Thing to teach the female spawns of my loin when they appear, number 053: You know, Nerd Girls get all the best guys. Want to learn how to calculcate AC?
- 62. I still remember going into a Politics exam back in my first year and ripping the hell out of some guy's (Milton Friedman's) theories, saying exactly why I thought they were ridiculous and irresponsible. The next day I remember feeling guilty since I found out he died twenty minutes before the exam started.
I have played a wide catalogue of games, from RTS' to RPGs to FPS' to (Insert acronym here). Some games just have that indefinable quality, that sense as you're playing them that you're not longer just PLAYING them, you're EXPERIENCING them.
And some feel like nails on a chaulkboard. Which is so irritating, since many of these are games that could've been genuinely awesome, that could have taken things so many steps beyond brilliant it earns a PHD in awesomeness. But they do not.
Black and White: We all heard the hype. Be a god, do everything, have a creature you train, blah blah. The 'be a god thing' was interesting, except your villagers were so thick they couldn't even look after their own food requirements without you regularly topping them up with a miracle. But, you know, the whole ability to interact so expertly with the environment was quite cool. Then came the creature. It was an interesting idea, the ability to have an intelligent servant you train to be the thing you want (entertainer, builder, gatherer, warrior, etc). Except it never worked like that. Training was so difficult and time consuming you just ended up with a creature that pooed in the food stores, eats villagers and casts 'Fire ball' on the food stores.
Black and White 2: This should be good, right? They take the first one, fix the problems, add the ability to make armies. Nope, still failed. It was easier to train your creature, but armies were ridiculous (they'd die within twenty seconds of fighting, and there was no strategy beyond 'charge') and the addition of 'super miracles' meant that you'd just get your backside worked within twenty seconds of one being finished, which seemed to happen ALL THE TIME in the singleplayer campaign. Still, at least your villagers could feed themselves. Right?
Right...?
Oh.
Battlezone II: An old game, but one I still dig out occasionally. An RTS played from first person perspective. You jump in vehicles ranging from swift hover-cycles to ponderous death-walkers and ride around the battlefield, ordering your troops, building your base, capturing resource points and setting up defensive structures. It sounds good, so where did it go wrong? They forgot to include the 'fun'. It just felt grindy, tedious, even the bits where you were fighting was a simple process of 'strafe and shoot' since the enemy AI wasn't smart enough to shoot where you would be, rather then where you were.
Knights of the Old Republic II: Number 1 was so great, it blew my socks off, then neatly picked them up, folded them and put them in the draw for me. Number 2 crashed on my couch, ate my breakfast cereal and watched reality TV shows all day. The story was atrotious, and many things made NO sense. The worst bit is? There are a number of gameplay elements they DID improve on, making it difficult to go back to number 1 without missing some of the changes.
Homeworld II: It messed with the winning formula just a LITTLE too much. In the original game, a Frigate was something to fear. It could rip through corvettes like there was no tomorrow, fighters could barely damage them, and it took an Ion Frigate (which HAD to have escorts to even have a chance of making it to the battlezone) to have a guaranteed victory. In number 2, a frigate was a little weakling that'd drop to a couple of missiles. The balance was so screwed with it made enjoying the game practically impossible, since that fleet you spent 20 minutes making could fall in 3 if it was attacked from the right angle. If you're going to play this game, just play mods, don't bother with the game proper.
Red Faction: This game definately had promise. One of it's big selling points was the ability to destroy the earth within which you fought, making new tunnels and such. The problem is this ability came into use about... four times in the game. I still recall once seeing a convoy of the enemy going past on a narrow bridge of Earth, with glee I loaded up my rocket launcher and blew away both sides of the bridge, thinking it'd fall with them all on it. Turns out the explosions missed a spot, and the entire rock bridge and two APCs on it were being supported by a section of rock about as thick as my finger which still connected the rock bridge to the wall. It was so thin I couldn't even hit it when I was shooting at it. It would've been easier to just shoot the convoy with the rockets. Plus the story was ridiculous.
P.S. Zendulo (http://www.youtube.com/user/zendulo), the lady I've said is awesome in about six different posts, commented on my blog. Man, if she weren't on the other side of the world, this could be awkward right about now.
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