Venetica

Here's an interesting title that caught my eye. It's a budget title, coming in as a new release at $40 in most stores. Normally, I'd ignore these kinds of games instantly, but this one piqued my curiosity enough to give it a shot.
Let's see if it's worth the $40...

Storyline - 2/5
The storyline of Venetica, while sort of unique, is certainly not the most engaging or believable.

The story mostly takes place in a 16th Century style Venice, where Death himself takes orders from a mysterious organization named Corpus. Once every generation, Corpus selects a replacement for Death.

But this time around, they "accidentally" select a powerful necromancer as Death's successor, one who wants to bring death to the entire world, not just those selected by Corpus.

Somehow, this renders Corpus, and the current Death incapable of stopping him, which means the only option for saving the world, and Death himself, lies in the hands of Death's daughter, Scarlett.

You know the relationship is over when she wants to introduce you to her dad.

You'd think something as important as choosing who Death is would not allow for a margin of error.

The story follows Scarlett as her dark powers grow, and she goes from a simple village girl to a powerful warrior, in her quest to save the world, and her dear old dad.

Graphics - 2/5

Visually speaking, Venetica is unimpressive. There are several graphical glitches and framerate hiccups, paired with largely choppy animations and character models that look awkward and disproportionate to the extreme, there really isn't much that's remarkable.

Even being presented in 1080p doesn't help any. It looks like a slightly upscaled PS2 game.

The visuals, however, have two redeeming factors.

The first is that the backgrounds are actually really good. Whether you're in a mine, a cave, or in the large city of Venice, everything that you can't actively explore looks very good, and adds to the ambience nicely in an otherwise ugly display of textures and colors.

The second is that Scarlett's character model seems to be the only one they worked on for longer than 5 minutes. She's well-proportioned, and her textures are smooth, as are most of her animations. As the character you have to look at for the longest time, they could have done much worse, especially looking at the NPCs.

Audio - 1/5

Unfortunately, everything about the game's audio is even more underwhelming than the visuals.

The music, when there is music, is vastly boring and uninspired. Even the boss fight music had me reaching for my custom soundtracks in short order.
Someone must have been taking lessons from Beyoncé, because it's basically the same 10 second chorus over and over again.

The sound effects are okay, but there aren't any that give any sort of immersion. Clashing and clanging of weapons are dull and unexciting, footsteps and bird calls sound like they were taking from a 10-year-old sound board, and the waterfalls sound remarkably like the Hypno Toad from Futurama, with all the tranquility and serenity of loud digital feedback noises.

You hear a relaxing waterfall...

The voice acting is just as awful. Everyone from the NPCs, to the bosses, to even Scarlett herself sound like they were given their scripts and instructed to read them as unenthusiastically as humanly possible. One NPC even changes voice actors mid-dialogue!

One bit of kudos go to the voice actor who did Death's voice. In an otherwise slipshod group of bad VA, Death seemed like the only one who took the entire thing seriously, delivering an excellent performance, outshining his peers by far.

Gameplay - 3/5

This is probably the closest thing to a redeeming factor that Venetica has.
The gameplay is like an action/RPG hybrid. You get one button for basic attacks. Yup. Just one. Most of the time, you can get away with just mashing the crap out of it, although some enemies are smarter than that, so sometimes you'll have to think a bit.

Go for the eyes! The eyes!

Although it's rare that you'll ever have to do more than hit the dodge button to get the better of a baddie.

You can map up to 5 spells and skills for easy use, turns out to be surprisingly easy, one each to the four D-Pad directions, and one more to the Circle or B button, depending on which system you play on.

Skills can be upgraded via teachers you find throughout the world, using skill points you get from leveling up.

You can also allocate attribute points with each level, allowing for a fair bit of customization on whether you want to be an in-your-face brawler, a spell-slinger who specializes in ranged combat, or a mixture of both.

Now, the best part about the controls is that they actually work. There's no discernable lag between hitting the button and the attack going through. Everything's nice and responsive, just the way that it should be.

HOWEVER.

The game's hit-or-miss lock-on system and shoddy camera can sometimes render the controls useless, as you constantly fumble with the camera to try to get the enemy into frame so you can lock on to it, as locking on is the only way to dodge AROUND an opponent, as opposed to dodging into his kneecaps, letting him stab you to his heart's content as you get back to your feet.

So basically, combat works well, when it actually works. Fortunately, the game has a very forgiving resurrection mechanic and a save-almost-anywhere function that helps ease the pain of getting your butt kicked.

The most disappointing thing, however, is the game is disappointingly short. You can probably run through the game in 15 hours if you skip the side quests.

And now, of course, the abridged version.

Score

Storyline - 2/5 Unique take on how Death works, but not all that interesting.

Graphics - 2/5 Good backgrounds and main character model, but glitches, framerate issues, and bad animations cripple the visuals. I've honestly seen better in PS2 games.

Audio - 1/5 Horrible music, sound effects, and voice actors. Death's VA is the only thing worth listening to at all.

Gameplay 3/5 Tight, responsive controls, with good customization options and easy skill mapping, but lousy camera and lock-on mechanics make combat frustrating way too often. Also, WAAAAAY too short.

Total - 8/20

This game is a shining example as to why I typically don't pay attention to budget titles.

Even for a budget title, there isn't a lot to make me recommend Venetica. It might be worth $10, but hardly the $40 that it's being marketed as right now. If you absolutely have to try it, I'd say either rent it, or wait until the price goes down.

Honestly, the only reason to even play this game is if you're an achievement/trophy whore. These ones are really easy to get.

As always, you can leave me questions, comments, constructive criticism, or game review ideas by dropping an email to grifsgamereviews(at)gmail(dot)com.

Thanks for reading! See you next time!