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...
Saturday, December 17, 2011
Saturday, December 10, 2011
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...
Monday, December 5, 2011
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...
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...
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...
Friday, December 2, 2011
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...
Tuesday, November 29, 2011
Gamers: Devour the game or Experience it?
So I was just reading a couple articles where there were conflicting opinions that resulted in some hurt feelings and odd name calling coupled with lengthy justifications regarding their own personal gaming styles. It is inevitable that we will encounter people who simply view the same game under a totally different lens than we do and it might generate this kind of friction, sure, but we can't go and rag on people for playing games in a way the fits with their approach to games.I find myself wondering how gamers would classify themselves when...
Opening Thoughts on Batman: Arkham City
After getting a disgustingly amazing deal on Arkham city and Skyward Sword on black Friday (got them both new for 70 bucks somehow along with some wii cords) I played around with both of them a bit and decided that I would work my way through Arkham city first. This post will basically be my opening thoughts on the game and things that stuck out to me.The first thing I want to say is that I freaking love the design of the Arkham City world. It is visually amazing and quite large...and covered in Riddler signs. It has been quite a while since I've...
Daedric Quests: Mephala - Ebony Blade - ????
Alright so basically I wanted to do a short post on this very odd weapon called the "Ebony Blade". It basically looks like a larger version of the Blade's sword and is classified as a greatsword, it also has a leech health enchantment on it. So that all sounds normal whats weird about that? Well upon receiving the blade you're instructed by Mephala to return the blade to its former glory by slaughtering your followers. Sinister. I had no problem doing this so I went by all the people who liked me and starting killing them off one by one and the...
Monday, November 28, 2011
Whats coming up? (Some stuff I wanna say)
Right now I'm playing through Batman: Arkham City as well as Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword and finishing up various side stuff on Skyrim. So the next few posts can be expected to be on any of those three things depending on what I want to talk about (Probably Batman first but who knows).I'm also working on putting together an Aion PvP video from my massive backlog of fraps so that is eating up a ton of my time I'll be posting that on here when it is complete as well as my Youtube channel Fest1277.Twitter: So I guess I decided to start tweeting...
Sunday, November 27, 2011
Skyrim Daedric Quests: Sheogorath & Boethia
Just a short little update on two more of the Daedric item quests that I finished yesterday. Enjoy!Sheogorath - Wabbajack - StaffSo, Wabbajack. Want to cause random explosions? Want to turn people into harmless chickens/bunnies/cakes? Want to occasionally turn people into Dremora? <-- Bad luck on this one. The Wabbajack does all that and more. It's description is "causes an unpredictable effect" and boy does that not even come close to doing it justice. The first time I used this on an enemy he turned into a chicken and just wandered around...
Thursday, November 24, 2011
Skyrim: Daedric Quests
Alright, so this isn't exactly a campaign but there are individual quests that can be grouped under the umbrella of "Daedric Weapon Quests". These are some of the best weapons you can get in the game with the coolest looks and unique enchantments. There is at least one for each type of player (Warrior, Thief, Mage). I'll go through all the ones I know about so far and add to this post as I finish up a few. There is one weapon/item per daedric lord.Mehrunes Dagon: Mehrune's Razor - DaggerThis is a fantastic dagger that looks pretty damn cool as...
Tuesday, November 22, 2011
Skyrim Campaigns: The Companions
The Companions are the "fighters guild" substitute for Skyrim with one huge difference, they're all werewolves. The Companion quest-line begins like you'd expect any fighter-ish missions to start, you go to a ruin and beat up some baddies. Then you get trapped in a room while your partner remains in the room completely alone. Suddenly a swarm of bandit looking people rush out and claim they're going to kill him and they close in on him. Farkas (your partner for this mission) then says something along the lines of "There aren't enough of you" or...
Monday, November 21, 2011
Skyrim Campaigns: The Thieves Guild
The Thieves guild was one of the better campaigns in Skyrim, it kinda made the Civil war stuff that I talked about in previous posts feel like garbage. There are basically two stages in the campaign which is nice because it offers a change of pace about half way through the quest-line. The first stage is just the basic thieving and stealth missions which are pretty fun if not just because Skyrim's typical style is to just absolutely eliminate everything in your way, so this offers a chance to play the game as you would a stealth game. You're essentially...
Sunday, November 20, 2011
Skyrim Campaigns: Civil War (Stormcloaks)
This will be a very short post since the differences between the two sides of this questline are extremely few and far between. Neither civil war rewards you very well at all and the fort sieges get pretty repetitive. The only thing I really liked about the Stormcloak side was the siege on Solitude. It is a larger city and proved to be more visually enticing than Windhelm. Outside of that they essentially just copy the quest-line from the Imperial side and change up the settings a bit. One thing I failed to mention about the civil war campaigns...
Thursday, November 17, 2011
Skyrim Campaigns: Civil War, Imperial side
So I chose to do the Imperial side of this campaign mostly because I like the look of their armor more than the Stormcloak's and I had high hopes that I would be receiving some sort of awesome looking armor set with super cool bonuses and stuff. I was wrong. You receive jack shit for doing this quest line outside of a sort of decent sword and a basic armor set which is nice if you do this right out of the gate and have no smithing skill or the ability to run dungeons to get gear (it really is not hard to get better armor/weapons than this quest...
Tuesday, November 15, 2011
Skyrim Campaigns: The Dark Brotherhood
So, I decided that trying to "review" or even talk about Skyrim as a whole just would either turn out to be a small book or be too short to do it justice. So to resolve this little problem I'll just talk about the various campaigns you can do to supplement your experience with Skyrim (does anyone just do the main story..?). I'll start with the only one I have completed 100% which is the Dark Brotherhood or the "Assassin's guild" for those who may not know what it's called.
You can start this campaign chain by heading to Windhelm and finding...
Monday, November 14, 2011
Skyrim
I have the hots for this game. Good lord where did the last three days go...Skyrim is possibly the most immersive game I have ever played. Bethesda did a fantastic job with this game no question about it. Just the way they shaped their world is phenomenal, the story is left up to the player, each playstyle has the ability to function well and the dungeons are d0-able with any kind of weapon setup. There is very little to complain about when you are given such a massive world, hundreds of quests and dungeons, and multiple complex campaigns to experience.One...
Friday, November 4, 2011
Rusty Hearts
So I was watching some Aion PvP videos on youtube out of boredom and one of the channels had videos of a game called Rusty Hearts. Now, being the well educated MMO player that I am, I had to check it out and see what this unknown game was. So I go to the site and see that its made by the same people who did Perfect World and their slew of cookie cutter MMOs that I could never understand why anyone bothered with. This was a definite put off. Burying my unease about the developer, I decided to download and give Rusty Hearts a try.RH (Rusty Hearts)...
Tuesday, November 1, 2011
Ambition
So I've been thinking a lot lately about the concept of ambition as well as my own ambitions for my life, my career, my personal growth, pretty much thinking about ambition as it applies to all aspects of my life. I feel like I'd feel better if I just put it down somewhere that I could look at whenever I feel uncertain or discouraged. So that place will be here since this has become a personal, yet very open, log of my thoughts as they relate to games. So here it goes.In regards to career ambitions: Honestly, I'm shooting for the stars when it...
Thoughts on Crysis 2
So I finally got around to finishing Crysis 2 this past weekend and just wanted to share a couple of my thoughts in regards to how it measured up to the first. The first thing I'll address here is the undertones that I encountered throughout the game. Being a first person shooter typically guarantees a sub-par story and lackluster character design by falling into the pattern of face-less super soldier blows up gratuitous amounts of aliens. This held true for Crysis 2, you play as Alcatraz, just a normal marine who gets flung into this massive conflict...
Monday, October 31, 2011
Thoughts before playing Limbo
As I have decided to embrace the more creative side of my brain for a while I find myself paying a special attention to the various messages conveyed through the games I play. Typically I'd find myself analyzing the more mundane aspects of games that are consistent throughout any game such as the mechanics, what works, what doesn't work, what caught my interest, whats new about this game, etc. Meaning almost lost its foothold in my brain as I play through game after game...sometimes its just hard to find meaning in most mainstream games. So I challenged...
Sunday, October 9, 2011
Aion over the years
Aion is something I have been involved in from the very beginning of its life and I just wanted to take a chance to look back and evaluate how the game has progressed over the two years it has been out. Originally Aion was supposed to be this groundbreaking MMO that would bring a lot of new stuff to the table for gamers everywhere and provide a solid alternative to WoW's deathgrip on the MMO market. Sadly I don't feel Aion delivered in the way people were hoping it would. Aion had a lot of good ideas that were executed rather poorly, the main...
Wednesday, September 21, 2011
Bodycount Review
Well I don't have too much to say about this FPS aside from well, its different...? Bodycount didn't really click with me and I typically enjoy hectic first person shooters and from the scores it received from multiple other reviewers I don't think it really "clicked" with many people at all. I'll still evaluate the good and bad as objectively as I can while offering some insight of my own.The Good: Fast paced, lots of enemies, ability to shred through most terrain, somewhat imaginative transitions between levels/enemy types.The Bad: Clunky controls,...
Wednesday, September 14, 2011
Deus Ex: Human Revolution
Alright here we go, I've been pumped for the new installment of the Deus Ex series and I was not disappointed in any way.Although I had no previous interaction with the older Deus Ex games, I still enjoyed the crap out of this new one (I also downloaded the other two on Steam :D). Its a completely solid stealth action game outfitted with various FPS elements as well as a well made stealth system. Coolest thing...
