This works pretty well and serves as mechanical guidance for players not to just hammer away at the attack buttons. Timing your hits correctly (usually just as the previous swing ends) will cost less energy and sometimes lead to different combo flourishes that deal more damage. Lords of the Fallen doesn’t tinker a whole lot with the combat formula, but incentives for timing weapon swings are one such addition. Lords of the Fallen is definitely much more forgiving of mistakes, but you can still lose a chunk of health by ballsing up a one-on-one encounter, requiring a quick sip of the Not-Estus health potions replenished at the Not-Bonfire checkpoints.Īs an illustration of Lords’ friendlier and more accessible nature, it’s possible (unlike in Souls) to cancel out of drinking a health potion in favour of a block or dodge. Combat encounters with grouped enemies are fairly rare (unless you dash around the map like a loon,) with one-on-one or one-vs-two being pretty much the standard. These familiar systems also translate to the kind of weighty, methodical combat Souls players are used to. Individual weapons come with stat requirements (but can still be ineffectively wielded by those who don’t yet have the numbers,) and the term ‘Poise’ pops up in relation to the stability of armour.īackstabs are just as enjoyable as ever, and you have to develop the same kind of ‘feel’ for them. Dual daggers are very different from swinging around a ten foot greataxe. You can fully redefine the keyboard controls though, so if you’ve been comfortable using mouse and keys in Souls games you should be fine here too.Īs the game’s tutorial takes you through the light and heavy attacks, optional parries (with the right kind of shield,) backstabs, locking on to foes, and the energy management of blocks and rolls, the Souls fan will be nodding along in recognition.įeeding into that familiarity is the way in which equipment weight has an impact on your roll speed, how character stats like Strength and Agility provide scaling on different types of weapon, and the way in which those weapons offer distinct move-sets. Producer Tomasz Gop (formerly of CD Projekt Red) and the rest of the CI Games team aren’t trying to hide any inspirations, and seem well aware that a significant amount of people picking up this game will want to settle in with a familiar control scheme.Īnd yes, as with FromSoft’s titles, a gamepad is recommended here. It reminded me of the way FIFA and PES offer alternate control configurations from one another’s games. The best way to demonstrate Lords of the Fallen’s healthy attitude towards the Souls games (and sorry, there’s really no way to write this review without constant reference to those titles) is that the ‘alternative’ gamepad control scheme is 95% of the way to being Dark Souls. There’s no multiplayer, so at least you won’t get invaded on this bridge. Though Lords of the Fallen is going to mostly come up short in a direct comparison, the conclusion ‘didn’t manage to be quite as good as Dark Souls’ should be read largely as praise, not as condemnation. Lords of the Fallen is a game full of systems and mechanics that are clearly influenced by the Souls titles ( Dark Souls in particular,) which means it’s also letting itself in for a great deal of close scrutiny an inevitable consequence of borrowing from one of the most analysed series’ in gaming. Given the great success of FromSoftware’s Souls series, it was only a matter of time (and has actually taken longer than I’d anticipated) for another company to have a go at challenging, third-person combat with stamina management. Once there were enough titles following similar mechanical cues, First-Person Shooter became a genre. Others were fine games in their own right. For a time, every shooter released after Doom was a ‘ Doom clone.’ Some of them deserved that name. Successful innovators tend to be emulated.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |