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Dec 5th, 2012 at 11:13:52 - Tower Defense: Lost Earth (Other) |
Also, a quick post about this Android game. Best. Android. Game. Ever. I am a big tower defense fan, and this one is dead solid. It's also got tons of content. I've been playing I don't know how long...this entire semester probably...and I'm halfway through the campaign levels. What's been extending its life for me is the achievements. Each level has a number of achievements: beat it on easy, beat it on normal, beat it on hard (though beating it on a higher difficulty does not count for the easier ones too, so you do have to beat each level at least 3 times), use your special move, destroy all the crystals, don't lose a life, and use rapid deploy 25% of the time.
Here's my order: First, I play a level on normal to get a feel. If I can do it without losing a life, or with destroying crystals, I will, but it's not always a good idea to try for like the crystals without beating the level once. Then I play it on hard, and usually use the special weapon here. Then I play it on easy to get the rapid deploy on 25% of the waves. This just makes waves come faster, which is obviously harder on your defense. And I'll get whatever other ones I didn't manage to get on my normal or hard playthroughs and play easy over and over until I get them all.
There are also multiple game modes, some kind of store where you can buy extra damage and things, which you unlock with crystals, which you accumulate from beating levels and getting achievements. There are still two towers I haven't unlocked yet. They're still adding enemy types. Recently they added a healer, who is a bastard. He's real fast, runs by enemies and heals them if they've been injured, and can really mess you up if you don't have towers placed at spots after where they heal other enemies.
HIGHLY recommend this tower defense game for peoples' phones. It's a blast.
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Dec 5th, 2012 at 11:05:27 - World of Warcraft: Mists of Pandaria (PC) |
Bought MoP on Cyber Monday, not really because I wanted to, but because it seemed stupid not to. P started a trial, and I figured what the hell, I'll check it out. I played one day and that was cool. Then P bought it and I didn't follow him. Then I opened my WoW account to see how much time I had on the free trial and my 6-month subscription had auto-renewed a few days earlier. Woops. I canceled it already so no more auto-renewing. Then it turns out, on Cyber Monday, that P's purchase didn't go through somehow the week before. I commented that it was half off for Cyber Monday and he bought it immediately. Then I figured, oh well, I might as well cough up $20 since I just accidentally paid for 6 more months. I'll see how Panda-land is, level one character, and PvP at 90 very casually. How is it so far?
I haven't leveled all the way yet. I'm just into 89. I picked Nachtluz, my paladin, since he's been my general favorite. It took me a little while to remember how to play, even after playing so long before. They completely redid talents, which I think suck now. They stripped away nearly all choice you had in customizing skills. There used to be the typical RPG talent trees. Now, every 15 levels, you pick 1 of three talents. All three on any of the levels are sometimes functionally equivalent so there really is no choice. For example, the level 15 talents for paladins are all movement speed talents. Do you want a very high movement speed bonus for a short time? A medium movement speed bonus for a longer time? Or a slower movement speed bonus permanently? You see what this means? By level 30, you've essentially made 0 choices and your character is the exact same as all others of your class, except for spec. Basically they rolled most of the old talents into the specializations, so you do get several more things from the beginning. But there's nothing *new.* I couldn't imagine my character being static for 30 levels. Actually I'm looking at them now and the talents are just so boring. The level 30 ones are all variants of a stun/slow. The rationale I've read for this from players is that "everyone used cookie-cutter builds anyway." Bullshit. There were many tough decisions to be made and that made it fun. *Now* there are cookie-cutter builds. One build for each spec and PvE/PvP. Because players have no choice otherwise. Glad I only have to go 85-90. On the one hand, I'm happy because I have a spec that works, but on the other I'm annoyed that I can't tweak much.
Ok so fair enough. Changes. It's more accessible overall, also with the cute panda bears. I thought it was stupid when I first heard about it, and it's still a little silly for me, but they've done an excellent job with the expansion's content. The Pandarens, as they're called, are drawn up from Chinese culture. They are monks, beer-brewers, do martial arts, and the entire of Pandaria looks like Chinese mythology. The quests are more or less the same thing they've always been in terms of what you have to do. There have been a couple amazing stand-outs though. When Mists of Pandaria is telling stories, they are excellent. This is when quests shine, when they are supported by really good storylines. When quests don't shine it's because the killing x enemies / collecting x things overshadows the story. The fighting is basic, dull, easy, repetitive, etc. by this point. So I appreciate the quests that are more story heavy, and there are more of those in this expansion. Unfortunately Mists of Pandaria dropped a lot of the awesome quests, and the best storyline (so far) in the first zone. There was one quest chain where you had to listen to 3 of your allies recount this mission they went on and why one came back nearly dead. So you talk to the first, and as the NPC narrates with voice, the game puts you in that character's shoes to act out the events s/he is narrating. Then the next NPC takes over the story, and the next, and you play this really cool tale of their expedition and learn what happened to them and what dangers are out there. It was *awesome* but it was right near the beginning and the only time there has been anything deviating so much from the typical quests. I feel like they thought it was a risk to innovate their quests and storytelling and probably didn't want to take it too far, but they really should have.
There are other cool things now with regards to quests and storylines. First of all, there's a good amount of voice acting now, so for main events you get that instead of just text. Quest chains are more organized and interrelated. At the end of chains now there is sometimes a cinematic! Sometimes too there are what I call "raid training" boss fights at the end that are pretty fun. Some of these spread over multiple quests and are much more involved than anything solo in the past. I like these. They are like unexpected rewards.
The rest of Pandaria is nice enough. The music is excellent. It's all Eastern and sounds great. The architecture is awesome too. All the buildings are all Chinese-flavored. I mean, I live here in Singapore. There are lots of temples and old Chinese-style buildings. Pandaria's buildings look like them. Really good job nailing the style. The lay of the land isn't as exciting. I haven't found any great zones particularly. There's a cool spot here and there. I think again the first zone was my favorite. It had lots of cool trees...
I played all the dungeons I could so far. They're fun enough. One takes place in a brewery and I thought was really dumb. But they're just dungeons, same as always. More streamlined, but that's this whole expansion. Everything is simpler, streamlined, quicker. Crafting also got a makeover and is super fast. I maxed out mining almost immediately and learned all the blacksmithing recipes I can really quick.
That's about it I think. I've just been playing out of rest experience every day. I suppose I'll hit 90 in another week and see what the new battlegrounds are like. I've had some good open world PvP battles while questing. I can't imagine anymore playing on a PvE or RP server. I'd be bored out of my mind just questing. I like that horde try to kill me because I usually kick the crap out of anyone who touches me at my level. There was one hunter though who I couldn't touch. But my best grudge matches were with another paladin and with a warlock. Both of them we went at it for like an hour, across multiple zones, while doing quests, camping one another, trying to aggro enemies onto one another. In the end the warlock whispered me from an Alliance character, added me as a friend, and said I made his day. We talked for a little bit.
Oh, there's this website called openraid.org that P had been using to do cross-server raids last time he was playing. They're having a fun-run on Monday which we signed up to do. I've never done one before and am excited. Everyone makes a level 1 human on a particular server, and there going to be event organizers there taking names for registration. They'll tell us where we have to run to, and you just have this level 1 human death race to see who can make it to the goal first. I expect to die a lot, but also have this strange notion that I think I can win. New ways to play an old game!
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Dec 2nd, 2012 at 08:08:24 - Nexuiz (PC) |
Hopped in Nexuiz to check it out. I know it's based on an old Quake mod, which means hyperfast space shooter. That part is right on. It seems pretty obviously unfinished though. I don't know why it was released on Steam already and included in this THQ pack I bought. There was one game online with 32/32 people, no idea who, then maybe 6 or 7 with 0/32, and that's all the games. Since no one was playing, which isn't a good sign, I did bot practice.
The bots, on easy, zigzag like maniacs and are hard enough to hit. I got a few frags, and they killed me a few times. The game looks alright. The sky is blindingly bright for some reason. The environmental draw distance is way too near. I had it on medium and it was drawing things real close to me, which always made it look like enemies were moving where there was no one there. Phantoms! The guns were completely stock, nothing special. Yeah, it's just a super basic fast Quake-style multiplayer FPS. The dude who makes it really needs to polish some and add more to it! I only saw that it has deathmatch and capture the flag. I saw only a handful of guns, and the level I was on didn't have much going on.
Also one time my character just started jumping. Just like he'd eaten a pixie stick or something and was hopped up on sugar. Jump jump jump. He wouldn't stop, and I finally had to restart so he'd quit jumping. That was weird.
But the music is really good.
So, deleting! Maybe this'll be more playable in the future, but I'll stick with the whole bunch of better FPSes out there. Speaking of, Unreal Tournament is super cheap on Steam this weekend.
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Dec 1st, 2012 at 04:02:00 - Spore (PC) |
I am so disappointed with Spore. I waited years to play it and it is one of the most dull and boring games I've ever sat through. It's basically trying to be 5 games in 1. I've just made it to the 5th and hope that there is some redeeming thing in the space space. The other 4 stages are:
Cell - This is Feeding Frenzy, Osmos, every game you've ever played where you become the biggest fish in the pond by eating smaller things and avoiding bigger things. It was alright, but I was still interested at this point. Also, it took like 15 minutes only.
Creature - This one was agonizing. I hated it. You've evolved legs, had a nest with a few other creatures like you, and had to go around the map collecting, I don't know, mutations or body parts or something, and either making allies or enemies with the other small groups of creatures. Some are more friendly than others and some are outright hostile. But the way to become more friendly is through a horrible repeat-after-me minigame. You have to mimic the actions (sing, dance, charm, pose) that the other creatures do. So you're just doing 1...3...1...4. or whatever few hotkeys for the actions over and over and over and over and over and over and over. You get more admiration from the creatures if you perform the actions better than them, meaning your sing/dance/etc. skill is a higher level than theirs. It was so bad.
Tribal - This was a stripped down version of any RTS game you've ever played. You get a city hall and 6 units (upgradeable to 12). One is a chieftain, who serves no special purpose, and the others are identical to one another. You can upgrade a couple weapons (torches for destroying buildings faster, scepters for healing allies). And again, you can either be friendly or hostile, and you win when you destroy all enemy city halls or get an allied victory. It was ridiculously basic and took no more than an hour.
Civilization - This one took me just over an hour, but I wasn't paying attention to the screen half the time. You have 3 (wow THREE!!) types of units you can make in this lame attempt at the game Civilization. Your goal is again to either take over all enemy cities or ally with enemies to win. It's so unbelievably basic again. I have no idea what they were thinking.
And then I'm at the Space stage now, where hopefully I get to do some more interesting stuff, but I'm not banking on it. So far I control a space ship and have been doing pointless quests for Ground Control like beaming up some creature on my planet and putting him in my city to be probed.
There are a few neat things. The creature creator is awesome. If you like to build things, you can make some crazy looking ships, buildings, and especially creatures. The infinite content is cool, so your planets will be populated from other players' creations. Maxis themselves have like 1600 creatures in the game already. The game concept is neat, the evolution is neat. You carry over your creature's traits. The more aggressive you are, the more warlike your groups will be in later stages of the game. Or that determines their stats or something. Even though I was completely warlike by the end, after being bored with being a peace-loving herbivore early on, I still won the Civilization stage by allying with my enemies just because I was super rich and paid them.
So yeah. Wow. Just wow.
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