twmac

Dragon's Dogma

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So, I wasn't even really thinking about this game much (having mistaken it for Asura's Wrath for the longest time), and then I read some info that made it sound pretty terrible.

However, this series of videos completely turned me around and now I can't wait for it to be released:

It seems to be a combination of Dark Souls and Skyrim.

There are some amazing set pieces with the gameplay seeming entirely emergent. Watching one of your AI teammates climbing up a giant's arm and stabbing it in the face then seeing another video where the main character did the same thing was awesome.

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Hm, this looks interesting, terrible name aside, it could be really cool. I liked Skyrim, I like the theory of Dark Souls, it's just in the handling of mechanics and difficulty... also the context of why I am doing certain things.

*Also after the giant bomb quick look of Asura's Wrath, that game didn't *look* that bad either.

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I've been really looking forward to this game.

A lot of the early stuff Capcom was showing off, people were just being utterly dismissive about because of the "fuck Cacpcom" attitude going around, and also because the game has a terrible title and kind of bland aesthetic. It's unfortunate, because the game actually looks incredible.

The whole pawn system sounds super intriguing, a cool and different take on passive multiplayer, not just what From was doing with Dark Souls.

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Agree about the whole thing seeming bland at first, that is why I am glad that OXM released those videos because now my interest is piqued and I will definitely be pre-ordering this.

Along side Witcher 2 I am going to have no time for anything.

As for Asura's Wrath it was alright, I played through the whole game and reviewed it on Arcadian Rhythms, I reckon that Giantbomb got a little too excited about it.

For reference my review.

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This game looks way more interesting than I thought it'd be, the title made it seem like something ign would tell me would blow me away.

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There's apparently a very impressive demo on PSN and Live, but i haven't checked it out because i am still in the clutches of Xenoblade.

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There's apparently a very impressive demo on PSN and Live, but i haven't checked it out because i am still in the clutches of Xenoblade.

The demo's really unimpressive in my opinion, probably mainly because it's incredibly short. There are two parts to it, "Prologue Quest" in which you play a premade character with premade pawns fighting through a bunch of goblins and facing off with a

chimera

at the end (spoiler tag because someone might want to be surprised, I guess). Then there's "Countryside Quest", in which you get to play as a character of your own design with your own pawn (but you get preset weapons, no choosing those) and fight a

gryphon

. All in all the demo took maybe 15 minutes to play through.

Mechanics seem all right though, assuming the actual game is more open and less linear than the demo and it could be pretty sweet.

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I didn't really enjoy the demo, but the wider game itself might still be interesting. And it's a co-op game at its heart, I hope anyway.

The controls are fiddly, especially shooting arrows. All feels clunky in the extreme after playing a lot of Dark Souls and Demon's Souls recently but probably passable when you get used to it.

The fights felt very drawn out; doing tiny amounts of damage for a really long time through a din of looping overly dramatic music (always a dumb mistake in safe tutorial stages where there's no genuine threat) and repetetive combat chatter garbage.

Not impressed by the big black bars at the top and bottom of the screen, and still a shitty frame-rate at the best of times.

The character creator is good, and much more varied than usual. And you can make some proper freaks.

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Have played through the demo a couple of times and loved it. It feels like a fantasy version of Lost Planet 2, I know that will lose the game a few points to some people (it shouldn't because Lost Planet 2 is fantastic).

The reason for that is that the Chimera fight and the Gryphon fight can last a while or not very long at all depending on where you hit them. On one playthrough it took me a while to kill the Chimera and the Gryphon was a cake walk. On my second attempt, once I knew what the Chimera wasn about, I climbed up onto the beast (in a similar fashion to Shadow of the Colossus) and wailed on its weak points. It was dead in a matter of minutes. With the Gryphon I actually ran away from it and did a bit of exploring. There are some amusing outcomes if you wander too far with the demo being limited to 1.5 Gig. The third attempt had the Gryphon kill me when I got too cocky and stood right in front of it.

My point is that this might be an RPG but it sits in the 'hit the not so glowy weak spot' Capcom school of design. The HUD can be made a lot less busy if you go into the options settings in the Main Menu and turn off the tutorial text, Pawn chatter etc.

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Eurogamer's review is out and it is a hearty 7/10.

However, Joystiq was less than enthusiastic. I didn't really like the review but it might be because I am so enthused about the release. Just 4 more days and I can be playing it.

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I didn't like that Joystiq review either. Warning bells go off for me when people start talking about a game being repetitive as a bad thing.

I think it's just incredibly lazy if that's the argument somebody is going to as a means to express their dislike for a game, because games are so fundamentally about repetitive actions. It says to me that person doesn't understand why they play games, and is unable to perceive or articulate what it is that they actually don't like about the game.

Anyways, I did end up giving the demo a shot and mostly quite liked it, found the combat mechanics really very interesting. I did have some problems with it though, and the ones that stood out most to me were the camera being terrible, and me definitely finding the party AI to be quite flawed. The latter of which is perhaps expected, because i honestly cannot think of a single recent Capcom game where co-operative AI was acceptably capable or even really functional on a basic level. (Looking at you, RE5 and Lost Planet 2.)

WIth that said, i've heard conflicting reports about the pawns getting "smarter" as they earn more experience, which then sounds like a case of terrible design as opposed to terrible execution of a design. If nothing else, it still seems there's a stark division in opinion on whether or not the AI in the game is any good. Either way, i'm getting a little tired of RPG's that let questionable party AI's make complex tactical choices on their own, the apparent lack of control that Dragon's Dogma affords to the player is a definite turn-off.

Also, has there been any word on what, exactly, Capcom's internet-infamous DLC plans for this game actually are?

Still, I am so curious about this game. It seems like a weird, flawed, and interesting thing. I want to play it, and if i had a little more cash to burn right now, i would take a risk on this.

Interested to hear your thoughts on the game, if you're going to pick it up.

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I didn't like that Joystiq review either. Warning bells go off for me when people start talking about a game being repetitive as a bad thing.

I think it's just incredibly lazy if that's the argument somebody is going to as a means to express their dislike for a game, because games are fundamentally about repetitive actions. It says to me that person doesn't understand why they play games, and is unable to perceive or articulate what it is that they actually don't like about the game.

Eh, I dunno, that might be overly harsh. I see what you're saying about games being about repetitive actions, but there are games that manage to make their core gameplay loop compelling and there are games that don't, and beyond that a game is more than the four buttons you use most often. Context and the implications of what the basic actions you're performing mean are equally, if not more, important. We are regularly asked as gamers to suffer a little bit of what we don't like in the course of a longer experience that appeals to us, but if the game repeatedly and consistently forces the same uninteresting actions and contexts on us, don't you think it's worth calling out?

The example that comes to mind immediately is the first Assassin's Creed. It was slammed for being repetitive, but not because of the things you actually do most often - those being run, jump and hit dudes. It was because of the overall goals that were being given, and the activities that were used to give context to those basic gameplay loops, being the same or incredibly similar over and over again. As much as I enjoyed the freerunning and the combat (and still do in current Assassin's Creed games), the game did feel repetitive. I was constantly tailing some guy to get information, or having the same kind of fistfight in an alley. At some point the names and reasons began to blur together. It was like being in a weird Third Crusade version of Groundhog Day. Some games don't need contextual variation very much, because they're about their systems, but Assassin's Creed and Dragon's Dogma are both kind of about an adventure, right? They're selling a fantasy? I don't think anyone has a fantasy of doing the same things for the same people for the same reasons constantly in the hopes it will earn them a chance to do something they find interesting in the future. Generally speaking we call that "having a job".

Basically I understand and even agree with what you're saying about games in general - though I don't necessarily consider it a good thing, but that's a discussion for another time and place - but I don't think it's fair to call the use of this term lazy. Inaccurate or vague might be a worthwhile assessment of it, though, because understanding what a reviewer probably actually means by "repetitive" actually requires a level of understanding of the meta-vocabulary of games critique in general that might not really be conducive to good communication in a public article. Also, as much as this feels like a hipster reason, the term is overused, which not only diminishes its impact as a criticism, but opens the door for exactly this kind of set of differing viewpoints on what a simple word might mean. In the end I'm inferring and speculating just as much as you are, and that's because hundreds of reviews over the past decades have used the term "repetitive" - and trying to figure out who is using it in a thoughtful way and who is just picking their "games review word of the day" calendar off their desk is becoming more and more difficult.

Alternatively this reviewer might just have found the game boring, but thought that "boring" doesn't sound as official and respectable as "repetitive". In which case I wish he'd just said boring rather than using another word that doesn't necessarily mean the same thing.

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First thing I want to say is that I think I'm going crazy, I'm sure I read that Joystiq review and found it filled with vague comments about the game being repetitive. However, looking at it again, i see a review that is doing an acceptable job breaking down what the writer feels is wrong with the game. Joystiq either significantly massaged their review, or i was thinking of another review and had conflated it with Joystiq's. (In which case, oops.) This being the case, it becomes difficult for me to make the points I want to make. Still, I appreciate the response, I think we do agree on a lot of points.

However, for the first two paragraphs of your response, i would argue that you've successfully articulated the kinds of points a review should be making instead of the kind of generalities i feel constitute inelegant criticism. It's way too much information to realistically expect a reader would simply infer from such broad terms as the aforementioned, and it's often giving the writer too much credit to assume such depth of meaning.

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However, for the first two paragraphs of your response, i would argue that you've successfully articulated the kinds of points a review should be making instead of the kind of generalities i feel constitute inelegant criticism. It's way too much information to realistically expect a reader would simply infer from such broad terms as the aforementioned, and it's often giving the writer too much credit to assume such depth of meaning.

I'm going to be honest, as I was reading the post back myself I started wondering if I wasn't tacitly agreeing with you by having to explain better ways to express the meaning that might be lurking behind the term "repetitive". So yeah, at this point I'm actually just going to fall back on the idea that the term itself isn't necessarily worthless, but it gets overused and improperly used so much in reviews these days that the onus probably needs to be on the writer to decently explain themselves rather than hoping the audience will infer a thoughtful and nuanced line of thinking.

Back on topic I would really like to hear what people think of Dragon's Dogma because I've been really unsure whether to bother even so much as renting it, the coverage of it pre-release has made me swing back and forth between interested and not quite a few times.

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Someone, anyone who has bought this game tell me what you think! I want to know, as I can't help but think the series the game is obviously based on (The Elderscrolls and Bethesda) have gotten lazy and maybe doesn't even really care about the Elderscrolls as a series anymore, instead just banking on repetitive, thoughtless design and their marketing team to make sales in what was once a series that epitomized detailed and thoughtful worlds.

And on the topic of being repetitive, I would point easily to the game Go, or chess if you prefer. But Go is more relevant, as you only ever have one action each time, place your token (marble, ball, what have you) in an appropriate slot. It is never the less one of the most complex games ever created. Thus the range and available consequences of any one action, no matter how repetitive and narrow, can make an entire game.

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Someone, anyone who has bought this game tell me what you think! I want to know, as I can't help but think the series the game is obviously based on (The Elderscrolls and Bethesda) have gotten lazy and maybe doesn't even really care about the Elderscrolls as a series anymore, instead just banking on repetitive, thoughtless design and their marketing team to make sales in what was once a series that epitomized detailed and thoughtful worlds.

I am so curious about your display of disdain towards Bethesda. I mean, are you just unhappy about TESO, or did you not like Skyrim? Not trying to protect a sacred cow or anything, i'm genuinely interested in knowing what the experience was that had led you to feeling like Skyrim was a thoughtlessly and carelessly made game. Divergent opinions are so interesting!

And on the topic of being repetitive, I would point easily to the game Go, or chess if you prefer. But Go is more relevant, as you only ever have one action each time, place your token (marble, ball, what have you) in an appropriate slot. It is never the less one of the most complex games ever created. Thus the range and available consequences of any one action, no matter how repetitive and narrow, can make an entire game.

I quite like this thought.

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That was interesting. Good to see some of the gameplay, which does look quite fun. I really, really hate the aesthetic though. And the narrative seems more of the same; I guess you'd play this for fun hack and slash, not for immersion in an interesting world.

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Friend is already playing and loving it. Amazon have not shipped my copy yet and I am chomping at the bit. I know I am not going to be able to play it all weekend because I am away but I just really want to start playing it damnit.

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I also have a friend playing through it right now that is way into it, it's making it very hard to hold off on this one.

From hearing talk about the game, i get the impression that the sharp difficulty curve that a lot of pre-release reviews were complaining about isn't actually much of a problem in the post-launch game. If you hit a wall, you don't grind for hours, you just go temporarily hire a tough pawn through the now active online portion of the game.

Very recently, there were some similar things going on with Dark Souls where you would see tons of pre-release reviews with no insight about how the elaborate metagame impacted that experience.

This probably needs to stop happening, with this kind of passive multiplayer thing as a continuing and growing trend.

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Okay, so I started up the game and beat the tutorial section from the demo and got into the game as my new avatar. I then proceeded to fight a Dragon by climbing up its hind leg and poking it in the arse. Within 20 minutes I found myself setting fire to a Cyclops then climbing on him and stabbing him in the eye until he died.

Awesome fun so far, will be linking to screen grabs as soon as I can, my female Strider called Dave will be killing fools left, right and centre.

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Nice to see some positive comments on it here, reviews seem... mixed, but I have hopes for this being an enjoyable game with some small issues. Maybe it's more appropriate to say that the true enjoyment of this game doesn't really fit with reviews are usually written. Either way, seriously thinking about this one.

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Yeah, please keep the impressions coming, particularly whether that 'repetitive' thing from upthread is an issue. I'm hoping I can get more dragons into my life.

(I like that thought about Go as well. The complexity comes from the mechanism being extremely relational - the value and significance of the move is contextual. The repetition of Assassin's Creed, while based on more complex and interlocked mechanisms, lacks any real contextual change. There's little value derived from this sit-down-and-eavesdrop mission as opposed to that sit-down-and-eavesdrop mission.)

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Loving the exploration. The motivation for it is to find out what weird creature is next going to appear. It can be immensely intense and rewarding. As your pawns fight people they learn how best to kill stuff. My dude has already adpated his tactics to be more in line with his opponents, letting me drop Harpies before rushing in and hitting them.

It is exciting stuff to walk into a new area and then wondering what boss creature is going to try and fuck you up.

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