Spontaneous Sunday: Breach & Clear

Spontaneous Sunday has arrived once more, this week I've played Breach & Clear (Developer: Mighty Rabbit Studies, Gun. Publisher: Gambitious, Devolver. PC, 2014).

This is the first PC title that I've played for Spontaneous Sunday. I don't often play PC games, though I do have a Steam account with a fair few games, so I thought I'd mix things up a bit this week and play a PC title. I played it on my 2012 Macbook Pro. I picked the game up for a few quid during the Steam sale this Summer.

"Breach & Clear is a 2013 turn-based strategy action role-playing video game developed by Mighty Rabbit Studios and published by Gun Media. The player is in control of four special forces units who must enter an area and kill all enemies in it."

- Wikipedia on Breach & Clear

"Breach & Clear brings deep tactical strategy simulation to PC, Mac and Linux! Build your Special Operations team, plan and execute advanced missions, and own every angle. Choose your real-world squad and take on a variety of foes with different skill-sets and abilities. Learn to approach, engage, and dominate your opponents through superior tactics and training."

- Steam "about" page

What do I expect from the game?

I read all about the game before buying it a few months ago during the Steam sale, so I know a lot about it and knew what to expect before playing. It's a turn-based strategy game in which you command a special forces squad and clear areas of enemies. The special-forces theme seemed cool and I think this theme usually makes for a good game (see Call of Duty Modern Warfare, Counterstrike, Rainbow Six etc.)

The game has very positive Steam reviews so I expect it to be well-made and enjoyable. I think the level designs will be interesting because of the nature of the gameplay - the levels will have to be designed in a way that makes this gameplay possible and it will be interesting to see how the designers pull this off. I've never played a game quite like it in terms of gameplay so I thought I'd just jump right in and see how it all works.

First Impressions - What did I think of the game in its first few minutes?

The intro movie talked a big game and was quite serious, with a stern female voiceover describing the game and calling it the "most advanced training tool for Spec Ops" - this seemed like a big claim and I thought the game would have to really deliver to live up to the hype of its own intro! But it did get me pumped to get into the game.

Screenshot from the opening movie.

After the intro movie, I chose my squad and went with the S.A.S of course! I then created each of my 4 squad members which included their face, class and name. I always spend far too much time naming my game characters I just went with the auto-generated ones.

There's different organisations from a variety of countries to play as.

Picking each squad members class - each class has different attributes.

My finished S.A.S squad.

After creating my squad I reached the main menu and decided that it would make sense to play the tutorial. The tutorial took probably less than 5 minutes to complete and covered the basics of camera control and how to control and move the squad members. My immediate thought was that the camera movement system seemed clunky, and it did take me a while to get the hang of it as the game went on.

I thought, at the time, that the tutorial didn't feel like it went far enough with its explanation and I felt slightly unequipped for jumping into the game - but I soon realised that the core gameplay really is simple enough to pick up from a 5 minutes tutorial. The game is very easy to pick up and start enjoying and the brevity of the tutorial is a testament to this.

Now it was time to get into the game properly and take my squad on their first mission...

The first mission in the game.

The first mission was reasonably simple and easy. Each round starts with the player looking around the level, assessing routes and figuring out a plan of action. You then choose which door(s) to breach through and you can also split the squad up and approach from different angles. I split my squad up, sending 3 of them through one door as the main assault and another on his own into what I thought was the back door but turned out to be the most enemy-filled room and he ended up getting killed - which I didn't foresee because you can't see enemy positions until you've already breached. This isn't a negative about the game though, it just meant that I'd have to be less gung-ho about my approach in future missions.

Pre-round setup.

After the level, I got a rating (3 out of 4 stars) and looked at my stats and each squad member earned some XP and skill points that I was able to put into different skills to improve the squad. The whole round took just a few minutes.

Post-match statistics.

What do I like about the game? What does it do well?

After the first mission I played for about 2 hours, completing the Afghanistan missions and the Turkey missions, improving my squads skills as I went along. Then I explored the squad customisation options and spent some of my hard-earned in-game currency on a bunch of weapons and gear.

I have a lot of positive stuff to say about Breach & Clear. The core gameplay is solid and it means it is just a very fun game in general. I am more used to playing real-time strategies so playing a turn-based was a bit of a new experience for me but I got right into and got the hang of it quickly and was playing mission after mission and getting decent scores (mostly!). It's fun, fast and it feels rewarding. The missions are only short - I don't think any of them lasted more than 10 minutes - so the game plays out quickly and progressively and the rewards come in thick and fast, this keeps things entertaining and made we want to keep playing.

So what else did I like about the game other than "it's fun"? The whole aesthetic and theme is attractive, interesting and consistent, and its probably the best possible theme through which to deliver the strong core gameplay. The game has a very cool vibe. It also looks really nice. The graphics are pretty decent, especially considering its a PC port of a game that was originally on Mobile. The action is usually viewed from an isometric view but the camera will also get to ground-level for a more involved view.

The level/environment design is another strong positive point. All the levels are intuitively laid-out to effectively play host to the game's core mechanics. The game is all about tactical movement and taking cover and the levels are perfectly designed to enable this. The Afghanistan missions took place mostly in office buildings while the Turkey levels took place in marketplaces, and the inherent real-world differences between these settings affected the design and how I had to approach each level. The levels also looked pretty nice. It has low poly models and low-res textures but this doesn't detract from the experience - the game is too exciting for the player to notice it.

The customisation system is a great feature. It offers a bunch of options including weapons, gear and clothing. This, coupled with the squad member stat system, makes it really feel like you're in charge. After just 2 hours gameplay I was able to kit my squad out with different weapons, headwear, gear and clothing and had tactically upgraded their stats to give them specific strengths. They really felt like  my  squad.

Finally, theres the audio. The music was punchy and dramatic and suited the game well. The SFX was decent. They sounded a bit low-budget, for lack of a better term, but this suited the low-poly, "former mobile game" feel.

What don't I like about the game?

There's not much in the way of negatives bar a few minor niggles. The squad control system wasn't as fluid as it perhaps could have been. I sometimes found myself not really knowing who I was controlling and sending men the wrong way. Another minor issue is that you aren't able to alter the pitch of the camera, only the rotation, position and zoom level, meaning it was tricky to get the perfect camera angle. There was also no option to have the camera automatically follow the action - all camera control was manual. Other than that, I failed to find anything bad about the game.

Final Thoughts

Breach & Clear is a game with solid core gameplay that is well-complemented by the narrative context. It's fun, well-paced and rewarding and offers huge tactical choice and customisation. I feel like it has been a valuable Spontaneous Sunday game because its a genre and platform that I haven't really experienced yet. I already want to get back to it and continue to hone tactics and my squad. I will definitely be playing it again soon!

Anderson Shelter Scene Submission

Welcome to the submission blog post for my Anderson Shelter 3D environment.

This scene was created over the last 3 weeks as a proof-of-concept for my proposed focus area for the year. I am going to be looking at atmosphere in games and how all the different elements of a game environment come together to make an atmospheric scene, including such things as lighting, textures, audio, particle effects, detail/set-dressing, historical/contextual accuracy, post-processing and rendering and so on. To this end, I set out to research the creation of atmosphere and apply this knowledge to creating an atmospheric scene.

Here's the final presentation shots and video of the scene. Below these I have done a write-up about the project.

 

Submission Video (Note: blogger compression has made the video look awful! (Please enable audio)):

...and now for the write-up! This write-up describes the steps that I took to achieve my goal for this project, the design process and the motivation behind my design decisions.

Idea Generation:

First, I had to pin down what my scene would be. I set the following criteria:

• Realistically, it had to be something small so that I could do it in 3 weeks. It couldn't be a huge warehouse for example because it would take too long and I wouldn't be able to put enough detail in. It also needed to be an indoor scene. A WW2 Anderson shelter seemed like a good idea because its small and indoors.
• It had to be a setting with a lot of atmosphere potential. There needed to be a lot that I could do with the audio, lighting etc. An office supply cupboard would be terribly unatmospheric, for example, whereas a bomb shelter gave me a lot of options.
• It had to be something that I could do a lot of research on. There needed to be plenty of information online and in books and places that I could visit to learn about my setting. Its safe to assume that ice age cave dwellings would be difficult to research. An Anderson shelter was a good option because plenty of information, images and first-hand accounts are available, and there's still some shelters in existence that you can go and see, which brings me to my next stage...

Research:

Research was a huge part of this project. I began my research immediately after coming up with my idea. I went to the library and withdrew some books about the Battle of Britain and the Blitz and read about Anderson shelters. I created a Pinterest board and began to gather images of shelters and images depicting war-time life in Britain. I did plenty of online research. I found websites containing first-hand accounts of shelters.

In terms of first-hand research/field trips, I visited Western Approaches WW2 museum in Liverpool and I attended a talk from author Michael Foreman at the Harris Museum and asked him about life in the war and shelters. My research was ongoing throughout the project.

I decided that I wanted to go into very fine detail in the historical accuracy of the scene and that I would set the scene on an exact date. I liked the idea of setting the scene on the night of October 28th 1940 - exactly 76 years prior to the projects submission date. So I researched whether this would make sense. I delved into the depths of information about the Battle of Britain and the Blitz and found a brilliant website that had exact day-by-day action reports for the entire duration of this stage of the war. On 28th October 1940, there was a night-time bombing raid on London -

Creating the scene:

A lot of work went into trying to make the scene as atmospheric as possible. I identified a bunch of things that needed to be done/included to achieve this.

Modelling: I did all of my modelling in Maya. I stuck to fairly low poly count limits when modelling - the biggest model in the scene is just shy of 3,000 tris. I didn't want to go too low poly because I thought this would limit the scenes realism and by extension, how atmospheric it was. The texture maps are mostly 2048x2048 with smaller/less important models being 1024x1024.

Texturing: The textures are almost all PBR with diffuse, normal, specular, metallic and roughness maps. Again, this was to maximise realism. The textures are hand-painted in Photoshop but in a realistic style. I used Maya to bake normal maps and then edited them in Photoshop as appropriate. I generated the specular, metallic and roughness by taking the finished diffuse textures and making them grayscale then playing with the brightness and contrast levels until they looked right.

Scene composition/rendering: The scene is built and rendered in UE4. I added a simple dust particle affect. I added post-processing affects such as bloom, slight lens flare, a dirt mask on the camera and subtle colour tints to the scene.

Audio: I created audio for the scene using Logic Pro X. The final audio contained several layers. There is two seperate layers of atmospheric noise/drone of planes overhead. This was created by recording the sound outside of my bedroom window, I then added lots of affects to this such as distortion and reverb to make it sound like the noise of planes in the distance. One of the plane noise tracks is high frequency and the other is low frequency. I found a recording of a radio broadcast by Winston Churchill from October 1940 and added it to the audio track. I edited the EQ so that it sounded like it was playing on a radio. I also added the sound of air raid sirens. I also created the sound of bombs and anti-aircraft guns by heavily editing drum samples.

Creating the audio

Historical Accuracy: My goal from the very start of the project was to make the scene as historically accurate as possible, here's some things that I did and some things that I included to try and achieve this:

• As mentioned previously, the scene is set on 28th October 1940. I chose this date as the project submission date is 28th October 2016. A raid on civilian areas of London did occur on this night. I made sure that everything you see and hear in the scene made sense given the date.
• MKII air raid wardens Brodie Helmet. This was issued to all air raid wardens. It was dark gray with a white W on the front of it.
• Air raid warden's report forms.
• 1936 Zenith 805 cathedral radio. This was a common home radio set that would have been used to listen to war-time broadcasts such as the Churchill speech that I included in the audio.
• Puddles on the floor of the shelter. Anderson shelters were notoriously damp places!
• Propoganda posters. The scene has two posters, the blue one on the back wall is part of the series of posters released in 1939 which also included the more well-known "Keep Calm and Carry On" poster. The other is a recruitment poster for air raid wardens.
• Lighting: the scene contains a lantern and candles - two common methods of lighting a shelter.

Conclusion:

With the scene now finished, I can say that I am fairly happy with how it turned out. I think I made a good decision on the concept of the scene. Conducting the research was a lot of fun because it is a subject that really is fascinating to me and I have learned a lot. I would have liked to include more content in the scene but unfortunately the project deadline arrived!

This project has definitely allowed me to test the validity of my proposed focus area and I already think that I have learned a lot about how atmospheric game environments are created. I'm looking forward to delving deeper into this as the course goes on.

Spontaneous Sunday: Metro: Last Light

Week 4 of Spontaneous Sunday is here! This weeks game is Metro: Last Light (2013, 4A Games, Deep Silver, Xbox 360). 

"Metro: Last Light is a single-player, post-apocalyptic-themed, first-person shooter video game with stealth and survival horror elements. It was developed by Ukrainian studio 4A Games and published by Deep Silver for Microsoft Windows, PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 in May 2013."

- Wikipedia on Metro: Last Light

What do I expect from the game?

Metro: Last Light is a first person shooter action/adventure game with stealth and survival elements, set in the ruins and underground of Moscow in the year 2034. It is the direct sequel to Metro 2033, a game that I played and completed a few years ago, so I mostly knew what to expect from the sequel. I really enjoyed Metro 2033 and it stood out to me as a well-made game. There aren't many games that I will fully play to the end but Metro 2033 kept my attention the whole time.

The original game mostly takes place in the stations and tunnels of the Moscow metro so it is full of dark, dingy, run-down and suspenseful environments. There are various enemies including human factions and mutated creatures. It features homemade weapons, plenty of scary moments and frantic fights, usually in very dimly lit areas, so its pretty exciting. It also has a minimal HUD and diegetic UI which was one of my favourite things about it. The environments are detailed and atmospheric and there is almost always multiple different routes that the player can take to achieve objectives and get to where they're going. I expected Metro: Last Light to also feature many of these elements.

First Impressions - What did I think of the game in its first few minutes?

The game's front end is almost entirely diegetic, with the information, options and even the developer/publisher splash screens appearing as part of the environment. The front end is a 3D environment of a metro tunnel complete with debris, lighting, particles effects etc. which is very cool. The environments and diegetic UI elements of the first game were very impressive so to see these two strong positives return right from the start of the sequel meant that Last Light made a good first impression.

While some game's main menu's can seem "lazy", Metro: Last Light's menu
is engaging and well thought out.

Starting a new game presents the player with a few options before they get started. This includes the choice of "original" or "Ranger" mode - the difference being that in ranger mode, the HUD is even more minimal and ammo/supplies are very hard to come by. This sounded very cool and sounded like it would add replay value to the game, however it appears that it can only be accessed if you pre-ordered the game - which is a bit of a downer! I then chose the difficulty, which effects the gameplay in more ways than simply making enemies stronger and the player weaker - availability of ammo and the awareness of enemies is also affects. This is a plus point as the conditions in different difficulty levels are often limited simply to how easily the player dies.

Gameplay begins with a section in which "dark ones" - paranormal beings seen and (supposedly) eliminated in the first game - attack the player and a small group of allies. The player drives a knife into one of the dark one's heads only for it to then transform into a human ally. This sequence turns out to be a dream and the player-character awakes safe in their bedroom. This was a pretty impressive opening for the game.

The player-character awakes from a nightmare to see a character called
Khan, who gives you your first mission of the game.

What do I like about the game, what does it do well?

There are many things that I like about the game and the developer's did a very good job, just as they did with the first one. The game is very immersive and atmospheric for a number of reasons. Firstly, there's the environments. The game's environment art is one of its strongest assets. Every area in the game is well-crafted with realistic lighting, details, particle effects and audio.

The first area the player finds themselves in (after the prologue section) is the player character (Artyom's) bedroom which is within a dorm that leads into a mess hall, training area and shooting range. This room and the starting area in general are incredibly detailed. The room is full of photographs, books, gear and furniture and also interactable objects like lamps that can be turned on and off.

Artyom's bedroom - a very detailed and well-crafted 3D environment.

There are many things that can be interacted with in the room.

There are many NPCs in the starting area, all of whom are doing something different and interesting. One is playing a guitar on a lower bunk of bunkbed while others watch. There is a room with its door propped open with a chair and a soldier servicing a gun inside. All of these NPCs look different and they have conversations with each other and make passing comments to the player. There is so much life in this starting area and something different to look at everywhere. It really grabs the players attention. I can't think of another game that has such detail and variety in terms of NPC appearance and actions. These positive elements are most noticeable in the starting area as the developers obviously went to more effort here as its their chance to make a good first impression, but the environments are very well designed, highly-detailed, engaging and realistic throughout the game.

The SFX/ambient audio is also a positive point, in the starting area and throughout the game, and this further helps to create atmosphere and immersion in the game. The voice acting is also good and sounds authentic. Enemies have a lot of dialogue lines that change depending on certain things and this means that it's easy for the player to tell how aware of their presence the enemies are, by listening to what they are saying. This is just one of the ways that Metro: Last Light uses in-world/diegetic cues to inform the player.

The weapons are interesting and varied. Some are pre-war, others are crafted
in the Metro by survivors.

The diegetic nature of the user interface is one of my favourite things about the game. Almost all the HUD and information is presented to the player via diegetic means: objectives are displayed on a journal/clipboard that the character can bring up and look at and use a lighter to properly see. The pause menu is set out like a book. Several of the guns have visible ammo clips so you can see how much ammo is left. The HUD is only visible when something happens to prompt its appearance - e.g, reloading a weapon will briefly display the ammo counter - but it disappears again soon after, meaning that for most of the game, the screen is entirely clear of HUD. This makes the game very immersive and less distracting than other FPS games with "busy" heads-up-displays and minimises detraction from the experience. In different game modes and difficulties, the HUD is even more minimalistic, I imagine this would make for an even more immersive experience, but might confuse first-time players. Having a minimalistic HUD is often a bold move but the developers pull it off very well and make it a plus-point for the game. Personally, I find that diegetic UI's make for a compelling and memorable game experience.

The lack of HUD makes for an immersive and engaging experience.

In terms of gameplay, the game is suspenseful, enjoyable and well-paced, with a good ratio of stealth sequences and action sequences. It is mostly a stealth game and stealth is often encouraged, but the player can still go in all-guns-blazing if this is how they want to play. The current objective is usually well-defined and the game has a strong story that makes the player want to play just a little more to achieve a goal or see what happens - this is possibly due in part to the fact that the game franchise is based on a series of books and books generally have much stronger narratives and writing than games do! This game's story however was not based directly on a book, but was written purposely for the game by the book's author, Dmitry Glukhovsky, and this is noticeable in the game's strong narrative.

The game's story is well-delivered throughout.

Most of the action happens below-ground, but the player also visits the
surface occasionally. This is the player's first view of the surface.

What don't I like about the game?

There are really not many negatives to pick up on and the positives of the game outweigh the negatives perhaps more than any previous Spontaneous Sunday game. There are a few things that I think could be improved, but nothing that really affected the gameplay experience. Firstly, there were a few instances where I felt like I didn't really know where I was going and that the game wasn't doing enough to guide me. This could be slightly due to the diegetic nature of the game's objectives and lack of on-screen text. The darkness of the environments might also have contributed - some of them really are very dark, which helps create atmosphere but can make getting around slightly difficult.

Secondly, I think that the stealth sections of the game were sometimes a bit messily-designed or too difficult. While most stealth games allow/require the player to observe enemy movements and plan and execute a safe route through an area, Metro: Last Light's stealth sections seemed a bit haphazard. After stealthily traversing an area, I did not get a sense of satisfaction from having worked out and used a route that was designed/placed for me by a level designer. It all felt a bit random and disjointed and I often found myself getting detected and having to shoot my way out. However with that said, I had only just begun to play the game, so maybe I just hadn't got the hang of how the game lays out its stealth sections yet. Admittedly, I don't play a lot of stealth games so it could be that I just wasn't finding the right paths and it was my approach that was messy rather than the design of the levels.

Finally, I think that the game's soundtrack was lacking. The music didn't leave much of an impression on me and there was long sections where there was no music at all, which is definitely a missed opportunity in terms of creating atmosphere (which the game does very well in almost every other way!)

Final Thoughts

Metro: Last Light is a very strong game in terms of pretty much everything including atmosphere, environment art, graphics, audio, level/world design and gameplay. I would go as far as to say that its my favourite Spontaneous Sunday title yet. Metro 2033 really hooked me when I played it and Last Light has also grabbed my attention. I will probably keep playing it and try to finish it. I think the Metro series hasn't received the recognition that it deserves! This might be due to its lack of a multiplayer mode, which is increasingly becoming an essential element in making an FPS really take off commercially. I read that a multiplayer mode was planned but eventually scrapped to allow all development resources to be focused on the single player experience - this to me seems like a good decision.

Playing Last Light got me thinking about game's based on books and how this effects the narrative. I realised that I can't really think of many games that are based on books and I have decided that I'm going to do some research into this in the future!

Anderson Shelter Scene Update

I've been doing a lot of work on my Anderson Shelter scene recently and its coming along quite nicely. I'm quite confident that I will have it finished to a decent standard by the project submission date of October 28th.

Here's a list of what I have done so far:

• 3D modelled, UV mapped and fully PBR-textured several assets including: the shelter walls, the door, the floor, the bunk bed and the bench.
• 3D modelled, UV mapped and assigned block-colour textures to several assets including: a set of shelves, an oil lamp, pillows and bed sheets.
• 3D modelled a bucket which hasn't been UV mapped/textured yet.
• Added some lighting to the scene.
• Added a generic dust particle effect to the scene.

And here's a list of what I still have to do:

• Fully texture all of the assets that I have created so far.
• Make more detail items for the scene such as books, pictures, posters, helmets/gas masks, candles, cigarette packets & ashtray, a radio etc. and texture these.
• Make music and SFX for the scene.
• Do all the lighting, particle effects, after effects etc.
• Take beauty shots and maybe a video for the submission package.

Here's some pictures of the scene:

Spontaneous Sunday: Two Worlds

Welcome to week 3 of Spontaneous Sunday! This week's game is Two Worlds (2007, Reality Pump, TopWare Interactive, Xbox 360). I bought the game for £2.50 from Cex last week which makes it the first game I've picked up specifically for a Spontaneous Sunday.

"Two Worlds is a high fantasy action role-playing game developed by Polish video game developer Reality Pump and published by TopWare Interactive in Europe and by SouthPeak Interactive in North America for the Xbox 360 and Microsoft Windows. The game takes place in a real-time three-dimensional fantasy landscape."

- Wikipedia on Two Worlds

What do I expect from the game?

I knew slightly more about this game before playing it than I did about the previous two Spontaneous Sunday games, having read a few reviews around the time it was released, and I had been interested in playing it for a while as I'm a big fan of RPGs. Two Worlds is an open world role-playing game in a medieval/fantasy setting. I expect the game to contain all the classic RPG features e.g strong fantasy elements, sword fighting, dungeons, villages, dragons and quests. I expect the environments and quest design to be a strong point of the game as is often the case in RPG games.

First Impressions - What did I think of the game in its first few minutes?

The game's main menu looks pretty good!

I hadn't heard of either the developer or publisher of the game before playing it which I found interesting as it's a fairly well-known title. There was a short intro cutscene that provided some background info on the game's story but didn't really seem to explain much, and felt a bit cheap and cheesy. The front end menu looked good and had some decent music. I selected to start a new game and was met with a character creator, which allowed for very limited customisation - there's only 4 hairstyles and a handful of all rather similar hair colours, and some face sliders that don't affect the characters appearance an awful lot.

The character creator doesn't offer a lot of customisation options.

A cutscene then played that again didn't explain much. The game's voice acting feels wooden and leaves a lot to be desired and appears to have been done by a very small number of actors. The graphics aren't great and definitely look dated. When the slightly-too-long intro cutscenes were finished, gameplay began with a short movement and combat intro quest in a small dungeon. Controls immediately felt a bit clunky and the UI system seemed confusing at first sight. After the tutorial mission was done, I was then free to explore the game world freely. In other RPG games, it can take a long time to reach the point at which you can free roam so it was nice to get to the exploration quickly.

A shot from the intro cutscene.

The tutorial dungeon is over quickly, allowing the player to get straight
into the free-roam action.

What do I like about the game, what does it do well?

Despite my best efforts to enjoy the game and the fact that I had wanted to play it since it first released, I found more negatives about the game than positives. As I had expected, the environments were definitely a strong point, although the graphics do look dated considering its 2007 release date. The environments are fairly generic fantasy/RPG with ruins, wooden buildings, small wilderness camps, forests, hills, mountains etc. Upon leaving the tutorial dungeon, the player finds themselves on a hill overlooking a valley that makes up the early game area. This allows the player to see the area that they can explore and start from there, deciding which landmark to head towards. The first view of the world is always an important part of the start of an RPG and Two Worlds handled it well. 

First view of the playable area.

Heading down through a forest towards the small quest-related village of Komorin, I noticed another positive about the game - the ambient audio and music. There's plenty of ambient sound effects of creatures and weather. There's also a load of creatures dotted all over the wilderness and villages which is genuinely one of my favourite things about the game. There was rabbits and snakes in the forests and geese and ducks in the villages, all of which had sound effects which created an interesting auditory tapestry. I followed the main quest for a while and ended up in a cave that had echoing drip SFX and the sound of bats.

The starting village, Komorin.

The RPG format and pacing is fairly well-executed, if a bit generic. The tutorial dungeon leads into the open world, with gentle encouragement towards the starter settlement from which quests can be picked up, trading can be done etc. Its a familiar formula that makes the game fairly easy to get into it its early stages. The quest design/stories are pretty good too. Once I had gotten over the slightly unattractive menu system, I quickly set to work customising my gear and stats. The inventory and stat systems are simple enough and are a positive point. You get skill points pretty often which gives the impression of constant character progression and working towards a goal in terms of creating a character build.

Trading is of course present in the game. The inventory systems is decent.

What don't I like about the game?

There's a lot of negative points about the game, some of which are minor while others become frustrating quickly and affect the experience. The game as a whole feels cheap, unfinished and a bit cheesy, and it feels much older than it is. For example, The Elders Scrolls 4: Oblivion came out over a year earlier but is much more polished in every way. Two Worlds feels years older than it actually is. The voice acting is a big negative. Even though it doesn't affect the gameplay, it is still difficult to overlook. While reading about the game after playing, I noticed that the voice acting was all done by the developers themselves rather than professional voice actors. The limited character creator was also a bit disappointing. It allows you to create slight variations of pretty much the same character.

The dialogue system is simple but effective - but the voice acting is not good.

The story is difficult to follow. The cutscene before the front end referred to plot points that never came up again in my nearly 3 hours of playing the game. The cutscene when launching the new game gave almost no background on anything and I failed to really understand why what I was doing was important while playing - I didn't know what my motivation was or the significance of certain things in the plot, but I did get the impression that things would be cleared up as the game progressed.

The controls, movement, combat and menu systems - particularly the quest/map menu - are all clunky and frustrating and directly detract from the gameplay experience. The wilderness is filled with enemies that can kill you very easily and attempting to fight them is usually pretty futile, which makes getting around a bit of a chore. About halfway through my time on the game, I managed to kill a few goblin-esque creatures called Groms at a forest camp and acquired a horse. This made getting around a lot easier. The horse was a positive point. You can attack while riding which is good, and the ability to bypass enemies when travelling made for a less frustrating experience. The horse model is also pretty good and looks realistic. But the horse riding controls are not great and its turning circle was a particular annoyance.

Having a horse made getting around a lot easier and was also pretty fun.

Final Thoughts

Two Worlds is undoubtedly a flawed game that feels unfinished and messy and has many negatives that all add up to make it not a very enjoyable experience. I really wanted to like it, but it was difficult to do so. Still, it charmed me somehow (maybe it was the ducks and geese) and I wouldn't be completely opposed to playing it again sometime. The environments are a strong point for sure but the graphics do let it down, and the SFX is also good. The quests, creatures, enemies, stat/inventory systems and towns are all decent, but there's a lot wrong with how the game operates and handles on a fundamental level which invalidates most of what is good about it. I didn't really take many design lessons from it other than what should be avoided.

Since the game's release, the developers acknowledged its many downfalls and the game received a sequel in 2010 which was much more positively received and performed well commercially. Perhaps I will try this game out in a future Spontaneous Sunday and see what comparisons can be drawn? If it manages to keep the good parts of the original, while fixing everything else, it should be a decent game!

That's all for this weeks Spontaneous Sunday!