smitty
10-02-2008, 06:37 PM
If you do choose to read this, thanks--my apologies for most of the snarkiness, but it's impossible to respond to the tone of your reviews without just a bit or the occasional mound of it. Also, while I won't attempt to sell you on the game, as that's SK's job & something they failed miserably at, I have authored an overly-long FAQ posted at gamefaqs.com which explains the sensible logic behind some of the design - particularly where the camera is concerned. I also wanted to add that you're spot-on about the Prince of Persia franchise, which is why I'm surprised you didn't find more of value in Too Human.
The reason I'm writing this to you specifically, even though it could apply to a majority of the negative reviews out there, is because I expected for you to be able to find something different to complain about; but instead you seemed to have put on the "I'm a casual gamer renting this for a weekend..." hat and promptly began to complain about the same ol' stuff as every other reviewer when the game was more difficult than you expected.
While Silicon Knights deserves to be bashed for their failure to sell the gamer on the mechanics and its design philosophy of "throw the gamer to the wolves" when it comes to introducing novel combat mechanics that are core to the game, a majority of the reviewers are to blame as well for being lazy twats that could be bothered to wrap their heads around something that wasn't 3rd person action game #58,000,000,000.
While us mere-mortals don't expect reviewers to be gaming gods, we do expect for you to attempt proficiency at a game before tossing it on the heap--mainly because that's what you're paid to do. Reading reviews written by people too lazy to master the basics of an RPG skill set one day and a FPS weapon selection the next would just lead to a chorus of whine, which is exactly what Too Human received.
I'm curious about your camera complaint, as I'm wondering what 3rd person point of view game with a non-fixed camera you would actually like. You use basically the same complaint in both your Ninja Gaiden and Too Human review that the camera would be off staring at a random object while you're getting buggered off screen; so this seems to be a problem more endemic to any game that takes camera management out of the control of the player; so my question is whether there is a 3rd person point-of-view game with good camera A.I. in your book?
If there isn't a game that can be used as a bench-mark, then it would seem that your game-design philosophy states that either the camera must be fixed a'la God of War or that every bit of camera movement must be controlled by the player or it's broken, then mention that when you critique a game.
I do have to make a concession on the camera thou'. I admit that when I listened to some of the developer interviews explaining the camera behavior, it made logical sense and allowed me to anticipate and adjust to most of the problems I encountered... But since Silicon Knights couldn't be arsed to explain it in the game, they deserve a fair amount of the venom for not bothering to inform anyone but their rabid fan base about the logic behind their design.
Since the controls were integral to your camera complaint, because it didn't use the industry standard for a 3rd person game, I'll say that I flat-out disagree with you. As I haven't played Devil May Cry, I'll use Ninja Gaiden as a counter-point for why the melee combat in Too Human is a viable alternative.
In Ninja Gaiden, if you screw up the timing of one button press during one attack animation out of 15 button press combination, then it's a half-your-health bar buggering for you. This leads, at least for me and possibly other non-gaming gods, to ignoring half of the game's combo's for the five or so that I can pull of consistently.
In Too Human, the replacement of precision button-mashing with loose stick-twiddling means that while I may not hit the exact guy I was aiming for when I made myself a guided melee-missile, I hit something. And I usually have enough time to adjust my plan of attack accordingly; instead of looking at the screen going "Oh crap..." as 6 different bad-guys take advantage of the three frames of animation opening from a mis-pressed button to bugger my character senseless...
Thou' there is one move in Too Human that does suffer from this "punishing you for bad timing" problem and that is the "ranged-melee weapon attack" that requires you to press both sticks in the same direction; which is prone to an imperceptible timing mistake. So instead of sending out a devastating-if-slow projectile, this results in sending you careening towards the exploding bastard you were trying to avoid with a ranged attack in the first place... The fact that you didn't play the game enough to take the piss out of this makes me wonder how much time you put into it prior to your review.
You and every other reviewer bashing this game complained about the unskipable Valkyrie-Ride and its frequency, going so far as to state that anyone who defended this deserved immediate removal from the gene-pool. I'm going to state that the game should have punished the reviewers much more harshly, possibly "Art of Theft" harshly, by having you start the stage or section over after a death setting you back further, with the hordes respawned, than the retail copy; on the hope that there's some sort of rule that reviewers that don't bother to develop the skills to complete a game aren't allowed to write about it.
As it stands, it seems like you and every other reviewer powered your way through the game once with the respawn system and declared that it was broken. A high incidence of character mortality usually indicates two things, either the game is poorly designed and cheap, a'la "Ghouls'n'Ghosts or "BattleToads", or that the player can't be arsed to learn the combat mechanics. As I can make it through a stage with an average of one death, I'd say that the problem is with the reviewer more so than the game.
Too Human could be accused of having a "designed for the hard core" learning curve that you discussed in your Ninja Gaiden review; as I do remember the 4-5 hours after hitting lvl 50 that it took me to learn why the developers put in things like a "ranged melee attack" and that my combo meter/magic bar was there to be used to clear the screen instead of dropping from 3 to zero because I was being miserly with it while the hordes were pillaging my bum. However, Silicon's Knight's failure to make the game "pick-up&play" does not mean that they produced a bad game.
A major factor that you cover is that melee combat feels like molasses and that the ranged combat feels like your weapons were loaded with spit wads... I'll deal with the melee combat issue first, by asking did you note that this game had a metric ton of Diablo style loot, and that one of the innumerable bonuses was to "Attack Speed", or that also like Diablo it had skill-paths that also grant bonuses to "Attack Speed"? Or did you notice that as a part of your death penalty, in addition to the Valkyrie-ride, that your combo-meter was reset to zero & that when this number was greater than zero that you gain a boost to several combat related attributes?
Moving on from melee, ranged combat does feel like an add-on for most classes, something that might soften up the hordes a bit before you're forced to go to melee. However, if you looked at the class selection screen, there was a choice, the commando, that was, as the game put it "a master of Stand-off methods of warfare" and had had 5 of those little blue blocks under ballistics... Which probably explains the You-Tube videos show tearing apart leader class units in under 4 seconds in a withering hail of gunfire. Now I grant you that his melee attacks feel like he might as well be using a wiffel-bat, but if you wanted gun fire - then play the class that uses guns good.
While the merits of basing combat effectiveness on the ability to find loot & stay alive without spamming your special abilities are debatable; if a player feels that his Baldur is not combat effective in a specific area, then it's either because you're wearing the wrong gear, didn't know how to use your skills, or you're class isn't suited to your play style... Or were a reviewer, that when confronted with something that had a learning curve, decided that they were going to flick boogers at it instead while laughing at the rest of use about the fact that they get paid to play video-games all day.
The game's philosophy that combat is the only source of "combo a.k.a. mana", health, and combat effectiveness touches on a sore point for even the fans of the game. Which you did note, was the exploding Kamikazes and their incurable "unless you play the healer class" status effects that are only mitigatible in two ways: (1) by killing and looting so quickly that you have piles of health coming to you, (2) rolling around like an idiot for a however long the interminable effects--which while "stop-drop-&roll" might make sense for being set on fire, it is completely retarded when applied to poison damage.
-Cont-
The reason I'm writing this to you specifically, even though it could apply to a majority of the negative reviews out there, is because I expected for you to be able to find something different to complain about; but instead you seemed to have put on the "I'm a casual gamer renting this for a weekend..." hat and promptly began to complain about the same ol' stuff as every other reviewer when the game was more difficult than you expected.
While Silicon Knights deserves to be bashed for their failure to sell the gamer on the mechanics and its design philosophy of "throw the gamer to the wolves" when it comes to introducing novel combat mechanics that are core to the game, a majority of the reviewers are to blame as well for being lazy twats that could be bothered to wrap their heads around something that wasn't 3rd person action game #58,000,000,000.
While us mere-mortals don't expect reviewers to be gaming gods, we do expect for you to attempt proficiency at a game before tossing it on the heap--mainly because that's what you're paid to do. Reading reviews written by people too lazy to master the basics of an RPG skill set one day and a FPS weapon selection the next would just lead to a chorus of whine, which is exactly what Too Human received.
I'm curious about your camera complaint, as I'm wondering what 3rd person point of view game with a non-fixed camera you would actually like. You use basically the same complaint in both your Ninja Gaiden and Too Human review that the camera would be off staring at a random object while you're getting buggered off screen; so this seems to be a problem more endemic to any game that takes camera management out of the control of the player; so my question is whether there is a 3rd person point-of-view game with good camera A.I. in your book?
If there isn't a game that can be used as a bench-mark, then it would seem that your game-design philosophy states that either the camera must be fixed a'la God of War or that every bit of camera movement must be controlled by the player or it's broken, then mention that when you critique a game.
I do have to make a concession on the camera thou'. I admit that when I listened to some of the developer interviews explaining the camera behavior, it made logical sense and allowed me to anticipate and adjust to most of the problems I encountered... But since Silicon Knights couldn't be arsed to explain it in the game, they deserve a fair amount of the venom for not bothering to inform anyone but their rabid fan base about the logic behind their design.
Since the controls were integral to your camera complaint, because it didn't use the industry standard for a 3rd person game, I'll say that I flat-out disagree with you. As I haven't played Devil May Cry, I'll use Ninja Gaiden as a counter-point for why the melee combat in Too Human is a viable alternative.
In Ninja Gaiden, if you screw up the timing of one button press during one attack animation out of 15 button press combination, then it's a half-your-health bar buggering for you. This leads, at least for me and possibly other non-gaming gods, to ignoring half of the game's combo's for the five or so that I can pull of consistently.
In Too Human, the replacement of precision button-mashing with loose stick-twiddling means that while I may not hit the exact guy I was aiming for when I made myself a guided melee-missile, I hit something. And I usually have enough time to adjust my plan of attack accordingly; instead of looking at the screen going "Oh crap..." as 6 different bad-guys take advantage of the three frames of animation opening from a mis-pressed button to bugger my character senseless...
Thou' there is one move in Too Human that does suffer from this "punishing you for bad timing" problem and that is the "ranged-melee weapon attack" that requires you to press both sticks in the same direction; which is prone to an imperceptible timing mistake. So instead of sending out a devastating-if-slow projectile, this results in sending you careening towards the exploding bastard you were trying to avoid with a ranged attack in the first place... The fact that you didn't play the game enough to take the piss out of this makes me wonder how much time you put into it prior to your review.
You and every other reviewer bashing this game complained about the unskipable Valkyrie-Ride and its frequency, going so far as to state that anyone who defended this deserved immediate removal from the gene-pool. I'm going to state that the game should have punished the reviewers much more harshly, possibly "Art of Theft" harshly, by having you start the stage or section over after a death setting you back further, with the hordes respawned, than the retail copy; on the hope that there's some sort of rule that reviewers that don't bother to develop the skills to complete a game aren't allowed to write about it.
As it stands, it seems like you and every other reviewer powered your way through the game once with the respawn system and declared that it was broken. A high incidence of character mortality usually indicates two things, either the game is poorly designed and cheap, a'la "Ghouls'n'Ghosts or "BattleToads", or that the player can't be arsed to learn the combat mechanics. As I can make it through a stage with an average of one death, I'd say that the problem is with the reviewer more so than the game.
Too Human could be accused of having a "designed for the hard core" learning curve that you discussed in your Ninja Gaiden review; as I do remember the 4-5 hours after hitting lvl 50 that it took me to learn why the developers put in things like a "ranged melee attack" and that my combo meter/magic bar was there to be used to clear the screen instead of dropping from 3 to zero because I was being miserly with it while the hordes were pillaging my bum. However, Silicon's Knight's failure to make the game "pick-up&play" does not mean that they produced a bad game.
A major factor that you cover is that melee combat feels like molasses and that the ranged combat feels like your weapons were loaded with spit wads... I'll deal with the melee combat issue first, by asking did you note that this game had a metric ton of Diablo style loot, and that one of the innumerable bonuses was to "Attack Speed", or that also like Diablo it had skill-paths that also grant bonuses to "Attack Speed"? Or did you notice that as a part of your death penalty, in addition to the Valkyrie-ride, that your combo-meter was reset to zero & that when this number was greater than zero that you gain a boost to several combat related attributes?
Moving on from melee, ranged combat does feel like an add-on for most classes, something that might soften up the hordes a bit before you're forced to go to melee. However, if you looked at the class selection screen, there was a choice, the commando, that was, as the game put it "a master of Stand-off methods of warfare" and had had 5 of those little blue blocks under ballistics... Which probably explains the You-Tube videos show tearing apart leader class units in under 4 seconds in a withering hail of gunfire. Now I grant you that his melee attacks feel like he might as well be using a wiffel-bat, but if you wanted gun fire - then play the class that uses guns good.
While the merits of basing combat effectiveness on the ability to find loot & stay alive without spamming your special abilities are debatable; if a player feels that his Baldur is not combat effective in a specific area, then it's either because you're wearing the wrong gear, didn't know how to use your skills, or you're class isn't suited to your play style... Or were a reviewer, that when confronted with something that had a learning curve, decided that they were going to flick boogers at it instead while laughing at the rest of use about the fact that they get paid to play video-games all day.
The game's philosophy that combat is the only source of "combo a.k.a. mana", health, and combat effectiveness touches on a sore point for even the fans of the game. Which you did note, was the exploding Kamikazes and their incurable "unless you play the healer class" status effects that are only mitigatible in two ways: (1) by killing and looting so quickly that you have piles of health coming to you, (2) rolling around like an idiot for a however long the interminable effects--which while "stop-drop-&roll" might make sense for being set on fire, it is completely retarded when applied to poison damage.
-Cont-