Well, at this point everyone pretty knows and admits HG:L was a failure, and I am sure nobody wants to hear my rant about how HG:L sucked and blah blah. But as someone who spent 4 years studying software engineering and a future game developer wannabe, I’d like to share some thoughts on the sink of Flagship.

One thing that has been getting popular in the field of software engineering is the idea of Extreme Programming(XP), which is a set of mindsets and methodologies aimed to deliver the highest quality of code with least amount of resource spent. Interest enough, Flagship CEO Bill Roper said something very akin to a specific path of XP: the Agile Development Method based on Hellgatewiki:

One of our philosophies of design is to get the game up and running as early as possible, keep it at a constantly playable state, and then constantly iterate on what’s there. Although this process takes a very specific mindset and dedication from the development team, we have found this to be the best way for us to create and balance an RPG.

The idea of constantly iteration sounds nice, and I am sure it has worked in numerous different companies. What interests me is the question “did they really follow the specific mindset Bill mentioned”? Based one former Ping0 employee, the reason the studio was failing is

and they didn’t do anything the easy way. They had their own server architecture, their own client, their own chat, their own graphics engine, their own everything basically. Plus they wanted a game that could support thousands of concurrent connections with no downtime, had an engaging single-player campaign, and could support an ongoing, persistent world. It was like picking everything that’s hard to do in a game

which is the total opposite of what Bill Roper said in the interview. Instead of using the simplest solution to get the game to work earliest possible followed by constant small incremental iteration, they aimed high and big from the scrath. I have personally learnt some very similar(and hard) lesson in one of my school projects, but to expect some industry veteran making the same mistake in the first and probably last muti-million product of a new company? Not something you would see everyday.

Another thing I find interest about HG:L is, being made by the maker of Diablo (as Bill Roper mentioned in countless interviews), HG:L is in no way comparable to the Diablo franchise. As much as I hated those “there will be no Diablo3 because everyone moved to Flagship” people(and now since D3 is announced the “D3 will suck because everyone moved to Flagship”), I also like to give everyone on the old Diablo team for making of such awesome games. So why does HG:L failed so hard in comparison to Diablo?

Being a firm believer of XP, I have always believed it is the people who make the software rather than the process or company regulations. But from the case of HG:L, it seems the same brilliant developers can perform vastly differently under different company. Being a new founded studio, I’d imagine Flagship have way less process and regulation enforced on its developers as Blizzard North. Could the lack of quality assurance process be one of the reason why they cannot put up the same performance as they were in Blizzard North? Maybe it is another example of 100 sheep lead by 1 lion defeats 100 lions lead by 1 sheep?

Jonova

The story of Assassin’s Creed is you play as Desmond Miles, who is a descendant of Altair, who is one of the best Assassin if not the best during the period of the Third Crusade. After failing a mission, Altair is stripped of his rank and is given a list of 9 men he must assassinate to regain his rank.

So how does Desmond relate to the story? It is revealed that a company call Abstergo Industries has created a machine call Animus, which can bring memories stored in one’s DNA and allow the host to experience the memory of their ancestor. Since Desmond is a descendant of Altair, who holds some information that Abstergo wants, he is kidnapped and brought in order to extract said information.

As Altair assassinate each of the nine men one by one, it is revealed they all belong to the Knights Templar, an order that seeks to bring peace and stability to the world through whatever means necessary. In a final twist, it is revealed the master of the Assassins Order is also a Templar, and he possesses an artifact called the Piece of Eden, which brainwashes people into believing whatever the wielder wants them to believe. After all of Altair’s memories are restored within Desmond, it is revealed the location of the Piece of Eden is the information Abstergo wishes to obtain.

Assassin’s Creed is a stealth based action game, there’s a witness indicator which shows how aware the soldiers in the city are of your presence. While you can avoid fighting through most of the game, near the end you will have some unavoidable battles where you’ll be surrounded by enemies. So it is advised you hone your fighting skills in early missions. The story of the game is pretty good, you learn more about the purpose of your nine assassination targets after each one dies and your place in the grand scheme of things. The ending left us with more questions than answers when we began, hopefully there is a sequel of some sorts.

Surprisingly, the controls for the PC in this game is pretty intuitive, i was quite comfortable with the default mouse/keyboard combination. Most Console to PC ports have bad keyboard/mouse support where i would just go and plug in a controller to deal with it, so being mouse/keyboard friendly is a plus. Graphics wise, since this is the first game i got since i upgraded from 6600GT to 8800GT, so everything looks nice. I’m not really a graphics person so as long as it looks good and no noticeable deformities its all good.

While the scenery is nice to look at, story is interesting to follow, the AI engaging enough to matter, the game play is repetitive to the point of where you would want to only do the minimum amount you are required in order to advance the story. In order to assassinate your target, you would have to gather some information about them in order to proceed. There is also some side quests like saving citizens being bully by soldiers and climbing view points. In the first mission, i gathered all six information about my target when only two is required, climbed all view points, and saved all citizens being harassed by soldiers. In the last mission, i collected the requisite information about my target and, climbed view points that were on the way, and turned a deaf ear to the citizens crying for help. While saving citizens can help, like spawning scholars so you can blend in to get past guard posts. But since pretty much all the buildings in game are scalable, you just have to found out where to go and how to get there. Assassin’s Creed is a pretty short game compare to others in its genre, therefore, the repetitive game play doesn’t feel as bad as it should.

Assassin’s Creed offers stunning visuals, along with good voice acting and a nice story. However, the game play does get tedious and it can have an effect on the enjoyment level. Maybe the game developers knew that and that’s why the game is relatively short. Replay value wise i don’t really see it, the flag collecting and templar slaying side quests are more meant for 360 achievements so it doesn’t have an effect for PC. Assassin’s Creed is a hit or miss title, if you can stand the game play, you’ll find the game to be enjoyable, if not, you’ll probably stopped playing after the second mission.

P.S. Altair might be able to jump from building to building, scale tall buildings, defeat numerous enemies, he still can’t swim.

The one thing I have always liked in Dynasty Warriors franchise was the feeling of accomplishment, the feeling of being a hero when you slew over one thousand foes and emerge victorious, knowing that you are responsible for change the history (although only imaginarily).

Needless to say I was looking for the same kind of feeling when I started Warrior Orochi, but for some reason, although the game almost plays exactly the same as Dynasty Warrior IV, it doesn’t feel the same. It really puzzled me a good while why I couldn’t find the same kind of satisfaction in this game as I had in Dynasty Warriors, after thinking it through a bit I think I have found two reasons:

First of all, the plot has no significance in it. So you have this really powerful and evil serpent king who is capcable of wraping time and space who is supposely from Japanese myth. But for those who didn’t know Japanese mythology well enough (for example, me), he is just another bad guy who doesn’t have much personality. Also, instead of having famous historic encounters some people (such as me) have kown since childhood, all the battles in Warrior Orochi take place in some imaginary realm, which once again, makes it less satisfactive for me to beat.

The second reason lays within the gameplay, in Dynasty Warrior IV, the allied AI officers and troops usually are defeated by the enemies easily if let unchecked. As an result of that, the player often ends up facing the entire army of the enemy with little to no reinforcement from the allies, which undoubtfully makes the game much harder to beat but at the same time, more satisfactory to beat as well. But in Warrior Orochi, the allied troops have increased strength and are often capcable of standing its own ground or even defeat enemies officers.  The youtube video in our last post shows one of the most common scene you will encounter near the end of the battle: so instead of being the zergee that the massive swarm of no names trying to take down, now you are one of the no named zerger within the swarm, enjoy.

Despite all the complains I have had here, I actually enjoyed the game while I was playing it. I have unlocked all the characters, reached level 99 on several of them and is now working on getting PI/lvl4 weapon for all the characters. There’s a good amount of replayability in this game, but I do wish there are more game modes like in Dynasty Warrior IV though.

Jonova

The story is about Orochi, the serpent king, transporting the Three Kingdoms era from China and the Warring States era from Japan together to test his own might. For each faction, Shu, Wei, Wu, and Samurai Warriors, you start off with 3 characters and unlock characters as you go along for a total of 79 characters including Orochi himself.

Characters are separated into 3 different types, Power, Speed, and Technique, each has a different special attack/abilities they can perform. Power types get Hyper Armor and an Attack Strength boost type special attack, Speed types get double jump and special attack that doesn’t use musou (for most), and Tech types get counterattack and increased effect on your charge attack, both using musou. There’s really no best character in the game, so it really depends on your playstyle.

The voice acting for the characters in the game is all over the place, some are quite good and comical like Magoichi and some are just bad like Zhou Yun. However, once you’ve played the game long enough, you’ll learn to block out most of the voices if you havn’t turned the voices off already.

You can use keyboard or controller to play the game, and since this is a port from the console version, it is better to just use a controller.

The only problem i had with the game is dealing with the event/chat lag. The lag is caused by the game unable to go through its queue because the chatboxes doesn’t go away right after the voice acting has finished. Supposedly the way to fix it is to pause the game when the voice acting starts, unfortunately for me, that didn’t work. Since many of the game’s unlockables requires some form of time based requirement, this lag can pervent you from unlocking characters and chapters in the game.

Warriors Orochi brings together the heroes of Dynasty Warriors and Samurai Warriors, the game offers lots of replayability through its four different campaigns, and unlocking characters and their items. As of writing of this review, I’ve only completed the Shu and Wu campaign and about half way towards completing the game. Some people might find the hack and slash gameplay to be repetitive, but the feeling of defeating 4 enemy officers together and clearing an entire screen of enemies never gets old. This game is must for fans of DW and SW, and also to action rpg fans who would like a different setting from the traditional Tolkien view.

Cover Image Courtesy of IGN.com