Brothers: A Tale of Two Sons

No. I'm not even going to review A Tale of Two Sons in depth, I wouldn't do it justice. Just buy it. Buy it and play it. What a brilliant piece of gaming.

Bravely Default

For Christmas I got Bravely Default, which is great because I've been wanting to play it since it came out. So far it's been enjoyable. The art is reminiscent of Tactics, which I adored. The music, while not up to the immersion standard found in the Final Fantasy title (yet) is still wonderful, granted this is not a Final Fantasy title. The story has been fabulous, yet very Final Fantasy-esque (harmonious crystals and impending darkness, etc.) which seems a little strange given how mindful they were to set the titles apart. Not that it's a bad thing.

I won't go into too much detail pertaining to the story because A: spoilers, and B: I'm stilling playing it. While it has many Final Fantasy elements despite not part of the franchise, it also has a lot of JRPG elements similar to Tales games and Silver Star Story which isn't a bad thing. It may take you by surprise though. There is also a story-related mini-game that has a lot of potential.

What's really unique about the game is the combat system. It's based on a job system a la original Final Fantasy, Tactics, FFXIV, and so on. You obtain new jobs by defeating bosses and gaining their job Asterisk. Each job has its own unique skills, attributes, and costumes. During combat you have all the basic options: attack, magic, items, skills, escape, etc., but you can also either Brave or Default. This is where things get creative.

You can Brave to get more turns at once or you can Default to defend (taking less damage) and then Brave later without going into the negative. If you Brave without Defaulting, you have to wait however many turns you Braved for afterward. So depending on what/who you are fighting you may want to incur the wait penalty and Brave right away or you may want to Default to avoid a big incoming attack and then Brave later. Really depends on preference and situation!

If you put the 3DS into sleep mode with the game running rather than turning it off, you can also gain 1 SP every 8 hours this way for a maximum of 3. You can expend SP to immediately have your turn in combat. Whenever you want. This has the potential to be game changing if used correctly, it is, however, not necessary at all. So if you'd rather just turn your 3DS off, you won't feel entitled to leave it on.

The game makes use of the internet in fun ways. You can call upon friends for help during battles, you can fight people you've passed on the street gaining Nemesis, you can borrow friends' skills, you can gain villagers. Entirely optional, of course. The game seems to have a lot of neat, optional content. Which is also nice. You can partake, or not, and it's totally fine either way.

I have to say though that, as per usual, Square's English voice cast is... bad. However that is easily remedied by going into the settings and either turning the voices volume all the way down or setting it to Japanese with English subtitles just so that not everyone sounds like a emotionless 8 year old boy who had been raised by robots except for the women who sound like sexy 5 year old girls (???) who were otherwise also raised by robots.

You'll want to mess with these settings regardless because by default all the volumes are set to 8, which means they are all competing for your attention. All the time. It's not really problematic until there is a cutscene and you can barely make out what anyone is saying. I found turning the music to 5 and leaving the voices at 8 was a workable solution. Except then I could tell just how horrible the English voice acting was and had to go back in to make the previously mentioned changes.

To The Moon

To The Moon is an interesting little morsel of a game. Only about 3-4 hours in length, but really any longer than that would've been unnecessary. You see, the people at Freebird Games had a story to tell and it is good enough all on its own that it doesn't need any time sink bells and whistles. I absolutely LOVED the story in this game. It was unpredictable and intriguing.

The music? Nothing short of brilliant. It puts you right where you need to be while playing: in the game.

The mechanics were a little simple, but this game isn't about wading through hordes of enemies and random encounters, in fact it's an entirely noncombat game, so you don't need complicated key inputs to proceed. The focus is on the characters, their development, and the world they inhabit though, so this makes perfect sense.

Graphically, cut scenes aside, you may find it lacking by today's standards. It is reminiscent of something you may have played on the Sega Genesis or SNES with charming 16 bit sprites and colorful environments that are 2D. But trust me when I say this takes absolutely nothing away from a game, let alone this game.

Freebird spent a lot of time making sure that what they were putting out made certain that you (the player) would pay attention to the right thing: the story. Because it would be a great disservice to you for your attention while playing To The Moon to be anywhere else.

It doesn't have much re-playability, no more than a good book you may wish to dust off and read again might, but that's okay. They aren't charging an unreasonable amount of money for the enjoyment this game will give you, even if just the once.

FFXIV Launch Review

So, launch. Let me begin by saying an MMO having a flawless launch is pretty rare. The closest I've ever experienced was the launch of Age of Conan, a game that was somehow better out of the gate than it was several months down the line. The worst launch experience I've suffered through was the launch of World of Warcraft, where the game was by and large unplayable (a fact many people seem to have forgotten). By comparison the launch of FFXIV 2.0 falls somewhere in between.

In my beta review I mentioned how ambitious I thought having such a short stress test was and how brave it was to do so so very close to retail launch. Everyone I know tried to convince me I was just being a Negative Nancy, perhaps bias from my previous experience with the earlier incarnation of the game. I stuck to my guns though and, shocker here, was right. People forget I've had a lot of experience here. I'm a Stress Test guru of sorts. I can read that shit like a psychic reads palms.

Let me preface with, I know the below sounds really bad, but the fact that despite all of that I'm still playing every day says a lot. The game itself is enjoyable. So what has the launch experience been like?

During Early Access many servers hit cap right away. By 10:00AM the next morning, many servers were locked to character creation meaning no new characters could be rolled there. So if you didn't pop on right at 2:00AM, you probably didn't make it on in time to create a character on the same server as your friends. Even if you did, most servers are full at all times of the day.

This, originally, was alright because you could just get into queue and eventually get in game. To throttle, they removed the queue on day one in a vain effort to get people to just reroll on other servers. Thing is, people roll on a server for a reason: to play with their friends. Convincing large groups of people to up and leave isn't an effective means by which to solve the congestion problem because it's just not going to happen. Especially not when their friends are likely already well established on the server due to there being no character wipe after open beta.

This means that early access was basically useless for a lot of people because they couldn't create a character and/or log in. To have any chance at all you had to sit and spam the log in process repeatedly, sometimes for hours, to get in. The sad part about this is that it's kind of an easy fix. As of now there's still no log out feature implemented for idle players online. This means that once you're online, you can go afk perpetually and remain in game unless your computer crashes or servers go down, meanwhile people who would actually be playing, can't.

That's kind of a huge oversight.

By official launch the problem was only worse. On launch day every single North American server was closed to new character creation. So you essentially went out, waded through a crowd, spent money, and couldn't even play the game. Square has been ineffective about communicating its intentions to fix the problem, creating a lot of understandable frustration. In short, my prediction during beta came to fruition.

I'm not wholly certain how they so woefully underestimated the amount of interest in the game. It's almost as if they didn't even bothering looking at the presale orders before setting the original server caps because, let's face it, the issue of over population became apparent during the first 24 hours of early access. Throwing retail buyers on top of that mess was obviously only going to exacerbate the issue.

In summary, if you are on your way to the store to pick it up... give it a week or two. Trust me, your experience overall will be much more enjoyable. Don't worry about falling behind, you'd do so anyway unable to create a character or login. Waiting will spare you the frustration.

Other than the congestion problems the launch has been a success though. I've yet to encounter any glitches, bugs, or game-breaking exploits that ruin my good time and if you do manage to get on, the game runs smoothly and there's very little (if any) lag.

FFXIV, Again

Disclaimer: Please pardon any jumping around that may take place with topics as there is a tiny human who insists I get up and sing the ABC song every five minutes.

After playing the atrocity to gaming that was FFXIV during it's initial open beta (launch build) back in 2010, I have to admit that I was looking forward to this do-over about as much as one looks forward to going to the dentist. Let me begin by saying, this is in fact like an entirely different game. Sure it's still the same setting (in fact the other launch is even written into the plot) with the same locations and races, but everything about it is better. Which isn't difficult because I'm fairly sure my infant son could've designed a better game than what this one had been back in 2010.

Character customization is much the same, which isn't a bad thing as character customization was basically the only working feature from the first launch. Though they have updated the controls during, which makes the process much smoother. For instance you no longer HAVE to use J, K, L, and I to move the camera during this process. You can just swivel views with your mouse.

They have expanded upon your options here a bit. For example, before there were gender restrictions on two of the races, those have been removed. You can now be a giant chick (Roegaydn) and a cat boy (Miqo'te). Granted I'm still not a fan that cat people exist at all. Your feature selections are all still presets with no sliders or color wheels, but you can manage to look fairly unique if you spend enough time on it. It's more in depth than WoW, but not as in depth as some other MMO's presently available.

Again there are two clans available to each race that further define you as a pixelated being, but again they don't seem to particularly matter a whole lot. Neither do your birthday or patron deity as far as I could tell.

Your class dictates your starting city and the beginning of your storyline and you cannot leave until you've progressed far enough in your quest, so if you want to play with your pals right off, plan for that. Don't worry too much about your initial class choice either, as you can change it at any point in time except inside of dungeons and during combat. Eventually you can master them all if you're so inclined.

The guy narrating the opening cinematic sounds a little like the guy from True Facts About... which is pretty distracting and made it hard for me to take seriously. But Square has never been known for their strong voice acting when it comes to their English cast, so, this shouldn't be new to anyone who has ever played a modern FF game. The mini cut scene next is fairly uninspiring and if you're starting in Limsa expect the little plot that introduces you to things to feel forced and more than a little awkward. Having played the other cities as well I can say they flow more naturally. Maybe this is something they'll work on before launch day. It's basically just an introduction to the game and the world anyway. The story doesn't really pick up until about level ten or so and from there it seems alright.

Graphically the game is on par with most of the others presently available, but musically it's fantastic. Which, being a Square game, shouldn't be surprising either. I was more surprised when I played the original game and the soundtrack was bland enough to be classified elevator music. Movement is typical of an MMO, though you also have the option of using a gamepad rather than mouse and keyboard.

The chat interface is fairly intuitive and you can expand your chat box to encompass your entire screen if you so choose, which may seem excessive, but for roleplayers or people trying to get a clear screenshot of a conversation, this is fabulous. You are limited to four chat tabs total though, which is a little weird. The HUD itself is clean and polished and you can customize it in a number of ways. Among the quick buttons like character sheet, armor chest, inventory, and system is even an emote list that brings up all of the animated emote list.

The emote list is fairly expansive and every one of them is thoughtfully animated. Speaking of emotes, there are also custom emotes also, so you can roleplay to your heart's content if that's your thing. Just keep in mind the command to do so is /em not /e, not /me, etc., etc., otherwise you'll stand around motioning towards yourself like a tool rather than actually emoting. Oh, and when you have entered text into the chat buffer, your character's mouth moves as if they are talking. That's pretty cool. More cool? Jewelry shows up on your character model when you equip it.

You can also sleep in beds, and sit on anything nearby with an appropriate sitting animation! So if you are standing beside a chair and type /sit you will sit in it. If you're standing beside a bed and type /sit, you'll sit on it. If you're standing out in the open and type /sit, you'll sit on the floor.,. And all three animations vary.

The game now makes use of hardware mouse! Not software mouse like it used to, for some insane fucking reason. This alone is cause for some serious celebration. Here's a drink to you, hardware mouse. Taken for granted until you're gone.

Quests will be very familiar to you if you've ever played an MMO before. Collection quests, kill quests, and random world events (likened to GW2) they call Fates. Quests are not voice acted but scroll out into chat bubbles via text. This gives the game a very RPG feel, which seems suiting of a Final Fantasy game. I like it. Having to sit through hearing Kate Mulgrew be my Trooper Mommy all the way through SWTOR got old after the first "Hey it's Captain Janeway!" moment. The NPCs however can be overly verbose, so figuring out what you're being told to actually do feels a lot like trying to solve a math word problem. This encourages you to just spam click through the dialogue to accept the quest and then just follow your quest tracker. Ignoring any story completely.

It doesn't help that many NPCs speak with a bad Cockney accent ('ey 'dere 'ow yous doin' lass? I be nee'n ya ta go'in get me summa 'dem whatev'as! -- FFS) meaning you may spend several seconds per sentence trying to sound that shit out to figure out what's even being said... and there's paragraph upon paragraph of it when all they want you to do is go get a carrot. Dear Square, not every quest needs an epic dialogue. If the farmer just needs some carrots he can just ask me to get some carrots. He does not need to tell me the life story of how he became a farmer, how he planted his crops, what his favorite colors are, and that he has a wife and nineteen children who all love carrots so so much. That's all entirely unnecessary to my gaming experience.

Once in a while would be funny. All the time is just a little obnoxious.

There is rested experience, so you should log out in appropriate cities or inns to maximize your exp gain when you log back in. There is no trash loot, which is amazing all on its own. When you realize you never have to buy a bag upgrade, it's even better. You start the game with all your bags and they're roomy and spacious and you can hold lots and lots of goodies. Your armor goes into it's own separate inventory so the fact that you need several sets of it to change job classes at a whim doesn't at all impede your ability to be a hoarder. There is also an onscreen display do that you know when your bags are getting full without having to open them all and dig around.

There are armor dyes that allow you to customize your look further once in game. You can buy them from a vendor and change colors as much as you like. Sadly not all of a piece of armor reflects your dye choice though. So sometimes it's not as useful as you'd like it to be. Even so, it's better than no armor dyes. In this day and age of gaming there's really no excuse for that except developer laziness, if you ask me.

Guild features are fully implemented and extensive.

Class roles exist and are fun to play. I disliked that class roles were done away with essentially in GW2. I prefer knowing who will be doing what when we enter a dungeon based on what their class is, honestly. Dungeons are straight forward, which is a great thing, in my opinion. I am so tired of dungeon content trying to be new and innovative. Don't mess with a good thing, man. New and innovative typically just comes off as absurd and convoluted.

Where it's like, "Okay, tank this while standing on one foot, reciting the alphabet backwards, and hopping. Oh, and keep all the adds on you by doing cartwheels counter-clockwise. Don't forget that you need to shout 'Bananas!' every 31.2 seconds or you'll lose threat." W-T-F. That's how I felt by the second WOW expansion.

This is better. It's tried and true. It's classic. If you're the tank, you tank. If you're the healer, you heal. If you're dps, you dps. As it damn well should be.

When loot drops, you can roll need on it if it's for your class. If it's not you can only roll greed. No longer will your leather hat be stolen by the mage who wants to sell it on the auction house.

Unfortunately holding a open beta stress test that lasts only a single weekend , ten days before launch seemed a little over-ambitious to me. This was only reinforced when I logged in on the very first day of open beta and the server all of my friends were on was already full. To prevent over-crowding Square restricted access to the server, meaning no new character could be created there. This meant I could not play with my friends. There were fifteen North America servers and of them only one was available to create new characters on. And that server had a queue. I created there just to test the game out to write this review, hoping that the server I wanted to be on would reopen to new characters at some point, but Sqaure never increased the server cap. So I spent the entirety of the weekend playing by myself, when I was able to play.

Error 3102. Around ten PM on Saturday night my game crashed. When I tried to log back in I received an error stating that I could not log in because my character was already logged in and to try again in a few minutes after the game had finished logging my character out. Okay, I thought and did just that. Only five minutes later? Same error. Ten minutes later? Same error. Several hours later? Same error. Even after Square took the servers down, same problem. Actually the problem got worse. Before it only seemed to affect those who had crashed, after the server down it was effecting over half of the beta testers on North American servers. So now not only could I not play with my friends, I couldn't play at all.

Japanese servers were fine though, so you could at least hop over there to play in the meanwhile. Granted uselessly. Open Beta characters won't be wiped come launch. So it would have been ideal to roll your character on your future home server. Those of us who couldn't now have leveled characters on useless servers. So when the game launches, if you plan to play it in retail, all of your friends are going to be levels ahead of you. If you have early access you'll be spending it playing catch-up. If you don't and they do, you're going to fall further behind. This isn't a deal breaker, it's just a little disheartening.

At around seven PM on Sunday error 3102 struck Japanese servers too. They managed to finally fix the problem at around eight or nine, but it persisted  on NA servers until past midnight. Over twenty-four hours of being unable to access my character. By then I had to go to sleep though, so when they extended beta from two am until eight am it wasn't much compensation.

There is a misconception that FFXIV will be free to play. It isn't. From what I was told, if you actually bought the previous FFXIV, as an official apology from Square, you can play totally free up until September 9, 2013 and transfer over your old character to a Legacy server with a few special rewards. Everyone else has to pay to play.

Overall? I enjoyed the game. I'm still personally undecided about whether or not I'll play it. If it were free to play I'd definitely invest. As it's still following the monthly subscription model though (get with the times, Square!), and with my limited time I'm just not sure it's worth fifteen dollars a month to play only two hours a day.

Do I think the game will be ready for launch in less than a week? Probably not, no. However with this whole experience from last launch to this open beta I feel Square will continue to improve the game even post launch, for free. PVP won't be in for launch, nor dueling, and several other things, but they have been promised to come soon, so. We'll see. It has potential to be a great game.

Tomb Raider

Lara needs an adult!

I have loved the shit out of this series since it's premier a million years ago. A strong, intelligent protagonist that also happens to be female? Sweet. It's the only video game I've ever played that manages to keep me seated and entertained while simultaneously making me want to get off of my ass and get some exercise.

Up until Tomb Raider 4, I'd say the franchise was easily my favorite. Beyond that point the controls got hopelessly convoluted. Once the series moved from Playstation to newer gen consoles the game also got away from puzzle solving and dove head first into action, explosions, and shooting bitches in the face. Thing is, if I wanted to shoot some bitches in the face, I'd just play Halo, CoD or one of the trillion other shooter games that are flooding the industry right now.

For my birthday I got me the new Tomb Raider game on the 360. Until now, no one has been able to recapture that feeling of adventure and accomplishment you felt playing through the originals. Unlike the previously mentioned games post Revelations, this is really fun and I'm actually enjoying it quite a bit. Even if Jude likes to get me killed. A lot.

It doesn't play like the old classics, but that's not necessarily a bad thing. There's more of a plot here while not losing a sense of adventure. I think any hardcore fans of the old, old Tomb Raider games will like this. When you're first starting out, you feel a sense of hopelessness. When you first encounter bad guys capable of sentient thought, you feel a genuine sense of dread. These are bad mother fuckers. When you need to sneak around without being seen, you may find yourself holding your breath trying to be as quiet as possible. That immersion and feeling of attachment is the sign of a well designed game.

On top of that the script is well written though not quite as quippy as its predecessors (which could be good or bad depending on your opinion of quipiness), the music is fitting to the scenario, and the graphics are beautiful and gritty. Also, Lara's accent isn't quite so canned. My only dislike thus far has been that there is no "Lara's Home" tutorial stage, like in the old school Tomb Raider games. I understand why that is, as learning as you go is sort of the theme of this game, but still -- I miss it.

I've only just begun, so all I've got is my trusty (read: crappy) bow, and I've spent a good deal of time just sneaking around killing animals and hunting achievements and that alone is adding up to a lot more fun than it should. As I progress I keep waiting for that moment of disappointment I've felt with the other games but what I find instead is myself liking it more and more. Color me surprised and thrilled! A new Tomb Raider game that's enjoyable for old Tomb Raider fans!

Reviews MIA

Many of my older reviews, uploaded to Gametrailers where I am a moderator, are currently inaccessible and my flashdrive with all of the back-ups is MIA. Until either of those issues resolves itself, only new reviews and those previously written for Blognari will be posted. Sorry for anyone looking for the more in-depth versions of a few of these, or the ones not posted at all anymore!

Guild Wars II

I beat this up at level 3. Yep, that's frost on my eyeballs.

Tonight I bring you a first look at Guild Wars II, having played the most recent beta build this last weekend.

I know a lot of you, much like myself, see NCSoft in any capacity and automatically go, "Oh yay, another Korean grinder." The term affectionately (or not so affectionately) tied to pretty much every game NCSoft has had its hand in (Lineage, Tabula Rasa, Aion, etc.), as well as all the others that fit the bill (Tera, Rift, etc.) You know the sort: remarkably pretty in the art department but also remarkably shallow in every other capacity, resulting in months after months of what equates to mind-numbing grinding of monsters with little to no actual content to compel you forward. Other MMO's at least try to mask the grind with fluff like quest-related stories and group activities.

But I digress, because much to my surprise that's not what Guild Wars II is like at all! You may not believe me at first because at a glance, the art direction makes it seem very, very much like that is what you can expect. Once you get into the game however you quickly realize this is not the case. In the course of three days I made it to level 15 without ever just having to senselessly kill wolves, or spiders, or bats.

Quests come in a few varieties and are voice acted, some better than others. There are personal story quests to advance your class/race/caste storyline which are somewhat unique. There are typical quests. Then there are area quests (much in the vein of Warhammer Online) where the overall goal is worked at by everyone nearby, not just you and whoever might be in your group. So long as you contribute, you get credit. Completing such quests earns a good portion of exp, whereas killing stuff just for the sake of killing it isn't half so rewarding.

Area quests may also have an actual impact on the environment, short term or not. Such as the entrance to a cave being blocked off, or a city being under attack. Which makes them somewhat more interesting than just things happening and then things no longer happening. If there aren't enough people around to finish a goal, there just might be consequences. You can "lose."

While it's all still questing it isn't a boring hassle.

You can also get a good amount of exp just from exploring, and there's plenty of unique locations around the world that are actually worth exploring. Kind of a win:win there. See cool shit and level up, why not do this?

Speaking of class/race/caste, I should probably explain what the hell that even means. During character creation you select your class as per usual and your race but you also select several other options that will later change the way your personal story progresses. Such as caste -- being a commoner rather than a noble (human) or being born in the dusk cycle rather than the dawn cycle (Sylvari). I have yet to play long enough to see the end outcome of these decisions, but I've seen far enough that I'm aware they have an impact on how the game will play out for you.

Character creation itself is nice. There are base faces from which to choose from and then sliders for things such as eyes, nose, lips, chin, jaw, etc., so that you may further refine these base options into something more unique to your character. There are also a variety of body types and a height slider. Hair options are currently tied into racial choice, but are quite detailed and numerous. And there are a ton of colors from which to choose for things such as eye color, hair color and skin tone. One of my personal favorites here is the attention to detail. If you choose to be dark skinned -- you will have light skinned palms.

Another way in which you can further customize your character's look is through armor dyes. Yes, you read that correctly. You could do this in DAoC way back when and since then it's a feature that has been largely absent in recent titles. It makes a reappearance here, starting you off with a few basic options and granting you more as you play through looting and perhaps other means I've simply not yet discovered.

There are a number of classes from which to choose, all pretty well explained on the game's official site, so I do not feel compelled to needlessly repeat that information. Same goes for the races at your disposal. One thing I will say, however, is that there is no stealth as stealth is traditionally presented in MMO's. Instead you have a number of abilities as a Thief that will put you into stealth, but only for a few seconds at a time. Some people will love this, other will hate it. I personally dislike it. During my playtime as a thief I had a number of survivability issues that would have easily been solved by being able to stealth for longer than 3 seconds at a time. It is beta however, I imagine these things will be taken into consideration before launch. Either increasing stealth time or improving innate survivability.

Artistically the game is beautiful. Character models, creature models, architecture, weather effects, and reflections are all lovely. Environments are large and spacious. The music is expressive and from what I've witnessed suiting to whatever situation you may be in at the time. There's also ambiance. People talking, birds chirping, foot steps in the distance, etc. All making you feel very much a part of the location you're in. Excellent for role-players, certainly.

Interestingly, despite being so damn pretty the game also runs well and loads quickly. I would say the graphics are easily above and beyond SWTOR in every perceptible way, but the game loads at least 4x quicker, with a more consistent frame rate to boot.

Mechanically the game is fun to play, with a combat system reminiscent of the original Guild Wars only more polished. WvWvW is a PVP mechanic similar to Dark Age of Camelot's 3 realm RvR system, so there is a lot of appeal to that. Three servers vie over a map, and the victors get special bonuses. Unlike Battlegroups in other MMO's these match-ups are not permanent and will alternate so that at no point are you gong to get stuck on the losing side as the under-dog forever. There are also quick match games, much like Battlegrounds in other games (DAoC, WOW, SWTOR, etc.).

The auction house is stable and you can check your mailbox from anywhere, which is nice. Though presently you cannot open trades with other players, the only way to transfer items or money from person A to person B is to mail it to them. Not a huge issue, just a little strange.

Much to my dismay there are not a ton of additions specifically for role-players. There is an extremely limited number of emotes presently in game, walk isn't a toggle, and you can't interact with the environment a whole lot (such as sitting in chairs). That said, people role-play anyway. It's rare to find in a game's beta, but I encountered more role-play in three days of GW2 beta than I have in most retail MMO's presently on the market.

There are chat bubbles and custom emoting is in game. Though, custom emotes have an excessively long range, sometimes carrying over almost the entire zone, which is a little weird. As a plus it means you can tell there's RP happening and go search for it. There was never a time where I dropped a custom emote and at least 5 people didn't show up soon after. Kind of nice.

There is also something of an appearance tab, though not in an incarnation you'll be overly familiar with. Rather than your combat armor/weapons tab taking stat precedence over your appearance tab, one replaces the other. Which I actually prefer. I have a strong issue with someone running around in a bikini only as it turns out it's actually got the magical stats of a full suit of plate armor. In Guild Wars II, if you have your Town Clothes on and leave the city to go try and quest... you are going to die miserably. As well it should be.

To wrap it up here, though I'll undoubtedly add more and amend things after future betas, the game has no monthly subscription fee, so you only need to pay for the base game. Which is $60.00 and can be preordered now despite that there is no set launch date at this time. This means even if you only play casually, it essentially pays for itself in the first few months (other MMO's charging $15.00 per month in addition to their base price). In essence, I don't see much of a reason at this point not to play.

MMORPG's

From time to time I look back fondly on all the MMO's I've played. Even the ones that took an unforeseen turn for the worse -- I focus on the enjoyable experiences prior to whatever patch or bug destroyed the game and/or community. It's not quite nostalgia, because I do not long to return to any of the games I've stopped playing. I stopped playing them for a reason afterall. I just like to think back to the days of old, when each MMO actually had something that set it apart from whatever other game was on the market at the time. Not things that made it necessarily better, just things that set them apart. That's difficult to find now.

Most MMO's bank all of their effort toward repeating whatever worked for whichever game came before it based on popularity of said game. This ultimately fails because it provides gamers with absolutely no reason to switch from the game they're already playing to the new game. Why start over with no gear, friends, or money in a game that's basically exactly what you're playing anyway?

A lot of people incorrectly label this the WoW Effect. Since World of Warcraft was for many people their first MMO experience, every game which followed afterward that had similar features was dubbed a WOW clone. With even just the slightest amount of actual research however, you will realize that most of the features in WOW were actually completely ripped off from other MMOs before it. That's right, Warcraft was not innovative at all. For instance the beloved PVP battlegrounds everyone thinks are token WoW material were actually alive and well in DAoC long beforehand. Talent trees, classes specialties, and even PVE instancing were all present in games predating WoW by years.

I find it incredibly interesting that while I liked WoW the least, it was one of the longest games I ever played. The learning curve was nonexistent. You could effectively do most tasks by rolling your face back and forth across your keyboard and get by just fine. The expansions were always just more of the same, to the point where even the models and other art were simply copy pastas of previous content. World PVP did not exist once BGs were introduced which reduced all player v. player conflicts to mundane, preplanned events. The only thing WoW had was the people.

Don't misunderstand. The majority of the Warcraft community is akin to some sort of special gaming Olympics. Millions of invalids who can do nothing but regurgitate old memes at one another with the overall combined charisma of a rancid turnip. Every once in a great while though, you'd stumble upon a genuinely intelligent, reliable human being. And if you were really lucky, they will have already sought out other such individuals and combined themselves into a small tightly knit guild, making the game worth playing where otherwise it would not be.

It's amazing how one or two great people can keep you around when all else can't. Especially when you manage to find them in what is essentially the Mos Eisley of gaming communities. Looking at the other games I've played, the reasons I had for sticking around post-apocalypse were much simpler. They were fun. Dark Age of Camelot had amazing PVP in its youth. Anarchy Online had a truly imaginative PvE instancing system, catering your 'dungeon' to your specific desires. To this day I am unaware of any true MMO that allows that. Starwars Galaxies had astounding role-play. Matrix Online had a truly immersing environment, add in enjoyable combat and interactive locking emotes and you had the recipe for role-player bliss. Everquest 2 was just amusing to play, the mechanics were simple but efficient. Age of Conan had a seriously innovative combat system and an impressively loyal community. Warhammer Online was an entertaining foray into the living, breathing Warhammer universe.

Ironically their short-comings were somehow related to why they had been worth playing in the first place.

DAoC tried to out-do their own PVP experience and basically ruined what had kept people playing in the first place. Seeing the error of their ways they reintroduced 'classic' servers. Sadly it was too little too late for the game to make a complete recovery, resulting in the combining of servers to combat the ghost towns they had become.

AO didn't change. Which is both good and bad. The good is that the gameplay remained entertaining and unique. They never tried to over-do it. This is also bad though because it made the game stagnate. The graphics are more or less the same as they had been when the game came out ages ago, despite all of the vast advancements in computer capabilities. Funcom has had a graphical overhaul planned since 2007, but there has been no change and no set date as to when this change could be expected.

This means your playerbase is composed entirely of the especially die-hard fans of the game and no one else. New players won't join because they dislike the subpar graphics and many old players leave because they've grown bored. If a new player does get over how out-dated the entire game is, they feel lost and hopelessly too far behind as soon as they login and realize almost everyone they meet is 200 levels higher than they are.

You can play it for free, however, so there is no reason not to play it every once in a while.

SWG's role-play came to a grinding halt once they took a game with over 20 classes, that you could hybridize to endless possibility -- to a game with fewer than 10 starting professions that could not stray from the set path in any capacity whatsoever. One completely game-altering 'upgrade' was enough. The second effectively killed the game and it's now shutting down forever come December. Despite the communities outrage and disappointment, SOE decided not to heed them and refused to roll-back to how the game had been, or even provide a 'classic' server where people could get away from the NGE. This was such an enormous marketing disaster that a member of the staff who pushed the NGE forward actually killed himself.

It is to my knowledge one of the most devastating changes made to an MMO in history.

MxO had everything going for it, except that it was run by SOE. They couldn't leave well-enough alone and made change after change until the original player base had basically evaporated. It remained alive for a little while, attracting the occasional Matrix fan, but ultimately met a swift, timely end. The rate at which SOE is handed liscences to games that should have 0 chance of failure, that fail, is boggling.

EQ had a very easy-to-play gaming experience. Quests were easy to follow, combat was simply executed, and they offered an optional graphical upgrade to those who wished it. Meaning if you had a crappy computer, you could still play, but if you had a good computer you could play and not look like you were molded out of Playdoh. While a simple game is a nice get away from games that require some form of degree to play right, it also gives you little reason to stick around. By level 20, you really had nothing to do but continue leveling up. Money was easy to come by. Leveling was a breeze. PVP only existed on certain servers. The most fun I had after level 20 in EQ2 was decorating my character's apartment.

AoC had one of the most innovative combat experiences I've ever had the joy of playing with. Incidentally it also had the smoothest launch of any MMO I've played -- and I've suffered through a lot of game launches. Patch after patch however created bug after bug and Funcom was rather disinterested in fixing them in any timely manner. This created issues that completely broke the game. The fantastic combat system was now a method by which you could charge up and behead someone at 10 yards; before you'd normally even be in range to swing at them.

This bug also only effected melee characters, so before long all of the healers and mages disappeared and the world was filled with warriors running around trying to chop off eachother's heads. Combine that with Funcom going back on their no graveyard camping policy, this meant that if you beheaded someone and ran to the resurrection pad fast enough -- you could murder them repeatedly all day.

This obviously had several damaging effects on the game. Since all of the healers and mages rerolled as melee... you could no longer efficiently get any PVE done. Which meant your entire gameplay experience rested on the enjoyment of PVP. Which you also couldn't do because any time you logged on, someone would chop off your head from 10 yards away before you even loaded.

Now, before you think, "You're just upset because people were chopping off your head!" you should know that I was usually the one doing the head-chopping. I'm just not so much of an ass I can't admit that it was broken.

Warhammer Online was the purist disappointment when it came to games I had been looking forward to. It was developed by Mythic, who did magical things with DAoC back in the day, so I was expecting more of that. It was also set in the richly story driven Warhammer world. How could they go wrong? Well, basically they pushed the game out much too fast, meaning that while all of the races were present, only two of their cities had been included in the game. They also apparently forgot that at the essence of Warhammer is role-play... because there were absolutely no tools implemented within the game to make this possible. You could not walk, or sit, or write custom emotes; you could barely even customize your character (which is forgivable provided you can do all of those other things).

They decided to make the focus PVE and PVP, which is fine as a Mythic game. That's basically what DAoC had been, but as a Warhammer game this was unacceptable. You had this vast, rich world full of life... and no way to interact with it. It was surprisingly disappointing. World PVP was also kind of broken, which left you to do nothing but run BGs. In which case, you may as well have been playing any other MMO already out, like I mentioned above, and avoided starting over. Which is exactly what happened after the first month live.

I realize this turned into more of a rant than I had originally intended starting out. I could gripe about the cons until the cows come home, or alternatively fawn over the pros until I convinced you to play them, but I think I'll spare you this time.

In short, what I was getting at was this: why can't developers create something fun anymore? Something that takes what's right about the other games and combines it all together, leaving out the bad. I mean, that is what made WOW successful. To copy Warcraft's success you do not need to make a clone of WOW. You need to do as they did and steal every good idea from every other MMO currently on the market.

Then, while it would not be a completely unique idea, it would at least be worth switching to from whatever you're playing now. I don't want mind blowing innovation. In my experience that's always bad (Tabula Rasa, Mortal Online, DDO, GW, etc.). Also, why is it the new trend in MMO's that to be innovative you have to switch to first-person perspective? That's not innovative, especially when nothing else is any different mechanically. I swear if one more up-and-coming MMO decides to  broaden it's audience by being first-person, I'll punch them with a dolphin.

I like toast and butter. I do not like toast crumbs in my butter. In that light: I like first-person shooter games and I like role-playing games. I do not however enjoy FPS games in my RPG games. If I wanted to play an FPS, that's what I would've bought. ffs.

Star Wars: The Old Republic II

Indeed.

This is another entry about Star Wars: The Old Republic, an up coming MMORPG set in the Star Wars Universe. If you have no idea what I'm talking about, you can get a summary here. That is also where the first half of this review can be found. Once again, if you aren't a geek or a gamer this post will be entirely meaningless to you. Feel free to skip it.

With the launch of SWTOR fast approaching, I just have a few more things to address. One pertaining to the game itself, the others pertaining to the website and features contained therein. After the first two paragraphs, this is going to seem like one big long complaint, but it's more like me trying desperately to comprehend the thought process behind what's going on because it makes no logical sense.

First of all, this week the launch build went live for beta testers. This means, for the most part, this is what the game will be like on launch day. While several proposed ideas seem to yet be missing (the ability to match all of your armor to your chest piece for example), one thing you will notice immediately is that many of the framerate issues have been fixed. Developers finally acknowledged the severity of the game's memory leak (mentioned in my past review) and have been working to get it patched up before December 20th.

This means that those of you with lower end computers may not have to shell out as much for upgrades as beta originally lead you to believe. Like I said before, the game is not graphically intensive at all. Aside from the impressive scenematics you should be able to run everything on medium or high just fine so long as you meet the listed minimum requirements. That said, if your computer is older than three years it's about time for an upgrade anyway.

Another thing I wanted to talk about briefly is the website's pre-launch guild management. I hadn't bothered listing my guild until just this afternoon because the system is remarkably flawed. At a glance, it's a superb idea: let players who have preordered reserve their guildname and login day one already in their guild. Friends can easily find your guild in the registry and apply for membership so that you all wind up in the same place come launch day. That sounds amazing, how convenient and considerate! But there's a catch, a rather drastic one at that... you have absolutely zero control over where your guild is placed.

What's basically going to happen is that, come launch day, your guild will be ported onto a random server loosely associated with the interests your guild selected at the time of its registration. Not so bad if you selected that you want to be on a PVP or PVE server, as you'll undoubtedly be shuffled off to one of those. Pretty bad if you want to play on an RP server because there is no option to specify whether you want to play on an RP-PVP server or an RP-PVE server. So, chances are high that your entire guild could get dumped on the wrong server type.

This is also a nightmare if you have friends in guilds other than your own that you'd like to be on the same server as. If it doesn't manage to port you to the same server, you'll have to reroll anyway and hope your guild name isn't taken on the server you actually want to be on. Basically it nulls the entire point of having a preregistration feature.

While there is an ally/adversary feature which lets you select other guilds you'd like to play with/against and attempt to put you on the same server, even that isn't guaranteed and  you can only have three total. Not even three of each. Allies have to be the same faction as you are and adversaries have to be the opposite faction that you are. If you're like me, with several dozen friends in several dozen guilds, this only further makes preregistration almost entirely useless for anything other than the possible recruitment of strangers.

The only redeeming benefit to this feature was that it bestowed upon you your own guild site and forums. Which to most people is a great boon as otherwise they have no ability to get these sorts of things up and running themselves. Even this however is pointless. Two weeks post-launch this feature is going away. Which means that essentially whatever guild community you've been fostering on your nifty swtor.com provided site is going to be gone too. You may as well have hosted your own to begin with.

Long story short: you're where you would've been had this feature never existed at all come launch. I can't complain too much, as I'm sure on paper this idea worked well, but in practice it just doesn't work at all and seems to lack any foresight whatsoever. Let's be frank, foresight is a pretty important skill in maintaining a functioning community, especially when that community is composed entirely of gamers.

Finally let's talk about account security. As I'm sure many of you have noticed over the last few months, Bioware seems freakishly obsessed with your account's security, to the point where they're ironically compromising it. Every week or so they send out a mass email telling us that our passwords have been voided and to visit their site to create a new one. Thing is, the more you have to input your account name and password, the more likely you are to have your account information compromised. Because let's face it, not many of you are creating entirely new passwords every time they prompt you to do so -- and I can't blame you. By the time the game has launched you'll have no idea what the frak your password is anymore.

Offer account authenticators, make us answer security questions upon login, submit us to email verification when we attempt to login from a foreign computer, but don't make us enter our account name and password every time we try to navigate to a new part of the website. If the keylogger you downloaded from that HOT SCHOOL GIRL WOMAN SEXY LADY link didn't snatch your info before, it will definitely have now.

Star Wars: The Old Republic

Could benefit from AA.

With the NDA recently lifted, this is a blog about Star Wars: The Old Republic, commonly referred to as SWTOR. An up coming MMORPG set to release in December by Bioware, EA, and Lucas Arts. So if you don't know what I'm talking about, aren't a gamer, or aren't a geek... you can go ahead and skip to the next blog and save yourself a lot of time and confusion.

Lets start with character customization. This is a good foundation of any game review and all games. On a scale of one to ten, one being severely lacking (example: World of Warcraft) and ten being super fantastic (example: All Points Bulletin), I'd give this game a hopeful three. Hopeful in that it will improve before you get your hands on it. Both graphically and when it comes down to options.

At current your options are quite limited. There are nine races total all of which are basically human. Such as human with spikes (Zabrak), human who is blue (Chiss), human without eyes (Miraluka), human with cybernetic implants (Cyborg), human who is pale (Rattataki), human who is green (Mirialan), and human who is spiky but their spikes are covered in flesh (Sith). The most nonhuman you can achieve is tentacle-head human (Twi'lek). And not all races are created equal. Some have way more options than others, even if unnecessary or uncharacteristic. You can pick through fourty-seven shades of beige for a human, but only seven colors (way less if you remove choices which are the same color but a little duller) for Twi'lek -- a race renown for coming in every pigment in the universe. Um, what? That can't be right.

Not that you won't see other more alien-looking races as you're playing. You will. There are a number of Trandoshan, Rodians, Ithorians, and other such iconic Star Wars species peppering the world. You just cannot play them as a race. Why? I don't know. I would have loved to play an Ithorian, but oh well.

Once you've chosen your race you can change their hairstyle provided they have hair, their eye color provided they have eyes, their skin color and their face. Some races have tattoos, piercings, or various head-dress to select from, but often only if they lack another trait to customize (i.e. hair, eyes). There are about twelve faces total, four Caucasian-looking faces, four African-looking faces, and four Asian-looking faces. There are no sliders to further refine individual facial features such as your nose, or cheek bones. What you see is what you get. There are four body types total to choose from. The first is anorexic looking, the second is your standard build, the third is meathead and the fourth is rotund (which is not actually all that fat).

Also, for some unknown reason, all men have strangely protruding chests which, from a distance makes them all appear female. I have no idea why this is, but it's very off-putting and will undoubtedly cause more than a little confusion.

Class is restricted by race, which I dislike. If someone told me I couldn't be an astronaut because I'm part Irish, I'd be livid and probably become an astronaut just to prove a point. Not that I'm honestly comparing video game racism to real life racism; having dealt with both personally. It's also not that I dislike racial tension altogether. In a story arch it can actually add a lot of depth. But in character creation it's just mechanics and wholly unnecessary. There is no discernible reason why Jamie the Chiss shouldn't be able to do what Quinton the Mirialan can do. I don't care what thinly veiled excuse Bioware tries to sate us with. Quite simply it's bullshit, especially when race offers no benefit that would somehow make one choice superior to another. Choice of race is entirely aesthetic.

The character models themselves are somewhat dated. Similar to those found in Dark Age of Camelot: Catacombs, even if higher res. Which says a lot considering Catacombs was released in 2004. Of course I could also do the more obvious and compare them to Star Wars: Galaxies character models, but that isn't much better given those are dated even earlier at 2003. This is 2011; we expect more. But I can let a game slide by on has-been graphics so long as the mechanics are entertaining and the plot is good. While the mechanics aren't anything fabulous, average by all accounts, the story is entertaining enough.

I experienced a lot of framerate issues playing on a decent laptop even though the game is less graphically intensive than several others I play without incidence. So I don't know what's going on there. The likely culprit is a memory leak, even though you'd suspect that kind of thing to be fixed by now (during the final stages of beta). I had to turn all of my options to minimum for the game to even be playable, so to those of you playing with older computers (even if they function fine with other current games) will probably need to upgrade as well. If you normally play on a laptop, I'd recommend a desktop PC anyway. That said, even though every server was at cap population every day, the server lag wasn't bad at all. Hardly even noticeable at prime time.

The game world seems nice (if smaller than anticipated), at least on par with other titles on the market. I wouldn't consider the game particularly visually impressive by any means, but it isn't abysmal either. It can hold its own. The scenematics however are remarkable. Seriously. Graphically, musically, emotionally, it's all captured spot-on. Which is impressive for something completely computer animated. Most times animated people just come off as strange and unnatural looking, but not here. Mouth movement, facial expression, all very thoroughly thought out and executed. I would high five the animation team if I met them on the street.

The music is one of the things that really set SWTOR apart. It is far superior to that found in other games, particularly MMORPGs. Some you'll recognize, some you won't -- but all of it is suiting and helps to immerse you in the world you're adventuring in. At times it got stuck in a loop which quickly became annoying, but such bugs should be fixed well before 0 hour.

However where the game really stands apart is in the questing. Each quest is completely voice acted and well done at that. When you talk to an NPC you are pulled into a cut-scene where you don't just mindlessly nod to everything the NPC is saying only to click an [accept quest] button at the end. You are presented with dialogue options. How you answer could effect the outcome of the quest, or even the tasks you are sent to do. You may even offend the NPC so much that they attack you or refuse to offer you a quest at all. It's entirely in your hands. Sometimes you may even encounter reactions to your dialogue that surprise you, which hasn't happened to me in a game since like 1999.

That, I found magical. There aren't many MMO's on the market where that sort of control is offered. In fact, I can't think of any other examples. While you are questing, the game feels very much a single player RPG, but you aren't sitting alone in the dark all by yourself like some recluse. You can play it with friends. Lots of them.

Much to my dismay, there doesn't seem to be a lot of role-play potential. As it exists right now, you cannot sit in chairs or lay down and many of the emotes do nothing at all. Interacting with the environment is exceptionally limited, and by limited I mean you cannot interact with it whatsoever. That said, WoW has existed as long as it has with those same faults and yet if you look hard enough, you can find role-play there. So, it's not without hope. It would certainly benefit from a couple official RP servers, if nothing else.

In regards to servers, during beta there were twenty US servers, nine of which were PVE and eleven of which were PVP. Two additional servers existed for UK players, both PVE. I'm not sure why European gamers didn't get a PVP server, your guess is as good as mine.

For veterans of Star Wars: Galaxies, you will encounter many familiar sounds and songs in the game. Particularly the chirping of mouse droids (MSE-6). Without noncombat professions however, the cantina scene will be nothing like you're used to. I hope cantinas will become social hubs, as they were in SWG, but without much reason to go there except to log out for rested experience, I somehow doubt they will be. There also doesn't seem to be any indication that there will be player housing. Especially not Open World player housing. This, in my opinion is a rather blatant mistake.

One of my larger concerns is that this game's longevity will rest largely in the hands of former SWG players (read: people who like Star Wars a lot). Bioware and EA should be attempting to offer more options than the game's predecessor. Not less. When you take a franchise license from one company and hand it over to a new one, you should really try to exceed previous expectations.

All in all, I would recommend the game, even if only to discover the stories therein and then cancel. If you've played a year, you've gotten your money's worth. I pre-ordered, but couldn't justify the added expense of the collector's edition or even the premium edition. Especially considering the collector's edition will burn a $179.99 hole in your pocket and in return you only get a handful of swag.

tl;dr: The good: cutscenes, quests, music. The bad: customization, graphics, features.

DC Universe Online

Meet Robot Teacher's Assistant!

DC Universe Online is an MMOAG (massively multi-player action game) centered around the DC Universe and iconic DC characters therein. Up until recently you had to purchase the base game itself and pay the typical MMO fee of $14.99 per month. It is now a FTP (free to play) game with perks for being a paying customer, either through buying items from the shop using real-world currency of $5.00 or more which grants you premium access, or you can opt to continue paying the monthly subscription of $14.99 which grants you legendary access.

So what's the difference? Well, for starters legendary access obviously nets you more perks. Such as additional character slots for a total of 16, all available DLC for free, 60 inventory slots, 48 bank slots, 20 auction slots, the ability to form Leagues, the ability to trade items and cash, unlimited in-game currency, 1 vault ticket per day, and the full range of social options.

Premium access is unlocked once you've spent a total of $5.00 or more on in-game items. Premium access nets you 6 total character slots, 42 inventory slots, 24 bank slots, 5 auction slots, the ability to join Leagues, the ability to trade items only, up to $2000 in-game currency, 1 vault ticket per 3 days, proximity voice chat, and up to 6 text messages per 30 seconds.

Free access is available to everyone and includes the base game as well (making the entire experience 100% absolutely free), but is pretty limiting. You only get 2 character slots, 28 inventory slots, 12 bank slots, no auction slots, the ability to join Leagues, cannot trade, up to $1500 in-game currency, 1 vault ticket per week, and 6 text messages per 30 seconds.

You can view a hand dandy chart here.

You can play as either a hero or a villain. The choice you make will drastically alter the story of the game as you play. If you are playing PVP, this will mean you can freely attack members of the opposite faction in the world when you come across them. Naturally, I made a villain.

Don't put too much thought into whether you really want to commit to possibly being ganked while questing or miss out on PVP entirely forever. You can freely switch between PVP and PVE at your factional headquarters at the Phase Shifter. It works like any other teleport pad in the game except it switches you from PVE to PVP or from PVP to PVE instead of physically changing your location.

This is handy if, say, you'd like to complete a quest but are finding it all but impossible due to an excessive amount of PVP. This usually isn't because people are just griefing twats though, fact of the matter is that most quests in the game share areas cross-faction. In example in one villain quest you are stealing civilian souls, but the hero version of that same quest line has them defending civilians in the same spot. You will run into PVP a lot, which makes questing more exciting, but at times may slow your progress since you're too busy fighting actual people to fight the NPCs you need.

You may also find yourself separate from friends if you login. Don't worry, you can play together. The game creates instances of areas and covertly dumps you into them based on population  at the time to make your play experience run more smoothly. If you and your pal can't see eachother, form a group and then sync phases.

Anyway, let's review things.

Character customization is a very precise process which will allow you to truly diversify your character's appearance. Unless you're copying a DC character, you're unlikely to come across another person who looks exactly as you do. You can also change your costume and color palette in-game after creation at any time. So if you later decide that bondage mask was a bad idea, you aren't stuck with it. You should also be aware that the options present at character creation are only the base of what will later be available to you. Throughout the game you will discover and unlock a plethora of new styles to further customize your ideal costume.

You start out with a series of choices. Gender, physical build, power type, transportation method, weapon specialization, and mentor. Some of these are obvious, the others I'll explain briefly. Transportation will dictate how you traverse the DC world. Your options are flight, super-speed and acrobatics. Power type defines your super powers. Things like telekinesis, gadgets, ice, fire, and magic can be expected. Lastly, your mentor will determine where in the world you start out and a bit of your story arch. Each has their own area of expertise. As a hero you can choose Batman, Superman, or Wonder Woman. As a villain your choices are The Joker, Lex Luthor, or Circe.

There is a lot of controversy about the control set-up being too 'console' in the PC version of the game. Most of these complaints seem to be from people who expected DC Universe Online to be an MMORPG. But like I've already mentioned -- that's not what it is. Anyone who has ever played an action game on their computer will find the controls similar to that. WASD for movement, mouse look, 1-6 for actions, 7 uses consumables, and 8 fires your trinket if you have one equipped. Left mouse is used to perform melee attacks and right mouse is used to perform ranged attacks. Hitting them in various tapping and holding combinations will perform styles you've specced into. Tab cycles through nearby enemies, Ctrl loots, spacebar jumps, and Shift is used to break crowd control. Pretty basic stuff there.

The game itself is visually impressive. The environment is immersing, with locales such as Metropolis and Gotham City fully explorable. It's reminiscent of MxO's game world, which I gave a glowing review of back in the day. Unfortunately SoE has a difficult time maintaining IP licenses and The Matrix Online no longer exists, so you'll just have to take my word for it.

The soundtrack is fitting for the world and whatever you happen to be doing in it and it seems as though every NPC in the game is fully voice acted. For better or worse. Some of the voice acting is top notch. Some, not so much. That seems to often be the case, though.

The gameplay, once you're accustomed to it, is intuitive and entertaining. Keep in mind, once again, that it is not an MMORPG. It is an action game. So it will play differently than what you are used to if you're coming from the typical MMO background. No auto-attack and no sticky targetting (not to be confused with target lock, you can lock targets).

Stability is something of an issue currently as SoE merged all of the servers together. Why? I don't know. Merging them all together seems excessive no matter how poorly sales might have been. I guess they like making their playerbase angry (SWG, anyone?). But I digress.

You have EU-PVP and EU-PVE which is effectually a single server and US-PVP and US-PVE which is also a single server. Characters however cannot interact with eachother unless they choose the same server type. While those playing PVP are on the same server as those playing PVE, they're invisible to one another. This causes population problems during peak hours where you'll either find yourself waiting in a queue to login, or find yourself suddenly staring at your desktop when the server crashes. If you're playing for free though, you can't really complain too much. As a legendary access member you'd probably be livid though.

In addition to world PVP (if you play PVP) there are also battlegrounds you can queue up for. Be forewarned though, BGs were clearly an afterthought in this game. Once you die in a battleground you must wait upwards of 7 minutes to respawn, which means you basically lose if your team dies because the whole round only lasts about 15 minutes total. There also seems to be some issues with leaving a BG once you're inside of it. I got trapped for a good 4 additional minutes last night and then once I was finally able to leave my client crashed. So, queue at your own risk. They have fixed the BGs and they are now quite fun to partake in. Queue up while questing and it really breaks up the grind to 30 (level cap btw). Since the game is skill based and not so much level based, this means you can join the fight at any time and still stand toe-to-toe against even cap level players.


Summary? The game is definitely fun too play, even given the inconveniences caused by over-crowding. Since it's free, I see no reason why  you wouldn't play it, unless you're short on HD space. The game is large. 17 gigs off of steam and 14 gigs if you download it from the official website.

P.S. Don't judge the game based upon my screenshot. My laptop is atrocious and my graphical game settings reflect that.

Edit: I love it when I feel my review of something has been justified. DCUO was voted MMO of the Year shortly after this was written!

Fable 3

Yes or no?

Aaron and I bought Fable 3 and have been glued to it all day. One of the first things we did was have a baby, but the nanny the game stuck us with was hideous and questionable at best for a child care provider. His traits included kinky, aggressive, and bisexual -- meaning neither our son or daughter would be safe. So we fired him before he had a chance to molest our virtual babies, only it didn't end well.

What we expected was that we'd fire him and a new nanny would show up. Problem solved. What happened was we fired him and social services took away our baby. I guess social services thought our baby was better left to an aggressive, kinky bisexual than with two heroes of the realm. We spent the better part of an hour trying to find her in the orphanage to no avail. Tragic, I know. Had we found her, perhaps we would not have become such murderous tyrants. Your fault, Fable. Your fault.

The game mechanic has changed significantly from Fable II, though it's not all bad. Simply... different.

You can now only access your inventory at your home base, where items are divided by type and separated by room. This isn't necessarily so much bad as it is needlessly time consuming. I can understand if they were working from an immersion perspective, where you wouldn't be able to carry all that shit with you, but considering you can instantly teleport to home base from anywhere in the world, well, so much for immersion.

I'm not sure how to give gifts to anyone outside of other players you invite to your game. You unlock emotes as you go, so perhaps it's just something we haven't unlocked yet? But it would seem odd I could gift to players but not NPCs by this point in the game.

Shops have changed too. You no longer speak to the NPC running the shop to open a shop menu where you select what to buy. Now all shops have their wares on display. To purchase something you approach the display and buy it there. There is sadly no "buy all" option so if you want to buy a lot of something, you'll have to hit A a lot. This gets old fast.

One thing I found odd is that you can only have a maximum of two spells equipped at once. One in each hand, and once you unlock the ability to cast two different spells your only option is to cast both simultaneously. You can't just cast one or the other. Not that it matters really, as your mana pool is infinite. It just seems like a peculiar change to me.

On that note, your progression (leveling up of skills, magic, and jobs) takes place in some other dimension by purchasing chests with guild seals instead of an in-game menu where you spend the appropriately colored orbs on the corresponding colored skill. This isn't necessarily a worse method of progression, just far less intuitive.

Then there's your emotes. Unfortunately you have little control over your interactions with others. If you want to dance with someone, for example, you may have to whistle, hug, and pose for them first (multiple times over) before the option becomes available to you. You can't just hit the d-pad as in Fable 2 until you find the one you want and then execute it. This can also get old fast. Particularly if you need to complete a task where a specific emote is required of you.

Lastly, they integrated the xbox Live store into the game, which seems unnecessary altogether but a keen idea in the regard that readily available content inevitably leads to more sales.

Co-op has definitely taken a huge step forward from Fable 2, which had such lousy co-op it was unplayable. The camera is the biggest set back, as only player 1 has any control over it and if they change it during movement it doesn't detect the change accurately for player 2 which sends them running off in some random direction -- causing them to get stuck in terrain or lost. This makes navigating narrow spaces and doorways a bit of a nightmare, but it can be done. Granted it's frustrating. Teleporting to player 1 is always an option if you get stuck, but there is a delay. The time it takes you to teleport to the other player, you probably could've ran around whatever obstacle was in your way. So really it just saves you some frustration, not time.

I realize some of that sounds really bad, but when you compare it to Fable 2's co-op, you realize it's all actually an improvement.

Unfortunately your dog is mentally handicapped in Fable 3. He will often bark to notify you of treasure, or a dig site, or danger, only to then just walk in circles confused. It takes considerable patience and a lot of wiggling around in one direction or the other to make your dog actually go to whatever he's barking at. Even with advanced treasure hunting. This is really my only true complaint as the game goes on this glaring retardation only seems to get worse and worse to the point where your dog loses all functionality and you are more or less guiding yourself to buried treasure.

The only game-breaking fault lies in a certain area of the game where the map does not actually correlate to the zone you're in. With the map being 100% inaccurate, you're effectively lost, wandering around in the snow blindly. Probably for aggravating hours. This situation is impacted by there being several caves in the zone -- and you only need to be in one of them. But you have no idea where they all are or which ones you may've already visited because everything looks the gd same.

Otherwise the game plays in much the same way. X attacks with a melee weapon, Y attacks with a ranged weapon, B casts magic, A sprints when moving, you've got a dog, and so on and so forth. The quests are good, your hero is voice acted, and the music makes you feel immersed in the world. If it weren't for the fact that the game's presentation seems so rushed and incomplete, this would be a definite buy. While I foresee much time spent exploring Albion in our days ahead, I can really only recommend you rent this game.

Final Fantasy XIV

This is going to seem delayed, considering, but if we've learned anything it's that a) I am a slacker and in general b) time means absolutely nothing to me. Perhaps I was simply waiting for my opinion to be justified, but it's more likely that I simply tried to block the experience out to the best of my ability. Because honestly, playing it was a lot like witnessing a horrible crime.

With the news recently that worlds (servers) are being forcibly merged due to population deficiency, I felt it was about due. Maybe because my harsh review seemed more justified now than it did before? I don't know. Anyway...

I'll preface this by saying, I could only stomach the game for roughly a week during beta. Mind you it was the final build in beta, only several days prior to retail launch so Square should've had their shit together. I presumed they would take what they had with FFXI and build/improve from there. That is not however what they did at all. It seems that for some reason or another they decided instead to start from scratch, rush, and then leave everything half-assed.

Let's begin with character creation. First things first -- this shit's weird. The arrow keys will filter through your menu options and do nothing to control the camera. For that you need to awkwardly use J, K, L, and I. Why? I don't have any flipping idea. But there you go. You're welcome. I probably just saved you a good three minutes of, "wtf???"

You have five races to choose from in FFXIV: Hyur (human), Miqo'te (cat-girl), Lalafell (elf-gnome-thing), Elzen (elves), and Roegaydn (man-beast). Each of those has two additional clan options with slight variances such skintone and starting attributes, but ultimately it doesn't seem to particularly matter a whole lot. Also some clans don't allow you to be certain genders so the whole thing feels a little last minute to me and I can't be assed to get into it in any amount of detail.

Selecting individual features is pretty lackluster, with no color wheels or true sliders to speak of. At the time in which I played there were, for example: five height options, three voice options, anywhere between seven and sixteen skin tones, between six and nine hair styles, and an impressive thrty-two hair color options -- though most are nearly identical to each other honestly, so you could probably half that. You can further customize your hair by selecting a highlight color on top of the base color, but honestly the lightning makes this process moot much of the time.

For faces you can choose the basic shape of the face and then further refine it by selectine eyebrows, eye color, nose size/shape, and so forth. Unfortunately for some reason your face shape is directly connected to your bust size if you're a woman, so you may choose the soft innocent looking face only to get in game and realize for some reason you now have a D-cup. The individual options aren't magnificent, but at least they're there.

There are four starting classes referred to as Disciples of War, Disciples of Magic, Disciples of The Land and Disciples of The Hand. Which probably means squat to you if you don't know wtf that crap means.

Disiciples of War are fighters who can choose between Pugilist, who fight with their fists and knuckle weapons; Gladiator, who specializes in sword and shield; Marauder, who wields giant two-handed axes; Archer, who clearly uses bows and arrows; and Lancer, who makes use of a lance.

Disciples of Magic are mages who can choose between Conjurer, who wields elemental magic; and the Thaumaturge, who wields spiritual magic.

Disciples of The Land are gatherers who can choose between Miner, Botanist, and Fisher. What those three classes do should be really quite obvious.

Disciples of The Hand are crafters who can choose between Alchemist, Armorer, Blacksmith, Carpenter, Culinarian, Goldsmith, Leatherworker, and Weaver. All of which should also be really quite obvious as to what they do in the scheme of things.

Incidentally, you can change what you are at any given time by purchasing a new weapon, so none of these choices seem to carry any significant weight behind them, cheapening your need to even make a decision.

After you've done all of this you can choose your character's birthday and patron deity. I still have very little idea what precisely these options did, as they had no discernible effect on my questing or storyline. But you can choose them, so I'd assume they intended to do something with the system.

After all of this, you choose your starting location, of which there are three, which I'm to understand is the key factor in deciding what storyline your character progresses through. Despite being able to travel freely, you can only witness the storyline of the city you started in, so I guess this is truly the only real option you've been given that matters. So I guess if you're really intent on hammering your way through this game, means you should choose wisely.

On to the rest of the game, then. The game is quite pretty, as expected of a Final Fantasy game these days, however from what I saw the story is sorely lacking (also kind of expected these days I guess?). The quests I did were very run-of-the-mill and left me feeling bored, even when faced with impending doom. Go kill obscene amounts of ______. Go collect absurd numbers of ______. And so on. The music left a lot to be desired, particularly for a Square title, and left me feeling outside of the world rather than a part of it.

The lag was a frightening experience itself, which strangely added more excitement to the game than anything in the actual game on purpose. To clarify, the issue was with the game servers themselves, not my internet. I'm fully aware of the difference.

Monsters were never where they showed up in the world, and since most were aggressive, this meant while slowly trudging along from one great distance to another, you'd get attacked by something you didn't even realize was actually in your path. Sometimes, the monster model wouldn't even show up, leaving you standing there trying to fight something invisible. Targeting was a nightmare and it had more to do with the targeting box-size (tiny) compared to the creature you were targeting (huge) than anything else. Though the choice to rely on software mouse rather than hardware mouse certainly did not help matters.

In fact, without a third-party modification for that game to enable hardware mouse, the game was effectively unplayable due to the effect lag has on software mouse. The fact that Square so adamantly refused to include hardware mouse as an option, forcing some random nobody to create the mod on their own speaks volumes as to what's wrong with FFXIV. Which, I suppose is a good place to end the review since just thinking about the game just disappoints me all over again.

P.S. I know it's Square Enix, and many of you would like very much to blame the last half of that equation for the woes here, but honestly old Square could've put more polish on a turd and sold it, with half the time. I mean, they know it's bad. Which implies they knew it was bad! They've sent at least two official apologies to fans, recognizing the poor quality of the product.

Edit: It should be noted at the very least, in an effort to make up for the extreme failure, FFXIV is free-to-play and there are numerous patches in development meant to correct many of the glaring flaws that have existed to this date. I would say, however, that these efforts are simply not enough and the release of this game no where near completion is the rock-bottom to the recent decline of the Square empire. At least there's no where to go but up from here?

Skies of Arcadia

Computer and internet troubles have plagued me since my return, no biggie, I'll have them sorted out in no time. In the meanwhile I have Skies of Arcadia to keep me busy.

I get to be a sky pirate. Yes, you read that right and it's exactly what it sounds like. Only cooler. Which beats what I was doing before hooking up the Gamecube:

Having a rather intense staring contest with my cat. I win by default because he always falls asleep.

The game plays a lot like your typical JRPG, but you have an airship. Also, maybe I just haven't played a JRPG in a long while, but this seems like more fun than what I'm used to in a JPRG. Less predictability, if that makes sense. Normally in this sort of game I've figured out the good guys, the bad guys, and how it's all going to end within the first hour of gameplay. Not so here.

Spore

For the uninformed, the genius minds behind greats such as The Sims, SimCity, SimAnt, etc. have been working on an entirely new game. Spore. In Spore you begin as a single celled organism and over the course of your play time, your creature evolves to the point where it comes out of the water onto the land. Eventually your creature even begins socializing with other creatures forming alliances, or if it's more your style you can just kill the other packs/herds of creatures.

You'll go from controlling a single creature to a whole society of your creatures, all 100% customized by you along the way at each various stage of evolution. Where is this intriguing game you ask? It's not out yet. But! That doesn't mean you can't have a little fun in the mean time. I got my hands on the Spore Creature Creator a few days early, a little demo that takes you through the basics of creating a creature and lets you give it a test run and see all the little animations your new life form can do. All totally unique to however you design your beast.

I downloaded this at... 2:00am and here it is going on 4:30am and I'm still playing with it. You can't even do much else besides be creative and play around, but it doesn't even matter. It's still fun. I can only imagine how entertaining the complete game will be. So what did I do with my time? I created just a couple creatures to test out. Most notably: Mintoad. As if watching Mintoad hop around and dance wasn't cute enough I discovered a magical button that spawns baby versions of your creature... and they imitate anything they see mommy (or daddy) do.

If you're interested in Spore at all, you should definitely go snag the Creature Creator when it becomes available for public download.

Age of Conan

AoC is an exciting game to play and is the cause of my absence lately.

Smoothest game (MMORPG) launch I have ever been apart of, despite a couple of issues, and I have been there at just about every launch in the last decade. No crashes, no lag, no roll backs. So now the pros and cons!

Pros:
The game has lovely graphics.
The sound is remarkable. Music, ambiance, voice acting, all of it.
The game mechanics are innovative and intuitive.
Combat isn't a complete snore fest.
There is no auto attack.
Instancing alleviates zone lag and crashing.
Quests are group-friendly.
The lore is superb based on the works of Howard.
The game's plot is grade A.
The emotes are amusing and smooth.
Crafting is complex and the rewards are great.
The economy seems heavily player based.
Mounted combat.
The dance system is very unique and fun.

Cons:
Despite the game's lovely graphics, customization is lacking.
The game mechanics make combos slow and occasionally useless in PVP.
Due to no auto attack I actually have to pay attention all of the time.
Instancing can cause some initial confusion amongst groupmates and guildies.
Also instancing means less people to talk to/kill per area.
There are no custom emotes (currently).
You cannot craft until level 40.
Money is very hard to come by.
There are some glaring class imbalances that have yet to be worked on (most bug-induced).
Dancing isn't friendly to all races/genders. Some people look downright ridiculous.

All in all it's a great game that could use some polish. Even with the current state of the game I'd recommend it, it's fun.

Edit: The game has gotten progressively worse in the months following launch. So much so that the game now has a free-to-play option (with limited classes and races available unless you pay-to-play, even if you had them maximum level previously).

Final Fantasy: Crisis Core

I got my hands on a copy of Final Fantasy VII: Crisis Core a few days early and haven’t put it down except to sleep and bathe.

I know many people had reservations about a prequel to Final Fantasy VII, but I have to say not only was this game done remarkably well, but I think it really does enhance the story and characters in Final Fantasy VII. In other words, it’s not just a money cow for Square-enix to suckle dry. They actually put effort and time into the game, and it’s good.

How good? Really good.

First of all you play as the obscure Zack, Cloud’s mysterious friend from the Shinra Mansion in Final Fantasy VII.

The story is engaging right from the get go. I know some Final Fantasy games can have pretty slow "tutorial-feeling" starts, but this really isn’t the case in Crisis Core. From the moment I hit New Game I felt compelled to continue playing.

The story is not only engaging, but it’s also deep, intricate, complex... all the reasons people loved the plot in Final Fantasy VII. Character’s have pasts, involving pasts. You may mistake them for real people if it weren’t for magic, summons, and the fact that they’re living in a world controlled by a power mongering electric company.

When you run into well known main characters from Final Fantasy VII, it doesn’t feel like a cheap thrill. You actually interact with them and with their help parts of Final Fantasy VII which left you wondering "wtf?" become clear. I for one thought figure heads like Sephiroth for example would just be quick glimpses to keep you playing, but that really isn’t the case at all.

The voice acting is actually top notch. On par with Heavenly Sword, dare I say it. Also the musical score introduces not only many new immersing pieces but also higher quality remakes of some Final Fantasy VII favorites -- but I won’t spoil them for you. You’ll hear them.

Combat isn’t traditional RPG, which I thought was going to bother me. It’s something like Final Fantasy XII but better. Like they finally worked out all th kinks that made you not want to deal with a new battle system. It’s also real time, which makes fights pretty exciting.

Don’t get me wrong, I haven’t given up my professional unbiased demeanor! The game has it’s flaws, there just aren’t many.

The combat system, while fun can be a little tiring at times. I play on a fat PSP with my girly woman-hands so sometimes the fast paced battles can leave my hands sore. This would probably be less of an issue if I played on a PSP Slim, so take that how you will.

The combat involves a neat slots type system which randomly grants you bonuses and benefits during a fight, such as no MP cost (all spells are free to cast), or invincibility (immune to damage, obviously). Problem is, as I mentioned it’s random. So you may continuously wind up with useless bonuses, or totally over powered ones depending on the type of things you’re fighting against.

Also there seems to be little rhyme or reason to leveling up. If you get a 777 in the slots, you level up. If you don’t get a 777 in the slots, you don’t. This means sometimes I might level twice or more in a fight then go an hour or more at the same level despite fighting nonstop. Which can be a little annoying if you’d like to level up and breeze through a mission or something.

On the same note, I guess it prevents power levels such as myself from exploiting the system and leveling to 99 before getting to the second boss.

There’s supposedly over 100 hours worth of game play and I’m only 10 hours in.