Freedom Force Vs The Third Reich: Game Design Review

Released about 3 years after the original Freedom Force, Freedom Force vs The Third Reich is a direct sequel to Freedom force.

Freedom Force 3rd Reich is basically Freedom Force except with a new storyline. Which I think is a real shame. I loved the original Freedom Force and I definitely love this one. But rather expanding on the gameplay, the creators have only created new missions and a couple of new characters. The entire game feels too much like an extended storyline and a couple of new characters thrown in rather than any substantial improvements or mechanics.

From a gameplay mechanics and usability perspective, the Freedom Force series nails everything about a superhero game should nail:

• You have a team of 4 super heroes with various powers and abilities with all sorts of super hero abilities.
• All stats and bonuses and attacks are labelled very clearly breaking down you exactly all the information you need about each attack for example, that the attack is ranged attack, takes 2 seconds to complete and does energy damage in addition to normal damage for example and will deal 7 damage to the opponent.
• When you hold down right over an enemy or terrain you are given a list of possible actions your currently selected Hero can perform
• A very fun physics engine - You can pick up lamp posts and cars and debris and hurl them at enemies and damage buildings. Some attacks even allow you to hurl enemies upwards or away with great force which is great for deal additional damage when they land.
• Levelling up is similarly quite easy and straightforward, you level up the previous skill up to level 3, and then you can purchase. Although the upgrade path is linear and you can't alter the superheroes, you can create your character using existing characters models or your own character modesl with all the powers available to you to give to the characeter. This custom character can be quite expensive or cheap depending on many powers or weaknesses you give him or her.
• There are battle rooms and challenges.
  

Unfortunately, what I am critical off is the lack of anything truly new or innovate. I thought a sequel would at least mix things up a bit and give some additional ideas in the game. But no, it's a linear campaign from start to finish.

What features could they have included in Freedom Force and the 3rd Reich?

• A world map maybe with optional quests or storyline to unlock and optional missions depending on your choices in the campaign.
• Increasing squad size from 4 to 6 maybe?
• Group move where everyone moves togehter as a group and the same speed hasn't been implemented. Faster characters will travel towards enemies and get that before slower characters.
• Synergy and bonuses - For example Man O' War and Sea Urchin are a team, so why not have some sort of synergy bonus when you use them in the same mission?
• Simultaneous attacks - Combo attacks like the ones seen in Chrono Trigger where both characters combine their powers would be cool.
• More time puzzles or missions? One of my most favourite missions in the game was a time puzzle where your actions in the present would affect the past. Considering the screwing up of time/space/reality was a big part of this game, they could have made even more missions like this. Maybe even have it so that you can play both teams at the same time! For example Chrono Trigger on the Super Nintendo gave you several time periods to travel in freely and your actions in the past could actually change the future!
• More character options to customise the appearance of your custom characters? You can use existing models but some sort of better customisation utility would have been nice.
• New Game+ Start the game again except with the stats of your Heroes already at the same level as they were in your old game.
• Needs more new enemies - There aren't that many new ones.
• More vehicles - You do get to control the tank for a while. Would be nice to control some sort of Freedom mobile or something or be able to hijack more stuff.

It's more of the same which is a good thing. It hits all the right notes and is still one of the best superhero themed squad based games especially with the custom character option but I am disappointed that a game which came 3 years after originally hasn't matured at all.

It's now available in a collection with the original Freedom Force so do buy it in a collection and play them back to back. If you love squad-based tactical games and superheroes, buy the Freedom Force Collection which contains both games. Now available on various platforms. It won't disappoint.

Why Games are Art

My good friend Shaun (a physicist) started a new blog (mostly about science) and invited me to do a guest blog on why games are art. Check out my post on why Games are Art.

Blood Omen: Legacy of Kain Vs Legacy of Kain Defiance

After a long while, I've finally been able to get Blood Omen PC version working on my computer and have just finished Blood Omen: Legacy of Kain (the first game) after playing through Soul Reaver, Soul Reaver 2 and Legacy of Kain: Defiance (the fifth and last game). The only game I haven't played is Blood Omen 2 which seems quite hard to obtain on the PC. I thought I would just run through my thoughts on the design of the games.

Blood Omen: Legacy of Kain
My overall impression of Blood Omen has been a positive one despite its age. It's a Zelda-like open world action game in many respects and it deserves its status as one of the best action RPGs. It has a dark unique atomosphere, good storyline, great voice acting and memorable characters. It's level design is quite logical in most cases and some of the puzzles are quite clever as well. Many dungeons have a clear picture at their entrance indicating what power you'll get and most of the dungeon save the last ones are of good playable length (no more 15 minutes between save points). It strikes a good balance between exploration and reward of your next power or ability. There are also a number of secrets and specials you can unlock during the course of the game. I love all the various spells, items and gory ways you can kill opponents and the ability to morph into gaseous form and werewolf form.

There are a couple of issues with the game which I think could have been done better
1) Faster attacks - For some strange reason, enemies just slightly attack faster than you and I have to do that whole run away, wait for enemy to attack, return and attack. This is very frustrating in my opinion as I always feel that you should be moving forward to attack not retreating with your back turned to the enemey. There were some occasions where I ended up being cornered and got killed because I couldn't strike fast enough. He's suppose to be a superhuman vampire yet can't quite swing faster than some of the enemies.
2) Slightly faster movement - I think this might be something to do with the fact that the game requires slowdown utility but Kain walks a bit too slowly and could have used a bit of speedup.
3) Bat shrines which act as teleportation points are often off the main travelling 'track' and its easy to miss them sometimes.
4) Some of the required abilities require you to search - I don't mind searching for optional abilities but the caves or dungeons with the required abilities should be forced to obtain them. There were one or two instances in the game where I was stuck not realising I had missed crucial powers until I read a walkthrough and realised there was a dungeon I had to backtrack to.
5) Some enemies are too powerful - Some of the enemies had way too much health and it was just easier to avoid them altogether diminishing the point of an action combat game.
6) Faster mana regeneration - Mana regeneration too slow in the game and needs to be faster.
7) Moon caves are silly idea - There are secret caves in the game which open only when the moon is full (ie. every 30 days of in game time). I finished the game in about 35 days so this is very bad design choice as it basically means you have to wait around for secrets to happen.
8) Power effects are the same - Some of the powers are the same as earlier except they do more damage or have a longer duration and cost more mana. It would probably have been better if they had simply completely replaced the old power with the new power instead and kept the mana usage the same. It would reduce the difficulty level but as mentioned the game is hard as it is already.

Legacy of Kain: Soul Reaver
Played this several years back so my memory isn't too great on this but I do remember that it was really fun because it had a variety of environments and really awesome boss characters with top notch coice acting. The storyline is very dark and is about how you are seeking revenge against your brothers and Kain I also liked the fact it was impossible to die and you merely return back to the spectral realm and when you get killed there you simply return back to the lake of the dead where you first started.

The game also does something very smart with gliding, when you reach a platform, Raziel will automatically drop on to the platform rather than continuing to glide. This is so much better than other games where you might accidentally overglide or overjump a platform.

Things that could have been improved
1) Ducking/crouching is useless in the game
2) Repetitive nature of some the puzzles
3) Story doesn't actually end
4) A bit too open ended in some respects and hard to find some of the powerups
5) Teleportation runes can get confusing
6) Some puzzles required spectral shifting which warps the environment but it wasn't always clear as to when exactly this should happen
7) Combat is okay but could be better, hard to attack multiple enemies and its easier sometimes just to run.
8) Hard to throw enemies into spike
9) Due to the apocalyptic themes, its a bit too grey and brown sometimes. Could have used a bit of cheerful colour now and again.

Soul Reaver 2
I played this about 7 months ago. Continuing the storyline of Soul Reaver, this game had improved graphics and had you playing in a time when Nosgoth was still green and fresh. Areas are much larger and puzzles more varied.

As before, there are several things which bring the game down:
Fighting is better but enemies can still sometimes overwhelm you.
Lack of cool bosses - Soul Reaver had very cool bosses and there are none in this game.
Spells and glyphs have disappeared replaced with Reaver abilities
Storyline is harder to follow as it involves time travel through different time periods.

Overall a worthy entry as Raziel continues to fight destiny and uncover more secrets. The game's improved in many areas and the story has become more complex. The main issue is probably the lack of cool bosses and the combat system could still use more work. It was getting there however.

Legacy of Kain: Defiance
After playing through Soul Reaver one and Soul Reaver. It seems as if they took the good points of what made Blood Omen and Soul Reaver 1 & 2 great and made them mediocre. The only great thing left is the voice acting which is top notch once again. The combat system has been updated and much more responsive but feels they should have done more.

Here are the things which I've found problematic
1) Combat requires more attacks. The basics are all good and there are some special attacks but it needs more variety. It might be unfair to compare to Devil May Cry but I think combat is a bit half heartened, Kain and Raziel behave almost exactly the same in combat. There are subtle differences but not enough.
2) Missing cool special abilities - Once again spell casting abilites for both Kain and Raziel have been removed and replaced with reaver powers again but these can only be activated when the reavers are charged through battle. I don't seem why they couldn't have had a separate mana bar which allows you could unleash other powers. Also the spell casting abilites looks boring. Usually just involving Kain or Raziel swinging the reaver around their heads with colour waves or attacking the ground. Telekinesis is fun but again could have been so much more particularly as Raziel's full telekinesis powers don't quite kick in until later on.
3) No cool boss fights - There are a few but many of the boss fights are very repetitive and there are maybe two or three 'different' boss fights.
4) Repetitive level design and enemies - The game makes you go through the same shrines as both Kain and Raziel which are exactly the same layout. Blood Omen and Soul Reaver had cool boss fights while Soul Reaver 2 had large unique environments. So why couldn't Defiance have both? You fight the exact same bosses everytime you visit a shrine as Raziel.Frankly that's just lazy design.

Overall, the quality of the game seems to have stagnated in Legacy of Kain: Defiance merely wanting to be average. All the required cutscenes and revelations are there including the showdown between Kain and Raziel but feels like an incomplete a game. If anything I think Blood Omen was better than Legacy of Kain: Defiance. Kain could transform into a werewolf cast various spells, eviscerate people and even control their bodies!

If you're a fan of the series then you should get this because its still okay. But if you're not already a fan, nothing in here will convince you its a good game.

Valkyrie Profile Game Design Review

Created by Tri-Ace, Valkyrie was released to much fanfare on the Playstation. It's a unique take on RPG's from a gameplay perspective and one which combines action and RPG fairly well. However I feel that Valkyrie Profile is a flawed classic because of the many bold but awkward gameplay design decisions that in my opinion tend to confuse the player and force the player to make uninformed choices rather than fun mysterious choices.

Keeping this in mind, let's go over the flaws:
Dungeons lack helpful descriptions - Dungeons get unlocked as you progress through the story but you can also revisit them to train. Unfortunately, sometimes its hard to keep track of which dungeons contain what sort of monsters and how you'll need to equip your troops.

Flawed time system - Each time you visit a location such as a town or dungeon it takes up time. When enough time passes you will move to the next chapter. As an RPG this places a real constraint on leveling up your characters appropriately.

Boring towns - Towns are generally places to get story or information about the world or quests or items. In Valkyrie Profile, because you craft items in the game menu the only reason you would visit a town or city is to obtain a character's special weapon and talk to people to learn more about the backstory.

Unfortunately the backstory isn't really fleshed out and you can't for example get side quests from townsfolk so there really isn't a reason to return back to them. Furthermore, visiting towns require precious time periods which could be better spent training giving you even less incentive to return.

Breakable weapons - Weapons that break permenantly are just annoying and they're very expensive as well. Worse, they aren't like items with limited use. Instead there is a 'chance' of them breaking. In the end you really only use them against bosses which I suspect was the intent all along or I would simply reload from my last save. It doesn't add anything to the game and I discourages players from experimenting and finding the best combinations.

Storylines could be interactive, link better and world could be more dynamic - Unfortunately, it seems the world of Midgard doesn't change enough if at all during the course of your travels nor does it seem to be affected in any way shape or form by any of your actions. I was hoping that your actions and level of success would somehow affect the wars between humans and new locations would open up open up. As I found out however, Valkyrie has very little effect on the human world. This is a really missed chance! Why shouldn't you be able to transform towns into cities or do something which actually affects the 'history' of the world or at least open up new side quests? There is from reading a game guide one or two secret side quests but that's about it.

Also once they join your party characters don't really interact too much with the each other or the real world either. Again another missed chance. It would cool to at the very least have a location or town or where you could visit and you could chat with them to gain clues or something. Instead, the only time you find out more about the character is after you send them to Asgard and you read about their exploits and replay conversations of them interacting with the gods and goddesses there as they level up!

Formation System could be better - Combat is blend of turns and action. During your turn, you push the relevant character's action button causing the character to attack. This works really well and is quite engaging. Unfortunately the actual formation system feels a bit limited because of this. The action buttons are mapped to the triangle, square, circle and cross buttons of the Playstation controller. As a result,that's the only formation you can make. This also makes it difficult to have 2 ranged attackers in your group because one of them will always be exposed to attacks and archers and mages take huge amounts of damage. This makes things somewhat unbalanced as a result.

Flawed combat magic system - Unfortunately its way too easy to spam group magic attacks if you have 2 or mages in the group. Usually this is enough to kill an entire enemy group unless they are resistant to magic. For me this created a imbalance in the difficulty where I would breeze through spamming group magic attacks until I hit the magic resistant enemies and find my warriors too week to do anything requiring me to retrain them and not spam magic attacks.

Poor experience system and flawed 'character sacrifice' system - Unfortunately the experience system is your typical 'kill monsters' level up system. You also get experience for performing certain actions or completing certain side quests. You can also purchase special abilities such as the ability to dodge or perform special attacks in combat. All okay so far. However the game has lots of characters and they only level up while in battle with you. When they join is also somewhat randomised so they might actually join in a later chapter where they arrive naturally underpowered. Yes, there are bonus experience points that can be stored and distributed to all party members but unfortunately it still isn't enough. The game therefore does not really provide incentive to experiment or use new characters since they will woefully underpowered when you use them.

One of the unique points of the game is that you need to send characters to Asgard to aid the war in Asgard. Sending experienced characters with the right statistics and abilities to Asgard will result in Freya, one of the other goddesses, praising your performance and granting you items and more points to create items.

As mentioned at the top of the article, the the time limit for each chapter also makes it difficult to train characters since there is only a limited number time periods. The only incentive to train new characters in fact is because you have to send characters to Asgard to help your forces in Asgard in order to get a better evaluation and more points to purchase/craft equipment with. Again, this is where the time system and the character sacrifice system sort of falls down. Because they made the game difficult, give you underpowered units and limited time periods, the game ends of punishing you for if you train up a set of characters too narrowly and neglect to train the other characters but also if you train too broadly. Its just difficult to know when you first play through the game whether you're doing things 'right' or 'wrong'.

Flawed reward system - Whenever you come across a special artifact, you are given a huge warning sign to surrender to Odin (thereby losing the item) or face a drop in evaluation. This is a way of controlling the difficulty in the game. As a gamer there are two problems with this. First the huge warning sign encourages players to think that the trade off between evaluation and item is quite significant and secondly you don't really know what the artifact does until you actually acquire it. Realistically, you should keep the item and then sacrifice it later in the menu if you don't really it need.

No New Game+ - Once you finish the game, that's it. You can't carry over your items and stats or whatever to make your new game easier. Again, hindering the player when they wish to enjoy the game again. Not many people would be happy to relevel up again. Furthermore, the higher the difficulty, the more dungeons you have to explore (note dungeons are NOT randomly generated). This would have been really helpful in encourging players in tackling the higher difficulties.

Bad ending - For a lot of RPGs the end of the Journey should be a powerful evocative one. Valkyrie just doesn't do that. Normal Ending is very strange and doesn't hint at the true story or even how to attain the true story. You practically have to read a walkthrough to realise there are 3 multiple endings.

Conclusion
Overall a game which has hints of greatness, replayability and interesting ideas bogged down by indecisiveness and quirks that discourage experimentation. I can only recommend it because it is so unique and treads new gameplay grounds with a wonderful art style, just don't expect a consistent polished experience.

Deus Ex: Invisible War: Game Design Review

From a gameplay and game design perspective, my overall impression was that Deus Ex: Invisible War is pretty much in the same game as Deus Ex, just improved in a variety of ways such as better graphics and more streamlined gameplay. That's not necessarily a bad thing in my opinion and I did enjoy the game. However there are numerous minor design issues I feel get in the way of the overall game. I suspect many of the problems are because of 'consolitis' having been developed for the Xbox at the same. In my game, I chose to be a African type male character focusing on stealthy non-lethal gameplay since in most other shooting games, you're forced to play a white Caucasian male that solves every thing by riddling it with bullets.

What I liked:
1) Lots of quests you can take which affects people's dialogue
2) Lots of different, weapons, gadgets and biomods
3) Well written dialogue with good voice acting
4) Game interface and inventory is clean and easy to navigate (very important for a game like this)

Issues:
1) Maps and areas are very small - This may have something to do with the limitations of the console but everything is a bit too claustrophobic and too small compared to how they would probably be in real life and when compared to the original Deus Ex. This has a rather unfortunate effect of ruining my immersion. It's hard to believe that a busy city could be so tiny. During missions I found myself often having problems finding places to hide if spotted and had to resort to turning invisible.

That being said, I do appreciate the fact that it's easy to get from your main location to where your next mission is compared to the long treks I had to make in a game like Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic. I wonder if there could be a compromise with this. Maybe have the main areas small and relatively packed with mission areas wide and sprawling? Or perhaps have a vehicle which can get you from point to point easily? Or maybe a teleport system?

2) Linear storyline seems stretched- Despite my initial hope that you would be able to play different areas etc depending on your allegiance, it doesn't really matter whose allegiance you follow in the game. You still end up in the same areas following the same major plotline being asked to do almost the same thing. If you succeed, then you move on to the next major area where the main characters will then ask you to again do something to accomplish their goals which coincidentally means doing something in the same exact location. I was hoping to have some faction specific/exclusive missions that would send me into different areas. A real wasted opportunity.

Also the main quest-givers in the game, i.e. The WTO and The Order and the later two factions seem to be a bit too forgiving to the point of being unrealistic. For example, I chose to side with the WTO early on in the game and The Order still kept trying to convince me to join them and sharing me confidential information on my next target etc. and who I should report too. Considering I had continually disobeyed their orders, I'm quite surprised they were only mildly annoyed rather than ordering my assassination except very near the end.

Also, all factions always seem to know exactly where I was and what I was up to and continuously communicated with me directly. In terms of game design, this was required in order to give me the full variety of choices and missions but in terms of storyline purposes didn't really make sense. It's hard to believe that somebody whose actions they can keep track of so well would be such a major threat to their plans. Again, breaking the immersion. Personally I think they should have design it in a way so that you had to initiate contact with the faction and there would be a faction bar indicating how trusted you were by the faction and whether they would accept you finishing a mission.

3) Faction rewards could be better handled - The game advises you to carefully choose a faction's benefits and advantages but the game doesnt' specifically what benefits you can accrue. I don't recall any particular amazing benefits to be honest. Just a couple of credits, an additional biomod and some minor additional information. I don't know, it just didn't feel different enough. I kind of wanted to for example, be able to call for backup or have access to special faction specific biomods.

4) Non-lethal weapons seem pointless - Like the original Deus Ex, it doesn't seem to be any real reward to non-lethal weapons aside from one or two characters complimenting you and the 'feel good factor'. This time round however, at least the non-lethal weapons seem relatively on par with the normal weapons and you can actually stop people fairly easily with them compared to the first game.

Also I discovered a bug where characters who were unconscious regain consciousness when you re-enter a map and then started fighting allies who have entered the scene to secure the area.

5) AI isn't very smart - AI is okay but unfortunately the AI just doesn't seem to work in pairs or groups very well and is almost suicidal which unfortunately tends to affect the game dialogue. For example, the AI often run into grenades their comrades have thrown and failing to take cover when I shoot them. Overall the environments also don't lend themselves well to any real tactical options.

Overall, storyline is good, gameplay is solid even if areas are a bit small. Factions and faction specific benefits could have been handled better. Won't be a game-changer but if you liked Deus Ex, the sequel is still very much an enjoyable story-driven RPG/action hybrid. I'm not sure why people don't like it. It's not ground breaking as the first game and there are some odd design choices at times but nothing too terrible that would make me hate the entire game like other people seem to do.

Shadowgrounds Survivor: Game Review

Overall, I liked the original Shadowgrounds. It offered fun shooting and interesting weapons.

Shadowgrounds Survivor seemed to have fairly good reviews and being a sequel with additional classes, I thought it would be even more fun than the original. From a game design perspective, additional classes means being able to truly draft levels and gameplay to suit a variety of players and that means that you can experiment more with the gameplay and create even more interesting game modes and situations.

What I liked:

• Overall still fun like Shadowgrounds Survivor
• Weapons are balanced and feel right as do their new abilities.
• RPG upgrade system balanced.

What I disliked:

• Shallow plot which doesn't even explain anything to new players.
• Grenades seem too slow for any tactical use
• Characters only have 1 special move - The developers could have easily added even more moves.
• Seems to lack any new enemies maybe even less than the original Shadowgrounds.
• No boss battles which Shadowgrounds had.
• Multiplayer needs better support - You can only play multiplayer on the same computer.
• Really short and needs more interesting level design
• Feels more like an expansion pack than a true sequel
• Ending isn't very exciting, just you defending a computer room from four directions

I originally paid $15 for Shadowgrounds and then bought this on the humble indie bundle. Shadowgrounds and Survivor is probably worth around $5 - $10 as a bundle. I would recommend to go play the free Alien Swarm first however and that's pretty much what you'll get with both except longer.

Overall, a hugely wasted opportunity to something better, bigger and even more explosive. I understand Frozenbyte is a small independent company, but I'm sure they could have done way better with just a little more thought.

Deus Ex Invisible War: Troubleshooting

Like many others, I encountered the menu freeze bug with audio looping. The reason for this is Deus Ex: Invisible War not recognising multiple core CPUs. Alot of advice online says to set Dx2.exe to one CPU core. This didn't work for me when I just set Dx2.exe.

The Solution
What worked was to set both DX2.exe and Ion Launcher.exe to affinity 1 (use just one CPU core ) using a program called Set Affinity from Edgemeal Software here. The website looks a bit dodgy looking but the program works fine. Note you can't play the game and Control+Alt+Delete out. The game doesn't allow you to do that during the startup sequence so you'll need this program or a program which does it before the program starts.

Also if you have an nvidia card, set the Threading Optimisation to 'Off' as well for this particular program. Not sure if this helped but it can't hurt.