In Media Res II
Nov. 20th, 2008 03:06 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
caraigSo I thought I would make a brief comment on a couple of games I've been playing lately and other things.
First off, I did end up seeing Star Wars: Clone Wars. There isn't much to recommend it. It's kiddified to a huge degree, but normally that's okay. What really gets my goat is that the animation is spotty, the modelling is kind of bad, and it's just got bad writing. Lucas basically took Tarktovsky's work and shat on it. There are a few things to like about it. The music is surprisingly good. The nose art on the gunships makes some sense and is very reminiscent of WWII nose art, and is good. (The reason why asexual clones would put pinup noseart on their gunships is left as an exercise for the reader... IF YOU DARE!)
But there's not much else. And it all points back to Lucas have very little thought for what makes good movies. He's got a mind for details, for doing stuff in films that you can usually blink, consider, and nod, liking the influence (like the inspiration for A New Hope's dogfight scenes being WWII footage.) But that's all. He's a trick pony, kind of like M. Night "Twisty" Shamalyan (who like Lucas isn't a BAD storyteller, he's just got a limited repertoire. In contrast to Lucas, Twisty is a reasonably GOOD storyteller.) An example: Ziro the Hutt. If you have seen Clone Wars you know exactly of what I speak. If you have not, let me elucidate for you. Ziro originally had the typical Hutt basso grande voice, and spoke in Huttee. Lucas, apparently, was sitting in the control booth at one point, looking at runs, and he said, "Make him sound like Truman Capote." I can only imagine the sound techs' jaws dropping in horror, and not a one of them able to tell Lucas what an incredibly bad idea this was. Truman Capote could write rings around Lucas, and Lucas used Capote's distinctive speech mode to simply vomit on the screen the suggestion that Jabba has a conniving gay uncle. I think this should put the nail in the coffin of any argument about how Lucas doesn't engage in stereotyping.
Look, I like Star Wars. It's iconic. It really is mythic. But it started going downhill when Lucas started believing the hype about himself. He just is not good at living up to the mythos that Star Wars has become. I've said it before, I'll say it again: Romantic writing needs to get a restraining order against Lucas.
Anyway, enough ranting about that! Let's move on....
Left 4 Dead. Oh, wow. Valve did it again. This is a kickass game. It's short, but I imagine like Team Fortress 2 it's big draw will be online. The AI is smart and good. The atmosphere is great. The dialogue is quite well done. The textures and the animation are fantastic. The author has run out of superlatives. Basically, it's you and three of your now-closest-and-dearest friends against a world turned zombie. It's the Zombocalypse, and I don't mean Zombo.com taking over the world. This is unique and new mechanics, and it works very very well.
You'll have to get used to one thing: These zombies are on speed. As one character puts it: "Zombies shouldn't move this fast! I call zombie shenanigans!"*
I want to mention Sacred 2 here for one moment, because something struck me abou it the other day. Basically, Sacred 2 is a sandbox-type Diablo clone / Roguelike. You get a limited number of characters to choose from, several combat arts, and are let loose into the world with very little to go on. The overall design is sound though as it stands now the game has a severe memory leak that crashes it eventually. I've yet to go for a couple of hours without it crashing. Fortunately, it saves fairly frequently -- at the end of every quest, for example, and when activating a resurrection obelisk -- but it's still very unfortunate and I cannot recommend it in it's current state.
That being said, there are some nice things about it. Your quest log is absolutely huge. The world is huge -- as in, "Oblivion? Yeah, that's my backyard. Let me show you everywhere else." Your character can actually ride mounts, which I know in WOW is old news but is still surprising to see (and you're going to need it in this world. There aren't a lot of teleportation gates....) The scripting language they use is kind of primitive and not terribly advanced, but it's sufficient. But it does have multiplayer co-op. And here is where things made me blink: Sacred 2 is everything we ever wanted in Neverwinter Nights. If NWN2 had been made with Sacred 2 instead of Aurora2, it would have been... well, frankly, incredible. However, chances are their scripting language, while simplistic, is probably arcane in ways that would make Elminster run to the Simbul's arms, weeping. (And considering how obfuscated they made the Aurora2 toolset on purpose, that's saying something, I think.)
Let's see... I'm currently running a campaign using True20. I've looked at D&D 4th Edition and no, sir, I can't say I like it. But it does have some interesting things going for it: that wizards are no longer locked in to Vancian magic and can still be effective when they go through their spell arsenal, and the Warlord class, and cleaning up a bit of the basic cosmology. I don't know why they got rid of gnomes as PCs... unless they really thought that the gnome population has been reduced that much. (![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
sharkcowsheep, I am looking at YOU! =) ) Also, getting rid of aasimar as PCs yet keeping tieflings just makes me think of all the horrible design decisions that brought us The Book of Vile Darkness while forcing The Book of Erotic Fantasy underground. (And as a codicile on that: I found TBoEF to actually be a decent read; though the art wasn't great it wasn't terribly offensive, and it approached the subject matter frankly and candidly. It was actually rather refreshing to read something on the subject that wasn't offensively juvenile. And since it didn't pander to the base, I'm guessing that's why it got lousy reviews. But, to each his own.)
ANyway, has anyone had any luck or information regarding getting things like the warlord, or the new warlock, or the 4th Ed. wizard's or sorcerer's abilities into True20? (Not that I expect anyone to have read down this far... =) )
* - "I'll pistol-whip the next one a' ya that says 'shenanigans!'"
Not much else going on here, really, so I'll leave it at that! Pax.
First off, I did end up seeing Star Wars: Clone Wars. There isn't much to recommend it. It's kiddified to a huge degree, but normally that's okay. What really gets my goat is that the animation is spotty, the modelling is kind of bad, and it's just got bad writing. Lucas basically took Tarktovsky's work and shat on it. There are a few things to like about it. The music is surprisingly good. The nose art on the gunships makes some sense and is very reminiscent of WWII nose art, and is good. (The reason why asexual clones would put pinup noseart on their gunships is left as an exercise for the reader... IF YOU DARE!)
But there's not much else. And it all points back to Lucas have very little thought for what makes good movies. He's got a mind for details, for doing stuff in films that you can usually blink, consider, and nod, liking the influence (like the inspiration for A New Hope's dogfight scenes being WWII footage.) But that's all. He's a trick pony, kind of like M. Night "Twisty" Shamalyan (who like Lucas isn't a BAD storyteller, he's just got a limited repertoire. In contrast to Lucas, Twisty is a reasonably GOOD storyteller.) An example: Ziro the Hutt. If you have seen Clone Wars you know exactly of what I speak. If you have not, let me elucidate for you. Ziro originally had the typical Hutt basso grande voice, and spoke in Huttee. Lucas, apparently, was sitting in the control booth at one point, looking at runs, and he said, "Make him sound like Truman Capote." I can only imagine the sound techs' jaws dropping in horror, and not a one of them able to tell Lucas what an incredibly bad idea this was. Truman Capote could write rings around Lucas, and Lucas used Capote's distinctive speech mode to simply vomit on the screen the suggestion that Jabba has a conniving gay uncle. I think this should put the nail in the coffin of any argument about how Lucas doesn't engage in stereotyping.
Look, I like Star Wars. It's iconic. It really is mythic. But it started going downhill when Lucas started believing the hype about himself. He just is not good at living up to the mythos that Star Wars has become. I've said it before, I'll say it again: Romantic writing needs to get a restraining order against Lucas.
Anyway, enough ranting about that! Let's move on....
Left 4 Dead. Oh, wow. Valve did it again. This is a kickass game. It's short, but I imagine like Team Fortress 2 it's big draw will be online. The AI is smart and good. The atmosphere is great. The dialogue is quite well done. The textures and the animation are fantastic. The author has run out of superlatives. Basically, it's you and three of your now-closest-and-dearest friends against a world turned zombie. It's the Zombocalypse, and I don't mean Zombo.com taking over the world. This is unique and new mechanics, and it works very very well.
You'll have to get used to one thing: These zombies are on speed. As one character puts it: "Zombies shouldn't move this fast! I call zombie shenanigans!"*
I want to mention Sacred 2 here for one moment, because something struck me abou it the other day. Basically, Sacred 2 is a sandbox-type Diablo clone / Roguelike. You get a limited number of characters to choose from, several combat arts, and are let loose into the world with very little to go on. The overall design is sound though as it stands now the game has a severe memory leak that crashes it eventually. I've yet to go for a couple of hours without it crashing. Fortunately, it saves fairly frequently -- at the end of every quest, for example, and when activating a resurrection obelisk -- but it's still very unfortunate and I cannot recommend it in it's current state.
That being said, there are some nice things about it. Your quest log is absolutely huge. The world is huge -- as in, "Oblivion? Yeah, that's my backyard. Let me show you everywhere else." Your character can actually ride mounts, which I know in WOW is old news but is still surprising to see (and you're going to need it in this world. There aren't a lot of teleportation gates....) The scripting language they use is kind of primitive and not terribly advanced, but it's sufficient. But it does have multiplayer co-op. And here is where things made me blink: Sacred 2 is everything we ever wanted in Neverwinter Nights. If NWN2 had been made with Sacred 2 instead of Aurora2, it would have been... well, frankly, incredible. However, chances are their scripting language, while simplistic, is probably arcane in ways that would make Elminster run to the Simbul's arms, weeping. (And considering how obfuscated they made the Aurora2 toolset on purpose, that's saying something, I think.)
Let's see... I'm currently running a campaign using True20. I've looked at D&D 4th Edition and no, sir, I can't say I like it. But it does have some interesting things going for it: that wizards are no longer locked in to Vancian magic and can still be effective when they go through their spell arsenal, and the Warlord class, and cleaning up a bit of the basic cosmology. I don't know why they got rid of gnomes as PCs... unless they really thought that the gnome population has been reduced that much. (
sharkcowsheep, I am looking at YOU! =) ) Also, getting rid of aasimar as PCs yet keeping tieflings just makes me think of all the horrible design decisions that brought us The Book of Vile Darkness while forcing The Book of Erotic Fantasy underground. (And as a codicile on that: I found TBoEF to actually be a decent read; though the art wasn't great it wasn't terribly offensive, and it approached the subject matter frankly and candidly. It was actually rather refreshing to read something on the subject that wasn't offensively juvenile. And since it didn't pander to the base, I'm guessing that's why it got lousy reviews. But, to each his own.)ANyway, has anyone had any luck or information regarding getting things like the warlord, or the new warlock, or the 4th Ed. wizard's or sorcerer's abilities into True20? (Not that I expect anyone to have read down this far... =) )
* - "I'll pistol-whip the next one a' ya that says 'shenanigans!'"
Not much else going on here, really, so I'll leave it at that! Pax.
