Be Excellent To Each Other

Hello,
Has anyone here played this cracking little game? It is basically Mass Effect with melee combat.

The Good:
- The story starts off as generic as you can get (missus killed) but soon you are chatting with centaurs and Gods and performing last rights on your companion’s dead relatives.
- The cut scenes and voice acting are all really good. I honestly wasn’t expecting the quality that was in here from a game I just took a chance on.
- It is a third person RPG but without leveling. Instead you gain favour with the gods by choosing their alignment in conversation then use their favour to pick new abilities. The conversation is done in the same way as Mass Effect in that you choose your follow up dialogue while the person is still talking so you can have seamless conversations. You can also dedicate feats you have achieved to certain gods so you can gain more of their gifts.
- The combat is pretty good fun. Two buttons for heavy and light attacks and a trigger to block. It feels really smooth, a little like Fable 2’s combat.
- It doesn’t outstay its welcome. I finished this in about 20 hours, but I reckon you could easily knock 6 hours off that as I spent a lot of time looking around.
- There are not really any kill 50 rats missions. Some revolve around solving disputes with dialogue and some are just about helping your mates out.
- There are lots of interesting cut scenes but they are all totally skip able if you like that sort of thing.

The Not so Good:
- It shares some other things with Mass Effect to, namely ludicrous pop in of textures and the occasional wobbly frame rate.
- It might actually be a little too easy. I played it on the default setting but I only came a cropper in boss battles while I was figuring out what I needed to do. (Some might see this as a good thing)
- This won’t be for you if you like pumping 60 hours into games by just exploring. It is very linear with the only real choice of what to do being which order you do stuff in.
- Err that’s about it.
Honestly if you can find it for £15 buy it because it is great fun while it lasts.

I was interested in this at the preview stage, but it got slated in reviews so I didn't bother.

I'll pick this up when it's cheap.

Well, Eurogamer gave it a controversially low score (which most readers felt was due to the ending - which the reviewer hated AND revealed in the review, the cunt) while PC Gamer, despite only giving it half a page, really like it for all the reasons you cite above.

I'm interested, but probably not enough to actually go and get it.

Hello! Nice to meet you.

<tin foil hat> I'm always a little suspicious when someones first post is recommending that I buy something. </tin foil hat>

But assuming you stick around I will look into the game.

(Do you see what I have done. He has to keep posting now Mwa ha ha. One of us. One of us.).

I had never seen a review and so was untainted by other peoples thoughts on it. If I had seen it slated in reviews I may not have bothered. I am playing Half Life 2 now and it feels like a crushing grind in comparison to the swashbuckling adventures I had with my argonaut chums.

Edit. Lave. This is not my first post I was previously called Steve here, I just set up a new account because I forgot my password ages ago and can't get onto my hotmail at work and haven't been able to log in for months.

My name here now is the same as my gamertag.

I Feel Asleep's been on my friends list since... forever.

Oh it's Steve! Sorry man!

Cheers Grim, but I am OK with my new persona.

I really liked this game. I think the press gave it a hard time because it's such an easy target (so-so acting, cliched plot, Harakles looking like a Masters of the Universe toy). I reckon 90% of reviewers played the game for around an hour, tops. Delve deeper, and you'll find a great game.

i hated ROTA. mainly because the action was always broken up by hours of conversation and when you actually got into a fight it wasn't very good.

you could play it just for the story but you'd get more fun watching the Jason film.

there was a lot to like in the game but ultimately it was just very boring and completely outclassed, combat-wise, by Conan (which wasn't even that good itself).

I played it all the way to the end, and I can confirm that if anything, it gets even arse-ier. I really liked their re-interpretations of the various mythologies and I think it had a lot of atmosphere, but underneath it all, it was the most simple-minded, surprise-free, one-note RPG I've ever played. The design wouldn't have washed 10 years ago, and the dialogue is appalling, which is a shame, being as there's so much of it.

The good news is that its generous with its achievements, takes only a few hours (5-7?) to complete properly and you at least feel like you've been on a journey at the end of it all, so it definately makes a good weekend rental.

Er, 43%

Stuff being Jason, I wanna be Hercules!

Hercules! Hero of Song and Story!
Hercules! Fighting for Zeus' glory!
Flying through the air! In his underwear!
Fighting for his life! With a rubber knife!
Take the side of! Hercules!

Picked this up in The Hut sale and it's fucking appalling. It's trying to be Conan, but with the graphical resolution of a PS1 game. The controls are clunky. The collision detection is terrible. The story laughable.

It's got points in it though.

I can't believe you bought that instead of BF1943.

I already have Bad Company which actually works.

I didn't play six hours of BF1943 yesterday, then. Must've been my imagination.

Bad Company's single player is fun, but the multiplayer is pretty boring.

Remind me how many Bezzies have that? Because we're up to nearly 20 with BF1943 now.

What car is everyone driving lately?

Mauve.

Better buy it quick, Dimmers, you've got only two hours 37 minutes left before DrG loses interest in it!

Hmm, you seem to be a man of decent taste, but I am going to have to disagree with you here. I am going to replay my way through this game to check that I am not wrong (and also to pick up some other achievments). I, however, felt that this was a rather charming little game. I enjoyed knocking about with Centaurs and Titans whlie easily whupping enemies. Yes, the graphics seem somewhat old fashioned and it has a strange feel of a PS2 game about it, a bit like God of War, with invisible barriers etc. but I felt like I had been carried along with something as I played. It is the sort of game you can play once and be swept along and not really have to worry too much about anything. To me it makes a nice change.

I don't know whether it is just me but I thought the voice acting was superior to Oblivion and Fable 2, I realise that is not saying much but for a game I was expecting nothing out of I was pleasently surprised.

I marked down the voice acting for using the phrase "could care less" on Mycanerncnenceneefcce

@Dimrill: So you didn't enjoy it in the slightest then?

Still playing it. It's a linear corridored RPG so far. With added "not as good as Conan" combat and gore.

Slightly improving.

I am fully expecting a tagline at the end of this game saying "Dedicated to all the Americans who died in Greece BC."

Blimey Dimrill you must have finished this by now.

Maxed, finished through twice. Not so bad once you get into it. Installing to the HD is almost essential, as the load times from the disc are horrendous and make the game stutter and break.

Was it a better use of time and money than Bezzie-Battlefield?

Yep, as I didn't already have the game.

Did you like the ending, Dimrill? Did it make you think

Of everything in this thread, that spoiler is the one thing that makes me want to get this.

I said bezzie-Battlefield. Not no-bezzie-battlefield.

WE HAVE DAVE! WE HAVE DAVE! WE HAVE DAVE!

Dave is mildly pissed off by acheivements not unlocking when earned.

Thats karma, paying you back for somehow unlocking Master Of Your Domain without having played as a scout.

Meh. Not Co-op multiplayer can suck my foetid balls.

Does RotA have coop multiplayer?

I'll rise your Argonaut, Dimrill.

@Zardoz. I'll raise your argonaut and give you a golden fleece*

*That's a rub with a bath mat i've pissed on.