Avast!

I JUST finished Cold Fear about 5 minutes ago.

Oh, what promise this game had. Oh, how it squandered it so.

Here's the synopsis of the game. Ah, forget synopsis. It's Resident Evil 4 on a boat.

It's like a bunch of people got together in a room to discuss how they would make their own survival horror game.

"I know!" says the plucky young intern, "Let's just cobble together a bunch of ideas from other popular games and add one neat twist."

"HOORAY FOR THE INTERN!" the rest of the developers shout, "Now go get us coffee!"

Honestly, that's how the game feels. You've got the setting for Metal Gear Solid 2 (Boat? Check. Oil rig? Check.) with the not-zombies from Resident Evil 4 (Pesky parasites that also infect the main characters? Check.) with horrible cutscenes from, oh, any non-AAA title (Characters look like they've been made with plasticene? Check!)

Need I go on?

Oh, I forgot to mention a few of its own special additions. You've got an aiming system that relies more on pure chance than skill and accuracy. You've got no map whatsoever which means you're never 100% sure that you're heading in the right direction.

And you've got the save system from hell which means that there are no set terminals or typewriters or user-controlled save points at all. The game will just pop a "Save Now?" window up when you hit a particular point in the game. Of course, you can't go back to this point and save. NOoooo... You also have NO IDEA WHERE OR WHEN IT WILL APPEAR!!! This means that for some sections it is a relatively short time between saves. Other times, like the very beginning, can take up to 30 minutes before the dialogue box appears. This is why it took me multiple days to get into the game because I'd play for 10 minutes, die, fall asleep and then have to restart the next day. Sigh.

Now, although I am pretty harsh on the game, I have to admit that I still really liked the main gimmick. What's the gimmick? The devs really tried to put a lot of work into making you feel like you're on a boat in the middle of an Arctic blizzard. Say what you will about the gameplay and the lackluster story, the setting is fantastic.

The first half of the game is really neat because the boat is pitching under your feet and when you're on the deck, you can actually be hurt by the waves as they pound into the boat. If you're really unlucky, you might be on deck when a big wave smashes into the boat and the deck goes from horizontal to vertical and you're sent sliding into the ocean... That said, most of those events were rather scripted so that you just had to step on a certain section of deck and it would happen over... and over... and over... But it was still pretty cool the first time.

I was really impressed with the work they put into the little touches like having water slosh around as the boat rocked and such. I just came away from the game feeling like they'd wasted an awesome opportunity to pull off some insane visual tricks and left me just trying to blast the heads off some moldy old Russian zombies. Sigh.

I guess the best thing about this is that I can trade it in tomorrow for a hefty chunk of change (always nice to get more than $30 for your trade-ins) and pick up God of War instead, which is getting some of the best reviews I've ever read, and that's for a game that looked kind of iffy last week before.

OH! One other thing that I saw while watching the credits. There was actually a whole paragraph which essentially said, "This game is rated for adults and assumes that an adult who plays can tell that it's a game and not real and won't do what they just saw happen in the game."

I guess this is to help shield them from any lawsuits in case there's a rash of teens on boats, blasting away at cottagers.
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What I'm Reading: Codex
What I'm Playing: Just beat Cold Fear (duh) and I'm getting God of War tomorrow, WoW
What I'm Watching: My joints stiffen up as a result of the evil Karate disease!