This is a post about pillars, in a way. Two major pillars of my pantheon of games, at least for the past few months, have been Diablo III and Elite: Dangerous. Also, Pillars of Eternity, Obsidian's Kickstarted modern successor to the Infinity Engine RPGs of old has been released, and I've played a bit of that.
A few other tidbits, first.
I finally uninstalled Borderlands 2, after giving it another go to see if the hook would set. It's not a bad game by any means, but it's not snagging me at the time being. I may have gotten my fill with the first game, but there's also the fact that I have umpteen other FPS to play, many of which I think I would get more out of for time spent. S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Clear Sky, for instance.
I played a little SpaceChem recently, as well. That's a great game, but one that might be too difficult for its own good. I like that about it. I'm stuck on what might be one of the first really genuinely mind-bending puzzles, a level called "No Ordinary Headache." Indeed.
Rather than tool around in Assassin's Creed Rogue collecting miscellany, I jumped back into Shadow of Mordor for that Assassin-like feeling. It's a game that is way better than it has any right to be, as a licensed property. In fact, I think the license is pretty boring, and probably a major reason why I'm not head over heels for this game. It's very solid and fun in the moment, but there's pretty much nothing that actively draws me back to play it over one of my pillar games.
Speaking of which, I leveled up a Crusader to 70 and beyond for Season 2 of Diablo III play. I like it better than Witch Doctor, but maybe not as much as Barbarian or Wizard. Crusader seems designed around the concept an agro-grabbing tank, which I think has limited utility in a game like this to begin with, and then only in multi-player. I would like to try that way of playing sometime, but I wonder if it would be as efficient as going all-out offense. It might require having other damage dealing-centric party members rework their gear to disregard survivability and go 100% damage- focused. I'm not sure if I'll play any more of Season 2. I ran bounties all the way to 70 and then did one rift after that. I might like to run a few more and then try a greater rift, but then I might just wait until Season 3, when I plan to play a Monk to 70 to complete the full set of classes. After that may be when I focus on endgame stuff for each class, and when I finally delve into hardcore mode characters. There is still a lot of Diablo left to play.
Elite recently hit version 2.2, where two new ships were added, the Vulture (5M CR) and Fer-de-Lance (51M CR), both dedicated heavy fighters. I was able to afford a modestly outfitted Vulture with my earnings from exploration and trading, and set out to try 2.2's other big change to the game, buffed bounties. Simply put, the monetary rewards for destroying pirate ships got a big increase, so much so that to me it seems like easily the fastest and most enjoyable way to amass a small fortune. At some point, maybe in a Type-7 or larger, trade might edge it out in CR/hour, but without any of the thrill of combat. I earned over a million credits over the last day in about an hour altogether of hunting pirates at a RES (resource extraction site). That is quite an improvement over earning rates pre-patch, no matter the method. I'll probably crank out a few more million hunting bounties, hoping to raise my combat rating, before putting it all into an Asp for some real big-time exploration. That's going to be fun. I don't know where I'm going, only that it'll be a hell of a trip.
I mentioned Pillars of Eternity at the top of this post, but I really don't have much to say about it just yet. I've created a character, a sort of halfling woman who is a Chanter, which is a class that seems a lot like a Bard from FFXI, with buffs and debuffs. I've only made it through character creation and the first maybe 20 minutes of play thus far, but it does seem very faithful to the feel of games like Baldur's Gate and Planescape: Torment. I hope to dig deep into this one soon.
Monday, March 30, 2015
Wednesday, March 18, 2015
Rogue Assassin Shay Cormac
Assassin's Creed Rogue finally came to the PC, and I plowed straight through it over the last week. It's a very high quality port, and seems to run much smoother than Black Flag did.
It's also a very solid Assassin's Creed game, and the end of an era for the series, in more ways than one. Rogue wraps up the 18th century colonial North America sub-group of the series, along with the series' use of it's current engine tech, sailing mechanics, and hopefully some of its other tropes. Unity looks to break away from several of these mainstays.
Rogue is the second game to set the modern portion of the series at Abstergo Entertainment, taking place there a year after the events of Black Flag. In-animus, it is the story of one Shay Patrick Cormac, a young Assassin in Achilles' (of III, Connor's mentor) Colonial Brotherhood. Achilles and the Assassins (Adewale of Black Flag and Freedom Cry among them) are meddling in forces they do not understand, and a mission Shay is sent on to Lisbon involving a precursor site and relic goes awry in a really awful way resulting in a lot of potentially avoidable death and destruction. This leads to some major disillusionment with the cause of the brotherhood on Shay's part, and he breaks from them in a very final way.
Who should come along then, to pick up his spirits and further his goal of preventing more tragedy like that in Lisbon, than the Templars? Shay falls in with a Colonel Monro and several other Templars, but does not become one himself until further engagement with his former Assassin brotherhood cost him this new friend, as well. From there he is a close associate of the Colonial Templar Grand Master Haytham Kenway (off III, Connor's absentee father, rival, and showstealer, as well as the son of Edward Kenway, protagonist of Black Flag) as they focus on hunting down and destroying Shay's former brotherhood and recovering a precursor artifact (the same given to Shao Jun by Ezio Auditore in Embers, later stolen from Templar hands by Adewale and given to Bastienne in Freedom Cry, used in Haiti leading to a giant earthquake, stolen by Templar Lawrence Washington and taken to Virginia, investigated by the Templars, finally winding up in the hands of Samuel Smith, who Shay assassinates and recovers the box from, giving it to Achilles).
It's a good yarn for anyone familiar with the series, and a good trip down the path of the Templar, in that 'we're not so different, you and I' sense. I would like to see a game from the point of view of a Templar who began his career that way, since thus far the only ones we've been able to play as began their training as Assassins (Haytham and Shay). I wonder how much parkour is involved in the training of the average Templar, though.
I had a pretty good time with Rogue, but now that it's finished, I'm not too sure how much of the extraneous stuff I want to wrap up. I put in 70 or 80 hours with Black Flag, and Rogue is very similar to that game. Where it's not, it resembles III, which I also spent a good 70-80 hours with. I may be about done with this iteration of the franchise. Which makes it fortunate, then, that the next game, Unity, looks to change some things up. I'm hoping it's enough to make it fresh again, because there is already another game on deck for this fall, Victory.
It's also a very solid Assassin's Creed game, and the end of an era for the series, in more ways than one. Rogue wraps up the 18th century colonial North America sub-group of the series, along with the series' use of it's current engine tech, sailing mechanics, and hopefully some of its other tropes. Unity looks to break away from several of these mainstays.
Rogue is the second game to set the modern portion of the series at Abstergo Entertainment, taking place there a year after the events of Black Flag. In-animus, it is the story of one Shay Patrick Cormac, a young Assassin in Achilles' (of III, Connor's mentor) Colonial Brotherhood. Achilles and the Assassins (Adewale of Black Flag and Freedom Cry among them) are meddling in forces they do not understand, and a mission Shay is sent on to Lisbon involving a precursor site and relic goes awry in a really awful way resulting in a lot of potentially avoidable death and destruction. This leads to some major disillusionment with the cause of the brotherhood on Shay's part, and he breaks from them in a very final way.
Who should come along then, to pick up his spirits and further his goal of preventing more tragedy like that in Lisbon, than the Templars? Shay falls in with a Colonel Monro and several other Templars, but does not become one himself until further engagement with his former Assassin brotherhood cost him this new friend, as well. From there he is a close associate of the Colonial Templar Grand Master Haytham Kenway (off III, Connor's absentee father, rival, and showstealer, as well as the son of Edward Kenway, protagonist of Black Flag) as they focus on hunting down and destroying Shay's former brotherhood and recovering a precursor artifact (the same given to Shao Jun by Ezio Auditore in Embers, later stolen from Templar hands by Adewale and given to Bastienne in Freedom Cry, used in Haiti leading to a giant earthquake, stolen by Templar Lawrence Washington and taken to Virginia, investigated by the Templars, finally winding up in the hands of Samuel Smith, who Shay assassinates and recovers the box from, giving it to Achilles).
It's a good yarn for anyone familiar with the series, and a good trip down the path of the Templar, in that 'we're not so different, you and I' sense. I would like to see a game from the point of view of a Templar who began his career that way, since thus far the only ones we've been able to play as began their training as Assassins (Haytham and Shay). I wonder how much parkour is involved in the training of the average Templar, though.
I had a pretty good time with Rogue, but now that it's finished, I'm not too sure how much of the extraneous stuff I want to wrap up. I put in 70 or 80 hours with Black Flag, and Rogue is very similar to that game. Where it's not, it resembles III, which I also spent a good 70-80 hours with. I may be about done with this iteration of the franchise. Which makes it fortunate, then, that the next game, Unity, looks to change some things up. I'm hoping it's enough to make it fresh again, because there is already another game on deck for this fall, Victory.
Wednesday, March 4, 2015
Once Familiar
Once familiar is how I would describe The Legend of Zelda: A Link Between Worlds. It reminds me quite a bit of A Link to the Past, but spruced up on more modern hardware with more modern design sensibilities. I like how it is analog and runs at a very smooth frame rate. Otherwise it seems fairly stock Zelda so far, save perhaps the item rental system, which if it pans out the way I'm hoping could lend the game an enhanced feeling of freedom over the usual. I haven't really liked a Zelda game in a very long time. I was wowed by Ocarina back when just like anyone, but looking back I can't help but feel it has been overblown, and I don't think I would ever want to replay it. I think my favorites in the series have always been the first and A Link to the Past. Zelda II holds a special place in my mind, but I wouldn't call it one of my favorite games by any stretch of the imagination.
The Homeworld Remastered collection came out recently, and I was given a copy as a gift by my good friend and podcasting buddy Esteban. This is a series I've seldom heard much about, but what I did hear was always very glowing. It's very well-regarded. So far I've played through the tutorial in both the remastered and original versions of the first game. It seems novel, an RTS that is relatively slower paced than most in a fully three-dimensional space setting. I'm planning to delve deeper into the remaster, as time goes on.
My Diablo III Season 2 Crusader is developing nicely. She's level 48 now, I think. This class makes a pretty satisfying brick house. It's neat to be able to just face down everything enemies try to throw at you and almost browbeat them into submission, albeit with a flail or some such. The shield-centric abilities are neat, too. You may trade off some loot-grind efficiency for the feeling of being untoppleable, but I don't mind.
I recently made a long exploring expedition in Elite, cut short somewhat by my desire to contribute to an exploration-themed community goal. I earned over 2 million credits with all my discovery data, and put that into a Lakon Type-6 trading ship, which allows for up to 112 tons of cargo. My Cobra would max out at 60. I've now flown everything up to a million credits in price, and my next ship is tentatively an Asp for more deep, deep space exploration. I may hop into a Viper for some combat play, though, or one of the new ships coming in the next update, if their sticker costs fall in under the 6+ mil required to fly an Asp. Right now my total net worth is probably around 5 mil, but I wouldn't be able to get much out of an Asp without about 8-10 mil for the ship itself and the additional modules needed to make the most of it. It's going to take some hours in trading to be able to afford that.
The Homeworld Remastered collection came out recently, and I was given a copy as a gift by my good friend and podcasting buddy Esteban. This is a series I've seldom heard much about, but what I did hear was always very glowing. It's very well-regarded. So far I've played through the tutorial in both the remastered and original versions of the first game. It seems novel, an RTS that is relatively slower paced than most in a fully three-dimensional space setting. I'm planning to delve deeper into the remaster, as time goes on.
My Diablo III Season 2 Crusader is developing nicely. She's level 48 now, I think. This class makes a pretty satisfying brick house. It's neat to be able to just face down everything enemies try to throw at you and almost browbeat them into submission, albeit with a flail or some such. The shield-centric abilities are neat, too. You may trade off some loot-grind efficiency for the feeling of being untoppleable, but I don't mind.
I recently made a long exploring expedition in Elite, cut short somewhat by my desire to contribute to an exploration-themed community goal. I earned over 2 million credits with all my discovery data, and put that into a Lakon Type-6 trading ship, which allows for up to 112 tons of cargo. My Cobra would max out at 60. I've now flown everything up to a million credits in price, and my next ship is tentatively an Asp for more deep, deep space exploration. I may hop into a Viper for some combat play, though, or one of the new ships coming in the next update, if their sticker costs fall in under the 6+ mil required to fly an Asp. Right now my total net worth is probably around 5 mil, but I wouldn't be able to get much out of an Asp without about 8-10 mil for the ship itself and the additional modules needed to make the most of it. It's going to take some hours in trading to be able to afford that.
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