Запросы на перевод публикаций

[nemezida]

Уважаемые лор-мастера, спасибо вам за то, что согласились помочь!

У нас есть несколько статей, которые надо подготовить за неделю (а потом будут еще). Мы очень просим нам помочь с публикациями по играм, которых мы не проходили!

Тут не обязательно точный и полный перевод: можно сокращать/добавлять. Неизменен только жанр: рецензия на игру.

Еще раз – огромное спасибо! Если кто-то берется – отпишитесь прямо в этой теме, плиз))

 

P.S. Если я не туда запилила эти просьбы - извините же: я пока не разобралась, куда тащить челобитные :)

 

 

The Elder Scrolls: Arena - взял Sylvius, спасибо, слава Стендарру!))

 

 

Square Enix has Final Fantasy. Atlus has Shin Megami Tensei. Gust has Atelier, and Namco has the "Tales of..." series. Bethesda Softworks, a once-small now-huge US developer, has The Elder Scrolls. At first glance, you may not have recognized this name. But, if I were to say "Morrowind" or "Oblivion," even casual gamers will remember these as top-selling titles.

But I'm here to teach a history lesson. Long before Oblivion and Morrowind, and even before the second chapter "Daggerfall" (arguably the least successful of the series), there was Arena. Originally released in 1994 on eight 3.5" Floppy Disks, requiring a minimum of 4MB RAM, this DOS-based game captured my young mind. Having been raised on Final Fantasy, Secret of Mana, and Chrono Trigger, this title was a change of pace for me. It was the first PC game I ever played, and in my heart, it will probably remain one of my favorites.

Graphically, the title is quite dated. In fact, even when I first played it, I struggled to comprehend what I was looking at (perhaps because I hadn't yet gotten used to the first person perspective or the concept of three dimensions in a game). The skimpy MIDI soundtrack is nothing special either. Aesthetically, the game wasn't too impressive, even for its time. However, there was something special about this game, and that something special is what has drawn gamers into each successive title. Well, friends, it all started here. Cut away the fancy layers of trim on your copy of Morrowind, and what you're left with is Arena. Bethesda has simply been expanding and improving a wildly successful formula that they put together over a decade ago.

Drawing on the mechanics and mathematical workings of Dungeons and Dragons, the game opens with you creating your character. You have to choose your class, either by simple selection or by taking a test that involves moral decisions. Then you choose your homeland and race, which coincide. Throw in a name and a gender, and then you can mess with your appearance, customize stats, the whole nine yards. After all of this, it's time to get to work.

The story opens by giving some background on the world and the problems within the royal palace. It seems a prominent Battlemage named Jagar Tharn worked his evil ways to take the throne from the rightful ruler and began a tyrannical reign across the country. Those who tried to stop him were killed. You, apparently, were a member of the previous ruler's court and have been thrown in prison. And so you start your journey in a prison.

Once you break out, you follow the advice of a woman, who speaks to you in dreams, and the help of random townsfolk to collect the 8 scattered pieces of the "Staff of Chaos" so that you can take on Tharn and stop him once and for all. And that's about it.

Okay, so it's not a ground-breaking story either. Become a powerful warrior and save the world. We've done it a thousand times, and we're going to do it another thousand times before we finally become so jaded that we swear off RPGs forever. Well, that's not where Arena's strength lies. No, the almighty power of Arena lies in its open-ended world, its quests, and its extremely addictive gameplay.

So, the world. Divided into various regions (including Morrowind, subject of the third chapter), the world of Arena includes many major cities, small towns, dungeons, and wide open fields. Though the major cities and 16 main dungeons (two for every piece of the staff of chaos) are pre-designed, nearly everything else is subject to random generation. Normally, one will ride from one town to the next on horseback, but if one so chooses, an alternate option is to simply walk the distance from one town to the next. Just follow the compass and go! It takes a fair amount of time, but as you go, you cross various terrain, plenty of enemies, and occasionally, an entrance to a randomly-generated dungeon.

The game's sidequests are many. There are small "odd jobs" to earn money, but these are nothing compared to the "rumor" based quests. These allow you to gain control of extraordinary weapons, armor, or items. By asking random townspeople about rumors, and then heading to an inn to confirm the rumor, one is able to locate a particular dungeon that will have the item in question. One such item was a book that allowed the character to go up 50 stat points as the player chose to assign them. This quest was repeatable, so after eight or nine tries, one could have a maxxed-stat character (100 in STR, INT, etc).

You are warned from the outset of the game that different classes will invariably determine the difficulty of the game. The easiest class to play as? Yup, the same as Jagar Tharn himself, Battlemage. You can fight, and you can cast awesome spells. This wasn't a balanced class so much as a somewhat-cheap "do it all" class. Non-spellcasters (such as thief or acrobat) have it the hardest, apparently, and simple healers or mages will have a rough go as well. The genuine value of spellcasters is found in the ability to create one's own spells. I particularly remember a glitch my brother and I discovered that allowed you to create a ridiculously powerful spell that didn't cost very much money to purchase or MP to use. Again, one might call this out on being a balance issue, but as the game was so open-ended, it was bound to happen.

Other very cool spells included wall creation, wall removal, staircase creation (imagine the time-saving feature here!), and a spell-based lockpicking ability. Simply amazing stuff was at your fingertips in this game.

In search of treasure? One of the best places to go for treasure was the residential area of your favorite town. By being sneaky and picking a lock, or simply breaking the door down with your weapon, you could enter a house that apparently belonged to no one (though monsters tended to live there). By trying to break in, you do risk being caught by castle guards, but if you're strong enough, they become fodder for you to level up and acquire even more equipment to wear or sell.

What else made this game fun? Oh yes, the riddles. In each of the story-related dungeons, there are doors that would not open without first answering a riddle. Some of these riddles were commonplace, but others were quite difficult (I remember one in particular where the answer was the letter "e"...you had to really think outside the box to solve it!) Then again, there were two or three riddles I never solved in my multiple playthroughs: I simply cast remove wall and found an alternate entrance into the room in question (persistence was the key in this case, as many walls were "indestructible" so to speak).

If there was one significant problem to this game, one that can never be solved, it's the glitchiness. This game was, is, and forever will be so glitch-ridden that it sometimes makes it difficult to play. Even today, with the DOSBox emulator on your PC, the game will freeze on you. When I had my first computer, I thought it was my computer's fault. Now I know that it is indeed the software that is at fault. And be warned: if the game freezes in the middle of a save, that save file will become corrupt and henceforth unusable. I recommend saving in different slots on a regular basis, just in case that happens.

Also frustrating is that you cannot play this game without a mouse. Attacking happens one way, and one way only: holding the left-click mouse button down and sending your pointer flying across the screen. Depending on direction and angle, this will make you swing your weapon in one of a variety of ways. It was a unique concept, but it wears you out pretty quickly sometimes.

All things considered, however, this game was the one that started it all, and it deserves respect as such. It certainly isn't a perfect game, but even now, it is a ton of fun to play. If you thought going back and playing Final Fantasy I was a trip, try playing the first chapter of The Elder Scrolls. You'll be glad you did. And, as of the game's 10th anniversary, Bethesda has offered the game as a free download on their site. So, go ahead and give it a try! You literally have nothing to lose with this classic title.

 

 

RPG Fan, Apr 2006

 

 

 

The Elder Scrolls: Chapter II - Daggerfall Review - это уже не надо, уважаемые лорщики ))

 

Someone has finally returned to the RPGs of the old school and created an adventure that will take even the most experienced gamer months to unravel.

It's been a long time coming, but someone has finally returned to the RPGs of the old school and created an adventure that will take even the most experienced gamer months to unravel in a world incredibly full of life and experience. That someone is Bethesda and the product is The Elder Scrolls: Daggerfall, the follow-up to the popular TES: Arena. From start to finish, Daggerfall shows itself to be an epic product that surpasses the time-crunching power of even the legendary RPGs of old.

At its core, Daggerfall is a well-written adventure game with solid role-playing systems plopped into what is basically an action engine. Players design their character using a creation routine that is second to none, choosing from one of 18 classes that includes knight, warrior, healer, assassin, and sorcerer, or design their own with a specialized sub-creation system. Those who aren't into RPG statistics can let the computer make the choice by answering a moral quiz (à la Ultima IV) that selects the class most appropriate to the player's personality. Once that's finished, players take control of their alter-ego through a first-person interface that in many ways resembles the Ultima Underworld series. From here, as if actually transported to another realm, players are free to do whatever they wish, with computer response mirroring that of the real world.

Although Daggerfall does sport an absorbing storyline (several, in fact), it's the potential for adventure outside of the standard plot that is so exciting. No longer forced to play the way The Man wants, we are now free to ignore the pleadings of the princess, wander off, and get involved in other complex tales that change and evolve in response to our actions! Here lies the greatest strength and weakness of Daggerfall. Those who are looking for an adventure that follows a straight path, that they can sit down and solve, are bound to be terrified (and annoyed) by the entropic nature of this game. Since, as in the real world, events take place at certain times and in certain places, it's also very easy for players to stray accidentally from the beaten path, just because they decided to stop for a bite to eat. It's also easy to get wrapped up in struggles between the game's various guilds without even meaning to. If you join a guild, you instantly make several new friends and even more enemies, and open up new adventure opportunities. The sheer size of this product is staggering, and even the most open-minded player is certain to be overwhelmed at times by the thousands of people to talk to, the scores of weapons and spells to keep up with, the hundreds of books to read, and the vast amount of landscape to cover in the game. To play Daggerfall successfully requires one of two mind-sets: to remain ever-vigilant, taking notes and going exactly when and where you're told; or to relax and let life take you where it will.

Daggerfall is not without its problems. By creating such a large world, Bethesda must have made it impossible for play testers to even scratch the surface of the play possibilities. Players who are determined to push the envelope - crawling, jumping, and swimming into every crevice of the landscape - are sure to find themselves stuck between two polygons with no way to continue except for suicide. Along these same lines is the game's tendency to crash occasionally for what seems to be no reason at all. Patches are bound to be forthcoming, but for now my recommendation is to save early and save often.

For those willing to exercise a little patience with its quirks, Daggerfall will deliver some of the most entertaining and absorbing adventures available. Those who are even the slightest bit put off by subtle storylines or RPG statistics, however, will probably find the game totally unbearable. The bottom line is this: RPGs have always attracted a fanatical core group, and this title was designed with those hard-core gamers in mind. For the rest of you, play another round of Quake and leave the adventuring to the pros.

 

 

 

Game Spot, Sept 1996

Изменено 27 сентября, 2013 пользователем nemezida

[nemezida]

The Elder Scrolls Travels: Shadowkey Review - ребята, это уже не надо (попросила писателей, а то мы затягивать не можем)

 

Technological hurdles cripple the gameplay, making Shadowkey little more than a failed attempt to simulate the Elder Scrolls PC experience.

The Good

• Huge world

• Lots of content

• Several classes to choose from

• Bluetooth party play system

• Great sound.

The Bad

• Horrible pop-up

• Janky combat

• No map system

• Character classes too similar

• Poor control.

In its several iterations on the PC, Bethesda's Elder Scrolls series has provided extremely immersive single-player role-playing by employing the first-person perspective typical of both Might and Magic games and traditional PC shooters. The Elder Scrolls' most recent incarnation, Morrowind, was a terrific success on both the PC and Xbox, so it's therefore not terribly surprising to see the series expanded to other platforms. The Elder Scrolls Travels: Shadowkey is Bethesda's N-Gage debut, and it adheres pretty closely to the series' conventions. In fact, Shadowkey makes few compromises to adapt to its new format, and it suffers as a result. Technological hurdles cripple the gameplay, making Shadowkey little more than a failed attempt to simulate the Elder Scrolls PC experience.

Shadowkey's story is purposely unremarkable, because, like its predecessors, the game lets you play the hero any way you choose. You combat a nondescript evil that "lurks in the shadows," as the game's opening scroll professes, and this great scourge can be attacked from a variety of angles. Shadowkey's major strength is its open-ended nature, which makes you the master of your own fate.

When you start the game, you'll be given a choice between several character classes and races. At least at the outset, these choices have very little bearing on gameplay, because you'll invariably begin with an iron dagger, a healing potion, and a blaze spell, which is essentially a magic missile. Apart from stat differences and player model variations, character class really doesn't affect the game a great deal.

Although you'll be guided on a series of tutorial missions, during which you'll mostly kill bandits and mutant rats, you'll immediately have the opportunity to travel anywhere you'd like in Shadowkey's huge world. Unfortunately, the lack of a functional map and the extremely short draw-in distance combine to make navigation very difficult. Additionally, the pop-up is so severe that you'll never be able to see a path until you're walking on it. This problem was addressed by enshrouding the game in a misty brume. A similar approach was taken with the indoor environments, which are all incredibly dark. Myriad sconces line the walls, but, as the game's engine isn't designed to support multiple light sources, you'll actually have to get right next to a lamp before you can see it. It's surreal to walk across an expanse of near blackness only to find that you were 10 feet away from sweet luminescence. All this results in pretty poor general playability.

Shadowkey shares its brethren's focus on exploration, but it doesn't give players the tools to properly explore. Imagine a version of Morrowind in which you could only see 10 feet in front of your character. If you don't think that sounds like a very appealing prospect, you're right. These are the types of considerations Bethesda should have made when adapting its game to the N-Gage, which simply doesn't have the resources to display large, three-dimensional environments.

Furthermore, the game's combat system is severely flawed due to inadequate control and broken collision detection. You'll have to use the keypad (in place of a mouse) to line up blows, which land or not depending on the computer's capricious fancy. Spells can be especially unreliable, because even scoring a direct hit isn't an assurance that the creature in question will take damage. When you hit an enemy, he'll sometimes turn red, along with his wound. Other times, he'll stand motionless but will still take damage. In some cases, however, he simply won't take any damage at all. And since combat is the bread and butter of Shadowkey's gameplay, these issues are pretty severe.

Because the Elder Scrolls games have always been single-player, one of Shadowkey's most intriguing features is its Bluetooth party play. Two can play cooperatively to complete missions. However, only the host will advance as a result of this work. The other player is relegated to providing combat support, although the number of enemies remains the same. This is not an especially refined system, but it does give you a chance to check out your friends' player models, which represent graphical highlights for Shadowkey.

Shadowkey features some of the same soaring musical score found in Morrowind, which comprises impassioned play on Renaissance minstrel instruments. You'll definitely feel like you're in a land where words are perhaps spelled with extraneous e's and where people feast on oversized drumsticks. So, the sound evokes atmosphere and typifies a solid effort.

The Elder Scrolls Travels: Shadowkey falls prey to its own ambition, which sounds a lot like an explanation for what turned some of the game's villains to the evil lifestyle. The game has simply been insufficiently adapted to the N-Gage's technology. As a result, what could have been a long and engaging experience will instead prove rather frustrating.

Editor's note 12/09/04: The review originally stated that the game features multiplayer support for up to four players, which is incorrect. GameSpot regrets the error.

 

 

 

Gamespot, Dec 2004

Изменено 27 сентября, 2013 пользователем nemezida

[Casval Sylvius]

Еще раз – огромное спасибо! Если кто-то берется – отпишитесь прямо в этой теме, плиз))

Возьму тогда статейку по Арене ежели не возражаете.

P.S. Если я не туда запилила эти просьбы - извините же: я пока не разобралась, куда тащить челобитные :)

Феникс сказал, что в принципе можно и сюда просьбы направлять, так что не проблема.

[nemezida]

Sylvius, низкий вам поклон!! Извините, что дергаем вас -

знаем, что у лорщиков всегда работы полно, но вот же: аврал у нас ((