"What the hell is a 'taffer', anyway?"
Apr. 26th, 2007 06:53 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
nano_mooseYep, I finished Metal Age, and feel kinda depressed now that it's over. It was so cool having the whole game ahead of me.
The Mechanists creep me the hell out. I mean, the Keepers are sort of obstructively cryptic, the Pagans are weird but compellingly alive, and the Hammers are - overenthusiastic, and I mean, it's not like they're completely unjustified in their harshness. But there's something blaringly off-key about the Mechanists. They dismiss perfectly natural, beautiful things as pests. Their churches are so cold and bare that they made me feel like a rat in a trap, or an insect about to be crushed. They discard all the intricacies of humanity for the simple, automated order of their machines. They have such contempt, such sneering superiority...while the things they worship talk in recorded circles, stupid and stale and faintly ridiculous.
Awesome. :D And I admire so much how everything that's wrong with the entire order is personified in Karras (who is so insane, at once hilarious, pitiable and terrifying - even when he taunted me with the power he held I could hear him falling apart. It gave me a little thrill of sadistic glee).
Poor Garrett. His life is at one of the suckiest points it's ever been at the start of the game, and as time passes it just gets worse, with better security, harsher police, weird disappearances, pollution, unreliable contacts, being run out of his home and everyone on earth out to get him. And yet, somehow, he finds the time to be nice to somebody (uh, while they were freezing to death, which just proves my theory that he only ever shows compassion when it won't get around), snort contemptuously at amateurs, stare up at gigantic Art Deco skyscrapers and display sarcasm instead of awe, and occasionally cause his player to walk him off sheer drops from surprise.
Have I ever said that I love the people who write this game? Because they are cool. I hear that Looking Glass designed the missions before the plot this time around, and it does show a little – the story is sometimes overly convoluted, much more so than the first game, as they try to justify why this came before that. In the end, it worked, which says a lot about how awesome they are. And I have a whole set of new things to look for when I replay Deadly Shadows, which I am going to.
I wish the Soulforge hadn't been so bloody long and frustrating - it's like the devs overcompensated for how easy and linear the Maw was. ...Actually now that I think about it, that's kind of amusing. The Maw of Chaos has one, simple path that's pretty much a straight line, and the Soulforge is confusing as hell with about ten ways to complete the objectives. Somebody got a little mixed up. Unfortunately, escaping the Soulforge wasn't nearly as satisfying as watching Tricksie boy explode, and the ending is very abrupt. I wish so much LG had been on hand to finish the story in the third.
I think my favourite missions were Framed and Life of the Party. (They were actually more creative with the names in Deadly Shadows, I noticed. 'Killing Time', 'Robbing the Cradle', 'Still Life With Blackjack' as compared to...'Lost City', 'Escape', 'Kidnap'. I mean really.) Framed was wonderfully suspenseful (because dude, I'm robbing a police station), and I loved the vaguely alarm-ish music. Life of the Party was just fun, the sheer unadulterated joy of theft and agility and escaping pursuit. Oooh, and I really liked Trail of Blood. It was weird and green and lovely. And uh. Eyeballs.
I was very annoyed by Casing the Joint and Masks. I like robbing mansions and stuff, but they really should have been one mission. Garrett seems to do just fine knowing jack-squat about what he'll encounter on a job. The main problem I have with Metal Age is that some of the objectives feel like chores instead of fun. "What do you mean I have to put the key back?"
The first two games are much more like each other than the third, but they have differences. By this point I was used to the Dark Engine's idiosyncrasies and familiar with the controls to the point of deftness, so it felt like it should be easier, but it wasn't. Once or twice I had to resort to a playguide because I was so badly stuck (that bloody vault is an example) and there were sometimes ridiculous arbitrary restrictions, usually on who you could blackjack. Hmph. I'm not sure I like that. My play-style relies a lot on knocking people out.
Weirdest Glitch Encountered: Opening the door into a crypt and watching its slow, stately flight away into the sky.
Runner-up: Stabbing a Servant out of pity and wtf-ing over the spiral of red dots that swirled over the body. Uh. I'm not sure what happened there. It was pretty impressive, though.
The Mechanists creep me the hell out. I mean, the Keepers are sort of obstructively cryptic, the Pagans are weird but compellingly alive, and the Hammers are - overenthusiastic, and I mean, it's not like they're completely unjustified in their harshness. But there's something blaringly off-key about the Mechanists. They dismiss perfectly natural, beautiful things as pests. Their churches are so cold and bare that they made me feel like a rat in a trap, or an insect about to be crushed. They discard all the intricacies of humanity for the simple, automated order of their machines. They have such contempt, such sneering superiority...while the things they worship talk in recorded circles, stupid and stale and faintly ridiculous.
Awesome. :D And I admire so much how everything that's wrong with the entire order is personified in Karras (who is so insane, at once hilarious, pitiable and terrifying - even when he taunted me with the power he held I could hear him falling apart. It gave me a little thrill of sadistic glee).
Poor Garrett. His life is at one of the suckiest points it's ever been at the start of the game, and as time passes it just gets worse, with better security, harsher police, weird disappearances, pollution, unreliable contacts, being run out of his home and everyone on earth out to get him. And yet, somehow, he finds the time to be nice to somebody (uh, while they were freezing to death, which just proves my theory that he only ever shows compassion when it won't get around), snort contemptuously at amateurs, stare up at gigantic Art Deco skyscrapers and display sarcasm instead of awe, and occasionally cause his player to walk him off sheer drops from surprise.
Have I ever said that I love the people who write this game? Because they are cool. I hear that Looking Glass designed the missions before the plot this time around, and it does show a little – the story is sometimes overly convoluted, much more so than the first game, as they try to justify why this came before that. In the end, it worked, which says a lot about how awesome they are. And I have a whole set of new things to look for when I replay Deadly Shadows, which I am going to.
I wish the Soulforge hadn't been so bloody long and frustrating - it's like the devs overcompensated for how easy and linear the Maw was. ...Actually now that I think about it, that's kind of amusing. The Maw of Chaos has one, simple path that's pretty much a straight line, and the Soulforge is confusing as hell with about ten ways to complete the objectives. Somebody got a little mixed up. Unfortunately, escaping the Soulforge wasn't nearly as satisfying as watching Tricksie boy explode, and the ending is very abrupt. I wish so much LG had been on hand to finish the story in the third.
I think my favourite missions were Framed and Life of the Party. (They were actually more creative with the names in Deadly Shadows, I noticed. 'Killing Time', 'Robbing the Cradle', 'Still Life With Blackjack' as compared to...'Lost City', 'Escape', 'Kidnap'. I mean really.) Framed was wonderfully suspenseful (because dude, I'm robbing a police station), and I loved the vaguely alarm-ish music. Life of the Party was just fun, the sheer unadulterated joy of theft and agility and escaping pursuit. Oooh, and I really liked Trail of Blood. It was weird and green and lovely. And uh. Eyeballs.
I was very annoyed by Casing the Joint and Masks. I like robbing mansions and stuff, but they really should have been one mission. Garrett seems to do just fine knowing jack-squat about what he'll encounter on a job. The main problem I have with Metal Age is that some of the objectives feel like chores instead of fun. "What do you mean I have to put the key back?"
The first two games are much more like each other than the third, but they have differences. By this point I was used to the Dark Engine's idiosyncrasies and familiar with the controls to the point of deftness, so it felt like it should be easier, but it wasn't. Once or twice I had to resort to a playguide because I was so badly stuck (that bloody vault is an example) and there were sometimes ridiculous arbitrary restrictions, usually on who you could blackjack. Hmph. I'm not sure I like that. My play-style relies a lot on knocking people out.
Weirdest Glitch Encountered: Opening the door into a crypt and watching its slow, stately flight away into the sky.
Runner-up: Stabbing a Servant out of pity and wtf-ing over the spiral of red dots that swirled over the body. Uh. I'm not sure what happened there. It was pretty impressive, though.
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Date: 2007-04-28 10:00 pm (UTC)and the Hammers are - overenthusiastic
Best description of the Hammers ever. :D
And I was thinking that Deadly Shadows was about as bad as you could get. Pissing off everyone and their dog, but at least he had a chance to make it up. And it sure helped to have the Hammers on your side when the Enforcers were after you.
I gotta confess, there have been a few times where I had to look stuff up to help me out with Deadly Shadows. Like, er, with the Overlook Mansion, I couldn't figure out how to get the widow to talk to me at the end, since she kept going on about wanting some wine? And I was like, "I CAN'T FIND ANY WINE, JUST TALK TO ME ALREADY," and it turned out that I just wasn't getting close enough to her. Or something. I... don't remember too well what exactly happened.
I'm a bit worried about playing it if you were having troubles despite being deft with the controls. I mean, I still can't handle throwing holy water on target. And what? You can't blackjack everyone? B-but I like not killing people.
I DON'T LIKE THE SOUND OF SERVANTS. I DON'T LIKE THE SOUND OF THEM AT ALL.
I phail HTML
Date: 2007-04-29 02:42 am (UTC)The sad thing is you don't see too much of the Hammers, except for one guy who spends his entire 'screen' time bitching about the Mechanists. I wanted to pat him on the shoulder and tell him I agreed, but he still had his giant hammer and I'm pretty sure he wouldn't have appreciated my concern. Oh well.
Well, in Deadly Shadows, things are pretty bad, but in Metal Age, there is no reasoning with the people after you. At one point, you come across a massacred village of Pagans - they didn't attack, they weren't planning anything and their only possibly sinister action was farming some plants. The dead include children. There are ghosts. It is not a barrel of laughs. Garrett actually sounds rather shaken by it.
I admit I consulted a playguide at one point in TDS, and it was in the Cradle, and I've been battling with myself over whether to tell you about it, because it is a very, very annoying place to get stuck. But I don't think you're far enough in yet.
You don't have the kill them (and usually you can't), it's just so you can be even sneakier and dodge around their line of sight. And yeah, I must warn you that Metal Age is a fair bit harder than Dark Project - more complex objectives and HUGE GIANT ENORMOUS SERIOUSLY I AM NOT JOKING areas that are extremely easy to get absolutely lost in. Also, there is no Easy mode. And the easier you set the game, the less you see of it.
THEY ARE - GOD THEY'RE EVEN CREEPIER THAN I THOUGHT. Okay, you know how I said you can hear them crying to themselves? There's also a second voice, a hollow monotone that seems to give them orders and says things like "Do not let yourself be fooled again". It's just. AGH. They laugh when you knock them out and you hear the nobles talking about them and it is all heebie-jeebies inducing like almost nothing else.