Jolt Country

Ten minutes. TEN MINUTES. And most of that was the game's opening cut-scene.

Oh, don't get me wrong. Anytime some prostitute has her trick in a bathtub full of his own blood with a smile on his face, well, I'm a fan. As far as opening game cinematics went that was towards the right of the bell curve. But I had to consult a walkthrough just to learn that there was some panel I can (apparently, haven't done it yet) pick up with the metal hook (which I just stumbled upon).

I feel the need to tell Fear Effect 2 that at any time I can go back upstairs and load Snatcher of SegaCD fame. Well, I do tell it that, but it never listens.

So. So far, Fear Effect 2 has had me engage in a pixel hunt, which is what I hate most about adventure games. Oh, it also has about 80 times as much characterization in the first ten minutes as the average non-sports game has in its entirety, which is exactly what I love about adventure games.

So far, Fear Effect 2 has had me engage in a pixel hunt, which is what I hate most about adventure games.

Duly noted.

Oh, it also has about 80 times as much characterization in the first ten minutes as the average non-sports game has in its entirety, which is exactly what I love about adventure games.

Also duly noted, and both points agreed upon heartily. Still working on review(s?), gimme 'til the end of the week, tops.

If it's not too much trouble, could you please expound on the "characterization" thing? I'm busy cutting-and-pasting all sorts of good articles, opinions, rants, etc. into a file for my/others' perusal (see the Lex's Gaming Update thread). Nothing makes for a good game like knowing what the audience wants, and playing shamelessly to it. Well, that and beta-testing.

Protagonist X wrote:

So far, Fear Effect 2 has had me engage in a pixel hunt, which is what I hate most about adventure games.

Duly noted.

That may have been more of a Playstation thing. The thing is shunting out its graphics on a 320x200 base, but on a 32" television. But then I'm also on my couch. I need to go back to FE2 tomorrow and see how "fair" it was with that panel, but I am usually of the belief that games ought to be extremely entertaining at the beginning (and extremely easy at the very end, but that's another thing). It really kills me, because I've smelted my experiences with the thing down to one bite-size snippet: "couldn't find the panel." Is that what the designers had wanted to spend all that development time on? Me looking for some bunch of dots?

There was at least some shooting of battlebot-esque constructs, though, so it wasn't all bad.

ICJ wrote:Oh, it also has about 80 times as much characterization in the first ten minutes as the average non-sports game has in its entirety, which is exactly what I love about adventure games.

Protagonist X wrote: If it's not too much trouble, could you please expound on the "characterization" thing? I'm busy cutting-and-pasting all sorts of good articles, opinions, rants, etc. into a file for my/others' perusal (see the Lex's Gaming Update thread). Nothing makes for a good game like knowing what the audience wants, and playing shamelessly to it. Well, that and beta-testing.

My comment on FE2 was more an attack on how bad other games are than any real over-the-top high five to FE2. But still, FE2 at least got me to care slightly about the characters at the beginning of play through the opening movie. Hana, the initial player character, is shown to perform the urban legend of kidney removal on some guy... except that she replaced the "taking away the kidney" with a bit of "engaged in intercourse with him and then killed him." So she's bad news. I contrast that to the joke of an intro that was Clock Tower, and the rather inexplicable and uninteresting one that was in Persona II. Sure, in FE2 interest is mainly due to the fact that a do-able Japanimated girl is playing the anti-hero card, but it's something. The thing being in English rather than Engrish didn't hurt either.

Players have no initial reason to identify or care for a player character when they boot up the game. It's imperative that the author get some sort of "positive" reaction out of his/her audience as soon as possible, whether it be sympathy, empathy, respect, attraction or whatever for the PC. RPG developers get a free ride on this because their players are usually tooling around with characters of their own creation, but in adventure games it's a lot tougher to capture. David Fillmore's "Spodgeville Murphy" does an excellent job of that, for instance, and is a real reason why I look back on that game so fondly whereas I don't on a game like Final Fantasy 7, which is probably a "better" game in the purest sense of the word.

Hi there, I'm Jaded as Fock. Pleasure to meet you.

Here's what they have you starting with in Fear Effect II, after you get the yellow key card:

1) You re-trace your steps; stuff goes wrong
2) You play as the other girl (OK, fine)
3) You go to a room that has a top-down view and you need to find the pattern to cross it, as gas is shot out at different intervals. This was a staple of Dragon's Lair back in the mid 80s, I should say
4) When you get through the door you need to make a weapon active rather quickly, otherwise you'll get shot to death like I did. Whoops.

None of that is the soul-crushing part. I get it, it's a console game, I'm going to be doing console-type things. Fine, fine, fine. No, the soul-crushing part is when you load the game up at 4:00am in the morning because you can't sleep, start playing as the raven-haired girl and think to yourself, "Hmm, that girl has a pretty nice body, y'know, now that I think about it -- " and then you freeze, because you're hit with the full force of the realization that life didn't work out quite the way you thought it would.

Note to self: you eventually play some scenes as guys in this game. Do not start playing this game at four in the morning under those circumstances. 'Nuff said.

Dammit, it took like five tries to get that posted!!! What the hell is going on here, some sort of denial of service attack or something?!?! DAMMIT!!!