Worth a buck.

I have played Darkfall for maybe an hour now and seeing as how the trial is only a buck I thought I would try it. So here is my initial thoughts; it's crap. It looks like crap, plays like crap, it's plain crap.

More power to those who gave it an actual chance or even stuck it out and are still playing. As for me I will probably try one more race for about an hour and then uninstall this load of poo.

The verdict is in!

Well, with my two week trial for EVE Online coming to an end I have gone ahead and purchased EVE Online and will continue my adventures in New Eden for at least one more month.

I am really enjoying the game thus far, more than I thought I would. The new tutorial does a great job at getting new players acclimated to the game, and the five career agent missions help new players by giving some really nice items and plenty of ISK.

With EVE being a sandbox MMO and not a theme park MMO like I am comfortable with I really need to make sure I don't become overwhelmed. So in my month of play time I need to continue to learn more about the game, learn to maximise my skill training and join a corporation. For now I will be running npc agent missions, but hopefully I can get myself into a corporation so I can get myself into some PvP. Yes, I want to PvP, maybe even try some piracy!!!

Batman Arkham Asylum on sale!

For those of you who are thinking about buying Batman Arkham Asylum but were holding out may want to read this article over at Joystiq. It would seem that the game is on sale through the Games for Windows' Games on Demand for only $12.49!

That is dirt cheap and well worth the price in my mind. The only sticking point is the GWL Games on Demand service, I have not used it so I have no idea how it works compared to Impulse or Steam. Batman is one of the few GWL enabled games so it's a bonus if you are into achievements.

A bit of EVE.

You may not have noticed from looking at my Raptr profile but I have been playing quite a bit of EVE Online. That dreaded sandbox MMO with a huge learning curve, overwhelming amount of things to do and with some unforgiving PvP.

I don't know what it is but every so often I want to play a space-flight sim. I do own a few of those types of games; Darkstar One, X2 and a couple X3 games, Freelancer, and I think that's it. But when I think about it, it's not necessarily the space stuff I am in the mood for but a ship type game in general. Whether it be in the unknown reaches of space or on the high seas, sometimes I just want to pilot a ship and blow stuff up.

Right now I am really enjoying my time with EVE Online, much more than the last two times I gave the free trail a try. The tutorial is much better and easier to follow now, and there are these career agents that you can do missions for and they will teach you various aspects of EVE's gameplay. But the best part is you get free stuff for doing the career missions so it's worth doing them all.

My free trial ends in a week and there is a good possibility that I will finish all of the career agent missions by that time. I am worried that once I finish those missions that my interest in the game will decline. Say what you will about the kill ten rats quest hub type of MMO's, it's what I am familiar with and EVE is not like that.

I do believe there are other agents that do give out missions and there's always the possibility of hunting pirates, but will that be enough to keep my interest? I guess I will see in a week won't I!

It's not that good.

I don't know what it is, but whenever I hear someone talking about Bioshock 2, I just want to violently kick them or their dog for saying just how great the game is.

But on the flip side, I still want to play the multiplayer, if only it didn't have such ass sucking peer-to-peer matchmaking.

Completed: Bioshock 2

I finally finished the single-player for Bioshock 2 on Friday night. I have been able to play some of the multiplayer and it's not bad, it won't compete with Modern Warfare 2 but it was a pleasant surprise.

Right now all I can say is if I had a choice between Mass Effect 2 and Bioshock 2, ME2 hands down. It's not a good sign when I would rather play multiplayer instead of the single-player.

No gamepad for you!

I actually saw this last night on the Bioshock 2 message boards, and again this morning on EvilAvatar;

Hey guys,

I talked to the dev team about controller support for BioShock 2, and I want to let you know that we won’t be adding this into the game in a patch. The decision not to support the controller was not made lightly, and to add it now would take a complete re-envisioning of the UI that the team worked so hard to create.

I’m sorry for those of you who are disappointed, and I want you to know that your comments and concerns have been heard and will be taken in to account when we are planning in the future.

Thanks,

-Elizabeth

For the record, the controls for Bioshock 2 on the PC are better than the first game. With that said, they are still not great and it would have been nice if the PC version had support for a gamepad or wired Xbox controller.

The biggest complaint for me has to be the mouse controls; you use the left button for firing weapons and the right button for firing off plasmids, pretty standard stuff. The problem is that on screen your left hand is your plasmids and the right hand is your weapons, so the tendency is to press the wrong mouse button because you are reacting to what you see on the screen.

Another problem regarding the controls, they differ some between the multiplayer and the singleplayer. Cycling through your plasmids and weapons works great in multiplayer because you have a limited number to work with, but it's completely different on the singleplayer side and it's frustrating.

But all of these problems would be cured if there was controller support for the game. The sad truth about Bioshock 2 is it's a console port in every way but the controls.

My bit of nerd rage.

Do you ever listen to a podcast and suddenly go into instant nerd rage over something that is said, or a certain topic of discussion? I did today.

The host of the podcast was talking about Star Trek Online and about how the community is really good for that game and just ignore the forums because of all the hate for the game. For some reason I had this knee jerk reaction and about turned off my mp3 player because of it.

But after writing this post three different ways, I realized that it's really much ado about nothing. I think my reaction came from the bad taste in my mouth left by Champions Online, Cryptic's other MMO. I do think that the official forums for any MMO only tell part of the story of the overall health of the game. But I guess if you were to use that same logic with WoW then one would think that game should have been canned along time ago.

I guess the morale of the story is not to take everything so personal, it's just a podcast for goodness sakes.

Mass Effect 2 done!

Well 2010 is already shaping up to be a kick ass year for games, that is if the rest of the year has games like the last two I just played then it will. I am attempting to finish Batman Arkham Asylum for a third time on a third format and I just finished Mass Effect 2 for the PC.

In case anyone was wondering, Mass Effect 2 is freaking awesome!!

Arrrrrrrrrrr.....

According to the email I received last night, Pirates of the Burning Sea are closing all but two servers and I can transfer any and all characters that I may have on those particular servers that will be no more.

One would assume that server closures are a sign of how healthy a game is doing which might not be so good, just ask Warhammer Online and Star Wars Galaxies. Personally I think it's an indicator that a game does not have a healthy player base, just my opinion.

The nice thing is that I don't need to have an active account to transfer my one and only character and I am getting a free month of play time to decide if I made the correct server choice. A free month of play time, awesome.

I really enjoyed my limited time with PotBS during the middle of last year, but like a few other MMO's that I was playing, I cancelled my sub because of Champions Online and eventually Aion, both games I was reviewing.

The great thing is that I have been wanting to try this game out again, but have been unwilling to spend the money to reactivate my sub. SWG is also free this month for me so I can log in and see all the cool stuff they have released recently is about, and then log out bored!

It's all about the attributes.

It seems that lately I have been in a MMO funk; I don't have much desire to play the two I have subbed at the moment, a desire to play MMO's that I am not subbing for now and a realization that I wouldn't play them anyways.

I then began to wonder what it was in or with WoW that compelled me to play that game for over 2200+ hours according to Xfire. I have been using Raptr instead of Xfire now, but Raptr pulled over all my games with time played when I signed up, nice! Here's something I didn't know till I looked; out of the top 10 games I have registered time playing, 6 of them are MMO's. The game I have played the second most is Star Wars Galaxies with almost 990 hours played! I do know that amount would be higher if Xfire had been out when I began playing SWG years back.

But back on topic, I was wondering why I have played so much WoW and why are there all these other MMO's that are good but are just not grabbing my attention like the big one did at one point. A couple of weeks ago I came to the conclusion that it boils down to the skills and attributes.

Hopefully I can explain this as well as it sounded in my head! I have played so much WoW that I have a pretty good grasp of the attributes do and how they affect the various skills. In LOTRO for example, I have very little idea what the various attributes do and how they affect skills for combat or what to look for in armor and weapons. It's the same thing with EQ2, WAR and to a certain degree AoC.

I understand that this is a simplistic view and that there are other aspects to a MMO like combat, exploration, questing, crafting, etc. But when you think about it, attributes affect almost every aspect of a MMO. Age of Conan back at launch is a great example of a MMO that had attributes that had little affect or made little to no sense within the game.

So my thinking is what if I take the time to learn how the attributes work in LOTRO, how they affect my skills and learn to play my class. Goes without saying right? But it is something I have not done much of since the game launched. So if I learn the attributes, finding a build and learning the skills, maybe the game will be that much more interesting for me and I will renew my sub for another three months!

So my goal is to do just that with LOTRO, stay tuned!

Weekend Edition

Please excuse the lame title of the post, I couldn't come up with something more witty. I was thinking that in order to give myself some motivation to continue to write I would start posting something on Saturdays just before my 'weekend' officially starts. Which will be when I get off work after posting this!

I finished Batman Arkham Asylum on the PC late last night, now I just have to finish finding some things and complete the challenges so I can get more achievements to add to my gamerscore. Batman is an awesome game, and it's best on the PC hands down. I have finished the game on the PS3, the PC and at some point I might play it on the Xbox 360, it's just that good.

The game I will be playing most this weekend will be Mass Effect 2. Bioshock 2 will release on Feb. 9th, so there's no need to rush through ME2 this weekend, but I wouldn't mind getting a big chunk of the game finished.

I haven't played WoW or LOTRO in almost two weeks and have been contemplating just un-subbing to both. I renewed my account so I could go play with the Casualties of War group in WoW and LOTRO is a game I should love and play more of, but just haven't. Really what it boils down to is time, I find it's being sucked up by non-MMO games, and it's only going to get worse in the coming weeks. Maybe I will just have one MMO sub, or buy a lifetime membership to LOTRO.

I have been thinking about giving EQ2 another go for what seems like the hundredth time already. I bought the game at launch, so I have a huge number of vet rewards that I haven't claimed, but I also bought the Echoes of Faydwer and Shadow Odyssey all-in-one compilations at one point and was thinking of pre-ordering Sentinels Fate. I see two problems though; if I haven't stuck with EQ2 after the countless times playing, why would I now. And, would it even be necessary to purchase the new expansion when my highest character is something around level 25. Something to think about.

Speaking of Batman, I think I have finally figured out the secrets to the freeflow combat. I need to do a little more testing this weekend, but I think I might share my thoughts on it at some point.

Well that's it for this way to long post, hope every one is enjoying their weekend, mine starts in a few minutes!

A few Mass Effect thoughts.

I really wish I wouldn't claim a game is awesome after just a few short hours of play, cause inevitably there is something that starts to ruin the whole experience for me. So here are just a few random thoughts about ME2 before I go to bed.

Why have squad commands if my squad is not going to carry them out. Sure, there are only three commands, but for what ever reason the AI seems to think my commands are more like a suggestion that they will take under advisement. So far commanding a squad is utter crap.

Weapons still use Mass Effect for ammo, but to keep them from overheating I need to use 'Thermal Clips' now. For those who don't know in ME1 weapons would overheat. So let's assume that gamers are idiots and that they will never now that thermal clips are really just ammo, that must be what Bioware was thinking when they thought that this was a great idea. I find that I am spending way too much time worried about running out of thermal/ammo clips, a needless distraction.

These are just my initial thoughts for now, hopefully tomorrow night will not be as frustrating as tonight has been. I still like the game and I am very interested in the story, but it's not as awesome tonight as it was a few nights ago.

Steering clear for now.

Cryptic just can't seem to catch a break can they. First they have a brouhaha with Champions Online with regards to the lifetime subs and a day one patch, then there is the skill cap issue with Star Trek Online. But tonight I read that the player base is up in arms because the next significant content release will require a payment.

Frankly I think that Cryptic deserves all the heat they are receiving. Not for this most recent mess, but for the way management has handled both games. To be fair the new paid update has no price yet and no one knows for sure just how much content there will be. But it is hard not to get upset I think at something like this.

For now I think I am going to steer clear of anything Cryptic for awhile.

Arkham never looked so good!

Turns out that Batman Arkham Asylum was one of the best game purchases I have ever made because the game is awesome! There's not much more that I can say about the game that hasn't already been said, but I will try.

The game takes place all in one night on Arkham Island where the asylum is located. With a little help the Joker has managed to free himself and taken over the asylum. You as Batman trek around the island trying to figure out what the Joker is planning and capture him before he does it.

The two gameplay features most talked about in the game are the Detective mode and the Freeflowing combat. In detective mode Batman can follow footprints, hand prints, find secret locations and even see enemies through walls and floors. The only downside is that there is no penalty for using detective mode the entire play through, which can make the game seem too easy at times.

The freeflowing combat is awesome, it's just a tad difficult to explain. Essentially you can begin attacking one goon and by moving the analog stick towards another enemy you will continue attacking and if done right it will be one smooth flowing combo attack. The freeflowing combat system is revolutionary and I hope at some time we will get some type of martial arts fighting game that will utilize it!

I have only two complaints about the game; Batman's sluggish combat animations and the camera during combat. It would seem that the more enemies that Batman has to face, the slower the animations get when attacking or trying to counter-attack. The camera wants to constantly be at Batman's back, which makes fighting large groups of goons a chore at times, especially if fighting in a small confined area.

I played and finished Batman on the PS3 about a week ago. The game plays great and doesn't look too bad, but I had this overwhelming desire to play it on the PC. After downloading the demo and playing for maybe ten minutes, I immediately purchased the game on Steam, and it has been worth it even though I finished it on another platform.

If you have a wired Xbox 360 controller and a decent PC, do yourself a favor and pick up Arkham Asylum on the PC, you will not be disappointed. The game looks so much better than the console version. I have my resolution set to 1920x1200 with all settings maxed and with no AA, and it runs very smooth. You will get the occasional hitching at times, but it's almost like night and day when compared to the PS3 version.

For those who have Nvidia 9800 or better video cards will also be in for a treat, Batman uses PhysX. So random debris on the ground like leaves, papers or rocks will be kicked up when Batman walks or runs around. I think it's great and really adds to the game.

Batman Arkham Asylum is fantastic. It's easily one of my favorite games and would have been my personal game of the year hands down if I had played it last year.

Mass Effect 2 time.

I sit here writing this, waiting in anticipation to fire up Mass Effect 2. I have had all day to think on this moment and what it will mean to my gaming time. I also had some time to think about the few games that are upcoming in both February and March, and what I have concluded is that I may just have to unsub both my MMO's till further notice.

Right now I have a sub to LOTRO and WoW, and in both I have logged in maybe once or twice in the past three weeks thanks to Batman Arkham Asylum. So I have Mass Effect 2 now, Bioshock 2 in less than two weeks, Battlefield Bad Company in March along with the new Dawn of War expansion, and I am sure I am forgetting a game or two in there, but you get the picture.

So do I go MMO-less for one of the very rare times since becoming a MMO gamer, or do I just pick one and use my time wisely? What about the fact that I have been tempted to try out EQ2 or AoC again, or maybe a f2p one like DDO? I guess life could be worse, I could be in a position to not be able to make any choices right?!?

Gamefly thus far.

When I bought my PS3 at Christmas, a thought came to me and it was this; now that I have a PS3, a Xbox 360 and of course my PC, my game purchases are going to get quite expensive. So I thought 'hey, why not give Gamefly another try and just rent games for the PS3 and 360 and save me a bit of money'. And of I approved of the idea.

So far I have been sent three games from Gamefly; Uncharted: Drakes Fortune, Lord of the Rings Conquest and now Resistance 2. Uncharted was the first game on my list, but Conquest was not second and I did not want Resistance 2 before I had a chance to play the first one. My guess is that Darksiders and Bayonetta, numbers two and three on my list, are not available and so I am getting a game that has the most availability on my list. So why not send Assassin's Creed 2, or the first Resistance, or even Prototype which were all higher on the list?

Uncharted is a good game, but a frustrating one for me. My first thought after completing the game was how come everyone loves this game so much. I guess I had a preconceived idea of what the game might be like and it was just not that. Good game, but I do hope the second one wow's me like it's suppose to.

Lord of the Rings Conquest; if a developer crapped on a disc and then stuck it in a PS3, this is what you would get. The game looks awful, the controls are terrible and it plays like garbage.

That leads us to Resistance 2. And after a couple of hours I can honestly say that it stinks so far. The action is not bad, the aiming controls a bit on the loose side, but the game looks bad so far and it just seems kind of boring. I think I will keep it over the weekend and see if it gets better for me.

Honestly if it wasn't for Batman Arkham Asylum, I would be thinking that my investment in a PS3 was a bad one so far. There are a slew of good games being released starting next Tuesday with Mass Effect 2 so my time management skills are going to be put to the test.

Reader is full.

Not really, but there sure were a lot of blog posts that I needed to catch up on, 129 to be exact. I try to not let it get so out of hand, but I took a couple of extra days off and spent most of the time playing Batman on the PS3. Normally I will do some blog reading and maybe the occasional post from home, but I tend to do most of it while at work when in the office. Oh well, catching up will give me something to do in the office for the next few days!

I belong in Arkham.

I have been spending a lot of time playing Batman Arkham Asylum for the PS3 over the past week, and it's unfortunate that such an awesome game has such a crappy end boss fight. Truth be told I have no idea if you fight the Joker, cause I can't even get passed the battle with the two Titans and the mass amount of cannon fodder soldiers that jump in to help.

The combat has been the best part of the game thus far, but it does tend to get frustrating. The combat is really well done, but it rewards patience and timing, so when I screw up and lose my combo meter because of a bit of button mashing, it gets frustrating.

Because of the enclosed confines of the last fight, the camera takes a dump on you and the controls seem to decided to that you need to move as if you are walking in a swamp. So about half-hour, forty-five minutes later I am no closer to getting my hands on the Joker than I was when I started playing tonight. And for that I am frustrated.

STO first impression.

Well, I will start by saying that STO is not the complete failure that I thought it would be. So does that mean it's great, by no means. I have only played maybe an hour and just got myself through the tutorial and into the space station that orbits earth so far. STO is not Champions Online is space, but it does have some similarities, specially in the user interface and menu options.

My first impressions of the ground combat; it's ok. I like that there is sprint and a sprint meter, but the aim mode made little sense to me and it combat itself was very reminiscent of Champions Online.

My first impressions of the space combat; it's the strongest aspect of STO and a whole lot of fun. The space combat is what I was most interested in and also was curious if it was like the ship combat in Pirates of the Burning Sea. I would say that the only similarities between the two would be you have firing arcs and you fight in ships, and they are both fun. Space adds a whole new dimension to the combat because you can attack and be attacked from above or below your ship.

I did have fun in my first hour of playing and I felt like I was in the Star Trek world, which is a good thing. Yes there are some issues, it is still in beta, but I am looking forward to getting home and doing some more space content after the football games!