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Fallout: New Vegas — No-Go + Update

Fallout: New Vegas — No-Go + Update

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...

Drakensang: The River of Time

Drakensang: The River of Time

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...