badgersprite said:
Also, as is kind of notorious, Fable II. So many of the mechanics were just so...shallow. I wanted to be attached to it, but I just couldn't. And, some elements of the game really felt like they were personally punching you, the player, in the face, which may have been the intent, but it didn't exactly do much to endear the game to me. It just felt like the game was being a jerk rather than trying to engross me or make me think.
I've always said that the main problem with Fable II was that it had such
potential as a game, but it never lived up to it. For instance, so much emphasis on freedom, but then the story railroads you into a bottleneck where you are limited to two choices, either the shining light of good or the deepest darkness of evil. Really, a fantasy swords 'n sorcery game where you can blow down an enemy with a shotgun, fry them with lightning and then finish them off with a mace should have been more
fun than it was, but somehow the combat system made it feel boring and ineffectual. Don't even get me started on the job system - another good idea in theory transformed into repetitive mediocrity by bad design.
OT: Similar to the above points about Fable II, my huge disappointment would be The Godfather II. I was absolutely in love with the first, a sprawling 40's-era New York full of gang hideouts to take down, shopkeepers to extort and banks to rob. It had so many things a sandbox game needs but so few actually have; one thing I always like to point out is that it had a high-end economy. Much like GTA, you gain money by doing missions, assassinations etc (also robbing banks, which is hella fun) but whereas in GTA (IV at least, less so in the PS2-era games) money becomes utterly useless after a certain point - even though it keeps racking up as a reward - in The Godfather you really
needed that money. There were safehouses to purchases, which are actually necesary - when you rob a bank or armoured car, the money doesn't actually enter your inventory until you get to a safehouse, meaning the more you have the easier it is to commit major crimes - and the weapons had tiers of upgradeability, the highest level of which cost a fucking fortune but made the guns amazing.
In the sequel, this is gone. Oh, you can still robs banks, but there is no longer any point since weapon upgrades have to be
found scattered around the (rather large) game world. Bank robberies themselves are less fun, too, due to the "team" mechanic that was one of my biggest letdowns. Much like Fable II, Godfather II had such potential - they added the ability to handpick a crack team of three specialists (fighters, demolitions etc) who would follow you around and could perform certain tasks to make life easier. The only problem is, they were
only good for those one or two things, and the rest of the time they got in your way. The thrill of sneaking into a bank vault, robbing it, and shooting your way out through a bunch of guards and cops is totally negated when robbing banks simply involves having your guy blow a hole in the wall and then making a run for it.
Which brings me on to the Don mechanic. Again, it was interesting and it had great potential, but it just didn't
work. It attempted to add a strategy component to the game by granting an overhead view of the three cities, showing business and rackets owned by the player's faction or the other factions. You could tell your guys to attack a certain place, or to bomb it, while you did something else. You could co-ordinate the defence of your buildings, allocate guards, and it would make you aware when one was under attack. Unfortunately, it was largely worthless. Sure, you could send goons to attack/bomb an enemy stronghold. They would inevitably die, because the game expects you to do all the work, so the goons are largely useless. As for the defensive capabilities, all you had to do was splash a little cash and put the maximum guards possible in every building. If it was attacked and things went south, this would
always grant you enough time to get back there in time to do their damn jobs for them. Oh, I almost forgot, there are also bonuses for owning, say, every brothel in the game. However, these bonuses are A) not all that useful and B) pretty badly timed. For example, owning every auto shop (I think) grants your faction the use of armour-plated cars. Since most cars in this game appear to have been constructed from tinfoil and rubber bands, this is actually pretty handy unless you actually enjoy exploding every few minutes. The problem is that to get the bonus, you need to control
every auto shop in
all three cities, something which is impossible right up until the end of the game, by which point the armoured cars have ceased to be particularly useful.
...wow. That was a hell of a lot more ranting than I expected to do.
TL;DR - The Godfather II, like Fable II, bit off more than it could chew. It set it's sights too high and failed dismally.
