I thought 2012 would be the year of me whipping my RPG pile into shape. So far, it's taken on a more action-oriented nature.
I finished off Max Payne before going out of town, with a minimum of pain in the ass factor. That is a game very heavy on the quicksave and quickload functions, though. Overall, my impression is that it's very much a case style over substance. The substance is good; it's just that Max Payne only really has one mechanic: the bullet-time shoot-dodge. Cap guys before they can cap you by either slowing down time to get the jump on them, or painstakingly memorizing each goon's placement and trigger point. That's the game, in a nutshell. It's all gussied up with a hammy hard-boiled motif, which is fun, but nothing to write home about. It's pulp gaming, which is probably what Rockstar and Remedy were going for here, so I guess it's a success. I raise an eyebrow at anyone treating it like an unassailable classic, however.
Dota 2 has been a consistent evening favorite. I like to play a match before bed if I'm not too tired; that's the time I'm most likely to be able to game out uninterrupted, these days. The multiplayer hour, I hereby coin it. All other gaming needs to be pause-friendly.
That I have yet to mention it here is an accurate reflection of how deep I've gotten into it--I've restarted KOTOR on the PC. Several years ago I tried playing the Xbox version emulated on a 360, and that was a real mess, so I gave up after maybe 5 to 10 hours. I was on the Jedi academy planet, as I recall. Well, on my second go 'round, I've made it as far as checking out the first cantina in the first major area on the first planet--maybe 90 solid minutes of play time. This will be a back burner game for a while to come.
Guild Wars keeps hovering just above my forget-about-it line, but I keep dipping into it here and there. It's a good game to mindlessly click through while I kill time listening to a podcast. I finally left behind Ascalon, both pre- and post-searing, so the scenery is improving. I still haven't run into any interesting plotlines or much cool gear, though. I'm not sure why I keep playing; it's some melange of wanting to cap out and earn GW2 stuff (a game I'm not even sure I'll play), wanting to see more of the game, and the fact that my podcast co-host Esteban is still playing.
I booted up Half-Life 2 for a short while yesterday, and had a nice time with it before having to go take care of something else. Man, Valve's Source engine games just feel so good and smooth. So much better than just about any other games out there. It's not just the framerate, either. There's something else about that engine. Or maybe it's the rock-solid game design. Whatever it is, Half-Life 2 has got it, just like all the others. I'm still not very far in, but I think I'm about to get to the hovercraft.
So I guess that all brings me to my focus game for the time being, if I could be said to have one. That is Batman: Arkham Asylum. I began the game some months ago on PS3, but only just began it. I'm now playing the PC version, and I'm quite a bit further into it, this time. You have no doubt heard it before, but this is a fantastic video game. It feels awesome to control Batman, the graphics are amazing, the pacing is great, the environments are nicely varied, the world is decently open to explore in a Metroid-like fashion, and there are a good amount of equipment and skills you gather and upgrade as you progress. The production values are high, and the game is a lot of fun; this turned out about a thousand times better than your average licensed super hero game. I'm very late to the party on this one, but those are my impressions after 4 or 5 hours. I'm currently past the Bane fight, and in Arkham manor looking for some documents. I'm not a big fan of the comics or anything, but there are a ton of little bits of fan service in the game for those who are. The PC port is even pretty well done! Bravo, Rocksteady, for that. I hear Arkham City is a more iffy prospect, however.
Showing posts with label Guild Wars. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Guild Wars. Show all posts
Monday, February 27, 2012
Tuesday, February 14, 2012
Of Games, This Day, February 14th, Twenty-Twelve
I'd like for this blog to be more than just an info dump on what I've been playing, but at the very least it has to be that. So, here goes:
Dota 2: Awesome. Valve takes another mod and redoes it AAA-style; it's a story we've heard again and again. I think this will end up being the most accessible game in the MOBA genre, for a few reasons, not the least being that it'll be native to Steam, which has an enormous userbase, will likely be free-to-play, and will have a built-in suite of training tutorials, a mentor program, and spectator mode. These games have a steep learning curve, but if anyone can level it out, it'll be Valve. I would also bet on the playerbase being more casual than HoN or LoL or the original DotA, making for an easier experience to new players. I've played twelve or thirteen matches, and have found a character I like: Windrunner. I'll focus on learning her while trying to improve my game in general.
Max Payne: It's finally starting to be kind of fun. There's not a lot to this game beside a film noir motif and lots of bullet-time gun fights. I might be able to finish it in the next day or two, which will be nice. The sequel sounds at least a little more interesting, and then we have Max Payne 3 coming out later this year, of course.
Diablo III beta: Stupidly great. I've maxed out a monk, wizard, and demon hunter thus far, though my monk was lost to an update wipe. I'm going to try a Witch Doctor next, probably. I'm keeping my fingers crossed that some of the beta-only achievements will carry over to the full release, though it's not very likely.
Dirt 2: It was only sale for $5 not too long ago, and since people say it's better than Dirt 3, I decided to check it out. I don't know about better, but it is a lot of fun. I'll play more. For some reason I've been more interested in rally racing games lately than street or track racers; not that I play a lot of racing games at all, though.
Super Meat Boy: I tried it out for the second time ever the other day, this time with the 360 pad hooked up. I'm stuck on level 20 of the first world. This game is okay; I liked VVVVVV a whole lot more, though.
Half-Life 2: I began it a couple of weekends ago because I wasn't really in the middle of an FPS since finishing off Bioshock 2. It's fantastic, thus far. I'll be playing this for my shooter fix once I finish off Max Payne. It's past time I played through it and the episodes
Guild Wars: It's an MMO without the fees or need for other players. That is almost too good of a summation of the game, actually. To it's credit, it is also much more user-friendly than your typical MMO--it offers fast travel, respecs, and other nifty touches that would make FFXI or WoW or what have you better on players. I wouldn't say it goes so far as to be as compelling as an offline RPG, though. It is still a bit of a grind, and light on anything you'd call interesting story. It's just good enough that I will keep it in my rotation; it has a huge world, and I'd like to see more of what is on offer there.
Dota 2: Awesome. Valve takes another mod and redoes it AAA-style; it's a story we've heard again and again. I think this will end up being the most accessible game in the MOBA genre, for a few reasons, not the least being that it'll be native to Steam, which has an enormous userbase, will likely be free-to-play, and will have a built-in suite of training tutorials, a mentor program, and spectator mode. These games have a steep learning curve, but if anyone can level it out, it'll be Valve. I would also bet on the playerbase being more casual than HoN or LoL or the original DotA, making for an easier experience to new players. I've played twelve or thirteen matches, and have found a character I like: Windrunner. I'll focus on learning her while trying to improve my game in general.
Max Payne: It's finally starting to be kind of fun. There's not a lot to this game beside a film noir motif and lots of bullet-time gun fights. I might be able to finish it in the next day or two, which will be nice. The sequel sounds at least a little more interesting, and then we have Max Payne 3 coming out later this year, of course.
Diablo III beta: Stupidly great. I've maxed out a monk, wizard, and demon hunter thus far, though my monk was lost to an update wipe. I'm going to try a Witch Doctor next, probably. I'm keeping my fingers crossed that some of the beta-only achievements will carry over to the full release, though it's not very likely.
Dirt 2: It was only sale for $5 not too long ago, and since people say it's better than Dirt 3, I decided to check it out. I don't know about better, but it is a lot of fun. I'll play more. For some reason I've been more interested in rally racing games lately than street or track racers; not that I play a lot of racing games at all, though.
Super Meat Boy: I tried it out for the second time ever the other day, this time with the 360 pad hooked up. I'm stuck on level 20 of the first world. This game is okay; I liked VVVVVV a whole lot more, though.
Half-Life 2: I began it a couple of weekends ago because I wasn't really in the middle of an FPS since finishing off Bioshock 2. It's fantastic, thus far. I'll be playing this for my shooter fix once I finish off Max Payne. It's past time I played through it and the episodes
Guild Wars: It's an MMO without the fees or need for other players. That is almost too good of a summation of the game, actually. To it's credit, it is also much more user-friendly than your typical MMO--it offers fast travel, respecs, and other nifty touches that would make FFXI or WoW or what have you better on players. I wouldn't say it goes so far as to be as compelling as an offline RPG, though. It is still a bit of a grind, and light on anything you'd call interesting story. It's just good enough that I will keep it in my rotation; it has a huge world, and I'd like to see more of what is on offer there.
Wednesday, January 18, 2012
Duodecim?
2012. The year the world burns. In the fires of a gamepocalypse. Gameageddon has gotten off to a running start here, at 9 Parsecs.
Momentum of motivation had me roll right into Fallout 3 not long after finishing Fallout 2. I have 30 hours on my save, thus far, and I've gotten to a decent stopping point in the main quest thread, searching for my character's father. He disappeared from Vault 101 all of a sudden, and not caring for the way the Overseer runs the place, my character Nanashi set out to find him, braving the capital wasteland beginning to uncover the truth of her place of birth in the process. I'm sure that I'll eventually track down dear old Dad, and in Fallout fashion, a greater goal will be set, through the pursuit of which I'll leave my mark on the ruined wreckage of Washington D.C., and the people who live there. I'm already excited to get back to playing more.
Speaking of playing more, I need to finish BioShock 2 once and for all. I'm guessing that I'm around a third to halfway through it, and fairly lost as far as the plot goes. Or maybe the plot just isn't that good. I don't like how the antagonist Sophia Lamb was retconned into Rapture history and cast up against Andrew Ryan. Retcons in general suck. Regardless, the game is a lot of fun to play, what with the plasmids and different weapons and environmental factors to take into account while fighting splicers, Big Daddies, and Big Sisters. I want this one off my plate. I just need to set aside some time to polish it off between everything else I'm playing.
I don't believe I've written about it yet, but a helpful Call Of Podcast listener wrangled a couple of Diablo III beta keys for Lonesteban and I. I love the Diablo series, going way back to the days of the 50MB overnight download for the first game's demo. Diablo III is almost by default my most anticipated game, but it's always seemed so far away that it was only on the periphery of my mind. Well, not any longer. I've been having a blast playing the beta so far. The only thing I don't like is that it ends after a few hours. Even that's not so bad, since you can take your character and do boss runs ad infinitum. Eventually you will hit the level cap and get so much amazing loot that you can't even wear it all, though. Then you can try another of the classes. I maxed out a monk first, and I'm slowly working a wizard through, now. I'm trying to take my time, because there are special beta-only achievements that I'd like to get (and hopefully they'll carry over on my profile into the full game), but they were inactivated with the last update to the beta. I'm hoping the next update will be rolled out soon, and they'll be re-enabled.
The monk is awesome, and the wizard is just as great. I honestly don't know which I'll roll with first, once the final game is out. The other classes don't really interest me at this point, but I'm sure I'll get around to them at some point. If I have one concern for Diablo III, it's that it doesn't look like there is much point to ever creating more than one character of the same class. In Diablo II you had a lot of different choices to make in terms of skill choices and point distribution, but Diablo III does away with all of that in favor of a system that lets you re-spec your character at any point. I guess Hardcore mode will kind of negate this issue, but unless you play Hardcore, you will presumably be able to level each class to cap and not really have any reason to start more characters over at level 1. We'll just have to see how the final product ends up.
Elsewhere, I've begun Dawn of War II: Chaos Rising. It was time. I don't think there is anything else strategy-related on my plate besides my stalled Starcraft: Brood War game, only just begun. It was also the last Dawn of War II expansion on my pile, since I had dipped into Retribution a bit, already. I'll eventually finish this and then play Retribution to completion before going back to the original Dawn of War and its expansions. And hell, one day I'll finish Brood War and start Starcraft II, also. No rush; I figure I've got at least 50 good years left in me, hopefully more. Giving up fast food and working out more should help with that. All for the games, all for the games. Anyway, about Chaos Rising--I was able to import my save from the base Dawn of War II with my squad fully leveled up and kitted out. Right off the bat it seems more difficult than the base game, but I guess that's to be expected. Even a real-time strategy noob like myself (though I did beat Starcraft) didn't have much trouble with the original. I've really gotten into the Warhammer 40,000 universe over the last couple of years, and I really like the genre-meld of Dawn of War II.
Speaking of 40K, I started the Space Marine campaign over again just for fun, and also tried out the multiplayer and Exterminatus ("Horde") modes. That's a real good game, all around. I got flattened repeatedly in the versus multiplayer, but I had a good time in Exterminatus, and I'll probably play more of it over time.
Another quick hit--SpaceChem. I completed the challenge level In-place Swap, after staring at it and mucking around for 2-3 hours. I'm still only on the third or fourth planet in the game's story mode. I wonder if I'll ever be able to complete it. This is a really hard game, but it's so great at the same time.
Something else I've begun in the last few weeks is Guild Wars. I don't have the time and presence of mind to go into it very much right now, but I like it. It's old, and it's mechanics somewhat tired out by the rest of the genre, but it has its virtues. I'll write another entry on Guild Wars at a later date.
Yesterday they released a demo for Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning, and being a big fan of RPGs, I wanted to check out this one, a new IP from a new studio (kind of), and from EA, no less. I'd say my overall impressions are positive, despite not liking the art direction, UI, voice acting, or what I've seen of the story thus far (admittedly little). The combat is well done for an RPG, and about to the level of an action game. The game runs really well and looks great (in terms of image quality) on my PC. The problem is that I just don't have anywhere near the amount of free time I would need to get around to playing this somewhat safe RPG. It plays it too safe, I think; there's nothing slightly off-kilter or European about it to get me interested. The premise is only interesting in the superficial parallels to Planescape: Torment, and the art style is just off-putting. I could set that aside, because the graphics are nice, otherwise, but go look at my RPG pile. I wish Amalur had a little bit more of its own identity.
Momentum of motivation had me roll right into Fallout 3 not long after finishing Fallout 2. I have 30 hours on my save, thus far, and I've gotten to a decent stopping point in the main quest thread, searching for my character's father. He disappeared from Vault 101 all of a sudden, and not caring for the way the Overseer runs the place, my character Nanashi set out to find him, braving the capital wasteland beginning to uncover the truth of her place of birth in the process. I'm sure that I'll eventually track down dear old Dad, and in Fallout fashion, a greater goal will be set, through the pursuit of which I'll leave my mark on the ruined wreckage of Washington D.C., and the people who live there. I'm already excited to get back to playing more.
Speaking of playing more, I need to finish BioShock 2 once and for all. I'm guessing that I'm around a third to halfway through it, and fairly lost as far as the plot goes. Or maybe the plot just isn't that good. I don't like how the antagonist Sophia Lamb was retconned into Rapture history and cast up against Andrew Ryan. Retcons in general suck. Regardless, the game is a lot of fun to play, what with the plasmids and different weapons and environmental factors to take into account while fighting splicers, Big Daddies, and Big Sisters. I want this one off my plate. I just need to set aside some time to polish it off between everything else I'm playing.
I don't believe I've written about it yet, but a helpful Call Of Podcast listener wrangled a couple of Diablo III beta keys for Lonesteban and I. I love the Diablo series, going way back to the days of the 50MB overnight download for the first game's demo. Diablo III is almost by default my most anticipated game, but it's always seemed so far away that it was only on the periphery of my mind. Well, not any longer. I've been having a blast playing the beta so far. The only thing I don't like is that it ends after a few hours. Even that's not so bad, since you can take your character and do boss runs ad infinitum. Eventually you will hit the level cap and get so much amazing loot that you can't even wear it all, though. Then you can try another of the classes. I maxed out a monk first, and I'm slowly working a wizard through, now. I'm trying to take my time, because there are special beta-only achievements that I'd like to get (and hopefully they'll carry over on my profile into the full game), but they were inactivated with the last update to the beta. I'm hoping the next update will be rolled out soon, and they'll be re-enabled.
The monk is awesome, and the wizard is just as great. I honestly don't know which I'll roll with first, once the final game is out. The other classes don't really interest me at this point, but I'm sure I'll get around to them at some point. If I have one concern for Diablo III, it's that it doesn't look like there is much point to ever creating more than one character of the same class. In Diablo II you had a lot of different choices to make in terms of skill choices and point distribution, but Diablo III does away with all of that in favor of a system that lets you re-spec your character at any point. I guess Hardcore mode will kind of negate this issue, but unless you play Hardcore, you will presumably be able to level each class to cap and not really have any reason to start more characters over at level 1. We'll just have to see how the final product ends up.
Elsewhere, I've begun Dawn of War II: Chaos Rising. It was time. I don't think there is anything else strategy-related on my plate besides my stalled Starcraft: Brood War game, only just begun. It was also the last Dawn of War II expansion on my pile, since I had dipped into Retribution a bit, already. I'll eventually finish this and then play Retribution to completion before going back to the original Dawn of War and its expansions. And hell, one day I'll finish Brood War and start Starcraft II, also. No rush; I figure I've got at least 50 good years left in me, hopefully more. Giving up fast food and working out more should help with that. All for the games, all for the games. Anyway, about Chaos Rising--I was able to import my save from the base Dawn of War II with my squad fully leveled up and kitted out. Right off the bat it seems more difficult than the base game, but I guess that's to be expected. Even a real-time strategy noob like myself (though I did beat Starcraft) didn't have much trouble with the original. I've really gotten into the Warhammer 40,000 universe over the last couple of years, and I really like the genre-meld of Dawn of War II.
Speaking of 40K, I started the Space Marine campaign over again just for fun, and also tried out the multiplayer and Exterminatus ("Horde") modes. That's a real good game, all around. I got flattened repeatedly in the versus multiplayer, but I had a good time in Exterminatus, and I'll probably play more of it over time.
Another quick hit--SpaceChem. I completed the challenge level In-place Swap, after staring at it and mucking around for 2-3 hours. I'm still only on the third or fourth planet in the game's story mode. I wonder if I'll ever be able to complete it. This is a really hard game, but it's so great at the same time.
Something else I've begun in the last few weeks is Guild Wars. I don't have the time and presence of mind to go into it very much right now, but I like it. It's old, and it's mechanics somewhat tired out by the rest of the genre, but it has its virtues. I'll write another entry on Guild Wars at a later date.
Yesterday they released a demo for Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning, and being a big fan of RPGs, I wanted to check out this one, a new IP from a new studio (kind of), and from EA, no less. I'd say my overall impressions are positive, despite not liking the art direction, UI, voice acting, or what I've seen of the story thus far (admittedly little). The combat is well done for an RPG, and about to the level of an action game. The game runs really well and looks great (in terms of image quality) on my PC. The problem is that I just don't have anywhere near the amount of free time I would need to get around to playing this somewhat safe RPG. It plays it too safe, I think; there's nothing slightly off-kilter or European about it to get me interested. The premise is only interesting in the superficial parallels to Planescape: Torment, and the art style is just off-putting. I could set that aside, because the graphics are nice, otherwise, but go look at my RPG pile. I wish Amalur had a little bit more of its own identity.
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