Away for a bit

So, going to take a break for awhile.  I want to catch up on alot of games I have lying around, work on some personal stuff, etc etc.  I'll be back eventually though.

Missing posts

I realized with stuff going on and my general level of being tired, I've missed a few posts here.  Expect some corrections and extra posts up to address this issue.

Dominion

So a few days ago a friend of mine brought over a card game that he bought called Dominion Main Page .  The basis of the card game is that your a lord trying to acquire more victory points then your opponents.  You do this buy buying parcels of land or acquiring cards that grant victory points.  Turns play out in a very simple fashion.  At the start of your turn you have 5 cards in your hand.  You can play one action and buy one card with money. Once your turn is done, you discard your deck and draw 5 more cards.  When your deck is empty, you shuffle your discard pile back into your library.  You keep playing until three piles of cards have been exhausted on the board, and then count up the total victory points everyone has.  What makes this game unique is there are around 50 different types of cards beyond money and land, and you only get to select 10 to play with.  So depending on the combination of cards you play with, the general flow of the game will change.  The first time we played, the cards gave extra points for the more cards you had in your deck, so we all focused on trying to acquire as many cards as we could.  The second time we played, the cards were more focused towards either making our opponent discard cards from their decks, or on acquiring more cards from the field.  So depending on the combination of cards you collect, the mechanics and strategies you employ will vary widely.  I'd highly recommend this game to anyone who is interested in a different kind of card game.

Games I'm playing right now

Working on a few games right now, so just thought I'd list them out.

1. Dragon age origins
2. Castlevania lord of shadows
3. Fallout New Vegas
4. Fable 3
5. Vindictus
   That's about it for now.

Scaling difficulty

Something I've noticed in a few games I play (Oblivion, Dragon age and somewhat as well Fable 3) is the concept of scaling difficulty.  This is different from choosing what the level of difficulty is at the start of the game.  What this entails is, as the game progresses and your characters increase in level, power and skills, the enemies around you scale up with you.  What this means in practical terms is that your characters never tend to be too overpowered for an area.  The enemies will scale up in terms of equipment, damage, armor etc.  This makes it so that your always being challenged by certain groups of enemies.  I personally find this to be somewhat of an annoying mechanic, as it tends to make it so after spending time finding new equipment, leveling and doing things of that nature, I walk into the next room and the guardsman are now wielding +5 swords of player slaying.  This is a mechanic that I have personally not seen that much in games except for the few I mentioned, so if anyone knows of any others they have seen, feel free to let me know.

Downloadable content

Downloadable content (also known as DLC) is a somewhat new feature to find in many games these days.  It's much more common on console games for the xbox and ps3, but is also found on some pc games.  What is is is new content for a game that is downloaded after the fact, more often for an extra cost.  This can include new maps to play with online, new items for a character to use, or even more levels.  Some good examples of this are Mass effect 2 and Dragon age, both by Bioware.  Each game had multiple releases  of new content that you could purchase.  This content ranges from some new weapons, to new missions and even advancing the story beyond what the original game offered.  Some people find this to be a greedy opportunity by some game companies to cash in on the popularity of the franchise.  They claim that the developers could have made all of this available in the game from the start, and that they should not have to pay for it.  Others see it as small expansion sets for games and are willing to shell out the extra money that is required to continue the adventures of their favorite characters, or to have a small edge in a battle coming up.

A recently new part of DLC has risen recently, and that is the advent of exclusive content for buying a game.  A good example of this is Fable 3, and also Dragon Age again.  Depending on which store you bought the game from, you got different in game items, such as different armors, weapons or even small trinkets.  This has led to some game stores (most noticeably Gamestop) offering exclusive items for pre-ordering the games from their store.  This has angered a lot of players, as the items being offered end up being as good, or even better then anything else you can acquire in the game.  This forces players to get the games at gamestop, so that they can remain competitive and not fall behind their friends in terms of power in games.  Personally I don't mind a bit of DLC for games if the original game was robust enough to stand on it's own merits.  If I can play a game from start to finish and feel satisfied, then offering me new content to play through will only make the experience better.  If a game was not that enthralling to begin with, offering me new levels for more money is not going to make me want to play it anymore.   

Halloween is over, back to other games

So, the Halloween season is over, so it's back to other games.  I've been playing Fable 3 some over the past few days, and feel ready to give it a review.  So, Fable 3 is a continuation of the previous Fables, where you control a hero and are set on some grand task (in this case overthrowing your evil tyrant brother and becoming a good king or a tyrant yourself.)  It continues the whittling down of the game screen, to the point now where almost nothing shows up on the screen, not even a health bar.  So one of the problems that you run into initially is that you are constantly going back to the Sanctuary (your basically in game menu) where you can change weapons, costumes etc.  The only indication that your getting decently hurt in the game is that the option to use a health potion shows up.  Combat is the same, one button per attack, so one for ranged, one for melee and one for magic.  You can roll around to avoid damage, and it avoids everything that comes at you.  So by just constantly rolling around, you'll never get hurt.  Overall, this game is not too bad.  The reduction of menus and the seemingly desire to have the player to do a bit of everything but not too in depth into anything makes it a bit annoying.  It's gone down I think from the previous Fables, as it keeps reducing the amount of things you can do.

So beyond that, going to do a review of Gamma worlds this Thursday, and working on some longer posts to make up some space this blog has been seriously lacking as of late.

Games within games.

Sorry for the missed post on Thursday, personal issues arose that made it so if I had posted, it would have been so angst ridden and poorly thought out that I would have deserved to be slapped about the face with a trout.  So back to the topic at hand.  Games within games.  Sometimes called mini games, other times side adventures, and even other times not given a specific name, just something else to do.  These will pop up in various kinds of games, such as RPGs, strategy games, platformers and even some adventure games.  They usually involve performing some tasks that is different from the standard style of the game.  Examples of this include the mini defense game in ff7, the racing game in Beyond Good and Evil and the shooters in Dead Space.

The purpose of these games usually depends upon the context of it within the game.  For Beyond Good and Evil, it's used to collect extra items, and sometimes to advance the plot slightly.  For Final Fantasy it's used to illustrate a story part of the game where a city is under attack.  The actual reasons range from these to just something extra the developers of the game wanted to put into it, to either test the waters for new ideas or even because they wanted to present the player with a different kind of experience then they would normally get within the game.  Sometimes these side games will be quite helpful and give the player new rewards or items.  Sometimes they will just be there as time sinks within a game.

Short post tonight, as tonight is the start of The walking Dead TV show on AMC, and we're still cleaning up a bit after the Halloween party we threw.  Going to be doing a double post this week to make up for some lost space etc, and thinking of trying out a few new ideas.

Short post tonight

Playing Fable 3 right now, more to come later.

Missing post, new games

So, as to the reason there was not post on Thursday, I was sick, like stay home from work, destroying bathrooms sicks.  So no post from me, as it would have most likely consisted of me rambling about bunnies and how they were plotting to take over the Russian throne.  So, onto some new games, a bit of blizzcon and other such things.

So Fallout New Vegas.  Newest game in the fallout series, made by Bethesda software creators of games such as Oblivion etc etc.  So some people have called it Fallout 3 with just an expansion pack.  So after giving it a few hours, some general cursing at my lack of good choices that I've been doing for some of the game options, I have to say, really people?  It's using the Fallout 3 engine yes, I am aware.  It's also a completely new story, different setting in the world, some new abilities, and it also now has included challenges from Borderlands, and the ability to create ammo rounds now.  So I'm not really seeing the problem people have with this.  So far it's been fun, I'm going to actually beat this one, unlike the last Fallout where my disc has disappeared into the great void, thus rendering my unable to actually beat the game unless I either find it, or buy myself a new copy.  More then likely going with the copy as I can pick up some other games along the way.  So my general consensus about the game with a quick review is, if you liked Fallout 3, pick up this game.  If you did not like Fallout 3, then your more then likely not going to enjoy this game as well.

Blizzcon was this weekend, and the geek that I am, I got the live stream and watched it in my house.  I have to give it a resounding, ehhh.   Nothing really new and exciting came out of it, and honestly considering I don't play World of Warcraft anymore, the special pets and such don't really entice me all that much.  The starcraft 2 tournaments though were fun to watch.  Makes me want to get back into the game, and really get destroyed by some people (not that good at it, as some of you may be guessing from my comments about my prowess with the game).  But at the end of the day, if your having fun right?

So what's on the Horizon for this here space of the net?  Well, I'm going to continue talking about some mechanics, might ask a few friends of mine to put up some writing of their own to spice things up a bit, I'll have a review of Gamma Worlds for Tuesday, and that's about it, as I'm still a bit under the weather.

Catch you all later.

A small break from survival horror

So I'm taking a small break from survival horror for the time.  Just picked up Fallout New Vegas and started playing it with my friend Dyslexic penguin.  So I'll be putting up a review of that in a few days, more then likely this weekend so I have some time to fully absorb the new game.  So today I'll be talking about the pay models used in most online games.  The three main models you'll see in most online games are either a free model, micro payments or full subscription based.

Free based games mostly tend to be small, web based online games, or some pc based MMO's use this model as well (I'll go into greater detail on those as well soon).  Most free games are free, with either micro payments put in, or advertising features built in to generate revenue for the game.  Some even have subscription based services, offering the players more options if they choose to pay a monthly fee.   Subscription based games are actually the most common model of online games you'll find.  How these work is you agree to pay a standard monthly fee, and you get access to all of the content of the game.  So all of the standard updates ,areas, services and features are included in this.  Most companies will give you a small discount if you agree to pay multiple months in advance.

Micro payments are actually the newest version of transactions you'll find in alot of online games.  How these usually work is your given full normal access to the game, and you can do all of the usual things.  How micro payments come in is that you can pay some money to either get a special in game currency or access to a special store.  The special currency will allow you to buy in game items such as weapons, armor, abilities or skills.  Some games make it so you don't need to use micro transactions to acquire everything in the game, if you have the time to spend getting it yourself.  In these games micro payments let people even out the playing fields somewhat.  Others give the micro payers special privileges, special areas only they can go into or even special classes they get access too.

Some subscription based games have even gone the route of micro payments.  Turbine is a very good example, taking both of their games (Lord of the rings online and Dungeons and dragons online) and turning them into micro payment based.  You buy turbine points from their online store and use them to purchase expansions, new items, special offer and other things from the game.  So you actually get to pick and choose what items you want.  If three new classes come out and you only want one, just grab the one you want.  This makes it a bit cheaper on the average gamer.

The last type of payment is much more obscure, but it's called a life time payment.  It's usually a large sum of money (a few hundred dollars upfront) but it guarantees you access to the game as long as it lasts.  Turbine did it with Lord of the rings, Champions online had it, and so did the ill fated game Hellgate London.

I hope you enjoyed this look into various payment methods of online games.  If I've missed one, please let me know.        

Survival horror games done wrong

So, last post I went in-depth into a game I thought was very well done, Dead Space.  Now to talk about I game i just could not get into, Resident Evil 5 (also known as RE5).  Resident Evil 5 is a continuation of the changes they made in RE4.  These include a certain graphic style, a move away from the previous games enemies of zombies created by the T virus, and also the umbrella corp not having as large a role, if at all in these games.  In this game your playing as Chris Redfield , with a female partner (Sheva Alomar).  Your sent to an African area to handle what may be a biohazard outbreak (the story is that since Umbrella went under, their trade secrets and bio-weapon instruments have been spread all over the world, so now your part of an elite group sent in to suppress outbreaks).  So your dropped into this location, and so begins the game.


So lets start with what's wrong with this game.  First off, it's not that scary.  You'll get the occasional surprise moment when something jumps out at you, but otherwise I've yet to be really scared by this game.  So let's talk supplies, enemies and controls.  First off controls.  The firing and combat just seems clunky and awkward to me.  Your mellee attack, the same stupid knife they've given you in every game so far still does next to nothing.  They added in a few situational moves you can use, such as roundhouse kicks and curb stomping, but these don't seem to actually do much to enemies.  I've curb stomped a basic zombie three times and he still kept coming up at me.  Also ammo is still at a premium in this game.  It seems like I always run out of ammo just as I get to the next area, so I'm also hunting and pecking for ammo to find for myself.  I also ended up buying myself some armor from the shop, and was unsure if I was actually using it.  I couldn't equip it, and it was taking up space in my inventory, so I'm guessing it was being used.  The screen to split things with your ally also seems a bit clunky.  Also, shooting just seems stiff.  Also they like ding the BS move RE4 did, where head shotting some guys makes huge insects come out and keep on fighting.  So your usual method of hunting down enemies just doesn't seem to work that well.


So controls are a bit wonky, it's story is well, not the best thing we've ever seen.  So we come to graphics, sounds and world.  Now, the graphics are definitely nice, but that's where they end.  It doesn't seem spooky or dramatic or anything at all to me.  The sounds are generic, usual shuffling noises and people talking.  Most of them are not talking in english though so it's not that scary to me.  Also the enemies seem very weird in the amount of damage they do.  A guy hitting me with an ax does less damage then a dog jumping at me.  Combine this with the lack of inventory space, ammo coming up for guns I do not currently have, the bad controls and everything else, and I really can't recommend this game.  I'm still playing it some more though, since it's a game I've yet to fully beat.  


So what's coming up soon.  I've got fallout Las vegas tuesday(my copy of fallout 3 is missing, of course) and Fable 3 next week.  Plus Blizcon is this weekend so I'm going to attempt to do some live blogging of it.  I'm going to mostly focus on some starcraft 2 tournaments, some of the panels and Diablo 3 panels.  Plus I'm hoping they announce their new MMO soon.  So that's it for me for now.  


         

No post tonight

Sorry folks, no post tonight.  Personal issues etc.  Will plan a large update this weekend to make up for it though.

Dead space, a game done well.

So, with Dead Space 2 coming around the corner and Halloween coming around the corner, I figured it's time to take a look at what I consider to be a very good example of a survival horror game.  Now, this game has been out for quite a while, so I'm going to go into the story a bit to help explain what makes this game well done.

--SPOILERS---


So the game takes place in deep space.  Your answering a distress call from a planet cracker ship, and your playing the lucky engineer who is going along for the ride.  Your girlfriend is also on the ship, so that's the hook they use to draw your character onto the ship.  As soon as you land, your hit by how empty the ship is, and how in eerie it all looks.  No one is around, and everything is abandoned.  Not so much that it's been a long time, more like just recently everyone tried to run away and never quite got there.  So the usual shenanigans go down.  The monsters pop up, chase you away from everyone else, and you spend the rest of the game chasing your girlfriend, following orders of people as you repair just about everything there is on the ship, and dealing with all of the weird monsters out to carve you into tiny pieces.

So, as I had talked about earlier, a few things make a good survival horror game.  We've established the first part, atmosphere.  The ship is very well made, and really does make you think people could live on it.  It's believable in size and scope, and the furnishings do a good job of conveying just how swiftly this all seemed to go down.  You can see the remains of people lying about, and even run into a few living people, all insane and scared by what has happened on the ship.  The monsters themselves help to bring forth this atmosphere.  They are twisted shapes of dead people, turned into killing machines by a mysterious alien technology/biological thing that seeks to establish more of itself.  Since it can only infect dead humans, it seeks to kill more of them.

Sound is something this game does very well as well.  The music is light and fits the atmosphere, and the general sounds you hear are either sounds from the machines around you, creature skittering about, or what works even best, dead silence in space.  The only sounds you can hear are from inside of your suit, and nothing else even makes a peep.  This is such a small thing to overlook in some games, but done well fits in so properly, whenever I see a game that does not do this I end up shaking my head.  The voice acting is done well, emotions pouring out of the characters.  Your character does not ever talk, but that's forgivable.

And finally, the controls.  Now, I've been trying to not try to write angry rants or anything in this blog, as it's not what I am trying to portray.  But controls, this is one of the things that will drive me mental in a game.  We've had games regularly coming out since 1985 (The nintendo system, atari before that as well) and yet, I still see games coming out with just poor, sloppy control schemes.  I should be able to move while I shoot, or at least dodge.  Item selection should be simple, maps brought up nicely, and status screens easy to read.  So many games just don't get his (I'm looking at you Resident Evil 5, yes you).  Dead Rising gives you an easy to follow status/item menu, combat controls that work freely and well, a decent physical attack that actually makes sense to use.  Your also not invincible, and can easily run out of ammo if your not careful with how you use it.  The ammo is a nice touch as well, you only get ammo for weapons your using.  So if you have a mine layer, and never use it, you never get ammo for it.  This makes inventory management a bit easier to manage, and makes sense from a game play perspective.  This makes both combat and exploring the station alot easier to handle.

This is one of the few game I own that I've actually played through multiple times, not just for achievements but also because the game was just fun to play again.  This game is honestly a very good example of how to do a survival horror game right.  Next time we're going to look at two games that I think belong in the bottom of the barrel in terms of survival horror games.

Fatigue/energy levels in games

So, this is a bit out of the theme of survival horror games I've been doing this month, but since it's been a very long day for me and mine, I got to thinking of energy levels/fatigue in various games.  These range in variety from game to game.  Some games give you an energy bar, which depletes as you perform various actions within the game, thus limiting your abilities.  Others give you a finite amount of uses of various powers, or even recharging meters.  Still others let you build up meters, slowly saving up power to unleash it at a later date upon your foes.

One thing I hear from some people is why these even exist in the games they show up in.  The usual answer is to limit the players power.  Alot of times, a character will have some moves, that if they could use unlimited numbers of times, they would easily defeat every single opponent they run into.  The developers/designers still want players to have these moves, but they want people to think about how to use them.  So you don't use it on the hordes of little things running around, but instead save it for that big monster coming down the path a bit.  Other games use it to give the players a fight or flight mechanism.  They may not want you to be able to defeat every enemy coming down your path, so they limit what you can use so you have to pick and choose your fights.

A third reason is to increase the difficulty of the game.  Some games will make it their mission to frustrate players, and limiting what they can and cannot do is another way to frustrate players.  Of course, this is rarer and rarer these days.

So because of the fact that I am somewhat exhausted right now, this post is going to be a tiny bit shorter then some others.  So as we get closer to Halloween, I'm going to be continuing my reviews of some survival horror games I enjoy, as long as some that I just plain wonder about.  I'm also going to be doing some semi live blogging of Blizzcon this year, so if your interested in that, feel free to hop on by and check it out.

Insane, or Perfectly Scripted

And Today, a very special post from Guest Blogger Vales, I hope to live up to the Saga Mechanic name.

To carry with the October theme of dark and spooky, I’m going to tackle the idea of madness in gaming. There are only a few games than directly handle madness or sanity within the game, although as an avid tabletop gamer, I love adding Sanity as a floating stat to my players character sheets. In the video game world there are two games that come to mind which use sanity as a meter of strength or closeness to the truth. The first is Eternal Darkness. In ED you got quick flashes of the truth or a freakish horrific incident (or sometimes just the screen going black with the no video signal blink for 10 seconds), and it really screwed with the character, let alone the player holding the controller. The first time I saw the no video trick, I was honestly taken. I tried to figure out what happened, because it just cut that scene and I wanted the next moment. Bastards got me good. The next game is a bit newer, Amnesia: The Dark Descent. This game is a bit more touchy with your characters sanity, as for you sanity equals health bar, and just like anyone going over the edge, you’re never really sure when you’ve lost it completely. No on-screen indication always makes it a bit more intense.

But I mentioned sanity in tabletop gaming, and that’s where I understand it best. There is nothing quite like have your players gather up to discuss their plans on how to attack the necromancer’s stronghold and because one character has a low enough sanity, I make some quiet d20 rolls behind the scenes and pass him a perception note. For all he knows, he’s picked up on someone spying on them. He hears someone in the hall, then gets the eerie feeling that he’s being watched. I get to watch it all unfold from across the table. The one perception character laments his “terrible roll” I must have made for him, and demands to make his own roll. Others stat trying to put out spying counter-measures, magic spells, mechanical locks, anything. I watch the mild panic settle on my players. After ten minutes, it goes away, the feeling of being watched, they move on - but they wonder.

Sanity is not just a health bar for your mental abilities and faculties. It’s your paranoia meter, it’s your hidden fear triggers, and if you play it right, as a developer (damn you ED) you can evoke a huge range of emotions.

Got any other times you’ve seen Sanity come up? Or remember a time you got had in a tabletop game because you didn’t know everything going on? (Any game of Paranoia done well does this.) Post a comment, I’ll be back here to respond to your thoughts.

Fear, a survival horror look

No, not the game Fear.  Fear from the game your playing itself.  We've all felt some kind of emotion playing a game.  Frustration when you get to a particularly annoying boss or puzzle.  Joy when you finish off that boss, or even anger or sorrow at seeing someone you've grown close to in a game die or move on.  Few games though, can invoke the fear, anxiety and sanity breaking madness of a good survival horror game.  Wether it's the fear from the unknown in the game causing the player to make a misstep, or making them look over their shoulder so much they fail to notice the danger right in front of them.  Since the original Resident Evil (and before it clocktower, yes I've been doing my homework) the survival horror genre has been attempting to scare, and make extremely anxious, it's player base.

This mechanic of fear is an interesting one.  I touched on it briefly in my last post, and will expand upon it a bit here as well.  Everyone experiences the fear in these games a bit differently.  I recall my most frightful experience thus far has been playing Silent Hill 2, alone in the dark during college.  With no lights on and by myself in the middle of a dorm room, nothing so far has given me that level of terror, and it actually made me play the game better then before.  I was paying more attention to things and straining to hear if anything was coming around the corner.  Other people become affected and become worse at a game.  They may lose focus and try to find that far-away tell tale noise, only to miss the giant monster coming from in front of them.  Other people cannot take the fright of the games and instead decide to walk away, never playing the games again.

This post is going to be cut a bit short, as it's a bit late for me right now.  I may need to skip a day or two of posts due to some real life issues going on right now, but I'll attempt to make them up as I go.

Survival Horror, what scares me

So survival horror, one of my favorite genres.  My all time favorite is still RPGs(and MMORPGs as well, but i'll get to that in a bit).  So what exactly makes a game, survival horror.  Well, we could do some analysis of the words, get out their meaning etc etc, but why do that?  Instead we're going to look at some of the games in the genre, their common themes and why some seem to be more popular then others.  So let's start with two classics, Silent Hill and Resident Evil.

Resident evil is a zombie survival horror game that focuses on an evil corporation that creates a new type of bio-weapon that turns people into zombies, hunters and other weird creatures.  This is more of a semi natural survival horror, as it attempts to explain what is going on by using a real world thing (virus, mutations and in the later games some kind of weird, insect thing I'm not 100% sure on that)  In this style of the genre, your usually trained in some kind of military or special combat (police officer etc) and thus are able to use various weapons.  The survival horror part comes from the lack of supplies scattered around and the feeling that your all alone, usually in a vast city or similar environment.  The game tends to be scary of the in your face kind, things jumping out of windows or randomly showing.  The music and general sounds do help a little bit, but overall I don't rate these games as very good examples of the genre.  Their still good games (except RE5, why oh why do my legs disappear when I pull out a gun).

So, onto Silent Hill.  This game does have some general jump out at you moments, but tends to focus more on the supernatural aspect of survival horror.  Your in a town, covered by fog.  Your all alone except for occasionally running into people who for all intensive purposes are kind of crazy.  The creatures you meet are also twisted, somewhat human in shape but always horribly transformed into something so obviously not human but human enough to make you cringe.  your also never really given a good answer of what is going on and what these creatures are.  One game alludes them all to being people and your just seeing them as monsters, one suggest they are creatures from a young girls twisted mind, and another never even gives them an explanation.  The terror in this game comes less from random events and more from your surroundings.  The landscape is foggy, worn down and flickers between somewhat normal and a dark, twisted version of itself.  The sound and atmosphere also make this game.  You hear things twitch and shudder around you, horrible sounds of huge metal fans or even random words float around you.  For me personally this kind of game is what truly defines the genre.  Your character is really just a normal person stuck in this horrific place, with only their regular skills, wits and sometimes no weapons to get themselves out of the situation.

Now, these two series of game are of course not the entire genre in of themselves.  We have the fatal frame series, the clocktower series (one i've been meaning to explore some more as time permits) and even the dead space series (which for some reason intrigues me to no end, one of the few newer games I've played through multiple times).  These games also tend to have some kind of otherworldly horror involved in them, sometimes set in the future or in a very small area to further heighten the tension.  At the end of the day, that is what survival horror, I believe is trying to accomplish.  It's trying to build tension and fear.  You don't feel like the all powerful god of destruction when playing these games.  You feel like an average person trying to make it out alive and hope what is left of your sanity is enough to make it to the grocery store without falling over twitching in some random puddle.

This is just the first Halloween themed post coming up.  I'm going to be reviewing some survival horror games as time permits, go a little more in depth into the genre and also talk about online play in games and how it has affected different genres.

Dead rising 2, a look at survival horror and upcoming schedule

Evening folks.  I finally got my hands on a copy of Dead rising 2 (after an adventure getting to the Gamestop) and have given it a few hours of my time.  So far I have to say, it's like the first one, with some new weapons, no camera to take photos, and beyond that I have not noticed anything else much in the way of differences (the zombies do look different, so I'll give them that)  I'll be giving it an in-depth look, as we're very close to the month of October, and as a huge fan of survival horror games, I'm going to be talking about the genre as a whole, some of my favorite, and least favorite games in it, and how things pan out in them.  Stay tuned.

Walls, barriers, obstacles and what's keeping you from the treasure.

    Take a look at almost any game you find.  The dank, dungeon walls in D&D that the party follows and wish they could bust through to get into that next room.  The giant immobile objects in a doorway preventing your party from accessing the latest wing of a room.  That ledge that is a bit too high to climb up, or that wall that you always seem to clip through and get shot at.  We've all run into these kind of things in our various travels throughout the various gaming worlds.  They can range from merely laying out how a dungeon or area should look, to being obstacles we need to overcome, to artificial barriers constructed by other players to keep others out of a certain area.
    Every game has barriers like this in them.  Think of any time you've tried to go into an area that looks like you should be able to get to it by some means, and watch as your unable to arrive at your destination.  Sometimes these are commonly seen and even expected.  In games such as Diablo 2, Counter Strike and even some strategy games like starcraft, walls are placed in certain area to direct a player in a certain direction, to provide cover from enemy fire, or to provide another layer of strategy that the player can use or have use against them.  They're expected in almost every game we play.  We generally assume that the mountains off in the distance are inaccessible, or that we cannot go around the fearsome beast in the doorway and instead have to either defeat it or trick it into leaving it's position.  Developers use walls to help players make better sense of an area, to mayhaps give warning of dangers that lie nearby, or even to slow down progression.  This is not to say obstacles and walls have not been abused.
    An old story from the days of Everquest talks about guilds using ogres to block doorways.  The game had collision detection, which means that when two players met, they could not pass through one another.  So guilds would have ogres, the largest character model at the time, let the guild into a room, and then stand in the doorway, barring the way for other people to enter.  This was a clever use of game mechanics that used the in-game detection of other players to prevent other players from accessing areas in the game.  This of course was a use the developers did not intend for, and thus we can see that barriers in this case were used as a barring mechanism instead of their intended goal, which was to prevent overcrowding of areas.
    Of course, players have also used it not just against other players, but against monsters in dungeons as well.  Stories abound of players using wall clipping to attack monsters but be unable to be attacked by them, or even to kite them around an area so that by the time the monsters reach them they are dead.  The players are using the walls, obstacles and barriers around them to manipulate the monsters to their advantage.  Of course, sometimes the terrain is used against the players.  Having certain bosses be invulnerable on certain sides, or even have to be maneuvered off of ledges or into certain areas where the terrain hurts them.
    We can all remember those times when walls frustrated us to no end.  We knew something was on the other side, but were unable to actually get to them or could not find our way around the path presented to us.  We wanted to check out that weird building by the end of the game road, only to run into an invisible wall or clip through into some weird pocket dimension we were never meant to get into.  As long as we have games, we are going to be stuck, with walls.

New games coming out

So, been trying to catch up on some games lately.  Picked up Deathspank, thongs of virtue over the weekend.  Think of it as a cross between diablo and monkey island style humour.  The first game was very well done, and the second game has kept the humour level going, but every enemy so far seems to be ranged, and you lack any decent infinite ammo ranged weapons like the first game, so it's taken a little bit of adjusting between the two games.  Looking forward to Dead Rising 2 this week, along with some more games of Civ V and starcraft 2.  So of course, time for some mechanics, today we are looking at travel.

So why travel you ask?  Almost every game has some form of travel in it.  From sonic racing across the fields, to flight paths in world of warcraft, to hopping between pipes and gaps in mario brothers, traveling is in every game, and every game does it differently.  Now, most games use travel as just a means, a way to get from point A to point B, without much fanfare.  We do have a whole genre of games devoted just to traveling, racing games (of which I fully admit I have not played much of so I cannot comment much on them right now).  Of course, some games also use travel as a small mini game, like Kingdom hearts in the gummi ship.  It's a way to travel between worlds, and also a small space mini shooter.  Travel can also occupy most of the aspects of a game, such as exploration.  Adventure games reward traveling from place to place by unlocking new items you can use, while some online games grant new forms of travel across vast stretches of land, reducing the amount of time needed to get there.

So,  some games actually seek to cut down on travel for players, either shuffling them from place to place without much input from the user (rail road shooters or even some new rpgs do this) and some games will actually discourage travel outside of certain areas, by putting vastly powerful monsters in your way.  So, this mechanic is kind of weird to talk about, as it's so common and spread out across so many genres that it becomes difficult to pin it down into one form or another.  I've actually had some ideas for some games tat would involve mostly travel as well, but I will save those for a later blog post.

So, with halloween coming up, I'm going to begin putting up some reviews of some survival horror games, some some more in depth looks into what makes a good survival horror games, and maybe even a gust post or two about some games.  Until next time, folks.

Card games

So, tonight we're looking at some card games.  Going to be focusing on two for right now, Flux and munchkin.  Both of them are simple to begin playing, but can be expanded upon with extra sets.  Flux is a simple game played with two basic rules.  You draw a card and play a card.  The game begins with these rules, and each player has three cards in their hands.  To win, you must complete a goal.  A goal is a card that any player can set during their turn, and any player can place a new goal onto the board.  You win goals usually by acquiring keepers.  Keepers are cards such as the cheese, or a rocket, things like that.  Now, along with goals and keepers, you have new rule cards, and actions.  Actions are performed the moment they are played by a player, and usually have the player hand cards around or draw extra cards or even swap cards with another player.  New rules change how a basic turn goes.  This can range from a simple change in the amount of cards drawn or played, or adjusting every other card, making it so if you whistle a tune you get another card, anything like that.  That is where flux aquires it's name from, the rules of the game are constantly in flux, as it were.  The game can last anywhere from a few rounds to going extremely long if enough rules keep changing constantly to make it so people cannot aquire the correct keepers to win.

The second card game, Munchkin is based on dungeons and dragons.  The term munchkin is used to denote someone who knows so much about the game, who focuses so much on getting the most loot/becoming the most powerful their almost impossible to play with.  Everyone starts the game as a level 1 human with no class (this is now required by law to state at each game, it's in the rules).  You play by traversing through a "dungeon" by turning over cards from appropiate decks, fighting monsters, and equipping treasure to increase your effective level.  The game is finished once someone reaches level 10 as their base level.  What makes this game unique is that it encourages cheating.  Equipping items your not usually able to have on you, doubling up on equipment slots, palming cards and such, all is allowed by the game rules, as long as no one catches you.  Of course, anyone at anytime can call you out on it, and if your caught cheating you have to revert back to not cheating and give up any items you should not be using, discard excess cards etc etc.  There are even special dice, cards and such from outside the game that gives you bonuses to cheating, or just even give you permanent pluses to dice rolls and other such things in the game.  So, this is just two examples of the vast amount of card games out there, and I'm hoping to write up some more soon. 

Civ 5, board games and so forth

So, started Civilization V tonight (main page).  It's a bit of a change from Civ IV.  So far, culture seems slower to acquire in terms of expanding city influence, and the barbarians also seem much more aggressive and actually have small cites now that they strike from.  They also introduced city states, which are     basically small civilizations that are not competing to win the game.  So I'll write up some more about the game as I play through some more of it.
As for board games, I've been looking at the Ravenloft board game, and a friend of mine is going to let me borrow Hero quest so I can read it over some.  Board game mechanics will be interesting to talk about, as they change from game to game, so it becomes a bit harder to categorize them and discuss them in broad terms.  Going to give it the old college try though.

Short post tonight

Between some internet troubles and lack of any ideas, plus some other stuff that is going on, not much of a post tonight.  Been looking into some new games coming out recently, and trying to wittle down my library of unbeaten games.

Game Genres

Since the days of old, from Pong to Donkey Kong to Sonic, and today, the world of video games has been split into genres of games.  The genres attempt to define a game's base elements, what it's focus is and how it seeks to present itself to the world.  The number of Genres continues to grow to this very day, and right now we are going to take a look at them.

Action - Running, gunning, fighting and seeking to make it to the end.  Action games tend to rely on weapon, lots of well, action and a lone hero facing off against overwhelming odds to save the princess, kill the bad guy, or save the world.  Examples of this include Contra and Devil May Cry.

Adventure - Adventure games tend to be somewhat puzzle solving games, where you don't win by strength or magic, but by wit and wisdom.  Collecting items, solving puzzles and outsmarting your opponents hallmark these games.  Monkey Island and Sam and Max are good examples of this genre.

Role Playing Games (RPG) - RPGs are hallmarked by the ability to permanently improve your character, by raising stats, gaining levels, new equipment and new abilities.  Most RPGs tend to have a story of some kind, involving the main character, saving the world, usually with a team of misfits or heroes to help them.  Any of the Final Fantasy series are good examples of this.

Racing - These games involve driving some kind of vehicle, trying to make it to the end of the track before anyone else.  Gran Turismo is a good example of this genre.

First Person Shooter (FPS) - This genre is marked by being a very competitive genre.  Players take the role of the main player, and it's name come from the view that players use while playing.  You see the game through the eyes of the main character.  Doom and Unreal are prime examples of this genre.

Survival Horror - One of my personal favorite genres.  This usually involves a character in a hostile environment, by themselves, outgunned and outnumbered as they have to run away and survive whatever force is after them.  Whether it be monsters from their own mind, alien horrors or flesh eating zombies, survival horror games are always a good time.  Silent Hill and Dead Space are two good examples of this genre.

Strategy - This is split into two main types.  Turn based and real time (also known as RTS).  Strategy games tend to involve the player being in command of multiple forces, and either through building towns, buildings or gathering resources, they gather more forces and engage their enemies in games of skill and wit.  Civilization and Starcraft are good examples of the two different kinds of Strategies.

Platformer - A platformer is any game where the character has to run, jump, fly, glide or somehow make their way to their destination.  These games are different from action games in that instead of an emphasis on combat, they tend to focus more on the actual travel and present obstacles in a players path to arrive at their destination.  Beyond good and Evil is a very good example of this genre.

Now, the next two are somewhat more new genres.  Turret defense and Defense of the Ancient clones.  Turret defense involves building building or training units to defend a specific location.  This is accaccomplished by defeating your opponents as they arrive, giving you more resources to defend your base.  A Defense of the Ancients (DOTA) clone is a very new genre.  It involves two or more forces controlled by the computer, constantly sending units at each other.  Each player gets control of a hero, who is more powerful then regular units, and thus able to turn the tide of the battle.  They use their heroes powers to either boost their allies, defeat large swaths of minions or kill other enemy heroes.

There are a few more genres, Multi massive online role playing games for example, we could talk about, but I think I've put down enough for one night.  So onto a few small announcements.  The schedule is still tuesday, thursday, sunday, expect the posts to go up late in the evening.  I'm planning to do a review of a few survival horror games around Halloween time, in keeping with the spirit of the season.  I'm also looking to write up a few posts about card game mechanics and a couple of board games that I enjoy.  Until next time folks.

Gaming terms, a quick rundown

As someone who travels the gaming sphere a bit, certain terms continue to pop up and remain relevant from game to game.  I'd like to go through some of those terms tonight, and basically explain what they mean, and how they are generally calculated.

DPS - Damage per second.  This is a calculation of a players damage per second.  This translates to every second of combat, a character is doing X amount of damage.  This is calculated by taking the total length of the fight in seconds and dividing the total amount of damage done by the player.

TPS - Threat per second.  This is the amount of threat a character generates per second of combat.  Calculated in the same manner as DPS, this stat is generally more appropriate to tanks and such.

HPS - Health per second.  This is a calculation of the amount a character heals over a set period of time.

HOTS - Heals over time - This is a mechanic where a heal  will hit a character, and every few seconds afterwards, will give them back some health towards their full health.

DOTS - Damage over time - This is a mechanic where an effect will hit a target, and over the course of a set amount of time, deal damage to that target based upon an in-game calculation.

This is just a quick overview, hopefully Thursdayay I will have a much more in-depth look at some mechanics.

Elemental, War of Magic review

So, finally got settled down to play some more of Elemental, and I can give a quick review of this game. For those of you who may remember it, this game strikes me as an updated version of Master of Magic. You build cities, expand their influence (like Civilization) and construct various buildings inside of them to increase production of units, money and other resources. You get hero units, which are special units that level and can learn new skills and use various weapons/armor, plus be customized to handle certain combat situations better then others.

Now, first off, I'm going to fully admit this game had, and still has me, confused about a few certain aspects of itself. I'm playing through the campaign mode, and it looks like it restricts certain aspects of the game, such as spells, research of new technologies, and claiming of crystals. Crystals grant you increases in types of damage done by certain spells, and I believe they perform other functions as well, but as of yet I am unsure as to their full usage. Construction of buildings also seems weird. The locations of cities they give you in the campaign world seem limited in their scope of size they allow you to reach. They do not give you enough food producing locations to be able to increase the total size of your cities by that much. It also took me awhile to find out how to actually cast spells, as there is no menu or button for them, you must know to click on the mana icon on your characters sheet to access your spell list.

I'd like to return to this review at a later date, as I want to give this game a fair shake.. My initial foray into the game does show some promise, but a more in-depth play through is required to really get into the meat of the game. My initial response is that it looks like it's an overall good game, it needs a bit more polish in the UI department, as the spell issue is just one of the many things I've run into (a cap on total units without any indication of such was also found by accident). So, sorry for being somewhat of a short post, but it's been a busy weekend, and the next few days may also be busy. I'll post something on Tuesday, even if it's just minor thoughts.

Another look at D&D, review and guest blogger

So last time, I went into a bit of detail about the differences between 4th Edition and 3rd/3.5 Edition of D&D.  We talked briefly about how the powers differed between the two, using the fighter as a basis.  Another big change between the two is how saving throws and stats such as Reflex work.  In 3rd/3.5 Edition, basic attacks would go against a characters AC (armor class) and things such as spells, traps, effects and the like would target a players Will, Reflex or Fortitude saving throw.  The Dungeon Master (the person running the world setting) would give the player a number, and if they could beat it by rolling the dice and adding their respective save against it. They either would negate the effect, or the effect would be lessened if they managed to roll a total equal to or higher than the DC (difficulty class) the Dungeon Master had set for them.  When dealing with AC, the DM would roll the monsters attack and if they beat the players AC, the attack would hit.  In 4th Edition, every attack hits a certain stat, be it AC or Reflex or Fortitude etc.  If the attack hits that value, then the attack will go off.  Poison attacks hit Fortitude, some ranged hit Reflex, etc.  So this means that a player has a base defense stat, and the DM has to beat it, the player does not have to roll the dice and add numbers to it.  Savings throw still exist but function differently.  An effect will hit a target; slow, poison etc, and at the end of the players turn, they roll a d20 die.  If they get a 10 or higher, the effect will end.  (Some classes get to roll twice or may get bonuses to certain rolls)  This makes combat flow smoother, and players need to worry about less numbers, which defense stat is needed to save against an effect, if it only gets halved etc or another effect goes off.

So we've talked about how powers work, a bit about combat and some basic other feature differences.  After playing with both systems for awhile, my basic conclusions are thus.  4th Edition is much more streamlined.  Numbers have been simplified enough to make combat and skills easier to flow with, without sacrificing too much of the customization people want in the game.  Meanwhile in 3rd/3.5 Edition, customization is much more prevalent, but comes with the price of having to keep track of a lot more information, depending on which books you are using, what are allowed and such.  Honestly, I enjoy both systems so far, and see myself playing both systems for awhile.

So in my last post, I mentioned I was going to review Elemental, War of Magic (by Stardock Entertainment Official site)  Due to time constraints and other life things going on, I have not had enough time to give this game a good play through, so I'm going to hold off on the review until I have some more time to play through it.  What I will mention though, is I will be having a guest blogger join the site soon.  He'll be adding articles around the same time I am, and also commenting and adding his own thoughts to what goes up here.  Until next time folks.

Dungeons and Dragons, a look

So, I've been playing a bit more 4th Edition of D&D then I have been recently, and got to thinking and discussing with some friends the differences we've been seeing between this and 3.0 and 3.5 Editions Let me preface this by saying I originally started D&D with 2nd Edition, took a small break and spent a long while playing 3.0 and 3.5 Editions, with various supplements to accommodate the different play styles (my favorite setting to this day is still Ravenloft, but that's a different tale). So after playing 4th Edition for awhile and playing around with some of the classes, I feel I've gotten a decent enough grasp to compare the two systems.

Quick intro for those of you that have never played D&D. D&D is a tabletop role playing game, played using dice, miniatures and paper. Players will design characters to play, using core classes such as fighter, cleric, wizard etc etc. You assume control of your character and are thrust into a world that is created by the Game Master, to fight monsters, solve puzzles, rescue people, challenge old powers, whatever the adventure may be. As you conquer the challenges in front of you, you accumulate levels, which grant you more powers, access to new skills and an overall increase in power. What draws so many people to this game is not only the amount of choices available to them (other game systems exist, such as GURPS which grant more choices, but we'll talk about those at another time) but also that there is no real victory. Your end goal is to tell a story involving your character, their exploits, adventures, failures and eventually what happens to them in the end.

So now that we've given out some basic info for people to follow along with, here we go. Now, both systems use similar basics. They both involve basic stats (strength, intelligence etc), races and classes for characters. The first major difference between the two is how classes work. In 3rd/3.5 Editions, a class is a basic template for a character. We'll use the fighter as a good example. A fighter gets an advantage in acquiring more feats then any other core class in the game (feats grant new skills, bonuses with certain weapons, special abilities such as whirlwind attack with weapons etc etc). So as a fighter gains in levels, they begin to diverge quite drastically from each other. So one fighter may decide to invest their feats into certain weapons or attacks, becoming a whirling machine of death, whilst another may take their bend towards a more defensive posture, granting themselves more bonuses to resist effects, extra hit points or even more ways to defend their team mates. A 4th Edition fighter can also go into the realms of tanking or damage dealing, but powers work differently in 4th Edition. They still have feats and stat points, but they gain powers specific to their levels. When you gain a level, you are allowed access to utility, attack, trigger powers etc. These are split into "at will", "encounter" and "daily" powers. How these break down is, an "at will" can be used as many times as you want during an encounter, "encounter" powers can be used once during a fight, and "daily" powers can only be used once per day, no matter how many encounters are in that day. Each of these scale in power, so a daily is quite powerful in it's execution, but you can only use it once, so you need to gauge when it is needed. In 3rd/3.5 Editions, the only classes limited by using powers were generally casters (unless you got into the book for the nine swords, which was the basis for a lot of 4th Edition powers).

This is actually going to be a multi-part post, as I'm trying to make sure my points come across, give me time to better articulate my ideas, and also a plug for my next post, which will be a continuation of this post, and also a review of a new game I just picked up, Elemental, War of Magic.

Achievements

Ah achievements. The bane of existences, the reason to keep playing the game long after you've beaten the final boss, and a reason to brag to your friends, both off and online. This is somewhat of a newer mechanic, appearing in consoles and spreading to PC games and other consoles as well. To talk about this mechanic, we will be using three games in particular. Mass effect 1, Crackdown 1 and World of Warcraft. Each one of these particular games have achievements in them, but each one uses them in a slightly different manner.

First off, what exactly are achievements? An achievement is a reward given to the player for a certain task completed. Whether this is defeating a certain boss,completing an in-game event within a certain amount of time or going so far through the game without dying. These usually result in an awarding of points, either gamer score, achievement points or trophies. Now, these points....don't really do much. Mostly they're used to display how much you've done within a game, or how leet you are in regards to a particular game or genre. Crackdown's achievements do this, and they range from some simple ones, such as leveling agility to max, to harpooning 25 or so enemies to a car with the harpoon gun. While putting enemies on a vehicles is fun, it's not something you would normally do in the course of playing, and thus must go out of your way to get this particular achievement.

Mass Effect 1 as more standard achievements, such as killing X number of enemies with a certain weapon or ability. The major difference between these two games in terms of rewards though, is Mass effects achievements actually end up affecting the overall game play. A good example is the soldier class. The soldier is the only class that gets the assault rifle ability. This gives them a distinct advantage in terms of raw firepower. Now, once you've gotten the achievement to kill so many enemies with the assault rifle, you get the option, upon making a new character to give them the assault rifle ability to train as well. Killing so many biological units will net you a bonus to damage against them, achieving so much money opens up new buying options, exploring gives you an experience bonus as you progress throughout the game, etc etc. The achievements in this game actually end up affecting how you play, an thus the player is given another incentive to attempt to get as many as they can.

The last game we will look at for achievements is World of Warcraft. This game has rewards as well for getting certain achievements, but these are merely cosmetic features. Special titles, unique looking mounts and unique in game pets are some of the rewards given to players who spend the time to work on the in-game achievements. While nice to have and definitely a carrot to give to players, the incentive is not there as much, as while it may make your character look cool to have that special flying mount or rare pet following you about, it does not in fact improve your character much, beyond giving them some status in the community you play with.

So there we are, three separate games. All of them use achievements, but each one utilizes them in slightly different ways. As someone who has been called an achievement whore (and has the t-shirt to prove it), they offer something else to do with a game once you've accomplished the main goals within a game. Some are just more fun, and useful to acquire though.

Online gaming - Persistence in worlds

So the first few posts here will be in varying formats until I find one that seems to work well for me.  So anywho, persistence.  For those of you unfamiliar with this term, it means a game world (usually online) where events have lasting impact upon said world.  A good example of this would be if once you killed a unique monster, it never respawned, or if you failed to escort a passenger they died and no one could interact with them again.
this would give almost every player in the game some way of making their mark upon the world.

I'm somewhat torn about this mechanic myself.  On one hand, I think it would be an interesting idea allow players the ability to radically change the game world.  This opens up the opportunities for a player to actually feel like they are taking a part in the game.  You could point to a specific instance, location or monster and lay claim to claring it, destroying it or making it safe for travelers.  This could also lead to alot of problems for new players though.  You would join the game, and unless the developers had a way to keep generating content at a rapid pace, or find a way to limit how much players could do, you would find yourself with almost nothing to do, always following behind the players who made it there before you.  Just some late night food for thought and such.

The saga begins

A cheesy opening I know, but seems appropriate in some odd way.  Allow me to introduce myself.  I'm your average gamer I'd say.  I have a fondness for certain genres of games of all kinds and makes.  This blog is here mainly to write about various game mechanics, both past and present. This includes card games, table top games, board games, and of course my usual forte, video games of various genres.  The main goal of talking about the various game mechanics found around the gaming worlds is to hopefully introduce people to some new games, wether it be video or board or other.  hopefully this will also foster discussion about possible new mechanics or how to combine certain older mechanics into new ideas.

So you may ask, how am I qualified to talk about this?  Well, I've been gaming since I was around 2, so that would be 26 years or so.  I've played many different genres of games, from simple card games to complex board games and MMOs.  I've always had a fondness for game mechanics, and have spent hours (and my friends can attest to this) talking about, and coming up with new ideas for games and various implementations of them.  Hopefully by reading this, you'll think differently about some games you've played, or feel interested to try out a game you were on the fence about.