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Diablo III (PC) by dkirschner (May 15th, 2012 at 08:55:42) |
Diablo 3 is out! Surprisingly the servers handled all the traffic. We couldn't log on for about the first hour and a half because the servers were busy/full, but after that, no problems. Minor lag spikes here and there that quit after a couple hours. P and I logged on. He made a Monk and I made a Barbarian because I want to whirlwind everything..but no whirlwind until level 20! It's all good because I made it to 15 before I stopped, so not too much longer. We had been on for 5 minutes when Am and Ad made it through, and we all partied together for a good hour before P had to leave. Four-player is not hard at all. The difficulty scales, but I also saw that 4 was easier than 3, 3 easier than 2, and I suppose 2 probably easier than 1, but I haven't played alone yet. I don't think I used a single health potion until it was just me and Am.
Things I like: Looks great, feels great, very high production value. It is weird playing a game, any game, where you can't manipulate the camera in any way. I find myself wanting to look at the environment but I can't. No matter, because what I can see is gorgeous, the lightning effects in particular.
There is a surprising amount of depth to the combat. I thought it would just be all hack and slash, left-click left-click left-click, but lo and behold there is thinking involved! Okay, with 4-player, it was pretty mindless. We went on an utter rampage. But when it was just me and Am, we were pausing to strategize, to talk about skills and specs, etc. So this depth comes with very few buttons, but each button is highly customizable. You have your left and right mouse clicks, then hotkeys 1-4. Each of these inputs has like 4 skills that you learn as you level up. So left click has 4 skills, right click has 4 different skills, 1 has 4 different skills, etc. You can only bind 1 skill of the 4 to each button at any time, but you can change which skill that is very easily and (I think) in the midst of combat as long as the skill you want to move isn't on cooldown. Then each skill has like 5 runes you can augment the skill with, which you can also change at will. So, for any given button, you have 4 or so skills and 5 or so runes. That's like 20 combinations FOR EACH BUTTON. And you have 6 buttons. And there are 5 classes.
One of these probably suits 99.99% of people's play styles. There are CC options, single-target options, AoE options, life leech options, knockback, + damage, cleaves, mobility options, a crazy amount of stuff. THEN on top of that you have your equipment! As a barbarian, do I want to focus on HP, strength, finding magic items, life leech, or all of the above? Do I want to be more defensive with a sword and shield or more offensive with a massive 2-handed weapon? There are so many combinations and so many situations within which to use them. I 'respecced' more than a few times in the few hours I played. For some reason I kept finding more powerful 1-handed weapons than 2-handed ones, so I spent the entire time with a sword and shield, which led me to more defensive combinations of skills and runes. Am says that though 2-handed weapons have roughly the same damage as 1-handed ones, they have a wider arc and hit more enemies to make up for it. I dunno about that, but I figure I'll try it out soon. I went all out with offensive abilities during 4-player, played around with different combinations when there were 3 of us, and hunkered down to a defensive AoE combination when it was just Am and I. He did the same. When it was Am and Ad and myself (they were both wizards), they decided one of them would go AoE and one single target. I find this huge range of options empowering, and it amazes me that by level 10 after just an hour or two, we are talking all this spec and strategy.
Needless to say, the game is VERY easy to pick up and get into. You just kill kill kill and loot loot loot. Everything is streamlined. The only consumables are health potions. No scrolls of any kind. Everyone gets a town portal spell. You can teleport nearly anywhere instantly, including right next to any other player character in your game. There is a story, though I had no clue what was going on because Am and Ad were moving so quickly (they both played beta). It bothered me at first, but by the end I couldn't have cared less. The story is just the context for killing and looting. It could be about unicorns and cupcakes and I'd probably have just as much fun. That said, I am interested in it, especially since it's obvious so much work went into designing the world of Sanctuary, and I'd like to play alone or just with P at a slower pace sometime.
Things I didn't like: As fun as killing and looting my way through Hell is, at the end of the day, that's all it is, and I've done it before. Sure, Diablo 3 is by far the best example of this type of game I've ever played, hands down, but this hack-and-slash type of game isn't what I want anymore. When I was a teenager, I played the shit out of Diablo and Diablo 2. I had a bunch of high level characters, I'd go on Mephisto runs and Baal runs. I knew how many Stones of Jordans anything else was worth. My brother was a 'scammer' and sold Diablo 2 items on eBay with his friends after school and I used to really enjoy watching them trick people out of their items...a bit mean, sure, but it was funny because people kept falling for it. Anyway, point being, this is another game you can find an excuse to play over and over because you can ALWAYS get better items. It never ends! I understood that to some extent when I quit playing Diablo 2 in my dorm room freshman year of college trying to acquire all of every set piece (my friend and I kept a tally). When I REALLY understood what it is to play a game that doesn't end was that final disenchantment with WoW last year, that had been building for some time, that I only couldn't stop bothering with because I had to raid and maintain relationships with guild people for work...not that I didn't like the guild people, but I just had to do it, and at some point I realized I could do that forever. Until some new genre comes along and (pretends like it) offers something new that doesn't end, I've no interest in maxing character levels and repeating the same content over and over. So on some level, yeah, this is disappointing because there's a certain magic when you can become so involved with a game so as to play it endlessly, and I'm...smart? wise? jaded? experienced?...enough to see through the smoke and mirrors. It kills some of the twinkly-eyed magic, but knowing how the tricks work doesn't depreciate their value. A great game is still a great game.
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Grim Grimoire (PS2) by dkirschner (May 9th, 2012 at 21:09:45) |
Can't get into this one. I suppose I knew at some point, but just forgot that this game is an RTS. Console RTSes...not the best idea. But kudos for trying! It's not a bad game by any means. It's got cool looking 2D graphics. The game is presented as a story, with books 1, 2, 3, etc. Each book has several chapters. So far it's all been chapter 1 is a dialogue scene, chapter 2 is a battle, and chapter 3 is another dialogue scene. The characters in the dialogue scenes have these awesome living, breathing animations. If you watch them, their chests heave with breathing, their legs wobble a bit as they sway while speaking, their arms drift slightly like sea plants in a current as they gesture. It's really neat. The story is very Harry Potter-ish, or at least it seems that way from my limited knowledge of Harry Potter. You're a new student at a magic school and there's some intrigue and plot unfolding with the professors and other students and some magic seal and a demon in the basement. I wasn't real captivated by it.
The gameplay is neat, and I think it's well done, but I just don't like it. RTSes just work 100 times better on PC than console. Grim Grimoire did a good job with the control scheme, but it STILL doesn't come close to the ease of managing units with keyboard and mouse. You can't select more than one type of unit at a time, there's no way to pick a few select units, there's no minimap you can click on to move your cursor quickly across the field, there's no real zoom to speak of, there are no hotkeys for using abilities or giving commands...the list goes on. If you want to give commands to multiple groups of allies, you have to select one, highlight the rest, give the command, move the cursor all the way across the map to where you want them to move, move the cursor back, select the next group, give the command, move the cursor to the other side of the map, move the cursor back...oh and then you need to select their special abilities and monitor your groups and build your units. Basically this game is spent moving the cursor across the map. And every stage is the same map! Each one is a basic square room that has more or less stairs, pillars and gaps. But it's all the same background, the same stairs, the same everything basically.
As far as units and things go, there are four schools of magic you can learn and they are strong/weak against one another in a rock/paper/scissors relationship. Each school has 3 'grimoires' you can get. Each grimoire is essentially a building (like a barracks) that spawns one or two types of creatures for you to command. Each grimoire has 5 levels, which you must pay mana to upgrade. You make little workers that mine mana just like any RTS resource gatherer. Each level of a grimoire opens up another unit or some unit's ability. Pretty basic stuff. You can have as many grimoires in play as you want. Some of them complement each other, some of them you would build for specific units or skills. For example, the Chaos Nest grimoire builds Grimalkins and Dragons. Dragons are expensive hulking units that take up literally 1/4 of the screen and breath fire on everything, while Grimalkins can put enemies to sleep. I pretty much steamrolled levels until I quit the game once I got dragons because I figured you can build an army of dragons and grimalkin to terrorize and pacify everything and win pretty handily. I'm sure that isn't a viable long-term strategy but whatever.
That's Grim Grimoire. I was through about 2/5 chapters in just a few hours' playtime, and I was playing it on the hardest difficulty...which is normal. Apparently you unlock hard once you beat it, but there are even two easier modes before normal. So yeah. Glad I checked it out because it's interesting, but just not my thing.
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Assassin's Creed II (360) by dkirschner (May 7th, 2012 at 23:35:21) |
Finished up Assassin's Creed 2 yesterday. Interesting game, worth playing for some of its cool ideas. I played AC 1 a couple years ago and found it also neat, but very very repetitive. AC 2 is a much better game with much more to do. If you played the Prince of Persia games for PS2, it's a lot like those too, and I suppose also sort of like Mirror's Edge for more reference. Lots of climbing up buildings and running over rooftops. One thing that struck me about AC 2 is that it's not really about being stealthy. I spent most of my time running full speed through city streets, weaving in and out of crowds, or jumping like a madman across rooftops. Rooftop archers and other guards didn't so much not notice me as they saw me a mile away and I ran at them until my dagger found their faces. They couldn't do too much to defend themselves. Sure, you can play it stealthy, but it got boring for me to do that all the time. The game has a neat mechanic for blending in with crowds that I very much enjoyed, and when I needed to use it, I did with great success. Also, the addition of hiring thieves, fighters, and courtesans to distract guards so you could go steal treasure was pretty fun.
My first impressions of the game, however, were very much like the first, and it doesn't pick up for a while. You don't get to assassinate anyone or even get weapons until several hours in. But yeah, after the extensive hand-holding, you finally get to start running around and doing real missions. AC 2 has equipment you can buy at various shops, paintings, treasure maps, health potions, weapon poisons, smoke bombs, and all kinds of other things. It's awesome but I didn't use half of them. Like I ever even tried smoke bombs or poisons because I'd rather just stab stuff, and the menu to select different types of a weapon is annoying because it always defaults back to the default weapon of that type. So you hit up/right for different weapon types on the D-pad. So up is my wrist blade. If I want to select my poison, I have to hit R2, move a dial around and select poison. But if I want to switch back to my sword then back to poison, I have to do the annoying radial menu again to get back to poison. Every single time you want to switch to something besides your main weapons, you have to go through the radial menu, even if you were just there. My solution was to ignore it.
All the cool stuff you get to do in the game is doled out over its entirety. This irked me for the most part too. Two examples: (1) you get a pistol near the end of the game. A PISTOL! What assassin doesn't want a pistol to snipe with? This one does. But I get it at the very end of the game where I hardly have time to play with it, and you only want me to use it in a few scripted sequences? I could have been sniping from rooftops the entire game. Lame. (2) 'super jump' - Yes, you get a super jump. Actually it's a leap technique you learn from the thieves' guild in like chapter 8 (out of 14 -- actually out of 12 because 12 and 13 are missing, which is another issue). The super jump lets you reach higher places on buildings by getting a little extra height in your reaches while climbing. This was so so so so stupid...but useful...at the same time. So I'd been trying to climb this tall tower forever. It was the only lookout point I hadn't gotten to in the city, but I couldn't for the life of me figure out how to scale it. I just couldn't find anywhere to jump up at some point, so I couldn't progress. It was really annoying and I kept trying to look for alternate angles, coming back to it after doing other missions, etc. Wellll, a couple hours later I did this section with the thieves' guild and they teach me how to climb better, which, you guessed it, lets me get up that tall church tower. Bullshit man. Why bother not letting you climb just a little higher for 3/4 of the game, and then giving you this giant tower to climb that you can't even climb until you do this mission, which you have no inkling that you would ever be able to reach any higher during climbs. It was just dumb. And then to make it worse, after that button was unlocked (push A while hanging to make an extended reach), like 1/2 the time I climbed after that when I just wanted to climb NORMALLY (also by holding A) it would read it as pushing A, which yeah I was doing but then holding it, and Ezio would leap up and fall back down. Constantly. It was so annoying and pointless.
One of the best things about the game was your uncle's villa that served as your headquarters. You could upgrade its buildings, get discounts from merchants there, and generally pay for its upkeep. Then, you get to reap the rewards of your hard work there by taking profit from the coffers. The coffers filled up every hour and twenty minutes. I always like games where I get my own keep or something to maintain, like one of the Neverwinter Nights expansions.
There were a lot of different types of collectibles in the game -- feathers, statuettes, assassin's seals, etc. There were also 300 treasure chests (wow!) that you could hunt for with money in them. I spent most of the game unlocking and doing everything on the map, but near the end realized I had more money than I would ever need, so much so, I calculated, that I probably didn't need to open a single treasure chest, which would have saved me a lot of time...but opening them was still fun. I haven't had as much fun going and collecting things in a game in a while, so I'm glad I liked running across rooftops and stabbing guards. I upgraded all my weapons and everything to the best available, and got the special set of armor, Altaire's armor, by completing all 6 of the assassin's tombs and getting those seals. Those were some of the most fun and challenging areas of the game, complete platforming challenges and very Prince of Persia-esque. They were huge tombs that you had to navigate your way around, and you had to be precise about it because one misstep and sometimes you were back to the beginning!
AC has a cool story, complete with a database and conspiracy flowchart showing who you've killed and who is still around. The database was very cool. I haven't mentioned yet that this game is absolutely steeped in history from the time. I know nothing about 15th century Italy, and I can't say I learned a lot, but I read a lot of factoids about palaces and chapels and popes, and I found it compelling because the designers obviously cared about the historical aspect of the game. And of course, the cities and churches and other things were painstakingly recreated I'm sure. Lots of research went into this one. The descriptions in the database often had little jokes here and there, usually pointing out ironies of papal rule or making fun of the church's brutality back then.
What else...oh, there's no death penalty. You just restart at a checkpoint. That plus the insane amount of health you get and the simplicity of fighting (X, X, X, X, X, X) means the game was REALLY easy and you could do stupid things like jump off the tallest building in the city and die and it didn't matter. Kind of lame, kind of cool. The hard parts of the game involved getting jumps just right and remaining invisible when you had to. But yeah, a failure sets you back about 30 seconds on average.
And finally, since I was talking about endings earlier, the ending of this one is cool, but it comes pretty quickly. Meaning that you're assassinating some people in memory sequence 11 and then whoooooaaahahhahah hazy dreamy stuff happens and you're transported to memory sequence 14 to kill the main conspirator! What happened to 12 and 13?! I looked it up because I'm not a huge fan of gaps in my games. Guess what. DLC! Wow really, you mean I have to buy more to get story that should have been in this game? Awesome, thanks! This isn't 'extra' stuff that's missing. It's the stuff that happened between memory 11 and 14, the stuff that you figure should be there or else they would have just named the last two memories 11 and 12. Creative design or creative marketing? You decide.
Either way, the 12...or 14..chapters of the game are lengthy enough without dragging. Overall enjoyable experience. Definitely better than AC 1. I have AC: Brotherhood sitting on my shelf as well, but I don't think I want to play it any time soon. And I just borrowed Arkham City from a friend, which will be similar to AC, so I'll probably hold off a bit on that one too. Maybe squeeze a couple other games and a little vacation in first. Good times. Oh, and Brotherhood has the multiplayer I've been excited to try out!
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Shining Force (iPd) by dvicente (May 3rd, 2012 at 12:53:36) |
I'm on the 4th Chapter now, and I just want to comment on a few things.
- Ranged attacks are seriously OP for this game, especially for knights. I haven't played many sRPGs or tabletop games but the ranged attacks at this point are close to ridiculous. Ken is a spear-wielding PLDN right now and he is leveling up faster than anyone else because of his 2-unit range and incredibly fast speed compared to everyone else's. Not to mention the difference between the two major bosses I've faced - one was a Marionette and the other a General who uses a sword. I had a way tougher time with the Marionette simply because her (his?) spells were AoE spells that could take out anyone with one hit, whereas the General can be gangbanged by surrounding him Go-style with 8 or more units, and he can only fight back by attacking 1 unit with much less damage.
...and what was incredibly unfair was that I had to face the Marionette first.
- How this compares to modern tactics games... in a way, not so much. I remember playing FFTactics and relying on Lancers and Holy Knights to inflict damage from afar as a way to kind of hit-and-run enemies. The only difference is that they're not as accessible as they were in Shining Force. The enemy obviously gets tough if their attacks affect multiple party members. The final bosses and enemies of this game really exploit this.
-I honestly don't know. Maybe there's this hidden desire lingering about that wishes to at least damage scale these AoE/ranged attacks. And maybe I just have a problem with game balances that allows grinding and leveling up statistics.
This entry has been edited 2 times. It was last edited on May 3rd, 2012 at 13:00:09.
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Skylanders (PS3) by jp (May 2nd, 2012 at 14:36:38) |
My son is a big fan of this game and is quite taken with the figures as well as what he can do with them.. While I haven't played the entire game I've enjoyed helping my son now and then and playing together. The game is mostly at the right level of difficulty although there are certain spikes when you reach boss challenges. The last fight is particularly gruesome...
I was concerned about the business model and what the impact of not having all the characters would be. While paying the game with the starter characters only is definitely possible, it's undoubtedly an impoverished experience. There are tons of areas that are blocked off and it's quite evident you need more characters. On the plus side, there are some expansions that unlock new areas and these remain unlocked. So, a friend of my son brought his "thing" over and unlocked some areas that we can continue to enjoy. That was pretty cool...
For now we've been focused on clearing up e different challenges and stuff, mostly I'm waiting for a sequel that would alow for furtheer use of the figures...
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they are currently playing. A GameLog is basically a record of a game you started playing. If it's open,
you still consider yourself to be playing the game. If it's closed, you finished playing the game. (it doesn't matter
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1542 registered gamers and 1463 games. 4887 GameLogs with 9111 journal entries. 3799 games are currently being played.
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Burnout Paradise (360) by GameBangin007 |
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most recent entry: Wednesday 5 March, 2008
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GameLog Entry #1
SUMMARY
Burnout Paradise is a game where you drive around an imaginary city called Paradise City and compete in various competitions while unlocking new cars. The object of the game is to get the best drivers license, meaning that you need to beat every competition and unlock every car.
GAMEPLAY
During the first hour of my gameplay experience, I was trying to familiarize myself with Paradise City. I chose the cop car, Citizen, in a white finish, which ended up being a fairly indestructible vehicle, except for when it came to head on collisions or the occasional "wall that popped out of nowhere." I liked the fact that there were no pedestrians or drivers within the game, which took away from the realistic aspect of the game, but made for simpler gameplay.
As I continued to roam throughout the city, I started noticing hidden jumps on the sides of the streets and one's that propelled you onto the tops of bridges. You have to use your turbo boost when trying to get a long distance, which in my case usually ended with "WRECKED." I really enjoyed the realistic graphics and slow motion crash scenes, which adds to the appeal of the game.
GAMELOG ENTRY #2
GAMEPLAY
During the second hour of my gameplay, I realized that Burnout is a game based on how good you can drive badly. The more dangerously you drive by barreling into oncoming traffic, narrowly missing crashes, and riding on two wheels, the more rapidly your turbo bar goes up. When the turbo bar goes up, it makes it easier to crash which starts to get really frustrating and irritating after a while because it adds a 5 second penalty.
After I familiarized myself with the city, it became mundane to simply just drive around. A friend of mine showed me a mode that's called Showtime, which is when you rack up money by crashing into cars. But instead of actually driving, your car jumps and tumbles destroying every vehicle in its path. If you hit a bus, it multiplies your score by one, and accumulates there on forth. I really enjoyed this mode because it allows you to set high scores on certain streets, which is beneficial when you're playing X-BOX Live.
DESIGN
Burnout is particularly exciting because the races take place on regular streets and freeways with hundreds of ordinary cars minding their own business and obeying the traffic laws, adding a very fun dose of realism to the game. Burnout has realistic characteristics, but some of these characteristics go beyond game world rules. It’s a real world game, but goes above real world capabilities in the fact that you can knock down street signs and light-poles without it hindering your speed.
I think the design elements within this game are very good and realistic, but the only thing I would change would be to add more cities to explore and race in. I really liked the fact that the car is so easy to steer, unlike many other racing games. The controller was very sensitive to movement, which made it easier to speed through traffic and other obstacles in my way. I also really appreciated how fast my car could actually go. In most racing games my finger usually gets sore from pressing the gas button so hard, thinking the harder I push it, the faster i'll go. But in Burnout, all I had to do was push the gas and turbo at the same time and it would actually give me a feeling of vertigo.
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