The Gamer’s Quagmire #16: Plunging Into Oblivion
The Gamer’s Quagmire: 16th Edition
- Jamison DeLorenzo
In the interests of beating a dead horse I decided that this was a good week to go back and dig up some thoughts on games that I’ve played within the past couple of years. As it turns out there are a ton of good thoughts about an RPG from the XBox generation of gaming. After some polishing and some much needed multiplayer Battefront this weekend this became the frontrunner for the topic du jour. Also, with the new Elder Scrolls game now out and available for gaming consumption I thought writing about the last RPG that I would deem as epic was a good idea. Based on everything I have read and seen to date Elder Scrolls Oblivion has the feel of a game that should be enjoyed by everyone. Still, I will reserve judgment until playing it.
As it turns out after whistling through Star Wars Battlefront II (well, not actually whistling- it’s almost impossible to maintain a high level of respect from your fellow squad members while sounding like a reject from auditions for the Seven Dwarves) I had this overpowering urge to play some more Star Wars games. Watching a couple of the movies added to the urge. Shopping for the games themselves for a friend added to the urge. The fact that this was supposed to be one of the topics during my historic games week added to the urge. My will power only goes so far.
So last night I sat down and started up Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic for the 10th time. This game now has had the most replay value of any other role playing game I have ever owned, borrowed, or rented. Considering the number of times I have gone through an Ogre Battle, Final Fantasy, Buldur’s Gate, Neverwinter Nights, and other classics this was a momentous occasion. Well, of course this point wasn’t realized until about two minutes ago so the game just kept on being played. It had all the historic significance of the Iraqi Constitution being ratified (if there’s a reason this never made it to Page 1 in major papers I’d like to know it).
How can one play through the same game so many times- aside from not having a life? Honestly this was a day that I never thought would come. I berate online games due to repetitious tasks this would seem to be a highly hypocritical action. Here’s something that you need to know about repetitive tasks: if they are fun, if they bring joy, if there is some benefit to them, then they will keep being done. All of these weights are subjective (although I would argue that photosynthesis is a repetitive task that everyone should be able to reap the benefits of). For many reasons this game is now definitely RPG I have played the most, and after some debating, meditating, performing exorcisms and mediating ritual sacrifices of various insects it has become clear that Knights of the Old Republic is also the best RPG I have ever played.
How does one jump to such a bold conclusion? Well, once you start down the path of ritualistic sacrifice you start to get used to it. After a while it becomes a normal custom that you feel appeases the gods rather than angers them. Oh, wait. Hmm. I’ve said too much.
All kidding aside I came to the conclusion that KoToR is the best RPG for me because of what I value in games in this genre. This game had more to live up to than others for the simple reason that I hold adaptations of already created universes, especially the Star Wars universe, to higher standards. People who adopt and contribute to universes should not twist the integrity of something they are borrowing for the sake of the story they want to tell. It is a lot easier to create your own universe to fit a story and quite another to interpret somebody else’s. Is the Star Wars universe and all of its previously told stories perfect and without flaws? I would have to be in complete denial to try and say that this was so, but that is never a reason to make it worse.
So, for starters the good people at BioWare put together a story that takes place in the realm of the Jedi long before the stories in the movies came to pass. So you know I am not going to be shy about divulging story spoilers here because if you have not played the game by now, quite honestly, you have no excuses. There are several games that need to be played within a certain amount of time if you are ever going to play them. Considering what the top selling games have been over the past two years there are very few that I would ever consider to be worthy of being played before KoToR- especially if you value role playing games.
The story of the game is well written for multiple reasons. The biggest reason is that right away you are sucked into the action before you are given the chance to explore and gather information about the world you are in. You wake up on a ship in the midst of being attacked and boarded. After you manage to escape you start your search for a powerful Jedi that survived the assault but was captured on a nearby planet. It is not until you get to the planet that you are allowed to interact with other NPC’s to get a feel of what is around you. Sure, the battle to start the game is not that difficult (when are they ever?), but you are not really given an opportunity to explore anything other than the basic elements of the game.
Once the story gets going the different characters you meet can only draw you in more. You want to learn more about them, interact with them, see how the handle themselves in battle, and see how they react to the choices you make during the course of the game. A battle droid that you eventually meet up with, HK-47, is high-quality comic relief. There are plenty of RPG’s that you want to complete for the sake of completing them. Knights of the Old Republic makes you want to complete the game because you cannot help but get somewhat emotionally invested in seeing them develop and succeed (or in one character’s case, suffer a painful death). A role playing game having compelling characters is key to it being a success. It doesn’t matter if you strongly like or dislike a character- if you feel strongly enough about it one way or another you will make the time to see the story through to its completion.
The story that encompasses the characters almost flawlessly. Different characters provide more value to you on some planets than others- whether it be their skill set or their own plot lines that you must seek out. For instance you gain a lot more out of bringing Zaalbar to Kashyyk than if you simply leave him on the ship. Not bringing Mission into the desert of Tatooine would be a huge mistake. Even Carth has some interesting story to him if you bring him to Korriban (for an added bonus bring HK-47 there as well). Is this an easy to thing to find the first time through the game? Of course not, but the more you interact with your party members the more you can find out about them. Even the two characters you have in your party interact with each other in different ways. It wasn’t until the second time through the game that I started to figure a lot of these things out. This is why the replay value of this game is so high. There always seems to be a little more story for you to find every time through the game. What’s more, if you wonder what would happen if you put a character in a certain situation and spend time to go back and make it happen odds are you will enjoy the results. Being creative playing an evil character yiels some very wonderful fruit in this game.
The power of the story in the game comes full circle once you realize you can take the light path or the dark path in the game. If you would like a translation to this- either you can be the nice helpful Jedi or the mercilessly evil Sith. Both are fun to play and the dialog accommodates both choices. Some parts of the game you can only unlock in character taking the light or dark path. This makes you want to play through the game twice or maybe more if you have an impulse control problem as I do. Role playing games should always provide the player to take multiple paths through it. You should be allowed to visit areas of the game at different times and have an impact on its outcome. You should be able to complete missions in different ways and have that effect the overall outcome.
You guessed it- affecting how the story ends is a big thing for me. It is not that tough to find an RPG that only has one particular ending. I always enjoy RPG’s that allow me to decide more about the character than the game designer. Games like Final Fantasy, Breath of Fire, Dragon Warrior, etc. almost always make you take the high road. Games like Ogre Battle, Ultima, Fable, Chrono Cross, and others allow you to play your character however you want. Signing pacts with the devil, burning down villages, murdering farmers are all activities that can be fun to do in the video game world so why not let the dark side of many players have a little fun? If I want to talk farmers into murdering each other then let me do it. If I want to talk a guardian into killing his dependent in the name of a life debt then let me do it. If corporate officers need to be force choked or butchered in order to make them give me proper respect then let me do it. Sometimes it’s worth being as evil as you can just to see if you can locate the trigger for your subconscious that makes you think about how evil you are being. And yes, thankfully I was able to locate mine.
Playing goody two-shoes characters all the time forces games like GTA and Manhunt (isn’t it amazing how one development company can illustrate this point on its own?) to be huge successes. If more games like these existed then they would not be such huge hits. Before you start believing that I revel in playing evil characters (we may be a little late for that and that’s fine- just let me make my point here) I do prefer taking the high road because you usually get better weapons, more friends, a better ending, and the girl. The dark side usually gets you more money, stronger abilities, and cooler looking equipment. Both seem to be an unwritten rule with games that let you play either side. The prime example of this in Knights of the Old Republic is the uber robe you get at the end. The dark robes are crisp and definitely have an aura of evil about them. The light robes, while they do resemble Obi-Wan’s robes from Revenge of the Sith, make your character look like a giant glow-worm. How is Malak or anyone else supposed to take anything you say seriously?
The dialog along with the voice acting is top-notch. Voice acting done poorly can definitely destroy a game even if the script is solid. Both the voice acting and the script in this game are as close to excellent as you will see (or maybe I just have incredibly low standards). One of the mini-bosses, Davik, couldn’t have sound more disinterested if he were reading the script at the ice capades. There were a couple spelling errors in the dialog too (with my personal favorite being phonemes over phenomes as it lays the groundwork for a few E.T. jokes). Other than that I felt myself getting sucked into the universe laid out before me because the story was intriguing and the voice acting brought out the emotion that I believed to be embedded in the script.
The graphics and sound quality are also top-notch. The graphics are the most the X-Box can handle and you are able to tweak your PC settings to get relatively good looking graphics so there is absolutely no way I can complain about them. There is one scene where you see Malak’s face without his mouthpiece. Considering he has no mouth it’s a little disturbing to see him talk. It’s entirely possible this was an homage to the scene in The Empire Strikes Back where you saw Vader without his helmet, but I’m willing to bet it was simply a miss. Thankfully no officer was stupid enough to tell him he forgot to put his face on. The movies in the game give the game a nice cinematic quality as well. The sounds match the tried and true effects from other Star Wars games. The new musical scores, while nowhere near the level of John Williams, do a decent job at building emotion in their accompanying scenes.
Even the puzzles and side games are a lot of fun. I could not believe my eyes when I started noticing problems in the game that were covered in collegiate courses. Two examples of this are the prisoner’s dilemma and the Towers of Hanoi. There are plenty of other puzzles but that’s enough to start. These additions to a game shows that games can be a learning tool even if you do not realize it. And for those obsessed with card games there is one here too called Pazaak. It is not quite Triple Triad but it is does get you credits- and that is always a good thing.
Is this game perfect? No, and it does suffer from some flaws that exist in most role playing games. You do get to choice to be good or evil but you should be allowed to go further. Fable gives you the option of simply killing everyone in a village, and that’s a start. A lot of RPG’s let you kill unimportant characters simply because it’s an option they built in for you. However it’s still impossible to kill the almighty shopkeepers. There are a couple you can threaten but you can never kill them or take any of their stuff. Somehow the game design is okay with you murdering Wookiees and putting them into slavery but you better leave that weapons dealer alone!
Something else to think about are the chests, footlockers, bins, etc. that you have access to. Treasure chests are not uncommon in fantasy realms but we should be past being allowed to open all of them. Again, you cannot rob or attack the shopkeeper but if there’s a stray chest don’t be shy about looting that one item upgrade and credits stored inside. There are some bins that get you in trouble for opening them but not every bin has a similar trigger. My favorite instance of this is a mechanic hunched over a speeder that he’s repairing with a toolbox behind him. You can open it and take the parts from it and not get caught or even be awarded dark side points. This reminds me too much of the scene in The Last Crusade where Indiana and his dad steal that German guy’s car right when he’s about to put a hub cap on it. It looks funny and people laugh but in the end the good guys are stealing from a farmer.
One other item that this and many other RPG’s suffer from is how your actions affect the world. Somehow the communication of these events never seems to propagate down the proper channels. If you want to do something sinister and not have your party members find out about it simply send them back to the ship, murder that unsuspecting person, and then call your party back. There is no need to panic because nobody will question the cause of the person slumped on the ground with a lightsaber wound in their chest. Of course other people may find out about it… regardless of whether anyone’s there to see it or not. I love it when game designers implement a game where you have the freedom to do what you want and we are still early in the process of seeing these games in action, but we should be allowing NPC’s to have the reactions that you would expect and have have your options for actions be less confined. Yes- Baldur’s Gate and Fable are games that do this better than others but we still have a long way to go.
By now you should be getting an idea of all the different reasons why I keep coming back to Knights of the Old Republic. It really is the best RPG I have played to date, and if you like RPG’s and have not played this yet you need to set some time aside to enjoy this game. You do not have to go through the game several times to get the full enjoyment out of it, but if you are big on replay value this is a definite keeper.
This article is written and copyrighted by Jamison DeLorenzo and all thoughts are solely his and do not necessarily represent anyone else’s including anyone else at this site. This is a weekly article which deals with anything and almost everything gaming. Feel free to post comments or e-mail. Thanks for reading.
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March 20, 2006
The Gamer’s Quagmire #15: The Oracle of Critics
The Gamer’s Quagmire: 15th Edition
- Jamison DeLorenzo
Am I simply an advertising tool of the video game industry? Is anyone that simply writes or reviews games? It is a question that I have to ask myself sometimes. Often when some topic, act, or person is so deplorable we choose to ignore it completely in order to prevent lending any credence to it. In what has become an annual tradition, usually when there’s a lull in the release cycle, we have writers making comments about how reviewers are nothing more than tools of the industry.
This is a hard jab because it takes the work of reviewers that are paid by companies to make positive reviews and casts blame over everyone. One of the reasons I stopped doing video game reviews was because the officially recognized reviewers were not allowed to make negative comments about games as it was considered libel. Okay, there was also the part of not having enough money to review most of the games that came out every year. It’s sickening that you can sue someone for writing negative comments about games. When did we permit makeshift insurance for greedy companies so they could get away with producing absolute garbage?
I’d like to say this was all a huge tangent but this is part of the overall point. When reviewers want to say everything possible about a game but are not allowed to do so the consumers will never get an accurate description of games. If that were the case games like Devil May Cry 2 and The Hulk would have never made it to market. Returning games that suck doesn’t necessarily bother everybody, but there are cases where games are so bad that consumers should feel like they were completely ripped off. I’m not suggesting that we hold video game producers to the same standards as pacemaker producers but every industry does have a bottom rung of quality and there are games that definitely fall under it.
Believe it or not there are game store employees that understand what playing an awful game is like. If you go to a store that is managed by gamers as opposed to employees you understand the difference. The good employees understand the pain of forking over cash for a bad game. I used to be afraid to talk to people in stores about games because I had this vision in my head of the employees just wanting to make sales. Once you have a 2 hour conversation with an employee about The Sims (part of me wants to be ashamed for admitting this, but sharing it does have a different purpose) when purchasing a completely unrelated game you gain a different perspective on the matter. What I am trying to say here is that there should be no shame involved in telling someone that you considered lighting the case on fire with a blow torch, smashing it with a 20 pound sledge, or shredding it with a table saw but instead chose to return it. If reviewers were more honest with what they wrote these things would never happen.
Although it’s fun sometimes to say these things just to see how the person responds. If they start to act they’re personally offended and can take it then they are someone you can trust.
Preventing people from writing bad reviews through legislation is not the only avenue available. As was the case with Driver 3, perhaps one of the worst games ever sold, reviewers were given money to write positive reviews for the game. It even took reviewers 3 years to start admitting that Madden games simply weren’t progressing and that competing titles were better (yes, sometimes I make stretches in order to take pot shots at EA but it is worth it). What scares me is that we have no way of knowing how often this happens? Almost assuredly Driver 3 is not an isolated case, but when reviewers are paid to write favorable reviews by the game producers this supports exactly what I fear.
Being someone who is not paid anything to play games or conjure opinions (I really want to make an RPG joke here, but trying to make it a non-cryptic joke is too much right now.. just ask the undead) on them it is easy to be an idealist. If my sole job was to write reviews it could be entirely possible that my livelihood could depend on writing nice things about games with the quality level of Apex. As someone who just plays games right now I could tell you that this would sicken me to the point of inventing a new disorder, maybe something like reviewing-induced bullhemia. By the way, can we have a pill for that too? This is the primary agent that drove me away from writing reviews professionally. I liked writing the reviews the way I write columns now and didn’t want to have to change or answer to anyone (if you’ll permit another bad joke- scouts almost always gave good moral compasses).
When you write reviews for a living you always have someone answer to. Imagine playing a game you absolutely hate but work for a company that funded the game’s development as a parent company. There is a major conflict here. You almost have to force readers to read in between the lines with your numbers and your words. A 7 of 10 means the game really stinks. The controls are complex but workable means the game is impossible to control. The graphics possibly needing more polishing means that the visuals are hideous. Only software engineers and cryptographists should deal in code. When I originally wrote about Apex I said that it was a game that showed promise and in the end caused me to snap it with my bare hands that was a literal translation. I wanted you to envision the pain and aggravation involved that caused me to take that course of action. What is Game Informer, IGN, XBox Magazine, or any other professional reviewer going to tell you?
Critics criticizing reviewers, who are in a sense critics themselves, is an interesting read. It reminds me of how Internal Affairs interacts with the regular police force. Reviewers aren’t doing their jobs the way critics feel they should so every once in a while we have this blurb about how reviewers are nothing more than advertisers. I love smashing critics’ opinions to shreds but only doing so when I have my own opinions to share. Taking pot shots was a collegiate activity. I’m much more sophisticated now (which is a nice way of saying I’m even more cynical). Reading these articles enflames me a little because I feel like I’m being attacked also.
Some people have this thought process that the only opinion they can truly trust is their own. There are lots of interesting ways to look at this, particularly with PC security, but there are good reviewers who write because they want their opinions as a fan of gaming to be believed, trusted, and enjoyed. Maybe the only reviewers you can trust are the ones who write them for free because they’re not paid for writing them. Again, this is why I started writing these columns in the first place. I never viewed myself as the oracle of video game knowledge. Like any good critic I know how to spot lies and deceit and as long as I feel that companies are trying to rip people off I’m going to continue to write the way I do.
What’s more is that this will continue to remain true if you think I’m a shill or not. The most important thing to know about critics is that no matter how many different opinions fly around the only one that matters when you pick a game is your own.
This article is written and copyrighted by Jamison DeLorenzo and all thoughts are solely his and do not necessarily represent anyone else’s including anyone else at this site. This is a weekly article which deals with anything and almost everything gaming. Feel free to post comments or e-mail. Thanks for reading.
Post your comments in the Forum!
March 6, 2006
The Gamer’s Quagmire #14: Gaming Fear & The Giant Ooze
The Gamer’s Quagmire: 14th Edition
- Jamison DeLorenzo
Gaming, humor, and insanity in harmony
Shortly after reading and writing about market reports from 2005 about the video game I started thinking about my recent gaming experiences. Normally this involves stewing over several games, writing down various comments from games and making sure they’re still in my collection or they’re nowhere to be found. Last year I was able to locate a piece of a broken disc behind the shelf where my collection resides. This immediately prompted some painful memories of Top Spin, perhaps the most infuriating sports game ever made aside from Apex.
So what did 2005 hold in store for me? It turned out not to be all that much. Everything was a sequel or remake with the exception of two online games and The Movies. Much like the movie industry I was disappointed that there were so few notable gaming experiences that made me glad I was a gamer. Games are supposed to be riveting to a certain extent. Either the story of a game should grasp you or there should be some notable multiplayer experiences that you come to cherish. I guess the lack of good role playing games contributed to an overall down year.
What are defining game experiences? I still remember seeing Final Fantasy III for the first time. I remember the 6 double K.O. match I had in Street Fighter II. I remember my record setting goal #241 in NHL96. I remember being mesmerized over Sephiroth’s transformation in Final Fantasy VII. I remember curling over laughing for 20 minutes during Resident Evil Zero when asked “will you accept the shaft?” I have no such memories like this over the past year other than fighting a 40-foot chicken in World of Warcraft named El Pollo Grande. Are gaming experiences that hard to find now or are my tastes changing that much?
The latter is probably the answer, because now I still hold unparalleled disdain for EA and refuse to buy anything under their name. As a teenage gamer I could not have cared less about who made what game- I only want to play. Being a gaming neophyte has plenty of advantages in that regard. What’s scary is that part of me is looking for excuses to complain about them. The current NFL labor issue has allowed me to become agitated on this issue again. I did feel much better once I saw that other people were discussing this also. It is always comforting when your insane thoughts are reflected by other people too.
Why bother mentioning this? I feel like too many people don’t seem to care about the problems that EA is bringing into the industry. I also an alarming sense of short attention spans. It is easy to bring up the problems that EA’s current NFLPA license has. This agreement was reached at the same year the NFL2K football game started to pick up a head of steam. Suddenly a $20 game was much more interesting that a $50 game. That year EA had to drop their price down to $30 to compete with that. The license killed any chance of any other football game to create a true NFL experience. For EA that was a calculated attempt to kill competition.
The apologists for this tell you that EA did this to protect their profit margins and that it is a sound business decision. This is quite true, but this is most definitely an anti-competitive maneuver that creates a monopoly on NFL football games- a highly illegal activity. EA vowed that the quality of their games wouldn’t go down and their price would be affected. Everyone to date that has avoided their Kool Aid knew that the price would go up, but nobody could have foreseen the egg laid with the 2006 NFL offering. This is even more true on the XBox 360 Madden game. I picked up a used copy of the game (to avoid giving any money to EA) and still see problems with the game that existed in 2001. This is what people are paying $50 again?
Still, I’m not the first person to make those complaints. This isn’t even the first time I’ve complained about it in this column. What prevents me from not mentioning this is that people still honestly believe that the exclusive license is fair play and that it’s just a tactic. Some people even think that this was done because Madden is clearly the best game. I will grant that Madden sells the best by a large margin. This is only the case because it is such a household name- if anybody even gives the NFL2K games a chance they will see the difference and throw their Madden game onto the trash heap.
What many people fail to realize is that EA tried to do this with their NBA game. I’m betting many people are glad this failed because NBA Live is almost universally hated compared to the NBA2K series this year. Both the football and basketball games still don’t have all the official league rules figured out. As a sports fan this is extraordinarily aggravating. When EA was smaller company and still had gamers shaping the direction of the company the gamers were leaps and bounds better than they are now. I don’t know why Nintendo is one of the few companies that have figured this out. Sure, Nintendo may only seem capable to make games under 4 different franchises (Mario, Link, Kirby, Metroid) but almost every one of them is entertaining.
The other fun argument is that the baseball games have an exclusive license. Did I miss something? Both Sony and Take Two released MLB games last year, so what exclusive license are we talking about? When did Sony and Take Two become the same company? If that were the case GTA would never be on a competing platform such as the XBox.
Look, I know that EA is far from being the only company that focuses on the marketing and business side of video games (UbiSoft comes to mind). They are certainly the most visible company to do this. When you have a company with such a large bottom line that can either use marketing to kill competition or absorb them it is like trying to attack a giant ooze in an RPG by throwing soldiers at it. It is this type of behavior that is damaging the gaming industry and why this current generation of gaming is not clear sailing. High definition gaming is definitely the future of the industry (even part of the present), but if the games are not any fun to play it is going to be a very rocky ride there.
Will 2006 a good string of games or will I have to constantly be wary of all the junk titles that will be coming out? I should not have these thoughts and I do not want these thoughts. Nowadays it is unfortunate that companies like EA force me to have them.
This article is written and copyrighted by Jamison DeLorenzo and all thoughts are solely his and do not necessarily represent anyone else’s including anyone else at this site. This is a weekly article which deals with anything and almost everything gaming. Feel free to post comments or e-mail. Thanks for reading.
Post your comments in the Forum!
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