Archive for February, 2008
Today I had to bring Devil May Cry 4 back to the rental shop. I managed to beat Dante finally after many attempts but couldn’t finish the 11th mission anymore. As I don’t want to pay another 10 Euros for an additional week, the game has unfortunately to go back. But I’ll keep the save game on the HDD so that I can borrow the game in a couple of weeks from a friend and finish it properly. It may be not the pinnacle of gaming, hack&slashs are however pretty addictive.
On the weekend my damn curiosity led me to have a look in yet another game. I didn’t have a PC for 2 years now and my iMac never let me regret it. I hadn’t upgraded to Leopard yet but Saturday was the day that I bought the new version of OSX. With it comes Bootcamp which made a Windows installation possible. With the prospect of having Steam and it’s huge back catalog again, I decided to run Windows on the iMac. The installation was pretty easy, although it took some time. Having Steam installed the Orange Pack smiled at me alluringly. I am a weak bastard so I grabbed my credit card, entered the 16 digits and after a night of downloading I finally had the full HL2 goodness on my Mac.
I played HL2 when it came out 2 years ago so I was more than curious how Episode 1 would fare. And although the first 2 hours are not the best in the HL franchise they’re still on a very high level. The art direction is refreshing in a time, where the Unreal 3 engine dominates with it’s bright colours and shiny bump mapping everywhere. An apocalyptic yet comprehensible story finishes the good impression so far. I am still in the city, on my way from house to house looking for a way to leave the rotting town with the citadel in the middle.
Yet, Episode 1 (and 2 and Portal) will have to wait a little. From what I’ve read probably some weeks. A friend of mine gave me Mass Effect to play. Yeah, I know, the next game I started. But that is just how I am. Too curious to let a game just wait for it’s time. But I have the feeling that Mass Effect might be worth it. I played a couple of hours yesterday and it feels good, despite the flawed menus and the confusing upgrade system. I finished the first mission on Eden Prime which ended with the destruction of the sender I initially had to retrieve. Bad luck. I arrived at a huge space station called The Citadel looking for the next missions. As I’ve said, it feels great so far, even the localization - the game got synchronized for Germany - is surprisingly good and in sync with the motion of the lips.
I didn’t have much time to play the last week, Work kept me busy most of the time, and when I wasn’t at work I wasn’t fond of serious gaming. So I looked for something mindless and found it in Devil May Cry 4. I rented it on Monday and played every day a couple of minutes and I am now in the 10th level, where I have to fight that Dante guy at the end.
I have mixed feelings about that game. It is undeniably fun. the controls are very responsive, the story is over the top anime style and the cutscenes are georgeous. But it often also feels bland, the graphics are sometimes butt ugly and the difficulty is very inconsistent.
Devil May Cry 1 was the only entry in the series that I played before. And I loved it. Not neccessarily because of the gameplay. But the game had style. It was the most stylish game I have ever played in a more emo-goth way. The 4th entry lacks this. And I miss it. The style made the simple hack&slash formula stand out. Devil May Cry 4 feels generic.
But it is still mindless fun and I haven’t finished it yet.
Today I had a decision to make. Do I want to keep Assassin’s Creed for another couple of days or did I have enough of it and want to bring it back to the rental shop? To be honest it was a question rather easy to answer. After the endeavours in Acre the next mission was to kill a slave-trader in Jerusalem. As in the first two missions I had to ride to the city, get in somehow and do the steps to fulfill the tasks. The problem was that it was all the same again for the third time, with two exceptions. The first one was the boss fight, in which I had to chase the victim throughout the city. The second one being that the mission played in the upper class part of the town. Problem was, that this wasn’t really noticeable because there were still the beggars around every corner that would annoy you with the same 3 sentences over and over again.
The game suffers from two big problems. Very loose storytelling and repetitiveness. I was one third into the game but still had not the slightest idea what the story was about. Assassin’s Creed is basically a sandbox game and as such has to rely on tight storytelling to keep the player motivated. The game fails here miserably. And by god the repetitions make it even worse. When you’ve heard the same sentence over and over and over again, you feel the urge to punch someone in the face. Not to mention the identical mission structure in every city. And yeah, the game is far to easy.
Technically Assassin’s Creed is quite an achievement. There is no doubt about that. It has some of the most beautiful graphics on any system to date. Altair and the people of the holy land are perfectly animated. Although the movement of Altair has many possibilities, the controls are very intuitive and easy to learn. Unfortunately it is a little too dumbed down as the fights are way too easy.
So yes, this game is a rental. But the technical perfection in Assassin’s Creed let’s me hope that the next game will be as good as the hype suggests.
Disclaimer: I am playing the german version. This is why some names of towns may differ. I try to translate them to English names. This is why I wrote about Akkon before which is actually called Acre.
While Damascus was nice, it seemed too clean to me. Although I was running around the slums of the town there was not much of the typical suffering in the middle ages present. Sure, some beggars, but all in all the town looked pretty friendly. Acre was in strong contrast. Standing in front of the gate the town looked dirty, dead or starving people lay around. To get into the town I had first to help a monk who was harrassed by soldiers. This led to a group of scholars to arrive in which I could hide to enter the town.
Acre was held hostage by the Knights of Hospitaller. My main mission was to kill the head of this order. I could have done this after 20 minutes but the city sucked me in. The game depicted the dark ages exactly in the way I imagined them. Suffering, diseases, poverty, hunger, polution. Everything was present and so real, that I couldn’t just move on. Instead I climbed every outlook and finished every secondary mission. There were also two informants in town that wanted me to fulfill certain duties in exchange for tips on how to kill Garnier. As I gathered more and more information the picture that was drawn of Garnier was that of an evil nazi doctor similar to Mengele.
The game also got a little bit harder than in Dasmascus. When I caused an alarm in Damascus it was pretty easy to run away. Climbing up the houses and hiding there was pretty easy. This changed in Acre because soldiers guarded the roofs of the city. But a death jump here and there and I was save most of the time. The fights got harder too as there were often 5-6 soldiers against me. I figured that counterattacks were a very good instrument to come alive out of these fights.
The actual kill of Garnier was a quite difficult task. He was in some sort of monastery where he did experiments on sick people. Fortunately I had helped a monk right around the corner before so that there was a group of scholars in front of the monastery that I could use to get past the guards. Finally in I witnessed a small scene in which Garnier talked to one of his “patients” who was in fear of the doctor. After that I entered the medical station and waited for the right moment to stab the doctor silently from behind. Escaping was rather easy: running as fast as possible.
That was that for Acre for now. Back with my master who gave me one of my skills back I am now on my way to Jerusalem.
Oh my god, it is 8am and I just finished playing. For all the frustration I felt on my way to Akkon, the actual town was just awesome. It was so awesome that I even finished all the side quests. I’ll write that up when I am back from the sleeping dead.
Assassin’s Creed doesn’t seem to care much about immersion. After the first mission where I had to find the traitor I was pretty much hooked up to the game and the setting and started to feel good. Bam! The game switched back to the laboratory with the scientists talking about some nonsense, nothing of relevance I think. I walked around, not knowing what to do, until I stood next to a bed and a message poped up that I can interact here. Wow! What happened is that my character laid on the bed and slept. Interactivity in the year 2008!
After a couple of more minutes and some chatty with the doctor I was back on the table that brought me into the memories of my ancestor again. My master was pleased with my first mission and sent me to Damascus to kill a weapons dealer. I had to go down from the tower to the town and from there out of the gates. There I picked up a horse and rode to Damascus.
What happened here now was a switch to some sort of overworld. Similar to traditional JRPGs where you switch from towns/ dungeons to a world map on which you travel to the different locations. Just that in Assassin’s Creed the viewpoint doesn’t change. There are no mission objectives on this world map except the possibility to climb up several towers, which serve as outlook points, and collectible flags. On the way to other towns I passed crusader’s outposts and villages. It’s like a walk on the country side.
As this was all new to me it took me 30 minutes to Damascus. In front of the gates I learned about the secondary objectives. These are things like helping people which are harrased by soldiers or getting additional information on the main objective by overhearing or interrogations. I helped the peasant and submerged between monks to get past the soldiers at the town gates.
Once inside the first minutes really overwhelmed me as the scenery was very vibrant and full of life. People walking everywhere doing something, talking to each other, the city was alive. My main goal was to go to a contact of the brotherhood to get the permit to kill this weapons dealer. Before I went there I just walked around, climbed some outlook posts, which gave me additional information about secondary objectives on my map. With every 15 accomplished mission goals - secondary and primary - the gauge on the upper left, that is basically a health bar, fills up with one block. So I ran over the roof of the city and helped some citizens and gathered additional information about my mission. Whenever I was in danger and soldiers were chasing me the game was really fun because it forced me to use my surroundings to my advantage. For example pidgeons sitting on roof edges mark death jumps that help to hide from soldiers. And those death jumps really look astonishing.
But after some of those secondary tasks this all went rather boring as it was the same over and over again. The area I could walk around was limited by blue barriers. When I wanted to pass those the game just told me that the system didn’t have access to that part of the genetic memento. So I was forced to stay in the slums of Damascus. I then headed to the contact person which allowed me to kill the weapons dealer now. That all was rather easy. I approached a small market place where I hid between other citizens overhearing the target person talking to one of his suppliers. Well, not talking. He killed him. Time for me to jump in. I followed the weapons dealer and chose to slaughter him. A small pretty nice cut scene followed which showed the dealer actually passing away and his ghost talking to me.
The mission ended with me running away after a not so subtle assassination. Bam! Back in the laboratory. Only the assistant was around so I tried to talk to her and she gave me some hints why this all was happening, but it didn’t really explain much. So back to bed and the next day started with the doctor talking about the problems of mankind and how humanity lusts for control. This doctor acted like a fascist. Interesting.
Time to head into another part of the memories. I could actually chose the next mission, either in Jerusalem or in Akkon. So again I went down the hill from the tower to the town, out of the gates to the horse and rode to the world map where I started the long travel to Akkon. This is were the game became frustrating for the first time.
In the game I was constantly reminded that I was actually ‘replaying’ memories. This showed sometimes in jumping between different parts of the memories like a fast forward to the next scene of importance. But why the heck wasn’t it possible to fast forward to the next town instead of walking there? It took so long to ride to the next city because you always had to be aware of hostile soldiers and rode slowly past them to not cause a stir.
And then it seems that the whole system of awareness of the soldiers is flawed. On the upper left of the screen there is a sign that shows the awareness level of a soldier. When it is yellow I ride past the crusader and he won’t notice me. When the sign is red I have to push and hold ‘A’ all the time to go slowly and he won’t notice me either. That is what the game told me at least. In fact, it happened so often that still every fucking soldier was chasing me for no reason at all. That is a huge flaw because the game is also built on stealth elements which at least didn’t always work for me.
But I have almost arrived at Akkon, so let’s see what happens there.
Today I came by a rental shop that is actually right around the corner of my appartement. I went in actually looking for a nice Bluray movie for the evening. I came out with Assassin’s Creed in my hands. This is one of the occassions where I feel really bad about myself, that I always have to take the shiny things with me, although I already have so much other stuff. Or in this, I have still so many games left to play. I have rented it until Monday, enough time to see, why the game was scored lower than the hype led to me to expect.
Much to my surprise, the game started off in a laboratory of today. My character was lying on some sort of an examination table, obviously not knowing what he was doing there. I was pretty much confused, as I expected the game to play like 1000 years earlier with me controlling a kick-ass assassin. But the scientist and his lady assistant explained, with lot’s of mumbo jumbo, that everybody has a genetic memento of his forefathers and that they need some part of the genetic memento of my character’s forefather 1000 years ago, which was an assassin. Yeah, right. So they hook that sad guy up to a machine which takes me now 1000 years back in the holy land, during the crusades.
After some tutorial yadayada, I finally got to play… sort of. Altair, the assassin I play, was together with two other assassins on a mission to recover a treasure. They were just entering some sort of cave as it turns out, that what they were after was the ark of the covenant. Too bad the crusaders came first, and although the other two guys warn me not to, I am on my way to kill the boss of the crusaders. Actually I tried not to, but this game is straight forward and leaves you no choice. The assassination failed and I got pushed out of the cave, the entrance collapsed and my mates were lost inside. After some jumping around I made it back to my home town.
My master was not so fond of my failure to deliver the treasure, but before he could punish me, the crusaders attacked the town and I had to help to fight the back. Which was fun for the first 3 crusaders I killed, but it got old pretty fast. In the end, fighting is not much more than button mashing. The combokills are a joke and the counterattacks make the whole experience very easy. What was nice about the fight against the crusaders though was the scene it, where I fake-jumped to death and sneaked behind the enemy’s lines to trigger a trap. Awesome stuff.
Back in the tower I got a mighty kick in the ass from my master, who basically punished me to climb the career ladder of an assassin up again. I still would like to know, how he could take away my learned skills… oh whatever. So I was an apprentice again, and my first mission was to find out who betrayed the order of the assassin’s and helped the crusaders by opening the gates of the town. So I sneaked around town. Actually at first I climbed around town. Climbing up house and juming over the roofs is so much fun. It gives a sense of freedom. In such moments Assassin’s Creed feels like the best sandbox game ever.
The sneak mission was pretty cool, as I had to overhear somebody, then I stole a letter from a merchant and finally I had to interrogate another guy to get the information about the traitor. With my first mission accomplished my master regained some trust in Altair, and sent him to Damascus to assassinate a weapon’s dealer.
But I will write that up tomorrow, as it is actually 6:30 am here right now and I am pretty tired.
Have I said something about FFVI being straight forward? Forget that. Today’s session with the game showed me again, why Japanese RPGs turn me off so often. I left the game the last time when I was on my way to South Figaro. I took the caves and went to the small town in the south of the cave’s exit. Arriving in this town I didn’t know what to do further. So i walked around and talked to all the people, bought equipment and other items, found some treasure chests, but no real hint for what to do now. All the people talked about was some Mount Kolts and some guy named Duncan. Although there was no real connection to what I had played up till now I figured going to this mountain was worth a try.
In the north of the town I find a lonely hut, nothing is in there, except some things remind Edgar of somebody. Outside of the hut is now an old man, that hints to the mountain. Well okay, I go to the mountain, now everything is straight forward again. Until I meet Vargas, who seems to have been the shadow that was jumping around the screen all the time. For whatever reason he wants to fight me, and in the middle of a fight a guy comes around and helps my party. I finish Vargas and that stranger turns out to be the brother of Edgar.
Wow, talk about logic here. I am pretty confused, especially because some of the names are different from the walkthroughs I’ve read. Mash for example is called ‘Sabin’ in the walkthroughs. Wonder why that’s the case. Anyhow. Now I am on my way to Sabin’s Hideout to get some clue’s about Tina’s fate, I think.
But that’ll follow next time. I am off to work now.
Today I didn’t feel like I wanted to play Forza 2. In fact, I have had enough of the XBox and needed a little change, some variety. So I figured I could play a game that I never approached. Shame on me, but I’ve never played Final Fantasy VI before. I own the first 4 entries to the series, played most of the 3D ones, but never finished one. It is embarrasing I know, but those games only kept me motivated for some days until I lost my interest and played something else.
Time for another attempt as I’ve fired up an emulator and entered the world of Final Fantasy VI. I am only in the very first minutes of the game and I already remember what I always liked about the SNES times. Cute 16Bit graphics, nice midi tunes, simple control scheme, cursing. Cursing?! I was surprised about the heavy use of the word ‘bitch‘ in the first hour of the game. Now I usually don’t care but I didn’t expect it in a more or less family friendly SNES game.
Other than that, the game is still pretty straight forward. I got to Castle Figaro, fled from there and am now on my way to South Figaro. Let’s see how it all evolves.
Today was time for another session of Forza 2. I had to finish the 5 by 5 Superspring Challenge in the second tier. I won the first two races yesterday after some heavy fights with my car, the #23 Magellan Financial Viper Competition Coupe. Keeping control over this car is an art by itself.
The third racetrack was King Cobra which looks like the name suggests. The Viper was obviously way too overpowered for a track like this. And way too nervous too. Like a rocket bound to skates. The track demanded a lot of concentration with corners mostly taken in the 2nd gear and very cautious acceleration. But to my surprise it took me just 3 attempts to win this race.
Now I felt relaxed because the next track was Road America (long version), one of my favourite circuits of the game. Fast corners, going up and down all the time, but still a very fluid experience. This time however I was tempted to smash something. Usually I would be in the front right from the start, around one to two seconds ahead of the Porsche Carrera GT. Then in the fifth of six rounds he would miraculously come closer and closer almost getting me on the long straight and pushing me out in the chicane after the straight. Talk about stupid AI. It took me over an hour to finish and finally win this race.
Having the challenge finished I moved up to level 28. I can’t finish the second tier, yet. The last two challenges aren’t availale until I have level 30/35. However, I have to get a break now anyway, my arms are starting to hurt, it almost feels like work playing this game with the driving wheel.