Thursday 11 January, 2007

Having played all the previous games in this series, I had high expectations for the most current installment Heroes V. Heroes IV and III both fell a little short in comparison to the first two so I was a little worried going into number five. After a quick play session my fears were over; this time around I was not disappointed. Even though a whole new publisher hosted the game they have expertly restored the greatness of the original while adding their own unique and rewarding twists to it.

The first thing I noticed about the game is the deep storyline which is supplemented by brilliant cutscenes. It is the first time in any of the Heroes games that I could really get into the story happening within the game. The only problem I have with it is that they put in such great visuals and voice acting but they couldn't animate the characters mouths to move. You see people talking and just see an unmoving face associated with it. That is only a minor annoyance but it really doesn't take anything from the game as a whole.

The gameplay is very similar to all the others but it seems as though your hero has more influence on a battle than in the others which is great since the game is called Heroes. For instance, my undermanned army of little skeletons and zombies can take on titans if have my minions dodge and avoid the titans while my hero casts powerful spells on the my stronger enemy. There is much more strategy involved with combat. You have to properly predict the enemies movements and counter them. If I make an army of several powerful ranged units and few melee units, I will have to quickly eliminate the opposing players archers and mages and take free shots at their other units as they march forwards trying to get in range of my archers.

So far this has been a very fun play experience and it will be a game I definitely finish up.

I love the heroes series, but I find I still like Heroes 3 the best...its the one I keep coming back to. I tell myself its because I'm not fond of the castle-building system in the newer Heroes, or the new combat system, but it could be that I'm just not used to it. =P And I agree, the non-animated mouths are a bit irritating.
In any case, I'm sticking to Heroes 3.

Err... You do realize that HoMMV has the same plot has HoMM3 right? Ubisoft had a long post from the dev's on the HoMM5 forums about how they decided to go with a plot that worked. :/

Err... You do realize that HoMMV has the same plot has HoMM3 right? Ubisoft had a long post from the dev's on the HoMM5 forums about how they decided to go with a plot that worked. :/

Bah. Double posted for some reason. Sorry.

The mouth movement is something that really stood out to you. Just for fun, let's pretend you are on the developement team, and you want to make sure the voices match the voice-overs, but you had to divery resources from somewhere else.

What would you cut to allow for the funding of something like a voice-tracking animation system? cut down on model detail or animations...those graphics artists do charge $100 a move...do you really need them all? What about sound effects...do people really care if they were recorded in a professional studio instead of with a monkey wrench a kettle drum and some fishing line? Maybe some of the voices themselves? How many lines would be worth cutting if each line felt more real by seeing the mouths move?

I'm not trying to say such a feature isn't important at all...my opinion doesn't matter really, I'm curious if you were the one in charge, how high would you prioritize it?

So, looks like all you HoMM3 fans caught me in a lie. So I 'played' HoMM3 as a younger kid. By played I mean do a couple missions and set it aside. Being younger, the game didn't catch my attention fast so I dropped it. I guess I'm gonna have to replay it since people are calling me on my half bluff. My bad.

About the mouth moving thing. How I see it, that particular issue is the bottom of where I would put my resources. I did say it was a minor annoyance, not something that took away from the game experience much. When you are designing a game, you try to put your subject into the realm of the game. Something like that simply breaks the spell the game is trying to put on you. I don't know much about the process in game design but it seem very simple to add motion to a mouth when comparing everything else they did in the game. To keep the mood of it all, you don't need this realistic motion as though every word matched perfectly with it. Just random up and down mouth movement when the person is speaking would suffice. I couldn't imagine that would take more than a days work for a professional and it would add a lot.