Zoe’s RPG Corner: Mass Effect

The Mass Effect series is a single player science fantasy RPG which, by and large, dudes seem to think is about shooting aliens and girls seem to think is about boinking aliens.  I’m sure there’s a good amount of crossover, but if you’ve never played it, just be aware that those seem to be the general ideas.

Before we go any further, please press play on the following video in order to get the correct atmosphere:

Credit here to the wonderful Miracle of Sound and everything power metal video game thing he does.

History and Development

Because the series is (so far) one long story, I’ve chosen to write a single review on all three Mass Effect games.  Mass Effect One was announced by BioWare (our old friend) in 2005 as part of a trilogy so it’s not like people were ever confused about it being one big thing. You play the same character through all three games – a character who gets more and more fed up with everyone’s bullshit – and NPCs have their own development and story lines throughout the trilogy.

The point of this game was to be an RPG, never a shooter.  There have been other games where the main point is killing dudes but Mass Effect was never one of those games.  The whole point was to immerse the player in the world and really get the story across.  The developers wanted them to connect to the characters, to really feel like they had a stock in their well being.  They wanted the universe they made to be important to the player. This is an RPG in the truest of senses because really you are supposed to take on the role of Commander Shepard, the PC.

Which like, isn’t hard, because Shep is a BADASS

Of course they also were making a shooter so they did a ton of development with that.  In the second game they apparently spent the first three months of development just reworking that part of the system, which is admittedly weak in the first game.  But as new technology and graphics and ideas became available, as they got feedback from their players, the games got better in that aspect.

Mass Effect is the kind of game where you play one and you gotta play them all.  That’s what happened to me.  I played the first one under duress and ended up getting totally into it.  They really do immerse you into the world.  The characters are really endearing  – people disagree with me on some of this but they are wrong – and the game itself is really fantastic.  Well, the games.  The first one has some…gameplay shit that gets me down.

There are some other things too but we’ll get to that.

Character Creation

The PC in this game is Commander Shepard, hero of the human space army (that’s what it is).  Commonly known as “Shep” by fans, Shepard is customization in gender, appearance, class, and the specifics of their history.

I think the first game explains classes the best.  There are three “categories”: tech, biotics (it’s the force, guys, but they gave it a different name), and combat.  Three classes are purely one of those and three classes mix them.  You have a lot of range on what kind of character you want to play even with only that.  There aren’t a lot of abilities either so it doesn’t get hugely confusing.  Really you have a gun and you shoot people and sometimes magic comes out of your hands. If that’s what you’re into.

To the surprise of absolutely zero people, I play a vanguard which is basically like the Mass Effect version of the Incredible Hulk.

HULK SMASH!

I’ve also played as a sniper which I totally frakking suck at so that is, I’m sure, entertaining to watch. My gamer bro keeps asking me why I am meleeing someone with a sniper riffle.  I have no good answer for him.

Physically, I’m going to start this by saying that character creation gets better.  In the first game it’s a little rough. I mean, graphically the whole thing gets better so that’s a big part of it, but the first game does seriously feel like it could have used some more love in the character creation front.  It has the same problem that the earlier Dragon Age games do with darker skin tones, though it does seem to try a little harder to make them available and natural looking.  I think the main problem here is that NO ONE looks natural in the character creation

By the third game, the bugs in character creation have run their course and it’s pretty streamlined.  It’s a solid system and it does what needs to be done and I can’t really ask any more of it.

Story

Bad things are happening in the galaxy.  Commander Shepard and their crew of lovable misfits are sent to stop the bad things from happening.  It turns out that the bad things are [SPOILERS] giant robot space bugs bent on galactic genocide for some mostly unexplained reason.  No one believes Shepard about this for like, two games and then even then it’s a little iffy.  It’s like that scene in “A Very Potter Musical” where the Minister of Magic refuses to believe Voldemort is back even when he’s standing right in front of him.

I’m reduced to using basically reaction gifs in blog posts to explain myself. A sad day.

The story is solid mostly.  There’s a lot of side stuff because obviously when giant robot space bugs are attacking is exactly the time to help all of your friends deal with their personal demons.  So yeah, also you deal with this hilarious bunch of assholes all the time who want shit from you constantly and make you do quests.  Which honestly is a lot of fun because they are crazy people who do crazy things and make terrible decisions.

Yeah, ya’ll stand there and look heroic, I know what you really did.

There’s a thing about the end of this game that a lot of people don’t like but I’m actually not going to discuss that much.  I’m a professional writer and I know that no matter how much people say your choices are going to matter in a video game, they probably won’t.  So when people get up in arms about the end of Mass Effect 3, I just shrug and move on because it wasn’t surprising to me and it wasn’t a bad ending all things considered for a video game. I think people were looking for something that was literally impossible in regards to programming and writing so they can pretty much just shut up in my opinion. I’m not saying the ending was stellar or anything (because it wasn’t and it didn’t make a whole hell of a lot of sense) but I found it satisfying.

Also BioWare should maybe have not pushed how great it was going to be and how all your choices were going to matter because…yeah, that didn’t help.

Gameplay

This part I will break up into three sections.

Mass Effect 1: Solid combat but uninspired.  A lot of focus on just shooting people which I am really bad at.  There wasn’t really much to say about the combat in this game because it was sort of just…there.  It did what needed to be done and didn’t do anything else for me at all.

The maps were a little large and sprawling and sometimes it was easy to get lost, especially on the citadel.  I know our normal blog runner stopped playing Mass Effect 1 for a long long time because he once got lost and was unable to get unlost and got frustrated and quit (sorry to out you, bro, but like, not that sorry.  He also quit Dragon Age: Origins because he thought he missed an item on the first big boss, which is HILARIOUS if you really think about it.)

ALSO WOW THE MAKO WAS A THING. Let’s give you a car that handles like total shit but can drive straight up a mountain.  Have fun.

I think my morality system was sort of weirdly broken on Mass Effect 1 because I kept getting “good” (paragon) points when I did horrible shit like shooting people in the face.  It was pretty awesome though.  I laughed.

Mass Effect 2:  They cleaned up combat a lot for this game and really went in to tweak abilities.  It’s pretty smooth for the most part though I definitely still sucked at shooting things.  They also went from a weapon overheat system in the first game to an ammo system in the second which I was less about because I can’t hit a target the first time ever and I ran out of bullets all the time. Hence why I was meleeing people with a sniper riffle (ha take that).

Things got way more linear which I don’t mind too much. Some open world games are great but Mass Effect 1 was kind of a wreck about it so I’m glad they scrapped that part.  Travel is a lot easier and you don’t have to drive your shitty lemon of a space car around to find resources.  You can just scan planets.  Which is time consuming and kind of a total pain but it is at least kind of calming and meditative.

They introduced conversation interrupts in this game which are totally hilarious. What that means is you can pistol whip dudes in the face in the middle of cut scenes and it’s hilarious.  Take the renegade interrupts.  I promise you will (almost never) regret it.

Mass Effect 3:  HAHAHAHA THE COMBAT IN THIS GAME IS GLORIOUS.  I think playing a vanguard I fired my weapon probably twice.  The rest of the time I spent running across the map at an enemy and punching the shit out of them.  Heavy Melee was introduced in this game which meant you got to literally punch space aliens in the head and kill them.  I loved every second of this because I am a bloodthirsty monster.

Also some NPC would be like “DON’T GO ANYWHERE NEAR THAT BRUTE!” and I’d take one look at this huge hulking enemy with three layers of armor and go “I’m gonna punch it.”

The Good

Companions! So much fun! Such a punch of assholes and I love them all even the ones other people hate (mostly those, I will not lie to you).

Later game combat! Great system, well thought out.

Most of the plot! Good plot.  Well done.

The Bad

Maps in the first game.  Lack of cohesion of plot in the third. The Mako.  The fucking Mako.  I am never ever going to be over how crap that thing handled.

The Ugly

Sniper riffles and shooting people because I am terrible at it and also because the first game makes me worse at it.

Also like, there is some weird character design shit going on.  I love most of it but then there’s like, Jack and Miranda and Samara in the second game which just like…they were so close to them being great and then like, somehow they fucked it up.  At least Jack later gets a shirt so that part helped but it’s just like…wear something more then a band of leather across your nipples please.

Samara, well…it’s like they did well and then were like “BUT IT NEEDS TO BE SEXIER.”

Also did I mention THE FUCKING MAKO???

From here…?

Oh my god, buy these games.  I got all of them on sale for like twenty bucks a few months back.  They’re pretty cheap, they’re really good, and they’re a classic.  If you haven’t played these games, you’re missing out on a real pillar of contemporary gaming.  Buy this to be able to tell your children you were part of the Mass Effect generation.  I believe people will be talking about this series for that long.

Next Month: World of Warcraft! A fucking classic in gaming that honestly I had never played before I needed to for this blog!

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Darkest Dungeon (PC, Mac, Linux, PS4, and PS Vita)

A distant Uncle(?) has left you the family estate but, like Luigi’s Mansion or the estate from Eternal Darkness, all is not as it seems. As it turns out this Great Uncle(?)  dug too deep, performed dark experiments, communed with Outer Gods, and basically did every bad thing Lovecraft ever wrote about. As the sole beneficiary it lies to you to restore the homestead and the nearby hamlet. And defeat the evil your… Father(?) unleashed. Hire some eager adventurers and set them on the monsters of the dark — or have I gotten that the wrong way around?

This disclaimer shows up everytime you boot up the game reminding you that this isn’t a game you win, it’s a game you survive.

History

Darkest Dungeon started out as a conversation between Chris Bourassa and Tyler Sigman about how a real person might react to a crazy dungeon delving scenario filled with monsters, demons, cultists, undead, and giant vermin. Inspired by psychologically heroes, particularly Hudson from Alien, they formed Red Hook Studios in order to make this a reality. They funded the game through Kickstarter, raising $75,000 for the project. Darkest Dungeon is still in Early access and as of yet is incomplete.

Darkest Dungeon entered Early Access on February 3rd, 2015. It’s competition was Hand of Fate (Linux, PC, Mac, PS4, and XBox One), Oddworld New and Tasty (PC, Mac, Linux), and Evolve (PC, PS4, XBox One)

Experiences

It’s natural that the player connect with the party… and doing so will hurt you. Eventually the character you rely on will fail you. The best of them will go mad and jeopardize everything. The one you love the most, the one you named after yourself perhaps, will die. At this point, after 30 expeditions, I’ve grown cold to the lives of the adventurers in my employ. I send them with no supplies sound in the knowledge that if they die then I can replace them. If they survive they’ll soon join the higher ups who perform the really dangerous tasks. The whole while the cash keeps coming in and I keep getting ready for a huge expedition with my most powerful party members. But the bodies are piling and I almost feel a tinge of guilt that my best must stand on the corpses of so many others… almost.

So far, the dead number 22 and the game keeps track of their names and how they died.

Gameplay

You take control of a party of adventurers who are about to learn what horrors live below, and in, the estate — I love the eagerness they begin with and how it turns into jaded paranoia and fear of having to go back. They move forward in a formation of four ranks, with certain combat abilities only being usable in and of certain ranks — your opponents will try to fuck up your formation… but you can also mess up theirs. Every quest has a certain objective and when it’s complete your people can go on home. They can also leave prematurely but that’ll stress them out.

And too much stress is really dangerous.

Speaking of stress, when your characters reach 100 stress points they’ll reach a breaking point which will typically cause them to acquire an affliction which makes their behavior more unpredictable and stresses everyone else out — but rarely causes them to fight more powerfully against the darkness. When a character reaches 200 stress they suffer a massive heart attack and die. Characters don’t die when they run out of health, they instead enter a state called ‘Death’s Door’ at which point the next attack against them has a chance of killing them.

Being on Death’s Door stresses them out and it’ll stress you out.

Completing quests nets you Heirlooms, gold, and trinkets which you can take back to the Hamlet and spend. The Hamlet is equipped with buildings that relieve stress, train and upgrade your adventurers, buy trinkets, and remove negative traits from characters such as phobias or diseases. Buildings are upgraded with heirlooms– which can never be taken away– and adventurers are improved with gold — which can easily be spent on expeditions that end in disaster.

The game has got his marvelous pre-Victorianesque setting where crossbows and flintlock pistols cohabit.

The game’s still in early access and as such has no definite goal. Doing quests in areas unlocks bosses and conquering the challenge is a reward in itself but other than that there’s not great conclusion yet.

The Gush

The designs of all the characters is unique and expressive. The different color palettes of the heads alone allow me to differentiate between characters of the same class. After so many battles animations get a little old and sometimes they drag and make battles seem like they take forever. The characters convey a lot based on appearance alone.

There’s something immensely satisfying about my party having their back to the wall and someone reaching their breaking point and becomes virtuous. The pause between the initiation and the reveal builds so much tension. It’s a small victory and I usually pump my fist or launch my hands into the air shouting, “YES!” repeatedly whenever it happens

YOU GET ‘EM PLAGUEY!

The game has created this bizarre system where the town’s upgrades are really what push the difficulty down. Nothing can be done to harm it or undo the work you’ve done to it. You can dump comically large sacks of money into an adventurer, keeping their mind and weapons sharp, when they suddenly turn into a critical hit magnet and die.

If you put together a particular team of adventurers the game will sometimes give them a themed title. I don’t know why I like this so much but I will occasionally mix and match team members just to see if they’re ‘The Misbegotten’ or ‘The Merciless’ or something.

The Kvetch

This game relies a lot on luck. Between your crits, enemy crits, getting surprised, surprising other parties, where the goal is in the dungeon, whether you scout or not, what every interactible item in the game does, and what enemies you fight, it’s difficult to determine where your strategy ends and the Random Number Generator begins.

Sometimes you get the triple crits, and sometimes they get you.

The game has got this really weird difficulty curve. Instead of getting more difficult as the game goes on, the game kind of gets easier. It takes more time to keep your high level characters in ship shape but it’s easier now than it’s ever been to me to reduce the stress of my characters or upgrade their gear. The big reason my people keep dying is because I use them like cannon fodder and pinch my pennies a little too hard, not because the challenge has gone up. Then again, higher level enemies grow more powerful to match the skills of your higher leveled characters.

The Verdict

This game scratched an itch that I didn’t even know that I had. It’s wonderfully eldritch and addictive in the same way that the Binding of Isaac is but it gives me a little more control. I’m really curious about what they turn it into, what classes they make next, and what or if there will be a grand conclusion to this all. I’m not sure if it’s worth 20 dollars but it’s definitely worth 15 so I’d recommend catching it when Steam runs its next sale.

Sacrifice (PC and Mac)

 

In another world there was once a man, a wizard named Eldred. He was not a hero, he was more a villain in truth. Wanting to destroy his enemies he summoned a creature that had a hard time differentiating enemies from everything — perhaps it was a cruel bit of irony as Eldred saw enemies everywhere. In any event Eldred fled across the astral void to another world. This world had five gods vying for power and would appreciate the service of a capable wizard. But… history has a nasty way of repeating itself. Run, cast spells, endure death, and choose your deity wisely in this third person Real Time Strategy game.

History

Sacrifice was made by Shiny Entertainment, the makers of Earthworm Jim and MDK. David Perry directed the project with music by Kevin Manthei and creature design and modelling by Joby-Rome Otero. The total team was around 25 people. Sacrifice also had stellar voice acting. With performances by Brad Garret, Tim Curry, Jennifer Hale, Tony Jay, and Paul Eiding — this game has got a near dream team of talent voicing it.

Sacrifice used the same engine as their previous game, Messiah which drew a lot of fire from expectant fans and people who opposed its religious connotations. These attitudes lead Shiny’s director, Perry, to make Sacrifice in total silence only breaking it months before release to advertise the game.

Sacrifice was released on November 17th, 2000. It’s competition was Megaman Legends 2 (PS1), Banjo Tooie (Nintendo 64). and Tomb Raider Chronicles (PS1 and Dreamcast).

Experiences

When I played through the game I was a goody-lil’-two-shoes 12 year old so naturally I chose to follow Persephone, the goddess of justice– justice spelled in all caps while decapitating something–, because I’m a good guy and that’s what good guys do. I played through the game and beat the big bad and felt accomplished because I saved the day but then I wondered what happens when I play someone else. As it turns out, the story is exactly the same but there’s so much more going on than any individual god is aware of. Playing through every campaign is the only way to get the full story. Some of the events and betrayals and backstabbing blew my mind.

Gameplay

Sacrifice is an odd game. It’s a third person real time strategy game and it’s just as weird as it sounds. Instead of playing an omniscient commander who has full knowledge of the battlefield who orders things around, you play as a spell casting ground commander with no combat capabilities — soooo you’re Gandalf without the swordplay. Every wizard serves one of the five gods of the realm except for a few who are freelancers or mercenaries.

The wizards have such interesting designs and the altars are so spooky.

Wizards can summon creatures, cast spells, and order troops.. A wizard can only produce as many troops as it — and there are some wizards that are ‘its’ and not ‘whos’– has souls. Wizards can purify souls captured from enemies in order to add more souls to their supply and some creatures are worth more souls than others. Contrary to popular adage wizards do not die when they are killed, they are merely rendered incorporeal and incapable of casting spells until they get enough mana shoved back into them. As such the goal of most missions is to desecrate your opponents altar which banishes them from the realm.

The Gush

It should come as no surprise that the voice acting in this game is super good. Tim Curry’s voice is delightfully sleazy while Tony Jay’s is appropriately wise and yet off in some way. Everyone delivers an absolutely amazing performance — except some bit parts and peasants which sound like they were recorded from across the room.

The Good Old Games version of this game comes with a digital version of the manual and each of the sections concerning the gods is written in that deity’s voice. It also includes an abridged history of the world which sheds some light on situations in the game. If you get the game get it through Good Old Games.

The creature design is really great. Even the palette swapped creatures look incredibly different from their counterparts and it’s explained that all the palette swapped creatures are the same creature but raised in a different environment — nice save developers, nice save.

The way the textures slide over things makes everything look alike but not the same.

Everything in this game is oozing with character. From the gods and the wizards with their taunts and incidental dialogue to the creatures and their descriptions and actions in the game.

The Kvetch

There are some situations where I wish so dearly that the wizard had a melee attack. No matter how weak or useless or utterly crappy it would be I wish they could do something besides getting punched in the face. Naturally, wizards have attack spells but the cooldown on them is so long that there’s usually not enough attack spells to go around. What really irks me is that some wizards even have weapons — the Hachimen have a sword — and they make no use of them.

SWING IT! SWING THE SWORD! IT’S RIGHT THERE!

Melee attacking creatures are typically not very good. It stands to reason that they’re meant to take out weaker ranged attackers but enemies can move out of the way and sometimes they do so seemingly out of reflex. The only thing Melee units are really good at is destroying structures but if they’re something guarding it then they’ll usually die before they can rush the gap.

The main mechanic of a real time strategy game is selecting units and ordering them around but the 3D environment makes this really difficult. It’s usually best or easiest to order a unit to guard you or a structure and let them make their own decisions.

This game has got multiplayer but I’ve never been able to get in a game. The community’s probably too small to support a multiplayer atmosphere. So it’s just this bizarre vestigial limb or redundant organ that no longer serves a purpose.

The AI is really predictable and gets easy to counter.

It’s really difficult to select and order units without using control groups. If you don’t keep on top of what creature is where then it’s really difficult to get things in order. The minimap is useless for controlling multiple units because everything on it is just a colored square. Are those my melee guys or my ranged guys? I don’t fucking know they’re all just white dots! This game demanded that I be more organized than ever and it was a real chore.

The Verdict

This game is rock solid. It’s well worth the ten dollar price tag. It’s an experience that wasn’t recreated until Brutal Legend did something similar. It’s got a compelling story and just enough character to keep me wishing there was a sequel.

Dungeons of Dredmor (Windows, Mac, and Linux)

The evil lich Dredmor held the world hostage with his host of monsters and magical ability. The wizards of the age, a little drunk and completely tired of Dredmor’s shenanigans, locked him away magically and physically deep beneath the earth. Dredmor, tenacious as he was, wiggled his body and soul until he was able to slip the bonds. The King and his court are certain that he means to take over the world again. He’s sent you, an eager young adventurer, to “prove your worth” by slaying Dredmor. With skill sets like Tourist, Fungal Arts Student, and Tinkersmith uh…. good luck kiddo.

Hop to it, Eyebrows.

History

Dungeons of Dredmor was published and developed by Gaslamp Games and a small team of five people. The main developer, Nicholas Vining, had been working on the game since 2006 and when Gaslamp formed in 2010 things really got in gear. Vining is known in the game’s industry for making something so bad that it inspired Penny Arcade to create the Fruit Fucker 2000 apparently — whatever it was Vining has redeemed himself by making Dredmor. PC Gamer US awarded Dungeons of Dredmor the Indie Game of the Year for 2011.

Dungeons of Dredmor was released on July 13, 2011. It’s competition was Bastion (XBLA), Ms. Splosion Man (XBLA), and Catherine (PS3 and XBox 360).

Experiences.

I’ve been playing Dungeons of Dredmor for three years and I’ve seen Dredmor once — at which point he threw a spell at me that obliterated my face. I cannot think of another game in which I’ve had such trouble. My latest and most successful run was interrupted by a vacation to Diggle Hell in which I got bushwhacked by Vlad Digula. In short, this game is hard. I created skill combinations that made me unable to defeat the first enemy I ran into. And yet, I can’t stop playing. I can’t stop trying to kill Dredmor with weirder and weirder skills. I know I can probably beat him with a martial artist, shield master, archeologist but can I beat him with a perceptive, burgling, Tourist?

For reference, that’s a diggle on the left — look at the cute little guy. That’s Vlad Digula on the right. The jump in difficulty is equivalent to the jump in creepy.

 Gameplay

Dungeons of Dredmor is a dungeon crawling Roguelike. It’s got everything a growing dungeon needs, item-crafting, traps, levers, secrets, side-quests, magical anvils, vending machines, shops, and monsters — a fuckton of monsters. Every floor is randomly generated from randomly generated rooms with random items on the floor and bequeeth to you randomly generated artifacts — items that have additional random stat ups and downs with randomly generated names — oh yeah, and all the rooms have random names. You can even randomly select your skills but I wouldn’t recommend it. Your goal is to get to the bottom floor and kill Dredmor, leveling up along the way, and trying to find good loot. The game is turn based so when you move or act so will everything else, in turn — although it all looks instantaneous.

And you’ll die… a lot. But dying is fun too!

The Gush

I love this games sense of humor. Sometimes monsters taunt with bizarre and funny phrases — I’ve seen screenshots of Vlad Digula remarking that he’ll “be in his bunk.” You can destroy statues of Dredmor in the dungeon and are awarded experience points for engaging in heroic vandalism — or so the narrator booms. There are even skills like Totally Not Drizzt — for all you Forgotten Realms fans.

Seriously, there are a lot of skills.

I love how crafting tools have a bunch of incidental crafting recipes that aren’t related to their primary use. It’s super cool that I can use my ingot press to make grilled cheese sandwiches and omelets.

I really like the design of all the different dungeon levels. Each floor of the dungeon is like an entire dungeon from another series. There’s the fungus floor, the ship floor, the sewer floor, the space ship floor, IT’S GREAT!

The monster design is bizarre and interesting and they don’t pallet swap too many monsters. I mean, I’m totally comfortable fighting a mustache spirit on one floor and then a grandfather mustache 3 floors down because that’s hilarious. The funniest monsters are the ones they reuse.

And every floor has a new kind of diggle who wants to kill you.

The Kvetch

The game is meant to be played on a meticulous level that really breaks the flow. Don’t want to step on a trap? Then you’d best take your steps really slowly unless you’ve got skills that increase your trap spotting range. But this is all in line with it’s Rogue roots.

It’s really easy to get screwed really fast. Open up the wrong door, take the wrong path, or walk on the wrong satanic displacement glyph and your adventure will be over faster than you can say Diggle. This game is designed to kill your character and it’s difficult to get it not to.

They have entire rooms devoted to it — but but but… loot!

The music is this sort of 16 bit synth stuff and I kind of like it although I’d rather listen to my own music or a podcast in the background as I play.

The Verdict

This game is a heckuva deal. For 5 dollars, and three pieces of DLC — total cost being 11 dollars. This game is definitely worth a look if any of the above aspects seemed interesting to you. This game is a solid and difficult adventure that will test your skills and ingenuity. The systems have a lot of depth. Dungeons of Dredmor will have you laughing through the fury.

The Bard’s Tale (2004 Release for PS2, Xbox, PC, Mac, Blackberry Playbook, Android, Linux, and Ouya)

And I think this game is the most widely available title released since Tetris.

A long time ago in that fantasy land that’s pretty accurate to actual legends and tales while still being campy and hilarious — you know the one– there lived a young boy who was tired of being hungry. He learned that travelers were paid just to sing songs at the local tavern. He dreamed of doing that someday. Having learned a magical tune that summoned a rat he stole a musical instrument and headed for the hills. He then traveled from town to town eliminating rat infestations he created with his rat summoning tune. You play as the sarcastic, pragmatic, sardonic, insufferable, kleptomaniacal, and rather roguishly handsome Bard as he uses his magical tunes and power of summoning to free a capture enchantress –seems pretty straight forward, what could possibly go wrong?

Everything probably.

History

The Bard’s Tale is a game with a pedigree that goes back to the barely graphical text adventures of the 80s. The classic games didn’t actually feature the Bard as a playable character. The stories were the stories the Bard was telling to his audience. The final game in the Bard’s Tale trilogy was released in 1991. It came as a mild surprise to people when a new Bard’s Tale game was announced to be released in 2004 — I just imagine the conversation that lead to the game’s creation. At InXile headquarters two old nerds are chatting. “Do you remember those Bard Tales games?” one game dev asks. The other looks to him and says, “Yeah. But we never did figure out what the Bard’s story was, like where he came from.” Then I imagine they both start shouting in unison like a crescendo broken only by them running to their computers, getting to work, frothing at the mouth, and shouting “Make it! Print it!” repeatedly.

The class games were real groundbreaking stuff. It had color and everything.

It was 1985 and this was state of the fucking art.

The game is a lot like Baldur’s Gate Dark Alliance and that would probably be because they both run on the same engine — which seems to happen a lot with fantasy games. One fantasy game comes out with a good engine and the other developers all jump on it.

The Bard’s Tale was released October 24th, 2004. It’s competition was The Lord of the Rings: The Third Age (PS2, XBox, and Gameboy advanced), Paper Mario: The Thousand Year Door (Gamecube), and Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas (PS2).

Experiences

I can’t think of the last time I had as much fun or laughed as hard when I was playing a game. The Banter between the Narrator and The Bard is comedy gold — especially when it’s ripping on videogame tropes. It was one of the games I played where I was having so much fun I didn’t care if I found all the loot. I stopped worrying about what I had missed or what would have happened if I had acted differently. It was one of the first games where I relaxed and had a good time.

Gameplay

In the game you control the Bard as he travels and completes various quests — and argues with the narrator. The signature system of the game is the snarky vs. straight dialogue system. In conversation the game will prompt the player to make the Bard respond with a sarcastic snarky quip or to play it straight. It might seem worthwhile to spend the whole game being honest and at least a little polite but that’s not the case. It’s very important to learn when the Bard can throw his weight around or whether he should just keep his mouth relatively shut — besides, being snarky is much more fun anyway!

It’s always tempting which to choose just to see what The Bard will say.

The Bard isn’t the greatest of fighters or thinkers. Thankfully, if he upgrades his instrument, he can employ various allies to help him in and out of combat. Some summoned minions help in combat like the Mercenary who can dish out immense amounts of damage with his axe or the Witch who only ever learned healing spells. Some minions help in other situations like the elderly Explorer who can disarm traps, pick up loot, and find secret passages –if you’re going dungeon delving this guy is a necessity– or the rat who can earn you extra coin by frightening tavern keepers or frighten other enemies in combat. The Bard’s adventures will take him far and wide across the countryside so it’s important to mix up his minions to match the situation.

The Gush

The voice acting cast in this is really good. The Bard is voiced by Cary Elwes– though you might know him better as Wesley from the Princess Bride– and the Narrator is voiced by Tony Jay — though you might know him better as the Claude Frollo from the Hunchback of Notre Dame. Oh yeah, and all the dialogue from the lowliest NPC is great.

A game about bard’s has got to have music! And music the Bard’s Tale has. Every tavern features a new song for the Bard to perform or listen to. Every minion has a different tune that The Bard plays on instruments from the lute to the Shadow Axe — minions can even be upgraded by finding more music for their song.

The Bard’s only loyalties are to food, coin, and cleavage — not necessarily in that order– and I love that about him. Saving the world is just a means to the end of getting into the Enchantress’ pants — well it is if you’re snarky. To him, it’s not about saving the world and I’m able to connect to the character more because he doesn’t have a lofty quest.

Even the game advertisements showcased this perfectly.

Something small but I really liked how the enemies dropped sellable loot instead of money. What Trow runs around with a coinpurse? None of them. But someone would pay some silver for a Viking’s sword.

The Kvetch

The Minions actually have personality, in some situations they can offer important advice and that’s good. What’s not good is listening to the crone wail, “Be healed!” Or hearing the Mercenary talk about how much The Bard is gonna owe him for this one for the thousandth time.

That being said, they at least all look awesome.

The combat in this game is really clunky. Thankfully the minions do most of the fighting for you but in the early sections of the game The Bard will have to do the fighting himself. So it creates a weird downward difficulty curve where the game starts off more difficult that it ends… and that’s not how difficulty curves are supposed to work.

The game isn’t really great to look at. I liked the character designs but the background designs were usually stock and uninteresting.

The Verdict

This game is awesome. It’s for anyone who’s played Baldur’s Gate, Dragon Age, Icewind Dale, and Planescape Torment and needs to take a break and have a laugh. The combats a little clunky but it couldn’t kill my good mood. This is a marvelous title and if you buy it on Steam then you get the original Bard’s Tale games for free if you feel like pulling your hair out through he laughs.

Next Week: Dungeon’s of Dredmor.

Zoe’s (MMO)RPG Corner: TERA: Rising

TERA, which stands for “The Exiled Realm of Arboria”, is a free to play third-person fantasy MMORPG set in the magical world of – okay, who am I kidding, this entire blog post is just going to be a rant about horrible, terrible armor design and if you don’t want to deal with this, just stop reading now.

History and Development

I’m going to pretend that I’m a professional and that I want to talk about other things so I’m going to go through all the sections here.  TERA was developed by Bluehole Studio out of South Korea. There’s not a whole lot of info on the development process – Wikipedia is really failing me today – but I’m honestly just going to assume that it’s like all those other Korean MMOs and it just sort of happened for money.

Further research tells me that TERA uses the “Unreal Engine 3” which apparently allowed developers a lot of freedom in the creation of the game and stopped some issues they were having in 2007 development about productivity.  They were using an early, slightly buggy version of the engine so they struggled with that side of game development.  At the time of its release in 2011, the graphics were considered to be spectacular and they still hold up pretty okay.  The quality of the graphics are not my complaint with this game visually.

Conceptual work on the game came from high fantasy (World of Warcraft and Lord of the Rings were mentioned by name) and also from Greek and Roman mythology.  Actually, now that I think about it, the Greco-Roman thing is really clear which is kind of cool to see that woven into the story.

You see it, right?

I was pretty…reticent to play this game.  This actually marks the first game I picked up specifically to play for this blog and I did so because this game is massive.  Everyone  knows TERA, whether they like it or not.  I’d never played it. A few years ago when I was looking for a new game, I glanced at it in sort of an “Oh, maybe that’d be nice” way but research showed me that I would honestly just be kind of ticked off about it.

But then here I was two years later downloading TERA.

It’s not an exciting story. It’s a mostly ticked off story.

Character Creation

Oh Lady Jesus on her throne, character creation.

Okay, so you have a lot of customization in TERA.  There are seven races including: demons, more demons, giant round metallic dudes, elves, humans, fat dogs, and bunny girls. Insert a deep sigh of pain from the gamer feminist at this point because the Elins, the animal girls, cause me deep physical pain.

Can anyone guess why? It starts with “P” and ends with “edophelia”.

Then you have your eight to nine classes: Archer, Berserker, Lancer, Mystic, Priest, Slayer, Sorcerer, and Warrior, plus Reaper if you play an Elin and have a high level character already, and I guess they just added a Gunner class but I haven’t researched that.  Your class determines the type of armor you wear (your race/gender determines how it looks) and what weapon you use.  Each class has one type of weapon.

Physically it’s not bad.  It’s a little basic and there are some sliders I would rather do without (like the “how much does my character hold their mouth slightly open like a porn star” slider, I’m not a fan of that one) and the faces pretty much stay close to the generic no matter how much you drag them around.  It’s fun though.  I had some fun making characters like “Tilda Swinton Elf” and “Ticked Off Five-Year-Old” so that was kind of a good time.

Story

I honestly don’t know.

Okay, I sort of know.  I haven’t looked it up specifically because I want to write my impressions.  What I have is: there is a big god and he is an asshole and trying to frak shit up so stop him. There’s a lot of back story on the Gods and the world before the start of the game.  There was a big war between the good guys and the bad guys and some of the bad guys joined the good guys and now there are seven good races and I guess a bunch of assholes.  There’s a big government organization that keeps everyone sort of in line and also just spews quests at you.

The reason I have trouble figuring out the story line is that it’s all done through this really large blocks of text and sometimes it’s a little hard to follow what’s going on all the time. I will admit to just casually clicking through a lot of it because I coudn’t be bothered to care about why they were sending me off to kill ten tree monsters or lizards or whatever. I tried to read the main quest more but when every quest is introduced with “Oh my gosh, here’s a big write-up on my problem” but boils down to “kill some shit” I stop caring.

Gameplay

TERA is the most stereotypical MMO ever. Like, it’s more MMO than World of Warcraft is.  It’s everything you think of when someone says “MMO”. There are like, three gameplay things that are interesting, but lets go through the ones that are not first.

Quests. Kill X number of Y creature and come back for a reward.  That’s like, literally all it is. Over and over again.  Kill, XP, get more quests.  At least you don’t run out of quests so that’s nice.  Very little unsupervised level grinding, and I’ve never had a time with no story quest, even if I wasn’t high enough level to do it yet.

Combat’s not half bad, but it’s a little stale. There’s this cool dodging mechanic that can actually be a lot of fun if you do it right, but I am apparently bad at it.  Like, sometimes enemies telegraph their attacks but sometimes they don’t and it can be a little frustrating to be like “Are you gonna hit me or nah?” and then have a monster punch you right in the mouth.

Get wrecked.

Because I chose to play murder town characters (tanks, mostly, but at least heavy armor) I chose the Beserker which fits my play style pretty well.  She’s slow as shit, don’t get me wrong, but when she hits, she hits hard.  Sometimes it’s a pain to get my defenses up in time and I do get my ass handed to me on occasion, but it’s honestly kind of fun.  I tried sorcerer too and I’m…not as good at that.  But that’s always been my personal curse with mages so I’m not going to say it reflects on the game.

The Good

Combat and mechanics aren’t bad, though they’re a little unremarkable.  Most of the good is a little unremarkable.  There’s a lot of solid shit, sure, but on the other hand, there’s nothing I want to write home about. When I talk about TERA, I’m certainly not going to be talking about mediocre story and uninspired gameplay.

The design has a lot of potential.  It’s got a unique style and gorgeous vistas that strech out over the whole game. It feels big.  The vast majority of the monster designs are great (maybe a little cluttered for my taste, but it’s got something going on).

I mean, look how much detail they put into this guy here.

It’s a real pity they squander this later.

The Bad

Story mostly.  I mean, I want to care about the story, I really do.  I tried and I can sort of keep up with it, but it’s iffy.  It really does boil down to “kill some evil cultist dudes, go to the next town, kill some more dudes.”  There are a couple of places where it clearly tries to break away from it and there’s some interesting betrayal stuff, but it really does just boil down to the same basic thing over and over again.

Some of the animation is a little weird.  Some of the races run funny and you’re just like “Can we talk about your form here? I feel like you’d cover more ground if you didn’t flap your arms around like that all the time.”

The Ugly

LET’S TALK ARMOR.

This is what I really wanted to get to.  TERA has what I am going to call literally the worst female armor design of any game I have ever seen.  Like, individual sets from other games might be bad (lookin’ at you here Guild Wars 2) but every single goddamn piece of armor I pick up in TERA is absolutely terrible. I feel like the rest of this review should just be pictures of female armor interspersed with pictures of the Daily Show’s John Stewart making horrible faces but I’ll try to be a little more in depth about the horror here.

Not one to do things by halves, I chose to play a Castanic, a race of demon people with an aversion to clothing in general.  And no, do not tell me I can “just play something else”, their lore and appearance is cool and I should never judge something on how good it can be but always on its low points.

Here are some examples of armor my Castanic Beserker (that’s a heavy armor class, mind you) has picked up.

Why?

Who did this?

I hope they’ve been fired.

Okay, if you don’t understand what’s wrong here, I can’t help you.

These are terrible and I honestly have nothing more to say than “Who allowed this to happen?”  Like, why do we live in a world where this is a thing? (That question is rhetorical, I am a 23-year-old feminist, I know why) It’s so hard to focus on the game when I’m into this utter nonsense.   I don’t buy the argument “but the men don’t wear much either” because like, at least they get pants.  I clearly don’t get pants.  I don’t think my character has had pants once since character creation.  She has an axe that’s bigger than she is, but no, she doesn’t need any goddamn pants to go with it, apparently. It’s almost worse with the Elin who look like little girls and wear very little clothing as well or like, cutesie but sexy clothing. Very gross.

From here…?

Here’s the weird thing. I kind of enjoy this game. Oh, not like, it’s good.  It’s the potato chip of the gaming world. You just do it.  It’s mindless and I don’t really give a shit about any of it, but then I look back and I’m level 20 or whatever. Like, don’t play this game. I’m not going to ever encourage anyone to play this game. It’s not that it’s bad, it’s just boring as hell.  There are better ones out there that do the same thing and keep your interest and don’t sexualize little girls.

 

Honestly, it reminds me most of WildStar, which is going free-to-play in the fall of 2015 so like…play that instead.

Next Month: Mass Effect! You can fight like a Krogan and run like a leopard but you’ll never be better than Commander Shepard.

Poker Night at the Inventory and Trusting the Designers (Windows and Mac)

Deep in the bowels of the city there’s a secret speakeasy, The Inventory. It was established in 1919 in anticipation of the passing of American Prohibition. The owners of the establishment had also heard that the 18th Amendment was going to outlaw games and amusements, something they would not stand for– as proprietors of a games and amusement company. The Inventory served game enthusiasts and creators for years and began to cater to game characters as well. They remained hidden for 90 years and they’re still open for business, offering games, gambling, and liquor to those who find their establishment. You are a gambler of some renown who has come to The Inventory to make some scratch playing some high stakes Texas Hold ‘Em.

And down we go via secret street elevator. You can even see Sam in the background.

History

Poker Night at the Inventory was born of the desire to create a sequel to Telltale’s Texas Hold ‘Em, that game’s focus on banter, and a conversation between Telltale employees about “what videogame characters do when they’re not ‘on the clock int he games we play.” Telltale already had the license to Strong Bad and Sam and Max because of their work on the modern Sam and Max installments and Strong Bad’s Cool Game for Attractive People. They then focused on acquiring a Team Fortress 2 character as the designer’s themselves enjoyed the game immensely. It was these talks with Valve that created a healthy relationship between them later on.

Poker Night at the Inventory was released on November 22nd, 2010. It’s competition was Super Meat Boy (PC), Call of Duty Black Ops (PC, Xbox 360, PS3, and Wii), and Donkey Kong Country Returns (Wii).

Gameplay

Texas Hold ‘Em is one of the most popular and simple iterations of Poker. At the beginning of each round each player is dealt two cards face down. These cards belong to them and only they can use them to build a five card hand– the game automatically chooses the best hand your cards can make. There’s a round of betting. Three cards are dealt face up, these cards may be utilized by anyone to build a their hand. There’s a round of betting. A fourth card is dealt. Another round of betting. The final card is dealt followed by more betting. Then everyone reveals their cards and the most statistically unlikely hand is declared the most superior.

Ranked from most rare to least.

The real draw of the game is learning the tells of the other players. They don’t have perfect poker faces, they let go of little bits of information regarding the quality of their hands all the time. It’s up to the player to figure out what action correlates to what hand state. For example, if the Heavy slams his fist on the table he’s got bad cards. It’s most difficult to learn the tells of the cartoonish characters Max and Strong Bad but they do have them and I think they’re pretty funny.

The other gamblers at the table are Strong Bad from Homestarrunner.com, Max from the Sam and Max adventure game duo, The Heavy from TF2, and Tycho from Penny arcade and they act just like you’d imagine them to. Every so often one of the characters will offer collateral instead of money. Defeating them will earn the player an in game trophy and out of game loot– as in special items in other games, not a pile of jewels or something.

Such as Strong Bad’s one-of-a-kind special Dangeresque prop glasses.

Experiences

The enjoyment a player derives from this game is directly related to how much they trust the designers. I told someone that I was playing this game and they said that it didn’t matter, that the game was rigged, and that the AI could just count cards whenever they wanted. I think that’s an unjust estimation. The big difference between me and my friend here is that I trust the designers not to allow the game to work that way and that he didn’t.

If the designer loses the player’s trust then there’s no way for the player to have fun. That being said, I saw time and again how the characters were loyal to their character– The Heavy or Max plays just about exactly as you’d expect him to. The game earned my trust by sticking to its rules. None of the players ever present a tell in an attempt to deceive– sometimes a character might perform the tell for a bad opening hand but turn it around by the end.

The Gush

The Banter is really where this game shines. I think it’s really funny and it doesn’t present the same conversations too often. Some of it’s way out there and really deep into the mythos of each of the characters but some of it’s based on something as simple as the character’s appearance.

There’s also something delightfully silly about someone scooping up poker chips with a shovel.

All of the characters have character and I really like that. It comes through in the repeated attitudes. Strong Bad dislikes Tycho and will often insult him. The Heavy considers Strong Bad to be a little Heavy. I hadn’t even heard of Sam and Max before this game and it’s Max’s playing… style that got me interested in them.

I mean, the resemblance is uncanny.

A deck of playing cards goes for anything between 2 and 20 dollars. At 5 dollars, Poker Night at the Inventory measures up pretty well to the cost of a deck and it throws in the experience of hanging out with a bunch of silly characters to sweeten the pot.

The Kvetch

Eventually every mine runs dry. It takes a long time but eventually you’ve heard everything they’ve had to say. I pick it up every once and awhile but I’m not sure if I’m hearing something new or if I forgot I had heard it.

The aesthetics can get a little dry after a long time. It’s always the same guys, table, and Inventory every game. There’s no way to change it up.

The Verdict

 I’m fond of poker and I’m fond of videogames. This game is like the peanut butter cup of these two ideas, it’s goddam delicious. This isn’t a game that brings on long play sessions it’s more of touch and go and come back to experience. It’s definitely worth the 5 dollar value if you purchase it on Steam. I’d say you’d enjoy the game if you’re familiar with at least half of the characters and enjoy poker.

Next Week: The Bard’s Tale

Might and Magic VII: For Blood and Honor (PC)

This game is a little confusing because it’s got two introductory cutscenes. The first of which depicts strange alien creatures washing up on a beach’s shore. They argue briefly and then part ways. When the player begins the game the cutscene depicts a scavenger hunt that’s going to determine who’s the rightful lord of the province of Harmondale — And you thought women distributing swords was a poor form of governmental selection. You’re playing a group of contestants enrolled in the scavenger contest because they’ve yet to realize what a pain in the ass leadership is — don’t worry about the beach people, the game will get back to them in about 20 hours.

History

This game was the adventure game tie-in to Heroes of Might and Magic III or it’s more likely that it’s the other way around considering that the Might and Magic series has been running way longer than the Heroes series. Where the Heroes series was just hitting it’s stride the Might and Magic series was just beginning its decline — so sayeth the fan base. Blood and Honor uses most of the monster designs from the Heroes series but sometimes there are inconsistencies that are a little baffling.

A comparison of goblins between Heroes (on the left) and Blood and honor (On the right). I’m not sure if there’s a lore inconsistency or if there’s a breed of sub-goblin or something.

Might and Magic VII: For Blood and Honor was released on May 1st 1999– a month after Heroes III. It’s competition was Ape Escape (PS1), Pokemon Stadium 2 (N64), and Street Fighter III: Third Strike (Arcades).

Experiences

Playing this game for the first time was like trying to bust down a brick wall like I was the cool-aid man but instead of the cool-aid man I’m just myself who is also naked. In short, it was an unpleasant experience that took a long time of getting used to but felt really rewarding when I finally succeeded. I finally started completing quests and figuring out how the game worked and it only took minimal looking at walkthroughs. I learned that I couldn’t just make a party of fighters and punch my way through the game. I tried again with a balanced party and it was now like I had clothes and some football pads while I threw myself against this wall.

Gameplay

You play as a four headed hydra made up of an adventuring party– which is apparently composed of some sort of hive-mind or consensus because they do what you say and never disagree on anything. They go everywhere in lock step and never split the party, these guys and gals all lock their arms wherever they go.

There are nine classes that mix and match between the magic of self (Body, mind, and spirit), arcane magic (earth, wind, water, and fire), thief skills, and combat skills. As usual, they can each make up for their weaknesses in a certain way, sorcerers can use telekinesis on trapped chests or knights can just eat trap damage with their faces. Each class can learn a series of skills but certain classes can reach levels of a skill that others cannot i.e. only knights can become Grand Masters of Full Plate and only Druids can become Grand Masters of Alchemy.

Of course there are rats too. Lots of rats.

The rest of the game is pretty simple. You walk around, travel, find quests, and complete them. That’s really all there is to the game. There are some ancient lost treasures to plunder and artifacts to find but the only reward is in itself.

The Gush

The sound design is lovely. The little noise that the game makes whenever I pick up some loot fills me with a feeling of glee. In a game where money and the acquisition thereof is vital it’s important to make it feel good.

There comes a point in the game where a well built party is unstoppable. Where me and the gang can fly around a battlefield, nearly immune to damage, showering the warriors below with magical barrages and laser weaponry — did I mention this game has goddam lasers? Well, it does… about 30-40 hours in.

Exploring is actually really fun and rewarding in this game. There are all sorts of lost treasures, characters, contests, and locations hidden around each and every map. You never know what you’ll find but it’s certain to be pretty cool at the very least.

For 1999 the visuals present a solid looking 3-D environment. I was never blown but that’s just a result of the times.

The Kvetch

I couldn’t find who did the music for this game but it couldn’t have been the guy who composed the Heroes soundtrack because the music in this game is garbage. It’s all very fantasy, with violins and chanting everywhere, but every area has music that repeats every 2 minutes or so. Sometimes it’s on point but it’s mostly boring.

Death can create a bizarre lock on the player. Dying empties the players treasury, breaks some of their possessions– usually the important stuff like armor, and drops them back at Harmondale. It’s possible, especially at early levels, to have so much broken gear that it’s nearly impossible to keep the game going. The only saving grace is that time passes in game, aging your characters, but also respawning enemies to grind for loot and XP. It’s like a saving grace, if grace were as frustrating as solving a rubix cube.

The characters in your party talk all the time. They shout something every time they get hit. I want nothing more than to hear, “Was that supposed to hurt?” every second. It’s great. Most of the voice actors have really grating voices. Thankfully each voice isn’t matched to a character portrait so it’s possible to mix and match but I shouldn’t have to dodge the voices that are annoying.

The early levels in this game are such a grind. Just for kicks I used a character editor to raise all my character’s stats to 300 and they were still losing an 8th of their health getting attacked my living trees. It’s basically all about gear and the character’s stats don’t really matter a lot and that’s something that’s rubbed me the wrong way about DnD for a long time. I don’t want to feel like a pile of loot and gear, I want to feel like I HAVE gear that helps me do things.

The only choice with any impact in the game is choosing between godly virtue and despicable malevolence. This impacts the ending and what promotions characters can get but there’s no real character impact from the decision. If you join the bad guys then you’re evil now and that’s all there is to it. There’s no deeper meaning to either decision really .

Oh… no… my portraits are all red and black. I’m evil now, better go be evil and do mean stuff like steal things and cast the Armageddon spell.

The Verdict

Playing this game is like revenge against a bully. There’s a sickening sweetness, a lot of maniacal laughter, and a lot of shit talking something that’s down and out. But it also involves getting pushed around until you’ve had enough and a lot of frustration. The reward for mastering this game is the very act of having mastered it. The sense of character is non-existent, the plot’s weak but funny, and the lore of the game is so deep and byzantine that it holds relevance only for those deeply familiar with the series.

Next Week: Poker Night at the Inventory

Heroes of Might and Magic III: The Restoration of Erathia (PC, Mac, iOS, Android)

Dear god, that’s a helluva name.

The King of Erathia, Gryphonheart, has been assassinated. In his absence the underground empire of Nighon has teamed up with the, literally, hellish force of Eofol to take over the kingdom. Meanwhile, the Necromancers of Deyja are thinking of putting Gryphonheart’s corpse and it’s military experience to use. The kingdoms of Avlee and Bracada are trying to hold Erathia together but between the invasion from below and the barbarian land grabs, they’ve got their hands full. Catherine, the new queen, having heard of her father’s demise returns home. Having fought in Enroth’s brutal war for its throne, she expects only to bury her father. With her country in chaos it falls to her, and her talented commander, to fight for her homeland.

History

New World Computing had just been purchased by 3DO and they wanted a sequel for their successful Heroes of Might and Magic series. David Mullich, the director of the project, had worked on such games as Ducktales for the NES and I Have no Mouth and I Must Scream –two games that couldn’t be more different. He was accompanied by writer and assistant director Chris Vanover who wrote every character bio and most of the text for the game. Mullich’s goal was to take the basic systems of Heroes II but improve the visuals and tighten everything. To that end they used 3D sprites instead of 2D sprites. Mullich put together his team personally and said, “I was working with a dream team the likes of which I have never again experienced in my thirty-five years in game industry.”

Fun Fact: David Mullich appears in the level editor as an Erathian knight named Sir Mullich, who is “prone to spasmodic fits of uncoordinated excitement believed to intimidate his troops into working faster.”

Heroes of Might and Magic III was released on February 28, 1999. It’s competition was Baldur’s Gate: Tales From the Sword Coast (PC), Star Wars: X-Wing Alliance (PC), and Final Fantasy VIII (PS1).

Oh man, 3D graphics! I wish the heroes could do more than cast spells though… alas they don’t attack until Heroes IV.

 Experiences

Before I knew what Dungeons and Dragons was, before I knew about Tolkien, before Diablo, there was Heroes of Might and Magic. This is the game that taught me that Medusa turns things to stone and that wizards are awesome. I used to play this game when my mother would visit some of her friends. These guys were old-school nerds. These guys used to code in DOS and had played Betrayal at Krondor. This game sort of started my interest in nerd culture and I thank it for that.

This game’s got everything, dragons, orcs, titans, necromancers, elves, EVERYTHING! They’re throwing fantasy at the wall and everything sticks.

Gameplay

The player assumes the role of a commander overseeing all affairs military and domestic in some sort of armed conflict. This commander hires heroes who take the battle to enemy heroes and cities. Heroes gain experience and level up, gaining new skills and improving the stats of units under their control. Cities produce military units, gold, and a mage’s guild that teaches heroes valuable spells, both combat and non-combat.

These heroes navigate an overworld map covered with all sorts of monsters, locations, and general adventure.

The game is split into scenarios which each have a certain goal. Sometimes it’s simply to destroy all enemies but sometimes it’s something more specific like taking a certain town or destroying a certain hero. Sometimes the goal is something as oddly specific as getting a particular artifact or enough resources before other players.

There are also aproximately this many artifacts. All of which have an interesting ability.

The game also comes packed with Hot seat and IP address multiplayer. So you and your friends can settle which is the better on the field of honor.

The Gush

The music in this game is really awesome.  It’s delightfully epic in its scope. It’s low budget grand fantasy, it’s nothing that an 8 track and a keyboard couldn’t put together but I think that just gives it charm. From the sweeping crescendos of the Stronghold’s rugged mountains to the dingy gloom of the Necropolis’ death filled halls the music fits wonderfully.

There’s also something pleasing about building up a city from a town hall and some huts to something like this.

The campaign writing and voice acting is pretty good. My favorite writing is the incidental writing though. All of the artifact pick ups have a description and all of the heroes have little biographies. It’s usually really campy but occasionally there’s something unique and interesting. The story of the main campaign is also pretty good so I felt rewarded.

Do you see this guy? You’d better step back…

… because you’re dealing with motherfucking Solmyr, one of the most busted characters in the entire game. Anyone who likes the Tower knows that they hire this guy on sight. His heroic specialty is the spell Chain Lightning so he starts with it. It costs tons of mana and deals buckets of damage. It win fights –Unless it jumps to your troops. If you luck out then you’ll find the Pendant of Negativity which renders your troops immune to lightning –never strike your own troops again!– then again there’s the opposite scenario where it falls into enemy hands and Solmyr turns into a useless blue cloud. Oh yeah, and he’s a freaking genie!

The Kvetch

Some cities have building restrictions. It’s usually really flavorful, the city just doesn’t have the military infrastructure to support strong units. The problem comes when I spend a lot of resources claiming a city that actually didn’t have the ability to build anything useful. There’s no way to know before taking the city so it just feels like a giant waste of time.

The randomness factor on maps can be a big one. I’ve gotten artifacts that benefit ships on maps with no ocean because that’s just what randomly spawned. Monster randomization has left me crying on some maps and sometimes I breeze through the same scenario because the monsters joined me instead of fighting because we were of the same faction. It makes me feel like strategy and skill doesn’t have the amount of impact that it should.

The main campaign is incredibly hard at later levels! The first few scenarios are alright but I hit a giant brick wall that I’ve never been able to overcome without cheating. I keep thinking that I should just get good but I don’t know how to improve or what I’m doing wrong.

The Verdict

This game holds up today. I’ve kept going down the Heroes series and I’m not sure if its nostalgia or if the future games just keep adding more unnecessary stuff but this game feels like the sweet spot between features and simplicity. No matter what, it’s a wonderful strategy game with a deep lore. It’s a fun time and worth the cost.

Next Week: Might and Magic VII: For Blood and Honor

Army Men (PC and Game Boy Color)

Author’s note: I apologize for the lack of images in this review. I couldn’t take or find many good quality screenshots for this game — which makes sense given its overall quality.

All those little battles you and your friends had with those green and tan army men seemed like good fun at the time. Little did you fools know you were changing the face of an entire other world! This world is split between Grey, Tan, Green, and Blue. You play as the top soldier in the Green army, known only as Sarge. He’s been sent into enemy territory to unveil a Tan bid for power and generally ruin Tan’s day. Run, crawl, shoot, and struggle with controls in Army Men.

History

3DO started its bid as a company in order to create a CD based console that could blow the Sega Genesis and the Super Nintendo out of the water. It was certainly far more powerful, being able to play Playstation era games 2 years before the Playstation was released. It’s powerful hardware made it very expensive however, about three times as expensive as its competition, retailing for $599 — a business move that didn’t even make sense when Sony did it 13 years later with the PS3. This immense cost eventually ended up scuttling the company’s console development plans and forced them into making games such as the succesful Might and Magic and less succesful Army Men series.

Army Men was released in 1998. It’s competition was Metal Gear Solid (PS1), Starcraft (PC and N64), and Fallout 2 (PC).

Experiences

There’s one mission in this game that is so hard that childhood me almost stopped playing the game forever. It’s the escort mission. Every game had them back in the day and this game is no exception. You have to escort a truck with vital plastic on it through a series of narrow mountain passes to safety.The thing that really irks me though is that enemies come from behind, from off screen — I take that back, the thing that really irks me is that the truck can get stuck on a wall and destroy itself. It’s a game of memorization. You’ve got to figure out where to use this mortar to destroy that passage or use those land mines to stop that tank that comes from behind and destroys you at minute four or whatever. It’s just trial and error and that’s no fun.

Gameplay

The game is split into three acts which are seperated by different settings. These acts are split into chapters which each have a different map, each chapter has three or four missions in it which must be complete sequentially — the objectives of which are delivered via scratchy radio voice over. Sarge is mostly unsupported so get ready to attempt to be a one man wrecking crew — key word, attempt. The goal of each act is to find three pieces of some sort of cosmic key — which are made out of interlocking tinker toys — which tan will presumably use for some sinister purpose.

At least soldiers from other factions will fight each other as well as you.

Sarge’s main strengths come from his ability to not rely on the awful AI and the ability to use whatever weapon he finds. He has his trusty rifle, a secondary weapon, and a support item. Secondary weapons include grenades, bazookas, and the flamethrower — in a world made of plastic the flame throwing man is king [now that I think about it, how do they keep a flame thrower made of plastic working?]. Support items include first aid, explosives, mines, or a minesweeper — which serves only to gate off certain areas, necessitating that Sarge have to go someplace unpleasant to find a minesweeper so he can continue on the original path.

The Gush

I still like the final segments of the game. The final fight takes place in a graveyard where Tan and Grey soldiers rise from their graves to fight Sarge and each other. It was bizarre, like the forces of the keys were messing with reality. It also presented an interesting strategy where it was in the player’s best interest to avoid the conflict and let these quasi-zombies destroy each other.

I find it sort of humorous and interesting that this world is one where people, their tools, and vehicles are all made out of plastic.There’s one mission in which Sarge robs a bank filled with plastic. Is this inert, lifeless plastic or is this living plastic meant to be turned into men? Do they have to instill it with green color or will it work for them even though it’s tan? Well, nobody cares and this sort of lack of world-building makes me laugh.

The graphics actually look pretty good for the time. The set pieces look like they would actually be sold with the toys.

The concept of human objects being super weapons in a world of Army men was a pretty cool idea. I gotta give credit where credit’s due and say that a gate made out of building blocks and activated with a tinker toy key is pretty funny.

The Kvetch

The minimap is useful in a number of ways, it’s got a great sector system that informs the player quickly and succinctly where they need to go. On the other hand the first stage is a desert and therefore tan troops don’t show up on the mini-map even when the player uses reconnaissance to reveal it. Little did I know I could get a more detailed map by pressing F12 that points out troop movements and other information — and it was little known because who would press F12 for anything in a videogame?

Most of the game feels like memorization as opposed to a top down shooter. I’ll admit there’s tactical decisions to make such as where to place one of three air strikes but they always lead to memorizing where on the map the tanks are and use the strikes there.

The Tan AI is pretty good for a game from 1998 but it’s plain to see why the Green forces suffer heavy losses, it’s because their soldiers have the rough intellectual capacity of an actual plastic toy. Green soldiers that follow Sarge generally spend most of their time running in circles and shooting in the wrong direction.

I don’t know why but if I’m running forward and shooting I can turn right but I can’t turn left. This usually leads me to running around in a circle to create the most roundabout left turn in the history of gaming.

This one’s a little specific but I got stuck on a mission for days when I was a kid. The scenario is that there’s a wounded Green soldier who has important information but the bridge to reach him was destroyed and there’s no other way across the river. What I’m supposed to do is go upstream, blow up each of the ends of a bridge there, and let the center section of that bridge float downstream to create a new bridge to reach that soldier. The only thing that hints at this is the  that the game gives you explosives. This sort of thing has not happened before and it never happens again.

The music can get really repetitive. Every once and awhile I’m treated to a new song and it’s like a golden glow reaching through gross clouds made of snare drums.

I’ve had such a hard time remapping the controls into something that makes the game playable. Firefights are made pretty simple by rolling out of the way of bullets and rockets but I was never able to get the dodge roll keys off of the number pad, which meant I had to switch from the keypad to the number pad in order to win fights. It’s a frustrating mess.

Also, the voice acting is nearly unintelligible at points. I was thankful that the game super imposes text of the conversation when Sarge is getting orders. Sometimes it was so garbled I didn’t know what was going on.

The Verdict

I may have loved this game when I was a kid but that just leads me to think that I was a really dumb kid. Vehicles control poorly, getting caught on the smallest pieces of scenery. Sometimes I run into tanks with no weapons that can deal damage to them. I beat most missions by remembering ways to destroy certain things to enemies can no longer reach me. This game is four dollars on Ebay and I’d say that’s an appropriate cost for a game of this caliber.

Next week: Heroes of Might and Magic III