Fatalism of the Orcs

I largely don't review games I consider good until I have completed them. I think Orcs Must Die is good, but I also don't think it's worth finishing. That's an odd paradox.

OMD is probably my favorite of the hybrid shooter/tower defense games to come out in 2011. Dungeon Defenders is considerably better looking in some ways (admittedly, the art style is worse, but that's an aesthetic choice) but the game is so damn boring and grindy, with this weird slippery feel to the game world. Sanctum is just worse in every respect other than having multiplayer - it's weird looking, aim intensive and lacks a satisfying feeling that conveys the effectiveness of your toys. OMD's shooting is less aim intensive more action than Sanctum and its traps feel far more satisfying.

It may seem a little weird to comment that a shooting / tower defensive hybrid is too aim intensive, but that's just the thing: You're not playing just a shooter. Having to line up perfect, weak point shots in Sanctum is the wrong type of gameplay, as you want to be observing the performance of your maze and your towers, not just shooting things. The end result if Sanctum is a bad shooter and a bad tower defense game, while OMD is a sloppy but satisfying shooter and a good tower defense game.

In fact, the core gameplay is almost spot on in every regard, except for two main problems.

The biggest, hugest problem with the game is it simply lacks the deeper polish that makes most tower defense games enjoyable in the long term. Each level represents a logical problem that needs to be deconstructed to effectively defeat, with multiple solutions based on the myriad of combinations. OMD really suffers in this regard. It has no ability to save your progress on any level, which chokes replay value.

I don't necessarily mean I want a rewind key. The game lacks the ability to save any concept of trap positioning, or let alone which traps you selected. You need to reselect your entire menu of traps each and every single time you restart a map. Accidents happen, mistakes are made, and the game punishes you severely for it. Even more ridiculous is how many things can't be reset once you've begun. Selection of the bonus powers talent tree can not be reset from within a map, you have to restart the entire level, repeating the entire stupid process. Again, and again, and again.

The menus and powers involved are mostly solid though. The menus are a delight to go through, with lots of personality and it is pretty quick. It's pretty evident that the developers completed this process over and over again, but it becomes a serious question of how they didn't fucking notice how unbelievably irritating not being able to save load outs is. It's baffling. In games where the load out screen is shitty (like, say, Mass Effect) you would actually just stop playing if they tried to make you build a new load out every single battle.

Traps, as an extension of this, are really satisfying. Unlike most tower defense games, OMD has few abilities you won't enjoy deploying. Picking traps is actually somewhat difficult simply based on how they're all good, all fun and all interesting. The game is a huge success on that angle, as opposed to like Sanctum where they're blocks I barely even notice doing anything. The various combat abilities are all delightful as well; Orcs are hurled, blasted, exploded, frozen and burnt in ways that while violent, are cheerful enough it doesn't feel especially grimdark. The game is colorful and gibtastic, with a delightfully nonchalant style to the whole matter.

However, getting back to the core problems, the game suffers from some seriously awful level design. The levels are weird, nonsensical constructs that have really nothing to do with being anything outside weird lines. Because of this, you really wonder why they bothered to make it an indoor castle thing and not something more of a say, fantasy reality.

But the real problem is that the levels work against the game's gameplay. While running multiple paths and different enemies types allows for a deepening game plan, after a while the game just start vomiting nonsense at you with multiple doors, confusing maps and overall irritation that gets away from the gibbing. Instead of spending my time enjoying the showers of gore, I'm instead running around, quickly putting up traps without planning and restarting maps because there is no manner of predicting where traps should go.

Trial and error gameplay is fine - In fact, you could argue Defense Grid the "Best" TD game has tons of it - but not when you're forced to spend minutes rebuild your interface and traps every single time you want to reconsider your plan. There's so little information presented, as well, that you are forced to trial and error through it. Couple the two together and while it's fun to limp over the finish line the first time you finish a level, several of the later levels just become too chorelike to bother replaying.

The worst part of this is the game always feel like it ends right after you've "solved" the puzzle. There is no satisfying part where the game slams you with massive enemy waves that your carefully assembled defenses pick apart - Instead, once you've crossed the basic "finish line" you're done. Maybe it's different on the highest difficulty, but I haven't read that and I'm not going to drag myself through the off last level just to discover the higher difficulty is even less enjoyable.

Like I said, this one of the few games I've really liked but have also found too much of a chore to finish. It's an odd contradiction to express but one that seems simple once you've played it. The gameplay is good. The game, on the other hand, has glaring holes in it that make it harder to recommend.

I'm gonna hold off on picking up the sequel til it's on sale, or til someone confirms me that the game's weird holes have been patched up.

Massively effective DLC system

Time is kinda off since I idled often

I don't have much of a thing for sequels. Sure, almost all my favorite books are presented with sequels galore, but books don't really bother with re-creating the entire framing from the ground up. Video game sequels pretty rarely are truly sequels in the film and book sense, often with huge changes to the game experience.

And holy poop does this game change the feel of the first game.

Insert ape based caption here

First things first, the game presents itself in this weird set up as though the antagonists of the second game are in some manner discrete from the first game. This is - no more no less - about as successful a plot element as butter is at successfully battling your frying pan set to max. You see through it instantly and it leaves little spots on the narrative you'd really they rather didn't bother with. But the game constantly talks about this other race as though they're somehow separate from the original game's antagonistic structure. It's really awful and it creates this weird feeling that you're facing an enemy that isn't so much a complex machine empire, but rather a bunch of mental patients who have difficulty deciding which spoon to jam into humanity's collective eyeball. I didn't really like this, and there's this weird subplot where the enemy "General" says your name all the time.

I have no idea why. Maybe I missed it.

Second, the combat system is squarely worse. It took me less time to adapt to it than the first game, since I've played more console babby cover system games since then. That being said, combat is just ... Bad. At the end of the first game I felt confident in what I was doing and had grown accustomed to the heat system. In this game I spammed one ability (Shockwave) while shooting people with which ever random gun I decided I felt like firing. I understand and actually appreciate the desire to make the game more of a shooter, but I think arguing the game is worse because it's more of a shooter is disingenuous.

Mass Effect 2 isn't worse because it's more "shooter". It's worse because it's a bad shooter AND a bad roleplaying game that traded out elements you'd actually see in a good shooter. If I open the gun pane or whatever you want to call it in Crysis 2, it tells me which guns are better. Alpha Protocol had a whole over complex window, and that's probably too far, but giving shooter fans numbers to work with isn't against the genre.  The other shooting elements are slapdash, guns have no feel, enemies appear from weird angles and I never get that satisfying feel when I shoot someone.

I mean at its simplest, ME2 really suffers because I'm shooting people with no solid explanation of which gun is good against what and no solid feeling when bullets hit people.

I can forgive the weaknesses in the plot (the middle chapter always gets the stick) and I can forgive the shooting, since it's really no worse than any RPG combat from my childhood. Yeah FF7's combat system was so deep bro! Herp derp. I can forgive them if the characters are good. And on the most part, they are.

My favorite new character: Miranda. I liked her serious attitude, and her voice actor was good. The last character added to the party was also awesome, but ends up joining the team a little too late to enjoy.  My least favorite character: Miranda's ass. Look, I know games need to be sexually charged because ... Uh, something about how dudes need tits on screen if there isn't violence or something but seriously, her ass is more of a character than half the cast. I mean it has more shading going on than her face and half of the time she's talking the ass puts in an appearance. The weird thing I actually feel considerably more annoyed with this than the blatant "I fuck chicks" in the Witcher. Like sure, you have sex with way more women in the Witcher, but that's mostly over and done with pretty quickly. It's an element of the game you can entirely avoid and has no real impact on the game, beyond making me laugh really hard a couple times. It's just so tongue in cheek I could't take it seriously. Miranda's ass (and the super awkward romance stuff with Tali) come up repeatedly, each time making me shudder a little. That screen shot above? That's from a loyalty mission you need to do in order to unlock Miranda's last power. It could be argue the game mechanically encourages it, and then literally shoves her ass in your face. The Witcher is silly, but this is actually outright creepy.

Just murdered a dude in cold blood. Now, some ass.

I actually botched the romance angles in the game due to misclicking an option in a dialogue tree. Given how creepy the first game's romance scene was, I'm not exactly torn up about missing it. The best thing is I didn't even realize it was relevant. Oddly enough, I eventually fixed the misclick but I guess I broke it or something.

The rest of the cast mostly returns from the first game, minus the Racist Who Dies. Most of them don't join the team, which is fine. They still resolve plot threads from them, which I liked. You also get this awesome Salarian scientist who does good work and kills people. It's hard not to gush about the quality of his voice acting and character. I change my opinion, he's my favorite. He sings!

So the game sells it based on actually getting to know the various characters and acting on their plots. It even has a bit where Seth Green the ship's pilot as played by Seth Green gets to hobble around, crack some jokes and watch other people get brutally murdered. I don't like Seth Green, but I like him here. I can't explain that.

In summary, the game has a sweet singing salarian scientist, steve blum doing an impression of wrex from the first game, worse combat, a weaker plot and largely deeper characterization. It's also a better looking game with lots of pretty vistas and less barren rocks. The game also drops the vehicle sections, which were bad, then re-adds them in DLC. I'm still a little bit blown away by this one: The main complaint about the first game's vehicle stuff is it was boring and you feel like you were driving a shopping cart. In this game, you drive a shopping hovercart and there's jumping puzzles. That's incredible. The gap between the developer who came up with that and reality itself must be tremendous. Seriously: There are jumping puzzles.

I think I enjoyed ME2 more than enough to recommend it, though like most roleplaying games, I have largely no intent to play it again. I archived my saved game and I'll stash it away with the intent to play ME3 after getting a rest from terrible roleplaying shooter hybrid things.

Adventures of the Worst Spy Ever

I'm not great at stealth. It's not fundamentally in my nature; I understand the concept, but damn am I ever impatient and bad at it. I mean, make it simple and linear, I'll probably get it. Make it sort of dicey or weirdly floppy and my true secret agent persona comes through: Set everyone on fire and go totes ma goats with an assault rifle blazing. No man is an island, and no one misses a volcano, but no one gets out alive either.

A literal master of stealth

So anyway Alpha Protocol is some game that did lukewarm in reviews and is actually well loved on SA, which isn't really much of a thing since people on SA tend to group think a little. But then so do reviewers, so I guess that's fair?

The game is really generous with being an espionage game, since like I said I'm actually the worst spy ever conceptually seen in a video game. And I mean literally seen, assuming your eyes have not already melted. In spite of being about spying and sneaking, the game fully supported my class choice of COMMANDO and didn't seem too upset with me for killing piles of dudes. So many dudes. This is nice.

Combat, which is often complained about in the game, seemed pretty reasonable on the most part. The actual gunplay and cover system seemed mostly fine, and close combat is satisfying to look at albeit extremely simple. The problem, and of course some of the complaining has a foundation, lies in the transitions. There's a couple examples, but all of them do have to do with that. The first one is that while melee is good and ranged combat is fine, sometimes you can knock enemies out of melee and then you sort of flail for a bit. It's very strange. Bosses, as well, transition between phases of combat which the game does terribly. The one boss goes immune to damage while you're punching him which just feels really weird.

The stealth dome: for stealthing

The cover system, man. I mean really, I've yet to see a game where the cover system even approaches functionality. Other than Doom, where the cover system was an accident. A basis of all good gaming is a smooth and reliable set of reactions to input - Known as control. The cover system felt out of control, sloppy and on the most part pretty disinterested in me. Thankfully I just shot everyone, they were dead and my bullets were my cover.

The story in Alpha Protocol is pretty simple - A military contractor does bad stuff, black operations, do stuff maybe don't do stuff and there you go. What is interesting about AP is I don't think it's possible or at the very least easy to examine most of the story on a playthrough. This is unique and pretty impressive. This element, and how the various factions interact, play out and so on, offers both replayability and a different story for each person based on their choices. I'm not entirely certain how perfect the various elements in fact are, since I'm only going to go through it once, but I managed to miss entire boss fights, get most of the cast killed by accident and not learn half the players actual identities. If I didn't have a giant pile of back logs, I'd probably go through the game again with a different play style but I have this huge backlog.

What did really suck about this is after a while the game starts framing acts with a conversation with one of the antagonists, presenting the game sort of as flashbacks. I didn't really enjoy this over much, since it kinda spoiled plot points, but it was constructed in a unique way each time that show off how the game interacts with your own narrative.

The characters, though, are the real boon of the game. And bones. Literally.

He told me to put the Bees to someone. The Beeeees.

The cast is, as one can imagine in a very grey morality spy game, a mixed bag of enjoyable personalities. I found interacting with them to be the real delight of the game, some of them because like the crazy guy in Taipei because they're funny and some of them because the dialogue system is enjoyable to work through. You can influence what you guys says, but only up to a point. Also, different attitudes work with different people well, which creates a sense that the characters are actually characters and not talking boxes that poop out replies. It gives conversations a legitimate sense of being a conversation and develops them into people you like, or hate.

Probably the worst part of the game, though, is blatantly obvious forced decisions. The game puts a number of "no win" choices in front of you. The issue here is that, they're not subtle, they're played to the trope which is ... Rather dull. It's the weakest part of the story, but the story is not necessarily very strong. It's the well written and well voiced characters that are. So I can deal with that.

All in all, it had its flaws and I understand where the bad reviews start - the various "skill" minigames could use some serious adjustment in terms of Not Being a Chore - but the actual meat of the game is a strong evolution on the genre that I guess unfortunately didn't do so well. Pity.

Which is to say I am part of the Goonmind and yeah, recommend this game.