1 Response

1. Glazius Says:

   Storyline
   Design
   Gameplay
   Detail

   @GlaziusF

   Running this on a level 50 spine/regen scrapper, +1/x2 with bosses on.

   —

   Ah, a meta-Architect scenario? These can be fun.

   A mysterious old man (no contact description) wants me to test his program. This should be simple…

   Looks like an ordinary 5th column stomp in the Requiem base — is that the first map in the special maps list? I’m curious.

   Ordinary up until some weird sonic necromancer void cultist who shows up in the boss room.

   —

   …and immediately I’m fighting the cult that man was supposed to be a member of and sucking the soul out of one of its major operatives? Wow.

   That’s kind of a jump from what might be a program glitch.

   Anyway, I go to fight the cult… and wow, there’s a lot of variety. I think I’m seeing pretty much every conventional (non-elemental) melee set on display. And a little necro and some guys with guns.

   The man in charge looks to be dark melee/dark blast, and too much in thrall to oblivion to feel anything.

   —

   And now I’m destroying them?

   Something seems fishy here. I mean, if it was this easy to off these guys you’d think someone would have done it before.

   Well, I’ll see how it all shakes out.

   Judging by the altar showing up halfway through the mission, I suspect there’s something more going on here… and the clue does not disappoint. The only mystery is what this demon’s powers are.

   Looks like… sonic blast. Nothing major.

   Should probably be “decrepit shell” there in the debrief.

   —

   Storyline- **. I’d make a “curse your sudden but inevitable betrayal” joke, but… it wouldn’t really be a joke. The arc flips straight from an innocuous testing mission to murdering a dude to stuff his soul in a crystal, so the betrayal is both sudden and inevitable. It’s really the sudden tone shift from innocuous to murderous that tips my contact’s hand.

   And why am I getting involved again? I’m killing a guy who’s tired of life anyway and who probably wouldn’t mind giving up his nihilized body to bring the cult’s dark patron into the world.

   Design - **. There’s an attempt to establish an immediate breadth of activity with this death cult that’s supposedly been working in the world for a while now. I can’t really work out what makes them so different from the Banished Pantheon, the current established group of cultists for the gods outside reality.

   By “breadth of activity” I’m talking about the varied descriptions on the various custom mobs, which seem to be setting up an internal structure. The problem is that it comes at us all at once, and the vast amount of variety on display makes it tough to actually pick out anybody’s individual story. Except for the case of the larvae and the pistolero there’s really nothing to tie an individual’s story to their powers. The meleers may just as well have all the same generic thug description (varying based on rank) — it’d actually make them a little more sensible.

   Gameplay - ****. The customs are generally not hard to fight, and the clustering in melee is appreciated. The first mission is a little long for something whose only gimmick is “there’s something off at the end”, though, and comes across feeling bland.

   Detail - ***. The detail reasonably sets up the simple story; the only real problem I have with it is in the description of the customs, where there are a lot of supposed distinctions being drawn that don’t really matter in the short term.

   Overall - **. So there are three kinds of games you can roughly call “horror”: shock, suspense, and Castlevania. Shock is a suddenness of lights and sounds to spark an adrenaline rush — suddenly, a zombie jumps through a plate glass window! Suspense builds a feeling of dread through environments that take familiar elements and use them in odd and unsettling ways — it only takes one zombie inside a department store mannequin before you’re suspicious of every one you pass. Castlevania puts a giant mass of zombies on the other end of a brightly lit corridor from you and lets you have at them with your sanctified weapon of choice.

   It’s nigh-impossible to do shock in the mission architect. Maybe a clever arrangement of chained objectives could pull it off, on the right map? I think certain giant monsters or oddly boned mobs can be posed so that by default they largely clip into the ground, as well. Suspense is hard, but still doable — there are decayed environments and it’s possible to introduce “noise” into text or use allied mob groups posed in strange tableaux. But by default what you get out of the mission architect is Castlevania. (Or if you’re using the Ruladak cave, Castlevania with the lights off, which isn’t so much shock as it is a bad Castlevania.)

   Now, there’s nothing wrong with Castlevania by itself. But it’s not very shocking or unsettling. I came into this expecting a meta-architect scenario, where this cult would somehow start manifesting in Architect itself and the system would “go haywire” trapping me inside with something that wanted to possess me. That at least is some dread-flavored horror. But what I got was Castlevania, with a plot twist I saw coming a long way away.

   Posted on November 29th, 2010 at 9:19 pm