Gone Baby Gone
This, in the UK, has a special resonance for me as it appears to follow a very similar path to the Madeline Mccan story. For those unfamiliar with this particular drama - an extremely irresponsible parent leaves their child alone for ages and is very surprised when the sprog gets kidnapped.
Gone Baby Gone proves that films are better than real life, though. The film isn't afraid to raise the important question of whether or not the kid is better off with her massively irresponsible mother or with a parent who actually gives a shit.
It starts off really, really well. Casey Afflek (who is definitely one of the most innately likable actors currently working) plays a detective hired by the kids grandmother to track her down.
It's a good film, it's tense, it's well directed... the only real problem is the script. Whilst things start off simply enough, there are so many plot twists, the damn thing just gets too complicated for its own good. There is such a thing as plot twist apathy where any given film has twisted itself into a knot and yet keeps twisting. Gone Baby Gone suffers from this in spades.
It's still quite good and it's better than a poke in the eye if you have nothing better to do. It's certainly not as emotionally draining as films like this normally are so it should be praised for that at least.
Yes Man
I still like Jim Carey. Yes, I only like three of his films - The Mask, The Truman Show & Eternal Sunshine Of The Spotless Mind but in all of those films he mixes being entertaining with soul and that has to count for something.
Yes Man starts off really, really badly. It's the standard Carey wackiness that we've seen in a dozen movies before. Things do settle down when Carey takes his pledge to say "Yes" to everything - so if you wanted to actually like this film, i heartily recommend skipping the first 15 minutes.
From then on... well it's still not a very good film. The plot isn't really there, there's still a bit too much standard issue silliness but it's held together by... well- the heart of the script writer.
The film isn't really a story, so much as the question: "wouldn't it be great to live your life like this" and I, for one, wanted to say "yes" to more things after the credits rolled. It's a film that makes you feel good about life and the opportunities it offers you - so it's practically unique in that respect.
It also helps that I have read the book this film is based on and really, really didn't like it. Anyone who has any great love of the book will probably hate the extreme liberties Yes Man takes with the plot. Although Danny Wallace does have a cameo, I'm told.
I'd actually recommend Yes Man over Gone Baby Gone. It's a worse film but at the end of the day, Yes Man might inspire people to change their lives for the better, Gone Baby Gone serves only to make people cynical about parents and their children.
Actually, that makes them both good.
Hooray, watch both of them.
Thursday, 28 May 2009
The Killing Floor
The Killing Floor, for those who don't know is a Zombie Shooter that, the creators say, is definitely not Left 4 Dead.
So, with that in mind, let's compare it to Left 4 Dead.
Well, Killing Floor is a hell of a lot cheaper than it's zombie filled brother. Here in the UK, you get about twelve quid off.
That's where the positivity ends, annoyingly. The Killing Floors graphics are... okay and whilst I'd like to think we're all mature enough to look past a few graphical flaws, they're symptomatic of a larger problem.
The problem is the Unreal 2004 Engine. This was never the best game engine in the world and time really hasn't been kind to it. The developers have worked some impressive wonders with it but it still feels remarkably imprecise and wooden compared to any game from the last three years you care to mention.
It's not terrible, by the way, it feels quite good fun for the first half hour or so. Blasting the heads off zombies with a well placed shotgun blast feels remarkably satisfying, particularly as there isn't a cross hair so the aiming is mainly down to your instinct as you rarely have time to use the iron sights.
Sadly, the gameplay would feel much better if the weapons were more interesting. There are a couple of shotguns, which are okay, there are two pistols which are okay, there is an assault rifle which is... okay. None of the weapons have really been crafted the way you'd expect them to be. In Crysis or Left 4 Dead, the weapons all have personality, here they're just generic boom sticks.
There are a couple of interesting weapons like a completely useless bolt action rifle and a flame thrower that has so much recoil it's rendered completely useless.
As far as the enemies go, there are an impressive number of types but the best word for them is generic. There's little you haven't seen before in some other game. Left 4 Dead, House of the Dead, Resident Evil... Killing Floor borrows from all of them and not in a good way.
The only original zombie, as far as I can tell, is the patriach who is the games final boss. He has a chain gun, a rocket launcher, a sword and can turn invisible. When he comes along, it won't be long before you see the “your squad was wiped out” screen.
Yes, Killing Floor is an absolute sod when it comes to difficulty. A lot of the enemies have far too many hit points, considering your limited ammo supplies and the limited team play aspects don't really help.
You're encouraged to compete against your team mates as you earn money by killing zombies. This means it's more advantageous to go off on your own and look for things to kill rather than stick with your mates.
There are other annoyances like the fact that you're always left running around at the end of each level looking for the one zombie you have to kill in order to move on, but I'm beginning to feel like I'm punching a disabled kid for not being able to run a marathon. Killing Floor isn't bad, if it had come out five years ago it would have been absolutely brilliant but time has moved on.
So, with that in mind, let's compare it to Left 4 Dead.
Well, Killing Floor is a hell of a lot cheaper than it's zombie filled brother. Here in the UK, you get about twelve quid off.
That's where the positivity ends, annoyingly. The Killing Floors graphics are... okay and whilst I'd like to think we're all mature enough to look past a few graphical flaws, they're symptomatic of a larger problem.
The problem is the Unreal 2004 Engine. This was never the best game engine in the world and time really hasn't been kind to it. The developers have worked some impressive wonders with it but it still feels remarkably imprecise and wooden compared to any game from the last three years you care to mention.
It's not terrible, by the way, it feels quite good fun for the first half hour or so. Blasting the heads off zombies with a well placed shotgun blast feels remarkably satisfying, particularly as there isn't a cross hair so the aiming is mainly down to your instinct as you rarely have time to use the iron sights.
Sadly, the gameplay would feel much better if the weapons were more interesting. There are a couple of shotguns, which are okay, there are two pistols which are okay, there is an assault rifle which is... okay. None of the weapons have really been crafted the way you'd expect them to be. In Crysis or Left 4 Dead, the weapons all have personality, here they're just generic boom sticks.
There are a couple of interesting weapons like a completely useless bolt action rifle and a flame thrower that has so much recoil it's rendered completely useless.
As far as the enemies go, there are an impressive number of types but the best word for them is generic. There's little you haven't seen before in some other game. Left 4 Dead, House of the Dead, Resident Evil... Killing Floor borrows from all of them and not in a good way.
The only original zombie, as far as I can tell, is the patriach who is the games final boss. He has a chain gun, a rocket launcher, a sword and can turn invisible. When he comes along, it won't be long before you see the “your squad was wiped out” screen.
Yes, Killing Floor is an absolute sod when it comes to difficulty. A lot of the enemies have far too many hit points, considering your limited ammo supplies and the limited team play aspects don't really help.
You're encouraged to compete against your team mates as you earn money by killing zombies. This means it's more advantageous to go off on your own and look for things to kill rather than stick with your mates.
There are other annoyances like the fact that you're always left running around at the end of each level looking for the one zombie you have to kill in order to move on, but I'm beginning to feel like I'm punching a disabled kid for not being able to run a marathon. Killing Floor isn't bad, if it had come out five years ago it would have been absolutely brilliant but time has moved on.
Monday, 25 May 2009
Star Trek
Kirk is a dick
So they introduce this character by having him drive a high powered supercar through the desert at 80 miles an hour. Whilst this kid is around 10 years old. This was a really fucking bad idea when Episode 1 did it, and it's a bad idea here. The kid is being a petulant prick and the film seems to think this will make us warm to him, rather than pray for him to go over a cliff in the ensuing car chase.
Things only get worse when Kirk grows up. He is an arrogant narcissist who never actually demonstrates all the skills he claims to have. The one time he demonstrates any insight is when he realises they are warping into a trap – which they then do nothing about as Sulu has all ready saved them there, by making them late. Literally all they do is raise shields and go to red alert, which I'm pretty sure they would have done anyway, after seeing the hulks of a dozen space ships when they materialise.
All the other characterisation is terrible
The characters are either really, really two dimensional (Uhura, Sulu, Bones) or a racist cliché (Chekov & the other aliens in the film – ever notice how there's only ever one representation of every race? That's the Star Trek equivalent of having a token black person. At least they had the good presence of mind to maintain their token black person in the form of Uhura.) Other than possibly the main villain, I can't think of a single character who was more than a string of cliches.
The plot makes no fucking sense
I actually quite liked the story of the aliens coming back and re doing time from their perspective. Yes, it's a story that Star Trek has done many, many, many times but the motivation for the villain was probably the strongest here, if a little two dimensional. HOWEVER, explain to me how no-one on the federation flag ship is more qualified than all these people they have just brought on to the ship (who are fucking CADETS). Kirk is the least qualified person available to be captain and he gets made Captain. Despite being a mutineer. No-one even makes him captain, he just says he is. This is the fucking flag ship of the federation, I'm pretty sure they take a dim view of that sort of stuff.
I hated the special effects
Now, the effects looked quite good, but they had two big problems. Firstly, there was too much CGI. It's really hard to take something seriously when it looks like a computer game. Secondly, the camera work was far, far, far too modern. And by modern, I mean constantly moving, jiggling all over the place, switching focus, maintaining a kinetic pace, not staying on anything in case people noticed that what's happening on screen is not actually that interesting. I tend to switch off when things are trying too hard to impress me and Star Trek tried way, way too hard. I know it has years of low budget stodge to blast through but the solution to that should not have been to shake the camera to the point where the audience gets motion sickness.
The film seemed to be convinced that it was really, really funny.
And it just fucking wasn't.
There were several other small reasons but when your list so far has covered Characterisation, plot, directing and special effects, there's not much more you can do to put a nail in this particular coffin.
Saturday, 23 May 2009
Franklyn
So I saw this trailer a while ago and it really intrigued me. I've been burnt by trailers like that before, however. For example, the trailer for The Fountain promised an epic love story across two centuries and whilst this was technically true, the film came across as extremely asinine.
It was with a healthy degree of cynicism, therefore, that I approached Franklyn and....
Wow.
I now have a new favorite Clever Film. I'm wary of giving too much away as the way the film portrays events and the drip feed of information it gives you is part of the brilliance surrounding it.
For example, the film constantly withholds information from you. One character, for instance, is looking for his son. You never see the picture he shows people of the boy. In a normal film, you'd think "ah, there's some sort of twist there, then" but the film also carefully withholds so many other bits of information (with a considerably amount of skill, it must be said) that you're never sure what's relevant and what's not.
The visual style is superb - one of the stories has a Gothic feeling which perfectly captured the Victorian fascination with the macabre (which is what I've always loved about gothism). The acting is brilliant as well. I had literally no idea that one of the main characters was played by Vesper Lynd from Casino Royale until I saw the credits - she gives an astonishingly good performance - she's disconnected, heart broken and rebellious but has a playful side.
I really can't recommend this film enough. It's not particularly action packed - despite how the trailer represents it... if the trailer intrigues you, I'd definitely recommend checking it out, it's out on DVD in this country in late June.
It was with a healthy degree of cynicism, therefore, that I approached Franklyn and....
Wow.
I now have a new favorite Clever Film. I'm wary of giving too much away as the way the film portrays events and the drip feed of information it gives you is part of the brilliance surrounding it.
For example, the film constantly withholds information from you. One character, for instance, is looking for his son. You never see the picture he shows people of the boy. In a normal film, you'd think "ah, there's some sort of twist there, then" but the film also carefully withholds so many other bits of information (with a considerably amount of skill, it must be said) that you're never sure what's relevant and what's not.
The visual style is superb - one of the stories has a Gothic feeling which perfectly captured the Victorian fascination with the macabre (which is what I've always loved about gothism). The acting is brilliant as well. I had literally no idea that one of the main characters was played by Vesper Lynd from Casino Royale until I saw the credits - she gives an astonishingly good performance - she's disconnected, heart broken and rebellious but has a playful side.
I really can't recommend this film enough. It's not particularly action packed - despite how the trailer represents it... if the trailer intrigues you, I'd definitely recommend checking it out, it's out on DVD in this country in late June.
Left 4 Dead SDK
The SDK is out, which hopefully means many awesome user generated maps. Or, more likely, three decent ones, several dozen shit ones.
I've tried using the SDK myself but, as with every single other level editor I've tried to use, I got about half way through building my first room before I ran away screaming. I used to love building levels in my youth but that was in the days of Duke Nukem 3d when developers were still using sprites. I feel old.
I have, however, tried a few of the user levels out.
There are some really nice ideas out there - I played a map called Back To School (which is an appropriately B-Movie ish title) which...
Well, I was fighting through the woods in standard Blood Harvest But Not Quite As Good territory when I came across a house. It was fairly bland until I got to the roof, where I found a sniper nest, with - get this- just the sniper rifle there. No M4, No auto shotgun. You then had to blow up a barricade to proceed, which alerted the horde.
I chose to load my bots up with sniper rifles and shoot from the roof. It went really well, the zombies swarmed up the house, inside and outside. We fended them off as best we could in some really tense gameplay.
Then I heard the tank music. I turned around and found myself face to face with a tank. I didn't have time to react, I only had time to think "oh fu-" before he had hit me full in the face. I went flying off the roof and landed several hundreds of feet away in a crumpled heap on the floor.
It was great fun :D
Most of the levels I've played are far from complete - there are loads of purple placeholder textures but most of the ones I've tried have had at least one very good idea in them. Give it a month and we should have some good levels to play with.
I've tried using the SDK myself but, as with every single other level editor I've tried to use, I got about half way through building my first room before I ran away screaming. I used to love building levels in my youth but that was in the days of Duke Nukem 3d when developers were still using sprites. I feel old.
I have, however, tried a few of the user levels out.
There are some really nice ideas out there - I played a map called Back To School (which is an appropriately B-Movie ish title) which...
Well, I was fighting through the woods in standard Blood Harvest But Not Quite As Good territory when I came across a house. It was fairly bland until I got to the roof, where I found a sniper nest, with - get this- just the sniper rifle there. No M4, No auto shotgun. You then had to blow up a barricade to proceed, which alerted the horde.
I chose to load my bots up with sniper rifles and shoot from the roof. It went really well, the zombies swarmed up the house, inside and outside. We fended them off as best we could in some really tense gameplay.
Then I heard the tank music. I turned around and found myself face to face with a tank. I didn't have time to react, I only had time to think "oh fu-" before he had hit me full in the face. I went flying off the roof and landed several hundreds of feet away in a crumpled heap on the floor.
It was great fun :D
Most of the levels I've played are far from complete - there are loads of purple placeholder textures but most of the ones I've tried have had at least one very good idea in them. Give it a month and we should have some good levels to play with.
Tuesday, 12 May 2009
Fast & Furious
When I read reviews of the The Fast & The Furious franchise, and then watch the films myself, I'm always struck by how completely the reviewers have missed the point.
Okay, so The Fast And The Furious was nothing but Point Break with Vin Deisel instead of Patrick Swazie and Tokyo Drift was alternately awful and extremely racist BUT 2 Fast 2 Furious was a good film. It wasn't great but it was a silly action film. It was a B movie, like War, Cradle 2 The Grave, Eagle Eye etc. etc. etc.
Fast & Furious continues in this vein. It's not Shakespere, it's fun. It's not entirely a car film, either. In fact, I've seen better car chases in several films but the acting is solid, the plot is above average for a film of this type and the number of times CGI is over used is minimal.
There's not really much more to say about it - it's a good, solid film. The reviewers say that it uses its strongest weapon first and then just trails off.
Now, this may or may not be true. I don't think it is but I can see how people would think that. The opening sequence is very, very good. Up until some CGI nonsense. However, it doesn't slip into X-Men 2 territory, where everything after the opening sequence is a pale imitation of those first few minutes. Fast & Furious mixes it up. There are interesting character dynamics, a fun mystery to unfurl and Jill from Chuck pops up a few times.
So yeah. If you were going to go and see Fast & Furious, expecting some B-Movie fun but were put off by the reviews... just go. Reviewers have always had problems identifying the good B-Movies from the bad ones. This is one of the good ones. Not great, but good.
Okay, so The Fast And The Furious was nothing but Point Break with Vin Deisel instead of Patrick Swazie and Tokyo Drift was alternately awful and extremely racist BUT 2 Fast 2 Furious was a good film. It wasn't great but it was a silly action film. It was a B movie, like War, Cradle 2 The Grave, Eagle Eye etc. etc. etc.
Fast & Furious continues in this vein. It's not Shakespere, it's fun. It's not entirely a car film, either. In fact, I've seen better car chases in several films but the acting is solid, the plot is above average for a film of this type and the number of times CGI is over used is minimal.
There's not really much more to say about it - it's a good, solid film. The reviewers say that it uses its strongest weapon first and then just trails off.
Now, this may or may not be true. I don't think it is but I can see how people would think that. The opening sequence is very, very good. Up until some CGI nonsense. However, it doesn't slip into X-Men 2 territory, where everything after the opening sequence is a pale imitation of those first few minutes. Fast & Furious mixes it up. There are interesting character dynamics, a fun mystery to unfurl and Jill from Chuck pops up a few times.
So yeah. If you were going to go and see Fast & Furious, expecting some B-Movie fun but were put off by the reviews... just go. Reviewers have always had problems identifying the good B-Movies from the bad ones. This is one of the good ones. Not great, but good.
Wallace & Gromit - The Last Resort
The second Wallace & Gromit adventure flopped onto the tubes a couple of weeks ago and I finally gathered the wherewithal to play it. I wasn't exactly enthralled by episode 1. Episode 2 is... better. It's still not really that good though.
This time around, things proceed in a much more game friendly format for the plasticine canine and buffoon. There are three separate acts and a coda, all with separate objectives and tones to them. Episode 1 did have this but the acts were all fairly tenuously linked - I got the impression that I was playing a day in the life of Wallace & Gromit which made the plot fairly hard to swallow.
Here, you have an act where you set up a hotel, an act where you run it and an act where you deal with a situation that has arisen due to the antagonists.
That's right, there are actual antagonists this time around. This is extremely fecking welcome as, bar a squirrel and a giant bee at the end, there were no malicious forces in episode 1, which made the whole thing seem a little too twee.
So. Episode 2 is better. Did I like it?
Well. Sort of.
I don't resent the time I spent playing it but I never really laughed out loud or found myself making real leaps of intuitive logic. The puzzles & game mechanics are a little too simple - meaning that the puzzles are either easy or obscure. Neither of those make for very interesting puzzles. And, unlike Sam & Max, the game doesn't really have humour to fall back on when the puzzles fail.
So, all in all, not as funny as Sam & Max, not as clever as Sam & Max, not as good as Sam & Max.
I am being a little harsh, perhaps. With the exception of the Ace Attorney games, the Sam & Max episodes are the only decent adventure games to appear on our screens for some considerable time. The Wallace & Gromit adventures are certainly far superior to the Strong Bad ones and A Vampire Story.
This time around, things proceed in a much more game friendly format for the plasticine canine and buffoon. There are three separate acts and a coda, all with separate objectives and tones to them. Episode 1 did have this but the acts were all fairly tenuously linked - I got the impression that I was playing a day in the life of Wallace & Gromit which made the plot fairly hard to swallow.
Here, you have an act where you set up a hotel, an act where you run it and an act where you deal with a situation that has arisen due to the antagonists.
That's right, there are actual antagonists this time around. This is extremely fecking welcome as, bar a squirrel and a giant bee at the end, there were no malicious forces in episode 1, which made the whole thing seem a little too twee.
So. Episode 2 is better. Did I like it?
Well. Sort of.
I don't resent the time I spent playing it but I never really laughed out loud or found myself making real leaps of intuitive logic. The puzzles & game mechanics are a little too simple - meaning that the puzzles are either easy or obscure. Neither of those make for very interesting puzzles. And, unlike Sam & Max, the game doesn't really have humour to fall back on when the puzzles fail.
So, all in all, not as funny as Sam & Max, not as clever as Sam & Max, not as good as Sam & Max.
I am being a little harsh, perhaps. With the exception of the Ace Attorney games, the Sam & Max episodes are the only decent adventure games to appear on our screens for some considerable time. The Wallace & Gromit adventures are certainly far superior to the Strong Bad ones and A Vampire Story.
Saturday, 2 May 2009
Velvet Assassin - First Impressions
I've championed Daniel Floyd's video gaming lectures on here before, especially with regard to non-writers writing for games. I originally thought that Fear 2 would be the ultimate argument for this. No, it turns out. Velvet Assassin is.
Things start off badly in Velvet Assassin. In the PC version, at least, you can't adjust any visual settings. At all. This almost certainly means I'm not running it on my native resolution which goes some way to explaining why the graphics look to rubbish.
I'm then treated to an intro sequence which breaks every rule of writing in the book. It feels like it was written by a teenager for a creative writing course at school who has heard about themes, motifs, imaginary and so on but hasn't worked out how to use them yet. It falls into the old trap of expressing something faintly poetic in the hope that it will sound profound rather than pretentious and shitty.
It also used two similes in a sentence once. That sort of thing makes me cry.
Anyway, the game.
The game loses big points in the first few minutes by having a huge (and I do mean huge) sign that flashes up whenever it autosaves that says "CONTENT SAVING DO NOT TURN OFF YOUR SYSTEM". I'm playing this on a PC, guys, we don't need to worry about shit like that. I am kind of resigned to messages like this but it's the first time where I've encountered one which flashes up in the middle of the damn screen which makes it impossible to ignore.
The controls are also fairly rubbish. They're not especially bad but they're imprecise knock offs of the Splinter Cell system.
So what about the gameplay? Well, it's unfortunate that this game has emerged a few weeks after Riddick. Riddick demonstrated that stealth gameplay could be intense, brutal and thrilling all at the same time. Velvet Assassin demonstrates that it can also be fairly dull.
Honestly, though, I didn't get very far into the game. I sneaked around under a bridge where the game explained that a purple line around my character indicated that I was concealed (if you think that would break any sense of immersion, you'd be right). I climbed up a bridge where I was amused to find the developers had been too cheap to animate the character climbing off the ladder onto the bridge. Instead, the screen faded to black when I was at the top of the ladder and faded up again with me on the bridge.
That bit was quite nostalgic, actually, I haven't seen a game do that since 2002.
I then sneaked up behind a drunk guard, stabbed him from behind then sneaked up behind another guard who wasn't drunk and stabbed him from behind. Yes, yes, I thought, this is all very well. What else can I do?
I let the next guard spot me as I ran up to him. Maybe I can disarm him in a cool way or something, I thought. No, no I can't. I can't do anything in fact. I couldn't even stab him. I had to just stand there and get shot.
It was at that point where I thought - Oh, that's the way it's going to be, is it? Fuck you - and turned the game off.
Velvet Assassin doesn't have a demo for reasons that should now be evident so if you're really determined to play it, for gods sake pirate it first.
In other news, there's a demo for Zeno Clash out so I suggest having a look. I didn't like it but I'm sure a lot of people will.
Things start off badly in Velvet Assassin. In the PC version, at least, you can't adjust any visual settings. At all. This almost certainly means I'm not running it on my native resolution which goes some way to explaining why the graphics look to rubbish.
I'm then treated to an intro sequence which breaks every rule of writing in the book. It feels like it was written by a teenager for a creative writing course at school who has heard about themes, motifs, imaginary and so on but hasn't worked out how to use them yet. It falls into the old trap of expressing something faintly poetic in the hope that it will sound profound rather than pretentious and shitty.
It also used two similes in a sentence once. That sort of thing makes me cry.
Anyway, the game.
The game loses big points in the first few minutes by having a huge (and I do mean huge) sign that flashes up whenever it autosaves that says "CONTENT SAVING DO NOT TURN OFF YOUR SYSTEM". I'm playing this on a PC, guys, we don't need to worry about shit like that. I am kind of resigned to messages like this but it's the first time where I've encountered one which flashes up in the middle of the damn screen which makes it impossible to ignore.
The controls are also fairly rubbish. They're not especially bad but they're imprecise knock offs of the Splinter Cell system.
So what about the gameplay? Well, it's unfortunate that this game has emerged a few weeks after Riddick. Riddick demonstrated that stealth gameplay could be intense, brutal and thrilling all at the same time. Velvet Assassin demonstrates that it can also be fairly dull.
Honestly, though, I didn't get very far into the game. I sneaked around under a bridge where the game explained that a purple line around my character indicated that I was concealed (if you think that would break any sense of immersion, you'd be right). I climbed up a bridge where I was amused to find the developers had been too cheap to animate the character climbing off the ladder onto the bridge. Instead, the screen faded to black when I was at the top of the ladder and faded up again with me on the bridge.
That bit was quite nostalgic, actually, I haven't seen a game do that since 2002.
I then sneaked up behind a drunk guard, stabbed him from behind then sneaked up behind another guard who wasn't drunk and stabbed him from behind. Yes, yes, I thought, this is all very well. What else can I do?
I let the next guard spot me as I ran up to him. Maybe I can disarm him in a cool way or something, I thought. No, no I can't. I can't do anything in fact. I couldn't even stab him. I had to just stand there and get shot.
It was at that point where I thought - Oh, that's the way it's going to be, is it? Fuck you - and turned the game off.
Velvet Assassin doesn't have a demo for reasons that should now be evident so if you're really determined to play it, for gods sake pirate it first.
In other news, there's a demo for Zeno Clash out so I suggest having a look. I didn't like it but I'm sure a lot of people will.
Friday, 1 May 2009
Zeno Clash - first impressions
I've been zipping through Zeno Clash for a couple of hours and have a few thoughts.
For those who don't know what it is, there's a trailer here which sums it up quite nicely.
So, observations:
1) It's really fucking weird.
The design is excellent, the setting is pretty unique and the story is... interesting. To be honest, the primary reason to play it is because it's so odd and if that doesn't appeal, you may as well stop reading now.
2) The combat is... a bit shit
You know how the combat in the trailer looked stilted and rubbish? Well, the game is exactly like that. The shooting is extremely unsatisfying & The hand to hand combat pales in comparison to Assassins Creed, The Chronicles of Riddick... even Crysis.
They've falling into the age old trap of assuming that punching people in the head becomes infinitely more fun the more you do it. This may well be the case in real life but it's really not in the game.
3) The voice acting aint up to much.
I feel bad criticising an indie game for having bad voice acting... but it's valid. Indie games are becoming more and more important in the industry right now and if they want to be taken seriously, they need to show that they can do what big budget titles can do in different ways. They do this with the story quite well- you're not eased into the world, all you know is you've killed your father-mother. I don't know what this is yet but I'm rather intrigued. If they'd spent a little extra on the voice actors, the story could have been the main selling point of the game.
4) The source engine is REALLY fucking showing its age.
Now, most of the time this isn't an issue but occasionally, you find yourself wandering through a desert and there will be a two foot high fence on your left and right and you can't pass it. Somehow, they've managed to make a game set in a desert / wilderness a corridor shooter.
About half of the time you're not actually fighting in these corridors but even when the game does open out, it feels small and restrictive. I get that these guys are working on a small budget, I really do, but could they not have picked a better engine? Maybe the Unreal 3 engine or... I don't know, the Cry Engine? Fuck, Merchants of Brooklyn felt more open than this.
5) This is another one of those games where most things about it are good... it's just the gameplay is shit.
It falls into the same category of Fallout 3 and, hopefully, like Fallout 3, many people will be able to look past how shit the fighting and gunplay are but I don't think I'll be able to. It's a game, it's an interactive experience. If the interactive bits are terrible, I'm wondering why the hell they didn't make an animated film instead... I can't help thinking that would have been better for everyone concerned.
6) Despite all of this, I'm going to continue playing it tomorrow.
If I'm honest, I'll admit that I'm not really enjoying playing it. And not even in a The Path way, where I'm not especially enjoying it but I'm so immersed in the game world I don't care. I'm going to continue, even though I have no idea why.
I really don't think it's worth buying anyway. I'd recommend trying it before you buy it but guess what, there's no demo (for reasons that are becoming apparent) so if you want to try before you buy, I suggest torrenting. Don't pretend you don't know how to do that. Hopefully you'll get more out of it than I did.
For those who don't know what it is, there's a trailer here which sums it up quite nicely.
So, observations:
1) It's really fucking weird.
The design is excellent, the setting is pretty unique and the story is... interesting. To be honest, the primary reason to play it is because it's so odd and if that doesn't appeal, you may as well stop reading now.
2) The combat is... a bit shit
You know how the combat in the trailer looked stilted and rubbish? Well, the game is exactly like that. The shooting is extremely unsatisfying & The hand to hand combat pales in comparison to Assassins Creed, The Chronicles of Riddick... even Crysis.
They've falling into the age old trap of assuming that punching people in the head becomes infinitely more fun the more you do it. This may well be the case in real life but it's really not in the game.
3) The voice acting aint up to much.
I feel bad criticising an indie game for having bad voice acting... but it's valid. Indie games are becoming more and more important in the industry right now and if they want to be taken seriously, they need to show that they can do what big budget titles can do in different ways. They do this with the story quite well- you're not eased into the world, all you know is you've killed your father-mother. I don't know what this is yet but I'm rather intrigued. If they'd spent a little extra on the voice actors, the story could have been the main selling point of the game.
4) The source engine is REALLY fucking showing its age.
Now, most of the time this isn't an issue but occasionally, you find yourself wandering through a desert and there will be a two foot high fence on your left and right and you can't pass it. Somehow, they've managed to make a game set in a desert / wilderness a corridor shooter.
About half of the time you're not actually fighting in these corridors but even when the game does open out, it feels small and restrictive. I get that these guys are working on a small budget, I really do, but could they not have picked a better engine? Maybe the Unreal 3 engine or... I don't know, the Cry Engine? Fuck, Merchants of Brooklyn felt more open than this.
5) This is another one of those games where most things about it are good... it's just the gameplay is shit.
It falls into the same category of Fallout 3 and, hopefully, like Fallout 3, many people will be able to look past how shit the fighting and gunplay are but I don't think I'll be able to. It's a game, it's an interactive experience. If the interactive bits are terrible, I'm wondering why the hell they didn't make an animated film instead... I can't help thinking that would have been better for everyone concerned.
6) Despite all of this, I'm going to continue playing it tomorrow.
If I'm honest, I'll admit that I'm not really enjoying playing it. And not even in a The Path way, where I'm not especially enjoying it but I'm so immersed in the game world I don't care. I'm going to continue, even though I have no idea why.
I really don't think it's worth buying anyway. I'd recommend trying it before you buy it but guess what, there's no demo (for reasons that are becoming apparent) so if you want to try before you buy, I suggest torrenting. Don't pretend you don't know how to do that. Hopefully you'll get more out of it than I did.
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