Posts Tagged ‘diablo ii’

My Top 5 Most Anticipated Games

Monday, February 16th, 2009

I was inspired by Gamespy’s editor’s lists of top 5 most anticipated.  You can click next on the bottom to see each of the contributor’s lists.  I was surprised how different each of them was until I tried to put together my own list.  There are tons of good games scheduled for this year.  With no further adieu, here is my list:

1) Bioshock 2: Sea of Dreams
2) Diablo III
3) Uncharted 2: Among Thieves
4) Call of Duty:  Modern Warfare 2
5) God of War III

Honorable Mention – Star Wars: The Old Republic

Cautiously Optimistic – Batman:  Arkham Asylum

Everything on my list is currently a day of full price purchase.  Key observation #1, everything on the list is a sequel.  I’m a skeptic at heart and I put a lot more stock in what the developers have proven rather than what they promise.  That said, I am expecting some top quality titles out of the various new IPs this year.  I just don’t know which ones will hit the mark far enough in advance to have high expectations for them now.

Now some further commentary:

Bioshock 2 – I know I’m setting myself up to be disappointed here.  My expectations are sky high for this title.  I can’t tell how many articles I’ve read that point out Ken Levine’s lack of involvement.  I’m not entirely sure how true that is.  The core group in 2K Marin was essentially formed out of key members of the Bioshock team.  The group essentially mentored under Levine.  You don’t think they have conversations about what they are doing and how it fits into the world he created?  Bioshock was one of my favorite titles of all time.  The team wasn’t boxed in by any parameters and were able to create a tight game and compelling narrative.  I expect the next Bioshock to be technically successful but I have real concerns about what the narrative will be.  The biggest concerns I have are polish and story.  I hope they don’t end up having to rush things.

Diablo III - I sunk a ridiculous amount of time into Diablo II.  The combination of RPG and fantasy elements appealed to me from the start.  The first Diablo was ground-breaking in its time.  There has been a groundswell of concern about the art direction on the newest title which I feel is entirely unwarranted.   I don’t want the color pallets for all of my games to be dipped in muck.  The Gears of War’s style color schemes are just too dark and boring.  My biggest concern is around the inclusion of the Paladin class.  There hasn’t been an announcement yet.   I always pick the Paladin.

Star Wars:  The Old Republic – I can’t wait to see what Bioware does with this.  I posted at the time of the EA acquisition that I though this game was the reason for the purchase.  Based on the highly successful KOTOR game, this title.  If anyone can challenge World of Warcraft, it’s the Jedi.

Batman:  Arkham Asylum – What a PR campaign.  The team promoting the new Batman game has the blogs whipped up into a frenzy.  The screenshots look great and all of the blogs are saying positive things.  The commentary and screenshots so far give the impression of a Bioshock-like tone to the game.  We are seeing the first crop of games to be influence by the top quality 2007 titles.  Batman is coming from an unproven studio, but I’m cautiously optimistic based on everything I’ve heard.

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World of Warcraft Impressions

Sunday, May 11th, 2008

With my newly assembled gaming PC, I finally decided to try World of Warcraft.  I’ve avoided it thus far for three reasons.

  1. It is expensive.  $15 a month plus $30+ to buy the game with which you get nothing but a 14 day trial of play time.  If you play for even 3 months, it will cost you at least $75.
  2. MMOs are time-consuming.  I didn’t have the time to play it, so why pay for something I wouldn’t use.
  3. I didn’t have a PC that would play it well
  4. I really want it to be World of Diablo.  I’m a die-hard Diablo fan, and that is the Blizzard action/rpg.  Warcraft is an RTS.

I ended up trying it due to the construction of my new PC and a 14-day trial disc that I had from purchasing South Park Season 10 with the hilarious “Make Love not Warcraft” episode.  Nice product tie-in on Blizzard’s part.

First Impressions

The game is fun.  Which shouldn’t be a surprise with 10MM active subscribers.  The early levels are a marvel of pacing.  Being the Diablo II aficionado that I am, I made the oh so predictable Human Paladin character.  Developing through the early levels was addictive.  There is constant feedback and progression.  The series of achievement is there constantly.

I’ve never really gotten into any MMOs due mostly to the reasons listed at the start of this post.  I didn’t get into Everquest.  My one experience with an MMO was when I received a free hard drive and Final Fantasy XI game from Squaresoft and Sony.  My impression of that game was that it was so massive and slow that I would never get into into it without a massive investment of time.  The slowness ultimately killed it in my eyes.  Even if I invested the time, it would still be slow and that would bore me.  Pacing is critically important in these games and Warcraft has it much better than Final Fantasy XI ever did.

Additionally, the trades are actually enjoyable and somewhat useful.  Other games that I have seen don’t seem to have useful trade systems.  The are slow, boring, and you can almost never make items powerful enough to actually use.  That isn’t the case in Warcraft.  I have actually made items that I use.   Although, I seem to have used the trades so much that I’ve maxed them out to the point allowed by my level and where I am in the game.  My core character progression is the bottleneck.  That’s a little disappointing, because the goal is to avoid any progression bottlenecks to keep things moving.

I also commend Blizzard for making it quick to get into and out of the game.  Within 20 seconds, you can get in or out of the game.  Even if you have only 10 minutes to play, you can move your character along on a quest.  When you log back in your character will be right where you left it.

The game starts to slow a bit when you arrive in Westfall, which is around the low double digit levels.  You move from a warm-feeling forest that is colorful and alive to a somewhat dead barren dust bowl.  The transition is stark, which I think the developers were going for, but it just isn’t as interesting, either.  I’ve continued to make progress and I’m moving along, but things feel slower.  The pacing just isn’t quite as good as in the earlier levels.

My major gripe with the game is the death by swarm.  Going solo in Warcraft is very difficult.  I have died in Westfall a lot.  In general, you fight enemies that are around your same level.  When fighting one enemy you will pretty much always win, but if a second enemy of equivalent level joins, you will almost always lose.  Countless times, I’ve been trying to fight single enemies and another one or more join the fight and kill me.  Sometimes you can run away, but not usually.

Joining a party for quests really seems to be the way to go with the game, and the game pushes you to do so.  With a trial account however, you can’t initiate a party request.

I haven’t decided whether or not to actually pay for the game.  It is $19.99 to buy into the game digitally through the Blizzard online store, which includes your first month.  The Burning Crusade expansion pack is $29.99 through Blizzard online.  The battle chest, which includes both discs and two books, doesn’t include the first month of play, but is cheaper if you want the expansion pack from the start.  The expansion pack seems to go on sale for as low as $9.99 occasionally, so paying the $19.99 and looking for the expansion cheap appears to be the way to go.  If I don’t actually buy the game it will be due to dying so much via swarms and the slowing progression of my character largely because of it.

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My Top Ten Games of All Time

Wednesday, April 9th, 2008

This post was inspired by Warren Spector’s Wikipedia entry that lists his top 12 games. Here is my top 10 of all time (with one additional current contender). The criteria is the games that have had the most impact on me. I took a shot at putting them in order.

  1. Final Fantasy (I)
  2. Super Mario Brothers (I)
  3. Diablo II
  4. Under a Killing Moon
  5. Quake
  6. Civilization
  7. Castlevania: Symphony of the Night
  8. Super Mario 64
  9. The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past
  10. God of War

Most likely to break into the top 10: Bioshock

Honorable Mention: Gex: Enter The Gecko

1) Final Fantasy - I can remember calling my local EB Games daily to find out if this game was in-stock yet. The expectations that I built up around it were staggering. It is one of the single cases I can point to where the actual game was better than what I built it up to be. This game created much of what became the RPG genre. The idea of traveling off to a vast land and exploring around was just amazing. I stuck with the series through much of the next few installments. Square lost me a bit when they started to move from Lord of the Rings style to quasi-futuristic steam punk.

2) Super Mario Brothers - Not sure what to say here other than that the game was a huge step forward. Mario Brothers became the premier franchise in gaming and with good reason. Anyone who owned an NES back in the day probably put more time into this game than any other. It was so much better than everything else that you found yourself replaying it over and over. Nintendo still releases 2D side-scrolling Mario games more than 20 years later. That’s longevity.

3) Diablo II – The Diablo series clearly set the standard for action/rpg hybrid games. I logged a ridiculous number of hours playing Diablo II online and had an absolute blast. The deceptively straightforward gameplay masked substantial depth. My top wishlist game right now is Diablo III.

4) Under a Killing Moon – This may be a surprising pick to some people, but UAKM and the rest of the Tex Murphy series (The Pandora Directive and Overseer) were definite favorites for me. The combination of a 3D world, actual acting, and witty dialog have influences that are only just being felt now. The games were way ahead of their time, probably too far ahead in some ways. The highly revered summary dialog system from Mass Effect has influences from UAKM. Plus, it was my kind of humor. I can also see some parallels in Naughty Dog’s Uncharted: Drake’s Fortune. The heavy acting component and sarcastic humor are both reminiscent of UAKM.

5) Quake – My first real experience with online gaming was Quake. I spent lots of time playing it. The game was incredible. Coming on the heels of the ground-braking Doom, Quake was another level entirely. The graphics were amazing for the time. All of today’s online first person shooters can draw a direct lineage back to Quake.

6) Civilization – Scary as it might sound, much of my ability to remember the seven wonders of the world comes directly from too much time playing Civilization. Sid Meier is a genius and the Civilization series demonstrates what games are capable of. The series is both addictive and at least mildly educational. There is a lot to be learned from Civilization about how people can be taught through games. As I learned in Civilization, when a Democracy is at war for too long, the populous will begin to rebel.

7) Castlevania: Symphony of the Night – Symphony of the Night was Castlevania does Action/RPG. As mentioned before, this is my favorite genre. I’ve proceeded to purchase and play all of the subsequent iterations offered for handheld systems. Every 2D Castlevania game since Symphony of the Night has maintained that same great action/rpg balance. My entire reason for purchasing the Gameboy Advance and Nintendo DS was to play the new Castlevania offering for each system.

8) Super Mario 64 - The game is often lauded in any top list of games. It essentially created the 3D platforming genre. Mario 64 was such a marvelous step forward from prior 2D games. The game was fun and avoided completely confusing players with the new 3rd dimension that they had to worry about.

9) Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past - As has been well established by this point in the list, I am a huge fan of Acton/RPG hybrids. In a lot of ways Zelda was groundbreaking in this genre. It wasn’t until the series hit the SNES that I really got into it in a big way. I wouldn’t consider myself a committed fan of the series, since I’ve not really followed every installment. Still, I can appreciate the impact that the series has had on other games and I really liked this particular installment.

10) God of War - The God of War series was a late addition to the list, probably because I’ve just completed Chains of Olympus. In future lists Bioshock will likely replace it (see the next entry). I really enjoy the Kratos character and the finely tuned action/rpg fighting system. The first thing that comes to any God of War player’s mind is “fun”. From the very start, the game is just a lot of fun to play.

Most likely to break into the top: Bioshock - For the moment this is a tentative inclusion. It is the first game that I’ve played which extends the Action/rpg genre to include a first person shooter. It is easily the most intense and immersive game that I’ve ever played. The real test of a game is how its impact is felt and how it holds up over time. I expect that Bioshock will mark a turning point in gaming where the level of sophistication and immersion take a great step forward. Only time will tell.

Honorable Mention: Gex: Enter The Gecko - This pick could probably be construed as the guilty pleasure on the list. In many ways the game’s mechanics were standard character platformer fare. The game’s hook was humor. The thing is, it was my kind of humor. I really got a kick out of the one-liners and levels that lampooned pop culture. I was disappointed to see the series die, but sales were never particularly impressive. Still, I think there is an opportunity for humorous games that isn’t being taken advantage of.

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