Much Ado About Everything

I finished another game.  This one was fairly short – though as a first-person shooter, it’s not expected to be nearly as long as an RPG.  Still, it should’ve been longer.  Luckily, I haven’t paid full price for it.

I have to say it – majority of game designers these days seem to be freakin’ morons.  I’d love to yell “idiots” at them!  Games are supposed to be fun.  Test my brain or my reflexes, not my patience!  This one, like so many others lately, equates fun with frustration.  So their words start with the same letter.  Oookay.  Uhm, that doesn’t mean they’re the same.  I mean, what else would you call a game where you don’t die in either of two boss fights (in other words, you defeat the boss on the first try), yet you have to replay certain “normal” sequences a dozen times?  Unbalanced to the max.  Normally in a PC game you can work around these design errors by using quicksave feature.  Unfortunately, there isn’t one in this game – yet another one of those “multiplatform” games where everything caters to the lowest common denominator so the PC version ends up having the functionality of a console version.  Oh, and you can’t skip the cutscenes (such as they are) either.  If you have to replay the sequence that comes just after the cutscene, God help you.  If anything else can be defended, there is no, absolutely no defence for not being able to skip cutscenes in a game, at least on the second go through any given one.

Perhaps it’s because game designers don’t have lives these days.  How can one expect originality or common sense from people who do only one thing other than sleep and eat?  Work is their life, and whether they recognize it or not, they suck at anything that requires more than just use of their craft.  Unfortunately, creativity arises from diversity, not conformity.  No wonder most games these days lack it to an extreme.

Whatever the case, the only thing that looks well in this game is its visuals.  They aren’t original but they do look fine.  Other stuff just doesn’t work.  The so-called mutant mode is useless – or if it isn’t, then where is a tutorial or at least in-game text explaining how to use it properly?  They never explain what the hell are two of the attacks you can do for (other than the melee which they do explain but which is useless as usually there’s lots of enemies around you and it’s a one-hit-kill if they get near you).  And then there are ultra-frustrating sequences, mostly involving a particular kind of shielded enemy that keeps generating other enemies ad infinitum.  It is very hard to kill its shield, and while you’re doing that you have to mind (and when necessary fight) the enemies it creates – but that is not the main problem.  As if it wasn’t difficult enough, they make sure you can’t use circle-strafing by putting you on a narrow path hanging above the abyss.  And blocking even that little space you have with obstacles (though they can and should be used as cover).  Oh and did I mention one-hit-kill from both melee range and from long range (grenades)?  While you’re attacking the enemy that generates other enemies, those other enemies can and will do attacks that will make your cover useless.  Is that all, you ask?  Of course not!  Imagine then getting a supposedly very powerful gun, and even reading from a console found on one level that it’s supposed to work great against those annoying shields.  In fact when you fire it, it basically kills all the enemies currently present on screen, even if they’re not very close.  And it lasts at least 5 seconds.  You’d think it’d at least weaken the shield, right?  Wrong!!  It will have – as far as I could determine – no effect on it whatsoever!  Additionally, if you fire such super powerful weapon at an automated turret – it won’t have any effect either.  What was again the purpose of it?  Even as explained by the information found in the game?  Wow, some really sick mind was working on making this game.  Fun!  Yeah, right.  People with such sick minds need to be fired, on the street, with no friends, and forced to reconsider their sins.  No, I’m not joking.  Out of the gaming industry!  Give us our fun back!  Or at least provide quicksave so that we can work around your stupid designs.

As you can notice, I was thoroughly pissed off by this game.  If it only was the only one of that type.  If only.  Wild Arms 4 has a whole bunch of ultra-stupid platform sequences.  Uhm, hello?  These aren’t games for the pokemon crowd.  Only idiots think that plenty of timed jumps – especially when you make the hardest one the last and a mistake means all over – are fun.  Idiots or small children.  C’mon people, grow up and put some intelligent puzzles in games.  Not cheap jump-o-crap.  And if you really want to do so, at least make sure that one mistake doesn’t undo all of previous hard work.  Because having to redo everything isn’t funny.  That right there reveals your stupidity or malicousness, either of which have no place in a $69.99 piece of entertainment software.  Jerks.