Last Week's Games: Baldur's Gate, Doom and Dark Void

 This week I’ve mainly been playing Baldur’s Gate on my laptop. I mentioned last week that I’m enjoying this game a lot more now that I’m in the frame of mind to go around the different areas grinding for Experience Points, but first impressions of the game are a little misleading in this respect, as there is really only one way you can go at the start of the game – the Nashkel Mines is the first major dungeon – and if you don’t go there reasonably quickly, certain party members leave you behind. I wouldn’t want to have to handle the first part of the game without Jaheira’s healing powers! Now that I’m well into the game, having cleared the Cloakwood mines – the second major dungeon – I’m touring round the Southern part of the world map, trying to tie up all my loose ends before I head to Baldur’s Gate itself.

Apparently he gets much
better later on...

The other thing to keep in mind was that while I was initially willing to allow some of my party members to die, I’m building a party around the six I have now that I’m happy with: The main character is a Paladin called Roisin, who I’ve given a two-weapon fighting style. Imoen, of course, is essential for her trap-finding skills and as her main weapon is her bow, she also serves as most of the party’s artillery. I picked up Branwen in Nashkel, and I held on to Jaheira as well – multiple healers in the party give it a little more longevity, especially in the later areas of the game where you need to cast several healing spells to heal a party member completely. Dynaheir is my wizard, and she is at her most useful when her area-of-effect spells flatten a combat encounter before it even starts. Finally, I have Rasaad, a monk who is new to the Enhanced edition of the game I have. He can do a decent amount of damage up close, but doesn’t seem to be able to take much himself – I had to use magic items[1] to bring his Armour Class down[2] to a reasonable level, and even then, he appears to get hit a lot and doesn’t have a particularly high hit dice.[3] Nonetheless, I’m happy with the party I’ve got now and I’ll hopefully see it through to the end!

I mean, I'm assuming this is an updated
version of the Revenant...

Elsewhere, I’ve been playing Doom on the PS4. I’ve had this a while and I’ve just gotten around to playing it; I’m liking it so far! While the graphics and gameplay have obviously been enhanced by increasingly good technology since the 1993 originals I still play from time to time, the fast and frantic game play is still there and makes for some intense, thrilling battles. Hit-scan weapons are thankfully a thing of the past, but it’s a lot harder to dodge projectiles unless you’re really on it with your strafing! I’m not very far into the game yet, but it’s one I will come back to when I need a cathartic shooting spree. I don’t have a PlayStation Plus account though, so you’re unlikely ever to see me on Multiplayer.

Has the same 7th gen problem of having
unnerving eyes...

Finally, I downloaded and played Dark Void on Xbox Games with Gold on the Xbox 360. This is an interesting game that looks like it’s going to be a jetpack-based shoot-em-up, but then the main plot kicks in and it’s a 7^th-gen cover-based shooter with some jetpack elements added later. It’s based just before the World War II, where your plane crashes somewhere over the Bermuda Triangle and you find yourself under attack from strange metal beings called The Watchers. It’s alright; it’s tried to implement verticality into cover-based shooting which was a brave move, and I probably would have liked it a lot more were it not for the fact that I’ve just played through Uncharted 2. I’ve heard that Dark Void was something of a let-down in its potential, but I’ll try to beat it and see for myself!

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[1] Monks can’t usually wear armour.

[2] Baldur’s Gate is based on the second edition of Dungeons and Dragons’ weird THACO – To Hit Armour Class Zero – system, and any enhancement to your armour class goes down rather than up.

[3] D8, I think.

Last Week's Games: Wolfenstein 3D, Beneath a Steel Sky, Super Castlevania IV, Torchlight, Horus Heresy: Legions

I’ve been playing quite a few games this week, many of which I’ve never played before; let’s hope I’ve got the space to write about them all:

As with the later Doom, the chaingun eats up
a lot of ammo...

The first one was Wolfenstein 3D on my laptop. This one is often regarded as the Grandfather of first-person shooters, and while it might have been the first game that kicked off a huge part of what mainstream video games eventually became, it hasn’t aged particularly well. You run through the halls and rooms of a grey castle, shooting Nazis and collecting treasure. It works, and it is fun. The level design has a certain “Dungeons and Dragons” sensibility to it, and it’s challenging enough on the right level. But when all the levels look the same with very little variety in what you’re doing, it’s hard to think of a part of the game I’ve played that I would classify as “memorable.”

Robert Foster and Joey.

I’ve also been playing Beneath a Steel Sky. This was a game that I got for free on my GOG account, for some reason, and had never touched it in that time. From the occasional coverage from Jim Sterling, I knew that it was a Point and Click adventure, but unsure as to whether I had the patience, I didn’t bother with it for the longest time. But I’m playing it now, and it’s a pretty good adventure; it was developed by Revolution who also did Broken Sword, so it was interesting to see the contextual mouse system being developed, even if it was in its infancy back then. It’s pretty good, amusing in the right places, but it has the same problem that most games of its time had – if you can’t work out the puzzle, the whole game grinds to a halt. This has happened to me at least once, where I had to use a guide to figure out what to do next, only to find I had to talk to a character I had no practical reason to talk to at that point. Nonetheless, I hope I get to the end of it!

Hands up who remembers THAT music...

On the WiiU, I’ve been playing Super Castlevania IV. This is a game I played a while ago, as my mate Matt had it on the Super Nintendo; it’s arguably as good as the Castlevania series ever achieved and certainly an entertaining game after all this time. A nice variety of enemies, tricky platforming sections, and bosses that you should never be able to beat makes for a fun time, marred only slightly by some cheap deaths and odd checkpoint placement. It works especially well with the WiiU’s internal saving system, and I’m enjoying playing through it again, if only to give myself some ideas on what I might develop in my own DnD campaigns in future!

Spiders. It had to be spiders, didn't it?

I also played Torchlight on the Xbox 360. This was a free download with Games with Gold, and while I’d already bought it on the PC I thought the Xbox would be a more convenient platform to give it a go. It’s a dungeon-basher, with a lot of things to loot, an interesting “Pet” mechanic and a linear and standard storyline. It’s been fun so far, but it hasn’t got the depth of many of the RPGs I play, and it doesn’t look like I’ll be doing much more than getting through to the end of the game. I’ll stick at it for a bit, but I don’t know, I might have wanted a bit more than this. Still, I didn’t pay for this version of it, so I guess it’s OK!

Custodes. A pain in the bum to run or fight.

Finally, I’ve been playing The Horus Heresy: Legions on my phone. It took me a while to get back in to it, but I got there in the end! I’ve joined a new lodge as well – emperors Finest. The reason for this was that my previous lodge, the Emperor’s Daggers, was full of dead accounts. I’d love to be able to win some points for the team in the events, but the Adeptus Custodes cards are very fiddly and I’m not sure yet how I can use them effectively.

Let’s see what next week brings, and whether I can finish some of these games!

Last Week's Games: Sonic Transformed, Catan, Exploding Kittens, Eternal Crusade and 911 Operator...

This week was busier than I expected!

Let's not worry too much about why a Hedgehog who is
the fastest thing alive needs a car...

My new game for this week was Sonic All-Stars Racing Transformed, recently downloaded for the Xbox360. This is a kart racing game with the usual line-up of Sonic characters, plus another several characters from Sega’s other properties such as Alex Kidd, Super Monkey Ball, Shinobi and, bizarrely, Wreck-it Ralph. I was expecting to play a few rounds of this and then put it to bed, but I was astonished and delighted by how much fun this game is! I’m working through the World Tour at the moment, which is great for introducing the game’s modes – racing, battles, time trials, drift challenges, that sort of thing. The races are pretty easy – you don’t need to win the race to beat the level; you only need to come third – but some of the other challenges are pretty tough. The drifts, in particular, require a lot of precision. I initially chose Sonic for my play through, because you don’t buy a Sonic the Hedgehog game not wanting to play as Sonic, but when I’d levelled him up as high as he’ll go and couldn’t progress him any further, I tried playing as Danica Patrick, who handles very well. I wondered what Sega game she was from and was surprised to discover that she is, in fact, a real person! I’ve got to the end of the World Tour – just the Bonus levels to do now – but the game still has a lot to offer and I’m nowhere near fed up with it yet, so I’ll keep going for a bit longer!

It’s a little strange how that works out as I tend to prefer games with storylines. Or, at least, I think I do. But a competently-designed racing game has a very addictive “just one more go” mentality that is proving every bit as fun as an engaging plot. I enjoy having a nice balance between the two.

A mixture of non-sequitur and smarmy self-reference
often mistaken for comedy by the same sort of people
who describe themselves as "random..."

Later in the week I had a Wednesday afternoon in Warlords and Wizards, and played an enjoyable game of Catan with a couple of the lads in there which I was very pleased to win! I also had a go with Exploding Kittens; it’s a card game where you have to avoid picking up certain cards from a blind draw. The art is amusing, though very much “of its time,” and the game mechanics work even though it is based on luck. But to be honest I didn’t think much of it. It’s far too reliant on luck for me, and the theme doesn’t lend itself to a compelling plot or reason to be doing what you’re doing. The kids in the shop enjoyed it, and if someone got it out at a party I’d join in, but I won’t be spending any money on Exploding Kittens. A change of schedule means that my regular visits to Warlords and Wizards on Wednesdays have now come to an end, but I will still pop in when I can. It’s a great little shop!

I had a few rounds of Eternal Crusade; what I’ve started doing with that is trying to progress with one character until I’ve reached a Requisition Points Bonus; there are usually three available bonuses worth 1500 points each, and once I’ve achieved one I’ll move on to the next character. The reason for this is that the one you’ve won takes a while to be replaced, and could be replaced with something you could have been working on while you were playing. It also lets me have a go with some of the other factions, which is always nice.

The level I'm stuck on, funnily enough.

Finally, I continued playing 911 Operator, which I originally tried way back in February (I had to go back through my blog to find that out.) It’s odd to play games about going to work, but I really enjoy the core gameplay loop! I think the campaign could have done with fewer cities and a bit more time to develop in each city, as the improvements you make usually only occur once before you have to move on. The map doesn’t make much difference to what’s going on.

Let’s see what I’ve got time for next week…

Backlog Beatdown: Solving the Mystery with The Wolf Among Us

I downloaded the first episode of The Wolf Among us as part of the Games with Gold series last year. I didn’t play it until recently because I realised that I was going to want to play the other four parts as well, and as the free release of the first part was a clever ploy to snare me in to buying the rest of it, I thought it would be better to wait until I was able to do so.

I was very glad I did, because this game is GOOD. I would say that Traveller’s Tales games are good at telling the story, but that isn’t news to anybody. It hooks you in and keeps you engaged. The conceit of the setting – fairy-tale creatures living in 80’s New York trying to conceal their true identities – is not new but is very well done here. The characters are memorable and well-voice-acted, and the plot is strong. I won’t say too much about it here because you really need to experience it for yourself, but I paid roughly £15 for the whole package and enjoyed every moment.

Bigby in a heated discussion between Snow White
and Ichabod Crane. Yes, really.

But the game does have… an issue. Apart from the word ‘game,’ everything said in the previous paragraph could easily describe a TV series or a film. And playing this game is an experience not dissimilar to that. You play as Bigby Wolf, the Big Bad Wolf, in what is essentially a point-and-click adventure game. The controls are basic; almost all guided by button prompts. Exploring the scenes make no secret of the intractable items, and conversations are timed – you have a limited amount of time to respond to the different characters. Sections where Bigby is in danger are handled by quick-time events, which is fine for the context of the game, but present very little challenge because in most cases the only penalty for failing them is returning to the start of the sequence.

So the question is, are you OK with all of that?

And the answer is yes I am. I played some of the more popular adventure game franchises in the 90s – Monkey Island and Broken Sword – and while those games will always have nostalgic value for me and anyone who played them, I admit that they would not do well in the current generation of gaming. Most of the puzzles needed to be completed in order to move on, and if you didn’t know what to do the whole game would grind to a halt. The Wolf Among Us doesn’t allow the pacing to be interrupted in this way; it’s obvious what you have to do, and even if you don’t manage it, the game will move on anyway with slightly different dialogue and outcomes. For this generation, that kind of pacing is fine. But I remember beating the first Broken Sword game by almost making it a co-operative effort with my friend; we’d play through until one of us got stuck, then hand my copy of the game over to the other, telling what we’d learned and swapping over like that until we’d got to the end. That wouldn’t happen in The Wolf Among Us!

Tweedle Dee, and Tweedle Dum. And Bloody Mary,
who is an absolutely brilliant villain.

I would have liked to have to have seen some of the decisions you make have a more salient effect on the plot. Situations that can be handled differently depending on your responses, but the effect is how people handle you later in the game. The plot remains the same, no matter what you choose to do.

There are unlockables in the form of entries in The Book of Fables – a series of profiles of the characters, settings and history of the plot. As some of these are based on your decisions and what order you do things in, you can’t get all of these in one play-through; you have to back-track through the relevant sections to get them. I cheated by using a guide for this, but only after I’d completed the game anyway.

The Wolf Among us is a great piece of interactive storytelling and I’d more than recommend giving it a go. It’s not very challenging, but it flows well and is a good example of current-generation adventure games.

No Game New Year: Down and Depressed with Deadlight

Deadlight is another Xbox Live Games with Gold download. Zombie Apocalypse games are nothing new, but I hadn’t played one in a 2D side-scrolling platform game before and I thought it would be interesting to see this take on it.

I set myself a different challenge this time: Get through the game without looking at any of the achievement trophies. This is because I’ve ruined games before by playing them and looking for the achievement points; they’re nice to get, and I won’t usually get rid of a game until I’ve got all that are possible, but they take away some enjoyment of the game if you’re too pedantic about it.

This is the title screen; even the music that
accompanies this is bleak and tragic...

The game puts you in control of Randall Wayne, who’s teamed up with a group of survivors of the Zombie Apocalypse in search of his missing family. At the start of the game you’re separated from the group, and you have to run, jump and fight your way through the horde of Zombies – in this game called Shadows – to reunite with your team and your family. That is, of course, if any have survived…

For those of us who remember the 80s and the 90s, side-scrolling platform games were the standard back then. They lost touch once 3d gaming came in; platforming was quite difficult to pull off accurately in 3d environments and not many games managed it. But they never went away either. In the early 00’s we had emulation. In the mid/late 00’s we had retro-gaming. And in the previous/current generation, they seem to be… not making a comeback; there has been a definite shift in what is considered to be mainstream, but they have a strong presence in the sub-triple-A market.

With this new surge of platform games, some elements have stayed the same across the generations, others have changed. What has remained is art style, in that every platform game worth its code has its own distinctive look and feel to it. And Deadlight is BLEAK. The backgrounds look worn down and hopeless, the character models are barely more than silhouettes and the soundtrack evokes misery and despair. The cut-scenes are graphic novel-style drawings and subtitles that remind me, more than anything else, of Watchmen. It makes you feel that, even if you do get to the end of the game, surviving is as good as it is going to get for your character and anybody fortunate enough last to the end.

See what I mean? Bleak.

What has changed from the old platform games is combat. The combat mechanics of platform games have never been complicated, but in new games, the emphasis seems to be taken away from the combat and put on the exploration and platforming. That works well for Deadlight, which boasts a very small number of enemy types; munching your way through zombie hordes gets old at the best of times and is presumably incredibly dull if you can only do it in two dimensions. In Deadlight, you have an axe, a pistol and a shotgun at the very most, and very limited ammunition for the latter two. You avoid combat as much as possible; aiming is quite tricky and you don’t swing the axe very fast. You can’t take many hits before you die, and you’ll find yourself blaming the clunky controls for the occasional plummet, or a missed shot that costs you the game. It creates a challenge where you have to think about what you’re doing in order to proceed; more satisfying than ‘kill everything in the room then go on to the next bit.’

Yet for all that, I can’t decide whether I enjoyed the game. It’s a great game, no doubt about that. It’s a well presented; if not entirely fresh take on an idea that’s becoming stale now. The art style carries it for the most part, and telling a single story that’s over in a few hours is a refreshing change of pace. But my word, it is depressing. Any sense of achievement you gain from completing the levels and objectives is subsequently crushed by the heavy atmosphere and the feeling that no matter what you do, you’re only delaying the inevitable…

I might go back to this later to look for all the achievement points, but for now I’ll move on to something more cheery.

No Game New Year: Charlie Murder

Charlie Murder was another game I downloaded off Xbox Live Games with Gold. I started playing it because I knew I only had a few days before my girlfriend came up for the weekend, and usually once she’s gone I have the urge to play a different game. I have no idea why things work like that, but they do! So I decided to play what howlongtobeat.com told me was a relatively short game.

The band sound as good as they look...

I think the game is best described as a side-scrolling beat-em-up with RPG elements. You play one of the five members of the titular Charlie Murder, a hardcore punk band that was murdered by a rival death metal band Gore Quaffer. You can have anything up to four players involved with the game playing as the other members of the band, and the main differences between the characters seem to be their special attacks. The ‘singer,’ Charlie, screams blue murder, as does his backing ‘vocalist’[1] Kelley “Skelekitten” Skitten. Guitarist Lester Deth makes fire shoot out of his guitar, and bassist Tommy Homicide makes acid-coated buzz-saws run across the floor. Finally, the drummer ‘The Rexecutioner’ makes bits of his kit fly around and hit things. You have a basic set of attacks, which when done in the right order can develop in to combos, and you have to battle your way through to the “battle of the bands” through witches, ninjas, pirates and devils to name but a few.

I probably would have enjoyed this game a lot more had I not spent most of the summer playing Streets of Rage II, which is the best game ever created and as far as I’m concerned was as good as side-scrolling beat-em-ups ever were or ever will be. The most enjoyable aspect of the game for me was, of all things, the story. This very rarely happens with me, because by the time I usually get to the end of a game that prides itself on its story, (40 hour RPGs, anyone?) I find the scale has been blown right out of proportion. But the game's story really did have an affect on me...

Here’s what Wikipedia says about the plot (it’s about right):

The game's protagonist, Charlie Murder, is a member of a garage punk band of the same name. Charlie kicks one of the founding members, Paul, out of the band, and begins to experience chart-topping success creating music in a new genre with new bandmates. Under the name Lord Mortimer, Paul forms his own band, Gore Quaffer, and makes a pact with a demon, raising an army of demons and undead in order to destroy Charlie Murder.[2][3] Charlie and his band are killed at the beginning of the game, fight out of hell, and are reborn on Earth amidst an apocalypse caused by Lord Mortimer and his army.[5][8] In order to stop the apocalypse, Charlie Murder must defeat Gore Quaffer in a Battle of the Bands.[4]

During the game, a series of flashbacks detail the game's backstory. As Charlie and his new band mates experience success without Paul, the latter becomes increasingly upset, eventually vowing revenge. The flashbacks neither paint Charlie Murder in a wholly positive light, nor Paul in a wholly negative light.

Now, spool time back to what is at this point eight years before the ever-moving now. I was playing in a band called Jack’s Legacy. There were four of us in the band, for the most part we were all good friends and we had the potential to be the best band in the world. That sounds like I’m blowing my own trumpet, or casting aspersions on everything I’ve done since then – but we just were that good. Sadly, a few months before we really hit our stride, our drummer joined a different band, which was no better than Jack’s Legacy, but a lot more busy. The inevitable happened, and a conflict of interest came up with the band’s schedules. This and some of the most underhanded shit-stirring I’ve ever had to deal with on the part of the drummer resulted in some blazing rows, missed gigs and an almost uncontrollable amount of bitterness on my part. We went our separate ways, and I’ve never spoken to him since then. And as the drummer has the luxury of not having to give a shit about what I think since the band broke up in February the following year, I doubt I ever will.

Can you see how the story in this game resonated with me? It struck a little too close to home. While I certainly never made a diabolic pact and murdered the rival band, I did sometimes wonder for a couple of years afterwards what might happen if I were to turn up at one of their gigs and smash up their equipment. I never did that either, I would never actually do such a thing, but it gave me a moment of grim satisfaction to think about it… but seriously, there is a flashback cut-scene where Paul, devoid of a band, is playing an acoustic guitar at an open mic while the audience is more interested in Charlie Murder on the TV screens behind him. I’ve definitely been there.

 

The game is presented very well and I was interested to see how it all worked out in the end. I got the ‘bad’ ending, and I suspect it was because I missed one of a set of five collectables. (I defeated the appropriate boss which left behind an eye; I didn’t realise you had to grab it, and by the time I came back the boss was gone.) But I got to the end credits, which was really all I was looking for with this one. There are more achievement points available for multiple play-throughs, but here my problems with the game start to come out of the woodwork:

First, I don’t think the game is anywhere near as good as Streets of Rage in terms of its fighting. While there are different combos available, there’s very little – if any – combining different attacks to do a huge amount of damage. There are different enemy varieties but you rarely have to alter your tactics in order to beat them. There are points in the game where you have to think about what you’re doing – boss battles, harder sets of enemies – but only because it’s hard, not because there’s a specific tactic you need to beat it.

Second, the pacing of the game was all off in terms of its checkpoints. I’m glad you have unlimited lives, don’t get me wrong, but having to go back and play a good half an hour’s worth again because you died seems a little cheap.

The RPG elements basically involve experience points, loot and shopping. There is a huge variety of collectables, clothes and accessories you can use to enhance your character, but having to equip everything slowed the game right down for me when I’d rather have been kicking the tar out of something. The XP system is reminiscent of role-playing games, but since the enemies scale up with your levels, it doesn’t make much difference. It’s nowhere near as clever as it thinks it is, in that respect.

Finally, while the art style is excellent – and I will always praise a game for trying to do something other than gritty realism – it’s not really my taste. It all looked a bit… washy and grimy for my liking.

I might give it another go at some point, but for now, I’m pleased to have got to the end of the game so I can play something else, probably next week.

See you soon!

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[1] Of course, I use the terms ‘singer’ and ‘vocalist’ loosely…

No Game New Year: Dead Island

Dead Island

Ah, Zombie Games. Of all the gaming tropes that refuse to die, Zombies – quite fittingly – are the most belligerent. Ever since 1995, when the first Resident Evil came out and Zombies became scary again, we’ve had a steadily-increasing horde of Zombie games rising up to consume its own genre – and infect other genres, that previously had nothing to so with the undead, as Zombie add-on packs are released for Call of Duty and Red Dead Redemption. Zombie games get yearly releases, new intellectual properties are published that are basically just Zombies, and recently we’ve been seeing the ways to kill them become more and more inventive – just to keep the so-called Horror genre interesting.

You’ll guess from that rather cynical opening that I’m not a huge fan of Zombie Games. I love the first Resident Evil game, and the fourth but I’d hardly class that as a Zombie game. I played Nightmare Creatures for a little while but didn’t get very far. The only other Zombie games I play are the ones where Zombies appear as part of a line up of enemies, in Role Playing Games for example. So how did I come to play this one?

You guessed it: Downloaded it off Xbox Live as part of the Games with Gold package. I wanted to play something I could get through reasonably quickly, and tearing through a horde of Zombies seemed like the ideal game to play. Turns out I, er, wasn’t quite right about that…

Customisation of weapons is always fun...

The game is essentially a first person action RPG that apparently has an emphasis on melee combat. I’ve not heard good things about it from Youtube videos I’ve seen where it’s been commented on, (To be fair, Zero Punctuation is hardly the best place to look for positivity,) but as I don’t play many Zombie games and certainly none of the previous-gen ones, I didn’t have any pre-conceived ideas of what the game would be like. What I got was a peculiar mish-mash of different games rolled in to one. “Hey, it’s Borderlands with Melee Weapons,” I found myself saying at one point. “Hey, it’s Elder Scrolls in a Contemporary Setting,” I thought at another. “Hey, it’s Far Cry with Zombies,” I thought finally, the Skyrim with Guns analogy already having been used by the aforementioned Far Cry. And while Dead Island isn’t really as good as any of the game it references, it’s OK for a while, bashing zombies with Baseball bats, cutting their limbs off with knives and the like. You might even come across a gun or two if you’re lucky. But there are issues in the game that, in retrospect, impede enjoyment of the game quite a lot.

The first thing about the game is this: It is not scary. I know Zombie games are not necessarily scary any more anyway, but here’s the thing: They should be. The first Resident Evil game worked so well because of the combination of fixed camera angles, limited ammo and ambiguous health system. More or less the same goes for the first two Silent Hill games. This did a fine job of building a huge amount of tension as you struggled to solve the puzzles in the game in order to move on to the next bit, all the time pushing your luck with your ammo and your health while you could barely see what was going on. Combine that with the occasional jump scare and the possibility that you could de-rail any chance you had of beating the game through sheer carelessness, and you had a genuinely frightening game. There’s none of that here. The open environment means that with a very small exception, you see the monsters long before they have a chance to react to your presence. The puzzles largely consist of fetch quests, and weapons are easily obtained and maintained. There’s no survival here. There’s just getting from one bit of the game to the next and killing Zombies if they happen to get in your way.

The ‘Quests’ are a good idea, but something of a missed mark in my opinion. For a start they are almost always ‘Fetch’ quests (bring Item A to Location B, then return to Quest Giver C and receive reward D, plus some XP.) Thematically they’re all correct – finding supplies, tools and prized possessions – but its all carrot and no stick. For example, in the first section of the game, the quests you have to do in order to progress the game further is attempt to get supplies from various parts of the island. All the others are side quests – someone asks you to look for a necklace, another asks you to find family member, a third asks for engine parts for a car. The only reason it matters what order you do all this in is the reward you get at the end, which could take the form of money, weapons or supplies. It never seems to occur to the game that, while you’re faffing about looking for a necklace, the missing family member is presumably fighting for their lives against Zombies, and will probably die if you don’t get to them soon. And while you’re doing all these side quests, how are the survivors coping with the supplies you’ve chosen not to look for? Do they revolt? Do some of them go scavenging themselves? Do they snarl at you whenever you’re around for not doing enough to help? No – they just stand around waiting for you to do it. There could have been an excellent ‘decision’ mechanic in there where you have to decide what is important and what isn’t, and come to terms with the fact that you can’t help everyone which would have fit the theme perfectly, but it just doesn’t happen. The other missions I’ve done so far are either ‘kill’ missions, where you have to kill a certain set of enemies – which you’ve been doing all game anyway, so that’s nothing new – or escort missions, and no one likes them no matter what game it’s in. There’s not a lot of variety in a game this long to be honest.

Next criticism – the game is quite stoically bleak. Everybody around you is as miserable as sin and whether you achieve their quests or not, it does little to lighten the mood. Now, I understand that there’s not a lot of room for sunshine and rainbows in a Zombie game, but there really isn’t much personality in any of the NPCs that I’ve met so far. They’re there for the more functional purpose of giving quests, and while there are some exceptions, most people just… talk.

The contrast between what people expected having seen the game trailer and what people eventually got has been well-documented. Having seen a video of a father and a husband (both the same person) fighting ferociously to defend his family, and eventually having to throw his recently-zombiefied daughter out of the window to a huge drop below, what we were expecting was an emotionally charged desperate battle for survival. The problem with this approach is that it only really works with a relatively small cast of characters so that we have time to build up relationships with them and actually care if they get hurt – and even then, they have to be correctly scripted and performed. This doesn’t happen much at all in the game I’ve played up until now, as none of the characters are particularly memorable.

***SPOILER ALERT*** on the one occasion I’ve come across where the NPCs actually contribute some emotional gravity to the story, it is so poorly paced you barely notice. A mechanic has been bitten, he knows he does not have much time left before he becomes a Zombie and promises to upgrade your vehicle before that happens. You have to fight off a Zombie horde while he does this, and when the mission is over, you are rewarded with a cut-scene where he asks you to take his daughter with you. What follows is a teary goodbye between father and daughter, which would have been a darn sight more effective if you hadn’t been introduced to both characters LESS THAN FIVE MINUTES AGO. The ‘scene’ is shot well – but because we have no pre-existing emotional attachment to the characters, we find ourselves caring about them a lot less than we should. This severely blunts the emotional impact we are supposed to have over this. ***SPOILER OVER***

That having been said, I’ve been playing through the game and I have been enjoying it. There have been no standout moments, but also no appalling incompetence on the part of the devs. It is a playable game, make no mistake about that, and I have been having fun with it. I especially like the idea of doing limb damage to enemies in order to prevent them from running or attacking, and crafting weapons is always a satisfying experience – if you have enough room for them in your inventory! Driving over Zombies is always fun, and even though there’s not a massive variety of enemies, you do at least have to come up with new strategies for when a new one is introduced. And the Looter gangs are good as well, as they lend a certain amount of moral ambiguity to the survivors. Finally, some of the sound assets for the Zombies are excellent. One of them genuinely sounds like they’re in pain when you’re staving their brains in with the handle of a hammer.

 I’ve stopped playing it for a little while but I expect I will come back to it eventually and get through the rest of the game. I’m about a third of the way through at the moment, but I decided to move on as I always come back from a weekend away from games wanting to play something else.

That turned out to be Virtua Fighter 2 from the previous blog…