Quick Movie Review of Doom: Hot Pursuit

With a title that belongs in a video game, Hot Pursuit is exactly what it says on it's IMDB tin. The funniest parts were in the previews, and the enjoyment I got out of this movie, was more from going to a $6 Tuesday showing with my wife, than what the movie provided. You can skip it, and hope they do better work in the future.

Best parts were Reese as José Beiber, and the news casts of their descriptions. Everything else was unimpressive for a comedy.

Dungeons & Dragons: Neverwinter

So Cryptic has Neverwinter out on Steam, which I thought was a perfect opportunity to jump in and play this F2P MMO. Now, Neverwinter does not play like Champions Online, though I wish Champions played a little more like Neverwinter!

I'm not very far in and haven't gotten a companion yet. Here are my impressions thus far.

A) Quests auto-update and change as you go through them

This is a big plus for me. For a long time, in older games, you would have all the objectives as is already on there, and you would finish a quest and get a new one added.

B) Dialogue trees

Even if they don't lead anywhere, the conversations are nice.

C) Voice acting on the main plot

This is becoming more common as MMOs continue. This is nowhere near lets say, SWTOR, but feels more than I remember from WoW.

D) Player created Missions and stories

I suppose people who played City of Heroes might know about player created content. The Forge lets you create a series of events and combats for the player to deal with. I haven't explored it much yet, but I've played one level, and the amount of things that they did, were nice, and I can see a great deal of possibility in this game.

E) Dynamic, action based combat.

I feel that the game's combat is similar to videos I've seen of Wildstar. You see where enemies will attack, and you dodge those areas, while playing an almost 3rd Person Shooter. Very fun.

F) Group Events and Beatdowns, ala Champions Online

These like mini-instances. Go in, fight off waves with a team, and take down a big bad. Your involvement decides your reward.

G) I haven't felt the pressure to buy yet

10 levels in and I haven't felt any restriction to my game play. Not saying it won't happen eventually, but they have a game that is more than fun enough on its own, and they give you space for profession materials, and I've earned one extra bag so far (which I haven't even needed yet).

Rift: Free 2 Play

So Steam did this big splash screen about having Rift Free to Play. So I decided this is the perfect time to try the game. No start up cost, just jump in and play. I played the game for about 6 hours then uninstalled.

Not because it was a bad game, but because I started seeing potential issues with the game, and didn't want to invest deeply into it. For one thing, I played it for six hours straight. I can't even pull off doing that with League of Legends. This was mostly due to discovery and experiencing a new game, but there was a feeling of constant activity in the game.

The final 2 hours were spent in this sort of random group questing, where you are piled together with several other people, and just rampaging across the countryside finishing off quests. I'm not even sure where the quests were coming from, just that I went from killing spiders to plants to boars without batting an eye. Rewards in this were fast, and I didn't feel like I had earned it.

The Rift system is interesting, but at one point there were 30 guys just bashing some rock or something. Again, rewards were easy to get in this. Because of the easy rewards system, I was able to get pretty good pants and weapon for my level (7 dps jumping up to 14 or 21 or something, can't remember the exact numbers).

I didn't get deep enough into the soul system, but I was annoyed at the auto-leveling that it tries to trick you into (I thought pressing the pop up would let me go set the points, but it automatically places the points).

Questing was a brain dead endeavor, where you don't read anything and just follow the mini-map (very much like WoW). Which really put me on edge with the game. I did like the everyone has a pet kind of thing (my Teleporting Rogue had a pig from the hunter tree, and my warrior had a pet cat).

The other negative was that the races just felt like different flavored humans. The only MMOs I have played where I enjoyed the race selections where EQ2 and WoW.

So, if you want to try out a F2P MMO, Rift is very decent. I never felt forced to pay, though they do a good job of letting you know you can (I didn't play long enough to need more bagslots btw, but that would be one reason to pay). The RMT in the game seems reasonable, though it does the one thing I dislike, which is converting real money to their play money. Though that seems to be the standard, so there's not much to do about that.

This is a recommend to check out, though in the end it wasn't for me, because I can't afford to lose myself for such long periods of time.

SWTOR: F2P

This is a difficult discussion to have at this very moment. As it is, F2P in SWTOR is in a state of flux, and they are slowly granting the Preferred class of players more for having spent money. Essentially, a Gold Membership still have the best deal, if you are going to be doing EVERYTHING in SWTOR, otherwise, you can piecemeal yourself the aspects of the game that you want.

The issue is that for a while, if you weren't Gold, you might as well not even bother. But they are changing that. As a note, I spent $5, to get Preferred status. That means I get several bonuses, as well as unlocking some cosmetic functionality (legacy name display, for example).

Things I don't like in the game, are things like, having to unlock the ability to wear Purple gear (unnecessary as it may be, it limits what I can get from the game). As well as unlocks for accessing certain gear. Even your partner's skin requires an unlock to use, and to even get at one point! That's right, there are rewards you cannot pick up unless access to it is unlocked. And you can't even unlock it later to use in most cases!

That aside, they have quite a few cosmetic items, which I'd be interested in, if I invest enough into the game to get to level 50. The game is quite playable for free, but I suggest dropping at least $5, even early on, to get the preferred member status.

Also, though the limit is only 2 characters, you can make 2 characters per server, so it is quite possible to negotiate all the storylines. As far as I can tell, members to go from Gold to F2P will keep their characters, but only 2 can have items bought for them. I would need further testing though, and I just didn't have the money to test it out.

If you like the game, I suggest getting the $5 bonus pack they sell in the cartel store (gives a lot of little trinkets, a ride, and gives you preferred status).

Cardboard Box Assembler Review

My son is usually a source of what is fun for me. That said, he has a way of finding interesting flash games online. One of them that I fell in love with, and would love to see expanded upon is Cardboard Box Assembler (distributed by Adult Swim Games). I played the game through the Armour Games online portal.

CBA (Cardboard Box Assembler), is a game where you play a guy running around the outside of a box. The game is a kinetic puzzler to get all the items necessary to open the portal and head through the exit. Movement is fluid. Jumping and running feel visceral, and has weight to it.

New concepts are introduced simply and by themselves before being combined with other aspects of the game. As you run around, you can see the other side of the box, which sometimes can hint at how to get where you need to go.

With that in mind, there is no hint system. If you are stuck, all you can do is skip the level. With that in mind, there are simply not enough levels in the game. The game would require more levels to be a full release to a console or portable device. It also feels that the character should be able to do more. Despite looking agile, the character can not wall jump, or do any other agile movements other than jump and run.

The 3D box effect is what first drew me into the game. It is amazing for a flash game, and reminded me of an old Atari game called Rubick’s cube. The storyline is throw away, and should be ignored, vigorously. I was trying to find out who made the game, and the best I could come up with was that it used to be called Cubesome. I suppose that adding the story is what made it an Adult Swim game, but honestly it would have done better to have chosen a better storyline.

There’s a lot of directions this game could go in, and I’m surprised I haven’t heard more about it expanding beyond a flash game. It is an amazingly fun little flash game that could easily become something more. Especially as a downloadable game on the 3DS or PSP Vita. The game could do more, like having more movement choices for the character, more levels, and more complicated structures (other than just cubes). The storyline is a severe issue though and should be dumped and recreated before release (as it manages to be both not funny and stupid).

Terraria - Review

Though there may be several similarities between Terraria and Minecraft, there are enough differences that I am able to call them different games. While some differences are rather obvious (2D vs 3D), others can be more subtle.

Terraria is a game about exploring the map and defeating boss monsters. Though there is no plot, it has the start of a plot on its way. What this means is that currently Terraria is more likely to transform into an adventure/sandbox game than Minecraft. Though this may not be what everyone would like, it is most likely the best direction for the game to go.

Terraria has a simple crafting interface. This makes it easy for first time players to discover how to craft things, but it also makes discovering new items a kind of accident, by simply holding items in your inventory.

There are a variety of enemies in Terraria, as well as invasions that can occur later on. Sometimes an event will occur, such as the Blood Moon rising, which will cause a mass of zombies to attack your home. Some enemies such as worms also have unique sounds they make before they attack.

Creating homes in Terraria have certain requirements, and allow NPCs to move in. Placing blocks is easy and the player has a range around them in which they can place things. Also working together with someone can be fun, and the players can join the same team so they can see their distance from the other.

With that in mind, multiplayer is easily griefed. Someone can go into a play session with a pocket full of dynamite and cause players to constantly fall into everlasting doom. Bosses will also sometimes randomly attack, which can cause a waste of resources if you think you can fight it, or a waste of time if you get killed.

There’s not much guidance in the game as to what to do next. This is in part due to the limits of what can be done. The Guide NPC can at least help the player figure out how to get other NPCs to show up, but beyond that there is nothing else to do in the game other than explore, fight and build. The issue is that those activities feel pointless without some sort of endgame goal.

The music is rather forgettable ambient sounds. The graphics feel like 16-bit SNES style graphics, and there are no mods to the game that I am aware of. The game does still get updates, so it is far from over.

With that in mind, there are probably more items, monsters, and NPCs coming. It would be nice if there was the ability to learn spells for the game, to give more purpose to the mana that you can collect. A quest system might also give a reason to do certain things in the game. One of my favorite aspects of Terraria is making a village. It would be exciting to have more NPCs.

In the end, Terrara is more than just a 2D Minecraft. It is fun, and worth checking out if you like 2D sidescrolling action adventure games.

Champions Online, the First 2 weeks

I've purposefully been making slow deliberate progress in Champions. I'm trying to absorb information, and I am testing some of the limits of low level game play.

With that in mind, there are frameworks I still haven't touched, and I've been mostly doing custom frameworks. On another interesting note, they are planning to add more frameworks down the line (for free), which is something rather nice to look forward to.

I haven't had much chance for grouping, and many of the bosses are scaled for a well played single player, and their little zones scale up with more players. This is true of grouping in general, and you may find yourself overwhelmed if you're grouped up, but running around solo. But this doesn't cover enemies higher than Super Villains, at which point you WILL need a good team to defeat. Most of your stats come from gear, and your superstats (which increase with your level). You get SOME stat bonuses from leveling, when you train in the powerhouse for it, but without good gear, you won't see much of an improvement in your guy.

After Crisis (essentially the first 10 levels of game play), you will have a choice of leveling in the Desert, Canada, or Millennium City. There really aren't low level quests in MC, so I suggest doing Desert and Canada first, and only heading to MC to do Super Group registration, Marketplace, or to check it out in general. Doing BOTH post-crisis zones of Desert and Canada, will only get you around level 17-18, at which point you'll really want to do the MC missions. (McMissions, they're really close by, and over with pretty quick ^_^ ).

That's my current highest level, finishing off, MC, trying to get to 20.

Auction House, or in this case the Marketplace, is still in it's infancy. I've sold all of one item so far. It doesn't show up on the map, and only displays the first 100 results. There is still much to be improved on it, so luckily we're in an MMO, and understand that it might be completely revamped.
Crafting is still developing, but as a suggestion, do NOT level up crafting to over 100 etc, until you have ALL the recipes of that level. If you don't grab the recipes you'll have to wait until you're retraining professions (which apparently is something they WANT you to do, since you don't forget recipes). Power Replacers can be sold to others, and some of them unlock costumes replacements for weapons.

Costumes are interesting, and as you level up you get extra costumes slots (currently the first time you do it will be free, but this wasn't always true), also when you join a Super Group. Costumes can be a complete remake of your character or a modification of your current one, and allows you to do things like role-play a Hulk type character, or a Secret Identity of your hero. The Tailor that you go to do your costume changes also lets you change the look of your weapon.

I touched on this in a previous post, but there's also sidekicking, which ups your level to the high level leader's point, and with the exception of gear, let's you join your high level friends in missions they're doing. Grouping in this game often times means tagging along for someone else's mission, and if feels it's easier to group if you're not going after only YOUR goals.

The dev team is very dedicated to this game, and fixes, and patches are coming fast and often. They're constantly doing little improvements, and come the Halloween event (Blood Moon), they'll have their first free "expansion".

Overall, the first 2 weeks have been fun, and the game is still in it's nascent stages of development after going live. The team's dedication I saw during Beta is what made my descision to get a lifetime account. I truly feel that this game has the potential to become great.

Of interesting note, I read in an interview that their UI will be universal for all their games, so expect Star Trek Online to play similarly to Champions, and any and all fixes applied to Champions to make it to STO and back.

Champions online, open beta

There's currently alot going on, and the forums at cryptic are abuzz with people who after playing Open Beta, decided this wasn't the game for them.

The biggest hang ups are, A) It's NOTHING like the Champions Pen and Paper game, B) It's going to have Microtransactions, and C) Zones are instanced.

So why isn't it like the Champions Pen and Paper? Well, quite simply because the reason that the Pen and Paper worked was because of your imagination. Instead in the MMO, you have to use powers and costumes they've designed, and either hope it matches you imagination, or tweak your imagination so that it matches what you get. This leads into the fact that it's also a level based MMO. So you start off as a weak hero and learn more of your abilities as you gain levels (which doesn't match a superhero pen&paper game at all). As for the look of your character, let's remember no MMO is ever truly "done" and they can always add more later. Which I'm guessing is their plan.

What they have now is pretty good, but after awhile you do start feeling limited (I'm saying around the 1000th hero you see you'll start seeing similar heroes). To be fair, I've seen look-a-likes of Jesus, Lincoln, Samus Aran, Superman, Batman, Hulk, Ironman, Goku, Vegita, Spawn, Obi-wan Kenobi, Warhammer Space Marines, a Draenei, various Succubi, and more.

As for powers, the energy builders (auto attack that increases you energy, aka endurance, which you use for bigger attacks) or end-builders, are pretty basic, and they did a good job making alot of them feel different, if even slightly. Each powerset (Electricity, Martial: Claws, Force, Telekinesis, Fire, Might, etc) has it's own flavor and provide some sort of direct damage and aoe attacks. Furthermore they have passive abilities (some are defensive and others are offensive), and you can build your character to act as a tank, dps or support.

The idea of tanking is to get the enemies attacking you, and you want to be able to take a hit. There are "advantages" you can get on some powers that make them generate more threat. Then you have your dps, whose goal is to kill things, and when in that role they do less threat (roles can be switched by bringing up your "builds" screen. Support can be done in two ways, either you're locking down enemies, or you're healing allies (support also has it's own role that can be switched to). These roles provide bonuses to health, damage output, end-building, buff/debuff strengths and more.

The game is more "action" than WoW, in that you can block incoming attacks by using a block button, and it's almost completely necessary to do so to prevent and early death (blocking will change a 200 hit attack to only hit for 80, for example). Aside from that, I didn't notice much of any real difference other than having more attacks that do knockback. The fights are also faster paced than WoW, in that ON level there are some specials that are strong enough to oneshot enemies (archers Sonic Arrow for example). And some attacks use a charge mechanic (in that you hold it down to make it stronger).

The environments have alot of destructability to them, and as your strength goes up, you're able to pick up larger things to throw or bash enemies with. Each stat gives bonuses that are clearly labeled. Strength for example, increases the size of objects you can pick up, improves your change to knock someone down, and helps you break out of tangible holds. There's constitution (health), endurance (energy), dexterity (crit chance and evade change), intellect (pet increase, and better intangible hold escaping), ego (crit damage increaase) and recovery (increased equilibrium and rate of energy building).

Now at times as you level you pick a "superstat" this stat is what your dps increase comes from. So for example you pick Intellect. At that point, Int increases your damage, but you'll still want dex and ego to do crits and bigger crits. You will end up with 2 superstats, so that's something to think about. If you want to tank, you'll likely choose Constitution as a superstat, since you'll be stacking it for survivability it will also increase your damage. This isn't very clear "ingame" and is one of my nitpicks about the game (that it doesn't explain it clearly).

That's how the game plays. You level up, increase your stats and group up to take down evil-doers. Very MMORPG like. There's PVP, but right now it feels like a joke, some players you can't kill even if they stand there and do nothing (since some defensive passives are too powerful right now).

The game plays kinda like Phantasy Star Online, several abilities can be used faster in a sequence, or charged for more effect or damage (sometimes it's better to do 2 shots real quick for 80 damage instead of charging a shot for 100). The world is instanced in that if you go to Canada you'll be in one of 30 Canadas with 100-200 people each. You can switch to another Canada if you want (let's say your friend is in Canada 9 and you're in Canada 18). Zone chatting is for that instance only, but you can whisper your friends on other instances. Grouping let's you guys go together into a zone. This can create some interesting situations. For example, going to city hall, I can go inside, which is it's own zone. I can come from zone 8, you from zone 6, and your friend from zone 18, and we'll all end up in the same City Hall Zone.

Each map has it's edge point, where you can no longer go any further (though at least you can "see" further. This combined with the instancing makes people feel like they're not in a single massive world, and was a reason I've heard repeatedly, as to why people were disappointed with the game.

Finally, there's the microtransactions. This is something we don't really have info on, but just the idea of it was enough to sully the game for some people. When I find out more about what's in the C store, I'll post it.

Bottom line, if you were expecting an emulation of the pen and paper, or want the world to be all together and not sharded across several instances of a map, or if you don't like microtransactions at all, this is not going to be the game for you.

This game is not like WoW, and it might not be what you're looking for. The combat is fun, and the travel powers are great, but the game currently doesn't have fishing.

PS: I STILL haven't found the AH, and I don't know who to ask for it.

PSS: If you don't like superheros, that might be a barrier to entry as well.

PSSS(is that even human?): Thanks for the comment on where the AH is, once I check it out I'll do a post about it.