Review NaN of 2
, from Fremont, Ca.
Price Paid:
$49.00
from EB Summary:
Let me start by saying I am a big Buffy fan. I've watched the show from it's beginning to the finale (and that was a weak finale for such an excellent series). All of Angel to date as well. And even though I'd seen all the episodes, I own all the DVDs to both Buffy and Angel. So I do know and like the Buffy Universe. That said, I believe Ethan Rayne must have produced this game. For those that aren't as into the series, Ethan is an ex-Watcher who sold out and will do anything for a buck.
This game has problems. The camera is a huge one. I've played hundreds, probably thousands of games on both PC and consoles dating back to Atari 2600. And in those years, in many a bad camera, I've never been one of those to get motion sickness from a game. I played all of Sonic Adventure 2 without any queasiness. But Buffy makes me seek sea sickness pills. This is a beat-em-up game and as such the action gets frantic often with you getting attacked from both the front and behind. But this camera is all over the place. You can control it with the right analog stick and you'll need to. It's always fighting you worse than any vampire. You turn it one direction, then the camera turns itself back to that position you didn't want, like you're in a perspective tug of war. Yes, this has been experienced in some games before, but not to this degree. So cograts to the game. You're the first to give me motion sickness in over twenty five years of gaming. Not only that, but the animations aren't very good. Some fighting moves are well done, but turning is like turning in a Resident Evil game. Your body turns without movement, as if the ground beneath you rotated, rather than you moving. Collision detection is sloppy. More than half of it is off. Go jump on a table and you'll see you're character floating an inch above it. Interactivity is limited to only certain boxes and an occasional door. But punch a book on a table all you want, it's not falling on the floor. And that off detection comes back to bite you, literally, when fighting vampires. They can grab you and take a bite while you're fighting, but the grab is also off by a good inch, so you look in the clear when you're magically suddenly floating in front of vampire hands and then being bit. That's just sloppiness on the developers part and unacceptable in the last half of 2003. Oh, and the fighting. In this game you constantly rotate what character you're playing as. You'll be Buffy (naturally), Spike, Xander, Willow, Faith and even Sid the dummy. Remember Sid from one episode of season two? How's that for obscure? Seems like a great idea on paper, but it got fouled up in the execution. Buffy and Spike are fun, but Faith is the best. When you're playing these characters, the game is a blast despite it's problems. But what the hell happened with Xander? Okay, seeing as you're Buffy more often and a slayer is extra fast and strong, the developers made the vampires strong and fast. Makes sense. They need to take a good sized beating before you can stake them usually. Makes sense with Buffy, Spike and five by five Faith, anyway. But Xander has no powers. He's a regular guy and as such the developers chose to make his controls more sluggish to demonstrate this. Yet they keep the enemy just as strong and as many in number as the slayer levels and it is not fun. You know, I like Xander on the show, I think he's hilarious, but as a character in this game, with these control and camera faults, it was more an endurance test as I prayed for his levels to end. And Willow with her magic is okay, but not great. The magic spells get pretty good later in the game, but there is a control problem. You need a couple seconds with some space from being attacked to set a spell. But the bad guys always charge you and you have no time to do a good one and end up just hitting and staking them. And the clipping seems worse, it's always bad, but still worse on Willow's levels. Aside from clipping and akward animations, the graphics are nice enough. I'd say this is one of the best PS2 games graphically. But this is Xbox and this is very much a port. It supports HD 480p, but not widescreen or dolby surround. Huh? Why support High Definition if you won't support wide screen? And instead of High Definition, I'd had preferred textures and a higher framerate. What was the thinking there? Moving on, they did get some of the actors from the series to voice the characters again (just like the first game). The people who play Xander, Spike, Tara, Giles, Ethan Rayne, and Faith all showed up. Apparently Sarah Michelle Gellar is still a game snob and is above this kind of work. Add Allison Hannigan (I think that's her name, but I don't care if I'm wrong) who played Willow on the show to the list. She's a no show as well. If Eliza Dushku can show while making movies and a fall TV series (Tru Calling on Fox), don't tell me the others were too busy with their American Wedding's and Scoobie Doo's. But there missing only proved how replacable they are. The unknown voicing Willow is good, if not exact. And the voice of Buffy is outstanding. I don't know who it is, but she sounds so much like Buffy, you'd swear it was Gellar. (It's the same girl as the last Buffy game) And on a voice acting topic, what happened? These are professional actors, and most did the last game. So you think they'd bring a little more, I don't know, energy to the lines, right? Nope. Tara, Spike and Xander sound as stiff and line reading as any amateur video game actor. Maybe it's because I just came off playing the terric voices of Futurama, but this is Resident Evil bad. The acting is fake and robotic. The exceptions being Dushku (as Faith), Buffy and the guy who does Ethan Rayne. A shame I can't remember the actor for Ethan because this guy does some of the best acting in a game ever. Seriously, he's leagues above everyone else and sounds like a real person. He really brought personality to his part. Tip of the hat to him, he should get an award for most human in a video game character. Maybe G4 will do it next year. Hopefully he'll do more voice work for games in the future. But you know what, even with all these problems, I still like the game. But then, I seem to have an addiction to games. And I like Futurama on Xbox. A lot. So I'm obviously not the mainstream. The Chaos Bleeds story is really good and came with the fans in mind with lots of inside bits from past shows. Plus, there are a lot of extras to unlock and muliplayer sections that I didn't touch on because no one around me likes games. I've only played the single player. And as I grew to conform to the gameplay problems and the camera only the First could have created, I did fall into that Zen state. I learned to dance around the programming bugs and sank into the gameplay where I forgot about the average graphics and cheap hits. The story drew me in and playing as Faith is a fan's dream come true. But again, most aren't like me. I'm scoring the overall for me and other hardcore nutcases. But if you don't know or care about Buffy or (worse) you're a casual gamer, you would never make it past the horrible first level and it's other faults. You'd score it an impatient two overall. And I can see your point. This should be better. But for those of us that fight through the ugliness, there are moments that it's actually fun. Just not imeadiatly. It helps if you're a bit obsessive as well. The story in Chaos Bleeds is much better than the first game, but the gameplay itself, including the camera, were much better the last time. Report this review >>
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