Tag Archives: RPG

Diablo III’s Brave New World

26/05/2012 Olly Leave a comment

Diablo III is my first experience with the series, and I like it a lot. Or rather I like it when it’s not doing something like this…

Diablo III Error 33

Bearing in mind that I’m going through it solo for my initial run, this is a single-player game with lag, server queues and no offline play. Goodbye flipping open the laptop on the train for a quick go and, for the moment, good luck playing at peak times.

This has been written on at great length and much more authoritatively than I could manage, so I’m going to point you in the direction of Eurogamer’s arguments for and against this new approach, because what surprised me about these discordant articles is that I agree with both of them.

When you’re online, the connection’s reliable, Battle.net is running properly and you have no urge to venture outside somewhere without a good wi-fi signal, Diablo III’s infrastructure is magnificent. Log in on any computer, PC or Mac, and your characters are there. Make some progress or just throw a couple of things into the auction house and it’ll all be reflected on your computer at home when you fire the game up later. That’s how ‘the cloud’ is going to change gaming, and we’re starting to see it with cloud saving in Steam, Xbox Live and PSN. Throw in how always being online makes playing alone, playing with randoms and playing with friends one and the same and never more than a couple of clicks away and it’s a good advert for the natural progression of what we’ll see in the next-generation versions of our current online services, only available right now.

It’s for these reasons that I’m giving it the benefit of the doubt. Blizzard is forging a new path here, and although it does a lot that needs to be done better, it’s a very respectable first attempt. When you can get on, that is.

Editorials, Games, PC games, Xbox

The Witcher 2 and Playing a Character

30/04/2012 Olly Leave a comment

RPGs have been in what you could charitably call a transitional generation, somewhere between when Final Fantasy and Dragon Quest dominated and a place where role-playing and all that it entails is less a genre in itself and more a set of conventions to be adopted by others. I don’t like it, but it’s true.

Two elements that actual RPGs have been pioneering this gen, though, have been morality and branching. They go hand-in-hand to a certain extent, but for me they’ve become an integral part of the role-playing experience, mainly because they actually entail playing a role. Previously even silent protagonists have been stretching the definition of roles, being that you’re along for the ride and doing nothing to put your mark on the character.

The Witcher 2

I’ve been playing The Witcher 2 over the last couple of weeks, now that I can play the incredible Xbox 360 port – seriously, there must have been some actual witchcraft involved there – and it puts to shame most games in their attempts to get these new mechanics right. It shouldn’t be so, because this is the RPG where you’re actually playing a defined character with an established personality and back story, but by casting you as a protagonist who is by default a neutral outsider in all conflicts, CD Projekt Red has its cake and eats it, as Geralt, and therefore the player, can do what he likes without breaking character.

Morality in games has only recently become fashionable, and it’s often depressingly childish in how binary it is. Mass Effect is another offender, where your character genuinely starts to look scarred and glow with an eerie red light if you decide not to take the recklessly moral ‘Paragon’ route. The morality in that game is literally reduced to a number, your responses adding a +1 to your Paragon/Renegade bar depending on whether you prefer the recklessly idealistic absolute moral code of ‘good’ Shepard or the cackling villain of the ‘bad’ route, wherein you have to wonder about a galactic society that lets such an unhinged individual be in charge of the fate of everything. The series actually rewards you for picking one extreme over another, suggesting that Shepard is deliberately set up to be either Mary Sue or space Hitler. Continue reading The Witcher 2 and Playing a Character →

Best of 2011, Games, GOTY, PlayStation, Xbox

Best of 2011 #4: Dark Souls

07/01/2012 Olly Leave a comment

Because seemingly nobody else can, I’m going to give my opinion on Dark Souls without mentioning the fact that it’s really hard. Apart from that time. And to say that it’s not as hard as some drama queens have made out.

Putting aside this fact-that-must-not-be-named, when this generation is over I’m confident that Dark Souls will be remembered as both one of a handful of Japanese games that didn’t disappoint – along with its spiritual predecessor there – and a truly great sequel that was an improvement on the original game in almost all areas. In fact, the only area where I definitively prefer Demon’s Souls to Dark Souls is in the first game’s setting and atmosphere, but the follow-up is no slouch there either.

I admired Dark Souls’ approach to an open world. Although it lacks the sense of unrestricted freedom of a game like Skyrim, putting barriers between the player and the highest peaks and deepest dungeons in favour of a few branching routes, it walks a nice middle ground of being open-ended and at the same time somewhat directed. Different but not worse. A very Western genre through the prism of Japanese design sensibilities. Rather than mediocre attempts at cover shooters, this is the blueprint for Japanese studios struggling to find the best of both worlds.

Best of 2011, Games, GOTY, PC games, PlayStation, Xbox

Best of 2011 #5: The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim

06/01/2012 Olly Leave a comment

The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim Imagine the plaudits a Bethesda game could boast if it made one that actually worked. Skyrim suffers from fundamental bugs that have plagued this new/old engine through Oblivion and two Fallout games so far, and yet it’s still managing to clock up incredible numbers of awards along the way. I can only assume that a Bethesda game with actual polish, once the critics recovered from the shock of it, would result in calls for all other developers to give up and go home for the year.

I have thoroughly enjoyed my progress so far in Skyrim, not so much as a narrative experience but a simple experience. Skyrim – the province, not the game – is gorgeous, and a nice change after the unending green of Oblivion and brown of Fallout 3. It’s amazingly atmospheric, from the mist around the mountain peaks to the auroras in the night sky, all of which just makes me wish it would be less bloody buggy.

This might seem like a low placement on the list next to the growing list of GOTY awards that it’s getting elsewhere, and that’s not even because of the questionable QA job. I just found myself seeing the dice rolls happening under the game’s skin more than I’d like and more than I do when playing games from BioWare, the other Western RPG developer that can seemingly do no wrong. I’m so used to seeing the bugs in a Bethesda game that I take it in my stride, but kludgy combat that got in the way of the exploration – the reason why I’m playing this, ultimately – got on my nerves. Next generation, as well as a genuinely new engine from Bethesda, how about letting me stealthily kill someone with a single arrow without having to trudge through 50-odd levels of guards running at me with arrows sticking out of their head?

Skyrim didn’t grab me like it did some, apparently, but I still enjoyed what it had to offer. Although I found other Bethesda games more immediately appealing – I say ‘immediately’ because I’m far from finished with it and may yet warm further to its unique charms – and desperately want some new tech behind these games, this is probably the best of Bethesda’s open-world RPGs. And that’s high praise.

Games, Impressions, Nintendo

Pokémon: In Need of Change

07/03/2011 Olly Leave a comment

Pokémon Trainer Last week I picked up Pokémon White, my first purchase in the series since Sapphire on the GBA. Like anyone whose age was under about 15 circa 1998, I was obsessed with Red/Blue, and although I enjoyed both, Gold/Silver and Ruby/Sapphire represented diminishing returns to me. By the time the enhanced remakes and so on started coming out with some regularity I was happy to leave it alone, but Black and White seemed like a good chance to see what has changed in the better part of a decade.

Not an awful lot, it turns out.

Back in 1998, I can actually remember looking at Pokémon and, having salivated at how gloriously Zelda had recently transformed from top-down 2D adventure to epic 3D quest, my friends and I were giddy at how good it would be when Pokémon did the same thing. Now, several generations later, the series’ latest and greatest is… a top-down 2D adventure. Even the battles have the same largely static, pixellated characters in place of some nice high-res art. They have polygonal buildings these days, though, so that’s something.

I know, I know. The DS never was a powerhouse and couldn’t reasonably be expected to do too much more than this. But the lack of ambition in the design extends to the gameplay as well: all of these games are essentially identical. Your character comes of age and gets his first Pokémon from a choice of three, goes on a quest to defeat the Gym Leaders while fighting off attacks from terrorist groups, and becomes the greatest of all time. Then collect and train your critters until you lose the will to live. Flavour has been added over time through features like the day/night cycle and some impenetrable network connectivity, but the basics are unchanged.

Why haven’t we had a proper Pokémon RPG for one of Nintendo’s consoles? It must be a budget concern or something – lots of monsters to model and animate, most of which, in my opinion, can’t beat the original 151 for personality – because there can’t be concerns over whether or not it would sell.

I can only assume that the fact that these games are ultimately aimed at children is how gameplay that is so painfully repetitive, in an RPG without much of a story to hold the interest, can maintain such popularity. Given the huge amount of innovative, clever stuff on the DS, I just can’t see the appeal any more.

What a shame. I’ll play it into double figures to give it a fair shake and happily retract this if it turns into something brilliant in that time, but sadly, I don’t think it’s going to happen.

Best of 2010, Games, GOTY, PC games, PlayStation, Xbox

Best of 2010 #2: Mass Effect 2

30/12/2010 Olly Leave a comment

I know for a fact that many of the first game’s most ardent fans will disagree vehemently with this, but for my money Mass Effect 2 will stand as one of the primary examples of how to improve on a game for its sequel. It may have jettisoned some of the RPG ideals of the first game, but I found its attempts at streamlining perfect, creating a brilliant action-RPG – emphasis on the ‘action’ – with one of the best open-ended stories in recent history. The important thing is that what the first game did best – creating a wonderfully vibrant and believable sci-fi universe – was preserved and expanded.

There’s a slim line between streamlining and dumbing down, and I think Mass Effect 2 is an example of it done right. While it was now more limited in being able to explore hundreds of largely redundant rooms on the Citadel, for instance, what was there was more detailed, more populated, and felt more like a real galactic capital. You couldn’t land on every planet any more, but the ones with missions were more unique and often looked beautiful, rather than constructed from a handful of set assets.

One area where I’ll give the first game a slight edge is in its story, as I liked the mystery around Saren and Sovereign more than this game’s Cerberus and Collectors, but the execution of this game’s finale was leagues ahead of anything in that game. The wanton way in which it would kill supporting characters, even making it possible for Shepard himself to not survive for Mass Effect 3, was extremely brave, the knowledge that it was possible for everyone to make it back alive – managing that was one of my proudest gaming achievements, definitely – made any deaths really hit home. It forced you to delve into everyone’s back story, which also made you care and caused every loss to hurt.

Mass Effect 2 is yet more proof, then, that Western developers are now the ones to watch when it comes to RPGs. BioWare had the courage to massively overhaul what was already a minor classic, and in doing so created what must go down as one of the generation’s best games. Bring on Mass Effect 3.