Magically the Wizard Reveal Video up a day Early on IGN!

Guild Wars 2 Preview(Beta Weekend #1)(PC)

          I believe the very first time I saw any of Guild Wars 2 was PAX 2010 as a streamed from booth video.  I was a pretty big fan of the original Guild Wars.  But in the end, I found that I liked the multiplayer far more than the PVE game.  Especially as I approached MAX level.  But Guild Wars #1 came out in 2005 and everything that they made as far as expansions had to fit into that.  Which severely limited the game.  At one point I could run Guild Wars Nightfall on my laptop and listen to itunes at the same time while I had Tweetdeck open.  Guild Wars 2 is definitely a MODERN MMO.  With modern graphics and mechanics to go along with it.

         This last Friday, Saturday, and Sunday were the first days of the First Closed Beta Weekend(which consisted mostly of folks that pre-purchased the game, got a code from PAX East, and press).  So of the three races available for this week; I played the Norn and the Human.   I was not going to play a Charr; as I’m saving that for when the game actually comes out.   When you start the game one the first thing you will be asked to do is pick your server which cannot be changed(this wasn’t the case during the beta weekend for obvious reasons).  Then you are asked to make your character.  The developers smartly gave the player many, many options in this area.  But not so many that it created completely terrible looking characters.  I know a lot of people like funny looking characters running around.  But personally, anything that looks that god awful is pretty hard to stomach if your constantly watching it go walk by freak show style(see DC Universe Online, Champions Online, and Aion).  After you’ve chosen the look for your character; you are asked some very specific questions about your character.  Things like,:”how do you solve problems?” You then pick from: a)with violence, b)with intelligence, or c) with charm.  This seems to effect some of the under the hood starting numbers for your character.  But these questions, not that one in particular; but these sorts of questions, can effect what your “personal” story consists of.  This can be anything from the kinds of friends you have, to you’re the NPC you turn your quests into. etc…  This is very interesting considering that most of the dialog that matters takes place in screen filling dialogue events.  Where both sides are voiced.  There aren’t usually choices here.  But when you reach the screen back in the game proper you are sometimes given a choice as to how you complete a certain quest chain.  This is certainly interesting, even if the demeanor of your character is pretty much set by those opening questions you had during character creation.  Unlike Star Wars Old Republic.

        This “personal story” is a completely separately instanced part of the game. Much like Star Wars the Old Republic, it is by and large separate from anything you’ll be doing in the public part of the game.  The places might be somewhat the same; but the personal story usually takes place off to the side in some building or area that everyone else either doesn’t have access to or very limited access to.  Much like in Old Republic when your class could go down that hall that no one else could.  From what I’ve heard from others and experienced for my self, the personal story seems to be kind of tuned to either be incredibly hard for one player or just an OK challenge for two or more. This is pretty funny considering, it’s your personal story… But for some reason the developer felt like kicking your butt and making sure that you play the game the right way. Because if you don’t, or god-forbid, you make some mistakes your going to die. And when you die you can retry the instance. Well for your sake, I hope the instance is multi-tiered because if it isn’t your just starting from the beginning again. This particular thing never happened to me, but I’m told there is a particular part in one of the Charr personal stories that if you happened to spec wrong; you might end up not being able to get through it alone or at the suggested level. That is after all an option, the way I played the personal story parts; was that I would do everything else and then do them. Which seemed to work out the best.

       Guild Wars 2 is one of the first MMOs that MIGHT actually have a fantasy story you care about.  Might care about because, I think it depends a great deal on which race you play.  To me, it’s amazing how different each race’s area is from another.  This certainly isn’t new to the genre.  Certainly, in World of Warcraft; the race you choose does affect your experience for the first 10-20 levels.  The funny thing about Guild Wars 2 is that leveling is quite a bit slower than in World of Warcraft.  So your starting area will actually dictate quite a lot of your experience for the first 4-8 hours depending on your play style and character class(as opposed to Warcraft where post Burning Crusade starting areas usually took a total of around 2-3 hours).  There definitely are some reused enemies like bandits, Skritt(rat men), and Wurms of various colors.  Not that there is anything wrong with that.  But this is where the similarities stop. 

   Between the Norn and the Humans I saw practically nothing repeated either thematically or literally. Which is wonderful, but I wonder how interested the average gamer is going to be in playing anything in the Human starting areas or human cities. I know Humans are pretty and familiar but I dunno; there is this big hole in the middle of the human capital city for some reason; I never did find out exactly why. Also, the Humans lands are being attacked by Centaurs and while that sounds cool and is cool for the first few battles. After awhile, I just started saying, “Centaurs! Why does it all ways have to be Centaurs?”

   They are a little annoying as enemies. As they get to higher levels, they get even more annoying. But I suppose I understand, considering in the story the Humans are for some reason at war with the Centaurs. But by the third or fourth time you fight them in a big battle; you just wish you could march on their capital and kill them all. Which is perhaps the point, but still…

       There ARE other things to do.  Every area you go into has two major types of quests.  The first are world events that happen whether you are there to complete them or not.  The other are more specific types of events that require certain prerequisites before they begin.  Such as clearing a road of enemies so a trade route might open up a quest that asks you to escort a merchant down the road.  If you don’t clear the road, the merchant never appears.  Sometimes these things are linked; sometimes(rarely that I’ve seen); they can work independently of each other.  Both of these quest types are incredibly fun and can be taken part in by any random passerby.  Which makes them even more fun.  If I’m out there killing something and someone comes along and helps me kill it.  I’m STOKED!  Why?  Because I get just as much experience and just as much loot as I would have doing it alone; but it’s EASIER!  What’s also fun about both of these quests is that the participants get Karma.  Karma is basically just like PVP points in other MMOs.  You use these points to buy SPECIAL ITEMS that are usually sold by the quest giver of whatever events you participate in.   These are usually especially good items, like a sword with really nice magic effects on it.  Or a trinket with an awesome buff.  In fact, the only REAL ways to get trinkets are from this or perhaps buying one on the Auction House.  So these are all great.  No one is telling me that I MUST do this or I MUST do that.  Except they kind of are….  If you don’t do at least 4/5 of these events your going to end up being too under leveled to do the “personal story” quests and not be able to move anything along.  But that still leaves the average person with some choices and I’m sure this opens up later on.

     One of the other big changes to Guild Wars 2 from other MMOs was supposed to be getting rid of the whole sacred trinity thing(Tanking, Healing, DPS).  Which usually works really well in other games(as long as people want to play those classes, SWTOR and WoW players can attest to this).  I played a Necromancer for my Human and a Warrior for my Norn.  Both of these classes played quite differently.  My Norn for example, had access to every weapon in the game except daggers(which seems strange).   She was even able to use guns, bows, and crossbows.  Which, She ended up being very good with.  I was very hard pressed to go back to using my melee weapons when I could just stand outside of the ring of death and shoot things.  Of course, that often meant that those things would just come up to me and start hitting me.  But unlike a normal DPS player; I didn’t have to run away, I just proceeded to keep shooting them.  But this time at point blank range.  Which was fun as well, even if only a handful of skills allowed for this.  When I was playing her in melee mode, I was usually wielding a very large hammer or sword.  In either case, I would do some direct damage to the thing I was hitting but I also had a nice “aggro” area of effect skill that would collect guys and send them after me.  But again, unlike a normal tank; I wasn’t just trying to survive.   I could dish out enough damage to kill just about anything that I fought at least one on one.  If I fought more than four guys at a time and they just so happened to be my level.  I was usually in trouble.  But in the Norn Lands, that just doesn’t happen too much.  If your out there killing a group of enemies at least two or three more folks will show up and kill them with you.

       Which means that someone, usually, ends up needing reviving.  Which is also fine, because every character can revive.  Just they don’t do it particularly well.  Which is why, I’m guessing that they make the game so difficult so that at some point you will experience watching one person trying to revive you and it taking like 40 seconds.  40 seconds is a long time to watch someone kneeling over you and little green numbers to pop out while color is filling in on your  life bar.  What this means is that every time I’m walking around a battlefield; the first thing I do if there are no monsters trying to kill me, is revive all of the fallen.  Which I’m happy to say other people do as well.  If you do it often enough, you even get an XP reward for it.  Fortunately you can prevent your own death by achieving your second chance.  What that means is that right before you die you are given a chance to kill what is killing you for a sliver health to get you off the ground and away from the enemies.  This would be fine except that usually the reason that you died, is usually standing over you pummeling you while your doing this.  So unless you died just a last moment before you killed them; you probably will have a hard time with this.  I could see this working better in a raid situation where you kill an add to get you up so you can heal before going back to fighting the boss.  In most other circumstances however, it’s kind of a luck of the draw kind of thing.

      All of these mechanics and options certainly give the soloing character, in this case; more flexibility and even if playing in a traditional style isn’t as effective as in the previous games.  The character, at least in this case can both Tank and DPS.  However, what this doesn’t do for the character is give them a clear role in a raid or even a world event.  In the hairiest world events(like killing a group of 20-40 enemies, yeah they send that many); I usually grabbed my big hammer and pummeled enemies into oblivion while the Elementalists, Mesmers, and Rangers shot them in the back.  But if something was more unpredictable.  Like an event in an area, where it was hard to tell where the enemies would be coming from or what types of enemies they would be.  I was back there with the casters and ranged folks shooting my huge gun or my longbow.  I was just as effective in both capacities, not better as one or the other.  That’s fine, for the Warrior who is heavily armored and specs a little precision to go with toughness/power/etc…  But when we move to the Necromancer things change a little.

      My Necromancer was Human and the Human starting area was quite different from the Norn(as I mentioned earlier).  The Human areas are very spread out(even more than the Norn) and people tend to move in big groups from one event area to the next.  Which means that the average player might think they are doing all right for the first two or three levels when in fact; they are not.  It’s easy to feel good about your class when you aren’t responsible for actually killing ANYTHING ALONE!  Even in your main human story for the first 2 levels, it’s unlikely that you will have to kill anything alone until it’s just a little too late to fix some of the problems you’ve created for yourself.  Mostly undergearing and not kiting enough.

    Necromancers are described by the in-game text tip as Healer/Summoners.  Which in most games would mean that they are a pet class and some of their powers can be used to heal.  It would be like a Priest and a Warlock had a baby to put it in WoW terms.  The problem here is that, Necromancers are not exactly that.  They are actually DPS/Summoners/Healers.  Most of their abilities, and I’ve used all most every skill that the game would let me by level 9(Which is quite a few actually) and none do DIRECT healing.  Many have healing side effects, like this spell will do X Damage, put on Y DOT, and then do 1% healing on the caster.  Which is fine, but I’m not standing out in a field keeping people alive, I’m killing the thing and if your standing next to me you might live longer, either because I killed the thing before it could kill you or because you would have died from 1% damage more.  But it’s not like I’m a Druid, Priest, or Paladin(WoW).  However, lest you think that the Necromancer is a DPS, I will tell you no.  The Elementalist and the Mesmer are much better at DPS than the Necromancer is.  She cannot tank, because she has many pets but they don’t live very long.  So what does she do well?  Not much…  She CAN DPS and she CAN Tank but only if there is no one else around and as long as someone is there to kill anything else that the Necromancer isn’t focused on.  Because she can definitely kill ONE THING at a time, REALLY well.  Or kill a group of things OVER TIME really well.  But if that group of things reaches her; she is all most certainly dead.  Even Death Shroud, which looks like an “Oh Shit! The Monsters are going to kill me” button doesn’t make you invincible for the duration of it.  It only increases your damage, gives you MORE health, and keeps you from being pinned to one spot.  Which are all great, except that it really cuts down on how much it is used.  I normally am kiting some creature all around, WoW Ranger style.   Or dropping sigil traps on the ground so enemies run into them; Wow Ranger/Mage style.  In fact, there is a ranger class  in this game and both classes seem to play surprisingly similarly.  Except that even at low levels, Ranger pets are more resilient and have more options than anything your liking to summon before level 10.

     Don’t get me wrong, however.  I really DO like the Necromancer as a class.  But she must be carefully specced and for some reason she must also be carefully geared.  Doing both of those things will help her be better DPS and maybe even a better Tank, probably eventually a better Healer.  Not that with Guardians around we need better Tanks or with Elementalists around we need better DPS.  The Healing aspect can  be explained by saying  that really high level skills and traits(by this I mean all the stuff that comes after level 13) and can be turned to healing rather than just DPS.  Which is fine, except that if I’m a Healer/Summoner;  That seems like a little late to get into the practice of keeping people alive all of a sudden.  While on the grand scale the first even 20 levels of a game like this are nothing.  It makes it incredibly difficult to understand your character if for the first 15 levels you do mostly one thing(DPS) and then are asked to do the exact opposite(Healing).  This is very much unlike something like Warhammer Online where the healers got power to do DPS with their healing.  Which blended both together so that the healers were constantly thinking of both.  But I’m guessing the developers are just giving us this option to play around with Necromancers.  They probably, except in rare cases; will be nothing more than DPS that can heal a little.  Which is fine because every raid needs lots of healing.  When the game goes live, I’m sure I’ll be rolling a Necromancer.  Just not a Human one.

      I played the two characters I mentioned, both to level 9.  Which is right before the traits begin to start affecting things.  I did play some PVP with more characters and while I didn’t try out any of the Necromancer’s healing skills my Fully Maxed Necromancer seemed to be mostly a DPS and kiting beast.  I played a Human Engineer which was a lot of fun, guns are very good in this game.  All most game-breakingly so.  My guess would be that before launch all the guns in the game get their stats nerfed.  I also played a Human Elementalist and a Human Mesmer.  Both were effective caster classes and were a lot of fun to play.  Nothing really struck me as being unexpected or crazy.  Except how much I loved playing PVP in this game(NCsoft does AWESOME PVP).  I only say unexpected, because judging from the PVE it seemed like the fights would boil down to a lag battle.   Where the people who had the best connections would win.  But considering that most of the battles were small and the maps spread out, this usually wasn’t an issue.

      In wrapping up, Guild Wars 2 is an amazing game and I can’t wait to play the other races when the next beta weekend hits.  Also, I can’t wait to see what the developers do with the MAC-LOAD TONAGE of beta data they got from this beta weekend.  The game mostly worked but some things were definitely just straight up broken.  The in-game store, the auction house, and a few instanced story quests were just not working properly.  But that’s why developers have betas and this weekend definitely gave the Guild Wars 2 team something to chew on come next week and even right now apparently.  Trying to get everyone in to play was their main concern and even with the sometimes infrequent updates and miscommunications; overall they preformed admirably.  I certainly have no fear going forward that this will be a great MMORPG.  I can’t wait to play as much of it as the developers will let me in the coming weeks and months before the game launches sometime later this year.  Go get your copy pre-purchased.  You better hurry I hear they are running out(really, I’m not kidding)…

Diablo 3 Beta Impressions(From the Open Beta)(PC)

         While I certainly understand that a lot of people have played the Diablo 3 Beta since it began around a year or so ago.  But I’m also aware that many people have not.  I would like to say first, that I played the beta during their last open beta weekend for around   The game looks great, as usual.  Some of the more updated changes(stuff that changed since last Blizzcon) was kind of odd to me.  A few of these changes included not being able to salvage any time I wanted; making it a purely Blacksmith only feature.  Also, the whole rune and skills system changes seemed strange.  Like just being doled out both runes and skills as you level; rather than choosing skills and finding runes.  I suppose the systems are fine but they definitely seem a little dumbed down from the way it was originally.  Which, I guess makes the game less complicated and more accessible.  Which is fine, I was just a little surprised when I played the beta how off-putting the changes were to me.  But I got over it.

       I played all of the classes except the Barbarian.  So will give you a short run down of each…

       Demon Hunter:  I played the Demon Hunter to the completion of the beta which hits around level 10.  Which is fine, supposedly you can play until level 13.  But I was pretty done with her by then; as I played for around 3-4 hours straight with her by then.  I’m thinking that at higher levels the Demon Hunter is probably a lot better; as I see a lot of potential there.  But considering her, incredible feeble amount of damage and the fact that she only uses traps and dodging from her Discipline pool that there seems like there is something missing.  Also, playing with two hand crossbows looks cool, but I think the damage output is probably better with a crossbow or two-handed bow.  Of course, having two descent hand crossbows would probably change this.  Problem, is the way loot seems to be dropping in beta; that is pretty tough.  In fact, much of the class specific loot doesn’t drop hardly at all and when it does it basically drops as a grey, low quality items.  Which is fine, the class specific stuff looks good but isn’t a make or break.  At least not at level 10 anyway.

 

       Monk:  The Monk overall, is one of the strongest classes, even at low levels.  What makes the Monk incredibly powerful is the fact that you can dual wield all most any one handed weapon; by doing this the Monk gains both the damage and magical buffs from those weapons.  So if you have a fire weapon in one hand and a poison weapon in the other you get poison and fire damage.  Which makes the average enemy complete fodder.  The Monk has a descent amount of stamina so even if you get hit it’s not really that big of a deal.  I managed to get one vampric weapon and was able to constantly heal myself.  Not that vampiric weapons are very strong.  They basically just keep you from dying long enough to pop a potion or hit some health orbs.  Which is great, because if used improperly the frequency of vampric weapons in the game could certainly break it.  Especially when it comes to the Monk.  My only real complaint with the Monk is that he has no real way of getting to a ranged target.  Perhaps this comes later or your meant to constantly be using the rush ability.  But in some cases, this makes you take quite a lot of damage.

 

      Witch Doctor: My favorite character from my time with the Beta had to be the Witch Doctor.  The Witch Doctor is the pet class of the game, but no only does he have his wonderful pets.  He DOES have some really interesting attacks.  One is a thrown jar of spiders, another is a fiery swarm of bats.  All of which make the Witch Doctor pretty dangerous.  Strangely, the Witch Doctor has some really strange weapon choices and while I think the damage might carry over; all of the effects definitely don’t.  Works with some abilities, doesn’t work with others.  Which is fine because using any of his abilities do a ton of damage on their own.  What I found great was being able to use the snaring area of effect ability and getting health procs every time.  While the Witch Doctor can use a shield, it’s probably better to pick the right weapon for each situation.  Mainly because, the Witch Doctor has SO FEW choices that your probably going to NEED to do this.  Apparently(from screenshots and advanced character class videos) there are focuses for the Witch Doctor but you won’t see any of these in the 1-10 level stuff.  At least I didn’t in the Beta.  But what you might not be expecting is that just like all the Monk and the Wizard you will never actually be hitting anyone with those weapons.  Might get the damage or effect bonuses but you won’t actually be touching anyone with them.  So while the weapons themselves are mostly for aesthetics I’m guessing that no matter your play style the weapons that are favored by your chosen class are probably going to have the best bonuses for your character.  I suppose what I find sad about this is that you will probably use every weapon available to your class just to get the bonuses.  Rather than being able to choose those said weapons right off.  While I do realize that this game IS about loot.  It is also a game where every single piece of armor you pick up looks like your classes armor style.

 

       Wizard: The Wizard is the character I spent the least time with.  While to begin with the Wizard is rather difficult to use as the Demon Hunter has to play a little bit of a run and gun game; the Wizard must do this to an extreme.  The Wizard really needs any block bonus or health bonus she can get.  Most of the time your running into or out of a situation and getting grazed.  Unfortunately, when the Wizard gets grazed; she is actually taking the equivalent on any other character to two direct hits.  Eventually, the Wizard does pay off with this because she does do quite a lot of damage.  But the beginning skills the game gives you.  Really just make you want to runaway.  Perhaps, this is some kind of tutorial telling the player to be careful not to get surrounded.  Which your area of effect power works well for this.  But unfortunately, this turns into more spamming than strategy.  I would really like to see how this character plays out at higher levels.

       What was evident for me in the extended play sessions I had with the Diablo 3 Beta was that this game is deep and interesting.  While there may be some possible problems with going through the same areas with different characters with different skills sets.  But perhaps this should be seen more as a challenge and a window into replay-ability rather than a slight against the game.  While I have only played the first four hours of the game.  I have to say that I’m really excited to play more of it.  To play all of it actually…  If you love hack n’ slash games you will be completely addicted to Diablo 3.

The Doctor is in! Early Video from the IGN!(Diablo 3 Character Reveal)

      From the beta, I have to say that the Witch Doctor was definitely my favorite class to play.

Trials Evolution and the Death of the Triple AAA Game.

       This has been a strange year for gaming to say the least and it’s only April.  I guess I should have seen this coming when Mass Effect 3 was kind of a mixed bag of awesome and disappointment.  Or when Street Fighter x Tekken was an awesome game with a horrible set of marketing projects that went along with it.  Soul Calibur V had everything anyone in the fighting game community could want and got a lackluster reception.  Then we had four games in a row that could hardly be better if God himself came down and touched them: Journey, Fez, Skullgirls, and Trials Evolution.  These games delivered on a promise that in some cases(Fez in particular) were many years in the making.  But did these folks use their long development cycles to make the same thing that everyone else was making? No, not even in the least.

        Journey is a game about you.  Yeah, it sounds like trippy, hippy crap.  But Journey is basically whatever you bring to it.  If you are a shallow jerk, then maybe you won’t get too much out of it.  If you are a feeling, intelligent, sensitive person then I probably don’t want to know what you think because I’ve probably all ready offended you somehow.  Seriously. though, never has a game brought out so much emotion and immersion with so little.  The game at a short two-three hours does more to evoke emotion in the player than just about every other game out there.  There is no well defined story with characters and dialogue.  There are no, crazy five minute long cutscenes.  No Journey is going to take you to figure it out and if you take the time and patience to do so; you’ll love it.  So if you haven’t all ready played Journey, you need to.

       FEZ, is not a game about you.  It’s a game about problems.  Yes, the game has a retro 8-bit style that has grown to be kind of uncool hipster lately.  But what it does do, is it presents the player with problems.  What these problems are and how you solve them is not all ways simple or straight forward.  Sometimes you must go to sources outside of the game for an answer, with a QR Code Reader perhaps.   But FEZ creates yet another kind of thing that hasn’t happened much in these times of consoles and internet.  Questions no one can answer yet.  Yes, the game is around a month old and there are still things in it, no one understands.  This also, could be partially due to the fact that the game is currently a wee bit buggy.  But I’m sure that will be fixed in no time.   What’s crazier is that there are new things about FEZ being discovered all the time.  Like there are hidden messages hidden in it’s soundtrack.  Really?  Now that’s some old school Mortal Kombat non-sense if I ever heard it.

        Skullgirls is one of the most unique XBLA/PSN games ever made.  Why?  It has amazing hand drawn art and it’s a fighting game.  The game is so visually absorbing that many people look at it and don’t even know what the game is about at first.  It just looks THAT good.  The game has no in-game move list and it’s a fighter.  But that’s OK.  The game has five modes: Story, Versus, Arcade, Training, and Online.  Which some people have a problem with, but most people don’t really care.  It is $15 and one of the fastest growing fighting games in the Fighting Game Community since last year’s Mortal Kombat release.  None of my IRL friends are playing it and most think it too hard to even try it.  Which is both good and bad.  The game DOES have an incredible tutorial mode but it also has a very unforgiving Arcade mode and most of the people playing it right now on both XBOX 360 and PS3 are pro-fighting game players who have been trying this game at tournament venues for the past two years.  When the typical person in the fighting game community was told things like: well there are five modes, eight characters, and no in-game move list.  The typical person usually replied with, “That’s OK, I’m sure they will patch stuff in. “ The game is just THAT AWESOME.

       Finally we have Trials Evolution.  The sequel to the XBOX LIVE ARCADE hit Trials HD.  This is a simple game about riding your motorcycle through obstacle courses.  The game is incredibly addictive but also incredibly hard to explain why one likes it.  It’s one of those, just download the demo and try it scenarios that is so hard to get across in a review.  It had the best day one sales on XBOX LIVE in the history of the service.  Trials HD had the best sales of any XBOX LIVE ARCADE game ever.  So this game is a really good seller.  And not one of my IRL friends are playing it either.  Not one!  It has no marketing campaign and while it is in the NEXT ARCADE promotion; I think most gamers have grown completely unmoved by Microsoft’s promotions as they come out what seems like every three months now and only one or two of them a year are any good.  But I’m sure the developers aren’t complaining.  After all, their servers crashed on Day One because too many people were playing the game at the same time.  What is this World of Warcraft?  So, I’m not saying cry for the developers of Trials; what I am saying is that Trials Evolution is a product of it’s own greatness and nothing else.

        I brought all these games up, not because I’m not going to review them(I will, I promise), but because combined, if you bought them all; it would cost you $60.  Yes, four of the arguably best games of the YEAR so far and ALL of them, would cost you $60 TOGETHER!  Why is this important or significant?  Games cost too much, they have for years.  They cost too much to make, market, and shove in a box.  When people start pointing fingers as to why, they have one pointed out and the other 4 pointed at themselves.  Which is exactly where the blame usually should lie.  No one, in the causal market or causal press wants to hear hardcore people, enthusiast press, or game publishers complain.  They just go off and play their $3 iphone games and ignore us.  If the game industry wants to reverse their decline they need to stop trying to make the next Call of Duty or Halo and start trying to just make fun games.  The money will follow…  That IS how it works…  If you start imitating everyone just to try and get a piece of an overcrowded market that’s all your going to get(a piece and a small one at that).  Developers and publishers need to get together and make unique cool games that they are passionate about.  Because that’s how you have a success.  Just ask the guys who made Trials HD and Evolution; if you can remember the name of their studio(RedLynx. Ltd.)

     

Blizzcast 17: Diablo 3 Quest, Item, and Sound Design video unlocked!

       While your mouse hand is recovering from the Diablo 3 Open Beta(Like mine is) watch this new video that unlocked from Darkness Falls Heroes Rise website.  You are participating there right?  If not, click on the link back there and follow the instructions.

Botanicula Leads New Humble Indie Bundle! Check it out!

Go here to snag it before it’s gone….

God of War Ascension is apparently a thing that is happening!

          Also, boxart… Courtesy of Giant Bomb!

More Wrath and less Heroism it Seems(Warhammer Wrath of Heroes Open Beta)

       This is my second story on Warhammer Wrath of Heroes and if anyone thought the last story made it sound like I was working for EA.  This story will sound like they fired me.  If you want particulars about the game go over and read that other story.  You can even see some gameplay footage there.  But this article is written with the idea that you have all ready read the other article or all ready know what Warhammer Wrath of Heroes is.

      Originally, way back in the closed beta(I will be estimating amounts here so don’t hold me to anything).  The average amount of gold it would take to purchase a Hero was around 5,000.  And you received probably around 500-1,000 gold a match.  Which meant that if you played for a couple weeks every day eventually you could own every hero in the game.  That seemed cool to me.  You would then have to play each one of these heroes to level them up in their mastery trees and get advanced skills for them.  Also, seemed cool.  I was not even bothered by the 10-20,000 gold skins.  I mean if you want a skin, your going to have to pay for it. Right?  Anyway, all of this was great and while I wasn’t exactly in love with running the same three maps and same three modes from here to eternity, I figured that as it was a free to play game they would eventually update it.

       Fast forward only a couple months later and the typical hero is now between 20,000-60,000 gold.  You only receive a maximum of 1,000 gold per match; usually more like 100.  And unless you are very good or very crazy there is absolutely no chance of you ever owning every hero in the game.

       Before the great inflation I was able to get Ilanya; but before her and probably right before this mass price expansion I had Glowgob, Bax, and Felicia.  Then EA reset everything and only gave me enough gold to buy one on-sale hero.  Yes, at least they left me my winnings from my previous games.  There have been many server resets and patches since and I guess they are happy to let me keep Ilanya who is 2/3 of the way to getting her full mastery tree and having all her skills.  Only 7 more points and I get my final unique spell.  But that’s it, if I didn’t like Ilanya I would be stuck with her.

     Unless of course, you pay. And that my friends is my problem. I have rented guns in games, I have bought XP boosters, bought hats in TF2(haven’t we all, come on), and once I even bought some loot for a character. But NEVER have I actually HAD to buy a character. But you most likely will HAVE to buy a character in Wrath of Heroes. Because, you will not be able to get any mastery points on any of the free characters they give you. So you will basically get stomped, over and over. The game won’t be fun at all and you will just quit.

     What I’m confused about is why EA didn’t just come out with this game as a downloadable on Origin for $20.  The game would have done great.  And that is basically what they want to you pay to have fun with the game anyway.  So just take it up front.  Why make us buy in-game currency(gems) so we can buy things from the store.  Just charge $20 right off, run it as an Origin exclusive and there you go. Some people may say that it is better to try the game first and then pay.  But if you can only try a limited number of heroes with a limited number of powers; that’s a demo not a F2P game.  Oh, and demos are also usually free.

      Considering how many feedback survey forms I’ve filled out EA is obviously not listening to me.  So, if you want to play Warhammer Wrath of Heroes; just bare in mind you are probably going to have spend between $5-$10 to have any fun at all and if you want more than two characters, your probably going to have to spend more like $15-$20.  Which is fine; the game IS probably worth that.  But as a Free-2-Play game it stinks.  Because yes, it’s free to play.  But more accurately its free to get frustrated and die every single time.  Everything else about the game is wonderful.  That’s why it saddens me so much to say that this is one of the worst excuses for a free-2 play game; I’ve played.  But bare in mind this game is still in beta.  There is a chance(a very slight chance), that this economic problem will be fixed before they launch the game.  Or perhaps they will come up with some kind of other system.  Unfortunately due to the limited scale of content the game isn’t a good fit for a subscription model.  So unless they lower their prices, I’m not exactly sure how they could make things better.

The PC, New Consoles, and Why Game Publishers Keep Getting it Wrong!

         Here we are in 2012 and things seem to be going along pretty well for, “ye olde video games.”  There are phones, pcs, consoles, ipads, and even a few televisions that can play games.  Never in the history of video games have things been so amazingly rich and diverse.  So why is everyone so worried and saying that the video game industry is failing.  There can be NO DOUBT that things aren’t going very well.  THQ just laid off a bunch of people, EA is set to lay off some soon, and even Blizzard dumped some customer service folks earlier this year.  Which considering how well their current Diablo 3 downloader works might have not been a good idea.  Anyway, without going into REAL numbers; which would probably either bore you or frighten you.

       The games industry is not doing as well as it was back in 2008.  But what industry is?  In 2008, there was a Global Financial Crisis that effected every form of every industry and is still being felt today in everything from oil prices to real estate sales.  So looking at things through that lens we should probably be happy new games are being made and people can afford to buy them.  But instead, we have the people who run publishers saying crazy things like;

“We need to have online passes to recoup our used game sales or prevent people from trading games in.

   We need to have a DLC flow, that while it doesn’t make any sense we are going to hold back finished content for day one dlc or maybe just dribble the content out over a series of months.  Not create anything new, just make sure we have enough stuff after the game goes gold to hold people for the next six months to a year.

   Keep console game prices up so that it is hard for people to afford new games and make sure these prices stick by creating digital marketplaces where games NEVER decrease in value even two or more years after they are released.

   We need to implement buggy DRMs to make sure that players must be online at all times even in single player games.  Who cares whether or not it really works, at least we can show stockholders that we are trying.

    Finally, make sure not to spend one penny more than we need to on advertising because games don’t really need good television commercials when we can just slam every website with popup ads. “

 

       Before some one out there accuses me of being overly negative; each one of these examples is based on something a publisher did this year or late last year.  I couldn’t make this stuff up if I tried.

       With the exception of the the DRM thing, however there has been one constant bastion throughout this time of troubles.  The PC game market; here games drop in price like stones dropped off of a cart(unless they are published by EA).  The graphics are amazing, the framerates are incredible, oh and there is more choice than there EVER has been before.  No where do we see the stagnation of the console industry except in the ports that come from it.  There are no online passes and DLC often comes in the form of free content patches(unless its an EA published title).  Steam has managed to keep things interesting and with the emergence of other digital delivery services like Gamefly(used to be Direct2Drive), Good Old Games(you get the idea), and Amazon(not just for boxed products anymore).  There has been a new revolution.  There are even Free to Play games that aren’t horrible.  While the consoles have languished in their as of this year 6 year cycle.  We are seeing PCs and PC games explode with content and possibilities.  Not everything is coming up roses, after all, games are often buggier on the PC and usually late in getting there.  The industry is definitely focused mainly on the consoles.  But as the consoles age even further(a Fall of 2013 for new consoles is rumored!)  We are going to see the PC market get even stronger still as the mobile and social network markets grow right along with it.

         With all this evolution most REALLY hardcore gamers who aren’t rich either buy all their games used or buy them on PC digitally at a discount or perhaps at a lower than regular price.  So it comes as quite a shock when rumors start swirling that the new consoles(circa 2013, remember).  Are not going to be able to play used games and are going to be only as powerful as a PC you could buy this year for around $700.  To this I say, WTF??   If these rumors are true, which considering the frequency of them, they cannot be completely false.  That would mean you want to sell me something that isn’t as good as a new PC and want me to subscribe to the same model as PCs; except I won’t get any of the benefits of them?

        In another environment, I would discount this as purely speculation on someone’s part.  But considering a recent study that said that more people use their XBOX 360 for doing things other than gaming than the other way around.  It’s starting to sound pretty logical.  Currently the 360, is a clunky piece of hardware that has gotten its upper limits so completely tested that the machine now stutters when it tries to load the starting screen.  The XBOX of today and the XBOX of 2005 are like the difference between the iphone of today and the iphone of 2005.  The folks at Microsoft are asking their machine to do far too much with far too little.  So if they released an updated version of this machine(updated circa this year or last years medium priced PC); they probably wouldn’t have to worry again for say, another 4-5 years.  You know the length of a console cycle or say how often most analysts suggest the average person buys a new PC.  Strangely logical isn’t it?  Oh and because of this lack of technological advancement they can probably charge much less for it.  Launch consoles probably won’t exceed $450, they learned that lesson in 2005.  Never again….

       After all, if the typical end user is going to spend all their time watching Netflix, Youtube, or watching movies downloaded from the Zune store.  They are going to be far more concerned about their internet connection than the power of the box they run it all through.  Which of course, leaves hardcore gamers to buy new and better PCs and not ever again touch their consoles or buy new ones.  In two or three years every game that has ever come out for the consoles will be cheaper and available on PC anyway.  And if you can’t buy new releases used, you may as well get them on a platform with the most power and flexibility.   And as exclusives begin to go the way of the dodo, this future seems even more probable.

        This means for game publishers that most of their console sales will dry up and their PC sales will probably double or triple.  Then the whole industry shifts again until someone realizes there is something that they can only do on some new console.  So that company makes one and this starts all over again.  Or maybe not…  There has been a lot of talk over the past ten years of a one console future.  That console is probably either Ipad or some kind of Android pad that has yet to come out.  But what they were probably considering at the time; will probably appear in the next two or three years on the PC.

       Unless of course, all the rumors and speculation are completely wrong.  In that case, well, things will go on the way they are until technology makes another paradigm shift and we are all using computers in our brains or something. 

Some More Day Early Diablo 3 Goodness from IGN: The Monk!

  I do love getting these a day early, even if it does take some fun out of the reveal day.

Diablo 3 First Reward Video Finally Unlocked!

Barbarian Video a Day Early from IGN?

   This video is definitely in the style of the official Demon Hunter Reveal that came out last week. So I’m guessing IGN just jumped the gun and posted it early.  But we will see tomorrow if that is true.

If This isn’t a Perfect Commentary on the Modern Game Industry I don’t know what is!

Get More: GameTrailers.com, Mega64 - New Consoles HD, PC Games, PlayStation 3, Xbox 360

Journey the Bestselling PSN product for March.

1.) Journey

2.) Infamous: Festival of Blood

3.) Resident Evil 4 HD

4.) MotorStorm RC

5.) Killzone 3 (Multiplayer)

6.) Mass Effect 3

Source IGN…

      I think it should also be noted that Journey was the only game in the top 5 that was not on sale or free.

Diablo 3 Heroes Rise video!

I Love this!

Maybe Alittle Too Unbound!(Ridge Racer Unbounded Review)

   One of the biggest questions I had when booting up Ridge Racer Unbounded for the first time was, “Why is this a Ridge Racer game?”  The Ridge Racer franchise is an arcade drifting series that started with the PSone.  But Ridge Racer  is marked with some particular mechanics.  One is to hit turns and then use automatic drift to go around the corner, chaining these together to drive faster than the folks that don’t drift.  This doesn’t exist here, in fact, drifting usually slows you down too much.  Another are fun cars named with brands that Namco owns, these cars are also usually crazy futuristic and cool.  Neither of these things exist in Unbounded.  In fact, Unbounded is more like a tame version of Burnout where the designers sometimes try to emulate existing vehicles in the world.  Ridge Racer also usually has a very arcady Japanese feel, with a cheesy announcer and unrealistically bright world.  This game veers more toward the unnaturally dark than the previous.  What did naming this Unbounded do for the game?  Considering the lackluster reception that all Ridge Racer games have received since the launch of PS3; I’m not sure I would be hitching my horse to it any time soon.

    There really is no story in this game and the main mode for the campaign is simply to play race after race trying to get three stars; another words, win.  The player does receive experience points one way or another.  They just don’t receive the bonus for placing first, second, or third.  As these experience points accrue the player unlocks cars, tracks, and track elements for the track editor.

   The main race type in the campaign are Dominaiton Races.  These races consist of 4-12 competitors(usually 12), there are some destructible elements in track.  But as you hit other cars, exceed a certain amount of speed, or drift.  You gain points on a meter toward power.  Once you cap the power meter; you can hit a button and get a boost that also allows the player to go through some particular destructibles and this is also the easiest way to wreck other cars.  To me it seemed relatively obvious that the game engine couldn’t handle all the destruction and 12 cars.  When not in slow motion due to hitting a car or breaking through an animation inducing barrier.  There is some SERIOUS slow down on the installed XBOX 360 version.  The game probably goes from 30-60 FPS to 10 FPS.

   In other modes, like Time Attack(beat a set time), Frag Attack(hit as many enemy cars as possible), and Shindo Racing(just racing with only boost and no destructibles); there isn’t this slow down.  Mostly because most of these modes don’t have the destructible environment elements like there are in Domination Mode.  Even when they do, there are much fewer of them.

   All of the limitations of the engine don’t exactly hurt the game too much.  But what does hurt the game as a whole is the silly difficulty level of the A.I.  Mostly this is due to the fact that the A.I. cars don’t adhere to the rules that the player car adheres to.  They can earn full power meter without drifting or meeting any of the criteria for it.  When one A.I. car is taken out by another A.I. car they respawn directly back into the position they were when they were taken out.  This also happens when the player takes out an A.I. car.  While if the player is taken out they lose however many seconds it takes to respawn.  This is not a matter of rubber banding A.I.  The A.I. cars are extremely difficult to catch up to and pass considering most races the player is put last or near to last.  There really doesn’t seem to be any difference in A.I. difficulty from the first city to the fifth or sixth city you get by unlocking.  The types of cars may be different but in most cases this doesn’t really matter.

   The player gets cars, tracks, and new track elements for the editor as they earn experience.  But most the cars in the main Domination mode are only made up of one class and this class has one or two descent cars in it.  They are all pretty slow and half are pretty fragile.  Considering the crazy level of unchangeable difficulty it might have been fun to not lock cars into classes.  Or maybe just make better Street Class cars.  Because these are all pretty lame.  Gaining track elements by leveling is a pretty poor idea considering you might not have earned some track pieces that you want to put on your track.  Why require the track designer to make a multi-hour commitment rather than letting them just build a bunch of cool tracks. Beating your own track is a requirement to complete your track.  Which is fine except that the A.I. difficulty is SO high even on EASY(which is only selectable in the track editor and no where else in the entire game); that I think many designers have simply created an impassable areas for the A.I. to run into and for normal players to go around.  I’ve seen it quite often and I’m guessing this is the reason.  Also, I’ve seen some completely ridiculous broken tracks that have made it through this race proofing concept.  Which simply proves that the idea of holding the designers to the standard of the top racers is counter productive.

      Which leads me to the online functionality.  Which for most players is where the meat of their experience will be.  The game allows the player to create tracks with a quick and easy editor.  It takes around 15 minutes to make a descent track and run through it.  The online is very good, downloading each track as you select it.  From selecting the track to playing will probably only take a minute or two depending on your internet strength.  In this area the game is great.  This part of the multiplayer is set up more like the campaign where your goal is to beat the creator’s score on the track.  Then there is the multiplayer mode where you actually race head to head with other people.  You can do this on user tracks or tracks from the campaign.  And this would be great too, but I can’t comment on it.  Because try as I may, I couldn’t get one single solitary game with other people.  Not even one.  Which this is probably Namco’s fault for not doing any advertising at all for this game and then there being some kind of shortage or distribution problem.  But whatever the reason there was no one online during launch week or the week after launch.

  I did have a great time playing through most of Ridge Racer Unbounded and I think anyone with a liking for Burnout or Split Second should definitely give it a look.  But what I found was that the longer I played it, the less I liked it.  Without any of the real trappings of Ridge Racer this game seems like it could have used an identity of it’s own to hang it’s hat on.  With it’s wonky difficulty, bad framerate dips, lack of online community, it doesn’t seem like this game was built to last.  The game was a great idea, but the implementation could probably use further testing.   8/10…