Posted by Strider on 5/5/2009, 7:44 pm
I don't know exactly how or when The Last Remnant started peeking over my buzz threshhold- it's not a game I had been anticipating, or even heard about, before its' release. At one point several weeks ago, I watched a trailer and saw nothing compelling- generic Square character designs traipsing through a generic Square high-magic setting in search of generic shiny relics (the titular "remnants", according to Wikipedia) spouting banal dialog that seemed oddly reminiscent of every anime series or JRPG ever. Yet it persisted to hover in the back of my mind, and seeing the demo on Steam encouraged me to pull it down and give it a try.
At this juncture, I wish I could report that I was pleasantly surprised. Unfortunately, I cannot.
I should mention up front that my two-year-old MacBook Pro seemed to be struggling a little bit with the game. It's not a brand-new machine and wasn't bleeding-edge even when it was; The Last Remnant seemed a bit choppy on it at times, which was one of the first things I noticed, but this may be due to my hardware and not the game itself. (Counterpoint: I enjoyed Dawn of War 2 tremendously in spite of the fact that it was clearly struggling on my machine. Part of this may be because Dawn of War's hardware issues manifested as slowdown whereas Remnant's issues manifested as more noticeable choppiness.)
While The Last Remnant was ported to the PC, it was originally released on the 360- the first and most glaring issue I noticed was that the game was very clearly intended to be played with an XBox 360 controller. This alone would not be an issue if it just meant I had to get used to a bunch of weird two-handed keyboard shortcuts in place of a mouselook, but every "press a button!" prompt was still labeled as a 360 button- a confusing task in a game with quick-time actions, leaving me largely confused when I'm prompted to press "Right Trigger" in battle. Worse still, the keyboard mappings (which you can only view or change from the title screen for some damn reason) are mapped to functions, and not directly to the Xbox buttons. I'm not sure if I ever managed to actually do a QTE right- the saving grace is that they're not actually required, but it's still a bit of frustration.
While I'm on the topic of controls, let me talk about camera controls for a moment. The conclusion that I, as a gamer, have eventually come to is that I should never have to think about controlling the camera myself in a third-person game. I shouldn't have to constantly worry about wrestling the camera into position when I change directions, and I should be able to see important stuff right in front of me all the time. If you've got some algorithm to do this, that's great; I can deal with fixed or pre-defined camera angles too. Look, all I'm saying here- and I know this will make the truly hXardk0re twitch- is that Final Fantasy 10 did it right. In a game like The Last Remnant, where you're more-often-than-not walking in a single, linear path, there's really no excuse for making me do things myself.
The Last Remnant's demo also commits the all-too-frequent cardinal sin of simply dropping you into the middle of the game without any relevant information about the setting or story. The "start demo" option places you in a room with a bunch of important-looking characters, who explain that you that you should make sure you're ready before you attempt to cross some mountain range- uhm, okay? No tutorial is provided on any of the game's systems- although, granted, what I've read about the game since indicates that this may simply be because no such tutorial exists in the full product, either. I muddled my way out to the world map, and found a nearby cave where I proceeded to slaughter some bugs. Feeling daring, I wandered into some nearby ruins, and was repeatedly demolished by some variety of demonic jellyfish, at which point I uninstalled the game.
It's not all bad- the combat system looks like it could be kind of interesting if I got into it, and maybe there's a storyline there, but the demo- at least- was terrible, and gives me no desire to see any more of the game.
- HC
Message Thread:
« Back to thread