Review: The Bard's Tale (Xbox)

The Bard’s Tale is a self-aware humorous action RPG with a witty brittish narrator and a randy main character that is only after ”coin and cleavage” as it were. Sounds like a simple concept, right? It is. It’s perhaps even a bit too simple.

The story begins with the Bard sending in a magic rat into a tavern to scare the owner, ”rescue” her from the rat and then recieve… rewards… The things he need to do to get laid and earn the silver snowballs on him and before he know it he’s knee deep into quest after quest over the, rather small, land. Gradually we earn stronger abilities, stronger helpers to summon (through songs, because the gimmick has to make some sort of sense I guess) and after a few hours of fetch quests, peculiar meetings with strange people and a whole lot of senseless killing it dawned on me that this is a pretty repetetive action RPG with only the most basic of components. It feels like one of those ”what if we did this sort of video game, lol”-ideas that shouldn’t have seen the light of day. Not in it’s current form at least.

"I was fed up with the humour and the gameplay but I still had 15 hours to go"

After a handful of hours I was fed up with the humour and the gameplay but I still had 15 hours to go. That’s right. A game that showed me everything it had to offer during the first three hours dragged out to a 20 hour journey. I didn’t care for the Bard or his quest what so ever and I honestly picked it up mainly because I thought it’d be much funnier with more good jokes. But it just didn’t deliver. So once again, I played through a game just so that I could mark it as cleared. Out of duty to my backlog. Not because I wanted to keep playing. It’s a curiousity and a time killer, sure, but I can’t see myself going through it again in the future. It wasn’t very good. A pity.

Review: The Chronicles of Riddick: Escape from Butcher Bay (Xbox)

Disclaimer: I haven’t seen the movie so I went in to this game without any expectations.

Riddick is a badass. He’s also a caught badass. He’s a prisoner at Butcher Bay and the object of the game is simply to escape, as one would’ve guessed from the title. It’s a first person shooter with emphasis on melee combat, much like the Condemned games. The physics are sluggish, you feel heavy moving around and throwing punches have both timing and planning to it if you want to succeed. If you throw a huge punch and miss your opponent, then you’re open to counters for a few seconds – an opportunity they seldom ignore. Much like the Condemned games. There are weapons in the game but often times you can’t pick them up because they are ID protected only to be used by guards. When you do have the delightful possibillity to wield a firearm it’s a bit tricky to hit your targets unless you stand still and aim carefully. The environments are gritty and dark and psychopaths are lurking in every corner, just waiting to gain the upper hand on you. Much like the Condemn… You get the picture at this point I’m sure.

"It’s actually a really impressive looking game for its age and I’d argue it has grown old with intact integrity."

The frame rate is not the most solid thing in the world, but I guess that’s the trade off they made to have such detailed textures, beautiful lighting and a dusty filthy atmosphere everywhere. I can live with a few dropped frames. It’s actually a really impressive looking game for its age and I’d argue it has grown old with intact integrity. Well, apart from one thing. One glaring thing that makes the game really feel old. The stupid checkpoint system. It’s one of those ”ooh, you don’t need to save, things just saves automatically, what a seamless game this is, wow, cool”-games. I mean for the love of god, I know I’m playing a video game. Give me the option to save when I want to save. Give me a save option in the menu or put out save locations in the game. As it is now, I have to keep an eye out for ”Saving...” that pops up on screen from time to time. Problem is, I’ve had numerous problems with this. I remember clearly how it said ”Saving...” after certain passages only to have me replay the whole section again if I were to turn the game off. It’s never clear when it’s ”safe” to turn off the game and in some cases I had to start almost half an hour back. I kid you not. Half an hour worth of progress just vanishes from time to time, even though you pass multiple ”Saving...”-sequences. So there’s a constant fear of losing progress whenever the gaming session is coming to an end. Should I stop here? Or here? Or…

Other than that it’s mostly a great game. Once I accepted the flawed checkpoint system I had a complete blast with The Chronicles of Riddick: Escape from Butcher Bay. Sure, there were times I was completely lost and had to consult a walkthrough to get some hints and pointers, but that’s to be expected from a maze like open ended stealth game when you have as little patience as I do (I have ADD).

Now I’m almost tempted to watch the movie.