I picked up Slayer and WOTW last night at Babbage's here in Houston. Some guy (not an employee) tried to convince me not to buy WOTW (was that you Kraig?:) but I'm glad I did. Up until now, my experience with fighting games has been limited to getting my butt kicked once by a twelve year old on Super Duper Street Killer Guy Something-Or-Other and renting Genesis Mortal Kombat for 3 days. So I'm not exactly an expert or anything, but I thought Way was a lot of fun. As far as it being too hard, I played a friend of mine for about an hour and then practiced for about 1/2 hour after he left. After that, I was able to beat all the opponents on heavy and medium advantage to me with both Dragon and Crimson. After one night of play, I can win every once in a while on equal fighting -- not consistently, but enough to keep me encouraged. I really don't understand what everyone was bitching about unless they were already really good at another fighting game and expected to immediately beat this one. The only thing that really annoyed me was how you lose sight of your character when he jumps. I don't mind the high jump and think aerial combat would be really cool, but I can never see my guy because he's either off the screen or behind the status bars, so I just flail araound and hope I hit somebody. Also, a question, what the hell is Dragon's little hop move for?
Slayer, on the other hand was a huge disappointment. I knew it wasn't going to be Underworld, but I was hoping for something like Doom or Dungeon Hack. In theory, it is like those games, it's just that the execution sucks. First of all, the graphics. Like Wolf-3D there are only right angle walls and they seem to have no thickness. Look at a doorway or a window from an angle and you can see this. The graphics are nowhere near Doom quality. I know this is going to attract a lot of flames, so let me just say that it is obviously an opinion but it's an opinion shared by the four other people in the room with me and we had Doom running on a 17" monitor right next to my TV running Slayer. There is also none of the bobbing up and down as you walk -- you just glide along. Ok, so you can look up and down and you can crawl. Wow. I'm sure that that can be useful in some situations, but it just didn't seem to add much to me. The engine is fast but it's a pain in the ass to control. Even on "Best Graphics" setting we were constantly over-shooting on turns. Try just standing in one place and turning just a *little* bit, no matter how you tap the controller, you turn about 20 degrees. Yes, I know, it's not the game's fault, we just suck and once we learn to control it it'll be great. And I'm sure there are people out there who are going to say how they can turn on a dime, walk a tightrope, etc. The point is that in a first person adventure game you want the control to be accurate enough that you can feel immersed in the game from the beginning. I was spinning around, picking off soldiers in Doom in the first five minutes I played it and I was hooked. Here, I spent 5 minutes cursing the controls as I tried to line myself up correctly to pick up an object. (Well, 5 minutes is an exaggeration) Anyway, I think the designers realized how bad the control was, because they made it impossible to accidentally (or intentionally) fall into a pit. The mosters are just stupid. THey look like pixellated cartoons with about two frames of animation apiece. C'mon! What the hell did they use all that CD storage for? Not only that, but a lot of the monters are reused: the shade is just a semi-transparent flesh golem and the sword-something or other is a shadowed death-knight.
The music is pretty good and` sets the right mood, but the sound effects are practically non-existent. I want to hear growls and screams and dripping water. Good sound would have added tremendously to the game by helping to create a mood that the graphics definitely don't. Well, this is getting pretty long so I'll stop. Let the flames begin. :)
michel.buffa@cmu.edu