All posts by Ashgar

On Extra Life Game Selection

Picking a game to play for Extra Life has been somewhat interesting. I decided ahead of time that since my upstream bandwidth is tiny, streaming a random emulated Game Boy Advance game would be ideal, since it allows decent quality at double or triple the GBA’s resolution. Some restrictions came from this, as it would have to be a game I actually have (which rules out the Metroids) and would be interesting in a two-hour period (which rules out the first game I thought of playing like this, Shining Soul 2, or the Mega Man Battle Network series). In the end, there were two candidates for this particular stream. Maybe I’ll record myself playing some of the others later.

The Runner Up

Castlevania: Aria of SorrowAriaofSorrowCover

This was the first actual metroidvania-style Castlevania game I played, although it’s the third that was released for the GBA. Statute of limitations is up on this 11-year-old game, so much like I don’t have to hide that Symphony of the Night has an inverted castle, I don’t feel like I have to hide that the playable character in Aria, Soma Cruz, is the reincarnation of Dracula, although it is the game’s biggest twist. There’s a direct sequel (Dawn of Sorrow) that doesn’t really try to hide it. Going along with this, you have the power of “dominance” over the enemies of the castle and can absorb their souls when you defeat them to use their abilities. (Maybe I like this game so much because it’s like Mega Man.) This would be a decent choice, but it’s been long enough since I played it and it’s a long enough game that I’m not sure I can take an interesting number of bosses in 2 hours.

The Winner

Kirby and the Amazing MirrorKirby_&_the_Amazing_Mirror

I like Kirby games, but most of them are more traditional than this one. The first Kirby game on the GBA was Nightmare in Dream Land, which was a remake of Kirby’s Adventure. This one instead is a take on Kirby Super Star’s Great Cave Offensive but expanded into a full game. It’s nonlinear and requires traversing a large maze of rooms in order to find 8 mirror shards and beat the final boss. Most of the copy abilities are taken from Kirby’s Adventure, which means that updated ones like Suplex and Plasma from Super Star are missing. It’s my all-time favorite Kirby game, so I hope you tune in to see me give it a good shot.

As a reminder, my donation page is here, and the team’s page is here. We (and the hospitals we’re supporting) would greatly appreciate your donations.

On Current Events #4

Time for another one of these, let’s get started.

Extra Life

extra-life-splash
First things first: Extra Life is this weekend, and I’m participating as a member of the Alliance of Awesome team. You can find my page here, and my stream will be active from 2-4 EDT. I’ll be around in chat while the other members are going, so you will probably hear a bit of random commentary from me throughout the day. All proceeds go to the various hospitals involved, so feel free to donate!

Heavensward

heavensward
This weekend, I get to find out exactly how excited I should get for the FF14 expansion in the spring. (Possible values range from “Super” to “Rae”.) Last weekend the expansion was initially announced at FanFest in Vegas, although the name came out earlier when it was trademarked. This weekend will be Fanfest in London, and I believe they said more information on upcoming classes will be coming out at that time. There are some favorites I’d really like to see make it to FF14 (Blue Mage, Mystic Knight), but this would also be a good time to introduce some new things to the series (or at least rarely-explored things). Dark Knight and Samurai have already been “leaked”, but I can’t help but wonder what else is coming. Geomancer? Berserker? Cannoneer? Calculator?

Idiocy

I feel like it shouldn’t be required to say this, but people continue to prove me wrong. Don’t harass people, and definitely don’t make death threats. One former Steam Developer is finding this out the hard way, when he posted the following on Twitter and subsequently found his game de-listed from Steam.
Don't Do This
Valve’s statement was quite simple: “Yes, we have removed the game’s sales page and ceased relations with the developer after he threatened to kill one of our employees.” (via Polygon). I’m glad to see that when possible, actions are being taken to ensure that this sort of thing is Not OK. If we can’t get people to think before hitting post, maybe we can at least get them to stop threatening the lives of others.

On Burnout

As much as I wish I was talking about a different kind of burnout, this is a post about Destiny. Sorry Destiny, but I think I’m done. I expressed longevity concerns when I started, and the things I was worried about mostly came true.

Exhibit A: Story

Let’s be completely, 100% clear here: Destiny’s story is completely terrible. You’re given very little background, almost no justification for anything you’re doing, and it doesn’t even end with a satisfying conclusion. It’s vague enough that it opens itself up to a lot of alternate interpretation. I’m on board with the theory that we’re the super enemies in some game not yet made. After all, all of the player characters are undead, and years of games have taught us that killing undead by the dozens is the right thing to do. How can I blame the Fallen/Cabal for trying to do likewise?

I don’t really demand a compelling story from everything I play, but most games aren’t trying to pretend to more story than they actually have. Transistor doesn’t tell you a lot about what you’re doing when you start, but the information is there in the game as you play it (and serves a dual function of getting you to experiment with the ability system). Gauntlet has an excuse plot, but it’s not trying to be anything more than that. Destiny doesn’t even have that, as there’s no real “goal” to work toward or a reason for most of the actions taken by the main character other than “The Ghost said so”. This isn’t really enough to keep me moving forward.

Exhibit B: Progression

Progression in Destiny is not exactly what I’d hoped it would be. Initial impressions of the way that the guns, armor, and subclasses level led me to believe that there would be more in the way of horizontal progression after the relatively low level cap. Guild Wars 1 does this, as you hit the level cap about halfway through the story and continue earning skills that can let you construct a wider variety of builds.

Needless to say, this isn’t how Destiny works, and what you get at the level cap is either praying to the Random Number Generator or a long Vanguard/Crucible rep/marks grind. Instead of making levels feel rewarding, it mostly serves as a “you must be this tall to ride” mark, as you do drastically reduced damage to enemies above your level. I don’t really find it fun, and facing this is pretty much where I stopped.

Exhibit C: Variety

to be fair, I did mention this as a concern earlier. Destiny reminds me of Diablo 3 (prior to 2.0) in that items that are “interesting” are incredibly rare, and not really all that impactful except in a few special cases (which got nerfed anyway). The equivalent of Borderlands Red Text items is either up to an incredible amount of RNG or lots and lots of grinding (for Strange Coins). (Contrast with Borderlands, where you get them as quest rewards sometimes.)

Enemy variety is a bit better, and the fun of shooting things was enough to keep me interested in the game for a good while. It was on reaching mars and realizing I’d already seen everything the game had to offer outside of the Raid (which I had limited interest in) that I decided to drop it.

Verdict

I know a lot of people find this game fun, and I know others never got into it in the first place, but I’m somewhere in the middle. I suspect that if the above were fixed maybe I could find it fun again, but I’m not sure how they’d convince me to give it a try. As-is, I don’t think Destiny is a long-term game for me.

On Decisions

SPOILER ALERT: This post includes spoilers for Dragon Age Origins. If you haven’t played through it, you should probably stop reading here.

With that out of the way…

As mentioned previously (and on the podcast), I’ve been playing through Dragon Age: Origins in preparation for Dragon Age: Inquisition next month. As you should know by now, the end goal of the entire game is to defeat the Archdemon and thus all of the Darkspawn that make up the Blight. Regardless of the decisions made throughout the game, you will begin the game by going through some sort of tragedy, get inducted into the grey wardens, recruit an army with variable makeup, defeat the Archdemon, and end the Blight. Laid out like that, it all seems rather simple and straightforward.

Breakpoints

My “recruit an army with variable makeup” point should be expanded on further, because it’s really somewhere between 50-60% of the entire game. As soon as you leave Lothering, there are 4 plot-important locations you can go to in order to gather support, as well as the capital city of Denerim (which there isn’t a lot of cause to visit at the outset). Each of these four locations contains a main story quest that will generally take several hours to complete, and involves some choices that affect the overall plot and who ends up joining you in the army you end up building. You’ll end up with either the mages or the templars, either the elves or the werewolves, the dwarves (sometimes accompanied by golems, sometimes not), and the human militia.

One of the best things about the game to me is how player decisions affect this process, even though making some of these decisions makes you a terrible person, and some of your party members will call you out on being a terrible person (and attack you in some specific cases). Even then, it’s not unanimous. Sten supports killing off the mages as part of the Mage’s Tower questline (Broken Circle). Wynne objects, and will leave your party and attack you if you start to hint at doing this. At the end of the game there’s an epilogue that describes the long-term effect of decisions like that. I suspect this will have some bearing on Inquisition, but I’m told it has only a minor effect on DA2 in most cases.

If at first you don’t succeed…

Even the 100% required plot events can play out in more than one way. A critical event near the end of the game is the Landsmeet, where Arl Eamon and the player character attempt to get the nobles to reject Loghain’s rule. If you don’t do enough sidequests to get support, you’ll fail and start a massive fight in the chamber. Likewise, this can happen if your choices in the dialogue are poor or if you don’t have the persuasion stats to back them up. I’ve played the game before, but I forgot about all of the elements that went into it; I had to do this 4 times to get the result I wanted in my most recent playthrough.

In Order:

  1. Forgot to turn in a number of sidequests at the bar in Denerim, failing to gain support of two noble families, enough to swing the vote against me. Oops.
  2. Turned in those quests, and then navigated through the speech incorrectly, resulting in the crowd supporting Loghain instead of me.
  3. Successfully navigated the talking portion, and then had Allister duel Loghain. Alistair kills Loghain in the cutscene if he wins, preventing any possibility of marriage to Anora, who will not marry her father’s killer.
  4. Did the speech, killed Loghain myself, Alistair & Anora arranged to get married, everything worked as planned.

For those of you that haven’t explored everything the game has to offer, I won’t talk about much more, but many of the other events in the game can also unfold multiple ways, even if it ultimately leads to the same outcome. Bioware’s other major recent game series (Mass Effect) is not quite as good at showing the consequences of your actions during the game, and it’s really the best thing about Dragon Age Origins. Here’s hoping Inquisition measures up.

On Familiar Territory

Knowing that Dragon Age Inquisition is coming out soonish, and I don’t have a save file to work with, I’ve been replaying a bit of Dragon Age Origins. My first playthrough was marked by bugs galore and a game that crashed roughly every 20 minutes, so I’m hoping that it does better this time. Despite that, I really liked it. The game is currently on sale on Steam until Monday, so if you haven’t played it before now’s a good time to check it out.

dragon age logo
My current dilemma is whether or not to go through the game as a rogue or a mage. (My advice to anyone playing the game for the first time is to play as a mage, for the record.) As a rogue, you have the ability to do the assorted roguish things (opening locks, picking pockets, disarming traps) without depending on another party member for it. Rogues do a lot of single-target damage if they can position for a backstab (or with the right talents, facestab on incapacitated targets). Rogues also get the benefit of being able to pick their origin, with the Human Noble and Dwarf Noble as standout choices.

Eidon
Mages, on the other hand, are overpowered. Their control is unparalleled, their burst damage is unmatched, and their utility is outstanding, even regarding the plot. With the arcane warrior specialization, they can become incredibly strong at the only things they aren’t normally good at, melee combat. However, the specialization that would normally appeal to me is complete garbage, and I hesitate to play one because of it. Also, the Mage origin story (the only one mages have access to) I find less interesting in the long run than some of the other choices.

Ashgar
I’m sure I’ll get far enough with one to abandon the other eventually. Even in single-player games I’m an altoholic.

On Current Events, #3

This is going to be a short one, but some crazy stuff happened recently.

Fantasy Iron Chef

battle_chef_brigade
Battle Chef Brigade is a game that I heard about in January, and it was just pointed out to me yesterday that it’s on Kickstarter now. It’s from a studio that has already released a few mobile games, and I really like the concept here. The characters also look awesome, and the price for the game itself ($15) is right. I intend to keep an eye on how this one shapes up.

The Man Who Arranges the Blocks

tetris
This might be competition for the Battleship movie, but the company behind the Mortal Kombat movies is making a movie about Tetris. There’s no good way to talk about this without it sounding insane, especially since he refers to it as “a very big, epic sci-fi movie”. There’s nothing I can add here that hasn’t already been said by Penny Arcade (in a comic that’s 11 years old, even). Either way, it’s unlikely to be as good as this video:

October Approaches

It’s time for the AAA Blockbusters of the year to come out, along with pumpkin-flavored everything. I’d hoped that Destiny would have enough longevity to carry me through the temptation of picking up a lot of these, but that doesn’t appear to be the case (more on that later). As a result, there’s a very strong itch for a good co-op game this fall. Borderlands: The Pre-Sequel is on the way, but their marketing campaign is giving me a lot of pause. This is unfortunate, because Borderlands 2 is one of my most-played games on Steam, behind Skyrim and Dragon Age. Speaking of which, Dragon Age: Inquisition is another game to watch, since DA:Origins is one of my favorite games and DA:2 is… not. Even if the campaign isn’t great, it’s including a Mass Effect 3-like multiplayer mode, and that might be entertaining enough. There are many more things for the rest of the year; Civilization: Beyond Earth and Super Smash Bros 4 are the ones I’m most looking forward to.

On The Saddest Trailer

The title is warning enough, so here it is:


If you missed it at E3/Gamescom, this is Ori and the Blind Forest, a metroidvania (yeah, I know) game coming to PC and Xbox One at some point this year, and Xbox 360 at some point next year (and if patterns hold, everything under the sun probably 6 months later). The above trailer came out of TGS.

Ori Intro Screenshot
Tam described this as a game of “Infinite Sadness and Light” and that description seems to fit. The creators of this game said they were inspired by nostalgia for Super Metroid, and this shows in the gameplay. Ori seems to have a variety of movement abilities in game demos, including traditional things like double jumps and wall jumps, which are animated wonderfully. A unique ability seems to be the ability to use enemies, enemy projectiles, and other sources of energy to launch yourself in any direction. The projectile/enemy used is launched in the opposite direction, so this works for traversal and puzzle-solving.

Ori2
It’s been a while since a AAA metroidvania game was released, as Konami seems focused on doing other things with Castlevania and Nintendo doesn’t seem to want to touch Metroid for a while. I’m hoping this game from a largely non-traditional developer satisfies that itch. Valdis Story and Dust: An Elysian Tale, while good, can only go so far.

ori3

On Marching to Zanarkand

The original title of this post was going to be “On Nonsensical Titles”, but that would look silly if I ever end up writing about a Kingdom Hearts game in the future and the title is even worse.

Instead of leveling up in Destiny, I’ve been addicted to a rhythm game. (This is a thing that happens sometimes.) Theatrythm Final Fantasy: Curtain Call is the re-release of the original Theatrythm Final Fantasy for the 3DS, including somewhat expanded game modes and all of the first game’s DLC and then some. It came up on the podcast when I discussed what I’d been playing, and it’s really eaten a lot of my gaming time over the past week.

The Basics

Ignoring the EMS stages because no one cares about those, Theatrythm is about using the stylus or buttons to tap along with directions that move from left to right across the screen. The two modes that matter are Field Music Stages and Battle Music Stages, BMS and FMS from here on out. FMS involve a single character moving across the screen, potentially finding treasure along the way, and getting a prize if they go far enough. If you miss a note, your character might fall and be replaced by the next character in your party, they’ll also take a little bit of damage. Finishing the song before you run out of health completes the stage.

Crystal Cave Intro
BMS have your entire party lined up on the right in traditional Final Fantasy fashion, as notes and enemies come in from the left. Hitting a note does damage to enemies according to the characters’ strength, missing a note causes your party to take damage. Successfully beating up monsters can earn treasure, and the song is passed if you reach the end before your HP runs out.

Under the Weight

The “Final Fantasy” Part

The framework is more than just for show. Characters level up, increase stats, and can equip abilities that improve their performance in the various stages. Examples include Paeon, which provides constant healing over time, Focus, which does additional damage after a certain number of held notes, or Trance, which triples magic power once your chain is high enough.

A lot of XP
Every song has a “feature zone”, which does something special depending on how well you do in it. In FMS, this summons a chocobo to let you go faster, with the color depending on how many perfects you got. In BMS, this calles one of the series’ standard summons (Or Knights of the Round) if you don’t miss any notes, or a chocobo (which does very little damage) if you do.

Ifrit summoning
In addition, one of the primary modes of play involves going on “quests”, which give you a map of (initially hidden) songs to choose from which form a path to a boss at the end. Finishing one can get you a lot of experience and potentially rare items (crystal shards, used to unlock characters, are the most common reward). After completing a quest, you can attach its associated map to your profile, and anyone you play against in multiplayer can also do the exact same quest.

Quest Clear!

Nostalgia Overload

The songs in this game are from the entire series, including spinoffs. Without any DLC, Curtain Call has 221 songs taken from all 14 main series games and most of the spinoffs, including Crisis Core, Tactics, Crystal Chronicles, Type-0, Mystic Quest, both Dissidia games, and Advent Children. Most of the songs you would expect are included (except Liberi Fatali for some unknown reason), leaning heavily on battle themes (Yes, Fallen Angel from FF14 is in). There is some DLC for songs not included in the initial release (The game’s been out in Japan for a while) like FF5’s Ancient Library theme.

Dead Dunes All-critical

Overall, this is my Game of the Month for September. The original was good, and the changes to this version make it better in nearly every way. More songs, more characters, more modes, and more control options. If you like rhythm games and Final Fantasy, you should give this a look. If you like rhythm games and don’t like Final Fantasy, you should still give it a look, because the music is awesome.

On The [insert noun here]

Arrrr. Now that that’s out of the way…

Destiny is an interesting, and somewhat divisive game. I’ve been playing it a bit, and I’ve been having fun, but apparently not everyone is. It’s not perfect, but I will say that I haven’t had this much fun with a 70s Metacritic game in a long time.

Valid Complaints

Destiny’s story is kind of terrible. There’s a lot of backstory in the grimoire, but you can’t access the grimoire in any way while in-game. Until you get to Venus (more than halfway through the story missions) there simply isn’t much in the way of story at all presented in the missions. There’s also this very annoying tendency to name everything “The [insert noun here]”. The Traveler, The Speaker, The Stranger, and The Queen are all examples. (The grimoire is especially unhelpful in this case, as it also uses these names. Proper nouns have so far been exclusively used for enemies.) I feel like Isey has an appropriate take on the story as presented.

destiny robots
Gun variety has been a bit lacking, although since they reserved special effects for level 20 exotic gear and I’m not yet level 20, it’s a bit understandable. But since exotics are so rare, it might not be excusable. It’s hard not to draw comparisons to either halo or borderlands here, but the former had things like the needler and the plasma pistol and the latter had more interesting weapons than I can count. Destiny doesn’t have this, and in fact the only “non-standard” weapon type it presents is the Fusion rifle.

Why I’m Playing Anyway

Despite the things I just said, and the collective rant in the podcast last week, I’m playing the game, and it’s very fun. The animations for precision kills are satisfying. The super abilities are incredibly fun to use (Even the not very flashy Sunsinger Warlock one). Progression is always enough to hold interest for a while, and that can certainly be found here (even your weapons level up).

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9ZyQK6kUdWQ
Last but certainly not least, playing with other people is a blast. the game’s overarching story isn’t great, but the story of the random things I did with Kodra while wandering the moon is more compelling. It’s not a perfect game, but I do think it’s a great one.

On Role Balance, Continued

I said that the DPS classes in Final Fantasy 14 could use a post to themselves, so here goes. The DPS classes are divided mostly into melee, casters, and Bard, which is a special case for a number of reasons. Interestingly, this role is often referred to as DD (damage dealer) as a holdover from Final Fantasy 11.

Melee

The options for melee in FF14 are Dragoon and Monk, and I’ll just get this out of the way now. Dragoons have a terrible reputation for dying a lot. (Even the developers made fun of this.) Both classes require moving for positional attacks directed at either the flank or the rear of their target, and the target circles are fairly helpful in helping you figure out where each of these starts. Monks generally have to move more for optimal DPS, but are penalized less for not moving. Dragoons lose entire combos without access to the flank or rear of enemies. Monks have a fair bit of ramp-up time (which can be mitigated somewhat with their level 50 ability, Perfect Balance) that dragoons do not. Dragoons tend to do larger single hits, monks don’t have anything with a potency higher than 190. In return, monks hit very quickly, getting up to 15% increased attack speed and 27% increased damage once they’ve been fighting for long enough. Dragoons have more off-GCD abilities, with a lot of cooldowns and their signature Jump ability.

Dragoons tend to have high physical defense (only tanks have better) and low magic defense (literally the worst in the game), leading to them taking extra damage if/when they get hit by boss AOE, which is almost always magic. Jump does apparently provide some untargetable time now (I don’t have lancer leveled and can’t test this), but it locks you in place for the duration of its animation, and can lead to eating boss attacks if used at unfortunate times. Monks have a different problem, in that if their rotation is interrupted for long enough, they lose their buffs and have to start from scratch. Perfect Balance every 3 minutes is not enough to mitigate this every time.

Either way, having a melee in the group gives everyone a strength bonus (meaning more threat for the tanks) and more importantly, access to a single-target limit break. Braver, Bladedance, or Final Heaven (depending on limit level) are incredibly useful in group content. This is kind of a balancing lever in itself, because as long as melee are the only ones with these attacks, melee will never be obsolete.

Casters

The choices here are Black Mage and Summoner. Summoner is a dot-based pet class, black mage is more direct damage with a fairly unique MP management mechanic. Both classes have a bit of defensive utility, with Eye for an Eye from summoners (which is cross-classable) and Apocatastasis from black mages (which is not). Summoners are the only non-healing class that can raise during battle. Summoners excel in AOE situations since they can apply a large portion of their single-target damage to as many as 4 things at once. Black mages excel when burst is called for, because Flare is one of the hardest hitting abilities in the entire game (and with some tricks it can be cast three times in a row).

Both of these classes are limited in the amount of DPS they can do while moving. Virtually all black mage spells used for DPS require you to stand still while casting. Summoners are a bit better off since their dots and pet can be going even if the caster has to move, but they still can’t re-apply most of their dots while moving. As far as the DPS produced by each class I don’t know which is actually better. Summoner DPS is incredibly difficult to parse, as it involves 3 dots, a week filler spell, a ground-targeted damage field, various pet abilities, and one very large hit. It’s hard to get a feel for if the damage you’re doing is good, and I think that drives a lot of players away from the class.

These classes also have a damaging limit break. The caster limit break is Skyshard/Starstorm/Meteor and it does significantly less damage than the melee one, but it’s a ground-targeted AOE. Most fights that don’t call for the melee limit break use this instead.

The Oddball

Bards are unique. They are currently the only dex-based class, and have unique benefits and drawbacks. Bards have various “song” options that drain the bard’s own MP for a group buff, either TP regen, MP regen, or lowered enemy resistances; these effects are entirely unique to that class. In addition, they’re a full DPS class in their own right and can do their full damage while moving. They’re also the best source of the silence effect.

The drawback for this is that they don’t have a damage dealing limit break, instead sharing their pool of limit breaks with the healing classes. It takes a bit of awareness to play this job well, since leaving one of the songs (other than Foe Requiem) running longer than you need to means you’re doing less damage than you should be.

This post kind of got away from me. I find it incredibly nice that systems in FF14 promote class diversity, and make all of the classes useful in some way. It creates sort of the reverse problem, where too many of any one thing is bad. The generally small group size (8 for “serious” content) also mitigates class stacking, but makes fitting all of the puzzle pieces in much harder. It’s a nice breath of fresh air from things I’m used to seeing where if you could, everyone in a raid would be one of two classes.