Review | Greed: Black Border
Format: PC | Genre: RPG | Publisher: Meridian4 | Developer: Headup Games | Release date: 13/01/10 | RRP: £14.95
Greed: Black Border attempts to recreate the Diablo experience within a different environment – outer space – and, despite some questionable choices in design and function, it achieves its homage with considerable quality at times.
But its antiquated design certainly raises questions to how enjoyable games such as this can be, as we race forward into a new decade.
TRADITIONAL
Greed: Black Border follows the hack ‘n’ slash path very strictly. Large levels with an equally large quantity of foes culminating in a large boss fight is the order of the day, and this illustrates one of the game’s main flaws: the experience becomes tedious quickly, and reduces the pace to a crawl. You often feel like you’re making no progress: running into enemies with each step increases the time it takes to complete a level tenfold, and while the genre is defined by the sheer number of foes present, with the enemies being so strong early on it serves to increase frustration more than live up to its predefined style.
It all seems to come down to a balancing issue with both the flow of the narrative and the difficulty. The initially tough encounters are offset later on by an easy section a few hours in; after meeting a trader who provides you with a weapon more than twice as powerful than your current, you’ll find the same enemies cause a great deal less concern than previously. The story is also slow to get going, with important information only coming to light through thorough exploration of the levels, and support character introductions and dialogue taking far too long to get started.
That said, while the dialogue begins badly delivered, with atrocious voice acting and ill-explained situations, by the end of chapter two it becomes apparent that the cheesy delivery may have been intentional, and after some in-game jokes regarding the situation and sci-fi convention as a whole your attitude towards the characters and the narrative shifts to a new perspective. Chapter two also sees dialogue between the characters increase in frequency in a natural way, and feels like the two bonding and becoming more confident as the story progresses.
THOSE SOUND LIKE FIGHTING WORDS
Controls are are identical to those of Diablo and everything like it since, but don’t suit the ranged combat as well as they’ve served melee for years. You’re required to click and hold the left mouse button to fire your weapon while hovering over your target, which proves a difficult task on fast moving enemies.
The controls prove just as off-putting out of combat as well. The occasional platforming obstacle will crop up in the form of a challenge like turret- or laser-dodging, and with movement being dictated by mouse clicks it’s difficult to achieve pin-point accuracy, leading to a number of unfair deaths. The controls are still responsive and faithful to PC hack ‘n’ slash RPG’s of yore, but the ranged combat and platforming obstacles are crying out for a WASD setup.
As far as the rest of the setup goes, it’s a fairly standard affair for the genre. You have the choice of three character classes, each with their own abilities that can be improved through levelling, but the main difference is the range of their weapons and is more about your style of play than anything else. In the end, Greed: Black Border does nothing new with the genre, and never jumps above mediocre in its presentation or design.
There are certainly worse games to pass the time, but what Greed: black Border brings to light is how this style of game has aged over time. As videogame storytelling has become more sophisticated, so too have RPGs themselves – even of the hack ‘n’ slash variety. For nostalgia’s sake this is worth a try, but will only serve to remind you how far gaming has come over the years. By Greg Giddens
5/10
