Today marks the start of a weekend long event in the vast world of Tyria. This will mark Guild Wars 2's next content expansion and allegedly some game changing events that will culminate on Sunday the 18th.
I've enjoyed Guild Wars 2's extremely well designed world quite thoroughly, it may even be my favorite aspect of the game as a whole. In addition to the slew of events this weekend there will also be a new PvP map introduced, a long needed addition to the stagnating PvP content that pushed me to shy away from the game to begin with.
So, what...
Friday, November 16, 2012
You're Doing it Wrong: SWTOR's F2P Model
With the MMO market rapidly shifting to a free to play philosophy there are games that do it right and games that...well make you want to kick yourself for even thinking it was a good idea to play it. Star Wars: The Old Republic is one of those games that I has generated a high level of self-kicking.
When you embrace a free to play model you have to go all or nothing. If you want to turn your game into an exclusive pile of garbage then you do what EA and Bioware did and divide both the content and the players themselves. SWTOR's free to play...
Friday, November 9, 2012
Fest's Character Corner: Supporting/Peripheral Characters
Few games use only one character, there is almost always a fairly high amount of supporting characters both in support and opposition of the protagonist. These characters often add a degree of depth and intrigue to a story as they involve themselves in both the main story as well as numerous sub-plots.
There are a few games that jump to mind, both new and old, that boast a solid supporting cast. The most obvious ones being games like Mass Effect....
Thursday, November 8, 2012
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...
Friday, November 2, 2012
Fest's Character Corner: Pets!
Pets are great. My house is a complete zoo containing three cats, two massive huskies and an albino ferret. Pets add texture to my life in the same ways that they do in games. Pets in video games often take a variety of roles depicted as anything from a companion character that serves little purpose, to an actual playable character.
Generally speaking, I love dogs. Most people do. Often shown as a dedicated ally to their owner it's hard to think...
Thursday, November 1, 2012
What CAN Make it in Today's Market?
As an avid gamer throughout the years I have watched the industry ebb and flow in some pretty significant ways but none quite as extreme as the changes we're seeing these days. For me, there has always been an expectation of quality coming at a price; games that were worth my time often demanded a significant portion of my money. This both encouraged me to spend my time in-game to make sure I was getting my money's worth and it also kept companies accountable to their subscribers.
This standard has gone through a complete shift in the past few...
Friday, October 26, 2012
Art Convergence
I've mentioned in previous blogs very briefly that video games are comprised of nearly every form of entertainment media carefully mashed together into an interactive experience all its own. I wanted to take a moment and really look at just how daunting a task this has turned game making into.
Creating any form of entertainment media with the intent of making money off of it is no easy feat. You have to take into consideration what people like and then create something to show them their entire life has been a hollow mess without (Insert Media...
Thursday, October 25, 2012
Aion 3.5 Chronicles: Tiamat Stronghold
Hey! This guide will serve as a general instance knowledge and boss strategy guide fully fit with any bugs encountered along the way. Tiamat's Stronghold is definitely one of the more challenging instances in the game right now so I figured a nice how-to guide was in order. Let's get started.
H'okay so let's talk party composition. The group I typically run with is as follows:
1 Sorcerer
1 Gladiator
1 Spiritmaster
1 Templar
1 Chanter
1 Cleric
That setup is one that works quite well as spiritmasters can dispell key buffs off the bosses that...
Friday, October 19, 2012
Video Games: Visual Storytelling
The title of this post may not exactly capture exactly what I'm about to talk about so I'll clarify a bit; Seeing as video games use visual representation as the primary method of conveying messages there is a heavy emphasis placed on how a game looks in addition to the story.
In previous posts I've singled out graphics as something we've become obsessed with in recent times that often seems to detract from other important aspects of game creation. That being said, graphics play an ever increasing role in how we take in these interactive stories....
Fest's Character Corner: The Sidekick
Sidekicks are a character type everyone should be familiar with, they're a very present component in many stories and video games are no exception. Many video game characters come fully fit with sidekicks ranging from useful to just downright strange. Several games come to mind when I think of sidekicks as these games go as far to feature them in the title of the game itself. First, we have one of my all time favorite series while I was growing up,...
Wednesday, October 17, 2012
Aion 3.5 Chronicles: Comprehensive 3.5 Guide
Features to be added:
Named Mobs: Locations/Maps
Gearing Process and Options: What armor to get.
What Not to do in the Eye: Bugs/Exploits to AVOID
PvP Friendship 101 - A good way to bond with your fellow players. Don't drive them away, get to know them.
Tiamat Stronghold Guide (Almost done! Just adding pictures!)
Dragon Lord Refuge Guide (So close, yet so far)
Leave suggestions in the comments section if you have any requests!
Staying Relevant...
Friday, October 12, 2012
Thoughts for Today
Migraines suck. They really do. Thankfully the worst has passed and the photo sensitivity has gone away to the point where I can at least come on here to write a bit. I just finished Dishonored last night and had some thoughts about the length of the typical action/adventure game. Dishonored was, thankfully, a breath of fresh air in this respect as it kept me busy for longer than most games in that genre.
It has become typical for games to last under 20 hours to complete the main story line which is honestly too short for me. I grew...
Fest's Character Corner: The Redeemed Villain
Every story has a villain of some sort, a primary antagonist. These characters are often representative of the exact opposite of the hero. Sometimes the primary villain is close with the protagonist in a story, typically experiencing some sort of event that pushes them apart, down opposing paths. These characters have always been of great interest to me as they represent the risk of falling and also the possibility for redemption.
Often in stories...
Friday, October 5, 2012
Fest's Character Corner: The Rising Hero
So I decided I wanted to start doing a weekly "theme" post every Friday delving into the various character archetypes we commonly see in video games. I figured a good starting point would be the concept of the Hero as this would be the "main" character(s) in a story. To clarify a bit I want to talk about the "rising" hero which I'm defining as a type of character with humble beginnings that we follow along his/her rise to hero-dom.
So, why do we...
Thursday, October 4, 2012
Dishonored: First Look
When it comes to video games one might find that
they see every single new release hyped up in a manner that is a bit more than
acceptable, leading to some pretty bitter disappointments. Dishonored however,
seems to be living up to the hype.
Dishonored is a stealth action game developed by
Arkane Studios in cooperation with Bethesda Softworks. Arkane studios set out
to redefine the concept of freedom in the stealth action genre and Dishonored
seems...
Friday, September 28, 2012
Why We Play
Everyone has different reasons for playing video games. Some of use it in our professional lives and careers while others just use it to pass the time or have fun with friends. But aside from personal motivators there are also several aspects of games that make them appeal to a deeper part of us. A good friend of mine brought up a particular article (attempting to find it) that discussed how video games satisfy a set of needs that often are not met in someone's professional career.
Diving deeper into that thought of games having the ability to...
A Spectator Sport
When I was growing up I would occasionally find myself watching one of my friends play a video game for brief periods of time if it wasn't a multi-player game or just didn't interest me that much but I never really went out of my way to sit down and watch someone else play a game. More often than not I'd vastly prefer to play the game myself rather than just watch someone else do it for me. However, nowadays we have seen a massive surge in the popularity of spectating games of all kinds; anything from multi-player games like Starcraft 2 or League...
Friday, September 21, 2012
Video Games as a Medium for Storytelling
I've always loved games. Ever since I started playing Mario for the first time on my cousin's SNES as a tiny child I have adored them. I count myself lucky to have lived in a time where games have gone from something so simple a concept as Pong or Pacman to something as complex as any number of current generation games. But it's not the fancy graphics or game mechanics that fed my love for gaming all these years...it was the stories they told.
Story has always been a central concept in every form of media entertainment and that goes two-fold for...
Thursday, September 20, 2012
Shifting Focus: A Look at Free to Play Online Gaming. Blog Assignment #3
As an avid MMO player I have found that in recent times a vast quantity of fairly large MMOs have made the switch from a subscription model to a free to play model. In this post I'll mainly be focusing on AION, as it is a perfect example of a game I actively play that has fully transitioned from a monthly subscription to a truly free model.
Aion is one of the more popular MMOs on the market right now with most of its player-base residing in Asia, and more specifically, South Korea. Since Aion is a Korean game we've received a "westernized" version...
Thursday, September 13, 2012
Direct Downloads: The Future of Gaming? Blog Assignment #2
This is a topic I've liked talking about for a while now as I am a huge proponent of games shifting into a direct download style of distribution as opposed to the typical physical disc. Why? Because it's healthy for the game studios/companies that are putting years of time and effort into making these games for us. Stores like Gamestop tend to make most of their money by offering gamers minuscule sums of store credit for their used games. This may seem like a benign practice but it takes a chunk out of the profits made by the...
Friday, September 7, 2012
Virtual Reality: A Step Forward? Blog Assignment #1
Alright so one of the things I looked into/tried out at PAX Prime was the virtual reality headset they had up for demo. I was pretty excited going in as it was my first time trying something like this. That initial excitement died fairly quickly as I realized that first off, the game was pretty "meh" and the headset was rather clunky, among other things.
The headset itself was connected to something else through a fairly thick set of cords that were anchored to the back of the headset. What this meant was the person running this booth was constantly...
Sunday, August 19, 2012
Morally Correct in a Morally Incorrect World: A Look at the Character of Wei Shen
This past week has been a big one for me since Darksiders II, Sleeping Dogs, and The Last Story all came out together. I decided to start with Sleeping Dogs since Gamestop managed to not have my pre-ordered The Last Story. In addition to the game review itself I wanted to stop and take a look at a character that has now taken a spot on my "Favorite Character" list, Wei Shen.
Sleeping Dogs puts you in the shoes of a fiery undercover cop named Wei Shen as he attempts to dismantle the Sun On Yee (A play on the actual Triad Sun Yee On?) from the inside....
