2014. nov. 11.

Bethesda took a hard row to hoe by trying to revive a legendary series, the Fallout saga of Black Isle. Ancient Fallout fans of the gamer population – who got into this post-apocalyptic, radio active world in 1997 and 1998, Anno Domini – were making grimaces on the first pictures and videos. Most of them were seeing just a post-apocalyptic Oblivion behind the trailers, and this scared off a lot of players even at the beginning. Somewhere I can understand it because the IV. episode of the legendary Elder Scrolls series, Oblivion was dividing RPG fans seriously. After Morrowind, a classic CRPG, Oblivion from the Spring of 2006 was an action-adventure game full of RPG elements. It was disappointing for a lot, so they had the right to be afraid of an “Oblivion with guns!” – quoted from Todd Howard, leading producer of Bethesda. Todd felt like this, but what we got in the end was much more than a new Oblivion with firearms in a nuclear setting! The story and setting of the Fallout series is based on America in the 50s. This was an era of nuclear arms race, silly songs, cold war producing the antagonistic America Dream, exemplary life in a carefree consumer society which raises and feeds perfectly sterile plastic emotions. However, the creator of the Fallout setting, Tim Cain was dare to go further and changed history. The world of Fallout is like a future imagined in the 50s. The main characteristics are the wanton use of nuclear energy, the advancement of technology to a point where robots are serving a softened puppet society and cars are fueled by fusion power, and finally, the frenzied nuclear arms race. Cold war lasted longer than in real, till in 2077 the fear of a world in flames came true. As a requiem of the long war against China, the whole planet was sprinkled with atom bombs. Of course, the American Dream must have not to dissipate, and a chosen lot escaped to underground shelters built by Vault-Tec. Years passed, generations grew up before the huge airlocks opened again, and people could start a new life on the wasted surface of Earth,...

2014. nov. 11.

I’ve tried it. Really. Several times. Again and again. Finally, I gave it up; this game is a no-go. It has a number of problems in its own, not to mention a comparison to the great predecessor. Mainly that it completely smells like a franchise. I bought it without a thought, because Fallout 3 (FO3) made the bed for it very nicely. What’s more, the setting reaches back to a much older time; the first two episodes were released sometimes in ’97-98, and CRPG fans lost their heart to them immediately. Anyone says anything, in my opinion, FO3 (released in 2008) deserved the Game of the Year title. Besides the complex system of interaction and free roam setting, the consequences of your character’s deeds made it an excellent computer role-playing game. Then they released… this thing known as Fallout: New Vegas (FO:NV). I deliberately waited for it. As I wrote above, I bought it without a thought. Then it was sitting in the computer for a long time, because I simply couldn’t play with it. The Western impact didn’t help the usual Fallout-atmosphere at all. It didn’t became both of them – instead it became something in-between without any clear outline. It isn’t Western enough, not even with all the gamble and the environment, and this unpleasant impression certainly lessens the original post-apocalyptic Fallout-atmosphere too. Characters are raw, or maybe they are just not unique enough. In this moment I can’t remember any figure more illustrious than the others. Another boring element was the radio, and a third was the row of events. The music and the DJs got entrapped in the snare of self-repetition in no time. Just imagine how exciting it is to listen boringly well-known and average hits while you are walking on the bleak plains and hillsides. Yes, I have a problem with the hills too. I understand why I can’t climb a high-pitched mountainside. However, plant life clearly marks if you can pass on a terrain, and it is very annoying to barge into an invisible wall on the middle of a grassy and easily walkable hillside. I felt limited in my freedom of exploration, in a game expected...

2014. nov. 11.

The term “role-playing game” is not about a character sheet. By this fact Fable III shows the fig to all the story-driven action, adventure and/or hack’n’slash games that try to make you believe they have something to do with the CRPG genre, just because they have a character creation and/or development system. Here and now we can tell they have not. Because the lack of character creation one can believe Fable III is more like a JRPG, but the similarity stops here. You don’t have to play through a linearly written story — of course, there is a story, but most of the time you can go forward as you wish, and a lot of things depend on your actions. Let me tell that 30% of the game is story, one fifth of it is combat, and the rest (you count it right: half of it) is partly treasure hunt, partly a free associating social RPG. Unfortunately, the second episode wasn’t released on PC, but in its time the first Fable squarely showed that combat is only a necessary but not basic element of a fantasy game. Opponents could be defeated easily, so combat couldn’t hinder you in exploring the story, which was an essential hero tale. The mere slip of a boy became a powerful hero that cleaned his homeland by weapons and magic. This was a simple but perfect foundation spiced with some fashioning, posing, love (even between the same sexes) and chicken kicking. In Fable common people are not just garnish for the main meal but organic parts of the interaction between the player character and the world. In the third installment this was lifted to such a high level that literally amazed me. Fable III supplied me with everything I felt missing from CRPGs in general: You can be friends, you may run errands, you can love each other, fuck (The Legendary Condom of the Gods +5 — no comment), get married, maybe you get an STD, give birth to a bastard, etc. Or you can go on the other way and build your kingdom on intimidation, sacking and tyranny. Because you will be a king or queen, and that’s...

2014. nov. 11.

Imagine what Baldur’s Gate would be if upgraded with modern, three-D graphics and some German precision. The River of Time (TroT) is based on the system and world settings of a PnP RPG famed as German D&D, and broadly speaking, it gives you the experience I’ve tried to catch in the first sentence. I suppose it was not a very good business decision to publish a game that can catch only a smaller part of a smaller part of the gamer audience in general. In the same time, this tiny group of gamers will rank it among the ten best CRPG of all time. But not because it is really one of the bests. It’s a decently manufactured stuff, all right, but it doesn’t punch too much weight. But the experienc is fascinating. Honestly speaking, Baldur’s Gate has no special place in my heart. I have several problems with it; at the end I felt like trying to brawl myself out of the nightmares of a power maniac Dungeon Master. There was no catharsis, no satisfaction from the well-finished adventure. To tell you an example, Icewind Dale was much more balanced. Of course, I don’t mention these two games at random. In spite of every flaw they have and beside every merit they have, their most important characteristic is that they symbolize a sort of barbaric-heroic age of computer role-playing games. Compared to the latest CRPGs they are like Conan books compared to the Earthsea series. If you doesn’t know/understand what I babble here, don’t mind about it, but I tell you that perhaps you won’t be able to handle TroT on its place. Because its rightful place is on the neo-barbaric-heroic shelf, and it has not too many companion there. You can put the first episode (Drakensang: The Dark Eye [TDE]) there, and maybe the recently released Legend of Grimrock too (although it is more like a neo-antique thing), but I don’t know more. Just a brief summary: The prehistoric age of CRPGs was marked by text-only games, and the transition to a new era can be characterized by Eye of the Beholder, Champions of Krynn and the early Ultima series. Then came the...

Third episodes are somehow hard to release. Fans had to wait ten years for Fallout 3, and the case of Doom 3 was exactly the same. Diablo III beat them by an extra three years to sharpen the appetite. So we waited thirteen years, and at last the favorite clicking-monsterkiller game os a good many people arrived. Among the several reasons of lateness the most important is that the game was rewritten three times. No wonder, the development started in 2001, and there was a lot of advancement in the technology since then. Not to mention the open secret that the character development system of the second Diablo was worth not heap of crap. The multi-way development opportunities were actually almost one-way at each character, because only the most effective characters could walk through the whole game. Only in the recent years the system was altered such way that skills started to strengthen each other. In spite of this Diablo II was successful enough to make the bed for the third part. The enormousness of the fan base was perfectly indicated by the 6.3 million copies sold on the first week. A must add; it deserved. Because the game was made excellently. From the graphix to the skill system lots of things were rethought and rewritten. It is not boring to replay it on different difficulty levels, because the monsters and the spells can bring new challenges and things to explore. On Normal difficulty you can watch the environment, read the story, but on Nightmare and Hell difficulties you have to be more and more tactical with the skills and the equipment. Relatively to the previous episode, character development was entirely reformed. There is no chance to purchase ability points, which – by the reason mentioned above – had no use anyway, but in exchange we get a level-dependent skill system with a heap of modification runes, and that makes hundreds of combinations to use what you want in the given situation. You can overwrite your choice anytime, so you can adopt to the various situation and will never “botch” your character. Identify and Town Portal spells had vanished, as did the Horradric Cube,...