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May 24th, 2016 at 11:35:46 - Hearthstone: Heroes of Warcraft (PC) |
Haven't updated Hearthstone in a long time, and yes, I am still playing this. Hard to believe I've been into this for 2 years.
I had a funny experience yesterday that I wanted to write down. I was playing wild with this bizarre mage deck I have. The deck is almost all spells and culminates in Yogg-Saron, a 10-mana card with a battlecry that casts a random spell on a random target, one for EACH SPELL YOU'VE CAST in the game so far. It can be amazing/hilarious/disastrous. So if you've cast 5 spells and play Yogg, Yogg casts 5 random spells on the board. I have a Brann in the deck that doubles battlecry effects, so if I have cast 5 spells and have Brann on the board when I play Yogg, Yogg will cast 10 random spells. That's the real gimmick of the deck if I can get that to happen.
But the deck also has Antonidas (whenever you cast a spell, put a fireball in your hand) and two summoning stones (whenever you cast a spell, put a random minion of equal value on the battlefield). So if this deck gets rolling, it's just a massacre of hilarious random spells and minions.
Anyway, in this story, I have my opponent to thank for the ensuing fun. I was on the ropes. He had a bunch of legendaries. I used a doomsayer/frost nova combo, and he tossed down the Old Gods Deathwing on his next turn. This Deathwing has a deathrattle effect that puts ALL the dragons in your hand on the board. So the doomsayer wiped the board and I was wondering "what dragons could he have?!" because he hadn't played any dragons and wasn't using a dragon deck. Wow, so out comes Chromaggus, Nosdormu and one of the other 8/8 legendaries!
Nosdormu is an odd one. If Nozdormu is in play, both players only have 15 seconds to take their turn. I managed to toss down a summoning stone and a couple spells, so I had some board presence. Then on his turn, he got hardly anything done in 15 seconds. Was he on a tablet?! Phone?! Was his connection slow?! This was great! I played a bunch of cards including Antonidas and built up my board. He got one or two things out before time. I killed off all his dragons except Nozdormu. It was clearly disadvantaging him against me. I had Yogg in my hand but didn't end up tossing him down. I had a lot of fun exploiting this person's Nozdormu effect!
This mage deck doesn't do very well most of the time though. It's just fun when it clicks!
**Edit** I was playing as I wrote this, and, for example, I got a giant Yogg combo down with Brann out and had probably cast 15 spells before, so I pumped out 30 when Yogg came out. Well, the end result was that I killed myself, oops! The first spell out was a pyroblast against myself, then various other things that changed the board, turned Yogg into a frog, and unfortunately damage spells kept hitting my character, and I died. Haha. Oh Yogg...
This entry has been edited 1 time. It was last edited on May 24th, 2016 at 11:51:44.
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May 24th, 2016 at 10:53:56 - Jet Set Radio (PC) |
I picked up Jet Set Radio in a Humble Bundle along with a Sega Classics collection that I'm excited to play some of (it has Golden Axe!). I missed most things Dreamcast back in the day, though I do remember playing a lot of Typing of the Dead with friends. Jet Set Radio has been something I've always wanted to play just from hearing its name over and over and seeing its cool cel-shaded graphics.
Upon playing the first time, I was surprised to find out that it was a roller blading game and I immediately drew parallels to Tony Hawk. But the skating is way simpler. You just push up to go forward, hold RT for a short speed burst, press A to jump, and LT to tag with spray paint (on Xbox controller). I think that's all the controls, very simple. So...a simplified skating game where you spray paint graffiti. Cool.
I took to the story right away. Your gang's turf is being contested by rival gangs in Tokyo-to, and you go around covering up their graffiti and drawing your own while avoiding the (annoying) authorities. It's got a heavy tone of youth and anti-corporate resistance, which is cool. The main bad guys are a corporation, and the titular Jet Set Radio is a pirate radio station run by DJ Professor K (I'm Professor K too, but no DJ...!).
Like I said, the game is really simple. This is good because I could pick up and play quickly, but bad because it started to feel real repetitive and dull and frustrating after a while. I played for two two-hour sessions; the first I enjoyed, the second not so much. You collect a cast of stylish characters who want to join your gang, and you've got to beat them in races to get them. This happens periodically. Then you just go to the city map and select missions to complete, which are all basically the same thing. Most of them involve skating around an area and tagging all the marked spots within the time limit. You pick up spray paint bottles, health bottles (for when the authorities shoot you and stuff), and just go to town finding tag markers and tagging.
The authorities get really irritating sometimes. It starts out with this one guy with a gun (you just shoot roller bladers in the street?!), then expands to police, then riot police, and finally helicopters that shoot homing missiles, and probably some more I haven't seen yet. If you have a long tag (they vary from one step to like 12 steps to tag), you'll be constantly interrupted and injured if the authorities are there, so you often have to do the level a few times and strategize an order in which to tag. Usually start with the easy-to-get-to tags and save the hard-to-reach tags for when the authorities come (because they can't reach them either!).
Yesterday I played an awful new type of mission where you have to tag other gang members, like physically skate behind them and spray them. There are three gang members in these missions, and they generally stick together. You've got to tag each of them 10 times in the time limit, and they follow a route that you can learn. This is where I realized (as some of the regular tagging missions had become difficult too) that the difficulty is not in my lack of finesse or skill, but just in crappy controls and collision physics that stop and sometimes injure your character if you simply touch an object. To tag the other gang members, you must get RIGHT behind them, which 9/10 times meant I would touch them, which caused my character to cry out and stop or fall down and take damage, which meant I then had to catch back up to them. And usually I wouldn't even get a tag out of it because you have to be SO close and can only tag when an icon appears. This led to my strategy of getting really close and spamming RT so that when the icon came up I'd at least get one tag before I inevitably ran into them and fell down.
Anyway, I feel I've seen all there is to see here, and I've got the gist of Jet Set Radio. Cool game, I understand why it's so popular, got some enjoyment out of it, but better things to play!
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May 15th, 2016 at 19:33:08 - The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt (PC) |
The Witcher 3 has quickly become one of my favorite RPGs. Like the two before it, it is gritty, dark, and the story flourishes in moral gray areas. There's rarely a "good/right" or "bad/wrong" decision. Geralt (the titular Witcher) has the capacity to care about people, the capacity to desire money, and the capacity to not give a shit about other people's problems. He can move between any of these attitudes and more, just like (gasp) a real person! Other characters are similarly complex. The Bloody Baron is a great example, and his story is amazing to play, as he enlists the Witcher to find out where his daughter and wife fled. What in any other RPG would be a short quest-line, this plot line has mandatory and optional parts, multiple outcomes, and is interwoven into several other plot lines as it unfolds over the entire Velen act. Did I say the storytelling was amazing yet?
This is a defining feature of the game as a whole and its relation to you, the player. It does not hold your hand. It is wonderfully, thoughtfully complex. It provides some help via a bestiary, quest trackers, and some other useful modern open-world RPG staples, but it will throw an impossible quest your way without thinking twice. I am level 14, for example, and I just picked up a Witcher contract (like a monster hunt) that was marked level 25. The thing is, I might be able to do it now if I am very patient in combat, use potions, oils, and signs effectively, etc. The tools are there, but the game will do this: Here's a challenge; tackle the near-impossible now if you think you can handle it, or just come back later when you're more prepared. In the meantime, there is plenty of other stuff to do. Another way to say this is that the Witcher 3 treats me like an intelligent adult, and I am into that.
Today I completed what I believe is the first act, if I can break it into acts. Geralt is searching for his daughter, Ciri. His friend and sometimes lover Triss and he decide to search in 3 places: Velen (no man’s land), Novigrad, and the Skellige Isles. I’ve spent a whole RPG’s worth of time in Velen alone, and am about to head into Novigrad. I’m at the gates! Velen might be way bigger than the other two places. It is massive. If it’s not bigger, then I’m looking at a 100-hour game. Whoa. It is interesting the way the game moves you across the map. You’re free to go just about anywhere from the get-go, and I actually immediately went to Novigrad (recommended level 10; I was like 2). Halt! Can’t cross the bridge on account of the Redanian army is blocking through traffic. Need a pass! Well, I got a pass pretty easily (and later found 3-4 other methods of acquiring one, cool), ventured across, and got slaughtered by higher level monsters when I tried to do much of anything. So I went into Velen instead.
If you look at the map, you will see some golden notice boards with quest exclamation marks, as well as a crap load of question marks scattered around. The notice boards are in settlements, and there’s usually one job on each one, often a Witcher contract. These are FUN and often CHALLENGING. And there’s usually a cool story to go along side it. Townsfolk, scared, superstitious peasants that most of them are, are occasionally terrorized by monsters. Maybe something is haunting their fields, or a family member went into the woods and never returned, or a foul poisonous mist is creeping along the land, etc. Your job is to go figure out what’s the cause of the problem. Once Geralt determines what kind of monster it is, he has to kill it or otherwise resolve the contract. These are basically mini-bosses, and some are pretty involved. I remember trying to kill my first noonwraith (a female spirit spurned in love or who passed in some other emotional turmoil) and spending probably 30 minutes doing it. You have to trap her with the Yrden sign to make her material and attack her. She’ll move out of the Yrden circle, so you’ve got to maintain it and lure her into it again. She’ll periodically disappear and create illusions, each of which you must kill. Repeat until she’s dead. It was easier the second time I faced a noonwraith. This is how pretty much every new monster is. You’ve got to think, develop a strategy, try it, fail or succeed, revise if necessary, etc. Wyverns are another class of monster I remember using a lot of brain juice to learn how to kill. I recently discovered a monster nest with TWO level 21 wyverns. I tried it a few times, but I don’t do much damage to them.
The question marks are areas of interest that you can explore at your leisure. There are a lot of different types of areas of interest (the type is revealed when you travel to it), including guarded treasures, bandit camps, abandoned villages, monster nests, monster dens, etc., etc. There’s almost always some good experience or loot to be found, and sometimes even a little quest. I usually get really bored over time exploring maps because it feels all the same, but it doesn’t feel that way in the Witcher 3. I love uncovering all the question marks and seeing what lurks at each one, partly because even though the types of areas repeat, there are so many different monsters and treasures that could be there, and then so many different approaches to take to do whatever needs doing at each place. I recently learned, for example, that I can fight on horseback. (Geralt can call his trusty horse, Roach, to his side at any time and ride). If you gallop full speed and time your sword attack well, you can insta-kill enemies. It’s great fun to gallop around bandit camps hacking off heads as they freak out and try to defend against oncoming death.
Combat is pretty fun. As with the other Witcher games, you use two swords, a silver one for monsters and a steel one for everything else. You can craft oils (I craft them but never use them) that increase damage against certain enemy types and potions (also which I craft but never use) that enhance your abilities and bombs (which I craft but only use to destroy monster nests). You have 5 signs at your disposal that have nifty little skill trees now. I can turn an enemy with my Axii sign now, my Igni melts armor, and Quen has become indispensable as a healing spell. I hear that the others once leveled up are also quite powerful. Too bad I’ll never have enough ability points to use them all at max, but I can buy a potion that resets my skill tree! In addition to those three signs, I have a bunch of points in the fast attack skill so I do more damage and more and stronger critical strikes. A lot of Witcher combat is dancing around enemies, parrying, and striking opportunistically. I’ve learned to make good use of the roll and dodge moves, and I can parry and counterattack pretty well. Each enemy is different to fight. It’s really refreshing.
And. That’s all for now. Wanted to write something before I got too much farther and finishing Velen seemed like a good time to reflect! On to Novigrad to talk to Triss!
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Apr 22nd, 2016 at 19:05:16 - The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim (PC) |
Beat Skyrim! What an epic journey that was. After all my stop-go playing of this for A YEAR I finally decided to hunker down, finish the main quest, and see how everything ends. I can say that going to Sovngarde, especially after spending so much time with the Companions, was really rewarding. I can't imaging having gotten to the end without ever doing the Companions questline. That questline culminates in you saving their leader's soul, preventing him from living out eternity as a werewolf in the huntsman god Hircine's hunting grounds, and sending him to the Nord afterlife in Sovngarde where he wanted to go. When I actually met Kodlak at the end in Sovngarde, I had many emotions. I was especially happy for him because I'd helped him have the afterlife he wanted and deserved. It was cool too how (especially since I'm the new Harbinger after Kodlak), all the Nord heroes talk about awaiting me in Sovngarde when I die. I really do feel like a hero!
Oddly, I didn't care too much about defeating Anduin, as that doesn't feel urgent or particularly impressive. Nor does it have much (if any) impact on the game world. After defeating him, you just get shouted back to Skyrim, listen to some dragons acknowledge Alduin's defeat, and...go back to doing quests or whatever else it is you were doing. I would have enjoyed the option to lose to Alduin and watch the world be torn asunder. Then game over and reload to win!
So at my typical rate of Bethesda RPGs, I can expect to purchase Fallout 4 in 3-4 years and beat it after another year. Haha. It's pretty interesting looking at Steam stats. 27.7% of Skyrim owners have beaten it. My most rare achievement was picking 50 pockets and 50 locks (12.1% of players).
Now back to the Witcher 3!
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