One thing I like about this game is that it’s a fantasy distopia. Not a post-apocalyptic science fiction setting, nor is it sunshine, unicorns, everyone-recycles-and-we-have-no-more-theft fantasy (I’m looking at you, Dinotopia). Bad things are going down in Ferelden, including but not limited to racism (against the up-until-recently-enslaved elves), mutiny, betrayal, assassination (of key political figures, no less), and dead puppies (PUPPIES! NO!).

Another thing that makes Dragon Age totally awesome is the character interaction. You get several NPCs that you can drag around to help you out in a fight, and unlike most RPGs, they’re all interesting. (I’m looking at YOU, Tales of Symphonia. Seriously, all of the problems in that game could have been solved if they’d just let Colette DIE.) My personal favorites are Alistair, the paladin with a personality; Morrigan, your typical Hot Topic cashier; Zevran, the bisexual elf who seems to think having sex is like saying hello, but he did grow up in a whorehouse so I can’t really blame him; and your dog, whom you can name yourself. (I named mine Samson, after my real dog, who was a totally awesome German Shepherd but is now tragically deceased. He lives on in virtual reality, yay!) Depending on your actions, the characters in your party like you more or less. Morrigan, for example, disapproves practically whenever you solve a problem without murdering a bunch of dudes. Not a big fan of humanity, that Morrigan.

Today’s particular adventure involved not playing Dragon Age at all. I got home from class to find that the X-Box was no longer in our living room. Stunned and disheartened, I wondered what I had done to anger the roommate who owned the X-Box and played Super Mario Galaxy instead until my other roommate came home. She, too, wanted to play Dragon Age, and called me stupid for not doing so myself until I pointed out that the X-Box was nowhere to be found. We theorized that the roommate who owned the X-Box had taken it into her room, which was locked. Bemoaning our fate, and suffering Dragon Age withdrawal symptoms, we considered texting her until we remembered that she had lost her phone a week earlier. Then we had a twenty-minute discussion about just how pissed she would be if we broke down her door, and whether or not it would ultimately be worth it.

She did, eventually, wake up and open her door and give us back the X-Box. They are playing it now, whereas I am writing this blog entry while I should be doing my homework. Good times.

Games you’ve probably heard of, part 6
Games you’ve never heard of, part 5
Games you’ve never heard of, part 4
Games you’ve never heard of, part 3
Games you’ve never heard of, part 2
Games you’ve never heard of, part 1

Odds are that any of you with any interest in videogames whatsoever have heard of Dragon Age: Origins by this point. Well, I was playing Super Mario Galaxy, minding my own business, when my roommate puts me in a headlock and forces me to play DA:O. And now I must tell you about it.

It is excellent.

…

Okay fine I’ll go into more detail. The controls work, the characters are well-rounded, the story is interesting… basically it’s everything I’d hoped that every other game I’ve played would be.

Except for one little thing: I can’t see anything.

Now, I’m not sure if it’s just the TV I’m playing on or what, but a LOT of this game is text, and I’m having a really hard time reading it. Nines and fives are interchangable, names are all squished together, and figuring out what the heck I’m supposed to do for my quests involves a solid ten minutes of squinting and readjusting my glasses. I even tried sitting directly in front of the screen, all of a foot away from it. No dice.

So yeah, if I could read the text, this game would be perfect.

Games you’ve never heard of, part 5
Games you’ve never heard of, part 4
Games you’ve never heard of, part 3
Games you’ve never heard of, part 2
Games you’ve never heard of, part 1

For those of you who don’t know, American McGee’s Alice is basically a Gothic re-imagining of the story of Alice in Wonderland. It’s a platforming action/adventure thing released about a billion years ago for PC and Mac.

Before I tell you about the game, I have a story to tell you about how I got the game.

I was lying in the stairwell, minding my own business, when my roommate mentioned off-handedly that she had a copy of the game. None of my spooky friends have shut up about it since it came out, so I was really excited about the opportunity to play it. So excited, in fact, that I decided I had to get down the stairs and to this game as quickly as possible. Since I was already in the lying-down position, it seemed like the fastest way to go would be face-first.

About halfway down the stairs, I realized that going downstairs face-first was a really stupid idea, so I tried to turn myself around before I hit the bottom. I very nearly succeeded, but instead of landing on my feet, I landed on my lower back. It made a very loud THUD and filled my mouth with a coppery taste and blurred my vision for a bit. Now I have stabbing lower-back pains whenever I sit, stand, or lie down. But considering that it’s a result of my own blinding stupidity, I can’t really complain too much.

And now, the game!

Alice opens with the titular character asleep in her bed. A cat knocks over a lamp, and her house is suddenly aflame. Lots of screaming ensues, and then we see Alice again, asleep in a different bed, only this one is in an insane asylum. A nurse tucks a stuffed rabbit into Alice’s arms and she wakes up a bit, snuggling the bunny, at which point the bunny shrieks, “SAVE US, ALICE.”

So begins our descent into Alice’s nightmare.

The first thing that struck me about the game was how old it looks. It’s really funny to read reviews of it now, since most of them praise the graphics. Compared to today’s high-definition hyper-realistic gaming, Alice falls flat on its face. Graphic quality overall could be compared to Super Mario 64.

As for gameplay, the controls handle as though one is sledding downhill while drunk. Even without that, the game is really, really hard, with no in-game tutorial to tell you how to move. I had to look up the controls online, only to find out that I struggled through the first level because the game hadn’t bothered to tell me what button to use to climb. (It is the ENTER key.) And even after knowing how to make Alice move around, her weapons are so weak, her health bar so small, and her enemies so numerous as to make the game nigh impossible.

Story is another area where the game is supposed to shine, but the problem is that most of the game’s story is told from a booklet that comes with the game. I do not have said booklet. So, yeah, no story for me.

So why am I playing this?

1.) To justify the aforementioned stabbing lower back pain.

2.) To increase my Goth street cred.

3.) The Cheshire Cat. Oh, the Cheshire Cat.

For those of you who know Bruce Maddocks, imagine playing a game where you hear his voice telling you creepy riddles throughout. For those of you who do not know Bruce Maddocks, imagine Stephen Fry, Tim Curry, or some other celebrity whose voice is known to make grown men weep with joy. The Cheshire Cat’s dialogue and voice acting are absolutely divine. Alice’s VA is passable, everyone else’s is painful, but the Cheshire Cat is a perfect delight.

previous parts:

http://www.umasstorch.com/blog/2009/09/26/games-youve-never-heard-of/

http://www.umasstorch.com/blog/2009/09/29/games-youve-never-heard-of-part-two/

http://www.umasstorch.com/blog/2009/10/07/games-youve-never-heard-of-part-three/

About an hour after that post, I beat the game.

NEW COMPLAINT: “Sphinx and the Cursed Mummy” is way too damn short. Position officially reversed again; I hate it now. HATE.

And so I have moved on to a new game: “Tales of Symphonia.” The game can be quickly explained as the product of throwing all the Final Fantasy games into a blender and making all of the characters chibi. However, unlike Final Fantasy, the combat is real-time instead of turn-based. But all other rules apply: attacks are announced before they are performed, the main character is a brash and idealistic young man, the main character’s love interest must sacrifice herself to save the world, the inevitable traitor has emo hair, etc. My roommates have been watching me play and offering helpful commentary.

For example, there is one attack in the game called “demon fang” that the character announces before performing. One of my roommates heard it as “beaver twang.” Guess what is my house’s new favorite catchphrase? Oh, you’re good.

Also, the main character is named “Lloyd,” which a dear friend of mine deliberately mispronounces as “Cloyd.” When I threatened to name one of my future children that, he responded that he would drive to my child’s school to beat him up every day and encourage others to do the same. But apparently my unborn child can escape this fate if Cloyd is only his middle name.

Merlinus Cloyd Henry is going to hate my guts.

Yeeeeeeah… about that… I’ve clocked like 10 hours of gameplay since then. Can’t. Stop. Running. Around. Ancient. Egypt.

Okay, yes, the game’s plot is riddled with clichés and the gameplay itself is painfully linear but dagnabbit it is FUN, you hear me? FUN.

I can’t wait to go home this weekend and get my copy of “Tales of Symphonia” back from the friend I lent it too, so I can play something that doesn’t make me cringe.

…Wait, what the heck am I talking about? “Tales of Symphonia” is even less original than “Sphinx and the Cursed Mummy”! It’s not nearly as linear, but the plot/dialogue is even worse. Worse, I say!

Anyway, about me going home this weekend. I will be attending the Garlic and Arts festival (http://www.garlicandarts.org/) with at least two of my roommates. I will give you the full report on that when I return.

I bought it used because an action-adventure game based  on the myths and legends of ancient Egypt sounded really, really cool. (I was terrified of mummies as a child, so my parents decided to cure that fear by making me super-informed about ancient Egypt.) Tragically, the game designers did minimal research (jotted down some big names and maybe even watched Disney’s “Aladdin” to get the setting), and stocked ancient Eygpt full of white people. That wouldn’t be so bad if the game itself weren’t so glitchy that saving at the wrong save points will corrupt your entire memory card. But let’s back up.

The premise is as follows: you are Sphinx, a young demi-god on a quest to stop the evil god Set from taking over the world. Sounds pretty good, yeah? Except that you have to take the back of the game box’s word for your demi-god status, as you have no powers that would speak to your godliness. You are half-lion (tail and all), but when you realize that 85% of the NPCs in the game are also half-animal without any discernable difference from the random white people in terms of social status or abilities, you start to doubt that is any clue to your demi-god state.

Anyway, the game starts off with Sphinx and his half-bird rival Horus getting sent on a mission by their half-baboon mentor Imhotep to retrieve the Sword of Osiris. You have to jump over a lot of lava to do so, and are predictably betrayed by Horus. Of course, he goes over a cliff immediately afterward, but true to video game/movie/comic book logic, that in no way means he’s dead. So you get the sword, escape the evil castle, and then -

- the game abruptly switches to an ancient Egyptian palace, where Prince Tutankhamun (or “Tut” for short, played by white guy #5) is waking up in his luxurious bed. He is now your playable character. And it is your birthday! Hooray! And your brother, whose character design was ripped directly from Jafar of Disney’s “Aladdin” and is in no way evil or about to betray you while cackling maniacally, is decorating the palace for you and has planned a big “birthday surprise” that totally won’t end up killing you so he can inherit the throne. Totally. (If you haven’t already guessed, this game is painfully predictable.)

Anyway, after meeting your (white girl #7) girlfriend, Nefertiti, and  doing a few short fetch quests, your brother’s surprisingly evil plot is unveiled, and he ties you down in a sarcophagus (or “really pretty coffin” for you non-Egyptology types) and starts casting some evil Egyptian hoodoo.

The game switches PCs back to Sphinx, who is running around a whole new dungeon and solving some puzzles and killing some monsters and generally thwacking things with the sword of Osiris until they do what he wants. Until you go through a particularly doorway and discover that, GASP! You’re in the selfsame dungeon that Tut’s brother is using to cast evil Egyptian hoodoo on him! And as you watch helplessly, poor Tut is turned into a mummy and sucked into hell along with his evil brother and his evil brother’s evil henchman! Nefertiti asks Sphinx to save Tut, and Sphinx gets right on that by going to the Big City…

…which is completely abandoned. No, wait, there’s a white guy. And another white guy. And a half-bird hobo. But other than that, the streets are empty and silent. Was there a plague? A massacre? Nope! THQ just couldn’t be bothered to program more NPCs.

I won’t bore you with more plot exposition (except to say that Horus comes back to plague you throughout the game, and Tut’s evil brother is really the evil god Set in disguise for no good reason, and if you jump in the wrong place or save your game in the wrong place or buy your items in the wrong order or cough while playing this game, it will glitch out and freeze up and die a horrible console-murdering death) because I need to take this time to tell you about what this game was SUPPOSED to be like.

You see, in the conceptual stages, Sphinx was supposed to be a true demi-god, complete with god-like powers such as fireballs, lightning bolts, and the ability to turn into an actual Sphinx and fly around killing stuff and solving puzzles and being awesome. All that plus the Sword of Osiris for plain-old run-of-the-mill killings. Cool, yeah? But apparently that was too much work, and with budget and time constraints, what we end up with is a Zelda knock-off set in ancient Egypt. Even just THAT would be pretty cool (who doesn’t like Zelda?) if they had gone whole-hog and ganked the GOOD parts of Zelda, like the part where the game itself actually works, and the part where there are enough NPCs to fill a town, and the part where you use more than one item to solve more than one kind of puzzle.

In conclusion, I hope this game gets remade with the proper budget and schedule, because the concept was AWESOME and the final product makes me want to bang my face into a wall.

Just look at this kid!

Now compare that to this Game Trailer. It’s obviously a bit exaggerated, but isn’t it nice to know that some things are based on reality? The live action trailer is a little less impressive than the 11 year old girl, but still interesting.

In other news… Wrath of the Lich King? Love it. Good game, Blizzard. Good game. I know where I’ll be for the next four weeks…can’t wait to log in, hop on a gryyyyyphoooooon! World of warcraft is a feeling.

Seeing as how The Torch is now on hiatus until the spring, I can return to my one true love…video games. Expect more nerd ranting.

Peace,

Aubrey Ramsdell
News Section Editor