Game Review: South Park: The Stick of Truth

South Park: The Stick of Truth was like Final Fantasy 7 and Diablo 2 moved to South Park and had a baby, with some of the puzzle elements of Sanitarium and the button mashing of Dante's Inferno (the game, obviously) thrown in. Needless to say, it was by far one of the best games I've ever played.

Naturally, I expected a great storyline and hilarious writing. It did not disappoint on that score. It was like a long episode of South Park. However, I was genuinely impressed by the game play, which I'll discuss. I'm trying to avoid spoilers. Without any connection to South Park whatsoever and a standard, yet predictable, fantasy storyline it would have still been a good game. Not a great game, but a good game. It borrowed (and satirized) elements from many different RPGs. The fast travel, for example, consists of calling Timmy to pull you somewhere.

The story begins, like most, with character creation. You assume the role of the new kid who moves in next door to Butters, who soon takes you to Kupa Keep (Cartman's backyard) where you join his forces. Like most fantasy RPGs, you get to pick a class, like fighter, mage or Jew (Cartman is the NPC who leads the character through this part). Each offers different skills, etc, though the player character will have the ability to use “magic” (farts) regardless of class.

The combat works about like Final Fantasy. It's turn-based, and each character has different skills and abilities. You fight with one ally by your side (Butters, Kenny, Stan, Kyle, Cartman or Jimmy). Each turn you can attack, use magic, use a special ability or use an inventory item. The items are pretty standard, health potions (cheesy poofs, snacky cakes, etc), mana potions (cans of beans, burritos, etc), strength potions (Weight Gain 4000) and revive potions (basically a phoenix down, but in taco form). Some can also be used to attack or provide skill bonuses. You can also get summon spells, which call upon some powerful character, like Mr. Slave or Jesus to assist the player in combat, not unlike summon materia.

Unlike Final Fantasy, the attacks (and blocks) all require some timed button tapping, holding and occasionally some mashing (and it actually refers to it as “mashing” in the game...instead of the “tap B rapidly” or whatever. Most of the special abilities required a degree of button mashing, often in sequence, much like Dante's Inferno. Unlike Dante's Inferno, you can poop...and pooping requires button mashing.

Aside from the potions I mentioned, there is a variety of weapons and armor available in South Park. They all require a certain level, and give different bonuses (aside from being silly), just like every RPG ever. You can even add modifiers to your weapons and armor, just like the gems and runes in Diablo 2 (I'd like to toss a few in a Horodrics cube and find out what happens). Armor patches and weapon “strap-ons” can add additional types of damage, like fire, frost or the especially lethal “gross out” damage. Unlike Diablo 2, your inventory is almost unlimited (you can only hold ten of each type of potion), and you can move patches and strap-ons.

There are also items you can use to modify your appearance (like in Fable), but they serve no practical purposes (like many things in Fable), except for in certain quests. There is also a large quantity of junk that can be looted from all over the map. In traditional RPG fashion, one tends to walk into every accessible room and take everything that isn't nailed down. Much of this stuff relates to specific episodes. It can all be sold in shops, though I never really found it necessary. I usually seemed to find better weapons and armor than what the shops carried, and I was never really short on cash. Some of the descriptions were funny to read though.

The world of South Park is fairly open, with a lot of side-quests. While combat rewards the player with experience, quests cause the people he or she helps to become Facebook friends. Gaining Facebook friends allows the player to get more perks, which grant a variety of bonuses. The quests offer an impressive variety; they aren't a bunch of repetitive “bring me X random items that are occasionally dropped by such and such monster (I once wiped out a significant portion of the Zehvra population trying to obtain four hooves. You'd think each one would have exactly that many),” like you get in World of Warcraft. They're all pretty unique.

There are a decent amount of puzzles required, primarily to get places, and the player is required to use magic and other skills outside of combat to do this (I don't want to say what specifically and spoil anything). It's a bit like Sanitarium, especially in the level at the end where you can assume forms from each of the previous realities to get through different obstacles in the last world. Manipulating the environment can also be used to take out enemies before entering combat. Each buddy also has special skills, like Jimmy's “Bardic Access” that are sometimes required.

I can't really say much more without running the risk of spoiling something. I don't exactly have complaints, but there are a few things that could be better. First it needs to be longer...it was 29 hours (keep in mind, I kick ass), but I want to play more, damnit. At least they could hurry up with the DLC. Anyway....second, there were some bugs. Not as bad as some games, but there were some. Last, I noticed that the character's choices don't effect the storyline much. The same was true of Final Fantasy, and Diablo 2 (well, there weren't really choices), but I do like games (Mass Effect, Fallout or even Dragon Age) where the character's actions do have some effect on the story. Despite the freedom to roam and the availability of side-quests, the story is completely linear.

Overall though, it's definitely one of the best games I've ever played. I highly recommend it to everyone who owns an xbox, playstation or computer (or at least knows where an unoccupied one is). It helps if you happen to be familiar with South Park, and it helps if you happen to be familiar with common tropes in fantasy RPGs, but neither is necessary to enjoy the game (I am both a huge South Park fan and a serious gamer, so naturally I thought it was fucking awesome!).

      

Review: Beowulf: The Game

     As I write, I’m hiding out in a basement nargile (hookah) café. I was trying to get some “real” writing done, but then the music died, and an eerie silence descended on the place. It was far too unsettling to write fiction, so I switched to this. As it turns out, it they just killed it for a few minutes for prayer (meaning it’s only a little after noon, so I’ve still got about three hours to kill before I can go home).

     As I said in my previous post, I’m reviewing the last four games I’ve played in order from worst to best. Next up is Beowulf: The Game (not to be confused with the epic poem). I’m not sure what company made it, but I believe it’s the same company that did Laxdaela Saga: The Game (it did poorly until they re-released an online version called “Ancestry.com”). It’s one of several games that I snagged at Play N’ Trade for next to nothing. At $2.50 it’s well worth it. It’s easily as satisfying as a pint of domestic beer, but not quite to the level of a micro-brew. It does, however, keep you occupied a little bit longer (even if you got bored and quit as early as I did).

     To begin with it was a pretty okay game. It’s not all that different from other third-person melee based action games (Think Dante’s Inferno or Assassin’s Creed). You push the stick in different directions to target different hostiles and mash buttons for a variety of attacks. In an attempt to be true to the poem, there is a bit of an emphasis on grappling. You can, by pressing “B” (it’s almost always “B”) grab your enemies and either kill them (generally by tapping buttons repeatedly or in a sequence), or toss them (with a poor level of accuracy) at other enemies. With enemies who have weapons, you can disarm them and steal their weapons, too (this comes in handy since any weapon you carry seems to break/vanish/get lost after a short amount of time).

     There is also a bit of climbing, but it’s generally on cliff-faces with poorly marked hand-holds, and thus mostly just annoying. In most cases, it’s to find a hidden something, or lower a bridge/open a gate for your merry band of thanes to follow you.

     Damnable Thanes. Anglo-Saxon kings may have had a use for thanes, but that isn’t the case in this game. When sailing, you have to tap buttons in a rhythm (like the banging of drums) to make your thanes row. This would be a kind of neat touch if it didn’t go on for so long. When you play a game like this, you don’t mind tapping buttons in a repetitive fashion, but something damn-well better die the majority of the time. They also seem to throw in random bits where a similar process is required to make your thanes move a big stone door out of the way. This seems pointless when (after filling up your badass meter) you’re capable of using a stone column twice your height as a club to beat Grendel senseless (before ripping him limb from limb), slaying a slew of slippery sea serpents, brutally bashing a bevy of barbarous beasts and splitting the atom with a single roundhouse kick (that last one may have actually been Chuck Norris, but you get the idea). Unless you’re trying to boost the poor bastards’ self-esteem by making them feel useful, I fail to see the point.

     That isn’t the main reason the thanes annoy me. Like every NPC ever, they’re next to useless in combat (this is why I’m confident I can put down any robot uprising). They demonstrate this fact by dying very, very quickly. This wouldn’t be so bad if some sadist at Epic Poem Game Studios hadn’t decided that you lose if you fail to keep at least one of them alive. This is especially true given that you lack any useful control over them (you can’t leave them some place safe, for example). Their primary strategy seems to primarily involve getting themselves completely surrounded and then being brutally slaughtered. On the plus side, they haven’t got automatic weapons or explosives, so you don’t have to worry about them killing you or one another (like Ian in Fallout with his stupid SMG).

     So, it’s a great game for the price, but overall, rather meh. I’d write more about it, but I actually haven’t actually played it since then. I also must take this time to apologize for not posting this earlier. I wrote it about a week ago, and then promptly forgot that I never actually posted it. Sorry about that.

    

Review: Fable II

Lately, I have lots of free time, which I obviously don’t spend blogging. Instead I turn on my 600 watt transformer (why the hell don’t Xboxes convert the voltage themselves like every other piece of technology?) and play Xbox until my eyes bleed. Fortunately for you, I ran out of good games, and can’t buy any here unless I let someone do stuff that the guy in the shop wasn’t able to explain in English to my Xbox. Until I’m emotionally ready to let that happen, I’m stuck with Fable II (or something I’ve already beaten).

Fortunately for you, that (It’s not a very good game) means I can pull myself away from my Xbox long enough to write some reviews of the games that occupied my time for the last month. Since the title “REVIEW: Fable II, Beowulf: The Game (not to be confused with the epic poem), Warhammer 40K: Space Marine and Assassin’s Creed: Brotherhood” is long, confusing, and violates the legal limit for colon usage, I’ll just do one for now.

     I’ll start with the worst. Fable II is really disappointing me. A lot. I played the first one quite a bit and had a pretty good time with it. I tried Fable II a while back, and switched to something else (back when I had choices). I’ve restarted and it’s playable (if you’re desperate).

     I do like the addition of the dog. Having a dog generally makes everything better, and I’ll admit they even did a good job of making him useful, rather than a burden (anyone ever try to make it through Fallout with Dogmeat still alive?). He can find treasure and growls at or occasionally kills bad-guys. You can also interact with him like you do with every other NPC in the game (Well, not exactly like other NPCs. Bestiality is not an option). You do get to name it, though due to some designer’s sloppiness, the name is almost never mentioned. It seems as though it would be easy to have the name you enter replace every instance of “your dog.” Nintendo games could do that. This is despite the fact that you can assign nicknames to EVERY OTHER NPC in the game.

     This sort of sloppiness seems common throughout the game. The menu is beast that requires a lot of up/down scrolling and clicking through sub-menus to do anything (they don’t seem to make use of the fact that an Xbox controller has eight buttons, two joy sticks and a D-pad). Multi-directional menus (like in Bethesda’s RPGs) could make a big difference, as Fable II isn’t that complex (compared to Oblivion or Fallout 3).

     They’ve also added mini-games, which I don’t think they had in the first one. You can gamble now, though it’s the Xbox equivalent of slot machines. They took the time to make a variety of different ones, with all the wacky rules and combinations of ways to win, but clearly never considered making the game involve any skill. Regardless of all the rules, every time you spin you either win some amount of money, or you lose. The only interaction other than pressing “A” to spin is selecting the amount of your bet. It’s nothing like gambling in Red Dead Redemption, where you actually play hold ‘em, blackjack or liar’s dice (my personal favorite). It’s just a matter of pushing “A” and seeing if you get money. It’s totally pointless, not unlike the jobs you can do in the game. These seemed nice at first, but are really, really tedious (especially if you’re the sort of person who likes to max out skills). Getting five stars in something like woodcutting or blacksmithing requires at least an hour spent tapping/releasing “A” at the appropriate time. The bounty hunter jobs aren’t too bad at least.

     Though they require combat...which is the next thing I want to complain about (I mean review). The very best thing about Fable (aside from kicking chickens, which you can still do) was one’s ability to zoom in with the bow and decapitate someone with a single arrow. That was pretty sweet. It brought joy to many. Now your ranged weapons just auto-aim and you shoot. That’s it. The melee fighting is okay, but the magic is nearly useless. The menu is just too clunky for any of the spells to be much help in combat (and I like smacking things with a big hammer anyway).

     I can’t say much about the story since I’m not that far into it, and it didn’t seem worth paying attention. I used to turn my music down and my TV up during the dialogue parts, but quickly realized it wasn’t worth the effort and gave up. Overall, I’m still unimpressed. That’s it for now (unless of course I am still unable to sleep, in which case, I’ll be writing the next review shortly).

    

 

Review: Redshirts by John Scalzi

I don't normally write reviews of books. Most of my blogging experience consisted of reviewing bars, bartenders and the occasional stripper. Perhaps I'll post a link to that blog someday. Statistically speaking, someone, somewhere actually really, really enjoys this sort of thing (given that plenty of people also enjoy cutting themselves, getting pissed on and watching Jersey Shore, this is not particularly exciting to me). But I digress (the handiest three words if you like to avoid having to write smooth transitions).

John Scalzi's latest novel, Redshirts, is a work of what one (or at least I) might call metametafiction and you should immediately go read it. (Seriously, stop reading this shit right now and go buy a copy). For those of you who are unfamiliar with Star Trek, I must first applaud you for reading a blog that's got a picture of a toy dinosaur (a dimetrodon, to be precise) wearing an aluminum foil hat in front of a field of stars (I don't know how you got here, but thanks for coming). Second, "red shirt" is the term used to describe the extras in Star Trek. They're the guys who go on away missions with main characters and usually die horrible deaths. The term has come to mean any secondary (or perhaps even tertiary) character whose only real function in the story is to die.

While Scalzi does a phenomenal job of lampooning many of the silly tropes and scientific impossibilites found in Star Trek and similar shows, there is much more to Redshirts. It tells the story of a group of these minor doomed characters (red shirts) as they become aware of their status as sacrifices upon the altar of drama (and not particularly good drama). This awareness leads them to take action to save themselves from the extra-dimensional force that controls their fate: The Narrative. This mission for survival leads them through the interior fourth wall (this story has two of them) via a black hole (they are fully aware of how badly this violates physics). Later on they even take a shot at the outer fourth wall, too.

I don't want to give away much, but rest assured it's an awesome read. If all you want is a good parody of TV science fiction, Redshirts has got it. If you want an honest and revealing examination of the nature of fiction, it's got that too. While I do recommend this book to everyone, I think that science fiction fans, as well as fiction writers will especially enjoy it (I'm a science fiction writer, so yeah, it rocked).

I actually listened to the audio version of this book (I do that a lot on cross country drives). I find it extra amusing that the reader is none other than Wil Wheaton, who is known for his role as Wesley Crusher on Star Trek: The Next Generation, and has been in other science fiction shows (Eureka, most recently). Not only is Wil a great reader, but his presence lends the audio book an extra bit of irony (I fucking love irony).