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aumentouI managed to avoid playing any computer games for five months. This is a personal best. Then I had a couple of bad weeks in November and fell off the wagon, so here is some ranting poorly disguised as a review of games you all played (and probably discarded) years ago:
Okay, let's start with the short one: Dragonshard. Do not play this game, it's shit. Everything about it is badly designed, except the bits they copied off other, better, games. Even the fucking load screen is awful, which wouldn't be an issue if it spent a sensible amount of time loading.
Neverwinter Nights:
This is an RPG based on the 3rd ed D&D rules. The last game I played using D&D rules was Baldurs Gate 2, which used the 2nd ed rules. BG2 was a sprawling adventure with about ten or so different characters (not counting "you") that let you play just about any alignment reasonably plausibly and had a million sub-plots and a lot of interaction between party members. It was fun, but somewhat marred because it was based on 2nd ed D&D, which meant that when you met a lich you always died (Time Stop. Powerword: Kill. Powerword: Insanity. Rinse and repeat). Also there were a few little fuckups in the interactions, but on the whole it felt more or less like a game world where things happened. Also, the plot was not quite a complete railroad, which was nice.
All this is relevant because it is where the bar was set, for me. NWN misses by quite a bit. For one thing, you only control one character and one semi-controlled henchperson. The two only interact when you choose to. The henchpeople all have a special quest that you can only get to when they trust you, but their trust is defined by your character level, so if you finish chapter one of the game and then dump your long-standing best choice of henchperson in favour of each of the others you can instant-complete all their quests (their quests involve finding items, which you will have found if you do the classic house-to-house search of all areas and you won't have sold because they have value 0). Worse than this, the main plot is a complete railroad. You can't disable it by killing the obvious traitor (he's invulnerable) or discrediting him (it's not possible even when it's obvious). It also makes no fucking sense. The city needs a mighty hero to save it from plague (because swords help with that), so instead of sending out the L3 guards, or the L5 captains, or the L? (but she's kickass) paladin in charge, or something, what you actually do is recruit some L1 scrotes and pick the one that survives the first assault to go out and solve the problem. On their own, except for the henchperson. Because you couldn't have hired all six of the mercenaries available for less than the price you paid out in reward money, or anything. Gah. Meanwhile you can't really play the game as anything other than neautral good, because if you weren't good you wouldn't be on this team and if you weren't neutral you wouldn't be practising house-breaking on behalf of a paladin.
Finally, point of detail, you can't zoom out very much. This means everything is nice and big for those old people with crap eyesight like me, but also means you only ever get two shots with a bow befor you're at point-blank. This would be less of a problem if you could order your henchperson to switch to melee weapons DURING combat, or if they could take the point-blank shot feat, buit both of those seem to be impossible.
So, what's good? Well, you can zoom right in on your characters ass, which would be good if a) I liked that sort of thing and b) it was possible to get a character that was pleasing to look at. Also NWN does manage to have these handy ring menus for interacting with things, but then copying squaresoft isn't really big or clever, is it now? Finally, it's made with 3d ed D&D rules, which means it is significantly less crap than 2nd ed rules. Still shit though. Character plus magic plate plus big shield = AC21. Yay. Character plus leather +1 plus two items of dex bonus plus small shield = AC21. Hang on a minute... armour STILL doesn't make you harder to kill? Right.
So, Dawn of War:
The first iteration of the game was rather fun. The resource-gathering model made some sense in some contexts and made much less sense in the final missions, but it was basically okay. There were balance problems in skirmish. Then there was the big thing: I got to the end of the campaign and thought, I wonder who is next? Orks or Chaos? Then found out that was it. Ah well.
The second iteration (Winter Assault) was disappointing. Partly because guard are annoying. Partly because the campaign was done on a bargain-basement twofer scheme. Mostly because the campaign had a string of deus-ex moments and also the plot broke the game system. If the system is about taking and holding territory, a mission which is about a rapid build with capturing anything followed by a massive assault is not a good mission. Don't give me 20K requisition and make me build an army on a fucking time limit so it all becomes builder micromanagement, give me the goddamn army and let me kill things.
The third iteration (Dark Crusade) is basically great. The campaign is a huge flexible thing, the missions are varied. There are only three little things I would pick at:
1) The guard are still crap. A lack of heavy weapons in their basic troops means they can't handle vehicles without specialists. They also can't handle assaults at all, since they can't get specialists until the top of their tree and even then only get two units. This means you tend to run into a moment during rapid-expansion mission (most of them) where you suddenly run into dreadnought-equivalents, and they grind through you. It's annoying, not least because your only answer is tanks and they are harder to get than dreadnought-equivalents.
2) Necrons are just a bit good. Using power to build generators that make power leads to exponential growth, and the fact that they don't need to take or hold territory is just sickening. Also, when you're attacking an enemy base and they've got three tomb spiders and three necron lords lying "dead" on the floor, each of which keeps getting up and causing more trouble, that's just annoying. There really ought to be some sort of limit on respawns, or at least on them building new "unique" lord units while the old one is still respawning.
3) The stronghold assault missions. I don't know how to say this, but they're a bit easy. They're basically slow-build puzzle missions, which makes them long and tedious rather than hard.
Okay, let's start with the short one: Dragonshard. Do not play this game, it's shit. Everything about it is badly designed, except the bits they copied off other, better, games. Even the fucking load screen is awful, which wouldn't be an issue if it spent a sensible amount of time loading.
Neverwinter Nights:
This is an RPG based on the 3rd ed D&D rules. The last game I played using D&D rules was Baldurs Gate 2, which used the 2nd ed rules. BG2 was a sprawling adventure with about ten or so different characters (not counting "you") that let you play just about any alignment reasonably plausibly and had a million sub-plots and a lot of interaction between party members. It was fun, but somewhat marred because it was based on 2nd ed D&D, which meant that when you met a lich you always died (Time Stop. Powerword: Kill. Powerword: Insanity. Rinse and repeat). Also there were a few little fuckups in the interactions, but on the whole it felt more or less like a game world where things happened. Also, the plot was not quite a complete railroad, which was nice.
All this is relevant because it is where the bar was set, for me. NWN misses by quite a bit. For one thing, you only control one character and one semi-controlled henchperson. The two only interact when you choose to. The henchpeople all have a special quest that you can only get to when they trust you, but their trust is defined by your character level, so if you finish chapter one of the game and then dump your long-standing best choice of henchperson in favour of each of the others you can instant-complete all their quests (their quests involve finding items, which you will have found if you do the classic house-to-house search of all areas and you won't have sold because they have value 0). Worse than this, the main plot is a complete railroad. You can't disable it by killing the obvious traitor (he's invulnerable) or discrediting him (it's not possible even when it's obvious). It also makes no fucking sense. The city needs a mighty hero to save it from plague (because swords help with that), so instead of sending out the L3 guards, or the L5 captains, or the L? (but she's kickass) paladin in charge, or something, what you actually do is recruit some L1 scrotes and pick the one that survives the first assault to go out and solve the problem. On their own, except for the henchperson. Because you couldn't have hired all six of the mercenaries available for less than the price you paid out in reward money, or anything. Gah. Meanwhile you can't really play the game as anything other than neautral good, because if you weren't good you wouldn't be on this team and if you weren't neutral you wouldn't be practising house-breaking on behalf of a paladin.
Finally, point of detail, you can't zoom out very much. This means everything is nice and big for those old people with crap eyesight like me, but also means you only ever get two shots with a bow befor you're at point-blank. This would be less of a problem if you could order your henchperson to switch to melee weapons DURING combat, or if they could take the point-blank shot feat, buit both of those seem to be impossible.
So, what's good? Well, you can zoom right in on your characters ass, which would be good if a) I liked that sort of thing and b) it was possible to get a character that was pleasing to look at. Also NWN does manage to have these handy ring menus for interacting with things, but then copying squaresoft isn't really big or clever, is it now? Finally, it's made with 3d ed D&D rules, which means it is significantly less crap than 2nd ed rules. Still shit though. Character plus magic plate plus big shield = AC21. Yay. Character plus leather +1 plus two items of dex bonus plus small shield = AC21. Hang on a minute... armour STILL doesn't make you harder to kill? Right.
So, Dawn of War:
The first iteration of the game was rather fun. The resource-gathering model made some sense in some contexts and made much less sense in the final missions, but it was basically okay. There were balance problems in skirmish. Then there was the big thing: I got to the end of the campaign and thought, I wonder who is next? Orks or Chaos? Then found out that was it. Ah well.
The second iteration (Winter Assault) was disappointing. Partly because guard are annoying. Partly because the campaign was done on a bargain-basement twofer scheme. Mostly because the campaign had a string of deus-ex moments and also the plot broke the game system. If the system is about taking and holding territory, a mission which is about a rapid build with capturing anything followed by a massive assault is not a good mission. Don't give me 20K requisition and make me build an army on a fucking time limit so it all becomes builder micromanagement, give me the goddamn army and let me kill things.
The third iteration (Dark Crusade) is basically great. The campaign is a huge flexible thing, the missions are varied. There are only three little things I would pick at:
1) The guard are still crap. A lack of heavy weapons in their basic troops means they can't handle vehicles without specialists. They also can't handle assaults at all, since they can't get specialists until the top of their tree and even then only get two units. This means you tend to run into a moment during rapid-expansion mission (most of them) where you suddenly run into dreadnought-equivalents, and they grind through you. It's annoying, not least because your only answer is tanks and they are harder to get than dreadnought-equivalents.
2) Necrons are just a bit good. Using power to build generators that make power leads to exponential growth, and the fact that they don't need to take or hold territory is just sickening. Also, when you're attacking an enemy base and they've got three tomb spiders and three necron lords lying "dead" on the floor, each of which keeps getting up and causing more trouble, that's just annoying. There really ought to be some sort of limit on respawns, or at least on them building new "unique" lord units while the old one is still respawning.
3) The stronghold assault missions. I don't know how to say this, but they're a bit easy. They're basically slow-build puzzle missions, which makes them long and tedious rather than hard.
