Psychonauts, Jade Empire, and next week's purchases

[Agent 57]

Just finished Psychonauts the other day, and greatly enjoyed it. The art style is quirky and beautiful, dialogue and writing are uniformly excellent, music was great, and platforming gameplay was fun with some ingenious level designs. The collect-fest aspect of the gameplay was kind of annoying (especially since I got to level 99 out of 100, and won't be able to access the bonus movie without a Bink player or grabbing an FAQ and go searching for the few remaning figments I missed), but it also served to drag out the time I spent playing - had I not gone for finding everything I could, I probably could have finished the game in 13 hours as opposed to the 20 it took me.

After that, I started Jade Empire, and so far am unimpressed. At first glance, it's basically just KotOR in an fantasy Oriental setting, with a real-time action-based battle system that somehow manages to be more boring than KotOR's menu-driven stuff and an extremely shallow character customization system. Thankfully, one of the reviews I read says that the game is relatively short (another 20 hours), so I can get a decent amount of playtime out of it.

And then next week, there are two games coming out that at the moment I'm really looking forward to: We Love Katamari and Indigo Prophecy. WLK was going to be an automatic purchase for me anyway, and hearing the buzz lately that it improves on the original in every way is very good news. Also, I was interested in Indigo Prophecy ever since I read an article on it in Game Informer a month or two ago, and so far I've heard good buzz from folks about the demo, and the European critics have also given it good scores, which seals the deal.

Good times.

[Agent 57]

More Jade Empire thoughts...

I'm a ways into the game now, and I have some more refined opinions.

Regarding the battle system: I read a review that said how boring the battles were on the normal difficulty, so I jacked it up to hard just to see if I could make things interesting. At the higher difficulty setting, combat is still as shallow as ever, but tactics do actually matter and I've found I occasionally have to do something besides "target an enemy, hammer on the A button until dead, goto line 1." Whee.

The other half of the gameplay, the conversation/quest dynamic, is starting to get real old. This is the third time I've played through Bioware's "good/evil" sliding scale, and at this point it's getting very tiresome. The choices you can make are either blatantly good or unconscionably evil with no middle ground whatsoever, if you walk the good path you still get shafted with regards to money, they didn't include the influence system from KotOR II (so that speaking with your followers gets you nothing besides a lot of character backstory, which is essentially fluff), and the worst part is that since JE only rewards the extremes (somewhat unlike the KotOR games where the Force costs can kind of balance it out...although if you opt for even Force costs instead of the massive bonuses you get from light or dark mastery in KotOR II, you're an idiot), once you start down one path you don't really have a choice any more. Meaning that effectively, you get to make one choice in the very beginning of the game and then you have to waste time reading all of the other path's useless responses for the rest of the time you play. It's kind of the opposite of what happened in KotOR, where all of the choices you made during the 40+ hours of gameplay in that game were effectively rendered pointless in the last five minutes. (To the folks who've finished KotOR you know what I'm talking about, and hopefully I've been vague enough to not spoil it for those folks who just recently left Taris.)

On the plus side, however, it's always nice to play a game made by a North American developer since I can finally get the cultural in-jokes and recognize some of the voice actors. So far I've seen both The Princess Bride and the Simpsons quoted, and enjoyed the cameos/roles played by John Cleese and the guy who played Noah Vanderhoff in Wayne's World.

[Torgo]

Sounds good. I was planning on getting Psychonauts anyway.

[kali o.]

Indigo Prophecy is good...so good, in fact, I think it should set the standard for future games (in terms of hiring script writers, skilled voice actors and laying down an engaging plot/story).

The only downside is the length. Short. You'll finish it in one rental easy. So unless you just want to support quality games with your wallet (I might) it's probably best to just wait till Blockbuster or whatever gets it in.

PS - Jade Empire sucked. Nevermind that the story was pretty half-assed...the actual gameplay elements (especially the forms) were wasted. Fighting mechanics just turned into cheese. The JE universe wasn't especially engaging either. That's the only RPG game I've ever turned in for store credit.

[Agent 57]

How'd you get (and play and finish, from the sounds of it) Indigo Prophecy already? I went to the mall this afternoon and the guy at the EB said he wouldn't have copies of the new releases until 10 or 11 tomorrow morning.

I'm definitely coming around to your view on Jade Empire. I'd turn the difficulty back down to normal so I can walk through the rest of the game and get it over with, but I think doing that would get me so incredibly bored that I would end up positively hating the game by the end instead of just being miffed by it.

And in a more disturbing trend, this is the second game I've played in the last few months, PoP: Warrior Within being the other one, that has received generally good to excellent reviews and I still disliked it.

[kali o.]

I have a magic potato-powered time machine that allows me to travel up to 6 months in the future and try out games.

Or I have an internet connection and played the early UK release aka Fahrenheit.

Whichever sounds more believable

[Nev]

*gasp* Doesn't that get expensive in potatoes?

[Agent 57]

I figured you had to have gotten hold of the Euro release somehow - I noticed that metacritic already had several Euro reviews up last week.

By the way, regarding that "magic potato-powered time machine" comment. I take it you're a Goats reader?

[SineSwiper]

I played Jade Empire for about an hour. Honestly, I don't know how BioWare keeps making money. All they do is make the same fucking game over and over again.

[Torgo]

Honestly, I don't know how BioWare keeps making money. All they do is make the same fucking game over and over again.

Works for Capcom and Koei.

[Zeus]

Honestly, I don't know how BioWare keeps making money. All they do is make the same fucking game over and over again.

Works for Capcom and Koei.

Am I the only one who likes evolutionary games? There's nothign wrong with 90% the same thing as long as there's some slight changes and great level design.

Seems to have worked for the FPS market

[SineSwiper]

The FPS market either has a great story with atmosphere, great multiplayer, and/or great graphics. Jade Empire looks to have a shitty tired old story, and a stitled battle system that's worse than KotOR.

[Derithian]

I don't know. I quite enjoed jade empire. unlike the others the end actually does change if you are good or evil.

[Agent 57]

unlike the others the end actually does change if you are good or evil.

In KotOR, the ending you get is based on a single decision you make about 10 minutes before the final battle. Whereas in KotOR II, the ending you get depends on your alignment when you beat the final boss.

I take it you mean that the Jade Empire ending is more like KotOR II then I, then?

[Derithian]

yes

[kali o.]

Except, no.

JE does both half assed...



**Spoiler, without specifics**

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Its been a while since I played, but as I recall, in the cave you make a final decision that sets your party against each other (closed fist vs open) regardless of how far you might haved turned certain members. Depending on your choice, it swings your alignment in a single direction (so basically save at this point to try endings). Then in the final confrontation, its a 'do you take the reigns or walk away' kinda choice.

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