Category: Game Reviews

Outriders : An Outwardly Satisfied Review

Hello, and welcome me back to my own blog. Anybody ? Nobody ?

Anyway….let me welcome myself back to my own blog. With a game review (which is what I used to like to do before I began writing about a lot of heavy stuff like politics). While I’ve been away, I haven’t exactly been away from my games – and have been replaying a lot of what I have already played. I was deep into Destiny 2, in fact, having returned to the game after a hiatus of almost a year. Then, one fine day, I was told by an email birdie that Outriders was for sale. In a impulsive moment, I took the dive.

And…..felt intensely happy that I was back where I felt I belonged – in worlds that reminded me so much of those I loved, but which had become old. In other words, looter shooters with modern graphics. But comfort can give way to ennui, and ennui to a feeling of déjà vu every time a new enemy spawns, another captain falls or another part of the map opens up. So did I give up playing midway like I have so many other games in the recent past ? Nope. Why ? Read on!

Graphics –

I’d love to say that the graphics blew my mind away, but that would just be exaggerating what was a good first impression. Playing on my Nvidia RTX 3070 at 4K with DLSS set to Quality, the game ran well. Better, in fact, that another game involving fighting ghostly creatures in modern day Tokyo. As you may imagine, such a game won’t exactly push Cyberpunk to the wall in terms of its graphics capabilities, but it’s well designed and looks stunning. The world (or worlds) have a stunning amount of detail, as does everything from armor to muscle movements to even gunshots. The result is a visual treat that doesn’t kill your GPU in the process.

It’s a fast paced game, so a massive drop in FPS would make it unplayable during fast encounters (and all encounters are fast here). But at 4K and everything set to Ultra, the detailed surfaces, the way the rays played with the surfaces and shone off armor and liquid surfaces, it felt like I was actually playing a game that took its graphics seriously.

Speaking of serious graphics, the worlds are somewhat stereotypical – lush tropical forests, arid deserts, post-apocalyptic trenches and futuristic cities. We have encountered all of these before, in Destiny 2, some in Division 2, some even in the Diablo franchise of yore. Neither are the design elements themselves radical – alien civilizations building windows with giant crosses reminiscent of church windows isn’t exactly novel to begin with. But whatever has been done, has been done masterfully and the attention to detail ( I know I sound like a broken record here) make the world come alive, making you want to stay longer and linger even after levels have been completed.

One minor grouse is the fact that the night and day cycles don’t seem to be random. While the day cycle makes for the best visuals, one wishes there were more early morning/late evening or night levels where you could actually play under the stars or the rising/setting sun. There are indeed some, and they add a welcome tone of divergence from the monotony of daylight levels.

Last and not missed was ray tracing. Solid textures and lighting have become advanced enough that even without ray tracing, the game doesn’t seem to be missing much. And it makes sense that ray tracing wasn’t included – it’s a fast paced game and ray tracing is known to be resource heavy on GPUs. Assuming many would be using GPUs of older generations, massive drops of FPS that caused enemies to look great but also made you die a lot more often really wouldn’t help.

Overall though, the game is a solid graphics package and keeps your eyes riveted to the screen even after the firefights are over.

Rating : 4.5/5

 

Plot – Something bad happened, earth is uninhabitable, people built a ship to take them to a new planet and then things went wrong. If this script has you yawning, join the club. Having played so many games that start with the assumption that life on earth is six feet under, it feels as if the plot (whichever twist is given to it) simply lacks the element of pure novelty that we experienced with say Halo.

That said, it isn’t a bad plot. In fact, after a point of time, I was playing on simply to see how the story ends. The game puts you into the shoes of an Outrider, folks who were supposed to explore Enoch (the alien planet that’s now the only refuge of humanity) before the others landed. S*** hit the fan soon after they landed and long story short, your outrider was put into cryo (hibernation for the uninitiated) and woke up 31 years later to find that everything has gone awry. Needless to add, it’s up to you to fix things, taking advantage of the fact that the storm somehow gave you superpowers and now you’re an “Altered”.

In course of fixing things, you become fixated on a signal coming from some place “beyond the storms” that mucked everything up, and set out to find it. On the way, you encounter a number of groups, some hostile and some friendly, until you achieve your goal. I won’t give away any spoilers here, but the story keeps you going even though it seems contrived at times.

Honestly, even though the premise is so worn out by overuse, the twists and turns are worthy of a few awards at least. The pace is just about right, with each firefight revealing something new, and keeping you in the game to learn more. The climax is, again, a bit expected and also a bit unexplained, but leaves you with the feeling that you have achieved what you set out to do and not in a way that you could predict from a mile away.

In other words, a good story based on some very overused premises and assumptions.

Rating : 3.5/5

 

Gameplay – I titled this review Outwardly satisfying, and the gameplay is the primary reason for that. Before I dive in, can I ask if you have played Division 2 (or 1 for that matter) ? You have ? Great, then you will feel right at home in Outriders. From the very first barrier you hunker down behind and the very first autoturret you throw to spew bullets at your enemies, the Division 2 nostalgia hits you hard.

Now the nostalgia may vary depending on the class you choose. Outriders is one of the few games which gives you discrete character classes based on how you play, rather than the rather stereotypical Tank/Wizard/Amazon or similar division, and this helps since each person approaches the game in a different way. Even better, the choice is given to you after you have played through the intro, so you know what to expect and how you want to progress.

I chose Technomancer, who specializes in staying back and firing from a distance. This was why Division 2 is the closest comparison perhaps. Others, like the Trickster, may make your gameplay more reminiscent of Darksiders, especially the Darksiders III one.

Whatever class you choose, the gameplay boils down to shooting and looting. You have a fixed number of skills, which you unlock as you progress through the levels. The highest is unlocked at level 17, so you may want to move up to at least that level as fast as you can. In battle, you use those skills to get an edge over your enemies (or just to catch a breath in the more challenging levels). For my part, the first three skills proved enough for me to move through the game and I never used the more advanced skills.

Along with skills, you also get a number of class points, which basically allow you to add improvements to your skills or your character, much like skill trees in RPGs. You can progress through the levels to unlock points faster, which allows you to hone your Outrider based on your playstyle.

And then there are the weapons. Like any RPG, it begins with piss standard weapons and goes all the way up to legendaries. However, the middle of the road Rare tier are good looking enough and useful enough to be usable in boss fights at the highest difficulty you want to play on. Epic and Legendary are good to have, but aren’t compulsory and don’t make this game a gun and armor grind like Destiny 2 has become of late.

What do you do with all this ? Well, going back to the  Division 2 analogy, the game contains levels, each of which contain large areas. Once you enter, the game throws enemies at you. Grunt enemies are accompanied by captains, and also by the toughest enemies, the bosses. The human (and two footed alien) varieties have “Altered” (like you) as their toughest enemies, while the four footed alien variety have hulking behemoths as their toughest tier. Fire, run, dodge, run, fire, throw skill, use skill, fire, dodge, fire, run, you know the drill.

And this is why the game is outwardly satisfying rather than being truly satisfying – it’s the limitations of the enemies facing you. While there are a number of groups and each have their own units, the human enemies (and  two footed aliens) can roughly be divided into the grunt shooters, the sharpshooters, the shotgun-wielding rushers, the knife-wielding superfast rushers and finally, the captains and the Altered. The four legged variety are even simpler – grunts, poisonous grunts/fire breathing grunts, flying minibosses and behemoth bosses.

Regardless of which level you are playing, the game will throw the same enemies at you, in gradually increasing quantities. If your first encounter with a race sees two captains turn up, the next one will probably have three or four. But they’ll be the same – there aren’t any special enemies that have unique skills. Well, there are, but these are scripted boss fights that only occur at specific points of the game, and they’re darn few.

The feeling of comfortable familiarity then rapidly changes into a feeling of déjà vu. It seems that whichever map you’re on, you’re just going to face an increase in quantity, and have to deal with them in tighter and tougher spaces. Perhaps 3-4 minibosses at once, perhaps with them coming with their own swarms of minions. But basically, just more of the same.

While the quantity of enemies in any one map is fixed, their difficulty is for you to set. The game uses a feature called world tier. Play on a specific world tier for long enough and it will fill up like your experience bar. You will get a reward and the next tier will unlock. Each tier makes the enemies tougher, but also allows you to equip better gear and obtain even better gear. The good part is that you can always fall back to a lower tier if the going gets too tough, as long as you make the decision before a fight begins, and are prepared to settle for poorer loot.

That said, the game gives you no apparent reason to bother moving from one tier to another, other than the loot. There aren’t any experience modifiers that I could make out, with Tier 1 and Tier 10 (the farthest I got) giving the same amount of experience. The enemies’ actions also don’t change – they remain the same. A Bulwark will always rush you with a shotgun regardless of which tier you’re on. It would have been good if the higher tiers gave the enemies some previously unseen powers that mixed things up a little bit.

There are a lot of improvement and customization options that you can very well do without. I took a standard Rare assault rifle raised to my current level to my final boss fight, simply because it was easier to upgrade than the fancy epics or legendaries.

Once you finish your final boss though, the game’s true déjà vu feeling starts to sink in. The World Tiers turn into Ascension Tiers, which are basically the same thing except that they are adjusted for endgame content called  Expeditions. Expeditions are basically survival challenges where you must weather waves upon waves of enemies, who just keep coming at you because the game has, by this time, completely exhausted any claim it had to novelty. I finished exactly one expedition and it persuaded me that unless I really enjoyed clicking my mouse button endless number of times for the same shooting animations to play again and again, I was done and dusted.

Oh, and there’s matchmaking. Except there isn’t. The game offers matchmaking options from the very beginning, but you can only matchmake with people at the exact same point in the story as you, which narrows down your options considerably. I tried matchmaking after I had finished the campaign, and well, zilch. Nada. Nothing. No matches were found and I went off to my one and only expedition as alone as ever.

To summarize then, the game feels like a comfortable chair that you know you’ve sat in before, and you settle in in just the right way. It feels relaxing, even nostalgic, and you get none of the aches and pains you would get if you were to try a completely new type of chair. Yet, the very comfort tells you that the chair doesn’t have anything new to offer beyond a point – and you eventually tire of it. Sure, you could stay in your comfort zone and you’ll be well entertained by the game, but if you’re looking for variety or novelty or anything that isn’t already there in Destiny 2 or Division 2, well you’re in the wrong place.

Rating : 2.5/5

 

Characters  – The game gives you a number of characters, and they are part of what kept me going despite the repetitive gameplay. From the young and somewhat childish Shira to the older leader Shira, to the emo girl Channa to the mercenary Bailey to the…… you know what, there are a helluva lot of good female characters in this game. Add to them some good male ones as well – Dr. Zahedi to begin with. All of them are played well, as is the person voicing your Outrider. The voice acting is good, the emotional moments are drawn out just about right. Perhaps drawn out a bit too much at times, but then you do need cutscenes to keep the more story-seeking players invested.

The game allows you to explore the main characters not only through cutscenes but also through mano-a-mano dialogues that bring out their characters and motives. Some characters begin as NPCs, turn into challenging bosses, and in what might be a new record for forbearance, go back to being your allies. Again, some of the moments with the NPCs seem contrived and tired, but overall, they keep the story moving forward and keep the player emotionally engaged enough to keep playing.

Not so the villains, unfortunately. The second villain you meet in the game (and the first in the current day scenario), can be defeated through a side quest i.e. he isn’t even important enough to be given his own main mission. Beyond that, enemies like Moloch just appear and have to be defeated – no explanation as to their motives, no character or tension building, nothing. The final boss, Yagak, also seems to be in there simply because the developers felt that he would be a good endgame boss. Compared to some memorable bosses, like those of the Far Cry series, the bosses of Outriders are baddies because baddies are required for bossfights. No grey areas here. Wipe them and move on.

This lopsided situation means that you are always on the right side and doing the right things, simply because the motivations of the other side are never clear (or are cartoonishly so). Complex storytelling there is, but it would have been so much more layered if they had brought in a villain with an actual backstory to explore and moral grey areas to encounter. Being a good guy is too easy in this game.

Rating : 3/5

 

Conclusion –

Come for the kills, stay for the story. That at least, is my experience with the game. I started out with the comfort of a familiar gameplay mechanic, and achieved a sort of mastery of the major gameplay mechanics really fast. Then I got bored and stayed on simply to finish the rather good story. Once it was over, I walked off.

So would I recommend it ? Definitely. The story is surprisingly good, even if the villains are one-dimensional and the plot seems a caricature at some points. The graphics are quite good, though no surprises here. Overall, the game possesses just about enough to keep you coming back until you’ve finished the story, and that, in my humble opinion, is what constitutes a satisfactory investment, but only one that is outwardly so.

Rating : 4/5

 

Control : The Strangely Satisfied Review

The game community has an unpleasant habit of hyping up the visuals of an upcoming game to the exclusion of almost everything else. So when a game that looks good, all the talk inevitably focuses on the visuals – on the awesome reflections, the hair mechanics, the way the enemies look, etc. etc. While all this may be important, they shouldn’t be the sole determinant when buying a game, because a lot of good-looking games can be actually crappy to play. But tell that to my two-month younger self, who bought into the hype train and pre-purchased the game at full price. As the title suggests though, I’m strangely satisfied, though I can’t exactly say what satisfies the most!

Graphics –

Okay, let’s get the graphics out of the way because a. my reviews always start with graphics and b. because that’s supposed to be the USP of the game. Right off the bat, it becomes clear that this game is a massive challenge for even the best of cards. On my decidedly mid-range RTX 2060 paired with a Ryzen 5 2600 and some 2400Mhz RAM, the game began to produce artefacts and a weird trailing halo behind the main character’s head when she moved. Turn on DLSS and the problems are solved. Clearly my graphics card – at less than half a year old – is overwhelmed by the sheer amount and quality of textures and effects being thrown at it.

Once things were fixed though, the fun began. From the reception desk to the depths of Mold infested caverns, and through the huge halls and cafeterias, the graphics are just – mind-blowingly brilliant. With ray tracing on, the shadows and reflections are always spot-on. By spot-on, I mean they look akin to real life to the extent that I actually spent my non-gaming hours comparing the graphics with actual reflections in the world. And damn are they close enough to be similar. Bar the oil spill in the puddle or the ant struggling for life in another, there is hardly any difference between the real-world reflections and those of the game. Which is kind of scary, because the game actually involves a mirror world in which everything is exactly the same but, well, reversed.

More than the crisp reflections though, what struck me is the extent to which the reflections changed as I moved, or objects came into view or moved out of view, and effects took place. Just the reflections of explosions on Jesse (the main character’s) gun are enough to make you stop and stare. And get killed by the Hiss (the main antagonist). But that extra death is worth it, because boy are the minutest surfaces capable of reflecting enough – just enough – to persuade you that the gun is real, you are real and the lighting of the world is real.

Surprisingly, all of this reality takes place in an office environment in which practically everything is technically indoors. Bar the bit of greenery from the huge trees – or the mold – there isn’t anything much that’s biological and plant-like. But every bit of it is so well rendered that I actually contemplated spending some nirvana-gaining moments at the bottom of one big tree in Central Research. The mold too is surprisingly detailed, and you wouldn’t believe that these are just generic textures reproduced all over the walls.

But I must find a fault if this isn’t to become a eulogy. The fault- or should I more correctly say the comparatively less impressive area – comprises of the facial expressions and facial textures when the characters are talking in third person. This is surprising because when the camera shifts to first person, the expressions and facial textures are a lot more believable. Light reflects off the cheeks properly, the eyes are alive, and the lips look like, well, lips. In third person though, all of this isn’t there and even the lip movements aren’t properly synced. But hey, even AAA games of the level of Assassin’s Creed Origin and Odyssey have very poor facial expressions and mismatched lip sync so I wouldn’t be demanding a refund over this.

One last word about the overall design of the game. Since it melds large cavernous halls with narrow infested passages, every area feels and looks new. Even if we discount the strange modifications always happening in the Oldest House (where this game takes place), exploring the place is at once challenging and visually fulfilling.

Oh, and did I mention the poop monster resembles actual poop if you look very closely ? Ultra textures FTW, amirite ?

Rating – 5/5

Plot – You enter an organization called Federal Bureau of Control and become its director in a span of less than 10 minutes. And then have to fix the whole organization with the few remaining employees, all of whom suddenly discover a great reverence for you (bar one, who simply sees you as a conduit for fungus control). Beginning with this weird premise, the game asks you to move into each of the various levels to cleanse them of the Hiss. The Hiss is a supernatural entity that has arrived – somehow – and has taken over everyone. Hence, most of the Bureau is now floating high in the air and chanting weird stuff.

As you progress, it becomes clear that the Hiss inhabit practically every room of the Oldest House, excepting the ones inhabited by the Mold i.e. a weird pseudo-biological organism. All of this exists in the Oldest House because the House itself is a supernatural entity where time and space don’t follow existing rules. Your job, as Director, is to simply cleanse the place and ensure the survival and continuation of the Oldest House, because despite its oddities and problems, it is the only thing that can contain the Hiss, the Mold and the AWE/Objects of power.

Did I say AWE ? Yeah, Altered World Event aka strange things that don’t really make sense unless you factor in the fact that strange things happen under specific – if unclear – circumstances. Anchors cause ships to rust and sink, fridges blow of buildings unless stared upon relentlessly, telephones allow you to communicate with unknown entities and slide projectors open up new dimensions. Amidst all of these exist the Board, who are in charge of the House and who give the director supernatural abilities.

So, to summarize, your job is to use those abilities to follow the instructions of the Board and cleanse the house of its current chaos. But there’s more. Apparently, Jesse herself was involved in an AWE in a place called Ordinary during her childhood. Following the event, her brother was taken into FBC custody while she escaped. It is heavily implied that she came back to the FBC to find her brother, though the exact linkages are never made clear.

So, to summarize again (because every time you try to summarize the Oldest House, it changes shape), you came to the FBC to find your brother but were made the Director instead and now have to clean up, find your brother and……enjoy a cushy salary and a permanent job ? But then you have a strange entity in your head called Polaris which wants you to do specific things that will help you and “her.” Somehow, “she” also helps you de-hiss objects and areas.

So, to summarize for the final time (you get the drift), you came looking for your brother on the instructions of Polaris (probably ?) and were made the director who has to clean up so her brother can survive, the people of the world can be saved and she can enjoy a nice salary ? What’s the salary of the director anyway ? Is it worth all this hassle ?

As the above summarizing would suggest, the story unfolds in layers, with the same area or topic being revisited again and again, but with crucial modifications. Previously cleansed areas spawn new enemies, new areas are found that were previously inaccessible and your duties and objectives keep changing. Despite there never being the “backstab” moment that has become so common across games today, the plot holds itself together and manages to keep the gamer interested when – when ­– they are not looking at the awesome graphics.

That said, it is not a particularly heart-wrenching plot. Sure, not everything goes well. Jesse is not a perfect person, and what happens in the end is not a perfect ending. But neither is it painful enough. This is crucially why the game feels strangely satisfying – the plot keeps you interested without really bringing out any emotions that would power you through. Ergo, you don’t power through the game, instead moving at your own convenient pace and allowing the house and your employees to guide you.

Rating – 4/5

Gameplay – The real reason why graphics aren’t everything is because gameplay is something. A whole lot of something important. Remedy (the people behind Control) know this. Hence, the demos showed fast paced action with Jesse deploying a range of mind-control actions like telekinesis, seize, etc along side normal gun combat and some really fast running and hovering.

In reality, Jesse is too weak for the Devil May Cry meets Quantum Break gameplay. Combat often takes place under cover of pillars or even staircases, and can often become limited to taking shots at an angle from behind the pillar. This is important because even though you can crouch, there really isn’t any good prone positions for shooting.

But you can’t stay long in one place either, as this makes you an easy target. Don’t take it from me, take it from the game, which literally suggests this on a loading  screen. In other words, you have to keep moving while alternating between firing your gun and using your powers. In later stages, abilities like telekinesis do much more damage than most versions of the gun, but initially, your gun is all you will have. Hence, from early on the in the game, the vital combination of the three will have to be learnt.

This is all the more important because the ability points needed to beef up these abiliites aren’t exactly easy to obtain. They must be obtained through specific main or subsidiary missions, some of whom are actually more dangerous than the main plotline. Consider for instance that there’s one that involves a bossfight so tough many gamers simply skipped the area. Once you get these ability points though, you can buff your abilities to the extent that killing even named enemies up to level 5 becomes a one-sided show where you hurl and fire at will while the enemy just takes damage and more damage. But as I said, there’s plenty to be done before you can get there.

You are also helped along by health elements, which heal you, and various materials, which are used to craft upgrades and mods. Whether these are for your gun or for yourself or both, is for you to decide. But this too makes you eager to join combat so you can get more stuff to upgrade with.

Outside of combat, the game is good without being noteworthy. It is basically a sort of dungeon explorer where you gain new abilities as your progress along the storyline. You have to use specific abilities (levitate for instance) to cross specific areas, and solve some puzzles. One puzzle – that of the mirror – truly had me reading up instructions over and over again. But blame that on my IQ, since there is general consensus that the quizzes aren’t very tough.

Thus, overall, the combat is refreshingly good, and lets you stay invested enough to consider doing tough missions or a little extra exploration so you can get the next upgrade. But beyond that, the game doesn’t have much to offer. This is perhaps fine, since the game was meant to be such and not a puzzle solving one.

Rating – 4.5/5

Characters – The main character, Jesse, is a young woman with a complex past. After fleeing Ordinary, her whereabouts aren’t known, and she eventually took up a number of odd jobs before heading to the Oldest House. Her real intention is to find her brother, and her thoughts – superbly voice acted – make it plain that she cares a lot about him. However, there just isn’t enough substance to her character to make her someone you’d associate yourself with.

This is true for all the other characters as well. Given that the villains are a bunch of inanimate/resonant/biological problems with no capacity to tell you how much they loath you, the game required a superb set of characters to fill this void. But bar Emily, there really isn’t anyone in the Oldest House you’d want to take out for coffee.

Honestly, this is surprising since Remedy scattered a huge amount of literature around the house. But very little of it belongs to you or your family or employees. So we learn precious little about the motivations of characters, their relations with each other, and with Jesse. Also, everyone at the end of the day seems to just get along with everyone else. Intrigue, suspicion and confusion are things only the Hiss inspires in the Oldest House, and that is truly a pity.

Rating – 2.5/5

Overall Rating – The game features some of the most advanced and beautiful graphics available today, along with some fantastic gameplay and – I forgot to mention this – an amazing score. However, the plot and the characters especially are insipid and fail to inspire. There is no endgame to inspire and no favourite characters whose deaths to mourn. So the best – and satisfying way – is to play the game at your own pace with as much environmental damage as possible. You’ll find the game becomes strangely satisfying to play.

Overall rating – 4/5

The Council – The Unhappily Conflicted Review

Given my grumpiness towards PUBG (see earlier post), it was perhaps not surprising that the game I took up during the holidays was, in many ways, just the opposite. It neither had guns (okay, maybe one), nor loot drops, nor – and most importantly – multiplayer. Instead, it was what some people call a walking simulator. You walk, talk to people in choreographed sequences and discover things. Sure, there are QTEs, but that is it. If you think this is boring, remember that Life is Strange was a walking simulator by this definition, and I’ve been hooked to them since. In between, I played another called Gone Home. And now, The Council. The Council is the first historical game of this genre that I’ve played, and I was equal parts excited and worried about how this would pan out. All I can say – and I shall justify myself below – that I was right in being equally excited and worried, since this game is both a step forward and backward for the genre.

 

Graphics

Given that this game came out in 2018, the graphics were always expected to be top-notch. In a majority of scenarios, this is indeed the case. The game takes place in the late 18th Century (January 1793) and we are treated to the mansion of a rich British aristocrat. The devs pulled out all stops when ensuring that the game looks and feels realistic. Once you are out of the rather dreary (Vampyr like) docks, you are treated to a breathtaking hall with large paintings that somehow aren’t just décor but have actual plot value. Right in front of you is a huge bronze statue sticking out of the wall. The pillars, floors and doors are all rendered in exquisite detail.

It only gets better from here. As you explore the mansion, you discover large salons with furniture that has been rendered down to the finest etchings, fireplaces that are as realistic as one can expect, and décor that deserves the newest rendering tech namely ray-tracing to reach its full potential. Shadows and reflections are especially notable, since the halls have smoothened and hence reflective floors.

Move outside, and the gardens are equally beautiful during both day and night. Statues in marble (or some other white stone) bask in the winter sunshine, their shadows carefully rendered and appearing completely natural. Move into the crypt, on the other hand, and the torches and stone walls make for an eerie experience.

Things only start going downwards when one moves to the character models. It is understood that walking simulators generally don’t have the budget to do live action recording of the people. Hence, unlike Far Cry for instance, the actions are rather woody. More problematic are the facial expressions. While no one expects the facial expressions to be as realistic as the background, it is very weird when the character’s eyes consistently look away when you’re talking to them. Lips move without any relation to the words being spoken, and the skin neither wrinkles nor stretches when the figures change “expressions”. This would have been fine had it been a top down or even third person game, but the dialogues are delivered “over the shoulder”, giving you an effectively first person view of the person you’re speaking to. This, combined with the deadpan expressions and wandering eyes, seriously made me wonder whether the plotline involved a lot of undead people living out the same experiences over and over again.

Last but not least, let’s not pretend there are no artifacts or glitches. None of them are game-breaking, or plot-breaking at any rate, but they are very much there. The protagonist spends more than a little time standing inside other characters, while their limbs gently disappear into walls. Lighting errors arise from time to time. But these are relatively minor, and never detract from the game so much as the deadpan expressions do.

Overall, the game could have invested a little more time and effort into the characters. This is especially tragic since the character models are actually quite good. The skin tones are accurate, the wrinkles (static as they are) appear natural and the proportions are just about right. One could argue that they overdid the breasts on the primary love interest (more on this later) but that too is forgivable. If only these characters didn’t look like wooden dolls with crooked eyes, one could earnestly say that this game truly brings the time to life in a way that others (AC Unity for instance) could not.

Rating – 4/5

 

Plot

You are Louis de Richet, son of Sarah de Richet, and member of the Golden Order. Your mother went to attend a secretive meeting on an island with a bunch of rich and important folk hosted by an old aristocrat called Lord Mortimer. Then she disappeared. Now Mortimer wants you to attend and help find her. So you turn up one cold January night of 1793 in search of answers.

With this premise, you start out your quest to find your mother. Soon you learn that you are meant to basically replace her until she is found, and in doing so, serve the mysterious Golden Order. There are other members of the order – notably Emily Hillsborough, a rich duchess who serves as a confidante of the British Prime Minister,  William Pitt the Younger. For plot purposes, she is the primary love interest (more on her in the next section). Others are all famous figures of the day, including George Washington, Napoleon Bonaparte, Manuel Godoy, and others. Added to them are the mysterious Miss Adams, Mortimer himself and his friend Sir Holm.

Your task is to basically talk to each of these people and find out what happened prior to your mother’s disappearance. It becomes clear early on that she is still alive and very much on the island. It also becomes clear that she has already made some enemies, who interestingly, don’t consider you on her side. Instead, they actively solicit your help to obtain their own ends, or simply to avoid her.

All this would have been fine enough, but fine isn’t what this game is about. Instead, it sparkles due to its historical setting. It is implied that Mortimer invites influential people to his place to propose world-changing treaties. These are debated and if approved by unanimous vote by all (Mortimer and Holm abstaining) it soon comes to pass. The current debate occurs on the transfer of Louisiana from Spain to France. Given that this was an actual historical event which preceded the Louisiana purchase from France by the USA, one could expect some historical depth to the whole narrative. Which there definitely is! The game refuses to go for simple us-vs-them situations. Instead, you are required to carefully draw out conclusions and persuade people using actual historical arguments.

For instance, you can persuade Godoy that Spain actually stands to gain from the transfer. Washington can be told that USA would eventually get the land, and this breaks his resistance to having a colonial (and currently unstable) power next to his own. In turn, characters would seek to persuade you to switch sides from Mortimer to Holm, or Holm to Mortimer. Since Mortimer proposes and Holm opposes, you have to carefully evaluate the validity of your arguments at each step. Making this a little easier are the character traits, which allow you to choose which weaknesses of characters to exploit, and which immunities to avoid. That said, the conversations aren’t fragmented skill exploits, but rather meaningful and add to the historicity of the whole game. One can only imagine how much research went into creating what appears on the surface to be a simple detective story.

All of this doesn’t imply, however, that you can simply play high politics and not focus on the real issue at hand. Developments across the spectrum of characters leads you to make choices, which in turn have consequences on the rest of the game. With no one cast in black or white, you are forced to eke out your own conclusions and follow them to their logical ending. On the way, you will take both honourable paths such as direct dialogue, and less honourable ones, involving snooping into people’s rooms and eavesdropping, to figure out the whereabouts of your mother and your own role therein.

If the game had built on this to reach a purely human, rational and historical conclusion to the game, I wouldn’t have been so conflicted (as evident from the title of this review). The problem with the game is that somewhere down the line, the budget began to thin out. All the erudition went out of the window, and in came – daemons. Yes, all the historical nuance and careful character development is thrown out once you find your mother and she (spoiler alert!) declares that Mortimer and Holm are in fact, daemons.

It would have still been fine if you’d fled at this point according to your mother’s plan. It would make for an awfully short game, but still leave it with some clothes on. Instead, the plot now becomes a daemon fest with everyone turning out to be a daemon. Emily? She’s a daemon and your sister! Mortimer ? Daemon, and your father! Holm ? Mortimer’s brother and your uncle and also a daemon! And you, dear Louis? Daemon-spawn!

The problem with the game is that it no longer tries to weave in the historical setting with the daemon business. Beyond some biblical bull about daemons always having been there and always having guided men, there is no grounding in the French Revolution, the Louisiana purchase or for that matter, anything else. Suddenly, everyone around you who is not a famous character turns out to be a daemon, and everyone is your relative. Your quest is to find your place in the daemon world now, dealing with some Father figure (who inhabits Miss Adams’ body) and using new daemon skills such as mind control and reading thoughts. All of which detract so wildly with the calm historical storyline hitherto developed that you feel like throwing your keyboard at Mortimer’s face.

It is to the credit of my patience that I persevered with this warped story, siding with one daemon and then another, and then again with another daemon, to finally kill Mortimer. The finale, if it can be called that, was the utter nadir of the whole affair. Suddenly everyone began throwing their arms as if to fight invisible forces, I limped up to Mortimer and stabbed him. To hell with the story, we need X-Men stuff and we need it now! Meh!

In the end, you dear reader can understand why I feel so conflicted. It feels almost as if the first part was developed by a sober group of people coming from different walks of life, who put in the effort to create a real historical game that would fit the historical narrative but still offer meaningful choices. The second half was developed by a bunch of dudes high on fentanylated heroin who could neither think straight, nor bother to develop what had already been taken to a high level of finesse. Instead, daemons appeared in their fevered hallucinations, and they wrapped it up with some superhero stuff. They’re probably off doing krokodil with whatever they could eke out of the dying budget.

Never have I played a game that was so good in half and bad in the other half. A truly Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde affair.

Rating – 2.5/5

Characters –

Thankfully, the characters remain lively and appealing throughout. The most important of them is Mortimer, and while he is introduced a bit later, you are likely to have a ton of conversations with him. The voice acting is superb, and he really does come across as a man of firm convictions who wishes to see change in the world but on his own terms. He chafes against the control of the daemon family and wants unlimited control, yet is not a maniac. He has done terrible things, but only to further goals that one cannot entirely disagree with. His methods are Machiavellian, but they make him all the more difficult to refuse. Not surprising then that I ended up following him up to the very end, only realizing what the game wanted me to do at the very end.

Next in importance is your love interest and the only fulsome wench (to use 18th century terms) on the island. Having risen from obscure origins, Emily Hillsborough married a declining nobleman and now moves suavely in elite circles. She is here to represent the British crown, having become the secretary to William Pitt the Younger. She is one of the first characters you meet, and from the time she gives you her handkerchief, you know her sole purpose here is to be the female foil to the male protagonist.

That said, she isn’t there simply to be taken for granted. Play her character dialogues badly, and you could end up losing a valuable ally. She has useful information on most of the characters, is refreshingly honest with you regarding her locus standi and looks to your advice on critical issues. All of this allows you to confide in her and obtain useful reactions, instead of risking the same with the others. That said – and I reiterate – play her wrong and she will mess things up for you.

Play her right though, and the chemistry develops gradually but surely. This culminates in you being given the option to sleep with her on the second night itself. You could do so, or end up getting drunk with the unstable Miss Adams. It is unclear whether Adams has sex with you, but what is clear is that being with Adams is more important that taking the duchess to bed. This becomes clear when, on the very next night, you get to sleep with her again, regardless of the choices you make in the conversation prior. Given that you can spend two out of four nights in Emily’s warm embrace, it is safe to say that she presents a not very difficult but quite satisfying romantic angle to the whole plotline. When she goes onto kill your mother to avenge her sister (not knowing that she is still alive) the love story takes a tragic but not unexpected turn.

From here, one could expect the love to wither or blossom, based on how two individuals see each other’s actions in the larger context. Could they rise above their own familial emotions and find warmth in each other’s hearts ? Or would there be more tragedy in the offing ? Sadly, all this is lost on the meth addicts. Emily becomes a daemon and turn out to be your sister, so that even when she is wearing next to nothing in bed, you can’t join her there. Later, she – and her now reanimated sister – who is also your sister, join their brother, which is you, to take down Lord Mortimer, who is the father of all three. Did the sentence make sense ? No ? Don’t do drugs kids!

Let’s now come to Sarah. She is an ageing femme fatale who knows how to get the work done. She is the leader of the Golden Order and hence commands an important presence. She came to the island looking for the Al Azif, and then went into hiding. She has committed a number of heinous acts, including torturing a young Miss Adams, and killing Emily’s sister Emma. But what are her motivations? Daemons of course! And off you go with her into daemon world, unlocking crypts to find Longinus’ spear and then trying to escape only to be trapped in conversation with Lord Mortimer. By the time you get out (and I think you can get out earlier), you find Emily has shot her.

This should have been the tragic end of the whole affair. But….. she comes back in a suspended reality sequence where she beseeches you to save her from limbo. Funnily enough (meth!) Louis now addresses her as Sarah without providing any explanation as to why he has suddenly stopped calling her Mother. Even more funnily, Sarah is perfectly fine with this. In the end, all your promises to help her come to nothing and she is – this time finally – never heard of again.

Beyond these, there are the other characters. Holm is the arch-opponent and also close friend of Mortimer, who shows a distinct coldness towards Louis from the very beginning. He eventually turns out to be Mortimer’s brother and well, a daemon. Mortimer tries and succeeds in killing him, which is your cue to turn upon your father and kill him. Decent voice acting, but not a very important role.

This leaves us with the truly human, non-daemonic characters. Of these, Cardinal Piaggi comes across as the most convincing with his cracking voice, conservative yet wise opinion and lack of exaggeration. He is a friendly person who can be easily persuaded when needed, and next to Emily, can be a good ally. The others – Napoleon, von Wollner and Godoy, are more difficult, and can oppose you openly on occasion. They are also somewhat shallower, and hence less appealing than the characters mentioned above. Godoy for instance, appears vain without any mitigating qualities, and Napoleon appears ambitious and nothing else.

Finally, we have the servants. I had expected them to take off their masks and spring a surprise at any moment. Yet they remained faceless servants and never did do anything more than offer up some amber or a book or provide basic directions.

The verdict, then, must be the same as it was for the plotline. The most interesting characters become interesting because of the deep contours inherent in their psyches, that you must unravel one dialogue option at a time. But then they become boring simply because the meth addicts flatten everything with a rolling pin. Thankfully, the characters are not so much damaged by the heroin rampage as the core story itself, and you can still take away a few positives at the end.

 

Rating – 4/5

 

Gameplay –

Gameplay revolves around moving around and clicking things and people. If it is people, you get dialogue options. Once you choose a dialogue option, the person responds and you move to the next dialogue option. Embedded in these options are special ones that involve use of skills. Skills are social abilities that exploit specific vulnerabilities of the target character to figure out what the right answer would be. These vulnerabilities are discovered through hit and trial, but are also sometimes exposed directly. Either way, using them would allow you to bypass their defences. On the other hand, running up against immunities would trigger hostile reactions and push you back.

All of this gets much more intense during confrontations. While some truly are confrontations, others are merely forced conversations eg. The one with Miss Adams on the stairs. Either way, failing them has very serious consequences, including cutting off later dialogue options and vital information about the character and others as well. Failing one particular confrontation will even lead to physical injury for Louis, while failing another would kill off an important character. To make matters worse, you only have a limited number of attempts, and exhausting them would lead the confrontation to fail. At best, the character will storm off in a huff. At worst, you or someone else will be seriously injured.

All the skills are arranged in three trees, based on the character type you choose. The one you choose has all its skills unlocked at level 1, while the others are locked and have to be unlocked manually. Following each segment, you get a specific number of skills points. Add a specific number to unlock a skill, then upgrade to level two and three. Level 2 and 3 aren’t fundamentally different, except that they require lesser and lesser effort points. Based on your own actions and dialogue/confrontation successes, you would also get additional skill points deposited in specific skills. They would also net you more XP which would increase the chance of a level up and hence more skill points. Finally, you can get skills from reading books you pick up around the mansion (or borrow from individuals).

Beyond this RPG-esque maze, there are also Talents and Traits. Talents are unlocked when specific combinations of skills at specific levels are unlocked. Most of them require at least one skill at level 3,  and hence aren’t the easiest to unlock. Traits on the other hand are given based on how you fare in the conversations and puzzles. Do them well, and you would only get positive traits. Do them poorly, and you would get negative traits. As you’d expect, positive ones reduce costs of certain skills while negative ones add to them. Again, very RPG-esque.

Like most walking simulators, there isn’t a health bar since there isn’t a real threat to your life. Instead, what you have are a number of effort points. Using skills costs effort points. These can be replenished using Honey/Royal Jelly, which can be found lying all around the place. Using too many will lead to negative effects, which can be cleared with another potion called Carmelite Water. There are two others, which are used to make a single skill use free of effort point cost, and reveal weaknesses for a limited time. In practice, the game only requires use of the first two, and I ended up with far more of the remaining two than I needed.

I also mentioned that you could click on objects. Such clicking can involve elaborate puzzles. Sometimes, as in the Medusa puzzle, the pieces are physical and therefore easy to piece together. However, there are far too many puzzles involving the bible (which I guess is why the erudite people were thrown out and the methheads brought in). For someone who has not read the bible, it was very difficult to piece together what would probably be simply deduction for Christians. Matters aren’t helped by the fact that the puzzles are nested i.e. there is a puzzle inside a puzzle, and all of them involve flipping through pages (actually book dialogue options). This has rightly been called tiresome by Steam reviewers, since it detracts from the real storyline and the pace of the plotline.

Finally a word on the daemon skills. There are basically two – mind reading and body control. Mind reading costs daemon skill points, which cannot be replenished by drinking any potions and must be obtained through clever use of dialogue options itself. By this time though, the ordinary skill use system would have become second nature and replenishing these points isn’t such a hassle. Body control, on the other hand, occurs in two strictly choreographed sequences with strictly fixed results if done right. Hence, it is not so much a real skill as a plot device.

I cannot say I’m dissatisfied with the gameplay. The use of skills and skills alone in conversation is an excellent way to maintain a façade of realism while forcing you to carefully evaluate individuals and information before committing to a course of action. This, like in real life, provides excellent incentive to think before acting, even when you have multiple skill options before you. Skill options are pretty unpredictable, and so investing only in a certain tree is not feasible. Instead, you have to be prepared to remain at level 1 with many skills and then move to level 2 with some. Even then, you would be caught with some skills which you may have but which would require a higher effort cost, forcing you to carefully balance the options. The coke addicts messed it up somewhat with their mind reading daemon skill, but by carefully not using it, I managed to retain the feel of the first part of the game. So if you’re a bit careful, the gameplay can be fun and riveting, barring some puzzles of course!

Rating – 4.5/5

 

Conclusion

 

As would be clear by now, the game suffers from a personality disorder. Half of it is scintillating and promises so much more, while the other half breaks it all up in favour of a clunky, dysfunctional and childish daemon story. This damages the plot more than anything else, but can also have an impact on gameplay and characters. On the other hand, some aspects – such as the puzzles – demand too much erudition and hence go beyond the average non-Christian player. If the game could have avoided these extremes, it could well have heralded a new age in the genre of historical games. Instead, it remains an unfinished masterpiece, where one part is painstakingly drawn out, while the other appears nothing more than childish scribbles.

 

Overall Rating – 3/5

Shadow of the Tomb Raider – The (Sympathetic) Contrarian Review

As someone who prides himself for being a decent game critic while being a below-average gamer, I cherish opportunities which allow me to go against the current of critical opinion. Sadly, such opportunities don’t arise too often. One reason for this is that my gaming lineup is somewhat conservative, consisting heavily of games that have a proud lineage or at least something to recommend themselves. More often than not, I play these games knowing they’re decent, if not outright good. And I generally agree in the end. The sole exception to this was Remember Me, where I found almost every angle of criticism (save the button mashing) to be unduly harsh and unjust. Not so with the third iteration of the Tomb Raider reboot series though. Shadow of the Tomb Raider is a game that has its flaws, and I understand that these are flaws and not some weirdly artistic nuances. Yet I also understand that where it fails in terms of repetitive story, it scores in terms of the variations introduced; where it stumbles for lack of new things to do, it rises above its predecessor in terms of the depth of side quests involved. I could go on, and I will, but to do some justice to the game’s devs, let’s start with the more positive aspects.

Graphics

If there’s one department where Shadow of the Tomb Raider shines, it is in the graphics department. No one expected Square Enix to be squeamish in this department, especially since SoTR is supposed to be getting cutting-edge CGI grade ray tracing compatibility. Yet even with my now aging GTX 960, I managed to unlock some of the graphics potential of this game. Running at Highest settings at 1080p eventually proved too much of a chore for my rig, but while I did, the results were breathtaking.

First off the bat, the scenery is mesmerizing. The dark cave walls, the patchwork of light and shade in caverns, the deep sunken temples and the bustling markets all appear as veritable works of art. Yet this game was marketed as a jungle survival game, and the jungle truly comes to life. Despite not being an open-world game, the jungle seems expansive enough to let you explore without risking straying too far away from the primary objectives. All the while, you’re constantly admiring the rich foliage, the great diversity of wildlife and – again – the interplay of light and shade on the grass, the trees, the distant peaks, the rocks, the water, the…..

Okay, let’s just say I felt deeply immersed in the forest. Move out of the forest though, and you get deep caves and sunken temples, usually having challenge tombs. Here, the lighting is just about right for you to be on the lookout for traps. Moving into large chambers changes the ambiance subtly, giving you the idea that you now have to solve some puzzle, or take down some enemies. All this while, the rock faces, the totems, the spikes and the skeletons appear eerily real. They’re places you can stay in and admire the artwork, but which really make you feel you should get going. The graphics are really that good.

Underwater levels deserve a special mention. There aren’t any wholly underwater levels, but Lara gets her ponytail wet often enough. These underwater levels can be clear and pretty like the cenote you visit about midway through the game, or the dark brackish water that you navigate as you move in or out of some challenge tombs. Either way, the game manages to keep you focused on the objective while allowing you to admire the graphics involved.

Speaking of ponytails, Lara’s hair remains what it was in the last game – uncannily similar to an actual horse’s tail. Despite the advances made to the other graphical aspects, almost no improvement can be found in this specific department. As any long-haired girl will tell you, ponytails stand somewhere between masses of tied seaweed and a bunch of loose threads. While games like Life is Strange lean heavily towards the former, SoTR goes in the opposite direction. You can make out individual hair strands, but they seem to have been woven artificially onto her head. The natural “bounce” and “volume” of hair still can’t be found in the game. This isn’t a negative since other games typically tie female hair up so tightly that there’s hardly any movement. But given how much detail the original reboot gave to Lara’s hair, this lack of improvement is disappointing.

Now a word about the populated areas. SoTR shines in areas with minimal human presence, where you are acutely aware of your surroundings and can take in the scenic beauty to the greatest possible extent. This isn’t possible in the populated areas. For one, the two populated areas in the game – Kuwaq Yaku and Paititi – are hardly paragons of architectural achievement. One is a ramshackle backwater of Peru, while the other is basically a village with some Mayan architecture thrown in. Either way, while the cities are pretty, there’s nothing awe-inspiring about them the way Alexandria is in Assassins’ Creed Origins.

Lastly, I should mention the facial expressions, since these have been vastly improved. The main cutscenes are specifically recorded with actors, so the facial expressions are supposed to be realistic. However, even the side mission cutscenes and the general facial expressions of NPCs and Lara herself, are commendable.

Overall, graphics is this game’s strong suite. It was expected to be, and it delivers well.

Score – 4.5/5

 

Plot – The plot has been heavily criticized, so let’s go over the basics first before I dive into by arguments. Lara is in search of a knife and a box, which together would allow someone to take on the power of a god and reshape the world. How this reshaping would be done is entirely unclear. The point is that a guy called Dominguez is after them, and Dominguez belongs to the uber-evil secret organization Trinity.

Hot on their trail, you reach Mexico, where you find the knife. But you get captured and lose the knife. You learn that the knife and box must be used together, otherwise there would be floods, storms, hurricanes, etc. etc.  You then head to Peru based on some clues on the carvings around the knife pedestal. On your way there – and Tomb Raider fans will probably see this coming from a mile away – you crash and your friend and pilot get separated. After some animal killing and tool construction, you reach Kuwaq Yaku. Despite the name, it is a modern town with people speaking Spanish and cursing the oil companies that went belly up.

From here on, you can truly spread out your gameplay. If we strictly stick to the plot, we are told of temples where specific symbols are found, which match the clues obtained up to this point. Team up with a pretty tomboy called Abigail (Abby) to find these places. Once you do, a series of levers and climbing levels deposit you in the second – and definitely more interesting hub – the Hidden City of Paititi.

Apparently, Paititi is a surviving outpost of ancient Mayan culture. Your job is to solve the power struggle between the Cult of Kukulkan (who are also Trinity for reasons not entirely clear) and the rightful claim of Queen Unuratu and her son Etzli. Dominguez turns out to be Amaru, a son of Paititi who has a specific plan for the box and knife in order to remake the world to make Paititi a safer place to…..you get the drift. You head off in search of the box even as Unuratu is captured trying to rescue her son from the clan. The box, as it turns out, had been removed from its rightful protection of the strange race of Yaxiil centuries ago by an increasingly deranged Jesuit monk named Lopez.

Foreshocks of the upcoming earthquake force you to flee from hordes of Yaxiil. You return to free Unuratu, only to see her get bumped off with a shotgun. You now head back to Kuwaq Yaku for reasons not entirely clear. On the way, you are attacked by Trinity forces, and have to endure a gruelling stealth section before letting it all out with some much-welcome assault rifle fire in the final stages. Your target, the Trinity military commander Rourke, gets away.

Instead of chasing him, you head to the Church of San Juan, looking for a crypt which would hold Lopez’s stolen box. As you learn about the madness overtaking the man through the writings of his companion T Serrano, you discover an elaborate and ghoulish chapel. More lever pulling later, you find the box. You naturally take the box, and for plot purposes, promptly hand it over to Dominguez.

Again for plot purposes, your friend Jonah takes it and makes a run for it. Again (again) for plot purposes, he’s thrown off the helicopter and now Dominguez has both the box and knife. You’re left wondering whether you might as well have taken up the Trinity job contract in Dominguez’s place and have had to do less rock climbing to get those relics to Trinity.

Fast forward to the final section, where you decide to ambush the Kukulkan men (and the modern Trinity men, who don’t seem to be cooperating much for some reason) and find the Yaxiil to be your allies. Clambering along walls to the accompaniment of hordes of these creatures (“they’re more than creatures” – Late Unuratu of Paititi) you finally reach Dominguez/Amaru, who has now absorbed the power of Kukulkan and become something of a god. Defeat him and you end up becoming the Kukulkan. The queen of the Yaxiil “kills” the god to abort the upcoming apocalypse, in a cutscene so generic that you almost know Lara would survive this “killing”. You end up back at the Croft estate, and the world is presumably safe.

Generally, I don’t recount the whole story in such detail. The reason I did is to draw out some points from it. First off, it has to be admitted that the storyline isn’t exactly fresh. This is the second game to have the three major categories – high-tech bad guys (Trinity), the old-timer bad guys (undead, in this case Yaxiil) and the lost civilization goods guys (Mayan Paititians) – of characters, and it feels a bit stale.

Granted that the game changes their roles somewhat, but in doing so, creates a confusing distinction between the modern Trinity mercs and the cult of Kukulkan. It is implied that Trinity either founded it or took over an existing cult, but how they coordinate with the modern-day baddies is not clear. Even when Rourke shoots Unuratu with a shotgun, the next section involves fighting sword and bow wielding enemies. Are these native Paitians who ally with Trinity and Kukulkan. Are they modern people of Trinity who just maintain a façade and didn’t have time to pick up modern weapons before attacking you ? The game leaves this maddeningly vague.

Another problem is the story progression. The writers could have done better than have Lara give up both pieces one after another. If both pieces needed to be with Trinity to create the epic showdown in the end, this could have been handled better than through two hostage situations. The second could have been entirely avoided if Lara had somehow changed the frequencies on which they communicated after Rourke found out when he came across Jonah’s walkie-talkie. Maybe she did, but the game says practically nothing about it. If she didn’t though, it would explain how Trinity turned up at the Church soon after the two started exploring it. (Also, mobile connectivity guys ? It’s 2018).

These big loopholes are coupled with many smaller ones. For one, Lara manages to fool all the guards of Kukulkan even when it becomes very clear that all the guards of the cult are male and Lara doesn’t even have a female Paiitian voice. That British accent, and horse-tail, would have been dead giveaways even if she left weapons at home. Secondly, the whole Maya theory is rather poorly explained. I never could figure out what the essential procedural difference was between Lara’s plan to restore the sun and Dominguez’s plan to take the power of the sun through Kukulkan. Thirdly, the game’s final section involves too many actors without actually, well, involving them. It says the rebels would be involved, but there’s no trace of them. It says the “High Council” of Trinity are personally there, but we soon hear they have been slaughtered. It’d have been better if this section was broken into a number of different missions, with each mission bringing out more about the City of the Serpent.

All these complaints aside, the story isn’t a damp squib. It kept me interested enough to finish the game during a rather busy week. The story is briskly told, with no unnecessary detours bar the ones you willingly take. There are enough variations in the roles of the Paitians and the Yaxiil to force you to appraise their roles and good and evil. In fact, turning the Yaxiil into allies in the last section is a masterstroke of storytelling, providing more depth than anything involving the Japanese or Byzantine forces. Lastly, while the plot logic is somewhat convoluted, the game doesn’t require you to scratch your head too much about it as long as you keep your eyes on the actual target – Dominguez.

So all in all, the plot could have been better. But in terms of variety, length and level of interest induced, I’d say it scores a solid four out of five. It may not be as great a jump as from the first to the second, but it possesses vitality nonetheless.

Rating – 4/5

Gameplay – Another major complaint of gamers has been the gameplay. This isn’t so much about broken mechanics as about lack of new things to do. Again, I sympathize. Whereas the second iteration extended the list of things to do between missions substantially, this game doesn’t extent it so much.

For instance, whereas you could improve your Russian by studying murals and signs in the previous game, this time around you are also rewarded with the possibility of deciphering obelisks containing vital supplies, including rare skins. Many a times though, simply wandering into areas with suspiciously unique looking attributes nets you the loot anyway. For instance, I found the loot of the obelisk by the water drawbridge by noticing that there were snake skin sheddings around it.

The side quests are better. While some – including the lengthy one involving Etzli’s coronation – are indeed complex fetch, or fight and fetch, quests, others provide interesting stories. One in the Hidden City asks you to find out about the meaning of life from the outcasts to judge whether such a man has stolen the dice of a child. Another in Kuwaq Yaku tells the story of Abby’s mother and her desire to turn the girl into a Croft-like adventurer.

Through all of this, and the endless exploration of caves, rocks, etc., gameplay is surprisingly smooth. Excepting places where the game got hung due to my hardware limitations, there weren’t any areas where I could jump through walls, stand on people’s heads or otherwise do something the game normally wouldn’t allow. Doors that were closed remained closed until the time had come or one had the right tools and expertise. Doors and levels that were available remained so without causing unnecessary hiccups in terms of randomly spawned enemies and randomly closing puzzle options.

Movement is fluid, and stealth sections are an especial treat. Despite being a bit of a klutz and completing these, I found it to be immensely satisfying taking down enemies. Even if your cover is busted, you have the options of melee and shooting rapidly, allowing you to take down almost all enemies.

Which brings me to combat. Of the three categories of enemies you would have to fight, the modern day Trinity is perhaps the easiest. They appear early in the game, and have all the flaws that you knew they would have if you had played any of the older games. Even later, with armored and heat-vision Trinity enemies closing in on you, you know that you have the full array of weapons to use and a range of strategies to adopt. These include slinging them up from trees (like in AC III), stabbing them in the back with your climbing gear, or simply planting a bomb/arrow and causing it to explode when an enemy approaches. Given that they aren’t exactly the worst either in terms of ranged or melee attacks, you can experiment and still live to tell the tale.

The second group of enemies are the Cult. The cult can easily be distinguished using their black and green uniforms. Despite both being part of Trinity, these guys never bear guns. A letter in the main Hidden City temple tells you this is to maintain the façade of being priests and not modern mercenaries. So when you masquerade as them, you too are limited to just arrows. This is fine as long as they aren’t trying to all rush you head on. When you’re discovered and you’re being sniped, shot and slashed at all at once, the lack of more modern weapons becomes a serious impediment. Yet in most instances, these guys are involved in search operations and can be taken down one by one.

The toughest group though, are the Yaxiil. The game never makes it clear as to who they exactly are. Lara’s argument about them being monsters or creatures is rejected by Unuratu. By negative definition and the fact that the queen eventually allies with you, it may be assumed that they are not, in fact, undead. This is both a relief, and also a thing to pique your interest. Maybe it will be satisfied in DLC, because at this juncture it is impossible to tell what they actually are.

Whatever they are, their tendency to fire dangerous poison-tipped arrows and charge you head on makes them challenging enemies. You can use guns against them of course, but remember that they will not give you any ammo. In fact, matters go to hard that I had to count every bullet on some levels such as the Tree of Life Challenge Tomb. You can imagine my relief when they become allies for the last mission.

Regardless of the comparative difficulty, it may be said that the game does well in allowing you all the resources and tools you need to take them on. Despite playing in the middling Rite of Passage difficulty, I never had trouble finding ammo boxes and/or arrows scattered around. Enemies move quickly, and not very predictably. Neither are they bullet sponges though, and only a few rounds is enough to take down most.

Now a bit about crafting and skills. The devs have tried to add a number of skills, but sadly most of these were already present in the last game or aren’t entirely useful. For instance, the skill allowing one to shoot two enemies at once, was hardly useful since there were very few instances when enemies were looking at each other but no other enemies were looking at them. Thankfully, challenge tomb skills are much more useful, and make the gruelling tombs worth their while.

Unlike the previous game, we now have clear demarcation between challenge tombs and crypts. Crypts are smaller, and generally provide you with legacy outfits rather than skills. They also generally don’t contain enemies or special skills. Challenge tombs, on the other hand, can be anything from pirate ships to huge underground trees, alongside the more traditional actual tombs. Here, you will have to climb/swim/run/walk your way through a pretty straightforward route, until you reach a puzzle. Despite lowering the puzzle difficulty to the lowest, I could not – simply could not – solve some of them. One of them, the mirror challenge, took me over an hour to complete. The skill ? Definitely worth it.

Crafting is also much of the same old stuff. There is some variation in the rare animal skin department, but nothing like the custom missions we get in Far Cry. Resources are generally widely available, and coupled with your being able to snark anything and everything from shops without anyone batting an eyelid, this makes crafting pretty easy. The only time I could not craft something was when I required rare wolf skins. The only wolves I could easily access lived outside the San Juan perimeter, and unfortunately got killed both times I took on the rare black wolf. That aside, I could easily get rare condor feathers, jaguar skins, etc. without actually hunting the animals.

A last point about navigation. For a game that places so much importance on navigation, the game’s own pointers are often misplaced. In some cases, this adds to the challenge, forcing you to analyse an area very carefully to find the monolith riches or survival cache. In story missions though, this is very irritating since caves are badly marked and easy to miss. In side missions, NPCs you need to talk to would be found at the edge or outside the marked circle. Combined with the not-so-easy topography of the game and you are in for some intensive backtracking.

Lastly – and I swear this is the last last – there are some truly useless things. Conquistador chests, for instance, contain some precious goods, some gold, and a random relic. This improves your understanding of a random dialect, but beyond that and the goods, the chests may well have been ordinary pots.

Overall, gameplay is quick, smooth and has enough to keep one experimenting. Some features are repetitive, others unimaginative or disingenuous, but again, they aren’t game breakers for me.

Rating – 4/5

Characters – The reboot shows Lara as a vulnerable but mature young woman. Each of the previous games explored sides of Lara’s character and past. This one explores her relationship with her father. This relationship is pivotal, and the game does decent justice to it without forcing you into endless dialogue options. She continues to have great chemistry with Jonah, but it is increasingly implied that Jonah is falling for Abby. This is explicitly implied when in the conclusion, Etzli asks Jonah when they’re getting married.

Coming to Abby, she is a well-rounded character who deserved even more missions of her own. There could have been entire sections where we played as Abby. These could have been sections which noted the previous history of Kuwaq Yaku. The Forge, which is to an extent centered on her, doesn’t do enough justice to the mechanic tomboy descended from the Incas. Yet what we do learn tells us that she is a strong independent girl, not dissimilar to Lara herself.

Then we come to the Hidden City cast. Of them, Unuratu stands out for her excellent voice acting and powerful personality. As both a warrior and a mother, she embodies the spirit of protection that is inherent in her role as the queen. Having rebelled against the cult, she chose the hard life and eventually died for it, refusing every offer of collaboration with Trinity. She, of all the characters, comes closest to being truly inspirational, despite her having clear parallels to the leader of the people in the Rise of the Tomb Raider. In the end, you truly feel one with her mission to free Paititi, feel sorry for Etzli when she dies and feel respect for her when you take on her role in the final chapter of the game.

Etzli, on the other hand, unexpectedly shines. Being essentially a child, I didn’t expect him to be such a developed character. Yet instead of making childish jokes, he comes across as a character not unlike a younger Lara herself, making sense of a fast-changing world and performing his duties to the greatest extent of his understanding. He is cheerful and understanding, which make him a great candidate for a DLC set sometime in the future.

Before coming to the enemies, let’s ponder over the somewhat dubious position of the queen of the Yaxiil. “Queen” is something I made up, since it is nowhere implied that she is their queen. She seems to be some sort of leader, though, since they bow to her and obey her. “Her” is also something I deduced from her clothing, since that is also not implied anywhere. In fact, there is little talk of the Yaxiil at all, compared to Lara actively learning about the Japanese queen in the first iteration, and the Macedonian invasion in the second. This, combined with the completely incomprehensibility of their language and the extreme difficulty of fighting them, make their cooperation in the final segment that much more gratifying. Despite the game not taking it well (putting Yaxiil constantly in my line of fire), I found the Yaxiil to be the single-most interesting addition to the game despite there being so little about them. The queen, if she may at all be called that, comes across as an interesting figure, dedicated to her task of protecting the box (and the knife too ?) but vicious and simplistic in her understanding of her allies and enemies.

Coming to the enemies, we only have two named enemies – Rourke and Dominguez. Rourke is the typically baddie, commanding troops and eventually getting killed by the Yaxiil queen and her followers. Dominguez on the other hand, is more of a grey character. He comes across as a deluded man who wishes the best for his Paititi, and doesn’t really care much about what happens to Trinity. But his choices make him a villain, and he pays the final price for it. (It’s mentioned that he is an academic, rather than a fighter. This probably explains why, despite his god-like powers, the final boss fight isn’t that difficult).

Before wrapping up, a note on the languages. The Spanish speakers speak, well, like the Spanish do. One can imagine that there are plenty of people who speak Spanish fluently, even if the developers demanded they speak the Peruvian flavour. More interesting, and disappointing, is the Quechua dialect, which I think is what the Mayans of Paititi speak. This language is still spoken by millions, so it is both a testament to the survival of actual Mayan language and the dedication of the gamers that they could integrate actual Mayan conversations into a game created five centuries after the invasion of Pizarro. Yet the lines seem read out and forced, with a few notable exceptions. Perhaps it is difficult to find enough qualified Quechua voice artists, and it would definitely be difficult to get children to do the voice acting if they didn’t use it extensively. Despite this disappointment, the very fact that they went to the extent of getting all the Mayan lines actually voiced in the Mayan language is no mean feat.

Overall, the characters are warm and full of life. Along with the quintessentially focused Lara and funny sidekick Jonah, characters like Etzli, Abby and Unuratu feel relatable and likeable, even when their arguments don’t make the most sense. Taken with the storyline, one may argue that this is the best cast of characters but with a decidedly not-so-best storyline.

Rating – 4.5/5

Conclusion – While I understand where the hate for this game comes from, I honestly can’t share the same view. While some backtracking was truly tedious, I never felt the game going in a direction I didn’t want to go into. The graphics, the sound, the characters and even the story melded together in a way that left me coming back for more. Even when I second-guessed where the story was headed, I didn’t feel distanced. Instead, I looked for pleasant twists and found them aplently. Even when I knew the gameplay would be much of the same hiding, shooting and occasional melee, I looked forward to making use of the subtle differences introduced this time around. In other words, while I wasn’t truly stunned by any moment in the game, I was more than once thrown off my comfort zone by the sheer ambition, effort and execution that had gone into the game. The result may not be what gamers want – and they want some very specific things – but it’d be a capital shame if this sent this game, and the franchise, in the direction Remember Me went.

Overall Rating – 8.5/10 (Recommended)

One Indian Girl : Book Review

One of the saddest facts about my sad life is that I don’t read a lot of books. Ask anyone on the street whether this is indeed a sad thing, and they will definitely agree. Especially if you tend to hang around bespectacled folks who carry jholas and attend seminars. Another sad thing is that when I do get around to reading a book that has nothing to do with my subject (history, not gaming!), I can’t find the proper adjective to put before “review”. Maybe reading a few more books would have given me ideas. Ah well.
Anyhow, if there’s one exception to my sad state of existence, it is Chetan Bhagat. He and I go back a long way, back to my school days. It’s too late (2:30AM to be exact) and anyhow not the right blog post to discuss my long history of interaction with the man and his literature. What I do wish to discuss though, is a specific book called One Indian Girl.
Most book reviews would give a bit of background about what the book is all about, how it fits into the genre and the age and how Bhagat has been evolving. But let’s skip all that. Instead, let’s jump directly into what I found interesting and what I did not. Because, you know, context is boring.
To begin with, the author tries to break new territory by situating himself in the mind of a female protagonist. Bhagat’s stories tend to be in first-person singular (except the sex scenes, when things definitely go “weeeeee”), and writing in first person female singular is no mean task. For one thing, you have to deal with the stereotypes that already exist in your mind regarding the other sex. Next, breaking away from them inevitably leads you into the counter-stereotypes that are created by movements like feminism. Trying to balance the two requires research and a sympathetic understanding of the fact that men and women, equally, prone to being individuals with their own distinctive traits. And from there you can weave the world of your protagonist, its supporting cast, its flaws and glories, its plot and its twists, and so on.
I’ve faced this problem, though you, the reader, don’t need to know where or why. Suffice it to say that I stumbled at the point where the individual breaks out of the stereotype, and gains a life of her own. Bhagat insures against this by meticulously interviewing a number of women. Does he run surveys ? Nope. He simply goes after the women who are closest to him and gets information about their experiences.
This makes for two qualifications to whatever he may have gleaned. One, as the Marxists will tell you, is that Bhagat being a member of the upper middle class, would inevitably gather information from upper middle class women. This, however, is not a big stumbling block if you intend to write about middle class women. The second, and more problematic issue, is that women may not open up about things that they typically wont’ discuss with men. Okay, your wife or girlfriend might. But beyond them (and one or two very close female friends) most won’t be willing to talk so openly about “matters” as they would be willing to with a woman. Even if they wanted to. Why ? Because many such issues may be embarrassing, difficult or traumatic in a way that “only women would understand.”
Be that as it may, what does Bhagat achieve? His research leads him to craft a character called Radhika. She is a middle class Punjabi girl with a management background. In other words, she is the exact opposite of the protagonist of Five Point Someone, one who is as close to Bhagat in terms of existence as can be possible. This is a wise decision, since reducing the number of variables makes it easier to feel at one with the character you’re creating. It also allows him to claim that his work is a comparison of the different reactions that men and women face under similar circumstances. All this adds a modicum of credibility to the overall premise.
Moving from background to the actual events, though, raises some very important questions. Radhika is seen as an overachiever with very little social life and even lesser experience with men. That, prior to her bagging a prize job at Goldman Sachs and flying off to New York to smash the glass ceiling. Here we face the first problem. All of Bhagat’s stories have been based in India. Okay, so some parts of Three Mistakes of my life may have been situated outside, ditto with Half Girlfriend, but mostly it’s been India. This is important, since Indian readers, for all their love of the firang and the vilet, internalise Indians living in India  more than any NRIism.
Radhika, however, hardly ever returns to India.  When she does, she is completely cut off from Indian society. Yeah, so her mom keeps nagging her about marriage. And she has periodic complexes about her sister. But that’s it. You hardly hear of a single truly Indian character in India with whom Radhika interacts. This lack of an Indian setting threatens to turn the story into the equivalent of a Karan Johar film.
Beyond the risk of aloofness, this also raises the ghost of context. It’s no secret that Indian society doesn’t take kindly to its women. Naturally then, the impediments facing a girl in India would be much more than those facing one living in the States. At the same time, these would be experiences that Indian women would not want to open up about when speaking to a man (the point I made earlier). So could it be that Bhagat could not get the information about the problems faced by women in India from Indian women  ? Did this force him to locate the story in an exotic setting devoid of the various ills that plague Indian society ?
In fact, Bhagat’s use of society is sharply attenuated. Our protagonist goes through life without facing a single issue of sexual harassment, molestation, stalking or eve-teasing. Except for a rather blatant case of misogynism in the boardroom (which seems sort a face-saving gesture on the part of Bhagat), there is no trace of the problems faced by women, either in India or in the US. Hence, Radhika emerges as an equal of men in a manner that does not reflect actual society. This makes for comfortable reading for men (including myself) who are not affected by such issues, yet in hindsight Radhika does appear to much of a man in the eyes of society.
So what issues does she face ? The prime one, expectedly, is that of marriage. A nagging mother and an inherent sense of proving herself worthy of being a wife and a mother plague Radhika’s conscience (and phone calls). Her sister, as the arranged-marriage girl of the family, acts as a template which Radhika must follow regardless of what she achieves in her professional life. Failing to find love on her own eventually leads her to give in, which culminates in the plot finale.
A second issue is that of her physique. This issue is more easily solved and once she regularly has sex, her self-image improves. In fact, Bhagat is mature enough to show that with growing sexual maturity, she both realises the self-control required and also the pointlessness of the traditional mores of self-controlled chastity. What emerges is a pragmatic woman who knows what she wants out of sex, and is not afraid to ask (or gently force) her partner into cunnilingus. At the same time, she is ready to reciprocate and is open about her desires (or lack thereof) of sexual feelings at any given time. Bhagat, consciously or sub-consciously, breaks down what had turned into a criticism of his work – that his female characters tended to be one-trick ponies when it came to sex, being shy before seeking out sex and essentially letting men take control. (His last work, Half Girlfriend, broke this trend to some extent but only partially).
Another sign of maturity is his handling of sex scenes. Bhagat’s writing is not erotica, and he does not even try to step into the realm of female erotica. Despite this, his handling of the scenes is more mature and detailed. No longer are bed scenes put forth in the final paragraphs of a chapter and left hanging, the next chapter beginning at the end of the coital session. In OIG, Bhagat takes time and effort to describe foreplay and coitus. Most importantly, he uses this to show the character traits and sexual evolution of his protagonist. Given that the protagonist is female, this is all the more commendable.
The choice of lovers is less so. Both her lovers (and her arranged would-be-husband) are Indian, though they belong to three different communities. The surprising part is that barring the last, they are placed in foreign surroundings. Couldn’t Radhika have found love outside the subcontinental diaspora. Bhagat gives no plausible explanation for this, but one has to presume that with his prime character being a woman, it made sense for her to deal with Indian men, thus giving an element of familiarity. Also, perhaps, it would help assuage the Indian male ego!
Their behaviour, too, is somewhat predictable. Thankfully, here Bhagat makes the predictable work for him. Not unnaturally, Radhika seeks to be a wife and a mother. Her first lover (a Bengali, gah!) wishes her to be that, but without her job. Her second lover wishes her to be his lover, but not his wife or his kids’ mother. This contradiction, where being a wife and a working professional come into conflict, are borne out by the two relationships Radhika goes through. To Bhagat’s credit, she is shown to be sympathetic to both, and tries her best to salvage what she can. Yet she eventually has to walk away, either on her own or because she is pushed out.
This makes her realise that neither of the two aspects need contradict the other. More importantly, she realises that she need not put up a timeframe for marriage, and thus accept one or the other. This realisation dawns when she is preparing to marry her arranged groom, and both exes turn up to woo her back. Radhika eventually decides that ultimately, what women want is also categorised by men and given in pre-determined platters for them to accept. What she really wants, though, to combine all the different aspects of professional and personal life, is something no man could offer her at the moment. She follows through on her realisation.
The way Bhagat puts it across, as always, is mesmerising. Reading the book across two plane flights, I could not help but be struck by the sheer un-putdown-ability of the book. Till the very end, her dilemmas speak to you as if they were  your own. Without destroying the “her” in the protagonist, the author manages to put you in her shoes and conveys the confusions. Till the very end, you cannot decide what she would choose. The final decision may seem dramatic and a wee bit ridiculous, but it takes Bhagat to steer it away from the shores of both stereotypes and raw feminism towards the fabled isle of the perfect climax.
Yet even in all this, there is a minor gripe. Radhika seems to put her personal problems before her professional life, even though it is this professional life which she uses as a bargaining chip against marriage pressure. She changes jobs when one relationship sours, and it takes her bosses to keep her on the job. One can understand that bosses treat valuable employees with utmost care, but then who is she to treat her career in such cavalier fashion ? This, in fact, smacks more of elitism that anything else, since a middle class girl would never give up her job (unless pressurised by marriage, pressure which Radhika staunchly resists).
To conclude then, One Indian Girl ticks the usual boxes with panache. The storytelling is superb, the moral dilemmas and emotional problems are brought out and held together with superb skill and the ending is marvellous. Where he breaks new territory, the results are somewhat mixed. Radhika is a relatable character, her problems are very real and her solutions are human and commendable at the same time. But the societal problems faced by women are not highlighted. It is almost as if she does not want to tell me, the male reader, those problems lest I judge her. Again, the setting and her attitude to her job are distractions that try their hardest to break the connect the reader feels towards the protagonist. Bhagat manages to create a lively, courageous and lovable girl, but one in the wrong place and too few and too predictable scars.

Assassins’ Creed Syndicate: The Unfinished Review

Seldom do I write a review before finishing the game. Seldom is the wrong word. I NEVER write a review before finishing the game. It’s a travesty, a sin against human nature! But then times are not what they used to be *sad music here* After months of not being able to write a review, it is slowly sinking in that my current predicament translates to a continually mobile lifestyle. Mobile lifestyles don’t agree with desktop computers and so, in defiance of my principles, I must write while I still play. Otherwise, the moment I shut down and begin travelling, the game and the review have left my head for good.

This is especially so when the game’s an AC aka Assassins’ Creed. Being one of the many who have played every single game since the inception of the franchise (except Rogue) and finished all but one of those I’ve played, a review becomes not just a study of the present game, but a long comparison tinged with nostalgia.

Assassins' Creed Syndicate
Assassins’ Creed Syndicate

Before I lose myself, let’s get down to the bare facts. The AC franchise has been accused of meandering for quite sometime now. Some say the last meaningful game was Revelations starring Ezio, while others would claim that Unity brought something back to the franchise. Whatever side you’re on, it’s hard not to argue that the last few years have seen their ups and downs. ACIII was easily one of the worst, while IV redeemed things a little. Rogue was more of a side-story (the first time the franchise went back in time actually) and Liberation HD was more of a PS Vita game. Unity raised a lot of expectations and the devs answered with everything they had. Sadly, that everything proved too much for most computers and coupled with glitches, made finishing the game a Herculean task. Further, it still kept the franchise stuck in the 18th Century, making many wonder whether it’d end before hitting REAL modernity.

Syndicate is a resounding answer to all of this. For one, it takes you into the 19th Century, the age of modernity, the age of man taking civilization to all parts of the world on the back of steam engines, telegraph lines and stage carriages. Again, you have an interesting experiment with two Assassins instead of one. A male and a female assassin not only break the monotony of grim I’ll-destroy-you figures (Connor, Shay, Arno) but also bring in both the caution and the joviality of Ezio. Further, the game is given the difficult task of making combat and travelling simple in an age when swords and horses are no longer to be found. This, as we shall see, the game does with admirable success. Storyline ? Character evolution ? Franchise evolution ?

Hold on, all of that is coming. Where? Look below!

Graphics and Environment

Unity was torn apart by critiques for showing teeth and eyeballs sans skin during the famous Arno-Elise kissing scene (and even later). Rightly so, because Unity took a leap in terms of graphics without preparing adequate safeguards. NPCs were multiplied tenfold (or hundredfold), buildings were suddenly 1:1 compared to real ones and AI was really intelligent all of a sudden. All of this made for great show, but it left way too much space for glitches (not the Helix glitches, real graphics ones) and errors. From bodies sticking out of walls to poor parkour to whatnot, Unity proved to be a comedy of errors. Such a comedy that many, including me, despaired of ever finishing the game on more than one occasion.

Cut to Syndicate and Ubisoft has learnt its lessons. For one, NPCs have been reduced a lot. Streets are near empty, and this makes for both good navigation and easier graphics processing. Secondly, the number of internally navigable buildings has been cut down a lot. Many buildings are navigable only during missions. Thirdly, the intricacies of the buildings, such as the multitude of balconies of the Notre Dame, have been done away with.

All this allows for a beautiful London without the chaos of Paris. Granted that this is meant to be so – London 1868 is the epicentre of imperial power, Paris 1789 is the epicentre of destruction of imperial power. That said, the city IS beautiful. The business-like grandeur of London has been brought out in beautifully recreated offices, warehouses and even living quarters. Roads are wide and spread out in geometric ways, giving much relief from the barricade-ridden labyrinths of Paris. The Thames – or the Silent Highway – has been recreated with every bit of the hustle and bustle you’d expect.

Markets, on the other hand, are few and generally don’t appear within missions. Crowded places are intentionally avoided, giving enough space to run and hunt down targets. Alleyways are not very complex, and generally open onto large promenades. All of this makes for a city that is a pleasure to go around, even when one is not in one of the well-recreated gardens or iconic places.

Now if we were to look closely at graphics, we would notice a slight stagnation. Faces in third-person are woefully lacking in detail. The game has coolly sidestepped the vexatious issue of women’s hair rendition by giving all women short hair, or in Evie’s case, a closely tied style. Not for Ubisoft the careful rendition of Lara Croft’s hair in Tomb Raider (one which changed in texture and movement with change in graphics). NPCs, as mentioned before, are fewer and one feels, lacking in variety too.

Cut-scenes, however, are well-detailed. Facial mapping has allowed expressions to mimic real life. Since the assassin pair provide much needed relief from the intensity of previous characters, a wider range of expressions is visible. Evie, in particular, has a range of smiles and smirks that give more life to her character than any Ezio-era female character would have.

Gameplay

Where Unity truly broke down was in gameplay. I remember vividly a mission in the docks where circumventing a pile of boxes caused me to be detected multiple times. Such problems, and the multiplicity of NPCs and debris everywhere made gameplay a terrible challenge. So terrible that Ubisoft had to release a 14GB patch to fix things. I’d never know if it did fix things because I never got around to downloading the whole patch.

Syndicate provided me just two patches of 2GB and 300MB. From the very start, gaming was simple and error-free. Your character would naturally circumvent boxes, jump over chains, be able to slide under obstacles and in general, do everything Ezio or Kenway could without too much button-mashing.

Button-mashing is a problem though. Pressing three buttons for a leap of faith, or jumping down from buildings, is something that is a bit unnecessary. Matters, however, have been drastically simplified on other fronts. Lockpicking is no longer a mini-game. Instead, you simply hold down “E” like you held down “Shift” in Ezio-era games (or “E” in later ones). Climbing buildings, however, gets the greatest makeover courtesy of the rope dart.

This simple thing allows you to hit R and move from one roof to another (or from ground to roof) using out of the blue ziplines.  Ziplines ? Remember Revelations, remember Ezio being taught to use those to travel quickly and take down guards underneath ? Those ziplines make a reappearance, and with a vengeance. This time though, they are totally under your control. You move where you want, when you want and in fact, how you want. No longer are you stuck at one spot wondering which side to move to to get the next foothold. No longer do you have to be spotted and stoned/shot down to the ground while climbing buildings after doing your stuff. No longer, and please gulp down any water in your mouth NOW, do you have to climb towers to get to sync points. Stand below the tower, hit R and voila! You’re at the sync point. Syncing thus becomes something you can do even while proceeding along another mission.

This has its pros and cons. Pros would include not having to waste time jumping about and being able to disappear from the scene in record time. Cons, as many longtime gamers would feel, would be that the concept of parkour has lost a lot. Buildings were indispensable parts of the parkour mechanic, and without them, you’re left wondering whether you’re not really Lara Croft creating lines to move from one landing to another. One also wonders whether this allowed the creators the freedom to cut down on the detail of the buildings. All looks hale and hearty, but if you’re not going to painstakingly climb the buildings, what is the point of adding detail ? Could this be a step backward in terms of the creative effort put into the game ? If it is, I’d rather see rope darts removed than the buildings progressively turned into Soviet-era blocks (unless the next game IS in Soviet-era conditions).

Coming to combat, we notice a similar easing of the tools. The mechanics of Unity are more or less retained, focused as they are on counters than on actual attacks. However, gone is the era of the sword and the crossbow. Instead, now you fight with kukris (short blades of Indian origin which are there entirely courtesy of Arbaaz Mir’s son), cane-swords and revolvers. Revolvers add the unique novelty of shooting non-stop without reloading. Kukris and cane-swords however, make combat a lot less flashy. Perhaps this is meant to be so, since most of the fights in the game are between street thugs (oh yes, you’re a street thug as well, coming to that!). Yet somewhere the novelty of fighting with a long sword and a short sword is lost. One type of weapon causes slashes, the other thuds. That’s it. Somehow you yearn to return to the age of swords, when hand-to-hand combat really made sense and the protagonists did not ALL belong to the wrong side of the law.

The range of throwables remains fixed. You have the smoke bomb, the hallucinogenic dart (that word!), the revolver, the throwing knife and voila (or Volta), the voltaic bomb. The voltaic bomb is a shocking (yes) bomb that disables targets and can even kill them. Developed by Alexander “Aleck” Graham Bell, this bomb acts as a backup to the smoke bomb. Sadly, things like the cherry bomb are not replaced, and there is practically nothing to send people in a different direction.

Assassination therefore involves walking up to them and stabbing them (Good morning dear Si…..ahhhh), falling on them from above, pulling them from windows or wooden gangways and sneaking on them from behind. You can also attract them and dispose at your convenience. Nothing fresh or interesting here, except that everything works far better than in Unity.

Any discussion on gameplay would of course, require a paragraph on travel. Travelling is important in London. Everyone travels to work, to meet friends, to make business arrangements, to buy groceries and to murder people. You usually go to murder people, and this requires speed. What do you do ? Get a 19th Century taxi – a carriage. Syndicate’s greatest addition is the carriage, which turns London into a 19th Century Watch Dogs’ Chicago or GTAesque Los Angeles. You race carriages, you assassinate drivers, you ride on top, you ride inside, you jump on them from above, you climb on them from the side, and most importantly, you use them to move as you’ve never done before. This isn’t promotional material speaking, it’s really that awesome. With broad streets and a huge city, the rope darts and the carriages allow you to really enjoy your time the way you’d do in any modern day world game. Indeed, this sets the game apart from virtually every other period game!

Characters

Another interesting change is the character lineup. Jacob and Evie represent twins who tend to have very different goals. So different that most of their discussions turn into banter and leg-pulling. So much so that NONE of the missions involve them actually working together (remember I’ve not finished the game yet, so NONE SO FAR would be better).

Jacob is, following Edward, a reckless man who believes he can turn the world on its head. His behaviour is carefree, without concern for the problems it might cause in the long run. This is amply borne out when, after two great missions by Jacob, the next involves Evie mopping up things. Yet Jacob’s cocky charm allows us a person who breaks away from the monotonous intensity of previous characters. Ezio had a certain joviality about him (remember his chat on the ship with Suleiman in Revelations ?) but Connor, Arno and Shay were all impossibly serious. Edward had a certain recklessness, but it seldom came down to banter. Jacob however, combines Edward Kenway and Ezio Auditore effortlessly, allowing us a glimpse of the unreformed, easygoing selves we were introduced to so long back.

Evie, to be honest, is a complete surprise. It is hard to make a girl jovial without going into stereotypes and sexual innuendo. Ubisoft makes no attempt at making her jovial. She’s self-confident and serious. In a way, she is the successor of Arno, without however, the freedom to work with an understanding lover called Elise. Jacob is hardly the understanding, petite, lovely, red-haired, beautiful, (okay okay fine), Elise. She follows her father’s instructions and teaching, causing her to look for what is really important to the Assassins (such as pieces of Eden, which are now referred more as Precursor Artifacts). Jacob ? He is going about liberating London by creating the biggest underworld gang ever! (More on this in the Plot section).

Characters apart from these two are, thankfully, quite interesting. Admittedly Dickens looks like a professor, Darwin a harried professor and Nightingale a tired maidservant (oh you bloody elitist Ari!). Yet they have enough in their expressions and their quixotic preferences to keep the story chugging along. Henry Green is the best of the lot, playing the part of an Assassin who’s good at everything but assassination (“field work” as he calls it). He also has a crush on Evie, and a lot of contacts. Results are that he is generally involved in missions involving her, and which have some amount of background involved.

The rest of the characters can be classed as ordinary folk, and goons. Ordinary folk are just that, people who lived in London. They have their specialities, but are not really admirable. There is also the police, but well, they are the police. Finally, the goons. Jacob runs one gang, the Templars run another. So you fight for territory the same way you’d do in say GTA San Andreas. Goons fight goons and cause destruction. If you were an assassin from the time of Altair or Ezio or even Kenway, you’d be banging your head on the wall.

Plot

Finally, the plot! Plots have typically tended towards becoming vengeance sagas in which you eliminate each person in the Templar’s circle before going for the Templar. Twists to these were provided by Rogue (Shay) and Revelations. However, the remove-the-inner-circle story remained the same. It still does, simply because it allows for a series of assassinations to be carried out.

Put simply, Jacob and Evie are free-spirited assassins who are tired of their part of the creed and set off to take over London. In London, Green mistakes them for people sent by the Order and helps them defeat the Templar Starrick. Here comes the catch. While Evie is working towards finding the pieces of Eden to defeat the Templars, Jacob is thrashing his way across London. He cooks up a gang called the Rooks, captures boroughs from the Blighters (aye, the Templar goons) and thus goes about clearing the streets of London the same way Ezio did against the Borgia. Many of the assassinations serve both purposes – getting Evie closer to the Shroud of Eden and getting Jacob another chunk of London.

The problem however, is that all of this is really not something that the Order orders. Where is the Order ? Relations between the Order and the protagonists of AC games have rarely been friendly. Barring Ezio, all have had trouble, with there being demotion (Altair), quarrels (Connor), cynicism and criticism (Edward), desertion (Shay) and excommunication (Arno). Yet they all involved the Council in some manner. Here, these two go about using their blades without ANY sanction from anyone.

Worse, they aren’t even concerned. This, perhaps, is because both of them got their assassin badges as part of their upbringing. They take it for granted. Thinking about previous protagonists, you notice that none were raised in the Order (Altair excepted perhaps). They came to the Order with specific needs and specific goals. They learned to follow the Creed with specific problems and lessons. Not so with these two – they treat their Assassin IDs as something that simply exists. Worst, Green doesn’t seem to have any idea that they are here without sanction. In the age of the telegraph, the London branch is in the dark about the whereabouts of the Crawley branch and its two assassins who have moved to the London branch. What joy!

Despite such glitches, the plot does manage to keep you somewhat hooked. The intermingling of business and politics is shown clearly, and this detracts from the usual lineup of political actors. Perhaps this is fitting in the age of global capitalism. What is not fitting is the lack of any twists and turns till late in the story. Even then, none of it is of a life-changing nature. Nothing changes the tone of Jacob, which makes for stark  contrast with Ezio. Nothing modifies the objectives at hand, which again makes for stark contrast with some previous titles. Everything is so hunky dory, you wish Ubisoft had hired better writers.

Conclusion

Assassins’ Creed : Syndicate is a game that takes some of the good from Unity, mixes it with some truly ingenious stuff fitting to the 19th Century and then forgets some of the essential stuff. Indeed, what is added with gameplay is taken away a little with graphics and, for those who contemplate, by the story too. The result is that the game is Assassin-grade because you have the blade, not at all  Creed grade and Assassins’ Creed grade because it brings back much of the joy -repackaged and modified of course – of the days of Ezio and Edward.

Far Cry 2 : The Outdated Review

It takes an idiot to play Far Cry 2 after Far Cry 3. It takes a special type of idiot to play Far Cry 2 after Far Cry 4, and then to write a review of the former! But here I am – sitting and writing on a (thankfully) cloudy June afternoon while installing Ghost Recon Advanced Warfighter. But let’s not deviate – the point is that I’m writing a review of Far Cry 2 after having finished it after a good day’s worth of play. Yep, a WHOLE DAY’s worth of play aka 24 hours! So what did I learn from the African jungles and the jamming guns ? Here’s the lowdown –

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Graphics

Playing Far Cry 2 after a highly polished and totally awesome title like Far Cry 4 can bring back that “
oh no not again” sort of feeling. But blaming Far Cry 2 for not having graphics as good as the successor of its successor is like asking Einstein why he didn’t build the Hadron Collider. This so especially since Far Cry 2 was considered a visual masterpiece of its time, a time which in gaming terms is already in the distant past.

But at the end of the day it all boils down to how the gamer feels, and this gamer aka arrian91 aka Aritra the Gamer (woo hoo!) feels the graphics are quite good. Unlike Far Cry 4, which is set in a somewhat familiar environment, I have really no idea what Africa looks like. Or more specifically, what war-torn failed African countries look like. But from what I’ve read and what I’ve seen on TV, Far Cry 2 does a pretty good job.

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So what does the good job constitute ? To begin with, the game contains oodles and oodles of tropical rainforest, topped off with decent amounts of savanna grasslands and at the very edges of the maps, deserts. While this may seem somewhat monotonous if you’re stuck in one part of the map, most missions require you to travel great distances (Coming to that) and for this reason, you’ll actually enjoy the scenery. In fact, some of the most beautiful parts of the game are ones where there are no human habitations. This, in my humble opinion, is at the core of the Far Cry experience, and again in my opinion, makes FC2 a true predecessor to the later games.

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Of course, it isn’t entirely a FC3 or 4 experience. For one thing, there is no hunting involved. Animals are there – wild buffaloes, deer, zebras and so on – but all are herbivores and none actually attack you. The only AI they have forces them to constantly run away and that too, not very effectively. You could shoot them down or run them down with your car, but there are no rewards for that. In the end, I ended up avoiding most of the animals altogether.

Lack of hunting directly translates into lack of suspense when travelling in the wild. While a kilometre in FC3 or 4 would involve at least one predator attack, here you can walk for miles and miles and face none at all. This makes travelling on foot quite monotonous for those who have played the later games. Yet it’s perhaps not right to blame FC2 for this – games like Fallout 3 and New Vegas have similarly barren stretches with little to interest the gamer, and they too are considered cult classics.

Despite such monotony however, the game has its moments of sheer beauty, even when you have become accustomed to the scenery and no longer admire the trees, cliffs and of course, the dirt roads. Once I was driving to one end of the map to kill some folks at some place called Segolo (I think). The game was about 75-80% complete and I was thoroughly accustomed to the southern part of the map. Yet when I broke through the foliage and moved into the grasslands – I was treated to a breathtaking site of the sun rising above the barren lands and few treetops. Again, when I was boating along the rivers, the rugged cliffs around me gave a sense of adventure that had nothing to do with my mission or the overall logic of the game.

 

In contrast, the human settlements are downright drab and sad. Okay, so there is a war going on. Okay so it is Africa and a very impoverished country at that. And fine, the war and the poverty do come out starkly through the quality of the settlements. But all said, endless broken rusty cars, rusting tin sheds, tires for roadblocks and buildings bemoaning their former glory do not make for an experience that is visually breathtaking. Whether it is Pala or a Leboa-Seko or Segolo or any other settlement, ceasefire or no ceasefire, the place feels like it desperately needs a makeover.

At first, the entire setting brings home the sense of collapse and despondence associated with entering a country that is tearing itself apart for no good reason. It even makes you feel a little angry at the person called Jackal – “the bastard that armed both sides”, as the protagonist puts it. But after a while, the sheer monotony of the buildings –some clearly colonial, others poor post-colonial ones, make one feel that there is little joy to be had in exploring the inhabited areas.

Not that there’s much to explore. Apart from a few diamonds here and there, the cluster of buildings can be broken down into –

  1. UFLL/APR headquarters
  2. closed off buildings
  3. Church
  4. some random shanty like areas
  5. an occasional ruined hotel or graveyard

You could probably explore the entire town – be it any town – in less than five minutes. And I’m talking about the ceasefire ones – the others (like Shantytown or one of the villages)  are even smaller and make you feel like you’re wading through a pile of wood, tin and miscellaneous metal.

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Talking of villages, these at least have some novelty. The houses are made of brick and their insides are honestly rendered. You have interesting hay ladders and low top floors – all of which add to the safari experience that is so central to any game that deals with sub-Saharan Africa.

All in all, the ambience is enjoyable at first but gradually loses steam. While you’re genuinely interested in exploring the various nooks and crannies of the map early on,  the later stages really make you feel like going through the main missions as fast as possible. Matters are not helped by the fact that some areas – like the waterfalls and the fishing village – have been rendered with essentially the same strokes as the rest of the greenery – something outstanding here would have made some of the missions (like the mission to kill the UFLL chief of the north) much more interesting. Still, the game holds well, and if you manage to mix up things, you can at least get through the main missions without dreading the monotony of the FC2 world.

Navigation

A good part of what makes matters monotonous is the relentless need to travel. The initial missions take you literally to the edges of the map, and while the later ones are much more spread out in terms of the destinations, they still require substantial travel. There are no fast travel options aside from the bus stops. These bus stops are at the very edges of the maps and oftentimes require a good deal of driving from virtually any point (except the central one) to reach. Matters are not helped by the lack of anything – literally anything – near the bus stops, which makes travelling to bus stops a micro-mission in itself.

Now to begin with the basics, travelling can be done in three ways – car, boat and animal power. Animal power ? Yes, the power of your two legs. Sadly, you’ll have to use the latter more than the other two combined. Why ?

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  1. Some areas are located so far from roads that you’ll be bumping through sand dunes and over cliffs if you’re in a car. Better to walk.
  2. Enemies will destroy your car even if they can’t put a bullet in you. Cars being the weakest of the movable objects in the game, you’ll often find your jeep or car or boat destroyed. You can jump onto the enemy’s boat but sometimes that blows up as well. Result – walk/swim.
  3. Cars are far fewer than in the later games and unless you’re lucky enough to find an enemy driving at you (and not running you over), you’ll have to set off on foot from the towns quite often.
  4. The maps are so convoluted that often a seemingly motorable road turns out to be so narrow or ridden with obstacles that you have to disembark and walk.
  5. A good number of checkpoints and outposts will have at least one drum and tyre construct to stop you from driving through. Stop there and your car is trash. Often you’ll have to walk from there if there is no vehicle in the area.
  6. Boats will get stuck on reefs and in marshes and no amount of pushing will help. Swim on, friend!

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Now you’d think that at least the roads would be simple to navigate. They  aren’t. Most of them are twisting snakes of gravel that will throw you off cliffs, take you to dead ends and to random areas with no utility whatsoever before you get to your destination. You do figure out the most important ones eventually, but you have to do a good amount of planning if you don’t want to end up at the other end of the country.

Road signs are there – but the only ones useful are the ones denoting a fork. In some junctions you can discover a long list of places and arrows directing you towards them. Sadly, the names in the game are so convoluted that you might be headed for Senkharanese and you might end up in Segolo.

The only thing that happens during a typical journey is endless encounter with enemies. They either come at you at guard posts or more often, in cars. Moments after they start shooting, your engine will start belching white smoke. You disembark, shoot them down, take their car, reverse and change direction and drive. And drive. And repeat. And drive. And repeat. And repeat.

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I drove about 100km in the game and walked 130. Need I say more ?

Combat

Far Cry relies primarily on combat, and thankfully, FC2 doesn’t disappoint – almost. The guns are fine, the mechanics are cool and the enemies aren’t hard to kill (at least on the lower difficulties). Reload times are tolerable and indeed realistic. The guns look great and for once, they got the rust and dirt right so an old gun looks quite old and rusty, and not in a bad way.

Another thing is their attention to the build of the guns. Each gun is meticulously designed and you can make out the exact design when reloading. Coupled with the realistic reloading and dirt/rust graphics, these make the guns true beauties that befit the environs.

But that’s about all that clicks. What doesn’t click – well there’ s quite a lot of that. Firstly, the realism is taken too far. The two most realistic mechanics are also the most annoying.

First, there is the recoil. Guns like ASR and PKM recoil so much that you’re essentially starting from the enemy’s feet and firing up to the heat, hoping that you get in enough bullets before you’re aiming at the heavens. The second  and the most pathetic, yes THE most pathetic mechanic is jamming. This is the only game in which jamming has been given so much primacy that virtually every gun jams. And when it jams, you’re left to either switch weapons, which is surprisingly slow in such a situation, or to hit the reload key till the gun works again.

Some people find the jamming mechanic amusing eg. the top shield of the PKM flies open and has to be stuffed back. In the midst of combat though, it is plain irritating and can cause you to lose significant amounts of health.

Initially I thought it was the problem with some specific guns – better ones would have less problems. So I went and bought more guns from the irritatingly distant gun shops. Since there are no bell towers or outposts, you have to do special missions to unlock the guns (coming up). Now I did get better guns, but they STILL JAMMED. Hell yes, they jammed and jammed and then….then they heated up and had to be thrown away! Yes, this is the only game where you actually have to throw away guns, leaving you without your primary weapon in the middle of a fight.

Now the reason I say primary weapons is because there are 4 classes of weapons – knife (constant), primary, secondary and special. The division is rather arbitrary since sniper rifles fall into both primary and special categories. Most of the time though, the primary gun would be an assault rifle, the secondary an Uzi or Makarov and the special an LMG, sniper rifle or RPG.

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Now the funny thing is that you get these guns from your enemies before you buy them – they drop the guns. However, guns from enemies are rusted and burn out faster, not to say jam like they are….arrrgghhhhhhh…..

Sorry my gun jammed again. Anyway, once you buy them you can buy accuracy upgrades to deal with recoil and reliability upgrades to handle jamming. Sadly, while this works for guns like AK47 and PKM and MP5, the ASR and the Uzi seem to have no pristine editions. They would jam no matter how many diamonds you’ve spilled on them.

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Speaking of diamonds, the game rewards you with diamonds from briefcases located in every nook and cranny possible and of course, from missions. Unlike most games, payment is made before you actually begin the mission so you can pick up guns you want before actually undertaking the mission – theoretically. Practically, the gun shops are so far away that you’re simply left with whatever you have.

Despite all this, combat is simple and quite easy. Stealth sucks, and sucks big time because the moment you fire anything (except the single-shot dart rifle), everybody becomes alert and you’re left in a messy gunfight. Since you come across an outpost every few miles while travelling, you become so used to gunfights that the actual mission ones often seem quite easy.

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The health system too is quite generous. You have five health bars from the start, and get 5 health syrettes to begin with. You can upgrade your health pack to raise the number to 7 eventually. Except early on, you will hardly ever run out of syrettes because health packs and stations are located in almost every habitation. You can’t draw syrettes from the same location in quick succession (Even when the station is still glowing) but that doesn’t really matter because barring mortars and the occasional sniper shot or RPG, you’ll never be seriously injured. Not even by LMGS.

Storyline

If you thought combat had hiccups, wait till I tell you about the storyline. You start off as a mercenary sent to kill the mysterious Jackal, an arms dealer that armed both sides and caused the civil war between APR (Alliance for Popular Resistance) and UFLL (United Federation for Liberty and Labour) to escalate. You are sent to kill the Jackal and the game’s load screen notes (similar to the ones by Artyom in the Metro series, but only these are static and change erratically between missions) do a lot to make you dislike the guy,

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As it turns out, the Jackal is hard to dislike, because he’s not there. He’s not there in the towns, in the villages, in the missions, in the side missions, he’s nowhere. You will meet him at the start and then you will meet him next when you’re halfway through the game, lying injured. In fact, the Jackal comes out of nowhere and saves your ass when you’ve been thrown in the middle of the desert by your friend turned foes the APR (or UFLL perhaps if you play differently).

Next he will appear when you’ve to go get some stones from the APR chief. This time he’s a true villain, finishing the cut scene by stomping on your face and setting you up for the APR chief’s death. Next when you meet him, he’s again the good guy trying to get the refugees across by bribing the border guards and stopping the factions following them. So is the Jackal good or bad ? Doesn’t matter, because he comes so few times and for such short durations that it is meaningless.

Worse, the notes suggest that the protagonist is looking for the Jackal. Yet not one of the NPCs mention the Jackal directly to him. How does he find out ? He doesn’t. The Jackal comes when he wants to, and leaves when he wants to. The protagonist is left to become just another mercenary without purpose.

That’s what 90% of the game’s missions are – unrelated to the Jackal. You can hook up with either faction and influence the war. But there’s no solution because you end up killing everybody. In the end, once everybody is dead, you work with the Jackal and save the refugees. The end.

Does this make you feel sad ? Hell no, because the NPCs are so soulless that you are left wondering whether the APR chief is the UFLL chief is the doctor is whatever…..

The side missions are no better. The gun dealer missions require you to take down a convoy which conveniently goes around in circles! You position yourself on a gun in the middle of the road and start firing when they turn up. Then take down the big truck that is supposed to have the guns but is actually empty and you’re done. You unlock some guns in the process though, so for the first few times the missions are worth the trouble and ennui.

The other missions are the bell tower ones. Kill this guy in this location. Done ? Done.

Then there are the underground missions. These are basically courier missions involving a small gunfight at the end as you take down the loafers roaming around the underground locations. Then you deliver the passports (travel papers) and take the medicine. Done ? Done.

Then there are…oh wait, there aren’t any other missions. Ah well.

Characters

The worst though, are the characters. The protagonist (I took Quarbani Singh, it doesn’t matter who you take) is a person sent into the country to kill the Jackal. The first thing that happens to him ? Attack ? Backstabbing ? Desertion ? Nope, malaria. Yes, you have the only protagonist ever to go on fighting while having malaria. The result is that you are overcome with fever ever so often and have to pop a pill if you don’t want to pass out. Now imagine being in the thick of battle with a mortar guy, five gunmen and a sniper taking shots at you and the screen clouds up, a weird spooky track starts to play and the medicine icon appears. Take the malaria pill! You take it and everybody resume shooting at you. And where do you get the malaria pills  ? From refugees of course. I mean why do only refugees have pills ? Ask Ubisoft!

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Apart from his meaningless notes about tracing the Jackal and his malaria, the protagonist is soulless. There are no choices to make in the game and most NPCs behave as if you are just another mercenary. No warmth or coldness associated with what you do or don’t do. Out of nowhere they would accuse you of working for the other side but then give you a mission as before. Bleh!

Talking of NPCs, there are too many. There are the leaders and doctors, who have short conversations before giving you missions. There’s the priest in the Church. There are some mercenaries who would keep talking as you pass them by. The only one of these NPCs to have any life is a reporter called Reuben who is recording his own version of events. He seems to have a genuine desire to help people in his country even when his own life is at stake.

Finally, buddies. These are supposed to be your friends. They do two things – rescue you when you’re dying and give you alternative ways to finish missions. The first is awesome. The rescue is highly cinematized and you feel as if you’re in a Call of Duty cutscene where your comrade is dragging you to safety as he clears the path of soldiers.

But the second is meaningless. Most of the time the buddy will ask you to meet him somewhere else. Then ask you to go somewhere and do something. Finally, you go and complete the real mission – solo as originally intended. Then you go somewhere and help out your buddy who is cornered for some reason. What good does this all do ? I have no idea. In fact, if your buddy gets shot and blue smoke starts billowing from the spot, you would be in a spot trying to save your buddy on one hand and shooting the bad guys on the other. I once had to be rescued by my “best buddy” saviour while trying to rescue the mission buddy. Imagine.

Lastly, women don’t have an honourable mention in the game. Why ? Because they don’t get any mention. Period.

Conclusion

One cannot help but be harsh on a predecessor when one has played sequels and the sequels are as great as FC 3 or 4. Yet there are serious flaws in the game, and one realizes how Ubisoft went about fixing them. For one, the game mechanics aren’t 100% okay. People will shoot through tin walls and people will protrude out of rocks (this happens in FC4 too, does Ubisoft enjoy this mechanic ?). The ambience is decent, the combat is realistic but tad irritating, the storyline and characters are nothing to write home about. But at the end of the day, the game did hold me enough to make me spend 24 hours in it, and I won’t say I regret much. While I can’t recommend the game to those who are looking for a truly well made game, this is a must for true Far Cry lovers.