![\"Staring](\"https:\/\/grafskaya.club\/mysst\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/06\/cerberus.jpg\" "\\"Staring")
<\/a>I\u2019ll always regret the \u00a35 I spent on Dirge of Cerberus<\/em>. Yes, it\u2019s a used copy, yes, it was cheap, yes, this was\u00a0four years ago. But none of that changes the fact that it\u2019s a terrible game. I\u2019d heard the bad reviews before, and I really should have listened, but a sort of morbid fascination guided my hand, like watching an imminent train wreck. Mind you,\u00a0I hadn\u2019t yet played Crisis Core<\/em> at that point, so I had no precedent as to what to expect. Vincent was my favourite character in Final Fantasy VII<\/em>, and the simple fact of him being the protagonist of his own game felt like he was finally getting some much-deserved limelight.<\/p>\nWell, he certainly didn\u2019t deserve this.<\/p>\n
The first reason why DoC doesn\u2019t work is because it\u2019s a third-person shooter derived from an RPG<\/abbr>. While it probably makes sense on a theoretical level, since Vincent\u2019s weapon of Vincent can also use a melee combo\u00a0if enemies manage to get up close and personal, but I’ll let you guess how often that comes in handy.\u00a0He also has access to materia (it wouldn\u2019t be an FFVII game without it), but there\u2019s such a small selection of it that, once I\u2019m not actually a stickler for smooth gameplay, and I can disregard quite a lot if the storyline and\/or characters compensate for it. But by that reasoning, DoC would have to be nothing short of a literary masterpiece. As you can probably guess, this is far from being the case. Sequels are tricky to manage at the best of times, even when the original story deliberately\u00a0leaves loose ends that would allow for one. FFVII certainly didn\u2019t, and DoC isn\u2019t any better in its premise than Advent Children<\/em> was. It even references the abomination that is Genesis, the Sephiroth-wannabe and sorry excuse for a villain introduced in Crisis Core<\/em>. The result is an insipid mess, as full of plotholes as a slab of gruy\u00e8re,\u00a0involving a super-secret, heretofore unknown and nefarious branch of Shinra, which performs human experiments and whose goal, once again, is to destroy the planet. My only interest was to get some insight into Vincent\u2019s past, and more specifically, Lucrecia\u2019s side of the story, which went largely ignored in FFVII. DoC does delve into these questions, but it loses itself in a morass of retcons, additions, thoroughly implausible developments\u2026and stupid outfits. An example would be the This brings us to the character department, which is just another nail in the game\u2019s coffin (get it?\u2026Vincent\u2026coffin\u2026ok, I\u2019ll just let myself out). Lucrecia gradually becomes appropriately deranged,\u00a0and Hojo is his usual psychotic self. That\u2019s about all the <\/a>choice is<\/em> a gun, after all, it fails in execution. First of all, you immediately start to wonder why the rest of the FFVII crew isn\u2019t helping him. There\u2019s a world-threatening crisis, surely they don\u2019t all have better things to do? He does get some minor assistance from Yuffie and Reeve\/Cait Sith, but that\u2019s it. The latter actually features in a short infiltration sequence, but it\u2019s terminally useless, thoroughly out of place, and the only worse character they could\u2019ve picked from the original FFVII cast is Aeris\/Aerith. Good thing they couldn\u2019t. Mweheh. Anyway, I guess the rest of the old crew were having a BBQ party. Or a massive case of indigestion. Who knows?<\/p>\n<\/a>Be that as it may, the shooter format feels like a simplistic downgrade from the RPG one. Corridor-riddled maps with invisible walls all over the place, no exploration to speak of, and character interaction reduced to cutscenes, often including idiotic dialogue. Still,\u00a0shooters can<\/em> be entertaining, when they’re well-executed, but this is most definitely not the case\u00a0here. Everything looks and feels stilted, clunky and unwieldy. Combat is slow and extremely repetitive. Movement…well, Vincent can jump, but\u00a0he’s either carrying bricks in his pockets, or those metallic toe-caps of his must weigh a ton. Possibly both.\u00a0And this is the\u00a0English version of the game; I\u2019m told the original Japanese release was even worse.<\/p>\n<\/a>To further damn the gameplay, some RPG elements still remain: the game is broken down into 12 chapters, which are further subdivided into stages, each with its own (frequently asinine) goal to achieve,\u00a0and Vincent gains a certain amount of EXP<\/abbr> at the end of each according to his performance. This can be used to level him up or transformed into money he can spend on supplies, such as ammo or potions (of which he can only carry a ridiculously small amount), or spare parts to upgrade his guns (of which he has three different models). The latter can quickly become expensive, meaning that you either have to sacrifice a significant chunk of EXP to be able to afford them or pray that enemies will drop wads of cash. Needless to say that this is a restrictive system, which penalises people who aren\u2019t good at shooters. Scratch that: people who aren\u2019t good at DoC, because the only less user-friendly gun mechanics I can think of are in the original Silent Hill<\/em>.<\/p>\n<\/a>again, you\u2019re left wondering where everything else went. The same thing happens to Vincent\u2019s trademark shapeshifting Limit Breaks, of which he had four different ones in FFVII. In DoC, he can only use the Galian Beast. There\u2019s a (largely implausible) storyline reason why he can\u2019t use Chaos, but what happened to the other two? Did he suddenly\u00a0incur partial amnesia?\u00a0We shall never know. Be that as it may, the Galian Beast does pack a wallop, but also looks terminally silly, with Vincent\u2019s cape serving as a loincloth. To trigger it, he must use a consumable item mysteriously named Limit Breaker. Is it drugs? Steroids? Red Bull? The game certainly doesn\u2019t tell you, and Limit Breaks didn\u2019t work that way in FFVII, so the mystery remains complete.<\/p>\n<\/a>introduction of Vincent\u2019s father as a character. Fair enough, but 1) he\u2019s essentially nothing more than a plot device and gets about two minutes of total screentime, 2) why the hell is he called Grimoire?! (which is a kind of spellbook), and 3) why is he dressed like Van Helsing, when he was supposedly a scientist? And for that matter, what kind of scientist wears a frilly blouse and asymmetrical frilly skirt? *points at Lucrecia* Don\u2019t ask me where she got a change of clothes before encasing herself into that crystal she\u2019s in, either (how did<\/em> she manage that, by the way?)<\/p>\n<\/a>positive I can dredge up though. Vincent gets all his emo dials cranked up a few notches and is reduced to about half a normal human being’s width. It’s a wonder he doesn’t snap in half whenever there’s a gust of wind. Yuffie\u2019s just as annoying as ever, Reeve is useless at best, and the rest of the FFVII team\u00a0features in\u00a0a horribly cheesy cameo at the end of the game. Other than that, the character lineup features such wonderful <\/em>highlights as a set of villains redundantly named after colours. Eg. Azul the Cerulean: ‘azul’ is ‘blue’ in Spanish, and ‘cerulean’ is a type of blue\u2026so the result is Blue the Blue\u2026*facepalm* There\u2019s also a half-robotic female scientist wearing what can only be described as <\/a>remnants of clothing (where did they ever<\/em> see a scientist like that?!), which would seriously not look out of place in a strip club, and her sister, who suffers from the Presea syndrome: arrested development due to scientific tampering, which left her as a 19-year-old in a 9-year-old body…who fights with a laser\u00a0skipping rope. This is already creepy in and of itself\u2013what with the ‘sexy’ pose she strikes on her official render\u2013, but the game pushes the creepiness further by introducing a storyline development whereby she gradually takes on Lucrecia\u2019s personality traits. While this may presage the worst, I\u2019m happy to report that Vincent manages to avoid Pedobear-worthy territory. But just barely.<\/p>\n