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.