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Nov 3rd, 2014 at 16:32:56 - Dragon Age: Origins (PC) |
I wrote this several days ago…next entry forthcoming.
I told myself I would write a gamelog for this first thing Wednesday morning. I’ve been uncharacteristically getting few hours of gaming in for a while now – about 15 hours of DA in the past month, most of which has come recently. I actually have a DAY OFF today though and I am going to get my fantasy RPG on. This will be a two-part log, the first part being pre-play today, and the second part being either later today or perhaps over the weekend (or 5 days later, woops). I anticipate having some more free time this weekend.
So, part the first. I have some impressions. DA is hard. I *think* though that I am doing things out of order. I traveled to a town after completing my origin story and received a few quests, including the main quest that is of the “go to these four places and do these four things” variety. My party and other NPCs were directing me toward one of the places, but the side quests I received in town seemed to direct me to another place. I went with the side quests, but wound up in another main quest location, not the one my party suggested. I have died at least 20 times. I managed to make it near to the end of that part of the main questline, but my party was so beat up and debilitated from resurrection penalties, and I was just dying over and over to a huge amount of skeletons in one direction and some miniboss in another direction, that I have given up and returned to camp.
In camp, all your resurrection penalties (penalties to stats that accumulate from dying in battle) are washed away, you can chat with your party members, change party members, and give them gifts, which I find odd. The gift-giving itself isn’t odd. That makes sense. You give party members gifts and they will like you more. But there are gifts (I’ve found 3-4 already) that give HUGE bonuses to party members’ favor, like 50 points worth. So…most of my party members already *really* like me and have gotten all kinds of little stat bonuses. It seems like too easy a thing to have them like me.
While in camp, I finally set battle tactics. Tactics represent the party members’ AI. These are nice and extensive. I’ve set my character (David the Elven Mage, haha) to be a healer. If Self -> Health below 50% -> cast Heal; if Party Member -> Health below 25% -> cast Heal; If Any Enemy -> in range -> cast Lightning bolt; if Enemies -> Group of more than 4 -> cast Fireball. Tactics are super cool. There are some good defaults, and I’ve modified all my party members’ tactics to tailor them to what I want. So whenever I’m not controlling a particular character, they act according to their tactics. I also figured out how to set party members to be aggressive and attack enemies on site. They would just mill about before and wait until I attacked, which was lame. After setting tactics and aggressiveness, I have noticed having an easier time. I really have no idea what my party members were doing before I set tactics! I think they were just auto-attacking, but I didn’t know!
I continue to be extremely impressed with the story (and stories). The game has a lot of optional text lore to read, which is cool, but all the quest lines, party banter, environmental lore, and all that are fantastic. That’s why I am so glad to finally have a day to sink a lot of hours into the game, so I can get absorbed in it. It drives me nuts not being able to engage with an in-depth RPG! Thus marks the end of part the first. Let’s see how I get on today.
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Oct 7th, 2014 at 08:30:04 - Dragon Age: Origins (PC) |
I'm way late to the party on this one, even though someone gave me the game upon release...5 years ago. My reason, and the reason I have other similar games sitting for so long, is twofold: (1) I know I will love it, and I tend to follow the saying "save the best for last," and (2) I know it will be a long romance. It is daunting to start a 70-hour game. But, it's a good time to start since I don't have any other huge, complicated plots floating in my head right now.
I chose an Elven Mage. Most any race/class combination presents you with an "origin story," which in my case I managed to do in about 4 hours over 2 weeks. The Mage's origin story involves going through a deadly trial called The Harrowing to move from being an apprentice to an actual mage in the Circle of Magi. There is so.much.lore. It is overwhelming, and since I've barely been playing, I'm losing some detail over time. But last night I played about 3 hours straight and was starting to finally get into the game. I like a lot of good lore, and this is delivering.
A friend I met at a convention this past weekend raved about Dragon Age. She said she's played it all the way through four or five times (!) to see all the origin stories and to experience the game from different perspectives (races, sexes, classes, conversation choices). I got the bright idea to do all the origin stories before beginning the main game, and then take my favorite character and play the rest of the game with them. But after finishing the Mage origin story last night, I am totally ready for the main event. Perhaps I will sprinkle other origin stories throughout the main campaign.
DA:O reminds me (obviously) of the old D&D games like Baldur's Gate and Neverwinter Nights. The most interesting thing to me is the camera. You can switch it between the top-down or isometric Baldur's Gate style and the 3rd-person Neverwinter Nights style. They call them the "tactical view" and "exploration view" respectively. I've been bumbling around both views, and generally prefer a zoomed out exploration view, a middle ground between the two. I think as I gain experience controlling my party and moving during battle, I will make more use of the tactical view in combat.
My other big surprise so far is that I've already been able to outright murder three NPCs. I generally don't do that due to repercussions with townsfolk, party members, or impact on questlines, but I was curious because it seemed like there WOULDN'T be any such repercussions...and there weren't. I got a quest from a prisoner being held in the middle of a camp. He was wrongly imprisoned (sort of), starving, and just wanted food and water. He also had a key to a locked chest nearby. I could either find him food and water or kill him and steal the key. Being a nice Mage, I tried to find him food and water, but the guard wouldn't give me his. I searched the camp, and gave up. It's possible that, later, I could get some somewhere else for the man, but I opted to knife him instead. The guard turned around and said, "Hey, what did you do that for?!" I said, "He lunged at me! I protected myself!" And the guard said, "Oh, well, okay." And that was that.
The other murder I committed was even more blatant. I don't even remember the circumstance, but the victim was in the middle of a populated area in camp. I killed him, and no one so much as blinked at me. "Weird," I thought. Then I had the opportunity to do another guy in, but I opted to blackmail him for a sword instead. I felt bad about that one because he was supposed to be bringing the sword to someone else, and the camera zoomed to his face, his lip quivered, and he sobbed, "You're such a mean man." :-(
I find these interactions interesting, even though killing people in the streets without repercussions is highly unlikely to me, even in fantasy-land. I'm going to invest my next bunch of skill points into Cunning so I can learn the Persuade trait to have a silver tongue in conversation. I always like exploring all the dialogue choices, and seeing the range of ideas that NPCs have, the range of things they will say. It fleshes out characters and situations.
Anyway, I'm going through my trial to become a Grey Warden now. Still getting used to the combat system and dying a little bit, but figuring it out. Totally intrigued and impressed overall. Looking forward to finding some free time this month to hurl fireballs at Darkspawn.
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Sep 20th, 2014 at 07:34:33 - Spelunky (PC) |
This game is HUGE. I really like it, but I'm giving up on it (for now) because it's painfully difficult by the end and it's crossed my threshold for how much time I'm willing to put in for perfectionism.
In my previous entry, I had reached the Ice Caves once or twice and was working on unlocking Tunnel Man's shortcut there at the end of the Jungle. Well, I successfully did that (2 bombs, then 2 ropes, then a shotgun for the Tunnel Man), and then breezed through the Ice Caves. It's weird how easy that world is compared to the others. The 4th world is the Temple, which kicked my ass every time I saw it. But the ICE CAVES! That's my favorite world so far. It's got yetis and wooly mammoths that turn you into a block of ice. It's got UFOs and psychic alien lords. It's got mines and other things that blow blocks up. And it's an abyss! So there's no real floor at the bottom, which is sometimes tricky to deal with.
I also discovered the Worm in the Ice Caves. You can also get to it in The Jungle, but my discovery was an accident. There are these pink blobs on the wall, usually in place where you would fall pretty far, and if you fall on it, you stick to it. It's good because it breaks your fall, and you can then jump off of it safely. Enemies and other objects get stuck on the pink blob too. So one time I had a damsel and threw him off the ledge and he landed on the blob. Then I jumped off to grab him from the blob. When we were both on the blob, after a moment the screen began shaking and the blob turned into a giant worm's mouth and ate us! I went inside the worm's belly, where there is a whole new level with new enemies and environmental elements. So. Cool. Inside the worm, there is tons of treasure, but the worm is very large. I never made it to the bottom of one before dying.
There are many other secrets in Spelunky. I read about most of them after deciding to quit, but discovered some on my own. The other one I was most pleased with was figuring out what Kali's sacrifice tables do. If you bring a humanoid or a damsel to the bloody altar, it dies. Bring enough and Kali rewards you with an item. Bring enough yet, and Kali rewards you with a special item that you can use to increase your health. Cool. There are apparently more secret levels and items that sound pretty neat.
So, why am I retiring Spelunky even though I like it so much? In my quest to unlock Tunnel Man's shortcut to the Temple, I had to bring 3 bombs, then 3 ropes, and then...the Golden Key from the Mines. What?! I don't know how to put this quite in perspective. I sunk 6 hours into Spelunky and made it through 3 worlds. The Mines probably took me 3 hours, The Jungle 2.5 hours and the Ice Caves maybe 30 minutes to finally figure out. The Golden Key is an item that spawns somewhere in The Mines. So to unlock Tunnel Man's shortcut to the Temple, you have to (a) find the Golden Key in The Mines (b) get the Golden Key (c) bring the Golden Key ALL THE WAY through The Mines, The Jungle and the Ice Caves WITHOUT DYING. Now, I died 176 times in Spelunky so far. The chance of me going through 3 entire worlds without dying is about the chance I have of winning the lottery. Just...No. Not right now.
Looking forward to starting a new game this weekend. What'll it be?!
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Sep 14th, 2014 at 11:40:34 - Hearthstone: Heroes of Warcraft (PC) |
Super exciting Hearthstone news. I realized last week that I could do daily quests in the arena, so now I don't have to play every few days to do dailies AND do arena. I can do both at the same time, which halves my play time. And I've gotten good enough in arena that the gold I win typically at least makes up for the extra cost of entering the arena.
My super exciting news is that yesterday, for the first time, I went "infinite." That means I won 7 games. It's called going infinite because at 7+ wins, your prize money is more than enough to enter the arena again. If you win 7+ games all the time, then you can just only play arena since you'll never need the money from dailies to purchase arena entry. That's not my goal, but I was amazed that I won 7. My previous record was 4!
I think I did get lucky with my draft. It felt like I had about 25% rare cards. I did it with a Druid, which is a class I typically avoid because I don't know it well. But, in addition to the excellent draft, I realize that while I've been playing some of the other classes, I've developed a very keen understanding of what they are likely to do when, and I was able to anticipate other players' moves and secrets. Actually learning class secrets is a huge help because those things will ruin your game if you can't carefully deduce which secret(s) another player has in play.
I guess I do all this in ranked play too, but I don't realize it because the stakes aren't high. In arena though, I want to get as many wins as possible.
Anyway, I wrote down my Druid deck to perhaps try and build it at some point. I wasn't just winning by a little bit; I usually obliterated my opponent. On the other hand, a couple of my losses were me getting smashed, most notably by a Priest who was being incredibly smart with his Hero Power, healing minions every turn. He got out a Zombie Chow, gave it +2 health, and I spent 3 rounds trying to kill it. By then, the priest had solid card advantage and it was pretty much over.
I learned a couple cool things about the Druid from this arena match. I never really understood what the Druid's various mana crystal cards did, but I drafted them to figure it out, and holy crap, they are fantastic. One gives you two extra mana crystals in a turn, which if you also have The Coin, can provide a huge advantage. The other PERMANENTLY gives you an extra mana crystal. There was one game where I drew both of those cards and had The Coin. My first turn I coined and got one permanent mana crystal, which took me from 1 to 3. Then my next turn I used the +2 mana crystal card (which costs 0) and played a 5 mana card. Then I had a great progression of cards in my hand, and my opponent was completely helpless after 2 rounds. I kinda want to play around in constructed with a Druid deck now.
Anyway, had to write this out, it was so exciting!
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