Darksiders – Think like Link, Fight like Kratos
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?
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
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.