Game Review: Indigo Prophesy

Well, this was a bit of a strange one. You start out as Lucas Kane, taking control of him immediately after watching him kill a man in a zombie-like trance after apparently slitting his wrists while a crow watches and we flash frequently to a man in a hooded coat mimicking Kane's movements. There is a lot there to try and figure out. Anyway, immediately after escaping the scene we then take control of our other main characters: the cops investigating the murder. Well, this is a conflict of interest. The game then continues to flop back and forth between the three as the story unfolds. Kane tries and generally fails to keep a low profile, as he's wanted for murder, while he tries to figure out what happened to him in the opening scene and why he killed the man. The cops meanwhile are trying to hunt him down. I don't really want to go any farther than that as any more might be considered spoilers.

As far as gameplay goes, it's pretty much just one giant quick time event with a few mini games thrown in here or there. You either need to alternate hitting two buttons (the triggers on the Xbox) or tilt the thumbsticks the right way at the right time (not sure how it works on computer). Interacting with the environment is done by moving the right thumbstick in the right direction for the desired action. For the most part this works well enough, it gives you a tenuous feeling of doing something while you go through the game. I say tenuous because it's sometimes a little unclear as to what, if anything, you are actually doing for the characters. Sometimes, like in the sparring match and the basketball game the results are immediately recognizable. Other times you'll fail and it seems like nothing happened. Of course, there's also a climbing event that gave me no end of trouble trying to figure out how to do it. It's not that it's complicated, either, the game just didn't want to accept my input on it for some reason. This pulled me out of the game pretty quickly as they are required to progress and take some time to reset (only a couple of seconds, but seeing your character fall and get back up over a dozen times gets old fast and any time is too much time).

Overall, I enjoyed the game. Aside from the horrible frustration gained from the climbing sequences and a few balancing mini games the game played fine. It's short enough that by the time I was starting to get tired of quick time events it was over and the story was interesting enough for me to play through it in almost a single sitting. The game was rather trippy and I'm not sure it's for everyone however. I know quick time events have gotten some flak, so if you don't like them it might be best to stay away.

Final scoring: 7/10
(5/10 base score)
+5 I enjoyed the game
-1 quick time events get tiresome and don't provide a lot of control
-1 those darn fences
-1 the story is trippy and a bit of a stretch to follow
(yeah, I know my scoring system needs refined, I'll work on it)

Wolfgang Out

"Life is a fatal complaint, and an eminently contagious one."

-Oliver Wendell Holmes

Thoughts on the Dragon Age II Demo (spoilers for the first game)

Well BioWare has released a demo for it's highly anticipated sequel to the 2009 Game of the Year: Dragon Age: Origins. Personally I'm not sure it really deserves that, but then I can't remember what all games came out in 2009. I should probably explain that before we go any further, shouldn't I? After all I'll be comparing the demo to the first game, so you should know  what I think about it.

In my opinion Dragon Age: Origins was a decent game with an alright expansion. Gameplay wise I was not impressed. They took your standard computer RPG system, slapped Final Fantasy XII's Gambit system on it, and threw the tired old Bioware conversation system on it. I've seen it all before, admittedly not all together like that, but honestly I just found myself wishing I was playing Knights of the Old Republic. Story wise the game did a bit more to impress me. Though, I'm fairly certain there's a plot hole with a Grey Warden king, should you chose to go that route. Weren't Grey Wardens supposed to give up all claims to political position or something like that? Anyway, that about sums up my feelings for the game: mediocre gameplay with a pretty good story.

Now on to the demo. Mechanically it doesn't look like anything has changed. The attributes have slightly different functions- I believe Cunning adds to defense now, not Dexterity- and there's a new thing called physical force listed under attack stats. I'm assuming the latter affects how far different enemies get thrown from explosions or powerful attacks. Or how likely they are to get thrown.

Presentation seems to be where the most changes have been made. Mages for instance now pull off a little combo whenever they attack and I think it varies when you're in ranged or melee combat. The main character now has a voice as well and they used what I'm guessing is the conversation engine from Mass Effect (I've not played either of the ME games yet). Instead of your character saying exactly what you select in a random tone, you get a little image that show's the tone your character will use and he or she will say something along the lines of what you picked. Sometimes the lines are more along what I'd want to say, sometimes they're not. I'm just glad my character is actually speaking now.

Story wise there's not much to go on since we only see something of a prologue. Of course I'm hoping they abridged it, because it starts to really jump around near the end of the demo. If they didn't... well, I'll just say I won't be happy. Tossing your players around like a ship in the storm doesn't really seem like the best way to tell a story. You could make the excuse that the dwarf is telling the story and HE'S the one jumping around... except that I doubt he knew every word of the conversation's you've heard up until that point. I'll give BioWare the benefit of the doubt in this area however.

Final thoughts. The talking main character is a great improvement and losing the black bars is nice as well. Presentation looks good, but underneath it's pretty much the same game. If you liked the first game, I'd guess you will like this one. If, like me, you thought it was just a over hyped Frankenstein's monster of other games' mechanics with a decent story... maybe. I'll probably pick it up, but not at full price. My best advice would be to play the demo for yourself and make up your own mind. After all, the demo's free.

Wolfgang out.

"Tradition is a guide and not a jailer."

-W. Somerset Maugham

Greetings Mortals

Welcome to my Interdimensional Closet. Not sure who all will take the time to read this but here goes. It is traditional to begin with introductions You can call me Wolfgang Hype. Not my real name of course, but anywhere online you can find by looking for Wolfgang. I'm a gamer and a roleplayer. I'm not really sure if those two are one in the same or separate. Either way I enjoy ranting about both. Thus the blog.

Gaming is fairly straight-forward: I play video games. I started fairly young- I want to say I was in first grade when I was playing Spyro on my uncle's Playstation. I'm far from the best, but I like to think I'm pretty good. Of course, I tend to be more casual when I play so I don't do many of the insane challenges you hear about for some games. The most extreme I've gotten is going for zero deaths on a Dragon Age: Origins run for my first time through. On normal.

On the roleplaying front I'm pretty new. I started doing forum based text roleplays around 7th grade. Probably didn't start seriously playing console RPGs until a few years after that (aside from Pokemon I could never finish them, I'd get bored with the combat system and start running from anything and then be too weak to get past the next boss). Finally I joined a World of Darkness game last year and just recently started playing some DnD 3.5.

I'll get into many of my theories about gaming and what I do and don't like in future posts. For now I'll just say I don't like sport games (get some friends together and play it for real, if you're a gamer you could probably use the exercise), I'm not fond of racing games (unless I can shoot missiles to slow down the opposition) and I suck at fighting games (What was that combo again? Nevermind, I'm dead). Other than that, I'll give most other stuff at least once. I think that's everything. One thing I need to work on as a writer is closing, I can never segue into it smoothly, however I have an indefinite number of future posts to work on that. For now...


Wolfgang Out.

"A question that sometimes drives me hazy: am I or are the others crazy?"
-Albert Einstein