I was doing a bit of blog surfing tonight and happened to notice someone who had Dragonchasers in their blog roll. Someone who wasn’t in my blog roll.
I fixed that now.
But please, I don’t want to be what Ysh an unnamed blogger calls a link leech!! If you’re linking here and I’m not returning the favor, just give me a shout. You can comment here or nudge me on twitter.
I’ve been playing this kinda neat RPG/Strategy game called Mount & Blade. Really, I haven’t put a lot of time into it (just a few hours) and I wouldn’t normally be “reviewing” a game so early on, but this one is on sale on Steam this weekend for just $7.50 US (75% off).
I’ve heard the game described as “Pirates! on land” and that’s a fair description. You start as a lone wanderer with some basic armor and weapons, and what you do from there pretty much is up to you. You can be a trader, or a mercenary, or a bandit. You travel an extensive and dynamic world, going from tiny villages to cities and castles, talking to Lords and tavern keepers (and the conversations are very well written, I might add), finding jobs, hearing rumors and recruiting mercenaries to fight beside you.
It definitely has that “indy” game tang to it. The landscapes are pretty good looking, but the character models are a bit rough and in places the interface gets a little clunky. At the same time, the world is sprawling and complex, and as you ride back and forth across it you’ll see other parties going about their own business, including looting villages (the bad guys) or riding down bandits (the good guys). It’s “alive” enough that Angela looked over and asked if those were other players, but no, this is a single player game. I can’t imagine an “AAA” publisher producing something as complex as this game; it will take you a while to get the hang of things.
When battle is joined, you can sit back and order your troops around, or charge in. Thus far, I haven’t tried the former because the latter is pretty awesome. I’ve never seen mounted combat done this well. Your horse handles..well, like a horse. It doesn’t stop on a dime and it can’t do a 180 degree turn at full speed. Riding at full gallop, leaning down to swing a sword at an on-foot bandit…it feels “right” (even if it looks a little wonky). Shooting a bow or crossbow while at speed is a real skill, both for you and your character. Very tough. And the one time I encountered enemies on horseback, after I sent one to his grave, his horse continued to roam around the battlefield in a panic.
As I said, I’ve just barely scratched the surface of the game, but I thought it was worth the risk to spread the word this weekend while it’s only $7.50. I’ve already got my money’s worth out of it (and there is a demo available). Apparently there’s a pretty healthy modding community for the game, too, though I haven’t dug into that yet.
This idle lifestyle of being a Gamer is starting to wear me down a bit. I’m feeling a real itch to create something, but I don’t know what. I need a personal project of some kind. Something fun to build (and, duh, I should point out that when I say “build” I really mean “code”; it’s not like I have a workshop with a table saw and drill press any more!) but small-scale enough to be manageable.
Anyone have any ideas? I’m thinking game-related but it could be something to do with blogging or other aspects of community building, too.
This being a new year and all, I sat down with the budget today, and things are not looking good. I’m still not entirely sure what the 10% salary reduction will look like after taxes, but we were playing it pretty close to the bone to begin with. Just a few posts ago I was idly wondering if I could swing a Station Pass so I could play EQ2 and Vanguard, but after looking at the numbers, not only was the answer “no” but in fact I had to cancel EQ2 as well, at least for a couple months. I need to get some regular freelance income rolling in (or have things look up at work and have my full salary reinstated) and until then a monthly game subscription isn’t really in the cards.
I still have almost a full month of EQ2 paid for, over a month of Warhammer Online, and until Jan 31 in Vanguard’s “Come back to Vanguard” promo, so I’m not going to be feeling any kind of a sting for a while (and who knows, by then maybe another source of income will have made itself known). And I’m patting myself on the back for springing for the Lifetime membership to LOTRO, because I’ll have at least that one AAA title to play.
But rather than be glum about this turn of events, I’m looking at it as a challenge. Free-To-Play MMOs are getting better all the time, and micro-transactions rock in that they’re a) micro and b) one-time expenses. So I’ll be looking at a lot of F2P MMOs, and watching for other gaming deals, and getting the most fun I can for the least money. (Right now I’m downloading the ad-supported version of FPS Area-51… about 2 days after I said I’d never play a FPS again… but I figured its FREE so why not give it a try.)
Hopefully I can keep things semi-interesting around here, though I acknowledge it’ll be a challenge when I’m playing some obscure game about sand gardening while everyone else is playing DC Universe Online or something. But I’ll try!!
I upgraded my WordPress installation tonight. If you notice anything funky, please let me know by leaving a comment. Thanks!
As mentioned, I received Valkyria Chronicles for the PS3 as a Christmas present this year. So far I’ve put 4-5 hours into it, and my initial reaction is very favorable indeed.
This game is probably classified as a Strategy-RPG but I’m going to coin a new genre here: Storybook Strategy. A Storybook Strategy game is a strongly narrative-driven game that uses strategy battles to move a story forward. In the case of Valkyria Chronicles, the term applies literally since rather than a world map or other device, you literally move through the game via a book.
The book tells the story of the small country of Gallia, caught between two super-powers in an alternate-world World War II (called the Second Europa War here). The Empire in East are the ‘bad guys’ while the Federation to the West are…well, less bad anyway. The Empire were the initial aggressors. Gallia sits on the coast of the North Sea roughly where Estonia and Latvia are in our world (geography isn’t exactly the same as the real world) but the little country feels more western than that. At the start of the story, the Empire is invading Gallia to get at the Ragnite that lies unmined under Gallian soil. (Ragnite, in this world, is the chief energy source; kind of oil and coal and dynamite — even medicine — wrapped into one resource.) The story revolves around Squad 7, a rag-tag militia squad doing their best to contribute to the defense of their country.
Anyway, back to the book, which looks like a richly illustrated history book, where each illustration or map triggers a cut-scene or battle (the actual text surrounding these panels isn’t readable). So you turn pages and work your way through chapters uncovering the story via cut-scene, and moving things along by winning battles. The ‘watercolor’ art style is very bright and peppy, but already there are some dark themes manifesting. The Empire has no qualms about killing civilians, even shooting them in the back as they flee. And among your squad there are issues of extreme racism and hate between members. Quite different from the usual “Good guys are GOOD” angle that most games take.
In Part 2 of my First Look, I’ll get into the RPG aspects of the game, which are fairly unique in a number of ways. I know that “linear” is a bad-word in the gaming nomenclature, but I really enjoy a linear game if it tells a compelling story, and so far Valkyria Chronicles’ story has me hooked.
Sorry the blog has been so empty lately, and when it hasn’t been empty it’s been depressing. I’ve had a couple of bad weeks, job wise, health wise (nothing serious there, just a miserable lingering cold) and personal wise. That’s left very little time/energy for gaming or blogging.
But today is Christmas Eve day, and when I leave work I won’t be back until Jan 5th, 2009! Woot! Plenty of time to de-stress, rest up, and play some games.
I actually don’t consider myself Christian but I do celebrate Christmas, not as a religious holiday but as a holiday of Good Will. I’ve been trying to keep up my Christmas Spirit over the past weeks, listening to carols and intending to watch Christmas specials (but never quite getting around to them)!
Tomorrow will be the first Christmas Angela and I spend together, and she’s surprised me by voicing the desire to do up a Christmas feast. My traditional Christmas dinner for the last few decades has been Chinese take out, in honor of A Christmas Story and since the last time I spent Christmas with someone was probably somewhere around 1993. My tradition (by choice, mind you) was to spend Christmas peacefully alone; a day to reflect on life and play some games. But tomorrow it’ll be Angela and I, accompanied by roast turkey, potatoes and all the fixins, or so I’m told. Woot! And a tree! And presents under it! It’s like I’m 8 again!
Anyway, the point I’m rambling towards is that I hope you all have a very nice holiday and I hope you’re all as fortunate as I am. Good food, warm shelter, and company you enjoy, even if it is only your own (nothing at all wrong with that). Merry Christmas, everyone!!
I had planned to roll a Warden when Moria came out; I knew nothing about the class aside from the name when I made that decision. Visions of ‘friend of nature’ style gameplay and all that. Then when Moria finally launched, well, it seemed like *everyone* was rolling a Warden and I was playing 35 other games so I just let it slide, until tonight.
Look, I’m all of level four, but I’m going to join the chorus praising the class (which isn’t even remotely tree-huggerish, I might add). Or at least, Gambits (the gameplay system that comes with it). At level 4 I have 3 basic skills I’ve learned, each of them doing a different style of damage. As you string these types of damage together, you activate your “Gambit” skill. There are a bunch of Gambits, all triggered by 1 hotkey, and which Gambit triggers depends on the order of skills you’ve used.
Examples might help. Doing two “thrust” skills lets you do a gambit that just does extra damage. Doing two “shield block” skills lets you do a gambit that short-terms buffs your shield blocking. Doing a “thrust” then a “shield block” lets you do a gambit that does damage with a chance to stun. And so on. Apparently at higher levels you get gambit ‘strings’ of more than 2 skills.
The system isn’t totally unique: in a way its very similar to EQ2’s Heroic Opportunities, with two exceptions. First, as far as I can tell all Gambits are done ‘solo’ in that what the rest of your party is doing won’t impact your Gambit. Second and more importantly, the end effect isn’t random (EQ2’s Heroic Opportunities do involve the whole group and have randomness in their results.)
I can see the Warden being a class that is very powerful in the hands of a skilled player, and less so in the hands of a button masher. I suspect it’ll be a hard class to come back to after an extended break. As you learn more and more gambits and skills it’s going to take a lot of concentration to look ahead and determine what you’re going to want to do and then how to do it.
I’m looking forward to playing the class more. Again, I’m all of level four, so I very much welcome corrections from people who’ve gotten their Wardens to higher levels.
My deepest apologies for starting conversations and then disappearing on my readers. It wasn’t planned but neither was it really avoidable. If you happen to follow me on Twitter then you probably had an idea that the week wasn’t going exactly swimmingly. Lots of work (literally from the time I got to the office until the time I went to bed, with an hour off for dinner), a bad financial crisis, a savaging of company morale, and some sudden changes in travel plans… I couldn’t manage to keep up with my RSS feeds, let alone find time to post.
Mother Nature appears to be coming to the rescue though. School closings have already been announced for tomorrow in this area, and some of my friends at other companies in the area told me they’ve already been told the office is being closed.
Of course, my company said “We care deeply for the safety of our employees, but short of a National Emergency, the office remains open.” That said, my intent is to take half a vacation day. Last year there was a storm that made my normal 20 minute commute into a harrowing 6 hours on the road, and the weather service says this is going to be the same kind of storm. Specifically they said:
“At this time…travel is not recommended anytime Friday afternoon and evening…as we expect heavy snow treacherous road conditions during this time.”
No way I’m risking another ordeal like last year!!
Anyway, hopefully I’ll be back on my feet and posting again soon. Thanks for sticking with me through this dry spell!
We had a big ice storm here in New England during the Thursday overnight. Friday morning our power went out, so I couldn’t post before work. At lunchtime I came home to check on things, making sure neither Angela nor the guinea pigs had frozen to death, so no lunchtime post writing. By the time I got home, power was restored. My heart goes out to the many people who will be without power for several days; high today will be in the 20’s so its going to get terribly cold in all those houses. One of my co-workers had to leave the area to go stay with family; they had no heat, it was getting cold, and all the hotel and motel rooms are booked. I guess some of the schools have been set up as shelters for those without the means to get out of the area.
Funny thing about electricity is how much you don’t notice it until it isn’t there anymore.
Anyway…
Thursday night before all this started I got my first taste of this year’s Frostfell celebration in EQ2. I can’t remember if my account was active for Frostfell last year, but if it was I didn’t pay much mind to Frostfell because there’s a lot of stuff new to me that I’m told isn’t new this year. For my first outing I aided Queen Bunny in her fight against the commercialization of Frostfell. It was a fun little quest, solo (and it scales to your level) and it took me to the Steamfont Mountains, an area I’d never visited in EQ2.
One thing I learned while doing this quest is how badly equipped Riowa is. I was taking a lot of damage which made me think to check his gear and it’s all level 30-32 (and he is 42)! One of my “problems” with EQ2 is that I’m perpetually doing “gray” quests because my quest log is perpetually full. So I always log in to ‘knock off some of these gray quests’ and end up leveling in the process, making even more quests gray. I’m anal about going from A to B to C (in everything I do, not just EQ2) so I take every quest I see, and what I’m learning is that there are too many quests for any one character to do and still maintain some level of challenge. Not sure what to do about that… the A-B-C thing is pretty deeply ingrained.
Anyway, Friday night I was so totally spent that I mostly watched TV. I jumped into WoW a bit to use up Rested Experience on my baby Rogue on Rexxar, but I have to be honest, WoW just isn’t engaging me. It was fun for a week or so but now it’s just the same old same old again, even with the added benefit of CoWs. My account is up for renewal on the 23rd and I don’t think I’ll renew. Winter’s Veil starts on the 15th so I’ll probably play around in that a bit then be done with WoW.
In LOTRO the Yule Festival has begun, and I’ve read there’s a quest in the Shire that earns you a Christmas Tree for your yard, so I need to do that this weekend. I’m wondering if I can get my Champion to 35, get a decent horse, and win one of the Festival Races to get a better horse, all in the course of one special event. But there’s Frostfell fun to be had, too! So many choices! I managed to snag the whole week between Christmas and New Year’s off, though, so I’ll have some extra gaming time. On the other hand, next week is going to be hell week (launching a new web site at work) and I don’t imagine I’ll be getting much gaming dune.