Game Review: Half Life 2

As I've said before, I'm usually very much behind the times when it comes to gaming. I recently completed playing Half Life 2, one of the most anticipated games of 2005. I got started in video games as an adult in shooter games, particularly games like Medal of Honor. But I've become more a fan of RPG's. Shooters are fine, but how many different ways are there to shoot a machine gun? But I wanted something different and this game seemed just the ticket.

Every time this game, or its predecessor, is reviewed, they talk, no rave, about the strong story telling. I played part of Half Life, and all of Half Life 2. What story? The game starts with Gordon Freeman waking up on a train in City 17. Why you are there is never really explained. Just go with it, you're there. You start roaming around, eventually get a crowbar and the game is on. For the next many hours, you run through an elaborate maze picking up various weapons along the way and killing a whole bunch of people, zombies, and aliens who are trying to kill you. Why you are doing this is not explained. Why the bad guys want to kill you is not explained, though I guess once you start killing them it's pretty obvious why they want to return the favor. Just go with it, you're a one-man army. And then, it's .... over. You've achieved ... something. But there is "immersive story telling."

Don't get me wrong, it's a fun game. The graphics and sound are really good. There is variety in the game. You aren't just shooting all the time. There are levels where you pilot a boat and where you drive a buggy. Sometimes you get to control alien entities and let them to the hard work of clearing out rooms. It takes up a lot of time and is definitely enjoyable.

There is one section that was just plain aggravating. You have to cross through this sandy region where if you touch the sand, antlions will rise up continuously until you are dead. So you have to pick up debris that just happens to be lying around and step from box to box to get to the other end. Slowly. Tediously. Whoever thought of that should get slapped.

The ending pretty much stinks. You lose all but one weapon, which mysteriously gets upgraded by the enemy. It becomes a cool little gun and gives you new ways of eliminating your enemies. But isn't the point of a shooter game to have multiple weapons you can choose from? Beyond that, it ends pretty much out of the blue.

Anyway, as a shooter game, it's fun. Just don't talk to me about story.

Game Review: Dreamfall: The Longest Journey

This game is a sequel to an earlier PC game called The Longest Journey, which I have never played. It is billed as an action/adventure game, which is pretty misleading. There is very little action, and what there is is pretty primitive. It's really more of a puzzle game in which the player is given a sequence of tasks to figure out how to accomplish.

Dreamfall tells a story set well into the future, but in a world that is still very recognizable. Or should I say, one world that is recognizable. The game actually covers three worlds, existing in parallel universes. There our world, which for some reason is called Stark. The world of Arcadia is a bit more like medieval Europe, but with magic. And then there's the world called Winter.

The primary character is a Moroccan girl named Zoë. She's a college dropout with no real direction in life. She has broken up with her boyfriend Reza, who is a journalist and is developing a story as the game begins. When Reza disappears, Zoë sets out to look for him and the game is on. She begins to uncover the story Reza was working on, and it involves the world's biggest electronics company whose newest product, the Dreamer, will revolutionize entertainment by giving the user dreams so vivid nothing else will compare.

I could continue, like the game was a movie and this was a movie review. The game has a very elaborate story, so much so that there are numerous long stretches in the game where the player simply watches the cutscenes. I like story-driven games, but this is almost overbearing taking the player away from the game for far too long. One of the ambitions behind Enter the Matrix was that it would tell a detailed story set in the Matrix universe and complete the movies. The problem is Atari forgot that in the end it was a game, so a lot of budget was put into the story side and didn't pay much attention to the game, and the results were obvious to anyone who played. In Dreamfall, they spend so much time on the story that the fighting is a joke and the player is taken away from the game for far too long.

Given that the story is so important to the game, how is it? Again, I haven't played the first game so I can't say if that would impact my impressions. The setup is good. Conspiracies make for a good story and this is no exception. I certainly wanted to get to the next level so I could see more of what was happening. But when they get to the meat of the story, it kind of just falls apart and gets totally confusing.

Remember, there are three worlds involved and I've only described what's happening in one. In the setup phase, there is only that world, except for one very short sequence in Arcadia, which has no connection to anything so I'm not sure why they put it there. But when they get to the heart of the story, Zoë wakes up in Arcadia. Why? Not really sure. There is a plot element driven by a little girl straight out of the movie The Ring who tells Zoë to save April Ryan, apparantly the heroine of the first game. But other than that, Zoë's travels in Arcadia have no bearing that I could understand on the events in Stark.

Now, in Arcadia we meet and play as April. Why? Uh, I don't know. For such a story-driven game, there appears to be no real story around April, and the events in Arcadia seem to have no bearing on the main story taking place around Zoë. There appears to be some sort of connection, but what it is is not explained nor explored. She's a rebel fighting against the Azadi who have occupied Marcuria.

In Arcadia, we also meet and play as a third character, the Apostle. Why? Uh, I don't know this either. His story is the smallest of the three, and makes the least sense. He's an Azadi warrior serving the empresses of Sadir and who is sent on a mission to Marcuria to bring down the rebels, which will bring him into contact and conflict with April. At some point, he inexplicably changes sides, at which time his story ends.

By now, whatever was interesting in the story has worn off and you just want to get it over with. None of the stories end very cleanly, or at all. There is no sense of resolution at the end. Frankly you fail to achieve much of anything toward your goals and ultimately fail. What kind of game is that? The only way I can make sense of the confusion and resolution is to think that this is the middle act of a bigger story, that there will be a third game which will sort everything out and make sense of what just seems unfocused confusion and bring the disparate story lines together. Having only played this game, I don't know that I would want to play that next, if there is one, but at least knowing that that was the plan might make this one a bit easier to take.

I've pretty much focused on the story, but that's because that's the heart of the game. As a game, the fighting, the few times that you actually do fight, is quite primitive. Like I said, it's more a puzzle game, and the puzzles are OK. Most are not particularly challenging, but there are couple good ones, and some that I have no idea how you would solve them without a walkthrough. There's one sequence playing as April where you have to set 4 widely spaced dials to the right values, but there's no rhyme or reason to the right settings, so I guess you just have to randomly set them until it works. There are actually a couple of sequences with April like that. If there was something to figure out that would tell you the right sequence, OK, but to find the one out of 24 possible sequences is just annoying and frustrating.

The graphics are great. The game looks really good. And it sounds really good, too. Both the soundtrack and the voice actors are very good. Those are really the only unqualified positives I can give.

So, in the end, Dreamfall is a story driven game where the story all but overwhelms the actual game and is confusing and disappointing. But it looks good.

Game Review: Fable

One of the reasons I wanted to get an XBox was for games like Fable. Having played it, the best way I can describe it is by quoting the a line from the opening of Bon Jovi's Social Disease: you mean that's it? Whatever the game may have going for it, it is short. No, I really mean short. I'm talking 10 hours short. In this day and age, that's a joke.

The game is a role playing game set in some dark-ages like setting. In this world, members of the guild of Heroes roam the land, either fighting evil doers or killing the innocent. The game starts with the player as a child whose home is destroyed by bandits. The child is taken into the guild and trained as a Hero. After training, the player guides the character through a series of quests. The main storyline is driven by learning more about who destroyed your home and getting either revenge or justice.

As is the fashion today in RPG's, the game features morality options. You can play as a good guy or a bad guy, making choices throughout the game play to affect your alignment. Strangely though, this morality has little impact on the game. The guild itself does not care if you are good or bad. They treat you exactly the same. Whether saintly or demonic, women will respond the same to your offers of chocolates and marriage. So, ultimately your alignment affects your character's appearance (horns and glowing red eyes if evil, radiance if good) and how people react to you (civilians will cower in fear if evil, applaud if good), but that's about it. Of the four RPGs I've played with the morality choices (Knights of the Old Republic I and II, Jade Empire, and Fable), morality has the least relevance in this one.

One of the reasons the game is so short is there really isn't much to do. You have your quests, some of which will advance the main storyline, others which won't. The developers tried to introduce more openness by allowing you to, for example, hit on women and try to get them to marry you. Once married, you can even have sex with them, and a tracker is provided to keep up with how many times you have. Apart from having sex with your wife, you can beat her (it's a little troubling to me that wife beating is translated into game entertainment, but that's another post) and she will divorce you, and yes there's a tracker to keep up with how many times you've been divorced. And, of course, you can kill all the innocent civilians you want, if you are playing evil. Oh, and you can buy houses and rent them out. Sure, these things will add to the length of the game, but seriously, how long does Lionhead think you are going to keep doing these things?

Playing the game the first time, it's interesting. It certainly looks good and the combat is interesting, varied, and challenging at times. But then all the sudden it's over, and all you can think of is Bon Jovi's song. Play again? Why?

Game Review: Jade Empire (Limited Edition)

Yes, I am a bit behind the times in gaming. I don't usually get to a game until long after it's been released. Why spend $50 for one brand-new game when you can wait a while and get 3 games for the same $50? Anyway...

My first experience with the RPG genre was Bioware's Knights of the Old Republic. It was, and remains, my favorite game. What I didn't realize at the time was just how good that game was. I keep playing other RPGs, expecting to find what I liked about KoToR, and finding they don't have those elements, the biggest being story telling. Rather than work on the sequel to KoToR, Bioware chose to follow up with a brand new game, Jade Empire. Surely Bioware could provide a game every bit as good as KoToR.

Did they? Not really. The game is very good, but still falls short of KoToR.

The game is set in a world that looks and feels very much like ancient China. The characters all have Chinese-like names and there is a strong focus on martial arts. The empire has stood for centuries with the emperors all but worshipped. Decades ago, the empire was afflicted by a severe drought, but the emperor was eventually able to solve the problem, though no one knows exactly how. In the process of solving the drought, the Emperor found a new right-hand man, Death's Hand, who leads the Lotus Assassins, who are essentially the secret police of the empire. The game begins with the player as a student in a provincial martial arts academy. The Lotus Assassins attack the school, kidnapping the instructor. And the adventure begins.

As with KoToR, the player moves through the empire, tracking his master, and picking up followers along the way. The followers will aid in the quest and in combat. But not everyone or everything is as they appear to be.

What worked? The biggest improvement in Jade Empire is the combat system. KoToR had a glorified turn-based combat scheme in which the player chose one move at a time, queuing up to three moves to be executed in succession. The scheme had a bit more of a real-time combat system than true turn-based combat, as in Gladius. But it was still awkward and lacked the excitement of a more combat-oriented game. Empire improves on this approach resulting in a feel that is much closer to adventure games like the Lord of the Rings games than previous attempts. And there's plenty of fighting to be done.

There are also plenty of styles and techniques to choose from, from martial arts and swords to "demon" styles in which you transform into something else. So, there are plenty of ways to approach the myriad fights in the game. And one style won't work against every enemy. In KoToR, a light saber with master flurry or force storm destroyed just about everything in the path. You have to be more versatile in this game.

I played the game on my new XBox (first game I have played on the platform), whereas I played KoToR on a PC, so it's hard to compare graphics and performance. But the game looked and sounded fantastic. Having said that, there are some amusing exceptions to this. Occasionally, the player will be given interludes in which he has to engage in aerial combat, equivalent to those interludes in KoToR where you man the guns on the Ebon Hawk. These segments felt very retro, reminding me of the very old days of Defender on the Atari 2600. 2-D graphics with a little flyer icon moving back and forth across the bottom of the screen shooting enemies that come down from the top. (Defender meets Space Invaders.) And then there's a sequence late in the game where you have to defend a bridge while a follower sets some explosives. The character moves across the screen but the camera doesn't, so you end up fighting at the very edge of the screen against enemies you can't really see because they are off screen.

What didn't work? I have one complaint about the combat system, an element they seem to have incorporated from Enter the Matrix. In battle, the player's character moves as if to circle the enemy rather than simply moving in the direction the player directs. This makes it quite awkward to try to move the character around, for example to pick up a power up, or to simply get away from an enemy for a moment.

Like KoToR, the game has a morality element in which the player can choose to be a good guy (Way of the Open Palm, the equivalent of playing the light side in KoToR) or an evil guy (Way of the Closed First, equivalent of playing the dark side in KoToR). Unlike KoToR, there seemed to be little value in this. In KoToR, one's appearance changed according to alignment and one got a bonus to certain character attributes if mastery was achieved. Sith Lords expanded on this to have alignment affect interactions with the followers. In Empire, it didn't really seem to make much of a difference. There was a bonus earned late in the game (a new essence gem), but that's about it.

Speaking of followers, they add little if anything to the game. One of the things I loved about KoToR was interacting with the supporting characters and uncovering their stories. In Empire, they don't have stories. Or, if they do, the game reveals the stories as part of the plot; there is little purpose in talking to the other characters. The only real outcome was that one character fell in love with the main character and they kissed.

More generally, there isn't much of a story. Certainly, things didn't go the way I expected them to, with a surprising twist about two thirds of the way through. But overall, there really isn't much to the plot.

The game is billed as an RPG, but it's really RPG-lite. Most RPGs are built around giving the ability to customize and alter just about everything, from abilities and attributes, to clothing, appearance, etc. Empire gives you a choice among a handful of pre-built characters to begin the game, with no customization. While you can alter their attributes as the game progresses, as with any RPG, you are stuck with the face and clothing the character had to begin with. The game feels more like an action-adventure game with more choices about combat style than a true RPG. That's not necessarily bad. I happen to like action-adventure games. But it something to realize before choosing to play the game.

That's a lot of negatives, I guess, but it really is a good game. It's not much of an RPG, but it is an enjoyable action game with lots of combat and ways to approach the game. That should be more than enough to occupy most gamers' attention for a long time.

Game Review: Knights of the Old Republic II: Sith Lords

I have recently completed my first run through the PC version of the Knights of the Old Republic II: Sith Lords (KOTOR2) video game. I was and still am a huge fan of the first game, which is one of the best I have ever played, so I awaited the sequel with great anticipation. When I bought the game, I read some reviews and was surprised to find just about every one gave a laundry list of complaints and then 4 out of 5 stars. My review: a lot of complaints, 4 out of 5 stars.

As with any sequel, the game will inevitably be compared with its illustrious predecessor. That explains everyone's complaints. The game is vastly inferior to the first. But compared to other RPG style games, it is still good. The high marks for KOTOR2 are really an indication of just how good KOTOR1 was.

Before getting to the complaints, let's be positive and address the improvements. The gameplay and controls are as in the first game. The combat interface is improved. The player can equip each character with two sets of weapons, and switch between with a single mouse click. This is nice early in the game when you may switch between blasters and swords, but once your character acquires a lightsaber, you won't be switching much if at all. Speaking of lightsabers, there are more components to the saber than can be upgraded--lenses, emitters, and power cells--along with the usual crystals. That makes it more interesting. And the user can assemble basic components at workbenches.

The most important change in gameplay is that the player's interaction with other characters can influence those characters, and many of them can become Jedi if you handle them right. This influence game can be tricky, but it does make the user think a little more about more nuanced dialog choices. But if you mess something up with a character, that character may never speak to you again in the game.

My biggest complaint about KOTOR1 is that the game had a cap for character development at level 20. And that was the combination of the level achieved on Taris, i.e. before becoming a Jedi, with the levels achieved as a Jedi. Given that one could spend a lot of time and gain a lot of experience on Taris, this cap restricted just how much one could do as a Jedi. In fact, the user was effectively encouraged to rush through Taris as fast as possible, gaining as little experience as possible, so save the level ups for after becoming a Jedi. KOTOR2 removes this cap. First of all, the main character is a Jedi to begin with. And the character can level up as much as possible. So this is a major improvement.

Now the complaints. Where to start? What I loved most about KOTOR1 was the story. The main story was interesting in itself, but each of the supporting characters also had their own personal stories and the more time one spent with them, the more one learned. In this game, the story is virtually non-existent, and in the end I really don't understand it. Rather than chasing down star maps, the main mission for the game is to track down some hidden Jedi masters. Why? I'm not really sure. Something about getting them back together to smoke out the enemy. But they are in hiding to begin with because getting together smokes out the enemy, and that's a bad thing. And when you finally get them together, all they want to do is strip you of your Jedi powers, because you are a wound in the Force who could spell the end of the Force. I gather in the dark side game, you actually fight the masters you have assembled.

And the characters have basically no story. You might learn a little bit about a character in order to turn them into Jedi, but that's about all.

Some planets in the game seem totally unfinished. Nar Shadaa is especially bad here. Quests pop up in the journal that make no sense. In a pazaak den, I meet a droid who plays very bad pazaak. OK. Now I have a quest. What does the quest say? I met a droid who plays very bad pazaak. It makes no sense. Then there are quests you can't finish. I meet a woman who is looking for a pilot and a pilot who is looking for a job. I have two quests, to provide what each needs. Obvious answer: hook the two up. Can't do it. (I've only played once, so there may be a solution to that one, but I couldn't find it.) On Malachor V near the end of the game, I looked at the map which identified locations like a meditation chamber in non-existent places. It's like they had the idea to put a meditation chamber there, but didn't and never removed the indicator from the map.

Another way some levels seem unfinished is that scenes appear in the game that make no sense. For example, on Malachor V, the game brings up a confrontation between Mira and Hanharr. Why? Does Mira somehow factor into what will happen next in the level? No. Mira wins the battle and then is never seen again. So why move away from the main character for this battle when it serves no purpose? Again, I bet there was idea earlier in the game development that something would emerge from that scene. Maybe Mira would be captured and I would have to free her. But then that plot line got dropped but the battle remained.

I have read that LucasArts gave Obsidian only 12 months to develop the game, which would explain the sense of incompleteness.

The game is buggy, even with the latest patch. I played on a PC, and admittedly mine is not a top of the line gaming machine. In fact, it is at the low end of requirements. So I expect issues, but still, some of the bugs were ridiculous. On multiple occasions, I had to restart from an earlier saved game because something got stuck. For example, on Onderon there is a big battle in the throne room of the palace. Somehow I got the game into a state where the battle was not finished, but I could not fight anyone so there was no way to get it finished. Elsewhere, I had to fight Darth Nihilious three times to see how the fight ended. His death should trigger a cut scene, but the game kept hanging at that point with a black screen and the sound of lightsabers doing battle. Finally, I hit the quick save button, and got the game back with Nihilious considered dead, but still standing there.

Back to game play, it takes forever to get a lightsaber. As I said, the character is a Jedi from the very beginning of the game, so you always have force powers. But it took me something like 15 hours of gameplay through multiple planets before I got the lightsaber.

So, with all those complaints, why would I give the game a high score. Compared to other RPGs I have played, it is still an excellent game. It is addictive and grabs one's imagination much more than other top RPGs like Champions of Norrath. For that reason, I will give the game a high score. I just wish Obsidian had had more time to put together a better, more complete game. You can't rush some things.