Dave's Dumbass Game Review: Dirge of Cerberus
Humor me, I'm practicing my writing again.
First, a synopsis. Dirge of Cerberus takes place in the world of Final Fantasy 7, roughly 3 years after the events in Advent Children. The story focuses around the character of Vincent Valentine, one of the heroes of the original Final Fantasy 7 and a key character in Advent Children. Vincent was once a human, but was murdered by the mad scientist Hojo during an argument about a mutual love interest, Lucrecia Crescent. Vincent was brought back to life by Lucrecia by infusing him with a mysterious substance, which ended up luring an incorporeal entity known as Chaos into his body. Chaos patches Vincent up and turns him into some sort of vampire-esque undead dude with the penchant for going crazy ape bonkers when the mood strikes (in FF7 the mood struck any time your limit break bar got high enough). The first time said mood struck was the second he woke up from being dead, whereupon which he busted out and mangled Lucrecia. Vincent regained control in time to save her by putting her in stasis in a bundle of Materia crystals (Materia = Magic). Being that he cannot die, he spends a lot of time staring at his imprisioned love and brooding. Very emo. Don't get me wrong, I actually enjoy the backstory a lot, but it's just so easy to make fun of.
Now for the meat. Dirge of Cerberus can be most accurately classified as a 3rd person shooter. You control Vincent Valentine, a shooty sort of man, and help him blast mysterious bad guys and escort good guys. The combat system is complicated, taking advantage of all of the buttons on the PS2 controller, and you will use them all. Fortunately for all concerned, an auto-targeting system helps a lot as does the ability to pause the game to access a status menu. Since this is a Final Fantasy game, you get XP at the end of levels and if you gain enough XP, your stats increase. I never really noticed a major difference when my stats went up other than having an increased HP and MP. In addition to XP, you also rack up the Gil (money) in the game by picking up money dropped by enemies and completing objectives. This money can be spent on items like potions to heal you and ether to restore your MP or upgrades for your guns.
There are three basic guns in the game (pistol, rifle, and submachine gun) that can be outfitted each with one of three different barrel lengths (short, medium, long) and several different attachments like scopes, doodads, and dangly bits. Yes, that's vauge, but so are these attachments. Some of them decrease the weight of your gun, some allow your gun to fire off magic spells, some enhance said magic powers, and so forth. Pretty much all parts of your guns can be upgraded, but the cost goes through the roof after a while. Odds are you'll find one gun/barrel/hoodoo combination you like and really pimp that out.
As I said earlier, the game takes place in the world of Final Fantasy 7, so you've got the standard sci-fantasy world to play in, only the game seems to focus on cityscapes with a few outdoor scenes thrown in for good measure. It's an exceptionally linear game, taking you from one level to the next and rating you on your performance. Within each level there are the standard objectives like an accuracy objective and a take less than X amount of damage objective, which are the same for every level, and other objectives like escort X amount of helpless morons to safety, and escort X amount of "helping" morons with guns who really couldn't shoot the broad side of a barn with a shotgun. All of the special objectives are either escort X, find Y, or shoot Z, so don't expect too much uniqueness there.
The level design in DoC is interesting at first, with interesting and dynamic cityscapes for loads of urban combat fun until you realize that you cannot really interact with the terrain. There's a jump button, and you can watch Vincent jump off all sorts of crazy crap in the cutscenes, but the levels won't let you do anything like that. You're mostly stuck climbing ladders and running up ramps to get around and the jump button is mostly used to avoid enemy attacks. In addition to jumping, you're given a full array of dodging abilities, but none of them involve interacting with the terrain at all, other than to seek cover behind some of it. This was a pretty big letdown as in production it was compared to "Devil May Cry" which allowed you to do many fun acrobatics using the terrain. Once this fact becomes apparent, the levels become interesting to look at, but are very linear and don't give you even the illusion of interactivity.
As the levels progress, you are exposed to more and more cutscenes of increasing length. In these cutscenes, the truth of this game comes forward: this wanted to be another Advent Children. It wanted to have an amazing story (which it does), but I guess they wanted to work a video game in to it somehow. Either that or it started as a video game with great potential, but as Advent Children rolled out, they decided to add more and more story. So, the game ends up being about 50% gameplay and about 50% cutscenes, which is pretty lame since it took me maybe 10 hours to beat and didn't end up being all that tough. Still, it was really pretty and if you want to explore more of the Final Fantasy 7 universe, I'd suggest renting this game. It's not something you want to pay full price for.
Dave's Arbitrary Rating for this game:
William Henry Harrison out of Abraham Lincoln. Had potential, but didn't stick around long enough to show us.
So, that's it for my first video game review. I'd really like it if you'd post some comments on it about whether you found it informative or not and what I could improve on.
First, a synopsis. Dirge of Cerberus takes place in the world of Final Fantasy 7, roughly 3 years after the events in Advent Children. The story focuses around the character of Vincent Valentine, one of the heroes of the original Final Fantasy 7 and a key character in Advent Children. Vincent was once a human, but was murdered by the mad scientist Hojo during an argument about a mutual love interest, Lucrecia Crescent. Vincent was brought back to life by Lucrecia by infusing him with a mysterious substance, which ended up luring an incorporeal entity known as Chaos into his body. Chaos patches Vincent up and turns him into some sort of vampire-esque undead dude with the penchant for going crazy ape bonkers when the mood strikes (in FF7 the mood struck any time your limit break bar got high enough). The first time said mood struck was the second he woke up from being dead, whereupon which he busted out and mangled Lucrecia. Vincent regained control in time to save her by putting her in stasis in a bundle of Materia crystals (Materia = Magic). Being that he cannot die, he spends a lot of time staring at his imprisioned love and brooding. Very emo. Don't get me wrong, I actually enjoy the backstory a lot, but it's just so easy to make fun of.
Now for the meat. Dirge of Cerberus can be most accurately classified as a 3rd person shooter. You control Vincent Valentine, a shooty sort of man, and help him blast mysterious bad guys and escort good guys. The combat system is complicated, taking advantage of all of the buttons on the PS2 controller, and you will use them all. Fortunately for all concerned, an auto-targeting system helps a lot as does the ability to pause the game to access a status menu. Since this is a Final Fantasy game, you get XP at the end of levels and if you gain enough XP, your stats increase. I never really noticed a major difference when my stats went up other than having an increased HP and MP. In addition to XP, you also rack up the Gil (money) in the game by picking up money dropped by enemies and completing objectives. This money can be spent on items like potions to heal you and ether to restore your MP or upgrades for your guns.
There are three basic guns in the game (pistol, rifle, and submachine gun) that can be outfitted each with one of three different barrel lengths (short, medium, long) and several different attachments like scopes, doodads, and dangly bits. Yes, that's vauge, but so are these attachments. Some of them decrease the weight of your gun, some allow your gun to fire off magic spells, some enhance said magic powers, and so forth. Pretty much all parts of your guns can be upgraded, but the cost goes through the roof after a while. Odds are you'll find one gun/barrel/hoodoo combination you like and really pimp that out.
As I said earlier, the game takes place in the world of Final Fantasy 7, so you've got the standard sci-fantasy world to play in, only the game seems to focus on cityscapes with a few outdoor scenes thrown in for good measure. It's an exceptionally linear game, taking you from one level to the next and rating you on your performance. Within each level there are the standard objectives like an accuracy objective and a take less than X amount of damage objective, which are the same for every level, and other objectives like escort X amount of helpless morons to safety, and escort X amount of "helping" morons with guns who really couldn't shoot the broad side of a barn with a shotgun. All of the special objectives are either escort X, find Y, or shoot Z, so don't expect too much uniqueness there.
The level design in DoC is interesting at first, with interesting and dynamic cityscapes for loads of urban combat fun until you realize that you cannot really interact with the terrain. There's a jump button, and you can watch Vincent jump off all sorts of crazy crap in the cutscenes, but the levels won't let you do anything like that. You're mostly stuck climbing ladders and running up ramps to get around and the jump button is mostly used to avoid enemy attacks. In addition to jumping, you're given a full array of dodging abilities, but none of them involve interacting with the terrain at all, other than to seek cover behind some of it. This was a pretty big letdown as in production it was compared to "Devil May Cry" which allowed you to do many fun acrobatics using the terrain. Once this fact becomes apparent, the levels become interesting to look at, but are very linear and don't give you even the illusion of interactivity.
As the levels progress, you are exposed to more and more cutscenes of increasing length. In these cutscenes, the truth of this game comes forward: this wanted to be another Advent Children. It wanted to have an amazing story (which it does), but I guess they wanted to work a video game in to it somehow. Either that or it started as a video game with great potential, but as Advent Children rolled out, they decided to add more and more story. So, the game ends up being about 50% gameplay and about 50% cutscenes, which is pretty lame since it took me maybe 10 hours to beat and didn't end up being all that tough. Still, it was really pretty and if you want to explore more of the Final Fantasy 7 universe, I'd suggest renting this game. It's not something you want to pay full price for.
Dave's Arbitrary Rating for this game:
William Henry Harrison out of Abraham Lincoln. Had potential, but didn't stick around long enough to show us.
So, that's it for my first video game review. I'd really like it if you'd post some comments on it about whether you found it informative or not and what I could improve on.