Ok so I finished my first game with the new blog. I'm going to experiment a bit on style, so please comments are very welcome on just the format. Here goes nothing...
Darksiders II
What I expected: Darksiders I in purple instead of red. Bigger and badder.
What I got: Darksiders I in purple instead of red, but there is more! An actual loot system complete with gear with stats, a boring talent tree, and a very lengthy survival mode. Well it certainly is bigger, but I'm not sure if its more bad or simply more bad ass.
What I liked: The art style. Joe Madureira's direction is pretty amazing. Everything has such a wonderful grand sense of scale. At one point I came up to an undead human, and I said, "Wow this guy is small." He is literally the same height as my character. I was so used to fighting things so huge, it was jarring to find something the same size as me. Every environment is interesting, but the angel's area is one of my favorite. Everything there is just so massive and thick. It really gives the impression they've been there for a very long time. Controls were also pretty good. I could customize hot-keys for different abilities, which worked very well.
Something I thought was really interesting was the lack of quick time events. (Well there is one place at the end you have to quickly press "B" once.) A common debate among my ex-coworker Drew and I was "is it better finish off a boss with a QTE or a long animation that you naturally go into?" I'm not sure this game solves that argument. Most bosses go into a very long (and cool as hell) animation of you executing the boss. There is no QTE at all involved. To support Drew's idea that QTEs are stupid, it was very nice not having to worry about hitting a certain button. I was able to actually enjoy the animation. In fact I found myself wanting to rewatch them. (IDEA: Boss execution gallery). To support my idea that QTEs however annoying, do bring you somewhat closer to feeling like you are actually killing the boss. I think that was the case here as well. Once these animations started I didn't feel like it was me doing it. Well, it wasn't, it was automatic. All in all, I think Drew is more right. I would rather feel slightly disconnected and be able to enjoy the wonderful animation. There might be a better way to do these types of things. This is probably a subject worth talking about later.
Combat felt good. Death is very quick and nimble. There is no block button like War had in Darksiders, so you have to rely on dodging. I've been playing Hawken....a lot, so dodging came very naturally to me. This was a very minor thing, but it did make it feel slightly less similar to Darksiders. Combos were also simplified a great deal from what I remember in Darksiders. Combos are now more about timing than memorization of silly button combinations. Different combos now typically do different style of attacks, rather than more powerful attacks. This was a very welcomed change, and I wish more brawlers would do this.
The idea of having different builds with the great variety of stats that gear offers you. More on this in the next section....
What I didn't like: The gear system was a bit odd. The idea of it is pretty great, as there are actually quite a lot of options for you. However you quickly find out that gear is quickly out leveled, so there is no reason to search for that one perfect piece. However, that's the other problem, there is no way to actually search for loot outside of the Crucible, which is a survival game mode. You end up just taking gear based on a few stats that you decide are important (for me DPS and STR), and just kind of deal with whatever else. I think I would rather have a system that involved some type of crafting, or some way to get gear that I want easier. There is no auction house either, but I'm not sure that's a good idea after seeing what happened in Diablo 3. There are merchants you can buy gear from, but they just have a random selection of gear. It's basically the same as the merchants in Diablo 3, sure they can have good gear, but they probably don't.
While the art style is incredibly imaginative, everything else is very uninspired. Let's take this piece by piece.
Your tool chest is very limited, and mostly the same from Darksiders. They do have 2 new tools, which are pretty neat (time travel portal and soul split), but the rest are the same, and just kind of left me wondering why they couldn't think of new things. I personally think a hook-shot is a good device, and I would have left it in. On second thought they only have 4 tools total, which now seems incredibly small compared to what I remember in Zelda.
Story, probably my biggest complaint. I never felt any sense of urgency at all. I know my brother War is in trouble, and I want to help him, but we never see the trouble he is in, we never hear why I need to go right this second. There really isn't a big bad guy in the game, which is annoying. Something I loved about Wrath of the Lich King, was Blizzard discovered that you should be introduced to the Big Bad immediately, and often. I beat this game, and I'm still not sure who the enemy really was. I know I know it's this dude I killed, but really? He showed up only once before and said I was a jerk. At one point in the game, I was actually wanting this game to be over, so I could move on. This is probably the most damning thing I can say about this game, which I generally liked.
Talent Trees are also boring. You have to spend so many points to make an ability great, and with that you can only really level up 2 abilities, which seems kind of lame. I'm sick and tired of games doing piece meal talent trees. Give me the entire ability damn it! Don't make my spend another point to get an extra 5% damage.
The dungeons were kind of lame too, there are many side dungeons that you encounter in the early game that you can't 100% without tools from very late in the game. I hate this type of design. Lock off the entire dungeon, not just half of it.
Final thoughts: I literally just finished the game, and I can't help but feel a bit disappointed. I'm not sure if its the sub-par (compared to the first one) story, the uninteresting talent tree, or the unimaginative tools. I can't stress how great the art style is though, I really enjoyed most of this game despite its flaws.
Now I'm going to try an experiment Cody and I talked about....
How much did I pay: $60/50 (whichever it was when it released)
How many hours did I play: 30
Dollar per Hour (a common trait I hope to rate all my games with): ~$2.00
How much would I pay for this game in perfect hindsight: $40
Why?: It is a lengthy game. I spent 30 hours in it, and I hardly touched the crucible, which could extend the life of the game for many many hours, and I didn't have the time to do New Game +. I do wonder how good the gear situation gets once you hit the cap. I did think of some really interesting wrath on critical based builds. For all the complaining I did, I did enjoy the game. I just wish they focused more on making a great story, like Darksiders.
So I over payed, but not by a terrible lot. I honestly hope they get to make Darksiders III, as I can't wait to play Pestilence or Famine. Sales seem to imply they won't though. Sad.
I wouldn't worry too much about the dollar per hour ratio, although it is important. There are some games that I've so thoroughly enjoyed that I would have been willing to pay $5-10/hour of play, and others where $1-3/hour seems fair.
ReplyDeleteAlso, it might be worth noting how much of the time the game was entertaining. For example, about 80% of the time, I enjoyed my time playing Legend of Grimrock, while something like Fallout New Vegas goes somewhere between 50-80% dependent on if I'm blindly looking for stuff, found a neat new area, or forced myself to slug back 200 lbs of crap to my "home base."
I really liked the What I Expected/What I Got, because that puts into perspective the expectations you started the game with. Very nice addition, I might have to "borrow" this for my blog. ;)
I just like having data and numbers. I think dollar per hour is more interesting than useful. When I'm done, I'll write up a whole post about the interesting things I've found. I think I will talk about how often the game is good. This idea pertains to LA Noire very much, but in a good way.
ReplyDeleteSteal all you want, all for the better I say.