Big Huge Wednesdays
Reckoning
As you can probably guess, most of the reviews are very positive, and none in this particular batch are particularly negative. I’m going to highlight GameBanshee’s excerpt from the PC Advisor review, though:
I have to commend the folks at 38 Studios for making their first game as ambitious as Reckoning is. In a time when most new IPs are Call of Duty or God of War rip-offs, Reckoning harkens back to a time when games were supremely immersive. Yes, it may not bring much new to the table and the plot and characters may feel hackneyed at times but in Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning we have a game done right. Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning is now available for the PC and it requires EA Origin installed on your PC to run. It has also been released for the Xbox 360 and the Playstation 3.
What’s important to remember about Reckoning is that it’s the first in what I earnestly hope will grow into a quite decent series. While it’s most obvious and most direct competitor is Skyrim, it should be pointed out that Skyrim is Bethesda’s fifth Elder Scrolls game, able to build on a lengthy history of experience and a massive body of lore that has been fleshed out and added to over the course of many years.
By contrast, Reckoning — though it has a massive series bible courtesy of author R.A. Salvatore, and though Big Huge Games has developed other titles prior to this one (e.g. Titan Quest) — is a new thing. That it merits comparison — favourable comparison — to Skyrim is pretty impressive, and I think suggests that the next game set in Amalur will be even more impressive.
The first Reckoning DLC has been announced!
Everyone loves pirates these days:
The legendary pirate Dead Kel and his Hanged Men have returned to haunt the seas of northern Amalur. Embark on a journey to the distant island of Gallows End with the eccentric Captain Brattigan in an adventure that will uncover a secret so great that it has incited wars and toppled kingdoms. Discover powerful new weapons and Twist of Fate Cards and use them to conquer the island’s unique inhabitants. Become the Lord of Gravehal Keep and lay claim to this once great fort that stands upon the edge of a cliff in the most expansive player housing option yet. In an extensive new story and a host of new side quests, battle treacherous new enemies and face exciting new challenges on the mysterious island of Gallows End.
The DLC adds a fair bit of new area to the game world…a 15% increase is what I’ve seen the majority of gaming sites report. It sounds (and looks) as though a few new monsters will be added as well, as well as a castle that your Fateless One will be able to call home.
The Legend of Dead Kel will be released on March 20th, which means you should all have just enough time to finish your first Mass Effect 3 playthrough.
KOA:R got it’s time with Yahtzee this week: http://www.escapistmagazine.com/videos/view/zero-punctuation/5416-Kingdoms-of-Amalur-Reckoning
I also played the demo (on xbox, at a friends), and wasn’t hugely impressed. Can’t really pin it down too much, but I’m not looking for that sort of combat-heavy RPG right now.
yeah played the pc demo too, can’t say I was impressed either…
While I preferred the Reckoning demo to the ME 3 demo, I will readily admit that the demo simply did not do the game justice. How could it? How do you adequately demonstrate a game that by some estimates requires 200 hours to finish in one dungeon and 45 minutes of wandering about?
The 45 minutes of wandering about is more than most demos. I took that to mean we were seeing what the game is actually like.
Something like the ME3 demo (or pretty much any other demo) usually really shows nothing about what the full game will be like. Doing a couple of combat missions doesn’t really show the characters or RPG parts of the game.
Maybe I’m wrong. But as far as demos go, a demo where you can visit several settlements, talk to dozens of NPCs, go to shops, complete a variety of quests… That kinda seems like a pretty in-depth demo to me.
I guess it depends a bit.
In terms of showing off some of the game’s systems, I quite agree: it’s in-depth enough. And it certainly let you explore the combat, which (let’s face it) rocks.
But the demo did limit your ability to move about the world to a fairly small area, so in that respect it didn’t do the scale of the world justice, nor do you get to experience the wider variety of terrain types that the game offers. And that, in turn, prevented you from following some of the more interesting quests, like the faction storylines. It also limits your access to crafting materials, so much so that there’s almost no point in messing about with blacksmithing (and only a bit of a point to messing about with sagecrafting and alchemy).
So…was it in-depth or not? I’d say “no” more than “yes”.
I actually thought the demo was a decent little taste of the game. Yeah, you kept running into walls that told you “buy the game to see this” but that’s sorta the point. (plus those areas weren’t build when they started the demo) I will agree that it barely touches on some of the game’s greatest points, but it’d be hard to touch on a lot of that in a demo. The time limit in an already restricted world was kinda needlessly limiting though.
While Reckoning isn’t as expansive as Skyrim, and doesn’t give you as much freedom, I felt the enhanced combat was worth it, though I would have liked to see more spells and powers. (an RPG with NO fireballs? Is that allowed!?)
Judged on it’s own merits, I think Reckoning is really an amazing RPG, and really takes us to a place we haven’t been in a long time. In an era of gritty, dark, “realistic” fantasy worlds, I loved that the world of Amalur is a world of high fantasy and fairy tales. A world of gods and heroes. It’s a bright, fun, sword-swinging romp.
I’m not going to say it’s perfect. The world is at times too open. Your choices never seem to matter as much as they seem like they should (One character shouldn’t be able to become head of EVERY faction. That’s kinda stupid) and it often misses the “YOU’RE A HERO” mark, but at the least, it’s undeniably fun. At the least it’s something to watch for when it hits it’s inevitable Steam sale.
My only other criticism is, why is everyone in the ENTIRE game between 20 and 30?
Nah, there’s old people too.
Though I suppose in some senses the youth of the average population makes a measure of sense. In-game, the world is still reeling from the first war against the Tuatha. And even though that war has become a stalemate in the eastern Faelands, it ravaged and touched almost all of the realm, and no doubt resulted in the deaths of many men (and more than a few women). Assuming that the people of Amalur took pains to preserve the lives of mothers and children, it would kind of make sense that there were a lot of rather young people — people who would have been children during the height of the Crystal War — wandering about. And it would also make sense that the elderly are few and far between.
Ian tweeted recently, “Ok, so Kickstarter worked for adventure games. Awesome! Now can somebody please give me a new space sim a la Freespace 2??”
Then I saw this video:
…tube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=6R6xgQv0wT4
Reminds me of Wing Commander combat. At 60-120 fps it would control great with a gamepad or dual mice. The sound effects and mixing are epic from the video. The guy yelling, “Nooooo” occasionally is poignant and hilarious. If they put a treble-dampening effect on all the audio but radio chatter and other stuff audible inside the cockpit (your breathing and control manipulations), it would sound crazy realistic. Muffled guns because you’re outside the atmosphere, hearing only their mechanical rattle as they fire and reverberate throughout your ship. No impact sounds unless you pass through what’s left of them and they impact your ship.
I’m on board for the new space game, as long as it’s clever and original gameplay-wise. Others have covered these bases well, so they’ll have to be adopted from and out-innovated at the same time. A space combat game with additional and often mixed elements of air, sea and land exploration with seamless, ever-possible combat should unite flight sim enthusiasts and ego shooters alike with a perfect blend of play control, relaxation with story or talking and of course hard killing. All ships should have a telescope in the cabin for sharp shooting, for example. Standard procedure to have a redundant yet inferior means of executing gameplay when the primary fails. Also watch some Leiji Matsumoto, Masamune Shirow and Katsuhiro Otomo films. Extras: Moon, 2001, Wings of Honneamise, Alien…
I was just talking about space-sims ala Wing Commander yesterday with my wife. I think they’re about to make a return. A couple have already started to come out.