Hunted: The Demon's Forge (2011) (PC) (InXile Entertainment)

Описание

I'm not a particularly religious man, but seeing as I've gladly given away several hundred dollars to InXile Entertainment it would appear that faith is not a character trait I lack. Brian Fargo and his pals have solemnly sworn to construct a pair of monumental hardcore PC RPGs (Wasteland 2, Torment: Tides of Numenera), but if you just look at the two major multiplatform games the team has actually produced there's no real evidence of any old school sensibilities whatsoever. Both Bard's Tale (i.e. the reboot) and Hunted: The Demon's Forge are unimaginative, mainstream-oriented releases which try unconvincingly to approximate much better AAA entries in their respective genre. In the case of Hunted, there are obvious Gears of War influences at work with some light RPG elements thrown into the mix, but the whole thing is simply so forgettable and derivative that it's hard to keep playing for more than a few minutes (also, the pathetic boob obsession and lingerie armor complex is more egregious than in most high fantasy games). Indeed, It's hard to imagine that this slightly depressing crap comes from the same studio which just recently released an extensive preview video of a top-down party-based RPG with turn-based combat, plenty of skill checks and a twisted post-apocalyptic game world.

Many people would single out Tim Schafer's much-publicized Broken Age as the Kickstarter Release That Simply Must Succeed for this whole crowdfunding phenomena to survive its first few years, but I would argue that inXile is the *real* test of whether KS is BS or not. The Double Fine guys are arguably at their creative peak right now and have been churning out a whole bunch of well-liked little titles over the past few years. In that context, Boken Age is just another quirky Schafer production which will in all likelihood be at least appreciated by fans and critics alike. But if a consistently underwhelming developer like inXile - known only for a bunch of weak "me-too" releases and some iDevice shovelware - can actually produce sophisticated and engaging roleplaying games when freed from the restraints of publisher-driven business strategies, well, then the emergence of Kickstarter could legitimately be seen as one of the most revealing and revolutionary developments in the history of the entire industry. If not, the joke is on gullible fools like me...