User:Erasculio/Reviews
Games[edit]The Force Unleashed[edit]The Force Unleashed: Ultimate Sith Edition is a very bad game. An action game that tries to place the player as an conduit to an almost all powerful Force, the PC version is an incredibly bad and bug filled port of something that wasn't that great to begin with. Often, when a game is released later for the PC than for consoles, it comes with some kind of improvement over its original version. Such was clearly the case with Mass Effect 1, in which plenty of interface upgrades improved considerably the PC game over the original versions, and even in Assassin's Creed, in which the control system was refined for a better experience. While the Sith Edition of The Force Unleashed has some extras over the original X-Box and Playstation editions, it's an incredibly bad port that was very clearly made just as a cheap way to make a bit more money. This becomes obvious when doing something as simple as navigating the menus and learning that the game uses “[“ and “]” to move the menus laterally, instead of using the left and right arrow keys, and when trying to save the game and learning that instead of a full save system, in which players would be capable of using different slots for different saves, the game simply uses one file and keeps overwriting it as the player advances. The very long loading screens simply for accessing menus, the fact that the menus have been split in multiple screens while they would comfortably fit in a single screen, and the fact that we cannot use the mouse in any menu are other small signs of how no work was done to make this game suited to the PC. The worst aspect of the console to PC conversion, though, is clearly the control system. The game uses a very awkward system in which it tries to automatically target whatever it is you are looking at, more often than not targeting the wrong thing. Considering how many Force powers require precise targeting in order to actually work, it's very easy to become frustrated as your character throws his lightsaber at a box on a wall instead of at an enemy, or grabs an enemy instead of the door you have to open. It would have been great to use the mouse to target Force Grip and use it to throw enemies through the screen, but what we get instead is a system in which mouse movement is extremely awkward and slow, to the point of making it nearly impossible to use some Force powers effectively. The movement controls are far from being precise as well, leading to a few irritating jumping sequences; between this and the incredibly bad camera, that sometimes becomes fixed in a position in which it's almost impossible to see what's happening (such as often happens in one of the last fights of the game), navigating through the game world is more often a chore than something fun. And the second worst aspect of the Sith Edition are the multitude of bugs in the game. There is a very common memory leak effect that slow downs the game to a very low speed, making it borderline impossible to play, and which may only be solved by closing the game. Other bugs include making enemies disappear (which happened to me in a boss fight near the middle of the game), stopping enemies so they perform no action but cannot be killed either (which happened to me in one of the last boss battles of the game), the command to skip a cinematic failing to work more often than not, and so on. I wish I could say that The Force Unleashed was just a good game plagued by a bad port, but unfortunately what was there to begin with wasn't that good in the first place. It has a very poor level design, in which some objects may be used as platforms and others with the exact same appearance cannot, making it an exercise in frustration to try to find any path from A to B other than the very specific way the developers have marked at the map. Combat is extremely annoying, as the only way the game has to offer a challenge is by adding seeking unblockable attacks which knock the character down and leave him at the ground for several seconds. These attacks are the most common source of damage in the latter stages of the game, and not only there's nothing in the game to deal with them (as you cannot reduce the knock down time or do anything in order to have a faster recovery), but they also push the character back. Between the bad controls and the frequent knock downs (some timed in order to have the next attack hit exactly when the character is rising from the previous one), it's extremely annoying to perform jumping sequences or use the slower Force powers; and both of those are often needed to deal with the ranged attackers. Another bothersome aspect of the game are the boss fights. In order to allow the player to perform “cool” actions, the boss fights end with dynamic sequences in which a player has to press keys which are quickly flashed at the screen; failure either restarts the sequence or sends the player back to the fight, in order to reduce again the health of the enemy. The idea failed miserably, though, as players are forced to pay attention to the bottom of the screen in order to watch for the next key hint instead of watching the “cool” moves of the playable character. The sequences also come without warning, making them annoying at the second half of the game: enemies which were bosses in the earlier stages become somewhat common enemies at the latter ones, yet they still require the dynamic sequences in order to be beaten. It's not uncommon for an event to kick in the middle of a big fight, during the execution of a combo, and the key sequence of the combo to count as a failed sequence in the dynamic sequence, forcing the player to try to attack the mini boss again. Some of the over the top boss battles have become somewhat famous as examples of bad design, such as the fight between a massively sized enemy in which the character has to perform a very repetitive set of goals in order to win. The graphics of the game are not exactly impressive, which is forgivable in a game as old as this one. However, LucasArts made a very big deal about its two new technologies for this game (the Havok engine, which would allow objects to be bent and broken as real materials do, and the Euphoria engine, which would give enemies complex animations when moved around), yet neither of them has a considerable impact at the game, being mostly a waste of resources. As someone who has played many Star Wars game, it's very annoying to again see a game which limits itself to music and sounds from the original trilogy (with something from the prequels appearing very occasionally), repeating the same tunes over and over instead of trying something new. In other hand, the story is very good. It follows the Star Wars theme of how one individual can change the Galaxy, without making additions that wouldn't make sense with the mythos as a whole and also explaining some aspects of the overall story that were not detailed in the movies. The plot also references in subtle ways to other sources from the Expanded Universe (such as the Dark Trooper project mentioned in Dark Forces), creating a nice feeling of consistency. The story is not perfect, though: the main character is not developed very well, as so often happens in action games, and his point of view changes surprisingly fast for someone who would have been indoctrinated through most of his life. In the end, though, he acts more as a catalyst for interesting developments than as the main subject of the plot. With great cinematics and good voice acting, the story was the only reason I kept playing the game through the end. What bothers me the most, though, is how The Force Unleashed fails at the most basic thing it was trying to achieve. One of the main goals behind the game was to make the player feel empowered by the Force, capable of astonishing feats of power. However, between the bad controls, the slow activation of powers, the need to charge many abilities in order to make them somewhat useful (good luck trying to charge something with knock downs every few seconds), and mostly underwhelming designs for Force skills, it's very hard to feel empowered by anything other than a strong feeling of masochism when trying to play this game. Other entries in the Star Wars universe, such as Jedi Outcast and Jedi Academy, actually made a much better show of power than The Force Unleashed, by allowing the main character to manipulate entire rooms of enemies without having to rely on gimmicks such as using Force Grip on a TIE fighter (and not being able to lift smaller things like an AT-T walker). The Force Unleashed: Ultimate Sith Edition is simply a bad game. With the sequel having received even worst reviews than the first one, and knowing it leaves its story open ended with no TFU 3 in the works anytime soon (as the lead designer has left LucasArts), this is the kind of game I don't plan to touch again any time soon. Dragon Age: Origins[edit]One of the most hyped games released in 2009, Dragon Age: Origins feels like a merge of Knights of the Old Republic with The Witcher and a small touch of Planescape: Torment. Like the other BioWare RPGs, Dragon Age begins with an introduction that soon leads to an open world, in which the player has a set of objectives to be done in any chosen order. There's still a central place in which to talk to party members, discussing their back stories and pursuing romance, and also all main quests have two paths that can loosely be described as "good" and "evil" options, often trying to add some kind of twist to what originally appear to be simple tasks. Those features are shared between this title, Jade Empire, Knights of the Old Republic and Mass Effect, so while they have been extremely well done here, they are somewhat predictable for anyone who has played older Bioware games. Like The Witcher, the game happens in a fantasy universe with a rich background; much has been said about Dragon Age being an "adult" or "dark" game also like The Witcher, but in truth the game is mostly obsessed with blood. Killing almost anything is enough to bath all party members in a layer of blood that will take a while to vanish; other than that, only in very few places the game manages to be darker than Mass Effect. The sex scenes have been censored considerably from what is seen on ME, probably a side effect of the American media claiming that the older game was a porn simulator filled with lesbianism; had the romance scenes been done tastefully in Dragon Age that wouldn't be an issue, but the sex scenes featuring characters in their underwear just look silly. Like Planescape: Torment, players may turn the camera to an isomeric view, playing with good old click to move. Considering how many RPGs today follow control schemes and camera modes exactly like those found in MMORPGs, it was a great surprise to be able to play the game like old CRPGs. It also allows for an interesting view of battle, giving a greater point of view in which to plan strategies. Thanks to having a party of four characters, with the option of stopping the game whenever wanted in order to give commands to each party member, battles give the opportunity to execute elaborated strategies; the game also offers many features dedicated to make fights more complex, such as most spells having friendly fire, characters doing more damage while attacking enemies from behind, and being able to set predetermined conditions in which party members will execute specific tasks (exactly like the gambit system found in Final Fantasy XII). Unfortunately, battles also have their flaws. There is a great imbalance in how mages are far more powerful than the two other character archetypes, warriors and rogues, both thanks to bugs (daggers and bows, the weapons of choice for rogues, are bugged and thus less effective than they should have been) and to design: all professions have trees of Talents, which give special abilities for any character. However, the abilities of warriors and rogues are split based on what kind of weapon they specialize in, while mages may pick any spell and be effective with it; more or less like a Warrior in Guild Wars placing all his attribute points in Hammer Mastery and being offered axe and hammer skills, with an Elementalist having 15 in all caster attributes and being able to pick skills from any spellcasting profession. As a result, a rogue or warrior character in Dragon Age would likely end the game with a few active abilities, while mages don't have enough space on their quickbars for all their spells. Picking new talents is the most important part of character progression. Dragon Age:Origins has a level cap of 25* and each level grants more health, more stamina/mana and more attribute points, the game features an scaling system in which the enemies also level up when the main character grows in power (and all characters in the party level up, too, even those who are not actively in use). Items are important, but not game breaking; while the game relies too much on potions (they are the only effective source of healing, and the most effective way for a mage to regain mana), having the best equipment does not give too much of an impact. Thanks to those two traits, the game avoids being like many Diablo clones in which the point of the game is to grind for levels and items, leaving the player to focus on the story. And as expected, it's on the story that the game really shines. The main plot may be a bit predictable for those who have played other Bioware games, but the background created for the world is incredibly rich, enough to make stories for multiple games. There are enough pieces of lore, back stories and dialogue to fill many books, together with great voice acting and great writing. Choices have consequences, beginning with character creation - picking one of the six possible origins for the main character has some sort of impact during the entire game, from the introduction to the ending scenes. The art is good, although not spectacular; the game looks better from the isomeric view, which hides some of the flaws in the graphics. The audio, in other hand, is perfect, from the great voice acting to an amazing soundtrack and to good sound effects. Unfortunately the game still has plenty of bugs. None game breaking, but Dragon Age does crash once in a while, there are many memory leak problems leading to long loading screens, and some features (like the above mentioned bug weakening rogues) leave some characters worse than they should have been. Some issues are already being worked on by Bioware, but their community manager (who's stupid) claims they're not in a hurry to fix them. In closing, Dragon Age: Origins is another Bioware game, with all the good and the bad that entails. It's mostly a good game, that shines on its rich world and great writing, despite some odd design decisions and some bugs.
Assassin's Creed 2[edit]An interview mentioned how one of the goals of the Assassin's Creed developers is to set their games in locations not often used in such media, so players may see new places and even learn a bit about them. Such goal is accomplished perfectly in AC2: the setting, which focuses mostly on Florence and Venice during the Renaissance, has been rendered faithfully down to almost all of the landmarks, with a large in-game database mentioning interesting facts about famous building and important personalities of the time. While the database entries are short and heavily tinted with cynicism, they add a degree of culture that is not often seen in action games. The setting has its problems, of course. The majority of the game happens in a single city, Venice, and while the available towns are more different among themselves than the ones of the first Assassin's Creed (running through the rooftops of Venice is not the same as running through the rooftops of Florence, for example), spending so much time in the same place becomes tiresome near the later chapters. Venice highlights one of the technical problems of the game, too: while the main character may actually swim in this Assassin's Creed, the NPCs still can't, so dropping enemies on the many canals of the city ensures an instant kill, and swimming away is a very easy way to escape from everyone. Assassin's Creed 2 adds many new moves, such as disarming an opponent, killing two targets at the same time, and killing a target from within a hiding place. The game also introduces underground levels designed as acrobatic challenges, which the developers have compared to the newest Prince of Persia game. All those features share the same problem, though: the controls are simply not precise enough. In Prince of Persia, you could input the commands for your character to jump from A to B, and he would comply; doing the same does not necessarily work in AC2, neither do most of the other advanced commands that have been introduced in this sequel. The lack of absolute precision wasn't a major issue in the first Assassin's Creed, since the game relied little on precise control; this time, though, the acrobatic levels theoretically demand a degree of control that doesn't exist. Making things worse, those levels are among the few places in which the camera isn't fully controlled by the player, meaning the viewing angle often changes in the middle of a move, leading to frustrating missteps. Fortunately the acrobatic levels are easy; in other words, they are lenient enough with the mistakes which are bound to happen due to the faulty control system in order to not become an exercise in frustration. Truth be said, some of the new additions work very well. Killing enemies from below ledges and from cover add entire new strategies for remaining undetected, together with the addition of a poison capable of slowing killing a foe (usually when the main character is very far away). Being able to hire NPCs in order to distract enemies is a perfect way to add a (thankfully small) gold sink while giving players more stealth options. The new blending system, allowing most NPC groups to be used as hiding places, also works very well to reinforce the stealth elements in an intuitive way. It has also become far more reliable to kill enemies from above, something possible but difficult to pull off in the first game. So many ways to kill a target would have been wasted if the missions of AC2 forced players to follow a specific path, but more often than not there are more than one way to reach a given goal; for example, in a sequence in which the character was supposed to slowly climb down a set of stairs to kill an enemy in a balcony, being careful to not be detected, I actually fell straight to ground level, and it was nice to learn how it was possible to finish the mission through a completely different path. And while the game has lost part of the strategy from its previous version, in which mini missions before the main assassinations would give hints about the area layout and etc, the level design for the main storyline is usually interesting. The multiple side quests suffer a bit due to repetition, but given how they may be done at any given time, it's simple to play the main missions to break the side quest monotony. The third part of the game, other than the main storyline and the sidequests, is the search for collectibles, just like in the previous game; but this time Ubisoft has added an interesting twist: the search for glyphs, hidden in a few major landmarks, trigger somewhat surrealistic puzzle sequences which, when completed, unlock a CGI animation detailing a very interesting part of the Assassin's Creed main storyline. The story itself was well done, similar to the first game. Most characters are not well fleshed, without becoming caricatures; and it's clear that the Renaissance story is driven by the actions, not by the characters. We see very little of the present, but its story follow the opposite pattern: little happens, but the interaction between the characters is the most important part of what we see. I wish I could replay those story sections... ...But I actually can't, unless I begin the game again. Unlike the first Assassin's Creed, in which we could replay any part of the game we had already completed, AC2 prevents players from replaying past sections of the game. This is joined by a very awkward saving system in which there is no manual saving, and the game has only one save file, so it's not possible to just load save files in order to play through the middle of the game. And making the issue even worse, there's the draconian DRM system chosen by Ubisoft: despite being a single player game, AC2 requires a permanent Internet connection, or the game simply freezes, and save files are stored at the Ubisoft servers, not in the local computer. While having an internet access has not been a problem to me, the overly restrictive DRM system is troubling, and it's somewhat worrisome to learn that until now, months after release, it appears no one has been able to crack the game. We are under the risk of such protection to be considered a success, and then copied by other game developers. Another major problem is a bug regarding users with Quad Core computers. For those players, the game simply freezes, demanding a full reboot of the computer, once every few minutes; Ubisoft's Support has still to say anything about the issue. The players themselves have found and shared a work around at the AC2 official forum, by having the game manually set to not run in all four cores, but that should have been only a temporary solution; now, months later, there is still no official response, much less an official fix. The good news is that the grind introduced to the game is a smaller problem than I had expected. The introduction of gold as a currency, earned through many different ways, early becomes a non issue as there's a very simple way to assure a constant stream of gold, requiring only the main character to visit a specific place to retrieve his money. Without the need to grind for it, the monetary system goes from being irrelevant (buying new weapons and armor when they become available is more a shore than anything else, but at least it's fast) to allowing some interesting mechanics, such as hiring NPCs or dropping coins at the ground to distract enemies. It's interesting that a game with so many options manages to become so repetitive. Often there's a single best way to achieve any given goal, so it's only a matter of recognizing the situation and applying the proper solution; other times, it would be possible to execute a very cool and cinematic action or kill, but the lack of precise controls ruins it. In fact, during one of the earlier Assassin's Creed 2 demonstrations, the developers were showing part of a demo in which the main character uses a new weapon, the dual hidden blades, to do a very cinematic move and kill two enemies at the same time. The developer who was playing actually missed, though, and instead killed only one enemy using a common attack. That's a good analogy with the game itself: it aims to do something very, very cool...And comes close, but misses in the end. Between all the major issues of the game, the (sometimes very interesting, others at least easily ignored) innovations of this sequel lose much of their appeal. And while the game ends on a cliffhanger, again, it's hard not to share some of the cynicism seen on the database entries and actually believe that Ubisoft has a master plan, with all the mysteries and foreboding actually leading somewhere. One of the main issues of the Assassin's Creed series is how its premises do not work on a present day setting, yet more and more that's the direction (or, rather, the time) Ubisoft appears to be reaching for. Here's to hoping Assassin's Creed 3 manages to work through all the faults in AC2 while adding more innovations to the franchise. Mass Effect 2[edit]The Good (in comparison with Mass Effect 1)
The Bad (in comparison with Mass Effect 1)
The Ugly (in comparison with Mass Effect 1) User interface. This is so bad it requires a section specifically about it. The storyline is nice, the characters are nice, the missions are nice, the combat is nice, but everything related to the user interface is horrible. I mean:
Mass Effect 2 is not better than Mass Effect 1. Bioware solved many of the annoying flaws in ME1, only to replace them with equally annoying flaws in the newer game. Considering the lack of impact the story has over the main Mass Effect storyline, I would only recommend this game to those who don't want to miss anything linked to ME (and of course the Bioware fanboys). Castlevania: Order of Ecclesia[edit]Now this was...Different. Having played all Castlevania entries on the GBA and the Nintendo DS, Order of Ecclesia was actually a surprise. We finally have a large number of new enemies, and new graphics for most of the old ones, making this the most original of the DS Castlevania games. The main character and the rest of the supporting cast are also very original, no longer members of the Belmont clan (not directly, at least) or relatives of Dracula; instead, we see the story of Shanoa, one of the few Castlevania characters who has really good reasons to do what she does. The game uses a system of Glyphs, abilities either found on statues through the game or taken from enemies, as a replacement for Dawn of Sorrow's dominance system. The Glyphs give a huge variety of moves to Shanoa, and it's interesting to see how the game mechanic has been incorporated into the lore of the game - almost all magic comes from Glyphs, so enemy spellcasters not only have their spells stolen by Shanoa, but also their spells fail when their Glyphs are taken. Unfortunately, the variety of Glyphs is in practice smaller than one would expect based on their numbers. Almost all weapon Glyphs have three variants, with the later and more poweful ones rending the earlier ones basically useless. Many of those weapons are very similar, so there are little advantages in not simply using the ones with the highest attack. Many of the spells have cool looking animations, but are almost useless (there's one to summon cubes that has no point at all). One way the developers have chosen to address this lack of variety is by adding plenty of hard counters in the game. While in previous Castlevanias an enemy would be slightly weaker against one kind of attack and slightly stronger against another, in Order of Ecclesia enemies are almost immune to some Glyphs and extremely vulnerable to others. Which means effectively destroying enemies is a matter of using the best Glyph for each kind of oponent, but most of the time it means using either the most powerful slashing weapon, or the most powerful smashing weapon; all other attacks are mostly unnecessary. The game also has a small number of platforming Glyphs, from a very creative magnetic Glyph that allows Shanoa to propel herself from magnets found through the game, to the ability of moving through a few walls and the expected flying Glyph. The game has some interesting platforming puzzles, most which find a good compromise between challenging and frustrating. Speaking about challenging, this game is HARD. While you could play the previous DS Castlevania games without dying once, I would guess most players are going to die at least a few times in this game. Common enemies are hardly pieces of cake, but most of the challenge lies in the boss battles, in which the game again has a system of hard counters. Most bosses have at least one devastating attack, but being hit by one of those is a sign that the player is doing something wrong; there is a way to completely avoid the bosses' main attacks, even if it takes a few tries for a player to figure out how to do it. While often it requires good reflexes, finding the weakness in each boss' battle pattern feels almost like a mini puzzle game, which was a very nice move from the Order of Ecclesia developers. With an interesting story, new enemies, interesting gameplay and great boss design, Order of Ecclesia is a very good game. However, a few flaws prevent it from being truly great, making Dawn of Sorrows still the best DS Castlevania game in my opinion. Dragon Age 2[edit]I was pleasantly surprised by Dragon Age 2. After playing Origins (which was good, but somewhat bland) and Awakening (which was IMO rather bad), Dragon Age 2 really captivated me. Somewhat ironically, considering how it has been bashed even by Bioware fanboys. The review will be more succinct, considering it’s also to be posted at the Dragon Age 2 forum, and something written purely as prose would be completely ignored there. The Good:
The Bad:
The Ugly:
The other features of the game didn’t leave a lasting impression. Combat has been made easier, but not too easy; it’s nice to see that enemies often come in waves, which is nice since otherwise a few well placed magic attacks would have easily been capable of dispatching all common enemies. There is less emphasis on controlling party members, but since the combat has been made to be more visceral, it makes sense. The crafting system in Awakening was annoying and clumsy; the system in Dragon Age 2 is better, if only because it’s less annoying and less clumsy, but it still isn’t something I’m fond of. Voice acting went from great (the actress for the female Hawke, for example) to meh (many minor NPCs). But overall, the game is great. An amazing story with an amazing setting, great graphics and a great soundtrack all combine to make Dragon Age 2 the best Dragon Age game yet. A pity it has some serious issues, but despite them it’s still one of the best RPGs from Bioware. The Witcher 2[edit]I admire the way Projekt RED treat their customers. They released the enhanced edition of the original Witcher game as a free update for old players, they effectively gave me a second copy of the newer game when I couldn't install it, they removed the DRM soon after release, and so on. With this kind of attitude, I was eager to enjoy The Witcher 2 and praise their work. I can't, however. The game is filled with issues, from crippling problems to small bothersome things that have ruined the game for me. It began in the very installation process – I couldn't install the game because Projekt RED used DVDs with dual layers, which require a specific, and not that common, kind of DVD reader to work. Took me a few days to solve the issue, as Support saw I had a valid game key and gave me a digital copy, which by itself came with another key. This issue happened so often that Projekt RED removed the need for game keys – so many players were given an extra one that the requirement was moot anyway. A similar issue happened with players that couldn't install the pre-order content – the game had a few items and small features based on where a player had preordered The Witcher 2, but people were having issues when trying to install any of those bonus features. Project Red replied by allowing everyone to install all pre-order bonuses, which was a nice move, but ultimately it was just a way to deal with one more bug. And speaking about dealing with bugs, for some reason the game didn't support a 1280x1024 aspect ratio - yes, aspect ratio, not resolution. I had to choose between playing the game with black bars taking part of my screen (such as when seeing a widescreen movie on a common television) or with distorted, stretched graphics. This has been fixed in a patch released recently, but still it was one more disappointing flaw in the game. Then we have the performance issues. The game has its considerable share of random crashes, and it uses loading screens in a very odd way – they happen when moving between areas, as expected, but they also happen in the middle of a zone, with no sign of a transition coming. It wasn't uncommon for me to be walking and suddenly be ambushed by a loading screen that left me exactly where I was, in the same area. Those frequent loading screens break gameplay, even though they don't last too long. What is incredibly slow is the transition between the game itself and some screens - it takes one eternity for the load screen to appear, or for the game to leave the game over screen. I have read that having few saved games makes this issue a bit better, but between the crashes and the way combat works, it's safer to have many savegames. Combat is a mess. The controls are very bad - there's clearly a delay between when we activate one command and when the character begins to execute it. This is very annoying when trying to parry or dodge (especially considering that there are enemies that can kill you in one hit), but it's almost unbearable when using "spells", since those have a delay to be activated, then the character begins the spell animation, then he finishes it and is stuck in aftercast for a few seconds. Combat is also very imbalanced - there's a "spell" that makes enemies move slightly back, and another (with the same cost and recharge and etc) that gives you damage immunity plus deals damage to enemies in an area. The second is clearly better than the first, and better than the other 4 spells in the game; it’s so good, in fact, that it makes parrying almost useless, as it consumes per parry the same resource that a single activation of that spell requires. Another thing that hurts combat is the control scheme of the game. I have no idea why, but it’s now more and more common to see PC games with a control scheme fitting for consoles: there is no cursor to define exactly what you want to interact with, instead the mouse controls the camera and the game automatically targets what it thinks you are trying to look at. Needless to say, this feature often doesn’t work as intended, so very frequently I had to spend quite some time moving the mouse around for the game to target the specific piece of equipment I was trying to loot from the ground. In combat it’s actually worse, as we can’t just select an enemy – we have to hope the game will target the enemy we want to hit, which is especially annoying in the many moments in which the character faces a group of enemies. Speaking about the item system, it’s one more annoying aspect of the game. Alchemy is an important part of being a witcher, so we spend a lot of time collecting herbs and similar things to make potions. Not only it’s rather annoying to be eternally collecting stuff, it’s extremely annoying to be collecting stuff we can barely see – in all forest environments (and nearly everything in the game is either a forest or some kind of city), the vegetation is so high and so thick that we can’t see anything below the witcher’s knee. Since there’s also no simple way to learn if something in the background is a container with items or an empty container that’s just part of the background, we have to rely on the witcher’s amulet – an effect that highlights items we can interact with. I don’t know if I was annoyed more because that was the best way to find items lying around in the world, or because the cooldown in using the amulet required me to, in some areas, use it, stop, wait for recharge, walk, use it again, and so on. The alchemy system itself isn’t much better – once we select a potion to be crafted, the game automatically fills the ingredients from a list of available reagents, but it always chose the most valuable first. Often it would use one of the rare mutagens, abilities that can improve permanently the witcher’s stats, instead of using one of the reagents that don’t have any other role other than being alchemy ingredients. Not even once did the automatic selection of reagents actually help me. The item system is also crippled by a limited inventory. How many items Geralt can carry without suffering penalties (walking very slowly and being unable to dodge) depends on the weight of those items. It would be a sensible way to prevent players from walking around with an impossibly big inventory, but in practice it doesn’t work. Some quests demand reagents that were available only in previous areas of the game and that were not marked as anything important, so it’s easy to sell those items by mistake and thus become unable to complete at least one important quest. The item crafting system demands specific components in order to craft stuff, and even ignoring how annoying the system is (you have to look at the materials, run around trying to learn where to find some as loot drops, where is a NPC that sells others, and find recipes for the remaining components, which require you to hunt materials for the materials you want in order to craft something), it’s not unusual for it to require reagents found only in a previous and now inaccessible area. Crafting materials are also incredibly heavy and are needed in large numbers, so it’s very easy to hit the inventory cap. Lastly, the story… Is nice, but it’s filled with a few very big holes. I think I can guess what happened – there’s a point in the story in which the game branches in two paths, and those paths come together later. The problem is, some reveals happen in one branch but not in the other, and in the end the character magically knows about things he had not been told about. Imagine my surprise when I learned about one of the most important plot points in the game by just casually checking the character’s log, only to find out later that the witcher makes a small speech about it despite not having any way to know about that piece of information. There are two such pieces of information that have a huge impact on the game yet appear from nowhere. The other plot points are interesting and show some promise, but in the end they all frizzle without reaching any satisfactory conclusion; The Witcher 2 has probably one of the most lackluster endings I have seen, considering how much potential the story before it had. Sure, the game has some good aspects. The voice acting is perfect, the characterization of Geralt (who is an existing character with a formed personality, unlike many current RPGs such as Mass Effect, in which we build the personality of our character from nothing) is excellent, the graphics are nice enough, and the soundtrack works. Overall, though, The Witcher 2 is a huge disappointment. Between the technical issues, the annoying combat, a bothersome items system and the unfulfilling storyline, this game doesn’t rise above mediocrity. Even some of the DLC content is severely lackluster. I hope one day Projekt RED will release a “The Witcher 2: Enhanced Edition”, but reading other reviews make me doubt it very much. I hope The Witcher 3, which undoubtedly will come, manages to focus more on what made the original The Witcher so interesting and less on all the aspects that desperately need a change. Deus EX: Human Revolution[edit]I have never been a fan of first person shooters. That’s not what Deus Ex: Human Revolution is, though. In fact, one of the game’s main marketing claim was that it could be played with multiple gaming styles, from a direct combat approach to a stealth gameplay to a hacking frenzy… And that’s a lie. Deus Ex is constantly pushing players to follow a specific style of gameplay, focusing on stealth above all else, be it through experience rewards (the game gives significantly more experience by playing a level without being detected or by silently knocking an enemy down than by killing all enemies in an area with a machine gun) or through the item distribution in the game (ammo is somewhat hard to find) or through the available augmentations for the main character (most of which are far more useful for a stealth gameplay than for a combat-style gameplay). That’s not necessarily a bad thing, though. If the game invites players to avoid just running from room to room gunning all enemies on sight and instead find other paths, it offers multiple options to do so. There are usually many possible ways to move through a level, be it by sneaking through the guards, punching through a wall in order to find a hidden path, hacking through doors in order to open a way that was blocked, finding a vent which to crawl through, and so on; it’s not uncommon for all those options to be available in the same area. That’s where the game shines: in rewarding exploration and creativity, almost making us feel like we are breaking the rules of the game as we avoid the main, obvious path to advance through levels. Unfortunately, that’s pretty much the only really great aspect of the game. The storyline is incredibly predictable, as most “plot twists” can be seen coming from the game’s prologue. The art direction is a repetition of old clichés, borrowing heavily from Blade Runner and from many similar games. Levels are detailed, but they often look almost the same, with only a few of those details telling us if the main character is in a Detroit skyscraper or in a Chinese factory. The soundtrack is utterly forgettable, and voice acting is rather inconsistent; the main character unfortunately has a very bad actor, who spends most of his time just reading his lines instead of actually trying to act. I was also a bit disappointed by the available augmentations. While we can give the main characters many different augmentations, allowing him to use a considerable number of new abilities, most of them don’t really add anything new to the game. Many are completely useless (seeing how far enemies could hear the main character, but without taking into account closed doors and all other ways to affect sound, for example) and most just make some activity easier, as opposed to adding a completely new ability (the invisibility system, for example, only makes some stealth sequences easier, but it doesn’t really open any new path). There are only a few abilities that actually change profoundly gameplay, such as the hacking ability, the ability of punching through walls and the ability of jumping higher. Those allow the main character to use paths that are simply not available without them, being incredibly valuable once learned. Despite all my criticism, I have to admit the game is extremely polished. All the small issues found in almost every game released recently simply don’t exist here. Controls are very responsive, they may be remapped at will, the saving game system works very nicely and the game very wisely keeps track of both the latest and the second to last automatically saved games. The user interface is beautiful and has been perfectly integrated to the game world, allowing us to believe that what we see is also what the main character sees, through his visual augmentations. The augmentations that change the way the UI looks are very inventive, as well as being visually well designed. The inventory system works quietly and efficiently, with items automatically moving around in order to allow for the best possible arrangement. In the end, Deus Ex: Human Revolution is very fun where it invites players to try to find alternate ways to move past a level, and nowhere else. The other aspects of the game are somewhat mediocre, but those interested in a fun almost puzzle-like first person game will be happy with this title. Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood & Revelations[edit]It’s easy to understand what is behind the main issues of Brotherhood and Revelations: they are both very short games. Brotherhood could have been just an expansion to AC2, and Revelations is so short it could have been an expansion to Brotherhood. Ubisoft decided to deal with this by artificially increasing the length of those games – in other words, by adding grind. That was one of their biggest mistakes. All the grind they have avoided in Assassin’s Creed 2 (which was something I was worried about when I heard AC2 was going to introduce a currency system, only to be pleasantly surprised when actually playing the game) came in full force at the two latest AC games, both by being asked to do menial, irrelevant tasks (really, who believes that “Jump X times from a horse to a beam” is something fun to achieve?) as well as having to focus on annoying activities that detract from the main game. It’s very sad to see that the main focus of Brotherhood, and an important part of Revelations, is the guild of assassins that consists entirely on a Facebook-like text based minigame, revolving around leveling the assassin recruits as they are sent to missions through a text-based interface every few minutes. The irony is that the short length of these games wouldn’t be as visible if not for the other biggest mistake by Ubisoft – Brotherhood and Revelations are way too easy. In the first Assassin’s Creed, you had to run and hide once alerting a high number of enemies. In AC2, you didn’t have to hide, simply run (or just swim), which was a loss of some of the stealth aspects of the game, but fine. In Brotherhood and Revelations, there isn’t even a need to run – the combat system has been changed so not only it’s possible to instantly kill an enemy after killing a previous one, but also the enemies will just run away after a few of them have died. Not only did combat, then, become a joke, but also the stealth gameplay doesn’t really matter – if you are detected, a few enemies will come, die in a couple seconds, and the rest will run in fear as the status changes back to hidden. Ubisoft tried to add a bit of a challenge to the games by implementing optional objectives to the missions, but the great majority of them are simply too easy to be interesting. Only the missions with the objective (be it the main one or the optional one) of not being detected are similar to the older Assassin’s Creed games, and have the focus on stealth that should have been the main attraction of the franchise. Those two mistakes – the excess of grind and the lack of a challenge – permeate both games. The short length doesn’t bother me – I would rather play a short but good game than a long and grind based shore. But Ubisoft could have increased the time it takes to play through Brotherhood and Revelations by making them more challenging, instead of adding grind. The result is that the innovations brought forth in the games may appear nice on paper, but in practice they make little difference since there isn’t any point in using them. For example, the bomb system introduced in Revelations is interesting – the game offers many bomb ingredients that may be used to make a large variety of bombs, from smoke decoys that explode after a few seconds and lure nearby guards to poison bombs that may be quietly attached to a guard, killing him after a delayed explosion. However, using this system is largely pointless, as the game offers a very high number of ranged ways to kill a target (there are throwing knives, a crossbow, the gun, poison darts, plus the bombs) and it doesn’t have the finesse to create situations in which the more complex option is better than the simplest ones; there are very few things that a bomb could achieve that just killing an enemy with a crossbow arrow wouldn’t do. Same with melee combat – the game has the hidden blades plus small weapons and medium weapons and heavy weapons, but it doesn’t make any difference as you can just counter-kill an enemy and then instantly kill everyone else one by one, regardless of which weapon you are using. The worst offender is the ability of calling the assassin recruits, which goes from summoning a small army to just instantly killing all enemies in sight, both without being detected. The other innovations in the games mostly fall flat. Revelations has a tower defense mode that is incredibly annoying, but fortunately can be disabled after a few moments of grind. The latest game also has some sequences played from the point of view of Desmond, in bizarre mazes navigated through by the placement of blocks, but those sequences are repetitive and the story they tell is rather underwhelming (just a recap of Desmond’s life up to the beginning of the first game). A nice addition to the game is the hook blade, also introduced in Revelations – while I had expected it to be useful only for navigating through ziplines (which are usually a small gimmick, only interesting in the underground areas), they actually add to common activities such as climbing and fighting, allowing interesting maneuvers such as doing a “hook and run” (using it to grab an enemy and run over him). The main story has also fallen a bit. Brotherhood lacks a bit of the intrigue found in Assassin’s Creed 2, and Revelations lacks the personal connection from the other games. The “real world” parts of the story are interesting in most of Brotherhood, as they help with character development around the main protagonist, but from the end of that game and during the entirety of Revelations they only destroy interesting plot points, without adding anything significant in their place. Incredibly enough, the soundtrack is also considerably worse in Brotherhood and especially in Revelations, with a big fall from the nice songs heard in Assassin’s Creed 2. Both games still have some great moments, though. There a single sequence in Brotherhood, when the main character has to climb a tower undetected, that has the perfect blend of gameplay, story and soundtrack, as the music rises in tone and the camera circles around the tower showing major plot points happening inside the windows as the main character approaches them. And if the main story of Revelations is weak, the game does an amazing job in developing the character of both Ezio and Altair, finishing their stories with the emotional impact required for those two protagonists. The in-door missions of Revelations are also the best “dungeon missions” among the entire Assassin’s Creed series; they may be short, but they are the most fun and well-developed of them. Voice acting continues to be perfect, and both games are decently stable, with few bugs and only a few random crashes (but then again, Ubisoft is using mostly the same engine for four games, it’s only to be expected that they could avoid major issues by now). Graphics are incredibly pretty, with the streets of Rome and Constantinople alive with a sea of different colors. I have never tried the multiplayer mode introduced in Brotherhood, but I have heard good things about it. In the end, though, both Brotherhood and Revelations are somewhat of a disappointment. The franchise has moved away from the best features of the first two games, in the direction of grind-based gameplay with no challenge at all. Assassin’s Creed 3 needs to bring big changes to the series, not only by overhauling game mechanics but also by moving away from the current direction Ubisoft is forcing upon the franchise. 03:13, 26 December 2011 (UTC) (Ah, one more thing: Revelations had one of the best game trailers I have ever seen. I keep it in my phone just so I can watch it once in a while. How comes it’s not available in the game itself? Not even the trailer’s main song appears in the game, which is a massive loss.) The Elder Scrolls: Skyrim[edit]At first glance, Skyrim is an amazing game. An almost infinite amount of content in a world filled with very rich lore and an expertly crafted leveling system… What else could someone ask for in a RPG? That’s somewhat true, and that’s probably all some people will see. A deeper look, however, shows all the flaws of the game. The leveling system in Skyrim is amazingly well done. Individual skills increase as they are used, and the character’s level only increases as its skills level up. The beauty of the system is that not only leveling happens naturally (if you like using fire magic, you will become better at it and thus able to use more powerful fire spells), but also that the lack of an experience system removes the need for silly quests worth nothing other than experience: doing a quest rewards nothing to level up other than what the character does in the quest itself. Therefore, “kill ten rats” quests don’t exist, as doing them would not give any experience beyond what one would obtain by killing those ten rats in the first place, regardless of quests. This removes one of the main carrots that allow game developers to make uninteresting quests, knowing that players would do them anyway in order to get more experience. The progression system is also great in that it does not force characters into specific classes – all characters can earn all skills equally, with only a few optional bonuses that increase more one kind of skill, but even those bonuses may be changed at any given time. There is no need to pick a specific “profession”, no “sub specialization” later in the game, nor any attribute system requiring players to invest in Intelligence to the detriment of Strength and thus ending with a very narrow-focused character. The result is a lot of freedom when building your style of play – my “mage”, for example, was an armor using character who often relied on magical swords in order to kill enemies, being also greatly skilled at lock picking and persuasion. The leveling system still has a lot of issues, though. While in theory anyone can learn everything, how effective a character is often relies more on how many perks have been spent at a skill than on the level of the skill itself. Since perks are given only when leveling up, and the game has a very large amount of skills, the result is that all characters can only be effective at a very narrow field. Some skills are limited by level – for example, many Illusion spells only work at NPCs of a given level and below. Leveling the Illusion magic skill or the main character do not help this limit – it only makes it worse, in fact, as a higher level character would more often meet higher level enemies and thus more often find those spells less effective. While there are a few ways to deal with this problem (for example, there are many perks in the Illusion skill that, together, increase the level in which enemies are vulnerable), they are either costly (especially in the case of perks) or too limited (there is no way to increase the level of undead enemies vulnerable to spells in the Restoration skill, for example). Even damage-dealing skills suffer this issue – the damage they do isn’t scaled up as their respective skills increase in level. The only way to deal with this is by buying perks that increase (a bit) the damage of some spells, and to buy more powerful spells, which very soon stops being possible as there aren’t that many spells available in the game. Magic users are still more limited in how the “magicka” system works. Magicka, the equivalent of Guild Wars’ energy, is required to cast spells, and all magic-based skills have perks that reduce by 50% the cost of each kind of spell (novice spells, apprentice spells, and so on). The problem is – the reduction isn’t from a sane cost to a low cost, often it’s from an impossible or unfeasible cost to something affordable. Magic users are practically forced to buy those perks in order to be able to cast spells. Between this issue, the small number of available perks and the need to invest perks in most skills in order to be effective, the result is a very narrow-focused character. The quest system also has its share of flaws. Almost all quests consist on “go to dungeon X and kill enemy Y (which is the boss of said dungeon) or take item Z (which is in the chest found right after killing the dungeon boss)”. This would be less of an issue if the quests were unique or the dungeons were different from each other, but neither of those is true – all dungeons are basically the same (other than very few exceptions), with few kinds of enemies and requiring the same style of play. A bit past the game’s soft level cap (level 50), the enemies become more or less the same everywhere, so wherever my character goes I either face an horde of Draugr Deathlords (the most powerful kind of undead) or of Bandit Marauders (the second to most powerful kind of bandit) or of Forsworn Ravagers (one of the most powerful Forsworns). There are few foes other than those, and even among the same kind of enemy, it’s usually exactly those three that I’ll find. They also require more or less the same strategy to be defeated, so doing quests quickly becomes extremely repetitive. The dungeons themselves, usually filled with narrow corridors, don’t cater to many different strategies – something as simple as summoning entities usually doesn’t work very well, for example, since those allies become stuck in the corridors and just uselessly obstruct the way. Other than killing (mostly the same) enemies, all the dungeons have are simplistic puzzles very once in a while, usually requiring players to see a group of symbols in a place and reproduce them somewhere else. Even the dungeon bosses are uninspired – they are basically statistically more powerful version of common enemies, nothing that requires special strategies or anything really creative. The lack of variety in enemies isn’t exclusive to dungeons, either – even the dragons are really just common enemies who can fly. The different kinds of dragons are just statistically variations with a few minor differences (so one breathes fire while the other breathes ice; big difference), and they are not more challenging, neither more interesting, than most of the rest of the game. The user interface is a mixed bag. In one hand, the screen when just walking around in the world is gorgeous – the idea of only showing the stats bars (health, magicka and stamina) when they are not filled is perfect, as most of the time the only thing from the user interface being shown is the very discrete compass at the top of the screen. Everything else is just you, your character and the world. Together with the great graphics seen in the environments of the game, this gives a very strong feeling of immersion: when walking alone through high mountains in the middle of a snowstorm, you can almost feel the cold in your bones. The fact we can play the game from both a third-person and a first person views is also a very big blessing – I wouldn’t even have tried to play the game if it had only the first person mode. In other hand, there are a great number of issues regarding the user interface; it appears to have been made for consoles, not for a computer, so the character menu has only four different options (and thus is very easy to navigate using a joystick, as you can move up for one option, right for another, and etc), leaving everything else in a different menu instead of simply having everything in a single place. In each of the menus, the options are grouped alphabetically, which creates a huge mess once in a while; for example, in the Destruction magic menu, instead of spells being ordered by type (Novice, Apprentice, and etc) or kind (fire damage, lightning damage or frost damage) or spell cost, they are just thrown alphabetically. This is a minor issue… But, combined with an entire different problem, it actually becomes something rather bad. There is no simple way to change the spell in your right hand. For some reason, trying to simply click on the spells menu or in the weapons menu doesn’t work. One way to deal with this is by assigning things as favourites – spells and items can be assigned as “Favourite”, and thus pressing the letter Q in the game will open a small menu listing everything you have marked as such… Alphabetically. Everything. Since that’s the only reasonable way to change between spells, pressing Q leads to a big list of names with everything throw in there, from sword names to spells from all magic schools to whatever. And even that is not enough – to really change things quickly in-game, we have to assign a number, from 1 to 8, to a given element in the favourites menu, and press that number to activate said element. When using magic, a spell called this way always appears in the left hand; we have to click on the same number again to move it to the right hand. So let’s say my character is walking around. A frost dragon appears in the distance and begins to attack me. I want to dual cast a fireball, then dual cast a fire cloak spell and switch to dual summoned swords to kill him up close. Unless all those spells were already assigned a number (and since we can only use eight numbers – I wish I knew why 9 and 0 are not available – that’s somewhat unlikely), I have to:
And that’s the simple, quick way. Needless to say, this is far from being the most comfortable way to play a game. Something like a quick bar would have been incredibly easier to deal with. Someone reading the paragraphs above could simply ask, “But if using magic has all those issues, from level requirements to using a lot of perks to a clumsy interface, why not just use weapons and forget about spells?”. Because the combat system is far from being that interesting. Most enemies feel the same; weapon-based combat is then just a matter of moving around doing the same attacks and getting out of the way, using a shield to bash once in a while if you want to use one. Combat is probably the worst part of the game, as it simply lacks variety or complexity. Without the magic system, which at least adds a minimum of change once in a while (despite how stubborn the game is against changing spells), playing through combat would be somewhat insufferable. And what about activities other than combat? There is trading with NPCs… Which is incredibly annoying. For some reason, Bethesda decided to only allow each kind of merchant to only buy the kind of items it sells, which is a small nuisance; however, all merchants have only a limited amount of gold, and exhausting it means we have to wait for two in-game days before that merchant restocks. So if my character has filled his inventory with iron swords, I have to either sell some to a blacksmith, wait 48 hours, sell some more, wait more 48 hours, sell some more, and so on; or keep travelling between all cities and selling some of those swords to every blacksmith in the game. At higher levels, a single item will cost more than the entire money a merchant has available, so trading becomes a huge annoyance. A way to increase the gold available in a merchant is to buy things from him, but this has only a temporary effect, and, again, merchants only buy the kind of item they sell. If I want to buy an expensive spellbook, it’s very unlikely that the mage who sells it would be willing to buy any of my iron swords. There are ways to mitigate this problem a bit – a perk in the middle of the Speech tree allows merchants to buy anything, another allows the character to invest 500 gold in a merchant and thus increase its gold by the same amount, and the last perk in the tree gives 1000 gold to almost all merchants in the game. Considering how few perks we have available, though, this isn’t exactly the more cost effective answer to the problem… What really annoys me is that this system isn’t preventing anything, only being a nuisance. I WILL sell all those iron swords, continuing the same example, but it’s going to take time and patience that I could be using to have fun. The main story of the game is rather meh. It’s very generic fantasy stuff – you are the chosen one to be granted unique power, kill the dragons and save the world. The specific part of the world doesn’t help, either – Skyrim is filled by the Nord, who share the same inspiration as Guild Wars’ norns: big people who value honor and combat and beer, drinking hard and boasting even harder, with a focus on Nordic mythology. In other words, a great number of NPCs are just an annoying, shallow stereotype. Some quests do have interesting elements, such as the Daedric quests (the ones about the “dark gods” of the setting), but more often than not even the sidequests are somewhat shallow. The game also has the bad habit of not allowing players to cancel a quest or remove it from the quest log. I have a quest, for example, in which one of the dark gods asked me to offer it one of my servants as a sacrifice. I said “no”, and killed all its cultists, but the quest is still in my quest log as active, and it was still there by the end of the game. The game does have a rich amount of lore, though. Reading all the books available in the game is great, even if many of them are exactly the same as those seen in Oblivion, and it’s clear that the world still has potential for a very, very long number of tales. And, of course, there are the bugs. The game is rather stable, as in, it has very rarely crashed. But other than that, I have never seen a game so bugged in my life. It’s a good thing I’m playing on a PC, and so I have access to the console that may be used to bypass some critical issues. Still, I have found a very large number of bugs, from small things (dead dragons didn’t go away; there’s a place in the game with a bunch of dragon skeletons hanging around) to moderate issues (using a specific spell can cripple the entire game by making NPCs somewhat afraid of you) to big problems (all dialogues from a specific NPC would not work, and since that NPC is required for the main storyline, I would have been stuck). Bethesda is patching the game, but very slowly, and some of the fixes are actually introducing more problems (such as dragons flying backwards and etc). Despite all the criticism above, the game has a lot of positive qualities. The amount of content in this game is astonishing, there is a very strong feeling of immersion, the environment graphics are incredible, and it’s possible to have a big impact in the game world regarding some things. There are also a lot of small things to be happy about: inventory is not unlimited but it’s of a reasonable size, and there are many ways to increase it. There is absolutely no need of potions or similar consumables, as everything in the game can be done without them. The game tries to detect your level and adjust the difficulty of areas you enter, within some restrictions, which works very well at the beginning of the game – I only met one area in which my character was too weak to fight, and that was at level 3; everywhere else I could explore unimpeded. And there is a lot to explore – the world is incredibly big, with very few walls actually blocking the way. I didn’t pay attention to all the hype about Skyrim since I believed it was just an overhyped piece of trash. After actually playing the game, I was wrong – it’s an overhyped ok game. The beginning is very fun, until repetition settles in and diving through the sea of bugs suddenly doesn’t feel worth it. The amount of content in the game is, again, amazing, I only wish it had been more interesting – this is one of the few games I have played in which I didn’t want to follow all sidequests and see everything that happens, since it just can’t keep me interested anymore. 00:56, 30 December 2011 (UTC) Manga & Anime[edit]Noir: an interesting premise, tinted with a slight veil of mystery and a wonderful soundtrack. Unfortunately, the series hit an all too common problem: it did not have enough content for 26 episodes. The middle of the anime drags itself slowly and painfully waiting for a conclusion that, once there, is not satisfying enough. The other issue of the series is the lack of blood - an anime about two assassins breaks immersion considerably by never showing anyone's blood. The problem was elegantly avoided at the opening, but unfortunatelly it plagued almost all episodes. Ergo Proxy: a bit similar to Noir, in that the anime had a great premise, but also lacked enough content for 26 episodes. It's a pity, considering how the few episodes are very good; but changes in main character and setting, together with way too many filler episodes, ruined what could have been a great series. The ending has some nice concepts, but a rather careless presentation. Bubblegum Crisis: Tokyo 2040: I saw this one when I was a child. Interesting soundtrack, but nothing more than that, really. It's interesting to see how the songs, which were revolutionary in the original Bubblegum Crisis, became pretty much every day stuff today. In one way, at least, the present has caught up with 2040. Kurokami: again, an interesting, if not well developed premise. Some great songs and some episodes have great direction, but the story only becomes engaging at the very end, and the anime has an annoyingly repetitive tendency. The Girl Who Leapt Through Space: this one is slightly different. Again, an interesting premise that didn't reach its full potential, but the anime has a curious property: the antagonists are not exactly "evil". There are some fights, but no one is actually killed, and there is really no strong violence in the entire series. A somewhat nice new perspective on this kind of anime. Key the Metal Idol: a simple, somewhat crazy anime with a few great songs (I love the opening; its English dub is rather nice, too) which unfortunatelly falters at the end but still give a fitting, if somewhat not fully satisfying end. Those Who Hunt Elves: speaking about crazy animes... The only series here meant to be funny, the first season had some interesting character development between parodies of the anime genre. The second season is somewhat worse, ignoring many of the plot elements from the first season in order to make crazier episodes. The soundtrack is nice, in a 80ish way. Death Note: few times the author of a series gave me the impression of being as intelligent as in this anime. The main character and his main antagonist are not only said to be geniuses, but the anime also how, exactly, both were smart. With a great soundtrack, great animation, perfect direction and no fear to make big changes in the status quo, this anime would have been perfect... If it had been finished at the end of its first part. The second and last part of the series is incredibly dull, filled with uninteresting characters and very forced plot devices that made my enjoyment of this anime disappear. YuYu Hakusho: saw this one when I was a kid. My country's dub was perfect when I was first saw it, perfectly attuned with Brazil's slang at the time. Today I wouldn't watch it again (it feels it has been made for kids), but the series still gives me good memories.
Gilgamesh: a probably unknown anime, although with a very interesting story. Following the theme of “not everything is what it appears to be”, with some odd character designs but a great soundtrack, this series wasn't trying to achieve much but it manages to tell an insightful, some times frightening tale. Gurren Lagan: once I began watching this one, I got the feeling it was quickly going to turn into some stupid and ridiculous anime for 10 years old like DragonBall Z – the animation looked a bit weird, especially on some faces, and some of the robot designs gave the impression they were meant to be funny. A few more minutes were enough to dispel my worries, though, as I learned what the series was really about – the victory of small, determined people through as much suffering as necessary. The animation isn't the best in the world, the soundtrack is interesting but not really groundbreaking, and a few things have a very silly look, but this anime is actually better than the sum of its parts. It's an interesting idea that the first episode actually begins with a moment much later in the series, leaving many episodes with a feeling that not everything is exactly what it appears to be. Eureka Seven: there's something about giant robots, space travel and a conspiracy to destroy the world, but this is actually the story of a young boy, the girl he likes and their friends. It's rather funny how the story does not try to hide its focus; what in other series would be the main elements of the plot here are completely left aside, leading to a very "slice of life" anime. The main character, a 14 years old boy, is really depicted as someone of that age, which is coherent although some times annoying. And few things are more annoying in this anime than the orphan kids of the show, who act as surrogate children for the female protagonist. Despite those flaws, the anime is good: animation is great, the soundtrack is very nice, and the story is good, even though often the main characters don't really do anything. Fate/Zero: It's odd to see an anime that is a prequel to something else without having watched said something else first. In one hand, I don't really understand all the minor references to future events, beyond the obvious (and there were many obvious references to characters who would matter later on). In other hand, not knowing the future makes the present significantly more unpredictable, especially in an story like this in which we expect characters to die. This is a significant boon - the characters are the most interesting aspect of Fate/Zero. The anime begins by assembling a large cast of well rounded characters, in which few could fit black and white "good" or "evil" definitions. In the end, though, it's also a significant flaw - many of those characters are not really given much attention, and often are given a somewhat rushed resolution only to get the stage set for the sequel. This is the most disappointing aspect of this story, to me - a large part of the promise we see in the first few episodes is hurriedly brushed aside in the second part of the series, leaving the strong impression that many more could have been told about those characters. Such a waste is not enough to ruin the anime, of course, but it's big enough to hamper the enjoyment of its great aspects. Other[edit]Ghosts of Ascalon[edit]Exposition, exposition, exposition. It's the bulk of Ghosts of Ascalon, which could be summarized as a very long introduction to the world of Guild Wars 2. The book has a story to tell, of course, but it becomes rather obvious why Jeff Grubb had to be listed as one of the authors: most of what the book tells is actually the lore of Tyria, focusing on the five races and on events that have plagued the world. It's one of the book's main problems: its main appeal is to the avid Guild Wars fan who is willing to learn everything he can about the game; but at the same time, most of the lore described in the book (which equals most of its content) had already been revealed to those same Guild Wars fan, through The Movement of the World and other sources. While there are a few new revelations, and it's definitely a good tool to the wiki for confirming some pieces of speculation, those who would get the most out of Ghosts of Ascalon are the newcomers to the world of Guild Wars who are unlikely to even read the book in the first place. The main story itself is mildly interesting, even if the characters are mostly stereotypes of the races they represent (which, again, fits the theme of trying to introduce readers to the world of Guild Wars). The book is well written, with action sequences being easy to follow despite one or two somewhat confusing moments, and the story really shines when it tries to emphasize how different individuals have very different points of view when seeing the world, which unfortunately is not done often enough. The book itself has a very beautiful cover, which looks better in real life than through screenshots. The paper used is the standard for pocket books, with a slightly gray shade on the pages in order to avoid a blinding pure white color. It amazed me how the book is short; it's somewhat thick, with 370 pages, but its height is less than even those of other pocket books. In the end, Ghosts of Ascalon is an okay book, yet I couldn't help but feel disappointed. I hope the next book will rely on the introduction offered here and focus on telling a better story with more diverse characters and more varied settings, instead of focusing on a retelling of the lore of Tyria. |
