Gamertell Review: Infinite Undiscovery for Xbox 360
by at September 12, 2008 12:07 pm
Sections: Action, Consoles, Features, Genres, Opinions, Reviews, Role-Playing, Xbox-360
|
Sign up for the FREE Tell Membership and receive benefits that include the digital edition of Tell Magazine sent straight to your inbox, product giveaways, coupons and much more!
Infinite Undiscovery (IU) is set in a world that is slave to an enigmatic organization known as the Order of Chains. The Order of Chains carries out a mysterious plot that involves binding towns and villages to the moon with magical chains that cause chaos and destruction. However, hope lives on in the form of a young man known as the Liberator and he alone wields the power to break these shackles.
The main protagonist, Capell, is a 17-year-old flute player who also bears an eerily striking resemblance to the Liberator. Because of this, he is mistaken for and imprisoned by the Order of Chains until a young girl named Aya helps him escape. She later introduces him to the Liberator, whose name is Sigmund, and his band of liberation fighters who adopt Capell as their newest member. Capell will embark on the adventure of his life treading through conflict and distant lands that will also encourage him to grow as an individual.
Keep Your Eyes Peeled and Friends Close
IU is unlike most role-playing games because it takes place in a real-time environment where battles can occur at any time. Time continues to pass unless the player pauses the game, allowing enemies to gain the advantage by attacking even while you are sifting through the inventory menu.
Battles are fought with a party of four characters where all supporting characters are controlled by the AI according to player-determined strategies. Fighting enemies is reminiscent of Dynasty Warriors where players will find themselves inputting button combinations to perform devastating combos. Each character also has distinctive power moves and as characters gain experience, they will learn improved and dynamic moves to add to their arsenal.
Some of the most interesting elements of IU are the connect and item creation abilities. The connect ability allows Capell to borrow different party members both in and out of battle. For example, Capell can connect with Aya, an archer, who can use her bow to launch a preemptive attack on a distant enemy. Or you can simply use her ability to shoot an apple out of a tree for item creation.
While exploring, some characters will get different reactions from the townies that may result in either item acquisitions or side quests. Many, not all, of the personalities that Capell will befriend can make use of the item creation ability. After defeating an enemy they will usually drop materials that are meant to be synthesized into weapons, armor, accessories or restorative items.
Discovering Flaws Easier Than Undiscovering Them
IU represented a very ambitious project that aimed to create an epic adventure with a fully interactive environment, open-ended game play elements, complete with a cast of memorable individuals. However, this game unfortunately falters and is at best a mediocre rendition of just another RPG.
The pace at which the story unfolds is much to languid and focuses more on certain characters than the worldly conflict or its origins. Even after 10 hours of game play, you will still not know anything more than what is described on the game’s box.
Players may also become frustrated thanks to the lack of direction or, more accurately, the allocation of ambiguous objectives. More often than not, players will find themselves aimlessly stumbling around the map until haphazardly faltering into an intended location.
Battles happen much too often and enemies re-spawn after about 20 steps. Even if you’re a carnage-craving barbarian and enjoy overabundance, this game often experiences slow-down when too many enemies or effects are on screen. Also, the AI creates bloodthirsty bastards out of your teammates who will end up rushing head first at enemies nearly half a screen away while ensuring the exhaustion all of their MP with little logic for reserve.
Even if you select the “save MP” strategy from the menu, it marks a premature death for anyone in your party since saving MP in this game is equivalent to not using it at all to the AI. You may be thinking that you could simply counter this defect by employing a barrage of restorative items but don’t forget that battles continue even while you’re in the items menu. Enemies are certainly not as considerate or patient as you might need them to be.
While Capell is joined by a superfluous cast of personalities, one can’t help but feel that they were selected from a cookie cutter of RPG characters. For example, Rucha and Rico are juvenile twins whose mannerisms may remind some very much of Palom and Porom from Final Fantasy IV (the only distinction between the two sets is the color of their hair and their clothes).
The in-game character models are certainly all lavishly detailed but almost every character’s face looks as if they caught a bad case of eczema due to what I assume was an attempt to make them look more life-like. The voiced in-game cut-scenes are decently acted out but there is a lack of lip-syncing and you’ll notice that characters will either be running their mouths to no audio or simply fail to move at all (something that fans of old Godzilla movies may feel nostalgic over, or perhaps, just be plain annoyed).
Good Step but Room for Improvement.
Even for all its faults, Infinite Undiscovery can be considered a decent role-playing game for Xbox 360 (since it doesn’t have that much competition). IU had the great potential to be exactly what it set out to be a unique RPG experience, however, it seems as though all its strong points were chiseled down to familiar, if not tiresome, run-of-the-mill attributes.
Even though the characters aren’t memorable and battles may be repetitive, Capell’s sophomoric antics still offer a few chuckles and is arguably entertaining.
While this short game (about 20 hours) may not be worth its full MSRP of $60, it’s definitely worth picking up as a rental. Xbox 360 RPG fans can play this game as a means to pass the time until the more promising The Last Remnant is released later this year (2008).
Site [Infinite Undiscovery] Read [Gamertell]
Related Posts