Fallen Earth Revisited.

Thanks to the blogosphere craze over Fallen Earth after launch, I decided to pick myself up a copy. Here's some advice; sometimes it's ok not to listen to bloggers, cause Fallen Earth for me was a big dud. There's no real one thing I can point to as to why I wasn't enjoying the game, I just wasn't. Mostly it was that the ranged combat was borked and by not wanting to craft, I felt like I was only playing half a game. I never hated Fallen Earth for what it was trying to do, it just wasn't for me. So after playing less than ten hours during my free month, I cancelled.

The almighty Jaye Dubb

As time went on and the game was patched more and more, I had a slight desire to return to Fallen Earth and see how the game compare to when I first played. I won a code to FE off another blog, but instead of using that, I thought I would start with the 14 day free trial, give myslef an extra couple of weeks in case I was enjoying the game.

The good news is I am enjoying the game thus far. It looks better, runs smoother and I am actually interested in trying to craft this time around. The bad news is that crafting is still overwhelming, the starting towns are very empty and if I quit today I don't think fell like I am missing something. Like I said, I am enjoying the game, I'm just don't see myself playing FE like I have other MMO's.

The basic tutorial hasn't changed; you wake up in some facility that I wasn't paying attention to learn where and you must escape. What has changed is some of the extended tutorial you can do once you pick a started town. I picked Zanesville because it was a combat town that focused on pistols and rifles. The once was a mission to get a free horse, but it seems to be given to you, at what point I don't know cause I wasn't paying much attention to the mission text.

To be fair to FE I have only been playing very casually, maybe and hour a night. But I do think that part of my enjoyment comes from knowing what to expect this time around. I know how the combat is, I know half the game is crafting and I know that it's not a great looking game. I am not interested in trying the PvP, and I have no idea what the 'end game' is like, but I am interested in getting out of the started town and crafting some of the better gear and weapons. It would be great to not be using BB guns for once.

Tates like chicken!

The month of August is shaping up to be a good one for MMO addicts such as myself. There's the new EQ2X beta starting in about a week, Champions Online is getting some huge patch I believe, City of Heroes Going Rogue launches and all of this on the same day if I heard correctly. All of this along with a renewed interest in WAR that has been growing for some time. I am going to continue with Fallen Earth after the trial  for at least the free month and possibly playing WAR, but who knows with these things.

Decision time.

With am increasing desire to play my Xbox 360, eagerly waiting to get my PS3, playing more Modern Warfare 2 than I wanted to with some friends and enjoying LOTRO, I am just not sure if I want or can manage my time for two MMO's.

There is a new patch for Fallen Earth today and I plan to play at least some of the game at some point. But my sub renews sometime in the early morning tomorrow so I need to decide if I am going to realistically play more than a few hours this next month or not.

Fallen Earth falling off the map.

I have been so enthralled with Dragon Age that I have left little time for myself to play anything else. One game the has really suffered from my lack of time is Fallen Earth. I'm not ready to give up on the game just yet, but I haven't missed the game which is not a good thing.

Part of my problem is that FE is so open that I feel a tad overwhelmed. Another problem for me is that crafting is such a large aspect of the game and I am not a crafter by nature, I am about combat, exploration and for some reason I have this fascination with resource gathering.

I really like the combat mechanics; switching from a combat stance to a none combat stance, the ability to play in a third person or first person perspective is nice. But the area that I am in with one character has been experiencing some lag during combat, so the mobs tend to warp around making ranged combat a pain. One thing I did do was remap my key bindings for switching weapons, and that has helped out a lot. But at times the combat feels like Star Wars Galaxies. That's just a personal observation, every player's experience might be different.

I like how involved the crafting is and love scavenging and gathering. But to me the crafting is the focus of the game and combat is a means to getting the necessary components for recipes. That's where I think I am having the biggest problem, cause I do myself a huge disservice if I don't do any crafting. Actually it's probably more of a requirement to do crafting in FE than it is in any other MMO, but I don't know that for sure.

So what this boils down to is that I am on the fence as to whether or not I am going to renew for another month in FE. With Dragon Age eating my time, Siege of Mirkwood now released and my overwhelming desire to play all things LOTRO and my possible tour in EQ2 to check out some of those new features, I just don't know if there is a place for FE. What I plan to do is not play anything Dragon Age on Monday, and use my day off to spend large blocks of time playing both FE and LOTRO.

What I really need it a beginners guide or a road map for some progression ideas and hints for FE. But in the end the only way to learn is to play right?

Sucked In.

It started off slowly. I would play a few hours here, a few hours there. But then it happened, I have become sucked into Dragon Age, unable to get away for very long to play anything else. One problem I am having is that I tend to jump between the different characters that I have, one for each origin.

My rogue has progressed the furthest of all the characters I have. He is has already convinced the Dalish and the Templar's to join the cause against the blight and is currently working his way through the Deep Roads in the hopes of getting the Dwarfs to commit as well.

There must be a lot more to do after this because I have barley finished a third of the game. The rogue has been played for almost thirty hours and that is with me skipping most of the side quests in each area.

But I will need to break away some because I have been neglecting Fallen Earth and that sub expires in the middle of the month and I need to spend some quality time with the game to see if I am going to be renewing for a third month. Also, the Siege of Mirkwood expansion will be released on Tuesday, along with it comes some new features and a few changes as well.

Fallen Earth tidbits.

I haven't spent as much time with Fallen Earth as I would like to have, but so far I am enjoying the game. Ultimately it's the sandbox openness of the game that I really like, among a few other things. Alik on the MMO voices podcast said something to the effects of it's the feeling of being able to do anything you want without having to be lead by the hand from quest to quest.

But I do have one complaint, and that is the combat. I actually think the combat quite neat and can be fun if everything is running smoothly. I am experiencing a bit of frustration right now using the crossbow at close range because mobs have been warping some around my guy. The bigger problem is the clunky way to switch weapons. Instead of using a crossbow at close range I should be using a melee weapon, but's such a pain so switch weapons.

It's just a minor complaint and it's not enough to ruin the game for me.

Fallen Earth

I finally did it, I took the plunge and bought Fallen Earth last night. I didn't really want to but it from Steam of D2D so I was going to just pick one up at the local Fry's till I saw that I could purchase the game straight from the Fallen Earth website. I thought how awesome, I will save a few bucks and some time by doing the purchase this way.

So the download and install went ok, but that's about all that did. The downloader that I used from the email that I was sent only installed a small portion of the game and the other 4.0gb of files needed to be downloaded.

No problem I thought, I have stuff to do and I can always play on the Xbox to kill time. Don't know about anyone else, but that sounded like a great plan to me, but the Fallen Earth patcher apparently had other ideas as to what I was going to spend my time doing.

The patcher for some unknown reason will only download a certain number of files before it decides that it needs to take a break. It could be five files, it could be five hundred, either way it was going to be a long night if I was going to have to cancel and restart the patcher each time it quits out.

I did check the forums for some information and it seems that I am not the only one to have this problem. There were a few suggestions like try a different downloader or download the beta client from Fileplanet. Being the tired and not thinking one I chose to go with Fileplanet, but no matter each method was going to take me a while.

One everything was downloaded, installed and started patching, I decided that it was time for bed at 0230 in the morning and just left the computer running for the rest of the night to finish with the patch. Woke up this morning to find that the patcher had quit not too long after I had gone to bed. Eventually I was able to get the game to finish patching, but what a hassle. Not a great start.

But I did get to play for a short time today before work. I was able to make my way through the tutorial and am now hanging out in Depot 99.