A game I have played a lot of recently is Dead Island, it is a FPS/RPG hack and slash game.
You wake up after a rough night of partying to find that a zombie apocalypse has broken out on the island while you slept. You try to escape and run into a bunch of other survivors, they ask you to complete tasks (as you are the only person capable of... blah blah blah) in order to get off the island.
There are four main characters that you can play as, each with their own skills and weapon sets. A Throwing, Firearms, Blunt and Sharp expert.
The main draw of the game is the hack and slash elements. You can pick up most items and use them as melee weapons, now and again you enter firearm sections but the main focus is on the melee combat.
The game is quite enjoyable in short periods but the game is very very repetitive. I can only play it for about an hour at a time due to this. All the quests are very similar, the areas are only slightly different and the enemies, once encountered are constant from then on out.
Showing posts with label RPG. Show all posts
Showing posts with label RPG. Show all posts
Wednesday, February 1, 2012
Wednesday, January 25, 2012
Building Worlds Is Easy! Or not...
A long while ago (pretty much straight after it came out) I bought and played Terraria, At the time however other games piqued my interest more so it didn't get much playtime. After getting a chance to play the game (1.1 release) for a long period of time I have a better idea of how the game works.
Terraria is a 2D side scroller sandbox game, that features RPG elements and a lot of exploration. You start off with very basic tools and need to find materials to build a house and upgrade your items. All the while defending yourself from enemies that spawn. Simple, weak slimes during the day and harder skeletons and zombies at night. Once you have set up your own house the next challenge is to build houses so that NPCs can move in.
NPCs are used as shops that you can sell items to and some of them can sell some really useful items such as a mining helmet that provides a constant light.
Once you have constructed a base of sorts you must then adventure to find items enabling you to enter the Dungeon, the first challenge area of Terraria. You have to defeat a boss in order to enter the Dungeon which will grant you loot to upgrade your items. The next two areas in the game are The Corruption and Jungle (which can be found anywhere on the surface or underground), followed later on by The Hallow and The Underworld (the deepest layer of the game). The rule of thumb is "The deeper you go the harder it gets".
There was a boss added called "The wall of flesh" which unlocks "hard mode" for the game, all enemies are made harder while new enemies start appearing. This helps to add longevity and an extra layer of difficulty once you feel you've "beaten" the game.
I still haven't gotten so far into the game that I can beat the wall of flesh but as far as I am now I am really enjoying the game. Unlike Minecraft it is not purely creative, and has more of a purpose and unlike RPGs you can actually add to the world in your own way.
As an indie game it is fairly cheap and if it is the style of game you enjoy you would get quite a bit of time from it.
Terraria is a 2D side scroller sandbox game, that features RPG elements and a lot of exploration. You start off with very basic tools and need to find materials to build a house and upgrade your items. All the while defending yourself from enemies that spawn. Simple, weak slimes during the day and harder skeletons and zombies at night. Once you have set up your own house the next challenge is to build houses so that NPCs can move in.
NPCs are used as shops that you can sell items to and some of them can sell some really useful items such as a mining helmet that provides a constant light.
Once you have constructed a base of sorts you must then adventure to find items enabling you to enter the Dungeon, the first challenge area of Terraria. You have to defeat a boss in order to enter the Dungeon which will grant you loot to upgrade your items. The next two areas in the game are The Corruption and Jungle (which can be found anywhere on the surface or underground), followed later on by The Hallow and The Underworld (the deepest layer of the game). The rule of thumb is "The deeper you go the harder it gets".
There was a boss added called "The wall of flesh" which unlocks "hard mode" for the game, all enemies are made harder while new enemies start appearing. This helps to add longevity and an extra layer of difficulty once you feel you've "beaten" the game.
I still haven't gotten so far into the game that I can beat the wall of flesh but as far as I am now I am really enjoying the game. Unlike Minecraft it is not purely creative, and has more of a purpose and unlike RPGs you can actually add to the world in your own way.
As an indie game it is fairly cheap and if it is the style of game you enjoy you would get quite a bit of time from it.
Sunday, June 5, 2011
The Third of the Fables
The original Fable game was a masterful creation. The stylised cartoony look suited the game and environment perfectly. The storyline was somewhat unique for games of that time as it involved quite a lot of tragedy and difficult decisions that could turn out badly. The combat also flowed really well. You could swing your sword knocking back an enemy and immediately throw a fireball to follow it up. There was a huge amount of customisability as well in clothing choice, hairstyles and tattoos. The main hook to Fable 1 was the choices you had to make between good and evil and this was done really well. You had three alignment choices throughout the game; good, evil and neutral. These depended upon what actions you performed (and also on some foods you ate). There were also some very interesting quest chains you could complete, for instance the arena section.
Now in anticipation of another fantastic game I pre-ordered Fable 3. With the pre-order you got some unique weapons and clothing items. My immediate reaction was that the unique cartoony style was gone, it was still fairly stylised but looked more realistic now. This didn't necessarily take away from the game but it was not a welcome change for me at least. The storyline was fairly similar to the original game with the same sort of beginning and end goal, the interim was slightly different however. A lot of the quests were fairly limp and uninteresting and made you travel through many pointless areas as if to draw out the quest as much as it could. Another thing that bothered me was the lack of choice you had, most choices were black and white/good and evil with no sort of middle ground or any way to backtrack on your decision. You were fairly limited in all of your choices and even in your customising there were less options of clothes and tattoos that you could wear. The combat in Fable 3 was a lot less streamlined than the original and I found it very clunky trying to switch between different weapon styles, sticking mostly to the gun, and found I got hit a lot as the dodging system did not work as well as in the original.
Overall I enjoyed the game and feel I got my monies worth out of it but I do not see myself going back and playing it over again as I tend to with Fable 1. It is just too restricted and linear to make me want to redo the entire story.
Now in anticipation of another fantastic game I pre-ordered Fable 3. With the pre-order you got some unique weapons and clothing items. My immediate reaction was that the unique cartoony style was gone, it was still fairly stylised but looked more realistic now. This didn't necessarily take away from the game but it was not a welcome change for me at least. The storyline was fairly similar to the original game with the same sort of beginning and end goal, the interim was slightly different however. A lot of the quests were fairly limp and uninteresting and made you travel through many pointless areas as if to draw out the quest as much as it could. Another thing that bothered me was the lack of choice you had, most choices were black and white/good and evil with no sort of middle ground or any way to backtrack on your decision. You were fairly limited in all of your choices and even in your customising there were less options of clothes and tattoos that you could wear. The combat in Fable 3 was a lot less streamlined than the original and I found it very clunky trying to switch between different weapon styles, sticking mostly to the gun, and found I got hit a lot as the dodging system did not work as well as in the original.
Overall I enjoyed the game and feel I got my monies worth out of it but I do not see myself going back and playing it over again as I tend to with Fable 1. It is just too restricted and linear to make me want to redo the entire story.
Monday, May 16, 2011
The Return Of The Dragons
So I finally got Dragon Age the second and let me start off by saying I really enjoyed this game.
Now that that is out of the way...
DA2 is in no way able to live up to DA1. It should have been a stand alone game and not a sequel, if it had held any other title it would have had no problems and most likely have received much better reviews.
The story, and the way it is told is brilliant (As of writing this I am about halfway through and loving the story and side missions.) and very unique. I quite enjoy the way there are sometimes silly interludes where the storyteller embellishes the actual tale. All of the characters, even ones you can't recruit seem to have well developed backgrounds. Even if it is just an impression of depth, it shows that the creators put a lot of thought into each character as they created them.
The combat seems very reactive, flows very nicely and looks fantastic. That is one thing that has definitely improved since the first game. It used to look very jerky and disjointed, but now the characters do leaps and spins as would be the case were it reality. Mages don't just stand around poking a stick in the vague direction of the enemies but now look like they are actually participating.
The talent trees have changed dramatically, you still get the standard, two-hand, shield, etc talents but now the trees have been broken down quite a lot more and it is harder to specialise in one type of combat. Another thing is that the talents are less interesting, there seem to be less abilities to use actively in combat and more stances or modes.
However there is a very nice addition, in most games you try to make all the characters love you instead of disagreeing with you, but in this instance you get a special ability if they love you or if they hate you. This means you can play the game the way you wish and whatever way it impacts upon the characters you will benefit somehow.
One thing that bothered me about the NPCs though was the distinct lack of customisability. Their talents are pretty much pre-determined as well as their equipment and of course their appearances. Appearance makes sense as they are a defined character, I can also understand the custom equipment as it makes sense for characters to already have their own weapons and armour. However if a game gives you the option to level up a characters abilities it should allow you complete control or have a specific tree that can't be customised.
My one major qualm about the entire game is the voice acting. The main characters all have great voice acting but the background characters have some dreadful acting and accents. For instance the Elves are (all of a sudden) Scottish and Irish, but the voice actors are not Scottish or Irish so a lot of the voices sound really fake.
Aside from this I am really enjoying this game and would advise playing it, but try not to compare it to the original game. You will really enjoy the story and there are some really neat features worth playing for.
Now that that is out of the way...
DA2 is in no way able to live up to DA1. It should have been a stand alone game and not a sequel, if it had held any other title it would have had no problems and most likely have received much better reviews.
The story, and the way it is told is brilliant (As of writing this I am about halfway through and loving the story and side missions.) and very unique. I quite enjoy the way there are sometimes silly interludes where the storyteller embellishes the actual tale. All of the characters, even ones you can't recruit seem to have well developed backgrounds. Even if it is just an impression of depth, it shows that the creators put a lot of thought into each character as they created them.
The combat seems very reactive, flows very nicely and looks fantastic. That is one thing that has definitely improved since the first game. It used to look very jerky and disjointed, but now the characters do leaps and spins as would be the case were it reality. Mages don't just stand around poking a stick in the vague direction of the enemies but now look like they are actually participating.
The talent trees have changed dramatically, you still get the standard, two-hand, shield, etc talents but now the trees have been broken down quite a lot more and it is harder to specialise in one type of combat. Another thing is that the talents are less interesting, there seem to be less abilities to use actively in combat and more stances or modes.
However there is a very nice addition, in most games you try to make all the characters love you instead of disagreeing with you, but in this instance you get a special ability if they love you or if they hate you. This means you can play the game the way you wish and whatever way it impacts upon the characters you will benefit somehow.
One thing that bothered me about the NPCs though was the distinct lack of customisability. Their talents are pretty much pre-determined as well as their equipment and of course their appearances. Appearance makes sense as they are a defined character, I can also understand the custom equipment as it makes sense for characters to already have their own weapons and armour. However if a game gives you the option to level up a characters abilities it should allow you complete control or have a specific tree that can't be customised.
My one major qualm about the entire game is the voice acting. The main characters all have great voice acting but the background characters have some dreadful acting and accents. For instance the Elves are (all of a sudden) Scottish and Irish, but the voice actors are not Scottish or Irish so a lot of the voices sound really fake.
Aside from this I am really enjoying this game and would advise playing it, but try not to compare it to the original game. You will really enjoy the story and there are some really neat features worth playing for.
Monday, May 2, 2011
Vault 101
Fallout 3 is a game set in a post-apocalyptic 50's-esque period. The storyline is that the Cold war broke out and mankind was forced underground into fallout vaults in order to avoid the nuclear blast.
It is an open world, sandbox shooter. You are given a main storyline mission that you can complete immediately or you can completely ignore it while you traverse the wasteland in search of fame and riches.
There is a wide variety of weapons, armour and items that you can scavenge from stashes or enemies (or even from friends) providing you with many different ways to tackle each situation.
The game is very entertaining and interesting and has many ways to deal with every encounter you have but can sometimes lack direction. You can finish a quest and not pick one up and then find yourself wandering around for hours just looking for something to do. (Not to say that you do not find plenty of things all over the entirety of the wasteland but it can all be a little bit aimless with no defined quests to do things.)
As always I played through originally as a stealthy, pistol wielding character. This proved to be rather difficult as pistols don't tend to deal a huge amount of damage and the stealth isn't the greatest stealth system i have ever seen.
My second play through was more successful as i used melee and rifles, providing me with the close combat skill as well as the ability to pick off distant enemies.
The game included a "Decay" system in which weapons, armour etc begin to wear out and you can use several of the same type of weapon to repair them (similar to reality where you would use parts from one to fix another.)
My overall impressions of the game were positive, the world was in general interesting and entertaining, the combat was not clunky or unresponsive (despite being frustrating at times if you haven't repaired anything in a while.), the conversations were somewhat entertaining, and the quests, while some were rather repetitive, they generally felt immersive and entertaining.
If you are interested in RPG games and don't like the medieval/fantasy setting then this is the game for you!
It is an open world, sandbox shooter. You are given a main storyline mission that you can complete immediately or you can completely ignore it while you traverse the wasteland in search of fame and riches.
There is a wide variety of weapons, armour and items that you can scavenge from stashes or enemies (or even from friends) providing you with many different ways to tackle each situation.
The game is very entertaining and interesting and has many ways to deal with every encounter you have but can sometimes lack direction. You can finish a quest and not pick one up and then find yourself wandering around for hours just looking for something to do. (Not to say that you do not find plenty of things all over the entirety of the wasteland but it can all be a little bit aimless with no defined quests to do things.)
As always I played through originally as a stealthy, pistol wielding character. This proved to be rather difficult as pistols don't tend to deal a huge amount of damage and the stealth isn't the greatest stealth system i have ever seen.
My second play through was more successful as i used melee and rifles, providing me with the close combat skill as well as the ability to pick off distant enemies.
The game included a "Decay" system in which weapons, armour etc begin to wear out and you can use several of the same type of weapon to repair them (similar to reality where you would use parts from one to fix another.)
My overall impressions of the game were positive, the world was in general interesting and entertaining, the combat was not clunky or unresponsive (despite being frustrating at times if you haven't repaired anything in a while.), the conversations were somewhat entertaining, and the quests, while some were rather repetitive, they generally felt immersive and entertaining.
If you are interested in RPG games and don't like the medieval/fantasy setting then this is the game for you!
Wednesday, April 20, 2011
If I go will you follow (Only if it's at night)
Today I would like to talk about my favourite game of all time. I spent well over two weeks obsessively playing this game.
If you know me you wont need three guesses to know what game I will spend the next few hours foaming at the mouth over.
I will start off by saying that this game was released in a completely unfinished state as so very unfortunately the studio working on it closed down before they could complete it. However they decided that they had spent so much time on it and it was such a unique universe that they would release it "as is" and let everyone play it, the community did what they could to fix it, releasing several patches that fixed a lot of the crashes, visual bugs, added a few features that couldn't be implemented and basically just helped polish an already amazing game.
Vampire The Masquerade: Bloodlines is set in a somewhat fictional America, at night. I say "somewhat" because all of the locations and buildings do actually exist in real life but the characters and main setting (and a couple of plot specific buildings) do not. The game starts with a cutscene of you and another character "getting busy". This all leads into a convoluted storyline involving a lot of running around, fighting toughs, collecting needed objects and other tasks, that fit together nicely, and once you start to figure out all the different sides from each of the faction leaders you begin to understand the entire story (even though there are still a few hidden surprises that no one will see coming). (Bear in mind I am trying not to give any spoilers.)
The gameplay provides you with many different options in how you want to deal with a situation. You can go all out brawler and talk with your fists, seduce everyone to your way of thinking, sneak past any obstacles you may encounter, or several other ways. It provides you with a lot of scope to play the way you want.
There are a couple of issues with the combat system. One being that the entire game is in a third person perspective but as soon as you pull out a gun you are sent to first person, which is rather jarring and even if you set it back to third person it doesn't provide a crosshair to make it more intuitive.
There is also a bit of a problem with blocking attacks. The block button does not "hold" block but rather you have to block at the exact instance you are about to be hit. While I can understand what they were trying to do with this (make it more realistic) it takes away from the combat system quite a bit as it is nearly impossible to gauge when exactly an enemy will strike.
Aside from this though the combat combines RPG, FPS and Hack and Slash elements amazingly well. The RPG elements being that you can "level up" your skill in particular weapons causing you to deal more damage, FPS being where you aim you hit, as well as having kickback and scatter, and the Hack and Slash being the melee side.
Now my favourite part of this game has got to be the character development and voice acting. You meet a whole host of characters while playing through, some you will love straight away (Jeanette i think is top of everyones list) and some you will most likely hate (Mr LaCroix would probably be the one, though i didn't mind him too much). The voice acting for each character (including background characters) is perfect, each voice suits the character absolutely perfectly (although again you sometimes have some glitches that play incorrect lines or incorrect voices) and every line is fully voice acted, there are no silences while text scrolls by, as a lot of newer, more expensive games tend to do nowadays.
Each character is unique and interesting and provides yet another reason for you to be sucked into the game and forget that it is JUST a game.
The music in VTMB also is perfectly suited to the atmosphere and provides a great blend of dark solitary silent nighttime atmosphere with the activity of the nightlife and clubs. Setting the scene brilliantly in each area. There are several songs from actual Metal and Goth bands within the game that were licensed and they also fit in as if they were tailored for it.
All in all Vampire The Masquerade Bloodlines is an amazing game that sadly did not get as much attention or coverage as many other lesser games. It is so unfortunate that it was not fully completed as the company had a lot of great ideas that got cut short. I really hope that some developer in the future will take up the mantle of Troika Games and will attempt to finish what they started so long ago.
If you know me you wont need three guesses to know what game I will spend the next few hours foaming at the mouth over.
I will start off by saying that this game was released in a completely unfinished state as so very unfortunately the studio working on it closed down before they could complete it. However they decided that they had spent so much time on it and it was such a unique universe that they would release it "as is" and let everyone play it, the community did what they could to fix it, releasing several patches that fixed a lot of the crashes, visual bugs, added a few features that couldn't be implemented and basically just helped polish an already amazing game.
Vampire The Masquerade: Bloodlines is set in a somewhat fictional America, at night. I say "somewhat" because all of the locations and buildings do actually exist in real life but the characters and main setting (and a couple of plot specific buildings) do not. The game starts with a cutscene of you and another character "getting busy". This all leads into a convoluted storyline involving a lot of running around, fighting toughs, collecting needed objects and other tasks, that fit together nicely, and once you start to figure out all the different sides from each of the faction leaders you begin to understand the entire story (even though there are still a few hidden surprises that no one will see coming). (Bear in mind I am trying not to give any spoilers.)
The gameplay provides you with many different options in how you want to deal with a situation. You can go all out brawler and talk with your fists, seduce everyone to your way of thinking, sneak past any obstacles you may encounter, or several other ways. It provides you with a lot of scope to play the way you want.
There are a couple of issues with the combat system. One being that the entire game is in a third person perspective but as soon as you pull out a gun you are sent to first person, which is rather jarring and even if you set it back to third person it doesn't provide a crosshair to make it more intuitive.
There is also a bit of a problem with blocking attacks. The block button does not "hold" block but rather you have to block at the exact instance you are about to be hit. While I can understand what they were trying to do with this (make it more realistic) it takes away from the combat system quite a bit as it is nearly impossible to gauge when exactly an enemy will strike.
Aside from this though the combat combines RPG, FPS and Hack and Slash elements amazingly well. The RPG elements being that you can "level up" your skill in particular weapons causing you to deal more damage, FPS being where you aim you hit, as well as having kickback and scatter, and the Hack and Slash being the melee side.
Now my favourite part of this game has got to be the character development and voice acting. You meet a whole host of characters while playing through, some you will love straight away (Jeanette i think is top of everyones list) and some you will most likely hate (Mr LaCroix would probably be the one, though i didn't mind him too much). The voice acting for each character (including background characters) is perfect, each voice suits the character absolutely perfectly (although again you sometimes have some glitches that play incorrect lines or incorrect voices) and every line is fully voice acted, there are no silences while text scrolls by, as a lot of newer, more expensive games tend to do nowadays.
Each character is unique and interesting and provides yet another reason for you to be sucked into the game and forget that it is JUST a game.
The music in VTMB also is perfectly suited to the atmosphere and provides a great blend of dark solitary silent nighttime atmosphere with the activity of the nightlife and clubs. Setting the scene brilliantly in each area. There are several songs from actual Metal and Goth bands within the game that were licensed and they also fit in as if they were tailored for it.
All in all Vampire The Masquerade Bloodlines is an amazing game that sadly did not get as much attention or coverage as many other lesser games. It is so unfortunate that it was not fully completed as the company had a lot of great ideas that got cut short. I really hope that some developer in the future will take up the mantle of Troika Games and will attempt to finish what they started so long ago.
Monday, April 4, 2011
Lets not even mention the PS2 version...
I decided today i would talk about one of my favourite games of all time.
Baldur's Gate.
This to me is one of the greatest RPGs ever. It works off the old AD&D system and follows the same conventions and is in my opinion the best translation from the pen and paper version to date.
Rather than being a pure "hack and slash" or "press this button to kill" game it involves a large amount of strategy. Some fights are impossible to win (even with the best gear and at the highest level) if you do not micro manage each character and have a defined strategy to beat the enemy and you can often find yourself in a lot of trouble without doing so, whether its a gigantic dragon or a horde of tiny spiders...
As with most RPGs there are several ways to go about the game and hundreds of side quests to compliment the main storyline. There is a massive range of items, armour and weapons that add huge flavour to the gameplay too. You can get some really cool looking sets of armour with good situational stats (such as the dagonslayer set) that you might find yourself giving up "better" gear in order to keep.
The character NPCs that you can recruit all have indepth stories and backgrounds (and quests that relate to them), some more interesting than others. You will find yourself picking some characters over others as you develop favourites amongst them (such as the brain damaged ranger with a miniature giant space hamster or the depressive suicidal half elf mage)
The locations you go through are fairly varied and unique (i mean how unique can a forest be...?) bringing you through cities, forests, mines, deserts, ruins and island villages. As well as several dungeons that aren't just duplicates of one another and have been created individually.
The entire game has been balanced nicely so that you do not have to grind for hours in order to progress through the storyline and even if you do complete the side quests and kill a lot of enemies you will not overpower all the enemies easily.
The storyline in this series is fantastic and there are a lot of twists that you would not expect however there are times where you will think one way but the story makes you go another way (often contrary to what you want) but as the story continues it becomes less of an issue as it is scripted together so well.
I have a couple of issues with the game one being that you are somewhat expected to play in a specific way. If you decide you hate someone and kill them it will usually result in not being able to proceed as every character in a hundred mile radius hates/fears you and will attack on sight.
Another being that some of the characters are somewhat story critical and even if you decide not to bring them along through the game they will pop up as if they were there all along.
My final issue is that a lot of the time some areas cannot be accessed until you complete a certain quest or reach a certain point in the story. In a game called "Baldur's Gate" where Baldur's Gate is the main city in the continent and is on your map at all times you would expect to be able to reach it as soon as you set out...
Despite these hindering issues this is still a fantastic game and i would advise Everyone, not matter what your preferred type of game is, to play it (at least the main storyline) because you will enjoy it.
There Was a PS2 game with the name "Baldur's Gate Dark Alliance" which should have just been called "Pile of Shit Dark Alliance" as it has NOTHING to do with the original title other than being an RPG. It has more in common with Diablo than Baldur's Gate. It barely had a story, terrible controls, no character development of any kind and i would advise never playing it unless you enjoy brain damage...
Baldur's Gate.
This to me is one of the greatest RPGs ever. It works off the old AD&D system and follows the same conventions and is in my opinion the best translation from the pen and paper version to date.
Rather than being a pure "hack and slash" or "press this button to kill" game it involves a large amount of strategy. Some fights are impossible to win (even with the best gear and at the highest level) if you do not micro manage each character and have a defined strategy to beat the enemy and you can often find yourself in a lot of trouble without doing so, whether its a gigantic dragon or a horde of tiny spiders...
As with most RPGs there are several ways to go about the game and hundreds of side quests to compliment the main storyline. There is a massive range of items, armour and weapons that add huge flavour to the gameplay too. You can get some really cool looking sets of armour with good situational stats (such as the dagonslayer set) that you might find yourself giving up "better" gear in order to keep.
The character NPCs that you can recruit all have indepth stories and backgrounds (and quests that relate to them), some more interesting than others. You will find yourself picking some characters over others as you develop favourites amongst them (such as the brain damaged ranger with a miniature giant space hamster or the depressive suicidal half elf mage)
The locations you go through are fairly varied and unique (i mean how unique can a forest be...?) bringing you through cities, forests, mines, deserts, ruins and island villages. As well as several dungeons that aren't just duplicates of one another and have been created individually.
The entire game has been balanced nicely so that you do not have to grind for hours in order to progress through the storyline and even if you do complete the side quests and kill a lot of enemies you will not overpower all the enemies easily.
The storyline in this series is fantastic and there are a lot of twists that you would not expect however there are times where you will think one way but the story makes you go another way (often contrary to what you want) but as the story continues it becomes less of an issue as it is scripted together so well.
I have a couple of issues with the game one being that you are somewhat expected to play in a specific way. If you decide you hate someone and kill them it will usually result in not being able to proceed as every character in a hundred mile radius hates/fears you and will attack on sight.
Another being that some of the characters are somewhat story critical and even if you decide not to bring them along through the game they will pop up as if they were there all along.
My final issue is that a lot of the time some areas cannot be accessed until you complete a certain quest or reach a certain point in the story. In a game called "Baldur's Gate" where Baldur's Gate is the main city in the continent and is on your map at all times you would expect to be able to reach it as soon as you set out...
Despite these hindering issues this is still a fantastic game and i would advise Everyone, not matter what your preferred type of game is, to play it (at least the main storyline) because you will enjoy it.
There Was a PS2 game with the name "Baldur's Gate Dark Alliance" which should have just been called "Pile of Shit Dark Alliance" as it has NOTHING to do with the original title other than being an RPG. It has more in common with Diablo than Baldur's Gate. It barely had a story, terrible controls, no character development of any kind and i would advise never playing it unless you enjoy brain damage...
Tuesday, March 15, 2011
Stop right there criminal!
As i have been playing a load of old games that either have had saves deleted or that i come back to again and again i was bound to come back to Oblivion at some stage.
First off i will say, No game should have DLC better than the game itself.
Shivering Isles is the best part of Oblivion BY FAR! While i do enjoy the game, the style, etc. There is no way it can compete with the fun, interesting areas and quests that shivering isles provides. There are several very interesting quests such as the daedra quests and faction quests as well as random encounters and occurrences.
That being said, there are several reasons to play on after completing the DLC. If, like me, you are a collector/completionist, there are several houses to buy and armour sets to own, including each city's guard armour set, as well as several factions to gain reputation with.
I usually start off as a sneaky melee or spellcaster character, but in an effort to experience all aspects of the game i decided to play as a heavy armour, ranged character. First of all i noticed that having ranged weapons is a fairly fantastic way to fight as you rarely if ever get hit. Secondly heavy armour means you take almost no damage from any hits you do take.
Due to the fact that i was using no magic or melee it changed the way the game played out for me completely, i ended up finishing quests in completely different ways than i normally would.
For instance one of the quests involved finding a missing mage. The original playthroughs i ran around the house using detect life and other skills and found the mage hiding. The latest playthrough i didnt have any spells to find him with so i ended up asking other mages to help and having to go on a brand new quest.
In summary this is a great game but even someone who loves rpg's and open world games it was a bit of a struggle to continue past some major points in it. If you enjoy open world rpg's this IS a good game and one that you will continue to come back to again and again. If you dont enjoy those type of games then i be rather hesitant to recommend it to you.
First off i will say, No game should have DLC better than the game itself.
Shivering Isles is the best part of Oblivion BY FAR! While i do enjoy the game, the style, etc. There is no way it can compete with the fun, interesting areas and quests that shivering isles provides. There are several very interesting quests such as the daedra quests and faction quests as well as random encounters and occurrences.
That being said, there are several reasons to play on after completing the DLC. If, like me, you are a collector/completionist, there are several houses to buy and armour sets to own, including each city's guard armour set, as well as several factions to gain reputation with.
I usually start off as a sneaky melee or spellcaster character, but in an effort to experience all aspects of the game i decided to play as a heavy armour, ranged character. First of all i noticed that having ranged weapons is a fairly fantastic way to fight as you rarely if ever get hit. Secondly heavy armour means you take almost no damage from any hits you do take.
Due to the fact that i was using no magic or melee it changed the way the game played out for me completely, i ended up finishing quests in completely different ways than i normally would.
For instance one of the quests involved finding a missing mage. The original playthroughs i ran around the house using detect life and other skills and found the mage hiding. The latest playthrough i didnt have any spells to find him with so i ended up asking other mages to help and having to go on a brand new quest.
In summary this is a great game but even someone who loves rpg's and open world games it was a bit of a struggle to continue past some major points in it. If you enjoy open world rpg's this IS a good game and one that you will continue to come back to again and again. If you dont enjoy those type of games then i be rather hesitant to recommend it to you.
Magical in a runeish sorta way...
My recent forays into indie/cheap games has lead me to a lovely replacement for a terrible(y-addictive) game by the name of WoW.
Runes of Magic is a free to play, micro transaction, MMO. It is very similar to wow (as any MMO tends to be) But it is created completely from scratch and does not try to be like wow.
You start off as either a human or an elf (new races will get added with each new expansion they decide to release) and can choose a selection of classes.
These classes can be a very crucial choice as later on in the game you can choose a second class that you want to spec into. You will get specific skills depending on the class combination as well as the general skills of each class. This i think is a very very cool way of making classes unique. You could be a warrior/priest and be able to tank and heal yourself or a mage/warrior and be able to deal immense damage AS WELL as getting the unique class combination skills.
I decided to play as a Rogue/Scout as it allows me to do close combat stealthy style and very good long range attacks and the two classes both rely on one stat as the primary.
As you continue on into the game you find you need to learn professions such as mining, woodcutting and herbology.
You can learn every profession in the game but you can only max out a limited amount of them. Each profession will give you specific benefits at higher levels but you have to choose carefully which benefits you really want before you level them up.
I haven't played enough yet to get to the higher levels but i think i might possibly go with leather working (as i can wear leather) and some sort of magic oriented profession such as alchemy to offset being a purely physical class.
There are some really neat features in the game such as the dual-class system, pvp dungeons, pure solo play, temporary mount rewards very early (as soon as you complete the easy tutorial), a teleport system from pretty much any location but for me the most important feature is the fact that there are no queues. There are over 4 million players registered on the game (and rising) and they decided to provide enough free places for everyone to join without having to queue. This in itself is a fantastic reason to play as most server based games will not give you the instant join ability.
Aside from all this the game does have a few issues, quests can be a bit tedious and ask for a few too many items to be collected etc, some of the later game stuff is apparently not working correctly (yet), and there isn't any way (as far as ive found) to find a specific trainer/location/etc (such as in wow asking the town guards). These are all minor issues and so far can be worked around by the smallest amount of work. (I have suggested implementations on the forums that might help but who knows if they'll be taken into account)
However overall i have had no issues with this game (so far) and have found it very enjoyable, even playing by myself, there are alot of things to do and places to see (and more coming all the time), Having a few friends to play along with would make the experience even better as far as i can see.
I give this game 4 and a half dead Darryl's out of 5! (and sure its free so ya aint gonna lose out anything by trying it!)
Runes of Magic is a free to play, micro transaction, MMO. It is very similar to wow (as any MMO tends to be) But it is created completely from scratch and does not try to be like wow.
You start off as either a human or an elf (new races will get added with each new expansion they decide to release) and can choose a selection of classes.
These classes can be a very crucial choice as later on in the game you can choose a second class that you want to spec into. You will get specific skills depending on the class combination as well as the general skills of each class. This i think is a very very cool way of making classes unique. You could be a warrior/priest and be able to tank and heal yourself or a mage/warrior and be able to deal immense damage AS WELL as getting the unique class combination skills.
I decided to play as a Rogue/Scout as it allows me to do close combat stealthy style and very good long range attacks and the two classes both rely on one stat as the primary.
As you continue on into the game you find you need to learn professions such as mining, woodcutting and herbology.
You can learn every profession in the game but you can only max out a limited amount of them. Each profession will give you specific benefits at higher levels but you have to choose carefully which benefits you really want before you level them up.
I haven't played enough yet to get to the higher levels but i think i might possibly go with leather working (as i can wear leather) and some sort of magic oriented profession such as alchemy to offset being a purely physical class.
There are some really neat features in the game such as the dual-class system, pvp dungeons, pure solo play, temporary mount rewards very early (as soon as you complete the easy tutorial), a teleport system from pretty much any location but for me the most important feature is the fact that there are no queues. There are over 4 million players registered on the game (and rising) and they decided to provide enough free places for everyone to join without having to queue. This in itself is a fantastic reason to play as most server based games will not give you the instant join ability.
Aside from all this the game does have a few issues, quests can be a bit tedious and ask for a few too many items to be collected etc, some of the later game stuff is apparently not working correctly (yet), and there isn't any way (as far as ive found) to find a specific trainer/location/etc (such as in wow asking the town guards). These are all minor issues and so far can be worked around by the smallest amount of work. (I have suggested implementations on the forums that might help but who knows if they'll be taken into account)
However overall i have had no issues with this game (so far) and have found it very enjoyable, even playing by myself, there are alot of things to do and places to see (and more coming all the time), Having a few friends to play along with would make the experience even better as far as i can see.
I give this game 4 and a half dead Darryl's out of 5! (and sure its free so ya aint gonna lose out anything by trying it!)
Sunday, February 13, 2011
Dragon Age?
Despite the lack of dragons this is an awesome game. The story is really good and I like how they give you a different beginning story depending on your race and such.
As i got into the game it was fairly quickly I picked up a magic weapon, I was quite surprised by this, but as the game went on I was less impressed. It wasn't until about the last stretch that I picked up a magic weapon that was in any way better than the beginner weapon I had gotten. I spent most of the game using standard weapons and armour.
I was a tad disgruntled that there was no class crossing over or dual classing but the classes and sub classes make up for it quite well, I played the majority of the game as a rogue/ranger and eventually chose duelist over assassin late game, only to realize that I had no points to put into any of its skills...
The way the party would resurrect after a battle if some members survived was a very good feature (I appreciate not having to go through a massive battle and gaining a small amount of loot just to have to spend it all on a raise dead spell) and one that often caught me out when relied on it to get me through a battle no problem (thank god for quicksave)
I would say that my favourite part was probably the circle of the magi, in the fade due to the sloth demon. I thoroughly enjoyed that part and actually loaded a save in order to go back and play it again.
One of my least favourite parts was the bridge puzzle, I'm really bad at puzzles like that and spent a good half hour trying to figure it out before I caved and searched online, and then found out that it is much more difficult on PC than on any other platform...
Overall it has a fantastic story, great character depth and background stories. The side missions are very interesting (strangely enough)and the ability to actually talk people out of things rather than having to fight everyone is a fantastic addition.
A couple of bad things about it were the lack of magic weapons and armour, the small number of classes and lack of dual classing and that ONE DAMN bridge puzzle.
As i got into the game it was fairly quickly I picked up a magic weapon, I was quite surprised by this, but as the game went on I was less impressed. It wasn't until about the last stretch that I picked up a magic weapon that was in any way better than the beginner weapon I had gotten. I spent most of the game using standard weapons and armour.
I was a tad disgruntled that there was no class crossing over or dual classing but the classes and sub classes make up for it quite well, I played the majority of the game as a rogue/ranger and eventually chose duelist over assassin late game, only to realize that I had no points to put into any of its skills...
The way the party would resurrect after a battle if some members survived was a very good feature (I appreciate not having to go through a massive battle and gaining a small amount of loot just to have to spend it all on a raise dead spell) and one that often caught me out when relied on it to get me through a battle no problem (thank god for quicksave)
I would say that my favourite part was probably the circle of the magi, in the fade due to the sloth demon. I thoroughly enjoyed that part and actually loaded a save in order to go back and play it again.
One of my least favourite parts was the bridge puzzle, I'm really bad at puzzles like that and spent a good half hour trying to figure it out before I caved and searched online, and then found out that it is much more difficult on PC than on any other platform...
Overall it has a fantastic story, great character depth and background stories. The side missions are very interesting (strangely enough)and the ability to actually talk people out of things rather than having to fight everyone is a fantastic addition.
A couple of bad things about it were the lack of magic weapons and armour, the small number of classes and lack of dual classing and that ONE DAMN bridge puzzle.
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