Finished this up over the weekend...easily my game of the year.
I have only two complaints. One of them is minor, and one of them is just the flip side of one of the game's biggest strengths.
First, there's a quirk to the weapon upgrade system that makes certain build choices sub-optimal and uninteresting. Taking the default weapon upgrade path (+1 through +15) provides a moderate increase in the physical damage dealt by a weapon, and preserves the weapon's normal scaling with stat growth (usually by Strength or Dexterity). The Lightning, Fire, or Chaos upgrade paths provide a moderate increase in physical damage dealt along with a hefty amount of elemental damage in top of that, but remove scaling based on stats. The problem is that the elemental weapon types are so good, especially after taking into account that many late game enemies have high physical defenses, that the default weapon types aren't remotely competitive without a ridiculously costly investment in stats, making Strength and Dexterity based builds extremely unattractive choices. From is aware of this, and a patch recently released Japan and scheduled for US release "soon" has slightly toned down the damage done by elemental weapons and slightly increased the level of stat based scaling.
The second issue is closely related to the game's bold story telling choices, which I generally enjoy, and respect From's team for sticking with. Dark Souls has a richer, deeper story than virtually any other video game I have ever played, and it tells that story with a tiny fraction of the dialogue found in the average game. There is no railroading, there are very few cutscenes, and the designers were not under the impression that they were making a movie instead of a game. Story points are found in the opening cinematic, in dialogue with NPCs, and in the text descriptions of many items. The flip side is that the game is simply not afraid to hide key story beats from the player. Getting the whole story, and I didn't realize this until after I had finished the game and did some reading on the internet to see what I missed, requires...
...that the player actively distrust the main plot-dispensing NPCs in the game, disregard their instructions, and actually go so far as to murder (at least) one of them. The apparent good ending is actually the bad ending.
To be fair to the designers, there are hints that might lead an alert player to question the intentions behind the game's mission, but they're subtle, and easily interpreted as simply the black-and-gray morality of the world as presented, when they're not ascribable to bad writing or mistranslation. For example, while I did think it was odd that the descriptive text for several items mentioned that Gwyndolin was the sole deity remaining in Anor Londo when I had gone there myself, and met and spoken to his sister Gwynevere (she of the "Amazing Chest"), I just assumed the writers had made a mistake. It didn't occur to me that this was supposed to be a clue that Gwynevere was an illusion created by Gwyndolin to manipulate me. Attacking her dispels the illusion, and reveals that Anor Londo is just as much a dump as the rest of Lordran, rather than the sunlit paradise it appears to be.
But, to be fair to the player, some of the choices that need to be made to find the full story would require clairvoyance, or at least access to a walkthrough. For example, there is a point in the game where you receive a key item, the Lordvessel, and the next natural step is to return it to Kingseeker Frampt, the NPC who tasked you with attaining it, who will then instruct you to go defeat four newly available bosses. The secret is not to do that. You can't even talk to Frampt, because you won't be given a choice as to whether or not to give up the Lordvessel. Instead, you need to a) somehow know that four new bosses are now available, b) go beat a specific one of them, and c) talk to the NPC who will only appear in that boss's location if you beat it without having spoken to Frampt.
The story implications are fantastic. The NPC who shows up if you jump through the right unintuitive hoops is the leader of the Darkwraith covenant, which is the PvP faction that most readily allows players who join to invade other players' worlds and try to kill them. In the context of the story, though, the asshole griefer PvP faction, who appear to be just that storywise as well, are actually the good guys. They're killing other players to prevent them from completing the mission the lying NPCs have duped them into. It completely subverts gaming conventions, making the force that would normally be the unquestionable engine of plot into an authority to be questioned and overthrown.
I just wish there had been, at the very least, a dialog option to refuse Frampt when he asks for the Lordvessel.
At any rate, five out of five, would recommend.
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"Trans Am Jesus" is "what hanged me"
I finished Uncharted 3: Drake's Deception on 'normal' in about two days. One of the most beautifully designed games I've ever seen. You really have to see it to believe it. I'm going through it again on 'hard' now. I'm not sure I'll even try 'crushing'...
After weeks of being bothered about it I'm finally trying minecraft. Pretty fun, though monsters spawning in pitch blackness for no other reason than it being pitch blackness seems a little unfair.
And the server's empty because everyone who was raving at me to play minecraft is off playing fucking skyrim.
The multiplayer doesn't seem so interesting so far in the little time others have been present. Just people building enormous structures with no function.
I play minecraft in peaceful mode, mostly, because I don't enjoy the monsters, just the exploration and building.
__________________ Hear me / and if I close my mind in fear / please pry it open See me / and if my face becomes sincere / beware Hold me / and when I start to come undone / stitch me together Save me / and when you see me strut / remind me of what left this outlaw torn
I picked up Orcs Must Die and all its DLC for five bucks in the Thanksgiving Steam sale. It's a fun diversion.
The best way to describe it is that it's a tower defense game where you're an individual in the world instead of a disembodied tactician. Each level consists of a castle built around a rift gate. Waves of orcs burst through the castle door(s) and head for the rift gate. You run around the castle placing (hilariously and cartoonishly gory) traps and fighting orcs until they're gone.
__________________
"Trans Am Jesus" is "what hanged me"
I play minecraft in peaceful mode, mostly, because I don't enjoy the monsters, just the exploration and building.
I insist on at least playing 'easy' because no monsters at all gets a little dull. It doesn't seem quite balanced though; creepers need no help at all killing you in ANY level of difficulty except Peaceful.
Yet the sound of punching a hissing creeper 4 levels down into a pool of magma warms the cockles of my heart.
Creepers are the reason I will never play on the new Hardcore mode, because it's always either you see them first or they kill you, and that just doesn't sound fun to me.
Creepers are the reason I will never play on the new Hardcore mode, because it's always either you see them first or they kill you, and that just doesn't sound fun to me.
That's what happens anyway. How's hardcore make it different?
What I end up doing when exploring new areas is buliding a reverse-zoo. Sort of an area where all the monsters can see you but can't get at you so they line themselves up for destruction.
hardcore means when/if it happens, you can never play that world again. Dying is annoying normally, and possibly very detrimental, but not permanent. Instant-and-irreversable-death-because-I-was-facing-the-wrong-direction just isn't a good game to me.
ETA: It's the same sort of frustration I got in early Diablo II patches, where my high-level hardcore-mode barbarian one-shot himself when that mob cast Iron Maiden on me in between my clicking the mouse and the attack landing, after there was fuck-all I could do about it.
I'm still playing Rift. Also, Rift. Sometimes I play Rift.
... I'm pretty happy. Note that part of this is that their addon API is fun to work with.
__________________ Hear me / and if I close my mind in fear / please pry it open See me / and if my face becomes sincere / beware Hold me / and when I start to come undone / stitch me together Save me / and when you see me strut / remind me of what left this outlaw torn
I've been busting out the emulators and roms lately, mostly SNES and N64 stuff. Mostly just for the nostalgia. Tonight I'll be skimming through the Ultima games for the NES to try finding the one I used to play as a kid. I'm pretty sure it was an Ultima game, anyway...
I also got a copy of CivCity: Rome, it's kinda fun.
I'm liking it Okay, but it bugs me that my lazy-ass citizens won't walk farther than half a city block to get shit they need, even though they'll go farther than that for jobs and such.
It's more micro-managing than I usually prefer, but it's good so far.
I've finally had time to give this a try, and I'm actually rather enjoying it so far. Space combat is actually kinda fun, and ground combat is not crappy enough to bother me. The only thing that's bugged me so far is it feels like it's set on Super-Way-Totally-Easy Mode. I'm gunning through platoons of Klingon "warriors" and destroying squadrons of Birds-of-Prey all by my lonesome in a Reliant-style starship. I kind of hope that picks up a bit once you're significantly passed the intro material. I think I'll keep it around.
It also bugged me that it had me set up a Perfect World account, and then was asking me about my Cryptic account when I actually installed the game, and I was like, I don't remember wtf my Cryptic account is and I'm not going to dig through emails for 20 minutes when I'm finally ready to start playing, which apparently means I can nevar evar link my Cryptic account in anymore. I think the only thing I did with it was Champions Online anyway, so meh.
I've been playing the everloving shit out of Mass Effect 3 since its release on Tuesday, and it's terrific.
I'm playing as the default-appearance male Shepard character I used during my first play-throughs in Mass Effect and Mass Effect 2. You make a lot of decisions in the first two games, and they all affect the course of play in ME3.
So the Reapers have arrived. Every 50,000 years or so this race of advanced sentient machines enters the Milky Way galaxy from their home in the dark space beyond the galactic rim to harvest organic life and civilization. The cycle's at least 37 million years old, and probably much older.
They don't tell us (or haven't yet) exactly how the Reapers returned this time. In ME1 we found out that the Citadel, the massive space station that forms the hub of galactic civilization, is a giant mass relay that connects to the Reapers' "home" in dark space. ME1 ended with Shepard & Co. keeping the relay closed and preventing the Reapers' immediate return. ME2 ended with Shepard & Co. defeating the Collectors, the Reapers' agents inside the galaxy, and a final shot of thousands of Reapers powering up and beginning the long trek to the galaxy.
You start out on Earth. Shepard's back with the Alliance navy but is grounded pending investigation of his activities with Cerberus in ME2. The Reapers arrive in the system, blow through Earth's defenses easily and start landing in huge numbers, blowing shit up and killing millions.
Shepard fights his way through waves of Reaper ground troops (standard husks, together with a new enemy called cannibals. We find out later that the Batarian Hegemony was the first civilization the Reapers hit. Cannibals are morphed and reanimated batarians. (The Alliance thinks the Hegemony was wiped out quickly and completely but for some batarian refugees that make their way to the citadel, but I don't know at this point whether that's true).
Shepard escapes Earth on the Normandy SR-2, which the Alliance commandeered from Cerberus. Admiral Anderson orders him to gather as much support and assets for the war effort as possible. Anderson stays behind to organize resistance where possible.
Let's get to the important stuff before going any further. It's OK to be male and gay in ME3! My male Shepard character boinked Liara T'soni in ME and Tali Zorah in ME2, both females. There have been plenty of het opportunities so far, but Shepard also has the opportunity to boink Maj. Kaiden Alenko (the availability of the Alenko character obviously depends on who you saved on the Virmire mission in ME1) and Lt. Cortez, a new character who serves as a shuttle pilot aboard the Normandy.
The voice acting is top notch, exactly as you'd expect. Lance Henriksen is back as Adm. Hackett, who has a much bigger role this time around.
Martin Sheen is back as the Illusive Man, the head of Cerberus. I don't know exactly what they're up to yet, but there's no doubt this time around that the Illusive Man is evil and Cerberus is the enemy. The majority of the firefights thus far have been against Cerberus troops.
Despite some framerate trouble here and there, the cinematics are superb. There's a scene on Tuchanka, the krogan homeworld, where a gargantuan thresher maw takes on a Reaper that you just have to see.
Wouldn't be much of a game if the Reapers were as invincible as they appear. A sizable group of missions center on the defense of Palaven, the turian homeworld. The turians are a martial society and have the galaxy's best military, so the Reapers have to fight for every inch of ground.
Even so, turian resistance is ultimately doomed absent outside help. You want the turians' help in driving the Reapers off earth. To secure turian cooperation, you have to get krogan ground forces to help fight the Reapers on Palaven. If Urdnot Wrex survived ME1, he's in charge of the krogan. His price for securing the krogans' help on Palaven is your help in curing the genophage. That involves a female krogan who was a test subject in Maelon's experiments during ME2. You collect the female krogan from Sur'Kesh, the salarian homeworld, along with salarian superscientist Mordin Solus, one of my favorite characters from ME2.
Mordin finishes synthesizing a cure, but turning it loose on Tuchanka will piss off the salarian government to no end. You're given the option of deceiving the krogan into thinking they're cured, thus keeping the salarians happy while presumably securing krogan cooperation, but I opted to release the cure. The salarian government was indeed pissed off, but the salarian military remained on my side.
The krogans keep their promise to help the turians, but krogan cooperation isn't complete. The krogan female who was instrumental in curing the genophage died in the process. Seems Maelon's experiments cured her of the genophage but largely wiped out her immune system. Some krogan clans are blaming one another for the female's death, thus reducing krogan cooperation. The game suggests that the female might have lived had I not opted to destroy Maelon's data in ME2. Guess I'll have to check that out in another play-through.
Aria T'Loak is back, and through her I've secured the cooperation of the mercenary groups Eclipse, Blood Pack and Blue Suns in fighting the Reapers.
Liara's back with a much bigger role than she had in ME2. Working on the prothean ruins on Mars, she finds plans for a superweapon that the protheans designed but were unable to build before the Reapers wiped them out. Big chunks of the game involve securing scientists and materials to help in the construction of the weapon.
I've secured a ton of allies and a shitload of war assets, thus bringing my state of readiness for an all-out battle against the Reapers from "very poor" to "poor." Either I've missed a bunch of shit, or there's a lot of game left to play.
The next major task is securing the aid of the quarians and/or geth. Legion and Tali both survived ME2, so I expect to see 'em p. soon.
Stuff I really like:
- If you ended ME2 at level 30, you start ME3 at level 30 and build from there.
- The familiar classes (soldier, adept, infiltrator, vanguard, sentinel and engineer) remain. You start the game with a substantial number of abilities improved to at least some degree. Fully upgrading an ability is more expensive, but you get more points for leveling up than ever before.
- The minigame from ME2 in which you had to mine planets for the resources needed to upgrade your ship, weapons and abilities is gone! Upgrades, new armor and weapons, etc. are available for purchase and can also be found lying around on missions.
- Regardless of his class, you can equip Shepard with a full compliment of weapons. However, carrying extra weapons comes at a cost in that your powers recharge more slowing depending on the weight you carry. My Shepard is a sentinel, and I sent him on one mission with a full soldier's compliment of weapons (pistol, SMG, shotgun, assault rifle and sniper rifle). The total weight of the weaponry rendered his biotic and tech powers almost useless due to the ridiculously long recharge times. By contrast, sending him out with a limited compliment of weapons (pistol and SMG, maybe a shotgun) ensures that his powers recharge quickly as hell (especially if you've purchased some or all of the faster recharge upgrades).
- There's a burgeoning romance between Joker, the Normandy's pilot (still voiced by Seth Green) and EDI, the AI that Cerberus installed when it built the new Normandy. Pretty lulzy.
- Lots and lots of familiar faces and voices. The character continuity is pretty remarkable, especially considering the sheer number of 'em.
- Combat is tougher. Chances of getting flanked or being swarmed from all sides are way up. That's good, seeing as how ME2 was so easy.
Some not so good stuff:
- Early in the game you capture this very human-looking robot that Cerberus used to infiltrate the Alliance's research facility on Mars. You take the robot aboard the Normandy, where EDI transfers much of her programming into it. The good news is that you can take EDI on missions with you. The bad news is that she looks preposterous. The giant metallic torpedo tits and ludicrous orange visor are especially nice touches. Starts out lulzy, but gets annoying pretty fast.
- The ammo substitute system (thermal clips) is back, but I got fully accustomed to it playing ME2 and it's not all that bothersome anymore.
- Shepard's got more moves in combat, but much like the Gears of War series all the moves are controlled by a single button. I've gotten myself killed quite a few times thanks to Shepard doing a sideways role right into the line of fire instead of taking cover like I wanted.
- Okay, so the Reapers can straight up FLY from dark space into the Milky Way in very little time. Beings smart enough to design and build drive systems that goddamn powerful should also be smart enough to go straight to the closest star system with a mass relay, jump directly to the citadel, and wipe out the seat of galactic government. Without the citadel, there's virtually no chance of developing a full-scale coordinated resistance. That worked 50,000 years ago against the protheans, who were more advanced and numerous than the organics that currently run things. Yet they don't do that. The citadel is an integral part of Shepard's work so far, in addition to being the most important and obvious target in the galaxy, but the Reapers are leaving it alone entirely.
- The side quests at the citadel come at you in large numbers with enormous rapidity. And you better get 'em done quickly. One key part of the game involves repelling a Cerberus attack on the citadel. Any uncompleted citadel side missions simply go away at that point, suddenly and without warning. No reward, no nothing.
- The number of available squadmates is down. So far the selection is down to Liara, Kaiden, Garrus Vakarian, EDI and James Vega, an Alliance marine and new character. The squadmate selection screen looks full, so that might be it. It's not that big a deal, though, since those five give you plenty of options for creating squads with a good mix of biotics, tech powers and weapons skills.
- Every race in the galaxy is faced with annihilation. So why is money still such a big deal? They should have put a volus with an Ayn Rand-looking exosuit on the Normandy.
- There's a shitstorm of bitching on the intart00bsz about the game's endings. I ain't there yet and thus have no comment.
That's more than enough for now, I reckon.
__________________
"We can have democracy in this country, or we can have great wealth concentrated in the hands of a few, but we can't have both." ~ Louis D. Brandeis
"Psychos do not explode when sunlight hits them, I don't give a fuck how crazy they are." ~ S. Gecko
A couple of big important sit down before you fall down announcements.
First: Diablo III has a release date of May 15th. That's two months people. (Unless they push the date again then we'll have to wait longer.)
Second: Baldurs Gate is about to announce something. As of right now there's about 40 minutes until something happens at BaldursGate.com. As far as I know, there's been a static image of the BG logo there for about two weeks. The timer showed up yesterday around 3pm and begin the countdown. But for now, we wait.
As I should have expected the moment the timer clicked over to zero every other nerd in the universe was watching it too and when I refreshed the page their servers went . But the nerdvine was not to be denied. Through a variety of sources the news will be something about a Baldur's Gate Enhanced Version. And that's all I know about that.
In the meantime, a friend showed me soemthing that looks great.
Sooo I bought two games recently. I got Borderlands in anticipation for Borderlands 2 and I got Alan Wake.
Borderlands is fun in little runs but tends to get a bit monotonus. I can imagine it's more fun in co-op mode, haven't tried yet.
Alan Wake, however, is a great story. The gameplay sucks, the product placement is AWFUL, the story, however, is pretty intriguing. I'm on chapter two now and would probably be a lot farther on if the gameplay didn't make me want to hurl the controller at the TV.
But dear GOD the product placement. You know how in movies it's almost undetectable? Probably because we're used to seeing it in that medium. In this game it's so noticeable it's painful. Yeah, we GET it. Don't make the products front and center in the cinematic shot as it's really taking away from gameplay. This is making me not want to get Alan Wake 2.
Re: Video Games - Watcha playin'?
Either I've missed a bunch of shit, or there's a lot of game left to play. 
. But the nerdvine was not to be denied. Through a variety of sources the news will be something about a Baldur's Gate Enhanced Version. And that's all I know about that.
Linear Mode
