Author Archives: Azuriel
Reviews: Darksiders, Greed Corp, Nimbus
Game: Darksiders
Recommended price: $5
Metacritic Score: 83
Completion Time: ~19 hours
Buy If You Like: Devil May Cry/God of War meets Zelda meets comic book
There are zero complaints in the visual department.
Darksiders is a 3rd-person action game with puzzle elements that tries to straddle the line between Devil May Cry/God of War demon-killing and the sort of casual world exploration and puzzles of Zelda games. You control War, one of the four horsemen, who gets framed for starting the apocalypse party early, which results in the death of the entire human race. As you struggle to clear your name and/or figure out who was responsible, you kill a lot of demons and four-story bosses while uncovering new items and re-unlocking your prior abilities.
While it seems the most popular comparison is with Zelda games instead of Devil May Cry, I just felt the puzzle elements in Darksiders were curiously out of place. The visually stunning post-apocalyptic landscape is rife with ready-made puzzle elements, but I never got over the fact that War couldn’t just scale that wall with his big-ass metal hand. Are you telling me I can wield a car like a baseball bat, but I can’t just stack some debris in the corner and use that to reach the 2nd floor? Why aren’t I just punching down every door I encounter, especially when I unlock the Power Glove Gauntlet that lets me punch icebergs? While the puzzles do keep combat from growing too stale, after a while you realize that more than half of your game time is spent in empty rooms moving boxes around (etc). That might be fine thematically for a 14-year old elf-boy, but it never felt right for a horseman of the goddamn apocalypse.
That said, I did end up enjoying my time in Darksiders. The game is incredibly stylistic, the visuals are fantastic, and the action is pretty serviceable in a button-mashing way. Although I just pooh-poohed the puzzles, that is mainly because of the tone of the game, rather than the puzzles themselves being annoying. Indeed, while demon locks do appear on some doors arbitrarily, the majority of the puzzles are based on more “realistic” scenarios. You know, assuming that it’s realistic to punch subway cars into place but not use that same power to knock some tree limbs out of the way.
On a final note, if you play on the PC as I did, the port job is not especially keyboard-friendly; in terms of lazy port, it ranks up there with the original Borderlands for PC. I still WASD’d my way through the game anyway, but it was seriously annoying how anyone thought “Tab + number” was a good button combo to select abilities while running around.
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Game: Greed Corp
Recommended price: Bundle
Metacritic Score: 76
Completion Time: ~8 hours
Buy If You Like: Symmetrical puzzle/strategy games
Definitely more Checkers than Chess.
Greed Corp is a strategy game that is a lesson in efficient and frugal design. Whereas in an RTS-style game you can have three factions with totally unique units and hundreds of different forms of interaction, Greed Corp is pretty simple; there is one walker unit, one factory that builds walkers, one cannon, one consumable unit that flies walkers to a different hex, one harvesting building, and the resources being harvested is the terrain itself. The goal is to use all of those things to remove your opposition from the map, sometimes quite literally.
Regardless, there is can be a surprising bit of depth to the shenanigans. For example, the harvesters knock its own hex and all surrounding hexes down one level at the beginning of your turn (hexes brought below level 1 crumble apart). There is no way to remove a harvesters other than self-destructing it, which knocks another level off each surrounding hex, along with sinking the main hex down into the abyss. What this can lead to is sending a single unit flying into your enemy’s island territory, plopping down a harvester, and laughing maniacally (or sobbing in frustration, depending) as that whole island eventually breaks apart.
Eventually though, my enjoyment evaporated once the late-game Expert-level AI opponents started demonstrating the weaknesses of perfectly symmetrical maps. Namely that it didn’t matter how clever your own strategy was when all it takes is one of the three random opponents to opportunistically ruin your day. When the outcome of your best-laid plans devolve into “whoever moves last wins,” it is time to move on.
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Game: Nimbus
Recommended price: Bundle
Metacritic Score: 80
Completion Time: ~6 hours
Buy If You Like: Twitch-based puzzle “platformers”
Kinda like a flying Super Meat Boy.
In essence, Nimbus is a pretty simple twitch-based puzzle-platformer… sorta. You control a ship that has no means of self-propulsion, and thus must rely entirely on environmental objects and inertia to ensure you do not become stranded on the ground (which kills you). Some of those objects are bumpers that always gives you a set amount of boost when collided with, some are speed squares that can accelerate you to dizzying velocity if you loop into them multiple times, and still others are little cannons which give you some respite along with directional control over your exit. The end goal is to touch the exit checkerboard squares as fast as possible, while also grabbing the secret coins hidden (sometimes diabolically) around the level if you are so inclined – doing so can sometimes unlock bonus levels.
It did not take me long to confirm that the old adage of “quick to learn, difficult to master” is fully applicable to Nimbus. While successful execution is the most important aspect of the game, Nimbus does a phenomenal job at keeping each level feeling fresh and unique like a brand new puzzle. Just when you start feeling comfortable with all the deadly spikes on the walls, you encounter a map that requires you to ram into spheres to trigger gate openings like a physics-based platformer. And just as you are getting used to some of the spheres having spikes on them, you are faced with a level where all the walls are made of deadly lasers. And then there are the ridiculous reverse-gravity levels. In short, Nimbus deftly avoids new puzzle elements feeling like gimmicks and more like natural progression.
I did not end up completing Nimbus though, as the later levels quickly outstripped my twitch abilities, even after ditching the keyboard for an Xbox controller. If you are not a fan of twitch platformers like Super Meat Boy, unfortunately you aren’t likely to enjoy Nimbus at all; there are few things more frustrating than knowing what you have to do, but running into that same goddamn spike wall for the 13th time in a row and redoing the entire level from scratch (there are checkpoint cannons, but sometimes only past certain points).
If you do happen to enjoy those sort of games though, Nimbus will certainly give you a run for your money. Not only are there secret coins to collect, but each level has a Steam leaderboard to compare best times as well.
Chicken & Eggs, PlanetSide Edition
I have been playing around with PlanetSide 2 (Ps2) for the past couple of days.
As far as initial impressions go, the “introduction” to Ps2 is uniformly awful. Oh, hey, they lifted the character creation head presets from Fallout. Pick a faction and server without knowing anything about either. And before you even get a chance to check out character/class settings and such, you are launched via drop pod into the heaviest fighting on the map and, in all likelihood, killed immediately. Now that you have some free time, go ahead and look over the thoroughly unhelpful menus while trying to ascertain to what degree SOE is set to gouge your wallet (spoiler: the Nth degree).
Not that it really matters, but hey.
Once you finally respawn, things do not get much better that first day. Coming from Battlefield 3 and even Tribes, killing people seems to take 1-2 seconds of full-auto fire more than it should. It is also difficult to tell who the enemy actually is – while you get a No Smoking sign on your crosshairs when aiming at a friendly, everyone has the same profile and even colors at first glance. Character animations look stiff, and the models seem lifted from Natural Selection, that Half-Life mod from a decade ago.
I respawned time and time again, courageously throwing myself in front of bullets intended for players actually capable of accomplishing something, while I returned fire with my Nerf Gun that shoots wads of wet tissue paper. In a lull in the dying action, I tried deciphering the stone tablet hieroglyphics that was my minimap. “Generator destroyed.” “Generator repaired.” Was that a good or bad thing? Whose generator? When the the vehicle I was spawning at finally got destroyed, I found myself literal miles away from any discernible action, with no way of knowing where to go, what to do, or why I was doing this instead of finishing packing.
I was lost and alone in the blinding snow.
Forever Alone…
The second and third days, by contrast, were infinitely better.
It took a lot of outside research, but I started understanding the pros and cons of the various classes. I learned enough about Certs (i.e. upgrade points) to know what they are, how to get more, and good places to spend them. I used Reddit to find a Google Doc that explained what the symbols on the map are, how to properly assault a Bio Dome, and some tricks for getting around. I learned enough about the weapon shop to know how badly SOE is gouging me (way worse than Tribes: Ascend, by the way)… but also the cool bit where you take a new weapon out for a 30 minute test-drive without paying anything.¹
On the third day, I found one of the best features in almost any game I have ever played:
Please make this the future.
I called this post Chicken & Eggs because games like PlanetSide 2 (and nearly all MMOs) require you to have social structures in place before you can really start having fun. Social structures which, incidentally, seem like a waste of time to seek out/develop when you aren’t having fun. “Join a guild to have a good time.” Why would I, if I’m not having fun currently? Which is supposed to come first? I am not necessarily suggesting that fun should occur without effort, but let’s be serious for minute: there are a hundred different games you could be playing right now that are fun from the word Go.
While I still believe the First Day experience in PlanetSide 2 is pretty awful, I absolutely love this grouping system with descriptions they have in-game and hope this sort of idea is lifted wholesale by every MMO multiplayer game. Why can’t there be some sort of in-game bulletin-board-esque system that allows like-minded individuals find each other in every game? Why do socially-oriented games basically require out-of-game social structures to work at all? I have always enjoyed the no-obligation/instant grouping of LFD, but I still recognize the existence of a social hole it cannot fill. Yet here, in a single simple feature, I can differentiate between the friendly strangers, the SRS BSNS folks, jokers wanting to recreate that helicopter scene from Apocalypse Now, and more.
So come on, social game designers, this is not that hard a concept. If the game is made better by playing with people we know, make it easier to get to know people in your own goddamn game. Nearly 99% of everyone I know online I originally met through WoW or blogging about WoW. Make your game a foundation for new friendships (by making it easier to do so) and people will continue coming back. We get the opportunity to express ourselves and meet new people, and you (likely) get a pair or more of multi-year customers.
¹ This feature is cool, but it has a 30-day cooldown on that specific weapon, and starts up an 8-hour cooldown on every other item. Apparently this cooldown is per character though, so you can cheese the limitation by rolling a new toon, trying it out, and then deleting it later.
This Is Why We Can’t Have Good Things
A few hours after Saturday’s post, I decided: “Yep, that PS3 bundle is the way to go.” Part of the ordering process is choosing the bonus game, which I did. “Part of this bundle is out of stock.” Alright, maybe everyone is picking LittleBigPlanet 2? I tried another game, and got the same error. Finally, I refreshed the page and saw this:
God… dammit.
Given the fact that I would have been getting five games, all of which I had a passing interest in, along with the 250gb console itself for $219, I started kicking myself for not jumping all over this thing. Why didn’t I order as soon as I saw it on Friday?
Bah. Let me check some other places to see if they offer similar price ranges…
raaaaaaaagggggggeeeee
You goddamn sons of bitches.
In the heat of my rage, I did end up laughing a bit over the fact that I was partly mad that I hadn’t thought to do this exact thing myself. These assholes aren’t even including the bonus game, which means they basically got paid $65 to take a free videogame.
But, seriously, this sort of shit is why we cannot have good things. Capitalism and free markets working as intended, sure, whatever. But can you sit there and tell me that this sort of arbitrage is anything more than nihilistic? There is zero difference in “markets” between Walmart.com and eBay, especially when the latter is being sold by a small-time retailer. I am fine with arbitrage conceptually because while the profit is essentially risk-free, it can be argued that value is actually being generated by the arbitrageurs by virtue of them moving product between markets. For example, I am fine with some local store basically buying shit online and selling it in their store at a markup, because hey, maybe I don’t want to wait for it to get mailed. Or maybe I’m not internet savvy. And so on¹.
These guys though? Fuck those guys. Stores are posting deals to encourage more shoppers to show up, and what they get instead are opportunistic leeches extracting other peoples’ consumer surplus while adding nothing. These are concert ticket scalpers buying thousands of tickets, artificially creating the scarcity they prey upon to the detriment of all parties.
And what really sucks for me personally? I am not going to be able to look at any sort of lesser PS3 deal without a jaundiced eye. Future deals will be contrasted with a $219 possibility and likely be found wanting. Just like with the Steam Autumn Sale going on right now, if I somehow miss a 75% deal during its window, I am not ever buying that game until it is back on a similar discount. It may not be entirely logical, but it is the way things work for me.
Moral of the story: Jump on these sort of deals immediately. Worst case scenario: eBay.
[Fake Edit] As I pulled into the Best Buy parking lot on Sunday to pick up my $180 32″ TV and $20 MoP expansion (uh oh), I noticed there was a Walmart right next door. Went in to get some groceries, walked out with the $199 (!) aforementioned Infamous/Uncharted PS3 bundle (cheaper because no bonus game). My “normal” Walmart didn’t have any, but this one had at least four. I was sorely tempted to go “I’ll take all of them,” but internet bravado rarely transfers into real life. Plus, I was already feeling worried I was going to get ‘jacked on my way to the car by carrying around a 32″ TV and PS3, let alone several.
¹ It did occur to me that I did a lot of this sort of thing in MMO AHs, i.e. “flipping.” However, I would argue that I was still providing a service insofar that the original seller was desiring a quick liquidation and nothing else. Or maybe it is the same thing in the abstract. Then again, the person who ends up buying my flipped good never knows how much I bought it for, which is the source of a lot of my ire right now.
Late to the Party
This question may be be moot by the time anyone can read/respond to it, but…
If you had zero next-gen consoles or games, which one (1) console would you purchase?
- Xbox 360 250GB w/ Halo anniversary and Forza 4 ($199)
- PS3 Slim 250GB Console with Uncharted 1 & 2 and Infamous 1 & 2 ($219)
- Nintendo Wii Console with Wii Sports and Wii Sports Resort ($119)
- None (see below)
I have zero interest in the Wii U or any of the handhelds – I’d be using the console as a Netflix box for a 32″ TV at a minimum. I am heavily leaning towards PS3 right now between the number of exclusive titles that I have some interest in, but I am also aware of how many times PS3 owners have been screwed over in terms of updates, game ports, etc. My PC will still be my primary gaming rig, but if I wait until 2013 and the next-next-gen, then my 32″ TV will be quite out of place attached to my PS2.
Then again, I haven’t actually bought the 32″ TV yet ($180), so technically I could just do nothing at all and wait all this shit out like I have been for the last 6-8 years. Sigh.
#firstworldproblems
Review: Syndicate
Game: Syndicate
Recommended price: $5
Metacritic Score: 69
Completion Time: ~6 hours
Buy If You Like: Amoral cyberpunk FPS bastardizations
Style over substance ^ 100
Syndicate is a FPS reboot of the 90’s series of the same name. As someone who never played the original series, I became interested after watching the trailer and was drawn towards the dystopian cyberpunk setting as a means of getting through my Deus Ex withdraw. Indeed, at first glance Syndicate has a lot in common with Deus Ex on a thematic level, although Syndicate never really goes any farther than reestablishing the rather brilliant lore of prior games. There are no deeper ramifications to your actions, or introspection on the nature of humanity, or much beyond entertaining gunplay, so… not really like Deus Ex at all.
The premise of the game is that you are Kilo, an Agent of a syndicate named Eurocorp, who just developed a highly-advanced neural implant that grants access to various powers. In this future, industrial sabotage takes on an incredibly literal meaning, with Agents of rival syndicates tasked with infiltrating R&D departments and basically killing/stealing ALL the things. During a mission to do exactly that, a conspiracy is uncovered, reinforcements arrive, boom boom, explosions, lens flare, boss fights, the end.
That sounds facetious, but plot is not at all Syndicate’s strong point.
Not much room for deep thinking when you get an Execute prompt for hobos watching bad VR porn.
What is particular strong however, is the gunplay. Syndicate does a great job of making you feel like you are running and gunning in a Matrix-esque movie, including having access to overpowered abilities without making you feel immortal. As the plot develops, you eventually gain access to three main “Breaches”: Suicide, Backfire, and Persuade. Suicide makes the targeted enemy shoot themselves in the head or pop a grenade if they are near others. Backfire causes enemies to fall down (possibly out of cover) and take additional damage for X seconds. Persuade makes an enemy fight on your side for X seconds, before shooting themselves at the end of the timer. Each of these abilities recharge only when you kill enemies, ensuring that you don’t just hide in cover until your cooldown comes back up.
What does recharge is the sort of bullet-time mode that you can use in a more traditional Max Payne/FEAR sense to dispatch foes. In fact, this bullet-time is incredibly important because you frequently face massive waves of enemies who are more than capable of mowing you down in seconds. As you progress, the enemies get smarter, tougher, and many start becoming immune to your Breaches altogether. Along the way, you will face rival Agents as proper boss fights, including extra-long HP bar and various gimmicks. While such boss fights were really out of place in a game like Deus Ex, for some reason they felt alright in Syndicate.
In any case, if you are like me and care more about whether it’s worth $9.99 or whatever than about how much the reboot ruins the spirit of the original games, I would say it entirely depends on how much enjoy cyberpunk settings. Syndicate looks great, it has a solid five hours of mindless fun, and you can almost pretend that there is an in-depth existential plot you are just Spacebaring through the whole time. Indeed, Syndicate has a lot more in common with Hard Reset than Deus Ex in that regard. Times aren’t what they used to be though, and whereas I would recommend Hard Reset at $10, I have a tough time recommending Syndicate at any anything higher than $5… and even then, only if you really dig cyberpunk games.
Post-Ownership
I am a big fan of digital games. In fact, I am having a difficult time remembering the last actually physical game I have purchased. The Greatest Hits version of Final Fantasy XII (still shrink-wrapped)? Or… yeah, probably Fallout 3 for PC – unless Wrath of the Lich King counts, anyway. As you can imagine, I skipped this entire console cycle and plan to continue holding out until I at least see if the Xbox 720 and PS4 are going to be backwards compatible.
At first, my purchasing habits were driven more by pragmatism than anything else. With the exclusion of a ridiculous find of Fallout 1 & 2 bundled for $15 and Planescape: Torment bundled similarly at a Media Play (anyone remember those?), computer games had always seemed stuck in the realm of permanent MSRP or mislabeled bargain bin treasure. Meanwhile, the local used game dealership offered a nice selection of $25 titles that you could eventually turn around sell back for $10 or so. Between the cheaper games and the likelihood of four-player split-screen shenanigans, there really was no contest.
Then… Steam happened. And cable internet. And WoW too.
Over time, I realized I no longer felt the need to “own” my games anymore. Keeping track of all the cartridges and discs started being a chore, and god help you if you misplaced the registration code for a PC game that you still actually had the disc(s) for. If legally all we are buying is a license instead of an actual good, then why could I not play Diablo 2 for a three-month period when I couldn’t find the case? Between that nonsense and how frequently I found myself downloading no-CD cracks for games I bought, it was really just a matter of time until I started eschewing gaming packaging altogether if I could help it.
What brought all this up to me again is that I am moving to a new apartment this week. While rummaging around in long-forgotten closets, I came across my NES and SNES collections; the wave of nostalgia nearly rendered me unconscious. While I did act on the daydream of plugging the consoles back up in college one time, these pieces of electronics haven’t otherwise seen the light of day for almost a decade. Was I really going to pack them up and move them to a closet in the new place? Would my theoretical future child have the slightest bit of interest in daddy’s ancient consoles in 2020’s era of (mobile) games? Hell, would these things still even work?
Holding onto the Chrono Trigger and Super Metroid and Secret of Mana cartridges impacted me more than I thought it would, even as I was cataloging their condition to sell to a website. It is pretty well understood how ownership of a physical good can influence your perception of its value, so that should not have been a surprise to me. However, I could not help but think: in a post-ownership world, is anyone going to feel this way again?
Maybe our kids still will. After all, I never held onto a Mass Effect disc, but still choked up a bit after uninstalling. A digital version isn’t the same as holding onto a piece of plastic that has been in your life for 20 years, but… well, it will likely be easier to play again than any of my N64 games which are permanently MIA.
P.S. The website I am using is DKOldies.com, whose prices seem pretty reasonable. If you know of a better place, by all means let me know – I simply don’t have the interest in playing the eBay game when I could ship everything to a single location
Bend It like Bachmann
WoW:
Update!
- Entry into the brawler’s guild is by invitation only. Invitations can be found on the black market auction house, by invitation from somebody within the guild, and occasionally as drops from certain Horde and Alliance NPCs.
GW2:
As we watch Guild Wars 2 mature in its Live environment, we have found that our most dedicated players were achieving their set of Exotic gear and hitting “the Legendary wall.” We designed the process of getting Legendary gear to be a long term goal, but players were ready to start on that path much sooner than we expected and were becoming frustrated with a lack of personal progression. Our desire is to create a game that is more inclusive for hardcore and casual players alike, but we don’t want to overlook the basic need for players to feel like they are progressing and growing even after hitting max level. Adding item progression is a delicate process normally undertaken in an expansion, but we feel it’s important to strive to satisfy the basic needs of our players sooner rather than later.
As the occasional¹ connoisseur of a nice bottle of Schadenfreude, I must admit: this week has been delicious.
While I kind of hoped that the Blizzard folks would have stuck to their guns with the Brawler’s Guild, the original plan always seemed more informed by the source material (“The first rule of Fight Club is…”) as opposed to good top-down game design. Creating “tight knit, underground” communities by throttling access makes the non-instanced, spectator-sport aspect feasible? Sounds like double-win efficient game design… on paper. But as we all know, things that feel good conceptually have a way of not working out in practice.
Speaking of that… whoo boy, ArenaNet.
I think my favorite part of this development is seeing all the mental gymnastics. This thread on Reddit, for example, tries to turn the question around and ask “what is a gear treadmill really?” Part of the OP’s reasoning is that the proposed new tier of gear will be easier to get than, say, in WoW, where you have to contend with random drops and competition between players over what gear does drop. So… if the treadmill is slow enough, it isn’t a treadmill at all!
Seriously, at one point the OP suggested:
O… k? All I see from that quote is that there will be more stuff later. That doesn’t make it a treadmill, just another flight of stairs, if you will.
Oh to be a psychic vampire capable of feeding off this boundless optimism/denial²; I would never go without.
To be honest, I think ArenaNet’s shift is both warranted and necessary. The cessation of reasonable progression is the natural Game Over screen for me, and you run off that cliff the moment you hit 80 and load up on inexpensive Exotics from the AH. This new tier of gear both reintroduces progression and gives players a reason to play the new content more than once.
Really, it is only bad news if you hold the ArenaNet devs up to some impossible standards like:
- “We didn’t want the endgame to be something you could only experience after a hundred hours of gameplay or after you reached some arbitrary number.” (source)
- “If you go into a dungeon in a traditional MMO and you, you hit a wall that you can’t pass and you need better gear, you have to go to a different dungeon and play and get that gear, whereas in Guild Wars if you encounter that, you could get better gear by going to World vs. World or expanding your crafting skills or several other ways,” said Millard. (source)
- “We don’t need to make mandatory gear treadmills, we make all of it optional, so those who find it fun to chase this prestigious gear can do so, but those who don’t are just as powerful and get to have fun too.” (source)
- “Because, like Guild Wars before it, GW2 doesn’t fall into the traps of traditional MMORPGs. It doesn’t suck your life away and force you onto a grinding treadmill; it doesn’t make you spend hours preparing to have fun rather than just having fun; […]. It all gets back to our basic design philosophy. Our games aren’t about preparing to have fun, or about grinding for a future fun reward.” (source)
So everyone just relax. You’re going need your strength for this extra flight of stairs anyway.
¹ Shut up.
² Shut up.
Character Select Screen
It sometimes depresses me to think about how different a game experience can be depending on the singular decision you make at the character select screen.
As you might have seen down in the Now Playing sidebar, I have playing Borderlands 2 (BL2) for the past couple of weeks. While it might be easy to think that the character select problem would be worse in MMOs – by virtue of spending 100+ hours instead of 30-70 hours – I actually think it can be more important in shorter, single-player games given you are less likely to replay them.
Right now, I am level 40 in the New Game+ Mode as Zer0, the assassin character that can basically focus either on sniper rifles or melee attacks. While my power to go invisible while projecting a holographic decoy has been useful (I have literally one-shot a few boss fights with a melee attack), I am finding it significantly less useful when all the enemies seem to have 10x more health this time around. Also, the power is pretty useless against the larger bosses with their instant-kill melee attacks¹.
I could technically respec to a more sniper rifle-focused build to get around this problem, but it occurs to me that BL2 characters sans their special move are basically all the same. In other words, a sniper-built Zer0 that doesn’t use the Deception skill regularly is just a gimped version of a sniper-built Axton/etc. Plus, it really annoys me that Zer0 is the only character without a passive health regen talent, meaning one of my equipment slots is permanently taken up with a health regen relic.
In other words, I have a pretty big case of Other Class Envy at the moment.
Does it really matter all that much? No. But that is kinda the problem, too. I went ahead and created new characters for all the “classes” and leveled them up enough to unlock their special abilities. But the thought of plowing through the entire game on normal again, which I have already started via Zer0 with New Game+, was just too much to bear. The gameplay would be different with a different class, but not that different. Hence the unlikelihood of ever seeing how the other classes play out. The waveform has collapsed, and there is just the one timeline.
Which got me to thinking: does anyone else worry about picking the “wrong” class at the character select screen in a new game? And the followup question: how do you end up picking a character?
For me, I try to do a little research on how a class is supposed to function by the end of the game before I even start, including looking at every talent tree. Then, I usually get over my inevitable decision paralysis by just picking whatever sounds interesting to me at that moment. My first WoW character was a warlock because I heard they were rare but prized members, crushing their enemies under the weight of a thousand DoTs; I abandoned it somewhere in the Hinterlands, and rerolled my namesake paladin on the basis of always liking D&D paladins but chaffing at the Lawful Good requirement. With BL2, I chose Zer0 because Lilith’s special ability in the original Borderlands was handy in escaping otherwise certain death, and Zer0’s sounded the closest to that.
Around 70 hours into BL2, I kinda wish I would have just picked Maya. Or Axton. Or… yeah.
I would settle for being allowed to start new alts out at level 20ish. Gearbox, make it happen.
¹ I am aware that a level 50 Zer0 with a few specialized pieces of equipment can solo the 4-player raid bosses. Unfortunately, that does not particularly help my enthusiasm gap right now.
In An Age 
Interesting Move, CCP
Nov 28
Posted by Azuriel
Way back in February, I was quoting Bullshitter in Chief, David Reid, on how Dust 514 could make EVE “the biggest game in the world at the end of 2012.” There are only 33 days left in the year for this to be theoretically possible, but nevermind.
At that time (and still currently), my questions focused on the “what the hell were they thinking with a PS3 exclusive” angle. The related followup question was how CCP planned to muscle into an already crowded FPS marketplace with a completely unknown IP (the FPS portion anyway); free-to-play will only get you so far, if no one knows about you.
Well, with all the game console browsing I have been doing lately, I have a partial answer:
That’s right, somehow CCP got Sony to include $30 worth of item shop goods in the, er… PS3 Uncharted 3: Game of the Year bundle. Because nothing says sci-fi F2P FPS like a 3rd-person action game.
It is an interesting move, and certainly one that will garner some extra attention from whomever takes advantage of that bundle. I can’t help but get confused though, when it appears that the Dust 514 mention is missing from the other bundles like the 500gb Assassin’s Creed 3 and even the 320gb Uncharted 3 bundle. Did CCP only pay enough to get on the 250gb bundle instead of the 320gb? Surely there is no hardware difference, so did they just change their minds? Did Netflix out-bid them?
Regardless, I find myself even more intrigued by this unfolding drama than I was before. And, hey, now that I own a PS3 myself, I might actually go full gonzo and try it at some point.
Posted in Commentary
4 Comments
Tags: Amazon, CCP, David Reid, Dust 514, EVE, PS3, Uncharted