Forum adverts like this one are shown to any user who is not logged in. Join us by filling out a tiny 3 field form and you will get your own, free, dakka user account which gives a good range of benefits to you: No adverts like this in the forums anymore. Times and dates in your local timezone. Full tracking of what you have read so you can skip to your first unread post, easily see what has changed since you last logged in, and easily see what is new at a glance. Email notifications for threads you want to watch closely. Being a part of the oldest wargaming community on the net. If you are already a member then feel free to login now.

When I heard that there was going to be an action game based on Roman warfare released on the Xbox One, I was ecstatic. I was fine with games like Total War and Praetorians, but I thought that the prestigious centurion, brave legionary, or ambitious auxiliary deserved representation.

Then I took a look at the gameplay trailer, and this was the first thing I noticed.

That has to be the most immaculate, overly-detailed set of armor I have seen. Especially for something from the year 68 A.D. It's almost unsettling, how perfect it looks, nary a sword-scratch or dirt-patch on it. It looks more like something from a sci-fi re-imagining, with how sharply angled the plates are. The legionaries look better, but not by much.

The trailer then got to the gameplay, which turned out to be execution-based-slow-mo-quick-time-event combat. My level of hype was critically low at this point, not even seeing the testudo formation in action could cheer me up.

But even then, I continued to another video to get a brief summary of the plot: The main character's family is murdered, so he embarks on the Roman tradition of gathering a personal army to go shove the killer's scuta where the sun don't shine. I became hopeful, as Spec Ops: the Line, a game with minimal gameplay elements, was able to tell a brilliant story about a soldier desperately clinging to the notion that he is the hero, despite the atrocities he commits. Maybe this game could be about how his quest for revenge leads him to undermine the infrastructure of the Roman Empire, leading to its slow collapse.

I could probably get past the issues of aesthetics(even though that is one of the things that I love about the Romans), and more recent videos of the game show that they have added more combo-based hack-and-slash combat, though they kept the obnoxious slow-mo. But I don't need a game about a man slaughtering nations just because a family we know nothing about died offscreen. Do you believe my view on the game is reasonable? What do you think of the game so far, and what attributes influence your decision to either buy it or not?

Also, I am nowhere near the expert on games/Roman culture as I like to think I am. If you see something incorrect, I urge you to tell me.

No I think you've pretty much hit the nail on the head there.

I’m on the battlefield. I’m stomping through the corpses of my comrades swinging my sword at anything that moves. I begin a combo, I slash twice and then whooom slow motion is initiated, gak is about to get ‘cinematic’. A button prompt hovers elusively above the sword I’m about to drive into the throat of my enemy… argh I’m too slow! The prompt flickers, disappears.

I missed it. Damn.

But then somehow, for some reason, I still complete the cinematic ‘kill’.

What?

Maybe it’s a bug I think, but no. Next time I deliberately press the wrong button. The kill goes ahead, no consequences. Then I try hitting no buttons whatsoever. The kill goes ahead. I put the controller on the table in front of me, the kill goes ahead.

What is going on here?

I ask one of the Crytek people hovering at the booth – is this a bug? Why am I completing kills when I hit the wrong button prompt? Or, worse, no button at all. Turns out it was a deliberate design choice.

“We don’t want the player to feel frustrated,” I am told.

This coming out of E3 immediately killed any interest I had in the game.

 Madcat87 wrote:
snip

Oh wow. I hear about developers setting low bars for player skill but that's an all new low XD

 Madcat87 wrote:
No I think you've pretty much hit the nail on the head there.

*snip*

This coming out of E3 immediately killed any interest I had in the game.

I had to stop thinking for a few seconds after reading that, lest I blow a fuse somewhere.

I've heard it being called the Call of Duty of Ancient Roman games. Judging by it's linear path, focus on spectacle over game play and "Walk up here and press this button" objectives I am inclined to agree. Not to mention the graphical style.

 TheCustomLime wrote:
I've heard it being called the Call of Duty of Ancient Roman games.

I've heard this all over the place as well, even hearing Yahtzee from Zero Punctuation calling it that... "unique" name he uses to label all games with the feel of Call of Duty or Battlefield.

"I am Quickius Timeius Eventius, and I will not go away!"

 Madcat87 wrote:
No I think you've pretty much hit the nail on the head there.

snip

This coming out of E3 immediately killed any interest I had in the game.

You HAVE to be kidding me?! QTE already replaced killer combos you had to have a certain amount of skill to pull them off, now you don't even have to complete those?!

That shield is a rediculous. I'm not usually *too* bothered about historical accuracy but that thing would have been impossible to create without modern industrial methods - that kind of stamped metal simply didn't exist before the 19th century.

 Madcat87 wrote:
No I think you've pretty much hit the nail on the head there.

(snip)
Maybe it’s a bug I think, but no. Next time I deliberately press the wrong button. The kill goes ahead, no consequences. Then I try hitting no buttons whatsoever. The kill goes ahead. I put the controller on the table in front of me, the kill goes ahead.

What is going on here?

I ask one of the Crytek people hovering at the booth – is this a bug? Why am I completing kills when I hit the wrong button prompt? Or, worse, no button at all. Turns out it was a deliberate design choice.

“We don’t want the player to feel frustrated,” I am told.

That seems pretty much the final state of the current trend in game design - "we'll pretend you're awesome and you pretend you're actually playing a game"

The moment crytek started to develop for consoles, the company went downhill fast.

The only thing Crytek has ever had going for it was making games look nice. There games are terribly boring.

Throwing chickens at koreans is boring?

Love how a couple of people have noticed the Horrible 'N7' centurion armour, it's the kinda thing that annoys me aswell. Maybe Crytek found evidence of Ancient Roman CNC?


Would be more interested in a Roman Intrigue simulator to be honest. SPQR: Noire or somesuch.

EDIT: I beg to differ on Crytek on the whole making boring games. Crysis 2's story mode is Fantastic in my opinion.

 Medium of Death wrote:
The only thing Crytek has ever had going for it was making games look nice. There games are terribly boring.

This guy has the way of it. I was never much impressed with any of the actual 'gameplay' in a CryTek game except in Far Cry 1 and only after they ahd some expansions to add onto the game.

Meh, I don't care about playing the Son of Rome for the bajillionth time. Maybe if it let me play the Daughter of Rome (and no, I don't give two flying rat-gaks about accuracy-- put her in the legions!), that might be a fresher look on things. But probably not.

 Melissia wrote:
Meh, I don't care about playing the Son of Rome for the bajillionth time. Maybe if it let me play the Daughter of Rome (and no, I don't give two flying rat-gaks about accuracy-- put her in the legions!), that might be a fresher look on things. But probably not.

And neither do the developers (On the historical accuracy). Unfortunately, this game is rather obviously a male power fantasy so if I had to hazard a guess the only female will be one in need a saving. Quite sad, I would be a little more hyped for the game if you could play as a woman in the legions. At least then it would be slightly more interesting than Call of Duty: Roman Legionnaires.

On another note, I will chug a gallon of bleach if the main character is called "Ryse".

 TheCustomLime wrote:

 Melissia wrote:
Meh, I don't care about playing the Son of Rome for the bajillionth time. Maybe if it let me play the Daughter of Rome (and no, I don't give two flying rat-gaks about accuracy-- put her in the legions!), that might be a fresher look on things. But probably not.

And neither do the developers (On the historical accuracy). Unfortunately, this game is rather obviously a male power fantasy so if I had to hazard a guess the only female will be one in need a saving. Quite sad, I would be a little more hyped for the game if you could play as a woman in the legions. At least then it would be slightly more interesting than Call of Duty: Roman Legionnaires.

On another note, I will chug a gallon of bleach if the main character is called "Ryse".

Make it 2 gallons, I think it's worse than Ryse:

Wikipedia wrote:The game-play is based on the control of a Roman general named Marius Titus

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ryse:_Son_of_Rome

Media as turned that name in to the most boringly generic name ever.

TBH This games looks cool but then i'm not that bothered about historical accuracy but then some people care a lot i just want to hack the feck out of people.

I don't care about historical accuracy, but I don't give a gak about playing a male power fantasy for the billionth time, and this game looks to provide nothing else. I mean, Mass Effect was a bit of a power fantasy, but it had more going for it than that, AND I didn't have to play a generic bald screaming white guy.

 TheDraconicLord wrote:

 TheCustomLime wrote:

 Melissia wrote:
Meh, I don't care about playing the Son of Rome for the bajillionth time. Maybe if it let me play the Daughter of Rome (and no, I don't give two flying rat-gaks about accuracy-- put her in the legions!), that might be a fresher look on things. But probably not.

And neither do the developers (On the historical accuracy). Unfortunately, this game is rather obviously a male power fantasy so if I had to hazard a guess the only female will be one in need a saving. Quite sad, I would be a little more hyped for the game if you could play as a woman in the legions. At least then it would be slightly more interesting than Call of Duty: Roman Legionnaires.

On another note, I will chug a gallon of bleach if the main character is called "Ryse".

Make it 2 gallons, I think it's worse than Ryse:

Wikipedia wrote:The game-play is based on the control of a Roman general named Marius Titus

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ryse:_Son_of_Rome

Marius... Mari... Mary. Mary Sue. At least they admit their excellent character writing skills from the get go.

Though I will give them a D+ for at least making it rhyme.

I'll give them a B- for finding yet another way to shoehorn a 'y' into a game title

theninjabadger wrote:
TBH This games looks cool but then i'm not that bothered about historical accuracy but then some people care a lot i just want to hack the feck out of people.

Which is fine, and personally while I like more historical accuracy, a lack of it won't stop me enjoying a good hackfest. But I want it to be my actions that are hacking people apart, not some game on rails that doesn't even care if I hit the right buttons, it will still make my guy do some elaborate killing move.

 LordofHats wrote:

 Medium of Death wrote:
The only thing Crytek has ever had going for it was making games look nice. There games are terribly boring.

This guy has the way of it. I was never much impressed with any of the actual 'gameplay' in a CryTek game except in Far Cry 1 and only after they ahd some expansions to add onto the game.

Honestly the only issue crysis had was that suit powers were really limited. Once you edited the config to give yourself a bit more energy, better recovery and slightly amped up str, speed and armor, you have a really fun game. You could punch cars into buildings, move so fast that koreans don't even notice you and tank a small army.

And besides who needs throwings knives when you got chickens?

So you're saying is that the game is only fun when you cheat to make yourself really overpowered?

Players control Marius using the controller, while simultaneously controlling his legion through Kinect voice commands.

Oh, this should be fun to watch...I need to get some pop corn for this

You know, I wanted to like this game. Really, I did, because I love the Romans. I love almost everything about them. And to be able to fight alongside my legionaries, to interact with them and become attached is what I thought I would get from this game. It wouldn't matter who the character was, black or white, man or woman, I just wanted to feel like I was there with the fourteenth. But the more I read about it, and the more I look at this thread, the more it breaks my heart.

Damn you Crytek.

Wait... how did anyone get a different impression of this game then it being utterly forgettable tripe since it's first showing?

 CthuluIsSpy wrote:

Players control Marius using the controller, while simultaneously controlling his legion through Kinect voice commands.

Oh, this should be fun to watch...I need to get some pop corn for this

Squeaky Voiced Pre-Teen Player: "Feth you, you [homosexual slur]! [Terrible swearing and homosexual slurs]! [Complaining bitterly at not instantly winning and being the best by insulting the computer's mother and its sexuality]!

Roman legions: "Erm... you want us to do what now?"