Hey everyone, it's been a while since my last post. Lots of things in my life going off like hand grenades of drama tossed into my little living room of productivity. But as the holiday that celebrates being 1/2 way out of the darkness of winter has passed, and the small fact that I simply can't sleep, I decided what a better time than any to toss you all a delicious update. Mmmmm tastes like chocolate.
Ok, this one's a bit of a post as I'm reviewing 3 games back to back to back. I am going to throw stuff out there in the order of "completion" or what ever cause some games just don't "complete." This review is on 3 RPG's so I feel comfortable linking them in one post.
The games: Fable III, Fallout: Las Vegas, World of Warcraft: Cataclysm.
Let us put on our safety purple rubber laboratory gloves and get right down o business.
Fable III:
This was a little bit of a surprise for me. As it stood so far, my relationship from Lion Head Studios was that of a love/hate dynamic. They would throw out a game, such as Black and White, that I would love and then throw out, Black and White 2, which would be more of the same that I didn't enjoy quite as much as the original. This was how it was with their flagship creation of Fable. Fable 1 was a very nicely put together solid game. It wasn't the best game of all time, mind you, but it was more than playable. The story was great, the options were dynamic, It had lots of little things to do and see. But here's where we get to the biggest problem about the Fable series, hype. They promised quite a great deal with Fable I, skills that changed as they were used (swing a bat for a long time, and your strength is based on the swinging) and levels that would manipulate in certain ways, boarder-less levels, and all sorts of fun little tidbits. Hearing these, at the time Fable I came out, I sorta had a certain.... feeling that current tech wasn't as good as they were letting us to believe. Well, the game came out, and I was both right and wrong at the same time. Although Fable didn't do as much as was promised, It did do a great deal. The biggest achievement for me, was the story line. It was a big and very epic story, and I loved it quite a bit.
Continuing on, Fable II....was rubbish. The story was poorly written, you stumble through it like blind person with no arms to feel out what's in front of you, so you fall down the stairs. The "big game changing choices" you had to make were either not important, or made redundant and obsolete later (the biggest end game one is done away with in the DLC). The last boss was, well, anti-climactic. Not to mention the most overlooked problematic issue of fable II of all time: Single slot auto-save. That's right, the whole game resides over one save slot, which is an auto-save. They wanted to make your choices feel more "permanent", but what they didn't realize, was that if your game has an issue, say a bug, you can't "go back to an earlier save" and re-try it. Your either stuck, or you have to start from the beginning. And the BUGS! Quite a large percentage of U.S. players couldn't get the game to work, an even greater percentage had a game breaking bug, like a quest giver, one that's NEEDED, to continue the main story plot, either wouldn't be where they were supposed to be and just went missing, or would just smile dumbly at the player, not recognizing it needs to start talking again. And the hype continued: Cinematic fights, no real "one way to get places", fence hopping, interactive dog companion. The promises went on and on! Inclusive multi-player....ok the multi-player just wasn't. Sure you could join some one's game, but you get like 4 stock characters to choose from (no customization), and it's 2 characters that share 1 camera, even if your over xbox live, 1 camera. Really really poor idea. About the only thing they did deliver on, was the dog companion...and even then, it was pretty annoying for upkeep.
Ok, so why am I talking about the previous games for Fable III? It's because Fable III is a sort of "apology" for the previous games, primarily Fable II. Fable III was EVERYTHING they promised for II, it's what II should have been plus a little extra. It's as if the media director looked in on projects, and hyped up the wrong game (hyping 3 when they were releasing 2). The dog is less annoying. The guns work, the fighting works, the auto-saves stagger sorta. Enough that if something happens poorly, there's a chance you can go back within a few moments to where it might not happen again. The multi-player is great, and by great I mean right. Cameras are dynamic to playres (unless your playing on the same xbox, but that's not that big of deal.) The characters are YOUR characters, not some ugly stock model like in the last game. 2nd player can customize options, just gotta coordinate who's going to gun room when, lol. Clothing looks, decent. AND THERE'S NO LUMBERJACK GIRL BUG! (lumberjack girl: In Fable II part of the story plot has you in a specific outfit. Problem was, they made the outfit for a very specific male character model. When they put it on the player character, it over-rides what your character looked like, with what the male model looked like, even if you were female! So you get wide shoulders, a stocky torso, and a big cleft chin, aka Lumberjack Girl.) The most entertaining thing about Fable III is the evolving combat cinema kills. It's random, it depends on how your killing and what your killing with, but every once and a while, your character will kill in quite the funny ways. Level design needed a little bit of work in places. (invisible walls need looked at on some of the moving platforms.) I really liked the smooth level transitions, the loading times were not that bad really, if at all. The elimination of the menu system was a GREAT idea. Loved outfit selection. Needed a bit better color selection and well "more". It needed at least 1 other type of weapon in each category. The have heavy hammer, small sword, long rifle, dueling pistol, and that's it. They just needed one more type of gun and one more type of melee and the game would have been greatly more "open" to style. It needed a few more tattoo designs, and better collectible item rewards (about 4 chests or more give you gold. As not as redundant as the previous game, gold still doesn't really matter that much in this game.) Some of the weapon designs were great, some of the armor designs were amazing. The star power, as British star power goes, was phenomenal (only a little sad that a Dr. Who reference wasn't used, oh well, lol.). The characters were great, and wonderfully portrayed...though I wish your actions could decide if you could save 1 or 2. But yeah. (As a side note, so you all know this isn't all just butter and kisses, is that the last boss was disappointing. It really felt like it should have been a multi-stage fight, with the first stage that you are given in the game now, evolving to either 1 or 2 more stages of increasing pace and difficulty.)
Overall I give it an 8/10: It's got "That twinkle". There is something a little special about this game that makes it pretty spectacular.
Moving on:
Fallout: Las Vegas
This was a game that I sort of had high hopes for. I was really excited when my roommate picked it up, and let me start playing. It took me a bit of doing and qutie abit of time, but I did finish it. Well, I finished as much as I wanted out of it. However, after a time...it started becoming, "not worth the effort". This review is going to be a little bit short but really, there's not much to say that hasn't already been said elsewhere for Fallout 3. Basically the game is Fallout 3 with a semi-sorta new map, semi-sorta new characters, semi-sorta new weapons, a semi-sorta new plot, and most of all, new annoying "good idea, bad executions." The graphics aren't much different, the guns aren't much different, the game play isn't much different, the story.....leaves a bit to be desired. There's some funny and fun twists, but overall, it was...well....pretty restrictive. That's sort of the word of the game "Restrictions." Apparently Bethesda studios decided that the players were given too much freedom in Fallout 3 and Oblivion, so they decided do away with that in a couple of ways. The first was the largest restriction: quest and story. Sure you can choose who to ally with, your path of good or evil, but once you choose, your stuck. There isn't any deviation, or unique changes, your given the objectives, complete or not finish the game. Your choice. The 2nd way they restrict the payer is with faction. This was a very good "idea" but a very poor execution. The good idea was simple: you do good things for particular factions, they like you more and give you quests, items, houses, and what not. The bad idea: faction is based on armor. What your wearing depends on standing and rep. This was a really poor idea for a couple of reasons. The first reason, most enemies you fight are faction related enemies. All gear from faction related enemies, other than guns, ammo, food, and miscellaneous items, is faction gear. Your items and gear deteriorate at astounding rates, you might be forced to run around naked even though there's TONS of armor around you, you just can't equip it cause your allies might open fire. your companions will not wear faction armor that opposes with their faction, even though it's 100 times better than what they are wearing. And a personal thing for me, I can't wear trophies of those I've slain. The last way Fallout: Las Vegas is restrictive is invisible walls. They really narrowed the playing field, quite literally, with these. Preventing you access to so many areas cause you just can't figure out the "right way round" even though it looks like you could just "walk" to it. I got very frustrated with areas I should be able to jump to, or even casually stroll too, but just simply couldn't for some unknown reason. And that's pretty much it.
I give it a 7/10: So far so good. The game is decent, not great, but decent. Could really have used a more dynamic choice in characters, a drastic overall of guns, and a redesign in faction mechanics, as well as a demolition project against inviso-wall incorporated.
And Last
World of Warcraft: Cataclysm:
To be honest, I'm just blown away. I have not been able to put this down, and that's saying something as I'm generally not a "massively multi-player" friendly kind of player. I tend to keep to myself, loathing the existence of other characters, wishing that this time would be the time that they broke their legs from jumping 1 too many times (I swear some keyboards have the space bar worn down to a little nub.) But yeah, this has been a very, very, delightful experience. I have yet to play this fully, I have yet to get to the new end game content (levels 80-85), and I have yet to play the new Goblin race. I have been playing levels 1-65 on the werewolves side of things, and besides a few bugs here and there, minor graphic issues, really, or just wrong sound file put into to wrong emote, issues with animations not syncing and just little tid bits like that, overall, it's great O.o. And that's a lot for me to say, as a lot of you know how bad I find World of Warcrack. But Blizzard has made the game....enjoyable. Questing, although still a burden some times, is easily accessible, you don't have to run from one continent to the other to continue, it's all a straight linear line of "if your on this land, go to point X, that land, go to point Y". The random dungeon que makes finding dungeons easier, gear looks decent so forth and this and that. The werewolves, wholly crap the werewolves. It's those little extra things that I so enjoy. The tidbits that have nothing to really "do" in the game, except sit there and be awesome. Levels 1-13 are amazing as you follow the story of your dying people and their heavy "curse" (but as a furry, it's not really a "curse" as much as a "better way of life" lol). The thing that kills me is that the werewolves are a Victorian age British civilization. Accents, architecture, culture, dress, and everything. Even greater, they have a werewolf only quest for top-hats. Yes, only World of Warcraft werewolves get top-hats. The level design for the re-imagined areas are pretty awesome, the big scars, burnt patches, and craters are interesting, as well as the big whirlpools of death spotted here and there (jump, it's fun). I like that the biggest baddest monster (the big dragon called Deathwing, that's the expansion's mascot) comes into random relms, and torches them. I have yet to see it's destruction first hand (I am always 2nd too late, but just in time to see the flames die down), but it looks spectacular. I love the phase tech all over, it makes it seem like your quests actually "do" something rather than "oh, thanks for your time, bye now sucker!" I like the battles all across the land, the Npc's not really doing anything but it looks like they are battling. It adds a bit better air of conflict and a greater scope of what's going on. I'm enjoying all the "underwater" shenanigans as I did play out the humorous "sea legs" first part to the lvl 80 content. Yeah, just enjoyment all around. Oh! And I like how they "specialized" the class talents. Each class gets a choice of 1 of 3 specializations, and depending on that choice depends on what bread and butter move they get. So you can just watch people play and say "oh, your this type of that class". Just a bit of fun there.
Overall World of Warcraft: Cataclysm is getting a 9/10 a Diamond in the Rough. I think that people should at least play the 10 day trial if they can, lol. All in all the changes they have made are great, some refinement is needed but it doesn't subtract much from the overall game. I like it a lot, lol.
So yeah, GOOD TIMES!
Oh and some movies I've seen, not really revies:
Tron was amazing, I nearly raved to the music right there in the theater, just needed glowsticks.
Harry Potter, was...ok, wish they wouldn't do the Michale Bay shaky camera fights and do some choreography instead :( Wish the 2nd part was released at the same time, so you could just sit for 4 hours and watch it from start to finish :(
And there ya go. Enjoy.
Monday, December 27, 2010
Thursday, October 21, 2010
The MMO that almost was.
So, many of you know my innitial review as posted in my art gallery:
Well, with all that said and done, things got a little wonky. I got to body level 11, punching level 9 and some other level 6-7 classes. I gave it the best try I possibly could. But in the end, I just ended up hating it more and more. Following forums and dev posts made it even worse so as they blatenly state that alot of the thing the game promots (even on the box cover and in the user manual) were not even implimented in game. Such as the punching class being able to use a steal skill, mage class summons, and other fun things like that.
What they have done, was successfully turned a game that could have been amazing, into a very pointless grind fest. You can't level a class except for x ammount per day (about 3-5 levels if that). You can only do 8 quests per day, and not all quests are for any 1 class, so it forces you even further to seperate your xp through the tons of pointless gather and crafting classes. The game echonmy is so upside down that even shoping for items is outragiously expinsive to begin with. There is no low level gear between levels 1-10. There may be some gloves, and a pair of boots, but really, unless your going to grind out untill level 15 with about 3 different crafting classes, you can't make, buy, or quest for a full set of new gear for any 1 particular class.
Something that makes it even harder to play: Your stats change with your class, and that changes with you main-hand weapon. You don't have different weapons for each class, it's all 1 main hand and 1 off hand. So if your a really heavy sack of hit points as a defense class, and you try mage, you suddenly get sickle cell anemia and hyperglycemia as all your hit points go down like some one give you a kick to the groin. It's really strange.
Time. Oh my god, time. They overlooked some incredibly major things when making this game that makes trying to do anything take a hell of a lot longer than it should. There is no quick change for your 10 or so different classes. You literally have to scroll through your unorganized inventory to find every little piece of equipment (2 hands, hat, gloves, shoes, backpack, apron, shoes) and equip them one by one. Each time your character model has to refresh (which takes about 30sec) and each selection refreshes your inventory and doesn't save your place. When your inventory is 80 objects long...it gets really cumbersome to scroll through to find equipment. This should have been in the back of the developer's minds. There should have been a solution like a quick button, or a several slotted macro item changer (like what is default in something like, i don't know, wow) that allows you to pre set what items go where, and then change over with a simple press of a button that adds all items to your character all at once. Equip, unequipped, 30 second character refresh, done. Not equip one item, 30 sec refresh, scroll, equip next item, 30sec refresh, scroll, that is pre alpha game mechanics that should have been dealt with. I say this because it's one of those "with the above said mandatory class changes, how could they not have known people need different equipment to be forced into various classes?" It really feels like a punishment to the player the huge amount of time equipment management takes in the game.
Something I did like about it was the fact that crafting had little simple minigames. It was the same minigame per crafting/gathering type, but still was an interesting quick time game mechanic. I had fun matching my marks and chopping trees. I had fun hammering a glowing sphere to do my bidding...even though EVERYTHING has a 90% fail rate, regardless of level it takes to make, making you loose soooooo many components to make 1 bolt of cloth, that it really defeats the purpose of training. Some of the attack animations and skills were great. The quest line, although impossibly short, and way to far in levels in between quests, was good and engaging where they were...just needed MORE, so so so much more. Every 2 levels needed a story quest. Not every 10 if they restrict your leveling so much. But yes, grindfest 2010.
Other then that, some technacle issues arrise: UI scale needs to be implimented, AI pathing needs abit better work. In game issues need work: Game needs to be more user friendly: Need minimap quest direcitonal beacons, needs quicker and better inventory management. Needs better class change management, needs more to do per singular class, needs more armor and wepons overall for lower levels. Needs something more entertaining than grinding. Needs quests that are more than "Kill this many over there" or "mine fish in that river" or "craft x many of these". Needs more plot at lower levels. All in all this is an MMO that just lacks so much substance. It feels rushed and unpolished. Really on the verge of being a great game, but falls utterly short, being out of breath, and out of ideas to make it work.
It is the first MMO that I ever stopped playing before my free trial was up. I just couldn't get in a mood to actually like it.
So far, this is my lowest rated game and it gets worse: Rating of 2 Yarg, it's more than a peg-leg, a hook, and a parrot short of a pirate!
My roommate gave me his buddy pass, so We've been playing Final Fantasy XIV for the past couple of days...and already, I can see my review (which will be concluded after the free 30 days) is not going to be in favor of the game. My roommate assures me that most Japanese MMO's are like this, and the problems I have with the game are how the average Japan MMO game player are more than used to and accustomed too, but really, I think there's a line here. Just because your used to a certain game mechanic, doesn't make it a good mechanic.
I've gotten to level 7. And that's where the game, yes the game, is having me stay for 3 days. You literally have x amount of quests (8) that you can do every 36 hours. If you try to grind out gaps in levels, your xp declines exponentially till you hit 0xp for everything you do. People assure me this is to stop power leveling, but really, when all you want to do is listen to the story, and they have a story quest at level 1 and then the next one isn't until level 10, at least you could get me to level 10, or have something to actually do in the game until then.
(side note: obvious sign of Japanese game: no jump, and your player is constantly defeated by knee high invisible walls)
I didn't intend for this to be my full review, but it's going to be a good chunk of it right here, 2 days of plugging around in the game (and I do mean plugging). The game from the get-go is anti-intuition and anti-player. easiest thing to explain is the anti-player. There are no in-game options for graphics cards, audio, or anything. That is a separate .exe that you have to open before you open the game .exe and change all the items around. After I changed the options to fit my pc, I realized that there's no U.I. scale...so I have to play the game in tiny eyestrain-o-vision.
Sadly I am kind of spoiled, I have come to hold that developers should know that not every consumer's pc is exactly the same as the ones that they are developing on. That not everyone has the same resolution setting across the globe. A simple U.I. scale that increase and decreases the general user interface's size on a fixed percentile ratio shouldn't and isn't that hard to implement into a general options menu.
Another reason this game is anti-player is the fact that you have to pay them extra money ($3) per character. that's right, per character. The game may say it's $9.99, but that's only access to their world. To actually walk around and do stuff in it, let alone get pass the log in screen, you got to give them $3 per avatar, and that adds up real quick if you want alts.
Here we get to game play. This is just simply not a game for me. I'll play it until the 30 days are up, then cancel. Which is sad because the environment in the game is beautiful to look at, truly. One thing that I really don't like in the game, is the fact that everybody is every class. The game feels more like Secondlife than it is an MMO. I feel like every class should carry something "special" to the table, each person having strengths and weaknesses that separates them and compliments everyone else's strengths and weaknesses. But FFXIV goes the opposite rout. Nobody is special because everyone has exactly the same everything. Only difference between characters I've seen, is your starting cloths, that's it...which is really unfortunate, in my opinion.
changes and transitions: Alot of MMO's, like Wow, Everquest 1 and 2, City of Heros(villians), Champions Online, Tabula Rasa (remains my favorite MMO of all time, OF ALL TIME), Guild wars, Conan, Baked Potato Online, and others I've played, have a steady transition that marches along with your character. Transition of gear, transition of fighting style, transition of movement, and most of all, transition of location. So far in FFXIV...no transition. level's 1-7 and I'm still at the same city gates, I'm still in the same cloths, I've still got the same weapon, Only difference is what little money I did make from the 8 quests I've expended (7 complete 1 abandoned cause it didn't tell me I needed a crafting tool, and then "oops, can't do that cause ya don't have the tool" and nothing to do but to give up) and waste the money on useless crafting tools that are HELLA expensive. So all in all, I'm bored. This game....hasn't changed yet...and I'm stuck waiting for it to do something. Me? I'm ready to do something, I've been ready, I'm just waiting for the game to catch up to me, and it's taking it's sweet ass time.
Crafting: what a bunch of BULLSHIT. Usual crafting games have a cuve. you start at level 1, easy, simple things to craft, then to what ever high level where things increase in more complexity. You have to venture further out in the world ass appropriate to your level and get more and better materials and make more and better items. In FFXIV, I have no idea how any uses this fucked up crafting system. you can not just go out, harvest some stuff, and come up with some item. (on rare cases, you can, but those cases are rare and far and few between.) I got frustrated with the inability to take the 79 different stacks of harvested Items I have and trying to randomly combine them to make things, so I looked up online recipes.....and you know what?
reason 1 I can't make something: out of the recipe that is meant for level 1's to make, there's a level 16-30 item that needs to be made and used IN THE LEVEL 1 RECIPE
reason 2 I can't make something: A lot of level 1 recipes rely on materials either gotten through quests or are rare or are obtained somewhere else as well as where I'm getting them through, all in all, to make a something I have to travel to other starting zones..how....I have no idea!
reason 3 I can't make something: It requires a purchased material, and I spent all my money buying the items required to make it in the first place.
reason 4 I can't make something: When it says "recipe level 1" it isn't, it's usually much much much much higher level due to the items it needs from reason 1
reason 5 I can't make something: level 1 recipes have about a 70% fail rate (probably worse then 70, feels more like 90). When you fail a recipe, it's considered a botch, and you loose all materials. which sucks because at level 1 you don't have many materials to begin with, so it's more of the same bullshit of the anti-playerness.
Something I really like about the game, the player character designs. Like most FF games, the player characters do look pretty good.
I like the pugilist class, but the game itself will not let you just play a class. You have to play ALL classes, making any single one class get caught up in the frustrating and very time consuming hat switching...thus making all classes not fun to play. I think I've spent just as much time playing the game, as I have navigating the menus trying to figure out if I'm supposed to equip the pick axe or some other arbitrarily pointless gear...WHEN ALL I WANT TO DO IS PUNCH THE SHIT OF OF THINGS WITH BRASS KNUCKLES!
Something that is pretty annoying: You can't tell a creature's level and compare it to your own. For one, you have 2 different types of levels. There's the class level, which changes with your many, many, avalanche of useless hats, and the body level, which only updates your numerical points and doesn't account for jack shit. With that said, there's no target box. When fighting a creature, all you get is it's health...which means they can stick level 20+ creatures in where ever they feel like in the level 1 zone. So when your be-bopping around, laying waste and slaughter to all the level 1 non-threatening squirrels of the start zone, suddenly you get one shotted by a level what ever mouse. The only way you find out it's a terror that far surpasses you, is when you select attack and you only do 5 damage, then it hits you and does 1280 damage, and you only have 612hp all in the matter of about 2 seconds. You can't even run, your just dead automatically, yay. Luckily, unlike City of Heros, there's no XP sink.
Another thing, levels and cut-scenes, all nice and balanced and pretty....Just wish the rest of the game was polished as much.
There are no in game tutorials for anything. The only starter equipment you get is your start cloths, and your start "weapon". Really starting out as fighter or magic person is a waste of time, and starting out as a crafter saves you about 2,000 money in the short run.
Switching to various crafting and gathering gear takes SO much fucking time to do, it's so very annoying. So far I'm teetering a rank of 4 because this game feels very unpolished and not very well thought out. (Like I get what they are trying to do with the power leveling stuff, but they should really implement those things later in the game, not at level 1...if anything is a put off of this game, it's the fact that I'm stuck at level 7 and all I wanted were some freaking gloves, some shoes, and a hat/mask! but now I can't get those things cause I'm out of levels, out of money, and trying to craft and can't, yay!)
I have more and other problems with the game, but I'll save those for the full review and further assessment later on.
Well, with all that said and done, things got a little wonky. I got to body level 11, punching level 9 and some other level 6-7 classes. I gave it the best try I possibly could. But in the end, I just ended up hating it more and more. Following forums and dev posts made it even worse so as they blatenly state that alot of the thing the game promots (even on the box cover and in the user manual) were not even implimented in game. Such as the punching class being able to use a steal skill, mage class summons, and other fun things like that.
What they have done, was successfully turned a game that could have been amazing, into a very pointless grind fest. You can't level a class except for x ammount per day (about 3-5 levels if that). You can only do 8 quests per day, and not all quests are for any 1 class, so it forces you even further to seperate your xp through the tons of pointless gather and crafting classes. The game echonmy is so upside down that even shoping for items is outragiously expinsive to begin with. There is no low level gear between levels 1-10. There may be some gloves, and a pair of boots, but really, unless your going to grind out untill level 15 with about 3 different crafting classes, you can't make, buy, or quest for a full set of new gear for any 1 particular class.
Something that makes it even harder to play: Your stats change with your class, and that changes with you main-hand weapon. You don't have different weapons for each class, it's all 1 main hand and 1 off hand. So if your a really heavy sack of hit points as a defense class, and you try mage, you suddenly get sickle cell anemia and hyperglycemia as all your hit points go down like some one give you a kick to the groin. It's really strange.
Time. Oh my god, time. They overlooked some incredibly major things when making this game that makes trying to do anything take a hell of a lot longer than it should. There is no quick change for your 10 or so different classes. You literally have to scroll through your unorganized inventory to find every little piece of equipment (2 hands, hat, gloves, shoes, backpack, apron, shoes) and equip them one by one. Each time your character model has to refresh (which takes about 30sec) and each selection refreshes your inventory and doesn't save your place. When your inventory is 80 objects long...it gets really cumbersome to scroll through to find equipment. This should have been in the back of the developer's minds. There should have been a solution like a quick button, or a several slotted macro item changer (like what is default in something like, i don't know, wow) that allows you to pre set what items go where, and then change over with a simple press of a button that adds all items to your character all at once. Equip, unequipped, 30 second character refresh, done. Not equip one item, 30 sec refresh, scroll, equip next item, 30sec refresh, scroll, that is pre alpha game mechanics that should have been dealt with. I say this because it's one of those "with the above said mandatory class changes, how could they not have known people need different equipment to be forced into various classes?" It really feels like a punishment to the player the huge amount of time equipment management takes in the game.
Something I did like about it was the fact that crafting had little simple minigames. It was the same minigame per crafting/gathering type, but still was an interesting quick time game mechanic. I had fun matching my marks and chopping trees. I had fun hammering a glowing sphere to do my bidding...even though EVERYTHING has a 90% fail rate, regardless of level it takes to make, making you loose soooooo many components to make 1 bolt of cloth, that it really defeats the purpose of training. Some of the attack animations and skills were great. The quest line, although impossibly short, and way to far in levels in between quests, was good and engaging where they were...just needed MORE, so so so much more. Every 2 levels needed a story quest. Not every 10 if they restrict your leveling so much. But yes, grindfest 2010.
Other then that, some technacle issues arrise: UI scale needs to be implimented, AI pathing needs abit better work. In game issues need work: Game needs to be more user friendly: Need minimap quest direcitonal beacons, needs quicker and better inventory management. Needs better class change management, needs more to do per singular class, needs more armor and wepons overall for lower levels. Needs something more entertaining than grinding. Needs quests that are more than "Kill this many over there" or "mine fish in that river" or "craft x many of these". Needs more plot at lower levels. All in all this is an MMO that just lacks so much substance. It feels rushed and unpolished. Really on the verge of being a great game, but falls utterly short, being out of breath, and out of ideas to make it work.
It is the first MMO that I ever stopped playing before my free trial was up. I just couldn't get in a mood to actually like it.
So far, this is my lowest rated game and it gets worse: Rating of 2 Yarg, it's more than a peg-leg, a hook, and a parrot short of a pirate!
Sunday, September 26, 2010
League of Legends
It is pretty rare that a pc game hits the free to play market, from the start of it's creation, and becomes a full fledged playable game full of substance and deliciousness. Usually, a game has to start as a pay to play service, then, through lack of players, marketing makes the move from pay per month, to pay per content. Sometimes, I'm ok with pay per content. Games like Dungeons and Dragons online, was a little overboard with pay per content, but overall, it was still a great free to play game. (I LOVE the idea of an MMO dungeon master, talking to you, describing the events and rooms, and people, and monsters and end bosses out verbally.
But, back to the point. League of Legends. This Free to play is all free to play. everything in the game can be "unlocked" by playing the game. The only things to buy with real life cash are little extra bits. Things that don't really change the game, but make it more entertaining than it already is. The game is a hero fight system. A sort of action strategy team based war game. You command a hero, and go lay waste to your enemies. You parade from one end of the map, to the other end of the map. You destroy buildings, such as turrets and crystals, and at the end of the day, your kill count doesn't matter. It's all about grabbing land, killing turrets, and stabbing your sword, axe, tentacles, airplane, wrench, spear, boots, whiskey cask, bullets, cannon balls, or music notes, into the enemy team's big crystal. You unlock heros with points you get per playing matches. And this point brings me to what you pay cold hard monies for.
So all in all, this game, League of Legends, is really solid. come check it out!
You can download it here using my referral link :P
Also, rating: I give this a 9! Cause it's good enough, that I'm addicted to it! XD Cocaine's a hell of a drug.
Wednesday, August 4, 2010
Hatch Day
Ah, my first post.
My first baby-steps into the vastness of internet blogging. Not only internet blogging, but on a topic that is beaten to death by anyone with a console and half eaten pencil. That's right, I'm going to be blogging VIDEO GAME REVIEWS! *strategically pauses for the gasping of the shocked fair grounds crowed* Yes, yes, how droll, how contrived, but it is something that I have thought about doing for some time, and decided to get the big spatula, scrape myself off the pavement where I had become a grease spot of existence, and slop my gelatinous form in front of a computer screen and bash my head against the keyboard until my displacement of teeth made some form of a complete sentence.
So a little about your average N00basurus. First things first, everyone's favorite subject, TERMINOLOGY! A N00b. A N00b has a long history of meanings but the one I like to use is the simplest and basic and it's first meaning. A N00b (that's capital N with two zeros and a lowercase b, for those who don't know leet speech yet) is a person trying to do complex tasks before having the proper training or experience required to perform them with any accuracy. A.K.A. someone who doesn't know what the hell they are doing, and usually brings down everyone around them, including themselves in a big flaming ball of fail and death. N00b, as any World of Warcraft nerd can tell you, can be used as an insult to imply an air of stupidity about any one person, but I find it to have a lack of imagination when used in that context.
The term saurus is simple. It is an old Greek word for lizard (since the ancient Greeks were one of the first paleontologists). Yup, that's it, lizard. Learn something new everyday.
Now some personal stuff. I may not be that great of speller, mainly cause I have a "form of autism" for a learning disorder, but I am crazy high functioning. You wouldn't know it by just well, hanging out, so it's not that big of a deal. Just forgive spelling and grammar. As Frankenstein Captain America would tell you: "NAZI'S BAAAAAD!". I live in a college town in Lawrence Kansas and I'm a student that has been in college for WAY too long. I hold jobs when I can, though those come and go over the years, and in my spare time, when I'm not hanging with people, doing other things, I play video games. A couple hours at a time, or longer depending on what's going on...a lot of times....absolutely nothing is going on.
Ok so an explanation of further indepthness is required like President Obama needs additional pylons.
I'm going to rate on a 10 point scale. I looked at shorter scales and found that a yay or nay isn't detailed enough. 5 star is a little.....I don't know, I never liked it ever since I tried that expensive 5 star restaurant when I was a kid and got food poisoning from some shrimp. I looked at a huge scale, 100 points...that seemed...too...nit picky, even for me, if you cold believe it! So 10 points seems just long enough to get my point across. I will do decimals, but only in .5's Cause some things can fall in between, but not much, I promise to floss.
So I will christen my first posting with a short game review. It's short because the game itself was unfortunately short. To let you know my reviews are in 2 parts. The overall review, and the the reasons why. In the reasons why parts there will be SPOILERS. I will try to make sure to label those parts as such, don't hold me to that, but I will try.
Crackdown 2.
This is a game that flew right under everybody's radar. It almost did on the previous title as well, however, because they added a beta for ODST from the Bungie crew, it got a bit more enthusiasm. The basis of both Crackdown games is simple. You are the future of the future policeman. Some supernatural sci-fi enhanced super dude busting some skulls on your usual police beat. There's violence in the streets in a GTA'ish environment and they need you to help out. You level some skills, you jump around, shoot guns, blow stuff up, drive cars, and beat down criminals with the bodies of other dead criminals.
I give the game about a: 5
Yarg! This game is a few Pegs short of a pirate!
It's a game that I'm not sure buying it fresh would be the best investment. It definitely has some fun moments. Leveling your skills to jump higher, run faster, blow things up with more blowy upness, and the like is some what fun. The environment is expansive and if you played the first game, it's interesting to see how the island has changed. It's got a little bit of exploring to it as well and the announcer is as funny as ever. Sadly this is where the game stops being fun. Spoilers from here on--> Not saying that the game becomes un-fun, it just sorta peters out prematurely (like a few people i know...lol). The skills need some where to "go". when you first start you get 6 dots of skill leveling. The first dot is free. Then you build up 4 dots, and Just like the last game, there is no "5th" dot. It is really anti climactic. This is one of those games where your character feels like it should have more and more and more levels of, well, EVERYTHING! It should continue up to level 10 or maybe even 20, I don't know, just more!
Another major problem I had with the game was the enemies. There are two factions. One faction has 2 enemy types (regular guy and slightly more health guy with metal for a face) and the other faction has about 5 (dudes,fat dudes, fast dudes, big dudes, bigger dude) But neither of the factions really has any "bosses" or important people, just tons and tons and tons of minions and then nothing else. It's like a Mario game without the satisfying hard as hell impossible to dodge browser fights. There's nothing to hold onto. It kind of is the theme of the whole game. "Some what fun to play, but nothing to really get excited about."
It feels rushed. As if they made 1 level, and that as really all they had time for. You have 1 objective with about 4 sub parts and 2 different kinds of side quests, and that's it. Nothing after that. Not even a boss fight to cap it all off. Much like the first game, it cut short. But the first game actually had more content..you just shredded through that content like nobody's business.
The character. This made me the saddest of all the things. Something that made Crackdown pretty cool was the fact that you could choose one of about 8-12 characters. As your skills, as limited as they were, leveled your dude would change in interesting and awesome ways. (Like the open faced helmet guy got night vision goggles, some dude got an eye patch and a huge scar, and all sorts of wacky stuff. One guy with crazy hair got even crazier hair.) But this game... Crackdown 2 gives you 4 characters to choose from. After level 2 in any skill it doesn't matter any more. Their face, the only skin visible, gets covered with a fully enclosed helmet. It's the same costume for all 4 characters which makes me wonder "Why even choose one to begin with?". There is no differentiation or personalization or even point to character selection. Just wasted space on the disk.
Finally: Don't get me started on NPC's and A.I. If you thought Louis from Left 4 Dead was bad, this an entire populated island with them! You can't drive a car without mowing down the 60 civilians that feel like they need to end it right then and their and jump INTO your car's windshield. You can't fire a rocket or RPG without civilians diving out to get the rocket as if it were a high velocity bag of delicious M&M's. There was literately a spot in the game, no joke, where I was taking a stronghold (one of the 2 side quest types) and a car, same damn car, would SPAWN, drop a couple feet from thin air 2 feet in front of me, EVERY DAMN TIME I PULLED THE ROCKET LAUNCHER TRIGGER! Seriously! I would even re-spawn and wait a few seconds, then *click* BOOM! I killed myself cause the blue sedan spawned on top of me right when the rocket left the rocket tube. I had to find a different weapon, one that didn't explode, to go into combat with. I don't think there should be a game designed that gives you a good thing to use, and then puts you in constant situations where you absolutely can not use it. "Here you go player, here is a wrench for you to carry around! Sorry, there are no bolts or nuts in the entire game, Good luck!" Needless to say, my friend, who was watching me play, was on the floor dying from laughter from my unfortunate turn of repeating events.
On a bright note: It was challenging. "Protect this sandwich" is always my Achilles' heel in games, since I'd rather eat the sandwich myself, but even still, there were some places where I just had to flail around uselessly until I found just the right weapon combo to get the job done...stupid big bigger dude with teeth for a face :/ (I was sad that you just can't go "find" these enemy's with face teeth walking around the streets bashing down buildings...that would have been awesome!)
The ending was confusing, disappointing, yet funny all at the same time. I'm not sure if that was what they wanted you to feel, but I was entertained by the strangeness of the sensation. (as a side note, way to make a DR. Who reference without meaning to do so...)
So yeah, recap:
Crackdown 2 gets a whopping 5, You should play it at some point for the experience, but rent or wait till it becomes discounted and marked down.
Has some great moments, especially with the narrative (seriously, the way the integrated his voice and your xbox 360 functions you take for granted had me laughing so hard I teared up, and is one of the few reasons this game wasn't scored lower...)
It is very short. about 6-8 hours of game play. I didn't even bother with online play.
More character customization needed and BADLY.
Online...was awkward, Tried one game, and then didn't pick it up, so can't really give a full review on that bit.
Needs more different factions and types of enemy's.
Needs satisfying boss fights.
Needs boss fights.
Needs a way to shut off the narrative after tutorial is over, and only have the naritive say funny things but also meaning ful things. (only once did I need to know what orbs did...but he sure had to make a point to let me know that they upgrade skill points EVERY DAMN TIME over the 200 some I collected!)
It is fun to bust GTA criminals
A.I. for NPC's needs a huge upgrade or patch.
And that's about it for Crackdown 2 and my first post! Hope you like.
My first baby-steps into the vastness of internet blogging. Not only internet blogging, but on a topic that is beaten to death by anyone with a console and half eaten pencil. That's right, I'm going to be blogging VIDEO GAME REVIEWS! *strategically pauses for the gasping of the shocked fair grounds crowed* Yes, yes, how droll, how contrived, but it is something that I have thought about doing for some time, and decided to get the big spatula, scrape myself off the pavement where I had become a grease spot of existence, and slop my gelatinous form in front of a computer screen and bash my head against the keyboard until my displacement of teeth made some form of a complete sentence.
So a little about your average N00basurus. First things first, everyone's favorite subject, TERMINOLOGY! A N00b. A N00b has a long history of meanings but the one I like to use is the simplest and basic and it's first meaning. A N00b (that's capital N with two zeros and a lowercase b, for those who don't know leet speech yet) is a person trying to do complex tasks before having the proper training or experience required to perform them with any accuracy. A.K.A. someone who doesn't know what the hell they are doing, and usually brings down everyone around them, including themselves in a big flaming ball of fail and death. N00b, as any World of Warcraft nerd can tell you, can be used as an insult to imply an air of stupidity about any one person, but I find it to have a lack of imagination when used in that context.
The term saurus is simple. It is an old Greek word for lizard (since the ancient Greeks were one of the first paleontologists). Yup, that's it, lizard. Learn something new everyday.
Now some personal stuff. I may not be that great of speller, mainly cause I have a "form of autism" for a learning disorder, but I am crazy high functioning. You wouldn't know it by just well, hanging out, so it's not that big of a deal. Just forgive spelling and grammar. As Frankenstein Captain America would tell you: "NAZI'S BAAAAAD!". I live in a college town in Lawrence Kansas and I'm a student that has been in college for WAY too long. I hold jobs when I can, though those come and go over the years, and in my spare time, when I'm not hanging with people, doing other things, I play video games. A couple hours at a time, or longer depending on what's going on...a lot of times....absolutely nothing is going on.
Ok so an explanation of further indepthness is required like President Obama needs additional pylons.
I'm going to rate on a 10 point scale. I looked at shorter scales and found that a yay or nay isn't detailed enough. 5 star is a little.....I don't know, I never liked it ever since I tried that expensive 5 star restaurant when I was a kid and got food poisoning from some shrimp. I looked at a huge scale, 100 points...that seemed...too...nit picky, even for me, if you cold believe it! So 10 points seems just long enough to get my point across. I will do decimals, but only in .5's Cause some things can fall in between, but not much, I promise to floss.
So I will christen my first posting with a short game review. It's short because the game itself was unfortunately short. To let you know my reviews are in 2 parts. The overall review, and the the reasons why. In the reasons why parts there will be SPOILERS. I will try to make sure to label those parts as such, don't hold me to that, but I will try.
Crackdown 2.
This is a game that flew right under everybody's radar. It almost did on the previous title as well, however, because they added a beta for ODST from the Bungie crew, it got a bit more enthusiasm. The basis of both Crackdown games is simple. You are the future of the future policeman. Some supernatural sci-fi enhanced super dude busting some skulls on your usual police beat. There's violence in the streets in a GTA'ish environment and they need you to help out. You level some skills, you jump around, shoot guns, blow stuff up, drive cars, and beat down criminals with the bodies of other dead criminals.
I give the game about a: 5
Yarg! This game is a few Pegs short of a pirate!
It's a game that I'm not sure buying it fresh would be the best investment. It definitely has some fun moments. Leveling your skills to jump higher, run faster, blow things up with more blowy upness, and the like is some what fun. The environment is expansive and if you played the first game, it's interesting to see how the island has changed. It's got a little bit of exploring to it as well and the announcer is as funny as ever. Sadly this is where the game stops being fun. Spoilers from here on--> Not saying that the game becomes un-fun, it just sorta peters out prematurely (like a few people i know...lol). The skills need some where to "go". when you first start you get 6 dots of skill leveling. The first dot is free. Then you build up 4 dots, and Just like the last game, there is no "5th" dot. It is really anti climactic. This is one of those games where your character feels like it should have more and more and more levels of, well, EVERYTHING! It should continue up to level 10 or maybe even 20, I don't know, just more!
Another major problem I had with the game was the enemies. There are two factions. One faction has 2 enemy types (regular guy and slightly more health guy with metal for a face) and the other faction has about 5 (dudes,fat dudes, fast dudes, big dudes, bigger dude) But neither of the factions really has any "bosses" or important people, just tons and tons and tons of minions and then nothing else. It's like a Mario game without the satisfying hard as hell impossible to dodge browser fights. There's nothing to hold onto. It kind of is the theme of the whole game. "Some what fun to play, but nothing to really get excited about."
It feels rushed. As if they made 1 level, and that as really all they had time for. You have 1 objective with about 4 sub parts and 2 different kinds of side quests, and that's it. Nothing after that. Not even a boss fight to cap it all off. Much like the first game, it cut short. But the first game actually had more content..you just shredded through that content like nobody's business.
The character. This made me the saddest of all the things. Something that made Crackdown pretty cool was the fact that you could choose one of about 8-12 characters. As your skills, as limited as they were, leveled your dude would change in interesting and awesome ways. (Like the open faced helmet guy got night vision goggles, some dude got an eye patch and a huge scar, and all sorts of wacky stuff. One guy with crazy hair got even crazier hair.) But this game... Crackdown 2 gives you 4 characters to choose from. After level 2 in any skill it doesn't matter any more. Their face, the only skin visible, gets covered with a fully enclosed helmet. It's the same costume for all 4 characters which makes me wonder "Why even choose one to begin with?". There is no differentiation or personalization or even point to character selection. Just wasted space on the disk.
Finally: Don't get me started on NPC's and A.I. If you thought Louis from Left 4 Dead was bad, this an entire populated island with them! You can't drive a car without mowing down the 60 civilians that feel like they need to end it right then and their and jump INTO your car's windshield. You can't fire a rocket or RPG without civilians diving out to get the rocket as if it were a high velocity bag of delicious M&M's. There was literately a spot in the game, no joke, where I was taking a stronghold (one of the 2 side quest types) and a car, same damn car, would SPAWN, drop a couple feet from thin air 2 feet in front of me, EVERY DAMN TIME I PULLED THE ROCKET LAUNCHER TRIGGER! Seriously! I would even re-spawn and wait a few seconds, then *click* BOOM! I killed myself cause the blue sedan spawned on top of me right when the rocket left the rocket tube. I had to find a different weapon, one that didn't explode, to go into combat with. I don't think there should be a game designed that gives you a good thing to use, and then puts you in constant situations where you absolutely can not use it. "Here you go player, here is a wrench for you to carry around! Sorry, there are no bolts or nuts in the entire game, Good luck!" Needless to say, my friend, who was watching me play, was on the floor dying from laughter from my unfortunate turn of repeating events.
On a bright note: It was challenging. "Protect this sandwich" is always my Achilles' heel in games, since I'd rather eat the sandwich myself, but even still, there were some places where I just had to flail around uselessly until I found just the right weapon combo to get the job done...stupid big bigger dude with teeth for a face :/ (I was sad that you just can't go "find" these enemy's with face teeth walking around the streets bashing down buildings...that would have been awesome!)
The ending was confusing, disappointing, yet funny all at the same time. I'm not sure if that was what they wanted you to feel, but I was entertained by the strangeness of the sensation. (as a side note, way to make a DR. Who reference without meaning to do so...)
So yeah, recap:
Crackdown 2 gets a whopping 5, You should play it at some point for the experience, but rent or wait till it becomes discounted and marked down.
Has some great moments, especially with the narrative (seriously, the way the integrated his voice and your xbox 360 functions you take for granted had me laughing so hard I teared up, and is one of the few reasons this game wasn't scored lower...)
It is very short. about 6-8 hours of game play. I didn't even bother with online play.
More character customization needed and BADLY.
Online...was awkward, Tried one game, and then didn't pick it up, so can't really give a full review on that bit.
Needs more different factions and types of enemy's.
Needs satisfying boss fights.
Needs boss fights.
Needs a way to shut off the narrative after tutorial is over, and only have the naritive say funny things but also meaning ful things. (only once did I need to know what orbs did...but he sure had to make a point to let me know that they upgrade skill points EVERY DAMN TIME over the 200 some I collected!)
It is fun to bust GTA criminals
A.I. for NPC's needs a huge upgrade or patch.
And that's about it for Crackdown 2 and my first post! Hope you like.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)