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narcasseHere on Hephaestus Eve before I considered doing much else of anything I was looking forward to a quick round of Bob of Arabia – part 2 demo to waste some time. Unfortunately as it turns out the demo itself is horrifically short. Maybe I’ve been spoilt by the fact that the demo for the first game gave me bits of four separate sections, maybe the question of why the chap at the end of Assassin’s Creed appears to have the Great Holocron from the Jedi library is preying on my mind, maybe it’s even because what started of sounding like Linkin Park by way of soundtrack never quite evolved into Korn. Regardless, the demo didn’t exactly strike me as exceptional.
Bearing in mind that I’m fresh from finishing the first of the new trilogy and over the course of that long weekend began to find Bob relatively endearing, it might well have tainted my view of the second game. Now I’ve done my research into the storyline and what exactly is going on with Bob, the Dahaka and that woman who seems to wear scarlet ribbons for clothing but it still seems to be lacking that certain something that the first game had. Perhaps it’s the short demo that’s done that and the actual game will render everything that much better but I’m not entirely sure it will.
The demo gameplay wasn’t bad exactly but it was a little… odd to put it politely. The variety of combos available in combat sections seemingly requiring little skill and just the studious application of button bashing. Likewise the fatalities were a little bit worthless because while it’s nice to be able to slit your enemies’ throat, stab them in the heart or break their neck; it gets a little bit silly if after you’ve done that they just get back up again. If fatalities are going to be included they should actually be finishing moves and not ones that you can pull off mid-fight with no more effect that if you’d just hit the enemy with another multi-slash combo. And the fact that the enemies on the Island of Time appear to be some kind of ninja just compounds the problem of a certain lacking seriousness. I can buy that Bob is being chased by the Dahaka because he was meant to die, I can live with the Empress of Time’s stock villainous femme-fatale accent, I can even tolerate Bob’s little attempts at Kain-esque repartee during combat but there’s just something very, very silly about the entire game that just wasn’t there before. Part one had a tongue-in-cheek humour about it but it was subtle and felt like a shared joke between all parties involved, where as part two comes dangerously close to taking itself far too seriously.
That said, posturing aside Bob is still entertaining enough; though I can’t help but feel that he’s gone from skirting vaguely camp to butch-gay in the interim. It’s almost as if the game tries just that little too hard to feature a Hollywood tough-man like Bruce Willis… all without actually having a Hollywood tough-man involved in proceedings and instead having kitted Bob out in the required paraphernalia which doesn’t quite seem to work. It’s the case with Bond films that so long as each Bond is kitted out with all the gadgets and details that mark him as Bond it’s easy enough to accept a change in actor yet in this case it seems that they’ve attempted the reverse. All the trappings are there but what’s lacking is Bruce Willis and instead we have Bob who might be running round yelling that he’s ‘the king of blades’ and various other manly sayings, doing combos and not shaving but at the end of the day, underneath all the unnecessary trappings; it’s still Bob with all his eyebrow quirking, headstrong determination and alarmingly successful track record with women. He may not be sweeping them off their feet manly man style but that’s not really how he gets things done and his ability to divert from that Hollywood stereotype really is the selling point character-wise.
Aside from that, while the game appears to be quite playable once you get past the colour tones; I still can’t entirely shake the feeling that Warrior Within is the reason why you never let Mortal Kombat and Quake get drunk together because this is the resulting mpreg product. Even the game logo looks like the Quake one with added bits and the little metal clashing noises when you select menu options doesn’t help with the matter. Equally the soundtrack is fairly generic as far as combat orientated games go though it does show promise in places in some of the slower, atmospheric tracks which come close to striking a reasonable medium between Quake and the first game.
When it finally comes down to it; I’ll play this game just like I played the first one and am likely to have a go at part three too just for the sake of continuity. Though having seen one suggestion to take Assassin’s Creed as the bastard lovechild of Thief and the new Prince of Persia games; I might have to go back and give Thief another go too. That said, considering that leaping in and hacking up my enemies is rather more my style than stealthing around and garrotting them with the piano wire that I left in the bathroom beforehand; I’ll probably still only be as good at Thief as I was at the first Hitman game.
Bearing in mind that I’m fresh from finishing the first of the new trilogy and over the course of that long weekend began to find Bob relatively endearing, it might well have tainted my view of the second game. Now I’ve done my research into the storyline and what exactly is going on with Bob, the Dahaka and that woman who seems to wear scarlet ribbons for clothing but it still seems to be lacking that certain something that the first game had. Perhaps it’s the short demo that’s done that and the actual game will render everything that much better but I’m not entirely sure it will.
The demo gameplay wasn’t bad exactly but it was a little… odd to put it politely. The variety of combos available in combat sections seemingly requiring little skill and just the studious application of button bashing. Likewise the fatalities were a little bit worthless because while it’s nice to be able to slit your enemies’ throat, stab them in the heart or break their neck; it gets a little bit silly if after you’ve done that they just get back up again. If fatalities are going to be included they should actually be finishing moves and not ones that you can pull off mid-fight with no more effect that if you’d just hit the enemy with another multi-slash combo. And the fact that the enemies on the Island of Time appear to be some kind of ninja just compounds the problem of a certain lacking seriousness. I can buy that Bob is being chased by the Dahaka because he was meant to die, I can live with the Empress of Time’s stock villainous femme-fatale accent, I can even tolerate Bob’s little attempts at Kain-esque repartee during combat but there’s just something very, very silly about the entire game that just wasn’t there before. Part one had a tongue-in-cheek humour about it but it was subtle and felt like a shared joke between all parties involved, where as part two comes dangerously close to taking itself far too seriously.
That said, posturing aside Bob is still entertaining enough; though I can’t help but feel that he’s gone from skirting vaguely camp to butch-gay in the interim. It’s almost as if the game tries just that little too hard to feature a Hollywood tough-man like Bruce Willis… all without actually having a Hollywood tough-man involved in proceedings and instead having kitted Bob out in the required paraphernalia which doesn’t quite seem to work. It’s the case with Bond films that so long as each Bond is kitted out with all the gadgets and details that mark him as Bond it’s easy enough to accept a change in actor yet in this case it seems that they’ve attempted the reverse. All the trappings are there but what’s lacking is Bruce Willis and instead we have Bob who might be running round yelling that he’s ‘the king of blades’ and various other manly sayings, doing combos and not shaving but at the end of the day, underneath all the unnecessary trappings; it’s still Bob with all his eyebrow quirking, headstrong determination and alarmingly successful track record with women. He may not be sweeping them off their feet manly man style but that’s not really how he gets things done and his ability to divert from that Hollywood stereotype really is the selling point character-wise.
Aside from that, while the game appears to be quite playable once you get past the colour tones; I still can’t entirely shake the feeling that Warrior Within is the reason why you never let Mortal Kombat and Quake get drunk together because this is the resulting mpreg product. Even the game logo looks like the Quake one with added bits and the little metal clashing noises when you select menu options doesn’t help with the matter. Equally the soundtrack is fairly generic as far as combat orientated games go though it does show promise in places in some of the slower, atmospheric tracks which come close to striking a reasonable medium between Quake and the first game.
When it finally comes down to it; I’ll play this game just like I played the first one and am likely to have a go at part three too just for the sake of continuity. Though having seen one suggestion to take Assassin’s Creed as the bastard lovechild of Thief and the new Prince of Persia games; I might have to go back and give Thief another go too. That said, considering that leaping in and hacking up my enemies is rather more my style than stealthing around and garrotting them with the piano wire that I left in the bathroom beforehand; I’ll probably still only be as good at Thief as I was at the first Hitman game.
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(no subject)
Date: 2007-12-26 09:14 pm (UTC)And a note on Mr. Bond: Sean Connery was the best and there will never be another, imo.(no subject)
Date: 2007-12-26 10:00 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2007-12-26 10:07 pm (UTC)I didn't like his hair...never saw one with Dalton in it, and Pierce Brosnan needs to quit his day job. o.o