These are the landscapes I've been seeing a lot of playing Far Cry 2 a ton over the last week. It's not a perfect game by any means, but it's absolutely unmatched in terms of presenting a gorgeous wide-open world that feels alive in many respects. For a few reasons, mostly concerning the somewhat repetitive nature of it's mission structure, it's best enjoyed in small doses, but I've been cramming it in trying to finally polish the game off so that I can move my focus on to the S.T.A.L.K.E.R. series. It's appeal hasn't suffered a whole lot, even so. I really like this game.
Elsewhere, I made a foray back into Puzzle Quest: Galactrix, which is fun. I want to keep at it and eventually finish it off before Puzzle Quest 2 eventually comes out. It's a shame about the warp gate hacking; without that the game would be a lot better. There's also DLC for the original PQ that I'd like to get, but it's overpriced on XBL. Maybe there'll be a sale sometime.
On the RPG front, I'm still working through Planescape when I get the hankering for some good dialogue and a weird world with crazy rules. A graphical update or a full-on Mass Effect-like fully voice acted remake of this game would be incredible. The next thing coming from the same people is Fallout: New Vegas. I will be anticipating that quite a bit.
Lastly, a new multiplayer game has caught my fancy, and that's Battlefield: Bad Company 2. Right now just the demo is out on XBL, and it's only one map and one mode, but it's huge amounts of fun, and it makes me want to play it more than any of the other several great multi-player games I have on tap. I may have to pick it up when it's released next month, but do I really want to spend a completion token on it? I don't even have any at the moment, though I have a few reasonably close. Questions, questions...
Oh, before I go I feel like I need to shout out a couple of iphone games that still get a ton of play from me, and those are drop7 and Words With Friends, an asynchronus Scrabble clone. I also bought UniWar for a few bucks last week, and it's pretty cool; a hex-based strategy game with three different factions. Canabalt gets pretty frequent play, too.
Showing posts with label Galactrix. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Galactrix. Show all posts
Monday, February 22, 2010
Monday, May 4, 2009
Some Things To Write About
I took a burnout break from WoW this past week from about Wednesday until Sunday night when boredom finally got the better of me. Consequently, I actually have some other games to thought-spew about! Just to get WoW out of the way, though, I'm almost to level 47, still mucking around Stranglethorn, and my skinning skill is already almost at 300! Incredible how fast that levels.
After scraping away a year or more's worth of dust, I found my copy of Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney in my DS game drawer and finally gave it a whirl. I played through the first case trial all in one go, and kind of got a feel for how the game works. It's not really like anything else I've played before, but seems pretty enjoyable. As of now, I'm into the second trial case, about to begin the actual court proceedings.
Chronologically, the next thing I played was some Galactrix, followed by several hours of Far Cry 2. Nothing much to say about PQ: G, other than that it remains pretty fun, and good for wasting time. Playing FC2, though, is a really unique experience. I completed a couple of sabotage type missions with one of my npc buddies and then did a couple of convoy ambush missions for the arms dealers in the countryside to open up more guns to buy for myself. I also did some diamond hunting and guard post scouting and safe house unlocking.
One incident that was totally awesome was approaching a checkpoint from the side just as a roving death squad was motoring through town. As they drove away I manned a gun emplacement and shot at them to get their attention, and as they turned around to come back I got off of my turret and ran across the road to some cover, and fired some shots at them with my automatic rifle as they drove into the little clump of buildings. Then, just as they came alongside the wall I was hiding behind, I pulled out my flamethrower and smoked both the driver and the guy manning the gun mount, and the jeep crashed and exploded and set the whole area ablaze. It was one of those Kodak moments you wish all your friends could have been there to see. I love the fire in this game. I read that during playtesting they had to tone the fire down because people could throw a molotov and set the whole country alight and kill the Jackal (main bad guy and target in the game) from miles away. How cool is that?
I tried out a bunch of demos this weekend, as well. The Chronicles of Riddick: Assault on Dark Athena, Bionic Commando multiplayer, and Red Faction: Guerilla.
Riddick has gotten huge amounts of acclaim, or rather, Butcher Bay has. Dark Athena has gotten less. This demo was from the latter. It seemed ok. The graphics were better than I had been led to believe (save Riddick's own model, which still looks last-gen). It was a lot harder than I was expecting, too. The demo was on the normal difficulty level, but I must have died at least 20 times just in the 15 minute or so demo section. I think I went into it expecting typical FPS type gameplay, but there seemed to be a lot heavier emphasis on stealth tactics that I didn't quite pick up totally in this short bit of game. I don't feel super compelled to pick up the game, but if I ever find it for $20 or something I may give it a go for Butcher Bay alone.
Bionic Commando, sadly, felt kind of janky. I didn't care for how the swing/jump was implemented (seemed like it required too many presses of the A button), and I really didn't like how the gun targeting and shooting felt. Your reticle is freaking huge, and you don't really have any indication of where exactly in there you're hitting. It seemed like maybe the game was registering a hit as long as the target was anywhere inside that huge reticle, which would make sense, since you'd likely need a large degree of aim-assist to shoot anything while swinging around wildly, but there just needs to be better feedback as to whether you're actually hitting the guy you're aiming for. It felt like I was shooting buckshot at something a football field away. The multiplayer character models suck, too. And 2 out of the 3 games I played, I was the pink guy, out of 8 possible colors. That's just not cool.
Red Faction: Guerilla was pretty exciting as a demo, though. It gave off Crackdown vibes in the way the character and camera are controlled, and the destructability of practically every object in the environment could potentially blow the doors of open-world mission-based gameplay. I liked the sledgehammer for breaking stuff, and the sticky remote-detonated mines are awesome. I'll be keeping an eye on this one in the future.
After scraping away a year or more's worth of dust, I found my copy of Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney in my DS game drawer and finally gave it a whirl. I played through the first case trial all in one go, and kind of got a feel for how the game works. It's not really like anything else I've played before, but seems pretty enjoyable. As of now, I'm into the second trial case, about to begin the actual court proceedings.
Chronologically, the next thing I played was some Galactrix, followed by several hours of Far Cry 2. Nothing much to say about PQ: G, other than that it remains pretty fun, and good for wasting time. Playing FC2, though, is a really unique experience. I completed a couple of sabotage type missions with one of my npc buddies and then did a couple of convoy ambush missions for the arms dealers in the countryside to open up more guns to buy for myself. I also did some diamond hunting and guard post scouting and safe house unlocking.
One incident that was totally awesome was approaching a checkpoint from the side just as a roving death squad was motoring through town. As they drove away I manned a gun emplacement and shot at them to get their attention, and as they turned around to come back I got off of my turret and ran across the road to some cover, and fired some shots at them with my automatic rifle as they drove into the little clump of buildings. Then, just as they came alongside the wall I was hiding behind, I pulled out my flamethrower and smoked both the driver and the guy manning the gun mount, and the jeep crashed and exploded and set the whole area ablaze. It was one of those Kodak moments you wish all your friends could have been there to see. I love the fire in this game. I read that during playtesting they had to tone the fire down because people could throw a molotov and set the whole country alight and kill the Jackal (main bad guy and target in the game) from miles away. How cool is that?
I tried out a bunch of demos this weekend, as well. The Chronicles of Riddick: Assault on Dark Athena, Bionic Commando multiplayer, and Red Faction: Guerilla.
Riddick has gotten huge amounts of acclaim, or rather, Butcher Bay has. Dark Athena has gotten less. This demo was from the latter. It seemed ok. The graphics were better than I had been led to believe (save Riddick's own model, which still looks last-gen). It was a lot harder than I was expecting, too. The demo was on the normal difficulty level, but I must have died at least 20 times just in the 15 minute or so demo section. I think I went into it expecting typical FPS type gameplay, but there seemed to be a lot heavier emphasis on stealth tactics that I didn't quite pick up totally in this short bit of game. I don't feel super compelled to pick up the game, but if I ever find it for $20 or something I may give it a go for Butcher Bay alone.
Bionic Commando, sadly, felt kind of janky. I didn't care for how the swing/jump was implemented (seemed like it required too many presses of the A button), and I really didn't like how the gun targeting and shooting felt. Your reticle is freaking huge, and you don't really have any indication of where exactly in there you're hitting. It seemed like maybe the game was registering a hit as long as the target was anywhere inside that huge reticle, which would make sense, since you'd likely need a large degree of aim-assist to shoot anything while swinging around wildly, but there just needs to be better feedback as to whether you're actually hitting the guy you're aiming for. It felt like I was shooting buckshot at something a football field away. The multiplayer character models suck, too. And 2 out of the 3 games I played, I was the pink guy, out of 8 possible colors. That's just not cool.
Red Faction: Guerilla was pretty exciting as a demo, though. It gave off Crackdown vibes in the way the character and camera are controlled, and the destructability of practically every object in the environment could potentially blow the doors of open-world mission-based gameplay. I liked the sledgehammer for breaking stuff, and the sticky remote-detonated mines are awesome. I'll be keeping an eye on this one in the future.
Wednesday, April 29, 2009
The Uninteresting Files
That's pretty much what this blog is fast becoming, the more I play WoW. The funny thing is that I haven't spent all that much time playing WoW, it's just been a disproportionate amount of my gaming time, altogether. As far as I can recall since last I wrote, I have made it to level 45, done a bunch of exploring around the world, and dropped Blacksmithing as a profession, replacing it with Skinning, instead, in an effort to both make more gold and to streamline my play experience. I'm not that into combing the AH for mats to collect for big complicated recipes, but I do like going out and killing and looting stuff!
I got that Green Hills of Stranglethorn achivement, finally finished the Warrior quest to get my Whirlwind Axe (long after twinks would have discarded it, no doubt), and did a bunch of other quests in random places. I finally visited the last Horde city, Silvermoon, in the blood elf starting area. Leaving from there I discovered a handful of other zones I had not yet been to, including The Hinterlands, The Badlands, Loch Modan, and Searing Gorge, I think. I had about half an hour of a podcast to kill last night, so I thought I'd jump into WoW to do it. I wasn't really feeling it, though, so after just one short quest I was done for the night. I might shelve it altogether until the weekend.
I got back into Far Cry 2 a couple of nights last week, doing a couple of missions and taking over some safehouses and finding some diamonds. I can see that there's a ton of fighting checkpoint guards and roaming death squads in the game, but it hasn't really bugged me yet. I get the same thing from the leapgate hacking in Galactrix. I've heard all about how much of an annoying hassle it is, but it just hasn't gotten to me yet. Similarly, I'd heard that the ending of Assassin's Creed was a huge letdown, but since I knew to expect that, I was strangely accepting of it. I think if you go into something with your expectations tempered a bit, your reactions aren't so volatile. I really dig Far Cry 2 so far, though. I'm still just like 3% into it or something ridiculous, though.
I just downloaded a free iphone game, Dark Nova, to get me through some idiotic training meeting thing at work. It's a kind of space trading thing.
I got that Green Hills of Stranglethorn achivement, finally finished the Warrior quest to get my Whirlwind Axe (long after twinks would have discarded it, no doubt), and did a bunch of other quests in random places. I finally visited the last Horde city, Silvermoon, in the blood elf starting area. Leaving from there I discovered a handful of other zones I had not yet been to, including The Hinterlands, The Badlands, Loch Modan, and Searing Gorge, I think. I had about half an hour of a podcast to kill last night, so I thought I'd jump into WoW to do it. I wasn't really feeling it, though, so after just one short quest I was done for the night. I might shelve it altogether until the weekend.
I got back into Far Cry 2 a couple of nights last week, doing a couple of missions and taking over some safehouses and finding some diamonds. I can see that there's a ton of fighting checkpoint guards and roaming death squads in the game, but it hasn't really bugged me yet. I get the same thing from the leapgate hacking in Galactrix. I've heard all about how much of an annoying hassle it is, but it just hasn't gotten to me yet. Similarly, I'd heard that the ending of Assassin's Creed was a huge letdown, but since I knew to expect that, I was strangely accepting of it. I think if you go into something with your expectations tempered a bit, your reactions aren't so volatile. I really dig Far Cry 2 so far, though. I'm still just like 3% into it or something ridiculous, though.
I just downloaded a free iphone game, Dark Nova, to get me through some idiotic training meeting thing at work. It's a kind of space trading thing.
Monday, April 13, 2009
I'm On A Quest!
I spent almost all of my game time over the last week playing World of Warcraft and Puzzle Quest: Galactrix. I acquired a lot more though: Peggle Deluxe and Peggle Nights in a half-off deal on Steam, and then Super Stardust HD, Pixel Junk Monsters, and The Last Guy via gamesharing on PSN. I only really tried out Stardust, and that was just one round of it. I'll have to get around to all of those sometime.
The big new thing for me is, of course, Galactrix. I've been waiting for this game for at least a year, from the time the first screenshot was posted online. I was a huge addict to the original Puzzle Quest: Challenge of the Warlords, the XBLA version. After a few hours with Galactrix (also XBLA; I hear the DS version has issues), I can say that I like it a lot. They had a killer combination to begin with, combining an addictive puzzle-battle game with the inherent hooks of character and story progression. They didn't need to change a whole lot, and wisely, they didn't.
The big differences, apart from the stock fantasy to stock science fiction swap, are the zero-gravity puzzle grids and greater character re-spec ability in place of different classes. Matches are now made vertically or diagonally (the hexagon pieces have no left-right oriented faces), and new pieces fall into the board in from the direction that the last move was made from. Also, you can have up to three ships to switch between, each outfitted with different equipment and abilities. It has that same variety of puzzle games to fight battles, craft items, mine resources, haggle with traders, and open leap gates for faster-than-light travel.
This brings me to the one major gripe people seem to have with Galactrix, the leap gate hacking. You need to hack a leap gate in order to access it to jump to the next star system. You do this a lot. This is also the only timed puzzle variant, and the only one that can really stop you in your tracks if you are unable to complete it. I haven't had too much trouble with the gates yet, myself, but I can see it getting repetitive (but the same could be said of every other puzzle variant, too), and I haven't had gates close on me yet, though I hear it happens after some time. We'll have to see how that shakes out, but so far I'm totally into the game. It's more or less just what I was expecting.
This weekend was another spent on mad questing in WoW. I spent a bunch of time in both Stranglethorn Vale and Arathi Highlands doing a bunch of quests, and went and did my first battleground PVP in Arathi Basin. It was a lot of fun. I went from level 38 to 41, and also got my first couple of world honorable kills in addition to a ton in the battleground. It's amazing how so much time spent can be summed up in so little writing.
The big new thing for me is, of course, Galactrix. I've been waiting for this game for at least a year, from the time the first screenshot was posted online. I was a huge addict to the original Puzzle Quest: Challenge of the Warlords, the XBLA version. After a few hours with Galactrix (also XBLA; I hear the DS version has issues), I can say that I like it a lot. They had a killer combination to begin with, combining an addictive puzzle-battle game with the inherent hooks of character and story progression. They didn't need to change a whole lot, and wisely, they didn't.
The big differences, apart from the stock fantasy to stock science fiction swap, are the zero-gravity puzzle grids and greater character re-spec ability in place of different classes. Matches are now made vertically or diagonally (the hexagon pieces have no left-right oriented faces), and new pieces fall into the board in from the direction that the last move was made from. Also, you can have up to three ships to switch between, each outfitted with different equipment and abilities. It has that same variety of puzzle games to fight battles, craft items, mine resources, haggle with traders, and open leap gates for faster-than-light travel.
This brings me to the one major gripe people seem to have with Galactrix, the leap gate hacking. You need to hack a leap gate in order to access it to jump to the next star system. You do this a lot. This is also the only timed puzzle variant, and the only one that can really stop you in your tracks if you are unable to complete it. I haven't had too much trouble with the gates yet, myself, but I can see it getting repetitive (but the same could be said of every other puzzle variant, too), and I haven't had gates close on me yet, though I hear it happens after some time. We'll have to see how that shakes out, but so far I'm totally into the game. It's more or less just what I was expecting.
This weekend was another spent on mad questing in WoW. I spent a bunch of time in both Stranglethorn Vale and Arathi Highlands doing a bunch of quests, and went and did my first battleground PVP in Arathi Basin. It was a lot of fun. I went from level 38 to 41, and also got my first couple of world honorable kills in addition to a ton in the battleground. It's amazing how so much time spent can be summed up in so little writing.
Sunday, January 25, 2009
Holding Pattern
This week has been much the same as the last. Highlights being finally finishing Metroid Fusion and playing Gears of War co-op through acts 2 and 3 on Saturday night.
It was nice in Metroid to finally accrue all of Samus' lost power-ups and be able to face down the SA-X for once. Most of the game you're avoiding or running in terror from it. I almost had to call foul on the game, though, for pulling the old Metroid escape sequence but spiking it with a final boss battle. I almost didn't make it through in terms of either life or time. I'm done with this one. It was cool to see where the overarching plot went, but by all reports Metroid: Zero Mission is the better GBA outing in the series, and I've got that in the queue waiting for a likely time.
I played some more Burnout Paradise this week, too. That's a great game. It's got a bunch of those qualities that keep you coming back to a game, like short, attainable goals, a sense of progression from unlocking more cars and beating more events, and a great online mode. The sense of speed in the game is also excellent. I crash a lot.
I put maybe 4 hours into Killzone this week, too. I'm up to the beginning of the 8th mission, of 11. I have a few gripes forming: a) checkpoints in this game are few and far between, b) enemy grenades seem way too unfairly deadly, c) the Helghast are beyond stupid AI-wise (and need more lines of spoken dialogue, or at least the frequency with which they spout their limited lexicon dialed back a bit). Otherwise, it's cool. The level design is kind of sparse, but I'd chalk that up to it being a hardware limitation, since the art-direction is pretty spot-on. Also, some of the dialogue is a bit overwrought--it's standard action-flick fare. Again, the limitations of the PS2 are the albatross around this game's neck. I'm excited to see how the sequel turns out when it's released in a month or so. The weapons and sense of being there and atmosphere are already pretty great.
I had a few minutes to kill tonight and so I played some Hexic. My brain just does not work the way that game wants it to. I got my best score to date, nonetheless. I think I made two of the star-flower things. If I understood the victory conditions correctly, I would need at least 18, arranged in the proper manner, to make 3 black pearls, and then get those arranged together, to win. I hope Puzzle Quest Galactrix is released soon...
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