The first true challenge of Boletaria

It occurs to me that I’ve been adventuring in the kingdom of Boletaria for just over a year now. You’d be surprised how easy it is to lose track of time when you’re dead. The only real proof of time passing is the occasional change in atmosphere here. No one can say what the true cause is - all we know is who chooses to take advantage of it. This change comes in two flavours - good and bad. Will the demons be weaker when you leave the Nexus, or will you be ambushed by a Primeval Demon? It’s anyone’s guess. Typically, these periods last for… at least a week? It’s hard to tell.

        This time, I was determined to take advantage of the change - it was God’s will that I do his work, and I’ve ignored it for too long. Heathens have spread troubling rumours about His true nature, but long… months… spent in prayer here in the Nexus with Saint Urbain have strengthened my resolve to cleanse the demons and their worshippers from Boletaria.

        I first visited the Boletarian Palace, to see which way the winds were blowing. If God had willed me a challenge, it would be best to start small. If the demons were weakened by His divine might, then my greatest enemies should fall in due time. The test I devised was to explore the abandoned gatehouse near the entrance to the Palace. When I began my adventures, during an extended period of change, I was killed by an executioner clearly driven mad by demonic soul power. It was time to revisit her. It seems that she only appears when such extreme atmospheres are present - sometimes she appears in the flesh, and other times she appears as a fearsome Black Phantom. Which I met would determine the current nature of the Kingdom.

        I fought through the Black Phantom dreglings along the way and took a moment to catch my breath before entering the gatehouse. I healed the careless wounds I received from the Black Phantom dreglings, then stepped into the gatehouse. Knowing the executioner, Miralda, would soon follow, I jumped back out into the open. I waited for a few seconds, and when nothing emerged, I took a step towards the door. Suddenly, Miralda surged through the door, her massive axe swinging upwards to meet my chin. Panicking, I turned tail and ran like a coward, only to have Miralda catch me from behind. Her axe crushed my skull in an instant, and I felt my soul sucked back to the Archstone in front of the grand Palace gate.

        Despite the literally crushing defeat, adrenaline surged through my system. God was on my side today - Miralda, the executioner, had appeared in the flesh. I knew that I could finally defeat this mad creature, only one of many in this forsaken kingdom, but any progress is good progress. I ran back, not even bothering with the Black Phantom dreglings. I rolled under their slow lunges, knowing they would not follow me up the stairs towards the gatehouse.

        I ducked into the gatehouse, then emerged and applied Turpentine to my weapon as I waited for Miralda off to the side. I dashed to her right when she began her signature uppercut, and attacked her from behind. Her legs buckled as I brought my mace to bear against the backs of her knees, and I swung it with all of my might at the back of her head. Her ragged clothes ignited briefly, but no screams of pain came from the vile creature. When she attacked again, I thought to block with my Heater Shield, but her axe simply knocked my arm aside.

        I backed off before she could attack again and gathered my stamina to prepare for the next assault. No blocking this time - dodging would bring this one down. In my heavy chain mail armour, rolling was a challenge, but I hoped I could recover before she had time to parry. I waited for her to attack, and jumped to her left. Landing heavily on my shoulder, I rolled and stood as quickly as I could and swung my mace almost without thinking. Once, twice, a third time, and still Miralda stood. I had barely the stamina to swing again, but seeing her turn brought a flood of ice-cold fear through my veins. Enough to give me the strength for one final swing. Enough to fell the first challenge I had met in Boletaria.

        I knew that her only a well-armoured opponent could withstand such an assault from the combined might of my strength and my faith. Despite the appearance of bulk provided by my chain mail armour, I knew that her armour would fit, and would provide a much lighter alternative without sacrificing much strength. I brought it back to the Nexus, and after trying it on, found that years of wearing chain mail armour made it incredibly simple to roll in such light armour. With the increased mobility, I knew I could take on more agile opponents such as the Flamelurker waiting inside the Stonefang Mines.

        Before leaving to take on this next challenge, I paid a visit to Sage Urbain to spend a moment praying for Executioner Miralda.

        Umbasa.

Echo Bazaar

So from what I can tell Echo Bazaar is user-created. There’s a button you click on the storylets you see that tells you who made them, which could just be all developers, or it might not be.

        I like the system of the stats, the storylets you unlock and the opportunity cards… However, what I’m most interested in is seeing what they have to make me coerce my grandmother into playing. Not every game is Demon’s Souls, where the gameplay itself is enough to sell copies. More on that when I get to my lodgings and see what kind of activities my friends can engage in there. Or something.

        Well, ok. Standard procedure, I said a thing on facebook and I got more action points. More on this as it develops. This is a game on the level of The Ruins Of, where I practically love it just for existing. However it’s too damn polished for automatic love and its status as a social game as opposed to a simple browser-based game (these are developed very differently - compare Echo Bazaar to The Ruins Of and you’ll get the idea) makes me want proof of its excellence.

        I will be back to declare a judgement on its excellence later. If it is excellent, I expect you to be my neighbours so we can perform various activities at each other’s lodgings. Or whatever.

Vanquish

So that Vanquish demo. It’s pretty nuts. Something tells me the final levels resemble a three-dimensional bullet hell game.

        I died five times during the demo. Short jog through a base, fight against a four-legged mech (legs are weak points, knock one out, shoot the core - if you’re lucky you’ll take it out after two, if not, three is fine), which then TRANSFORMS into a two legged version with electro-whip arms. Checkpoint is at the first part of the fight so dying against the second means starting it all over. Your health regenerates and all, so it’s not like you’re weaker by the time the second half comes along, but still. One thing that made me feel less like a failure is that your weapons upgrade themselves as you either pick up upgrade chips (probably dropped from specific enemies during missions) or as you pick up the same gun (if an enemy drops an assault rifle, you pick it up and gain ammo, and some work towards a gun upgrade). When you die, you restart with the current state of your weapons, so it’s like a short term new game+.

        So the game itself. You have an uber nanotech suit thing, titanium neuroskeletal technomagic armour stuff. It has a booster pack that for some reason requires you to power slide to use. So you press L2 and you power slide until your suit overheats. Then you can also do a dodge roll, and if you press L2 while doing that, time pretty much stops and you get to fire away until your suit overheats. When you do a melee attack, which are as effective as an EMP blast/titanium fist to the face should be, your suit will also overheat for a bit. You lose a third of your movement speed while your suit is overheating, so it comes at a cost. But I did a flying knee to the face and killed a guy instantly. That was cool.

        So this game is like style and then substance. First you do cool shit, and then they try to justify it. For example, you don’t actually carry any guns - your suit morphs into guns by replicating any guns you find. It can store three in its memory at a time, but it’s suggested during the tutorial that you can upgrade that.

        Did I mention there’s a turbo power slide button?

        Oh, and you get the slow motion effect automatically when your health gets low, and that’s really cool. An explosive barrel blew up beside me, and the physical barrel or whatever put me at critical damage, and then I outran the explosion and survived.

        If I can finish the demo without dying, I’ll buy the game. If not, I have no chance to survive. Make my time.

Enslaved: Odysey to the West

edit: oh god this got really long, you’d never know that I only played a 15 (or something like that) minute demo

        Have you played Prince of Persia (2009), or whatever it is they call that pathetic game? I bought it because I desperately wanted it to be good. I wish I could unbuy it and use that money for Enslaved: Odyssey to the West. I’m going to rent it and finish it, but I’m having a really hard time justifying the cost of buying it :/ Not because it wouldn’t be worth it, not because I don’t want to own it and recommend it to people, but because sixty bucks is sixty bucks.

        But let me explain. I downloaded the demo and just finished playing it. The game released on October 5th for the PS3 and 360. Sucks if you don’t own either of those I guess. Here’s a synopsis of the game from wikipedia:

Enslaved is a story set 150 years in the future where a global war has ravaged the Earth. In this future, nearly all of the entire human race has been eradicated, but robots still plague the land. Although they are from a bygone era, they are still following their orders to eradicate the humans. The storyline is loosely based on the ancient Chinese novel Journey to the West.

        You control two characters in the game: Monkey, a beefy all-american manly man with an EMP staff and some sweet gloves that can make a shield I guess. He also climbs really well. Surprising, no? Your other character is Trip, a female hacker, who has to rely on Monkey’s brute strength to help her get home. But here’s what puts the game far above a simple “oh you have a hacker sidekick” gimmick: Trip installed a modified slave headband on Monkey after the crash landing of the slave ship they were on. She can control him with voice commands and put an insane amount of hurt on him if he tries to disobey. Worse than that, if she dies, the headband kills him instantly.

        Essentially, Monkey is her slave, and you have to help her and protect her from killer robots - or else. So first of all, you have a two character gameplay mechanic (similar to Prince of Persia, and different parts of the other PoP games - also featured in some shitty game that just came out called Quantum Theory and I’m sure countless others) that is actually an interesting plot point. If you’ve played the 2009 Prince of Persia game, you’ll know that the princess girl is practically just eye candy… Sure, she has her uses in the gameplay, but her main use is a terrible plot delivery mechanic (there are lots of articles about how the story of Prince of Persia failed, check the one Anthony Burch wrote for Destructoid if you care) and to revive you every time you die. Enslaved: 1. Prince of Persia: 0.

        The platforming, thanks to such innovations as the “camera angle” and “close ups,” somehow manages to be cool and, well, personal. There’s probably a better way to put it, but it’s like, you feel a lot more involved in what’s going on with the way they move the camera and shake it and generally just do things movies have done for ages. I’ll admit that I haven’t played either Uncharted game so this may not be new, but it’s just so awesome in comparison to Prince of Persia. In Prince of Persia, the platforming is very cool and you look like a badass, albeit a slow badass. But it never felt engaging, and I never really thought “hey that was cool” except for the time that I did something the game didn’t want me to do. It was just visually attractive, and basically all in a day’s work, totally mundane. Enslaved: 2. Prince of Persia: 0.

        Enslaved’s combat has pretty much the same pros, and Prince of Persia’s combat has pretty much the same cons. So that’s Enslaved: 3 and Prince of Persia: 0.

        Honestly this game gets so much better the more I compare it to Prince of Persia. I was seriously thinking of this while playing it, like wow, I really hate that Prince of Persia game, and I REALLY like this one.

        From what I’ve read, the relationship between Trip and Monkey actually develops throughout the course of the game, which is something that you might take for granted in a novel or movie, but in a video game is actually fucking noteworthy. I look forward to not having to mention that as a specific bonus in the future.

        edit for those who read all this: Jim Sterling was right to say that it’s like someone took Heavenly Sword and gave it good gameplay. I rented that game and that was a good decision, but I wonder if this might not be one to own.

        Time to go play the Vanquish demo!