Seven months without an entry. That is inexcusable. In my defense, though, it has been justified. In that time, I have purchased a home, secured full-time employment, and had a new baby. Needless to say, blogging has been one of the last things on my mind.
That said, I do plan to make this quite a bit more regular. I need to sharpen these linguistic and pseudo-journalistic chops.
Okay. Enough preamble. Time for some real body.
The past several months have inundated me with gaming goodness. So much, in fact, that I am kind of drowning. Here’s an outline:
- Assassin’s Creed: Revelations
- Mass Effect 3
- Demon’s Souls
- Team ICO Collection
- Star Wars: The Old Republic
- Dota 2 beta
- Skyrim (Thanks to Wayne for this!)
- Batman: Arkham City
Just looking at the list tires me out. Here is the progress I’ve made on each so far:
Assassin’s Creed: Revelations - Not started
You know, it’s funny. I played the AC: Brotherhood multiplayer as soon as I got it. I haven’t touched this game at all yet. Mostly because I got SW:TOR, then got back into Mass Effect 2. Really looking forward to powering through the story here and getting AC3 later this year.
Mass Effect 3 - Not Started
I tried to get as much of ME2 done as I could before ME3 released. So much for that. Playing through ME2 as vanguard, and I think I’m getting close to the end finally. Been Paragon up to this point, but going to start tossing in more Renegade stuff just to mix it up. Watching my wife play ME3. We’ll see how differently our stories progress.
Demon’s Souls - Soul level 50-60ish
This is a great time waster. Luckily, I have the patience for it...mostly. Love the old-school challenge level of it. Still want to get Dark Souls. :D
Team ICO Collection - 8 colossi down; ICO untouched
Went through a period where I didn’t have an Xbox around. Went back to my PS3. This was much more kid-friendly than Demon’s Souls, and one of my favorite games of all time (SotC, that is). Still just as great as I remember. Now that I’m playing on a 42” HDTV instead of a tiny 17” CRT box, I can actually see those blasted lizards and fruit I read about back in 2006.
Star Wars: The Old Republic - Half dozen characters, Main is Jedi Seer at level 40ish
Great, great game. Love the story. Can’t lie, though. There is still a lot of work to be done to catch up to MMO standards. Update 1.2 should be making some good strides. However, probably won’t be back to this for some time. Newborns kind of make MMO gaming nigh impossible.
Dota 2 beta - played a few bot matches
Still not quite sure how I feel about this. I’ve been playing League of Legends off-and-on for about two years. However, Dota 2 looked like it had a great art style. I’ve never played DOTA proper, so the learning curve was pretty steep. The basics were the same, but there were some key differences. Such as denying. Neat strategy, but I never focused on it. In Dota 2, death costs you money, instead of just making your conqueror richer. My favorite difference though, was the environment interactivity. Some characters could walk through and hide in clumps of trees. You can even use trees for things such as healing and character abilities. It’s a small touch, but it’s nice. Since going back to LoL, though, these differences are not missed. Dota 2 will probably be the next “hardcore” MLG offering, but I’ll likely be sticking with LoL.
Skyrim (Not yet started)
When I start this, thus ending my life, I vow to do one thing in particular: save my game in two slots. I will NOT have a repeat of Oblivion where I get 25 hours in, on my way to becoming a vampire, when my save gets corrupted. Never again, Bethesda. Never again. ಠ_ಠ
Batman: Arkham City (almost 40% complete)
Amazing game. Top notch voice acting, great design, awesome combat. Not just best Batman game of all time, but definitely in the top 50 games of all time. (I say "top 50" simply because I really don’t know what my rankings would be.)
So, that’s what I’ve been up to and what I have ahead of me. Also, Diablo 3 releases in just about a month. I probably won’t get it at launch, but I have a feeling I’ll have it some time this year at least. Then, there’s Borderlands 2. And, Bioshock: Infinite. And, Assassin’s Creed 3. Oh, boy. “What an age we live in!” as they say.
For now, Gnome out.
Not too much I can comment on here except Star Wars, TOR.
ReplyDeleteI was also left with similar lukewarm feelings at best. It IS undeniably an excellent game, great graphics, great Star Wars IP, well designed, everything you want/need in an MMO... and yet, so much a feeling of "too little too late", in my opinion.
As someone who was playing WoW from beta/Day 1 and many years after, good and bad, along with a number of other MMOs, it is all so... recognizeable and "deja-vu".
There is, objectively, little to criticize it for from a pure game design point of view, it was just way too much of a WoW clone to hold my interest. I simply could not shake the feeling that every aspect of the game was started out with a meeting where the designers sat around and started with "ok, so here's how this goes in Wow, how can we change it/make it better?"
At almost no point did I feel any originality or daring game design decision. It really felt like a re-skinned WoW, which, in a different time and place, if you had asked me if I wanted such a thing, just in Star Wars universe/lore, I would have said hell yeah. But the end result just totally failed to capture me, I don't have the time, energy or interest to develop something like a full fledged, maxed out MMO character (and the massive amount of playing hours that requires) like I did with Wow when it came out.
When WoW came, heck even before it came out (was reading about it long ahead of time and got into beta), it was revolutionary, mind blowing, the "idea" of an MMO was clearly there already with Everquest and such, but no one had really given it that incredible addictiveness and accessibility like only Blizzard seems to be able to infuse in their games.
I'm rambling now and my shift is almost over (hence the numerous comments on your blog in one day, ha) but in short, SWTOR left me deeply disappointed, and I can't even say it's the fault of Bioware of the obviously talented designers who I know spent years working on that game (many of them right here in Austin, just a few blocks away).
My conclusion was that it was not a bad game at all, just... bad timing, it missed it's mark by about 2-4 years. Had it been released a few years back, it might have conquered the world.
That, or more bold design decisions/deviations could have helped differentiate it from the pack. Guild Wars 2 for example, is totally excellent, and even though it also failed to "capture" (just like the first one did, right around when WoW came out), I can recognize that it is uniquely different and very good in its own way. I just look for different things in an MMO for myself these days, I guess.
Only MMO that I can get into these days is EVE online, for whatever that's worth.
Also, Batman games, Arkham A. and Arkham C, YES! SO EXCELLENT!!!! I don't even LIKE US comic book IPs (much more European aesthetic in that sense, entirely personal) and even then, the gameplay in those games is so utterly excellent I do not even slightly hesitate to list either game in my top ten of all time.
Graphics, story, overall design and most importantly ADDICTIVE FUN, those games get A+++ in all categories as far as I'm concerned, again as someone who approached them blatantly biased against Batman and comic book universe stuff in general. That's how good they are, Arkham City most especially.
Anyway thanks for the blog posts, you helped me pass a long wednesday afternoon working the same customers you do!
Have a good shift.
Thanks for the thoughts, Bud!
DeleteI recently revisited SWTOR after a long hiatus, in which I was playing Mists of Pandaria. I've refound a love of the game, but I think my personal issue is that I'm finding it hard to put the requisite amount of time/effort required for an MMO as a parent. I love to game, but my kids need to come first. Perhaps it would be easier if my PC wasn't as far away from our main living space, but I kind of like that it's tucked away and separate so it doesn't dominate my house.
I've played around with a few EVE Online demos in the past, and I did like what I saw. Because it works even when you're offline, it seems to work better for people who can't play every day. Not going to play for a week? Queue up some skills that take days to research. Hell yeah! I've just never been able to justify a subscription, though, because I was playing other games at the time.
I recently finished Arkham City, and it was a blast. I need to write up my review pretty soon. I was apprehensive about Arkham Origins, but I'm starting to get pretty pumped for it. I have an an idea for a storyline that I feel that they'd be remiss to leave out. ;)