World of Darkness Werewolf: The Apocalypse – Earthblood - action-RPG adaptation from Cyanide

[J1M]

Unlike most other games, being detected isn't really a bad thing because it means you get to turn into werewolf form.

Big question, can you get away by smashing the left mouse button on most enemies? Second question, most combat arenas are just industrial looking installations? Any combat system where I can get away by spamming the left button bore me to tears and pretty much most of the footage I saw were on industrial looking installations that can also become very repetitive fast.

First, I'd say that a game like this does need some mooks that you can smash easily. But your point is well-taken.

Second, I'm only 3 missions in. So far there have been enemy types that require a heavy attack to break a shield or a dodge to get behind them to do any significant damage. The skill tree suggests some alternative solutions, like an AOE stun spell.

 

[JDR13]

Unlike most other games, being detected isn't really a bad thing because it means you get to turn into werewolf form.

Big question, can you get away by smashing the left mouse button on most enemies? Second question, most combat arenas are just industrial looking installations? Any combat system where I can get away by spamming the left button bore me to tears and pretty much most of the footage I saw were on industrial looking installations that can also become very repetitive fast.

1. Yes

2. From what I saw, yes. I quit after the third mission because I realized by then it wasn't worth my time, but that mission took place mostly in a forested area.

 

[lukaszek]

Have these people ever been outside at night in the wilderness?

when was last time you saw clear sky?

 

[Fedora Master]

Have these people ever been outside at night in the wilderness?

when was last time you saw clear sky?

I know what the Milky Way looks like and presumably Cairns are in the deep wilderness where there is no light pollution.
In fact, wilderness in the WoD is specifically stated to be more hostile to human encroachment, and not just because of the Garou. There's all kinds of awful shit out there.

 

[Caim]

Have these people ever been outside at night in the wilderness?

when was last time you saw clear sky?

I know what the Milky Way looks like and presumably Cairns are in the deep wilderness where there is no light pollution.
In fact, wilderness in the WoD is specifically stated to be more hostile to human encroachment, and not just because of the Garou. There's all kinds of awful shit out there.

You're forgetting something. Those lights in the night sky?

Those aren't stars.

 

[rusty_shackleford]

Have these people ever been outside at night in the wilderness?

when was last time you saw clear sky?

In USA away from the cities? Anytime the sun goes down.
Considering the setting of this game, it's reasonable to expect to see the clear night sky.

 

[Fedora Master]

Have these people ever been outside at night in the wilderness?

when was last time you saw clear sky?

I know what the Milky Way looks like and presumably Cairns are in the deep wilderness where there is no light pollution.
In fact, wilderness in the WoD is specifically stated to be more hostile to human encroachment, and not just because of the Garou. There's all kinds of awful shit out there.

You're forgetting something. Those lights in the night sky?

Those aren't stars.

Then what are they?

 

[Caim]

Have these people ever been outside at night in the wilderness?

when was last time you saw clear sky?

I know what the Milky Way looks like and presumably Cairns are in the deep wilderness where there is no light pollution.
In fact, wilderness in the WoD is specifically stated to be more hostile to human encroachment, and not just because of the Garou. There's all kinds of awful shit out there.

You're forgetting something. Those lights in the night sky?

Those aren't stars.

Then what are they?

Spirits, all of them. They are the product of the Spirit Wilds, the Penumbra of the Middle Umbra. Here nature is amplified and the stars shine all the brighter while the polluted parts of the world are all the more vile. Everything here has a spirit linked to it, embodying them as well as representing them, even the individual stars. But they are too minor and too weak to provide much of a boon to the Garou, and only the most potent stars or entire constellations can provide Gifts.

 

[Fedora Master]

Have these people ever been outside at night in the wilderness?

when was last time you saw clear sky?

I know what the Milky Way looks like and presumably Cairns are in the deep wilderness where there is no light pollution.
In fact, wilderness in the WoD is specifically stated to be more hostile to human encroachment, and not just because of the Garou. There's all kinds of awful shit out there.

You're forgetting something. Those lights in the night sky?

Those aren't stars.

Then what are they?

Spirits, all of them. They are the product of the Spirit Wilds, the Penumbra of the Middle Umbra. Here nature is amplified and the stars shine all the brighter while the polluted parts of the world are all the more vile. Everything here has a spirit linked to it, embodying them as well as representing them, even the individual stars. But they are too minor and too weak to provide much of a boon to the Garou, and only the most potent stars or entire constellations can provide Gifts.

Then I'd be seeing them with Penumbra vision, but they disappear.
Also doesn't explain the absence of the Milky Way.
It's just a shit skybox.

 

[Chippy]

So this game is crap?.

 

[Fedora Master]

So this game is crap?.

It's a mediocre consoleshit brawler.

The Epic Store seems to be full of mediocre games like this.

 

[Caim]

Have these people ever been outside at night in the wilderness?

when was last time you saw clear sky?

I know what the Milky Way looks like and presumably Cairns are in the deep wilderness where there is no light pollution.
In fact, wilderness in the WoD is specifically stated to be more hostile to human encroachment, and not just because of the Garou. There's all kinds of awful shit out there.

You're forgetting something. Those lights in the night sky?

Those aren't stars.

Then what are they?

Spirits, all of them. They are the product of the Spirit Wilds, the Penumbra of the Middle Umbra. Here nature is amplified and the stars shine all the brighter while the polluted parts of the world are all the more vile. Everything here has a spirit linked to it, embodying them as well as representing them, even the individual stars. But they are too minor and too weak to provide much of a boon to the Garou, and only the most potent stars or entire constellations can provide Gifts.

Then I'd be seeing them with Penumbra vision, but they disappear.
Also doesn't explain the absence of the Milky Way.
It's just a shit skybox.

Ah, in that case you're looking at the Deep Umbra. Beyond the asteroid belt there is a mostly empty vastness populated by alien entities and eldritch locations, the what ifs, could've beens and never weres of reality, Paradox Realms, the Shenti (which are both the homes of the Triat and the Triat themselves) and assorted things such as Arcadia, Mount Qaf, Bygone Umbral realms and what have you. So no gas giants, no Milky Way. It is the edge of reality, and it's staring down at Earth.

 

[J1M]

I have no idea what that is, and it would be nice to see some of that quirky shit make its way into a proper game, but we all know that WoD will never reach enough success to get past the "here's an intro to the setting" products.

 

[Fedora Master]

Q U A L I T Y

e: Why is Endron - an OIL COMPANY - running a fucking prison? I know this is America and all but that still retardedly contrived.

 

[Caim]

I have no idea what that is, and it would be nice to see some of that quirky shit make its way into a proper game, but we all know that WoD will never reach enough success to get past the "here's an intro to the setting" products.

Werewolf sticks to the Middle Umbra anyway, and the Lower is the domain of the Vampire/Wraith/Demon trio. The rest of the cosmology is the domain of Mage, and has to be explored either through a major acid trip of an RPG or a Mass Effect style space opera.

 

[Roguey]

e: Why is Endron - an OIL COMPANY - running a fucking prison? I know this is America and all but that still retardedly contrived.

Is it specifically Endron or Pentex? Pentex is "everything I don't like has one neck" https://whitewolf.fandom.com/wiki/Pentex If it's Endron, they messed up.

 

[Fedora Master]

e: Why is Endron - an OIL COMPANY - running a fucking prison? I know this is America and all but that still retardedly contrived.

Is it specifically Endron or Pentex? Pentex is "everything I don't like has one neck" https://whitewolf.fandom.com/wiki/Pentex If it's Endron, they messed up.

I have not seen a single mention of Pentex. They have all the other subsidiaries in there - O'Tolley's, Sunburst, Hercules - but no Pentex.

 

[Fedora Master]

Okay so I just murdered an entire prison.
The game gives you the option of going around and doing favors for inmates... or you can go Crinos at any time and fuck everything and everyone up with no consequences. Combat is piss easy anyway.

This is garbage. Uninstalled.

 

[Xelocix]

So this game is crap?.

It's a mediocre consoleshit brawler.

The Epic Store seems to be full of mediocre games like this.

This is garbage. Uninstalled.

It took multiple hours of playtime for you to realise this? I haven't even played the game and could see most of the problems you've been talking about before it even launched.

That's what you get for wasting $40 on an obvious piece of shit.

 

[Caim]

At least there's a level set around an O'Tolley's restaurant in the same vein as that one Dukeburger level from Duke Nukem 3D, right?

 

[Fedora Master]

So this game is crap?.

It's a mediocre consoleshit brawler.

The Epic Store seems to be full of mediocre games like this.

This is garbage. Uninstalled.

It took multiple hours of playtime for you to realise this? I haven't even played the game and could see most of the problems you've been talking about before it even launched.

That's what you get for wasting $40 on an obvious piece of shit.

"Bold of you to assume I paid for the game."

 

[Xelocix]

So this game is crap?.

It's a mediocre consoleshit brawler.

The Epic Store seems to be full of mediocre games like this.

This is garbage. Uninstalled.

It took multiple hours of playtime for you to realise this? I haven't even played the game and could see most of the problems you've been talking about before it even launched.

That's what you get for wasting $40 on an obvious piece of shit.

View attachment 17752
"Bold of you to assume I paid for the game."

It was wrong of me to so hastily assume that anybody on Codex was actually cringe enough to p*rchase this travesty of a game. I apologize.

Still though, you shouldn't have even bothered in the first place. This thing was doomed since its inception.

 

[Fedora Master]

I feared as much but didn't really follow the development, went in knowing barely anything about it other than that it was supposed to be a fighting game.

 

[DJOGamer PT]

Completed the game earlier this week.
All my points from previous posts still stand.

I will now add some more info regarding the combat.


I played this game on Hard - because this being a western game I knew any other difficulty was bound to be piss easy (and I was right)
On Hard the game can be challenging and you can't get away with many stupid mistakes, but it's still not a proper difficulty that really keeps on your toes
This is part due to
> Healing: there's no auto regen (outside a passive Frenzy upgrade), instead you have to use the Healing ability which uses one of "bar" of Rage; so far so good, however even in beggining of the game this skill heals the very high value of about 20% of HP; this is further made worse by the fact that healing is instantaneous and you can have 7 bars of Rage (and filling the Rage "meter" is piss easy)
> Some skills remove your PC's weaknesses: a character's limitations are one of the things that give meaningful challenges to a game, while I said in the previous post that combat give gives actions and properties, unfortunately some remove player weakness - for example when healing; before your PC gets his HP back he's locked in a short animation; this means that during this time you're vulnerable and can even be stunned, which cancels out the healing; however there's a skill that not only prevents you from being stunned during healing but also knockback enemies that are too close to you; this obviously almost removes the risks and drawbacks of using this ability
> 1 input special moves: in each stance you can use 4 different abilities accessed by the D-Pad/Num 1-4; the problem lies in the fact that most of them are very good attacks; so instead of performing them as part of some combo, you simply click one button as watch as the PC does some awesome high-powered move
> Level Design: because the rooms were designed to suit both combat and stealth, they always are big, spacious arenas with weak enemy placing; none of them require you to prioritize targets, none of them restrain you in any way and none of them allow you to come up with more interesting strategies other than picking the groups sides of weaker elements and clustering them together to perform big AoE attacks

A personal nitpick is the game feel.
The animations, while very well done, lack IMO that "humph" feel that melee games should have (sound fx might also be a issue since they aren't cool to listen to)
They got the amount of blood right, but the blood itself looks like watercolour and even more strange is how there's no dismemberment at all (even though during combat your PC does the most violent shit ever)
While it's cool that you can pick up and throw enemies (though it sin't possible to use them as a shield), the throw is pathethic, feels like you're throwing crumpled toilet paper...

Finally there's the enemy design, which I abstained from commenting in my last post as I was still hadn't reached the half-way point of the game
Since this one is going to be big, I'll leave under a spoiler:

Spoiler

The enemy design is way too generic
If you played a game like PS4's Spider-Man, then thats the kind of shit you can expect

You have:
> Mooks - they are just there as meatbags for the player to get one free bar of Rage, unless they have shotguns or snipers (specially if it's loaded with silver bullets) don't mind them, their damage is laughable, you can one-shot them and like zombies in the nuDoom games you can immediately execute them
> Armored Mooks - mooks using alot of Kevlar armor, because of that you can no longer kill them in one hit and to execute them you must first reduce their life to 1/3 of total HP, also they either carry one of 4 things: a shotgun, a sniper, a bunch of grenades (rare) or a shield (the latter sometimes uses a eletric prod on the other hand, as electricity stuns you); the shield guys aren't too be understimated as they will try to flank you and block you off so that another enemy can take a crack at you
> Big Guy - exactely what you think it is: genetically altered human that almost as tall as a werewolf, hits like a truck and has a big HP bar (in act in this game they are take more time to kill than the mech guys); they either use a shield and machete or a grenade laucher (the latter is very infrequent)
> Mechs - soldiers using the mech suits you saw in the game's promos; they are the one original and fun enemy of this game, there's 2 types: buzzsaw, that make some serious damage upclose; flamethowers mechs, these are the only enemies in the game that are difficult to get close; also both can use a eletric AoE attack to stun you
> Wyrm Parasytes - introduced half-way trough the game; the most boring annoying enemies; they can hide in every other enemy (except mechs I think) and only reveal themselves after you killed the enemy; so end-up killing the same guy twice, only the 2nd time is worse has they they give enemy huge HP boosts, making even mooks tiresome to fight; plus their attack in the wyrm phase are very predictable and boring AoE attacks
> Infected Fat Guys - the worst enemy in the game, they are swollen up fat bastards that spit green acid/goo; the problem being they only stand in one place, take way too long to fucking kill because of a ridiculously big HP pool, constantly home-in on you (even if you are close to them they still shoot), their spit balls have a big circular area and top it off you can't stun them
> Drones - they appear sometimes and for some reason their attacks consist solely of suicidal charges

As for bosses, they are all pretty much other Werewolves
These are cool fights as the Garou pretty much have your moveset, making them the most "complete" enemy in the game

But overall 2 good enemies don't make a satisfying rooster that demands mastery of the combat system
It's really a shame that despite using the WoD setting this is all you ever face up against
No vampires, no hunters, no mages, nothing

Overall it's a weird and unfornate game.
Everything in it screams like it was made by a indie who was trying to make a AA game, yet it was made by Cyanide
The game is so barebones in content that if this was released back in the PS2 era, it would've most certantly have been developed in a year by such a big studio, yet it took them almost 4 years for this...
And despite having such a unique ip to work with plus a decent, if undeveloped, combat system, the game does nothing interesting with either of them
I wouldn't mind a sequel if all the problems were adressed, the combat improved and the game actually taking advantage of the WoD setting
But seeing as how badly received it has been and the fact this does seems just like a cash-grab project I doubt that a sequel or another Werewolf action game will ever be done
As it stands I can only see it as being worth to buy if you get it in a Humble Bundle or really want to a Werewolf action game and have 5 euro to waste, other wise don't bother specially if you're a fan of WTA

Or you can just pirate it...
It's only 10Gb...

But how is the lore implementation?

They name drop some garou tribe names and WTA concepts here and there...

I have already said in my post on page 26, but this doesn't feel to be set in any on the World of Darkness at all.

 

[lycanwarrior]

This game is no more an ARPG than Batman: Arkham Asylum and PS4's Spiderman is

The "If it's marketed as an RPG it goes into RPG Discussion" rule was adopted to avoid these subjective arguments.

Enjoy this forum being drowned by every game with a progression system
Because nowadays every game with one markets itself as an RPG

After starting to play the game yesterday, I'd have to agree unfortunately.

The skill tree is more akin to Immortals Fenyx Rising than to any traditional/hardcore CRPG.