Relics of RPGs Past
Posted by Mordiceius at 2:00 pm
I am about 80% done with Mass Effect 2 now. Rynala wrapped up the game on her character yesterday. Being a bit of a completionist myself, I have been doing every little side quest possible before moving forward with the story. For Rynala, she was lukewarm on the first game. She saw the game as "good, but flawed". She was originally reluctant to event start playing ME2. Now, she loves the game so much that she just started her second play through. She is probably even more excited than me for Mass Effect 3.
Many of my friends have finished the game as well and while most are giving it nothing but praise, there are some that think the game has drifted too far from the RPG roots. You can see this sentiment echoed in various places on the internet. Personally, I feel this game is just as much of an RPG as the original and the areas of the game that were changed were areas that did not enhance the game originally.
One friend of mine complained about the lack of inventory. He wanted more guns to drop and more variety. Personally, I do not see the point. In ME2, there are 2-6 different weapons for each slot. Each weapon has different pros and cons. One weapon may have higher damage but another may have higher accuracy while another may hold more ammunition. You are allowed to pick a gun that fits your style and go with it. In Mass Effect 1, people just kept upgrading to the best guns until they got the Spectre weapons and then they would never upgrade their guns again. Now, you pick the gun you like and that will always be the best gun. You can still upgrade its damage and accuracy through the tech lab but you do not have to spend half the game dealing with an inventory full of guns you will never use anyway.
To me, an RPG is not about constantly fiddling with the inventory or allocating stat points. To me, a role playing game is about playing a role. It is playing the personality of the character and changing the world around me. So many of the things that were trimmed off Mass Effect 1 make sense. They are shackles of the past that are just busy work. Streamlining role playing games is not a bad thing. I would much prefer more time playing the character out in the world and less time having to check spreadsheets and min-max characters. When playing games, we need to ask ourselves: "Is this really enhancing the game or is this just busy work?"
Mid-Game Review: Mass Effect 2
Posted by Mordiceius at 1:33 pm
I am currently about 20 hours into Mass Effect 2. I would have been further but between, work class, and getting new furniture this week, my gaming time has not been where I would like it.
So far, I think Mass Effect 2 improves on the foundation of Mass Effect 1 in every way possible. The action is better, the character interactions are more cinematic, and the monotony has been reduced.
From what I have read, I am just around half way through the game. I am going a bit slow and being a completionist though, so I may take longer than most people will. Some friends of mine have already beat the game and clocked in 30-35 hours. I am expecting to get in 40+ with doing all the side quests.
Gone is the planet exploration with the Mako and the relentless gun and armor drops (that would always just get reduced to omni-gel) and replacing it is a streamlined game. I have seen complaints from people that they think Bioware toned down the RPG and dialed up the shooter parts too much but I could not disagree more. I think this game delivers a perfect balance between shooter and RPG, but this is something I will probably deconstruct more in another post this week.
The best quality of the game is hands down the cinematography. I believe that the directing in this game is a huge step forward for video games as a genre and will go far to show the kind of personality and emotional response that games can invoke. The characters are not just flatly delivering lines, their faces and bodies give the visual cues that real people give.
This was more eloquently described by CharlieFoxtrot on the SomethingAwful forums:
"I might be flaring up the discussion about ME2's writing again, but I thought there were some interesting points brought up earlier. Basically, it boils down to this: complaining that ME2 isn't up to Planescape: Torment's standards is like complaining that that Steven Spielberg can't write novels like J.D. Salinger. They're trying to accomplish two different things.
Because games are still relatively young as form of expression, they have to borrow their narrative grammar from other forms. P:T chose a novelistic style, full of dense prose, reflection, and introspection. Technology has reached a point where ME2 can choose a cinematic style and use the grammar of film. And it does it so, so well.
It's helpful to compare it to Dragon Age, a game made by the same company but also trying to accomplish something slightly different. For all the amazing stuff Dragon Age pulls off, they did not put as much energy into cutscene presentation. The camera angles tend to be flat and workmanlike, purely designed to convey the necessary information, and the world and its characters are not expressive enough to stand alone without little parenthetical descriptions from time to time.
ME2 spends so much energy making the game's presentation as flawless and emotionally charged as possible. It's all composed of the little things, like that you can see Shepard smirk a little after making a one-liner, or that people walk around and shift positions when having a conversation instead of standing perfectly still, or that the characters' eyes are articulated enough that you can follow what they're looking at like an audience does a thousand times when they watch real people in a real movie.
It really hit me in Miranda's loyalty quest, in the scene where she looks at her sister and her family and the camera drifts from over her shoulder and racks focus into the distance, and then it cuts away and has Miranda step away towards the camera so that you can read every nuance of her expression. Any film buff can tell you that that is a cinematic technique to get us closer to a character's perspective and get us to relate to them better. But most game designers either aren't sophisticated enough or don't care enough to make use of techniques like that.
Of course it would all be for naught if that kind of detail didn't carry over through to everything; it would be like the FMV craze of the late nineties where everyone was saying "It's like a movie and you're the star!" when in reality you were playing a discrete gameplay segment, then watching an FMV, then playing the game some more. Everything BioWare has done in ME2 is about streamlining and perfecting -- not just the gameplay but the story as well. The main directive in ME2 seems to be never to break the flow, and to make every part of the game as seamless and immersive as possible. Rejiggering the systems so that you're not shuffling through an inventory screen or a level up screen every few minutes not only streamlines the gameplay, but also prevents as many jarring immersion breaks from the narrative as possible."
Darksiders – Think like Link, Fight like Kratos
Posted by Mordiceius at 12:53 pm
Due to my old standard definition TV going out about a week ago I have finally updated myself to the HD world and as such, I have been having a mini Xbox360 revival. My game of choice currently is Darksiders.
I had heard about Darksiders a few months ago on the Gamers With Jobs Conference Call. It was described as something along the lines of "you go around as one of the horsemen of the apocalypse and kill angels and demons". The concept sounded neat but that was the last I heard of it. When it released earlier this month, from the screen shots it looked like another God of War clone. Luckily, it is not.
Anyone who tells you that this game is most influenced by God of War is a liar. This game is essentially the new Legend of Zelda. Instead of Link, you play as the apocalyptic horseman War who looks like he stepped right out of World of Warcraft character designer meeting. Instead of the kingdom of Hyrule, you find yourself on post apocalyptic Earth. An apocalypse YOU were tricked into starting and there are very many unhappy individuals that want you dead.
The combat, however, feels a bit more polished than a Zelda game. Instead of just your standard two or three attacks, you have a multitude of combos on a variety of weapons that you can buy and upgrade. Enemies drop souls that are used as currency, replenish your health, and replenish your rage. This is where the God of War comparison comes in. But in the end, this game feels like 20% God of War and 80% Legend of Zelda.
The gameplay is incredibly solid. I am playing on apocalyptic difficulty since I was told the normal difficulty was a bit easy. Early in the game it was not unheard of to get two or three shot by enemies. Combat was fast paced and unforgiving and dodging was essential. Now that I have upgraded my health quite a few times the game feels a bit easier though dodging is still very important. Apocalyptic difficulty definitely keeps you on your toes and I would expect nothing less.
A good deal of time is spent dungeon diving. So far, I have been through two proper dungeons: an evil cathedral that was essentially a fire temple and a section of subway and sewers that was essentially a water temple. In each temple you get a new item or weapon to help you solve the puzzles of the stage. Within the fire temple equivalent, I received an item that works the same way as the boomerang in Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess.
At the end of each dungeon, you face a boss that requires you to often show mastery of your weapon and the gimmick of the dungeon. I found the fire temple boss to be much harder than the water temple boss but both were enjoyable.
Overall, I have found Darksiders to be a really fun game. It does not do anything new but I think what it does, it does well. A lot of people scream for innovation nowadays, but personally I am just happy to be playing another Legend of Zelda game.
How Should You Deal With The Launch Rush?
Posted by Mordiceius at 1:46 pm
The launch month is usually a tumultuous time for new MMOs. In the post-World of Warcraft landscape, there is one undeniable pattern in the first month of new MMOs: probably about 50-75% who play your game for the first month will not be staying past those first thirty days. Whether it is because they are going back to WoW or to whatever other game is not important. The simple fact remains that more people will leave in the first month than stay.
There are a lot of reasons for this. Some may blame the "WoW tourists" and others may blame game breaking bugs while some others may blame hype and the game not living up to the expectations set by it. However, none of that is really important to this topic.
Let us just pretend for a minute that the universal rule for new MMOs is that after the free thirty days, you will lose one-half to three-fourths of your user base. Let us pretend that there are no ways about this rule and no matter how complete and polished your game is, it will always happen. How do you plan for that? There are three methods that come to my mind that recent games have used.
Warhammer Online decided to launch with about fifty servers. With the amount of boxes they sold, the servers were decently populated for the first week or two. Once the people started leaving, servers were shut down en masse. There were multiple server merges and now the game is down to about five servers. All seem fairly decently populated, but it is about one tenth of what they started with. They saw a lot of bad press for the mass server closures, but would have also seen bad press had they only started with five servers.
Aion went the opposite route. The game opened with ten servers. Some servers saw queues of between four and eight hours. After about two weeks, NCSoft opened up a handful of new servers as well. The queues settled down after a couple weeks when the people started leaving, but for the first week or two there was quite a bit of negative press on how NCSoft should have better prepared for the launch. Now, however, all the twelve or so servers they have are sitting at a relative stable population.
Darkfall used a different method when they started their game up. Being that they are not releasing a triple A title, they used unique means of distributing their game. Purchase of the game was only done through their online store and for the first few months, they only allowed a certain amount of copies to be sold a day and only for a small time-frame each day. They received a bit of negative press for this because it seemed like they were not letting people who wanted to play to even buy the game. Also, since it was more of a niche title, the exodus numbers might have been different. In the end, they limited the amount of people able to buy the game per day so that they could better handle the server population from day one.
Are any of these methods superior to each other? Are there any better methods to handle the launch rush and exodus?
To me, it seems like NCSoft did it best with Aion, but even still I wonder how many people were turned away from the game because they heard about the terrible queues.
If you were to go play a new MMO on launch day, what method would you prefer?
Back In Rotation
Posted by Mordiceius at 2:40 pm
I am finally back to blogging. It has been a busy couple weeks for me so hopefully things are properly settled down now. I spent Christmas at home in our with Rynala and the two of headed to her parent's house for New Years. From there I flew home to Idaho to care for my mom for a week and a half while after she had shoulder surgery and then the last few days I have been sick in bed.
What is amusing out of all of this is that before my long holiday, I figured I would be able to get in a good deal of gaming time. Sure I had some chores and responsibilities to fulfill, but without having work and school I thought I would have more time to game. I was actually surprised by how little gaming I have done over the last three weeks.
Rynala and I have been playing through Titan Quest. We just started the third act and are about 20 hours into the game. I am enjoying the game even if it does get a bit repetitious. Play this game is getting me really hyped up for the Clash of the Titans movie in March.
I have tried to get back into Borderlands but I do not know if I will ever be able to. Besides how much the game just feels like a bad port on the PC, the way the DLC is being handled is infuriating.
I recently picked up Darksiders for the 360. The game is essentially a mixture of God of War and the Legend of Zelda in a post-apocalyptic, demon infested world. I am absolutely loving it.
Holiday Break and Gaming Update
Posted by Mordiceius at 11:40 am
I apologize a bit for the radio silence, but expect it continue for the next two weeks. I have been doing quite a bit of gaming with Rynala. Between World of Warcraft, Darkfall, and the games I have been buying from the Steam holiday deals, I have almost had too many games to play. Tomorrow, I am flying home to be with my mother for a week and a half to care for her after she undergoes surgery. In my down time I hope to get the chance to write some, but I am not making any promises as of yet. I do have quite a bit I would like to write about.
I have been getting deep into the World of Warcraft economy and have made over 15,000 gold since patch 3.3 has come out. I finally get it and I am finding myself quite addicted.
I stopped playing Borderlands for the most part. Rynala and I got about 50% through the game and the flaws of the game are starting to hinder my enjoyment. Not to mention the developer essentially lied to PC gamers about the game.
Darkfall has taking somewhat of a back burner. I am not turning away from the game as I still really love it, but I have just had so much to play, I just have not been able to make the time for Darkfall. I plan on playing more soon.
Titan Quest is the game that I have been playing for the past week. I had picked it up from Steam during the Black Friday deals and have never played it before. Rynala loves Diablo clones so we gave it try. We are currently in the second act of the game and I really have been enjoying the game. The game is about three years old but it is still a very beautiful looking game and gameplay-wise it feels just like Diablo to me.
The holidays have truly provided quite the gaming boon to me and I hope it has been just as good to all of you.
Going Broke Saving Money
Posted by Mordiceius at 10:42 pm
Steam seems to know my weakness is deals. Within the last month I have bought more games than I will ever be able to play but I cannot help myself.
Today - You now own Prototype.
Dec 25 - You now own King's Bounty: Armored Princess.
You now own Cogs.
Dec 23 - You now own Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis, The Dig, Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, Loom.
You now own S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Clear Sky.
You now own Gumboy Crazy Adventures, Gumboy Crazy Features, Vigil - Blood Bitterness, Obulis, Chains.
You now own Defense Grid: The Awakening.
Dec 15 - You now own The Last Remnant.
Nov 30 - You now own Mirror's Edge.
You now own Monkey Island Special Edition.
You now own Evil Genius.
Nov 28 - You now own Borderlands.
Nov 27 - You now own STALKER: Shadow of Chernobyl, Full Spectrum Warrior, Full Spectrum Warrior: Ten Hammers, Titan Quest, Titan Quest: Immortal Throne, Company of Heroes, Dawn of War Gold, Dawn of War: Dark Crusade, Dawn of War Gold: Winter Assault, Company of Heroes: Opposing Fronts, Juiced 2: Hot Import Nights, Dawn of War: Soulstorm, Frontlines: Fuel of War, Saint's Row 2, Warhammer® 40,000™: Dawn of War® II, Red Faction: Guerrilla , Red Faction, Company of Heroes: Tales of Valor, Red Faction II.
You now own Starwars: Knights of The Old Republic.
Nov 16 - You now own Overlord, Overlord: Raising Hell, Overlord II.
Holiday Update 09
Posted by Mordiceius at 4:00 am
Somehow I got in the Darkfall Spotlight on the forums. I do not personally read the forums, but it is not because I am lazy. It is simply because I am afraid (that, and I cannot access them at work).
Being that it is the holidays, I hope you do not expect too many posts from me over the coming weeks. I am going to be working all this week but I will have all of next week off work (though Rynala and I may be driving up to see her folks around New Years). I will be gone for the first week and a half of January to fly north and care my mother while she has surgery.
I have been devoting a majority of my time to Darkfall and World of Warcraft. Since Darkfall is not a system resource hog, I am able to play both simultaneously. This works even better for me since I can set up my character in Darkfall to mine or log and go run an instance or work on auctions in WoW. In WoW, I have had to find unique ways of making money as enchanting and engineering are not huge money makers right now. I am thinking of taking my level 70 warlock out of retirement and making them an alchemist.
As for Darkfall, I have been spending majority of my time in small scale PvP. The Goons have largely moved from Aerngardh to Darkmoore since Aerngardh was not so newbie friendly and apparently the spawns are broken all over the frigid north lands. The journey was absolutely terrifying.
When we moved from Janhalek to Aerngardh, there were about ten of us on a raft making the trip, this time there were only four. A third of the way through the trip, there was a cry of pure horror on vent. Closing fast on us was the kraken. One of the people on the raft tried to push me off as a sacrifice but was instead knocked off the raft himself by the kraken. We could not rescue him so we made haste out of there. Fifteen minutes later we saw the kraken once more on the horizon pursing us. One of the other members of the ship sacrificed his life to save the raft. The raft owner and myself made it to landfall safely, never forgetting the sacrifices our two brave comrades made.
I found the move to Darkmoore very amusing because it is about a ten minute mounted journey north of Mir Bellith, the elf area I started at. I had gone from Mir Bellith down to Janhalek and north to Aerngarde only to end up ten minutes north of the start of my journey. Since I was so close to my origin, I returned to Mir Bellith to work on getting some skill ups (and to look for some PvP).
My favorite targets so far have been people in the NEW clan. NEW is the clan for people new to Darkfall, but has lately received some scorn. When they were originally created, Goon Squad declared war on them as a joke, and made a couple enemies from other clans in doing so. Since then, I have seen many clans declaring war on NEW. In clan chat, people were explaining that there were some players exploiting the clan and using it as a safe haven to avoid PvP so a lot of guilds were getting sick of it.
I have had a lot of good PvP in Mir Bellith. Since I am still quite new to the game it is nice finding people that mostly match my skill. I have lost quite a few times though. Luckily, beside my mount, I have not lost anything of any importance. As for the mount, that situation did not make me happy. I was running away from a guy that was killing my mount with arrows and so I ran into the city to safe corner to try to desummon my mount and then bank it before I died. While dismissing it, some blue player came, jumped on it and rode it off. Since they were blue, I could not attack them due to the guard tower and an alignment hit. There should be penalties to mount thieves. It would nice to see them take an alignment hit or go rogue for a while. If that guy had gone rogue, the guard towers could have taken him out. Other than that, it has been a lot of fun in Mir Bellith.
All of this good MMO gaming has made it hard for me to go play any other games. I have yet to finish Borderlands and I still have a load of games from the Steam sale I need to play including Last Remnant, Overlord 2, WH40K: Dawn of War 1 and 2. Plus, the good games are going to keep coming with Mass Effect 2, Bioshock 2, and Final Fantasy 13 coming out in the next few months. What is a gamer to do!
The Best of Both Worlds
Posted by Mordiceius at 1:02 pm
I am playing two MMORPGs right now. World of Warcraft and Darkfall. It would seem like those games are polar opposites of each other and that they would not go together. Well the do not go together and that is why I like it. I could be playing World of Warcraft and LotRO or World of Warcraft and Aion or World of Warcraft and Warhammer or Darkfall and Fallen Earth but in all of those cases, the games are the similar style (themepark and themepark or sandbox and sandbox).
Now, I have a great themepark game and a great sandbox game. If I want to go socialize, leasurely group with others, kill some random things, see purples fly, or even just sit in town and idle, I can play World of Warcraft. If I want to travel a harsh land fearing for my life and expecting death around every corner, I can play Darkfall. I think it is a logical fallacy to believe someone could only ever want to experience one of these feelings. Variety is the spice of life.
I generally save my larger play sessions for Darkfall now so that I can get more accomplished in that game, but I still will often alternate between the two. The other day, I ran an instance in WoW, then went to Darkfall for a few hours, then went back to WoW to run another two instances to take a break, and finally returned to Darkfall to do more gaming.
Having both of these games satisfies almost all of my MMO urges and lets me better game to my mood. I do not want to fear for my life every time I log onto a game, but sometimes I do. I do not always want to have rewards raining from the sky with zero risk, but sometimes I do. I think that playing both games helps me develop a greater appreciation for the differences in the two.
Both games tried to do something different. World of Warcraft took the Everquest model and opened it up to the masses while Darkfall went back to the MMO sandbox roots like Ultima Online.
All of this just hammers in the point that we do not need more of the same. We need more new ideas. Do you want a good themepark game? Play WoW or LotRO. Do you want a good sandbox? Play Darkfall or Fallen Earth. Now give me something different (here is to hoping Planetside 2 is good).
Settling in Darkfall
Posted by Mordiceius at 2:14 pm
I traveled with the Goons this weekend as we relocated from their previous base of operations in Janhalek to a new location in the frigid northlands. I was still in the elf starting lands when the announcement went up in vent that the move would be taking place later that day. Both the old and new locations were equal distance from me. I could head south to Janhalek and then travel north to the new town. I had heard that traveling north took me through a bit more perilous territory so I ventured south.
The journey was uneventful but took the greater part of two hours on foot. While I saw a lot of wildlife, I saw very few enemy camps while sticking to the coast. Making the swim from the mainland to the island of Janhalek took over a half hour in itself. I could have asked for someone to bring a raft for me but I wanted to try to do it all on my own.
I arrived in Janhalek about fifteen minutes before launch time and had some time to meet and greet with the Goons before about ten of us got on a raft. The raft ride was pretty fun as we all laughed and joked while fishing and watching for the kraken. There was word that a trio of ships was assaulting the city we were heading to and as a raft we were pretty much sitting ducks. We made a wide angle entrance into the city and luckily arrived after the assault was over. Just hearing word of it made me excited.
When we tried to bind to the city, their stone was out of bind slots since their keep was destroyed from the attacking ships so myself and a handful of other people rode north to a hamlet to bind. It was terrifying as we left the city because about a hundred people on mounts were rushing straight at us. Luckily, they were just allies returning to the city.
I took another hour to get acquainted with the area and learn a little more of the game. I found a nice troll spawn about ten minutes away so I worked on my skills a little there.
Yesterday afternoon when I logged in, the owners of the city were about to make an attack on a neighboring city. A group of Goons had offered to join the charge and I decided to go with. My skills are still at abysmal levels but I wanted to see an attack for myself. I rode down from the hamlet to the city just in time for the army to take off. It was about ten Goons and a hundred other people heading out in this charge. We were told on vent that the enemies were some of the most skilled players in the game.
The destination was nearby and it only took about twenty minutes to get there. Unfortunately, our attack was very unorganized. It was more of a "everyone charge this point, okay now everyone head to this point, okay now everyone go to this next point" instead of "group one take this point, group two take this other point, etc". After about ten minutes of fighting, a full retreat was called. I fired of a ton of arrows and did hit someone with one arrow for 13 points of damage. I may not have contributed much, but I contributed!
When we returned back to the city, I went back to that troll camp to work on my archery some more. As I have only been in the game for about a week, I find myself being overly cautious. Especially in this location which is not just new for me, but the entire guild, I am wary to leave the troll spot for farming because I do not know what will annihilate me yet.
The hardest thing for me currently is just deciding on what skills I want to work on. It is weird playing this game after so many theme-park games because in Darkfall, there is just so much I can do that I do not know what I want to start first. I keep getting gamer ADD and working on one skill for five minutes before getting distracted and working on something else. I know eventually my completionism tendencies are going to kick in and I am going to start focusing hard on one or two skills at a time until I max them out.
I am having a lot of fun in Darkfall and I am excited to become more familiar with the area and the mechanics and more comfortable with taking risks.