Review: Risen

[uk_john]

I love Risen. It's hard, and why many gamers, because of the 'multiformat' dumbing down of the last 5 years don't like ot. I love Risen. It's a solid game that doesn't crash (the first RPG in probably a decade that didn't need patches!) and it has everything you would want in an old school RPG, a genre, by the way, where we get 1 game PER YEAR, if we're lucky! Remember, no gamer or reviewer is going to say 'I am a wuss and found the game too hard!', so they are going to complain about everything else about the game to cover their shame!

I found out yesterday that Activision paid for all the main game reviewers to go to Santa Barbara and gave them two hours on Modern Warfare 2 then they had to write the review there and then while Activision staff looked over them. Now did any games review of MW2 you read tell you that?

Well, this review of Risen is another part of this way of reviewing. For while a big deal was made in the review about 'the 5 or 6 animations' for NPC conversations, it, along with every other Oblivion review said no one single word about the 5 or 6 voice actors used in the game for 1,000 NPC's.

Now you have to ask yourself, why do gaming sites lick the boots of major developers and stick the boot into the smaller developer games? Well they lick for the money and the trips and the free goodies, and they stick the boot in to make it look like they are being fair and can quite rightly say 'we don't give every game 90%'! But this is all smoke and mirrors, and it's why I don't pay any attention to media reviews like this one, and base all my buying on user reviews and gamer forums.

Retro and indie PC gaming is growing in leaps and bounds because gamers are sussing this media corruption and trusting the media as little as they do the major publishers. They hanker for a better time, when games were about entertainment, and were labours of love. Today only indie games and games from small publishers like Deep Silver are made that way, and of course, prior to about 2003, almost 90% of PC games were too.

 

[svenjl]

Anybody there? Not important...OT: I am loving Risen after avoiding it for years. It's hard to get this game anymore, and luckily you can now buy it in Australia after it was initially denied classification. There are so many things that Risen gets right that I've found it easy to overlook some of the visual and animation deficiencies. For a 2009 (2010 on Xbox 360, which is what I'm playing) game the graphics are woeful. There are some nice touches here and there, but clearly this is not a AAA RPG with bucket loads of money thrown at it. In fact, the 360 visuals really could have been produced on a PC in the late 90s. But no matter, because the game marches to the heartbeat of a wonderful and complex RPG. The story unfolds through exploration and discovery, talking to characters and making decisions that actually matter. Neither is there much handholding. The tutorial hints at the beginning of the game are rudimentary at best, but this means that you actually have to learn for yourself as the game evolves. Combat can be annoying at first because your character is so weak, but becomes more engrossing. Fighting human opponents is a game of patience, and can be frustrating if you approach it las a hack and slasher, so you need to be prepared to hold up your guard continuousl and time your attacks carefully. In terms of skills and general character development, I personally love the investment of time and effort it takes to gain proficiency in things like alchemy, sneaking, lock picking and various weapons. It's a big, complex and sometimes difficult adventure that avoids becoming a bloated whale of a game like many other RPGs by stripping back to the essentials of what makes a good game. I'm not convinced it breaks any new ground as such, but it am finding it really refreshing and unique - and therefore worthwhile.