One of the tough things about jumping back into an MMO after being away for a while is re-acquainting yourself with those rows and rows of icons. Every time I try to get back into Lord of the Rings Online, it’s a whole learning curve all over again. What a fantastically tedious chore it is to piece dozens of spells, skills, and abilities with their tiny and often inscrutable icons.
When I visited ArenaNet yesterday, they showed us some early game content, which was manageable enough. Then they threatened to jump us ahead to level 30 content, which would includ some underwater adventuring and a dungeon stocked with the equivalent of elite creatures in Lord of the Rings Online. Who wants to be fast-forwarded and dropped into something like that?
But one of the many nifty things ArenaNet is doing in Guild Wars 2 is arranging skills into “packages”, for lack of a better word. Half of your skills are dependent on your choice of weapons. When you go underwater, it gives you a whole new set of skills. When you’re reduced to a downed state (known as incapacitated or “incapped” in shooters), you have a different set of skills. Elementalists have different skills based on their choice of element. Engineers have skills based on their choice of kits. As a thief, I could steal a skill from an opponent and use it immediately against him. The slot for hotkey 6 is always your healing skill. Slots 7-9 are your choice of three class skills. Slot 0 is your ultimate. Actually, I think ArenaNet calls it your legendary, but I couldn’t help but think of League of Legends as I considered the relative elegance of Guild Wars 2 in comparison to other MMOs. This is a game where the developers help you choose and arrange skills into sets rather than ringing the screen with a hundred tiny icons. Jumping ahead to a level 30 character was only slightly more daunting than jumping into a level 1 character.
For other reasons I want to play Guild Wars 2, check out my coverage on GamePro.
Koth was a challenge. Between his Rockslide Elementals and his multiple copies of Spitting Earth, he was clearing my creatures off the table faster than I was able to play them. In the end, it took three tries to finish him off and unlock both his deck and the first upgrade to my own. That said, I didn’t care. An AI opponent to play against can sometimes be exactly what a collectible card game needs.
After the jump, why even the simplest AI can improve a collectible card game Continue reading →
Dungeon Siege 3 has the feel of pushing a plumbing snake down a drain.
Thumbs down.
Sir Digsalot has made his little stone fort and begins another night of digging beneath it before exploring the surface during the day. I head straight down to where the background changes, signifying that I’m in “underground” layer. That’s when I find a huge section of sand. Sand! You might think sand is useless crap.
After the jump, you’d be wrong. Continue reading →
Escape from the Sewers! is a disgusting level if you think about it, so I tried not to as I played it, since I was liking it. The level involves a lot of swimming in murky, brown water, which made my stomach turn a little bit whenever I thought about the word brown. So I focused on the weird glowing green aura in places. That and the swimming. I’m reading a fascinating book on cave diving right now, and so the subterranean swimming in this level appealed to me, especially considering the breathing dynamic these underwater levels have.
Also, it was a nice change to have the ‘buzzing flies’ sound effect actually make sense in one of these levels. Often the inclusion of that sound is so random, and randomness in games is something we will only tolerate in small doses. Most things should make sense.
Speaking of which…
After the jump, back to the drawing board Continue reading →
Behold Sir Digsalot and his spawn point in the kingdom of Quarteria! From these humble beginnings, I shall dig, and build, and dig some more, and kill, and continue digging until I has achieved dominion over this procedurally-generated medium-sized world! Blonde of hair, Green of Eye, and Plain of Clothes, Sir Digsalot’s story begins as all good stories do:
With an axe.
After the jump, we get our build on. Continue reading →
Tom Chick and Jason McMaster, both recovering from having to write Duke Nukem Forever reviews, float a new format for your approval. Bear with us as we dude-bro our way through picks for news story of the week, post of the week, and game of the week.
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As you are all no doubt aware, online multiplayer games are filled with trash talk. From Doom to Counterstrike to Halo I’ve had a host of uncreative insults hurled at me. Starcraft II, however, is surprisingly cordial. The vast majority of the matches I’ve played have started with a “gl hf” and ended with a “gg”. I mean, I don’t really wish my opponent good luck. They can have fun, though, as long as they enjoy losing. But I’ll say it anyway, because there’s something so wonderfully formal, almost ritualized about the practice. Like a duel.
I thought maybe I could explain this by the pace of the game. Who has time to make conjecture about their opponent’s sexuality when they need to be topping 100 actions per minute? But if that was the reason wouldn’t the notoriously obnoxious DOTA community be better than it is? It might have something to do with the game’s popularity and long history in South Korea.
After the jump: the proper way to bm.
Continue reading →
I have I confession. I’m a turn based strategy gamer. Going back to The Ancient Art of War (1984) I’ve obsessively played most of the non-grognard computer turn based strategy and tactical games. Warlords, Sword of Aragorn, Master of Magic, Civilization, Master of Orion, you name it. Even more perverse, I spent an inordinate amount of time playing clunky multiplayer turn based strategy games. I used to run an online competitive ladder for Warlords 3 — not the Battlecry RTS nonsense, the real one from back in the late nineties.
Sure, I also played all the big RTS games, but the multiplayer never clicked for me. It all felt too arbitrary and chaotic, I felt hampered by not being able to carefully consider my actions. I knew I was missing something, but it wasn’t until I forced myself to play Starcraft II for a few weeks that it all fell into pace.
After the jump, what I was missing all these years.
Continue reading →
The game I was looking forward to this week is the game I’m not playing. I have no idea whether Shadows of the Damned is any good. Instead, the game I’m playing is one I fully expected would be a chore. But so far, that’s not the case. In fact, I’m about to write something I never thought I’d write:
It looks as if Fear 3 is very good.
I try to be careful with the word “very”. It’s usually verbal filler. But I’m going to leave it in that line up there. I’m five chapters into the campaign, and I’ve just dinked around with the multiplayer options. But it looks like the guys at Day 1 Studios have done a heck of a job tidying up the ways the Fear games have been dopey, focusing the design on the gunplay, and making one fine corridor shooter in the process. I’ve previously been dismissive about Fear 3 because the other Fears were so uneven. And Day 1’s last title, a dirt-based shooter called Fracture published by LucasArts, didn’t inspire much confidence that their next title would be any good. But I couldn’t be happier to eat my words! I’ll have a full review next week, but in the meantime, consider Fear 3 a clear and present danger to your wallet.
Dungeon Siege III, however, poses no such threat. Expect a full review later this week.
So we saw Tree of Life this week instead of a movie about Ryan Reynolds getting a magic green ring. After one hour and 28 minutes, we finally get around to this week’s 3×3 of under-appreciated creature designs.
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Blizzard knows exactly how bad you are at Starcraft II.
In the deepest darkest depths of Battle.net there’s a single number which says precisely how well you play the game. This number (called match making rating or MMR) goes up when you win and down when you lose and it reveals exactly how you match up against every other player in the world. MMR is the cold hard truth. Blizzard is never, ever going to let you see it.
After the jump, what Blizzard will let you see. Continue reading →
His name is Cowboy Bob and he needs you to help him recover the Golden Apple from the Cave of the Alligator Mouth…or something. I couldn’t be bothered to pay attention to a word he said because he was utterly useless as a collaborator. That’s why he’s not pictured. He did nothing to help me. He’s part of the level, and we’re supposed to be working together, but he is total dead weight. Now I know how my friends feel when we play co-op. In fact, he got himself trapped in a cage from which I had to liberate him, so he gets extra minus points. Cowboy Bob, you suck at this game. My friend, we are simpatico!
Your level, however, does not suck. I liked it a lot. It’s called Wooden Perfection, and believe me, I wrestled quite a bit with what to do with the title of this entry. I’m not going to lie to you, the word ‘sporting’ was part of it for a good long while. But since this isn’t a political blog, I decided against using that headline.
This is about gaming, and in that vein…er…
After the jump, the planet core Continue reading →
The Starcarft II ladder is the perfect home for what I’m going to call the casual hardcore gamer. Those of us who have an obsessive competitive streak but are also saddled with bothersome responsibilities like work. And children. Let me tell you, children will wreak havoc on your gaming time. That precious “single sitting” indie game is going to take you two weeks to finish at best. That 40+ hour eastern european RPG is good for a season, if you even manage to finish it. And you can forget about MMOs unless you want a visit from child services.
But Starcraft II? In an hour or so you can play all the daily Starcraft II a normal man can manage.
After the jump, a normal man tries to manage. Continue reading →
…the inert bastard child of no one bothering to even try.
Thumbs down.
