There's this thing some developers do, where they decide to have French characters utter like one or two words in French in the middle of a sentence. Yeah, that's my leadoff. This is a rambling shamble of a review.

Now, I may know a language or four. I can tell you that, in the midst of a conversation, if I can't find the word I'm looking for in the langauge I'm speaking, I'll flail my way around for awhile and only after I've given up would I use another language's word. It goes something like, "Euh, uhh... 'ow you say... ananas?" If I know what the word is, in the language I'm using, I use that word! I mean, that's what the word is for!

Randomly peppering your speech with words from other languages is pretentious to the nth degree or possibly the laziest way to suggest foreignness by writing, but okay, let's say that was the intent. If your voice actor is going to use the French word, say it like it's an actual French word. Or, if you're not, okay, say it like an English word. Fine! Whatever! But pick one approach and stick with it! Don't just randomly switch it up in the same little bit of dialogue! Frikkin' pay your voice actors enough that you can have lines redone if they forget to roll that r or whatever!

You want to set my ears on fire? Just make your r's as flat as possible. Bone Joor. Gem Appel Fran Swah. Je do le streaming on le Twitch. Wee wee.

Fuuuuh.

Yes, I am really fired up about this. That's the mood I had coming into the game. And if they're that cack-handed about easily the most important bit of dialogue in the game, if they've already tripped over their own shoelaces right in the first minute, where else are things inattentive?

So, uhh, you ever play Far Cry 3? Hold on, I have a point here. I mean... FC3 is kind of rubbish. It falls quite short of Far Cry 2, and what's more, totally revealed the smoke and mirrors of FC2's enemies to me as well, so it went hard negative. Buuuuut there's this antagonist in that game, a relatively minor character who's dead by the end of the first act or whatever, named Vaas. Do a websearch for this dude, you'll find the Internet is basically a shrine to the guy, and for good reason: the actor was way better than the script called for. But he has this monologue which stuck with me and was a repeating theme in the game:

"Insanity is doing the same ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ thing, over and over again, expecting ♥♥♥♥ to change."

After a few minutes of intro exposition and making my character, I spent the next 45 minutes getting to the first boss - the tutorial messages weren't even done, so it was still technically part of the tutorial I found out later - and it started doing the soulslike thing. Start from your bonfire respawn-cagey-thingy, kill this mook, take that corner, kill t'other mook, bossfight, die, back at the respawn-cagey-thingie, do the kills, grab up your magic space bux, die to boss, etc.

Now you could rightfully say it's a skill issue, and I won't fight you on it. You're probably right and, at 4 AM, I wasn't seeing how to beat the thing. And it didn't help I took the most fragile class right off the bat, apparently. And I don't even strictly mind that it's "soulslike" but it was exactly soulslike.

But ♥♥♥♥ me running if I was going to keep slamming my face against that wall either. That's the picture of what Vaas was talking about. That's insanity.

Then I remembered the game has an "assist" mode. You can reduce or remove the damage entirely. So I did that. With no damage, now it's just a clicker, I could W+LMB my way through the content... and now it's just content, a word that bleaches all interest out of anything. Am I playing a game? No, I am experiencing content. It's a slight degree of interaction removed from an idler. I have now taken the game out of the game. The rest better be real good.

The foresty stuff was foresty, I suppose. The robot's whirring noises did sound like a lot of fine, straight-cut gears working their torques. That was actually a plus. But that same, elegant robot - in "dancer" class this time - was still kind of stiffly animated. Some of it was the impact-pauses that games insist on doing, maybe. And the enemies, which I haven't talked about, looked like molten brass boogers that had been cast on the blacksmith's floor. And oi, did I want more dudes who would talker in le français from temps to time?

I groaned in dismay and mashed alt-F4.

I feel a little bad about it, a tiny wee bit. I know it's hard making games, by and large. I do have to admit the player character's little whirrings and sounds were pretty convincing! It's just alongside everything else - the boogerbots, the randomly-inserted needless French (with a cointoss on the accent), the ♥♥♥♥-stapling joy of repeating the same content a dozen times for a loot-run, I'd quite well had enough.

Maybe things get swazzier later on. I just made up that word, you work out what it means. But Vaas had a thing or two to say about going back to that same well and expecting it to go differently, and maybe even the criminally insane have nuggets of wisdom from time to time. Today, I learned a lesson from an Ubisoft NPC. Hunh.

There's this thing some developers do, where they decide to have French characters utter like one or two words in French in the middle of a sentence. Yeah, that's my leadoff. This is a rambling shamble of a review. Now, I may know a language or four. I can tell you that, in the midst of a conversation, if I can't find the word I'm looking for in the langauge I'm speaking, I'll flail my way around for awhile and only after I've given up would I use another language's word. It goes something like, "Euh, uhh... 'ow you say... ananas?" If I know what the word is, in the language I'm using, I use that word! I mean, that's what the word is for! Randomly peppering your speech with words from other languages is pretentious to the nth degree or possibly the laziest way to suggest foreignness by writing, but okay, let's say that was the intent. If your voice actor is going to use the French word, say it like it's an actual French word. Or, if you're not, okay, say it like an English word. Fine! Whatever! But pick one approach and stick with it! Don't just randomly switch it up in the same little bit of dialogue! Frikkin' pay your voice actors enough that you can have lines redone if they forget to roll that r or whatever! You want to set my ears on fire? Just make your r's as flat as possible. Bone Joor. Gem Appel Fran Swah. Je do le streaming on le Twitch. Wee wee. Fuuuuh. Yes, I am really fired up about this. That's the mood I had coming into the game. And if they're that cack-handed about easily the most important bit of dialogue in the game, if they've already tripped over their own shoelaces right in the first minute, where else are things inattentive? So, uhh, you ever play Far Cry 3? Hold on, I have a point here. I mean... FC3 is kind of rubbish. It falls quite short of Far Cry 2, and what's more, totally revealed the smoke and mirrors of FC2's enemies to me as well, so it went hard negative. Buuuuut there's this antagonist in that game, a relatively minor character who's dead by the end of the first act or whatever, named Vaas. Do a websearch for this dude, you'll find the Internet is basically a shrine to the guy, and for good reason: the actor was way better than the script called for. But he has this monologue which stuck with me and was a repeating theme in the game: "Insanity is doing the same fucking thing, over and over again, expecting shit to change." After a few minutes of intro exposition and making my character, I spent the next 45 minutes getting to the first boss - the tutorial messages weren't even done, so it was still technically part of the tutorial I found out later - and it started doing the soulslike thing. Start from your [strike]bonfire[/strike] respawn-cagey-thingy, kill this mook, take that corner, kill t'other mook, bossfight, die, back at the respawn-cagey-thingie, do the kills, grab up your magic space bux, die to boss, etc. Now you could rightfully say it's a skill issue, and I won't fight you on it. You're probably right and, at 4 AM, I wasn't seeing how to beat the thing. And it didn't help I took the most fragile class right off the bat, apparently. And I don't even strictly mind that it's "soulslike" but it was [b]exactly[/b] soulslike. But fuck me running if I was going to keep slamming my face against that wall either. That's the picture of what Vaas was talking about. That's insanity. Then I remembered the game has an "assist" mode. You can reduce or remove the damage entirely. So I did that. With no damage, now it's just a clicker, I could W+LMB my way through the content... and now it's just content, a word that bleaches all interest out of anything. Am I playing a game? No, I am experiencing content. It's a slight degree of interaction removed from an idler. I have now taken the game out of the game. The rest better be real good. The foresty stuff was foresty, I suppose. The robot's whirring noises did sound like a lot of fine, straight-cut gears working their torques. That was actually a plus. But that same, elegant robot - in "dancer" class this time - was still kind of stiffly animated. Some of it was the impact-pauses that games insist on doing, maybe. And the enemies, which I haven't talked about, looked like molten brass boogers that had been cast on the blacksmith's floor. And oi, did I want more dudes who would talker in le français from temps to time? I groaned in dismay and mashed alt-F4. I feel a little bad about it, a tiny wee bit. I know it's hard making games, by and large. I do have to admit the player character's little whirrings and sounds were pretty convincing! It's just alongside everything else - the boogerbots, the randomly-inserted needless French (with a cointoss on the accent), the dick-stapling joy of repeating the same content a dozen times for a loot-run, I'd quite well had enough. Maybe things get swazzier later on. I just made up that word, you work out what it means. But Vaas had a thing or two to say about going back to that same well and expecting it to go differently, and maybe even the criminally insane have nuggets of wisdom from time to time. Today, I learned a lesson from an Ubisoft NPC. Hunh.