Video Game Review #154: Undertale

Undertale 

PlayStation 4

Nostalgia Factor:

I first read about Undertale when it was still in development a few years ago, and what I saw immediately piqued my interest. The game was a 16-bit style RPG, inspired by the Super Nintendo classic Earthbound. I never had the chance to play Earthbound growing up, so I made it a point in my life to someday play Undertale.

Even though the game has been out for several years now, I finally got around to playing it here in October, 2018.

Story:

The game’s intro scene gives us a few pieces of critical information. Humans and monsters once populated the surface of the game’s planet. Whether or not this planet is Earth, I don’t think the game ever really says. Eventually humans and monsters would end up going to war against each other, with humans coming out on top. The surviving monsters were banished to the world located below the planet’s surface, hence the name of the game: UNDERtale.

In present day, your ambiguously gendered character falls from the surface of the planet into the monster inhabited underworld below. Taking control of this character, your goal is pretty straightforward: escape the underworld and return to the world of humanity above.

How you go about accomplishing this goal is one of the main draws of Undertale. You can take the peaceful route, talking to characters in battle and showing them mercy, or you can approach this like a typical RPG and just go around killing everyone who challenges you.

 Gameplay:

 At first glance, Undertale plays out like a typical old school RPG. The game’s camera angle is the usual ¾ view that you would see often in 16-bit RPGs from the 90s. You walk up, down, left, and right. Move off the corner of the screen and it brings you to a new area. Controlling your character, you walk around and talk to people. There is no spoken dialogue in the game, everything takes place through text boxes. Again, just like all the classic 16-bit RPGs of long ago.

Battles are triggered through random encounters as you walk around. There are several set boss fights as well. Nothing out of the ordinary there. What makes Undertale different is the battle system. The game gives you two different ways to make it through each battle – by fighting back against your opponents and killing them, or by utilizing the conversation menu to talk yourself out of the fight. I actually didn’t know that there were multiple ways to play this game when I first started it. I played it like I would a traditional RPG and I killed everything that would attack me. I didn’t learn until after I had beaten the game that the “preferred” method of playing was the pacifist route. By sparing your enemies, it would make people in the game like you and admire you. As a result, your experience as you play is vastly different depending on which way you go.

The other unique thing about the game’s battle system is in how you play defense. Most old school RPGs were strictly turn based. You attack them, they attack you. And when they’d attack you, they’d almost always hit you. This game gives you a chance to defend yourself. A little box shows up in the middle of the screen. There is a red heart in the middle of the box (sometimes it changes color depending on the situation) that represents you. A flurry of bullets and other objects that represent the enemies attack will flood the box. You have to evade these items to avoid taking damage. Some attacks are very easy to evade, and you can make it through several entire battles at a time without taking a single hit. Other times, the attacks are extremely difficult to avoid. In fact, the game can get downright difficult at times because of all the crap getting thrown your way.

Graphics:

This game truly looks like it could have been made in the 16-bit era. The characters are extremely simple and basic looking. Most of the game’s environments are about the same, although there are some areas that look better than anything that could have been done on an old console. That said, the game often looks a bit TOO basic. Outside of some areas that have fun atmospheric effects, there is little that is visually exciting about this game.

It gets even worse when you go into battle. Expect to see a lot of black backgrounds with ugly characters drawn out in white. If you know me, you know that I am more about the fun factor of a game rather than the graphics. So even though the game is often not very pretty to look at, I don’t hold it against the game too much. Clearly the makers of the game were looking to emulate the look and feel of old classic Super Nintendo era RPGs. Sometimes the visuals are spot on. Other times, things are a bit drab and ugly looking.

Sound:

I never had any problems with the game’s music or sound effects. The music always seemed to fit what was going on onscreen. I would comment more, but I really can’t. The music wasn’t bad or anything, it just was not memorable to me. I couldn’t name one track that I was gaga over or that would get stuck in my head. It was serviceable, but that’s about all I can say.

Overall:

After reading so many overwhelmingly positive reviews of this game, I started playing it with very high hopes. I have to say that I came out feeling a little bit disappointed. I wanted to like this game. I truly did. I love RPGs. I love retro games. This game combined two things I love, but it still managed to come across as a bit dull for me.

First off, the game’s humor. I get that it tries to be lighthearted and funny. I don’t have a problem with that. My problem is that it tries a bit too hard. A lot of the characters had potential to be funny and memorable, but just ended up being annoying instead. You are trying to walk across the screen to get to a new area. Someone calls you on your cell phone to tell you something stupid. Haha, okay. Cute. You take three more steps after the call ends, and they call again. Take three more steps and they call again. And again. And again. And again. It’s like – just let me play the game already! I don’t care about this stupid shit. But you better get used to it, because stuff like this happens throughout this game CONSTANTLY. It seems like more than half the game is sitting through “humorous” conversations while your mute character just sits there and watches these eccentric monster characters run around and make fools of themselves. Apparently this is someone’s idea of a great time, as this game gets showered with praise every time I read a review of it.

The graphics and the music are a mixed bag, as I said. I won’t harp on that. The story is extremely simple. It’s fine. Nothing special. The battles? Fine. Nothing special. That’s pretty much how I felt about the whole game. It is fine. Nothing special. It feels like it is geared towards 8 years old kids. I’m sure I would have loved this when I was younger. Now, not so much.

What did I like about the game? I like the feel of the game. It is quirky and it is original. I like the idea of the game, if not necessarily its execution. One thing people seem to harp on is the “bullet hell” system as you play defense during battles. I actually enjoyed this quite a bit. Some of these sequences were a bit challenging, and I am always up for a good challenge. I also like the fact that you can play through this game multiple ways. I expected to just play it, beat it, and be done with it. Turns out I ended up playing through the whole game twice just to see what happened differently playing as a pacifist and not killing a single enemy vs killing everyone I fought with in battle.

That said, after I finished playing the game a second time, I was wiped out. I’d had enough with the bad jokes, the childish characters, and the inane conversations that would go on for far longer than they should have. I just wanted to be over and done with the game and have it in my rear view mirror. Honestly, I can’t ever see myself ever playing this game again. Games are all about fun to me, and I just didn’t have fun with Undertale. It started out entertaining, but quickly turned into a dull grind for me.

I can’t think of a more overrated game that I have played in recent years. Have this game’s rabid fanatics ever played a video game before? If you want a game where you connect emotionally with its characters, try the Telltale Walking Dead game, Uncharted 4, or The Last of Us. This game is not great, in any way.

In fact, I struggle to say it is even good.

Overall:

D

If you liked my review of Undertale, please check out some of my other game reviews:

Final Fantasy VI

Final Fantasy VII

Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic

Final Fantasy IX

Star Ocean: Integrity and Faithlessness

Video Game Review #153: Fallout 3

Fallout 3

PlayStation 3

Nostalgia Factor:

Believe it or not, this is the first time I have ever played through a Fallout game before. The series started back in 1997, and here I am in 2018, 21 years later, playing it for the first time. This game actually was loaned to me by a friend of mine several years ago. I had intended to play it, beat it, and get it back to him a quickly as possible. That didn’t happen. I did manage to start the game, but for whatever reason I stopped about an hour in and never came back to it.

Playing it had been on my mind for a while, but I was just never in the mood to start it up again. I had always heard that each Fallout game was a major time commitment, and I was not quite ready to take the plunge yet. I don’t know what changed, but last month, after several years of having this game in my possession, I finally decided that the time was right. I was going to start up Fallout 3 and see what all the fuss was about.

Storyline:

Since this is the third game in the Fallout series, I was a little worried that I would have missed something story-wise having not played the first two games. Turns out I had nothing to worry about. You can jump into this game easily without having played anything else in the series. Yes, the games are all connected, but it is not essential to have played the other games to understand what is going on here.

The game starts with you creating a player. You can pick either sex and pretty much any ethnicity you please. When I play games like this, I usually play as a man first. If I return to the game to play through it again at a later date, I will play as a woman. Sticking to tradition, I did indeed pick a man this time around.

After creating your character, the game takes you back in time to the birth of your character. Flashback scenes have you take control of your character through several defining points of his childhood. This is where you learn the basic story and the basic controls of the game. Your find out that you were born in a nuclear fallout bunker, AKA Vault 101. Nuclear war has devastated the world outside, leaving the last remnants of society (or so you think) living their day to day lives in the Vault. One day your father randomly decides to dip out and leave the Vault with no explanation. This throws the community into a panic, and Vault security comes looking for you for answers. Fearing for your life, you escape the Vault. The whole outside world in front of you, you set out on a quest to find your father… and answers as to what has been going on in the “outside world” this whole time.

I hope this isn’t too much of a spoiler (skip to the next section if you are worried about that kind of thing), but eventually you do track down your father. Turns out, he is a brilliant scientist who is looking for a way to purify all the irradiated water in the area and bring new life to the DC area. Sounds fine and dandy, but the last remaining faction of the old US government, the Enclave, wants this research for their own nefarious purposes. A classic battle of good vs evil ensues. What side you happen to be on is completely up to you.

 Gameplay:

I think one of the reasons I stopped playing this game the first time around is because I did not understand its combat system. As you are walking around, Fallout 3 looks and feels like a typical first person shooter. But when you go into battle, it is anything but. Sure, you can manually aim and fire away at your enemies, but the damage you inflict seems minimal and ineffective. The key to taking out your enemies in this game is to hit the R2 trigger. This pauses the game and makes combat feel more like that of a traditional role playing game (but not quite). When paused, you can manually target different parts of your enemy’s body. Targeting the head, which is what I mainly did, zaps their health faster and increases your odds of a critical strike. Targeting the legs will slow enemies down and make it hard for them to follow you. Targeting the arms can knock the weapon out of your enemies hand, rendering their attacks impotent. Your attacks are MUCH more powerful when you use targeting mode versus coming into this and trying to play it like a simple first person shooter. That said, if the game allowed you to stop the action and go into targeting mode at will, it would make the game too easy. Instead, you only get a limited amount of this kind of attack. You have an AP meter that determines how often you can enter targeting mode. When the meter is fully depleted, you have no choice but to play in “real time” and try to kill your enemies as if this was a regular FPS. You can only go into targeting mode to slow combat down if you have the proper amount of AP remaining on your AP gauge. Luckily, your AP replenishes itself fairly quickly.

Combat aside, game mechanics work like pretty much any traditional first person shooter. You walk, you pick stuff up, you jump, etc. You can switch to a behind-the-back viewpoint at any time, but this camera angle is basically useless. Stick to first person mode. In first person mode, you can see a greater range of what is going on onscreen. It also makes it much easier to collect all the items that are scattered around this world.

Speaking of items, you have to be careful with how much you take with you in this game. If you try to play like I did the first time I picked up Fallout, you are going to find yourself overburdened and barely able to move in no time. Each item has a specific weight number attached to it. You can only carry so much weight, so once you hit the limit your character starts walking around at a snail’s pace. The only way to begin moving at a normal speed again is to drop some of your items to get you below the weight limit. There is a crafting system in this game, but I never bothered with it because in order to craft special items, you need many smaller items to work with. I was always over the weight limit, and I preferred to keep space in my inventory for weapons, armor, and healing items, and that never really left me with any room to save smaller items for crafting, so I missed out on that whole facet of the game. You also have to be careful not to grab everything in sight, not only because of the weight limit, but because of what the game’s NPCs will think of you. If you walk into someone’s house and start grabbing stuff off the shelf, they will freak out and try to either fight you or hide from you. If you are in a town or a village, everyone will see you as a thief and start attacking you on sight.

Which leads us to the game’s karma system. If you have played games like Mass Effect or Knights of the Old Republic, you should know what to expect here. If you do good deeds as you play the game, you will find yourself with a positive karma score. The people of the game will praise you and randomly give you items as you play. You’ll hear stories of your good deeds broadcast over the radio system. Certain characters like the overpowered Fawkes will want to join up with you. Overall, you will be looked at as the hero of the wastelands. This is how I chose to play the game on my playthrough. When I play it again at some point in the future, I will likely pick the bad karma route. Make bad choices, like stealing and murdering, and it will lower your karma score. I don’t know how this affects you as you play, but I can imagine it will make people openly hostile to you. You’ll probably hear the radio DJ condemn your actions. Instead of the hero of the wastelands, you will be its villain. Really, you can’t go wrong with either choice.

The game is made up of many different quests, some of which are optional. The main story quest begins the second you exit Vault 101. You have to follow in your dad’s footsteps and look for clues as to his whereabouts. As you explore, you will discover a plethora of sidequests you can partake in. If you wanted to, you could skip these side quests and only do the story ones, and finish the game in a fraction of a time it would have taken you otherwise. But where is the fun in that? You should be happy to see that these quests are not all just annoying fetch quests. Many of them are very creative and actually do affect how things will play out later in the game. An example: a town is being ravaged by giant fire ants. You have to kill the ants, track down where they are coming from, and eliminate the source once and for all. Another quest has you freeing slaves from their imprisoners. The different choices you make while undertaking these quests affect your karma. An example: there is a quest where you agree to a bounty on four different NPCs. These people all have keys on them that the man issuing the bounty wants. There are many ways you can go about this quest. You can do it by the book: kill each bounty and take their keys back to the man who hired you. Or you can tell them the truth so that they give you the key and leave with their lives. Or you can kill them and take all the keys for yourself and use these keys to unlock a treasure. Or you can corroborate with these bounties and turn around and kill your employer instead. There are so many ways to go about each mission in the game, and it adds a LOT of depth to this title.

Graphics:

Considering that this game is ten years old, I think it still looks decent. It definitely shows its age, but I wouldn’t say it is hideous or anything. This game takes place in Washington DC, and many of its landscapes and monuments are faithfully recreated here. The landscapes look really good. I love it when I go over the crest of a hill and see everything sprawled out in front of me. The game is HUGE, and the amount of detail put into making it seem like a place where people used to live is terrific. You’ve got houses, office buildings, subways, downtown shopping areas, factories, parks, junkyards, museums, libraries, campgrounds, playgrounds, the whole nine yards.

There are a few glaring rough spots that you will notice as you play. The characters are nowhere near as well-detailed, well-animated, or lifelike as the ones you see in current games today. Some textures look pretty rough and grainy. A lot of the interior areas have the same dingy, dreary brown and grey tones. I mean, this is supposed to take place after a nuclear war, so it is not like everything should be bursting with color. But things do get a little boring to look at after a while. There is also a lot of slowdown to be seen here, especially when there is a lot happening on the screen at one time. The imperfections never really bothered me TOO much, as I am more of a gameplay guy than a graphics guy. Despite the game’s graphical flaws, it was still a very immersive experience for me, and I found that its setting of Washington DC ravaged by nuclear was never anything short of completely engrossing.

Sound:

Right off the bat, I knew that this game was serious with its voice acting. One of my favorite actors of all time, Ron Perlman, narrates the game’s introduction. Liam Neeson plays your father. There may or may not have been other notable celebrity voices in the game. If there were, I did not notice them. But the voice acting was pretty much on point for the entire game. Not all voice actors delivered perfect performances. Some characters’ voices came through as a little robotic or stunted. But the overwhelming majority of them were great. If I had to make one complaint, it would be that the ghouls all sounded like Krusty the Klown from the Simpsons to me. I just could not take them seriously because of this.

The music is nice too. It’s not very noticeable. Very low key. It sets a nice tone for walking around and exploring. The radio stations are a different story. I like a lot of the 50’s style music you can listen to, but there isn’t much variety in the songs you hear. I heard that Butcher Pete song (hackin’ and wackin’ and smackin’) so many times it was starting to make me grind my teeth. My favorite song was definitely I Don’t Want to Set the World on Fire. I like that one so much that I downloaded it and added it to all my playlists after I finished the game.

Overall:

I had an absolute blast with Fallout 3. There is so much to do here and so much to see. I still can't get over how enormous the world of the game is. I must have played this for well over 40 hours and there are still dozens and dozens of locations on my map that I haven't even explored yet.

Aside from Shenmue and Shenmue II, I can't recall playing a game in recent memory that has kept me as engrossed as Fallout 3. I would turn the game on around four in the afternoon with the intent of only playing an hour or so, and then I would look at the clock and find that it was after ten o'clock at night. Even knowing I had to go to bed, I would still struggle with finding a good point to save and turn the game off. I kept telling myself, just one more mission. Just make it to the next area. Just talk to this one person. Then you can stop. But then something would happen that would keep me playing even longer. I have a very short attention span, and the fact that this game kept me riveted for so long is truly a testament to how great it is.

Not to say the game is completely without flaws. I think the game struggled with finding its balance between being too easy and too difficult. There were many areas of the game where I would encounter overpowered enemies, and I would really struggle to make it through in one piece. Other areas were laughably easy. Even just wandering the map from one location to the next, the results were a mixed bag. Sometimes I would cruise along, no problem. Other times I would encounter enemies that would take me down with just two or three hits, and then I would find myself starting over again from the last save point. I met a character named Fawkes who joined up with me to help me on my quest. At first I thought he was a great addition, but then I discovered that he was making the game far too easy. Enemies couldn't get within ten feet of me because he would mow them down in three seconds. This was all fine and dandy, but with him killing everything in sight it made it very hard for me to kill anyone myself and get the EXP I needed to level up my character. As soon as I dismissed him, I started getting swarmed by giant radioactive scorpions, minelurks, and deathclaws - and the game became too difficult.

Another flaw is the game's map system. Traversing the ruins of DC is no easy task, and the map does you no favors. I would have a destination highlighted on my map and I would be following the marker. Then the marker would all of a sudden whip around and tell me to go back the way I came from. Then I would turn around, and it would whip around and tell me to turn around again. I knew where I needed to go. The game knew where I needed to go. But the map seemed like it was confused as to how to get to that location. The map often would lead me into a building or subway tunnel. As soon as I entered the new area, it would tell me to exit and go back out onto the main map. I would do so, and then it would tell me to enter the place I just exited from again. I'd often have to just ignore the map and wander off myself, not knowing if I was going the way I was supposed to, or if I was headed in the completely wrong direction. As a result, I did often wander into areas where I was not supposed to be yet, loaded with overpowered enemies and dead ends. I hope they fixed the map system for future Fallout games, because I got lost quite often, and it was no fun at all.

The game's save system is a little irritating too. The game autosaves whenever there is a loading screen, which is pretty much whenever you enter a new area or leave a shop or business. But this caused a few issues for me as I played. Let's say I am talking with someone and I make a bad conversation choice and they start attacking me. I'd turn around and run out the door, and the game would automatically save as I exited the building. Then all of a sudden I have the entire town attacking me, and if I tried to go back and load the last save, they would STILL be attacking me because the game had auto saved after I exited the door after making the bad conversation choice. I'd have to go back and load my last manual save (whenever that had been) and replay the whole segment of the game over again. So definitely manually save often or you will run into the same issue I did, many times.

So those are my gripes with the game: the save system, the map, and the uneven difficulty level. The graphics aren't the best either, but like I said I don't care about that too much. Even with all these gripes, I still absolutely loved the game.

As I said before, the game is completely engrossing. The makers of Fallout 3 did a tremendous job at creating such an enormous, believable environment. The world of the game is filled with its own lore. The missions in this game are all a blast to play, but just walking around and exploring and taking in the sights and meeting new characters and discovering the history of this nuked out world is an exhilarating experience.

I don't know how I resisted the allure of Fallout for so long. To believe that Fallout 3 has been out for ten years, yet I am just playing it now is crazy to me. I guess if there is an upside to waiting so long to dive into the series, it is that I do not have to wait to play more. Fallout: New Vegas, Fallout 4, and the original non-first person Fallout games are already available for me to play, and Fallout 76 comes out next month. There is a whole world of Fallout in front of me, and I couldn't be more excited. According to some of the reviews I have read, New Vegas and Fallout 4 are even better than this game. I consider this to be a damn fine game, so if the reviews are to be trusted then I am in for a real treat.

I usually only reward games that I consider to be flawless with perfect scores. Clearly, I had some gripes with this game and I do not consider it flawless. But I have to factor in other things. The size and the scope of the game. The complexity of its missions and its character choices. Uncovering the lore and the history of this big, complex world. The fact that I completely lost myself in this game, playing for days on end, hours on end, for weeks on end. The fact that I would recommend this game to anyone and everyone who will ask me about it. The fact that this game has fully put me on the Fallout bandwagon. If it wasn't for this game, Fallout would continue to be just another series that I didn't have time for yet. This game changed everything.

And that's a good thing. A very good thing.

Final Score:

A+

If you liked my review of Fallout 3, please check out some of my other reviews:

BioShock

Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic

Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic II: The Sith Lords

Dishonored

Far Cry Classic

Re-Review #3: The Walking Dead: Michonne

Re-Review!

The Walking Dead: Michonne

PlayStation 3

>click here for my original review of the Walking Dead: Michonne<

I replayed the first two Walking Dead games from Telltale a few months ago. Mainly, I just wanted to play them again because I had planned to play the third game shortly thereafter. I needed a small refresher as I could not for the life of me remember where the second game had left off. Time has passed but I still have not gotten around to the third game yet. I figured that, in the meantime, I will play The Walking Dead: Michonne again. While it is unrelated to the Clementine story that takes place in the main game, I figured it would be a fun distraction until I would be able to play Season Three.

I don’t remember a whole lot about my first playthrough of the game, even though it only took place about a year and a half ago. I only recall thinking it was… okay. Not bad, but not particularly good or memorable either. Just okay. What would I think this time around?

I came into it with an open mind. I love Michonne, especially the comic book version of the character. If you are a fan of the comics, this game takes place shortly after the “All Out War” story arc. Michonne leaves Rick’s group and winds up hanging out with some sailor broskis on the water. Michonne and the bros get caught up in a battle between a vicious group of survivors and a family who is in open conflict with the bad guys.

The game plays out like past entries in the Walking Dead series. You can walk around and talk to people. You pick from different conversation branches and different character choices. Battle scenes consist of quick time events. There is nothing really new to report here, from the gameplay all the way down to the music and the graphics. I liked the past few Walking Dead games, so this was no problem for me.

The game takes place over the course of three episodes. While you may think “oh hey that’s not bad for such a small price tag”, keep in mind that each episode is only about an hour in length, if that. So at most the whole game is about three hours long. They could have easily released the game as one big chapter. This seems like a sneaky way of trying to get more money out of people who bought the season pass to me. Luckily, I didn’t buy the game until all three had been released and I was able to get the whole shebang on sale for about five bucks. I don’t know how much it costs now, but I wouldn’t pay any more than five bucks for it if I was you.

The game itself is fine, but it is nothing horribly memorable. The conflict is extremely straightforward. It doesn’t challenge you or make you think at all. The game also didn’t make me cry or trigger any kind of extreme emotions like the first Walking Dead game did with Lee and Clementine. It tries, with the deaths of several main characters and Michonne’s flashback scenes to the deaths of her two children. But to me it failed. I don’t know, the game just was not long enough to really get me invested in the characters. I wanted to feel that attachment, but I didn’t. The ending fell a little flat for me too. When the conflict is resolved, Michonne is just like "ok I guess I should go back to Rick's group now", and that is it. The end. There are no twists or turns, no big wow moments. No lasting repercussions for the actions you took as you played. That makes it the weakest of all the Walking Dead games that I have played so far.

Don't get me wrong, this is a fun distraction if you are bored and want to throw a few hours into a quick game you can finish in one night. It may not be the emotion-filled journey we've come to expect from Walking Dead Telltale games, but it is still fun to play. It is fast moving, action packed, and although the game's story is not horribly deep, it is well told and keeps you interested in seeing what is going to happen next. I definitely had FUN while I played this. 

So this falls into the category of "fun and enjoyable, but nothing memorable whatsoever". Ask me again in several years what I thought of the game's story, and I probably am not going to be able to tell you much. I may be able to remember that I liked the game and had fun with it, but beyond that? Meh. This is worth picking up if you are a big Walking Dead fan, or just a fan of Telltale in general. But I wouldn't pay any more than five bucks for it.

Overall:

C+

(original score: B)

Other re-reviews:

The Walking Dead Season 1

The Walking Dead Season 2