Me and Bethesda are life long pals. Elder Scrolls and Fallout 3. These guys, know how to make a game. They also publish games as well. Other people's games. WET, Rage, Fallout: New Vegas, and now Arkane Studios' Dishonored.
Dishonored is a game about the bodyguard to the Empress, Corvo Attano. Coming home from a long journey of seeking aid from the other islands for the insufferable Rat Plague, Corvo finds him self in the wrong place at the right time. Assassins murder the Empress and kidnap Emily, the heir to the throne, and poor Corvo is accused as the murderer. He's sentenced to death and six months later, the night before he's sentenced to be decapitated, finds out it was a conspiracy by the Lord Spymaster and High Overseerer to take control of the city.
Corvo, with aid from Loyalists who believe Corvo innocent, breaks out of prison and joins the fight against the new Lord Reagent. Most of which involves sneaking around the City Watch and taking out key members of the Lord Reagent's inner circle.
You're given a choice between taking the utter stealth approach with nonlethal methods or seeking revenge in the most pure sense, silently (or brazenly) slaughter everyone. Dishonored is a first person experience with a combat system similar to Elder Scrolls. LT/RT controls the left and right hand respectively. Your sword in your right hand and either a power or ranged weapon in the left.
Stealth is, of course, the main mechanic of the game and is done well for stealth engines. Combat is hectic when it happens and things go south real fast in a fight. One minute you could be fending off two guards then suddenly six more join the fray. Now if you elect to take a nonlethal approach to things, be prepared for a real challenge. When not a key target, there are only two ways to go about a nonlethal take down. Sleep darts from your crossbow or coming up behind someone and choking them out by holding down RB. You would think that sounds reasonable, but when you only have TEN sleep darts and can't refill unless you're lucky enough to happen upon some in the field or wait until you get back to The Hounds Pit and see Piero.
Speaking of, Piero is your guy for equipment. Any restocking you need happens with him between missions. He also will upgrade your equipment and more upgrades become available as you find, fairly rare, blueprints. And no, Bolt Capacity doesn't include sleep darts. You need to find a blueprint for that. And in my entire run, I failed to find it.
There are also powers you can use. The most useful being Blink, Dark Vision, Blend Time, and Possession. I highly recommend upgrading Blink to the max as soon as you can. You upgrade them by collecting Runes scattered around the world. There are also passive abilities you can get by collecting Bone Charms. Each one has a different effect. But you can only equip a certain amount unless upgraded via Piero. To be honest, I didn't collect many Bone Charms .
Storywise, the game performs great. It's a truly interesting world and culture and you can learn loads from the many scattered books and notes. I don't want to say too much about it, but suffice to say, I didn't have a complaint about it.
My only real issue with the game was the low amount of ways to do nonlethal take downs. You always had a different option for key targets but normal guards you could hit with a stick or something. It was really frustrating keeping my kills to a minimum to get the ending I wanted.
Final Thoughts:
Coming into this game I had really no expectation. It was a must buy game for me, but I hadn't really absorbed any info or gameplay demos. So I was blown away on a basis of neutrality. It felt a lot like a mix of Bioshock and Fable. So is it worth the money? Well, if you have the patience for stealth then I say yes, it's definitely worth the $60. All I know now is that I'll enjoy the game even more, taking the lethal path after all that built up frustration in the nonlethal run.
Final Score: 8/10
Wednesday, October 10, 2012
Sunday, October 7, 2012
Scythe Plays: Resident Evil 6
We start off this year's round of reviews, a little late, with Resident Evil 6. Now I have been a fan of this series since it's birth on the Playstation. Survival horror is my genre of game. It's one I truly enjoy playing. Resident Evil was on of the first I played next to Silent Hill and Dino Crisis (RE's dinosaur counterpart). And yes, I am one of those fans who's quite bitter about the shift in gameplay that started with Resident Evil 4. But here's the thing, RE4 managed to keep some sense of it's survival horror roots. RE5? Eh, not so much. With RE5, it was more about action than survival. Continuing with stepping back from it's roots, RE6 is now a far cry from the days of fixed camera angles and tank controls.
Everything about RE6 is action. There's loads of explosions, enemy gunners, bullet sponge B.O.W.s, and of course, MANY quick time events. It quite honestly feels like Capcom is taking notes from the Resident Evil movies rather than the other way round. It really is disheartening to see one of my all time favorite horror series take a turn to just a third person shooter. There's really nothing there to suggest it's horror other than the zombies. But this is my own opinion on the matter. As a fan of the series, it hurts to see it stray so far from what it was. Whether or not you agree, it doesn't much affect how the game plays. So let's get on with it.
There are three main campaigns to play. Long time RE veteran, Chris Redfield and his brother-in-arms Piers Nivans, secret service man, Leon S. Kennedy and fellow agent Helena Harper, and newcomer Jake Muller and Raccoon City survivor Sherry Birkin. All three of the campaigns play very differently, I was surprised to find out. Chris' campaign feels a lot like a game of Gears Of War. There's a lot of shooting, explosions, rail gun sections. Jake's campaign is very fast, disorienting at times, and has a lot of run-for-your-life scenarios. Play the Benny Hill theme and you've played Jake's campaign. Leon's campaign was actually the closest to feeling like a RE game. It actually had some puzzles, there was some horror feel to it when you weren't balls to the walls fending off zombies in the streets, and IT ACTUALLY HAD ZOMBIES!
You were mainly up against the J'avo. Most of them wield guns if not a machete. Any severe damage to them can randomly activate a mutation into some sort of BOW, a flying insect, spider creature, a giant rat thing, etc. When you weren't fighting the zombie elite and BOWs, you were fighting even bigger BOWs that NEVER FUCKING DIE. This was a BIG issue in Jake/Sherry's campaign. A certain BOW called, Utanak pursues you constantly throughout the campaign. While normally I wouldn't have and issue with it, you can't just keep showing all these fantastic ways from him to die only to have him come back ten minutes down the road. The worst part is it wasn't just once or twice or thrice, no no. It was at least ten times. TEN BLOODY TIMES, you have to fight this guy.
At a certain point, he just serves as a means to empty your inventory of ammo and healing items. There's absolutely no satisfaction when you actually do kill him either. Because at that point, you're convinced he'll come back just one more time. I know these things are suppose to be beyond superhuman, but I shouldn't have to empty an army's worth of ammunition over and over again, just cause Capcom can't make any other bosses.
Speaking of, boss battles were probably the worst part of the entire game. Weak points weren't always as obvious as one would think. Shooting the glowing red spot didn't always work. I understand working to getting them to reveal the weak point but when it's just blatantly out there and doing nothing, it's hardly good boss design. Being new gen RE, most of the boss battles were QTE heavy which isn't too much of an issue other than it's just really unnecessary the amount of time you have to do it.
Most of the gameplay was fairly good. The biggest flaw in it was the game's inability to inform you of what you should be doing. I know RE has never been a series to do so, but RE6 barely gives you a hint, I found myself hitting Continue a bunch of times before I finally discerned what it was I was supposed to have been doing. I'm not saying it should hold your hand, but it needs a better way to inform you of what to do, as soon as you need to do it. The skills were also barely touched in my game. I bought Defense for two ranks, Firearms for two ranks, and an assault rifle ammo frequency skill. Skill points are earned collectively with all the campaigns and apply to all characters, But like I said, you'll barely use them. Everything good is far too expensive to purchase before you finish the campaign. Even if every box you do break open is skill points. Which was another problem I had. Desperately low on ammo in the middle of a boss fight and the crates are giving me skills points which you can't use until AFTER the chapter is over.
Story wise, the game stands up well with the rest of the series. Taking place three years after the events in Resident Evil 5. All three campaigns have their own storyline that eventually, in one way or another, intersects with the others. Which I loved. I loved that about the GTA IV DLCs too. What's cooler, though I couldn't experience it, is that you can leave your game open to online players and people playing other characters would be in your game as the other characters when you encountered the,.
There is one other campaign that gets unlocked once you finish all three of the main ones which is fairly shorter than the others. There are also other modes such as the return of Mercenaries and Agent Hunt mode which puts you as a BOW trying to mess up other people's games.
Final verdict: There are a lot of frustrating parts here and there but past them is a fairly good game. Worth the $60? Well it depends. If you are a fan of the series and the storyline, I'd say it's worth the money.. If you're not crazy about it, wait until the price drops. There isn't enough gameplay to satiate anyone who won't enjoy it just cause it's Resident Evil.
Final Score: 6/10
Everything about RE6 is action. There's loads of explosions, enemy gunners, bullet sponge B.O.W.s, and of course, MANY quick time events. It quite honestly feels like Capcom is taking notes from the Resident Evil movies rather than the other way round. It really is disheartening to see one of my all time favorite horror series take a turn to just a third person shooter. There's really nothing there to suggest it's horror other than the zombies. But this is my own opinion on the matter. As a fan of the series, it hurts to see it stray so far from what it was. Whether or not you agree, it doesn't much affect how the game plays. So let's get on with it.
There are three main campaigns to play. Long time RE veteran, Chris Redfield and his brother-in-arms Piers Nivans, secret service man, Leon S. Kennedy and fellow agent Helena Harper, and newcomer Jake Muller and Raccoon City survivor Sherry Birkin. All three of the campaigns play very differently, I was surprised to find out. Chris' campaign feels a lot like a game of Gears Of War. There's a lot of shooting, explosions, rail gun sections. Jake's campaign is very fast, disorienting at times, and has a lot of run-for-your-life scenarios. Play the Benny Hill theme and you've played Jake's campaign. Leon's campaign was actually the closest to feeling like a RE game. It actually had some puzzles, there was some horror feel to it when you weren't balls to the walls fending off zombies in the streets, and IT ACTUALLY HAD ZOMBIES!
You were mainly up against the J'avo. Most of them wield guns if not a machete. Any severe damage to them can randomly activate a mutation into some sort of BOW, a flying insect, spider creature, a giant rat thing, etc. When you weren't fighting the zombie elite and BOWs, you were fighting even bigger BOWs that NEVER FUCKING DIE. This was a BIG issue in Jake/Sherry's campaign. A certain BOW called, Utanak pursues you constantly throughout the campaign. While normally I wouldn't have and issue with it, you can't just keep showing all these fantastic ways from him to die only to have him come back ten minutes down the road. The worst part is it wasn't just once or twice or thrice, no no. It was at least ten times. TEN BLOODY TIMES, you have to fight this guy.
At a certain point, he just serves as a means to empty your inventory of ammo and healing items. There's absolutely no satisfaction when you actually do kill him either. Because at that point, you're convinced he'll come back just one more time. I know these things are suppose to be beyond superhuman, but I shouldn't have to empty an army's worth of ammunition over and over again, just cause Capcom can't make any other bosses.
Speaking of, boss battles were probably the worst part of the entire game. Weak points weren't always as obvious as one would think. Shooting the glowing red spot didn't always work. I understand working to getting them to reveal the weak point but when it's just blatantly out there and doing nothing, it's hardly good boss design. Being new gen RE, most of the boss battles were QTE heavy which isn't too much of an issue other than it's just really unnecessary the amount of time you have to do it.
Most of the gameplay was fairly good. The biggest flaw in it was the game's inability to inform you of what you should be doing. I know RE has never been a series to do so, but RE6 barely gives you a hint, I found myself hitting Continue a bunch of times before I finally discerned what it was I was supposed to have been doing. I'm not saying it should hold your hand, but it needs a better way to inform you of what to do, as soon as you need to do it. The skills were also barely touched in my game. I bought Defense for two ranks, Firearms for two ranks, and an assault rifle ammo frequency skill. Skill points are earned collectively with all the campaigns and apply to all characters, But like I said, you'll barely use them. Everything good is far too expensive to purchase before you finish the campaign. Even if every box you do break open is skill points. Which was another problem I had. Desperately low on ammo in the middle of a boss fight and the crates are giving me skills points which you can't use until AFTER the chapter is over.
Story wise, the game stands up well with the rest of the series. Taking place three years after the events in Resident Evil 5. All three campaigns have their own storyline that eventually, in one way or another, intersects with the others. Which I loved. I loved that about the GTA IV DLCs too. What's cooler, though I couldn't experience it, is that you can leave your game open to online players and people playing other characters would be in your game as the other characters when you encountered the,.
There is one other campaign that gets unlocked once you finish all three of the main ones which is fairly shorter than the others. There are also other modes such as the return of Mercenaries and Agent Hunt mode which puts you as a BOW trying to mess up other people's games.
Final verdict: There are a lot of frustrating parts here and there but past them is a fairly good game. Worth the $60? Well it depends. If you are a fan of the series and the storyline, I'd say it's worth the money.. If you're not crazy about it, wait until the price drops. There isn't enough gameplay to satiate anyone who won't enjoy it just cause it's Resident Evil.
Final Score: 6/10
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