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Jan 25th, 2011 at 00:02:49 - Neverwinter Nights 2: Mask of the Betrayer (PC) |
I am *almost* finished with Mask of the Betrayer, as in, I'm stuck on the typical NWN extremely difficult final boss. I never have much trouble in NWN games except for the last bosses because there's always some trick to it that I don't figure out until later or I have to look it up. This fight is a battle against the hunger in my soul threatening to devour me from within. Seems important to win. I assume I had to use my Devour Spirit ability or some such to bind it (I'm not supposed to actually kill it; just bind it), but it's not working. If you keep doing damage, he just keeps healing once he reaches Near Death status. I'll give it a few more tries and think about it today before I give up and look up the answer.
The path to this fight has been a dark one, all about vengeful death gods and a crusade into the City of Judgment (current reigning death god's home) to tear down the Wall of the Faithless (where souls of people who had no faith in any god suffer in eternity along a wall, compressed with others of the faithless, losing their selfhood as they meld into the writhing mass of the wall). I love the story of this expansion. It follows the story of the main campaign. Your hero character wakes up, and it so happens that after the final events of the NWN2 campaign, your unconscious body has been tampered with and moved by someone (but who?! and why?!), and your body is now inhabited by this mysterious hunger. And that's the story. What's the hunger? How did it come to be within you? (How) can you control it without it killing you? How can you put an end to it? Really, the story is excellent, very original and creative and surprising, and presented throughout the game as well as such skilled game designers and storytellers can present one.
My favorite quest (and there were many great ones) was in the Academy of Binders and Shapers, the Red Wizards of Thay school, where the party goes to find the Founder of the school and hunt your "brother" down. I've forgotten exactly why I had to do this, something about freeing spirits, but anyway, I had to free this man's spirit from some realm or another. Unfortunately for him, he'd signed a contract with a devil. He didn't know he signed his soul away, didn't read all the fine print in the contract. What ensues is like a 20-minute long detective session where you go back and forth between the man and the devil and try to figure out how to save the man's soul so you can free it and the devil doesn't take it as per the contract. The devil's society's form of contract law is explained, as well as their love of rules and bindings, how they cannot break terms of a contract, how they get around terms anyway, and so on. It was really fascinating reading. You also hear the whole of this man's story as he tells it, how he came to sign the contract, how he fulfilled terms and conditions and was rewarded, what happened to him after, how he died, and so on. I ended up figuring out that the devil in fact breached the contract by forcing the man to fulfill one of its terms and nailed him for it, and he had to let the man go, much to his displeasure. I had so much fun with that quest!
The companion characters are not as interesting as in the NWN2 main campaign. Well, they're interesting, but lack some of the eccentric personalities present previously. The exception, and my favorite character by far (though the first to sit on the bench because he was the least useful for me) was Gann, a quick-witted and vain hagspawn who can walk in people's dreams. He made me laugh quite often, and I gained a lot of influence with him by bantering back and forth and poking fun at other characters with him. He was also handy for a number of quests where you went into dreams. Otherwise, he wasn't too useful as the new spirit shaman class. The cleric was quite boring and I used her just because she was the best healer; the wizard was interesting and prominent from a story perspective, but had a dull personality; and Okku, the Bear God, aside from being the coolest looking of the bunch (imagine a rainbow-colored bear with bright, round, staring eyes) also wasn't that exciting to talk to. I kept Okku and the wizard in my party at all times because they wreaked havoc and because Okku had double the HP of anyone else. Mask of the Betrayer added a formal Influence system to party interaction that was pretty cool. If you say and do things they like (verbal sparring with Gann, suppressing your hunger with Okku), you gain influence. Do things they dislike (mostly insulting them or their mothers), and you lose influence. Gain enough influence and new conversation trees open with them, ultimately, at the highest level of influence, granting you special bonuses due to your companions' loyalty. There was a similar system in NWN2 but not so formal. And, I might add, it's really cool at the end of the game to see the spirits of all the characters from NWN2, and throughout the game finding out from various sources what became of them after the final battle of NWN2.
My character had some glaring flaws too, unfortunately. I played the original campaign with a warlock, and found it quite fun, if having limited spells. That campaign took me to level 18. I decided to go on with another warlock for a couple reasons. (1) This campaign started at level 18, so I could just continue or reroll a fresh level 18 (which I did) for a sense of continuity with essentially the same character; (2) To see what destructive power a warlock unlocks at the higher levels. How disappointed was I to discover that warlocks never learn any new spells after spell level 4, right around level 18! I spent this entire game not learning a single new spell with my character! If I felt that warlocks were limited in spells before level 18, well they don't get any more, ever! Once you hit Epic Character status at level 20, your Eldritch Blast (main attack) increases 1d6 fairly often, and that's it. So you do get much stronger attacks, but I used the exact same attacks for however many hours I played this. Now, to praise NWN2, I did have direct control over my other party members, which is one reason I like to use a warlock. Warlocks don't require any micro-managing (just spam eldritch blasts), which gives me the opportunity to micro-manage the other characters, of which I do love to sling spells with the wizard. If I couldn't play with the other characters, a warlock in and of itself would be boring as hell, but thankfully it actually made it so I effectively had four characters and had the time to play with them all. I was originally going to specialize into the Hellfire Warlock presige class, but I think its abilities are stupid. Hellfire warlocks output more damage at the cost of constitution. Mmmm, I'd rather not lose health for dealing damage since I do plenty anyway. I reverted my save game and went on my way.
The other bad thing about choosing a warlock (initially) or any caster is that I have a low strength score, meaning I can't carry anything. I love playing casters, but I hate not being able to carry things. Oh if I could have my cake and eat it too. I also love playing thieves, who usually can't carry a lot either. Steal but can't carry! Anyway, I bought a Bag of Holding -80% weight reduction real fast, which fixed the problem for a while, and then as that was losing effectiveness, I got Okku, who by the end of the game has like 45 strength and can carry something stupid like 10000 pounds. Permanent solution for sure!
Mask of the Betrayer supposedly had some upgraded and important crafting system, but I never used it. I never craft anything in NWN games. I thought about why, and it's because, first, I don't know how, and second, I don't really care. I seem to find good items everywhere that get the job done. It's the same with a lot of DnD skills in the cRPG games really, like setting traps, searching, hiding, stealthing, and so on that I just find useless. I'll walk through traps and live, thank you, without trying to stealth mode around and detect them. I find a lot of spells are just pointless too. Just walk in and blast the hell out of everything, works fine. On some level, I feel like I'm missing out on some of the intricacies of DnD games by ignoring so many feats, skills and spells. On the other hand, I guess you could say I choose characters who don't need all that, and I'm still playing the game one of the myriad ways to play it. For example, I didn't pick a single lock or disarm a single trap this whole game. I bashed things and ran through all the traps, and did fine. I actually found out most of the way through that my wizard can summon a familiar who can pick locks and disarm traps. Well, I technically I knew that from the beginning of the game, but I just forgot until something reminded me. I never had her using her familiar the entire game until then! I did feel stupid for forgetting about her familiar.
The only real criticism I can level at the game is the Spirit Meter/Energy/Thing. It is a poorly implemented mechanic and is not fun in the least. Here's how it works: You have this hungry devouring thing inside you, called the spirit-eater. You have to eat spirits to satiate it or else it consumes you. At least, this is what the game tells you. There are two meters. One is Spirit Energy, from 0 to 100. The lower it gets, the worse off you are, taking periodic damage and other penalties, until you die at 0. It decreases over time. To fill the Spirit Energy bar, you can either consume souls or Suppress your hunger. The other meter is the -- I don't know what it's technically called -- say, Transformation Meter. On one end, you are human, and on the other end, you are the hunger. The closer it gets to hunger, the faster your Spirit Energy periodically drains, from 1 at a time to like 6 or 8. SO if you consume spirits to fill your Spirit Energy, then your Transformation meter moves toward the hunger, because you gave into it and devoured a spirit. If you Suppress your hunger, the Spirit Energy goes up and you move toward human. However, you can only Suppress once per day, and after you Suppress, you can't devour souls that day. If you want to Suppress again, you need to rest. If you rest, that's 8 hours of time, which means your Spirit Energy drops by 8 hours worth, which, unless you are like exclusively human on the Transformation meter (which has about 20 ticks, meaning you've really got to be at 0 or 1 tick), is a long time and is going to further drain your Spirit Energy way past what your Suppress did to help. Also, since you take periodic HP damage the lower the Spirit Energy is, this means that at some point you can't even rest because you'll die. If you can't rest, how can you Suppress? And eating spirits to fill it just makes it drop faster! This sounds complicated. You find yourself going very quickly down a slippery slope where your consumption gets out of control and you end up having to use this terrible ability that penalizes you 25% of a level but fills up your Spirit Energy. SO, how to deal with this? Well, supposedly you're supposed to manage it by eating spirits, resting, and suppressing, says the game. Says I, you just choose two adjacent locations on the world map. Every time you fast travel, it counts as resting. Fast travel, Suppress, fast travel, Suppress, fast travel, Suppress x 20 or 30. It will take 30 minutes, but you can get your Transformation bar all the way to human and fill your Spirit Energy. It's super tedious, but it's the easiest way to not have to deal with the stupid devouring souls/spirit energy/transformation bar mechanic. Spending 30 minutes a couple times over the course of the whole game is way worth avoiding the excruciating pain of managing that meter that I tried to do early on.
And there is NWN2: Mask of the Betrayer. I'll hopefully finish it later today or tomorrow on my own, but may seek a guide for that final battle. And here's to hoping for a satisfying conclusion!
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Jan 13th, 2011 at 23:31:11 - Call of Duty: Black Ops (360) |
Black Ops is down. What did I think of this best-seller? Yeah, it was fun. It's even more stupidly action-packed than the previous one I played, which was Modern Warfare. The story is way more convoluted, involving brainwashing, flashbacks, multiple playable characters, tons of other story characters, 'Nam, historical fiction, and...zombies? I literally had no idea what was going on except for the biggest picture idea. The story seemed very pointless, as in, I'm sure it would make a good book, but since most of the story is explained in these fuzzy Saw, Clockwork Orange, Manhunt 2-esque cut scenes that mostly involve a lot of yelling and cursing, I was having a hard time paying attention and following it. The rest of the story unfolds during gameplay moments, and I preferred these because they fit nicely within the action context. I would have enjoyed a simpler story that didn't have to try and be so deep and twisting. The simpler story would allow the game to focus on what it's best at: action. The story as it is made the action infinitely more confusing, although still entertaining in and of itself.
Overall though, I enjoyed the single player campaign more than CoD 4. I have a feeling it's because of the way objectives were handled this time, and just the faster pacing of the levels. In each level, there are a lot of objectives, and constant waypoints, so you are constantly moving toward a small goal. It kept me very focused on what I was doing and how I was moving forward. I seemed to complete an objective every 5 minutes, and it felt like a big victory because this game I found to be more difficult than CoD 4. I died a lot, had to replay a lot, and despite the numerous objectives, had to do a good amount of trial and error in learning how to take down enemy helicopters (my biggest cause of death), learning how to push back enemy troops with barrels of napalm (the one I retried the most), and so on. I liked the difficulty. There are too many stupidly easy games out there. So, the objectives, and the NPCs that always accompany you, make each level and each moment very dynamic. I never really knew what was going to happen next and always felt right in the thick of things. That's another way this differed from CoD 4. In 4, you were always just with your squad, one squad or another. In Black Ops, your allies are way more varied. Sometimes it's you and one other person. Other times it's you and like an entire army. The flow of the levels and the presence of all the other characters just makes everything feel so right.
Black Ops had one stand-out level. That was when you, as one character, give RTS-like orders (move, attack, stand ground, etc.) to a squad on the ground from inside a helicopter. From time to time, for important acts, you take the role of one of the ground units that you were controlling, and you go clear out the barracks or whatever. Then the role shifts back to the sky, and you order the ground units around some more. I thought that was a very cool way to play a level, but the part was actually really short. Other than that, I didn't feel there were too many 'wow' moments where the game was doing something I hadn't seen before.
CoD, of course, is really a multiplayer game, and I've been having some fun there with James. We've been playing on Xbox Live every night, getting our asses kicked all over the internet. Alex leveled up James' profile since Christmas to level like 30 (out of 50), so the game thinks we're waaaay better than we actually are. Thus, we consistently bring our team down and are directly responsible for bad losses. It's pretty funny when we get matched as the 'high' ranked players on our team. It'll be like us two at 35, then a 30, 25, 15, 5, 5 vs like 50, 40, 30, 10, 10, 10 or something, and it's like...yeah, our two 35s are actually like 10s. But it's still a lot of fun. I really like some of the maps. One is called Nuketown, and it's a small map modeled for ABC street in suburbia with pastel houses, manicured lawns, picket fences, and mannequin white families. Another is Firing Range, which is a massive firing range with moving targets and a lot of tin-roofed buildings to run through. Really great multi-player levels.
I went back and played some CoD4 online in hopes of that helping me with Black Ops online performance, but it didn't really work. It's kind of hard to translate mouse and keyboard expertise to a gamepad. I did consistently better than James though, but that's not saying much. We found out that on hardcore mode (less health, no regeneration, no attachments, no radar, friendly fire on), that we could kill one another. That's after he shot me to death. I got him back with a knife, and then we called a truce. I also found out you get negative points for friendly kills.
But but but the coolest thing about Black Ops that I discovered tonight is the zombie survival mode. It begins with JFK, Robert Macnamara, Richard Nixon, and Fidel Castro all sitting around a table. The zombies start busting in and JFK yells something like "they're breaking in!" and Nixon responds something like "there's no break-in! what break-in?!" ha-ha. You begin with a pistol in a room. Zombies bust through windows and walls. You get points for shooting zombies and barricading broken windows and holes in the walls. You can spend points on weapons and on progressing through the level (500 points to open this door, 250 points to ride the elevator, etc.). I assume there's some goal at the end, but we never made it too far. We got as far as realizing we had to cut the power on in both the zombie levels, but never actually cut it on. It seems like a cool game mode though. Zombies aren't actually part of the story unless I missed something, so I guess they're just having fun with the zombie craze. Maybe the next CoD game will have vampires...
One final note is that the multiplayer is designed even better than CoD 4 to make you want to play forever. There are near endless things to upgrade. I can't imagine how much playtime it must take for people to acquire all the guns and all the attachments and stuff. Then now there are challenges to beat, and achievements to unlock, and all this stuff with each and every gun and each and every attachment. There are also contracts, endlessly repeatable money-rewarding tasks like Get 20 Kills in 40 Minutes or Win 3 Domination Matches, etc. ,etc. And there are the equivalent of daily quests every day, just randomized challenges that reward extra CoD points (to buy weapons and things). MMO design meets online FPS. I'm not sure whether that's a good thing or a bad thing. Considering I'm a rank 9 on CoD 4 after like 3 months, I don't think it matters to me personally, but shooters aren't my favorite thing. I suppose the more designers can figure out how to reward 'dailies' or just more play time, the more people are going to keep playing, if it's fun of course. I wouldn't be surprised to see the dailies idea popping up in more and more types of online, or even single-player, games in the future.
So, CoD, glad I played it, and I hope James is able to smoke me on Xbox Live next time I'm home.
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Jan 10th, 2011 at 12:46:00 - Audiosurf (PC) |
I'm not trying to make a ton of new entries and logs, but I'm sitting around at my mom's with not much else to do but read, watch TV, and play games, and so it's happening.
I've downloaded a lot of new music since I've been home this break and decided to open up Audiosurf to "ride" some of it. I've watched videos of Audiosurf, but playing it is better! I love how you can feel the track moving underneath you to the beat and tempo of the music. I tried out various oldies, metal, rock, techno, and acoustic stuff to get a feel for some different things. Audiosurf creates a unique track for each song. The point of the game is to navigate your ship left and right to stack blocks, 3 of a color, that come down the track to the beat. More intense parts of songs have "hot" colored blocks, and they come faster and are worth more points. Slower parts have cool colors like blue and purple and are easier to stack, but worth less. Syncopated beats make bumpy tracks, and things will speed up and slow down during stops and gos. I found that the most fun songs to play aren't just super fast ones, but ones that change tempos and beats because it makes the tracks quite dynamic. Super fast metal songs are fun and totally intense, and slow acoustic tracks are mellow, but the slow-fast-slow stuff, whatever you can find like that, is my favorite.
I am most surprised by all the different variations of gameplay. One mode you just match colored blocks and avoid gray ones. All these different modes are with different ships, so one you can rearrange the board to match colors, another you can grab a block and hold it to use later, another you can jump or spread out to cover all 3 lanes at once. It's pretty cool, but I had the most fun with just the basic "casual" modes. The others are just too insane for me to care about perfecting, but it's awesome that so many hardcore play styles are supported. I tried some technical death metal in Ironmode and I don't know how anyone could keep up! I definitely foresee playing this from time to time in the future. In a way, it makes me pay attention to the music more than I would if I were listening to stuff while doing something else since the music is wrapped up in the movement of the character.
I even showed it to my mom and she things it's neat. We did co-op Beatles songs for a while. The universal stat tracking is awesome too. I didn't play a single song that hadn't been played before, which surprised me. You can even hold top spots and it tells you you're in first place for some song. I imagine this game brings out the competitiveness of anyone who likes it, even if it's just a little competitiveness. I sure feel it! I'm going to tell some folks about it and see if I can't get friends to match scores with. Cool game. I will be riding some new music this week!
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Jan 9th, 2011 at 23:45:34 - Darwinia (PC) |
Darwinia started crashing on me at the Pattern Buffer level with various errors at various points, so I downloaded the latest patch and it erased my profile and save game. Haaaate. Annoying because the game is a bit tedious. I just looked to see how close I was to the end. Turns out I'd done 7/10 missions, gotten all the available weapons and units, and seen all the enemies. Therefore, I have gotten enough of Darwinia. It's not a long game. 7 missions probably took me 4 or 5 hours, but like I said, the missions get tedious because you've got to babysit units so they don't get stuck moving from point A to point B. It's a neat game, looks like geometry class and a classic arcade. My favorite thing to do was to take my 4 squads of 6 units each and just run into a web of viruses spewing grenades and air strikes. The blasts and ensuing rumbles and screen shakes were satisfying. Mass carnage.
I don't have a whole lot to say, much less than I thought I would. I think I overhyped the game for myself and it was just a bit of a letdown. I was expecting a faster pace and definitely expected not to have to babysit moving units around the map. Maybe that's just something that really inhibits my enjoyment of a game, the babysitting units. Oh well! I'm glad I played a bit of it because I enjoyed the visuals, the premise, and all the unique things about it.
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