My theory is that America and China Expanded their territories when they started colonizing planets.
Cultures that are popular enough get to survive through the diffrent space colonies, hence the Robo Geisha
My theory is that America and China Expanded their territories when they started colonizing planets.
Cultures that are popular enough get to survive through the diffrent space colonies, hence the Robo Geisha
I've resisted the urge to post Warhammer images here to prevent the thread from going off track but... I.... just... can't...
Anyway it kind of makes the whole deep space thing redundant if all the fighting is still being done by old earth governments in earth's orbit. It kind of kills the whole space adventure thing.
Also, it comes off as REALLY on-the-nose because her cyborg eyes give her a honeycomb effect so she looks like she's a set of lacy wings away from turning into a fairy or giant bee?
Gameplay: I hope you guys like never ending hallways with dead end side paths. After this video I'm going back to my original statement of never tapping yellow circle again, I'm fucking done with yellow circles after I popped back in to the Ratman room. This is a fair warning: this video is like 90% walking slowly down coridors and tapping green circles, interspersed with moments of schizo-story insanity.
But fuck yeah, at the 9 minute mark there is a GEISHABOT FITTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTE!!!!!!!!!!!
It is the exact same fight as every other, an empty grid of squares with a single enemy making random movements across a board.
This might be a good time to go in to the combat abilities of this game. The battles are apparently hard coded. Since the game is linear, and since you gain whatever XP the game wants you to per battle, you are left with each mission being tailored by the devs. But this means that instead of having unique and exciting encounters specifically designed to challenge the player, you are left with all enemies having the same abilities (plus one or two unique special), and the only difference is animations and damage. This is conjecture but I would not be surprised if there's just a huge nested if statement for the game itself, and every enemy pulls from the same class that has every ability assigned to every battle:
Take the geisha bot for example. As if this video it can melee attack, fire forward, fire forward and diagonal, and fire an arcing attack (special). Leopards can melee, fire forward, fire forward and diagonal, and throw a grenade (special). Brusiers can do all that, except they have 2 different fire forwards and a 3 square bombardment. But instead of firing a volley of bullets a Geishabot throws some stick, which is both different and challenging I guess.
Because of this, leveling up doesn't mean anything. You can't grind, and you can't be under-leveled. Your special abilities are meaningless because you have effectively infinite tries as you accrue med-kits. You literally can't lose, unless you paid for this game, which I am slowly coming to realize is the real losing move.
Story: For anyone who was worried about Poochy the motorcycle don't, because even though it's dead and not on the screen everyone needs to talk about it still. There's a bunch of gibberish about resetting the server, fighting snow leopards, about how Chessboard is leaving Holiday out of the loop. Oh my goodness, I hope this isn't because The Red Queen Chessboard has secretly become self aware and is taking over the mission! Also, Unknown is now a blank slate bot that is willing to disregard mission orders from the Commander just because another person tells her to. That's real secure, Chessboard.
Quotes:
Amelia: [filtered] We know about everyone else on this mission, but... we don't really know about you Holiday: What would you like to know? Amelia: [filtered] Why'd you bring a motorcycle to a space station? Holiday: WHAT? Amelia: [filtered] Perfectly valid question. Holiday: Hyperion is a 30 million dollar piece of hardware. You can't just park her at a meter and cross your fingers.
Minuete: I'm in command here Holiday. Ok, this is the course of action. We reboot the system, arm the Core and reestablish a satellite link to the Pentagon. Then we bug out and go home. Amelia: Reestablish control how? Minuete: Satellite uplink. It's secured with SSH tunneling protocol. Amelia: Ooohhhhhhh, that's impressive security. You could be handing the keys to anybody! [holy shit this is so fucking bad and so hit and miss on even the world this game takes place in]
Holiday: Unknown. Help me take over the Comm Array. Amelia's right on this one. You know what's even more fun than threatening a helpless nerd? Going guns blazing and taking on an Alpha team, whappity-pow! Unknown: Your point is valid. But, Minuete is commanding officer. Holiday: This isn't about following chain of command like a blind idiot, this is about survival. We make the wrong play, everyone dies. Unknown: Alright.
Combat Tally: 17
Playtime:1:53:36
Aaaaand NOW I'm kind of in my element because if I can sperg hard about anything, it's fast wheeled vehicles. Hyperion's cost for what it is is goddamn insane.
You know what $30 million for motorcycles should pay for? If you gave me that much money and told me to do motorcycle shit, I could fund an entire MotoGP effort with that, and that's basically bike F1: the most expensive, most extravagant, decadent, high-performance expression of motorcycle racing in the entire fucking world. The most expensive single MotoGP bike costs something around...$2.5 million. Which means Hyperion-just ONE Hyperion, which in cutscenes appears to be just a really naff motorcycle-is something like TEN TIMES MORE EXPENSIVE than today's fastest, gnarliest 250-MPH track monsters. You don't put its neato Extreme-G sticky tires on something whose defining feature could be rendered moot by a good enough shot that can snipe the rider right off her mount or, you know, could drop her right off the seat if she loses her footing or something while it's on a wall or upside-down (and you don't not show them off at every opportunity like the rest of your heroine's sci-fi gadgetry, either). Why wasn't this thing a little shuttle or car with nice things like seatbelts, or an actual ruggedized military bike, which should look something like this. And I'm pretty sure one of this dwindling breed is way, way less than 30 mil! 30 million which is now scrap!
...on second thought, maybe 30 mil wouldn't be enough, if only because you'd need a rider who works on a cheap contract, and I don't see contesting well with that kind of incentive...
Remember that old joke about NASCAR: "Oh boy, they're making a left turn!"? That's the feeling I get from this game.
Oh, and someone really should tell Ms. Wu what the Q in QTE stands for.
Gameplay: Guys I'm really not playing here, this game sucks to play. As much shit as I talk about Wu and company, I really wanted to give this game a fair chance because hey, mediocre is still a 8/10 by IGN standards. But as far as gameplay goes this is absolutely abysmal. I don't understand why anything is the way it is. Now I don't believe this is because I'm on a 3rd gen iPad, and if it is my humblest of apologies for being poor, but this is the best example I have.
See all those quick time events I do? Draw squares, trace lines, make a circle? What you're not seeing is a half a second lag behind what my finger actually does. So if I'm drawing a square and I start to overshoot it because my fucking sausage fingers block the view for a second, well I don't know it until half a second after I've started to fucking overshoot the square! THEN I FAIL! Except there is no god damn reason for the QTE in the first place because the only time you can actually fail is in combat and you want to be super extra careful there because if you fuck up it just makes the boring combat take even longer.
During one of the loading screens it is said that Holiday 09 is the highest level Holiday you can get. Which means I'm nearly done with this game, since the XP is hardcoded I know Brianna wouldn't end the game without letting you pick one "super skill" as the choice before the final boss of this dumbass game. I can't wait to see what it is.
Also, great, thanks Giant SpaceKat Games, I sure love QTEs that let me move fucking crates around, where the only penalty in sight is having Holiday shake her head slightly. That's a great use of player interaction. It's almost as if there is no game here at all, but you couldn't justify hiring FOUR people to make a movie so she was all, "oh yeah, make some swipes, do some shit, that way people are even more engrossed in this Nebula-Award winning interactive graphic novel!"
Story: Guys this game is fucking terrible - same rules for judging gameplay apply to story, and after all the reviews I had read talked about the "amazing, engaging story" I actually hoped for something good. But it's so unbelievably bad, it has gone completely to shit. Minuete gets hacked by a Geishabot who jokes about being dressed like a yellow whore and then gets stuffed into a cat suit like she was made of farce (that's a li'l grinder humor for all my sausage making bros). Chessboard has gone rogue. And Minuete has been converted and gone crazypants.
Why is the AI sassy? I mean, throughout the entire game the AI (in all 5 lines or less of dialog) has been cold and informative, and suddenly Chessboard-Geishabot is the Sassmaster of the universe?
Great work on stealing from Resident Evil twice in a single game with the sexy convenient laser beam dodging. It was also really nice to have nothing bad happen when I fail, and I was even given bonus points.
Quotes:
Minuete: You don't seem like any AI I've ever worked with. You're more... frenetic. Crimson 09: Frenetic how? Wow, you've got some nice hardware! Sort of 60's sci-fi, which is great with the little... bug thing you've got going on. Minuete: Yeah. Like that.
Crimson 09: Have you ever been stuck behind someone that doesn't know how to use an ATM? Or been running late, and gotten stuck behind a moron in traffic? That's what it's like, being an AI. Thinking in billions of megaflops a second - held back by GLACIAL human reaction. I can consider countless variables, spending every second of every day calculating the most minute of details. All in the service of some... HUMAN staring at a screen! [HI HARLAN ELLISON!]
Holiday: On the Xiezhi, when you accelerated healing to Val's head wound... how did you do that? Amelia: [filtered] Chessboard nanites operate on a standard frequency. I sent them updated commands. Holiday: Could someone else send them updated commands? Amelia: [filtered] Let's try to be realistic, Holiday. You'd have to have Chessboards master encryption key for that. [The only thing I'm going to say is Frank Wu is Chinese-American so shouldn't he be upset that his people are portrayed as a race of faceless male clones who's entire function is to get kicked in the nuts by waspish, snarky transexuals? Oh... oh wait... I think I understand now...]
Combat Tally: 20
Playtime: 2:15:32
Whats the status on the beers in the fridge? I hacked into the forum and I know where you live. As such, if you are running low, I'll get you some more grog.
Hell, I'll do more then that. I'll send in a calvicade of prostitutes. What? Not into prossies? I'LL SEND IN BIKERS!
Edit: Also! For a FEMINIST game, there sure is alot of ass staring in this!
Crimson 09: Have you ever been stuck behind someone that doesn't know how to use an ATM? Or been running late, and gotten stuck behind a moron in traffic? That's what it's like, being an AI. Thinking in billions of megaflops a second - held back by GLACIAL human reaction. I can consider countless variables, spending every second of every day calculating the most minute of details. All in the service of some... HUMAN staring at a screen! [HI HARLAN ELLISON!]
