So, despite suddenly finding myself at the shit end of the economy, I managed to squat upon the wallet and produce a couple of C notes for a crapton of videogames, both new and used.  

The very first of the pile, and in fact the first one I grabbed was this gem.  I remember nothing of its advertising campaign, and now that I've actually played it I'm not entirely certain I actually remember this game HAVING an advertising campaign.

It begins with a very interesting opening movie that drops some interesting bombs to get us started.

Aesir, world tree, hell, giant cyborg wolf dogs in a cybernetic hel... what the fuck is this thing?

Let me cut to the chase.

You play Baldur, the norse God of the Aesir pantheon... an apparently immortal cyborg warrior in the far distant, apocalyptic future, the bastion of Humanity against the Machines (goblins, trolls, dark elves and I assume the Giants (ymir, but we've only heard of them so far, not seen them) who thrive in the great frozen wastes beyond The Wall, apparently occupying 'ruins' from before.  The Norns are the sentient guardian program of the cyberspace 'world tree', and your minion soldiers (and yourself) are lifted up by valkyrie upon death.


Say what?

Its actually quite good so far. Odin is some sort of AI thing, I think, an absentee father figure to the Aesir, Hiemdall seems to be the main leader of the Aesir, and we are treated to, as time goes on, glimpses of this strange cyber-fantasy future, including how the Aesir come to be Aesir and not just random dudes.

But how does it play?

A bit like a knock off of the KOTOR games.  You've got five classes to chose from, and apparently they can seriously mix up some co-op play... I'm running the Berserker, which is a dual wielding melee god.  You've got chumps following you around, but they appear to be just color (they aren't controllable, don't appear to do any of the killing, and if they get killed off (which happens frequently) they just respawn later.

It does have MMO elements: color coded equipment drops and the ability to trade same to other players over live.  THere is a lame craft system (you have money, see, and you can craft an item from a dropped blueprint for money. Or you can just wear items that dropped... that's IT).  You can equip one melee weapon and one ranged weapon at a time, and swap freely between them during play (literally: Swinging a weapon uses the left joystick, shooting uses the triggers, depending upon which control you are mashing decides what you are using from moment to moment), and you've got the standard array of armor.

Melee takes the form of swords, staves and hammers.  There are one handed, two handed and dual wields in each catagory (though, dual weild hammers are actually hammer and sheild, and unusable to berserkers...)

ranged takes the form of pistols, rifles and cannons. Pistols are automatically dual wielded, cannons are only available to 'cybernetic allegiance'.

There is an alignment system: You choose after the first mission to be 'human or cybernetic', and this alters health, skills and equipment choices and is fixed. No other changes noticed.

Now: despite the fact that you apparently have infinite lives, and you respawn in 'real time'... that is, while fights are ongoing (it is, however, slow. Thirty seconds to a minute long at least...), the game is HARD.

Sort of.

'Goblins', the primary grunt badguy are easy from the very beginning of the game onwards. I kill hundreds in minutes, zipping around the battlefield like a meth-yoda.  The Trolls and 'leader goblins'... those are harder.  

Let me explain: Leader goblins (among others...) have a force feild which is, near as I can tell, immune to melee weapons.  Melee weapons do MASSIVELY more damage than their pistol counterparts (not just because I'm a berserker melee dude either... I'm equipping melee weapons which do 150 points of raw damage and a cannon (cyborg only massive ranged weapon) which does... 26... and ranged weapons are more like 'short ranged melee', or so it feels.)

Trolls, a very common 'big bad' stomping around the map are worse.  Troll have six different hit locations, each with armor and hit points. With me so far? They have a big ass hammer which they swing roughly every five seconds or so against the ground that hits everything out to at least rifle range.

Melee appears to hit no hit locations, and is not 'targetable', meaning even when it does hit it may be against a location that is already 'destroyed'.  Despite being weaker, the best stratagy against a troll appears to be walking away from it while shooting and jumping to avoid the AOE damage, but targeting the sub locations accurately is... problematic due to the control scheme.  

Never mind the first (and hopefully only!) time you run into the 'freeze' troll. Nothing is more aggrivating that getting frozen solid every three seconds or so (while waiting for an enemy attack to damage you enough to unfreeze you) to a seriously stupid distance.


But that's not all.

Not hardly.

THe second mission, which took some four hours to play through, appears to start with everythign at level 15 and ended closer to level 20.

Problem: After beating the first mission I was only level 10. After running through the first mission a second time I was level....13.  Also: chosing to run through previous missions again circumvents the storyline, forcing you to exit the game and come back in to get back to it. Gah!



But I LOVE that premise... at least given that the execution is so good.

The premise is awesome. Oh its so wonderful an idea. But gameplay? Ouch it hurts! It's a mechanical nightmare of glitchiness, pseudo MMORPG, and other madness.

But man, if I could get a tabletop game with that premise and decent rules? Even if you just play a Raven, Wolf, or Bear soldier...

Yeah. I forgot to mention the ass-tacular camera and frequently weird controls...

But I'm still addicted just because I'm high on the premise.  I haven't had to deal with much glitchiness, but I HAVE had to deal with a fucking sketchy as hell book for it. Figured out last night how to 'add runes' to the purple charms I'd been collecting... you use the normal grey charms once they've been unlocked and 'runed up' with the regular runes. Fucking hell!  now I know I've been discarding/neglecting duplicate charms like a moron... thanks, guys!

I think I passed on this one because of the game play and demo. I want to like it, but...

Seanchai

Quote from: Spike;309175Yeah. I forgot to mention the ass-tacular camera and frequently weird controls...

But I'm still addicted just because I'm high on the premise.  I haven't had to deal with much glitchiness, but I HAVE had to deal with a fucking sketchy as hell book for it. Figured out last night how to 'add runes' to the purple charms I'd been collecting... you use the normal grey charms once they've been unlocked and 'runed up' with the regular runes. Fucking hell!  now I know I've been discarding/neglecting duplicate charms like a moron... thanks, guys!

Yeah. I know, just wait until you see the prices on high end gear! I mean, sheesh, it be nice to have X weapon before its useless. Ah well the game is very very awesome in its ideas. I'll finish it someday, but I'm not sure when...

I did have some ideas on the lines of Too Human, as, like most people here, the premise seemed really good - unlike the execution (bad camera is death in 3rd person games).

PC's were spacefaring 'norse warriors' empowered by an omnipresent computer hive-mind known as the Aesirium. PC classes were determined by the 'god' of their choice; each god is an avatar of the Aesirium with Loki, the default bad guy, a rogue aspect.

Couldn't get much further.