Since I lived through my commentary on Legacy Of Kain with minimal
psychic scarring, I thought I'd give a whack at Deception, which I
picked up this weekend.

Overview:

Deception is best described This Old House meets Faust.  The plot is
unusually dark - you play a prince who has sold his soul to the devil,
and now oversees The Castle Of The Damned.  As majordomo, you have to
install traps, create monsters, and exterminate the annoying intruders
who invade your demesne.  All the while, you are searching for a set
of artifacts necessary for the resurrection of Satan, presumably to
allow him to squash the world beneath his feet.

While the plot is interesting, it's hampered by fairly monotonous
gameplay and a horrible translation.  I'm not vigorously antipathetic
towards this game, but I do feel somewhat cheated about the gameplay.

Gameplay:

Fundamentally, Deception is a strategy game.  The game is divided into
Chapters, each of which consists of a set of one or more invaders to
the castle.  You arrange the castle's traps, and then lure your
opponents into the traps.

Deception has two distinct modes: a 'strategy' mode for setting up
traps, and a doom-like mode which you use to lure people into the
traps.  The strategic mode is basically what you'd get if Bob Vila
went very very evil (which makes him Red Green, I guess) - you can
expand the house, building additional rooms and placing traps hither
and thither from an abstract overhead view.  Expansions last until you
change them, traps are cleared (and refunded) at the end of each
chapter.  Traps are also broken into three broad categories -
capturing[giving you the opportunity for conversation, as well as the
chance to suck of magic points or save the body], killing [what it
sounds like] & confusing.
  
The Doomish, 1st person mode is what you use to wax your victims.  You
basically wander around until your targets notice you, lead them into
a trap [traps are visible to you as red triangles which beep and
rotate when they can be used effectively], and then trigger the trap
on them.  Depending on the trap, you will either annihilate your
opponent[kill], or have the opportunity to do multifarious evil things upon
them [capture].  Lather. Rinse. Repeat.

Beyond that, the gameplay doesn't offer much in the way of surprises.
You have no personal attack ability, an interesting twist, I grant.
You can also develop monsters (at least one through plot, the others
through capturing enough corpses and gluing them together), but they
are really unimpressive.  Monsters do one attack, on one opponent, and
then go home until summoned again.  Since summoning is relatively
expensive, I really haven't found monsters to be that useful.
 
The game is divided into chapters, each of which is basically a
scenario where one or more opponents invade the castle, and you
convert them into mincemeat.  There are little animated segments at
the beginning and end of each chapter which explain a little bit about
the opponent and the overweening plot [fairly generic - evil overlord
being resurrected, descendants of last batch of heroes coming to
fight, etc. etc.].  At the end of each scenario, you're awarded bonus
magic points based upon how well you did, and then you continue.

My major problems with the gameplay are threefold:

 First, while you can expand your house, you're given very little
incentive to do so.  There are very few special rooms that you can
actually build, you can only have a finite number of traps in the
house at any one time, and it's not hard to trap enemies in the initial
space allotment.  Finally, since the enemies are such incredible idiots
(unless they can see you about two feet away, they'll wander off and
look at your corpse collection or something), adding space to the
house just gives them more space to get lost.  

 Second, the strategic aspect of the game is more or less nonexistent.
Yes, you do technically set traps, capture enemies, and so on, but
it's not particularly difficult.  As long as you go body-hunting on a
regular basis, you badly outclass just about anything that gets in
your way.  There is supposed to be an economic limit imposed on you
(traps, expansions, development and monsters all cost either MP or
Gold or Block Orbs), but you are so swamped with saleable treasures
and magic points that there's never really a se If the game had been
more stringent in rewarding bonus points (either by halving the
rewards, reducing the prices on the saleable treasures, increasing the
MP costs of traps, or including more MP sacrifices), I would have been
happier.  I have the vague feeling that the game is about half of what
the designers wanted it to be.

Third, Merchants.  Merchants make my head explode.  The basic idea of
merchants is that you lure them into your castle, then,
while they are throwing the better part of a kitchen at you, you buy
and sell artifacts from them.  Finally, after doing this, you capture
(or kill) the merchant, and find out that all the money & equipment
you sold them has gone to some ethereal void somewhere.  The Merchants
make no sense to me whatsoever, and they really just strike me as a
stopgap solution to a deeper problem : finding a way for the player to
acquire block orbs, money and healing artifacts in sizeable quantities. 
Either that or it's a bug.  I sincerely hope it's a bug.

Plot: 

A nicely twisted storyline actually.  Beside my gripe about a certain
level of genericity, the storyline of Deception is actually very dark
and grim.  The core plotline involves you being framed by your younger
brother & court wizard for the murder of your father.  As you are led
to the gibbet, you call out to _anyone_ for help,and the Devil answers.

Spirited away (it's not clear whether or not you died first), you find
yourself outside of the Castle Of The a two-story fix-up opportunity
located in the Undead part of town.  After replacing the former Master
of the Castle, you are introduced to Astarte, Satan's assistant and
your liaison to the dark powers of hell.  For Astarte (and her boss),
you must recover the five artifacts that will allow Satan to be born
again and come back to this world.

In the interim, with your marriage to the princess of the neighboring
country of Angelio coming to a grinding halt, Zemekia (your kingdom)
and Angelio go at each others throats.  You, largely through control
of Castle, your brother's intense hate for you, and the desperate
attempts of various Angelio & Zemekian forces to enlist your aid, find
yourself in the middle of this war.  

That's the brief outline.  As the game progresses, you find yourself
involved in three forms of scenario - dealing with the war, dealing
with your brother, and dealing with people who, in that suspension of
intelligence common to all horror films, come into the castle to
either kill or talk to you.  

There are various points where the plot really does shine.  A good
[spoiler] example involves your fiancee, Fiana.  After she comes to
the castle, your brother sends an assassin after her.  He succeeds,
and Astarte gives you the option to either resurrect her, or leave her
dead.  I made the mistake of resurrecting her, and now have a
psychotic flesh-rending zombie in my possession.  Deception has
several stomach-wrenchingly innovative moments like that.

Graphics: 

These are really impressive.  Texuremapped & Shaded polygons
of intricate detail.  There are around 25+ individual opponents in the
game, most of which have at least two variations as well as color
shifting.  All the characters have distinct faces, a very nice touch
indeed.  In general, I'm very impressed with the graphics.

I've encountered one case of clipping problems - involving using the
hand & volt hand traps, but apart form that the game has been
extremely good at maintaining the illusion of solidity.

Sound & Music:

Not my strong point.  The sound is okay, and the noise level can be
used to detect opponents' proximity, which is a good touch.  For some
reason, the laughter sounds somewhat off, and there's no digitized
speech to speak of [good thing or bad thing?  You decide].    

The music is awful. The Tecmo Women's Choir moaning rhythmically does
not make for a quality experience.  This particular game could have
immensely benefitted from a little creative thievery (for future
reference guys - Holst "Mars, Bringer Of War", Orff's setting of The
Fortuna Chorus in Carmina Burana, Mozart's Requiem, McGowan's "Turkish
Song Of The Damned").  You can guess what I'm listening to when I'm
playing this.

Translation:

Ugh.  Apart from charming lines like "I'll punish you for
such lack of mercy!" and the immortal "Failured to capture", the
translation is rife with grammatical errors and characters who laugh
like villains from a Jack Chick comic. I'd be a _LOT_ happier with
Deception if the translation had been better, or if the translation
had at least gone through a native English Speaker's hands once or
twice.  [If it did, you should be ashamed of yourself, whoever you are].

Ages:

Hmmm....Satanic references.  Zombie flesh-chewing girlfriends.  14
year old girls crushed under 1-ton weights.  Spike Fu.  Cage Fu.  This
doesn't go for anyone under 16, and if you're uncomfortable with
occult & devil references, you don't want this at all.  [How did Tecmo
slip this past the censors, I wonder...]



Good Points:
The graphics are extremely detailed.  Heavy textured polygonal work,
all the characters have their own faces.

The storyline has some truly innovative moments.  

The fact that you, yourself, cannot directly attack is an interesting
change for a doom-clone.  

Bad Points:

Certain lapses into silliness, usually involving merchants or traps.  

The music is painful.

Gameplay is somewhat monotonous.  

9 Slots on your memory card/Savegame.  Why?

Conclusion: 

Try it out with a rental first.

  Michael Collins, mc7f@andrew.cmu.edu
			"Quotes Are For The Weak" - Omar Beckins