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?).

Summoner

Now your eyes have gotten over the initial visual trauma of this post have an actual screenshot as a reward.

Heh.. yeh, I know, I know the first picture was better… But anyway, Summoner 1 really did suck, and in fact the only good thing about the game was the fact the combat system was at least vaguely intuitive. Combat would work in an unusual way with various directions on the D-pad corresponding to attacks, your character would hack away at a monster semi-automatically with you using the D-pad at timed intervals to strong together combos that caused more damage. This would have actually been quite fun had it not been for the games staggering difficulty level and major bugs. The game also (while I didn’t complete it) had very little to do in terms of actual summoning and while I did gain various summons along the way they all seemed to be pretty crap and irrelevant. Perhaps Un-Summoner would have been a better title for the game..

The game has (fortunately perhaps) seemed to have vanished into the mists of time with very little to find on it when I searched on the internet (other than archaic reviews) . Some nice soul on youtube has uploaded some ingame footage though so below is how the combat plays out in party mode.

In hindsight I suppose the game is worth digging out off ebay if you fancy a week of mind numbing frustration.

Summoner 2

On the other hand, despite the series disastrous beginnings I still purchased the second installment. Complete with a new cast, new environments, and a new combat system Summoner 2 actually really impressed me from the moment I picked up the demo. Taking the role of queen Maia Summoner 2 introduces you to a world far better looking and far more realized than that of the original. Maia was a far more interesting lead the previous games lead and has the added bonus of not needing a personality transplant. The game also allowed you to play as a substantial cast of characters aiding Maya on her quest all of which were again interesting and varied individuals. This time there wasn’t much Summoning to be done either, but instead Maya could shape shift into various huge creatures allowing her new abilities and skills as she progressed through the game, while again I think the games title was misplaced these creatures were actually useful and added some good scope to the title.

The combat this time round was a satisfying hack and slash style gameplay which while not as unusual as the original games combat style was frankly just a hell of a lot more enjoyable.

Anyway, I’m sleepy, I have games to play and that was a brief little feature on some lesser known PS2 RPG titles. I strongly recommend picking up at least the second game if you haven’t before and giving it a whirl, you may be disappointed of course, but I wasn’t.

(Videos used uploaded to youtube by users LCGame and Beriel1, thanks guys)

Yay for Seth!

Oh right yeh… first impressions..

So while Kingdom Under Fire continues to frustrate me to the point I want to run down to Blue-Side and scream “ITS A SINGLE PLAYER GAME ASWELL YOU IDIOTS” and Devil may Cry IV remains gathering dust after a fantastically fantastic holiday in Brighton coupled with a big workload swallows up any gaming for 7 days something has recaptured my attention. I picked up Lost Odyssey today and after three hours I can say that it’s pretty damn good.. although why oh why do we have to play such a generic emo prettyboy?

Kaim is undoubtedly a little moody because his sword is compensating for something

So far Lost Odyssey has impressed me in two ways. 1) It’s shiny little additions to traditional RPG combat, 2) It’s cast (3) It isn’t the gaming equivalent of paint drying like a certain other Mystwalker title) . JRPG combat seems to really be stuck in a “zomg we can’t think of anymore ideas for combat” rut at present and while Lost Odyssey keeps to the tried and tested formula the little extra things make all the difference. The “ring” system is innovative, reminds me a teeny bit of Shadow Hearts (never a bad thing) and keeps you interested in the combat instead of picking various parts of your body while you wait for your character to run along and whack somebody with a sword. The way the immortal cast members learn skills from their mortal counterparts is also intriguing and once my team flesh about a bit with more members this seems to be something that shall be highly rewarding to explore more.

While this is a short first impressions post I need to take a moment to talk about the cast. Let’s get this straight while Kaim obviously has plenty of time to develop as a character (and hopefully he will), right now the guy is about as charismatic as a head louse with really bad breath and serves purely as the “strong and silent” type cliche. In fact scratch “strong and silent” the guys practically mute unless somebody throttles the answers out of him. Seth and Jansen on the other hand are absolutely fantastic, Jansen is comic gold and his voice actor (english) sounds a bit like James Woods (I’m assuming it isn’t but I’m far too lazy to do my research). There hasn’t been many times I have “lol’d” at a game but so far Jansen has made me do so several time in just three hours. Finally we have the only main female so far Seth, shes fiery, fun, and to be quite blunt pretty damn hot. I won’t rant about how much of a Seth fangirl I am just now, because by the time it comes to me writing a LO review I shall have probably talked (or rather typed) myself hoarse about her.

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.

 One of the key factors in the changing difficulty of games is the ability to save where you like. Older games years ago only ever let you save on completion of a level/dungeon and it was notoriously difficult to reach that goal sometimes. These days players are used to being able to save wherever they like regardless of what is on screen at present. Over on xbox.com I noticed a number of players recently complaining about Mass Effect purely because you couldn’t save during combat and there weren’t enough auto-saves. To me this highlighted just how spoiled we gamers have become from the ability to save where we like as Mass Effect has an incredibly lenient save system compared to older games and for people to be complaining that it wasn’t good enough was to me completely ridiculous. That said, I am just as guilty of being a fan of lenient save systems I clocked up close to 1000 saves in my recent trek through Oblivion and a good few hundred in Mass Effect aswell, how many times did I save in such titles like Ocarina Of Time a few years ago? A damn site less thats for sure. 

 The key question to ask here (as my girlfriend has just pointed out ) is that “Do we really need to save so often”, due to the power of quick-saves we as gamers have heavily abused the feature. Nearly every time I save in a game I don’t die and have no need to ever use that save again (except for the obligatory overwrite when I save .5 seconds later) because of the quick-save feature I no longer trust my abilities like I used to and the idea of *shock* replaying a section of a game aain becomes a horror unlike no other, bound to get my temper flaring. The power to save where we like has corrupted us no end, we don’t need to save every 5 seconds, we can probably complete most games without saving until the end of each section yet we still save away making games that lack a quick save feature seem far more frustrating and difficult than they actually are. What originally seemed like a great idea has heavily changed the way we play our games and view difficulty of games and that in hindsight is quite a bad thing.

So, have games got easier over the years? No, I don’t think so. What has changed however is a gamers approach to games which is almost entirely down to being accustomed to save so that whatever mistakes we make are instantly cancelled out. In some ways, this is of course a good thing, it has probably brought more casual gamers into gaming and opened the market a little to people who just aren’t that good at games as a while. However it is the way we as gamers have abused the save system that has made the differences between games where you can save anywhere and games where you can’t SEEM more apparent, thus making games that do challenge us to risk battling bosses without saving appear more difficult when really they aren’t.

 Apart from Zelda. Zelda’s hard.

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.

Shivering Isles for those who are unaware, takes place in the twisted realms of Madness and Dementia after the Madgod himself Sheogaroth arrives in the existing Oblivion world looking for a champion to fight for his cause. You, of course accept his offer and enter the Shivering Isles, a bizarre world where everyone is most certainly not normal and insanity and paranoia rain supreme. What does Sheogaroth want your help for by the way? To fend off the legions of Juggalog, Daedric Prince of Order who is attacking his realm. As is typical of Oblivion plots it’s a fairly standard fare but throw in some strong characters ( a LOT stronger than the originals cast), a great ending plot twist and a truly original world things rise in quality considerably over the main quest in the original games immersment factor. The main plot of Shivering Isles will have you battling drug addiction, defending forts in epic battles and even laying traps in dungeons to try out on would be adventurers. While some of these quests are generic fetch quests the overall quality of them is arguably the best to be found in the whole game.

Shivering Isles cast as I mentioned before, is also one of it’s stand out points. Sheogorath makes for a colourful lead, leaping about merrily and madly and greeting you with lines about unwinding your intestines and the like. Other prominent cast members worth mentioning are Syl the Duchess of Dementia whose unending paranoia sends you on a rather interesting set of quests, Hasgill the ever polite but mildly sarcastic butler to Sheogorath and the palace guards themselves who are divided into two factions who dislike each other leading to some interesting stories and dialogue. Something Oblivion lacked was a memorable cast and short of Martin and Jauffre they are all instantly forgettable, Shivering Isles does something to remedy this and it makes the game far more enjoyable as a result.

Perhaps the aspect of Shivering Isles I enjoyed the most was the side-quests, it features some highly entertaining ones one of which involving you helping a man kill himself while it still being a surprise to him AND making it look like an accident. It took a great deal of though to get this quest complete and it was a lot of fun actually achieving completion of it too. Shivering Isles most certainly features some of the most innovative sidequests to grace an RPG and are well worth taking a break from the achivement ridden main plot to investigate.

There are certainly some complaints to be levered at Shivering Isles too though, some borderline game breaking bugs have still survived unpatched and it took me 10 goes to actually get the games main cities to load without crashing (a commonly reported bug when the game launched). When it did finally work, the game didn’t crash again, but it can be majorly off-putting to crash the first time you try and enter the place where the games main plot kicks off. The frame-rate in general seemed to be choppier once I got to Shivering Isles too. While the original wasn’t perfect the slowdown in Shivering Isles was painfully noticeable at times and something that still needs fixing.

Also while Shivering Isles does add plenty of new quests, some of them quite brilliant it still is essentially “more of the same” and if you played all the way through Oblivion you may be sick of the game by now and not enjoy this at all. While it was undoubtedly a great expansion I am certainly all Oblivioned out after playing Shivering Isles and I’m glad my month and a half long trek through the Elder Scrolls IV and all it’s expansions is at an end.

Oh and finally what idiot thought it was a good idea to make you play (or at least reload a saved game) Shivering Isles twice to get all the 360 achievements??? I may be an RPG fanatic but I’m certainly not a masochist.

Anyway, as you can probably tell despite some bugs and me suffering from Oblivion burnout Shivering Isles is fantastic and if you liked Oblivion your sure to love this, just maybe space out playing it a bit more than I did!

Overall Score: 8.5/10

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.

Two Worlds dumps you into the boots of bounty hunter who’s disturbingly large breasted and scantily clad sister has been kidnapped by some seedy hooded guys with no faces which sets him off on a quest to save her. It’s not the most original of storylines and it fails to be so at any point in the plot, you will spend most time in the game doing sidequests as the main story is pretty brief (probably about 4 hours game time max) and the only way of levelling up to do it is to kill monsters and do sidequests. So your character sets forth into the world to bash many wolves with their combat method of choice and spend lengthy periods of time trapsing through empty blocks of terrain getting to new locations. You go to a town, do the sidequests in it (some are simple, some a bit more involved), kill some baddies and level up so your high enough to do the appropriate main plotline bits. It’s simple, and actually quite oddly compelling, in a similar way to how Diablo is compelling in its endless repetition of the same formula Two Worlds as a hack and slash rpg with a few quests is actually pretty entertaining. Forget plot, forget compelling stories what we have here is a straightforward formula to make your guy powerful and find “ph4t l3wt” as people used to say back when I played Everquest. If this sounds boring to you, stay well away as you will probably have more fun stapling your hand to a keyboard than playing two worlds if you dislike simple hack and slash with a pretty dull plot guiding it.

The levelling up and skill tree system is one of the meatier bits of Two Worlds, you can spend points in skills (Diablo style) to get more impressive versions of exsisiting abilities and also find trainers in the world to help you unlock new skills. When you level up or complete quests you get a number of bonus skill points to spend along with points to raise your abilities. You will certainly need them too, as Two Worlds while fairly unforgiving in that when you die you respawn a few feet away will kill you a lot. The last two bosses alone killed me about 20 odd times between them (a process that began to get irritating after a while ) and it took every ability I had unlocked in my 40 levels to actually defeat them without embedding my fist in the TV. Yes be warned that even on easy Two Worlds is frustratingly unforgiving at times and unless you really are a king and queen of grinding you will spend a fair bit of time running circles round monsters shoving weapons up their bums or running away from monsters spontaniously turning to blast them with a spell. There a fairly large amount of differing enemies to run away or around in the game from weakling wolves and run of the mill orcs to huge big fire breathing dragons, demons and stone golems all of whom can have you in pieces around the landscape in under five seconds. Lovely.

Graphical, technical (the games frame rate is awful) and sound issues aside, the other main hinderance to Two Worlds being “good” rather than “fun but mediocre” lies in the fact developers Reality Pump have made a huge world perhaps comporable in size to Oblivions but promptly not put enough content in the game to actually fill the world or even make reaching level 50 a really credible option. To begin with youll be overwhelmed in fairly entertaining side quests but the further south you go the less likely you are to find much to do other than wander aimlessly occasionally being killed by huge enemies. The game world feels empty and lifeless at times, but satisfying and deep at others. The developers seriously needed to put more content into the game to improve the experience for those who play till near the end. The variety of environments (the desert and chinese style town in particular were refreshingly different and fun) just about makes up for this error but it’s certainly still noticable.

To sum up Two Worlds is a game I enjoyed, but a far from perfect one. It was more fun than the considerably more polished Blue Dragon, however it is technically awful and only lasted about 15 hours or so to play through (granted I didnt do everything). What Reality Pump have produced is an RPG that will appeal to hradcore fans of PC RPG’s of the past, but not really to anyone new.

Overall Score 5.5/10

Oh and after watching the final baddie die this is the games end sequence.

Yeh, crap isn’t it?

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.

Troika games did fail quite miserably at removing the bugs from Bloodlines, the game was possibly one of the most unstable I have ever played before patches, and this evidently put a lot of people off. Patched however, this game is a masterpiece, arguably finer than anything Bioware themselves have put together and thankfully one thing Troika did manage to put across well in the game is a living breathing vampire filled city with excellent quests, characters and atmosphere. For those unaware, Bloodlines begins by dumping you in bed with a guy or girl who has just decided to take a huge chunk out your neck. Throws of passion? No.. you’ve been made a vampire and seeing as in the vampire world you need permission from your leaders to do so you’ve been made a vampire illegally too. La Croix and his heavy mob rule the undead side of the city and following the swift execution of the guy or girl who “turned” you, La Croix sets you to work in your new undead body paying off your debt to him for letting you live.

Thus opens up the city and its four equally twisted and depraved areas filled with copious amounts of violence and sexual content as you pursue your destiny. Bloodlines will have you doing some pretty grim things as you hack your way through your enemies, drain the blood of innocents and (assuming your an attractive breed of vampire) flirt with everything that moves.

Bloodlines has many memorable moments and characters, and (judging by the vast amount of semi-nude wallpapers and disturbing cosplay that google image search turns up) Jeanette is probably one of the key cast members. Shes probably popular not only because there’s a fairly disturbing schizophrenic side to her which results in a brilliant plot twist, but also as she flirts with you regardless of gender repeatedly. Its worth noting that despite the fact nearly the entire cast of Bloodlines seem to have some kind of interest in your character the most you actually get in terms of sexual content is gnawing on the necks of hapless humans or some Fable-esque black screens with obligatory moans. It certainly isn’t anywhere near as edgy in terms of sexual content as it thinks it is and Mass Effect shows a damn site more flesh.

Anyway Jeanette (who owns a night club) and her sister Therese are the plot-lines responsible for dumping you in one the scariest and most memorable quests ever to grace a video game. I have yet to see a game pull off a poltergeist so convincingly, but when your running along a hall with a ghost ripping up floorboards behind you and reading about severed heads being found in washing machines just as the washing machine next to you springs to life its genuinely scary. The ghost house is one of the few scary moments in Bloodlines but alone it manages to be one of the most terrifying moments in gaming ever.

The above screenshot is from another brilliant quest, a side quest this time. Being the fairly beauteous (albeit half dead looking) Tremere breed vampire that I was I leapt at the chance to take part in a magazine photoshoot when asked too! However, you soon find out the cameraman is a serial killer and under the studio are lots of little rooms where he has dismembered people and presumably eaten bits of them. Lovely. The ultimate justice of course is beating him to death with one of the severed limbs he himself left behind. In hind-site and looking back at this quest it was probably one of the most exciting sidequests I had completed in a long time and a genuine surprise the guy was such a nutcase.

Some of the games finest moments take place towards the latter part in Chinatown. The introduction of a demonic breed of Chinese vampire more unpleasant than anything else in the game leads to some triad style gunfights mixed in with all the bloodsucking. One of the final moments of the main story has you (should you make certain decisions in the main plot) battling the tentacled queen of the Chinese vampires in a lengthy and epic battle. This boss fight sticks in my head purely as it was so damn difficult. The queen produces mini slimey versions of herself and eventually even splits in half giving you so many targets to fight. I remember frantically running around using vampire powers to slow time repeatedly and madly hacking at her with my katana. Difficult, yet at the same time epic and a stark contrast to most of the games earlier, simpler battles.

In amongst all the amazing quests there are however some flaws to the game. The shooting side of the gameplay which sometimes pits you against many enemies at once can be frustrating as its difficult to focus on both being good with weapons and guns and being a badass time bending seductress of evil. The combat for me at least felt pretty unbalanced at times and frustratingly difficult after I got dusted for an umpteenth time. That said, this is only a minor complaint for those who are more combat focused in their breed and attacks things are probably easier, and the superb narrative and interaction with the world more than make up for any flaws.

Anyway, there’s my mini rant on the awesomeness of Bloodlines! Hope you enjoyed it and I highly recommend checking it out.

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.

Pointlessly long titles aside, lets first take a look at Blue-Side’s effort. The Korean developer has abandoned the RTS/RPG hybrid of its Xbox editions of the franchise and has instead plumped for an all out action-RPG, reminiscent of the Diablo games, but much, much better looking. The demo of the game allows us to step into the boots of two of the games playable cast (obviously there are more in the full version) and proceed to hack through legions of creatures in a beautiful forest area, and a not so beautiful forest area. Combat pretty much entails whacking away with your blades, occasionally sending yourself hurling into the undergrowth by mistake, and afterwards picking up all the crap the enemies drop and moving on to the next bunch. While it isn’t amazingly executed its enjoyable enough for a fan of a bit of hack and slash and it was fairly satisfying to level up and play through the demos two stages.

Circle Of Doom also has some seriously weird stuff going on too. At the end of each of the stages, my character reached a clearing where they could shop and customize items with a God/Goddess of a variety of types (I saw Love, Greed and Death), at this point your character can also sleep and proceed to have some seriously trippy dreams that I can only suppose are meant to semblance something of a plot. I picked emo-kid Leinhart to play who (baring in mind I have NO prior knowledge to the series) seemed to be a vampire of sorts. His cut-scenes seemed to involve being groped by some elf woman in a ridiculously revealing outfit who suddenly turned into an old man and.. well… things got a bit complicated after that and the second and third dream sequence left me wondering if the designers were on crack. Hopefully it’ll all make sense when I buy the game, but for now the storyline verdict is “huh”?

All in all Circle of Doom proved to be entertaining if a little basic and weird from demo alone I give it a 6/10. Not bad, not good, just average. Oh and for the love of God people stop it with the tiny text in games, even in HD I couldn’t see the bloody writing in this demo without a high powered telescope.

Next up is Dark Messiah which featured in my most anticipated RPG’s of the year, and also unfortunately appears to be under the delusion that every-ones TV set has the surface area of the moon. Infuriatingly tiny text aside I must say I love Dark Messiah, I’ve played the demo about seven times all the way through, and its ridiculously fun and violent combat carries it superbly. Lets face it story wise it’s probably going to suck more than being unfortunate enough to get in the way of a backfiring enema but combat wise its refreshingly new, different and challenging to be well worth a shot.

The demo sees our hero (whos class you choose but little else), going through the tutorial as his master instructs him. It’s rather creepy as your master isn’t with you and seems to be communicating to you in a “voices in your head” kind of way, encouraging you to kick people off cliffs or onto spikes etc.. . Fortunately it’s a game and not real and the protagonist doesn’t actually go and need to seek psychiatric help. ANYWAY, the demo basically has you kicking, impaling, bludgeoning and crushing your way through a temple and in the end fighting a giant spider. Its fairly textbook level design and exploring gameplay but the excellent combat more than compensates so  it’s a nice cuddly decent 8/10 for the Dark Messiah demo!

On another note and slightly of topic, why the hell is nearly everything I want to purchase come out in February? These two titles both land that month as does Lost Odyssey and Devil may Cry 4! Heck even Too Human is slated for a release in February.. but I suppose at least that’ll be postponed.. to.. oh I don’t know.. 2010?

Today I do a mini-rant on sidequests, an RPG staple.

I consider myself a bit of a side-quest addict when playing an RPG I take it upon myself to do just about every single side quest I can and will search frantically for them before even touching the main quest if possible. Fortunately in the modern world of RPG’s the side quest has become a many complex thing with some side quests being more fun and involved than a games overall plotline, but even in games like Mass Effect or Two Worlds where the side quests are fairly dull and unrewarding I end up doing them.

Side quests can be broken down into several varieties, the simple “explore and kill”, “explore and collect item” and the JRPG style “complete a 500 floor optional dungeon”. What matters is how these quests are executed and the storylines driving them along with the twists and turns to these mini stories. Looking back into older RPG titles you can see how the most basic versions of these side quests have evolved into increasingly complex and involving quests in recent years. Playing titles such as Diablo II, or some of the Kings Quest games give a good idea of how basic side quests can be while when you look at something like Oblivion you can see how complex and involved they can be.

On the subject of Oblivion what you have in my opinion is some of the greatest side quest ever created in a video game, unfortunately these take place at the cost of the main story but hey they are still shining examples of gameplay. The Theives Guild and The Dark Brotherhood plotlines in Oblivion stand out more than any previous games side quests as being the best there is. Quests such as “WhoDunit?” and “Boots Of Springheel Jack” in particular remain in my mind as fantastic examples of storytelling inside a simple side quest both operating off one of the simple premises of “explore and kill”/ “explore and collect item”.

JRPG’s of course have their own brand of side quests more along the lines of “optional content” really than anything hugely plot driven. There’s always the optional massive dungeon with super loot and enemies to beat should you be a masochist or have too much time on your hands. There’s also the quite often occurrence of a trade chain where you trade items from person to person to receive a super mega item at the end. Now while I love sidequests I rarely enjoy JRPG ones, they demand a HUGE time sink and often replaying a game (something which I rarely do) not only that but they are rarely as involving as their western counterparts.

For a side quest to be fun it needs to be short (15-20mins at most), involving and be a challenge without being too difficult. A truly good side quest will have you think things through, investigate thing thoroughly but ultimately won’t be too straightforward or too frustrating. In my honest opinion the only game I have played so far with perfect sidequests is Oblivion but hopefully this year shall deliver a lot more.