Leveling up your characters in Guild Wars 2 is only one form of advancement. There’s also your score, which tracks all manner of things you’ve done with all your characters, broken down into categories of achievements: crafting, combat, PvP, fashion, exploration, and so forth. The score doesn’t mean anything, but it’s a helpful way to compare how much you’ve played compared to your friends. For instance, Jason McMaster has 1078 points. I have 1226, thanks in part to the careful application of a flamethrower. I rest my case.
One of the cool things about events like the ongoing Dragon Bash is that the points system — known in some circles as achievement whoring, but there’s no need to be nasty about it — is used to encourage us to do stuff related to the event. For instance, I’ve been gathering all this taffy that gives me a brief boost if I eat it. Big whoop. Frankly, I can’t be bothered. So I’m sitting on about a hundred pieces of taffy that I might as well throw away.
Oh, look, there’s an achievement for eating the taffy. I might as well start pounding it down. After about ten pieces of the dragon-themed candy, the above screenshot ensues. Pretty sneaky, ArenaNet. Also realistic.
My favorite instance of overindulgence gimmicks in an MMO was in Lord of the Rings Online. Turbine tried mightily to make player housing and guild housing relevant. Among their attempts was furniture and trophies you could use in the instanced housing. Such as the keg someone put in our guild’s house. It had a warning label on it that basically said the ale in the keg was too powerful and you therefore shouldn’t drink it. “Seriously,” it suggested, “just don’t!” So, naturally, you drank it. At which point you were teleported to a random location and told that you didn’t remember anything that had happened. This triggered a cute Hangover style quest in which you talked to various people to piece together what you’d done during your blackout.
But my favorite part of the gimmick was that when you were teleported to the random location, you appeared without your pants on. But not to worry! You hadn’t lost your Reinforced Mithril Britches of Budgeford! They were safe in your inventory.
UPDATE: After finishing off all my taffy and vomiting a few more times, my score is now up to 1228. Jason McMaster’s score is still only 1078.
Company of Heroes is a classic real time strategy game for a reason. It brought design innovation and Hollywood kick to the genre, and it did it with a stultifyingly familiar setting. You loved Company of Heroes no matter how badly you were burned out on World War II! It did so many things right: the interplay of infantry and armor, the destructible terrain, the commander abilities, the four factions, the victory conditions, the various game modes, the voice acting, the interface, the fancy graphics, the gratifyingly tactical fiddliness.
After the jump, what would possibly go wrong with the sequel? Continue reading →
Well, that wasn’t nearly as difficult as I thought it was going to be. I logged in, dinked around with my skills a bit, and ambled over to check out a dynamic event in which some centaurs had occupied a human settlement. If I had five silver for every time that happened in Guild Wars! In the occupied settlement, I found three other players working on the event. They invited me to a party and there went the rest of the evening. I had been playing a necromancer based on debuffing enemies, which is a bit of a finicky way to fight a battle. However, I was able to easily rejigger her into a more accommodating pet class. Let my bone fields, blood fiends, shadow fiends, flesh golems, explosive bone minions, and adorable little jagged horrors get in there for the fighting while I get reacquainted with what’s what. It still got a bit chaotic. At one point, I didn’t even notice my party had moved on. Hey guys, wait for me and my army of freaks!
Crafting, on the other hand, looks like it’s going to be a nightmare to relearn. I think I’ll just let that sit for a while. As for the player vs player stuff, I can’t help but feel the allure of the new skill system for the world vs world larger-scale multiplayer. That was already a hole you could fall into for days at a time. Now it looks big enough to fall into for weeks at a time.
The worldwide event currently in progress, Dragon Bash, involves smacking dragon pinatas, burning dragon effigies (pictured), and some minigames that I have no desire to play, including bird race betting in the capital. A huge illusionary dragon presides over the capital, which seems like it would be unnerving for the people who live there. A series of new missions are playfully styled as fantasy noire. Unfortunately, I think they’re above my necromancer’s level (level 33 out of 80), as I’m being tasking with finding a suspect in an area with level 55 monsters. I’m not sure I’ll be able to progress into the next stage of the event, which begins tomorrow. It’s something about sky pirates. I’m tempted to call in the big guns (i.e. my level 80 engineer).
Tomorrow’s update also includes what ArenaNet calls the “largest balance patch ever”. What better time to relearn how to play?
High Moon Studios has been doing yeoman’s work with the Transformers games. Can they rise to the absurdity required for a good Deadpool game? We find out this week.
Nintendo’s latest collection of Wario minigames comes out for the Wii U under the name Mario & Watch. I’ve played the multiplayer, where I found exactly one mode worth playing more than once. It’s a Super Monkeyball style game where you and other players try to land your pieces on scored targets. I mainly like this mode because I don’t have to dig out any Wiimotes to play an old copy of Super Monkeyball. Otherwise, I don’t see the appeal of Wario & Game for anyone who isn’t a Wario completionist.
Endless Space, a strategy game without an AI, gets DLC called Disharmony. Among the additions is an “Adaptive Multi-Agent Artificial Intelligence System”. I didn’t make that up. The developers made that up. That’s actually one of the new features. In my experience, the fancier the name for the AI, the dumber the actual AI. But I’d love to be wrong. Endless Space is far too stylish a sci-fi game to be left to languish brainlessly.
The DLC I’m really excited about is the dedicated Tiny Tina add-on for Borderlands 2. Or, as I like to call it, the Burches are back. The conceit is that Tiny Tina is dungeonmastering a session of Bunkers and Badasses. I just failed my saving throw to resist.
This year’s Magic the Gathering release, Magic the Gathering 2014, gets a new sealed deck tournament and more flexible deck-building. These seem like fine additions to an already fine game. At this point, the biggest drawbacks to these digital versions of Magic the Gathering is that you’re still only playing Magic the Gathering. I can think of about a dozen other card-based games I’d rather play.
If you like your vampires in hoodies, Dark is an action/stealth RPG from the German studio that made a Dungeon Keeper clone called Dungeons.
Finally, Company of Heroes 2 is out this week. Have you played the original Company of Heroes? If so, you’re good to go.
When there’s no more room in hell, Damon Lindelof will help write a confused Brad Pitt thriller that has some poorly directed zombie scenes in it. If you want to avoid World War Z spoilers, jump to the 59-minute mark for this week’s 3×3 about cheese. Yep, it’s about cheese.
Next week: Byzantium
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Sometimes a rollback happens in an online game and it’s no big deal because you weren’t playing and didn’t lose anything. Most times, it’s one of those things that happens to other people.
After the jump, this isn’t one of those times Continue reading →
I love the sound of this muscle car’s engine, especially as I slow down to cruise by a farmhouse I spotted from the main road. Should I go in? Are there survivors in there? Is it safe to look for salvage? My stamina is low, so I could use some food. And we’re in dire need of food back at the base. Three of us are weak from hunger. However, my machete broke when I foolishly tried to clear out an infestation at the gas station back there, and I only have four rounds for the shotgun. Do I head home and hope someone else found some food? Or do I make the one last stop?
After the jump, if the zombies don’t get you, the decisions will Continue reading →
This week we talk with Vic Davis about his new game, Occult Chronicles, in which Nick Diamon’s nemesis is a baby grand. Vic also reveals his favorite character in Injustice: Gods Among Us, what he wished he’d named his company instead of Cryptic Comet, and what Microsoft and Saturday Night Live have in common. Stick around for some talk about kicking doors in Door Kickers, shooting up a dynamic galaxy in Drox Operative, and gunning for your chance to get on TV in Defiance.
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Michael J. Bassett might be the new Paul W.S. Anderson when it comes to translating videogaming absurdity into cinematic silliness. So if you’re willing to sit through a Resident Evil movie, there’s no reason not to sit through the latest Silent Hill movie. Bassett is an ideal man for the job, considering his Solomon Kane is another one of the best worst things you can see all week. Say what you will about the guy’s movies, but he’s got style and he knows how to gather watchable actors. This Silent Hill features Carrie-Anne Moss as Edgar Winters, Malcolm McDowell as a really lame boss fight, Sean Bean sitting out most of the action, Martin Donovan as a detective you’ll forget was in the movie before it’s over, and Michelle Williams look-a-like Adelaide Clemens showing the sort of commitment that will serve her better in her small role in The Great Gatsby and in her kick-ass turn in Versus director Ryuhei Kitamura’s surprisingly good No One Lives.
Of course, you don’t come to Silent Hill for the human players. Revelation does an admirable job collecting a bunch of cool sets and weird creatures, all loosely connected by what might be a story. Pyramid Head moonlights variously as a carny, a prison warden with an effective solution for grabby inmates, and even a Big Daddy. The nurses are disturbingly erotic in a way that I’m not sure I noticed playing the videogames. And the movie’s counterpart to Silent Hill 2’s disturbing mannequin rape is a wonderfully creepy introduction to a new creature as memorable as anything from the games. What sense does it make? What story does it tell? What do we find out about the town itself? What motivates the characters? Forget it, Tom. It’s Silent Hill.
Silent Hill: Revelation is on VOD, Blu-Ray, DVD, and Netflix.
Now that everyone’s presumably done with E3 — all that’s left is to watch how deep a hole Microsoft digs themselves — let’s get back to a far more important topic: games we can actually play right now. I’m not surprised that publishers try to drive the conversation to upcoming games. That’s their job. But I am surprised at how well it works. Why are so many of you peering so intently through carefully jiggered binoculars handed to you by various marketing departments? Had enough yet? Are you ready to come back to the amazing stuff already at your fingertips?
Because here are ten games you should still be playing Continue reading →
State of Decay developer Undead Labs has some good news and some bad news. I know you like your dessert first, so there’s this tidbit in today’s blog update announcing that they’ve passed a half million copies downloaded.
We’re working on a pure sandbox mode for State of Decay, in large part because you asked for it.
State of Decay is already an open-world game with scads of freedom, but it’s got particular story beats that might get old after, say, a second play-through. But it’s also got more than enough gameplay to sustain a completely wide-open unscripted sandbox experience, and I’m delighted Undead Labs will see it through. I just hope we can name our own characters, because I already have my share of baggage with the existing characters.
Now I’m going to give you the damn veggies. It looks like the first patch will download but it won’t install. There’s some confusion about how and even whether this actually happened. But if you were like me and holding off for that handful of fixes before continuing your game, you might want to hold off a little longer. Which will get you that much closer to the sandbox mode.
The only major release this week is Capcom’s latest appeal to nostalgia with Dungeons & Dragons: Chronicles of Mystara, an action RPG with official D&D flavoring available for download for the Xbox 360. This seemed like a good idea to me. Until I played it. This is a direct port of an arcade brawler from 1993 and its 1996 sequel, both of which hurt my eyes and my game design sensibilities. Who would play this? It’s like having Spin Doctors songs in your iTunes library.
Before we’d seen Man of Steel, one of us on this podcast predicted that it would be the worst movie we see all summer. Did Zack Snyder, the director of Sucker Punch, live up to this expectation? If you want to avoid Man of Steel spoilers, jump to the 1:09 mark for this week’s 3×3 of our favorite babysitters in movies.
Next week: World War Z
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Diablo III gets it. Torchlight gets it. Marvel Ultimate Alliance gets it. Titan Quest gets it. Borderlands gets it. Path of Exile doesn’t get it. Van Helsing doesn’t get it. Krater doesn’t get it. Dungeon Siege doesn’t get it. Sacred doesn’t get it. Hellgate: London didn’t get it. Try as they might, many RPGs don’t get it, including some of the good ones.
Marvel Heroes totally gets it. Totally.
After the jump, gets what? Continue reading →
Ever wonder what kind of horror movie Mark Duplass would write? Frankly, me either. But the answer to that question is Black Rock, directed by and starring Katie Aselton, who has worked with Duplass in quirky indie comedy fare like The League and Puffy Chair.
It opens with — stop me if you’ve heard this one — three women going camping. They drive a little boat out to an island utterly devoid of anything resembling scenery or likely camping spots. This being a horror movie, there are bad men out here. When it comes time to toughen up and survive, the scenes play out like acting workshop exercises. “Okay ladies, in this scene, you’re a football team getting psyched for the big game. Go!” They even smack each other on the head to show they’re serious. But this stuff is practically Brando compared to the villain, a pale willowy nerd mistakenly cast as a ruthless war-hardened psycho.
The most notable thing about Black Rock is its take on nudity. Plenty of horror movies include pointlessly titillating nudity. It goes with the territory. Black Rock takes a briefly courageous approach, but quickly turns timid. The actresses put their clothes back on and you’re back to watching a typical horror movie. It all ends in a ridiculous rough-and-tumble finale with all the brutality of a pillow fight, but with bad bruise make-up and a little fake blood.
Black Rock is available on video on demand. Support Qt3 by watching it on Amazon.com.
