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Jul 5th, 2010 at 09:32:17 - And Yet It Moves (PC) |
I figure I'll knock out one of these games from a month ago. For the record, I tore through about 10 in a month and a half, mostly short ones, to clear out my game library before I go home later this month. Surprisingly, I've nearly done it, just Rogue Galaxy left (and Oblivion, but I'll be playing that for MMObility).
Anyway, And Yet It Moves I got in the Steam Indie Pack for $19.99 with Osmos, Galcon Fusion, World of Goo, and Machinarium. And yet It Moves is a 2-D side (or up, down, and all around) scroller in a world made of paper. You are some guy trying to get somewhere. Make it to the end of each level, point A to point B. This is complicated by obstacles such as trees, 90 degree angles, angry monkeys, etc. Gameplay involves jumping and rotating the world 90 or 180 degrees at a turn. Instead of jumping over objects, you can rotate the world to maneuver yourself around them, usually involving some jumping too, although there is an achievement for finishing a level by ONLY rotating the world! I got the hang of it fairly quickly and the first half of the game was so-so, pretty easy, not too exciting, few new mechanics. Halfway through though, you get bitten by a snake that totally injects you with some LSD or something, because the world gets progressively weirder. Colors like a disco ball, pulsing light, nightmare trees, etc. I loved the game after this point. It got very artistic, like I said especially with all the colors. The sound, which I liked before, but don't really remember now, got even better. The one sound effect I specifically remember is the death sound, which was like a "whoosh" mixed with tearing paper. Anyway, if I need an example of good game sound and music in the future, go back to the last levels of this.
I remember the audio and the visuals were playing off one another. My favorite part of the game was near the end. There are disappearing platforms to jump on. They are different colors, and disappear and reappear in sequence. This sequence was in synch with the music of the level, and when you jump on a platform, it accents notes or effects in the music. It was very fluid and engrossing. Later, these platforms disappear and reappear depending on what angle the world is turned. Flip 90 degrees, some platforms appear, others disappear. Completion required me to toy with which platforms appear at which angles, and gauge my jumps towards invisible platforms, rotate the world, and hope I jumped toward the correct position. It was very cool.
So this was a month and a half ago, and I don't remember some details, but that's the gist of this one. I think it took about 5 or 6 hours to beat, not long, but worth playing.
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Jul 5th, 2010 at 09:16:44 - Overlord (PC) |
Played a couple hours of Overlord today and am just before the end of the game. One more short session should do it. I'm struck every time I turn it on by how good it looks. Overlord is 3 years old, but looks better than some newer games. Seeing 40+ minions each in various stages of equipment, today seeing the worms blown up by eating the bugs that blow up, the desert level...Everything has these soft, glowing edges.
I enjoyed the desert level very much. The deadly sand worms get agitated when you cross the sand, and emerge to feast on minions in range. They quickly wiped out my army a couple times, so I reloaded until I figured out what to do. Actually I looked it up because I didn't think to lure the bugs with eggs onto the sand. I didn't even think the worms could necessarily be killed, but I knew I had to get the bugs to move somehow to blow up the bone barriers blocking my passage. If I had shifted around, I would have seen I could pick up eggs, and the game certainly had me shifting to pick up other eggs and things before. I wasn't thinking I guess. So you have to take a minion (brown or green to withstand attacks), steal an egg, and lure the bug onto the sand. When the earth rumbles, drop the egg and run back. The bug will stay and protect the egg, and the worm emerges and eats the bug, which explodes in the worm's belly. 2 bugs kills a worm.
This was a cool idea, but I found the controls of moving the minions with the mouse to be a little difficult because I simultaneously had to move my Overlord behind the bug and the camera was fixing in front of me. I had to move my lure minion out of my sight some and try to edge it around rocks without knowing exactly where he was going. Twice, my minion got stuck on some rocks and couldn't move, and died, and then there was another area where a bug kept pinning my minion down. Overall, I like the controls for this game, sweeping the minions by holding down both mouse buttons and moving the mouse, picking up an egg and then moving the mouse as if it were the minion, but sometimes it's a bit wonky and doesn't respond how I want it to, or minions don't go quite where I'm trying to direct them. Get a minion to pick something up by holding shift to target the object, then left click to move the minion to it, then continue to hold shift the entire time the minion is moving with the object, and simultaneously move the mouse as if it were the minion. It's tricky. Easier with practice, but still tricky.
I quit playing today because I was near the end, had spent a long time blowing up worms and losing minions to these assassins that toss fire and wipe out 5-10 at a time, and came across a part where I basically had to stop to go farm green essence to get more green minions. The last levels, these beholders are flying and can only be taken out by reds or greens. I have plenty of reds but no greens. These beholders spawn assassins, either melee ones or fire throwing ones. The fire throwers are particularly deadly. To kill the beholders, you have to move your minions above them on conveniently placed ramps and throw fire (reds) or leap on them (greens). Then you and the rest of your army must guard the reds from assassins, watching out not to get hit by the beholder aura, which will instantly kill minions. I guess I was tired of losing minions, feeling the game was being a little cheap with those fire throwers because they like to hang around the minion aura and kill you from range, and if you go closer, your minions get caught in the aura. Also I need more greens and will have to just go grind them in the Evernight swamp. I could use more browns too.
I'm going to test out writing more thematically next time, maybe take a few notes during play. I have this nice set of questions for MMObility I could use to frame these entries.
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Jul 4th, 2010 at 09:13:40 - Overlord (PC) |
I began Overlord Monday and planned on finishing it by Friday, but I haven't yet. I skipped a couple days to deal with taxes (yuck). Everyone says Overlord is like Pikmin. I never played Pikmin. It reminded me of Fable from the beginning. The art looks like Fable and human NPCs might as well be plucked from Fable. Fable was a year ago for me, so it's not degenerated too much in memory.
My first impressions were loving the minions and finding them a bit difficult, but fun, to control them. Now, they are entertaining as ever. I love sending Browns on a rampage through a room, smashing up crates, furniture, enemies, and informing me that they've brought me treasures. I've gotten more used to guiding them where I want them to go, especially the Blues through water. I find little need to micromanage the different minions. I generally swarm with Browns and Reds, and have no problem simply replacing the dead. Swarm, minion berserk spell, win. I actually think it's more efficient to run in with a billion Browns than have a varied army. Who cares if they die. They like dying for me, and I can just summon more. On the other hand though, I think it's a weak point in the game that I can swarm like that. I rarely use blues or greens unless the environment says I have to. There's little actual need to be strategic, and although swarming makes me feel powerful like an overlord should, I wouldn't mind using my overlord brain a little more.
The animations are great, all except the overlord's. He's really clunky, which is weird because everything else is so nice. Another thing I don't like about the game is the forging/upgrading items system. I've played almost the whole game with my original armor and weapon, and done fine. I finally got the third smelter and upgraded everything, but haven't imbued them. Sacrificing minions is a serious commitment because it takes so many to upgrade an item! I think this helmet I was upgrading takes like 1100 minions. Man, i have like 200 and I need them. Gold is a bit more plentiful. I've been spending it on making my tower look cooler, completely pointless, but fun. Again with the upgrading, it's something in the game that I don't need to do to succeed. Like it doesn't even make it difficult if I don't use the forge. I would have liked to see a little bit more in-depth item creation system, maybe even a little personal inventory.
So playing today, the Overlord faced a moral dilemma at the end of a quest. I was to find the elven women (the last in existence in fact), and free them to their menfolk so the elves could continue as a race. When I get there, I have the option to rescue them or NOT rescue them, and take gold instead. I found this a bit disturbing that someone would choose gold over keeping the race of elves alive. That's basically extinction through nonaction. Usually in these 'moral' choices in games, I'll think about it, and usually side with good. This one though, it was like "What?!" There was no considering not rescuing the women. Overlord makes fun of the fantasy genre by casting you as evil and maintaining a humorous tone throughout, but this quest ending, even though my adviser made a joke about how great it would be if there were no elves, just hit me as a serious topic. I mean, do I let people die for wealth and personal gain?
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Jul 4th, 2010 at 08:43:42 - World of Warcraft: Wrath of the Lich King (PC) |
Since leveling Cass up to 80, I've been very casually gearing her up. I haven't had a new 80 to play with in over a year, besides the one with Allison, and I've been especially curious as to how Blizzard has made the gearing up process friendlier. I can hear about people grinding heroics and being raid-ready in a week, but I didn't want to grind heroics. How long would it take a casual player to gear for raids? I hit 80 a month ago and my gearscore for shadow and holy was like 4300-4400 Saturday. I can say that for the casual player, gearing for raids is going to take a long time (defined I guess as more than a couple months, 'casual' as no more than a heroic daily per day or so, and 'geared for raids' as closer to 5000gs). After a month of just doing the daily heroic and VoAs the last couple weeks, I hit a major plateau in what I could buy with emblems and how quickly those emblems were coming to me.
This weekend then I decided to see how long it would take someone to gear up 'hardcore,' playing for most of a weekend. I probably logged 15-20 hours on Cass Saturday and Sunday together. I made sure to run the ICC heroics both days, daily heroic, Ahune, and just chained ICC regulars and ToC until I got some stuff. It all felt really pointless grinding these things again, but I had a point to prove. I expect a devoted player can gear a brand new 80 from crap to ICC-ready in one weekend. I brought my gearscore up to 4800+, like 500 points, in just 2 days. Now, when I'd just hit 80, I could have done every heroic available every day for a few days. This would accomplish the same thing. Here's my timetable. Weekend = 2.5 days, Friday evening through Sunday night. Friday evening, ding 80, chain heroics, do any raids you can sneak into (unlikely). Saturday morning, get up and grind heroics. Get in any raids you can get in. By Saturday night, chances are you can get yourself up to Ony or ToC. Keep buying gear with triumph emblems and do your best to win stuff out of raids and heroics. Maybe get lucky in Vault. Sunday, grind heroics, and by Sunday night, I bet damn well you could have a GS up around 5000.
The only reason I'm on Cass is to see how gearing up is after Blizzard implemented all these rewards for heroics and made it much easier for players to get into raiding. So today I wound up in a 25 ToC, won a 245 chest, won a trophy. I got gloves from H HoR, got lucky with a Battered Hilt drop. It's interesting. I could get up tomorrow and get in an ICC probably, maybe win some things from there, and have gone from new 80 to 'geared' in a few days. If you think about it, someone who hit endgame right after WotLK came out, they've been raiding for a year and a half to get the gear they have. Now someone (or their alts) can come along and have equivalent gear in a weekend. This pisses off players who raid almost exclusively for gear. Players who raid for socializing or achievement, and who don't mind as much about winning loot, don't mind this situation as much. But as far as design goes, this choice makes gearing up easy, makes results quick and noticeable, and lets players experience raiding or endgame who might otherwise not. Drawbacks I see are that it's seen as unfair and a welfare system.
It's also interesting how much I learned about playing a priest this weekend. I feel like last week I was a priest noob compared to now, even though I've been playing her for a couple years. I'm a better healer and DPS, not just because of gear, but from practicing, knowing when to cast what, cast rotations, how to perform my role in accordance with others', etc. And it's been neat to compare priest healing to paladin healing. Priest flash of light is actually stronger than paladin flash of light. And it seems priest greater heal is less strong, but priests have SO many more heals. Paladins have 3. Priests, I regularly use like 7. And as far as DPS differences range vs. melee, I was thinking I would feel more of a difference during raids. I did ToC and have done some VoAs, and range DPS is still DPS. It's still DPS and it's still range (heals). So I basically move like a healer and DPS like, well, a DPS, maybe different targets here and there, but really the same thing. If I didn't already understand all classes and roles, this would probably be more shocking to do things differently, but I've thought about the range perspective or watched Patrick play enough that I could imagine doing it already. This all makes me wonder what the point of multiple characters is. Once I know how they all work, is there a point to actually playing more than 1? Is it more fun? Maybe it's more work. Professions are handy, but the more you have the more you have to keep up. WoW gets to feel like a vicious cycle sometimes. I want to raid on Cass now, but I've already done it a lot on Nacht and Neph. What's the point? It is fun to gear up, to go on raids, to down bosses, to win loot, but I've done it all before. Ruby Sanctum just came out this week, but I haven't found or put together a group for it, and the guild is mostly nonexistent these days. I would like to check it out, but probably just next week.
I really don't want to feel compelled to gear up and raid with Cass. I know it's all fun, but there are other things I could be doing. I should call her an experiment completed and go back to Nacht and be a one character kind of guy. There's no need for more. It took me a long time to figure this out, but really, more characters is time I could spend experiencing other games, or reading, or whatever it is. I've been fluctuating thinking about just sticking with Nacht versus juggling 2 or 3, but no more juggling. I'm a poor juggler.
So this week, hopefully I can get an RS, check that out, do guild GDKP, and win something from VoA.
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