Improved Shooters

A few weeks back I finished Operation Flashpoint: Red River which is the sequel to Operation Flashpoint: Dragon Rising (and totally unrelated to Operation Flashpoint: Fire Rescue). These games are semi-realistic in that one bullet can see to your quick death, yet still has the convenience of "magic" first aid kits you can use to stop bleeding and repair yourself. Don't worry, it's rare that you will be able to use them and survive anyway. :P

Dragon Rising had a steep learning curve (for me anyway), with enemies who liked to hide in thick foliage and objectives that if failed could end your game prematurely. The night time, stealth missions frequently come to mind. Also it was a bit jarring given that you cycled between different characters in different units each mission. While this opened up the variety of missions you could do, you never really got to know who you or your guys were, or why you were doing silly things like capturing a village on the far side of the map.

Red River fixes most of that and is basically a more polished and more user friendly game. As a marine grunt most of your sorties are all out strategic adrenaline pumping firefights - just the type I like but most importantly it also gives an easier to follow story. While your overall general sounds like a bit of a douche during the mission briefing screens, the true star of the piece is Staff Sgt. Knox who is out on the field with you giving you tips, assessing your performance and generally telling you how it is with often funny foul language.

Follow his rules to stay alive!

 

Another first person shooter that has seen some nice improvements is Orion: Dino Beatdown, now called Orion: Dino Horde. New maps, new dinos, new vehicles all add to the fun but it still has its fair share of problems. In my case it doesn't like my mic, lags a bit with four people, nor can it sync with my steam friends list. Despite that it is a very fun romp trying to make those dinosaurs extinct once more. Honestly, they've been the ones winning every round I've played so far. :P

Wizardry Online: Cartography Project

Since the maps in Wizardry Online are more than a bit lacking in detail I thought I'd try manually draw out each floor to help other adventurers better plan and prepare their forays into hostile territory. The scale is not exact and I'm sure there are errors or things I've missed somewhere so please advise me when you find them so I can fix them up!

Also, I'm more than happy to put up maps done by other people here to try collate them all into one place. If you have a map you want included please let me know. Alternatively if you want to read about my experiences in game you can do so at A Touch of Wizardry.

Completed Maps:
Caligrase Sewers
Kaoka Parrej Ruins
Deltis Keep
Trials of Fantasy [incomplete]
Golden Dragon Ruins First Floor
Golden Dragon Ruins Second Floor
Chikor Castle (thanks to Quark for helping with this one!)

Donated Maps:
Descension Ruins First Floor by Dremlock

Since I'm not active on Wizardry Online at the moment I thought I'd put up map kits containing the base maps and icons I've used in the above if anyone wants to continue the cartography work. Please feel free to use the below.

Map Kits:
Caligrase Sewer Base
Kaoka Parrej Base
Deltis Keep Base
Golden Dragon Ruins Floor 1 Base
Golden Dragon Ruins Floor 2 Base
Chikor Castle Base
Trials of Fantasy Base
Icons Base

Devils in the Torchlight

Been going through Diablo 3 and Torchlight 2 (pretty much a Diablo clone) on and off with my guildies and I've gotta say these two similar games so I thought I'd write up a quick comparison review.

Style and Story:
While both have the mostly unchangable eagle-eye camera view during gameplay, Torchlight 2 takes the more cartoony approach to its graphics and very rare (and flash like) cutscene(s). I prefer the sharp grittiness of Diablo 3, and the cool story and uber awesome cutscenes that go with it. Blizzard has pretty much perfected that part. :P

Places to See, Things to Do:
D3 has a mostly procedurally generated map. It and the baddies repopulate each time you start a session it seems. This is cool in that you can run into some interesting traps and people you haven't met before. However given it's nature, there is no real point (other than farming) to enter non-main story related instances. Even if you do it's not like it will matter because that dungeon you cleared may not even exist in the next session anyway.

T2 has a set map, even for its dungeons I think which means you can memorize paths and where secret rooms are etc. The baddies actually do respawn (not sure on the timer, possibly 1hr or some other trigger) within a single session, but the difference is that every dungeon actually has a purpose, a quest, or quest item that you need/probably want. Sure the monsters can respawn after and you can go back to farm but once you're done with a dungeon there's that sense of accomplishment that you don't need to go back in there again. For me T2 wins this section.

Party and Levels:
In D3 it allows for a party of 4 to face the demons of hell, give or take some NPCs depending on your current quest. Also, XP gain is scaled so that a lev 20 party killing low level scum will get minimal XP. Unfortunately if you have a lev 1 joining the lev 20 it means the lev 1 character will also get minimal XP, which actually encourages people to play solo instead of co-op.

T2 on the other hand seems to adjust XP gain based on an individual level (instead of a party level like D3), meaning it's easier to level up a low level buddy as they are getting full XP for each critter kill. It also allows up to 6 people to party up. This doesn't really affect single player people but for us where we like being in a team (and levelling up our allies to our level) this method obviously works better.

Difficulty:
As a group neither game is actually overly difficult. Had more deaths in T2 simply because it lets us go straight to the "elite" mode that we enjoy. D3 however forces people to play through "normal" mode first, and upon each completion of the game unlocks a harder tier. Tobold put up a post on Unlockable Difficulty and I pretty much agree with him in that it's a stupid idea. Once I've finished the plot line, what's the point in playing it again? Grinding numbers?

The D3 developers were either very lazy, or very arrogant in thinking theirs is the only game in town in this regard. With so many other games to play, I've seen no reason yet to replay this one. T2 definitely wins this category.

Bonus Stuff:
D3 has the Auction House which is pretty nifty though self defeating in my opinion. After looking at the wares available I've concluded that crafting, buying stuff from NPCs and grinding through all the random, non essential dungeons is a waste of time. Why would you bother when you can deck yourself out in full unique gear for an ultimately paltry sum of gold? Still, I like it since it saves time and puts all those coins to work.

T2 has no auction house or crafting meaning all those loot drops are slightly more important because you WILL need to find better gear (encouraging you to venture into all those dungeons). However what it does have are PETS. Everyone starts with a cute pet NPC who helps carry stuff, fight, and most importantly can go back to town on their own to SELL AND BUY stuff. This is frigging fantastic since it means the flow of combat doesn't need to be broken by merchanting runs back to town.

So, in the end while both games are pretty cool and both fun, in the end I think Torchlight II is simply better designed overall, which is kinda wierd when you think about it.

House Wars II

I just had a somewhat expensive weekend having to do upgrades on the house, with more maintenance bills to follow. Our main water heater exploded (literally) so that needed replacing since cold showers in autumn are generally not a good idea. Replacing all the old taps on top of that is a hefty drain on the wallet but  hopefully one I won't need to do again any time soon. Also after defeating the germanic bug tribe that was our problem last year, nature is now sending its second army in the form of plant life. Creeping vines, spidery weeds and heavy branches used as highways by the local possums all encroach into my territory and in some cases are beginning to dislodge the stone and woodwork. Taken to hacking the damned things back, but I'm beginning to suspect poison is again going to be the best answer - at least for the weeds. Gotta say it's pretty good exercise though. :P

Also just for fun some random blog stats as of this posting:
- 245 posts (wow they really pile up)
- 10101 page views so far.
- Top 5 countries where visitors view the site from are Australia, USA, UK, Russia, & Canada.
- 6 comments (half from me, no surprise there)

What is intriguing though is that the most searched keywords that lead here are:
"Skyrim Hamburger" and "pile of ash"

Not sure how that works, but I found it pretty funny. :)

Dangerous Assistance

Part of the journals from Wizardry Online! You can view the rest here!

Good news - I finally got past the watchman last night and retrieved the soul gem from the Temple of Oblivion, but I must admit it wasn't through my doing at all. I finally gave in to Thanam's suggestion of using a magic ring I received for free from a girl (Aika Lakuza) handing them out in town a few weeks back. When worn the ring lets you communicate with everyone else wearing one, and the amount of chatter I was hearing at the start was enough to go crazy. Still, I asked for help while in the depths of the temple with Quark and his human mage friend Westy and to my surprise someone offered to help - a dangerous (ooc: level 30 O.O) female criminal thief called Winter2 Silence. I was a bit wary of her arrival since I heard from the chatter that she liked to kill people after she helped them.

Fortunately this was not the case as she had a personal rule about not murdering in the temple. I don't exactly know how she handled the watchman, but basically she told us to stay out of her way. A few minutes later she called us in, standing over death's corpse.

He didn't look happy at all.

With the barrier down it was easy to take the soul gem we came in here for. Winter2 was amiable enough as she sat and recovered in preparation to face some forsaken priest elsewhere in the temple. Probably don't want to run into her again outside this place though. Selenka on the other hand did meet a super friendly criminal porkul lass called Cheeky Loli a few days ago at Chikor Castle. She's the first criminal status adventurer I don't think we'd mind meeting up with again.

Speaking of Selenka she's also had a crazy (and dangerous) idea of mapping out each dungeon in detail for new adventurers. Given the 37 deaths last month and the lower number of adventurers in town lately this is probably a good idea. I ran it by Quark and he agreed it had some merit so we'll get that cartography project started shortly and let you know how it goes.

-Caanon

Boston Bombing

Sad news this day with the bombing of the Boston Marathon. Slightly intrigued that they setup the bombs at the finish line though as I'd imaging you would have hit more people just before the start while they are milling about, though maybe that was intentional to hit "less" people - or maybe the location at the finish was just more accessible. I guess since most people were keeping their eye on the North Korean missile threat they didn't see this one coming. Will be interesting to see if Obama links it to North Korea regardless (get some NK patsy to take the blame), prompting a swift and decisive military action into that country. Not like they've done that before right?

Also wondered why anyone would willingly "take responsibility" of such an act since it would generally be painting a big target on your face and affiliations. Maybe they want to be heard. Maybe they want a challenge. Most likely they're just crazy. Guess we'll just have to wait and see.

Jin-e fits that description of crazy.

 

In much quieter news seems America was doing some bombing of it's own today too. They just kinda missed.

Age of Conan: the Single Player MMORPG

My brother was toying with the idea of trying out this game since it is free to play now and just for the hell of it, I decided to download it for myself to check it out and put my findings here. You start out as an amnesiac slave/prisoner (just like all the Elder Scrolls games eh?) and the opening cutscene is basically your character drowning to their death. Sort of. I won't spoil anymore but the story seems to be pretty solid from what I've seen so far anyway and you will be bombarded with quests of a non-repeating variety through mostly voiced conversation (no wonder the download is huge). I've read that after the first zone not everything is voiced as per MMO standard but even so it's very well done in that you don't actually -feel- like you are grinding for EXP. Better yet, if you need to collect bits from foes you don't have to kill 10 frogs to get 1 frog eye for example (damn you Wizardry Online :P). Provided you have a relevant quest, each (and every) critter will drop exactly what you need until you get your quota.

I don't need friends!

Some quests are even single player specific, taking you into the nighttime instances of an area which is basically solo mode. Daytime is the default multiplayer sandbox, but from what I've seen there has not been a good reason to team up with anyone else (possibly because it is not grindy). Sure it helps when other people are in a zone killing stuff that would get in your way but given the quest structure it would be rare that they would have the same goals you do. This is perhaps the biggest question mark for me as basically Age of Conan feels like a single player game that happens to have other people running about.

The graphics aren't as crisp as GW2 but they are pretty good, and the draw radius for the expansive zones is awesome - they just blur as they get farther. When you get to the Acheronian Ruins valley and are told "you have to get to the top of the temple", you can actually see where that is from the very distant opposite side which I find very cool. The mechanics of climbing and sneaking about are also passable with a little "light" gem ala the Thief Series to indicate how stealthy you are. Climbing is also fun (and mandatory later on) though my character doesn't actually use the hand and foot holds provided, instead preferring to climb the air 1 foot away from the wall. It looks silly but it's minor and is preferable to clipping inside the wall.

But it's an MMO? Looking for Party!

Combat is a bit clumsy with button mashing to the max (it is about a barbarian after all), wherein you are trying to attack your opponent on their least defended side (indicated by shield arrows) to do more damage. There are evasive sideward hops like in Wizardry Online but so far I've found it to be a it's a useless mechanic in this game. Death penalizes you with stacking gravestones that make you weaker for a penalty time, unless you can get back to it and tap it. A nice feature for me is once you are a set number of levels over the local monsters they become "white", meaning they give you only 1 EXP when slain but that they will also not bother attacking you anymore (at least not without aggressive friends) as they know they will lose. It also pushes players into harder areas since they can't grind the popcorn mobs.

I think the main multiplayer aspect is meant to come in the form of guilds in the end game (max level 80), wherein groups fight for territory, gold, fame and probably most of all out of boredom. I could be wrong, but if the story is as good as I think it is then it should have a proper end. Still, it looks like a nice ride to get there though - and apparently the titular character himself is in the game somewhere. Afterall, this is the age where he is King.

I will governate you.