Review

I can make this short and sweet, since I only played about 1/4 of the game. It was about that far in when I ran into several areas that completely violated the rules that the game and I had come to agree upon. I was actually having a fairly good time, learning to effectively use my spells and weapons, managing my ammo usage, discovering vulnerabilities in the creatures, etc.. The rule in question, however, was simple: if you kill the creatures that come after you, then the area is clear. This is a fairly well-established rule in shooters, actually. Levels include a certain amount of pre-arranged encounters, and the game gives you a certain amount of resources with which to overcome those encounters. Do well managing those resources, and as a player you'll succeed and progress. So here I go playing Undying, happily killing things as efficiently as possible so as to not use up all of my ammo, etc., that have been so thoughtfully placed within the levels by the game's designers.

And then what happens? I'm wandering through this catacomb area. It's just the current area in a game that obviously consists of a very long string of connected areas. I encounter some action with a few of the howlers (werewolf type creatures). And then some more. And some more. I'm dispatching them quickly, but they keep coming. I seem to have stirred up a little nest of them, so I keep my back covered and begin the task of exterminating them so I can go about exploring the area. But no. They keep coming. More and more and more of them. They're appearing fast enough that I can't rely on just my magic ability to kill them because it isn't recharging fast enough, so I mix in my trusty pistol and my newly acquired shotgun. Before long, though, I've used 90% of my ammo for both weapons (which was a *LOT* of ammo) and I'm becoming concerned. I think perhaps they're emerging from some source or something, and I have to shut a door, or destroy a portal or whatever, so I start running around the catacomb. But it's just a boring old catacomb; big pillars, some small rooms with a chest or two, the stairway from which I entered (which is now blocked) and a stairway out. Now I'm pissed. So I stop and decide to peek at a walkthrough to see what I've obviously missed, only to find out that this area simply has infinitely spawning howlers.

What?

That's right. Unlike every other area so far, and every group of howlers so far, this particular area has infinitely spawning howlers.

• Do they look different? No.

• Do they act different? No.

• Does the area look special in any way? No.

• Is there any special noise or anything? No.

• Is there any thing AT ALL that would indicate that I, as the player, cannot dispatch the group of howlers as I see fit, like I've been able to do over the entire course of the game up to this point? NO!

So now I'm really pissed off, but I load my quicksave game and do what I'm apparently "supposed to do", which is just sprint through this perfectly normal looking area to avoid this magical pack of perfectly normal looking howlers that will continue spawning from now until the heat death of the universe.

I didn't stomach much more after that. It turns out that one of the level designers must have been rather fond of the InfiniteCreatureSpawn entity in the map editor, because it surfaces several more times. Each time, it's completely indistinguishable from every other area in the game where I'd been able to approach the conflict however I saw fit, and was free to actually examine an area after clearing it.

What really pushed me over the top, though, was one particular spot where not only were the howlers spawning infinitely, but the game went and broke ANOTHER rule that it had clearly negotiated with me. I'm standing on this stairwell killing howlers, and beginning to suspect that they're infinitely spawning, when I get killed mysteriously. I'd quicksaved only moments before, so I load up and get killed again. I'm thinking that the collision detection with the howler attacks is being very generous because the bastards are a good 4 or 5 yards away from me when I die. After a few more quickloads and quickdeaths, I cast my scrye spell on a lark and discover that there's a monk ghost kicking my ass. Well, the rule was that scrying allowed you to witness things from the past, or things from another plane of existence; in other words - things that couldn't harm you, certainly at least not if you weren't actively scrying.

So now what, I'm supposed to suffer through random Insta-Kills because things that aren't even supposed to be able to touch me can walk up, completely invisible, and whack me while I'm standing around trying to determine whether or not I'm "allowed" to kill this or that particular group of creatures.

Ok, screw this. Count me out. You don't just go randomly changing the rules of the gameworld just to keep the player "on their toes". Oh - how about this: how about if every now and then an ammo box would explode whenever the player picked it up? Or what if a health pack was occasionally a "poison pack" but the player wouldn't know it because it would look just like the health pack and when they used it they'd die instantly? Wouldn't that keep them guessing?

Never betray the player. Ever. No matter how good you think your gameworld is, it's broken and unrealistic in a huge number of ways, and the only way that the player will stay in your world and excuse all the ways that it's broken is if you tell them that there are a set of rules for your broken gameworld and that you promise to stick to them.

I was willing to excuse the fact that Undying's gameworld was full of doors that would open one moment but not the next, as long it didn't violate the rule that I wouldn't ever be "stuck" because I'd left an area without doing something critical, or obtaining some necessary item. I'd excuse the fact that ammo and health packs are found in totally random places that make no sense, because I know the designers are obeying the rule that the player always has access to enough resources to get through the game. I'll excuse the fact that servants in the mansion are totally unphased by the death of their coworkers and the sight of dead werewolves in the hallway, because I figure that the designers are ensuring that if there is someone that I have to talk to, that person will be available to talk to.

But Undying committed one of the worst cardinal sins in game design, and that is breaking one or more rules of its own gameworld. Once you betray the trust of the player, there's no going back. Violate a rule and it can't be unviolated. The player will not trust anything in the game after that.

Oh, and on a completely unrelated note: it was annoying as hell to have no way of skipping the death scene whenever Patrick dies, and of having to wait for the default load to occur after death before I could reload the game I really wanted.

I guess that wasn't so short after all. But I feel much better!