The Dark Furie

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Amy Review

As mentioned in the box over to the right, today I'm reviewing Amy, a downloadable game that was released yesterday on Xbox Live Arcade, Playstation Network and PC. I'll be reviewing the Xbox Live version of the game but I wouldn't expect many differences between the different versions.

I'm what some people would refer to as a "shrewd consumer" while other people would, no doubt, find the words "obsessive lunatic" a bit more descriptive. I like to find out all about a product, specifically media products like games or books or television series, before investing the money needed to experience such things. Most of the time I use this research to put a price on items that I'd be willing to pay for it and we usually wait until the item has gone down to that price before buying it. Sometimes I've misjudged how much an item should be worth and I usually end up thinking of it as even more of a bargain when we've bought it cheap and it would have been worth more to us. This is usually how our media buying goes and we very rarely are unhappy with something when the price has been taken into account.

The reason I'm telling you about our usual way of buying media is because I didn't actually do that before buying Amy. So often, when researching whether a television programme finished its story before getting cancelled or whatever, I've had plot points spoiled for me or people who have previewed a game have let out a major discovery as part of general conversation about it. I decided that, with what I already knew about Amy, that it was enough and that I'd go into the experience otherwise blind as the game itself seemed to be high in story. This was a mistake, as you'll see when you read the review/skip to the score at the bottom.

The premise of the game sounds fascinating. You play as Lana, a scientist who has rescued one of the subjects from the lab she works at. The rescued subject is Amy, a four or five year old mute girl who seems to develop psychic powers as the game goes on. A virus has infected the city you're moving through, turning everyone into psychotic monsters bent on killing anyone uninfected. While Amy is immune to the virus, Lana isn't, but she can be healed of any contamination by sticking close to Amy who just may carry the key to the whole mystery behind the virus and its cure. Sometimes Lana will have to risk death by becoming purposely contaminated with the virus in order to enter areas teeming with monsters and clear a path that she can later bring Amy through without being seen.

While the story sounded quite interesting, it was this last aspect that interested me most about the gameplay as the idea of the risk/reward ratio of becoming purposely infected with a zombie virus in order to slip through their ranks was something that hasn't been done all that often. Having the little girl act as a mobile decontamination point seemed like it could open up some truly interesting gameplay opportunities. Unfortunately we wont know about that until another game tries to do the same things as Lexis Numérique, the developers of Amy, only ever force this gameplay on the player rather than allowing the player to make it their own choice. One entire level is built around that concept and you're forced to play that way as the game ends if you're seen and recognised as human. While the opening sequence to maybe one other level is best played that way due to lack of weapons to defend yourself with, there aren't any real points in the game where you feel that you may be able to play it as you want to, making judgement calls about what may be best. Each level expects you to play a certain way and there are a lot of game overs coming your way should you decide to play it any differently.

True, the game does occasionally split Lana and Amy up, forcing the player to race against time to get back to Amy as they become more and more infected. The ways this is done are seemingly out of the Penguin Big Book Of Videogame Clichés though. Facilities around the world are built with elevators that have buttons to operate them on the other side of a room, usually up on their own platform. Combined with the fact that Amy can't climb ladders (Lana can but only very very very slowly) and you can almost see the increasing desperation of the developers to create something playable. "We've got some interesting features to this otherwise generic zombie game", they must have thought, "How can we show them off so the player doesn't miss them and hack and slash his way through the game?" Almost every situation in which Lana has to leave Amy behind is painfully contrived and one level even starts with Amy running away for absolutely no explained reason. Had the game had more open arenas (with plenty of enemies but also plenty of hiding spots) that allowed for more judgement calls to be made on whether to fight or hide, these contrivances wouldn't have been needed, and the game would have been much better off. Players would have found a natural rhythm between hiding, fighting, splitting up and allowing the infection to take them for a while, sticking together for protection from the virus and making progress through the story, and I truly believe that the basic relationship mechanics in this game could have allowed for the game to be a masterpiece with only the barest of effort put into truly non-linear level design. Alas, this was not to be.


Some genuinely creepy enemy design combines with Amy's obvious vulnerability to promise so much.
Sadly, more than this game is able to deliver.

This lack of freedom applies to almost every aspect of the game. Amy can pick up powers by drawing glyphs that can be found in the environment. These powers are usually located just before they are needed and usually in places that you can't get past without them. I missed one power which blasts wooden beams away when they're nailed over doors and, as this was the first time I should have found the power and I had no idea that it existed, it kept me stuck on one part of a level for fifteen minutes simply trying to find how to get where I was going. The lack of signposting in the game and the insistence that the game be played only one possible way affects so many other places that some will no doubt decide the game is unplayable to the point of being broken and leave long before the credits have run. Others will stick out the six relatively short chapters of the game and come away even more annoyed at the lack of information about what they've just been playing. So much of the game background isn't explained in the game itself, to the point that even the fact that the year is supposed to be 2034 was only found out from the website. At the end of the game no explanations were forthcoming and a new character/the mad professor we were running away from (explained in the opening cutscene so not technically a spoiler)/the priest we saw on a monitor early in the game shows up and there is nothing to tell the player which of the three this character is meant to be. Characters also blatantly exist only to keep the story going and are never heard of outside of their cutscenes.

Now I could complain a little about the level design being a bit samey, and how easily the player can get lost due to that, but the fact is that the majority of the game is set inside a metro station and those are designed to be that way anyway. Some fault does fall on the graphics obviously, but this is a downloadable title and this sort of quality was to be expected for the price. Likewise, the slightly shoddy voice acting was expected for the price, despite Supergiant Games showing recently with Bastion how attention to voice acting in a budget title could easily tell an incredibly moving story that is truly beautiful in some places. I forgive the game these shortcomings as it is a budget title, yet there are so many other things wrong with the game that I can't score it anywhere near as highly as I'd hoped to when I first heard of it. There are the bones of a masterpiece hidden in the rotting corpse of Amy, but they never quite show themselves nor are they given the flesh needed to make them thrive. Like Lana must have during the space of the game, by the time you're finished you may have come to realise that Amy is more of a burden to be dragged around than you'd first hoped she'd be.

4/10

"I Wwebsite As On The Internet"

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Yes, I know this is a long text post and yes I know those can be a little boring sometimes, especially for my readers who are used to surprise reveals, guest stars and explosions after every car chase (if you're a new reader, stick around because the new year has even more). This however is something close to my heart, two things close to my heart in fact - good customer service and the public bitch-slapping of an asshole. Read on and I'll even throw a couple of cartoons in there to break the text later on, and end it in a comic. Deal?

Read more...

Glitched

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Kim and I have completely different philosophies when it comes to saving in video games. I like to rely on auto saves, only really making a manual save when I'm about to come off a game or when I know I'm in a part that can get messed up easily (via my own incompetence or glitches that have made it through quality assurance). This has resulted in occasions when I've lost a few hours of progress in the past, including the near-infamous incident when a power cut occurred just as I reached a save point after an hour and a half boss fight in a Final Fantasy game. That incident is known only as The Scream Heard Around The World. It's safe to say I don't manually save often enough. Kim, on the other hand, saves too often in games. It's not unknown for her to pick someone's pocket and save after each and every item stolen, which kind of explains why she has made over four hundred Skyrim saves while I'm just shy of my first century despite having racked up a hundred and thirty hours of gametime so far (with so very much still to do in the game).

In a way this reflects our playstyles and aims in the video game worlds we inhabit. I like to lose myself in the world as much as possible and inhabit the character, making decisions the character would make. Kim likes to steal the clothes from everyone in a town while they're wearing them and leave an entire town wandering around in their underwear, which she managed somewhere around save 400 and hour 80. Bizarrely they don't seem to have noticed the extra chill or even the fact that everyone else is nude too. I put it down to them fearing the early onset of a mental illness and trying to ignore it as much as possible. It's the Emperor's New Clothes, with the entire town of Whiterun cast as the Emperor. Kim also spends an amazing amount of time arranging dead bodies into sexual positions while the most I'll do is throw an enemy's dead comrade at them or leave a dead husband in bed with his living wife. See, I'm not above playing pranks at all; I'm just more selective of my victims. The man screaming out everyday in the town centre about worshipping his chosen deity had a poison administered to him which made him attack a guard and then I watched with glee as the entire city guard descended on him like wolves. On the subject of wolves, I'm also not averse to becoming a werewolf and using my wolfman form to chase Khajiit (humanoid cats in the game series). These are the sorts of pranks I adore as they seem to fit the character I'm playing.


"Some people call this junk. Me, I call them treasures."
This admission from merchants takes on a whole new meaning when nude.

Both of these approaches are equally valid ways to play Skyrim, both are fun in different ways and both are somewhat explainable within the context of the world. I suppose that's the true power of Bethesda's open world games - you find yourself explaining things in ways the designers may not have anticipated. For example, the religious nutcase I killed had a small following in the town and occasionally people would stop to watch him and listen. After I killed him this obviously stopped, except for one old woman who still stops to listen despite there being no-one there. This is just a slight data mishap where a certain switch hasn't been toggled the right way, but that's not the first explanation that leapt to mind. To me, this old woman had lived through the war thirty years ago and had lost the right to worship her chosen deity as a result. She was now living through a civil war which brought back painful memories and, as she lived alone and made no mention of living relatives, I think those memories have something to do with the loss of a child in the war. In my mind this woman took great comfort in her friends, especially those who spoke out against the loss of the god Talos. Her mind must have reeled at the news of his death, especially the bizarre way he lost control and uncharacteristically attacked people. Each time I see her stop at that shrine I know that she's wondering why this had to happen and how much more must she lose? And I feel guilty for her loss.

It never ceases to amaze me when a game has a complete enough world that you start filling in the few gaps yourself, almost allowing what is right to act like a get out of jail free card for what goes wrong. Arkham City is another recent example. A wonderfully created game with brilliant gameplay and one small glitch. One feature has Bats beating up groups of thugs around the city while keeping one conscious so they can be interrogated for information afterwards. Bats descends on the last man like a demon, holds him in the air by his throat and questions him... sometimes. Other times the thug is somehow removed from the game before the interrogation scene and Bats questions then knocks out thin air. I put this down to him practising, much like the infamous De Niro mirror scene in Taxi Driver. "You talkin' to me?" Bats asks, trying to get the perfect gravelly voiced threatening tone to inspire fear when he meets real life criminals. "I don't see anyone else here." intones the caped and cowled Travis Bickle before punching nobody in the throat. BAM! "And now you're asleep!" Whether he's or this is another expression of the psychological condition that made him dress as a bat in the first place is irrelevant. This is a prime example of a game glitch that enhances the story rather than breaking it, and a phenomenon that occurs only during the better games that are released. That we've had two in the space of a month that can get away with glitches in this way can only be good for gamers, as it speaks to the quality of what's out there right now and the talents of those creating it.

Skyrim

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There's a moment in Skyrim where it all just clicks into place and the disparate segments of the game become one glorious whole (behave children) but that point can be any amount of time away depending on how you play the game. For me it was just over twenty hours into the game that I finally understood how it all worked. This moment was followed with a sigh at a certain amount of wasted money. In other Elder Scrolls games you slowly get better armour options open to you as you discover new types of armour. I followed this philosophy in Skyrim but with a difference as I was able to smith my own armour. I did find myself short of a few bits and pieces needed to do so and bought those from the blacksmith but in the end I had a fine set of Elven armour quite early in the game. It was around then that I discovered that most light armours protect the same amount depending on your skill and that your Smithing skill can be used to upgrade armour to make it better (a new and welcome addition to the series). Lesson learned I "downgraded" my armour to a leather that suits my character concept of travelling spellsword better, upgraded that armour to Exquisite level, and threw my shiny elven crap at the nearest blacksmith. From then on I knew that this game was the Elder Scrolls series refined to its core and redesigned to keep you playing forever, no matter how you play.


I've spent twice the time on the game as Kim has and have only two levels on her due to the fact that I'm usually carrying a small town on my back and moving at a snail's pace due to that. The fucking broom dungeon wont know what hit it.

A big part of that is the Radiant Quest System, which does its best to keep the world seeming alive and reactive. How this works is simple. If you're in a town and there is a quest in the town or near it, then you'll be directed to that in some way. If a den of bandits or necromancers needs clearing out then you'll be told about that. Different people may direct you to these quests in different ways. You may find out about a nearby shipwreck from a passing guard making conversation while I may be sent there to pick up an heirloom lost by a villager. A tavern owner may have a bounty for the bandit leader in a nearby cave while a shop owner may want you to find a shipment stolen from him in there. The game determines the missions and events that are available and wraps them up in new ways for you, making the world seem a little more alive. If that were the extent of the system then it'd be enough, but they've done more work to make it even more tailored to you. Rewards and quest targets are also tailored to you by the system. If you have been raising your two-handed weapons skill and favour blades then the legendary weapon you've been offered in reward will likely be something you'll find useful like a greatsword, while a mage may have a legendary staff given to them or a tome with a rare spell. Those that diversify a lot in their skills will find that the system can't quite keep up with them, but those who play focussed characters are going to feel like the entire world was built to please them. In fact, the world doesn't like it if you've not got a hell of a lot to do. The game keeps a record of the things you've been doing and uses that to find something you haven't done recently, then finds a way to offer you a quest to do that thing.


Been avoiding bears? Then you should expect to find someone soon who has a phobia of them and wants you to collect ten bear pelts to help cure it (or some other contrived reason that gets you out killing bears).

These little kill and collect quests could seem pretty shallow (and I'm sure that hundreds of hours of gameplay will make them seem so, but that still means hundreds of hours of play) but there are so many ways to be given these objectives and they mix in so well with all of the other quest types in the Radiant Quest System that they simply come across as another thing to do. In the example above about collecting bear pelts, you may simply travel from shop to shop buying them or go from home to home stealing them if you don't fancy killing some nice, defenceless wall of muscle, fur and teeth that has no such problem with eating your face. The final part of the Radiant Quest System is the relationships system which allows for multiple people to give the same quest and reward you for them. Say you have to escort someone somewhere and the quest is completed but they somehow die before rewarding you. In most games the mission would count as failed, but in Skyrim you have more complexity added. People related to the recently deceased character may have the quest reward for you. Depending on how they feel about you they may also lower or raise the value of the reward, or even decline to pay and seek revenge for their deceased relative. The same applies if someone dies before they can give you a quest as the system moves that quest to their nearest relative, or even switches towns and gives it to someone with the same job. The clever part of the Radiant Quest System is that it all works behind the scenes and the player is never aware of any of the vast network of calculations going on in the background. All the player knows is that there is so much to do in the world and that people just keep mentioning things that either lead to quests or add places to the map. Guards mention nearby ruins and caves, traders and people in the street may mention trouble going on nearby, couriers come up with messages from people you've met that invariably lead to new missions and rewards, Jarls post bounties in the pubs, random travellers and prisoner convoys provide the opportunity for plenty of adventure, guilds have their own sets of repeatable quest types with the target randomly generated in the world and everyone has something for you to do. The Radiant Quest System works so well at making the story quests that little bit different for you and surrounding them with so many different things to keep you going that it ceases to be a recognisable game system at all for most players and will simply be another aspect of this living, breathing world.

And what a world it is. The cold mountains frequently experience snowstorms, the rivers and waterfalls have a thin mist surrounding them as the water is usually hotter than the air surrounding it. The ingredients system from previous games returns, but has been expanded beyond plants and animal parts. Bugs can be plucked out of the air and fish out of the rivers and seas. If you happen to see salmon jumping up a waterfall (something I wasn't expecting in a videogame) then see if you can grab one while it's out of the water. This attention to detail permeates the entire world and contributes to making it feel like a living place. Alongside the Radiant Quest System this leaves Skyrim as one of the most reactive landscapes in videogame history, but this makes the little bugs and annoyances all the more prevalent.


The tactical additions to companions allows you to tell them to go somewhere.
You will only ever use this to get them out of the way when they stubbornly refuse to move out of a doorway.

The addition of dragons to the Elder Scrolls series had me groaning at first as it's such a done thing in fantasy games. I don't know whether it's the Norselands inspired setting that makes it any different but Skyrim pulls off dragons magnificently. These beasts can appear anywhere, and frequently do, sometimes landing in the middle of villages perching on the buildings and breathing frost and fire down on the populace. These battles, while far from being the most difficult things you'll face in the game, are always intense and tactical as you swap to bows and spells to ground the dragon then on to melee to take it on when it lands.


There's nothing better than being in a pitched battle with a group of enemies when a dragon lands.
Old grudges are put aside and allegiances change as everyone joins forces to take down the perceived greater threat.
Use this distraction to slaughter them from behind...

The dragons are built into the game in every conceivable way. The land is covered in ancient dragon burial sites and some ruins contain walls with the ancient dragon language carved into it. These walls dim the lights as you get near and a single word shines brightly on it, burning itself into your mind and allowing you to use the magic of the dragons which is generally so much more powerful than the magic of humans. It is said in books and by scholars that this language is how dragons communicate with each other and that a dragon battle where they spew fire and frost at each other is merely a heated discussion, a debate in that mystical and powerful language. In short, the dragons feel as mystical and powerful as they did when you first heard about them as a child. By keeping their abilities the same but changing the lore surrounding those abilities, Skyrim manages to make even a concept as done to death as dragons have been feel fresh and new as well as part of the existing world that has been set up over the past few games.

I was a fan of the Elder Scrolls from the time the series began and counted Morrowind (which I famously spent 440 hours on before I was done with it) as one of the greatest RPGs ever created. When Oblivion came at the start of this generation I eagerly bought it (we actually bought the game a month or so before the console to make sure we'd get a copy) and was bitterly disappointed. All of the improvements they'd made came at such a cost to the game that they were actually detrimental to the overall game. Yes, there were many more dungeons in the game than ever before but they all used one of five tilesets and had nothing to set them apart from others that used the same set. Yes, there was full voice acting, but there were only six people providing the voices and they went from talking about vast political machinations to single lines repeated ad infinitum. Every improvement came with a price that simply wasn't worth paying and the game suffered vastly for it. For many it was still a great game but too much had been lost for me to enjoy it as all I was surrounded by were cases of the could-have-beens. Skyrim on the other hand is a glorious return to form and an evolution of everything that came before. The voice cast hit seventy people and they have so many things to say (in part aided by the wonderful Radiant Quest System) this time around that they rarely repeat, except for the guards who all used to be adventurers until they got shot in the knee making me think that someone out there is ending careers by shooting peoples knees (I'm keeping my eyes open just in case). Almost every dungeon has its own twist. There are still repeated tilesets but these have some secret or mini puzzle that sets them apart from other similar dungeons. The world has a depth to it that was missing in Oblivion and so many layers that keep you coming back and doing different things. The new perks system allows you to customise your character as never before and actively encourages different play styles from those who inevitably end up playing the same type of character each time. In all, this is the redemption of the Elder Scrolls series and a solid contender for the RPG of the generation.

Gone Fishing...



...and fighting and crafting and casting and shouting and slaying and hiring and making friends and making enemies and exploring and probably a bit more fighting and vikinging and getting married and buying houses and civil-warring and thieving and...