Posted by FTrapper on 5/6/2009, 2:35 pm, in reply to "The Last Remnant"
This exchange says it all (from earlier this year in the usual IRC hangout, when Xagor/Will_Knights was writing game reviews for his college newspaper):
[Xagor] tomorrow i get my press pass (school paper). wonder if square enix has playable games for the press
[Indogutsu] That'd be nice.
[Xagor] yeah, dq5 especially =P
[Indogutsu] Unless it's stuff like "The Last Remnant" that you'll be finding used copies of for under $10 in a few years.
[Xagor] lol kawazu =P
--Previous Message--
: 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
:
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