Preamble, the skipable part

In May of 2004, I learned that a new development studio, Obsidian, would develop the sequel to Knights of the Old Republic. Like Trokia, the developers at Obsidian were former Black Isle employees. Specifically, they were known for working on two respected games in the RPG field: Fallout and Planescape: Torment.

My perception of their games was as follows.
Fallout 1 and 2 – Never played them
Planescape: Torment – Excellent
Icewind Dale- I bought it when it came out, created a group, got one quest to kill goblins, killed those goblins, and then uninstalled the game. I never attempted to play it again because no gameplay element appealed to me.

Arcanum - Very good
Temple of Elemental Evil – It looked like another Icewind Dale, so I never picked it up
Vampire: Bloodlines – Very good

I looked forward to Knights of the Old Republic 2, got it the day it came out, called in sick to work, and played through in one 26 hour sitting. KotOR 2 was a great game… in places. It was fascinating, interesting, and stylish but some aspects of it were quite disappointing.

I was still a fan of Obsidian and looked forward to their next game. Unfortunately, I found Neverwinter Nights 2 to be more of a disappointment. I've heard praise for Mask of the Betrayer. I ought to play through it someday, but doubt I will do so. I own Alpha Protocol. I even installed it. I never played it and it's currently sitting in a plastic bin with a bunch of other games that I ought to organize.

I did eventually play Fallout 2. There was a great deal about it I liked, but I found the combat cumbersome. I played for 20 some hours before I hit one of the harder fights, and after several tries, and getting killed by my squadmates repeatedly, I set the game aside and didn't pick it back up.

I didn't panic when I heard Bethesda picked up Fallout 3 but I did adjust my expectations. I had played Morrowind and Oblivion, the first of which I thoroughly enjoyed. Bethesda can make good RPGs, they just can't make strong main plots or interesting NPCs. I never 'finished' Fallout 3, but that's because I abandoned the main plot as soon as I could and only rejoined it when I had to or I happened to stumble across the right NPC. I hear it had something to do with my Father and water.

That leads me to…

The Review

Fallout: New Vegas is a great RPG. It's the RPG that I've waited six years for Obsidian to create. I was prepared to like it, but I was not prepared to love it. It's the best open world RPG I've played. (Beats Morrowind) It's the best first person RPG I've played. (Beats Deus Ex) Is it the top of my RPG list? Possibly. Ask me in a year when the luster has worn off.

Two caveats to the above. One, I live in Las Vegas. I live a one block from the strip and there is a certain 'neat!' factor to roaming around a post-apocalyptic version of your own backyard. Two, I haven't played a good game in awhile. Assassin's Creed 2 in March would be my last one.

That's seven months without a good game. It's a bit like being abstinent for seven months and then having sex; I'm inclined to like it more than usual.



Fallout: New Vegas is not the type of RPG I like. In general, I prefer story-driven RPGs like Dragon Age or the Witcher. Open world RPGs are a bit more touchy. I want to explore, but if it's something like Oblivion where I feel I have to hike five miles from one place to the next, I quickly get bored.


New Vegas gives you with the feeling of a desolate wasteland, but packs it with stuff. It's a delicate balance. The only time walking distances managed to make me cranky was when the game kept me up passed 2 am, which is generally when any game element can make me cranky.

The graphics are rough. I am fine with this. If you're not, there are already a number of mods available already to tinker with them. Given the overall quality of the game, I was surprised at all the new art assets. Yes, many objects are the same, but when it comes to the environment, there's a great deal of new content.

There are several new Vaults and all but one is a treat. There's the Science Experiment Run Amuck Vault, the Sinister Moral Dilemma Vault, and the Zombies Attack! Vault.

Bizarrely, many Vaults are flooded with water. This makes no sense because the setting is *a desert*. Rainfall is rare, storms are incredibly rare, and while flooding happens, it rarely lasts more than a few days. It begs the imagination as to how one vault designed to withstand a nuclear bomb might suffer massive water damage underground and remain flooded for years, let alone three.



Combat is much like Fallout 3 though thankfully not every death is accompanied by a gory and slow-mo moment. You get companions early and the humans are well done though the AI can be horribly aggressive. I entered one Vault, stood near the enters and just waited to see what my companions would do. As I stood there, they cleaned out the first floor (even opening doors to do so) and started on the second before returning to me.

Fallout: NVneeds to place a marker on the local map for fallen companions because they frequently run off to battle something you hadn't notice and then die. Several times I would be running along only for the [Cass has fallen unconscious!] message to pop up. I'd backtrack and find her lying among a group of giant radscorpians that she'd taken on with only a 10mm pistol.

Oh, I gave her a shotgun, but earlier I'd used my sniper rifle to take out a large group of Fiends. Cass, bless her heart, had decided to charge them, firing round after round while she was still a half mile away. She possibly did no damage, but she easily ate through the 40 slugs I'd scavenged. After running out of ammo (though still not at their base), she then stood there furiously cocking and reloading her shotgun while going "Fuck! Out of ammo!" "Fuck! Out of ammo!" "Fuck! Out of ammo" (I somehow heard this clearly though she was nowhere near me) until a Fiend armed with an incinerator popped out and fried her.

Screen Note: [Cass has fallen unconscious!]

That said, the companions are likable, interesting and, when the AI works, incredibly useful. If your PC wants to focus on soft skills instead of combat, the companions level up with you and are all designed around combat so you can sit back while they kill shit.

Can I heap more praise on this game? Yes.

The plot is interesting. The sidequests are varied and the minor NPCs well done. I like the various factions, though the game needs to be clearer about the difference between Karma and Reputation. I killed a bunch of Powder Gangers, which lowered my Rep with them but increased my Karma. I then took their stuff, which lowered my Karma because apparently stealing from dead outlaws makes you a bad person.

Speech, Medicine, Barter, and Repair all make frequent appearances in the dialogue, but you'll also see Sneak, Survival, Charisma, and Intelligence on occasion. There's a perk called 'Terrifying Presence' which I've only seen once, and it didn't do anything. There's also something I call the 'I'm a lesbian' perk, which gives you +10% damage to female characters and extra speech options in regards to…being queer. They're not always flirtatious or romantic, and one wonders how liking women helps you do more damage to them. (You're intimately familiar with female anatomy?)

I like the music, though there seems to be less variety than Fallout 3 and I quickly turned off the radio. Mr. New Vegas isn't as interesting as Three Dog though Wayne Newton does a good job.

(On a side note, Mr. Newton agreed to come to an event my company sponsored but didn't show up. I *still* get the occasional angry e-mail from men who came simply to see Mr. Newton and say we lied about him coming.)



I've heaped praises on this game. Is there anything I'd change? Yah. The bug that won't let me finish after 50 hours of playing.

Oh Obsidian. I was waiting for this throughout the game. You've given me 50 hours of interesting, fun gameplay along with an enjoyable story and the feeling as though the world was really reacting to my decisions. Now, however, whenever I step onto the Strip, I'm attacked by a swarm of robots who have missiles and grenades. And my ally, the one I've worked with since the beginning, now will no longer speak with me, and the main questline is marked as FAILED.

Why? There are two possibilities. It seems the turrets of a random Vault are marked as part of the Strip's faction. Therefore, even though they automatically target you, if you destroy them, you're marked as hostile. In addition, it seems that if you tell a companion to return home, they're attacked for some reason when they try to enter the Strip where the home base is. When they defend themselves, again, the PC is marked as hostile.

I've done both of these things in the ten hours since I was last on the Strip. Yes, I have a save, but it's been *ten real time hours* since I went to the Strip last.

For now, I'm uninstalling and waiting for a patch. I know one has come out already. I tell myself that in a month, another will come out, I'll reinstall, and play through the entire thing without a hitch.

In the interests of full disclosure, I hate Batman. Okay, hate is too strong a word, but I dislike the character immensely. Long before I was a video game geek, I was a comic geek. I’ll admit that in the hands of a skilled writer (1980s Frank Millar), Batman can be great, but in the hands of a skilled writer, any comic book character can be great.

My main complaint is that Batman can do no wrong. He’s supposed to be the most ‘dark and realistic’ hero in the DCU, but is often portrayed as a model of intellectual, physical, and ethical perfection who the plot-gods make sure always comes out on top no matter what the situation.

But I’m talking about the GAME DEMO here, so I will attempt to keep an open mind, even though I greatly dislike the main character.

The first thing I noticed was an inability to fiddle with the graphic settings. No changing your resolution, textures, or SFX. It’s very possible this is just because it’s a demo, but if that’s the case in the full game, I wouldn’t complain. I tend to think of graphics settings as either accommodating people whose computer doesn’t meet the recommended specs or massaging the ego of those who’ve have high-end systems. Graphically speaking, I think games would be better if there was a single end-user experience.

The second thing I noticed was the ‘character bios’ section. I love this sort of fluff, so I immediately clicked on it. Only Batman and the Joker are displayed. Batman has an expression I interpret as constipated man stoically going to the bathroom, or five-year-old denied his peanut butter cookie. The Joker has two out of five audio tapes of an interview between the Joker and… Magma from X-Men: Legends? It sounds just like her to me, and she’s apparently a doctor now. While the Joker’s tapes don’t interest me – by definition, his psyche is meant to be impenetrable – I hope we get to listen to/discover those of other villains. It might be a neat way to get into their head and have them portrayed as more than one-dimensional punching bags. (It worked in BioShock!)



We start with a brief cinematic in which Batman rushes through the city in his Batmobile with the Joker handcuffed in the backseat. Gotham looks suitably stylish. Not as impressive as Tim Burton’s Gotham, but not just a copy of New York either. Batman himself is very broad and muscular, moreso than I prefer. While he’s not Spider-Man, his fighting style is fairly athletic and acrobatic, and he spends as much time running and swinging as he does lifting heavy objects.

After the cutscene, we’re immediately tossed into a battle with a group of shirtless thugs who all have the same broad, muscular build. I vaguely point Batman at one, click my left mouse button and he punches. I continue to click the button while sometimes changing direction and Batman performs a wild range of stylish moves, sometimes in slow motion. I’m even graded on my combos. It feels like Devil May Cry 4, but requires far less in the way of timing or chaining together moves. There’s an interesting contrast between the stiff, Dead Space like movement just walking/moving, and the very fluid movements of the combat. One moment, I’m playing a comic book, and the next, I’m back to driving my grandfather’s rice combine harvester.

After the obligatory smack-down segment, the Joker invites me to come and find him. I wander into the nearby cells and find something out of Silent Hill. This pleases me, as one of my favorite versions of Arkham is that of a hellish, cruel pit the uncaring citizens of Gotham toss anyone who can’t handle reality. And that people tend to become more violent and insane after being interred in it for awhile. I get a few new character bios, and discover a fairly obvious secret object.

The corridors are all narrow and the rooms seems very small, possibly a stylistic choice, but it reminds me of too many games developed on the old Xbox that had to have tiny areas because of memory restrictions.

I head down to the patient pacification center, which has a giant electrical chair. Zsasz has captured a guard and strapped him down, and will kill him if he sees me coming. Is it the stealth tutorial? I think so! I’m also alerted to ‘detective vision’ which allows me to see through walls and highlights important objects.



I first try to fail the stealth portion to see how the game deals with my failure. I learn to grapple, then hang upside down on a gargoyle, drop and walk in front of Zsasz. I’m treated to a small cutscene of Zsasz electrocuting the guard (the man dies off screen), then the Joker appear in front of a black background and appears to be taunting Batman’s dead body. It’s game over, would I like to retry?

Now, I could understand if this was a critical situation, but it’s a single guard. Why does his death mean the game has to end? To be sure, I’m not asking for multiple endings or for events in the mission to change. The guard dies, I beat up Zsasz, and I continue on in Arkham. Instead, the game makes me replay this part, and I stealth knock-out Zsasz.

The demo then has me sneak attack a few groups of henchmen, and it’s over.

Thoughts so far: Fairly shallow combat, characters, and story. Being the World’s Greatest Detective seems to boil down to using your X-Ray Batvision and interacting with anything that glows orange.

On the other hand, leaping from gargoyle to gargoyle while people fire at me, and sneaking behind thugs to take them down was fun. They seem to have the atmosphere right, and while a bit of the voice acting is questionable, it’s mostly solid.

I have a head cold and the antihistamines I took keep have me nodding off. I have three different topics I’d like to talk about and hardly enough energy for one. I’ll go with a topical one: Spore.

The Galactic Adventures pack is coming out sometimes soon. I wouldn’t know because EA’s marketing isn’t accurate. For the last two months, I’ve seen banners and ads saying it was ‘available now’ and each time I clicked through I ended up at a pre-order page. (Wiki says it came out June 23 – see, this is kinda, sorta topical!)

This is about original Spore though, and my opinion of it can be summed up thusly: Creativity is no panacea for mediocrity. Just because a game is innovative, genre defying, creative, inspired, artistic – whatever synonym you prefer – does not mean it’s a good game. Even if those same elements can turn a good game into an excellent game.

Which leads to the question, ‘Does a game have to be good to be worthy or important?’ No, not at all. Enter the Dragon is a bad film, but it’s the film that introduced American audiences to Bruce Lee and quality martial artist choreography. Before Enter the Dragon, most Hollywood fight scenes were Western style shootouts or akin to Captain Kirk vs. Gorn.

A c-game[1] is a form of media as well as an art form as well as (sometimes) an interactive narrative form as well as (sometimes) a social experience as well as system the user navigates using heuristic devices. The last is what makes a game a game, and when I say a game is good or bad, that’s major element I’m evaluating.

In a number of reviews, I’ve read that Spore is not one but five games. I’d argue that it’s two games: the pre-space age and the space age. The cell, creature, tribal, and civilization stages [2] are a single game and a bad one at that. The goal in each stage is to grow, you can choose to do so violently or not, and the way you implement your goal is by gathering a resource and buying objects. In the cell and creature stage, these are body parts. In the tribal stage, these are clothing, children, and buildings. In the civilization stage, these are vehicles and buildings.

There are many excellent games built around this core concept: gather resources in order to buy a beneficial improvement. In Civilization IV, a strategy game, I try to gather metals, food, and money so I can by buildings. In Diablo, an action RPG, I kill things to gather XP so I can buy powers and abilities.




The early stages of Spore never go beyond the core concept. It’s about as bare bones as you get and the lack of complexity, of even simple give or take, means you can go through these early stages on cruise control.

I’m not the first view the simplicity of the early sections as problematic, but I’ve notices that many believe this decision was made to appeal to casual gamers. The hardcore/casual schism is ridiculous and mostly perpetuated by ‘real’ or ‘hardcore’ gamers who view the mere existence of games that don’t cater to their tastes as a type of sacrilege. Maxis might have ‘dumbed down’ Spore for casual gamers, but I doubt it.

I play casual games, my mother plays casual games, my mother’s friend plays casual games, and my mother’s friends daughter and *her* daughter both play casual games, often together. Nothing they play is as boring as the first four levels of Spore. Games like Bejeweled or Plants vs Zombies are simple, but still very engaging.

Moving on to the Space Age and we find a semi-decent space civ sim, but still not as good as half-a-dozen other games on the market.

The bottom line is that if it weren’t for the creature/building/vehicle creator, this game would have hit the bargain bin a month after it was released.



Problematically, the creation tool isn’t a game, it’s a tool. It’s fun to play around with. It’s also fun to eat dinner, go to a movie, or doodle on my PC tablet, but while it’s nice when fun and games meet, one does not imply the other. There are parts of the creation tool that relate to the game as you design your creature’s body and pick various parts to buy, but in itself, this isn’t a game.

This makes things difficult for me. If I’m judging a game, do I go by the total experience, or just the game? It’s not that unusual a quandary. If I go out to a restaurant, and get a great view of the ocean, watch the chef prepare the entrée while flames leap up around her, and have great conversation with my friend, but the food itself is lousy, how good was the meal? There are people who love the creation tool. (And not just because they can make a giant dickasaurus) I don’t enjoy it, but I can see how it’s unique and interesting and an impressive feat.

A game does not have to be good to be worthy or important. I’m not sure if this is either of those either. No other developers seem interested in exploring a multi-generational game right now and user-end content creation tools haven’t changed. More accurately, Spore is riding a larger trend in letting users create content.

Ultimately, Spore might be an evolutionary dead-end when it comes to gaming.

1 - Computer or console game
2 - It’s inaccurate to suggest that a tribe isn’t a form of civilization. A bit of unintended ethnocentrism there.

Overlord II – examination

Note: As of this write-up, I’m 4/5ths through the game and about to begin a section called The Last Battle. This review contains spoilers.

The Introduction:

In 2007, Codemasters released a Triumph Studios game called Overlord. It was a third-person puzzle game in which the PC as the titular dark Overlord, gathered a group of minions and enslaved or destroyed the populous of a fantasy setting. The setting itself was a spoof of stereotypical fantasy settings, and the game had many comedic elements.

Despite this premise, the Overlord is ‘the good guy.’ The antagonists of the piece are the seven heroes who slew the previous Overlord and have since become corrupt with power, their particular vices based on the seven deadly sins.

It was an interesting game. Solid puzzles, a fresh idea, and engaging plot made this one of the best games of 2007. At the same time, it could get a little monotonous. I managed to make it through a single play though, but I only finished because I wanted to see the ending. Sometime after the fourth (or was it fifth?) boss battle I got bored with the gameplay.

Overlord II is set several hundred years after the original. The old Overlord mysteriously disappeared after the magical Great Cataclysm and the world is currently ruled by the decadent and magic hating Empire. I suspect a twist ending, but haven’t reached that point yet. I’ll amend this post when I do.

Other than the plot, it’s the same game: You are an Overlord; you use minions to fight and solve puzzles; you collect a variety of resources so you can upgrade your minions, armor and weaponry, and your Netherworld Fortress; and you have mistresses who give you a bonuses and a sex scene. There are a few additions: minions have mounts now, dominating a town makes resource collection easier, and the graphics have improved.

But, is Overlord II as good as its predecessor? Is it better? Is it worth shelling out money if you enjoyed the original?




The Good:

Yes. Yes. And (you guessed it) yes.

Not only is it as good as Overlord, it’s better. For one thing, it’s more puzzle-centric. In the original Overlord, you could slaughter your entire group of minions in a big fight, run back to the spawn pits to get more, and then finish the fight with fresh recruits. In Overlord II, a fight is either of easy or normal difficulty, or it’s a puzzle. If your troops are being slaughtered, it’s because you’re doing something wrong.

Some players might object to this – what’s the use of having 700 brown minions if there aren’t fights that grind them into ground beef? – but a puzzle game ought to reward problem solving and punish you for trying to just muscle your way through combat. It’s far more satisfying to replay an encounter several times until I get that mental click, at which point things become easy, than to scrape through an encounter with 1 HP and all the minions I’ve leveled up and equipped dead.

Overlord II also avoids the monotony of the original game. The puzzles are much more varied; there are only a handful of sections where you guide your minions through a dangerous maze, which happened in Overlord every 30-45 minutes. Overlord II has sections where you possess a minion, usually to sneak around, places where you take control of catapults and war machines, and even places where you steer a ship. These game play shifts are well integrated into the story and gameplay, so they don’t feel like random mini-games.

The ability to control towns is a smart move. Towns provide you with a steady source of money, equipment, and lifeforce. They also feel ‘right’ for an evil Overlord.



The Neutral:

The story isn’t as interesting as the first game. It’s not bad, but at least with the Seven Deadly Sins theme, it felt slightly cohesive instead of a series of unrelated puzzles in different locations. I don’t care about defeating the bad guy because he’s only a face. I don’t care about saving everyone because I’m an evil Overlord. I have no personal stake in the matter as the main character has all the personality of burnt bread (burnt bread in hulking, evil armor.)

It’s supposedly a comedy game, but it’s a weak form of comedy. It’s sort of like a five-year-old coming up to you and doing a silly dance: it’s not so much funny as something you smile at because it’s cute and they made the effort.

So, the minions put random stuff on their head, drink beer, and piss loudly afterwards. Haha? They club baby seals and the elves talk in a California accent while defending all that’s cute and fluffy. Haha?

Part of the problem is that when it comes to books, their ‘spoof’ is dated. In 1996, The Tough Guide to Fantasyland by Diana Wynne Jones, made most of these jokes about elves, dwarves, and other common fantasy tropes, but even then they weren’t all that common. Overlord II is a bit like a comedian making jokes about big-hair, neon green legwarmers, and Flashdance. The tropes it makes fun of are mostly confined to DnD and a handful of cRPGs.

Someone once said, “Most game developers have read one book – Lord of the Rings – and seen two movies – Star Wars and Aliens.” If you’re like this, you probably believe the Overlord series contains barbed satire of the fantasy genre. If you’re like me, you probably wish the jokes weren’t so stale.

I also find it strange that Overlord II insists you be a hero of sorts, yet again. Dungeon Keeper never told you that while you appeared to be crushing everyone around you, you were truly saving the world from a much greater tyranny. This is the second time the series has you playing a dark savior. Why?

I’d rather the main antagonist was a good, pure-hearted soul that I stomped under my rusty, iron boots.




The Bad:

Overlord isn’t a perfect game by any means. If you want cool stuff, you have to spend hours farming for resources. Instead of having fun, you get to run around areas you’ve already visited to kill gnomes or destroy the scenery with your minions yet again. It’s dreadfully boring. If you’re going to make farming mandatory, at least try to make it interesting.

For some reason, there’s a ‘Kill 1,000 gnomes’ quest in your journal. It’s an achievement and unlike the other quests, there’s no benefit to it. Achievements are not quests. They should not be listed in the quest log. Another tedious ‘quest’ is the kill/dominate 100 townsfolk for two of the towns. At least this one has some benefit, as dominated townsfolk produce weaponry.

But again, instead of solving puzzles or fighting things, I waste my time farming. This isn’t WoW, and the game is long enough without this element. Why not ditch the farming aspects altogether?

Like the first game, you have ‘good’ or evil choices. More like evil and less evil, really. There are times when the ‘good’ choices are difficult to make. For instance, I run around an elven commune attempting to dominate everyone as they toss pumpkin bombs and swear up and down they’re not rebelling. The AI has no sense of self-preservation though, and several times the elves toss pumpkin bombs into a group of elves or into their own house and blow the crap out of themselves. After they do this a few times, the game decides that I’ve subdued the village through ‘destruction’ even though I haven’t attacked or harmed anyone.

Lastly, on a politically correct note, this game hates fat people. It’s bizarre. There’s even a cut-scene where the camera lingers on a naked fat man while Gnarl, one of the minions, rants about how disgusting he is. I’d write this off as a writer missing his medication one day, but it’s not an isolated incident.

When I was in college, I knew a few girls who’d lost a large amount of weight and obsessed about fatness. For them, being heavy was equivalent to necrophilia. Parts of this game makes me wonder if some of them might have made it into game development.