While I expected this plot to just serve as bookends to the gameplay, Planet Robobot surprised
me with occasional cutscenes and supplementary text detailing the whys and hows of its story.
It's an intriguing premise, and the story gets told through back and forth dialogue at the beginning and end of the missions,
with the occasional cutscene thrown in for good measure using a Saturday morning cartoon style that I really liked.
You still spend most of your time on a series of cleanup missions tangentially related to the main story,
with the occasional cutscene tying Ghaul and the game's main threat back into the campaign.
Not exact matches
They could have made the game a bit more like WW
with occasional touchscreen use
with items like the boomerang and puzzles that needed it originally, kept the gameplay exactly the same but in HD
with HD
cutscenes or even redone the games completely.
Other than the
occasional base defense, most of the quest design in the game has you merely running from one place to another to grab an item or throw a switch, then moving on to the next area to do the same thing,
with occasional poorly produced and dramatically bankrupt
cutscenes punctuating the events of the story, such as it is.
There are still
occasional story - style quests
with cutscenes, but mostly you get to choose your own way through High Rank, hunting whatever you like.
Oddly considering the fact that the Harry Potter series started life as a book meaning it's a story driven affair the game actually has barely any story to it, instead it simply ignores most of the storyline and gives only the
occasional reference and
cutscene leaving anyone who has not actually read the books or watched the films
with a general feeling of «What the hell just happened?»
Unfortunately, the
cutscenes take a little dip in quality,
with a bit of latency in mouth movements, jagged transitions, and the
occasional audio cutout.
Occasional hiccups
with dialogue audio — most notably some skipping during
cutscenes — only further mar the overall experience..
Long
cutscenes with one
occasional random QTE that immediately kills you and forces you to start the whole scene over, bland and uninspired shooting, along
with padded length in the form of walking around finding collectables.
There weren't
cutscenes, and Duke was mostly a passive character,
with the
occasional quip about his appearance or what a stripper should shake.
It's instantly forgettable junk told via static screens
with only the
occasional voiced
cutscene, but otherwise the singleplayer campaign offers up several hours of gameplay and the AI provides a surprisingly good challenge, although I must confess that despite having a decent tactical mind card games are a definite weakness of mine, thus it's entirely possible that veterans will find little resistance.
The music is great and really sets the mood along
with the voice acting (which I had set to English, but you can play in Japanese if you wish), however not everything is voiced, so there is a lot of reading — you get the
occasional one - liner from the person you are speaking too, but full - on VO is reserved mainly for
cutscenes and the Trials.
While full - motion in
cutscenes is a nice touch, there's
occasional issues
with the new graphical style.
The most dramatic moments in Sonic Forces, for example, happen in
cutscene form,
with the player pulling off wild and dramatic jumps without any control over the character's movement, sans the
occasional QTE.
After a few
cutscenes, the story gives way to a battle, which replaces the turn - based strategy combat of previous Valkyria games
with real - time hack and slash swordplay,
with occasional gun and magic usage.