Category Archives: Game Reviews - Page 2

Those Wacky Internet People

Posted by on February 27, 2012 No comments

Playing a MMO gives you the great opportunity to experience a whole different class of individual on the Internet.  The douche-bag.  Now this isn’t you ordinary garden variety Jersey Shore style of douche-bag.  The internet douche-bag is a special breed.  This is very similar to Penny Arcades “Greater Internet Fuck-Wad Theory” (“given both anonymity and an audience, an otherwise regular person can become a “total fuckwad,” i.e., a very disagreeable person.”)  except in MMO’s you loose the audience and gain the Pokemon “Gotta collect them all” attitude.

In an MMO, it comes down to stats and gear.  If you play online for longer than the average player, you can gain access to all sorts of good gear, higher ranks, and stat bonuses.  This can be great when playing the game because it gives you an advantage that may take other players a very long time to obtain.  There is nothing wrong with this “gear grind”, except when that douche-bag switch gets flipped in your head and you are suddenly leaps and bounds better than anyone who doesn’t have what you have.  Apparently, on the Internet, this means that those people are somehow lesser than you.

In a game where it’s every man for himself, I would think that would be more tolerable (but still douchey).  In a team based Multi person match, though, it’s the team you are on that needs to win, not just you.  It is in every ones best interest to ensure that the team wins.  These gear mongers spend all of their time in game just working to get the best gear possible so they can lord it over anyone who hasn’t spent 90% their game time working towards the best gear.  People like this don’t care about the story of the game, or another outside of the gear grind.

So here is the fun fact.  Once you have all the greatest gear in the game….what then?  I am fully aware that I can spend all my time collecting stuff that makes my character better, but I will eventually hit that wall where it’s “Well, I guess I have all the best stuff, now what do I do?” The answer is “The whole rest of the game!!” there are other character stories, lots of exploring, group missions, operations, etc.  Plenty of stuff that doesn’t involve berating those who haven’t spent elventybillion hours getting PvP gear.

What spurred this was an encounter I experienced the other day in Star Wars, The Old Republic.  If you haven’t experienced the WarZone areas, it’s a PvP arena where the Imperials ad Republic get to fight for certain objectives.  The winning team gets extra points that can be used to upgrade gear and stats.  The losers still get points, just not as much.  On our server, the empire players have been dominating.  They just play better, are more organized, and due to their wining, they have some better gear.  This is starting to balance out now that the Republic is catching up, but it’s slow.  Many times you can join a match and someone will leave the group leaving the balance at 6 players vs 8.  When this happens, it’s pretty much a lost match.  Most people will play through to the end anyways to get some points.

TLDR: I met an Internet Douche-bag and had an argument. He got his ass handed to him and we lost a match because of him.

This happened to me and I made a comment about it.  Only to be yelled at by another player and told to “STFU” because I was under-geared.  That somehow my having less than the top tier gear was causing the match to be a loss.  (Mind you, I have won quite a fair share of matches, and have pretty good gear).  I mentioned to this person that, if we were to play as a team and work towards a win, everyone would be better geared and it’s puppies and kittens for all! (paraphrasing) The slew of arguments that flowed from this person about how “Under-geared n00bs” were ruining WarZones, made me (and several other players) not want to aid him in the rest of the match.  (Naked Dance Party time!*)

Sure enough the very next WarZone we were matched up with this player and 3 others from his guild.  The warzone we were on was the Alderaan turret capture map.  He asked if I was “Planing to throw the match again”, I asked if he was “planning on working as a team?”  Myself and one other player went to capture and hold the left hand turret while he and his guild members, along with two others went to the middle turret.  On the left, we had a few invaders that were quickly dispatched and we held the left turret.  The max geared Internet douche and his team were wiped out repeatedly and never captured a turret.

I didn’t hear anything else from him.

Remember kids, Wil says “Don’t be a dick!”

*Naked Dance Party in a warzone is were everyone strips off their gear and uses the /dance command.  It basically means we know it’s a lose.

Testing FRAPS with SWTOR

Posted by on January 30, 2012 No comments

A long time ago (blah blah galaxy) I tried my hand at some Machinima video capture.  For those who don’t know, Machinima is using video game footage, re-edited together to make a video.  A lot of folks use the medium to make music videos, some people have ran with it and made full series of funny videos (like Red Vs. Blue).  Well, a few years back some friends and I tried to make a series called Stupid Hobbitsess.  It was made using the Lord Of The Rings Online game.  Unfortunately, the videos were pulled from YouTube because of Digital rights for some of the music used.  (less than 30 seconds worth).  So now, they only exist on my Hard Drive.  I may see if I can get them up here somewhere.

Anyways, I used a capture software called FRAPS.  It’s one of the popular choices for Video Game capture.  Problem is, back in the day, when I ran the capture on my old system, it would lag the game…..a lot.  On a while I decided to try and run FRAPS behind The Old Republic and see what the hit would be.  I was amazed to find that there was no lag at all.  Now, it is an updated system and FRAPS has been updated quite a few times since then so it may be more streamlined.  Below is a sample capture of some in game footage.  This kind of stirs the creative juices a bit, well see if anything comes from it.

Ninja Edit:  Looks like the old Myspace page for Stupid Hobbitsess is still up with the videos.  If you dare venture into Myspace land, you can see them here

SWTOR Crew Skills, or “Corso Shakin his Money Maker!”

Posted by on January 23, 2012 1 comment
Next in my line of talking about Star Wars The Old Republic, Crew skills!!  Crew skills are TOR’s form of crafting.  In other MMO’s they incorporate crafting in the form of “Hunting and Gathering” where your character would come across materials out in the world(s) and use that material to build armor/weapons/stuff back in some special location.  In WoW you could find an Anvil somewhere or cooking fire, etc.  You would have to stand next to that location and toil away your time watching your character move his arms up and down.

TOR sought to make that a little more enjoyable.  For starters, in general game play they give you a companion to aid you in your quests.  The companion ties in to your story line and can change the way the story plays out depending on which companion you use (through out the game, you gain more Crew Members).  For crafting, the added the ability to send your companion out on a Crew Skill.  This is a mission that your crew ventures out on for a set amount of time, and then comes back with materials used for crafting.  While your crew is out, you are free to continue questing un-hindered.  They still include the random nodes in the world(s) that you can harvest for materials, but this allows you to pull in specific materials for your crafting by sending your companion out to get them.

The actual crafting part works much the same way.  You can send your companion out to make up to 5 items at a time and then go about your business.  When he/she is done the items will be in your inventory.  The best part is that all the materials can sit in your vault.  This is a huge step beyond any of the other MMO’s that force you to carry everything you need and tie you to a work area to build things.

Now, the down side.  Unfortunately, not all crew skills are created equal.  All of the discovery crew skills (the ones that gather materials) cost credits to send your companion out.  Essentially you are paying for them to gather instead of you doing it.  This is a double edged sword since you get your materials, and your skill increases, but too much and you end up broke.  Except for one skill, Slicing.

Slicing used to be overpowered to the point where it was insane to not have it because it was a steady flow of large sums of money.  Sadly, they “fixed” that and brought it down to a slow trickle of money.  If you have the ability to run slicing missions non stop, it can still turn you a profit, but it takes some time and you have to face the consequences of a loss from time to time.  In the long run you will make money.

The below chart is a great display of which crew skills tie together for crafting (Credit goes to http://www.swtorcrewskills.com):

http://www.swtorcrewskills.com

http://www.swtorcrewskills.com

Enjoy your Crafting!

“Corso, get back out there and shake your money maker!!”

The New Old Republic from a long time ago is now!

Posted by on January 11, 2012 No comments
The game that nearly all Star Wars fans have been waiting for since Star Wars Galaxies rolled out it’s new combat experience.  Bioware has filly come out with an MMO that changes how we really play MMO’s.

I have played quite a few MMO’s in my life.  I think my first dose was back with SWG came out, and that’s what it took to make me jump, Star Wars.  Since then there has been Everquest, FFXI, LOTRO, and the ever popular WoW.  One thing that was a constant was that, while the gameplay was fun, I never really got into the story.  That’s not to say that I didn’t like the story much, but it never grabbed me.  That is until The Old Republic.

In single player games, there is a lot of emphasis put on the story.  You are telling the story from the players point of view.  These are the games that grab you and make you care about your character and drive you through the game.  In most MMO’s the story is told through the quest givers and usually there is a lot of reading.  Most of this reading breaks down to “Them thar cyotes are killin mah chickens! Go kill 10 of them and bring me their pelts!” Because, surely the other “cyotes” will take the hint.  With TOR, the quest giver tells you, through actual conversation, what he needs, and you steer the conversation with your reactions.  Fully voiced characters help with that.  I can see that my character is making the decision to kill 10 “cyotes” and I can hear the impact that it has on the NPC.  It’s not just a paragraph of text that I probably wouldn’t be reading anyways.  Span that across 50 Levels….that’s a big story.

So now we have taken the Single player aspect of story telling ad brought it to a MMO.  But what about the M in MMO? (yeah I know there are two, we are talking about the Multiplayer one.)  That’s what makes the story telling part that much more interesting.  Lets throw a second player in the conversation now.  Farmer Frank is worried about his chickens, Jedi Joe is very interested in Farmer Franks plight, but Smuggler Steve just wants to get paid.  This changes the conversation!  For each conversation choice, the players roll to see who gets to answer.  Depending on the response, Farmer Frank could reply with something different.  The outcome of the quest could be, less money, or no money, or lots of money!

I found that I was really interested in my story quests, so much so that I started bypassing some of the side quests that everyone can get just to progress my story.  The downside to this being that my story got too hard for the level I was at.  Side quests are there to help build you up more.  I have become more attached and actually care about my characters story line more so than any other MMO.  Add into this the actual moral choices that Bioware is known for throwing into the mix, and now we have different story trees that make even the same player class re-playable!  I wasn’t so sure on this until I watched a friend, who was the same class, in his story quest and the outcome of the conversation was vastly different because of his choices.  (it’s no wonder this game took so long to come out!)

All of this is not even getting into actual game mechanics and game play.  I might try and cover that in a separate post since I don’t want to make this terribly long.  A quick side note about interesting game mechanics.  Everyone knows that you can press a key combo to hide your UI and then press “Print Screen” to take a screen shot.  Bioware took this to the next level by giving Collectors Edition buyers a “Holocamera” in game.  When used, it creates a screen shot from the players POV.  Not too different from the key combo right?  Nope, but the in game character will actually pull out a camera and take a picture.  This made my trip to Tatooine a bit more touristy!  Enjoy the pics and expect more from a galaxy far far away soon!

Workin for the Man

Posted by on February 6, 2011 No comments

So here I am working on Super-bowl Sunday.  I have a bit while I wait for some code to compile and figured I would write up an update to say what I have been doing for the last few weeks.  I mean, that’s what the blog is for right?  Lately it seems like my blog is more of a place where I forget to write things.  I guess that’s what Twitter has done to me.  I think ‘Oh I already updated folks on twitter so I don’t need to post to the blog as well”.  The downside to that is that I really like writing.  When I look back at all my posts from last year and beyond I realize that some of them get crazy long.  I see other peoples blog posts and wonder how they can cram so much into so few paragraphs, then I realize that they have left out so much detail.

Perfect case in point for this, I have downloaded and started reading Stepto’s (Stephen Toulouse) new book, “A Microsoft Life”.  It’s a compilation of a number of blog posts he wrote throughout his career at Microsoft.  All of the stories are fascinating, but I am left wanting more details.  Each chapter is a post from the blog but I read one and am left with the feeling that there could be so much more that could be fleshed out.  I guess that could be seen as a complaint about the book, it was so good that I wanted to know more.  If you are a geeky type of person and interested in the more inner workings of the MS world, I highly recommended it.

Meanwhile back on the gaming front, I mentioned last time that I picked up a new laptop.  The ASUS beast, or Tumbler, has been an awesome addition to the house.  I have found myself playing more PC based games in the last month, just because I could.  Yeah, it could be a little more portable, but I love that it’s big and powerful.  Because of this I picked up both Civilization V and Starcraft II.  SCII is great for a quick 30min to 1 hour map, while Civ V is awesome if I want to kiss my weekend goodbye.  It’s amazing, I feel like I have discovered time travel.  Seriously!  I start playing Civ V and suddenly I am teleported to 6 hours in the future where the dog is whining because he wants food and the plants are dying.  I also realized how much I suck at SC II.  I bought the game because I love the storyline and am I steeped in the single player game.  I tried to play Multi-player though and was just swamped.  I guess it’s because I love the building aspect and hate the idea of just fast building stuff to throw at the enemy.  I want to build my troops up so they will survive the attack and that takes time!

On the photography side of the house, I am pining over a new camera.  Unfortunately it doesn’t exist yet.  I have seen lots of rumor reports of a Nikon 5100, and everything I see in the rumors lead me to believe that it’s the perfect camera for me.  I really want to replace my D3000 before DragonCon, so while I still have a few months to figure it out.  I love that the D5000 has the flip out screen and better everything than the D3000, but not as good as the 3100, the D90 is about the right price range, but lacks some of the newer features like an auto-focus while filming movies, the D7000 has all the best features (except the flip out screen) but is well over $1k.  There is a great site that has been helping me compare models of cameras: http://snapsort.com/compare. There is some speculation that the February 9th press conference may bring an announcement, but even more rumors saying that the 5100 won’t be announced for a while still.  Either way, I will be giving the D3000 a true test at PAXEast.

So for now, I sign off.  I hope to finish up here soon and head home for some chili and Super-Bowl action.  Not really a football fan, but I love watching the big game.  Weird right?

Post Con Report

Posted by on September 10, 2010 No comments

Well, I am back from DragonCon and getting back into the swing of things.  The Con was great but I didn’t do some of the more Blog type stuff that I had wanted to.  That’s not to say that I didn’t do more than enough to cover the whole con but I had planned on getting an interview about games with a few of the the folks there, and there just wasn’t time.  The biggest takeaway is of course that there were a bazillion people there!  Ok, not really, but there were certainly more people than I had ever seen before at a Con.  One thing that kind of bugged me a bit was the in-accessibility of some of the stars.  Now, don’t read that the wrong way, I am certainly not expecting some big name stars to be at our beck and call, but when I read that certain names are on the guest list, only to find out that they are only doing limited appearances, ala, 1 panel, maybe a private autograph session, it’s a little sad.  I had really wanted to meet Paul Dini, but when I went to the Artist’s area he was nowhere to be found.  Apparently the Info desk there was well versed in the answer to “Where’s Paul Dini?”  From what we learned, Paul was only doing a few panels and had no table.

Such was also the case with one of my Favorite Mythbusters!  Adam Savage was at the con but only did limited Autograph sessions (and with so many people there, the lines were impossible) and even my favorite part of any Savage sighting is the #adamincognito game he plays.  Adam is an avid costumer so DragonCon is a great place for him.  He will sometimes dress up in Costume and encourage people to find him.  Unfortunately, the con was 5 hotels large with between 30-50,000 people there.  With no location tweeted it was nigh on impossible to change encounter him.  For this one though I blame the lack of Signal that happens when you get that many people in a small area all with smart phones.

(Deep Breath) Ok, now that all my bitching and moaning is over.  What I did get to do at the con was great.  Sarah and I took about 6 costumes each and got to wear most all of them.  I got to meet a lot of the stars I planned on seeing, and of course the visiting with friends and drinking.  All in all, a great con.  Pictures can be found in my gallery.

Now, to get back into my rigorous gaming habit!  Reach comes out next week so I have only a few more days to finish up with Spider-Man Shattered Dimensions.  All I can say so far is that it’s apparent that there will never be a Spider-Man game where the camera isn’t completely hosed while wall crawling.

What are you Playing? (When you aren’t getting ready for a CON)

Posted by on August 19, 2010 3 comments

Hey all, it’s time for another rousing round of What are you Playing!  The last few weeks have been mostly occupied by me procrastinating getting things ready for DragonCon.  In just 2 small weeks I will be living it up in Atlanta rubbing elbows with some of the best costumers and sci-fi geeks on the planet.  I am also really excited about the Guest list this year.  So excited that I have been trying to think up questions that would be game related that I could ask some of our favorite celebrities.  Info that I would bring back and post here on the site.  So I put it to you, there is a huge guest list over on the website Http://www.dragoncon.org. If there is anyone in particular that you would like to know what their gaming habits are, or any questions you think I should toss out there.  I plan on using my phones voice recorder to grab some sound bites from the folks there.  Please feel free to drop questions you want asked into the comments.  (P.S. Apparently, Paul Dini, the writer for the Batman Arkham games will be there, you KNOW I am going to be talking to him!)

As for what I am actually playing…. I finished up Crackdown 2, I bought another new Xbox 360S to replace the E-73 Error-ed out one downstairs so the Rock Band setup is back to normal.  I am hoping to knock out Alan Wakes “The Signal” here soon, but mostly just getting stuff ready for vacation.  What are YOU playing?

Risk Factions, where Zombies rule the earth.

Posted by on August 11, 2010 No comments

I know it’s been a while since I picked up this game but there has bee a ton going on.  It does help that I keep playing it and thinking “Man, I really need to write up the review”.  As a kid we always liked to play various board game.  I always kind of feared the nights where we would play RISK though because of the massive involvement of the game.  A good RISK game could last for hours of hours, and when it’s done there is so much clean up.  Not to mention the RISK of stepping on one of those like roman numerals in the middle of the night.  Once again, the Xbox steps in to simplify the board game genre and add a little spice to it at the same time.

RISK Factions brings all the fun of territorial control and conquering that the original game had but with no clean up, simplified scoring and much faster game play.  The “Factions” portion of the game come in assigning different cartoon characters to the colors of Risk.  Black becomes Zombies, Red for Robots, Yellow for Cats, Green for Humans, and Blue for Yeti’s.  The Single player campaign takes you through the story about how these characters interact, but mostly it’s there to provide a little more eye candy for the grueling dice rolling game play.  They have also added a form of “Fast attack” where the rolls are all done in the back ground and you keep attacking until someone wins.

For those purists who don’t want any taint on their precious game, they preserved the original game play in a “Classic” mode that includes the original cards and structure.  Honestly, I tried to play this way once, and it seemed slow.  I much enjoyed the newer style better.  The turns are faster, the scoring is much easier, and when you are done, no clean up.  This is one of the best family board game ports on the arcade and I highly recommend it!  I give it an VIII out of X

What are you playing? or….The Risk of Cracking Down on your Limbo Skills

Posted by on July 28, 2010 2 comments

It’s that time again to run down what you are playing!  I am slowly but surely working up a review of the XBLA (Xbox Live Arcade) game Risk Factions, which I managed to finish the campaign on.  The nice thing about it is that it’s such a great Family game that we find ourselves playing it as a group all the time.  Also mixed in lately has been Crackdown 2.  Initial impressions of CD 2 are not that great.  I just get the feeling like it’s too much all at once and it’s REALLY hard to focus on the ga…oooo  Agility orb!

The latest add in to the library has been the XBLA game Limbo.  This came out for the Summer of Arcade promo that Xbox does every year.  The game is a hell of a lot like Braid, and if you haven’t played Braid you need to go check it out.  Both are side scrolling puzzle platformers that will twist your brain in loops.  I love it!  Review for Limbo will be after Risk and Crackdown 2 will probably be a while still.  Don’t forget that the first DLC for Alan Wake is out now, The Signal.  My copy of Alan Wake is out on loan right now so I will be getting to that as soon as it comes back.

Outside of that, the workouts are going great, I can already feel a difference and only 36 days left before DragonCon!  I am hoping to maybe squeeze out an interview with one or two celeb’s to see their take on gaming.  And with that I leave you with the amazing Music video from the Guild:  GAME ON!

What are you playing?

Posted by on July 20, 2010 7 comments

I have been thinking of trying to get a weekly post up of what I am playing and maybe put it out to see what you guys are playing as well. I have seen a lot of sites do this to get a good discussion going and maybe get some ideas about a game I wouldn’t normally pick up.  So, seeing as how I am the only one here, I’ll go first.

The past week or two I have been working on some house type stuff and reconfiguring things on my network.  After picking up the new Xbox 360S (I traded in my old 20gb Xbox) I decided to upgrade my router to a Wireless N to use the new Xbox’s N device.  I bought the Belkin Play Dual Band Wireless N router and replaced my crappy Netgear G.  Long story made short, I can’t stream media from my PC to the xbox anymore and have no idea why.  While I am not a hard core network guy, I still know my way around a subnet and have spent the past 2 weeks tweaking and such to figure this out.  It’s kind of a pain.

Outside of that I have been playing some Lego Harry Potter with Sarah.  It’s one of those games where we pretty much only play together.  I believe we are towards the end of Book 3 right now.  the Quick review on it, it’s a Lego game.  Same basic premise and humor.  That’s not a bad thing, because I love the Lego games.  Aside from that I have picked up Risk: Factions from the Xbox Live Arcade.  They found a way to really make a Risk game fun for everyone!  We have played as a family, as well as through the solo campaign.  Enjoyable all around.  May have more of a full review on it up soon.

In the life department, I also picked up an Elliptical machine and am using it to get back into some sort of shape that’s not “round”.  My hope is to turn some of this belly fat into muscle in time for DragonCon at the beginning of September.  We’ll See, as of this morning I was at 192lb.  My target is Around 175lb but I would be happy with a strong 180-185lbs.  The goal is not so much loss but re-distribution.  Wish me luck!