Käyttäjän Bodacious Space Teirhan viimeaikaiset arvostelut

A sort of hybrid of Fable and Skyrim, Amalur suffers because of its unoriginality. In the end, why play it? If you are looking for a skyrim-alike game, play that instead. Miss Fables? Play the original, for it is still the best.

Competently made and largely free of graphical or gameplay glitches, Amalur suffers from the greatest sin a video game can commit: it is boring.

pick up gun. shoot enemy. loot corpse. shoot enemy. loot corpse. find new gun. exchange weapon. shoot enemy. loot corpse.

repeat loop. repeat loop. gain special power. summon robot/turn invisible/shoot guns/summon drone/put enemies in stasis. kill enemies. loot corpse. kill enemies. loot corpse. exchange gun; kill more enemies. turn in quest. snicker at one-liner. repeat loop. repeat loop. repeat loop. repeat loop. repeat loop. repeat loop.

pause for a moment, take in the vew. admire the world; admire the character art.

return to the loop. repeat loop. repeat loop. repeat loop. repeat loop. repeat loop. repeat loop. repeat loop. repeat loop.

lean back in your chair. where has the day gone? You don't care.

repeat loop.

The first thing that it might be appropriate to discuss: Dear Esther is not a game. It is to some extent sold and marketed as a game, but it is not one; there are no choices, no alternate paths, no characters to interact with. There are no mechanics, no puzzles, no combat, no minimap, no hud. There isn't much of anything except a narrator and a view.

What a view it is. Dear Esther is gorgeous, an astonishing creation of a space that I feel even Skyrim can only aspire to. It is an astonishing reminder of what even an old and creaky engine like the Source Engine - a decade old at this point - might accomplish. The cave sequence in particular is astonishing, utilizing lighting, texturing, and design to create an environment that feels very nearly real and connected with itself. Dear Esther has, while keeping you locked into a small and for the most part unbroken straight line, managed to give the player the illusion of an entire island to explore and wander. That aforementioned lack of HUD really plays into this, allowing the player to become immersed in the island's environment in a way that few other games can match. The Chinese Room has really done something astonishing here in giving a virtual environment such weight, such verisimilitude. As a result, wandering the island is a joy.

Can we speak of the narration? Not in specifics, because the specifics would spoil the experience. It is dynamically generated, to some extent, with different lines and paragraphs chosen semi-randomly based on which "chapter" you are currently wandering and using some obscured internal logic. As a result, the story - epistolary, concerning at least partly the exploration of an island in the Hebrides - feels fragmented, confusing. It to some extent even feels obscured by the narrative methods used to convey it. You are left wondering, is this all of it? Am I getting it? These questions can't be answered without multiple viewings of Dear Esther, perhaps, except that the small changes this would lead to would hardly seem compelling enough to warrant another meander across the island.

As we have said, Dear Esther is not a game. It is a sort of hybrid short story, a few thousand words of text combined with an interactive environment and a sound track. It is probably best enjoyed from this particular perspective. In the end, everything but the words felt irrelevant. Beautiful, yes, but irrelevant. Would the emotional impact have been lessened if I had read this in a short story collection? I would say no; others, of course, may disagree.

Dear Esther is a piece of work which seems designed to invite comment and discussion without having much to say; as an examination of grief or the banal cruelty of the world it treads over ground well-furrowed by others. Dear Esther's claim to fame, then, is novelty. Is that enough? That is a judgment I feel every person who interacts with it must make by themselves.

It is hard to "recommend" this work. It may appeal to you, it may not. The most positive thing I can say about it is that it took me about an hour to wander the island, start to finish, from a ruined lighthouse to the conclusion perched on a world war II aerial. In retrospect, I don't regret spending that hour to explore Dear Esther at all.

ME is one of the best games I have played, and is the strongest RPG of the trilogy. A decent shooter with immersive conversations and the most well-plotted story of any of the trilogy. If you haven't checked this one out, you should. Beware that ME2 and ME3 play significantly differently, and ME3 can only be purchased on Origin, EA's competitor to Steam.