Review: Rise Of The Argonauts
After reading so many reviews, my expectations for this game remained very low. However, since Viking: Battle of Asgard came out the wealth of unfair reviews have spread like wildfire and I have learned not to judge by others opinions. First and foremost I use a few things to help judge how fairly a game should be rated. For instance a game’s budget has a lot to do with it. It’s incredibly unfair to compare a game such as Killzone 2 and Rise of the Argonauts, or God of War. There is an unbelievable amount of more manpower and funds fueling a game such as God of War. I hope many people keep this in mind.
Rise of the Argonauts was developed by Liquid Entertainment and published by Code masters. It tells the story of Jason who is on the quest for the Golden Fleece. ROTA is filled with rich details of Greek mythology. ROTA is not an action based game, and is much more comparable to something like Jade Empire. You will be talking a lot, running, doing fetch quests and fighting along the way. Combat is a very small part of the game, and is very basic. A lot of depth is added however when you level up. Traditional leveling up is not in ROTA. Instead for each quest you do and enemies you kill you acquire deeds. Deeds are used to dedicate to a god of your choosing each has different skills and abilities for your different weapons. A lot has been made of the technical issues that supposedly hamper the game. The frame rate drops some mostly when the game auto saves. It is definitely not as bad as it has been made out to be. The graphics are subpar, there is texture pop in. Some areas look great while others do not. If you’re a graphics Nazi you may want to pass. Sometimes audio cuts out and I got stuck in a few places. But other than that and the annoying auto save system these problems should not hamper the enjoyment of the game. ROTA does a few things other games such as Fallout 3 and other wide known RPG’s struggle at, and that’s make you care and feel like there is a purpose to what you do. This was reinforced by flashbacks, symbols and a very good musical score, which sucked me into the experience. It was one of the few games this year that I actually feel satisfied after finishing. It’s rather depressing that a game like this which does a lot of good things gets written off especially when it does things better than some companies with a bigger budget. If you are a fan of story driven experiences then I suggest at least renting it. There is a fair amount of replay value to warrant a purchase.
8/10
Filed under: R
“It’s incredibly unfair to compare a game such as Killzone 2 and Rise of the Argonauts, or God of War. There is an unbelievable amount of more manpower and funds fueling a game such as God of War. I hope many people keep this in mind.”
Hold on, I argue the opposite. It’s unfair to give a game leniency just because it had a lower budget and be harsher on games with higher budgets.
We still have to pay the same for them and if a game is bad, it is bad, regardless of whether it was made with £50 or £50million.
While I see your point, i have to still disagree. I am not by any means giving it a free pass. However if it did have the manpower and funds of a God of War type game they could have developed there own engine, instead of using the unreal engine, which i think is still a blight to the gaming industry. For the number of people they had working on the project and as well as the funds they had available, it came very close to becoming a AAA title. Which shows how talented of devs they are. There’s slim pickings as far as RPGs with the exception of Fallout 3 and Valkyria Chronicles and its a welcome addition to any RPG lovers collection. Have you played it yet? What are your thoughts?
I’ve not played it, no, I was just commenting on that bit.
A game should be judged on the game, not the conditions with which it was developed.
you seem to be praising the devs more than the game its self. while the devs do deserve a pat on the back for being able to rise above the low budgeting and make a decent game, that shouldn’t deserve more than a mention in a regular review. you also shouldn’t point to other games, especially ones that haven’t come out yet to provide contrast and justify bugs and poor quality. instead, focus on the games strengths and especially why this makes the game good. i agree that the technical issues shouldn’t have held the game back as much as it did in other reviews, but if you want to be a real journalist you need to do a better job of formulating your own opinion plus explanation rather than pointing out what others have said and justifying your thoughts. keep it simple and just say what you liked about it and why, then what you didn’t like and why.
also, i shouldn’t be one to complain about spelling or grammar, but since you are the one submitting an official review you may consider spending more time editing your work and fixing the grammatical errors.
i give your review a 4 out of 10. suck on that.