BG&E again

[A Black Falcon]

I'm just saying that you don't exactly have the finest tastes in games. Your opinion is your opinion, but it's a pretty out-there one...

I am not the only person who ever liked Pod. And as usual you are an idiot for acting like your opinions are true for everyone. You are not the sole decider in the determination of if a game is good or bad! I know you'll never understand that fact, though... but I'll link some still-there Pod sites to prove that it isn't exactly like no one liked this game. Sure many did, but others liked it. It's a matter of opinion and does not reflect on some idiotic idea of the people who liked it liking bad games.

http://membres.lycos.fr/skubidou/Pod/
http://www.murmuran.net/pod/
http://berlinrc.de/pod/
http://witnessteam.free.fr/

Jesus, you've barely gotten anywhere in the game! Yet you still critisize it's "twists" as you put it. What an asinine thing to say. That's like only watching the first half of The Sixth Sense and complaining about how dumb the story is. Not that I expect any less of you, however...

I can read FAQs. That's how I reminded myself how far I was, actually. I'm about 2/3rds of the way through. That is not barely anywhere by any standards. Distort it all you will but five FAQs aren't all lying.

And saying "it gets better later" is one of the most common and stupidest excuses people use when people question games they like. You hear it all the time with MMORPGs -- "it gets fun once you hit level 20", or level 30, or level 40... is that true? Maybe slightly. But the amount of fun you're having at level 15 will not suddenly reverse in your mind and become massively more or less fun once you hit that magic number...

In the case of thise game I can be more specific than that. I know that it does not suddenly change focus partway through. I know the kind of game it is does not change midstream. I know that the story does not suddenly take big plot twists that you would never expect. It just plods along the path it sets out in blazing lights right from the start... the one "plot twist" is that DomZ=Alpha Section, but even that barely qualifies as such given how obvious it is that both groups are evil right from the start. The plot isn't HORRIBLE, but it's just so simplistic and lacking in depth, detail, complexity, uniqueness and originality, etc... it does not impress me much, you can tell. As I said not AWFUL, but not nearly as great as the game gets credit for.

You just made my point for me. I said that you were a hypocrite for blasting BG&E's relative simplicity (despite the fact that it isn't supposed to be a super-deep game and that it does so many different things so very well), while at the same time liking mindless simplicity like the Gauntlet series.

The rest of your reply was the quote again...

As for this point, I guess BG&E is supposed to be simple. The problem is that it is not that simple! Yes, the gameplay is simple and so is the story. But it has so many ways where it seems to me like they said 'should we add depth or cut back and leave the players wishing for more' and chose the latter... it's a game without depth that desperately needs it. Gauntlet is a game without depth that would probably be bad with lots of depth. Baldur's Gate: Dark Alliance is a game with a moderate level of depth that would be better with more. Same with Dungeon Siege. Diablo II has a little more which is part of why it's a bit better than those two. BG&E? It's not the same kind of game as those four so a direct comparison is stupid. A better comparison would be games in the genre it is in: adventure/RPG/platformers.

That is, Zelda, Star Fox Adventures, etc. BG&E is more complex than SFA, thankfully (and as I've said SFA makes it look positively deep), but honestly... based purely on story, I care more about the story in SFA. I'm not sure which of the factors I've gone over before is the cause, but I just do not get very engrossed by the world or the story in BG&E. I don't find myself caring all that much for the characters. I do not feel like the world is "real". I don't feel like the story is plausible -- not because it could not happen but because they simplify a story that should be deep and complex to a cartoonish level of simplicity. For Gauntlet that is good, but for BG&E that is most assuredly bad.

As such, I would say that the simple direction they took was the wrong one. The game would be better with deeper combat, more challenging puzzles, real stealth instead of just puzzle rooms, a actual penalty for when you die (as it is it has the oh-so-cruel and incredibly unfair penalty of having to start the room you are in over... oh the horror...), and a story with actual depth! The game does not have those things and it suffers for it.