Deeply Delving Dungeons

I’m afraid I have a confession I must make. This isn’t easy for me, admitting the depths to which my addiction has sunk, but it needs to said, regardless. I… I am currently playing 4 MMOs at the same time. Surely you think to yourself, “Well, that’s not so bad. Truly avid MMO-goers often have several free to play MMOs going alongside their primary ‘premium’ MMO.” In my case, however, I currently have active subscriptions to 4 so-called “premium” MMORPGs. I know, I know… I need help. What can I say? I love the genre, or rather I love the potential the genre holds because oftentimes I find myself growing weary of an MMO in short order due to (in my mind) lackluster implementation of system, setting, and/or story.

If you look to my “What I’m Playing” sidebar it should be easy enough to see which MMOs I am currently subscribed to. Obviously Lord of the Rings Online is at the top of the list and it will continue to hold that position as I am a Lifetime subscriber. Fair enough, that makes it easy to explain away playing 2 MMOs at once, but it doesn’t explain 4.

Star Trek Online is also on that list and while I may still have an active subscription it will be dropping off my list very soon as I have already cancelled it. If you’ve been reading my posts for this month of February the reason should be clear: I hate this fucking game! I thought that giving myself a break from it for a couple weeks would give me a fresh perspective on the whole affair but I couldn’t even play for an hour before quitting out of boredom/disgust. STO has put such a bad taste in my mouth that I will never, ever, purchase anything developed by Cryptic Studios again, if only because the chances of their adopting an intelligent design philosophy are minimal at best (who knows, maybe they will shape up in the future… I seriously doubt it, though).

Which brings me to EVE Online, the panacea to my STO rage. I haven’t spent much time in-game yet, being distracted by other games and life in general (fortunately that doesn’t stop my skill training which means that the time isn’t exactly wasted, per sé), yet what little time I have enjoyed in that far-flung galaxy has served to mollify my frustrations considerably. Yet even EVE may find itself on the cancellation block soon thanks to the fourth listing on my sidebar. I haven’t cancelled my subscription as of this time but if matters continue to move forward with my latest acquisition as swimmingly as they have thus far I’m afraid I simply won’t be able justify a subscription to EVE Online.

So, Fallen Earth. “Why Fallen Earth,” you may ask yourself. Well, most of the credit for my decision is owed to Syp of BioBreak (currently my favourite blog) who spent a great deal of time and energy late last year shouting the praises of this unexpected gem. What really caught my attention were his many tales of the phenomenal crafting system as I am a big fan of any diversion from the typical humdrum of combat in MMOs. In many ways what he was describing sounded like a blending of pre-NGE Star Wars Galaxies  and Ultima Online, especially with regard to the skill system. So, it being my birthday on Monday, I decided to treat myself with an impulse purchase over Steam, confident that my investment in this title wouldn’t be squandered like it was with Star Trek Online.

So far, it seems that I was right on the money.

Continue reading ‘My First Foray Into Fallen Earth’

Er… Yeah, I’ve got that right.

You see, tomorrow is my birthday so technically it’s okay if I post today. Anywho, my recent silence will continue until Tuesday, er, that is to say, my silence on anything interesting to write about. Wait, is anything I write about interesting? Oh dear, I’m really getting confused here.

Oh, and about the Colbert clips: the audio was terrible and shaky-cam was in full force so I didn’t bother uploading them. I guess I should have checked the quality of the clips before promising to put them online but I was just so excited about seeing Colbert that all logic completely escaped me. Oh well, you’ll still get to catch most of it when the Report airs on TV, you might even get to see me in the crowd considering how close I was (not that you know what I look like, heh).

Wait- Colbert is definitely something interesting to write about. So is this breaking the chain of my recent laziness? Why did I even write this post about having nothing to write about if I actually wrote about something worth writing about? Er…

I attended a live recording of the Colbert Report today, just outside Science World in Vancouver. There was just a sea of people; thousands decided to attend this historic event, and before Colbert made his first appearance (which took 2 hours of standing around in the cold morning wind) pain was the running theme of this show. Being utterly crushed by a mass of humanity on all sides, forced to stand in one spot for hours, my back and feet were killing me, a sentiment shared by all. Physical pain wasn’t the only item on the menu however as there was a fair bit of professional hurt when the organizers decided to bring out plasma TVs (for showing clips from the Report) into the direct view of the sun on a beautiful, cloudless morning. It wasn’t long before the gases in the sets were agitated to the point of uselessness with the screens being almost completely black and only a tiny morsel of Colbert Report goodness peeking through. It was, in a word: pathetic.

None of that mattered though when Stephen himself appeared on stage and the crowd exploded into a woo-ing frenzy. So taken aback by our energetic welcome, Mr. Colbert decided to take back everything bad he had said about Canada in building up to the Olympics. I for one can’t wait until us Canadian Iceholes come off the On Notice board as our time on that cursed board has been a great shame to any loyal citizen of the Colbert Nation. After asking for our forgiveness in case he should “Fuck up” he got his show off to a rousing start by… fucking up! I’m a big fan of those times when Colbert flubs a line or starts to crack up so for me this was the quintessential Colbert experience, and he recovered from his fumble as gracefully as he ever had on his show.

Continue reading ‘The Icehole Cometh’

I don’t like spam. I don’t think anyone really likes spam. In fact, if I had to choose between starving or settling for spam I would stick with the former. Well, maybe that’s not entirely true but it does apply for comments on this blog. I’d rather have no comments at all rather than a ton of meaningless spam but I have a hard time censoring them sometimes.

I’m big on freedom of speech so pretty well anything you want to say goes on this site. However, I do not consider spam to be speech so much as textual diarrhea and as such have no ethical qualms when it comes to trashing such comments. Unfortunately there is a definite possibility with regard to perfectly valid comments, generally those giving out general praise or criticism, falling prey to this systematic quelling of spam and that does bother me a great deal.

This blog is not supported in any way by advertising, nor does it avail itself of free hosting; I do this for fun, not profit (yet at a cost to myself), and part of the fun for me is reading and responding to what few comments visitors to my dungeons leave in their wake. I appreciate the effort it takes to respond to one of my posts whether you enjoyed it or found issue with it because it is far easier to simply move on without leaving your mark.

So, in the interest of better differentiation between spam and proper human comments I would ask that if you wish to make a comment on an article(s) please be sure to reference the content of the post in some way. It doesn’t have to be anything major (but try something other than the post’s title for obvious reasons), just make mention of what you liked/hated because most spam comments make use of generic blanket statements. This is just a general rule to follow to make sure your comments don’t find their way into the trash, though really any attempt to humanize your comments should suffice.

In the interest of keeping things on-topic I would also appreciate it if you could send any questions or comments regarding my site’s functionality (or lack thereof) to my email at alcasm@deeplydelvingdungeons.com as opposed to commenting on any one article. I do take these technical queries into consideration and as soon as I stop being a lazy bastard I will do my best to see to them (one of these days I’ll look into what’s buggering up my RSS feed in Google Chrome).

I hate having to lay things out like this because, as I stated earlier, I’m big on free speech. But I don’t like spam!

Seriously, I don't like it!

I love Bioware. Really, I do. They’ve been my favourite game developer for many years now, ever since I spent untold hours playing through their masterpiece Baldur’s Gate II: Shadows of Amn. Since that time Bioware has been one of the more consistent developers in terms of delivering quality gaming experiences, in my mind rivaled only by Valve Software. Yet, despite my great admiration for the studio and its exemplary library of RPGs I just wasn’t looking forward to Dragon Age, a brand new IP that they had been working on for many years before its release. It just looked like a colour-by-numbers, dumbed-down, completely uninspired dark fantasy epic. Boy was I ever wrong!

For the past few years the glory of the RPG has been undergoing a systematic watering down by gaming culture at large. Games like Fallout 3, Borderlands, and most recently Mass Effect 2 have been hailed as the greatest the genre has to offer. Yet whatever your opinion regarding the merits of these games may be (I personally find Mass Effect 2 to be the only one of them worthy of any real praise as a gaming experience) the simple fact remains that these games aren’t really Role-Playing Games in the truest definition of the genre. Oh sure, these games may ape certain elements considered unique to the RPG experience, but they remain at best hybrids (hybrids that are very light on the RPG aspect). A great deal of the difficulty lies in people not really wanting to settle on a proper definition (something I’ve always wanted to attempt for kicks and flame-wars), after all, the more genres you can say your game is the more demographics it will appeal to, right?

Well, I’m here to tell you (many months later than I should have) that Dragon Age: Origins is very much an RPG in the truest sense. It’s not the best RPG ever made, not by a long shot, but it is an RPG, and it makes no apology for that by integrating other genre conventions. Dragon Age is a Role-Playing Game, through and through.

Continue reading ‘Dragon Age: Origins Review’

Well, it took a little longer than I had intended but I must say it does feel good to be running a freshly formatted computer. The primary reason for it taking long was my thorough use of Windows Update which was possessed of a seemingly limitless supply of updates, with even more appearing as other applications came into being on my fresh install. Normally I ignore Windows updates outside of service packs so I’m hoping that perhaps my patience this time around is rewarded in some way. In any case, I am now back up and running again with only a few more installs of importance that need dealing with before I can just sit back, relax, and bask in my computer’s new-found glory.

There is no unifying theme to this post outside of “stuff that’s happened since my last post,” in case you were curious. Still, I suppose that is still a perfectly valid theme so let’s get on with it.

First thing’s first: Star Trek Online.

When I started the whole process of backing up my old files before beginning the wipe of my hard drive I began to question whether or not I would bother reinstalling STO considering how little I have cared for it thus far. In the end I decided to reinstall it, though it wasn’t so much to get my money’s worth (I don’t consider wasting my time not having fun to be a great cash-in on my investment) as it was because I was infected by a short-term version of that typical MMO nostalgia we are all afflicted with at one point or another. Mostly however, it was because during the process of cleaning up my computer I had started to go through all the old Original Series episodes in air date order on youtube. The enjoyment I got from following the escapades of Kirk and friends was what ultimately convinced me to give Star Trek Online another shot.

Continue reading ‘And I’m Back’

Or rather, he’s on the brink of death, and by he I mean my computer. It’s been running like crap for a while now, though strangely enough it’s been relatively well behaved when playing games, but I use it for more than that and I am frankly fed up. So, I am currently in the process of backing up important data before formatting. Unfortunately I have been rather lazy when it came to sorting my files lately so it’s taking me a bit of time to get things organized for hard back-ups.

I only mention this because it means I probably won’t be able to update this blog for at least a day or two, assuming I don’t run into any serious problems along the way. I’m sure you’ll survive.

… or Lieutenant Commander as the case would be with me.

Okay, so I finally hit the Lt. Cmd. rank in Star Trek Online today after struggling through the tedium that is the STO mission structure and I was all set to have my mind absolutely blown! So what does it feel like having received a promotion within the Star Fleet command structure?

Meh...

Yeah, kinda meh, kinda how it felt when I first started out the game. Sure, I got a new ship (I decided to go with a cruiser which is what contains the famous Constitution class starship from TNG), I got a new tier of skills, access to new items, and the ability to promote my Bridge Officers (amusingly referred to as BO in STO parlance. Guess there are no showers on board), but none of that really cried out, “The game as you knew it has changed for the better!“. It could have though, if Cryptic didn’t seem to be so terrible at designing MMOs past the character creator (just my opinion, yeah, but there is something seriously wrong with this studio).

Continue reading ‘Fire At Will, Commander…’

You can find Part 1 here.
You can find Part 2 here.
You can find the review Supplement here.

Well, seeing as the STO servers can’t decide if they’re up or down I guess I may as well make the promised final part to my review of Mass Effect 2. I’m a little pissed as I write this, bear in mind, (I’m 28 skill points away from hitting Lieutenant Commander rank in STO and therefore about to find out whether or not I wasted money on Cryptic’s latest half-hearted effort) but that kind of works because this part is chiefly devoted to stuff I didn’t like in ME2. Okay, there will still be good things in here too, just thinking about Mass Effect 2’s loveliness instead of Star Trek Online is starting to cheer me up. Okay fine, this is gonna be mostly good things. Still, there may be further review supplements down the line in case I miss anything here (and I probably will).

Speaking of final frontiers I suppose I should start off with the galactic exploration aspect of Mass Effect 2.

So how is it? Well, a mixed bag ultimately. It has been given a major facelift since the first Mass Effect and for the most part the changes are very welcome yet there is one mechanic that is so pervasive and tedious that it threatens to undo every improvement made to the Galaxy Map. Probably the biggest change has been to the manner in which you navigate through the Galaxy Map. As opposed to simply clicking on points of interest and progressing through the various zoom levels or reading a snippet of information about the object you selected, in Mass Effect 2 you have a more active role to play in your exploration of strange new worlds. Now when you’re not on the Galaxy zoom level you actually get to control a little Normandy spaceship on a 2-dimensional plane and travel between celestial entities and solar systems. It’s not exactly what you would think of as a huge improvement and in fact it simply draws out the old process of exploring planets but it does a great deal to immerse you in the universe that Bioware has crafted.

Continue reading ‘Mass Effect 2 Review: The Final Frontier’

Okay, I swear that I will post the final part of my Mass Effect 2 review later today. I actually had it mostly written out already but ended up scrapping it because my lack of sleep had spilled out onto the page. But that’s not the real reason for my lack of discipline.

It should come as no surprise that STO is distracting me from my bloggerly duties, though not in the way that it should. Truth is, I don’t quite know what to make of this game yet. As of this moment I am almost a grade 9 Lieutenant and so far this game is boring me to tears. So why am I playing then, you ask? Well, like many that must be suffering through the early levels I am hoping there is a light at the end of the Lieutenant tunnel in the form of upgrading my ship (which is why I’m playing so much to the detriment of other activities, I want to get these early levels over with!).

As it stands right now I find myself sailing through battle (which is pretty much the only thing to do in this game), employing the exact same tactics every single time, coming out on top without breaking a sweat. I’ve only died once so far and that was because I was dicking around in a Fleet action (sort of like a raid) when I got surrounded by ships that warped in and blew me back to the Stone Age. Other than that combat has been relatively tame and uninteresting, which is a shame because it seems to have a great deal of potential what with the whole juggling of power distribution and balancing of shields and managing fire arcs and what have you. Maybe if there was something else to do it wouldn’t seem so bad but so far every exchange has been pretty well the exact same encounter every time.

This is how STO is making me feel right now.

Continue reading ‘Boldly Going Forth and Procrastinating’