Caporegime
- Joined
- 18 Oct 2002
- Posts
- 33,188
Yup, it's one of these super cheap game extension mechanics, check every single room for a spoon to get 8 gold. But it makes no sense, the city is under the "gloom" it's poor people living in slums, how is stealing a golden spoon even becoming money, you don't sell it, and there is no explanation of how it's turning in to money and doesn't feel right in the particular game setting? All while ignoring potentially valuable things like paintings and some jewellery as it's "collectibles" because every ******* game must have collectibles.
Worse still is in this game the mechanic of unlabelled windows, which are indistinguishable in a map that is fairly confusing with a crap minimap(and full map) which really gives no indication you've been in that window before. IE, you end up going through this painfully long entering house/room sequence with the windows, completely with quick time style mash button event...... and it could easily be a room you've accidentally gone in 3 times before.
It's stupidity, on top of lameness, with added frustration with zero god damned point.
You can replay levels to pick up items to get more money, which I haven't done and won't bother with.
One thing I do like and was done well is walking around the city you can be outside a window and overhear people inside talking, only broken by the crappy glass and no inside of building rendering, IE you can't look into the nearest window when you hear this and see two people through that window talking. But there were tidbits like "I heard there is a valuable item in guy X's house", or "did you see the new watch, Barry had on down the pub".
Which could have been a great mechanic but the majority of them weren't real, I'm fairly sure one or two were actually useful. LIke I think I heard someone say along the lines of "did you know he apparently has a secret room in the library", which made me go and check for a secret entrance, it's a bit rubbish with the focus mechanic letting you highlight a room and find the button all too easily. The entrance should be your classic book on a book shelf pulled or a candle stick on the wall turned, but that you have to find not press F and it highlights everything in the room.
But a lot of the conversations seemed unlinked to anything close buy or just a bit random, which add's to atmosphere in that sense but felt like unfinished clues left in the game.
It's kind of a half game, where if they removed the generic crap, added more items you overhear about and actually make it a challenge to find them. It would take just as long to do so, probably require more interiors(in the map overall very few houses can be entered and most are very very basic.
I think there a few things like the overheard sounds that hint at more depth and difficulty, but so many other things that feel bodged or unfinished. Maybe they ran out of time, did the classic massive over stretching and half the stuff didn't work so had to redo lots of simpler stuff that could be added quickly. I don't know. There is some excellent music and a couple excellently designed levels like the ones I mentioned before that hint at the real level of quality they were maybe aiming at, which makes this an even bigger let down really.
Worse still is in this game the mechanic of unlabelled windows, which are indistinguishable in a map that is fairly confusing with a crap minimap(and full map) which really gives no indication you've been in that window before. IE, you end up going through this painfully long entering house/room sequence with the windows, completely with quick time style mash button event...... and it could easily be a room you've accidentally gone in 3 times before.
It's stupidity, on top of lameness, with added frustration with zero god damned point.
You can replay levels to pick up items to get more money, which I haven't done and won't bother with.
One thing I do like and was done well is walking around the city you can be outside a window and overhear people inside talking, only broken by the crappy glass and no inside of building rendering, IE you can't look into the nearest window when you hear this and see two people through that window talking. But there were tidbits like "I heard there is a valuable item in guy X's house", or "did you see the new watch, Barry had on down the pub".
Which could have been a great mechanic but the majority of them weren't real, I'm fairly sure one or two were actually useful. LIke I think I heard someone say along the lines of "did you know he apparently has a secret room in the library", which made me go and check for a secret entrance, it's a bit rubbish with the focus mechanic letting you highlight a room and find the button all too easily. The entrance should be your classic book on a book shelf pulled or a candle stick on the wall turned, but that you have to find not press F and it highlights everything in the room.
But a lot of the conversations seemed unlinked to anything close buy or just a bit random, which add's to atmosphere in that sense but felt like unfinished clues left in the game.
It's kind of a half game, where if they removed the generic crap, added more items you overhear about and actually make it a challenge to find them. It would take just as long to do so, probably require more interiors(in the map overall very few houses can be entered and most are very very basic.
I think there a few things like the overheard sounds that hint at more depth and difficulty, but so many other things that feel bodged or unfinished. Maybe they ran out of time, did the classic massive over stretching and half the stuff didn't work so had to redo lots of simpler stuff that could be added quickly. I don't know. There is some excellent music and a couple excellently designed levels like the ones I mentioned before that hint at the real level of quality they were maybe aiming at, which makes this an even bigger let down really.
the FMV in the early games was epic, they got worse but with hotter chicks as time went on. The music in the first game is still soooo awesome. I almost want to buy it on steam(origin apparently) just to play through the first game with the awesome music.
