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Dhruin
Stranger In A Strange Land
Joined: 20 May 2002
Posts: 1825
Location: Sydney, Australia |
No, that isn't a "fact". It's unfortunate that you don't like it but some of us think it's pretty good. The guns don't behave like a FPS? Good! It isn't an FPS, it's an RPG.
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Editor @ RPGDot |
Fri Nov 19, 2004 1:23 pm |
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dagoo7
Head Merchant
Joined: 07 Nov 2002
Posts: 58
Location: USA |
quote:
Originally posted by Anonymous
I think its funny how you don't think you're a twitch-action gamer.
Oh Sensei, please explain this pearl of wisdom to young grasshopper.
How am I a "twitch action player", the only "action" games that I ever play are those that have some aspect of hardcore rpgs (Gothic II, Deus Ex) etc. I have pitiful reflexes and manual dexterity. My favorite game of this type is Gothic II, a real twitch action game. Simply because I defended the combat to a certain degree in this game and expressed a preference for more realism in certain ways does not make me an action player.
I think it would be quite an understatement in your case, to say that brevity is most definitely not the soul of wit. If you have a valid argument or complaint about my innocuous comment please state it clearly and fairly. |
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Fri Nov 19, 2004 3:04 pm |
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You made the point yourself, "My favorite game of this type is Gothic II, a real twitch action game." Contradiction must be the soul of hypocrisy. Or, at the very least, the blatant obvious is the soul of my explanation.
You said you are not a twitch-action gamer "by any means" and then explained why you prefer twitch-action games. To quote your explanation you said, "I actually prefer games where melee combat is harder, takes awhile to master, and is more realistic", ala Gothic 2: a twitch-action game.
Further, you expand on this idea by saying, "In many ways games where you can lock on an enemy and simply proceed to click buttons is totally unrealistic and frankly boring." What I especially like about this statement is that you described pretty accuratly the combat in Gothic 2. You lock on an enemy and proceed to click bottons. In VtM:Bloodlines you skip the lock on an enemy part and go striaght to the button clicking.
As to twitch-action games being more realistic, I would have to disagree whole heartedly. In an RPG (aka Role playing game) you, the gamer, take on the role of someone else-the character. This character has skills seperate and independent of your own skills. This characters skills should not be reflected, or related to (or tied to)your own skills in ant way. If the character whose role you are playing is a 20th lvl warrior, and while providing this character dirrection by the taking over of his persona you decide to fight a troll, the skills of the warrior and the decisions you make while controlling his persona should be the sole factors in deciding the outcome of the fight (and, of course, the luck of the dice roll or whatever game mechanic factors in). He is the warrior that is skilled in the use of swords, you are not.
If your user skills (clicking bottons, timing, reflex, etc) weigh in to combat, then you aren't playing the role of the character, you are being the character. Seeing as how you are neither the nameless escaped prisoner of Gothic nor a Vampire fledgling roaming the streets of LA, I would say the rpg way is more realistic. Which way is more fun is up to personal opinion. So far I like VtM very much. I also loved the story, setting, and world of Gothic 1 and 2. But, I am actually not a twitch-action gamer, so the combat in Gothic 1 and 2 were impossible for me. I had to play both games in marvin god-mode to fight anything.
Again, realism and fun, action games and rpgs, are not the same thing. You can have a realistic fun combat system, an action rpg, a fun combat system that is not realistic at all, a realistic combat system that is not fun at all, an rpg that includes action combat, or a pure rpg game. What is better or the best is up to each individual's tatse and prefferences. But a contradiction is a contradiction, and the obvious is the obvious. I can't say I'm not a turned-based combat player by any means and then say I love ToEE, JA 1 and 2, X-Com TftD, Realsm of Arkania trilogy, Geneforge, Fallout 1 and 2, blah blah blah are my favorite games. That is called a contradiction.
And if I did do that and someone called me on it, I sure as hell wouldn't make a retort post laden with sarcasm towards the person who called me on it and then perfectly contradict myself again. I'm sure if you take the time to think things through to their logical conclusion a lot of heart ache and confusion can be avoided in your life. You like twitch-action games with rpg elements, no crime in that. Lavern liked to mix milk and Coke. I like to make sandwiches with sour cream and crunchy peanut butter. Live and let live my Ma used to say.
So far I am enjoying the hell out of VtM:Bloodlines. I think the combat is crap and the 30 minute load screen for downtown LA is crap, but the rest of the game is pure Trokia gold. Trokia has a record of either having great combat and light everything else (ToEE) or crap combat and great everything else (VtM, and Arcanum). I was pretty sure I wouln't like the combat before I bought the game. |
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Sat Nov 20, 2004 4:46 am |
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dagoo77
Guest
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quote:
Originally posted by Anonymous
You made the point yourself, "My favorite game of this type is Gothic II, a real twitch action game." Contradiction must be the soul of hypocrisy. Or, at the very least, the blatant obvious is the soul of my explanation.
Ever hear of a little thing called sarcasm, Thats what I was using when I referred to Gothic 2 as a "real twitch action game." Hard to see how you missed that given how good you seem to be at detecting sarcasm in everything else.
Basically, I think we have a misunderstanding in terms. I personally don't feel that Gothic 2 is a "twitch action game", it is an rpg which has realtime combat and that combat is secondary to the rpg. Action players complained endlessly about combat in Gothic 2, and its definitely not a game where action dorks would be playing to gank each other endlessly. The fact that I stated that I liked a few rpg games that had rudimentary action characteristics does not make me some dumb Mortal Kombat playing teenager. That's what your initially snide lil' response did.
What's eminently silly is that for the most part we seem to agree. All's I said was that I like the game despite the combat as combat is really secondary to me. As far as Gothic 2 goes, it did have some rudimentary action characteristics but it was not a test of your action skills, character progress and growth of skills/exp was quite noticeable in ones performance, the action was only one component. The combat in this game seems to try to do this as well (eg. dmg reflecting skill lvls), but much less succesfully.
I see your point now that you bothered to make it. The fact that you did not make your point and dismissed me summarily w/out explanation led to my sarcastic response. Once again, I was being sarcastic in my characterization of Gothic 2, not contradictory, and simply because you missed that does not make me illogical. If you had bothered to state your point clearly to begin with, then maybe we could have had a logical argument.
Now that we've both underestimated/misunderstood each other and made our snide comments, I think we would both like to move on with our lives after this silliness. However, in the future, please don't dismiss others opinions with snappy one liners and then lay claim to victory in a debate that never happened. |
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Sat Nov 20, 2004 5:51 am |
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I still think its funny you don't consider yourself a twitch action gamer. |
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Sun Nov 21, 2004 7:22 am |
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dagoo7
Head Merchant
Joined: 07 Nov 2002
Posts: 58
Location: USA |
Touche! Your rapier wit once again displays itself, whilst once again utterly avoiding the matter at hand. It's been a pleasant and productive exchange, o anonymous one. |
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Sun Nov 21, 2004 7:55 am |
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fadedC
Guest
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The combat may not be great, but I've seen far worse in RPGs. In my opinion the roleplaying elements are more then enough to make up for it. I've been having alot of fun with it so far.
In alot of ways it's similar to most every game Troika has made. The combat is not very good, but it attempts (succesfully in my opinion) to make up for it by a wealth of choices and ways to play your character. The game is not completely crippled by bugs in it's first release, which makes it a big step above anything else they have ever made. And unlike their other games, no massive balance problems have become obvious in the first hours of play (though I'm sure they are out there).
So if you enjoyed Troikas other games despite their massive bugs, bad to mediocre combat (with the partial exception of TTOE), and complete lack of even the most basic concepts of balance, then this game should be like heaven to you since it has as much of the good, and not as much of the bad. |
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Mon Nov 22, 2004 1:24 am |
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The rating is more than fair i think. The story is quite good, although getting too fast in the end, but there's a million bugs in the game. It's not fun, when you gotta write console commandos just to go to the next level, to avoid a crash, and it sucks that i've tried two ending decisions with both a malkav and tremere, to find out that i cant continue because my character gets stuck in the world. My friend have managed to avoid these bugs, but only by reading alot of material, and standing at the right spot at the right time to move through the bugs. (Try open the door to china vamps sanctum, it's impossible - And all enemies respawn forever, with no delay.)
I've heard rumours that they've used an older version of the steam engine aswell. That may explain the extremely poor performance of the game. I bought Bloodlines and Half-life2, and i can play HL2 in highest settings with every effect available smoothyl. Bloodlines runs at 10-20fps though? And Bloodlines is miles below HL2's graphical beauty. That kind of made me sad, since i bought this new computer for HL2 and Bloodlines, and even the newest hardware can't cope with the game.
There's also some game balancing problems. If you play Nosferatu, you'll need a specific amount in lockpicking to continue your path at the first meeting with Lacroix. If you didn't buy, tough luck. Start over.
They should have used at least a half year more on finishing the product. I hope the patch _made by consumers_ will fix it. However, that will make me no more happy about Activision and Troika's twisted view on publication. |
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Fri Dec 17, 2004 5:50 pm |
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Guest
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quote:
Originally posted by fadedC
The combat may not be great, but I've seen far worse in RPGs. In my opinion the roleplaying elements are more then enough to make up for it. I've been having alot of fun with it so far.
In alot of ways it's similar to most every game Troika has made. The combat is not very good, but it attempts (succesfully in my opinion) to make up for it by a wealth of choices and ways to play your character. The game is not completely crippled by bugs in it's first release, which makes it a big step above anything else they have ever made. And unlike their other games, no massive balance problems have become obvious in the first hours of play (though I'm sure they are out there).
So if you enjoyed Troikas other games despite their massive bugs, bad to mediocre combat (with the partial exception of TTOE), and complete lack of even the most basic concepts of balance, then this game should be like heaven to you since it has as much of the good, and not as much of the bad.
ToEE had great combat. You say Troika's other games over and over. They only have two other games, Arcanum and ToEE. ToEE had great combat, Arcanum had crap combat like VtM:B. |
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Fri Dec 17, 2004 11:11 pm |
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Lord_Brownie
High Emperor
Joined: 16 Feb 2003
Posts: 575
Location: Unfashionable arm of the spiral galaxy |
I'm near the end of the game, here is what i have noticed.
First, the rpg part is (story, setting, and characters coming together) is 5 out of 5 stars. The only fault I might give it is that all of it seems to pander to the male side of things. Would have been interesting to see a game like this from the other prespective as my wife plays through it.
Second, the problems with combat controls are horrible. I give it 3 out of 5 stars. When fighting normal mobs the sticky controls rarely cause a problem, but lack of responsivness when fighting boss mobs I was quickly getting fustrated. Walking for a second after I take my hand of the key or a second pause before my guy punches after I hit the key was wearing me down quick. The game would run smoothy for while, then suddenly have these controls issues, and then go back to running smoothy again. Because my character was supposed to be a hand-to-hand guy, this was VERY fustrating!
Sad thing is, even though I was a hand-to-hand guy, used ranged weapons on most of the boss mobs because fighting hand-to-hand got so fustrating. I like the way fire arms works: it is based on skill usage and physics. Have to have line of sight and roughy aim at a target to hit.
There was also some areas of the game I felt that I couldnt advance without firearms, there was just too many mobs to fight at one time. This may have been a result of my not having maxed out melee skills rather than game balence. I think a game should be playable with all 'classes' or in this case clans without breaking the game and with interesting things to do for each class/clan.
Other than that, I like hand-to-hand. Took me half the game to realize that I had different froms of attacks that did different things. Not alot, left punch, right punch, kick, leap attack, but I'm not big on pure fighting games so it was plenty to please me. Stealth was amazing rewarding, too. Coupe-de-grace was an option I used frequently.
Third, the game never crashed, never lost track of quests, or left me unable to advance. I played as a Venture clan vampire, with average skills in hand-to-hand (6 ish in H2H, and 7 in Dodge), and high lockpicking/ hacking/persuasion skills (9ish). The game is full of humor, I laughed outloud at some if jokes it contains in the dialogue. It is also nice to play an adult game in a world were almost every game is full of fluffy-bunny garbage. Adult themes, stories, and language can still be used to tell a good story, too bad its just one game. Never played pen & paper version of the game, so I can't compare the two.
My system specs:
P4 1.7
1 gig ram
Nvidia 4700(?) 128 mb
SB Audigy 2
Lots of Dr.Pepper (goes in me, not the computer!)
Overall a fun game that I will be happy to finish it, and play through again if they fix some control issues. I wish Trokia would polish this stuff before they release their games. They are a great studio with lots of talent and creativity, they just need to release games with less fustrating bugs to be perfect.
LB |
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Sat Dec 18, 2004 12:46 pm |
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It's a shame it came out so bad really.. the exploring is never any fun at all since there are only like 15 different weapons or less and 4-5 armors, most rooms are just empty and most of the m are copy/paste work from some other room.. you cant even pick up weapons that bosses drops.. The clipping is awful, your head goes right thru the victims body when you bite someone (at least with my nosferatu).
This game is a joke. |
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Sat Dec 18, 2004 5:49 pm |
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Dhruin
Stranger In A Strange Land
Joined: 20 May 2002
Posts: 1825
Location: Sydney, Australia |
Finshed my second run through yesterday, first as an ambitious Camarilla wannabe Tremere and second as a charismatic blade-wielding Torrie. First off, apart from some poorly-produced cutscenes and some clipping I experienced no significant bugs: prefectly stable and the quest scripting was fairly solid (two or three minor glitches) -- apart from one well-known (and disappointing bug).
Bloodlines has some of the best dialogue and best characters I have ever encountered, really brought to life with superb voice-acting and the facial animation system. The atmosphere and mature themes are superbly handled and the backdrop of vampire politics is fascinating.
It does a good job of providing a different game experience for the clans, through the different clan abilities, different dialogue options and multiple solutions such as sneaking, hacking or persuasion.
Bloodlines has two major flaws over everything else: the game is extremely linear with cheap tricks to maintain that linearity (areas and doors that can't be opened until you get the right quest and so on) so although you can approach the major plot quests in different ways, you'll always do them and in the same order, regardless of how the game might otherwise unfold. Secondly, this attention to dialogue and multiple solutions weakens towards the end and the very end is a tiresome combat fest.
These flaws do bring it down but it's still one of the best games I've played in recent years.
_________________
Editor @ RPGDot |
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Sun Dec 19, 2004 12:58 am |
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Guest
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quote:
Originally posted by Dhruin
Bloodlines has two major flaws over everything else: the game is extremely linear with cheap tricks to maintain that linearity (areas and doors that can't be opened until you get the right quest and so on) so although you can approach the major plot quests in different ways, you'll always do them and in the same order, regardless of how the game might otherwise unfold. Secondly, this attention to dialogue and multiple solutions weakens towards the end and the very end is a tiresome combat fest.
These flaws do bring it down but it's still one of the best games I've played in recent years.
Agreed.
It’s not loading time or minor bugs but the linearity of the plot was most disappointing for me.
Con game with chatty characters could have been interesting in that plot. Especially near the end, how about an option for them to let factions fight each other than buy a flamethrower to go through combats.
Now in my second run, I am playing as a Malk, which makes whole the story into a slapstick comedy but I know the ending doesn’t make so much difference. There are some strange things happening around my character outside of the screwball dialogue but I guess they are rather like easter-eggs and play no important roles.
BTW, are you working on the review? For I was rather shocked to see even for some hardcore RPG fans, it seems to be a bullet-time disciple than plot and characters which impressed them most in the game. While some others seem to have simply moved to FPS or strategy games. |
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Sun Dec 19, 2004 3:16 am |
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Dhruin
Stranger In A Strange Land
Joined: 20 May 2002
Posts: 1825
Location: Sydney, Australia |
I have a 3/4 completed review but I got bogged down in RL and after we were hacked, it took a little while before we could add new articles -- which gave me a justification to ignore it while I was busy and now I'm thinking it's a bit old to worry about. Haven't decided but it won't get done in a hurry now. 
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Editor @ RPGDot |
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Sun Dec 19, 2004 5:28 am |
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