Showing posts with label Guest. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Guest. Show all posts

100 Reasons behind the big bad evil guys plots and actions.

Posted by: Jason Silverain / Category: , , , , , ,



The morning light creeping across the landscape, its warm caressing breeze caused Arctas's robes to sway as he stood upon the battlements of the tower simply know as the Spire, An imposing sight, the Spire towered above all else in this land that he and his companions had fashioned from the very element of creation themselves with their combined magic's, featureless to the naked eye, to anyone with the talent it was the runic ley line heart which pulse and ebb breathed life into the land around.

His daily examination of the runic patterns status and efficiently complete Arctas drew back his senses, fingertips tracing the crystal orb at the tip of his twisting black oak staff as he waited for his newly arrived visitor to speak. 

"I do not understand why you so insistently focus on such things when there other preparations that you could undertake." The voice was low and rough, more similar to a growl than human speech though this identified its owner without mistake.
"To explain in terms you will appreciate my Druid associate, when the time comes magic will be the lifeblood of this place, therefore it must be ensure that the body and circulation is healthy and each new addition the flow observed. While I... admire the cold logic of Ychellas golem creations they will make suitable caretakers but not engineers, they as of yet lack the creativity and foresight to predict problems but this is unlikely what you came to discuss I am correct?"       

With another new year comes another new table, in the past we have covered Regional Drinks, Places To Wake Up and a Collection Of Cut Throats so this year we delve in to the motivation behind our villains.
While personal greed or desire for power are common place amongst many villains that a group of adventurers may face the reason behind this desire is often unexplored so this table below may help when designing your own campaigns overarching big bad evil guy/gal (BBEG).   

1
The BBEG had a traumatic childhood, Their village/family got killed in a brutal manner. Now they are older they feel they must get revenge for the fallen by targeting those he feels may have been responsible.

51
The BBEG is just plain mad and does evil things as easily as he would do good deeds as long as it continues to amuse or interest him. The mad are never known to have consistent goals so he is just as likely to kill someone he has just saved on a whim.

2
The BBEG had a traumatic childhood, Their village/family got killed in a brutal manner. They have no idea who did it and now lashes out at anyone out they see as a possible foe, trusting no one but themselves.
52
The BBEG is mad, enjoying violence and hurting others and find it fun.
They don't understand the concept that others would not also find it fun and expects the same treatment in return.
3
The BBEG grew up in a rich but loveless family. He feels the only way to get approval from his parents is to gain power, and with the resources at his disposal he acts to do so.
53
The BBEG is mad and treats their actions like playing a game. He could be stuck in a child like mental state but with the powers of an adult. 
4
The BBEG was a gifted child, in the arts of magic\science\combat (or whatever else is appropriate). When his teachers could no longer teach him he reached out into forbidden lore in search for more power. 
 
54
The BBEG is not obviously unhinged to casual observation but mentally unstable and their actions are taking them on a path of suicidal self destruction. 
He does not realise he is doing this.
5
The BBEG was a gifted child,  in the arts of magic\science\combat (or whatever else is appropriate). His teacher moulding the gift to use it for their own gain. After the training was complete the teacher remained in the background constantly reassuring the pupil that what he is doing is right.
55
The BBEG has increasing paranoia is reacting against perceived threats and plots to themselves.
The DM can decide just how many if any are legitimate concerns.
6
The BBEG was cast out by their mentor and has now returned. Targeting the mentor and other students that have been taught since, the BBEG wished to force acknowledgement of their abilities from their mentor and possibly usurp their legacy by replacing them. 

56
The BBEG has been driven mad by a particular revelation and now acts unpredictably while carrying out their schemes which have no pattern or reason to them.
It is obvious the BBEG believes these scheme act against whatever the cause of his revelation.
7
The BBEG is in fact the rightful heir to the land/ throne/ heritage of his target, they are motivated to get their rightful claim to the land recognised. 
 
57
The BBEG is under the influence of drink or drugs when they carry out their evil acts. They only have a vague idea what they have done when they are sober. 
 
8
The BBEG is completing a goal started by a deceased member of their family. 
 
58
The BBEG believes they have seen visions of a disastrous future and are taking actions to stop it occurring. DMs choice if this is true or a form of madness/excuse.
 
9
The BBEG is attempting to rescue a friend or family member, this could be done by stealing enough money to pay the ransom or gaining enough power to break them out directly. 
 
59
The BBEG is cursed to have an insatiable desire (this can be food, lust or wealth for example) and they cannot find something to fill it. They are now going to increasing lengths to find what will satisfy the desire even briefly. 
 
10
The BBEG is actually the descendant of another BBEG and seeks to regain their family's glory/power.
 
60
 The BBEG is of a long lived race and has simply grown bored with life, most of what he does is for his amusement trying to stave off the effects of ennui. 
 
11
The BBEG is not in fact a person but an intelligent magical item influencing those around it to help it carry out its purpose. E.G. an item made to slay dragons will want to be used to slay dragons. 
 
61
The BBEG believes they are already dead and the world they currently inhabit is purgatory. Their actions are to escape this situation or makes them not care for laws.
12
The BBEG has been paid to target a particular person or kingdom. However they could be persuaded otherwise with a large amount of cash. 
 
62
The BBEG believes undead are perfect and free from sin, they wish to create more to make a perfect world.
13
The BBEG had been paid to target a particular person or kingdom, however their employer is dead and they are completing the contract out of honour. 
 
63
The BBEG is a religious fanatic driven by the urge to clense the world of people/races he considers to be infidels or heretics. 
14
The BBEG is owed a debt of payment or service by their target. They will not stop until the debt is paid.
64
The BBEG started a cult to lessen the power of a potentially stronger cult, it has gotten beyond their control leaving him a figurehead with minimum power over its actions. 
 
15
The BBEG is a mercenary and wishes to keep problems occurring in the local area so that their mercenary band will remain employed.

65
The BBEG is a leader of a cult and needs to keep showing impressive displays of power to keep their followers in line.
 
16
The BBEG was once in love with a noble but was spurned. Now they take revenge on the noble and their lands.
 
66
The BBEG wishes to exterminate a particular location or group since they are traditional enemies with his race or organization.
17
The BBEG has been tricked by someone he is in love with and is attacking a kingdom or person thinking that it is a threat to the one he loves. 
 
67
The BBEG sees a particular race as corrupt or inferior and wishes to exterminate or enslave them.
18
The BBEG believes that those in power only earned it by deceptive means and wishes to unmask them. He believes his targets are willing conspirators or pawns so has no guilt in slaying those who get in his way. 

68
The BBEG is a member of a minority within the kingdom and wishes to force a kingdom to accept his race/culture by force if necessary.
19
The BBEG initially had a bounty on them but things have spiralled out of control as he attempted to defend himself, each time the bounty gets bigger and the need to defend themselves higher and the carnage around them greater.
69
The BBEG believes he is the chosen one and believes he is the hero of his own personal quest and that anyone who tries to stop him is a villain.
20
The BBEG is defending those he believes cannot defend themselves. However the methods for doing so are merciless he terrifies those he represents. 
70
The BBEG was imprisoned for a crime they didn't commit and now feels they can commit evil acts because they have already atoned.
21
The BBEG is protecting a particular sacred location and is hunting down documents and people who have knowledge of it.

71
The BBEG was originally imprisoned for a petty crime but learned so much from the other inmates that the lure of larger crimes and their rewards was very tempting. 
 
22
The BBEG considers a particular uncovered relic too powerful and wishes to hide it once more and kill everyone who knows of it. 
 
72
The BBEG is in deep debt, they are now trying one last ditch effort to get money to pay off the debt or they will be killed.
23
The BBEG simply wishes to return the land to its natural state and sees all intelligent humanoids as a plague. 
 
73
The BBEG is obsessed with getting an heir, his plans revolve around producing heirs of various bloodlines.
24
The BBEG sees himself as a keeper of the balance between good and evil and is acting in this way because he believes good has upset the balance. 
 
74
The BBEG is trying to impress another BBEG of higher power. The motivation behind this desire to prove themselves is the DM's choice.
25
The BBEG believes the kingdom cannot defend themselves at this time and is causing trouble to ensure that a new generation of defenders arises. The BBEG may be a former hero or protector of the kingdom.
 
75
The BBEG is a master trapmaker they love to see their traps in action and enjoy the thrill of pitting their devices against the wits and skills of others.
26
The BBEG made a pact with an Evil entity because they wanted personal power and influence and now must act on it's behalf to maintain these gifts.
76
The BBEG is a sadist and enjoys watching people suffer, while fulfilling their goals they will often take the opportunity to harm others physically or mentally.
27
The BBEG made a pact with an evil entity for power to save a loved one from a terrible fate. However the entity now continually forces them to act on its behalf due to the terms of the pact. 
 
77
The BBEG purposely pushes and twists the boundaries of the law for personal profit and amusement feeling that only ones own code matters and to see how others react to hardship. 
28
The BBEG was tricked into a pact by an otherworldly entity and their evil acts are driven towards preventing his soul from falling into its clutches upon their death.
78
The BBEG inflexibly adheres to the laws and codes of his land/religion and reacts harshly to those who do not follow his same standards using the punishments as examples to others.  
29
The BBEG is being possessed by an entity. The entity makes use of the Hosts power, influence or magic while the person inside watches on helplessly. 
 
79
The BBEG is now compensating for a time in his/her life then they were powerless, they relish in holding power over other people and fight to keep themselves in charge so they never have to return to that dark time in their lives.
30
The BBEG is being possessed by an entity. However they are a willing accomplice in its plans often advising the entity on subjects it is unfamiliar with.
80
The BBEG is the leader of a group of nomads and is seeking lands to settle in because their nomad lifestyle cannot continue for much longer.
31
The BBEG is a war profiteer, they are trying to destabilise the surrounding kingdom for wealth and influence.
81
The BBEG the ruler of a kingdom but is utterly merciless in their rule, in both keeping his kingdom stable or developing an advantage over his neighbours. 
 
32
The BBEG is a merchant who takes the gear of fallen adventurers to sell on for cash. The whole scheme is a ruse to lure people to him with magical equipment.
82
The BBEG is manipulating the heroes to further his grasp on his own kingdom and using them to put down rebel factions.  Eventually using them as scapegoats to deflect public outcry from himself.
 
33
The BBEG is attempting to start war with a weaker foe to potentially kill off his rivals who may be leading armies while minimising the glory they would gain from success.
 
83
The BBEG is making political moves against another person in court and does not realise the implications of their actions. 
 
34
The BBEG is raiding a richer kingdom to bring money back to his own to survive through harsh times. These actions may not be fuelled by altruism or need but by personal greed and glory seeking. 

 84
The BBEG believes that they are in charge but are actually a distraction for someone working behind the scenes to grab power politically.
 
35
The BBEG is from a civilisation that requires slaves and is simply raiding to replenish their stock.

85
The BBEG has grudges against several factions and is seeking to make them destroy each other by framing some members of the factions for crimes against the others. 
 
36
The BBEG requires more land to gift to his heirs to keep his kingdom from infighting and civil war upon his death. His actions schemes may involve direct conquest or forced political marriage.
 
86
The BBEG is not in fact evil, it is due to propaganda between kingdoms that their actions are said to be evil or twisted to seen that way to those in other kingdoms. 
37
The BBEG is an opportunist and only striking when the target kingdom defences are weak.
 
87
The BBEG is madly in love with another BBEG. However the love is not returned. The BBEG will do anything to impress their love which includes diabolical acts.
38
The BBEG wishes to prove himself to be the greatest warrior in the world. They seeks famous foes to slay and artefacts that increase their personal power, they have no concern of the long term implication of their actions.
 
88
The BBEG is in a contest with another BBEG of similar power, each scheme is the equivalent of a chess move to them.
39
 The BBEG is from a culture where warriors need to die in glorious battle, the BBEG does violent acts to encourage strong warriors to come and fight him.
89
The BBEG carries out his schemes because he likes to prove how clever he is by outwitting others at every turn. As his life progresses the schemes become more complex as he feels he needs to prove himself more and more.  
40
The BBEG simply wishes to live in hedonistic pleasure and their actions are to either gain objects of desire or ensure their possession of them.
90
The BBEG was originally working for another but has slain him and taken his plan for their own. GMs choice if the BBEG has the full plan or has somehow filled in the gaps. 
 
41
The BBEG sees themselves as an artist and the things that they do as their 'art'.
91
The BBEG has been long dead and his plans are now being carried out though a series of long damaged communication devices and long held prepaid contracts. The plans may not have been intended to be evil but due to the damaged magical items mixed messages are delivered. 
 
42
The BBEG wants to be legendary throughout the lands, they want to be so famous that hundreds of years after their death people still dare not speak his name.
92
The BBEG is recently deceased, the latest plan is being carried out by his trusted allies and lieutenants. This contingency plan for their death may result in his resurrection.
 
43
The BBEG been inspired my myths and legends in an area and is attempting to replicate them in modern day. Whether or not these rituals hold any magical or religious significance is the DMs Choice.   
93
The BBEG is attempting to unite the various factions of his people through religion/war and is doing this by using races as scapegoats for their problems. Whether or not he believes his own preaching is the DMs choice. 
 
44
The BBEG sees themselves as a collector of exotic rarities and is attempting to collect items of power, people of skill or objects of interest.
94
The BBEG is deliberately causing trouble so that he can allow an accomplice to 'defeat' him and take power, fame or glory. DMs choice if the accomplice is aware of the plan.
 
45
The BBEG is a collector of beasts and wishes to collect rare specimens and create new creatures either through breeding or magical experimentation. He likes to see how his new creatures fare in combat and in new environments. 
 
95
The BBEG possesses a powerful magic item or relic, but he no longer wishes to have the power any more but believes he cannot entrust it to just anybody or hide it where it may be found by the unwary. 
 
46
The BBEG is a crafter of magic items and requires rare components for each of his works, he is growing increasingly unscrupulous about where he gets them from.
96
The BBEG attacks kingdoms who advance too far into the research of technology fearing that too much technology will upset the balance of magic and leave him powerless. Many plans will aim to disrupt the making of large technological projects such as trains. 
 
47
The BBEG is a powerful spell caster dedicated to advancing his magical knowledge, having frustrated with the limited results by testing their spells on animals and objects they now wish to experiment on intelligent humanoids.
 
97
The BBEG wishes to exterminate users of magic as he sees them as toying with reality and a danger to the world around them.
48
The BBEG is attempting to collect relics which will allow them to perform a powerful ritual, this may turn them into a lich, give them unspeakable power or give immortality.

98
The BBEG wishes to exterminate divine spell casters since he sees them as fakes and not really representatives of the gods, he thinks that they work to control the populace through fear or by taking advantage of their religious beliefs. 
 
49
The BBEG seeks power/youth/beauty/the love of another. They think that what they are doing is the way to obtain this or a means to this end.
99
The BBEG wishes to cause a big enough disruption that it attracts the attention of the gods themselves to force a showdown between the various divine powers.  
50
The BBEG is dying of an illness and wishes to leave a lasting impression on the land. He wish to do this traditionally by conquest and destruction or alternatively set events in motion for which only he has has the solution to appear as a saviour. 
 
100
The BBEG feels that the gods themselves are playing with mortal lives and wishes to rebel against them by destroying them or their influence. However he is also fears that he is falling into their ploy by doing so. 
 

The pacing footsteps on stone and another gravelly growl could not have better announced his companions irritation than if he had extended his magic to read the druids thoughts, not needing to turn round Arctas could envision the druids beastly snarl and hunched shoulders while the man replied "Fine then.. the girl of your blood, is she suitable?"
For a brief moment he considered saying nothing or lying before dismissing the thought as needless "Yes she has the spark but it has not truly awakened as of yet so I decided to wait until a better time.."
"So you can procrastinate with your tests and distractions? You've still not decided?" the druids interruption fuelled by petty annoyance reminded Arctas just why he had sacrificed such feelings to gain his immortality and how little he had lost.

"No I have not decided, why limit myself to a single course of action when I can direct my efforts to serving both until the most efficient and effective has been determined? As our agreement stated we work upon our own solutions and avoid cross conflict, why you must feel such concern towards my own progress and abilities is unfounded especially since you have already begun work upon another smaller ark project... perhaps you may even find interest in my findings."
"Unlikely, Remember Arctas not all of us are immortal." Leaping from the Spire the druids form twisted into one of the beasts he felt so comfortable as, the large Roc now soaring away as a habitual smirk crossed Arctas lips his eyes dropping away to gaze upon the succubus and angel that argued below in the shadow of the Spire.
"All the reason not to waste possible potential."
     


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Having looked at the sequel Hax Monster steps back to discuss Hotline Miami.

Posted by: Jason Silverain / Category: , ,



This review contains spoilers of Hotline Miami throughout. If you haven’t played it yet, all you need to know is that it earns a solid recommendation from me. However, I want to be free in pointing out the beauty of the game’s story and the way it transfers it. It’s cheap, runs on any PC and is short, so there are no excuses: play it and then come back. For the used interpretation of the plot of this game I have used something Rami ‘vlambeer’ Ismail’ wrote on the internet on this game. 
 
One wonderful ability that I share with any creator of any written text, work of art or intellectual work in general is that I know at least one thing about you. I don’t know if your name is Victor or Josh (although it would be funny if that happened to be the case), if you like your eggs soft- or hard-boiled or whether or not you just elected for US president the most unsuitable person for governance since emperor Nero, but I do know that you are reading my text. And since I know this text will most likely only be seen on the Sword and Torch Inn website, I know at the very least that you are using either a PC, tablet device or smartphone to view my work. I know you are using an internet browser as well. This might seem obvious, but the beautiful thing is that I can use that to my advantage. 
 
I can use the limitations of the medium that is used to transfer what I have created more effectively. Post-modernistic art tended to do something like this quite often: reminding the audience, reader or viewer of a work that they are viewing or reading something to take them out of the experience on purpose. Another example is the last song of Slipknots ‘All Hope Is Gone’ record, which purposefully starts breaking up in a way that sounds as if the CD is scratched to pieces. Video games offer beautiful possibilities in this area, since the person enjoying the work directly interacts with it and is therefore more immersed than Atlantis after a major sewer clogging. Perhaps the most beautiful example of a game using this for its narrative is Hotline Miami, without a colon, since the second one wasn’t called Hotline: Stoke On Trent or something. Although I do notice I keep making typing mistakes, writing it as ‘Hoeline Miami’, which could either be an escort service or a company selling farming equipment over the phone. 

 
Anyway, Hotline Miami is a high-paced psychedelic over-the-top top-down violent fighting game where your answering machine cryptically instructs you to go to various locations in 1980’s Miami and slaughter armed dudes. Every level starts with you getting out of bed in your messy apartment, walking over to the phone and receiving a message that, in convoluted terms, tells you to go somewhere and take care of business. Then, you proceed to do so and as soon as you leave the building, blood clinging to your shoes, the game cuts to a shop, bar or pizza place and lets you do a mundane, every-day activity, such as buying a drink or ordering pizza. This applies to nearly every chapter, with the only interruptions being dream sequences where a horse, rooster and owl speak to you in respectively a soothing, authorative and resentful tone. 
 
Describing the gameplay on paper doesn’t really allow me to describe its depth, not surprising for a two-dimensional medium, so don’t judge too early if the mechanics I’m about to walk you through sound extremely standard and boring. You move around the level from a top-down perspective and can punch enemies to knock them on the floor. Once they are down you can perform a finishing move of one brief second. You can also pick up melee weapons which all are instant kills and can be thrown. Some weapons, like knives, are also lethal when flung at the enemy. Others merely knock them down. There are also guns, which have only one clip that can’t be reloaded. Finally, you can knock people down by throwing doors in their face and there are windows that your foes can see through. That’s it, really. One level mixes things up with metal detectors that alert everyone if you walk through them with a gun but, on paper, the gameplay is run of the mill at its finest. But ‘seemingly simple’ doesn’t mean ‘bad’. One can easily mock a Barett Newman painting as something a household painter and decorator could make within three minutes, until you find yourself in the Museum of Modern Art, five centimetres away from it, and find yourself inexplicably drawn in.


The simple gameplay is what allows the game to convey its message. The reason for this is that H:M’s gameplay has something in common with Guitar hero, and not only the fact that you obliterate small, brightly-coloured objects with satisfying sound as a result. Like Guitar Hero, you can only play Warmthread Las Vegas by not thinking about it. If you consciously try to aim your attacks and estimate the size of your ambiguous hitbox, you will end up with more metal in your head than Punished ‘Venom’ Snake. This partially has to do with the behaviour of the AI in that it is impossible to get NPC’s to behave consistently. Because of this, you can’t rely on a plan when it comes to luring enemies or predicting their path. Planning, therefore, is a no-go. The key is to completely trust your intuition and get into a certain flow and, all of a sudden, everything works out. You will manage to somehow throw a club in someone’s face while sprinting through a door, finishing the two enemies you door-slammed in the process, grab the gun of one of them, shoot an incoming attack dog and then shoot the first guy you club-faced before he can get up, all in under four seconds. 

But it is more trance-inducing than visiting a pop-art exhibition while on LSD, also thanks to the game’s superbly hypnotizing 80’s synthesizer soundtrack. Then, however, the moment the last lifeless body thumps to the ground, you immediately come down from your killing spree. Then the game does something that seems arbitrary but is actually very important: it forces you to walk back to your car at the start of the level with all the damage, blood and broken glass still lying around. Meanwhile, the funky synthesizer tunes are replaced with one eerie consistent tone. You are confronted with your wrongdoing and all of it hits extra hard because the game didn’t give you time to think about it during the fight. 


 
As I mentioned earlier, after each of these fights you go to a normal place and do a normal thing and this offers a frame of reference against which the massacres still stay extreme and horrifying. If Call of Duty or modern day television taught us anything it’s that horrifying violence can easily be the norm if it is all you show (Listen to Tool’s song ‘Vicarious’ or Meshuggah’s ‘Obzen’ if you want to know what I mean), so cleverly Hotline Miami gives us something to contrast that. But these scenes also serve to show how your character becomes more and more nutty as time goes on. First, subtle clues interrupt the mundanity of these little slices of daily life, but before you realize it you’ll be talking to walking corpses that may or may not have been killed by you a few levels ago and that is the point after which there is no return from Bonkersburg. 
 
As the insanity piles up and the pixel blood keeps flowing, you are confronted by the three animals in the dream sequences with your wrongdoing. But nothing changes. It’s still: another day, another answer machine, another massacre, another news story that the NRA can spin to promote gun usage. Finally, you reach the boss of all the dudes that you bested thusfar. As you walk in, he says he expected you. Then you shoot him, smoke a cigarette, end of story. Anticlimactic, isn’t it?

But wait! There’s more!

As a short first credit roll finishes, time is reversed and we find ourselves around the time of the earlier levels we played. Now, however, the player character is a tough-looking biker, his head obscured by a helmet. Then some more missions follow as we play as this unknown character who, maybe because of his sound-isolating helmet, is no blind slave to the answering machine. He commits his massacres on his own accord to find the source behind the murder-messages. After all, this was the 1980’s, where internet trolling did not exist yet and someone sending you homicidal messages on a regular basis was actually a thing people took seriously!


The biker levels are a bit more annoying than the previous ones, since the biker can’t pick up weapons or guns or throw things. All he uses is one meat cleaver and three throwing knives that you can pick up after use. My beef with this is that this goes against the spirit of the game’s supersonic intuitive gameplay that was the strength of the previous half. You can’t improvise much and now have to plan every knife throw because some situations can only be resolved with a ranged weapon. 
 
But as soon as you overcome all that you can come to the haunting conclusion of the messages and that is where the tricks of using your art form artfully I mentioned earlier. Because the mind-boggling thing is that the person sending you those answer messages and telling you to kill is the same person that tells you to kill in Call of Duty or Battlefield. Is he a boring, stern military commander? Not at all: the person telling you to kill is, as in any game, the game’s developer. The biker’s quest leads us to a shabby basement where we find two figures, looking like the developers of the game. The biker then asks them if they think this is some kind of sick game, sending out massacre-encouragements across the city. And the brilliant reply is: Don’t you think this is a game? You ARE playing a game right now, aren’t you? Are you having fun? With this subtle but groundshaking bit of fourth-wall-breaking everything falls into place and the banality of a game’s developer essentially making you kill on command becomes painfully clear. With this, Hennes Maurits brings beautiful criticism towards violence in video games and, considering the trance it brings you in it its most violent moments, the manner in which people perceive or deal with violence.


The game has three big gaping flaws. The first is the mask system. Throughout all of your genocide runs you wear an animal mask and all of them, except for the starting one, give you gameplay bonuses that vary from silenced guns to lethal door smashes. However, there is one that rules them all, which is the one that makes your fists kill enemies instantaneously and makes finishing moves instant as well. The latter might seem pointless, since finishing someone only takes one second, but the pace is higher than that of a Dragonforce song on fast-forward and that means that finishers can be the difference between life and death, and not only the life or death of the downed NPC. 

The second big gaping flaw is the hospital level. At one point as we still play as the first character, we are arrested and end up in hospital. There, we have to sneak out without being spotted by doctors or the police holding us there. I normally wouldn’t mind an attempt to mix gameplay styles up and it is better to have us leave the hospital without resorting to cutscene, but the problem is that Heisslinien Hamburg has controls and visuals only really suitable for over-the-top violent massacring gameplay and not for sneaky stealth sections. It would have been better if this sequence had been nothing more than the player walking through a corridor without there being a chance of getting caught. One little detail I liked was that, during this chapter, moving too fast or too much causes your character to get a headache which is conveyed through visuals and audio in a way that brings across the feeling of a suddenly rising headache quite well. I like that we feel some vulnerability for the first time in the game because that raises the steaks and reminds us of the slight bit of humanity left in our mute, faceless, nameless protagonist. 

Then there is the final flaw and never has such a minor flaw had such horrible implications as in this case. The problem is that the beautiful conversation with the ‘developers’ I mentioned earlier has dialogue trees, which is for the very first time in the entire game. There seems to be no reason for it and there is no real choice involved beyond what the characters are going to say next. The horrible thing is that the grand, revolutionary twist in which the developers draw the attention of the player to the fact that he is merely playing a game doesn’t come up if you pick the wrong dialogue choice. And that is how a dialogue tree can uproot your entire game in under two seconds. 

 
Videogames are a beautiful art form and, with their interactivity, can do things that no other medium can pull off. The problem is that the greatest works of gaming art created, such as Killer7, Hotline Miami or Spec Ops: The Line are buried under the endless pile of Call of Duty’s Battlefields and League of Legends’s. Funnily enough, Hotline: Miami was itself buried by its sequel. For more information on that, read my review of that game. It suffices to say that there was no need for a sequel and that the sequel only goes through the same motions as the predecessor to ring a few more pennies. It introduced nothing except poor gameplay design, bugs and a bloated, inefficiently designed story. And thus the story was concluded of probably the best indie game I ever played. Let’s enjoy it now before they release a movie, book, tea towel and maybe also a constipation aid bearing its name to earn even more money!


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Haxmonster Finds Himself Shuffling Aimlessly As He Explores Dead Island

Posted by: Jason Silverain / Category: , ,



I find myself trapped on a beautiful island, haunted by a terrible disease. Almost everyone has been infected and those that are, are unaware of the fact that they have become monsters. The authorities have sealed off the island to prevent the illness from spreading, for a breakout would surely be the end of the world. Barricading doors and windows offers no salvation, as the sheer size of the infestation lets it break down any obstacle. The only ones unaffected are the numerous zombies that roam the island. All others have been contaminated with the horrible plague that is the Australian accent. Be honest, I haven’t fallen victim to it as well, have I, mate?


Oh, what fun it would be to actually play Dead Island if it had really been about surviving the apocalypse of the bad accents. Unfortunately, until that game really comes out, we’ll have to make do with boring old zombie apocalypse and the game surely follows the standard undead survival scenario with dedication. It’s a four-player online co-operative game that, like a child trying to build a few sandcastles at once, is spread out across multiple sandboxes. The combat forms the core of the game and is mostly melee focussed and very much stat-based, not unlike the vast majority of MMORPG’s. The story keeps the cliché combo up by continuously alternating between the most common end goals in a zombie scenario, such as defending your home base, escaping the infected area or inventing a cure. So, as you can tell, with the possible exception of Left for Dead no zombie game is as formulaic as this one.

That doesn’t take away that Dead Island is certainly quite fun and is put together quite competently. Like in most zombie games most of your time is spent looking at a standing corpse while either shooting it or trying to smash it’s brains in and in this case we find a clear preference for the latter. Luckily, I can report that cutting through zombie flesh with big stodgy meat cleavers in this game is pretty satisfying, akin to popping bubble wrap with a pneumatic hammer. The fact that slicing a cleaver through an undead’s throat has a punchy feel to it and creates an orgy of blood and severed limbs might sound like an irrelevant detail, but I’ll say the same thing as I said in my Symphony of the Night review: it is the thing you will be doing for the vast majority of your playtime, so if turning enemies into Swiss cheese comes with some visceral joy then that, like the Swiss flag, is a big plus. 


That said, not every weapon is equally engaging to use. Machetes and knives pack a suitable punch, but batons often seem to hit way harder than their size suggests, which makes them feel like they have an invisible brick taped to their end. Mallets are very awkward to use. They have a thing in common with penises in that they are always a bit shorter than their owner likes to think they are. This led to many situations where I flung a sledgehammer a few centimetres before my target’s face as if I only intended to smash his nose off to make an impromptu Lord Voldemort replica. The game’s melee system also reminded me of that of Ride to Hell: Retribution and when that name comes up, that’s not a very good sign. The resemblance between the two games is that the kick attack is extremely overpowered as it knocks enemies down, can’t be interrupted, interrupts most enemy attacks and deals damage as well. Since the time they require to get back up again is usually enough to die of old age you won’t have problems dispatching most hordes this way, which turns a lot of the game into a ‘disabled kicking simulator’, which doesn’t pose a very meaty challenge.

The guns very clearly take a back seat, with no more than about five guns in the entire game. Ammunition is very scarce, so you won’t be shooting any other enemies than humans since they all use guns and therefore drop bullets. This causes the situation where all encounters with human enemies are firefights and all fights with the undead are melee-focussed. It’s a shame that this separates both combat styles. You can’t mow down zombies with your one or two guns because of a lack of bullets and you can’t beat marauding survivors to bits with a paddle because of an excess of bullets, in your guts to be precise. On the other hand, the game offers you a choice of four playable characters and this at least provides situations where the gun-focussed character is at an advantage, which at least gives the character system some use. 

 
To elaborate on the character system; the other three survivors specialize in knives, blunt weapons and throwing weapons. As I mentioned, blunt weapons are useless since you can’t estimate your range and the throwing weapons expert has his issues as well. He specializes in throwing regular melee weapons at the enemy and since you can’t carry more than twelve weapons or so at a time you can’t fend off more than half the walkers in an average horde. The other half will then have ample opportunity to select the tastiest part of your buttocks for consumption while you are busy looking at the floor to collect all those weapons again. So essentially, your choice is limited to guns or knives, with the deciding factor being whether you want an edge in the first half of the game, when zombies are the primary enemy, or if you want a lead in the second part, when there are more guns lying around than in an average Texan shopping mall. However, I played through the entire game with the gun specialist and noticed no drawbacks when I broke out the fisticuffs, so it can all be safely disregarded.

Beyond their questionable gameplay differences an attempt was made to give all four characters basic personalities, which are very evenly spread out across the spectrum of selfishness. These identities are almost solely conveyed through cutscenes which come across as a little weird when you play the game on your own. After all, they always involve all four characters even if they aren’t all present in gameplay. I like that the leads clearly differ a bit from each other as far as personality is concerned, but the problem remains that they influence the story perhaps even less than I as a reviewer influence the course of the gaming industry. Although a lot of events lead to bickering between the two more selfish and the two less selfish characters, they always decide to just go along with whatever other people suggest. They never make a decision that alters the course of the story. 
 
Also, their dialogues are more corny than the state of Iowa and entirely one-dimensional. Mister blunt weapons specialist has a problem in particular in that, in cutscenes, he always gestures as if he is receiving electroshock-therapy even though he maintains the tone of voice he could use to ask missus blunt weapons specialist to pass the salt. But what ultimately kills characters for me in Dead Island, beyond zombies I mean, is the horrible facial animation. Characters could be shooting the walking corpse of a former loved one, could be bleeding to death or could be sobbingly telling the story of a former comrade who sacrificed himself for them, they always maintain this dozy look in their eyes that suggests they are coming off anaesthetics. This, combined with the corny, exaggerated Australian accent, kills the game’s many attempts at making me feel sad for the struggling and suffering of the robots pretending to be human characters.

Dead Island: where the NPCs have less facial expressions than the zombies.

I’d better warn you that some very light spoilers are around the bend. Now that I’ve given it some thought, a lot of the story involves the four leads being led around by the nose by a large variation of secondary characters; a problem that also frustrated me in Grand Theft Auto V. For instance, on one occasion the game shifts to an entirely different mini-sandbox because of that one character who we ask to transport us to the ultimate goal of the game says: ‘I can’t take you there, but there’s this other place that’s totally not where you want to go, shall we just pop over there?’ And even without a reply from the protagonists that just happens then. At another point in the game we spend four missions just to please one other character so that he will let us through to our goal, but when we are almost done with that we get a radio call from another character, saying that we don’t need to help him and that there’s another route to where we need to be, rendering the past hour of gameplay pointless. 
 
For completeness’s sake I should probably elaborate on the fact that Dead Island is an online co-op game. I only joined a four-player game on one occasion and then I noticed that Dead Island shares a problem with Trove in that there is a difference between playing with someone else and playing alongside someone else. It doesn’t do the co-op much good that, like Trove, Dead Island is in the latter category. Besides reviving each other and exchanging items there is very little player-to-player interaction which means that, most of the time, all four players are simply all bashing heads in without interacting with each other. No characters or abilities exist solely to buff other players or offer some kind of supporting role. But as much as that damages the co-op experience, I like that it works this way because it allows the game to stand up to scrutiny when you play by yourself. You never really need others, so this gives the game some versatility. It can be co-op if you want it to be, but that doesn’t have to be the case.


Dead Island was developed by a studio called ‘Techland’, but it’s not quite an example of unparalleled technical prowess. Graphics-wise it looks a bit like the Call of Duty: Modern Warfare games. Everything looks like it’s shrink-wrapped in plastic and that there are very little small details. Some textures, like those on the big rocks that mark the end of the mini-sandboxes, are extremely blurry. Furthermore, the game makes very temperamental use of invisible walls. Often you can just shimmy your way through a lot of alleged obstacles, but not everywhere and sometimes such a barrier seems really artificial and unnecessary. Using the map to avoid the invisible walls is impossible since the only map is a satellite photograph which shows nothing since the world is filled with more vegetation than a three days old forgotten cheese sandwich.

Silverain here just to expand a little further on the technical aspects of the game, it is very poorly optimised and even computers that have far beyond the capabilities to run the game will experience slow down and the occasional sluggishness as it demands far more CPU power than it really should require. Case in point my own play through with Haxmonster (See Below) was forced short as the Dead Island would often cause my CPU to overheat.

So the game really discourages exploration and prefers that you just drive everywhere in a car. Cars make you nigh invincible since the zombies apparently never played GTA when they were still alive and can’t figure out that they can simply pull the car door open and pull me out. Of course they can damage cars but I got through the entire game without one car ever being destroyed.


You might get the impression that Dead Island is quite an easy game with the overpowered kick attack and indestructible cars and you would be completely right to deduce that. I could finish most of the game with only Silverain tagging along or just by myself. I am not even sure if ‘insultingly easy’ covers it. Zombies usually move very slowly, can’t open doors or climb ladders and, worst of all, there are next to no consequences when you die. You respawn mere meters from your death with all damage you did to zombies still remaining. All you lose is a percentage of money and using money is very much optional. You can pay money to repair or upgrade weapons but if you just complete enough quests, and you will since that’s the only activity in the game, you are constantly loaded down with better weapons to replace the broken ones. Speaking of optional, fighting zombies in it’s entirety is optional as well. Often you can just run past all zombie hordes and close a door behind you, which they can’t open, and you are safe for ever. 

 If you want to see Dead Island in action you can see me and Hax Monster roam the first few areas here.
 
But in conclusion I think it’s safe to say that Dead Island is fairly amusing, provided you skip a lot of it’s repetitive, dull sidequests. The central gameplay mechanic, the melee combat, is satisfying and I don’t really feel like anything important is missing from the formula. Running a zombie over or smashing is head in is a simple kind of pleasure, but it’s undeniably fun. So, if you still enjoy zombies at this point, disregard most of the previous things I mentioned and pick it up! 
 
Hang on a minute!

I think I’ve just realized something. As the opening paragraph of this review revealed I believe that zombie games as a genre are more dead than the walking corpses the genre is based around, but just maybe the developers of Dead Island feel the same way. Fighting zombies is optional; they are merely an occupational hazard that you can run past. The biggest enemies are usually humans. In the third act there is even an entire section where the game turns into Far Cry 2, and we find ourselves running through jungle slums wielding an AK-47, fighting a war between two small militant faction leaders with weird accents. Can we still call that a zombie game?

Suddenly it all makes sense! Time to submit it to the ultimate zombie-game test. I kept count of the amount of times Dead Island uses the word ‘zombie’, which one would expect to be quite a high amount since it depicts a zombie apocalypse. The final count, however, is around…
Three.
Maybe it’s about accents after all. Gud on ya, ded ayland!


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