Let's Look At: Jade Empire

Despite how obsessed the world is with Martial Arts, there aren’t a lot of non-fighting games that feature them in any serious way. Even if they do, they’re side scrollers and the like. Well, evidently somebody at BioWare said, “Screw that! Let’s make a martial arts game set in a weird, fictional version of China! We’ll make up our own language instead of just using Chinese! The game will have demons, gods, and magic! And flying machines! And maybe a little girl who acts as a conduit for an otherworldly guardian?” Somehow, it got greenlit, and we ended up with Jade Empire, one of the more interesting RPGs to come out of BioWare.

Sometimes strange ideas manage to survive the hell of corporate nonsense, and I'm glad that Jade Empire did.

Jade Empire is a real-time action RPG that focuses on marital arts, magic, and weapons combat. You have three stats (body, mind, and spirit) which feed into three resources (health, spirit, and focus). Weapon use drains your focus, and magic use drains your spirit energy, but you can use your martial arts as long as you’ve got health. You gain experience from defeating enemies and completing quests, which you can use to upgrade your martial arts, weapons, and magic skills as well as your three main stats. You have a number of companions that can assist you in battle or provide support, like slowly regenerating your spirit or health. You also have a number of transformation skills that allow you to transform into several kinds of demons that you encounter throughout the game. There’s a sort of morality system called the Open Palm and the Closed Fist which is affected by your quest and dialogue choices.

The UI in Jade Empire is non-intrusive, which is always good. The focus here is on the in-game world, rather than hardcore RPG-ing.

Jade Empire tells the story of a martial arts student from the little town of Two Rivers. One day your teacher reveals to you that you’re the last of the Spirit Monks, an ancient order who protected the Water Dragon, the god of life and death. You find out that she is unable to perform her duties, so the ghosts of the dead cannot pass on and are wreaking havoc. Your village is destroyed when the empire discovers this, and you embark on an epic quest to seek revenge. You will travel from the swamps near your village, to the heavenly realms, to the imperial city itself on this quest, and meet many companions along the way.

Welcome to an epic quest of discovery, revenge, and belonging.

It’s an odd game, really. The focus on martial arts in a somewhat open world is fairly unique. It’s not a sandbox, like Sleeping Dogs or the Yakuza series of games, but calling the areas “levels” would definitely be wrong. The areas are extremely varied and interesting. They range from simple villages, to grand cities, and even the heavenly realms of the gods. Jade Empire also has a really vivid and interesting retelling of a lot of Chinese mythology and Daoism that really helps with the world building. There’s not a huge amount of reused assets or, so every area feels unique and memorable. There’s also a really cool use of color palettes to set the mood for area. The heavenly realms make good use of bloom and bright, airy colors while the caves of the cannibals are filled with sinister purples, blacks, and browns. Each area has a number of side quests and a few main quests that allow you to move the plot along, so you never feel as if an area overstays its welcome.

The most unique part of Jade Empire is the combat, for sure. As mentioned, you have a number of different martial arts, weapons, and magic skills that you can improve over time. I think whoever designed the combat was a big fan of classic beat-em-ups, because the combat works very similarly. You’ve got a light attack, a heavy attack, and a block. You can also do an area of effect attack to knock enemies back, as well as the ability to augment your attacks with spirit energy to do extra damage. You can also use your focus to slow down time temporarily as well as power your weapon styles. You choose a few styles at the beginning of the game, but you can find many more throughout your adventures. What’s interesting is that you can miss a lot of styles completely, which adds a lot of replay value to a fairly linear game. What’s also really nice is that your morality standing plays into certain combat styles, which are more effective if you’re aligned with the right morality. The martial arts systems can feel a bit dull after a while, though. The moves never change, despite upgrading. While you acquire more different kinds of skills, you aren’t really given enough upgrade points to upgrade all of them, so you pretty much have to choose a few to use for the game. I think a Witcher inspired style of combat would be better, where you moves change based on distance and speed, rather than just using the same ones over and over again.

You can see a martial style, a support style, a weapon style, and a magic style in the hotbar in the bottom left here. All of the styles work together to make you a formidable force. 

Your companions are another serious high point in Jade Empire. You collect a large variety of them, most of which can assist in combat, though a one is a mobile item shop, and one only provides a unique martial arts style. All of your companions have rich backstories, motivations, and side quests all their own. They’re a bit disappointing when it comes to supporting you in combat, though. They don’t do a lot of damage, and are generally better used for their support abilities. It feels like missed opportunity, because they have all have the same combat effectiveness, so the only reason to bring different companions along is their different support abilities.

Most companions offer direct combat support, or some other passive effect. There's not much difference between them in actual combat, which is disappointing. 

Worth Playing?

Yes. Jade Empire is a really fun game. It’s got enjoyable combat, interesting companions, and a really imaginative and beautiful world. There aren’t many games about China, fictional or otherwise, so it’s really cool to see one that does everything so well. I would highly recommend this game if you like role playing games, games with a non-Eurocentric focus, or strong art design.

Let's Look at: Dark Messiah of Might and Magic

Some of that might be due to the box art. I mean, look at this. How much more generic could you be without doing the whole, "white guy looks away while slinging a gun over his shoulder" thing.

First person cameras are crazy common in games. It might be the most common perspective but despite all of that, there are certain things that are remarkably hard to do in 1st person. Platforming is one of them, and so is any kind of melee combat. Somehow, Dark Messiah of Might and Magic manages to do it. It didn’t make a huge splash when it came out, and it continues to be more of a cult hit than anything, but it deserves a little more of a spotlight than it gets.

Dark Messiah is an action RPG that came out in 2006 for the PC, and later in 2008 for the Xbox 360. In Dark Messiah you play as Sareth, a wizard’s apprentice. After finding the mysterious and magical Shantiri Crystal, you are sent off to deliver the item to an acquaintance of your master. You find out that both wizards are after an artifact called the Skull of Shadows, and you are to help them find it. As you can guess, things don’t go so well, but I won’t spoil any more of the plot. As you complete story sections, you get experience points which can be spent on the three skill trees the game offers (Combat, Magic, and Miscellaneous). The game is fairly straightforward, though there are many hidden areas with bonus items. There are not a huge amount of items and armor to use, so I would not expect a Skyrim like experience, if I were you.

Suck it, random guard. Hope you like the taste of wall and 50 foot fall.

The melee combat in Dark Messiah is dynamic, fast paced, and just plain enjoyable. Unlike most 1st person combat systems, some amount of trial and error is needed to really understand how to beat enemies. Unlike Skyrim or Oblivion, you can’t just mash the attack button and expect everybody to fall over. Enemies will keep blocking if you try to wail on them, and if you time your blocks correctly, you can set them off balance and deliver a flurry of blows. There’s also a really good sense of weight to your and your enemies’ attacks. An odd, but extremely awesome, addition to melee combat is the ability to kick enemies. You can use your kick in the middle of combat to unbalance enemies, knock them off ledges, or into the spiked walls that seem to be everywhere for some reason. There are few things more satisfying than blocking an enemy then kicking them into their partner, making them both fall off a cliff. You can mix melee with magic, stealth, and ranged combat to give yourself a slew of different approaches to every problem, and your quick movement means that combat never feels too slow or too rooted in one place.

The platforming in Dark Messiah is also very well done, despite the 1st person camera. This is helped by the fact that you can actually see your feet, so you have a much better idea of where you’re landing. Sprinting and making a huge leap or climbing across a roof to reach a hidden area gives you a great feeling of momentum and speed. The game was designed around a lot of vertical movement and it’s amazing how non-frustrating it is. Most times when a first person game introduces platforming it just means they’re giving you a section where you can die a bunch without meaning to, but Dark Messiah manages to make it thrilling without being overly unfair. Also, this game has the best utility item ever: the rope arrow. Essentially, you can stick an arrow into anything wooden, and a rope will hang down. You can climb up the rope to reach whatever you need to, and it totally unlocks the space in a unique way. I think a lot of developers usually design linear games in a very planned way, to guide the player through the story in a specific way. It’s very interesting to see them give the player tools to really change how they make it through the levels.

Go anywhere, with the power of rope arrow! Even to areas of the level that aren't actually designed fully!

It’s never all roses and puppy dogs though and Dark Messiah is no exception. While you get to visit a bunch of different kinds of environments, the levels are confusingly designed. Most of them are fairly linear, but there are usually a few ways to get to the end, and when you introduce the ability to climb pretty much anything with the rope arrow, you can get turned around pretty easily. There’s not a lot of difference between one sandy temple corridor and another, really. I also think the combat and platforming also would have fit fantastically in a more open world setting, especially with the rope arrow. Something more exploration based would have really suited the characters ability to get pretty much anywhere, rather than forcing you down a bunch of similar corridors. The female characters are also really, really one dimensional. They really don’t have a lot in the way of agency, an arc, or importance, and I feel like that was a real waste. There are two female characters that get some screen time, and they could both have had really interesting backstories given the magical and fantastical world this game is in, but they’re mainly eye candy.

Gosh. Which of these three exactly-the-same paths should I choose?

Worth Playing?

Yes.

I would not head into this game if you’re looking for a well fleshed out story, an open world, or a really long game. But, if you’re looking for great melee combat, some fun exploration, and the sort of combat item since Half Life 2’s gravity gun, then yeah, this one is worth your time.

Dark Souls and Dark Souls II: Sequel Comparison

Dark Souls and Dark Souls II are both games made by From Software, the makers of the Armored Core series. Both games are renowned for their difficulty, their dark and alternatingly horrifying/ beautiful worlds, and their many ways to play. With Dark Souls III coming up fairly soon, these games have been on my mind. There’s a lot of discussion over which game does what better between 1 and 2, and some of the design choices in each game are kind of confusingly bad. Here, we’re going to look both games and take some examples of good and bad from each and do a little compare and contrast.

Dark Souls has a lot of interesting combat mechanics, but one of the most useful ones is the parry-riposte combo. You can knock aside an enemy’s weapon if you parry at the right moment, and then you can riposte by pressing the attack button. The riposte is an attack that does a larger amount of damage then a normal attack and knocks the enemy down, if it doesn’t kill them outright. While performing a riposte, you are locked into an animation and invincible for a second or so. In Dark Souls II, the mechanic was altered a bit. The parry works the same, but now when you parry an enemy, they fall down. To riposte, you must be standing in the exact right place in front of them, and you must wait for the enemy to fall down. Once that happens, then you can riposte. This really breaks up the game. First of all, you can be hit inbetween parrying the enemy and the riposte, which will knock you around and cause you to miss the riposte. In Dark Souls, if you knew what you were doing, you could tear through large amounts of enemies in almost no time by constantly parrying and riposting. In Dark Souls II, you are forced to wait if you want to do anything besides hiding behind your shield. This might seem small, but parrying and riposting is a huge part of these games and to put a barrier in-between the moves really screws with how you can use them and the timing of the combat.

Dark Souls 1 Parry/Riposte

Dark Souls II Parry/Riposte

Dark Souls has a unique “level” design, to say the least. All of the areas are connected and there are shortcuts between them. In the beginning of the game, you can go in pretty much any direction and do things that you need to do. Towards the end of the game, things get more linear, but you get the ability to jump between the different levels at checkpoints.

Dark Souls 1 Map

In Dark Souls II, the levels work in the opposite way. The path is very linear until near the end, and you start with the ability to jump between levels. There’s a central hub that you level up at, and head to each level from. The level design in Dark Souls II leaves a lot to be desired. By giving you a home base, it really depreciates the feeling of adventure, and the difficulty of the journey you face. The ability to jump between worlds also makes them feel like “levels” rather than areas that you travel from. The Souls series has a general feeling of hopelessness, and I don’t think that holds up as well when you can head home for hot chocolate.

Dark Souls II Map

Dark Souls II added some very interesting things to combat that you might not expect. In Dark Souls, dual wielding was pretty much useless, except for some weapons that allow you to parry a little better. This was kind of frustrating, since it meant you only had one or two melee options (shield or no shield). Wielding two weapons was actually bad, as most of them removed your ability to parry. Dark Souls II gave weapons different moves when placed in the right or left hand, added a number of different kinds of weapon types, and added something called “power stance.” Power stance lets you use both of your equipped weapons at the same time, and actually makes dual wielding an option. You need 1.5x the stat requirements for each weapon, but you can do massive amounts of damage. This was a really great addition that gives you more playstyles than Dark Souls, which is awesome.

Finally I can recklessly use two swords. No more sensible shield wielding for me!

Dark Souls had a pretty wide variety of bosses. There were monster bosses, people in armor bosses, dragons, and more.

They're not this cute in the game. I guess people spend so much time getting absolutely murdered by them, you get a Stockholm syndrome kind of thing, and start to love them a little.

Dark Souls II pretty much just had people in armor, and one boss that was a literal color-changed version of a boss from Dark Souls. Not to say that none of the Dark Souls II bosses were interesting (I’m a big fan of the Pursuer and The Last Giant), but it’s a definite step down in terms of variety and creativity. Bosses in the Souls series are a lot like Megaman bosses, actually. Each level is themed around them in some way, and almost every area ends with a boss. When the bosses get very generic, I think the level design suffers as well, since there’s not as many unique themes to use. There were some really interesting areas of Dark Soul II, but it seems like the creativity stopped after the new weapons.

Worth Playing?

Yes and maybe. Dark Souls is a very good game. The combat is enjoyable, the areas are interesting, and there are so many different playstyles. Dark Souls II has a lot going for it, but the changes in the combat, level structure, and boss design are aggravating. I think the weapon types and dual wielding in Dark Souls II are superior to Dark Souls, but almost every other area is a huge back step.  What do you think? Why do you prefer Dark Souls or Dark Souls II?

Let's Look At: FTL: Advanced Edition

FTL: Advanced Edition is a rogue-like, top-down, spaceship simulator. It’s currently available on Mac, PC, and mobile devices. Playing FTL is basically like being Captain Kirk in Star Trek. You can actually yell out, “All power to shields! Fire lasers at their engines! Crewman, get to the medbay!” and it makes sense (well, you’d still be yelling at a computer, makes you look a little crazy). It’s an unforgiving game that will require a fair amount of time on your part, but there aren’t many games like it on the market.

There’s not much story in FTL, but you’re given enough to make sense of things. You’re a member of the federation, transporting secret information about the weakness of the Rebel’s Flagship. To do this, you have to make it from one end of the sector the other, then jump to the next sector.

Seems simple right? Civilian systems usually have less danger, but also less rewards. Nebulas mess with your sensors, but can have rare quests.

The game randomly generates the sectors you can choose to jump to. Each sector has about 21 waypoints and you need to jump between them to make it to the exit waypoint. Each point on the map has random events, like stores you can buy crewmembers, weapons, repair your ship, or ship upgrades from, or enemy encounters. Certain waypoints also feature hazardous environments like asteroid belts or solar flares. The Rebel fleet chases you through the galaxy, taking over waypoints, so moving backwards is always a gamble.

The Rebel fleet peruses you as you try to collect as much scrap as possible in each system. An upgraded ship stands a much better chance surviving the galaxy.

Your ship requires fuel to jump, which you can find or buy in various ways. When you encounter an enemy, you have to either destroy their ship, kill the crew, or simply wait until your “faster than light” drive charges to jump away. By destroying enemy ships, accomplishing side quests, or encountering random events you get scrap which you can use to repair your ship or buy weapons, upgrades, and crewmembers.

FTL is about management at its heart. You assign your crew members to different rooms and they man their equipment there. Each subsystem of your ship (weapons, shields, engines, etc.) is actually a skill that your crewmember can level up by using that station in combat. For instance, every time you fire a weapon in combat, the crewmember’s weapons skill increases a little.

Here's the starting ship, The Kestrel. It's pretty bare bones, but very up-gradable It's got three human crewmemebers, but they haven't been assigned anywhere except the pilot.

There are a number races of crew that you can, each with their own unique traits. Humans, for instance, learn skills faster than any other races. The Engi (a race of sentient machines) can repair things twice as fast as all the other races, but they do half the damage in hand to hand combat. You should aim to have a number of different races on your crew, and figuring out who does what best is really gratifying.

Here you can see human and Engi crewmembers. You can have a total 8 crew members, which is definitely helpful.

All of your ships systems (weapons, shields, etc.) require power from your ships reactor, which can be upgraded and improved over time. You make choices throughout the game about which systems you’re going to focus on, because you can’t generate enough power to fuel every part of the ship at once. This allows you to focus on certain playstyles and really opens the replayablity of the game.

You can see that each weapon requires a certain number of power bars to work, as do the rest of the ships subsystems. Here, the weapons system has not been upgraded enough to allow all three weapons to be active at once.

Combat is the main way you deal with enemies in FTL. Each encounter shows your and the enemies ship from a top down perspective, and you can target individual rooms of the enemy ship. You’ll face rebels, pirates, slavers, religious zealots, and more. Your ship’s weapons each require power, and the missile based weapons require ammunition each time you fire. Each weapon has a charge up time that resets once it fires, so you need to manage the warm up times of everything while dealing with incoming fire from the enemy. Each ship has up to 4 shield bars that you need to get through before hitting the enemy ship directly (certain weapons bypass the shields directly, like missiles). The combat takes place in real time, but you can pause the game and issue orders, so it’s almost possible to play the game turn-by-turn. There’s a large variety of weapons with different effects, warm up times, and damages. Mixing and matching them is challenging, but rewarding when you figure out a good combo.

By targeting the subsystems of the enemy ship, you can disable that system until the enemy repairs it. This makes combat really dynamic and strategic. Yeah, it would be good to knock out their weapons, but if you knock out the shields first, the rest of their ship is open to attack.

There’s a lot of different kinds of ships you can use, with different layouts and subsystems. Each ship has an A, B, and C variation and more ships unlocked as you beat the Rebel Flagship or complete various side quests. The ships themselves don’t actually make a huge difference in gameplay, other than that you start with different races of crewmembers and subsystems. Throughout the game you can also acquire up to three upgrades for your ship that have various effects (collecting 10% more scrap every time you find some, missiles have a chance to do no damage, etc.) Unlocking new ships is fun and it really gives you a reason to keep playing besides just how many points you can get.

Playing with the various ships is fun and can force you to change your playstyle, which is definitely interesting.

There are some parts of the game that can be annoying. You can be totally screwed over by RNG at any point during combat. RNG, for those who aren’t familiar, stands for Random Number Generator. It means that the game rolls a die and if the number is above “x”, the attack will hit. This means that you can launch 20 attacks in a row and have all of them miss, while getting hit by all 30 of your enemies’ attacks even though you have a 50% dodge chance. This is amazingly frustrating, but it can work on your side.

The last boss is also crazy hard. I won’t spoil it for you, but beating the Rebel Flagship takes a number of attempts and a good amount of luck. It’s really frustrating to be intensely invested in your ship, crew and just lose because they game decided that you’re going to miss all of your attacks, or because the first volley of shots knocks out your shields. A large number of the random events you encounter can also end in you losing crew members, and since training them takes time, it can be a huge loss. It’s hard to get an idea of exactly what’s going to happen for every quest or dialogue choice and the game autosaves after every event, so there’s no going back.

Get used to seeing this screen a lot.

Worth Playing?

Yes.

I love this game. It has more replay value that most triple AAA games, more interesting mechanics, and it’s more challenging. The amount of customizability you have with your ship, your crew, the weapons, the upgrades, and path is fun and really well designed. It’s hard though. If you’re looking for a nice, relaxing game to play after a rough day in the salt mines, you should choose something else. This game will make you yell at your computer as well as anybody that tells you to calm down.

Let's Start Looking At: Fallout 4

Why do people love post-apocalyptic stuff so much? What is it about the post-end-of-the-world that people are so attracted to? Maybe people think that they’d do better without rules, or that humanity would be better if we got a fresh start. As for me, I think I just like burned out cars and giant mutated bugs. Something charming about them, really. The Fallout series of games is where people have traditionally gone to scratch this itch, so let’s see if the newly released Fallout 4 do the same.

This dog and I are going to totally mess up some giant ants or something.

There’s a lot to like about Fallout 4, but it’s more a mixed bag than I usually like in my games. The combat is punchier than ever before, the settlements system is interesting and adds a new dynamic to the game, and upgrading weapons and armor creates an interesting personal attachment to your equipment that’s definitely new. Fallout 4 also has a terrible dialogue system, little to no RPG elements (something Fallout games were renowned for), and an annoying habit of making you go back home to drop off all the junk you’ve picked up on your thrilling adventure.

Just like last week, this is a first impressions piece. I’ve sunk a little over 13 hours into Fallout 4, which isn’t nearly enough time for a proper review. These are some of the more obvious things I’ve seen in the game, so take them for what you will.

Fallout 4 begins with you designing a male or female character, then witnessing the beginning of the so called “Great War”, which consumed the world in nuclear fire. Over 200 years later, you exit the vault and set out to find the man who stole your son and murdered your partner. Fallout 4 takes place in The Commonwealth, a post-nuclear version of Boston and its surrounding area. This is definitely the most “domestic” start to a Fallout game it feel a little out of place in the series. I like the motivation that the family angle gives you, though.

I like the idea of using a mirror as a character creation tool, but the constant comments from your character and the other can get a little annoying.

So, to start, the combat is much faster paced than it was in any previous Fallout game. The melee weapons have a lot more momentum when you swing them and the guns feel much more responsive and weighty than they used to. There’s a decent variety of weapons, both melee and ranged, and the modification system (which I’ll touch on later) helps keep them interesting. Melee attacks can be done with ranged weapons (some of which can be modified with bayonets for extra damage), which is much more FPS-y than Fallout has ever been. Melee attacks stagger opponents and are generally too slow to be of much use. I think it would be very difficult to play a melee combat only character, but it could make for an interesting challenge run. This is a bit of a disappointment, as older Fallout games allowed you to play with a variety of characters, from ranged, to melee, to pacifists. Despite all that, the combat is very enjoyable and firefights definitely feel less wooden than in Fallout 3 or Fallout: NV.

Enemies are more dynamic and will use cover in the environment.

There’s a new system that allows you to build “settlements” in certain areas of the map, once cleared of enemies. This is a big addition to the Fallout universe. Usually, you just go through the wasteland completing quests, but for the first time you have the ability to start rebuilding the world. You collect different kinds of resources by breaking down junk and other items that you find in The Commonwealth and use them to build things. You can build and plop down houses, defenses, furniture, and other items like you might in The Sims. Each settlement can have a maximum number of people, and you need to provide them with beds, food, water, and protection to keep them happy. With certain perks, you can even build stores that generate income and supplies based on population. While the level of customization doesn’t even begin to touch something like The Sims, it’s still very impressive given that the whole system is new. Building settlements and establishing trade routes is pretty enjoyable and it does make you feel like you’re doing something to improve the lives of the people of The Commonwealth, rather than just murdering people in post-apocalyptic locations.

You can build some damn nice looking settlements if you have a mind to. While not essential, settlements definitely improve the Fallout 4 experience.

Lastly, the crafting system in Fallout 4 is really fun and it makes hunting for junk more enjoyable than it has any right to be. Crafting has been in the Fallout games since Van Buren (Black Isle Studios’ cancelled Fallout 3), but was just a side thing you could do, rather than an important part of the game. In Fallout 4, crafting is how you get better gear. In the older games, you might explore new areas or complete quests to get better weapons or armor, but in Fallout 4 you focus more on improving the basic weapons and armor you find earlier. To improve your gear you need to collect various different kinds of materials, which you get from breaking down junk that litters just about every place in the game. As you level up, you can get perks which improve the kinds of modifications you can give your weapons and armor, up to pretty ridiculous levels.  While some aspects of the junk collecting are annoying, it’s really fun to take what was a simple pistol and add on 6 different kinds of mods with dozens of varieties, to turn it into something really unique.

Each weapon has about 6 modifications, each with about  5-10 varieties. You can really customize weapons to fit your playstyle.

Bethesda has done a lot streamline the Fallout games since they acquired the rights in 2004. Nowhere is this more evident than in Fallout 4. To start, the entire dialogue system has been revamped. Traditionally, you were given a number of conversion options for every encounter, but now you always have 4. Instead of the list format you had previously, you now have a sort of conversation wheel, similar to Mass Effect. The new dialogue system is a serious step down in complexity, role playing, and clarity. Each speech option is described with a word or two and really doesn’t tell you enough about what your character is going to say. This is frustrating, annoying, and kind of stupid. You need to know what you’re saying in a role playing game, that’s just a fact. Conversation becomes a crapshoot, rather than any kind of role playing exercise or storytelling mechanic.

What do any of these mean? Does somebody not "support news"? You may as well blindfold yourself and just mash buttons.

The skill, perk and S.P.E.C.I.A.L systems have been rebuilt from the ground up. In all of the main Fallout games up until 4, you create a character, pick a number of “tag” (or main) skills, and distribute a number of attribute points into strength, perception, endurance, charisma, intelligence, agility, and luck (S.P.E.C.I.A.L, up to 10). These attributes affected what level your skills started at and had other effects such as the number of companions you can recruit, which kinds of weapons you could use, and other character stats. Your special points could be increased through perks, gear, and sometimes even surgeries, but it was nearly impossible to get 10s across the board. As you leveled up, you could get perks which might increase the damage you do, make wild animals take your side in combat, or other benefits. In Fallout 4, you no longer have skills and instead your S.P.E.C.I.A.L stats directly govern character stats. When you level up, you can choose to increase your S.P.E.C.I.A.L stats, or choose a perk. Each perk has several ranks, requires a certain number of points in an attribute, and a certain character level. There is no hard level cap in the game, so you can build a character that has 10s across the board and every perk. This removes much incentive to play the game multiple times and diminishes the role playing aspect of this RPG, which is confusing. Like I said before, one of the best parts of any Fallout games is the ability to play vastly different characters. At this point, it seems like Bethesda is just taking little bits and pieces of Fallout’s clothes and dressing up a very different game in them.

There are a huge number of perks, many of which with more than one rank, which would have been great with a level cap. As it stands, there's little reason to make new characters.

No one likes being interrupted in the middle of something. Fallout 4 doesn’t get that though. You have a weight limit for your character and junk fills up inventory very quickly. Most RPGs are filled with a degree of clutter, but it’s usually used as environmental storytelling rather than something you need to weigh yourself down with. Interrupting your adventure to travel back to dump all your junk back at base makes you feel as if you’re playing two different games and one of them is not fun. Scavenging for resources makes a lot of sense, given your situation, but the implementation leaves a lot to be desired. Maybe you could order your follower to head back to the settlement to drop the junk off and then return to you, or maybe you could hire a temporary follower just for ferrying junk back and forth.

Look at all this stupid junk I have to cart back and forth every 20 minutes. This is what fun is, right?

Worth Playing?

Yes.

Despite all the issues, Fallout 4 is really fun and the amount of content is staggering. There are a lot of little annoyances but exploring, combat, and the world that Fallout 4 constructs are just as enjoyable as before. There’s a catch, however. If you were hoping for a return to anything like Fallout 2, you should stay away. This game will not scratch that itch. I would be willing to wager that you won’t see another game like the old CRPGs for a long time, if ever.

Let's Start Looking At: Elite: Dangerous

I remember being a kid and watching Star Wars Episode IV, very vividly. I remember how much I wanted to fly an X-Wing. Flying through space, dogfighting with other ships, and blowing up the Deathstar seemed like the most awesome things you could ever do in your life. There hasn’t been a game that quite sated that urge, but Elite: Dangerous looked like it might come close. There are a lot of things in this game that are well designed, fun, and just plain cool to use but there are also a small number of, but worryingly large, issues that really take away from the game.

Space: the final frontier...

Now, this is not a review. These are first impressions, since I don’t think I’ve put enough time into this game to speak to the whole thing. I’m also only talking about the single player rather than the always-on online world.

To start, the user interface looks awesome. You spend (almost) the whole game in your ship and you can see every part of the UI by looking at a different part of your cockpit. Look right and you see a technical readout of all your ship parts, your inventory, and more. Look at the left part of your cockpit and you can open the system map, the galaxy map, see information about the current system, and your missions. This is a really cool way to get information and it fits really well with the feel of the game as well as the design of the world.

It's all very shiny and very cool looking, really. The cockpit has almost all the info you need, though it's not all directly in front of you.

Flying your spaceship is quite possibly the best part of this game. Flying feels smooth and responsive, but never too easy. You have a number of thrusters on your ship, so you can angle things pretty much however you want to and you can really pull of some ace pilot maneuvers when you get a handle on it. I was playing with a mouse and keyboard, but I think a joystick would give you the best experience. There’s a really good sense of momentum and weight when you try to bank hard, or spin your ship around quickly to shoot at a pursuer. While figuring out the initial controls is fairly easy, using them in combat, or pulling off anything more impressive takes time and practice, which I think is good. This gives the game a good sense of progression that goes beyond what kind of ship you have. 

The open world aspect of this game is pretty close the ideal of the style, I think. There’s no side quests that warp you into some weird side quest-world, there’s nowhere you can’t go if you have the fuel, and there’s no jobs you can’t take. You can be a trader, ferrying goods from end of the galaxy to the other and buying low and selling high. You can be a mercenary, hunting down pirates and outlaws and doing corporation’s dirty work for credits. You can just explore the galaxy and sell the data to whomever else wants it, or any combination of these and more. The freedom here is awesome and probably the second best part of this game.

You really do get the feeling that you can go anywhere and do anything, which is hard to do in games.

The combat is also really fun. You can have all sorts of weapons, from lasers to miniguns, missiles and more. All of the weapons have a different feel, but they all fit. Lasers lance across space, minigun tracer rounds fly towards your target, and missiles leave plumes of smoke behind them as they follow your enemy. The number of different kinds of weapons, potential for a million kinds of combat situations, and easy to learn/hard to master nature of the flight and combat make every combat instance interesting and difficult.

Complex, but fun. You can attach as many weapons as you have hardpoints on your ship.

Now, everything isn’t roses and unicorns here. When I made a pros and cons list for this game, the pros outweighed the cons by quantity, but the cons had way more of an effect on how I played the game and what I thought about it.

To start, the user interface is clunky as hell. I can’t imagine trying to open my targeting menu to target the enemies’ cargo hatch in the middle of a fight, as I’d have to look to the right side of the cockpit (where I can’t see the enemy), click through two menus, and then return to combat. In this time, any decent fighter could have my shields down to zero and be destroying my hull. I love the idea and look of the menus, but I think that they fall apart in combat. It might be better if you could hold a button to create a targeting overlay on your enemy while fighting them, then choose which part you want to aim for. This would allow for the same level of detail in combat without forcing players to “take their eyes off the road” to speak. This might not seem big, but given how much time you need to spend in the menus to play a lot of this game, it’s a constant annoyance and drags down the experience.

Another really big issue is the total lack of explanation the game offers you and how many steps everything takes. There are several tutorial videos, the first 7 of which I found useful, though I think you could start after the first 4. Each video is about 5-7 minutes long, so you’re looking at a minimum of 20 minutes before you actually start playing the game, which is definitely a bit annoying. You would think that with 12 tutorial videos, how to complete some of the missions might be included, but you’d be wrong about that.

I mean look at this. So intuitive. A child could do it. Screw those round peg square hole puzzles, just give kids this game.

The first mission I found was a mission to hunt down some pirates who were harassing a corporation’s supply line. “Sounds great!” I thought. What a fun way to start out a space adventure. So, after using the galaxy map to plot my course to the relevant system, flying a minimum distance away from the station I was docked at, jumping to the system the pirates were in, entering an in-system mode of travel known as “supercruise” (as flying from one end of the system to the other would take real time days), lining up my ship with my destination, waiting 5 (actual) minutes to reach my destination, fiddling with the controls to drop out of supercruise at the right speed, and arriving at the navigation beacon at the center of the system, I found myself looking around at the other ships, trying to figure out who was a pirate, or how to locate them. Now, this may be an issue of taste rather than an actual problem with the game, but the thousand steps needed to do one thing makes playing Elite: Dangerous feel more like work than fun.

I had to go online to find out that the game doesn’t actually tell you exactly where the pirates are or how to identify them. Turns out, pirates will be the ships scanning other ships, trying to find valuable cargo. They could be at the nav beacon, but they could also be one of the literally dozens of random signals that you can only see from supercruise. This means that you have to keep going in and out of supercruise around the system (a 1 to 2 minute process), not overshoot the signal locations (add another 2 minutes), drop out of supercruise, see if people are scanning other people like crazy, then go back into supercruise to try to find more signals. Then, if you somehow find your target, they can jump to supercruise and you literally cannot force them out of it unless your ship has a special upgrade that you are never told about. It’s so frustrating because with combat and flight as fun as they are, you would think that hunting pirates would be awesome, but instead it’s a massive chore.

Worth Playing?

Maybe.

It really depends what you like. If the idea of a space trading or exploration sim sounds great to you, then yeah, this game could totally be what you’re looking for. If you want to enjoy fun combat without resorting to attacking friendly ships and piracy, I don’t think you’ll like this one. It’s possible that somebody could enjoy the work associated with finding your target, but I have a really hard time imagining that you could. Personally, I love a lot of the ideas in Elite: Dangerous, but actually playing it is frustrating, tiring, and so far from the space adventure I want.

Let’s Look At: Metro 2033 Redux

Living in post-apocalyptic Russian subway tunnels would be hell.

Among the mutants, the cramped and disgusting spaces, the toxic gases, and the bandits, death might be better. For the characters in Metro 2033 Redux (Metro 2033) every day is a new struggle to survive to the next miserable day. Yet, they move forward anyway, hoping that the next day will be better.

The game’s mechanics ironically reflect the differences between the hope of the characters and the oppressiveness of the world.  So much about Metro 2033 is wonderfully made and executed, but there are times when parts of the game can make the player feel squeezed in from all sides.

Welcome to the Metro, comrade.

Metro 2033 Redux, released on August 26, 2014 is a visually and technically upgraded version of the original game, with both graphical upgrades, less hiccups, and all DLC released for the original Metro 2033. The game takes place in 2033, 20 years after Russia was devastated by nuclear bombs. A small fraction of the populace of Moscow survived by retreating into the Russian metro tunnels.

Metro 2033 Redux makes several improvements on the original, and is definitely the definitive version of the game.

You play as Artyom, a young man who has spent almost his whole life underground, at his home metro station, Exhibition. After mysterious creatures known as “The Dark Ones” attack Exhibition you leave your home to seek the help of the elite combat unit, The Rangers.

This game is actually based on a 2005 Russian novel of the same name, by Dmitry Glukhovsky. You can see how having a concrete plot to work with definitely helps the story of the game in terms of cohesiveness and flow. As you play through the story, you can feel how Artyom feels and really get a sense for what life is like for people in the stations.

While a strong point, the story of Metro 2033 is outshone by the scenery and attention to detail, among other aspects. The metro runs on a currency of military grade bullets, so most weapons use inferior homemade rounds. Of course you can use military grade rounds in your weapons, but then what will you do when you need to trade for food or other resources? You need to wear a gasmask every time you head onto the irradiated surface, and you need to keep a steady supply of filters to even use the mask. Every station designed so it looks like somewhere people would actually live. Every station has areas to sleep, little markets, a makeshift bar, or entertainment areas. Walking through the various tunnels and on the surface, you find the bodies of others who tried to make it to other stations, just like you are trying to do. You pray you are luckier than them.

The thought put into the stations in the Metro really helps you understand the people inside them and Metro 2033's world.

The weapons are another high point. Some of them, like the Kalash, are based off of real world weapon (in this case the AK-47). Others, however, are cobbled together from whatever the metro citizens could find. For instance, the “Bigun” is a 6 round semi-automatic shotgun made entirely out of bicycle parts. Almost all the weapons can be upgraded, with a variety of sights, barrels, and other attachments. They are punchy and satisfying to use, and the different varieties mean that you’re always looking forward to your next shop visit to upgrade a current weapon or buy a new one.

Who doesn't want to use a shotgun made out of a bicycle?

Along the same lines, the variety of enemy AI keeps you on your toes, as you have to consider strategically how to use your weapons every time you encounter someone (or something) different. The human enemies try to flank you, throw explosives, and lay down covering fire. The mutants charge in groups and come in from behind, with the faster mutants attacking you in the back and retreating. Firefights are always dynamic, and never pop-up shooting galleries.

Another great feature in Metro 2033 is the “Ranger” difficulty that you can play on. This mode removes the heads up display entirely, along with crosshairs, among other things. It only takes a shot or two to kill you or any other character. Ammo is scarcer and total ammo inventory is halved, with the exception of silent throwing knife storage, which increases. As you can guess, stealth is heavily encouraged on this mode, but I would argue it’s not the most fun way to play. Sneaking around until you make a mistake and a frantic gunfight begins is definitely more enjoyable than reloading every time you’re caught. After all, who doesn’t feel proud of getting themselves out of a sticky situation?

Metro 2033 isn’t without its share of issues, however.

While the metro stations are generally well designed and thought out, the outdoor levels are significantly less directed. It makes sense that the surface of Moscow would be a snowy, chaotic mess, but it makes it very difficult to find where you’re supposed to go. Often, a doorway or path forward looks like a dozen of the other pieces of old wreckage that litters the surface. Sometimes it feels as if the designers were attempting to make you backtrack through every inch of the level, rather than leading you where you’re supposed to be going.

There are 20,000 possible directions to go in this picture alone.

There are also times the game doesn’t tell you what you’re supposed to be doing. The goal is usually simple: move forward. You can be given more complex objectives, such as planting charges to close a mutant-spewing tunnel. In that case however, I found myself shooting wave after wave of mutant, waiting for it to end. Normally, other characters remind you what you need to do, but not this time. I had to check my menu to figure out the objective, which obviously removes a lot of the tension at the moment.

Without spoiling anything, there are actually two endings to game. If you take enough “moral” actions during the game, you get the second ending. I thought that figuring out these specific actions was confusing and under-explained. Sometimes, the “moral” action makes sense, like when you give rounds to a man that begs against the wall of a station. Others, like moving to stand in the corner of a hospital room to get a better view of the beds, does not. Each moral action causes the screen to brighten momentarily and noise can be heard for less than a second, but there’s no explanation for what’s going on. All through the game, your screen colors change for a huge number of story and gameplay reasons, so I didn’t even notice when I was making a “moral” action. While a nice treat for anybody who looks it up, it seems as if this ending was hidden a bit too well.

Worth playing?

Yes. Metro 2033 Redux is an extremely enjoyable ride from start to finish. The story keeps you engaged, the combat is brutal and punchy, and the attention to detail and world building are exceptional among first person shooters. While there are significant issues with level design, direction, and explanation they do not detract from the overall package enough to sour the experience.

Let's Look At: Receiver

Receiver is a first person shooter designed by Wolfire Games, an independent studio also responsible for Overgrowth and Lugaru: The Rabbit’s Foot. It’s not a very large or long game - the entire world takes place on top of a roof of a very large building. Receiver explores the mechanics of shooting more than a traditional FPS; not really surprising given that it was developed for the 7-Day FPS challenge.

 The game really begins when you find cassette tapes lying around, which gradually reveal your history and purpose. The monotonic voice on the tapes claims to be your only hope of survival against interdimensional beings, and guides you through the game as you find new ones along the way. You proceed uneasily through dark hallways, and barren and sterile rooms. The layout procedurally generates itself and never looks exactly the same, although patterns tend to pop up every so often. The enemies, quiet and drab. They creep; they do not jump. 

As you move through the “houses,” the bare bones user interface doesn’t add any frills. In the bottom of the screen, the player can see their items laid out in a straight line, going left to right, each slot corresponding to a number key. The fairly Spartan visual look of the game, with little in the way of complex graphics (mainly flat shading and the occasional colored light), feels more deliberately empty to create a feeling of loneliness rather than incompleteness.

While sparse, the environments in Receiver do a lot to add tension and unease.

Receiver places a huge emphasis on the controls Reloading a gun takes 7 full key presses and aiming is iron-sights or hip-fire only. Whichever pistol you choose (of which there are three possible options), you have to hold the right mouse button to aim the gun, and fire with the left mouse button. To sprint, you must tap the W key rapidly to gain speed in-game. However, when you enter combat with the enemy, your complete control over your movements makes you feel both in control and helpless as you scramble to press all the right buttons to link the minute movements that make up the fight while furiously mashing the "w" key to sprint away.

Receiver helps you by giving you an option to view all the actions you can take at any given moment (in white) against the total possible actions that the player can do (in gray).

From this description, you might imagine the enemies were some kind of horror-movie fodder, but they’re just machines. There are two kinds of enemies in the game, rotating automatic turrets and flying tazer drones. You find both in any place, though usually not right next to where you start. A single beeping tone indicates that one of them has spotted you. One hit means death, so you must see them first. The lock on beep sends more of a chill down your spine than most horror movies can.

Like the environment, the enemies are simply visually designed, but like the gunplay, their complex mechanics force you to use a very careful playstyle. The turret is made up of the ammo box, the battery, a motor,and a camera. If you shoot out the camera lens, the turret spins and won’t see you. If you shoot out the battery, the gun stops spinning. If you shoot out the ammo box, the turret spins and sees you, but can’t shoot. If you shoot out the motor, the barrel of the guns drops to the floor and stays stationary. The flying drone has a similar set of mechanics, though hitting their various parts is more difficult because of their high attack speed. As you might have guessed by now. running and gunning in Receiver is usually tantamount to suicide.

Enemies are carefully designed to promote a careful and considered approach.

    I would be very interested to see this model applied to a larger game. The difficultly and tension of the gunplay would work well with an inversion of the usual macho hero first person shooter. Maybe you’re a civilian who gets caught in an active warzone and you find a weapon on a downed soldier and you use it to try to escape, your skills with it building every time you need to fire it, or a similar situation where the violence inherent in the gameplay speaks to the horror of war. 

Worth Playing? 

    Yes. Though Receiver is sparse on details and content, it creates one of the most viscerally potent experiences in the FPS genre. You can’t spend more than a few hours delving into the game. The minimal layout and procedural levels become monotonous before too long, but it’s a short, sweet, and won’t take up too much of your time and wallet. It’s worth playing if only for the stark contrast with almost any other first person shooter, save some of the more simulation based ones.