Portal 2
After writing this piece, I was pretty disgusted with how it was nothing but unadulterated praise and sunshine glee for Portal 2. So I decided to go back in and put in a negative depressing image for every positive thing I said.
Given that I've finished Portal 2 five times (4 on PC, 1 on Xbox), I'm not going to use a score chart, because it would just be 20 out of 10 the whole way. That's not to say there aren't any issues with the game, just that the strength of the atmosphere, gameplay, story, dialogue and characters overshadow any other problems.
Update
My lack of updates have been fourfold:
- Entertaining company in real life. This happens once every 2-3 years, but it meant I couldn't continue Metroid: Other M, which is what I'm trying to finish for backlog and scripting purposes. The good news is that I have to have it done by next Tuesday, when Dragon Age II comes out. I also need to play the last 5 minutes of Trauma Team and actually finish it.
- Above-mentioned company also made me discover the pure joy of playing Minecraft on a dedicated server with close friends. I am the material-bitch, who spends all their time digging in mines so everyone else has enough cobblestone to build awesome things.
- RIFT. I cancelled my World of Warcraft account (sorry, Jacquelle), which doesn't say much because I've cancelled it about 10 times in the 2 years I've been on-and-off playing. Even so, RIFT has completely blown me away. I'll probably write something up on it in the future when I get a better grasp on things, but it's so fun. It's also not so much of a timesink; I'm not sure how they did it, but it always feels like you're doing something awesome, even if you can only play a couple hours at a time. In WoW, I would stare unmoving and unaware at the screen for 14 hours and then see that all I did was craft a pair of pants. In RIFT, during a couple hour session playing with my friend, we did a few entire quest threads, explored a mountain area, got a few artifacts, sealed 3 large Rifts and fought back a full-scale invasion of our hometown. It also links in to Twitter, so if you're so inclined to see all my picture updates (I try to only take interesting ones), you can check it out here.
- This has nothing to do with anything, but I haven't been so excited for any video game in recent memory as I have been for Catherine. Words cannot express how much I want to play this, and the fact that Atlus is actually releasing it in the US at the end of July brings me so much joy...I was expecting at least a late-year release, but I guess there's a lot less to translate in a 10 hour puzzle-game than a 200 hour RPG like Persona.
- Bonus - The fact that I can't listen to this while playing a game makes it hard to play anything, since that's all I've been doing.
Dragon Age 2 Demo
Playtime: 1 hour, single play-through
I bought Dragon Age: Origins on the PC, and had never before tried it on the 360 since there was no demo. I heard the controls were completely different - while the PC version had a special top-down tactical view, the 360 had more of a hybrid real-time strategy feel that didn't quite work. I have no idea if that was true, but I was really happy I could try both versions with the Dragon Age II demo.
First thing I found out -- I can't keep up with the cutting edge of gaming PC specs. I have a decent machine that plays pretty much anything and it choked hard on the demo, not to mention throwing up a horrible yellow screen in the intro until I turned on DX11 shaders. Even with the resolution lowered and the quality set down, it was still a bit shaky at times. No fault on the game itself, but definitely a point for the ease of the 360 version.
The Witcher
Playtime: 28 hours
Before you ask, that upshot at the end was because the game was finally over, not because of an amazing ending.
The Witcher isn't a bad game, by any stretch. The combat is annoying, but acceptable...the world is well-realized, especially since it's drawn from a a series of novels. The sidequests can be interesting, and it's refreshing seeing the morality compass completely thrown out the window (though it gets a bit tiring to see that every nice person is secretly a rapist).
It's just incredibly long, and in the wrong way. I don't mind long games if it isn't a hassle to move around: Fallout is painfully long; much more than the Witcher, but it doesn't feel that way. Despite being sent on countless fetch quests, they make it EASY to travel. Even if you choose to physically walk from one side of the world to the other, you can jump, climb, take sewers, explore -- it's fun. And obviously you can fast travel, making it all incredibly convenient.
Perhaps this is because Witcher is based on a modified Aurora engine (used for top-down RPGs), but moving around is a serious pain. Quests are almost always resolved at the furthest possible point from their origin, and walking is a nightmare. There's no jumping, no vaulting, no anything...as I said in a previous post, if you come across a couple inch drop or incline, you have to go around. And since nothing is a straight shot, you end up having to weave through three quarters of the map just to get to the end. And then you have to go through 3 maps to get to the quest destination. Then you have to go back and tell the person you finished it.
Needless to say, after the first chapter or two, I skipped every single sidequest. Maybe it'll get better in Witcher 2, when they're coding their own engine.
I think the inclusion of the sex cards is why a majority of people like this game, and I'm all for in-game romances, but it gets silly. Every woman in the game wants to rip your clothes off; either for no reason at all, or because you treat them like a cheap hooker and give them a jewel. And afterwards they don't act any differently. They don't say or do anything else - it's basically a big checklist in an effort to see all the nudity in the game. There are two main romances, which are nice, but it goes from zero interest to total infatuation in no time (at least with Triss), with Geralt writing the most high school-y crush letter to her.
Which might be appropriate, who knows, because I certainly didn't see any character in him. I'm sure he is meant to be all cool and dark and brooding, but he just comes off like he had a lobotomy. Although there is a plus side to that; his complete lack of personality makes his quips, when given, a lot more amusing.
All in all, I would've liked the game a lot more with a bit more flexibility and a lot more believability. What the Witcher did do, however, was make me want to go play Neverwinter Nights 2 which uses the Aurora engine properly.
The Witcher Script
CAST OF CHARACTERS
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GERALT
The main character, a Witcher
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- WOMAN HE SLEEPS WITH
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- WOMAN HE SLEEPS WITH
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- WOMAN HE SLEEPS WITH
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- WOMAN HE SLEEPS WITH
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- WITCH HE SLEEPS WITH
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- WOMAN HE SLEEPS WITH
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- ELF HE SLEEPS WITH
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- WOMAN HE SLEEPS WITH
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- WOMAN HE SLEEPS WITH
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- WOMAN HE SLEEPS WITH
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- DRYAD HE SLEEPS WITH
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- WOMAN HE SLEEPS WITH
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- WOMAN HE SLEEPS WITH
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- WOMAN HE SLEEPS WITH
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- VAMPIRE HE SLEEPS WITH
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- PRINCESS HE SLEEPS WITH
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- WOMAN HE SLEEPS WITH
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- WOMAN HE SLEEPS WITH
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- ELF HE SLEEPS WITH
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- GODDESS HE SLEEPS WITH
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- WOMAN HE SLEEPS WITH
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- WOMAN HE SLEEPS WITH
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- ELF HE SLEEPS WITH
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- PAIR OF WOMEN HE SLEEPS WITH
PROLOGUE
EXT. CASTLE COURTYARD - NIGHT
GERALT is a witcher, a mostly-human monster slayer for hire. He stands in a castle tower, preparing for a great battle against a monster rampaging through the streets. This particular monster is the king's daughter who has been cursed since birth, though the king waited about 16 years and several hundred bodies before doing anything about it. GERALT has been hired to dispel this curse. Tied up in the corner is the man to be used as bait; the one responsible for the Princess' monstrous form.
PRISONER
What are you going to do?!
GERALT
I'm going to dispel her curse, if you get my drift.
PRISONER
Fool! The only way to break the curse is for you to stay alive through the night and deny her the succor of her sarcophagus come dawn, forcing her into the sunlight!
GERALT
No, I have my own dispelling stick I think will work a lot better. Though you are right, I'll definitely be with her all night. Allll night.
PRISONER
...
GERALT adjusts his belt buckle and sets the PRISONER free, who flees downstairs. GERALT follows.
GERALT
Never met anything that wasn't fixed with a good dicking.
GERALT gets to the bottom of the tower to witness the PRISONER being eaten alive by the PRINCESS. He cups his crotch.
GERALT
Come to Daddy, baby.
Almost there: Trauma Team and Witcher
The past couple of weeks I've been focused on finishing Trauma Team and The Witcher, both of which are startlingly long (Trauma Team is also startlingly good). I can only get in a couple hours here and there, and I've been keeping notes to do a script on Witcher, so nothing has been worth posting so far.
Witcher is juvenile and sexist, but I'm still somehow putting lots and lots and hours into it. The gameplay has gotten repetitive and the story has droned on far too long...Chapter IV was a complete joke, consisting of a series of unrelated side quests that had you going back and forth between two opposite ends of an island. And Witcher is one game where traveling is one of the most painful things you can do; the main character can't jump and can barely vault, so when there's a 2 inch drop to something below, you have to run all the way around to a gradual decline to get down to it.
I've hit Chapter 5 though, which is the last one before the epilogue, so I'm almost there. The script should be good, there's enough material to pick at.
Trauma Team is the real gem; I started playing it when it first came out and put 12 hours into it, but stopped for some reason. After picking it up again, it's become absolutely addictive. The storyline is really engaging, and the characters are just absolute masterpieces. Trauma Center was always a good game series, but it was really all about cutting people open with a stylus (or a Wiimote). While Nurse Angie was cute, the characters had about as much depth as a dried up puddle.
Trauma Team changes all that, and the characters are what drives everything. Even the character I thought I was going to hate (dark haired mopey emo kid) turned out to be an amazing one. I have no idea how many copies this sold, but it wasn't nearly enough.
Back to the grind...hopefully I'll finish Witcher soon and can get the script out, and move onto something else.
Minecraft Script
CAST OF CHARACTERS
CHAR - The main character, marooned in a strange world with no memories.
CHICKEN - A reluctant sidekick.
CREEPER - The main villain. Favorite pasttimes include running towards CHAR or something CHAR loves and then blowing (it/CHAR/the puppy down the road) up.
EXT. SANDY BEACH - MORNING
We open with a gorgeous beach overlooking a vast ocean, with rolling hills stretching out across the horizon. There are signs of wildlife all around; a PIG and a COW are happily hopping around the scenery. A SHEEP wanders nearby. Focus in on CHAR waking up sprawled out in the sand.
CHAR
Where am I? Who am I?
Looking out into the distance, CHAR begins to notice the horizon shifting. A set of gigantic mountains suddenly pops into view.
CHAR
Whoa.
CHAR checks his pockets and immediate surroundings, searching for clues as to who he is or why he's here.
CHAR
Nothing, of course. And it looks like I'm stranded on this island. I guess I'll start looking for food.
Machinarium
Playtime: 4 hours (5.75 hours total)
I finished Machinarium, and I have glee like a kid in a ball pit. The game is masterfully done, and while one or two of the puzzles stretched things a bit, it was satisfying hard and incredibly logical overall. If I'd known it would be about 6 hours, I probably would've had a tad more patience on some of the puzzles that I got hints for.
And it's images like the one below that made me fall in love with it. Look how unhappy he looks! It's so adorable!
Machinarium First Impressions
Playtime: 1.75 hours (1.75 hours total)
Personal Rating This Session: 10 - The graphical style and charm of this game melted me from the beginning...the puzzles are appropriately difficult, require clever thought, and have not yet delved into illogical cheap crap.
Machinarium is another one of those games I started ages ago and never finished, probably because I got distracted by something sparkly in the house. It's a puzzle-adventure game with an incredibly unique hand-drawn art style, and absolutely no story. Literally, none -- I got dumped into a junkyard in pieces and start marching off with no idea why. There are bits of characterization and story woven in as I progressed through -- all done completely without dialogue, relying instead on thought balloons of the main character remembering things (usually someone beating the shit out of him), or someone with a speech balloon showing a picture of something they want. All in all, this makes one of the most atmospheric and gorgeous games I've played.
Mafia II – Complete
Playtime: 6.5 hours (14 hours total)
Personal Rating This Session: 3 - The last few missions of the game are a complete bitch, with sparse checkpoints and unreasonable difficulty. The game ends sadly, but I had too much of a migraine to really care.
As you can see from this chart, the game started out strongly and ended really weakly for me. Mostly because 3-4 of the last 6.5 hour play session was spent retrying entire missions over and over and over because I either died, or an NPC bugged out. By the end, the only thing that made me keep trying was that I knew I was so close to finishing it, and I didn't want to add this to a pile of games I almost finished.
There's still DLC to play, and though I started one of them, I'll have to give Mafia II a bit of a rest before I pick them back up.
This game confused me a lot; there seemed to be a lot of elements that didn't exist for any logical reason, now that all's said and done. Money, for one. I amassed a huge amount of wealth, and lost it all, and amassed it again, and I didn't really find anything to spend it on except sometimes repairing my vehicle. Most of the time I just stole the nearest car, or took a car an NPC wanted me to take, so upgrading/repairing/painting cars I was attached to was a nice one-time thrill, but that's it. When only 10% of the game is driving, and there are only 2-3 garages to retrieve saved vehicles, I realized it's way quicker to just steal a car and be done with it.
There's no point to buying guns in the game because all the guns I could possibly want are giving to me in the missions. On top of that, they took away my guns every chapter or two. There was no point in customizing my cars, because I could never access them easily. There's no point in eating, because I could really only eat at home, and if I was home I was going to sleep soon, which fully recharged my health. There's even absolutely no point to half the map, which is a separate island that has exactly one mission on it.
I liked the sandbox-lite feel of the game for its focus, and there's a couple story twists that are pretty cool. But this is all overshadowed by a complete lack of understanding on basic checkpoint principles, and an overly empty feel of the game mechanics.
