Conker's Bad Fur Day (2001) Review

Lucas Versantvoort / 19 Oct 2015

Conker's Bad Fur Day, made way back when that shiny Rare logo on the box meant something, is one of my definitive childhood games. I bought it, or rather my parents did, when I was quite young. I must've been like 10 or 11 which is why I'm still a bit stunned that my parents got it for me, especially since the game featured a big M (for Mature) right on the box. 

What to say about the story? That wonderfully nonsensical story. Our hero, the squirrel Conker gets wasted on night in the local bar, The Cock and Plucker, gets lost on the way home and wakes up the next day with the worst hangover. This is what Conker calls a 'bad fur day'. Basically, his entire quest is...to get home to his girlfriend Berri. That's it. No saving the world from an evil tyrant. Just get your ass back home. Of course, Conker gets involved in all kinds of wonderful nonsense, but for him the ultimate objective is to go home. The other main thing to consider, plot-wise, is the evil Panther King who has a problem of outlandish proportions. You see, the Panther King likes his milk. He likes a table he can put his glass milk on whenever he's not actively consuming it. But when said table has only three legs, he gets a wee bit angry, you see. So, he sends for his assistant, professor Von Kripplespac, to find a solution. His solution is to put a squirrel underneath it, a red squirrel to be precise, since it would fit perfectly underneath the table. So, the Panther King sends out his lackeys to get him one of these red squirrels.

And so the foundation is laid for some of the most off-the-wall humor that has ever graced the N64. It's this random, yet delicious humor that's the reason why the game has enjoyed a cult following to this day. The N64 mostly had a kid-friendly reputation, so to see Conker's Bad Fur Day get away with all kinds of crazy humor and foul language was great, particularly in retrospect. One moment you'll meet a drunken scarecrow who'll teach you about context-sensitive buttons (they're sensitive to context), the other you'll bump into a redneck pitchfork who's gonna...stick his big fork right into yers (yeah...). One moment you'll stand on a monk's stone tablet who'll then toss you upward and the other you'll need to use a sunflower's triple D tits. When you die (or...lose a life), you meet Gregg...the Grim Reaper in the afterlife who tells you that you've got a few more lives/chances. The game's filled with these fourth-wall breaking jokes that are really well done. The context-sensitive joke is another one.

What's great is that the game was also something of a technical miracle back in the day. Just look at the draw distance in the overworld section and the lack of fog in the distance. Very little pop-in of objects and characters too. Marvel at the detail with which Conker is brought to life: individually animated fingers (instead of Goldeney-esque cement blocks for hands), lip-synching, his tail has physics instead of being a rigid texture, he has all kinds of appropriate facial expressions. Conker's also got countless animations: push against a wall and rather than keep walking, he'll respond appropriately by putting his hands up against the wall. Walk very slowly and he'll tip-toe around. Stand still and he'll read a magazine, casually start tapping his feet, drink some juice or juggle some balls. I also like how when you rotate the camera closely around Conker, he'll look directly at you with his permanent smile and wide-eyed look. He'll also look directly at objects of interest close to him instead of just blankly staring ahead. A modern title like Skyrim would need a mod for that. Then again, it's Bethesda. If they tried to implement head tracking, it'd probably break a quest or something somehow. Other great details? Too many to mention: Franky the pitchfork's slow walking animation, his homo-erotic dialogue, the view from the top of the barn where you can see the major areas you'll visit (jpeggy, but still), the stuck-up, aristocratic cats, Gregg's hatred of cats; the list goes on.

The game's not without its downsides. The camera can be a bitch to maneuver, making it hard to see where you are in relation to your enemies and surroundings. Also, some of the humor hasn't retained its impact after all these years. While the war and Dracula parodies and so on are still great, the Matrix scenes aren't. Not only because Matrix parodies are old nowadays, but because the game doesn't really do anything with them. The parody is intended to work through recognition: 'ahh, I know this. This is from The Matrix.' There were opportunities to really make something out of it, but they didn't make the most of it, unfortunately. Also, I remember the game's difficulty being all over the place. The opening level immediately throws some really tricky jump sections at you after which the game gets easy for a while. Then later, you beat the Terminator haystack boss in that 'basement' underneath the barn and the water starts filling up the basement. You're then forced to climb upwards all the while throwing knifes to cut electrical cords with laser-precision. For all its merits, this game could be absolutely infuriating. Often, the first thing I'd do upon booting up the game was enter the 'unlock all levels' cheat code, because sometimes I couldn't be bothered. I just wanted to play the fun parts again.

But yeah, it's nice looking back on a game and realizing not only how funny it was (and finally getting some of the references and obscure dirty jokes), but that it's also got its place in history due to its remarkable technical competence. In a way, this is the kind of game that should be made more often: a bunch of developers putting their heads together and making the game they want to make.

The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim (2011) Review/Rant

Lucas Versantvoort / July 15, 2015

'Oh man, yet another Skyrim review…', I can hear you thinking. Well, if you're expecting me to sing this game's praises, then you're mistaken. Don’t get me wrong, Skyrim’s a decent game, but it’s got problems that extend beyond classic Bethesda glitchfests. My history with Skyrim is a tedious and drawn-out one. I first got it on PS3 back when it came out on 11-11-11 and had fun with it. I'd played the ever-loving f*ck out of Oblivion, which was my first Elder Scrolls game, so I obviously found the idea of a sequel immensely appealing. Needless to say, since the PS3 and Skyrim go together like Imperials and Stormcloaks, my experience with the game was a decidedly troubled one: there were glitches galore and lag issues that got worse over time. I eventually sold the game, but years later inexplicably bought it again, this time on PC, the platform of choice not just due to the bug fixes, both official and fan-made, but the mods of which there are now more than forty thousand. The presence of bugs in a Bethesda game has unfortunately become an expected scenario. Can you believe Bethesda recently stated it'll do everything in its power to at least ensure your Fallout 4 save files won't be corrupted!? Gee, thanks Bethesda. How about you make a game where I won't have to feverishly pray I make it through a loading screen! This little mini-rant aside, on to the review. I'll judge Skyrim from here on out without taking the technical side into consideration to see how it holds up as an experience. In other words, I'll judge it on content, not form.

True to tradition, the next iteration in the series takes place in a new environment, the wintery home of the Nords, Skyrim. You're a prisoner about to be executed, but a sudden appearance of a dragon, for the first time in forever, has everyone scrambling. You escape and you soon discover you're Dragonborn, meaning you have the inborn ability to use the powers of dragons, namely Shouts. Using your gift, you fight to rid Skyrim of dragons...or you could, you know, run off and do your own thing which is what the Elder Scrolls series is all about in the end. 

In terms of gameplay, no one besides the newcomers will be surprised by what Skyrim's got on offer. You create your character, customizing his/her looks and stats, and venture out into the world, looking for adventure. 

And there are plenty of adventures to be found. Probably the key characteristics of the series: side quests and dungeons. The average mission structure is as follows: talk to quest giver, clear dungeon, return to quest giver, receive reward. This is predictably fun up until the point you start to wonder what else the game's bringing to the table. After all, Skyrim is a role-playing game, aka you play a role, a very specific type of character and adhere to (your own) rules. This requires the upkeep of an illusion, both on your part as well as the game's part. 

Here is where I think the game starts to fall apart and you feel the game was rushed just so Bethesda could have its oh-so special 11-11-11 release date. Sure, the game's got plenty of dungeon crawling and character building, but what about that other type of character building; you know, character development, world-building and so on? This is where the illusion falls apart even on the most basic level. For instance, you can't walk five seconds in a city without encountering npc's who repeat their one or two lines before walking on pretending they’re actually doing something. To make Skyrim feel more 'alive' and prevent the cities from being too quiet, Bethesda programmed the npc's to say their little lines to you if you get too close to them. While a nice idea, since the npc’s only have a couple of lines, this gets tedious really fast, making you actively start walking around these characters just so you won't have to listen to the same lines ad nauseam. What immersion! And what is it with npc's who out of the blue divulge their problems to some stranger on the street? "I spend a lot of time at the market stalls so I ca--NEWS FLASH: nobody cares! It's Bethesda's lame excuse for alerting you to the fact that a particular npc can give you a quest. What immersion! 

Speaking of npc's, pretty much every character is boring and one-note. They serve one of two purposes: to give you a quest or to fit into a certain type of character (guard, farmer, merchant, etc.). There is not a single character that holds your interest for more than a minute. There's the occasional character development, but since this development has no real consequences beyond the mission it takes place in, it doesn't really matter anyway. No, what Bethesda relies on is your imagination, that you fill in the blanks, that you imagine the characters to be more than they seem. Taking any of these characters seriously requires Herculean effort and strength of imagination on the player's part. Some mod authors create custom followers with their own little backstories, but since most of these followers are not custom-voiced, they serve no real function. The backstories make no real difference, but are provided for the player, so he/she will hopefully project the backstory onto the follower. The mod author might as well say: ‘yeah, this follower is not custom-voiced, but try to imagine he had a really crappy childhood’…

Even more hilarious is the inclusion of a marriage system. You do a favor for a certain someone, wear an amulet and they'll hint at the fact they're interested in you. It says a lot that the inhabitants of Skyrim are prepared to say 'i do' to someone who got them an item or, better yet, delivered their mail. I guess South Park was right: we should watch out for those dastardly UPS guys. This entire system reeks of laziness on Bethesda's part once again. You marry the npc of your choice and stuff them in their/your home where they mostly sit around, doing nothing. But at least they now have maybe like FIVE entirely new lines, including such gems as "Hello, my love. Back from some adventure I bet." Wow, such immersion! Who needs a loving bond, the sharing of an understanding, the lengthy conversations when you can marry mr/mrs Doesn't-Say-Alot. 

And what about the civil war? You know, between the Imperials and the Stormcloaks!? Bethesda goes out of its way to make you aware of this conflict and how Skyrim's being TORN APART because of it. Yet, how is it then that I can walk around for hours and not stumble upon one fight between the two parties? According to the mod author of Civil War Overhaul, Bethesda hardcoded what they had to reach the deadline. In other words, what we got is a lot less complex than what could've been. As it is, the civil war is one of the most uninvolving aspects of Skyrim. Whether you side with the Imperials or the Stormcloaks, the mission structure stays the same: talk to general, liberate fort or something to that effect, return for reward. And don't you just love how in the middle of a civil war, you're sent on your own to kill a few dozen enemy soldiers? Sometimes npc's from your camp will help you, but even then it's like a 6v6 fight, hardly a number that instills the notion that a hard-fought civil war is going on. 

I could go on and on about the lackluster character development, the poor world-building, etc. The reason this bothers me is quite simple: poor world-building and poor character development = poor role-playing opportunities. To play a role means to lose yourself in the game world. Therefore, the game world and its inhabitants must conform to certain standards of realism and complexity. After all, how can you lose yourself in your own character, in the way you want to play, if the game world doesn't respond to your actions in the ways you'd expect? How can I believe in the Companions, see them as an elite fighter's guild with its own history and lore, when they never venture out to fight and I'm offered to join their elite Circle after just one mission? How can I believe there's a civil war going on when I don't experience the chaos that's supposed to go with it? How can I believe in the Thieves Guild when its recruiter Brynjolf walks up to me and tells me he can sense I'm an excellent thief even if my character's never stolen a single Septim? How can I believe in the whole marriage system when it's so lazily executed as to boggle the mind? How can I believe in the cities' inhabitants when the guards talk down to me even if I'm the Jarl of that particular city? How can I believe the Kahjiit trading caravans are conducting business with the local cities when all they do is sit around their little tents? How can I believe that Windhelm is a racist shithole, when I can be a dark elf and join the Stormcloaks without my character being exposed to copious amounts of racism and there not being extra demands placed on me? How can I believe in General Tullius and Ulfric Stormcloak when all they do is sit on their asses and look at their maps? How can I believe that I'm the key to stopping the dragons when a handful of town guards take one down with bows and arrows while I sit back and shove a few cheese wheels down my throat? The list goes on; believe me, it does. 

The causes behind all these shitty design choices aren't that hard to figure out. Previous entries like Daggerfall had mediocre graphics (by today's standards), but a gargantuan amount of content (with the map being roughly the size of Great Britain!) As graphics got better and better, making huge games took longer, got harder and more expensive as well. This led to the inevitable trade-off between graphics and content. The older games had so much content, because the graphics were relatively simplistic. (Daggerfall had such a rich variety of conversation options precisely because voice acting wasn’t as important as it is now.) With Skyrim, compromises had to be made. Making Skyrim literally the size of Great Britain would take eons. The aforementioned trade-off has consequences for all forms of content: from the number of dungeons to npc's. Bethesda wants their cities to feel alive, but they (were only able to) do so with the bare minimum of effort: a few dozen npc's with a few dozen lines (if you're lucky) who walk around doing nothing and say the same things to each other; day in, day out. Bethesda would want all followers to be unique and feel like real characters with motivations and backstories, but that would require dozens of voice actors and hundreds if not thousands of recorded lines, so instead we get these blank slates who follow you around, saying "I'm right behind you" every five seconds. 

I guess it's what you expect going into Skyrim that'll determine if you'll like it or not. Is the game fun? Sure, swinging an axe, shooting lightning bolts and clearing dungeons for loot is good times...up to a point. But if, like me, you like complex characters and impressive world-building in your rpg, then you'll start getting bored really quick.

Mass Effect 3 (2012) Review: Beating a Dead Horse Edition

Lucas Versantvoort / February 11, 2015

After the success of Mass Effect and the even bigger success of Mass Effect 2, everyone was awaiting with baited breath the game that would conclude the story of Commander Shepard in stunning fashion. And in 2012, the game hit store shelves and sure enough, the game was memorable, though for other reasons than an ardent Mass Effect fan might hope.

            The story starts with Earth being attacked by the Reapers. You escape Earth in the SSV Normandy with your crew and spend all efforts on gathering as many allies as possible. Depending on your decisions in previous games, this might prove easier/more difficult than anticipated. It is up to you to try to make everyone see the bigger picture, that focusing on their own little quarrels doesn’t matter much if the Reapers wipe everyone out in the process. This amounts to you helping the other species and garnering favors and securing promises of aid against the final assault against the Reapers. Meanwhile, Cerberus, the organization you helped in the previous game, has turned against you, its leader (TIM) having a plan of his own of ‘ending’ the Reaper threat. Eventually, you are informed of an ancient Prothean superweapon that might prove key to wiping out the Reapers and saving the universe.

            So…the story. Is it any good? I’m going to go with the always highly useful answer of ‘yes and no.’ It is true that several sections are incredibly potent, but it’s offset against a plethora of narrative issues: drivel like Shepard’s nightmares about the one kid he couldn’t save on Earth. Puh-lease… You mean to tell me that after two games of allowing you, the player, to decide Shepard’s character through dialogue options and so on, now you’re going to actively write him as a dramatic character? I’m sorry, but it doesn’t work that way. What if someone’s renegading? After pragmatically killing of hundreds of enemies—and sometimes entire species— in cold blood over the course of two games, making Shepard go all emo about one boy just doesn’t work dramatically. I also remember this clichéd missions featuring a bomb on Tuchanka where the Turian Lieutenant Victus sacrifices himself to redeem his honor and save the rest and of course he goes out with a one-liner: “Victory, at any cost.”  I can almost hear the solemn trumpet solo in the background…

On the other hand, what the game does positively nail is the feeling of things coming to an end now that the Reapers have finally showed up. Even when I was just strolling through the Citadel, I had the feeling that I should get my ass moving and save the Universe. There was this constant air of melancholy permeating every second of the game. And that’s precisely the feeling that, for better and for worse, BioWare was going for with this entire game. It’s the same deal with Final Fantasy XIII: there’s little to no exploration, because the main characters are fugitives. In Mass Effect 3, the Reapers are killing everyone, so there’s little to no time for sightseeing (no exploring the homeworlds of the Turians and Asari); there’s only a race against time to gather as many allies as possible and defeat the Reapers.

            All in all, the story is flawed (to speak nothing of the ‘radically different’ endings), but there are times, as I said, when it gets it completely right. The perfect example is the chapter involving the Krogan. This is where everything comes together, where the gameplay is tense, the storytelling is tight and the choices are meaningful. You can let Mordin sacrifice himself for the good of the Krogan future, or, if you did certain things beforehand, can save him as well. You can confront Mordin with your worries about future Krogan aggression and fatally wound him, etc. The great thing here is that it feels like a self-contained chapter that has a clear beginning-middle-end structure and builds on the themes connected to the Krogan and Salarians. It all comes together wonderfully. More importantly, it’s emotionally satisfying.

Speaking of which, that’s another problem with ME3, the fact that it has to tie everything together and make sure your that all your choices made in the previous games matter. It sounded ambitious when BioWare first announced its plans of letting you transfer saves from one game to the next, but in practice, it’s clear BioWare bit off more than it could chew. Rather than having all your previous choices make a real difference, they don’t mean a lot in the end, a fact emphasized by their being given a number of War Assets. Remember the huge decision at the end of ME2? Whether or not to destroy or save the Collector base? All that does in ME3 is give you a measly few War Assets…whoop-dee-fuckin-doo. That’s the problem when you’ve created a canvas as big as this: it becomes impossible to make all the player’s choices matter without most of them feeling inconsequential in the bigger scheme of things. The direct consequence is that you become more easily aware of the underlying machinations of what triggers what event. You quickly identify certain short scenes as being a little reward for you having done something in one of the other games. It doesn’t exactly enhance the narrative flow when you’re like “oh okay, he shows up, because I did this in ME2.” You instinctively realize it doesn’t really matter. Minor characters make little more than glorified cameos for one scene and are never seen again. It’s the same thing that plagued ME2. To save or not to save the Council; that was the big question at the end of ME and all it meant in ME2 were a few pointless scenes featuring the Council, that’s it. It didn’t change anything substantial.

In terms of gameplay, the game suffers from/enjoys the same features that separated ME2 from the first game. Just like ME2 was more of a shooter than an RPG, ME3 symbolically does away with all RPG elements and goes into full-on Gears of War mode and never looks back. Oh sure, BioWare may have claimed they’d introduce “added RPG elements,” but the simple fact is that no one in their right mind would consider this an RPG. Even the classes themselves aren’t truly unique enough to provide for radically different gameplay styles. In the end, it all boils down to moving and shooting, getting behind conveniently placed cover and shooting, and so on…

Ugh...

            And don’t even get me started on War Assets, a feature with which you can keep track of the support you’ve gathered throughout the game (individuals, armies, technology and so on). What baffles me is that it flat out tells you the minimum number of points necessary to even get access to one of the main endings. It’s so immersion-breaking it defies belief. So let me get this straight, you spend three games immersing yourself into this universe and all these characters and prepare for the coming onslaught of the Reapers and now you get a system that blatantly tells you when you are ready to defeat the Reapers, the almighty species against which victory is nigh impossible? Yeah…do you see how that doesn’t really fit into an emotional storyline where you desperately fight to save the universe and everyone in it? What kind of computer is even able to predict this, anyway!? I understand that a game in the end is entirely ‘technical,’ that it takes into account certain variables and that you are assigned a certain ending as a result and all that, but how about we don’t confront the gamers with this emotionally inert nonsense? You’re supposed to effectively suppress aspects of game design, not shove it into people’s faces. Right after reaching the minimum amount of points necessary, I remember thinking, “well, no matter what I do, I guess I’m now able to defeat the Reapers.” Not exactly the kind of emotional response you’d want to get out of a dramatic narrative. What's worse is that you need to compete online for assets, otherwise you can only gain 50% of all assets. So, 50% is gained through single player, while the rest through online multiplayer and iOs/Android apps. I was furious when I first discovered this, cuase it felt my single player experience was being fucked around with by needless online components.

            Other things that left a bad taste in my mouth are little things like BioWare’s decision to increase Ashley and Liara’s cup sizes for what I’m sure was a very valid reason with lots of narrative implications. Even worse is the inclusion of Jessica Chobot as reporter Diana Allers who you can take with you on the Normandy, so she can ‘broadcast the truth to the people’ and all that. You can romance her, but it’s just a fling, so why would you? For those of you who don’t know, she was involved with IGN at the time, which casts an all the more dubious light on not just her casting, but on the notion of ‘objective video game journalism.’ Just this casting choice alone can easily make me dislike the game as a whole, depending on my mood. BioWare also screwed up side quests, more specifically the giving of objectives. Most side quests involve only going to some planet and find some object or something, but the objectives don’t necessarily state which planet you’re supposed to go to and even when they do, you’re not told exactly where it is. Apparently, you’re supposed to just wander the galaxy and hopefully stumble upon the right planet at some point. How do you screw up something as simple as side quests? Another “new and exciting” feature was that you could give voice commands through Kinect with a headset. How anyone could think this is what gamers want is beyond me. Because you know…sometimes I look at my controller and I think, “man, I wish I could just do away with all those buttons and just talk to my TV, because that would definitely increase my immersion into the game world and raise my enjoyment levels by at least 100%.” The entire notion is just ridiculous, a failed attempt at blurring the lines between your living room and the game world.

Just...wow...

            For what it’s worth, there were enough good moments to warrant my purchase of Mass Effect 3. The attempt here was obviously to create a stunning, emotionally compelling, cinematic finale and they somewhat succeeded. But for every compelling moment, there were things that annoyed me: the fact that ME2’s teammates can’t join you on your ship (BioWare instead obsessively focused on ME’s cast and gave ME2’s cast a couple of cameos for good measure), the lack of conversations with your teammates, the immersion-breaking War Assets, the lack of differences between classes, Diana Allers, the fucking cup sizes, the relatively boring new characters, the obvious appeasing of the LGBT community by shoving gay romances into the proceedings (I have nothing against gays, but it’s weird how Shepard and Kaidan can all of a sudden ‘bat for the other team’ even though this was never implied in previous games, not to mention how underwritten Steve Cortez was), EVE’s hot cyborg body, the dream sequences, not to mention the endings themselves…and that final screen... BioWare tried and occasionally succeeded, but they bit off more than they could chew here.