Regular readers will note that I very often complain about
not having enough time to play as many games as I would like, and this week has
been no exception, though for different reasons than usual. I got caught up in
a family emergency of the kind not terribly considerate of the average number
of hours in a day, and while that’s been mostly sorted now, a lot of the spare
time I was expecting to have this week has been taken up in dealing with it.
Sometimes life gets in the way, and this week there were other places I needed
to be!
 |
| See what I mean? It couldn't look more XBLA if it tried! |
On those days where I had an hour or two to spare, however,
I found myself playing Sacred Citadel. One pattern that regularly occurs when I’m
playing games is that after I’ve finished a big, heavy game like Assassin’s
Creed, I’m more likely to play a couple of light or retro games that I don’t
have to think too hard about in order to have a pretty decent time. Sacred
Citadel is a fantasy-themed hack-and-slash brawler with RPG elements, similar
in gameplay to the old arcade brawler machines that were the staple of the
arcades in the early 90s, but with a look I that can only describe as Xbox Live
Arcade. I didn’t realise until I was doing the research for this blog that it’s
actually a part of the Sacred franchise, which isn’t a series of games I’m
familiar with so I had no pre-conceptions about the content of the game.
Honestly, at this point I just wanted to hit something.
You choose from one of four characters; the Warrior, the
Ranger, the Mage and the Shaman. They have different abilities depending on who
you choose; I went for the Mage because it’s a refreshing change to be able to
fireball something to death without having to commit to a 40+ hour roleplaying
game. The game is divided into four acts each with a number of levels in there;
it starts out easily enough with the game showing you the different mechanics
in the first few levels and taking the training wheels off for the rest of the
game. You have access to a range of attack combos and can also upgrade your
weapons. The more recent brawlers I’ve played have mechanics like this and they’re
not awful, but it’s an illusion of depth as your weapon upgrades etc increase
in power as the game increases in difficulty, as the enemies you face can take
more damage as you’re going along.
Where the game truly becomes like an RPG is in its
levelling-up system, where once your character gets a certain amount of XP they
level up and you have to distribute points into their characteristics. This
should also be an illusion of depth, and it would be if the game didn’t have a
massive difficulty spike halfway through the second act and force you to go
back and grind for XP to have a hope of beating the boss. There are some
challenges to make this more interesting – complete a level without dying, or
in a certain amount of time, or score a certain amount of points – but it’s
brought the pace of the game right down to a standstill for me. I’ll keep going
at it from time to time though, as I’m not expecting to have much time this
week either and I’m not quite ready to get off my casual gaming horse just yet!
 |
| Looking forward to opening this! |
I also bought Games Workshop’s new release, Necromunda
Underhive. Necromunda is a game that was available when I first got into the
hobby but had been and gone by the time I’d considered getting in to it. Games
Workshop’s smaller skirmish games have a lot of good character development
rules, though, and I remember Mordheim very fondly, so I’d love to see how it
works in the futuristic gang war setting. I haven’t even had time to get the
box out yet, and I suspect it will be a while before I do as I want to make
sure I do a reasonable job with the painting this time, but we’ll see what
happens with it.
No comments:
Post a Comment