This year, 2012, Diablo 3 and Guild Wars 2. Two games that, to me, are going to be an evolution of epic proportions. Not revolution, though, and that's a good thing.
Diablo 3 sets out to bring about the next evolution of the aRPG genre, doing away with skill trees and trying to remove the ability of creating a "broken" character.
I played Diablo 2 and it's expansion since it was released, but I only leveled ONE character past 90, EVER. I re-created more characters than I can possibly count simply because I came to a point during the came (sometime during act 2 or act 3) in which the skills I had leveled were no longer working and I kept dying. Playing a game like Diablo 2 and having to build your character a certain way (read: not MY way) in order to play the late-game is not fun.
Diablo 3 changes this, in that it makes ALL skills viable throughout the entire game. The damage of your skills are based on the weapon you are carrying. So, if I am a wizard carrying a two-handed greatsword, my skills will do a lot of damage but with slow attack rate, and I won't be able to use an off-hand orb. Or I can have a knife and be a fast caster with an off-hand orb, or I can find (or craft) an awesome wand and just devastate everything. I'm not limited to only using wands and staves!
Also, attributes are auto-assigned when you level. This has caused quite a stir in the community, but again this prevents players from creating broken characters. Plus, anyone can modify these stats by using gear that adds to them, and using gems in crafting to beef up certain stats.
Blizzard seems to have done an amazing job making sure that everyone who plays will have a viable base character with which to customize via skill-set, gear, crafting, gems and anything else we haven't seen yet. Plus every class gets more than 100 skills that all work with your character and wont get obsolete in late game, and you can outfit your character with the skills that work well with your play style, up to 6 skills assigned at any given time.
So, if I get my wizard to level 30 and I find that my current skills and tactics aren't working on mobs anymore do I need to re-roll? NO! Just search through the myriad of skills for other working combinations, find better gear, and upgrade the artisans for better crafted gear!
Guild Wars 2 sets to bring about the next evolution of MMO's, doing away with the standard quest structure, "skill cancer" bars, and in general players competing against players for EVERYTHING. Need to go and "kill 10 rats" but that other player doing the same quest killed the last one in the area and now you have to wait for another rat to spawn? No, not fun. Player competition should only be in PVP, PVE should be player cooperation!
I think the only time that I had to talk to an NPC quest give was during the tutorial area, since then I just roamed around and events would pop up in my hud and I would stop by and help out!
I also like how there is very little hand holding when it comes to events: I remember my first event in the human starter world, it was on a farm and I could help the farmer by doing many things:
-Water crops
-Weed out worms
-Feed cattle
To weed out worms you had to find their burrows and stomp on them to get them to come out, defeat them and move on. To water crops you had to FIND buckets of water and pour them on the crops. To feed the cattle you had to FIND some feed and bring it to the cattle.
All this was done WITHOUT hand-holding markers on maps, exclamation points over objects, or tooltips in the event description or hud. Seriously it actually took me several minutes to find the crops to water with the bucket I was carrying! I like that kind of difficulty, the kind that actually rewards players for thinking it through or discovering it for yourself. Also, this is when I noticed that there aren't any enemy dots on the map with easy to read aggro circles. When you target an enemy; if an enemy is orange he is docile, if an enemy is red he will aggro you if you get too close, but you don't really know how close is too close.
After helping the farmer for a while, the mother worm shows up and she's huge! That's when the dynamic event popped up and everyone around joined the battle to take down the worm without having to group up, everyone got experience and loot. When we all finally felled the beast the event was cleared. And just when I was thinking "where do I go now?", I walk down the road a bit and another event pops up in my hud, a different challenge with different goals.
This has encouraged me to discover, to walk off the beaten path, and explore the map even beyond what the map obviously shows. Explorers are rewarded in this game, and it's so much fun! If you walk the beaten path you still get events, but there's just so much more if you just take the time to explore off the road.
I better stop now, I could go on forever. 2012 is a year for evolution, the game mechanics of ye' old are dead, it's the start of a new era where fun and cooperation without needless mechanics to get in the way are here!
Wednesday, May 2, 2012
Monday, April 30, 2012
Guild Wars 2 - A single player game with a bunch of other people
Guild Wars 2... wow, where do I start? First off, this is an AMAZING game, second, it's not quite without faults, but most of them are due to beta status and should hopefully be resolved before launch (whenever that is).
Issues during beta:
-Hundreds of thousands of players joined up and server/login issues were abound during the first 8 or so hours, and there were some errors that even prevented people from playing the game at all during the beta weekend.
-Lots of people in the starting areas created a lot of queues into the area, but the overflow worked so no one was stuck not being able to play. But it did create issues with people trying to play together and group up.
-Along with game server issues, the forums went down several times throughout the weekend but was generally working well and was a good source for people with issues.
I leveled a human Elementalist to level 13 throughout the beta and I was able to enjoy many of the events and story quests. Towards the end I was able to craft some awesome new armors for my character and even visit other starter areas (Norn and Char) to do their events as well. The reason why I joined up with other starter areas was that the content for my level was pretty difficult because there wasn't that many people in those areas, but more on that later, here are my views on the main points of Guild Wars 2 so far:
- Combat
Bottom line: Deep and enjoyable. I never got tired leveling all my weapon's skills, nor which skill set I should use for the coming battle. All skills have their purpose in combat and I used all of them pretty frequently.
In addition to all the weapon skills (5 possible skills) there were 1+4+1 class skill slots that unlocked as I leveled (1 slot for your healing skill (already unlocked), 4 for other skills, and 1 for your elite skill). I got 2 slots and you use skill points to unlock the skills and you get skill points by doing the skill point challenges scattered across the map. By the time I was done I unlocked 3 skills and a new healing skill. There are also skill combos that I have yet to figure out how to use.
Movement is paramount in GW2, I found myself circle strafing foes, dodging, jumping over obstacles to get out of the way of any attacks. Most enemies have a large cone of attack so even if you think you are out of the way, you still get hit (maybe caused by lag). Using skills that hindered or slowed enemies added strategy to the mix along with aoe skills and luring enemies into the aoe field worked well.
- Controls
Bottom Line: Keyboard/Mouse movement and combat works great for Right handed people. Since I am left handed and can't really use my right hand I had to find an alternative. Gamepad works well for me, and using XPadder it was actually and advantageous setup.
Using a PS2 gamepad: left stick to arrow keys, right stick to camera direction, buttons to skills and looting, combat and journeying became a blast and extremely comfortable. With combat, skill 1 is always auto-attack, and if you press it it will immediately attack your closest foe within range. This made targeting extremely easy and I very rarely had issues with needing to target single foes like bosses.
I was able to map the right to camera movements by using the push-right-stick button map to toggle right-click on/off. And by leaving the mouse cursor about an inch above my character's head before activating it, this made AoE targeting skills easy to target via using the camera stick.
Gamepad works extremely well, at least AS WELL as keyboard/mouse for combat so long as you set it up right and have a Playstation controller. Can't really say about Xbox controllers or anything else. I am looking forward to setting up my projector and sitting back on the couch playing GW2 in the future :)
- Questing
Bottom line: FUN!
Every character does have a main quest that's designed around the choices you made during character creation and this quest line can be done at any time but does have a level recommendation next next to the quest before you go.
You get to those levels by doing events (group area missions), these events are familiar to anyone who's played Warhammer, but there are a LOT more of them and are a LOT more fun to play! Some of them even get complex; for example you start off feeding some cows and watering plants, but by the end you wind up fighting a giant worm boss. You get quest rewards and a medallion (bronze, silver, gold) based on your overall involvement within the event. There's also points of interest and waypoints scattered across the map that you gain experience from if you find them.
A few issues:
-It got a little confusing as sometimes two events might be close enough to be triggered simultaneously but you might not know which one you are doing.
-Sometimes you might get a reward for the event, but he event is not over, there could be more sections to the event.
-When venturing into obviously more difficult events, I would immediately get killed and then leave to find something else only to get quest rewards (sometimes gold-level) several minutes later when I'm no where near it.
- Crafting
Bottom line: FUN!
While getting all the skills in my final weapon of the beta (staff), I farmed for ingredients for my crafting class (cloth), and I was able to get new customized armor for my toon. Crafting is simple, fun and rewards testing.
I could have crafting the basic tunic that it gave me but after getting the required elements I went to the discovery pane, put in both parts of the tunic, and an insignia (there's also an additional optional slot for something else) and the game let me know that there is definitely a recipe behind this combination of elements and the difficulty of crafting it, pressed the craft button and viola! I had a new (and very useful) tunic with armor art that was NOT found anywhere else either buying or looting! Plus it saved the recipe that I discovered in my main recipe list for easy crafting next time if I wanted to.
There is a little bit of hand holding, but overall it's very enjoyable and rewarding after quite a bit of farming for a day.
- Conclusion
Guild Wars 2 is awesome. Guild Wars 2 is AWESOME!
I can definitely see myself playing this game for years just like GW1, and with no subscription fee that's just icing on the cake. They could have easily applied a subscription fee and it still would have become immensely popular than anything else. And working extremely well with a gamepad is a huge plus. This game is everything I needed and wanted it to be and more. And it's just the BETA!
Next beta weekend, I am going to only level one class, and I think it will be a Mesmer, hopefully Asuran or Sylvari.
Issues during beta:
-Hundreds of thousands of players joined up and server/login issues were abound during the first 8 or so hours, and there were some errors that even prevented people from playing the game at all during the beta weekend.
-Lots of people in the starting areas created a lot of queues into the area, but the overflow worked so no one was stuck not being able to play. But it did create issues with people trying to play together and group up.
-Along with game server issues, the forums went down several times throughout the weekend but was generally working well and was a good source for people with issues.
I leveled a human Elementalist to level 13 throughout the beta and I was able to enjoy many of the events and story quests. Towards the end I was able to craft some awesome new armors for my character and even visit other starter areas (Norn and Char) to do their events as well. The reason why I joined up with other starter areas was that the content for my level was pretty difficult because there wasn't that many people in those areas, but more on that later, here are my views on the main points of Guild Wars 2 so far:
- Combat
Bottom line: Deep and enjoyable. I never got tired leveling all my weapon's skills, nor which skill set I should use for the coming battle. All skills have their purpose in combat and I used all of them pretty frequently.
In addition to all the weapon skills (5 possible skills) there were 1+4+1 class skill slots that unlocked as I leveled (1 slot for your healing skill (already unlocked), 4 for other skills, and 1 for your elite skill). I got 2 slots and you use skill points to unlock the skills and you get skill points by doing the skill point challenges scattered across the map. By the time I was done I unlocked 3 skills and a new healing skill. There are also skill combos that I have yet to figure out how to use.
Movement is paramount in GW2, I found myself circle strafing foes, dodging, jumping over obstacles to get out of the way of any attacks. Most enemies have a large cone of attack so even if you think you are out of the way, you still get hit (maybe caused by lag). Using skills that hindered or slowed enemies added strategy to the mix along with aoe skills and luring enemies into the aoe field worked well.
- Controls
Bottom Line: Keyboard/Mouse movement and combat works great for Right handed people. Since I am left handed and can't really use my right hand I had to find an alternative. Gamepad works well for me, and using XPadder it was actually and advantageous setup.
Using a PS2 gamepad: left stick to arrow keys, right stick to camera direction, buttons to skills and looting, combat and journeying became a blast and extremely comfortable. With combat, skill 1 is always auto-attack, and if you press it it will immediately attack your closest foe within range. This made targeting extremely easy and I very rarely had issues with needing to target single foes like bosses.
I was able to map the right to camera movements by using the push-right-stick button map to toggle right-click on/off. And by leaving the mouse cursor about an inch above my character's head before activating it, this made AoE targeting skills easy to target via using the camera stick.
Gamepad works extremely well, at least AS WELL as keyboard/mouse for combat so long as you set it up right and have a Playstation controller. Can't really say about Xbox controllers or anything else. I am looking forward to setting up my projector and sitting back on the couch playing GW2 in the future :)
- Questing
Bottom line: FUN!
Every character does have a main quest that's designed around the choices you made during character creation and this quest line can be done at any time but does have a level recommendation next next to the quest before you go.
You get to those levels by doing events (group area missions), these events are familiar to anyone who's played Warhammer, but there are a LOT more of them and are a LOT more fun to play! Some of them even get complex; for example you start off feeding some cows and watering plants, but by the end you wind up fighting a giant worm boss. You get quest rewards and a medallion (bronze, silver, gold) based on your overall involvement within the event. There's also points of interest and waypoints scattered across the map that you gain experience from if you find them.
A few issues:
-It got a little confusing as sometimes two events might be close enough to be triggered simultaneously but you might not know which one you are doing.
-Sometimes you might get a reward for the event, but he event is not over, there could be more sections to the event.
-When venturing into obviously more difficult events, I would immediately get killed and then leave to find something else only to get quest rewards (sometimes gold-level) several minutes later when I'm no where near it.
- Crafting
Bottom line: FUN!
While getting all the skills in my final weapon of the beta (staff), I farmed for ingredients for my crafting class (cloth), and I was able to get new customized armor for my toon. Crafting is simple, fun and rewards testing.
I could have crafting the basic tunic that it gave me but after getting the required elements I went to the discovery pane, put in both parts of the tunic, and an insignia (there's also an additional optional slot for something else) and the game let me know that there is definitely a recipe behind this combination of elements and the difficulty of crafting it, pressed the craft button and viola! I had a new (and very useful) tunic with armor art that was NOT found anywhere else either buying or looting! Plus it saved the recipe that I discovered in my main recipe list for easy crafting next time if I wanted to.
There is a little bit of hand holding, but overall it's very enjoyable and rewarding after quite a bit of farming for a day.
- Conclusion
Guild Wars 2 is awesome. Guild Wars 2 is AWESOME!
I can definitely see myself playing this game for years just like GW1, and with no subscription fee that's just icing on the cake. They could have easily applied a subscription fee and it still would have become immensely popular than anything else. And working extremely well with a gamepad is a huge plus. This game is everything I needed and wanted it to be and more. And it's just the BETA!
Next beta weekend, I am going to only level one class, and I think it will be a Mesmer, hopefully Asuran or Sylvari.
Monday, April 23, 2012
Tera and Diablo 3 beta update
While I was able to get my gamepad working great in Tera, there are a few problems I have with the game and it will definitely not be a purchase for me, but I might play when it goes F2P.
1. Magical and Archery classes are boring, it's just a spam fest, same skills over and over again. I know I only experienced early content, but through 13 levels as a sorcerer I never had to change my tactics.
2. Items and loot are boring, through 8 playthroughs of the first 10 levels content I never found anything new, the same boring ring of only one kind, the same weapons with extremely minor and bland differences, even 3 names for weapons found in different locations but no statistical differences at all, same with armor.
3. Dual wielding classes are partly fun for me when I get to mix and match different blades with different statistical properties in each hand, not so here. Weapons for the dual wielding class come in pairs and are just as bland as identical as the next piece you will find, so no mix and matching.
On the positive, combat is still fun but only if I play the close combat classes, especially the dual wielding class. But when it comes to Tera, fun combat is the ONLY good point on the game, everything else is as bland and boring as possible.
The Diablo 3 servers were finally up for a good deal of time on Sunday, and it enabled me to really get through a lot of the beta content. I played 4 of the 5 classes and I found something to enjoy out of all of them, the wizard being my favorite. Plowing through enemies, even at the lower levels were a blast.
Blizzard certainly hasn't disappointed with looting, it's always fun to keep searching for better gear, and with the new artisans it's much more fun to upgrade him and get better equipment made.
Couple of things to mention:
1. No easily visible damage stats. They included even a detail list box that shows all of your attributes from magic find to poison defense, but no damage stats. It was very difficult as a wizard to try and determine the best skills.
But after a while I sort of got used to not really knowing, Blizzard has designed this game to NOT be about designing the max of the maxes possible maximum stats, but rather about kills per second. If you find yourself not being able to plow through large groups of enemies, then your not using the right skills, or better yet you aren't using the right skill rune.
Very few skills in the game work by themselves, but combinations of skills work wonderfully. And there is no right or wrong combination, it's all about your personal style.
2. Attacks are class specific, not weapon specific. So if you are a wizard, your basic attack will be shooting arcane bolts... even if you have a sword, or bow or anything else equipped. The only thing I've found that is taken from the weapon you carry is attack speed. Once discovering this it was easy to pretty much just equip the most powerful weapon I could find; whether it be a magic dagger or a crossbow and I would still keep the same attacks but with better damage.
I was on the fence for this for a while, but after playing through it I found out that Blizzard designed it very well and it WORKS. For some classes if you wait for the appropriate weapon, you could be making the game exponentially more difficult. I found this out during my first play-through as a wizard, I kept trying to find a wand because the enemies were getting harder but then I succumb to a pretty powerful dagger only to find that I didn't get replace my primary attack but rather enhanced it completely. And with all classes' primary attack being MP free, it felt too easy.
But I found out quickly that it's NOT too easy. Movement and utilizing a good variety of skills is way more important here than it is in D3. By the time the beta content was done I had to primary skills to Mouse 1 and Mouse 2 as well as 2 secondary skill slots (2 more will open up later in the game) and I was using them a lot. I can see a great deal of tactics later in the game needed to find the right combination of skills and runes for your play style.
Yes, the first playable area in D3 was, overall, pretty easy, but let's face it, when the beta of D2 came out, it was also pretty easy and people were QQing all over the place of how easy D2 will be. Well, D2 turned out not to be such a pushover (after the initial content) afterall, and I'm sure Blizzard has some nice surprises up it's sleeve for D3 that we haven't the faintest clue about.
It's official, D3 is day-one purchase for me!
1. Magical and Archery classes are boring, it's just a spam fest, same skills over and over again. I know I only experienced early content, but through 13 levels as a sorcerer I never had to change my tactics.
2. Items and loot are boring, through 8 playthroughs of the first 10 levels content I never found anything new, the same boring ring of only one kind, the same weapons with extremely minor and bland differences, even 3 names for weapons found in different locations but no statistical differences at all, same with armor.
3. Dual wielding classes are partly fun for me when I get to mix and match different blades with different statistical properties in each hand, not so here. Weapons for the dual wielding class come in pairs and are just as bland as identical as the next piece you will find, so no mix and matching.
On the positive, combat is still fun but only if I play the close combat classes, especially the dual wielding class. But when it comes to Tera, fun combat is the ONLY good point on the game, everything else is as bland and boring as possible.
The Diablo 3 servers were finally up for a good deal of time on Sunday, and it enabled me to really get through a lot of the beta content. I played 4 of the 5 classes and I found something to enjoy out of all of them, the wizard being my favorite. Plowing through enemies, even at the lower levels were a blast.
Blizzard certainly hasn't disappointed with looting, it's always fun to keep searching for better gear, and with the new artisans it's much more fun to upgrade him and get better equipment made.
Couple of things to mention:
1. No easily visible damage stats. They included even a detail list box that shows all of your attributes from magic find to poison defense, but no damage stats. It was very difficult as a wizard to try and determine the best skills.
But after a while I sort of got used to not really knowing, Blizzard has designed this game to NOT be about designing the max of the maxes possible maximum stats, but rather about kills per second. If you find yourself not being able to plow through large groups of enemies, then your not using the right skills, or better yet you aren't using the right skill rune.
Very few skills in the game work by themselves, but combinations of skills work wonderfully. And there is no right or wrong combination, it's all about your personal style.
2. Attacks are class specific, not weapon specific. So if you are a wizard, your basic attack will be shooting arcane bolts... even if you have a sword, or bow or anything else equipped. The only thing I've found that is taken from the weapon you carry is attack speed. Once discovering this it was easy to pretty much just equip the most powerful weapon I could find; whether it be a magic dagger or a crossbow and I would still keep the same attacks but with better damage.
I was on the fence for this for a while, but after playing through it I found out that Blizzard designed it very well and it WORKS. For some classes if you wait for the appropriate weapon, you could be making the game exponentially more difficult. I found this out during my first play-through as a wizard, I kept trying to find a wand because the enemies were getting harder but then I succumb to a pretty powerful dagger only to find that I didn't get replace my primary attack but rather enhanced it completely. And with all classes' primary attack being MP free, it felt too easy.
But I found out quickly that it's NOT too easy. Movement and utilizing a good variety of skills is way more important here than it is in D3. By the time the beta content was done I had to primary skills to Mouse 1 and Mouse 2 as well as 2 secondary skill slots (2 more will open up later in the game) and I was using them a lot. I can see a great deal of tactics later in the game needed to find the right combination of skills and runes for your play style.
Yes, the first playable area in D3 was, overall, pretty easy, but let's face it, when the beta of D2 came out, it was also pretty easy and people were QQing all over the place of how easy D2 will be. Well, D2 turned out not to be such a pushover (after the initial content) afterall, and I'm sure Blizzard has some nice surprises up it's sleeve for D3 that we haven't the faintest clue about.
It's official, D3 is day-one purchase for me!
Saturday, April 21, 2012
Wonderful weekend of gaming here, Tera Beta AND Diablo 3 beta!!!
After getting XPadder and creating a template for Tera, I got into the beta and saw that Tera's controller config AND XPadder's config were vying for the same buttons. It took several hours, but I found a way to disable Tera's controller and it is working wonderfully with XPadder!! Tera really is a joy to play with a controller, at least the warrior is. Going to try magic/bow characters soon as that will require actual aiming, but the controller works extremely well and very enjoyable. Only issue is accepting/turning in quests, I have to move the mouse cursor with the right stick over the dialog box buttons in order to click them, but it's a minor annoyance as everything else works better than expected.
Diablo 3 beta, FINALLY. Only through 6 levels so far in the beta content as a Wizard and I'm enjoying every minute of it. I don't enjoy rpg games where you can use ALL of your skills in several layers of skill bars, I love the tactical feeling of many skills but having to choose a few between them like Guild Wars.
Couple things I am not liking though;
1. No stat assigning, can't assign the stats you get every level yourself.
2. Could not find a way to determine magic damage in my skills, I know you can turn it on but not sure where.
3. Skills and runes unlock automatically as you level up, takes the joy out of hunting for your needed runes, even though there are only 5. I would have liked to see more runes and runes specific to each character, and then having to hunt for them in the wild.
After getting XPadder and creating a template for Tera, I got into the beta and saw that Tera's controller config AND XPadder's config were vying for the same buttons. It took several hours, but I found a way to disable Tera's controller and it is working wonderfully with XPadder!! Tera really is a joy to play with a controller, at least the warrior is. Going to try magic/bow characters soon as that will require actual aiming, but the controller works extremely well and very enjoyable. Only issue is accepting/turning in quests, I have to move the mouse cursor with the right stick over the dialog box buttons in order to click them, but it's a minor annoyance as everything else works better than expected.
Diablo 3 beta, FINALLY. Only through 6 levels so far in the beta content as a Wizard and I'm enjoying every minute of it. I don't enjoy rpg games where you can use ALL of your skills in several layers of skill bars, I love the tactical feeling of many skills but having to choose a few between them like Guild Wars.
Couple things I am not liking though;
1. No stat assigning, can't assign the stats you get every level yourself.
2. Could not find a way to determine magic damage in my skills, I know you can turn it on but not sure where.
3. Skills and runes unlock automatically as you level up, takes the joy out of hunting for your needed runes, even though there are only 5. I would have liked to see more runes and runes specific to each character, and then having to hunt for them in the wild.
Tuesday, April 10, 2012
Tera beta impressions and Guild Wars 2
Guild Wars 2 Pre-purchase became available today, with the way Guild Wars 1 is GW2 is an instant purchase for me. Not sure when the next beta weekend is, but I can only hope it's not too far away!
I managed to sneak away a few hours last weekend to play the Tera US beta and I was overall slightly impressed. Unfortunately they didn't really innovate important mechanics; questing, travelling, skills, talking, running, jumping, it all feels strangely familiar and boring.
However, it's Tera's combat that really shines. There is no targeting, basically you swing your weapon and if an enemy is within the your hit box, the enemy gets hit. It really was a joy to romp through large groups of enemies swinging, slicing and dicing my dual-sword-wielding warrior. I do believe that this is the first mmo where non-magical classes are more enjoyable to play for me.
During the beta I rolled a Warrior (dual-wielder tank), Slayer (BAS tank), Sorceress, and a Priest. The Sorceress and Priest felt very limited at first as I was just spamming the same spell over and over again for the first several levels, however the Warrior classes were immediately fun and engaging.
The game is very pretty, all the character toons are hawt, with armors for both sexes that really dont make any sense as far as protection is concerned, but rather designed specifically to please the visual senses. This doesn't really matter to me, I enjoy looking at a fine female character during my travels in an mmo, that's just me. And, to be honest, that's a pretty big part of an mmo's enjoy ability for me.
Howevery, all of Tera's other mechanics feel very stripped, basic and boring. I leveled up my Warrior the farthest to level 13 and while I learned many skills I only learned 2 new skills, all the other skills were updating my already learned skills to the next level. Questing is very primitive, go here kill that, and even some delivering or receiving quests felt very thrown together as a great many of them were delivering and receiving merely a few feet away from the quest character right next to him, really? If it weren't for Tera's great combat, I would have turned it off way before the beta weekend was up.
What will make or break Tera for me, is the controls. The game mechanics scream for a gamepad, and the game works extremely well with an Xbox controller, however that's the ONLY controller that works with Tera. My PS2 controller hooked up via USB was instantly recognized by Tera and a helpful UI popped up with a button layout and what skill each button was mapped to, however the buttons were all switched around, the right stick for camera controls was switched as well (Y axis controlled X, and vice versa), and the left stick didn't work so I couldn't even move around.
I will be visiting this game every beta weekend I can get to to see how things have changed, but this will definitely NOT be a purchase unless it goes cheap or F2P much later after release. Time will tell.
I managed to sneak away a few hours last weekend to play the Tera US beta and I was overall slightly impressed. Unfortunately they didn't really innovate important mechanics; questing, travelling, skills, talking, running, jumping, it all feels strangely familiar and boring.
However, it's Tera's combat that really shines. There is no targeting, basically you swing your weapon and if an enemy is within the your hit box, the enemy gets hit. It really was a joy to romp through large groups of enemies swinging, slicing and dicing my dual-sword-wielding warrior. I do believe that this is the first mmo where non-magical classes are more enjoyable to play for me.
During the beta I rolled a Warrior (dual-wielder tank), Slayer (BAS tank), Sorceress, and a Priest. The Sorceress and Priest felt very limited at first as I was just spamming the same spell over and over again for the first several levels, however the Warrior classes were immediately fun and engaging.
The game is very pretty, all the character toons are hawt, with armors for both sexes that really dont make any sense as far as protection is concerned, but rather designed specifically to please the visual senses. This doesn't really matter to me, I enjoy looking at a fine female character during my travels in an mmo, that's just me. And, to be honest, that's a pretty big part of an mmo's enjoy ability for me.
Howevery, all of Tera's other mechanics feel very stripped, basic and boring. I leveled up my Warrior the farthest to level 13 and while I learned many skills I only learned 2 new skills, all the other skills were updating my already learned skills to the next level. Questing is very primitive, go here kill that, and even some delivering or receiving quests felt very thrown together as a great many of them were delivering and receiving merely a few feet away from the quest character right next to him, really? If it weren't for Tera's great combat, I would have turned it off way before the beta weekend was up.
What will make or break Tera for me, is the controls. The game mechanics scream for a gamepad, and the game works extremely well with an Xbox controller, however that's the ONLY controller that works with Tera. My PS2 controller hooked up via USB was instantly recognized by Tera and a helpful UI popped up with a button layout and what skill each button was mapped to, however the buttons were all switched around, the right stick for camera controls was switched as well (Y axis controlled X, and vice versa), and the left stick didn't work so I couldn't even move around.
I will be visiting this game every beta weekend I can get to to see how things have changed, but this will definitely NOT be a purchase unless it goes cheap or F2P much later after release. Time will tell.
Friday, November 26, 2010
Gran Turismo
Well, Gran Turismo 5 is finally here! After 5 long years of waiting for a GT on the PS3 I am finally able to get back to real racing! Although it's a bit of a dissapointment, but that's not to say that I still love this game and I see myself playing it for a long time.
Physics - INCREDIBLE! I mean really, absolutely amazing level of detail. Every race, with every car, there's something different, something unexpected, special and totally satisfying because that's what I think would happen in real life. Like drifting around a sharp turn in a RWD car, coming out of the turn and my rear tires slip onto the gravel just as I gear down and my rear end just spins out. It's beautiful.
In GT4 and earlier games, it was very easy to rush around a course, ram into cars to slow down and just plain abnoxious driving was just too easy to win. Now, it's a whole 'nother level. Yes, there is some damage, on premium cars, but there really is no damage system (more on damage later), but with the vastly improved physics wiping out is easier and more time costly than before.
I tested this out last night, I came around Trial Mountain's tunnel straight away and slammed into the leader car at full speed. In GT4, the other car would of careened into the wall and I would have just sped up past him. In GT5, I slammed into him so hard my rear end lifted up and to the left as my front end got caught up on his rear sending us both to the girder and me facing the wrong way. I lost 3 spots because of that.
On the same track I was able to take the chicane at the end of the track over the dirt and gain about 4 seconds on the AI in GT4. My first lap in GT5 I overturned my vehicle; second lap I hit the warning bumper at a weird angle and I spun out losing 2 spots. Third lap I almost spun out but was able to keep control, but I only gained about a second. This exploit and others like are still possible, but now much more dangerous and costly if you don't use it perfectly.
Graphics - Overall this is a beautiful game but some things just really detract from the visuals. Like the standard cars (GT4 cars), they seem to have just imported the car models from GT4. The premium cars are incredible, but there are only 200 of them. And the shadows on anything moving are just butt ugly!
Control - Pristine, of course this is Gran Turismo we are talking about here. Drifting and slipstreams make huge headways in this game and add much needed tactical realism in this game. Playing with the Standard PS3 controller is just fine and very responsive, the variety and depth of the vibration feels very intricate. I was able to feel the difference between my rear wheels losing traction around a turn, and losing traction while accellerating, and both feel very different depending on the drivetrain. This helps tremendously when "listening" to your car and adds a whole 'nother level to this game.
Sound - Dopplar effect makes huge strides in this game, everything sounds perfect. Every car has it's unique sound, revving, etc, and it all sounds excellent. Unfortunately I don't have my surround sound hooked up, but even through the TV I get an excellent range of accoustics. Can't wait to turn this up on a good sound system.
Damage - Well, there is, and there isn't damage. There is physical damage, but only on the 200+ premium cars, HOWEVER, damage is completely visual only and has no detrement to the way your car handles. You can run 150mph into a wall and all you might see is a dented bumper, eh.
If you advertise damage as part of the main features of a game, you better go the distance. I want the fear of going around a turn and running into the rear of the car in front of you and damaging the radiator taking you out of the race, or busting a CV joint causing your car to wobble and lean, or another car running into your rear causing abnormal turbulence at high speeds, or busting your trunk so bad it blocks your rear view mirror. Hell, even if it isn't cosmetic, but "simulated" engine/frame damage would be a nice addition.
Those are the kinds of real-racing dynamics that I long for in a racing game. And I don't think I'm going to get it on this generation consoles.
Anyways, bottom line, GT5 is awesome and I will be playing it regardless for a long time.
Physics - INCREDIBLE! I mean really, absolutely amazing level of detail. Every race, with every car, there's something different, something unexpected, special and totally satisfying because that's what I think would happen in real life. Like drifting around a sharp turn in a RWD car, coming out of the turn and my rear tires slip onto the gravel just as I gear down and my rear end just spins out. It's beautiful.
In GT4 and earlier games, it was very easy to rush around a course, ram into cars to slow down and just plain abnoxious driving was just too easy to win. Now, it's a whole 'nother level. Yes, there is some damage, on premium cars, but there really is no damage system (more on damage later), but with the vastly improved physics wiping out is easier and more time costly than before.
I tested this out last night, I came around Trial Mountain's tunnel straight away and slammed into the leader car at full speed. In GT4, the other car would of careened into the wall and I would have just sped up past him. In GT5, I slammed into him so hard my rear end lifted up and to the left as my front end got caught up on his rear sending us both to the girder and me facing the wrong way. I lost 3 spots because of that.
On the same track I was able to take the chicane at the end of the track over the dirt and gain about 4 seconds on the AI in GT4. My first lap in GT5 I overturned my vehicle; second lap I hit the warning bumper at a weird angle and I spun out losing 2 spots. Third lap I almost spun out but was able to keep control, but I only gained about a second. This exploit and others like are still possible, but now much more dangerous and costly if you don't use it perfectly.
Graphics - Overall this is a beautiful game but some things just really detract from the visuals. Like the standard cars (GT4 cars), they seem to have just imported the car models from GT4. The premium cars are incredible, but there are only 200 of them. And the shadows on anything moving are just butt ugly!
Control - Pristine, of course this is Gran Turismo we are talking about here. Drifting and slipstreams make huge headways in this game and add much needed tactical realism in this game. Playing with the Standard PS3 controller is just fine and very responsive, the variety and depth of the vibration feels very intricate. I was able to feel the difference between my rear wheels losing traction around a turn, and losing traction while accellerating, and both feel very different depending on the drivetrain. This helps tremendously when "listening" to your car and adds a whole 'nother level to this game.
Sound - Dopplar effect makes huge strides in this game, everything sounds perfect. Every car has it's unique sound, revving, etc, and it all sounds excellent. Unfortunately I don't have my surround sound hooked up, but even through the TV I get an excellent range of accoustics. Can't wait to turn this up on a good sound system.
Damage - Well, there is, and there isn't damage. There is physical damage, but only on the 200+ premium cars, HOWEVER, damage is completely visual only and has no detrement to the way your car handles. You can run 150mph into a wall and all you might see is a dented bumper, eh.
If you advertise damage as part of the main features of a game, you better go the distance. I want the fear of going around a turn and running into the rear of the car in front of you and damaging the radiator taking you out of the race, or busting a CV joint causing your car to wobble and lean, or another car running into your rear causing abnormal turbulence at high speeds, or busting your trunk so bad it blocks your rear view mirror. Hell, even if it isn't cosmetic, but "simulated" engine/frame damage would be a nice addition.
Those are the kinds of real-racing dynamics that I long for in a racing game. And I don't think I'm going to get it on this generation consoles.
Anyways, bottom line, GT5 is awesome and I will be playing it regardless for a long time.
Monday, November 22, 2010
GT5 and COD:BO
Gran Turismo 5 comes out this Wednesday! Lucky for me I already have Wednesday off, but unlucky for me I didn't pre-order the game. So I will have to scrounge around town for an available copy that morning.
I'm not too worried about it, I'm not one of those types of people that MUST have the game on day one. Sure it would be nice, but I'm not going to cave just because I have to wait a few more days.
Still playing COD: Black Ops, just finished Single player over the weekend. It was a great story and it was fun playing, but the real game is online multiplayer. I just hope they release a patch to fix the stuttering issues that I have. At the start of every match I stutter and lag for the first 5-10 minutes, very frustrating. When it gets smooth, it's very enjoyable, especially customizing your loadout, ranking up in levels, and going on killing sprees.
This is my first FPS game that I have played with my left hand. It's difficult. At heightened times, my right hand keeps jumping off the keys and my left hand keeps staying still. So I will sometimes end up running into a wall or just standing still like a n00b. I keep getting better, but I'm no where near the level of playing as with my right hand. Damn carpal tunnel.
I'm not too worried about it, I'm not one of those types of people that MUST have the game on day one. Sure it would be nice, but I'm not going to cave just because I have to wait a few more days.
Still playing COD: Black Ops, just finished Single player over the weekend. It was a great story and it was fun playing, but the real game is online multiplayer. I just hope they release a patch to fix the stuttering issues that I have. At the start of every match I stutter and lag for the first 5-10 minutes, very frustrating. When it gets smooth, it's very enjoyable, especially customizing your loadout, ranking up in levels, and going on killing sprees.
This is my first FPS game that I have played with my left hand. It's difficult. At heightened times, my right hand keeps jumping off the keys and my left hand keeps staying still. So I will sometimes end up running into a wall or just standing still like a n00b. I keep getting better, but I'm no where near the level of playing as with my right hand. Damn carpal tunnel.
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