Evil Within is Awful

That is all.

Okay that's not all. It's really that bad. Poor Shauna had such high hopes for the game. I think she was expecting scary and instead we got blurry graphics, poor performance, terrible controls and all around bad gameplay. All it has going for it at this point is a few intuitive game mechanics. I think this is the first game we have changed the difficulty on to make it easier. And that's saying something when we played all of Alien Isolation on HARD.

I actually had to take a break from fighting the butcher boss. He's the one with the chainsaw in the barn on chapter 3. I was so angry and stressed out it mixed with my upset stomach and the heat, and I literally ended up needing a 10 minute break from the game as I sat on Shauna's couch with a bag of frozen hashbrowns on my face. So we have now coined the term "Hashbrowns-on-face bad" to describe a game. Might just shorten that to "hashbrown bad," but that would suggest that hashbrowns are anything but delicious.

Before this boss you have to wander around this town area using the "stealth" mode because your weapons and fighting skills are shit. You can't see half the traps. You can't see half of everything. We had to reduce the resolution and graphics quality just to get the game to run at 25-30fps. Anything higher than the reduced settings gives us 10-11fps. This is all BEFORE Fraps is a factor. Actually we had so many issues even getting the game to run at all. I had to upgrade drivers, turn off settings, edit some files and FINALLY it ran. Even before we reduced the graphics quality, the character moves in this lurching, drunken gait. We had to turn off motion blur because we were getting nauseous. It was even bad during the cinematics, which feature all these plastic looking people.

Then the controls. After playing a good 2-3 hours last night, I finally got the controls to work in my favour, but seriously, I keep hammering the R3 button to crouch or run because muscle memory dictates it. I keep accidentally turning on my ass light and alerting all the zombie dudes because it's bound to L3. I pull out my gun to shoot, but then I want to switch to my fists to pummel a guy and end up shooting with my melee button because the melee button (R2) switches when you have a gun out (becomes Y...as in WHY DOES IT DO THIS?) and then L2 lets you aim and shoot, but the hip fire ends up being more accurate half the time. The inventory system lets you bind items to the D pad (figured that out last night), which helped greatly (though not with the melee issue) and sometimes when you try to use a pistol you whip out your crossbow and UGH. Then you're sprinting away from dudes, have a limited sprint, and when you run out you stand in place and catch your breath for three seconds which is long enough for a zombie to catch up and ram a pickaxe up your ass.

Realism. It's great. Except when it's not. IF the game had ways to compensate for the stamina feature, the slow-down on the stairs, the jittery and ineffective crouch system (seriously, you'll exit stealth randomly after performing certain actions), the lurching walk/run and the terrible camera (IF!), then yes, maybe we could work with this. But it doesn't. Combat is just as cumbersome (as mentioned above), the enemies arbitrarily see you when you sneak up on them, the enemies suddenly have weapons like shotguns (actually one cool aspect of the game I liked is that the AI will actually find and pick up weapons, so you often need to sneak or get to those weapons first) and they all do shit tons of damage. The traps are BS. I like the variety and they do catch me off guard and they are useful for killing unsuspecting enemies as you can lead them through trap areas, but disarming is awful. The bombs for instance. I assumed you'd get multiple turns of the needle to try and land the blue area. Nope. You get one shot to land it and if not, you explode when the needle hits the 12 0' clock position. Which, is incidentally hilarious as when you die to explosions your body just falls apart like a bloody, gooey mannequin. Your head just comically rolls off. Another great one (and quite satisfying), is when you land a headshot with a melee weapon and the zombie's head explodes you are showered with radioactive pink jam.

So yeah. Melee with weapons, when it works, is great. AI going for weapons is great. Needing to burn bodies and make sure things stay dead is great (though you can only carry FIVE MATCHES at the beginning of the game...and don't ask about where Shauna thinks he stores them). Having effects like fire and melee damage carry to other enemies and do splash damage is great. The variety of traps is cool. Everything else is disgusting. I'm to angry while playing to even pay attention to the atmosphere (or lack of) or the story while playing. All I know is that some detective dude was investigating an asylum and there's this undead ripoff Assassin's Creed assassin running around trying to be creepy, murdering random dudes and sticking knives in things and suddenly we're getting in car crashes and falling off cliffs and there's this mental patient that's important for some reason and an upgrade area with a doctor lady and...just what?

Man I'm sorry for all the typos you're going to find in there. That rant wasn't supposed to happen. Honestly, I'm more angry with this game than Awesome Possum. Yeah. You heard right. At least I expect that game to be awful. I expect the anger. When I need to run around for 30 mins trying to kill a guy cause I ran out of ammo and my only option is a spike trap (which was hard to time because Butcher McIdiot Face can't make up his mind whether he wants to get lost and confused or run at us at light speed) and need to stop to put frozen hashbrowns on my face, you know there's a problem.

Okay, Last Post about Diablo

For now...

I finished the game last night. I have to admit, in my frustration I was probably a little unfair to the game and the system, but my opinions still stand. My final thoughts on the story is that it is cheesy and clichéd, has epic cutscenes, has a neat little twist near the end and was way too short. When you calculate how long each act really took me, I'd say the game only takes about 6 hours to complete (if you don't backtrack, if you spend little time in town, if you don't die and if you don't wander around exploring). In fact, you could probably do it in less time. It's a little bit sad, but makes sense as in the real appeal to the game comes with the later, harder levels of Hell and Inferno. 

Co-op play is really the seller here, which I never expected. I hardly read anything about D3 before its release (probably should have since it may have eliminated some of my frustration...but maybe I wouldn't have bought it...who knows). I really enjoy it and I didn't think I would. I've been teaming up with a lot of my friends, which has made the game a lot more difficult (and chaotic). The story and details get a little lost, but it changes the game. It also makes all the encounters a lot more silly than when you're playing on your own.

In the end, I'll say it's a good game, it's worth a buy and has good aspects to it. Was it necessary to make? Probably 10 years ago when it was still fresh and welcome. Am I glad I have it? Yes. The story suffers, but the graphics, gameplay and co-op are way better. 

So no more complaining or analyzing it...back to my regularly scheduled blithering about Dungeon Siege.

Bored

So I'm going to take this opportunity to rant about Diablo 3, because I am pissed. I was going to wait until the end of the game to withhold my judgement, but I need to vent a little bit. I also seem to be the only person save maybe...one that seems to have negative opinions of the game so I apologize for my bitter old veteran speech.

Let me make this perfectly clear. The one aspect that REALLY gets my knickers in a knot is the ONLINE ALL THE TIME gameplay that Blizzard seems to think is necessary. This is bull shit. This means that if I want to play online, alone...as in single player without anyone else (if that wasn't already clear), I have to be signed in to my battle.net account and be logged in to a server 100% of the time. 1) The servers are always overloaded. 2) My internet connections sucks. 3) My laptop sucks. 4) Blizzard is a cash whore. OH DID I SAY THAT OUT LOUD? No you idiot this is text. God.

Seriously though, I can't play any session without the game lagging to the point where it is unplayable. The fact that I need a constant internet connection is not an asset. This means I can't play if I do not have access to the internet (to my knowledge). Maybe there's an offline mode, but I have not heard of one. If there was, I would have just set it to that in the first place. Not only that, once I add friends, they always know when I'm online, can see everything I do and there is no longer any anonymous activity. You have your full name up there 100% of the time. This is a problem for people with names like mine. I am the only one in the world with this name (again, to my knowledge) so I can't just add random strangers I know from YouTube and such without worrying about some creeper stalking me online. I see why this was done, there are good aspects to it, but this isn't going to stop trolls or people exploiting the system.

Now the actual game when I can manage to play for 10 mins without lagging out, getting disconnected, having the server go down or other stupid internet related problems, is horribly cheesy. I can't believe how cartoony it has gotten. Actually, scratch that. I knew it would get this way. Blizzard has a "style" now. We don't want dark. immersive, story-centred games. We want casual, silly games that makes Blizzard lots and lots of money! Yeah I get you're trying to appeal to a wider audience here Blizzard. I get that you want the game mechanics to be smoother and easier to understand (though I don't get why you had to hide away the option that allows you to take personal control over your skills and abilities). I get that you have the choice to take the story wherever the hell you want (no pun intended), but really, who did you honestly make this game for?

Think about it. After so many years, why make the game at all? For its fans. You didn't need this game for money. You have the World of Warcraft cash cow for that. So why make Diablo 3? I assume they wanted to appeal to that group of us that have a particular fondness for the game, but when the original developers of the game have long moved on...why bother? I'd almost prefer to be left with the masterpieces that they were. They are far out-stripped by a lot of games today. Games today have come a long way and...well they ARE much better. The games piss people like me off because I have a nostalgic love of the old games, and the new games do not meet the standards I have for the series. This is why I don't believe in remakes. I don't believe in continuing a series a decade after. It doesn't work for its fans. AND THAT IS WHY YOU MADE IT. Granted, there are new comers to the field. Well good for them. Make a new game. Keep the same universe if you want, but don't try to continue the story. Don't try pass it off as a continuation of the same series. TRY SOMETHING ELSE. This is why you were good in the past Blizzard.

Okay, so now that I've had my rant (and feel only marginally better), what's good about the game? Well, I'll admit that the social aspect is one of the only reasons I'm still playing after all my frustration. It has given me the opportunity to play with people that don't obsess over being the best or getting all the greatest items. It has given me the opportunity to spend quality time with people that I haven't seen in ages. Most of all, it's just fun to talk about all the crazy stuff in the game, the cartoony and cheesy story and how epic the cutscenes are. Yes, the cutscenes, as always, are fantastic. Cheese aside, Blizzard really gets you interested in the cutscenes. They are well done, high-scale and all round enjoyable. You forget that the plot is one of the lamest, cliched stories ever created by humanity. I watched Act II's cutscene last night (yes I'm only on Act II of normal...see the above rant) and man was it good. had my attention.

The voice acting is all over the place. Some of it is great and some of it is EXTREMELY bad. The queen at the end of the first act is pretty bad and Cain sounds like he's voiced by a young guy pretending to be an old guy (though I shouldn't be so critical after hearing how bad my voice acting its). the music is wonderful. Say what you want about Blizzard games, but no one can say they have terrible soundtracks. I love the music in these games and I'm glad to see it's just as good as it used to be.

Lastly...the cheesiness kind of works for it. Once I get over the fact that this game actually scared the shit out of me when I was younger and many of the bosses were actually intimidating, it's super hilarious. I love the physics and how bodies just cartwheel through the air at the slightest provocation. Dropping chandeliers on demon's heads and crushing others with logs. I'm playing a wizard right now and I have to admit I enjoy zapping dudes. That, and I have a GOD DAMNED LASER. Everything is better with lasers. That and I giggle constantly at how chill everyone is about demons and the forces of Hell cropping up everywhere. The Blacksmith ends up needing help killing his wife at the beginning and right after he's all "time to get back to work...now where's that darned apprentice..."

Overall, the game angers me, but it has redeeming attributes. I will continue to play it. I already have plans for a Barbarian after my wizard so that's cool. I just really needed to get that out, mostly because the hype that that game is getting from my friends and the general gaming community is just so blown out of proportion. Need a bit of a counter-balance every now and then. In return, I will try to relax a little and just enjoy it for what it is....grudgingly.