Tag Archives: Game - Page 2

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!

Malware sucks!

Posted by on January 10, 2012 No comments

Well, not sure if anyone noticed, (given that I probably only have like 3 people that read this) but my main site came under attack recently.  Apparently there was a wordpress exploit that someone got a hold of and it set up all kind of weird re-directs in my site and in Sarah’s food blog.  This cause some posts/pages to browse to some Russian malware site.  So, yea, huge apologies for that screw up.  BlueHost (my hosting company) help me clean out the junk and get things updated and fixed.
 
I took this opportunity to clean things up around the site and try out a new theme/look.  This only affects the main site, not my Tumblr site (which usually has the same posts).
 
As per usual, I am going to try and do some more posting with the new year.  So far 2012 looks like it’s going to be a busy/crazy year.  That is, if I can get off my butt and not play Star Wars: The Old Republic so much.  I’ll see if I can get a post up about that in the coming few days.
 
As per usual, Stay Tuned!  (and sorry for that Malware thing, really….you may want to see a Doctor and get checked out)

Photos, Games, and Cars

Posted by on November 8, 2011 No comments

Here is a fun mix of photography, gaming, and cars all bundled into one post!  Now, as you all know I picked up my new MINI just over a week ago and couldn’t help but get out and take come cool shots of it.  I have some ideas of some other shots but those will come along soon.


On kind of a whim I picked up the Forza 4 game for Xbox 360.  (ok not so much whim but I learned that there is a MINI in the game). On top of it being a great racing game, I learned it has a cool photo mode that allows you to take great shots of the cars in the game.  Of course, I couldn’t resist.

Lastly, wanted to post that my work travel plans have changed and this means I will be able to join in on the MINI’s take the Beltway charity drive!!  The money all goes to the Wounded Warrior project and it’s 50+ MINI’s gathered to do a Lap on the beltway!  It’s this Sunday so if you are in the DC area and want to see a ton of MINI’s check it out!

What I am playing

Posted by on April 4, 2011 No comments

Wanted to toss up a quick “What I am playing” Since I haven’t done one in a long while.  My gaming has been a lot sporadic and varied over the last few months.  With the new job I, of course, lost a little bit of free time with the commute and new taskings so I have had to modify the gaming schedule to fit.  Because of this, my iPad has become very valuable to me as a gaming platform.  So I will break it down via platform….

iPad:

  • Angry Birds Seasons – Who doesn’t play this, really.
  • Carcassone – This is a great little board style game that we love playing while waiting for food at a restaurant or wherever.  The scoring being done by the system is a huge plus.
  • Catan HD – Same as above, we recently wanted to try playing Settlers of Catan and I found the iPad version.  It’s a great translation, but could use some updates.
  • Zombie Dice – It’s an iPad Version of Steve Jackson’s dice game about Zombies!  what’s not to like!  If you enjoy dice games, and playing with statistics, you should check it out.
  • Words With Friends – It’s Scrabble.  Sarah loves playing and keeps getting mad at me because I am beating her.
  • Galactic Empires – GE is a iOS port of the classing O-Game which is a Space Based conquest game.  It’s kind of addicting and fun in a weird project management kind of way.  You get a planet and you mine for resources, but the tasks can take hours to complete.  The draw is the investment that you put into it and climbing the ladders to research the best ships and build a great fleet.  The downside is that it’s kind of an MMO.  All of the other planets in the game are other players and they all can either help you…..or attack you.  As with John Gabriel’s “Greater Internet Fuckwad Theory”, there are internet assholes everywhere.  If you can get past that, it’s a fun game.


Next up, XBOX 360!

  • Dead Space 2 – This is currently in the Tray and being played.  It’s creepy as heck and I am still just starting.  So far…. Love it!
  • Rock Band 3 – Picked this up at launch (of course) and managed to get teh MIDI adapter for the drum kit with it.  No more swapping of cables, my drum brain is wired into the 360 now for real feel of rocking!
  • Kinect, Your Shape Fitness – So when my schedule got re-arranged, I kind of lost my workout time as well.  I get down to use the Your Shape every now and then, When I do, I feel great, but I need to do it more.


Android Phone

  • CyanogenMod – ok, so it’s not a game so much as ROM replacement on my phone.  I recently upgraded my rooted Droid to the latest CyanogenMod running Android’s Gingerbread.  At first I was having all sorts of sluggish problems, then realized that I had some redundancy with SetCPU running.  It was bogging my phone down a lot.  After un-installing it, the phone runs amazingly now.


Lastly, PC.

  • StarCraft II – Working my way slowly through the campaign.  I love the SC games, but only the Single player side of it.  As a friend proved when we teamed up in a match, I suck at Multiplayer.  
  • Civilization V – I haven’t really played many of the Civ games but I picked this one up as a fun game to start on my new laptop.  I was so sucked into the first match that I think I lost a full weekend.
  • World Of Warcraft – Yeah yeah, I guess a lot of people could have seen this one coming.  I have re-joined the collective and re-activated my WoW account.  A number of my friends went back for Cataclysm and I caved to the peer pressure.  I have been impressed in many of the changes.  I like the phasing that happens on some of the quests too.  It really makes you feel like you are doing something in the game and not just grinding out an area.


So there ya go.  Now….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

Heavy Rain … Or… Press –> to read this post.

Posted by on July 15, 2010 2 comments

After many hours and many times of screaming “No, not that way!!” and “Damnit I DID hit X” I have finished playing through Heavy Rain, the thriller mystery exclusive for the Playstation 3. It took a little longer than I had originally planned due to some frustration with the control scheme and the ever impeding life thing I have going on (I really should do something about that).

Heavy Rain takes us through the story/mystery of the Origami Killer as if affects a family, the detectives searching, and the journalist reporting on it. Unlike some of the other games of this genre, you get to play as each different character to get their point of view on the story, and ultimately drive the story to a unique ending tailored to your actions. This is one of the story points that really makes Heavy Rain stand out. It’s a cleverly disguised “Choose Your Own Adventure” story where, depending on what choices you made, you may get a completely different ending than someone else. Because of the nature of the story, I hesitate to mention any plot line specifics for fear of spoiling it. Instead we will jump to the likes and dislikes.

Likes:
Great Story – Seems like most of the games I have really gotten into as of late have been driven by a good solid story. Heavy Rain really takes the murder mystery story to a whole new level with the different ways you can drive it, including multiple different outcomes. I have said many times that story is really key to a good game so I won’t spend time on this one. The story was good.
Detailed Graphics – The detail that goes into the characters and settings in Heavy Rain is amazing (in some places). If you get the chance I highly suggest checking out some of the bonus videos on the disk that show the actors that portrayed the characters in the game. The fact that they were able to make the in game faces match so perfectly was astounding.
Innovative control scheme – Heavy Rain really takes immerse control to the extreme where you can interact with so many things and each action is meticulous in it’s implementation. The use of the Six Axis to perform tasks like sliding a door, opening a cupboard, or turning a nob worked really well…..for the first 10 min (Continued Bellow).
Multiple perspectives – As the story played out you get to jump from Ethan (The Father), to Madison (The Journalist), to Norman (The Agent), and to Scott (The P.I.). Because of this it almost felt like you were following four different stories, but they all tied together in an amazing way and it was genius to see the same story from all of the different views.
Solid voice acting – None of the voice acting really felt forced like we have seen in other games. Most of the conversation seems to flow naturally and fit the mood of the game very well. The behind the scenes videos showing how they auditioned some of the actors was a great touch. I love watching voice actors perform.

Dislikes:
Suspension of Disbelief – This stemmed from one of the first scenes in the game, hopefully not much of a spoiler, where Ethan looses track of his son in a mall. He can see him only about 30 feet in front of him but the mall is crowded and it’s hard to catch up, even though you are calling out to your son, he blatantly ignores you for the full 20 min you are chasing him (right behind him BTW). The people in the mall actually move in front of you so it makes it even more difficult to catch up. Also, you can’t run so you are doing this at a walking pace. There were quite a few times in the game where I felt that the “fourth wall” was broken due to something completely unbelievable.
Graphic Glitches – So as nice and detailed as the graphics were, there were still quite a few graphics glitches that really took it from a simple glitch to a full blown annoyance. Things like fabric, the clothes they would put on or take off looked horrible. Like they could stand up on their own. Walking around the rooms made your character look like a strung out marionette. It just seemed that in free walk mode the characters had no fluid motion.
Innovative control scheme – So after the first 10 minutes the control scheme starts to really be tedius and aggravating. For example, at one point I needed to walk over to the fridge, tap the analog stick to the left to open the fridge door, tap up to grab the orange juice, shake the controller to shake the juice, tap up again to drink the juice, tap down to put the juice back and tap right to close the fridge. Now count that. That’s 6 button/stick commands to do a simple act of drinking juice. Between each command there is a pause in gameplay so I can issue the next command. Towards the end of the game it wasn’t quite as bad since you aren’t really searching anymore.

For the most part, I didn’t hate the game. The story kept me going and the way the game played out for me was good for how I played it. I really wish that the dislikes didn’t detract from the game as much as they did because it would have made it that much better. As it was I feel like I spent 20 minutes of every hour playing just doing the control gimmicks and tedious button mashing. Overall I enjoyed playing it and would give it a Solid 7 Origami Cranes out of 10.

Naughty Bear…or….20 minutes of game play I’ll never get back

Posted by on June 30, 2010 No comments

Tuesday is new game release day, and Wednesday is new comic day.  Now I don’t typically buy as many new games as I buy comics, but I tend to keep an eye on what’s getting released in the same way.  This last Tuesday saw two releases that I have been watching for a while now.  Lego Harry Potter, and Naughty Bear.  I knew what to expect with any Lego game, while they may tell different stories, the game play is similar across the board.  The Sleeper was Naughty Bear.  I had seen a number of preview videos and some of the trailers, and to be honest, they did their job well and I was enticed.  It looked funny/cute in a “Happy Tree Friends” sort of way.

Sadly, I was wrong.  I bought Naughty Bear at 7:30pm on Tuesday night, got home and played through the first “episode” and instantly knew that I had made a mistake.  I toughed it out and finished the episode, then packed it up and headed back to Gamestop.  Thankfully the gracious personnel there were nice enough to let me swap it out for Lego Harry Potter.

Side note here.  I was warned, by Erin when I bought Naughty Bear, that it was going to be bad.  I decided to make my own judgment.

So what made it so bad?  Well, The idea was good and funny.  Unfortunately that was the extent of the good.  The Premise was that you played Naughty Bear, the bastard step child of this “Care Bear” style island where everything is puppies and kittens.  Some of the other bears on the island have treated you unfairly and you decide to get back at them by being naughty.  Being Naughty can range from scaring them, sabotaging their stuff, or even bashing their stuffed heads in with a baseball bat.  Who wouldn’t think that could be fun?!

What it ended up being was a series of “Challenges” where you had to sneak around and scare/kill your fellow bears while disrupting their activities.  I guess that you could play the game more Sam Fisher style and sneak in the bushes then pop out and scare them, but after the first time you do that they all know you are there, so no more sneaking will help you.  From there is just becomes “I’m going to run around and hit you with a bat”.  When you finish with the bears, you can gain a few extra points by smashing stuff.  And that was it!  After a while, even the narration is grating.

Now, I think the game may be not as bad as I am making it out to be if it weren’t for one more glaringly bad problem, it was release at the price point of $49.99.  For the same price as something like Lego Harry Potter, you get a game that may have done well as an Xbox Arcade title, for maybe $10-$12 bucks

The Graphics were just ok, the actual game mechanics were horrible.  I had to maneuver myself around and fumble with the view to get into a position where I could actually scare another bear.  Just Awful, one of the worst games I have tried.  This may, and I emphasize MAY, be worth it when the price drops down to like $5, which I have no doubt that it will fall to that.