2 Responses

1. @Tobacconist Says:

   Storyline
   Design
   Gameplay
   Detail

   This arc started out wonderfully, very well written, good settings, interesting enemies. The psychodrama mission was quite entertaining. Unfortunately, when the outdoor mission involving CoT got going, it became a frustrating, maddening, infuriating hunt for an NPC that I never found. I ended up having to just quit after hunting for an hour. Too bad. It started out very well.

   Posted on May 8th, 2009 at 9:55 pm

2. Glazius Says:

   Storyline
   Design
   Gameplay
   Detail

   @GlaziusF

   Playing on a low 40s DB/Fire brute, diff 2 so I fight bosses as bosses. Mission Engineer draws ever closer.

   —

   Lumps of crystal sitting around giving out missions is no basis for a system of justice! How would it sound if I said a piece of jasper told me to rob a bank?

   But more seriously, the second person contactery doesn’t work. Drop it into first-person, wrap some italics around it, and call it good. It turns into a headtrip instead of somebody awkwardly puppeting me and telling me how to feel.

   It’s kind of sad that the knockoff reflections of Crey are more fun to fight than actual Crey in this level range.

   “permeate” is active, not passive. You can’t just substitute it for “fill”. And, uh, giant hunks of rock don’t have emotions. Emotions are evoked, not projected.

   —

   Passive-aggressive little hunk of shiny, this crystal. First it decides I’m offended, then it decides it’s apologized. Look, buddy, just give it to me straight, alright?

   …

   HATE THIS MAP.

   Only one layout, terrible pain to navigate, have to click on a “dead end” to progress making it impenetrable for first-timers, can’t freaking see anything. It works in its original context because most if not all of the Rularuu glow. This is not my beautiful 1800s cattle town! I was expecting like that one Croatoa village map or something!

   And there are little internal demons that let me know I’ve found them by popping build up.

   …wonderful. The terrible thing about these caves in general, and this map’s use of them in specific, is that you can knock something into a wall and then it can hit you from anywhere on the map but you can never hit it.

   GUESS WHAT I DID TO A BOSS.

   Quitting game, coming back, planning the knockaround a little better this time. And that fight was going so well until the Sapper stepped in, too.

   Speaking of sappers, aim and short circuit put together can take out about 2/3 of an end bar pretty inerrantly. Good thing the AI doesn’t understand the range of the latter or I’d really be screwed.

   Man. This is gonna turn out to be another arc about playing psychotherapist to some codependent nutjob who thinks the best way to honor the dead is by destroying everything else they ever loved. At least this time I’m taking my frustrations out on the twisted little twisters inside his brain.

   Also now that I don’t knock a boss into a wall, “prevades” is probably a typo for “pervades”, and it means “to be everywhere”, meaning using it as a contrast doesn’t work either. (Yes, I’m being a little anal about this when I overlook other grammar mistakes in other arcs. If you’re going to use ten-dollar words don’t put ‘em on paper plates.)

   …also, random boss placement REALLY doesn’t work in this cave, because there are side passages that you can just completely ignore on your first pass.

   —

   Yeah. First-person narrative would really work a lot better here. You’re trying to express sensations that don’t really work when all there are is a wall of text.

   Huh. Okay, so is this in an alternate dimension (as Neuron’s bots would seem to suggest) or are the Portal Corp labs just falling apart now?

   (also, PX4837 isn’t consistent with Portal Corp nomenclature. All the dimensions heroes visit have the pattern “greek letter greek letter number-number” and the numbers seem to be two digits at most. For example, the Psychic Clockwork dimension is Epsilon Tau 27-2.)

   —

   Why yes, intro text, I do wonder why the Circle is here in this graveyard.

   It would be nice if one of them would tell me.

   ….okay, one of them does! But exactly how brushing some moss off a tombstone and getting interrupted notifies him I have no idea. (seriously it just seems like that objective bugs out. Also the stone vanishes but that may be deliberate.)

   …uh, dude, I know Diviner Maros. I’ve done missions for Diviner Maros. And you, sir, are no Diviner Maros. I appreciate the paucity of the models but with the arcane pack out you can probably whip up a custom that looks pretty close.

   —

   And now it’s time to fight somebody’s emotions come to life in a freaky alternate dimension.

   …uh, I think I did this already and it was called mission 2.

   Still the same 3 EBs with an AV friend to help ‘em. Can a brotha get that greatest of all treasures, which is Hope? Or some kind of assist.

   I mean, from what I understand the dude locked himself in a room and paced his thoughts around so much they wore through the floor of his mind, turning him into a psychopath with a private army of neuroses.

   There’s got to be something left that wants to actually go on living.

   —

   Storyline - ***. This is another mission that tries to get cute with the contact. The problem is that, while I have no doubt the author has a clear picture in mind while writing, that picture has to transmit, and the more stylized the text gets, the less likely it is to actually happen. I have no idea what distinguishes mission 1 from mission 3, or mission 2 from mission 5, other than that 2 and 3 are more boring than their counterparts - 2 because of the map, 3 because Crey provide a lot more variety than Neuron’s wall o’ robots.

   Design - ****. The maps at least make sense with what they’re supposed to be, and the use of custom enemies and custom groups is generally well-done. I do question giving the lieuts and EBs access to Aim/Build Up, if possible Maros needs a model that actually looks more like him, and given that all the psychos are supposed to be manifestations of one guy’s heartbreak shouldn’t they all be one gender? I mean, Despair comes off as a heartbroken lesbian, which I am pretty sure a guy from the 1800s would spontaneously combust on encountering.

   Gameplay - ****. The EBs with their occasional short-circuiting help are a pain, and the final boss opens the fight with Instant Healing. I wore most of it out taking out his mook squad and his singy, but we were still ineffectually flailing at each other for quite some time.

   Detail - **. The main fault in the storyline is how terribly the contact text expresses what’s actually going on. It feels like someone trying to communicate with sign language in a mascot costume - there are shapes under the surface moving but it’s very hard to tell what they mean. Eventually I just gave up. Which is exactly the opposite of what you want to happen.

   Overall - ***. An arc that needs a pass for balance, and whose storytelling style attempts to do something new but ends up obscuring the story. Not the overall shape of what’s going on, but the reason why each mission is happening.

   Posted on June 6th, 2009 at 6:18 pm