Quick Shop Stop!
Something a little different: Buffy the Vampire Slayer: Sacrifice, Now with more pictures!
Posted by Robyn L. at 7:54 PM
Game History:
Anyway to begin, as the title says I'm reviewing the 2009 Nintendo DS (Dual Screen) Buffy game: Buffy the Vampire Slayer: Sacrifice. Now for all of you readers in North America who haven't heard of this game do not be alarmed, this game received a very limited release, only available in the UK from a specific games chain! Thus it's pretty unheard of anywhere in the States or Canada.
It was released in March 2009 and was created by 505 games and written by a Buffy alumni, a writer by the name of Rob Des Hotel. For those curious mr. Hotel wrote episodes from Season 1-2 including: Never Kill a Boy on the First Date, Puppet Show, The Dark Age, Phases and Killed by death.
Game Synopsis:
Game Synopsis:
- Time line:
- Game Summary: (Spoiler Heavy)
"The Amulet...
It bridges time
It brings two worlds together
It bonds Buffy and Spike."
Two days after the closing of the Hellmouth. Buffy, Giles and Willow have all gathered back at the crater that was Sunnydale having realized that Spike is trapped within a vortex in the Hellmouth portal.During their trip to the ex-Sunnyhell Willow discovers that someone has left the amulet on her spellbook. The scene cuts to Spike standing before a demon discussing where he is, his love and need for Buffy and possible consequences (none of which are detailed at the point) of his "choice."
As this goes the amulet which has somehow found its way to Willow begins to glow vividly and Buffy realizes that Spike is still out there and begins to encourage Willow to use a spell to bring him back. While Willow worries (incredibly briefly) about doing the spell pushing her over the edge back to Dark Willow she does the spell with almost no hesitation.
As the three Scoobies stand looking over the horizon Willows spell is done and Sunnydale suddenly appears whole before them, trees, homes, school, everything.However the spell is not without its price as the amulet shatters into 5 pieces, and they disappear throughout Sunnydale.
If you haven't guessed just yet, the point of the game is now to find the various pieces of the Amulet and put it back together, and to find Spike, as Buffy puts it; "Spike's back. And we're going to find him ... If something came back with Spike, I'll kill it. It's what I do."
Game Review: (Spoiler heavy)
- Length
- Story
This game also loses many points with me because it commits the biggest sin anything can do in my mind in relation to licensed works. The whole point of the game is that, as far as the 'verse is concerned, nothing actually happened. The game ends in such a way that season 5 of Angel would be completely unaffected by this game if it were to have actually happened in the show. I think that authors do this in order to make it so that their works can be considered to be closer to canon, but I say, if you're not canon anyway, why not have a little more fun with it than making sure it all matches up at the end?
Also the games story line reads a bit like mediocre fanfic, while the author was a Buffy writer, he wasn't involved with the show anywhere near the time when Buffy and Spike actually did get together. Though it's obvious he's a fan, his script is full of fights, forgiveness, Buffy love via Spike and some fun Angel/Spike dialogue which is complete with one minor-almost-fight between the two vampires. However the entire thing didn't read much differently than anything that could have been found at the Bloodshedverse, though it would count as a little to unSpuffy for their tastes in all likelihood.
- Gameplay: Controls/Graphics
The controls of this game, the moving and fighting rank from annoyingly frustrating to painfully frustrating, this is because you're playing with a fixed camera location, very similar to the original Resident Evil games. Thus if you are moving from one room to another for example, and you're going left once you hit that other room you may now need to go right to get where you want even if you are still going in the same direction. So if you're like me, and you can't tell one pixel-ly landscape from another you can sometimes end up going back and forth between rooms over and over and over and over by accident.
As well this game espouses one of it's features as being a combination of 1st person and 3rd person game play. The problem with this is that it's really weird to go from 3rd person which you are playing for the majority of the game, to 1st person which they use for major fight scenes. During this time you can not only not use any of your weapons other than your range and one melee out of a possible 20.
In these instances you are now unable to block and your entire control set up is completely changed. Now it's a shoulder button for attacking instead of a Y or X, and God help you if you want to cast anything. In order to cast any spells, most of which are what is going to save you during these fights, you are required to use a combination of buttons as well as using your stylus, which is only going to make you wish you had a third arm.
I can't even count how many times I died simply because I went from a third person screen into a first person one and was immediately faced with multiple enemies all of which were eager to either suck my blood, eat my brain or just kill me violently.On the subject of enemies, each one is the same model depending on type of monster, though the real problem they present is trying to get through them, the best and easiest way to get through the game is using your crossbow.
The crossbow lets you kill the enemies quickly and before they come anywhere near you, this ease comes at a big price later though. Each time you go into a first person part of the game, which is every single time you face a boss, you are required to use only your crossbow, any other range such as grenades, or holy water and stakes.
The best way to beat any of the bosses is to use your range, so if you use them up getting to them you end up unable to beat fights which should be easy otherwise.This means you have two choices for the usual monsters, fight them very slowly, blocking every hit and only going for the openings (you'll run out of potions slowly.) Or you can try running past them, before you run out of range which usually only gets you killed anyway.
Though while death doesn't have much of a consequence in this game, as you are brought back to life at the nearest checkpoint, the slowness of killing each monster, block, hit, repeat x5 will make the entire experience seem much worse.
- Graphics
The cutscenes also work in two ways, there are split screens where it shows two of the main characters in static images with minor dialogue going back and forth about various plot points of the game. The other type is an artistic interpretation of whatever is going on, these are really nice but what hurts it is that the images are shadows or siloutes, there are few to no full faces of the main characters. Though it doesn't really make a huge difference and really I just wish that there had been more of these scenes because they were quite enjoyable.
Two examples of Cutscenes: They are all very much like this, no faces anywhere to be found, can you tell who's in these images?
My only really huge complaint for the game as far as graphics are concerned are with the settings. Mr. Hotel had worked on the show for two years and there are another 6 of show to watch for reference. Of all of the various scenes shown, the school, Buffy's house, the magic box etc, only one of these was correct, and that was of the front of Buffy's home, which was only seen once and you were there for about 15 seconds on the way to the inside of the house.
I'm not asking for perfection in detail, but getting the layout of these locations correct would have been a great improvement, especially considering the majority of the people who are playing this game anyway are only those who are already huge fans and we (yes we) would be the people who notice those sorts of things.
Overall:
Wow, in all honestly I didn't expect this to get this long, originally I was planning on writing down the script and story line for those who could not see it, but it kind of morphed itself into a bigger review.
In all fan-girlish honestly I want to say that the game was good, but it really wasn't very good at all, and the only reason I think I enjoyed it at all was because I am a huge Buffy nerd to begin with. I think that's kind of the way you've got to address this game with a mindset that it's nice to get another piece of the Buffyverse which was actually writen by someone who had officially been involved with canon at some point.
Overall I would agree with the very few review scores I have seen online which gave the game a 55%. 55% because the game is playable, it can be difficult to get through purely due to the control at times, but it is like a fanfiction, take it for what its worth and you can get through it and enjoy it for what it is, a smaller slightly unpolished piece of a much bigger, very enjoyable verse.
I'm not asking for perfection in detail, but getting the layout of these locations correct would have been a great improvement, especially considering the majority of the people who are playing this game anyway are only those who are already huge fans and we (yes we) would be the people who notice those sorts of things.
Overall:
Wow, in all honestly I didn't expect this to get this long, originally I was planning on writing down the script and story line for those who could not see it, but it kind of morphed itself into a bigger review.
In all fan-girlish honestly I want to say that the game was good, but it really wasn't very good at all, and the only reason I think I enjoyed it at all was because I am a huge Buffy nerd to begin with. I think that's kind of the way you've got to address this game with a mindset that it's nice to get another piece of the Buffyverse which was actually writen by someone who had officially been involved with canon at some point.
Overall I would agree with the very few review scores I have seen online which gave the game a 55%. 55% because the game is playable, it can be difficult to get through purely due to the control at times, but it is like a fanfiction, take it for what its worth and you can get through it and enjoy it for what it is, a smaller slightly unpolished piece of a much bigger, very enjoyable verse.
0 Comments:
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
