So I quite like shooters, they tickle my fancy and peak my interest and so on.
It might be that I am getting old, but shooters don't feel like shooters anymore. It used to be about fun and exploring and monsters, and now it's about 'realism' where the ammo count of your Assault rifle has to be exactly UND EXACTLY the same as it's real life version else the fans have a ragefest, meanwhile the player automatically regenerates bullet wounds while crouching behind a impenetrable wooden crate.
Personally I had more fun with the totally unrealistic weapon below then I ever had with any gun in recent shooters.
Cookie if you remember it.
Rise of the Wolverine.
Before regenerative health we were forced to explore every nook and cranny to get medkits and health vials. If a fight went ugly you had to backtrack for minutes to gather enough medical supplies before opening the next door. This created reasons for developers to make huge elaborate levels with hidden rooms and secret stashes for the player to discover. Easter eggs weren't found on FAQ's just to get that achievement, they were stumbled upon as a player tried to find another pair of rockets for the upcoming boss fight.
With regenerative health, you can just huddle in a corner and wait till your back to full. Aside from taking away the need to explore, it also broke up the action. Did you remember standing still in Unreal Tournament? Or Quake? No? Because standing still got you killed. The action was fast paced and brutal, strafing and jumping were needed to stay alive, encounters were often and fast, if your health got low you bashed the button for the med kit and continued shooting.
Now you sit behind a car, pop off a few shots till the screen goes red and then resume sitting behind the car till the 'realistic' blood-blur dissipates. Regenerating shot off limbs and headshots like your Wolverine from the X-men.
Thanks. Dick.
Enter the Hoarder.
In the golden days you could carry 9 weapons, or more. Basicly as much as you had number keys, sometimes with subcategories. There have been games that even let you carry as much as 26 weapons, at once.
This, was, FUN. You hoarded weapons and ammunition for all these weapons and you used them whenever you wanted and wherever you wanted. You could pick off someone with a sniper rifle, switch to a mini-gun to thin the oncoming horde, then pick off the stragglers with your shotgun, and nobody stopped you.
This created a problem for developers. We all hoarded the ammo for all the powerful weapons, so by the time we reached a boss the whole encounter was made trivial, we just pulled out the Devastator with full ammo and unloaded it on the giant creep and be done with it. And if the Devastator wasn't enough we still had a full ammo RPG in our backpack, next to the maxed mini-gun and the plasma rifle we saved up for such an occasion.
And after I shot all 67 rockets up his nostril, I'll throw some pipebombs, then shoot off every rocket form the RPG and then the chaingun and then the...
For a game developer this was annoying. Some tried to take all your weapons away before a boss encounter, or forced you to use a specific gun, but none of these helped.
Enter 'Realism'
It's not realistic to hoard weapons and mosey around with enough armaments to make the U.S military blush. So fun made way in favor of realism, as did the environments trade places from lush colorful scenery to bleak brown washed 'realistic' scenery.
Graphics improved, game developers wanted desperately to show how 'realistic' they could make their game. It started with the water effects, it was sort of an unsaid e-peen of developers to make the most realistic rendition of water. It started with splash effects, then rippling then splashing sounds, all the way to wet pants.
Realistic was becoming synonymous to good. But it wasn't. Far Cry was a nice looking game, sadly you spent 90% of it inside grey bunkers trying to find X keycard for X door. Before we even realized it, fun was being sacrificed to realism on a day to day basis.
It's sad that only now after 7 'Call of Duty' and just before number 8, we are slowly seeing the return of shooters that spit in the face of realism and walk the way of mindless entertainment once again, and though they forgot how to do it after all these years, they are remembering.
Yeah, just let me come out of the closet here right now.
I am a massive Warhammer 40k nerd, I don't play the tabletop but I devour the books, the lore and any snippet I can get from the Warhammer 40k universe, I probably read every page of the lexicanum.. twice.
So when THQ came out and told us that Relic, one of my favorite developers, was making another Warhammer 40.000 game, I was pretty happy, when they announced it was a third person game I was ecstatic and when they showed us that the player was going to be following Captain Titus of the Ultramarines I passed out, and regained consciousness a day later with a smile from ear to ear and in dire need of clean pants.
Needless to explain any further, I am a fanboy, and my views should be considered as such. This probably isn't objective, it is biased. You are considered warned.
It's going to be LEGEN -wait for it- DARY.
The premise is this. You are Captain Titus of the Ultramarines Chapter, you lead a small squad of battle hardened Space Marine veterans onto an Imperial planet beset by Orc's.
Note, this isn't your typical "Space Marine" these are the big daddy Space Marines, the one everyone else (Read: Halo, Starcraft, Gears of War) tried to imitate and fail at it. These are the quintessential superhumans in power armor. They aren't some kind of steel biting testosterone filled macho males, these are warrior monks, who lived for centuries and have been bred and genetically modified for war, so far in fact that they are only human in superficial comparison, they are taller, their skin is different, they have 13 more organs then we have including a second heart, a solid bone plate covering their vital muscles and an organ that helps them regenerate wounds on the fly, or at least close off open wounds so they can continue fighting.
Per example: The Ultramarine Leader.
The game focuses heavily on combat to be as visceral as possible and as most engaging as possible, per example, there is no cover system, under the motto that a Space Marine does not hide from the enemy (debatable but let's swing with it for now) instead you execute enemies to regain fury and health.
The environment will mostly consist of the planet, which could be detrimental but for what I have seen so far they are being true to the books and lore, and if that's the case it shouldn't be a problem. The Warhammer 40.000 universe humans live in a sort of high Gothic cities, with large cathedral like structures. Their electronics and machines are so advanced they themselves have forgotten the exact workings of them, they are inhabited by 'Machine Spirits' and are adorned with skulls and brass idols.
The factory planets in the books are planets completely covered with factories and machine shops, literally every square inch is inhabited, they are bleak desolate planets whose only function is to supply ammo, weapons and armor to the Imperial war machine.
The weapons shown off so far are part lore and part fabrication by Relic, though all weapons so far seem to be of lore true strength. The main weapon of a Space Marine is his Bolter, a gun unlike anything we have, it fires shells that are actually miniature rockets that bore into their targets and then explode, reducing their targets to a fine red pulp.
Combat seems to revolve around massive hordes, and that's where the difficulty comes from, it's not so much a one on one battle, but more the danger of being overwhelmed by mooks, which again is pretty much spot on lorewise, as a Space Marine is a warrior few can stand toe-to-toe with and survive.
Recommended system specs have been announced for PC, but Space Marine will be released for all platforms.
Recommended Configuration
* OS - Windows 7
* Processor - Any Quad-core AMD or Intel Processor
* RAM - 1GB (XP), 2GB (Vista), 2GB (Windows 7)
*Hard Drive - 20 GB space free (10 GB free after install)
* Video Card - 512MB Video Card using Shader Model 3 & DirectX 9.0 or better (Performance equivalent to an AMD Radeon 5750 or NVIDIA GeForce GTX 260)
* Online Steam account
As announced on the Space Marine forums, the only thing that worries me slightly is that last line.
Not that I don't like Steam (I really really don't, but it's tolerable) but I fear the game won't get full exposure possible if only available on digital distribution. And some people will even go as far as refuse to install a game that requires steam.
When I heard Obsidian was back on the playing field my heart skipped a beat. Then New Vegas happened, and Obsidian showed they know the what and the where, but fail to execute.
Dungeon Siege III is further proof of this. A hack'n slash that feels like it knows how to be epic but comes short in the end. It's hard to describe, they know what makes a hack'n slash fun, they know what makes RPG's fun, but they still manage to botch it up.
Dungeon Siege III, is available on all platforms, features co-op, and on the PC it can be played with a gamepad aswell as keyboard and mouse. I recommend the gamepad as of time of writing, the keyboard and mouse control is cumbersome at best and Obsidian even acknowledged it's horribleness (somewhat).
It's a classic hack'n slash reminiscent that can be played from a top down view or a more intimate third person view.
The Combat.
It's is nice and visceral, for my first play through I picked Anjali. She is an Archon, lore aside she's a firemage lady that uses fire in everything. And it feels right, she has two stances, like all characters. One for melee, and one for ranged combat. Her kicks are augmented with fiery effects, and her staff swings look like they make a righteous impact. Dungeon Siege does the combat sounds spot on as well, this is something allot of games do wrong, whilst if done right it can breath so much more life into the combat. When firing a fireball in a bandit's face, the animations look powerful, and are accompanied by a mighty rich 'Oomph' sound on release. It reminds me a bit of God of War's sound effects, how the sound perfectly conveyed Kratos's strength and the power he puts into each bone shattering smash.
Fiery Lady using lot's of Fire: almost an understatement.
Sadly the combat is hampered severely by the lack of skills, 3 offensive skills per stance, and 3 defensive skills caps the total skill count to 9, there are 'empowered' versions of these and you can customize the effects, but there is absolutely no choice in skills. By the end of the game you will have picked two or three skills you genuinely like and the rest are left ignored and unused.
The defensive skills are simple yet effective, one regenerates your health, one empowers your attacks and one shields you. Sadly there is little in the ways of clear indication when these buffs are up. The only visual indicators are on the characters themselves, in Anjali's case her hands light up when the weapon buff is active, sadly in her fire form, with the talents I gave her, she has allot of fire around her already, and especially from the isometric view in the midst of firestorms and balls it is nigh impossible to make out if the buff is still active.
This normally doesn't need to be a problem were it not that in my game I upgraded that spells so it would give me health back based on damage done, it was my primary method of healing, and the few times I did die, it was because I did not notice in time the buff died out.
You power these abilities by expending focus, a blue bar reminiscent of mana, but unlike mana in traditional games, focus is regained primarily by hitting things, repeatedly, it is a good thing, it means you rarely have to stop to take a breather or to regenerate and it allows you to keep active in the fray.
For my play through with Anjali it was the summon skill that was left unused, not because it is useless but more because it's buggy. Pets tend to wander off and aggro nearby mobs, while in the case of the fire dog you get as Anjali, it makes a horrible sound as well. Which iterates the point, the sound of the combat in general is right, but some sounds are so annoying they just stand out.
Leveling, Lewt and Companions.
Leveling works as you'd expect it, you whack people over the head with your staff, they keel over and you are awarded with delicious experience. When you level up you are given a point to spend on upgrading an ability and a talent. Each ability can be augmented in two specific ways that add unique functionality to the spell, with the most points spent in either way giving greater benefits. The talents provide buffs on kill, or general passive buffs. Again nothing too shocking. Every so often gaining a level will grant you with an spell point which you can use to purchase a spell, though it is rendered moot because at the end you will have each spell available anyway, so it only really serves as another carrot to keep playing.
As with any RPG worth it's salt there is loot galore, plenty of armor and weapon upgrades are found throughout the game and you will unlikely be wearing the same pair of trousers for long. Another thing Obsidian did extremely well is the inventory system, it is quick and comfortable, even with a controller. It is easy and intuitive to scroll through your armor and there is a side by side comparison to the item highlighted and the item equipped in that slot. The stats are bit obfuscated in their purpose, but a quick look at the help section fixed that for me.
Inventory space is, spacious and your character can carry an unrealistic amount of armor weapons and trinkets of which I thoroughly approve, and when it inevitably does run full, you don't have to hike back to the shopkeeper or discard items, you can simply mutate the undesirable items into money.
Whilst you are thumping people over the head and searing off their eyebrows you occasionally run across loot not meant for your character, and with occasionally I mean on a near constant basis. There are 3 companions for you to choose from and whether they have been discovered yet or not the game does not care. The game will hurl copious amounts of pistols and undergarments at your head designed for people you haven't even heard of.
In the beginning I kept the best piece of armor for each character I hadn't yet encountered but the charm of that soon wore thin, so I started selling them off, worried that I made a big mistake when I first encountered my second companion I was both disappointed and relieved that my selling had little to no impact. Dungeon Siege only allows a single companion to be out at any given time. It is possible to switch out your companion, but as you travel and build up your companion there is little incentive to do so. I personally switched out 4 or 5 times just to see what the other companions abilities were like, I eventually settled on the companion I first got and completely and utterly ignored the others, and the game was perfectly fine with me doing so.
In this I feel Obsidian should have looked at their BioWare brothers and learned from Dragon Age, the companions are very thin and offer little in personality and they can be largely bypassed and ignored. In Dragon Age each character is at least interesting and oft vital part to the story, in Dungeon Siege the opposite is true, your main character is the central coil of the planet and your companions are just troublesome mooks your forced to put up with. There is no need for a certain setup for a certain encounter, as on normal you can pretty much steamroll the content with any companion at your side.
Speaking of difficulty, Dungeon Siege is not a hard game, it does not require tactics, the mooks are mooky and can be cut through with little to no effort, the bosses are nice, and sometimes offer quite a challenge, but in the end it's just all in the tells, the boss will at some point wave his arms in the air in a big elaborate "I SHALL BE ATTACKING YOU!!... soon.. ish." and as long as you dodge out of the way once his attack does come you should be alright, the difficulty comes from learning which wavy arm motions signals which attack.
Quest and Plot.
The quests are meh. Honestly that's all I can say about them. It's been two days since I played Dungeon Siege and I'm struggling to remember examples, the only one that comes to mind is something with a spider, with someone captured and there's a spider behind them, and the conversation goes like this 'You have to cut me down please! There's something here! Hurry!' to which your character responds 'Let me guess, a big white hairy spider?' and the guys goes 'How did you know? Oh it's right behind me isn't it."
That's it, that's literally it, the rest of my mind just blanks, which isn't a good sign. I can perfectly remember the quests of the Dark Brotherhood in Bethesda's Oblivion, that's a good sign. Dungeon Siege just hurls generic baddies at you and collect this, talk to this and kill these quests, which is sad, there has been a veritable drought in hack'n slash games and they could have truly innovated in the genre, sadly they did not.
As for the story, I could for the life of me not remember anything specific, it is the most generic generated story of cliche's, your a member of an organisation that was vastly powerful but has been all but eradicated, you need to find the person that started the crusade on your kin, that person is mad and has awakened something dark and evil which you have to go stab with pointy things. The end. No twists, no surprises, that's it. Everything in the plot is spotted a mile away.
The NPC's and conversations use the classic 'zoom to face and blank stare' as patented by the Bethesda RPG's, except the NPC's don't just stare, they look around, roll their eyes around in a very creepy way. At least it does have the option to have group conversations which is nice, would they have a smidgen of realism mixed into them. You control the conversation with a classic Mass Effect wheel minus the Paragon/Renegade options.
Conclusion.
The game has no replay value to mention, and the co-op is, well. The other person in your game receives 0 xp, 0 gold, 0 items, starts with a naked new char moment they join, and gain absolutely nothing from playing with you. The only cool thing is when there is a conversation you both get to decide what option to take.
Though I don't like rating games or giving points, I'd still recommend this game if you have a few hours to spare, it's an easy going game that plays perfectly reasonable, it is the gaming equivalent of a B horror movie, it's watchable, doesn't require too much investment and it's over before you know it.
