The Darkness II
First striking thing about the second Darkness is its art style. Gone are the drab greys of New Yoik from the foist game, though admittedly the way the first game was envisioned; that often complained about colour scheme; actually fit the games ambience. Instead our eyes are greeted with a lovely cel-shaded touch that isn’t so bold as to turn it into an obvious hyperbolic statement that THIS GAME IS BASED ON A COMIC BOOK, but subtle enough in its characters defined outlines and rich colours to pay suitable homage to the original paperbacks. We’re talking a very suitable toned down Borderlands/XIII style here.
As far as I can tell the new developers have stayed faithful to the original’s gameplay. Unfortunately this includes the tedious breaking of the light fixtures. Much like Sam Fisher of Splinter Cell fame, Jackie Estacado in this game prefers the darkness to the light very much so (whoda thunk it) and lets just say New York has no shortage of light fixtures. This means in order to stay alive and be able to use your tentacle wielding powers you’ll have to be constantly shooting or whipping out lights as you progress through a level. It breaks up the combat in a bad way and is tedious to say the least. It’s almost like trying to play one of those really bad stealth missions they’d put in FPS’s in years of old. Only this time there isn’t a SMIDGEN of stealth design in this game because enemies will always be shooting at you so you sit there thinking to yourself WHY AM I KILLING LIGHTS AND NOT PEOPLE TEN METRES AWAY FROM ME.I think I got my point across. I’m not sure if there already is, but perhaps some kind of power in the talent tree could be unlocked that would allow you to break lights in a certain vicinity (like an area of effect spell) whilst still allowing you to dismember and shoot people on the move. Just a thought. Speaking of which…
I was disturbed at first when I wasn’t able to eat the hearts of my fallen foes, but pleasantly surprised that I got to unlock that ability as part of a tech tree of sorts. Jackie collects glorious numerical experience this time around and the more disturbing your kills the more you get. These points can be used to purchase new abilities and upgrades, seemingly allowing the player to tailor their gameplay style via whichever path they’d like to follow on the tree. The ease of picking up and throwing objects and the ability to direct your darkness arm slashes are also welcome additions, allowing for solutions to simple environmental puzzles (like having to slash down on electrical wires to open doors) and more variety in kills (like slashing upwards to suspend a foe in midair). Gameplay is certainly more visceral and faster than the first game. Enemies die quicker and you can interrupt the heart eating animation so you can gobble them up on the run (both these points run contrary to the original). One other annoyance is eating hearts, picking up weapons and reloading are all keyed to the same button. I understand the button constrains of a controller but come on now devs, you really gotta think more about these context sensitive buttons. Every enemy that has a heart has a weapon. Having to hunt for the text on screen to find out what I’m actually doing every time I walk up to a corpse is not ideal. This is a shooter, not a text adventure.
Jagged Alliance: Back in Action
I’ve never played a JA game before, only hearing about the old ones here and there and the new one recently. Reading the game synopsis gave my e-penor a hard on. An Isometric tactical strategy of sorts
where I’m:
Tasked with freeing the island from the dictator’s iron grip, players will command rebel and mercenary forces while using tactical, diplomatic and economic tools to keep troops supplied and ready for the next flight, all while commanding them directly in nail-biting battles.
Was that use of ‘flight’ instead of ‘fight’ intentional? Oh you whacky Europeans. Anyway…
Great! It sounds like it has the complexity of a small scale total war game plus it has a combat planning system reminiscent of the original Rainbow 6 games. I suppose the XCOM games are a suitable comparison.
The tutorial was straight forward enough though the constant diving into the inventory and switching items in and out was tedious. Perhaps that’s not as noticeable when you play a full-fledged mission? I didn’t really play long enough to find out. In the demo mission I was plopped into an environment with no real direction and an overwhelming screen of red markers pointing out every single bad guy on the map. This game lacks a fog of war which doesn’t entirely make any sense. It’s almost impossible to tell whether an enemy has line of sight on you and whether you have line of sight on them. I ordered my mercenaries to crouch towards what I thought was a large boulder that would be excellent for cover. As my jungle camoed heroic hired helpers ever so slowly trudged through the nipple high swamp under the majestic Mayan moon light they inexplicably came under fire from the shack up ahead. I was sure I was undetectable given what the game’s visuals had communicated to me. Surely then we would be safe under this large hunk of rock? Nope. Even in a prone position with only their noggins bopping above the waterline my mercs were dying in the equivalent of an apple bopping contest with less teethed mouths and more bullet filled guns. Does this game even have a cover system? If it does it didn’t do a particularly even mediocre job of telling me how safe my men were.
As for any diplomatic or economic action? I didn’t get that far to get a glimpse, I’m not sure the demo even includes it. I am fond of the personality there is to be found in the individuals of your squad. They all have their specialties, unique looks and accents. With dashing call signs like ‘Joker’ and ‘Magic’ to boot. I’m always fond of ways in which you can more emotionally engage a player and I did feel a little bad when Jynx (bless his soul) squirmed in pain from a bullet wound and continued to drown in a swampy cesspool of malaria surrounded by his mates. Tear.
Kingdoms of Amalur
Amalur crept up on me out of nowhere really. I’d seen it on the steam page a couple of times and had skimmed through a few articles about it but really didn’t give it much attention. To be honest I dismissed it as a very derivative fantasy RPG somewhat in league with WoW both aesthetically and mechanically. Also given what I had heard of 38 studio’s founder and former Red Sox pitcher over the years and his infatuation with MMORPGs; I don’t think I was far off.
That’s not to say it’s a terrible complete rip off of a game. On the contrary, I was pleasantly surprised with the demo. Thankfully the MMO influence did not translate to the combat which resembles more of a brawler like say Arkham Asylum or Space Marine. Combat is responsive and quite varied I found as I closed in on multiple enemies whilst firing arrows, dodging their first swings, engulfed them in flames with my enchanted staff, shield blocked their counter attacks and finished them off with a bolt of lightning. All this without having to resort to menus or inventory to swap out any weapons or abilities. It was all just there at the tip of my fingertips, instantaneously without any need to retreat and fiddle with hotkeys. However when you do have to delve into the inventory it’s as clunky as Skyrim’s default UI; Submenus galore and spatially challenged lists for the tens of items in your invisible rucksack.
One thing that stood out the most was the variety and quality of the voice acting and dialogue. It baffles me that Amalur; which I’d wager has just as many NPCs as Skyrim; has so much differentiation and character to each of it’s inhabitants no matter how insignificant they may be. I suppose having an award winning author and comic book writer doesn’t hurt. The majority of dialogue choices with these NPCs though are all the same. You can ask everyone about the exact same subject and usually not much else unless they’re distinguished characters, so replies often consist of the same repeated information but voiced and worded differently.
From the approximate 45 minutes I played Amalur seems like a solid title. It’s obvious a lot of work went into creating its characters and its lore, it’s just a shame that everything about it feels so generic. I’ll definitely give the full game a go when it drops in price.
