The Mark of Kri
PlayStation 2
Before Playing:
This game has been in my possession for over 20 years now, and I have no idea where it came from. I have no recollection of buying it or having it gifted to me. It just kind of appeared out of nowhere. Presumably, I picked it up at a used game store somewhere, probably for 4 or 5 bucks. I don't know what prompted me to pop it in, but I finally decided to do so here in the year of our Lord, 2026 (for context, this game came out in 2002).
Reviews of this game online are fairly positive, so I thought I'd have a good time with it. I was wrong. Keep reading for my full two cents.
Story:
I'm going to be using the phrase "on the surface" a lot in this review. On the surface, this game has a decent storyline. You don't see too many video games based on Polynesian lore, and I was interested to see where this would go.
You play as Rau, a down on his luck wannabe-warrior searching for his purpose in life. Rather than accept a job mopping floors at the local bar, he decides to head out and take on a group of bandits that have been causing trouble for his village. Surprisingly, he defeats them handily, and his tales of courage and strength spread like wildfire across the land.
This is where the game kind of lost me. There's too much exposition, and too many "side tales" talking about Polynesian legends and mythology - a lot of which doesn't seem to have anything to do with the task at hand. "This god married this mortal and now they are constellations in the sky" blah blah that kind of thing. Not gonna lie, I would zone out majorly during these segments. And then I would zone out during the actual story segments and miss major plot developements. Once I lose interest in a game's story, there is almost no getting it back for me. And that happened here. A lot of this recap is going to be major guesswork because of this.
Rau gets drawn into some kind of plot where he has to protect people who bear "the mark of Kri" which is a magical tattoo that appears on their skin. Why these people are important and who is after them is something I can't explain. Sorry.
This is what you get for reading the blog of a guy who can't stay focused while playing a game. "Some reviewer I am, right?" is always my go-to joke in these scenarios. I'm here to give MY experience on the game. If you want a full story recap, go look at the Wikipedia page for this game.
I'll even help you:
Gameplay:
Since I didn't care about the story of this game, I decided to focus on its gameplay instead. On the surface, this should be a fun game. The tutorial makes it seem like a beat 'em up, similar to God of War. Different button combinations launch different attacks at your enemies. There is a block button, and later on in the game you pick up a bow and arrow for long range attacks.
The lock-on system is intriguing. You use the right analog stick to highlight multiple enemies on the screen. When highlighted, a different button is mapped to these characters. Want to attack the guy with the square icon above his head? Just hit square. Want to attack the circle guy instead? Hit circle. In theory, this should allow the battles to flow naturally, as you pick which enemies you want to go after and when.
The problem is, this makes it really hard to pull off combos. If a combo is square, square, x - but you have the different buttons mapped to different characters, hitting square, square, x attacks the square guy twice and the x guy once. Kind of defeats the purpose of having button combos and this button mapping lock-on system going at the same time. And that's not it. The enemies in this game are insanely hard to defeat, even basic grunt enemies. In a game like God of War, you do a button combo on the enemy and you knock him down or defeat him. If he gets up, you keep going after him. In this game, even if you pull off a successful combo, there's about an 85% chance it is going to be blocked. If you storm in and just mash the x button, your attacks are going to be blocked. If you play defensively and counter-attack after blocking an enemy hit, your attack is going to be blocked. It seemed like I could never land an attack on anyone - and that is even closely following the gameplay outlined in the tutorial. They fucking block everything.
I kept thinking as I played the game: what the hell am I doing wrong? Is the game system broken or am I just not understanding things properly? To this date, I still don't know the answer. Like I said before, reviews of this game online are mostly positive. Were we playing the same game?
In the second stage of the game, you learn a counter attack where if you tap block at the moment you are being attacked, you counter the enemy and perform an instant kill on him. That's what the rest of the game devolved into. Just me countering everyone by tapping the shoulder button as they attacked me. The combo system went out the window. The lock-on system went out the window. Just tap the block button and counter-kill everyone became the name of the game. What is the point of the regular combat system, then, if the only way to beat everyone is to just spam the same thing over and over again?
The more frustrated I became, the more I tried to focus on stealth. This is the way. Apparently, this is more of a stealth game akin to Tenchu: Stealth Assassins (another game in my backlog that I haven't played) than it is a brawler like God of War. You are better off avoiding enemies or sneaking up and stealth killing them than engaging in actual combat. This is all fine and dandy, but WHY FOR THE LOVE OF GOD DOES THE GAME NOT MAKE THIS CLEAR? EVERYTHING IN THE TUTORIALS MAKES YOU THINK YOU NEED TO FIGHT EVERYONE LIKE THIS IS A BEAT EM UP. WHY THE THE FANCY LOCK ON SYSTEM AND THE COMBINATION ATTACKS AND THE SCROLLS THAT LEARN YOU NEW ATTACKS IF THE NAME OF THE GAME IS TO JUST SNEAK BY EVERYONE???
Sorry about the all-caps, but this pissed me off. It's like the game intentionally misleads you to play one way, when you are really supposed to do it the other way. That's also not how the game is advertised or represented on the back of the box. Every single thing about this game screams "just go forward and fight your enemies like you would in any other game like this." At no point is it ever made clear this is really a stealth game.
Once I started treating this like a stealth game, I started to make some real progress. If/when I would get spotted, I would just do the ol' counterattack insta-kill thing and pick off my enemies one by one. Trying to fight them using the normal combat system is useless, like I mentioned already. The game basically became: sneak into the new area, pick off any enemies with the bow and arrow or stealth attacks, sneak into the next area. Rinse and repeat. Getting spotted brings a swarm of enemies coming after you that you have to defeat. This is mostly manageable, save for the areas with snipers positioned above you. You are basically fucked if you get spotted in these areas. You can't fight the enemies off because you're getting sniped with an arrow every four seconds. A lot of times, I would just die on purpose to restart the area over again, because the battles are basically unwinnable under those circumstances.
Every time I would start to get into a groove with the stealth gameplay and start to like the game, something new would happen to piss me off. It's like the game actively hates you and doesn't want you to have a fun time. The armored archer area, that takes place in a giant spiral arena (I don't know how else to describe it) was almost the breaking point for me. You can't snipe the archers from a distance because they are armored, so you have to rely 100% on stealth. You get spotted once and your game is over. These bastards have such amazing eyesight. You can leave one pixel exposed around a corner and they'll spot you from 400 feet away. It's ridiculous. This area which would have taken 10 minutes if this game had a normal combat system became a 4 hour debacle. To make matters worse, the game glitched on me right after I saved it, and the camera angle became super zoomed in on me, not allowing me to see my immediate surroundings or look ahead to make sure the coast was clear. This was reallllly not helpful considering this was a stealth section filled with enemies with the eyesight of a bald eagle. I kept accidentally stepping out from cover because I couldn't freaking see anything, and then it would be game over for me because once you are spotted, you are toast. It didn't matter how many times I reloaded my save or tried again, the camera wouldn't fix itself. I almost gave up on this piece of shit right then and there.
I found out that turning the game off completely and then loading my save would fix the camera. But guess what? If I died and had to reload the save, the camera would get all messed up again. I'd have to turn off the system and reload it again after powering it back on again. I basically had one chance and if I messed it up again I had to restart the whole thing.
Somehow I powered through it, and the camera fixed itself when the level ended. But this was so annoying. It took me so freaking long to make it past this area. It was hard enough as it was, but the camera glitch really, and I mean really soured my experience with the game.
All this talking and I haven't even mentioned the bird. Rau has a bird on his shoulder that he can send ahead to scout new areas and spot enemies, which comes in handy for the stealth segments. This bird can also help solve puzzles by throwing switches for you that are out of range. Yippy. I just can't muster any excitement for this game, even the things it does well.
Luckily, the game isn't long. It is six stages. The first five stages are essentially the same stealthy kind of thing. The last stage throws this all out the window and focuses solely on combat. On the surface, this would be a welcome thing. That's what we all signed up for, right? Wrong. The combat sucks and the enemies still block everything. I decided to break my cardinal rule of gaming and activate a cheat code to make my character invincible. I wasn't going to struggle through this stage for 9 hours of pure frustration. I just wanted to be done with it.
Graphics:
The game looks okay. It's a PS2 game that shows its age. Even looking at it in comparison to other games coming out at the time (like God of War, which I keep mentioning) it doesn't look great. But it doesn't look bad either. It's right in the middle. I like the sunsets and the ruins and the waterfalls and all that kind of thing.
Where the game shines the most graphically is the cutscenes (you know, the ones I zoned out during?). The story segments are told with some nice, storybook style sequences that are fairly pleasing to the eye. Too bad they are boring AF.
Sound:
I'm at a loss for words here. I remember nothing about the game's sound, and I just finished it like a week ago. Was the music good? IDK. Was the voice acting good? IDK. The sound effects? IDK.
I'm just going to go ahead and say they were adequate. If they were bad, they would have stood out in my mind. But the sound must not be very great either if I can't remember any of it.
Overall:
I've made it quite clear that I don't like this game. It left a bad taste in my mouth, and I can easily say I will never return to it again. That's not to say there aren't good things about it. When it was clicking, the stealth gameplay was fairly good. There were a few levels in the middle of the game where I was like "alright alright. I get it now." But then something ridiculous would happen to piss me off and send me back to hating the game again. It's like I said earlier in the review, this game wants you to have a miserable time. It is like it actively goes out of its way to remind you how much it hates you time and time again.
I can't recommend this game to anyone. It's a steaming pile of doo doo in my opinion, and I consider myself an easy gamer to please. I almost never rag on a game like I did here. What I can't figure out is why this game is so popular in online circles. I've scanned the reviews before and seen that they were mostly favorable. I didn't really read too many of them, because I like to have my own opinion when I review games, and to not have it be influenced by anyone else. But now I am done playing. If you are one of the hundreds of people that love this game, please, and I mean PLEASE tell me what you love about this game. And please tell me what I was doing wrong in combat to make me hate it so much.
Okay, I've said my piece. I'm very glad this game is over and I never, ever have to play it again. It only gets a passing grade (barely) because I am not that big of a hater to overlook this game's strengths. And like I said, there were a few times I found myself having a good time and vibing with the stealth gameplay. It's just too bad those moments were so few and far between.
THE GRADE:
D-
For a complete index of all my past posts and game reviews, click
>HERE<
No comments:
Post a Comment