A very large arachnid Inspired by posts from gamers on Twitter, I sat down and came up with a list of five game series that I really enjoyed enough so that another entry in the series would be a must-buy. I’m considering a series as more than one game that shares a title, so even a two game collection would be a series (say, for instance, Red Dead Redemption). RDR isn’t on the list, though, but it’s close. ...
Rumble in the Presidio I kinda remembered the Presidio battle from Alpha, but Arislyn on Google+ was saying it had gotten a lot tougher. I think I did it with someone else back then, but I didn’t remember it being TOO hard. Basic plot is, you’re trying to get a favor from the Frogfather – the location of a notorious pirate you’ve been chasing – and to earn that, you need to do the Frogfather a favor – get some spices stored in the Monquista Presidio. ...
I’d promised myself I wasn’t going to play Dragon Age: Origins until I’d finished Torchlight all the way through. Not that this was a huge burden, but I do hate leaving good games unplayed just because another game found its way into my computer. I knew I was getting to the end of my quest to thwart the power of Alric, Ordrak and the power of Dark Ember when I hit the Black Castle far, far below the shaken inhabitants of Torchlight. You want epic loot? EVERYTHING is epic in the Black Castle. Epic Common Sword. Epic Worn Shoulderpads. Epic Broken Dagger. Epic Clump of Kitty Litter :) All the valueless, vendor-trash loot was epic! The final battle against the awakened Ordrak was satisfyingly, er, epic. ...
The weekend wasn’t ALL EVE Online, though it could have been. That game is just SO addictive, though, that I have to consciously NOT log in, find something else to do. Thankfully, I had Torchlight backing me up. My Torchlight Vanquisher is about 4/5 of the way through the main storyline, and I’m already thinking about her retirement. In Torchlight, once you’ve finished the main storyline, you can continue on with custom maps or user mods, or retire the character. Retired characters can pass along one special item to their heir, and this item will become simultaneously more powerful and lower level. You can keep doing this until you eventually make the most powerful item in the game that can be wielded by a very low level character. My plan now is to retire the Vanquisher Marksman and start a Vanquisher Rogue – a two-bladed dervish of spinning steel, and then use that character to run user mods. ...
Oh, let’s call a spade a bloody shovel, shall we? Attack from a safe distance with a rifle? CHECK. Kitty pet that does all the hard work (including running to town to sell loot!!??) CHECK. Yeah. My Torchlight character is a hunter, no two ways about it. But in old Mythos fashion, she could have gone down other paths than Marksman – she could have chosen to become a Rogue, a master of thrown weapons and two-bladed fighting, or an Arbiter, expert with traps and gadgets. ...
When I’m running around the mean streets of the Rogue Isles in City of Heroes, you know what I hate the most? Nah, not the dons of the Family. Not even Longbow. It’s those damn tourists from Paragon City. And NOW I find that the heroes themselves are thinking about slumming their dark sides on my turf? Sente hopes the expansion adds more depth to the Mission Architect, allowing real choices instead of “if it moves, kill it. If it doesn’t move, harvest it.” gameplay so common in CoX missions. Syp sees this as a necessary move to separate the game from Champions Online and DC Universe Online. Spinks wonders why it took so long for such a basic premise as heroes and villains swapping sides to make it into the game. Hudson hopes the expansion will deal with City of Heroes’ boredom factor. ...
Apologies to Randall Munroe Yes, I really do believe you can’t honestly review an MMO without investing yourself in it for a fairly substantial bit of time, so that any oddities with controls and stuff become second nature and you can understand the core of what the game developers were striving for. A 1999 EverQuest review could have written all about the low polygons and stiffness of the character models, the laughably sharp-cornered world and so on, and missed the forest for the trees. You have to play a MMO long enough to see and appreciate the forest before you stamp a score on a review. ...
It’s a gray, rainy day today, perfect time to stay home and game a little. Could be a perfect time to level up a few alts in City of Heroes. Zubon of Kill Ten Rats uses the new Architect system to design the perfect opponents for his new characters and bring them to level 20 in a single mission. Ogrebears has some issues with SOE’s partnership with ZAM.com to give that third party website more access to the game data than any other website, ever. It’s not so much that they have been set above EQ2i, LootDB, EQTraders and such, but because that it seems poorly designed and incomplete. ...
Welcome to the weekend! It’s fantastic weather, so gonna keep this short. More news about the ex-Mythos developers’ new game, Torchlight? The Runic Games Fansite has a FAQ complete with everything they know about the fantasy Action RPG and its followup MMO, and Runic Games Insider’s Taylor Balbi has really long interviews with a few of the devs with the nittiest, grittiest details. Keen at Keen and Graev has a rather positive look at Free Realms. It’s a fun game, but will it appeal enough to kids to become a success? ...
Penny Arcade starts off Freeday Friday with a little bit of snark about the Chronicles of Spellborn payment plan. While it’s true that you can now use a credit card like for every other game… I think trying to figure out their Coins-based plan is a fun game all on its own, don’t you? Reported everywhere is Lord of the Rings Online’s second anniversary promotion. Free to try again, 25% experience bonus on kills that stacks with all other bonuses, tokens you can trade in for cool stuff, etc etc. The xp boost is very nice, anyway. I haven’t seen what the tokens trade in for, but I have my suspicions I have a lot of Blueberry Tart recipes in my future. ...