Dishonored Full Review

When a player hears the word "freedom" tossed around lightheartedly describing a game it may give them reason to pause. How much freedom can we expect in a video game?

Games themselves are simply a set of rules and scenarios presented to a player in the hope that they will take and apply those rules in the intended ways. Dishonored, however, sought to break the mold of its predecessors and allow the player a high degree of freedom to move through the game in a way they see fit.
So what is Dishonored? If you were to categorize it then you'd label it a stealth action title. But it's more than that, Dishonored took the standard stealth game formula and ran with it, giving birth to an incredibly intricate mission based stealth sandbox.

The gameplay is a fluid mix of physical weaponry and supernatural abilities, a combo reminiscent of Bioshock’s combat systems. Players can upgrade their physical arsenal in significant ways using currency and can augment their supernatural abilities by finding hidden items called Runes. This customization can be pursued to the player’s liking; allowing Corvo, the protagonist, to become anything from a walking supernatural armory to a shadowy assassin armed with nothing more than a blade. The choice is entirely the player’s and Dishonored doesn’t demand that any of these abilities be used to complete the game.

The plot the other hand, draws from many tried and true themes and plot points with heavy emphasis on betrayal and consequence. Much of Dishonored’s themes, however, are communicated through a visual medium, as you take control of the silent protagonist, Corvo, and guide him through the ruined remains of the once great city of Dunwall, now reduced to a shell of its former self by a brutal plague akin to the Black Death.

Corvo’s story is, in part, left up to the player. It can be a story of vengeance and death, as Corvo becomes part of the chaos he seeks to destroy to exact his revenge on those who took both family and dignity from him. Or it can be a story of retribution and redemption as there are non-lethal ways to complete every mission.

No matter what choices you make you will end up in the same geographical locations but they will be vastly different in content depending on how the player has shaped the story. This is measured throughout the game by determining the level of “chaos” the player has caused in completing Corvo’s assignments. Should the player choose a more chaotic path, it will be reflected in both the mission content and the environment itself as the city reels in the wake of Corvo’s vengeance.


Dishonored is arguably one of the most prominent stealth action titles to hit the market in recent years and promises a solid, albeit short experience. It is a must have for any fans of the stealth genre and has fully earned my approval

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GW2 Stress Test

When I saw the tweet from the GW2 team about the stress test the day before last I was SO excited. Mostly because I was under the assumption that I wasn't going to be able to play until the 25th but also because I got a taste of video making and editing this past beta weekend and was itching to make another, far better PvP video.

So, two hours of the stress test were devoted entirely to recording sPvP fights to put into a PvP montage, similar to my previous one but with a more offensive spec, and more time/editing put into it. After several hours of going through footage and finding clips I put together an opening for the video.

Let me know if you like what you see!

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Guild Wars 2 D/D Elementalist!

Woohoo first post in a few weeks! I've been kinda busy writing parts of a book and playing gratuitous amounts of video games and haven't really had much to write about on here but fear not, the days of my ramblings are going to increase drastically in the days to come. On the 10th of August I'll be picking up The Last Story, for the Wii which should provide me with some new guides to write and a good old fashioned review to work on. At the end of the month is when the real fun begins, Guild Wars 2 launches.

I've been a part of all three beta weekend events and they were all fantastically entertaining for me and my friends as we played around with the various classes and PvP'd our asses off. During the last day of the final beta weekend I decided I wanted to record some of my structured PvP matches and make a montage with Vegas, a piece of pricey software that has been collecting dust  for some time now.

My editing skills are severely lacking but it was an incredibly fun, rewarding experience that ate up several days as I tinkered around with the more rudimentary aspects of Vegas and got used to the software. The final product was by no means a masterpiece or even that great but it showcased one of my defensive Elementalist builds that still managed to pack a punch through the use of burns and some mild skill burst.

I'll be experimenting more as the final build of the game is released at the end of August to determine if I'll choose to use a D/D Elementalist as my main character or not, I don't want to decide until we're through all the pre-release nerf bats. I plan on taking part in competitive sPvP frequently once the game is live and there will be tons more videos to come once I obtain a full understanding of Elementalists and whatnot. But until then, you have my current video!

Give the like button a press if you enjoyed the video, subscribe if you'd like to see more! Also feel free to leave any constructive criticism you may have for me with either my playstyle or editing, I'm very eager to learn more about both! Do keep in mind that, as I mentioned before, this was my first crack at both Elementalist and Sony Vegas so be gentle!

-Fest

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Aion Crafting Guide: Heart Costs

So, I hate flying all the way out to Tigraki just to check heart prices that I've been far too lazy to write down. But hey, I figured I've got the time and will make a price list of major (used) balic crafting designs to save people the trouble. This guide will cover Weapons and Armor since those are the dominant balic crafts at the moment, leave a comment if you'd like the accessory/consumable design costs!

Weapons:
Level 50 Designs: Hot Hearts
60, 180

Level 55 Designs: Burning Hearts
42, 126, 378

Level 60 Designs: Burning Hearts
60, 180, 540


Armor:
Level 50 Designs: Hot Hearts
Chest: 40, 120
Pants: 30, 90
P/S/G: 20, 60 (Pauldrons/Shoes/Gloves)

Level 55 Designs: Burning Hearts
Chest: 28, 84, 252
Pants: 21, 63, 189
P/S/G: 14, 42, 126

Level 60 Designs: Burning Hearts
Chest: 40, 120, 360
Pants: 30, 90, 270
P/S/G 20, 60, 180

I'll add the lower level crafts to this guide next time I'm out at Tigraki :3

Hope this helps!

-Fest

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Aion 3.0 Chronicles: Debarim the Omnipotent

Since most people scarcely even know this boss isn't a Sandstorm target I figured I'd throw together a handy little guide detailing how to kill him.

Information!
1. You don't need a templar to kill this.
2. He has an enrage timer, do not attempt without a solid set of dps.
3. Sometimes the floor doesn't light up the way it is supposed to, have someone who can see the effect direct the group away from it!
4. His spawn timer is less than 24 hours.
5. He spawns on both channels.
6. Suggested alliance size: 10-12


Guide:
First off, this is the legendary-grade Jotun boss that hangs out in the northernmost hallway of Debarim's Studio in Sarpan (that air PvP zone nobody uses). Getting there is easy as there are no mobs in the hallway leading up to his room.

It is important to note that upon starting this boss encounter the door to the room will close, potentially locking opponents out or separating your group should the boss fight be started accidentally. Also note that you can kisk in this room and should do so to avoid potential wipes.

Phase 1:
Debarim starts off by mixing a long range AoE, which will likely hit the whole group, and a single knockdown skill on the tank. Neither of which does much damage and should cause no stress for the healers or the tank. The AoE hits for roughly 2-3k and the knockdown skill is roughly 3-4k. This phase is rather simple and shouldn't take much time.

Phase 2:
Once Debarim hits 75% health he will cast rage, stunning the group, and begin to use Terraspin. This skill hits everyone in the designated area for roughly 7-8k and should be avoided if at all possible. Thankfully, avoiding this skill is simple as there is always text preceding the skill that will say "The center ground is shaking, move." and it can be either left, right, or center. Simply move out of the lit zone (or follow someone who can actually see it) and you will avoid the damage completely. This phase is made even more simple by the fact that Debarim enters a stunned state for 15 seconds after each Terraspin and is completely vunerable. Rinse and repeat until 50%.

Phase 3:
Debarim will now revert back to his AoEs in addition to using Terraspin every so often, thus making this phase a combination of the previous two. Assuming your group has gotten this far, you should have no trouble dealing with this phase.

Phase 4:
At this point in the fight (25%) text will show on the screen something like "The cave is collapsing! Find safe ground to attack Debarim!" you'll do just that. This time you'll see bright blue circles appear on the floor, do not stand in them as you will take periodic damage. Find a safe spot to continue dpsing Debarim and keep pulling him down. Everyone, including the healers, will need to be moving around to make sure they aren't in any of the circles.

Congratulations on a successful world boss encounter!

Debarim drops eternal level 58(?) earrings and several other blues.

Hope you found this guide helpful!

-Fest

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Aion 3.0 Chronicles: Rentus Base

Rentus base is proving to be a constant necessity for the average end-game player as it houses some of the best weapons 3.0 has to offer and a hefty amount of fabled loot for disenchating. The instance itself is quite short and if you've got yourself in a decent group this instance should take you an hour or less depending on your DPS. This post will serve as a guide for the heroic bosses that inhabit Rentus Base, there are elite "mini-bosses" that drop golds but they are incredibly easy and will not be included in this guide!

Boss #1: When you approach this boss you'll notice that there are two elite adds at her side, these will be your top priority when the fight begins. Neither has a ton of HP so they should be quick kills while the tank pulls the boss. The boss itself is a pain due to it's habit of randomly attacking people regardless of aggro/hate. Thankfully it doesn't hit terribly hard so you just need to toss heals on whomever is the chosen target and rotate heals when the boss rotates targets.

This boss also likes to go into hide so make sure nobody is afk auto-attacking, they will lose their target :D!

Drops: Eternal Shields!

After working through some elites and a mini-boss you will see some siege tanks on either side of you, these are used for the next boss. There are two types of tanks: a "tank" tank which can pull aggro, heal itself, and go invulnerable for a short period of time, you will only need one of these. The other tanks are geared towards offense and can lay mines and shoot cannonballs to deal with the adds before the actual boss, everyone else will be in these. Once you're ready to fight the boss have your dps tanks form a half circle roughly 25 meters away from him and use their siege transformations.

Boss #2
This boss is very easy since everyone will be in siege mode and just obliterate him with their cannons. All the tank has to do is kite back and forth in front of the boss and keep aggro on any adds that spawn while he is being burnt down. Once the boss goes down the adds all despawn.

Drops: Random Golds/Blues

Boss #3
This boss is a pain without an SM and most groups usually skip it since there are no eternals or relevant gear that drops from this boss. If people want a guide for it please leave a comment :D!

Drops: Random Golds/Blues

Boss #4
After killing another mini-boss you'll see a large dragon flying in an open area. This is a fairly easy fight but it can get out of hand if your dps/heals aren't capable so be aware.

Phase 1: Flight. While in the air, this boss will do fairly low damage but after a few seconds he will go to the middle and put up a shield and summon a couple adds. No big deal for the first shield so just wait for it to come off or dps the adds down while you wait but make sure to get right back on him when hes vulnerable. Ideally you'll have him down before the second shield comes and if not...prepare for lots of adds. If you find yourself at this point you'll need to pop defensive cooldowns if you don't have the adds under control, they can get overwhelming. They all use magic based ranged attacks so respond accordingly.

If you find yourself unable to kill him before another shield pops up and the adds are overwhelming you it is likely a lost cause. But there is hope!

Protip: If your dps is lacking you can bug the boss out of his shield by juggling aggro between multiple players. This means letting your tank lose aggro to one of the dps and then taking it back and losing it again etc. By doing this he will sometimes not put up a shield at all!

Phase 2: Once he is off his dragon you'll fight the captain on the ground. This is an easy fight but he does like to shift targets and use a line of ranger skills so healers be ready to switch targets. There are no real phases to this boss so just burn him down, he'll only wound you with his buggy audio and terrifying use of mana treatment!

Drops: Random Golds/Blues

Boss #5
Fatty-fat-fat-fat.
This boss is boring for me as I have no role in it, you really only need a tank and cleric to participate...everyone else can afk. This boss can't really be hurt by player attacks so you have to wait until oil barrels spawn in the corners of the room. You'll drag the boss over to the corner with the barrels and break them once he's on top of them. This will put a debuff on him causing him to take tons of damage from the bombs he summons. Rinse and repeat until dead!

Drops: Random Golds/Blues

Boss #6
Vasharti
This boss is the reason people run Rentus! He is also a royal pain in the ass with boat loads of HP and a constant reflect that everyone has to deal with. This is not a boss fight you can zone out on. Vasharti technically switches phases four times but it's the same thing every time so I'll just describe the two modes you'll be confronted with.

Phase 1: When the fight starts Vasharti will cast a reflect skill with either red or blue in the title. As you may have guessed...go to the corresponding flame pillar in order to get a buff. What these buffs do is decrease his reflect damage. He will do roughly 2k damage per hit if you don't have the buff so make sure you get it! If you have the proper buff you'll be reflected with 500ish damage per hit so be mindful if your hp, especially my fellow assassins out there who like to weave! Vasharti also spawns a fire and ice add from the fire pillars every few minutes. The ice add needs to be handled by the melee and the fire add needs to be dealt with by a caster. Each spirit is immune to either physical damage (fire) or magical damage (ice) and they can be problematic if you don't dps them down fast enough!

The tank's role in this fight is typically to spam taunts and stay roughly in the center or at least several meters away from the group using the fire pillar for the reflect buff to ensure that the party isn't hit with Vasharti's AoE. Fire Column is the name of the AoE you need to make sure doesn't hit you which isn't too hard considering the effective range is only a few meters. Once you get him to roughly 75% he'll head to the middle of the arena and put up a shield.

Phase 2: When Vasharti starts floating in the middle of the room he becomes invincible and starts flinging fireballs at everyone. The only ones you really need to worry about are the red/orange circles as they inflict massive damage if you get caught in the blast. These phases usually only last about 30~ seconds and then he goes back to Phase 1.

Repeat several times and you're done!

Drops:
5/6-slot Eternal Weapons
Pagati Mount (2nd Fastest in game)

Hope you found this helpful, thanks for reading!

Fest - Assassin 60 (Tiamat)

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Aion 3.0 Chronicles: Muada's Trencher

Last night Void decided to take on the other 12-man instance, Muada's Trencher. We didn't know what to expect going in and thought it was an actual instance, however, it turned out to be a single legendary-grade boss. We gave it a few tries to see how the boss worked and if we could handle doing it "legit" or not, we ran into some...issues.

Strategy: The first thing you need to do if you're going to follow this guide is drop a kisk outside of the entrance to the instance. Kisk res'ing during this fight is essential since the healers will already be bombarded with adds and will likely be too busy to res you. This boss also likes to enrage if you don't kill it fast enough, but fear not, there is a way to recover from the enrage.

IMPORTANT NOTE!: Enrage was a problem we ran into frequently, possibly due to our low numbers, and we have a solution for getting enrage off of Muada. We did something similar to the ol' Lannok trick where we had someone sit the first part of the fight out until Muada went nuts and killed everyone. Once everyone dies the buff runs off. Before Muada resets we had the person sitting out grab her to make sure she didn't reset before the rest of the group kisk reses and runs back in. This may not be a problem for full groups of 60's with good gear but we didn't even have a Sorceror with us so this was a necessary part in the fight for us.

Phase One: 100-75%
This is the easiest phase, Muada does a 360 degree AoE (Ray Thorn) that hits everything outside of 20 meters or so of her. To avoid being hit by this ALL party members must be standing close to Muada and the tank will be positioning the boss away from the rest of the group. Muada does some other minor attacks during this phase like projectile vomit but it's nothing terribly dangerous outside of Ray Thorn but be ready to run when phase two begins.

Phase Two: 75-50%
At this point Muada will use a skill called Rage and stun your party briefly, following this stun Muada will spawn a couple elite adds and add spawners. Now, we tried this several different ways and, possibly due to our less-than-average sized group, we were unsuccessful when we tried to burn the adds faster than they were spawning. One or two from each set would be left over and eventually overwhelm us.

To remedy this we decided to have all DPS stick to the boss as the Templar kited it around the circular room. When you do this it causes all of the adds to zerg around after various members of your group so it's important to kite when you've got a large number of adds on you. Moving in a circle prevents both the boss and adds from ever catching you since they are all pretty sluggish (<--Ohohoho so clever). After slowly but surely kiting and DPSing Muada out of this phase you enter phase three.

Side Note: If you feel you can DPS the adds down before more spawn then make sure to prioritize the spawners and be sure to utilize CC's (Unconfirmed, seemed most everything works on them though) and blinds (Confirmed) as both of them work on all of the adds. Also, when the adds die they melt into a puddle of acid and do significant damage to anyone that steps in it so be mindful of your environment.

Phase Three: 50-25%
Before you dig into Muada's health again it is important to kite off the remaining adds, they despawn after a while and no more adds should spawn. Once the adds are down have your tank settle Muada back into the same position as Phase one. The only difference between this phase and the first one is the additional AoE to complement Ray Thorn, Swiping Blow. This AoE hits in a 360 degree zone 15 meters around the boss, this needs to be outranged as it does heavy damage and knocks people down.

Every 20 seconds Muada will alternate between Ray Thorn and Swiping blow. To make sure nobody gets hit you run out of Swiping Blow and immediately back in after it ends to avoid Ray Thorn, repeat until the phase ends. Pretty simple.

Phase Four: 25-0%
Muada will use Rage, same as all new phases, and then burrow underground. Shortly after using this skill the text "Muada has created a giant sand hell, run!" pops up on your screen. Following the disembodied words' instructions quickly run out of the central area and onto the sides. I assume if you fail to do this you die horribly. But it's not hard to get out of so no big deal.

Once you're back on the boss he gets a new skill called Neurotoxin which he will randomly cast on party members. It does a medium amount of damage and puts a status effect on the target that cuts its attack and does damage over time. This is curable so clerics make sure you're dispelling the targets of Neurotoxin.

Muada will stop doing Ray Thorn this phase and will switch back to Projectile Vomit (Frontal Cone) and will continue doing Swiping Blow and Neurotoxin. Make sure to keep out-ranging swiping blow whenever Muada uses it and keep burning him down.

This should finish off the fight! Congratulations on defeating Empress Muada!

For those of you curious about the loot she can drop, there are two eternal necklaces (Caster/Melee) that Muada drops that aren't too shabby for PvE and she drops a fabled hat and shields. We got the fabled cleric shield to drop :3.

Thanks for reading!

-Fest
(Tiamat/Assassin/60)

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A First Look: Asura's Wrath

Keeping with the trend of taking a peek at the upcoming 2012 titles I decided to download a couple demos, which happened to include a game I've been pretty excited for since seeing the reveal trailer some time ago, Asura's Wrath.

Not kidding.

This is not your run of the mill game, like not even close, I mean really, REALLY out in left field. Why is that? Oh I don't know...but the demo involves me punching a giant fat guy to death. By giant I of course mean roughly twice the size of Earth.

I have to give the developers credit for their astoundingly creative ideas. I mean I have certainly had enough of fighting people the same size as me, what fun is that? I am clearly too awesome to demean myself with fighting people sized baddies. Now I expect every game I play in the future to include one boss that is the size of the planet. Step it up people.

(sort of sarcastic....maybe?)

Urf.

The demo consists of two parts, first one was the planet sized baddie as pictured above, which sorta blew my mind, the next was a fight with some regular sized guy who looks like Asura. My trip from fighting a planet sized behemoth is over! Time to have a normal boss fight! Wrong. It's time to go to the moon and have an epic battle with a dude with a sword! He kind of kicks your ass most of the time but at least it looks cool when he makes his sword extend, impales you, and then rams you back down to Earth. Then, as if ramming you through the atmosphere wasn't badass enough for this guy, he impales the entire planet for good measure. I felt like I was watching an episode of Dragon Ball Z where everyone turned red instead of yellow. Awesome.

Enough about the over the top stuff, lets talk about the gameplay. Unfortunately the demo did not feature much average combat and instead decided to show us two boss fights. From what I can gather from other videos; the one vs. many combat plays like a hack n' slash ramped up to epic proportions with a lot of, for lack of a better term, quick-time events. I know QTEs bring up some bitter emotions for people but these are at least a little better if not just because they involve you doing extremely over the top finishers on bosses or blowing up hordes of lil' baddies. The actions they have you do on the controller also correspond to Asura's movements in the game which is a nice touch that makes it feel less arbitrary. For example, when preparing to intercept the poke-o-doom from the big fat guy, the game has you plant Asura's feet by flicking each analogue stick to the side. At least it isn't the infamous "press x to not die" type of QTE.

A lot of the game is cinematic, for sure, but that doesn't mean you can just sit back and watch. Even the cutscenes that aren't combat related give you the option to "Shut _____ up" which causing the dialogue to skip due to Asura launching himself at his opponent. This provides a bit of a new dimension for how you'll experience the game and just how much crap you want to put up with from your condescending opponents. The Wyzen fight (big fat guy) gives you very little control over Asura's movement, aside from strafing left and right while dashing towards Wyzen. Will this lack of control serve to bolster the gameplay or hinder it? Time will tell, it's hard to give my honest opinion right now since I really did enjoy what they showed me but I could also see it getting kind of old if that's what every fight is. We shall see how things pan out.

I know I've used the phrase "over the top" a couple times in this particular write-up but you know, that's exactly what this game is. Every aspect of it has taken the step up to absolutely, impossibly, amazingly, epic. It destroys what we thought was epic before and replaces it with mind-blowing, planet-impaling goodness. I am excited to see how else Asura's Wrath shocks me when it releases on the 21st of February, be sure to check it out! Thanks for reading.

-Fest

P.S.

Come at me bro.

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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

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