Sudeki
UltimaGecko
hates endnotes Join Date: 2003-05-14 Member: 16320Members
hates endnotes Join Date: 2003-05-14 Member: 16320Members
in Off-Topic
<div class="IPBDescription">...probably wanted a Japanese-ish word</div> So, I got my cool copy of OXM (because, it's more efficient that going to gamespy - and I'd rather wait a month for a magazine than 5 seconds with their super pop-ups!) with the cool demo disc...which happened to have a Sudeki demo on it. Generally a demo wouldn't warrant a review, but hey, it's an RPG...on the Xbox!
Apparently it's set to be one of the new Xbox hits (hooray for 4 RPGs...). So, I figured I'd throw some stuff out there about what's in the demo.
It's basically one level, in a temple (the temple of ...Mo...but I'll get to that in a second). The graphics in the game aren't supreme, world-ending graphics, but they're fairly on par and suitable (I especially like the icon for every item in the menu...opposed to FF's "Here's a list of all your crap"). The boss spider thing at the end is kindof annoying, but it does look pretty nice, and the game doesn't slip in the frame rate area really (even 6+ enemies on screen). Aside from the kindof annoying attempt at looking Japanese like, it's pretty nice (from the video along with it, it seems outdoor areas would be better looking).
Well, the game itself is pretty easy to get into - despite knowing none of the characters or story when you start the demo. This brings me to my first major annoyance with the game. The first time I heard Ailish speak my brain shuddered and I needed to crack myself in the head with my controller to get over how terrible it is. It's not really that bad of voice acting (not that great either...), it's just, it sounds like script kiddies in CS...think 8 year old CS player and you're there.
I'm assuming she's supposed to be a young princess...but they tried a bit to hard (or not at all..) for that one.
Well, that leads us over to the combat. It happens in realtime (with magic use creating a bullet-time like effect). Despite the annoying voice of Ailish, and the whole "fear my giant fireball" type speech whenever you cast magic, it's fast, fluid and fairly enjoyable.
-You control one person at a time (beginning of the demo you get Ailish (magic caster girl), and Tal (warrior type guy).
-Items are bound to the directional pad and can be used pretty much on the fly, which is nice (no real item searching, but you can scroll through a list if you want too, similarily to magic). Didn't figure out how to switch the items bound to the d-pad though.
-Magic is activated simply and quickly by pressing the Y button (which brings up a menu (where you can go to items if you want) and bullet times the action). A list of your magic appears and you pick it. An icon, depicting what direction and distance your spell will go can be controlled with the stick to posistion it well it charges...and then they do their weird speech and let it fly.
-Weapons are switched on the fly too; which was something that added nice depth. -Ailish has a quickfiring scepter, a lightning scepter that fires at a medium rate, and a 'giant explosion' scepter, that does tons of damage, but takes a while to be ready to use again.
-Tal has a similarily assembled arsenal consisting of 3 swords.
-The battles in the temple are pretty straightforward, but they do get nice when you get the weird demon things blocking and casting magic back. I think there's a block button for Tal and Ailish (definately one for Buki), but I never used it - despite seeing the demons use it frequently to guard against my scepter spewed onslaughts <!--emo&:p--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html//emoticons/tounge.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='tounge.gif' /><!--endemo--> .
Buki seems to only have 2 weapons that can't change, but the other buttons produce different attacks instead, which threw me off at first. She's probably the least fun of the 3 so far.
While you only control one character at a time (and the others are AI controlled - you can change their settings in the Y menu mentioned above), they fought pretty much as well as I did - I was a noob, though, so maybe they're a little bad. You can switch on the fly, so it's pretty nice (makes me think it could be a co-op game in battle, which would be nice, heh).
Ailish fights in first person (like a FPS with the scepters that launch magic), Tal, and his melee attacks (along with Buki), fight in third person (didn't get to use the 4th guy - you meet him for a second, then it's off to fight the spider boss!).
There seems to be a large unexplained portion of the demo involving weapon enchantments and exactly whats up with your character attributes, but it seems like it could be in-depth and entertaining (as long as there's more than just those few spells- I'm thinking once you get all of them on a page it goes to another page or something...but that's just rambling speculation).
The fighting system seemed very solid and entertaining (as long as there's enough variety in the final game - in the demo there's 8 or so spells/abilities for Ailish and Tal and they're both level 5 (you level up once in the demo and can assign some skill points to unlock some of them)).
I can't really vouch for the story. Apparently you're looking for a crystal in the Temple of Mo...Mo the cat God...or something. Buki seemed pretty obsessed with Mo with her, "A dragon's fury is second only to Mo, the cat God!" thing whenever you cast Dragon Fire.
Speaking of Buki...her voice sucks too. She sounds like a 50 year old woman who can't voice act. Fighting the spider boss at the end just made me cringe whenever I cast her fire spell.
There are 2 'puzzles' in the demo, neither of them are particularily hard (and the second one reminds me of some box pushing/pulling ones in the Legacy of Kain series). They're not really exciting or overly special, so I'd have to say they're just kind of annoyances (I'd assume better puzzles are floating around in the real game).
You know what? The only completely bad thing I could find was the voices. If there were a way to make it captioned with no talking from the main characters...well, there you go. The game seems definately worthy of a rent. People that have it preordered might want to check out the August issue of OXM to make sure they're spending their money right.
On UltimaGecko's 100 point scale for scoring whatever the [bleep] he wants, I give it 80/100 (lowered by 3 points out of spite for terrible voice casting).
[man, I must have something against voices I find terrible, first Brak, now Ailish and Buki....and sortof Tal, but he's more fitting.]
Maybe that's a bit too much talking about a demo...but the game is supposed to be out in a few days...so there's a pre-emptive review of stuff:
Good battle system (fun and fairly strategic too).
Nice controls (responsive too).
Fairly good graphics.
Unknown storyline.
Terrible, "Satan condemns thee for voice acting in this game!" voices.
Apparently it's set to be one of the new Xbox hits (hooray for 4 RPGs...). So, I figured I'd throw some stuff out there about what's in the demo.
It's basically one level, in a temple (the temple of ...Mo...but I'll get to that in a second). The graphics in the game aren't supreme, world-ending graphics, but they're fairly on par and suitable (I especially like the icon for every item in the menu...opposed to FF's "Here's a list of all your crap"). The boss spider thing at the end is kindof annoying, but it does look pretty nice, and the game doesn't slip in the frame rate area really (even 6+ enemies on screen). Aside from the kindof annoying attempt at looking Japanese like, it's pretty nice (from the video along with it, it seems outdoor areas would be better looking).
Well, the game itself is pretty easy to get into - despite knowing none of the characters or story when you start the demo. This brings me to my first major annoyance with the game. The first time I heard Ailish speak my brain shuddered and I needed to crack myself in the head with my controller to get over how terrible it is. It's not really that bad of voice acting (not that great either...), it's just, it sounds like script kiddies in CS...think 8 year old CS player and you're there.
I'm assuming she's supposed to be a young princess...but they tried a bit to hard (or not at all..) for that one.
Well, that leads us over to the combat. It happens in realtime (with magic use creating a bullet-time like effect). Despite the annoying voice of Ailish, and the whole "fear my giant fireball" type speech whenever you cast magic, it's fast, fluid and fairly enjoyable.
-You control one person at a time (beginning of the demo you get Ailish (magic caster girl), and Tal (warrior type guy).
-Items are bound to the directional pad and can be used pretty much on the fly, which is nice (no real item searching, but you can scroll through a list if you want too, similarily to magic). Didn't figure out how to switch the items bound to the d-pad though.
-Magic is activated simply and quickly by pressing the Y button (which brings up a menu (where you can go to items if you want) and bullet times the action). A list of your magic appears and you pick it. An icon, depicting what direction and distance your spell will go can be controlled with the stick to posistion it well it charges...and then they do their weird speech and let it fly.
-Weapons are switched on the fly too; which was something that added nice depth. -Ailish has a quickfiring scepter, a lightning scepter that fires at a medium rate, and a 'giant explosion' scepter, that does tons of damage, but takes a while to be ready to use again.
-Tal has a similarily assembled arsenal consisting of 3 swords.
-The battles in the temple are pretty straightforward, but they do get nice when you get the weird demon things blocking and casting magic back. I think there's a block button for Tal and Ailish (definately one for Buki), but I never used it - despite seeing the demons use it frequently to guard against my scepter spewed onslaughts <!--emo&:p--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html//emoticons/tounge.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='tounge.gif' /><!--endemo--> .
Buki seems to only have 2 weapons that can't change, but the other buttons produce different attacks instead, which threw me off at first. She's probably the least fun of the 3 so far.
While you only control one character at a time (and the others are AI controlled - you can change their settings in the Y menu mentioned above), they fought pretty much as well as I did - I was a noob, though, so maybe they're a little bad. You can switch on the fly, so it's pretty nice (makes me think it could be a co-op game in battle, which would be nice, heh).
Ailish fights in first person (like a FPS with the scepters that launch magic), Tal, and his melee attacks (along with Buki), fight in third person (didn't get to use the 4th guy - you meet him for a second, then it's off to fight the spider boss!).
There seems to be a large unexplained portion of the demo involving weapon enchantments and exactly whats up with your character attributes, but it seems like it could be in-depth and entertaining (as long as there's more than just those few spells- I'm thinking once you get all of them on a page it goes to another page or something...but that's just rambling speculation).
The fighting system seemed very solid and entertaining (as long as there's enough variety in the final game - in the demo there's 8 or so spells/abilities for Ailish and Tal and they're both level 5 (you level up once in the demo and can assign some skill points to unlock some of them)).
I can't really vouch for the story. Apparently you're looking for a crystal in the Temple of Mo...Mo the cat God...or something. Buki seemed pretty obsessed with Mo with her, "A dragon's fury is second only to Mo, the cat God!" thing whenever you cast Dragon Fire.
Speaking of Buki...her voice sucks too. She sounds like a 50 year old woman who can't voice act. Fighting the spider boss at the end just made me cringe whenever I cast her fire spell.
There are 2 'puzzles' in the demo, neither of them are particularily hard (and the second one reminds me of some box pushing/pulling ones in the Legacy of Kain series). They're not really exciting or overly special, so I'd have to say they're just kind of annoyances (I'd assume better puzzles are floating around in the real game).
You know what? The only completely bad thing I could find was the voices. If there were a way to make it captioned with no talking from the main characters...well, there you go. The game seems definately worthy of a rent. People that have it preordered might want to check out the August issue of OXM to make sure they're spending their money right.
On UltimaGecko's 100 point scale for scoring whatever the [bleep] he wants, I give it 80/100 (lowered by 3 points out of spite for terrible voice casting).
[man, I must have something against voices I find terrible, first Brak, now Ailish and Buki....and sortof Tal, but he's more fitting.]
Maybe that's a bit too much talking about a demo...but the game is supposed to be out in a few days...so there's a pre-emptive review of stuff:
Good battle system (fun and fairly strategic too).
Nice controls (responsive too).
Fairly good graphics.
Unknown storyline.
Terrible, "Satan condemns thee for voice acting in this game!" voices.
Comments
However then there are games with superb voice acting and that shows. But its not a thing that botheres me that much.
There's not really much of a story in the demo: You're looking for a crystal of (something...maybe it was Ghandra...I forget), in the Temple of Mo (and Buki's all upset because she has to kill a giant spider who was friends with her people for a long time). Doesn't really go much beyond that.
So aside from the voice acting and the unknown story, it seems pretty good. [The fighting might be a little too simplified (since my tactic in the demo was basically: run backwards and shoot the wand as quick as possible), but sometimes the demon thingies would cast spells or block my wand attack stuff - so then you just break out the cool magic (which are fairly cool, aside from the quips the characters say before using them).
Buki's fire spell is cool, since it's a big tunnel of fire that bursts out and then in the end it forms a weird flame wisp of a dragon (appropriately because it is Dragon Flame or Dragon Fire or something - it has Dragon in the name <!--emo&:p--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html//emoticons/tounge.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='tounge.gif' /><!--endemo--> ).
There also seems like there might be a lot of running around (just to make the maps seem big, I guess), like in KotOR...there doesn't seem to be FF-esque random battles though, so it's not too tedious, either (although the puzzles were a bit annoying because you had to move stones around, but you could only push or pull them, and not side step with them (so it was basically Resident Evil pushing going on).
It's at least worthy of a rent (although, hopefully there's an option to turn off the voice acting and add captions or something...maybe the few quote that are in the game are the only bad ones...
[well, I can hope, can't I?]
[I'm just dissapointed at the voice acting in this game, since games like KotOR, Halo, Riddick, Full Spectrum Warrior (okay, maybe not ALL of FSW) and even Hunter the Reckoning (not great, but it's above par for the majority of the games around at the time - and you can't beat a game with an evil killer teddybear [okay you can, but the Teddy is cool <!--emo&:p--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html//emoticons/tounge.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='tounge.gif' /><!--endemo-->]) have decent voice acting.]
Should be decent, it's an RPG on the Xbox afterall...it's not like RPG fans can be picky <!--emo&:D--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html//emoticons/biggrin.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='biggrin.gif' /><!--endemo--> .
OMG That was the worst synchro i ever heard in my life, the master chief sounded like some teenie popstar. Really it ruined the whole mood when he talked.
Anyways i played the game about 6 times trough <!--emo&:p--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html//emoticons/tounge.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='tounge.gif' /><!--endemo-->
OMG That was the worst synchro i ever heard in my life, the master chief sounded like some teenie popstar. Really it ruined the whole mood when he talked.
Anyways i played the game about 6 times trough <!--emo&:p--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html//emoticons/tounge.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='tounge.gif' /><!--endemo--> <!--QuoteEnd--></td></tr></table><div class='postcolor'><!--QuoteEEnd-->
I have the 'Bungie Foreign Films" German section on my computer (basically the first intro thing when MC meets Captain Keyes).
...I'd actually have to say the guy who says the main cannon is off-line is worse (just how he says it, it's pure comedy). The Master Chief might be the main character (and his acting is far from exceptional, but I'm still going to have to say it's better than Ailish's and cast about on par with Buki). Can't really say much for the actual syncronization though, Sudeki seems to have that decent...it's just the voice, blargh!
Plus, you'd expect a lot more voice actors available for English speaking roles, so the Sudeki casting director needs to be beaten.
Er...well. So I've never <i>played</i> the German version of Halo, but there, I've heard part of it, <!--emo&:D--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html//emoticons/biggrin.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='biggrin.gif' /><!--endemo--> .
It's not that dialogue sucks or anything either (not a big fan of the Temple of 'Mo'...), it's just who's doing it. Let me try to think of something to compare it to...
[edit] Okay, I've got it: The voice acting is on par with Barry and Jill in the dining room in the PS version of Resident Evil.
"What's that?"
"I'm not sure...it looks like....Blood."
---or, the minute later,
"What is it!?" After Barry shoots the zombie that follows you from the hall (where you see it chewing on someone, and then run back).
-They're decent dialogue, but they're acted horribly; plus imagine Wesker's voice for Barry, and Roseanne Arnold's voice for Jill - and you'd get how badly they're cast.
The game is still set to be pretty fun. I mean, everyone can ignore poor voice acting - it just turns everythign into pure comedic gold! <!--emo&:D--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html//emoticons/biggrin.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='biggrin.gif' /><!--endemo-->