Largely on impulse, I picked up the Gothic Universe box, a series which I had never played before offering me three full games for a mere $20. I count RPGs as my favorite genre of game, so I decided that I might as well give this series a try.
I started with the first game in the series, appropriately enough.
From the onset, the only word could possibly describe the game was "broken" -completely and utterly broken. I went prepared to have to forgive a bit of roughness around the edges- it's a seven year old game after all; it's from the dark ages of 3D games, a time I had previously spent hiding in the refuge of top-down isometric games, waiting for the day where somebody would finally figure out what the hell they were doing and make it safe for the rest of mankind to venture forth.
The technical issues I suppose only made sense; the game won't close or minimize without crashing, and the dialog segments keep overlapping, making it impossible to hear what anybody was saying.
What doesn't make sense is how anyone thought that Gothic's control scheme could be anything other than the distilled essence of utter hatred. In order to pick up a weapon, you have to click the left mouse button while pushing the up arrow key at the same time, apparently on the logic that if pressing one button to do something is fun, then pressing another completely arbitrary button at the same time to do the same thing must be twice as fun. In fact, in order to do anything in the game it seems that you have to be pressing one of the arrow keys, which, oh, by the way, also move your character.
Now, when I say ?move your character?, I mean something more along the lines of ?hurl your stupid oaf in a general direction?; the movement is as awkward seeing your grandmother naked. This means that doing anything in the game, whether trying to open a chest or swing your weapon at an enemy, feels something like trying to open a car door by getting in a shopping cart with two broken wheels and jousting at it with a ten foot pole.
Despite spending only a brief time playing the game, describing in detail everything about the UI that offended me would require more bandwidth than the escapist could probably afford. This goes beyond simple bad design, and the only two possible explanations are either the type of cartoonish stupidity that you wish to God only existed on TV, but apparently made fanficion.net possible, or active malevolence. Since this game was made by Germans, the latter explanation seems more likely.
I felt that I owed it to this game to at leave gain a level or two before writing it off, but every moment that I played simply felt too painful. The final insult that I would dare to take lying down came when I accidentally overwrote my save file- while I was dead. Instead of bringing up the load screen automatically when you die, Gothic, well, just sits there. You can make your own way to the load screen if you want, or you can just stare at your dead body. It's no skin off Gothic's back either way. You can't use your mouse to select the ?Load? option either; as best I can tell the arrow key production industry was afraid that the mouse was going to make them obsolete, and paid Gothic's developers under the table to force the players to use arrow keys in lieu of any other control option, ever. So, in a moment of annoyance, I skipped up once too many times and overwrote my save game. Oh, you know those helpful little confirmation dialogs that pop up to give you one last chance to see what you're about to do? Well, Gothic sure as hell doesn't.
I could have reloaded another save, as I always rotate between three saved games, and there is apparently a console command that I could use to resurrect my runaway turd, but I thought that it was wisest that I didn't. God is sending me a clear message here, and I'd rather not wind up as a pillar of salt just for Gothic's sake.
So now I go bravely on to install the second game. If you don't see this thread updated by tomorrow, it might mean that I'm actually enjoying it and intend to finish it before writing a review. If it hasn't been updated in a month, then a second does of Gothic may have been too much for my system, and I may be dead.
(EDIT: I've been playing the second game for about an hour now. In this iteration, the controls are merely awkward, allowing me to view and experience Gothic II as an actual game rather than an alien entity, forever incomprehensible by sane humanity.)
I started with the first game in the series, appropriately enough.
From the onset, the only word could possibly describe the game was "broken" -completely and utterly broken. I went prepared to have to forgive a bit of roughness around the edges- it's a seven year old game after all; it's from the dark ages of 3D games, a time I had previously spent hiding in the refuge of top-down isometric games, waiting for the day where somebody would finally figure out what the hell they were doing and make it safe for the rest of mankind to venture forth.
The technical issues I suppose only made sense; the game won't close or minimize without crashing, and the dialog segments keep overlapping, making it impossible to hear what anybody was saying.
What doesn't make sense is how anyone thought that Gothic's control scheme could be anything other than the distilled essence of utter hatred. In order to pick up a weapon, you have to click the left mouse button while pushing the up arrow key at the same time, apparently on the logic that if pressing one button to do something is fun, then pressing another completely arbitrary button at the same time to do the same thing must be twice as fun. In fact, in order to do anything in the game it seems that you have to be pressing one of the arrow keys, which, oh, by the way, also move your character.
Now, when I say ?move your character?, I mean something more along the lines of ?hurl your stupid oaf in a general direction?; the movement is as awkward seeing your grandmother naked. This means that doing anything in the game, whether trying to open a chest or swing your weapon at an enemy, feels something like trying to open a car door by getting in a shopping cart with two broken wheels and jousting at it with a ten foot pole.
Despite spending only a brief time playing the game, describing in detail everything about the UI that offended me would require more bandwidth than the escapist could probably afford. This goes beyond simple bad design, and the only two possible explanations are either the type of cartoonish stupidity that you wish to God only existed on TV, but apparently made fanficion.net possible, or active malevolence. Since this game was made by Germans, the latter explanation seems more likely.
I felt that I owed it to this game to at leave gain a level or two before writing it off, but every moment that I played simply felt too painful. The final insult that I would dare to take lying down came when I accidentally overwrote my save file- while I was dead. Instead of bringing up the load screen automatically when you die, Gothic, well, just sits there. You can make your own way to the load screen if you want, or you can just stare at your dead body. It's no skin off Gothic's back either way. You can't use your mouse to select the ?Load? option either; as best I can tell the arrow key production industry was afraid that the mouse was going to make them obsolete, and paid Gothic's developers under the table to force the players to use arrow keys in lieu of any other control option, ever. So, in a moment of annoyance, I skipped up once too many times and overwrote my save game. Oh, you know those helpful little confirmation dialogs that pop up to give you one last chance to see what you're about to do? Well, Gothic sure as hell doesn't.
I could have reloaded another save, as I always rotate between three saved games, and there is apparently a console command that I could use to resurrect my runaway turd, but I thought that it was wisest that I didn't. God is sending me a clear message here, and I'd rather not wind up as a pillar of salt just for Gothic's sake.
So now I go bravely on to install the second game. If you don't see this thread updated by tomorrow, it might mean that I'm actually enjoying it and intend to finish it before writing a review. If it hasn't been updated in a month, then a second does of Gothic may have been too much for my system, and I may be dead.
(EDIT: I've been playing the second game for about an hour now. In this iteration, the controls are merely awkward, allowing me to view and experience Gothic II as an actual game rather than an alien entity, forever incomprehensible by sane humanity.)