Black and white. I’ve mentioned before that there’s something about a black and white level that speaks to me. Even when it’s a bit awkward to play, as Along Came a Spider can be, I’ll treat it to multiple plays because I like the feel. Classic. Almost cinematic.
Speaking of cinematic…
After the jump, if I only had a brain Continue reading →
If you’ve played any of the large-scale player vs. player in an MMO, you know what an absurd jumble it can be: a hundred character models jammed together with names hovering above them as if a layer of random multi-colored letters have snowed down onto their heads. Guild Wars 2’s world vs. world battles (pictured) are no exception.
A lot of Dark Age of Camelot players will appreciate how world vs. world pits three factions against each other, often trying to carry away each other’s orbs (owning orbs gives everyone in your faction a health boost), capturing each other strongpoints, and bringing powerful siege engines to bear. Many world vs. world encounters include powerful and expensive golems that excel at knocking down doors. Above is me in a catapult helping a bunch of players in the red faction while we try to knock down a door. It felt a lot like some of the battles I played in Warhammer Online. But it also felt different enough that Guild Wars 2’s world vs. world combat is one of the main reasons I can’t wait for this game to come out.
After the jump, six reasons Guild Wars 2 is a PvP game I want to play Continue reading →
One of my favorite things about the original Guild Wars is it never turned into that typical late-game MMO interface of rows of hotbars framing the screen, each festooned with tiny icons of impenetrable meaning. In Guild Wars, whatever level you were, however many hours you’d been playing, you only ever had eight skills. Before an adventure, you picked any eight skills you wanted. Your character was always a flexible thing. You could freely rejigger Guild Wars’ equivalent of a talent tree, which tweaked your eight skills in unique ways. But playing Guild Wars was always and only a matter of pressing one of eight buttons.
Guild Wars 2 is both simpler and more complicated. But I’m convinced it’s better for a few reasons, including one reason that means I absolutely, positively, no-question-about-it must go into that swamp pictured up there.
Find out what’s in the swamp after the jump Continue reading →
Let me get this out of the way, because it’s important and, as I played the beta of Guild Wars 2, it was something I realized I’d nearly forgotten: Guild Wars 2 is a massively multiplayer online RPG.
That probably sounds obvious to a lot of people. I mean, it’s obvious to me on an intellectual level. But after being continually disappointed by MMOs, and fondly recalling the few that do things differently — DC Universe Online, Rift, the original Guild Wars — I think I piled too many expectations onto Guild Wars 2. So as I was playing, and as I sank into that comfortable groove, I started to smell something familiar: ennui.
Guild Wars 2, for all the cool stuff it does, will not change your opinion on MMOs. It’s very much a part of the genre. It is not the Second Coming of MMOs. It is not even the Reformation; a lot of things I like in Guild Wars 2, I’ve seen in other MMOs. It is, however, an epiphany. What I saw while playing over the last few days was a very good game, easily more polished than many MMOs at launch, and full of exciting content, bold design decisions, and beautiful artwork. It does things differently enough, smart enough, and gorgeous enough that the occasional whiff of ennui doesn’t make me any less enthusiastic about playing when it’s released.
After the jump, you’ve never seen a quest log quite like this Continue reading →
PvP! It’s a thing. A thing some people are surprisingly passionate about; before my guild chose our server, there was some hot debate on whether we should go Player versus Player or Player versus Environment. Eventually the fear of being constantly killed and corpse camped in open world PvP was too valid an argument, and we decided PvE.
But just because we aren’t throwing down with the other side all the time doesn’t mean we’re deprived of killing us some Imps. This is war, man! Republic (or as I like to say to annoy everyone, Rebellion) versus Empire! Good versus Evil! Freedom versus Oppression! And it’s awesome, when it isn’t being terrible!
After the jump, the high highs and low lows of SWTOR PvP Continue reading →
That little gear in the middle there, between the two bigger gears? I shot that out of my head. Or rather my helmet. My gear hat. Cog hat? Whatever. It sprang fully formed from my head either way and wedged as you see it, forcing the larger gears to turn and raise the wall over to the right.
InterKinetic. It makes to lull you to sleep with its rocking-cradle tick-tock feel and lullaby music, and then it gives you a gear hat. Add gear hat to the list of things in LBP I want to have in real life, along with fire hat. Go ahead and take cupcake hat off the list. I’m sick of cupcakes already. But then I’m a pie man.
New rule: designers who don’t bother to state explicitly that the level I’m about to play is a versus level should be smacked with a sackpuppet. I don’t know if such a thing as a sackpuppet even exists, but I’m willing to invent one for just this purpose. Jumping into a level and then being told, after the level loads, that it is really for more than one player drives me bonkers. That must have happened five or six times the last time I played, and given the length of my load times of late, it really is too much to take. You’re making me just want to ditch my PS3 controller in favor of grabbing my iPhone and checking my Ascension turns, something that will not take much to persuade me to do. You really want to do that?
LBP CUP 2011-William Tell Overture, does not have this problem. While it is indeed a race, you race against the clock so a versus tag is not necessary. What’s more, after you’ve galloped Fred Flintstone-like for awhile, the level becomes something totally other. Weird. Unexpected. Kind of wonderful. No tags needed for that. However I would love to be able to just bloop back, TiVo style, to where the shift occurred, because I can’t quite figure it. A quick replay would be nice.
Speaking of replays.
after the jump, what the hell just happened? Continue reading →
We’re raiding! Or operating, I guess, as Star Wars: The Old Republic’s end game instances are called operations. So, we’re operating! And it’s great!
Every aspect of it is satisfying for me: the required teamwork, the pressure not to let the group down, the elation when the boss is reduced to zero health, the sense of camaraderie between my fellow operators and myself. I even enjoy when we wipe because it leads to group strategizing on how to do a better job. There’s only one thing that I truly hate about operating: the loot.
After the jump, what the hell is wrong with me Continue reading →
One thing I’ve been clear about in playing community levels, one might say to the point of harping, is that I don’t care to go into a level that is a movie. I don’t want to sit through your sack-version of the Scream movies, or watch you remake Indiana Jones with LBP design tools and no real gameplay. I have better things to do with my time. Therefore, I tend to automatically avoid levels described as “cinematic” in the review notes, because more often than not this means I’ll be watching instead of playing. I don’t play games for watching. I have real movies for that.
The drawback here is that in avoiding “cinematic” as a descriptor I miss out on some levels that are not movie remakes, but play like your sackdude is in a movie. This week’s level, Hurricane Edna, is one of those. I took a chance on it because I remembered playing another level by its designer, Kelitorious, last year. It was called The Casino Robbery, and while it had pacing problems I liked it. Hurricane Edna is much leaner, but still very cinematic, in the best possible sense.
“So how do we do this?” I ask Alex. We’re driving home from his second MMA class, which was on Brazilian Jiu-jitsu, a cardio intense grappling martial art. It left him pretty exhausted.
“Water,” he demands. “You give me water.”
I hand him the bottle, which he begins draining.
“How do we do what?” he asks in between gulps.
“Find our eighth member for the guild. You said it would be hard?”
“Ha!” he lets out a derisive laugh. “That’s not just hard. That’s impossibllllle!”
I think he was doing Luke, but he still has some water in his mouth and it comes out as “impwossable.”
After the jump, Alex and I go on a recruiting mission Continue reading →
What? Why are the sheets wet? Was I drooling? Jesus, that’s sweat. Who’s sweating in my bed? It’s getting all over me. Oh, I’m sweating. It’s me. Right, I’m sick. Is that good, that I’m sweating? Doesn’t that mean I’m hydrated? God, I hope so. I can’t drink any more water. Why are my lips so dry? How long is that D20-sized clot of pain going to throb behind my eyes?
It’s still dark out. I can’t believe I woke up before dawn. Looking at the digital clock — oh, shit, the digital clock isn’t turned on, did the power go out? No, no, it’s on, I think. I just have to squint because my eyes are all bleary and I can’t see anything. It’s 7 o’ clock. Why isn’t it light out yet? I have to change these sheets. I’m wearing my clothes? I went to bed in my clothes? I don’t think I can get up just yet. I feel like I’m going to be sick. When did I last eat? Maybe it’s 7 o’ clock in the evening. It is. 7 o’ clock in the evening. Last I remember it was the afternoon and I was just going to lie down for a second because I could see the dark wave coming. What happened to Tuesday? Or Wednesday? Did I have something I had to do today? Is it still Tuesday?
Where’s the DS?
After the jump, the sickness unto Wesker Continue reading →
Kind of a cool image, huh? Creepy. Evocative. But how does the level play, you rightfully ask. Okay. Fair enough.
I have no idea. My PlayStation is currently waging a war with my LAN. This happens. Usually when there’s an update for either the system or for LBP. My network and that game just don’t get along. The update process starts and my Internet connection gets banished. So this week’s level is one I played a few weeks ago that I meant to revisit. I’d love to do so, but, you know…the war. That’s actually okay, though, since another game has had my full attention all this week, and it requires neither my PlayStation nor my home network.
After the jump, banished and it feels so good Continue reading →
“We need another DPS,” my brother, Alex, tells me, as he wraps his hands.
We’re at our local mixed martial arts gym. That was the deal we had made – I would help him run his Star Wars: The Old Republic guild, but he had to start taking classes with me. I figured the two would balance out our social lives.
“Which are those again?” I ask, adjusting the straps of my gloves.
“Pretty much everythi- Ow. Am I doing this right?” he holds his left hand out to me.
I take my gloves off and check his hand. He’s wrapping it too tight – I loosen it for him.
“Are you guys talking about World of Warcraft?” some little guy who overheard our conversation asks. When I say little, I mean height wise. His arms do not look little.
“No,” Alex sneers. “We’re talking about Star Wars.”
“You sparring?” the guys asks him. I can sense malice in his voice. “I need a partner.”
“No!” I say, quickly. The last thing I want is for my brother to get his ass kicked at his first
class. Especially by some World of Warcraft player.
After the jump, raiding for dummies Continue reading →
I have this thing for objects that become characters, or that we come to see as characters, in movies and games certainly, but also in life. I love how my little boy can get lost in a conversation with one of his beloved stuffed animals while I’m voicing it. That willing suspension of disbelief always came easy to me — I remember as a child totally going along with my dad when he wanted to pretend his Fiat X1/9 was an X-wing on our way home after seeing you-know-what — and I’m happy to see my son shares this.
But stuffed animals and pets are easy. I like it when something that doesn’t normally have personality — a truck, a weapon, a tire — feels like a character. Maybe it’s having watched the excellent and weird Rubber again while working up my end-of-the-year list for the movie podcast that’s influencing me, but this week’s level, Super ball deluxe, hits that spot for me. Part of it is the physical design: the ball plays like it has weight and texture, say the heft of a bocce ball with the slipperiness of a bowling ball spinning down its lane. It’s more than that though. It’s got personality, and as Jules observes in Pulp Fiction, personality goes a long way.
When I first read the title Black and White platformer, I got excited. A level all in black and white would be a nice change of pace. That didn’t pan out, as you can clearly see from the fireballs in the above screenshot. I still had a blast with the level in spite of this little letdown, and in spite of the weird thrusting phallus sections. Maybe I’m misinterpreting that part though. Sometimes a pointy column with a slightly bulbous tip is just a pointy column with a slightly bulbous tip. You be the judge.
Speaking of judging, it’s Sackie Awards nominations time! Yep. Sackies. That’s what they’re calling them. Get your nominations for your favourite levels of 2011 in before 06/02/2012, and seeing as there’s a ‘u’ in favourite, please note that the deadline is February 6th, not June 2nd. Also, my mention of pointy columns followed by an announcement of the Sackie Awards is entirely coincidental. No need to page Dr. Freud, I assure you.
