Virtual Adept

Had a really good time this weekend playing EverQuest 2 that I got in the SOE Station Access Collection. Lyndal and I got it at the same time to try out. For one thing we have been using Xfire and/or Teamspeak to do voice chat during the game and that just makes it a heck of a lot more fun. So we got some evil characters up to around level 9 or so in EQ2. Here are some random thoughts about the game.

First, leveling up is way faster than EQ was, but maybe it will slow down a lot later. I think it’s even faster than wow up to 9. Secondly, the game has some very decent quests. Way better than the quests from EQ1. About on par with WoW, really. I enjoyed the quests, especially the one where you have to go murder this guy’s ex girlfriend because since they are for opposing factions he can’t have her so he’d rather her be dead. There were other choice ones, like poisoning a loud mouth dark elf, and of course the standard go kill N mobs, or collect X widgets. But I did enjoy them overall.

The graphics to me are not as good as World of Warcraft. Sure, technically they are fairly impressive, but artistically I just think WoW is heads and shoulders above EQ2 and pretty much every other MMORPG. I also think the animations in WoW are much smoother and nicer looking than EQ2’s. Also the environments are nowhere near as compelling as WoW’s, at least not so far as I’ve seen. I was able to get EQ2 to run in a window much like the way WoW works so that was nice, I like being able to access Firefox or whatever while playing. EQ2 didn’t want to play nice with Xfire though, so I had to disable that.

The bottom line… would I pay $15 a month to play EQ2? Well, in a world without World of Warcraft, for sure, no problem. But I think I still prefer WoW over EQ2. I can see myself getting a toon or two up into the mid teens or early twenties in EQ2, though, because it is pretty fun. I will say that EQ2 is so far the best MMORPG I’ve played besides World of Warcraft, even better than City of Heroes which I liked a lot. So if you don’t like WoW for some reason and still want a fantasy MMORPG, check it out.

Here is a nice review of Titan Quest, the latest Diablo 2 style game for the PC. I tried the demo for this and was pretty impressed, so I bought the game. But I haven’t had time to sit down with it for much quality time. My initial impressions of it are that it’s a very good D2 style game, and if you liked Diablo 2 you should definitely take a look at the demo at least.

I recently resubscribed to World of Warcraft in anticipation of the imminent release of the expansion pack, The Burning Crusade. Well now Blizzard has decided to delay the expansion until January. Bummer. On the plus side, this means I’ll probably actually be able to log into the game over the holidays.

Had an opportunity to play World of Warcraft again for the first time in a long time. I played one of Lyndal’s characters while we tried out Xfire and Teamspeak with WoW with mixed results. Teamspeak worked well, Xfire not so well. It looks like I may decide to just did resubscribe to WoW. WoW looked great on my new computer, which I didn’t have when I quit WoW some 16 months ago. It really brought back memories. I even remembered the quests, heh. I guess it really impacted me in a major way, it’s a powerful game that can do that. Looking forward to Burning Crusade!

I have characters on Thunderhorn and Argent Dawn. Thunderhorn I’m horde and AD I’m alliance.

This long winded titled RPG called Legend of Heroes: A Tear of Vermillion for the PSP has been taking up a bunch of my portable gaming time lately. Developed by Japanese RPG developer Falcom, apparently this game is actually the third in a series of games that started on another platform. However, knowledge of anything from previous games is not required at all. Legend of Heroes is a story based RPG with a turn-based combat system. The graphics are kind of old school 2D top down view with very well drawn artwork and some nice 3D special effects for spell effects and such. The water effects look very nice and other environmental effects, but the overall graphical feel is somewhat retro. This is actually part of the game’s charm.

You play as a young man named Avin who was seperated from his sister at a young age when an evil wizard broke into the church where they were raised and tried to capture her. They were seperated during the fighting and Avin as taken away to be raised by a sage in a small village. After he grew older, the sage died and entrusted Avin with a quest to deliver a sacred artifact to another sage in another village. Avin met another young boy Miles and the two became good friends as they grew up together in the small village. Miles decided to go along with Avin on his quest. And so the two young men set out to find Avin’s sister, and along the way they had many adventures.

The combat system used in Legend of Heroes is a turn-based system where you select what you want each member of your party to do and then the action occurs in an order determined by each combatant’s speed rating. Movement and placement on the map is actually important, because for melee attacks you must be able to move within range of your target or you can’t hit them, and for spells you must be able to get within the spell’s range or area of effect for them to work. You kind of have to do a little guesswork there because you pick what you want to target at the beginning of the turn, but they are not guaranteed to be in the same place when that character’s turn actually comes up during the fighting. This gives the game a bit of strategy in choosing what targets you want to attack.

In addition to normal attacks with normal weapons like Avin’s swords or Miles’ boomerang, you can use spells. Avin knows black magic and Miles knows white magic, which is about what you’d expect. Black magic is more for offense and white is more for defense and healing. There are other types of magic too. You will meet one character early on who can do something called spirit magic which lets her bring forth elemental spirits who can attack all enemies at once. In addition to spells, which use magic points, you also have skills, which are kind of like spells or more like unique character-based powers, but these skills do not cost any magic points to use. Then there is also something called “deadly”, and that is a massive deadly attack that does a great deal of damage and is customized for each character. You can only use deadly when your deadly meter is full, and it gets full by doing regular attacks on enemies, each regular attack adding a bit to the meter until it eventually fills up. Knowing when to save and when to use your deadly attack is an important strategy.

The story so far after about 6 or 7 hours is very well developed. The characters actually feel more realistic than the typical kiddie type characters you get in most RPGs. Yes, you are playing a young man, Avin, but the characters do just feel more realistic in many ways. For example, the methods of speech used by the characters just seems more grown up and less contrived as you might expect in other Japanese console RPGs. The plot itself is actually pretty deep and it involves quite a bit of politics and deception, so it’s less childish in many ways than a lot of other RPGs I have played. This has drawn me further into the game world and keeps me wanting to play more of it.

I will report more about the story and any flaws I happen to find in the game as I play further. If I had to rate the game today I’d probably give it a A, it’s really entertaining so far.

I once blogged about Real Arcade. This is Real Network’s online gaming thingy. You can access it for free, and download all the demos you want. Most of the games are priced between $10 and $20 normally, if you aren’t a subscriber. However, for a subscription fee of $8/month to Real Arcade GamePass, you get 1 free game per month, and a $5 discount on all the other games you buy that month. Once you buy a game it is the full version and yours to keep and play forever*. Pretty much all the games I’ve played on there are worth a pidly $8 which is what you pay to get a free one each month. You do need to remember to log in each month to use your free credit, because they do not cary over at the end of the month. Use it or lose it.

So anyway the reason I am posting about this again now is that I had quit the service a long time ago, but just now resubscribed. If you subscribe now, they are giving away a free game called SuperCollapse II which is a puzzle game somewhat similar to Columns except stuff comes up from the bottom, and it has several variations. Also if you subscribe now, you get another free game of your choice. Your first month is free, and even if you keep the two free games and then quit you pay nothing and have no obligations. You can quit the service at any time. I couldn’t pass that deal up.

If you like casual games, especially puzzle games, I recommend checking Real Arcade GamePass out, it’s a pretty sweet deal now if you ask me. It got me to resubscribe. You can also just view the list of the games they offer. Also a really cool pirate trading game called Tradewinds Legends is now marked down to $10, or only $5 if you are a subscriber. If you’re looking for another game to use your free game credit on, I recommend either Geneforge or Geneforge 2 if you like RPG games. Don’t let the retro graphics of those games fool you, they have very cool gameplay depth.

Lastly, if you do decide to sign up for this, and you don’t mind me benefiting from it, I can get a 15% off coupon if I email you an invitation that you can use to sign up with. But if you don’t, that’s okay too. Other than that I do not get any benefit from Real for writing this, I just thought it was a sweet deal (two free games with no strings attached), so I decided to post about it.

* Forever - but don’t lose the email account you used to sign up to real, because to access Real Arcade to re-download the game in case you reformatted or something, you need that email address (and preferably the password but it will email that to you if you forgot). However, I think you can back the games up to a CD or something but I haven’t tried that to make sure it works when you copy it back to your hard drive.

World of Warcraft is heading to the big screen [thanks Ars Technica]. Blizzard has shown that they have a cinematic flair with all of their excellent cut-scenes in their games, so hopefully this will be a first - an actually good video game movie.

Just as long as Uwe Boll goes nowhere near it.

Vanguard: Saga of Heroes is the hard-core MMORPG that is being developed by Brad McQuaid at Sigil Games Online. Brad was the lead designer of the orignal EverQuest. Apparently although Sigil previously had arrangements with Microsoft for them to be the publisher, they’ve bought those rights back and instead have made a deal with Sony Online Entertainment to add Vanguard to their stable of games under the Sony StationAccess Pass program. Good or bad? I dunno, but it’s a bit more likely I might give Vanguard a try some day maybe. New brought to you via Aggro-Me, where there is a lot more analysis of this merger.

Joystiq posted up a blurb about an upcomming RPG for the Nintendo DS, Lunar Knights. This is apparently set in the same world as the awesome Lunar: Silver Star Story and Lunar: Eternal Blue originally for the Sega CD, then Saturn, Then Playstation. This one has vampires!

So far I’ve spent about 16 or 17 hours with Oblivion, and now feel like I’m familiar enough with the game to make some non-spoily comments.

Overall Oblivion is the most immersive game I’ve ever played, period. You really feel like you’re there, in a richly detailed fantasy world, and there’s very little to the game to pull you back to reality and make you feel like “oh yeah, I’m playing a game”. Every time I’ve sat down to play I’ve been under for hours without even realizing the time flew by. The game lets you chart your own path and do your own things. There’s a bazillion quests, a bazillion dungeons to explore, and more. YOu can play the game however you want, be it stealthy, gung-ho actiony, or however. It’s extremely flexible.

Graphics are probably the best I’ve seen in any game, especially the outdoors landscapes. The forests literally look like real forests. The terrain looks realistic. There’s plants and grass, and it’s all so extremely realistic. In towns the detail is astounding, and the architecture has a very realisic style to it, you really feel like this could be a medieval town. The skies are excellent, and quite beautiful no matter what time of day it is, and constantly changing. Indoors, in the dungeons, feels like a dungeon. There are traps to avoid, it’s gloomy, the rocks and walls all feel very realistic. The game’s excellent physics system is another factor in adding to the immersion of this game.

The faces on NPCs are somewhat ugly in many cases, but look realistic. I think Bethesda was going for a specific realism factor over beauty and style. Facial expressions and the lip synching during the all-voice-acted conversations is also realistic. Almost all the voice work I’ve heard so far is very good if not great. Patrick Steward did an amazing job as the Emperor. In addition to the voice work the other sound effects are well done, and so is the game’s music. The music has an epic feel to it during the highlights and battles, and a more subdued, quiet feel during exploring.

This is a game a person can spend hours and hours just exploring the world. In many ways it sticks to the same formula as Morrowind did. I never got into Morrowind, though, because I felt that the NPCs were too stale and the quests were too boring. So far that hasn’t been the case with Oblivion, but this is still an Elder Scrolls game. Don’t come to this game expecting a different style of game than it is. If you didn’t like the style of MW, you won’t like Oblivion either. Non-linear, explore the world at your own pace, that’s what this game is about. There is a main quest, and I’ve heard that some have finished that in around 16 hours or so. I haven’t really tried rushing through that, although I did do the first bit of it with the gate to Oblivion. Oblivion is another plane, where the demons come from, and you do get to explore the demon realm of Oblivion, which is kind of cool.

The game system seems pretty much the same as Morrowind’s. Basically you have a “class” but that only determines what skills you start with, and the actual gameplay itself determines which skills go up. I had to restart after closing the first Oblivion portal, I couldn’t handle the stuff in Kvatch and I was noticing real problems when leveling up my custom class “Asskicker” on my Dark Elf character. I had too many unrelated skills and the character just wasn’t focused well enough I think.

So I decided to make a blue-haired mage name Kudos, a high-elf. I made it through the starter dungeon and started exploring some nearby ruins. I think I’m going to like this character better. I said “mage” but really this is another custom class, I call a “Spellsling”. Magic specialization, favored stats of Intelligence and Willpower. Skills are Destruction, Conjuring, Restoration, Stealth, Security, Marksmanship, Light Armor. Tactics so far involve sneaking up on people, shooting them with a poisoned arrow, then shoot again until they close to melee, then fry their ass with spells. Seems to be working so far, but I haven’t even gotten a level up yet. Anyone want to comment on my choices?

Yet, Oblivion is not perfect. There have been a number of complaints from people who have experienced crashes. I myself have experienced one crash to desktop in 16 hours of play. I’ve also had the game lock up or crash when exiting a couple of times. Performance, on the other hand, is excellent, the game runs extremely smooth for me. My rig is far from top of the line, but also not bottom feeding either. P4 3.2ghz, 1gb RAM, GF 6800GS 256mb.

The other not quite as bad flaw is the game’s interface. It definitely has some consolitus going on. There’s not enough customization allowed on the keyboard, and the menu system is a bit slow and cumbersome to work with. Not hard to figure out, but not efficient. The game does allow you to hotkey weapons to number slots (or spells, or potions). But you can only use keys 1 - 8, for some unknown reason. On the plus side, the game pauses if you hit the menu key (i’ve remapped it, it defaults to TAB), and then you can select spells or equip weapons on that screen, even during a combat.

The Journal automatically keeps track of quests which is nice. It will even put a marker on your compass to let you know where you need to go. You can also bring up a map, and if you don’t want to go overland the long way, there is a quick-travel icon that you can click the places on the map you’ve visited (and some you haven’t) and instantly travel to that location. That’s pretty handy for getting around this very large game world.

In conclusion, Oblivion has sucked me in like no game since World of Warcraft. I’m thoroughly enjoying myself. Right now if I had to rate this game I’d give it 9 / 10. I consider this a must-own game for anyone who prefers a non-linear, free to do what you want style of RPG. If you played and enjoyed Morrowind, this is a must-own game, it’s got everything good about Morrowind and a lot more and does it all all a lot better. If you didn’t enjoy Morrowind, you might not like Oblivion depending on what you didn’t like about Morrowind.

I’ll post more on this game probably in a few weeks when I have played even further and hopefully know more about game balance, have experienced more of the quests, and can give more insight into the setting/story.

I never really liked Morrowind that much, so I surprised myself when I decided to pre-order Bethesda’s latest RPG in the franchise, The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion. So far Oblivion has grabbed me like no PC game in a long while, and I just hope it lasts.

The first thing I noticed about Oblivion is the graphics. Oblivion has pretty much the best graphics of any PC game I’ve ever seen. The forests/outdoors are so realistic it’s mind blowing. The only game I’ve seen that has water in the same league as this is Half Life 2’s Lost Coast demo. Oblivion uses an HDR (High-Dynamic Range) technique for lighting that gives it a very realistic feel. Character models and animations are very realistic, especially facial expressions on the NPCs when they are talking to you, it’s like they can convey emotion.

So, the eye candy is very nice, but Oblivion also has gameplay coming out of it’s ass. But it’s a lot like MW’s gameplay, so if you didn’t like the “explore everywhere, do your own thing, living world” aspect of MW you won’t like Oblivion’s. But Oblivion does it better, much better in fact than any game I’ve ever played. It’s truly an open-ended RPG, but it also has a pretty interesting main quest so far.

The physics system is perhaps the best I’ve ever seen in any game. It’s absolutely amazing. At the very beginning of the game you find a bow and arrows, and there’s a well with a bucket hanging above the well. If you shoot the bucket, the arrow sticks in it, and the weight of the arrow alters the center of gravity on the bucket making it tilt slightly. Retrive yoru arrow and the bucket readjusts back to center. This is just one example, but everything so far in the world just feels right, it’s quite amazing. Bodies of slain enemies when falling down seem to fall realistically. There was another scene that was pretty cool where a bunch of goblins were standing around down an incline and there was a stack of logs, I snuck up and pushed the logs over and they rolled down the hill, crushing the goblins.

I’ve been reading some reports from people that have had crashes and stability issues. So far, I’ve not had a single crash or lock-up. About 6 hours of play time so far, in two long sessions. It’s really too early to say how widespread the crashing is.

The menu interface could be better. Not all functions can be assigned to hotkeys and not all keys are reconfigurable, but most are. I haven’t bothered doing it tho, the default interface is pretty good. Much better than Gothic games, I’ll say that. And I was willing to put up with a lame UI for Gothic. Oblivion’s interface takes a little getting used to but it isn’t non-intuitive like Gothic was. The menus aren’t terribly efficient, but they’re easy to figure out.

You can hotkey spells and equipment to the number keys. So I have 1 set to my sword, 2 set to my bow, and 3 set to my fireball spell. I set 5 up for the healing spell. Stuff like that. Makes it very quick to select what you want to do and do it. And as a bonus, unlike MW, you can have a spell active and a weapon active at the same time so you can bash away and heal yourself without swapping out. I haven’t gotten good at blocking, I am going to have to learn that soon. But so far I’m more of a ranged guy, using stealth and then shooting my bow gives a massive damage bonus, so I can take out a lot of enemies with one hit.

Game system is a lot like Morrowind’s. I’m just hoping it’s more balanced than MW’s was. I can’t really say for sure if it is or not, still early in the game. I can say that I’m enjoying this game immensely more than MW, and the game system this time around for some reason isn’t a detraction. I usually hate systems where you get better at skills by using them versus spending points on what you want, but Oblivion so far is so immersive it just feels right. That may be the “new” of the game tho, so I’ll report more back after I’ve gotten past the initial excitement to see if it still has appeal later.

I just got a new keyboard, a Zboard MERC, which lets me customize the keys even if the game doesn’t, and has a very nice “fps” layout with tons of keys very handy together on the left side. I haven’t had to customize keys yet but I can see where I might want to a bit. The MERC keyboard so far is pretty nice, I can see this being a real boon for FPS games especially. So far all the keys in Oblivion mapped to appropriate and intuitive keys on the MERC without me having to do anything except for the inventory (tab) key, which is a bit smallish and I might want to reassign that one. There’s even a quick-save, quick-load pair of buttons on the merc real handy like and those mapped automatically too.

Going to play more Oblivion tonight and over the weekend, and will post more about it later. I’ll also post more about my impressions of the MERC keyboard when I have a chance.

I have been reading a few web sites, and learned that Fallout 3 is not going to be shown at E3. For those that don’t know, the Fallout series is one of the best role-playing game series that has ever been made. Developed by Interplay’s internal studio, Black Isle Games, Fallout 1 and 2 were exceptional RPGs that allowed the player unprecedented freedom of action. What you chose to do in the game had an impact on the story, and how you chose to develop your character made the games play out in very different ways. And the post-apocalyptic setting was done with such style and flavor that one couldn’t help but love it. I heart Pip-Boy.

Anyway, so Interplay went kaput and so did any hopes of another sequel (after the much maligned, but still fun Fallout Tactics, a squad-based tactical strategy game that sadly didn’t have the original series’ style or open-endedness). That is, until Bethesda aquired the rights to the Fallout name and setting, and sometime in 2004 began production of Fallout 3. No one really knows what changes Bethesda is making to the Fallout franchise with this iteration, but based on the developers discussions the game is extremely important to them, and they are taking their time with it, much like Oblivion.

Since Fallout 3 will not be shown at E3, we can pretty much rule-out a release in 2006 and probably early 2007. I guess fall 2007 is about the earliest we could hope to see it. Here’s hoping that it will be worth the extremely long wait!