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Jun 24th, 2014 at 12:17:42 - Hearthstone: Heroes of Warcraft (PC) |
I woke up this morning thinking "I'll just log on Hearthstone, see what the daily is, maybe complete it, then log off. I'll do this all over breakfast."
Current Me looks back at This-Morning Me in awe that This-Morning Me could be so naive.
Way way way too many hours later and I still haven't completed the daily (win 3 games. ONLY THREE!). I won ONE game. ONE game in way way way too many hours. Given my success yesterday, I did not expect this result. At first I thought it could be that I was only playing ranked matches. Maybe there are a lot of more skilled folks on in the morning EST. Maybe I just got lucky a handful of times yesterday. Maybe, just maybe, I am a noob.
I finally stepped away from the rankings and spent my gold on two Arena entries. This is where I had my ONE victory. I got, like yesterday, a pack of cards and 35 gold (actually yesterday I think I got 40). Then in the Arena series where I lost all 3, I got some gold and some dust for disenchanting or crafting or something. I glanced at that, but crafting is obviously a ways off. So based on 3 Arena runs, it seems you need to win 1 to make it worth the gold, versus just buying a pack of cards. That is, if cards is a main motivation for you to enter the Arena, which it now is for me because I realize other people have some way better cards than I do!
After failing in the Arena, I switched to normal Casual matches, thinking that I would pick up the other two wins pretty quickly. Nope. I lost Casual matches one by one until I resignedly decided to go eat lunch and hang up Hearthstone for the day. I did figure out that you can close the daily you have and get another, which in my case was "Win 2 games with the Paladin or Warrior," so, basically the same thing I'd been not doing all morning.
In the end, what I learned today is to NOT chase the "Win x matches" dailies. Those are rabbit holes. I want that "Kill 40 minions" from yesterday! That one I can do no matter how many times I lose. I wonder what other types of dailies there are.
I also learned that the class rewards past level 10 are cosmetic, at least so far. I lost my way up to level 15 with my Mage and just got a prettier Arcane Intellect card. Then I saw at level 20, you get a golden Arcane Intellect card. The new one I got doesn't do anything different, and so I doubt the golden one does either. I don't care about prettier cards. I want more better cards. How do you get these? Just packs, is it? I read again something about getting Expert cards from Expert packs, but I still don't know what an Expert pack is. What types of packs have I been getting then? Basic packs? How do you get an Expert pack?
I did play around with the Rogue today. That's who I chose for the Arena. And when I won my ONE match, I decided to make a Rogue deck because the one in the Arena had some really neat things. Very different than the Mage, mainly in that the default focus seems to be on weapons and harassing individual cards rather than damage spells. Still didn't help me win any later games though, maybe because I'm not level 10 and don't have all the basic Rogue cards yet. I played with the Druid in the other Arena matches and got stomped. Not a fan of the Druid. And from playing other players, I think Priests look like my style too.
I also couldn't help noticing that 75% of my games were against Hunters. Do people just like the two-damage Hunter spell? Hunters also seemed to use a play style summoning a lot of beasts onto the field, so I'd sometimes get overwhelmed by numbers. This was often my downfall actually, so that I think one of my weaknesses is sufficiently handling large numbers with my own minions. I have built decks heavier on spells and abilities and so often don't have many minions to fight with. This can work really well unless the enemy pumps out a ton of minions. I seem to have this really strong point about round 6 or 7 where I pummel people until then, but afterward, I lose momentum, run out of cards, and end up losing. I guess I build my decks front-heavy with a lot of lower mana cards.
Anyway. Despite all those losses, I was still having a lot of fun. Funny thing about Hearthstone is that most of the games feel close. Some of my losses, I would have won on the next turn. That's definitely part of the brilliance of the game, making battles feel close. But at the end of the day, I still tallied like 1-20. No more chasing "win" dailies. No more chasing levels. See what other dailies there are. Find friends who play. Make it more social than fruitlessly competitive. Should be good.
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Jun 23rd, 2014 at 18:30:13 - Hearthstone: Heroes of Warcraft (PC) |
Ah, Hearthstone. Bringing me back to Warcraft. P got me started when I was visiting him last month. I played some matches with the computer, unlocked a couple classes, and he and I battled a couple times. Haven't had a chance to sit down with it, but was motivated since chatting with some hardcore CCG players at a party Saturday. So here it is, 3 hours with Hearthstone...
I leveled the Mage up past 12. I stuck with the Mage more or less because that's what I'd been playing the computer and P with, so I had the most cards with it and was the most comfortable with it. I'm curious to play the others more, but the leveling system is enticing me with rewards (next at level 15!). I figure at some point I'll level all the classes to 10, which seems to be a landmark after which you are an Expert...not sure what that means. I think you get better cards, or Secret cards, or something. Just...more/better/complex.
When you level past 10, the tutorial prods you to go play other people in Play
mode or the Arena, and also says that you can play Expert AI matches. I tried one, and the AI was using Secrets...or Secret cards. So maybe those are Expert cards? I also played my free Arena matches. The Arena is pretty cool. You build a deck from random cards. I think you choose from random classes as well. I remember I had a Warrior, Hunter and something else available, and chose the Hunter. If there was some way to scroll and select different classes, I didn't notice. I saw those Secret cards there too, and really realized the difference between common cards and class-specific cards. The Hunter's cards are colored green. Looks like all class cards are color-coded.
I opened up 3 packs that I had gotten (1 from a quest to get to level 10, 1 from playing in the Arena, and 1 from...I don't remember) and saw more color-coding, and saw rare cards too. I see that packs cost gold, or real money. Going in the Arena also costs you. I won 1/4 Arena matches (you are eliminated when you lose 3 times), and got a pack and 30 gold. You get greater rewards the more wins you get. I am assuming that you always get a pack and that the 30 gold was my reward for winning a match. No idea how it scales. But, it's 150 gold for the Arena (guaranteed pack? + gold and other things[?] for wins) and 100 gold to buy a pack. So it looks like if you win 2 matches in the Arena, then it was worth the extra 50 gold. That is assuming the packs are the same type, like you always get a rare for purchased packs and Arena packs. I have no idea. Anyway, the Arena was more fun than just buying a pack!
I haven't figured out exactly all the ways to get gold. I see there are quests, which net gold. I don't think you get gold for winning matches. So I've done a couple quests, like get a class to level 10. There are dailies, which I'm not sure how I feel about. I learned from playing WoW that I have a love-hate relationship with daily quests, and I've generally avoided them like the plague in any game after that. I'll have to see what types are available in Hearthstone. Today's was to kill 40 minions, which I played until I completed. As long as I don't feel like I have to complete them, and as long as they aren't mindless, I'll be happy with them. But if I kill 40 minions in the course of playing for fun, that's great.
I like building decks. Endless fun and thought there. And there are a lot of new cards trickling into my collection. I've already played players who have developed specific types of decks or strategies. I'm sure it depends somewhat on the class, their unique strengths and cards, but I've seen people focus on playing taunt cards, nuking the hero, overwhelming with numbers, using hero weapons and specials...my current (probably horribly noob) deck is focused a bit on getting out cards that give + spell power, then using powerful spells to AoE minions or to hammer the hero. It's actually working pretty well. I've only lost twice in 6 Play mode games, and one of those losses was because I forgot to select my deck, so I had the standard Mage deck.
I've checked out the ranked matches too. They don't seem any different from normal Play matches except that you can gain/lose rank. I lost my first one of those, then won 3 so that I'm at rank 24, Leper Gnome (yay). According to the loading screen on Play matches, you are pitted against people of equal skill. Then of course the same is true for ranked matches. So what's the real difference? Just a higher stake in the ranked matches?
And that's my first real sit-down with Hearthstone. I'm a little overwhelmed when I think that there are 9 classes, but easing into it with the Mage feels pretty good. It's very familiar as a CCG and a Warcraft fan, so I think the sheer number of cards and classes is mostly what's overwhelming, but that the content won't be, and in fact isn't so far. Also waiting to see how far I get in ranked matches before people start schooling me.
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Jun 21st, 2014 at 17:34:16 - Dungeon Keeper Gold (PC) |
Been goofing around with this for a couple months. It is really good for a 17-year-old game! Feels way ahead of its time. I see so many later games in it. It's very "blocky" like Minecraft. Granted you can't dig up every pixel block, but it's a similar idea. Excavate an underground dungeon and build some preset rooms. The Dungeon Heart reminds me of the Ancients in DotA, and you can build lanes and almost treat your minions as heroes. Like an RTS, you can zoom in and control individual units. Then like a god game, you zip around the map picking up minions, moving them to and fro, and even slapping them to work harder. Because there are so many familiar elements, the game is very intuitive.
Although the game is totally playable, it's still painfully old in that it is missing so many advances in all the genres it spans. It needs a fast-forward button so badly. It probably has really good tooltips for 1997 (back when you had to read instruction manuals for info), but they are pretty vague for 2014. After playing for how long I did, I still didn't quite understand the relationships between some of the rooms, or what some of the icons even meant, what the various progress bars were for, and some other stuff. There needs to be a way to select large blocks of land easier. When you're excavating, you can sort of drag multiple blocks, but oddly when you're building, you can't. You have to click every square. Annoying! It's different than you would think to get units to fight. You can't drag a box around them like an RTS, but you have to either pick them all up and drop each one of them, or plant a rally flag moving ever forward and sort of coax them to the enemy.
None of these are damning. It's just old, and I don't expect anything more. But, it was tough to play for long periods of time because of all the stuff above and more. It was fun to play with and had a good sense of humor. I wonder if this was the first game where you play as the bad guy? It reminded me of Overlord for that reason. I also found an easter egg. I just happened to play the game on Peter Molyneaux's birthday, and there was a happy birthday message to him before the main menu. Pretty cool!
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May 23rd, 2014 at 21:01:00 - Heavy Rain (PS3) |
Heavy Rain reminds me a lot of Indigo Prophecy, which makes sense as it’s another Quantic Dream game. But that’s both good and bad because like Indigo Prophecy, Heavy Rain was damn cool for at least ½ the game before spinning out of control into some nonsense by the time it ends. At least Heavy Rain didn’t delve into the supernatural, so the nonsense of Heavy Rain is only due to the branching storyline and the super lame twist about who the killer is. Writing this will be difficult because I want to explain why I think what I do about the killer, but I don’t want to provide spoilers…so I’ll just be vague and/or quiet.
So the controls are mostly great. I loved the interactive movie-ness that they created. You must move the right stick in certain directions and patterns, and press and tap buttons in sequences or like QTEs or context commands in order to interact with objects. So like a half-arc turns water faucets and characters will splash their faces or wash their hands, pushing up will pick things up, tapping triangle when prompted may make a character force open a door and so on and so forth. It sounds boring to talk about, but in the game it works really well and is very engaging. The movements are often quite naturalistic. I liked both the mundane aspects of the game, like exploring rooms, and the action sequences. The controls and the actions that you perform, between the mundane things and the more action packed things reminded me of a hilarious mix between LA Noire and Octodad (sometimes characters were almost that difficult to control. I don’t know why you just can’t move with the left stick like every other game).
You can also hold L2 to get options to hear characters’ thoughts. This was had the weird outcome of causing all the characters to seem scattered and confused. As you push all the buttons to hear their thoughts in a situation, for example, as you’re wandering around your apartment, you may hear like, “I am thirsty. I should get something to drink,” “I have to pee. I should go to the bathroom,” “My wife will be home soon. I should get some work done,” “Oh no, I was supposed to wash the dishes,” “I wonder if my son is having fun at his birthday party,” etc. All these random thoughts always make characters sound scatter-brained or schizophrenic or something, like they’ve always got a million conflicting things going on in their heads. I didn’t like it. It’s worse in the tense scenarios because, for example, you’re running from the cops and the character will think, “Gotta keep running,” and “I should just turn myself in,” and “It sure is raining hard outside,” and “I’m so tired from running!” and “I wonder if Madison got away,” and “Shaun! Where is Shaun!” Like 10 different random often contradicting things always going through their minds!
So the big part of the game of course is the narrative. Overall, very cool. I liked the murder mystery, the 4 playable main characters, their particular jobs and types of interactions and interwoven storylines. Despite all I didn’t like about the game and the story, I have to say that it was really neat. One thing I disliked about the story was all the Saw-like nonsense going on, like the killer laying sadistic traps. How the killer got SD cards through an electrical grid or scattered glass in air ducts for you to have to crawl through, or how the GPS knew Ethan was driving on the wrong side of the road, or how the killer recorded the voice in the GPS in the car that had been in the garage 2 years ago…and a bunch of other weird omnipresent and omniscient killer stuff. Oh and other Saw things like you have to cut off your finger, inject yourself with poison…Right.
I guess one thing that is sad about Ethan’s plight is that after going through each trial, the SD card is usually somewhere he could have found it without going through the trial. Like after he shoots the drug dealer (or whatever happens if you don’t shoot him), the SD card is in the gun. After he drives down the wrong side of the road, the SD card is in the glove compartment accessible with a key in the GPS. After he chops his finger off, turns out the SD card was under a loose floorboard. If he were calm enough to take apart his environment, he’d probably find some of the SD cards without shooting a man or chopping his finger. I felt bad for him.
After completing the game (and my girlfriend was watching me play most of the time and was really interested in the outcome), we went online and looked up all the various endings and things that could happen to different characters. I was surprised at how many endings there were, and I was also surprised that there was only one real killer. Since I really thought it was someone else, I was sure there would be an ending where that someone else was the killer, but in fact, there is only one, although that someone else can be jailed for it. I was also surprised to learn that, for example, hiding in the refrigerator in the burning apartment building was a legitimate way to survive the explosion and escape the building. I hid in the fridge as a joke.
Anyway, interesting stuff, worth a look.
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