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Tag: 2007

  • Stranglehold (Midway, 2007)

    Stranglehold (Midway, 2007)

    Developed/Published by: Midway Studios Chicago, Tiger Hill Entertainment / Midway Games
    Released: September 7th, 2007
    Completed: 12th May, 2015
    Completion: Finished it.
    Trophies / Achievements: n/a

    Kind of a wake-up here to just how old the “previous generation” of video games I’m still living in is, this is from eight years ago, basically making it, and I believe this is the scientific term, “old as balls.”

    Anyway, I’ve been meaning to play through it for ages because I like Hong Kong action (although John Woo has never stood out particularly to me, because he’s done so few films comparatively) and I played the demo in, probably 2007, and remember thinking it was hilarious.

    I think the demo (and first level) somewhat portrays the game under false pretence. Starring a digital Chow-Yun Fat as the same character he played in Hard Boiled in a “how exactly did they get them to agree to that” way, the first level asks the question “what if you covered Chow-Yun Fat in Vaseline and set him loose in a marketplace?”

    It’s hilarious as you slide about on everything, smashing watermelons and leaping about in slow motion at all times while shooting folk, if you remember how John Woo movies were always called “balletic” this is “balletic” in the way a dance recital for five year-olds would be, if you got them all drunk and made them perform on a waltzer.

    Unfortunately, while the rest of the game features just as much stuff to smash, the novelty wears off fast, as it becomes pretty transparent that the level design boils down to “trap the player in an arena until they kill enough baddies, run to the next arena, repeat.” Well, apart from the level where you have to endlessly destroy tables with drugs on them/place bombs (feels the same) and a really dull turret bit.

    And tragically, Chow-Yun Fat is totally wasted, as there’s a skeleton of a plot that makes far less sense and is far less compelling than your average Hong Kong film—and they usually made those up as they went along.

    It’s all a bit dull, and not helped by the fact that I’ve already played through Sleeping Dogs, United Front Games’ Hong Kong actioner, which is varied, fun and totally gets the genre right down to the compelling story. I can’t really blame Stranglehold for not being as good as a game that came out five years later… but I will anyway.

    Will I ever play it again? Nope. I don’t really regret playing it, though.

    Final Thought: Completely forgot to mention that there’s a boss fight in the middle that grinds the game to a halt because you’re not supposed to leap around during it and (in fact) I got stuck for ages because I had no idea you could crouch/crawl. Whoever it was that decided games should always have a bit where they’re like “ah-ha! now you’re not supposed to play the game the way you’ve learned for hours” should be forced to walk on their hands and eat with their feet for a year.

  • What Did I Do To Deserve This, My Lord? (Acquire/Japan Studio, 2007)

    What Did I Do To Deserve This, My Lord? (Acquire/Japan Studio, 2007)

    Developed/Published by: Acquire / Nippon Ichi Software
    Released: December 6th, 2007 (Japanese release as 勇者のくせになまいきだ)
    Completed: 23rd April, 2014
    Completion: Completed Challenge mode.
    Trophies / Achievements: n/a

    What Did I Do To Deserve This, My Lord? is one of those games that represents the perils of creativity. It’s got one of those not-really-very-interesting-by-now high concepts—what if you were the dungeon master?—but it takes it in a totally different direction from the likes of Dungeon Keeper. Instead, whoever it was that had the initial idea looked at game dungeons and didn’t think of them as “designed” but “evolved.” So instead of designing the dungeon, you dig it out, and you hope that the creatures you reveal move around, spread nutrients and mate to create stronger creatures. A process that you (generally) have little to no control over.

    You can definitely see that the reference points are different from something like Dungeon Keeper—the “slimemosses” that are the first creatures you deal with are obviously inspired by the Slimes from Dragon Quest—and to some extent that has influenced the design, but in general the “dungeon as ecosystem” doesn’t have a precedent; when you play it, it really does feel like something totally different.  The peril, of course, is that as different as it is, it just doesn’t gel. 

    With What Did I Do To Deserve This, My Lord? the problem is that the ecosystem is totally unmanageable and often inscrutable. Slimemosses, no matter how carefully you attempt to create the right kind of paths, just never seem to want to spread nutrients the way you want them to. Look away from a section of a dungeon for a minute and the more powerful creatures may have eaten all the weaker ones, and are now dying of starvation. And when the heroes arrive? Maybe they don’t go down the route you want them to; maybe even if they do your dragons—so expensive and difficult to create—ignore them until it’s too late.

    It’s all utterly random—or at least, it’s random in that way that all your time spent playing is attempting to desperately mitigate the random factor, rather than feeling any sense of control. It’s the kind of design where I can’t really fathom how large the task would be to fix it; making creatures more predictable, maybe, or making sure they can’t remove nutrients from blocks that can make a more powerful creature. Even at that, what about when you get to that point where you’ve dug out too much of the dungeon? There are a lot of “give up and start again” points, no matter how close you think you are to “getting it.” It’s like a tower defense game, where you can’t guarantee that your towers are going to actually shoot at the enemy, or even stay where you placed them.

    There are a million things going on underneath the hood—I haven’t even really discussed how you have a dig limit, monster upgrading, all the other weird interactions—and What Did I Do To Deserve This, My Lord? feels like a jam game they just kept building on top of without making sure each aspect worked with every other. Seems like an ironic oversight in a game about attempting to perfectly balance an ecosystem.

    Will I ever play it again? I didn’t actually finish the main game mode! It’s an eight level single dungeon challenge, but as explained above, the game is just too random to make it worth trying to finish. So I won’t be playing it again, no.

    Final Thought: So, the bit I did finish was the challenge mode, which is the bit where you’re like “ah, the developers obviously have a very clear understanding of the game’s systems” because it asks you to do some incredibly difficult edge-case challenges (like breeding slimemosses from a dungeon with no nutrients, etc.) You’d think this would teach you how to play the game really well, but actually even if you know how to do these things it’s meaningless in a live-fire exercise. Alas.