| Mar. 17th, 2003 @ 08:29 am (no subject) |
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Current Mood:  thoughtful
Micro-Review: So, The Tuxedo, actually a lot better movie than it should have been, though it suffered by not turning Chan loose to go absolutely bugshit nuts, but I suppose (a) its an American made film, and (b) Jackie is starting to slow down as he gets older (that is to say, only 2x as fast as an unaugmented human being). Jennifer Love Hewett actually managed to be cute in the movie, which is astounding given the "depth" of her acting ability. The extent of the James Bond parody is less than you'd expect going in.
For some reason Ritchie Coster does a dead on Michael Praed playing Phileas Fogg impression. (It amuses me that Praed's latest filmography lists "Nine Dead Gay Guys" as his most recent bit -- the man obviously cares nothing for political correctness.) Put Ritchie and Praed together in the same room with those pointy sideburns, and they could be brothers.
Compare & Contrast: Since ![[info]](http://p-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif) bruceb convinced me to go ahead and reinstall Diablo II, I figured I'd complete my damnation by reinstalling Dungeon Siege, too. Playing the back to back, after so long a break, drove home some very obvious points:- D2 gives you much cooler stuff much earlier in the game; this makes the early game a lot more fun than DS.
- DS has graphics that'll put your eyes out, and the ability to spin the camera for real 3d visuals is superb. D2 suffers being, essentially, an animated sprite-based game.
- The area designs are far more intense in D2. As soon as you step out into the Blood Moor as a 1st level character, its only seconds until you have a situation where you have to think fast. DS is a far more deliberate pace, in part helped by the fact that you just don't get a massive swarm of anything on you at any time.
- DS' semi-automatic combat system is actually a lot more usable than D2's clickfest, if only because its hard to keep clicking on each member of a swarm in D2, but your character'll fight back automagically in DS.
- On the other hand, you get a lot more diverse set of enemies in D2, and the addition of bosses with variable powers every time you encounter them is a great boon. DS' enemies are, on the whole, rather boring, except for the mondo oversized bosses.
- DS has lousy (and I do mean lousy) drops; this is one half of why combat in DS is, overall, less fun than combat in D2 -- the rewards suck. D2 gives you a good chance of having a magic item drop that you can use that's really unlikely for anyone else to have every time you fight. DS is way, way, way more stingy with the magic drops (though the results tend to be more attractive when they do, visually).
- The other half of why D2's combat wins out is because it gives each character a greater diversity of skills/powers they can bring to bear at any time. In DS, while anyone can have magic, they all go through the same progression of spells, because some are obviously more useful than others and more available. While DS' "learn by doing" mechanic is far, far and away more interesting in play than D2's level-based system, it has the drawback of tracking the whole set of abilities in one chunk and making all Brick and Archer characters almost identical.
In the end I have to give the overall "most fun" prize to D2, but its with obvious reluctance and hesitation. DS is a highly moddable and rewritable core system -- if Blizzard were to team up with Gas Powered Games to produce a D2/DS hybrid as Diablo 3, with more classes/class-skills, better drops, D2-style level design with DS-style graphics, and DS-style interface, I think it'd end up being a monster, scary hit.
Buffydate: No Black Mirror updates today ... I'm kind of tired and I've been gaming half the night.
Today's Projects: This afternoon at 5.30p, I go to the dermatologist again. Yay. And after that -- nothing. Go me. (Yes, I know, like you care.) |
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happy
By Hell!: The Lord of Squid does a celebratory dance of death! Finally, my copy of