Category Archives: Gaming

Gaming

On Honorable Mentions

Recently, Aggrochat discussed our Games of the Year for 2014. It’s been an interesting year for game releases, but we still managed to find a large number of games to talk about. My personal top 5 for the year is Transistor, Diablo 3: Reaper of Souls, Pokémon Omega Ruby/Alpha Spphire, Shovel Knight, and Infamous: Second Son, but I feel like there were some other games that came out this year that deserve recognition. Some of them got mentioned in the podcast (most notably Dragon Age: Inquisition, and Divinity: Original Sin, which I am not talking about because I haven’t played as much of them as I’d like), but here are 5 more games that were not mentioned in no particular order that make the GOTY Honorable Mentions list.

Super Smash Bros. for 3DS/Wii U

This one couldn’t make the main list because I haven’t given it as much time as I’d like. A lot of the annoyances in Brawl (like tripping) are gone, but the changes aren’t entirely favorable to the characters I played most in previous games (Marth & Pikachu). I find the game a bit awkward to play on the 3DS, but the Wii U version already feels like an old friend. The new characters are pretty cool, especially Bowser Jr. and Mega Man. I haven’t tried online play, but I hear that’s also much improved from Brawl. There are a lot of interesting new ideas (Great Cave Offensive, Crazy Orders, 8-player Smash) but some that fall flat (Smash Tour). Overall, I do think this is the best version of Smash Bros. to date, and it’s a welcome addition to the Wii U’s library.

Crimzon Clover: World Ignition

I wrote about this one already, but I think it’s the best scrolling shooter currently on Steam. This version of Crimzon Clover is a re-release of a game that technically came out in 2011, but the World Ignition release is the game’s first release in English, so it counts for this year. The variations between the modes and ship choices keep the gameplay interesting, and the difficulty levels mean that it can be played without getting your face immediately punched in. That said, it’s no walk in the park, and I’d have a hard time recommending it as someone’s first game in the genre. I do recommend it to anyone who likes flying small objects into showers of bullets while wielding overwhelming firepower.

Theatrhythm Final Fantasy: Curtain Call

I wrote about this one already, too. If Game of the Year were decided by how much time I played any given game this year, the winner would be Final Fantasy 14. The runner up would probably be Theatrhythm. I really love rhythm games, and I don’t think any other good ones came out this year. The RPG-structure and soundtrack for this one also increases its personal appeal. Playing along to things like “Torn From the Heavens” is awesome, and tracks like “Tempus Finis” make me look forward to Type-0 HD this upcoming year. I hope there’s a Theatrhythm Kingdom Hearts at some point in the future; Theatrhythm Dragon Quest was recently announced.

Mario Kart 8

Mario Kart 8 deserves recognition for a few reasons. It presents exactly what’s expected of a Mario Kart game (although it is thankfully a bit lighter on the Blue Shells than Mario Kart 7). It’s fun in local multiplayer and online, and it’s had one of the better DLC releases I’ve seen from any game in a while. It’s also worth noting that the game is really pretty with a lot of detail in both the courses and the racers (who interact with each other in small ways when close). The course selection (both new and retro) is pretty awesome, including one of my favorites from the DS game, Tick Tock Clock. The antigrav mechanics work well and change things up just enough to make it interesting.

South Park: The Stick of Truth

If you like South Park and Paper Mario-esque RPGs, you should play this game. It’s funny, inappropriate, and quite fun. It’s somewhat easy to forget about because it came out in March, but I found it entertaining all the way through. In addition to all of the things South Park normally makes fun of, it also likes to make fun of RPG and video game conventions while cheerfully making use of them. It picks up where the Black Friday episodes of South Park leave off, so watching those is recommended. It’s probably not as strong of an RPG mechanically as Divinity or Dragon Age, but I still haven’t beaten either of those, and Stick of Truth kept me going until the very end.

Farewell, 2014

It wasn’t the best year for AAA releases, but it wasn’t a bad year in games, all things considered. I hope some of the issues of this year stay in this year (which is just wishful thinking) but there are lessons to be learned going forward. Here’s hoping that 2015 doesn’t disappoint (and that Ori and the Blind Forest gets a solid release date).

Gaming, MMO

On Jumping Good

The developers of Final Fantasy 14 have been very slow to make balance changes. The last patch to make major balance changes before last week was in December of last year, with major Warrior buffs, Summoner nerfs, and quality of life improvements for just about everyone. With Ninjas coming in with patch 2.4, it became clear that there were some balance issues between them and the existing melee DPS Jobs. As I’ve mentioned earlier, Dragoons had a few issues with positional requirements and magic defense that Ninjas and Monks did not share. I expected the patch to address these, and maybe nerf Ninjas a bit. (Ninjas were balanced on the assumption that Ninjutsu is hard, and it sort of isn’t. More on that later.)

What actually happened was beyond the wildest dreams of every Dragoon player I know. Buffs were received in multiple places, addressing both survivability and damage. The required math to figure out where they ended up in relation to the other classes is beyond me, but I have my suspicions.

Potency ↑

A few abilities got flat damage increases. Full Thrust went up by 30 potency (and so Life Surge -> Full Thrust became better burst). Both dots (Phlebotomize and Chaos Thrust) went up by 5 potency per tick (for a total of 30 and 50). The direct damage portion of Chaos Thrust also went up by 50 when used from behind; I’m pretty sure at 600 total that’s the highest displayed potency on any single target ability across all classes.

Impulse Drive didn’t get a potency increase, but now has full potency from all sides of the enemy (which incidentally means that it’s the only offensive ability you should use other than heavy thrust before Level 26). To go along with this, the positional requirements on all combo steps have been essentially eliminated (Heavy Thrust and Chaos Thrust still do more damage from the side/rear), and combos can no longer be “missed” by positioning incorrectly.

Cooldown ↓

The Dragoon’s signature Jump ability had its cooldown reduced from 40 seconds to 30 seconds. In addition to the straight damage increase this represents, it also allows it to line up nicely with Power Surge. Life Surge’s cooldown also decreased.

As a related note, I personally think that the way Ninjutsu’s 20 second cooldown aligns nicely with the ninja’s ability set is why that class was not as hard to play as anticipated. A 1-minute long rotation of Huton, Suiton, and Raiton overlays over the “standard” rogue rotation in a mostly predictable way.

Survivability ↑

The most important change in this patch for Dragoon survivability is that the magic defense on their armor increased to be equal to the amount on comparable Ninja/Monk armor. This change alone means a lot for survivability in boss fights, and it allowed us to use Dragoons as fireball soaks in T5 this past week. In addition, the cooldown that melee like to use at the worst times, Blood for Blood, had the damage taken component reduced for Dragoons only. (Monks and Ninjas can continue to kill themselves with it.) Combined, these might mean that Dragoons survive the boss AOE they’ll inevitably get hit with.

The End of loldrg?

Dragoon is still the melee that is perceived as being the easiest to play, and playing either of the other two optimally requires running it up to 34 anyway (for the aforementioned Blood for Blood). Because of this, there are a lot of potential dragoons, and some of them are still… unfortunate. The past two weeks have taught me that while good dragoon players are amazing, bad dragoon players are still bad, and no amount of patching is likely to fix that.

Maybe next game, guys.

Gaming

On The Road

This is going to be an interesting week. I’m packing up and moving halfway across the country for the 3rd time in my life, so computer access for the next few days is likely to be hard to come by. As a result, portable games are going to be the way of things for a little while.

The Summoner’s Journey

All the talk about FFX-2 on the podcast actually got me playing FFX on the Vita. The game is a bit prettier than I remember (which is the entire point of an HD remake, I suppose) and still plays pretty well. The Expert Sphere Grid (which was not in the North American release of the original) actually does a lot to fix one of my major complaints about the game. For the vast majority of the main game, everyone is locked into their particular path on the Sphere grid in the normal version. Yuna will only get white magic and magic boosts, Wakka will get status effects and physical bonuses, Auron will get all of the ability breaks, and so on. If you want any character to branch out, they can’t do so until late in the game. The only exception is Kimahri, who starts in the middle and can pick someone else’s path early.

surprise
In the Expert grid, everyone starts much closer to the center (Kimahri still starts in the center) and can venture down the paths intended for the other characters almost immediately. Yuna is generally the biggest benefactor of this, since she can get either Lulu’s offense or Tidus’s support abilities, giving her something to do if no one needs healing right away. Wakka can enter Auron’s section and do something about his generally low strength. You can have someone other than Kimahri learn to steal long before you get Rikku in the party. The cost of all of this is slower progression in the things the game expects you to be able to do (if you branch out) and a lower theoretical stat maximum compared to the standard grid (which you don’t need to worry about at all unless you’re a crazy person). It’s a change I like, and we’ll see how far I get this time through the game before going to play its better sequel.

PING!

On other hardware, there’s Super Smash Bros. 4. I miss certain things about playing with the GameCube controller, but other than that I really like this version of Smash. The character roster is good, although I find myself mostly sticking to old standbys like Marth and Pikachu. I like most of the changes from Brawl, especially the lack of tripping and the changes to grabs (a brief cooldown on grabs renders chain-grabbing impossible).

Bowser Spin
Unfortunately, hotel internet means I won’t be playing this with anyone anytime soon. Smash Bros. is best with other people; I had a lot of fun with it at a family gathering early last month. If you also have the game and want to play it, let me know. My friend code is 4897-6120-6518.

Gaming, MMO

On Speculation

First things first, this post is inspired by Bel’s post this morning, and conversations we’ve previously had. I might be the friend he mentions who would drop everything for Blue Mage. With the announcement that Dark Knight is going to look more like the version from FFX-2 than the version from FF11, the doors are open for wild speculation on the other jobs. I have a few ideas of my own, but we’ll start with one already covered.

Berserker

In my opinion, this is a natural fit for a DPS job to go with the already-existing Marauder class. Marauders have almost everything needed to be a functional DPS class already. They have a long-duration DoT (although the potency is laughable), a slashing resistance debuff and a large DPS cooldown (which is even called “Berserk”) the only thing it lacks that the other melee DPS in the game have (including Ninja) is some form of gap closer, and all of these so far are Job abilities anyway. They’d likely have to give up the defenses of heavy armor in trade for proper DPS stats.

One of the reasons I think this would fit well is because the Warrior quests are all about not letting your rage overwhelm you, and gaining control over it. Berserker quests could provide an interesting counterpoint, displaying the power of what happens if you just let it all out. There are no actual hints of anything like this, so it’s just based on my wild speculation, but I’d like to see it.

Gambler/Trickster

There is already at least one NPC who is a master of illusion and strikes with cards. I don’t think a class focusing on such would be unreasonable, although this game doesn’t really need more DPS classes right now. With the Gold Saucer on the way, I think it would be nice to have a class using the traditional dice/cards/slots to do damage to enemies. It’s probably better for everyone involved if the number of negative effects associated with such a class were kept to a minimum, but purely positive things could still work (like Wakka’s attack reels, or Setzer’s dice).

To go along with this is the card-using trickster class from FF Tactics A2. This one lacked the random abilities, and had status abilities instead. They also had an abilities that did increased damage based on the number of statuses, similar to the ability Fester that summoners currently have. Since most of what this job did went to arcanists, it might not get reused.

Red Mage/Mystic Knight

One of the skills that I noticed early on that enemies use, but players can’t use in any way, it the en-[element] spells (like Enaero or Enthunder). These usually go to some sort of mystic knight class,but in FF11 they mostly went to the Red Mage along with a large assortment of other buffs and debuffs. Interestingly, I think this class would best fit into FF14 as a tank. Powerful defensive buffs could make up for potentially lighter armor, and weapon enchants could be switched around depending on situation, possibly for AOE, or increased survival, or other purposes.

Gun Mage

“But Ashgar, Gun Mage isn’t even a Final Fantasy class!” First, that’s incorrect. Second, as that game’s version of the Blue Mage, this would make me happy forever. As far as gun classes go, this one seems quite unlikely. Yoshi-P said that the gun class would be something that people didn’t expect (which immediately made people expect that it would be a healer), but I’m holding out hope for this.

I can dream, right?

Gaming

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.

Gaming

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.

Gaming

On Burnout

1 Comment

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.

Gaming

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.

Gaming

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.

Gaming

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.