Mr eel
January 2007 - Currently Playing
Like usual, I’ve got a few different games on the go at the moment. Here are my initial impressions of what I’m currently playing.
Mass Effect (Xbox 360)
Buggy graphics, driving the Moko vehicle on planet is a pain in the arse and the combat difficulty fluctuates weirdly. It also suffers from artificial difficulty. The idea that anyone would attempt to take on an tank-sized robots with rifles is ridiculous, but that’s what the game wants you do to — it makes it hard you see.
It also has quite complicated RPG elements, which the game makes no effort to explain or ease you into using. Which is a shame, because if you don’t read the manual you’ll be confused as to what’s going on. Also, you’ll get caned in combat. You absolutely have to swap and upgrade your equipment. Ordinarily I hate this kind of thing, but I actually really enjoy it in Mass Effect.
All the problems aside, the dialogue system and dialog itself is fantastic. I’ve yet to find a badly voiced character and most of the interactions are believable. I normally avoid dialogue in RPGs because it tends to be irrelevant junk, but in Mass Effect it’s interesting.
Also the sense of a well-developed universe is enough keep me poking about, although I almost wish I didn’t have to bother with all the on-planet combat. It’s a bit bland.
I’m still ambivalent about it, but I think I might come out liking this game. We’ll see.
Silent Hill 0rigins (PSP)
Despite my fears, this is actually a competent entry in the series. The art direction is spot on, the sound design and music hits all the right notes and there are some genuinely scary moments. It’s a quintessential Silent Hill game. That’s actually part of it’s problem.
It retreads the previous games very closely. The monsters — hello nurses — the settings, even how progression is handled. None of it is surprising. In that sense it’s not much like the previous games, where you can see a conscious effort was made to move the series in new directions.
It’s early in the game, but I’m slightly disappointed. Almost no time is being given to the plot — being a prequel, you would think this is pretty important. Instead I’m trudging through large, bland levels and getting assailed by loads of monsters.
Now, here is where I really complain. Combat in the Silent Hill series has always been clumsy and a bit lame. Thankfully it wasn’t much of an issue, since it wasn’t emphasised much and most of the monsters were easy enough to handle.
0rigins however confronts you with lots of monsters. Most of them are pretty tough, they are placed in multiples, will chase you and respawn at the most annoying spots. This coupled with a clumsy combat system makes for a frustrating time. Being killed by respawned monsters after solving a tricky puzzle is just plain shit. So rather than soaking up the atmosphere and you know, being scared, I’m just get annoyed at the game.
I’m early on in the game and I can see it might get better, but I’m feeling a bit ambivalent about this one as well. I’m having doubts anyone can make a Silent Hill as good as Team Silent — the dev team within Konami.
Zelda - The Phantom Hourglass (Nintendo DS)
I love the graphical style, the controls work surprisingly well, tooling about in the ship is good fun and in general the game just oozes quality.
However… it forces you to return to a central dungeon repeatedly. This sucks. It really, really sucks. It’s boring and it takes a long time. I actually put the game down for awhile because I was just getting annoyed with it.
If I just grin and bear it, I know I’ll be rewarded with some good fun. At the same time however, I know I’m going to have to go back to that stupid dungeon again. Let’s see if I actually finish it.
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