Ok, it's been a fair while since I last posted, sorry if that's bothered anyone. Thing is, I do get a lot of ideas for blog posts, but then I get to writing and can't find enough to put on screen. So, here's some stuff that sounded much longer in my head than they would have been:
1) Movie tie-in games can only stop sucking if they are based on movies that are based on something else, like a comic or a book. At least then there is a wider subject matter to delve into to make up the gameplay hours; games based on original movies only have the plot of teh film to go on, and 2 hours of audio-visual media doesn't translate into 15+ hours of interactive. Mad props to (most of) the Harry Potter games for making a good effort at this. Shame on the Batman Begins tie-in for not even trying.
2) Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines is a great game, and stands up well even after 7 years. The folks who use their own time and expertise to patch the damn thing just so it works for other people need to be given a job by someone, if they haven't already. Seriously, the massive bugs were the one thing that held this game back, and they are all but gone now. You have no reason not to buy this game, it's on Steam for cheap.
3) On the other side, Spellforce is a good game that has not aged well. The graphics are sketchy, the voice acting is lame, and it re-uses too many character models. However, the mechanics are really good, especially for its time - I'm surprised that not as many games have tried to copy it. Still, it's tough playing through it now given that it looks like a duck's arse. However, it's damn cheap right now, download it if your into RTSs.
4) I am not 100% sure it is worth buying the other two Deus Ex games for the sake of the latest one. I didn't have the computer or money for the first game, Invisible War passed me by, and now Human Revolution is this huge thing that everyone is playing and I've been completely left out. This is not me moping over not being with the in-crowd, I'm just lamenting the fact that yet another current-event game is slipping past because I wasn't on-the-ball enough to get in there when everyone else did. If it turns out that you don't need to have played the first game to understand the third one, I will be very happy :)
5) I'm don't know how I feel about stealth games. See, I think the application of stealth in a combat situation is awesome, and it makes for very impressive action sequences in films. However, I'm not an incredibly stealthy person, and I tend to f**k up the sneaky bits in a lot of games (it's the reason I never got past the first dungeon in Zelda: The Wind Waker) due to a clumsy attitude towards hiding and a nervous disposition in the face of danger. However, it seems that many stealth games have heeded to call of klutzes like me, and have made it possible to be all sneaky-like and not worry about getting caught - in the sense that when you do get caught, you won't immediately die a horrible death or get captured. Games like Splinter Cell: Conviction, Assassin's Creed and Batman: Arkham Asylum seem to represent a "stealth-made-easy" herd of action games.
As overjoyed as I am to be able to be a sneaky as anyone is a game, it does make me wonder if any of the challenge has been taken any from the real stealth aficionados, the master burglars of Thief, the silent assassins - no disguises required - of Hitman (another game I like) and the commando captains of Metal Gear Solid; how do they feel about the quick-cover systems and new-found character survivability?
Am I just riding a gravy train to Easytown that disrupts their service to the Land of True Skill? Makes me wonder...
Well, that was therapeutic, glad to those thoughts out of my mind and out there. I do like that having no clear format to this blog means I don't have to deliver any minimum amount of work on any given topic...good God I'm spoilt.
Comments if ya got 'em :)
