Yeah, I'd given the original Torchlight a relatively low grade (mid 60s) mostly because of the monumental bore and blandness of its one-dungeon setup (and what a boring dungeon), but Torchlight 2 is a definite improvement in every way. Still a bit too bland for my taste though. But the multiplayer is well done and there seems to be a nice variety of loot and environments. I'd probably give it a high 70s this time.
Where WE review our games
- Thread starter Rub'Rum
- Start date
- Joined
- Mar 31, 2008
- Messages
- 14,926
Dwarf Fortress (yes, that Dwarf Fortress)
Dwarf Fortress has two modes: Adventure and Fortress. Adventure plays like a very large-scale roguelike where you create your character and are thrown into the world with no story or goals. Fortress Mode, the main mode of the game, has you plop down somewhere in the world to guide your dwarves to carve out a fortress from the countryside.
Compounding this is the game's extreme attention to detail. You wouldn't believe at first that the game is only 50 megabytes max, but it is. The game tracks body damage from the broken ring finger on your right hand to nerve damage to broken ribs. Even though their are quirks, the damage system is still one of the most realistic ones you'll see in gaming. It isn't rare that your demigod of a hammerdwarf is killed by a single well-placed bolt to the leg, which makes him fall to the ground to have the mess beat out of him by a horde of goblins.
The game also has an intricate production chain. Most games are fine with just simulating iron, copper, tin, and what-have-you. Dwarf Fortress simulates geographical layers and dozens of different kinds of ores, soils, sands, and gems. For the farmer in you, there are also many different crops and wild crops to gather seeds from to plant even more of a crop you want.
As for the dwarves themselves, it needs to be remember that each one has a history, personality, gender, age, and skills.
However, for many, the most important tidbit of information is that the game uses ASCII instead of good god-fearing 3D, or even 2D graphics we have all come to expect from games. The game doesn't lose much in the translation.
Gameplay: 8/10
Gameplay is complex and no two playthroughs are the same, neither are two endings. The game is so frustratingly difficult for new players that "Losing is Fun" has become the unofficial motto of the playerbase. Skilled players have mastered the art of fort survival and go on to do megaprojects that rival anything seen in Minecraft in terms of complexity.
Secondly, the game is a lot like Evil Genius (which is like other games, but I haven't played those) in that you don't directly control the dwarves. You give orders, such as dig out a room or craft a chair or place a door, and your dwarves jump to do it. While you don't control individual dwarves, you do control which labors are enabled for each dwarf.
However, the one thing keeping this from a perfect 10 is that the UI is horrible. ASCII is fine, and as one person told me, is like the computer guys in the Matrix learning how to read the green code. Everyone sees a garbled mess of characters, you see a burning kitten being dragged by its intestines to a cliff. The problem is the actual UI of the game. Navigating the menus, despite the fact there are less menus than Aurora, can be frustrating to the point that the Lazy Newb Pack for new players includes Dwarf Therapist, a program that is ran outside the game to take over some of the tasks of the in-game menus, such as assigning labors.
As the game becomes more complex, I predict the UI will only become more difficult to work with.
Graphics: ???
The ASCII works. The Lazy Newb Pack includes tilesets if it is a problem, but ASCII works. It is hard to understand at first, but liberal use of the Look function will help out greatly.
Mod Support: 10/10
The moddability of the game is legendary. Modding in a creature that never eats, sleeps, or drinks, nor feel pain, and has two axes for hands is a lot easier than you think it would be. The mods for the game range from the mentioned Dwarf Therapist to the Cavemen2Cosmos of Dwarf Fortress, Masterwork. There are third party visualizers that allow you to see your fortress in 3D.
There also is a Dragonball Z mod, a pony mod, Warhammer, new civilizations, new items, etc. Many mods take an already complex game and make it even more complex, going to show you that no game is safe from the modders.
Sound: 0/10
But to be fair, if there is any, I turned it off.
Overall?
9/10
Game is great fun once you get over the learning cliff, and the frustrating UI can be circumvented by Dwarf Therapist to a large degree. If you don't like ASCII, there are at least three tilesets for you to pick. The wiki is useful for new players and veteran players and whatever you need to know about an item can be quickly found out on it.
Dwarf Fortress has two modes: Adventure and Fortress. Adventure plays like a very large-scale roguelike where you create your character and are thrown into the world with no story or goals. Fortress Mode, the main mode of the game, has you plop down somewhere in the world to guide your dwarves to carve out a fortress from the countryside.
Compounding this is the game's extreme attention to detail. You wouldn't believe at first that the game is only 50 megabytes max, but it is. The game tracks body damage from the broken ring finger on your right hand to nerve damage to broken ribs. Even though their are quirks, the damage system is still one of the most realistic ones you'll see in gaming. It isn't rare that your demigod of a hammerdwarf is killed by a single well-placed bolt to the leg, which makes him fall to the ground to have the mess beat out of him by a horde of goblins.
The game also has an intricate production chain. Most games are fine with just simulating iron, copper, tin, and what-have-you. Dwarf Fortress simulates geographical layers and dozens of different kinds of ores, soils, sands, and gems. For the farmer in you, there are also many different crops and wild crops to gather seeds from to plant even more of a crop you want.
As for the dwarves themselves, it needs to be remember that each one has a history, personality, gender, age, and skills.
However, for many, the most important tidbit of information is that the game uses ASCII instead of good god-fearing 3D, or even 2D graphics we have all come to expect from games. The game doesn't lose much in the translation.
Gameplay: 8/10
Gameplay is complex and no two playthroughs are the same, neither are two endings. The game is so frustratingly difficult for new players that "Losing is Fun" has become the unofficial motto of the playerbase. Skilled players have mastered the art of fort survival and go on to do megaprojects that rival anything seen in Minecraft in terms of complexity.
Secondly, the game is a lot like Evil Genius (which is like other games, but I haven't played those) in that you don't directly control the dwarves. You give orders, such as dig out a room or craft a chair or place a door, and your dwarves jump to do it. While you don't control individual dwarves, you do control which labors are enabled for each dwarf.
However, the one thing keeping this from a perfect 10 is that the UI is horrible. ASCII is fine, and as one person told me, is like the computer guys in the Matrix learning how to read the green code. Everyone sees a garbled mess of characters, you see a burning kitten being dragged by its intestines to a cliff. The problem is the actual UI of the game. Navigating the menus, despite the fact there are less menus than Aurora, can be frustrating to the point that the Lazy Newb Pack for new players includes Dwarf Therapist, a program that is ran outside the game to take over some of the tasks of the in-game menus, such as assigning labors.
As the game becomes more complex, I predict the UI will only become more difficult to work with.
Graphics: ???
The ASCII works. The Lazy Newb Pack includes tilesets if it is a problem, but ASCII works. It is hard to understand at first, but liberal use of the Look function will help out greatly.
Mod Support: 10/10
The moddability of the game is legendary. Modding in a creature that never eats, sleeps, or drinks, nor feel pain, and has two axes for hands is a lot easier than you think it would be. The mods for the game range from the mentioned Dwarf Therapist to the Cavemen2Cosmos of Dwarf Fortress, Masterwork. There are third party visualizers that allow you to see your fortress in 3D.
There also is a Dragonball Z mod, a pony mod, Warhammer, new civilizations, new items, etc. Many mods take an already complex game and make it even more complex, going to show you that no game is safe from the modders.
Sound: 0/10
But to be fair, if there is any, I turned it off.
Overall?
9/10
Game is great fun once you get over the learning cliff, and the frustrating UI can be circumvented by Dwarf Therapist to a large degree. If you don't like ASCII, there are at least three tilesets for you to pick. The wiki is useful for new players and veteran players and whatever you need to know about an item can be quickly found out on it.
This thread has been around for a while and I'd just like to remind people that may see it for the first time that I've always been updating the original first post with a complete list of all the reviews that were posted, with links. The list is in alphabetical order of game titles
There is an increasingly large number of games that have been reviewed by someone, so it could be useful to anyone thinking of getting a game that's on sale, or something like that.
There is an increasingly large number of games that have been reviewed by someone, so it could be useful to anyone thinking of getting a game that's on sale, or something like that.
civvver
Deity
- Joined
- Apr 24, 2007
- Messages
- 5,855
I agree. Torchlight 1 is really, really cool until you realize, wait I'm just grinding the same dungeons over and over to transmute a bazillion gems into more powerful gems. Like that is your sole existence at some point. I mean there is a backstory, but you don't remember what it is while grinding dungeons most of the time. It's pretty much just a loot fest which would be fine if great loot and lots of skillups were required to proceed but the game is quite easy to the looting feels like looting for loot sake. It gets a 6.5 for me. I have torchlight 2, have yet to play it though. Glad to hear it's a big improvement.
Maniacal
the green Napoleon
That's exactly why I never bought it. I played the short 'beta' for TL2, it was a lot of fun and a much improved game but I'm just not that interested in diablo-arpg games.
civvver
Deity
- Joined
- Apr 24, 2007
- Messages
- 5,855
I love dungeon crawlers myself, but torchlight 1 was way too easy. Compared to dark spore, which many consider an awful game, I couldn't get enough of making squads and customizing my heroes. And the game got progressively harder, extreme jumps in difficulty on some levels, so you were grinding gear for a purpose of defeating the next level. Torchlight is missing something in the formula. Actually, I might do a dark spore review sometime just so you can all laugh at how much I praise the game haha. Has a 60 something on metacritic.
Heretic_Cata
We're gonna live forever
I didn't like Torchlight 1 because at some point while playing i realised - so i'm playing a really primitive version of Diablo 2. Why am i doing this ? I could play Diablo2.
I didn't like Torchlight 2 because at some point while playing i realised - so they copied everything they could from Diablo 2 and Diablo 3 trailers. So why am i playing the imitation and not the originals ? Unlike T1, T2 is much more playable and i guess it's good if you're into that sort of thing.
I didn't like Torchlight 2 because at some point while playing i realised - so they copied everything they could from Diablo 2 and Diablo 3 trailers. So why am i playing the imitation and not the originals ? Unlike T1, T2 is much more playable and i guess it's good if you're into that sort of thing.
Wow i forgot about that, thank you for the time you take to keep it up to date.
- Joined
- Mar 31, 2008
- Messages
- 14,926
Tropico 4 (with all DLC, including Modern Times (PC)
There were many naysayers when Tropico 4 was released calling it little more than a standalone expansion of Tropico 3. In terms of graphics and core gameplay, I am incline to agree. However, after playing Tropico 4, and even before counting the DLC and Modern times, a player quickly realizes that the game is, in nearly every way, an improvement over what I considered an already fun game.
Gameplay 9/10
Tropico 4 puts you in the shoes of El Presidente, the potentially egomaniac ruler of the country of Tropico. Before you start up either a campaign or sandbox game, you're given the ability to customize your in-game avatar for El Presidente. For the most part, I don't really care about the appearance since unless I'm taking screenshots, I don't even notice him most of the time.
However, the important part of the customization are the stats. Remember above that I said "nearly" every way. While Tropico 4 does add more stats and backgrounds and rise-to-power options, I feel that there are several mistakes. The first mistake is making traits able to "level up". For example, a level one trait that decreases construction cost by 10% could, at level two, decrease costs by 15%. I don't like this because the trait isn't leveled up in-game, and carries over multiple playthroughs.
The second miss is the removal of flaws. In Tropico 3, you had to pick a group of strengths as well as flaws, whereas in 4 you're not longer bound. I can maybe let this slide, since many traits have strengths and drawbacks. However, many more traits don't have any drawbacks for their selection, making the half/half ones more of a challenge than anything else.
In-game, the controls are rather simple. There are nice touches to the UI, such as being able to right-click to bring up the build menu, which is easy to navigate.
For actual gameplay, your goal is to complete whatever the mission is or, if in sandbox, whatever you want to do. To this end, you can develop your island into a tourist paradise with no logging or mining, an agrarian or mining based economy, an industrial powerhouse with highly-paid workers, or anything in between.
Each Tropican is tracked and has a job with an income, a home, skill stats, education level, parents, grandparents, a spouse maybe, children, etc. Tropicans also have needs such as food, healthcare, religious satisfaction, job satisfaction, liberty, and that sort. Finally, each Tropican has political leanings. I don't know if parents affect the political leaning of children, but everything else you do does. For instance, you can set your schools to be more military focused, making children more supportive of the militarist faction. Other factions include Capitalists, Communists, Intellectuals, Loyalists, Religious, Environmentalists, and Nationalists. They all have their demands, but they're usually easy to meet. Except Environmentalists.
In most games I've played, the hardest part is the start-up. Early on, you won't have the infrastructure to keep your people happy so one or two will often end up running into jungle to become Rebels. Rebels are Tropicans who will, occasionally, launch attacks against your production buildings or even your palace to overthrow your government.
After you get past the rocky years, it actually becomes easy to manage your population and keep it happy I've found. This is the biggest drawback of the game in my opinion. After a point, it becomes easier as your city grows, not harder.
Anyway, your people work at jobs depending on the buildings available. You have your farmers, college professors, fishermen, engineers, etc. You set wages on the island until you build the Stock Exchange, which allows other countries to build buildings in the country. Most of the key jobs produce resources that are exported.
One of the biggest changes between 3 and 4 is importing. In 3, the only way to get away with not having domestic food production is with the UN Humanitarian Aid Camp. This might be way the UNHAC doesn't make an appearance in 4, because you can now import resources you're deficient in. This opens up more avenues of play since you're not railroaded into doing something or not doing something because of a lack of resources.
Like Dwarf Fortress, it does get to the point where you'll extra time and resources to burn. Early on, you probably have farms and tenements next to your palace. Bah! Tear those down and relocate them! I've spent a lot of time trying to do zoning, suburban areas, etc. Unfortunately, the islands ARE rather small most of the time, but not crippling so. Comparing from what I've played with SimCity 5 screenshots, I'd say there is still more room.
Graphics 8/10
The graphics get the job done, and they hold up nicely today. Not against the major AAA titles, mind you, but on their own merit and especially compared to previous games in the series.
User-Friendliness 9/10
There is a very helpful tutorial, and the learning curve is not as steep as Anno 2070 or Dwarf Fortress.
Replayability 10/10
You'll play it nonstop for a few weeks. Stop. Pick it up against sometime down the line. Play the mess out of it again.
Sound: 1-20/10
So yeah. The music is extremely catchy. Almost annoyingly catchy.
Link to video.
Overall 9/10
For the price of the game when it comes on sale on Steam, the game is worth it and then some. While it may not be the most challenging game there is, it stands on its own legs based on its own merits. Are there room for improvements? Of course, but on a basic level, the game is very sound and very enjoyable. Don't take my word on it though. There's a demo available on Steam.
There were many naysayers when Tropico 4 was released calling it little more than a standalone expansion of Tropico 3. In terms of graphics and core gameplay, I am incline to agree. However, after playing Tropico 4, and even before counting the DLC and Modern times, a player quickly realizes that the game is, in nearly every way, an improvement over what I considered an already fun game.
Gameplay 9/10
Tropico 4 puts you in the shoes of El Presidente, the potentially egomaniac ruler of the country of Tropico. Before you start up either a campaign or sandbox game, you're given the ability to customize your in-game avatar for El Presidente. For the most part, I don't really care about the appearance since unless I'm taking screenshots, I don't even notice him most of the time.
However, the important part of the customization are the stats. Remember above that I said "nearly" every way. While Tropico 4 does add more stats and backgrounds and rise-to-power options, I feel that there are several mistakes. The first mistake is making traits able to "level up". For example, a level one trait that decreases construction cost by 10% could, at level two, decrease costs by 15%. I don't like this because the trait isn't leveled up in-game, and carries over multiple playthroughs.
The second miss is the removal of flaws. In Tropico 3, you had to pick a group of strengths as well as flaws, whereas in 4 you're not longer bound. I can maybe let this slide, since many traits have strengths and drawbacks. However, many more traits don't have any drawbacks for their selection, making the half/half ones more of a challenge than anything else.
In-game, the controls are rather simple. There are nice touches to the UI, such as being able to right-click to bring up the build menu, which is easy to navigate.
For actual gameplay, your goal is to complete whatever the mission is or, if in sandbox, whatever you want to do. To this end, you can develop your island into a tourist paradise with no logging or mining, an agrarian or mining based economy, an industrial powerhouse with highly-paid workers, or anything in between.
Each Tropican is tracked and has a job with an income, a home, skill stats, education level, parents, grandparents, a spouse maybe, children, etc. Tropicans also have needs such as food, healthcare, religious satisfaction, job satisfaction, liberty, and that sort. Finally, each Tropican has political leanings. I don't know if parents affect the political leaning of children, but everything else you do does. For instance, you can set your schools to be more military focused, making children more supportive of the militarist faction. Other factions include Capitalists, Communists, Intellectuals, Loyalists, Religious, Environmentalists, and Nationalists. They all have their demands, but they're usually easy to meet. Except Environmentalists.
In most games I've played, the hardest part is the start-up. Early on, you won't have the infrastructure to keep your people happy so one or two will often end up running into jungle to become Rebels. Rebels are Tropicans who will, occasionally, launch attacks against your production buildings or even your palace to overthrow your government.
After you get past the rocky years, it actually becomes easy to manage your population and keep it happy I've found. This is the biggest drawback of the game in my opinion. After a point, it becomes easier as your city grows, not harder.
Anyway, your people work at jobs depending on the buildings available. You have your farmers, college professors, fishermen, engineers, etc. You set wages on the island until you build the Stock Exchange, which allows other countries to build buildings in the country. Most of the key jobs produce resources that are exported.
One of the biggest changes between 3 and 4 is importing. In 3, the only way to get away with not having domestic food production is with the UN Humanitarian Aid Camp. This might be way the UNHAC doesn't make an appearance in 4, because you can now import resources you're deficient in. This opens up more avenues of play since you're not railroaded into doing something or not doing something because of a lack of resources.
Like Dwarf Fortress, it does get to the point where you'll extra time and resources to burn. Early on, you probably have farms and tenements next to your palace. Bah! Tear those down and relocate them! I've spent a lot of time trying to do zoning, suburban areas, etc. Unfortunately, the islands ARE rather small most of the time, but not crippling so. Comparing from what I've played with SimCity 5 screenshots, I'd say there is still more room.
Graphics 8/10
The graphics get the job done, and they hold up nicely today. Not against the major AAA titles, mind you, but on their own merit and especially compared to previous games in the series.
User-Friendliness 9/10
There is a very helpful tutorial, and the learning curve is not as steep as Anno 2070 or Dwarf Fortress.
Replayability 10/10
You'll play it nonstop for a few weeks. Stop. Pick it up against sometime down the line. Play the mess out of it again.
Sound: 1-20/10
So yeah. The music is extremely catchy. Almost annoyingly catchy.
Link to video.
Overall 9/10
For the price of the game when it comes on sale on Steam, the game is worth it and then some. While it may not be the most challenging game there is, it stands on its own legs based on its own merits. Are there room for improvements? Of course, but on a basic level, the game is very sound and very enjoyable. Don't take my word on it though. There's a demo available on Steam.
civvver
Deity
- Joined
- Apr 24, 2007
- Messages
- 5,855
Magicka was one of my favorite games two summers ago. I played the heck out of it for a few weeks. The main game has really good level design imo, very challenging but progressively so with varied enemy types. The challenges are ridiculously hard but if you get really good at casting magicks you can do them. There is a lot of luck involved with getting powerful spells and/or item drops early in the arena challenges though. If you get lightning bolt, haste or summon elementals it's gg. I don't think I'd give this game a 90, but a full 75 seems fair.
However I got the expansion, the stars are left, and was hugely disappointed. It's INSANELY hard. The first boss is at least twice as hard as anything I encountered the whole original campaign. For this reason I never got past the first level. You either have to become a magicka guru or play multiplayer. A review I read echo'd this sentiment saying they felt like the game was designed for co-op as it was far to difficult solo. Unfortunately the group system is very poor. Thus the expansion gets a 60 from me.
Luckymoose
The World is Mine
I didn't like Torchlight 1 because at some point while playing i realised - so i'm playing a really primitive version of Diablo 2. Why am i doing this ? I could play Diablo2.
I didn't like Torchlight 2 because at some point while playing i realised - so they copied everything they could from Diablo 2 and Diablo 3 trailers. So why am i playing the imitation and not the originals ? Unlike T1, T2 is much more playable and i guess it's good if you're into that sort of thing.
Wow i forgot about that, thank you for the time you take to keep it up to date.
So, you're saying the people who developed Diablo 2 made a game (TL2) similar to it, so you shouldn't play it over the original because it is an imitation? TL2 is closer to Diablo 3 than Blizzard could ever get, honestly.
Heretic_Cata
We're gonna live forever
I'm not saying people shouldn't play it. I'm saying people should play it only if they're into the genre. If not, why settle for the lesser evil ? That's how playing it made me feel anyway.
Maniacal
the green Napoleon
If they're not into the genre then they shouldn't bother playing Diablo either.
civvver
Deity
- Joined
- Apr 24, 2007
- Messages
- 5,855
Update: As of June 16, 2013 there is a bug in the game where you cannot save any edits to your heroes or unlock new ones. This means you cannot equip new gear. This essentially renders the game unplayable and it's a server bug effecting everyone. This is not the first time a server bug has rendered the game unplayable. Around december 2012 there was a login error where most people could not log or it would take dozens of attempts to log in. Eventually that bug went away. This latest one I am not confident will every be fixed. The official forums state that darkspore is essentially abandoned and no one at EA is supporting it any more. Why it still goes on discount is beyond me, a dishonest attempt to still push a broken game. In its current state I cannot recommend darkspore to anyone. Review should be a score of NA or 0/10 since game is unplayable.
Another Update: July 19, 2013, the bug where you can't save heroes has been fixed and the game is playable once again. Still I cannot recommend as it seems every 2-3 months there's a bug that makes the game unplayable and it takes 2-3 months to get resolved. I still really enjoy this game but buy it at your own risk knowing you might not be able to play it ever again at some point.
Original review:
Since we're on the topic of dungeon crawlers, here's my darkspore review you can all laugh at.
Darkspore
Well it has a 5.6 average user rank on metacritic. So most people hate this game. But I love it. Here's why.
Gameplay and mechanics:
Darkspore is a typical hack 'n' slash dungeon crawler. You choose a hero, deploy to a level and grind your way through, looting all the way. Controls are simple, you left click to move/attack and right click to force attack without move. Abilities are hotkeys.
There are 25 heroes total and they are divided in genesis types and class types. Each hero also has 4 variants to unlock for a total of 100 heroes to unlock. You unlock them by leveling up through experience gained when you complete levels. It's not essential to unlock all heroes at all, the only difference in the variants is default appearance, a tiny base stat difference (like +-2 agility for example but with gear your agility is boosted to over 1000 so it's meaningless) and their second ability. Each hero has a standard attack, sometimes with unique effects, and one ability that never changes. Their second ability is based off the variant and is common among their genesis types. For example, Plasma heroes have a flame wave, a meteor strike, webbed lightning and a plasma fireball thing, so Krel (who is a plasma hero) has one of those abilities depending on the variant. The squad ability also never changes but it is available to all your heroes in your party. So you don't have typical classes like many other dungeon crawlers, instead you have unique heroes that share some abilities.
The part that is like classes is whether your hero is a tempest, ravager or sentinel type. This determines your stat caps and your primary stat. Your primary stat increases your ability damage and energy cost. It does not increase default attack damage! The only way to increase that is with specific equipment. Stat caps are important because you can't just stack on all hp and strength on a sentinel, it's capped at a certain amount depending on your level. You have to buy upgrades to the stat caps from the shop with money you collect (called eDNA in game). Tempests are like caster heroes and use mind as primary and have high resistance stats but lowest hp and dodge caps. All tempests are ranged as well. Ravagers are like rogue heroes and use agi, with high crit caps, and medium everything else with a mix of range and melee, and sentinels are like tanks with the most hp, dodge, strength and lower crit and resists. Sentinels are all melee.
Genesis types are important because enemies of the same genesis type do double damage to you. Some elite enemies are also resistant to genesis types. So it's important to mix up your squads with multiple genesis types. It's also important to mix up ranged and melee and physical vs energy damage, since some enemies have high dodge and others high resistance. Whether an attack is physical or energy just depends on the attack, you have to read the tooltips to tell.
When you deploy for missions you chose a squad of 3 heroes. You can swap between them at any time, though it's on a cooldown. To me that's what makes the game most interesting is configuring squads. A lot of considerations are made between what types of heroes, the damage types, the squad abilities etc. Squad abilities are available to all heroes in a squad so some are really important. Like one hero Meditron has a squad heal. He can be a cornerstone for nearly any squad. Another example is Krel has a squad ability that increases energy damage taken by 50% for the next two attacks. Arakna has a sqaud ability that shoots 3 projectiles that do energy damage and heal you for 50% of the damage dealt. So they have incredible synergy together on a squad. The third squad member can use both abilities together, it's quite amazing!
Gear is also a really important part of the game. There is TONS of gear. There's about 8 slots on your hero to put stuff in, all with a varied assortment of stats from base stats like strength, to derived ones like dodge and hp to very specific random ones like deal 10% more physical dmg or 25% shorter cooldowns. You get to equip all this gear in a loadout a lot like spore's creature creator. There you can fully customize the appearance by changing sizes and rotations of pieces and colors. You can even add decoration only pieces if you want. I personally don't go too crazy making my heroes look good but you can spend hours playing with it if you want. This is the only real tie to spore in the game, other than the art style, which is basically a "dark"er spore.
That's pretty much the entire game mechanics, although there are also these powerups you grab called catalysts. They give you bonuses in a single mission like 5% more dmg or resistance. You collect more of them to create chains for more bonuses and you can keep them until you stop running levels.
Levels:
Levels are broken up into 4 parts within a chapter. The first 3 in a chapter are similarly difficult and the final one jumps up quite a bit in difficulty and the first of the next chapter a even bigger jump. The level of gear that drops is proportional to the difficulty so you might have to grind some levels to proceed to the higher ones. There's 8 chapters total iirc. But after you defeat the final boss he resurrects and you do the 8 chapters again, two more times. So it becomes a very grindy game. But the second and third playthroughs are random levels, the only thing the same is the 4 chapter difficulty format. At the end of a level you get a choice of whether to proceed or stop and collect rewards with a dice roll to determine the rarity of your reward. To increase your chances you must run more levels consecutively and complete objectives on each one like killing all darkspore or destroying all objects. The objectives are randomly generated each level.
Enemies:
There is a wide variety of enemy types which is really cool. They also have real time tooltips which tell you what they do. You also get a preview of what enemies will be in a level before you deploy so you can pick the right squad. Knowing the enemy types can be a big difference between living or dying... If all your heroes die in a level you lose all reward progress, collect no rewards for those levels, and have to start over! So it's really important not to die when chaining a whole bunch of levels together. There is a good variety of bosses too. Though I will say they are definitely not all balanced. Some are insanely hard while others are super easy and some are easily countered depending on your heroes.
Story:
There is some sort of story your first play through (the first 8 chapters) about these darkspore dudes infecting everyone with bad eDNA to turn them into darkspore. You play a crogenitor who controls a bunch of heroes to stop them. Story is told through some cut scenes between levels but honestly you don't even notice it's there.
That's pretty much the entire game, though there is also multiplayer co-op. The multiplayer makes most levels really easy. I didn't play it in that much.
Technicals:
You must be connected to the darkspore servers to play, even in single player (like diablo 3). Also there is no pause. Super annoying feature. So you have to keep slogging along when chaining a bunch of levels with no breaks. Go afk too long and your game will time out and you lose your progress. The server support is really terrible, I don't usually disconnect but for a month last christmas no one could connect to the servers at all. So I can see why a lot of people would ding this game heavily on the technical aspects.
Overall I found it a super addictive crawler that I couldn't get enough of. The way the gear and squads work was just appealing to me to keep customizing everything. And the game is very challenging in single player so you have to stay on the cutting edge of your gear.
Scores-
Graphics: They get an 7.5. They're not amazing compared to some action games, but the spell effects are good and the art style works for me.
Sounds: Eh, sound is average, 7. Didn't really notice it too much.
Gameplay: Gets a 9 from me. I love the way the abilities, genesis types, damage types all work in this really nice rock/paper/scissors format. It provides a ton of customization and the gameplay is pretty smooth and engaging. It seems really straightforward and easy at first, but the latter levels make huge jumps in difficulty and you have to start doing things like kiting, balancing your heroes perfectly and making tactical decisions.
Technicals: 3. Like I said, no pause, server support is bad, must be online.
Overall: 8. Would be higher if not for bad technical aspects and the game does get insanely grindy near the end.
Another Update: July 19, 2013, the bug where you can't save heroes has been fixed and the game is playable once again. Still I cannot recommend as it seems every 2-3 months there's a bug that makes the game unplayable and it takes 2-3 months to get resolved. I still really enjoy this game but buy it at your own risk knowing you might not be able to play it ever again at some point.
Original review:
Since we're on the topic of dungeon crawlers, here's my darkspore review you can all laugh at.
Darkspore
Well it has a 5.6 average user rank on metacritic. So most people hate this game. But I love it. Here's why.
Gameplay and mechanics:
Darkspore is a typical hack 'n' slash dungeon crawler. You choose a hero, deploy to a level and grind your way through, looting all the way. Controls are simple, you left click to move/attack and right click to force attack without move. Abilities are hotkeys.
There are 25 heroes total and they are divided in genesis types and class types. Each hero also has 4 variants to unlock for a total of 100 heroes to unlock. You unlock them by leveling up through experience gained when you complete levels. It's not essential to unlock all heroes at all, the only difference in the variants is default appearance, a tiny base stat difference (like +-2 agility for example but with gear your agility is boosted to over 1000 so it's meaningless) and their second ability. Each hero has a standard attack, sometimes with unique effects, and one ability that never changes. Their second ability is based off the variant and is common among their genesis types. For example, Plasma heroes have a flame wave, a meteor strike, webbed lightning and a plasma fireball thing, so Krel (who is a plasma hero) has one of those abilities depending on the variant. The squad ability also never changes but it is available to all your heroes in your party. So you don't have typical classes like many other dungeon crawlers, instead you have unique heroes that share some abilities.
The part that is like classes is whether your hero is a tempest, ravager or sentinel type. This determines your stat caps and your primary stat. Your primary stat increases your ability damage and energy cost. It does not increase default attack damage! The only way to increase that is with specific equipment. Stat caps are important because you can't just stack on all hp and strength on a sentinel, it's capped at a certain amount depending on your level. You have to buy upgrades to the stat caps from the shop with money you collect (called eDNA in game). Tempests are like caster heroes and use mind as primary and have high resistance stats but lowest hp and dodge caps. All tempests are ranged as well. Ravagers are like rogue heroes and use agi, with high crit caps, and medium everything else with a mix of range and melee, and sentinels are like tanks with the most hp, dodge, strength and lower crit and resists. Sentinels are all melee.
Genesis types are important because enemies of the same genesis type do double damage to you. Some elite enemies are also resistant to genesis types. So it's important to mix up your squads with multiple genesis types. It's also important to mix up ranged and melee and physical vs energy damage, since some enemies have high dodge and others high resistance. Whether an attack is physical or energy just depends on the attack, you have to read the tooltips to tell.
When you deploy for missions you chose a squad of 3 heroes. You can swap between them at any time, though it's on a cooldown. To me that's what makes the game most interesting is configuring squads. A lot of considerations are made between what types of heroes, the damage types, the squad abilities etc. Squad abilities are available to all heroes in a squad so some are really important. Like one hero Meditron has a squad heal. He can be a cornerstone for nearly any squad. Another example is Krel has a squad ability that increases energy damage taken by 50% for the next two attacks. Arakna has a sqaud ability that shoots 3 projectiles that do energy damage and heal you for 50% of the damage dealt. So they have incredible synergy together on a squad. The third squad member can use both abilities together, it's quite amazing!
Gear is also a really important part of the game. There is TONS of gear. There's about 8 slots on your hero to put stuff in, all with a varied assortment of stats from base stats like strength, to derived ones like dodge and hp to very specific random ones like deal 10% more physical dmg or 25% shorter cooldowns. You get to equip all this gear in a loadout a lot like spore's creature creator. There you can fully customize the appearance by changing sizes and rotations of pieces and colors. You can even add decoration only pieces if you want. I personally don't go too crazy making my heroes look good but you can spend hours playing with it if you want. This is the only real tie to spore in the game, other than the art style, which is basically a "dark"er spore.
That's pretty much the entire game mechanics, although there are also these powerups you grab called catalysts. They give you bonuses in a single mission like 5% more dmg or resistance. You collect more of them to create chains for more bonuses and you can keep them until you stop running levels.
Levels:
Levels are broken up into 4 parts within a chapter. The first 3 in a chapter are similarly difficult and the final one jumps up quite a bit in difficulty and the first of the next chapter a even bigger jump. The level of gear that drops is proportional to the difficulty so you might have to grind some levels to proceed to the higher ones. There's 8 chapters total iirc. But after you defeat the final boss he resurrects and you do the 8 chapters again, two more times. So it becomes a very grindy game. But the second and third playthroughs are random levels, the only thing the same is the 4 chapter difficulty format. At the end of a level you get a choice of whether to proceed or stop and collect rewards with a dice roll to determine the rarity of your reward. To increase your chances you must run more levels consecutively and complete objectives on each one like killing all darkspore or destroying all objects. The objectives are randomly generated each level.
Enemies:
There is a wide variety of enemy types which is really cool. They also have real time tooltips which tell you what they do. You also get a preview of what enemies will be in a level before you deploy so you can pick the right squad. Knowing the enemy types can be a big difference between living or dying... If all your heroes die in a level you lose all reward progress, collect no rewards for those levels, and have to start over! So it's really important not to die when chaining a whole bunch of levels together. There is a good variety of bosses too. Though I will say they are definitely not all balanced. Some are insanely hard while others are super easy and some are easily countered depending on your heroes.
Story:
There is some sort of story your first play through (the first 8 chapters) about these darkspore dudes infecting everyone with bad eDNA to turn them into darkspore. You play a crogenitor who controls a bunch of heroes to stop them. Story is told through some cut scenes between levels but honestly you don't even notice it's there.
That's pretty much the entire game, though there is also multiplayer co-op. The multiplayer makes most levels really easy. I didn't play it in that much.
Technicals:
You must be connected to the darkspore servers to play, even in single player (like diablo 3). Also there is no pause. Super annoying feature. So you have to keep slogging along when chaining a bunch of levels with no breaks. Go afk too long and your game will time out and you lose your progress. The server support is really terrible, I don't usually disconnect but for a month last christmas no one could connect to the servers at all. So I can see why a lot of people would ding this game heavily on the technical aspects.
Overall I found it a super addictive crawler that I couldn't get enough of. The way the gear and squads work was just appealing to me to keep customizing everything. And the game is very challenging in single player so you have to stay on the cutting edge of your gear.
Scores-
Graphics: They get an 7.5. They're not amazing compared to some action games, but the spell effects are good and the art style works for me.
Sounds: Eh, sound is average, 7. Didn't really notice it too much.
Gameplay: Gets a 9 from me. I love the way the abilities, genesis types, damage types all work in this really nice rock/paper/scissors format. It provides a ton of customization and the gameplay is pretty smooth and engaging. It seems really straightforward and easy at first, but the latter levels make huge jumps in difficulty and you have to start doing things like kiting, balancing your heroes perfectly and making tactical decisions.
Technicals: 3. Like I said, no pause, server support is bad, must be online.
Overall: 8. Would be higher if not for bad technical aspects and the game does get insanely grindy near the end.
civvver
Deity
- Joined
- Apr 24, 2007
- Messages
- 5,855
It has a demo. The demo is pretty limiting though as you don't unlock the really cool heroes and gear until much later. But it's a relatively cheap game. It will most likely be on sale fo $5 sometime this summer.
Also I played it a year after launch. I think there were even more bugs and server issues at launch. Like sim city and diablo 3, server issues can completely sink an otherwise decent game.
Also I played it a year after launch. I think there were even more bugs and server issues at launch. Like sim city and diablo 3, server issues can completely sink an otherwise decent game.
- Joined
- Mar 31, 2008
- Messages
- 14,926
Saints Row: The Third
Score: A Disappointment out of 10. (7/10)
Let me start by saying I'm a huge fan of Saints Row. Years ago, on my birthday, someone got me a used Saints Row 1 game. I thought, "Oh Gee, a GTA clone." Dozens and dozens of hours later, it became one of my favorite games. So, when Saints Row 2 came out, no question I would get that.
Saints Row 2 built upon the first game successfully and in every possible way. So, years and years later, Saints Row IV is announced and I figured it was time to buy the III while it was on sale.
Awesome stuff, awesome stuff, awesome stuff, and then we run into the problem.
Saints Row lost its way.
The franchise, before III, wasn't exactly know for being serious in story, but the game did have its dramatic moments and the story was good enough to allow yourself be invested. The characters were memorable, the story and humor were there, the actual gameplay solid, and while there were some technical hiccups with things like pop-in, you had hours of fun.
Not so with Saints Row 3. Not only is the story the most railroading one in the series, and not only does it have two different endings, the game clocks in as hours shorter than the previous games. I finished Saints Row 3 in 18 hours, and that's counting the amount of time I spent screwing around.
The Good
1.) The Gangs
The three enemy gangs are the Deckers (high-tech British-anime...guys and gals), the Luchadors (explosion loving wrestlers), and the Morningstar (generic-generic). The game introduces really cool sub-bosses for each faction. All three have Brutes, which are gigantic foes with high health and sometimes very heavy weapons.
The Deckers have a roller-skating girl with a huge weapon called the Shockhammer which will ruin your day. Those girls are fast, and easily the coolest of the sub-bosses.
The Luchadors have a armored big guy with a rapid-firing grenade launcher. The grenades from it don't do much damage to you compared to others (for balance, given he can fire off a dozen in a few seconds), but when you're caught in the explosion, the screen shakes and your PC takes a second or two to recover.
The Morningstar have sniper guy who doesn't really matter. I don't like the Morningstar.
I like the aesthetics of all three factions, since they're easy to distinguish. However, that is not to say that the gangs don't have problems, which will be revealed in a moment.
2.) Underlying Mechanics
The game gives you plenty of moneysinks this time around, ranging from vehicle customization to weapon upgrades, to personal upgrades. In the previous games, increasing respect only unlocked new missions. In SR3, they open up personal upgrades such as increased sprinting, ammo capacity, health, number of gang followers you can have, and a slew of other options. It is a very nice touch.
You can also go around buying property, which increases your hourly in-game income. Combat is a lot more hectic and less easy than previous games thanks to aforementioned sub-bosses.
The Bad
1.) Technical issues, such as pop-in. I played this game on PC and I am extremely surprised how bad pop-in is and how bad the draw distance is. Vehicles will pop in and out in front of your very eyes too often. This is the same problem that existed in SR1 and 2 and should not exist in Saints Row at this point.
This is really a problem if you're using air vehicles since its very possible you fly so high that you can't see any cars on the ground because the game won't make them appear.
Draw distance shouldn't even be an issue at this point. Crackdown was released for Xbox and had excellent draw distance.
2.) Boring Minigames. Besides Professor Genki's Super Ethical whatver, there isn't a lot of variety. Mayhem, tank mayhem, escort missions, etc. All the unique-to-Saints Row minigames are gone, and that's rather sad.
3.) Tanks are awful. I have no idea if it is just me, but the main cannons on tanks don't like shooting where you want them to go. There doesn't appear to be an immediate drop on the projectile, so the fact it'll explode three dozen meters in front of the target is baffling.
4.) Zombies. Just zombies.
5.) Robbing stores, and stores in general, are boring. You used to be able to walk into a tattoo parlor or gun store, point a gun at someone, and they'll walk to the safe, unlock it, and a bunch of other stuff. Nope, not anymore. They'll just hand you the money outright. Also, if you own a store and walk in, all your notoriety is erased. There are several things wrong with this, which'll be explained in the next section.
The Ugly
1.) YOUR GANG DOESN'T PATROL THE STREETS. At NO point driving around will you ever seen your gang walking the streets. In the early game tutorial, this is handwaved by saying the Syndicate (the Decker-Luchador-Morningstar Alliance) won't attack your property because that'll give you the OK to attack their property or some stupid crap like that. THE PROBLEM WITH THAT is that this works on police too, and there are NO missions involving the normal police. This works on STAG, the new faction that pops up later as a police replacement in some areas, which makes NO SENSE given the things you see STAG do.
It makes less sense given that your gang doesn't patrol the streets, but are hold up in a handful of HQs you steal from factions. [There are also less stronghold missions in SR3 than SR2].
It is hard to take the idea that you're growing in power in Steelport when you see gangs with eradicated leadership more prominent on the streets than Third Street.
2.) Story is a mess. You no longer have a choice in which gang you target first, making the story extremely linear which wouldn't be bad if the story line was developed. The fact the storyline is, on average, eight to twelve hours shorter than previous games means it isn't developed.
And while in gameplay the factions have more personality in combat, in the story, they aren't. In previous games, gangs had more than just one important character in them. The Ronin, Brotherhood, Los Carnales, they FELT like major criminal organizations each with major power players. In SR3, the Deckers have only ONE character. The Luchadors have ONE character. The Morningstar has ONE character and two minor characters, one of which becomes major but not within the context of Morningstar.
In other words, while the visual distinctiveness of each gang might have seen an increase in combat, in terms of actual depth, it has it the lowest mark in the franchise. That is not to say that the characters are not strong, because they are (except the main Morningstar guy). However, the overall gangs lost some flair, drive vehicles that are pretty much all the same but recolored, and the fact that all the other gangs start off in an alliance makes things a little sadder.
3.) SR3 jumped the shark with refrigerator skis. We're supposed to believe that five years has pass since SR2 and SR3. Fair enough. However, we're supposed to believe that between the events of SR2 and SR3 the United States had built a
and equipped the federal anti-gang task force with lasers, VTOLs that shoot lasers, and laser tanks? The fact that something like STAG exists doesn't seem that weird given you're running an organization that killed thousands of people in Saints Row 2 (at least, my character did in SR2) and has since become Vice Kings+. However, the fact that STAG is as heavily militarized as it is doesn't make too much sense.
Also, zombies. These aren't slow zombies either. They're fast zombies and while they are confined to one island, they're annoying and don't add much to gameplay or to the story. After they're brought up, they're quickly ignored once more once their short part in the story is finished.
The Deckers and Morningstar play EXTREMELY minor roles in the story. Because the story is linear, both gangs are come and go and not a lot is established for either gang other than the Deckers are high-tech and the Morningstar is sophisticated and European.
Final Verdict
If this game had been released by itself with no expectations, like a new IP, it would've been fine. However, this is the sequel to a popular franchise and it fails to live up to the legacy. The announcement of Saints Row IV and the announced story of IV shows that the series has lost its way in a big way.
If IV is anything like III, or worse than III, than I see no reason to get SRIV over GTAV. Saints Row, a series created in response and gained popularity because of the gritty realism GTA IV tried to create, will now lose players back to Grand Theft Auto because they want some kind of semblance of seriousness and story telling in their games.
For the money you could spend on SR3, you could pick up SR1 and 2 for the same.
Score: A Disappointment out of 10. (7/10)
Let me start by saying I'm a huge fan of Saints Row. Years ago, on my birthday, someone got me a used Saints Row 1 game. I thought, "Oh Gee, a GTA clone." Dozens and dozens of hours later, it became one of my favorite games. So, when Saints Row 2 came out, no question I would get that.
Saints Row 2 built upon the first game successfully and in every possible way. So, years and years later, Saints Row IV is announced and I figured it was time to buy the III while it was on sale.
Awesome stuff, awesome stuff, awesome stuff, and then we run into the problem.
Saints Row lost its way.
The franchise, before III, wasn't exactly know for being serious in story, but the game did have its dramatic moments and the story was good enough to allow yourself be invested. The characters were memorable, the story and humor were there, the actual gameplay solid, and while there were some technical hiccups with things like pop-in, you had hours of fun.
Not so with Saints Row 3. Not only is the story the most railroading one in the series, and not only does it have two different endings, the game clocks in as hours shorter than the previous games. I finished Saints Row 3 in 18 hours, and that's counting the amount of time I spent screwing around.
The Good
1.) The Gangs
The three enemy gangs are the Deckers (high-tech British-anime...guys and gals), the Luchadors (explosion loving wrestlers), and the Morningstar (generic-generic). The game introduces really cool sub-bosses for each faction. All three have Brutes, which are gigantic foes with high health and sometimes very heavy weapons.
The Deckers have a roller-skating girl with a huge weapon called the Shockhammer which will ruin your day. Those girls are fast, and easily the coolest of the sub-bosses.
The Luchadors have a armored big guy with a rapid-firing grenade launcher. The grenades from it don't do much damage to you compared to others (for balance, given he can fire off a dozen in a few seconds), but when you're caught in the explosion, the screen shakes and your PC takes a second or two to recover.
The Morningstar have sniper guy who doesn't really matter. I don't like the Morningstar.
I like the aesthetics of all three factions, since they're easy to distinguish. However, that is not to say that the gangs don't have problems, which will be revealed in a moment.
2.) Underlying Mechanics
The game gives you plenty of moneysinks this time around, ranging from vehicle customization to weapon upgrades, to personal upgrades. In the previous games, increasing respect only unlocked new missions. In SR3, they open up personal upgrades such as increased sprinting, ammo capacity, health, number of gang followers you can have, and a slew of other options. It is a very nice touch.
You can also go around buying property, which increases your hourly in-game income. Combat is a lot more hectic and less easy than previous games thanks to aforementioned sub-bosses.
The Bad
1.) Technical issues, such as pop-in. I played this game on PC and I am extremely surprised how bad pop-in is and how bad the draw distance is. Vehicles will pop in and out in front of your very eyes too often. This is the same problem that existed in SR1 and 2 and should not exist in Saints Row at this point.
This is really a problem if you're using air vehicles since its very possible you fly so high that you can't see any cars on the ground because the game won't make them appear.
Draw distance shouldn't even be an issue at this point. Crackdown was released for Xbox and had excellent draw distance.
2.) Boring Minigames. Besides Professor Genki's Super Ethical whatver, there isn't a lot of variety. Mayhem, tank mayhem, escort missions, etc. All the unique-to-Saints Row minigames are gone, and that's rather sad.
3.) Tanks are awful. I have no idea if it is just me, but the main cannons on tanks don't like shooting where you want them to go. There doesn't appear to be an immediate drop on the projectile, so the fact it'll explode three dozen meters in front of the target is baffling.
4.) Zombies. Just zombies.
5.) Robbing stores, and stores in general, are boring. You used to be able to walk into a tattoo parlor or gun store, point a gun at someone, and they'll walk to the safe, unlock it, and a bunch of other stuff. Nope, not anymore. They'll just hand you the money outright. Also, if you own a store and walk in, all your notoriety is erased. There are several things wrong with this, which'll be explained in the next section.
The Ugly
1.) YOUR GANG DOESN'T PATROL THE STREETS. At NO point driving around will you ever seen your gang walking the streets. In the early game tutorial, this is handwaved by saying the Syndicate (the Decker-Luchador-Morningstar Alliance) won't attack your property because that'll give you the OK to attack their property or some stupid crap like that. THE PROBLEM WITH THAT is that this works on police too, and there are NO missions involving the normal police. This works on STAG, the new faction that pops up later as a police replacement in some areas, which makes NO SENSE given the things you see STAG do.
It makes less sense given that your gang doesn't patrol the streets, but are hold up in a handful of HQs you steal from factions. [There are also less stronghold missions in SR3 than SR2].
It is hard to take the idea that you're growing in power in Steelport when you see gangs with eradicated leadership more prominent on the streets than Third Street.
2.) Story is a mess. You no longer have a choice in which gang you target first, making the story extremely linear which wouldn't be bad if the story line was developed. The fact the storyline is, on average, eight to twelve hours shorter than previous games means it isn't developed.
And while in gameplay the factions have more personality in combat, in the story, they aren't. In previous games, gangs had more than just one important character in them. The Ronin, Brotherhood, Los Carnales, they FELT like major criminal organizations each with major power players. In SR3, the Deckers have only ONE character. The Luchadors have ONE character. The Morningstar has ONE character and two minor characters, one of which becomes major but not within the context of Morningstar.
In other words, while the visual distinctiveness of each gang might have seen an increase in combat, in terms of actual depth, it has it the lowest mark in the franchise. That is not to say that the characters are not strong, because they are (except the main Morningstar guy). However, the overall gangs lost some flair, drive vehicles that are pretty much all the same but recolored, and the fact that all the other gangs start off in an alliance makes things a little sadder.
3.) SR3 jumped the shark with refrigerator skis. We're supposed to believe that five years has pass since SR2 and SR3. Fair enough. However, we're supposed to believe that between the events of SR2 and SR3 the United States had built a
Spoiler :
and equipped the federal anti-gang task force with lasers, VTOLs that shoot lasers, and laser tanks? The fact that something like STAG exists doesn't seem that weird given you're running an organization that killed thousands of people in Saints Row 2 (at least, my character did in SR2) and has since become Vice Kings+. However, the fact that STAG is as heavily militarized as it is doesn't make too much sense.
Also, zombies. These aren't slow zombies either. They're fast zombies and while they are confined to one island, they're annoying and don't add much to gameplay or to the story. After they're brought up, they're quickly ignored once more once their short part in the story is finished.
The Deckers and Morningstar play EXTREMELY minor roles in the story. Because the story is linear, both gangs are come and go and not a lot is established for either gang other than the Deckers are high-tech and the Morningstar is sophisticated and European.
Final Verdict
If this game had been released by itself with no expectations, like a new IP, it would've been fine. However, this is the sequel to a popular franchise and it fails to live up to the legacy. The announcement of Saints Row IV and the announced story of IV shows that the series has lost its way in a big way.
If IV is anything like III, or worse than III, than I see no reason to get SRIV over GTAV. Saints Row, a series created in response and gained popularity because of the gritty realism GTA IV tried to create, will now lose players back to Grand Theft Auto because they want some kind of semblance of seriousness and story telling in their games.
For the money you could spend on SR3, you could pick up SR1 and 2 for the same.
civvver
Deity
- Joined
- Apr 24, 2007
- Messages
- 5,855
L.A. Noire
I bought this game on a 75% off steam sale last summer but only got around to playing it a couple weeks ago. 24 hours played in, I am just about to wrap up the main plot and thought I would post my thoughts while it's fresh in my mind.
Plot
The game is set in LA in 1949. The setting is extremely important here. As you can glean from the title, the whole story revolves around noire style stories set in this atmosphere. A lot of the stuff that happens wouldn't make sense in a city such as Chicago or New York and it definitely wouldn't make sense in a different time period. For example forensics are advanced enough to blood type but not match dna, which you'll find has a big impact on a couple cases. Plus the majority of the plot revolves around post war events with GIs returning home and so forth. Also a lot of the behaviors of the characters wouldn't fly in today's time. Think basically mad men but police detectives.
You start the game as police officer Cole Phelps. Phelps has an interesting background as a former marine officer, and has a wife and kids. You start off on street patrol but after making a few good arrests you quickly get promoted to detective. Then you get assigned to different case desks, starting with traffic, moving up to homicide, then finally the pinnacle vice desk (which seems like a lateral move or demotion from homicide honestly but it gets explained). The game is broken up into chapters where their is typically a lead in cutscene like a murder scene, then you go investigate and solve the case. At first the cases don't have much connection to the main plot but eventually you start to uncover a huge drug conspiracy that ties in all the main characters. What's really cool is throughout there's flashbacks to Cole in the marines and he starts to meet up with his old war buddies throughout the game and many of them tie into major plot points. I can't say much more than that since this game is all about story it's just much better if you discover it yourself.
Gameplay
Simply put, there isn't much. Well ok, you have to travel between plot points and cutscenes and do tasks like look for clues and shoot bad guys on occasion. The controls feel a lot like grand theft auto. There is no hud, like no ammo or health indicators other than Phelps will say stuff like I'm low on ammo and he'll look noticeably hurt when he's about to die from gunshots. If this were an action game this sort of realism would be a burden but here it works. The minimalist UI helps to immerse you in the story.
The two things you do the most in terms of gameplay are chase badguys and look for clues. Both are pretty boring in and of themselves, but they're spaced out well like mini challenges between plot points so it flows fine and I never felt myself annoyed by the tasks. The only thing that was kind of annoying is some criminals can clearly be stopped at certain points along the chase by tackling them or aiming a gun at them (and you get acheivements for doing so) but if you don't do it then eventually they get hit by a car or you're forced to shoot them. The thing is it's really hard to end the chases early and it also has zero effect on the game's outcome. Shoot some guy in the head and you can't question him, no problem the game always has a secondary way to arrive at the same information. It's kind of nice knowing you can't mess up but it also makes this more like a movie than a game.
Also if you mess up an action sequence you get to try again with no penalty. If you mess it up multiple times the game will actually ask you if you'd rather just skip it. It's pretty funny actually, though I like that LA Noire doesn't pretend to be some sweet action game, it knows what it is and does that part really well.
The final thing you do quite often is interview people. They answer your questions and you have to determine if they're being truthful. Determining correctly makes Phelps continue the interviews in different ways, getting more info as well as experience points. The experience is kind of worthless, it just gives you intuition points which reveal correct answers and clues when used. But at the end of cases you get a rating on how well you did and finding clues and getting questions right goes into that rating so there's that to shoot for.
What's really cool though is all the people's faces are built off of real actors so they look like real people with real expressions. It's pretty easy to tell when they're lying, though proving it can be a bit tougher.
Finally there's a ton of travel in this game because LA is huge. If you're a fan of open world exploring you'll probably like it. Just driving around town and looking at landmarks is a cool experience. Thankfully though you can make your partner quick drive to locations so you can save a lot of time and skip right to the story if you want.
Summary and Comments
In all it's a really cool game. Gameplay is lacking but it's a clear design decision and if you play this game like watching a movie play out it's really enjoyable. Just know it's not an rpg. You don't get to change the script based on how you play it. This isn't really a spoiler since it's completely obvious from the start of the game that this lounge singer Elsa is going to have a thing with Phelps, but all of the sudden you're in the middle of the game and Phelps is making out with Elsa and you're like wait, I have never even talked to her or anything, I haven't had any input into this outcome. And that's how the game is intended, you play it just to get to the next part of the movie. But the movie script is really, really good and kept me entertained.
In all if you like story based games and lots of cutscenes (and/or you love the show madmen) you'll probably love this game. If that stuff bores you and you'd rather blow things up or you need control over outcomes or a challenge to your games, you'll probably be bored with LA Noire.
Graphics: The graphics are really good. The character faces are amazing. Their bodys kind of suck, they move a little awkward at times. But the enviornments are all very rich with detail, really good graphics all around. 9/10
Sound: The music is great. 50s movie score stuff. The sounds and voices are awesome. 9/10
Gameplay: Ok so the gameplay is pretty pedestrian but it doesn't detract from the overall experience at all. But judged singularly, can't give it more than 6/10.
Story: The story is great. And the acting quality is like something on a hit tv show. 10/10
Final Verdict: 8/10
I bought this game on a 75% off steam sale last summer but only got around to playing it a couple weeks ago. 24 hours played in, I am just about to wrap up the main plot and thought I would post my thoughts while it's fresh in my mind.
Plot
The game is set in LA in 1949. The setting is extremely important here. As you can glean from the title, the whole story revolves around noire style stories set in this atmosphere. A lot of the stuff that happens wouldn't make sense in a city such as Chicago or New York and it definitely wouldn't make sense in a different time period. For example forensics are advanced enough to blood type but not match dna, which you'll find has a big impact on a couple cases. Plus the majority of the plot revolves around post war events with GIs returning home and so forth. Also a lot of the behaviors of the characters wouldn't fly in today's time. Think basically mad men but police detectives.
You start the game as police officer Cole Phelps. Phelps has an interesting background as a former marine officer, and has a wife and kids. You start off on street patrol but after making a few good arrests you quickly get promoted to detective. Then you get assigned to different case desks, starting with traffic, moving up to homicide, then finally the pinnacle vice desk (which seems like a lateral move or demotion from homicide honestly but it gets explained). The game is broken up into chapters where their is typically a lead in cutscene like a murder scene, then you go investigate and solve the case. At first the cases don't have much connection to the main plot but eventually you start to uncover a huge drug conspiracy that ties in all the main characters. What's really cool is throughout there's flashbacks to Cole in the marines and he starts to meet up with his old war buddies throughout the game and many of them tie into major plot points. I can't say much more than that since this game is all about story it's just much better if you discover it yourself.
Gameplay
Simply put, there isn't much. Well ok, you have to travel between plot points and cutscenes and do tasks like look for clues and shoot bad guys on occasion. The controls feel a lot like grand theft auto. There is no hud, like no ammo or health indicators other than Phelps will say stuff like I'm low on ammo and he'll look noticeably hurt when he's about to die from gunshots. If this were an action game this sort of realism would be a burden but here it works. The minimalist UI helps to immerse you in the story.
The two things you do the most in terms of gameplay are chase badguys and look for clues. Both are pretty boring in and of themselves, but they're spaced out well like mini challenges between plot points so it flows fine and I never felt myself annoyed by the tasks. The only thing that was kind of annoying is some criminals can clearly be stopped at certain points along the chase by tackling them or aiming a gun at them (and you get acheivements for doing so) but if you don't do it then eventually they get hit by a car or you're forced to shoot them. The thing is it's really hard to end the chases early and it also has zero effect on the game's outcome. Shoot some guy in the head and you can't question him, no problem the game always has a secondary way to arrive at the same information. It's kind of nice knowing you can't mess up but it also makes this more like a movie than a game.
Also if you mess up an action sequence you get to try again with no penalty. If you mess it up multiple times the game will actually ask you if you'd rather just skip it. It's pretty funny actually, though I like that LA Noire doesn't pretend to be some sweet action game, it knows what it is and does that part really well.
The final thing you do quite often is interview people. They answer your questions and you have to determine if they're being truthful. Determining correctly makes Phelps continue the interviews in different ways, getting more info as well as experience points. The experience is kind of worthless, it just gives you intuition points which reveal correct answers and clues when used. But at the end of cases you get a rating on how well you did and finding clues and getting questions right goes into that rating so there's that to shoot for.
What's really cool though is all the people's faces are built off of real actors so they look like real people with real expressions. It's pretty easy to tell when they're lying, though proving it can be a bit tougher.
Finally there's a ton of travel in this game because LA is huge. If you're a fan of open world exploring you'll probably like it. Just driving around town and looking at landmarks is a cool experience. Thankfully though you can make your partner quick drive to locations so you can save a lot of time and skip right to the story if you want.
Summary and Comments
In all it's a really cool game. Gameplay is lacking but it's a clear design decision and if you play this game like watching a movie play out it's really enjoyable. Just know it's not an rpg. You don't get to change the script based on how you play it. This isn't really a spoiler since it's completely obvious from the start of the game that this lounge singer Elsa is going to have a thing with Phelps, but all of the sudden you're in the middle of the game and Phelps is making out with Elsa and you're like wait, I have never even talked to her or anything, I haven't had any input into this outcome. And that's how the game is intended, you play it just to get to the next part of the movie. But the movie script is really, really good and kept me entertained.
In all if you like story based games and lots of cutscenes (and/or you love the show madmen) you'll probably love this game. If that stuff bores you and you'd rather blow things up or you need control over outcomes or a challenge to your games, you'll probably be bored with LA Noire.
Graphics: The graphics are really good. The character faces are amazing. Their bodys kind of suck, they move a little awkward at times. But the enviornments are all very rich with detail, really good graphics all around. 9/10
Sound: The music is great. 50s movie score stuff. The sounds and voices are awesome. 9/10
Gameplay: Ok so the gameplay is pretty pedestrian but it doesn't detract from the overall experience at all. But judged singularly, can't give it more than 6/10.
Story: The story is great. And the acting quality is like something on a hit tv show. 10/10
Final Verdict: 8/10
L.A. Noire:
Me: "Hmmm, I think this little girl might be lying... But I have no proof... I'll DOUBT her, poor thing, hopefully she'll open up.
*Click DOUBT*
Cole: "YOU LITTLE HARLOT STOP RUNNING YOUR FILTHY W**** MOUTH AND TELL ME WHAT HAPPENED"
Me: "Not exactly the tone I was going for but okay"
Me: "Hmmm, I think this little girl might be lying... But I have no proof... I'll DOUBT her, poor thing, hopefully she'll open up.
*Click DOUBT*
Cole: "YOU LITTLE HARLOT STOP RUNNING YOUR FILTHY W**** MOUTH AND TELL ME WHAT HAPPENED"
Me: "Not exactly the tone I was going for but okay"
Similar threads
- Locked
- Poll
