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Star Wars: The Old Republic (PC) by dkirschner (May 24th, 2013 at 22:48:31) |
Star Wars: The Old Republic is a safe game. It doesn’t break MMOG conventions except by virtue of having apparently the highest production cost of any game ever. The high production cost allows for some new things like FULLY VOICED SCENES with good-to-great actors for every single quest NPC and story part. This obviously opens up some cool things with storytelling. I’m at level 12, and I think I’ll write here, just to split it up, about my experience up to level 10 (mostly), which is rule-book end-of-tutorial phase for most MMOGs. After level 10, you can queue for PvP Warzones and PvE Flashpoints, and you travel off the moon you started on and go to a capital world. I’ll cover 10+ and PvP and PvE experiences later.
I began the game like any other MMOG. Choose a faction – But wait! An epic 10-minute movie telling the story of the Republic?! Awesome. If I was on the fence about being the good guys or the bad guys (a dichotomy that will undoubtedly be challenged as the story progresses…?), I decided that because of the movie, I was definitely playing a dual-light-saber-wielding Jedi Knight. It was either that or an evil force-wielding Sith. Chose a cyborg character, then made him look like Justin Bieber and named him Cybieb. Cybieb entered the world as a hopeful Jedi-to-be on some Jedi homeworld. Over the next 10 levels, he became a Padawan and then a Jedi. Those first 10 levels were completely cookie-cutter MMOG.
The UI was immediately familiar, and you can even choose to play in “classic” mode which sets it up exactly like WoW’s. The Jedi Knight class is a standard warrior in any other game. I have a leap to jump to an enemy from afar, various slash attacks, some to build my “Focus” and some to expend it, and AoE attack that stuns enemies. Very, very familiar, not one thing uncharacteristic of the warrior archetype, except I guess that every character in SW can heal themselves out of combat and can revive other players out of combat. Death is not a big deal (yet…?) Up until level 10, you have infinite medical droids that revive you on the spot. After level 10, you just spawn somewhere nearby and run back. I don’t think there’s any cost to death besides time and repair costs.
Other players mill about doing the same quests I was doing. My first interaction was with a character being chased by a mob who she wasn’t attacking for some reason. It was killing her, so I stepped in to help. She said “Thanks, I hate the bug where you get attacked by invisible enemies and you can’t kill them because you can’t see them to target and so they just kill you.” ?!?! Well that sounds annoying! My second interaction with people was during a “Heroic 2+” quest, which is a quest that the game suggests you bring two players to complete. Enemies are of varied difficulty in addition to level, with different decoration on their character portraits. I’ve seen normal (no decoration), sort of hard (silver decoration), hard (gold), or world boss, which I know better than to approach. Anyway these Heroic 2+ quests seem to have silver and gold enemies. Some other character and I were in this area together and helped each other clear it out, although I later found out I could do it myself. Not true for the second Heroic 2+ quest I got where I almost died immediately every time I tried alone. Maybe they get harder after the tutorial area. I also joined a guild solely because there is a +5% XP bonus if you’re in a guild.
Questing is made easier and more fun because of your companion, which is essentially like a class pet, but is also a proper story character. I have a little R2-D2 type droid who tanks for me. The companion system is very cool, and it is part of what makes SW feel like a single-player Bioware game a la Mass Effect or the old Knights of the Old Republic games. The companions have alignment points, how much they like or dislike you, and I suppose that affects…things. In conversations with NPCs, you can gain and lose favor with your companion, each of which has a personality, attitudes, things they like and dislike and so on. Later on, after level 10, you can learn some “crew skills” (aka crafting skills) and some of them let you send your companion off on missions. So I learned treasure hunting and routinely send my droid off to hunt items for me. It’s…neat I guess. I keep asking it to go find items that increase companion favor, and it will bring those back, or some gems or something or other.
There are other alignment systems in the game. There is of course the light side/dark side thing, which I have no clue what that impacts besides your ability to equip some items (i.e., requires Dark Side 1000). Hopefully it impacts how your companions treat you or your story somehow. If you are nice and say pretty things, you get light side points. If you are a jerk, you get dark side points. Black and white.
You can choose to be nice or a jerk because of the very cool storytelling and conversation system. SW got a lot of praise for having essentially 8 full-length stories, one for each class. So the Jedi Knight has a story, the Jedi Consular, etc etc. They all weave into the main narrative of the game, and I do wonder how different each one actually is. I’m sure generic Republic story is quite different from generic Sith story, but within factions, I’m not so sure. Anyway, conversations with NPCs are handled with the conversation wheel like in other Bioware RPGs. You get a choice of a few things to say, and what you say supposedly directs the conversation and has outcomes on the story, including gaining light/dark side points. I confirm that saying and doing different things does have outcomes. This is very cool in an MMOG and personalizes the experience a great deal. For example, at one point some Flesh Raiders (bad guys) were terrorizing a Twilek village. I was talking to their matriarch at first, but she was sick and dying, so ended up talking to her daughter. The matriarch died, and the daughter became the matriarch. I did urge her to do this, and I’m not sure if she would or wouldn’t have done it without me. Anyway, I kept choosing the [flirt] option because, as it is in RPGs, I am most amused that I can meet a character and flirt my way into their pants in a matter of minutes. I consoled her about her mother. I told her I had feelings for her. I promised to save her village. She felt the same and in a fade-to-black screen, I’m pretty sure we had sex. Then she ratted out my Master and traded him to the Flesh Raiders because they threatened her. I know the relationship was my doing, but I think she betrays the Jedis anyway. But she felt bad about betraying the Jedis. Maybe she wouldn’t feel so bad about it if we weren’t romantically involved. She begged me to forgive her. I could either forgive her or kill her (sure dark side points). I forgave her and told her to remain matriarch. But the whole thing was so interesting because she seemed to be acting based on emotions that she felt for my character, and I can’t help but wonder how the story goes if I never flirted with her. Then at the end of the tutorial, when you become a Jedi, this roundtable of Jedis go over some of your deeds, and they will mention things you did during the tutorial! They even mentioned my relationship with the Twilek and told me to cut that shit out because Jedis aren’t supposed to love. Awesome.
Other conversations, especially with more mundane NPCs are not so interesting. They spout a lot of lore and quest information. Although it’s well presented, these mundane quests are no different than WoW and other MMOGs where you go here and there, collect quests, go do them, and turn them in. Here though I felt I could safely be a jerk to NPCs and it didn’t affect outcomes. If you call them a dirty name, they’ll be offended for about one line of dialogue, and then return to normal telling you about their problem. Slander them again and they’re momentarily offended before asking you to help, and so on. This is a problem with the quests. Because the quests are voiced and the NPCs take more time to build them up and contextualize them, they should be more epic than they are. They feel too short and insignificant. The game feels so much like a single-player RPG, where getting quests from NPCs is usually a relatively major undertaking. In this game though, the quests themselves have the same buildup as a major undertaking, but it still takes 2 minutes to ‘collect 5 tablets’ or ‘kill 10 raiders.’ Imagine playing Mass Effect and going on a mission that you complete in a few minutes. That’s the constant letdown that I’m being socialized to deal with. They’re individually anticlimactic. So far it hasn’t really happened, but I hope that in some quest hubs, moons or worlds or whatever they may be, the quests add up to more of a climax.
Climax or not, the game consistently preps you for the supposed awesomeness to come if only you will keep playing. Every couple levels, these tutorial windows pop up talking about “You’re about to embark on an epic space adventure!” and “You will be able to join other players and fight for the Republic” and so on. So far, at level 12, I’ve seen about ½ these promises. I still don’t feel like I’m having an epic space adventure, and one of these tutorial messages was talking about me owning my own spaceship to explore the galaxy in. I WANT MY OWN SPACESHIP! So far there is very little freedom for me to explore. This is an MMOG on rails. I keep thinking, “When I get my spaceship…” but I don’t know when that will be. I suspect it will be once I finish my story on Coruscant, because then maybe I’ll have to go out of the star system or something. You always have to do your story missions…I miss WoW where you just go wherever the hell you want. Sure, there’s less overarching narrative tying everything together, but the freedom to travel...sigh. Hopefully I get a ship soon.
SW is also a free-to-play game with a subscription option and a cash shop, so it’s always (albeit subtly, thank god) reminding you that you’re not getting the full experience and that they welcome your cash. Before I started playing, I looked at the comparison chart between the F2P, Preferred Status, and Subscription. Subscription is the clear winner of course, but Preferred had a few things that seemed worth shelling out $4.99 for. I paid my $4.99, which is the minimum purchase of something in the store to be granted forever Preferred Status, for one main reason: sprint. Yes, free-to-play characters move 35% slower until level 15. [shudder]. So for $4.99 I could sprint from level 1, well worth it. I also got two crew skills instead of one, access to the bank, which you don’t get as F2P and which would suck since your inventory is so small. I can chat outside the tutorial area, which F2P can’t, so that’s good because I’m, you know, not in the tutorial area and want to talk with people occasionally. I can use the mail system, which is good because sometimes you get mail from completing quests. And I get more auction house slots, which is good because I would like to try and sell some things, use my bank, participate in the economy a little bit. There are PLENTY of restrictions still in place on me though that Subscribers have, like caps on about everything imaginable – slower XP gain, no rest XP, 5 warzones per week, no additional inventory space without shelling out cash, can only win 3 items from PvE flashpoints per week, can’t equip some items or receive some quest rewards, and a bunch of other little inconveniences. Then of course if you somehow played all the way to level 50 for free, you can’t join Operations (raids), so no endgame for you.
Anyway, after the tutorial is over, around level 10, you finally get to go off-world. Next entry for this.
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Kinect Adventures! (360) by dkirschner (May 22nd, 2013 at 20:05:57) |
Closing this one because I don't see myself ever playing it again. Tried it out with some friends after it'd been sitting on my shelf for 1.5 years. It's alright. Only 5 minigames that you just play over and over. A couple of them are pretty neat, like the whitewater rafting one (lean left/right to guide the raft, jump to make the raft jump, and try to collect a bunch of coins) and the plug-the-holes-in-the-glass one (position your hands and feet to stop water from flowing into your glass tank as devious underwater creatures try to crack the glass).
Actually the thing that surprised me most about playing the game was how tired my friends got. Out of shape! I figured at that point I could play it alone for exercise, but it's really boring alone. There are way more entertaining multiplayer games for Kinect. I need to get one of the dancing ones.
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Super Columbine Massacre RPG (PC) by ajg993 (May 20th, 2013 at 12:26:28) |
Playing Super Columbine Massacre was not too fun today. It just involved a lot of shooting and killing without much variation. At this point of the game I really don’t know why the game was created. Is it a tribute to Eric and Dylan? Is this a way to attract even more hate against the killers? It can be interpreted in many different ways. Not to mention, many times when a gamer is playing a game, he or she will often get some kind of emotional attachment to the character he or she is using. Was this game a way to “feel for” Eric and Dylan? The game really isn’t good, I would probably never play it in my free time, yet I see it is extremely popular. I am confused about this, is it because the tragic event really happened?
Anyway, when the time came to choose to end the mission or continue, I decided to end it. The cops showed up and the mission was over. They showed pictures of the tragedy and explained a few things about Eric and Dylan how all they wanted was to be isolated from everyone. SCM really didn’t have much of an effect on me. The graphics were so low that it was somewhat hard to get into the realism of it. The tragedy happened and there is nothing anyone can do about it. I feel like because there are so many violent movies and games that this one has virtually no difference for me, even though it really happened. The media itself has taken the value out of real life situations by creating so many equal or even worse situations that are fake.
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Super Columbine Massacre RPG (PC) by ajg993 (May 19th, 2013 at 20:14:53) |
I returned to Super Columbine Massacre today and noticed how much this game moved me. I researched and found out more information about the tragedy and understood the gameplay much more. It is unbelievable how close the story mode is to the real thing. Other than a few things like an unlimited arsenal of weapons or getting passed hall monitors by having them not touch you (even when they clearly see you but you are two boxes away so the game doesn't register it) the game was quite real.
I noticed that they left a message to whoever found it. They were apologizing to people they knew for what they were about to do. I feel like this was a way for them to feel better for what they were going to do, it almost seemed like the message provided justification for their actions. On top of that, they were planning on killing 200 plus people. I just don’t understand what kind of people would want to take out their revenge on the lives of innocent students and staff.
The final thing I would like to point out is that for some reason, I felt very weak when I was playing this game. As if any power was taken away from me by the developers. There was only one way to play it, no alternative conclusions. I felt myself actually wanting to avoid the story, but there was just nothing I could do about it, except of course just not play.
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Super Columbine Massacre RPG (PC) by ajg993 (May 18th, 2013 at 21:53:42) |
Super Columbine Massacre was interesting. It is remarkable that someone actually recreated the event and made a video game out of it. Although the graphics are pretty low, the game was far from simple. I noticed that many random objects have deeper meanings. For example, when I was in the basement, I saw a pizza box and decided to walk up to it and hit “enter”. The pizza box took me through a flashback to explain how they were getting ready for the “big day.” The creators really wanted to show the players the entire story.
I went into playing this game without much knowledge of the actually shooting. I knew it was 2 boys, who were mad at society, who killed their fellow classmates and teachers. I was going to do a little research to find a little more background information on the even but decided to just play the game without that information. I felt like the game would do a good job in telling the story. I only got passed the cafeteria part where I have set the bombs and grabbed the guns. That mission was really annoying, it took me over 10 tries to fully infiltrate the building, and right when I finally did, I got caught again and had to start all over again.
This game obviously has a lot of ethical hazards. The idea of the game itself seems a little immoral, since it is based on a true story. I think if the situation never happened, it would lack any controversial opportunities against it. However, since it actually did happen and innocent people died, this realism truly makes the game open for discussion. I also noticed how the creators of the game were implying that the killers’ ideas of the attacks were enhanced by media. Because in the game, when I was in the basement I saw a movie that seemed like it was motivation for them. As if the media inspired the killers actions.
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1661 registered gamers and 1789 games. 5596 GameLogs with 9917 journal entries. 4331 games are currently being played.
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Grand Theft Auto - San Andreas (PS2) by ckim33 |
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most recent entry: Thursday 24 September, 2009
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In my third playing around, I realized how much fun I am having, playing San Andreas. Even though I’m still in the earlier stage of the game, I think that story line is what makes this game so great. In one of my recent mission, I had to go beat up the crack dealer. As I approached the crack dealer, I used baseball bat as an weapon and beat up the crack dealer until he was dead. All of sudden I realized how much I have enjoyed the violence in the game. Due to this, I thought if this game had this kind of effect on me, what will it do to kids who are playing this game? Children are easily influenced, so I do believe that a child who plays this game can become more violent.
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