Gaming Tradition

I don't know how other people feel on this topic but I am quite saddened by the new generation of RPGs. I'm a huge traditional RPG fan who still finds enjoyment in playing/replaying older RPGs on the original Playstation. Stuff like, Legend of Dragoon, Legend of Legaia, Final Fantasy 7-9 (10 I suppose as well), "Tales" games (Symphonia and the like). The question I find myself asking is where on earth have those kinds of games gone? Have we just transitioned out of the structure that all those games revolved around?

It's not that people wouldn't play them, I mean we've been seeing large amounts of people expressing interest in a FFVII remake and that's a game we've already experienced as a gaming community. I know I'm not the only one who feels this way but I find that we've shortchanged the story in favor of "better" gameplay. We've effectively reduced our idea of an "epic" game to things like Mass Effect or Dragon Age, games that only require around 30 hours to thoroughly complete. Don't get me wrong, I love Mass Effect but it's a completely different type of RPG and we're getting the third installment of the franchise shortly but honestly, I'm somewhat certain that I put more time into a single Final Fantasy game than both ME1 and 2. That saddens me greatly, especially since we haven't seen a good Final Fantasy game since 9/10 (My Opinion). I feel like we're losing touch with a genre of games that put out some of the most influential titles of their times.

The gaming industry is very preoccupied with innovation and I often find myself enjoying their new and fancy additions to their games but I'd trade every nuance in the book in exchange for a story that really floored me. I'm not attracted to games by all their bells and whistles or their super awesome gameplay (sometimes), I just want a lengthy game that doesn't try to be anything but itself. The Elder Scrolls games are a great example of an "epic" that continued to evolve over the years and is now widely regarded as one of, if not the best, game of 2011. Why have no other games come through in such a big way? Nobody wants turn based combat anymore, I kinda get that but at the same time it was a model that worked for people for a very long time and honestly, it wasn't a big part of the game, the story was the main focus.

I suppose if I were to summarize this I would say that my wish would be for a game to come out that, while it may not have the best gameplay, has a phenomenal story and allowed me to really dig into it for much longer than most current generation games allow. I've logged over 100 hours into several games, Skyrim being the newest addition to that list. Things like Legaia, Dragoon, FFVII, Persona 3/4. They all have their flaws but there was something that kept me coming back.

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Darksiders II

Holy crap. I cannot wait for this game to come out and am replaying the original just to get back into the universe that Darksiders takes place in. I had the opportunity to meet a lot of the guys who worked on the original Darksiders as well as the sequel, they are a great bunch of guys who really want to push the limits of what you can expect out of a gaming experience. In truth, Darksiders was a mashup of elements from various other games woven into a post apocalyptic world filled with secrets and a very free combat system. You find aspects of Zelda strewn throughout the game, they are tried and true concepts that helped build one of the most well loved franchises in gaming history and are brought to a new stage with Darksiders. From what I've seen so far with Darksiders II, Vigil is taking their idea and building upon it in a way that will hopefully define the Darksiders series like never before.

The first thing that caught my eye was the combat. Comparing it to the original Darksiders is like night and day. The combat is fluid, fast paced, intense, responsive, and much more than I'll be able to do justice here. I did love the original Darksiders' combat simply because it worked well for what they were trying to do but honestly whats really winning me over here is that they didn't cop out on the work like so many sequels seem to. The game is evolving. Vigil is able to do so much more than ever before with their idea and I think that is just fantastic. When you put a game like Darksiders with a studio like Vigil the sky is the limit. Maybe I'm biased because Vigil is the only studio I've had the opportunity to personally see but I'm glad these are the guys working on Darksiders, it has fantastic potential as an RPG and it would be a shame to see it amount to anything less than amazing.

Next is the movement. War is a big dude, no question there. His movements were a bit slow and heavy which had adverse effects throughout the game. Death is significantly smaller and more agile than War is and, just from the tiny bits of gameplay that have been shown thus far, the new movement mechanics reflect this agility. Quickly chaining skills together, rolling out of the way of oncoming attacks, and dashing around your enemies seem to be easy for Death. Just these two simple aspects of the game make a world of difference when it comes down to making a successful game. So in my book, that's two steps in the right direction for Darksiders II

Can't wait to see more on this game, so excited!

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Batman: Arkham City

Alright so I finished Arkham City the other day and the ending kind of took me by surprise, which then generated a need for me to talk about why this ending works for me. WARNING: SPOILERS APPROACHING!

Arkham City was a fantastic game and you don't need me to tell you that, there are plenty of sites and magazines ranting and raving about how amazing it is. I agree with them completely, I enjoyed the crap out of the game. Its not just limited to the game though, I loved the s tory that was told through the diverse cast of heroes and villains. Batman as a whole has always been grounded in the importance of life and the preservation of it in a severely broken world. Arkham City was no exception to this theme but it also served as the final story (I think?) in this specific Batman universe. The transition from the Asylum to the City was significant because it also represented the spreading chaos that simply could not be contained in such a small area anymore.

The cast of villains you encounter are all extremely brutal and the plot is filled with death and destruction despite Batman's efforts to prevent it (mostly by hoping that several broken bones is enough of a deterrent for most people). In the wake of this brutality lies death and oh boy is death a recurring theme throughout the story here. You'll see almost the entire cast from the Asylum make appearances here or at least get mentioned with the exception of Scarecrow (Killer Croc food) which is strange to me considering we go from a little death in Asylum to a whole bunch in City.

Kicking off the death train is Rah's Al Ghul or however his name is spelled with his whole life and death mean jack shit to me kind of attitude. This character is a major villain in the Batman universe and essentially is trying to annihilate everything from the world, starting with Arkham City. As it turns out he is behind the entire operation to wipe out every prisoner in the city and he even kills Strange and then himself as a result of his failure, thinking he can be revived in the Lazarus pit like usual, then Batman kicks Clayface into the pit and wrecks it....ha. So, Rha's ends up dead, potentially for good.

Next up is Talia, Rha's daughter and Batman's lover. Talia typically takes care of her father but after he tries to kill her she ends up kind of siding with Batman and even saves him from Joker by offering him immortality in exchange for Batman's life. Despite Batman's efforts to save her she still ends up getting shot by Joker and dying.

Hugo Strange is another villain that meets his well deserved demise in Arkham city at the hands of his ally, Rha's. He spent the entire game seeking wholesale murder and he ended up dead before he could realize that ambition.

Lastly we have the most important death. Joker. Throughout the game Joker engages Batman in a game of mutual destruction or benefit which culminates in a final showdown resulting in the death of Joker. Batman has a bit of a crisis when he sees Joker dying in front of him while he holds the cure to what is killing him. During this period of thought Joker takes the opportunity to stab Batman in the shoulder with a knife, making him drop the cure on the floor. Batman expresses his regret and tells Joker that even though he shouldn't he still would have saved him. The game concludes with Batman carrying the Joker's corpse out of Arkham City and walking off, conflicted. In the end, evil didn't need any help eliminating itself.

So why does this ending work? Well for me at least, I find that most Batman stories are constantly doing this dance with death leading up to a climactic end but it is fairly uncommon to see death on such a large scale. However, seeing death that much allows you to contrast it to the value of life expressed in most Batman series. Bruce Wayne's entire motivation to become what he is was fueled by death and in turn, the value of human life. Arkham Asylum/City was no exception to this, it is death that spurs Batman onward in order to protect life and while most of the time the bad guys just end up in full body casts for a while, they remain alive. Why did Arkham City kill off a good portion of the villains? It was symbolic of this series' end. Just like any story you are free to interpret it however you'd like but Arkham Asylum/City boasted some of the most depth in multiple areas such as character design, story-line, plot, and even the world's they crafted were incredibly complex and intricate. Upon seeing the undoing of the various villains I found myself feeling bad for them, victims of their own machinations.

Thanks for reading, there will be a more gameplay centered post later on!

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Limbo

Well I tried to write a post about Limbo a few days ago when my browser decided it would be a dick and crashed as I was about to post it up. So now I get to re-do the entire post...joy. Essentially I was super late to the Limbo scene and most of what could be talked about has already been discussed on various threads located elsewhere. However, Limbo is an incredibly interpretive game and can be taken in many different ways depending on how you look at the facts the game presents to you. This is my take on it.

Just a little disclaimer here, Limbo is an incredibly ambiguous game and gives you very few solid facts to work with. There is no dialogue or plot necessarily and the entire game takes place in a world that makes no sense and is left up to the player to interpret. That ambiguity is potentially one of the reasons that Limbo is such a great game, players tend to like being able to draw their own conclusions even though it can be frustrating at times. Anyway, onto the interpretation!

The description we are provided with in regards to the game is just a simple sentence. "Uncertain of his sister's fate, a boy enters Limbo". So we start the game off with the basic plot, we're looking for this kid's sister in this crazy world filled with darkness, monsters, and even a few other people. Now I'd like to point out here that this world is exceedingly cruel and filled with death and punishment, you can see the results in the scattered corpses and decay all around the world. Despite this world being so cruel this little boy pushes straight through it in pursuit of his ultimate goal, how badly must he want to find his sister? I think that they boy's motive is sort of unique and he is obviously not trying to check on her in a traditional sense since he has to traverse this odd world to do it. I think that, based on some of the conclusions at the end of the game, the boy is dead and he cannot pass on until he knows what happened to his sister.

About 3/4 of the way through the game you encounter the boy's sister sitting under a tree-house picking flowers but just before you reach her you get one of those lovely bugs biting into your head and are forced to go the other direction for a while. After ridding yourself of the pest you return to where your sister was and she is no longer there. In her place are only more obstacles. This is a key point in the game in my opinion simply because it demonstrates that the world is clearly not a solid world or even a real one. The boy clearly idealizes the finding of his sister and as soon as he is about to grasp that goal it is moved away from him. I think his time in Limbo is symbolic of a journey back to reality and it ends with the completion of the boy's goal. I'm not entirely sure if his sister is dead as well but I'll get to that in a moment.

The ending. As you finish the final puzzle you are flung through a barrier of sorts. People have interpreted this to symbolize the event that cause his death (car accident, falling out of a window, etc). I, however, interpret it a tad bit differently. I think this was the barrier between the living world and the world of the dead. The game description we are given almost implies that at least one of the characters (the boy and his sister) is dead but I find myself drifting more towards the idea that the boy had died and wanted to know what happened to his sister. To support this conclusion I would call attention to the fact that upon passing through that "barrier" you can move backwards and there is no remnant of the area you had just passed through, only more forest. Also, upon approaching the boy's sister she looks up as if to communicate that she felt something, but she does not turn around.

After the credits we see that the previously intact tree-house is now in disrepair and there are flies above two spots on the ground, implying they are both dead. I found this to sort of represent the passage of time. Perhaps the girl was putting flowers over the boy's grave under the tree-house? Maybe she was buried there later, as indicated by the flies over the two spots? Or I could be wrong and they were both dead from the start, as symbolized by their shadowy figures. It's kinda great that we can't actually know.

Hope you enjoyed reading! If you've played the game please comment with any thoughts!

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Skyrim! Pickpocketing! Yay!

So I finally got Skyrim to stop doing that super fun thing where the first menu box just keeps looping itself over and over and am able to play Skyrim again...not that there is a whole lot left for me to do on it right now. There was still one last thing I wanted to do to have some fun and finish up a few of those Daedric quests as well as other random quests. That last thing was maxing out pickpocketing and then stealing everyone's shirts.

It is quite hilarious to walk up to guards in places like Solitude where they are busy hitting practice dummies with their swords or bows and then nick their weapons and armor so they just sort of stand there and go...."I feel like I had clothes on a moment ago...oh well". Needless to say, the entirety of Solitude is now naked. Of course since I didn't want to lug all that useless crap around with me it is scattered all over the ground throughout the city. It's also fun to completely strip unsuspecting enemies of their gear and then make my presence known to them and watch as they attempt to punch me to death in confusion. Oh Skyrim, will you ever cease to entertain me?

On a slightly more serious note: Pickpocketing rocks for anyone who likes leveling quickly and having nice things. I lifted an Elven bow off an npc when I was like level 4 or something, Stole the Skyforge weapons from the various Companion members and got myself about a thousand arrows which helps a lot when all I'm using on this new character is a bow. I'll probably do the thieves guild again on this character and keep the Skeleton Key to solidify my role as an unstoppable thieving bastard.

I'll also be finishing the final few Daedric artifact quests to complete my list, getting 100% of the artifact masks, and writing about the main story line/completing all the shouts. Posts on all of those will be made available as I finish them.

Daedric Artifacts remaining:

Hermaeus Mora: Oghma Infinium - Book

Sanguine: Sanguine Rose - Staff

Hircine: Savior's Hide/Hircine's Ring - Ring

Malacath: Volundrung - Warhammer

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Lineage 2 Rebooted: Goddess of Destruction

Me and a couple friends decided to leave Aion to give Lineage 2 (L2) a shot since they turned it into a free to play and overhauled a lot of features to try and make it a competitor with other newer MMOs. However, L2 is not a new game by any means and this update doesn't change that as much as I had hoped. That being said, I know I had pretty high expectations for the update and since I have yet to reach the level cap (far from it) I can't exactly pass judgment on it but from what I've seen so far it's essentially the same game with just a few tweaks and added content. I'll talk about what I liked and what I thought they really needed to improve and didn't.

Starting with the negative!

Things I think needed improving that got completely/partially ignored:

1. The User Interface (UI)

2. I WANT TO JUMP.

3. Combat is still very much point, click, win, at this point (As I get more skills this will lessen)

4. Movement remains clunky and obstacles cannot be jumped over

5.Graphics are still "meh" but that's not a big deal to me

The User Interface: To me, having a shoddy UI is inexcusable for any game calling itself a current generation game or in L2's case, a game that can compete with current gen games. A good UI is not hard to accomplish by any means, games like Aion and WoW have fantastic UIs that are player friendly and don't require you to dig around through tons of boxes that are either unnecessary or just painfully difficult to access. This was probably the one thing I would have loved L2 to fix since it has a rather cluttered mess of a UI that might have been okay five years ago but that doesn't exactly fly. Now, you might say I'm too picky about this and people have no problem with it and I would tell you to eat a shoe if you've played L2 previously. You get used to it, no question about that, but when trying to appeal to a non-nostalgia market a good UI is critical and makes everything smoother for everyone playing. Maybe I've just played Aion for too long and it killed other MMOs for me :(

2. There is a reason most MMOs have a jump button. I mean when I am traipsing along through L2's absolutely MASSIVE world it gets a tad bit annoying when my character encounters a tiny rock and is like "WHAT IS THIS WALL I HAVE RUN INTO!?". Then I have to admit that the tiny rock is too much of an obstacle for my poor feet and walk around it shamefully. There is also this funny thing where some mobs will spawn ontop of rock formations, and they have bows...it then becomes a game of "find the spot" while you run around the rock looking for a way up onto it whilst being shot with arrows. You're still allowed to fall off things though, they couldn't take that away from me but you just sort of trip your way down hills and such. I want to vault myself off cliffs.

3. Fear my cursor. L2 still has its old combat system which was disappointing but I can't say I honestly expected them to rework their entire combat system since you could essentially label it Lineage 3 and people wouldn't find that to be outlandish. However it is still a point of annoyance for me since I like dynamic combat (they promised this by the by but we shall see if endgame delivers) and I especially like dynamic PvP and somehow I feel like I'm going to get blown straight to hell by mages and such since I can't move properly, which brings me to....

4. WHY DON'T MY FEET WORK?! After watching PvP videos of various L2 servers (Private and Retail) I still think they have made their PvP entirely dependent on planting your feet and getting into an immobile slugfest which I hold in the same regard as a rock em' sock em' robot battle. When I can't kite around my opponent and add that dimension of control it just encourages gear based PvP which I do not like (I put a bucket over my robot's head, you lose!).

5. Graphics. This is 50/50 for me because I actually kind of like how L2 looks but honestly when you make such a massive update I expect the graphics of this ancient game to be absolutely overhauled completely, totally, any other word that means something similar. Hell Aion even underwent a graphics upgrade about a year after it was launched (I like this a lot even though it is cosmetic it shows that the game is trying to stay current). That being said, I like the graphics they are definitely nostalgic from when I used to play avidly.

What I liked:

1. The world

2. The leveling curve

3. The gear curve

4. The player base

5. Quests are worth doing!

The world of L2. It is the single most massive world I have ever encountered in a game. If I walked from top to bottom it would take me hours. There is just so much terrain in this game and no loading screens to break the continuity which is just great. Despite every major town and grinding/quest area being packed full of people I was still able to find my own little personal leveling area simply due to the fact that the world they have made is big enough for everyone to do their own thing in. Since the update most of the main towns from before are now ransacked and lay in ruins and a lot of the previous leveling spots people used are far different than they were before the patch (I found this out the hard way).

Leveling! L2 was infamous for its debilitating leveling curve that either devoured your soul or made you quit the game. This has changed. Drastically. Essentially the first 20 levels take almost no time at all thanks to the new opening quest line and the rest of them are significantly lowered in terms of required exp which reduces the previously insane grind down to a pleasant playing experience.

I'm so shiny! The gear curve is better simply because they provide it for you. Since this patch was supposed to make L2 accessible to multiple playerbases and also involved a lot of people starting fresh on brand new servers they decided to implement a "Path of awakening" system that rewards you at various points along your leveling experience with weapons and armor suitable for your level. Some would complain that this makes things too easy and there is no doubt that it does make things incredibly easy compared to before but a lot of the playerbase consists of returning players who have experienced the grind for levels and gear before and don't exactly want to re-do that entire experience. It boils down to what will get them players and what will make them want to stay. The gear you receive is also limited though (The highest rank gear lasts 90 days) and they don't give you end game gear so this essentially levels the playing field on the way up to cap.

SO MANY PEOPLE *trampled*. I think it is absolutely hilarious that Aion can barely populate 2 servers and L2 had to open up a 4th server because all the others were running at capacity. You can be playing the best MMO ever but if you don't have a solid playerbase then you will undoubtedly fail, hard. Conversely, if you take an older game and give it an overwhelmingly huge amount of players you'll see a reinvigorated game. I firmly believe that the players make the game fun, MMOs are built around having that community, that competition.

Excuse me, I have to go save some maidens. Questing used to be a piece of crap before this patch. L2 was almost entirely a grind with very little quests since they few they did have were terrifyingly useless and time consuming. Now, we have quests that are simple and level you up quick, which is nice but the ease is offset by the sheer number of people trying to farm a limited number of mobs. I still found it easier to grind my way through the levels but once I get to a point where the quest areas are a bit less densely populated I'll return to questing.

Last thing I swear! It is incredibly important to remember that L2 is a free game now. How many free games sport all these things with such few flaws? L2 is a fantastic game and I love it to death, I am immensely happy to see life breathed back into it after such a long period of only having one server of bots/old players. Such a long post...kudos if you read it all.

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