonder if they were absorbed by publisher Natsume or simply fell apart like (tragically) so many other indie devs.
-This game allows you to go skinny-dipping with a girl….I promise I’m not kidding.
-Cutting grass and hoeing acres has the chance of sprouting a frog or mole respectively -- pretty cool additions.
-Sometimes your character will pause to observe a flock of birds ascend from his front yard upon opening the door in the morning.
-You get a dog at the beginning of the game, but he honestly appears to serve no discernible purpose besides generic companionship (was more originally intended for Fido that had to be dropped during development)?
Played on the Wii U Virtual Console
Farm simulators may be a dime-a-dozen these days, but back in the 90s they were actually pretty risky: as Toy Story, of all things, duly-showed, agrarian aesthetics were dying in the public eye -- the Internet was growing, Space Camp rising, and even Clint Eastwood had finished his cowboy tenure with Unforgiven.
Yet in 1996, a little company called Amccus burst onto the scene, debuting the first entry in what would eventually be called the Story of Seasons franchise. Dubbed Harvest Moon (or Farm Story in Japan), the premise was somewhat similar to popular JRPGs at the time in that you played as a blank slate tasked with restoring a piece of the world, that piece, here, being your family’s dilapidated ranch.
Unfortunately, despite not featuring an experience system, Harvest Moon feels too adjacent to those aforementioned role-playing games, its contents regurgitating their grindy schematic into a unique, though ultimately elongated, reskin. See, instead of levels, you’ve got monetary thresholds; instead of fighting, you’ve got ploughing; and instead of journeying across a foreign land, you’ve got backtracking galore along the same routes.
Anyone who’s played the myriad of spiritual successors out there knows how things go: you start off with a big plot, till the soil, plant seeds, water them till ripe, sell ‘em, use the profits to either buy more seeds or animals, and rinse & repeat. The problem is, whereas those aforementioned sequels built upon the formula and added diversity, you get no such changes here - progression is built on repetition, meaning you’ll end-up going through the same motions as though you’re grinding for exp ala Final Fantasy/Pokemon/insert_JRPG_of_your_choice. And I know it isn’t fair to criticize a game for lacking something its sequels have, but in determining whether or not a classic holds-up, such comparisons are necessary for deducing if those subsequent additions were common sense supplements or outright genuine innovation (the former, of course, being derogatory in nature towards the progeniting classic in question).
But even on its own merits, Harvest Moon stumbles due to its deliberately-lethargic scheme: you’re all but made to start out with crops because they’re the cheapest commodity available (chicks are $1000; cows $5000!), and after planting them you’re forced to hydrate them square by square by square -> after they maturate, you got to pluck them square by square by square and drop them into the shipping crate piece by piece by piece -> once you get animals that yield produce, you’ll need to pick each egg up yolk by yolk by yolk, or milk every cow, udder by udder….by udder.
Yeah, if it isn’t obvious, this is tedious work. On the plus side, I suppose Amccus successfully recreated 19th century rural farm-life; on the negative side, though, it doesn’t make for a fun time. Harvest Moon has frequently been described as relaxing, but I often found myself more bored than serendipic throughout my 10+ hour runtime, and what’s particularly grating is how the game goes out of its way to make things worse than they should be: you can’t navigate through plants because apparently stems are as thick as stone; you can’t water your middle crop (harvests are grown in a 9x9 grid) until the rest have been reaped, you have limited stamina that can only be replenished through protracted trips to a hot spring ayonder, there’s no rucksack for storing more than one-good at a time, dropping something insta-destroys it, you can’t put stuff for shipping overnight lest it auto-rots, and, perhaps worst of all, you can’t upgrade most of your tools manually. With the exception of the watering can, you’ll have to wait for pre-scripted events in order to acquire your next gear, and arriving at those points requires trudging through hours-and-hours of content: content that I’m not sure many people will willingly stick with.
None of this is even getting into the shortness of the days, which is egregious even by abridged standards: it’s not 5 or 4 or even 3, but 2.75 measly minutes. That’s right, in the time it takes you to microwave a burrito, you’ve got to complete all your daily chores, which yes becomes problematic the larger your grange grows. True, you’re not going to be handling crops every day, but treating(+) your animals, selling their staples, running to town to purchase/peddle additional goods, and successfully serenading your date (more on that later) all take time that the game simply doesn’t give you enough of.
Now, to be fair, some alleviants have been thrown-in to help make things more palatable: you’re able to purchase a horse that acts as a mobile shipping box, grass (in non-winter seasons) constantly regrows/doesn’t need water, chicken eggs can be used to conceive an unlimited supply of hens without needing to procure new ones, chicks don’t have to be fed, wood (for upgrading your house) is auto-stored, you don’t collapse from exhaustion, and, best of all, you’re not penalized for nighttime labor: so long as you irrigate your land and put feed in the stables before heading to bed, the game will count it as having been conducted for that day. Unfortunately, the fact that you’re basically strong-armed into working consecutive nights is doubly indicative of the excessively-swift pacing of the days.
There’s more I could harp on, like how slight movement resets the breakage counter on a boulder/log, how you only have two spaces on your tool belt, or how chickens are automatically killed by wolves if you leave them outside (defeating the whole purpose of setting-up a pen), but to go into all that detail would drag out this review pointlessly. I get that some of Harvest Moon’s prolixity was purposely implemented for the sake of realism, but when taken in conjunction with everything else, it ultimately brings down the product as a whole.
As stated earlier, Harvest Moon incorporated a bit of a dating sim into its framework via the ability to charm a girl and get married (sorry hetero-women, no choices for you), and, in fairness to the writing team, they actually crafted a decent amount of dialogue (granted, a lot of it has to be unraveled over the course of the game, but it is there). Sadly, this aspect is even more simplified than Mass Effect’s due to it purely coming down to you talking to them and giving them gifts tied to their personality. Such a quid pro quo system would be tolerable on its own merits, but the problem, once again, comes down to that everlooming hourglass: with less than three minutes, it becomes a pain in the @ss to balance your duties whilst concurrently running down to the village, talking to them, and/or bringing them a present, a task you have to repeat near-everyday should you wish to (eventually) have a spouse.
Graphically, things are pretty outstanding. Being a SNES release, Harvest Moon naturally boasts sharp pixel art, with NPCs textiles, in particular, doing a phenomenal job conveying their respective characters’ personality (your MC’s farmerwear, Ann’s tomboyish attire, Nina’s more-modest churchgoing garb, etc…). Seasons, as I said before, exist in the game, and effort was thankfully put into their visualization beyond a standard repaint ala Super Mario Bros: footprints in the snow, dead leaves in Autumn, brighter fields in summer, etc….etc….
The real standout, however, has to be the animations programmed for each action: from tools to golden tools to even dancing, you’ll discover a series of special movements coded exclusively for your character.
My only complaints had to do with three foibles: one, your main character’s eyes look permanently dead and depressed (no seriously, at first I thought he was just tired, but that’s his default visage); two, rainfall and extraneous cows in the barn (I believe more than 4) result in a noticeable framerate drop; and three, there’s this ugly yellow/brown filter they put over the camera lens. I get that family-owned farming is often associated with the past, but this discount sepia aesthetic felt unnecessary and honestly diminished the inherent vividness Harvest Moon’s canvas otherwise possessed.
Sound falls along the same wavelength as those aforementioned animations due to the engineers at Amccus synchronizing each with an appropriate din. 2D-based games never invested heavily in sound, but what you get here is a solid auralscape even by those standards. That said, there is a defect in the form of a screechy robot beep donned for the text bubbles (I have no idea what Amccus was thinking with this annoyance, but you’ll be glad to speed through it).
Music is where the game truly drops the ball as, much like A Link to the Past, there’s an insufficient amount of it. You’ve got a single tune for each season, in addition to the town, mountains, and festivals. There are some miscellaneous ones crafted for certain areas (like the chapel), but given that you’ll barely spend any time in those places, you’re liable to primarily hearing the other songs again and again and again. Having a single track/season, in particular, was boneheaded because the game allocates 30 days/quadrant, meaning you’ll hear the same music on repeat for an extended period of time. Composer Tsuyoshi Tanaka is a talented musician as, with the exception of Spring, I liked every leitmotif he crafted here (especially the town’s), making me wonder what led to him shortchanging the score as a whole.
Ultimately, I gave-up on completion due to the grind for cash being too much. I fully concede I may have been playing the game wrong as Harvest Moon is often cited as a relaxing enterprise by most fans; that said, its formula has, objectively-speaking, been improved upon by succeeding ventures (most notably Stardew Valley), meaning you won’t get anything here that you can’t garner from other ventures.
NOTES
+Treating = feeding, selling their bodily products, and (in the case of cows) brushing them.
-It’s pretty interesting to see how little information there is about Amccus online: not only do they lack a Wikipedia page, but they didn’t even go on to develop any of the other Story of Seasons entries, making me wonder if they were absorbed by publisher Natsume or simply fell apart like (tragically) so many other indie devs.
-This game allows you to go skinny-dipping with a girl….I promise I’m not kidding.
-Cutting grass and hoeing acres has the chance of sprouting a frog or mole respectively -- pretty cool additions.
-Sometimes your character will pause to observe a flock of birds ascend from his front yard upon opening the door in the morning.
-You get a dog at the beginning of the game, but he honestly appears to serve no discernible purpose besides generic companionship (was more originally intended for Fido that had to be dropped during development)?
2020
This review contains spoilers
Note - this game contains a couple scenes that may be triggering to epileptics
Note - as I did not beat the game, this write-up should be taken more as a set of observations than a genuine review
Primarily game solution spoilers discussed; however, I understand those inherently involve story spoilers which I, admittedly, do touch on as well (though, in my defense, I tried to be vague in regards to those)
My love of cyberpunk has taken me from the labs of Majestic 12 to the real-life streets of Kabukichō, yet all affairs have their limits, and I unfortunately found mine in the form of VirtuaVerse. An indie PnC developed by Theta Division, VirtuaVerse seemingly boasts all the right ingredients for cyberpunk success: corpo-dystopias, grim aesthetics, and of course plenty of neon. However, by drowning its story under an avalanche of contrivances, VirtuaVerse squanders any potential it may have had, becoming the kind of forgettable schlock left behind every gaming generation.
PnCs largely come down to their causal puzzles, and on that front VirtuaVerse heavily stumbles. On the title screen, you’ll see the devs pathetically boast about making their game difficult, but hey, credit where credit’s due - they’ve actually accomplished this feat without falling into Moon Logic territory. I played through about half the game before calling it quits, and during that time encountered plenty of bizarre scenarios: scenarios that either derived their solution from talking to/examining every entity, or, worse, triggering some outlandish Rube Goldberg event that made no sense from a practical standpoint. The former tactic was at least defensible under the banner of encouraging interaction with the world at large (even if they failed to make distinguish special objects from the background), but it genuinely blew my mind whenever I encountered the latter given the presence of more realistic alternatives.
For example, one section has you trying to get the attention of this boatman blasting a radio, but rather than have you simply tap him with the broomstick in your inventory (an item that, mind you, literally serves no other purpose in the game), you’re instead supposed to melt an adjacent hut to fall into the water and knock him overboard. Another scene has you prevented from searching this garbage bin for spare parts courtesy of a crazed hobo, and while it would’ve been easy to just knock the guy away or blast him with a fire extinguisher (another item that ends-up serving no purpose throughout), the actual solution involves something so ridiculous, I’m going to postscript it so as not to ruin the flow of this sentence(+). Now you may retort well Red, maybe they didn’t want to turn your character into a pr!ck, to which I respond they either way did that (more on that later).
As with most generalizations, not everything is bad, and I did enjoy the few brainteasers I resolved on my own, but I’ve always judged PnCs by how much I felt impelled to look-up their answers, and the second I found myself consistently doing that with VirtuaVerse, I knew it was time to call it quits. Life is too short for games that wholly frustrate you, even those latent in the genre you love, and while I acknowledge I’m not the smartest gamer, I feel these criticisms will also hold water for PnC veterans.
If that weren’t enough, VirtuaVerse boasts some unergonomic controls that’ll constantly remind of the superior schemes from Daedalic and Wadjet: the inventory and journal are tied to keyboard buttons, you can’t exit out of accidentally-restarted conversations, and dialogue is automatically processed ala Costume Quest (and no, the toggle option in the settings menu doesn’t affect this). That said, VirtuaVerse does offer the ability to rebind your keys, meaning you can do what I did and simply truss them to the WASD pad for easy convenience. But still, I don’t understand why they couldn’t just tie everything to the mouse.
Now, to their credit, the developers did put in place a story mode that reportedly cuts-down on the enigmas in favor of a straightforward “cinematic” experience, but even this abridged version won’t garner much enjoyment due to the lackluster narrative on display. The premise is you’re a loser hacker named Nathan trying to find his girlfriend in an unnamed corporate hellscape, and what you’ll quickly realize is just how much the writers failed at making any of these components engageable in the slightest.
To start with Nathan, I didn’t use the pejorative “loser” for no reason: he is truly pathetic, the kind of sycophantic yes man utterly incapable of standing up for himself whenever he comes across a barrier or rude person. Any coolness derived from his admittedly sweet attire (more on that later) is tossed out the window the second you see him strike up a tune with an adjacent NPC. And look, I get that not every protagonist needs to be a brooding bad@ss ala JC Denton, but given the man’s indulgence in blackhat shenanigans, you’d think he, of all people, would at least warrant a backbone. To add salt to the wounds, the writers took a page out of the Deponia schoolbook of awfulness via throwing-in situations in which you’re forced to ruin an NPC’s life just to progress forward (your hooded hero showing little remorse towards the aftereffects++).
The search for Nate’s girl Jay (and its subsequent developments), on the other hand, is hampered by some of that aforementioned lousy game design: every time he gets even a little close to finding his objective, a deliberately stupid roadblock props up, killing the few ounces of momentum generated in the moment. One of the worst versions of this, for instance, entails Nate actually seeing Jay run into an errant room, only for him to get cockblocked by an usher (even after you present him with the necessary ID!). And that really speaks to another qualm I had with a fair amount of the puzzles -- they bask in pointless elongation.
Have you guys ever seen a conundrum presented with a one-stop-shop-fits-all solution, only for the game to throw-in a couple extra steps the second you found said solution? Yeah, VirtuaVerse features that in spades, their presence indicating an ill-concealed attempt at extending the game’s runtime. One of the more annoying instances of this occurs after you successfully close the office door of a man whose dwelling you’re robbing: instead of letting the closure of said door be enough, the game forces you to find the keys to lock it in order to continue forward. And look, that may sound practical on the surface, but when you’re constantly peppered with such quandaries on top of the aforestated problems, it can be degrading to the process.
None of this is even taking into consideration the number of in-game moments blatantly drawn-out for the sake of irritating the player, like how you’re literally forced to listen to a 30 second Dial-Up screech (twice!) just to advance a phone call.
The cyberpunk setting itself arguably had the potential to subvert these dilemmas (as Dex’s did for its cliche tale), yet Theta failed at delivering on any of its unique prospects. Core to the game’s worldbuilding is advertising, with large companies exploiting augmented reality interfaces to spam, well, spam everywhere in bright neon hues. I’ve always said that AR headsets hold greater potential for market dominance than VR ones due to their balance of reduced motion sickness and easy-synchronicity, and VirtuaVerse remains the first sci-fi game I’ve ever played to actually exemplify such a possibility. Unfortunately, it’s not used for anything other than crazy art assets: you don’t get any interesting histories, no witty observations - only limited backgrounds on the businesses in operation.
Then again, perhaps that superficialness was for the better as the few times the game explores its themes of corporate hegemony, it ends-up devolving into a series of heavyhanded discourses reminiscent of a high schooler's level of nuance. One scene has Nathan and this dealer suck each other off over their mutual hatred of cloud computing; another sees Nathan go off on some tangent about music playlists due to them being arranged by an algorithm compared to human-built band albums. If these parts had at least contained some degree of subtlety, I might’ve been able to tolerate their length; however, not only do they not, they ironically come across as Theta having as much of an agenda as the megacorps they’re lambasting.
Graphically, VirtuaVerse is at least quite beautiful. It takes that early-90s computer gaming aesthetic and pumps it full of dark colors, providing yet another cyberpunk bastion rich in atmosphere: polluted rain falls everywhere, neon luminescence rouses the dilapidated landscapes, and you even get some really creative uses of pixel art, such as barbed motion to indicate swaying lights, wind-swept clothes, and rising smoke from cigarette ends. I praised Nathan’s get-up earlier (the multicolored diodes of his visor being particularly noteworthy), and that attitude extends to the majority of textile work here: it’s working-class chic balanced against individual culture -- the kind of clothing you could actually imagine someone wearing in a downsized area, from the black blazers of conventional streetfolk to the simple shirts & jeans of the distant Nuwakans. Yes, there’ll be gamers who find this retro-style too outdated, or the cyberpunk flare overly-hackneyed, but as I said in my Dex review, I’m a sucker for these kinds of esthetics, and consequently loved what the artisans at Theta did.
Sadly, the sound is nowhere near as good, largely due to some horrendous mixing that both sees the music played at a significantly-higher decibel than the SFX (even after manual adjustments), and outright removed when entering certain buildings (impossible to tell if this was intentional or not). I could’ve tolerated things had the score been to my liking, but given that it primarily goes for, what’s described in-game as synth heavy metal, it ultimately didn’t work for me in light of my admitted averseness to the genre (though I understand this is highly-subjective and that the OST is well-done for an indie release).
Without voice acting, you’ll hear the SFX a lot, and it does its job overall as far as supplementing your actions with appropriate beats. I really appreciated the multiple footstep dins programmed for the different types of terrain Nathan and co. walk on throughout.
In the end, though, the best soundscape wouldn’t have convinced me to keep up with VirtuaVerse. The story is boring, puzzles frustrating, and music too loud. For all the visuals and nightlife ambience, VirtuaVerse falters too much in the other, more important departments.
NOTES
+So you have to do two things: first, get a spiked VR chip via posing as Jay to blackmail a local retailer into selling you the tradeable products for the chip; and second, poisoning the meal of a local sushi critic so that the owner throws out his food, in turn causing the hobo to start pillaging the waste container and providing you an opportunity to slip the VR chip into his stash....yeah, you don’t need me to explain why this is so much more convoluted than simply kicking the dude in the nads.
++Off the top of my head, the above guy is poisoned, another dude gets killed, a third has his shop destroyed, and a whole group has their livelihood ruined (this being the sole instance Nate is kind of regretful over).
-One cool concept in the game was the idea of personal IDs being tied to someone’s entire biometric profile (certainly a believable evolution on SSN!).
Note - as I did not beat the game, this write-up should be taken more as a set of observations than a genuine review
Primarily game solution spoilers discussed; however, I understand those inherently involve story spoilers which I, admittedly, do touch on as well (though, in my defense, I tried to be vague in regards to those)
My love of cyberpunk has taken me from the labs of Majestic 12 to the real-life streets of Kabukichō, yet all affairs have their limits, and I unfortunately found mine in the form of VirtuaVerse. An indie PnC developed by Theta Division, VirtuaVerse seemingly boasts all the right ingredients for cyberpunk success: corpo-dystopias, grim aesthetics, and of course plenty of neon. However, by drowning its story under an avalanche of contrivances, VirtuaVerse squanders any potential it may have had, becoming the kind of forgettable schlock left behind every gaming generation.
PnCs largely come down to their causal puzzles, and on that front VirtuaVerse heavily stumbles. On the title screen, you’ll see the devs pathetically boast about making their game difficult, but hey, credit where credit’s due - they’ve actually accomplished this feat without falling into Moon Logic territory. I played through about half the game before calling it quits, and during that time encountered plenty of bizarre scenarios: scenarios that either derived their solution from talking to/examining every entity, or, worse, triggering some outlandish Rube Goldberg event that made no sense from a practical standpoint. The former tactic was at least defensible under the banner of encouraging interaction with the world at large (even if they failed to make distinguish special objects from the background), but it genuinely blew my mind whenever I encountered the latter given the presence of more realistic alternatives.
For example, one section has you trying to get the attention of this boatman blasting a radio, but rather than have you simply tap him with the broomstick in your inventory (an item that, mind you, literally serves no other purpose in the game), you’re instead supposed to melt an adjacent hut to fall into the water and knock him overboard. Another scene has you prevented from searching this garbage bin for spare parts courtesy of a crazed hobo, and while it would’ve been easy to just knock the guy away or blast him with a fire extinguisher (another item that ends-up serving no purpose throughout), the actual solution involves something so ridiculous, I’m going to postscript it so as not to ruin the flow of this sentence(+). Now you may retort well Red, maybe they didn’t want to turn your character into a pr!ck, to which I respond they either way did that (more on that later).
As with most generalizations, not everything is bad, and I did enjoy the few brainteasers I resolved on my own, but I’ve always judged PnCs by how much I felt impelled to look-up their answers, and the second I found myself consistently doing that with VirtuaVerse, I knew it was time to call it quits. Life is too short for games that wholly frustrate you, even those latent in the genre you love, and while I acknowledge I’m not the smartest gamer, I feel these criticisms will also hold water for PnC veterans.
If that weren’t enough, VirtuaVerse boasts some unergonomic controls that’ll constantly remind of the superior schemes from Daedalic and Wadjet: the inventory and journal are tied to keyboard buttons, you can’t exit out of accidentally-restarted conversations, and dialogue is automatically processed ala Costume Quest (and no, the toggle option in the settings menu doesn’t affect this). That said, VirtuaVerse does offer the ability to rebind your keys, meaning you can do what I did and simply truss them to the WASD pad for easy convenience. But still, I don’t understand why they couldn’t just tie everything to the mouse.
Now, to their credit, the developers did put in place a story mode that reportedly cuts-down on the enigmas in favor of a straightforward “cinematic” experience, but even this abridged version won’t garner much enjoyment due to the lackluster narrative on display. The premise is you’re a loser hacker named Nathan trying to find his girlfriend in an unnamed corporate hellscape, and what you’ll quickly realize is just how much the writers failed at making any of these components engageable in the slightest.
To start with Nathan, I didn’t use the pejorative “loser” for no reason: he is truly pathetic, the kind of sycophantic yes man utterly incapable of standing up for himself whenever he comes across a barrier or rude person. Any coolness derived from his admittedly sweet attire (more on that later) is tossed out the window the second you see him strike up a tune with an adjacent NPC. And look, I get that not every protagonist needs to be a brooding bad@ss ala JC Denton, but given the man’s indulgence in blackhat shenanigans, you’d think he, of all people, would at least warrant a backbone. To add salt to the wounds, the writers took a page out of the Deponia schoolbook of awfulness via throwing-in situations in which you’re forced to ruin an NPC’s life just to progress forward (your hooded hero showing little remorse towards the aftereffects++).
The search for Nate’s girl Jay (and its subsequent developments), on the other hand, is hampered by some of that aforementioned lousy game design: every time he gets even a little close to finding his objective, a deliberately stupid roadblock props up, killing the few ounces of momentum generated in the moment. One of the worst versions of this, for instance, entails Nate actually seeing Jay run into an errant room, only for him to get cockblocked by an usher (even after you present him with the necessary ID!). And that really speaks to another qualm I had with a fair amount of the puzzles -- they bask in pointless elongation.
Have you guys ever seen a conundrum presented with a one-stop-shop-fits-all solution, only for the game to throw-in a couple extra steps the second you found said solution? Yeah, VirtuaVerse features that in spades, their presence indicating an ill-concealed attempt at extending the game’s runtime. One of the more annoying instances of this occurs after you successfully close the office door of a man whose dwelling you’re robbing: instead of letting the closure of said door be enough, the game forces you to find the keys to lock it in order to continue forward. And look, that may sound practical on the surface, but when you’re constantly peppered with such quandaries on top of the aforestated problems, it can be degrading to the process.
None of this is even taking into consideration the number of in-game moments blatantly drawn-out for the sake of irritating the player, like how you’re literally forced to listen to a 30 second Dial-Up screech (twice!) just to advance a phone call.
The cyberpunk setting itself arguably had the potential to subvert these dilemmas (as Dex’s did for its cliche tale), yet Theta failed at delivering on any of its unique prospects. Core to the game’s worldbuilding is advertising, with large companies exploiting augmented reality interfaces to spam, well, spam everywhere in bright neon hues. I’ve always said that AR headsets hold greater potential for market dominance than VR ones due to their balance of reduced motion sickness and easy-synchronicity, and VirtuaVerse remains the first sci-fi game I’ve ever played to actually exemplify such a possibility. Unfortunately, it’s not used for anything other than crazy art assets: you don’t get any interesting histories, no witty observations - only limited backgrounds on the businesses in operation.
Then again, perhaps that superficialness was for the better as the few times the game explores its themes of corporate hegemony, it ends-up devolving into a series of heavyhanded discourses reminiscent of a high schooler's level of nuance. One scene has Nathan and this dealer suck each other off over their mutual hatred of cloud computing; another sees Nathan go off on some tangent about music playlists due to them being arranged by an algorithm compared to human-built band albums. If these parts had at least contained some degree of subtlety, I might’ve been able to tolerate their length; however, not only do they not, they ironically come across as Theta having as much of an agenda as the megacorps they’re lambasting.
Graphically, VirtuaVerse is at least quite beautiful. It takes that early-90s computer gaming aesthetic and pumps it full of dark colors, providing yet another cyberpunk bastion rich in atmosphere: polluted rain falls everywhere, neon luminescence rouses the dilapidated landscapes, and you even get some really creative uses of pixel art, such as barbed motion to indicate swaying lights, wind-swept clothes, and rising smoke from cigarette ends. I praised Nathan’s get-up earlier (the multicolored diodes of his visor being particularly noteworthy), and that attitude extends to the majority of textile work here: it’s working-class chic balanced against individual culture -- the kind of clothing you could actually imagine someone wearing in a downsized area, from the black blazers of conventional streetfolk to the simple shirts & jeans of the distant Nuwakans. Yes, there’ll be gamers who find this retro-style too outdated, or the cyberpunk flare overly-hackneyed, but as I said in my Dex review, I’m a sucker for these kinds of esthetics, and consequently loved what the artisans at Theta did.
Sadly, the sound is nowhere near as good, largely due to some horrendous mixing that both sees the music played at a significantly-higher decibel than the SFX (even after manual adjustments), and outright removed when entering certain buildings (impossible to tell if this was intentional or not). I could’ve tolerated things had the score been to my liking, but given that it primarily goes for, what’s described in-game as synth heavy metal, it ultimately didn’t work for me in light of my admitted averseness to the genre (though I understand this is highly-subjective and that the OST is well-done for an indie release).
Without voice acting, you’ll hear the SFX a lot, and it does its job overall as far as supplementing your actions with appropriate beats. I really appreciated the multiple footstep dins programmed for the different types of terrain Nathan and co. walk on throughout.
In the end, though, the best soundscape wouldn’t have convinced me to keep up with VirtuaVerse. The story is boring, puzzles frustrating, and music too loud. For all the visuals and nightlife ambience, VirtuaVerse falters too much in the other, more important departments.
NOTES
+So you have to do two things: first, get a spiked VR chip via posing as Jay to blackmail a local retailer into selling you the tradeable products for the chip; and second, poisoning the meal of a local sushi critic so that the owner throws out his food, in turn causing the hobo to start pillaging the waste container and providing you an opportunity to slip the VR chip into his stash....yeah, you don’t need me to explain why this is so much more convoluted than simply kicking the dude in the nads.
++Off the top of my head, the above guy is poisoned, another dude gets killed, a third has his shop destroyed, and a whole group has their livelihood ruined (this being the sole instance Nate is kind of regretful over).
-One cool concept in the game was the idea of personal IDs being tied to someone’s entire biometric profile (certainly a believable evolution on SSN!).
Should I even write a review? Milk inside a bag of milk inside a bag of milk will take you, at best 20 minutes to complete, meaning anything I say will inherently emit spoilers.
As someone who isn’t a big fan of VNs, I found myself strangely drawn-into the world crafted by Nikita Kryukov, and it’s really saying something when a short indie title does a better job tackling mental health issues than some of the bigger games I’ve played.
The mucky claret art style works towards the game’s psychedelic nature, though I wish some images were less blurry (the in-game explanations coming across as much like excuses as legitimate rationale). Likewise, I would’ve appreciated a little more SFX despite the writers, again, technically providing a reason for the reliance on music. That said, the tunes Kryukov has assembled here befit his moody product quite well.
There’s honestly not much more I can, or rather should, say - at a $1.00 asking price, you’ll get your surreal experience for sure.
As someone who isn’t a big fan of VNs, I found myself strangely drawn-into the world crafted by Nikita Kryukov, and it’s really saying something when a short indie title does a better job tackling mental health issues than some of the bigger games I’ve played.
The mucky claret art style works towards the game’s psychedelic nature, though I wish some images were less blurry (the in-game explanations coming across as much like excuses as legitimate rationale). Likewise, I would’ve appreciated a little more SFX despite the writers, again, technically providing a reason for the reliance on music. That said, the tunes Kryukov has assembled here befit his moody product quite well.
There’s honestly not much more I can, or rather should, say - at a $1.00 asking price, you’ll get your surreal experience for sure.
1990
Played on the Wii U Virtual Console
Yes, I technically had to abandon the game because I couldn't beat the end boss rush, but having completed every other aspect, I feel this review stands as a qualified opinion
These days you’re liable to seeing video game mash-ups from different genres, but back in the 90s, a then-new company called Quintet seemingly pioneered this tactic with their debut title ActRaiser(+). Shoving city building and godhood systems into an action platformer schematic, ActRaiser stood as a unique first-year release for the SNES, one that concurrently launched Quintet into mainstream discourse.
If you’ve been a part of any retro community, chances are you’ve read skyrocketing praise for ActRaiser over its various elements, and while they definitely do warrant respect, I feel the lack of a genuine sequel may have boosted the base game’s reputation into abnormal parameters. What do I mean by this? Well, as you guys have no doubt experienced by now, the best sequels are the ones that take the good from their predecessor and make it even more exemplary: they iron out the kinks, chisel new systems, and smelt the entire product into a revolutionary package: ACII, Half-Life 2, Arkham City, DKC2 -- we still look fondly upon the original, but recognize that significant improvements were done in the follow-up.
ActRaiser’s problem is that it didn’t get a true sequel(++), meaning any lauding it’s garnered from 4th gen enthusiasts smacks of the kind of superior advancements fans would’ve physically seen in a theoretical ActRaiser 2. This isn’t out of disingenuity or anything of the sort, but more-so nostalgia combined with the admittedly-novel concepts bolstered by the game.
To illustrate what I’m alleging, let’s start with the city building: it’s entirely linear. Each area has you start off with a giant piece of land that you then have to direct your worshippers towards industrializing (an activity they consequently conduct square-by-square). There’s no strategy, no worrying about environmental or economic factors, no catalog of dwellings to select from, nothing. Once your people seal off the adjacent monster lairs, you don’t even have to concern yourself with their safety (not even from such phenomena as natural disasters or surprise incidents). Throughout your tenure, you’re occasionally hit with a scripted dilemma, but almost all of these have to be resolved instantly in order to progress further.
The god prayers are handled a bit better insofar as you’re actually given agency whether to grant them or not (i.e., not smiting the requested mountain), but these don’t result in any noticeable consequences outside of your character not gaining a power-up or extra magic scroll (more on those later). Regardless, the lion’s share of scenarios ultimately demand completion for the sake of unlocking the hidden boss cave in the region, meaning they’re just as mandatory as the obligatory city ones.
Don’t get me wrong, these aspects provide a lot of that simple dopamine gamers have come to love from modern-day releases -- seeing each village get constructed from the ground-up, in particular, reminded me of the renovation system from the Ezio games wherein you’d instantly behold the fruits of your labor. I liked the interactions that came about between the citizenry and your protagonist: how they’d treat you reverently, make earnest requests, and offer alms in your honor. Despite the limited dialogue, it’s a relatively-accurate representation of how faith operated in older civilizations, and while ActRaiser doesn’t really address any deeper themes on the topic (save a blurb at the end), I do think this part has contributed to the game’s continued fervor.
On that note, what exactly is the premise of ActRaiser? Well, in the original Japanese script, you were literally the Abrahamic G-D trying to save humanity from the influence of Satan and his 12 minions. Of course, that kind of on-the-nose storytelling wouldn’t have flown back in the day, and so western markets renamed him The Master, and his opponent Tanzra.
Regardless, the gist is your typical good vs. evil scheme. One of the things I appreciated about ActRaiser was how you never actually see your persona: during the action scenes, he inhabits a gold guardian, while the town simulations have him directly interact with an anonymous Cupid. The former decision, in particular, end-ups being an unintentionally (or perhaps intentionally?) wise integration as it subsequently explains how your deity is able to be “defeated” by lesser enemies.
You’ll be conducting these fights during the platforming sections, which is arguably where ActRaiser succeeds the most. Quintet would later garner fame for their trilogy of ARPGs, and it’s clear they cut their teeth working on ActRaiser as it is absolutely solid: you have a jump, slash, duck, and magic attack, all of which you’ll need to employ should you wish to beat the various enemies and bosses thrown your way. The jump, in particular, works really well, with Quintet having mastered the precision, weight, and height factors that go into 16-bit springing (that is to say, it’s easy to learn and do without feeling like you’re at a disadvantage).
Honestly, there are only two real problems here: first, side bounding and attacking is very inconsistent to pull off (and outright impossible for vertical jumps), and two, the game is way too bloody easy, that simplicity largely coming down to a single spell you acquire in the third world: Stardust. At the click of a button, your avatar can call down a hailstorm of galactic pellets, and man do these babies do a significant amount of damage: so much so, that bosses are rendered cakewalks. To try and counter this, the game puts a cap on the amount of times you can cast a spell/per a run (NOT per/a life; die and any previously-depleted slots remain empty), but the thing is, if you’re fully developing your cities, chances are you’re going to find the majority of magic scrolls (ammo) out there anyway, thus ensuring you’re well-armed prior to most battles (this isn’t even taking into account the number of temporary extra scrolls you can loot in-game).
I’m not sure who on the dev team thought this would be a good idea, but it ends-up undermining a lot of the programming that no doubt went into the craftsmanship of these bosses. Perhaps realizing this too late, the game forcibly reverses course during the final act wherein Tanzra is preceded by a punishing boss gauntlet that’s so frustrating, you’ll see below why it caused me to drop the title(+++).
Thankfully the levels themselves are quite stunning, taking place over a variety of locales ranging from indigenous-inspired forestry and frosty ice caves to even a Tatooine-influenced abode (no seriously, it’s got its own Sarlacc Pit). The bosses themselves exemplify this virtuosity to a tee, often being conventional monsters wrought out with gorgeous colorwork and gargantuan proportions. Enemy design, on the other hand, could be hit-or-miss: some levels throw uniquely-crafted creatures at you like forest ents, orc-like wasps, and lizardian knights, while other times you’ll find yourself scratching your head at the presence of floating eyeballs, conventional gargoyles, and even swole women!
ActRaiser, as stated before, came out early in the SNES’s life, and while the visuals for the abovementioned levels are top-notch, unfortunately the bird’s eye map for the city building isn’t quite at the same level, often looking one-step removed from Oregon Trail’s graphics. If that weren’t enough, you’re often forced to partake in this discount schmup schematic via your little Angel shooting arrows at an ever-breeding(++++) source of minions (till their grounds are sealed for good). The critters themselves are even more generic looking than their earthly compatriots and do little more than destroy structures and carry away the occasional batch of humans (as I keep saying, it’s an underdeveloped part of the game that ultimately gets repetitive in light of the lack of differentiation between continents, as well as the relative shortness of the platforming stages).
Part of me does wonder if more was originally intended with the city-building as you’re granted elemental powers (earthquakes, lightning, wind, etc…) that can theoretically affect the landscape, but which are only ever utilized during the, you guessed it, scripted events. As it stands, unless you wish to destroy your own creations Sim City-style, you’re not going to find much use for these abilities.
Ironically, the sound design operates oppositely to the visuals in that more effort was put into the aerial arrangements than their platforming equals: from the creature growls to each of your god powers, you’ll hear a distinct din compared to the ground wherein everyone is silent save their projectile attacks. Your sword literally swipes like someone breathed a hot air “ha” on the microphone, and the dialogue scroll is so awfully-screechy, I implore prospective buyers to choose the fast text speed for the sake of your ears.
The music was strung together by Yuzo Koshiro, a man who’s, of course, acquired a strong reputation amongst the RPG community. Unfortunately, he simply wasn’t given enough money here to do what he could, meaning there are a lot of repeated tracks chock-full of their own repetitive loops. Sometimes this works, as in the case of the soothing town-building tune, but other times it comes across as unintentionally lazy, such as every boss sharing the same beat. That said, I will give him credit for morphing his tracks depending on the individual theme of the stage (i.e., the pyramid has a more Egyptian horn accompaniment whereas the lava motif wouldn’t sound out-of-place in Bowser’s Castle!).
Regardless of my complaints, I still recommend playing ActRaiser by any legal means necessary. For starters, it doesn’t wear out its welcome, being completable in 1-2 sittings, and for all the downsides of its supplementary genres, the fans have a point -- there really is no other game like it.
NOTES
+For the record, I don’t know if ActRaiser was the first video game to combine multiple types of games into one cartridge. Also, does anyone know what happened to Quintet? It’s a very sketchy story when you read about their disappearance from society.
++There technically was an ActRaiser 2, but it abandoned the town sim aspects entirely in favor of pure platforming. A spiritual remake called Renaissance was released semi-recently, but, as pointed out by SNESDrunk, it failed to do any kind of innovation on the formula minus adding a Tower Defense-schematic.
+++So basically you have to beat six of the previous 12 bosses before facing Tanzra who, in turn, comes in two stages. The problem is, you aren’t given any kind of health or mana replenishment throughout the ordeal, meaning you need to beat it one-go. Oh, and to top it all off, the game strongarms you into using-up several mana shots on the first thug, a sped-up version of the Minotaurus, due to said speed-up making it near-impossible to hit him with conventional attacks. It’s a shame because an easy work around to this difficulty spike (in addition to granting replenishments) would’ve been to just save the meteor spell for this moment, allowing players to beat the bosses as they were originally intended during the vanilla run.
++++Strictly-speaking, there is a limit to the number of spawns, but it’s so high you’re better off closing the portals as soon as possible.
Yes, I technically had to abandon the game because I couldn't beat the end boss rush, but having completed every other aspect, I feel this review stands as a qualified opinion
These days you’re liable to seeing video game mash-ups from different genres, but back in the 90s, a then-new company called Quintet seemingly pioneered this tactic with their debut title ActRaiser(+). Shoving city building and godhood systems into an action platformer schematic, ActRaiser stood as a unique first-year release for the SNES, one that concurrently launched Quintet into mainstream discourse.
If you’ve been a part of any retro community, chances are you’ve read skyrocketing praise for ActRaiser over its various elements, and while they definitely do warrant respect, I feel the lack of a genuine sequel may have boosted the base game’s reputation into abnormal parameters. What do I mean by this? Well, as you guys have no doubt experienced by now, the best sequels are the ones that take the good from their predecessor and make it even more exemplary: they iron out the kinks, chisel new systems, and smelt the entire product into a revolutionary package: ACII, Half-Life 2, Arkham City, DKC2 -- we still look fondly upon the original, but recognize that significant improvements were done in the follow-up.
ActRaiser’s problem is that it didn’t get a true sequel(++), meaning any lauding it’s garnered from 4th gen enthusiasts smacks of the kind of superior advancements fans would’ve physically seen in a theoretical ActRaiser 2. This isn’t out of disingenuity or anything of the sort, but more-so nostalgia combined with the admittedly-novel concepts bolstered by the game.
To illustrate what I’m alleging, let’s start with the city building: it’s entirely linear. Each area has you start off with a giant piece of land that you then have to direct your worshippers towards industrializing (an activity they consequently conduct square-by-square). There’s no strategy, no worrying about environmental or economic factors, no catalog of dwellings to select from, nothing. Once your people seal off the adjacent monster lairs, you don’t even have to concern yourself with their safety (not even from such phenomena as natural disasters or surprise incidents). Throughout your tenure, you’re occasionally hit with a scripted dilemma, but almost all of these have to be resolved instantly in order to progress further.
The god prayers are handled a bit better insofar as you’re actually given agency whether to grant them or not (i.e., not smiting the requested mountain), but these don’t result in any noticeable consequences outside of your character not gaining a power-up or extra magic scroll (more on those later). Regardless, the lion’s share of scenarios ultimately demand completion for the sake of unlocking the hidden boss cave in the region, meaning they’re just as mandatory as the obligatory city ones.
Don’t get me wrong, these aspects provide a lot of that simple dopamine gamers have come to love from modern-day releases -- seeing each village get constructed from the ground-up, in particular, reminded me of the renovation system from the Ezio games wherein you’d instantly behold the fruits of your labor. I liked the interactions that came about between the citizenry and your protagonist: how they’d treat you reverently, make earnest requests, and offer alms in your honor. Despite the limited dialogue, it’s a relatively-accurate representation of how faith operated in older civilizations, and while ActRaiser doesn’t really address any deeper themes on the topic (save a blurb at the end), I do think this part has contributed to the game’s continued fervor.
On that note, what exactly is the premise of ActRaiser? Well, in the original Japanese script, you were literally the Abrahamic G-D trying to save humanity from the influence of Satan and his 12 minions. Of course, that kind of on-the-nose storytelling wouldn’t have flown back in the day, and so western markets renamed him The Master, and his opponent Tanzra.
Regardless, the gist is your typical good vs. evil scheme. One of the things I appreciated about ActRaiser was how you never actually see your persona: during the action scenes, he inhabits a gold guardian, while the town simulations have him directly interact with an anonymous Cupid. The former decision, in particular, end-ups being an unintentionally (or perhaps intentionally?) wise integration as it subsequently explains how your deity is able to be “defeated” by lesser enemies.
You’ll be conducting these fights during the platforming sections, which is arguably where ActRaiser succeeds the most. Quintet would later garner fame for their trilogy of ARPGs, and it’s clear they cut their teeth working on ActRaiser as it is absolutely solid: you have a jump, slash, duck, and magic attack, all of which you’ll need to employ should you wish to beat the various enemies and bosses thrown your way. The jump, in particular, works really well, with Quintet having mastered the precision, weight, and height factors that go into 16-bit springing (that is to say, it’s easy to learn and do without feeling like you’re at a disadvantage).
Honestly, there are only two real problems here: first, side bounding and attacking is very inconsistent to pull off (and outright impossible for vertical jumps), and two, the game is way too bloody easy, that simplicity largely coming down to a single spell you acquire in the third world: Stardust. At the click of a button, your avatar can call down a hailstorm of galactic pellets, and man do these babies do a significant amount of damage: so much so, that bosses are rendered cakewalks. To try and counter this, the game puts a cap on the amount of times you can cast a spell/per a run (NOT per/a life; die and any previously-depleted slots remain empty), but the thing is, if you’re fully developing your cities, chances are you’re going to find the majority of magic scrolls (ammo) out there anyway, thus ensuring you’re well-armed prior to most battles (this isn’t even taking into account the number of temporary extra scrolls you can loot in-game).
I’m not sure who on the dev team thought this would be a good idea, but it ends-up undermining a lot of the programming that no doubt went into the craftsmanship of these bosses. Perhaps realizing this too late, the game forcibly reverses course during the final act wherein Tanzra is preceded by a punishing boss gauntlet that’s so frustrating, you’ll see below why it caused me to drop the title(+++).
Thankfully the levels themselves are quite stunning, taking place over a variety of locales ranging from indigenous-inspired forestry and frosty ice caves to even a Tatooine-influenced abode (no seriously, it’s got its own Sarlacc Pit). The bosses themselves exemplify this virtuosity to a tee, often being conventional monsters wrought out with gorgeous colorwork and gargantuan proportions. Enemy design, on the other hand, could be hit-or-miss: some levels throw uniquely-crafted creatures at you like forest ents, orc-like wasps, and lizardian knights, while other times you’ll find yourself scratching your head at the presence of floating eyeballs, conventional gargoyles, and even swole women!
ActRaiser, as stated before, came out early in the SNES’s life, and while the visuals for the abovementioned levels are top-notch, unfortunately the bird’s eye map for the city building isn’t quite at the same level, often looking one-step removed from Oregon Trail’s graphics. If that weren’t enough, you’re often forced to partake in this discount schmup schematic via your little Angel shooting arrows at an ever-breeding(++++) source of minions (till their grounds are sealed for good). The critters themselves are even more generic looking than their earthly compatriots and do little more than destroy structures and carry away the occasional batch of humans (as I keep saying, it’s an underdeveloped part of the game that ultimately gets repetitive in light of the lack of differentiation between continents, as well as the relative shortness of the platforming stages).
Part of me does wonder if more was originally intended with the city-building as you’re granted elemental powers (earthquakes, lightning, wind, etc…) that can theoretically affect the landscape, but which are only ever utilized during the, you guessed it, scripted events. As it stands, unless you wish to destroy your own creations Sim City-style, you’re not going to find much use for these abilities.
Ironically, the sound design operates oppositely to the visuals in that more effort was put into the aerial arrangements than their platforming equals: from the creature growls to each of your god powers, you’ll hear a distinct din compared to the ground wherein everyone is silent save their projectile attacks. Your sword literally swipes like someone breathed a hot air “ha” on the microphone, and the dialogue scroll is so awfully-screechy, I implore prospective buyers to choose the fast text speed for the sake of your ears.
The music was strung together by Yuzo Koshiro, a man who’s, of course, acquired a strong reputation amongst the RPG community. Unfortunately, he simply wasn’t given enough money here to do what he could, meaning there are a lot of repeated tracks chock-full of their own repetitive loops. Sometimes this works, as in the case of the soothing town-building tune, but other times it comes across as unintentionally lazy, such as every boss sharing the same beat. That said, I will give him credit for morphing his tracks depending on the individual theme of the stage (i.e., the pyramid has a more Egyptian horn accompaniment whereas the lava motif wouldn’t sound out-of-place in Bowser’s Castle!).
Regardless of my complaints, I still recommend playing ActRaiser by any legal means necessary. For starters, it doesn’t wear out its welcome, being completable in 1-2 sittings, and for all the downsides of its supplementary genres, the fans have a point -- there really is no other game like it.
NOTES
+For the record, I don’t know if ActRaiser was the first video game to combine multiple types of games into one cartridge. Also, does anyone know what happened to Quintet? It’s a very sketchy story when you read about their disappearance from society.
++There technically was an ActRaiser 2, but it abandoned the town sim aspects entirely in favor of pure platforming. A spiritual remake called Renaissance was released semi-recently, but, as pointed out by SNESDrunk, it failed to do any kind of innovation on the formula minus adding a Tower Defense-schematic.
+++So basically you have to beat six of the previous 12 bosses before facing Tanzra who, in turn, comes in two stages. The problem is, you aren’t given any kind of health or mana replenishment throughout the ordeal, meaning you need to beat it one-go. Oh, and to top it all off, the game strongarms you into using-up several mana shots on the first thug, a sped-up version of the Minotaurus, due to said speed-up making it near-impossible to hit him with conventional attacks. It’s a shame because an easy work around to this difficulty spike (in addition to granting replenishments) would’ve been to just save the meteor spell for this moment, allowing players to beat the bosses as they were originally intended during the vanilla run.
++++Strictly-speaking, there is a limit to the number of spawns, but it’s so high you’re better off closing the portals as soon as possible.
TBD
Note - game received for free as part of a review code
Ressifice is an indie throwback to the Splatterhouse games of yore wherein you were tasked with killing scores of ghouls in atypical gory fashion. Question is, how well does it hold up to its progenitors? Well, as someone who never played them, I can’t say, though, on its own merits, it’s a nice enough diversion for the $1.00 asking price.
As it’ll literally take you less than an hour to beat Ressifice, I won’t frolic around too much. Graphically, this is a superb structure, combining early-2000s pixel art with some bloody Halloween aesthetics. This is a dark, hematic place, chock-full of monsters ready to rip apart unwary teenagers too cool for their own good, and while there are only three-or-so beasts in the entire game, each are excellent crafted, boasting an executioner’s hood and piercing maroon eyes (the bigger ones even holding visual throwbacks to such classic entities as Cthulhu and Jason). I was particularly impressed by the unique death animations, their intricacy showcasing some quality (though twisted!) artwork ala self-hanging suicides.
Backgrounds are plain yet foreboding, their compositions also bearing throwbacks to popular horror settings like Camp Crystal Lake and Burkittsville Forest. On top of this, the game, as a whole, features some surprisingly organic lighting that periodically shows up via fireflies, candlesticks, and good old-fashioned electricity. The human models, particularly your protagonist, are arguably the low-point in terms of their plainclothes appearance, but given that this was obviously the intention, that’s not saying much.
The only thing that kind of bothered me were the purple smears which accompanied your bat’s swinging, as the color felt out-of-place amidst the backdrops as well as the bat itself; however, as you guys can tell, this is a heavy nitpick -- the truth is Ressifice is a superbly-crafted title that successfully evokes grody nostalgia.
Music and SFX are pretty limited, though what you hear is trusty enough. The haunting melody cues that play every time you successfully complete a puzzle (more on that below) are particularly memorable, and while I would’ve liked a stronger crackle behind your club’s impacts, the minimized impingement won’t distract you as you’re mowing down scores upon scores of demons.
This brings me to the gameplay. As stated in the first sentence, Ressifice plays like a sanguine Namco beat’em up wherein you’re tasked with killing everything that stands between you and the exit. It’s a simple system of swinging & dodging, and though you’ll die frequently courtesy of the low health bar, the abundance of autosaves essentially provides you with nigh-immortality. In fact, I kind of wish the game had gone all-out with the power fantasy aspect: spam more monsters, increase your attack power, and do away with all HP. It wouldn’t have hurt the gameplay given the plethora of save states, and might’ve actually made things more fun considering how frustrating the three-hit health bar could get.
Outside of killing, your real quest is to escape this spooky world, your method of doing so being the assemblage of several painted skulls. There are some light puzzles involved as far as unlocking certain abodes to acquire them, but they won’t take-up much brainpower to resolve.
Honestly, the biggest problems I had with the game design were two-fold: one, the amount of respawning enemies -- they’re not only annoying to deal with, but inconsistently generated (some appear in specific spots, others will pop-up several blocks down); and two, the lack of a quick load function, forcing you to manually click the restart button each time with the mouse.
Storywise, Ressifice isn’t going to win any awards, taking the typical man vs. gothic monster template and doing little to mould it. The writers did try and shove some tongue-in-cheek humor into the script; however, the short length of the game combined with the lack of a real mythology prevents these from being anything more than cornbread comedy. I was also irked by the font projection, it often being too wide, too crunched, and too quickly generated for pleasant reading.
Overall, Ressifice is a case of what you see is what you get. If you grew-up with the Splatterhouse series (or its many scions), you’ll absolutely enjoy your time here -- all others, best look elsewhere.
NOTES
-Dialogue in the beginning of the game is rendered through a beat system that sounds like Japanese in reverse.
Ressifice is an indie throwback to the Splatterhouse games of yore wherein you were tasked with killing scores of ghouls in atypical gory fashion. Question is, how well does it hold up to its progenitors? Well, as someone who never played them, I can’t say, though, on its own merits, it’s a nice enough diversion for the $1.00 asking price.
As it’ll literally take you less than an hour to beat Ressifice, I won’t frolic around too much. Graphically, this is a superb structure, combining early-2000s pixel art with some bloody Halloween aesthetics. This is a dark, hematic place, chock-full of monsters ready to rip apart unwary teenagers too cool for their own good, and while there are only three-or-so beasts in the entire game, each are excellent crafted, boasting an executioner’s hood and piercing maroon eyes (the bigger ones even holding visual throwbacks to such classic entities as Cthulhu and Jason). I was particularly impressed by the unique death animations, their intricacy showcasing some quality (though twisted!) artwork ala self-hanging suicides.
Backgrounds are plain yet foreboding, their compositions also bearing throwbacks to popular horror settings like Camp Crystal Lake and Burkittsville Forest. On top of this, the game, as a whole, features some surprisingly organic lighting that periodically shows up via fireflies, candlesticks, and good old-fashioned electricity. The human models, particularly your protagonist, are arguably the low-point in terms of their plainclothes appearance, but given that this was obviously the intention, that’s not saying much.
The only thing that kind of bothered me were the purple smears which accompanied your bat’s swinging, as the color felt out-of-place amidst the backdrops as well as the bat itself; however, as you guys can tell, this is a heavy nitpick -- the truth is Ressifice is a superbly-crafted title that successfully evokes grody nostalgia.
Music and SFX are pretty limited, though what you hear is trusty enough. The haunting melody cues that play every time you successfully complete a puzzle (more on that below) are particularly memorable, and while I would’ve liked a stronger crackle behind your club’s impacts, the minimized impingement won’t distract you as you’re mowing down scores upon scores of demons.
This brings me to the gameplay. As stated in the first sentence, Ressifice plays like a sanguine Namco beat’em up wherein you’re tasked with killing everything that stands between you and the exit. It’s a simple system of swinging & dodging, and though you’ll die frequently courtesy of the low health bar, the abundance of autosaves essentially provides you with nigh-immortality. In fact, I kind of wish the game had gone all-out with the power fantasy aspect: spam more monsters, increase your attack power, and do away with all HP. It wouldn’t have hurt the gameplay given the plethora of save states, and might’ve actually made things more fun considering how frustrating the three-hit health bar could get.
Outside of killing, your real quest is to escape this spooky world, your method of doing so being the assemblage of several painted skulls. There are some light puzzles involved as far as unlocking certain abodes to acquire them, but they won’t take-up much brainpower to resolve.
Honestly, the biggest problems I had with the game design were two-fold: one, the amount of respawning enemies -- they’re not only annoying to deal with, but inconsistently generated (some appear in specific spots, others will pop-up several blocks down); and two, the lack of a quick load function, forcing you to manually click the restart button each time with the mouse.
Storywise, Ressifice isn’t going to win any awards, taking the typical man vs. gothic monster template and doing little to mould it. The writers did try and shove some tongue-in-cheek humor into the script; however, the short length of the game combined with the lack of a real mythology prevents these from being anything more than cornbread comedy. I was also irked by the font projection, it often being too wide, too crunched, and too quickly generated for pleasant reading.
Overall, Ressifice is a case of what you see is what you get. If you grew-up with the Splatterhouse series (or its many scions), you’ll absolutely enjoy your time here -- all others, best look elsewhere.
NOTES
-Dialogue in the beginning of the game is rendered through a beat system that sounds like Japanese in reverse.
Quality superhero films may be the norm these days, but in hindsight it’s strange how little we’ve gotten in the way of narratively-equivalent video games. Sure, there’s the occasionally great movie tie-in(+), but outside of the Arkham and Spider-Man series, you could count on one hand the number of solid story-driven titles out there.
It’s a shame, then, that Guardians of the Galaxy reportedly underperformed as it’s the kind of game I felt the industry really needed with regards to the comic book genre, and what makes it particularly amazing is how it manages to craft its own path whilst still staying true to the characterizations of the eponymous film. See, compared to Batman and Spider-Man, where their numerous iterations have made audiences open to new versions, Guardians is different in that most people are liable to only knowing the characters from James Gunn’s flick, and so the writers at Eidos-Montréal had a tough task before them: how do we create our own version of the team that concurrently pays homage to the comics without alienating any cinephiles?
Well, I’m not sure what their thought process entailed, but the end result was taking the core personalities personified in the movie and combining it with an original backstory, namely one in which every Guardian was a veteran of a conflict known as the Galactic War. Each member played a different role during the war, and the way such information is divulged over the course of the game goes a long way towards distinguishing its cast from their cinematic interactions. Yes, Quill is still comedic, Drax a literalist, Rocket a loudmouth, etc…etc…, but their experiences have led to them developing varied demeanors towards society as a whole. Gamora, for example, seeks some form of redemption for her support of Thanos; Rocket & Groot are purely about surviving, and Drax hunts for honor over his inability to protect his clan.
Found familyhood was cited as a major inspiration behind the tale, and I can safely say the writers successfully accomplished this task via the sheer amount of dialogue they crafted for the game. Seriously, fans of the Mass Effect or Red Dead series may find themselves in awe at the innumerable conversations typed-up for every chapter; convos that go a long way towards establishing relationships, lore, scenarios, and general camaraderie. Hearing Drax repeatedly call Gamora an assassin, seeing everyone snicker at Quill’s attempts at self-aggrandizement, or catching Rocket’s reactions to Groot’s various statements truly render the Guardians as three-dimensional people who’ve had a lot of laughs & cries along the way. No matter their disagreements, there’s a basic-level of respect amongst each peer, and while you occasionally have the option to interject with a unique response, both choices ultimately contribute to that looming amity.
I’m not exaggerating when I say GOTG has a ton of impromptu chatter -- your main hub of a ship spouts the lion’s share of these, with characters either speaking to each other out of their own volition, or engaging in ones triggered by unique items found during missions. Both moulds give-off a big Mass Effect vibe, and I was constantly amazed whenever I discerned some new interaction, whether it be petty, dramatic, or (in most cases) downright amusing.
None of this is even taking into consideration the outside convos in which characters often shout unique battle cries or make special observations should you be standing in a specific place. One of the best things GOTG does is resolve TLOU Problem I’ve had with certain narrative-driven games wherein your hero is meant to progress forward in stark contrast to the gameplay encouraging dicking around; it breaks the game’s immersion to see your next objective or companion kindly wait on you as you do whatever it is you feel like doing. By having the other Guardians actually remark on Quill’s strays off the beaten path, it goes a long way towards maintaining GOTG’s atmosphere.
In some ways, all the dialogue can get a little overwhelming, particularly for people (like myself) who suffer from FOMO: there’s a solid chance you’ll unintentionally cut-off or outright miss at least 15 percent of the optional scripting here, and that’s just something you’ll have to contend with should you wish to play the game.
Of course, no one would’ve cared about these palavers had the voice acting not been good, and that’s thankfully not the case here. Guardians of the Galaxy is interesting in that it opted for an entirely unknown cast -- I consider myself pretty well-versed in the voice acting industry, and I honestly only recognized a single name here (Andreas Apergis, and even then that was mainly because of his recurrent roles in the Assassin’s Creed franchise). That said, their unknownness doesn’t impede the project in any way as they are all terrific, embodying their characters fully as they wander amidst a full spectrum of emotions. Like I noted with the script, there was a difficult balancing act required in terms of making sure these takes on the Guardians were both similar and dissimilar from their movie counterparts, and all the actors proficiently did-so whilst rendering their characters their own. All cards on the table, I actually preferred most of these takes over the celebrityhood of James Gunn’s enterprise: Jason Cavalier grants Drax far more tragic introspective depth than Bautista ever did; Alex Weiner removes that atrocious Gilbert Gottfried inflection Cooper gave his Rocket (RIP Gottfried, but I was not a fan); and even Robert Montcalm manages to provide Groot a more-variegated personality than the one Diesel was limited to.
Given the strong vocal bounce between the characters (Rocket & Groot standing out as the best), GOTG deserves further acclamation for its robust ADR direction. See, there’s a good chance the actors did not record their lines together, and so their ability to resound like they had good chemistry owes a lot of fealty to the narrative directors for providing the appropriate context for each delivery.
There were only two voices I had issues with, the first being Jon McLaren’s Star-Lord. This may come as a surprise given that Quill is the lead protagonist and only playable character, but I did not like the inherent stoner-esque gravel McLaren provided him. Don’t get me wrong, the performance is otherwise solid; however, more often than not, I found myself thinking of a Seth Green character over a Marvel superhero.
The second is Emmanuelle Lussier-Martinez’s Mantis, though I don’t hold this against her as it’s evident the writers were going for this crazed NPC wrought with constant knowledge: the problem is, rather than do a Dr. Manhattan-type performance, they opted to portray her like Omi in that episode of Xiaolin Showdown where he gets infused with factoids from the Fountain of Hui (and yes, for the uninitiated, that’s a bad thing when done in spades).
Regardless, everyone’s performance was successfully transposed into the game via top-quality facial capture, rendering their squints and frowns through phenomenal animations. When you visibly see pain and happiness on your characters’ faces, it does a lot for the execution of the overarching story.
On that note, the narrative has its pros and cons. As I harped on earlier, the scribes do a phenomenal job developing the relationships between the Guardians: while this version of the team is already well-acquainted, it still takes place in the early part of their formation, meaning this is where you see them go from world-weary associates to the makeshift family we all know-and-love. In terms of the grand adventure you’re set out on (i.e., the campaign those interactions fall under), your mileage is going to vary. The entire game is full of heart, and there are some emotional moments that genuinely touched me to my core, but getting to those moments means engaging in standard superhero schlock wherein you’re charged with saving the universe from despair. Yes, other comic book games like Arkham Asylum and Shattered Dimensions indulged in similar premises, but I’d argue the difference is those titles were carried by their villains and a sense of mystery towards uncovering said villain’s plot. GOTG’s problem is that it’s upfront about its secrets from the get-go and, more importantly, lacks memorable antagonists: the main one, in particular, being a generic evil shroud akin to such classics as the Rising Darkness from Constantine, Galactus from Tim Story’s Fantastic 4, and Smallville’s version of Darkseid (yes, this is sarcasm). A couple of the secondary adversaries like Lady Hellbender fare a bit better, but, as they’re not a constant presence, this is a game you’ll largely be playing for the protagonists.
For the record, I had a good time with the story -- it’s well-told, has minimal pacing issues (save the end++), and would’ve worked well as an officially-published graphic novel. It’s just, post-completion, you won’t recall the majority of the chapters (the interactions within, yes, but not the events).
Thanks to James Gunn, the GOTG franchise is also permanently associated with comedy, and on that front the game works quite well. Whereas Gunn’s films were more about gags and one-liners, Eidos goes for a more situational style-of-humor wherein you’re witnessing how a coterie of charismatic individuals with sharp comportments would behave when placed in an enclosed dwelling. I wouldn’t call it laugh-out-loud, but more-so chuckle humor: you’ll smile and giggle like a schoolgirl, yet rarely twist your stomach out from hooting, and I think the tactic works great. There are times when the game tries to mimic the Gunn route; however, those scenes fall very flat and are thankfully few-and-far between(+++).
Of course, Arkham and Spider-Man didn’t get popular solely from their narratives or witticism: they had phenomenal gameplay systems to back everything up, and on that note, Guardians of the Galaxy is pretty dang good. It’s interesting that I made the comparison to Mass Effect earlier as the similarities between the two even extend to combat: you control Quill while his comrades are AI-guided, each of whom can be called upon to use a special attack against a foe or foes. Quill himself is equipped with his fists, dual blasters (primed with elemental shots obtained during set story beats), and a batch of special moves ranging from electro mines to the iconic jet boots. Much like the original Mass Effect, ammo for every tool has been replaced with a cooldown period, and there is no cover: if you’re not on the run, you’re likely to get swamped quickly (similar to Control).
With the exception of the final slot (garnered through story progression), every Guardian’s super attack has to be unlocked by way of good old-fashioned experience points gathered from combat scenarios, lending the game a bit of a lite-RPG schematic. Supplementing this are a heap of 15 additional perks players can add to Quill’s stockpile via select work benches scattered throughout most chapters, the only catch being that you have to scavenge the requisite components in the world (akin to TLOU).
Overall, fighting is fun if a bit repetitive - not every Guardian attack is practical, and their icons (save the final one) weren’t distinguished enough to avoid confusion between the useful and the useless. It also suffers from being too easy for its own good due to a number of mechanisms present even on the hardest difficulty: the option to do a one-hit KO team combo(++++) once an enemy’s health has been whittled down enough; the Huddle -- a unique feature wherein Quill can pause the skirmish, call over his team, and give everyone (including himself) an attack boost/HP recovery; and a third one I’m going to avoid stating for fear of spoilers(+++++).
Besides brawling, you’ll be conducting basic exploration involving simple puzzles that solely come down to figuring out which Guardian to employ against which obstacle. It’s a shame more wasn’t (or wasn’t able to be) done as the novel abilities specific to each alien could’ve led to some really cool environmental enigmas. In fact, part of me wonders if that was the original plan as there’s an immersive sim aspect here in the form of Quill being able to leap around and ascend most structures, only for it to not lead anywhere.
That said, the minimal scavenging didn’t bother me too much in light of how gorgeous everything is. This is one of those titles where you can tell no expense was spared, and that probably had to do with Square and Eidos’s well-intentioned belief that the GOTG IP was fertile enough for mass profit.
Well, we’ll talk about the reasons why the game faltered later, but for now, let’s at least appreciate the sheer production value on display. Guardians is interesting in that it occupies that same Jim Lee aesthetic Arkham Asylum imbibed apropos to toeing the line between photorealism and comic book poppiness (i.e., the game is liable to aging better than some of its eighth gen brethren). When it comes to the graphics, their beauty originates from three major areas: clothing, character modeling, and texture streaming.
With the first, GOTG arguably has the greatest textile work I have ever seen in a video game -- courtesy of the camera mode, I was able to zoom-in on various suits, and not a single one was shortchanged as far as detail or composition. From the individual stitches on Star-Lord’s jacket to the wear-and-tear knee creases of security guard latex to the overlapping of plate metal & linen on Gamora’s byrnie, there were so many wonderful subtleties in the wardrobe department that to list them all would drag this review out by several pages.
That same effort was continued over into the modeling, where humans and aliens alike boast pores, wrinkles, and follicles upon closer inspection. Ironically, though, it’s Groot and Rocket who deserve the most acclaim if only for the virtuosity of their respective hides: being able to glean splintered bark and singular bristles of fur on each member’s skin respectively was absolutely mind-blowing when you consider just how much easier it would’ve been to draw a single layer (what TellTale did back in 2017).
Environments maintain this quality by matching the diversity with appropriate texturization. Eidos leaned heavily on the comics and their imagination when devising the areas to throw players into, and while some of them are admittedly a bit standard (the red deserts of Lamentis; the frostbitten scape of Maklua IV), the majority do take you to some pretty sweet locales ripe with filled-in gubbins and walling. The golden-lacquered Sacrosanct and magenta-strewn matter of the Quarantine Zone are predisposed to being fan favorites, but for my own tea I personally adored the cyberpunk vibes of Knowhere where sleaze, soft lighting, neon signs, and lite-smog blended together into an evocative site.
My last major bastion of praise goes towards the personalization facets, and not in the usual sense of the term. In the past, I’ve praised devs for crafting unique spaces you could tell were tenanted by a standalone persona -- what GOTG has done is take that template and extrapolate it for the mainline species here. Heading into a Kree ship, for instance, gifts you a shelf of books with Kree rune titles, clean pipes with the Nova Corp insignia, and a general sense of orderliness. Compare this to Lady Hellbender’s gladiatorial planet, chockful of broken glass, spilled beer, and cobbled food. As you explore alien terrain, you really get a sense of prior lives and civilizations that mysteriously vanished over the course of evolution, leaving behind such remnants as hulking monoliths, structures, and carvings. It’s all superbly done.
Other miscellaneous graphical feats include unique lunge animations for each Guardian when jumping gaps, cold air breaths in subzero climates, natural finger movements when rotating examinable objects, Quill putting his hands up when approaching fiery pits, reflective surfaces from puddles, gold tiling, and tiny mirrors; the pose algorithm during 1-on-1 counsels being very organic (compared to Valhalla’s constant arm-crossing), character subtitle names boasting different colors, how Quill turns his head towards the current speaker, and, most vivid of all, the entirety of Kosmo -- this is a psychic dog you’ll infrequently run into during the course of the game, and I have to imagine someone at Eidos either grew up with golden retrievers or put mo-cap dots around a real one as, as any dog owner will tell you, everything about his canine behavior was pitch perfect: the constantly darting stare, twirling of his tale, twitching of his eyebrows, the effervescent panting -- for all his ESP, he may ironically go down as the most accurate dog in video game history.
I did have some complaints, but they concerned relatively minor stuff like the lack of footprints on powdery exteriors, Groots root bridges clipping the ground, and Quill occasionally acting jittery during dialogues.
SFX, unfortunately, was the sole area undercompensated by the devs in that it’s inconsistent to a trained ear. For starters, not much went in the way of footstep differentiation, with ice & metallic platforms, and beds & tile floors bearing the same din as their paired twin. There were times where I’d hear the crunch of snow pellets on surfaces they were minimally scattered on, while the bulk of each Guardian’s abilities (save Quill’s) were sonorously indistinguishable. Effort did go into individuating every team member’s movements, and jumps did come programmed with that distinctiveness I sought; however, it was otherwise rather basic for a game of this caliber. Don’t get me wrong, nothing’s distracting, you just won’t be immersed in any planet’s auralscape.
Finally, the OST by Richard Jacques (which, by the way, was much harder to find than it should have been courtesy of Eidos opting to promote the licensed mixtape instead) is solid, if a little derivative. Let me explain so I don’t come off as pretentious or condescending: ever since Alan Silvestri pioneered that massive symphonic sound in The Avengers, a lot of Marvel-based composers have incorporated aspects of that into their scores. It’s certainly a wise decision with regards to maintaining a familiarity to audiences, but it does come at the cost of that uniqueness we used to get in superhero music pre-Avengers. As a result, you’ll hear a lot of recognizable motifs despite the soundtrack being its own set of arrangements -- I’m talking electric guitar riffs, Greek-inspired choral harmonies, pounding brass, and crescendos galore. Thankfully, Jacques does give us one of the best comic book themes to come out in a while; however, in respect to the rest of his compositions, they’re good at the expense of not rising to that same level of memorability.
Per my earlier remark, Eidos spent a lot of money licensing popular 80s hits that you can either manually play on the ship or randomly hear during those aforestated Huddles. I know there have been, and will be, a lot of people who enjoy the substance, but part of me wonders whether or not it was a good idea. As I keep harping on, GOTG was clearly an expensive game to make, and considering how little you’ll hear the music (being off-ship/infrequently using Huddles), it begs the question of how much money could’ve been saved instead by hiring a band to create 80s-inspired tunes.
Then again, maybe it wouldn’t have helped much considering most critics blame the poor reception of the Avengers game for GOTG’s financial disappointment. It’s a tragically valid connection, and combined with the game not releasing adjacent to any of the mainline movies, it sadly wasn’t able to stand on its own. Zack Snyder got a lot of sh!t for his flavor of the week comment years ago, but the fact of the matter is he was right to an extent: certain characters only achieved profitability because they were specific versions crafted in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Outside of that ecosystem, it was always going to be a struggle for any hero not named Batman, Spider-Man, or Wolverine to succeed.
It’s been almost three years since GOTG released, and with no signs of a sequel, we have to accept the game for the unique specimen it was. It’s rare we get superhero games of this quality, and will be even rarer as the MCU goes through a post-Bubble period, but let it be known that, for all my complaints, this was an exquisite product well-worth your money.
NOTES
-Before addressing anything else, I should mention that there is a choice system in the game, but it’s more akin to the first Witcher or Deus Ex wherein it impacts the flow of events rather than causing multiple endings. When it involved hard gameplay, I was fine with it; however, there was an instance in one of the story climaxes where it ruined the moment (you’ll know it when you see it).
+Spider-Man 2, X-Men Origins: Wolverine, Batman Begins, and, heck, I actually liked the Iron Man one.
++Without spoiling, basically it indulges in the cliche fake-out tactic that’s been overdone by this point. You don’t even get a proper end boss, though not that it would’ve mattered as the boss fights here are mediocre: not Arkham Asylum bad, but arguably lower than Insomniac’s first Spider-Man.
+++The worst involves a scene where Quill has to do improvised karaoke (trust me, you’ll know it when you see it).
++++The finishers themselves aren’t that exciting, being a series of hard cuts of each Guardian doing an attack on the target. A little strange considering standard melee combos often result in your Alien brethren actually conducting a coordinated strike alongside Quill.
+++++All I’ll say is it involves Groot’s final unlockable power, its essence simultaneously diminishing a certain “emotional” story beat.
-Similar to Metroid Prime, Quill’s visor enables him to examine enemies and environs for pieces of supplemental data, but the game unfortunately doesn’t pause background conversations for the latter, meaning you’re forced to read them quickly lest you get interrupted.
-The writers created their own profanity for the characters to gleefully indulge in.
-Why does Mantis have Hela’s garb?
-Tell me Gamora’s VA doesn’t sound like Leela from Futurama?
-There’s a glowing red digital billboard in Knowhere that displays ads for a McDonald’s rip-off. I bring this up because I actually saw a similar hoarding in Shinjuku albeit for a Wendy’s, making me wonder if it was inspired by that?
It’s a shame, then, that Guardians of the Galaxy reportedly underperformed as it’s the kind of game I felt the industry really needed with regards to the comic book genre, and what makes it particularly amazing is how it manages to craft its own path whilst still staying true to the characterizations of the eponymous film. See, compared to Batman and Spider-Man, where their numerous iterations have made audiences open to new versions, Guardians is different in that most people are liable to only knowing the characters from James Gunn’s flick, and so the writers at Eidos-Montréal had a tough task before them: how do we create our own version of the team that concurrently pays homage to the comics without alienating any cinephiles?
Well, I’m not sure what their thought process entailed, but the end result was taking the core personalities personified in the movie and combining it with an original backstory, namely one in which every Guardian was a veteran of a conflict known as the Galactic War. Each member played a different role during the war, and the way such information is divulged over the course of the game goes a long way towards distinguishing its cast from their cinematic interactions. Yes, Quill is still comedic, Drax a literalist, Rocket a loudmouth, etc…etc…, but their experiences have led to them developing varied demeanors towards society as a whole. Gamora, for example, seeks some form of redemption for her support of Thanos; Rocket & Groot are purely about surviving, and Drax hunts for honor over his inability to protect his clan.
Found familyhood was cited as a major inspiration behind the tale, and I can safely say the writers successfully accomplished this task via the sheer amount of dialogue they crafted for the game. Seriously, fans of the Mass Effect or Red Dead series may find themselves in awe at the innumerable conversations typed-up for every chapter; convos that go a long way towards establishing relationships, lore, scenarios, and general camaraderie. Hearing Drax repeatedly call Gamora an assassin, seeing everyone snicker at Quill’s attempts at self-aggrandizement, or catching Rocket’s reactions to Groot’s various statements truly render the Guardians as three-dimensional people who’ve had a lot of laughs & cries along the way. No matter their disagreements, there’s a basic-level of respect amongst each peer, and while you occasionally have the option to interject with a unique response, both choices ultimately contribute to that looming amity.
I’m not exaggerating when I say GOTG has a ton of impromptu chatter -- your main hub of a ship spouts the lion’s share of these, with characters either speaking to each other out of their own volition, or engaging in ones triggered by unique items found during missions. Both moulds give-off a big Mass Effect vibe, and I was constantly amazed whenever I discerned some new interaction, whether it be petty, dramatic, or (in most cases) downright amusing.
None of this is even taking into consideration the outside convos in which characters often shout unique battle cries or make special observations should you be standing in a specific place. One of the best things GOTG does is resolve TLOU Problem I’ve had with certain narrative-driven games wherein your hero is meant to progress forward in stark contrast to the gameplay encouraging dicking around; it breaks the game’s immersion to see your next objective or companion kindly wait on you as you do whatever it is you feel like doing. By having the other Guardians actually remark on Quill’s strays off the beaten path, it goes a long way towards maintaining GOTG’s atmosphere.
In some ways, all the dialogue can get a little overwhelming, particularly for people (like myself) who suffer from FOMO: there’s a solid chance you’ll unintentionally cut-off or outright miss at least 15 percent of the optional scripting here, and that’s just something you’ll have to contend with should you wish to play the game.
Of course, no one would’ve cared about these palavers had the voice acting not been good, and that’s thankfully not the case here. Guardians of the Galaxy is interesting in that it opted for an entirely unknown cast -- I consider myself pretty well-versed in the voice acting industry, and I honestly only recognized a single name here (Andreas Apergis, and even then that was mainly because of his recurrent roles in the Assassin’s Creed franchise). That said, their unknownness doesn’t impede the project in any way as they are all terrific, embodying their characters fully as they wander amidst a full spectrum of emotions. Like I noted with the script, there was a difficult balancing act required in terms of making sure these takes on the Guardians were both similar and dissimilar from their movie counterparts, and all the actors proficiently did-so whilst rendering their characters their own. All cards on the table, I actually preferred most of these takes over the celebrityhood of James Gunn’s enterprise: Jason Cavalier grants Drax far more tragic introspective depth than Bautista ever did; Alex Weiner removes that atrocious Gilbert Gottfried inflection Cooper gave his Rocket (RIP Gottfried, but I was not a fan); and even Robert Montcalm manages to provide Groot a more-variegated personality than the one Diesel was limited to.
Given the strong vocal bounce between the characters (Rocket & Groot standing out as the best), GOTG deserves further acclamation for its robust ADR direction. See, there’s a good chance the actors did not record their lines together, and so their ability to resound like they had good chemistry owes a lot of fealty to the narrative directors for providing the appropriate context for each delivery.
There were only two voices I had issues with, the first being Jon McLaren’s Star-Lord. This may come as a surprise given that Quill is the lead protagonist and only playable character, but I did not like the inherent stoner-esque gravel McLaren provided him. Don’t get me wrong, the performance is otherwise solid; however, more often than not, I found myself thinking of a Seth Green character over a Marvel superhero.
The second is Emmanuelle Lussier-Martinez’s Mantis, though I don’t hold this against her as it’s evident the writers were going for this crazed NPC wrought with constant knowledge: the problem is, rather than do a Dr. Manhattan-type performance, they opted to portray her like Omi in that episode of Xiaolin Showdown where he gets infused with factoids from the Fountain of Hui (and yes, for the uninitiated, that’s a bad thing when done in spades).
Regardless, everyone’s performance was successfully transposed into the game via top-quality facial capture, rendering their squints and frowns through phenomenal animations. When you visibly see pain and happiness on your characters’ faces, it does a lot for the execution of the overarching story.
On that note, the narrative has its pros and cons. As I harped on earlier, the scribes do a phenomenal job developing the relationships between the Guardians: while this version of the team is already well-acquainted, it still takes place in the early part of their formation, meaning this is where you see them go from world-weary associates to the makeshift family we all know-and-love. In terms of the grand adventure you’re set out on (i.e., the campaign those interactions fall under), your mileage is going to vary. The entire game is full of heart, and there are some emotional moments that genuinely touched me to my core, but getting to those moments means engaging in standard superhero schlock wherein you’re charged with saving the universe from despair. Yes, other comic book games like Arkham Asylum and Shattered Dimensions indulged in similar premises, but I’d argue the difference is those titles were carried by their villains and a sense of mystery towards uncovering said villain’s plot. GOTG’s problem is that it’s upfront about its secrets from the get-go and, more importantly, lacks memorable antagonists: the main one, in particular, being a generic evil shroud akin to such classics as the Rising Darkness from Constantine, Galactus from Tim Story’s Fantastic 4, and Smallville’s version of Darkseid (yes, this is sarcasm). A couple of the secondary adversaries like Lady Hellbender fare a bit better, but, as they’re not a constant presence, this is a game you’ll largely be playing for the protagonists.
For the record, I had a good time with the story -- it’s well-told, has minimal pacing issues (save the end++), and would’ve worked well as an officially-published graphic novel. It’s just, post-completion, you won’t recall the majority of the chapters (the interactions within, yes, but not the events).
Thanks to James Gunn, the GOTG franchise is also permanently associated with comedy, and on that front the game works quite well. Whereas Gunn’s films were more about gags and one-liners, Eidos goes for a more situational style-of-humor wherein you’re witnessing how a coterie of charismatic individuals with sharp comportments would behave when placed in an enclosed dwelling. I wouldn’t call it laugh-out-loud, but more-so chuckle humor: you’ll smile and giggle like a schoolgirl, yet rarely twist your stomach out from hooting, and I think the tactic works great. There are times when the game tries to mimic the Gunn route; however, those scenes fall very flat and are thankfully few-and-far between(+++).
Of course, Arkham and Spider-Man didn’t get popular solely from their narratives or witticism: they had phenomenal gameplay systems to back everything up, and on that note, Guardians of the Galaxy is pretty dang good. It’s interesting that I made the comparison to Mass Effect earlier as the similarities between the two even extend to combat: you control Quill while his comrades are AI-guided, each of whom can be called upon to use a special attack against a foe or foes. Quill himself is equipped with his fists, dual blasters (primed with elemental shots obtained during set story beats), and a batch of special moves ranging from electro mines to the iconic jet boots. Much like the original Mass Effect, ammo for every tool has been replaced with a cooldown period, and there is no cover: if you’re not on the run, you’re likely to get swamped quickly (similar to Control).
With the exception of the final slot (garnered through story progression), every Guardian’s super attack has to be unlocked by way of good old-fashioned experience points gathered from combat scenarios, lending the game a bit of a lite-RPG schematic. Supplementing this are a heap of 15 additional perks players can add to Quill’s stockpile via select work benches scattered throughout most chapters, the only catch being that you have to scavenge the requisite components in the world (akin to TLOU).
Overall, fighting is fun if a bit repetitive - not every Guardian attack is practical, and their icons (save the final one) weren’t distinguished enough to avoid confusion between the useful and the useless. It also suffers from being too easy for its own good due to a number of mechanisms present even on the hardest difficulty: the option to do a one-hit KO team combo(++++) once an enemy’s health has been whittled down enough; the Huddle -- a unique feature wherein Quill can pause the skirmish, call over his team, and give everyone (including himself) an attack boost/HP recovery; and a third one I’m going to avoid stating for fear of spoilers(+++++).
Besides brawling, you’ll be conducting basic exploration involving simple puzzles that solely come down to figuring out which Guardian to employ against which obstacle. It’s a shame more wasn’t (or wasn’t able to be) done as the novel abilities specific to each alien could’ve led to some really cool environmental enigmas. In fact, part of me wonders if that was the original plan as there’s an immersive sim aspect here in the form of Quill being able to leap around and ascend most structures, only for it to not lead anywhere.
That said, the minimal scavenging didn’t bother me too much in light of how gorgeous everything is. This is one of those titles where you can tell no expense was spared, and that probably had to do with Square and Eidos’s well-intentioned belief that the GOTG IP was fertile enough for mass profit.
Well, we’ll talk about the reasons why the game faltered later, but for now, let’s at least appreciate the sheer production value on display. Guardians is interesting in that it occupies that same Jim Lee aesthetic Arkham Asylum imbibed apropos to toeing the line between photorealism and comic book poppiness (i.e., the game is liable to aging better than some of its eighth gen brethren). When it comes to the graphics, their beauty originates from three major areas: clothing, character modeling, and texture streaming.
With the first, GOTG arguably has the greatest textile work I have ever seen in a video game -- courtesy of the camera mode, I was able to zoom-in on various suits, and not a single one was shortchanged as far as detail or composition. From the individual stitches on Star-Lord’s jacket to the wear-and-tear knee creases of security guard latex to the overlapping of plate metal & linen on Gamora’s byrnie, there were so many wonderful subtleties in the wardrobe department that to list them all would drag this review out by several pages.
That same effort was continued over into the modeling, where humans and aliens alike boast pores, wrinkles, and follicles upon closer inspection. Ironically, though, it’s Groot and Rocket who deserve the most acclaim if only for the virtuosity of their respective hides: being able to glean splintered bark and singular bristles of fur on each member’s skin respectively was absolutely mind-blowing when you consider just how much easier it would’ve been to draw a single layer (what TellTale did back in 2017).
Environments maintain this quality by matching the diversity with appropriate texturization. Eidos leaned heavily on the comics and their imagination when devising the areas to throw players into, and while some of them are admittedly a bit standard (the red deserts of Lamentis; the frostbitten scape of Maklua IV), the majority do take you to some pretty sweet locales ripe with filled-in gubbins and walling. The golden-lacquered Sacrosanct and magenta-strewn matter of the Quarantine Zone are predisposed to being fan favorites, but for my own tea I personally adored the cyberpunk vibes of Knowhere where sleaze, soft lighting, neon signs, and lite-smog blended together into an evocative site.
My last major bastion of praise goes towards the personalization facets, and not in the usual sense of the term. In the past, I’ve praised devs for crafting unique spaces you could tell were tenanted by a standalone persona -- what GOTG has done is take that template and extrapolate it for the mainline species here. Heading into a Kree ship, for instance, gifts you a shelf of books with Kree rune titles, clean pipes with the Nova Corp insignia, and a general sense of orderliness. Compare this to Lady Hellbender’s gladiatorial planet, chockful of broken glass, spilled beer, and cobbled food. As you explore alien terrain, you really get a sense of prior lives and civilizations that mysteriously vanished over the course of evolution, leaving behind such remnants as hulking monoliths, structures, and carvings. It’s all superbly done.
Other miscellaneous graphical feats include unique lunge animations for each Guardian when jumping gaps, cold air breaths in subzero climates, natural finger movements when rotating examinable objects, Quill putting his hands up when approaching fiery pits, reflective surfaces from puddles, gold tiling, and tiny mirrors; the pose algorithm during 1-on-1 counsels being very organic (compared to Valhalla’s constant arm-crossing), character subtitle names boasting different colors, how Quill turns his head towards the current speaker, and, most vivid of all, the entirety of Kosmo -- this is a psychic dog you’ll infrequently run into during the course of the game, and I have to imagine someone at Eidos either grew up with golden retrievers or put mo-cap dots around a real one as, as any dog owner will tell you, everything about his canine behavior was pitch perfect: the constantly darting stare, twirling of his tale, twitching of his eyebrows, the effervescent panting -- for all his ESP, he may ironically go down as the most accurate dog in video game history.
I did have some complaints, but they concerned relatively minor stuff like the lack of footprints on powdery exteriors, Groots root bridges clipping the ground, and Quill occasionally acting jittery during dialogues.
SFX, unfortunately, was the sole area undercompensated by the devs in that it’s inconsistent to a trained ear. For starters, not much went in the way of footstep differentiation, with ice & metallic platforms, and beds & tile floors bearing the same din as their paired twin. There were times where I’d hear the crunch of snow pellets on surfaces they were minimally scattered on, while the bulk of each Guardian’s abilities (save Quill’s) were sonorously indistinguishable. Effort did go into individuating every team member’s movements, and jumps did come programmed with that distinctiveness I sought; however, it was otherwise rather basic for a game of this caliber. Don’t get me wrong, nothing’s distracting, you just won’t be immersed in any planet’s auralscape.
Finally, the OST by Richard Jacques (which, by the way, was much harder to find than it should have been courtesy of Eidos opting to promote the licensed mixtape instead) is solid, if a little derivative. Let me explain so I don’t come off as pretentious or condescending: ever since Alan Silvestri pioneered that massive symphonic sound in The Avengers, a lot of Marvel-based composers have incorporated aspects of that into their scores. It’s certainly a wise decision with regards to maintaining a familiarity to audiences, but it does come at the cost of that uniqueness we used to get in superhero music pre-Avengers. As a result, you’ll hear a lot of recognizable motifs despite the soundtrack being its own set of arrangements -- I’m talking electric guitar riffs, Greek-inspired choral harmonies, pounding brass, and crescendos galore. Thankfully, Jacques does give us one of the best comic book themes to come out in a while; however, in respect to the rest of his compositions, they’re good at the expense of not rising to that same level of memorability.
Per my earlier remark, Eidos spent a lot of money licensing popular 80s hits that you can either manually play on the ship or randomly hear during those aforestated Huddles. I know there have been, and will be, a lot of people who enjoy the substance, but part of me wonders whether or not it was a good idea. As I keep harping on, GOTG was clearly an expensive game to make, and considering how little you’ll hear the music (being off-ship/infrequently using Huddles), it begs the question of how much money could’ve been saved instead by hiring a band to create 80s-inspired tunes.
Then again, maybe it wouldn’t have helped much considering most critics blame the poor reception of the Avengers game for GOTG’s financial disappointment. It’s a tragically valid connection, and combined with the game not releasing adjacent to any of the mainline movies, it sadly wasn’t able to stand on its own. Zack Snyder got a lot of sh!t for his flavor of the week comment years ago, but the fact of the matter is he was right to an extent: certain characters only achieved profitability because they were specific versions crafted in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Outside of that ecosystem, it was always going to be a struggle for any hero not named Batman, Spider-Man, or Wolverine to succeed.
It’s been almost three years since GOTG released, and with no signs of a sequel, we have to accept the game for the unique specimen it was. It’s rare we get superhero games of this quality, and will be even rarer as the MCU goes through a post-Bubble period, but let it be known that, for all my complaints, this was an exquisite product well-worth your money.
NOTES
-Before addressing anything else, I should mention that there is a choice system in the game, but it’s more akin to the first Witcher or Deus Ex wherein it impacts the flow of events rather than causing multiple endings. When it involved hard gameplay, I was fine with it; however, there was an instance in one of the story climaxes where it ruined the moment (you’ll know it when you see it).
+Spider-Man 2, X-Men Origins: Wolverine, Batman Begins, and, heck, I actually liked the Iron Man one.
++Without spoiling, basically it indulges in the cliche fake-out tactic that’s been overdone by this point. You don’t even get a proper end boss, though not that it would’ve mattered as the boss fights here are mediocre: not Arkham Asylum bad, but arguably lower than Insomniac’s first Spider-Man.
+++The worst involves a scene where Quill has to do improvised karaoke (trust me, you’ll know it when you see it).
++++The finishers themselves aren’t that exciting, being a series of hard cuts of each Guardian doing an attack on the target. A little strange considering standard melee combos often result in your Alien brethren actually conducting a coordinated strike alongside Quill.
+++++All I’ll say is it involves Groot’s final unlockable power, its essence simultaneously diminishing a certain “emotional” story beat.
-Similar to Metroid Prime, Quill’s visor enables him to examine enemies and environs for pieces of supplemental data, but the game unfortunately doesn’t pause background conversations for the latter, meaning you’re forced to read them quickly lest you get interrupted.
-The writers created their own profanity for the characters to gleefully indulge in.
-Why does Mantis have Hela’s garb?
-Tell me Gamora’s VA doesn’t sound like Leela from Futurama?
-There’s a glowing red digital billboard in Knowhere that displays ads for a McDonald’s rip-off. I bring this up because I actually saw a similar hoarding in Shinjuku albeit for a Wendy’s, making me wonder if it was inspired by that?
NOTE - there are two versions of Gothic that come with the Gold Edition -- the vanilla release as well as Night of the Raven, the latter being a lite-remaster that adds a new chapter/area called Jharenkar whilst concurrently upping the difficulty. If you get the Gold Edition, please understand that you can only play one version of the game over the other as they are treated as separate titles without carryover files. Obviously, based on my rating, you can tell I don’t recommend either, but NOTR even less due to it making an already challenging game pointlessly difficult
Gothic 2 is the kind of game I feared the original Gothic would wind-up being: an outdated CRPG ripe with fetch quests and pointless loot galore. Granted, I obviously had enough problems with the first to abstain from a full-on endorsement; however, I can’t deny its end product was vastly different from those initial worries: occupying a revolutionary Eurojank format chock-ful of unique systems.
Unfortunately, the sequel forgoes all those interesting tidbits in favor of a relatively-standard release that would’ve been fine had it not been for the presence of defects in almost all its major facets, beginning with the overworld. Gothic 2 is arguably twice as big as its predecessor, yet makes the genius decision to not only undercut your speed, but deny you access to quick travel options well until the third chapter. True, the first game did this as well, but because its realms were much smaller, it never felt excessively impeding - you could dart between the three major camps without ever worrying about the 24-hour cycle looming past you. Gothic II, au contraire, is far more triple-spaced, meaning you’re liable to getting lost in places you most definitely don’t want to be in when night rolls over. And look, that by itself isn’t a bad thing (the hallmark of most open world games is the freedom to wander about aimlessly after all), but when you’re forced to backtrack for tens of minutes on end just to reach the safety of a town or find the next big civilization, it gets frustrating very quickly, and I consequently have no regrets about exploiting waypoint commands.
I mentioned earlier that your velocity has been undercut this time around, and while slower walking does exacerbate those distance qualms, the real issue with it is it forces you into combat scenarios. In the first Gothic, you couldn’t harm a Blood Fly without getting one-hit-KOed, but that was at least mitigated by the ability to outrun 99% of foes until you got stronger.
In developing Gothic II, though, Piranha Bytes have swapped to a combat-focused schema that fails to make the necessary adjustments for such a genre, opting for this weird in-between wherein your weaknesses are contrasted with the ability to dodge, parry, and critical hit. There’s a bit of a FromSoftware motif here in the form of enemies, both human and nonhuman, having unique attack patterns; however, it’s not been ironed out, leading to a lot of good and bad. On the plus side, you get armor early-on and can pretty easily block-spam most humans, but on the negative side, critical hits are haphazard and monsters so erratic, the bulk are impossible to “figure out”. This is a game where you constantly have to save scum because you just never know when someone or something will gain the RNG upper hand and knock your health bar down with a single blow (and when those moments occur, it’s beyond frustrating). Be prepared to hoard a bunch of food for post-battle recovery as every 1v1 skirmish turns into a pyrrhic victory.
Speaking of 1v1, Gothic II once again thrives on this approach to fighting, and once again is deliberately obtuse about it. You’re rarely going to encounter a single enemy by itself: whether it’s bandits, goblins, scavengers, or orcs, they’re always going to be in groups of 3 or more, and I don’t understand why the devs thought this would be a good idea when they blatantly geared their combat system towards personalized duels. Even when you get sufficiently strong, you’re literally forced to cheese the game because your character is simply incapable of fighting multiple foes at once - your stepbacks are too short for evading, you autolock onto singular enemies, and sword strikes only slice one entity/each. So yeah, be prepared to engage in such annoying tactics as inching closer-and-closer to trigger a lone monster’s vision cone, or humping boulders & tree trunks in the hopes of exploiting enemy pathing issues (oh, and to add salt to the wounds, the game deliberately undercuts your damage output when facing parties compared to isolated foes).
Now you may be thinking, well Red, you’re just speaking about the melee - surely players are meant to combine this skill with archery and magic for success? Well no. While archery is more useful this time around (if only because there’re less-ranged foes), it’s hampered by three factors: one, limited skill point acquisition that prevents sufficient investment in both paths; two, the necessity of a secondary skill called dexterity for arrow damage increase; and three, swapping between tools being a decidedly-elongated process hostile to dual-tactics.
Magic, on the other hand, has been completely upended this time around via Piranha Bytes opting for outdated class specialization. See, if you don’t join the Fire Mage Guild in the first chapter (more on that later), you lose access to most offensive spells: like literally, you’re unable to use them, even if you have sufficient mana and the requisite scroll. Sure, you can still do summons, but, outside of demons (which are hard to come by), they aren't a huge help against those aforementioned hordes.
On the topic of guilds, Gothic II further peeved me by not properly outlining the presence of the other factions. In the first Gothic, you were explicitly told by Diego about the different camps and how you were meant to choose one. Here, though, you’re made highly-privy to the Paladin Way via Xardas mandating you deliver a message to their head regent - when you arrive there, you’re informed that the only way to pass on this missive is to join the City Guard and become a citizen of Khorinis. The Mages are briefly mentioned if you talk to one of the adjacent representatives, but considering the dangerous distance to the location (as well as the nonsensical entrance fee of 1000 gold + a sheep), it’s not exactly an open path compared to being a Guardsman.
The Mercenaries are a bit easier to join given Lares’s offer to escort you to their leader; however, unlike Gothic 1, where Mordrag took you directly to the New Camp, Lares leaves you behind a good ways away from the mercenary headquarters, and I consequently was unable to find the man until well-after I had joined the Khorinis Militia. But even if I hadn’t, I don’t see why I, as a player, would’ve considered joining them when the militia being at odds with the mercs implied that doing-so would’ve made it impossible to dispatch the letter for story progressment. Yes, I know now that there would’ve been some avenue for success, but the point I’m trying to make is that Gothic II just isn’t framed as well as its predecessor, with these obscurity methods coming across like goaded attempts at encouraging multiple playthroughs.
As a result, I can’t give an accurate assessment about the narrative in terms of how it differs in that initial act. With regards to the consequent chapters (assuming the story beats remain the same), though, I can tell you that Gothic II is an utterly boring, fetch quest extravaganza. I hate making constant comparisons to its predecessor, but to see such a noticeable drop can’t help begetting these mandates- before your Nameless Hero felt like he was forging his own arc amidst the brave new world he was trapped in. Gothic II, on the other hand, is content with having you play errand boy for almost every single figure you come across: you’re first doing the bidding of Xardas by delivering his memo to the Paladin Commander, then are forced to do arduous tasks for the merchants within Khorinis in order to obtain citizenship, then are tasked with doing MORE bidding for the Commander by conducting a scouting mission to the previous game’s area , then have to do, you guessed it, another set of chores for the Paladins and mages, then rinse-and-repeat until the last saga wherein your protagonist finally grows a pair and takes initiative into his own hands (though by then it’s obviously too little too late).
It’s a shame because there was so much potential here with regards to what could’ve happened following the fall of the barrier and all these criminals and gangs running free, but no, the writers evidently thought it better to forgo that in favor of a generic fantasy yarn (which, on its own, might’ve been fine were it not for the whole indentured servitude schematic). Some of the NPCs you meet are kind of interesting, you finally get a decent reason for why your Hero isn’t named, and it was admittedly cool seeing what happened to your allies/nemeses from the first game. But overall the endeavor was just very forgettable (and yes, this applies to the sidequests too).
Gameplay, despite the flaws I touched on earlier, has seen some improvements from Gothic 1. For starters, the useless skills of sneaking, lock bumping, and pickpocketing have been converted into singularly-learned talents that actually serve a purpose in certain quests. Secondly, 1h and 2h weaponry are equally-useful methods for dispatching foes, with upgrades to one partially carrying over to the other (at a ratio of I believe 5:1 skillpoints). Thirdly, as I alluded to in my rant above, you can actually take more than one-strike now without dying, which SIGNIFICANTLY helps in leveling-up quicker compared to before. Finally, the revamped combat is quite fun, occupying a fencing-style of play that risks/rewards lunges-and-retreats. As you upgrade your swordwielding, the game also provides visible feedback via faster drawing, swiping, and new combos.
Unfortunately, that’s about all the praise I got as everything else is either mediocre or an infringement upon the game’s fun factor. To run down the list: there’s no quick save/load option, you can only cook & brew one item at a time, leaves & foliage outright block your vision during combat, executions have been removed(+), you can’t dual-wield swords with torches for night fights, and you’re unable to sync the attack and action buttons to the same prompt (something that genuinely makes no sense given that you can’t even do actions when you have your blade out).
Worst of all, there’s no sense of difficulty scaling in the narrative - in G1, yeah every enemy was annoying on some level, but they were at least restricted to their respective areas of influence, and the story appropriately structured your mandatory encounters with them.
In the sequel, though, you can happen upon a troll or skeleton medley, or find a swarm of blood flies right next to a pack of snappers, all in the most random of places. One of the worst decisions has you in the second chapter, let me repeat, in the second chapter, sent off to maneuver around the Orc Army, and it honestly stands as one of the most vexing experiences I have ever had in a video game - to be forced to run around these behemoths spammed everywhere with no method of fighting back(++). There had to have been some cut survival horror elements as I just don’t see why anyone at Piranha Bytes believed this would be a good idea in the slightest - imagine encountering the Trigen within the first third of Far Cry and you’ll get an idea of my frustration.
If all that weren’t enough, exploration is rendered worthless as, just like in the first Gothic, the only things you’re privy to finding in the open world are lone caves ripe with repetitive loot. On that note, expect a cluttered inventory due to the sheer amount of pointless garbage you're liable to discovering on corpses and chests alike, from gems to various meats. True, G1 also had similar problems, but there was at least a unique bartering schematic wherein you could trade this stuff for an item you wanted - Gothic 2 reverts to a standard monetary system that ultimately requires you to sell this stuff for cash to then use for purchasing, turning a simple back-and-forth enterprise into a padded-out middle man approach.
Graphically, Gothic II continues to stumble as it’s just not at the level of its contemporaries, let alone something that’s aged well. Now look, part of me actually appreciated the aesthetics due to them blatantly resembling RuneScape right down to the font-type (I wouldn’t be surprised if Jagex and Piranha Bytes’ artists came from the same school of design), but objectively the modeling is pudgy, animations stilted, shadows circular blobs, and vast majority of monster designs either rehashed or uninspired. Most of the texture work is admittedly pristine, with castles, villages, mountains, and ponds rendered quite well; however, there’s nothing about their surrounding biomes that makes them stand apart from your usual fictional settings, and a fair amount are unfortunately adorned with blatantly painted-on simulacra (stone veins, floor bones, door locks). You also have a ton of repetitive knickknacks and buildings plastered in the majority of locations: expect to see the same farmhouses, Shadowbeast mounts, treasure chests, flowery lion busts, and Angel/Demon paintings despite their presence in varied locations.
Gothic II also suffers from a few minor, yet noticeable, technical issues you’ll have to contend with, namely the poor draw distance, animation lags (for candle flames, large oceans, and at-distance NPCs), as well as incessant clipping. They won’t bring down the experience by any means, but are worth noting for the sake of knowledge.
Don’t get me wrong, there are some amazing feats like the phenomenal textiles, moving clouds, dynamic lighting, presence of raindrop/snowflake impacts, and how looking up at the sun turns the screen yellow. And for all my complaints about the repeated interior layouts, the artisans went all out for that final dungeon wherein you’re privy to some gorgeously-grisly details ala torture chambers with displaced skeletons, walls laden with chiseled runes, and giant knight statues glaring with red eyes. I just wish that same effort had been put into the preceding locales.
SFX is a bigger letdown, containing some of the worst noises for monsters I’ve ever had the misfortune to hear in gaming. Orcs and dragons are decent, but every other enemy groans like a conventional noise bumped up several decibels: prepare to cover your ears when facing scavengers (roosters), lurkers (snorting pigs), blood flies (bass drums), and goblins (literally like someone farting through a French horn). In addition, footsteps are heavily muffled and grass rustling clearly recreated via a candy wrapper being rubbed against the boom mic.
When you’re in towns, the soundscapes fare better despite their volatility - I loved hearing the workings of a smithery, mixturing of alchemists, and liveliness of taverns. Outside the walls, things like the flow of water, crashing of waterfalls, wavering of rope bridges, diverse footstep dins, and even varied food eating crunches were also great. However, as an overall enterprise, the game is too crowded with those aforementioned beastly wails that get very grating very fast.
Voice acting, at the least the English dub I played, wasn’t very good either, with Piranha Bytes (or whoever handled the localization) not only recasting some of their previous characters with worse VAs (Lares, Diego), but also going TES route via having a select few actors do every single voice. This would’ve been fine had there been proper ADR direction, but the lip syncing is terrible and performances fluctuating - the more talented people are obviously solid; however, because the parts were clearly handed-out haphazardly, you get a scattershot inconstancy similar to Horizon Zero Dawn wherein some random joe will sound more immaculate than a major character.
Prince Charming returns as the Nameless Hero, and he’s one of those thespians I imagine could've been great with proper direction as he actually has the right chording for the script, yet flounders around way too much to render the guy memorable. What I mean is he does a fair job granting the Hero an everyman cadence, but the second he tries acting tough (particularly against the dragons), oh man, cringe doesn’t even begin to describe things.
Lastly, there’s the music by Kai Rosenkranz, and it’s satisfactory to a fault. A large chunk of it comes across like elongated overworld themes (your typical hodgepodge of horned melodies interrupted by guitar chords or vice-versa), but because of all the backtracking, you’ll be hearing the same tunes on-repeat, and while they never get vexing, it serves to hammer in the point that the music is inherently lacking any kind of grandiosity. It doesn’t sound like you’re on a big adventure, but instead a small-scale journey with occasional strife (and yeah, I guess that makes the OST technically accurate to the game, but my point is it could have elevated things).
So in the end, Gothic II is not worth playing. It’s a step-down from its predecessor in almost every major venue, a title that, itself, was too flawed to be worth recommending. There are things I admire, and I can definitely see where the influence on later RPGs came from - there’s just a good chance those games are better worth your time than this one.
Take this as a forewarning - when a non-Metroid game opens up with your character literally being stripped of their abilities for no other reason than a lazy respec, it’s a harbinger of bad things to come.
NOTES
+You’re able to execute certain NPCs, but not everyone like in G1. You have the option to flip to Gothic 1’s combat system, but I doubt this would’ve granted the ability.
++The worst part is the average player would have no way of knowing that you require speed potions to outrun the orcs as the game gives no indication of such (worse still, I don’t even know how you’d obtain the chemicals due to both higher-level alchemy apprenticeships being locked off and there being very few vendors on site [thank the Lord for console commands!]). The slew of apologists out there will claim you’re meant to use specially-marked pathways to avoid the orcs, but I can tell you there are no such things minus the initial entryway into the Valley of Mines. And even if there were, the fact that you’re granted no freedom to traverse the place willy-nilly whilst having to continuously look over your shoulder is just not fun in the slightest (at least in an action video game). I’ve also heard claims that you’re meant to employ sleeping spells, but as far as I could tell, these don’t have a huge range and would be futile against a clan of brutes + shamen.
-One of my favorite Eurojank moments occurs whenever you try to long-jump at a wall corner as it results in your character flying over it (and then some!).
-You’ll encounter a number of crates sparkling with that shimmer effect Disney used to employ in their cartoons back-in-the-day.
-Speaking of Disney, tell me the JoWooD Productions animation logo wasn’t inspired by the classic Disney World castle one?
-Gothic II boasts a few solid CG cutscenes.
-NPC patterns are pretty varied: you’ll see them chat, go about their workday, eat food, enjoy the nightlife, relieve themselves, and of course sleep. It’s a shame their convos with each other are so dang repetitious.
-If you reload a save file, any spell you’ve cast or torch you were wielding doesn’t return. The reloads themselves are very quick, though in some ways too quick - you can literally see the NPCs easing back into their walk/sit pattern upon booting.
-There are times where the script doesn’t match what is being said by the characters.
Gothic 2 is the kind of game I feared the original Gothic would wind-up being: an outdated CRPG ripe with fetch quests and pointless loot galore. Granted, I obviously had enough problems with the first to abstain from a full-on endorsement; however, I can’t deny its end product was vastly different from those initial worries: occupying a revolutionary Eurojank format chock-ful of unique systems.
Unfortunately, the sequel forgoes all those interesting tidbits in favor of a relatively-standard release that would’ve been fine had it not been for the presence of defects in almost all its major facets, beginning with the overworld. Gothic 2 is arguably twice as big as its predecessor, yet makes the genius decision to not only undercut your speed, but deny you access to quick travel options well until the third chapter. True, the first game did this as well, but because its realms were much smaller, it never felt excessively impeding - you could dart between the three major camps without ever worrying about the 24-hour cycle looming past you. Gothic II, au contraire, is far more triple-spaced, meaning you’re liable to getting lost in places you most definitely don’t want to be in when night rolls over. And look, that by itself isn’t a bad thing (the hallmark of most open world games is the freedom to wander about aimlessly after all), but when you’re forced to backtrack for tens of minutes on end just to reach the safety of a town or find the next big civilization, it gets frustrating very quickly, and I consequently have no regrets about exploiting waypoint commands.
I mentioned earlier that your velocity has been undercut this time around, and while slower walking does exacerbate those distance qualms, the real issue with it is it forces you into combat scenarios. In the first Gothic, you couldn’t harm a Blood Fly without getting one-hit-KOed, but that was at least mitigated by the ability to outrun 99% of foes until you got stronger.
In developing Gothic II, though, Piranha Bytes have swapped to a combat-focused schema that fails to make the necessary adjustments for such a genre, opting for this weird in-between wherein your weaknesses are contrasted with the ability to dodge, parry, and critical hit. There’s a bit of a FromSoftware motif here in the form of enemies, both human and nonhuman, having unique attack patterns; however, it’s not been ironed out, leading to a lot of good and bad. On the plus side, you get armor early-on and can pretty easily block-spam most humans, but on the negative side, critical hits are haphazard and monsters so erratic, the bulk are impossible to “figure out”. This is a game where you constantly have to save scum because you just never know when someone or something will gain the RNG upper hand and knock your health bar down with a single blow (and when those moments occur, it’s beyond frustrating). Be prepared to hoard a bunch of food for post-battle recovery as every 1v1 skirmish turns into a pyrrhic victory.
Speaking of 1v1, Gothic II once again thrives on this approach to fighting, and once again is deliberately obtuse about it. You’re rarely going to encounter a single enemy by itself: whether it’s bandits, goblins, scavengers, or orcs, they’re always going to be in groups of 3 or more, and I don’t understand why the devs thought this would be a good idea when they blatantly geared their combat system towards personalized duels. Even when you get sufficiently strong, you’re literally forced to cheese the game because your character is simply incapable of fighting multiple foes at once - your stepbacks are too short for evading, you autolock onto singular enemies, and sword strikes only slice one entity/each. So yeah, be prepared to engage in such annoying tactics as inching closer-and-closer to trigger a lone monster’s vision cone, or humping boulders & tree trunks in the hopes of exploiting enemy pathing issues (oh, and to add salt to the wounds, the game deliberately undercuts your damage output when facing parties compared to isolated foes).
Now you may be thinking, well Red, you’re just speaking about the melee - surely players are meant to combine this skill with archery and magic for success? Well no. While archery is more useful this time around (if only because there’re less-ranged foes), it’s hampered by three factors: one, limited skill point acquisition that prevents sufficient investment in both paths; two, the necessity of a secondary skill called dexterity for arrow damage increase; and three, swapping between tools being a decidedly-elongated process hostile to dual-tactics.
Magic, on the other hand, has been completely upended this time around via Piranha Bytes opting for outdated class specialization. See, if you don’t join the Fire Mage Guild in the first chapter (more on that later), you lose access to most offensive spells: like literally, you’re unable to use them, even if you have sufficient mana and the requisite scroll. Sure, you can still do summons, but, outside of demons (which are hard to come by), they aren't a huge help against those aforementioned hordes.
On the topic of guilds, Gothic II further peeved me by not properly outlining the presence of the other factions. In the first Gothic, you were explicitly told by Diego about the different camps and how you were meant to choose one. Here, though, you’re made highly-privy to the Paladin Way via Xardas mandating you deliver a message to their head regent - when you arrive there, you’re informed that the only way to pass on this missive is to join the City Guard and become a citizen of Khorinis. The Mages are briefly mentioned if you talk to one of the adjacent representatives, but considering the dangerous distance to the location (as well as the nonsensical entrance fee of 1000 gold + a sheep), it’s not exactly an open path compared to being a Guardsman.
The Mercenaries are a bit easier to join given Lares’s offer to escort you to their leader; however, unlike Gothic 1, where Mordrag took you directly to the New Camp, Lares leaves you behind a good ways away from the mercenary headquarters, and I consequently was unable to find the man until well-after I had joined the Khorinis Militia. But even if I hadn’t, I don’t see why I, as a player, would’ve considered joining them when the militia being at odds with the mercs implied that doing-so would’ve made it impossible to dispatch the letter for story progressment. Yes, I know now that there would’ve been some avenue for success, but the point I’m trying to make is that Gothic II just isn’t framed as well as its predecessor, with these obscurity methods coming across like goaded attempts at encouraging multiple playthroughs.
As a result, I can’t give an accurate assessment about the narrative in terms of how it differs in that initial act. With regards to the consequent chapters (assuming the story beats remain the same), though, I can tell you that Gothic II is an utterly boring, fetch quest extravaganza. I hate making constant comparisons to its predecessor, but to see such a noticeable drop can’t help begetting these mandates- before your Nameless Hero felt like he was forging his own arc amidst the brave new world he was trapped in. Gothic II, on the other hand, is content with having you play errand boy for almost every single figure you come across: you’re first doing the bidding of Xardas by delivering his memo to the Paladin Commander, then are forced to do arduous tasks for the merchants within Khorinis in order to obtain citizenship, then are tasked with doing MORE bidding for the Commander by conducting a scouting mission to the previous game’s area , then have to do, you guessed it, another set of chores for the Paladins and mages, then rinse-and-repeat until the last saga wherein your protagonist finally grows a pair and takes initiative into his own hands (though by then it’s obviously too little too late).
It’s a shame because there was so much potential here with regards to what could’ve happened following the fall of the barrier and all these criminals and gangs running free, but no, the writers evidently thought it better to forgo that in favor of a generic fantasy yarn (which, on its own, might’ve been fine were it not for the whole indentured servitude schematic). Some of the NPCs you meet are kind of interesting, you finally get a decent reason for why your Hero isn’t named, and it was admittedly cool seeing what happened to your allies/nemeses from the first game. But overall the endeavor was just very forgettable (and yes, this applies to the sidequests too).
Gameplay, despite the flaws I touched on earlier, has seen some improvements from Gothic 1. For starters, the useless skills of sneaking, lock bumping, and pickpocketing have been converted into singularly-learned talents that actually serve a purpose in certain quests. Secondly, 1h and 2h weaponry are equally-useful methods for dispatching foes, with upgrades to one partially carrying over to the other (at a ratio of I believe 5:1 skillpoints). Thirdly, as I alluded to in my rant above, you can actually take more than one-strike now without dying, which SIGNIFICANTLY helps in leveling-up quicker compared to before. Finally, the revamped combat is quite fun, occupying a fencing-style of play that risks/rewards lunges-and-retreats. As you upgrade your swordwielding, the game also provides visible feedback via faster drawing, swiping, and new combos.
Unfortunately, that’s about all the praise I got as everything else is either mediocre or an infringement upon the game’s fun factor. To run down the list: there’s no quick save/load option, you can only cook & brew one item at a time, leaves & foliage outright block your vision during combat, executions have been removed(+), you can’t dual-wield swords with torches for night fights, and you’re unable to sync the attack and action buttons to the same prompt (something that genuinely makes no sense given that you can’t even do actions when you have your blade out).
Worst of all, there’s no sense of difficulty scaling in the narrative - in G1, yeah every enemy was annoying on some level, but they were at least restricted to their respective areas of influence, and the story appropriately structured your mandatory encounters with them.
In the sequel, though, you can happen upon a troll or skeleton medley, or find a swarm of blood flies right next to a pack of snappers, all in the most random of places. One of the worst decisions has you in the second chapter, let me repeat, in the second chapter, sent off to maneuver around the Orc Army, and it honestly stands as one of the most vexing experiences I have ever had in a video game - to be forced to run around these behemoths spammed everywhere with no method of fighting back(++). There had to have been some cut survival horror elements as I just don’t see why anyone at Piranha Bytes believed this would be a good idea in the slightest - imagine encountering the Trigen within the first third of Far Cry and you’ll get an idea of my frustration.
If all that weren’t enough, exploration is rendered worthless as, just like in the first Gothic, the only things you’re privy to finding in the open world are lone caves ripe with repetitive loot. On that note, expect a cluttered inventory due to the sheer amount of pointless garbage you're liable to discovering on corpses and chests alike, from gems to various meats. True, G1 also had similar problems, but there was at least a unique bartering schematic wherein you could trade this stuff for an item you wanted - Gothic 2 reverts to a standard monetary system that ultimately requires you to sell this stuff for cash to then use for purchasing, turning a simple back-and-forth enterprise into a padded-out middle man approach.
Graphically, Gothic II continues to stumble as it’s just not at the level of its contemporaries, let alone something that’s aged well. Now look, part of me actually appreciated the aesthetics due to them blatantly resembling RuneScape right down to the font-type (I wouldn’t be surprised if Jagex and Piranha Bytes’ artists came from the same school of design), but objectively the modeling is pudgy, animations stilted, shadows circular blobs, and vast majority of monster designs either rehashed or uninspired. Most of the texture work is admittedly pristine, with castles, villages, mountains, and ponds rendered quite well; however, there’s nothing about their surrounding biomes that makes them stand apart from your usual fictional settings, and a fair amount are unfortunately adorned with blatantly painted-on simulacra (stone veins, floor bones, door locks). You also have a ton of repetitive knickknacks and buildings plastered in the majority of locations: expect to see the same farmhouses, Shadowbeast mounts, treasure chests, flowery lion busts, and Angel/Demon paintings despite their presence in varied locations.
Gothic II also suffers from a few minor, yet noticeable, technical issues you’ll have to contend with, namely the poor draw distance, animation lags (for candle flames, large oceans, and at-distance NPCs), as well as incessant clipping. They won’t bring down the experience by any means, but are worth noting for the sake of knowledge.
Don’t get me wrong, there are some amazing feats like the phenomenal textiles, moving clouds, dynamic lighting, presence of raindrop/snowflake impacts, and how looking up at the sun turns the screen yellow. And for all my complaints about the repeated interior layouts, the artisans went all out for that final dungeon wherein you’re privy to some gorgeously-grisly details ala torture chambers with displaced skeletons, walls laden with chiseled runes, and giant knight statues glaring with red eyes. I just wish that same effort had been put into the preceding locales.
SFX is a bigger letdown, containing some of the worst noises for monsters I’ve ever had the misfortune to hear in gaming. Orcs and dragons are decent, but every other enemy groans like a conventional noise bumped up several decibels: prepare to cover your ears when facing scavengers (roosters), lurkers (snorting pigs), blood flies (bass drums), and goblins (literally like someone farting through a French horn). In addition, footsteps are heavily muffled and grass rustling clearly recreated via a candy wrapper being rubbed against the boom mic.
When you’re in towns, the soundscapes fare better despite their volatility - I loved hearing the workings of a smithery, mixturing of alchemists, and liveliness of taverns. Outside the walls, things like the flow of water, crashing of waterfalls, wavering of rope bridges, diverse footstep dins, and even varied food eating crunches were also great. However, as an overall enterprise, the game is too crowded with those aforementioned beastly wails that get very grating very fast.
Voice acting, at the least the English dub I played, wasn’t very good either, with Piranha Bytes (or whoever handled the localization) not only recasting some of their previous characters with worse VAs (Lares, Diego), but also going TES route via having a select few actors do every single voice. This would’ve been fine had there been proper ADR direction, but the lip syncing is terrible and performances fluctuating - the more talented people are obviously solid; however, because the parts were clearly handed-out haphazardly, you get a scattershot inconstancy similar to Horizon Zero Dawn wherein some random joe will sound more immaculate than a major character.
Prince Charming returns as the Nameless Hero, and he’s one of those thespians I imagine could've been great with proper direction as he actually has the right chording for the script, yet flounders around way too much to render the guy memorable. What I mean is he does a fair job granting the Hero an everyman cadence, but the second he tries acting tough (particularly against the dragons), oh man, cringe doesn’t even begin to describe things.
Lastly, there’s the music by Kai Rosenkranz, and it’s satisfactory to a fault. A large chunk of it comes across like elongated overworld themes (your typical hodgepodge of horned melodies interrupted by guitar chords or vice-versa), but because of all the backtracking, you’ll be hearing the same tunes on-repeat, and while they never get vexing, it serves to hammer in the point that the music is inherently lacking any kind of grandiosity. It doesn’t sound like you’re on a big adventure, but instead a small-scale journey with occasional strife (and yeah, I guess that makes the OST technically accurate to the game, but my point is it could have elevated things).
So in the end, Gothic II is not worth playing. It’s a step-down from its predecessor in almost every major venue, a title that, itself, was too flawed to be worth recommending. There are things I admire, and I can definitely see where the influence on later RPGs came from - there’s just a good chance those games are better worth your time than this one.
Take this as a forewarning - when a non-Metroid game opens up with your character literally being stripped of their abilities for no other reason than a lazy respec, it’s a harbinger of bad things to come.
NOTES
+You’re able to execute certain NPCs, but not everyone like in G1. You have the option to flip to Gothic 1’s combat system, but I doubt this would’ve granted the ability.
++The worst part is the average player would have no way of knowing that you require speed potions to outrun the orcs as the game gives no indication of such (worse still, I don’t even know how you’d obtain the chemicals due to both higher-level alchemy apprenticeships being locked off and there being very few vendors on site [thank the Lord for console commands!]). The slew of apologists out there will claim you’re meant to use specially-marked pathways to avoid the orcs, but I can tell you there are no such things minus the initial entryway into the Valley of Mines. And even if there were, the fact that you’re granted no freedom to traverse the place willy-nilly whilst having to continuously look over your shoulder is just not fun in the slightest (at least in an action video game). I’ve also heard claims that you’re meant to employ sleeping spells, but as far as I could tell, these don’t have a huge range and would be futile against a clan of brutes + shamen.
-One of my favorite Eurojank moments occurs whenever you try to long-jump at a wall corner as it results in your character flying over it (and then some!).
-You’ll encounter a number of crates sparkling with that shimmer effect Disney used to employ in their cartoons back-in-the-day.
-Speaking of Disney, tell me the JoWooD Productions animation logo wasn’t inspired by the classic Disney World castle one?
-Gothic II boasts a few solid CG cutscenes.
-NPC patterns are pretty varied: you’ll see them chat, go about their workday, eat food, enjoy the nightlife, relieve themselves, and of course sleep. It’s a shame their convos with each other are so dang repetitious.
-If you reload a save file, any spell you’ve cast or torch you were wielding doesn’t return. The reloads themselves are very quick, though in some ways too quick - you can literally see the NPCs easing back into their walk/sit pattern upon booting.
-There are times where the script doesn’t match what is being said by the characters.
2012
Note - as I did not beat this game, this write-up should be taken more as a set of observations than a genuine review.
Note - this game contains a couple scenes that may be triggering to epileptics
Fez was one of three titles popularized by Indie Game: The Movie, and arguably ended-up the most famous of the bunch. Why was that? Well, I’m so glad you asked as it had to do with its co-creator and media representative Phil Fish. Now, Fish’s rise-and-fall among the gaming community is its own rabbit hole worth looking into (though please stave away from the laughably apologetic This Is Phil Fish video that went viral years ago+); however, I bring him up because, even as his popularity fell, there remained a strong advocacy on behalf of his baby - that, no matter how much you hated the guy, his art merited consideration purely out of innate quality.
Well, I hate to be the bearer of bad news (not really), but the truth is Fez ain’t all that great. It features an absolutely fascinating concept, and is certainly far better than anything I could ever create; yet it can’t help escaping from the fact that it’s just boring. As a neo-platformer, the gimmick here revolves around the ability to turn your screen on its horizontal axis four different ways, theoretically yielding 4 different variations of each level: and yeah, that seamless perspective shifting is definitely amazing, but the issue is it’s rarely used towards anything beyond basic navigation quandaries. Oh, is that ledge out of reach? Well, flip clockwise and bam, now you’ve got grassy hooks to climb on. Are those twirling boards leading out to the middle of nowhere? Well, just change directions and you’ll see they actually ascend upwards!
That’s literally the extent of Fez’s imagination -- it takes your conventional side-scrolling formula, reels it vertically, and swaps obstacle solutions between dimensions and doors (more on that later). Sure, the ploy is fun at first, but once the novelty wears off you’re left with a very flat experience that drags and drags to the point of being unfun. The most diversity I ever saw involved matching external objects to some background effigy, and triggering explosives at specially-marked areas, but their solutions, again, entailed no creativity - just whirl-and-haul until things set in place. The problem isn’t even that it’s easy, but moreso that it’s repetitive -- imagine if twisting resulted in kinetic changes in the world? Or were tied to triggering power-ups? I know I’m spitballing here, however, that’s the kind of advice I wish had been imparted on Fish and company during development.
Unlike most platformers, the goal of Fez is to collect yellow cubes located amidst a myriad of interconnected stages, and while darting between areas is pretty cool, it ultimately harms the game by spacing things out too much - what should’ve been singular realms are broken-up into multiple skotas you can only access via specific doors, and as finding said doors fills the bulk of Fez’s gametime, the endeavor gets tepid very fast. I’m not lying when I say you’ll be spending 90% of your time locating hidden enclaves, with these enclaves, in turn, being nothing more than barren islands or, worse case scenario, empty rooms. There’s no discovering new mechanics or happening upon some hidden lore, just chamber upon isle of prolonged blandness.
The continual need for fresh cubes means you’ll be doing a lot of backtracking as well, and the lack of a quick travel option to individual lands consequently adds insult to injury - if you want to return to a previously-absconded area, be prepared to go piece-by-piece-by-piece as you waste time re-netting your way there (the devs not even bothering to mark each door++).
To Fez’s credit, it has a fine map system equipped with dynamic motion, but rather than waste time programming it, I feel the Polytron Corporation would’ve been better off sticking with closed-off levels that players would have had to complete in-full before moving on to the next place. As it stands, there’s just nothing special about Fez beyond the initial 5 minutes of bliss your average gamer will get from experiencing its new mechanics. Even the side content, involving the use of cryptic pictorial riddles to solve puzzles, is hampered by the sheer distance between said clues and their accompanying location.
Graphically, Fez got a lot of praise for its presentation, and I’ll definitely agree that it’s the best aspect of the game, combining pleasant colors and calming aesthetics into a pixelated masterpiece - the kind of title I could see someone running around in purely to replicate 5th century Buddhist meditation techniques. Most of the backdrops and environs take clear inspiration from Mayan-based architecture, combining stoney ruins with colored blocks, grassy covered exteriors, looming trees, and an abundance of overflowing water; however, there are a fair amount of locations where Fish and his team dip into transcendent territory, whether it’s the World 1-2 inspired sewers, a storm-ridden manor, or the blood-flooded eeriness of the hub plane.
That same effort was carried over to the interior chambers, which could be really bizarre depending on the abode. In my abridged playthrough, for example, I caught sight of map carvings, robot idols, bathroom pumps, dorm room bedding, and even a witch’s pot. Perhaps there was some thematic message Fish intended, but if there was I was too dumb to discern it.
One of the stranger decisions Polytron makes is the incorporation of wildlife, other NPCs, and a dynamic day/night cycle. I say strange because, outside of two puzzles(+++), they don’t serve any purpose in the game and accordingly feel like a waste of money. You could at least make an argument for the presence of humans out of explaining the protagonist’s existence, but given the sheer amount of unique animations programmed for each animal (worms, rats, birds, frogs, butterflies, etc…), I was expecting them to occupy a role in-game besides standard window dressing. Don’t get me wrong, the artisans absolutely deserve credit for their modeling and aptitude, it’s just a case of Chekhov's Gun being violated.
Fauna aren’t the only entities who get specially-coded movements - your anonymous hero may look like a 2D Sackboy, but he’s actually quite versatile in terms of his scripted actions: idle away too long from the keyboard and he’ll fall asleep; hop in water and he’ll paddle like a fish; stand near the edge of a ledge and he’ll teeter over ala DKC.
Unfortunately, the sound editing stumbles too much to be worth a listen, particularly with regards to the music cues. Your basic SFX is all well-and-good, if a bit soft-mixed; however, I found almost every jingle to be obnoxiously loud: opening treasure chests sprouts a Zelda-esque ripoff, jumping into portals triggers a booming vibration, and fully-assembling cubes yields you a disparaging synth-beat.
That obsession with synth carries over to the score, composed by a guy appropriately called Disasterpeace. Peace indulges in a subgenre of the matter known as chiptune, which, as the name suggests, renders every other melody in the OST like something between the NES and SNES generation. It’s a theoretically-solid concept (Kirby’s Adventure did something similar after all), but the problem is Peace’s compositions end-up sounding more akin to early-2000s electronica than synthetic instruments, resulting in a lot of extended flat notes filtered through an e-piano. It’s outdated, it’s misophonic, and most importantly contrasts with the placid visuals.
There’s really nothing else to say about Fez. While I’m always happy for indie games that break through the zeitgeist barrier, Fez ultimately doesn’t live-up to any of the notoriety surrounding it or its creator.
NOTES
+Since that video is (sadly) popular, I’ll flesh out my opinion of it in the event of potential fan backlash -- Danskin does raise good points about the nature of the Internet and the tendency for users to project general sentiments onto a singular persona for the sake of a homogenized rebuttal/attack; however, his brushing-off of Fish’s behavior under the argument of Internet celebrities not needing to be held to higher standards is preposterous to say the least. Yes, some of Fish’s quotes did get blown out of proportion by the media, but Fish himself did no favors as far as adapting to criticism or changing his public image. And no Mr. Danskin, it doesn’t matter if he was always this way - when you’re put into a position of power and influence, you’re obligated to be professional lest you contribute to the normalization of toxic behavior par for the course for such authority figures.
++Standing in front of a previously-entered door will bring-up a projection of the next place, but given that you have to match this with the corresponding map image, it’s fundamentally a two-pronged process that would’ve been better off with conventional naming.
+++The first is nighttime revealing a hidden door; the second is a giant owl statue puzzle, though from what I understand both are completely optional anyway.
-There’s a mining section with a bunch of Mjolnir-looking hammers.
-There’s a track here that I swear was all but recreated in Evan’s Remains.
Note - this game contains a couple scenes that may be triggering to epileptics
Fez was one of three titles popularized by Indie Game: The Movie, and arguably ended-up the most famous of the bunch. Why was that? Well, I’m so glad you asked as it had to do with its co-creator and media representative Phil Fish. Now, Fish’s rise-and-fall among the gaming community is its own rabbit hole worth looking into (though please stave away from the laughably apologetic This Is Phil Fish video that went viral years ago+); however, I bring him up because, even as his popularity fell, there remained a strong advocacy on behalf of his baby - that, no matter how much you hated the guy, his art merited consideration purely out of innate quality.
Well, I hate to be the bearer of bad news (not really), but the truth is Fez ain’t all that great. It features an absolutely fascinating concept, and is certainly far better than anything I could ever create; yet it can’t help escaping from the fact that it’s just boring. As a neo-platformer, the gimmick here revolves around the ability to turn your screen on its horizontal axis four different ways, theoretically yielding 4 different variations of each level: and yeah, that seamless perspective shifting is definitely amazing, but the issue is it’s rarely used towards anything beyond basic navigation quandaries. Oh, is that ledge out of reach? Well, flip clockwise and bam, now you’ve got grassy hooks to climb on. Are those twirling boards leading out to the middle of nowhere? Well, just change directions and you’ll see they actually ascend upwards!
That’s literally the extent of Fez’s imagination -- it takes your conventional side-scrolling formula, reels it vertically, and swaps obstacle solutions between dimensions and doors (more on that later). Sure, the ploy is fun at first, but once the novelty wears off you’re left with a very flat experience that drags and drags to the point of being unfun. The most diversity I ever saw involved matching external objects to some background effigy, and triggering explosives at specially-marked areas, but their solutions, again, entailed no creativity - just whirl-and-haul until things set in place. The problem isn’t even that it’s easy, but moreso that it’s repetitive -- imagine if twisting resulted in kinetic changes in the world? Or were tied to triggering power-ups? I know I’m spitballing here, however, that’s the kind of advice I wish had been imparted on Fish and company during development.
Unlike most platformers, the goal of Fez is to collect yellow cubes located amidst a myriad of interconnected stages, and while darting between areas is pretty cool, it ultimately harms the game by spacing things out too much - what should’ve been singular realms are broken-up into multiple skotas you can only access via specific doors, and as finding said doors fills the bulk of Fez’s gametime, the endeavor gets tepid very fast. I’m not lying when I say you’ll be spending 90% of your time locating hidden enclaves, with these enclaves, in turn, being nothing more than barren islands or, worse case scenario, empty rooms. There’s no discovering new mechanics or happening upon some hidden lore, just chamber upon isle of prolonged blandness.
The continual need for fresh cubes means you’ll be doing a lot of backtracking as well, and the lack of a quick travel option to individual lands consequently adds insult to injury - if you want to return to a previously-absconded area, be prepared to go piece-by-piece-by-piece as you waste time re-netting your way there (the devs not even bothering to mark each door++).
To Fez’s credit, it has a fine map system equipped with dynamic motion, but rather than waste time programming it, I feel the Polytron Corporation would’ve been better off sticking with closed-off levels that players would have had to complete in-full before moving on to the next place. As it stands, there’s just nothing special about Fez beyond the initial 5 minutes of bliss your average gamer will get from experiencing its new mechanics. Even the side content, involving the use of cryptic pictorial riddles to solve puzzles, is hampered by the sheer distance between said clues and their accompanying location.
Graphically, Fez got a lot of praise for its presentation, and I’ll definitely agree that it’s the best aspect of the game, combining pleasant colors and calming aesthetics into a pixelated masterpiece - the kind of title I could see someone running around in purely to replicate 5th century Buddhist meditation techniques. Most of the backdrops and environs take clear inspiration from Mayan-based architecture, combining stoney ruins with colored blocks, grassy covered exteriors, looming trees, and an abundance of overflowing water; however, there are a fair amount of locations where Fish and his team dip into transcendent territory, whether it’s the World 1-2 inspired sewers, a storm-ridden manor, or the blood-flooded eeriness of the hub plane.
That same effort was carried over to the interior chambers, which could be really bizarre depending on the abode. In my abridged playthrough, for example, I caught sight of map carvings, robot idols, bathroom pumps, dorm room bedding, and even a witch’s pot. Perhaps there was some thematic message Fish intended, but if there was I was too dumb to discern it.
One of the stranger decisions Polytron makes is the incorporation of wildlife, other NPCs, and a dynamic day/night cycle. I say strange because, outside of two puzzles(+++), they don’t serve any purpose in the game and accordingly feel like a waste of money. You could at least make an argument for the presence of humans out of explaining the protagonist’s existence, but given the sheer amount of unique animations programmed for each animal (worms, rats, birds, frogs, butterflies, etc…), I was expecting them to occupy a role in-game besides standard window dressing. Don’t get me wrong, the artisans absolutely deserve credit for their modeling and aptitude, it’s just a case of Chekhov's Gun being violated.
Fauna aren’t the only entities who get specially-coded movements - your anonymous hero may look like a 2D Sackboy, but he’s actually quite versatile in terms of his scripted actions: idle away too long from the keyboard and he’ll fall asleep; hop in water and he’ll paddle like a fish; stand near the edge of a ledge and he’ll teeter over ala DKC.
Unfortunately, the sound editing stumbles too much to be worth a listen, particularly with regards to the music cues. Your basic SFX is all well-and-good, if a bit soft-mixed; however, I found almost every jingle to be obnoxiously loud: opening treasure chests sprouts a Zelda-esque ripoff, jumping into portals triggers a booming vibration, and fully-assembling cubes yields you a disparaging synth-beat.
That obsession with synth carries over to the score, composed by a guy appropriately called Disasterpeace. Peace indulges in a subgenre of the matter known as chiptune, which, as the name suggests, renders every other melody in the OST like something between the NES and SNES generation. It’s a theoretically-solid concept (Kirby’s Adventure did something similar after all), but the problem is Peace’s compositions end-up sounding more akin to early-2000s electronica than synthetic instruments, resulting in a lot of extended flat notes filtered through an e-piano. It’s outdated, it’s misophonic, and most importantly contrasts with the placid visuals.
There’s really nothing else to say about Fez. While I’m always happy for indie games that break through the zeitgeist barrier, Fez ultimately doesn’t live-up to any of the notoriety surrounding it or its creator.
NOTES
+Since that video is (sadly) popular, I’ll flesh out my opinion of it in the event of potential fan backlash -- Danskin does raise good points about the nature of the Internet and the tendency for users to project general sentiments onto a singular persona for the sake of a homogenized rebuttal/attack; however, his brushing-off of Fish’s behavior under the argument of Internet celebrities not needing to be held to higher standards is preposterous to say the least. Yes, some of Fish’s quotes did get blown out of proportion by the media, but Fish himself did no favors as far as adapting to criticism or changing his public image. And no Mr. Danskin, it doesn’t matter if he was always this way - when you’re put into a position of power and influence, you’re obligated to be professional lest you contribute to the normalization of toxic behavior par for the course for such authority figures.
++Standing in front of a previously-entered door will bring-up a projection of the next place, but given that you have to match this with the corresponding map image, it’s fundamentally a two-pronged process that would’ve been better off with conventional naming.
+++The first is nighttime revealing a hidden door; the second is a giant owl statue puzzle, though from what I understand both are completely optional anyway.
-There’s a mining section with a bunch of Mjolnir-looking hammers.
-There’s a track here that I swear was all but recreated in Evan’s Remains.
2019
This review contains spoilers
Spoilers only discussed at the very bottom of the review
Resident Evil 2 is a magnificent feat- an example of how to remake a classic without alienating old fans. Take a look at any gameplay trailer and you’ll see exactly what I mean: AAA graphics, sharp gunplay, and quality-of-life features balanced against that old-school layout of tight corridors & inventory management. It remains a perennial paragon of authentic love, and should always be analyzed by those seeking to relaunch past titles.
And yet, I couldn’t help but be disappointed, a large part of that dejection admittedly having less to do with the game and more to do with core aspects of RE’s DNA that haven't aged well, the worst being the sheer amount of backtracking and lame puzzles galore. During the first 40-50% of the game, you’re forced to engage in multiple tedious fetch quests as you move between parts of a dilapidated police station in search of objects to use with other objects, and while retreading old ground isn’t inherently bad, what makes it particularly egregious here is the fact that nothing is ever changed - you’re going to see the exact same enemies in the exact same areas. Because you know where everyone is and how they act, there’s a diminished sense of tension akin to replaying a title for the second or third time, and it honestly ended-up getting very boring.
I might’ve been able to tolerate things had the item retrieval been fun, but as I alluded to above, it’s quite the opposite. In the first Resident Evil, a fair amount of objects were hidden behind puzzles you had to put some degree of thought into, like the light paintings, eagle statues, or needle wall room. Here, though, there’s nothing of the sort- minus one generator alignment, you’re literally just gathering glorified keys to put into glorified locks, and combined with the aforementioned enemy monotony, it ultimately wasn’t fun for me. To the game’s credit, a new foe is introduced halfway through this section as a means of spicing things up; however, given that they have their own slew of problems, it’s slim pickings at best(+).
Now, I did stress 40% as, once you leave the precinct for good, the game becomes significantly better: there’s less backtracking, a lot more zombie variety, and even the puzzle solving reverts to requiring an inkling of intelligence. Many fans will claim that things turn too linear compared to the station, and though that is true, I’d argue the change actually accentuates the horror since the devs are able to craft more-unique, scripted sequences compared to the prior areas of spammed zombies and extraneous jump scares.
It’s a shame it takes so long for the gameplay to get enticing because the shooting & running mechanics are actually quite good - guns respond well, and popping a headshot to slip past some braindead cretin never loses its edge. Really I’d argue the only dock against the enterprise arises in the form of the boss fights, wherein your character’s lack of a dodge renders plain encounters unnecessarily frustrating.
Speaking of the characters, they represent another latent issue with RE’s DNA that the remake simply couldn’t extract, that being the inherent campiness of the script. In a horror-themed video game set amidst a nightmarish outbreak, you’d expect a basic degree of humanism in the cast, yet what you get instead are traits more akin to an 80s action flick. I can only speak for Leon’s story since he was the one I chose, but I kid you not when I say the man shouts off more “cool” one-liners than Arnold in Batman & Robin. He has no reaction to the concept of zombies whatsoever, is hardly fazed by any of the crazy stuff he encounters, adopts a macho man approach to every ordeal, and boasts dramedic dialogue straight out of an action hero movie. I’d call this a case of Kagome Syndrome, but considering the game, as a whole, is full of campy moments beyond Leon (and considering too how heavily reminiscent everything is of Resident Evil 1), I’m convinced that this was deliberately done as a means of staying true to the OG game.
Of course, a horror comedy or satire isn’t intrinsically awful, but the problem is RE2 wants to have its cake and eat it too -- it wants to be a scary game about the aftereffects of corporate anarchy, yet can’t help undercutting these moments with inherently silly dialogue or situations (++). Leon’s a likable enough guy, but by the end I stopped caring about his overarching plot due to the writers clearly not having any interest in an atmospherically-cogent tale.
On the topic of atmosphere, RE2’s last big criticism has to go towards its sound scheme, which is flawed in two bigs ways: first the directional output is abysmal, with zombies screams reverberating so loudly, you can never tell where they’re originating from (I get that this was probably intentional, but if so, it comes across as heavily-manufactured fear). The second, arguably greater sin, though, involves the game being deliberately designed for headphone users (at least on PC). Now, it’s an objective fact that horror games are more immersive when played with earphones; however, it’s also an objective fact that a video game shouldn’t be reliant on such devices for the sake of engrossment, and that’s exactly the problem with RE2. If you don’t play with a pair of receivers, expect a general softness to everything but the footsteps and monster cries, with ambient noises, in particular getting diminished the hardest. Don’t get me wrong, RE2’s atmosphere is definitely nerve wrenching at times; it’s just not consistent unless you’re willing to self-induce long-term hearing damage (+++).
It’s disappointing as the overall sound design, besides those two caveats, is actually really solid, with the classic echoing of footsteps producing the most fear regardless of the surface you’re clamoring on. This diversity extends to every enemy archetype, all of whom you’ll be able to aurally-distinguish by virtue of their movements or calls alone (which you’ll become very intimate with in light of the constant backtracking).
Bullet impacts are a bit more erratic as, while impact variation does exist, it can be hit-or-miss whether or not the appropriate din plays. I shot at metal containers, for example, that sounded like stone, and glass, as a whole, lacks individuation. However, the burst of soft flesh never grows tiring, and when those aforementioned ambient noises do play (shattered windows, inclement weather, splashes, distant rumbles), they are absolutely riveting (zombie smashings against closed doors, in particular, being habitually haunting).
Voice acting unfortunately suffers from the tonal inconsistencies of the story: I don’t think any of the actors chosen were amateurs, but they can’t help coming across that way in light of the poor framing and direction surrounding their output. I’m not lying when I say some of the best performances derive from optional videos and tapes you stumble across, and that probably has to do with the directors treating those scenes seriously compared to almost everything else.
In terms of the main cast, though, I’d say Karen Strassman’s Annette Birkin ends-up the strongest of the bunch as every time she came on screen, it genuinely felt like she was in a completely different project from the rest of her mates. The worst offender, on the other hand, goes to Nick Apostolides’s Leon, who fails to nail both the “tough guy” and dry humor attitudes of his protagonist (not to mention him literally sounding Ed Norton if Ed Norton’s testicles never dropped).
Finally, the OST by Shusaku Uchiyama, Zhenlan Kang, and Masami Ueda is sufficient. It’s very much one of those Brown Noise-ridden scores that successfully underlines whatever is occurring in-game at the expense of not holding much resonance outside the work. There are times where the trio indulge in tracks beyond their normal scope, such as the synth-ridden bass of Black Impact, more-orchestral Third Demise, or Lorne Balfe-esque Mournful Pursuit, but overall it’s definitely not an album you’ll be listening to outside the game.
The next area to talk about are the graphics, which remain RE2’s most polished facet by far as this is a gorgeous specimen, with not a single area ignored in terms of texturing or general visilitude. Environments are liable to receiving the most praise courtesy of Capcom’s artisans doing a phenomenal job of not only lifting the sixth-gen style of the original game, but combining it with absolutely superb 3D modeling: from something as simple as a cracked desk to the specific placement of bloodstains, this is one of those games you can tell had strong art direction conveyed between the head designers and arthouse department. Every location resembles architecture straight out of hell, as though no one had a chance to evacuate courtesy of the T-Virus’s instant infection rate.
Unfortunately, I can’t really rave to you guys about any minor details the developers laid out due to a central problem core to RE2 - it’s ridiculously-dim lighting. I get that this is a horror game, but considering the plethora of similar genre fare that haven’t had to indulge in overly-dark settings, there was no reason why I had to strain my eyes every time I entered some ill-lit hallway. The flashlight itself shines fine; however, it’s a band-aid, not a cure, with the overarching darkness occasionally making it impossible to even see items in your vicinity (thankfully the new map system alleviates this, though more on that later).
Regarding graphical feats I could discern, I have to give an immense shout-out to the textile modelers as they went all-out. The T-Virus wasn’t isolated to singular demographics: you’ll run into innumerable populations reflecting the extent of Raccoon City’s damage, and the fact that I could discern what these victims used to do for a living solely by their attire is a testament to the design craft. Leon, especially, was fantastic - everything about his figure, from the placement of pouches to the seaming of the padding, was perfect, and seeing it sustain damage over time Arkham Asylum-style stood as an exquisite touch by the artisans.
Besides that, you’ve got some nice animation work implemented on various enemies and NPCs, including: falling zombie flesh contingent on damage, Leon raising his arms protectively against fire-and-rain, Claire’s hair physics, Leon shaking his arms to dry-off, undead “corpses” displaying subtle signs of movement, Leon exhibiting pain ala clutching his stomach, wincing, and grunting, and more I’m sure I’m missing due to the inherent umbra surrounding everything.
I’d say my only graphical complaints concerned two very minor minutiae: the first is the presence of trickling water on brick-based walls as it came across as a little too artificial-looking, and the second is the absence of destructible simulacra beyond scripted events (I know this is a largely-difficult facet to implement in video games, but to not even have breakable glass was disappointing).
Given the strong acclaim behind RE2, I do want to end this review on a positive note if only to highlight the quality-of-life features hinted at in the beginning. Anyone who read my review of REmake knows that I felt its minimal gameplay improvements from the original Biohazard significantly degraded the overall experience. Luckily, however, that kind of nostalgiabait didn’t guide the personnel behind RE2R as they’ve gone out of their way to make the game far more open to conventional players: objects can be dropped, ink ribbons are nonexistent, autosaves sprout after key storybeats, you periodically obtain upgrades to your inventory, the opening logos can be skipped, door loading screens have been removed, and, best of all, your map marks leftover items, obstacle names, and specific doorlocks for each and every room, providing some temperament to the backtracking.
But as a complete product, I do think the Resident Evil 2 Remake has been unduly praised beyond its tangible facets - it’s a good game, but unless you’re a fan of classic survival horror or Metroidvania titles, you’re not going to find as much enjoyment here as fans and critics would have you to believe.
NOTES
+++There’s literally an option called 3D Audio for headphones users.
-Absolutely hated whenever zombies would get stuck behind doors, giving you no choice but to get attacked by them.
-I liked that the devs redid the motion capture for the English voice actors, rather than simply having them dub over the Japanese cast.
-Reading notes, opening your inventory, and using items all stop the game clock. The first is perfectly fine since I don’t like to be pressured to read through integral lore quickly (a problem that plagued Alien: Isolation), but for the latter two, I do think something was lost by allowing players to essentially pause the game in the midst of any high-tension moment.
-Speaking of lore, once again whoever wrote the data entries deserves a raise for being able to combine enticing mystery with fascinating dives into a world run amok with mad science.
-The craftsmanship behind inventory items is exquisite, especially considering you can examine and rotate them in-full. I really liked, in particular, how keyheads had corresponding lock sigils with their targeted door.
-You get a flamethrower that reloads like a standard magazine, something I don’t think is realistic to the actual device.
-One thing I wasn’t able to naturally-orate in the review was the brilliance behind item placement. The devs were able to accurately glean what things players would need before & after set dilemmas (herbs, munitions, etc….).
-Is there a story reason behind why Leon and Claire don’t get infected from zombie bites? Or is this like the first Assassin’s Creed where, canonically, they were never actually attacked?
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SPOILERS
+Mr. X is the guy, and from what I understand they basically took aspects from the OG RE3 antagonist Nemesis and injected them into X, allowing him to randomly appear throughout the barracks. He has some scripted sequences following this portion of the game (for Leon), but most of the love you’ll see for the guy stems from this part due to it being universal for both MCs.
Unfortunately, he had the misfortune of debuting five-years after Alien: Isolation gave us a similarly-tuned Xenomorph that wowed (and continues to wow) gamers. Now, I generally don’t like to make comparisons between vastly-different games, but X’s flaws couldn’t help outlining them, the biggest one being the inconsistency behind his triggering - at first glance, sound would appear to be the obvious one, but relaunching the same save file multiple times, I found this to be untrue as running and shooting/alerting zombies only prompted him on some playthroughs.
That randomness would be annoying enough on its own, but what really got under-my-skin were the locations he’d appear in: sometimes he’d show his face in small chambers, other times the cramped corridors, and still others the more-open lobbies, and all these really illustrate just how poorly-designed he was in relation to the rest of the title. Maneuvering through claustrophobic interiors amidst hoards of zombies is of course what makes Resident Evil Resident Evil, but such schemes just don’t befit a mobile mammoth like X- one time the b#stard appeared when I was in a passageway with two Lickers, and I was forced to die due to the inability to get out of there without setting-off the adjacent zombies.
Compare this to Isolation, where you not only had tons of wiggle room and obstacles to navigate around the xenomorph, but rarely encountered it when facing the Working Joe androids.
Speaking of Lickers, these monstrosities are another attempt at spicing-up the game, and their AI is pretty hit-or-miss. You’re told via a note that walking slowly won’t alarm them; however, just like with X, that isn’t consistent - I got by some using this tactic, yet others would detect me and begin a slow crawl in my direction. It’s a case of not enough time being granted to sufficiently program them.
++Obviously the crocodile fight is the biggest one, but then you’ve got the gateway scene between Leon and Claire, the beat reporter who gets killed by X, all of the boss fights really, and, worst yet, anything involving Ada - a humorously bad remnant of that late-90s/early-2000s trope of a well-endowed women juxtaposed against suave dialogue as a way of making them stand “above” their blatant sex appeal purposes.
The thing these creators never realized is that the problem wasn’t that their females were sexy, it was that they were sexy amidst impractical scenarios (something the Charlie’s Angels movies, of all things, successfully avoided), and Ada is an anachronistic reminder of how dumb that looks in practice. Tell me why a spy, trying to extract a virus in a zombie-ridden locale, would be running around in a tight one-piece and heels(!) that would limit her mobility? Tell me why she’d boast juicy cleavage and sleeveless arms exposed to bullets and zombie bites alike?
The scenes between her and Leon aren’t inherently bad, but there’s no sense of a bond being built -- the conversational callbacks are cheesy, and the kiss loses all iconicness the second you realize they’re both drenched in sewer water. Don’t even get me started on her magical survival, something that even hardcore RE fans haven’t been able to provide a satisfactory answer to.
Despite adding some neat gameplay variation, narratively she is, without a doubt, the one sordid trait in an otherwise solid second half. Oh, and to add salt to the wounds, she initially engages in that irritating trope wherein an NPC will deliberately abstain from answering a question in order to “prolong” the mystery for the player.
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Resident Evil 2 is a magnificent feat- an example of how to remake a classic without alienating old fans. Take a look at any gameplay trailer and you’ll see exactly what I mean: AAA graphics, sharp gunplay, and quality-of-life features balanced against that old-school layout of tight corridors & inventory management. It remains a perennial paragon of authentic love, and should always be analyzed by those seeking to relaunch past titles.
And yet, I couldn’t help but be disappointed, a large part of that dejection admittedly having less to do with the game and more to do with core aspects of RE’s DNA that haven't aged well, the worst being the sheer amount of backtracking and lame puzzles galore. During the first 40-50% of the game, you’re forced to engage in multiple tedious fetch quests as you move between parts of a dilapidated police station in search of objects to use with other objects, and while retreading old ground isn’t inherently bad, what makes it particularly egregious here is the fact that nothing is ever changed - you’re going to see the exact same enemies in the exact same areas. Because you know where everyone is and how they act, there’s a diminished sense of tension akin to replaying a title for the second or third time, and it honestly ended-up getting very boring.
I might’ve been able to tolerate things had the item retrieval been fun, but as I alluded to above, it’s quite the opposite. In the first Resident Evil, a fair amount of objects were hidden behind puzzles you had to put some degree of thought into, like the light paintings, eagle statues, or needle wall room. Here, though, there’s nothing of the sort- minus one generator alignment, you’re literally just gathering glorified keys to put into glorified locks, and combined with the aforementioned enemy monotony, it ultimately wasn’t fun for me. To the game’s credit, a new foe is introduced halfway through this section as a means of spicing things up; however, given that they have their own slew of problems, it’s slim pickings at best(+).
Now, I did stress 40% as, once you leave the precinct for good, the game becomes significantly better: there’s less backtracking, a lot more zombie variety, and even the puzzle solving reverts to requiring an inkling of intelligence. Many fans will claim that things turn too linear compared to the station, and though that is true, I’d argue the change actually accentuates the horror since the devs are able to craft more-unique, scripted sequences compared to the prior areas of spammed zombies and extraneous jump scares.
It’s a shame it takes so long for the gameplay to get enticing because the shooting & running mechanics are actually quite good - guns respond well, and popping a headshot to slip past some braindead cretin never loses its edge. Really I’d argue the only dock against the enterprise arises in the form of the boss fights, wherein your character’s lack of a dodge renders plain encounters unnecessarily frustrating.
Speaking of the characters, they represent another latent issue with RE’s DNA that the remake simply couldn’t extract, that being the inherent campiness of the script. In a horror-themed video game set amidst a nightmarish outbreak, you’d expect a basic degree of humanism in the cast, yet what you get instead are traits more akin to an 80s action flick. I can only speak for Leon’s story since he was the one I chose, but I kid you not when I say the man shouts off more “cool” one-liners than Arnold in Batman & Robin. He has no reaction to the concept of zombies whatsoever, is hardly fazed by any of the crazy stuff he encounters, adopts a macho man approach to every ordeal, and boasts dramedic dialogue straight out of an action hero movie. I’d call this a case of Kagome Syndrome, but considering the game, as a whole, is full of campy moments beyond Leon (and considering too how heavily reminiscent everything is of Resident Evil 1), I’m convinced that this was deliberately done as a means of staying true to the OG game.
Of course, a horror comedy or satire isn’t intrinsically awful, but the problem is RE2 wants to have its cake and eat it too -- it wants to be a scary game about the aftereffects of corporate anarchy, yet can’t help undercutting these moments with inherently silly dialogue or situations (++). Leon’s a likable enough guy, but by the end I stopped caring about his overarching plot due to the writers clearly not having any interest in an atmospherically-cogent tale.
On the topic of atmosphere, RE2’s last big criticism has to go towards its sound scheme, which is flawed in two bigs ways: first the directional output is abysmal, with zombies screams reverberating so loudly, you can never tell where they’re originating from (I get that this was probably intentional, but if so, it comes across as heavily-manufactured fear). The second, arguably greater sin, though, involves the game being deliberately designed for headphone users (at least on PC). Now, it’s an objective fact that horror games are more immersive when played with earphones; however, it’s also an objective fact that a video game shouldn’t be reliant on such devices for the sake of engrossment, and that’s exactly the problem with RE2. If you don’t play with a pair of receivers, expect a general softness to everything but the footsteps and monster cries, with ambient noises, in particular getting diminished the hardest. Don’t get me wrong, RE2’s atmosphere is definitely nerve wrenching at times; it’s just not consistent unless you’re willing to self-induce long-term hearing damage (+++).
It’s disappointing as the overall sound design, besides those two caveats, is actually really solid, with the classic echoing of footsteps producing the most fear regardless of the surface you’re clamoring on. This diversity extends to every enemy archetype, all of whom you’ll be able to aurally-distinguish by virtue of their movements or calls alone (which you’ll become very intimate with in light of the constant backtracking).
Bullet impacts are a bit more erratic as, while impact variation does exist, it can be hit-or-miss whether or not the appropriate din plays. I shot at metal containers, for example, that sounded like stone, and glass, as a whole, lacks individuation. However, the burst of soft flesh never grows tiring, and when those aforementioned ambient noises do play (shattered windows, inclement weather, splashes, distant rumbles), they are absolutely riveting (zombie smashings against closed doors, in particular, being habitually haunting).
Voice acting unfortunately suffers from the tonal inconsistencies of the story: I don’t think any of the actors chosen were amateurs, but they can’t help coming across that way in light of the poor framing and direction surrounding their output. I’m not lying when I say some of the best performances derive from optional videos and tapes you stumble across, and that probably has to do with the directors treating those scenes seriously compared to almost everything else.
In terms of the main cast, though, I’d say Karen Strassman’s Annette Birkin ends-up the strongest of the bunch as every time she came on screen, it genuinely felt like she was in a completely different project from the rest of her mates. The worst offender, on the other hand, goes to Nick Apostolides’s Leon, who fails to nail both the “tough guy” and dry humor attitudes of his protagonist (not to mention him literally sounding Ed Norton if Ed Norton’s testicles never dropped).
Finally, the OST by Shusaku Uchiyama, Zhenlan Kang, and Masami Ueda is sufficient. It’s very much one of those Brown Noise-ridden scores that successfully underlines whatever is occurring in-game at the expense of not holding much resonance outside the work. There are times where the trio indulge in tracks beyond their normal scope, such as the synth-ridden bass of Black Impact, more-orchestral Third Demise, or Lorne Balfe-esque Mournful Pursuit, but overall it’s definitely not an album you’ll be listening to outside the game.
The next area to talk about are the graphics, which remain RE2’s most polished facet by far as this is a gorgeous specimen, with not a single area ignored in terms of texturing or general visilitude. Environments are liable to receiving the most praise courtesy of Capcom’s artisans doing a phenomenal job of not only lifting the sixth-gen style of the original game, but combining it with absolutely superb 3D modeling: from something as simple as a cracked desk to the specific placement of bloodstains, this is one of those games you can tell had strong art direction conveyed between the head designers and arthouse department. Every location resembles architecture straight out of hell, as though no one had a chance to evacuate courtesy of the T-Virus’s instant infection rate.
Unfortunately, I can’t really rave to you guys about any minor details the developers laid out due to a central problem core to RE2 - it’s ridiculously-dim lighting. I get that this is a horror game, but considering the plethora of similar genre fare that haven’t had to indulge in overly-dark settings, there was no reason why I had to strain my eyes every time I entered some ill-lit hallway. The flashlight itself shines fine; however, it’s a band-aid, not a cure, with the overarching darkness occasionally making it impossible to even see items in your vicinity (thankfully the new map system alleviates this, though more on that later).
Regarding graphical feats I could discern, I have to give an immense shout-out to the textile modelers as they went all-out. The T-Virus wasn’t isolated to singular demographics: you’ll run into innumerable populations reflecting the extent of Raccoon City’s damage, and the fact that I could discern what these victims used to do for a living solely by their attire is a testament to the design craft. Leon, especially, was fantastic - everything about his figure, from the placement of pouches to the seaming of the padding, was perfect, and seeing it sustain damage over time Arkham Asylum-style stood as an exquisite touch by the artisans.
Besides that, you’ve got some nice animation work implemented on various enemies and NPCs, including: falling zombie flesh contingent on damage, Leon raising his arms protectively against fire-and-rain, Claire’s hair physics, Leon shaking his arms to dry-off, undead “corpses” displaying subtle signs of movement, Leon exhibiting pain ala clutching his stomach, wincing, and grunting, and more I’m sure I’m missing due to the inherent umbra surrounding everything.
I’d say my only graphical complaints concerned two very minor minutiae: the first is the presence of trickling water on brick-based walls as it came across as a little too artificial-looking, and the second is the absence of destructible simulacra beyond scripted events (I know this is a largely-difficult facet to implement in video games, but to not even have breakable glass was disappointing).
Given the strong acclaim behind RE2, I do want to end this review on a positive note if only to highlight the quality-of-life features hinted at in the beginning. Anyone who read my review of REmake knows that I felt its minimal gameplay improvements from the original Biohazard significantly degraded the overall experience. Luckily, however, that kind of nostalgiabait didn’t guide the personnel behind RE2R as they’ve gone out of their way to make the game far more open to conventional players: objects can be dropped, ink ribbons are nonexistent, autosaves sprout after key storybeats, you periodically obtain upgrades to your inventory, the opening logos can be skipped, door loading screens have been removed, and, best of all, your map marks leftover items, obstacle names, and specific doorlocks for each and every room, providing some temperament to the backtracking.
But as a complete product, I do think the Resident Evil 2 Remake has been unduly praised beyond its tangible facets - it’s a good game, but unless you’re a fan of classic survival horror or Metroidvania titles, you’re not going to find as much enjoyment here as fans and critics would have you to believe.
NOTES
+++There’s literally an option called 3D Audio for headphones users.
-Absolutely hated whenever zombies would get stuck behind doors, giving you no choice but to get attacked by them.
-I liked that the devs redid the motion capture for the English voice actors, rather than simply having them dub over the Japanese cast.
-Reading notes, opening your inventory, and using items all stop the game clock. The first is perfectly fine since I don’t like to be pressured to read through integral lore quickly (a problem that plagued Alien: Isolation), but for the latter two, I do think something was lost by allowing players to essentially pause the game in the midst of any high-tension moment.
-Speaking of lore, once again whoever wrote the data entries deserves a raise for being able to combine enticing mystery with fascinating dives into a world run amok with mad science.
-The craftsmanship behind inventory items is exquisite, especially considering you can examine and rotate them in-full. I really liked, in particular, how keyheads had corresponding lock sigils with their targeted door.
-You get a flamethrower that reloads like a standard magazine, something I don’t think is realistic to the actual device.
-One thing I wasn’t able to naturally-orate in the review was the brilliance behind item placement. The devs were able to accurately glean what things players would need before & after set dilemmas (herbs, munitions, etc….).
-Is there a story reason behind why Leon and Claire don’t get infected from zombie bites? Or is this like the first Assassin’s Creed where, canonically, they were never actually attacked?
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SPOILERS
+Mr. X is the guy, and from what I understand they basically took aspects from the OG RE3 antagonist Nemesis and injected them into X, allowing him to randomly appear throughout the barracks. He has some scripted sequences following this portion of the game (for Leon), but most of the love you’ll see for the guy stems from this part due to it being universal for both MCs.
Unfortunately, he had the misfortune of debuting five-years after Alien: Isolation gave us a similarly-tuned Xenomorph that wowed (and continues to wow) gamers. Now, I generally don’t like to make comparisons between vastly-different games, but X’s flaws couldn’t help outlining them, the biggest one being the inconsistency behind his triggering - at first glance, sound would appear to be the obvious one, but relaunching the same save file multiple times, I found this to be untrue as running and shooting/alerting zombies only prompted him on some playthroughs.
That randomness would be annoying enough on its own, but what really got under-my-skin were the locations he’d appear in: sometimes he’d show his face in small chambers, other times the cramped corridors, and still others the more-open lobbies, and all these really illustrate just how poorly-designed he was in relation to the rest of the title. Maneuvering through claustrophobic interiors amidst hoards of zombies is of course what makes Resident Evil Resident Evil, but such schemes just don’t befit a mobile mammoth like X- one time the b#stard appeared when I was in a passageway with two Lickers, and I was forced to die due to the inability to get out of there without setting-off the adjacent zombies.
Compare this to Isolation, where you not only had tons of wiggle room and obstacles to navigate around the xenomorph, but rarely encountered it when facing the Working Joe androids.
Speaking of Lickers, these monstrosities are another attempt at spicing-up the game, and their AI is pretty hit-or-miss. You’re told via a note that walking slowly won’t alarm them; however, just like with X, that isn’t consistent - I got by some using this tactic, yet others would detect me and begin a slow crawl in my direction. It’s a case of not enough time being granted to sufficiently program them.
++Obviously the crocodile fight is the biggest one, but then you’ve got the gateway scene between Leon and Claire, the beat reporter who gets killed by X, all of the boss fights really, and, worst yet, anything involving Ada - a humorously bad remnant of that late-90s/early-2000s trope of a well-endowed women juxtaposed against suave dialogue as a way of making them stand “above” their blatant sex appeal purposes.
The thing these creators never realized is that the problem wasn’t that their females were sexy, it was that they were sexy amidst impractical scenarios (something the Charlie’s Angels movies, of all things, successfully avoided), and Ada is an anachronistic reminder of how dumb that looks in practice. Tell me why a spy, trying to extract a virus in a zombie-ridden locale, would be running around in a tight one-piece and heels(!) that would limit her mobility? Tell me why she’d boast juicy cleavage and sleeveless arms exposed to bullets and zombie bites alike?
The scenes between her and Leon aren’t inherently bad, but there’s no sense of a bond being built -- the conversational callbacks are cheesy, and the kiss loses all iconicness the second you realize they’re both drenched in sewer water. Don’t even get me started on her magical survival, something that even hardcore RE fans haven’t been able to provide a satisfactory answer to.
Despite adding some neat gameplay variation, narratively she is, without a doubt, the one sordid trait in an otherwise solid second half. Oh, and to add salt to the wounds, she initially engages in that irritating trope wherein an NPC will deliberately abstain from answering a question in order to “prolong” the mystery for the player.
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2013
Long before I decided to become a reviewer, I used to jot down brief thoughts on the games I was playing in order to capture my feelings at the moment of completion for personal archival purposes. Since then, I’ve of course evolved my craft into full-fledged write-ups, but I do think there is enough merit to some of these earlier critiques to warrant their publication, especially for titles I do not intend on replaying (in the near future at least). I’ve thrown in some updates, but this is one of them.
STORY
-Premise is basic - father died and left behind a mine to his son Rusty, which you have to go through to discover what secrets he was creating/hiding. Nothing else narrative-heavy happens that I can recall. The ending does try to be semi-emotional, but fails because of the lack of real development between Rusty and the townsfolk.
-Would've liked to have seen the lore of the game expanded upon. It's cool seeing all these creatures, but you don't get to know much about them outside of brief mentions from the townsfolk (i.e. Shiners being partially responsible for the creation of steambots).
-Some satirical writing, but surprisingly light on spoofing western tropes despite the homages (the tagline is literally called "A Fistful of Dirt").
GRAPHICS
-Graphics are great, looking akin to those flash animations you’d seen on Newgrounds with bold outlines combined with steampunk and weird western aesthetics. Some really beautifully colored interiors, particularly as you get deeper into the Earth.
SOUND
-No voice acting, just hit-or-miss vocalized noises like in Skyward Sword (the fat salesman's tone, in particular, being REALLY annoying).
-All the items sound good. Explosions, whether you're using dynamite or hitting a TNT barrel or dodging a suicidal robot, have the same stock noise though regardless of quantity. Same with enemies dying.
GAMEPLAY
-Game initially feels like a lovechild between Minecraft and the Snowmuncher minigame from Neopets, albeit with a surprising amount of platforming and RPG mechanics. Unfortunately, the game is too short to really capitalize on either of those elements.
-Some Metroidvania aspects since you can discover secret areas and have to revisit previous levels. However, regarding the latter, that part only happens at the end and there's a quest arrow to help you, which I liked but others probably won't.
-At $10.00 it gives you about 4-5 hours of gameplay, so it just barely passes my rule for a buy. However, be warned that the pacing is all over the place - the first couple of hours feel like forever, while the ending is rushed.
-Then again, that does make sense given that the more upgrades you have, the faster you dig. However, all the upgrade options end up being pointless since you don't need the lion’s share of them to advance further. You may ask "what about strategy?" And I suppose there is some of that, but really you'll be fine so long as you adopt an “all-around” strategy in terms of getting a decent amount of armor, decent amount of water tanks, and so forth.
-.Also upgrades for your pickaxe are as worthless as the melee upgrades in the first Deus Ex since the vast majority of players will just utilize the faster drill for navigating. The only thing the pickaxe ends-up being good for in the long-run is getting through crates (of which there are very few) and hitting one of the bosses (which you can either way do, albeit longer, with the drill).
-I like how the underworld stays the same as when you leave it. There's a bit of a Minecraft element to it in that regard. Transitions are extremely smooth from place-to-place.
-One thing I was mixed on were the respawning enemies and minerals: repeat enemies were annoying to deal with while the minerals made the game significantly easier since you could theoretically just exit and reenter a place to farm the same minerals ad nauseam.
-Inventory management makes no sense- I could never tell if I was close to being full since there's no indication as far as I could tell. Also, the game goes out of its way to separate the minerals, which, while a cool touch, ultimately remains pointless since I doubt anyone will go out of their way to discard and replace minerals they find.
-Didn't like that you could only lay one teleporter to return to the surface. Should've been able to create several throughout the world as it’s a pain to backtrack, especially towards the endgame.
-Cannot use ladders or lanterns inside the levels. Can use dynamite though. Dying inside them luckily restarts from within so you don't have to go back to them from the surface.
-Experience (i.e., money) expands the town with new shops, but is again underutilized.
-All the upgrades are cool. I liked how water was the source for most of them.
-You get something called a "mineral detector," but I honestly have no idea what it did, if anything.
VERDICT
-Despite my negatives, I cannot deny that Steamworld Dig is addicting. I loved excavating further and further into the underground to discover new areas and secrets (especially since it wasn't procedurally-generated). It feels a bit grindy at first until you get the drill (about 1-2 hours in), but outside of that the game does a good job making you feel like you're progressing forward.
STORY
-Premise is basic - father died and left behind a mine to his son Rusty, which you have to go through to discover what secrets he was creating/hiding. Nothing else narrative-heavy happens that I can recall. The ending does try to be semi-emotional, but fails because of the lack of real development between Rusty and the townsfolk.
-Would've liked to have seen the lore of the game expanded upon. It's cool seeing all these creatures, but you don't get to know much about them outside of brief mentions from the townsfolk (i.e. Shiners being partially responsible for the creation of steambots).
-Some satirical writing, but surprisingly light on spoofing western tropes despite the homages (the tagline is literally called "A Fistful of Dirt").
GRAPHICS
-Graphics are great, looking akin to those flash animations you’d seen on Newgrounds with bold outlines combined with steampunk and weird western aesthetics. Some really beautifully colored interiors, particularly as you get deeper into the Earth.
SOUND
-No voice acting, just hit-or-miss vocalized noises like in Skyward Sword (the fat salesman's tone, in particular, being REALLY annoying).
-All the items sound good. Explosions, whether you're using dynamite or hitting a TNT barrel or dodging a suicidal robot, have the same stock noise though regardless of quantity. Same with enemies dying.
GAMEPLAY
-Game initially feels like a lovechild between Minecraft and the Snowmuncher minigame from Neopets, albeit with a surprising amount of platforming and RPG mechanics. Unfortunately, the game is too short to really capitalize on either of those elements.
-Some Metroidvania aspects since you can discover secret areas and have to revisit previous levels. However, regarding the latter, that part only happens at the end and there's a quest arrow to help you, which I liked but others probably won't.
-At $10.00 it gives you about 4-5 hours of gameplay, so it just barely passes my rule for a buy. However, be warned that the pacing is all over the place - the first couple of hours feel like forever, while the ending is rushed.
-Then again, that does make sense given that the more upgrades you have, the faster you dig. However, all the upgrade options end up being pointless since you don't need the lion’s share of them to advance further. You may ask "what about strategy?" And I suppose there is some of that, but really you'll be fine so long as you adopt an “all-around” strategy in terms of getting a decent amount of armor, decent amount of water tanks, and so forth.
-.Also upgrades for your pickaxe are as worthless as the melee upgrades in the first Deus Ex since the vast majority of players will just utilize the faster drill for navigating. The only thing the pickaxe ends-up being good for in the long-run is getting through crates (of which there are very few) and hitting one of the bosses (which you can either way do, albeit longer, with the drill).
-I like how the underworld stays the same as when you leave it. There's a bit of a Minecraft element to it in that regard. Transitions are extremely smooth from place-to-place.
-One thing I was mixed on were the respawning enemies and minerals: repeat enemies were annoying to deal with while the minerals made the game significantly easier since you could theoretically just exit and reenter a place to farm the same minerals ad nauseam.
-Inventory management makes no sense- I could never tell if I was close to being full since there's no indication as far as I could tell. Also, the game goes out of its way to separate the minerals, which, while a cool touch, ultimately remains pointless since I doubt anyone will go out of their way to discard and replace minerals they find.
-Didn't like that you could only lay one teleporter to return to the surface. Should've been able to create several throughout the world as it’s a pain to backtrack, especially towards the endgame.
-Cannot use ladders or lanterns inside the levels. Can use dynamite though. Dying inside them luckily restarts from within so you don't have to go back to them from the surface.
-Experience (i.e., money) expands the town with new shops, but is again underutilized.
-All the upgrades are cool. I liked how water was the source for most of them.
-You get something called a "mineral detector," but I honestly have no idea what it did, if anything.
VERDICT
-Despite my negatives, I cannot deny that Steamworld Dig is addicting. I loved excavating further and further into the underground to discover new areas and secrets (especially since it wasn't procedurally-generated). It feels a bit grindy at first until you get the drill (about 1-2 hours in), but outside of that the game does a good job making you feel like you're progressing forward.
2017
Long before I decided to become a reviewer, I used to jot down brief thoughts on the games I was playing in order to capture my feelings at the moment of completion for personal archival purposes. Since then, I’ve of course evolved my craft into full-fledged write-ups, but I do think there is enough merit to some of these earlier critiques to warrant their publication, especially for titles I do not intend on replaying (in the near future at least). I’ve thrown in some updates, but this is one of them.
STORY
-SteamWorld Dig 2 is a direct sequel to SteamWorld Dig, It follows Dorothy/Dot as she tries to find Rusty following his disappearance at the end of the first game.
-Fen is annoying, and his decision at the end (like with most of the game's emotional beats) comes off as contrived (much like how the ending of the first SWD wasn't sad).
GRAPHICS
-Graphically, it looks the same as the original but with more detailing and texturing. Not a huge difference, but it is noticeable and gives the game greater flare.
GAMEPLAY
-The transport system has been heavily streamlined. There are no more ladders and torches, and you now have access to multiple transport tubes which have to be discovered throughout the area, compared to the first game where you only had 1 and had to buy extras if you wanted to replace the preexisting one.
-Resources are more diverse, and I actually noticed a difference this time around compared to the first game where they all felt jumbled together.
-There are a lot more upgrades this time around. In fact, there are so many that you won't have enough money to buy them all, adding a little bit of strategy to the game. That said, I didn't like that mining was your only method of making money. For a game that puts a lot of effort towards building-up the town of El Machino, the buildings serve no purpose and it consequently would've been cool to have a renovation or task system for the different city inhabitants in order to procure cash beyond excavating.
-There are also cogs you can find (or buy, limited amount) throughout the world, which is far larger than the first Steamworld Dig’s. Cogs are usually found in caves (which serve as "side missions") and can be used to either give bonuses to your machines or Dot herself, such as increasing elemental orbs generated by killed enemies or making your weapons stronger.
-I was mixed on the cave aspect. They have secrets in them, but these secrets are usually discovered through uncovering a hidden pathway rather than solving puzzles (a good puzzle one being the mine cart button one), which wouldn’t be a bad thing were it not for those hidden pathways often having nonsensical locations.
-Completed caves have a green checkmark on them. However, you can only see that when you exit them, meaning you could end up restarting it despite not getting everything.
-The world at times feels too big for its own good. Things get grindy pretty soon, compared to the first where, because it was shorter, it didn't wear out its welcome. I also didn't like how you were forced to start off with the pickax again as it was annoying having to reupgrade Dot. The developers should've done something like Assassin’s Creed Rogue where, even though you had to reupgrade The Morrigan, you began with the charge ram and machine gun from the get-go. Here, Steamworld Dig 2 could've had you start off with the drill to alleviate extraneous farming.
-That's another thing, the drill (my favorite tool from the first game) is replaced with a jackhammer that just isn't as good or cool-looking as its forebearer.
-It was also dumb how, no matter how much you upgraded your armor, you still couldn't survive a falling boulder. Got really annoying, especially when you lose a cut of the game's already limited ores.
--Respawning enemies are tiring, especially those birds that make the irate noise.
-On the plus side, pools this time around last forever, meaning you don't have to worry about draining a source compared to the first game. This might be seen as a bad thing by some players, but it's not like SWD is an inherently strategic series (at least not until the third one).
VERDICT
-Took me about 6-7 hours to beat the story, and while there is a lot of extra stuff via the caves, they, as I said above, lack genuine puzzle elements. There's also no post-game playing, meaning you have to beat everything before doing the final boss, otherwise you'll have to rebeat them at the end.
-However, I didn't end up 100% the game because it just got tiring having to look for every secret. I wish there was a map or tracker you could unlock, because the game really doesn't have good exploratory incentives compared to true Metroidvania titles.
-I did end up putting in a total of 12-13 hours, meaning SteamWorld Dig 2 falls under my cost:gametime ratio formula. That said, because of the grinding, I ultimately had less fun with it than its predecessor, despite the tube and upgrade system improvements.
STORY
-SteamWorld Dig 2 is a direct sequel to SteamWorld Dig, It follows Dorothy/Dot as she tries to find Rusty following his disappearance at the end of the first game.
-Fen is annoying, and his decision at the end (like with most of the game's emotional beats) comes off as contrived (much like how the ending of the first SWD wasn't sad).
GRAPHICS
-Graphically, it looks the same as the original but with more detailing and texturing. Not a huge difference, but it is noticeable and gives the game greater flare.
GAMEPLAY
-The transport system has been heavily streamlined. There are no more ladders and torches, and you now have access to multiple transport tubes which have to be discovered throughout the area, compared to the first game where you only had 1 and had to buy extras if you wanted to replace the preexisting one.
-Resources are more diverse, and I actually noticed a difference this time around compared to the first game where they all felt jumbled together.
-There are a lot more upgrades this time around. In fact, there are so many that you won't have enough money to buy them all, adding a little bit of strategy to the game. That said, I didn't like that mining was your only method of making money. For a game that puts a lot of effort towards building-up the town of El Machino, the buildings serve no purpose and it consequently would've been cool to have a renovation or task system for the different city inhabitants in order to procure cash beyond excavating.
-There are also cogs you can find (or buy, limited amount) throughout the world, which is far larger than the first Steamworld Dig’s. Cogs are usually found in caves (which serve as "side missions") and can be used to either give bonuses to your machines or Dot herself, such as increasing elemental orbs generated by killed enemies or making your weapons stronger.
-I was mixed on the cave aspect. They have secrets in them, but these secrets are usually discovered through uncovering a hidden pathway rather than solving puzzles (a good puzzle one being the mine cart button one), which wouldn’t be a bad thing were it not for those hidden pathways often having nonsensical locations.
-Completed caves have a green checkmark on them. However, you can only see that when you exit them, meaning you could end up restarting it despite not getting everything.
-The world at times feels too big for its own good. Things get grindy pretty soon, compared to the first where, because it was shorter, it didn't wear out its welcome. I also didn't like how you were forced to start off with the pickax again as it was annoying having to reupgrade Dot. The developers should've done something like Assassin’s Creed Rogue where, even though you had to reupgrade The Morrigan, you began with the charge ram and machine gun from the get-go. Here, Steamworld Dig 2 could've had you start off with the drill to alleviate extraneous farming.
-That's another thing, the drill (my favorite tool from the first game) is replaced with a jackhammer that just isn't as good or cool-looking as its forebearer.
-It was also dumb how, no matter how much you upgraded your armor, you still couldn't survive a falling boulder. Got really annoying, especially when you lose a cut of the game's already limited ores.
--Respawning enemies are tiring, especially those birds that make the irate noise.
-On the plus side, pools this time around last forever, meaning you don't have to worry about draining a source compared to the first game. This might be seen as a bad thing by some players, but it's not like SWD is an inherently strategic series (at least not until the third one).
VERDICT
-Took me about 6-7 hours to beat the story, and while there is a lot of extra stuff via the caves, they, as I said above, lack genuine puzzle elements. There's also no post-game playing, meaning you have to beat everything before doing the final boss, otherwise you'll have to rebeat them at the end.
-However, I didn't end up 100% the game because it just got tiring having to look for every secret. I wish there was a map or tracker you could unlock, because the game really doesn't have good exploratory incentives compared to true Metroidvania titles.
-I did end up putting in a total of 12-13 hours, meaning SteamWorld Dig 2 falls under my cost:gametime ratio formula. That said, because of the grinding, I ultimately had less fun with it than its predecessor, despite the tube and upgrade system improvements.
2012
This review contains spoilers
Because of the nature of the story, it’s impossible to discuss Spec Ops: The Line without spoiling its contents. Having said that, I do think this is one of those titles every gamer will play at some point in their lives, so let this review stand as less of an overview and more of a discussion regarding its merits.
Minor spoilers discussed for the original Modern Warfare Trilogy as well as Black Ops I and II
Spec Ops: The Line is one of those games I both admire and unadmire -- it takes a thought-provoking approach to military shooters, only to subvert them in the most erroneous way possible, and while I would’ve loved to have seen more titles like it, I ultimately can’t recommend the game itself as a must-play venture.
It should be noted in advance that the story we got was not what was fully intended by the writers: in an article published on Cracked.com back in 2016, Spec Ops co-writer Walt Williams disclosed multiple changes the narrative underwent during development (be forewarned spoilers are present), and so I am definitely sympathetic to the fact that the story would’ve been more consistent had things gone as originally planned(+). That said, because of the high reputation Spec Ops continues to hold among the gaming community, consequent criticisms will be unadulterated regardless of this piece of prescient knowledge.
The problems stem from multiple sources, but I suppose the premise is as good a place to start as any: a semi-apocalyptic timeline wherein Dubai is ravaged by horrendous sandstorms (err, more than your garden variety anyway). Prior to the events of the game, a battalion of US soldiers nicknamed the Damned 33rd opted to disobey orders and evacuate the city, resulting in a loss of contact with their overseers. Months later, a lone transmission broadcast by the infantry’s Colonel Konrad causes the US Government to send in a small Delta Squadron to conduct reconnaissance and find out what exactly transpired.
It may sound solid to an outsider, but Americans holding a basic understanding of their military will know just how nonsensical everything is upon closer inspection. For starters, on what planet would a US satellite be unable to see through dusty wind? We’ve had this technology nailed to a tee going back to the 60s, let alone the 2010s timeline of Spec Ops, yet you mean to tell me no such spacecraft was capable of keeping track of Konrad’s movements?
The idea of HAVING to send in personnel becomes further idiotic the second you find out the CIA had previously infiltrated Dubai, meaning the government already had a source of information on the ground! Are you honestly going to tell me with a straightface that the DOD and CIA were not communicating with one another in any capacity (the same two agencies that, mind you, worked hand-in-hand during the Cold and Iraq Wars?).
And let’s talk about Konrad - even if I bought into the idea of him disobeying orders, in what world are the thousands, let me repeat, thousands of soldiers under his command going to go along with a mutiny (let alone the innumerable Captains and Lieutenants)? This was clearly a homage to Apocalypse Now, which served as a major influence on the plot, but the difference is, there, Kurtz oversaw significantly less troops, making their switch in allegiance all the more believable. Here, though, there’s no reality where a mass of armyheads would betray their country because a single higher-up said so.
The final stretch of incredulity extends to the actions done by main protagonist himself, Captain Walker, and while significantly less heavy than their aforementioned forebears, they end up being arguably the worst of the bunch given their purpose in jumpstarting the plot: that is Walker’s decisions to ignore orders. Unlike Konrad’s men, Walker is, at the very least, explicitly portrayed as a by-the-book veteran, so why is he not following such basic protocol as reporting in attacks by members of the Dubai populace? Long before he snaps, why is he not doing the very thing he was explicitly asked to do ala sending in information about the status of Dubai (it’s not like he forgets this mission since his squadmates are constantly reminding him every other scene)?
I know fans will retort that every military game takes creative liberties for the sake of storytelling, a notion I agree with, yet Spec Ops’ errors struck me as a bit hypocritical given its themes of deconstructing such titles over their lack of realism. Plus, unlike Call of Duty, a couple of easy rewrites would’ve gone a long way towards ameliorating, if not outright correcting, these issues (++).
But look, we’re just dancing at the outskirts -- Spec Ops biggest issues are two-fold: one, its inability to craft morally-grey situations; and two, its aggravating attempts at critiquing player agency.
Regarding the first, Spec Ops’s storyline operates under the banner of “the road to hell is paved with good intentions,” a fascinating concept that’s been privy to some of the best storytelling in fictional media. However, the problem with Spec Ops’s version is that it’s more interested in manipulating gamers than actually weaving a good tale - almost every “ambivalent” scenario Walker and his buddies come across is deliberately obscured for the sake of a gotcha moment (a tactic that feels less like organic development and more like shock value). Real ethical murkiness seeps from having a decent understanding of the facts and consequently making a Scylla & Charybdis decision: that is knowing things could go north or south, but ultimately concluding that the outcome of one justifies its selection over the other.
Sadly, only once does the game do anything akin to this, with the rest of the story otherwise consisting of Walker being tricked into committing acts of Genevic violence, and what makes this particularly annoying is that you’re almost always responding out of self-defense. The Damned 33rd constantly ignore Walker’s words and shoot on-sight, in turn forcing players to engage in extended firefights that give way to those aforestated war crimes, and as a result, I never once felt guilt-tripped by Walker’s deeds because I knew things would’ve played out differently had the issues been forthright over this force-feeding method. Yes, in wartime, you’re never acquainted with all the facts, but as I more than illustrated above, the game wasn’t exactly heavy on veritable recreations from the get-go.
Interestingly, the infamous White Phosphorus scene exhibits this flounder best, with Walker gulled (read - coaxed) into using the eponymous incendiary against an opposing unit, unaware that there are civilians in the mix. Despite the intentions of the writers, it just didn’t work for me because there was never any indication that citizens were moved to this area, nor a single reason why this particular weapon had to be employed when previous scenarios had you gunning down similar numbers of troops amass no problem. Ironically, what I found far more haunting (and what I wish had been focused on instead) were the sundry of burning troops you meander past following the ordeal: hearing their screams and singeing, it genuinely dawned on me just how sickening my actions were, something I can’t say occurred with the so-called “plot twist”.
Another notorious part involves Walker being deceived (noticing a trend here?) into helping a CIA crony sabotage the Dubai water supply; a scene that only prevails because the game deliberately turns Walker into a moron (+++) in addition to conveniently killing off every exposition-y character who would’ve told him the truth about the agent (whose motivations, on their own merits, are full of horsefeathers++++). Contrived is the perfect word to describe this part because that’s the kind of framing the game unfortunately utilizes in order to render its many tragedies a success. Compare this to Assassin’s Creed I or Witcher 2 where Geralt and Altair were put into decently-detailed scenarios in which you were able to make a concerted decision: a decision that may have caused more damage than good, but never once seemed coerced.
Still, in spite of my disagreements, I actually would’ve commended Spec Os had it not indulged in that aforementioned secondary quandary of emotionally-blackmailing players as though they did something wrong. It does this through its death screens (no doubt a parody of the CoD equivalent) which, if you’re lucky, you won’t be seeing too many of courtesy of how infuriatingly condescending they can get. You get such pretentious polemics as: “This is all your Fault,” “Do you feel like a Hero?,” and an additional one about the parching of Dubai’s citizens that I didn’t jot down verbatim (amongst others+++++), all of which struck me as wholly unnecessary because it’s not like the game provided a pacifist route or legitimate choices for players to willfully exert agency on.
Now of course, being a beloved game, I’ve heard counterarguments to some of these qualms, namely that Spec Ops is a deliberate response to Call of Duty’s cartoonish approach to war, a claim that makes no sense to anyone who's actually played those games. Like seriously, from Black Ops II on-back (i.e., the titles that were out at the time of Spec Ops’s release), can anyone actually think of a moment where actions against civilian targets weren’t treated seriously? The chemical gas attacks in MW3, the death of Noriega’s sister in BOII, the nuclear explosion in MW1, Castro’s assassination attempt in BO1, etc…all led to serious consequences for the protagonist(s). Even No Russian (a mission which, by the way, provided far more player agency than any chapter in Spec Ops ever did) literally resulted in the advent of World War III, so I genuinely don’t know what commentary the devs were going for if this was actually their intention.
Another big rebuttal I’ve heard is that Spec Ops was meant to be critical of gamers who decide to play war titles without thinking about what they’re doing, a facet that, if true, would genuinely trigger me. Nothing pisses me off more than when a video game’s grand or ulterior message is to not play it -- the purpose of any published title, irrespective of its tangents, should always be to be experienced. Telling players that they were dumb to embark on a journey advertised to them would be deceptive, sly, and downright egotistical on the part of the writers.
Perusing the Wikipedia article will inform you that the writers wanted to showcase a realistic decline in the mental state of soldiers at war, something that is generally overlooked in conventional military shooters. Now, I’ve never served in the armed forces (and I suspect neither have Williams and Richard Pearsey); however, I’ve read enough books and spoken to enough veterans to feel confident in saying that this psychological change is not as instantaneous as the hackneyed approach Yager Development took here, condensing a months-long process of deterioration and dehumanization into what feels like the span of a few days. Walker’s transformation, in particular, is preposterous because it entails him immediately developing a split personality, something that literally doesn’t happen overnight. To add salt to the wounds, the game rips-off Black Ops 1 by treating this as a plot twist (though unlike BO1, the dialogue here is overtly-obtuse to the point of not lending an organic layer to said revelation).
Listen, I know I’ve been rambling, but it’s only because I’m passionate about video game storytelling, and I feel Spec Ops could’ve done a better job executing its well-intentioned parameters. It generally tells a good tale about the fall of three men trying to do the right thing, and honestly succeeds in its depiction of PTSD (the spontaneous screaming/acts of violence, Walker’s nightmares): it’s just everything else was severely lacking in either tangibleness or believability. Even as an adaptation of Heart of Darkness it stumbles because you just don’t get a sense of Konrad’s (i.e. Kurtz’s) descent into madness due to the game shoving most of that backstory into optional collectibles (more on that later). There’s also a whole spiel I have about the “true ending” that I’ll detail in the notes section (++++++).
Like I said though, this is a story you will get invested in, and that’s honestly due less to the script and more to the stupendous voice work and chemistry of the main stars. Nolan North, of course, needs no introduction, his performance as Walker arguably standing at the top of an already-esteemed resume. The way he vocally depicts Walker’s crumbling mental state and increasing anger, in particular, deserves immense praise as a gold standard in voiceover work. His coworker, Omid Abtahi, does an equally superb job as thirdmate Lugo, often being handed the most fervently-charged dialogue behind North, and successfully orating it.
Christopher Reid takes the reins as Walker’s second-in-command Adams, and he’s admittedly the weakest of the trio, failing to astutely exude the multitudinous emotions his character undergoes. Still, his camaraderie goes a long way in the game (his conversations with Walker, in particular, being a consistent highlight).
The remaining NPC cast is admittedly hit-or-miss. Jake Busey, for example, is surprisingly good as the shock jock Radioman Delta Squad overhears for most of the game, but he’s unfortunately counterbalanced by Bruce Boxleitner’s Konrad, who not only lacks Brando’s pristine elocution, but dons a nasal impersonation of Kiefer Sutherland from Phone Booth (he also gave the man a bizarre accent for no apparent reason).
If you’ve heard anything negative about Spec Ops, it’s probably had to do with its shooting mechanics, though I honestly feel the lion’s share of these perceived issues would’ve been ignored with better soundwork: firearms lack impact, bullet blasts resound the same across every non-metallic surface, and you don’t hear enough sand crunching in spite of the abundance of grains. Had things been more visceral, particularly during gun battles, I genuinely think a lot of people would’ve flipped their opinion on the gameplay as it’s honestly fine, occupying your standard cover shooter system of pick-and-pop. There are a few enemy varieties (including juggernauts straight out of MW2), but the battle strategy remains the same, and I guarantee you any deaths you accumulate will derive primarily from running out into open areas.
The biggest supplement to the whole shebang is a Mass Effect-esque command squad wherein, at the click of a button, Lugo & Adams can be directed against a specific target. The AI for the duo is actually quite good, with the two of them not only following orders well, but actually hitting/pursuing their targets to a tee. The only downside is the inability to give them specific directives in terms of what tactics to employ (i.e., whether to lob a grenade, provide suppressing fire, snipe, etc….), leaving their choice-of-attack up to either RNG or the occasional on-screen prompt. When they do go down, you’re able to revive them with a quick tap, though be forewarned this does leave you open to bullet fire.
On that note, Spec Ops is definitely more realistic than its contemporaries in terms of damage calculation as, even on the normal difficulty, Walker can only take a few hits before his screen goes red. And seeing as how you’ll rarely be up against minimal foes, you’ll definitely want to avoid darting into the open kamikaze-style lest you wish to die quickly.
But that’s at least understandable - what isn’t understandable are some of the bizarre gamepad calibrations: the semi-tank control scheme where you have to rotate Walker separately from the camera in order to dictate his direction; running being relegated to a singular button tap; and vaulting being keyed to same button as melee.
I talked about the intelligence collectibles earlier, and those are definitely more akin to the backpacks from Spider-Man than their Call of Duty counterpart in the sense that they’re recordings which divulge vital information on either something that occurred before the events of the game, or on present thoughts from Walker on something at hand. They’re excellently scribed and definitely provide integral lore in a way the main campaign never does, but the problem is you have to go out of your way to locate them. I don’t know who thought this’d be a good idea over placing them directly in the player’s path, and what’s worse is, if you want to view them later, you have to exit the game and select them from the title screen despite certain ones pertaining to the specific chapter they’re found in -- tl;dr, it made no sense.
Graphics are the one area Yager truly went all-out on as Spec Ops has aged incredibly well. Character models, in particular, boast extraordinary detail you’re not liable to finding in a lot of games these days, beginning with the fact that you can actually see streams of sweat on Walker’s face alongside the progressive-accumulation of caked dirt and dried blood. Character diaphragms enlarge in an arc motion when breathing, compared to the balloon-shaped expansion typical of most releases, and texturing, as a whole, is incredibly deep, adorning textiles and architectural materials equanimously. Though primarily in desert-strewn areas, you’ll often duke it out in exteriors reminiscent of the 33rd’s past history (makeshift gyms/army barracks) or interiors mimicked off of real-life locations from the iconic city (the Dubai Mall, Burj Khalifa, various resorts), both of which do a phenomenal job giving a lived-in feel to the world. The use of colors, even under the baked overlay of Spec Ops illumination, were especially fantastic, often giving rise to some of the most gorgeous vistas I’ve ever had the privilege to witness in gaming -- one room could literally be home to dashes of rainbow, another pure blues, and still another murkier lighting reminiscent of the climax of Apocalypse Now.
The desert is more than a backdrop, with grenades causing cloudbursts, breakable glass giving way to sandslides, and the occasional habūb slipping into battle during scripted moments. Part of me wishes these latter storms, in particular, were randomized over predetermined as such moments of granular chaos were absolutely thrilling: red-orange typhoons terrorizing everything in their path.
Still, the highlight of the game has to be its murals - painted canvases embellished upon numerous walls you run across in your 7+ hour journey. The artisans behind them did a phenomenal job satirizing the military-industrial complex, their works frequently contrasting idealistic propaganda with the ongoing carnage of Dubai. Some of my favorites included a burnt American Flag above a pile of dead soldiers, a hot girl vacation ad next to a guy shooting himself, religious divinity amidst massacred civilians, and a diamond adorned with pig blood amongst numerous others I recommend you seek out.
Other miscellaneous graphical bits I enjoyed were the heat waves that rose from discharged turret barrels, visibly seeing empty magazines fall to the ground while reloading, and those darkly gorgeous loading screen illustrations showcasing Walker in varying poses of melancholy.
In terms of visuals criticisms, I had a couple of minor ones ranging from clouds being stationary to Lugo’s hat lacking proper texture streaming, but my biggest ones concerned two aspects from the desert: one, the extensive brightness of sunlit areas - maybe it was because I just got done playing Resident Evil 2, but there were several places where I felt the lighting was overblown; and two, the inconsistency of footprints - not every sand surface yielded them, and even when they did, they often took the form of instantly-formed blobs rather than an organically crafted boot imprint.
Finally there’s the score by Elia Cmíral, and I was pretty disappointed with it. The biggest issue is Cmíral (and Yager in general) were clearly more interested in recreating those rock-based moments from Apocalypse Now than conceiving something standalone, and they apparently settled on doing so via adding such motifs to almost every single album piece. I’m not lying when I tell you guys that the same electric guitar and drum riffs occupy at least 75% of the OST, and if they didn’t, something harmonically-similar did to the point of being aurally-indifferent. There were also numerous times where the music was completely at odds with the thematic content on display, the worst instance of this being the finale with Walker finally meeting Konrad (seriously - go take a listen to it). I’m usually a fan of alternative rock, but unfortunately I can’t say its use in a serious war game was good pickings (oh, and to add salt to the wounds, your ears are privy to a horrifically screechy rendition of the Star-Spangled Banner via the title screen theme).
And that, in a nutshell, wraps-up all my problems with Spec Ops: The Line. As I said in the beginning, I respect what the writers were trying to do, and it would’ve been great if more video games had built on this formula over sticking with standard AAA templates(+++++++), but the game itself tragically has too many flaws to be worth a solid recommend.
I do believe everyone will play it at some point in their gaming life, and for those who have, I encourage commentary/debate because I acknowledge I could very well be ignorant to some major boon that was simply overlooked.
Then again, if a video game can inspire these kinds of discussions to begin with, maybe it already succeeded at its tasks.
NOTES
+To anyone even vaguely-interested in the process behind video game scriptwriting, I highly-recommend checking out that article irrespective of your views on Spec Ops.
++The Damned 33rd had fallen into civil war, so why not have one faction do the counterinsurgency tactics over throwing in the CIA? And rather than make Walker Delta, why not turn him into a Black Ops soldier? You’re already having him act like one anyway.
+++The CIA is explicitly depicted as being untrustworthy to the point of Walker’s teammates warning him otherwise.
++++The US Government already disavowed the Damned 33rd, so what exactly was the CIA trying to cover-up? Any war crimes committed by the unit would’ve been condemned the second they came to light.
+++++The slogan that really got under my skin was one that asked whether I even remembered the original reason for coming to Dubai. The answer is yes homie, you created a campaign no longer than your average CoD one: of course I remember what transpired two days ago.
++++++The writers reportedly claimed that Walker died in the helicopter crash and that the last act of the game is actually him in Limbo. Firstly, this doesn’t make much sense given that a lot of major events, including the deaths of his comrades and the Konrad Revelation, are disclosed post-crash, but second, why would you scribe a video game about maintaining convictions to the bitter end, only to take away that ending from gamers? What was even the point in having multiple choices if they were all “fake” by your own admission?
This is truly a case where Death of the Author should be applied in spades as I think leaving the conclusion up to the player is far more wise - you got three different finales representing the three most possible outcomes: one, Walker acquiescing to his guilt and killing himself; two, Walker acquiescing to his trauma and becoming self-brainwashed; or three, Walker ultimately opting to seek help and Dubai’s citizens privy to rescue by the US Military.
+++++++To be fair, the Modern Warfare reboot and (reportedly) BioShock Infinite did similar takes on American Exceptionalism, so perhaps some post-Spec Ops influence did happen.
-I’d say the one aspect of the graphics that is visibly outdated is surprisingly the choice of font. I don’t know how to describe it, but it genuinely looks like the kind of typeface you’d see on early-360 shooters.
-Spec Ops was delisted from Steam, and no one seems to have any idea as to why that happened.
-The sound mixing has Walker sounding louder than his brethren, which can get obnoxious during firefights when he’s screaming orders. That said, I did like how, if one person was out of your vicinity, their voice would be filtered through the radio (I believe ACIII did the same during the modern-day sections).
-Talk about a blast from the past, one of the NPCs here uses an iPod!
-The intro credits throw in your name as “special guest____” if you needed further proof that the writers were disapproving you as much as they were Walker.
Minor spoilers discussed for the original Modern Warfare Trilogy as well as Black Ops I and II
Spec Ops: The Line is one of those games I both admire and unadmire -- it takes a thought-provoking approach to military shooters, only to subvert them in the most erroneous way possible, and while I would’ve loved to have seen more titles like it, I ultimately can’t recommend the game itself as a must-play venture.
It should be noted in advance that the story we got was not what was fully intended by the writers: in an article published on Cracked.com back in 2016, Spec Ops co-writer Walt Williams disclosed multiple changes the narrative underwent during development (be forewarned spoilers are present), and so I am definitely sympathetic to the fact that the story would’ve been more consistent had things gone as originally planned(+). That said, because of the high reputation Spec Ops continues to hold among the gaming community, consequent criticisms will be unadulterated regardless of this piece of prescient knowledge.
The problems stem from multiple sources, but I suppose the premise is as good a place to start as any: a semi-apocalyptic timeline wherein Dubai is ravaged by horrendous sandstorms (err, more than your garden variety anyway). Prior to the events of the game, a battalion of US soldiers nicknamed the Damned 33rd opted to disobey orders and evacuate the city, resulting in a loss of contact with their overseers. Months later, a lone transmission broadcast by the infantry’s Colonel Konrad causes the US Government to send in a small Delta Squadron to conduct reconnaissance and find out what exactly transpired.
It may sound solid to an outsider, but Americans holding a basic understanding of their military will know just how nonsensical everything is upon closer inspection. For starters, on what planet would a US satellite be unable to see through dusty wind? We’ve had this technology nailed to a tee going back to the 60s, let alone the 2010s timeline of Spec Ops, yet you mean to tell me no such spacecraft was capable of keeping track of Konrad’s movements?
The idea of HAVING to send in personnel becomes further idiotic the second you find out the CIA had previously infiltrated Dubai, meaning the government already had a source of information on the ground! Are you honestly going to tell me with a straightface that the DOD and CIA were not communicating with one another in any capacity (the same two agencies that, mind you, worked hand-in-hand during the Cold and Iraq Wars?).
And let’s talk about Konrad - even if I bought into the idea of him disobeying orders, in what world are the thousands, let me repeat, thousands of soldiers under his command going to go along with a mutiny (let alone the innumerable Captains and Lieutenants)? This was clearly a homage to Apocalypse Now, which served as a major influence on the plot, but the difference is, there, Kurtz oversaw significantly less troops, making their switch in allegiance all the more believable. Here, though, there’s no reality where a mass of armyheads would betray their country because a single higher-up said so.
The final stretch of incredulity extends to the actions done by main protagonist himself, Captain Walker, and while significantly less heavy than their aforementioned forebears, they end up being arguably the worst of the bunch given their purpose in jumpstarting the plot: that is Walker’s decisions to ignore orders. Unlike Konrad’s men, Walker is, at the very least, explicitly portrayed as a by-the-book veteran, so why is he not following such basic protocol as reporting in attacks by members of the Dubai populace? Long before he snaps, why is he not doing the very thing he was explicitly asked to do ala sending in information about the status of Dubai (it’s not like he forgets this mission since his squadmates are constantly reminding him every other scene)?
I know fans will retort that every military game takes creative liberties for the sake of storytelling, a notion I agree with, yet Spec Ops’ errors struck me as a bit hypocritical given its themes of deconstructing such titles over their lack of realism. Plus, unlike Call of Duty, a couple of easy rewrites would’ve gone a long way towards ameliorating, if not outright correcting, these issues (++).
But look, we’re just dancing at the outskirts -- Spec Ops biggest issues are two-fold: one, its inability to craft morally-grey situations; and two, its aggravating attempts at critiquing player agency.
Regarding the first, Spec Ops’s storyline operates under the banner of “the road to hell is paved with good intentions,” a fascinating concept that’s been privy to some of the best storytelling in fictional media. However, the problem with Spec Ops’s version is that it’s more interested in manipulating gamers than actually weaving a good tale - almost every “ambivalent” scenario Walker and his buddies come across is deliberately obscured for the sake of a gotcha moment (a tactic that feels less like organic development and more like shock value). Real ethical murkiness seeps from having a decent understanding of the facts and consequently making a Scylla & Charybdis decision: that is knowing things could go north or south, but ultimately concluding that the outcome of one justifies its selection over the other.
Sadly, only once does the game do anything akin to this, with the rest of the story otherwise consisting of Walker being tricked into committing acts of Genevic violence, and what makes this particularly annoying is that you’re almost always responding out of self-defense. The Damned 33rd constantly ignore Walker’s words and shoot on-sight, in turn forcing players to engage in extended firefights that give way to those aforestated war crimes, and as a result, I never once felt guilt-tripped by Walker’s deeds because I knew things would’ve played out differently had the issues been forthright over this force-feeding method. Yes, in wartime, you’re never acquainted with all the facts, but as I more than illustrated above, the game wasn’t exactly heavy on veritable recreations from the get-go.
Interestingly, the infamous White Phosphorus scene exhibits this flounder best, with Walker gulled (read - coaxed) into using the eponymous incendiary against an opposing unit, unaware that there are civilians in the mix. Despite the intentions of the writers, it just didn’t work for me because there was never any indication that citizens were moved to this area, nor a single reason why this particular weapon had to be employed when previous scenarios had you gunning down similar numbers of troops amass no problem. Ironically, what I found far more haunting (and what I wish had been focused on instead) were the sundry of burning troops you meander past following the ordeal: hearing their screams and singeing, it genuinely dawned on me just how sickening my actions were, something I can’t say occurred with the so-called “plot twist”.
Another notorious part involves Walker being deceived (noticing a trend here?) into helping a CIA crony sabotage the Dubai water supply; a scene that only prevails because the game deliberately turns Walker into a moron (+++) in addition to conveniently killing off every exposition-y character who would’ve told him the truth about the agent (whose motivations, on their own merits, are full of horsefeathers++++). Contrived is the perfect word to describe this part because that’s the kind of framing the game unfortunately utilizes in order to render its many tragedies a success. Compare this to Assassin’s Creed I or Witcher 2 where Geralt and Altair were put into decently-detailed scenarios in which you were able to make a concerted decision: a decision that may have caused more damage than good, but never once seemed coerced.
Still, in spite of my disagreements, I actually would’ve commended Spec Os had it not indulged in that aforementioned secondary quandary of emotionally-blackmailing players as though they did something wrong. It does this through its death screens (no doubt a parody of the CoD equivalent) which, if you’re lucky, you won’t be seeing too many of courtesy of how infuriatingly condescending they can get. You get such pretentious polemics as: “This is all your Fault,” “Do you feel like a Hero?,” and an additional one about the parching of Dubai’s citizens that I didn’t jot down verbatim (amongst others+++++), all of which struck me as wholly unnecessary because it’s not like the game provided a pacifist route or legitimate choices for players to willfully exert agency on.
Now of course, being a beloved game, I’ve heard counterarguments to some of these qualms, namely that Spec Ops is a deliberate response to Call of Duty’s cartoonish approach to war, a claim that makes no sense to anyone who's actually played those games. Like seriously, from Black Ops II on-back (i.e., the titles that were out at the time of Spec Ops’s release), can anyone actually think of a moment where actions against civilian targets weren’t treated seriously? The chemical gas attacks in MW3, the death of Noriega’s sister in BOII, the nuclear explosion in MW1, Castro’s assassination attempt in BO1, etc…all led to serious consequences for the protagonist(s). Even No Russian (a mission which, by the way, provided far more player agency than any chapter in Spec Ops ever did) literally resulted in the advent of World War III, so I genuinely don’t know what commentary the devs were going for if this was actually their intention.
Another big rebuttal I’ve heard is that Spec Ops was meant to be critical of gamers who decide to play war titles without thinking about what they’re doing, a facet that, if true, would genuinely trigger me. Nothing pisses me off more than when a video game’s grand or ulterior message is to not play it -- the purpose of any published title, irrespective of its tangents, should always be to be experienced. Telling players that they were dumb to embark on a journey advertised to them would be deceptive, sly, and downright egotistical on the part of the writers.
Perusing the Wikipedia article will inform you that the writers wanted to showcase a realistic decline in the mental state of soldiers at war, something that is generally overlooked in conventional military shooters. Now, I’ve never served in the armed forces (and I suspect neither have Williams and Richard Pearsey); however, I’ve read enough books and spoken to enough veterans to feel confident in saying that this psychological change is not as instantaneous as the hackneyed approach Yager Development took here, condensing a months-long process of deterioration and dehumanization into what feels like the span of a few days. Walker’s transformation, in particular, is preposterous because it entails him immediately developing a split personality, something that literally doesn’t happen overnight. To add salt to the wounds, the game rips-off Black Ops 1 by treating this as a plot twist (though unlike BO1, the dialogue here is overtly-obtuse to the point of not lending an organic layer to said revelation).
Listen, I know I’ve been rambling, but it’s only because I’m passionate about video game storytelling, and I feel Spec Ops could’ve done a better job executing its well-intentioned parameters. It generally tells a good tale about the fall of three men trying to do the right thing, and honestly succeeds in its depiction of PTSD (the spontaneous screaming/acts of violence, Walker’s nightmares): it’s just everything else was severely lacking in either tangibleness or believability. Even as an adaptation of Heart of Darkness it stumbles because you just don’t get a sense of Konrad’s (i.e. Kurtz’s) descent into madness due to the game shoving most of that backstory into optional collectibles (more on that later). There’s also a whole spiel I have about the “true ending” that I’ll detail in the notes section (++++++).
Like I said though, this is a story you will get invested in, and that’s honestly due less to the script and more to the stupendous voice work and chemistry of the main stars. Nolan North, of course, needs no introduction, his performance as Walker arguably standing at the top of an already-esteemed resume. The way he vocally depicts Walker’s crumbling mental state and increasing anger, in particular, deserves immense praise as a gold standard in voiceover work. His coworker, Omid Abtahi, does an equally superb job as thirdmate Lugo, often being handed the most fervently-charged dialogue behind North, and successfully orating it.
Christopher Reid takes the reins as Walker’s second-in-command Adams, and he’s admittedly the weakest of the trio, failing to astutely exude the multitudinous emotions his character undergoes. Still, his camaraderie goes a long way in the game (his conversations with Walker, in particular, being a consistent highlight).
The remaining NPC cast is admittedly hit-or-miss. Jake Busey, for example, is surprisingly good as the shock jock Radioman Delta Squad overhears for most of the game, but he’s unfortunately counterbalanced by Bruce Boxleitner’s Konrad, who not only lacks Brando’s pristine elocution, but dons a nasal impersonation of Kiefer Sutherland from Phone Booth (he also gave the man a bizarre accent for no apparent reason).
If you’ve heard anything negative about Spec Ops, it’s probably had to do with its shooting mechanics, though I honestly feel the lion’s share of these perceived issues would’ve been ignored with better soundwork: firearms lack impact, bullet blasts resound the same across every non-metallic surface, and you don’t hear enough sand crunching in spite of the abundance of grains. Had things been more visceral, particularly during gun battles, I genuinely think a lot of people would’ve flipped their opinion on the gameplay as it’s honestly fine, occupying your standard cover shooter system of pick-and-pop. There are a few enemy varieties (including juggernauts straight out of MW2), but the battle strategy remains the same, and I guarantee you any deaths you accumulate will derive primarily from running out into open areas.
The biggest supplement to the whole shebang is a Mass Effect-esque command squad wherein, at the click of a button, Lugo & Adams can be directed against a specific target. The AI for the duo is actually quite good, with the two of them not only following orders well, but actually hitting/pursuing their targets to a tee. The only downside is the inability to give them specific directives in terms of what tactics to employ (i.e., whether to lob a grenade, provide suppressing fire, snipe, etc….), leaving their choice-of-attack up to either RNG or the occasional on-screen prompt. When they do go down, you’re able to revive them with a quick tap, though be forewarned this does leave you open to bullet fire.
On that note, Spec Ops is definitely more realistic than its contemporaries in terms of damage calculation as, even on the normal difficulty, Walker can only take a few hits before his screen goes red. And seeing as how you’ll rarely be up against minimal foes, you’ll definitely want to avoid darting into the open kamikaze-style lest you wish to die quickly.
But that’s at least understandable - what isn’t understandable are some of the bizarre gamepad calibrations: the semi-tank control scheme where you have to rotate Walker separately from the camera in order to dictate his direction; running being relegated to a singular button tap; and vaulting being keyed to same button as melee.
I talked about the intelligence collectibles earlier, and those are definitely more akin to the backpacks from Spider-Man than their Call of Duty counterpart in the sense that they’re recordings which divulge vital information on either something that occurred before the events of the game, or on present thoughts from Walker on something at hand. They’re excellently scribed and definitely provide integral lore in a way the main campaign never does, but the problem is you have to go out of your way to locate them. I don’t know who thought this’d be a good idea over placing them directly in the player’s path, and what’s worse is, if you want to view them later, you have to exit the game and select them from the title screen despite certain ones pertaining to the specific chapter they’re found in -- tl;dr, it made no sense.
Graphics are the one area Yager truly went all-out on as Spec Ops has aged incredibly well. Character models, in particular, boast extraordinary detail you’re not liable to finding in a lot of games these days, beginning with the fact that you can actually see streams of sweat on Walker’s face alongside the progressive-accumulation of caked dirt and dried blood. Character diaphragms enlarge in an arc motion when breathing, compared to the balloon-shaped expansion typical of most releases, and texturing, as a whole, is incredibly deep, adorning textiles and architectural materials equanimously. Though primarily in desert-strewn areas, you’ll often duke it out in exteriors reminiscent of the 33rd’s past history (makeshift gyms/army barracks) or interiors mimicked off of real-life locations from the iconic city (the Dubai Mall, Burj Khalifa, various resorts), both of which do a phenomenal job giving a lived-in feel to the world. The use of colors, even under the baked overlay of Spec Ops illumination, were especially fantastic, often giving rise to some of the most gorgeous vistas I’ve ever had the privilege to witness in gaming -- one room could literally be home to dashes of rainbow, another pure blues, and still another murkier lighting reminiscent of the climax of Apocalypse Now.
The desert is more than a backdrop, with grenades causing cloudbursts, breakable glass giving way to sandslides, and the occasional habūb slipping into battle during scripted moments. Part of me wishes these latter storms, in particular, were randomized over predetermined as such moments of granular chaos were absolutely thrilling: red-orange typhoons terrorizing everything in their path.
Still, the highlight of the game has to be its murals - painted canvases embellished upon numerous walls you run across in your 7+ hour journey. The artisans behind them did a phenomenal job satirizing the military-industrial complex, their works frequently contrasting idealistic propaganda with the ongoing carnage of Dubai. Some of my favorites included a burnt American Flag above a pile of dead soldiers, a hot girl vacation ad next to a guy shooting himself, religious divinity amidst massacred civilians, and a diamond adorned with pig blood amongst numerous others I recommend you seek out.
Other miscellaneous graphical bits I enjoyed were the heat waves that rose from discharged turret barrels, visibly seeing empty magazines fall to the ground while reloading, and those darkly gorgeous loading screen illustrations showcasing Walker in varying poses of melancholy.
In terms of visuals criticisms, I had a couple of minor ones ranging from clouds being stationary to Lugo’s hat lacking proper texture streaming, but my biggest ones concerned two aspects from the desert: one, the extensive brightness of sunlit areas - maybe it was because I just got done playing Resident Evil 2, but there were several places where I felt the lighting was overblown; and two, the inconsistency of footprints - not every sand surface yielded them, and even when they did, they often took the form of instantly-formed blobs rather than an organically crafted boot imprint.
Finally there’s the score by Elia Cmíral, and I was pretty disappointed with it. The biggest issue is Cmíral (and Yager in general) were clearly more interested in recreating those rock-based moments from Apocalypse Now than conceiving something standalone, and they apparently settled on doing so via adding such motifs to almost every single album piece. I’m not lying when I tell you guys that the same electric guitar and drum riffs occupy at least 75% of the OST, and if they didn’t, something harmonically-similar did to the point of being aurally-indifferent. There were also numerous times where the music was completely at odds with the thematic content on display, the worst instance of this being the finale with Walker finally meeting Konrad (seriously - go take a listen to it). I’m usually a fan of alternative rock, but unfortunately I can’t say its use in a serious war game was good pickings (oh, and to add salt to the wounds, your ears are privy to a horrifically screechy rendition of the Star-Spangled Banner via the title screen theme).
And that, in a nutshell, wraps-up all my problems with Spec Ops: The Line. As I said in the beginning, I respect what the writers were trying to do, and it would’ve been great if more video games had built on this formula over sticking with standard AAA templates(+++++++), but the game itself tragically has too many flaws to be worth a solid recommend.
I do believe everyone will play it at some point in their gaming life, and for those who have, I encourage commentary/debate because I acknowledge I could very well be ignorant to some major boon that was simply overlooked.
Then again, if a video game can inspire these kinds of discussions to begin with, maybe it already succeeded at its tasks.
NOTES
+To anyone even vaguely-interested in the process behind video game scriptwriting, I highly-recommend checking out that article irrespective of your views on Spec Ops.
++The Damned 33rd had fallen into civil war, so why not have one faction do the counterinsurgency tactics over throwing in the CIA? And rather than make Walker Delta, why not turn him into a Black Ops soldier? You’re already having him act like one anyway.
+++The CIA is explicitly depicted as being untrustworthy to the point of Walker’s teammates warning him otherwise.
++++The US Government already disavowed the Damned 33rd, so what exactly was the CIA trying to cover-up? Any war crimes committed by the unit would’ve been condemned the second they came to light.
+++++The slogan that really got under my skin was one that asked whether I even remembered the original reason for coming to Dubai. The answer is yes homie, you created a campaign no longer than your average CoD one: of course I remember what transpired two days ago.
++++++The writers reportedly claimed that Walker died in the helicopter crash and that the last act of the game is actually him in Limbo. Firstly, this doesn’t make much sense given that a lot of major events, including the deaths of his comrades and the Konrad Revelation, are disclosed post-crash, but second, why would you scribe a video game about maintaining convictions to the bitter end, only to take away that ending from gamers? What was even the point in having multiple choices if they were all “fake” by your own admission?
This is truly a case where Death of the Author should be applied in spades as I think leaving the conclusion up to the player is far more wise - you got three different finales representing the three most possible outcomes: one, Walker acquiescing to his guilt and killing himself; two, Walker acquiescing to his trauma and becoming self-brainwashed; or three, Walker ultimately opting to seek help and Dubai’s citizens privy to rescue by the US Military.
+++++++To be fair, the Modern Warfare reboot and (reportedly) BioShock Infinite did similar takes on American Exceptionalism, so perhaps some post-Spec Ops influence did happen.
-I’d say the one aspect of the graphics that is visibly outdated is surprisingly the choice of font. I don’t know how to describe it, but it genuinely looks like the kind of typeface you’d see on early-360 shooters.
-Spec Ops was delisted from Steam, and no one seems to have any idea as to why that happened.
-The sound mixing has Walker sounding louder than his brethren, which can get obnoxious during firefights when he’s screaming orders. That said, I did like how, if one person was out of your vicinity, their voice would be filtered through the radio (I believe ACIII did the same during the modern-day sections).
-Talk about a blast from the past, one of the NPCs here uses an iPod!
-The intro credits throw in your name as “special guest____” if you needed further proof that the writers were disapproving you as much as they were Walker.
2008
Braid was the third biggest highlight of the Indie Game Movie behind Fez and SMB(+), and given that I reviewed the former not too long ago, I thought it only befitting to tackle Braid during my sabbatical from shooters.
However, unlike Fez, I had actually beaten Braid many moons ago, my memories recalling mixed feelings on the matter in spite of its gorgeous palette. Well, with fresher eyes and more veteran years under the belt, were those recollections mistaken or does Braid fail to live-up to the hype? In my opinion it’s the latter, though in a strange twist of faith, I couldn’t tell you why.
See, Braid doesn’t do anything wrong per say: au contraire, it actually does what any great platformer should do -- set-up a unique mechanic, throw-in bite-size levels, and gradually introduce new variations on said power in a World 1-1 manner. It’s pleasing to look at, has terrific music, and is easily replayable in a pick-up-and-play kind of way.
So why didn’t I like it? Well, I think part of it has to do with the game largely relying on timed moments and specific routes, meaning you’re always under some kind of pressure regardless of the task at hand. Braid’s gimmick, of course, is time reversal, allowing you to rewind the clock as far back as you want; however, as a result this, 90% of the puzzles end-up being overlain with some degree of urgency. Short of pressing the pause button, there’s no breathing room - you’re always on the move, trying to hit the right beats for the right solution, and that type of temporal gameplay is inherently antithetical to my nature. One of the reasons I’ve failed to get into products like Majora’s Mask and Pikmin 1 is their reliance on kitchen timer mechanics, and while Braid’s obviously not in the same category as those games, it bears enough DNA to make it spiritually-similar.
Now you may ask “if you can reverse every decision at will, what’s the qualm?” Well yes, you’re able to do that Prince of Persia-style, but the problem is it doesn’t change the fact that you still need to find that precise order of killing enemies or pulling switches or causing slow-downs etc….etc… -- barring exploits, Braid just doesn’t leave much room for experimentation: if you miss the solution, you gotta restart, all while contending with an invisible countdown.
And again, I want to stress that none of this is objectively bad - the game got critical acclaim for a reason and is definitely worth checking out. For me personally, I unfortunately wasn’t able to get absorbed like I typically do with most platformers.
That said, there were three issues I felt went beyond the parameters of subjectivity into genuine irks. One, there’s a small, yet noticeable, delay whenever you start your rewinding that basically forces you to hold down the key for a couple extra seconds. It doesn’t sound like a big deal, and within the grand scheme of things probably isn’t, but when you hit a snag and want to instantly get back in the groove, it does get annoying having to die again ~alley~ just because you forgot to push the button longer than necessary.
Two, your protagonist’s jump is a tad bit floaty. No, I wouldn’t put in the same category as Super Mario Bros. (of which Braid is a clear love letter to), however, you’ll definitely be redoing sections courtesy of improperly-executed jumps you thought you’d make.
The final problem revolves around the story font. To elucidate, Braid conveys its narrative via blobs of text dispersed amongst a set of books leading into each world’s entry, and it’s okay as far as quality, detailing a toxic relationship that sprung up between main character Tim and his ex(++). Unfortunately, the devs made the bizarre decision to have said blurbs dissolve between each other, creating this blurry transition wherein you have to wait for the scrawl to clear-up before you can read the next one. Yes, it’s small potatoes and you can dart-on past them, but to those of you interested in the game’s tale, you’ll have to contend with this design choice.
Speaking of design choices, it’s high-time we talked about the graphics, and oh boy is there a lot to say as this is a beautiful-looking game. Jonathan Blow and David Hellman were clearly interested in recreating European storybooks, and they’ve accomplished that here via taking the Donkey Kong Country-template of interposing 3D models against stylized backdrops. Whereas DKC was more-photorealistic though, Braid opts for a flair reminiscent of German Romanticism, with bleary tones and nature-backdrops rendered under bright pigments. Subtle animation work has been incorporated into nearly every facet of the game, bulking it with a vibrant liveliness that never ceased to amaze me across vistas: whether it was the fluttering of Tim’s hair during runs & falls, the spinning of the sun in the background, the blopping of Avatar-esque raindrops, or the movement of clouds, everything added up to a thoroughly-invigorating treat for the eyes. If I had to complain about anything, it’d be that enemy designs were aesthetically-uninspiring.
The sound effects are, tragically, hindered by poor mixing - if you really want to hear the rainfall or thumping of critters, you’re going to have to manually lower the music into near-silence, and that to me indicates Blow was more interested in using the OST as a proxy stand-in for authentic SFX. What you hear is fine, but outside of major foreground obstacles like cannons and sliding pillars, you’re generally going to be oblivious to most of the aural minutiae.
Thankfully, the music is excellent, its contents interestingly consisting of licensed tracks over originally-conceived tunes. The trio of artists behind them (Cheryl Ann Fulton, Shira Kammen, Jami Sieber) have indulged in a selection of Middle Age baroque songs ripe with violins, chords, and the occasional piano, all of which contribute to that aforementioned fairy tale-vibe the game is clearly going for. The one downside to the score is Blow didn’t account for how the harmony would sound in reverse, meaning you’re often privy to some chiptune-esque grate whenever you rewind time.
There’s really not much else to say about Braid. The goal here is to acquire all the puzzle pieces within each stage, though if a level is giving you trouble, you are provided the option to just move onto the next place. And because progress is instantly saved, you don’t have to redo the entire world when you return to replay things. Unfortunately, I found myself not inclined to do that and ended-up bailing on the prospect when I realized I was relying on a guide too much. That said, I have beaten Braid once before, so this review stands as authentic regardless of how my new playthrough went. Look up some gameplay and give it a try if it seems up your alley.
NOTES
+Super Meat Boy, not Super Mario Bros.
++The books are filled with haphazard swaps between tenses, making me wonder if this was intentional or an oversight.
-Clothes pulsate with light like the armor from the Clash of the Titans remake.
-I liked how Tim’s pupils widen and look downwards whenever you descend from a height.
-Because of The Witness (and its fanboys), Blow has acquired a reputation for coming across as pretentious. Having seen Indie Game: The Movie, I can’t make that supposition about him (he seemed relatively-normal there), but I will say a line of his from regarding the choice of music rubbed me the wrong way:
“My not-so-charitable opinion of game-music people is that most of them are not at that level of skill. Most of them don't really understand gameplay that well unless it's very simple, traditional gameplay. If they give you a song, it's usually not very high-quality, like what a real musician makes. By real musician, I mean people who made the song because they cared absolutely about that song. They weren't making it for anything. They just made what they most wanted to make at that time, so that's what I was looking for.”
Yeah, if you don’t know anything about composing or writing scores, I would suggest keeping your smarmy generalizations to yourself, especially when they’ve been blatantly proven wrong by the myriad of “fake” musicians in video game history.
However, unlike Fez, I had actually beaten Braid many moons ago, my memories recalling mixed feelings on the matter in spite of its gorgeous palette. Well, with fresher eyes and more veteran years under the belt, were those recollections mistaken or does Braid fail to live-up to the hype? In my opinion it’s the latter, though in a strange twist of faith, I couldn’t tell you why.
See, Braid doesn’t do anything wrong per say: au contraire, it actually does what any great platformer should do -- set-up a unique mechanic, throw-in bite-size levels, and gradually introduce new variations on said power in a World 1-1 manner. It’s pleasing to look at, has terrific music, and is easily replayable in a pick-up-and-play kind of way.
So why didn’t I like it? Well, I think part of it has to do with the game largely relying on timed moments and specific routes, meaning you’re always under some kind of pressure regardless of the task at hand. Braid’s gimmick, of course, is time reversal, allowing you to rewind the clock as far back as you want; however, as a result this, 90% of the puzzles end-up being overlain with some degree of urgency. Short of pressing the pause button, there’s no breathing room - you’re always on the move, trying to hit the right beats for the right solution, and that type of temporal gameplay is inherently antithetical to my nature. One of the reasons I’ve failed to get into products like Majora’s Mask and Pikmin 1 is their reliance on kitchen timer mechanics, and while Braid’s obviously not in the same category as those games, it bears enough DNA to make it spiritually-similar.
Now you may ask “if you can reverse every decision at will, what’s the qualm?” Well yes, you’re able to do that Prince of Persia-style, but the problem is it doesn’t change the fact that you still need to find that precise order of killing enemies or pulling switches or causing slow-downs etc….etc… -- barring exploits, Braid just doesn’t leave much room for experimentation: if you miss the solution, you gotta restart, all while contending with an invisible countdown.
And again, I want to stress that none of this is objectively bad - the game got critical acclaim for a reason and is definitely worth checking out. For me personally, I unfortunately wasn’t able to get absorbed like I typically do with most platformers.
That said, there were three issues I felt went beyond the parameters of subjectivity into genuine irks. One, there’s a small, yet noticeable, delay whenever you start your rewinding that basically forces you to hold down the key for a couple extra seconds. It doesn’t sound like a big deal, and within the grand scheme of things probably isn’t, but when you hit a snag and want to instantly get back in the groove, it does get annoying having to die again ~alley~ just because you forgot to push the button longer than necessary.
Two, your protagonist’s jump is a tad bit floaty. No, I wouldn’t put in the same category as Super Mario Bros. (of which Braid is a clear love letter to), however, you’ll definitely be redoing sections courtesy of improperly-executed jumps you thought you’d make.
The final problem revolves around the story font. To elucidate, Braid conveys its narrative via blobs of text dispersed amongst a set of books leading into each world’s entry, and it’s okay as far as quality, detailing a toxic relationship that sprung up between main character Tim and his ex(++). Unfortunately, the devs made the bizarre decision to have said blurbs dissolve between each other, creating this blurry transition wherein you have to wait for the scrawl to clear-up before you can read the next one. Yes, it’s small potatoes and you can dart-on past them, but to those of you interested in the game’s tale, you’ll have to contend with this design choice.
Speaking of design choices, it’s high-time we talked about the graphics, and oh boy is there a lot to say as this is a beautiful-looking game. Jonathan Blow and David Hellman were clearly interested in recreating European storybooks, and they’ve accomplished that here via taking the Donkey Kong Country-template of interposing 3D models against stylized backdrops. Whereas DKC was more-photorealistic though, Braid opts for a flair reminiscent of German Romanticism, with bleary tones and nature-backdrops rendered under bright pigments. Subtle animation work has been incorporated into nearly every facet of the game, bulking it with a vibrant liveliness that never ceased to amaze me across vistas: whether it was the fluttering of Tim’s hair during runs & falls, the spinning of the sun in the background, the blopping of Avatar-esque raindrops, or the movement of clouds, everything added up to a thoroughly-invigorating treat for the eyes. If I had to complain about anything, it’d be that enemy designs were aesthetically-uninspiring.
The sound effects are, tragically, hindered by poor mixing - if you really want to hear the rainfall or thumping of critters, you’re going to have to manually lower the music into near-silence, and that to me indicates Blow was more interested in using the OST as a proxy stand-in for authentic SFX. What you hear is fine, but outside of major foreground obstacles like cannons and sliding pillars, you’re generally going to be oblivious to most of the aural minutiae.
Thankfully, the music is excellent, its contents interestingly consisting of licensed tracks over originally-conceived tunes. The trio of artists behind them (Cheryl Ann Fulton, Shira Kammen, Jami Sieber) have indulged in a selection of Middle Age baroque songs ripe with violins, chords, and the occasional piano, all of which contribute to that aforementioned fairy tale-vibe the game is clearly going for. The one downside to the score is Blow didn’t account for how the harmony would sound in reverse, meaning you’re often privy to some chiptune-esque grate whenever you rewind time.
There’s really not much else to say about Braid. The goal here is to acquire all the puzzle pieces within each stage, though if a level is giving you trouble, you are provided the option to just move onto the next place. And because progress is instantly saved, you don’t have to redo the entire world when you return to replay things. Unfortunately, I found myself not inclined to do that and ended-up bailing on the prospect when I realized I was relying on a guide too much. That said, I have beaten Braid once before, so this review stands as authentic regardless of how my new playthrough went. Look up some gameplay and give it a try if it seems up your alley.
NOTES
+Super Meat Boy, not Super Mario Bros.
++The books are filled with haphazard swaps between tenses, making me wonder if this was intentional or an oversight.
-Clothes pulsate with light like the armor from the Clash of the Titans remake.
-I liked how Tim’s pupils widen and look downwards whenever you descend from a height.
-Because of The Witness (and its fanboys), Blow has acquired a reputation for coming across as pretentious. Having seen Indie Game: The Movie, I can’t make that supposition about him (he seemed relatively-normal there), but I will say a line of his from regarding the choice of music rubbed me the wrong way:
“My not-so-charitable opinion of game-music people is that most of them are not at that level of skill. Most of them don't really understand gameplay that well unless it's very simple, traditional gameplay. If they give you a song, it's usually not very high-quality, like what a real musician makes. By real musician, I mean people who made the song because they cared absolutely about that song. They weren't making it for anything. They just made what they most wanted to make at that time, so that's what I was looking for.”
Yeah, if you don’t know anything about composing or writing scores, I would suggest keeping your smarmy generalizations to yourself, especially when they’ve been blatantly proven wrong by the myriad of “fake” musicians in video game history.