First thing: I am not a reviewer. I will not be giving any games scores, and rarely will I be saying anything nice. My purpose is to be a critic. I’m that guy who enjoys pointing out plot holes in your favorite movies. I’m that guy who breaks the illusion of your favorite magic trick. Hopefully, I’ll be the guy who points out the problems in your favorite games (hereafter referred to as “that bastard”).
Well, except for this first game, as I have yet to meet anyone who enjoys this steaming turd (except for Leah, but she’s a crazy person). Taken by itself, and if it were released first, Puzzle Quest Galactrix (hereafter referred to as “Galactrix,” or “dung-vomit”) would surely have been hailed as a phenomenal game; but it can’t be, and it wasn’t.
Two-Thousand and Seven was an awesome year, full of amazing games that I am still catching up on. One of my very favorites was Puzzle Quest: Challenge of the Warlords (hereafter referred to as “Warlords” or “the good one”). I bought this game for XBLA, then shortly thereafter I grabbed a copy for PSP , and PS3. Oh, and at some point I snagged a download version for PSP as well. That’s right. I boughtfour copies of this game. I loved almost every aspect of it. Needless to say, I was quite anxiously waiting for Galactrix to be released.
For those not in the know, the fine chaps (hereafter referred to as “fine chaps”) at Infinite Interactive managed to take the story of their oldWarlords franchise and force it into some bizarre mating experiment with Bejewled and they came up with gaming genius. It’s an RPG in which all of the battles are played out by matching three (or more) colored gems together to attack or cast spells at your foe. It had catchy music, bright artwork, a decent (if somewhat clichéd) story, and some genuinely funny dialog.
Galactrix has none of this. It really is as if the runaway success of Warlords went entirely unnoticed by the team, as they took everything that was great about the first one and pooped on it. It is dark, has little music, poor pacing, almost no attempt at fleshing out the world and characters, and is full of absolutely broken and unrewarding gameplay. Warlords made a point of rewarding the player for each and every encounter, even if it was only a few gold pieces or some experience points. Prepare for having 70% of the encounters in Galactrix to go unrewarded, and perhaps, repeated.
Imagine, for a moment, that the next Final Fantasy game required a timed battle after every single room in every single dungeon. The player would have access to none of the awesome abilities and spells that have been collected over the last 25-40 hours, and would be randomly and arbitrarily forced, five percent of the time, to repeat these battles. Oh, and you gain no money, experience or items from these battles. Would anyone enjoy that? There’s nothing a gamer enjoys more than having to replay sections of the game, right? I was tired of these leapgate hacking sequences after the fourth one. I estimate that I’m less than halfway through the story and I’ve done over seventy of them.
In fact, I’m adding Leapgate hacking to my list of things that have made me stop playing a game. So far, it includes unpausable cutscenes (Metal Gear Solid 3–I was on call and my pager went off), Quick Time Events (Too many poopy games to count), trapping me in a dungeon with no way to refill health or escape, (Dragon Quest VIII—after sixty hours, the bastards) and not being able to pause (Phantasy Star Online and Universe).
Why don’t I stop? Well, if I stopped, I’d be out twenty bones and material for this little thing here. I’d be finished with the game a lot sooner, but I’m finding myself having to grind for money to buy better ships to even survive the random encounters. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have to go play dung-vomit some more because I hate myself.
Way to endear yourself to the boss on your first post, “you bastard.”
Welcome to the crew.