Each day I wake up, put on my Sith dress and get ready for the party I’m about to crash. After scratching, yawning, and using the bathroom, it’s time to jump in the pilot’s seat and wreak some havoc. Space havoc. But first, I do my “I’m about to murder” dance (pictured above).
After the jump: space Continue reading →
What the heck kind of MMO doesn’t have crafting? DC Universe Online. Until today, that is. The latest update added “Research & Development”.
…decide what kind of item you wish to create. Equipment Mods can be socketed into gear for powerful benefits, and various Consumables will lend you bonuses for short durations of time. Plans for the creation of either can be found throughout the world or purchased at new Research and Development vendors.
Once you have learned the appropriate plan, collect the necessary components, including Exobytes, and assemble the new item at a Research and Development station. Equipment Mods come in various colors which, when matched with similarly colored sockets on your gear, can provide even further bonuses and power.
As a fan of DC Universe Online, I think this is a great idea. One of the strengths and weaknesses of this game is that you can get to the level cap pretty quickly. This means it’s relatively easy to get to the endgame content. But it also means that satisfying sense of advancement comes to a halt and you’re left grinding instances for bits and pieces of raid gear. A good crafting system, especially when it relates directly to the player’s equipment, is a great alternate track of advancement once character leveling slows or stops. See, for instance, the legendary items in Lord of the Rings Online or the modular weapon system in Star Wars: Old Republic.
The new R&D system is part of Update 8, which went live today.
Every game of Jetpack Joyride opens in a room with a gramophone playing a languid holiday ditty. A jetpack sits on a table with a sign next to it that reads “DO NOT STEAL”. Some scientists shuffle around. At the other end of the room, another sign notes your high score as a measure of your best distance.
After the jump, all this changes when you touch anywhere to start Continue reading →
Recognizing a revolution is a lot easier than starting one. In 1994, Avalon Hill published Mark Herman’s design We the People about the American Revolutionary War, and the term “card-driven gameplay” started its lexical journey to ubiquitous descriptor of pretty much any game currently in print. Instead of moving all your little cardboard squares from hex to hex each turn, you moved a few of them from box to box using a deck of cards with numbers and events. You heard that right: you didn’t always play games with cards.
After the jump, it’s all in the cards Continue reading →
Demon’s Souls has had one hell of a story. The game was originally set to be published by Sony who dropped it because they felt it wasn’t going to sell. It turned into one of the must-have games for the Playstation 3. In fact, Demon’s Souls was the first game I bought for the Playstation 3 from word of mouth alone. And I bought it three months before I actually owned the system.
After the jump, the wonderful world of constant death Continue reading →
As much as I’d love to revisit Lord of the Rings Online, a writer who goes by the name of Revious at Kill Ten Rats details exactly what I know will happen:
When I logged back in I was beset on all sides by system mailings, announcements of new achievements I had somehow started, resets to all my legendary weapons, and a new trait / stat regime. It was bad enough that I was in the middle of a book, with tons of other quests already started, in the beginning of a region I didn’t remember while staring at a virtual cockpit of skills. Like a strange, albino gangle creature emerging into sunlight, I just blindly stumbled around for awhile until I found something to kill. It took me way too long to kill the enemy (as I, in the madness of things, had forgotten to up my legendary weapon’s DPS because it had been reset), and frustrated I logged off.
I don’t mean to engage in duelling MMOs, but this is exactly why I instead jumped back into Rift, which is atypical among MMOs for how it’s generous with respecs. One of Rift’s unique selling points is that every character class is, at any time, eight different character classes. Actually, that’s not quite true. A character is technically a mix of skills and abilities from any three classes at once. That’s not even quite true. A character can have several of these set up at once, and can furthermore toggle among them at any point. This lends Rift a lot of variety in terms of how it plays, but it also makes for a relatively painless re-entry. Don’t understand your character build? No sweat. Tear it down and build a new one from the ground up. Build a few. That’s how Rift works.
But I recommend Ravious story, because it actually has a happy ending. Spoiler: you can get by with a little help from your friends. In the end, the main draw of an MMO is the social element.
