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Sacred Reviews: Sweet Home - The Second Coming (Tech Demo)
thesacredlobo- 03/28/2024 12:21 AM
- 45 views
Intro
"Sweet Home: The Second Coming" was a horror themed RPG being developed by outlander145 that has been on indefinite hiatus for a while at this point. Apparently this is meant to be a weird hybrid between live action and sprite graphics. And to be honest the merger looks pretty bad. Admittedly the developer has said they have a better build on their computer, but apparently never felt like uploading that build to the site. As such the only thing I can really review for this project is a tech demo that was released as part of the Release Something X event. An event that ran for three days in March of 2010 and centered around people releasing something and those releases could be anything from a new demo/updated demo, to a blog post about progress on a current project, or even a review. After all, it's important to give people feedback.
As for what killed this project. It appears to be a combination of the developer being busy with more pressing real world issues and the sheer scope of this project. Seriously this game was intended to have multiple teams of playable characters with their own unique storylines. Storylines that would even factor in who lived and died over the course of the game. And considering this game was originally intended to have ten teams. That is an awful lot of writing to do. In fact, I think it was the sheer scope of this project that truly killed it.
Story
Summary
As far as the tech demo goes there really isn't much of a story. We begin the game with the only playable team participating in a two-man tourney with three people. To make matters worse everyone else that signed up was just as stupid as we are since they decided to partake in a tag team match without a partner. At any rate after winning one round we decide to head home to our mansion which has apparently become infected with evil spirits while we are away. So it looks like it's up to Team USA to save or at the very least escape their now haunted home.
Bad Idea
For some reason the game allows you to change the names of all of the members of Team USA. This is a horrible idea since gamers love institute truly awful character names when given the chance. Even I couldn't help myself and changed the first characters name from "D." to "DEZ Nuts". Though I'll admit that's probably the most immature of the bunch since I renamed the other characters Mega Man and Antman.
Oh well, I still feel more mature than the SpoonyOne and his choice in name for Rinoa and her dog. Though stuff like this is why I tell people you never let the player name characters not even their own.
Gameplay
On the combat side of things the game utilizes the default combat system that comes with RPG Maker 2003. As such I don't have too much to say about it's mechanics. After all, if you've played a bunch of RPG Maker 2003 games over the years you'll be well aware that they use an active-time battle system. A system that tends to be associated with a lot of entries in the Final Fantasy series of games. A system I generally hate since it places an emphasis on flipping through drop down menus in a hurry and the last thing I want to do while flipping through a text menu is have someone light a fire under my backside.
The only other notable things about combat in this game is that your level capped at twenty which is mildly annoying if your used to level 99 or 100 being the cap. Though a lot of the games I played feature a maximum level of 9,999. At the same time this cap is perfectly fine if the game is properly built around that cap in terms of difficulty. Though assessing if that's the case with the tech demo is impossible. This is because the tech demo gives you a ton of free tonics which means you can abuse them a lot in order to overcome the toughest battle in the tech demo.
Another oddity with this game is that you don't appear to learn new moves as you level up. A decision that is a lot more annoying in my opinion. After all, this means you have very little reason to use your weaker moves in the tech demo. After all, why would you use a low cost move when you can spam your best moves nonstop? Though I suppose the player having access to all of their moves from the start may have been part of a playtesting scheme by the developer or simply left in by the developer as they rushed to release the demo in time for the event after doing their own playtesting.
Graphics
On the visual side of things this project is butt-ugly. This is because the game uses a mixture of RPG Maker assets, assets pulled from other games, and images of the developer and his friends.
Yes, that is Terry Bogard walking away from us.
As you can imagine this means the various graphical assets in this project are all highly different in terms of look and style and result in a project that is hard to look at due to how much the various assets clash against one another.
On a positive note I can say this is truly different and including edits of yourself and friends performing various fighting moves in order to incorporate them into a game is definitely unique. On the other hand it really doesn't look good and will probably drive some people away because of it. And for the curious I'm speaking from personal experience since I had more than a few friends who wanted nothing to do with browser games because they couldn't compete with their home consoles in terms of graphical quality.
Sound
On the sound side of things the title screen is rather odd since it lacks a background track. Though I'll admit I kind of forgot what the rest of the game sounded like due to the utilization of the iconic theme song for "Mortal Kombat" as the game truly begins. After you drop that everything else is kind of just background noise in my opinion.
Conclusion
On some levels this seems like it would have been an interesting project. On other levels this feels like a project that was bound to fail from the get go due to the sheer scope of the project simply being beyond what a few people can do in a reasonable amount of time before wanting to move onto something else. I suppose on the bright side this project serves as another reminder why people should try to set smaller and more reasonable goals for their projects. That way their project is at least something they can complete in a reasonable amount of time. And if you want to expand the project after finishing it you can always go back and add more content later.
"Sweet Home: The Second Coming" was a horror themed RPG being developed by outlander145 that has been on indefinite hiatus for a while at this point. Apparently this is meant to be a weird hybrid between live action and sprite graphics. And to be honest the merger looks pretty bad. Admittedly the developer has said they have a better build on their computer, but apparently never felt like uploading that build to the site. As such the only thing I can really review for this project is a tech demo that was released as part of the Release Something X event. An event that ran for three days in March of 2010 and centered around people releasing something and those releases could be anything from a new demo/updated demo, to a blog post about progress on a current project, or even a review. After all, it's important to give people feedback.
As for what killed this project. It appears to be a combination of the developer being busy with more pressing real world issues and the sheer scope of this project. Seriously this game was intended to have multiple teams of playable characters with their own unique storylines. Storylines that would even factor in who lived and died over the course of the game. And considering this game was originally intended to have ten teams. That is an awful lot of writing to do. In fact, I think it was the sheer scope of this project that truly killed it.
Story
Summary
As far as the tech demo goes there really isn't much of a story. We begin the game with the only playable team participating in a two-man tourney with three people. To make matters worse everyone else that signed up was just as stupid as we are since they decided to partake in a tag team match without a partner. At any rate after winning one round we decide to head home to our mansion which has apparently become infected with evil spirits while we are away. So it looks like it's up to Team USA to save or at the very least escape their now haunted home.
Bad Idea
For some reason the game allows you to change the names of all of the members of Team USA. This is a horrible idea since gamers love institute truly awful character names when given the chance. Even I couldn't help myself and changed the first characters name from "D." to "DEZ Nuts". Though I'll admit that's probably the most immature of the bunch since I renamed the other characters Mega Man and Antman.
Oh well, I still feel more mature than the SpoonyOne and his choice in name for Rinoa and her dog. Though stuff like this is why I tell people you never let the player name characters not even their own.
Gameplay
On the combat side of things the game utilizes the default combat system that comes with RPG Maker 2003. As such I don't have too much to say about it's mechanics. After all, if you've played a bunch of RPG Maker 2003 games over the years you'll be well aware that they use an active-time battle system. A system that tends to be associated with a lot of entries in the Final Fantasy series of games. A system I generally hate since it places an emphasis on flipping through drop down menus in a hurry and the last thing I want to do while flipping through a text menu is have someone light a fire under my backside.
The only other notable things about combat in this game is that your level capped at twenty which is mildly annoying if your used to level 99 or 100 being the cap. Though a lot of the games I played feature a maximum level of 9,999. At the same time this cap is perfectly fine if the game is properly built around that cap in terms of difficulty. Though assessing if that's the case with the tech demo is impossible. This is because the tech demo gives you a ton of free tonics which means you can abuse them a lot in order to overcome the toughest battle in the tech demo.
Another oddity with this game is that you don't appear to learn new moves as you level up. A decision that is a lot more annoying in my opinion. After all, this means you have very little reason to use your weaker moves in the tech demo. After all, why would you use a low cost move when you can spam your best moves nonstop? Though I suppose the player having access to all of their moves from the start may have been part of a playtesting scheme by the developer or simply left in by the developer as they rushed to release the demo in time for the event after doing their own playtesting.
Graphics
On the visual side of things this project is butt-ugly. This is because the game uses a mixture of RPG Maker assets, assets pulled from other games, and images of the developer and his friends.
Yes, that is Terry Bogard walking away from us.
As you can imagine this means the various graphical assets in this project are all highly different in terms of look and style and result in a project that is hard to look at due to how much the various assets clash against one another.
On a positive note I can say this is truly different and including edits of yourself and friends performing various fighting moves in order to incorporate them into a game is definitely unique. On the other hand it really doesn't look good and will probably drive some people away because of it. And for the curious I'm speaking from personal experience since I had more than a few friends who wanted nothing to do with browser games because they couldn't compete with their home consoles in terms of graphical quality.
Sound
On the sound side of things the title screen is rather odd since it lacks a background track. Though I'll admit I kind of forgot what the rest of the game sounded like due to the utilization of the iconic theme song for "Mortal Kombat" as the game truly begins. After you drop that everything else is kind of just background noise in my opinion.
Conclusion
On some levels this seems like it would have been an interesting project. On other levels this feels like a project that was bound to fail from the get go due to the sheer scope of the project simply being beyond what a few people can do in a reasonable amount of time before wanting to move onto something else. I suppose on the bright side this project serves as another reminder why people should try to set smaller and more reasonable goals for their projects. That way their project is at least something they can complete in a reasonable amount of time. And if you want to expand the project after finishing it you can always go back and add more content later.
