1up delivered up a controversial 5.0 review and then pulled it, appending a heartfelt apology for something that was good enough to post earlier in the day. Reading it made me... unhappy, but its removal is not something I endorse. As I said during the Savage fiasco, (paraphrased) if a reviewer can only stand to play your game for two hours, I want to hear from that guy. I want to hear from every person with experience on the subject, from the reverent acolyte in the official forum to the sworn enemy toiling on a competing product.

An editor at the newly christened Games For Windows magazine has been frank (disarmingly so) in a personal blog on the rescission, but as much as it might incense me that Neverwinter is being compared to a first person Action RPG (and let me pause for a moment while the animal rage subsides), what the review said about the role of deep numerics in a modern game is more than true for most people. Gabriel, for example, would never tolerate a game like Neverwinter Nights. I hate that this is so, but then, I am the rusted hull of a man who longs for the best days of a genre gone by.

There are a few things that make the article situation more complex than it needs to be - for example, 1up is determined to make use of "the whole scale," which makes a 5.0 score (seen in the larger media context) look like a hacksaw castration when it's really just a slow nod of disapproval. At 4.5, we're supposed to picture the arms folded, and as the score descends into the dark and dismal four region, we should imagine that the reviewer is also making a sound that sounds like "Pfff." The bulk of the now disgraced work constantly decries the game's dedication to Dungeons and Dragons mechanics - a poor choice for the author tactically, because Neverwinter (more than any other franchise) is really about rules. You could, in actuality, claim that's all it is: a system for determining success or failure, and the tools to create scenarios where player characters may succeed or fail.

That's what bothered me more that anything else - nowhere in the lithe frame of the piece did it mention that Neverwinter Nights 2 is a toolset. It's reviewed solely on the base campaign - whose quality must be exposed, certainly - but that's a serious Goddamn omission. That said, you can't exactly review the future. Will NWN2 ignite the community, as the first one did? And what is the timeline for this ignition? Those who purchase this game are investing in potential, an ethereal good.  

I like me some Dungeons and Dragons, but a game is not beyond reproach just because it has some fucking umber hulks in there. My complaints have more to do with its poor performance, and this on a machine whose vigor is that of a wild mustang.  But I've put together a group to give the campaign a solid playthrough online, a group dedicated to a single goal:  the acquisition of truly obscene wealth.  Oh!  Oh!  And subjugating the weak.  So I guess that's really two goals. 

(CW)TB out.

how do you slow this thing down

In the three years Child's Play has been in operation, it - by which we mean you - has raised nearly one point two million dollars and delivered more than fifty-three thousand toys and games to children's hospitals.

Please take a moment to feel extremely good about yourself.

That feels great, doesn't it? Well, you can have that feeling again, pretty much any time you want, by visiting the Child's Play site and looking over the nearly thirty partner hospitals. There's also a new Child's Play shirt this year, carefully modified so that the Red Cross doesn't sue us.

We'll also try to expand our support for H.O.P.E. this year, a.k.a. the Hospital-based Online Pediatric Environment - their mission is amazing, and I think we can do right by them.

(CW)TB

The mood in the office this morning is somewhat tense. We all spent the weekend playing FFXII and we came back today completely divided regarding its quality. I have to admit that after putting in nearly fifteen hours over the past two days I’m prepared to call it the best FF game I’ve ever played. I know that’s at odds with what I said on Friday but it’s the truth. Tycho and Robert are actually playing together and they’re at about the five hour mark. They came in this morning saying the game was trash and I can’t blame them. They’re knee deep in what I’d describe as the tutorial phase of the game. If you played Kingdom Hearts II you’ll remember that’s a game that doesn’t actually “start” until nearly eight hours in. I don’t mean like you don’t start having fun until then, I mean you literally don’t even see the title screen until you’ve dicked around with Roxas for eight fucking hours. FFXII felt the same way to me. It’s extremely slow to start but now I’m having a hard time putting the controller down.

The big thing for me was that I finally started to understand the combat system. I don’t just mean I could manage it, that’s not hard. I mean, I understood what they were trying to do and how it isn’t a departure from turn based combat but actually an interpretation of it. I almost said refinement there and maybe I should have.

So the big complaint and the one I had for probably five hours was that I wasn’t actually doing much during most combat situations. My gambits took over and my characters just did their thing. It wasn’t until I got to the first boss Firemane that a little light bulb went off over my head and I really “got it”. I was literally stopping the action after every turn and adjusting my characters actions, or making new decisions. It was for all intents and purposes a turn based encounter. Now, this is where I wish I was Tycho because I want to explain the combat system as I understand it, but I’m not sure I’m up to the task.

When I think about playing FFX or IX and I think about the battles that take place between bosses I remember that I was never really in too much danger. When a battle pops up between your party and let’s say some wolves in X you just select attack on all your characters, maybe toss in a fire spell for fun and then watch the wolves bite it. Most of the time you weren’t sweating over what each character should use their turn for because a single miss step could mean game over. Sure you could fuck up and die but you really only had to get serious during boss fights and handful of other tough mobs. Most of the time, it’s just you selecting the same moves over and over, occasionally dropping a healing potion. Well all that FFXII has done is stream line that process. I’m not pushing “X” as much but I’m doing the same things. It was hard for me to get my head around at first because I wanted to believe I was doing more than that but I wasn’t. I wanted to believe that every fight in IX really required strategy but it didn’t. People feel like their being taken out of the driver’s seat, that the car is just on autopilot now. The truth is that you may have been driving the car before but the fucking thing was on rails. You just grind through monsters until you hit a boss and that’s when the combat really gets interesting.

It’s funny, I should have realized what was going on when I played Enchanted Arms. One of my favorite features of that game was the ability to have your characters just do the same move they did last turn. Rather then having to go and select in from the menu it was automatic if I wanted it to be. Obviously I could tweak it and change that when I wanted but much of the time I just want my healer to heal, my fighter to hit and my wizard to cast spells. The Gambit system lets me tell my characters how I want them to behave. At anytime I can stop the action and make adjustments but for a lot of stuff I don’t need to. All its doing is saving me the trouble of navigating five different menus to tell a character to do the same thing they did last time.

When I hit a boss all of that changes. Just like in previous FF games, now I really need to think about what everyone’s doing. I have my gambits as a sort of failsafe running underneath but for the most part I’m stopping the action all the time to adjust each character’s target or change a spell. Everything I love about controlling multiple characters through a difficult turn based fight is right there. That’s the thing, the new system means the game is as deep as I want it to be whenever I want it to be.

Well there, that’s how I feel about the new combat system. I hope that made sense even if you don’t agree. The rest of the stuff about the game isn’t as important I don’t think. I love the story but that’s because it’s Star Wars meets LOTR. Obviously not everyone is going to dig that. I think the writing and the voice acting are the best in an FF game to date. Again that’s open to interpretation. I think most importantly for me beyond just getting my head around the combat is that I really like these characters. For me it doesn’t get much better than Balthier. Like I said, everything else is secondary though. If you don’t like the gambit system and the way it affects combat then you won’t stick around long enough to enjoy the rest of it. I just felt like it was important to tell you guys how drastically my impression of the game changed over the weekend. Maybe it’s still not for you but I’d recommend giving it some time. You may find out that it’s exactly what you wanted.

-Gabe out