Filling Out Twenty-Fourteen

The end of the year is rapidly approaching, and I like to come to some kind of annual conclusion on what my game of the year is, so I am now trying to revisit or look into some of the more notable releases of the year, to my sensibilities, anyway.

I also jumped sooner on at least one game, Shadow of Mordor, after hearing a lot of talk about its interesting Nemesis system. I've only played it for about an hour so far, but it seems pretty slick, with solid (Batman) combat, Assassin's Creed climbing, and multiple systems of unlocks for new abilities. It's a pretty good looking game, as well, especially powered by my new 970 GTX.

Civilization: Beyond Earth has also just come out, and I am most itching to get in and play it some more. I also have only spent about an hour with this one, so far, but I've spent 70+ with Civ V. While I am far, far from anything approaching good or expert at the game, I do really like it, and I see a lot, at least on the surface, of Civ V in Beyond Earth. I think I prefer the exoplanet colonization theme, too, as great as the historical cultures of the world theme, is. Both are very cool.

Legend of Grimrock II is out! I haven't had much time to put into this one yet, either, but so far so good. I really loved the first game, and this seems like more, and more robust, and nice outdoor environments, too.

The Banner Saga is on my short list of GOTY contenders, but it had been several long months since I last played (and never completed) it, so I'm trying to pick it up again. I played for about half an hour last night, and was given a healthy reminder on what is so grand about the game. The art is stellar, the writing is also great, and it even has a cool tactical combat system, though this may be its Achilles' heel, so to speak. It seems easy to play yourself into an untenable state. That may just be it's razor's edge balance speaking, but often the battles in this game have me feeling really stretched thin. I'll have to see how it further pans out. I don't really have any sense as to how deep into the game I am, other than an hour count (6).

Elsewhere, I've dipped into both Borderlands 2 and Diablo III for a bit of click and loot, I'm continuing playing Baldur's Gate (on ipad now) as a solo sorcerer, and I even played the first hour of Final Fantasy VII the other day just in the interest of refreshing my memories (and opinions) on what it seems is finally no longer the undisputed masterpiece of everything ever. While far from my favorite of the series, it is also far from my least favorite, and I think I would like to revisit it, in limited chunks, here and there.

Blazed Based Baldur's Gate

I went and finished off Baldur's Gate, including all of the Tales of the Sword Coast content. There is some very challenging content in there, moreso than with the base game. The Greater Wolfwere, the Demon Knight, and Aec'Letec were all very tricky fights, and each more difficult than the final story confrontation with Sarevok.

I've had a blast with Baldur's Gate, and am definitely looking forward to more not only with the sequel, but the additional content in the Enhanced Editions as well as the upcoming Icewind Dale Enhanced Edition and numerous other D&D computer RPGs I already own.

For now, though, I'm going to play a number of things, starting with Legend of Grimrock II. It looks to be a refined, expanded, and enhanced sequel to the excellent first Grimrock, and I'm excited to delve in. So far I've created a group and explored a little of the beach you are washed up on after being shipwrecked.

In the Grimrock Future of the Third Millenium

If there is one thing I would have liked Legend of Grimrock to have, it is a proper New Game+ mode, where I could bring in my experienced party of adventurers and continue to level them up through the dungeon again, facing stronger enemies. I see the flaw here though; Grimrock is not Diablo, and instead of using randomly generated dungeons, it relies on a single, meticulously constructed and labyrinthine oubliette as its setting. The puzzles are half or more of the experience here, so for an additional adventure to really be great with your existing party, it would have to be through a new dungeon.

This is not to say that Grimrock has no replay value built right in (in addition to the user-made and official expansions that are sure to come), as there is a novel take on the idea of a second quest for the game; it's just that that particular mode does not import your existing party when you play it.  If you would like to replay through the same dungeon, though, there are plenty of potential party configurations to do it with, between the four races and three classes to choose from for each party member, and even further decisions about which skills to level up, and what weapon types to use.

The key limiting factor here are the levels. Grimrock's main campaign has 10 full levels and 3 smaller ones toward the end of the game, which is just about a perfect amount for a single playthrough. I have to admit, though, that I was expecting to carry my party and all their gear into a second playthrough, which isn't happening until and unless expansion dungeons allow for it. I hope more about these comes to light soon.

More levels will help to better balance the class utility for the game, also. This thread on the Grimrock official forum points out a few concerns people have with the way things currently are. I used the default party lineup, so I didn't really encounter too many issues, incidentally.

So, the point of this post is just that I've finished Legend of Grimrock, and really enjoyed it. I think it's got a good future ahead of it, as well, as it appears to be highly modifiable, and games of this sort are nearly non-existent these days. If I had infinite time, I'd try a playthrough of the stock second quest mode, as that seems interesting. I don't though, alas, as I'm flying to Japan tomorrow for a couple of weeks.

Look for more impressions of Avernum and other ipad games soon!

Grimrocking The Lanes

For the last couple of weeks, I've only been playing two games: Dota 2 and Legend of Grimrock.

I've got over 50 hours in Dota 2 at this point, and I'm still having a blast. I think this is the first multiplayer game to really click with me to this degree, save something like FFXI or WoW, I guess. It's looking so far like this will be a year of Dota and Diablo. I've played 20 matches each with Windrunner and Bounty Hunter, and I'm trying a few other heroes for the time being. Omniknight may be the next I focus on for a while.

The design of Dota is genius. It's symmetrical in some ways (map layout), and less so in others (team makeup), and is in many ways a zero-sum game, meaning that whatever advantages you take the other team are deprived of, and vice versa.  The game is as much about denying your opposition the resources of experience and gold, and through them, morale, as it is accruing those things for yourself. It's simple on the surface, but with a great and unseen depth of strategies and mechanics below. All these things make it less than beginner-friendly, but if you are interested enough to pull yourself up by your bootstraps and learn the game, the reward is an amazingly fun and interesting game, even after the hundredth or thousandth match on the same map. I think of it as more like a board game in that respect. Chess, Checkers, Igo, Shogi; none of these games suffer from lack of variety in settings. Besides, Dota has somewhere around a hundred characters to choose from. That alone is likely more variety than I'll ever need.

Legend of Grimrock is something I've been looking forward to since first reading about it last year sometime (if memory serves). It's a very old-school first-person dungeon crawl, much like Eye of the Beholder or Etrian Odyssey, both of which I enjoyed, and Dungeon Master, which I only heard about recently in articles relating to Grimrock. I couldn't really tell you why I was so excited for the game, except that I like role-playing game mechanics, simple, straight-forward designs, and exploratory environmental puzzles often found in large temples or dungeons. Also, the game looks gorgeous, if the amount of art is limited.

I never got far at all into Eye of the Beholder, and though I finished Etrian Odyssey, that game featured an entirely different battle system to what seems to be the norm in this genre, so I can't really point to nostalgia, exactly, for my interest in Grimrock, but perhaps rather an appreciation for it's aforementioned old-school sensibilities is what attracted me. Regardless, I am having a ball making my way through the dungeon of Mount Grimrock. Hidden switches, floor panel switches, trapdoors, and teleports are just a few of the elements used in the puzzles in this game, and many of them are optional, hiding a secret piece of equipment or cache of consumables rather than something critical to advancement through the dungeon. That only makes them all the more devious and alluring in their design.

It's a real pleasure to play Legend of Grimrock, but I'm afraid it is probably an acquired taste, and one unpalatable to many of today's gamers. But then, it's a DD-exclusive game for the PC, so someone merely being aware of its existence is already halfway to the point of being receptive to it's charms, I reckon. I was up entirely too late last night playing this game.