Game C1 : Blood Omen - Crushing my Soul

First of all, sorry about the slow posting. I've been away from my keyboard for a few days for health matters which are solved right now. So I'm back in the game!

Being in the hospital didn't delay my Blood Omen playthrough, though. I switched the game on my PSP, and kept on playing. However, I'm really starting to doubt of my ability to finish this game...

I'm utterly stuck right now. I've been to a lot of places, gaining new powers, securing access to the Soul Reaver, which I can only imagine is the best sword of the game, considering it's the name of the direct sequel (and considering it's a badass sword). I have really gained in experience, life and magic bars and so forth (and finally changing my status from "Whelp" to "Gimp"... way to make me feel better, thanks)

My major problem is that I think I experienced some kind of a bug that prevents me from going any further. I've seen a huge graphical glitch after visiting a village, basically turning the whole game into some kind of pixel vomit. I went to save anyway, but curiously all the areas I crossed while the glitch was going on had its doors closed, with (apparently) no way of getting them opened again...

Then again, I'm not sure about it, but the doubt is lurking in the shadow right now : have I made the game unwinnable? It's definitely a possibility when I see the lack of polish the overall experience had shown so far...

So, right now, I'm roughly 10 hours in, and I'm wondering if I should start the whole thing again. My first playthrough is now a total waste, though, considering I'm more familiar with the whole game mechanics, I know where things are, and so forth, but I'm really doubting I want to slog through a few areas another time...

On one side, I'd really like to just put a (harsh) COWARD rating on this game and skip to Resident Evil 2, on the other side, experiencing failure to complete a game so soon in the course of this blog is a bit humiliating... I'll keep you posted.

Game C1 : Blood Omen - Rise to Power

Kain journal entry 3 : Following once more the advice from Ariel the ghost, I gained access to Malek's bastion. The Serafan proved himself to be a dreadful enemy. Rendered invincible by the powers of the Nine, the fiend finally had the upper hand, having me flee for the first time since the beginning of my quest. I knew the only way I had to get to the end of my quest, which was the destruction of the Nine, went through the obliteration of this sorry excuse for a Paladin. I then sought once again the advice from Ariel, which in her turn, oriented me to ask my questions to the Oracle. I kept on eastward after Malek's Bastion, and explored the labyrinth of caves where the Oracle was hiding. After more fierce battles, I gained the information I was looking for. The only vampire ever to have vanquished the Serafan in battle, Vorador, was resting in a mansion hidden in the middle of the Termagent Forest. Strange place for a vampire, the Termagent Forest and its swamp-like ground was a deadly trap for our kind. I had no choice however, and I left the Oracle in order to continue my quest...

If the entries are becoming more and more confusing, I'm sorry but I'm trying my best. I found a Game Script online because I really felt I was missing a lot of things from my difficulties to understand all the informations told to me. And right I was! There is definitely much more story to discover : The love story between Ariel the ghost and Nupraptor, Ariel's passing and Nupraptor descend into madness, which would lead to the corruption of the Nine, and so forth...

Ok now, you have it. I'm still having a lot of troubles with the gameplay, but I definitely want to see this story unfold to the end... It's frustrating to see what this game is and what it could have been... I think the Legacy of Kain series would be much more in the light nowadays if the games had been just a bit more thoroughly tested and tried before release, but then again, it's the case of a lot of IPs...

Drinking blood from a distance is still funny-looking though...

Now my major concern is the difficulty curve. You can cross a long cakewalk where every enemy falls easily and where there is a lot of blood to drink (your main health source), then explore a cavern or a dungeon where you get your ass kicked a lot of times before being able to progress. The graphics complexity is still an issue too, with a few times where I turned around a lot before being able to find where to go next.

I've gained access to a lot of new funny items, including one that make my enemies rot in a few seconds, or another one that stops time, allowing me to feast on them while they're powerless. Every new item is introduced in a sadistic way by the voice over, and a few of the descriptions are really fun to hear (always in a dark way of course). I have gained the Mist form too, which is great because it makes you impossible to hit with physical attacks, while consuming a great deal of magic.

I have secured a new weapon too, which is a pair of axes. It's a great weapon as it allows you to slash your way through the enemies ranks. However, it forbids you to use magic while using them. With the choices of weapons comes another problem. You have to switch from the axes to the mace really often (the mace is useless in battles, except against humans, but it allows you to break walls and pillars where you can find useful items). And when you switch, you have to go to the inventory menu (4 seconds loading), switch weapons (1 second when you know where it is) and go back to the game (another 4 seconds). 9 seconds don't seem like a lot, but when you have to switch weapons 12 times on the same screen to be efficient in battle (and if you're not efficient, your health meter drops fast), it can be REALLY bothersome...

I've learned to hate this word with my whole soul.

On the plus side, I have to correct one of the fears I had when starting the game. It is not a corridor. You have sufficient opportunities to get back on your tracks in order to find new areas as soon as you have access to a new power. The game opens up quite fast and it's fun to backtrack and see what I've missed. I can find more life and more magic this way, which makes the continuation of the main quests easier. It's really a good thing and makes the whole experience feel more like a RPG than in the beginning of the game where it felt more like a (poorly executed) action game. Some places are really dark and pleasant to explore, too.

Malek, I simply loooove what you did with your interior, you should come to redecorate my place!

So I'll keep going. My rise to power is more and more exhilarating, and the (soon-to-be) great vampire Kain is getting more powerful by the minute. With more than 700 kills and 200 mutilations, the game still calls me a "Whelp", though, so it's beginning to be a little insulting. Masses will fear me I tell you! If I can get pass the loading screens, that is...

Game C1 : Blood Omen - Vampiric gameplay

Kain journal entry 2 : The first of my enemies has fallen. The Mentalist Nupraptor, former lover of the ghost Ariel, was well hidden in his skull-shaped retreat far above the city of Vasserbunde. I bested his traps and took his head after a fierce battle. Seeing the severed head of her beloved, Ariel acknowledged that my first mission was a success. In order to proceed, however, I had to take down Malek, ghost paladin and defender of the Nine. Probably a more fearsome foe than the crippled old man I had faced to restore the first pillar...

This game is weird. I'm still not sure if it's a great game or if the recurring glitches just ruin the experience. My major fear about it being a 40-hours long corridors has proven to be unfounded. There is still room for exploration and you have a bit of backtracking to do when you gain access to a weapon or a power in order to find hidden places and secrets.

The human disguise has proven itself useful and I'm now able to cross villages unharmed and talk to people instead of murdering them. Granted, they seldom have something interesting to say, but it's a relief not to have to fight my way through every screen numerous times (a lot of slain enemies just respawn when you leave the screen, which is always a great thing for immersion...)

The huge game world is slowly revealing itself.

The writing is nice, there is a few cult lines (e.g : "In life, I would not have graced this place with my presence. In death, I was merely adding to the stench") and the voice acting, even if it's a bit on the over-acted side, is pleasant enough. The setting is great too, especially when you come back to Coorhagen, Kain's hometown, to see it ruined by plague.

I consider the "Bring out your dead!" dude a serious Monty Python reference.

The powers are interesting and you gain access to them in a timely manner. I now have some kind of force-field that can send magic back to their casters, which is great because most of the time it's really hard to avoid the seeking projectiles, and is mandatory to cross a lot of screens filled with spell-casting enemies. I have finally found another weapon, which is a mace, and a blessing when dealing with human enemies : I can now stun them and quietly drink their blood, renewing my own health bar. I have items that slow time, burst enemies or cure poison, it's an overall much more solid gameplay now than at the beginning of the game, and every reward makes your character more powerful.

So what's the problem then? Well the game is crippled with little glitches that stain the whole experience. First of all, the graphics are not really clear and more than once I just ended up running in circles because I hadn't seen a door or switch hidden is the complex wall textures. The voice acting is great but there is no subtitles and it happens to sometimes be a challenge, considering I'm not a natural-english speaker. The writing is verbose enough and I sometimes simply don't get what it's told, even if my english understanding is usually pretty good. Another example of these times where game developers were so proud of their full-voiced games they didn't thought of putting subtitles (Trick, I understand what you felt through Mortville Manor even if Blood Omen voice synthesis is far better...) The loading screens can be overwhelming, making you wait a few seconds for every screen change, or when you want to access the menu, or when you change shape, or when you switch weapon, or when you pick your nose.

Ow come on!!! I had this screen half a second ago!

And I wanted to insist on the fact that I'm playing the game on my PS3, which the game nicely stored on my hard drive, so I guess the loading times are a bit reduced compared to the original CD version. I think this game destroyed a few CD lenses with constant data access every time you do something...

But the worse glitch concerns the battles and overall action sequences. The hit-recognition has proven itself a real pain. You can easily be trapped between two enemies and a spiked floor and just bouncing stupidly between their hits, incapable of doing anything and going from a full health bar to near-death in a matter of seconds. Granted, it works both ways and you often can easily kill a stupid enemy who just stands there and wave his sword at the air, incapable of hitting you... The first boss battle was a good example of that : the pattern is interesting, you have to make your way through a lot of magical bullets before being able to get close enough to the dude to hit him, and you're supposed to be able to hit the bullets. It's a good idea and nice change of the hack and slash pattern, but it's ruined by hit-recognition making the bullets near impossible to hit and making it harder than it should be...

As I've mentioned before, you can switch shape to a wolf and be faster and more powerful for a period of time. However, the wolf sprite is much larger than your usual form and some narrow paths are just impossible to negotiate without getting hit a few times by traps or spiked floors... I'll stop rambling about it but you got the point that this game is kind of ruined by little things that could have been avoided with a bit more testing before releasing it...

The bar on the left shows the number of pillars I have to repair : I think I'm not done with this game yet.

But I want to keep playing it. The setting and writing more than makes up for these problems and I want to know how the story goes. I want to know what powers I'll gain afterwards and what's hidden is the depths of the world map. Kain is a great character and I want to know the next steps in his rise to power. I just wished the gameplay itself would be less of a mess.

Game C1 : Blood Omen - Our darkest hours

Kain journal entry 1 : My journey started where most end : by death. I was brutally slain by robbers in the darkness of the night. My soul couldn't find peace, though, and when the Necromancer Mortanius came to me to offer me my revenge, I didn't think it through and grabbed my chance. Now I'm cursed. Cursed with the gift of a sub-life, constantly relying on drinking blood to survive. The robbers didn't stand a chance against me and it was pretty quick till I killed them all, however it didn't end here. I've met a ghost, Ariel, keeper of the balance at the Nine Pillars of Nosgoth. She told me the Circle of the Nine, guardians of the Pillars, had become corrupted and that their lives must be ended. It will be a long road until the sun rises and I finally find peace.


After my first two hours through the world of Nosgoth, I confess I'm a bit at loss at what to think of the game for now. It obviously has a lot going for it. The setting is interesting, the voice acting is quite good (especially Kain's voice, that comment on a lot of things. I especially like how happy he looks when he discover another way to dismember or make exploding his enemies), and I'm pretty sure the quest's gonna be a long one. However, there is a few little things that really pull me out of the game sometimes.

First of all, the camera-handling is quite weird. The game is viewed from a top-down perspective, similar to A Link to the Past (in the way it shows different levels of elevation, opposite to The Legend of Zelda, which is all on one level), and you can choose between two zoom levels. The first one is really close, and the camera readjust itself each time you turn around, to show a bit more in the direction your character is facing. It makes sense because you couldn't see anything is Kain was centered all the time, but it's not handled well and takes a while to get used to. The other one is just too far away to see anything correctly, even on a large TV set...

Next thing : the game is DARK. And I mean it. Playing the game with your curtains opened while it's only mildly grey outside is really difficult, and while there exists a spell to procure some more light, it can be too much at times. I juggled with the Gamma controls of my TV to see if I could make it clearer (especially when trying to catch screenshots) but it jumps immediately from too dark to too bright. Well, it adds to the overall ambiance so I'll go with it.

Broad daylight. Yes. Makes sense for a vampire game, though...

The biggest of my concerns, though, is that gameplay for now doesn't seem that interesting. Nosgoth seems to be a really huge place, considering the size of the world map, but my experience so far resumed to walking a long path, with very little room for exploration. Sometimes, I stumble on a cave where I can get a new power, or on a village where I can slaughter everybody, and... that's about it, I'm back on my path to the next point of interest. There is very little interaction with the world except pushing switches to open door and killing people.

However, I've just stumbled on a power to disguise me as a human in the last town I went through, and I can now finally talk to people (before sucking their blood). I'm not sure if it's gonna change a lot of things (there is no dialogue options and people just ramble on the same random subjects) but it's a nice touch, especially considering you couldn't do it for the first two hours of playing.

Nothing spells "Dark Gothic" like ominous german-sounding town names...

I think the game is only bound to get more interesting, though. I find new powers often, which give me nice options to move (I can now change into a wolf and jump on places I couldn't reach before) or to kill people (which is great because a lot of basic enemies can take a while to kill with your weapon). I'm just a bit disappointed there is no real interaction with the world, quests per say (except the main "kill the nine bad guys" quest) or puzzles other than finding the right switch.

Well, I'm only two hours in, though, so I'll definitely keep playing to see if it becomes more fulfilling. I think it's a long game, so I just hope I'm not in for a forty-hour ride on the same path (Final Fantasy XIII already made me do that, and it was nicer-looking).

Granted, there is not a lot of games that have a "Mutilations" counter and call you a whelp at the same time.

Finally, before moving on, a word on the setting. I think the developers were trying too hard to get an adult world. It works well with Kain himself, which is a properly tortured anti-hero, and it's always nice to simply slaughter an entire village just because you can. On the other side, including brothels just for the sake of it might have been shocking in 1996, but doesn't really hold well today, especially when there are not so many places you can enter (and considering you can't do a lot of things in these places, slaughtering people in a brothel is not that different than doing it in a tavern or a house, except for the red carpets...)

I'll just settle in this nice-looking inn and... wait... what?

On the same note, having 90% of the female villagers telling you "Nights can be pretty cold around here, stranger, maybe I can do something to help you through it" lacks a bit of finesse... Well, it's not that video games have always been oriented toward female gamers anyway. And 1996 was the year we were all exposed to Lara's polygonal boobs, so maybe this game is not the worst example of video games finesse either...

About my progress in the game, I've found a few powers, including the one to shapeshift into a wolf or a human (the most interesting feature so far), I can throw fireballs, which is great because long-range enemies are becoming more and more common, and I've stocked on a few special weapons for difficult battles. I hope I haven't missed anything to upgrade my weapon because I'm not doing too much damage right now and the more basic enemy can take as much as 10 hits to kill (which is sometimes cumbersome because the hit recognition is not top-notch either). I'm making my way towards the lair of the first Guardian, which is a giant skull on the top of a mountain (discreet castle for a bad guy if I dare say so). I'll keep you posted on my progress!

Game C1 : Blood Omen - Introduction

The development for Blood Omen : The Legacy of Kain was kind of hellish (which suits well the setting for the game). Game developer Silicon Knights (who would later create the cult survival-horror Eternal Darkness for the Gamecube) went through nearly 6 years of work to completion, even working without a destination console before settling for the Playstation and release it in 1996 (and ported to Windows a year later).

The goal was to create "a cerebral role-playing game where you had to use your head as well as your reflexes" (sic) with an adult gothic vampire setting. They talked a lot about the character of Kain, who was supposed to be "the first true anti-hero" of video-games (I haven't verified the claim, but I'm pretty sure it's not true). Maybe not the first, but certainly one of the biggest bad guys you ever had to control in a game. He dreams only of vengeance, sucks the blood of innocents (from three feet away, which is a bit weird) and is overall a pretty big bastard.

I'm not sure about the three pole-dancing skeletons behind him, though.

The game fetched good reviews and made a big success, getting a cult following over the years. It would go on to create a series of four sequels (interestingly enough, the IP went to a following of lawsuits between Silicon Knights and publisher Crystal Dynamics who went on to produce the series), organized in two "trilogies".

The games Blood Omen and Blood Omen 2 would follow Kain in his course of becoming the meaniest baddass around, while Soul Reaver and Soul Reaver 2 would follow antagonist Raziel in his quest to defeat the said Kain. The two trilogies culminate in PS2 title Legacy of Kain : Defiance where I'm pretty sure they end up being pals and walking to the setting sun while eating donuts.

And it's pretty obvious Raziel is the nicer guy.

The intertwining stories and evolved storytelling (as well as the action-RPG gameplay) is what drove me to the series, which I've never really played before, and that's strange. It's got vampires, quest for redemption and as far as I know, pretty solid games overall, even if the Blood Omen subseries is considered a bit of lower quality than the Soul Reaver one. I'm pretty excited by the idea I might stumble on a great series I've missed.

To be honest, though, what I remember most of the first game was jerky camera (which is a first for a top-down perspective), killing loading times and roaming peasants that weren't worried by the vicinity of a blood-sucking vampire. We'll see if it's worth digging through these little things and if the story is really as appealing as it sounds.

Considering I allowed myself the right to Virtual Console, I'll play the PSN version of the game, which is the exact same game that was released for Playstation, hoping the fact the game is on hard drive will lower a bit the loading times.

Let's suck some bloooooood!

Problems with screenshotting

Hi guys,

first of all, I know that screenshotting is not a real word.

However, I'd like to ask a question to my fellow bloggers :

How to make a decent screenshot out of console games?

I asked the question to Zenic who told me he put the video feed on his PC, but I've got a major problem with that : My PC is a piece of crap. I've heard there is another solution which consist of using a DVD recorder, put the video feed through it and record it on DVD-RW. Did anyone around here already use this solution? Does it work? Is there another solution I'm yet to discover? And what about portable console gaming?

Thanks a lot in advance. I've managed to go through my first two games using only screenshots from the internet, but it's really hard to find something illustrating correctly what I want to say, and it's gonna be even harder when I'll tackle less known games (for example, let's say... Legacy of Kain?)

I'd love to know how you do this kind of things. If I can't find a simple solution, I might have to postpone a bit on my blog before going through the next games, because it's really hard to come by descent screenshots and a screens-less blog would be just sad.

I'm trying to get good pictures with my camera too, but it's really hard to get something correct. Any idea?

Update : 3 tests below to see how it fares. I can see myself in the first one, and the second is kinda blurry, but the 3rd one kinda works, what do you think?

Game B1 : The Legend of Zelda - Final Rating

Ok, first things first, I wanted you all to know that I've updated Resident Evil's COWARD score. The comment from Zenic made me really think about this rating, notably concerning Cleverness and Originality. The two grades have been lowered by a point, putting them at the medium mark, which leads to a total COWARD rating of 42. That leaves more space for the ratings to evolve. After all, if Resident Evil has a Cleverness score of 6, where does it put Ocarina of Time? 13? We'll see about that after a few ratings, but I may have to be a little harsh on grades to make them evolve nicely.

So, onto The Legend of Zelda rating. It was really hard to rate it and I'd like to emphasize on two things before getting started :
-The comparison between Resident Evil and The Legend of Zelda is unavoidable (after all, the two games are graded on the same scale) but ultimately pointless. The COWARD scale works (well I hope it does) for comparing different games in a same series, not for different ones. I wouldn't dare to say that The Legend of Zelda is better or worse than Resident Evil. They're two really different experiences, both well worth your time.
-The COWARD system only implies what I feel about the game I've just played, and how I rate the experience I had for the last few days/weeks. It's not a "review" of any sort, and it's only my point of view, I wouldn't be so presumptuous as to think this as an objective rating.

Hum. Now that it's settled, I hope I'll be avoiding the wrath of the many Zelda fans out there while trying to rate these games...

Yeah, now that I think about it, this acronym works pretty well...

C for Cleverness

No doubt that The Legend of Zelda is a pretty clever game. It lets you loose in a huge gameworld, while simultaneously giving you enough clues to avoid getting you stuck (well, most of the time). The feeling of discovery is overwhelming and makes finding a secret entrance or item really rewarding. The heart containers mechanic (which still holds in Zelda games today, even if it's in the more refined "heart quarters" mechanic) is excellent and makes for a suitable character evolution. Try tackling the last dungeons with three hearts and you'll know what I mean. The otherworld is greatly done, full of little mysteries, and rewards for the more attentive players. However, in the meantime, I have to address my biggest concern with the game : It over-emphasize combat. Progress in the dungeon nearly always mean get in a room, wipe everybody out, than maybe push a block, get in the next room, repeat. Granted, the formula evolves during the game, notably with the dungeons layouts becoming more and more complicated, but the process is often the same : enter, kill, push block/bomb wall, exit. Starting with Zelda III, the series will be known for its excellent dungeons full of traps and puzzles, but it's yet to appear here. So it's a 6 for me.

Rating : 6

O for Originality

If you put back The Legend of Zelda in the context of its release year, the risk taken by the Nintendo teams is huge. The game is, in my opinion, one of the major milestones of the evolution of console gaming. Simple arcade games were the norm back then, and Miyamoto and his team really made things change by showing everybody that great adventures were possible to make on these consoles. Granted, it took inspiration from the Ultima games, but it refined the formula to make it more action-oriented, hence more akin to what console gamers were waiting for. If I don't reward this game in this category, it would be meaningless.

Rating : 8

Save battery was great too, because the alternative was not sexy...

W for Writing

Not much to say here, I'm afraid. The land of Hyrule is a huge desert, with only a bunch of old fellas concealing themselves in caves or the occasional merchant. It was the norm in NES games, but we're far from Zelda II, Final Fantasy or even Dragon Quest, which was released the same year.

Rating : 1

A for Appeal

The graphics are clean, sharp, and, as I've mentioned in a post, pretty stable. The slowdowns and flickering are minimal and it's a bit of a exception for this game console. The different areas of Hyrule are well-defined, and the ambiance is really different between the forests, the mountains or the cemetery. For an early NES game, Zelda is quite a nice feat and a good example of what this console was capable of doing. The music needs no introduction too. If you forget about the introduction and conclusion, that you'll not hear for more than a minute, it holds only on three major themes (otherworld, dungeon, and the creepy music for Ganon's hideout), and you never get tired of it. A lot of contemporary game composers could learn a lot from that.

Rating : 7

R for Reaction

The game is easy to control and almost always fair. I have a little concern about a few enemies (namely the Knights who change direction when you try to take a hit at them, and the Wizzrobes who can be a mess to fight) but, hey, they are supposed to be hard to kill. I was about to give a 5 to this category, then I remembered you could control the boomerang in a natural way that a lot of games were only dreaming to approach. So it's a 6 here too.

Rating : 6

D for Delicacy

I don't deny I had a great time with this game. Like a lot of masterpieces, it's better than the sum of its parts, and even with the repetitive dungeons structure, tedious money-grinding and occasional frustrating death, it's still a pleasure to play through. However, comparing to the later Zelda games, it lacks a bit in a few categories, notably in the fact that the game is, at its core, a huge fetch quest. It was a really tough grade to make. I'll go for a above-average mark, which is the sign I had a lot of pleasure playing through it, but that there's a lot of room for improvement.

Rating : 6

FINAL COWARD RATING : 57

Ok, there, I've done it, I've put my rating on this game, please don't kill me. I was expecting a bit more, but overall I'm satisfied with this grade. It leaves a lot of room for superior games in the series and won't lead to A Link to the Past or Ocarina of Time going through the roof of the rating system. On the other side, it shows that, even today, 25 long years, it still holds up as a great game to play.

Now, I'll be moving on to the first game I haven't thoroughly played in my game list. I've only played Legacy of Kain a couple of hours in the past, and I'm quite curious to see a game series that is hold in good esteem and that I've never really experienced. It will be a good thing because I've played Resident Evil 2 and Zelda II maybe a thousand times each, so I'm glad to play something I don't know before that...