If there's even just one thing that Happy Tree Friends has taught us, it's that destroying innocence is fucking hilarious - take a bunch of cute characters of general kid's cartoon stereotype, then have them maim the crap out of each other. Fairytale Fights follows much the same example, putting you in the shoes of one of four classic fairytale characters (Red Riding Hood, Jack (and the Beanstalk), Snow White and the Naked Emperor), then gives you sharp instruments and a crowd of enemies. You guess what happens next. Simple mechanics and ludicrous blood are easily what makes this game - the problem is, most everything else is not up to scratch.
The first thing worth noting is that there's no actual attack button - to swing a weapon, you tap the right control stick in the direction you want to swing, and if you want a stronger swing, you hold it down in one direction, then shift it over to your intended swing direction. You can probably guess that this is quite confusing and awkward at first, but it doesn't take too long to adapt to, at least with the faster moves. However, despite its simplicity it feels like an extremely unecessary control scheme - you almost never have any incentive to swing in a specific direction. It only even affects gameplay differently in a grand total of two possibilities: launching enemies upwards into an air combo (which, again, is extremely confusing and at first seems to occur completely at random), and a shockwave attack (which is only accessible with a strong attack anyway). The rest of it is just the same move with different animations, to the point that you might as well have used an actual face button for the attacks instead. Not that this particularly gets in the way of the fun too heavily, it just comes off as incredibly pointless.
One thing it DOES tax on, however, is the camera. Now let's face it, anyone old enough to legally be interested in this kind of shit has the common sense to realize that the right stick should be used to guide the camera, or at the very least if it doesn't, that the auto-guided camera be some kind of gift from god that magically knows exactly where the player wants to be looking at any and all given times. And in Fairytale Fights, that, it isn't. For the most part it's barely enough to get by on, but you'll find it's not all too uncommon to be killed by enemies and hazards that aren't even onscreen, and on occasion you'll find yourself thrown with a camera angle that seems absolutely fucking hell bent on hiding enemies and treasure chests behind obstacles in the foreground, completely ruining your platforming either before or during tricky jumping sessions, or generally just throwing you for a loop by making it as hard as humanly possible to see just what the fuck you're actually doing.
Speaking of platforming, by fuck does this game want you dead. As if the camera wasn't bad enough, the hazards themselves are a work of sheer masochism that almost universally punish you with death for the slightest of slip-ups, can literally occur with no perceivable warning, and... well, perhaps this can be best explained with a single, memorable example. Imagine there are circular saws suspended in the air, and you have to actually jump on them and use them as platforms without touching the edges. Fair enough, not exactly unheard of in a platformer. Now imagine you have to jump between multiple blades at a time, and that you're constantly moved around on the surface of the spinning saw to fuck up your precision. Imagine that they have fucking blades within blades around the centre of the saw, forcing you to teeter the the sharp edge on the brink of the blade and the additionally edges spinning on the inside. Imagine that this all happens in the third fucking level of the game, at a time where you're still trying to get a basic grasp of the game. Now hold on, I'm not done yet. Additional to that, you have a camera angle not ideal for so many factors, the fact that your shadow is very difficult to see and possibly out-of-place due to dynamic lighting, making your jumps potentially innaccurate, and the possibility of multiple players attempting the same obstacle, resulting in the camera trying to keep all players onscreen with complete disregard for the lead player attempting to jump on an offscreen obstacle, and the fact that players can push and nudge each other around both deliberately AND accidentally is just icing on the motherfucking cake.
I mean, christ on a fuckstick, guys. It ain't quite I-Wanna-Be-The-Guy material, but it's starting to get pretty damn close. The only thing preventing it from being worse is the extremely lenient infinite lives system that respawns you frequently mere inches from where you last died.
Okay, maybe I went a little overboard there, so let's go back to what the game's best at and pretend for a moment those issues don't exist: simple, arcadey hack n' slash, and the riduculous, uncharacteristic amount of gore it yields. It's a button masher to be sure (or erm, a stick masher if you choose to be fucking picky), but the best bits are simply visual rewards for killing people. When you kill someone with a cutting weapon, their body is almost always bisected perfectly along the exact angle of the cut - the first time I've ever seen anything of this sort of such precision in a videogame. This goes double for the "Glory Attack" mode, enabling you to go absolutely apeshit with these slices and make multiple perfect cuts varying by the direction of the swing, making end results ranging from people divided into perfect quarters to poor sods sliced into sections so thin you could probably spread them onto a sandwhich like a piece of salami. And the blood? An intended and effective selling point of the game, as not only does it spill in such large amounts that you could literally paint entire buildings with, but a technology dubbed "volumetric liquid" enables it to actually behave like a realistic liquid, spraying onto other people, spreading across the ground over time, and to the delight of two of the game's achievements, even allows players to slide on it. This is definitive cartoon violence at its best, and in a videogame you probably won't see anything better for a long, long time. However, as far as sound and graphics go, the violence is all the game has going for it - other than that, the game has a severe lack of visual polish. Nearly all textures are damn-near flat, animations lack the visual oomph of a higher budget game, and sound? Outside of nasty slicing sounds, extremely underwhelming and sometimes nonexistent, and the game has a bad habit of using songs in the soundtrack in very unfitting contexts, even if some of them are pleasant on their own.
Finally, there's the boss fights. Most of the smaller bosses involve beating down on some fucktard until he stops moving, then pushing them into a hazard repeatedly until they don't get up again - understandably, this gets really tired and predictable once you figure it out the first time. The bigger bosses though, while not much better as far as repetition goes, really know how to make you feel really small, something other games rarely touch on like this. It's like the level itself works for them, and they won't hesitate to use it to try and kill you - ranging from tilting the entire platform you're standing on to try and knock you off, to blowing so damn hard that you have to practically glue the control stick in the opposite direction to avoid getting impaled on a nearby hazard. The rest is mostly pattern exploitation that, honestly, has gotten extremely old in the biz as of late, but for what it's worth, at least they feel genuinely big for a change.
Defining Points
- Blood, lots of it and just about as realisitic as possible in a videogame, along with extremely precise dismemberment that would usually have been generic and scripted to a small list of possibilities, sets a new bar for videogame blood and gore that is unlikely to be topped for quite a while.
- Gameplay is relatively simplistic on a basic level. Even if there are usually better tricks that the game doesn't properly introduce you to, the bare basics can be learned within a single level, making this as arcadey and pick-up-n'-play as they come.
- The larger bosses have some very interesting setpieces, on a scale few games out there can compete with.
What could've been done better
- Straight to the point, the platforming sucks. A combination of unsuitable camera angles, bad platforming shadow, masochistic level and hazard design, unsuitable camera angles, unintentional team-killing, unsuitable camera angles and unsuitable camera angles completely ruin any sense of fun and fairness that could have been earned from pressing the jump button, and hell, sometimes you'll find yourself falling off edges simply for attacking enemies too close to them. Did I mention unsuitable camera angles?
- The game overall suffers from a big lack of polish outside of the blood and gore it prides itself on, and yet, somehow still finds way to lag your system down nevertheless. In extreme circumstances it's possible to actually lag so badly that the game can freeze for a whole second or two, making me wonder if anyone actually tested this game very well.
- For the most part, using the right stick as an attack method comes off as pointless where using a button could easily have yielded a comparable, if not exactly the same, result. Which is infuriating in comparison to the horrendous unsuitable camera angles it inadvertantly causes.
- unsuitable camera angles unsuitable camera angles unsuitable camera angles unsuitable camera angles unsuitable camera angles unsuitable camera angles unsuitable camera angles unsuitable camera angles unsuitable camera angles unsuitable camera angles unsuitable camera angles
Overall...
4/10: Fairytale Fights is practically a one-trick pony, excelling in one area whilst performing average at best, horrible at worst in every other. If you can persist through the godawful platforming sequences and unsuitable camera angles then perhaps one could find pleasure in simple slash-'em-up gameplay and ludicrous blood, but to absolutely nobody else would I recommend a purchase of this game. Such technology deserves far better treatment than this.
unsuitable camera angles
Monday, December 7, 2009
Monday, May 25, 2009
REVIEW: Tenchu - Shadow Assassins
Tenchu is a franchise I have a bit of a soft spot for - admittedly, I haven't played the original Playstation game that people seem to hold in such high regard, it's still in general a stealth series I adore, even if their concepts could have been executed better most of the time. Shadow Assassins is just the latest entry into the franchise, and even though some of the fundementals of the series are changed to a decent amount of success, some aspects of the game prove to be extremely infuriating - sadly, more on fault of the game rather than the player.
Outside of gameplay, Shadow Assassins is merely decent in some fields, and bloody lovely in others. The graphics aren't particularly special, but they're enough to get by on and aren't particularly distracting or intrusive. The only real problem I have with the visuals is the animation, which ranges from okay to laughably bad - at several points I managed to kill enemies by setting them on fire, and I couldn't help but marvel at how ridiculously unfitting the death animation was. There is no ingame lipsynching and very little facial animation of any kind, which also tends to lend characters a very dated look when viewed close up. The game also supposedly boasts Havok physics, but what physics the game displays are incredibly clumsy and poorly thought out - dead bodies needlessly twitch for ages after they've dropped dead, and I've even had several incidents where I dropped a crate on the ground and it landed sideways on one of its corners... and stayed there, making jumping on them as a platforming aid completely impossible.
The aural side of the game, on the other side of the spectrum, is fantastic. Many of the sound effects take influences from old japanese movies, and I'd be lying if I said it didn't fit eerily well for a game of this kind. In fact, much of the time it's perfect. The sound you get from cleaving through some poor sod at the climax of a Hissatu stealth kill is also immensely satisfying, and easily enough to single-handedly make up for any possible inconsistent and less-than-stellar graphics that may compliment the phenom. But as far as sound goes, Tenchu's best trait is easily its soundtrack. It may take a bit to grow on you, and sometimes I felt the tone of the tune didn't quite match the context, but otherwise the soundtrack is simply a masterpiece and a real pleasure to listen to. I absolutely adore the feeling I get from losing a guard's interest after drawing trouble, which cues a set of strings that seems to compliment your sense of relief, note for note. Absolutely beautiful.
Getting into the matter of the way the game actually plays, the movement scheme immediately feels awkward from the second you start playing. I'm not going to deny that. If you're a fan of the Resident Evil 4/5 control scheme, this method of playing may seem less alien to you, and to be fair it gets less intrusive the more you play the game, but no matter how much you adjust, anything that involves jumping universally feels clumsy and limiting - often you'll find yourself pressing the jump button in excess of five times just to clear a waist-high fence, even if you take a running start first.
The hell starts, however, the moment you first get spotted by a guard. More often than not, if you are seen, the guard attacks you in a scripted cutscene, you disappear into a cloud of smoke and feathers and spawn right back at the entrance of the level, leaving behind any dead enemies and moved items that you might already have tinkered with. Yes, that's right, you don't even get a fucking say in the matter, you just stand still like an idiot and wait to be attacked. This happens quite often throughout the course of the game, even as you get better at it, and it doesn't get any less annoying every time it happens. The only way you can change the outcome of this is if you happen to have a sword with you (yes, you don't even start with a fucking sword in this game), which brings me to my next point: the combat.
The actual fighting in Tenchu - Shadow Assassins simply screams of "missed opportunity". The main highlight is guarding against enemy attacks - the enemy swings in a specific direction, as helpfully indicated with an assisting red line intersecting the screen, and you have to hold your blade horizontal to the direction of the strike to defend it - a perfectly angled block fills your Tenchu gauge more than usual, whilst a bad defense angle (such as guarding parallel to the strike) results in the blade taking damage, resulting in you losing the fight if it breaks and sending you back to the beginning of the stage as per normal. As far as defending goes, this is a very clever mechanic and would've worked well to compliment a gameplay style overall that suited it.
The only problem is that this gameplay style doesn't suit it. Every other concept the fighting utilizes screams of sheer retardation and it's a wonder that From Software thought these ideas would work well together. See, remember that Tenchu gauge I mentioned earlier? You can't attack until it's filled to the brim. When it is filled, the enemy can't attack nor defend, and you simply flail the Wiimote until either the other guy dies or your Tenchu gauge runs out again. I'm assuming that the attacking has some kind of directional sensitivity, but I never bothered with anything as such seeing as generic Wiimote shaking always does the job the same way, if not better. What the hell kind of sense is this supposed to make? I would've played an RPG if I expected turn-based fighting, not a reputable stealth series.
Like all decent stealth games, though, I can't particularly fault the game too badly for its horrendous fighting scheme - any seasoned stealth player will learn to avoid a direct confrontation either way, so as long as you don't suck, it won't be a problem. Of course, you could also simply forfeit the combat altogether and refuse to carry a blade at all, simply warping to the beginning of the level when spotted. It only becomes a burden when the fighting is forced on you for the boss fights that happen after completing some levels. Either way, it's a frustrating affair.
Naturally, the game is at its strongest when you learn to stay undetected and take out enemies stealthily. Tenchu has a strong reputation for stealth kills that vary depending on context, but Shadow Assassins goes way over the fuckin' top with them, to the point that you can kill an enemy whilst doing virtually anything.
- It's possible to get a different stealth kill for every one of the 8 directions you can approach an enemy on the ground
- It's possible to get a stealth kill whilst airborne, in mid-dash, whilst hanging from a cliff (on an opponent above AND below), standing on a support beam in the ceiling, pressing on a wall corner, holding up high in the inside corner of a wall ala Splinter Cell, hiding in the floor, a large jug, under a table or inside a storage compartment
- It's possible to get a stealth kill by knocking enemies into environmental hazards (such as wells, cliffs or fires and torches) via use of Shurikens or a handy fishing rod.
- It's possible to get a stealth kill in the middle of or just after a quick dash between bushes, and also to kill up to three enemies in one Hissatu if they are bunched together tightly enough.
- It's even possible to beat other Ninja to the punch and throw a Kunai at them into their hiding place - they'll never get seen seeing as they were in invisible hiding spots to begin with.
It's worth noting that several of the close-quarters stealth kills now utilize Quick Time Events, utilizing motions with the Wiimote and Nunchuk to complete the kill. Quite frankly, these feel unnecessary in practice, and sometimes even frustrating, as failing them yet again causes the guard to counter, spot you and usher your ass back to the beginning of the stage once again. In some instances, the QTEs just add to the satisfation of catching some fucker off guard and snapping their neck - the actual movement of flicking the Wiimote and Nunchuk in opposing directions works well and feels in-character with the rest of the scene. What really irritated the hell out of me, though, are the stealth kills that require a thrusting movement.
Now to be honest, at first I had it down that these movements in particular were incredibly unresponsive, most notably because I'd perform the action indicated onscreen in excess of three times within the generous timeframe that was offered to me... but as it turns out, the problem wasn't the reponsiveness of the controls, as strange as it may sound. To demonstrate my point, I'll use a Hissatu from a bush as an example, where your character drags an enemy in and stabs them out of sight. The game shows an image of a Wiimote thrusting into the screen to compliment the QTE, which consequently, I failed 4 times out of 5. Right near the end of the game I learned what the problem was - it was the wrong input. I was supposed to thrust downwards.
Just in case you thought there was a typo there, I'm going to repeat that last bit for emphasis. There was an onscreen prompt that indicated to thrust towards the screen. The REAL QTE required me to thrust into the ground, as if the victim was lying there.
What.
The.
Fuck.
And as it turns out, this isn't even the only example. There are other QTE inputs in the game which hardly resemble the real, working solution at all, and sometimes require educated or even random guesses contrary to the button/flail prompts and closer to that of the animations of your protagonist. Never in the history of all of videogaming have I ever seen a game that expects you to outright ignore an onscreen prompt and instead do something completely contrary to the game's instructions. This is easily one of the nastiest fuckups I've seen in the gaming biz, let alone the genre, and can single-handedly ruin the whole experience if you can't figure out how to decipher the vauge onscreen prompts. It's a good thing I told you first then, isn't it?
Defining Points
- The soundtrack for the game is simply amazing, and aside from an odd out-of-context usage here and there, it benefits the situation no matter where it is used. The sound effects are also suitably retro and fit into the game surprisingly well, despite their dated and even somewhat cheesy nature.
- The sheer amount of methods that exist to kill your targets is surprisingly large, to the extent that you can practically kill an enemy whilst doing anything, no matter what it may be, and get a completely different stealth kill for each context. Pulling one off in itself after careful planning is a feeling of satisfaction in itself, and the main selling point of a game of this kind.
- There is plenty of potential replay value for those that look for it - you can replay the story missions to improve on your initial ranking, which in turn unlocks a series of 50 side-missions which are graded seperately and give extra incentive to play the game. There is also collectable pieces of a mysterious map and a host of secret, extremely potent items to find if you look hard enough.
- The defending mechanic in the swordplay combat is a very good idea, and in fact is one of the best swordplay mechanics in a Wii game I've seen in ages...
What could've been done better
-...but it still doesn't change the fact that the rest of the combat completely sucks ass. Reducing the fighting down to turn-based block-attack schemes and reducing the actual attacking to generic waggle is one of the worst ideas imaginable, however good the guarding phase may actually be.
- Even without loss of progress, restarting the map over and over again because you got spotted is needlessly frustrating, particularly when the solution to a problem isn't immediately obvious. There is no justification, at all, for robbing us of the ability to flee from a confrontation and hide instead, either.
- The prompts for ingame QTEs are sometimes outright inaccurate, and the game in these cases expects you to perform an action completely contrary to the instructions displayed on the screen. It is simply unbelieveable that any developer could make such a fucking retarded mistake in this day and age.
Overall...
7/10: There is a great game hidden somewhere in here, but it is buried under some extremely infuriating mistakes in the conceptual and development process, resulting in a game that rewards only the perfectionist player. To veterans of the franchise and/or genre, this can prove to be an experience enjoyable enough to warrant a purchase, but newbie players will be too busy tearing their hair out to make any ends of it. For fans of the franchise or the stealth genre only - everyone else should steer clear and buy a Splinter Cell game instead.
Outside of gameplay, Shadow Assassins is merely decent in some fields, and bloody lovely in others. The graphics aren't particularly special, but they're enough to get by on and aren't particularly distracting or intrusive. The only real problem I have with the visuals is the animation, which ranges from okay to laughably bad - at several points I managed to kill enemies by setting them on fire, and I couldn't help but marvel at how ridiculously unfitting the death animation was. There is no ingame lipsynching and very little facial animation of any kind, which also tends to lend characters a very dated look when viewed close up. The game also supposedly boasts Havok physics, but what physics the game displays are incredibly clumsy and poorly thought out - dead bodies needlessly twitch for ages after they've dropped dead, and I've even had several incidents where I dropped a crate on the ground and it landed sideways on one of its corners... and stayed there, making jumping on them as a platforming aid completely impossible.
The aural side of the game, on the other side of the spectrum, is fantastic. Many of the sound effects take influences from old japanese movies, and I'd be lying if I said it didn't fit eerily well for a game of this kind. In fact, much of the time it's perfect. The sound you get from cleaving through some poor sod at the climax of a Hissatu stealth kill is also immensely satisfying, and easily enough to single-handedly make up for any possible inconsistent and less-than-stellar graphics that may compliment the phenom. But as far as sound goes, Tenchu's best trait is easily its soundtrack. It may take a bit to grow on you, and sometimes I felt the tone of the tune didn't quite match the context, but otherwise the soundtrack is simply a masterpiece and a real pleasure to listen to. I absolutely adore the feeling I get from losing a guard's interest after drawing trouble, which cues a set of strings that seems to compliment your sense of relief, note for note. Absolutely beautiful.
Getting into the matter of the way the game actually plays, the movement scheme immediately feels awkward from the second you start playing. I'm not going to deny that. If you're a fan of the Resident Evil 4/5 control scheme, this method of playing may seem less alien to you, and to be fair it gets less intrusive the more you play the game, but no matter how much you adjust, anything that involves jumping universally feels clumsy and limiting - often you'll find yourself pressing the jump button in excess of five times just to clear a waist-high fence, even if you take a running start first.
The hell starts, however, the moment you first get spotted by a guard. More often than not, if you are seen, the guard attacks you in a scripted cutscene, you disappear into a cloud of smoke and feathers and spawn right back at the entrance of the level, leaving behind any dead enemies and moved items that you might already have tinkered with. Yes, that's right, you don't even get a fucking say in the matter, you just stand still like an idiot and wait to be attacked. This happens quite often throughout the course of the game, even as you get better at it, and it doesn't get any less annoying every time it happens. The only way you can change the outcome of this is if you happen to have a sword with you (yes, you don't even start with a fucking sword in this game), which brings me to my next point: the combat.
The actual fighting in Tenchu - Shadow Assassins simply screams of "missed opportunity". The main highlight is guarding against enemy attacks - the enemy swings in a specific direction, as helpfully indicated with an assisting red line intersecting the screen, and you have to hold your blade horizontal to the direction of the strike to defend it - a perfectly angled block fills your Tenchu gauge more than usual, whilst a bad defense angle (such as guarding parallel to the strike) results in the blade taking damage, resulting in you losing the fight if it breaks and sending you back to the beginning of the stage as per normal. As far as defending goes, this is a very clever mechanic and would've worked well to compliment a gameplay style overall that suited it.
The only problem is that this gameplay style doesn't suit it. Every other concept the fighting utilizes screams of sheer retardation and it's a wonder that From Software thought these ideas would work well together. See, remember that Tenchu gauge I mentioned earlier? You can't attack until it's filled to the brim. When it is filled, the enemy can't attack nor defend, and you simply flail the Wiimote until either the other guy dies or your Tenchu gauge runs out again. I'm assuming that the attacking has some kind of directional sensitivity, but I never bothered with anything as such seeing as generic Wiimote shaking always does the job the same way, if not better. What the hell kind of sense is this supposed to make? I would've played an RPG if I expected turn-based fighting, not a reputable stealth series.
Like all decent stealth games, though, I can't particularly fault the game too badly for its horrendous fighting scheme - any seasoned stealth player will learn to avoid a direct confrontation either way, so as long as you don't suck, it won't be a problem. Of course, you could also simply forfeit the combat altogether and refuse to carry a blade at all, simply warping to the beginning of the level when spotted. It only becomes a burden when the fighting is forced on you for the boss fights that happen after completing some levels. Either way, it's a frustrating affair.
Naturally, the game is at its strongest when you learn to stay undetected and take out enemies stealthily. Tenchu has a strong reputation for stealth kills that vary depending on context, but Shadow Assassins goes way over the fuckin' top with them, to the point that you can kill an enemy whilst doing virtually anything.
- It's possible to get a different stealth kill for every one of the 8 directions you can approach an enemy on the ground
- It's possible to get a stealth kill whilst airborne, in mid-dash, whilst hanging from a cliff (on an opponent above AND below), standing on a support beam in the ceiling, pressing on a wall corner, holding up high in the inside corner of a wall ala Splinter Cell, hiding in the floor, a large jug, under a table or inside a storage compartment
- It's possible to get a stealth kill by knocking enemies into environmental hazards (such as wells, cliffs or fires and torches) via use of Shurikens or a handy fishing rod.
- It's possible to get a stealth kill in the middle of or just after a quick dash between bushes, and also to kill up to three enemies in one Hissatu if they are bunched together tightly enough.
- It's even possible to beat other Ninja to the punch and throw a Kunai at them into their hiding place - they'll never get seen seeing as they were in invisible hiding spots to begin with.
It's worth noting that several of the close-quarters stealth kills now utilize Quick Time Events, utilizing motions with the Wiimote and Nunchuk to complete the kill. Quite frankly, these feel unnecessary in practice, and sometimes even frustrating, as failing them yet again causes the guard to counter, spot you and usher your ass back to the beginning of the stage once again. In some instances, the QTEs just add to the satisfation of catching some fucker off guard and snapping their neck - the actual movement of flicking the Wiimote and Nunchuk in opposing directions works well and feels in-character with the rest of the scene. What really irritated the hell out of me, though, are the stealth kills that require a thrusting movement.
Now to be honest, at first I had it down that these movements in particular were incredibly unresponsive, most notably because I'd perform the action indicated onscreen in excess of three times within the generous timeframe that was offered to me... but as it turns out, the problem wasn't the reponsiveness of the controls, as strange as it may sound. To demonstrate my point, I'll use a Hissatu from a bush as an example, where your character drags an enemy in and stabs them out of sight. The game shows an image of a Wiimote thrusting into the screen to compliment the QTE, which consequently, I failed 4 times out of 5. Right near the end of the game I learned what the problem was - it was the wrong input. I was supposed to thrust downwards.
Just in case you thought there was a typo there, I'm going to repeat that last bit for emphasis. There was an onscreen prompt that indicated to thrust towards the screen. The REAL QTE required me to thrust into the ground, as if the victim was lying there.
What.
The.
Fuck.
And as it turns out, this isn't even the only example. There are other QTE inputs in the game which hardly resemble the real, working solution at all, and sometimes require educated or even random guesses contrary to the button/flail prompts and closer to that of the animations of your protagonist. Never in the history of all of videogaming have I ever seen a game that expects you to outright ignore an onscreen prompt and instead do something completely contrary to the game's instructions. This is easily one of the nastiest fuckups I've seen in the gaming biz, let alone the genre, and can single-handedly ruin the whole experience if you can't figure out how to decipher the vauge onscreen prompts. It's a good thing I told you first then, isn't it?
Defining Points
- The soundtrack for the game is simply amazing, and aside from an odd out-of-context usage here and there, it benefits the situation no matter where it is used. The sound effects are also suitably retro and fit into the game surprisingly well, despite their dated and even somewhat cheesy nature.
- The sheer amount of methods that exist to kill your targets is surprisingly large, to the extent that you can practically kill an enemy whilst doing anything, no matter what it may be, and get a completely different stealth kill for each context. Pulling one off in itself after careful planning is a feeling of satisfaction in itself, and the main selling point of a game of this kind.
- There is plenty of potential replay value for those that look for it - you can replay the story missions to improve on your initial ranking, which in turn unlocks a series of 50 side-missions which are graded seperately and give extra incentive to play the game. There is also collectable pieces of a mysterious map and a host of secret, extremely potent items to find if you look hard enough.
- The defending mechanic in the swordplay combat is a very good idea, and in fact is one of the best swordplay mechanics in a Wii game I've seen in ages...
What could've been done better
-...but it still doesn't change the fact that the rest of the combat completely sucks ass. Reducing the fighting down to turn-based block-attack schemes and reducing the actual attacking to generic waggle is one of the worst ideas imaginable, however good the guarding phase may actually be.
- Even without loss of progress, restarting the map over and over again because you got spotted is needlessly frustrating, particularly when the solution to a problem isn't immediately obvious. There is no justification, at all, for robbing us of the ability to flee from a confrontation and hide instead, either.
- The prompts for ingame QTEs are sometimes outright inaccurate, and the game in these cases expects you to perform an action completely contrary to the instructions displayed on the screen. It is simply unbelieveable that any developer could make such a fucking retarded mistake in this day and age.
Overall...
7/10: There is a great game hidden somewhere in here, but it is buried under some extremely infuriating mistakes in the conceptual and development process, resulting in a game that rewards only the perfectionist player. To veterans of the franchise and/or genre, this can prove to be an experience enjoyable enough to warrant a purchase, but newbie players will be too busy tearing their hair out to make any ends of it. For fans of the franchise or the stealth genre only - everyone else should steer clear and buy a Splinter Cell game instead.
Thursday, May 7, 2009
RANT: Why Sonic shouldn't listen to his fans
Just as a present for those who can't stand my tl;dr mongering, I'll give you guys a short version. Here's four reasons why Sega/Sonic Team shouldn't listen to you:
1. Fanservice alone doesn't improve the quality of an already crap game.
2. Sonic Team has a habit of twisting fan demand into unusual and nonsensical directions - a trend which should've been obvious the moment Shadow was resurrected.
3. Nowadays there is a massive gap between nostalgia-themed games and entries designed with modern intentions, making it completely impossible to make a universally acceptable game based off your word alone.
4. Because you're most likely a complete moron with no game design experience of any kind and no understanding of the possible repercussions your actions would have on the franchise.
Get it? Good. If I seem overly blunt about it, you should realize there's good reason for it - this crap has gone on for TEN YEARS almost uncontested whilst fanboys prance under the hideously mistaken delusion that they somehow know better than Sega AND Sonic Team with absolutely nothing to show for it. To say I'm absolutely sick of it would be a fuckin' understatement.
I could probably finish this post right here and still have a worthwhile topic to go off, but that's not what you guys know me for, is it? Let me go into a bit greater detail here, and perhaps finish it all off with a great big list.
Perhaps we should start with how this silly trend started in the first place. Let's go back to the days where point # 2 (fanservice twisting) was less extensive - between the original Sonic Adventure and Sonic Heroes. This was also (to mere coincidence, mind - don't start getting ideas, fanboys) back when the games where debatably good, but undeniably liked by most. It's pretty obvious to me how these entries could be labelled as fanservice, what with SA1 having a six-character roster (complete with unique movesets, stage ladders and fucking theme songs), SA2 introducing the more "serious" approach to the franchise (and subsequently Shadow, an instant fan-favourite) and Heroes having debatebly the largest playable roster in the history of the franchise. But the problem isn't what these games did to please the fans, at least in these select entries - rather, it was how the fans themselves recieved them.
I'll be honest, I'm not the biggest expert in fanboy psychology, even if I have a habit of boasting about it occasionally. But this is what I see as a major milestone in a fandom - the point where fans quite simply stop caring what the game itself is about, and just start mindlessly buying everything that has the mascot's face on it. To be fair, this isn't limited exclusively to Sonic (matter of fact, this is an incredibly serious problem as far as the Zelda fandom is concerned), but nonetheless, it's still the first spark that would later trigger the raging, never-ending inferno that would later become the modern Sonic fanbase.
To my experience, the one way of destroying this mentality is to take the series along a route that isn't the one they've been following for the majority of the franchise's life previously. Which brings me to the next main game in the series - Shadow the Hedgehog. And boy howdy, did they deviate the shit out of that approach. What started as the simple prospect of bringing closure to Shadow's storyline and making him the main character in the process, ended in all manner of gimmicks, plots and designs completely alien (pun intended) to nearly every ideal the franchise had previously established. That they did this without changing the game engine from previous entries is quite a feat indeed. And this is coming from somebody who LIKED the prospect of guns in a Sonic(esque) game.
Yet despite all this - the game inexplicably featuring games, the plot somewhat darker than can be tolerated from a kid's franchise, the game overall turning out to be arguably the worst entry in the series even today (second only to you-know-what)... Sonic Team still did exactly what the fans asked of them. They made a solid effort to conclude Shadow's role in the series and finally explain his mysterious past instead of hiding it behind the lame plot device known as amnesia, and to top it all off, they made one of the most popular characters of the series the main character and never let him out of it until the game was finished. It's not the developer's fault if your demands don't a good game make - if anything, it's YOURS.
In any case, Shadow's game was what eventually led into the convulted mess that was to be 2006 Sonic and consequently, today's fanbase. For this there was two reasons - as mentioned above, the sudden break away from traditional methods is one of them. The other is a common belief across nearly every franchise greater than five years of age - that they can do better by creating Sonic games exactly as they were in the "olden days" (subjective as that term might be). These two phenomenoms don't work well together, and eventually create the infamous "modern vs classic" debate that will likely persist until the end of fuckin' time. A debate for another time, to be sure.
Alright, history lesson's over, so let's get down to the meaty bits. One puzzling attribute I've noticed in today's fandom is that they cannot recognise the very things that they demand to see in a game, even when it is implemented into the game as a key feature. They blindly refuse to admit they're wrong about anything even in the face of such strong evidence and continue to request the same thing over and over, ignorant of Sonic Team's failure to produce a worthwhile game out of it. Well, I don't mean to be fuckin' blunt, but...
It didn't work the first time, dipshit.
So why should Sonic Team be expected to continually follow through with your retarded requests when your theory has been repeatedly been put into practice, fruitlessly, and when anyone else with even an ounce of common fucking sense these days will go way beyond the call of duty to take delight in reminding you that you're completely full of shit? Here's a word of advice, pal - parroting the words of other fanboys doesn't necessarily mean you or anyone else has the right idea of how to go about the issue - if anything it just proves you're a complete tool and you wouldn't know what a good idea was if it came around to your house, knocked on your door and told you to fuck off.
So next time you think about claiming Sega or Sonic team hasn't done everything possible to please their fans and undertake their requests, well, look no further than this handy dandy chronicle of all fanservice, right off the top of my head, since the invention of the Dreamcast:
- Sonic Adventure 1: Largest playable roster to date, featuring individual storylines complete with stage ladders, intros and outros, character themes and unique movesets. Boasted a deeper storyline that every game previously lacked. The design, visually, is still comparable to the more classic entries in the series.
- Sonic Adventure 2: Much the same, only the storylines where bunched between three seperate arcs instead of one for each char. Implements a long-requested "serious" outlook for a plot, along with two new characters to accompany it. One becomes a major fan favourite. Introduces rail grinding, which becomes a part of nearly every Sonic game thereafter thanks to the fans. Arguably the best story ever written for a Sonic game.
- Sonic Heroes: Fans asked for Sonic, Tails and Knux playable simultaneously ala Sonic & Tails in classic games, and ST delivered. Resurrects Shadow and Metal Sonic. Has the largest playable cast of any Sonic game in history, if you count the members of each team seperately (4 teams of 3 chars = total of 12). Special Stages and Chaos Emerald collecting return.
- Shadow the Hedgehog: Features Shadow in his own game and brings closure to Shadow's backstory at long last. The "serious" story style returns in full force. Players get to choose, to an extent, how the story ends.
- Sonic Riders: Is a Sonic racing game that isn't Sonic R. Careful what you wish for.
- Sonic Rush: Established a gameplay style more heavily oriented around speedy gameplay than any other game previously. Special Stages and Chaos Emeralds return again.
- Sonic '06: Is practically a spiritual Sonic Adventure remake right down to the sharing of level themes (most notably a chase scene directly ripped off from SA1) and a majority of the moveset intact (in theory, not excecution though). Features 9 playable characters (including a hedgehog that isn't a Sonic clone) and four story arcs. Hub worlds return. Upgrades return. Side missions introduced. Health bars are significantly nerfed.
- Secret Rings: Features only Sonic playable. Focuses on linear on-rails gameplay.
- Sonic Rush Adventure: Changes nothing from the original, except level progression and special stages. Takes place in Blaze's dimension. Eggman is actually the final boss for a change.
- Sonic Unleashed: Basically Rush 3D. Sonic-only gameplay again (in a technicality). Water-running returns. QTEs are implemented (yes, believe it or not people actually ask for this shit). Human chars are more cartoony now.
- Whatever else I couldn't think of in the space of 30 minutes (go ahead, add your own! Don't be shy!)
1. Fanservice alone doesn't improve the quality of an already crap game.
2. Sonic Team has a habit of twisting fan demand into unusual and nonsensical directions - a trend which should've been obvious the moment Shadow was resurrected.
3. Nowadays there is a massive gap between nostalgia-themed games and entries designed with modern intentions, making it completely impossible to make a universally acceptable game based off your word alone.
4. Because you're most likely a complete moron with no game design experience of any kind and no understanding of the possible repercussions your actions would have on the franchise.
Get it? Good. If I seem overly blunt about it, you should realize there's good reason for it - this crap has gone on for TEN YEARS almost uncontested whilst fanboys prance under the hideously mistaken delusion that they somehow know better than Sega AND Sonic Team with absolutely nothing to show for it. To say I'm absolutely sick of it would be a fuckin' understatement.
I could probably finish this post right here and still have a worthwhile topic to go off, but that's not what you guys know me for, is it? Let me go into a bit greater detail here, and perhaps finish it all off with a great big list.
Perhaps we should start with how this silly trend started in the first place. Let's go back to the days where point # 2 (fanservice twisting) was less extensive - between the original Sonic Adventure and Sonic Heroes. This was also (to mere coincidence, mind - don't start getting ideas, fanboys) back when the games where debatably good, but undeniably liked by most. It's pretty obvious to me how these entries could be labelled as fanservice, what with SA1 having a six-character roster (complete with unique movesets, stage ladders and fucking theme songs), SA2 introducing the more "serious" approach to the franchise (and subsequently Shadow, an instant fan-favourite) and Heroes having debatebly the largest playable roster in the history of the franchise. But the problem isn't what these games did to please the fans, at least in these select entries - rather, it was how the fans themselves recieved them.
I'll be honest, I'm not the biggest expert in fanboy psychology, even if I have a habit of boasting about it occasionally. But this is what I see as a major milestone in a fandom - the point where fans quite simply stop caring what the game itself is about, and just start mindlessly buying everything that has the mascot's face on it. To be fair, this isn't limited exclusively to Sonic (matter of fact, this is an incredibly serious problem as far as the Zelda fandom is concerned), but nonetheless, it's still the first spark that would later trigger the raging, never-ending inferno that would later become the modern Sonic fanbase.
To my experience, the one way of destroying this mentality is to take the series along a route that isn't the one they've been following for the majority of the franchise's life previously. Which brings me to the next main game in the series - Shadow the Hedgehog. And boy howdy, did they deviate the shit out of that approach. What started as the simple prospect of bringing closure to Shadow's storyline and making him the main character in the process, ended in all manner of gimmicks, plots and designs completely alien (pun intended) to nearly every ideal the franchise had previously established. That they did this without changing the game engine from previous entries is quite a feat indeed. And this is coming from somebody who LIKED the prospect of guns in a Sonic(esque) game.
Yet despite all this - the game inexplicably featuring games, the plot somewhat darker than can be tolerated from a kid's franchise, the game overall turning out to be arguably the worst entry in the series even today (second only to you-know-what)... Sonic Team still did exactly what the fans asked of them. They made a solid effort to conclude Shadow's role in the series and finally explain his mysterious past instead of hiding it behind the lame plot device known as amnesia, and to top it all off, they made one of the most popular characters of the series the main character and never let him out of it until the game was finished. It's not the developer's fault if your demands don't a good game make - if anything, it's YOURS.
In any case, Shadow's game was what eventually led into the convulted mess that was to be 2006 Sonic and consequently, today's fanbase. For this there was two reasons - as mentioned above, the sudden break away from traditional methods is one of them. The other is a common belief across nearly every franchise greater than five years of age - that they can do better by creating Sonic games exactly as they were in the "olden days" (subjective as that term might be). These two phenomenoms don't work well together, and eventually create the infamous "modern vs classic" debate that will likely persist until the end of fuckin' time. A debate for another time, to be sure.
Alright, history lesson's over, so let's get down to the meaty bits. One puzzling attribute I've noticed in today's fandom is that they cannot recognise the very things that they demand to see in a game, even when it is implemented into the game as a key feature. They blindly refuse to admit they're wrong about anything even in the face of such strong evidence and continue to request the same thing over and over, ignorant of Sonic Team's failure to produce a worthwhile game out of it. Well, I don't mean to be fuckin' blunt, but...
It didn't work the first time, dipshit.
So why should Sonic Team be expected to continually follow through with your retarded requests when your theory has been repeatedly been put into practice, fruitlessly, and when anyone else with even an ounce of common fucking sense these days will go way beyond the call of duty to take delight in reminding you that you're completely full of shit? Here's a word of advice, pal - parroting the words of other fanboys doesn't necessarily mean you or anyone else has the right idea of how to go about the issue - if anything it just proves you're a complete tool and you wouldn't know what a good idea was if it came around to your house, knocked on your door and told you to fuck off.
So next time you think about claiming Sega or Sonic team hasn't done everything possible to please their fans and undertake their requests, well, look no further than this handy dandy chronicle of all fanservice, right off the top of my head, since the invention of the Dreamcast:
- Sonic Adventure 1: Largest playable roster to date, featuring individual storylines complete with stage ladders, intros and outros, character themes and unique movesets. Boasted a deeper storyline that every game previously lacked. The design, visually, is still comparable to the more classic entries in the series.
- Sonic Adventure 2: Much the same, only the storylines where bunched between three seperate arcs instead of one for each char. Implements a long-requested "serious" outlook for a plot, along with two new characters to accompany it. One becomes a major fan favourite. Introduces rail grinding, which becomes a part of nearly every Sonic game thereafter thanks to the fans. Arguably the best story ever written for a Sonic game.
- Sonic Heroes: Fans asked for Sonic, Tails and Knux playable simultaneously ala Sonic & Tails in classic games, and ST delivered. Resurrects Shadow and Metal Sonic. Has the largest playable cast of any Sonic game in history, if you count the members of each team seperately (4 teams of 3 chars = total of 12). Special Stages and Chaos Emerald collecting return.
- Shadow the Hedgehog: Features Shadow in his own game and brings closure to Shadow's backstory at long last. The "serious" story style returns in full force. Players get to choose, to an extent, how the story ends.
- Sonic Riders: Is a Sonic racing game that isn't Sonic R. Careful what you wish for.
- Sonic Rush: Established a gameplay style more heavily oriented around speedy gameplay than any other game previously. Special Stages and Chaos Emeralds return again.
- Sonic '06: Is practically a spiritual Sonic Adventure remake right down to the sharing of level themes (most notably a chase scene directly ripped off from SA1) and a majority of the moveset intact (in theory, not excecution though). Features 9 playable characters (including a hedgehog that isn't a Sonic clone) and four story arcs. Hub worlds return. Upgrades return. Side missions introduced. Health bars are significantly nerfed.
- Secret Rings: Features only Sonic playable. Focuses on linear on-rails gameplay.
- Sonic Rush Adventure: Changes nothing from the original, except level progression and special stages. Takes place in Blaze's dimension. Eggman is actually the final boss for a change.
- Sonic Unleashed: Basically Rush 3D. Sonic-only gameplay again (in a technicality). Water-running returns. QTEs are implemented (yes, believe it or not people actually ask for this shit). Human chars are more cartoony now.
- Whatever else I couldn't think of in the space of 30 minutes (go ahead, add your own! Don't be shy!)
Tuesday, March 31, 2009
REVIEW: IGN "Sonic and the Black Knight" review
Yes, it's IGN on Sonic again, folks, so I imagine you're already having preconceptions of where this is going. Sad to say, you're probably right on most counts - whining about pointless gimmicks and classic days, listing virtually every example of such as if it were to prove some kind of point, and then finally concluding, as usual, that this outing is the worst addition to the series yet. You're probably not surprised that IGN still holds to this same template for practically all of its reviews on the subject of Sonic, but what might very well surprise you is that this was all just the first paragraph of the review I described there. And it doesn't get much better from there.
Naturally, they do praise the game for its visual and aural qualities, but that's to be expected - it's about the one thing you CAN'T talk shit about in some way. It certaintly ain't Sonic Unleashed, but for a Wii game the graphics are incredible, and the voice acting follows up from the slow-but-steady curve of improvement that Unleashed helped to start up. They also mentioned that the dialogue was pants, which did seem to make sense before I'd tried the game personally, but I can't find any sign of what they're talking about. Unless they have a problem with the way people actually spoke back in those days.
But you don't read a review just to hear people talk about the graphics do you? Of course not, we can already tell from a glance whether or not the game looks good. So now we go over to the gameplay critique, and even though Matt Casamassina does poke apon a decent point every now and then, much of the remainder of the review screams of ignorance and hypocrisy - not like you expected any less from IGN.
Naturally, the first thing Matt picks on is the lack of speed. Now I don't know why speed should be a defining factor in a game featuring swordplay combat, but even so, I get the impression Matt wasn't even trying. Why should working up a decent amount of speed be an obligatory part of the game as opposed to something that requries some actual skill, built apon over the course of the game (however short it is) to use effectively? It's almost as if they just want a single "go fast" button to go through the whole game.
Oh, wait.
Moving onto the control scheme. I suppose it's to be expected that Matt would complain about generic waggle controls, and ordinarily I'd forgive that kind of complain in most circumstances. But what really strikes me as odd here is that Matt himself has reviewed two games previously (Zelda: Twilight Princess, Sonic and the Secret Rings) with virtually identical attack methods and made them out to be some kind of godsend - on the latter game, I might add, he mentioned that the shaking, quote, "feels great - much better than pressing any button". So what's the deal? Is this kind of waggle control a good thing or not? This kind of redundancy only serves to confuse readers, particularly the ones who regularly frequent or even subscribe to IGN, and I can't say it's good for the writer's credibility either.
And even all that said, the reviewer tends to make it out that all you have to do is to waggle furiously to get anything done, again quote "all you have to do is shake continuously and you'll lay waste to your enemies before they are done with their opening dialogs". For many standard stages early on in the game, this is actually true, as most of the initial enemies die in a single hit before they can land a hit. The chances of this approach actually succeeding rapidly falls in probability as the game progresses though, as the game throws lances (making it impossible to do this kind of frontal attack), giants (who grab you if you get too close within slashing range), and of course my favourite, the bosses (who will literally kick your ass 30 times if you attempt to waggle-mash them).
It all makes me wonder if Matt actually attempted to hold the control stick in a direction other than up when attempting to attack - yes, that's right, even though the motion control has the approximate depth of a button press, the control stick still yields completely different attacks if you tilt in other directions whilst attacking, so in a manner of speaking it's exactly the same control scheme as Twilight Princess. So if you enjoyed Twilight Princess, go ahead and get the game anyway because obviously this complaint doesn't bother you all that much. Point is, you'd be lying if the combat was defined by the rate at which a player can shake a Wiimote if only for this reason alone.
And all of that is even ignoring the possibility that the game was built for a casual audience, who probably couldn't care less how indepth the motion control is - they just want to flail a wiimote about and watch a character onscreen swing to the rhythm, simple as that.
I've also heard some complaints of input lag as far as the Wiimote swinging goes. This, again, is actually true, but only partly - whenever two characters clash swords in a boss fight, the game requires specifically timed shakes to parry the opponent's strikes and break the clash (it deserves mention that this process both looks and sounds absolutely fucking awesome, by the way), but I found with the clash inputs that the shake not only has to come well in advance, but also still has to be inputted within the time the shaking Wiimote appears onscreen, making the area of opportunity deceptively small and incredibly confusing. For this reason I have NEVER won a clash outside of the King Arthur fights (and even that was bloody annoying), and it really baffles me as to how I'm expected to get this done.
Outside of that, though? Almost nothing. The swords swings themselves are occasionally slow and slightly unwieldly (even then, it only takes a level or three to adjust), but I've never noticed any actual input lag in the main game throughout the entire playthrough. Did me and Matt actually play the same game here?
Back on the subject of speed again, I should probably reiterate - yes, I know we're talking about The Fastest Thing Alive here, but why should the game be expected to go fast in the first place when clearly the swordplay is supposed to be the main focus of the actual game? Regardless of that though, there are actually ways to play the game on speed, ranging from comboing a Homing Attack and spinning sword move together (which is an awesome combination that tears down peons like a set of goddamn bowling pins) to, oh I dunno, jumping over the enemies altogether. I strongly suspect Matt was so stuck into the "lol waggle" mentality that he didn't give the game any creative thought at all. By Matt's logic you could say the same thing about Devil May Cry - claim that the game is all about pressing X until the other guys die, and completely ignore any possibility of using any other method of attack. Why do reviewers always do this?
Defining Points
- Matt shows strong praise for the graphical and aural displays that the game offers without tying it into the game's overall score. Smart move - if we played games based on their graphical capability we'd all be hailing Crysis as a Halo Killer.
- Writing skill is obviously top-notch, with very few, if any, spelling or grammatical errors throughout the whole two-page review. He also uses some pretty colourful dialouge when he describes how much he thinks the game sucks.
- Actually acknowledges the amount of fanservice put into the game. Considering many people, fans and reviewers alike, bitch about the very same things they asked for years ago, this is incredibly rare for the franchise.
What could've been done better
- The review is overall incredibly inconsistent and bordering on outright hypocrisy. It deliberately overlooks gameplay components for the sake of making the game out to be generic and repetitive, and goes as far as to exaggerate flaws beyond their area of context to emphasise that view.
- It has actually been proven that Matt didn't finish the game fully (up to the secret final boss). To a person with half a brain, this won't matter - one doesn't search through a mountain of shit in hopes of finding a cherry sundae and expect even if they do find one that it still won't have the unmistakable taste and stench of shit all over it - but to less intelligent readers this comes off as obligatory, so they're bound to get the wrong impression easily.
- IGN still stand firmly by its template for Sonic reviews - reference roots, reference modern failings, make current game out to be worst yet. It's so predictable nowadays that it comes off as utterly pathetic and lazy.
- The text descriptions in the score summary was repeatedly edited after the review was published - come on man, if the review ain't even finished then why bother even posting it up on the net?
Overall...
4/10: Briefely touches apon a good point or two only to twist the truth and make the game out worse than it actually is, particularly to its actual target audience. This review is suitable only for deluded anti-fanboys who get a laugh out of people pointing and laughing at Sonic's shortcomings, but even then, you could get better material of that simply by watching Yahtzee's review of Sonic Unleashed.
This review is a PARODY written in the spirit of April Fool's and is not an accurate reflection of anybody's views. If you take anything in this article seriously, you are a complete fucking moron. Good day.
Naturally, they do praise the game for its visual and aural qualities, but that's to be expected - it's about the one thing you CAN'T talk shit about in some way. It certaintly ain't Sonic Unleashed, but for a Wii game the graphics are incredible, and the voice acting follows up from the slow-but-steady curve of improvement that Unleashed helped to start up. They also mentioned that the dialogue was pants, which did seem to make sense before I'd tried the game personally, but I can't find any sign of what they're talking about. Unless they have a problem with the way people actually spoke back in those days.
But you don't read a review just to hear people talk about the graphics do you? Of course not, we can already tell from a glance whether or not the game looks good. So now we go over to the gameplay critique, and even though Matt Casamassina does poke apon a decent point every now and then, much of the remainder of the review screams of ignorance and hypocrisy - not like you expected any less from IGN.
Naturally, the first thing Matt picks on is the lack of speed. Now I don't know why speed should be a defining factor in a game featuring swordplay combat, but even so, I get the impression Matt wasn't even trying. Why should working up a decent amount of speed be an obligatory part of the game as opposed to something that requries some actual skill, built apon over the course of the game (however short it is) to use effectively? It's almost as if they just want a single "go fast" button to go through the whole game.
Oh, wait.
Moving onto the control scheme. I suppose it's to be expected that Matt would complain about generic waggle controls, and ordinarily I'd forgive that kind of complain in most circumstances. But what really strikes me as odd here is that Matt himself has reviewed two games previously (Zelda: Twilight Princess, Sonic and the Secret Rings) with virtually identical attack methods and made them out to be some kind of godsend - on the latter game, I might add, he mentioned that the shaking, quote, "feels great - much better than pressing any button". So what's the deal? Is this kind of waggle control a good thing or not? This kind of redundancy only serves to confuse readers, particularly the ones who regularly frequent or even subscribe to IGN, and I can't say it's good for the writer's credibility either.
And even all that said, the reviewer tends to make it out that all you have to do is to waggle furiously to get anything done, again quote "all you have to do is shake continuously and you'll lay waste to your enemies before they are done with their opening dialogs". For many standard stages early on in the game, this is actually true, as most of the initial enemies die in a single hit before they can land a hit. The chances of this approach actually succeeding rapidly falls in probability as the game progresses though, as the game throws lances (making it impossible to do this kind of frontal attack), giants (who grab you if you get too close within slashing range), and of course my favourite, the bosses (who will literally kick your ass 30 times if you attempt to waggle-mash them).
It all makes me wonder if Matt actually attempted to hold the control stick in a direction other than up when attempting to attack - yes, that's right, even though the motion control has the approximate depth of a button press, the control stick still yields completely different attacks if you tilt in other directions whilst attacking, so in a manner of speaking it's exactly the same control scheme as Twilight Princess. So if you enjoyed Twilight Princess, go ahead and get the game anyway because obviously this complaint doesn't bother you all that much. Point is, you'd be lying if the combat was defined by the rate at which a player can shake a Wiimote if only for this reason alone.
And all of that is even ignoring the possibility that the game was built for a casual audience, who probably couldn't care less how indepth the motion control is - they just want to flail a wiimote about and watch a character onscreen swing to the rhythm, simple as that.
I've also heard some complaints of input lag as far as the Wiimote swinging goes. This, again, is actually true, but only partly - whenever two characters clash swords in a boss fight, the game requires specifically timed shakes to parry the opponent's strikes and break the clash (it deserves mention that this process both looks and sounds absolutely fucking awesome, by the way), but I found with the clash inputs that the shake not only has to come well in advance, but also still has to be inputted within the time the shaking Wiimote appears onscreen, making the area of opportunity deceptively small and incredibly confusing. For this reason I have NEVER won a clash outside of the King Arthur fights (and even that was bloody annoying), and it really baffles me as to how I'm expected to get this done.
Outside of that, though? Almost nothing. The swords swings themselves are occasionally slow and slightly unwieldly (even then, it only takes a level or three to adjust), but I've never noticed any actual input lag in the main game throughout the entire playthrough. Did me and Matt actually play the same game here?
Back on the subject of speed again, I should probably reiterate - yes, I know we're talking about The Fastest Thing Alive here, but why should the game be expected to go fast in the first place when clearly the swordplay is supposed to be the main focus of the actual game? Regardless of that though, there are actually ways to play the game on speed, ranging from comboing a Homing Attack and spinning sword move together (which is an awesome combination that tears down peons like a set of goddamn bowling pins) to, oh I dunno, jumping over the enemies altogether. I strongly suspect Matt was so stuck into the "lol waggle" mentality that he didn't give the game any creative thought at all. By Matt's logic you could say the same thing about Devil May Cry - claim that the game is all about pressing X until the other guys die, and completely ignore any possibility of using any other method of attack. Why do reviewers always do this?
Defining Points
- Matt shows strong praise for the graphical and aural displays that the game offers without tying it into the game's overall score. Smart move - if we played games based on their graphical capability we'd all be hailing Crysis as a Halo Killer.
- Writing skill is obviously top-notch, with very few, if any, spelling or grammatical errors throughout the whole two-page review. He also uses some pretty colourful dialouge when he describes how much he thinks the game sucks.
- Actually acknowledges the amount of fanservice put into the game. Considering many people, fans and reviewers alike, bitch about the very same things they asked for years ago, this is incredibly rare for the franchise.
What could've been done better
- The review is overall incredibly inconsistent and bordering on outright hypocrisy. It deliberately overlooks gameplay components for the sake of making the game out to be generic and repetitive, and goes as far as to exaggerate flaws beyond their area of context to emphasise that view.
- It has actually been proven that Matt didn't finish the game fully (up to the secret final boss). To a person with half a brain, this won't matter - one doesn't search through a mountain of shit in hopes of finding a cherry sundae and expect even if they do find one that it still won't have the unmistakable taste and stench of shit all over it - but to less intelligent readers this comes off as obligatory, so they're bound to get the wrong impression easily.
- IGN still stand firmly by its template for Sonic reviews - reference roots, reference modern failings, make current game out to be worst yet. It's so predictable nowadays that it comes off as utterly pathetic and lazy.
- The text descriptions in the score summary was repeatedly edited after the review was published - come on man, if the review ain't even finished then why bother even posting it up on the net?
Overall...
4/10: Briefely touches apon a good point or two only to twist the truth and make the game out worse than it actually is, particularly to its actual target audience. This review is suitable only for deluded anti-fanboys who get a laugh out of people pointing and laughing at Sonic's shortcomings, but even then, you could get better material of that simply by watching Yahtzee's review of Sonic Unleashed.
This review is a PARODY written in the spirit of April Fool's and is not an accurate reflection of anybody's views. If you take anything in this article seriously, you are a complete fucking moron. Good day.
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