The everyday blog of Richard Bartle.
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8:31am on Tuesday, 31st January, 2006:
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On the strength of the game Desperados, which I (re)played last year, I bought another game from the same developer, Robin Hood: the Legend of Sherwood.
It took longer to install than I spent playing it.
I have played games that took longer to install, especially in the olde days when they came on nine floppies, but this one was an unusually tiresome grind given that it was on one CD. I knew I was in trouble when I read the manual and found that the combat system was one of those "draw a shape in the air with the mouse" affairs that always seems such a good idea but never works. The mechanics were otherwise OK, although you have to question why Robin would have to pick up the odd one or two arrows from the ground rather than carrying around a quiver full of them.
It was the lousy combat that did for me, though. I kept getting killed because it wouldn't recognise my moves as being what they were supposed to be. A lunge forward came out as a half-spin, a coup de grace came out as a complete spin, and I didn't manage to get it to do anything at all when I tried to adopt a defensive posture. Maybe it's just my unreadable handwriting. Then again, the ranged weapon combat didn't use the mouse-move trick and yet I didn't manage to hit a thing with an arrow (they always seemed to bounce off the target). I was repeatedly killed. This was on the easy setting, too.
Thus, I uninstalled it. Any game with a tutorial that's too difficult for me to finish does not have a long-term future on my hard drive...
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Copyright © 2006 Richard Bartle (richard@mud.co.uk).