Voyage Century Online: First Look

While playing Urban Dead today, I stumbled on an advertisement for a classical-nautical MMORPG... I'm a sucker for that sort of thing. And looking into it, Voyage Century Online was FREE to play! This both encouraged me AND set off warning bells... as my recent experience with Space Cowboy Online reminded me you usually get what you pay for. Nevertheless, I entered their open beta and downloaded the client, a svelte 1gb zipped up.

After a little effort, I got the game installed and created a character, who I named Blackjack_LeGatt, since underscores seemed to be allowed while spaces were not.

However, upon entering the game, I found to my consternation that the vast majority of the text of this game is much, much too tiny to be legible. Add to this that the resolution of the game is uncompromisingly 1024x768, and, well, there wasn't a whole lot I could read.

Fortunately, the controls were pretty easy to learn... left click to do something, right click to go somewhere, camera controls were a little clunky but a far cry better than, say, Neverwinter Nights.

So, after managing to decipher a little text, I set about on a newbie quest to build myself a small boat.

It took me a good 15 minutes to find the stupid boat builder guy, who was all of 10 yards from my position.

Anyway, I eventually got it done. And, shortly thereafter, a bit of blind stumbling and a few more pages of illegible text and I had somehow joined a Pirate-hunter NPC guild, trained myself to shoot a flintlock pistol, and managed to stomp a harmless turtle to death. I also discovered that it was far more lucrative to just collect shells that were lying around on the beach than to actually kill critters for their... well, whatever it is that critters drop.

One thing I will say for the game, they're generous with tutorials and startup cash for n00bz. I had plenty to get me started, though I could only understand half of what was going on because the text was smaller than this. Oy. Smaller than that by a factor of about 3.

The models are all beautiful, incidentally, and the outfits are nice and the towns have a really immersive feel. If only I could communicate in letters more than a millimeter high.

The game appears to be rather robust, with both personal and nautical combat, adventuring, exploring, sailing, cannon-blasting, critter smushing, and tradeskills. Indeed, when I stumbled into the suburbs of Athens (yes, Greece... that's the city where I started, incidentally), I found all kinds of people going about their crafting ways, including three people chopping away at a never-falling tree. The streets were jammed with players who had set up vendor stands to sell things that other players might want, provided they can read what the hell they are.

Are you sensing that the size of the text is grating on me a little?

I noticed a few humorous glitches, like the tendency for the sun or moon to suddenly scramble across the sky like a stage actor who just realized he was supposed to be stage LEFT, not stage right.. and when that happens, all the shadows of the players and objects crane around rapidly like the heads of a Wimbledon audience.

Anyway, after an hour or so of wandering through town oogling pirate chicks in their undergarments and getting the feel for things, I decided to see what it was like out on the high seas. The process of joining the anti-pirate league or whatever seemed to provide me with a 2-masted ship, so I headed to the docks to figure out what to do from there.

A couple clicks, and I was offshore of Athens. The controls seemed easy enough, until suddenly I found myself anchored. It seemed to happen right as another ship materialized inside MY ship... he sailed off, but it took me a full 5 minutes to figure out how to get moving again.

Anyway, the sea is beautiful, and after a few little growing pains, control seems easy enough... so I sailed around looking for something to do.

I couldn't figure out much offshore of Athens (though I found a shoal where fishing could be done, had I the proper equipment)... so I sailed back IN to port, and then chose to sail directly to the "high seas"... which then zoomed me out into a quasi-corny map that reminded me a lot of FF7.

I managed to gain 2 levels in seamanship just floating there while I typed the above sentence. I continued to screw around until I was forced to return to port for provisions. Restocked, I sailed out to the high seas again, determined to find something to blast with my four tiny little cannons.

At first, it was hard to find anything, but as luck would have it I stumbled upon what appeared to be floating debris in the water. It turned out to be mostly waterlogged cargo, and some cannon balls. How I managed to find FLOATING cannonballs, I'll just let you figure out.

I finally managed to find some Crete pirates, but after exchanging one broadside, they just kept sailing... guess I wasn't very interesting. A second encounter yielded much the same result, and I was starting to wonder if I was doing something incredibly dumb. But I persevered, and managed to catch up to the ship by cutting slightly more to the wind (he was sailing directly upwind, the dummy)... a few minutes of swapping cannonfire, and he eventually sank into the briny. I wheeled around and dragged in the wreckage to find 3 pounds or tons or palettes or whatever the unit of measurement is, of Dates. And it only cost the lives of around six of my crew :P For some reason, my ship repaired itself immediately at the end of combat.

In high spirits, I sailed my way back to Athens, my hold slightly LESS empty now, with the dates I dredged from the smuggler I sank. Imagine my chuckle when the half-drenched crap I pulled from the random debris sold for around the same amount as the dates. And even put together, it didn't match the amount I spent on provisions and how much cannonshot I flung out into the Mediterranean sea. 3 minutes gathering shells on the beach seemed to clear as much profit at the end of the endeavor. Ah well, I'm sure I'm just not doing something right.

Well, all in all it has the potential to be an interesting game, especially for free. Better than SCO anyway. If only they'd do something about the TEENY TINY chat font. But what the hell... free game, right?

Rating: C. And that's the word from bandit camp...

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Vaporware of 06

Wired has published their list of "Vaporware of 2006", and while I don't often read the trite periodical in question, I must admit this column piqued my interest. And I had to chuckle at who got the number one spot on the list yet again.

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Merry Christmas

Tidings of Comfort and Joy to you, yours, and everything else. I'm back from vacation. Hopefully I'll have some good stuff to talk about here soon.

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Oh Hell Yes.

Firefly has been licensed for production of a MMORPG based upon it.

I just hope those netscape nutscrapers don't screw it up is all.

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The Problem with CoH/V

So I've been playing City of Heroes (well, villains really) for a while. I've gotten a few characters up into the higher parts... and while I still enjoy playing it immensely, I find that I am not making the amount of tangible "progress" I feel I should. The combat still feels innovative and action packed... but even the best action movie out there knows there has to be a payoff at the end.

So, I guess what I'm saying is I feel like I'm levelling too slowly.

And that leaves me with the question of, what am I levelling FOR? I can't stand playing with other people, by and large. This precludes me from the endgame big "raids." The PvP, while a charming diversion, is not something in which you can make a long investment, a la DAOC. Really, what it boils down to is that when you get 50, and you get all your "hammy enhancements" or whatever... what's left? Start a new character. That's it. And while I enjoy the first 25 or so levels, the thought of pushing through 26-50 again at half of what the rate of exp gain SHOULD be, the sweet taste of (in)justice turns to ashes in my mouth.

And that makes me sad, because I REALLY like the character customization in this game.

I haven't cancelled my account yet... Maybe the new patches coming up will do something for me. As I play villains mostly, the latest (mostly hero-oriented) expansion "issue" didn't do much for me.

Oh, and I got a look at the new costume options too... it's like Cryptic went over to the Matrix Online prop department, filled up a cart, and ran away as fast as they could. The new sunglasses, the trenchcoats, etc... all scream "TEH MAYTRICKS!" as loud as digitally possible. Well, at least they did a good job with the glasses, and some of the new costume patterns are good... and the "trinity" female trenchcoat is kinda neat too... but I am disappointed in the look of the trenchoats for male characters. I was expecting Sam Spade. Peter Gunn. Humphrey Bogart. What I got was a longsleeve vest with a flowing, lightweight cape tied to my ass. With the right color, it still looks passable... but I wanted Bogey, dammit.

And that's the view from Bandit Camp...

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So where have I been?

No, this blog isn't "falling by the wayside" for me. I've just been busy. Oh, I've still been gaming, too, but nothing really new... because there's really not been all that much new come out recently that was WORTH playing. I will, of course, update my faithful (imaginary) readers as soon as there are.

Maybe I should go down the list of what I passed on and why...

Eh, forget it. I'm too busy at work these days... but it pretty much can be summed up in two words:

Coffee Tycoon.

I mean, Dubbleyou Tee Eff? We need another goddamn tycoon game? And running a coffee shop. Could we be milking this franchise ANY HARDER?? I haven't seen a dead horse this savagely beaten since Madden. It's disgustipating.

Anyway, I'm busy. A radio station doesn't keep ITSELF from burning down and exploding.

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Whamadoodles Online

Several years ago, the MMO landscape was a scorched, bloody, cratered wasteland. Conceptual MMO games were popping up like mushrooms and crashing like houses of cards in an earthquake. Dawn proved to be nothing but vaporware. WW2O closed its doors after only a month or two. Anarchy Online had one of the worst launches on record. All in all it was a bad time for many in the MMO business. Such is the stage for a brilliant bit of comedy known as The Game Producers. A parody of "The Producers," it was a sardonic roast posted origionally on the now defunct "Slow News Day" news site (formerly belonging to Lum the Mad, but he pulled the plug from it as soon as their reviewers started getting critical of his new corporate masters, Mythic Entertainment). It found a temporary home again on themorlocks.com, but it's gone from there now as well.

For a while, it looked like the "Springtime for Hitler" of online gaming that is Whamadoodles Online might slip away, forgotten.

Well, I am happy to say that with the kind permission and gracious assistance of the author, I have secured the files and have set up hosting once again for The Game Producers. Hope you enjoy it!

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Review: Neverwinter Nights 2

Probably one of the most hyped titles of the second half of 2006, Neverwinter Nights 2 has been anticipated by a large number of... well... nerds. But will it live up to their often unattainable expectations? And can somebody who's never even held a D20 get into it?

You've probably read the now-pulled review that gave Neverwinter 2 a 5/10 on 1up. I know I did, but I'm trying not to let that predispose me to one way or the other for this review.

The important thing to remember about NWN is that, out of the box, it's really a toolset first, and a "game" second. Sure, it comes with a campaign, but what made NWN 1 such a sensation was people making their own modules and campaigns for it, to let others play.

The short story is, if you liked NWN 1, you will like NWN 2. If you didn't like NWN 1, you probably won't like 2 either. For 2, basically the developer made some incremental improvements to 1.

The big draw, first and foremost, is that it is an extremely versatile system for playing a Forgotten Realms D&D campaign without having to lug around 40 pounds of source manuals and a sock so full of enough varieties of dice that you could brain a moose with it. It's all about your characters and the stories, etc you put them through.

Let's get into my gripes about it, though:

1) Although the limits on the camera angles have largely been removed (you can actually see the goddamn sky this time, if you want to), the camera and movement controls are still archaic and a little awkward. A lot of people complained that NWN1 could only be played top down and zoomed way out, and I was one of them. I even wanted a first-person perspective. Well, we don't quite get that in 2, but it is a step in the right direction. However, the camera controls and movement controls are still all operating from the assumption that you are going to play watching the action from 90 feet in the air. Even in the new "Drive camera" mode, controlling the view and your character's movement from down in the action is clunky and prone to overcorrecting, and when close to your character, turning the camera is excruciatingly slow. Not enough time was spent getting the game to be enjoyable from a more immersive perspective, despite the models having higher polygon counts... speaking of which...

2) If you thought some of the face models in oblivion were ugly, wait till you get a load of these lumpy-sack-of-potato-faced models. I don't know who they got to make the models for their humanoid characters, but they need to beat him within an inch of his life with a crab mallet. They'd have been better off using the older, low-poly-count models from NWN1. I can appreciate that more detail now goes into my character and those around me, but when the highly detailed face of every single person in the game looks like they just tried to perform cunnilingus on a beehive, there's a problem.

3) The big draw of the game is supposed to be playing it with your friends, but the official campaign that comes with the box is extremely unfriendly toward multiplayer, unlike NWN1. While the campaign is allegedly "longer and more epic," the game almost seems to be going to special pains to ignore the fact that there is more than one protagonist. NWN1's campaign had special coding in all their npcs to change dialogue where appropriate to reflect the nature of your party, but NWN2 does not. Much more annoyingly, other players cannot do ANYTHING while any other player is talking to an NPC. They all stand still, can't talk, can't get in their inventory, can't view their character sheet, nothing. Additionally, any faction hits or alignment changes affect only the "speaking" player and none of the others. Many a big strike against multiplayer, which is supposed to be NWN's strong suit.

4) The AI for the NPC groupmates is often dumb as a post. Many times a fight has started and one of my "allies" either stood there doing nothing, or ran into the next room, drawing the attention of even more enemies, which then consequently slaughtered us. The dumb tiefling rogue girl is especially bad about this, though the dwarf has his "moments" as well. The casters are particularly bad about running into a doorway and standing there casting, thus clogging up the path for anybody else who might want to get into the room.


Now, it's not all bad. Here are some of the good points:

1) The world is much more world-like. It doesn't look so "assmbled from tilesets" like the first one, at least outdoors. Indoors it still does, but that is to make it easy for the layplayer to design dungeons and stuff, and it isn't a big problem.

2) A lot of people have complained about technical problems playing the game, but I can't say I've experienced any. Maybe it is because I have an ATI card and the complainers all seem to have NVidia. Sure, the game taxes your system a little, and if you alt-tab out it will crash, but other than that I haven't ever had the game exit without my instruction to do so.

3) From a single player standpoint, the included campaign isn't bad, abarring above concerns. The story is similarly engrossing to past bioware fare, though after you play these games for 20-someodd years you often can predict what is going to happen next. That's not really the game's fault though... more our fault for being RPG nerds. For all the hype, it isn't "Longer and more epic" than NWN1's, but the plot is acceptable, and the ending leaves you hanging a little less than NWN1's did... but only just.

4) For all my griping about the multiplayer, it's pretty easy to just set up a server and get your buddies in on it with you. You start the game, your friends connect to you, and bam, you're on your way. Including the option for Direct connect via IP address was a sound decision on the developer's part.

5) The game lets you have as much or as little of the "behind the scenes" dicerolling and character building as you want. It will show you all the "rolls" that go into deciding what happens in combat, and just like in NWN 1, complicated things like attacks of opportunity, saving throws and other rolls are all handled seamlessly, automatically and transparently. Plus, if you're not into lovingly crafting your character's unique skills, feats, spells and talents... there's the handy dandy "recommend" button which will automatically get you the best cookie cutter stuff to make for a good adventuring character.

6) A vast improvement over past bioware titles is the new death paradigm. If a character is KO'd in combat, they fall down. If it is you, you fall down and you can switch easily to another character in the party to control directly. If everybody in the party gets ganked to 0, it's game over and you have to load a saved game or start over... but here's the difference: If even one party member survives to the end of the fight, the others (even you) get groggily up to their feet as if merely shaking off a terrible hangover. Sure, they'll be at 1 hp, but it's a far cry better than having instant game over for the protagonists' death or having to haul a body (and all that body's gear) to a temple to get him revived, or even having to return to base to get your henchman revived. Definite kudos for a progress-friendly method of handling death.

Well, that's about the size of it. As I said at the beginning of the article, if you liked NWN 1, you'll like 2 (and probably like it better than 1). If you didn't, probably safe to steer clear of this one. It's definitely a niche game, but members of that niche will gobble it up.

Rating: B-. And that's the word from Bandit camp...

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The Infamous "Pulled" 5/10 NWN2 Review

1up.com has pulled the review, but I managed to find a quote from it over on Evil Avatar.

As everything-the-original-did -- and more -- follow-ups go, Neverwinter Nights 2 deserves a banner&something like "mission accomplished." Think the sequel to Jurassic Park, where Spielberg's all "You want more dinosaurs? I'll show you more dinosaurs..." As a contemporary CRPG, on the other hand, NWN2 leaves a lot to be desired, and that's too bad, because these are the guys who brought us Planescape: Torment and Icewind Dale 2...and therefore they are the guys I'm least inclined to take issue with.

But issues exist, and defining them is really no more complex than saying, "Hello D&D superchrome, buh-bye storytelling and character development (you know, those things you're supposed to "immerse" yourself in)." The idea seems to be that we're meant to rah-rah about a superabundance of feats, spells, races, prestige (advanced) classes, and math-equation tickers full of the usual "I attack you with a +4 sword of --" booooooring. Fine, sure, dandy...but when is a "role" not a "role"? Simple: when it's a rule to a fault.

Ever loyal bites
I'm cruising for a bruising (don't I know it), but NWN2 is a splash of cold water to the face: A revelatory, polarizing experience that -- in the wake of newer, better alternatives -- makes you question the very notion of "RPG by numbers." It foists Wizards of the Coast's latest v3.5 D&D system (a molehill that's become a mountain at this point) onto your hard drive with stunning fidelity, then tacks on dozens of artificial-looking areas vaguely linked by forget-table plot points you check off like grocery to-do's.

Sure, the interface is sleeker with context-sensitive menus and a smart little bar that lets you more intuitively toggle modes like "power attack" and "stealth," but with all the added rule-shuffling, NWN2 seems like it's working twice as hard to accomplish half as much. Worse -- and blame this on games like Oblivion -- NWN2's levels feel pint-sized: Peewee zones inhabited by pull-string NPCs with no existence to speak of beyond their little playpens. Wander and you'll wonder why the forests, towns, and dungeons are like movie lots with lay-about monsters waiting patiently for you to trip their arbitrary triggers. As if the pencil and paper "module" approach were a virtue that computers -- by now demonstrably capable of simulating entire worlds with considerably more depth -- should emulate. It's like we're supposed to park half our brain in feature mania and the rest in nostalgic slush, and somehow call bingo.

The dungeons feel especially stale, so linear and inorganic they might as well be graph-paper lifts filled with room after room of pop-up bogeymen (Doom put them in closets; NWN2 just makes the closets bigger). Maybe you'd rather chat with the dumb NPCs that speak and sound like extras in a bad Saturday morning cartoon? Oh, boy -- there's the portrait "plus" sign! Time to shuffle another party member (improved to four simultaneous) through the level-up grinder, which you can click "recommend" to zip past...but then, what's the point?

Rule-playing game
In all fairness, it's not entirely developer Obsidian's fault. D&D certainly puts the "rule" in role-playing, and a madcap base of D&D aficionados is no doubt ready to string me up for suggesting that faithful is here tantamount to folly (to these people, I say: "Go for it, NWN2's all you've ever wanted and more"). Call me crazy -- I guess I'm just finally weary of being led around on a pencil-and-paper leash and batting numbers around a glorified three-dimensional spreadsheet in a computer translation that should have synthesized, not forklifted.

That five-of-10 is actually a hedge, by the way. For D&D fans who want to play an amazingly thorough PC translation of the system they're carting around in book form, it's proba-bly closer an eight or nine. But if, like me, you want less "rules for rule's sake" and more depth and beauty to your simulated game worlds, you can certainly find more exciting prospects. Part of the reason we call them "the good old days" and think fondly of games past is that it's always easier to love what we don't have to play anymore.

It certainly is eloquent for a review that "doesn't meet standards." I call BS on this one... they pulled it because they didn't want to lose Ad revenue, in my not so humble opinion. However, I think it could also be argued that they DID, in fact, basically assign a guy who hates football to review Madden '06. In other news, I've actually started playing it myself, and it isn't THIS bad. Review to follow in the next few days...

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Optimus Prime in City of Villains

Apparently, on the test server, a very familiar looking (at least to those of us who were kids in the 80's) red semi with a silver/blue trailer was spotted in sharkhead isle. Hope it goes live.

Pictures here.

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Review: Sid Meier's Railroads!

Everybody has a little squirt inside them that loves to play with toy trains... and that's why Sid Meier's train games keep selling. Of course, it doesn't hurt that the latest entry into that foray is graphically appealing and immersive.

I wasn't one of the folks who was absolutely enamored with Railroad Tycoon. Long story short on Railroads! however, is it's a fun, solid title... if it would just maybe not crash so much (the program, not the trains).

The gameplay is smooth, although there's a bit of a fierce learning curve. The first few times you play you will end up with all your locomotives staring angrily into eachother's headlamps, each refusing to budge to let the other pass on the track. But once you get the hang of setting up multiple tracks and laying down crossover points every so often on them, that problem largely goes away.

The game comes with many scenarios and they're all fun to play with. It also has a multiplayer mode I haven't really experimented with yet.

It would be the textbook example of a perfect release if not for the fact that it crashes on me at least once an hour, once the game really gets going into heavily congested parts of the game (IE, the last couple decades before you win). That gets very frustrating.

But, so long as you remember to save often, it's a solid title worth adding to your library. Get it for your Dad, he loves trains, right? Rating: A-....

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A Little Side Project

A little side project I have going on... Founded a wiki to catalogue every single darn video game "babe" that ever existed. If you wanna, have a look.

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Review: Battlefield 2142

So the furor from the "spyware" debacle is dying down, as EA is assuring us all it does is use our IP to give us geographic context to the ads it will show us. Time to get down to brass tacks about the latest of the BF series.

I'm going to do away with my usual subheadings and just talk about the game. It would be silly to describe the gameplay, graphics, sound etc in detail because it's battlefield. Chances are, if you are interested in a BF2142 review, you already know what it means to play a Battlefield game.

First, let's talk about what's GOOD about the game. At least excluding network issues, the game performs slightly better on my machine than BF2 did, which is a welcome improvement. The new walkers are neat, but not TOO overpowered. The player "classes" and kits are nice and streamlined. The maps are well designed. All in all, it's a decent recipe for potential fun.

Pardon me while I crack my knuckles in anticipation of voluminous typing...

Ok, now let's talk about what's wrong with this game.

You may hear grumblings from many corners of the net about this being little more than a modded version of BF2. Well, I must grimly report such accounts are accurate. The dynamic, the control, the weapons, pretty much everything about 2142 basically says "you could just have left the -142 off the end of the name." Maybe some want every Battlefield product just on principle, but I would be disappointed to have shelled out for a game that looked, felt, and played pretty much exactly the same as the last game. Just without jets.

And Dubya Tee Eff is up with that, anyway... the No Jets thing? This is the freaking future. Where are the personal aircraft? The hoverboards? The jump packs? Ok, so we've got these titan things, but that's not what I'm talking about. A large part of the allure of the past BF games (which is now missing) has been "Wanna be a soldier? Be any solder! Be a machine gunner or a bazooka guy or a medic! Wanna drive a tank? We got lots of tanks! Drive one! How about a helicopter? Got those too! Fighter pilot? Hop in! You wanna steer a goddamned battleship? Here you are, skipper! Ask us about our submarines next! Have a little artillery there! Dune Buggy! Jeep! B-17! A-10! Schwimmwagen! Flakpanzer! Swift boat! Jetpack! We got it all and you can drive any of it, right out of the box!" What you got in 2142 is a much pared down selection of basically humvees, walkers, and static gun emplacements. And if you're lucky, maybe a futuristic bladeless helicopter.

Speaking of "right out of the box," even that is gone... and I'm not even talking about the patch immediately required. EA has added a new "unlock" rank system that only advances through online play, such that you have to play (and do well) to earn points to gain ranks to "unlock" most of the equipment for your profile. This is yet another step in a hated direction from those of us who liked 1942's coop mode for single player and the sandbox capabilities contained therein. I'm pretty sure I'm NOT alone in that I liked cranking up the number of bots to 64 in original BF's co-op mode and playing by myself. But Co-op mode went the way of the dodo way back in BF:Vietnam, although there was a nice mod for BF2 that let you play "enhanced co-op" with more equipment, flag points, etc. We can only hope a nice mod comes along for 2142. Some already have pointed out that the unlock system will be discouraging for newcomers, what with all the good toys already in the hands of the Catass Crew, it'll be hard for them to compete to get the points THEY need to unlock the goodies in a timely manner. Hopefully somebody is already working on a hack to unlock everything straightaway, if only for single player mode.

All in all, it's not something I'll be buying, unless something comes along that addresses the unlocks, and maybe adds in some more co-op goodies. The former is unlikely, and the latter is laughable. Besides, we all know the 2142 expansion must be mere weeks from launch, right? One thing that has made me sad is how the brand name Battlefield, which used to be synonymous with comprehensive inclusion of all things combat, now is synonymous with shovelware.

Rating: C-. And that's the word from Bandit Camp...

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Review: Space Cowboy Online

Space Cowboy Online has one real marketing hook: It is free to download and play. And, I supposed that's a good thing, because I certainly cannot see myself paying for it.

Gameplay

This game is a Massively Multiplayer Online game, but I hesitate to call it an RPG. It's more like Privateer meets Starfox. You fly around, shoot stuff down, maybe do a "mission", go back to base, sell the crap you picked off whatever you shot down, buy better stuff for yourself and go back out to do it again.

When you get right down to the brass tacks of the game, the controls are very simple. You move your mouse, and your ship turns the way you point. You click, and you shoot. Left click fires guns, right click fires missiles. Your guns will only hit what you have targeted in your reticle, though your missiles can be fired at most anything you have a lock on, so long as it's reasonably in front of you. As far as this much of the game goes, the design and impelementation are good. The method by which you target enemies takes some getting used to (you automatically target and keep targeted on the first thing your attack reticle drags over, and you hit "shift" to discard that target, then you'll target the NEXT thing your reticle will drag over).

Where we start to get into trouble is predictable to anybody who's played an MMO fresh from the orient. While there is a basic tutorial that does well at teaching you to handle your craft, there's precious little help for figuring out anything else in the game. After finishing the tutorial, you are dumped, naked, helpless, clueless and confused in the middle of the spaceport with no idea of how anything works. What happened to my ship? How do I get back in it? How do I sell items I collect, and where do I buy new ones? What do these stats do in my stat window? How do I outfit my ship and what should I look for while doing it? How do I know if I've leveled up? What do I do once I have? All these questions you are left to answer for yourself, or make an ass of yourself asking 900 noobie questions in the open chat channel.

Add into that the mission system, which is drab, linear, and about as exciting as a day old corned beef sandwich, never gives you any way to actually track down what it is you are supposed to be doing. If you're lucky, often it will at least instantly fly you to the right ZONE, but from there, you're on your own buddy. Go find that hypermoth somewhere in this 30-square-mile area and shoot it down.

All in all, while the actual flying and shooting is ok and fairly quick to master, a lot of people will get frustrated with the sink-or-swim learning curve after blundering, blasting, tree-scraping and ditch-gouging their bewildered way through their first 10 levels or so. It may be eight or so levels before some players actually realize that they have an inventory, as nothing ever points it out to you. You just kind of accidentally stumble on it while you're clicking around in the menus wondering what all is there. Then, when you find it, it is most likely full of crap you've picked up, and you have no idea where to go to sell it. Another 20 minutes of floundering in the spaceport will find you the merchants, and figure out how to buy and sell things.

The game has two forms of currency, one is the regular you get from doing stuff in game, and the other is a special currency called a "Gpotato" that you get by sending them real money on their website. Regular currency will do for repairs, refueling, normal items and whatnot, but the game makes sure that whenever you go looking for something, the first thing you see are the big fancy pretty items that cost Gpotato. I suppose that's to be expected, they *are* trying to get you to spend money while you play their free game. And by "play their game" I mean stagger around running into walls, not quite sure what you doing exactly, but somehow still managing to gain experience and finish missions.

I suggest reading up on the Online Player Guide to avoid most of the frustration.

Graphics

The graphics are suitably pretty and look about what you'd expect from a game of east-asian design. The ship models are lovingly crafted, but everything is done in the tried-and-true bigeyed anime style, using chestnutted stereotypes of such familiarity as to invoke an almost crushing sense of ennui. As is with most games of this geographic origin, individuality and customization take a faaaar backseat to the standard grind-to-increase-stats portion of the game. There are but a handful of pilot appearances, a shortcoming made all the more painfully apparent every time you go into the spaceport to hit the shops. All the pilot models are the same handful, and there's no customization of them at all that I could see. But then, I guess that's a cultural thing, now isn't it? It does seem to plague a lot of the Asian fare.

Sound

The sound is standard. Just what is needed to make it a game. The background music is decent as well.

PvP

After you reach level 10, you'll have to choose either the Army or the Rebels to join. Outside of the newbie zones, these two factions are perpetually at war with each other. Population imbalances are addressed by the larger side having to pay more for goods and services (called a "tax." There's a lot of content dealing with the fight between these two "nations," particularly something called the "Nation War." Like most of the game, you'll end up joining one side or the other and coming into conflict with the enemy nation without really having a conscious realization of exactly what is going on here.

In Summary

Few games have left me as conflicted in my reviewing as this one. It's hard to compare it to fancier games you have to pay for because it is free... so I find myself comparing it more to games like Urban Dead or Kingdom of Loathing. It certainly has as much, if not more, to offer than those games... but if you've been spoiled on the kind of content that requires payment, or even moreso, a monthly fee, then you will probably not find much enjoyment in this game. If you are a starving student who can barely afford ramen, this is probably the best game you can find for free.

If I had to sum up the feeling of playing this game, I would say it matches the feeling of skateboarding backwards down a hill. You aren't really sure of what's ahead of you, though you seem to be able to stay up... for now. The queasy mixture of confused progression and unintuitive character management may appeal to those who like a challenge, have a masochistic streak, or plain old don't care what the hell is going on so long as they get to shoot stuff.

And hey, it's free, after all. Rating: C...

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More Females than Males in Online Gaming?

I'm not sure I buy it, but polls are indicating a slightly larger number of online gamers are female than male.

Article at MSN Tech

In my opinion, that just indicates the Manginas are playing pretend on polls as well as in their RPGs.

Although, come to think of it... at least as many of the voices in teamspeak the last six months or so have been female as not...

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City of Heroes/Villains: Invention System

A sneak look at the new crafting system called "Invention" that Cryptic is working on for the Issue 9 expansion can be found over on the euro boards here. Looks for some very interesting stuff.

Some may be concerned about the effect the enhancements detailed may have, but me, I don't see this as unbalancing at lower levels. I expect most will wait until they're close to 50 to mess with this stuff.. after all, who wants to pour buckets of salvage down the drain for something that will only be useful for 5 or so very short levels?

And I'm psyched about craftable temporary powers and costume pieces.

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RTS Review: Warhammer 40k Dawn of War: Dark Crusade

Hot off the heels of THQ's RTS smash "Company of Heroes" comes this nerdgasm. If you know anybody who even remotely likes Warhammer, 40k, Blizzard RTSes, Company of Heroes, or just the RTS genre in general, get them this game. The best way I can describe it is summed up like this:

This is what Starcraft was trying to be. WH40K:DoW:DC expands on Company of Heroes' engine and gameplay style, set in a gritty bloody future like Starcraft, with a dash of Warcraft 3's "hero" system for army generals, and incorporates a non-linear campaign mode to give even the single-player mode almost unlimited control and replayability. Throw in the fact that there are seven different factions to possibly play, and all in all, it comes down to you not leaving the house for a while after you get this game.

And even though it's an "expansion," it stands alone just fine. If you don't have the original Dawn of War, nor even the expansion previous to this one, you can still play Dark Crusade without missing out on a single thing.

Let's get into some specifics.

Gameplay

The gameplay dynamic is one that fans of Company of Heroes will find familiar and yet have enough that is new to be interesting. Those who have only experienced Blizzard or Command and Conquer fare in their RTS'ing are in for a refreshing experience. While most of the commands are intuitive (left click to select, right click to perform obvious actions, etc), the paradigm is squad based: rather than having to mass select all the individual grunts, you may have two or three units, each comprising maybe a dozen or so soldiers, a squad leader, and perhaps some upgraded weaponry. As individuals in a squad are killed, you have a "reinforce" command on each unit. Basically, rather than having to click on a barracks and say "make more troops," you only have to produce a unit from the barracks, then add members to the unit by clicking on the unit in question and clicking reinforce. The unit will then "build" its new soldiers in the familiar way, costing resources and filling a progress bar over time. Other improvements to the squad are purchased in the same fashion, such as a "sergeant" to improve the squad's stats or specialized weaponry upgrades. Unlike Company of Heroes, the troops' AI doesn't have it scrambling for cover the instant fighting starts, which is good in some ways and bad in others. Really, the concept of "cover" in Warhammer is dramatically simpler than in CoH. Another difference is that squads can reinforce/upgrade in the field, without having to return to base. Also, there is a cap on how much infantry and how many vehicles you can support at once, which is largely determined by how many of the buildings that produce these units you have in your base... but even at the maximum, you'd be hard pressed to have more than 15 or so units, give or take 5 or so depending on the cost of the various units you choose to produce. All in all, it makes for a very balanced strategic game.

Graphics

Like its cousin, Company of Heroes, 40k's graphics are superb yet scalable. If you play on an old clunker, the game is perfectly playable and enjoyable with most of the fancy bells and whistles turned off... but if your rig is so powerful it practically needs dual exhaust, you can crank the graphics up and be wowed by the level of detail and intricacy. Add in the iconic artwork from the Warhammer world, and you've got an all-around crowd pleaser.

Sound

While most of the sound effects and music are what has come to be standard these days, there were a few things worth mentioning. The music is nice and atmospheric, though nothing fancy or involved. The voice acting is good, but often the unit voices become extremely repetitive. I only played it for about an hour before I could practically recite "Long have I wished to serve under you, sir" perfectly in time with the growling trooper, complete with
thick Liverpudlian accent. This is really the only shortcoming I've found thus far, and it is by far a minor one.

In Summary

When it rains, it pours. We've been awash in very decent games recently, and this is another. In fact, it's not decent, it's excellent. Even if you've been burned out from hours and hours of Company of Heroes or any other RTS, this is definitely one you want in your collection. Even if you've never played the Warhammer tabletop game in your life. Especially if you have. Excellent strategy. Challenging AI. Forgiving consequences for failiure in the single player game (you just fall back and either try again next round or attack somewhere else). Vibrant graphics and artistry. Novel controls. All in all, it's a definite keeper. I give it four chainguns and a plasma rifle. Rating: A+....

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City of Heroes/Villains: Halloween Event

So, the Halloween event for CoX is in full sway, and I for one am pleased with it. Lots of activity stirring as people look for the new giant monsters or go trick or treating, and I'm never one to turn down a new costume slot.

Say what you will about other aspects of the game, let it never be said that Cryptic doesn't know how to throw a party.

A fair number of people are using the new costume slot as their "Halloween Costume," and I decided to as well...

My Normal Costume:



My "Halloween" Costume: "Football Player"


Hope you all get lots of candy.

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BF2142 - The Future of Combat is Orwellian

So, by now everybody has heard about the Spyware in Battlefield 2142. I, naturally, disapprove. However, my ire on this matter is tempered by the fact that there hasn't been a Battlefield game worth buying since the first one, and half of that was because of the pillar of awesomeness that is the Desert Combat mod.

Don't worry, folks... I'm sure the pirate, cracked version that has most likely already hit your favorite torrent site has also neutered the spyware. If not, well, give BF2142 a pass and maybe try Starwars Battlefront 2 instead.

Last thing I need on my box is another piece of poorly programmed marketing-maggot software bogging down my performance and causing other issues... that's really the biggest problem I have with spyware. Sure, the fact that it watches me and reports what I do irks me as well, but what really frosts my tuchis is the performance hit. Anyway, I digress.

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If you run a new ASUS mobo, read this

Seems ASUS is pushing more voltage than you tell it to... might be important for those who are experiencing performance issues, or overlockers who don't want to fry their gear.

Article from NGOHQ


Apparently no word on if this is unintentional or a deliberate attempt to boost benchmarks done by unwitting reviewers.

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