Speed Reps With Seth
Posted on June 14th, 2009 in Reviews | No Comments »
This Session: Click-N-Killz(or “The Point And Click Action RPG”), Vol 1.
Let me start off by saying I absolutely love Click-N-Killz. From Sacred to Divine Divinity to that one game from the creators of WoW (I forget what it’s called), I’ve played most, if not all the major releases in the genre that have made it to the North American shores. For that reason, I figured this genre would be perfect for the inaugural session of Speed Reps With Seth.
Alright, what exactly is Speed Reps With Seth? Well, being a part-time gamer, I don’t have much time to play games, and even less time to write full-blown reviews. However, given that I’ve learned to cram so much gaming into a small space (i.e. my free time!), I figured I could do the same with reviews. So Speed Reps With Seth is just that: A collection of short review blurbs on hopefully similar games, although I reserve the right to randomize based on whatever I’ve been playing in any given space of time. You’ll notice also that we’ve adopted the simple five star rating system here at PartTimeGamers.com, so short, sweet, simple. That’s Speed Reps in a nutshell.
The Games:
Space Siege – Gas Powered Games / SEGA
Sacred 2 – Ascaron / cdv Software Entertainment
Space Siege:
Most of us are familiar with Space Siege, GPGs take on the Click-N-Kill in space, following up their medieval/fantasy Click-N-Kill series, Dungeon Siege. Space Siege doesn’t stray far from the formula established by the Dungeon Siege games, and that’s a good thing. The player is tasked with saving the crew of a ship in space, drifting towards…the salvation of the human race.
“here i come to save the day…”
Disliked:
The game’s story is small in scope, and the actual quest/plot line really bears this out. For a part-time gamer, this shouldn’t be a bad thing at all. What makes it a bit of a negative is how GPG handles it. There are several points where the game could have ended but for some reason or other it didn’t. The game ends up suffering from design fatigue, and I think this is one of the major reasons why. Past a point you end up revisiting the same areas of the ship multiple times, doing the same quests (the popular formula seems to be, “do 3 of something”).
“and that’s three of you…next!!”
Boss fights are usually against some very interesting looking enemies, but the fights themselves are the polar opposite. These encounters all follow the tried-and-true boss fight formula of:
Giant enemy + takes no damage + dishes out killing blows + incapacitates player giving Giant Enemy more time to dish out said killing blows = Mindless and often not terribly fun for little rewards.
At the end of the day, these boss fights don’t feel like they detract too terribly from the overall experience, but I will admit I did use cheat codes to get through a few boss fights. This was more because I wanted to get back to the killing and looting, which I think actually speaks well for Space Siege’s design overall, because with any good Click-N-Kill, you want to get back to the clicking-n-killing, which, to re-iterate, is the main design point Space Siege gets right: It makes me you want to get “moar phat lewtz.”
“GIVE…ME…MY…LEWTZ!!”
Last but not least is the issue of “morality”. This is one of the big points Space Siege was marketed on, but at the end of the day, GPG could have left this point out and just let the user play the game as they wished, either human or cyborg. The end result would have been a much more fun overall experience, but in a way, it lends to Space Siege’s overall replayability. As there’s really no end-game bonus or penalty for playing through with cybernetic enhancements, playing back through the game from different save points with different enhancements and skill builds becomes a fun, if unintentional, mini-game in itself.
“Chicks dig the cyborgs, right?”
Liked:
As noted in the overview, Space Siege follows the Click-N-Kill formula to the letter, which is awesome. The mechanics are simple, the gameplay itself is fun, and minus the few points mentioned above, Space Siege is a fairly polished experience.
“Glad you found work again, R.O.B.”
Being a PC game with a simple save system makes this a great game for part-time gamers. This is actually one of the areas where the small scope of the game helps out, you’re never confused when you come back into a game. Additionally, objectives are always clearly marked on the map. I did experience on glitch where I had saved in a particular spot early on and was faced with a wall of killer robots and gun emplacement upon loading my saved game.
“I must admit, you’re much prettier than I…”
The game itself caters fairly nicely to part-time or casual gamers in a few ways. You’re never left with a shortage of health packs, guns have unlimited ammo, upgrade resources drop like rain, and a rebuild factory for your robotic companion is usually just around the corner or at the end of the hall. While this might make the game sound overtly easy, I see it more as putting elements in place that remove needless grinding or time lost to death.
“I didn’t say stop shooting!!”
Overall:
If you missed it this first time, give Space Siege a look. It’s available from most digital download outlets for a fairly low price ($10-$20) and will certainly give you at least that much entertainment if you’re a fan of the genre.
4 stars
Sacred 2:
In the wake of Diablo II came Ascaron entertainment’s Sacred. Granted it was about a 4 year wake, but someone had to do it since Diablo 3 was nowhere to be seen. Now in the wake of the Diablo 3 announcement, Ascaron releases their number 2 punch in the form of Sacred…err, 2. If you’re looking for a new world to get lost in and Azeroth or Albion aren’t doing it for you anymore, Ancaria is just as if not more vast, with plenty of quests and “phat lewtz” for even the most discerning Click-N-Killer. But is the experience as a whole greater than the sum of its parts?
“I’m a seraphim, not just any angel…”
Disliked:
There are only a few things I didn’t like about this game, but they’re fairly big points. The major one is the NPC AI. This wouldn’t be too big a deal if the NPC dependent quests were few and far between. The reality is that there are quite a few of these, and the poor AI makes them much longer than they should be. Often times you’ll be escorting an AI and they’ll bail off into the woods for no good reason. Thankfully the game tethers the NPCs to the character, so often times just charging ahead will warp the AI to your location, but this comes off as a band-aid for a bad implementation.
“Nobody here but us cybernetic Anubis clones…”
I also didn’t like being forced down the main quest line. Many times you’ll get to a town hub and pick up some side quests, but the minute you leave the town to embark on one of the side quests, the game automatically kicks you onto the main quest line. This doesn’t sound like a big deal at first, but when the quest leg happens to be one of the aforementioned buggy escort quests, well, you can see how that might detract from the overall experience.
“So you’re what the call a werewolf here in Ancaria?”
The only other thing that I felt detracted from the overall experience was progression. For me, World of Warcraft is the gold standard for progression for any digital RPG. The player is always aware of their advancement, through art and the game environment itself. In Sacred 2, much like many other single player RPGs, the world doesn’t change quite as drastically as I’d like it to. Personally, I like lava levels and ice levels, especially when they delineate progression.
“Yeah, I think it was unfair that they cut your part from Ice Spiders too.”
Liked:
Much like Space Siege, Sacred 2 adheres to the Click-N-Kill formula very well. It borrows more than a few pages from Diablo, but for the better. Players are limited to a set number of character archetypes, but each one plays noticeably differently, with unique spells, skills, and armor sets per class.
“…Wait, like the Bass Ale Logo?”
The world is HUGE. Ancaria (the game world) encompasses something like a 400 square mile area, and this area is littered with NPCs in need of your unique talents. You could almost play Sacred 2 MMO style, i.e. skip the main quest and just move between the town hubs grinding out quests, “collectin the phat l00tz”, and pimping out your character.
“Just a little discharge, nothing serious”
Character customization is actually one of the other points that I really like. As mentioned above, each character has a specific set of skills and armor pieces. The list of armor pieces, however, is gigantic. On top of that, they look pretty cool, even the pieces you collect early on. Sacred 2 is quite the character customizers dream.
“My ride’s about to pimp YOU, yo!”
And lastly, on a personal note, I love Blind Guardian.
“Ok, one more turn through the moshpit, then back to questing”
Overall:
Given this game’s massive scope and propensity for forcing you down quest lines you may not want to follow, it’s hard to recommend this game to part-time gamers. Factor in some weird AI bugs that tend to draw out the length of the all-too-frequent escort quests unnecessarily, and you have a game that, while fun, definitely requires a commitment. While I wouldn’t recommend this to the garden variety part-time gamer, if you’re the kind that just loves Click-N-Killz, make some space for this one and look in on the world of Ancaria from time-to-time.
