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Jun 8th, 2016 at 15:43:45 - XCOM: Enemy Unknown (PC) |
So XCOM: Enemy Unknown is nothing short of amazing. I've been having a blast all week with this. When I realized that I could name my squad members, I went to Facebook and announced that anyone who wanted to fight for humanity could be immortalized in my XCOM game. That thread exponentially grew, and I had a list of almost 30 characters to make. Downside: I doubt I'd want any of my squad mates to die, but since they are all friends of mine, i REALLY don't want them to die! And I don't want to save spam, so a lot of them died. Today I lost a Colonel (the highest rank) sniper, my friend Mark. He had been in my squad since the very beginning, had done like 20-something missions and had like 40 kills. I had to resist not reloading, and so he's gone forever.
One unit gave his life to stun a muton berserker so that my scientists could study it and develop armor.
My girlfriend died as a lowly Squaddie (rank 2).
My friend Daniel, a Captain assault, died by a freak accident, killed by a thin man.
My friend Chris got zapped by a sectoid commander before I realized that they had a primary attack. I thought they only mind controlled people.
And so on and so forth. Every death has a story.
Here's how the character development process works. You purchase new recruits. They arrive in a few days. You outfit them and take them out on missions, and they rank up after they get X kills. At each rank, you get a perk. There are 7 ranks, and it takes a while to move all the way up, although you can be smart about who you give kills to so that your Colonels aren't just mowing down weak aliens that your Squaddies could benefit more from killing. Standard SRPG/TRPG trick.
After you acquire a particular artifact from an alien crash, you can construct a facility that lets you test your soldiers for psionic abilities. I've found one in the whole game that has psionic abilities. Turns out that's good because you have to take a psionic soldier into the final battle! Psionic soldiers maintain their regular rank, but also gain access to tiers of psionic abilities as you use those abilities in combat. My psionic guy, Thad, is fun to use to mind control enemies. Mind control basically gives you an ally for 4 rounds, and/or forces the enemies to take the time to kill the mind controlled alien. Either way, they lose a unit and usually waste some actions.
One of my favorite things about XCOM is the R&D aspect. You have scientists and engineers at your disposal. Scientists conduct research on the aliens, on weapons and other things, then send their findings to engineering, who actually manufactures the materials that you can purchase. You also go to engineering to construct facilities that power your satellites, laboratories to make research go faster, a foundry to upgrade your items, and so on. There's a little base building component where you have to excavate underground and smartly build facilities to maximize synergies and ensure you have enough power to run the place, satellites to monitor alien spacecraft, etc.
The coolest thing about R&D is that it's ALWAYS happening. You're constantly choosing something to research and watching the time tick away until it's done and you can look at it (and buy it if you have the cash). And you don't really know the stats on armor and guns until you buy it, which is a cool design. You generally know that what you just built is better than the previous thing, but not how much better. It is never bad to purchase something new because you will use it and it will help keep you alive and/or kill aliens better. I had a huge turning point in the game when I got a request from a council nation to supply 4 laser pistols. I had one and they are only like $20 to make, so I bought the rest to give to Egypt or whoever. My reward? $800. Hell yes. All of a sudden, I had a nice new piece of armor and a bunch of new plasma guns and various other upgrades. That REALLY turned the difficulty of the battles down a notch.
I'm actually sort of at that point again out of necessity. See, I fulfilled all the requirements to do the final mission, which I attempted, and could possibly beat, but didn't manage it the first time. There's one room where you have to take on two sectopods (giant deadly robots) that broke me. They killed my sniper and critically injured my support. I managed to kill them with the remaining four squad members, only to die in the final room with the two (or three?) ethereals and muton elites. So, I loaded back before the final mission because I still have a ton of equipment I never bought and upgrades, and I never created a SHIV mech, and there's just a lot I didn't do! Also, at the end, the ethereals wreaked havoc on my squad with mind control, so I'd like to purchase some of those helmets that resist it. It's cool because I can just keep scanning for alien activity and doing missions and getting money, and upgrade away until I feel I am ready for the final mission.
Of course, I run the risk of my fav soldiers dying in battles along the way. Till next time!
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Jun 7th, 2016 at 18:49:15 - Counter-Strike: Global Offensive (PC) |
After a couple days of intense Counter-Striking, I'm glad that I Counter-Struck, but I doubt I will want to get very Counter-Stricken in the future.
The game is undoubtedly fun, way updated from the old version. It looks and feels great, love all the different types of guns. It's got some cool game modes I hadn't played in another game before. My favorite has to be Arms Race. It's like Deathmatch, but when you kill enough enemies, or the opposing team's current leader, you rank up and get a new weapon. The goal is to reach the highest rank, which awards a golden knife, and kill someone with it. That's how you win the match. I never got the golden knife, but I got to the previous rank a couple times. I think the weapons are randomized except for the golden knife so you're always getting something unexpected and everyone is forced to play with all different types of guns.
One thing I dislike is the constant chatter of other players, usually saying asinine things or calling one another derogatory names. I'm sure you can turn it off, but somehow I feel it's part of the online shooter experience you're supposed to have. Makes you feel like you're playing with others and not bots. I didn't actually learn anything from their chatter, which I thought I might at the beginning. I played one mode where I thought one team was supposed to plant a bomb while the other tries to stop them or defuse it. I got yelled at one time for planting the bomb! As I observed, it seems you can win by killing all of the opposing team, and that's what they were all trying to do. So I was actively detracting from my team's informal objective by following the formal objective.
What I learned a lot from was playing the same couple maps over and over. I picked up a lot of tricks from watching other players and from getting killed myself, including that you can open and close doors, that many people shoot through doors as they approach to kill people on the other side, that there are many, many more ways in and out of houses and rooms than it initially looks like, that you need to aim for the head or else you'll die a lot pumping bullets into people's torsos, etc. At first I was like, "Ugh, why do they keep picking the same map?! This is boring" and after a while I was like "There's so much to learn about this map, it never gets old!"
Anyway, there are hundreds of guns that I could spend hundreds of hours shooting at other players. It's good fun, but seems like idle time when I could be progressing through another game with a story. I'll keep CS:GO installed as people want to play it every now and again (and until 6 months ago I couldn't join in).
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Jun 3rd, 2016 at 15:43:50 - Outland (PC) |
I’ve confirmed there is FPS drop regardless of whether I use Big Picture mode. Can’t imagine it’s my laptop. It’s not too annoying, but it’s there. It smooths out so nicely when there are fewer enemies on screen and when it’s zoomed in to a smaller view of the area. That’s my only problem with the game. Otherwise I thought it was wonderful.
I’ve realized that the combat is deeper than it initially seemed. Early on, I was just hacking and slashing away, but you can actually do things like an uppercut sword swing and launch your foes into the air, stun them, hit them from above and below on ledges, launch bombs at them, make enemies hit one another, and use a whole barrage of special abilities in different situations. There is a really cool beam blast that annihilates anything in a line. There is another cool one that absorbs all energy balls (the red and blue bullets flying everywhere) and then sends a 360-degree shockwave out from your character that will similarly annihilate enemies. It’s a good way to clear a path through dense bullets and enemies.
The difficulty ramps up toward the end, which is great because there is so much room for complexity here. There are spots where the bullet patterns take a minute of observation to discern. Add enemies walking through those areas, and you’ve got a conundrum on your hands! How do you avoid the bullets and avoid/attack enemies at the same time? Answer: Rapid and precise color switching. Or lure the enemies out of the bullet area if possible.
About halfway through the game, the machines that shoot bullets start alternating sometimes shooting different colors. In the last of the game’s worlds (heaven or something), the enemies start changing colors too. It is a bit mind-bending to keep track of what color bullets are flying where and what color enemies are, keeping track of all of those things changing colors, keeping track of YOUR color, and trying to platform your way around at the same time. It feels awesome every time you get through an area.
All this craziness culminates in the final insane boss battle. It took me nearly 10 tries to get it and probably 45 minutes of repeating, getting a little farther, a little farther, stuck on one part for a while, a little farther, and finally defeating the boss. Here’s a video of someone doing a nice job of it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pTSNvPwiMEs. Somehow they can destroy the dragon heads in two hits, while it took me three. There were no weapon upgrades that I know of, so I dunno how the player was doing that. Also, I didn’t think to use special powers against it until the very end when I had 1 health left and thought I was going to die. I was just riding around on the outer circle and it popped in my head: “Oh! I bet I can just use the beam and shoot the sisters from here!” Bam, win.
Really great game, highly recommended if you like 2d platformers!
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Jun 2nd, 2016 at 20:24:57 - The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt (PC) |
Finished up Witcher 3 tonight. "Wow" is all I'm tempted to say.
This is one of my favorite games of all time. I'll just continue where I left off in the last entry...
The Skellige isles were cool, but not quite Velen pt. 2. Probably on par with Novigrad. The Skellige story is one of warring clans. Skellige’s king has just died and all the clan leaders vote on a successor, drawn from a pool of anyone who steps forth. It’s mostly the jarls’ sons, and one of their daughters (gogo gender representation issues!). Some of them embark on quests to prove their valor/bravery/honor and Geralt gets the opportunity to help some of them. Cerys, the one woman, is trying to cure one of the jarls who went mad after the death of his brother. Together, Geralt and Cerys discover that a hym has attached itself to the man. Hyms are spirit monsters that haunt people who do some evil, and hyms basically feed on the madness they cause the person. (Was the jarl's brother's death really an accident??) Then you help another hopeful king slay a notorious ice giant who has taken over one of the Skelligan islands, making it inhospitable. So, I enjoyed helping out the claimants to the throne, and there is a lot of exciting politics going on in Skellige! It’s all resolved climactically after a banquet goes horribly awry. There are traitors and plots and all that good stuff. The Witcher loves to throw these twists at you when you think a storyline is wrapping up. Love it.
Since Skellige is a bunch of islands, the game introduces boats and harbors (fast travel for boats). Sailing around the islands was fun, and there are probably 75 sunken treasures, smuggler’s caches, and stuff like that to find in the middle of the ocean. After I’d done every quest (yes, EVERY quest in the game that I could find!) I determined to sail around Skellige and identify all the "?" icons and get all the treasure. Well, after like 30 minutes I’d barely made progress and realized that 9/10 of those icons was just a smuggler’s cache, which is like some crafting supplies, money, some crappy items, nothing to write home about. So I figured I didn’t need to do that and got on with the game.
Did I mention I completed EVERY quest I could find? I’m feeling like quite the completionist here and it’s exciting. I can’t believe a game kept my interest long enough for me to want to do everything and explore everywhere. There were some excellent, surprising, funny, heartfelt quests. One in particular I won't ever forget. CD Projekt Red must have been discussing DRM in the office and wrote a whole quest criticizing it. You go to an island, where the villagers ask you to find out what's up with this mysterious tower that appeared out of nowhere and is causing bad weather. You go to the tower and its Defense Repelling Machine* (*I forget the actual name, but its acronym is DRM!) explains that you are not the tower's owner and so you must be destroyed. Tower defenses activate, you kill some golems and find a mage there who had "bought the tower at auction for a great price." So he wasn't the original owner and the tower tried to kill him, haha. Then you have to find the Gavin's Omni Grimoire* (*not the actual name, but its acronym is GOG [Good Old Games, platform selling DRM-free games]) and give it to the tower's second-hand owner to shut down the DRM. Hilarious, and the idea works so well in fantasy context.
In addition to all the quests, I found all the crafting recipes for witcher gear and (gasp!) actually crafted things. I hardly ever craft things in games if I don’t have to. I played nearly this whole game without using potions, crafting anything, or using decoctions. Which leads me to ask, why is that stuff in the game? Why do open-world RPGs include all these systems? Do most people use them? Do most people ignore them? Do most people dabble? I have no idea, but I’m curious. I imagine it's one of those things that some people really like that's there if players want it, but can be ignored if players don't want it. Simple-to-learn, hard-to-master? As much or as little depth as you like? I usually ignore/dabble a little, but rarely bother with unnecessary crafting. That usually takes time, costs you effort and money to find ingredients, have to visit craftspeople, learn more menus, and usually you find weapons and armor that’s good enough anyway. One instance when I will buy in to crafting and potion-making and such is when the game is difficult and those things really give me an edge. If the edge isn’t large enough, I calculate that it’s not worth my investment. Very pragmatic.
It sucks though because all the crafting systems and the ability to loot crates, boxes, and bags nearly everywhere, means that a neophyte Witcher player likely will spend much time collecting garbage around the world. There are hundreds of items to pick up. I had two friends on two different occasions have the same conversation with me, which is why I've been thinking about the necessity of these systems:
Friends: What are you playing these days?
Me: Witcher 3. It's awesome.
Friends: Oh, I couldn't get into that.
Me: Why not?
Friends: It's too complicated! There are a lot of menus and too many things to pick up.
Me: Oh, you don't have to loot everything or pick up herbs.
Friends: Really? Why is all that stuff there then?
Me: Good question...
I picked up all the things early on too, then after a while realized I wasn't ever using any of it and stopped for the most part. But I did start crafting some things later on. The stuff I crafted in the Witcher was witcher armor and swords when I had completed quests for the two master craftsmen in the game who can create the best gear. I figured I found the recipes and did the quests, so I should check out what I can get. Good thing too, it’s sweet gear. I also started using cat potions that let you see in the dark. I’d been just using this lamp that lets you see ghosts (and illuminates the room a bit), which worked fine, but you can’t run or jump while holding it. Made wandering dark caves more realistic and scary. Right near the end of the game, before the final quest, I upgraded all my witcher gear that I was wearing to "mastercrafted" ones that were level 34, and didn't realize that I was only level 33. I realized it when I exited the crafting menus and Geralt was in his underwear. Took me a second to realize that I'd rendered all my gear unusable for the time being. So I actually did some of the final quest line in underwear, which was amusing.
Another "useless" diversion in the Witcher 3 is gwent, a full-fledged collectible card game. I won't go into detail, but I spent a lot of time playing and must have collected almost all of the cards. You can play most of the innkeeps and shop owners, as well as a lot of special games against more difficult opponents, and a tournament (which I lost in the second round :-/). Looking forward to playing more gwent in the DLCs with new cards!
Anyway, I've written enough I think! Other writers should take note of character development in the Witcher and copy it. Gerald and Triss play off one another so well, as do Geralt and Yennifer and Geralt and Ciri. The latter are so cute, and it would be a cynical player who wasn't overjoyed to have a snowball fight with Ciri to cheer her up. Triss and Yennifer have a great interaction with Geralt at the end as well that cleared up some issues I had with how the romances were playing out. Great writing.
This game is amazing. Go play it. I will be eagerly awaiting a price drop in DLC, both of which are supposed to be excellent.
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