Money makes the world go wrong… Afrika pt 1

Need to hurry so I leave you first with a couple of screenshoots, enjoy…

 

Nineteen to go… five minute drive by blogging

Haven’t posted in quite a while, well, there’s really nothing to write about… been pretty busy with office work. Picked up a few games though today, Siren, Afrika, Disgaea 3. I’ll talked about those games once I played enough of them.

Thought about picking up Madden ‘09 or Tiger Woods ‘09 but never really liked gold games and I already got NCAA Football ‘09, two football games seems redundant.

Now, main topic, if you don’t know, pictures I’ve been putting up are from the PSP game DJ Max Portable 2. There’s also a DJ Max Portable, but I don’t know how to download the picture from PSP to PC.

DJ Max is a rythm game, coloured blocks comes down from the top of the screen and depending on the color you press a button in time with the beat of the music. Okay, short review, a good game. A bit hard but after a while you’ll get the hang of it. Songs…? About 50, ok beat although some songs feels like button mashing rather than following the beat. Overall an ok game, pretty addictive if you like music/rythm games, moderately challenging hard to master.

Ow, I also need to mention, you can customize the look of the game interface, changing the notes and the interface border, each customization adds a specific effects like +exp or +gold, etc etc. Yes, you can raise your level, levels open up new customization and new songs but other than that… pretty much nothing.

Next up: Either Disgaea or Afrika~

 

Breaking the barrier… Soul Calibur IV

Quoting from the back of the box, “The premier weapon based fighting game reinvented featuring new and favorite characters, and guests from the Star Wars galaxy: Darth Vader, and his Secret Apprentice! – For the 1st time ever, challenge players Online in head-to-head VS. Mode! – Customize your characters from visual appearances, character stats and fighting styles, or even create your own original fighter!”

First of all I have to say, this is an HD game, graphics are stunning, sharp pictures, highly detailed models and backgrounds, the character movement’s are fluid, and the stage designs are truly first class. From the imperial docking bay to a ghost pirate ship, the stage won’t make you feel like it’s just another stage hashed with new background.

The stage differs from one another that you have to employ different strategies for different stages. On one stage ring outs are more easy while on the other there’s no ring out. “Caged” stages offer walls that you can throw your opponent at to add damage while another the walls moved back and forth that makes it harder to time the throw.

Game-play’s similar to the rest of the series, 3D fighting game, 8 way run, 33 characters each with their own fighting style and weapons, story mode, etc. What’s changed though, other than the new characters, is Tower of Lost Souls mode.

The Tower of Lost Souls is basicaly the replacement for The Chronicles of Sword mode in the previous series, this time you have to fight a total of 100 stage of increasing difficulties to obtain all of the game unlockables. These unlockables are unlocked through performing specific action while in the tower, for instance in the first floor you unlocked the Soldier Hat by winning the stage without sustaining damage. This looks nice at first but if you’re a casual gamer like me, this can be a nightmare, one stage requires you to block an enemy attack 10 times in a row, not that easy…

Next we have the Online mode, this is where the game truly shines… or crumbles depending on your internet connection. Put it simply, it’s fun being able to fight another human but it clearly depends on your connection speed. Fighting games like Soul Calibur are games that depends on actions performed at a fraction of a second and most of the time that doesn’t translate well into the game on online, lags etc causes simple moves like forward, A to become just A or just forward or even a dash… so, yes, it’s fun… but it depends…

Character customization, one thing I loved about Soul Calibur 3 is the character customization. Well… quite frankly… I’m kind of disapointed with the customization in Soul 4. In Soul 3 the character customization gives a few more fighting style to play with, while now, you basicaly just customizing the regular characters. Sure you can create a really different character, but in the end it’s just the same character.

Another thing about the customization is this, in SC 4 the equipment carries a stat, and it reflects heavily on the gameplay. So, frequently I found myself going to the same outfit again and again just to maximize the characters stat. The thing with these create-a-character mode in games are the sense of putting yourself in the game, to customize your character how you want it to look without having to think much. You can say it adds strategy but in the end it adds annoyance, I’m an attack heavy character who like a heavy armored look, well though luck since heavy armor adds defence only… it’s ok, the character customization, but it really loses the spark.

So in the end Soul Calibur 4 is a good game, a game worth buying, especially when you’re hanging out in a friends house laughing like maniacs, but where it improves from the previous entry, a few drops. Honestly… I still prefer Soul Calibur 3 than this…

 

Moving continued… Lord of The Rings Online part deux

Once upon a time there was Ultima… and well, that’s about it. Before Ultima there was Roguelike and before that there was table top RPGs but since then pc RPGs never really change, sure there was upgrades in graphics, sound, multiplayer capabilities but gameplay wise? It’s all the same.

Putting it simply gameplay of LoTRO, or most other MMORPGs out there for that matter, is this :
• Get quest,
• Kill monster,
• Collect item,
• Return quest,
rinse and repeat. So, what do LoTRO adds to the fray? For one, it’s based on Lord of The Rings, you’ll meet characters like Gandalf and Frodo in game and the game’s main quests follows the story of the fellowships journey. Throughout your journey in the game you’ll cross paths with the fellowship, doing favors for the fellowship and taking part in the main storyline. Other innovations includes being able to play a musical instruments at level 5 and being able to play as an enemy mob at level 10.

PVP in LoTRO are consensual for most parts. The only way you’re going to be able to hit another player are either you played as a monster or initiated a duel, so, there’s no posibilities of you being ganked by high level players… good thing bad thing? Depends on which side of the ganking you’re on.

Graphics are quite good, it’s not jaw dropingly good but good none the less. Also, since LoTRO supports DirectX 10, if you’re running Vista(why?!) you can make use of the DirectX 10 support and get a much sharper picture, again, not jaw droppingly great but, meh…

Colours are vibrant and the buildings are detailed and very LoTR. Throughout your journey you’ll travel to such places as Bree and Rivendell and you’ll found yourself saying, “hey, I’ve seen this place in the movie,” it’s not much and the novelty wears off after quickly but it’s this little immersive things that puts game like World of Warcraft and LoTRO above the competitions.

Now for the negative part, my only complaints about the world is… the map is to big, you got few spot of interesting ruins or cities interspeced with vast land of pretty much nothing, it’s a good nothing but nothing none the less. Enemies are few and far to spaced and when you do find enemies that aren’t spaced to far they’re usually linked to each other. And finally, your character feels like he’s walking on air.

Now let’s talk about control, controls are sub-par. It’s your basic click once to attack, so… where can go wrong? Well, in this game you can’t use skill or attack while moving, and stopping in itself is not an instant action, there’s like a 0.5 second delay to fully stop. So ocasionally I found myself already stopping but still unable to cast any skills. Also, by default if you click attack on an enemy you don’t approach the enemy. You can turn this on or off in the option menu but my opinion? Turn it off. Here’s another problem, if you aproach the target and the target approach you, most of the time you’ll find yourself in a situation where the enemy can attack you but you’re either turning your back towards the enemy or you’re to close to attack… simple, just adjust your distance… not that simple, here’s why, pressing forward or backward will result in you dashing forward/backward out of attack distance, running around the enemy works but like I’ve said you can’t attack when you’re moving so all that time of you adjusting? Your enemy got free hits on you, clearly a bad design.

There’s also a jump button but really I don’t see any use for it, your character’s vertical and horizontal jump are very very short, a small ledge where in real life you can just step over, in LoTRO you have to walk around it. You can’t jump it… well, you can, but it feels very unnatural… you can’t jump to close to the ledge since your leg’ll bump the ledge, canceling your jump, and force you to land, and you can’t jump to far or else you’ll ended up landing before you reach the ledge. So you need to postion yourself, run, then jump, very very unnatural. The time it takes for me to set myself up for the jump is almost the same as it took me to just walk around it.

That been said, I actually quite enjoy my time in middle earth, it’s not going to be my main MMO but for what it’s worth… it’s fun. The community I met in game are relatively friendly, the exp to next level are quite low and even then the quest exp helps a lot, and the game mechanics while flawed is easy to get used to. If you’re bored it’s a good game to fill time and if you never played any MMORPGs before the game’s easy enough to pick up and play.

My suggestion? There’s an offer of 14 days free trial… take it, it’s long enough to try out everything you need to know about the game and to decide whether you’re serious or not about it, cheers~

Next Up : Soul Calibur IV

 

Copy and updated, blog starts now… Lord of The Rings Online

Currently installing and updating Lord of The Rings Online : Shadow of Angmar.

I’ve been trying to avoid this game for some time now but… it’s a weekend, well, officially weekend doesn’t started until later on after work but hey, whatever. Anyway, Lord of The Rings Online, LOTRO for short, I’ve been trying to avoid this game for some time now, the graphics are quite good but gameplay feels very stiff, I know I’ve only seen this stiff gameplay through someone else’s video on YouTube but hey, the whole reason I started my World of Warcraft addiction is because of someone else’s video on YouTube so forgive me for being prejudice about you, LOTRO.

So what gets me to actually play LOTRO? Music. Not the background music, never could care less for background music, but the aspect of being able to play a flute… in-game! According to the almighty WikiPedia, player characters have the ability to play the flute and all asortment of other musical instrument… yes, I can already imagine your raised eyebrows but you know, with Age of Conan and Warhammer Online coming out it seems like most MMOs these days are heavily PVP based and LoTRO with its rather casual style gameplay kinda hooks me up. How it played remains to be seen but yes, the musical instrument thing pretty much sums up my whole reason to play this game. And now, since the game finish updating, thank god… it’s time to… go to work… fuck… I’ll give my first impressions and review later on today, thanks and goodbye.