Dragon's Crown - Hello back problems!

Hey everyone its been awhile since I last posted, well I've finally managed to get things in order and can finally start putting up reviews! I'll be updating every Wednesday night and I'll cover games from every platform and genre. 

To start the ball rolling I've decided to put up a review today, but I will do another one later in the week. For Weds we shall tramp through the desolate lands that Dark Soul inhabits, but today I shall talk about Dragon's Crown, an ARPG that has you fighting Orcs, Goblins and surprise surprise there are also Dragons.

(Please note I do not intend to discuss the over sexualised characters in this review, I probably will do an article on it at a later point, because it is a problem in the games industry. But not in this review, this is just looking at the game, how it plays and if you guys might find enjoyment out of it.)

Dragon’s Crown is an ARPG set in a fantasy world where you are an adventurer traversing through dungeons and fighting monsters for glory and gold. You and your group are based in the Kingdom of Hydeland where you will take on quests from both the Adventurers Guild and the Royal Family who are in search of the fabled Dragon’s Crown.

In order to get through this adventure you will need to pick one of the 6 classes, each of which have unique play styles compared to the each other. The Fighter, Dwarf and Amazon being your close combat powerhouses; the Wizard and Sorceress taking on the magic and support while the Elf fills in for the long range role.

Most of the controls are similar for each character, square for basic attack, circle for special attacks and by pointing the left analog stick you determine which attack you will be using. This makes playing each character simple though each play different due to their special abilities, the Fighter with his shield to block attacks; the Dwarf being able to throw enemies and allies; the Wizard and Sorceress using different spells depending on their weapon etc, which means that after playing one character you can easily pick up another and do fairly well with them. 

Each of these classes become stronger as they level up and find more powerful items and weapons, plus the skill points you get at each level allow you to enhance not only your character’s unique skills but also those that are common to all characters. The common skills tend to enhance your characters attributes, whilst the unique skills unlock special abilities that can allow you to fire off a flurry of arrows, become a tornado of flash and steel and turn all the enemies in the area to stone.

Throughout your game, your actions and the events that happen to you will be described through the Narrator and for anyone who has played pen & paper games, they will instantly recognize that the narrator is designed to make you feel like you were playing Dungeons & Dragons, Pathfinder or any other fantasy RPG, coupled with the fact that you can decide what actions and paths you take, this further reinforce the concept that you are in control of what you do and say.

When you do get into the gameplay, after making your character you will notice that it harkens back to games like Golden Axe; Streets of Rage and Guardian Heroes as with each new area you enter you will be beset by a range of enemies and will only be able to progress by defeating them. Along the way you can unlock doors to side areas and chests for gold and loot, which you obtain by defeating the boss at the end of the level, the rewards that you get will be graded from S to E with E being the worst and S being the best.

I’m sure you will have noticed among the list of playable characters that there isn’t rogue amongst them, so how do you unlock those doors and get at the shiny baubles? Thankfully at the beginning of the game you partner up with Rannie the thief, who will open up anything locked for you, but whilst doing that he needs your protection otherwise he will be booted away by your enemies from the chest/door and be unable to pick the lock. 

He isn’t the only A.I. partner that you get, throughout the game you will encounter the bones of fallen adventurers which you can pick up and revive through the church in town. Once revived they can join you on your adventures and help defeat the various foes you encounter. However, sadly the A.I. is average at best and over time their equipment loses its durability, this cannot be replaced forcing you to continually search for more bones to resurrect higher level A.I. characters with better equipment. If you’re not interested in an A.I. partner you can also bury them and give them peace, this gives you a chance to obtain an item that they have for your own use. If it’s a weapon or accessory, you won’t be able to repair it, but it’s possible that it’s better than what you have already and if not you can always sell it extra gold.

Now after a while you have probably gotten used to the game and feel fairly confident with all the mechanics, but at about halfway you are introduced to Rune Magic- a way to create various magical effects by all characters. This is done by using your pointer and clicking on runes carved into the scenery and then on the rune stones in your inventory. The carved runes are different for each area so while you may be able to summon a fountain of gold in one area, you will only be able to make your character invincible in another. These spells can be very powerful depending on what you can cast, with one spell destroying all the undead in the area, while another can send a shower of elemental magic to burn, freeze and zap your foes.

Now eventually after completing the first nine areas and defeating the bosses there, you will unlock the online multiplayer the next time you go out to the gate. The added advantage of playing with humans far outweighs A.I. companions with the added bonus that you will save a copy of each player you come across, thereby allowing you to summon them as an A.I. partner that has multiple bags filled with equipment. The bones that you find around the levels also have a chance to be that of a human player who ran out of lives and died there. Revive these and you have an A.I. partner that has multiple bags of equipment, making them last a lot longer than your other A.I. partners, while burying them seems to give you a better chance of obtaining high level equipment from them.

Along with unlocking the multiplayer, a new gameplay mechanic is introduced which is randomized dungeons. By going through the gate you will enter a random dungeon and by completing it you are offered the chance to continue on to another. Each time you complete a dungeon you will get a bonus added to your money, loot grade and xp earned; so in order to get greater rewards you will need to do multiple dungeons back to back. This would take a lot out of your weapons so you will need to acquire extra bags to equip items in; essentially they are a different set of items and weapons for you to use when your current set’s durability runs low.

And those nine dungeons you have now gotten used to have all changed, the difficulty margin has been bumped up to Normal difficulty, meaning enemies spawn in areas they didn’t before, new types arrive and once you’ve defeated one lot yet another come to take a bite out of you, if that wasn’t enough a B path is added for each dungeon which leads to a completely new area, along with a completely new boss, each of which needs to be put to the sword.

And all of these dungeons, monsters, characters etc look gorgeous, Vanillaware have clearly spent a lot of time and work making the artwork, which with the animation system they have that blends and morphs it to make it move, means that it’s fantastic to see in motion. While there are a few female character designs that do pander exclusively to the male audience, they thankfully number in the few rather than the majority. Coupled with a great fantasy soundtrack this game certainly invites you to dive in and enjoy the experience and the story.

There are a number of problems with the game, some to do with the multiplayer, others with the game design.

For starters just because you have unlocked multiplayer for one of the characters, it doesn’t mean that you have unlocked it for the rest of your characters. Each one will need to defeat the first nine bosses before you can go online. Thankfully, the high level A.I. adventurers you have amassed will make getting to the multiplayer part of the game a lot quicker, allowing you to get into the thick of the action in only a couple of hours.

Local couch co-op is good to go from the start, however all the characters will be associated with Player 1’s Playstation account, so you won’t be able to load up your own characters if you go round to a friend, nor will you be able to take them back home.

And while the multiplayer can be nice and smooth, if at any point you connect or someone joins who has a bad connection, the game slows down dramatically, with it freezing every 5 secs in order to synchronize all the players. Unfortunately for those who don’t have a great internet connection, the A.I. isn’t suited to playing dungeon after dungeon, due to the fact that the A.I. can’t change which bag they are using during an adventure, nor can you send them away when they become useless as such, you either have to quit at the next point or hope they die and someone else takes their place.

And while the randomisation of the levels along with the A and B routes, does mean you get a fair amount of replay ability it does get a bit monotonous after a while. Higher difficulties do help by having different enemies pop up in the areas you have already been to, but it’s not enough to stop the game feeling like a grind after a while.

Even with these problems, this is a great game that relives the golden age of side scroller beat-em ups. Fans of Golden Axe and Guardian Heroes will certainly love this game and those that enjoy fighting games will get a pleasurable experience; with the large number of dungeons and bosses to defeat and a difficulty level that continually ramps up, all means you will find it very difficult to put down once you pick up the controller.

Also never trust a fairy around alcohol.

Dead Space 2 - Where is my survival horror?

*WARNING: If you have not finished Dead Space and don’t want some plot points spoiled, then don’t read this review*

Just as a heads up since Dead Space and Dead Space 2 are so similar, I won’t go over the same points as I did for Dead Space, as I would only be re-treading ground I’ve previously talked about, instead I’ll talk about other things.

 

Dead Space 2 starts a number of years after Dead Space, Isaac wakes in a mental asylum on the Sprawl, a space station near Titan, Isaac has no knowledge of how we got there, nor how long he has been there, but thankfully a dude is kind enough to try and rescue us, but sadly he is quickly cut down while he tries to get Isaac out of the straight Jacket and is transformed into a necromorph, forcing Isaac to run for his life yet again and figure out what this whole mess is about, all the while being chased by a hallucination of his dead girlfriend thanks to marker he found on the Ishimura.

Now I did say earlier that Dead Space 2 is very similar to its predecessor, but that doesn’t mean that there weren’t any changes at all, one important one is that Isaac finally speaks and you see his face! After being mute for the last game, he finally has the chance to shine; which is great since it gives us the chance to truly bond with the guy and have him pluck our heart strings a bit. This really comes into play when he interacts with others and his hallucinations.

And you know that hallucination stuff is another biggie as you can’t be sure what you see is real, is it a necromorph or a living person? And if you’ve seen the promo materials then yes Isaac does get a new suit, you don’t get till later so don’t get your hopes up, but you do get a jetpack for the zero-g areas so that should get hold you by till you get it, it’s quite fun to zoom about with it and makes the zero-g parts a lot more fun.

Now we all know that I don’t think that the Dead Space series is anything like a survival horror, but what is a good survival horror? Well Dead Space is a good one with a few changes, for starters the enemies need to be more daunting, the necro could look totally disgusting and be several buildings tall, but it won’t frighten you if you can easily chop it to pieces. 

Another thing that could be changed is the store system, at no point should you be able to buy ammunition, the whole idea of a survival horror is that sure, you have bullets, but not a whole lot of bullets and it takes a few to take out the monsters, so it’s best to sneak round and save what ammo you can. This idea is blown out of the water when you can buy ammunition when you run low, survival horror is all about the stress, so when you remove the stress of saving bullets, the horror just isn’t as effective as it could be.

“But what about the new fangled multiplayer!?” I hear you cry? Well I’ve yet to truly try it out properly and what I have was confusing and most certainly not newbie friendly, so we’ll be ignoring that, but if I ever do try out the multiplayer a bit more I’ll be sure to write about it at some point. 

Or we could do some Dark Souls…Yeah Dark Souls sounds a lot better.

Dead Space - Terror? What terror?

Dead Space is a 3^rd person Resident evil 5 style shooter, sci-fi survival horror where you play as Isaac Clark, an engineer that is part of a team sent on a rescue mission to the USG Ishimura after receiving a mayday signal, the mission goes awry the moment it starts trapping the team on the ship after their own is destroyed. Worse still are the monsters that roam the metal halls, wearing the flesh of the dead crew, but amongst all of this Isaac searches for his girlfriend Nicole, a medical officer who took a tour upon the Ishimura when all of this happened.

Now before I start reviewing this sucker, let’s have a quick excerpt of how it is to play Dead Space.

“Doot de doot, oh scary music time must be a necro around, ah there he is the strange dead body on the floor, give me a sec whilst I fire up the death ray *SHAZAM*……right lets oooh look the most difficult enemy in the game! *SHAZAM* right let’s get going”

And that is pretty much how your Dead Space experience will be, Dead Space a sci fi Surival Horror game, suffers from 2 things, theres no survival nor horror! Now while it sounds like I hate the game, I actually quite like it, it’s just a shame that it suffers from a few problems, so we’ll get through the bad and then on with the good.

Now for a survival horror game, there is very little survival and very little horror, since you pretty much trip over ammo and health packs that there is very little need to conserve what you pick up, hell most of the money you use to buy upgrades, is gotten from selling the stuff you don’t need and boy is there a lot. The horror isn’t effective either, well during the first 5mins you will crap yourself, but only because you have no weapon and your new to all the tricks that Dead Space uses, after 30mins in however you will be immune to all the shock tactics used, because they are repeated again and again throughout the entire game. Another very big problem is that the weapons are not balanced for a survival horror experience, the first weapon you pick up can easily kill anything, so the stronger weapons makes a complete mockery of the game, with the strongest enemy becoming a complete pushover.

Now for the good, for starters the monsters in Dead Space look fantastic, necromoprhs (not to be confused with Xenomorphs) are essentially amalgamations of dead human bodies transformed due to an alien life form, this has been used to completely change the shape of the human body, with arms being turned into scything blades, ribs and skin into wings and even multiple bodies fused together to form creatures many times the size of Isaac. And because of this they aren’t easily killed with normal weapons and so have to be cut into pieces before they die, this brings up strategy, cut off the head and it can’t see you, cut off the legs and its forced to crawl, of course all of this depends on the monster you face. 

Another thing that’s great is the UI in the game, all of it has been designed so that it will appear on or near the character, but in a way that makes sense for the character using it, health appears as a bar on the spine of Isaac to show others his general health, when aiming a little hologram shows his remaining ammo, a map appears in front of him allowing him to see where he is and when contacted, his wrist display will create a hologram showing the face of the speaker. None of this gets in the way of the game and it makes sense in universe as well.

The audio is exceedingly creepy and by using this special feature called Fear Emitter they can actually have the music can creepier and creepier the closer you get towards the monsters, sadly this is over used and essentially becomes a kind of radar of how close the bad guys are.

This game while it has its flaws, has an excellent story, imaginative bad guys and fantastic UI design, I would certainly recommend playing it, but if you’re looking for scares, this aint the game for you.