I'm in need of a break from World of Tanks (which I've been playing profusely for the last month or so), so I came across Arcane Saga Online and decided to give it a try. Unfortunately I got halfway through customizing the controls before I realized there was no option to invert the mouse Y-axis, which makes the game unplayable for me. Had the same problem with Perfect World Online a while back and had the same solution: immediately uninstall it.
So I was thinking to myself, if I was going to play a fantasy-stylized Korean AMMO with outlandishly clad women I might as well play THE fantasy-styled Korean AMMO with outlandishly clad women--for I recalled at that moment that Tera is now free to play.
And it shall be so. Downloading the client as I type this.
I played the beta a while back with Callsign (I think I probably made a post about it back in the day) and was unimpressed, but I'm in need of a quick fix and its had some time to stew so let's see how it's doing.
Also, did I make a post about the Firefall beta yet? I'm in the closed beta for that and it's interesting if pretty empty at the moment. I'm concerned because it's being patched with actual content VERY slowly and it's already approaching open beta. I played it a lot for a few days before getting pretty burnt out on the same grinding waltz of content for xp and materials (high level ARES missions and Melding Tornado events which are lovely for xp and the obligatory Thumper grinding for mats). I'm hoping I can come back to it in a month and there'll be more to do, but I already haven't played it for a few weeks and when I checked on it yesterday there were just handfuls of random bug fixes.
Saturday, June 8, 2013
Sunday, May 12, 2013
Fallout Soon, Fellow Wastelander
I've been playing through Fallout: New Vegas again to keep from being driven nuts by my shitty DSL internet (which has been practically unusable for large portions of the day for months now). I had a dream the other night that would make a really cool premise for a new Fallout: it started just before the bombs hit and in the dream the player character was a child in the back of some bus on some school field trip or something. The PC survives the blasts but is turned into a ghoul, which immediately gave me several interesting ideas for a number of angles for the story to develop:
-We could get a peek at the world immediately post-bombs (ghoul form would make the ambient radiation a non-issue from a gameplay perspective).
-Otherwise, the player could get trapped somewhere only to be rediscovered in "modern" times.
-The player could stumble across something that reverses ghoulification.
etc etc
If you really wanted to out on a limb you could turn the whole ghoul/not-ghoul thing into a set of Dark Souls-esque game mechanics.
In other news, I tried the Marvel Heroes beta over the weekend. Got through the tutorial and briefly perused the forums before I decided it was completely not worth the waste of time. The former was hella boring and promised a lot of future grinding that if I wanted to commit to I'd pick a better game (made me kindasorta want to play some more Path of Exile) and the latter was filled with the requisite fanboy forum-denizens who are happy and willing to swallow developer cock instead of acknowledge any form of criticism.
It's bizarre how much they're pushing the game's status as an MMORPG, because you get silly stuff like this, specifically #8. It's an ARTS. Diablo clone if you prefer. It's free2play and it's the shady kind where if you want to play a particular hero you're going to need to shell out cash for it or grind ad nauseam. It wasn't eye-catching or interesting in any novel way, but don't take my word for it--go try it yourself. I'm just saying I found it really really boring.
-We could get a peek at the world immediately post-bombs (ghoul form would make the ambient radiation a non-issue from a gameplay perspective).
-Otherwise, the player could get trapped somewhere only to be rediscovered in "modern" times.
-The player could stumble across something that reverses ghoulification.
etc etc
If you really wanted to out on a limb you could turn the whole ghoul/not-ghoul thing into a set of Dark Souls-esque game mechanics.
In other news, I tried the Marvel Heroes beta over the weekend. Got through the tutorial and briefly perused the forums before I decided it was completely not worth the waste of time. The former was hella boring and promised a lot of future grinding that if I wanted to commit to I'd pick a better game (made me kindasorta want to play some more Path of Exile) and the latter was filled with the requisite fanboy forum-denizens who are happy and willing to swallow developer cock instead of acknowledge any form of criticism.
It's bizarre how much they're pushing the game's status as an MMORPG, because you get silly stuff like this, specifically #8. It's an ARTS. Diablo clone if you prefer. It's free2play and it's the shady kind where if you want to play a particular hero you're going to need to shell out cash for it or grind ad nauseam. It wasn't eye-catching or interesting in any novel way, but don't take my word for it--go try it yourself. I'm just saying I found it really really boring.
Sunday, April 21, 2013
More like Bioshock Infinitely Lame
Adapted from a series of posts I've made elsewhere.
Bioshock Infinite: I'm not impressed. Tried too hard to one up the look of its predecessors without properly capturing the spirit. The story is not extremely engaging, nor particularly thought provoking. It touches on themes of political ideology and sociology to justify the setting without exploring them with any depth or finesse--which could have been an improvement upon its forefathers' flimsy pedantic, black & white morality shortcomings. The gameplay is disgustingly linear (although to its credit they at least try to hide it) and is at best a cash-in on the series' iconic imagery and at worst a cash-in on generic actiony spectacle shooters.
I'm a pretty huge fan of the first Bioshock; I even liked the much-less-critically-successful sequel. I think what really killed Infinite for me was about halfway through the game when I realized I was basically playing Dishonored in a floating cloud city without the stealth mechanics. I kinda wish they'd given it a different name instead of Bioshock.
The game just didn't have any humanity: take the first Bioshock where even the average mook (not even taking into consideration that care was given to creating personalities for every archetype of splicer) was identifiable as a person who fell from various levels of grace into the mutated hell of plasmid overuse (plasmids, also note, were more than a gameplay mechanic and was quite central to the overarching plot). In Bioshock Infinite at every stage you're gunning down faceless zealots of various flavors, with virtually no distinguishing characteristics amongst them--the most egregious example being Cornelius Slate's soldiers, whom you have no reason to fight and have absolutely no reason to fight you other than that the Hall of Heroes apparently was in dire need of local adversaries.
Honestly, the most exciting part of the game for me was the brief moment in the ending sequence where you end up in Rapture (I was actually kind of hoping there'd be an even longer nod to the first game, maybe witnessing the plane crash before you enter the lighthouse). And even that moment was partially spoiled by the cockblocky way the sequence conveniently puts down a recurring big bad which would have made an excellent boss fight somewhere instead of just getting tossed in the trash heap with the rest of the plot.
It's a cushy themepark ride; significantly more style than substance, content only to briefly amuse you with flashing lights until the ride commensurate to the ticket you paid for is over.
Bioshock Infinite: I'm not impressed. Tried too hard to one up the look of its predecessors without properly capturing the spirit. The story is not extremely engaging, nor particularly thought provoking. It touches on themes of political ideology and sociology to justify the setting without exploring them with any depth or finesse--which could have been an improvement upon its forefathers' flimsy pedantic, black & white morality shortcomings. The gameplay is disgustingly linear (although to its credit they at least try to hide it) and is at best a cash-in on the series' iconic imagery and at worst a cash-in on generic actiony spectacle shooters.
I'm a pretty huge fan of the first Bioshock; I even liked the much-less-critically-successful sequel. I think what really killed Infinite for me was about halfway through the game when I realized I was basically playing Dishonored in a floating cloud city without the stealth mechanics. I kinda wish they'd given it a different name instead of Bioshock.
The game just didn't have any humanity: take the first Bioshock where even the average mook (not even taking into consideration that care was given to creating personalities for every archetype of splicer) was identifiable as a person who fell from various levels of grace into the mutated hell of plasmid overuse (plasmids, also note, were more than a gameplay mechanic and was quite central to the overarching plot). In Bioshock Infinite at every stage you're gunning down faceless zealots of various flavors, with virtually no distinguishing characteristics amongst them--the most egregious example being Cornelius Slate's soldiers, whom you have no reason to fight and have absolutely no reason to fight you other than that the Hall of Heroes apparently was in dire need of local adversaries.
Honestly, the most exciting part of the game for me was the brief moment in the ending sequence where you end up in Rapture (I was actually kind of hoping there'd be an even longer nod to the first game, maybe witnessing the plane crash before you enter the lighthouse). And even that moment was partially spoiled by the cockblocky way the sequence conveniently puts down a recurring big bad which would have made an excellent boss fight somewhere instead of just getting tossed in the trash heap with the rest of the plot.
It's a cushy themepark ride; significantly more style than substance, content only to briefly amuse you with flashing lights until the ride commensurate to the ticket you paid for is over.
Saturday, April 20, 2013
An irrelevant long-winded post about Solomond Island in the Secret World that nobody I know will understand or really care about
I originally wrote this 4/6/2013.
I really love Solomon Island as a quest-chain, even though I have a lot of complaints about it.
At the beginning of the Secret World you discover that your character has somehow swallowed a super-power bestowing bee whilst sleeping and wakes up discovering that they have the power to wreck their apartment over the course of a week. You're quickly whisked away to one of three factions representing a covert power struggle. They all essentially do the same thing: tell you that you're now super awesome, that there's some evil something that needs to be dealt with, and that you as an unwitting newbie have to go sort that shit out. Not much motivation given, but eh that's what you've got to go on.
You're immediately shoved off to Solomon Island, a "small" island off the coast of Maine, where a mysterious fog is terrorizing the place The Mist style complete with zombies, Cthulu-esque horrors, an evil cosmic life-eating infectious force, a convenient rift between the dimensions of Earth and Hell, ghosts, evil giant burrowing insects, and a few other varieties of supernatural terrors.
So here's the full back story, it comes in a few parts (if you're the sort of person who cares about spoilers and think you might want to play the Secret World someday, you're probably not going to want to read the rest of this):
-At some point a thousand years ago, a contingent of Mayans escorted by some dark evil god invaded Solomon Island looking for...something. Unfortunately the island was then occupied by a tribe of native Americans called the Wabanaki. The Mayans proceed to slaughter the Wabanaki, who do their best to fight back, and are in danger of being eradicated when, conveniently, a group of Norse explorers wielding a powerful light artifact show up and join the battle on the side of the Wabanaki to push back the Mayan expedition. The Norsemen and Wabanaki together set up powerful wards to protect the even bigger even more powerfuler artifact that the Mayans were after before the Norsemen depart and are summarily sunk some distance out by what can be assumed is some remnant of the dark god's power.
--As a silly aside, the powerful light artifact which is the focus of the Solomon Island quest, is never directly named, is the source of my favorite line from the Darkness War ("TheNorsemenhadbroughtwiththemthepoweroftheirgodsandthiswassomethingtheMayanswerenotpreparedfor."), and is heavily implied to be the source of all of Solomon Island's troubles, is Excalibur (if you check the Verangian's buff when he uses it during the Darkness War, it refers to the sword by name).
-Flash forward to modern times, a fishing boat from the island goes missing for some time but eventually returns sans part of its crew and with the rest suffering from some insidious hallucinations. They're followed very shortly by an abandoned shipping barge that had disappeared from the same area several years before which is itself accompanied by a dense fog that covers the island. The people who escape the fog (perhaps by hiding in a supermarket), eventually find the rest of the town empty but for a few days until the missing contingent of citizens return for a mini zombie apocalypse. Also, there's Cthulu-inspired sea horrors invading.
-It's also established in the introduction of the game that there's an overarching malevolent force called the Filth that has been popping up (and promptly covered up) all over the world. Somehow, and at the same time, they also choose this exact moment to pop up on Solomon Island. I think at the time that the game was released it was meant to be surmised that the Filth were the harbingers of the 2012 Mayan apocalypse and that shit was getting worse as time marched towards December. The link is less apparent now that December 2012 has come and gone, but it's alluded to a couple times early on and promptly forgotten as though it was perhaps something that would be more present-in-mind if played parallel to 2012 IRL.
--It's implied that the shipping barge had discovered the wreck of the Norse ships and had recovered Excalibur. From here it's not clear if the dark powers behind the fog were attached to the sword (I thought it was implied in a few places that the fog was a direct result of the sword's power being brought back to the island) or simply following in an attempt to claim it...somehow.
---A man who has been pursuing the means to open a portal to Hell so he can become Hell-Stalin and liberate the everyday working demon, conveniently succeeds in doing so RIGHT on Solomon Island AND at the same time as the fog, which also opens a ton of related unstable portals in one whole corner of the place.
---The local secretly-Illuminati-controlled college has a sudden alumni ghost flare up at the same time. Also, there's a haunted amusement park and mansion, but it can possibly be assumed they were haunted before the fog rolled in.
---A race of evil insects who had apparently burrowed under the island for some time (I think it's implied that the Mayans brought them over but I can't quite recall) suddenly decide its time to set up shop on the surface.
---Also, every local legend about angry spirits or backwoods creatures? Yeah, they're all true now. Bigfoots, wendigos, angry hauntings, evil possessed scarecrows, even the village idiot who oversees the junkyard is now building giant trash heap golems.
While all of these are basically convenient explanations for a variety of quests, it starts to get comically out of control while you're on your tour of the single most supernaturally unlucky island in the world. There's a very convoluted transition from where you go from investigating the cause of the Draug's invasion to stopping the Filth from getting their filthy hands on the Gaia Engine. The first part of the island is the strongest, narratively speaking, especially since it's focused only on the sea monster invasion, but by the time you move on to the second part of the island everything else starts kicking into overdrive. The entire thing kind of overstays its welcome too even from a gameplay standpoint; by the time you're done with Blue Mountain, if you've done everything there is to do, your character progression (which is tracked by an approximation based on the number of skill points you've spent and the abilities you've unlocked) should be somewhere around QL7 out of a max of QL10.
I kind of wish the Filth subplot would have played a backseat, maybe as a subtle behind-the-scenes manipulator, to the Cthuluey Draug plot, for no other reason than that the sea monster invasion was an infinitely more interesting thing to explore in an MMO than garden variety corruption #53. Actually, now that I think about it, it could perhaps be argued that the first part of the island, Kingsmouth Town, reaches a climax when you defeat the Ur-Draug at the wreck of the Polaris, which might explain why the Draug are suddenly second-string villains by the time you reach the Savage Coast on the other side of the island.
Anyways, I applaud The Vanishing of Tyler Freeborn for at least attempting to tie things together, even if its conclusion is rather weak. The link between the sea creatures and the Filth is extremely not clear in the base story. Issue 5 attempts to tie them together by coming to the implied conclusion that the ancient Norse ship was sunk by the Filth, which "evolved" along its own, separate path to the Cthulu-type horrors with zombies con queso we see in Kingsmouth Town et al. In my opinion it cheapens the Draug as primary villains, but at least the effort was made to tie up that loose end.
To top off my complaints, Solomon Island ends on a horrendous cliffhanger that's not resolved in the current content. There's another minor kick-to-the-balls moment in the inter-mission transition for the Illuminati where it's implied that there's dozens of other weapon-artifacts that you may-or-may-not get to see, but that's maybe more forgivable.
I really love Solomon Island as a quest-chain, even though I have a lot of complaints about it.
At the beginning of the Secret World you discover that your character has somehow swallowed a super-power bestowing bee whilst sleeping and wakes up discovering that they have the power to wreck their apartment over the course of a week. You're quickly whisked away to one of three factions representing a covert power struggle. They all essentially do the same thing: tell you that you're now super awesome, that there's some evil something that needs to be dealt with, and that you as an unwitting newbie have to go sort that shit out. Not much motivation given, but eh that's what you've got to go on.
You're immediately shoved off to Solomon Island, a "small" island off the coast of Maine, where a mysterious fog is terrorizing the place The Mist style complete with zombies, Cthulu-esque horrors, an evil cosmic life-eating infectious force, a convenient rift between the dimensions of Earth and Hell, ghosts, evil giant burrowing insects, and a few other varieties of supernatural terrors.
So here's the full back story, it comes in a few parts (if you're the sort of person who cares about spoilers and think you might want to play the Secret World someday, you're probably not going to want to read the rest of this):
-At some point a thousand years ago, a contingent of Mayans escorted by some dark evil god invaded Solomon Island looking for...something. Unfortunately the island was then occupied by a tribe of native Americans called the Wabanaki. The Mayans proceed to slaughter the Wabanaki, who do their best to fight back, and are in danger of being eradicated when, conveniently, a group of Norse explorers wielding a powerful light artifact show up and join the battle on the side of the Wabanaki to push back the Mayan expedition. The Norsemen and Wabanaki together set up powerful wards to protect the even bigger even more powerfuler artifact that the Mayans were after before the Norsemen depart and are summarily sunk some distance out by what can be assumed is some remnant of the dark god's power.
--As a silly aside, the powerful light artifact which is the focus of the Solomon Island quest, is never directly named, is the source of my favorite line from the Darkness War ("TheNorsemenhadbroughtwiththemthepoweroftheirgodsandthiswassomethingtheMayanswerenotpreparedfor."), and is heavily implied to be the source of all of Solomon Island's troubles, is Excalibur (if you check the Verangian's buff when he uses it during the Darkness War, it refers to the sword by name).
-Flash forward to modern times, a fishing boat from the island goes missing for some time but eventually returns sans part of its crew and with the rest suffering from some insidious hallucinations. They're followed very shortly by an abandoned shipping barge that had disappeared from the same area several years before which is itself accompanied by a dense fog that covers the island. The people who escape the fog (perhaps by hiding in a supermarket), eventually find the rest of the town empty but for a few days until the missing contingent of citizens return for a mini zombie apocalypse. Also, there's Cthulu-inspired sea horrors invading.
-It's also established in the introduction of the game that there's an overarching malevolent force called the Filth that has been popping up (and promptly covered up) all over the world. Somehow, and at the same time, they also choose this exact moment to pop up on Solomon Island. I think at the time that the game was released it was meant to be surmised that the Filth were the harbingers of the 2012 Mayan apocalypse and that shit was getting worse as time marched towards December. The link is less apparent now that December 2012 has come and gone, but it's alluded to a couple times early on and promptly forgotten as though it was perhaps something that would be more present-in-mind if played parallel to 2012 IRL.
--It's implied that the shipping barge had discovered the wreck of the Norse ships and had recovered Excalibur. From here it's not clear if the dark powers behind the fog were attached to the sword (I thought it was implied in a few places that the fog was a direct result of the sword's power being brought back to the island) or simply following in an attempt to claim it...somehow.
---A man who has been pursuing the means to open a portal to Hell so he can become Hell-Stalin and liberate the everyday working demon, conveniently succeeds in doing so RIGHT on Solomon Island AND at the same time as the fog, which also opens a ton of related unstable portals in one whole corner of the place.
---The local secretly-Illuminati-controlled college has a sudden alumni ghost flare up at the same time. Also, there's a haunted amusement park and mansion, but it can possibly be assumed they were haunted before the fog rolled in.
---A race of evil insects who had apparently burrowed under the island for some time (I think it's implied that the Mayans brought them over but I can't quite recall) suddenly decide its time to set up shop on the surface.
---Also, every local legend about angry spirits or backwoods creatures? Yeah, they're all true now. Bigfoots, wendigos, angry hauntings, evil possessed scarecrows, even the village idiot who oversees the junkyard is now building giant trash heap golems.
While all of these are basically convenient explanations for a variety of quests, it starts to get comically out of control while you're on your tour of the single most supernaturally unlucky island in the world. There's a very convoluted transition from where you go from investigating the cause of the Draug's invasion to stopping the Filth from getting their filthy hands on the Gaia Engine. The first part of the island is the strongest, narratively speaking, especially since it's focused only on the sea monster invasion, but by the time you move on to the second part of the island everything else starts kicking into overdrive. The entire thing kind of overstays its welcome too even from a gameplay standpoint; by the time you're done with Blue Mountain, if you've done everything there is to do, your character progression (which is tracked by an approximation based on the number of skill points you've spent and the abilities you've unlocked) should be somewhere around QL7 out of a max of QL10.
I kind of wish the Filth subplot would have played a backseat, maybe as a subtle behind-the-scenes manipulator, to the Cthuluey Draug plot, for no other reason than that the sea monster invasion was an infinitely more interesting thing to explore in an MMO than garden variety corruption #53. Actually, now that I think about it, it could perhaps be argued that the first part of the island, Kingsmouth Town, reaches a climax when you defeat the Ur-Draug at the wreck of the Polaris, which might explain why the Draug are suddenly second-string villains by the time you reach the Savage Coast on the other side of the island.
Anyways, I applaud The Vanishing of Tyler Freeborn for at least attempting to tie things together, even if its conclusion is rather weak. The link between the sea creatures and the Filth is extremely not clear in the base story. Issue 5 attempts to tie them together by coming to the implied conclusion that the ancient Norse ship was sunk by the Filth, which "evolved" along its own, separate path to the Cthulu-type horrors with zombies con queso we see in Kingsmouth Town et al. In my opinion it cheapens the Draug as primary villains, but at least the effort was made to tie up that loose end.
To top off my complaints, Solomon Island ends on a horrendous cliffhanger that's not resolved in the current content. There's another minor kick-to-the-balls moment in the inter-mission transition for the Illuminati where it's implied that there's dozens of other weapon-artifacts that you may-or-may-not get to see, but that's maybe more forgivable.
Wednesday, March 6, 2013
It's my party and I'll Far Cry if I want to.
I've been playing Far Cry 3 lately and enjoying it for the most part, but the more I play it the more it worries me.
Far Cry 3 is the epitome of the science of modern game design. It's also the next logical step in open-world sandbox-style games after Skyrim, and it certainly bears a lot of the marks of its influence. Everything about this game is designed to keep you playing a little bit longer: XP based character progression, tons of collectables, hunting for crafting materials, tiny bits of treasure scattered everywhere that trickle slowly into your wallet, guns that slowly unlock availability as time goes on (or can be bought) and are further customizable, Assassin's Creed-style slowly-unlock-the-map-and-side-missions-as-you-go gameplay, Skyrim-style laughable sidequests where everyone needs something that's conveniently in walking distance. Layered on top of a save-your-friends story where you go from OHMYGODIHAVEN'TSHOTAGUNBEFOREICAN'TKILLAMAN to fuck-yeah-jungle-survivalist-badass in the span of about 20 minutes and you're literally egged on by an alluring woman who promises you approval and (I'm not kidding) full-on graphic sex if you give her everything she wants.
And yet everything manages to simultaneously be an instant gratification roller-coaster ride. The game is filled with cutscenes and character actions where control is taken away from you to do something actiony while your vision is locked in all its headbobby glory to a camera lodged in your character's eye sockets. Your character is established as being a well-off white kid from California who hasn't touched a gun in his life and couldn't imagine shooting even his kidnappers, fortunately your older brother (whom you're held captive with) is an ex-marine so he's able to show you the ropes before being conveniently killed--but it's no problem because you're instantly adopted by the warrior tribe culture that's fighting against the pirates who kidnapped you and your friends who have this mysterious power that turns you into a master-stealth-ninja-survivalist by merely placing a small tattoo on your left arm. Everyone on the island instantly knows your name and how much of a badass you are, there's zero character development at all--you're instantly the only possible person in the world who can solve this island's troubles.
Putting myself in my character's shoes is very difficult. I feel like it robs me of what could have been an amazing character development experience when my character is suddenly a master marksman with what should be years of jungle special forces training literally the second I step out of Dennis' shack. There's no tension, no proper sense of the stakes whether it be in a small situation like taking over an outpost to the overarching story (your character constantly whining about the imminent danger of his friends doesn't do it, and is frankly meaningless to us when we the player don't KNOW Jason's friends personally). And the extent of the actual in-game character development I've seen thus far is the friends you rescue being shocked that you're no longer a benign white boy who panics at the first sign of danger like they do.
I feel like the setting is a mask for what is basically an empty game experience that only exists to eat up my time and money. It's the sodapop of video games--empty calories that tastes sweet but has no substance.
Far Cry 3 is the epitome of the science of modern game design. It's also the next logical step in open-world sandbox-style games after Skyrim, and it certainly bears a lot of the marks of its influence. Everything about this game is designed to keep you playing a little bit longer: XP based character progression, tons of collectables, hunting for crafting materials, tiny bits of treasure scattered everywhere that trickle slowly into your wallet, guns that slowly unlock availability as time goes on (or can be bought) and are further customizable, Assassin's Creed-style slowly-unlock-the-map-and-side-missions-as-you-go gameplay, Skyrim-style laughable sidequests where everyone needs something that's conveniently in walking distance. Layered on top of a save-your-friends story where you go from OHMYGODIHAVEN'TSHOTAGUNBEFOREICAN'TKILLAMAN to fuck-yeah-jungle-survivalist-badass in the span of about 20 minutes and you're literally egged on by an alluring woman who promises you approval and (I'm not kidding) full-on graphic sex if you give her everything she wants.
And yet everything manages to simultaneously be an instant gratification roller-coaster ride. The game is filled with cutscenes and character actions where control is taken away from you to do something actiony while your vision is locked in all its headbobby glory to a camera lodged in your character's eye sockets. Your character is established as being a well-off white kid from California who hasn't touched a gun in his life and couldn't imagine shooting even his kidnappers, fortunately your older brother (whom you're held captive with) is an ex-marine so he's able to show you the ropes before being conveniently killed--but it's no problem because you're instantly adopted by the warrior tribe culture that's fighting against the pirates who kidnapped you and your friends who have this mysterious power that turns you into a master-stealth-ninja-survivalist by merely placing a small tattoo on your left arm. Everyone on the island instantly knows your name and how much of a badass you are, there's zero character development at all--you're instantly the only possible person in the world who can solve this island's troubles.
Putting myself in my character's shoes is very difficult. I feel like it robs me of what could have been an amazing character development experience when my character is suddenly a master marksman with what should be years of jungle special forces training literally the second I step out of Dennis' shack. There's no tension, no proper sense of the stakes whether it be in a small situation like taking over an outpost to the overarching story (your character constantly whining about the imminent danger of his friends doesn't do it, and is frankly meaningless to us when we the player don't KNOW Jason's friends personally). And the extent of the actual in-game character development I've seen thus far is the friends you rescue being shocked that you're no longer a benign white boy who panics at the first sign of danger like they do.
I feel like the setting is a mask for what is basically an empty game experience that only exists to eat up my time and money. It's the sodapop of video games--empty calories that tastes sweet but has no substance.
Holy dicks look at that fucking passive skill tree. Seriously, look at it.
I originally wrote this 2/5/2013.
(http://www.pathofexile.com/passive-skill-tree)
I've been playing a lot of Path of Exile the last several days and I like it quite a lot not only as a solid game but for what it represents in the state of game development nowadays.
Diablo 2 was a groundbreaking game for which there are now three big games vying to take it's place as a modern interpretation. In my opinion, Path of Exile is the real spiritual successor to Diablo 2, where Diablo 3 is a nominal successor (and nothing but) and Torchlight 2 is...well it's kind of a goofy, awkward attempt at reskinning the classic. There was a MOBA comparison that I keep wanting to draw that doesn't quite fit, where PoE is Dota 2 to D2's WC3 DotA, D3 = LoL, TL2 = HoN etc. Anyways, we can forget about Torchlight 2 for now (and it's rather damnable how easy it is to), because the most relevant contrast is between Blizzard's Diablo 3 and Grinding Gear Games' Path of Exile.
It's no secret that Blizzard has fallen from grace. They had a number of groundbreaking franchises which peaked at the release of World of Warcraft and ever since they've floundered trying to recapture the magic. The latest showings of their big 3 have all really defined what it is to miss the mark; Starcraft 2, recent WoW expansions, and now Diablo 3 joined the cast. At a time when Blizzard is part of Activision's video game marketing machine, Diablo 3 was a classic modern "Triple A" release, with all of that marketing monster behind it. But the results were mediocre at best.
Meanwhile, Path of Exile was developed by a very small team from New Zealand that recaptures the thematic style and gameplay openness that made Diablo 2 such a lasting game all while sliding into a smooth, fairly bug-free-but-not-flawless open beta.
Anyways, it's a great sign that when video games continue to grow into the marketing behemoths they've become, where a game isn't considered a hit unless it has a big stupid action setpiece themepark ride, super srs TV commercials, retarded Pope Doridew™ product placement tie-ins, and can afford to buy great reviews and viral marketers, that there will always be small, dedicated developers ready to step in and fulfill the demand for games that recapture the old spirit of gaming in a modern light.
But fuck "indie" devs, they're arrogant, lazy, and greedy fucks who just want to cash in on hipster chic gamers who have massive hardons for retro graphics.
Also, I haven't finished deepthroating Dark Souls yet. Holy shit that game is amazing. We seriously need more games like it. My dream game is a modern recreation of Vagrant Story with all of Dark Souls' game mechanics (call it Vagrant Souls?). Sadly, it seems likely that its quality was a happy accident as the developer seems ready to abandon a lot of what made the originals great for its sequel in hopes of attracting a wider audience. "Attracting a wider audience" is usually the death knell for any established decent franchise.
I've been playing a lot of Path of Exile the last several days and I like it quite a lot not only as a solid game but for what it represents in the state of game development nowadays.
Diablo 2 was a groundbreaking game for which there are now three big games vying to take it's place as a modern interpretation. In my opinion, Path of Exile is the real spiritual successor to Diablo 2, where Diablo 3 is a nominal successor (and nothing but) and Torchlight 2 is...well it's kind of a goofy, awkward attempt at reskinning the classic. There was a MOBA comparison that I keep wanting to draw that doesn't quite fit, where PoE is Dota 2 to D2's WC3 DotA, D3 = LoL, TL2 = HoN etc. Anyways, we can forget about Torchlight 2 for now (and it's rather damnable how easy it is to), because the most relevant contrast is between Blizzard's Diablo 3 and Grinding Gear Games' Path of Exile.
It's no secret that Blizzard has fallen from grace. They had a number of groundbreaking franchises which peaked at the release of World of Warcraft and ever since they've floundered trying to recapture the magic. The latest showings of their big 3 have all really defined what it is to miss the mark; Starcraft 2, recent WoW expansions, and now Diablo 3 joined the cast. At a time when Blizzard is part of Activision's video game marketing machine, Diablo 3 was a classic modern "Triple A" release, with all of that marketing monster behind it. But the results were mediocre at best.
Meanwhile, Path of Exile was developed by a very small team from New Zealand that recaptures the thematic style and gameplay openness that made Diablo 2 such a lasting game all while sliding into a smooth, fairly bug-free-but-not-flawless open beta.
Anyways, it's a great sign that when video games continue to grow into the marketing behemoths they've become, where a game isn't considered a hit unless it has a big stupid action setpiece themepark ride, super srs TV commercials, retarded Pope Doridew™ product placement tie-ins, and can afford to buy great reviews and viral marketers, that there will always be small, dedicated developers ready to step in and fulfill the demand for games that recapture the old spirit of gaming in a modern light.
But fuck "indie" devs, they're arrogant, lazy, and greedy fucks who just want to cash in on hipster chic gamers who have massive hardons for retro graphics.
Also, I haven't finished deepthroating Dark Souls yet. Holy shit that game is amazing. We seriously need more games like it. My dream game is a modern recreation of Vagrant Story with all of Dark Souls' game mechanics (call it Vagrant Souls?). Sadly, it seems likely that its quality was a happy accident as the developer seems ready to abandon a lot of what made the originals great for its sequel in hopes of attracting a wider audience. "Attracting a wider audience" is usually the death knell for any established decent franchise.
A Less-Than-Super Duper Update
Alright, so I took some time off before I was going to write the last part of the last round of big updates, but in that time I managed to lose interest in Guild Wars 2. I've been wandering the vidya-scape as per usual between big game time investments. I wanted to update A) to copy a big post I made on Facebook about PoE over here since I just remembered I have a video game blog and B) to write another one on the things that have been on my mind while playing Far Cry 3. The first I'm going to post shortly, the second I plan on working on later, perhaps tonight.
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