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Apr 13th, 2011 at 08:05:00 - World of Warcraft: Cataclysm (PC) |
Just a bit of fun writing and an update about WoW...
Coming out of my anti-WoW funk of the last couple months, I've picked up raiding again with GW and am trying to get back into simple weekly arena matches for points with P and some other guildies. Our fury/disc combo is proving quite the beast. We stayed up until 3am before reset the other night getting our 5 wins. We went 4-0, then got this shaman/dk team that beat us twice in a row. Then our 5th win took 42 minutes. 42 minutes! It was against either ret/prot pally or warrior/prot pally. I can't remember because I killed the dps half in about 30 seconds. Then this prot paladin ran the two of us around for the other 41.5 minutes of the match until, thank god, we finally killed him. When the score screen came up, he and I had done some ludicrous amount of damage and P had done mega-healing. 42 minutes! I think my previous record was half that. I was going to be so pissed if we lost. I'm glad we stuck it out, and P made the nice call to stay on the bottom of Blade's Edge. Every time we went up onto the bridge, the paladin just beat on P. When we'd get him down below, P had more space to run, I had more space to stun, intercept, intervene, etc. The downside is the paladin had a bunch of pillars to LoS behind. He kept bubbling to bandage for some reason, instead of bubbling to heal. Anyway, it was insane. I'm glad for this 4.1 prot/ret word of glory nerf so that this prot paladin can no longer run around self-healing for 20k all the time.
So, arena is still fun. TB is still old and pretty boring, and I just do it occasionally for the best honor return, and have gotten back into doing BH, in which Fal won PvP gloves last week, my first BH drop in Cata. I haven't touched BGs in a while, and still haven't gotten around to doing a rated BG, although Nacht's resilience is good enough for the minimum requirement of the pugs I sometimes see, about 3k.
I have been intermittently leveling the hunter with Z, and we did some major BGing last time, which was fun! It's crazy leveling up new characters since with heirlooms and guild perks, I go 45% faster than normal. 45%! I do like 1/6 the quests in a zone, a couple BGs, a dungeon, and I'm leveled out into the next zone. I still haven't checked out the goblin or worgen yet, and I still haven't played through the new gnome and troll starting zones. I don't imagine it'll be too crazy new and exciting, but I almost feel obligated to experience it just because...it's an odd feeling. That, and I now have a character of every class over level 30, so I'm not going to seriously level any of the new races. I'd consider race changing if I had multiples at 85, but am not planning on leveling any more to 85 except this current hunter, which is a long-term project, and maybe a druid. Even then, I don't plan on playing the hunter once I hit 85. It's just a fun-to-level-with-a-friend character. Maybe when we hit 80, I'll switch to a druid and go 80-85 with a druid instead. Long-term plans!
Raiding, the good stuff. In my time off, the guild recruited a handful of new people, including several tank/healers and a couple dps, mostly to replace our two (main) tanks that gquit in the last couple months. Today we ran with two new paladin tanks. One of them seems more experienced than the other, but the less experienced one is eager to learn and seems nicer to raid with. Neither of them heal, which is good for me since my spot isn't compromised. We do have a new druid healer, who is pretty good and who I like. When I was just coming back 1-2 weeks ago, we would have 4-5 healers on. I have thus far avoiding having to dps too since I never even had a ret spec and just had unenchanted gear, some of which was pvp (is pvp!). I don't mind dpsing, but I haven't dpsed in cata yet. I've been holy about since the day I hit 85 except for some early PvP, so I'm not real confident about it and would only like to try on early bosses. So one of our two druid healers ends up dpsing since they each have decent dps sets. And it's good too since one is boomkin and the other kitty, so we have ranged and melee on call. I did enchant all my ret stuff today though, as well as create a ret spec, which I promptly changed back to pvp holy (but I know what one looks like now!) so that if I must play ret, I can wing it.
Healing is going phenomenally. I love holy paladins in cata. I am the same holy paladin with a couple extra aoe spells and a new instant spell. No longer am I 'the tank heals' keeping up two tanks with beacon, but I am more versatile. Healing assignments are less important in cata than wrath. Everyone just kind of heals whoever. That, and our three healers have been healing together for over a year, so we've become quite the unit. The raid bosses themselves are a lot of fun, with a lot of hectic moments and last-second kills. There's a lot to coordinate too. We were in a slump for some time, but last week we got two new bosses down. We're now 8/12, and even though we could be doing better, we are proud of ourselves. Last week we downed Chimeron and Conclave of Wind for the first times (1-shot Conclave!). The Chimeron kill was preceded one week earlier by a 1.5-hour-long wipefest wherein us healers were trying to learn the fight. Chimeron is totally a healer fight. You've got to keep everyone above 10k hp at all times because he spits slime on the raid that reduces hp to 1. If you're over 10k, the slime can't bring you below 1 due to this little robot running around the room that gives you a buff. If you get hit with the slime below 10k hp, then you die. Healing anyone after they're already over 10k is a massive waste of mana, except the off-tank, who takes the double attacks. So, it took us all a while to get the hang of how to coordinate our healing for the fight, but once we got it, we got it. When he gets to 20 or 25% hp, he enrages and enters a long survival/kite phase. You can't really kite him because he's fast, but everyone needs to pop survival cds and dps him down before he kills you one by one. In our kill, he was at about 400,000 with our two rogues left. They dpsd him down to about 150k when rogue A got hit twice and killed. We're all yelling in vent, cheering and going 'evasion! pop evasion! rogue tank!' The rogue gets Chimeron down to about 30k and gets hit down to 1hp! We're freaking out in Vent. The rogue's poisons are ticking away and he's still attacking. Rogue B pulled off a photo finish and took Chimeron to 0. It was incredible and I wish the whole thing had been recorded. I might have the Vent, but not the Fraps. We had a similar thing with Conclave, where we beat the encounter with 2 seconds left.
Monday we had an extra optional raid night to learn Nefarian, which started going pretty well after half an hour, at which point my internet failed us and we had to call raid because I couldn't stay online. I felt terrible and was pretty irritated because I wanted us all to learn the fight, and it was wholly my internet's fault that we had to stop. We'll get back in there though. I had the special job in phase one of healing with RF up to aggro the adds. We got the CC down. Priests were fearing them, mages frost novaing them in place. It was pretty nice by the time I started dcing. We had issues with one of those new tanks learning to turn onyxia, but he was getting it by the end. We pulled in the other new tank and he did it better from the start. I think we'll be able to kill him this week. Today we went into BoT and did Halfus (3rd or so attempt), Valiona & Theralion (1-shot, barely), and then did Conclave (45 minutes' worth, the first attempt of which we probably had them but I accidentally jumped off the ledge and caused a wipe). Tomorrow we go clear BWD, hopefully up to and including Nefarian. Friday we learn and kill Ascendant Council and work on Al'Akir. So, best case scenario probably involves a Nefarian and Ascendant Council kill this week. Worst case scenario is endless wiping on early bosses and never even seeing new ones (yuck). Assuming good attendance from good regulars, I'm leaning toward the scenario A. I think our number 1 problem is attendance. We're a casual guild, but we're a bunch of better-than-casual players, i.e., most of us were hardcore raiders at some point. So we all know we can do better, and we all want to, but we all have fun first hanging out, which is what I love about these people. So we don't mandate that people be on all the time, but that is something that definitely affects raid performance and progression. I'm trying to make it a point to be on our 3 days a week from now on whenever I can because I really want to see us succeed. Since I can pretty much work whenever I want, I feel this is a good opportunity to commit to something feasible and beneficial for me personally and for all of us as a group. I am excited for us. Here's to 10/12 this week!
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Apr 4th, 2011 at 11:13:07 - Just Cause 2 (PC) |
Last entry for a while since I'm getting back to work and found a game that will take a long, long time. So many little short ones in a row the last week or so. I never played the first Just Cause. It didn't appeal to me enough when it came out. Just Cause 2 didn't either, until it went on sale on Steam and I started reading reviews. What I remember reading is that the territory is massive, there are over-the-top explosions a-plenty, it doesn't take itself too seriously, you can fly, drive, parachute, base jump your way all over the fictional country, and there is a multi-purpose grappling gun for your creativity to put to work. All points true. JC2 is funnnnnn. The first time I played a few days ago, I spent like 2 or 3 hours just on the first mission, which was to ride shotgun escorting an NPC. It was a great introduction to the mechanics of crawling around a vehicle, jumping between and on top of vehicles, hijacking vehicles, blowing them up, and using the grappling hook. More on that later. But I died who-knows-how-many times, probably 20 or 30. I didn't care though. Funnnn.
My favorite thing? Explosions. The game looks incredible. Explosions are massive, ground-shaking balls of fire and steel. I played about 4 hours tonight, and spent at least half that time running wild through a port town, and my favorite part of the night was when I realized I could plant multiple remote detonation charges at once, and detonate them at the same time. I brought down 4 giant smoke stacks at once, and then two enormous cranes at once. So much destruction! I like running away, and detonating the charges as I look back over my shoulder. It's very action-movie-like. As are the speed challenges, solo races against the clock in either a plane or a car so far (helicopter and boat later too I bet). The game really is just a giant playground.
Why was I destroying smoke stacks? Well, first of all, the fictional Southeast Asian country of Panau is huge by video game world standards. There's been a political assassination and change of power. The old dictator was killed by his son, who now rules the island nation. Scattered around the map (hundreds of them, literally) are civilian towns, cities, and various military bases and communications arrays. You (Rico) are sent into the country to topple the new dictator. One way of doing that is to destroy infrastructure, which means blowing shit up. When you blow shit up, you get 'chaos' points. Earn chaos points to unlock story missions, faction missions (3 non-government factions are vying for territory and a bid at power), stronghold missions (which actually expand whatever faction's territory), and items from the black market (you can have weapons and vehicles airdropped to you for cash, and can insta-travel to anywhere you've previously been using the black market contact). You'll also get chaos points for completing missions and completing locations. Each point of interest in the country can be 'completed,' which means you've blown up all the government stuff (propaganda wagons, dictator statues, building equipment, weaponry, fuel tanks, power generators, gas stations, etc.) and found all the upgrades (weapon and armor upgrades to upgrade weapons and health).
All the locations I'd previously discovered were tiny compared to this port city. Each thing I found or blew up gave me 1-2% of the total. Huuuuge city! I'm stuck at 93%, but am pretty amazed I got that far. I don't go too far out of my way to explore all the towns and other locations, usually just ones that are on the way to a mission, but I couldn't resist this one once I saw how big it was. And yes, I spent somewhere between 2-3 hours blowing shit up, finding upgrades, assassinating generals, doing race missions, and running from government military. It was awesome.
JC2 is like GTA and all those in that causing mayhem doesn't go unnoticed. Since this is a military dictatorship, there are soldiers everywhere. They don't mess with you until you destroy something, start running over civilians, drive like a maniac, steal one of their vehicles, go into forbidden territory, the usual stuff. It's called 'heat' and works just like in GTA games I've played. More destruction = more heat = more/tougher military. I can get to level 3 right now, and they send out a chopper, which is easy enough to hide from given the verticality of the game. Evade for long enough, and your pursuers think they lost you and then you're free to roam again. Sometimes though the enemies are annoying and, even though I know they can't see me (like when I'm up inside a building), they'll start to lose interest and then one of them will yell like he sees me, and I'll get heat all over again. The solution is to move somewhere else, but really they shouldn't see me sometimes and they do. Nothing else in the game is unfair or stupid so far, which is good.
Getting around is fast and fun. I mentioned the grappling hook. Imagine how Spiderman leaps from building to building. It's just like that. You can grapple to about any surface anytime and zip to it. You've also got an instantly and repeatably deployable parachute. I figured this trick out today, if you grapple the ground ahead of you, deploy the chute, and then grapple the ground again, you'll swing past that grapple point on your chute, and repeat, for really fast travel. You can do this around city buildings and anywhere else too. I've gotten alright at doing it, and it's really fun. Grappling up buildings can be a pain when there are ledges. It can be hard to get over them. It can also be annoying trying to grapple around because things get in your way, like ledges and poles. Sometimes too the targeting can be difficult if there are multiple things and spots to grapple right next to each other. Just got to learn to be more precise.
Grappling isn't just for moving though! Grappling is for causing destruction. You can grapple enemies and yank them toward you. Grapple --> yank --> shoot is a good combination. So is grapple --> over the edge of a building. You can also grapple two things to one another, and this is where it gets really fun. So far I've come up with some neat ones.
Grapple:
-an enemy to a ceiling to string them up like a pinata.
-an exploding barrel above an enemy to the enemy so the barrel falls and explodes on their head.
-an chemical tank to an enemy, shoot the tank, watch it rocket away, dragging the enemy through the air with it before it explodes.
-an enemy to a moving vehicle.
-a moving vehicle to a moving vehicle, then blow out the tires of one, watch it veer and wreck, yanking the second one with it to a fiery death.
-a vehicle to a statue to pull it down!
-an enemy to an enemy, tossing them at one another.
-an enemy to a wall over a ledge and watch them fly through the air to smack into the side of another building.
-an enemy to a plane/helicopter
The list goes on. It is ridiculous how much fun it is to play around with. I want to try grappling like a car to a plane, or a person to a boat.
Panau is an interesting place for me, since it's in Southeast Asia and I'm in Southeast Asia. I never would have known it a couple years ago, but I can pick out basically where this is supposed to be based on the language(s) and the voice acting. There is a lot of Malay in the game, and some of the writing looks Thai. The voice acting sounds a mix of Minglish, Singlish, Indonesian/Indian/Chinese English. It's pretty cool, if a bit exaggerated. It sounds kinda like they got some real talent from here and then some non-locals trying to do some. So I'd say that Panau is most closely Malaysia or Indonesia. Really neat to see aspects of this part of the world more accurately represented than not, and featured in a highly successful game.
JC2 reminds me of GTA. That's my only real point of comparison, and I know it's quite different too. I have GTA 4, but I kind of don't think it could be better than this. It doesn't have a grappling gun. It also reminds me of what Far Cry 2 was supposed to be like, but I couldn't play FC2 because I couldn't fix the mouse lag and it was making me feel ill. Games seem to be getting massive though. FC2 was huge. GTA is always huge. The new Batman game, Arkham City is supposed to be something like this. I recently read the devs said there will be 5 times more space than Arkham Asylum. Wow. AA wasn't huge by any means, but 5 times what it was will be large. And then JC2, massive. And I'm sure there are plenty more I've never played with giant worlds to explore. Oblivion. Next Elder Scrolls game. Not to mention any MMO out there.
No more entries for a while. They flooded in this week. Will likely be playing this a long time to come. Good times.
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Apr 4th, 2011 at 02:15:46 - Plants vs. Zombies (PC) |
I've only been hearing about PvZ for like 2 years, and I finally gave it a try. It's fun. Way more fun than I expected. And way more in-depth than I expected. When I hear PopCap, I just think, "Oh, waste of time little puzzle games like Bejeweled and Peggle," I guess because eeeveryone plays them and I get tired of them real fast. So when I played PvZ, and then couldn't wait to open it again to defend my home from zombies using pea shooters, magic mushrooms, and sunflowers, well, I decided I will no longer dismiss PopCap games. I've played through the campaign, which is around 60 levels (1-1, 1-2...5-10). The difficulty is nice. I didn't encounter any problems until after halfway through, then every now and then a level would kill me a few times, usually after introducing a new zombie type that I didn't know how to effectively deal with.
PvZ does validate my idea of PopCap in that it never ever ends. I finished the campaign, so I've got all the plants and seen all the zombies, but now I can do it again and Crazy Dave will select 3/x cards for me, and I have access to everything, like a new game plus. There is also a survival mode (10), a puzzle mode (18), and a slew of mini-games (20). There is also a small list of achievements (21), which hint at even more modes and unlockables. There is the Zen Garden, where you can grow plants, water them, fertilize them, serenade them, so that they grow and yield cash. Use the cash in Crazy Dave's shop to purchase upgrades, new units, new stuff for the Zen Garden, and on and on. It's at 4 pages of items now, and the costs are soaring, $30,000 for the top items currently (the most I've ever had at once is like $8,000). So it seems like I should replay the campaign, focusing on accumulating money to fund my Zen Garden and upgrades, which will yield more powerful units and more money, and thus more upgrades, and thus more money, and...
PvZ is a funny game. I like its humor. Each plant and each zombie has a little bio (for some reason I never encountered zombie #20 out of 26). A couple of my favorites:
Marigold, a flower that spits out silver and gold coins, "Marigold spends a lot of time deciding whether to spit out a silver coin or a gold one. She thinks about it, weighs the angles. She does solid research and keeps up with current publications. That's how winners stay ahead."
Dolphin Rider Zombie, "The dolphin is also a zombie."
Newspaper Zombie, "Newspaper Zombie was *this* close to finishing his sudoku puzzle. No wonder he's freaking out." (When you destroy his newspaper, he enrages.)
Torchwood, "Everybody likes and respects Torchwood. They like him for his integrity, for his steadfast friendship, for his ability to greatly maximize pea damage. But Torchwood has a secret: he can't read."
I was doing level after level because each one, and this is brilliant, almost EACH little level, introduces a new plant, and about half introduce new zombies. I wanted to complete the levels to read the descriptions, seriously. Humor goes a long way in maintaining my interest.
With so many plant/zombie/environmental combinations (it's either front yard/backyard with pool/roof and either day/night), PvZ is allows for a lot of planning and real-time execution. You have an inventory of 6 (upgradable) plants per level that you select from your entire stock after getting a good look at the zombies waiting off-screen. Whatever types of zombies you see will appear in the level. The levels themselves are grids, and you plant one plant per square. Zombies attack in horizontal lanes, so once you see a type of zombie appear, you can react if need be. Otherwise, plan ahead and be proactive! Basic zombies go down fast, but they become very differentiated, and they all have some plant that can counter their unique abilities. The Magnet Shroom for example attracts any metal object the zombies have, thus countering the football helmet zombie, the bucket head zombie, the pogo stick zombie, and more.
I'm very glad I decided to try this out. It's quite a lot of fun, and looks like it will be for a long time. I'm done with the basic campaign, so don't feel the need to play a lot, but will probably stay familiar and do other modes every now and again.
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Apr 2nd, 2011 at 02:15:58 - Dead Space (PC) |
Almost done with Dead Space, and I don't want it to be over! Such an awesome game. Funny how I have such polar thoughts about two games in the same day. I don't know how many points of comparison there are between Dead Space and Machinarium, but I prefer Dead Space 100%. Just a couple things before I take a short break.
Ammo drops only for the weapons you have equipped. You can load out 4 weapons (out of 8 I think). This means you can use whichever 4 weapons you like best, and you won't ever get ammo for that crappy weapon you hate. I've been using (and upgrading) my standard pulse rifle and plasma cutter. Then I've been toting around the contact beam and the force gun. The contact beam is fantastic for knocking enemies back and for killing little groups of parasites and headcrab things. The force gun fires a crazy strong blast. I use the ripper for fun sometimes because bonesawing enemies to death is enjoyable.
In chapter 9, I found a Zero-G Basketball game. It was an interesting diversion where you use anti-grav boots and the gravity gun thingy to jump from little free-throw area to little free-throw area and shoot basketballs into some hoops far away. I beat all 6 levels and got a bunch of items. Items and ammo, by the way, increase in number big time as the game goes on. Makes sense since my suit can hold like twice as much as it used to be able to.
Enemies have gotten harder. There are darker versions of some of the same ones that take about twice as many bullets. The craziest ones so far are these hyper-speed enemies. Slowing them down with stasis helps. There is this persistent boss-type monster that regenerates such that you cannot kill him. He's been terrorizing me here and there for like 5 levels and I finally got the chance to kill him! There's a part where you have to get the shuttle engines online, and you can test the engines. Well, dismember his legs behind the shuttle and sprint to the controls to test fire the engines. Toasted monster. I'm sure I had a huge grin on my face as he writhed in flame.
The story is cool. The religious aspect is fleshed out. There is a cult, which according to some in-game reading is an accepted Earth religion, called the Church of Unitology. They remind me of your typical cult wherein aliens will come, but you have to drink the kool-aid before you can see heaven. There's an insane scientist in charge who is one of the only ones left alive on the ship. He's killed a handful of people that I've watched, and has just given himself up to ascendancy byyyy...letting the monster-type that converts corpses to monsters do that to him. His live feed went off when that happened, and I'm sure he turned into some mega-boss that I get to fight later.
There's another scientist on board, and we lack mutual trust, but he says we have to return the Marker (the alien artifact that started the mess) to the planet, that the Marker was sealing this hive mind of the Necromorphs (the alien monsters) inside that planet. So I'm helping him do that. My female teammate doesn't trust him either, and I'm not really sure what she's up to now. My male teammate died a horrible death in front of me at the hands of one of the giant gorilla things.
Break time, then finish..
HOLY TWIST in chapter 11...I did not see that coming. And now Isaac's...girlfriend? is back again. I'd been having visions of her, her pleading with me through TV screens to 'make us whole again,' and I'm still pretty sure she's not real. All the crew started hallucinating and seeing people, although my female teammate was too, but she...well. The doctor trying to send the Marker back to the planet knew who I was. I think something strange is going on, like I was on this colony or on this ship sometime before the events of the game. I've got some history here. Well, following my (imaginary) girlfriend's instructions now. To the grand finale!
So wonderfully gory. I thought I saw an item in the distance in a zero-g area, so I force pulled it to me, and it was just a severed head. Shudder.
Final boss silhouetted against a giant asteroid and a burning yellow sun is magnificent to see. Way too easy of a fight though. After the fight, there is one more thing, and I may have had a minor heart attack.
Final words: This is one of the most intense 11.5 hours of gaming I've ever experienced. I loved every minute. Highly, highly recommend.
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