My husband knows this about me. Other people (like him) live for that new experience feeling, that rush you get when you are trying something you have never tried before. That is what compels them to buy game after game after game, wading through a sea of mediocrity to find the rare gems of "playable" games (and that's not even mentioning how infrequently actual GOOD games come along).
Me, on the other hand...well, I like to stick with what I know. When I pop a Bethesda game into the Xbox, I don't have to worry about whether or not I am going to enjoy myself; if I am going to have difficulty with the control scheme or get too frustrated to continue....I know that I am going to get the most out of my play time, without that annoying learning curve.
But occasionally Mike will fear that I am falling into a gaming rut, which admittedly I am prone to do (I have a default of about six games), so he will bribe, coerce, threaten, or cajole me into giving a new game an honest shot and I can find no good reason to dodge his efforts. The latest of his persuasive interest is "Captain America: Super Soldier".
Before I start talking about it.....No, I have not finished this game yet. As it is, I am trying to put the kids down for nap and they do much better when I have nothing on the TV, with the notable exceptions of Oblivion and Fallout 3--those were the games that I played while enduring long, sleepless nights with them as newborns, and I believe the soundtracks are now soothing for them. Back to my original thought, no--I have not finished; I am in the process of finishing it (or at least, I am currently playing it--not many games get the honor of completion from me), but I am writing prematurely for a purpose:
Impressions of a game change the further you get into them. What may have once been novel combat may become repetitive; engaging storyline may begin to lose steam; or fun side missions could lose their luster. Of course, it goes both ways--some games that start out quite rough (like the tedium of the extended vault tutorial in "Fallout 3") give way to unequivocally enjoyable experiences. That being said, I would like to map my own impressions of the Captain America game as I am going through it so that I can get a tangible overarching opinion instead of a "well, now that THAT'S over..." final parting thoughts.
Once again, I wandered off on my own tangent. It's my blog, I can do what I want--deal with it =P
I all ready know how Mike feels about this game. He has completed it, and written a review of it (which can be found here http://www.mikescomicblog.com/2011/07/captain-america-super-soldier-video.html). Though he is a particular softie when it comes to comic book games, forgiving to the point of stubbornly overlooking their faults, he acknowledged this was not a perfect game. Better than some, absolutely worth the experience, but not an amazing or outstanding game by any stretch of the imagination. Which led me to the thought...why on earth would he be so determined for me to try it?
Admittedly, one of the six staples in my aforementioned cache of games is "Batman Arkham Asylum", and the parallels between that game and this one have been drawn very boldly by every reviewer that I have bothered reading. Logic dictates that if I heartily enjoyed a game that I would probably get some pleasure out of a copycat, even if it is not as much.
What surprised me is that though I concede that Batman: AA is undoubtedly the better of the two games, there are many aspects of Captain America: SS that I actually prefer to AA.
For example: the combat scheme is remarkably similar between the two games, BUT Arkham Asylum plays up the stealthy aspect of the character, while Super Soldier feels no such obligations. Because of this, Cap feels more powerful, more invincible since he can take a much greater beating than Batman and still come up swinging. That is not to say that the combat in SS is better than that of AA; it just provides for a different feel. Batman is able to focus more on the suspenseful, while Cap feels more like a tank.
I also prefer Cap's tactical vision or whatever it was dubbed over that of Batman's detective mode. One of my complaints about AA was that they had such beautiful, carefully crafted environments that rewarded long-term comic fans, but much of it was wasted because having detective vision on was so much more convenient and made gameplay more fluid. The tactical vision is on for a brief moment (maybe a little too brief for my tastes, but not unusably), and then it flashes back to normal vision with glowing directives left behind. With this method, you lose none of the visuals of the game or the direction of the special sight. Granted, the scenery of Cap is much more bland and unexciting than that of the prison island of Batman, but the thought is still there.
Obviously I realize that Sega had a bit of an upper hand and could re-imagine the parts of AA that they did not enjoy when making SS. But they also had less time, so it sort of all evens out in the end.
Moving away from the similarities between the two games now.
Collectibles.
Mike (and probably most gamers) were not impressed with this part of the Captain America game. There are tons of ceramic eggs, film reels, dossier folders, beer steins, Prussian Stahlhelms, statues, and schematics littered throughout the environment, glowing to distract the eye just in case you missed a few. Sure, they offer you additional intel points which you can use to purchase upgrades...but my experience thus far as shown that upgrades are almost entirely worthless, so why artificially extend game play by hunting down hundreds of these baubles?
For me, just because it is one of the most fun elements of the game.
I don't know why--maybe it is the pack rat in me that likes amassing tons of shit I don't need. I had a funny thought of Cap trying to sneak around enemy encampments jangling like a sack full of silverware because he is so weighted down with all these things....but the way I figure it, someone put the extra time and effort into writing Zemo's diary entries and animating the film reel mini stories, so the least I can do is listen. Not surprisingly, they are quite enjoyable to listen to, in my opinion. They give insight into what was going through the developers' minds as they made this game, and it builds suspense for a story that I would otherwise not give a crap about. Not to mention the obvious benefit that it breaks up the combat so that it is not constantly fight after fight, which would have broken the game for me.
The platforming, or what there is of it, sort of frustrates me.
I don't really care for platforming in any game except Sonic (and even my love for Sonic is growing stale of late). Michael will disagree with me, but I just do not see the fun in jumping from place to place like a monkey scurrying along treetops. It doesn't make me feel badass, it makes me feel ridiculous and frustrated; especially when you fall time and time again and this is the only way out of this area.
Luckily, what platforming there is in Super Soldier is very forgiving--it is almost more of a timed button sequence than actual genuine platforming, but as I completely disregard the games prompting to "push A now", I feel it is more in my control than it would have led me to believe. The only truly frustrating part to me is how scripted it feels--you don't direct Cap on the path where he should go; he just simply follows the line drawn for him from point A to point B (no matter how convoluted or curvy that path may be). Because of this unusual design decision, you cannot jump onto the path anywhere except for the one predetermined area, which you are coerced to do if you want to proceed with the game.
The other problem I have with the platforming element is that it restricts your mobility in every part of the game except those places where the extra agility flair could be utilized, which is baffling. For example, why can I vault so gracefully over a short balcony, but later cannot vault over an even lower stair railing? Or why can I clamor up one freight car, but not another one the same size and half an inch away? Mike said that developers don't want to waste time animating something to be interactive when it does not enhance the gameplay or the player's experience in any way, which I can understand and respect, but it really takes me out of the game. I don't like feeling limited, and it is harder for me to immerse myself in a character if the rules aren't consistent.
The other thing that bothers me is another consistency problem--sometimes, a hit will feel solid, feel great. You can believe that you are a super badass when kicking a HYDRA agent hard enough to break ribs. But other moves feel much less impressive, more of a pissy slap fight or half-mast punch than that real strong flesh-to-flesh connection. Maybe it's because I turn the vibration off (it is an unpleasant element in gaming that I wish they would do away with all together), but with Batman (I know, I said I was done harping on about their similarities--I lied) every hit felt as powerful as the last; in Captain America, some of the attacks feel so half-assed.
All in all, I think I am going to keep going with playing the game. There are some minor quibbles I have, but nothing that makes it unplayable or even unenjoyable. Maybe my opinions will change as I get further in, but these are my initial impressions, how it feels to me thus far.
Time for toodle-oo's!!
~Andie~
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