Deeply Delving Dungeons

Fallen Earth is a very interesting MMO. It is one of the few experiences that has opted out of following World of Warcraft’s “casual” example. In many ways the mechanics of the game itself are just as brutal and unforgiving as the post-apocalyptic wasteland that it is set in. With a limited allocation of AP (Advancement Points, used to increase your abilities) at your disposal and an inability to master more than a few skills and attributes it is quite possible to create a character that is unable to take full advantage of its potential. Because you are denied access to many skills early on in the game (the advanced mutation skills which essentially act like magic) it is almost impossible to plan ahead if you don’t take advantage of character planners created by enthusiastic players.

This whole state of affairs is only made more complicated due to a large assortment of quests which provide Bonus AP, some of which are gated behind Faction Reputation. Each Faction has enemy factions associated with it making it almost impossible to play all sides and get all the Bonus AP quests (unless you undertake the supposedly grueling grind involved in “spinning the wheel” in an attempt to build up faction across the board). These faction gates combined with a lack of a respec means that creating the perfect character in Fallen Earth is far more difficult than most players are accustomed to.

As I learned about these details in my early stages I came to grips with the fact that my current character would be tossed to the wayside sometime in the future when I’d be prepared to create one that would be pre-planned, taking into account the many limitations I have noted above. However, I was not really prepared for just how soon that time would come. What follows is a short summation of the journey of Elandarex Mihst before he was sent to that great LifeNet station in the sky.

Continue reading ‘Sacrifices Must Be Made’

With the latest major content patch for LotRO comes a feature for which many have been clamouring for a long time now, that being the ability to solo the epic quests. The epic quest chains in LotRO contain some of the most interesting quests in the game, out of any MMO even. Obviously Turbine had to come up with something for your character to do while the Fellowship does its thing and the ensuing tale is full of interesting characters, twists, and (appropriately enough) epic engagements. Now, while getting a group together to tackle the quests in the epic books (epic quests are separated into chapters which are contained within books which often double as content updates and the books are then contained within volumes representing the overarching stories, just so we’re clear) is great fun and taking on your fearsome adversaries in the company of your fellow adventurers lends a suitably grand feel to the whole experience but most players simply aren’t interested in getting together to do the older books anymore.

Part of the problem is that with the increases in level cap the rewards simply aren’t worth it and with the accelerated level advancement the rewards are often outstripped even at lower levels. A bigger problem than that however, especially with Volume 1: the Shadow of Angmar, is that most of these quests have to be done in order and when you factor in the sheer quantity of quests that need doing, with sometimes more than 10 chapters in a single book, it can be difficult to get everyone onto the same page. This problem is only compounded by the amount of travel time that is required by many of these books (especially Vol. 1 Book 15. Dear god, my main is a class that can “teleport” and has run speed boosts and on top of that I actually enjoy travel, yet that book almost drove me ’round the bend) with the group quests strewn amongst a bevy of solo quests.

Basically, you would run into the following problem a lot: you wanted to do chapter 6 of book 10 (note, I’m not actually referencing the proper quests here) but it’s a fellowship quest so you need 5 other people. You manage to find a couple in the same boat as you but it’s still not enough so you stumble across some other people only one of them is on chapter 3 of book 10 so you need to help them do chapters 3, 4, and 5 before moving on. Another guy has already done the quest but thanks to the Reflecting Pool feature he can still help out and even get some special tokens for running the quest again. Unfortunately, he’s playing with a friend who is on the last chapter of book 9 and won’t help out until his friend is all caught up. You agree to help, somehow managing to convince the other players not to ditch you in the process and you all do the fellowship quest in book 9 that you’ve already done. Now, of course, you have to help the friend out with chapters 1-5 of the book you’re on and because you don’t have a Hunter with you the parts that require traveling halfway across Eriador can’t be completed in mere seconds because you can’t port. On top of that this player hasn’t worked on grinding up their reputation with certain factions so they don’t have the right swift travel options available, causing even more delay. Halfway through chapter 2 the guy who already did the quest says he has to go and his friend goes with him and the group subsequently disbands!

Continue reading ‘Divine Inspiration’

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’

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’

… 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’

You can find Part 1 here.
You can find Part 2 here.

Ok, just so we’re clear, this isn’t the final part of my ME2 review. I was just listening to the latest episode of Podtoid where they discuss the latest Mass Effect and had a few things I wanted to mention before they escaped my notice, a few shortfalls to be precise. Just think of this as part 1.5 as it deals heavily with the story aspect of Mass Effect 2.

One of the biggest problems that this game has is a problem inherent to narrative game play of any sort, that being the player’s tendency to meta-game or use outside knowledge (or tools) in order to further themselves in game. At its most basic level this can be simple foreknowledge that a character in the game world would not rightly have access to though it can also present itself in the form of meticulous stat tracking (and by stat tracking I’m speaking more along the lines of statistics that are hidden from the player for the most part that can determine the likely outcome of certain scenarios in-game) or by reloading your game in the case of an unfortunate turn of events (not a series of events though, that’s under copyright). You get the basic idea.

My positive reaction to the game’s ending would have been greatly diminished had I meta-gamed (well, meta-gamed more than I had up until that point, some habits are hard to kick) and reloaded my save when Tali fell to enemy fire. Sure, I could have gone back in there and done things right gosh darnit, but then the ending wouldn’t have had quite the impact that I ultimately felt it did. The temptation was there, don’t get me wrong, but I knew (despite all my years of gaming training telling me otherwise) that doing so would have been a cop out and disrespectful to the story as a whole. But that isn’t what I’m going to nitpick; this problem of reloading saves is a very difficult problem to solve without removing a lot of player control and doing so tends to foment resentment.

Continue reading ‘Mass Effect 2 Review Supplement: Meta-Gaming’

Well, the final part of my review of Mass  Effect 2 is being put off until tomorrow unfortunately as a friend of mine managed to somehow convince me to shell out the money for Star Trek Online, which I had originally intended to completely ignore for the most part. All’s fair in gaming and temptation though as I managed to get him to lust after ME2 and that carries a heftier price tag [inner voice: yet no monthly fees] (shut up you!). I must admit that it was probably Mass Effect’s glorious space epic that really pushed me over the brink and though I know that there won’t be much in the way of exploration in STO (though there bloody well should be tons of exploring to do in a Trek game!) I’m still hoping it can scratch that space adventure itch I am currently trying to soothe.

With this I think I can definitely say that this blog is most definitely NOT LotRO-centric (though to be perfectly honest, it never really was) and I think I can live with that just fine. I’d much rather write about gaming in general than focus on a singular experience and not having to follow any particular theme (outside of trying to break things down as much as possible… hey, that’s kinda like delving!) makes this far more enjoyable and therefore makes me far more likely to write.

Of late I have been more eager to put up posts on this site, though my tendency to write lengthy articles puts me off occasionally, and I hope to keep this newfound vigour going for some time. So, expect to see the final part of my Mass Effect 2 review tomorrow and also expect to see my impressions on Star Trek Online soon as well.

I’m sure I’ll get back to Dragon Age: Origins eventually, it’s only been two months after all…

You can find Part 1 here.

Now where were we? Ah yes, we just finished going over the story elements of ME2 which means it is now time to review the primary game play, and by that I mean combat. Anyone familiar with the first Mass Effect will be happy to hear that the clunky combat has been completely revamped into a far more visceral and satisfying experience, which is good because you will be spending the vast majority of the game in the heat of battle. Exploration has taken a major backseat to intense firefights and despite my own predilection for exploratory game play I have to say that Mass Effect 2 is all the better for its renewed focus.

Refining the game play of the original is actually a major design theme in ME2 with many systems being heavily toned down in order to streamline game play. In fact, I do not really consider this game to be a proper RPG at all. Sure, it has dialogue with choice and consequence but that is hardly a qualifying attribute for an RPG (after all, the vast majority of classic RPGs don’t have any C&C whatsoever!) and though there are still levels, skills, and classes it has all been stripped so bare as to almost be a pure shooter. To be perfectly honest I wish Bioware would just get rid of any pretense of it being an RPG and just focus on what makes Mass Effect great: gripping cinematic dialogue and thrilling combat. But seeing as they still want to market this franchise as an RPG I feel I must mention the new “RPG” system before moving on to the retooled combat.

Fans of the original Mass Effect will recall that as your characters would level up through combat and completing Missions and Assignments you would be allocated a number a skill points based on your current level range that you could then spend on your wide array of skills point by point. Each skill had many levels of proficiency with major upgrades staggered throughout the progression, including unlocks for skills that start out barred from use. These skills ranged from firearm proficiency to general skills such as armour use and general stat boosts to special skills like Biotics or Tech skills. There was even a skill that was tied to the class you chose and in the case of Commander Shepard you also received three more skills in the form of a special Spectre skill as well as Charm and Intimidate for use in dialogues. Unfortunately, each point spent on a skill went largely unnoticed with the barest of minimal increments in utility as they were trained, and to top it all off similar characters shared the same skills which hurt individuality amongst your squad.

Continue reading ‘Mass Effect 2 Review: Core Game Play’