Because it’s really good, no really

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FUCK YEAH, chocolate! Thank you, that was my first submission. I feel so special, chère amie.

It’s been a while!

Here is my third game review, on a rather recent game I finished about a month ago : Dragon Age II. The game is all right. It’s all right. It’s definitely not the best RPG out there, but it remains of rather high quality, though I will admit I haven’t played many single-player RPGs lately.

Dragon Age II is a single-player dynamic RPG game. It is action-packed and allows you to control four party members at the same time, and is heavily based on positioning and careful planning of one’s limited abilities and attributes. Indeed, Dragon Age II sort of works like WoW : your characters have few abilities, one per level considering you will be about level 20 by the end of the game. This makes Dragon Age II sort of look like World of Warcraft, especially since abilities have cooldowns or can be passive. 

One main difference in gameplay compared to WoW, however, is mobility : WoW does not really rely on mobility when facing bosses, unless you are facing a boss in a PvE rather high-end raiding environment. And even then, the stakes are completely different : in Dragon Age II on high difficulty, you will literally have to kite a dragon for 10 minutes with a bow and 2 abilities (at least I had to do that), something you won’t do in WoW unless you’re up for a challenge. Additionally, there is no team play : you’re the team. You need to pause the game repeatedly to plan out positioning unless you want your retarded AI teammates to fuck up the boss fight.

This gameplay style was rather interesting, especially coupled with the highest difficulty (Nightmare). A few disappointments however : why do monsters keep popping out of nowhere?! In Dragon Age II, don’t breathe in relief when you find yourself only facing the last monster of a tough wave of opponents : there’s more coming back! From the roof, from the ground, from thin air! With only one enemy facing you, POOF, you find yourself suddenly fighting a dozen more! Better yet, they completely surround you, which does not allow for very tactical positioning. Secondly, why is the Nightmare mode so poorly done? The Nightmare mode is VERY challenging, at least it was for me. It is HARD. But what makes it hard? Your freaking team mates! Friendly fire and poorly designed tactical conditions (the conditions you use when setting up AI tactics and behaviour) make the game into a true “nightmare”, especially as monsters have much more health than your characters. As such, one poorly placed fireball may kill your rogue, but only leave the enemy with bruises. I am almost wondering why I keep finding myself in the EXACT same tunnels and areas finding the EXACT same types of monsters : your party barely ever leaves the city and the amount and variety of areas is extremely limited. Worse yet, I think there are virtually only four cave maps : they’re all the same! The cave in the mountain and the cellar : same shit! This was a heavy disappointment, as was the terrible variety of monsters.

The scenario was overall kind of dull. The story was not that breathtaking, especially as 80% of your quests will be finding a random douchebag’s daughter in a cave or killing some random demon for no apparent reason. It’s all rather linear as well. The main character is very… dull… his voice is mild and lacking sensitivity (at least the male character model), and the interaction with companions is as basic as “loving and hating”. I did really like the fact that the game involves possible romance (though getting there is overly straightforward:  just click the buttons with a heart on them), especially homosexual romances ; I truly enjoy a game that completely embraces the possibility of homosexual relationships instead of the same old perfect hero-and-princess or hero-and-tough-kid matches. 

I seem very critical, but in reality it’s not all that bad : Dragon Age II is an all right game, it’s just not the game of the year.

Review (following this method)

1. Aesthetics : A- => A

• Sound : B. The music is quite good, especially during fights, and sets a dynamic and stressful environment. The “landscape” music is not as good — too quiet — but still all right. The fighting sounds are quite good, with additions such as characters speaking when they’re in trouble, out of mana, etc. The characters (including secondary characters) all have their own voices with clear, understandable pronunciation (I’m French playing the English version, so this matters for me), but male Hawke’s voice remained stupidly dull.
• Graphics : A. Well, the graphics are great, honestly, at least according to me. I don’t see much of a flaw in character models, the environment texture is well done, there are tons and tons of well-made movie clips…
• Presentation A : the interface is well done, clean and traditional, not invasive, with intuitive controls and pre-made keyboard shortcuts. Everything you need to know is explained at the start.

Gameplay : B- => B

• Difficulty : B. There are four difficulty settings, which is quite amazing. The Nightmare mode IS REALLY challenging. The other settings are a bit mild though if you ask me, but I suppose some people just like to run through a game without dying a single time. However, the Nightmare mode was not planned enough because Nightmare-specific AI strategies haven’t been implemented : I would have wanted a “IF Character X is near enemies, do NOT cast fireball” clauses for instance.
• Type & Efficiency : C. The gameplay in Dragon Age II is interesting but not that great : I really felt like I was playing WoW at first, before enjoying the positioning techniques and use of the party and pausing, before realizing that was (almost) useless considering monsters pop out of nowhere to kill you, or considering it must be flawlessly executed during repetitive 15-minute long fights (BORING). Without these two mistakes though, I find this gameplay style promising, especially if not copied on WoW. It’s a bit simple for an RPG though.
• Lasting Appeal : B. I enjoyed playing the game, and the game is quite long (I don’t exactly know, but it took me about one or two weeks worth of regular playing to finish the game doing almost every side quest). However, I had to take a few pauses because I had gotten bored and I know I will not retry the game with another class.

Creativity : C

• Scenario : C. Meh. It’s almost below average for me, because the story really isn’t all that interesting and it’s hard to get involved in the quests and archives (the “Codex”). There is still a lot of lore all over the place though, which is a much better score than many RPGs.
• Game Type & Mechanics : C. Dragon Age II is not terribly original, and not terribly boring and retro : it’s not WoW, it’s not Diablo II, it’s not Baldur’s Gate II nor is it Mass Effect ; it’s Dragon Age II.

End Grade : 

(A*2 + B*3 + C*2) /7 = B approximately

Dragon Age II is not the game of the year, but it’s worth a try. Especially if you’re on a Mac like poor me.

[This is a repost, no idea where the first one went]

“Finally!” Duke Nukem Forever is coming out. After about a dozen years of waiting, every Duke Nukem 3D fan out there was at least a little excited by the release of Duke Nukem Forever. We were all looking forward to a dynamic, action-packed and modern Duke Nukem, filled with chauvinism, testosterone, strippers and portable rocket launchers.

Yet the game is a disappointment. This game would have been good a few years ago, but right now it just seems blatantly outdated, for instance graphically. More importantly, the gameplay is incredibly disappointing : once I discovered I could only carry two weapons at once, I already knew the game was doomed to be crappy and nothing like the old Duke Nukem 3D, where you could carry each type of weapon without limits. Moreover, the monsters are nothing like DN3D’s : they’re fucking tough. And the fact they are tough completely ruins the game : in the past, they were all over the place, they tricked you, appeared in your back ; they all exploded with one rocket shot. Now the rockets are useless, limited to 5 ammo, only usable properly against bosses. Finally, the environment is stupidly linear and narrow : in DN3D, you could actually run around a lot. Open spaces, different places to go, different ways to get to the end, for instance by using the jet pack. Actually, let’s talk about the jet pack : it doesn’t exist anymore. But then, neither does the scuba diving kit, nor does the acid-resistant boots. But then, the medical kit does not exist anymore either. And you know why? Because now , Duke Nukem has Call Of Duty - style health. It’s called “Ego”, but it works the same : when you get hurt, you automatically regenerate. This was the last required step to create a completely different game from the original Duke Nukem, as having this type of health completely changes the gaming style and the difficulty.

At least, they kept — and almost overdid at times — the one-liners, the chauvinism and the tits which made Duke Nukem 3D’s pixelated naked posters ever so fascinating when I was  11. In my opinion though, while sometimes this part of the game is a little exaggerated — having to find a dildo for a stripper then getting a lap dance, honestly? — other times it is severely lacking : the chicks can only be found in a small part of the game, before The Queen, and that’s the only time you get to sorta interact with them and watch their impregnated stomachs burst into baby monsters. The Earth doesn’t seem all that “invaded” in this game, when you think about it, which is drastically different from DN3D.

Now that I’m done ranting, here’s the review for each criterion.

Review (following this method)

1. Aesthetics : B- => B

• Sound : B. Well, overall the sound is pretty good. The music is good, Duke Nukem’s voice is great even translated into French, and we can hear a few if not all classic DN3D musics. The monsters sound funny, which I find very appropriate, and the one liners are frequent. The atmosphere is not as great as in DN3D though : I miss the growls in the background, the sudden noises of one of those god damn flying teleporting monsters popping up in your back, that made the game all the more thrilling.
• Graphics : C. Meh. The game just looks old. They seem to have spent a lot of work on making the bare tits of the chicks look acceptable, but they forgot to fix their hair, which look like a bunch of blonde sticks coming out of their scalps. The environment isn’t great, it’s quite narrow, it makes you jump where you’re not supposed to. It’s decent, but meh.
• Display : B. Let’s admit that the HUD is not invasive. But all in all, some parts are a little confusing : it took me a while to figure out which of my specials was a can of beer and which was steroids, and it took me even longer to figure out exactly what they did. It also took me a little while to figure out what the game meant when it showed me buttons to push or move when I interacted with some objects. There are still lots of tips and messages that come up to help you out, though, so overall this is nothing bad.

Gameplay : C

• Difficulty : C. There are three levels of difficulty, compared to four in Duke Nukem 3D. I guess it’s decent. The “Hard” mode IS fucking hard, sometimes. I got killed, a lot, especially at the start which is almost unbearable in hard mode (well, it was for me). Sometimes though it just gets annoying, and I’ll tell you why now : the LOADING SCREENS. The FUCKING. Loading screens. They’re all over the place. Every time you die, you have to wait about 45 seconds (yes, I counted), to get back to the latest save spot. 45 fucking seconds. When you die over 10 times, I promise you it just gets annoying. And it could be avoided! When using a car, when Duke falls he automatically respawns at the original spot without a loading screen! Why didn’t they do that for the entire game?! This makes the “hardships” unbearable, more boring than entertaining : basically, it’s all about moving properly to avoid the octopus beams and shoot them properly with your sniper. That’s the “Hard mode”. Compared to Duke Nukem 3D, where I had to reload repeatedly (and instantly!) when playing the hardest game mode and where it was a very, very fun challenge, especially because it was based on other game mechanics such as limited health and using the right weapons, I’m rather disappointed.
• Type & Efficiency : D. Yes, but no. Duke Nukem Forever is a disappointment for any former Duke Nukem 3D players when it comes to gameplay. Several things must be noted : 1. Health is no longer limited. This means instead of actually being careful, I can just hide behind the same freaking wall and wait for monsters to come. 2. You can only carry two weapons at once. This means instead of frenetically switching between shotgun (for assault troopers and enforcers), chaingun (for pig cops), RPG (for octobrains and packed monsters, and Protozoid Slimer Eggs), shrinker (for Assault Commanders), etc., I must make ever-so-dramatic choices between weapons that have been — most of the time — chosen for me for the encounter. Exciting! 3. Monsters have shitloads of health. This means they’re limited in numbers (otherwise you die) and usually come in rather predictable ways, in waves. Exciting! 4. You can’t run like a madman and shoot anymore. This means Duke is much more static than he used to be. 5. Everything is very, VERY narrow, with specific tunnels and corridors and spots to visit. Be gone, open spaces, big cities, roofs and windows! You spend your life in a tunnel or in a very narrow desert. Yes, deserts can be narrow apparently. 6. There are less monsters than in Duke Nukem 3D. That’s right, less. And they’re not quite as fun. No more green slimes jumping on your face from the ceiling, no more crazy flying kamikazes, and no more big fatasses with giant chainguns. Just pig cops with chainguns, or shotguns, or RPGs. In this category, thus, the game is just tremendously lacking.
• Lasting Appeal : C. Well, the game does last a good while. Nothing out of the ordinary, but it’s rather long and has a MultiPlayer mode. Thing is, though, since we’re talking about “appeal”, I personally got bored while playing, A LOT, especially when I got stuck in useless, boring, outdated puzzles. So the game lasts long, but who wants to play a boring game until the end?

Creativity : D+ => D

• Scenario : B. Duke Nukem has no scenario. Well, it does, but it’s so simple and silly it’s not really worth calling a “scenario”. However, the humour is still there, the one liners are still there, the naked chicks are still there, Duke’s chauvinism is definitely there, and it’s all rather funny and entertaining.
• Game Type & Mechanics : E. We talked about this enough. Just, no.

End Grade : 

(B*2 + C*3 + D*2) / 7 = C approximately

Conclusive statement

Duke Nukem Forever is a disappointment. It is, at best, an average game, only slightly saved by the humour and “Dukeness”. If you’re in for a good, fun game in terms of playability, buy something else. Or try Duke Nukem 3D! Hail to the king, baby!

I have some spare time, so here is my first game review on a recent game : Portal 2. I wanted to make a review on Duke Nukem Forever, but I haven’t finished it yet…

Regardless, Portal 2 is a first-person puzzle-platform video game released by Valve in 2010. Here’s how the game works : you have a gun, but it does not shoot bullets. Instead, it creates portals, an orange one and a blue one. Each portal takes you to the other. So if you create a blue portal on Wall A and an orange portal on Wall B, going through Wall A’s portal (blue) will bring you to Wall B’s portal (orange).

The concept is very simple, but very rich because it allows for intricate and fun-to-play situations. The great thing about the game is its originality : I don’t know any other game that revolves around this concept, though there probably are. Another great thing about the game is its amazing scenario and humour : the humour is black, sarcastic, and quite frankly hilarious. The story is rather simple but well-conducted, and I promise you some good times laughing while playing. The difficulty is also good in my opinion : not too easy, not too hard. I don’t know about you, but personally I hate staying stuck in the same puzzle for 3 hours without knowing what to do — save for looking up the walkthrough, of course. Once you get used to it though, the solutions are often a little too obvious. The game is also relatively long, but nothing outstanding : something like a dozen hours for me, if I recall correctly. Anyhow, it’s worth it : time goes quickly when playing Portal 2, as it is great fun and addictive.

Review (following this method)

1. Aesthetics : A- => A

• Sound : A.  The game does not have much music. In fact, very little music comes with the game, or it’s very soothing, soft, sometimes almost inaudible music. It seems to suit the game, though, and its silent atmosphere, and everybody does love the end-game music by GLaDOS along with the lines of the laser turrets. The voices are also amazing. Come to think of it, not a single time have I thought of listening to my regular music while playing the game.
• Graphics : B. I’m not certain how to rate graphics save for stating whether it seems well-done and good-looking to me. And I think the graphics, for this game, are great. Everything seems well rendered, smooth, though not outstanding or worth 10 minutes of admiration. 
• Display : A. Nothing much to say here, the menu is intuitive and non-invasive, and it’s not like there is much to display here. I’d almost rate it as irrelevant in this game, which only needs about 8 keys to be played. It’s the opposite of “complicated”, so obviously the “Display” loses its importance.

2. Gameplay : B+ => B

• Difficulty : B. There are no choosable levels of difficulty, as that would equal changing all the puzzles to something harder. Generally, the game is rather easy, with saving points all over the place (actually, you save whenever you want) and no big challenge. I find this to be a good thing for the puzzles, as long as you need to think a little (it took me 30 mins or more to solve some of them). The good part is you won’t have to get frustrated and look up the walkthrough. The bad part is, for instance, the end-game bosses. They’re just too easy. Perhaps it could have been interesting to face more of a challenge for the end-game boss.
• Type & Efficiency : A. Portal 2 is a rather rare type of a game, called a “puzzle-platform” game according to Wikipedia. You move around, jump around, avoid enemies, and solve puzzles at the same time. A lot of puzzles. It’s thus kind of hard to talk about “efficiency” when the game type is already kind of rare and the concept of the game so original. However, overall I would say the game quite efficiently exploits its concept, though I think it could have developed it further (maybe a third portal, more challenging enemies, more components?). At the start, though, it’s really counter-intuitive. I think I may have been half-asleep back then, but when I first got my portal device I had NO idea what it did. I thought it went through walls and it took me a whole 30 minutes to figure it out. Nothing is explained and they expect you to get it. Once you’ve got that though, the game mechanics are obvious and easy to handle. Overall, the game uses its mechanics very efficiently. It’s not perfect, but nothing is (that was so philosophical).
• Lasting Appeal : B. I haven’t played many puzzle-platform games, so I don’t know how long they usually last. This game lasted 8 hours for me (I just checked), so that’s overall not very long at all, I think, but then most games don’t last very long in their Solo mode. There is also a multi-player mode, so technically the “Lasting appeal” is infinite. The “appeal”, though, is what matters indeed : if I have no one to play the game with, and I don’t, there’s a good chance I won’t be playing the game again. Though I may play the Solo mode a second time later, because it remains very high quality. Nothing out of the ordinary, but it’s a game you’ll play until the end with renewed pleasure.

Creativity : A. => A

• Scenario : A the story is interesting, a little intricate but easy to understand, and very “original” I would say. The humour is just amazing, with thoughtful sarcasm all over the place, especially from GLaDOS, along with a very ironic and amusingly predictable sequence of events (I won’t spoil anything, play to see). I give it an A : what makes the game amazing is not just the way it works, but how great the environment is.
• Game type & Mechanics originality : A. I had never played a game as Portal 2, and the closest to it would probably be Portal 1 (Haha, I’m so funny). The game is truly original and creative in its game mechanics. It’s not your typical RTS, puzzle game, or FPS, which usually come in with the same basic recipe and a new package and sometimes a better balance. 

End Grade :

(A*2 + B*3 + A*2) / 7 = A approximately.

The game is truly amazing. Try it, you will not be disappointed. Make sure you are familiar with English, though, I don’t believe it comes in other languages.

Conclusive statement

When grading the game I noticed I was too harsh, especially with as amazing a game as Portal 2. I mean, the game is really awesome and was given a 9+ out of 10 on most websites I visited. At first, the game was most likely to get a B, but I believe I was too harsh on the Sound, Difficulty, and Lasting Appeal in the end. Nevertheless, this leads me to think grading with A, B, C, D and E is both challenging and interesting, because it broadens the “top grade” and lets games have a “perfect grade. We will see if it changes later. I hope you enjoyed my first game review!

We have all heard of the recent events concerning Dominique Strauss-Kahn, former head of the International Monetary Fund (IMF), when he was arrested in an American airport, accused of raping a maid in the hotel he was staying at. More recently, many newspapers and political shows, at least in France, have told us again and again about the “expensive” hotel room, about DSK and his wife’s important wealth. Many politicians, especially on the right side of the political spectrum, have claimed that this was heavily incompatible with Dominique Strauss Kahn’s supposedly “socialist” views : how can anyone be so rich and support socialism or social-democracy? As such, these politicians claim that the French Socialist Party (PS) has lost the “battle of morals”, and that it must stop its “moral teachings” (“ravaler ses leçons de morale”), for instance when French president Nicolas Sarkozy was criticized for being a “Bling bling”, showy president.

This seems to make sense. If socialism advocates better redistribution and claims to support poorer classes and common interest, it seems contradictory and shocking to have such a wealthy socialist representative. But this is based on the idea that politics convey some sort of “morality” ; that is, politicians are there to communicate a strictly moral message, for instance that it is “bad” to be rich. As such, we could say socialists see wealth as a “bad” thing while rightist liberals see wealth as a “good” thing, thus making the left into the movement of the poor and underprivileged, and the right the movement of the privileged. With this view of things, we can effectively say the right represents the privileged, the oligarchy, the rich, and claims as a moral message that being rich is a good thing and that support should thus firstly go towards the rich. As such, I don’t even get how they’ve won the “moral” battle ; they have just effectively proven, all by themselves, that they could care less about society as they care about their wallets.

This view of things is of course fallacious. Based on my understanding of the social contract, I can safely say the basic purpose of politics in a democratic country is to reach optimal collective decisions : “common interest” is the end of all collective decision-making. How can we make people happier? And normally, every political party sees common interest as an end ; only, they differ in terms of means. For instance, we could say (very basically) the left wishes to reach common interest via redistribution of wealth and solidarity, while the right wishes to reach common interest by stimulating competition and law flexibility. That’s why you will often see leftists speak of the “common interest” (or a synonym) and wonder how it can be reached, and you will often see rightists claim that their goal is to make everyone happier, for instance by increasing economical growth and reducing public debt (very popular lately). Of course, you will often see the same rightists contradict themselves the way they did in the case of DSK, when they start confusing common interest with their own morals and own self interest, but that does not happen as often.

But how does this show DSK can be rich and socialist at the same time? It’s quite simple : by wishing to enforce common interest and democratic decision-making, socialists admit that humans are not perfect. When we have money, when we are in a position of power, we are tempted to use it for our own ends. This is not a cynical conception of man, only the idea that man is not absolutely altruistic and that man may fail even his own moral principles. As such, what can be used to avoid this abuse of power? Law! Laws are there because we are often unable to correctly regulate our social relationships ; they are the very expression of our flaws. If we were perfect, egalitarian, loving, caring and moral, why would we need laws, why would we need a state and a democratically designed authoritative figure? That’s why I can be socialist and wealthy at the same time. I am perfectly aware it may be difficult for me to simply get rid of all of my wealth and hand it to the state, and as such I appeal to the law to deal with something I cannot systematically do myself. Dominique Strauss-Kahn and his wife respect the law, pay their taxes and will probably end up with their wealth reduced if the left is elected in France. They are not generous or altruistic, they simply respect the law and consider more redistribution and higher taxes of their income will bring a better society for all. Meanwhile, what is argued by most right-wing people and politicians? Often, they will tell you that most rich people are altruistic, want to spend their money and help others. But instead of giving to the State and letting the State spend that money according to democratic decision-making, the right considers people should be free to give their money to whomever they deem deserving. For instance, they could give out their money to associations, for specific sicknesses, for poor people, for research… but they get to choose it! Charity versus State-enforced redistribution. Thus while the left believes men may 1. not give out as much as they optimally should on their own, 2. not give out their money optimally (to the wrong people), the right believes we are all angels! I will let you choose which message seems the most realistic and collectively optimal…

DSK is not an angel and is perfectly aware of it. Many rightists, and many rich people are not angels, but they think… or pretend they are.