With the recent flood of RPGs on the XBOX (Tales of Vesperia, Lost Odyssey, etc.) it can be hard to distinguish between the good and the bad. They all seem to have a common factor, you take the lead role of some hero in distress to try and save the girl or city or country from extinction...but does it have the extra pizazz that makes it stand on it's own? With Square-Enix's latest, Infinite Undiscovery, there may be a lot to look past in order to undiscover the greatness inside the game.
The story begins with a young boy named Capell. He is imprisoned because he looks like some hero named Sigmund. Shortly after being harassed by the local guards, you are rescued by a young girl named Aya. The escape is a little less typical from normal games in that you are fleeing from enemies instead of taking them down. You eventually will fight the baddies that are in hot pursuit, but for the time being, you just run. Eventually you meet up with your look alike and the story's arch begins. Without giving plot points away, this is nothing revolutionary. There's an evil organization named, simply enough, the Order and they are chaining the world's moon and doing all sorts of nasty business in the areas around the chains. Begrudgingly, the main character decides to help the rag tag group of adventures who rescued him and so begins the all too familiar tale of RPGs. If you are looking for a revolutionary story, look elsewhere. This is pretty normal stuff here. You won't be disappointed as long as you keep your expectations low. But, even though the story is a snore, the combat more than makes up for it.
The combat in IU is different from most RPG games. Instead of taking turns hitting on the enemy and being hit by the enemy, everything is in real time. When I say everything, I mean everything. Going into your inventory to get a healing item runs the risk of being pounded to the ground by an ogre. Until you get the hang of it, expect to run into some trouble every time you try and open up the inventory. By hitting the A and B buttons you perform normal and hard attacks respectively. You can perform combo's just like a standard action game (A, A, A, B performs a flurry of attacks while A, B shoots an enemy into the air) but the varieties are kind of stale. Hitting X and holding it allows the main character to play his flute. With the songs, he can either hurt enemies, help teammates, or even find hidden areas depending on the song being played. Finally, the Y button calls for healing from teammates. Get used to hitting Y for healing since the menu is a little difficult to get to in the thick of battle. With everything considered, the combat in this game is great. It is extremely refreshing to see more games using the Action RPG methodology of real time battles instead of turn based. This actually allows you to use strategies when taking down hordes of bad guys. You can take control of your teammates and have them perform specific tasks (oftentimes, required to progress) but for the most part, they are controlled by the AI, which does a pretty good job doing so. If you were upset over the story, the combat will definitely keep you interested int his game long enough to play through it.
The graphics of IU are a little misleading. The cut scenes at the beginning of the game shows a beautiful world with bleak castles and lush landscapes. This is followed by a decent graphical representation of the world through the playing. The graphics are not "bad" but they really aren't that great. With large amounts of enemies on screen, you may see some tearing, but it's nothing to be concerned about. Audio, on the other hand, is horrendous. The voice actors don't do a terrible job, but it's obvious the mouth movements were done long before any voice actors were hired. The voices aren't even dubbed over Japanese mouth movements. The characters just kind of flap their lips, hoping to end their movements around the same time the voice actors end theirs. Sometimes this works, most of the time it doesn't. On top of this, some cutscenes are vocalize, while most others just use text at the bottom of the screen. There doesn't seem to be any rhyme to their reason when it happens. One second you hear the voice actors and the next cutscene (with equally important storyline) text is replaced. It would have been nice to see a little more attention to detail with this.
So, in the end, is Infinite Undiscovery a game to pick up? Sure, why not. If you have the extra money and need something to hold you over until Fallout 3 or Fable 2 is released, go for it. If, on the other hand, you don't have a full time job and money is hard to come by, stash it away until October's blockbuster releases. One thing that is always big for me is Achievements and I am happy to say that the achievements look pretty good in this game. You can actually get them by going through the story instead of doing ridiculous things like "Killing X Amount of Y." If you are seriously on the fence about whether or not to get this game, then I can say you most likely won't like it. The people who will are the ones who made up their minds months ago when they began following the title. If buying isn't your style, go pick it up for a rental. At the very least, it's worth the 8 bucks to rent.
The gaming community lately makes jokes about companies making games that look like "PS3" or "PS2" games. While this is such a nasty dig, there may be some truth to this in the case of tri-Ace.
Sad really. I used to love these guys but man...they just aren't what they used to be.
The Cod games have been using an engine built in the mid 90s. Nothing wrong with using an old engine if they update it. Bioshock used UE2 and looked better than most UE3 games. Arkham knight used UE3 and looked better than most UE4 games.
Sh it does suck but I enjoyed star ocean 6 the most out of any game last year. I thought it was solid af start to finish. My favorite game that year.
I'd love for Sony to get ahold of them.
To late to edit but I just wanted to add not every game that comes out needs to push a consoles boundaries. Star ocean 6 looked fairly good to me.
Yeah. They definitely squeezed every drop out of that engine for SO6. It was a fun game
I assume you are talking about "Star Ocean: Integrity and Faithlessness" which I do have and am still playing. IMHO it is a good game but for some reason I still prefer "Star Ocean: The Last Hope" that I played on my PS3.
As a side note I have "Star Ocean: Till the End of Time" (PS2 version) which I played on my first gen PS3 but unfortunatly the Australian version of the PS3 did not have full backwards capability like the US version did. I got so far in the game and hit a bug (advancement to a new area between two mountains) that prevented further play.
During the Inside Xbox live stream today, developers from the backwards compatibility team announced that the program would sadly be coming to a close.
What a good run. Assuming every og xbox, 360, and One title will be available on Scarlett. Will make next gen transition easy. Hats off!!
As long as they continue adding more BC once the Scarlett comes out.
The current game selection on Game Pass is impressive, but it’s still missing a handful of big games.Here are the 10 most dumbfounding omissions from Game Pass.
