This preview is going to be a double preview; two for the price of one. I’ll give you both Quantum of Solace (PC demo) and Sonic Chronicles hands-on impressions today. Once you read it, you’ll understand why I combined them into one.
After hearing about how the Wii version of Quantum of Solace won’t be gimped, I figured I would contribute to a quick preview based on the PC demo. We know the game uses the COD4 engine, so all the gameplay mechanics are in place. All they need now is good Wiimote controls. I haven’t been keeping up with this game’s development because I honestly didn’t care. Talk is cheap, and playing it for yourself is the best way to find out!
The demo starts off with Jimmy Bond is in the sewers in pursue of One Eye Willie’s legendary treasure; or maybe he’s looking for the Ninja Turtles. I don’t know, I wasn’t paying attention. The developers, on the other hand, are paying attention to the game’s gameplay. The incredibly sophisticated gameplay can’t be summed up in words, but I’ll try my best: You walk and shoot — AT THE SAME TIME! I’m astounded, to say the least.
Hey, that ain’t Pierce Brosnan!
Another innovative feature is the cover function — which is totally NOT reminding me of the Star Wars: Rebel Alliance 2 PC game from the late 90’s; or wonder why the hell it took so long to be implemented into FPS games; or memories of crashing the Millennium Falcon repeatedly.
I’d get more screens, but the opening un-skip-able logos are longer than the demo itself.
I didn’t see any gadgets incorporated into the gameplay. You’d think he’d at least carry an emergency inflatable bed in case he encounters woman who wants to have sex with him in the sewers. I didn’t see a button in the configuration menu for switching to anything but the guns. Then again, this is a demo, so they might have just removed it. Right now, it’s Call of Duty in a tuxedo leaning against walls. I don’t know whether the game is good or bad. I mean, I did enjoy the few scant minutes of it, but maybe the full game sucks so bad, you’ll be bored after ten minutes. We’ll never know until it’s release. I am pissed at wasting two hours to download a demo that lasted five minutes. My DSL speed isn’t the fastest, so instead surfing the web to slow down the download speed, I decided to play Sonic Chronicles to pass the time.
Hey, that ain’t Pierc — OMG, that is Pierce Brosan.
Sonic Chronicles is exactly what you’d expect from a Sonic based RPG. Bioware did an excellent job at retaining Sonic’s legendary lethargic gameplay. They also brought with them their speech tree plus dual screen text reading. It’s nice to know you suck at reading when you press the button while staring at the wrong screen. This takes less than a minute to get used to, but you can tell Bioware put a lot of thought into making it confusingly convenient. Maybe I wasn’t confused, but would rather look at the beautiful Sega art on one screen instead of looking at Bioware’s dreadful Saturday Morning cartoon art on the other.
Everything looks great, until you see the human art…
Run around really slow at super sonic speed to explore, talk, and solve puzzles. All the RPG conventions are here. At least your party members are put to good use in the game.
Solve puzzles using all your team members.
The one stand out feature is the chase sequence before battle. Occasionally you’ll chase down enemies while jumping over obstacles. If you step on a speed boost, you speed up. Slamming into the obstacles will slow you down, and you lose a bit of HP. Your entire party is engaged in this race, and it can be exciting/tough with four characters to manage. It’s an interesting double-edged sword that makes battles a bit more exciting, but also causes you to waste more time than needed on weak enemies. This doesn’t happen very often, though. At least there are no random battles, but the interactive special moves aren’t as involving as the any of the Mario RPG games.
I constantly found myself looking up from the game to see if my download was complete. Not a good sign. There’s nothing wrong with it, it’s just very dull. I don’t think I’ll go back to playing this game again. The only thing that stands out is the chase sequence I just mentioned. If Sonic survived Sonic 2006, it’ll survive an unremarkable RPG. I don’t know what I’m more disappointed with — a two hour download for a brief demo, or spending two hours on a game with very little to say.
