Oh well. Good show, Hello! I don't know how you find the time to keep doing these, but they're always a riot. Actually watched an LP for the first Darkness recently, so I'm definitely looking forward to saving money you taking on the sequel.
Gotta admit, I'm surprised you were that positive after all the rage. I'm a bit more forgiving of older games, though I admit Undying had its share of problems even back in the day. You can see it wanted to have a deeper-than-usual horror story, but it kept veering sharply towards FPS conventions which kind of undermined the effort: conveniently jammed doors, endless respawns, too many breaks in pacing (the mansion should've been a lot quieter in general, in my opinion), and so on. Throw in weapon/spell balance issues, plot problems - Journal Patrick and Game Patrick show very different attitudes towards Keisinger - the acting, and all of Eternal Autumn and you do have a game with problems on top of simply not aging well.
That said, I still enjoyed it. The weapons and spells partly avoided the usual FPS guns loadout and using them simultaneously was innovative for its time. I like games that put some thought into enemy placement, so you're not always fighting the same things; the game was guilty of throwing waves of mooks at you sometimes, but varying them by region was a nice touch. Backtracking can either be lazy re-use of assets or a way to better establish a setting. I would've preferred a map and some open design, of course, but I liked being able to revisit the mansion and unlock more of its secrets over time. It'd be a stretch to call the game well plotted or scary, but it did have some internal consistency and a few legitimately disturbing elements.
Whatever you can say about Clive Barker's Clive Barker's Undying, Featuring Clive Barker, it wasn't trying to be just another early-oughts shooter, even if it did feel like one at times.
Side note: for anybody who cares, I did stumble on this Q&A thread with one of the developers. They go into a couple details that aren't really elaborated in the game: what the King actually was, the nature of the Celt sacrifice, the relationships between the siblings and Keisinger, and gameplay stuff that got snipped out of development (such as missing spells, some of which are used by enemies).
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Oh well. Good show, Hello! I don't know how you find the time to keep doing these, but they're always a riot. Actually watched an LP for the first Darkness recently, so I'm definitely looking forward to saving money you taking on the sequel.
Now playing: Teardown and Baldur's Gate 3 (co-op)
Sunday Spotlight: Horror Tales: The Wine
Also, there was so little mention of JAHM in that little end of game rant.
Youtube Channel!
Anyway, looking forward to the darkness. I've heard you can quad wield guns.
That said, I still enjoyed it. The weapons and spells partly avoided the usual FPS guns loadout and using them simultaneously was innovative for its time. I like games that put some thought into enemy placement, so you're not always fighting the same things; the game was guilty of throwing waves of mooks at you sometimes, but varying them by region was a nice touch. Backtracking can either be lazy re-use of assets or a way to better establish a setting. I would've preferred a map and some open design, of course, but I liked being able to revisit the mansion and unlock more of its secrets over time. It'd be a stretch to call the game well plotted or scary, but it did have some internal consistency and a few legitimately disturbing elements.
Whatever you can say about Clive Barker's Clive Barker's Undying, Featuring Clive Barker, it wasn't trying to be just another early-oughts shooter, even if it did feel like one at times.
Side note: for anybody who cares, I did stumble on this Q&A thread with one of the developers. They go into a couple details that aren't really elaborated in the game: what the King actually was, the nature of the Celt sacrifice, the relationships between the siblings and Keisinger, and gameplay stuff that got snipped out of development (such as missing spells, some of which are used by enemies).
Now playing: Teardown and Baldur's Gate 3 (co-op)
Sunday Spotlight: Horror Tales: The Wine