Yeah. And my girlfriend commonly mistakes various shooters I play for one another. If you weren't well versed, Rainbow Six: Vegas 2 and Modern Warfare 2 are nigh indistinguishable at a glance, but they are very different games.FieryTrainwreck said:Ever heard of the girlfriend test?
I've got a semi-gaming literate girlfriend. She plays with me from time to time.
She thought Castlevania was God of War.
Heh, that sort of suggests she *isn't* so well versed.... I mean QTEs are all over the place, and not just in action games. And the ones in Castlevania are more different than most. RE5's QTEs have more in common with God of War's than Castlevania's do. Castlevania's are more like the ring system in Lost Odyssey. It's less about finding the right button than it is about hitting a button at the right time, which I tend to prefer. It lets you stay concentrated on the action. There are the button mashing ones, where you need to mash the right button, but those tend to be forgiving. Not saying it isn't a similarity at all, but given the prevalence of QTEs, it's no reason to single out Lords of Shadow.I play a LOT of third person action games, so it makes sense that she'd confuse them. But this is the first time she was legitimately mistaking one game for another. "Wait, this isn't God of War? I thought you just unlocked a new character or something? But he still uses whips? And you still have those little mini-games where you press the buttons on screen?"
They don't use whips/chains. The combat cross is powerfully evocative of the Blades of Chaos/Athena, I'll admit... but what *should* he use? Belmonts have been using whips and chains since the very first Castlevania.She didn't mistake Darksiders, Bayonetta, or DMC4 for GoW.
I'll grant that there are superficial similarities. I was a bit worried they *would* be too similar, but that worry melted away once I started playing it. YMMV, I suppose.Anyways, the point of this little aside? If you're capable of distinguishing in such detail the minor (but likely significant, to the hardcore player anyways) differences between the rapid flashing whips of God of War and Lords of Shadow, you're probably too detail-oriented to decide whether or not the games are overly similar. I mean at that point you're pretty much capable of differentiating anything.
Fair enough. It's all opinion anyway. If it's too similar for one player, it's too similar. But I do feel it's a bit unfair to the game. Lots of games out there share superficial similarities. Why is this one singled out? Personally, I think it's because Yahtzee's repetition of "Like God of War, but..." has made it a particularly heinous crime to share anything in common with God of War. Make a shooter with a power armored super soldier, and people won't give you too much of a hard time for ripping off Halo. They may take away originality points, but they won't bust your balls over it too much, particularly if your game is otherwise really good. But, here, at least, if you make an action game with chains and quick time finishers, you're going to get called a God of War clone, regardless of what else your game might be.I think I'm gonna be done here. I feel like I'm arguing with an impassioned minority, which is exactly what you tend to find in ZP threads. I think I'll just go with the following: LoS is not a shot-for-shot remake of GoW. If that's enough for you to dismiss the charges of "GoW clone", by all means, enjoy your game.
Edit: well *you* won't be called a God of War clone, but your game might be