Dragon Age: Origins

Dragon Age: Origins is Bioware’s latest success in the RPG-market and it’s about as standard fantasy as you can get without a group of midgets trying to propose to a volcano. It’s got elves living in a wood, dwarfs in mountains with braided beards and a bunch of humans messing everything up. Depending on your race and class combo there are six starting quests – all ending with you being in the same spot drafted into killing an army of demons and of course it all goes well until Sean Bean betrays everyone… I mean one of your Generals betray everyone…

Due to some poor choices, and bad luck with the saving, I played through most of the starting quests before setting so much as a toe into the main game and it’s a bloody good job I did! The small bit of text doesn’t really sum up the three classes, since each class has about four different subclasses you can fit into, so, in the end I went for a human warrior (original I know.) After playing around with the rather over-the-top character customarisation I began my adventure and within the first two minutes I found my identical NPC-twin. Strangely enough it was my brother’s wife - then a moment later I got my first helmet and all that character customarisation was completely pointless. Throughout the game I had to wonder how promiscuous my character’s father was considering most of the human NPC:s were strangely familiar, but still I pressed on.

I was really struck by two things.
1) How badly designed the interface was. I was playing the Xbox-version and even navigating the menu was like trying to play Guitar Hero on expert. I’m told the PC-version is a lot friendlier and as long as I can put more than 6 spells on the quick cast bar I’m inclined to believe it. 2) The other thing was how much like every other Bioware-RPG this was. If I replaced the elves with Jedis I could have been playing Knights of the Old Republic. All that being said, after almost ten hours I was still playing and eager to find out more. I’d built an army, saved a few thousand people, settled down and was now picking out carpets for my future castle. For your information, they’re red.

World of Warcraft: Cataclysm

Not exactly a retrospective – but hey like anyone cares.

Unless you’ve been living in a cave on Neptune with your eyes and ears covered you can’t have missed Blizzard’s soul sucking golden egg World of Warcraft or WoW for short. As in “WoW, I can’t believe I’ve been playing for 12 hours already”. World of Warcraft is a pretty standard MMO; full of elves, dwarfs and the normal Tolkienesque brick-a-brack.

The third expansion to this monster is the appropriately named Cataclysm – boasting a revamped world after the local bad guy of the day has gone all “day after tomorrow” on it.
Long time players will be able to revisit old zones drastically altered by the cataclysm... But they won’t.
2 new playable races – the goblins bearing a striking resemblance to a Jew in a Walt Disney film and a breed of lovable cockney werewolves allowing the players to learn more about these races that have until now been lurking in the background… But they won’t.
And of course six lovely new zones for max level players to run around and play in… But they won’t.
In truth the vast majority of the game will now see players parked outside their local auction house while waiting for a little pop-up window to appear and invite them to whichever dungeon or PvP-battleground has the shortest waiting time. This removes the first “M” for “massive”. 

Now I’m going to pause this review here and reveal the awful truth that I have been losing my soul to this game for six years now and after taking a break I thought that “now might be the best time to get back into it”. So at the risk of sounding like every forum post ever written – here comes the comparisons to the older versions of World of Warcraft.

The first noticeable change is obviously the world itself. The revamping is a very welcome refreshment to a game that was starting to feel a little stagnant. New quests have been added in almost every zone and I’m grateful to see a lot of the more tedious quests removed. No more “collect 20 items that drop 5% of the time of mobs that only spawn ever other lunar cycle”.
However after pushing further into the zones I noticed two things: the lack of group quests and then, to my shock, the lack of people at all. If I didn’t know better I would have thought I was simply playing a single player game. Desperate for human contact I entered into the random dungeon finder and thus allowing myself to take on the challenge of harder content with richer rewards together with the help of four other players from other servers. “At last!”, I thought, “human contact!”. However my attempts at greetings fell on deaf ears as we set off. “Not to worry” I thought, “they’re just eager”. After the first boss went down everyone left without a word and I thought “well ok them“, so I tried again several times to much the same ends.

Then it hit me like a well-placed dwarven hammer. There is no need for anyone to do more or less then they need to anymore – you can come and go, steal and abuse without any repercussion. It’s not like I’d ever see them again and trying to talk sense into anyone is like trying to add logic of a forum argument about Justin Bieber fighting Chuck Norris, so I decided to stick to my solo play. This removes the second “M” for “multiplayer” and leaves me with just the “O” for “online” and it was only my bank statement reminding me of that.

The next screaming difference I noticed was the talent system – the means by which I can make my character unique. Instead of 70 or so talents handed out with one per level and placed as I wish over 3 grids, I now start by picking a specialization out of the 3 grids. This instantly gives me a handful of spells and abilities from that tree then a talent point every other level at first. It seemed like a good idea, no more would certain specs be useless until higher levels. However, after the first few points went in I started to get the feeling I was being led down a path. Each tier is made out of 5 essential talents and some useless ones that I can’t imagine anyone needing,  so I decided to check around and sure enough. Every one of my class had pretty much the exact same spec and the ones that didn’t clearly had a different aim from me (normally PvP). Then I started to realise why. After picking a specilisation I couldn’t spend any points in the other specs until I reach the bottom of the first spec I picked, by which time it would be too late to make a difference.

Finally I realised what I had become and what this game had become. A series of identical motions, a routine going through the same motions as everyone else like a drone in a hive right down to the pre-programed “ding” and “grats” responses. And the more I played the more I fell into this pattern, like showing any actual emotion or breaking of from the norm would cause the secret police to come and haul me off to reeducation camp. The game truly feels evil, like some kind of Orwellian “Big Brother”-nightmare and honestly the only ones to blame are the players. After years of listening to “X is overpowered”, “now Y is overpowered “, “this is too hard”, “this is too easy” and “my porridge is too hot” Blizzard are now just telling you what you want and watching you eat it up like the good whores you are.

Legacy of Kain-series

The Legacy of Kain is Crystal Dynamics hack-and-slashing-blood-sucking-vampire-platform-game made up of five games which tell the stories of the series’ main boys, Kain and Raziel.

Kain is a brutal anti-hero vampire who’s trying to fight off the shackles of fate and pre-determinism and Raziel is a wraith who’s trying to find his fate. The story is too complex to even give an overview –  the game makes use of time travel paradoxes and mysteries so thick that you couldn’t spread it on a sandwich even if you used a really big knife.

The storytelling characters and voice acting throughout the series are some of the best that can be hoped for even by today’s standards. The visuals are fantastic and even the soundtrack fits in perfectly with the atmosphere so it might come as quite a surprise when I say that as a series of games they’re just not that great and it’s due to the keyword “games”.

Half of the series (the Blood Omen-titles) sees you take on the role of Kain and plays out largely as a hack and slash idea, broken up by some puzzles and large sections being linear runs from point A to B with a handful of random encounters sprinkled here and there.
In despite of your vampire’s strength and agility a lot of the combat involves blocking and waiting for a chance to pull off a button mash combo attack, making the whole thing feel slow. Thankfully this was remedied in the final installment where the combat feels a lot more free flowing and fun – although to counteract this point Crystal Dynamics seems to load you up with even more meal tickets to kill.

The other half of the series sees you play as Raziel and the problems which the Blood Omen-games have these games have, plus even more problems of their own. If it’s possible the combat is even more uneasy and in the last installment, where a lot of the combat issues were dealt with, it feels quite stiff. As well as all the hack and slash puzzle action there is also an element of platforming, which is made almost impossible by the worst camera work in the world. This is coupled with the game often feeling very repetitive. To go to seven identical temples and solve the same basic puzzle and get a new power and then go to the next temple is made even worse by Raziel’s ability to shift between the physical realm and the spectral realm, where the room is slightly distorted. It allows him to reach a platform or pass through a barred gate and it makes a boring puzzle seem twice as long.

Don’t be put off from playing the games though, they’re worth it for some of the best storytelling you’ll ever hope to come across. Although I feel that I should warn you – the fifth and what looks to be the last game doesn’t really finish the story and fans (including myself) are still waiting for a conclusion to the story. The series have a fantastic idea and is largely let down by game play. I can’t help but feel it would have been better as a movie or TV-series or even a puppet show.

Silent Hill: Origins

An odd choice for a first retrospective, but as a fan of the series who was finally able to play it I thought what the hell.

Silent Hill: Origins is a survival horror game and a prequel to Konami’s wonderfully creepy series. The game opens with the lovable meat head Travis Grady, a redneck trucker who’s taking a shortcut through Silent Hill – the American version of the Bermuda Triangle. Before even making it into the town shit starts going wrong as Travis narrowly misses squashing a little girl (this can probably be attributed to him talking on his radio instead of watching the damned road). Despite the girl being fit enough to outrun Travis into Silent Hill he still decides to follow her into the town. Within seconds he’s in a burning building rescuing a barbequed girl from some kind of ritual. After saving her the lights go out and Travis’s bad day starts.

One of Silent Hill’s biggest selling points over the years has been its intricate plot and characters – not to mention  the spine chilling horror of the town itself. Newcomers to the series, British-based Climax Studios couldn’t have missed the point more if they’d been blindfolded, facing the wrong way and on another planet from the point itself.

I’m just going to take a second out to clear something up; I’m not some kind of pokey eating Japanite who’s cursing my lack of Samurai blood, but those japs know two things.
1) How to kill a whale and 2) how to make a good horror game. Previous titles have been characterised by the almost crushing loneliness of everything. You’re constantly on the edge of your seat, always expecting a monster that just doesn’t come until that split second where you’ve unclenched your sphincter.
After five minutes of playing Silent Hill: Origins I was bombarded with monsters and every corner I turned to had some twisted horror jumping out and screaming “boo” at me until I came to expect it. Enemies respawning faster than I can kill them and so any terror I felt was replaced by annoyance. The first time you see a 12-headed horror from beyond its pretty terrifying, but after the 50^th time they become interchangeable with anything and have the same effect. However, they never stop being a problem and this is due heavily to…
…The combat! Now I realise that Travis is just a humble trucker and probably hasn’t got a black belt and a green beret, but half the time it’s like he’s not even trying. There are so many holes in the combat that I’m just going to save the time and list them off; Travis is as slow to throw a punch as a 90-year old Buddhist, when he does have a weapon it break unreasonably quickly for example a sledge hammer – an item designed to be driven through tough structures at very high forces – breaks after five swings at whatever squishy bag of organs you’re aiming for. The inability to move and change weapon at the same time makes it feel like Travis is a Pokémon and learning to do more than four things may cause him to forget how to breathe and finally… Quick time events… Please God, stop this shit! All quick time events ever do are to make sure we’re paying attention and force us to watch the same little animation over and over and over again…

To sum up: this is a poor attempt from another developer to squeeze some money out of a dying franchise. The characters are so mind-numbingly unlikable and unreasonably stupid. I mean honestly, there is NO reason at all for Travis to be there.  No wife to find, no daughter, no past to explore, nothing at all! Unless he has a van and a mystery solving Great Dane somewhere there is nothing keeping him in Silent Hill. There’s a scene early on where he talks to a nurse moments after fighting some twisted pile of flesh. He oddly neglects to mention this to her and after some ideal banter she mentions that she’s going to some sanitarium and for no reason at all he decides to go there! He doesn’t ask her if he can go with her, or more reasonably, if she can call him a taxi out of town. No, he waits ‘til she’s long gone and then the only indication of his destination is a small ring on the map. People this dumb deserve to be dry humped to death by fleshy monsters. If he’s so desperate to stay in Silent Hill he won’t mind me turning of the console and leaving him there.