Bloody rats
You can see it when you compare System Shock to Bioshock, for instance. While Bioshock was advertised as a spiritual successor to the highly acclaimed System Shock 2, the game was incredibly shallow and simple compared to System Shock. Bioshock had as much to do with ‘RPG’ as I have with hair on my head. It was pretty and atmospheric – but shallow. Which is somewhat strange if you remember where the game took place (ba-dum-tish).
Fallout 3 is another such example. While Fallout 3 definitely ranks among my most favourite games ever, it also contained much less depth than the previous Fallout games, as well as less depth than its spiritual predecessor, The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion. There simply weren’t as many paths to follow, not as many nooks and crannies to discover, no guilds to join, relatively few quests, and character development had elements taken away.
And here we have Sacred 2, a hack and slash RPG in its purest form. Refreshingly, no concessions have been made to make the game approachable or easy to use for 13-year-olds. Character development is complicated, weapon statistics read like Excel spreadsheets, and the different avenues for damage, ability, and armour development are plenty. Because of this, the game has more statistics and management windows than your average operating system, but somehow the developers still managed to make it all playable with the limited amount of buttons on the XBox 360 controller.
First, let’s get all the bad things of the game out of the way. Sadly, this will take a few paragraphs.
This being a role-playing game, you’d expect a story that sucks you in, and keeps you entertained and forces you to move on, because you’re interested in where it will lead you, how it will affect your character and the world around him or her. Sadly, I lost sight – and interest – in the main story of the game after about 25 seconds, mostly because of the horrible voice acting and the disjointed nature of the story; it seems to be jumping all over the place without a clear path to follow.
Side quests (of which there are ~600) are a bit of a hit-and-miss; some of them are genuinely funny and entertaining, while others are badly written and make little sense. The game also suffers from broken quests every now and then, which can be quite annoying. Luckily, the internet can usually inform you of ways to ‘fix’ broken quests.
For a traditional hack and slash game, it’s also insultingly easy – at least for me. I don’t know how much trouble the game is posing for other players, but I currently have more than 3000 health potions, so I don’t exactly feel threatened by my enemies – who are also quite easy to kill. The game hasn’t felt threatening from the moment I started playing it, and this certainly takes away a lot of the joy in playing an RPG – that crippling fear that the next dungeon will pose a genuine threat to your carefully developed character.
Oh and for the love of the gods, what’s up with all the rats? Throughout most of the game, I felt less like the loving and caring hero of the land, and more like an extremely overpowered but highly ineffective pest control company.
However, I think my biggest gripe with the game is the lack of a pause button. Yes, you actually read that right: Sacred 2 does not have a pause button. This probably stems from the fact that online co-op play is a major feature of the game, and pausing in multi-player games is always a bit problematic. Still, I turned off any connection to XBox live within the game, strictly focussing on the single-player experience (RPG = single player, for me, I’m weird). As such, I demand a pause button! It’s very tiring always having to find a friendly town or NPC to talk to before I can actually safely go to the loo or grab a drink.
While the enemies aren’t very dangerous while playing, standing around doing nothing while the enemies kill you will make you lose your survival bonus, while also leading to point loss for your attributes.
The loot reflex
Every person with an affinity for role playing games will recognise the loot reflex; it’s this almost instinctive urge to go around and explore every corner, closet, and chest in a room, because maybe, just maybe, that one room you though about skipping contains a +29 sword of retribution (as opposed to your current +28 sword of retribution).
Sacred 2 is a game designed entirely by and for people with very strong loot reflexes. The amount of loot in the game is literally insane; swords, armour, rings, talismans, potions, pendants, shields, poles, spears, throwing stars and daggers, energy pistols, magic staffs, clubs, axes, spells, and so on, and so forth. There is such a huge amount of loot in this game that you’ll just want to keep on moving to the next loot location or monster party just because there you might just finally find that last of the nine parts of the Niokaste armour set.
Character development is also a strong aspect of the game. Not only can you develop your attributes (strength, vitality, dexterity, etc.), but you can also learn new combat arts (special attacks and spells), and all of these total of 15 combat arts per character class can be modified individually. You can also string different combat arts together for more devastating attacks. Then there are character skills, of which there are quite a few (but you can only learn a limited set). These skills, too, can be individually developed and improved.
On top of that, you can modify weapons and armour that have gold, silver and/or bronze sockets in which you can forge stones, rings, talismans, or other things that will modify the defensive/offensive capabilities of those weapons and armour pieces – or even of your character as a whole by modifying skills or attributes. There are also five different damage types; fire, ice, magic, poison, and physical. Weapons can deal these types of damage (or can by modified to do so) and armour can protect you from specific types of damage (either by modifying individual pieces of armour, or by carrying relics). These damage types can be dealt in three different ways: regular damage, conversion damage, or my favourite: damage-over-time.
The end result of all this development and statistics business is that developing your character correctly can be a real chore, and most certainly can go wrong too. The game doesn’t have a respec NPC, and offers no option to rollback your choices – in other words, mess up, and you’re boned. Especially during the early stages of the game, when you don’t quite grasp yet how all the effects work together, this can be problematic. For instance, I had upgraded some of my combat arts a little too quickly, which meant they became rather useless: my low-level character could not handle the high-level arts, leading to very long regeneration times, rendering them useless in most combat situations.
The character classes are different from your standard set of classes found in many other fantasy role playing games. Especially the temple guardian, a Stargate-esque Anubis-like cyborg thing which doesn’t use regular weapons but modifiable arms – is completely different from what you would expect in games like this. The addition of mounts and class-specific mounts is also an interesting gameplay mechanic; these mounts (horses, tigers, whatever) have their own set of statistics which affect those of their riders.
That’s like applie pie without custard. Like a car without brakes. Like a farmer without wellingtons. Like a dog without fur. It’s naked man.
And it’s kinda lazy.
Edited 2009-08-23 19:27 UTC
There’s this thing called the internet, where there are game and video sites which are much better at showing off screenshots than I am.
To me, games aren’t about graphics, and as such, I don’t find screenshots very important. If you still need your fix, Google is only a few clicks away.
Absolutely true Thom, Google is but a click away, however pointing this out in such a way may also force people to discover what else the Internet has to offer outside of OSnews, if you are lucky they may come back again. Choice is a great thing for viewers and consumers, but it’s a bugger when it offers you competition.
My first comment ever on here, a shame it had to be for this. After all, we were only hoping for a screenshot to illustrate your points.
The sites that those tratorus people that (accourding to you) should be caged, will discover will be gaming sites. And I don’t really think people use OSNews for there daily gaming news.
To be fair, Google can also find reviews of games – we just like getting our stuff from OSNews!
Frankly, your general experiences of the games are more interesting than the ability to look at pictures I could – as you note – get anywhere. However, at least one illustrative screenie is useful for a game, particularly when the detail of the scenery is a major feature of the review.
You’re right that not all console gamers are Halo addicted. There’s nothing wrong with being a Halo addict though!
There’s not *even* anything wrong with being 13 but I think I know what you mean if you’re talking about the abusive teenagers on Live – a friend of mine tried playing online for a bit and got sick of the foul language they kept yelling at him. A shame that the community went that way, I would hope that it’s better these days.
Foul language in squeaky voices!
What does it matter what it looks like? Either the game is fun and worth playing or not. Screenshots are not important.
The gaming review industry really need to get out of their tech obsession and start to actually reviewing games. Separating scores into Audio, Graphics, Gameplay etc is retarded.
When was the last time you saw Roger Ebert score a movie on Effects, Script and Casting? Never, you say? Gee, I wonder why that is.
It’s the whole that’s important, not the parts.
Comparing games to movies is pretty idiotic. You watch movies on a screen, its pure one way interaction.
A big point of gaming is the interaction: both controls, how it plays and immersion.
Next thing you know someone’s going to find a way to compare gaming with manufacturing cars.
So what? It’s the experience that matters. What’s the point of scoring Graphics, Audio etc independently?
It’s the whole of the game that matters, just like with movies or books. Games being interactive has nothing to do with it.
What good is great graphics in a crap game?
While I can’t comment on Mr Ebert’s reviewing style, most reviews I read cover those aspect you mention.
I’ve seen plenty of reviews that state things like “While the acting is weak at times, the story is interesting enough to carry the movie” or “While the story is weak, there is some truly amazing cinematography which is worth the price of admission” and so on and so forth.
I disagree. I’ll go see a movie just because it has an interesting story or just because it has some amazing cinematography or just because they pull off some state of the art special effects work. Sometimes a really good part can compensate for a weak whole.
What I was getting at is the rating of the individual elements. You very commonly see, at most “major” gaming sites, ratings like, for example, Graphics 5, Audio 3, Gameplay 1. I know this is a long-standing tradition but it is one we need to move beyond. It stifles the development of the industry by enforcing that these elements can be rated individually. When was the last time you read, on a game packaging box, things like “gripping story” or “engrossing, lasting gameplay”. No, you’re more likely to read “Uses the latest 3D engine Wazooom-3D-Rawks with Extra-super High Definition”.
One of the few sites I know that gets this right is mobygames where there is only an overall rating.
Umm, all the time actually. Go down to your local games store and actually have a look at some boxes. Many of them brag about their story and lasting game play.
Also every gaming website I know of give games and overall rating that isn’t simply an average of graphics audio and game play, but an overall assessment of good the game is as a game.
Awesome, I’m glad that separate ratings are falling out of favor.
It’s about fanatics who don’t mind having to become fluent in a made-up language, memorize a manual the size of three phone books, and spend 120 hours a week for three years to play a game. Some of us just want a game to be – you know – fun and not consume every waking moment. That’s why I prefer racing games to RPGs.
OK, you need to understand, or if you can’t understand, acknowledge nonetheless, that consoles are CRAP. I don’t mean that in a flame-way, I am here to prove it right now:
Team Fortress 2 – available on PC and Xbox.
PC
– up to 33 players on good servers (official 24), but works flawless wit +30 players
Xbox
12! lousy players. C’mon, if there is 12 players only, it sucks so bad I want to shoot myself. 24 is ok-ish, but nothing quite like 30.
Xbox players can’t play on same servers as PC players, namely because the CRAPPY config does not allow for equal player numbers, and I understand maps are not all 100% identical. – Why oh why would that be necessary in the third millenium?!
NO UPDATES – hey dudes, blind dudes: there is loads of cool contents and fixes, balancing, etc being delivered for PC all the time, even today. XBox hasn’t seen ANY !!!!! of it at all in over a year and if they will eventually do (did they finally by now?) they have to PAY for the FREE content if they are unlucky sucky Xbox users. – I am not making that up, the devs said so in interview. Go hate your crap xbox, not me.
etc etc etc
That is why console players are always at the short end and the only reason why you can be content with that crap is because you evidently do not know any better than that.
Already a year ago you could read in Xbox/TF2 forum comments that there isn’t even many players around for TF2 on XBox and the reason is of course because it is half-baked, sucks, never updated CRAP. – But on PC this game is shining and buzzing like crazy. So it’s not the game, it is the crap platform. Consoles screw you and you buy them because you do not care to educate yourself about it. This is not a question of personal likes, this is a question of fact, read them above.
Oh, and then there is always the input disaster with inferior controls.
10 years ago, the argument went like this: But we already have a TV bla-bla. OK. And today there is a PC/laptop in every house, 5 in ours alone, but only one TV. Guess who is gonna die in the living room if football is on and you want to play crap consoles all night? Yes, you are gonna die
99% people don’t even have an HD TV and so the whole “experience” (the main selling point of X360/PS3) is no better than a PS2 anyway. On the other hand, they are throwing dirt-dirtcheap quality high res TFTs for PC at you at every street corner.
I do not want to be unfair, however. At least the PS3 has some limited use for Folding
So, TF2 is crap on Xbox36o ergo all consoles and console games are crap? Wonderful logic.
You seem to have some irrational aggression against consoles and I hope it helps you to get it out.
One nice piece of logic that proves that consoles suck are the prices. I’m not talking about the prices for the consoles themselves, but the games.
Sacred 2 being a perfect example of this. Pretty much everywhere you look, the price of Sacred 2 has dropped recently to 15-20 dollars for the PC. For the Xbox360 and Playstation 3, it is still in the 40-50 dollars.
One thing Consoles will NEVER be as good as is the role-playing games. It’s not because they can’t handle the graphics or the game play, but it’s because they simply don’t have the complexity one can attain from having a keyboard.
Not to mention that 99% of all the console role-playing games are Final Fantasy clones. Of course a big part of that is due to most of them being influenced by Ultima 1 and Anime.
Sacred 2 may very well be an ‘RPGish’ game, but walking around and hacking up monsters and clicking through dialog for quests is not a true role-playing game, and is basically just Nethack with a pretty interface (not that this is necessarily a bad thing!), it’s just not in the same class as games like Neverwinter Nights, Alternate Reality, Ultima 4-7(maybe 9), Wizardry, Might and Magic, Elder Scrolls, Fallout / Wasteland, Bard’s Tale, etc.
Even running emulators on an original Xbox is painful if it requires the keyboard at all. Gamepads have their place, as do keyboards, flight sticks, mice, touch screens, etc. But they’re not very good at playing games that require a lot of variable input, or really FPS games for that matter. A lot will argue with that last statement, but whenever I read a game forum where they talk about the possibility of letting Xbox360/PS3 players connect with PC players, they always say it wouldn’t be fair, ’cause the PC players would slaughter them with a keyboard / mouse.
Of course playing a racing game with a keyboard is almost OK, but once you’ve used a steering wheel, or even a analog game pad, you just don’t want to go back to the keyboard.
Oh, and I don’t think the Xbox360 or PS3 version of Sacred received the Physx upgrade either.
Consoles have one advantage over PCs. Single development platform. Though in more recent years that hasn’t helped, games seem to be more buggy, since they are more complex. It’s the same reason why Apple computers are more stable than your typical run of the mill beige box (although on a side note, no one calls them that anymore, since most cases are black or silver or pretty much any color BUT beige.)
Nice list.. Alternate Reality rocks for its depth but I think the actual UI could be ported to a modern console without too much difficulty. Developers are intentionally dumbing down games for both PC and console but the latter gets much more.
You fail to list one game that might be better than the ones you mention: Dungeon Master. If you haven’t played it, go get “Chaos Strikes Back for Windows (and Linux, MacOS X, Pocket PC)” (play the DM dungeon first, before the CSB expansion). It’s free.
Also Ultima 3:Exodus is a great game too. Not as deep as IV but still great fun.
Personally I never saw the point in computer RPG’s and find the majority of them dull to the extreme. Another day, another underground dungeon. Oh look, some dwarfs and an elf.
Also, this is your opinion. Some people would say console RPG’s are superior.
Just like how 99% of PC FPS games are dull DOOM/Quake/HL clones?
I dont see why, for example, Fallout couldnt be run on a console. It doesnt really require any keyboard input or a mouse.
Yes, FPS with a pad sucks. On the other hand, I’m not much of a fan of FPS anyway.
Which would, uh, make consoles better since they usually have an analog pad these days. Most PC’s do not come with a steering wheel or an analog joystick.
no, the logic goes like this:
I have two crazy console players in the casa and I have seen it all. In the past 4 years, no matter how unsocial I appeared, I wouldn’t pick up a control (for XB1 / pS2) because I can very well see what it is about. That is a qualified decision made by an otherwise very capable player
(I am always 1st online if I want to and most times if I don’t care) I did play those racing gameson XB / PS – but having played racing on the PC (GP Legends, most bestes realistic demaninding racing game ever) I can see how this is still total crap without a force-feedback wheel. So yes, all console games are crap. Not because TF2 is crap, but because they are simply all crap. Pleasure to help 
“13-year-old Halo-addicted twats”
I had to take a second look when I read that …
Very unprofessional, but rather amusing to see text like this in what is meant to be a professional news site. haha
Well, if you look at OSN as Personal Blog ™, then it isn’t quite as offensive.
Well not offensive as such. Just makes the author appear illiterate and stupid.
Yup, very unprofessional and unnecessary IMHO … C’mon Thom you are the Managing Editor here, is this sort of language really necessary? I hope this isn’t a sign of things to come for OSNews
Edited 2009-08-24 07:23 UTC
I thought it was very offensive. Previously, I directed my students to follow stories on osnews as part of a class following technology trends. I will no longer be able to do this. This was personally very embarrassing for me, as it was a student who told me “twat” was being used in a piece on osnews. I urge you to improve your standards.
As far as I know from British English, “twat” means nothing more than “fool”. I don’t see how it is supposed to be offensive in any way.
While indeed most often used in the above way, it technically also refers to female genitalia (just found that out). Well, that still wouldn’t be a reason for me to lose any sleep over it (I’m not puritan), but I’ve removed it anyway.
Edited 2009-08-24 07:40 UTC
Then I recommend you get a better dictionary (or at least use the one you have). Twat is (among other meanings) a crude slang for vagina.
Err, I’m not the only one who thinks that way.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/dna/h2g2/A753527
My native tongue is not English, so mistakes are bound to occur. I had no idea “twat” was even remotely offensive or had anything to do with anything other than “idiot” or “fool”.
Pathetic.
That still makes you a big twat, Thom, calling people fools, regardless, in a review of a game, about the players of such games.
Review the game, not the players, you twat!
Welcome to the Internet. Warning, people may say things you dislike in a language you don’t approve of.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twat
First few lines say it all.
Well Thom I think you might be offending those who are insecure and/or who fit the profile. The label, while denigrating, served its purpose. The term twat can also be interpreted (in my mind) as a ‘obnoxious spoiled brat’, not far from idiot or fool as you intended.
There is truth in the label as you used it. It’s professional to express opinions without trying to be politically correct, at least here the US. Being politically correct over being honest is seen here as insincere and that can be taken as offensive too.
You just angered a bunch of twats.
It’s not like PC FPS games are, or ever was, titans of intellectual challenges and deep story lines. I think the dumbing down has little to do with influence from consoles and mostly to do with games being moved into mainstream entertainment. More money = more at stake = simpler games designed to appeal to as many people as possible and rake in the dough (who said EA?).
Who said Nintendo?