I've been doing a lot of platform jumping and navigating over the last week, having barreled through the entirety of VVVVVV in all it's glory, and jumping into a game I recently took an interest in, Prince of Persia (the 2008 release). My cause for playing the latter is having heard about it shunting combat off to the side, or rather, reducing its frequency and emphasis in the game to a level more fitting of its place in an adventure game--that is, not a combat-focused action game.
My major gripes with Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time and both Uncharted games thus far are that the combat, in each case, drags the game down. I didn't show up for overlong, frustrating, not-very-well-done fighting sequences. I came for the adventure aspects; the exploration, navigation, puzzling--the fun bits. So far, I'm having a good time with PoP 2008. It's pretty straight forward and not terribly challenging, but so what? It's a good game to chill out with because the smoothness with which the prince can move around the attractive open world is very fluid and relaxing. I'm around a quarter of the way through it, I think. I'm thinking I might pick up the epilogue DLC if I'm still feeling it by the time I get to the end. I only paid about $10 for the full disc, used, so I may kick $10 to Ubisoft to support this game, which I feel like probably wasn't a great success.
VVVVVV was the Resolution game for last week, and I got right through it and collected every shiny trinket in about 5 hours over 3-4 days. I really like this game. I love the art and the retro C64 feel to it. I also love the music, which is chiptune and also retro sounding, but featuring fully modern production values. It is an amazing soundtrack, tickling my nostalgia bone just right. The game itself is a big open world hub with linear stages sprinkled throughout, so it's kind of Super Metroid like, except that you can go anywhere from the word go, and there are no power-ups of any kind. Start to finish, you only ever use three buttons, left, right, and gravity-flip. It's a hardcore old-school platformer in a lot of ways. There aren't really any enemies, only obstacles and gauntlets to navigate around. Anyway, VVVVVV comes highly recommended. I think I got this for $2.50 on Steam, though I also bought the soundtrack for $4 later on.
I jumped back into League of Legends this week, trying out a new champion, Pantheon, the Spartan-alike warrior with a spear and buckler. I am complete garbage at this game, and my team loses more often than not, but somehow I still end up having fun playing. I think I am now 2/5 or so with this character, and more like 1/6 in terms of games where I felt like I played worth a damn. Like I said, though, it is fun to play. I wonder how Valve's DOTA2 will compare. I know that is going to be a lot more like DOTA itself, so it may end up being less accessible than LOL, which would be weird, but then, I guess Counter-Strike is also a Valve game.
Elsewhere, I've been plugging along at Tactics Ogre. I feel like every great thing I want to say about this game I have already said in the past about Final Fantasy Tactics, but don't let my silence lie, this is a fantastic game, and a must-buy if you a) still own a PSP, and b) like turn-based tactical combat games. An appreciation for extreme political depth and subterfuge is also a plus. I got through another chapter of Dead Space, too! That puts me at Chapter 6.
Monday, February 28, 2011
Thursday, February 17, 2011
Never A Dull Moment
I feel like I have no reason to ever be bored at home, just considering all of the games I could be playing, let alone all of the books and movies and good TV to watch anytime I want. Imagine the odd feeling I got this past weekend when I didn't really feel like doing any of that for several hours. I think I ended up playing some more Bad Company 2 multiplayer.
I'm playing the PC version of BF:BC2 now, since my 360 red ringed, and I had gotten rid of the console version anyway when I went "xbox live free," and picked up the PC version for like $7 during the December Steam blowouts. That game is so good, it's easily my favorite multiplayer shooter ever. I've never been extremely into any of them, really, but the only ones I've played and enjoyed anywhere near as much as BC2 are Halo 3 and Team Fortress 2. TF2 I really like, too, but only play occasionally. I can sink my teeth into BC2, though. I played somewhere around 30 hours worth on the 360 version, and another 3-4 so far on the PC version. Battlefield 3 is going to be awesome. Red Orchestra 2, also. RO is kind of like BF, but more realistic and with less servers. Hopefully the sequel gains more traction with players.
I've been playing Dead Space since last week, but I'm still less than halfway in. I'm at the beginning of chapter 5 right now. It's executed very well. It feels like next-gen Resident Evil 4 in space, like better Resident Evil in space. The graphics are very nice, the UI and general presentation is slick as hell. If I have any problem with it, it's just that this style of game has never been my favorite, and I don't feel anything drawing me through the game; it's kind of the opposite, because of the tension waiting for the next big startle. I feel more inclined to not play the game than to play it. Without the force of will, this game my fall by the wayside. It's not overly long, though, so I may push on through just to finish it off and see more of the cool graphics.
I played some more Magicka over the weekend, too. Esteban and I played a few short rounds of the arena challenge mode, and I played through a couple more of levels on the single player campaign. Magicka, in a word, is crazy. You are frantically trying to assemble any kind of offensive spell that will knock guys back and dispatch them. It's funny at times when your hastily assembled spell explodes and kills you and everyone around you, or when you somehow trick enemy wizards into frying each other with their magic. The game also has a really campy sense of humor, spoofing every RPG trope you can think of, and referencing everything from Rambo to 300. My wizard currently has an M60 machine gun instead of a sword to complement his staff. This is a great package for $10, and I hope it's unique magic system is co-opted into other games somehow. Maybe a simpler version with 4-6 elements would fit into a more serious game like a Mass Effect or something.
Demon's Souls is the Resolution game for this week, and I'm trying to pick up where I left off not too long ago, working through 4-2, getting some souls. I have still never even visited worlds 3 or 5; I should probably check those out to see if there's any useful loot or easy bosses.
Tactics Ogre: Let Us Cling Together was finally released this week, and I bought it over PSN and downloaded it onto my PSP through my PS3. So far, so good. I'm only 4-5 battles in thus far, just through the introductory stuff, for the most part. It seems deeper in some ways than FFT, but less so in others. I really love what they've done as far as UI and ancillary information to the game (the Warren Report). I haven't had occasion to use the Chariot system yet, which allows for rewinding battle turns, but I think the next battle will be a tough one, so we'll see.
I miss FFT's ability to spin the entire stage around in 90 degree increments, and the ability to tilt it up and down, but TO allows for a bird's eye view--from two different angles, which strikes me as redundant, but whatever. Also, the sprites and environments are by default zoomed-in, so they appear blurry on the PSP screen, but if you zoom the view out so they appear nice and sharp, then they're too small to see very well. More options here and there would be nice, as would an option in the store to see what all of your guys are wearing at the moment, and how that gear compares to what's on sale. That should be in every RPG, period. Come on, people!
I'm not far enough in to really be into the plot, but so far it looks like it has all of the hallmark's of a Matsuno game. I'm excited to get further in.
I'm playing the PC version of BF:BC2 now, since my 360 red ringed, and I had gotten rid of the console version anyway when I went "xbox live free," and picked up the PC version for like $7 during the December Steam blowouts. That game is so good, it's easily my favorite multiplayer shooter ever. I've never been extremely into any of them, really, but the only ones I've played and enjoyed anywhere near as much as BC2 are Halo 3 and Team Fortress 2. TF2 I really like, too, but only play occasionally. I can sink my teeth into BC2, though. I played somewhere around 30 hours worth on the 360 version, and another 3-4 so far on the PC version. Battlefield 3 is going to be awesome. Red Orchestra 2, also. RO is kind of like BF, but more realistic and with less servers. Hopefully the sequel gains more traction with players.
I've been playing Dead Space since last week, but I'm still less than halfway in. I'm at the beginning of chapter 5 right now. It's executed very well. It feels like next-gen Resident Evil 4 in space, like better Resident Evil in space. The graphics are very nice, the UI and general presentation is slick as hell. If I have any problem with it, it's just that this style of game has never been my favorite, and I don't feel anything drawing me through the game; it's kind of the opposite, because of the tension waiting for the next big startle. I feel more inclined to not play the game than to play it. Without the force of will, this game my fall by the wayside. It's not overly long, though, so I may push on through just to finish it off and see more of the cool graphics.
I played some more Magicka over the weekend, too. Esteban and I played a few short rounds of the arena challenge mode, and I played through a couple more of levels on the single player campaign. Magicka, in a word, is crazy. You are frantically trying to assemble any kind of offensive spell that will knock guys back and dispatch them. It's funny at times when your hastily assembled spell explodes and kills you and everyone around you, or when you somehow trick enemy wizards into frying each other with their magic. The game also has a really campy sense of humor, spoofing every RPG trope you can think of, and referencing everything from Rambo to 300. My wizard currently has an M60 machine gun instead of a sword to complement his staff. This is a great package for $10, and I hope it's unique magic system is co-opted into other games somehow. Maybe a simpler version with 4-6 elements would fit into a more serious game like a Mass Effect or something.
Demon's Souls is the Resolution game for this week, and I'm trying to pick up where I left off not too long ago, working through 4-2, getting some souls. I have still never even visited worlds 3 or 5; I should probably check those out to see if there's any useful loot or easy bosses.
Tactics Ogre: Let Us Cling Together was finally released this week, and I bought it over PSN and downloaded it onto my PSP through my PS3. So far, so good. I'm only 4-5 battles in thus far, just through the introductory stuff, for the most part. It seems deeper in some ways than FFT, but less so in others. I really love what they've done as far as UI and ancillary information to the game (the Warren Report). I haven't had occasion to use the Chariot system yet, which allows for rewinding battle turns, but I think the next battle will be a tough one, so we'll see.
I miss FFT's ability to spin the entire stage around in 90 degree increments, and the ability to tilt it up and down, but TO allows for a bird's eye view--from two different angles, which strikes me as redundant, but whatever. Also, the sprites and environments are by default zoomed-in, so they appear blurry on the PSP screen, but if you zoom the view out so they appear nice and sharp, then they're too small to see very well. More options here and there would be nice, as would an option in the store to see what all of your guys are wearing at the moment, and how that gear compares to what's on sale. That should be in every RPG, period. Come on, people!
I'm not far enough in to really be into the plot, but so far it looks like it has all of the hallmark's of a Matsuno game. I'm excited to get further in.
Thursday, February 10, 2011
Revenge of the Consoles
I've been playing a bunch more console stuff recently, since my last few "focus" games have been Assassin's Creed 2, Uncharted 2, and now Dead Space. I expect that to continue for a good bit; there are a lot of things I need to get around to on PS3, and many of them should be fairly neat 12-20 hour experiences.
I guess first thing I need to cover here is Uncharted 2, which I played through in about 12 hours over 4-5 days this week and last. It was pretty much more of what the first game had to offer, but in different locales. There's not a ton to say about it, other than it was mostly enjoyable, but is a little too proud of it's combat system. Less goons to wade through would be a good thing for this series, on a number of levels. It would help pacing, alleviate frustration, and eliminate some of the very real dissonance between the Nathan Drake of Uncharted's many well done cinematics, and the Nathan Drake of Uncharted's action-heavy gameplay. The final encounter was kind of lame, but otherwise the game is mostly fit for the win category.
Magicka, a neat little indie PC game, is also mostly win. It's an action RPG played from an isometric perspective much like Diablo, but with a very original and very novel casting system that has you choose elements to cast using the QWERASDF keys, and right-click to cast whatever combination of elements you've queued up. Most random combinations will result in something happening, as long as you don't negate any elements with their opposites (stone and shock, for instance, or healing and arcane). There are hundreds, maybe thousands of permutations to try as you make your way through the humorous quest or fight in multiplayer arenas versus waves of enemies. The game is best played with other people, but single player is pretty fun, too.
I finally decided to download and install my Steam copy of Battlefield: Bad Company 2, having not played the game in months. This is my favorite multiplayer shooter in recent memory, and probably my favorite ever. If Battlefield 3 is a substantial improvement on this, it'll be beyond incredible. It looks and runs really well on my PC, too. Even on high settings I get 50+ frames per second, whereas I think the 360 version topped out at 30. It's good to be back in, even if I do have to start over with the unlocks from where I was on the 360 version.
For Resolution, I started Dead Space tonight. It's pretty slick so far, I have to admit. I finished the first 2 chapters of 12. More on this as it develops!
I guess first thing I need to cover here is Uncharted 2, which I played through in about 12 hours over 4-5 days this week and last. It was pretty much more of what the first game had to offer, but in different locales. There's not a ton to say about it, other than it was mostly enjoyable, but is a little too proud of it's combat system. Less goons to wade through would be a good thing for this series, on a number of levels. It would help pacing, alleviate frustration, and eliminate some of the very real dissonance between the Nathan Drake of Uncharted's many well done cinematics, and the Nathan Drake of Uncharted's action-heavy gameplay. The final encounter was kind of lame, but otherwise the game is mostly fit for the win category.
Magicka, a neat little indie PC game, is also mostly win. It's an action RPG played from an isometric perspective much like Diablo, but with a very original and very novel casting system that has you choose elements to cast using the QWERASDF keys, and right-click to cast whatever combination of elements you've queued up. Most random combinations will result in something happening, as long as you don't negate any elements with their opposites (stone and shock, for instance, or healing and arcane). There are hundreds, maybe thousands of permutations to try as you make your way through the humorous quest or fight in multiplayer arenas versus waves of enemies. The game is best played with other people, but single player is pretty fun, too.
I finally decided to download and install my Steam copy of Battlefield: Bad Company 2, having not played the game in months. This is my favorite multiplayer shooter in recent memory, and probably my favorite ever. If Battlefield 3 is a substantial improvement on this, it'll be beyond incredible. It looks and runs really well on my PC, too. Even on high settings I get 50+ frames per second, whereas I think the 360 version topped out at 30. It's good to be back in, even if I do have to start over with the unlocks from where I was on the 360 version.
For Resolution, I started Dead Space tonight. It's pretty slick so far, I have to admit. I finished the first 2 chapters of 12. More on this as it develops!
Wednesday, February 2, 2011
Death Comes For Us All, My Friend. Requiesquat En Pace.
Today I laid to rest a good friend who gave me much joy and satisfaction over the last 4 years, my Xbox 360. Yes, it was taken by the RROD, out of nowhere and with no warning signs. Here one day, gone the next. We had some times, though, from Halo: Combat Evolved and Oblivion to Halo: Reach and Assassin's Creed II, some great times, indeed.
Fortunately, I had already beaten Assassin's Creed II, and with over 30 hours on the clock, I was just hunting down the last 15ish feathers in the game and only about 4 achievements away from the full 1000 points. I was sure I was going to finish that off tonight, and it would have been a brilliant end to my time with a brilliant game, but alas. The pezzo di merde kicked the bucket! Four years is a hell of a long time to get out of an old model 360, though, so I can't grouse too much.
Assassin's Creed II is an incredible game. I loved every minute of it, and it's one of a very select group that I wanted to keep playing even after finishing the story. I will very much be looking forward to playing Brotherhood while I attend to some other games on my PS3 and PC, primarily. Now newly Xbox-less, I'm going to hold out as long as I possibly can before buying one of the new systems. The guys at Microsoft offered to fix my console for about $100, but meh. Meh, I said, ambivalently.
There is no shortage of gaming to be had on my PS3, though. I've got the aforementioned Assassin's Creed Brotherhood and Red Dead Redemption for the system, as well as a bevy of PS3 exclusive titles to keep me busy. And you know, 2011 is looking a lot more like a Sony year than a MS year as far as exclusives go!
I haven't played much but ACII over the past couple of weeks, but I did spend a little time with New Super Mario Bros. Wii for Resolution. Yep, it's a Mario game. It's a lot like the DS one. I finished up Metro 2033 from the week before, and enjoyed that a good bit, which lead to me playing some more STALKER a few days later, for the first time in a while. I'll finish that game in good time. It's my new Far Cry 2. Elsewhere, a kind listener to Call Of Podcast gifted me a copy of Europa Universalis III over Steam. A blog post wouldn't do that game justice; a master's thesis probably wouldn't, either! Suffice it to say that it's an incredibly deep strategy game where you manage one nation through several hundred years around and during the Renaissance. It's way over my head, but it's pretty nice to load the game up and listen to the music whilst trying to make sense of the menus and available options.
Fortunately, I had already beaten Assassin's Creed II, and with over 30 hours on the clock, I was just hunting down the last 15ish feathers in the game and only about 4 achievements away from the full 1000 points. I was sure I was going to finish that off tonight, and it would have been a brilliant end to my time with a brilliant game, but alas. The pezzo di merde kicked the bucket! Four years is a hell of a long time to get out of an old model 360, though, so I can't grouse too much.
Assassin's Creed II is an incredible game. I loved every minute of it, and it's one of a very select group that I wanted to keep playing even after finishing the story. I will very much be looking forward to playing Brotherhood while I attend to some other games on my PS3 and PC, primarily. Now newly Xbox-less, I'm going to hold out as long as I possibly can before buying one of the new systems. The guys at Microsoft offered to fix my console for about $100, but meh. Meh, I said, ambivalently.
There is no shortage of gaming to be had on my PS3, though. I've got the aforementioned Assassin's Creed Brotherhood and Red Dead Redemption for the system, as well as a bevy of PS3 exclusive titles to keep me busy. And you know, 2011 is looking a lot more like a Sony year than a MS year as far as exclusives go!
I haven't played much but ACII over the past couple of weeks, but I did spend a little time with New Super Mario Bros. Wii for Resolution. Yep, it's a Mario game. It's a lot like the DS one. I finished up Metro 2033 from the week before, and enjoyed that a good bit, which lead to me playing some more STALKER a few days later, for the first time in a while. I'll finish that game in good time. It's my new Far Cry 2. Elsewhere, a kind listener to Call Of Podcast gifted me a copy of Europa Universalis III over Steam. A blog post wouldn't do that game justice; a master's thesis probably wouldn't, either! Suffice it to say that it's an incredibly deep strategy game where you manage one nation through several hundred years around and during the Renaissance. It's way over my head, but it's pretty nice to load the game up and listen to the music whilst trying to make sense of the menus and available options.
Friday, January 21, 2011
Heading Into Another Weekend! Punctuation!
My Resolution feature for Call Of Podcast has been going well. Last week I began Starcraft: Brood War, and this week I've been playing Metro 2033. I have a feeling a lot of these games are going to fall by the wayside, but some will grab me and/or be short enough to finish, and I think Metro will be one of those. Brood War, on the other hand... well, it'll be a while.
Metro 2033's closest analogue in my mind is probably Half-Life, but Call of Duty is a good comparison, too; it's just that the set pieces aren't so bombastic as your typical CoD. I suspect Metro has a ton in common with Half-Life 2, but I haven't played that game yet! Get your Resolution votes in today! The visuals in Metro are damned good, even set to low so that it'll run at a decent framerate in 1080p (bumped down from my usual 2048x1152, also to help the framerate) on my 4850 512mb. I'm going to need to upgrade the GPU in my PC before anything, it seems. I like the game well enough, but it's not really blowing me away. The atmosphere is there, and pretty unique, but the combat could use some work. Humans take way too many shots to go down, and the mutants all behave like Doom pinky demons--they charge you, and that's about it. There are other nits to pick with Metro (the UI is bad, enemies need more dialogue barks), but I like the game for what it's trying to be, and where it does succeed.
Brood War is very good, and very hard. It's Starcraft for veterans, which I guess I qualify as, but only just barely! The game is rock-solid. Rock-solid as in rocks to break yourself on like an ocean wave. Over and over and over, until, particle by particle, you can erode bits and pieces of the cliff face away, and over eons make progress inland.
I can't seem to play Assassin's Creed 2 in anything other than 4 hour chunks. There is just so much to do in this game! I'm in the middle of the fifth DNA sequence of like 16 or something--I keep getting sidetracked doing optional missions of 100 stripes. I have already fully upgraded the Villa as far as renovations go, I just need to collect all of the art and weapons and feathers and stuff like that. The feathers, at least, will probably never happen, but the rest may. This is a very playable game.
Metro 2033's closest analogue in my mind is probably Half-Life, but Call of Duty is a good comparison, too; it's just that the set pieces aren't so bombastic as your typical CoD. I suspect Metro has a ton in common with Half-Life 2, but I haven't played that game yet! Get your Resolution votes in today! The visuals in Metro are damned good, even set to low so that it'll run at a decent framerate in 1080p (bumped down from my usual 2048x1152, also to help the framerate) on my 4850 512mb. I'm going to need to upgrade the GPU in my PC before anything, it seems. I like the game well enough, but it's not really blowing me away. The atmosphere is there, and pretty unique, but the combat could use some work. Humans take way too many shots to go down, and the mutants all behave like Doom pinky demons--they charge you, and that's about it. There are other nits to pick with Metro (the UI is bad, enemies need more dialogue barks), but I like the game for what it's trying to be, and where it does succeed.
Brood War is very good, and very hard. It's Starcraft for veterans, which I guess I qualify as, but only just barely! The game is rock-solid. Rock-solid as in rocks to break yourself on like an ocean wave. Over and over and over, until, particle by particle, you can erode bits and pieces of the cliff face away, and over eons make progress inland.
I can't seem to play Assassin's Creed 2 in anything other than 4 hour chunks. There is just so much to do in this game! I'm in the middle of the fifth DNA sequence of like 16 or something--I keep getting sidetracked doing optional missions of 100 stripes. I have already fully upgraded the Villa as far as renovations go, I just need to collect all of the art and weapons and feathers and stuff like that. The feathers, at least, will probably never happen, but the rest may. This is a very playable game.
Wednesday, January 12, 2011
Rolling Start 2011
It's been a good long while since I've had a chance to update my progress in a blog post. It's been really busy at work, and I tend to play games at home more than read or write about them. I've had a very eventful gaming time these past few weeks! I finished 3 whole games! Quickly:
Bayonetta - I pushed hard through the second half of this game to finish it off before the end of 2010, but I really enjoyed it. It's a must play for anyone who likes the action genre or Japanese gaming, or both! I'm not big on either, lately, but Bayonetta was a load of fun. This is probably one I would have played multiple times back when I was in school and had tons of time. The combat is fun, smooth, and has a lot of depth to it if you want that.
Halo: Reach - the first game I played for my Resolution feature, as voted on by Call Of Podcast listeners. It was good, but it doesn't stick out to me as much more than just another Halo game. It's surely the apex of Halo multiplayer, but that's not really why I play Halo, and indeed I am not even subscribed to XBL anymore. I thought the campaign was just kind of average, and definitely lacking in the wow factor that other missions in other series entries had. The action all being centered on one planet and not on crazy space installations with epic landscaping is to blame for that. I did appreciate the space flight and other vehicle sections new to the series, but those all together make up maybe 10% of the campaign. I kind of wonder about the future of this franchise...
Fallout - probably the most unorthodox RPG playthrough I've ever had. I kind of stumbled onto the endgame not really knowing that it was the endgame. The whole thing ended up being shorter than I had thought it would be, and by a good margin. The entire critical path of the game really only has two legs, though the second consists of two objectives. First you find a water chip (by hook or by crook), then you're tasked with destroying the leader of the super mutants, and separately destroying the source of the super mutants. This is really all the direction you're ever given in the game; the rest is up to you. You have to figure out how to use the resources present in the world, in the form of people you meet, the skills you gain, and the gear you're able to get your hands on, to accomplish your goals. I hunted around until I sniffed out a trail for the water chip, and I joined the Brotherhood of Steel to get my hands on some power armor and heavy weaponry for the latter objectives. There are other, equally valid ways of doing these things, all of which have an effect on the game's ending. My game had a kind of bitter ending for several factions, as I'd inadvertently allowed the super mutants lay waste to the ghoul town of Necropolis and scare away all the residents of The Hub, as well.
I finished Fallout, but hadn't had enough, so the next day I jumped right into Fallout 2! I'm just a few hours in, but so far so good. It's very similar to the first game, just with a few improvements having been made in the year between the two games' release dates. In Fallout 2 you play The Chosen One, a descendant of The Vault Dweller, the protagonist of the first game, and you are sent out into the world in search of a Garden of Eden Construction Kit, or GECK.
It was high time that I jump into Assassin's Creed II, as well, so jump I did. It's great so far! Ezio Auditore da Firenze is a much more likeable player character than Altair was in the first game, and the variety of mission objectives and other things to do in the game is a tremendous improvement upon AC1. I'll have more to talk about regarding this game at a later date.
That about wraps things up for now, aside from some light warfighting/manshooting I've been doing in Red Orchestra: Ostfront '41 -'45 and Battlefield 2, both excellent games, by the way. More on those later, too.
Bayonetta - I pushed hard through the second half of this game to finish it off before the end of 2010, but I really enjoyed it. It's a must play for anyone who likes the action genre or Japanese gaming, or both! I'm not big on either, lately, but Bayonetta was a load of fun. This is probably one I would have played multiple times back when I was in school and had tons of time. The combat is fun, smooth, and has a lot of depth to it if you want that.
Halo: Reach - the first game I played for my Resolution feature, as voted on by Call Of Podcast listeners. It was good, but it doesn't stick out to me as much more than just another Halo game. It's surely the apex of Halo multiplayer, but that's not really why I play Halo, and indeed I am not even subscribed to XBL anymore. I thought the campaign was just kind of average, and definitely lacking in the wow factor that other missions in other series entries had. The action all being centered on one planet and not on crazy space installations with epic landscaping is to blame for that. I did appreciate the space flight and other vehicle sections new to the series, but those all together make up maybe 10% of the campaign. I kind of wonder about the future of this franchise...
Fallout - probably the most unorthodox RPG playthrough I've ever had. I kind of stumbled onto the endgame not really knowing that it was the endgame. The whole thing ended up being shorter than I had thought it would be, and by a good margin. The entire critical path of the game really only has two legs, though the second consists of two objectives. First you find a water chip (by hook or by crook), then you're tasked with destroying the leader of the super mutants, and separately destroying the source of the super mutants. This is really all the direction you're ever given in the game; the rest is up to you. You have to figure out how to use the resources present in the world, in the form of people you meet, the skills you gain, and the gear you're able to get your hands on, to accomplish your goals. I hunted around until I sniffed out a trail for the water chip, and I joined the Brotherhood of Steel to get my hands on some power armor and heavy weaponry for the latter objectives. There are other, equally valid ways of doing these things, all of which have an effect on the game's ending. My game had a kind of bitter ending for several factions, as I'd inadvertently allowed the super mutants lay waste to the ghoul town of Necropolis and scare away all the residents of The Hub, as well.
I finished Fallout, but hadn't had enough, so the next day I jumped right into Fallout 2! I'm just a few hours in, but so far so good. It's very similar to the first game, just with a few improvements having been made in the year between the two games' release dates. In Fallout 2 you play The Chosen One, a descendant of The Vault Dweller, the protagonist of the first game, and you are sent out into the world in search of a Garden of Eden Construction Kit, or GECK.
It was high time that I jump into Assassin's Creed II, as well, so jump I did. It's great so far! Ezio Auditore da Firenze is a much more likeable player character than Altair was in the first game, and the variety of mission objectives and other things to do in the game is a tremendous improvement upon AC1. I'll have more to talk about regarding this game at a later date.
That about wraps things up for now, aside from some light warfighting/manshooting I've been doing in Red Orchestra: Ostfront '41 -'45 and Battlefield 2, both excellent games, by the way. More on those later, too.
Monday, December 27, 2010
2010 Game Of The Year & Recap
My game of 2010: Mass Effect 2
Runner-up: Castlevania: Lords Of Shadow
I took down 23 games in 2010, which is pretty good, I think, though I know I could have done better.
Games finished in 2010:
Bayonetta
Assassin's Creed: Bloodlines
The Witcher
Civilization V
Castlevania: Lords of Shadow
Final Fantasy Tactics: The War of the Lions
Starcraft (Protoss)
Metal Gear Solid: Peace Walker
Alien Swarm
Call of Duty
inFAMOUS
Star Wars: The Force Unleashed
Super Mario Galaxy
Planescape: Torment
Torchlight
Starcraft (Zerg)
UniWar
God of War
Far Cry 2
Mass Effect 2
Vagrant Story
Yakuza 2
Metroid: Zero Mission
Past years totals:
2009: 19
2008: 26
2007: 15
I've got a big 2011 ahead; in addition to having a baby, I'm going to be doing more writing and job hunting on the side, so I'm going to go ahead and set a more realistic goal of finishing one game a month on average. This will of course mean focusing more on games I want to complete, but I'm sure I'll get plenty of variety in there. Also, with the epic amount of games I bought in 2010 (around 120!), I need to work on both playing a bunch of those, and buying less overall.
I'm going forward with 2 out, 1 in, with indulgences for games under $20, but I do plan to be more selective, considering my massive, incredible backlog of games. Help me thin out the pile by voting for games I'll play in the Resolution feature of Call Of Podcast!
Happy 2011, everyone!
Runner-up: Castlevania: Lords Of Shadow
I took down 23 games in 2010, which is pretty good, I think, though I know I could have done better.
Games finished in 2010:
Bayonetta
Assassin's Creed: Bloodlines
The Witcher
Civilization V
Castlevania: Lords of Shadow
Final Fantasy Tactics: The War of the Lions
Starcraft (Protoss)
Metal Gear Solid: Peace Walker
Alien Swarm
Call of Duty
inFAMOUS
Star Wars: The Force Unleashed
Super Mario Galaxy
Planescape: Torment
Torchlight
Starcraft (Zerg)
UniWar
God of War
Far Cry 2
Mass Effect 2
Vagrant Story
Yakuza 2
Metroid: Zero Mission
Past years totals:
2009: 19
2008: 26
2007: 15
I've got a big 2011 ahead; in addition to having a baby, I'm going to be doing more writing and job hunting on the side, so I'm going to go ahead and set a more realistic goal of finishing one game a month on average. This will of course mean focusing more on games I want to complete, but I'm sure I'll get plenty of variety in there. Also, with the epic amount of games I bought in 2010 (around 120!), I need to work on both playing a bunch of those, and buying less overall.
I'm going forward with 2 out, 1 in, with indulgences for games under $20, but I do plan to be more selective, considering my massive, incredible backlog of games. Help me thin out the pile by voting for games I'll play in the Resolution feature of Call Of Podcast!
Happy 2011, everyone!
Wednesday, December 22, 2010
What Am I Doing?
Yeah, I still have yet to finish any of the games I listed in my last post. I won't even list all the games I bought, though. In my defense, they were all ultra-cheap. Maybe I should take drastic measures for 2011, like limiting myself to buying one game a month, or buying everything I want now (no restrictions) and then closing the wallet 100% for 2011. That would be tough.
Well, maybe my current system will work. I've eased the cutoff price up to $20 because I was tired of debating whether or not to spend completion tokens on $13 or $15 games. I figure once a current-gen console game hits $20, it won't go much lower unless it's a real turd or mega-bomb. Take for instance a by all accounts good game, Darksiders. That game has been $30 and then $20 for a while now, but I've yet to see it get near $10, whereas some supposedly big releases this year that flopped I've seen on sale in the $5-$10 range, and I don't even mean on Steam!
So, I don't really know what I'm ultimately going to do with this whole game buying/playing balancing act, but for now I'll say 2 completions earn 1 purchase for games over $20, I guess. I started at 1 for 1 above $10, but this may be a better balance as far as inflow and outflow.
Enough of that--games! I've been busy playing a whole host of stuff in the last few weeks, and that's what counts. I got a new big-screen TV to game on, and that's caused me to mix things up some, as well.
I had a slight Monster Hunter resurgence on the Wii, playing a bunch more online and encountering several new big monsters I'd never fought before. It's a great game, and a lot of fun. Why the hell is it shackled to portables and hobbled, barely-online enabled systems. Why bother with huge fail bucket projects like Lost Planet 2 when an HD Monster Hunter would be a sure fire success in Japan at the very least, and could crack the west wide open for Capcom?
I also returned to Bayonetta one night last week, to pick up where I left off a few months back. I was pretty confused, having forgotten a lot of how the combat system flows and how to handle different enemy types. Mixing up the weapons I used helped some. I only went through one chapter, though, and I'll be needing to see to that again soon, to continue on and hopefully finish the game up before New Year's. Bayo is a really fun game, but I just have so much else I'm more interested in that it's hard to get around to. Yeah, life is tough in these hard times.
I've been playing a lot of Fallout, also. I'm more acclimated to it now, and I've made some good progress. I actually completed the first major quest, which is to find a new water chip to replace the one in the main character's home vault. You're given a deadline of 150 in-game days in which to accomplish this, or the water runs out in your vault, everyone dies, and it's game over. In my travels to find a replacement, though, I started to wonder if living underground in vaults is the best thing for survivors in the wasteland. There is definitely life above ground, dangerous as it is up there. I half expected the water chip quest to be the entirety of the main quest line of the game, and after finishing that up the rest of the world just being there to run around in and do as you will, but no, there is more to it than that. I guess this was before the days of open world games as we know them, now. No, my next task is to hunt down whoever or whatever is behind the too-rapid growth in the super-mutant population, and stop whatever they are doing. I believe I ran into some of this faction in my search for the water chip, but when I return to where I met them now, circumstances have changed, and I'm attacked on sight, so I'm thinking about going to someone else for help, perhaps the Brotherhood of Steel. I'm definitely getting into this game.
Another game I've been playing a big chunk of is Dawn of War II. I have no way of really knowing how far into the game I am, but I'm estimating maybe halfway. I keep performing well enough on missions to deploy an extra time each day, which as far as I can work out, is allowing me to pursue optional objectives in addition to playing out the main campaign. My squads of Space Marines are all around levels 12-14, currently, and Wargear drops are plentiful on each sortie. This game is a ton of fun to play, but the mission structure makes it a little too easy to stop playing. The missions can get pretty intense when you are essentially controlling 4 individual Diablo characters at once against hordes of enemies and boss encounters. It's too easy to just walk away after one or two quick missions, especially playing near bed-time, when I don't want to get too amped up. I really, really like this game, though. I already own the first expansion, Chaos Rising, and the next, Retribution, is a sure purchase next year.
The recent announcement of The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim made me really want to go back and play some more Oblivion (TES IV), so I found myself re-installing it this past Sunday. I still have all of the Shivering Isles content unplayed, and it may remain that way, because now that I've played the total conversion mod Nehrim, I don't think I want to go back to the vanilla game. The Nehrim designers, who also made total conversions for TES III: Morrowind, I'm given to understand, have taken Oblivion, broken it down into its constituent parts, and reassembled from them an entirely new world with its own mythology, creating an almost all-new RPG. Sure, all of the building blocks are familiar, but entire systems have been overhauled to address some of the more common complaints players of Oblivion had, and the result is a game that I feel comfortable in saying is just better, mechanically.
Oblivion featured some odd, almost experimental design decisions. Everywhere you went, monsters and loot were basically level-synched to your character, which allowed for total freedom in exploring the world, but meant that you would never really find anything all that exciting when you did. You never found a super bad ass sword that made you entirely overpowered, you only found the sword that was balanced to be pretty decent vs the enemies who were balanced to put up not too much of a fight. This all meant that leveling up in general felt pretty meaningless. If you leveled, so did everyone else. You would run into situations where random bandits on the roads would be wearing the same high level armor that you were. Gaining new abilities never seemed to make you more powerful, only give you more variety in what you could do.
Nehrim fixes this by just going back to a more conventional setup where enemies are assigned static levels, and areas are populated with enemies and loot of a certain range of levels. All of the sudden, combat and exploration are both more exciting, making for a better game, overall. It doesn't stop there, though, they have overhauled the inventory and standard UI, also, making them more functional and PC-friendly. Oblivion was basically a console port, and the inventory, UI, and FOV really reflect that. Nehrim helps out in those areas. The map in the original game was a real pain to use, and the guys behind this mod have done a lot to improve on that, too. You can still definitely see Oblivion's flaws poking out, but Nehrim tries it's best to smooth them over.
So that's what Nehrim is mechanically, but how does it play, you ask? Well, it's of course a first person RPG, like Oblivion, focused on melee/ranged/magic combat and character growth featuring an open world and a ton of quests, all optional after the first couple of hours. The plot is that you are a monk who has grown up in an abbey, and you receive a mysterious letter telling you that your life is in danger unless you show up to meet the sender at an old abandoned mine, and to come alone and tell no one. Upon arrival, you are attacked by trolls living in the mine, fall through some floor boards to the lower levels, and have to find your way out again, encountering other recipients of the same mysterious letter, most already killed by the trolls. When you finally find your way back to the entrance of the mine, you are alone, and arrive to find a powerful mage torching a pack of trolls. This mage explains that he was the one who asked you there, along with several other candidates, but of course did not expect the trolls or for all the other candidates to be killed. Turns out, a secret brotherhood of mages (secret to avoid persecution in the magic-fearing kingdom) have been watching you and these other candidates for some time, and have decided you are fit of character and natural ability to join them. It's literally an offer you can't refuse; they'll kill you if you do. You are given a forged letter announcing your conscription into the army of the kingdom for some far-off war, and told to give it to the head of the monks at your abbey, and then to meet with the mage again in a nearby village. The mage disappears, leaving you to your own devices. This is basically where the game opens up. You'll have to do a few little quests before you can leave the encampment surrounding the mine, which is under attack by a rogue group of mages (different from the group that has just recruited you, by their robes), but after that you're free to go out and explore the world and do as you will.
I'm following the main quest line so far, with a few diversions into caves and ruins I've discovered, and random side quests to uncover more about my character's past pre-Abbey. I've been playing for about 5 hours, so far, and really enjoying Nehrim so far. If you have a copy of the PC version of Oblivion (retail or Steam, either way), and you want to breathe some new life into it, definitely check out this total conversion, which basically amounts to a whole new 50+ hour RPG, and completely free, of course!
Well, maybe my current system will work. I've eased the cutoff price up to $20 because I was tired of debating whether or not to spend completion tokens on $13 or $15 games. I figure once a current-gen console game hits $20, it won't go much lower unless it's a real turd or mega-bomb. Take for instance a by all accounts good game, Darksiders. That game has been $30 and then $20 for a while now, but I've yet to see it get near $10, whereas some supposedly big releases this year that flopped I've seen on sale in the $5-$10 range, and I don't even mean on Steam!
So, I don't really know what I'm ultimately going to do with this whole game buying/playing balancing act, but for now I'll say 2 completions earn 1 purchase for games over $20, I guess. I started at 1 for 1 above $10, but this may be a better balance as far as inflow and outflow.
Enough of that--games! I've been busy playing a whole host of stuff in the last few weeks, and that's what counts. I got a new big-screen TV to game on, and that's caused me to mix things up some, as well.
I had a slight Monster Hunter resurgence on the Wii, playing a bunch more online and encountering several new big monsters I'd never fought before. It's a great game, and a lot of fun. Why the hell is it shackled to portables and hobbled, barely-online enabled systems. Why bother with huge fail bucket projects like Lost Planet 2 when an HD Monster Hunter would be a sure fire success in Japan at the very least, and could crack the west wide open for Capcom?
I also returned to Bayonetta one night last week, to pick up where I left off a few months back. I was pretty confused, having forgotten a lot of how the combat system flows and how to handle different enemy types. Mixing up the weapons I used helped some. I only went through one chapter, though, and I'll be needing to see to that again soon, to continue on and hopefully finish the game up before New Year's. Bayo is a really fun game, but I just have so much else I'm more interested in that it's hard to get around to. Yeah, life is tough in these hard times.
I've been playing a lot of Fallout, also. I'm more acclimated to it now, and I've made some good progress. I actually completed the first major quest, which is to find a new water chip to replace the one in the main character's home vault. You're given a deadline of 150 in-game days in which to accomplish this, or the water runs out in your vault, everyone dies, and it's game over. In my travels to find a replacement, though, I started to wonder if living underground in vaults is the best thing for survivors in the wasteland. There is definitely life above ground, dangerous as it is up there. I half expected the water chip quest to be the entirety of the main quest line of the game, and after finishing that up the rest of the world just being there to run around in and do as you will, but no, there is more to it than that. I guess this was before the days of open world games as we know them, now. No, my next task is to hunt down whoever or whatever is behind the too-rapid growth in the super-mutant population, and stop whatever they are doing. I believe I ran into some of this faction in my search for the water chip, but when I return to where I met them now, circumstances have changed, and I'm attacked on sight, so I'm thinking about going to someone else for help, perhaps the Brotherhood of Steel. I'm definitely getting into this game.
Another game I've been playing a big chunk of is Dawn of War II. I have no way of really knowing how far into the game I am, but I'm estimating maybe halfway. I keep performing well enough on missions to deploy an extra time each day, which as far as I can work out, is allowing me to pursue optional objectives in addition to playing out the main campaign. My squads of Space Marines are all around levels 12-14, currently, and Wargear drops are plentiful on each sortie. This game is a ton of fun to play, but the mission structure makes it a little too easy to stop playing. The missions can get pretty intense when you are essentially controlling 4 individual Diablo characters at once against hordes of enemies and boss encounters. It's too easy to just walk away after one or two quick missions, especially playing near bed-time, when I don't want to get too amped up. I really, really like this game, though. I already own the first expansion, Chaos Rising, and the next, Retribution, is a sure purchase next year.
The recent announcement of The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim made me really want to go back and play some more Oblivion (TES IV), so I found myself re-installing it this past Sunday. I still have all of the Shivering Isles content unplayed, and it may remain that way, because now that I've played the total conversion mod Nehrim, I don't think I want to go back to the vanilla game. The Nehrim designers, who also made total conversions for TES III: Morrowind, I'm given to understand, have taken Oblivion, broken it down into its constituent parts, and reassembled from them an entirely new world with its own mythology, creating an almost all-new RPG. Sure, all of the building blocks are familiar, but entire systems have been overhauled to address some of the more common complaints players of Oblivion had, and the result is a game that I feel comfortable in saying is just better, mechanically.
Oblivion featured some odd, almost experimental design decisions. Everywhere you went, monsters and loot were basically level-synched to your character, which allowed for total freedom in exploring the world, but meant that you would never really find anything all that exciting when you did. You never found a super bad ass sword that made you entirely overpowered, you only found the sword that was balanced to be pretty decent vs the enemies who were balanced to put up not too much of a fight. This all meant that leveling up in general felt pretty meaningless. If you leveled, so did everyone else. You would run into situations where random bandits on the roads would be wearing the same high level armor that you were. Gaining new abilities never seemed to make you more powerful, only give you more variety in what you could do.
Nehrim fixes this by just going back to a more conventional setup where enemies are assigned static levels, and areas are populated with enemies and loot of a certain range of levels. All of the sudden, combat and exploration are both more exciting, making for a better game, overall. It doesn't stop there, though, they have overhauled the inventory and standard UI, also, making them more functional and PC-friendly. Oblivion was basically a console port, and the inventory, UI, and FOV really reflect that. Nehrim helps out in those areas. The map in the original game was a real pain to use, and the guys behind this mod have done a lot to improve on that, too. You can still definitely see Oblivion's flaws poking out, but Nehrim tries it's best to smooth them over.
So that's what Nehrim is mechanically, but how does it play, you ask? Well, it's of course a first person RPG, like Oblivion, focused on melee/ranged/magic combat and character growth featuring an open world and a ton of quests, all optional after the first couple of hours. The plot is that you are a monk who has grown up in an abbey, and you receive a mysterious letter telling you that your life is in danger unless you show up to meet the sender at an old abandoned mine, and to come alone and tell no one. Upon arrival, you are attacked by trolls living in the mine, fall through some floor boards to the lower levels, and have to find your way out again, encountering other recipients of the same mysterious letter, most already killed by the trolls. When you finally find your way back to the entrance of the mine, you are alone, and arrive to find a powerful mage torching a pack of trolls. This mage explains that he was the one who asked you there, along with several other candidates, but of course did not expect the trolls or for all the other candidates to be killed. Turns out, a secret brotherhood of mages (secret to avoid persecution in the magic-fearing kingdom) have been watching you and these other candidates for some time, and have decided you are fit of character and natural ability to join them. It's literally an offer you can't refuse; they'll kill you if you do. You are given a forged letter announcing your conscription into the army of the kingdom for some far-off war, and told to give it to the head of the monks at your abbey, and then to meet with the mage again in a nearby village. The mage disappears, leaving you to your own devices. This is basically where the game opens up. You'll have to do a few little quests before you can leave the encampment surrounding the mine, which is under attack by a rogue group of mages (different from the group that has just recruited you, by their robes), but after that you're free to go out and explore the world and do as you will.
I'm following the main quest line so far, with a few diversions into caves and ruins I've discovered, and random side quests to uncover more about my character's past pre-Abbey. I've been playing for about 5 hours, so far, and really enjoying Nehrim so far. If you have a copy of the PC version of Oblivion (retail or Steam, either way), and you want to breathe some new life into it, definitely check out this total conversion, which basically amounts to a whole new 50+ hour RPG, and completely free, of course!
Tuesday, December 7, 2010
Road Map/MOST WANTED
I've dug myself a hole, here:
Current MOST WANTED games of the now and foreseeable future:
Assassin's Creed Brotherhood
Tactics Ogre
The Witcher 2
Total War: Shogun 2
Those are going to cost 8 completions, but I'm in 3 in the hole, so I have to finish 11 games! Here are the ones I think I am nearest or most motivated to finishing off:
Bayonetta (about half done)
Fallout (motivated)
Dawn of War II (motivated)
Assassin's Creed II (haven't yet begun, but motivated)
Hitman: Blood Money (maybe 1/4 done, probably not too long)
Poker Night at the Inventory (I'll be done when I've won enough/all items and such)
Demon's Souls (somewhere like 1/4 done, but long & hard)
Titan Quest (somewhere near the beginning)
STALKER (somewhere near the beginning)
Halo: Reach (borrowed, shouldn't be too long)
Bioshock 2 (borrowed, shouldn't be too long)
Batman: Arkham Asylum (borrowed, shouldn't be too long)
That's 12 games that I could finish in a reasonable amount of time, and that are at least on my Radar of Shame.
I got to get off work and go get to work!
Current MOST WANTED games of the now and foreseeable future:
Assassin's Creed Brotherhood
Tactics Ogre
The Witcher 2
Total War: Shogun 2
Those are going to cost 8 completions, but I'm in 3 in the hole, so I have to finish 11 games! Here are the ones I think I am nearest or most motivated to finishing off:
Bayonetta (about half done)
Fallout (motivated)
Dawn of War II (motivated)
Assassin's Creed II (haven't yet begun, but motivated)
Hitman: Blood Money (maybe 1/4 done, probably not too long)
Poker Night at the Inventory (I'll be done when I've won enough/all items and such)
Demon's Souls (somewhere like 1/4 done, but long & hard)
Titan Quest (somewhere near the beginning)
STALKER (somewhere near the beginning)
Halo: Reach (borrowed, shouldn't be too long)
Bioshock 2 (borrowed, shouldn't be too long)
Batman: Arkham Asylum (borrowed, shouldn't be too long)
That's 12 games that I could finish in a reasonable amount of time, and that are at least on my Radar of Shame.
I got to get off work and go get to work!
Saturday, December 4, 2010
Game CRAZY
I talked about it on the newest Call Of Podcast, 59, but I had accumulated so much credit at my local Game Trader shop that I felt like cashing it out before they themselves cash out of business. Not that it's looking like they're going to, but I kind of feel like they're too good to last in today's market. Anyway, I used my $140 of credit to pickup NSMB Wii, Starcraft II, and God of War III. Of course, I didn't have 6 games completed to cash in the tokens for all these, but I did have 3, meaning I'm only 3 games in the hole. Well, 5 games in the hole until I'm go for The Witcher 2 or Assassin's Creed Brotherhood or whatever I want by the time I've finished 5(!) more games.
Speaking of that never-ending battle, I'm doing well, up to 22 games finished in 2010 so far. I just had a look through my Pile of Shame and culled a few titles that I no longer care about completing, old DS games, RPGs that I had played before and was halfway through, etc. However, come Jan. 1, that Pile is about to get a whole hell of a lot bigger, with the astounding amount of games I've bought this year (and mostly for under ten bucks).
I have a feeling that the Road Map to Success idea I've been trying is just never going to work. At best I can kind of anticipate the game I want to play next, but looking farther ahead than that or across too many genres, it's just way too much in flux for any projections to make sense. It'd be like the local weather guy forecasting for Jupiter and Mars based on your local Tri-state area.
I'm not sure what I'm going to do for a 2011 gaming resolution, but I like what I've got going so far with the 2 out, 1 in token system with the $10 clause. Maybe I'll think of something to complement that and/or something to help my life overall, like for 2009 I decided to stop drinking carbonated soft drinks. It's been almost 2 years now!
Speaking of that never-ending battle, I'm doing well, up to 22 games finished in 2010 so far. I just had a look through my Pile of Shame and culled a few titles that I no longer care about completing, old DS games, RPGs that I had played before and was halfway through, etc. However, come Jan. 1, that Pile is about to get a whole hell of a lot bigger, with the astounding amount of games I've bought this year (and mostly for under ten bucks).
I have a feeling that the Road Map to Success idea I've been trying is just never going to work. At best I can kind of anticipate the game I want to play next, but looking farther ahead than that or across too many genres, it's just way too much in flux for any projections to make sense. It'd be like the local weather guy forecasting for Jupiter and Mars based on your local Tri-state area.
I'm not sure what I'm going to do for a 2011 gaming resolution, but I like what I've got going so far with the 2 out, 1 in token system with the $10 clause. Maybe I'll think of something to complement that and/or something to help my life overall, like for 2009 I decided to stop drinking carbonated soft drinks. It's been almost 2 years now!
Thursday, December 2, 2010
Missions Accomplished
It's rare that I finish a game, relative to how often I play them, which is about every day. It so happens, though, that just this week I've finished two of them, The Witcher, and Assassin's Creed: Bloodlines.
Finishing The Witcher was the culmination of about 5 months of on and off role playing as Geralt of Rivia, the White Wolf, a professional monster slayer. Geralt is minding his own business with the other members of his Witcher order when their fortress, Kaer Morhen is attacked by a mysterious group of mages who kill one of their dwindling number and make off with the alchemical and magical secrets behind the Witchers' abilities to mutate normal humans into the superior warrior-monk-mercenaries that make up their order. Geralt and the other remaining Witchers agree to split up and comb the realms of the world for clues as to who is behind the attack and why, and to attempt to recover the Witchers' stolen secrets and prevent whatever evils their mysterious mage assailants are plotting.
Geralt makes his way to Vizima, capital of the kingdom of Temeria, and before long finds himself embroiled in local power struggles, race relations, and close to picking up the trail of those who attacked Kaer Morhen. The plot of The Witcher proceeds through a prologue, five large chapters of action, and an epilogue, and in total took me 60 hours to play through, taking time to go out of my way to finish 95% of the available side quests available on my single playthrough. There are actually three distinct ways to play through the game, taking either of two sides to the main conflict, or a completely neutral path to the end of the game. Major plot points apparently play out the same way, but the alliances you forge and those you spurn can have a large effect on what type of people you are surrounded by, and which other characters are open to you for friendship and more other, more amorous, relations.
I played Geralt more as a proxy for myself, often choosing the side of the conflict that I thought personally was more in the right. It's all shades of gray in The Witcher. Consequences of your choices are never laid out to you beforehand, and there is nothing approximating Mass Effect's meters of how much you are leaning to one end of the spectrum or the other. I felt like because of those factors, I played more with my own mind than how I play Commander Shepard, whom I tend to steer in a certain direction for consistency and gameplay benefits, and whom I see more at a step removed from myself. Shepard and Mass Effect I enjoy more like something being presented to me, but Geralt and The Witcher it was easier to see as something I was actually participating in.
There is a lot you have to be willing to overlook with the technical aspects of the game--random glitches, varying quality in the VA, every citizen of Vizima being one of about 10 models wearing different colored outfits, a less-than-perfectly optimized game engine, a combat system that can seem finnicky at times, and more, but when you balance all of that with the excellent story being told, the nice visuals, music, and excellent role-playing to be had, I can easily recommend the game, especially to people who are RPG fans, or certainly anyone who likes Mass Effect and could play that with badass swordsmanship, alchemy, and magic swapped in in place of guns and tech/psi powers. Incidentally, the game is easily playable on any system that would run the Mass Effect games.
Assassin's Creed: Bloodlines was, overall, pretty mediocre. It kind of makes me melancholy in a way for the bad old days of shitty, dumbed down versions of real console games that I used to play on the Game Boy and Game Gear. Games cast in the mold of their bigger brothers but shoehorned onto a smaller platform never turn out well. This game really should have been re-thought and designed from the ground up for the PSP, like the Metal Gear Solid games have been. I'm not sure how they could have done it and maintained the open-world feel of Assassin's Creed, but it probably could have been better than this half-hearted approximation. The VA and music were not great, either, and there were a lot of audio glitches in the game.
The game wasn't all bad, though. The fighting felt pretty faithful to AC on 360, and the story was at least a little interesting, though probably relatively inconsequential to the overall mythos. I spent probably 5-6 hours playing it, and I felt I got my money's worth. But then, only about $2.50 came out of my own pocket for the game. I wouldn't necessarily recommend the game, but if you got it as a pack-in or on the cheap, it'd be worth a try.
I've had a hankering for some Call Of Duty/Modern Warfare type multiplayer lately, so I installed COD4 from Steam. I played through the single player on a borrowed 360 copy, but this game came in a Steam COD pack I bought earlier this year. After messing around with punkbuster some, I was finally able to get into the action, with mixed results. I don't think these maps are meant to be played with a maximum of 50 players. I eventually found a server with a more manageable pace of play, but by that time I had been repeatedly owned for about 45 minutes straight and was ready to move on to something else. Still, this game is a lot of fun, and nothing else I've found can completely substitute for it in every way.
Keeping up with the RPG pile, after finishing The Witcher, I've moved onto the Fallout series, starting with the first. I'm not planning on barreling through all 5 games in the series sequentially or anything, I just thought I'd stick to the pattern of new school (Mass Effect 2), old school (Planescape), new school (The Witcher), and come back to the old with this game. At the rate I'm going, I'm expecting this to last me probably until around next May when The Witcher 2 is released, but we'll see. I'll probably end up playing this like I did Oblivion, just doing a bunch of random stuff and then rolling a new character and trying other stuff, eventually getting around to the main quest line once I kind of get the hang of the game. This game is old, and it plays like an old game, so it's going to take some getting used to. I'm off to a decent start with my first (of this go around at the game) character. I don't really have any sense of the scale and scope of this game, but I'm excited to uncover it.
Friday, November 26, 2010
Two Steps Forward, A Hundred Steps Back
I haven't purposefully neglected writing here; it's just been really busy at work lately, heh. I've also been busy outside of work. I was called away for about 10 days for a family emergency, and then the new Wheel Of Time book, Towers of Midnight, arrived at my door and I had to immediately take a week of free time and read straight through that.
Here I am now, though, making amends. I've got quite a bit to cover from the last 3-4 weeks.
First off, Civ V. I played a few more games and achieved every victory condition at least once before prying myself away to play other games for a while. Civ is amazingly addictive, and I'm looking forward to going back to play a bunch more, to try and get a win with each Civ, at least, which will be a lot more gaming, since I've gotten wins with only 4 of the 20ish Civs currently playable. I'm not sure what type of victory I should go for with the rest. I may re-instate the score victory condition for those games.
While out of town, I did some light gaming, just played a little Diablo II, Minecraft, and emulated Demon's Crest for SNES on my Macbook, and while I'm here I may as well mention iPhone standards Canabalt, Galcon, and Words With Friends. I also tried out Doom II RPG and Civ Rev, both of which I had picked up very cheap, but didn't care for them for one reason or another.
Since arriving back home, I haven't played a whole hell of a lot. I played some League of Legends, which I continue to be mediocre at. I'm sticking with one champion until I can learn the greater movements of the game, and once I'm confident with the game at large, then I might find another type of champion to play depending on what mood I'm in. I had some reward cash at Best Buy that I had nothing better to do with, and used it to get the retail collector's pack of LOL, which comes with a redeemable code that unlocks 20 champions and gives some Riot Points (the cash currency) that you can use to either buy more champions or skins for the ones you already own. I think I may be able to purchse Influence Point bonuses also. IP are the points you earn by playing matches that can be used to buy enhancements for your champions or to unlock more of them for play.
The rest of my Best Buy rewards cash I spent on Assassin's Creed: Bloodlines, the PSP game. I was kind of curious, and it wasn't much real, actual cash out of my pocket, so I figured, what the hell? It turns out to be a PSP-fitted follow-up to AC1. You play as Altair again, this tracking down the remaining Templars and more artifacts like the Apple of Eden from the first game, visiting the island of Cyprus. A lot of things from AC1 are there, they're just kind of ill-fitted into a junior-sized version of the game. The cities are open-world, but the wards are small, sparsely populated, and separated by loads. I'm about halfway through the game, and so far it's also been laughably easy. I don't know whether to laud the game for what it's pulling off on the PSP, or condemn it for being what it is, limited in scope by the choice of platform. It's not bad, per se, but it's not pulled off with the same flair that MGS: PW is.
Finally, I'm making a concerted effort this holiday weekend to finish, or come as close as possible to finishing, The Witcher. It may not be doable in such a short time. This is one of those games that I'll take a long time away from, and then come back and wonder why I don't just plow through to the end of it. It's really engrossing when I've got the time to devote to it. I'm in the middle of chapter 3 right now, of 6 if I'm not mistaken. The sequel is coming out next year, and I may upgrade my video card just for that.
I almost forgot what prompted the title of this post--Steam is having one of their famous sales this weekend, and I bought Alpha Protocol for cheap, and just now got a bundle of 5 different indie games for $5 total. There is no resistance.
Here I am now, though, making amends. I've got quite a bit to cover from the last 3-4 weeks.
First off, Civ V. I played a few more games and achieved every victory condition at least once before prying myself away to play other games for a while. Civ is amazingly addictive, and I'm looking forward to going back to play a bunch more, to try and get a win with each Civ, at least, which will be a lot more gaming, since I've gotten wins with only 4 of the 20ish Civs currently playable. I'm not sure what type of victory I should go for with the rest. I may re-instate the score victory condition for those games.
While out of town, I did some light gaming, just played a little Diablo II, Minecraft, and emulated Demon's Crest for SNES on my Macbook, and while I'm here I may as well mention iPhone standards Canabalt, Galcon, and Words With Friends. I also tried out Doom II RPG and Civ Rev, both of which I had picked up very cheap, but didn't care for them for one reason or another.
Since arriving back home, I haven't played a whole hell of a lot. I played some League of Legends, which I continue to be mediocre at. I'm sticking with one champion until I can learn the greater movements of the game, and once I'm confident with the game at large, then I might find another type of champion to play depending on what mood I'm in. I had some reward cash at Best Buy that I had nothing better to do with, and used it to get the retail collector's pack of LOL, which comes with a redeemable code that unlocks 20 champions and gives some Riot Points (the cash currency) that you can use to either buy more champions or skins for the ones you already own. I think I may be able to purchse Influence Point bonuses also. IP are the points you earn by playing matches that can be used to buy enhancements for your champions or to unlock more of them for play.
Finally, I'm making a concerted effort this holiday weekend to finish, or come as close as possible to finishing, The Witcher. It may not be doable in such a short time. This is one of those games that I'll take a long time away from, and then come back and wonder why I don't just plow through to the end of it. It's really engrossing when I've got the time to devote to it. I'm in the middle of chapter 3 right now, of 6 if I'm not mistaken. The sequel is coming out next year, and I may upgrade my video card just for that.
I almost forgot what prompted the title of this post--Steam is having one of their famous sales this weekend, and I bought Alpha Protocol for cheap, and just now got a bundle of 5 different indie games for $5 total. There is no resistance.
Wednesday, November 10, 2010
2010 GOTY Candidates
Of course, this is my personal GOTY, and I haven't played everything, so I'm afraid some big name games may not be in the running (Red Dead Redemption, Starcraft II, Fallout: New Vegas, etc.). Anyway:
Mass Effect 2
Battlefield: Bad Company 2
MAG
Monster Hunter Tri
Metal Gear Solid: Peace Walker
Alien Swarm
Minecraft
Bayonetta
Castlevania: Lords of Shadow
Civilization V
So, these are the noteworthy 2010 games that I actually played in 2010, so far. I may add one or two to the list before the end of December 31st, but I just wanted to start thinking about this a little bit ahead of time. Tough decisions ahead!
Mass Effect 2
Battlefield: Bad Company 2
MAG
Monster Hunter Tri
Metal Gear Solid: Peace Walker
Alien Swarm
Minecraft
Bayonetta
Castlevania: Lords of Shadow
Civilization V
So, these are the noteworthy 2010 games that I actually played in 2010, so far. I may add one or two to the list before the end of December 31st, but I just wanted to start thinking about this a little bit ahead of time. Tough decisions ahead!
Friday, October 29, 2010
Good Thing I'm Bored At Work Right Now...
...or this post would likely not get written. I haven't consciously been writing here less frequently, it's just that I've been pretty busy. I do write these posts at work pretty often, and my job has been keeping me a lot busier the last few months, but no, the primary reason this entry would not get written at home is Civilization V.
It's super addictive. I bought Civ IV on the cheap once, and booted it up once or twice, but it just seemed impenetrable, and I never managed to work up the desire to get in and figure it all out. Before long it was known that Civ V would be coming out, and not only did it look a lot nicer graphically, but it was being touted as simplified, more tactical, more user-friendly, and just in general re-tooled to be a sleeker, purer experience than the games before it, which had seemingly evolved and become convoluted over time. I decided I'd wait on V to come out before jumping in.
I'm pretty happy with that decision, with what I know now (and continue to figure out little by little). First off, the game is pretty nice looking. It actually seems to tax my GPU (the weakest link in my system) more than I'd expected. I'm having to play in DX9 to get rid of screen tear, get rid of other odd graphical glitches, and get FPS I want, but that may just be a quirk of my 4850, as Far Cry 2 looked messed the hell up in DX10, also. Another facet of Civ V I like is that military units can are one to a tile. Apparently in prior games you could stack units on a tile and move gigantic forces around that way. I prefer the more "tactics" style of having a large force occupy a large area, which makes sieges and warfare in general a lot more interesting. Lastly, in comparison to what I've seen of Civ IV and Civ Rev, I overwhelmingly prefer the interface of Civ V. Tooltips are helpful, the layout is pretty intuitive, and artistically it is just gorgeous in a early 1900's, Chrysler Building sort of way. Maybe that just strikes me, as an American, as a perfect motif for advancement of civilization. I was wondering in the car today if someone from India or Japan playing the same game would get the same feeling from the UI, and I kind of doubt it. It would be interesting to see what sort of UI the game would ship with were it developed in another country and culture.
It's super addictive. I bought Civ IV on the cheap once, and booted it up once or twice, but it just seemed impenetrable, and I never managed to work up the desire to get in and figure it all out. Before long it was known that Civ V would be coming out, and not only did it look a lot nicer graphically, but it was being touted as simplified, more tactical, more user-friendly, and just in general re-tooled to be a sleeker, purer experience than the games before it, which had seemingly evolved and become convoluted over time. I decided I'd wait on V to come out before jumping in.
I'm pretty happy with that decision, with what I know now (and continue to figure out little by little). First off, the game is pretty nice looking. It actually seems to tax my GPU (the weakest link in my system) more than I'd expected. I'm having to play in DX9 to get rid of screen tear, get rid of other odd graphical glitches, and get FPS I want, but that may just be a quirk of my 4850, as Far Cry 2 looked messed the hell up in DX10, also. Another facet of Civ V I like is that military units can are one to a tile. Apparently in prior games you could stack units on a tile and move gigantic forces around that way. I prefer the more "tactics" style of having a large force occupy a large area, which makes sieges and warfare in general a lot more interesting. Lastly, in comparison to what I've seen of Civ IV and Civ Rev, I overwhelmingly prefer the interface of Civ V. Tooltips are helpful, the layout is pretty intuitive, and artistically it is just gorgeous in a early 1900's, Chrysler Building sort of way. Maybe that just strikes me, as an American, as a perfect motif for advancement of civilization. I was wondering in the car today if someone from India or Japan playing the same game would get the same feeling from the UI, and I kind of doubt it. It would be interesting to see what sort of UI the game would ship with were it developed in another country and culture.
As for actually playing the game, I went through the tutorial first, which just puts you on a small Pangaea style map versus one opponent to teach you the basics. I was randomly rolled as Babylon and put up against Aztec. I wrapped that game up in 144 turns just by taking Montezuma's capital, and then began my first real game as Japan (Oda Nobunaga), because I wanted to dominate using Samurai and Bushido (which is a trait in game that makes wounded units fight just as hard as units at full strength). That game I ended up winning by points after 500 turns. I want to mention here that I think cutting the game off at an arbitrary limit based on time, and determining a winner based on an equally arbitrary score system seems like bullshit. I lost my next game as Babylon (Nebuchadnezzar) in which I was trying for a science victory, because at the 500 turn mark I was low on points due to some mismanagement and bad decisions in early eras.
From now on, I'm turning off the time/score victory condition, and shit will be settled the real ways, i.e. Domination, Diplomacy, Science or Culture. You either bully, cajole, research, or shmooze your way to success in real life, and that's how it's going to be in my Civ games, by George. I just love the fact that I have the option to do that.
Speaking of options, this game has a million different settings you can play with for setting up games, from the number of opponents all the way to the age of the world you are playing on (3,4, or 5 billion years), and everything in between. It is addictive as hell.
I'm currently set on achieving a Science victory by being the first civilization to build a space ship and launch a colonization effort. I'm going to play Babylon until it happens, because they're the only civ in the game that has an innate bonus that relates to science and tech upgrades, which I need to happen as soon as possible. The question is what else to stress in management of my civ from the ancient era up to the future era. Based on my experience in my last failed game, I'm going to de-emphasize military for the most part, and focus on making money and getting the most out of my lands in terms of resources to help the science initiative. I fucked up bad last game by losing units early to barbarians, and then later again in an ill-fated attempt to war on Montezuma at the request of Washington. I've been impatient all day today to get home and have another go.
Otherwise, I've been playing a little Demon's Souls the past couple of weeks, trying to get back into that. I'm working on 4-2 and trying to level my guy up a little bit. I got my first experience as a black phantom recently, and that was pretty enjoyable. I think I need to finish the game at least once to be competitive in real pvp, though. And, in what has become a weekend ritual, I've been playing more League of Legends after recording the podcast, and at other random times throughout the week. I'm still learning my character of choice, but I think I've improved considerably from when I began. I've got much further to go, however.
Monday, October 18, 2010
Mercury Steam Has Vanquished The Horrible Night
I'll just go ahead and steal the title of the NeoGAF official thread for my Castlevania: Lords of Shadow post, because that is exactly how I feel.
Now that I've had a couple of days to let the game and the ending sink in, I have to say, well done, Spaniards, well done, indeed. I don't know that I've seen a franchise overhauled in such a dramatic and successful way. Maybe Metal Gear with the first MGS, or maybe if you count Final Fantasy's occasional flashes of brilliance amidst it's normal (since VI, anyway) mediocrity. Regardless, Castlevania was really in need of this reboot. Prior 3D games were average at best, and the Metroidvania formula was stale almost the moment they started them on the GBA. I'd almost given up hope that we would ever see one my my favorite franchises make the leap from retro greatness and more modern soulless tedium to something with all the glitz of HD and great playability of it's forbears.
Lords of Shadow succeeds for me on three essential levels. First, it extracts the essence of Castlevania for this new entry, leaving behind the messy continuity and all the baggage of the series to this point. The window dressing for a great CV title is gothic architecture and decor, traditional European horror monsters, and a brave warrior wielding a whip, or a sword in a pinch. Second, Lords of Shadow nails the transition from 2D into 3D. I've thought about this a lot over the years, and the only really viable way to recreate CV for the modern era is basically to make something very much like a God of War game, in many respects. Mercury Steam has pulled this off, and even made it work better than it sounds by making combat more about patience, defense, and reading your enemy than your typical GoW or DMC game, which tend to be more about how long your combo can get without an iterruption. The third aspect of LoS that resonates the most with me is just how much of an epic journey the game is. I played far, far more of Castlevania II and III growing up than I did I or IV. If you're not familiar, II and III had just as much, if not more, of their stages set outside Dracula's Castle, in the Transylvanian countryside, than within. Simon's Quest was entirely in the countryside, and had no castle at all, as I recall. Gabriel's path in LoS takes him from one end of the map to the other, traversing rural villages, haunted forests, ancient ruins, abandoned fortresses, frozen wastelands, an absolutely huge castle, and other realms of the dead before it's conclusion.
The game is long, too. By the end of the journey, you'll have been through so many places and so many challenges, that you'll be as worn out as our hero is. I played the game on Knight difficulty, one notch up from the default, and the hardest setting available the first time through. I clocked almost exactly 20 hours on it. I would actually recommend Knight, because you'll be forced to really learn the combat system to succeed, and it's much more fun when you know what you're doing in challenging encounters, even outside of the game's awesome bosses. 3 sword masters at a time, or 3 greater lycans, or any encounter mixing 3 or more skeleton warriors with other types of monsters were enough to have me stuck for 5-10 attempts with regularity.
This brings me to some of my complaints with the game. First off, one of the most annoying, is that occasionally you will be dealt damage from an attack before the animation has gone off. This seemed to happen more when fighting the game's larger foes, bosses in many cases. I believe it to be a case of the game shortcutting to your death when it has calculated that you're dead anyway, but I'd feel better about it if I at least saw the killing blow before dying. Next up is the music. It's not bad, it's just not outstanding. Castlevania has always had outstanding music. The rest is either technical or design issues that, while bothersome, ultimately take away little from the overwhelming helping of awesome that the game serves up. I'm a longtime fan of the series, and I already love what Mercury Steam have done here. Fix up some of these little things, and the sequel should be amazing.
Now about that sequel... going off the ending to this game, there are a couple of ways they could take it, and I am dying to see what they're going to do. If internet malcontents complained about this game not being Castlevania for whatever reason.... Bloody Tears, indeed.
Now that I've had a couple of days to let the game and the ending sink in, I have to say, well done, Spaniards, well done, indeed. I don't know that I've seen a franchise overhauled in such a dramatic and successful way. Maybe Metal Gear with the first MGS, or maybe if you count Final Fantasy's occasional flashes of brilliance amidst it's normal (since VI, anyway) mediocrity. Regardless, Castlevania was really in need of this reboot. Prior 3D games were average at best, and the Metroidvania formula was stale almost the moment they started them on the GBA. I'd almost given up hope that we would ever see one my my favorite franchises make the leap from retro greatness and more modern soulless tedium to something with all the glitz of HD and great playability of it's forbears.
Lords of Shadow succeeds for me on three essential levels. First, it extracts the essence of Castlevania for this new entry, leaving behind the messy continuity and all the baggage of the series to this point. The window dressing for a great CV title is gothic architecture and decor, traditional European horror monsters, and a brave warrior wielding a whip, or a sword in a pinch. Second, Lords of Shadow nails the transition from 2D into 3D. I've thought about this a lot over the years, and the only really viable way to recreate CV for the modern era is basically to make something very much like a God of War game, in many respects. Mercury Steam has pulled this off, and even made it work better than it sounds by making combat more about patience, defense, and reading your enemy than your typical GoW or DMC game, which tend to be more about how long your combo can get without an iterruption. The third aspect of LoS that resonates the most with me is just how much of an epic journey the game is. I played far, far more of Castlevania II and III growing up than I did I or IV. If you're not familiar, II and III had just as much, if not more, of their stages set outside Dracula's Castle, in the Transylvanian countryside, than within. Simon's Quest was entirely in the countryside, and had no castle at all, as I recall. Gabriel's path in LoS takes him from one end of the map to the other, traversing rural villages, haunted forests, ancient ruins, abandoned fortresses, frozen wastelands, an absolutely huge castle, and other realms of the dead before it's conclusion.
The game is long, too. By the end of the journey, you'll have been through so many places and so many challenges, that you'll be as worn out as our hero is. I played the game on Knight difficulty, one notch up from the default, and the hardest setting available the first time through. I clocked almost exactly 20 hours on it. I would actually recommend Knight, because you'll be forced to really learn the combat system to succeed, and it's much more fun when you know what you're doing in challenging encounters, even outside of the game's awesome bosses. 3 sword masters at a time, or 3 greater lycans, or any encounter mixing 3 or more skeleton warriors with other types of monsters were enough to have me stuck for 5-10 attempts with regularity.
This brings me to some of my complaints with the game. First off, one of the most annoying, is that occasionally you will be dealt damage from an attack before the animation has gone off. This seemed to happen more when fighting the game's larger foes, bosses in many cases. I believe it to be a case of the game shortcutting to your death when it has calculated that you're dead anyway, but I'd feel better about it if I at least saw the killing blow before dying. Next up is the music. It's not bad, it's just not outstanding. Castlevania has always had outstanding music. The rest is either technical or design issues that, while bothersome, ultimately take away little from the overwhelming helping of awesome that the game serves up. I'm a longtime fan of the series, and I already love what Mercury Steam have done here. Fix up some of these little things, and the sequel should be amazing.
Now about that sequel... going off the ending to this game, there are a couple of ways they could take it, and I am dying to see what they're going to do. If internet malcontents complained about this game not being Castlevania for whatever reason.... Bloody Tears, indeed.
Tuesday, October 5, 2010
My Next Post
In which I talk about how League of Legends is played.
Imagine taking your guy from a Diablo style game, and plopping him down on in the middle of an RTS map where two people are currently playing against each other. Your job is to take your one guy, and together with the might of an army that you can't control, but whose actions you can use to your advantage, and help one side win. Yours is a hero unit capable of slaying mass numbers of the ordinary units of either side, and you act as the tie-breaker in this struggle, taking out defensive turrets and clearing the way for your side's army to infiltrate and destroy the enemy base. Your hero has several active abilities and can purchase equipment at a shop with gold found on felled enemy units, a lot like they might in a Diablo style game, and together with your team of other action-RPG refugees, you are a force to be reckoned with. The other side of the conflict also has such a team.
...and that's League of Legends (and DOTA, Demigod, and Heroes of Newerth). It's pretty cool.
I polished off FFT: TWotL last night. I've started games of it a few times since finishing it for the first time on the PSX, but had never actually followed all the way through to the end again until this time. I have to admit that I trucked it through the last quarter of the game in order to finish before an imminent release, but I enjoyed the hell out of this game. It was so great to read through a not only competent, but extremely well done localization of what is without a doubt the best story to ever carry the Final Fantasy name. It also happens to be the game in the series with the gameplay that best holds up a number of years on. Maybe that is due to being in a small and sparsely populated genre, but a few niggling things aside (really, no option to quit to the main menu from a battle gone awry?), this is all the game and more that first graced us over a decade ago. And to throw one more wrench in the works, I noticed something in the final scene which I didn't back in 1998, and has redefined the entire ending for me. Mind blown. Do yourself a favor and play this game if you own a PSP and have not yet. If I might offer some advice: keep your army as small as possible, and cross train them in as many jobs as possible. I tried to have one guy in every job slot, and not only was it impossible to keep everyone leveled up, it was a major pain trying to outfit everyone with good gear, too.
The imminent release I mentioned just now is of course, Castlevania: Lords of Shadow, which I have beside me now, and which I will begin tonight. I don't think I've been this excited for a new release since Mass Effect 2. Here's hoping we've finally gotten the Castlevania we've all been waiting for!
Imagine taking your guy from a Diablo style game, and plopping him down on in the middle of an RTS map where two people are currently playing against each other. Your job is to take your one guy, and together with the might of an army that you can't control, but whose actions you can use to your advantage, and help one side win. Yours is a hero unit capable of slaying mass numbers of the ordinary units of either side, and you act as the tie-breaker in this struggle, taking out defensive turrets and clearing the way for your side's army to infiltrate and destroy the enemy base. Your hero has several active abilities and can purchase equipment at a shop with gold found on felled enemy units, a lot like they might in a Diablo style game, and together with your team of other action-RPG refugees, you are a force to be reckoned with. The other side of the conflict also has such a team.
...and that's League of Legends (and DOTA, Demigod, and Heroes of Newerth). It's pretty cool.
I polished off FFT: TWotL last night. I've started games of it a few times since finishing it for the first time on the PSX, but had never actually followed all the way through to the end again until this time. I have to admit that I trucked it through the last quarter of the game in order to finish before an imminent release, but I enjoyed the hell out of this game. It was so great to read through a not only competent, but extremely well done localization of what is without a doubt the best story to ever carry the Final Fantasy name. It also happens to be the game in the series with the gameplay that best holds up a number of years on. Maybe that is due to being in a small and sparsely populated genre, but a few niggling things aside (really, no option to quit to the main menu from a battle gone awry?), this is all the game and more that first graced us over a decade ago. And to throw one more wrench in the works, I noticed something in the final scene which I didn't back in 1998, and has redefined the entire ending for me. Mind blown. Do yourself a favor and play this game if you own a PSP and have not yet. If I might offer some advice: keep your army as small as possible, and cross train them in as many jobs as possible. I tried to have one guy in every job slot, and not only was it impossible to keep everyone leveled up, it was a major pain trying to outfit everyone with good gear, too.
The imminent release I mentioned just now is of course, Castlevania: Lords of Shadow, which I have beside me now, and which I will begin tonight. I don't think I've been this excited for a new release since Mass Effect 2. Here's hoping we've finally gotten the Castlevania we've all been waiting for!
Friday, September 24, 2010
8 Days Gone
Then, as it was, it shall ever be, and though the course may change some times, rivers always reach the sea.
I will finish The Witcher. Eventually. It's an awesome game, with a great dark fantasy world and a smooth operating badass protagonist. In one session a few nights ago I bedded two separate attractive females, and I am entirely unrepentant about enjoying it. One I knew was eventually going to invite Geralt to her bed, but I didn't figure it would happen so soon. I also like the dice poker and crazy quests you end up taking on in this game. I must be getting near the end of chapter 2 by now.
I'm actually in chapter 3 of FFT: WotL now, working down the job trees on getting to the ninja and arithmeticians and such. I understand there are new classes in this version of the game, including one that looks like a dark knight from some art in the manual. That would be cool. I just love the plot of this game. It's so much more interesting than the typical JRPG tripe. This is a kingdom plagued by real problems in addition to the supernatural ones. It's almost like the video game version of George RR Martin's A Song Of Ice And Fire. It's pretty telling that even though I consider this one of my favorite games of all time, I wouldn't have been able to clearly recall or summarize the plot until having played through this remake with it's amazing localization. Wiegraf actually has motivation! Delita's actions actually kind of make sense! So good.
Some months ago I was playing and writing about Demigod, a 'Defense of the Ancients-inspired game,' or whatever we're calling this little sub-genre that it and League Of Legends belong to. I really enjoyed that game until something else came along and distracted me from playing it any more. Cut to the present, and I've decided to try out LOL after having heard good things, read good things, and out of curiosity about the free-to-play business model that a lot of online games are going to these days. I've played a game just about every night this week, and I'm kind of getting into it. LOL, I'm given to understand, is much closer to what the original DOTA mod for Warcraft III ended up evolving into, though not without some additions and changes to spruce things up a bit and make the game a little more inviting and less incredibly unfriendly for newbs, as DOTA and Heroes of Newerth are reputed to be.
Upon completion of a match of LOL, a player is awarded Influence Points, which can be used to purchase either perks that strengthen the player's character in game or permanent access to the game's champions, it's player characters. There are something like 60 champions to choose from, 10 of which are free to play at any one time, the selection rotating every week. I've been playing in practice matches so far, but only earning like 30-70 points per match, which isn't a whole hell of a lot. It could take quite a while of playing before you have enough points to purchase much of any worth, from what I can tell. That's to be expected when the company would rather you pay with your money than time, I guess.
I guess I should talk a little about how the game plays. I'll try to get into that in my next post.
I will finish The Witcher. Eventually. It's an awesome game, with a great dark fantasy world and a smooth operating badass protagonist. In one session a few nights ago I bedded two separate attractive females, and I am entirely unrepentant about enjoying it. One I knew was eventually going to invite Geralt to her bed, but I didn't figure it would happen so soon. I also like the dice poker and crazy quests you end up taking on in this game. I must be getting near the end of chapter 2 by now.
I'm actually in chapter 3 of FFT: WotL now, working down the job trees on getting to the ninja and arithmeticians and such. I understand there are new classes in this version of the game, including one that looks like a dark knight from some art in the manual. That would be cool. I just love the plot of this game. It's so much more interesting than the typical JRPG tripe. This is a kingdom plagued by real problems in addition to the supernatural ones. It's almost like the video game version of George RR Martin's A Song Of Ice And Fire. It's pretty telling that even though I consider this one of my favorite games of all time, I wouldn't have been able to clearly recall or summarize the plot until having played through this remake with it's amazing localization. Wiegraf actually has motivation! Delita's actions actually kind of make sense! So good.
Some months ago I was playing and writing about Demigod, a 'Defense of the Ancients-inspired game,' or whatever we're calling this little sub-genre that it and League Of Legends belong to. I really enjoyed that game until something else came along and distracted me from playing it any more. Cut to the present, and I've decided to try out LOL after having heard good things, read good things, and out of curiosity about the free-to-play business model that a lot of online games are going to these days. I've played a game just about every night this week, and I'm kind of getting into it. LOL, I'm given to understand, is much closer to what the original DOTA mod for Warcraft III ended up evolving into, though not without some additions and changes to spruce things up a bit and make the game a little more inviting and less incredibly unfriendly for newbs, as DOTA and Heroes of Newerth are reputed to be.
Upon completion of a match of LOL, a player is awarded Influence Points, which can be used to purchase either perks that strengthen the player's character in game or permanent access to the game's champions, it's player characters. There are something like 60 champions to choose from, 10 of which are free to play at any one time, the selection rotating every week. I've been playing in practice matches so far, but only earning like 30-70 points per match, which isn't a whole hell of a lot. It could take quite a while of playing before you have enough points to purchase much of any worth, from what I can tell. That's to be expected when the company would rather you pay with your money than time, I guess.
I guess I should talk a little about how the game plays. I'll try to get into that in my next post.
Wednesday, September 15, 2010
Man, I Have Got To Finish Some Games
I'm holding off on purchasing anything new until Castlevania: Lords of Shadow, which I plan to cash in my completion tokens for next. I really want Civ V too, though, so I need to be plowing through some shit right about now.
Unfortunately I'm deep in a couple more that I only recently began, FFT:WotL and Hitman: Blood Money. I'm going to be a while finishing those, too. I should really pop back to Bayonetta and polish her off before CV hits. That only makes sense.
It's awesome to be playing another Hitman game. It's been about 4 years since I played about halfway into Contracts. I love this series; it's so cool. I love the hiding in plain sight by impersonating other people, and I love how each mission is like an intricate puzzle with a very simple solution just there for discovery. You're free to go balls-out and kill every motherfucker in the level, of course, and that's good to work out some frustration issues from time to time, but the real joy is in observation of the AI, realizing that this faction of people have access to this part of the level, and that your target tends to wander from A to B to C and back in this pattern, etc.
And of course, FFT is legendarily good, and the new translation only makes it better. I've yet to run across any serious slowdown on the PSP version, either. Maybe having a PSP-3000 helps to alleviate that or something.
Unfortunately I'm deep in a couple more that I only recently began, FFT:WotL and Hitman: Blood Money. I'm going to be a while finishing those, too. I should really pop back to Bayonetta and polish her off before CV hits. That only makes sense.
It's awesome to be playing another Hitman game. It's been about 4 years since I played about halfway into Contracts. I love this series; it's so cool. I love the hiding in plain sight by impersonating other people, and I love how each mission is like an intricate puzzle with a very simple solution just there for discovery. You're free to go balls-out and kill every motherfucker in the level, of course, and that's good to work out some frustration issues from time to time, but the real joy is in observation of the AI, realizing that this faction of people have access to this part of the level, and that your target tends to wander from A to B to C and back in this pattern, etc.
And of course, FFT is legendarily good, and the new translation only makes it better. I've yet to run across any serious slowdown on the PSP version, either. Maybe having a PSP-3000 helps to alleviate that or something.
Thursday, September 2, 2010
En Taro Adun, Executor
My life for Aiur! For Adun! I have returned. I have returned. I have returned. My life for Aiur! For Adun! I have returned.
Yes, I have been playing a lot of Starcraft recently. I beat it, actually, finally finishing off the game with the Protoss campaign. Each race's campaign was 10 missions, and if I had to guess, each took somewhere around 12-15 hours to beat, it not more, counting all of the failed strategic gambits and false starts and reloads. Thus, I've been counting each campaign as a separate game. I did the same with Oblivion's guild quest lines, and will split other games into halves as it suits me, perhaps Super Mario Galaxy will count again if I go and collect all the stars, or Peace Walker if I can ever finish all of the missions it has to offer.
I've enjoyed Starcraft, but have yet to get fully comfortable playing it. Each campaign would probably need to be twice as long for comfort to set in, and what do you know, I have the Brood War expansion waiting, which features an additional campaign for each race, and a few new units, too, from what I gather. By the time I'm done with that and the SC2 campaign(s), I should be ready to try multi-player. At this pace, it'll be at least a year before I get there, though.
As far as strategy goes, I want to finish Dawn of War II next, and then I've got that game's first expansion, Company of Heroes complete and Dawn of War I complete to play, as well as the aforementioned Brood War, and I'll want to pick up Warcraft III at some point, too, since I don't own it, yet. That's not to mention turn based or or 4X or SRPG or DOTA type games!
It's been a few weeks since I've written up a post about what I've been playing, but the list is fairly small. In addition to finishing off Starcraft, I picked up Bayonetta, and have been enjoying that some, though I'm still not very far in. The last week or so has been almost all Starcraft, though I've been trying to get back into The Witcher, an effort which was put off by a failed GPU fan. Dell replaced my card, though, and so that will be back on just as soon as I get back from my trip this weekend for Labor Day. While out of town I'll be playing FFT: War of the Lions, which I've also put a few hours into over the last couple of weeks. Both that and Bayonetta I only have dabbled in (though I'm an old hand at FFT on PSX), but both are looking very good, and I'll have more to say on those later.
The game plan now (and it's always subject to change) though is to focus on Bayonetta, The Witcher, and DoW II once I get back, and to play more FFT and MGS PW while I'm gone.
I've also been reading recently--my first venture into the Warhammer 40K universe, a book called Eisenhorn by Dan Abnett. It's almost a noir detective story, only set in the far flung future and strung out across the galaxy over centuries, chronicling the lengths one Imperial Inquisitor will go to in service of the God Emperor. It's very good. Very, surprisingly, good. I was expecting a level of quality along the lines of books emblazoned with Dragonlance or Halo or Mass Effect logos, but it puts them to shame. I would recommend it to anyone interested in sci-fi, especially anyone who likes Dune or anything with more fantastic elements. Eisenhorn is an omnibus of three novels Xenos, Malleus, and Hereticus, with two interleaving short stories, the first of which, Missing In Action, I thought was especially good.
Yes, I have been playing a lot of Starcraft recently. I beat it, actually, finally finishing off the game with the Protoss campaign. Each race's campaign was 10 missions, and if I had to guess, each took somewhere around 12-15 hours to beat, it not more, counting all of the failed strategic gambits and false starts and reloads. Thus, I've been counting each campaign as a separate game. I did the same with Oblivion's guild quest lines, and will split other games into halves as it suits me, perhaps Super Mario Galaxy will count again if I go and collect all the stars, or Peace Walker if I can ever finish all of the missions it has to offer.
I've enjoyed Starcraft, but have yet to get fully comfortable playing it. Each campaign would probably need to be twice as long for comfort to set in, and what do you know, I have the Brood War expansion waiting, which features an additional campaign for each race, and a few new units, too, from what I gather. By the time I'm done with that and the SC2 campaign(s), I should be ready to try multi-player. At this pace, it'll be at least a year before I get there, though.
As far as strategy goes, I want to finish Dawn of War II next, and then I've got that game's first expansion, Company of Heroes complete and Dawn of War I complete to play, as well as the aforementioned Brood War, and I'll want to pick up Warcraft III at some point, too, since I don't own it, yet. That's not to mention turn based or or 4X or SRPG or DOTA type games!
It's been a few weeks since I've written up a post about what I've been playing, but the list is fairly small. In addition to finishing off Starcraft, I picked up Bayonetta, and have been enjoying that some, though I'm still not very far in. The last week or so has been almost all Starcraft, though I've been trying to get back into The Witcher, an effort which was put off by a failed GPU fan. Dell replaced my card, though, and so that will be back on just as soon as I get back from my trip this weekend for Labor Day. While out of town I'll be playing FFT: War of the Lions, which I've also put a few hours into over the last couple of weeks. Both that and Bayonetta I only have dabbled in (though I'm an old hand at FFT on PSX), but both are looking very good, and I'll have more to say on those later.
The game plan now (and it's always subject to change) though is to focus on Bayonetta, The Witcher, and DoW II once I get back, and to play more FFT and MGS PW while I'm gone.
I've also been reading recently--my first venture into the Warhammer 40K universe, a book called Eisenhorn by Dan Abnett. It's almost a noir detective story, only set in the far flung future and strung out across the galaxy over centuries, chronicling the lengths one Imperial Inquisitor will go to in service of the God Emperor. It's very good. Very, surprisingly, good. I was expecting a level of quality along the lines of books emblazoned with Dragonlance or Halo or Mass Effect logos, but it puts them to shame. I would recommend it to anyone interested in sci-fi, especially anyone who likes Dune or anything with more fantastic elements. Eisenhorn is an omnibus of three novels Xenos, Malleus, and Hereticus, with two interleaving short stories, the first of which, Missing In Action, I thought was especially good.
Thursday, August 26, 2010
Most Anticipated Games This Fall
It's getting to be that time of year, and so I thought I'd take stock of what's coming out this Fall, and what I'm most interested in picking up. This will be a short list, as I've got to finish 2 games for every new one I purchase, but here goes, in no particular order:
Civilization V
Castlevania: Lords Of Shadow
Halo: Reach
Fallout: New Vegas
Vanquish
Call Of Duty: Black Ops
WoW: Cataclysm
I lied; that's more or less in order of how likely I am to purchase them, in retrospect. However, I've still got a small list of games that have already come out this year that I haven't gotten yet, including Red Dead Redemption, Starcraft II, and perhaps Metroid: Other M.
Civ V and Castlevania are as close as I'm getting to sure things here, but all games are shoo-ins within the next 12 months, I figure. I'm kind of torn about Fallout. I have all of the rest, but haven't even begun them yet! I wonder if I should just forget about playing them in order and just jump into the newest; there is no chronological overarching plot as far as I'm aware. I'm not really even excited for Reach, but it's quality is more or less guaranteed, and I am curious about it more than anything. Vanquish just looks slick, Black Ops' multiplayer on PC may attract me, and I am definitely curious to see what Azeroth will look like post-Cataclysm. I still need to cap out my Warrior, too...
Civilization V
Castlevania: Lords Of Shadow
Halo: Reach
Fallout: New Vegas
Vanquish
Call Of Duty: Black Ops
WoW: Cataclysm
I lied; that's more or less in order of how likely I am to purchase them, in retrospect. However, I've still got a small list of games that have already come out this year that I haven't gotten yet, including Red Dead Redemption, Starcraft II, and perhaps Metroid: Other M.
Civ V and Castlevania are as close as I'm getting to sure things here, but all games are shoo-ins within the next 12 months, I figure. I'm kind of torn about Fallout. I have all of the rest, but haven't even begun them yet! I wonder if I should just forget about playing them in order and just jump into the newest; there is no chronological overarching plot as far as I'm aware. I'm not really even excited for Reach, but it's quality is more or less guaranteed, and I am curious about it more than anything. Vanquish just looks slick, Black Ops' multiplayer on PC may attract me, and I am definitely curious to see what Azeroth will look like post-Cataclysm. I still need to cap out my Warrior, too...
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