MadCap's Game Reviews - "Neverwinter Nights 2"

I swear, I don’t know how it is that fate sees me writing up reviews on so many sequels rather than the first entry into a game series.  Dead Space 2, Fable III, Dragon Age II...I mean, by this point, it’s almost a running joke – especially since I’ve reviewed NONE of the predecessors of any of those three in particular.  So, let’s chuck another onto the pile, shall we?

Here’s Neverwinter Nights 2, a game that runs on the 3.5 edition rules of Dungeons and Dragons (more or less), made by Obsidian Entertainment and published by Atari.  This is a fairly drastic change from the previous game, which was developed by BioWare, and went by the Third Edition Rule Set of D&D – again, more or less – a change that manifests itself in a number of ways.  And, for the record, this will not be a review of any of the expansions that have come out for the game (i.e. Mask of the Betrayer, Storm of Zehir, etc.) mostly because I don’t have them and I haven’t played them (and, y’know, fodder for the future as well).  Still, the game should be able to stand up on its own merits, after all…

I will say this for it, NN2 is actually very enjoyable all on its own, which is helped because the game only vague refers to the events of the first one.  You get some vague mentions of the Wailing Death and of the war with Luskan – neither of which seems to have affected Neverwinter that much, but we’ll get to that – and then mentions the a War with the “King of Shadows” that oddly wasn’t even mentioned in the previous game despite being some big event.

Seriously, I know that the switch between studios means things got shuffled around, but c’mon guys! Continuity!

Did Nasher think the symbol of the genocidal lizard lady was just that awesome?

Of course, you don’t actually start in the city of Neverwinter, but actually in the never-before-mentioned village of West Harbor in the Mere of Dead Men (which is an actual place in the Forgotten Realms campaign setting, before you start laughing).  As a young man/woman in the care of an old elf ranger who is very Spock in his ways, you enjoy a tutorial level of a quaint little village fair…which is immediately juxtaposed when the Plot finds the village that night.  After saving the place – sort of – your foster father sends you into the swamps to dick around with some lizardmen and find a magic shard of unknown origin, telling you to take it to the city of Neverwinter.

Like pen and paper Dungeons & Dragons, you can choose between several different races.  These include your usually vanilla D&D stock of humans, elves, dwarves, half-elves, halfings, half-orcs, and gnomes; as well as several subraces for the non-humans of all kinds, including the plane-touched – which are basically humans that have either demon or celestial ancestry.  Each race has its own pros and cons to playing it.  Top tip, if you’re just starting out in the D&D world and have no idea what you’re doing – human fighter is not a bad race/class combination to go with.  They are generally the first one’s hit by newbies in pen and paper D&D and are about the easiest to play.

Behold and be transfixed by the variety!

Which brings us to classes.  Now, while the expansions add more base classes, NN2 only gives the basic allotment of Barbarian, Bard, Cleric, Druid, Fighter, Monk, Paladin, Ranger, Rogue, Sorcerer, Wizard, and Warlock…wait, what?  Yes, apparently, the game decided to throw in another basic character class that isn’t in the Player’s Handbook for 3.5 Edition.  Now, I’ve never played a Warlock in actual pen and paper D&D (mainly because I’ve never even seen a copy of “The Complete Arcane”), but as far as NN2 goes…they’re nothing to write home about.  Sure, they don’t have the limitations that wizards and clerics do about preparing spells and don’t have the limited number of spells that sorcerers and bards do, but they are easily outclassed by pretty much anyone else of an equal level.

I’m sure if you stat them out appropriately, they become pretty powerful, but who has the time to micromanage?

There’s also a variety of tasty Prestige classes, some of which are very easily gotten to (a fighter or barbarian can qualify for Frenzied Berserker almost right off the bat) and some not so much (5 ranks of Survival to play a HARPER AGENT?! THAT’S NOT EVEN A BARD SKILL!!!!).  But, as with the races, the classes all provide their own flavor and variety of pros and cons.

Not to be dissuaded by this, when I first played I had taken my own advice (after starting up a sorcerer and failing miserably far too often for my own enjoyment) and had started up a human fighter.  Thus, it only seemed fitting to bring back to life my noble warrior of Chaotic Good ali – oh, did I not mention alignments? In Dungeons & Dragons, for the uninitiated, you have alignments that determine how much of a goodie-good or how much of a complete asshole your character is.  

However, generally, PCs tend to be within the good or neutral alignments.

Generally.

However, don’t pay too much mind to it, as it has next to no real impact on the game besides either people being utterly terrified of you/singing your praises and either giving you or not giving you things that you want or need.  I will say that chucking a few Skill points into your Diplomacy, Bluff, and Intimidate skills would not be bad regardless of whatever class you pick, as all of them are immensely useful in dialogue.  It’s actually really hilarious and I would almost recommend picking Chaotic Evil and picking every dialogue option that makes you out to be a supremely evil, uncaring jackass. It’s hilarious, especially later on when the game has to contrive a way to keep the plot going.

Anyway, as I said, my noble warrior with aspirations of knighthood once more came back into being.  He felt a bit incomplete, however, so I made the logical opposite – a Lawful Evil Tiefling Wizard/Pale Master.  In their parallel universes, the two set off on their journeys and its gone pretty well so far, so who am I to complain?

One might notice I haven’t gone too much into the actual gameplay mechanics and have instead talked for about seven paragraphs on just what has been adapted from the pen and paper D&D.  That’s mostly because…well, there’s not much to talk about.  If you’re a fighter, you click on a target and you’ll hit them repeatedly until they die.  Unless you’re playing a spellcaster class, combat becomes very quickly uninvolving, something that the first game also suffered from. You select your target and watch your character charge forth to deal out the pain, yawn-o-rama.

"Sarah Connor?"

Now, when you’re playing a spellcaster class – such as my wizard – the combat becomes…slightly more involving.  A neat little trick is that you can pause the game, survey the battlefield, and act accordingly.  However, there’s really no strategy involved.  Again, select target and wail on them until they die – necking health potions as needed.  That works for both melee and ranged attacks, oddly enough.  The pause feature is useful, too, for mages as it allows you to work out where best to cast your summon fiery apocalypse spell (okay, that’s not what it’s called, but it’s close to that).

But that’s so far as combat goes. Other characters in your party are controlled by the A.I., which you can set on your own – with sometimes hilarious results – and you can have up to three other people at a time without cheating.  Throughout Act II, you’ll get an additional member of the group, but apart from that you’ll be pretty much stuck with your three (again, unless you cheat).  Like any good D&D party, it’s best to have a well-balanced group.  Let’s say, a fighter, a mage, a cleric, and a rogue, or some variation thereupon.  Like any actual D&D party, you probably are going to have many situations where that won’t be the case.  Including some companion quests where you’ll be required to have one of them tag along and they’ll force their way into one of the party slots.

As for the characters who serve as your companions (replacing the apparently derogatory term ‘henchmen’ from the first NN), they all have their own personalities and backstories of one sort or another. Some of them were cut from the game for the sake of time, but several remain and a lot of them are worth getting into (like Khelgar’s) or are gotten through during the actual plot unless you’re just a complete dick (like Elanee’s).  They range from the psychotic to the bizarre, from the noblest of good to the most baby strangling varieties of evil, and it’s up to you to arrange and equip them as you see fit.

Seriously, Nasher, why did you pick this as your symbol? She tried to flash fry you all!

Which brings me to what is really my only gripe about the inventory system – why does everything take up the same amount of space?  You have four “pockets” in your pack, each of which can carry a multitude of items in slots.  My question is why does a shard of metal that’s barely bigger than my thumb take up the same amount of space as my greatsword of mass evisceration +7?  This isn’t like in the first game, when you actually had to do a fair amount of inventory Tetris to get your items to fit if you started picking up every little thing.

Oh, and there’s an influence system with companions too that I had forgotten to mention.  It’s basically in having to play within their alignments (which will almost assuredly have you lose influence with other members of your party of opposing alignments unless you have all of one type) with quest decisions and other choices to assure that they won’t turn on you in the final battle against the King of Shadows.

Which brings me to the actual storyline.  Like any really well-crafted D&D campaign, it has layers and layers of complexity and several different plotlines running together and apart all at once.  The player gets involved after the attack on West Harbor, getting a shard of a Githyanki silver sword that was once used to defeat the King of Shadows.  However, the Githyanki were heading the attack on the village because they want the sword back.  In the meantime, it is learned that Black Garius – a mage in Luskan – is gathering together several Shadows Priests, servants of the King of Shadows.  It’s revealed that the King of Shadows wasn’t defeated at the battle at West Harbor, but was only delayed in his return.  And on top of all this, the players has to contend with the crazed warlock Ammon Jerro, who was the one to defeat the King of Shadows before, trying to recover all the shards of the Silver Sword before they can.

And that’s just Act One.

When I say it takes up the length of a whole campaign, I can honestly say that it does.  I definitely enjoy the story and seeing how Neverwinter and the lands surrounding it have developed after the first NN game (though I’m wondering why Lord Nasher’s chief knights are using the symbol of Morag as their own now).  I’m not big on the combat, though the interface is about as simplistic as you can get, with handy quick slots allowing you to bookmark specific items, spells, and even skills and feats for use at literally the click of a button (and, as the game reminds you, there are 120 per character so don’t be stingy!).

The combat can drag on for a while, especially later on in the game against opponents with ludicrously high Armor Class and taking damage like you’re attacking them with a rusty spoon instead of a Sword of Complete and Utter Kick-Ass +5.  But, and this is nothing against the game really, but it lacks the vital component of D&D that’s just sitting down with a bunch of your friends and cracking jokes and kicking butt.  But, of course, if you get this game then that isn’t what you come to it for.  As a single player RPG, it’s great.  Stylistically different from its predecessor, Neverwinter Nights 2 shines brightly as a gem of the genre. My gripes about the combat and the inventory aside, I say give it a whirl if you're a fan.

Neverwinter Nights 2 is available for PC from Obsidian and Atari.

MadCap's Mad Ranting - "Dragon Age: Inquistion - Preview with Brand New Gameplay"

Okay, so...

I have mixed feelings on all of this. You already all know my thoughts on Dragon Age II - it was the first thing I ever reviewed way back in ye olde 2011. And while my thoughts on that have changed somewhat - I did enjoy having to have a more active role in combat, though combat became very samey and grindy in most areas that all looked very oddly similar, and pretty much anything else I could say that was good about the game now is just damning it with faint praise before the many, many problems it has. None of which even gets into the actual story of the game (why exactly did every mage in Kirkwall seem to turn to blood magic?)

Now, however, EA seems to have learned from the tremendous backlash they received and are setting things right back to how they were...in Origins.  And I should be elated about this. I loved Origins. In fact, I'd almost go so far to say I absolutely love it save for very minor problems that can be very easily batted away (note to self: retro review in the future). And Origins also had a diverse group of character races you could pick from instead of just being stuck as a regular human. II, of course, had you stuck as one of the six different varieties of Hawke and...well, it was just really rather depressing after the comparative variety we were given in Origins.

And on those two points alone, I really should be ecstatic about all this. And yet somehow, my enthusiasm about it is next to non-existent. My own stigmas about trusting trailers aside, I'm cautiously just waiting for the game itself. Maybe I'm a bit too hung up on how II could have been so much better and was done so wrong.  Maybe I've just become more acutely aware of how EA has a poor record with third parts of their intellectual properties.

But hey; the return of the tactical view to micromanage everyone in combat (which you generally won't do because you'll press 'attack' and watch as your characters wail on, shoot, or magically blast enemies until they die), limited environmental destruction, and dragons! And, as anyone who regularly reads my blog will know, dragons are effectively my Kryptonite for better or for worse, so I'm more than likely to break down and give Inquisition a go in spite of the trepidation I feel about it. Who knows? Maybe EA learned its lessons and really have fixed everything.

Maybe...

MadCap's Game Reviews - "Far Cry 3"

There are some gaming experiences that you enjoy simply because of the story.  I’ve done several myself.  Sometimes I’ve been rewarded for my efforts, and sometimes there have been games that have been disappointing after having promised me the moon.  And now that I’m back to at least semi-regularly reviewing games that people actually give a crap about, I took a look at a release from last year that I missed, and sadly so.  Far Cry 3.  And where did it land on the scale of one to THIS GAME SUUUUUUUUUUUUUUCKS?!

Well, let’s take that little journey together, shall we?

I took on the role of Jason Brody, the third-place winner of a Zach Braff look-alike contest, who is vacationing with his friends in the Pacific when he ends up getting captured by a comically overblown and possibly racist pirate and his band of pirates who plan to sell him and all his friends into slavery.  However, timid Jason breaks out with the help of one of his friends (who gets a bullet to the neck for his trouble) and runs off into the jungles of the Rook Islands to avoid dying…

After reenacting the climactic bridge scene from Temple of Doom, Jason wakes up in a village where a (possibly) magic tattoo has been scrawled onto his arm that marks him as a warrior.  Thus begins an epic tale of revenge, flipping switches, several drug-induced hallucinations, and lots and lots of bodies scattered all around the island.

The best part is that I’m really not kidding, that could basically have been the blurb on the box art for as accurate as it is.  Jason journeys across the island learning how to make medicines from the herbs (the Richard and Tommy method of healing) and to skin the animals of the island in order to make holsters, packs, and ammo pouches of all sorts.  And by skin animals, I really do mean skin all of them.  Almost every animal you run into in the game has a skin to serve one of the aforementioned purposes, the highest tiers of which require taking special missions to hunt specific creatures and skin their pelts…which is easier said than done in many cases.

Not even getting into dealing with sharks, which have frightened me from a young age.

The game is open world, though the second island isn’t open until about halfway through the campaign.  However, there is more than enough space and enough on the first island to keep you occupied for quite a while.  The hunting of creatures for pelts alone can literally take up hours of time.  Plot-wise, a main objective is to clear out enemy outposts across the island to secure more territory from the pirates and re-activate radio towers in order for merchants to bring in new equipment.

"Do you have a moment to talk about our Lord, Jesus Christ?"

A neat bit about the merchants is that while the game does have a commerce system (a barter system accompanied by whatever loose change you find in the pockets of people you kill) you’re not actually required to purchase any other weapons but the starting gun.  Activating radio towers unlocks certain weapons for free, so after a handful of them you’ll have enough guns that you can access to blow a small crater into the moon. The game very much allows you to be self-sufficient in this regard, just a quick trip through a nearby glade getting you enough leaves to fill your medicine cabinet and thus making the only real need for money being ammo.

The game encourages stealth combat to a strong degree, largely in the second half of the game.  During the first half, taking out enemy outposts is rather easy.  A few well-placed shots, they’re all dead, no fuss no muss.  But as time progresses, new factors are added that make a direct assault possible but rather impractical.  Bases get alarms that bring wave after wave of reinforcements along, enemies get better weapons and stronger defenses, and so on.  So there is a strong emphasis on sneaking around and taking out enemies from the shadows whenever possible.  Unless you just have a death wish…particularly, again, on the second island where enemies tend to be more resilient than not to weapon fire and you have to look for weak points.

This focus on stealth is particularly irritating when you have escort missions, as you do have a couple of them throughout the game and they are really exactly what you’ve come to expect out of escort missions – very, very irritating.  The death of the piece of meat you’re guarding means, of course, that you have to start the section all over again.  And it is very, very frustrating when you complete your mission objectives and then have your escort taken out by a single bullet fired from a man you couldn’t see before.

That all being said, I won’t say that the game is unfair by any stretch.  If you’re observant of your surroundings and manage to have just enough manual dexterity to act, you’ll come out alright…nine times out of ten, anyway. 

The storyline itself is very interesting, certain text screens quoting bits from Alice in Wonderland as we see Jason’s descent into becoming what Rook Island will make of him.  And I have to admit, seeing that descent is rather chilling as he goes from being offended at the very thought of killing in cut scenes to doing it off-handedly and not giving it the least bit of thought.  

It’s a little harder to swallow all of the carnage in the very beginning, naturally, due to his attitude.  But once the narrative picks up, we start to see him slipping as he realizes what he has to do and then starts doing it.  Very well, in fact.  Enough so for the local native tribe to want him to stay and be one of their warriors, their priestess in particular wanting Jason to stick around after killing the two main Big Bads so she can have his uber-warrior children (more on that later).

That being said, both of the boss fights against the Big Bads, Vaas and Hoyt, are pretty underwhelming for what I was expecting.  Hoyt in particular, though considering the one with Vaas is a massive drug trip if I weren’t told that I’d actually killed Vaas I would have never known.  Also, for as much as knives are considered a sacred weapon by the Rakyat – in fact, certain people can only be killed by knives in certain side missions – you only get into two knife fights over the course of the story.  These boil down to quick time events that you have to memorize and that really just are irritating when they’re brought up right out of nowhere.

Even in the aforementioned side missions, you don’t fight with your knife anywhere else in the game, so it is rather jarring to only have the two sections of it right out of nowhere.

Beyond all that, you get a flightsuit/parachute combo during the second half of the game from a C.I.A. agent, so I really can’t complain too much (though hey, Ubisoft, couldn’t you have gone the extra mile and gotten me a jetpack?) as far as that goes.

What I could complain about but won’t is the endings.  Spoiler alert:  There is no good ending.  I’d normally complain, but it’s actually really nice to see an inversion like this in gaming what with so many games doing alternate endings or special ones you only get for achieving certain objectives or getting certain items.  Cut and dried, playing through the entire game, you only get two and it gets based from a literally last minute decision.

Vaas really steals the show...until he's killed off halfway through...

In the end, Jason can decide to join up with the Rakyat, kill off his friends and have some crazy hot sex with the priestess leader of the tribe…who promptly stabs him in the chest after conceiving (it’s implied, anyway, your guess is as good as mine as to how in the hell she knows that) and promises that he will die the warrior he has become.

Or, as his second option, he frees his friends and elects to leave.  The priestess tries to stop him and is immediately killed by one of her followers who tries to attack Jason for being a traitor.  Then Jason and his friends leave, and he lives out the rest of his days as the monster he has become.  Not to mention what is probably the complete demolishment of the Rakyat tribe and very possibly the beginning of the end for their civilization.

So, yeah, it’s the Kobayashi Maru.

  

There is no right answer.

But y’know what? That works.  That’s actually a really welcome change for me.  Again, this isn’t something I’ve seen that often, maybe I just need to diversify what I play, but…really, for a game to take a bold step like this and really just give no light at the end of the tunnel is pretty astounding.  Of course, it fits the overall feel as well.  The jungle is not a nice, inviting place.  It is foreign, it is hostile, and it will consume you given the chance.

Just as it does to Jason Brody, one way or another.

So as for a recommendation…yeah, I say go for it.  It’s pretty good beyond a few minor irritants here and there.

Far Cry 3 is available for Microsoft Windows, Playstation 3, and Xbox 360 from Ubisoft and Ubisoft Montreal.

MadCap's Game Reviews - Reviews On the Way!

Well, dear readers, I am employed once again, and that means I can get at least semi-regular reviews started once again! Huzzah!

The same rules currently still apply, however. If the game isn't on Xbox 360, Nintendo DS, or PC (and by that I mean freeware or Flash games, my laptop won't handle that crazy), I won't be able to review it. But other than that, pretty much all bets are off. Leave a comment for me to put something on the review list.

And no sneak previews, but my next review is a real far cry from anything I've done yet.

See you next Friday!

MadCap's Mad Ranting - "Microsoft Confesses that Xbox One is a Flop"

I honestly didn't think it would happen. I take back everything I have said. CLEARLY Microsoft can learn from their mistakes and move on to do things that are not sales suicide.

Thanks to "thetastyduckbutter" for the video to link.

MadCap's E3 Rantings (So Far)

Well, E3 certainly gave us quite a bit to work with, didn't it? More Xbox One bashing (a stupid title for a stupid console), and the pricing of both that system and the Playstation 4 (no guesses as to what side of the next console wars I'm on), Kingdom Hearts 3, Batman: Arkham Origins, and Destiny all revealed. Looks really neat!

This has nothing to do with my point, I just found it funny.

Oh, and of course Halo 5, but I've already mentioned my almost disdainful attitude towards the Halo series at this point.  Yes, Microsoft, you've had a great cash cow of a series.  But when you really get down to it, it hasn't been good since the first one.  Not to sound like an aged Hipster or anything of the kind, but really, the original Halo was pretty much the high point of that series.  And when Bungie left after Halo 3, just forget it.  Halo 2 suffered the problem of splitting up my time to a protagonist that I don't care about - whether or not he's voiced by Goliath - and a cliffhanger ending that was completely unecessary.  Halo 3 suffered from "Oh, no, really, you should have read all the extra source material" syndrome.

No thank you, Halo 3, now please go sit in the corner on your piles of money and think about what you've done.

However, that does bring me Destiny, something I do actually care to talk about.  The newest project of Bungie, it's an ambitious little thing.

Not even gonna lie, it looks good. Then again, it's Bungie, so I'm not expecting it to look anything but good. Though I'm far more hesitant about how a game looks after certain games with their trailers that tell us sweet, sweet lies before giving us a monster turd. Still, this one will definitely be on my list for ones to get, though likely on the PS4 if that'll even be possible.

And speaking of things to come that will probably disappoint me...

Eh...good to see Morrigan again (at least I'm assuming that's her what with the look at the Claudia Black voice), but I don't know. Don't get me wrong, Dragon Age II notwithstanding, the Dragon Age series has been relatively fun and interesting. Maybe this will be their glorious redemption after the fiasco of that second game.  Maybe they will do everything right and it will be a wonderful sequel that will live up to the original.

Also, maybe Joe Quesada will publicly apologize for his crimes against Spider-Man fans. Anything could happen.

Apart from that, the only other comment I have to make on E3 in general.

You want me to pay five hundred dollars for a system that has always on Kinect, has to be checked in online every twenty-four hours, and that restricts the use of used games?

Get real, Microsoft!

And yeah, E3's not over yet. But if anything else comes to light, I'll keep you all updated.

But until then, lemme close with this...

MadCap Reviews - "Fancy Pants Adventures"

Oh, goodie, more Flash Games! This time a bit of an older title comes to my attention, Fancy Pants Adventures available on Armor Games, and more recently (by the game's own admission) on the Xbox Live Arcade and Playstation Network. Developed by one Brad Borne and a Ts7, this game is now pushing seven years old.  Does it still hold up? Is it worth it to even give it a shot? Will I ever get back to reviewing actual game releases?

 Well, if you have to ask, then you don't know.  Thankfully I'm going to answer those questions...most of them, anyway.

In this world, the player is given control of a stick man with wicked hair and a pair of brightly colored - one might argue fancy - pants, who traverses the world to...well, there is no real plot to this one. There's a bit with a penguin near the end, but that's not so much a plot as a final boss fight.  The controls for moving around Fancy Pants Man are pretty much what you'd expect for a platformer like this, the arrow keys move you, the 'S' Key allows you to jump and that's really all you need.  Like Mario if he had awesome pants and some killer hair, F.P. Man can leap on the heads of his enemies, sending them into a daze before punting them off into the air with a strong running kick.

There's also collectables available that are Easter eggs, little nods to other Newgrounders and various others who aided in the development of the game, as well as the ability to change the color of your Fancy Pants from orange into a variety of other colors.

And that, so far as it goes, is pretty much it for Fancy Pants Adventures...well, the first one at least. I'd recommend it, just don't be looking for anything of real substance.  It's a platformer, and it's fun, but there's really not that much to it.  Luckily, I've played the second one, which has far more complexity, and I've heard that 3 increases the complexity of it even further. Who knows? There are plenty of Fridays left in the world.

Fancy Pants Adventures is now available on the internet.  Seriously, the link is above.