If you’re reading this post then I’m going to assume that you know what Aion is. If you do then you can skip this paragraph. If you don’t then a brief description is: Aion is a new MMORPG that is being developed by NCSoft. The MMORPG uses the Crytek engine and each character has a limited flight ability.

With that very brief synopsis out of the way, I have been playing Aion in the last two beta events. I’d like to share a quick few thoughts about it.

• Aion is essentially like every other MMORPG. Quests (I call them “jobs” or tasks”) are the same (slay 10 creatures, collect 15 of these, take this here) are the same as what you find in other MMOs, with the occasional interesting story-based quest that pops up completely unexpectedly.
• Combat is similar to other MMOS, but the chains do add a small choice to your combat. Do you knock them back, or do you shield bash for extra damage? They’re small choices, but they can add up to make a big difference
• Flight is significantly more limited that I expected. The majority of the game world is a “no fly zone”. The only time that you can fly (outside of the abyss) is when you are near one of three or four chunks of the Tower. These are, of course, city or outpost areas. The adventure zones are all no fly zones.
• That said, you can glide in the no fly zones, and the website claims that some areas have “pockets of air” that will send you higher… kind of like a hang glider, actually. I have yet to run into these locations, but you do have a limited amount of control over your gliding. With some practice you can glide longer than usual, as long as you’re effectively going down hill or at least have jumped from a cliff.
• The main cities – Sanctum and Pandamonium – are both no fly zones. This baffles me, particularly in regards to Sanctum because that is a city floating in the clouds! Yes, it is possible to go over the side and die, although much of the city does have invisible walls preventing this.

With all of that said, it is a solid MMO. The game runs beautifully; that is to say that older computers should have no problems running this game (though you will, of course, need to turn down some graphics options). The animations are smooth and fluid (more often than not). The client is stable, though the beta servers can have some issues (I suppose that’s expected).

The real fun is obviously in the PvP of the game. NCSoft has been really smart about the PvP in Aion.

You don’t need to engage in PvP because there are areas in the game that the other side simply can not enter. These rift-free zones are of the same level as the rift-enabled zones. If you just want to grind and do the usual MMO jobs then you can do that, but taking part in PvP brings considerable benefits.

First of all, the campaign quests – those are the quests that reveal your character’s missing memories and progresses the game’s main story line – are (in my experience thus far) only available in the zones that have limited PvP. So if you want to continue your story then you’re going to have to accept the possibility of occasional, limited PvP.

I’ve said “limited” a few times, so what does this mean? NCSoft loves to use the description PvPvE. That’s “Player versus Player versus Environment”. This describes the action in the abyss, but these limited PvP zones are a way to slowly introduce the players to this concept.

There will be “rifts” (think worm hole) that appear in these zones. Sometimes they’re one-way and sometimes they’re two-way. These rifts don’t always appear, and when they do they are always in a limited number and they are in a random location. When they do appear you will see a message in your chat box that says “A rift to Eloysea has appeared” or “A rift to Asmodae has appeared”. It will repeat once for each rift that appears (I never saw more than 3 at once).

In addition to these limitations, the game also imposes a numerical limitation. That is to say, only a small number of the other side can come through at any one time. Once a certain amount of players use a rift then that rift will vanish. This makes it impossible for the attacking force to out number the “home forces”; you can not be zerged. That’s not to say that you’re limited to single digits; all together you can have more than 10 players from the other side in your area, but it’s unlikely that they will ever have more players than are on the home side.

You can never see the level of the opposing characters, so it is actually impossible to know for sure exactly what you are going up against. Logically a ganker could try to make their way closer to the city in that area to find potentially lower level players, but you have players coming and going fairly frequently. You can never be sure that the person who you are about to attack is weaker than you. There is also nothing stopping the “home force” from having considerably higher level players in the area for one reason or another.

In the two weekends that I’ve played I’ve had a small number of PvP kills. I think that it’s about 24. It’s only that high because I went through a rift, found an invading party, and happily went about assaulting the enemy. ;D It was fun times. They eventually caught on to us and sent a repelling force around twice our size and basically steam rolled us. Hah! Well, they missed the assassin who could hide, but they did eventually find that sneaky little bugger too..

In so far as my home area is concerned, I had few enough PvP encounters that I could easily count them on one hand and probably still have a finger or two left over.

It’s an interesting way to ease the player into the game’s PvP action. You’re never over whelmed because they have a limited number that come into your area, and they are not always in your area because the rifts are not always present. When they do appear then you know about it and you know how many rifts there are (but not necessarily how many players, if any, have used them).

Lastly, the launch version of the game will have another feature. If a player decides to jump through a rift into an area that is considerably lower level then them then they’re in for a bad surprise. The game curses you after you kill so many players that are considerably weaker than you. You can no longer return your character to your home. You’re stuck in the enemy map and that’s that. You’re not going anywhere until you get killed.

Some of the other players have told me that upon getting cursed the location of the cursed character is always shown on the area’s map. I do not know if that is true or not, but I do know that the ‘curse’ described above is true. Still, this is something to keep in mind.

Generally speaking the game becomes a more enjoyable experience once you join a group and decide to take part in the PvP. The rifts are so random that I’ve come to think of the opposing characters as rare uber spawns with rare loot. No, players do not drop loot, but they do give you “Abyss Point” which can be spent to get sweet gear, useful items, as well as better consumables (potions, food) than you can find on a common vendor.

Oh, lastly there are arenas that you can enter if you want to do something like that. These are not “capture the flag” or other types of games. They are simply gladiator arenas that you enter, are instantly flagged PvP upon entry, and can consequently attack anyone else or be attacked by anyone else in the arena.

Of course you can avoid all of that if you want, but I’ll be happy to take part in it. When I get bored of it or just want a break, well, then there are the PvP-free zones that are the same level as the rift zones.

In all it’s been a decent experience. It is not a genre-changing game, but it’s a MMO that offers enough features to keep me interested. . . for awhile.

I had the pleasure of getting this trophy yesterday. Unfortunately it was in Training mode and not online, but when “It’s The Only Way To Be Sure” popped up on screen I laughed out loud. Then I actually checked the trophy to see its description and proceeded to chuckle off and on for the next 20 minutes or so.

These BlazBlue trophies really crack me up.

Note: The description is “Do a 20 hit combo after the round is over” (yes, you can continue to control your character, to a limited extent, after KO).

The BlazBlue Limited Edition (same $60 price tag) has a DVD / BluRay (depending on which system you get it for) that has tutorials and comments on it for each of the characters, as well as for the game in general. I’ve watched it, and it’s not terrible. It covers the very basic single button attacks as well as combos that will definitely take awhile to master.

BlazBlue also has an “easy specials” feature and is designed to work very well with a pad. You press a direction on the right analog stick and you do a special. This includes Distortion finishers and Astral Heat finishers. Of course, the person who creates the lobby can disallow easy specials.

That’s another thing. BlazBlue has real lobbies. Up to six players, if I recall correctly off of the top of my head, can be in a single lobby. When you create a lobby you can set it so that the winner keeps playing or that the loser keeps playing, or I think random? I’m not entirely sure what the third option is. Anyway, it’s pretty cool.

In addition to the above, anyone can save their game to their consoles hard drive. It dumbfounds me that CapCom didn’t do this, and in fact put limitations on the playback feature for each console. In BlazBlue you can save any fight that you have, and you can even allow other people to download your fights. So, in SFIV you’re limited to the top 5,000 players, but you’re free to share your fights as much as you want in BB.

There’s also a spectator feature in BB. You will be booted if your connection can’t keep up. That’s happened to me once. Generally, though, it’s pretty easy and painless to watch other people’s matches. This is a feature that can be disabled when the room is created, so it’s not always available.

The single player has a pretty decent story, as far as fighters go. There’s both a story mode and an arcade mode. Oh, and you don’t have to unlock basic characters lol, but you do have to beat arcade mode with most characters to unlock their Astral Heat finisher.

BlazBlue’s features are far superior to Street Fighter IV. In fact, it blows SFIV out of the water and really shines a light on IV’s confusing, dare I say archaic limitations. When reviewers say that BB is the new standard that fight games will be set against, that’s true.

The game play, of course, is significantly different. Just watch any video and you’ll see that it’s more chaotic. I had no idea what to expect before I got it; I never heard of Guilty Gear before people began talking about BB. I thought the game was going to be some crazy and confusing stuff, and it is because I’m new, but it’s not as bad as you may think.

The game play in each is just too different to compare though. I can’t say that one is better than the other. They’re both good games and both require a unique approach. BlazBlue will be friendlier to new players though, I think.

While it sounds like I’m a gushing BlazBlue fan boy, the facts are simply the facts. SFIV’s features simply doesn’t hold a candle to BlazBlue. The game play, though, is so different that I don’t think it’s right to say that one is better than the other.

Still, I can’t recommend Street Fighter IV to a new player. BlazBlue’s feature simply puts IV to shame.

Technorati Tags: Street Fighter, BlazBlue

Street Fighter IV has, as most reviews will suggest, been a positive experience thus far. However, this post isn’t about the game. This shares some of my thoughts about the Street Fighter IV Collector’s Edition.

The Negative – Let’s get this out of the way.

The Collector’s Edition (aka, the CE) comes in a box that is smaller than what I expected. At the least, I thought that the much hyped “hint book” would have taken up some room. Unfortunately, this wasn’t to be the case.

The “hint book” for Street Fighter IV CE is a very thin, glossy paper thing with a very small number of pages. It is easily the most disappointing part of the SFIV CE. In fact, I seriously thought that the hint book had been left out of my CE because it was no where to be found inside of the box.

Only once I opened the Blu-Ray Street Fighter IV animation did I find this supposed… “book”. It’s more accurately described as a flyer at best. You’re familiar with the advertisements that come with products these days; the ones on glossy paper that are tucked into DVD cases and the like. That’s pretty much what the “hint book” turned out to be.

This SFIV “hint book” lists (seriously) only a few (four? five?) of the characters, and in turn only a few of their moves. There are no hints, nor any information, nor anything else. There isn’t even text aside from what is absolutely required to list the moves and the names of the characters. The only good thing about it was the artwork.

If this was supposed to sell me on the official SFIV Prima guide then it is has failed miserably. I won’t even bother looking at the thing.

The Okay – Cool, but not made of awesome.

Laying somewhere in the middle is the animation, Street Fighter IV: The Ties That Bind. This skin-deep introduction to Street Fighter IV is definitely not a high quality anime story, although the artwork itself is done well enough. On the other hand, I don’t think that anyone was expecting a deep story from this. It is, ultimately, a long intro movie for the game, and many of Street Fighter IV’s animated endings make direct references to the events in The Ties That Bind. (note: you can currently find the entire movie on Youtube and elsewhere).

As a part of the SFIV CE it’s not a bad perk at all. The voice acting (I only watched it with Japanese audio) employed some decent talent, and the image quality is good; of course, it’s Blu-Ray so you kind of expect that. The animation & artwork quality isn’t the best that I’ve seen in an anime movie, but it’s far from “bad”. If you do watch it on Youtube then keep in mind that you’re probably not watching the HD version.

The sound track also deserves to go here. Here are some thoughts on the Collector’s Edition sound track:

Thankfully – and yes, I do mean thankfully – the Street Fighter IV theme song itself is not on the CD. I just don’t even want to think about this song, so moving on…

Track 3 on the sound track is a good example of what makes this OST decent. It’s befitting a fighting game, but it’s use of strings, appropriately Asian drumming, voice (think group “hua!”), and fast paced music makes it something that’s actually well worth listening to. If you liked the music in 9 Dragons then you’ll totally dig this tune, though it’s a faster tempo than what you’ll find in that MMO.

The new Chun-Li theme (track 7) is also fairly well done. It’s clearly identifiable, but it’s been brought into the present with instruments, modern synths, and additions that make it an over all enjoyable listen for fans of the Street Fighter series. This music is only played during a “Rival Battle”, so it does have a more serious sound to it. Rival Battles: Serious business, amirite?

Track 16 is a mellow, nonetheless upbeat techno tune that I’ve heard occasionally played in the Lobby between online matches. It’s good for chilling for a moment before hitting “Ready!”.

The closing track, track 17, is a catchy Jazzy version (complete with synth Sax) of a traditional Street Fighter tune. Oddly enough, it reminds me of the background music found in the Out Run series of driving games.

Track 3 alone almost moves this OST into the “Good” category, but the rest of the tunes on the CD (all of which I skipped here) are firmly set in the category of “background noise”. At least to my ears.

The Good – Now we’re getting somewhere…

While I’m very disappointed in the “hint book”, the Street Fighter IV Collector’s Edition is, in all, a pretty good buy. Taken all together I’m not disappointed in spending the money for it. The addition of the Blu-Ray animation, the Ryu figure, and the sound track are all bonuses that come together to make it a good edition fitting any gamer’s collection.

The Ryu figure, which I have not removed from the box at all, looks decent enough from what I can see. The artwork on the box is pretty good (although I wish they’d stuck with Chun-Li, I have an obvious bias).

In all, the CE itself is the best part of the CE, aside from the game itself. As a package, it comes together well.

Good night folks.

Technorati Tags: Street Fighter IV, SFIV, Street Fighter, Collector’s Edition

You’ve read the hype, but what about the reality?

The following was my response to a pal asking me how the game was, and it paraphrases the game perfectly:

There was not one single thing during Dead Space (includes ending) that was not 100% predictable or otherwise obvious. Was the ending decent? That depends. It was step-by-step by the books, but was it executed well? Sure. It’s kind of like grading a test though.. how well did they follow the steps?

Dead Space: The Gist

What steps am I talking about? If you’ve watched a horror movie in the past 20 years, you’ll know. I’m talking about the by-the-books bag of tricks that all horror movies take from: things such as when something jumps out to give a cheap scare, the sound effects that are used to keep you unnerved, and even the music to heighten a scene.

Add to that every cheap trick that any “scary” game has ever used, such as when you’ll get attacked, or when something quickly runs by up ahead only to vanish, and other such norms, and you have Dead Space’s repertoire that leaves no cliche unused (and in some cases, blatantly abused).

EA took hold of this bag’o tricks and dug in like a little kid on Halloween. Dead Space isn’t bashful of upending this bag and using everything that falls out. EVERYTHING. I do not lie nor exaggerate when I say that the game even goes so far as to clearly use the Psycho “reak!, reak!, reak!” sound. Regularly (at least in the beginning. maybe I grew deaf to it after awhile or it eventually stops using the sound).

Audio

Like the game as a whole, it’s not that the audio is bad, it’s just that no originality was to be found. The music could have easily been taken from any 80’s (or 90’s) horror movie, while the sound effects and extra-loud volume always kicks in when you’re fighting anything. It doesn’t matter how simple the fight is. It could be a single little monster. The “Oh My Gosh I’m Being Chased By Monsters!” effects will begin playing and the volume will suddenly be twice as loud as it should be.

Game Play

Dead Space is Resident Evil on an abandoned space craft. It’s that simple. There is no further need to explain the controls or how the controls feel. It’s up to you to decide if that’s a good thing or a bad thing. Personally, I got annoyed at the fact that you can’t so much as switch guns without stopping to wait for the animation to play out, but that’s the way that these kind of games go.

That said, there were some sequences during the game that I found to be especially frustrating. Occasionally your character will be grabbed by a giant tentacle and you must shoot the one large vulnerable spot on the tentacle to destroy it. This is all well and good, but unfortunately the folks at EA took the path of “frustration equals difficulty”: Your camera shakes violently and your gun becomes very difficult to control.

I understand the idea behind this, and had it been executed well then it would have been fine. It wasn’t. Often times even the beams of light with which you aim would be pointing off at a 90 degree angle, completely out of whack with where the gun was actually shooting.

When you fail to take out the tentacle you’re treated to a long, dramatic death animation as your character is pulled into a small dark hole and struggles to escape but ultimately fails. It’s cool at first, but not when you’re repeating the scene for the 4th or 5th time because the good-for-nothing laser lights are shinning off into the wild blue yonder and you have no idea where in the hell you’re shooting.

There is one of these scenes in particular that made me want to set down my controller and call it quits. This is because in addition to the above, all of your controls are also reversed. So you have the shaky camera, the seemingly unresponsive controls, the beams of light that defy physics, and now up is down, down is up, left is right, and right is left.

If that sounds frustrating, you couldn’t be more right! I about had it at that point, and it didn’t help that the death sequence was longer than usual.

Technical Issues

There were two very noticeable technical problems that I had with Dead Space:

1.) When you finally make it to the ship’s Bridge you walk down a very short incline, take a right, and enter a door to get into the actual control room. The entire ship vanished, with the exception of the inside of the control room, while walking back up to the bridge proper. The visual result is that my character was walking on nothing out in the dead of space while the control room (and bits and pieces of the rest of the general area) floated in space with me.

2.) At one point I backtracked to hit a save before a fight. This required taking an elevator back up to a previous level. The game slowed down massively when the elevator began to move. It was so extreme that I honestly became concerned that my XBox 360 was about to die. Luckily that wasn’t the case, and when the elevator stopped at the top the game began once again playing at full speed.

That was the only time that I experienced this level of slow down, though smaller moments were experienced at a couple of other points.

Conclusion

EA played it safe from start to finish. There is not one ounce of originality in Dead Space. It’s set on a derelict space craft filled with (what are effectively) zombies and they used every cliche in the book to drive it to the most predictable ending possible. Were it a movie rather than an interactive video game I would have fallen asleep.

So it’s like I said: It’s kind of like grading a test. Did they follow the steps well?

The answer is that it should be impossible to make a mistake when you’re being as deliberately – even blatantly – unoriginal as EA was with Dead Space, and that holds true. Though way over used through out the game, they did manage to use these standard props very well indeed. Were I grading a test I would leave them a note to suggest that they not write their essay quite so dryly, but would easily give them a perfect score.

Is that a good thing? My opinion is probably clear from the tone of this review – I was bored to death rather than scared to death during the entire game – but obviously many people have enjoyed Dead Space despite its formulaic construction.

And really, it’s not a bad game. The voice acting is done well, the graphics – though mostly identical through out the ship – are quite nice, the audio is of a good quality.. it’s all well executed.

There’s just not a single drop of originality to be found anywhere through the entire experience that is Dead Space. Not in any technical aspect, not in the story telling, not in … anything.

The game is OK, but don’t buy into the hype.

Technorati Tags: xbox, xbox 360, 360, horror, scary, survival horror, Dead Space, EA

I’ve read that Nintendo is planning on finally releasing a console capable of HDTV sometime around 2011. As a 30 year old guy who has been gaming since the Commadore and Atari, here are on my thoughts on Nintendo.

The problem with Nintendo is that they are always a generation behind. During the era of the original X Box Nintendo considered online play to be unimportant. Everyone else knew otherwise, and then Live hit. This generation they considered HD capabilities to be unimportant. Have you seen a Wii on an HDTV? A pal of mine has a 60″ HDTV, and the Wii is a woefully unpleasant experience.

With each successive generation Nintendo is playing catch up; touting features that are, as others have pointed out, five years too late.

Then there’s the problem of their games. I’m not saying that Zelda and Metroid aren’t cool, just that they’re Zelda and Metroid. I’m 30 years old now, and those games are identical to what they were when I played them as a kid on the NES. The only difference, of course, being graphics, but literally everything else about them are the same! The (annoying) music that plays when you open any chest in Zelda, or the fact that Metroid is the same formula as ever.

Nintendo refuses to take any chances with these games because they bring in money, but it’s backed them into a nasty corner that they now need to claw their way out of.

Lackluster hardware, a distinct lack of innovation in their games (controllers merely change the way you do the same’ol thing), and negative comments about hard core gamers has made me even less inclined to get the Nintendo Wii or their future products. This is coming from someone who didn’t so much as have the Nintendo 64.

They give mature gamers every reason in the world to go to the other team and stay there. Nintendo is still focused on kids. That’s who they’ve always been focused on, and I suppose if you repeat the same thing long enough then you’ll have another generation of kids to market to.

Unfortunately I can’t make this post more in depth than it is because I have to get on with the day. See you folks around.

Technorati Tags: games, Nintendo, Wii

This (screen shots after the jump) is the dark elf female in Neverwinter Nights 2 after installing player made face and hair mods. This is SO much better than the monkey-like appearances for dark elves that were created by Obsidian!

The character’s profile is “quick and dirty”. There wasn’t much room to write a proper profile, but I think that you’ll get the point.

I had an incredibly difficult time choosing the class, especially knowing how enormously biased Neverwinter Nights 2 is toward melee classes. This strong bias carried right on through to the expansion. This new dark elf model looks so damn cool in assassin or similar armor that I nearly could not resist. I wish that the game was not a linear path, else I would gladly make about 3 more classes at least.

Screen shots after the jump. Read the rest of this entry »

This Spore creature was made using Maxis’ Spore Creature Creator, which is available on the official Spore website.

Obviously I like horror and spooky things, so that’s the kind of creature that I made with the creature creator. The idea behind the creature is that I want it to fly, obviously, but I don’t know if that will be possible in the game. Spore is not yet released so there’s no way to tell, but you can put wings onto your creature.

This beastie intended to be a stealth hunter and thus has multiple bonuses to stealth, with some bonuses to striking, grasping, speed, and defense.

Image and Video:

Technorati Tags: spore, creature creator, spore creature creator, creater, creature creater, spore creature creater

So, I just finished the single player campaign of UT3. It was strange, having a story line taking such front stage in a game that’s little more than run, gun, and respawn. I found the whole “respawners” idea (the story’s way of explaining away the infinite lives that one has) to be a bit hokey. The rest of the story was interesting enough though, and the voice actors done a darn good job.

For all of its flash and popularity, UT3 is a very limited game that quickly becomes dull. At one point I found myself wondering why the game just didn’t end. There are only three game modes – CTF, DM, and “Warfare” – and that’s it. Through the entire single player campaign. These three modes simply are not enough to hold interest over a game that spans multiple levels on two different planet settings.

The real joy, however, comes from the bots. When I say “joy”, I mean this as sarcastically as possible. Here’s a quick little image: Read the rest of this entry »

I was playing around in the new Rise of Kunark expansion for EverQuest II when I came across this curious NPC. It seems that the folks behind the game enjoyed themselves quite a bit…. that, or they ran out of ideas for pets. I think that it’s the former, though, and I got a bit of a chuckle out of this.

Rise of Kunark has new pets for the characters. These pets do nothing but follow you around and try their darndest to look cute. Apparently there’s more than one, and these NPCs want you to “collect them all”!

Yes, seriously: They’re called Chokemon and the NPC says that they have to collect them all. You use a special magical ball to catch them no less!

This one is an image of my first Chokemon:

Enjoy getting them all!

Technorati Tags: Pokemon, Chokemon, EQ2, Everquest, MMO, MMORPG, EverQuest 2, Everquest II