I already
waxed poetically about my fondness for taking past eras with fantastical
surroundings and then putting it on its ear in my review of NecrovisioN, so it
was with much excitement that I received Damnation, a pseudo-cowboy shooter that
involves steampunk devices, robots fighting in the civil war and sinister
overtones. Heck, I was practically thinking this was going to be a game like
Darkwatch, and I was an excited game reviewer, let me tell you.
Then I
played the game.
I hate to
spell it out like that, but Damnation had too good of an idea for it to fall
apart that way. In Damnation, the Civil War has taken a decidedly different
turn. Most of the country is in the iron grip of a despot named Prescott, a arms
dealer who sold to both sides. Prescott has pretty much ensured his victory by
using robots and serum-injected soldiers to run roughshod over all opposition –
which brings us to the "hero" of the game, one Hamilton Rourke. An outlaw
gunslinger who is working with the resistance to usurp Prescott and his evil
ways.
"If
you cross this bridge, you need to pay the toll… .35 cents."
How this is
done is primarily though a series of Spider-man like jumps and moves while
climbing up or down insanely large structures. Our man Rourke does all sorts of
jumps, swinging on bars, climbing poles, jumping off balconies and all sorts of
other, kind of out of place acrobatics. I mean, our guy looks pretty muscular
and carrying some heavy-looking weaponry. It just doesn’t keep with the ebb and
flow of the gameplay, he looks disproportionate and out-of-place. Don’t get me
wrong, it can be somewhat enjoyable to control Rourke this way, but I question
his character design.
Now for a
shooter, the dev team chose to make the game a third-person shooter. Not what I
was expecting, but in all fairness, I have played some good games in this
perspective. However, the game does not feel like it was given the full shooter
treatment. For instance, the actual shooting that occurs is too stiff for its
own good. You can zoom in a bit to refine your shooting, but still, the subtle
nuances that better, well made shooters seem to possess are nowhere to be found.
Jumping around and moving like a ninja is fun for a little bit, but when
plugging bad guys with an uncomfortable or smooth shooting mechanic, plain
stinks.
"It’s
the 1800’s, but like my Harley?"
Now the
story the game gives you is rife with suspicious pasts, and pretty soon you
start seeing ghosts experiencing some odd things and still, the game’s plot
feels unfinished and weak. I’m not saying we need to have a fantastic plot, but
I like it to make some sort of sense, I suppose I would understand more if my
mind would not have wandered, but that’s the price you pay with this one; it’s
tedious, boring and repetitive.
As if things
could not get worse, Damnation manages to make the graphics stink it up even a
bit more. For starters, pop-up menus that appear when you run over an item like
to linger a bit too long, and they affect gameplay since you cannot see threats
that are coming. Combine this with the design flaw of enemies getting stuck on
the walls, being shot repeatedly in the head without dying and basic rudimentary
physics that just decide to no longer apply.
"Now
that’s a paintball gun."
The game
does allow for some co-op play, but it doesn’t offer anything new or more
rewarding to the whole experience. There is online play, deathmatch sorts of
things, but insanely, the huge levels that are featured in the game are used to
some degree in multiplayer matches, and that includes when only you and a couple
other people are playing. No sort of adjustment, just you, one other person and
miles (or so it feels like) of map. Ok, I’m fibbing a bit, there was no one else
playing … seriously, no one is playing online Damnation; it stinks.
And
mercifully last, the game’s audio is a complete train wreck. Sound effects cut
out, voices don’t match the gender; it’s a nightmare of sound. Our hero’s voice
is trying to sound all Clint Eastwood tough, but in reality its laughable. Other
characters seems to completely forget that they are running around a war zone
with zero inflection in their voice. I know that if I had just dodged death 49
times, I would show some emotion.
|
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Gameplay: 5.0
Moving
around like some sort of spider monkey is the best part of the game, otherwise,
the shooting is stiff, strafing is almost painful, the button configuration was
developed by a chimpanzee on Ritalin.
Graphics: 4.0
Poor A.I.,
poor development of movement, everyone is kind of big and chunky looking – like
one of my son’s Rescue Heroes. Did I mention the framerate sometimes bombs out
and stutters?
Sound: 3.8
Pretty poor
quality control going on here. I suppose a man could sound like a woman
screaming if he was shot, but vice versa?
Difficulty: Hard
Concept: 3.5
Another
example of a good idea that was horribly, horribly mismanaged.
Multiplayer: 2.0
No one is
playing this game online.
Overall: 3.0
Look, I
haven’t played a game like this in a long, long time. I am literally sad because
it seemed like it could have at least been a solid shooter. But it fails on
almost every level.
