The Weekly Nuke: Look Who’s Back – Wrap Up

Things got a little bit on top of us last week, which means this topic got extended. Normal service will be resuming as of now, so let’s see what people had to say.

On The Forums

gcndavidmn opened things up with a short one that I think many of us can get behind nowadays, so it’s worth sharing:

Rhythm games like Guitar Hero or Rock Band should stay away for 15-20 years.

It’s already strange to think back at how crazy that stuff was only a year or two ago, isn’t it? There might be a lesson to be had here about running things into the ground so much that people stop caring.

A few people also mentioned Duke Nukem Forever, but I wasn’t so sure it qualified for this topic:

Duke is sort of a special case since that was never planned as a revival. When DNF was announced, DN3D had only been out for a year.

Yeah.

Faye Lanks expressed a fondness for re-releases:

I enjoy going back to something I knew updated because it’s fresh and familiar at the same time. Ocarina of Time‘s recent reproduce is really good. The game design was good and all they needed was a new lick of paint, so they decided not to mess with it and end up with an awesome, good looking game again. Shadow of the Colossus looks like it’s going the same route and I’m very excited to play the game with the added draw distance. Along with Ico, their muted artstyle made everything feel dreamy and a little bit unreal which I loved. Plus Yorda is super cute. I loved walking around with her.

Medieval however, Had the very definition of how to NOT do it. They not only changed the fundamentals of the gameplay by removing buttons, they changed level design, placement, voice-acting and added characters that had no place.

I’ve enjoyed some re-releases too, but I can’t help thinking that as long as it’s a cosmetic update and doesn’t change what’s great about the original, it’s a safe option.

Someone was bound to mention Prince of Persia eventually, and it was Faye Lanks again this time. When a game is essentially a comeback of a comeback, that since has had another comeback of the first comeback, things are getting confusing:

Reboots Like Prince of Persia (2008) do it poorly. I think abandoning the idea that the game is about Iranian Royalty was a bad move as the game doesn’t feel like it’s any relation. Even if you are some other cousin of the King or perhaps reset the franchise to before the original crisis behind it, or just tell a different story with a new mechanic. But along with butchering the mechanics of navigation with hidden QTE’s, making combat a button mashy chore, the story hasn’t got a clue where it’s roots are and so I really think the branding was a poor move.

Eventually the topic turned back to the game that inspired it, Deus Ex: Human Revolution. In the red corner, Ace Flibble, with an opinion:

So yeah, didn’t really capture the feel of the orignal to me. The initial weapon selection says it all: shit pistol, shit machine gun, shit taser thing or not-entirely-shit tranq rifle. In the original you could get a massive rocket launcher right away! That was the whole point, to me. I could stealth the whole game and never kill anyone and then on another play through I could go in blowing everything to tiny pieces, then on a third I could be a sniper or hack everything or be effective in melee and take people out that way and I didn’t have to grind or do any weird missions to open up these options. I could play how I wanted right from the very start.
In HR you basically have to go with sneaking and hacking everything, until the atrocious AI dogs you at which point you’re just screwed. I’m not going to lie: I’ve not even reached the first boss, I have no idea how good or bad those parts are. I’ve restarted four times, trying different stuff. All ends up the same crap. Combat just gets you killed, you can’t talk your way through, you can’t sneak past without killing people, you can’t get by without hacking. There aren’t any viable options other than to hack, hack, tranq and hack some more and just hope that the AI doesn’t bugger you about, seeing you through walls. I contemplated starting for a fifth time but then I thought sod that and played Mass Effect 2 instead.

And in the blue corner, me, disagreeing on almost every count:

I can actually see why you’d think that, because in retrospect the start of the game is the most difficult part and the most punishing. But I’m gonna call bullshit on the idea that you have to go with sneaking and hacking. I was playing a sneaky-hacky guy, HOWEVER:

1. There were multiple points in the game where my sneaking screwed up and I ended up in a fight, and had to use my limited resources to confront the situation. I remember this happening a LOT in the original game, and part of what the game feel Deus Ex-y to me was the way occasionally my plans would go tits-up and I’d have to improvise.
2. There’s a (spoiler free) part later on in the game where you are faced with an optional battle against lots of tough enemies, with a sort of time limit. While I’m usually one to avoid such, I was motivated to fight for story reasons. Even though my character was mainly built for stealth and hacking, I succeeded. I had to be a bit strategic and clever about my movements and weapon/energy use, but I did it. It took me a few tries but I imagine if I had built my character up as a fighter with all kinds of modded weapons and augs for that, I would have got through first try. It’s just NOT TRUE that sneaking/hacking is the only option in the game, though I’d guess it was the most rewarding option – but the same is true of the original, no matter how good the choice is.