Don't Click [Diablo's Claws]

Ah, Blizzard.  Love them or hate them, everyone has to agree, they have staying power over anything else.  The ability to just put out a game and it to just "be".  That is to say that a game they put out will probably still be played for quite a while, unlike other titles *cough* X Military FPS simulator of the week *cough cough*.

So it boils down to this:

I've been plugging away at Diablo 3 since it's closed beta up through recent, my character in Mists of Pandara beta is stuck due to a rather nasty bug that I hope gets worked out soon, and I'm in a writey mood.

It begins.

Game: Diablo 3
Dev: BLIZZARD
Platform: PC (Online only...)
Rating: 7 A witch doctor, a monk, and a barbarian walk into a bar...

I fell a little awkward talking about Diablo as a series.  To be honest, I never did play Diablo 1.  Nor have I played Diablo 2 pure and expansion-less.  On top of that, I never made it 100% through Diablo 2.  I've seen the cinemas and such, but never played all the way through it.  I think I got about 80% through before getting excited about another character and another build so I'd go back to square one.  One thing that sticks with me, it had one of the funniest loading screens ever... just cause I'd always yell out "AAAH MY FACE!" at just the right moment... If you've seen it, you know where.

Click for larger: Where do I get that sword?

I do, however, know the "feel" of Diablo and how it's supposed to emulate a unique sense of "place" if anything else.  That is to say, this over the shoulder looking from the sky camera and a toon that walks in an X axis that lays on a grid like an X and not like a + shape (you kind of stand and move in diagonal motions, never exactly straight.  You can see this if you try to spin your character around and make them face certain directions like forward and backward, turns out, you can't, it's 4 directions, and all movement is derived of these 4 directions).  It creates this unique feel of motion and movement of your character and all NPC's.

There is a lot more that goes into the "feel" catagory in this game.  The gruesome and rather grotesque monsters that made me zoom in and shudder when looking at them for the first time.  The dark scenes, the hellish levels, all very Diablo-ish.  They did a very good job with art.  It is pretty!  On a personal subjective note, I know they did a desert level in Diablo 2, so I wish they wouldn't use one in Diablo 3 and use this chance explore more unique terrains, but oh well.  Music, monsters, bosses, this game just "is" Diablo 3, and due to the distance between the previous and this one, that was a major concern of mine.

Click for larger: Bitches love fist weapons

Lets touch a little bit of the bad side to this game.  It did have a rather rocky beginning.  I think one of Blizzard's least smooth opening days since Wow v1.0.  The worst part about it in my opinion, was that they new it was going to happen before hand. A couple weeks before D-day, they were hosting an open beta.  During this time, they had the exact same problems.  Because the beta was so close to release, I'm guessing there wasn't much time to really do anything about all the bugs, log in problems, and most of all, the server issues.  They really should have hosted that beta either earlier than a week or 2 or pushed the release date a couple days to hammer the issues out for a smoother release. Either option isn't really that ideal, but at least most, if not all of the issues were taken care of within the following weeks.




Bugs are still quite rampant here and there in the game, but they ease up and become fewer and fewer as time goes on.  The AH, which has been strange and fun to follow continues to be online and offline at random points.  This still isn't Skyrim, so that's good at least.  I haven't encountered anything game breaking just yet.  Other then one of the strangest bugs with tooltips.  Apparently there must be some items that aren't fully in the game yet they can be link able in chat.  But when some one clicks it, the client can't even deal with it and crashes.  It sucks because people are using it to troll general chat.  Why that's kind of an issue, see below.

Click for larger: SUPER JUMP!

Most of the issues come from the fact that the game is Online Only.  Even in single player, you must be connected to the internet to play on their servers.  This poses problems.  Everything from crazy random lag spikes to 20-30 sec rez timers on single player in higher levels.  If their servers are down for any reason, you can't play your game you paid for by yourself like previous installations of the Diablo series.  Also this could have far reaching implications in the future as well.  You can't just hand a disk to your friend and be like "here play this", they have to get their own whole account.  You could be sitting in the same room, with 2 computers and you couldn't play together if only one or neither of you has the interwebs.  And if Blizzard goes away, or decides to take down the servers at any point, the game goes with it.  In turn, the players don't "own" the game they play.  Like any other online only game, it will only last as long as the company that holds the reigns deems it profitable... (yet no burial pire has been lit in the form of a pirated or emulated server for Tabula Rasa, may she rest in piece).

Click for larger: 7 sided strike is pretty boss

You are also at the mercy of patches.  One of the more recent patches has forced all players to auto-join "General Chat" at login.  Pretty much what that means to gamers, is that you are forced into wow trade chat at login.  And what that means to non-gamers is TROLL CITY BITCH, YEP TROLL CITY!  That and the crazy gold farmer spammers.

But enough of the doom and gloom.  Some more good junk.  Skills.  I like how abilities are done in this game.  You have a gambit of spells or abilities and from there there's a slew of "runes".  Runes not only do stat stuff, but they change the effect, look, and in a lot of cases the feel or mechanics of those abilities.  For instance, Witch Doctor has exploding frogs as a spell.  You summon a swarm of frogs that run out from your origin and explode where your cursor is (moving in random patterns in a cone).  One rune turns that into summoning a giant frog that eats smaller enemy NPC's.  And there's a whole other rune that makes it rain frogs on top of your foes!  The best thing about all of this, is that one list of spells or abilities isn't statistically more significant than any other.  It comes down to play style.  That is incredibly nice.  Something I hated in old wow, and now that I think about it in Diablo 2 as well, is that you got slammed into using a certain rotation or some abilities completely phase out older ones.  It sort of sucks because you become stuck in a numbers game.  For a handful of people, they like the numbers.  Me, I like to look good when I do things on epic proportions.  I don't care really how "effective" it is. .01% more damage or -31 stam or blah blah blah, hate that crud.  I want the spells to be most of all fun.  With Diablo 3, do what ever.  Any combo of whatnot can be made to work.  It's wonderful.

Quick one line note: The use of physics is super spectacular!

Click for larger: "Arise chicken....arise!"

The devs did decide to constrain the list by categories.  Which I really like in most cases.  Luckily, for the class(es) that don't quite seem to fit the category system, there's an option that lets you select where to put your own stuff.  Which is cool.  I personally love the spells that make you transform into things.  Like Wizard's Arcon and a special Witch Doctor rune....RUN CHICKEN (then) KA-BOOM!

And now we sing to the story.  Act 1 is good.  I wish they would have split 1 quest into 2 or 3 be cause it takes forever and goes through like 4 zones and if you have to stop for one thing or another, you have to start all the way back at the start.  Act 2 I'm pretty good with...other than the fact that SPOILER it takes place in the desert which feels like "been here, done that".  In act 2, you face a demon called Belial that's supposed to be "the lord of lies".  I feel there was a large opportunity missed to expand this game into more acts by making him live up to his name.  As it stands now, his 1 lie is pretty poor at that.  You walk up, punch him in the face, that's that.  Missed opportunity for some interesting story there, I feel.  Act 3 and Act 4 get shorter and shorter as you near the end.  Especially Act 4.  The last of Act 4 is pretty anti-climactic as well.  The ending cinema leaves a lot of questions and open ends (one of my primary concerns is "how the fuck do I get back down from here?!?") END SPOILER

Other than that, yeah, pretty solid Diablo game.  Well done.

Rating: 7 A witch doctor, a monk, and a barbarian walk into a bar...

--N00basaurus

So Epic it's Purple

When the xbox 360 was new, and trying to find it's footing among the established legacy consoles, there were a lot of interesting and somewhat strange games stocking the shelves at stores.  Games like these were Prey (a very interesting sci fi Native American horror game), Perfect Dark 2 (which had none of the feeling and even less of the epic space secret agent story of the first game, leaving you with a really poor story), and games like the brash awesome Saints Row.

At this point in time, developer Rock Star Games pretty much not only had the market cornered, but had a precedent on vehicular crime sandbox games.  Back then, their game "Grand Theft Auto" was kind of the "end all' with outrageous.  Run around, pay a hooker, then kill them for your money back while you make off in your stolen car.  It Really wasn't till a splinter company named Volition showed us a few boundaries that not even GTA had crossed.  However, because of the history of GTA (that is, it came first), you can only really compare the beginnings of the Saint's with it's rival for perspective.

Saints Row

It was brash, in your face, and I loved every moment of it.  Where GTA was confined to making games a little more realistic, Saint's was a bit in the opposite.  The quests, the people, the weapons, the story, all of it was over the top.  There were many facets of hidden amusement, it's really hard to talk about with giving away major spoilers.

Like GTA the game had quite a few of the same notions.  An in game cell phone was how you communicated with quests.  Gang wars in the streets and you capture zones.  Cheat codes could manipulate the environment in which the game operated.  You join a gang, you go and do gang stuffs.  And then there's zombies, military, crazy bosses, and all sorts of wackiness.

But Saint's Row really raised the bar on how much a video game could get away with (much to the same effect as Conker's Bad Fur Day for the N64).  There was, however, the downfall of the ending.  It was pretty awful.  Now don't get me wrong, it wasn't Mass Effect 3 bad.  It was expected, but fairly bad none the less.  It also had issues with game mechanics as well.  UI and character controls were clunky and some of the chase scenes were really difficult because of it.

Saints Row 2

To be honest, I couldn't make it all the way through Saints Row 2.  It was a tough chew.  The difference was that it took itself way, WAY, too seriously.  It turned into a GTA clone more than anything else with nothing very surprising about it.  Everything was droll and realistic and wasn't what I was expecting.  It's only saving grace was that there were no limits on character creations.  So having a girl with a giant Mohawk and a British rugby thug voice was pretty hilarious.  Who ever did that particular voice was wonderful.

Saints Row 3


Developer: Volition Inc.
Console:  Xbox 360, Playstation 3, PC, F-Yeah!

This.  OMG this.  Shake off the shackles of boring realistic gaming.  This is just epicness.  Saints Row 3 was just a sick secret pleasure to play.  The shear numbers of customization with outfits (including the pretty funny fursuiting mascot options...still need tails but a minor want....) are awesome.  Volition really didn't worry about keeping it too "real", which is exactly why this game is hot.

I like using "a different" melee weapon...

The quests are crazy.  There's so much insanity in this game it's hard to spoil any one thing.  One point I love talking about is sky diving.  There's this scene where you fall from an aircraft...and then you fall from a 2nd aircraft...and this time....in a tank.  You skydive with a tank.  A tank.  With sky diving.  A sky diving tank.  There's throwbacks to pop culture like Tron.  Weapons like the "Fart in a Jar".  Hover bikes.  Murder Bowl.  So much stuff.

Typical firefight

And something that is kind of amazing about it all is that the story stayed consistent throughout all the "over the topness".  The conveyance of Saints Row 3 is smooth and nice while all the shit goes down around you. There was plenty to do and plenty to see.  And topping this title is going to be very difficult in the future.

One of the major problems I had with the game was that I wanted more.  Much like in Crackdown, they automatically limit themselves with declaring factions.  There's 3 factions and thus 3 bosses.  Game, Set, Match.  I really felt that there should have been a bit more in length.  It really wouldn't have suffered story wise to have a few more mini-sub bosses and quests along the way.  The side quests were nice, but more story would have been absolutely wonderful.

Skydiving with class

Something that I kind of would have liked to see, would be some sort of limitation on skills and abilities.  By having it "open" it puts an artificial "end" to the game.  What I mean by this is that the "end" of the game comes when the player has all skills.  There's no real point in deciding which to get when or something.  You get infinite ammo to all weapons, you can't be hurt by anything save for physics, all the gangs and cops love you.  Game Over.  Not literally but there's no expanding beyond that, it just "is" and you get kind of stuck with it. The character can't move forward as there's nothing to move too. There's a few options out there to alleviate this problem.  One that is most commonly used is to introduce a skill tree.  By selecting an option it blocks the selection of another.  By adding a limit like this, it expands future playability.  The player is able to replay the game over and over changing their options around to see how their character develops through specialization and such.  Another option is to make the list incredibly expansive.  There's a lot there, but a lot more extraneous things (like for instance a moon jump and many other aesthetic options as well).  It's not a major issue, however.

Hey...hey...hey you!....Ba---BOOOM!

Co-op was beautiful.  To often is co-op handled poorly.  Limiting players in game mechanics like camera or distance limitations from each other.  This game, you join and do what ever you want.  There were quite a few missions that were fun to be flying air support in a missile loaded helicopter while my buddy finishes objectives.  That's pretty much it.  This game is was just pretty amazing and fun to play.

Saints Row 3

Developer: Volition Inc.
Console:  Xbox 360, Playstation 3, PC, F-Yeah!
Rating:  9 Bitches 

F da po-lice with Kung fu.

Just Wanted To Share...

There's lots of stuff going on, some changes I'm working on the blog.  Going to make a title banner and make some other style changes.

So in the mean time, here's a screen shot I took just for you.

Click image for larger: And pandaren monks are proving to be super bad ass.

More to come

In the next few months, Diablo  3 will be dropping in a full out way.  World of Warcraft Pandaria Beta will be accessed.  And all sorts of goodness like that.

My next review is going to be on Saint's Row 3.  It's quite a little crazy, as it should be.  I had a lot of fun with it, but formulating my explosions of experiences here and there in a coherent fashion (as text doesn't allow for much mouth noises, such as "Ahhh! oooo! Gwarrgh!", with tonal context intact).  In the end, purple thug life is hard for a Soviet Princess, such as Svetlana.

Also have been shimmying with Dance Central 2.  It's been in my pile of games college hasn't let me have time for, along with Naughty Bear and Kung Fu Panda 2 the game.  Yup, thar ye have it ya skallywags.  That's all to come.

RRRRWAAAARRRRRRRRRGH!

-N00basaurus

Space Clarification

So there's main stream media covering the angered players over the mass effect ending.  But, like usual, the main stream media is missing the underlying point of "why" players are angry.  It's not because the ending wasn't happy rainbows and bunnies (which in and of it self would make a better ending).  It's because of a specific promise the game was sold on, that wasn't delivered.

SPOILERS

That promise is simple "Your choices matter".  That is to say, you make decisions in the game, and that has rewards and consequences throughout the game, especially the ending.  Well they forgot about that last part.  For example, you fly around the galaxy recruiting this mass army, special units and squads, and tactics and space ships with guns.  After the 2min cut scene of you and Joker, where Joker calls out about 1/3rd of your forces "reporting" the rest of the end battle and ending cut scenes have nothing to do with all your pain staking work of gathering everyone together.

That's the problem.  Nothing you do matters.  That's why everyone is so upset.  And as I've had time to think, it was the very same problem that I had with their game RPG that came out last year "Dragon Age 2" the EXACT same problem.  The only major difference is that where Dragon Age 2 semi-sorta arched in different areas and only specific things happened that you couldn't do anything about, Mass Effect 3 comes out, flips you the middle finger and slaps you in the face with it.  The same people die, no matter what.  Nothing you can do about it.  In some cases you can make them die slightly differently by changing "who" shoots them, but they still get shot and die.

Players are angry because there needed to actually "be" multiple endings.  What they call a "different ending" is a color of an explosion.  Red, green, and blue some how translates as "completely different" endings, even though the cinemas all play out with the exact same scenes, and the exact same timings.  What if your colorblind? Then there's only 1 ending, grey.

This video on Youtube, posted by Youtube user Crosscade illustrates exactly my point.  Although it's not the full ending, it shows plenty enough of it to illustrate why players as a whole are a little pissed about it.

But yes, that's why players are upset.  We were promised dynamic pathways forged by our characters, and then when it came to it, Bioware simply didn't deliver.  It kind of feels that they "copped out" of doing what they promised the players and settled for "the easy way out".  In other words, Troll Face.

Also, this comic sums it up pretty well, thank you www.vgcats.com


-N00basaurus

What the... I don't even...

Ok, yet another game I have to suspend review and critique upon comes to turn.  But this time, it's... well... I have to cool down a while to really write with a level head.  I do want to cover something here though:

Mass Effect 3, it's ending particularly, but throughout story. I'm spoiling a lot, I know, but it needs to be said.  If you haven't played it through, stop here.  You have been warned.


Spoilers! Spoilers! Spoilers! Spoilers! Spoilers! Spoilers! Spoilers! Spoilers! Spoilers! Spoilers! Spoilers! Spoilers! Spoilers! Spoilers! Spoilers! Spoilers! Spoilers! Spoilers! Spoilers! Spoilers! Spoilers! Spoilers! Spoilers! Spoilers! Spoilers! Spoilers! Spoilers! Spoilers! Spoilers! Spoilers! Spoilers! Spoilers! Spoilers! Spoilers! Spoilers! Spoilers! Spoilers! Spoilers! Spoilers! Spoilers! Spoilers! Spoilers! Spoilers! Spoilers! Spoilers! Spoilers! Spoilers! Spoilers! Spoilers! Spoilers! Spoilers! Spoilers! Spoilers! Spoilers! Spoilers! Spoilers! Spoilers! Spoilers! Spoilers! Spoilers! Spoilers! Spoilers! Spoilers! Spoilers! Spoilers! Spoilers! Spoilers! Spoilers! Spoilers! Spoilers! 


Ok, just going to stab at the heart of it and say "What the cock was that crap?".  I liked the game, the bulk of the story was good.  That said, here's what I really had issues with:

1) The fact that such things happen to characters you know, what was the point of not just letting them all die in the second game?  I mean really, if a good chunk of them do it by their own hands, wtf was I fighting so hard for?

2) The lack of the usual diversity in your party saddens me.  Most of the characters are re-hashed from previous games... My main issue, where the hell is my dedicated krogan?  I ended up with Garrus and Edi, which sadly was 90% lack of acceptable companions and 10% fuck yeah Garrus.

3) Continuity errors.  In the beginning, people (specifically James) coming up to Shepard as if they have been life long buds.  I wanted a renegade option to smack him in the face being all like "That's commander to you, bub!"  There was very little of them in the middle.  In the end there, wow, it was a fuck fest of errors.  I'm only going to go off on one though.  The Normandy.  It breaks away from the armada to deposit you planet side.  After that it goes back in formation to attack with the fleet.  In the end, for some reason, it's jumping in a gate going god knows where and gets stranded on some random planet.  Why wasn't it with the fleet?!?  What happens to the armada that survived on earth? WHAT THE HELL IS GOING ON!

4) Synthesis.  So everyone now has circuit boards cut into their skin and no one notices squat.  What the fuck.

5) Illusive man.  I haven't been able to find a way to crack his last speech option.  Why give us that damn option if it's locked and we can't use it?  BLARG!!! Frustration!

6) Choices.  Not only does nothing you have done on any of the few games have any affect what so ever in the last mission (where it should matter a great deal) or the ending (where it should matter most), but the options for the ending, are all bad.  It is nothing but troll face.  Your options are: You kill yourself and the space gates, or You kill yourself and give everyone circuit board skin (which no one even notices) and kill the space gates, or you commit genocide and kill the space gates.  That's it.  I spent 5 min putting bullets into that damn option giver (Bruce Campbell gun was the only pleasing thing in the ending.)

7) Space Forces do pretty much nothing, really.  Your doomed.  That's it.  Regardless of how much readiness you have, how much battle prep you have, you're doomed.  It's a crap shoot from point one and nothing you do really affects it.

8) New peeps.  There are a couple new peeps that pal around with you.  But largely, no.  Most of the game is you running around trying to have your old companions not die (they probably will though).  And even worse, none join your party.  It's sickening.

9)Where was my sex scene?  There have been news report about "sex scene controversy" and not once did Shep get laid.  I was very disappointed.

And 10)  Overall I'd rate the game a solid 8.  It's pretty damn good.  The ending pretty much halves that score.  A 4, almost my worst ever rating given so far, because really? What the cock was that crap?

I was going to write a Skyrim review, but then I took an arrow to the knee.

So here's the skinny.  Skyrim was fun, it was great, I'm taking a break from it for a while, but I'll be back to it sooner than later.  The problem is, I can't really give it a proper review.  From all my experiences with the game, they have been good.  However, every so often I get a major game breaking glitch which makes me have to reset to a previous save, turn my xbox on and off until it goes a way.  I'm afraid to play it cause my character is right where I want it.  A few of these glitches, if I were to review the game now, would affect my opinion and review of it.  So I'm going to wait, and see if they release a patch that addresses most of the issues before I review it.

I WOULD say, however, it is worth the buy.  If you can get it cheap, get the PC version for mods if your into mods.  I chose xbox since oblivion originally came out on xbox, and I'm kind of a purist like that, I guess.   But yeah.  Well worth the play, if you can get past the bugs.