Customer Reviews

Damnation

5 star:		(0)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(4)
1 star:		(5)

 

 

There was a lot of hype surrounding Damnation, but I didn't really pay attention because I was too busy working and waiting gleefully for Batman: Arkam Asylam. But sadly, it got pushed back to Fall, and my local Blockbuster was fresh out of copies of Red Faction: Guerrila and Protoype. So here we are, Damnation. A game I played for about fours until I realised there was something far more interesting and enertaining in the cubbard underneath my kitchen sink. It's sad becasue this game had a lot going for it. Giant steam-powered motor cycles, platforming/parkour elements, giant steam-powered motor cycles, a ruthlessly steampunk art deco, and of course, giant steam-powered motor cycles. On paper, all of these elements sound to make one heck of a shooter. However, Damnation does the impossible and falls completely flat on it's overhyped face.

For starters, the story doesn't make a lick of sence. It approaches the player like we're supposed to know the basic story and all of the characters and their ambitions without even playing it. Like I said, I didn't follow Damnation through the hype train, so if something was exlpained in an article or video, then I guess I didn't here it, but it still won't earn any points in my book. I mean, I didn't follow the first Gears of War on the hype train either, but I still understood the basic story just fine. And that plot was bananas! The charcters range from eye-rollingly cliche(mainly the lead protagonist) to painfully annoying (mainly everyone). For a game that looks like it's all about the story and narritive, it all feels like an after thought.

Before I go on, let me say this. Developers. You want to make a steam-punk video game? Great! But before you do, watch "Steamboy" or just about any movie from Hayao Miyazaki. That is what steampunk is and what it should be. I mention this because the whole steampunk direction of Damnation was royally screwed over. The whole point of steampunk is to merge old world design/technology with modern design/technology and give it a flare of fantasy. In Damnation, steampunk means having some steam powered guns and vehicals, painting everthing gun-metal grey and depressing-uninteresting brown, and include so much grit it would make a shellshocked war veteran with no eyes break into tears. I know steampunk has a lot of different styles, but this is definetly not a good look. While some games can look good with all of the colors of the dirt spectrum, like Gears of War, "depressing grit" does not belong in steampunk.

It appears that I've compared Damnation to Gears of War twice in this review. Why? Because Damnation has a lot things that seem they were taken from Gears. The atmosphere, the narrative, the awful vehical sections, heck, I'm even gonna go on a limb and say that Damnation is trying to be Gears of War. The guns look and sound almost like the ones in Gears, the laughable "gore system" is very remenicent of the one in Gears, the friendly and enemy AI has the same (low) IQ of the AI in Gears, all that it's missing is a cover system. Which is ironic, because that's one of main things this game needs. Enemies spam almost all the time and you'll die after a few shots. Crouching behind walls will only block your aiming, and sure you can fire over ledges you hang from, but you can only use your pistol and you'll rarley find ammo for it. Speaking of which...

The only thing that I mostly enjoyed was the parkour mechanics. While they weren't as intuitive or as fluid as say the Prince of Persia series or Assassin's Creed, they're simple and get the job done say for a few problems. While games like Assassin's Creed allow you to free run all over the place, Damnation's parkour follws moslty a linear path. Also, the camera isn't much of a team player as sometimes it will be facing a direction that seriously hinders your veiw of a ledge or platform, even the ocasional bottomless pit. Most of the time moving it will help, but there will be certain cases where the camera will get caught in the geometry of the level.

I moslty blame the bad camera for the level design. The levels are a mess of buildings and structures, and it's never clear which ones you can climb or which one leads to your objective. Add the fact that there is no in-game map, and you can bet that you'll be running around a level trying to figure out where to go more than once. There are also moments where the level will kill you even if you're a tad off on your precision. There were many times were I barley miss or even see a ledge and I'd fall into a pit. This annoyance occurs both in the on foot sections and vehical sections. The game makes up for this by have a lot of checkpoints. But still, nobody likes dying over stupid reasons.

There is a word that describes Damnation, and that word is "Rushed",and the game reeks of it. An unimaginative story (if you can even follow it), bland graphics and animations, and there are bugs glitches at almost every corner. If the developers took less time on the art direction, and spent most of their time and moeny on fine tuning the gameplay, Damnation would've made a fantastic shooter. As I've said in my Turning Point review, focusing on art and art alone while making shooter is a very bad tactic that'll only end in horrid mechanics and bad AI.
While Damnation isn't a bad game neccassarily , it's faaar from a good one

This is an awsome game despite what I have been reading around the net. I have almost beaten the game on the hardcore setting and, though the game can get a little repetitive, it is in no way a bad game.

Once you get used to the controls, they are fluid and responsive. The settings are varied and the graphics are good but not great.
The gameplay is awsome and this is the game that got me to play something other then COD MW2 for a change.

Though there is no built in cover system, you still can take cover and whatnot, but it requires you to choose the location and lean down or back, just like the old days when we actually played games, instead of letting them play themselves (like Assasins creed and Gears).

I got this for $20 new at my local game store and am very happy that I did. Give it a try with an open mind and you won't be dissapointed, unless you are just looking for flashy graphics. This is gameplay at its finest! You get co-op and Vs. multiplayer, online or splitscreen, for a steal! Get this game and show a friend how good a badly reviewed game can be!

this has gotta be one of the worst games on the xbox360 along with turning point. first of all the graphics are really bad. you think the gameplay would make up for it but it doesnt. you get lost a lot dont know where to go,enemies are really stupid most of the time just stand around. the levels arent even cool looking there all bland and look the same. the aiming in this is bad, no cover system. the story and voice acting are terrible. the only positive things about the game i could say is the platforming is usally good. riding in the motorcycle is kinda cool. but stay away from this i wouldnt even recomend renting it. trust me your not missing out on anything.

I really wanted to like this game. For one the atmosphere is really cool. The old style western meets futuristic steampunk is pretty neat and the set up for the story is certainly interesting. The whole thing kind of reminded me of an old 80's cartoon called Bravestarr which I thought was awesome when I was eight years old. I also like the alternate history of the civil war where a weapons dealer sells measures and counter measures to both sides extending the length of the war and ultimately rising to power. All this is well and good but the story following a small group of freedom fighters against said arms dealer is very poorly told with a ton of awkward voice acting.
Really, that's the entire problem with this game, with every good thing it does, it turns around and does like two things wrong. The graphics are good from a technical standpoint, the draw distance and scenery look breathtaking at parts but then the textures look like something running on a PS2. The shooting is lacking and the biggest problem is that the A.I. for your allies and enemies sucks and there's absolutely no cover system which is odd as this game tries real hard to be Gears of war. The jumping mechanics and climbing are all well done with lots of polish so it's really baffling how they screwed up the shooting and drving so much.
Another strong gripe is that the boss battles are bland, all four of them and two of the fights are with the same girl whose voice acting is awful. Seriously, I think someone on the dev team had their girlfriend read the lines because they went over budget. On that note, this game is full of weird glitches and bugs and the game has random loading sequences that literally stops the game for like ten seconds. In one case they put a loading screen in the middle of a conversation.
So overall, it's not really terrible, but it sure is sad that this up and coming studio took a great concept for a game and nearly ruins it with lots of stupid problems. I can't really recommend this but if you find it under ten dollars like I did, you can certainly do worse, just make sure you jump in with lowered expectations. I say pick up Gears of War instead but if you want to try your hand at something a little different and aren't afraid to over look some of the serious issues, then give it a spin.

Might possibly be the worst game I've ever played in twenty+ years of gaming. One of the first things you'll noticed is how repetitive this game is. Animations, voice acting, and game play are like a single CD set on repeat. In addition, the aiming and weapons (especially the machine gun) are near useless. The most annoying part of this game are the elevator rides. Do I really need to sit dead still in silence and watch and my character goes up for what seems like forever? This game drags on forever not only because they make you take never ending bike rides, but due to the fact you never have any clue where you are going.

In summation, if you want to become massively frustrated with poor AI intelligence, poor gameplay, and like having no idea where you are going this game is for you. Otherwise stay away from this game, as I honestly could not find anything fun about this game.

You may notice that Overdos3 gives a lot of 2's and 3's from our 3 star scale. This is because we are average consumers whom are not given games to play for free, therefore we tend to buy games, DVDs and see movies that we are pretty sure we will like. It is a nice surprise, then, when a windfall trade in of older games from our parents house allows us to try out something we hope would be good, but would never buy with our hard earned cash in a million years.

With hope in my heart that the reviews were wrong, I bought a copy of Damnation.

They are not.

On paper Damnation could be a great game. It seeks to marry Gears of War style cover based third-person shooting with Tomb Raider's platforming. I am pretty sure a good game could have come out of the Damnation design document, but ham filled voice work, stiff control, some of the worst AI in recent memory and weak visuals drag this game down to the depths of hell.

While most of these aspects can be chalked up to a low budget, the art failing is probably the area that is saddest to me because the cool steampunk syle art is completely lost in the low resolution mess that ended up on the screen.

The control works, but never feels fluid or natural, and the button placement is more than a bit awkward. To make matters worse the control gets complicated by the developers seeming to be 100% unwilling to use context sensitivity to stream line their control scheme. Add into this movement which allows for very little finesse, and you will find yourself constantly thinking about the controller and button placement rather than just having fun and playing the game

You could criticize the story of Damnation, but any shooter can get by with a weak story if the voice acting is bombastic yet believable enough to enjoy. The voice work in Damnation sounds like it is sample tracks created by the developers and then left in the game once the budget had dried to a point past being able to hire professional voice actors.

What makes Damnation even that much more frustrating is that the path finding can be so broken. There are times where the game is pretty clear about where you need to go, but then others where indicators of your destination are sparse or simply not there, and this adds an element of frustration that is the final straw which earns this game it's 1 star.

I might have never bought Damnation if it wasn't for a pile of NES accessories and games from my parents house, but after playing it I almost feel like I would have been better holding onto a junk heap rather than taking this waste of a few hours home with me.

From [...]

I'm basing my review on playing this game on co-op with my son.

Damnation is basically a third person shooter game. You start off the game with two friends beside you. Your time is basically spent jumping from roof to roof and to make it even more difficult there is no map that tells you where to go so you're sometimes left wandering around trying to find out where to go next. You're also sometimes left struggling to see where you're going when scaling and jumping from walls.

I would also expect that in a shooter game like this you would be able to take cover but it is almost impossible to take cover in this game. Your friends most always end up dying and lay on the ground crouched(like your GOW buddies)until you revive them.

I'd suggest renting this or wait until the price drops tremendously before picking this up.

I enjoyed playing this game. It can be hard at times but you can try again where you die. You are a drugged up monkey jumping, big gun shooting guy that kicks ass, and there are plenty of other people to shoot and kill. If you like shooting games you'll love this. Give it a try!!:)

I picked this game up from gamestop the other day thinking it would be a decent game. After going through the game, over 90% of the game is like playing gears of war mixed in with 10% god of war. This game is a fun, but overall not totally worth it. It is too much like playing a western version of gears of war. The basis of the game is a superpower whos industrial technology was far superior to that of the United States, came in and took over the Country. Uour lead character is a Captian of the resistance trying to free the country and return it back to what it once was. While at the same time, trying to find you lost love who was kidnapped. If I wanted to play gears of war, I would load up a copy of gears of war. This game is worth renting, not buying. I am going to take it back and exchange it for guitar hero or something more worth my spare time.

The game could have had MAD potential...if someone else made it. Read other reviews to get an idea of the game. So pissed.