A First Look: Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning

KoA: Reckoning is a new action-rpg title being released across the board (Xbox, Playstation 3, and PC) that takes a little bit from several games such as Fable, Skyrim, and Dragon Age, and synthesizes them into Kingdom's of Amalur: Reckoning. Before I actually say anything about the game itself there is one detail that needs to be cleared up before anyone even tries playing the demo: It is buggy as all hell. But there is hope! A lot of people (including myself) were having issues with the game showing up as completely black except for the pause menu and the cutscenes. In order to remedy this you have to simply go into the graphics options of the game and switch "Post Processing" to "disabled". There are still numerous bugs in the demo but hey, it's a demo I think we can cut them a little slack and save the brutal judgement for when the game is released a week from now. Anyway, moving on.

Combat: This is the selling point of KoA: Reckoning, they advertise it heavily in trailers along with their open world. In short, I totally agree with the hype they are sporting for the combat, its crisp, fluid, and stylized. In addition to the basic combat working well they give us a plethora of skills as we progress through the game with an equally vast amount of weapons to choose from. This extends to all classes and even the mages will move around a lot with their skills instead of just sitting around casting spells you're more likely to be running around executing combos and giant, awesome looking AoEs.

In the demo I decided to play as a rogue and they really did a nice job providing the rogues with a lot of quick physical skills as well as some shadow arts that you can seamlessly weave into combat. Many of the combos you can perform also seem to be based on your timing. For example, the skill "Crossfire" is started by briefly pausing mid combo which then allows you to use the opening hit and follow it up with a secondary strike to send your opponent flying. The timing comes into play with this skill when you use the second hit, which automatically does critical damage if timed properly. This mechanic drew me into the combat and prevented me from just mindlessly killing stuff as I do in so many other games.

The world: Now its only the demo but the starting area is huge, really huge. You're basically given a rather large forest to explore that has it's own set of dungeons and quests that can easily occupy players for more than the 45 minutes they're given by the demo. This is a good sign, it may not be as much of a sprawl as Skyrim but hey, it'll still provide players with a lot of content to explore and plenty of dungeons to crawl through.

The classes: This is another cool area of the game since they give you a ton of classes to choose from. By choose I mean mixing and matching skills from the three basic trees in order to unlock "destinies" which give you bonuses and unlock themselves once you've put the prerequisite amount of points into the trees. You can go full rogue and become a nightblade or go half rogue half warrior and end up a blademaster, each providing different styles of play. This allows players to really experiment and find their own niche, allowing them to have a unique experience with the game.

Overall: Based on the demo I think that KoA: Reckoning could be a good kickoff for gaming in 2012 provided they fix the numerous bugs that plagued the demo. The combat really works well with the open world setting and gives the game a very unique feel that keeps you engaged. I'm still very curious to see how the story plays out, but so far the game is looking like a fantastic early 2012 release. You can download the demo on Steam/Origin (for the PC) or just wait for the full game to be released on February 7th!

Thanks for reading!

-Fest

P.S There may be a video accompanying this post in the near future, stay tuned!

Read More

New Look

As you may have very well noticed I have changed the site quite a bit in the last 24 hours to try and clean it up and make it more accessible for people. I'm not totally done putting in all the changes since I'm a bit new at HTML editing so there will be more changes made in the coming days, but for now everything works except the navigation bar at the top that jokingly describes every category as something Fest related. So giggle at that and ignore it for now. In the future I'll probably use that bar to link to other related sites with relevant gaming information.

That's all for now! More SWTOR stuff later.

-Fest

Read More

Resident Evil 6

Oh man am I happy about this game, the trailer looks awesome, the main characters all look great, the gameplay seems to have been significantly improved from previous titles while still remaining close to the style we all know and love. I've never been a huge fan of the Resident Evil series and I've only really completed RE4 and RE5 but I fell in love with both of them and have big expectations for RE6.

One of the things I've noticed from the trailer is that there appears to be a more fluid melee combat system, something that was a bit clunky at times in previous installments of the series. The trailer alone reveals multiple in-game combat sequences that are much more elaborate and polished than any we've seen in previous RE games.

There also appears to be a few separate "main" characters and, at least in the trailer, they are all scattered around the world and have significantly different styles of play as well as incredibly different environments. Leon interacts with an unknown female character who claims responsibility for the outbreak while engaging the residents of Tall Oaks, a town described as "another Raccoon City". Leon and his new lady aren't dealing with anything like Las Plagas or anything from RE4/5, they seem to be more reminiscent of traditional zombies...except they can jump and pick you up and stuff...so yeah. Moving on, Baldy and his tiny lady friend are reminiscent of a much smaller version of Chris and Sheva as they trek through a snowy city combating what looks to be a Nemesis-esque baddie with a robo-arm (with attachments). So then there's Chris and his new partner dude fighting terrorists with their squad in what I assume is Shanghai in a more action packed setting that reminds me a lot of RE5's setting, fast paced and violent with lots of big guns and explosions.

The new faces. There are a bunch of new protagonists that make appearances in this trailer and they have piqued the curiosity of many many fans. First off we have Baldy who loves money and likes to punch zombies. Seems like a pretty cool guy, but who the hell is he? After doing some digging I've found people speculating that he is some guy named Hunk, a mercenary from the RE3 epilogue files. There is also speculation that baldy is Alex Wesker, the guy who unlocked the key to immortality and betrayed Spencer and fled, which would explain why his blood is so important. Again, that is all speculation and Capcom has not released any details in regards to this new mystery protagonist's identity. Baldy's little lady friend is apparently Sherry Birkin, the daughter of William Birkin from RE2. The zombified president at the beginning of the trailer sparked rumors that this blonde haired girl is actually Ashley from RE4, the President's daughter. Next up we've got Chris' new partner...who is a fellow soldier that I really couldn't find much information on so I'll just let Capcom identify him whenever they want. Lastly we have Leon's new partner, Helena Harper, who is apparently responsible for something in regards to the outbreak, so lets just start hating her now.

I have to say that I like the idea of this sort of separate campaign stuff that is implied in the trailer with all three pairs being in very different environments. Leon and Helena's section seems to have a much more traditional feel to it, inside houses, small hallways, in a bit of a rustic town. Chris and random agent's segment has a more action packed feel to it with even some potentially human opponents (the terrorists perhaps) as well as what appears to be a cover system that zombies don't care about and will pull you out of anyway. A lot of the merc's footage is of a huge zombie chasing them down relentlessly through a snowy city which looks to be very cinematic and epic. Should be interesting as more details are released in the future.

Thanks for reading! RE6 is scheduled for a November 2012 release so look forward to it!

-Fest

Read More

SWTOR: Meet the Sniper (PVP)

Alright so my main character on SWTOR is a Sniper and I've really enjoyed the playstyle despite it being a bit odd for me to play a ranged class in an MMO as I am typically an assassin. But yeah, the sniper is a heavy ranged DPS class that utilizes a cover system to demolish opponents in both PvP and PvE without taking any damage, ideally. The particular specialization I chose to pursue is the Engineer, a spec that focuses on explosions and other area of effect skills (AoE).

The sniper's role in PvP is definitely in the vein of covering your teammates as well as blowing up high priority targets before they have a chance to do their thing. An Engineer is focused on putting a dent in a large number of players to change the tide of larger fights by using things like grenades, probes, and even an orbital strike to inflict massive damage on other players. Snipers also have some damage mitigation skills that allow us to either absorb damage with a shield or dodge it altogether which makes us viable even at close range. Our ideal distance is between 20 and 30 meters since most other classes need to be closer than that to do the majority of their skills. We're also given skills that slow other players down or immobilize them completely in order to kite (the act of maintaining distance from a target by use of slows and strategic movement) melee classes that can close distances quickly.

Despite the value of our ranged combat, Snipers can still be useful at close range if we use our skills properly while paying special attention to the placement of your area skills. If you see a warrior or two...or three (there are lots of warrior classes) coming at you its not a bad idea to pop whatever defensive buffs you have and put area skills down right over yourself. Nothing is more hilarious that watching three frustrated melee classes chase you around in a circle while being hit by an orbital strike, burned by a probe, and having grenades chucked in their faces every few seconds. Snipers can be extremely effective in a sort of one vs. many scenario provided the player knows what they're doing it is possible to drop three or more people at once as an engineer due to the extremely high AoE damage you can put out.

I'll just briefly mention the other two specializations you can choose from. First you've got your basic marksman spec which, as the name implies, is entirely focused on ranged skills and your fundamental sniper skills. The spec's main benefit is that it powers up critical hits on a lot of your skills and offers a very high amount of chain-able skills such as instantly cooling down "Series of Shots" and allowing you to use two more without a cooldown. So basically that means you can put heavy dps on a target for a solid 20 seconds without consuming much energy. My favorite part of the marksman tree had to be the skill "Followthrough" which, again as the name implies, follows up one of your snipes or ambushes with a powerful shot that takes no time to prepare and does extremely high critical damage. This spec, as well as the other two, is very viable for PvP and PvE alike.

Next is the Lethality spec. This is a tree focused on dealing damage over time with your poison skills and is widely regarded as the "best" spec for PvP, an opinion with which I strongly disagree. However, this is still a great spec for dealing with a lot of the heavier classes under the label of "tank". It's very possible to tag a target with multiple DoT (damage over time) skills which just pile up damage and is very difficult to out heal or even get away from. If a lethality sniper has you in it's sights then you better focus on killing it quick.

Engineers like making things go boom and so do I. It's a perfect fit. That's pretty much all I've got to say about Snipers for the time being. I'll probably do a Meet the Operative after I finish mine and they get nerfed.

Thanks for reading!

-Fest

Read More

Star Wars the Old Republic: Overview

Alright so this will just be a moderately brief look at the overview of the game discussing things like various classes/roles and gameplay as well as some aspects of what makes SWTOR a good game and also some things that need touching up. I'll start with the class system.

Classes: SWTOR takes a pretty typical approach to an MMO class system. You start out as a basic class and advance to one of two advanced classes at level 10. To add more depth to this fundamental system Bioware added specialization trees to each advanced class which essentially changes your playstyle based on what spec you choose to pursue. You can also mix and match to create your own spec that suits your playstyle the best. People will always try to figure out the "best" one but that is totally subjective and most specs are viable in PvP. The class list goes as follows

Imperials: Agent, Sith Warrior, Sith Inquisitor (Mage-ish), Bounty Hunter

Republic: Smuggler, Jedi Knight, Jedi Consular, Trooper

Imperial Agent: Sniper, Operative

Sith Warrior: Juggernaut, Marauder

Sith Inquisitor: Sorceror, Assassin

Bounty Hunter: Powertech, Mercenary

Smuggler: Scoundrel, Gunslinger

Jedi Knight: Guardian, Sentinel

Jedi Consular: Sage, Shadow

Trooper: Commando, Vanguard

I personally play a Sniper as my main character so I'll discuss that in depth in my next post. The cool thing about all the classes is that there are multiple roles that each can fill based on which skill tree you pursue (same as a spec). For example, the "Assassin" class has a basic DPS (damage per second) spec that makes for a great PvP tree but it also has a spec for tanking that is filled with defensive skills. What kind of assassin can tank stuff? Point being, SWTOR has pushed some classes that are, by themselves, very traditional into very non-traditional roles. There are also options to turn your character into a healer for three of the four basic classes meaning that depending on your group's needs you can fill the role of healer if need be. This also makes things interesting in PvP because you can have a mercenary who sits there firing missiles off his back and another one healing. It makes it difficult to determine target order until you're part way through a match. That's enough about classes for now though I'd like to move onto some of the aspects of the stories that make SWTOR stand out.

Story: Story? In an MMO? Nonsense! Is what many people might say about your typical MMO since, by in large, MMOs have basic lore and not much else in the story department. But even the lore in most MMOs is shaky at best and eventually it develops into something really, really stupid. Like pandas. Yeah, thats right WoW I'm looking at you. Thank the lord I never touched that game. Anyway, WoW's megafail isn't my point here. SWTOR's story is actually quite well done and plays out in a similar manner to it's predecessors, KOTOR and KOTOR II. Each class has a unique story that follows the same underlying plot and it takes you from level one right to level 50. My Sniper's story quest was actually the last quest I completed that leveled me right to cap which I found to be quite amazing that they pieced together a three part story for every class that brings them straight to the level cap and through all the different planets SWTOR has to offer. So lets think about that real quick. There are eight classes in total with their own unique story that lasts, if you did them all in a straight line without stopping or factoring in your level, about 15-20 hours in total. Multiply that by eight and you've got the content that Bioware developed just for the story.

Having a story you can experience by yourself is a strange concept to me since most MMOs focus on the group aspect of playing. However, this was incredibly nice since my satisfaction was not based on how many of my friends were playing at the time, I didn't have to wait for a group to get on to experience content. In reality the story plays out more like a single player game with the option of inviting friends along for the ride but you can complete the story all by yourself if you want to. Giving players the option to play and level their characters solo or questing with a group is a nice change of pace from other MMOs.

Leveling: The typical grind of an MMO is not present in SWTOR. There are hundreds of quests and a large amount of content you can use for leveling via questing but that isn't the only way to level. You can also level using space missions which essentially play out like a Star Fox 64 level where you fly around in your spaceship on a pre-determined course shooting down baddies for experience and commendations to buy things for your ship. Any space mission of "heroic" mission will also reset every morning allowing players to repeat content at their leisure to gain significant experience without having to log on for five hours a day just to get a level.

Yet another way to gain experience as well as money and even gear is the instanced PvP or "Warzones" which net you the average quest experience for your level and it scales up as you level as well so it remains a constant option for leveling, money, and gear. Warzones also buff up your stats to that of a level 50 character which allows for equal play in the non-50 bracket despite the level gaps.

So that went a bit longer than I expected...more later as I do a sort of "Meet the Sniper" kinda thing.

Read More

Break is over!

As of tomorrow I will be starting my Spring Semester of my "Junior" year of college. Should be tons of fun and I've got high hopes for both my academic success as well as being consistently posting things about various games I'm playing, have played, and am looking forward to playing. I'll try to keep it interesting and really go in depth with whatever I'm talking about which may involve multiple posts discussing one game.

The first thing on my list of stuff I need to write about is the new Star Wars MMO. In case you've been living in a cave/hole/box for the past month or so its basically Bioware's attempt at creating an MMO out of their successful KOTOR franchise. I'm a KOTOR fan and an avid MMO gamer so I hopped right on board the SWTOR train and leveled myself a character to 50 (current cap) over my break. But much more on that later.

Things to look forward to! Woo! I love looking forward to games that are coming out in the coming months its so exciting to see what my future holds in the gaming world. First of all, the Resident Evil 6 trailer ( http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sS_bGpe9qE8 ) can anyone say...HELLLLL YEAAAAAA? I sure can, and I did, many times while watching this reveal. Old heroes, new ones, and zombies! Yay zombies! It looks like they've tweaked a lot of gameplay issues that arose in RE 5 and are kind of implying that this is a climactic conclusion to this saga with mention of a cure and all sorts of other thinly veiled concepts shown in the trailer. Looks epic. In an earlier post I mentioned Darksiders 2 and was all giddy about it and whatnot. Well, I still am giddy but now even more so since they released a full trailer which I will provide a link to once Youtube stops being weird and not letting me sign in...but anyway! Lots of tweaks and improvements appear to have been made and it gives me something to look forward to for a good kickoff to my summer.

What I'm playing right now. Still derping around on SWTOR with PvP and some alts and helping some friends work their way up to cap but I'll probably have very little time for it with the semester starting up, got plenty to write about it anyway :). Also playing through one of my absolute favorite games remade on the 3DS...Ocarina of Time. I have dabbled a little bit with the ICO/Shadow of the Colossus HD remake for the PS3 recently and that is one of many games on my list to complete. Keeping with the fantasy theme I'm also going to dig into Skyward Sword after I finish Ocarina of Time. So many great games to play right now, plenty to keep me busy throughout the next month or so.

Expect much more soon, thanks for reading!

-Fest

Read More