When authors don’t know what to say, they turn to the quotations of others. When video games don’t know how to fill time on loading screens, they do the same.
In a military shooting game, for instance, an epigraph from Patton might set the stage for a grand battle. Early in “Dragon’s Dogma,” a role-playing game from Capcom, we’re treated, while we wait for the machine to do its business, to Henri de Regnier’s praise of “the delightful and always novel pleasure of a useless occupation.” An apt description of playing video games in general, perhaps, but not of “Dragon’s Dogma.” The game is useless, but not delightful; probably because it is anything but novel.
“Dragon’s Dogma,” the latest product of the sad phenomenon of Japanese game developers trying to mimic the success of Western role-playing games like “The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim” and “Mass Effect 3,” was made by people who weren’t sure exactly what they wanted to make. The folks behind the game have worked on such hallowed series as “Resident Evil, “Devil May Cry” and “Breath of Fire,” but any evidence of this pedigree has been whitewashed. Instead we get a yet another medieval hack-and-slash that pretends to depth by letting you customize in great detail the appearance of your character. You can even have different-colored eyes!
The game’s one interesting twist comes in the form of Pawns — characters that fight by your side autonomously. You get one permanent Pawn, designed by you, and fill two more slots with Pawns borrowed via the Internet from people who aren’t using them at that moment. This forces a certain variety in the makeup of your party, but ultimately, the sense of connectedness this engenders is false, as you’re not playing alongside other people, just mindless characters they designed.
| ‘Dragon’s Dogma’ |
| » Systems: PS3, Xbox 360 |
| » Price: $59.99 |
| » Rating: 2 out of 5 stars |
This wouldn’t be so bad if, like a chess master, you could command these Pawns in some great strategic scheme; turns out, incredibly, the only useful battlefield order at your disposal is “come to me.”
So, we get, again, yet another medieval hack-and-slash. By a Japanese developer that could have been spending its time on what it does best.
