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MED: Sionainn's Gamer Review

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  • MED: Sionainn's Gamer Review

    Okay everyone, it's time for your favorite ND Gamer Girl to give her review of the latest game, The Shattered Medallion.
    __________________________________________________ ______________________

    Initial Desires:To be perfectly honest I wasn't impressed with the teaser at the end of SPY. Mostly because I didn't get the point of the entire thing. It was only when I saw the actual Trailer on Her Interactive that I went "Wow... This is something interesting that I might want to look into."

    Fortunately I saw this in time to pre-order it and get ahead of the crowd.

    Achievement Unlocked: So...maybe I will get this

    Plot: Now this is where stuff is going to get rather iffy in terms of my review. You get onto the island and it seems to be straight forwards. Get the medallion pieces, get points, win the game. Got it...

    Then George falls and she says that something is weird.

    This is where I'm finding it hard because you just started. You more or less have the first challenge (almost, depending on how far you explored) finished and then suddenly you have her going "Oh, here's the mystery" rather... Casually.

    Then the game takes the twist of two plots, the first is the obvious "Find the medallions and win" the second is "why are we really here" Now I will admit that as the game went on such things began to make sense. The problem was that well... They didn't blend well in my opinion. I saw them more as stand apart. Maybe that's just me but there it is.

    My other problem is well... it seems to start off a little... Slow. I played the game more or less straight through but until you get around to the point where you snoop around it is rather... Lacking in desire to play.

    Now this changes as the game goes on and you peel more away from things till the end when I'm looking at the device going "What does this do?" More or less rather literally as I shall explain later on.

    Achievement Unlocked: Great taste, Less filling


    For obvious reasons I'm excluding George Bess and Jamaila.

    Overall I didn't expect to meet every cast member of the tribes, teams, whatever and it seemed to be obvious which teams would continue onwards to the final rounds. The main problem was the lack of...well, character, to the characters. Safe for one which I shall discuss.

    Patrick: Okay. I admit it. At first I wondered the same thing I did with Brigit during SPY. Could anyone really BE this dense? Then I realized, yes. Yes they could. However that denseness kinda changed once I heard Bess' explanation. It seemed more like he was really just kinda there. And he was okay with that. Still doesn't make me think much of him. Then at the end with the whole water thing I was "uh... What?" Must be his guru'' side

    Leena: Leena got me a bit the first time. Someone who insists on reading the rules so much and yet "bends" them has got to have a few things up. Turns out she does. Somewhat. As a government agent for who knows what organization and that seems to be even more strange as she's a cryptologist. I didn't really peg her as much at all. More or less the "Character inserted to help then left alone". Kinda feel sad for her.

    Kiri I hate to say it but I called her attitude the moment you are introduced to her via the announcer. I saw her as backstabbing and conniving and all and it seems that she was fairly true to that. The biggest problem is that is all she seems to be. She glosses everything over with fake. I saw better plastic actresses in high school

    And last but not least the only really intriguing character:

    Sonny Joon: Where to start.

    So this is the guy you replaced in Scarlet Hand and ended up following around almost all over the world, seeing and hearing about him until finally TA-DAH! He's right in front of you.

    Gotta admit, he wasn't what I expected and yet was everything I expected. He gets to the point fairly quickly with how everything goes on. You ask him questions and he becomes a near brick wall, rather pathetically I might add. However as you start catching on you start peeling away his layers and he starts becoming more weird but somewhat understandable until the very end where I kinda ended up wishing I knew someone like him in real life. And there are a few more things I will address later.

    Achievement Unlocked: Are these Characters or Caricatures?

    Graphics and music:

    Graphics: As per usual graphics don't really make or break a game too much in my personal opinion and the way we play games hasn't changed so much that I'd go OMGEEE! and all. So for the most part the graphics are good and I had no problems there.

    Music: I must fully admit that I noticed, even when meddling with the options to increase music and decrease the other sfx, that there was very little if any music at all. Not even for the End Game Round, The Sudden Death Ending or the Final Puzzle which was rather disturbing and I would have at least hoped for something with those. Rather disappointing.

    Achievement Unlocked: Music: Is this thing on?
    Achievement Unlocked: Graphics: It looks so REAL

    Tasks and Puzzles:

    Tasks: As far as the tasks go for gaining the medallion pieces they were fairly simplistic, at least in obtaining them. Find the plants, get the gold, beat the time. etc.

    The relic pieces however were rather different and it took a bit of thinking and searching for them, which, if you think about it, makes sense(and is rather one of the FEW things that does-sadly)

    The Puzzles I gotta say... The puzzles on the other hand weren't. Granted the first one at the very beginning was a minor bit difficult simply because it took me a moment to realize that some of the pieces of the track connected with another completely different piece but that's neither here nor there. Some of the puzzles, like the word search and the find the differences were fairly easy and they graduated to the seemingly impossible end puzzle where I had to actually look up the pictures to figure out how to solve. SERIOUSLY? I knew what I had to do and everything yet I still couldn't understand how the puzzle worked. Yea...

    Achievement Unlocked: Tasks- Might want to bring a Map
    Achievement Unlocked: Puzzles- Where are the instructions?

    Mini Games: Now as I have the bonus edition I have the cool stuff on Nancy's phone that I'm not going to rate.

    Puzzle Palace is more like "Game Central" where you have two games (from previous games though there is nothing wrong with that as repeat games seem to be the norm)

    Now save for an Easter Egg that you can get from one and the increase in points the mini games don't seem to be that interesting. I mostly played Monster out of my severe boredom of playing board games and they gave me some spendable points for the auction booth. All in all, nothing to complain about here.

    Achievement Unlocked I am The Game

    Trophies: Now here's the fun part, my favorite part of any game is earning the trophies and ND is no different.

    As with most ND achievement games there are several Trophies that you can pretty much guess at how to get or get rather easily. Gamer, Spoiler Free, Big Spender, Egged (when you know how to get them)

    And some take a bit of guess work on the amount of things you have to do: Diver, high scorer, superfan...

    Although to be honest... I got the Survivor... And I have no clue how I did.

    Achievement Unlocked: Full Trophy Case

    Interesting Notes: Now this is the area where I usually talk about things that don't fit into the above categories, things that catch my attention or just random comments that I find go best here.

    So for starters... I don't get the whole Culprit ending. Betrayal? Did I miss a conversation with Them... I mean I didn't do much convo so I might have missed something important.

    The whole game seemed rather easy for a reality TV show, speaking of which...This seems to be one of those "ignore the rules" tropes where even though there is no crew to speak of, there is footage for the world to see. I mean, I know a lot of Real life Reality TV have the hidden cameras in commonly traveled areas ahead of time so it isn't a surprise for things like the Bridge scene and a few others but still...

    The game was also fairly short, only an afternoon long. A bit disappointing but some things happen.

    Finally I'd like to talk more about the Man of the Hour: Sonny Joon.
    - Where to start?

    Well finding out the truth about Sonny is a bit surprising and all with S.P.I.E.D. and such. The interesting thing came with the Comic's which made me wonder how the heck Jin got the information on all this and knew who to get and when and what and why and all.

    This is furthered by Sonny's attitudes starting after he catches you in the off limits areas and then his helpfully cryptic answers to them.

    It got to the point, and I am being honest as possible because I could NOT make this up even if I wanted to, that regardless of the fact that Ubisoft and Her Interactive don't share any games and that they are two fairly different genre's somewhere in my mind when Sonny started talking about snooping in his things I immediately went "SONNY IS A MEMBER OF THE ASSASSIN ORDER!"

    And I'm serious. When Nancy asked about the truth and getting a straight answer I fully expected that Sonny would answer " The straight answer about the truth? Nothing is true Nancy. Everything is Permitted."

    Which... Now that I think about it... Might make for a good fan fiction cross over (Puts that on circular to do list)

    Achievement Unlocked: Some things just spark
    Bonus Achievement : Nothing is True Nancy, Everything is Permitted

    Overall: Whelp, to be honest as possible I do not agree with everyone saying that this was a complete total and utter FLOP, however... It was bad. It feels like HI took the game and threw it on Sonny's shoulders hoping that he could keep it afloat but... Unfortunately it didn't work out that well. The game didn't take long which while not bad isn't good either. SPY was a fairly good game and I doubt Her Inter will be able to top it any time soon and I don't grade games against each other like most people do but it seems that they took all the Awesome in Bubble Letters and shoved it into SPY and left MED hanging out to dry.

    Which is kinda sad... The game had potential and I see it could have rocked with the mystery under the mystery but they didn't overlap it very well....

    Overall Achievement Unlocked: Barely made the Difficulty Check