Avoid like a barbarian with a massive axe...
Written: Sep 15 '05
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Product Rating:
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Pros: Its probably very cheap by now
Cons: Just awful in every other respect
The Bottom Line: If you see this game in a shop run far and run fast. Truly absymal. Slightly less fun than the ebola virus.
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| geordieeliot's Full Review: Barbarian for Xbox |
Ok, I admit it; I’m a sucker for special offers, stick something on a ֭ For 2’ offer and I’ll buy it, I may be a single bloke living alone but in my opinion you can never have too many sanitary towels as long as you’re saving a pound in the process. Imagine my delight, if you will, when in a fit of pre-Fable desperation I chanced upon a copy of ‘Barbarian’ for the princely sum of £9.97 (Pre-owned), you see not only do I love special offers, throw in an axe and some ‘medieval’ setting and I’m anybodies.
It doesn’t take a massive logical leap to discover that I was bitterly, bitterly disappointed to discover that ‘Barbarian’ is, in a word, awful; in three words I can do even better, ‘Barbarian’ is complete, utter tripe.
Where do you begin deconstructing such monstrosities? For a start the actual point of the game, admittedly spending hours staring at a computer screen is a, lets face it, a fairly pointless activity, but ‘Barbarian’ goes beyond that, ‘Baldur’s’ Gate’ for example at least had some semblance of plot to engross, ‘Championship Manager’ is supremely addictive. ‘Barbarian’ is not. The plot what there is of it seems to be concerned with your chosen character (there are twelve to choose from) avenging someone/something, in reality it serves as an excuse to set up fights with all the other characters, even when they serve no purpose; for example in one of my games I spent ages fighting this mutant monkey thing only to be told that ‘this area holds nothing for you, instead you must fight X,’ very annoying. It is not even as if the fighting itself is interesting, although there are options, block, combos, magic etc. the fights boil down to little more than button bashing, any attempts at something more complex are useless as they gain very little for you and open you up to using. Instead the majority of fights can be won by hitting ‘x’ repeatedly.
The sounds and music are admittedly adequate but that’s all they are, imagine that in every developers office there is a disk marked ‘Medieval Atmosphere-Fighting’ and you’re pretty close. As are the graphics, they’re not too bad, not too good, they get-the-job-done but don’t do much else. They spectacularly fail to recompense for the awful gameplay.
I can imagine the multi-player would be entertaining, for a while, at least until you both figured out the way to win was by tapping ‘x’ and cancelled each other out.
I had planned to write a tome of vitriol about this game, the frustration I felt whilst playing it should be currently flowing out of my hands and on to the keyboard. Instead I find I can’t. Not because I have had a sudden, spectacular change of heart, on the contrary I hate it more now than I did before, I find myself struggling to write this purely because I have blocked out all knowledge of its existence, rather as one does with traumatic events from earlier in life. In fact the most positive thing I can about this game is that it is such a non-entity it doesn’t leave any long-term scars, however it is still truly, truly awful.
Recommended:
No
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Epinions.com ID:
geordieeliot
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Location: Newcastle
Reviews written: 52
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