Immensely crappy paint jobs aside Summoner 1 quite frankly sucked more than a Dyson that happened to have sucked in about forty other vacuum cleaners. I try and remember the game (one of my first ever PS2 games) and all I get are horrific images of entire cities popping out of the floor, side quests vanishing inexplicably from my journal as I’d spoken to too many people, a cast about as bland as a tasteless ryvita and some of the most bizarre and irritating combat I’ve faced in an RPG. Summoner 2 on the other hand was pretty damn brilliant (hence the delightful illustration above) so here is a little post about them both (ok, ok there was a version on the Gamecube aswell, but a cleverly renamed one so the Cube owners didn’t realize that they’d just been completely ignored by the franchise until right of the end of the consoles lifespan, damn those clever marketing ploys eh?).
This rant is inspired by the fact I officially suck at Zelda: Phantom Hourglass. After much dungeon trawling, frustration at forgetting to save my game and even enlisting the help of a friend to get me past that f**king Temple Of The Ocean King again I have become unstuck once more this time at the boss of the Goron dungeon. After a few defeats I was in DS hurling mode, and having actually sat down and thought about it, I have realized that getting pissed off at games is a fairly new phenomenon for me. Back in my N64 gaming days I would have quite happly endured many hair tearing moments to get 100% of a game and see everything, these days not so much. These days a game is rarely as difficult as games used to be “back in the day” and my approach and style of play has gradually changed over the years as a result of this.
Shivering Isles may not add a great deal in terms of something different to Oblivion, however it does add a heap of extra content, enemies, weapons and some of the more interesting quests to be found in the world of Elder Scrolls so far.
Posted in Update on February 13, 2008 by Mangaminx
Just a quick general update on what I’m currently playing. Oblivion is on the verge of completion but I have been sidetracked by the arrival of KUF:COD (which is a hell of a lot better than the demo version) and non-RPG (yes I do play them) Devil May Cry IV. Oblivion should be wrapped up and my coverage of it shall end with a Shivering Isles review in the near future and it isn’t too long until both Dark Messiah and Lost Odyssey shall be arriving on the blog too. Hopefully Lost Odyssey shall discover a truly memorable JRPG experience and going from the reviews so far it seems to be quite promising on that front.
“Forsooth knave, thou art about as visually appealing as having pins repeatedly stabbed into myne eyes”, is what I would say had I presumably gone mad from listening to all the awful dialogue in Two Worlds. Fortunately I skipped most of and never actually have to listen to it again until I feel the urge to take up the expansion pack, not only is two worlds the worst sounding game I’ve played (non XBL) on the 360 it’s also the worst looking, its so badly put together from a visual and audio perspective that it looks similar to an N64 or early PS2 game (disturbingly it reminded me of the original Summoner). “The “Two Worlds” developers are sheer perfectionists” quips the games website ( http://www.2-worlds.com) when talking about the upcoming patch, excuse me.. are you on crack? Fortunately if you can get past the games massive graphical and sound flaws theres actually some fun to be had here and while Two Worlds certainly deserves to live in the bargin bin, once its there its certainly worth picking up for some short lived RPG entertainment.
I’m going to try and start adding short video clips of games to my blog in the future. They won’t be amazing in quality as I lack the correct equipment for now. However, hopefully it’ll make things a bit more interesting, below is a test video (my girlfreind playing Oblivion).
While I am in the process of slogging through Shivering Isles, Two Worlds and a variety of other things with plenty of new releases on the horizon I thought it best to introduce a new kind of post where I talk about older titles that I simply LOVE. Vampires: Bloodlines has me frantically addicted as I slayed, sucked and seduced my way through the one of the most adult but excellent titles I have ever played. Here are some of the highlights.
Crashing into the UK this February come two new Action heavy RPG titles both of which recently had demos released on live. After taking both for a spin I have a few first impressions of both games so here is how Blue-Side’s Kingdom Under Fire: Circle Of Doom and Ubisoft’s Dark Messiah Of Might And Magic: Elements seem at this point in time.
The RPG Realm 