The Four Color Media Monitor

Shack News reviewed a game called Flint: Treasure of Oblivion, a pirate-themed adventure using comics-style panels in its narrative, but the writer doesn't think it lives up to its potential:

Flint: Treasure of Oblivion is developer Savage Level’s debut game. It’s a pirate fantasy that mixes turn-based tactical combat similar to games like Baldur’s Gate, with a unique comic book narrative style. Going into it, I was interested to see how the shenanigans of the pirate lifestyle could be implemented into the immersion of a CRPG. While it has a few new and interesting ideas at play within its combat system and fresh take on storytelling through the comic book style, it struggled to land with me during my roughly 11-hour playthrough. [...]

It’s a fairly generic swashbuckling story that goes more off the rails as the story goes on. Unfortunately, it never quite got its hooks into me. I appreciated the addition of the comic book page-like dialogue, which helped give the characters more life than would otherwise be possible with the game’s isometric point of view, however, the story beats seemed to come and go so fast that I’d barely get the chance to care about any of these characters or even really know who exactly they are.

Additionally, the game introduces a lot of characters at such a fast rate, and then pretty much ignores them, resulting in most of the characters feeling forgettable and like they were only introduced to move the story forward. I still don’t understand the significance of many of the characters introduced, and can only remember a few of their names. This made it difficult for me to get invested in the story and ultimately made the non-combat sections of the game feel like a bit of a slog, which was only further exacerbated by clunky controls and UI. There were several times when I’d have to click on something multiple times or stand at just the right angle in order to activate it, and moving the character felt a little wonky on mouse and keyboard.

What I found a turnoff was from one of the screencaps they posted of the comics-style panels, showing a pirate captain warning another guy at bladepoint that if he came back his way, he'd visit graphic violence against him. Seriously, even if this is supposed to be an adult-themed game, that's still very nasty and superfluous, and we could honestly do without it. Some could say it's another example of how "realism" has come at the expense of escapism. And emphasizing villainy can be a poor influence too.

I'm sure there's more computer games out there with comics-style narratives that could hold up better, and it's to be hoped some future game producers will consider how too much jarring violence and allusions to the same are doing more harm than good to the medium. If anything needs to be toned down, it's the superfluous reliance on overly violent content.

Labels: golden calf of villainy, msm propaganda, technology, violence