My Impressions: Betrayer
I'm going to do a breakdown of every thing you do in Betrayer. Not in the Alone in the Dark "this shit is stupid enough that it doesn't need commentary" way of breakdown, but just to list ALL the things you can do in the game.
You show up at an abandoned series of outposts in the middle of the wilderness in 17th century America. In between investigating the exact happenings that lead to the outposts being abandoned, you fight various demonic infestations with 17th century weapons.
The main enemies are the Spanish conquistadors. They hang out in the open, patrolling in groups. Rather easy to spot in the default black and white color gamma, harder if you turn the color contrast up - which is a shame, because the game looks way prettier in full color (the contrast between colored daytime and black and white nighttime is also much more interesting)
You can sneak around the enemies, and sneak attacks do way more damage. Unfortunately, your only "quiet" sneak attack weapons are melee - and patrols generally intersect enough that that's not an option for a group - and arrows. Arrows have a random chance of bouncing off the enemy armor, regardless of how well you've aimed the attack. In a large group, that's basically guaranteed to happen, and then they all emit a howling shriek and charge at you.
All your strong weapons are one-shot and take time to reload. Your arrows are kinda terrible at doing damage to alert enemies - and both are likely to miss as the bad guys seem to change directions or duck just as you release. In order to fight large groups, I generally either tried to take advantage of their AI by ducking behind obstacles and popping out - which was very hit and miss - or kept running away and letting them string themselves out in pursuit (their friends shots do damage to them, which is a mechanic I always appreciate) hoping I won't run into another group as I run.
When you die (or change areas) all the enemies respawn. There's also the rogue-like option of dropping all your loot if you die, to be despawned if you die before recovering it. I'm not a big fan of rogue-likes, so I didn't use it. Must be quite frustrating.
Besides the conquistadors, there are flaming Indians (crouching in cover, hard to spot) Harryhausen skeletons (jump out of the ground on certain cues, sometimes right on top of you) and floating spirits at night, and members of the English expedition turned to ash statues (dead in one hit, the only use for the melee strike). Six enemy types if you're feeling generous.
Once you've killed everyone in the area during the daytime, looted what you can, unlocked the fast travel destinations and got upgraded loot from the merchant (left in a chest with notes asking you to pay) you can ring the bell (unlocked in the central settlement in each area) to change to nighttime.
Now you can head to the central landmarks on the map. They are shrouded in corruption, and a big group of enemies generally spawns near them (often just as you approach, meaning you get right into a fight without a chance to stealth). Cleanse them all, and the gate to the next area is opened.
But before you pass through, you want to check out the local ghost stories / history. During nighttime, you can talk to the wraiths / shadows (I still have no idea which is which). They will generally give you a shred of their "how I died" story. Press X to hear an otherworldly shriek, and head towards it, pressing X again every 10 seconds or so to keep your bearings. This will generally lead you to a grave with some scraps of material evidence, another ghost giving its take on the first ghosts death, and/or a fight. Trek back and forth a few times to get the full story ("I remember looking at the barrel of a gun and feeling oddly calm"................. "Oh yeah, it's because I committed suicide after my son accidentally shot himself with that very gun") and you'll get a monetary reward you can use to upgrade your weapons.
There's a Red Riding Hood Maiden in Red hanging around the settlements. She doesn't believe in demonic entities (even if you kill them in front of her) and you can give her scraps of material evidence as gifts ("Here, have a shoe that belonged to a raped and murdered Indian girl"). She then asks for your reasoning for giving her each gift. There's an achievement for finding out her name, so I guess you need to give enough gifts with good reasons.
There are also a bunch of hidden treasure spots scattered on each map. You need a shovel to dig them out, and some bastard went and hid it on the final next-to-penultimate map.
That's EVERYTHING you do in the game. I didn't much mind playing it so far, but I can understand why the "What should I know" thread called it very repetitive and not worth playing. Still, that was one of the few bundle games I got that was fairly interesting and professional-ish. Just a bit too ambitious.
...
Basically nothing new happened between the moment I wrote the post and the endgame. 1 new enemy type, featured in precisely one map to little effect. I launched the game with a bit of sigh - "yes, let's do some more of this. Same old, same old".
In the end of the game, you're expected to visit every single ghost in every single location (so the ghost investigations weren't actually the least bit optional) and tell them to rest in peace or writhe in torment. Then you fight through several waves of enemies, all the more numerous depending on how many ghosts you've condemned to hellfire. Not a terrible idea - in fact, I would have welcomed it, had it taken place right after I wrote my initial post, rather than three meandering maps later.
There are achievements for killing enemies, killing them in melee from stealth, and killing them with tomahawks. I have completed the game with every other achievement, every weapon, every interactable object interacted with. I had less than half the kills needed for every one of the "kill enemies" achievements as the game gave me the "a winnar is you the adventure is over, but feel free to explore" message, encouraging me to grind in the open empty world. Yeah, no.
Shame. With a bit more variety, or if it condensed things down a bit, this could have made for a fairly decent budget title. As it stands, it just drags on way too long.
You show up at an abandoned series of outposts in the middle of the wilderness in 17th century America. In between investigating the exact happenings that lead to the outposts being abandoned, you fight various demonic infestations with 17th century weapons.
The main enemies are the Spanish conquistadors. They hang out in the open, patrolling in groups. Rather easy to spot in the default black and white color gamma, harder if you turn the color contrast up - which is a shame, because the game looks way prettier in full color (the contrast between colored daytime and black and white nighttime is also much more interesting)
You can sneak around the enemies, and sneak attacks do way more damage. Unfortunately, your only "quiet" sneak attack weapons are melee - and patrols generally intersect enough that that's not an option for a group - and arrows. Arrows have a random chance of bouncing off the enemy armor, regardless of how well you've aimed the attack. In a large group, that's basically guaranteed to happen, and then they all emit a howling shriek and charge at you.
All your strong weapons are one-shot and take time to reload. Your arrows are kinda terrible at doing damage to alert enemies - and both are likely to miss as the bad guys seem to change directions or duck just as you release. In order to fight large groups, I generally either tried to take advantage of their AI by ducking behind obstacles and popping out - which was very hit and miss - or kept running away and letting them string themselves out in pursuit (their friends shots do damage to them, which is a mechanic I always appreciate) hoping I won't run into another group as I run.
When you die (or change areas) all the enemies respawn. There's also the rogue-like option of dropping all your loot if you die, to be despawned if you die before recovering it. I'm not a big fan of rogue-likes, so I didn't use it. Must be quite frustrating.
Besides the conquistadors, there are flaming Indians (crouching in cover, hard to spot) Harryhausen skeletons (jump out of the ground on certain cues, sometimes right on top of you) and floating spirits at night, and members of the English expedition turned to ash statues (dead in one hit, the only use for the melee strike). Six enemy types if you're feeling generous.
Once you've killed everyone in the area during the daytime, looted what you can, unlocked the fast travel destinations and got upgraded loot from the merchant (left in a chest with notes asking you to pay) you can ring the bell (unlocked in the central settlement in each area) to change to nighttime.
Now you can head to the central landmarks on the map. They are shrouded in corruption, and a big group of enemies generally spawns near them (often just as you approach, meaning you get right into a fight without a chance to stealth). Cleanse them all, and the gate to the next area is opened.
But before you pass through, you want to check out the local ghost stories / history. During nighttime, you can talk to the wraiths / shadows (I still have no idea which is which). They will generally give you a shred of their "how I died" story. Press X to hear an otherworldly shriek, and head towards it, pressing X again every 10 seconds or so to keep your bearings. This will generally lead you to a grave with some scraps of material evidence, another ghost giving its take on the first ghosts death, and/or a fight. Trek back and forth a few times to get the full story ("I remember looking at the barrel of a gun and feeling oddly calm"................. "Oh yeah, it's because I committed suicide after my son accidentally shot himself with that very gun") and you'll get a monetary reward you can use to upgrade your weapons.
There's a Red Riding Hood Maiden in Red hanging around the settlements. She doesn't believe in demonic entities (even if you kill them in front of her) and you can give her scraps of material evidence as gifts ("Here, have a shoe that belonged to a raped and murdered Indian girl"). She then asks for your reasoning for giving her each gift. There's an achievement for finding out her name, so I guess you need to give enough gifts with good reasons.
There are also a bunch of hidden treasure spots scattered on each map. You need a shovel to dig them out, and some bastard went and hid it on the final next-to-penultimate map.
That's EVERYTHING you do in the game. I didn't much mind playing it so far, but I can understand why the "What should I know" thread called it very repetitive and not worth playing. Still, that was one of the few bundle games I got that was fairly interesting and professional-ish. Just a bit too ambitious.
...
Basically nothing new happened between the moment I wrote the post and the endgame. 1 new enemy type, featured in precisely one map to little effect. I launched the game with a bit of sigh - "yes, let's do some more of this. Same old, same old".
In the end of the game, you're expected to visit every single ghost in every single location (so the ghost investigations weren't actually the least bit optional) and tell them to rest in peace or writhe in torment. Then you fight through several waves of enemies, all the more numerous depending on how many ghosts you've condemned to hellfire. Not a terrible idea - in fact, I would have welcomed it, had it taken place right after I wrote my initial post, rather than three meandering maps later.
There are achievements for killing enemies, killing them in melee from stealth, and killing them with tomahawks. I have completed the game with every other achievement, every weapon, every interactable object interacted with. I had less than half the kills needed for every one of the "kill enemies" achievements as the game gave me the "a winnar is you the adventure is over, but feel free to explore" message, encouraging me to grind in the open empty world. Yeah, no.
Shame. With a bit more variety, or if it condensed things down a bit, this could have made for a fairly decent budget title. As it stands, it just drags on way too long.