Fuck you.
Just fuck you and everything you stand for.
You clearly don't belong in this game. Everything else about it is brilliant - the visuals are slick and gritty, the gameplay is solid and extremely different from Mortal Kombat and the Story Mode is engaging and challenging without being bullshit hard. When Bane kicks the Joker into an elevator, then runs inside to smash his head against the walls hard enough to leave dents, I pump my fist into the air with joy. The game as a whole could have been a beautiful rose in the colourful flowerbed of video games, but it isn't. And that's because you exist on it as a hideous, parasitic fungus eating away at it's insides and ruining everything that's good about it with your rank stench of dog turd.
Allow me to elaborate. I had cleared the Story Mode and earned a load of Armoury Keys to unlock alternate costumes for the characters. However, the Keys are only awarded with every alternate level you reach, so I wasn't able to unlock all of them. It was then that all my common sense leapt out of my brain and scurried away, leaving to me to make a really stupid decision. "Okay," I say to myself, "perhaps I'll try the S.T.A.R Labs missions. Mortal Kombat's missions were cool and I beat loads of those, so maybe this'll be a ticket to free XP and Armoury Keys." Little did I know of the bullshit that was lurking over the hill, waiting for the chance to pounce and sink his filth-encrusted fangs into my patience.
So I start up the missions, and all goes well. Lex Luthor has kidnapped Louis Lane, as he is wont to do, and Superman has to save her, as he is also wont to do. Mission 1 has me beating up The Flash for some off reason - all I do is follow the on-screen prompts and I complete it, earning three big silver stars. "Huh," I say to myself. "This isn't so hard. I was expecting a bit more, but okay." Mission 2 is more fun - Superman is low on health and has to stay in these patches of sunlight to recover it whilst fighting Bane. It's tense and frantic, and I complete it with little fuss. I earn only two stars this time, but then I try again and it turns out I had to punt Bane through a building as well, which is fair enough.
But then you come along, Mission 3, and put a fucking brick wall between me and progress.
Lex is mind-controlling Batman and has given him a supply of Kryptonite-laced Batarangs (no they don't specify how, put your hand down). And it's not like the challenge is difficult in concept - beat Batman, use a stage prop, don't get hit by the killer green projectiles. No problem, one might say. And indeed, for the first few minutes, it seems pretty simple. Batman barely puts up a fight as I wail on him with Superman's arsenal of kickass moves, punching him through a glass cabinet and throwing a plane on his head. I've whittled him down to half health and so far, things are fine.
And then I get hit with a Batarang.
I ignore this and complete the mission. But because I was hit, I'm deducted a star. And the only way to get all three stars is never to get hit. So I try again. And again, and again, and again, and gradually the veil of normalcy is torn away to reveal the hideous beast underneath, the sight of which makes me swear in disgust and throw my controller down so hard it bounces off the floor, hits the TV and knocks my copy of Metal Gear Rising off my shelf. Because the tongue-slapping otherkin dickheads behind the creation of this mission have rigged it to the point where earning that precious third star is fucking impossible.
See, there is literally no way to predict when Batman is going to throw a Batarang, because the A.I. doesn't have the same patterns one would find in a Capcom game. And it seems Lex's mind-control device also made Bruce Wayne fucking precognitive as well, because everything I do can somehow be perfectly countered with a telepathically-thrown Batarang from the fucking future. Heat Vision blasts are interrupted without a fuss, attempts to dive in are blocked and any attempts at actual combos or closing the distance are met with a giant Batarang-shaped middle finger. And even when I'm close up to him he will find some way to throw one in my face, because Ryu is apparently a pussy for not throwing projectile attacks at a such a close range as to render them pointless over regular punches or kicks.
My problems with this are twofold. Firstly, one shouldn't set such a fucking narrow goal in the first place. Not everyone is going to be capable of dodging a Batarang every time, so there's no reason to penalize us for not being picture perfect. Three will do at the most, because even then the Kryptonite Batarangs (note how fucking dumb that sounds, by the way) don't even do that much damage. Secondly, even if you are going to set such a goal, you have to make sure the enemy A.I. for that mission isn't an input-reading arsehole that delights in ruining people's dreams. Because Heaven forbid that the players actually succeed in completing the shitty challenges we personally designed to have a fucking reward at the end for completing! Only pansy casuals design their games to let their players have any chance of winning at all! No, kicking the player's arse for having the gall to try and do anything besides take it like a bitch is where it's at, because Dark Souls did it so we might as well too! Haw haw haw, tongue-slap tongue-slap!
In the end, I gave up. I turned off the Xbox and played some Mario Tennis instead. There came a point where I asked myself "Why am I even bothering to press any buttons?" because clearly I wasn't meant to succeed, so what was the point? I refuse to put up with bullshit A.I., idiotic goals designed by Hitler and fucking capital punishment for the slightest of errors, because challenge is one thing, but setting up a concrete wall and expecting us to bash it down with naught but a toffee hammer is an exercise in frustration and anger. I'm not proud of my lack of patience when it comes to these things, but from now on I'm only playing games that at least give me a chance to actually fucking complete them. And if that makes me some kind of casual scrub, then call me Scrub McNewbpants, but better to reign in Casual-Land than continuously have my face shoved into dog shit and broken glass in New Hardcoria.
In short, fuck you, Mission 3. I hope Killer Croc rips you open and eats your insides. I'll just grind Story Mode from now on if I want my XP.
Showing posts with label XBox 360. Show all posts
Showing posts with label XBox 360. Show all posts
Tuesday, 21 May 2013
Tuesday, 12 March 2013
DmC Devil May Cry vs. Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance
Okay, let me just get this out of the way before I begin - I never was a fan of Raiden from Konami's Metal Gear Solid series.
I was introduced to him via Playstation All-Stars Battle Royal, and his cold, self-assured blandess immediately made me dislike him almost instantly. On top of that, Yahtzee Chroshaw's mostly negative review of-
...Oh, wait, I've done this before, haven't I?
So here's Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance, a game that many people have been comparing to DmC Devil May Cry ever since the conception of both, because fanboys will argue over anything given the chance. It doesn't help that both are action-based hack-and-slashers starring borderline-pubescant, unlikable protagonists with a pencheant for over-the-top violence and cringe-worthy dialogue, nor that both games were outsourced to a third party because the original producers couldn't trust themselves to do anything with it. But it does help that the both of them have significantly different feels, when one gets right down to it, and it also helps that when two similar games come out, for some strange reason people are only prepared to buy one or the other, rather than have both (thank you, CeX vouchers!). So because I don't know any better, let's compare the two games and find out which of these is "best"!
Plot!
DmC loses several million points right out of the gate by being written by Temmem Antoniades, who, as we have established, is a self-righteous prick with all the empathy a glass of water conjures. From then on, it's pretty much downhill - the dialogue often descends into foul-mouthed teenage back-and-forthing which, while funny in a ridiculous kind of way, makes Joss Whedon's constant parade of one-liners look like Shakespeare. The social commentary is about a subtle as a sledgehammer to the face, as the organization which Dante must take down to ensure humanity's freedom might as well have been called Nox Fews, and on top of that not a single character is relatable in any measure, and you know something is wrong when you hate your player character more than you hate the giant, vomit-spewing maggot demon you're supposed to be fighting.
MGR's plot, by comparison, is a lot stronger. By Kojima standards, it's pretty simple - Raiden good, war bad, kill cyborgs - but has enough intruige and curveballs to keep the player interested. There's a host of intruiging and likeable characters, each with quirks beyond "wears a silly hat" and "swears all the time", that I found myself getting oddly attached to - we transition from the somewhat psychopathic yet informative Doktor easing us into tutorials to the reassuring tones of Boris to give us mission directions, with geeky nerd girl Courtney to save game progress and comedic foil Kevin to tell us why we should give a shit. Drama and laughs come from all sides, and one truly feels that there is an appreciable threat that we need to hunt down and eliminate, not some nebulous corporate miasma that we only tangientally grasp. Definitely better than most of Kojima's efforts, which apparently were desperate attempts to stop making Metal Gear games, I've read.
DmC: 0
MGR: 1
Protagonists!
Dante and Raiden - two malnourished teens with giant swords, bland personalities and odd dress sense. The two make an interesting contrast of each other - on the one hand, a cybernetic ninja with traditional honour values who fights PMC's because it's his job, and on the other, a half-demon slacker who fights demons because he's got nothing better to do that day. One dresses in what can only be called a metallic fetish outfit complete with high-heels and ass-hugging bodysuit, whilst the other wears the first wifebeater, coat and jeans he could find that morning. It's like a metaphor for class separation, if you'll forgive the amount of pretentiousness in that sentence.
In all seriousness, though, I think I prefer Dante over Raiden here. Okay, so he spouts off F-Bombs and punches out bodyguards like a sulky teenager who isn't getting his own way, but there was a very clear sense that he's facing something huge that he can only barely comprehend. The demonic foe is huge, omnipresent and pretty much hates him on sight, and there is a real uncertainty at times if Dante can even take on something so big it literally controls most of humanity behind the scenes, like a mouse trying to fight a humpback whale. Raiden, however, is backed by a technologically-advanced PMC with loads of money in their pockets and all the latest gadgets, and can cut entire buildings apart with a single swipe of his sword. It's hard to root for someone who doesn't feel like he can be threatened by anything, and that's why Dante is (relatively) more relatable than Raiden despite his constant abuse of the word fuck.
DmC: 1
MGR: 1
Combat!
Let's talk about the big gimmick of MGR first - Blade Mode. Once you've stuck an enemy, you can hold down Left Trigger and slow down time, allowing you to rattle the Right Analog Stick about and dice the foe into pieces. A blue meter beneath Raiden's health bar slowly decreases as you slice, and once it runs down you exit Blade Mode and can't use the slow-mo feature the next time you activate it. You get more points for the more pieces you cut an enemy into, and if you cut at a specific location you can then press B to follow up with the Zandatsu, which allows you to recover health and energy and nets you even more points. It feels awesome when you get it right, and the game makes a big thing of how you can cut practically anything with it, which must have been a programming nightmare - kudos to the man who managed to get that working!
However, Blade Mode only works when the game isn't asking you to make precise, fine movements. This is the sort of game where you can be surrounded by soldiers and helicopters vomiting missiles and bullets from every direction, and you can't stop to be accurate or else a Gekko might sneak up and stick his foot up Raiden's arse. But then the game asks you to precisely slice a hand off certain soldiers to obtain data, and even the Zandatsu requires that you precisely target a small orange box on the victim's stomach, and Blade Mode itself is inexact and wild by nature. It's entirely possible to waste your entire energy bar trying to strike a specific point on the target which won't hold still long enough for you to do so, and this is extremely aggrivating as well as flow-breaking.
It doesn't help that combat itself is rather awkward and sticky, and lacks the flow one expects from a hack-and-slasher. Every fight consists of the following, ad nauseum: beat an enemy long enough to render him vulnerable, dice him up with Blade Mode, perform Zandatsu, rinse and repeat. I don't know why the ability to perform actual air combos has to be bought as an upgrade, but the designer needs a slap in the face for that, because I only found this out when my attempts at dicing an opponent in midair failed because what I thought was the launcher can't be comboed from. There's nothing akin to DmC's chains or dash strikes to keep up the pace of battle, and so there's always a period where you'll be running around trying to find that one last enemy that keeps shooting you from really far away. And when you have a game mechanic (i.e., the parry system) that can be outwitted by rubbing the controller on your knee, then it might be worth not bothering at all.
DmC has it's combat down right - you have a variety of weapons that can be chained together for mind-buggeringly long combos, you have a mechanic that lets you jump from one enemy to the next to keep the flow going, and it's generally more fast-paced and frantic. It's basically being about the beauty of combat itself, rather than trying to build up to a spectacular end result that gets boring and stale after you've turned an enemy into prawn salad for the umpteenth time. On top of that, whilst Raiden is pretty much stuck with his sword and can only use rocket-launchers for the occasional hard-to-hit enemy, Dante wields things like flaming gloves and a scythe that can be swapped between during combat to adapt for every challenge, making you feel untouchable.
Also, where the fuck is dodge?! This might sound petty, but I won't apologize for having gotten used to being able to leap out of the way of a sneaky chainsaw attack coming from the corner of my eye. In MGR, if an enemy attacks you from behind whilst you're busy with his mate, you might as well have your cyber-trousers around your ankles.
DmC: 2
MGR: 1
Upgrades!
Okay, MGR definitely takes the prize for this one, because the benefits that might be had for having multiple weapons in DmC are compounded by the upgrade system being like an overly-complex DnD sheet. You acquire upgrade points based on how well you do in combat, but they come so sparsely that you have to think very hard about which skills you want to buy, especially early in the game when you have no idea if Trillion Stab is better than Bullet Rain or so on. On top of that, you have to level up your skills as well as buy new ones, but all your attacks are equally effective on the hordes anyway, so any upgrades to attack damage or speed don't seem rather pointless when you can just stunlock the enemy to death and get equally productive results.
MGR's upgrade system is much more refined: you have a currency, which you earn from killing all enemies, and you buy skills and upgrades with that currency like a shop of murder. And more to the point, each skill feels absolutely nessecary - Raiden needs all the edge he can get against things like unmaned helicopters, robot wolves and giant metal dinosaurs. All the skills in DmC are just more stylish ways of inflicting damage, and whilst there's nothing particulary wrong with that you could potentially proceed through the game without even buying all of them, which strikes me as missing the point somewhat. In a hack-and-slasher, the player needs to evolve in order to take out an increasingly dangerous threat, and there's nothing threatening about a giant demon that can be defeated by abusing the basic combos without any hinderance.
DmC: 2
MGR: 2
Exploration!
This one I agonized over a bit, because both titles have considerable flaws in this aspect. On the one hand, MGR's story focus means that exploration is severely limited, each level being mostly linear with little to no deviations in the path between battle arenas as a consequence of trying to show off epic setpieces. On the other hand, DmC's exploration is hampered by the game's obnoxious habit of blocking off areas in a level that require you to return after obtaining items from later levels, forcing people to replay the first few handfuls of missions in order to get 100% completion on them. This meant a lot of umming and hawing on this subject.
But in the long run, DmC gets the prize because at least there's actual exploration in it. Most importantly, there's an actual reason to do it - finding the keys and challenge doors to find the neccesary upgrade points one needs to make Dante stronger. On top of that, finding all the Lost Souls nets you a bonus amount of currency, which one needs to buy items to keep going in the game, and all MGR has to offer you is rocket launchers. Not a bad reward, but when ammo is scarce due to the focus on melee combat, rockets are pretty much a liability.
DmC: 3
MGR: 2
Setpieces!
Of course, what would a hack and slasher be without fancy environments to hack apart your foes in? MGR does a good job of creating high-octane action by having sequences where Raiden runs along a moving train, down a collapsing clock tower while fighting a Metal Gear RAY and battling enemy cyborgs on top of a stormy tower. But the trouble with these is that they aren't exactly awe-inspiring or original - they feel like sequences ripped from a Borne or Bond movie that we've seen a hundred times before. The environments themselves are nothing to write home about, either, mostly consisting of ruined streets or military bases and little else besides. On top of that, the dull, greyish-brown pallette means that no matter how exciting the cutcenes get, they lack a certain punch that just a bit more vibrant colour could have added.
DmC, however, takes the proveribal chocolate cake when coming up with environment design. When Dante is propelled into Limbo, the realm of the demons that lies just behind the human world, everything turns red and hazy and gains a clear desire to murder the poor drifter in violent ways. The scenery itself shifts and rips in desperate attempts to kill Dante, glowing letters flashing accross the landscape to try and demoralize us. And from murderous carnivals and a run-down mansion decaying with age, we move to hopping up floating boxes in a demonic drinks factory to swinging through corridors fromed from bombastic news logos. There's even a sequence during the battle with evil newscaster Bob Barbas where Dante is monitored by a news camera as he dices up enemies, complete with scrolling text below filled with blatant lies about how handsome the villain is. They're silly, they're unique and they're fun, which is more than can be said for Street #124 Raiden is running down.
DmC: 4
MGR: 2
And the winner is...
I was introduced to him via Playstation All-Stars Battle Royal, and his cold, self-assured blandess immediately made me dislike him almost instantly. On top of that, Yahtzee Chroshaw's mostly negative review of-
...Oh, wait, I've done this before, haven't I?
So here's Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance, a game that many people have been comparing to DmC Devil May Cry ever since the conception of both, because fanboys will argue over anything given the chance. It doesn't help that both are action-based hack-and-slashers starring borderline-pubescant, unlikable protagonists with a pencheant for over-the-top violence and cringe-worthy dialogue, nor that both games were outsourced to a third party because the original producers couldn't trust themselves to do anything with it. But it does help that the both of them have significantly different feels, when one gets right down to it, and it also helps that when two similar games come out, for some strange reason people are only prepared to buy one or the other, rather than have both (thank you, CeX vouchers!). So because I don't know any better, let's compare the two games and find out which of these is "best"!
Steel Komodo presents:
DmC Devil May Cry vs. Metal Gear Rising
Plot!
DmC loses several million points right out of the gate by being written by Temmem Antoniades, who, as we have established, is a self-righteous prick with all the empathy a glass of water conjures. From then on, it's pretty much downhill - the dialogue often descends into foul-mouthed teenage back-and-forthing which, while funny in a ridiculous kind of way, makes Joss Whedon's constant parade of one-liners look like Shakespeare. The social commentary is about a subtle as a sledgehammer to the face, as the organization which Dante must take down to ensure humanity's freedom might as well have been called Nox Fews, and on top of that not a single character is relatable in any measure, and you know something is wrong when you hate your player character more than you hate the giant, vomit-spewing maggot demon you're supposed to be fighting.
MGR's plot, by comparison, is a lot stronger. By Kojima standards, it's pretty simple - Raiden good, war bad, kill cyborgs - but has enough intruige and curveballs to keep the player interested. There's a host of intruiging and likeable characters, each with quirks beyond "wears a silly hat" and "swears all the time", that I found myself getting oddly attached to - we transition from the somewhat psychopathic yet informative Doktor easing us into tutorials to the reassuring tones of Boris to give us mission directions, with geeky nerd girl Courtney to save game progress and comedic foil Kevin to tell us why we should give a shit. Drama and laughs come from all sides, and one truly feels that there is an appreciable threat that we need to hunt down and eliminate, not some nebulous corporate miasma that we only tangientally grasp. Definitely better than most of Kojima's efforts, which apparently were desperate attempts to stop making Metal Gear games, I've read.
DmC: 0
MGR: 1
Protagonists!
Dante and Raiden - two malnourished teens with giant swords, bland personalities and odd dress sense. The two make an interesting contrast of each other - on the one hand, a cybernetic ninja with traditional honour values who fights PMC's because it's his job, and on the other, a half-demon slacker who fights demons because he's got nothing better to do that day. One dresses in what can only be called a metallic fetish outfit complete with high-heels and ass-hugging bodysuit, whilst the other wears the first wifebeater, coat and jeans he could find that morning. It's like a metaphor for class separation, if you'll forgive the amount of pretentiousness in that sentence.
In all seriousness, though, I think I prefer Dante over Raiden here. Okay, so he spouts off F-Bombs and punches out bodyguards like a sulky teenager who isn't getting his own way, but there was a very clear sense that he's facing something huge that he can only barely comprehend. The demonic foe is huge, omnipresent and pretty much hates him on sight, and there is a real uncertainty at times if Dante can even take on something so big it literally controls most of humanity behind the scenes, like a mouse trying to fight a humpback whale. Raiden, however, is backed by a technologically-advanced PMC with loads of money in their pockets and all the latest gadgets, and can cut entire buildings apart with a single swipe of his sword. It's hard to root for someone who doesn't feel like he can be threatened by anything, and that's why Dante is (relatively) more relatable than Raiden despite his constant abuse of the word fuck.
DmC: 1
MGR: 1
Combat!
Let's talk about the big gimmick of MGR first - Blade Mode. Once you've stuck an enemy, you can hold down Left Trigger and slow down time, allowing you to rattle the Right Analog Stick about and dice the foe into pieces. A blue meter beneath Raiden's health bar slowly decreases as you slice, and once it runs down you exit Blade Mode and can't use the slow-mo feature the next time you activate it. You get more points for the more pieces you cut an enemy into, and if you cut at a specific location you can then press B to follow up with the Zandatsu, which allows you to recover health and energy and nets you even more points. It feels awesome when you get it right, and the game makes a big thing of how you can cut practically anything with it, which must have been a programming nightmare - kudos to the man who managed to get that working!
However, Blade Mode only works when the game isn't asking you to make precise, fine movements. This is the sort of game where you can be surrounded by soldiers and helicopters vomiting missiles and bullets from every direction, and you can't stop to be accurate or else a Gekko might sneak up and stick his foot up Raiden's arse. But then the game asks you to precisely slice a hand off certain soldiers to obtain data, and even the Zandatsu requires that you precisely target a small orange box on the victim's stomach, and Blade Mode itself is inexact and wild by nature. It's entirely possible to waste your entire energy bar trying to strike a specific point on the target which won't hold still long enough for you to do so, and this is extremely aggrivating as well as flow-breaking.
It doesn't help that combat itself is rather awkward and sticky, and lacks the flow one expects from a hack-and-slasher. Every fight consists of the following, ad nauseum: beat an enemy long enough to render him vulnerable, dice him up with Blade Mode, perform Zandatsu, rinse and repeat. I don't know why the ability to perform actual air combos has to be bought as an upgrade, but the designer needs a slap in the face for that, because I only found this out when my attempts at dicing an opponent in midair failed because what I thought was the launcher can't be comboed from. There's nothing akin to DmC's chains or dash strikes to keep up the pace of battle, and so there's always a period where you'll be running around trying to find that one last enemy that keeps shooting you from really far away. And when you have a game mechanic (i.e., the parry system) that can be outwitted by rubbing the controller on your knee, then it might be worth not bothering at all.
DmC has it's combat down right - you have a variety of weapons that can be chained together for mind-buggeringly long combos, you have a mechanic that lets you jump from one enemy to the next to keep the flow going, and it's generally more fast-paced and frantic. It's basically being about the beauty of combat itself, rather than trying to build up to a spectacular end result that gets boring and stale after you've turned an enemy into prawn salad for the umpteenth time. On top of that, whilst Raiden is pretty much stuck with his sword and can only use rocket-launchers for the occasional hard-to-hit enemy, Dante wields things like flaming gloves and a scythe that can be swapped between during combat to adapt for every challenge, making you feel untouchable.
Also, where the fuck is dodge?! This might sound petty, but I won't apologize for having gotten used to being able to leap out of the way of a sneaky chainsaw attack coming from the corner of my eye. In MGR, if an enemy attacks you from behind whilst you're busy with his mate, you might as well have your cyber-trousers around your ankles.
DmC: 2
MGR: 1
Upgrades!
Okay, MGR definitely takes the prize for this one, because the benefits that might be had for having multiple weapons in DmC are compounded by the upgrade system being like an overly-complex DnD sheet. You acquire upgrade points based on how well you do in combat, but they come so sparsely that you have to think very hard about which skills you want to buy, especially early in the game when you have no idea if Trillion Stab is better than Bullet Rain or so on. On top of that, you have to level up your skills as well as buy new ones, but all your attacks are equally effective on the hordes anyway, so any upgrades to attack damage or speed don't seem rather pointless when you can just stunlock the enemy to death and get equally productive results.
MGR's upgrade system is much more refined: you have a currency, which you earn from killing all enemies, and you buy skills and upgrades with that currency like a shop of murder. And more to the point, each skill feels absolutely nessecary - Raiden needs all the edge he can get against things like unmaned helicopters, robot wolves and giant metal dinosaurs. All the skills in DmC are just more stylish ways of inflicting damage, and whilst there's nothing particulary wrong with that you could potentially proceed through the game without even buying all of them, which strikes me as missing the point somewhat. In a hack-and-slasher, the player needs to evolve in order to take out an increasingly dangerous threat, and there's nothing threatening about a giant demon that can be defeated by abusing the basic combos without any hinderance.
DmC: 2
MGR: 2
Exploration!
This one I agonized over a bit, because both titles have considerable flaws in this aspect. On the one hand, MGR's story focus means that exploration is severely limited, each level being mostly linear with little to no deviations in the path between battle arenas as a consequence of trying to show off epic setpieces. On the other hand, DmC's exploration is hampered by the game's obnoxious habit of blocking off areas in a level that require you to return after obtaining items from later levels, forcing people to replay the first few handfuls of missions in order to get 100% completion on them. This meant a lot of umming and hawing on this subject.
But in the long run, DmC gets the prize because at least there's actual exploration in it. Most importantly, there's an actual reason to do it - finding the keys and challenge doors to find the neccesary upgrade points one needs to make Dante stronger. On top of that, finding all the Lost Souls nets you a bonus amount of currency, which one needs to buy items to keep going in the game, and all MGR has to offer you is rocket launchers. Not a bad reward, but when ammo is scarce due to the focus on melee combat, rockets are pretty much a liability.
DmC: 3
MGR: 2
Setpieces!
Of course, what would a hack and slasher be without fancy environments to hack apart your foes in? MGR does a good job of creating high-octane action by having sequences where Raiden runs along a moving train, down a collapsing clock tower while fighting a Metal Gear RAY and battling enemy cyborgs on top of a stormy tower. But the trouble with these is that they aren't exactly awe-inspiring or original - they feel like sequences ripped from a Borne or Bond movie that we've seen a hundred times before. The environments themselves are nothing to write home about, either, mostly consisting of ruined streets or military bases and little else besides. On top of that, the dull, greyish-brown pallette means that no matter how exciting the cutcenes get, they lack a certain punch that just a bit more vibrant colour could have added.
DmC, however, takes the proveribal chocolate cake when coming up with environment design. When Dante is propelled into Limbo, the realm of the demons that lies just behind the human world, everything turns red and hazy and gains a clear desire to murder the poor drifter in violent ways. The scenery itself shifts and rips in desperate attempts to kill Dante, glowing letters flashing accross the landscape to try and demoralize us. And from murderous carnivals and a run-down mansion decaying with age, we move to hopping up floating boxes in a demonic drinks factory to swinging through corridors fromed from bombastic news logos. There's even a sequence during the battle with evil newscaster Bob Barbas where Dante is monitored by a news camera as he dices up enemies, complete with scrolling text below filled with blatant lies about how handsome the villain is. They're silly, they're unique and they're fun, which is more than can be said for Street #124 Raiden is running down.
DmC: 4
MGR: 2
And the winner is...
DmC Devil May Cry
So there you go. In my own opinion, DmC is a much more interesting and unique game than Metal Gear Rising. Of course, this is just my opinion - both games have their merits, and one could arge that there's a place for both games on any gamer's shelf, regardless of dumb fanboy wars or negative press. DmC does some things better, and MGR does other things better, and it all boils down to what you as a consumer want from your hack-and-slashers. So if you have the disposable income, get either game you fancy, because they're both great on their own merits and one shouldn't let petty arguments and personal feelings stand in the way of their overall quality. Who knows? Perhaps if they were to combine, they could produce the greatest game in the hack-and-slash genre to ever exist, dethroning God of War from it's throne of skulls and decapitations.
Also, to the Metal Gear fanboys who I know will be off to humiliate themselves in the comments by saying MGR should have won this...
Monday, 25 February 2013
DmC Devil May Cry - First Impressions
Okay, let me just get this out of the way before I begin.
DISCLAIMER: I am a twenty-year-old, slighty pudgy nerd stuck in a rented apartment in the middle of England with nothing but this internet connection and a slightly unhealthy obsession with Maltesers to keep him going through every day. I have no links to Capcom, Ninja Theory or any big gaming company involved with the development of DmC Devil May Cry you care to name, because I'm not cool enough for that. So there is no possible way I could have been "paid off" to say the things about DmC that I am going to say - I have always been and will continue to be an impartial speaker, with no general bias towards any perticular property, console or company that exists. Anyone who wishes to insinuate otherwise can direct their enquiries to the nearest ravenous, man-eating predator.
Right, that's that. Also, let me get this other thing out of the way - I never was a fan of Dante from Capcom's Devil May Cry series.
I was introduced to him via Marvel vs. Capcom 3, and his cocky, one-liner-shooting smugness immediately made me dislike him almost instantly. On top of that, Yahtzee Chroshaw's mostly negative review of Devil May Cry 4, as well as a mish-mash of conflicting evidence, implanted me the subconcious message to avoid any game in the series the same way I avoided Final Fantasy games back then (until Crystal Chronicles: Echoes of Time, that is, but shut up). From getting my ass handed to me to fuzzy second-hand comments about which game was the best and how technical you could get with what seemed to be dumb, over-the-top anime games, I just thought to myself for the longest time that the Devil May Cry series just wasn't for me.
So when Ninja Theory got torn apart for changing a lot of things in their reboot of the franchise, I was left kind of lost. Sure, Dante looked different. Sure, the world was different. Yes, creative director Tameem Antoniades was kind of a prick when you get right down to it. And yes, F-Bombs and Sniperbortions were being thrown around like the ball pit balls in Charlie Chalk's Fun Factory and the writing was juvenile as fuck. But I didn't really understand the outrage the fans were spewing onto the internet. Dante was still an unlikeable prick, even if he had been listening to Linkin Park for a bit and cutting his hair, and the game was still an over-the-top hack-and-slasher. What were people getting so mad about?
So today I toddled down to my local games retailer and bought a copy to see what the fuss was about.
So what's the story? Well, in this alternate-universe prequel-reboot... thing, Dante is living in a trailer and just trying to get through life with as little fuss and as much booze and angel stripper shagging as possible. Unfortunately, he just so happens to live in a city controlled by demons, who are keeping the public stupid via soft drinks and a terrible Bill O'Reily impersonator, and something about our hero(?) rubs them the wrong way enough for them to suck him into the alternate world of Limbo and send a giant monster after him to blow up his house. After dealing with that mishap, Dante is taken by a mysterious woman named Kat to meet his brother Vergil, leader of the terrorist organization known asAnonymous The Order, who reveals that there may be more to Dante than he realizes...
So going into the game, I could most definitely see why hardcore fans of the original games might bring out the pitchforks and torches. Not only has Ninja Theory seen fit to change Dante's design (on Capcom's suggestion, ironically enough), they also changed his character from a confident, self-assured badass to a whiny, self-important bellend. Tameem took every opportunity to insult the fans at every turn, claiming he had no respect for the original quadroligy and that his story would "stand among the greats" despite... well, Sniperbortions. The change from Capcom's MT Framework to the Unreal Engine was seen as a downgrade by the technical fans, who claimed that the drop in framerate would cut out the depth of the combat. And on top of that, the writing is crap even by Capcom standards, and considering Street Fighter X Tekken reduced Kazuya to spouting cliche'd villainous one-liners, that's saying a lot.
So yes, I can perfectly understand why this game should get the flak it-
I AM THE FUCKING GOD OF HELLFIRE
...Woah, I do apologize. It's just that after experiencing the combat of DmC, I've developed the uncontrollable urge to bellow such lines at the top of my voice.
DmC, in my mind, stands next to Max Payne 3 as one of those games where, if you get it right, you feel like an untouchable god among men. It's the sort of game where you can walk into a room full of slavering demons and, a minute of button-pressing later, you can walk out again completely unscathed and feeling like a badass, with only the blood stains to tell the story of how you should not be fucked with ever. It's stylish, fairly simple to grasp, and once you truly get the hang of it it's a satisfying as wrestling open a particularly stubborn bottle top, although my Darksiders playthroughs might have helped pepare me for this game to a degree.
See, the game is obsessed with style. You build up "style" by chaining together successful combos, and the higher your style ranking at the end of a fight, the more points get added onto your score at the end of the level. You also get rewarded with currency and upgrade points to spend on new abilities, and if you get struck, you have to build up the style meter from scratch, and may not get as many rewards as before. So the idea is to basically be an untouchable badass who cuts apart anything that looks at him funny, flitting from mook to mook like an enraged butterfly on a sugar rush and busting out unimaginably crazy attacks. If you seriously don't find something awesome about keeping an enemy afloat with a constant stream of bullets, then it's time to re-assess the way you look at things.
But what DmC brings to the table are the interchangeable fighting modes that grant Dante different weapons and abilities to use in combat. In his standard mode, Dante wields his familiar sword Rebellion and uses his twin pistols Ebony and Ivory for long-ranged attacks. Pulling Left Trigger activates Angel Mode, where Dante uses the Osiris scythe for crowd control and fast, multi-hitting strikes. Pulling Right Trigger, inversely, acivates Demon Mode, where Dante's attacks with the giant hammer Arbiter are slow yet can shatter any defense. Both modes also feature different grappling techniques that allow you to deal with pesky airborne or far-away enemys and extend combos - the key is switching between the two modes to build up the style meter effectively.
And when you get it right, it feels fucking amazing. Here's a combo I'm very fond of at my current stage in the game - rush in with the Trillion Stabs, pull the enemy back with the demon chain, dice them up with the scythe, uppercut them into the air, perform a special move that's basically a rising tornado of bullets, dice them up some more, yank them back again, then smash them into the ground with the axe. The length of that sentence alone should tell you that the number of ways to inflict major pain on the demonic enemies you encounter is enough to keep things Schadenfreude-tastic, and I haven't even progressed that far in the game yet. There should be a law banning this kind of catharticism in the world.
And there is a feature in this game I will happily debase myself in gratitude for in future hack-and-slashers, and that's the "Try" feature in the shop. In games that allow you to spend points or whatever on buying new moves, I tend to get flummoxed by the array of choice I have, unsure wherever to pick the arm blades or the glidy-wings and wherever it's going to bite me in the arse later. Thankfully, DmC's shop grants you the ability to go into the game's Training mode to test out the move before you purchase it, allowing you to figure out if you could naturally work this move into your repitoire. Oh, yeah, and there's a training mode as well, which is also cathartic, but more in the punching-bag sense of whaling one this one unfortunate demon over and over until your thumbs hurt.
That said, practicing flashy combos in a white void against one enemy is one thing. Trying to remember your elaborate sequence of grapples, slashes and bullet bonanzas in the middle of a crowded room full of various types of jerks is another. Due to the huge variety of nasties all closing in to take a bite out of Dante's underfed arse, I tended to panic and mash buttons like Woody Woodpecker, occasionally pulling out the chains or hitting dodge when my Spider-Sense kicked in. I guess all that gushing about the flowing and intuitive nature of the combat is invalidated now, but it's this same button-mashing instinct that tends to get me through most fighters, so it seems to be working out fine here. I still get, like, B's and A's on the style meter.
So yes, DmC Devil May Cry can be called a lot of bad things. You can call it a catastrophic abomination that takes a dump on everything that was good about the previous games. You can call it a childishly-written lump of bad dialogue that reads like a 13-year-old's fan fiction fever dream. You can even call it another in a long line of Capcom's big blunders after the whole Mega Man and Street Fighter X Tekken debacles. But there have been few games I have ever played where I can cry "Giant Hary Bollocks to story and character development" and go smash someone's face apart in a kickass manner. One of those is Saints Row The Third, and the other is DmC.
So if nothing else, I can reccommend this game on the strength of it's combat and maybe the platforming sections, but I haven't played far enough to talk much about those. Maybe my not playing the previous games invalidates my opinion and secures me a spot in that special Hell nerds condemn people to for not agreeing with their views, but I'm having so much fun right now I simply don't care, so suck it, haters. If you're determined enough to overlook the troubled development history, unsubtle social commentary and flimsy writing of DmC, or never really cared about the franchise and just want to hit things with various kinds of metal stick, then I definitely say it's worth a
EAT SWORD YOU DEMONIC FUCKWITS
...That's it. Where's my cider?
DISCLAIMER: I am a twenty-year-old, slighty pudgy nerd stuck in a rented apartment in the middle of England with nothing but this internet connection and a slightly unhealthy obsession with Maltesers to keep him going through every day. I have no links to Capcom, Ninja Theory or any big gaming company involved with the development of DmC Devil May Cry you care to name, because I'm not cool enough for that. So there is no possible way I could have been "paid off" to say the things about DmC that I am going to say - I have always been and will continue to be an impartial speaker, with no general bias towards any perticular property, console or company that exists. Anyone who wishes to insinuate otherwise can direct their enquiries to the nearest ravenous, man-eating predator.
Right, that's that. Also, let me get this other thing out of the way - I never was a fan of Dante from Capcom's Devil May Cry series.
I was introduced to him via Marvel vs. Capcom 3, and his cocky, one-liner-shooting smugness immediately made me dislike him almost instantly. On top of that, Yahtzee Chroshaw's mostly negative review of Devil May Cry 4, as well as a mish-mash of conflicting evidence, implanted me the subconcious message to avoid any game in the series the same way I avoided Final Fantasy games back then (until Crystal Chronicles: Echoes of Time, that is, but shut up). From getting my ass handed to me to fuzzy second-hand comments about which game was the best and how technical you could get with what seemed to be dumb, over-the-top anime games, I just thought to myself for the longest time that the Devil May Cry series just wasn't for me.
So when Ninja Theory got torn apart for changing a lot of things in their reboot of the franchise, I was left kind of lost. Sure, Dante looked different. Sure, the world was different. Yes, creative director Tameem Antoniades was kind of a prick when you get right down to it. And yes, F-Bombs and Sniperbortions were being thrown around like the ball pit balls in Charlie Chalk's Fun Factory and the writing was juvenile as fuck. But I didn't really understand the outrage the fans were spewing onto the internet. Dante was still an unlikeable prick, even if he had been listening to Linkin Park for a bit and cutting his hair, and the game was still an over-the-top hack-and-slasher. What were people getting so mad about?
So today I toddled down to my local games retailer and bought a copy to see what the fuss was about.
So what's the story? Well, in this alternate-universe prequel-reboot... thing, Dante is living in a trailer and just trying to get through life with as little fuss and as much booze and angel stripper shagging as possible. Unfortunately, he just so happens to live in a city controlled by demons, who are keeping the public stupid via soft drinks and a terrible Bill O'Reily impersonator, and something about our hero(?) rubs them the wrong way enough for them to suck him into the alternate world of Limbo and send a giant monster after him to blow up his house. After dealing with that mishap, Dante is taken by a mysterious woman named Kat to meet his brother Vergil, leader of the terrorist organization known as
So going into the game, I could most definitely see why hardcore fans of the original games might bring out the pitchforks and torches. Not only has Ninja Theory seen fit to change Dante's design (on Capcom's suggestion, ironically enough), they also changed his character from a confident, self-assured badass to a whiny, self-important bellend. Tameem took every opportunity to insult the fans at every turn, claiming he had no respect for the original quadroligy and that his story would "stand among the greats" despite... well, Sniperbortions. The change from Capcom's MT Framework to the Unreal Engine was seen as a downgrade by the technical fans, who claimed that the drop in framerate would cut out the depth of the combat. And on top of that, the writing is crap even by Capcom standards, and considering Street Fighter X Tekken reduced Kazuya to spouting cliche'd villainous one-liners, that's saying a lot.
So yes, I can perfectly understand why this game should get the flak it-
I AM THE FUCKING GOD OF HELLFIRE
...Woah, I do apologize. It's just that after experiencing the combat of DmC, I've developed the uncontrollable urge to bellow such lines at the top of my voice.
DmC, in my mind, stands next to Max Payne 3 as one of those games where, if you get it right, you feel like an untouchable god among men. It's the sort of game where you can walk into a room full of slavering demons and, a minute of button-pressing later, you can walk out again completely unscathed and feeling like a badass, with only the blood stains to tell the story of how you should not be fucked with ever. It's stylish, fairly simple to grasp, and once you truly get the hang of it it's a satisfying as wrestling open a particularly stubborn bottle top, although my Darksiders playthroughs might have helped pepare me for this game to a degree.
See, the game is obsessed with style. You build up "style" by chaining together successful combos, and the higher your style ranking at the end of a fight, the more points get added onto your score at the end of the level. You also get rewarded with currency and upgrade points to spend on new abilities, and if you get struck, you have to build up the style meter from scratch, and may not get as many rewards as before. So the idea is to basically be an untouchable badass who cuts apart anything that looks at him funny, flitting from mook to mook like an enraged butterfly on a sugar rush and busting out unimaginably crazy attacks. If you seriously don't find something awesome about keeping an enemy afloat with a constant stream of bullets, then it's time to re-assess the way you look at things.
But what DmC brings to the table are the interchangeable fighting modes that grant Dante different weapons and abilities to use in combat. In his standard mode, Dante wields his familiar sword Rebellion and uses his twin pistols Ebony and Ivory for long-ranged attacks. Pulling Left Trigger activates Angel Mode, where Dante uses the Osiris scythe for crowd control and fast, multi-hitting strikes. Pulling Right Trigger, inversely, acivates Demon Mode, where Dante's attacks with the giant hammer Arbiter are slow yet can shatter any defense. Both modes also feature different grappling techniques that allow you to deal with pesky airborne or far-away enemys and extend combos - the key is switching between the two modes to build up the style meter effectively.
And when you get it right, it feels fucking amazing. Here's a combo I'm very fond of at my current stage in the game - rush in with the Trillion Stabs, pull the enemy back with the demon chain, dice them up with the scythe, uppercut them into the air, perform a special move that's basically a rising tornado of bullets, dice them up some more, yank them back again, then smash them into the ground with the axe. The length of that sentence alone should tell you that the number of ways to inflict major pain on the demonic enemies you encounter is enough to keep things Schadenfreude-tastic, and I haven't even progressed that far in the game yet. There should be a law banning this kind of catharticism in the world.
And there is a feature in this game I will happily debase myself in gratitude for in future hack-and-slashers, and that's the "Try" feature in the shop. In games that allow you to spend points or whatever on buying new moves, I tend to get flummoxed by the array of choice I have, unsure wherever to pick the arm blades or the glidy-wings and wherever it's going to bite me in the arse later. Thankfully, DmC's shop grants you the ability to go into the game's Training mode to test out the move before you purchase it, allowing you to figure out if you could naturally work this move into your repitoire. Oh, yeah, and there's a training mode as well, which is also cathartic, but more in the punching-bag sense of whaling one this one unfortunate demon over and over until your thumbs hurt.
That said, practicing flashy combos in a white void against one enemy is one thing. Trying to remember your elaborate sequence of grapples, slashes and bullet bonanzas in the middle of a crowded room full of various types of jerks is another. Due to the huge variety of nasties all closing in to take a bite out of Dante's underfed arse, I tended to panic and mash buttons like Woody Woodpecker, occasionally pulling out the chains or hitting dodge when my Spider-Sense kicked in. I guess all that gushing about the flowing and intuitive nature of the combat is invalidated now, but it's this same button-mashing instinct that tends to get me through most fighters, so it seems to be working out fine here. I still get, like, B's and A's on the style meter.
So yes, DmC Devil May Cry can be called a lot of bad things. You can call it a catastrophic abomination that takes a dump on everything that was good about the previous games. You can call it a childishly-written lump of bad dialogue that reads like a 13-year-old's fan fiction fever dream. You can even call it another in a long line of Capcom's big blunders after the whole Mega Man and Street Fighter X Tekken debacles. But there have been few games I have ever played where I can cry "Giant Hary Bollocks to story and character development" and go smash someone's face apart in a kickass manner. One of those is Saints Row The Third, and the other is DmC.
So if nothing else, I can reccommend this game on the strength of it's combat and maybe the platforming sections, but I haven't played far enough to talk much about those. Maybe my not playing the previous games invalidates my opinion and secures me a spot in that special Hell nerds condemn people to for not agreeing with their views, but I'm having so much fun right now I simply don't care, so suck it, haters. If you're determined enough to overlook the troubled development history, unsubtle social commentary and flimsy writing of DmC, or never really cared about the franchise and just want to hit things with various kinds of metal stick, then I definitely say it's worth a
EAT SWORD YOU DEMONIC FUCKWITS
...That's it. Where's my cider?
Monday, 30 April 2012
The Kid Icarus/Darksiders Double Bill
You know, whenever anyone does a fantasy-themed game, they always take it one of two ways. Either they make it all colourful and full of wacky characters and magical lands for us to laugh along with or gawp at, or they make it a desolate, grim affair that involves you throwing demons into the air and chopping them in half with one swing. It's like if you try to go for any middle ground, someone in the games industry sends the Jigsaw Killer round to punish you for your hubris (hopefully not with that Needle Pit from Saw 2, that makes me cringe every time).
No two games illustrate this phenomenon better than Kid Icarus: Uprising and Darksiders.
Kid Icarus: Uprising is the newest installment in Nintendo's Kid Icarus franchise after the extremely long hiatus since the first game on the NES and it's Game Boy sequel, Of Myths and Monsters. Literally set 25 years after the defeat of Medusa in the first game, Uprising sees Pit the flightless angel, now using his Smash Bros. Brawl redesign, take on the sudden return of his old nemesis, who has been mysteriously restored to her former glory in order to get revenge on Palutena, Goddess of Light. But how did Medusa return? Is there a greater power behind this second invasion from the Underworld? More importantly, why am I laughing at almost every line of dialogue?
The main story mode of Uprising is divided into seperate chapters, each with two distinct styles of play. For the first few minutes, you control Pit rail-shooter style as he flies across the scenery, shooting down anything that dares raise it's ugly head. Afterwards, Pit is controlled akin to a third-person shooter, still killing things but now moving around on the ground, sometimes in a tank or mecha suit if you're lucky. What's nice is that the controls stay consistent between both game modes - Circle Pad to move, L Button to fire, touch screen to aim. It means you don't have to re-adjust your grip on the 3DS between levels.
The differences between the two modes are subtle, but this helps give them a distinct feel from each other. In flight mode, you can charge up special attacks that clear the entire screen of enemies, like an overpowered version of Star Fox's smart bombs. On the ground, however, Pit can perform dodges and dashes again to Smash Bros., and has a selection of collectable powers that can be activated during gameplay. These powers range from inproving the homing ability of shots, increasing attack power and recovering health, the latter of which you will run out of very fast as you get to the later chapters, trust me on this one. There are also, on certain occasions, special vehicles that Pit can drive for a while, letting him marmalise enemies whilst absorbing damage like an iron sponge.
You will, however, spend most of your time in the menus between missions, and this is not the smug wanker criticism it sounds like because there's a hell of a lot to do. See, killing enemies gets you hearts, which, in defiance of Nintendo tradition, are actually currency that you can spend. And you will want to spend this, because they play an important role in the game - apart from buying weapons at the store, you can bet some of them in the Fiend's Cauldron before each chapter to increase the diffuclty and rewards you earn. You can toss eggs in a pan to collect idols to admire later on. And you can also throw excess hearts away by offering them up to Palutena, which raises too many questions in my mind. And not all of them are wholesome.
Speaking of weapons, there's a lot of those around for you to equip between missions. They all fall into diferent categories - Arms have the best melee, Staffs are best long range, Orbitars have the best homing capabilities etc. Each category has a large variety of models, each with their own quirks, while every individual weapon has it's own stats and modifiers, resulting a mind-boggling array of possible weapon choices. And this isn't even counting the legendary Zodiac weapons, which you will be scouring the levels in search of because they're that cool. You can also fuse weapons you've earned to make more weapons, so hope you've got a strategy guide on hand.
The Good Bits
The gameplay is solid, the story (while often taking sudden turns here and there) is well presented, the graphics are pretty nice even with the 3D off and the music is awesome. But it's the dialogue you will stay for - only in this game will you hear Danny Mann arguing with himself as Hewdraw, the main villain flirting with your sidekick or back-handed references to Wikipedia. Couple that with the fact the dialogue delivery is definitely above what passes for average in most video games and you have a recipie for chuckles all throughout as you play.
The Bad Bits
Even with the Fiend's Cauldron, the difficulty flits between surprisingly easy and Battletoads-style face-stomping frustration (damn you, Chapter 14). Some bits of levels are locked off unless you're playing on higher intensities, which is dumb. And there are some gameplay features that make no sense, like the aformentioned heart offerings or the AR Cards that come packaged with the game. I've heard people complain that the controls give people hand cramps, but sucks to be them.
Also, I can't drive Exo-Tanks. This makes me sad. :(
Sound: 5/5 ("I'm sorry, I can't hear you over all this AWESOME!")
Replayability: 5/5 (You'll be replaying half the levels just to find all the loot.)
Final Verdict: If you ever get a 3DS, get this game. Trust me, you will not regret it.
On the opposite spectrum to Nintendo's cheerful shoot-em-up comedy is THQ's grim hack-and-slash tragedy, Darksiders.
Darksiders is themed around the Biblical Apocalypse, and follows the story of War, one of the Four Horsemen. Accused of conspiring with Hell to start the apocalypse early, War has been stripped of his powers and sent back to a ruined Earth in order to destroy the one responsible. He discovers that Samael, the Prince of Demons, may be able to help him, but he must perform some favours for him first...
Darksiders is best described as the result of a bout of the Soggy Biscuit Game (don't ask) between The Legend of Zelda and Devil May Cry - from Zelda, it takes the open-world roaming over different terrain, dungeons featuring puzzles and bosses, and various equippable items, while from Devil May Cry, it takes an emphasis on combat, including the variety of weapons, bullshit enemy attacks and bloody finishing moves that can be performed once an enemy has been pummelled enough. But just because it rips off- I mean, borrows heavily from these games, that doesn't mean it hasn't got anything unique under it's belt.
For one thing, while Link does a shitty forward roll that can't even dent the average wooden sign and struggles to climb even a basic ledge, War practically parkours around the ruined landscape and has a dash ability that can be used in combat, especially in the overpowered stab attack that knocks most enemies flying. And while Dante only has two swords and a pistol to his name, War has one giant sword, a scythe, a rapid-firing handgun, a giant glove that smashes people's faces and the abilty to become a giant flaming monster that basically raises a giant middle finger to the concept of taking any damage whatsoever. Suck on that, you wise-cracking, trenchcoat-wearing shit. So what if your new game is actually pretty good - War is still going to rip your mortal head off. Or bash it in with the nearest car. That's right, he can pick up cars and you can't. Suck it.
Another unique feature is the Forge - War can purchase special modifiers that add boosts to his weapons, such as damage output or recovery. These can be slooted into whatever weapon you chose - I myself have equipped a modifier that guarantees blue souls (the game's currency) every time I smash the scenery, ensuring that I cause as much wanton destruction as possible. Other features include special Wrath powers that let War rip shit up with unique abilites, consumable items that can be used in the field to recover health or Wrath and upgrades for the various weapons you will pick up. All of these can be purchased from the demon Vulgrim, whose major fault is overpricing even the most basic items, the prick.
One thing you will do a lot of in Darksiders is exploring, for there is a lot to find in the expansive, post-Apocalypse world. Not only are there chests containing money for you to hoard like a heavily-armoured Scrooge McDuck, there are also Artefacts that you can sell to Vulgrim so you can afford that goddamn area of effect attack, as well as pieces of the Abyssal Armour that can be equipped after assembling all of them. Also, there is a bonus boss consisting of a British zombie in a top-hat, who fights by fencing with his cane. Truly the best result of exploring like a mofo in this game.
The Good Bits
Darksiders is quite functional, for what it is. It takes on a concept that few others would approach for fear of having the Church harp on at them and makes it work quite well. Combat works well and is visceral and satisfying, the puzzles are creative to the point of GameFAQs consulting, and the ability to ride Ruin, War's Horse, everywhere you see fit is something that is hard to top. Also, one of the characters is voiced by Mark Hamil, who automatically improves any game ever with his mere presence.
The Bad Bits
The story is a bit of a mess, especially near the end (without wishing to reveal any spoilers). War has little to no personality, only displaying anger whenever things don't go the way he wants them. Come on, man, you just bitch-slapped a dragon with flaming fists! Show some more emotion!
Meanwhile: A throwable blade that can hit multiple targets. A grappling hook that lets you swing across chasms and pulls you onto climbable walls. A gun that opens fucking blue and orange portals. If any of these sound familiar, then you are smarter than the average CoD-playing dullard who can't recognise rip-offs from a hundred miles away. Maybe THQ has kleptomania or something.
Sound: 4/5 (Mark Hamil is using his Joker voice. 'Nuff said.)
Replayability: 3/5 (Unless you really want to play through again with the Abyssal Armour, don't bother.)
Final Verdict: Fun in it's own way, and worth playing through at least once.
BONUS CHALLENGE: Who would win in a Fite between Pit and War? Bow of Palutena vs. Chaoseater! Power of Flight vs. Chaos Mode! Three Sacred Treasures vs. Abyssal Armour! Debate this in the comments, or maybe draw a fancy picture if you're so inclined.
No two games illustrate this phenomenon better than Kid Icarus: Uprising and Darksiders.
 |
| "Freeze! Now gimme a packet of Tropical Fruit Bubblicious!" |
The main story mode of Uprising is divided into seperate chapters, each with two distinct styles of play. For the first few minutes, you control Pit rail-shooter style as he flies across the scenery, shooting down anything that dares raise it's ugly head. Afterwards, Pit is controlled akin to a third-person shooter, still killing things but now moving around on the ground, sometimes in a tank or mecha suit if you're lucky. What's nice is that the controls stay consistent between both game modes - Circle Pad to move, L Button to fire, touch screen to aim. It means you don't have to re-adjust your grip on the 3DS between levels.
The differences between the two modes are subtle, but this helps give them a distinct feel from each other. In flight mode, you can charge up special attacks that clear the entire screen of enemies, like an overpowered version of Star Fox's smart bombs. On the ground, however, Pit can perform dodges and dashes again to Smash Bros., and has a selection of collectable powers that can be activated during gameplay. These powers range from inproving the homing ability of shots, increasing attack power and recovering health, the latter of which you will run out of very fast as you get to the later chapters, trust me on this one. There are also, on certain occasions, special vehicles that Pit can drive for a while, letting him marmalise enemies whilst absorbing damage like an iron sponge.
You will, however, spend most of your time in the menus between missions, and this is not the smug wanker criticism it sounds like because there's a hell of a lot to do. See, killing enemies gets you hearts, which, in defiance of Nintendo tradition, are actually currency that you can spend. And you will want to spend this, because they play an important role in the game - apart from buying weapons at the store, you can bet some of them in the Fiend's Cauldron before each chapter to increase the diffuclty and rewards you earn. You can toss eggs in a pan to collect idols to admire later on. And you can also throw excess hearts away by offering them up to Palutena, which raises too many questions in my mind. And not all of them are wholesome.
Speaking of weapons, there's a lot of those around for you to equip between missions. They all fall into diferent categories - Arms have the best melee, Staffs are best long range, Orbitars have the best homing capabilities etc. Each category has a large variety of models, each with their own quirks, while every individual weapon has it's own stats and modifiers, resulting a mind-boggling array of possible weapon choices. And this isn't even counting the legendary Zodiac weapons, which you will be scouring the levels in search of because they're that cool. You can also fuse weapons you've earned to make more weapons, so hope you've got a strategy guide on hand.
The Good Bits
The gameplay is solid, the story (while often taking sudden turns here and there) is well presented, the graphics are pretty nice even with the 3D off and the music is awesome. But it's the dialogue you will stay for - only in this game will you hear Danny Mann arguing with himself as Hewdraw, the main villain flirting with your sidekick or back-handed references to Wikipedia. Couple that with the fact the dialogue delivery is definitely above what passes for average in most video games and you have a recipie for chuckles all throughout as you play.
The Bad Bits
Even with the Fiend's Cauldron, the difficulty flits between surprisingly easy and Battletoads-style face-stomping frustration (damn you, Chapter 14). Some bits of levels are locked off unless you're playing on higher intensities, which is dumb. And there are some gameplay features that make no sense, like the aformentioned heart offerings or the AR Cards that come packaged with the game. I've heard people complain that the controls give people hand cramps, but sucks to be them.
Also, I can't drive Exo-Tanks. This makes me sad. :(
Scores
Graphics: 4/5 (Very pretty - even without the 3D.)
Gameplay: 4/5 (Despite the complaints, I've managed just fine with them.)Sound: 5/5 ("I'm sorry, I can't hear you over all this AWESOME!")
Replayability: 5/5 (You'll be replaying half the levels just to find all the loot.)
Final Verdict: If you ever get a 3DS, get this game. Trust me, you will not regret it.
On the opposite spectrum to Nintendo's cheerful shoot-em-up comedy is THQ's grim hack-and-slash tragedy, Darksiders.
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| "Pardon me, but where can I find the laundrette?" |
Darksiders is best described as the result of a bout of the Soggy Biscuit Game (don't ask) between The Legend of Zelda and Devil May Cry - from Zelda, it takes the open-world roaming over different terrain, dungeons featuring puzzles and bosses, and various equippable items, while from Devil May Cry, it takes an emphasis on combat, including the variety of weapons, bullshit enemy attacks and bloody finishing moves that can be performed once an enemy has been pummelled enough. But just because it rips off- I mean, borrows heavily from these games, that doesn't mean it hasn't got anything unique under it's belt.
For one thing, while Link does a shitty forward roll that can't even dent the average wooden sign and struggles to climb even a basic ledge, War practically parkours around the ruined landscape and has a dash ability that can be used in combat, especially in the overpowered stab attack that knocks most enemies flying. And while Dante only has two swords and a pistol to his name, War has one giant sword, a scythe, a rapid-firing handgun, a giant glove that smashes people's faces and the abilty to become a giant flaming monster that basically raises a giant middle finger to the concept of taking any damage whatsoever. Suck on that, you wise-cracking, trenchcoat-wearing shit. So what if your new game is actually pretty good - War is still going to rip your mortal head off. Or bash it in with the nearest car. That's right, he can pick up cars and you can't. Suck it.
Another unique feature is the Forge - War can purchase special modifiers that add boosts to his weapons, such as damage output or recovery. These can be slooted into whatever weapon you chose - I myself have equipped a modifier that guarantees blue souls (the game's currency) every time I smash the scenery, ensuring that I cause as much wanton destruction as possible. Other features include special Wrath powers that let War rip shit up with unique abilites, consumable items that can be used in the field to recover health or Wrath and upgrades for the various weapons you will pick up. All of these can be purchased from the demon Vulgrim, whose major fault is overpricing even the most basic items, the prick.
One thing you will do a lot of in Darksiders is exploring, for there is a lot to find in the expansive, post-Apocalypse world. Not only are there chests containing money for you to hoard like a heavily-armoured Scrooge McDuck, there are also Artefacts that you can sell to Vulgrim so you can afford that goddamn area of effect attack, as well as pieces of the Abyssal Armour that can be equipped after assembling all of them. Also, there is a bonus boss consisting of a British zombie in a top-hat, who fights by fencing with his cane. Truly the best result of exploring like a mofo in this game.
The Good Bits
Darksiders is quite functional, for what it is. It takes on a concept that few others would approach for fear of having the Church harp on at them and makes it work quite well. Combat works well and is visceral and satisfying, the puzzles are creative to the point of GameFAQs consulting, and the ability to ride Ruin, War's Horse, everywhere you see fit is something that is hard to top. Also, one of the characters is voiced by Mark Hamil, who automatically improves any game ever with his mere presence.
The Bad Bits
The story is a bit of a mess, especially near the end (without wishing to reveal any spoilers). War has little to no personality, only displaying anger whenever things don't go the way he wants them. Come on, man, you just bitch-slapped a dragon with flaming fists! Show some more emotion!
Meanwhile: A throwable blade that can hit multiple targets. A grappling hook that lets you swing across chasms and pulls you onto climbable walls. A gun that opens fucking blue and orange portals. If any of these sound familiar, then you are smarter than the average CoD-playing dullard who can't recognise rip-offs from a hundred miles away. Maybe THQ has kleptomania or something.
Scores
Graphics: 3/5 (Bit dull and grey, but at least it works.)
Gameplay: 4/5 (Works just fine- OHMYGODTHEYRIPPEDOFFPORTAL D:<)Sound: 4/5 (Mark Hamil is using his Joker voice. 'Nuff said.)
Replayability: 3/5 (Unless you really want to play through again with the Abyssal Armour, don't bother.)
Final Verdict: Fun in it's own way, and worth playing through at least once.
BONUS CHALLENGE: Who would win in a Fite between Pit and War? Bow of Palutena vs. Chaoseater! Power of Flight vs. Chaos Mode! Three Sacred Treasures vs. Abyssal Armour! Debate this in the comments, or maybe draw a fancy picture if you're so inclined.
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