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Oct 2nd, 2015 at 23:22:01 - Valkyria Chronicles (PS3) |
This is a really neat blend of strategy and action. The game is essentially about WWII, but set in a different world. It’s the “Europan Wars,” not the World Wars, and nope, not the European wars. Europan. The country that is being invaded by the East European Imperial Alliance (aka Germany and/or Russia) is called Gallia, and looks to be where Lithuania/Estonia/Latvia are. The Empire is invading these poor border countries to attack the democratic Atlantic Federation (aka the Allies in Western Europe). There is even a “race” of oppressed people called the Darcsen (Jews), who I think are the only characters with black hair. I could be wrong about that, but there is something “darc” about them.
You play as a man who gets drawn into the conflict as part of a town militia, later leader of a bigger militia group, Squad 7. You and your sister command from a big ol’ tank, and you have a squad of probably 40 troops, of which you choose 20 to be battle-ready, and 9 of which you deploy in any given mission. Troops fall into 5 categories: scouts, shocktroopers, lancers, engineers, and snipers. The game keeps introducing new things. There are also tanks, of which you command one and the enemy will have more than you. The last map features anti-tank guns and land mines, in addition to named enemy commander units. Troop effectiveness is more or less a rock-paper-scissors game. Scouts and shocktroopers > lancers > tanks > scouts and shocktroopers. Snipers just snipe and anyone can kill them easily if they get close enough. Engineers are not too handy with a gun. Their role is to have mobility for calling the medic and capturing enemy bases. If an ally loses all his HP, you can call the medic by moving another character to that ally. Medics and scouts have excellent movement. And then shocktroopers will kill a scout in a gunfight, but they are technically of the same rock-paper-scissors class.
Combat plays out on two scales. You begin in the command view, with a big picture of the battlefield, your troop positions, and enemy troop positions, inasmuch as you know them. You have a certain number of CP (command points?) to move individual units. Units all take one CP to move; tanks take two CP. That one CP covers moving until that unit’s AP is drained and one attack command. You can move and attack in any order, and can always continue moving until your AP is empty. When you select a unit to command, the camera zooms down and you control it in third person, so you can see lines of sight and move behind cover and attack and whatnot. It’s fairly intuitive. You can crouch behind sandbags and crawl in grass, hide behind walls or your tank, and climb ladders.
Units have various traits that affect their situational performance. Some that I recall have to do with gender relationships (woman lover/hater, man lover/hater) with associated bonuses and penalties for being near allies of particular genders; environmental conditions (“country living” characters like being in grass and fields, while “city dweller” characters get bonuses on paved roads and proximity to buildings). There are a lot of others, about as many beneficial ones as penalizing ones. Units can also favor other units, and they have a chance to get extra attacks if they are near characters that they like. It’s interesting, but there are so many troops I can command that I don’t think their traits are something to memorize. I think you find out what type of terrain, for example, the next mission is, then go select all the units that won’t be penalized for fighting in sand or whatever.
Leveling up is neat too. You get experience and money from winning battles, but you spend experience points on unit types, not individual units. So, I can dump 1000XP into scouts, for example, and all my scouts would level up. This is great because no one falls behind! The decision for whom to use becomes their synergies and affinities, or if you’ve equipped them with a particularly special weapon you might have found on a slain enemy. Weapon upgrades are straightforward so far. Just spend money and unlock the next upgrade. But it looks like some have like skill trees, so some weapon or unit type specialization may be in my near future.
And that’s the gist of it so far! I’m really enjoying it. There’s a lot of dialogue, punctuated by big fights. The story (so far) isn’t anything to write home about, seeing as it’s basically an alternate version of WWII, but I like the characters. They are anime likable. The main character likes bugs. He went to college for “animal sociology,” according to the game notes, which is a niche field of sociology. Was an animal sociologist writing this game script?
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Oct 2nd, 2015 at 23:17:38 - Dead Space 3 (PC) |
I enjoyed this overall. Like I said earlier, it’s big dumb fun, sort of like Jurassic World. But I tell you what, they tried hard to wreck it in the second half. There is a love triangle. It is cringe-worthy. Ellie, whom I think is Isaac’s love interest from the other games, is now with some other hardened military guy. Let’s call him Jerkface, because that’s his entire contribution to the game, being a jerkface. If Ellie looks at you, he expresses jealousy. He walks past you and bumps into your shoulder a few times. He yells at Ellie for talking to you. He clearly wants you dead. But Ellie, poor, helpless female stereotype that she is, can’t help batting her eye-shadowed eyes at you and hugging you after every close encounter. Jerkface really does not like this and eventually does try and kill you, but, and this really isn’t a spoiler because jerks always die in games, you kill him first. You would expect Ellie to accept this, but apparently she loved him a lot more than it looked like, and she spends 10 minutes being very angry at you. “How could you, Isaac?!” Even though he tried to murder you and sabotage the entire mission. It doesn’t matter. She’s mad, dammit! Then after she’s been sufficiently and stereotypically emotional about it, she warms back up to you and you’re her hero and savior again.
The second way the game tried to implode is by forcing you to complete insidious rock-climbing and rappelling sequences. There was one early in the game that was fine, but there are like 7 of these in the last handful of chapters. I cannot convey how frustrating these were. On one in particular, I died more times than any other part in the game. The most challenging of challenges in Dead Space 3 should not lie in a rock-climbing segment where you dodge some falling shit. But my god, I could not get past it for the life of me. Even after searching forums and watching 3 let’s plays, I still had trouble! The problem was one little part. You are climbing up this cliff side. A giant rock falls. Stasis it and jump to the left. No problem. Another giant rock starts to fall. At the same elevation is an elevator lift swinging from left to right. Stasis both of them and wait for the rock to fall. Avoid the rock. Not much problem. But the elevator. Grr. You have to stasis it when it hits the left wall. Then you have to walk over to a vertical gap and jump across to the right side, while the elevator is still in stasis, and continue your ascent. First, and this was stupid about the rocks too, if you so much as touch, even come within a foot, of the elevator, you die. Why can’t Isaac touch the elevator? Since when does touching a rock or an elevator—in stasis!—mean instant death? Second, Isaac refuses to make the seemingly obvious jump across the gap. Like 50 times I did this. I literally almost quit the game. You walk as far right as you can. You jump. He doesn’t make it and does this crazy grunt/flail/swing back to the left thing, inevitably gets too close to the elevator, which is still in stasis, and dies. I tried jumping from all verticalities. I tried running starts. I put the elevator in stasis every way I could think of. Dead. Deader. Deadest. After numerous forums and let’s plays, and more trying, he finally…just did it. I swear I didn’t do anything different. Haha, I’m mad just writing about it! What a waste of time!
Aaaaaanyway. Long story short, the game thankfully ends. The end was fine. The third wheel character does a stupid thing and gives the bad guy (who was a weak bad guy and impossibly survived and flew his space ship inside and alien and everywhere else you go) the codex to save Ellie, which Isaac wasn’t going to do (lol), though he constantly had stupid monologues about Ellie, even as the world is exploding and he’s fighting the final boss. Yo Isaac, forget about your love interest for five seconds. No one cares! But I’m glad that happened instead of giving Isaac the choice to either destroy the necromorphs or to let them free. The story and dialogue was leading up to that choice, but then they didn’t give it to you. It would have been exceedingly dumb if they had. Oh, and surprise, because it’s EA, this franchise can go on and on and on and on and on forever because apparently even a giant moon explosion and floating in space forever can’t kill engineer Isaac. Meanwhile, Ellie is crying, in a tank top with cleavage. What a terrible stereotype.
Does it sound like I hated this game? I didn’t. But I don’t recommend it.
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Oct 2nd, 2015 at 23:14:50 - Dead Space 3 (PC) |
This is not the Dead Space I remember. Where did all this action come from, and where has the horror gone? Ok, at first I was turned off, but I’ve warmed up. Despite the lame voice acting and same basic setup as the first two games, I am totally immersed in the environment. Although it isn’t horror anymore, it’s solid action. You can’t go a minute without some set piece happening, either necromorphs flooding out of vents or you having to go spacewalk to retrieve satellite parts or one of those unkillable necromorphs chasing you or some massive destruction of whatever part of the ship you’re in. It’s big. It’s dumb. It’s fun.
One new thing is the ability to craft your own weapons. This is actually neat and useful (I usually ignore crafting in games if possible) in part because you can dismantle weapons without penalty. This means (*gasp*) you can experiment! You find parts lying around, pick them up, go to a work bench, and see what the parts do. Each gun is made up of like 3 core components, then you have attachments and other mods, plus secondary fire modes. I haven’t made anything terribly cool yet. I am using a shotgun with a big spread and a sort of rapid-fire pistol, again with a medium spread. I like big spreads because you can fire more blindly at enemies, haha.
The space walking parts are some of my favorite. In previous Dead Space games, you were on one derelict ship, or on one planet/space station or whatever. In this one, there are several ships, other vessels, and a planet. The ships are all floating dead in space, and you have to rig a little space pod early on to be able to fly between ships. I think I am about to launch to the planet, which is where a big marker is (the first marker?). I expect I am roughly halfway through the game, maybe a little less.
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Oct 2nd, 2015 at 23:10:17 - Sonic & All-Stars Racing Transformed (PC) |
I’ve been ill with a little stomach bug/food poisoning from dinner last night. I did almost nothing today except write/answer work emails and lay on the floor…and after my second nap, I managed to get an hour of Sonic in and see the credits roll. It required just a little bit of grinding. You need 95 stars to unlock expert difficulty and the final world, but credits roll here. You don’t actually have to do the final world, and I’m not gonna! I had like 90 stars at the end, so I had to go back and win 5 more things on hard. I returned to the first world, assuming those events would be easier, and knocked out 5 events in no time. I leveled up Tails completely and almost got Sonic leveled completely. There’s not a lot of point to doing this except to use your favorite character all the time. Each character gets 6 specializations, and they all overlap with specializations of other characters, so eventually you would wind up with a bunch of the same stats on various characters.
So yeah, fun little cart racer. I guess I’ll keep it on my computer since I figured out how to play split screen. Maybe someone will be down for Sonic racing!
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