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Nov 4th, 2012 at 03:19:32 - Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War II (PC) |
This one let me down. I really liked Dawn of War and was expecting bigger and better and newer for DoW 2. DoW 2 was different, further distinguishing itself from the Company of Heroes style RTS that DoW 1 was. It was actually some kind of RTS-action RPG hybrid. This was neat most of the time. There is no base-building, no resource gathering, no control point holding, etc. You have 7 squads by the end of the game that function as hero units DotA-style. There's you, the Commander. There's Tarkus, the assault marines ; Cyrus the scout ; [name] the devastator ; [name] the dreadnaught, and whatever others. Each have different specialties. They gain experience and level up. Each has 4 skill tree paths to put points into. You'll never fill them all up and unlock all their abilities, so you plan ahead and specialize how you like. There are loot drops, so each character can be equipped with weapons, armor, and accessories. Customizing characters was probably my favorite part.
So all this is nifty and innovative. But the downside is that the story sucks, the characters are forgettable, the voice actors are boring, the gameplay and missions get repetitive, and it's too short. Basically, all these cool things are in place, but the game itself just isn't that exciting. You get these badass characters with fun abilities to use throughout the campaign, but you don't care about them as characters. Their roles are all that mattered to me. In fact I never used the scout unless I had to. The scout stealths around. But this is Warhammer 40k! There is no subtlety! So I benched him almost as soon as I got him. Characters you don't use must get 1/2 xp at the end of missions or something because he fell far behind. Then of course something happened in the story and I was forced to use him for a couple missions. He spent them more often dead than alive because he was weak.
Also there are several very odd UI choices. You can't just assign hotkeys to groups. They are in an order on the right-hand side of the screen (Commander is 1 ; Cyrus is 2 ; Dreadnaught is 3...or whatever) and you can't change their order except in between missions. Then if you change the hotkeys (ctl+1 ; ctl +2 ; the standard RTS way) their order on the screen doesn't change, so it's really confusing when the top character is 3, the one below him is 1, the one below that is 4...the order is all wrong! And you can't assign all your squads together to one hotkey! Like I wanted so bad to just push 5 and select all my squads at once. But if you try to assign your entire army to 5, it instead wipes all their hotkeys. You should be able to have groups 1, 2, 3, 4, and then 5 selects all. Like in every other RTS. It's stupid to not allow me to do that. So you have to constantly drag the box around the units on the field to select them all.
Also there is no button map to look at. You can't assign hotkeys to anything besides groups, and you can't even look at what the buttons do. In fact there is no help menu or anything within the game. No reference whatsoever. Stoooopid. As soon as I beat the game this afternoon, I fired up the first expansion pack, Chaos Rising, and saw that they added a help feature. So now I will go read and see what all I didn't know in the last game that would have helped!
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Oct 29th, 2012 at 06:25:25 - Grandia III (PS2) |
Had a 3-day holiday weekend and my roommate left for the time, so I figured I'd have a nice gaming marathon. That ended in me not so much playing and beating Grandia 3, but letting it run on auto-pilot while I did most of my readings for the week, and got a lot of other odds and ends done on my computer and around the house. Never played a Grandia game before, but it seemed a pretty standard hi-production value JRPG. Nothing too too special going on, and my life would have been fine had I never played it. But it was fun enough.
The coolest thing about Grandia 3 is the battle system. It's a kind of action/turn-based hybrid where space, timing, and targeting matter. Battles take place on a field. You can't move with the joystick at will, but if you defend you can choose where to run. And your characters do actually run to engage enemies, and enemies run around. There's also knockback and you can launch enemies in the air to chain combo attacks. So, executing an attack isn't automatic. They have to run to the enemy first, which is where the timing and spatial awareness come in to play. On the way to an enemy, or while charging a spell or something, you can be attacked, which will slow you down. There is one basic combo type attack, one critical attack (for knocking enemies in the air to begin an aerial combo and for canceling enemy abilities), then there are special moves (inherent to the characters) and magic (which you equip).
In the upper left hand corner of the screen is what is called (I think) the IP dial, which is divided into 3 parts: wait, command, and action. Every character is represented on the dial. Characters' icons move clockwise around it through the wait section. At the beginning of the command section, you give your command. Enemies will give commands at any point, but no one begins carrying out moves until they pass through the command section to the action section. If you choose a regular combo attack or the enemy chooses a normal attack, you quickly move through the command section to the action section. So you will probably act before a character who gets a magic or special move command. They move through the command section at a slower speed. There's some nice risk and reward at work. This is where interrupting comes in. You can time criticals or special moves to interrupt enemies who have been given a magic command or something and send them back into the wait section. Strategy for fighting really involves staying alert as to what enemies are doing, canceling their moves, and knocking them back to the wait section. Once they reach the act section, they carry out their action, then back to the wait section. It's neat, and battles are very fluid.
So earlier when I set I let the game go on auto-pilot, what I mean is that i took advantage of the friendly AI settings. You can set your party (0-4 characters) to run on a couple different scripts. They will be 'rational' which is trying to choose the best strategies for the situation using all their tools, or they will be 'fair' which is only using regular attacks and criticals (no specials or magic), or they will be 'wild,' which is they will go all out. I quickly realized that the AI battles more efficiently than me and battles take about 1/2 the time it takes me. So by an hour or so into the game, I just let the AI take over all the battles. I'd just navigate the maps and did other things during battles, like read for class or pay my bills or clean my room or whatever. I just listened for the victory music. This worked like a charm for like 95% of the game, even with boss fights, up until near the end when my AI crutch couldn't handle some of the tougher enemies and started making really dumb decisions. So by the end I was monitoring more closely or doing some fighting on my own. But what a way to 'play' a game!
As far as the rest of the game goes, it's really nothing special. It's very pretty, especially the scenery, and some of the big monsters and the Guardians look awesome. The sound is quite good, and the music was excellent, especially the sad passages. There is a particular violin part that kept giving me goosebumps. The voice acting was good enough. Lots of emotion. The game itself followed a decent story, rebirth of an old god, yada yada, and had a really irritating focus on the power of love. Granted it was handled alright, but I was over RPGs being obsessed with love and friendship before I ever played one. The beginning especially was this cheeseball intro about the main character wanting to fly. The more lame bits are spread out and easy enough to look past. It's still an emotional game at times. The part where the son leaves his mom really worked for me because it explored the tension she felt between wanting him to go run off with a girl and wanting him to stay at home with her. The villains were not done very well. I'm not exactly sure why the bad guy was bad. And there are a lot of just unexplained villains who exist for no purpose that I could figure out. There's this mysterious guy throughout the whole story and he does nothing at all, hardly even talks, until he betrays another bad guy and then gets killed by the reborn god. Okay. What was the point of him? Anyway, I could go on about loose ends and things that weren't explained very well.
Finally, the game is completely linear. Like y=ax+b. It's weird playing an RPG with 0 exploration elements or side quests. I literally found nothing off the path to do. And you even have a plane to fly! But there is simply nowhere to go! Really bizarre. With a name like Grandia, I expected it to be, I don't know, more grand. Even if this wasn't the best or most thought-provoking game ever, it was still enjoyable and entertaining, and I got a lot done while playing/monitoring it.
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Oct 23rd, 2012 at 10:58:16 - Saint's Row: The Third (PC) |
Saints Row: The Third is hands-down one of the most entertaining games I've ever played. I will say with certainty that it's the funniest. The Adult Swim endorsements and Tim & Eric promos are an indication to the style of humor. I lost it a handful of times and probably laughed out loud on 20 or 30 occasions. I'll name a few...
-when I rescued a pimp from a BDSM club and he began speaking in autotune.
-the first encounter with Prof Genki's Super Ethical reality Climax. hilarious. Youtube the Tim & Eric promo about this.
-characters singing Sublime's What I Got in the car on the way to a mission
-the camera fading in to the mission where you have to 'conquer your fear.' the fade in shows you in the driver's seat of the car with an angry tiger in the passenger seat.
-running down the street and hearing Time & Eric's song "Sports" blasting from a passing car. I almost fell out of my chair for that one.
-surviving the text adventure in the virtual world and the main character cursing the 'loose flagstones'
-Burt Reynolds
It's like what I wished GTA would be like. Get rid of the serious overtones and just go absurd with it. I spent half the game wearing one of those full-head bondage masks, a bright red bathrobe, and pink bunny slippers. The other half of the game I had on a priest robe and a Team Fortress 2 soldier bobblehead head. But there are hundreds of different pieces of clothing to buy. I was pleased at the end of the game to unlock the toilet as a playable character. I particularly like the way the lid flaps up and down when it runs.
The characters were funny and dialogue was great. The missions were entertaining. The game is action-packed full of explosions and crazy mid-air tank battles and airplane stunts. The side quests are called 'activities,' and they were tons of fun too, and got quite challenging. I busted out laughing at a couple of them, one of which involves you throwing yourself in front of traffic to rack up insurance claims.
The only negative thing about the game is it's obviously a white male project and sexism abounds. It's self-aware and yet not at the same time. The novelty of using a blow-up sex doll and a giant purple dildo to attack enemies wore off after a bit. I understand that Stilwater is a rough and dangerous place, but there is an over-the-top proportion of prostitutes and other scantily clad women. Granted, the main female characters are as self-assured and witty as the guys, but they're still the objects of sexual humor much more often than the men.
I've never played a Saints Row game before. The point is just to earn money and respect (experience) and take over the districts of the city of Stilwater from rival gangs by purchasing buildings and shops and beating up the other gangs. Pretty simple stuff, but tons of things to upgrade, and a lot of fun to do. The game reminded me a lot of Just Cause 2 with the over-the-top action and city control theme. It was a little on the short side. When I saved at the end, it had 12 hours tallied, but I'm pretty sure that's wrong. I was thinking closer to 20. But Steam won't show me the logged time right now, so I dunno. Much longer and I think the shooting and activities would have started getting repetitive. As it is, the game moves right along at a fast pace.
There are two endings, and in a sweet move, once you beat it with one you go back in the world and you can keep exploring and doing activities and do whatever you want. It also makes the final mission available ad infinitum so you can see the other ending without having to replay the whole game. I haven't done it yet but I will next time I play. The final final mission, by the way, is completely random. I wonder if the other ending is the same one. I'm tempted to go for 100% completion, but I'm not sure there's a point. I've done the story and I don't think I'll get any new dialogue or character interactions, which was the best part. So I will be on the lookout for DLC sales and for Saints Row 4 in the future!
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Oct 21st, 2012 at 09:56:30 - Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood (360) |
Completed! This is my favorite of the series so far. Best gameplay by a long shot. Story...good, but not as tight or interesting as AC2, which I will give best story. AC2 has this nice assassination grid where you map out the entire network of bad guys, killing one after another to reach the mysterious centerpiece of it all. This one was more like you know who the bad guy is from the beginning, and you have to liberate parts of the city and build an army to rise up against him. It was cool, but it didn't feel like much was happening or coming together until the very end. Also, this one has more of the weird sci-fi present-day stuff going on which is just confusing. Assassin's Creed doesn't *need* the pretext of sci-fi memory machines ancient races magic relics. It would be fine just starting with, "Hey, you're an assassin in 1500 Rome. Go." In AC2, it switch back and forth between past & present, but in this game the beginning is present, then the *entire* game save the very end is in the past. I completely forgot about the present except for this annoying tooltip that kept popping up saying "You can leave the Animus and explore Monterigioni!" Why would I want to leave the Animus and stop assassinating people? Why would I want to warp out of the cool historical memory land Rome and come back to Desmond in AD 2xxx and run around some building?
The coolest part of the game by far was the Borgia towers/commanders. I went on in depth about this in the previous entry, and it didn't get any less cool every single time. There was a particularly memorable (and hard) one in this tunnel network under some ruins. You have to get past like 20 guards in tunnels *without alerting them* and then chase the commander through the tunnels without the guards blocking you, and kill him before he gets out. I felt like a freakin genius when I finally got him. Then another that stands out is one that you have to kill on horseback because the commander is on his horse giving a pep talk to some training soldiers. I tried to come at it from a couple directions, tried to snipe him, pull him off the horse, but he or the training soldiers kept spotting me and he'd gallop away. Finally I realized I needed a horse because then I could just ride alongside him and do a horse-to-horse assassination. So I admit I was cheap in going about it. I made it to an ideal spot behind a wall on the edge of a cliff and lost my notoriety. Then I just waited there until the guard shift change so the commander spawned right in front of me. Then I killed him.
Another thing I like about AC:B is that it forces you to use more of your arsenal. In AC2 I used like no special weapons, only pokey sticks. In this game, I found the wonders of the crossbow. When enemies got more armored and the first crossbow shot only alerted them instead of killing them, I switched to poison darts, which are hands down my favorite weapon in the game. You shoot an enemy with the poison dart, and he takes about 25 seconds to die. He begins flailing around, swinging his weapon and injuring anyone around, before finally flopping on the ground, spasming a bit, and going rigid. The best thing about darts is they're one-shot kills, and no one sees or hears you do it (if you're hidden of course).
Actually the level I learned to use ranged methods in was the Leonardo wings level. You unlock several Leonardo da Vinci missions where you have to recover his war machines from the Borgia, then destroy them. This one level to steal his flying wings was really challenging for me. It involved climbing around the giant courtyard of a castle, scaling the walls, and making it to the interior rooftops where the wings were. But there were guards all over the walls and they were constantly spotting me. You had to remain undetected in that memory. So I started toying with crossbows and poison darts to great effect, but it still took a ton of desynchronizations to complete. Speaking of Leonardo missions, they were cool in that you get to use the wings, drive a tank, row a boat that shoots cannonballs, and some other cool stuff, but you *never* get to use those items again! The tank is only for that one da Vinci mission. Same for the boat. And as for the wings, he gives you a crummy consolation prize, a parachute.
One combat mechanic the game adds is executions, which are great. If you just mash X a lot, and you can kill that particular enemy with your weapon, you'll eventually execute him, and if you change target during an execution with Left Stick, and mash X immediately after, Ezio will leap to that target and do a one-shot kill. And you can chain these together, which is awesome. The fighting in this game is more basic than previous games, but I like it better because that means it's faster too. I ended up using this giant sword, which worked against all enemies except lance guys and the quick ones who leaped out of the way. Usually I'd just wade in and slice the hell out of everyone. If it was one of the armored lance guys, I'd kick him in the balls (yes, that's a move) to break his defense then slice the hell out of him. Sometimes I'd switch to barehanded and steal his weapon. The quick guys were more annoying. You just have to wait for them to attack and do a counter.
I talked some about how much better the money/treasure system is, and it fleshes out quite well through the game. I actually got 100% completion for rebuilding Rome! I didn't quite finish all the faction missions, but I was close. So when you open treasure chests, you get items too. The items are used either to sell or to complete shop quests. If you complete shop quests, you unlock special items. Same thing with pickpockets and messengers. Every now and then one of these will pop up on your map. The pickpocket will actually run into you and steal money sometimes. You go kill them and you get your money back and an item. It turned out that I didn't really need any of the shop quest rewards, but they would have been handy nonetheless. But it's cool that, compared to the last game, finding treasure chests is actually working toward something. They also tier the treasure maps, and give you maps for Borgia flags and feathers (100% of feathers too! No reward except achievement though sadface). So again, compared to last game, I didn't have like 300 treasure chests staring at me on the map from the very beginning. Getting them in waves was nice.
I also enjoyed the 100% synchronization challenges for every memory. You get 50% synchronization for completing the memory, but 100% for meeting special challenges! A lot of times it was "kill target using [weapon]" which gave me a reason to vary my strategies and try out different ways of assassinating. Others involved completing missions without being detected, which was good practice for stealthing and silent assassinations, or not swimming, or working within a time limit, etc. My favorite one that I remember was when I had to infiltrate this cultish pseudo-orgy party and assassinate a banker. The 100% challenge was "Assassinate the banker from a bench." Whoa. So I spent a while tracking him and learning his movement. I noticed there was a bench he always walked by, except there were patrolling guards right there too. So I had to sneak my way to the bench, sit down and wait on him to walk past me to get him. It was awesome.
In AC:B, you actually build the brotherhood of assassins and eventually become its leader. You basically save people from Borgia attacks and then recruit them to join your cause. These people become your personal guard. They all start at level 1 with basic arms and armor. You can send them off on missions, which range from 1 star to 5 sparkly stars. They always have some % chance to complete the mission, and they get XP for doing it. You can have up to 5 assassins go on each mission, and they share XP accordingly. So you send a level 1 assassin on a 1-star mission, easy. As they level up, they can tackle harder ones. By the 5-star sparkly missions, an "assassin" level assassin (level 10) will have like a 20-25% chance to complete the mission, so they go out in teams of 4-5 to get a 100% chance. I guess they die if you're unlucky. I did send some out early on with like 80-something% chances to complete missions, but as they got leveled up, I realized I didn't want to find out if they'd die permanently, so I started only sending them at 100%. Anyway, so they go level up and whatnot. You can call them in battle and they come and assassinate guards for you and fight by your side a while. Very handy. They also bring back money and items for you. Also very handy.
So overall, there were more things to do, more things to collect, and more challenges in AC:B. They were more worthwhile, integrated, and interesting than previous games, so they didn't feel as grindy, which was a big complaint of mine from AC2.
After I beat the game, I finally checked out the online modes that I'd been dying to try since the game came out. I really like the basic free-for-all so far. It's very Assassin's Creed! I have this game called The Ship, which apparently no one else bought, where you are on a ship and you have to kill or be killed. You play online with other players (I think I played against a couple people one time, but like I said, I don't think anyone ever bought it and I usually couldn't find a match). It works like this: You get a target and you in turn are targeted by someone else. You have to find and kill your target before your hunter gets you. The Ship was fascinating because your character had to eat, sleep and pee! So your pee meter or whatever would fill up and then you'd *have* to go find a restroom to use. This made you vulnerable. I always liked walking in on people peeing and shooting them. Anyway, AC:B's multiplayer is similar, minus the bodily functions. There were 6-8 players in the matches. You get a target and have to try and find him/her. At the same time, you're marked by someone else and they're looking for you. This is complicated by the stealth mechanics. You can blend in with crowds, hide in haystacks, sit on benches, the usual. You can, on the other hand, sprint like a madman, climb and run across rooftops, and so on. It's tricky because you need to be inconspicuous both so your target doesn't see you coming *and* so you don't give your own position away to the assassin hunting you. It's brilliant. The radar is modified so that you get information about the direction and distance (but no exact location!) of your prey. I don't fully understand it yet, nor the point system. You get points for 'style' and amount of kills, as well as for evading assassins. I played a few matches and it was hectic and exciting. I will leave the log open because I plan on delving into multiplayer some more. I always wanted people to play The Ship with! I'll trade my bathroom breaks for a hidden blade.
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