Saturday, July 2, 2011

Oh the humanity

So got a few things to chat about this week.  Let's start off with some beta news.

Heroes of Might and Magic 6
I pre-ordered Heroes of Might and Magic 6 and thus got into the early play tests of it.  For those of you unaware of the Heroes series, time for an introduction.  The Heroes of Might and Magic series began as a game called King's bounty, which eventually became an offshoot of the Might and Magic series, a long running RPG series for the PC.  It's a turn based strategy rpg combined with city building and exploration.  You hire heroes, who carry stacks of troops.  Every stack of troops are comprised of the same unit.  Every unit has a defense stat, attack stat, health and damage.  Every unit in a stack adds their respective powers together, and the hero controlling the army adds their stats to the units as well.  Rounds are taken in order of speeds of the units, and you control the units one at a time, moving them across a board to attack the enemy units.  The hero has the ability to cast one spell per turn, or attack if your playing some of the later versions of the series (4 had the hero as an actual unit in the battle, 4 did not do so well).  You win a battle by destroying all of the enemies stacks of units.  You can acquire more units at cities you own, and some can be found in neutral locations.  The cities build units by constructing buildings, which you build by gathering minerals on the map, including standalone resources and mines that produce a certain amount of resources every round.  your hero can be outfitted with artifacts that increase their powers, give them special abilities, and you can also train them in new skills, which will let them move further in a round, learn new spells or even raise the dead from a fight to fight for your side in the next battle.

So with that bit of background info in place, what does 6 bring to the table?  First off, they've cut down the number of resources.  It used to be lumber, stone, sulfur, mercury, crystals, gems and gold.  Now it's just gold, lumber, stone, and crystals.  Heroes now also have a destiny path system which gives them specials powers, also some artifacts level with you now.  So the longer you have them, the more powerful they become.  Combat has changed a bit as well.  Previously you used to be able to move and attack, so for example you could move your archers out of range and have them fight back.  Now once you move them, your turn ends for them.  Also not sure if it's the games intent, but enemies always seem to go first.  I've finished the first mission and am working on the second mission right now, so there may be more to combat then that.  Cities have changed a bit too, they seem to be more flexible in what you can and cannot build, plus you can convert towns from one type to another.  Also they introduce the concepts of forts.  Normally nothing would prevent an enemy from taking a resource mine from you, but now if you have a fort, they cannot claim a mine unless they take the fort as well.  Once the fort is taken, every mine in that area falls under neutral control and can be claimed by other players.  The player skills have changed too.  You seem to have more activated powers and buffs, but it may also be the hero I've been given for the tutorial.  Only time will tell, but it does seem like the game is trying to improve on the previous versions and bring in some new players, so this game is shaping up to be something to look forward too.

Shadows of the Damned

So, have you ever played No more Heroes, or No More Heroes 2?  Ok, consider those two games to be the litmus test of this one.  If you enjoyed them, their weird brand of humor and nonsense story, then you will enjoy this game.  It's a survival horror game built on the premise of you going to hell to save your girlfriend, who has been captured by the big demon Flemith.  A big skeleton like creature in an army jacket and wielding a bazooka.  It differs from most survival horrors in that your guided along and combat is a bit more interesting then other games.  You wield a variety of guns, so far a standard gun, a grenade launcher and a machine gun, plus a flaming torch, which all happens to be Johnson, a floating ex-demon skull thing that travels with you.  Yes, that's your weapon, advisor, and source of information.  Also, goats are the sources of light in the underworld, doors eat brains, eyes and strawberries(actually demon fruits, their made up of ground up tongues) and one of the bosses pisses darkness.  Yes, a boss, a giant goat demon, pisses darkness to fight you.  That right there about sums up this game and it's general premise.  It's fun, the controls are decent, story is entertaining, and overall it's worth a shot if you want a somewhat funny, mature game.

Hellgate London

What's that you say?  Hellgate London?  Did it not die years ago due to lack of money and the devs/owners not owning up to their promises of exclusive content to paying players(of which I am going to talk about at a later date).  Well your wrong, it's back from the dead!  And like any zombie and/or dead thing, it should have stayed buried and long forgotten.  Now, hellgate was not a bad game.  It was Diablo with a decent plot around it, and it had some promise.  It was fun for a few hours here and there to kill some time with.  So when I heard it was coming back, I was intrigued.  So I finally got to give it a shot last night.

I've had more fun ramming nails into my forehead and then cleansing the wounds with turpentine.  Let's start off with what has changed.
  • The graphics have gotten worse.  This is not to mean the graphics are dated or anything, they literally got worse.  It's almost like they wanted to put in their own graphics(which they did, they re-imaged some of the main characters to make them more...something.  It did not work too well.)
  • Maybe it was my sound card, but I could not hear some of the most common quotes from the game, like for the living etc.
  • The tutorial will lock your keyboard until you press the buttons it's telling you too.  This is annoying, especially when a monster might be chewing on your face and the game is yelling at you to press I to bring up your inventory.
  • They introduced micro transactions to the game, so by buying their special currency, you can biy special in game items, like more acts.  Yup, you need to buy Act 3.
  • From reading their facebook page and such, it seems like the servers come up and down so often they are earning frequent flyer miles from all the traveling they are doing.
So, quick synopsis.  This game is not really Hellgate in my opinion.  I'm going to keep an eye on it incase it gets better, but we'll see what happens.
          

Monday, June 20, 2011

Darksiders and Duke Nukem Forever

So been working on some older games I never got around to trying when they come out.  Seems to be a common trend lately, but it works with my schedule so.  First we're going to take a look at Darksiders, and then I'm going to delve into some Duke Nukem.

So Darksiders.  I wish I had gotten this game when it first came out.  It's a game in the similar vein of Jak and Dexter, beyond good and evil and platformer/fighters in general, with a bit of God of War tossed in.  You play the game as War, one of the Horsemen of the Apocalypse.  You've been stripped of your powers and sent back down to earth to essentially fix the problems they think you caused.  The game runs like a standard one of it's genre.  You get some weapons, skill and weapons to do battle with the various demons and angels that assault you, and use them to solve various puzzles scattered throughout the world.  The system works a bit like Zelda, where you go to a dungeon, get a new item that helps you out and then you can go back and re-discover areas you've never been too before.  What sets this game apart from others of it's kind is the story/atmosphere and also the general ease of controls.  Once I got used to how the control scheme worked and picked up a few new moves, the game just seems to flow well.  I can swiftly go from offensive to defensive with my attacks and movement, and also throw in random other moves to get me around.  Plus, and this is a big kicker for me, you can activate your defense anytime, during any move.  So many games just don't do this.  You start off a move and are now stuck in it, meanwhile any enemy can come along and knock you off your flow, thus making doing almost any move beyond your basic almost worthless.

The atmosphere was the other big part.  I'm usually not one to fawn over how a game looks and such.  But this game is just amazing in it's details and settings.  It's a post apocalyptic world that actually looks like it would make sense.  It's got some ruined sections, others returning to nature, signs of demonic influence scattered throughout the world and some pretty nice visuals of the whole destruction wrought.  The lore of the game is also very interesting.  It's a different take on Christian Theology, with the Horsemen actually working for a neutral third party, who's main interest lies in maintaining a balance between the powers that be.  I'm eagerly looking forward to the second installment of this game, and urge people to pick up a copy of this if they can.

So, Duke Nukem Forever.  The game that took 10+ years in total to bring out.  The game everyone would joke about and kept assuring ourselves would never come out.  Well it's out, and well....   Ok, first off, the game does not live up to the hype.  Unless it came in a gilded case, physically made your other games weep in sorrow and then blew your mind would it live up to the hype.  This being said, this game feels half finished, and that's a funny thing to say with how long it took to come out.  The best way I've heard this game be described is an FPS archaeological dig through what was hot during certain years.  Driving in FPS games(borderlands) was fun, so there is a level or two with some driving.  Unfortunately, the car handles like crap, and also randomly disappeared while I was using it in once level, forcing me to kill myself to get it back. The lack of being able to have more then one weapon as well, is annoying as hell.  You see so many weapons lying around all over the place from enemies you kill, and since you can only have two at a time on you, your forced to leave some behind, or guess at what might be dropping in the future to get some ammo.

The Duke Nukem humor is there, and this is one of the few redeeming factors of this game.  Constant jabs at other games, internet humor and other references make the one liners all the more amusing.  Plus, Duke's voice is the right kind of gritty wise cracking that a game like this wants.  This can't save the game though.  So many of the features either seem half rushed in, like they really wanted to show it off but either left it half done, or just didn't know what to do with it.  This is a major pet peeve of mine with games.  Almost any mechanic can work in a game, if it's A. Implemented properly and B.  Fits into the overall scheme of the game.  You wouldn't expect to be playing Final Fantasy and suddenly a golf match shows up out of no where to handle a boss fight.  Then again, the Final Fantasy games have been getting weirder as time goes on....  Anyway, back on topic.  So, after all this time, what do we have?  A somewhat ok generic shooter, with some ok jokes and wisecracks, a whole case of misogyny and not much else to show for it.  This game is going to go down in history, just not the way it wanted too.

Thursday, June 16, 2011

New games

Well everyone, it's been a bit hasn't it?  Life has been a bit busy, moving into a new apartment, got myself a new job I am starting soon, and loads of other things going on.  So, now that we have that all settled and done with, let's get to some games, shall we?

First off, recently had a good session of a new board game out called Mansions of Madness.  Quick description of this is Arkham Horror meets Betrayal at house on the hill.  You randomly select a challenge to overtake, and every player except one chooses from the list of investigators.  Every investigator has different stats and some even start with special items, such as spells or artifacts that could help them in the challenge.  The player who did not take an investigator is the person running the game, who is in charge of the house and it's various elements.  they get special powers to try to thwart the players in their goals, and also help to move the story along.  The major difference between this and Betrayal is that the house is generally set up ahead of time, so you don't need to worry about finding out where the kitchen is for example.  I've yet to play all of the various challenges, so it's possible one does require you to build the house out as you go.

I've recently fallen down to the gods of Facebook and decided to join it.  Of course, one of the first things I did is set myself up in a couple of the games on it.  I've been playing Zombie Lane, Dragon Age Legends and Knights of the crystal.  Their all mostly generic facebook games, although Dragon age does require a certain knowledge of how the game works, so there ya go there.  As to Rift, I've stopped playing for the time, as my pc recently went through a period of not wanting to work very well and blue screening all of the time as soon as I went to sneeze on it.  With my newly built pc though, I should be giving it another try soonish.  We shall see.

Well, that's about it for now.  I'll update some this weekend with some new information about some games.

Starting up

Yes I know, I've said this before, but I'm going to be posting some new stuff soon, so, keep a look out.

Monday, March 14, 2011

Rift, Planes of Telara

So, the game that has been consuming my free time these days is called Rift, Planes of Telara link.  This game was in development for a few years, and I was able to get into the closed beta and play through it.  This is going to be a somewhat lengthy post, so bear with me a bit.

First off, what kind of game is it?  It's a Fantasy MMO based in a world called Telara, which sits at the crossroads between the other dimensions of the cosmos (earth, fire life death etc etc) and it was protected by seals.  During a great war between the Guardians (followers of the Gods) and the Defiant (users of ancient technology) the seals guarding the world were broken, and the various elemental forces began to invade.  It's up to you, the players to protect the various towns, outposts and strategic locations around the world, preventing them from being captured and taking back the ones that have been overrun by the invading forces.

Character creation is pretty straightforward to begin.  You pick a side to belong to, the Guardians or the Defiants.  Each side has three races that can be selected, with slight racials giving each race a different ability or resistance to some element.  Once you chosen a race, your able to customize your characters appearance.  This includes height, build, facial features, hair and optional features such as tattoos and piercings.  Once this is all set, you get to pick your basic calling.  There are four to choose from.  The warrior, the cleric, the rogue and the mage.  What these paths determine is what souls you are able to acquire in the game.  Each calling has 8 souls attached to it, and these souls are what you use to customize your characters abilities.  I'm primarily familiar with the warrior calling, so I'll use those souls as an example.

Every level you gain in the game gives you skill points your able to put into your souls.  Your able to have three souls equipped at one time, and can have up to 4 slots for builds, thus allowing you to have multiple builds depending on the situation.  Every soul gives you some base abilities, and as you put points into them, they will unlock more abilities.  So let's take the paladin for example.  The skills you gain with it are bonuses to blocking, armor, more hp and such, and as you place points into it, you unlock more skills, such as disarming blow, shield throw and even a ressurection spell.  Now, you can then add some other souls, such as reaver, which is a tank/debuff soul for a warrior.  So by putting points in this soul, you get the ability to drain your opponents strengths and make them easier to fight, or you can go void knight and gain resistance to spells and powers to grab your opponents and bring them to you.  You could also take a dps soul like beast master and use that souls powers to offset your defensive capabilities.  You can even unlock special pvp souls that use the same pool of points and will give you extra bonuses when fighting in the warfronts.

So onto the pvp.  Honestly, it's been alot of fun for me.  I play a warrior, tank mostly, on the guardian side on a pvp server.  The queue times for us are not that bad as there are many more defiants then there are guardians.  The first two warfronts I've done are the Black Garden and the Codex.  The Black Garden is similar to to capture the flag, but with points.  For holding onto the flag (in this case the fang of Regulos) you aquire points, but the fang is dangerous to hold, so your constantly taking more and more damage from holding it, and eventually it will kill you.  The codex is a control warfront.  As you hold onto control points, you aquire points, first team to 1000 points wins.  You gain rep with certain pvp factions as you battle and favor.  You spend favor to earn some decent gear, plus unlocking more pvp souls and ranks.

Tomorrow I will go into the dynamic world aspect, how the dungeons work and how the rift system itself works.

PAX Review

So I ended up going to PAX East this weekend, and holy hell was it alot of fun.  I started there on Friday and walked around the expo hall, picking up some free swag and checking out the latest games.  Played some Vindictus on the new Alien Ware machines and checked out the Duke Nukem forever demo, the Knights of the old Republic Demo and many others, including quite a few indie games coming out of the Boston area.  Went to go see the unveling of Kingdom of Amular, made by the game company Curt Shilling made, and not sure how much I can talk about it, but it's looking to be quite a spectacular game and I am eagerly looking forward to giving it a shot.  Sat in one some D&D panels, and played alot of table top games, including giving the Heroes of Shadow powers a run on Friday night.  So overall, the experience was quite worth the exhaustion and general lack of sleep I got through the weekend.

Rift

Rift post coming soon, still tired from PAX.

Sunday, February 20, 2011

-cough-

Is anyone still here?  No?  Oh well, here we go.

So I'm back to writing this.  It has been some time I am aware.  Some things have gone on.  I'm moved into a new apartment, I've been playing quite a bit more board games as of late, as I went through a period with my home computer deciding it hated life and everything about it.  Still getting my systems in place and all set as well, so only been playing a few video games as of late, but I figured I'd like to get back into writing this blog, seeing how things can go with it.  So I'm not going to have a set schedule as of yet, as I'm not sure yet what format I really want this to be in.  I'm contemplating putting up a few videos of my d&d group, and possibly going over games I play on Tuesday nights at a local comic shop near my old apartment.  We shall see.  For now though, if anyone comes across this, I hope you enjoy your stay.