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| What the fuck is this shit? by Ice Cream Jonsey 01/07/2003, 1:35pm PST | ||||
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| I am in a somewhat difficult position of defending an article that has yet to be posted. I don't quite feel that I can make direct quotes from it to prove the points that I want to make, because that would be spoiling the thing if it does end up on the site, which I strongly believe that it should.
I'd like to say that I read numerous reviews on Baldur's Gate II when it first came out and after scanning through them with meticulous care and weighing the pros and cons, I decided to spend my hard-earned dollars on the game. But I didn't -- as a slobbering fanboy, I snapped that shit up the day it was released. But it hardly mattered, as the two or three reviews I got round to reading mouthed the game in such an openly slobbering manner that it would have caused the game's bitch slut dark elf to cough nervously and shift about in her stance. So I admit that there exists the possibility that some of the ground that Mr Dungsroman covered was also touched upon by other reviewers when the game was fresh. But somehow I doubt it. I doubt that: 1) Anyone else went right down the list of the terrible NPCs in that game and effectively character assassinated them. 2) Anyone else pointed out that MOTHERFUCKING SARK did the voice-overs for Jon Irenicus -- I bought the Tron DVD (well technically I signed up as "Gary Payton Jr." through Columbia House DVD and and chose that as one of my free discs and left the bill unpaid) and didn't put the Sark and Jon connection together. That factoid adds more to the game then fucking Minsc ever did 3) Anyone else gave the thing shit for naming the antagonist "Jon" 4) Anyone else pointed out how, though there are 180 wizard spells in the game, 175 of them are defensive spells that turn the game into sko rock-sissors-paper-meets-Archon debacle 5) Anyone else pointed out with such specifics on a step-by-step process to extend your enjoyment of the game by plugging in all the (good) user-made patches, levels, boards and classes But overall, the review is one that deals with what it's like to live with what is the biggest non-console CRPG on the planet. If I had anything to do with the development of BG2 I would extend two middle fingers to that review, because it mostly glosses over the cool stuff. But that's entirely the point -- BG2 jumps over the bar that was set by BG1 and Icewind Dale, but there's an enormous number of things that can be done to improve the thing, as well as the genre as a whole. Anyone who wanted to get BG2 did so a long time ago, so a review that strictly deals with the game on a buy/warez/pass basis doesn't have as much use in 2003. HSW essentially wrote up a great piece on the shortcomings of the D&D style RPG, and if I were going to make one I could put together a decent checklist of improvements that *need* to happen for the next generation of these kind of games. To put it another way, we live in a reality where both his review has never been posted publicly, and where Neverwinter Nights exists in the manner that it does. Is this the kind of world you want to live in? One you want your children to live in? the dark and gritty...Ice Cream Jonsey! |
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