It's good to be back.

[Jarno Mikkola]

So what's happened in the last half year?

Madmen have come, gone, and are still here. They are trying to take over the world, and these forums. But so is everyone else. The bombs have been sent, and are on delivery.
So watch what you will get in the mail, it might be a bomb, or something much worse.

 

[Malky]

Brady, meet Jarno. Nothing he says makes any sense at all. Get used to it, and fast.

Welcome back, mang.

 

[quietfanatic]

Good to see you back.

The crazed Jarno seems a little less incomprehensible everyday. You actually can try to reason with him, it's just a bit of a trial.

 

[Bradylama]

There's always somebody acting crazy on the internet. Of course, in the actuality that Jarno is crazy, then he might have some good stories.

Also, here's a review for Oblivion that I submit to all you writer-types for consideration:

I originally intended to put this off for a while, but it occurred to me that some of you will probably end up buying the game if you haven't already. The following is a severe warning:

Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion, has been in development for quite a while now. It's one of the most highly anticipated RPGs of the year, and has a very large following. The Elder Scrolls itself is also a great property, in which the player is free to roam in one of the many provinces of Tamriel.

Oblivion, however, fails to live up to any of its hype, is in no way an RPG, and features extremely shoddy aspects of game design.

The first problem when playing the game: rats. Freaking rats. It's as if no Role Playing Game in the history of mankind can ever have a starting area that isn't packed to the gills with giant rats hungry for your man-flesh. So the game starts off with stale conventions. Ok. Not only that, but the beginning of the game is basically a tutorial that instructs you on how to play, and introduces you to the main quest. Not only is it annoying when you're forced to play through a tutorial, but the player is given no option of deciding his class, or the skills he'll focus on, until well into his playtime.

Once you get into the outside, you'll be overcome with a sense of freedom. That freedom is the best thing the game has going for it, so you'd better enjoy it. Like Morrowind, the greatest part of Oblivion's gameplay is the sense of adventure one experiences when exploring new areas. Coming across a mine in the middle of nowhere is exciting, and Daedric Shrines are an especially prime discovery, as performing the bidding of the Daedra can provide substantial rewards.

Of course, as I mentioned before, this is in no way a roleplaying game. Gameplay is entirely combat-oriented, meaning that if you don't select a couple of combat-related skills, you're shit out of luck. The end result, then, is that the player is type-cast into a murder machine, whether he be a powerful mage, hulking bruiser, or silent assassin. Diplomatic paths to victory are out of the question, considering that all of the dialogue in Oblivion is topical, and the few dialogue choices the player is allowed to make have no significant impact on a conversation whatsoever. The main quest is also focused on a single outcome, and the player is given no real option concerning his role as a positive or negative influence on Cyrodiil and Tamriel. Joining the evil cult offers no clear path for progression within the organization, meaning that the player could do something evil (joining involves a blood sacrifice) without having to face any repercussions. Sure, you could join the menacing Dark Brotherhood and go around killing people, but in the end that's all you do, kill people. None of your quests have any impact on Tamriel as a whole, and none of your actions affect the ending (from an intellectual perspective, Oblivion doesn't even have an ending, so much as a conclusion to a quest path more involved than others). Hell, this time around, none of your quests even impact your relationship with the Guilds. I completed all of the quests for the Brotherhood and Thieves Guild, and I could still join the Fighters and Mages guild, and follow their progression paths.

Not only is the player character typecast, but the skill set lacks any sense of balance. If you focus primarily on being combat-oriented, you'll have a difficult time going about things, whereas a character that combines a magic focus with a few select combat skills can walk around as a practical demigod. I should know, I'm roleplaying one right now. Not only that, but many magic schools are practically useless compared to the others. Regenerative magic is obviously a must-have, and Destruction is the only offensive-oriented magic system. Combine that with Alteration and Mysticism, and eventually you'll have a Battlemage that can kick ass, as well as alter her stats and abilities on a whim and enchant and restore items. It is THE most powerful way to play the game, and by comparison, playing as a strict fighter, mage, or stealth becomes a handicap. The magic system is also imbalanced due to the fact that your mana regenerates constantly, which makes sleep and the passage of time meaningless outside of the day/night cycles, and provides an unlimited number of ranged attacks for any one situation.

So, not only is Oblivion anything but a role-playing game, it also has no sense of balance, and a poorly designed skill set. That's three strikes. In baseball terms, this game would be out before you even leave the Imperial city.

Now we come to the interface. The overall design of Oblivion is noticeably dumbed-down due to its cross platform release. From an unintuitive no-drag interface, to item values that are on a scale so small, increasing your skills in their focus takes far too long to gain any increase in value, as well as the scale between lower and higher quality items. Your map, journal, inventory, and stats are all pulled up with one button. You can switch between them using F1-F4, but that obvious feature isn't documented in the manual. Once in the interface, you can use your mouse to click on things, but since there's no real inventory management that allows you to see more than 5 items, meaning a lot of scrolling, it would have been simpler to assign keyboard functions to the player interface. Not only that, but clicking on visited or documented locations on your map transports you automatically to them. This eliminates any need for exploration and travel, as there is no possibility of a random encounter mussing up your day. The player has to force himself to danger the roads, making their presence meaningless, and the fold-out map that comes with the game a useless novelty.

The graphics do not live up to next-gen standards. Vistas, foliage, and architecture are admittedly beautiful, and several spots are breath-taking (so long as you have the right hardware). Character renders, however, are ugly as Hell, the monster designs are unoriginal (as Roshambo of the NMA put it "they're more interested in rendering Minotaur testicles"), and the character animations are blocky and unnatural. When NPCs and monsters move, they appear to glide and float more than they do walk and jump. Looking at yourself in 3D is also pointless unless you strike a pose, because the player character's animations have no relation to the world, essentially creating a "skating" effect.

The Radiant A.I. has been revealed to be nothing more than pure, Grade A, American Raised bullcrap. Bethesda touted the Radiant A.I. as highly advanced, and something that would breathe life into the soulless world of its predecessors. Not only does it fail to accomplish these things, but bugs regarding NPC functions abound. Quirky NPC reactions range from inaction to assault, to assaulting the wrong character, to charging straight into traps. Not only that, but NPC routines usually involve going somewhere, having disjointed conversations with other NPCs, and staring at a wall for several in-game hours. My Making-Of DVD shows an early example of an NPC programmed with Radiant to set goals for herself, and react accordingly to circumstances. This means either two things: one, Bethesda is a bunch of lying bastards, or, the design team was too lazy to assign the NPCs any convincing behaviors or routines whatsoever. Monsters and enemies also don't engage you using any tactics whatsoever beyond cast-a-few-spells and swarm.

The combat itself has barely changed at all. It's still the same shoot-arrows/cast spells from a distance or wildly swing your weapon around until you kill something. *yawn* As a novel touch, though, your arrows tend to stick out where they strike, which makes a killing headshot that much more comical.

The game progression itself is retarded. The game is easy in the beginning. At no point from exiting the Prison, to level 9 did I feel in any way in danger fighting the spawned characters. Enemies in the game, you see, scale-up as you get better, as opposed to there being some strong enemies in certain locations or quests. Guards are always a constant, but enemies that spawn will become either progressively tougher monsters, or humanoid enemies will have increasingly better gear. The end result is that the player is punished for his progression, since these difficult-spawning enemies make a lot of quests highly difficult if not impossible, as where before they were well within the means of accomplishment.

NPC interaction is much less dreadful than Morrowind, however, and the dialogue is better written. Most of the personality injected into characters, however, comes from the game's competent voice acting as opposed to any real written or observable behaviors. There's also no real cultural difference between the towns or races that impact the gameplay. I suppose if I played as the beastmen races Khajiit or Argonian I'd run into some prejudice, but those races faced the same condition in the last game, and there's no NPC you can't butter up through the game's retarded persuasion mechanic.

Ultimately, the biggest change in Oblivion for the better compared to Morrowind is the quest design. A lot of quests are actually really fun. The Dark Brotherhood, for instance, features some great quests that make killing fun. My favorite was a whodunit, in which the Player Character had to socialize with, and murder every NPC in a locked mansion; under the condition that none of them figure out the Player Character is the killer. Simple retrieve-and-deliver quests are much fewer in number, and the player is given goals that more often than not have a good reason behind it. The Main Quest itself is a spectacle unlike any other, though the faction-related quests are very well designed.

I had a lot of fun with Oblivion, but that was mostly due to the sandbox gameplay, which is a mechanic where the player determines how varied his game experience is as opposed to the designers, and the good quests, which is the one aspect of game design that Bethesda actually got right. They appear to have learned from none of the mistakes of Morrowind.

Admittedly, I also have a certain bias. I'm a huge Fallout fan, a franchise which Bethesda currently has the rights to make sequels for. After seeing the abundantly terrible game design presented in Oblivion, coupled with the fact that Oblivion's lead producer is also the head of the Fallout 3 project, it would seem that my prospects of seeing a decent sequel to my favorite roleplaying series will never come to pass. Not only did Bethesda already have no experience with the gameplay mechanic present in Fallout (turn-based tactical grid combat combined with branching dialogue trees for NPC interactions) but they've shown themselves to be incapable of creating a great game using their own original property.

I'd like to not regret my purchase. I did have fun, but ultimately I must be aware of the knowledge that by purchasing this game, I've also essentially supported shoddy game design, and put stock in the business practice of "Hype over Substance." Something likely to carry over into the making of a game that I desperately want to be good.

Games like this sell. They have mass appeal, and are released on multiple platforms. Their media blitz also practically guarantees that they're looked upon favorably by gaming media (though some big-name sites have picked apart a lot of the hype, while Gamespy continues to eagerly suck cock) due to their advertising. It's a game that will appeal to everybody, but it's the only mass-world sprawling sandbox of its kind, which doesn't mean that it's a good game, just the only one of its kind. If you absolutely must play it, then go ahead. You'll probably have some fun. People looking for much more bang for their buck should wait for Gothic 3, though.

 

[Pajari]

Okay, let's drop the word "retarded" entirely from your lexicon. It's just a pet peeve of mine . Try to come up with a better word for something that strikes you as out-of-place or illogical, resort to a thesaurus (sp?) if nessecary.

Make sure you pick a single pronoun and stick to it. There were many parts of the review where you went back and forth between "you" and "the player". I tend to avoid "you" as much as possible because it's amatuerish, so I'd keep describing "the player" and his experience rather than talking directly to the reader. It's a bit more impersonal at awkward at first, but it's much more professional and more conducive to the analytical style you're supposed to adopt as a game reviewer.

Also, another pet peeve of mine (and all my editors) is an introduction. I made the mistake of putting "Allow me to explain my position on this series...." at the beginning of one review I wrote and it threw the review completely off-track. Just start straight in with a thesis about the game and build from there.

Actually, I have seen introductions done well, but that was by a professional writer with thirty years of experience in journalism who was getting used to online reviews and felt the need to be as long-winded as possible. So, it can work, but it doesn't often.

Anyway, you probably want to spend more time describing the gameplay and work your analysis into that, instead of making a list of flaws with the game and letting the things you found wrong with it define the game for the reader. In other words, describe each aspect of the gameplay, the actual experience of playing the game, and make commentary as nessecary.

That's it for the structure comments . Don't get discouraged, because I'm seeing mistakes in your review that I was making only a year or so ago. And if you compare your points to the ones in PC Gamer or GameSpot, well, heh... you've got the drop on them when it comes to that.

My only real problem with the tone of the review or the opinion that you have about Oblivion is that you're definitely letting external factors color your review. Let's face it, if it was any other publisher besides the one that's publishing Fallout 3, you'd have given them some slack. But the consensus on these boards seems to be that F3 will be a carbon copy of Oblivion, and some of that anger came out in the review.

(I don't think Oblivion is quite the tragedy you think it is, but that's another topic and I'm going to get eviscerated if I say that so don't mention that I said it to anyone, k?)

Of course, if it's a sequel you're reviewing and you think the developers just shoveled out another re-skinned game and did a +1 to the title, then you have legitimate complaints that should be addressed in the review. Whip out the hatchet, in other words. But try to separate everything else that doesn't matter. If nessecary, review a less controversial game.

Phew. That's all for tonight. If you want any more advice, send me some more samples and I'll help you out. We need less bullshit in this industry!

 

[Montez]

Pajari made some good comments, so I'll just add what little I have to offer that I didn't see in his post.

You seem to have two of the same problems I have: colloquial language and commas. Skip the next two paragraphs if you don't want to read my boring thoughts on those two things.

Colloquialism isn't necessarily a bad thing, it really depends on the context and the effect you're going for, if any. It does make everything seem less objective and tends to obscure reasoning, arguments, and meaning though, since writing is missing all of the audible clues that speaking gives us. I don't know enough about it to say much more than that, but I think that more often than not it seems to be the cause of most misunderstandings where writing is concerned - most of us write the way we speak or imagine we would say the things we are writing, and so what we are writing makes perfect sense to us since we "hear" our own writing in our heads. Apart from punctuation marks and a few things like italics and underlining though, the people reading what we write have none of those things to go by and thus read everything "flat" or apply some imagined speaking style to the words - either way, with writing of any complexity the meaning is going to be shifted and altered from what you intended if it's written in a colloquial style. Not a big deal with short posts on the internet, but if you're intending to write professionally or write long articles it's something to keep in mind and to learn to control. As you can read, I've still got a long way to go.

Too many commas are pretty much the result of the same thing - trying to write the same way you would speak, as if adding pauses for air or emphasis - combined with trying to cram too much into a single sentence. For people who read a lot they aren't too big a hurdle, but for any type of professional writing besides poetry and some fiction it's unnacceptable except in very limited doses. Same as with colloqualisms I still have a huge problem with it and am fairly clueless so I can't say much more about it, so the only advice I can offer is that if you notice too many commas in anything you've written it's time for a rewrite.

To be honest though, I only noticed those two things and some of the stuff that Pajari mentioned because you asked for criticism - I liked the review and apart from you taking a personal rather than objective slant I think it matches up to any other game review I've read. (Not that I think attempting "objectivity" is better, just much more common) The only thing I did notice that you might want to correct is in paragraph 7 - you mention "roleplaying" a character, while in the rest of your review you emphasize the fact that Oblivion is not a roleplaying game. I think most people would understand what you were saying, but it's a pretty big and exploitable flaw for anyone trying to argue against your position.

 

[welsh]

Welcome back Brady. Sorry to hear you dropped out of school but sometimes its worthwhile to step back and think about what you want to do. In hindsight, I regret not pursuing a career in journalism back when I was in college.

The problem with English is that it's to wide a field- you could do any of the subfields of Engish lit or even the subfields of creative writing. At least doing journalism, you'd be focused.

One thing you should do though is write as much as possible. The more you write and the more you get published the better your portfolio will be to get a better job down the line.

You may also have to consider what fields of journalism you'd like to get into - broadcast, print, etc. Then you might also want to consider a sub-field in something you are interested in. Gaming, I think, would be too narrow for the long haul, but technology and science and technology, might be better fields and give you more leverage and opportunity when you hit the working world.

There's a lot to be had for a person with a background in sciences, engineering, etc. Usually people split between Social Sciences and Humanities and the Sciences and Math. To be able to deal with both is a good idea.

That said, I would also check into career trends in journalism. As with most industries, I would expect a lot of retirement coming up and new opportunities to come. But it might be that the field is currently saturated.

Oh- and you might want to read the Zanzibar Chest for fun (life of a foreign journalist in Africa- pretty wild).

 

[Jarno Mikkola]

You seem to have two of the same problems I have: colloquial language and commas.

This is so on the point on me too. Has any one received aid for this, I mean cause it's a hinderance to our work you know. Or am I the only one that has tried
to rice his voice over this.

But it might be that the field is currently saturated.

And it might be that a motherfucker pushes a button and a few hours from that, we are all being screwed, and a few hours from that, there isn't a barn thing to notes that we were ever hear, though non of us knows it yet.
(Turns and walks to the shadows he once dwelled in.)

 

[Bradylama]

Okay, let's drop the word "retarded" entirely from your lexicon. It's just a pet peeve of mine Wink. Try to come up with a better word for something that strikes you as out-of-place or illogical, resort to a thesaurus (sp?) if nessecary.

Right. I'm still of the mindset of writing towards a certain intended audience, and that if I sound too official, it'll come off as stuffy and unimpersonal. Though I guess it would be more important to develop a professional writing style when I can.

You're also absolutely right about my pronoun usage. I was going for the more professional presentation, but like I mentioned, I was keeping in mind a certain audience. I'll have to put more effort into my proofreading beyond looking for spelling and grammatical errors.

I'll also more than likely be doing a sample for Hammer & Sickle next. Highly uncontroversial. So I'll probably get that out some time within the week for everybody's review.

I suppose I should also invest in that Thesaurus. One can never have too big a vocabulary.

Montez - I agree wholeheartedly with your stance on Colloquailism, and a large part of my motive for studying English is to attempt to suppress that urge as much as possible. I must also admit that I have a large uncertainty when it comes to proper punctuation involving anything more basic than commas and colons. For instance, I still have no concrete understanding of when and when not to use semicolons.

Objectively, Oblivion isn't as bad a game as my overabundance of negative response makes it out to be. However, the design aspects were covered fairly objectively, I felt. I also noticed my inconsistancy in mentioning the fact that I "roleplayed" but it was already out by the time I noticed it.

Welsh - Being a game journalist is definitely the dream, here. I've developed an extreme fondness for any form of topical writing, whether it be review, correspondancy, or editorial. If I can't get my foot in the door of gaming media, then oh well, I'll be happy so long as I can write about something.

I'm also fairly sure I'll focus on Social Sciences and Humanities. I've got an intellectual interest in the Sciences, but my true passions lie in politics, history, and all that other good sociological jazz.

Also, I'm atrocious when it comes to mathematical type stuff.

 

[Bradylama]

It's been awhile since I made anything new, but I'm on vacation now, so the time has come for Call of Cthulhu:

Developed by Bethesda Softworks, CoD: Dark Corners of the Earth for Xbox and the PC is a first person survival horror based on the horror universe of H.P. Lovecraft. In Dark Corners, the player plays Private Investigator Jack Walters, who is called to negotiate with the leader of a bizarre cult located outside of Boston. 6 years later, Jack suffers from amnesia, and the entire six years prior to the current point in time (1922) is unknown to him. Jack is then called to investigate the disappearance of a general store manager in the isolated community of Innsmouth.

What DCotE does right is atmosphere. Tons of it. The streets of Innsmouth are decaying from the centuries of exposure to seawater, and the darkness that permeates throughout its streets creates a fitting setting to complement the hostility of its inhabitants. The visuals center mostly around Innsmouth, and actually become pretty monotonous. It isn't until the phenomenally designed Gold Refinery and underwater city (note to fans: Not R'lyeh) that the art direction and level design truly blast off.

Lovecraft's bestiary is also faithfully recreated. The Shoggoth truly fits the bill as an indescribable horror, and the Deep Ones never fail to intimidate. The game's lineup also features some more heavy hitters that I'd rather not spoil.

The story borrows heavily from famous short stories The Shadow Out of Time and Shadow Over Innsmouth. Situations in the game are also lifted from the Call of Cthulhu board game "Escape From Innsmouth." The end result being a game that feels more like an homage to Lovecraft games than an actual original game based in Lovecraft's works. This narrow focus in regards to the game's storytelling makes it incredibly linear. When things start to go down, the player is confronted with a chase scene lifted almost directly from Shadow Over Innsmouth. However, this scene requires a machine-like motion in which the player must close doors, slide bolts, and move dressers in order to keep Innsmouth's tainted from giving you a gaping new axe hole. The end result is a lot of reloading as the player dies from being unaware of the required process, or executing it imperfectly (the lack of a HUD means that manipulating bolts independently of the doors can sometimes be difficult, particularly for Xbox players). This cycle repeats itself throughout the game, and while no sequence is quite as demanding as the chase through Innsmouth's rooftops, there is always one certain way to do things that involve stealth or combat, and the game is usually balanced towards accomplishing tasks the stealthy way until the late game.

The game's hyped insanity feature aims to please. When confronted with horrifying, or disgusting imagery, Walters begins to suffer from mental afflictions, among which include blurred vision, temporary deafness, and disembodied voices. It's a great way to draw the player into the game, and a massive insanity failure will result in Jack killing himself either with the weapon on hand, or with his bare hands. There are several points, however, during combat where psychological effects act as a detriment to one's ability to fight. Reloading a previous save also seems to cause a finicky response to sanity effects, where they may not activate altogether.

Combat can be exciting at times, but for the most part is underwhelming. Since the player has no HUD, he also has no aiming reticule. Aiming accurately requires shouldering a weapon and aiming down its iron sights. Aiming for too long, however causes Jack's arms to tire and sway, reducing accuracy. The game claims that there's a best weapon for every situation, but to be quite honest, the player needs to be able to get off headshots with the revolver, because otherwise he'll probably be facing the loading screen quite often. Corpses also fade away far too fast for the player to admire the carnage in any appreciable way. The weapons are period-faithful, among which include a Springfield rifle and Tommy Gun. However, the player loses these weapons quite often throughout the game, and having to get them back is annoyingly repetitive.

As mentioned before, there is no HUD. The player gauges how many bullets he has left by the amount of shots he's fired, and health by the damage indicated on the screen. Blood splatters indicate minor damage, while serious blood loss causes time to slow down and the colors to bleed away to black and white. Healing requires application of bandages, splints, and such through the inventory screen, but pressing the H button circumvents that process and applies the necessary medicines to the proper places. However, the player has a limited amount of medical supplies which he must bear in mind, though medkits are abundant throughout the levels.

Is DCotE scary? It certainly has its share of frights, but the tension is more often than not artificially expanded by the annoying save system, which leads to the vast majority of reload-related frustrations. Fans of Lovecraft with some FPS skills will want to pick this up, but if you've never read Lovecraftian works and don't like the idea of being forced to do one certain thing at a time throughout the entire experience, then this isn't a game for you.

I think it's an improvement over the others, but my conclusions seem to be repetitive. Maybe it's just me.

 

[SuAside]

you might wanna try to get the title right for your reviews. it's CoC, not COD :p

as for the game itself:
the linearity & repetitiveness of the game really put me off. i didnt finish it (while i'm a huge fan of lovecraft).

also, it's pure console gameplay (the save system makes it even worse)... retarded to play on pc.

 

[Bradylama]

LE SIGH. I've just recently had a problem with acronyms involving Cs followed by lowercase Os. I had problems describing Day of Defeat Source as COD: Source, because basically all WW2 games are the same am i rite!?

Fresh in the mind.

Also as an aside, it's probably just as well that you didn't finish it. Though fighting the Flying Polyps scared the Hell out of me. I don't think I've ever seen anything so violent.

 

[EyeMaster7]

Bradylama alive and kicking.