DS2 and CoD2

7 June, 2006. 365 words.

Two quick game reviews.

I finished Dungeon Siege II a couple weeks ago, so you can all sleep better knowing that Valdis has been defeated, and will not be using the fabled Aegis Sword and Shield to bring about the ruin of the world anytime soon. It’s a good game if you like the genre. It suffers a little, as all of these types of games do, from repetitive hack-slash-shop syndrome. That is, you fight a bunch of monsters on your way from point A to point B in the story, then sell all the loot you pickup, which has the feel of “busy work.” I also found it pretty lame that you could almost always buy better weapons in the town shop than you would ever find on a monster, which I think was also a problem in the original Dungeon Siege. Once you first enter a new town, you can basically buy the best weapon you’re going to have until the next town. I hardly ever even looked at the loot I was picking up toward the end of the game.

I also finished Call of Duty 2 the other day. Great shooter, especially the sound effects. Unfortunately, it’s incredibly short. Which is to say, I finished it in about two weeks, and I’m a person who doesn’t have very much free time for games anymore. A dedicated gamer could probably polish this thing off in a couple days, if that. So there’s not much entertainment value for your gaming dollar. I started the game on the “normal” difficulty and found it pretty easy, so I went up to the “hardened” difficulty. It was still pretty easy. Even on the “you will not survive” setting, it’s not exactly impossible. The game suffers a little because everything is “scripted.” Meaning you can pretty much memorize how to get through each level (eg. german A comes out door B at time C) — sort of like Groundhog Day in Germany — anyway, there’s not much replay value, which is a shame.

I only played single-player on both these games. I hardly ever look at the multi-player part of games anymore, because it’s just too time-consuming.

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