I’ve recently been dabbling in the world of Ebberon through Dungeons and Dragons online and I must say that the free to play MMORPG has surprised me. I entered my first dungeon and was greeting by some narration by the mysterious “Dungeon Master” in an attempt to recreate the feeling of playing a tabletop. I loved it, it gave me a feeling that I was doing more than just running around beating the snot out of anything that moved in the hope of getting some fat loot.
One particular adventure had me reach the final room of a dungeon to be faced with a puzzle and I must say I was amazed, here was something I couldn’t just bluster through with brute force as is most often the case in MMO’s. I imagine when replaying adventures it is less impressive but as a change of pace it was welcome. I also found secret doors, hidden treasure chests and locks that would require a rogue to pick open which meant groups have more to offer than simple combat utility.
DDO has a fairly low concentration of enemies from what I’ve seen so far which fits the D&D 3.5 edition ruleset which it is based upon where some powers can have very tight limits on the amount they can be used but doesn’t lend itself to the action game mentality that I initially approached it with. Being able to use my main Paladin ability once per adventure to add a negligible damage boost seemed unrewarding and meant I ended up forgetting I even had it. D&D 4th edition would be more friendly to an action game system but wasn’t out at the time, I can understand that remodelling the whole game from the ground up would be a mammoth task but if a sequel were to be based in the 4th edition rules then it would certainly be a game to watch out for.
Tuesday 20 July 2010
Monday 10 May 2010
Patchwork Heroes
I dug out my PSP yesterday to play an odd little game called Patchwork Heroes, I haven’t used my PSP for a great deal other than Monster Hunter in the past which I have always thought was a shame so I’m always on the lookout for something interesting.
Patchwork Heroes sees you protecting your hometown from attacking airships by climbing aboard and chopping them up until they lose enough mass to fall out of the sky, this simple idea is expanded upon by the placement of enemies, comrades to be rescued and reinforced sections. Players clamber across the side of the ship as Titori and pressing the circle button saws out a chunk where he is clinging, when a player separates one section from another the smallest section falls away and the airship gets a little closer to stopping
If players can cut off a section that an enemy is clinging too they drop out of the sky and your Mojo meter fills up, this can be unleashed to provide an essential boost in times of need by granting invulnerability, speed and the ability to saw through even the reinforced sections of the ship. This is essential to dismantle some of the more intricate airships and means you need more forethought about when to saw.
Rescuing comrades is an interesting system as they are used as spare lives if you get hit but also can be instructed to detonate a small area of the ship, even a reinforced area can be taken out, providing players a choice between utility or protection. Some levels I have completed easily without using any bombs but sometime it ends up your only option if you have made a few bad cuts and left yourself with no Mojo.
Patchwork Heroes came in quite cheap at around £7 and it fits its niche perfectly as a downloadable game to while away a few minutes on the bus or even a longer trip it still keeps you entertained with new difficulties and challenges opening up. At some point I would like to go back and make sure I rescue everyone as the comrades sacrificed for protection end up in the graveyard mode and mine is looking worryingly full.
I would say if your PSP is starting to look a little undernourished, relegated to the back of the cupboard, then download Patchwork Heroes and give is some hearty gameplay to put some meat back on its bones and have it once again as an amusing travelling companion.
Patchwork Heroes sees you protecting your hometown from attacking airships by climbing aboard and chopping them up until they lose enough mass to fall out of the sky, this simple idea is expanded upon by the placement of enemies, comrades to be rescued and reinforced sections. Players clamber across the side of the ship as Titori and pressing the circle button saws out a chunk where he is clinging, when a player separates one section from another the smallest section falls away and the airship gets a little closer to stopping
If players can cut off a section that an enemy is clinging too they drop out of the sky and your Mojo meter fills up, this can be unleashed to provide an essential boost in times of need by granting invulnerability, speed and the ability to saw through even the reinforced sections of the ship. This is essential to dismantle some of the more intricate airships and means you need more forethought about when to saw.
Rescuing comrades is an interesting system as they are used as spare lives if you get hit but also can be instructed to detonate a small area of the ship, even a reinforced area can be taken out, providing players a choice between utility or protection. Some levels I have completed easily without using any bombs but sometime it ends up your only option if you have made a few bad cuts and left yourself with no Mojo.
Patchwork Heroes came in quite cheap at around £7 and it fits its niche perfectly as a downloadable game to while away a few minutes on the bus or even a longer trip it still keeps you entertained with new difficulties and challenges opening up. At some point I would like to go back and make sure I rescue everyone as the comrades sacrificed for protection end up in the graveyard mode and mine is looking worryingly full.
I would say if your PSP is starting to look a little undernourished, relegated to the back of the cupboard, then download Patchwork Heroes and give is some hearty gameplay to put some meat back on its bones and have it once again as an amusing travelling companion.
Saturday 1 May 2010
Why I love hunting Monsters
After my post about Monster Hunter Tri I thought I’d write up a little something about why the Monster Hunter series has such a warm spot in my heart.
I guess it all starts back on the PS2, I bought monster hunter on a whim, it’s title appealing to me with its straight faced seriousness. I could tell it was a game about hunting monsters, in my book that’s all good. I remember running around on my own exploring the Forest and Hills map (I didn’t own a PS2 modem so multiplayer was never on the cards), I mined ores, brewed potions and fought some of the small monsters. The combat felt really unique since back in those days you used the second analogue stick to choose your attack and depending on your place in the combo different moves could be chained together, this made it feel like you were actually swinging a weapon around by having to memorise patterns to pull off the right attacks and someone with more knowledge of a weapon would be able to accomplish more with it.
I’d played for quite a while before I came up against the mighty Yian Kut-Ku, a pink wyvern with a distinctive yellow beak. The Kut-Ku was a massive hurdle for me as I played the way I played most actions games, attacking constantly and hoping it died before I do, which led to a quick demise. It was after fighting him a fair few times with my giant great sword that I tried to fight him with the more nimble sword and shield, this suddenly revealed to me the mistake I had made. Fighting monsters needs skill and precision, there are times when you have to run around for a minute to let a monster calm down after a particularly powerful attack, you need to wait for openings and target weak points. At the time this was a massive change in the way I played but it has also shaped most of my gaming experiences since, I now value speed and agility above anything else and now my characters dart around their game worlds as cold and calculating acrobats of death.
I never got very far on the PS2 but Monster Hunter was eventually ported to the PSP which I picked up along with one of my housemates and the two player co-op was phenomenal, coordinating your efforts to take a monster down is amazing fun. One player might use a bow-gun to fire paralysing bullets so you can remove a monsters tail with a longsword, which in turn reduces its effectiveness in combat as it can’t hit anything with a little stump.
I love that in Monster Hunter there is no levelling up, your hunter is still a normal person by the time you are fighting mountain sized dragons, but the armour and weapons you create keep you safe and make you a deadly warrior. This appeals to me as it ties you into the world, you aren’t a god or a superhuman, you are just a normal person which makes the feeling of accomplishment greater.
To me Monster Hunter is a series that manages to make fighting countless monsters into something other than a grind which in itself is magic beyond that which most of the games industry has yet to understand. By making all the large monsters a challenge regardless of your power level they are never a simple fight meaning that you can’t just run in and slaughter something without a thought. This means that each battle is something planned and considered, each victory is worked for and earned. To me this is what makes Monster Hunter so satisfying, finally figuring out how to down the deadly Rathalos or bizzare Khezu is something that fills you with a feeling of accomplishment.
I guess it all starts back on the PS2, I bought monster hunter on a whim, it’s title appealing to me with its straight faced seriousness. I could tell it was a game about hunting monsters, in my book that’s all good. I remember running around on my own exploring the Forest and Hills map (I didn’t own a PS2 modem so multiplayer was never on the cards), I mined ores, brewed potions and fought some of the small monsters. The combat felt really unique since back in those days you used the second analogue stick to choose your attack and depending on your place in the combo different moves could be chained together, this made it feel like you were actually swinging a weapon around by having to memorise patterns to pull off the right attacks and someone with more knowledge of a weapon would be able to accomplish more with it.
I’d played for quite a while before I came up against the mighty Yian Kut-Ku, a pink wyvern with a distinctive yellow beak. The Kut-Ku was a massive hurdle for me as I played the way I played most actions games, attacking constantly and hoping it died before I do, which led to a quick demise. It was after fighting him a fair few times with my giant great sword that I tried to fight him with the more nimble sword and shield, this suddenly revealed to me the mistake I had made. Fighting monsters needs skill and precision, there are times when you have to run around for a minute to let a monster calm down after a particularly powerful attack, you need to wait for openings and target weak points. At the time this was a massive change in the way I played but it has also shaped most of my gaming experiences since, I now value speed and agility above anything else and now my characters dart around their game worlds as cold and calculating acrobats of death.
I never got very far on the PS2 but Monster Hunter was eventually ported to the PSP which I picked up along with one of my housemates and the two player co-op was phenomenal, coordinating your efforts to take a monster down is amazing fun. One player might use a bow-gun to fire paralysing bullets so you can remove a monsters tail with a longsword, which in turn reduces its effectiveness in combat as it can’t hit anything with a little stump.
I love that in Monster Hunter there is no levelling up, your hunter is still a normal person by the time you are fighting mountain sized dragons, but the armour and weapons you create keep you safe and make you a deadly warrior. This appeals to me as it ties you into the world, you aren’t a god or a superhuman, you are just a normal person which makes the feeling of accomplishment greater.
To me Monster Hunter is a series that manages to make fighting countless monsters into something other than a grind which in itself is magic beyond that which most of the games industry has yet to understand. By making all the large monsters a challenge regardless of your power level they are never a simple fight meaning that you can’t just run in and slaughter something without a thought. This means that each battle is something planned and considered, each victory is worked for and earned. To me this is what makes Monster Hunter so satisfying, finally figuring out how to down the deadly Rathalos or bizzare Khezu is something that fills you with a feeling of accomplishment.
Tuesday 27 April 2010
Monster Hunter Tri
I’ve recently been playing a lot of Monster Hunter, it’s a series I’ve been an avid fan of for a while so the recent Wii release has had me really excited as it has brought a whole swarm of new monsters into the mix and introduced aquatic combat.
The solo play has been improved and players must now venture through a few missions to introduce them to the hunting essentials before they venture out into the vast depths of the internet. The change to the single player campaign makes it more inviting and expands your options in the village to allow you to easily gather materials and trade for exotic treasures from far off lands.
Aquatic combat is fun, fighting in three dimensions helps with aiming at monster locations and the seamless transitions in the mix land/water environments are delightful. Just running to the edge of the sea and diving in is so much fun and being able to hunt giant catfish, jellyfish and sharks with harpoons is one of the highlights for me. The aquatic monsters have some interesting design with the Gobul being by far my favourite as a strange chimera of catfish, angler fish and puffer fish.
The new monsters seem to be quite interesting with each one doing something more than just ladling on damage and soaking up attacks, one mimics the calls of other monsters to bring in aid in battle, one hides in the river bed and lures you in before attacking and another covers itself in mud that protects it from elemental attacks.
One thing that has changed for the worse is that the prolific selection of weapons and armour has been cut down to its bare bones, now it appears one weapon exists for each element and status effect leaving you little choice for picking correct armaments for each mission. This is such a shame as one of the most exciting parts of having managed to defeat a new monster was running to the blacksmith and finding what weapons you could create.
Another factor that could let Monster Hunter Tri down is that it is still not really new starter friendly, as a seasoned veteran I knew how to make potions and other items to help me in my missions but someone without prior knowledge would struggle. The new single player experience certainly is better than the PSP versions but doesn’t manage to communicate the little tricks that make a hunter excellent
All in all, MH3 has been a successful move in my eyes. It has provided new and interesting monsters, updated the core gameplay which has managed to sort out some of the awkward issues that marred the PSP versions (a certain fishy beast had magical hips that could damage you from well beyond its physical reach), squeezed a huge amount of power from the Wii and provided more of that team based adventure which my friends and I have been consuming with gusto for years.
The solo play has been improved and players must now venture through a few missions to introduce them to the hunting essentials before they venture out into the vast depths of the internet. The change to the single player campaign makes it more inviting and expands your options in the village to allow you to easily gather materials and trade for exotic treasures from far off lands.
Aquatic combat is fun, fighting in three dimensions helps with aiming at monster locations and the seamless transitions in the mix land/water environments are delightful. Just running to the edge of the sea and diving in is so much fun and being able to hunt giant catfish, jellyfish and sharks with harpoons is one of the highlights for me. The aquatic monsters have some interesting design with the Gobul being by far my favourite as a strange chimera of catfish, angler fish and puffer fish.
The new monsters seem to be quite interesting with each one doing something more than just ladling on damage and soaking up attacks, one mimics the calls of other monsters to bring in aid in battle, one hides in the river bed and lures you in before attacking and another covers itself in mud that protects it from elemental attacks.
One thing that has changed for the worse is that the prolific selection of weapons and armour has been cut down to its bare bones, now it appears one weapon exists for each element and status effect leaving you little choice for picking correct armaments for each mission. This is such a shame as one of the most exciting parts of having managed to defeat a new monster was running to the blacksmith and finding what weapons you could create.
Another factor that could let Monster Hunter Tri down is that it is still not really new starter friendly, as a seasoned veteran I knew how to make potions and other items to help me in my missions but someone without prior knowledge would struggle. The new single player experience certainly is better than the PSP versions but doesn’t manage to communicate the little tricks that make a hunter excellent
All in all, MH3 has been a successful move in my eyes. It has provided new and interesting monsters, updated the core gameplay which has managed to sort out some of the awkward issues that marred the PSP versions (a certain fishy beast had magical hips that could damage you from well beyond its physical reach), squeezed a huge amount of power from the Wii and provided more of that team based adventure which my friends and I have been consuming with gusto for years.
Tuesday 20 April 2010
Endless Ocean 2
This morning Endless Ocean 2 arrived for me in the post and I have been excited all day. The first game promised exploration and interaction with all sorts of aquatic beasties with whales and octopodes being the highlights for me.
Unfortunately I didn't manage to get past a particular section so never got to track down the elusive whale I was after but I did manage to dive deep into the abyss. This is probably where I should mention that though I love the ocean and am fascinated with its creatures I have an irrational fear of being underwater in games, so descending into a pitch black chasm with nothing to keep your bearings but the occasional flash of an unnatural looking fin gave me a huge case of the heeby-jeebies and made Endless Ocean one of the only two games that has managed to scare me enough to turn the console off (the other being Thief).
So what was I expecting from Endless Ocean 2
- Vast blue seas full of creatures to poke, prod and examine.
- Great Big Whales!
- Relaxing environment exploration.
- Collecting treasure, equipment and information.
What are my thoughts so far:
Firstly, Arika seem to have sussed something about their audience, in the first 5 minutes you are in the water surrounded by whales and it is awesome! Whales give an impressive sense of scale and after being established as impressive gives you an idea of what the rewards will be for playing the game.
A nice surprise was that Endless Ocean 2 gives you an actual storyline to play through which is a welcome change from the first game which did have progression but it sometimes felt a little vague as to how to unlock the next event and area.
Combat has been added by way of the Pulsar device. It effectively is a fishy tazer for zapping any nasties until they calm down. I've not let myself be bitten by a shark but they have closed on me with grim intent. It's kind of fun but my underwater nerves don't hold up particularly well when the danger sign comes up on screen, with no indication as to what direction the danger is coming from I flounder and swim away as fast as possible.
One little sticking point for me at the moment is the diving timer, it the original you could swim uninterrupted for a long while but now a leveling system has been introduced that allows you to dive for progressively longer and longer periods. I find that even after a short dive my wet-suited adventurer is rasping for breath which breaks the flow for me when I have to pop back to the boat just to go swimming again. I would have preferred to have a longer dive time to begin with rather than slowly gaining experience at breathing but its a minor gripe at best.
All in all, I can't wait to plunge back into Endless Ocean 2
Monday 19 April 2010
Gaming off the rails.
I've played a lot of games in my life and I don't doubt I'll play many more. Some of them will excite me for what they achieve and some will amaze me by being not quite what I expected.
I like to explore off the beaten track, poke my nose into odd corners and find out exactly how a world holds together. I enjoy play a game made with care and love by people who really want to make something amazing.
I'm keen on nifty mechanics, systems that make games fun to play, ways to entice you further in and tricks to keep you coming back for more. I like understand why swimming through a vast blue ocean can be so much more exciting than slaying demons.
I like gaming off the rails, taking a game and making it yours by how you play. The choices you make and the story you experience, which may not be what was intended, but which make the world yours.
I like to explore off the beaten track, poke my nose into odd corners and find out exactly how a world holds together. I enjoy play a game made with care and love by people who really want to make something amazing.
I'm keen on nifty mechanics, systems that make games fun to play, ways to entice you further in and tricks to keep you coming back for more. I like understand why swimming through a vast blue ocean can be so much more exciting than slaying demons.
I like gaming off the rails, taking a game and making it yours by how you play. The choices you make and the story you experience, which may not be what was intended, but which make the world yours.
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