InsaneJournal

Tweak says, "you light my fire."

Willow (the_willow) wrote,
@ 2008-05-02 01:04:00

Entry tags:

online: games, wtf

Stargate - Bring It's Cracked Up Mess To Even More People
Discover thriving alien worlds, meet ancient civilizations … and tell them all the things they’re doing wrong. Or take a peaceful approach and try not to get beat up. Smack a clip into your assault rifle and enter Stargate Worlds.

Seriously Stargate Worlds?

Seriously?

Imperialism ported for Aliens?

You're pretty and all. But between this, the privacy policy and the fact I get bored so easily with even the prettiest game* - do I really want to sign up for Beta? I'm unsure. I'm leaning towards no.

* The Boredom - I've discovered I need the ability to explore AND a story to move things along, so I can flip back and forth depending on mood. I haven't been to perfect world in weeks. Killing things is boring. Also that switching characters should lead to completely new and different storylines, not the same thing over and over again - kill this, get that, go there, kill this, get that, go there. Because I get bored and go find a book to read.

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An impromptu Fable review in case it is of interest

pandorasblog
2008-05-02 02:10 pm UTC (link)

Fable might be interesting for you - it's an old Xbox game, though, and I don't think you have a console? Worth checking on whether they'd produced a PC version.

The idea is that everything you do in the game boils down to a moral choice and this has an impact on the appearance of your character. While this is on the surface rather shallow (if you continue doing bad things, you end up looking very scary, if you continue being good, you age gracefully and are still hawt even in late middle age/early elderliness, which is as far as I've got), the mechanics work well and it's interesting to swither between good and bad choices and see how they affect your reception by non-player characters (if you behave heroically they're happy to see you coming; if not they eventually run from you).

The other thing is that your progress through the game is altered by your moral choices. Each mission can be played from the heroic or villainous perspective - for instance, you might defend a farm from bandits, or be in the raiding party. Then there are some good-specific and evil-specific missions. Your moral standing can shift throughout the game according to your behaviour and this changes what part of the story flowchart you're on. A lot of people play through it trying to be good the first time, then make bad choices the next time to see how the plot changes.

Story - standard wronged boy --> man who must avenge his past, go to a sort of Hogwarts for heroes, and find out what happened to his family all those years ago.

Diversity - lovely to hear a range of British regional accents in a game (it's set in a fantasy version of olde worlde England). I can only recall a couple of black characters, siblings Thunder and Whisper who are part of the quest and turn up at pivotal moments. Whisper grows up at the Heroes' Guild with you and is an ally, but one you're competing with. I was disappointed that you couldn't play her; there's just the one playable character, who is male. There are non-playable female characters who have heroic story roles. Also, you can choose for your character to have a same-sex partner.

Note - I see that a sequel is coming for Xbox 360, and that it will allow you to pick a female playable character. It'll even be possible for the character to become pregnant, and the children will have a similar moral alignment to the parents. Interesting that it's set in an Enlightenment-type period... this is the kind of thing that makes me think I should be saving for a 360.

Overall - the thing that hooked me about this was that you could roam freely around the environment and that the story, while not particularly deep, did make it feel like being in a fantasy novel. I find it a game that I can curl up in; it's nice to play around for a couple of hours improving my character and learning new skills. The only issues might be the violence and the fact that there's some horror-fantasy oriented stuff; not sure how you feel about that in games... also, it's not a MMORPG.

As for that Stargate game blurb... words fail me. I do not understand why they don't realise how off that is.

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