Cult of the Malformed Fork Posts

I can sum myself up into three words on the topic rather easily.  I’m Very Excited.

Very few games try to engage you at the beginning.  Usually standing on the edge of some field, watching the local fauna being slaughtered as a local pastime.

I rolled into my first chance with Guild Wars 2 as a Human Mesmer.  Skilled in misdirection, confusion and illusions.  Character creation was a strange amalgamation of physical tweakings and personal story background adjustments.  In this case, Vestolo was born of common parentage who’s only regret in life was that he never looked for his true parents.

You start the game equipped with a weapon granting you a single meager skill with which to defend yourself.

The first few fights are a boring affair of letting the inherent first powers’ auto attack do it’s job.  Killing earns you xp and progresses you to unlocking the subsequent powers which make fights more involved and help identify one weapon vs another.

Keep in mind, each weapon has it’s own skills associated and you never forget skills.  So you choose to put down that scepter and pick up a mighty staff.  You need to learn staff skills, but again, you don’t forget the old skills.  Your bar changes automatically and away you go.  You don’t unlock the first of your utility skills until level 5, roughly 2 hours of dedicated questing.

Questing, in this case, amounts to traveling the land and helping troubled merchants, farmers and the occasional garrison with their local problems.  I visited an orchard overrun with spiders and apples in need of picking a dam being assaulted by earthen elementals and a farmer who’s field needed watering and it’s own local pests slain.

These objectives appear automatically as you come and go from one area to another.  Events pop up in relation to the areas’ troubles and you never have to actively accept or deny the tasks set before you.  No micro-management of your quest log or careful wiki evaluation before you decide which quest to skip.

If you consider your weapon skills as per-fight abilities, then the Utilities you unlock at 5 and up are the tactical tools for troublesome encounters or pinch situations.  Each class gets a heal button, a power designed to keep you alive when things get tough.  On top of all this there are Elite skills what provide stronger situational options.

I didn’t delve into the crafting a great deal.  From what I’ve heard and read, crafting provides xp and skill training keeping you leveling as you progress.  Based largely off of salvaged and looted materials in the world, you’re never fighting with another player for a node.  You can access and mine the rocks and chop trees all you like while you follow your like-minded Warrior friend as they mine the rocks and chop the trees.  The world is shared in many aspects and makes for a less immediately frustrating experience than any MMO I’ve played in the last 10 years.

I eagerly await a possible release this summer.  For the first two days after the beta, I couldn’t help but frantically refresh the development blog waiting for some sign of life.

 

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Guns.  Borderlands is about guns.  Well, guns in a sense, the list does include rocket launchers.

Violence.  In a nutshell, these are the two things Borderlands is about.  Guns and Violence.

I liked Borderlands a lot, I played it a lot.  But I’m a sucker for a Diablo clone that offers me near endless targets and random rewards.  In this case, guns.  Each with roughly 5-7  components that randomly generated make for millions of possible combinations.

Always one of those games that was fun alone, yet struck me as something that would be levels more entertaining with friends.  Sadly, it wasn’t until after I departed my gaming household for domestic solitude that I found the game.

So Borderlands 2 is coming down the pipe.  Each trailer flashing bright words offering more guns, more enemies, more excitement.  Dialogs are recorded and articles written where the developers tell us ‘they saw what they did wrong, changed some things bring the sequel more in line with what they want to do.’

I have faith.  In this more than other things.  I believe they’ll deliver an excellent experience worthy of praise and reward for years to come.

In the meantime, i’m trying to wrap my head around their 87 bagillionder guns they’re proposing.

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I’m pre-ordering the much anticipated Guild Wars 2 in the next month or two.

Everything I’ve seen I like.  From not having to hone my mastery of the Sharpened Stick to a general lack of gear-based progression.

I’m fond of Guild Wars (the first), as I am most games with a unique class system.  In a nutshell, you got a primary class with a function or power that was on all the time.  For a elementally based caster, it was an increased mana pool from which to draw.  This, plus the 3 or 4 other skill paths gives you room for diversification based on your needs or wants from the common toad.  Now, you also got a second class.  In this choice you received access to skills and powers but not the primary identifying special skill of the primary class.

Case in point, mixing Elementalist with Mesmer.  Ranged blasting with debuff and debilitating effects.  Depending on how you twist that it’s either a deep pocket of mana to shell your opponents with maddening slowness and meteor swarms – or – reduced cooldown on your various skills.

There’s an intriguing build in one of the wiki’s devoted to the game on how to lay your points to maximize your ability to drop Meteor’s upon your opponent rapidly.  And the general inspiration for my Mesmer/Elementalist character.

– Guild Wars 2 –

We’re dropping the second class choices, dropping the perpetual gear grind and keeping a host of delightful other options.

I’m pleased as punch they kept Mesmer.  I like how the button bar is setup, use a sword? A line of sword abilities.  Ooh, what’s that, a Mace you say? Well then <puts on Mace> oh snap, the buttons for my sword changed to Mace Powers.

I haven’t played the beta or any special pre-release.  But I’ve watched a few videos, I’ve read the site about sixteen times front to back.  I’m hyped.  But I can’t say much that isn’t already on the site.  I encourage you to check it out.

http://www.guildwars2.com/en/

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I’m in my second serious playthrough of Skyrim having at first made a stab at Lightly Armored Spellsword’ing my way through the game.  It was doable and at level 30 I was having a routine time of exploring tombs, stealing treasure from the inhabitants and mauling dragons.  But it seemed amiss.  And frankly, Magic was just too damned tempting to ignore any longer.

So the second playthrough is pure magic.  I owned a dagger for all of an hour.  I used it once, the frantic swinging and stabbing motions backed by my panicked backpedaling as i watched my mana bar recover enough to put the insistent witch down.  Since then, I sold the dagger and focused on purely magical pursuits.  That being said, i’m a danger to anyone in the room with my paired Chain Lightning whose forks know no selection ability and strike anyone or thing within reach.  Zap, down go the bandits.

I’m amused as the lightning spells carry a little thunder with them.  I swear, it’s a dark day, the sky is clouded and the slight thundering from my powers can suggest a near-time raining.

I spent 20 or 30 minutes on Sunday practicing Illusion via Courage.  Courage is a solid spell which helps one of the NPC’s stand up to whatever issue their running into.  In this case, Heimskr is a political voice against the government that rules Skyrim.  He’s generally alone, standing before the Talos Shrine in Whiterun, your first serious city in the lands you explore.

In general, you can practice skills via usage.  But it takes an event that would needs said skills.  You can’t, say, swing your sword in the air or against a barrel and get better.  No, it’s takes battle.  Destruction spells? Sure, take some shots at a dragon and up you go.

And so it was that I learned that Heimskr needs your help.  He’s alone, rarely he has some of the bored or unemployed people standing before him one or two at a time.  He speaks right, as his issues are our issues.  So it was with great ideals that I gave him the courage to stand there and keep speaking.  For 30 minutes.  Until my magicka would run out and I’d have to let it build up some more.

Not that he needed it, he’s always there and his routine takes about five or so minutes to reset.  But for those 30 minutes, I was supporting a revolution.

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Why didn’t I play this game earlier? What was I thinking?

Someone in my house recently bought SR2 over the weekend and damn.  I enjoyed Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas but I didn’t feel compelled to buy the sequel, GTA IV.  So when it came down to playing a few minutes of Saints Row 2, I was hooked.  Something about it’s open-world “do as you please” design caught my attention.

Saints Row 2 holds your hand for all of ten minutes to get you out of prison where you were in a Coma for years before ‘waking up’.  From here, you’re left with a loose suggestion on what to do next.  But it rewards you for progress.  Do the first mission and rescue your comrade-in-arms and you’ll be rewarded with a Crib where you can stockpile clothes, weapons and cars.  Do the second mission, you have a hangout where your gang lives – homie’s you can recruit to follow you around and provide additional firepower.

Should you feel more mayhem inclined there are many mission points scattered around the map you can visit for objectives like smearing the police or causing massive property damage.  I spent 20 minutes last night standing in an intersection shooting rockets at passing cars all in pursuit of an elusive $500k property damage value.  As if that wasn’t enough you’re also left the option of the Classics: Armed Robbery, Mugging and Carjacking.

Senseless violence and a loose plot makes this a keeper in my library and I eagerly await Saints Row the Third so I can continue the fun.

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This commentary is full of spoilers.  Play the game first, or keep reading – you’ve been warned.

As a chapter in the grand saga that is Dragon Age, part 2 is a solid game and a fine example of linear plot design.  They all but telegraph the problems in this city in the first 10 minutes.  Mages vs Templars.

Now, don’t get me wrong.. the Mages are dangerous.  They can easily be corrupted by creatures from the Fade (this worlds version of an astral plane).  And when corrupted, they’re not some cloth wearing sissy with fireball.  No, now they’re daemonic badasses who take a fair effort to kill.

Don’t worry though, they don’t change at whim, it’s purely by plot which of the mages turn ugly and which of them continue to hurl fiery doom.

And then of course there’s Knight-Commander Meredith who you’re told is running her operation of rooting out renegade mages like a military campaign.  So you don’t actually reach this conclusion until Act 3 and sadly, there’s no way out.  No matter how much you want to deviate from the main plot.  I tried.

It’s sorta sad really, how many excellent story bits they weave into the side quests and the companion elements and yet you have two choices when it comes to the final act.  I’d really have liked to see you and your romantic interest walk off into the sunset.  “Good luck suckers, enjoy your power struggle.”

Worth noting that few choices you make in the early game impact your late game exploits.  I neglected to pursue Fenris’ Companion Quests and so I do his Act 3 quests.

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I will never play Rage.  I do not want to.  I have no desire, not even a modicum of interest.  My exposure ends at 20 minutes of playthrough from Youtube.  TheRadBrad provides an amusing experience, but sadly I must pass on this venture.

I will never buy this game.  Not from discount bin, nor from Greatest Hits Collection.

Thank you ID.  It was fun while it lasted.  But thank you for providing Gearbox some excellent pointers on what not to do.

We shall all learn from your mistake.

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I’m a fan of the genre.  First Person Shooters, that is.  I don’t play them all of course, that would be crazy.  But like fans of cars, they don’t drive them all but they appreciate the technology and labor of love in each one.

So it is with FPS games I feel.  Since launch I’ve been devouring the thunderous glee in it’s elegantly decorated spaces.  Everything I read about the world, all the lore and information and characters I’d come to know from study painted me a picture I can now see in this game.

You play as a named marine, one man of three leading your Brothers across a ruined and wartorn Forgeworld.  That is, a planet that builds things.  Large things, small things.  All it does is build, it’s population the builders.  Among these ruins you shoot orks, greenskins, Xenos.  And you shoot a lot of them.  Unless… yes, unless you prefer the weapon always and easily at your disposal.  I right-click and it swings, I keep clicking and a path of blood is painted before me, my enemy cut down.

I lost myself in the first chapter.  I cut nearly everything.  It was the obligatory map segments where snipers took shots that I deviated and pulled out my own powerful gun.  And it boomed.  Bolter-fire is a glorious thing.  The characters are modeled well, the animations are superb.  The colours are as I would imagine them to be.  Nothing about this makes me utter a negative word.

Though.. at one point I did look up.  I’m -sorry- it was quiet and I got distracted.   The sky was a simple matte painting of some swashed colours.  I could have asked for a bit more, but with so much of your action happening within tall walls and narrow passages, i’m not surprised they cut that corner.  I think I would have too.

The story campaign is brief, as is expected.  It’s a brutal violent game that rewards violence with more violence.  When all is said and done the campaign takes something in the order of 8 hours to complete.  I’m comfortable with that, most FPS games deliver a solid multiplayer to balance a light single-player and Space Marine delivers.

Supposedly in October there’ll be a co-op “You against the horde” option.  I’m eagerly awaiting it, nothing makes a game more fun than a few good friends.  For now, it’s me, this bolter and an excellently engineered multiplayer.

http://www.spacemarine.com/

 

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I’m an adventurer at heart.  A seeker of hidden glories, of lost temples.  And so I plundered the depths not once, not twice but seven or eight times since picking up Minecraft a year ago.  I’m not a builder, but I respect their ilk.  I’m not a designer, but I salute them.  I’m a searcher, a finder and explorer.  When what’s beneath the surface loses my interest, I rove the lands seeking new inlets to the subterranean wonders.

Minecraft is a simple game of block’s, crafting and mining.  A game made more enjoyable when you play with others.

And so it happened, on Thursday evening as I fired up MC for a little dig and build.  My gf’s brother asked about it and seemed interested and so I let him have it.  Guiding his hand and instructing him on the tenets of Minecraft.

1) Never dig straight up

2) Never dig straight down

While this is happening something changed in my gf.  Once of the “Trees don’t fall, that’s stupid, I’ll never play” faction, she defected to “I wanna play too” team and soon joined us as we all three sat around playing MC for several hours.  It didn’t take long for me to find the server code and start a multiplayer game.

And so our first night was spent running from monsters and waiting for the morning.  The second night was much more productive.

In this experience I learned two important rules.

1) All things are more fun with people.

2) Creepers still suck.

And with that I leave you to ponder my words and perhaps explore a little mining of your own.

www.minecraft.net

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