Tag: Gaming (page 8 of 41)

There Can Be Only One

April 4, 2011 / / 0 Comments

Courtesy Wizards of the Coast
My sister’s Commander. She gains life. A LOT of life.

My family has become pretty keen on the “newest” Magic: the Gathering format. I put the quotes around ‘newest’ because it’s a format that’s actually been around for a while, underground & independent. But like the rockers who have to trade in their hipster glasses for suits & ties because they have to meet with label people now, the format’s been picked up by the big name and now is getting mass-produced later this year. I’m speaking of what Magic calls Commander, but some folks still know it as Elder Dragon Highlander, or EDH.

Instead of your typical constructed format, Commander has an interesting if somewhat quirky rule set that changes the pace and flavor of the game:

  • Each player begins with 40 life.
  • You may have 100 cards in your deck, one of which must be your Commander.
  • Aside from basic lands, you are allowed 1 copy of each card in your deck.
  • The Commander must be a legendary creature.
  • Your Commander is not shuffled into your deck but remains in a special area out of play. You can summon it at any time for its mana cost.
  • If your Commander would be destroyed, exiled or otherwise removed from play, instead of going to the graveyard or being exiled it returns to its area. It can be resummoned, but 2 colorless mana is added to its casting cost for each time it is sent back to its area in this way.
  • The colors of the Commander define the colors of the deck. For example: if your Commander is red, blue and black, the cards in your deck cannot contain green or white.

Typically, the Commander also lends a theme to the deck, be it creature removal, life gain or straight-forward beat-down. I originally built a creature-enchantment deck around Razia, Boros Archangel, but since most of my father’s cards are red and white, he picked her up as well. So, I’ve gone back to the drawing board. I tried a red-black burn deck with Lyzolda, the Blood Witch as the Commander… it didn’t end well. Now that more or less I know what I’m facing, as my family has become my ‘local meta’, I’ve started on a few ideas.

Vorosh, the Hunter is the most viable, unique Commander I have currently, as Teneb is being fielded (quite effectively!) by my sister-in-law, Beth. I’m building a graft/infect deck around him. The more proliferation I can get into it, the better. Until then it’ll be using some of my more insidious control tricks, at least until I get some other decks up and running. While it might be some time before that happens, due to limited resources, a couple other ideas have popped into my head.

I like my dragon burn deck (and the others hate it due to Archenemy memories), and can probably beef it up a bit with a better Commander. Bladewing the Risen, perhaps. Or I can add some control elements with Crosis, the Purger, Lord of Tresserhorn or Sol’kanar the Swamp King.

The other big idea I had involves control and artifacts, two great tastes that taste great together. The latest block of expansions introduced a few really neat control devices reliant on artifacts, so I would need a Leonid Abunas to keep them safe. But what if he didn’t come out in time? And I still needed a Commander. A little searching, however, introduced me to Sharuum the Hegemon. Black allows for creature recursion (Abunas won’t stay dead!) and her ability for bringing artifacts back is not only good for when she gets sent packing back to her perch outside of the game, but also plays right into the hands of my favorite planeswalker – Venser the Sojourner.

So I have a few things to consider as I plan for my next encounter with my fellow planeswalkers. After all, in the end, there can be only one.

Sequelitis

March 31, 2011 / / 6 Comments

Courtesy BioWare
“No. I’m not taking another step until Justice lets Anders out to play.”

There are some marketing decisions I’ll never understand.

Fast food chains showing a split-second of something from a moderately-trending YouTube clip. Ads and reviewers pretending that adding a third visual dimension to one-dimensional stories or characters is worth the investment. Concealing lack of content with blatant sex appeal or gratuitous trendiness. New Coke.

And the notion that a sequel must – must – be indicated with a number.

I think this is more an issue with video games than other media. The second Dream Park novel wasn’t called Dream Park 2, it’s The Barsoom Project. Batman Begins was followed by The Dark Knight. Yet on PCs and consoles, long is the list of new games followed by lackluster sequels indicated only by larger numbers on the end. Some of them fail for simply not being good games. But others, I think, take more flak than they should simply because somebody in marketing decided that “2” was a better descriptor of the game’s content than any sort of subtitle.

You know where I’m going with this, right? Of course you do.

In the grand tradition of my Dragon Age: Origins experience, I’m ruminating upon a fantasy RPG with depth and complexity before stumbling into an actual review. Unlike Origins, however, which was lauded nearly universally, Dragon Age 2 is approaching levels of hate I didn’t think possible for a BioWare game. If this were Pixar, this latest game would be the studio’s Cars.

I’m not blinded by fanboy wank, though. I can see the flaws. Copy-pasted caverns. An overwhelming number of sidequests with even more generic, interchangeable foes between them. Cumbersome menus likely meant to be easily navigated with thumb sticks. A first act plot motivated more by destitute desperation and blatant greed than anything altruistic, let alone heroic. Anders… Andraste’s knicker-weasels, poor Anders. There’s more, I’m sure, and I’ll cover them all in my review.

But how bad are they, really? So far, in my opinion, none of them break the game. It holds up due to interesting characters with vibrant relationships in the setting of a very personal, gradually-building story. I’m not sure what it’s building to, at this point, but I’m interested in finding out, and I personally like the fact that it’s not necessarily building up to the go-to video game goal of “Kill The Final Boss To Win At Life”. The things Hawke does, even if some of them are just to get him and his mom out of a shithole apartment, feel like they matter outside of XP or monetary gain. Different, in this case, is not necessarily bad. Again, this might change when I cross that finish line.

I think that a lot of the bile being spewed by gamers, like so many Boomers dousing survivors in Left 4 Dead because they’re making loud noises, is due to the title. Dragon Age 2, to most, indicates a continuation of Dragon Age: Origins in terms of story scope (epic, large-scale, overarching quest goal), player projection – an unvoiced character is easier for the player to use as a self-insertion fantasy persona – and nostalgia factor. I mean, come on, if Origins were trying any harder to be a Baldur’s Gate game it’d be called “Baldur’s Gate: Ferelden Edition” or maybe “Baldur’s Gate III” if EA had anything to say about it.

Instead, there’s this guy or girl named Hawke instead of a character the player builds from the ground up. There’s only one city, and it doesn’t matter how well-realized or lively that city itself is if players are expecting multiple unique locations to serve as quest hubs. The relationships and characters remain, but between the voiced player character and things like Anders, there’s plenty to tell the player this is not what they were expecting.

And when unexpected change happens in the world of gamers? Gamers get mad.

Fantasy gamers especially, it seems. Walk into a gaming store and talk about how the 4th edition of Dungeons & Dragons isn’t that bad. Just be prepared for massive backlash.

Again, I’m not saying some of the negativity isn’t justified. Expect more expansion upon the drawbacks of Dragon Age: The City of Chains (see? Doesn’t that sound cooler than some dumb old number?) in a future post. But, for the record, I don’t care much about the change in scope, perspective or anything like that. I’m all for games trying to do something different than their predecessors. My concern is regarding the story, the gameplay in and of itself, the overall experience and the little things that make the game stand out. It remains to be seen if Dragon Age: The Champion’s Legacy can overcome this odd strain of sequelitis that has people treating it like a leper. It’s possible I can scrape that number off and find a half-decent game waiting for me in the end equation, or perhaps the marketing boys pushed it out the door to cover up how crappy some of the dev team’s decisions turned out to be. Either way, if it weren’t called Dragon Age 2, it might not be taking such a severe beating. At least the Essentials line of Dungeons & Dragons can sit next to Hawke and hand him an icepack.

Requiem for the Masquerade

March 29, 2011 / / 0 Comments

 

Courtesy Highmoon 

Has it really been 20 years?

Obviously it has, since the 20th Anniversary Edition of Vampire: the Masquerade is coming. I’m definitely interested, for a variety of reasons, not the least of which the time I spent playing that game both on the table and in live action. This pending milestone, plus my current re-read of Niven & Barnes’ Dream Park, has me thinking back on those times I donned a suit for a purpose other than a job interview.

Masquerade was a fun and engrossing game world, but it wasn’t without its flaws. A diverse set of clans for power specialization and fluff flavors coupled with an intriguing take on old vampire legends made it appealing right out of the box. The premise of it being based on ‘personal horror’ was fascinating as well, to me: what does this change, these powers, mean on a personal level? How hard will you fight against these new instincts, this new society, to hold on to the person you were? How far will you go to make a place for yourself among the other creatures of the night? These questions, to me, were far more important to me than any number of filled-in circles on a character sheet, especially in retrospect.

There’s a part of me that wonders if I left a good amount of this really juicy storytelling material unexplored. When I first became acquainted with the game I was still developmental in both my abilities for telling tales and my maturity in handling character beats. To put it another way, I was all about the circles. As time went on I did delve into some of the deeper issues but more often than not, real life found a way to upset the pace I was setting for myself in an ongoing Masquerade game.

Then came Requiem. I haven’t played it anywhere near as much as Masquerade, although I did get a great taste of it when I met Will Hindmarch. The questions are still there, but the answers felt odd, in a way. There felt like there was a clean disconnect between who a character was after becoming a vampire, and who they were before. Maybe it’s just me, but the pitch and timbre of the ‘music’ of Requiem felt a bit more avant-garde than that of Masquerade.

Don’t get me wrong, there’s some great stuff in Requiem. I adore the fact that they did away with cookie-cutter villains, letting player factions and politics become the crux of the drama in gameplay. The change to clans felt a bit odd to me; while I acknowledge it adds potential diversity through bloodlines, it also seemed like an overcomplication of an aspect of the game that didn’t need fixing, in my humble opinion. The obliteration of the Cainite history, and most history for that matter, felt like the least-welcome change. Traditions, tales and lore added depth and a sense of weight to the condition of the players: You are a product of all that has come before you, and it’s up to you if you follow in those bloody footsteps or strike out on your own. In Requiem, any ties to your past or your lineage is tangential at best. There’s less pressure on the player… fewer questions asked.

I’ve long felt that the perfect vampire game (at least in the World of Darkness) lies somewhere between these two settings. The Cainite history, august lineages of the clans with their centuries of infighting, betrayal, absorption and breakaways and deeper personal questions from Masquerade coupled with the faction politics and cagey-yet-social nature of the Beast from Requiem seems like the best of both worlds. Then again, that could just be me. Either way, the characters continue to be the focus of any decent story, and when it comes to the World of Darkness, they’ve been fascinating for 20 years and hopefully will continue to be so for many more years to come.

Header image courtesy Highmoon’s Ponderings

First Impressions: Dragon Age II

March 28, 2011 / / 6 Comments

Courtesy BioWare

Finally.

After pushing myself to complete a replay of my original character in Dragon Age: Origins and the Awakening expansion, I fired up the sequel at long last. I know I have a long way to go before I can do a legitimate review and I’m continuing to do my utmost to avoid exposing myself to reviews both positive and negative. So, after a couple hours in the Free Marches and some hardware tweaking assisted by my lovely wife who convinced me to be unafraid of beta GPU patches, here are my first impressions of Dragon Age II.

Courtesy BioWare
Yes, I made my Hawke look like me. I did the same in Origins, and they’re related. They’re both mages from the same family.
…Don’t you judge me.

Characters continue to be BioWare’s strong suit. While I haven’t recruited every available party member yet, those I have encountered show a great range of personalities, motivations and quirkiness. I can’t say I dislike any of them, but I like them all for different reasons. Hawke him/herself also shows a good range of character depending on how we register his/her responses using a dialog wheel instead of the numbered choices of Origins. I’m sure it’s one of those divisive decisions that split the fan-base, but having Hawke speaking in his/her own voice gives the conversations more of a natural flow, and actually helps with the immersion into the story, which I’ll get to in a moment.

Staying with characters, however, the leveling system feels a lot less cumbersome than the previous game. It’s easier to make decisions as to how to tweak individual characters, and it seems that the reduced amount of choices will keep players from being overwhelmed and characters from outstripping their opponents. The lack of things like Mana Clash indicates to me that the developers wanted to present a balanced experience to make the faster-paced combat more interesting and thought-provoking. Again, more on that later.

Now, granted, I’m only a couple hours into the story of the game, but it already feels like a far more intimate affair than Origins. Without an over-arching “save the world” storyline, the importance and priority of tasks falls to the individual player. How important is it, to you, to reclaim your birthright? Would you rather blast X amount of Y opponents in order to earn Z coins to progress the plot? Immersion in the plot and importance of its points has nothing to do with a threat hanging over the characters like a Sword of Damocles. Personally? I’m liking that.

Courtesy BioWare

Kirkwall is a great setting for this sort of story. It feels like a living city. There’s places to explore, some of which you shouldn’t do during nighttime if you’ve any sense whatsoever, lots of people to talk to and history to build upon. The scale of it, with buildings looming over you and figures shuffling to and fro, draws you into the world without overwhelming you. As you begin to make your way through Kirkwall, the concerns of the outside world cease to matter as much as getting yourself out of the roach-infested scummy streets of Lowtown. The tidbits of news coming in, however, are something I appreciate, especially knowing the decisions I made in Origins influence the headlines.

Outside of Kirkwall, I’m not sure what to make of things. I’ve been through one rocky cavern already (the pass in the Sundermount related to Flemeth’s quest) and I get the feeling that’s the copy-pasted bit everybody’s complaining about. We’ll see, I suppose.

Speaking of questing, so far it seems to be a decent continuation of previously-used structures. I haven’t run into a straight-forward collection quest but I won’t be surprised when one shows up. I like the day/night system, requiring Hawke to go to different places at different times, as it contributes to the feeling that this is a living, breathing city part of a legitimate world. However, I’m not sure how I feel about the breaking of questlines into bite-size chunks: go to this area, find this person, blast them & their cronies, move directly on to the next area. It removes some of the impetus for exploration that was abounding in Origins. Yes, I know, this runs counter to my previous complaints of Origin’s length but in this case I think they’ve gone a bit too far in the other direction. Again, this is a first impression, so take it with the appropriate amount of salt.

Courtesy BioWare

The changes to aesthetics are another divisive issue, and for my part the change of elves from normal humans with pointy ears to waspish humanoids with oversized heads and Irish accents hasn’t grown on me yet. I mean, I dig the accents but the aesthetic is throwing me off. That could be part of the point – elves are supposed to be different from humans, after all – but the proportions just feel wrong. I haven’t run into an qunari yet so I can’t comment on that. But I still wonder why hurlocks, menacing creatures with human origins and malicious intent, look like rejects from Power Rangers and scuttle around with horrible posture instead of striding across the field to gleefully shove a wickedly-barbed dark longsword down my throat.

A word on combat: I appreciate the ability to pause the combat to issue orders as I did in Origins, but the removal of the isometric top-down view bugs me. I like the fact that it’s more active and fast-paced, with enhanced cries and interaction during a fight, but I can see why the removal of certain aspects pisses people off. Overall, though, I like it so far.

One of the things that really annoys me, though, is equipment. Half of the things I pick up are Hawke-only, meaning a good two-thirds of the things available for sale are useless to me. I don’t mind being able to save my coin, but it makes me feel like the development of my fellows’ equipment is dependent more on doing quests instead of making intelligent pre-combat investment decisions. Again, this is a first impression rather than a review, so that might change in the hours and days to come, but for now I’m scratching my head every time I get another item drop.

More to come, rest assured. Overall I’m really enjoying Dragon Age II, for the moment. We’ll see how long it lasts.

It’s Just Too Easy

March 24, 2011 / / 0 Comments

Courtesy SUDA 51

I know this is an issue that has been addressed elsewhere. In the majority of modern first-person shooters, even ones touted for their realism, all you have to do in order to survive a firefight in which you’ve been wounded is crouch behind a chest-high wall. Your health regenerates by itself. I’m not entirely sure when this trend began, but it’s removed an element of risk from those games and made them easier than they necessarily need to be.

A similar problem crops up in storytelling from time to time. Rather than carefully constructing the narrative with disparate and possibly contradictory plot threads in the beginning to be woven together at the end, some stories have no qualms about stating everything for the audience as plainly as possible. And some of these tales become embarassingly popular, as the bland plotlines and flat characters spoon-feed ‘entertainment’ to the waiting masses. Go back and watch how many times Anakin & Padme say they’re in love in comparison to the times when they actually show it. Watch Shia LeBouf project danger and tension by yelling a lot instead of wearing an expression other than dull surprise. Listen to the delivery of lines in a Gears of War, God of War or Call of Duty sequel and see if you can discern emotions other than those related to macho swagger.

Now, I’m not saying every game has to be a Killer7 or a BioShock. Not every film will be able to match The Usual Suspects or Inception. Few novels will measure up to A Game Of Thrones or Oryx and Crake. Consider me to be of the opinion that writers who make an attempt to show what’s going on instead of just telling, who opt to challenge their audience rather than making things easier on them, are going to be met with more success and repeat business. Let doubts linger in the shadows of the narrative and characters keep their agendas hidden until the last possible moment. This will engage the audience and make them invested in seeing the story through until the end.

Going back to the bit about regenerating health, the point I’m trying to make is that the player should be empowered to determine how much they risk and how often. If I’m playing Half-Life 2, I might pass up a health station because I know there’s a hard firefight right around the corner. In Dragon Age I churn out health poultices and study Spirit Healer spells to keep my party alive during combat. Some forethought has to be invested, but the end result is a more rewarding experience that I’m interested in repeating.

Writing really isn’t all that different.

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