So another PAX East has come and gone. I wrote up daily ‘reports’ on the show over on Google+. Some of them were written under the influence of too much good beer with good friends, and none of them are particularly noteworthy or in-depth. I went to PAX purely as a spectator and didn’t corner anyone for interviews or insider information. But if anyone not on G+ wants to read them let me know and I’ll dump the raw copy into a post.
Short version: PAX was crowded and noisy and good for my soul. I was considering ditching the whole thing but Angela really wanted to go, and I’m really glad she didn’t let me follow my melancholy. I came back from the show with my love of gaming totally re-energized. Now the melancholy I’m feeling is from wanting to be back among my people!
The highlight of the show was, once again, the Tweetup. For me, it’s really the only time of the year I can sit around with serious gamers and just ‘talk shop’ for a few solid hours. We arrived at about 8:15 pm and packed it in at 2 am. My only regret is that I didn’t do a better job of mingling at it. @creeptheprophet & @grimnir_ are both people I’ve ‘known’ from afar on social networks, both were there, and other than hello and goodbye I didn’t spend time talking to either of them. I was always too engrossed in the conversation immediately around me. Maybe next year we need to set up the Tweetup like a Speed Dating Event!
Anyway, my apologies to everyone who was there that I didn’t talk to. It was definitely my loss.
Anyway, I’m back-logged on post ideas but I’m also back-logged on the day job, so I’ll do my best to get caught up. I jumped on a new Kickstarter project while waiting in line for a PAX Panel, and there’s a new project coming out today I want to talk about. Been playing some games, both old and new… lots going on, so stay tuned!
Oh, almost forgot. Turns out my phone with digital zoom is a terrible device for taking pics of fast-moving gameplay so very few of my shots are worth looking at, but Angela had a real camera, so check out her photo gallery from the show.
Thursday is my Friday this week, as we’re off to PAX tomorrow morning.
It’s been a pretty tough week and very very little down time for gaming. In fact I’m heavily demotivated and I’m not even really looking forward to the convention. I’d kind of rather sit around the house playing games. I’m sure I’ll perk up once I start breathing the magic PAX Air, though!
Purchases This Week
I picked up Arcanum: Of Steamworks & Magic Obscura from GOG.com last weekend. It was..sheesh, under $5 I think.
I also bought I Am Alive on PSN for $15-ish. Dunno when I’ll play it seriously but I wanted to send a message to the developer that PSN users want to buy their games. Sick of stuff hitting the Xbox weeks before PSN.
I also downloaded NFS: Shift 2 and Shank 2 on the PS3. Both were freebies for Playstation Plus members.
Played This Week
Raptr says I spent about 45 minutes playing SW:TOR and 15 playing (testing, really) Arcanum.
I spent a few hours on The Legend of Heroes: Trails in the Sky early in the week, but otherwise I just fired up a few demos here and there. Wings of Steel grabbed my attention. Blades of Time did not. There were a few others that I barely looked at before deleting. Asura’s Wrath was one…I can’t even remember the others.
I played up to the title screen of I Am Alive just to see what gameplay was like, and ran 1 race in NFS:Shift 2
Plans For the Week to Come
PAX! Being away for the weekend will probably put me so far behind that I won’t get any gaming in next week, but if I do it’ll probably continue to be The Legend of Heroes: Trails in the Sky.
I’m really looking forward to things getting back to normal next weekend!
I tell you what, I have no idea how long this Kickstarter Nantucket Sleighride will last but I hope it never ends. All of a sudden all the games I’m most excited about are either Legend of Grimrock or a Kickstarter project!
It’s really exciting to me, to be able to help these game designers make games that sound awesome. Suddenly I’m a fucking philanthropist!! Good games better the human condition, right? 🙂
Anyway the latest project to get me pumped is Shadowrun Returns, led by Shadowrun creator Jordan Weisman. His company, Hairbrained Schemes, created the very awesome Crimson Steam Pirates for the iPad last year. [Holy smokes, in looking for that link I found out CSP is on the Chrome Store, too!]
Shadowrun Returns is planned as a 2D, turn-based, party-based RPG that will come with a mission editor. It’s got some social aspects in that you can hire your friend’s characters as minions to take on your own missions. Weisman says it’ll come out for iPad and PC.
But no sense in me rattling on. Here’s the introductory video and of course there are lots more details over on the Kickstarter page.
They’re hoping to raise $400,000. They’re close to $60K $70K (went up $10K while I was writing this post!) now with 24 days to go and backers coming on-board at a brisk pace. $15 is the minimum pledge to get a digital copy of the game for PC. I went with a $30 pledge in order to get a book of stories written about the game.
I am what’s wrong with gaming today. At least, what’s wrong with MMO gaming.
As you’ve no doubt heard, Funcom opened up pre-orders for The Secret World today. To get a feel for how stoked I’ve been for The Secret World, here’s all the coverage I’ve had on the site: tag = The Secret World. (Spoiler: It’s 1 post showing a video.) I’ve also stated publicly that MMOs aren’t a good fit for me, and that I’m tired of subscription models that make me feel compelled to play in order to get my money’s worth.
The end result of all this? Of course I pre-ordered The Secret World this morning. I can’t help it. Curiosity about MMOs drives me. And I don’t even try to fool myself that this will be The One anymore. I’m sure I’ll play TSW for 2-3 weeks and then move on.
So why Pre-Order? Because I’m a sheep in sheep’s clothing. Oooo, I get to start 4 days early! Maybe. If I pre-ordered early enough. In those 4 days I’ll probably manage 2-3 hours of gametime! And I get to reserve a name! If I could think of one I felt like reserving. And play in beta weekends…though I’ve sworn off betas.
Essentially all Funcom had to do is throw up a bullet-pointed list of Perks and they had me. I’m not proud of this, but it’s the truth. And in being so weak-willed I just encourage game companies to keep dangling silly freebies in order to entice players to pre-order.
So I apologize to the gaming community for encouraging this type of behavior.
Now let’s start the griping portion of this blog post!
Pre-ordering is supposed to get you a name reservation. I signed up, gave ’em my credit-card info, got my “Thank you for pre-ordering” email but when I click the link to reserve my name I’m told I don’t have any Name Reservation ‘slots’. Hmm. And I have a big alert that says “You have a pending payment. Click here to complete payment” but when I click the link I just loop back to the same page with no options. So maybe I just need to be patient and wait for that payment to go through. I’m not irate about this, but I am a bit confused. [Update: OK just checked again and I had my name reservation slot, so scratch this one.]
Pre-ordering was supposed to get you 1 of 3 combat pets: A Doberman, a wolf, or a kitty cat. The wolf is super-awesome, the Doberman is pretty cool, and the cat is, well, a kitty cat. After I signed up my account page shows, under Your Products, “The Secret World – Preorder (Cat).” So what does that mean? I sure didn’t pick the cute little kitty. Is it a random selection? Is “Cat” just a placeholder and I’ll be able to pick later? Not at all clear. If I’m stuck with that cat I’ll be annoyed. I mean, I like cats and all, but I like ’em curled up in my lap quietly purring, not out doing battle with me. That just seems silly.
Last up, during the process of handing over $50 to play the game, you’re already getting DLC marketing prompts thrown at you. In addition to that $50 for the pre-order you can spend $15 (a social pet, a set of weapons, and a leather jacket), $60 (30 extra days of gametime, and additional character slot, an additional name reservation, a high-end talisman for each new character, 10 experience potions and a 10% discount on all social clothing purchases) or $200 (everything in the $60 bundle plus a lifetime subscription and an exclusive leather jacket) more in order to get various bundles of extra stuff. You can also buy additional character slots and name reservations for $9.99 each.
[In days of yore I’d always go for Lifetime Subs because they (illogically) remove that pressure to get my money’s worth out of a subscription gaming experience, but these days I just assume every MMO will go F2P within a few years of launch so Lifetime subs no longer seem viable to me. Anyone else agree?]
I have to say that I found all these offers a bit off-putting. All I could think was that if they’re pitching all this stuff now, by the time I get in the game I’m going to be smothered under all kinds of RMT offers. Asking me to spend real cash is fine (well, acceptable at least) in a F2P game, but if I’m paying a subscription I don’t want to see a bunch of ads for additional cost items.
All in all, I came out of the pre-order experience thinking “Hmmm, maybe that was all a big mistake.” but I’ve certainly wasted more than $50 on other games I never played much (~waves at SSX~), so I’ll stick it out. But come launch, Funcom better bring their A game if they want to convert me into a fan.
I’ve been playing The Legend of Heroes: Trails in the Sky on the Vita lately (though its a PSP game). I’m really not very far into it. Five hours maybe? The game features the typical (in JRPGs anyway) plucky young heroes out doing battle with monsters. In this case, the first two characters you meet are Estelle and her adopted brother Joshua. Their father is a Bracer, which is basically an adventurer-for-hire in this world. Estelle and Joshua have been training to become Bracers too; in fact they’ve just earned their certificate when the game begins.
Shortly thereafter, their father gets called away on business and it falls to our determined young Junior Bracers to finish up a few jobs he’d accepted before leaving. These are kind of semi-tutorial warm-up quests, or so I thought.
In the last of the three missions you have to escort a newspaper reporter and his photographer assistant to the top of a tower. We’d been to that tower once so I figured it’d be another cakewalk.
I was wrong.
As we climbed higher, the monsters got tougher. We got a little lost and had to backtrack a few times and every time we’d leave and return to a floor the monsters would have respawned. In LoH ‘random’ encounters can be seen on the map as you get near them. Once you spot the monsters you can try to surprise them, approach them normally or avoid them altogether. In the latter case, they’ll sometimes chase you. This isn’t normally a problem because you can outrun them outside, but in the confines of the tower, and with the addition of the 2 ‘guest characters’ that made our party ‘train’ longer than usual, that wasn’t always possible.
As I stumbled into battle after battle it dawned on me that I was going to get wiped out. I hadn’t spent any of my hard-earned Mira (cash) on upgrades or supplies. Estelle (who has a healing spell) was out of mana and my supply of healing items was all but depleted. And it’d been a LONG time since I’d saved.
I decided it was time to try to fall back and regroup, but that meant fighting my way out of the tower. I figured if I could get back to town I could rest and resupply and if I fought my way back to the tower I might gain a level in the process.
It was tough and I did wipe a few times (those gorgous game designers added a “Retry?” option to battles so when you do wipe you can try again using different tactics) but eventually I made it out. Threaded my way past random encounters on the road back to town and finally flopped down in an Inn. Whew!
At that point I looked up and it was 1 am and I had work in the morning. I’d totally lost track of time and was going to be exhausted in the morning, and to make matters worse, I’d failed to complete the quest!
And yet it was the most fun I’d had gaming in recent memory. In fact it was so much fun that I had to bring my Vita to work and sneak out at lunch and have another go at that tower. This time I paid attention and made a mental map as I went, rather than stumbling around blindly. I also bought some armor and a satchel of healing items before leaving town. And I made it to the top of the tower! Yay! And was only 20 minutes late getting back from lunch. Ooops!
So what’s the point of my little story? Well it dawned on me that having to go back to town like I did would be seen as a horrible flaw to a lot of today’s gamers. It could de decried as ‘pointless travel’ or even worse, as ‘grinding.’ We dislike anything in our games that slow us down and cause us to struggle.
But it’s the struggle, and frankly the fear of losing all that time and having to go back to an earlier save, that made my little adventure so compelling and exciting. In broader terms, without risk, rewards aren’t as, well, rewarding. Last night my ‘reward’ was making it back to town safely (I’d accumulated a lot of currency-ish loot during all that fighting, plus lots of experience).
Maybe this is the difference between an ‘old school’ gamer and a ‘new school’ thinking, I dunno. I’m just doing that ‘thinking out loud’ thing I do.
Anyway, be that as it may, I’m really enjoying Legend of Heroes: Trails in the Sky, with it’s strictly turn-based combat and quirky, chatty (text only) characters.
So speaking of Kickstarter… I’m backing a few projects that haven’t yet met their goals. Figured I’d share them here in case they seem interesting to anyone else:
The first one is the one I’m most hesitant about: Class of Heroes 2 Deluxe for the PSP. This is a collaboration between MonkeyPaw and Gaijinworks to bring a deluxe, physical version Class of Heroes 2 to the PSP. Gaijinworks, to me, = Vic Ireland of Working Designs fame, and that’s why I’m backing it. However my understanding is that they’re localizing CoH2 no matter what…the Kickstarter is more about a big fancy packaged edition and some general enhancements to the project. I’m not interested in physical copies of anything, so I’m just kicking in for that ‘general enhancements’ part. Also, they’re trying to raise $500,000, which is a pretty big number for a PSP game, I think.
Update: There’s been an update to the Kickstarter page for this making very clear what funding will add to the project:
-A Physical Deluxe Pack to be made
-English Voice Acting in the Digital and Physical releases
-English Opening Song and Video in both releases
-Extended game fixes and features (extra save slots, better controls, etc)
-Translation and release of Class of Heroes II webcomic series
Next up is Tortured Hearts – or, How I Saved The Universe. Again. This one bills itself as a satirical, old-school RPG, but what grabbed me is the artwork (see the video below) and this bit about the party system (a party-based RPG? Yes!):
This is a single player game, with 8 possible companions (unless of course you donated $5000, in which case you can be your own companion). It is quite possible to play solo. If you choose companions, you can have up to five in a party for the classic 6-person party. However, not all these companions get along with each other. They have their own personalities, skills, and agendas. The PC and the companions have approximately 100,000 words of dialog with each other. Much conversation is initiated spontaneously by the companions and occurs between them as well as with the PC.
These folks are hoping to raise $300,000; I’m hoping they make it.
Last is The Dead Linger which is “a first-person zombie survival sandbox in which you can venture into a vast, undead world, surviving and exploring in whatever way suits you best.” Nope, I’m still not tired of re-killing zombies! I like the sandbox aspect of this one; believe it or not I was getting a bit of a Minecraft vibe when reading about it. First, you can play with up to 16 people in your zombie sandbox, and then there was this bit:
You’ve found a hideout. Now what? Barricade it! Fortify it! Defend it! You probably need a place to keep your stuff. You might need a place to house your clan, or maybe you just like a particular building you found. If you choose, you can fortify and defend
This one is from an established team with a game out on Steam (Detour) and they’re only looking for $60,000. We ought to be able to get them there, right?
I’m backing a few more projects but they’ve already made their goals so no need to promote them, but just for the sake of completeness:
FTL, the indie spaceship simulation rogue-like, finished their Kickstarter drive today. They were hoping to raise $10,000 to help finish the game. They barely squeaked by, finishing up at $200,542.
This is a game being made by a team so tiny they don’t even have a company name. It’s just FTL by Matthew Davis and Justin Ma. And they got as far as getting a demo onto OnLive and winning a couple of Independent Game Festival Honorable Mentions (for the Seumas McNally Grand Prize and for Excellence in Design) without any funding (as far as I know).
Now they’ve got about 20 times what they were hoping for. I wonder what they’ll do with it? If it costs them $10K to finish the game, will they just pocket the other $190K (hopefully using it to fund their next game). Or will they try to add $190K worth of new features to FTL?
They must be overwhelmed, to be honest. Estimated launch date is this August. Maybe they’ll quit their day jobs and work full time on the game. Who knows?
I just know I’m looking forward to playing it! I kicked in enough to get into the closed beta that’s supposed to start in May because I was too impatient to wait for August. 🙂
Congrats to Davis and Ma, and here’s hoping Kickstarter continues to be a great way for people to get unique game ideas funded!
