Video Games

World of Warcraft – Part 03 – Blood Elves

So yeah, my experiment with MMOs has come to a bit of a culmination of events. In general, I’ve been finding myself kind of frustrated and stuck in a bit of a rut when it comes to games in general. In order to try to spice these things up, I decided to do something I haven’t ever done and have actively preached against for ages. I signed up for an MMORPG. I don’t mean, started playing some watered down Free to Play game, I mean a paid monthly subscription (not that i can’t cancel it later or anything).

I considered trying something newer like Guild Wars 2 or Secret Wars but I’m seeing those as being a bit pricey. World of Warcraft has been the most enjoyable of these titles I’ve tried and it’s the “Big Daddy” of the genre, so why not. It also helps that Blizzard has the base game on sale so i get the game and a month of play for $5.

With this upgrade, I decided to make a new character. I’ve been playing my orc a bit but I’ve been finding his gameplay a bit boring. He’s a Hunter class, so his primary features are ranged attacks and his pet. This means every fight amounts to me standing 50 feet away from the enemies while my little pet Boar runs in to take all the damage and deal a bunch of damage. It’s easy, and safe, but I’m essentially playing a support class for a damn pig, and I’m not real content with that.

So I created a new Warrior class Blood Elf.

I have no idea of Blood Elfs and Warriors are a good combination or not. Some of the things I read online suggested not, but I wanted to play warrior and I liked this character, so I picked it. I really want to play an Alliance class but I think my next character is going to be a Tauren, and I’m going to try my hand at making him a “carefully curated and useful party character”. For this Blood Elf, I’m pretty much just running with “hey this seems like a cool ability/move/weapon/etc, so she is probably totally useless for anything meaningful (which seems to be Tank/Support/DPS).

Also, Blood Elf is not a class Trial players can use.

Anyway, so far, I’m enjoying playing as a Warrior and a Blood Elf much more than playing as an Orc Hunter. I have all sorts of fun useful skills that let me heal and damage enemies at once and I’m not limited on what types of armor I can use like the Hunter is. I also get to explore a whole new part of the world which is considerably less Brown than the Orc lands. Lots of forests and fancy crystals and architecture. The monsters seems more varied as well, I swear 90% of the monsters over on the Orc land are Scorpions or Boars. Though the other day I did kill some Giraffes. Medieval fantasy giraffes, not real ones.

One of the real interesting aspects of playing WoW is getting used to the impermanent aspects of the game play. The closest comparison i can think of is The Elder Scrolls, where I can defeat an enemy or townsperson or whatever, and find their body laying there for ages even if I walk away (in some areas). Meanwhile, in WoW, I’m on a quest to disable some sort of mechanism, which I do, and the little energy bolts disappear for some nice visual feedback, and then, while I’m still in the room battling some enemy, the thing turns back on. My first thought is that I need to do it again, maybe do all three faster. Then i realize, this is an MMO. The system needs to reset itself in case another player is coming along. It’s kind of funny to think that this machine will never be off.

It’s even more hilarious when you consider any quest where you have to slay some specific enemy. Some poor NPC leader gets to die and respawn, for all eternity. In fact, I got to see this first hand when i defeated the boss, but was killed by one of his followers. When I returned, the boss had respawned. I was frustrated a bit because it meant I had to fight the boss again. Then I noticed his body was still laying where I had left it nearby. I just needed to collect the loot and leave.

The loot being his head. Blood Elves are apparently obsessed with collecting heads, I think I’ve collected like 5 or 6 so far.

Anyway, on the subject of dying, I’ve found that warriors seem to die a lot. I guess the idea is that I’d recruit a friend to be a healer to help keep me alive. I’ve found that fighting more than one enemy at a time is almost an instant death sentence. It’s getting better now that I have some abilities that can heal and hurt at once, but I still am finding it easy to get overwhelmed. This wasn’t a problem with the Hunter Orc, since he has a Boar tagging along to absorb damage.

Anyway, I have no idea how long I’ll stick with this, but I’m enjoying it for the most part so far. I’m really looking forward to getting a mount, if only so I can travel faster.

World of Warcraft – Part 02 – Giving it a Chance

Feb 17th, 2012

by Ramen Junkie.

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So, I was trying to hold out just a little longer before writing another one of these for something else… something, better. I will probably get to at least one more of these posts, maybe two if I manage to get to my level 20 cap. If you’re just tuning in, or have not gotten what’s going on here, I’m working on playing through some of these many Free to play MMOs available on the market and giving some thoughts. I’m starting with World of Warcraft since it is “the game”, or at least, it once was and seems to still be what other MMOs are measured against. Part one, where I start my adventure can be found here.

I wanted to go ahead and get a part two out there. At this point in my play, I can not fathom any reason why anyone would pay a monthly subscription to play this game. Ever. I have absolutely no clue how this game is so popular even from a social aspect angle, there are much better experiences out there. There are also way better gameplay aspects out there.

Now, I am still sticking it out to see if things get better, which they might. Firstly, I am currently at level 9, which as near as I can tell in this game, is synonymous with being on the edge of *more*. Or even on the edge of possibly what could be called the “real game”. For example, There are several features, even basic things like achievements, which I currently can’t get which say “Unlocks at level ten”. I’ve encountered several quests and even a phantom ghost wall which said I had to reach level 10 in order to access them. I remembered that I needed to upgrade my hunter skills and while so far I’d unlocked something like one per level, level ten adds at least half a dozen including things like the ability to train more pets.

So once I pass this level 10 mark, I can already see a whole new wealth of possibilities. As i said, there will be at least one more post on this topic, after I’ve done some of this new stuff.

I also have made it to some sort of very large city. So far, I’ve been to three towns, all were mostly deserted of other players and all could be viewed end to end from any point in the town. I have recently arrived at a large city and it was chock full of other players, many riding mounts and all considerably higher level than I.

On the other hand… the combat is boring. Traveling is boring. Here’s the pattern as I travel between towns, I wander through a vast open empty area, eventually I reach an area full of enemies, these enemies all attack one at a time and often only after being provoked. Being an archer, primarily, this means i target the enemy. I walk towards them mashing “2” until i am in range of my special attack, then I stand there mashing 2 while the normal auto attack shoots arrows and my pet runs in to take all of the damage. After killing the enemy, I walk up to the body, i look a few useless trinkets that I’ll later sell, then i find the next enemy.

This is slow and tedious.

The travel itself is also slow. There may be a way to point to point travel that I have not discovered, but as much as I think, say, the fast travel of TES or the point to point TPs in Second Life kind of “break the experience” (when I played oblivion I made a point of NEVER fast traveling), trudging through the land of Warcraft is really really laborious. I’ve left several old quests behind from my current city and I am absolutely dreading the idea of wandering back to complete them.

So, I’m really holding out for more excitement, and I have a feeling that I’ll either find it soon or not at all.

World of Warcraft – Part 01 – Newbie

Feb 14th, 2012

by Ramen Junkie.

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I’m doing something here that may or may not stick, not the WOW thing exactly but something related to it.

Anyway, this morning, I did something I have not done in my many years of being a “gamer”. I opened a World of Warcraft Account. This is supposed to be the end all be all of MMORPGs so I figured that I should probably at least try it. I mean people make a living doing this apparently. Or at least Chinese sweatshop managers do. Also people break up with their families and lives for this game and forget to eat or feed their babies over it.

I generally steer clear of MMORPGs. It’s a pay per month grind trap. The new trend though is limited “Free to Play” style MMOs which either rely on micro transactions for income or limit how far the player can advance. I really am not up to a reoccurring $15 monthly fee. Yeah, I could afford it but frankly, I’d get more enjoyment out of an Audible subscription.

On to WoW.

The first task was to choose a character. I picked an Orc, because Orcs are pretty bad ass and being Evil is “cool”. I then had to choose a class, which I ended up with a Hunter. Hunters use bows and can do sort of some of everything, at least that was the impression I got. In other free form games, The Elder Scrolls as the obvious example, I tend to migrate towards a bow wielding magic using sneaky sort of assassin play style. Hunter seemed like it would work all right. Later research would show this was a good choice as apparently Hunter is a good class for “Soloing”. I really am not interested in befriending a bunch of strangers on my foray into this game right now, so Soloing is good.

After choosing my class, I got a little story about some names which sound vaguely familiar from Warcraft II and Warcraft III. I then get dropped into a small village with a pet to keep my company. Then I get to undergo a series of quests.

So my chief complaint about MMORPGs is the overall shallowness of it all. The joke is that they are nothing more than “a series of fetch quests”. “Go collect XXX of item YYY”. “Go kill ZZZZ of Enemy WWWW”. That was always the joke. I’ve only really played one MMO for any length of time, and it was Final Fantasy XI, which I hated. World of Warcraft, is like playing that joke. Maybe there is more later, I keep hoping there is more somewhere but so far, all I have done for about 3 hours, is wander through an empty desert killing XXX scorpions and YYY boars for various people. I also, made the mistake of picking the “best armor” options as my reward, which means I now own a pretty cool set of Mail armors, which I cannot wear until Level 40. I should probably add that my free account caps out at level 20. I am a GENIUS like that…

Anyway, I eventually got myself sent to another village where I get to kill soldiers instead of scorpions. Also, I died for the first time. The death experience seemed mostly inconsequential other than my pet ALSO died, and now I am lonely.

Anyway, I play to stick it out some more in this game but the overall time may end up being less than I had planned. I am already 1/4th of the way through my level cap and, honestly, I am rather bored by the game.

Stay tuned for more updates on World of Warcraft in the future.

Review – Time Lord (NES)

Sep 8th, 2011

by Ramen Junkie.

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Time lord | NES | Milton Bradley | 1989

This game, for me, was a bunch of disappointments, right from the start. Every year, like any good greedy kid, I would provide my parents with a list of things I wanted for Christmas. A friend of mine had this pretty neat overhead RPG titled Times of Lore. I loved to play Times of Lore and really wanted my own copy to play at my leisure, so of course, I put it on my Christmas list.

I later realize that the best explanation is that my parents misread what I had written or misinterpreted it and bought Time Lord. In hind sight, my dad, being a Dr. Who fan, probably was rather stoked for the idea of a game called Time Lord, despite that this game really has nothing to do with Dr. Who. I was a good sport about it and I’ sure my 10 year old self didn’t really make the connection between the similar titles of Times of Lore and Time Lord.

Of course, how can you go wrong with that box? There is a knight, holding a space helmet. That’s like, total win! There’s even a dragon!

This game actually has an interesting concept, you travel through various eras of time collecting orbs and defeating bad guys. The isometric viewpoint is pretty neat and the Orbs themselves have some little tricks which must be accomplished to collect them. You get different weapons depending on the era, swords for the Medieval age, Guns for the Western Age, etc. You also have a set timer to complete the game, as there is a clock ticking up in the future till the destruction of the world. Apparently Time travel isn’t an exact science since time in the future still rolls onwards.

I never did save the future, I could never complete the third stage, the Western era. I don’t know if my copy of the game was buggy or if there was some trick where the boss would regenerate health but I could spend 20 minutes pounding the giant Mexican dude at the end with bullets and yet, he would never ever die. I think there was a Pirate themed level but I never played it.

So, once again, disappointment. Not only did i get stick with a game i didn’t really want and had never heard of, it turned out to be impossible to beat. I’m sure there is some trick to it that I just could never get down, shoot him in the back maybe, or just constantly shoot without letting up, who knows, it still left a bad taste.

Review – Frequency (PS2)

May 18th, 2011

by Ramen Junkie.

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Frequency
PS2 – 1-2 Players
Gameplay – 7/10

Graphics – 7/10

Sound – 9/10

Replay – 6/10

Overall – 7.3/10

Frequency is generally a hard game to describe. There isn’t really anything that is much like it. The closest thing I can think of is “DDR without the down arrow”, but, there is so much more on in
addition to that so the description doesn’t really fit very well. For one, the tracks are a lot longer. Then there’s a little ship thing that you’ll actually have to control your on top of following the
pattern…

Well, maybe I should start out simple and then get ease you into the more complicated parts of the description. Imagine that you have a line, and that line represents a song. Now, turn that line into an 8-sided extruded tunnel. Your ship travels down this tunnel. There are no branches or forks but the tunnel does twist around a lot to some nice trippy visual effects. Essentially it is still the straight line. Now
take that tunnel and divide it up into several shorter segments. Each song is divided into segments; each segment is roughly 8 measures long.

Ok, now, back up one step to the 8 sided corridor. Each side of the corridor is lined with patterns of nodes that follow the sound of certain parts of the music. Each side represents a different layer of
the sound. For example, pretty much every track has a basic starting side representing the lowest drum or bass line. Pretty much every song has a vocal track. The techno based tracks may have a couple more bass sides or some synth sides. The more rock like tracks have more guitar sides, the hip hop type tracks tend to have several vocal sides.

The trick here is that the music for that side doesn’t play continually until you unlock that side. When the track starts out you’ll have a basic drum line. As you unlock the guitars and vocals, they will join in. It’s really cool to hear the songs sort of unfold as you complete more sides. It’s sort of like getting a custom made remix each time you play through the track.

To complete a side you have to follow patterns of nodes. You must complete two consecutive measures of nodes on a side to unlock it. Then the side will play on its own for the rest of that segment. See each segment has its own set of sides. Though some of the sides repeat throughout the song in more than one segment, it’s probably not possible to collect all 6 sides of a segment in one pass.

But wait; I said there are 8 sides in our tunnel yet only 6 sides to capture. You see, after you’ve unlocked 5 of the 6 sides you’ll unlock freestyle sides of that segment which can be used to collect bonus points. There are two type of freestyle sides, Axe and Scratch. Some tracks have two of one type but most have one of each. The scratch creates a record scratching effect as you move the analogue stick as well as placing different sound samples into the music as you press the buttons. The Axe track adds digital
sort of “crystal” sound effects to the music as you move the analogue stick and hold one of the buttons.

As mentioned before, you also collect nodes along each measure This is the part that is comparable to DDR. You move along and hit the nodes as they pass under your target, the nodes have left right and middle and work similar to DDR’s left, right, and up arrows and correspond to the Square, Circle, and Triangle buttons respectively. The X button is used to activate power-ups you collect. There are two power-ups. Auto-Capture will complete a side for you, and multiplier will increase your score. You can also use the L and R buttons to capture nodes but honestly this could have been better designed to alow you to turn between the sides of the tunnel. Instead, you move between the sides using the left and right control pad buttons. Also, unlike DDR, you are penalized for hitting an incorrect or non-existent node and must start over on your 2 measures in a row sequence.

Sound thoroughly confusing enough? It’s not really as bad as it sounds if you’re at all familiar with Rhythm style gameplay, especially DDR.

The object of the game is to make it through all of the segments to the end of the song. The number of segments varies with the length and complexity of the song. Harder difficulty songs tend to be longer. As you travel along the song your life bar is depleted as you miss picking up nodes. It is increased when you complete a side. You pick up power-ups by completing a measure with power-up nodes. In addition to the main game, there is also a freestyle mode where you create a song of your own using samples from the in game music. You can even play the homemade tracks in the regular game mode. This mode is sadly fairly limited in what it really lets you do. You aren’t really so much making music as telling the game when you want the pre made music to play.

The game comes with 25 songs, some by popular known artists such as No Doubt or Fear Factory, others by less well-known artists such as Funkstar De Luxe or Symbion Project. Pretty much all of the music is good though. In Easy mode, only the first 15 songs are available, in Normal there are 20 songs and Expert lets you play all 25 songs. The songs are divided into 5 song stages and you must complete the first 4 songs of an earlier stage to unlock the next higher stage. Each stage has 4 songs initially playable and a 5th song that is unlocked by getting a combined high score of a certain amount on that
stage. To complete a difficulty you complete all of the songs on that difficulty.

This is fairly frustrating for anyone who is unable to complete the harder difficulty levels. It also means a fairly limited song selection for those same people. Twenty songs isn’t much when you consider DDR tends towards 70-80 or so tracks. All that keeps a rhythm game going is variety of music and needlessly limiting what music choices this was isn’t a good idea if you want to keep the player interested. The remix mode isn’t a very fun addition to help keep up interest either.

The difficulty doesn’t help either.

The game starts out fairly simple but becomes excessively difficult in the later stages of the game. The highest difficulty is certainly more difficult to complete than the highest difficulty on say, DDR. I can pass most Heavy DDR songs with a controller, I can’t pass a single one in Frequency. The overall difficulty is compounded because of the extra interaction required by changing sides. Also the tunnel moves around at weird curves and whatnot which can be slightly disorienting, Additionally the node patterns tend to become extremely complex and the game is pretty unforgiving in regards to mistakes. This can lead to a lot of frustration and a pretty unsatisfactory game experience.

All in all, Frequency is a pretty fun game as far as rhythm games go. There is also a sequel called Amplitude that is supposed to be even better but in my opinion it drops a lot of what makes this game
interesting in favor of making things a bit easier. Unfortunately maybe easier is what this game needs. Though the visuals are interesting, the music is good and the game play is unique without being lame, it’s a bit repetitious and limited in what can really be done. The steep difficulty later in the game hurts as well.