Might and Magic: Heroes VI: An Honest Opinion

So, in my anticipation of all the big stuff releasing over the next little while: Final Fantasy XIII-2 and Soul Calibur V dropped yesterday, Kingdoms of Amalur next Tuesday, (February 7th, if you're keeping track), the Vita launch - you know, the big stuff - I decided to fill the time by playing smaller games. One of these smaller games happened to be Might and Magic: Heroes VI, a turn-based strategy game developed by Black Hole entertainment, that I downloaded off Steam. Now, like The Binding of Isaac, Heroes VI has been out for a while, but given my fixation on triple-A titles, it's not something I was really paying attention to when it came out. In fact, I'll tell you a secret: I've never played a Might and Magic game before. Yes, I've heard of them, but never actually delved into them. Here's another secret: I don't play a lot of turn-based strategy games. That makes this game a really odd choice for me to download, I know, but the reviews about it were mostly favourable, so I decided it might be worth giving it a whirl. And a whirl I gave it.


Since I was going into this series blind, the first thing I was curious about was how the game's story would play out. Was it a direct continuation of Heroes V, whose story I wouldn't understand because I'd never played its progenitor? Well, I can't say for sure. You see, since I'd never played a Might and Magic game before, I decided to judge the game's story based on itself, instead of how it fit into the wider lore of the series. That meant not looking up what had happened in the previous games, and simply playing this one. Now, at the time, that seemed a perfectly fine idea. What I didn't realize, though, was how much I was going to dislike the way the story is presented. There are elements of the story that are presented through cinematics: the opening, pre-menu cinematic was actually pretty cool, but there are other story elements that are presented in flat dialogue sections that simply feature a box of text and character portraits superimposed over the map you're about to play on. To me, that simply isn't good story telling. If the entire game was like that, it would be tolerable. Fancy cinematics aren't always needed to tell a good story. But the fact that they have some cinematics makes the text box thing additionally jarring. Couple that with the fact that the voice-acting in the game is somewhat flat, and it just doesn't make for an engaging tale. The content of the story could make for a very interesting game; something about a soul trapped in a sword, a war, archangels flying around trying to make everything right again, people dying, and what have you. But, again, it just wasn't presented in a way that managed to hook me, and I actually only have a very limited idea of what was going on while I was playing. And no, I didn't make it all the way through. There are several different campaigns to play through, and while that would probably be something fans of the series or turn-based strategy games would be fairly happy about, for me, it just meant there were parts of the game I wasn't going to see.

Above: A rearing horse upset with its lack of screen time.

What about the gameplay that supports this story that I wasn't really engaged by? Well, it's pretty standard turn-based strategy fare, from what I was able to tell. You start on a world map with a hero army and (sometimes), a friendly city, and then you proceed to build up your armies while exploring the world map, looking for enemy settlements, friendly units to recruit, resources to collect, etc., etc. It's all very top-downy, as anyone who has played a turn-based strategy game would expect, and anyone who hasn't could see by looking at screenshots. I think it's here that my biggest problem with the genre is: I just don't find this a particularly engaging mechanic of gameplay. If they were to ax that system, and opt for a more Final Fantasy Tactics-y system, I think I would have enjoyed the game a lot more. That doesn't actually make any sense to me, since real-time strategy games use a similar method, but I enjoy them a lot more than TBS games. Don't ask me why, I don't know. There's enough similarities between the two genres that enjoying one should, (in theory), equal at least a limited enjoyment of the other, but I found Heroes VI just too ... dense. There's a lot to be conscious of. You've got your hero's level, which directly affects the strength of the troops in his army, but not your other friendly armies, resources to watch, cities to manage, and a world map to navigate, and all this has to be dealt this before you even get to the meat of the game, which is, of course, the battles.

Here, go explore with your aforementioned neglected horse... I'm sure that's just a bit awkward.

Here, go explore with your aforementioned neglected horse. I'm sure that's just a bit awkward...
But then, you finally get to fight things, and like the world exploration, it's a fairly familiar system, even to someone with only limited exposure to TBS games in the past, like me. Your troops line up against the enemies troops, your hero stands at the back of the line, unable to move, but with some abilities to help in combat nonetheless, and you proceed to... well, be strategical. Enemies retaliate if you attack them with a melee unit and don't kill them, your ranged units can't move and attack in the same turn (at least not that I found), and your hero can only preform their actions before any of the other troops on your side. So the idea, I assume, is that you have to think about the conflicts you're in before you start moving around and hitting things, like a sort of chess match. The thing is, I found the game to be fairly lacking in the 'need strategy to advance' department. Yes, I admitted that I didn't get very far into the game, but the bit I did play, I got by just by shooting things with my crossbow units, and then running up and wailing on them with my sentry units, occasionally using a priest(ess?) to do a little healing, and make sure they didn't get clawed apart by the demons that they were fighting. Fairly limited, strategy-wise. Yes, it's perfectly acceptable for the game to get truly difficult later on, but give me some hint at the start as to where it's headed. Even at the start of the game, I shouldn't be able to win every battle using the TBS equivalent of the 'mash the confirm button in a turn-based RPG,' system of play. I can only assume that, with five different campaigns to progress through, the difficulty curve is fairly lax. Maybe the game gets really difficult as you near the end, but I don't want to play for 12 hours just to encounter a challenge. It doesn't have to be there from the get-go, but some indication of it should be there from the opening moment.

You can figure out the unit types by yourself. I gave up on that, too.

Altogether, although this 'honest opinion' may seem silly to some, that's really my entire experience with the game: a short run followed by a dismissive hand wave and a seat on the sidelines. Overall, I just wasn't having any fun with it, and that is the only reason to keep playing a game. I've read some 'professional' reviews that praise the changes Might and Magic: Heroes VI made to the series' mechanics, and how it's a fairly robust TBS game, but since I'm not a fan of the series, nor a connoisseur of the genre, neither of these things mean diddly to me. If you're a fan of the series, or of TBS games in general, I suppose that's enough for me to tell you to at least give it a try. But if you're not a fan of either the game or the genre, and just think it looks interesting, I'd say pass on it. If you're looking for an entry-point into the genre, I'd recommend looking around some more. There has to be a TBS game out there that would be a better starting point. That's my honest opinion, anyway.

Star Wars: The Old Republic: An Honest First Impression

So, here it is: the the long-awaited tolling of the bell announcing the end of a ridiculously long school day. Doctors Ray and Greg have finally seen it fit to release Bioware's massively anticipated online role-playing game, Star Wars: The Old Republic on the PC. It now fits neatly into the library of their titles that included such critically acclaimed hits as Mass Effect, Dragon Age: Origins, and, of course, Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic. Of course, some long time PC gamers would scoff at that list, and say we gamers of lesser (read: 'dirty') birth are stupid, and should be thinking about Bioware games like Baldur's Gate, or (in case that's way too old for you), the slightly more recent Jade Empire. But if I have to give you a run-through of Bioware's extensive repertoire, then perhaps your in the wrong place. What's important is this: The Old Republic has finally gone live.


Now, obviously, it's been live for close to a month, or a little longer, if you're counting the early access. But, as I've said before, I'm simply one man, so I can't buy every big game the moment it hits the shelves. But, since tomorrow is my birthday, (you can send presents whenever you feel like it), I decided earlier in the week to splurge a little, and purchase this hugely anticipated title. Now, being one man, there is no way I could have possibly played enough of the game yet to write a proper review, so I'm not even going to try. No, what I'm doing tonight is giving you my honest first impression of the game so far. That means what's coming here is just what I've been able to glean from the game so far: there will be no screenshots, no opinions on graphical fidelity, user-interface, combat, or any of those other review-y points. I'll be back in a few months time to write a proper review for it, which will include all those thing, but for now, you'll just have to make do with the thoughts I've had about the game so far.


Firstly, I bought the game last Saturday. The front of the case clearly states the following: "Valid credit card or paid game card (if available), internet connection and paid subscription required to play game. 30-day subscription included with purchase." Which, in my head, translated into the following: "I have 30 days to try the game before I start paying for play time. If I don't like it, I may be out $60, but that's no different than with any other game." Not so. As it turns out, you can't play at all until you've either given them a credit card number, or bought a time card, even though your account has 30 days of play time on it from the get-go. After getting the game home, installing it, and coming to this realization, I thought: "that's a bit different. They made it sound like I had 30 days to play before I gave them more money, didn't they...?" I went back and read the blurb on the case a few more times, but the wording still didn't scream "we want another $14.99 before you can play!" But I figured, "Whatever. Must have been having a slow moment." Now, I'm not in possession of a credit card, so I decided I'd go out the next day, and buy a time card. Boy, was I wrong. Every store in my area was sold out of the bloody things, and none had any idea when a new shipment would be in. I slightly agitated, (to sugarcoat it), but I didn't blame the game: I blamed myself for misreading the package and not realizing I need to pay to play, and the stores for not having any time cards. I also blamed Bioware a little bit, for not allowing prepaid credit cards to make a subscription to the game. That one I found out by reading the forums, not buying a prepaid credit card. I was thinking ahead that time.


I won't regale you with anymore of my woe: suffice to say, it was Tuesday when I finally went out, bought a prepaid credit card, and used that to purchase a digital time code from the EA Origin store. By that point, I was feeling a bit of ill will toward the game, but it was just as much my fault as the game's, so I let it be. So, Tuesday evening, when I was done all my classes for the day, I finally booted up The Old Republic, which is all I'd wanted to do since Saturday, and had my first moments with the game.


My first character was aligned with the Republic, a human female Jedi Knight, who's advanced class would eventually become Guardian. I chose Republic because I always play light-side first when a game gives me the choice, and female because I felt that female representation in the Jedi Order was very slim in the movies. I was human because, to be perfectly honest, the choice of races felt a little thin. I chose Jedi because, come on, who didn't want to use a lightsaber when they were a kid?


So, my Jedi Knight created, I proceeded to start running around Tython, ancient homeworld of the Jedi (if the game is to be believed). After about an hour of playing, I noticed something very odd: my framerate dropped drastically. It went from a smooth 50-60 fps (that's frames-per-second for those who don't know), to a choppy and almost unbearable 5.5 - 6. "Odd," I thought. "The graphical settings aren't that high, are they?" Turns out, they were. Whether it was my computer automatically setting them to the highest setting, (which, technically, it can't handle. It's a laptop, and it's getting old. Shut up.), or the game's default is simply the highest setting, I don't know. But I dropped them into the mid-range, which my computer should have been able to handle more than easily. I mean, if I can run the Witcher 2 on middle-low settings, this shouldn't be a problem, right? As it turns out, that was still no help. The framerate didn't improve. I pondered over that for a while, wondering if my internet connection was the problem, but it was running at a full 5 bars, according to the game, and I'd never had a problem with any other online game before, except for minor lag on a bad day. So, I dropped the settings down as low as they could go. No help. Well, I really wanted to play, so I shrugged off the problem, and continued to run around. The game would go from about 6 fps for a stretch of five or six minutes back up to 20 fps for about two or three, and then drop again. It was jarring, but I powered through it. After reaching level 5, I stopped for the night.


The next day, I resumed playing. I was in my basement, then, sitting pretty much right next to my router. My connection would never be stronger than that. Again, as soon as I loaded the game up, it ran fine. About a half-hour later, the slowdown started again. But, like the night before, I ignored it, and powered my way through. I hit level 8, and stopped.


This slowdown problem never really away, and it was hampering my enjoyment of the game. So, I went on to The Old Republic forums, to see if there was anyone else having a similar problem. As it turned out, there was. A whole slew of people were experiencing framerate issues, some with rigs that should have been able to run the game at double its highest settings. With no official response from Bioware, other than that they were aware of the problem, and looking into it, people were starting to get annoyed.


Last night, I played again. When I reached level 11, I left Tython, and reached the Republic Fleet. From there, my mission took me to Coruscant. I stopped shortly after getting onto the fleet, though. I just couldn't put up with the framerate anymore. Tonight, I went to Coruscant, and managed to get through a few missions before the problem cropped up again. To be thorough, I shut down my computer for a while, and when I rebooted, I started another character (a Sith warrior this time. I really like beating people with lightsabers, okay?), on a different server, lightly populated and located on the east coast (my first character was on a west coast server). It didn't help, Not that I had really expected it to.


So, a few days with the game. Level 12 on one character, level 5(?) on another. What do I have to say about the game? I don't know. I'm pretty much forcing myself to play it, at this point. The stories seem engaging, but it's Bioware, so that's no surprise. I can't judge whether or not I like the combat, because the game runs so slow most of the time that battles aren't much more than a slideshow. I'm hitting the buttons to use my abilities, but I can't tell how effective those abilities are. I haven't even tried the Warzones yet, because if I can't get into a fight with NPCs properly, a human-controlled character is going to eat  me for breakfast. In short, even though I've been playing Star Wars: The Old Republic, I haven't been playing the game. It's a complicated situation. All I can say at this point is this: don't buy the game yet. I have a lot of fun with the game before the framerate issues start to mar my playing, so I feel like, in time, it will be worth the buy, but it's just to much to ask somebody to pay for a game they might not even be able to play properly. I'm going to continue to play the game in my little 30-45 minute chunks, and hope to hell that Bioware manage to fix this framerate issue soon, but because I have to resort to that, I can't, in good conscience, recommend this game to anyone else. To anyone who may be playing the game right now, problem free (I know there are some), I envy you. I hope you're enjoying it. Really. The game seems like it will be an extremely good MMO, once it passes it finishes taking its first few shaky steps. But until it gets into a better stride, I doubt I'll be able to play, and I wouldn't ask anyone else to take the risk either.


So, after the wall of text comes the final verdict. What does my first impression tell me? Simply put: wait and see. Come on, SWTOR, I believe in you. Straighten up and fly right. Please.

The Binding of Isaac: An Honest Opinion

I figured I'd better start off relatively small. This being my first review, I didn't want to jump into something huge, and then get totally lost and have no idea how to write what I wanted to write. So, I decided to pick a downloadable indie game, now available for download on Steam.


The Binding of Isaac is a Steam game that was released way back in the mythical month of September, (that's September 2011, depending on how far in the distant future you are when reading this), designed by Florian Himst and Edmund McMillen, the latter of Super Meat Boy fame. If you've played that, you pretty much know what you're getting into here. The easiest way to describe Isaac is by telling you it's the unholy spawn of  The Legend of Zelda and Super Meat Boy after a night of sweaty sex in the back of a poorly maintained Corolla. So, basically, it's Super Meat Boy given a Zelda-y action-adventure game twist.


If you're at all biblicaly inclined, you know the story of Isaac: Abraham is told by God to kill his son Isaac, takes his son to the top of a mountain to sacrifice him, angel appears to stop him, blah, blah, blah. In the game, the story is given a little twist. Basically, Isaac's mother goes crazy after spending all her time watching the Christian channel on TV, and starts hearing a voice in her head. Eventually, as voices in your head are apt to do, it told her to kill someone: namely, Isaac. In order to escape her, Isaac jumps down into the basement, and winds up in a private hell.


The meat of the game is fairly simple. You have to navigate your way through 5 dungeons, all with a very Zelda-like feel, in order to evade the knife of your murderous mother. That, in a nutshell, is the game. But as you may expect, it being from the creator of Super Meat Boy, that's no easy task. The Binding of Isaac can get really tough at times. The best way to describe that is by telling you that if you die at any time during any of the 5 dungeons, that's it. It's game over. No checkpoints, no save spots, no second chances. You have to start from scratch.

How he's writing in his diary when he's dead, I have no idea.

Aside from the difficulty, the perma-death, and the messed up, vaguely biblical story the game is pretty much a standard Zelda clone. There are treasure chests in the dungeons with items inside: keys, coins, bombs, and other things to help you on your way. There's a boss to fight at the end of each dungeon, although, unlike Zelda there isn't a special boss key to find. Kill all the enemies in the room where the boss door is located and it opens up. I rather liked that change to the formula, since I hated having to track down stupid boss keys. It always just felt like padding.

Speaking of bosses, and just enemies in general, the enemy design in this game is one of the weirdest I've ever seen in my life. There's really only ever a bare suggestion at what it is you're supposed to be fighting: the rest of the time, it's just disembodied heads, or bodies with engorged heads, or flies (okay, that's not quite as weird, but still, why flies?), and other, stranger things. If the game had even a hint of realism to it, the enemies would be downright disgusting to look at. As it is, you get a moment of 'what exactly is it that I'm fighting?' every once in a while. The bosses are even stranger. Once I fought a distinctly humanoid thing with an extra head attached to an umbilical-cord thing running to its stomach, and both the humanoid thing and the head were trying to make my life a living hell. Actually, they were trying to end it, but let's not get nit-picky here. Another time, the boss was two worm things with a weird human-like heads. I get the feeling that all the enemies are supposed to be symbolic of something, but I don't know what that would be, so they're just plain old weird. Also, I feel something would be amiss if I didn't comment on the way Isaac himself looked. Yes, that's him: the completely naked boy with a face covered in tears. Which are, by the way, your primary weapon to start with. Again: weird.

You can't see it in this picture, but those worm things poop. Just thought you should know

 There was a particular nuance in my language describing the bosses that I wonder if you caught. I said "once, I had to fight..." Now, in a regular Zelda game/clone, that would mean in the same playthrough, in a different dungeon. Not so in Isaac. The dungeons of every game are randomly generated, and the bosses never come in the same order. I haven't played quite enough to know if the game is restricted to the same five bosses, just mixed and matched, but I doubt it. Every new game also has different items, and different reward drops from the bosses. Effectively, you're never playing the same game twice. In an age full of seven-hour titles, a game that could go on and on forever is a nice change. Also, every time you get through all five dungeons, you unlock something that will appear (if you're lucky) within the dungeons during your next playthough. There are also other characters you can unlock, so you don't always have to be the little naked crying boy, and they even have different stats, so it's not as simple as just throwing a new skin over Isaac and calling it a day: they're whole new characters to play through the game with. And yes, the new characters, and the new items you can get all follow the same thread the game has been tugging at since it started: they're all kind of weird.

That is an item. More specifically, it is a fly. Why do I need a fly? I already have a Shoop-da-Woop.

The Binding of Isaac is not an easy game, by any stretch, but it is a fun one. Randomly generated dungeons, new items to unlock, new characters to play as, and a psychological need to disobey one's mother mean that this is well worth the price of admission. The game isn't perfect, though, even if I've kind of been singing its praises. There are a few glaring flaws or just general shortcomings in its design.


Single playthroughs are very short, which can be good and bad at the same time, depending on how much you want to play. It's not like getting through the five dungeons and then starting from square one if you still feel like playing is a big deal, but a little extra length could have made it so that one playthrough at a time would have slated anyone's thirst. There is also no way to save your progress, which is fine while you're playing, since it adds a challenge, but it also means you can't temporarily save your progress if you have to stop playing. An option to save and quit, where the save file was erased as soon as you resumed your game would have been nice. There isn't really a whole lot of depth or variety to the gameplay, but it's a small downloadable game, and that was almost certainly a deliberate design choice, so me holding that against it would be sort of insane. There's also problems inherent with random generation. Sometimes the random rooms generate fairly poorly. For example, in one room I entered, the only enemy inside was a single fly, who, upon realizing that all of his friends had deserted him, attempted to run away, while I, needing to get into the next room, was forced to run around shooting my tears at him. Another time I encountered an entire floor full of rooms that were empty of enemies or features of any kind, save one that had a single key sitting in the middle of it. There are also times when a room generates with a chest in the middle, but there are pits surrounding the chest, and with no way to jump, (unless it's a power-up I haven't come across yet), there is no way to get to these chests. Similarly, sometimes enemies will spawn in the middle of a room, the section of the floor they're on surrounded by pits, and when you kill them all, an item drops out of reach. Those are the dangers of randomly generating your levels, and this game isn't going to escape unscathed. It's unfortunate, but the more you play the game, the more you're going to come across minor gripes because of randomly generate rooms. It's a risky thing to throw into a game, although it has crossed my mind that, this game being as difficult as it is, those kinds of things were done on purpose, just to frustrate you a little bit, but even then, it seems unnecessary. 


I want to make sure people understand what they're getting into: yes, it is a Zelda clone, but it is not a full Zelda experience. It's more like the first half-hour or forty-five minutes of a Zelda game on repeat, with the potential for a few minor gameplay gripes to pop up every now and then. Now, if, like me, you're a fan of old-school Zelda, then The Binding of Isaac should scratch an itch for you. It's fun, challenging, and manages to be endearing, even though the design is extremely strange. All in all, it's a nice little game, and it does for action-adventure titles what Super Meat Boy did for platformers: gives them the unequaled ability to kick your ass. That's my honest opinion, anyway.