Losing Cool

I think it's been two weeks since I claimed to pull a Brendan-like not-buy-any-games-until-I-finish-what-I-have move. Yeah, that failed. My birthday is around the corner and family members have been sending me little amounts of money tucked into possibly touching birthday cards. I throw the cards away. MONEY! When I get money, and Susan can attest to this, my first thought becomes: how can I save this? I was then seriously instructed by my wife, my parents, and others that in no-uncertain terms I should not save this money. Damn. What do I do now?

Second thought: Let's be responsible. Do I need clothes? No. Work Clothes? No. Shoes? No. I run through the gamut of things I can buy that'd be remotely responsiblle, but there's pretty much nothing I need right now. Excpet more video games.

I bought Dark Messiah, which I've had an urge to play just because of Source-engine goodness. The second game, the second game purchase has already gotten me maligned by my peers: I bought Two Worlds.



I'm a sucker for open-ended sword-and-sorcery role-playing games. It's the epic geek in me, really. When this game came out, it got terrible reviews, and rightfully so. Susan warned me to stay the hell away as did others I knew. I've always had a nagging thought to play it. Recently the price took a dip to 30 bucks; throw in 15 dollars worth of trade-in value and I've got myself a game I don't feel guilty about buying. But what about playing?

Two Worlds is a broken game. Even after the large (1 gig!) patch, it's horribly unbalanced and glitchy. But this is where the fun lies. Sure the jerky animation and ugly textures and models grate once in a while, but it's not that bad. No, exploiting equipment glitches and poor game mechanics are where the fun lie.

It is easy-as-hell to become an uber-character in Two Worlds. I can't even believe I'm typing this, but for some ungodly reason equipment stacks. It doesn't stack in the take-up-one-space-in-inventory either, stats will stack. If a player has two shields with a parry rating of 4, stack them up and the parry rating becomes 6 or something. Fuzzy math. As far as I can tell, players can do this infinitely. It boggles my mind how someone could think to implement such a feature. I also can't get over how awesome it is. Even magic spells and attack boosts stack. I'm not buying big expensive swords. I keep buying run-of-the-mill swords and stacking them. It's fantastically stupid.

Of course, the dialogue and voice-acting also make this game need-to-own at cheap price points. Everything is monotone and puncuated with "forsooth," "perchance," and "mayhap." Sure, one may have seen these words in fantasy novels or in other written media, but have you ever heard someone actually speak them? aloud? I don't think I have, because words cannot convey how incredibly awkward it is to actually hear someone speak in such a manner. I'm sure the poor voice-acting plays a big part in this awkwardness, but I assure you Sir Lawrence Olivier could not deliver these lines in an unawkward fashion.

I can go on about this game, but it's one of the first truly so-bad-it's-good games I've ever played. Usually bad games are so unbearable, but not Two Worlds. Congratulations are in order I guess. Good job fellas, keep 'em coming.