Unfinished Business: Magicka, Shellshock 2 and Rock of the Dead

Kill the goblins, pick up a new staff, talk to the villagers. It all felt so, well, boring.

“I’m hungry,” I told myself, as I closed down the game, went downstairs and made a sandwich. That must be it. It has to be my stomach distracting me that’s keeping me from enjoying it. After all, “Everyone else seems to like it.”

But I didn’t, and I still don’t. There was our review copy of Magicka staring me in the face every time I opened up Steam, and every time I started to play it, a nagging feeling set in. Something telling me I had something else to do. Make lunch, do laundry, check the mail. Always something keeping me from enjoying the game.

Then it hit me: I don’t like Magicka. Not one bit. I’ve had the review code for well over a month and I still haven’t finished it. Hell, there’s even an achievement for finishing the quest in less than three hours.

I had stumbled onto a game I would rather fold clothes than play. But then again, I think we all do at some point. The game works well enough that we could play through it, but something about it just isn’t fun. This is what this new feature will seek to address. Those games that we (or at least whoever is writing that installment) just couldn’t be bothered to finish.

Magicka

What’s so bad about it? Well, let’s start with the opening splash page.

Before the menu or anything useful pops up, there they are: Facebook and Twitter links. I realize that Arrowhead is a smaller company, but I’m not your damn PR guy. If I want to post something about the game, I’m pretty sure I can manage on my own.

And then there were the bugs. The game launched in an almost unplayable state. Many of the worst problems have been addressed, but the fact that early adopters essentially paid for little more than a beta code takes a lot of the shine off a game.

The gameplay sure wasn’t drawing me back either. Sure, you get more powerful spells to cast by combining the same basic elements from the beginning of the game, but most of them are complicated enough that in the heat of battle you just go back to the same two or three that you’ve been spamming since the first five minutes.

The game clearly attempts to be funny, but most of the jokes fell flat for me. Yeah, it pokes fun at the conventions of fantasy games, and letting you replace your standard sword or spear with an M60 machine gun at one point was a nice touch, but other games have poked fun at their genre better. Much better. The Bard’s Tale hired Cary Elwes. These guys had someone mumbling in Swedish. It quickly became more annoying than funny.

I realize I’m in the minority here, but I don’t think Magicka is a good game. I don’t even think it’s an OK game. And don’t look for someone else to review it just because I didn’t like it. This is the review. Sorry.

It’s not a 1/5. It’s not a 0/5. Magicka gets a DNF: Did Not Finish. Feel free to disagree, but I’d get more fun out of my $10 buying dryer sheets and stove top cleaner.

In the spirit of the above review, here are two more games I couldn’t be bothered to play all the way through.

Shellshock 2: Blood Trails

Ah, Vietnam. What videogame developers assumed we wanted when everyone started complaining about the glut of WW2 shooters on the market. Luckily, most devs dropped it when they realized generic FPS’s don’t work as well when right and wrong get a little bit blurry.

Rebellion decided to take a different approach with Shellshock 2: Blood Trails, though. Do you remember hearing from your parents about all the problems the US was having with zombies over there?

Yes, in an apparent effort to find a replacement for the culturally acceptable shooting dummy that is the videogame Nazi, the developers cooked up a story about some Agent Orange-like prototype weapon program gone horribly wrong. But instead of giving everyone who comes in contact with it leukemia and causing severe birth defects, it turns the Vietcong into zombies. I’m not entirely sure that makes your role as a US soldier over there that much more noble. You are trying to clean up the mess I guess.

Still, the real problem is that they didn’t fix what turned many gamers and critics off of WW2 shooters in the first place: the gameplay. You still walk from point A to point B, shooting whatever enemies jump out at you from around corners, completing objectives largely by fulfilling the arduous task of walking over a waypoint, and other generic tasks that the one man who (apparently) single-handedly won the war does.

I did what America should have done and got out early. If you really want to see Vietcong zombies that bad just look up videos of it on YouTube. That, or wait for Activision to make the same crap sometime in the next couple years as they drive Call of Duty into the ground.

Rock of the Dead

Remember House of the Dead and how cool it was? Then there was Typing of the Dead, and you were like, lol wut? Well Epicenter Studios decided that what the market was really missing was a game in the same vein, but without the cool factor of House of the Dead, nothing educational or useful, and played with the guitar controllers you have lying around.

Yes, Rock of the Dead has players strumming along with a random series of notes, not really connected to the background music, or anything else for that matter, to blast zombies, giant bugs and other baddies with “The Power of Rock”. All these games refer to rock like it has some great effect on things. If that’s the case, then why are two-thirds of Crosby, Stills and Nash playing casinos in Oklahoma instead of running the world? Actually, bad example. I think that one kind of answers itself.

All there is to the game is strumming a few notes at a time, and those only seem to register properly for three out of four attempts. It just leaves you mashing on a guitar so you can see more of a game that isn’t worth seeing in the first place.

I got it on Gamefly and I felt ripped off. I guess I should have paid attention to the featured user review they have that is all about playing through it with a regular controller instead to get the achievements quicker. I’m as much of a sucker for achievements as the next guy, but I’m not putting up with this crap.

Those looking for another use for those extra guitars would be better served stumbling through a round of Black Ops for shits and giggles instead.