Goodbye 2013, hello 2014

Posted on by Nimgimli

A few of my friends have been doing annual recap posts so I decided to get in on the fun. I’ve been so terrible at writing posts here this year…maybe this will start a new trend.

2013 was a good gaming year for me! When Sony and Microsoft announced their new gaming consoles I immediately pre-ordered them both then got to work making extra $$ to pay for them. So when launch came I had the cash tucked away in an account ear-marked for consoles and nothing else. Sure, working 3 jobs for a while over the summer sucked, but to me it was worth it to have guilt-free next gen gaming when the time came.

It’s been over a month now and I still can’t decide which of the new consoles I like more, though the Xbox One gets a lot more use as a tool since the cable box is hooked up through it. Both systems have a bright future once development ramps up for them, and I’m glad I have ’em both.

At the same time I feel like I’m getting a lot more picky about the “big” games I play. My favorite games this year were The Last of Us and Grand Theft Auto 5. I don’t know if I can choose between them since they’re so apples and oranges. TLOU was some heavy shit while GTA5 was mostly just crazy capers.

Looking past those two games though, nothing else much stands out. I played a lot of games but none of them made a huge impression.

My favorite genre these days is the survival/building genre. Games like Minecraft, Terraria and Starbound. I just like creating things in games, but if there’s no struggle to do it, I lose interest. Unfortunately technology hasn’t seemed to keep up with game developers and all these games are decidedly retro in look and feel. I daydream of the time when we have a game like this done up in a AAA game engine.

As for MMOs, my love/hate relationship with them persists. I think I love the genre except I really don’t. What I really want is a ‘virtual world’ that I can roam around and be a loner in, but what we have are mostly theme park MMOs that are designed for folks who want to play with others and socialize while doing so. There are exceptions, but then I run into time issues. Games like Wurm Online should be perfect for me, but they require so much time that I can’t really enjoy them.

I’m looking forward to Trove and Everquest Next Landmark as possible games that fit my play style. I’ve been fortunate enough to get into betas of the other high profile MMOs heading our way and found that they don’t really excite me much. Nor can I find much motivation to follow my friends who’ve been returning to and enjoying older games like WoW or LOTRO.

Gaming aside, I’ve been started to read more again, and have been dabbling in watching anime for the first time in a few years.

My resolution for 2014 is to learn more and game less. Some days I look back at the amount of time I’ve spent gaming with really not much to show for it. Not that there’s anything wrong with that…gaming is a way to relax and re-charge, after all. But if I set aside say 25% of the time I spend gaming and spend it learning something…I think it’d be good for my mental well-being. It doesn’t matter if I’m learning about building catapults or home dentistry or a new programming language or how to read Japanese. Just the process of learning something and keeping the mind sharp will be a good thing for me.

I hope everyone who comes cruising past this blog now and then had a great holiday season and I hope you’ll all have a prosperous and peaceful 2014!

Farewell to Forza

Posted on by Nimgimli

forzaboxWell after 2 weeks of Forza 5 I think I’ve slaked my thirst for simulation racing. Last night I hopped over to the PS4 and Need For Speed: Rivals and all I could think of was “Wow, this is so much more fun!”

I think Forza 5 is a very good game but it’s a game that really requires dedication if you want to enjoy it over a long period of time. You can start out by turning on all the assists and doing pretty well in races, to be sure, but honestly that doesn’t require a lot of skill. And enjoying Forza is all about becoming more skillful.

I started the other way. I turned off a bunch of assists and was doing OK while driving the less expensive cars (the C & D class cars). As soon as I jumped into my first B class car (a Jag) I just couldn’t keep the thing on the road. Punching the throttle would cause the back end to spin out, the slightest bit of oversteer would cause me to fishtail back and forth down the track.

I turned a bunch of assists back on and started finishing in the front of the pack again, but I couldn’t help but feel like the Xbox was playing more than I was. What I really needed to do was practice, practice, practice using the controller to drive. I needed to learn to feather the right trigger (throttle) rather than mashing it all the way down, and same with brakes (though I did have ABS on which made braking less of an issue…earlier in my career I’d hit the same issue with braking and ABS eliminated the need to learn to feather the brakes).

Problem is, I just wasn’t motivated to do that, for a few reasons.

First, Forza 5 is a slow moving game. You load up a track and that takes a while. Then you race a 2-3 lap race which doesn’t take very long. Then the game goes into the post race routine where it slooowwwly shows your (probably battered) car rolling to a stop from 3 different angles. Then it slowwwwwly counts up your winnings, then makes you stare at them for a good 10 seconds. Then it slooowwwwwly shows your experience and affinity gain, and again makes you stare at these for much longer than you’d ever want to. Then finally you get to the post-race screen. When you hit continue it takes a good while to unload the current track, then another while to load the next track.

I haven’t measured it but it feels like I spend more time watching loading/unloading screens than I do racing. I’m pretty sure that isn’t really the case, but it’s how it feels. I find myself impatiently mashing buttons on the controller hoping to find a magical combo that will speed up the post-race routine. I’m sure the pacing is so some kind of number crunching can finish in the background… but after a while it starts to get under my skin.

Second, the replay cameras kind of suck. I play the game from the in-car view so often I’ll get slammed into and not really know what happened, so I go to the replay. There are a few camera options there but none of them gives a good broad view of the race. I want a camera that follows my car from a few hundred feet above and behind it, so I can see how issues in a race developed. If there is such a camera I haven’t found it. There is a “replay” camera that shows the race from certain fixed points but there are huge gaps on the track where there’s no coverage and the “replay” camera defaults to a view from the front bumper, which is totally useless since that’s more or less the view I was driving from.

Third, I like a healthy dose of CarPG in my racing games. I love earning credits/cash and using it to upgrade my cars. You can do this in Forza 5 but generally you do it once per class change and that’s it. Every car has a numerical rating and classes start at the hundred marks. So if Class B starts at a rating of 501 (going by memory here) then in order to be competitive in Class C your car better be rated between 490-500. When you move from Class D to Class C (assuming you just don’t buy a Class C car) you’ll upgrade everything to bring that car up to spec. And Forza 5 gives you a 1 button upgrade to maximize all of this.

Four is a lack of variety. Forza 5 is all about circuit racing. Once in a while you’ll have some goofy challenge at the Top Gear test track (like driving through bowling pins) but, as far as I’ve seen anyway, there’re no rally courses, or drift competitions, or Kart racing to break things up.

Now there’s a lot to Forza 5 I haven’t taken advantage of. There is an elaborate painting/design system that people use to create pretty amazing paint jobs. I don’t really have the patience for that but I appreciate being able to access the great work other players have done.

There’s a whole Tuning system that you can use to customize how you car handles. Sadly I’m just not knowledgeable enough to make use of it, and this is probably my Forza Achille’s Heel. Maybe that Jag wouldn’t be so squirrely if I tuned it properly. I could learn about this, and I know that people do learn about car tuning just to play Forza better, but that’s where the dedication requirement kicks in. At the end of the day, it’s just not that important to me. That’s my problem though, and not a problem with the game.

And there’s online racing against real players. I feel like I suck too much to get into that, but I suppose I should try it sometime.

As I said, Forza is a good game, but for a casual racing fan like me, it requires too much dedication and too much patience for long-term enjoyment. That said, I’ve played it every single night for the past 2 weeks so I don’t regret the purchase one bit. I’ll probably leave all the assists turned on so I can go back and enjoy it from time to time just to marvel at how amazing everything looks.

And I hope the company makes a Forza Horizons 2 for the Xbox One. From what I hear, the simulation aspects of Forza Horizon are dialed back, but it’s still a looker of a game. So a ‘next gen’ version would be very welcome.

Until then, I’m back to waiting for the arrival of Drive Club and The Crew while I continue to trick out my Mustang in Need For Speed Rivals.

In defense of the PS4 launch library

Posted on by Nimgimli

The Playstation 4 is here and I have mine. I’m a happy camper! (No fanyboyism…my Xbox One should be arriving next Friday and I’m excited for that, too.)

A lot has been said about how weak the PS4 launch library is, and I’m here, at the risk of damning with faint praise, to say it isn’t as bad as some of the gaming blogs would lead you to believe, particularly if you’re already a Playstation customer.

I’ve owned the PS4 for 24 hours and here’s what my library looks like:

Need For Speed Rivals: $60 (I paid $40): This is the game I’ve been playing the most. I like it a lot. It isn’t a system seller (it’s available on last gen too) but it’s a solid arcade racer.
Killzone: Shadow Fall: $60 (I paid $40): Haven’t touched it yet
Assassin’s Creed IV: $60 (I paid $40): Haven’t touched it yet

I got these 3 in an Amazon “Buy 2 get 1 free deal”

Knack: $60 (I paid $50): Haven’t touched it yet

I bought this one digitally in October when Sony was giving you $10 back for every $50 you spent.

So far, this is what game sites are talking about when they talk about the weak launch. But they don’t mention:

Sound Shapes: $15?? (I paid $0) A PS3/Vita title that has been ported to the PS4. If you own it there, you own it here
Flower: $15?? (I paid $0) Same as Sound Shapes. I already owned it so d/led it for free.

Resogun: $0 Take an old school shooter and pump it full of steroids. This is the game I’ve put the 2nd most time into. Love it!
Contrast: $0 Haven’t touched it yet

These two are free to ‘lease’ for as long as you’re a Playstation Plus member, and since every PS4 comes with a 1-month free trial of PS+, everyone has access to them free for the first month of their console ownership

DC Universe Online $0
Warframe $0
Blacklight: Retribution $0

Haven’t tried any of them yet (well I’ve played DCUO on the PS3) but all are free-to-play games available for anyone to download and enjoy.

So no, the PS4 doesn’t have the strongest launch library ever, but it does have a lot of options that you can sample without spending a lot of money. I kind of wish I hadn’t purchased so many games so soon; the free offerings could have carried me a long ways, I think.

Of course the big question is what happens on Tuesday and the Tuesday after that and the Tuesday after that. Will the library sit stagnant until March or will we get a continuous stream of new content? I think that’s the important question that we need an answer to.

That which does not destroy us: My battle with motion sickness

Posted on by Nimgimli

i2_ScreenShot_Cole_GrindI’m pretty excited about the Playstation 4 that is headed our way in a couple of months, and I’ve been gearing up for it by trying to cut down my ‘pile of shame’ of PS3 titles I’ve wanted to get to.

One of these in Infamous 2. I played through the first Infamous and enjoyed it a lot, and one of the big early releases for the PS4 is Infamous: Second Son, coming some time in early 2014. I bought Infamous 2 when it first came out but somehow got distracted and never got very far.

So when I picked it up again a few weeks ago, I was stoked for another great gaming experience. But I had to bail out of my first session with the game early when motion sickness kicked in hard. I broke out in a sweat and my stomach was threatening to expel i’s contents. I had to go lie down for a while and wait for the feeling to pass.

Infamous 2, in case you haven’t played it, is a really twitchy game. The controls are super-sensitive with a very small dead area on the sticks. Plus there’s a lot of parkour-like climbing that’s made really easy by giving the character feet that tend to stick to anything remotely resembling a rail or a ledge. This means that sometimes your character will jerk a little in one way or another to help you stick a landing, even if you weren’t intending to land.

It makes the game really fun because you can easily do crazy things like jump off a tall building and land on the tip of a light pole, but I think it really aggravated my motion sickness. Just that little lack of control was enough to throw my inner ear into fits.

But I a) really wanted to play the game and b) was really annoyed at this motion sickness thing. As you get older you lose the ability to do more and more of the things you enjoy and dammit, I wasn’t going to lose the ability to play a video game!

So the next day I went back to Infamous 2 and played for all of 5 minutes or so. As soon as I felt a bit of discomfort, I stopped. And I did that again the following night, and the night after. By about the 4th night I was up to 15 minutes or so. At this point if I started to feel a little queasy I’d pause and look away for a few minutes before continuing.

The nice thing about Infamous 2 for this ‘regime’ is that there’s tons of collecting items and simple side quests to do, so I could play for 15 minutes and still feel like I made a little bit of progress.

The body, or at least my body, adapts quickly and now, a few weeks later, I can play as much Infamous 2 as I want without feeling bad. Sometimes after a really intense battle I do have to pause, get up for a drink or to pet the dog or do something other than look at that moving screen for a few minutes, just to let my eyes and stomach ‘settle’ a little, but it’s no biggie now.

I’m just sharing this story in case anyone else out there suffers from motion sickness in gaming. You can overcome it through regular, short-duration play sessions. Don’t let yourself get sick…stop before you do. You don’t want your sub-conscious to develop negative associations to gaming (though that would probably save you a lot of $$)!

I will admit that I now make sure to play at least a little Infamous 2 every other night or so. I’m afraid if I leave it for a week I might back-slide. So even on busy nights I’ll log in and chase now a blast core or break-up a robbery or an abduction or something. Just to stay ‘video game fit.’ 🙂

And I’m glad I did this because Infamous 2 is pretty good so far, and there’ll little references to things I’ve seen mentioned in previews of Infamous: Second Son. By the time that game launches I’ll be ready!

First Look: Don’t Starve

Posted on by Nimgimli

dontstarvelogo
Over the weekend I returned to Don’t Starve, the strange little survival game from Klei Entertainment. I’d played Don’t Starve back when it was in beta and liked it quite a bit but as with so many games it got pushed to the back of my brain and forgotten.

Now the game is launched and Klei is constantly updating it, adding new things to discover. I love that a game I paid about $10 for (beta price, it lists for $16 but is frequently on sale on Steam) gets this kind of continuous support. It probably helps that Don’t Starve is going to come out on the Playstation 4, too.

The other day I had my most successful run in a game, making it 20 days before I succumbed to the dangers of the world. I wanted to tell you about that run, but I realized I’d never talked about the game so here’s a belated First Look.

When a game of Don’t Starve begins, you find yourself empty handed and alone in an alien world. Your first order of business is to find food and the tools to make fire. If night falls and you have no light source you’re pretty much doomed. There are beasties in the dark, and the dark is pitch black.

So you start scrounging. There are emaciated bushes that you can get sticks from, tufts of dry grass to pluck and chunks of flint strewn about. You can combine these basic materials to create shovels, mining picks and axes. You can also make a torch, but torches burn out pretty quickly.

With an axe you can chop down trees to get logs (and pine cones which you can use to grow more trees). With a flint and logs you can build a campfire which should get you through your first night. Later you’ll want to gather some rocks to make a fire pit which will burn your wood more efficiently (and safely).

Now that you have light it’s time to address the grumbling in your belly. Food is a major motivator in Don’t Starve. You can scrounge for wild carrots and berry bushes at first but they offer poor sustenance. You might find seeds and you can eat those too if you get desperate. All these items can be cooked over your campfire which seems to make them slightly more filling, though that could be my imagination.

Soon enough night falls and the dark closes around you and your little fire. You munch your berries, keep feeding logs into the fire, and wait for dawn. There’s a bit of downtime here, it must be said, though later in the game you’ll have chores to do at night.

At this point you might notice you have 3 gauges. One is health, one is hunger, and the third is sanity. When your hunger gauge is empty you’ll start taking health damage, and you can also take health damage in battle. Your sanity goes down as you go more hours without sleeping.

As your sanity drops, the game starts to represent this loss by throwing various artifacts on screen. Things shake, shadows appear, harmless bunnies start to look like fierce creatures. Hands reach into your fire and steal the light. Being crazy isn’t fun, but skipping sleep for that first night won’t have too bad an impact.

When dawn breaks it’s time to get to work again. You can choose to scrounge for more food, or perhaps build traps out of grass to try to capture those bunnies I mentioned. One of your first big goals is to gather the materials (chunks of gold being the hard-to-find component) for a “Science Machine” which provides you with recipes for more craftable items. The day goes by quickly and there never seems to be enough time.

Once you get a science machine your options open a lot. You can build basic weapons and go hunting. If there’s a herd of beefalo nearby you can collect their manure and build gardens where you can grow crops. And you can craft bedrolls…those are important.

When it gets dark, you can use a bedroll to skip the night hours. This helps to ‘heal’ your sanity, but you take a big hit on your hunger meter. So there’s a constant balancing act between having enough food and getting enough sleep to stay sane.

As the days pass and you wander farther from your origin point you’ll encounter all kinds of weird things. There are different biomes like grasslands, forest, swamps, rocky plains and even graveyards. There are sentient, or at least semi-sentient, creatures living in the world. There are monsters to avoid and animals to hunt. There are more machines to build that unlock more tools to craft, as well as walls to help keep you safe.

But when you die, it’s pretty much Game Over. There are ways to prevent death but they’re pretty elaborate for beginners like me.

Don’t Starve is a game like The Sims in that it can spawn some interesting stories. I’d like to eventually tell some of my stories but I think I’ve rambled on for long enough for now.

Game Watch: Citadels

Posted on by Nimgimli

Citadelsresized.103515Here’s an upcoming game that caught my eye: Citadels. Reminds me of the good old days and games like The Settlers. This video (which has a really ill-fitting translated voice-over!) just shows one aspect of the game. Beyond that all I know is what the PR email said:

Citadels relates a spellbinding story from a time of kings, noble knights, and impenetrable castles, offering medieval battles with extraordinary characters and numerous tactical possibilities. In order to survive enemy onslaughts, players must construct mighty castles and fortify them with moats, walls of spears, and defensive units. But, building a powerful army requires the extraction and production of resources, making the delicate balance between economy and battle a critical decision in every engagement.

Key Features

  • Experience medieval England at the time of King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table with detailed graphics and painstakingly designed environments – and rewrite history in the process!
  • Good or evil? Decide for yourself whether you will fight on the side of King Arthur or Mordred and his allies from the Northlands.
  • Construct impregnable fortresses and fortify them with units, moats, and spear walls. Your strategy will determine your success or failure.
  • A castle alone does not ensure victory! The right combination of defensive structures and units, as well as resource extraction and production are decisive for the outcome of a siege.
  • Fight medieval battles with an army of all kinds of units and siege weapons. When assembling your army, you will have access to archers, crossbowmen, swordsmen, mounted units, ladder carriers, catapults, trebuchets, ballistae, and siege towers.
  • Realistic projectile ballistics enables a tactical advantage for higher positions, and falling objects and rubble cause damage.
  • By fulfilling certain tasks, you can acquire legendary characters that will give you a bonus for your missions.

I like to Move it Move it!

Posted on by Nimgimli

51BnFAf-WlL._SX385_A lot of gamers, myself included, have a dim view of motion controls in gaming, and with good reason. The Nintendo Wii shipped with Wii Sports and those games were pretty fun for a while, but the motions needed were very artificial. Sure people did Wii Bowling by stepping up as if they were at a bowling alley, but you could also just pivot the WiiMote with your wrist and accomplish the same thing.

Still Wii Sports was fun, but what followed were all kinds of crappy shovel-ware games that relied on just ‘waggling’ the remote in a way sure to give you carpal tunnel. Most of us moved past the Wii motion controls pretty quickly.

Microsoft’s answer to the Wii is the Kinect. The problem with it, for many of us, is that it requires way too much empty space in front of the TV. (The new Kinect shipping with Xbox One is supposed to address that problem.) If there are great Kinect games I don’t know anything about them because I never had room to get the Kinect working properly. I’d appreciate comments sharing the best Kinect games, though.

Sony has the Move for the PS3, a lighted ball on a stick that, upon being announced, was immediately ridiculed for looking like some kind of weird sex toy (to some people) or at the very least just looking like a toy. The Move works a lot like the Nintendo Wii only with more fidelity. It uses a camera instead of a sensor bar, though.

This year’s E3 has reinvigorated my love of consoles and it has me revisiting some old titles that I played lightly if at all. In the midst of this I decided to give my Move controllers another spin. I mean, I’ve used them in games like The Unfinished Swan recently…games like this use the Move almost like a mouse pointer (and it works pretty well like that). But I wanted to revisit “motion controlled” games.

I’ve been messing around with Sports Champions and the demo for Sports Champions 2 and I have to say, I’d forgotten how well the Move actually works for sports-y games. I’ve played the tennis game on the SC2 demo and a lot of Frisbee Golf in SC1. Both ‘feel’ natural to me. Frisbee Golf in particular…there’s a HUD on screen to help judge how far you’re going to throw, but I don’t need it or pay attention to it. I’ve flung enough Frisbees to know how to throw one soft or hard and the Move translates my ‘natural Frisbee skills’ to the game very nicely.

But the game that really knocks me off my feet is Gladiator Duel. In this one you’re armed with melee weapon and shield, and ideally you play it with 2 Move controllers. One is your shield and the other your melee weapon. This is pretty much the coolest fighting game experience I’ve ever had. You hold up your shield arm and swing it to block attacks while your weapon arm is drawn back, looking for an opening. When you see one, you take your shot. You can do a quick swing for a low power hit to keep the opponent off guard, or you can really haul back and swing as hard as you can…assuming he doesn’t block that can knock him sprawling. And that’s the central game play.

There are some ‘tricks’ to learn. Holding the T button and shoving your shield fowards results in a shield bash, for instance, and when your opponent is on his back, shoving both Moves into the air triggers a scripted jump attack that can do serious damage before he gets up. Worst is the Super Attack mechanic where you fill a gauge by blocking and when you do, hit X and land a blow to do a Super Attack where you have to follow indicators on-screen to do big bonus damage. It’s the Move equivalent of a QTE and it feels cheap.

And the game isn’t perfect… every so often it’ll think your weapon isn’t where you think it is and things get confused. But when it’s working… when you’re standing in your living room in a gentle crouch, left arm holding up your shield while you probe for weaknesees in your opponent’s defense…it can feel pretty damned magical. And it feels even better when you finally land a crushing blow on your opponent’s shield and you shatter it, leaving him or her defenseless.

So I think there’s actually hope for motion controls in a certain context. Or there would be if enough gamers were interested to support this style of game. I’m not sure Sony sold very many Move controllers. We’ll see how Kinect 2 works but somehow I feel better holding something (plus you have button to help supplement the motion controls.. in Gladiator Duel holding a certain button and flicking the control causes you do dodge to one side, for instance).

I’d be playing a lot more Sports Champions except for 2 issues. First is I’m so out of shape that I end up sweating and tired after half an hour or so (of Gladiators and Tennis anyway… Frisbee Golf is pretty mellow). Second, for some reason the dog is TERRIFIED of the Move. Whenever she sees me flailing around with those controllers she runs and hides and when I go find her she is shaking like a leaf! So I have to pick my play times carefully..when she’s on a walk with Angela or is off sleeping in her bed or something. LOL

King Julian

Spartacus Legends

Posted on by Nimgimli

legends_logo_215x120Spartacus Legends is a free-to-play fighting game from Ubisoft that hit XBLA and PSN recently. It’s based on the Starz gladiator series. Already all kinds of alarm bells should be going off in your head, right? A F2P game based on a TV show!? Yegads.

I’m not sure why I downloaded it but I did and tonight I fired it up and surprise! It’s actually not too bad. The core here is a gladiator fighting game, with all the gore you’d expect, plus plenty of salty language just in case we were confused about whether or not a game where you can slice your enemy’s face off their head is meant for children.

The fighting engine… well listen, I’m not a fighting game guy. I can’t remember combos and when I can remember them I don’t have the dexterity to pull them off. But I can play Spartacus Legends, which probably means if you’re serious about fighting games than this is going to be way too basic for you. But for this kind of game/audience, going a bit more casual was probably the right move. Your face buttons are light attack, heavy attack, a block breaker and a grab. Left shoulder button is block, right shoulder button, along with analog stick, let’s you roll. There are combos here if you can figure them out. I felt like after a while my fingers had figured out a few without my brain really parsing what they were.

What I like about Spartacus Legends is the strategy/rpg wrapper around the fighting game. You’re trying to build up your stable of gladiators to make your house/school/ludus famous once again. You start with one poor bastard armed with a piece of junk sword, a busted up shield and a loin cloth. As you win fights you’ll gain both coin and fame. You use coin to buy better armor and weapons, additional gladiators and cells for them to sleep in (more cells = more potential gladiators).

As you gain fame, you (you as in the faceless guy/gal running the ludus) can access more and more lucrative (and dangerous) venues to have your gladiators fight in. I just dipped my toe in the second area after an evening’s play. Early battles are non-lethal (through the magic of Hollywood I guess) but as you advance the “Lethality Meter” increases. It’s probably going to suck when one of my favorite gladiators gets killed. 🙁

Your gladiators also earn Perks for winning battles. One of the earliest for instance is “Hard Headed” which gives that Gladiator +10 defense.

Of course things get expensive pretty fast, and that’s where the F2P stuff comes in. Instead of earning coin you can just buy it with real money. Gold coins, in particular, are pretty hard to earn and some of the better gear can only be purchased with gold coins. Also each Gladiator has a finite number of Perk Slots (1 to start) and replacing a Perk with a new one costs Gold coins.

There’s an Online Battle component that I stayed far away from. With a game where real $$ can get you the best gear I don’t want to have anything to do with PvP. But if you stick to the PvE side of the game, you can have a pretty good time without spending any money. I may buy some Gold Coins just to support Ubisoft if I play for much longer.

Spartacus Legends isn’t going to win any game of the year awards or anything, but it’s worth downloading some evening when you just feel like something a little different. And gory. And foul-mouthed.

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Ping! I’m still alive

Posted on by Nimgimli

I popped into the blog today to update the backend and realized I’d let over 2 months slip past without a blog post! At my age you have to make some noise every now and then or people start planning your funeral, so I figured I’d best post something.

Thing is, E3 came around and kind of knocked my gaming habits out of whack. I got pretty excited about the next generation of consoles, then looked at my stack of unplayed games for my current consoles and figured I’d better start working through them. I haven’t done any significant PC gaming in quite some time, and I’m in one of my ‘Ugh, MMOs’ phases that I go through from time to time.

Plus working a LOT. Plus the days are so long that we wind up eating dinner late and so my evenings feel really short.

Really I’ve mostly been dabbling. My only ‘serious’ gaming in the past month or so has been The Last of Us which I crammed through in about 4 days (20 hours or so of gameplay). Man, that game got its hooks into me… one of my two favorite games of this generation, the other being Red Dead Redemption. I guess when it comes to games I really like somber, strongly narrative-driven titles.

Whenever I turn on the PS3 though, I feel guilt about not finishing Ni No Kuni. I swore I’d finish that game but DAMN is it ever BORING. On the Xbox I popped in, and threw aside, a series of games before I decided that maybe playing games for the sole purpose of having played them so you can get rid of them isn’t the best way to sample games. So I’m back to slowly working through the Halo 4 Spartan Missions. When the Xbox 360 gets thrown into the Gaming Collection Closet I guess a bunch of unplayed games will go with it.

Been spending a lot of time with the handhelds too. Animal Crossing: New Leaf is a great ‘before bed’ game since it’s so slow and mellow it puts me to sleep. On the Vita I’ve been messing around with Toro’s Friend Garden though I have no idea why; it’s the most pointless piece of software ever invented. Been dinking around with Escape Plan too, which is a nifty puzzle game that takes a while to get interesting.

And that’s it! Mostly I’m waiting for November and new silicon! Though Shadowrun Returns is about a month out and I’m looking forward to it, too.

Fire Emblem Awakening: Classic vs Casual

Posted on by Nimgimli

fire_emblemI’m still playing turn-based, tactical, strategy-RPG Fire Emblem: Awakening on the 3DS. Have been, off and on, since it launched. Suffice to say I love the game.

I’ve actually got two games running at the same time. The one I started first is in “Classic Mode.” Fire Emblem traditionally has had a perma-death feature. If a character dies in a battle, that character is dead forever. The only exception to this (in FE:A) are two of the main characters. If either of them dies it’s an immediate Game Over. If a character who dies is important to the story, he or she will still appear in cut-scenes (when they ‘die’ they leave with a snippet of conversation saying something about needing to withdraw) but you can never use them in battle again.

This, we’re told by the nebulous entity known as gamers, is how we “should” play Fire Emblem and I agreed with that. Perma-death definitely adds a lot of weight to the decisions you make in the game. Of course the reality is that if a truly beloved character falls in battle, you can always reset the 3DS and avoid the dire consequences. I suspect many people play this way. In fact at times I think you have to. Losing 1 character is heart-breaking, yes, but if a battle goes south and you lose 4 or 5, you’re going to be in a world of hurt trying to advance through the game.

At one point in my first game I felt like I had played myself into a corner, so I restarted in Casual Mode. As of now I’ve put about 17 or 18 hours into my Casual game and 10 in my Classic game.

And *drum roll please* I’ve determined that Casual is (for me anyway) actually a more exciting way to play! And here’s why.

In my Classic game I am EXTREMELY cautious. I grind constantly, taking on easy challenges over and over again to level up my characters so every ‘real’ battle is a cake-walk. I haven’t lost a character since Ricken bit it back in February. It’s all rather boring but I can’t help myself; these are my friends, I can’t needlessly risk their lives in battle!

In my Casual game, though, I take chances all the time. I’ve had battles where I went in with a dozen warriors and came stumbling out with 3 barely standing, but victorious. The fights sometimes come down to the wire and I find myself almost holding my breath. I think for me having to re-play the battle if I lose is enough to make me really want to win.

Now on the other hand…in my Casual game I have too many characters. I really only need a core team. With no risk of death there’s no reason to have ‘spare’ characters, so to speak. But for me, I find leveling these characters to be fun so I’m still doing extra quests to level everyone up. But the game is clearly designed around the idea that you’ll lose characters and will need to replenish your army, so there are way more characters than you ‘need’ (or at least can be…many of them come from the DLC or the random armies that pop up via the Wireless menu).

I think if I was King of the World I’d decree that Fire Emblem had some ‘middle road’ mode. Basically it would be Classic Mode but the player would have some kind of (onerous) way to resurrect fallen characters. It’d either be expensive or would incorporate a mini-quest-line that you had to play through, or something. So that when that character who you really, really love fell in battle you could decide to overcome the required obstacle to bring him or her back. But when Vaike fell, you’d just move on. Because really, nobody likes Vaike.

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