I’m afraid of a guy named Guildenstern?

Posted by Ruckus on Monday, April 25, 2005

I took Bucho’s advice last week and fed the bomb to Onimusha: Warlords, the first in Capcom’s three part series. Jeff described the game better than I could, but I thought there were some things you should know.

Since Jeff has already described the positive aspects of the game, I’m going to talk about the bad stuff. Keep in mind the game was good enough to make me buy a sparkling new copy of Onimusha 2: Samurai’s Destiny (for $12), but there are some things that I’d feel bad not telling you. First, the game’s got a steep learning curve and it took me a long time to get a hang of the controls - maybe half the game before I felt like I had things down. The game follows a different aesthetic than I’m used to; namely, when you press the up arrow your character walks in the direction he’s facing regardless of his relationship to the fixed camera. Press the left arrow and he turns to HIS left, not yours, a seemingly small enough difference but one that drove me bonkers. There are no checkpoints in this game either, so when you face a boss and get killed, expect to spend a minute or two working your way back to him and watching the unskippable cut scene again before you get back to swords. Bad camera angles are at their worst when you fight bosses and I found myself getting my ass kicked because I couldn’t see hero Samonosuke and the boss at the same time. The frustratingly bad camera angles detracted heavily from what I felt was a fun game.

The other thing I need to ask after playing this game is, “who the hell translated this game?” Case in point: there’s a terrifying demon surgeon who stitches together abominations to hound you constantly. His name? Guildenstern. The name of his evil master, the king of demons? Fortinbras. (Remember kids, the “s” is silent!) His two “most evil” creations? Marcellus and Reynaldo. I’m sorry, but when he shouted, “Get him Reynaldo!” the only thing I heard was Swedish super-group ABBA singing, “there was something in the air that night / the stars were bright / Reynaldo!*” How am I supposed to be intimidated by a dude named Reynaldo?

Allow me to give this game a meaningless rank: 4.

* yes, I know it’s really Fernando, but that didn’t stop me from humming the song.

5 Comments »

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Comment by Jeff S

4/25/2005 @ 11:19 am

Your meaningless rank brings about a good question. Should Eat My Bomb develop its own rating scale? Should we do the breakdown of Audio, Gameplay, Grapics, Replay, Value and Tilt (whatever the hell that’s supposed to mean)? I have a post coming this week about the ratings from the juggernaut gaming sites (Gamespot, IGN, etc.) and it’s not favorable. We should make an effort to do it right.

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Comment by squee

4/25/2005 @ 8:31 pm

Still waiting for a tutorial from Jeff on this damn confusing posting crap. I rate Ffej a 0 out 5,345,672.

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Comment by Dan

4/26/2005 @ 12:02 am

I’m going to go ahead and give Chris’ post a 7.4 Overall. It was succinct and insightful, with the relevant linking to Jeff’s previous post to reduce redundancy.

Graphics… 5.0 The lack of images meant that my graphics card was more than adequate, but a bit more eye candy would have made for a more enticing read. Text, on the other hand, was crisp and served its purpose well.

Gameplay… 6.2 Although largely non-interactive, I did enjoy clicking the links in the article using the LMB, reading through the post by utilizing the scrollwheel, and exercising the Leave a Reply option to put yourself in the middle of the action.

Value… 9.4 Free is always nice. There was no subscription charge for this MMOA (Massively Multi-Reader Online Article) which is a refreshing change. The talk of the game’s value in the post was icing on the cake.

Audio… 2.7 Unfortunately, it’s the audio that really hurts the overall score. My 5.1 setup remained entirely silent throughout the read, instead relying on my inner voice to provide the vocals. Normally, this would only reduce the score to an average 5-6, however the not-so-subtle prompting of ABBA lyrics to be sung in that same inner voice has forced me to reduce the score out of spite.

Replay… 8.3 The additional user-created content in the Comments section will give this post extra life long after the final sentence of the original article has been read. Around the 7th or 8th Comment, I will probably refer back to the orignal text to find out just where the inevitable tangent split off. Definitely worth the re-read.

Tilt… 1.4 My monitor alignment seemed to be just fine and no tilt was noticed, but since I don’t give out 0’s or 10’s (any effort is worth something and no effort is perfect), I’ll slap a low score on this.

It’s only a matter of time before we get a blurb on the back of a game box.

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Comment by Dan

4/26/2005 @ 10:42 am

Wait…I think I may have missed the point.

What did you mean, Jeff?

;-)

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Comment by Jeff S

4/26/2005 @ 11:01 am

What I meant was more tilt, less of everything else. For example: Dead or Alive 3 gets a 4/5 for tilt because of its innovations in breast physics modeling.

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