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Mar. 21st, 2003 06:35 am
(no subject)
I have a confession to make.
I was wrong.
No, I wasn't wrong when I told you you looked like a merengue in that dress, nor was I wrong when I said the T'lari invasion fleet was on the way (though I was off on the timing, unfortunately for my your-lord-and-master status).
No, I was wrong about a video game.
Those who were there will recall that Mike bought me "Hunter: The Reckoning" for the Xbox, and I told him I wasn't into it and didn't want it, so he returned it.
Well, after a while I realised that he'd bought it so we'd have a game we could play together, and I felt guilty, and told him so. A few weeks back, he had the opportunity to buy the game for the GameCube for only $5 (a trade-in from an employee), and did so, and last night, I finally tried it.
Now, I really dislike the Hunter game from White Wolf. It was pretty much the marker for when I decided WW had jumped the shark and was no longer worth my money. Don't get me wrong, I love the concept: humans discover the truth about their world -- that it is ruled and manipulated by monsters (Vampires, Werewolves, etc.) -- and decide to fight back, becoming hunters of the evil things. I'm an absolute sucker for the "Small band of heroes stand against the Dark" genre. But the game's execution had all the virtuosity of a teenager's first sexual encounter.
But the video game is pretty fun. It resembles the game in the same way that the Wing Commander movie resembled the games upon which it was based -- the concepts are there, but the heart isn't. Fortunately, in this case it works to the betterment of the game.
A four-player cooperative game, you can play one of four different characters: The Avenger, the Defender, the Judge, and the Martyr, each with their own weapons, numina (called "conviction" in the game) and stats, which increase over time.
My only real complaint is that the game doesn't seem to scale down the viciousness for single-player play. I was in an escort mission to get a kid to a church. I was doing fine until a freaking gargoyle dropped off the roof and smashed her flat. "You let Kaylie die." No, a frelling gargoyle fell on her frelling /head/! I didn't /let/ that happen, I couldn't prevent it!
My only petty complaints are that 1) You sometimes have to make SURE you kill every - single - monster in the area so you can find a stupid key. While I'm doing this I'm thinking "Priest or not, forget the key and kick the goddamn church door in, you sonofabitch!" and 2) I wish I'd kept the Xbox version -- my hands are a bit large for the Gamecube controller, making play sometimes uncomfortable.
In flavor, the game is rather like Gauntlet but with actual story elements and cutscenes beyond "You have found the 15th of 57 pieces of glass! Congratulations!" Ugh.
I was wrong.
No, I wasn't wrong when I told you you looked like a merengue in that dress, nor was I wrong when I said the T'lari invasion fleet was on the way (though I was off on the timing, unfortunately for my your-lord-and-master status).
No, I was wrong about a video game.
Those who were there will recall that Mike bought me "Hunter: The Reckoning" for the Xbox, and I told him I wasn't into it and didn't want it, so he returned it.
Well, after a while I realised that he'd bought it so we'd have a game we could play together, and I felt guilty, and told him so. A few weeks back, he had the opportunity to buy the game for the GameCube for only $5 (a trade-in from an employee), and did so, and last night, I finally tried it.
Now, I really dislike the Hunter game from White Wolf. It was pretty much the marker for when I decided WW had jumped the shark and was no longer worth my money. Don't get me wrong, I love the concept: humans discover the truth about their world -- that it is ruled and manipulated by monsters (Vampires, Werewolves, etc.) -- and decide to fight back, becoming hunters of the evil things. I'm an absolute sucker for the "Small band of heroes stand against the Dark" genre. But the game's execution had all the virtuosity of a teenager's first sexual encounter.
But the video game is pretty fun. It resembles the game in the same way that the Wing Commander movie resembled the games upon which it was based -- the concepts are there, but the heart isn't. Fortunately, in this case it works to the betterment of the game.
A four-player cooperative game, you can play one of four different characters: The Avenger, the Defender, the Judge, and the Martyr, each with their own weapons, numina (called "conviction" in the game) and stats, which increase over time.
My only real complaint is that the game doesn't seem to scale down the viciousness for single-player play. I was in an escort mission to get a kid to a church. I was doing fine until a freaking gargoyle dropped off the roof and smashed her flat. "You let Kaylie die." No, a frelling gargoyle fell on her frelling /head/! I didn't /let/ that happen, I couldn't prevent it!
My only petty complaints are that 1) You sometimes have to make SURE you kill every - single - monster in the area so you can find a stupid key. While I'm doing this I'm thinking "Priest or not, forget the key and kick the goddamn church door in, you sonofabitch!" and 2) I wish I'd kept the Xbox version -- my hands are a bit large for the Gamecube controller, making play sometimes uncomfortable.
In flavor, the game is rather like Gauntlet but with actual story elements and cutscenes beyond "You have found the 15th of 57 pieces of glass! Congratulations!" Ugh.