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Dante's Inferno

The Trials of St. Lucia

Create your own action-packed arenas for the world to play? Sounds like a good idea, no? Sadly, it's a pretty broken experience...

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I need to be honest here - I always liked Dante's Inferno better than God of War III. We can discuss the game mechanics and graphics all we want, that's not the point here: my point is simply that I liked the storyline and the design of Visceral Games' action romp through Hell more than Kratos search for revenge. Mostly because of the protagonists of the two games. Kratos, to me, always felt like a guy that decided to speak in a coarse voice, paint his face with red paint and become the lyricist for some bad death metal band together with his drunk friends in order to become "cool". Dante, on the other hand, felt more like a Norwegian black metal singer that runs around in graveyards at night wearing corpse paint; not to be cool, but because he actually worships Satan.

So it's been rather painful for me to watch the DLC that so far has been released for Dante's Inferno. The Dark Forest was one thing, pretty standard half-assed DLC pack that seem to be all the rage among several game publishers and developers, but the "soul packs" seemed to be taking the whole micro-payment model a bit too far. So with Trials of St. Lucia out I had pretty high hopes that the game finally would get what it deserved.

The Trials-expansion was announced at the same time as Dante's Inferno was released, and a trailer for it even came on the original disc. It's a pretty cool concept, at least one paper: build your own "trials", arena-style levels with a customizable amount of waves. Pick which monsters will spawn, add traps and health/mana fountains, set the difficulty level and upload your creations to a central server for other people to download and play. Add two player co-op and you have what could have been a really cool expansion for a really cool game.

So where did Trials of St. Lucia go wrong? Why can't I shake this rather bland taste in my mouth?

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First of all, the expansion makes me fully aware why I prefer Dante's Inferno over God of War III. It's not about the full-on action, it's about the action mixed with the messed up design and story. Take out the story and there's nothing left for me. Sure, the gameplay is good and all, but this kind of third person action isn't enough to carry its own weight for hours upon end. Co-op is of course good fun, but it can never beat a co-op mode in an actual campaign.

I have no doubt that I'd react the same way if a similar DLC pack was released for God of War III, mind you. So your mileage might vary, of course.

Secondly, it all comes down to execution. Building a proper trial, one that is actually fun to play, is hard. I appreciate that. In many ways, Trials of St. Lucia will show you how hard it is to design and balance action games. It tells you, over and over again, to properly test your own creations before uploading them. After all, if your trial is too easy, it's no fun. If it's too hard, it's only a lesson in frustration. That's very cool, and something that modders all over the world have learned the hard way. The tools, while very easy to use, are quite complex under the simple surface.

The thing is though, most people don't really care. Why? It's all about them achievements, baby!

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Don't get me wrong here, I love me some achievements/trophies. I'm as hooked on them as the next guy, and I'm shocked at how popular they've become. The problem with the achievements in Trials of St. Lucia is not that they are there, it's about how badly balanced they are to the actual content. They are ripe with exploits, and that's how people are using the Trials right now: as a cheap cash cow of achievement points. Take a look at the top ten Trials at the time of writing:

1. Easy 10k - wait 3 sec - hit bomb
2. Easy 666 combo achievement
3. Magic Frenzy
4. Easy Plat 7k
5. The Hypron Trial
6. Easy Platinum, keep tapping B
7. Platinum in 18 to 30 sec #1
8. Quick Silver
9. Easy Plat only 4 rounds
10. Gold in 10 to 20 sec #21

That's two out of ten actual Trials, the rest are only quick and easy ways to get a lot of points. When you hit 100k points, you get an achievement. At 250k, you get another one.

I tried out one of those Trials. Play it once, get 10k points. Play it five times, you get a bonus of 30k points. Play it five more times, get a bonus of 75k. You get my drift here...in general, the Trials are not used as great examples of game design, they are used as easily forgettable hit-and-run gamer points.

It's too bad. There are bound to be a lot of cool Trials out there, masterly crafted and balanced by people that wants to create challenging levels for their fellow action fans. Sadly, they are not easy to find and will have a hard time fighting against the onslaught of cheap platinum badges and easily grinded scores. It's hard to blame the developers for this, but at the same time it's hard to blame the players either; this happens all the time when there is a path of least resistance. And while achievements can be fun and of great worth to a game, this is their dark side. For many, the game itself isn't the point at all.

There's also two achievements for uploading Trials - one for making a platinum-level co-op Trial and one for a single-player gold-level. These achievements aren't balanced either, since you can easily get them by just adding stuff until your Trial reaches the amount of waves/monsters/arenas to grab them. More crap on the servers. Then there's the achievement for getting a good vote on your Trial, thus some actually name their Trials "please give me good vote for achievement". More crap! Oh dear.

So is The Trials of St. Lucia worth your money? Well, it depends. If you like the pure action gameplay and have a friend to play with (and the St. Lucia character looks awesome), and you can see yourself slogging through the pure waste to find the good stuff, absolutely. If you like to craft well-balanced levels and don't really expect people to play your creations, absolutely. The concept behind the DLC is still cool, while sadly Visceral missed the mark a bit. Perhaps next time there will be more time to balance the achievements to challenge the players to actually create something of more worth than this.

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