So this is one of the only app games I've had on my phone and kept for such a few months. This is a combination of a few kinds of mini games wrapped up in a pretty nice little package. Only reason I'm removing it now is just to clear some space and go back down to three games (from 5). Too many of the ones I had required to frequent an upkeep to remain "active." May definitely come back to it someday, but just gonna pass for a while and play a few others out to completion. I actually got into this when I saw Markiplier plug it on his channel, the interactivity seemed interesting and gave it a shot -- that was many months ago. Of the 300ish monsters I've acquired 130.
So the features of this game are kind of varied so I'll try to describe as many of them as best I can.
Battles - they have three subdivisions of battles: 1) PVP versus other players in a 3v3 battle; 2) Adventure Map which resembles the classic level-to-level progression; 3) finally there are the dungeons, which were my personal favorite. These are temporary and always geared around your individual level offering varying difficulties and rewards for doing such. 1 & 2 were fairly unforgiving depending on your strength and level.
Breeding - one of the major features is breeding monsters to discover new ones. Discover is kind of misleading as you can always see the monsters in their encyclopedic book or dex. Now some of the full images and statistics remain hidden until you find them, but you always get a thumbnail and their name minimum. This was kind of the final straw sealing its fate, just too much RNG with little to no sense built into its scaffolding. Breeding time ranges from seconds to multi-days with hatching taking a comparable time as well. As such many times you have extra things waiting on the next stop.
Enhancement - through use of the Monster Lab and Rune Farm you can increase the base stats of your monsters, over powering them from their original maximums. You can boost a monster's max level by up to 20; and the runes increase in power up to level 10 (takes 4 of each level to guarantee the next power up).
Island Events - so the premise of this game is floating isles similar to Quest for Epic Loot, but they host your monsters rather than a castle you actively defend. As such you occasionally spawn an event isle with a theme or limited-release activity for you to participate in. They seem to have a good assortment of events and never so long as I played replayed the same event back-to-back. The one at the moment consists of illusion. Each of these has the opportunity to drop at least one Legendary monster and unlock the creature.
Material Farming - akin to almost every browser-based, click-heavy game (practically anything on Facebook) you "grow" resources that are used to level and strengthen your monsters: food and gold in this case.
Monsters - the art style is typically exaggerated and cartoonish, but there are a few that I thought were well designed and "attractive" for lack of a better word.
Stores, Assorted - almost every game type offers a pay-to-win store to unlock rare monsters or powerful runes. Now whales will fill these slots very quickly, but the vast majority are not completely unavailable to the rest of us (cheap bastard here, remember). As many of the activities offer the in game currency (gems) as rewards. It just takes time to accumulate them and luck that something you desire is available at that time.
The Negatives:
1) Upkeep, the recharge on the stamina to attack refills from zero to four (max battles per reset) is under a half hour so the alerts are annoyingly short lived between breaks. Active players can rarely be considered "casual" due to such quick turn-around times.
2) Undependable RNG - while there are some set percentiles for breeding a particular monster, there are way too many that make either little sense (if any) as to how or are available full time. Many of the more powerful monsters aren't available except during limited-time events where they enter the breeding possibility (usually at a 1% drop rate). Some of the rarest monsters don't show in the monster book, but are indeed possible -- at the same 1% drop rate from almost any legendary pairing. Most monster pairings netted 70%, 50%, 30%, 10%, 7.5%, 5% or 2.5%.
3) Community - there is a updated wiki, but I can't say it's the easiest to navigate, read, or understand how its organized I've ever used. There is also a sub-reddit, but it's usually a ghost town and threads go days without a view let alone a comment. The times people do respond were very helpful, friendly, or informative. Just not a very dependable community imho.
4) VIP - here's the exclusive whale or premium-pay rewards. There are an established set of monsters deemed VIP and are only offered at limited intervals for $20 IAP. Only once did I ever see one of these possible and it was reported at a 0.1% breeding-drop rate.
5) Ability upgrades - there is zero warning to what you're going to get at the 5-level intervals to learn a new skill, each interval has a pool of powers to randomly offer [one] the player and there's no guarantee it will be more powerful than anything you already have. You also cannot tell explicitly what an attack will do (stats yes, but not exactly how it will compare hit-for-hit). As such there's also no guarantee you will gain access to every power in their arsenal in the course of leveling them up.
There was very little that made the game unplayable and I did enjoy it for quite a while considering any of these short-lived free games tend to cycle off my phone within a month.
If any of this sounds interesting give it a try, but have patience as it will take a while to achieve self-sustainable rotations.
B-
Available on iOS and Android; also as a facebook browser game.
Tuesday, October 4, 2016
Monday, June 13, 2016
eSports...Streams... & my thoughts on them.
Alright so I am not a complete noob to the concept or having seen some of this. I am an avid stream/let's play watcher for assorted gamers online (personally I prefer YouTube to Twitch, but have no real opinions or citations to try to sway one or the other). I have and am currently subscribed to a few in the last decade where they have emerged into a category of their own. The ones I tend to follow really fall into two broad categories: content creators and official channels.
Content creators have my most profound respect because they take already existing content and put a fresh spin on it; take lots of vague, scattered information, sift through it and compress it into digestible chunks for those of us interested; or generate completely original content long individually-developed mindsets. Regardless of tastes, styles, interests, or any criteria you could assign yourself, there exists something you would more than likely enjoy. Might look at the other things I subscribe to one day, but I'm gonna stick to the video gaming aspect for now. I am currently subscribed to Markiplier and MatPat/The Game Theorist. I have been or occasionally seek out content from Pewdiepie, Jack Septiceye, Neebs Gaming, and FrankieOnPCin1080p depending on my current appetite for content. I tend to like streamers or creators that present an interesting take on something I'm already aware on or treat their viewers to their 'honest' self -- fully aware of how ridiculous this reads. Let me give you an example, Pewdiepie was my first gaming channel I subscribed to long before he reached the thralls of heights he has now -- I have no beef or grief with him, I just didn't care as the content coming out. Anyway he was still in Italy at the time (after Sweden, but before moving to the U.K.) and I loved his full playthroughs and his highlight videos, being the online superstar he's become I just don't get as much joy out of the majoirty of his content he's done given the accelerated release schedule. Frankie, Mark and some of the others gained my attention because of their commentary or the same-old-same expressed in their unique mindset or accents (silly but true).
Official channels will get the minimalist blurb I can give them out of respect for the original creators buried somewhere in their ranks. If you enjoy or find interest in a game I would recommend you follow at least one of the official outlets they offer: forum, social media, streaming service, etc. I keep falling in and out again with Guild Wars and on occasion I will catch myself watching GungHo's livestream.
For more than a decade now, these subset of media have grown by leaps and bounds so of course someone thought there was a way to marginalize and market it. Enter the eSport events. Yeah, this is gonna be a negative slant on the industry and two specific events that follow. However IF DONE PROPERLY, I think this is an interesting concept in its own right and might have some merits if refined under the right mindset. The idea is good, let people watch professionals or skilled players compete in these games we all have a piqued interest or strong desire to bare witness to.
However like vapes and the like adopting eCigarettes, I think gaming adopting the moniker of eSports was just a vast misrepresentation for the subculture (No I don't smoke, but have heard friends argue it to no end). I have watched two or three events and just not enjoyed it at all. Two were DOTA tournaments and the other was the Battlefield 1 celebrity live-stream earlier today (6/12/16). My central complaint is the asinine commentators. There are a dozen or more points of view (64 on the stream) and we are handcuffed to whatever they or an unseen producer in a monitoring room think is interesting content. The largely brain-dead dribble they regurgitate is frequently incorrect, idiotic, or just dull. eSports are NOT a live sporting event and as such do not benefit from the same announcer mentality I don't mind and even reciprocate positive experiences with for Football or alternative sports like MMA or Ninja Warrior. The reason I tuned in today was to hear some of the YouTube content creators give me their thoughts, not the two jackasses who never shut up and were obvious company-endorsed shills. The production itself was sub-acceptable (forget par) by even the most generous of reviews, 64 -- SIXTY-FOUR participants -- zero introductions of non-celebrity gamers until after the event, a very fuzzy distinction between teams and who was playing at any given time. I made it part-way through the Neebs/StoneMountain interview before the questions and conversation made me turn it off in disgust. God bless them the gamers tried their best to answer, but everyone with a mic obviously knew minimal about gaming in general.
Another issue I take is the style of event. Again a 64-man respawning, general strategiless FPS is not the best place to watch someone else's idea of a 'good view'. I will grant them that a few times they had some decent shots, but more times that appeared on screen were indistinguishable from any other. More than half of the participants, some of the content creators I've already spoken highly about, were never mentioned or covered. I've already seen two post their own recordings and thoughts after the event (thank Christ). THAT's the majority of content people joined for on top of seeing the fresh pre-Alpha playthrough. I didn't give two shits about what the half-dozen, industry- or company-funded yes men spouted or had to say. Oh you enjoyed your time, which I'm not going to get to see; I have no fucking idea who you are, could essentially not care less, and the repeated elevation your trying to claim your voice has is nauseating to the point of cancerous. Now I will throttle it back down a moment and say the gross inadequacies seen today are not so readily apparent in smaller MOBA or squad-sized team games. There are vastly fewer players and thus much fewer nodes of action at any point in time.
One final thought we had was an inability to follow how points were given or allocated, especially on the cumulative team pool. Mathematically, and having watched multiple points of view of all three games now, we still don't know how anything was calculated. It wasn't death tickets as in BF4, it wasn't any legible KDA ratio, and it surely wasn't any proportional reflection of points scored per person or team. My two roommates and I spent way more time that was necessary trying to figure it out. I direct you to the end of this video (game 3 from the livestream) to try and translate the scorecards to the final result.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h1RUNPEZHQc
Content creators have my most profound respect because they take already existing content and put a fresh spin on it; take lots of vague, scattered information, sift through it and compress it into digestible chunks for those of us interested; or generate completely original content long individually-developed mindsets. Regardless of tastes, styles, interests, or any criteria you could assign yourself, there exists something you would more than likely enjoy. Might look at the other things I subscribe to one day, but I'm gonna stick to the video gaming aspect for now. I am currently subscribed to Markiplier and MatPat/The Game Theorist. I have been or occasionally seek out content from Pewdiepie, Jack Septiceye, Neebs Gaming, and FrankieOnPCin1080p depending on my current appetite for content. I tend to like streamers or creators that present an interesting take on something I'm already aware on or treat their viewers to their 'honest' self -- fully aware of how ridiculous this reads. Let me give you an example, Pewdiepie was my first gaming channel I subscribed to long before he reached the thralls of heights he has now -- I have no beef or grief with him, I just didn't care as the content coming out. Anyway he was still in Italy at the time (after Sweden, but before moving to the U.K.) and I loved his full playthroughs and his highlight videos, being the online superstar he's become I just don't get as much joy out of the majoirty of his content he's done given the accelerated release schedule. Frankie, Mark and some of the others gained my attention because of their commentary or the same-old-same expressed in their unique mindset or accents (silly but true).
Official channels will get the minimalist blurb I can give them out of respect for the original creators buried somewhere in their ranks. If you enjoy or find interest in a game I would recommend you follow at least one of the official outlets they offer: forum, social media, streaming service, etc. I keep falling in and out again with Guild Wars and on occasion I will catch myself watching GungHo's livestream.
For more than a decade now, these subset of media have grown by leaps and bounds so of course someone thought there was a way to marginalize and market it. Enter the eSport events. Yeah, this is gonna be a negative slant on the industry and two specific events that follow. However IF DONE PROPERLY, I think this is an interesting concept in its own right and might have some merits if refined under the right mindset. The idea is good, let people watch professionals or skilled players compete in these games we all have a piqued interest or strong desire to bare witness to.
However like vapes and the like adopting eCigarettes, I think gaming adopting the moniker of eSports was just a vast misrepresentation for the subculture (No I don't smoke, but have heard friends argue it to no end). I have watched two or three events and just not enjoyed it at all. Two were DOTA tournaments and the other was the Battlefield 1 celebrity live-stream earlier today (6/12/16). My central complaint is the asinine commentators. There are a dozen or more points of view (64 on the stream) and we are handcuffed to whatever they or an unseen producer in a monitoring room think is interesting content. The largely brain-dead dribble they regurgitate is frequently incorrect, idiotic, or just dull. eSports are NOT a live sporting event and as such do not benefit from the same announcer mentality I don't mind and even reciprocate positive experiences with for Football or alternative sports like MMA or Ninja Warrior. The reason I tuned in today was to hear some of the YouTube content creators give me their thoughts, not the two jackasses who never shut up and were obvious company-endorsed shills. The production itself was sub-acceptable (forget par) by even the most generous of reviews, 64 -- SIXTY-FOUR participants -- zero introductions of non-celebrity gamers until after the event, a very fuzzy distinction between teams and who was playing at any given time. I made it part-way through the Neebs/StoneMountain interview before the questions and conversation made me turn it off in disgust. God bless them the gamers tried their best to answer, but everyone with a mic obviously knew minimal about gaming in general.
Another issue I take is the style of event. Again a 64-man respawning, general strategiless FPS is not the best place to watch someone else's idea of a 'good view'. I will grant them that a few times they had some decent shots, but more times that appeared on screen were indistinguishable from any other. More than half of the participants, some of the content creators I've already spoken highly about, were never mentioned or covered. I've already seen two post their own recordings and thoughts after the event (thank Christ). THAT's the majority of content people joined for on top of seeing the fresh pre-Alpha playthrough. I didn't give two shits about what the half-dozen, industry- or company-funded yes men spouted or had to say. Oh you enjoyed your time, which I'm not going to get to see; I have no fucking idea who you are, could essentially not care less, and the repeated elevation your trying to claim your voice has is nauseating to the point of cancerous. Now I will throttle it back down a moment and say the gross inadequacies seen today are not so readily apparent in smaller MOBA or squad-sized team games. There are vastly fewer players and thus much fewer nodes of action at any point in time.
One final thought we had was an inability to follow how points were given or allocated, especially on the cumulative team pool. Mathematically, and having watched multiple points of view of all three games now, we still don't know how anything was calculated. It wasn't death tickets as in BF4, it wasn't any legible KDA ratio, and it surely wasn't any proportional reflection of points scored per person or team. My two roommates and I spent way more time that was necessary trying to figure it out. I direct you to the end of this video (game 3 from the livestream) to try and translate the scorecards to the final result.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h1RUNPEZHQc
Monday, May 9, 2016
RIP Unlockable Content. All Hail Cash-Gated DLC
This is something I think many of the old guard and most of the mid-guard (of which I consider myself, and no this is not an intentional Thor/Norse joke) would agree is becoming a more noticeable issue. For those of us still in the pulse of the gaming community we've seen the less than subtle shift from actually using easter eggs, challenging content, hidden secrets and such to progress your gameplay. These are notoriously utilized as a flashy in-joke or short-cut through their content. Not blatantly dumbing down the game to make it more completable and accessible, but it's not far from it. Where are the games that offer unlockable content or secrets or alternative skins/weapons that require a challenging succession of achievements or an undocumented cheat code or something that just doesn't come out prior to the game itself? I, for one, loved these kind of things and enjoy searching for them if I'm lucky enough to get in on a game early; or finding if I show up late and have only the knowledge that "something" exists.
Now whether in single-player campaigns or in a MMO-style environment I tend to lean onto the achievement hound and collector mentalities if I become engrossed in a game for one reason or another. Prime examples I can think of involve Prince of Persia (hidden weapons like a hockey stick or teddy bear), Pokemon (G1-2), and Dynasty Warriors. The latter was my first foray where I had to decide what to unlock because some of the items/power-ups in DW4:XL were gated against one another; i.e. if you unlocked character A's ultimate weapon's form, character B's ultimate weapon was forever beyond your grasp. The game also possessed one of the more annoying save functions for the PS2 where there was no "saving one with A and one with B" as it held everything within a single file. I like my stories engaging--by either the gameplay or the story. Often times I will fluctuate between these as I play a game sacrificing doing one to do the other, etc. This is another reason I find replayability highly undervalued as well as there are some games out there with little to no incentive to ever return. On an MMO and usually in a RPG I will typically keep at least one save or character slot solely for the purpose of exploring the lore, talking to all the NPCs. This is the closest I come to actually roleplaying in video games (tabletop RPGs are fine, but I never saw the appeal to online RP).
Anyway the newer incarnations of some of those same games are fraught with DLC. Some of which extends the story but sometimes only provides the conclusion to the main story they'd already sold you. Or in the case of cosmetic alternatives, pay us monies and you can run around like _____. Yes, as much as I enjoy you I'm looking at you Saint's Row, Tomb Raider, and Koei (Dynasty/Samurai Warrior publishers). I remember when to unlock something you just had to find it in game somewhere. These scavenger-hunt style micro-missions were often a big thrill for me, especially if it involved some extra skill to get: only accessible at night, and should be blinded, etc.
This is not meant to be a manifesto against the entire micro-transaction movement, though as an unemployed debtee, I do find it a tad disheartening. I appreciate that for some* games this is their only source of income: free2play mobile apps, certain unsubscriptioned MMOs or MOBAs, etc. All I'm asking is for some justification in the cost/desire. I bought most of the Dynasty Warrior franchise for $20-25 if I got it new or $10 at Gamestop later, but for each of those I got well over 100 hours of playtime racking up power-ups and legendary weapons. Now to get the same accomplishment I need over $200 in steam and I have everything from the get-go. One game app I casual-play has a special for $55 you get 1 guaranteed character of 20 and a chance at up to 3 more. Sorry for that amount of coinage I want to expressly know what I'm getting. The pay-to-win mentality is strong and I understand commercial entities trying to tap that, but in doing so they isolate a measurable percentage of their player base while at the same time increasing others frustration within the game along with their likelihood of leaving. Its a very soft border between these factions, and I am far from an expert, but I think far too many are using RNGesus as an excuse within the confined of their IP's 1's and 0's.
Anyway, semester is wrapping up this week and I should be back gaming occasionally between application and interviews. Let me know what you think.
Now whether in single-player campaigns or in a MMO-style environment I tend to lean onto the achievement hound and collector mentalities if I become engrossed in a game for one reason or another. Prime examples I can think of involve Prince of Persia (hidden weapons like a hockey stick or teddy bear), Pokemon (G1-2), and Dynasty Warriors. The latter was my first foray where I had to decide what to unlock because some of the items/power-ups in DW4:XL were gated against one another; i.e. if you unlocked character A's ultimate weapon's form, character B's ultimate weapon was forever beyond your grasp. The game also possessed one of the more annoying save functions for the PS2 where there was no "saving one with A and one with B" as it held everything within a single file. I like my stories engaging--by either the gameplay or the story. Often times I will fluctuate between these as I play a game sacrificing doing one to do the other, etc. This is another reason I find replayability highly undervalued as well as there are some games out there with little to no incentive to ever return. On an MMO and usually in a RPG I will typically keep at least one save or character slot solely for the purpose of exploring the lore, talking to all the NPCs. This is the closest I come to actually roleplaying in video games (tabletop RPGs are fine, but I never saw the appeal to online RP).
Anyway the newer incarnations of some of those same games are fraught with DLC. Some of which extends the story but sometimes only provides the conclusion to the main story they'd already sold you. Or in the case of cosmetic alternatives, pay us monies and you can run around like _____. Yes, as much as I enjoy you I'm looking at you Saint's Row, Tomb Raider, and Koei (Dynasty/Samurai Warrior publishers). I remember when to unlock something you just had to find it in game somewhere. These scavenger-hunt style micro-missions were often a big thrill for me, especially if it involved some extra skill to get: only accessible at night, and should be blinded, etc.
This is not meant to be a manifesto against the entire micro-transaction movement, though as an unemployed debtee, I do find it a tad disheartening. I appreciate that for some* games this is their only source of income: free2play mobile apps, certain unsubscriptioned MMOs or MOBAs, etc. All I'm asking is for some justification in the cost/desire. I bought most of the Dynasty Warrior franchise for $20-25 if I got it new or $10 at Gamestop later, but for each of those I got well over 100 hours of playtime racking up power-ups and legendary weapons. Now to get the same accomplishment I need over $200 in steam and I have everything from the get-go. One game app I casual-play has a special for $55 you get 1 guaranteed character of 20 and a chance at up to 3 more. Sorry for that amount of coinage I want to expressly know what I'm getting. The pay-to-win mentality is strong and I understand commercial entities trying to tap that, but in doing so they isolate a measurable percentage of their player base while at the same time increasing others frustration within the game along with their likelihood of leaving. Its a very soft border between these factions, and I am far from an expert, but I think far too many are using RNGesus as an excuse within the confined of their IP's 1's and 0's.
Anyway, semester is wrapping up this week and I should be back gaming occasionally between application and interviews. Let me know what you think.
Tuesday, April 12, 2016
Marvel Puzzle Quest (2013)
More & more 'match three' games...
So one thing I have learned about myself is I like puzzle games. I exhaustively cleared 3 Tangram app games a few years ago, and my longest running mobile games is another of this variety (PAD). That said there are more than a few out there and most hearken back to the granddaddy of the genre, Bejeweled. Now rather than every single one being a carbon copy recreation with a fresh (or semi-clean) shirt, there are some key distinctions between them:
1) how much you can move a piece - sometimes you can only swap two adjacent pieces, other times you can drag and drop a single piece all over the board, occasionally the orbs drop in free-fall and you can only clear them where 3 or more intersect, once I found a game where you has x seconds to adjacent swap as many as you could in the time.
2) number of colors (for matches) and unique orbs - usually the minimum I've seen is three colors, but I've seen upwards of 8 in different games, which tend to scale with difficulty. There are also proprietary "special" tiles that vary from game to game. Some destroy a row, column, or predefined shape among the chaos; others remove or manipulate a specific hue from the pool; others manipulate the board in any innumerable possible ways. Poison, jammer, indestructable are just some of the other varieties.
3) additional formats - this genre is perhaps so over-saturated that fresh faces have to get you with a gimmick or incorporating another style within the game itself. I'll go into one examples below, but genre-targetted apps like Doctor Who: Legacy uses skins of characters from the show (wow, that sounds dark suddenly).
So by-and-large this is one of the primary game-types I adhere to, and while I burnout on some individual versions for one reason or another, I have yet to clear them all off of my device ever.
[Marvel Puzzle Quest] (Mobile, Apple or Android; PC, Steam) 2013
I'll admit I got roped in by the Marvel skinned app and it had some familiar if fresh takes on the whole RPG team and card collecting formats that added an interesting change of gameplay for me. I'm usually [yawn] at RPG team builders unless I have a lot more control and prettier pictures (i.e FFX); I also usually skip card-based video games of all kinds, save a brief forray with Yu-Gi-Oh when I was younger on principle alone. Also upon research I see this 'fresh' take is 3 years old :P
So you assemble a group of 3 characters (enemies or villains) restricted only by them populating your painfully inadequate collection. Now the cards themselves didn't really pose a problem as I had 2 semi-rare ones when I dropped the game after playing less than 2 months. My major complaint with this game was the limited and expensive box space. They are not shy about giving you chances at cards (lots of commons, but even my first day I had 2 premium pulls ready to go), you only get 3-4 slots initially and it costs more and more to add slots until I had 2 6-slot pages and it wanted over 500 ?gold coins? (I was never told what the other resources were called) to get another.
These cards, however, have levels as well as up to three individual power each with their own nuance. The card levels were unlocked by adding and fusing additional power cards together (up to 13 cumulative points where you had to decide between 5-5-3 or 5-4-4 builds on your key players). Once the higher level was possible, you used in-app rewards Iso-8 (a Marvel staple for who knows how long) and grind them up in ever increasing quantities. My complaint here is limited to its steep loss you suffered if you dumped it into one card then chose to retire it in place of another. A common trope in these style games, but still annoying knowing not all do this.
This game also lacks any kind of roster or unlock system to further incentivize collecting the individual characters. For an achievement hound/collector in me, this is a very sad realization. Unfortunately, taking up quite a few precious card slots are full 1-star and 2-star (rarity and power based) ranked teams that are used as part of the daily incentive quest (Deadpool). Additionally you have to have "daily random character X" in order to run for additional daily rewards. These further exasperated the restricted nature of your collection box and were the primary reason I opted out of further playing.
Now I liked the idea of keeping pre-set teams as you leveled in order to clear particular content. I loved the way the app handled the variety of 3-4 game types: prologue, story events, and pvp content. Instead of everyone pooled into the single event and scrambling up invisible ladders, you could select your own (I believe of 7 possible) time slot and play (or not) to your heart's content. I finished in the top 3 on the last two events I participated in, unlocking a 3-powered Daredevil and Colossus respectively.
All in all it was a nice game and if I weren't as invested in PAD I might have considered this to be my primary game app. 8/10
So one thing I have learned about myself is I like puzzle games. I exhaustively cleared 3 Tangram app games a few years ago, and my longest running mobile games is another of this variety (PAD). That said there are more than a few out there and most hearken back to the granddaddy of the genre, Bejeweled. Now rather than every single one being a carbon copy recreation with a fresh (or semi-clean) shirt, there are some key distinctions between them:
1) how much you can move a piece - sometimes you can only swap two adjacent pieces, other times you can drag and drop a single piece all over the board, occasionally the orbs drop in free-fall and you can only clear them where 3 or more intersect, once I found a game where you has x seconds to adjacent swap as many as you could in the time.
2) number of colors (for matches) and unique orbs - usually the minimum I've seen is three colors, but I've seen upwards of 8 in different games, which tend to scale with difficulty. There are also proprietary "special" tiles that vary from game to game. Some destroy a row, column, or predefined shape among the chaos; others remove or manipulate a specific hue from the pool; others manipulate the board in any innumerable possible ways. Poison, jammer, indestructable are just some of the other varieties.
3) additional formats - this genre is perhaps so over-saturated that fresh faces have to get you with a gimmick or incorporating another style within the game itself. I'll go into one examples below, but genre-targetted apps like Doctor Who: Legacy uses skins of characters from the show (wow, that sounds dark suddenly).
So by-and-large this is one of the primary game-types I adhere to, and while I burnout on some individual versions for one reason or another, I have yet to clear them all off of my device ever.
[Marvel Puzzle Quest] (Mobile, Apple or Android; PC, Steam) 2013
I'll admit I got roped in by the Marvel skinned app and it had some familiar if fresh takes on the whole RPG team and card collecting formats that added an interesting change of gameplay for me. I'm usually [yawn] at RPG team builders unless I have a lot more control and prettier pictures (i.e FFX); I also usually skip card-based video games of all kinds, save a brief forray with Yu-Gi-Oh when I was younger on principle alone. Also upon research I see this 'fresh' take is 3 years old :P
So you assemble a group of 3 characters (enemies or villains) restricted only by them populating your painfully inadequate collection. Now the cards themselves didn't really pose a problem as I had 2 semi-rare ones when I dropped the game after playing less than 2 months. My major complaint with this game was the limited and expensive box space. They are not shy about giving you chances at cards (lots of commons, but even my first day I had 2 premium pulls ready to go), you only get 3-4 slots initially and it costs more and more to add slots until I had 2 6-slot pages and it wanted over 500 ?gold coins? (I was never told what the other resources were called) to get another.
These cards, however, have levels as well as up to three individual power each with their own nuance. The card levels were unlocked by adding and fusing additional power cards together (up to 13 cumulative points where you had to decide between 5-5-3 or 5-4-4 builds on your key players). Once the higher level was possible, you used in-app rewards Iso-8 (a Marvel staple for who knows how long) and grind them up in ever increasing quantities. My complaint here is limited to its steep loss you suffered if you dumped it into one card then chose to retire it in place of another. A common trope in these style games, but still annoying knowing not all do this.
This game also lacks any kind of roster or unlock system to further incentivize collecting the individual characters. For an achievement hound/collector in me, this is a very sad realization. Unfortunately, taking up quite a few precious card slots are full 1-star and 2-star (rarity and power based) ranked teams that are used as part of the daily incentive quest (Deadpool). Additionally you have to have "daily random character X" in order to run for additional daily rewards. These further exasperated the restricted nature of your collection box and were the primary reason I opted out of further playing.
Now I liked the idea of keeping pre-set teams as you leveled in order to clear particular content. I loved the way the app handled the variety of 3-4 game types: prologue, story events, and pvp content. Instead of everyone pooled into the single event and scrambling up invisible ladders, you could select your own (I believe of 7 possible) time slot and play (or not) to your heart's content. I finished in the top 3 on the last two events I participated in, unlocking a 3-powered Daredevil and Colossus respectively.
All in all it was a nice game and if I weren't as invested in PAD I might have considered this to be my primary game app. 8/10
Monday, March 21, 2016
The Return of the Blog/Playstyle
Gods, I can never seem to consistently force myself to maintain a blog for an extended period of time. Best I did was for my table top miniatures (still actively viewed). So yeah I will be back [sporadically] as I try to clear out some of my Steam(c) library and free some of my phone's memory up. Expect it to be slow, but come graduation in May I'll have a few classics I'll finally be playing thru (Mass Effect, Assassin's Creed, and XCOM series). --Hey-- No judgement,s I picked them up over the past few years in Steam sales, bundles, or free code giveaways/trades and never took the opportunity to play them.
That said, I guess I'll explain my game style. I've all over the map. I like to try new games, but rarely do so unless they're cheap/free/my group is playing them. When I actually become an invested player I join a branch of the community (i.e. Wooden Potatoes for GW2) and usually approach it with a lore- or achievement hound-attitude. That said I'm not one who commits to more than 1-2 immersive games at a time. Guild Wars 2 is filling my MMO slot at the moment so anything I'm likely to play will be stand alone titles, casual games, or just something to clear memory off of one of my devices.
Forthcoming right off the bat I've tried my hand [over the past 9 months] at a few mobile games co-workers, classmates, or family have played and I will summarize them first (cause I'm likely not playing them anymore). Anyway, sorry for the absence, and happy gaming.
UPDATE 5/9/16:
Alright so to give myself a little time between job-hunting, moving, and just general downtime I will try for monthly discussions and try to get as many games in as I play. That said they may not be new all the time and may resort to tips, tricks, or just "what I've been playing" updates.
That said, I guess I'll explain my game style. I've all over the map. I like to try new games, but rarely do so unless they're cheap/free/my group is playing them. When I actually become an invested player I join a branch of the community (i.e. Wooden Potatoes for GW2) and usually approach it with a lore- or achievement hound-attitude. That said I'm not one who commits to more than 1-2 immersive games at a time. Guild Wars 2 is filling my MMO slot at the moment so anything I'm likely to play will be stand alone titles, casual games, or just something to clear memory off of one of my devices.
Forthcoming right off the bat I've tried my hand [over the past 9 months] at a few mobile games co-workers, classmates, or family have played and I will summarize them first (cause I'm likely not playing them anymore). Anyway, sorry for the absence, and happy gaming.
UPDATE 5/9/16:
Alright so to give myself a little time between job-hunting, moving, and just general downtime I will try for monthly discussions and try to get as many games in as I play. That said they may not be new all the time and may resort to tips, tricks, or just "what I've been playing" updates.
Sunday, June 14, 2015
Mobile Games & Derivatives
So like many people I am guilty of installing a game or two on my phone and often I will hear of/see a similar game with a twist or a skin on it that makes the copy+paste game "unique" in the creator's mind. More often times than not this is more likely a cash grab situation as they churn them out as fast as possible, allowing for in-app purchases, and really don't support the game. There are entire studios devoted to this business model >> 1) What's popular? 2) Can we recreate it? 3) Can we change it just enough to avoid claims and suit? This is not the entirety of the games out there but for every game you like there's bound to be 20+ games eerily similar to it in one respect or another. Well I venture down the rabbit hole occasionally and I've found many that fall on both sides of the fence. Sometimes they provide a decent distraction for a brief interlude, sometimes they frustrate me, other times they're just sad, humorous attempts at mimicry. Here's two examples that I would call successful clones, but may or may not stay on my phone for long. (Possibly a review of them as well).
1) Star Wars Commander (similar to Clash of Clans)
Pros: Star Wars skins!
a unique functionality at the early onset of the game you can decide to support the rebels or the Empire which will determine which units you have access to for the remainder of the game.
gameplay and upgrades make 10x more sense than CoC and you can easily judge when something is under-powered. (i.e. Your base has lvl 5 HQ? Everything you have can upgrade to lvl 5)
Cons: the unique functionality does make it harder to play with friends if you chose Empire for the cooler looking units and they chose Rebels for the heroes. The "Squadrons" are limited to one side or the other and cannot cross-over. The lack of cross over ability kind of twists the knife anytime one side or the other gets something cool (I reinstalled and when light side only to find that it was not identical abilities).
As much as I did in fact enjoy the game the community was very small and not truly active. 6/10
2) Doctor Who: Legacy (similar to Puzzles & Dragons)
Pros: Doctor Who skins, companions, enemies, storyline, etc.
a (somewhat) story that progresses through the dungeons
enough minor changes from PAD that you fell like it successfully makes its own niche (including no stamina)
amazing community and dev-support
Cons: The story is [sadly] weak and usually skipped
The lack of limiting factors like stamina means you unconsciously play yourself out of it most times
Leveling up allies alters their powers at level 5 such that some of them with powers you liked 1-49 now trigger something entirely different at 50.
7/10
1) Star Wars Commander (similar to Clash of Clans)
Pros: Star Wars skins!
a unique functionality at the early onset of the game you can decide to support the rebels or the Empire which will determine which units you have access to for the remainder of the game.
gameplay and upgrades make 10x more sense than CoC and you can easily judge when something is under-powered. (i.e. Your base has lvl 5 HQ? Everything you have can upgrade to lvl 5)
Cons: the unique functionality does make it harder to play with friends if you chose Empire for the cooler looking units and they chose Rebels for the heroes. The "Squadrons" are limited to one side or the other and cannot cross-over. The lack of cross over ability kind of twists the knife anytime one side or the other gets something cool (I reinstalled and when light side only to find that it was not identical abilities).
As much as I did in fact enjoy the game the community was very small and not truly active. 6/10
2) Doctor Who: Legacy (similar to Puzzles & Dragons)
Pros: Doctor Who skins, companions, enemies, storyline, etc.
a (somewhat) story that progresses through the dungeons
enough minor changes from PAD that you fell like it successfully makes its own niche (including no stamina)
amazing community and dev-support
Cons: The story is [sadly] weak and usually skipped
The lack of limiting factors like stamina means you unconsciously play yourself out of it most times
Leveling up allies alters their powers at level 5 such that some of them with powers you liked 1-49 now trigger something entirely different at 50.
7/10
Thursday, May 28, 2015
Guild Wars 2: Heart of Thorns PvE Beta
A brief mention as I did participate.
It was very lack-luster and kind of a disappointment. I am aware it was a stress test and am in no way slanted negatively towards them, but I was very underwhelmed in my experiences (~3 hours over 2 of the blocks). The root cause imho was a combination of the UI and the new systems implemented therein.
1) Story
While I wasn't expecting a great arc the sad, single quest with 4 sub-parts would take ~20 minutes to do solo unless your system crashed. Mine did twice but only once during the quests, so I had to start all over. The story chose the two decisions for you, railroading you in your script instead of presenting the options they're so proud to brag about in HoT. The events, day/night cycle, and outpost events were interesting but gave little to no indication of what you were supposed to do. 3 times I failed objectives when no enemies appeared, no interactive material spawned for us to 'deliver' and took a long time for use to figure out the 'to do'
2) User-Interface & Integration
So they bragged we would experience some of the new systems, masteries, and abilities for the new expansion. 3 hours in and a few rare people had figured out how to actually add points to their system. I ended up with 5, but I couldn't figure out how to actually spend them even though the mastery page said it was already full. To be honest gliding was the one thing I wanted to try and see how it went. No one was explaining anything in chat to assist other gamers and the vast majority of people didn't get to from what I've discussed with guildies and read in the forums.
3) Instructions
This was possibly the most heinous mistake that occurred and you';ll see the vein in the other points. There was no instruction. There was no intuitive design to implement any of these new systems as such leaving many people more unimpressed than I was. As I mentioned I had 5 mastery points, I had 8 or so tracks "open" to me to view, but everything was either grayed out and locked or already said I was fully trained and locked (1/1, 3/3, etc). I tried the classic double-click, went key-by-key down my board, even the drag and drop ability which left nothing accomplished. I hope they hold another one with better us of their players time. After I explored as much of the map as I cared to I just swapped to normal play and left the Beta with a sickening, empty feeling that didn't sit well for all the hype and attention this has been getting.
All grieving aside it looked pretty. That said in an age where anything sub-photo-realistic is considered retro, stylized, or cheap. I think no more than what I had with the teaser trailers thus far: it has potential but will likely be very small in comparisons to similar expansions [in other games] in both scope and newly accessible areas. This may be a glimmer at what is to come with a fuller-engrossing Season 3 Living World. This could rework a masterful overhaul to the game world we already know. There are too many unknowns and too many theories and speculation about where it all is going.
I previously had the experience the PvP map Conquest. This looks promising but a lot more play will be needed to understand all the new features going on in it. For it ~ 6/10
Still hopeful if a little less optimistic for HoT. 3.5/10 for the limited Beta
**Full Release Update** 5/10 was alright just way too small and limited to be taken serious as a MMO contender. ArenaNet will really have to step it up to keep its population, because everything I've seen and heard in chat and on forums (even from major content creators like Wooden Potatoes) has been steadily declining in favor because they're not keeping the audience entertained between content and they back back-pedaling more and more on their promises.
It was very lack-luster and kind of a disappointment. I am aware it was a stress test and am in no way slanted negatively towards them, but I was very underwhelmed in my experiences (~3 hours over 2 of the blocks). The root cause imho was a combination of the UI and the new systems implemented therein.
1) Story
While I wasn't expecting a great arc the sad, single quest with 4 sub-parts would take ~20 minutes to do solo unless your system crashed. Mine did twice but only once during the quests, so I had to start all over. The story chose the two decisions for you, railroading you in your script instead of presenting the options they're so proud to brag about in HoT. The events, day/night cycle, and outpost events were interesting but gave little to no indication of what you were supposed to do. 3 times I failed objectives when no enemies appeared, no interactive material spawned for us to 'deliver' and took a long time for use to figure out the 'to do'
2) User-Interface & Integration
So they bragged we would experience some of the new systems, masteries, and abilities for the new expansion. 3 hours in and a few rare people had figured out how to actually add points to their system. I ended up with 5, but I couldn't figure out how to actually spend them even though the mastery page said it was already full. To be honest gliding was the one thing I wanted to try and see how it went. No one was explaining anything in chat to assist other gamers and the vast majority of people didn't get to from what I've discussed with guildies and read in the forums.
3) Instructions
This was possibly the most heinous mistake that occurred and you';ll see the vein in the other points. There was no instruction. There was no intuitive design to implement any of these new systems as such leaving many people more unimpressed than I was. As I mentioned I had 5 mastery points, I had 8 or so tracks "open" to me to view, but everything was either grayed out and locked or already said I was fully trained and locked (1/1, 3/3, etc). I tried the classic double-click, went key-by-key down my board, even the drag and drop ability which left nothing accomplished. I hope they hold another one with better us of their players time. After I explored as much of the map as I cared to I just swapped to normal play and left the Beta with a sickening, empty feeling that didn't sit well for all the hype and attention this has been getting.
All grieving aside it looked pretty. That said in an age where anything sub-photo-realistic is considered retro, stylized, or cheap. I think no more than what I had with the teaser trailers thus far: it has potential but will likely be very small in comparisons to similar expansions [in other games] in both scope and newly accessible areas. This may be a glimmer at what is to come with a fuller-engrossing Season 3 Living World. This could rework a masterful overhaul to the game world we already know. There are too many unknowns and too many theories and speculation about where it all is going.
I previously had the experience the PvP map Conquest. This looks promising but a lot more play will be needed to understand all the new features going on in it. For it ~ 6/10
Still hopeful if a little less optimistic for HoT. 3.5/10 for the limited Beta
**Full Release Update** 5/10 was alright just way too small and limited to be taken serious as a MMO contender. ArenaNet will really have to step it up to keep its population, because everything I've seen and heard in chat and on forums (even from major content creators like Wooden Potatoes) has been steadily declining in favor because they're not keeping the audience entertained between content and they back back-pedaling more and more on their promises.
Saturday, May 16, 2015
The Mighty Quest for Epic Loot (2015)
The Mighty Quest for Epic Loot (2015*)
Ubisoft Montreal
PC
Arcade, Multi, Free2Play
Short one today as I attempted to grab an older title that I thought I'd played sufficiently and would require little refresher and I'd have it reviewed and could move on. At very few if any points in this transaction did any of that happen. Let me start off by assuming that I was in some kind of beta or early access for this because I remember playing it a bit in late 2013 or mid 2014 so the February 2015 date listed on the Steam page is incomplete or outright wrong. This makes no sense to me. The game from what I can gather has also changed drastically in the interval I was not playing to the point I am level 20 and have nothing in my castle but the starter resource nodes (x2). Previously I'd bought or hired traps, creatures, bosses to keep my loot safe and my many other nodes in working order. I couldn't figure out how to manage my lack of resources and the UI has a poor interface that lets you do nothing you want to where it would seem logical, everything must be selected, them toggled what you're doing, then proceed. Clunky does not even begin to cover it and I was so hoping for something a bit better. I guess I should say the reason I came back is in a game code trade I got a pet or something and decided to try it out. Well it follows me around and 'helps' but I have a semi-large, empty castle and now you apparently have to craft or summon the items using mats I did not have nor any idea how to get them. The game had just changed too much and was not being of any use for me to 1) rectify it or b) begin anew so I could learn again. Possibly I will try again on my smurf account (non-standard, usually just for extra storage or extraneous attempts at similar circumstances.
3/10
That said let me tell you why I wish it was better. The comical cartoons and the art style are very nice and approachable. It gives the impression od a Clash of Clans style game without (previously) all the strategic management of resources. I acquaint the minor sarcastic humor to the similar 'kid at heart' jokes present in alot of animated films and kids' shows you see today (I have younger cousins, some of my friends have kids, etc I HAVE seen some recent kiddie programs). There is nothing endearing me to attempt any further progress on my main account as it is free to play anyway so until I get around to doing this, "au revoir."
Ubisoft Montreal
PC
Arcade, Multi, Free2Play
Short one today as I attempted to grab an older title that I thought I'd played sufficiently and would require little refresher and I'd have it reviewed and could move on. At very few if any points in this transaction did any of that happen. Let me start off by assuming that I was in some kind of beta or early access for this because I remember playing it a bit in late 2013 or mid 2014 so the February 2015 date listed on the Steam page is incomplete or outright wrong. This makes no sense to me. The game from what I can gather has also changed drastically in the interval I was not playing to the point I am level 20 and have nothing in my castle but the starter resource nodes (x2). Previously I'd bought or hired traps, creatures, bosses to keep my loot safe and my many other nodes in working order. I couldn't figure out how to manage my lack of resources and the UI has a poor interface that lets you do nothing you want to where it would seem logical, everything must be selected, them toggled what you're doing, then proceed. Clunky does not even begin to cover it and I was so hoping for something a bit better. I guess I should say the reason I came back is in a game code trade I got a pet or something and decided to try it out. Well it follows me around and 'helps' but I have a semi-large, empty castle and now you apparently have to craft or summon the items using mats I did not have nor any idea how to get them. The game had just changed too much and was not being of any use for me to 1) rectify it or b) begin anew so I could learn again. Possibly I will try again on my smurf account (non-standard, usually just for extra storage or extraneous attempts at similar circumstances.
3/10
That said let me tell you why I wish it was better. The comical cartoons and the art style are very nice and approachable. It gives the impression od a Clash of Clans style game without (previously) all the strategic management of resources. I acquaint the minor sarcastic humor to the similar 'kid at heart' jokes present in alot of animated films and kids' shows you see today (I have younger cousins, some of my friends have kids, etc I HAVE seen some recent kiddie programs). There is nothing endearing me to attempt any further progress on my main account as it is free to play anyway so until I get around to doing this, "au revoir."
Thursday, May 14, 2015
Khet 2.0 (2014)
Khet 2.0 (2014)
BlueLine Games
PC
Single/Multi
Arcade
This is a relatively new addition to my collection and without a doubt a byproduct of some Steam sale or various bundle offer recently. That said, it's actually not that bad at all. I was expecting something akin to a clunky crossword or sudoku interface I've seen a dozen or so times in assorted incarnations and formats, but this went fairly smooth. Re-watching the trailer I think I got hooked by the puzzle aspect of it and the clincher--LASERS! Of yeah, you're playing a distinct, technologically superior Egyptian chess with laser-beams! Dr. Evil would be so proud. :)
Like most novice (or better) gamers I dove headfirst into it without consulting rules, instructions, or tutorials (not sure if it has any tbh, but I was in the mood to game). The learning curve is't that steep--use your turn to position or rotate a single piece while attempting o destroy you'r opponent's pharaoh. Mirrors will reflect in the 90-degree direction they are angled to. Anubis (2x each) require to be hit on their side or back to destroy. Scarab pieces can override/replace lesser pieces from your opponent's side otherwise they are locked where you place them. Just over an hour played so far and I felt so giddy I decided to throw a few lines down. I have yet to find a way to destroy scarabs, but I seem to be about a 50/50 W/L on medium difficulty.
Its a fairly involved little puzzle or strategy game with enough variations that it could very easily be applied to a mobile app or such. The back-and-forth gameplay is not timed so this could easily fit in a similar niche to 'Words with Friends' or even the early precursor online chess bouts. For the completionist in some of us there are Steam achievements, cards and therefore badges. It may not be something for everyone but it's a fairly inexpensive (on sale) game that casuals and strategy junkies could appreciate.
7.5/10
Upon reviewing their Steam product page apparently it won a few awards including a Mensa Select recognition. So yeah play this game and feel smart!
BlueLine Games
PC
Single/Multi
Arcade
This is a relatively new addition to my collection and without a doubt a byproduct of some Steam sale or various bundle offer recently. That said, it's actually not that bad at all. I was expecting something akin to a clunky crossword or sudoku interface I've seen a dozen or so times in assorted incarnations and formats, but this went fairly smooth. Re-watching the trailer I think I got hooked by the puzzle aspect of it and the clincher--LASERS! Of yeah, you're playing a distinct, technologically superior Egyptian chess with laser-beams! Dr. Evil would be so proud. :)
Like most novice (or better) gamers I dove headfirst into it without consulting rules, instructions, or tutorials (not sure if it has any tbh, but I was in the mood to game). The learning curve is't that steep--use your turn to position or rotate a single piece while attempting o destroy you'r opponent's pharaoh. Mirrors will reflect in the 90-degree direction they are angled to. Anubis (2x each) require to be hit on their side or back to destroy. Scarab pieces can override/replace lesser pieces from your opponent's side otherwise they are locked where you place them. Just over an hour played so far and I felt so giddy I decided to throw a few lines down. I have yet to find a way to destroy scarabs, but I seem to be about a 50/50 W/L on medium difficulty.
Its a fairly involved little puzzle or strategy game with enough variations that it could very easily be applied to a mobile app or such. The back-and-forth gameplay is not timed so this could easily fit in a similar niche to 'Words with Friends' or even the early precursor online chess bouts. For the completionist in some of us there are Steam achievements, cards and therefore badges. It may not be something for everyone but it's a fairly inexpensive (on sale) game that casuals and strategy junkies could appreciate.
7.5/10
Upon reviewing their Steam product page apparently it won a few awards including a Mensa Select recognition. So yeah play this game and feel smart!
Wednesday, May 6, 2015
Incomplete Games
So as I mentioned with KF2, I'm involved in what has to be my first or second "early access" game I've ever had. I was aware things would change, but I wasn't 100% prepared for how limited it was. Let's be fair and honest for a moment, I'm a full-time grad student, part time employee and I just shelled out $40 for an incomplete game. I'm the kind of cheap bastard gamer that buys hoards of games on the Steam sales, bundles, or just naturally waits for prices to go down. The last game I bought at launch was Borderlands 2 and I never doubted my decision there as my 500+ hours will attest to--for the record, no I've still never beaten it 100% or maxed a character yet.
Getting your "money's worth" is something that always comes up in these discussions because let's face it--you, me, us and the rest of the 99% don't always have all the money we want for all the things that interest us and rarely if ever have the time to enjoy them as much as we would like. Therefore it's a very personal question on whether and how much something is worth to you. I believe upon completion I will be spending well worth my money in game with friends or on my own in the future, I support what they're doing as a game developer, and I have a better than chance they WILL complete this game. Oh yeah, if you weren't aware, all these Alpha/Beta versions, early access, or pre-launch games are never guaranteed. You find them on Steam and sites like Kickstarter and IndieGoGo trying to come up with funds that they don't have or try to drum up interest in games to justify whatever financial support that are getting. I assume Steam vets them sufficiently, but there's 0 accountability on crowd-funded projects to ever be published. It's more of a gamble, one I've participated in a couple of times, but usually only after them meet their requested goals and I'm personally satisfied with what appears to be coming out of there. Two I can readily recall are Banner Saga & Star Citizen. Banner Saga was made by a start-up developer in Austin, TX and this was to be there first big release. I remember being captured first by their artwork and style, this hook led to me watching the video where they showcased a lot of the game already completed (another thing to consider as it can take years to develop games depending on where they are in production). They laid out clear points they wanted to achieve with this money they were asking for and I took the gamble. I enjoyed it and will likely review it at some point, even met one of the lead writers at PAX South earlier this year. Star Citizen is the newest brainchild of the man who most flight simulator or sci-fi games will know by name alone: Chris Roberts. This guy is behind some of the most best selling series in early PC gaming: Wing Commander. His presentation was a testament to what he WANTED to do, very little was flushed out at the time beyond concepts and some very primitive set-ups. But he was making the game regardless and shelled out more informative updates as their project flew thru record-breaking pledges. This baby, whenever it does come out will need me to upgrade to a new rig so I'm not having to run it on minimum settings, but looks jaw-dropping amazing.
Timetables are another thing I briefly mentioned, but are VERY important this day in age with all the instant gratification we've come to expect with the many facets of our lives. Some of these games are completed and just need a bit of polish and fine tuning. These early access period give development teams a great opportunity to stress-test their equipment and play-test their game as a whole. Forums and communities that stem from these experiences are always a mixed bag, but you can usually find quite a few people WANTING to help make the game a better thing. Other projects are just at the treatment or early-on in a design phase, this will take a considerable amount of time to complete and you need to at least be aware of that when you join in--money you're giving away NOW may not get you anything for months or even YEARS down the line. Usually a good team will keep the patrons and backers regularly hyped with updates or teases and announcements with what they're working on. The best ones will give you a calendar that you can follow--even if it changes as the process advances, just knowing they have a measurable goal is a comfort to those of us waiting in the virtual lists.
Beta-testing is a whole other circumstance altogether. For the record I have been involved with 3 closed betas. I was very big into League of Legends and a few years ago a company premiered a new MOBA-style game at QuakeCon entitles SMITE and asked me to be one of the many people trying it out. Many virtual forms were required and had to fill out reports and check lots of tedious little things there, and I didn't really enjoy the game anyway. So after a couple of weeks I filed my last report and moved on. The other one I wish to speak of is a mass-beta event, these are a lot more common closer to a launch. I got into the Elder Scrolls Online with a newsletter all-call to gamers who were interested in trying it out before launch. Only certain portions of the game were available with quests or travel points specifically bugged or left incomplete to keep everyone corralled where the developers wanted us. I participated in 3 of these weekends and filled out a single, short form each. There are some lucky bastards who get paid to play games and critique or identify flaws in the industry. I am not, nor have ever been. I also don't like quite a few genres so I probably wouldn't enjoy it as much as I might think.
If anyone has anything related they'd like to talk about, ask away. These discussion posts are just that to see if there's any interest.
Getting your "money's worth" is something that always comes up in these discussions because let's face it--you, me, us and the rest of the 99% don't always have all the money we want for all the things that interest us and rarely if ever have the time to enjoy them as much as we would like. Therefore it's a very personal question on whether and how much something is worth to you. I believe upon completion I will be spending well worth my money in game with friends or on my own in the future, I support what they're doing as a game developer, and I have a better than chance they WILL complete this game. Oh yeah, if you weren't aware, all these Alpha/Beta versions, early access, or pre-launch games are never guaranteed. You find them on Steam and sites like Kickstarter and IndieGoGo trying to come up with funds that they don't have or try to drum up interest in games to justify whatever financial support that are getting. I assume Steam vets them sufficiently, but there's 0 accountability on crowd-funded projects to ever be published. It's more of a gamble, one I've participated in a couple of times, but usually only after them meet their requested goals and I'm personally satisfied with what appears to be coming out of there. Two I can readily recall are Banner Saga & Star Citizen. Banner Saga was made by a start-up developer in Austin, TX and this was to be there first big release. I remember being captured first by their artwork and style, this hook led to me watching the video where they showcased a lot of the game already completed (another thing to consider as it can take years to develop games depending on where they are in production). They laid out clear points they wanted to achieve with this money they were asking for and I took the gamble. I enjoyed it and will likely review it at some point, even met one of the lead writers at PAX South earlier this year. Star Citizen is the newest brainchild of the man who most flight simulator or sci-fi games will know by name alone: Chris Roberts. This guy is behind some of the most best selling series in early PC gaming: Wing Commander. His presentation was a testament to what he WANTED to do, very little was flushed out at the time beyond concepts and some very primitive set-ups. But he was making the game regardless and shelled out more informative updates as their project flew thru record-breaking pledges. This baby, whenever it does come out will need me to upgrade to a new rig so I'm not having to run it on minimum settings, but looks jaw-dropping amazing.
Timetables are another thing I briefly mentioned, but are VERY important this day in age with all the instant gratification we've come to expect with the many facets of our lives. Some of these games are completed and just need a bit of polish and fine tuning. These early access period give development teams a great opportunity to stress-test their equipment and play-test their game as a whole. Forums and communities that stem from these experiences are always a mixed bag, but you can usually find quite a few people WANTING to help make the game a better thing. Other projects are just at the treatment or early-on in a design phase, this will take a considerable amount of time to complete and you need to at least be aware of that when you join in--money you're giving away NOW may not get you anything for months or even YEARS down the line. Usually a good team will keep the patrons and backers regularly hyped with updates or teases and announcements with what they're working on. The best ones will give you a calendar that you can follow--even if it changes as the process advances, just knowing they have a measurable goal is a comfort to those of us waiting in the virtual lists.
Beta-testing is a whole other circumstance altogether. For the record I have been involved with 3 closed betas. I was very big into League of Legends and a few years ago a company premiered a new MOBA-style game at QuakeCon entitles SMITE and asked me to be one of the many people trying it out. Many virtual forms were required and had to fill out reports and check lots of tedious little things there, and I didn't really enjoy the game anyway. So after a couple of weeks I filed my last report and moved on. The other one I wish to speak of is a mass-beta event, these are a lot more common closer to a launch. I got into the Elder Scrolls Online with a newsletter all-call to gamers who were interested in trying it out before launch. Only certain portions of the game were available with quests or travel points specifically bugged or left incomplete to keep everyone corralled where the developers wanted us. I participated in 3 of these weekends and filled out a single, short form each. There are some lucky bastards who get paid to play games and critique or identify flaws in the industry. I am not, nor have ever been. I also don't like quite a few genres so I probably wouldn't enjoy it as much as I might think.
If anyone has anything related they'd like to talk about, ask away. These discussion posts are just that to see if there's any interest.
Killing Floor 2 (2015*) Early Access
Killing Floor 2 (2015*)
Tripwire Interactive
PC/Steam
Single, Co-Op, Multi
Instance
So one of the primary reasons I did the first one so early was I had been planning on getting the sequel on launch. However all the hype and demand and "something" from the many throngs of followers online prompted Tripwire to release an 'Early Access' version of the game in late April. I have enjoyed it thoroughly whether just jumping into matches with randos or having a few friends join me who also got it. That said this is a [better than] Beta release. Only 4/10 perks or classes are available and only 3 maps are present at this juncture, with no solo play mode yet. I've followed all of the developer diaries thus far (only 4 or so) and watched a couple of let's plays that came out earlier this year. I will not be regurgitating soundbites for you, but know that more information is out there and likely to continue until an official launch is performed.
Location, location, location:
That's it--3 maps: Burning Paris (France); Biotics Lab (Horzine HQ); Outpost (aka Hoth on some servers). I love these maps so far. They are large enough to warrant exploration and provide actual strategy for their new destructible environments they've implemented in the game. The one issue I've found is sometimes things get destroyed while you weren't there. And I'm not talking about a chair or something, but entire dorrs or [glass] walls that we purposefully avoided to leave them for later wave use are destroyed off-camera. For the time we're unsure if that is truly a bug or just a random affect of the zed (C) invasion. Makes for an interesting challenge so long as it's not persistent every time we do that map.
Perky, Classless Bastards
More of an homage to the semi-filthy language was associate, expect, nigh on demand from this game developer--and we are not disappointed. Good selection of sayings each character and/or class has could only ask for more on the basis I will probably hear and be tired of them whenever my gaming group starts the grinding of skill levels. Currently we have Berserker, Commando, Medic, and Support. I have never been fond of not expect to be of the Berserker--despite my up-close-and-personal play-style on similar games, this is just not my cup of tea. Maybe with more experience and practice. Support is one I have a feint interest in, but haven't had the opportunity to play it much--mostly due to the fact friends or randos, just too many Supports on most maps. Commando is my only niche perk thus-far released. I love the feel, control, and style of the Commando and the visual tracking of stealth stalkers is more convenient than most other starter perks imho. Finally we go to the surprise leader for me the Medic. I am more often than not on this baby for many reasons. The weapons systems here are phenomenal and so unique with the blue iridescent glow. It also makes me very useful to the rest of the team, not to mention that by healing and killing I typically go up a skill level each successful win. Sure that will change as we go higher.
The only negative I have has to do with the "Early Access" issue where everything is working but nothing is guaranteed to remain as is. Perks, achievements, in-game statistics, etc will all be reset multiple times as they include more features, perks, of this build. I wasn't expressly aware of this prior to purchase but I can understand why it needs to be this way. I would feel much more profoundly pissed if this weren't an online game where you're equally dependent of the other guy as much as yourself. If makes sense and new things come into play and get added some re-shuffling and adjustments are very likely. They've actually done a helluva job interfacing with the community to help wart out bugs and errors in what is released. They seem to be a constant presence on the forums and fairly transparent in why things are changing from time to time.
Can't justify perfection as it is still incomplete, but I do love what I see and have played so far. I love the fact that the entire game is being built so that the modding community can have immediate and ease of access once it gets off the ground. I expect this to rise with its official launch but for now, I give it a strong 8/10.
Tripwire Interactive
PC/Steam
Single, Co-Op, Multi
Instance
So one of the primary reasons I did the first one so early was I had been planning on getting the sequel on launch. However all the hype and demand and "something" from the many throngs of followers online prompted Tripwire to release an 'Early Access' version of the game in late April. I have enjoyed it thoroughly whether just jumping into matches with randos or having a few friends join me who also got it. That said this is a [better than] Beta release. Only 4/10 perks or classes are available and only 3 maps are present at this juncture, with no solo play mode yet. I've followed all of the developer diaries thus far (only 4 or so) and watched a couple of let's plays that came out earlier this year. I will not be regurgitating soundbites for you, but know that more information is out there and likely to continue until an official launch is performed.
Location, location, location:
That's it--3 maps: Burning Paris (France); Biotics Lab (Horzine HQ); Outpost (aka Hoth on some servers). I love these maps so far. They are large enough to warrant exploration and provide actual strategy for their new destructible environments they've implemented in the game. The one issue I've found is sometimes things get destroyed while you weren't there. And I'm not talking about a chair or something, but entire dorrs or [glass] walls that we purposefully avoided to leave them for later wave use are destroyed off-camera. For the time we're unsure if that is truly a bug or just a random affect of the zed (C) invasion. Makes for an interesting challenge so long as it's not persistent every time we do that map.
Perky, Classless Bastards
More of an homage to the semi-filthy language was associate, expect, nigh on demand from this game developer--and we are not disappointed. Good selection of sayings each character and/or class has could only ask for more on the basis I will probably hear and be tired of them whenever my gaming group starts the grinding of skill levels. Currently we have Berserker, Commando, Medic, and Support. I have never been fond of not expect to be of the Berserker--despite my up-close-and-personal play-style on similar games, this is just not my cup of tea. Maybe with more experience and practice. Support is one I have a feint interest in, but haven't had the opportunity to play it much--mostly due to the fact friends or randos, just too many Supports on most maps. Commando is my only niche perk thus-far released. I love the feel, control, and style of the Commando and the visual tracking of stealth stalkers is more convenient than most other starter perks imho. Finally we go to the surprise leader for me the Medic. I am more often than not on this baby for many reasons. The weapons systems here are phenomenal and so unique with the blue iridescent glow. It also makes me very useful to the rest of the team, not to mention that by healing and killing I typically go up a skill level each successful win. Sure that will change as we go higher.
The only negative I have has to do with the "Early Access" issue where everything is working but nothing is guaranteed to remain as is. Perks, achievements, in-game statistics, etc will all be reset multiple times as they include more features, perks, of this build. I wasn't expressly aware of this prior to purchase but I can understand why it needs to be this way. I would feel much more profoundly pissed if this weren't an online game where you're equally dependent of the other guy as much as yourself. If makes sense and new things come into play and get added some re-shuffling and adjustments are very likely. They've actually done a helluva job interfacing with the community to help wart out bugs and errors in what is released. They seem to be a constant presence on the forums and fairly transparent in why things are changing from time to time.
Can't justify perfection as it is still incomplete, but I do love what I see and have played so far. I love the fact that the entire game is being built so that the modding community can have immediate and ease of access once it gets off the ground. I expect this to rise with its official launch but for now, I give it a strong 8/10.
Saturday, April 18, 2015
Virgil Stoneblade (NPC)
Virgil Stoneblade was an aged gambler and drunkard who took a fickle shine to Varyn. On good days he would teach him games of chance over cheese and crackers or how to recognize or manipulate odds into your favor. On bad days, the salty old drunk might throw you out with a new bruise across your jaw or a slight limp. On one particularly cloudy day, Varyn seeks out Virgil and finds him in a darkened corner of his favorite (i.e. cheapest) watering hole with a knife in his side. Before the normal bar-flies and crowd take notice, however, Varyn pockets the Dwarf's purse which was always kept off his body but within reach. This was a typical habit for the gambler that was enacted when or where markers might be called in.
Virgil was an older Dwarf, well past the comfortable 250 years where many still worked on or near the docks. He wasn't precisely lame, but he did use a short stick to help steady himself as he walked about town. It was even money whether this was for some physical ailment or his massive consumption. Out on the streets of Bruinstead, you never saw him without a small knit cap; faded and worn, it had seen a fair number of winters itself. Mind you, the second he crossed a threshold it surreptitiously appeared in his coat pocket, exposing his deep asymmetric widow's peaks and what remained of his thinning silver mane straining forward that it might tickle his forehead. His eyes were somewhat sunken into their sockets, but that gave his gold-rimmed eyes a noted glimmer when he spoke excitedly. He held a broad flat nose, much like the rest of his kin, with invisible scars from past breakings. He kept a modified cut of his facial hair, a callback to his time on the sea. Feathery mutton chops laid beneath a voluminous, bushy mustache, the vast majority of which matched his silver tresses, or what was left of them, save his unkempt eyebrows and an odd swath of color running down each cheek which resonated with a youthful brindle hue. If ever he rambled on for more than a few words the mustache appeared to be trying to loose his lips from the rest of his head like scissors, but with the aid of his dimples gave the impression of a flume-operated pipe when he smoked.
The pipe itself was a quaint little thing. Obviously made from a hollowed out claw, the origin of which often changed to suit the most recent rendition of stories that spewed forth on pleasant, mead-laden nights. Virgil was a philosopher with a caustic wit which brought smiles all-around and often, but kept friends few and far between. He rarely got too specific about his role aboard and abroad, but he was old sea dog at heart and could spin a clever a yarn as any decent bard. Additionally Virgil kept his namesake, a large Bowie-sized stone knife with a driftwood handle in a shoulder strap beneath his left arm. Dice and cards were among his most fond games, but rarely did he turn away from fiddling with chance. He was a friendly gentleman, if a nervous sort, but ambidextrously deadly from across the room with a dagger (or dart as the case may be). Often uttering unique colloquialisms when he expressed himself there, "Quit monkeying with the drift wood (discard pile)" or spewing awkward, personal entreatments to Bahamut (this realm's Luck deity).
((Visually think of a stocky Yosemite Sam, with the temperament of Doc Holliday))
Virgil's Stone Blade is above-sized for a dagger, but not quite large enough to be considered a short sword, so it uses a 1d5 or 1/2(1d10) when calculating damage. (doubtful will ever come up)
Virgil was an older Dwarf, well past the comfortable 250 years where many still worked on or near the docks. He wasn't precisely lame, but he did use a short stick to help steady himself as he walked about town. It was even money whether this was for some physical ailment or his massive consumption. Out on the streets of Bruinstead, you never saw him without a small knit cap; faded and worn, it had seen a fair number of winters itself. Mind you, the second he crossed a threshold it surreptitiously appeared in his coat pocket, exposing his deep asymmetric widow's peaks and what remained of his thinning silver mane straining forward that it might tickle his forehead. His eyes were somewhat sunken into their sockets, but that gave his gold-rimmed eyes a noted glimmer when he spoke excitedly. He held a broad flat nose, much like the rest of his kin, with invisible scars from past breakings. He kept a modified cut of his facial hair, a callback to his time on the sea. Feathery mutton chops laid beneath a voluminous, bushy mustache, the vast majority of which matched his silver tresses, or what was left of them, save his unkempt eyebrows and an odd swath of color running down each cheek which resonated with a youthful brindle hue. If ever he rambled on for more than a few words the mustache appeared to be trying to loose his lips from the rest of his head like scissors, but with the aid of his dimples gave the impression of a flume-operated pipe when he smoked.
The pipe itself was a quaint little thing. Obviously made from a hollowed out claw, the origin of which often changed to suit the most recent rendition of stories that spewed forth on pleasant, mead-laden nights. Virgil was a philosopher with a caustic wit which brought smiles all-around and often, but kept friends few and far between. He rarely got too specific about his role aboard and abroad, but he was old sea dog at heart and could spin a clever a yarn as any decent bard. Additionally Virgil kept his namesake, a large Bowie-sized stone knife with a driftwood handle in a shoulder strap beneath his left arm. Dice and cards were among his most fond games, but rarely did he turn away from fiddling with chance. He was a friendly gentleman, if a nervous sort, but ambidextrously deadly from across the room with a dagger (or dart as the case may be). Often uttering unique colloquialisms when he expressed himself there, "Quit monkeying with the drift wood (discard pile)" or spewing awkward, personal entreatments to Bahamut (this realm's Luck deity).
((Visually think of a stocky Yosemite Sam, with the temperament of Doc Holliday))
Virgil's Stone Blade is above-sized for a dagger, but not quite large enough to be considered a short sword, so it uses a 1d5 or 1/2(1d10) when calculating damage. (doubtful will ever come up)
Friday, April 10, 2015
Varyn, Half-Orc Barbarian
**Updated with expanded material about NPCs**
Name: Varyn (Last Name Unknown) [Wrenwing]
Race: Half-Orc
Class: Barbarian
System: D&D 5E, but Homebrewed World
Descriptive References: Pirates, Vikings, Norse, land & naval encounters, etc
Personality Trait - I sleep with my back to a wall, all I own is wrapped in a bundle in my arms.
Ideals - Community. We have to take care of each other, because no one else is going to do it.
Bonds - I owe a debt I can never repay to the person who took pity on me.
Flaws - It's not stealing if I need It more than someone else.
Backstory (modified Urchin BG):
Orphaned at 10, Varyn grew up on the streets. Few if any ever acknowledged his presence unless he got in their way. He had no one to watch over or to provide for him, so he learned to provide for himself. He fought fiercely over food and kept a constant watch out for other desperate souls who might steal from him. Varyn slept on rooftops and in alleyways, exposed to the elements, and endured sickness without the advantage of medicine or a place to recuperate. He's survived despite all odds, and did so through cunning, strength, speed, or some combination of each.
Unknown (Father) Male Orc. Has never been regarded by name (to Varyn's knowledge), always refered to as "your father" by his mother. His handwriting is assumed to be the author of the note (below) concerning the scabbard. Unsure whether anyone in town knows.**
Marin (Mother) Human Female. After [whatever happened with father], she carves out a sparse living as a seamstress/washer-woman/thatcher. Some of her duties aside from child-rearing included darning socks, re-stitching the occasional sail or net, clean or create garments as needed by the community. As such she taught Varyn some basic sewing so he could repair simple tears and replace buttons. Died in a house-fire when Varyn was 10 years old.** After the fire, one of the few things recovered was an ornate scabbard (trinket/background item) and note wrapped in burlap and concealed within the floorboards in his mother's room.
[Note]** No person's names are mentioned specifically, but they give reference to this scabbard being held secret until called upon. Additional fluff leads Varyn to suspect that it was penned by his father and the scabbard itself may be more important than just a source of quick pawn-money. The letter is signed not with a signature but by a blue wax seal emblazoned at the bottom of a stylized raven inscribed with the word 'Wrenwing,' presumably from a signet ring or stamp.
Otherwise he's pulled the odd jobs or favors for the townsfolk, whether too old or timid to raid properly, so most everyone knows who he is if nothing else -- "a strong, young back that'll do much for little." (generic racial or derogatory names akin to 'sport' 'kid' etc are popular). Most make small chat about the weather and current on-goings as you imagine they have little to no visitors otherwise. The uncommon "warrior-that-survives-to-old-age" always asks why you're not raiding with the other young me, etc. (motivation to enlist).
Osvin (Pet) Red Squirrel with Black-tipped ears. Found injured by Varyn one evening hiding from an owl, nursed back and now his companion. Usually hangs out beneath his tunic's collar.
Virgil Stoneblade (Mentor) Male Dwarf.
^^See related post
Name: Varyn (Last Name Unknown) [Wrenwing]
Race: Half-Orc
Class: Barbarian
System: D&D 5E, but Homebrewed World
Descriptive References: Pirates, Vikings, Norse, land & naval encounters, etc
Personality Trait - I sleep with my back to a wall, all I own is wrapped in a bundle in my arms.
Ideals - Community. We have to take care of each other, because no one else is going to do it.
Bonds - I owe a debt I can never repay to the person who took pity on me.
Flaws - It's not stealing if I need It more than someone else.
Backstory (modified Urchin BG):
Orphaned at 10, Varyn grew up on the streets. Few if any ever acknowledged his presence unless he got in their way. He had no one to watch over or to provide for him, so he learned to provide for himself. He fought fiercely over food and kept a constant watch out for other desperate souls who might steal from him. Varyn slept on rooftops and in alleyways, exposed to the elements, and endured sickness without the advantage of medicine or a place to recuperate. He's survived despite all odds, and did so through cunning, strength, speed, or some combination of each.
Unknown (Father) Male Orc. Has never been regarded by name (to Varyn's knowledge), always refered to as "your father" by his mother. His handwriting is assumed to be the author of the note (below) concerning the scabbard. Unsure whether anyone in town knows.**
Marin (Mother) Human Female. After [whatever happened with father], she carves out a sparse living as a seamstress/washer-woman/thatcher. Some of her duties aside from child-rearing included darning socks, re-stitching the occasional sail or net, clean or create garments as needed by the community. As such she taught Varyn some basic sewing so he could repair simple tears and replace buttons. Died in a house-fire when Varyn was 10 years old.** After the fire, one of the few things recovered was an ornate scabbard (trinket/background item) and note wrapped in burlap and concealed within the floorboards in his mother's room.
[Note]** No person's names are mentioned specifically, but they give reference to this scabbard being held secret until called upon. Additional fluff leads Varyn to suspect that it was penned by his father and the scabbard itself may be more important than just a source of quick pawn-money. The letter is signed not with a signature but by a blue wax seal emblazoned at the bottom of a stylized raven inscribed with the word 'Wrenwing,' presumably from a signet ring or stamp.
Otherwise he's pulled the odd jobs or favors for the townsfolk, whether too old or timid to raid properly, so most everyone knows who he is if nothing else -- "a strong, young back that'll do much for little." (generic racial or derogatory names akin to 'sport' 'kid' etc are popular). Most make small chat about the weather and current on-goings as you imagine they have little to no visitors otherwise. The uncommon "warrior-that-survives-to-old-age" always asks why you're not raiding with the other young me, etc. (motivation to enlist).
Osvin (Pet) Red Squirrel with Black-tipped ears. Found injured by Varyn one evening hiding from an owl, nursed back and now his companion. Usually hangs out beneath his tunic's collar.
Virgil Stoneblade (Mentor) Male Dwarf.
^^See related post
Saturday, April 4, 2015
Brief 5E Update
So my rpg table is finally returning to the fray as we tackle the 5E D&D. We will be running a homebrew version of the world my original DM created. Mid-Fantasy, non-gunpowder generic. The area and setting we will be interacting with is Norse/Viking based with more details to follow when we actually sit down in a few weeks. We did have a "session zero" where we discussed the setting and as a group attempted to build their characters and give our player input to the DM.
I will have his backstory and profile up as soon as we meet once due in most part to the fact that I have to balance my story along with the other 3 players and has to fit within the DM's idea of the realm. Basically whatever gets approved will be posted.
What I can tell you is my rolls:
Half-Orc
Barbarian
15-15-13-13-9 (4d6, drop lowest rolls)
I'm excited guys. :D
I will have his backstory and profile up as soon as we meet once due in most part to the fact that I have to balance my story along with the other 3 players and has to fit within the DM's idea of the realm. Basically whatever gets approved will be posted.
What I can tell you is my rolls:
Half-Orc
Barbarian
15-15-13-13-9 (4d6, drop lowest rolls)
I'm excited guys. :D
AudioSurf (2008)
AudioSurf (2008)
Dylan Fitterer (Indie)
PC
Single
Arcade
This is a quirky niche game that does sufficiently well what dozens of others have accomplished better. I can't say I didn't like it because something that combines your own personal music (or audio books as I got bored one night) with an F-Zero-esque game is definitely worth a sale purchase and try.
Let me say by a seemingly independent individual this is amazingly done, something I would expect from an upper level college game project (at time of publication) or low-industry end release. Well done sir, my hat is off to you (truly). It has a few ability differences with a limited number of ships to select from, a small assortment of game types, and a frequently steep difficulty curve. The real problem where this falls short for me is the bland progression and limiting versatility. The difficulty of the game is highly HIGHLY dependent on the audio files you load, the game type/mode differences can be so subtle sometimes you don't realize you accidentally selected hard with a slow, soft song--but are ready to curse the gods and your creator when you throw a hard n' heavy song on normal mode.
This falls into a growing chunk of games who do something similar if not exactly alike with nuance-differences to set this apart. As much enjoyment as I myself for 3 hours, I couldn't find anything that set this above or beyond, or achieved through something that gives it a uniqueness I would return to at some future nostalgia pangs. I do expect to review more of them as I go, but I'll purposely spread them around to avoid the copy+paste trend of the reviews.
3/10
Dylan Fitterer (Indie)
PC
Single
Arcade
This is a quirky niche game that does sufficiently well what dozens of others have accomplished better. I can't say I didn't like it because something that combines your own personal music (or audio books as I got bored one night) with an F-Zero-esque game is definitely worth a sale purchase and try.
Let me say by a seemingly independent individual this is amazingly done, something I would expect from an upper level college game project (at time of publication) or low-industry end release. Well done sir, my hat is off to you (truly). It has a few ability differences with a limited number of ships to select from, a small assortment of game types, and a frequently steep difficulty curve. The real problem where this falls short for me is the bland progression and limiting versatility. The difficulty of the game is highly HIGHLY dependent on the audio files you load, the game type/mode differences can be so subtle sometimes you don't realize you accidentally selected hard with a slow, soft song--but are ready to curse the gods and your creator when you throw a hard n' heavy song on normal mode.
This falls into a growing chunk of games who do something similar if not exactly alike with nuance-differences to set this apart. As much enjoyment as I myself for 3 hours, I couldn't find anything that set this above or beyond, or achieved through something that gives it a uniqueness I would return to at some future nostalgia pangs. I do expect to review more of them as I go, but I'll purposely spread them around to avoid the copy+paste trend of the reviews.
3/10
Saturday, February 21, 2015
Blizzard(c), Nevermore Asshats
i.e. World of Warcraft, Diablo, Starcraft, Hearthstone, etc...
If the name Blizzard means nothing to you, I can't hazard a guess as to what you're doing on a page dedicated to gaming. For the better part of 30 years they've been one of the most go-to studios for video games in the industry. They literally developed the MMO genre to create the most successful franchise currently in said niche's industry. They have championed the pleebs of the internets in some aspects, catered to the mindless raid-monkeys at times, tried to incentivize and cajole their patrons out of more and more of their money as the months trudge onward through time. After many years of loyalty I bid them a heavy farewell and a hearty "fuck off!"
Honesty up front. I have never played Starcraft. I have zero interest in Hearthstone and their coming soon MOBA adapation of their titles. I got into Diablo 2 well after release of the expansions when I joined friends in LAN runs. I did play WoW for far too many years thru college, but have been clean since ~2009. Included I splurged on Collector's Editions for Burning Crusade, Wrath of the Lich King, and Cataclysm. I also pre-ordered two Diablo 3 and made my first ebay snipe (a practice I've abhorred in others but netted me a one-time profit that was desperately needed at the time). I've had my typical spats that come with committing that much time to any endeavor--things that are cute, fun, or eccentric devolve into time-consuming, unskippable, repetition-grinding souless puppet shows that have you going thru the motions more than anything. I've personally lost count of the number f times I've gotten physically frustrated with their online or phone tech support for bug, billing, or technical issues. For my brothers in these arms, their continued ineptitude astounds me and I've seen some shit in both the industry and their clientele...
Now the majority of people do this from time to time. They take hiatuses from 'involved' or repetative games and may come pick them up again at a later date. Often this is preceeded by the release of serious technical overhauls, additions of sought after content expansion, or just forgotten curiocuty ("Why did I ever leave?" only to be reminded shortly thereafter). I don't want to downplay this so I'm making it perfectly clear--I AM DONE WITH THEM 100%. There are many varied nuances to why I'm leaving but as this is a blog and not a discertation I will attempt to convey the most crucial and still grant them the minimal of courtesies I still hold for them.
The story. Warcraft & Diablo had some of the most well-versed canon in a video game at their peek times. Those have massively been castrated and belittled for flash and presentation in lieu for the all-mighty dollar as they have literally made a career of ret-conning their own material. For the uninitialized this means they change the past of their story in future releases to build up something new they've not developed yet. It's very irritating to people who play those style of games FOR the story lines and plot devices--I mean come on guys what does the RP stand for in MMORPG anyway? Warcraft with their expansions continued to invalidate everything you did prior to the newest shiniest new turd they released. Made it awesome for someone to go plow thru zones almost unimpeeded by competing players but that takes away from the MMO atmosphere. It also belittles players who have bragging rights to some of their earlier achievements, i.e before it was nerfed, before it was dumbed down for casuals, etc. Introducing collection and achievement systems that DIDN'T take any previous actions into account were more insulting to some of us who could not go back and beat something again because we PUGged or just got really, really lucky on a drop roll or something. I admit I'm a bit of an achievement hound and showing off stuff can be nice but makes things get taxing when you have to re-complete content that you're well and truly not down for.
Money. I had previously thought it to be the only well-known MMO to still be subscription based game out there, but was recently proven wrong as another veil from my past contacted me about re-linking and returning to my account, Dark Age of Camelot--which despite the 13 year anniversary just passing is still subscription only. Anyone who was aware of Everquest in the day knew you could find rare items and sell them on ebay or a similar site for real-world money. There was some* of this going on but due to their drop-system was more of a 'hire me and we complete _____ until you get your macguffin." It's also one of the first games I was ever aware at for the volume and exploitation of micro-transactions over the internet. In today's market we're used to the ideals of DLC or pay-to-play games on our smartphones or even free--to-play/pay-to-win versions coming up on their stores daily. Blizzard pioneered parts of this business model with exclusives available thru online stores or live events they would attend or host (BlizzCon). Citing the most heinous Diablo 3 real-money auction house would just be too easy but yeah it existed. Now this week we get a press release stating new micro-transactions will be added to the game. I can only assume they're to unlock new dungeons or loot tables that were previously attainable to all within the game.
Security & scrutiny. Here's the cherry on top and the final nail in their coffin as far as I, personally, am concerned. Remember when I said they fought FOR the users on occasion (lol at Tron reference). Well in the mid-2000s when hacking financial data thru game accounts became a serious threat they implemented what was one of the simplest fixes to the problem imaginable--a key dongle. It would generate a random number that was tied to their servers so only if the username, password, AND authenticator were correct could you access the information. Fairly genius and cheap to implement fix. I will also say I credit that at least in part to why my info was NOT hacked the 2-3 times I'm aware of Blizzard getting hit. Now you could send away money for a keychain or just download a free app for your smartphone. Guess which one this cheap bastard on the other side of your monitor chose :). In all the years since I got it it has let me down exactly twice. Once about 5 years ago after x-months not logging in it became desynced with the host servers. It was a fairly simple process to unbind it from my account and then re-connect it~2 hours just with passwords, verification, and confirming identiies, etc. This is where we start to see the neurosis of their paranoia. I'm all about protecting my information but I'm spending almost as much time getting into my own info that I KNOW that a hacker would theoretically spend brute-forcing his way into the encryption. The most recent authenticator issue was about 3 months ago when again it desynced. This one I'm not willing to contribute to inactivity cause I was playing D3 with friends every few weeks. Anyway expected the same tedious, but simple fix. untold man hours later going thru my account, speaking with tech support tiers 1-2, and bouncing emails back and forth with them I am informed that my account has been locked due to new security measures in place. By unbinding my authenticator to fix an desync issue I had engaged one such protocol and I would not be allowed to access ANY of my accounts and such without providing a copy of a photo id from an official documentation source (driver's license, passport, etc).
So Blizzard(c), I bid you a not-so fond farewell, waving my middle fingers high in proclamation and for added emphasis to say I'm done with you. I don't care if you donate 100% proceeds to cancer research. I don't care if your game you continually shit on goes free-to-play. I don't care if you come to my house and offer to pay me some of the untold (but sadly calculated) thousands of dollars I spent on subscription fees back--well you might get my attention briefly if I'm being 100% honest, but it'd have to be a competitive rate in this economy.
If the name Blizzard means nothing to you, I can't hazard a guess as to what you're doing on a page dedicated to gaming. For the better part of 30 years they've been one of the most go-to studios for video games in the industry. They literally developed the MMO genre to create the most successful franchise currently in said niche's industry. They have championed the pleebs of the internets in some aspects, catered to the mindless raid-monkeys at times, tried to incentivize and cajole their patrons out of more and more of their money as the months trudge onward through time. After many years of loyalty I bid them a heavy farewell and a hearty "fuck off!"
Honesty up front. I have never played Starcraft. I have zero interest in Hearthstone and their coming soon MOBA adapation of their titles. I got into Diablo 2 well after release of the expansions when I joined friends in LAN runs. I did play WoW for far too many years thru college, but have been clean since ~2009. Included I splurged on Collector's Editions for Burning Crusade, Wrath of the Lich King, and Cataclysm. I also pre-ordered two Diablo 3 and made my first ebay snipe (a practice I've abhorred in others but netted me a one-time profit that was desperately needed at the time). I've had my typical spats that come with committing that much time to any endeavor--things that are cute, fun, or eccentric devolve into time-consuming, unskippable, repetition-grinding souless puppet shows that have you going thru the motions more than anything. I've personally lost count of the number f times I've gotten physically frustrated with their online or phone tech support for bug, billing, or technical issues. For my brothers in these arms, their continued ineptitude astounds me and I've seen some shit in both the industry and their clientele...
Now the majority of people do this from time to time. They take hiatuses from 'involved' or repetative games and may come pick them up again at a later date. Often this is preceeded by the release of serious technical overhauls, additions of sought after content expansion, or just forgotten curiocuty ("Why did I ever leave?" only to be reminded shortly thereafter). I don't want to downplay this so I'm making it perfectly clear--I AM DONE WITH THEM 100%. There are many varied nuances to why I'm leaving but as this is a blog and not a discertation I will attempt to convey the most crucial and still grant them the minimal of courtesies I still hold for them.
The story. Warcraft & Diablo had some of the most well-versed canon in a video game at their peek times. Those have massively been castrated and belittled for flash and presentation in lieu for the all-mighty dollar as they have literally made a career of ret-conning their own material. For the uninitialized this means they change the past of their story in future releases to build up something new they've not developed yet. It's very irritating to people who play those style of games FOR the story lines and plot devices--I mean come on guys what does the RP stand for in MMORPG anyway? Warcraft with their expansions continued to invalidate everything you did prior to the newest shiniest new turd they released. Made it awesome for someone to go plow thru zones almost unimpeeded by competing players but that takes away from the MMO atmosphere. It also belittles players who have bragging rights to some of their earlier achievements, i.e before it was nerfed, before it was dumbed down for casuals, etc. Introducing collection and achievement systems that DIDN'T take any previous actions into account were more insulting to some of us who could not go back and beat something again because we PUGged or just got really, really lucky on a drop roll or something. I admit I'm a bit of an achievement hound and showing off stuff can be nice but makes things get taxing when you have to re-complete content that you're well and truly not down for.
Money. I had previously thought it to be the only well-known MMO to still be subscription based game out there, but was recently proven wrong as another veil from my past contacted me about re-linking and returning to my account, Dark Age of Camelot--which despite the 13 year anniversary just passing is still subscription only. Anyone who was aware of Everquest in the day knew you could find rare items and sell them on ebay or a similar site for real-world money. There was some* of this going on but due to their drop-system was more of a 'hire me and we complete _____ until you get your macguffin." It's also one of the first games I was ever aware at for the volume and exploitation of micro-transactions over the internet. In today's market we're used to the ideals of DLC or pay-to-play games on our smartphones or even free--to-play/pay-to-win versions coming up on their stores daily. Blizzard pioneered parts of this business model with exclusives available thru online stores or live events they would attend or host (BlizzCon). Citing the most heinous Diablo 3 real-money auction house would just be too easy but yeah it existed. Now this week we get a press release stating new micro-transactions will be added to the game. I can only assume they're to unlock new dungeons or loot tables that were previously attainable to all within the game.
Security & scrutiny. Here's the cherry on top and the final nail in their coffin as far as I, personally, am concerned. Remember when I said they fought FOR the users on occasion (lol at Tron reference). Well in the mid-2000s when hacking financial data thru game accounts became a serious threat they implemented what was one of the simplest fixes to the problem imaginable--a key dongle. It would generate a random number that was tied to their servers so only if the username, password, AND authenticator were correct could you access the information. Fairly genius and cheap to implement fix. I will also say I credit that at least in part to why my info was NOT hacked the 2-3 times I'm aware of Blizzard getting hit. Now you could send away money for a keychain or just download a free app for your smartphone. Guess which one this cheap bastard on the other side of your monitor chose :). In all the years since I got it it has let me down exactly twice. Once about 5 years ago after x-months not logging in it became desynced with the host servers. It was a fairly simple process to unbind it from my account and then re-connect it~2 hours just with passwords, verification, and confirming identiies, etc. This is where we start to see the neurosis of their paranoia. I'm all about protecting my information but I'm spending almost as much time getting into my own info that I KNOW that a hacker would theoretically spend brute-forcing his way into the encryption. The most recent authenticator issue was about 3 months ago when again it desynced. This one I'm not willing to contribute to inactivity cause I was playing D3 with friends every few weeks. Anyway expected the same tedious, but simple fix. untold man hours later going thru my account, speaking with tech support tiers 1-2, and bouncing emails back and forth with them I am informed that my account has been locked due to new security measures in place. By unbinding my authenticator to fix an desync issue I had engaged one such protocol and I would not be allowed to access ANY of my accounts and such without providing a copy of a photo id from an official documentation source (driver's license, passport, etc).
So Blizzard(c), I bid you a not-so fond farewell, waving my middle fingers high in proclamation and for added emphasis to say I'm done with you. I don't care if you donate 100% proceeds to cancer research. I don't care if your game you continually shit on goes free-to-play. I don't care if you come to my house and offer to pay me some of the untold (but sadly calculated) thousands of dollars I spent on subscription fees back--well you might get my attention briefly if I'm being 100% honest, but it'd have to be a competitive rate in this economy.
Sunday, February 15, 2015
League of Legends (2009) Profile Stats & Lists
So I won't be calculating the RP/IP I've spent--not that I'm sure I even have access to the information, but here's my stats, skins and whatever else I can pull off the UI.
Level 30
User-User Interaction Ratings
Friendly 9
Helpful 2
Teamwork 12
Honorable Opponent 0
(Classic)
Takedowns 2820
Monsters & Minion Kills 44497
Wins 148
(Dominion)
Takedowns 204
Monsters & Minion Kills 280
Wins 9
(ARAM)
Takedowns 0
Monsters & Minion Kills 0
Wins 0
I don't pretend that these stats are excellent in any way but I was curious when I wrote the breakdown review yesterday. I like the personalized rating system but was already mostly out of my LoL routine when they implemented it. I don't really care for Dominion but I used it to break the monotony I was feeling towards the end of my active participation. ARAM is something I know nothing about other than it's a gamemode option in the drop down window. It's been so long they've apparently reset any ranked/league info I had because those are blank or asking if I'd like to join a league.
Runes
9x Greater Mark of Armor Penetration
1x Greater Mark of Attack Damage
9x Greater Mark of Attack Speed
9x Greater Seal of Attack Speed
9x Greater Seal of Magic Resist
1x Greater Seal of Mana Regeneration
1x Greater Seal of Scaling Health
1x Greater Glyph of Armor
9x Greater Glyph of Attack Speed
9x Greater Glyph of Magic Resist
1x Greater Glyphy of Scaling Mana
3x Greater Quintessence of Attack Speed
1x Greater Quintessence of Revival
1x Greater Quintessence of Scaling Ability Power
3x Greater Quintessence of the Deadly Wreath
3x Greater Quintessence of Piercing Present
Item Sets
I know for a fact they've discontinued at least two of my go-to items with my various builds so I'm not going to bother. This tab wasn't here when I was playing though I would have loved it. They rotate, introduce, and retire items as their season come and go so I'll leave this blank in case I ever do want to drop my 2-cents worth.
Characters
Owned 109
Skins 264 - 109 (Classic Skins) = 155 Unique
Noticed a lot of new skins when I was browsing/counting also quite a few art redesigns and splash replacements. Like the grittier art style as opposed to their cartoonish animesque. As you may can tell at one point my group was trying to sync into a specific theme with skins. I was one who tried for the Ocean skins since my handle is Skelefish. We could never agree on one we all liked and so much of the skins I did acquire never saw gameplay.
Going through I see a disparagingly sad spread on some characters. Some have of the devs favorites (Fiddlesticks, Annie, etc) continue to get more and more skins while others continue with the 2-3 they premiered with over a year ago. As someone who played one of their niche characters I can tell you it's frustrating that you're good, but the community doesn't like your character so there's always a limited number of skins while others keep getting more and more. I get the marketing aspect: if a character is popular give them more personality options, but hit up the black sheep occasionally guys.
by Character... Name (# Skins) Faves if any
Ahri (1); Akali (5) Blood Moon; Alistar (5) Matador; Amumu (3) Little Knight; Anivia (1); Annie (5); Ashe (2) Amethyst; Blitzcrank (3) Boom Boom; Brand (3) Zombie; Caitlyn (5) Officer; Cassiopeia (2); Cho'Gath (5) Gentleman, Loch Ness, Jurassic; Corki (4) Urfrider, Red Baron, Dragonwing; Diana (2); Dr. Mundo (1); Draven (1); Elise (1); Evelynn (4); Ezreal (1); Fiddlesticks (3); Fiora (2) Headmistress; Fizz (2) Tundra; Galio (1); Gangplank (1); Garen (3); Gragas (4) Scuba; Graves (3) Riot; Hecarim (3); Heimerdinger (3) Alien Invader, Snowmerdinger; Irelia (2); Janna (2); Jarvan IV (4); Jax (7) PAX, Jaximus, Nemesis; Jayce (1); Karma (3); Karthus (3) Grim Reaper; Kassadin (2) Deep One; Katarina (3); Kayle (6); Kennen (1); Kha'Zix (1); Kog'Maw (5) Lion Dance, Deep Sea; LeBlanc (2); Lee Sin (2); Leona (4); Lissandra (1); Lulu (1); Lux (1); Malphite (2) Coral Reef; Malzahar (3); Maokai (3); Master Yi (2); Miss Fortune (7) Candy Cane; Mordekaiser (3) Pentakill; Morgana (1); Nami (1); Nasus (3) Galactic; Nautilus (1); Nidalee (5); Nocturne (2); Nunu (4); Olaf (1); Oriana (2); Pantheon (1); Poppy (2); Rammus (2); Renekton (4); Rengar (1); Riven (2); Rumble (1); Ryze (3) Professor; Sejuani (3); Shaco (1); Shen (4); Shyvana (1); Singed (3); Sion (2); Sivir (5) PAX; Skarner (2); Sona (4); Soraka (1); Swain (2); Syndra (1); Talon (1); Taric (2); Teemo (2); Tristana (4); Trundle (2); Tryndamere (1); Twisted Fate (2); Twitch (3); Udyr (1); Urgot (2); Varus (1); Vayne (1); Veigar (5); Vi (1); Viktor (1); Vladimir (2); Volbear (2); Warwick (3) Hyena; Wukong (1); Xerath (2); Xin Zhou (2); Yorick (1); Zed (1); Ziggs (2); Zilean (3); Zyra (1)
Level 30
User-User Interaction Ratings
Friendly 9
Helpful 2
Teamwork 12
Honorable Opponent 0
(Classic)
Takedowns 2820
Monsters & Minion Kills 44497
Wins 148
(Dominion)
Takedowns 204
Monsters & Minion Kills 280
Wins 9
(ARAM)
Takedowns 0
Monsters & Minion Kills 0
Wins 0
I don't pretend that these stats are excellent in any way but I was curious when I wrote the breakdown review yesterday. I like the personalized rating system but was already mostly out of my LoL routine when they implemented it. I don't really care for Dominion but I used it to break the monotony I was feeling towards the end of my active participation. ARAM is something I know nothing about other than it's a gamemode option in the drop down window. It's been so long they've apparently reset any ranked/league info I had because those are blank or asking if I'd like to join a league.
Runes
9x Greater Mark of Armor Penetration
1x Greater Mark of Attack Damage
9x Greater Mark of Attack Speed
9x Greater Seal of Attack Speed
9x Greater Seal of Magic Resist
1x Greater Seal of Mana Regeneration
1x Greater Seal of Scaling Health
1x Greater Glyph of Armor
9x Greater Glyph of Attack Speed
9x Greater Glyph of Magic Resist
1x Greater Glyphy of Scaling Mana
3x Greater Quintessence of Attack Speed
1x Greater Quintessence of Revival
1x Greater Quintessence of Scaling Ability Power
3x Greater Quintessence of the Deadly Wreath
3x Greater Quintessence of Piercing Present
Item Sets
I know for a fact they've discontinued at least two of my go-to items with my various builds so I'm not going to bother. This tab wasn't here when I was playing though I would have loved it. They rotate, introduce, and retire items as their season come and go so I'll leave this blank in case I ever do want to drop my 2-cents worth.
Characters
Owned 109
Skins 264 - 109 (Classic Skins) = 155 Unique
Noticed a lot of new skins when I was browsing/counting also quite a few art redesigns and splash replacements. Like the grittier art style as opposed to their cartoonish animesque. As you may can tell at one point my group was trying to sync into a specific theme with skins. I was one who tried for the Ocean skins since my handle is Skelefish. We could never agree on one we all liked and so much of the skins I did acquire never saw gameplay.
Going through I see a disparagingly sad spread on some characters. Some have of the devs favorites (Fiddlesticks, Annie, etc) continue to get more and more skins while others continue with the 2-3 they premiered with over a year ago. As someone who played one of their niche characters I can tell you it's frustrating that you're good, but the community doesn't like your character so there's always a limited number of skins while others keep getting more and more. I get the marketing aspect: if a character is popular give them more personality options, but hit up the black sheep occasionally guys.
by Character... Name (# Skins) Faves if any
Ahri (1); Akali (5) Blood Moon; Alistar (5) Matador; Amumu (3) Little Knight; Anivia (1); Annie (5); Ashe (2) Amethyst; Blitzcrank (3) Boom Boom; Brand (3) Zombie; Caitlyn (5) Officer; Cassiopeia (2); Cho'Gath (5) Gentleman, Loch Ness, Jurassic; Corki (4) Urfrider, Red Baron, Dragonwing; Diana (2); Dr. Mundo (1); Draven (1); Elise (1); Evelynn (4); Ezreal (1); Fiddlesticks (3); Fiora (2) Headmistress; Fizz (2) Tundra; Galio (1); Gangplank (1); Garen (3); Gragas (4) Scuba; Graves (3) Riot; Hecarim (3); Heimerdinger (3) Alien Invader, Snowmerdinger; Irelia (2); Janna (2); Jarvan IV (4); Jax (7) PAX, Jaximus, Nemesis; Jayce (1); Karma (3); Karthus (3) Grim Reaper; Kassadin (2) Deep One; Katarina (3); Kayle (6); Kennen (1); Kha'Zix (1); Kog'Maw (5) Lion Dance, Deep Sea; LeBlanc (2); Lee Sin (2); Leona (4); Lissandra (1); Lulu (1); Lux (1); Malphite (2) Coral Reef; Malzahar (3); Maokai (3); Master Yi (2); Miss Fortune (7) Candy Cane; Mordekaiser (3) Pentakill; Morgana (1); Nami (1); Nasus (3) Galactic; Nautilus (1); Nidalee (5); Nocturne (2); Nunu (4); Olaf (1); Oriana (2); Pantheon (1); Poppy (2); Rammus (2); Renekton (4); Rengar (1); Riven (2); Rumble (1); Ryze (3) Professor; Sejuani (3); Shaco (1); Shen (4); Shyvana (1); Singed (3); Sion (2); Sivir (5) PAX; Skarner (2); Sona (4); Soraka (1); Swain (2); Syndra (1); Talon (1); Taric (2); Teemo (2); Tristana (4); Trundle (2); Tryndamere (1); Twisted Fate (2); Twitch (3); Udyr (1); Urgot (2); Varus (1); Vayne (1); Veigar (5); Vi (1); Viktor (1); Vladimir (2); Volbear (2); Warwick (3) Hyena; Wukong (1); Xerath (2); Xin Zhou (2); Yorick (1); Zed (1); Ziggs (2); Zilean (3); Zyra (1)
Saturday, February 14, 2015
League of Legends (2009)
League of Legends (2009)
Riot Games
PC
Multi
MOBA
I'm not aware of a hotkey or shortcut to find the number of time spent in this "free-to-play" multi-player online battle arena that is arguably the most successful right now. QQ more Dota players, can't get behind you. Now admittedly I haven't played this game on a regular basis in 2 years give or take, but it still brings back quite a few fond memories. I log in every now and again to prevent the 6-month lock out to engage and to occasionally see if anything is on sale I can spend some of my remaining RP/IP on. Not going to get into a stat-heavy post, maybe later.
I was one of the people who got into it when it still typically came in the paper box in store. I own the vast majority of their possible characters and as such been with them from nearly the very beginning--not from the beta as my desire but unobtainable skin list shows (i.e. King Bowser Rammus). As in most game-acquisitions I DO purchase I wait for sales and bundles, Riot used to be really good about giving a champ and 2 skins on a regular basis--as I'm not a regular I can't speak to it now. I got a handful of them for free when myself of a friend went to a gaming convention and got a code, and I'll admit once or twice of purchasing a similar code from ebay if none of use were capable of going. As far as cosmetic re-skins I'm reminded a lot of the Penny Arcade comic concerning that exact notion --though I stress I did NOT spend $8000+ I did spend a few hundred over the course of the many years I was playing it. There is no gameplay mechanic necessity to buy from them, the entire game can be unlocked by just playing the game, but you miss out on the personalization of your chosen champion and I'll admit they do a decent job making them inticing and some of them (due to rarity) are kind of status symbols and bragging rights.
My favorite characters (due to my own personal play-style) are Jax, Corki, Caitlyn, and Jarvin IV. My heyday would be around season 2 where, along with some IRL friends we made a good stab at Ranked. Time schedules and living a fair piece from each other is what we attribute most to that failed venture, but c'est la vie. We did have a really good routine down and they were good enough that they could typically hold off a full 5-man push and I could backdoor (a flanking strategy) 1-2 of their turrets by stacking pure attack speed and 'on x hits' items like the Ionic Spark (R.I.P.) and Guinsoo's Rageblade. That sais the game lost a lot of my interest when it started trying to be so focused on competitive. Ironic though it sounds I'm citing where they pushed to make it like a Counter Strike event--not that it couldn't be, but I'd gotten to level 30 in a more or less casual pursuit.
Some of the major disheartening practice I associate heavily with Riot are their lack of content. Yes they had the 2-weeks new character roll around, but all that did was make new people pissy about unbalanced games when a heavy hitter joined in OP. For the entire length of time they did that they couldn't work on new features to the game for the sake of continually tweaking balance. I'm STILL waiting for a new map. I've seen the rough mocks up for it, I've heard devs confirm they've got it in the pipeline, where the fuck is my g.d. Molten Core map? I hate they and apparently most of the players are ok with their new gametype instead of new map strategy. I can stand Dominion, but I don't like it. I've yet to try whatever ARAM is but I see it listed in my profile. That said there are well over 100 characters and 3 maps to my knowledge: one solely for 3v3 Twisted Treeline; one for 5v5 Summoner's Rift; and Dominion. 4 if you count the solo-instanced bridge you play thru the tutorial in.
Where I think Riot vastly succeeded and suddenly failed was with their community efforts. Nika Harper was one of the *honestly* most hyper-positive, bubbly, recognizable personalities on the internet at the time and what she and Riot did with their weekly* Summoner Showcase was brilliant at keeping the community up on new developments and stuff other fans and players did. It got a bit stale as they scaled it back prior to her leaving Riot, but at it's pinnacle was a very looked-forward-to distraction each week. When she left there was a massive void in the Riot community and to date nothing has stepped up to do so to the level the Showcase did. Like most things online if you follow, lurk, or troll the forums or social media sites of your selected distraction you will likely be abreast of recent big developments but otherwise the nuance and sparkly shimmer was gone.
I do not recommend this game as a solo attempt, but if you'd like to try your hand feel free. I believe the base game itself is free-to-play so if you can wrangle one or more friends to share in the learning curve I do recommend that. As with all microtransaction-heavy games, unless you have some commitment to play it, test the waters before you drop hard coin on it. Every champion will eventually become free playable on a rotation so you can try them out before you buy. There were frequently bundles in their online store that gave you a handful of stuff at a decent discount, and there are always the occasional game unlock code at conventions or thru ebay.
7/10 imho best MOBA out there
Riot Games
PC
Multi
MOBA
I'm not aware of a hotkey or shortcut to find the number of time spent in this "free-to-play" multi-player online battle arena that is arguably the most successful right now. QQ more Dota players, can't get behind you. Now admittedly I haven't played this game on a regular basis in 2 years give or take, but it still brings back quite a few fond memories. I log in every now and again to prevent the 6-month lock out to engage and to occasionally see if anything is on sale I can spend some of my remaining RP/IP on. Not going to get into a stat-heavy post, maybe later.
I was one of the people who got into it when it still typically came in the paper box in store. I own the vast majority of their possible characters and as such been with them from nearly the very beginning--not from the beta as my desire but unobtainable skin list shows (i.e. King Bowser Rammus). As in most game-acquisitions I DO purchase I wait for sales and bundles, Riot used to be really good about giving a champ and 2 skins on a regular basis--as I'm not a regular I can't speak to it now. I got a handful of them for free when myself of a friend went to a gaming convention and got a code, and I'll admit once or twice of purchasing a similar code from ebay if none of use were capable of going. As far as cosmetic re-skins I'm reminded a lot of the Penny Arcade comic concerning that exact notion --though I stress I did NOT spend $8000+ I did spend a few hundred over the course of the many years I was playing it. There is no gameplay mechanic necessity to buy from them, the entire game can be unlocked by just playing the game, but you miss out on the personalization of your chosen champion and I'll admit they do a decent job making them inticing and some of them (due to rarity) are kind of status symbols and bragging rights.
My favorite characters (due to my own personal play-style) are Jax, Corki, Caitlyn, and Jarvin IV. My heyday would be around season 2 where, along with some IRL friends we made a good stab at Ranked. Time schedules and living a fair piece from each other is what we attribute most to that failed venture, but c'est la vie. We did have a really good routine down and they were good enough that they could typically hold off a full 5-man push and I could backdoor (a flanking strategy) 1-2 of their turrets by stacking pure attack speed and 'on x hits' items like the Ionic Spark (R.I.P.) and Guinsoo's Rageblade. That sais the game lost a lot of my interest when it started trying to be so focused on competitive. Ironic though it sounds I'm citing where they pushed to make it like a Counter Strike event--not that it couldn't be, but I'd gotten to level 30 in a more or less casual pursuit.
Some of the major disheartening practice I associate heavily with Riot are their lack of content. Yes they had the 2-weeks new character roll around, but all that did was make new people pissy about unbalanced games when a heavy hitter joined in OP. For the entire length of time they did that they couldn't work on new features to the game for the sake of continually tweaking balance. I'm STILL waiting for a new map. I've seen the rough mocks up for it, I've heard devs confirm they've got it in the pipeline, where the fuck is my g.d. Molten Core map? I hate they and apparently most of the players are ok with their new gametype instead of new map strategy. I can stand Dominion, but I don't like it. I've yet to try whatever ARAM is but I see it listed in my profile. That said there are well over 100 characters and 3 maps to my knowledge: one solely for 3v3 Twisted Treeline; one for 5v5 Summoner's Rift; and Dominion. 4 if you count the solo-instanced bridge you play thru the tutorial in.
Where I think Riot vastly succeeded and suddenly failed was with their community efforts. Nika Harper was one of the *honestly* most hyper-positive, bubbly, recognizable personalities on the internet at the time and what she and Riot did with their weekly* Summoner Showcase was brilliant at keeping the community up on new developments and stuff other fans and players did. It got a bit stale as they scaled it back prior to her leaving Riot, but at it's pinnacle was a very looked-forward-to distraction each week. When she left there was a massive void in the Riot community and to date nothing has stepped up to do so to the level the Showcase did. Like most things online if you follow, lurk, or troll the forums or social media sites of your selected distraction you will likely be abreast of recent big developments but otherwise the nuance and sparkly shimmer was gone.
I do not recommend this game as a solo attempt, but if you'd like to try your hand feel free. I believe the base game itself is free-to-play so if you can wrangle one or more friends to share in the learning curve I do recommend that. As with all microtransaction-heavy games, unless you have some commitment to play it, test the waters before you drop hard coin on it. Every champion will eventually become free playable on a rotation so you can try them out before you buy. There were frequently bundles in their online store that gave you a handful of stuff at a decent discount, and there are always the occasional game unlock code at conventions or thru ebay.
7/10 imho best MOBA out there
Friday, February 6, 2015
Killing Floor (2009)
Killing Floor (2009)
Tripwire Interactive
PC/Steam
Single, Co-Op, Multi
Instance
I currently sit at 132 hours played and 157 or the 286 achievements unlocked on my Steam profile. Albeit I like this game. I had the distinct pleasure to visit with some of Tripwire's development team and personnel when I attended the inaugural PAX South recently and was in awe of how light and friendly they kept the typically stagnant atmosphere of developer-focused conventions. They were very personable with the audience and any individuals who decided to approach them and ask questions. They were so at ease it only too one slip of an expletive until the entire panel resorted to name calling (for fun) as one of them would incorrectly explain or misinform an answer to a question or so forth.
As the game itself goes it was originally developed as a mod for Unreal Tournament 2004 and was so successful it was redone into its own game (similar to the original DOTA). It is a standard FPS zombie survival game but what it uniquely does to my knowledge is their PERKS system. Very similar and specialized to other games CLASS systems it goes a very welcome step forward and allows you to progress them based not only on which class you selected, but the weapon you are wielding. Example I typically roll with some friends as a Firebug (Pyro, flamethrower, etc) but if I ever solo on my own I will use the Commando (battle rifles) perk which I have leveled enough to see invisible enemies well before they pose a threat to me.
I've spent the time and jokingly created my own storyline in some of the many maps I'm curious to see what they officially say are there. They do have 3 objective mode maps where a loose tale is woven I just wish there were a few more, it's an interesting fictional world they've created. No story to speak of otherwise but highly enjoyable with IRL friends online working as a unit. In multiplayer mode you get to deal with unknown quantities and play-styles with PUGs (pick up groups, randos, etc) just like any other online game. Recommended as you learn but always risky for completions of anything you're aiming for.
8.5/10
Tripwire Interactive
PC/Steam
Single, Co-Op, Multi
Instance
I currently sit at 132 hours played and 157 or the 286 achievements unlocked on my Steam profile. Albeit I like this game. I had the distinct pleasure to visit with some of Tripwire's development team and personnel when I attended the inaugural PAX South recently and was in awe of how light and friendly they kept the typically stagnant atmosphere of developer-focused conventions. They were very personable with the audience and any individuals who decided to approach them and ask questions. They were so at ease it only too one slip of an expletive until the entire panel resorted to name calling (for fun) as one of them would incorrectly explain or misinform an answer to a question or so forth.
As the game itself goes it was originally developed as a mod for Unreal Tournament 2004 and was so successful it was redone into its own game (similar to the original DOTA). It is a standard FPS zombie survival game but what it uniquely does to my knowledge is their PERKS system. Very similar and specialized to other games CLASS systems it goes a very welcome step forward and allows you to progress them based not only on which class you selected, but the weapon you are wielding. Example I typically roll with some friends as a Firebug (Pyro, flamethrower, etc) but if I ever solo on my own I will use the Commando (battle rifles) perk which I have leveled enough to see invisible enemies well before they pose a threat to me.
I've spent the time and jokingly created my own storyline in some of the many maps I'm curious to see what they officially say are there. They do have 3 objective mode maps where a loose tale is woven I just wish there were a few more, it's an interesting fictional world they've created. No story to speak of otherwise but highly enjoyable with IRL friends online working as a unit. In multiplayer mode you get to deal with unknown quantities and play-styles with PUGs (pick up groups, randos, etc) just like any other online game. Recommended as you learn but always risky for completions of anything you're aiming for.
8.5/10
Gaming Designations
So I utilize and love the Steam Category options, my only minor gripe is that you can only set them to a single category at a time (excluding Favorites) so for someone as occasionally neurotic at sorting as I am at times, it can be an occasional pain. As such I will use a modified version of my categories as tags for the games I review (Steam or otherwise).
Name(s) (Tear)
Developer/Manufacturer
Platform
Classification(s)
The Game Title will also be the name of the post for easy browsing in the calendar. Some titles are known to have alternative titles, change at some point after release or have a ridiculous amount of sub-titles like a George Lucas productions. The Year will be included to differentiate the version of the game played. With all the reboots, remasters, re-releases, etc saturating the market at the moment I just want to let you know what version I'm talking about to clear up any conclusion. The Developer will be listed for my own benefit. I'm embarrassed to admit this but I'm very NOT in the know as to who makes what games aside from a few favorites or things I picked up thru repetition or attrition. Platform, again most will be the PC but I may reference back to anything I may have previously played elsewhere, etc.
Classifications:
Single - single player campaign (option); arcade or puzzle/platformer derivative
Co-Op - cooperative campaign setting (optional or required); specifically LAN style or otherwise
Multiplayer - online connection required, thrown out into the tubes like a little lamb for the slaughter, god help you with rando PUGs.
Arcade - minimal writing, text typically optional for intensive purposes (i.e. Pac-man)
Instance - Various maps with objectives to complete (i.e. any MOBA, TF2)
Sandbox - open world wandering environment (i.e. GTA series)
Story - some actual writing was done for the game and a narrative suggests you move in a particular direction of sorts. (i.e. Assassin's Creed series)
**to be added to as I determine other specifics**
Name(s) (Tear)
Developer/Manufacturer
Platform
Classification(s)
The Game Title will also be the name of the post for easy browsing in the calendar. Some titles are known to have alternative titles, change at some point after release or have a ridiculous amount of sub-titles like a George Lucas productions. The Year will be included to differentiate the version of the game played. With all the reboots, remasters, re-releases, etc saturating the market at the moment I just want to let you know what version I'm talking about to clear up any conclusion. The Developer will be listed for my own benefit. I'm embarrassed to admit this but I'm very NOT in the know as to who makes what games aside from a few favorites or things I picked up thru repetition or attrition. Platform, again most will be the PC but I may reference back to anything I may have previously played elsewhere, etc.
Classifications:
Single - single player campaign (option); arcade or puzzle/platformer derivative
Co-Op - cooperative campaign setting (optional or required); specifically LAN style or otherwise
Multiplayer - online connection required, thrown out into the tubes like a little lamb for the slaughter, god help you with rando PUGs.
Arcade - minimal writing, text typically optional for intensive purposes (i.e. Pac-man)
Instance - Various maps with objectives to complete (i.e. any MOBA, TF2)
Sandbox - open world wandering environment (i.e. GTA series)
Story - some actual writing was done for the game and a narrative suggests you move in a particular direction of sorts. (i.e. Assassin's Creed series)
**to be added to as I determine other specifics**
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