Path of Exile: FOR THE LOVE OF ODIN PLAY THIS!

You know, do not even ask me about the "Forsaken Masters" part as I do not really know.  But Path of Exile, I do not think I have ever sunk this much time into a free-to-play game.  Even the previously mentioned Clash of Clans or Plants vs. Zombies 2.  No, not even Mafia Wars, which was way back in the day, as far as I am concerned.

At the moment I have put 35 hours into this game, although that number seems to be growing week-by-week.  But let us talk about the game.

Bloody hell this game is beautiful, just take a look at this dank and infested dungeon!

and a spectral-esque-type forrest.

Now if I only played good looking games, there would be room for an argument here, but I am also playing a lot of The Elder Scrolls: The Arena which looks a lot like Doom with a sword and heal potions.  PoE plays remarkably well too.  Think Diablo, with bits of Torchlight II thrown in (stationary waypoints) as well as MMORPG action hot key type actions as well.   There are even some improvements such as removable gem socketing in weapons and armor without damaging either the equipment or the gems.  I think that is one of the things that helped to sell the game.  

There are even little individual animations that the enemies do.  For instance, an enemy archer will run towards you, stop, pull an arrow from their quiver, lick the fletching, knock the arrow then fire towards you.  That is, if you haven't already shot them yet.  If you zoom in as close as you can, you can see the corpses of fallen enemies twitching a couple of times before they lie permanently prone.  At first I thought it was either a glitch or my eyes playing tricks, but no, you can see hands and feet twitching a few times.  Sometimes monsters will also roar at you before or during attacks, you know, because their wild animals that just happen to want you very dead.

Oddly enough, one of the best things about this games is all the ways Grinding Gear Games does not charge you to play and there are a lot of aspects to this game that I feel that could have been used to create options to pay real world money.  You want to enchant that sword to a +1 to damage, pay 50 gold (translates to $0.50).  You want to recover that life sapping gem from your armor that you no longer want, that will be 200 gold.  You want to create more than one character, pay us 500 gold to create extra character slots beyond your first character.  Of everything that I have seen that the game charges money for, everything appears to be cosmetic.  Sure you have your swag stashed in a chest that has four pages of a 12x12 grid and you can pay for a fifth page, but I do not foresee needing that much space considering I am currently only playing one character.

Basically, there was one time when I left the game for the sole purpose of finding out how I could give Grinding Gear Games money using real money.  Maybe buy a package thing via Steam using my Steam Wallet.  I could not.  There was nothing I could do but use their in-game market.  That was not was I was looking for, so I have yet to give them currency validation towards their great game.

Similar to Diablo and Torchlight, I do have a problem with hoarding.  When I found gems, I saved them until I could create the next higher quality gem, then I saved that gem until I could create the next. . .so on and so on.  I was always paranoid that I would find a better weapon or suit of armor and that gem that I had soldered into my equipment would then be lost forever.  Thankfully in PoE, this is not the case as I can take out and remove gems as frequently as I want (unless otherwise noted in the description of the gem).  Grinding Gear is making this game too easy to like and doing things that I had wanted earlier Diablo-esque games to do.

There are a handful of other features from the game that surprised me.  At first, I was annoyed that the maps were a lot smaller than what I was used to on Torchlight II, but I quickly realized that they were more like the Diablo maps and one of the sidequest goals is to kill every monster on the map.  That would be quite the feat in Torchlight II.  Another is that your health and mana potions autofill as you kill enemies and whenever you return to town, which makes healing spells almost obsolete.  It can become difficult however when you have to go up against a boss that does not want to summon creatures to help fight against you, which would then refill your potion bottles.

To date, I have only played cooperatively once with Chreekat a month or two back.  And while the game could be played with friends, you don't have to and I feel that playing locally would be a lot more fun than playing across the country.  That being said, I am usually up for playing cooperatively if people are interested.  That then brings me to the online-ness of the game.  Unless you are intentionally playing with anyones else, all the areas, with the exception of the towns/villages are instanced.  You do not have to worry about other people running around in the same area stealing your kills and loot.

The only negative statement I have to make about this game is that it takes a while to load.  The first couple of times I tried playing, I gave up because I thought the game was stuck on the loading screen.  It turned out that I just had to wait a minute or two, then everything was as I expected it to be.  There was no noticeable lag in the game and the only times the game had to load was moving between areas.

I am going to stop now so I can get this out there.  Path of Exile has been out there in the world for 13 months now and honestly, it is never too late to pick up this game and start playing.  So, you should go and start playing as it is just too much fun to not play.



~JWfW/JDub/Jaconian
The Great Warriors of Doom and Wind

Game Review: Wizorb (PC)

Wizorb is a game that came bundled with Humble Indie Bundle 6 over a year ago and based on it's premise of a conglomeration of Breakout and a Dragon Warrior/Final Fantasy NES era RPG, this game should be right up my alley.

First off, I am not particularly great at Breakout and its many clones.  No, this does not mean that I suck at video games.  As it happens, I apparently do not have the stamina to play multiple levels of Breakout with a limited number of lives.

In Wizorb, you take on the role of Cyrus, a wizard tasked with saving the kingdom, or the world, I am not too sure on that point.  Once the story portion is completed, you are sent out to reclaim what was rightfully, someone elses, I think.  The plot, as far as I can tell, is a pretty generic JRPG plot but instead of playing a strapping young lad kicked out of his respective village, you play as an old man wizard/sorcerer/mage.  Maybe you have to rescue your daughter?  Suffice it to say, I do not expect any significant plot twists to occur.  Maybe the main villain is your son?  We will have to just wait and see.

After the not too long/deep story/exposition part of the game, you are then taken to the level where the Breakout-ness happens.  As you break blocks to clear the stage, you are often awarded with either nothing, gold, gems for store purchases, extra lives, vials that refill your magic meter, and eventually magical bits that can temporarily slow you down or reduce the size of your wand/paddle.  Magic is used to cast spells, the first two being a wind spell that moves your magical projectile (the ball) in the opposite direction and the other spell being a fireball that causes damage just like your blue ball of magical goodness.

So far, the game should not be too difficult, but often completing a stage requires additional support.  Throughout the stages, you can find shops to purchase temporary upgrades to your staff/bar-thing, extra lives or vials to refill your magic meter.  One time I bought a staff upgrade thinking that it would be permanent, but it turned out to only last the length of the stage and my staff was back to its normal size (after four hours) at the beginning of the next stage.  All the other times I have purchased extra lives in the store as I have found them to be much more valuable.  Apparently there is also a magnet of some-sort, but as I have never purchased it, I could not tell you what its application is.  Maybe it does not bounce the ball but just grabs and holds on to it instead?

So keeping all of this in mind, my initial impression was that I did not like the game.  I loved the visual aesthetic and the newish take on Breakout, but I found the level to be comprised of too many stages to be able to progress through to and defeat the level boss.  Being able to make it through I-do-not-know-how-many stages in each level and defeat a boss was too much for me the three or four times I tried out the game.  A few months later I came back and decided to give the game another go.  This time I used a controller and I noticed that if I did not make it to the boss, I did not have to start back at Stage 1 of Level 1, but I started whatever stage I was currently on, but with all of the blocks back in their original starting position.  I believe the game must have updated at some point, for which I am very thankful.  

It is also highly probable that the game has always operated this way and I just did not notice, but which is sad because since finding this game-saving-fact out, I have put in two hours into the game.  I find that I play a lot better with a controller and not playing through out TV set.  Something about the distance away from the screen seems to give me less time to react to where the goody magical blue ball is going to land.

So after as semi-disastrous first impression of Wizorb, I definitely plan on giving the game the time it deserves.  At least until I become so frustrated/aggravated/annoyed with my general lack of skill in the game that I give up entirely.

Happy Monday!



~JWfW/JDub/Jaconain
Igniting the Paralyzed Soil

First Impressions: Tactics Ogre: Let Us Cling Together (PSP)

Wow, okay.  I bought Tactics Ogre: Let Us Cling Together because I liked the look of the game, I'd heard nothing but good things about the Tactics Ogre/Ogre Battle series and because the game was on sale when I bought it through Amazon back in December 2011.  I started it up, but then relinquished my PSP to Conklederp since she was just getting into Final Fantasy Tactics: The War of the Lions, which I had suggested she try out, so that was my own doing.  Jump ahead to February 2013 when I restarted the game as I had no idea where I was supposed to go or what my motivations for doing anything was and I played on-and-off until April.  I don't remember what happened back in April, but I've finally picked the game up again a couple of days ago.

I've actually tried writing this article a few times and each time I go off on tangents about certain aspects of the game which leads to a history of this game, Final Fantasy Tactics and tactics games in general.  But lets get down to things about the game, which is why this article is in existence.

It's a lot like Final Fantasy Tactics.  The look of the game, the character design, the complicated political plots that are reminiscent of something you'd find written by George R. R. Martin.  I don't understand all of the political intrigue and back stabbing, but I'm sure that that epiphany will surface on it's own in the later chapters.  Even the music is composed by Hitoshi Sakimoto (FFT, Vagrant Story, FF XII).

What's interesting and much welcome about TO:LUCT, similar to what was done in FFT:TWotL, is a historical record of sorts is kept in game by a "historian."  This means that I can go back and look through a timeline of important events and watch cutscenes of said events.  There's even a record of NPCs and their backstories before the events in the game take place.  The game is detailed in a way that allowed me to pick the game up after not having played for nine months and I felt I knew what I was doing and why I was making those decisions.

One drastic element that is added to this game is the ability to rewind turns during a battle to have them replay differently.  For instance, you move your mage over a couple of squares to a better vantage point on an enemy who is already being attacked by one of your own fighters.  You cast a fireball spell that accidentally hits your fighter in the back of the head.  Or if you moved a thief to a spot you had thought was going to give you a tactical advantage, but then that thief is gang-killed.  You have the ability to rewind time to any point in the battle.  For posterity sake, the game keeps track of how many battles you won using this feature.

Two very much welcome features to this game happen when you're losing a battle.  First off, your characters do not permanently die.  I found this out during a boss battle and thought that I would give up the life of one of my characters as I just won a difficult (~45 minute) battle.  As my characters timer reached zero, they said something about "living to fight another day."  When the battle was over, they didn't gain any skill points, but they did gain some XP.  The second thing about losing, is that if you are about to lose a battle completely, you can, with the click of a button, retreat from that battle.  You will then gain some skill points and some XP, but obviously not as much as if you had won the battle.

Battles in TO:LUCT are about as cumbersome as they are in FFT, but that's one of the reasons why I fell in love with FFT and why I really like TO.  Conklederp will confirm that my swearing increases ten fold every time I'm in a battle; if it's missing an attack chanced at 80% accuracy or being gang-killed.

Okay, I'm going to limit myself to talking about only two more aspects that I love about TO.

First.  Apparently the music in the game has been re-orchestrated and it sounds great.  Granted I didn't play any of the original releases of this game so I cannot say "how much" better or worse it sounds, just that it sounds very much like Hitoshi Sakimoto. And, and, AND!, there's a music player included in the menu that also has a notation from the Hitoshi Sakimoto or the arranger Masaharu Iwata about the song.  How flipping awesome is that!?  I love that Square Enix acknowledges the music side of the game to include information about it's composition.  This should be standard in every video game.

Lastly, is the "Personality Test" based around a fictional tarot deck, that is supposed to alter (slightly?) the game based on your answers.  I have no information about how this actually happens, but the questions themselves, I felt, put you in the mindset that this world won't necessarily be a friendly one and that tough choices are ahead.  Below are a couple of my favorites.

XVI: The Tower

A Fire engulfs your home.  Whom do you save from the flames?

-My Beloved

-My Child

-My Parents

(I love how this question is worded.  It's stating that all three are in a burning house, but you can only save one set: your beloved, child or your parents, then watch as the rest die).

XVII: The Moon

In a fit of passion, you take your friend's lover.  What will you do next?

-Keep the lover for my own

-Savor the moment

-Put it from my mind

(The added layer to this question is self imposed, in that I already have a fiance.  So in this instance, I knowingly take my friends lover, running the very high risk of ruining my current relationship, what then would/do I do?  No one is coming out of this unscarred).

So after a nine month hiatus, I'm back into this game and I'm really liking it.  There have already been a number of times when the story split based on a decision that I made and each time I've questioned if I made the right one.  Granted I could "go back" to see what would have happened if I made a different decision, but I don't want to know that, at least right now.  I want to live with the consequences of my actions.  I feel that's where a lot of character development (implied or self induced) comes from and I don't want to rob myself of that emotional experience.

In closing, if you've played Final Fantasy Tactics, you will not at all be disappointed with Tactics Ogre: Let Us Cling Together.

~JWfW/JDub/Jaconian

Instrumental

First Impressions: Anodyne

Here's a song from the game for you to listen to

an·o·dyne
ˈanəˌdīn/

adjective
1. not likely to provoke dissent or offense; inoffensive, often deliberately so.
"anodyne New Age music"

noun
2.a painkilling drug or medicine.

Anodyne is a 2-d, top-down Zelda clone.  They even include the 'stop when you strike' feature that I think is pretty neat.  It is a Zelda clone by engine, but not by theme.  Unlike Zelda, the game is immediately eerie, dark and strange, and there are reasons to distrust what you are told.  There is an ambient soundtrack through the first portion, and as the world expands, the soundtrack seems to want to expand, but can never quite become a fanfare in that bright, Zelda style.  I should mention I'm a big fan of Zelda clones.  

The gameplay is not as complex as Zelda games.  For example, it wasn't until about two hours into the game that I gained an ability beyond the basic attack.  On the other hand, the basic strike has a secondary use, which is to pick up and drop bits of dust.  These bits of dust have been used in a few different ways.  The designers have used these few abilities to craft some interesting puzzles, and the combat can be tough.  The enemy movement and projectile patterns keep me on my toes.    

The game appears to be open-world and non-linear, though there are clearly established 'zones.'  I have no idea if I'm going to the right place at the right time, and that aimlessness seems to be a part of the design. One thing I like is that there is a moment where you find a road sign, the first in the game, and it is too unclear to read. I don't know why, but I really like that the first road sign you see has no content. It stands out as something to read, but too bad, it's faded, and you can't make it out. Where to from here. The good news is:  I have yet to get stuck.  I think this speaks to a sense of care on the part of the designers.  

If you have a hankering to play a well-designed clone of early Zelda games, but with a creative and creepy vibe, then I recommend giving Anodyne a look.  I'm going to play through the rest, and try to craft a more thorough posting.  

-D

P.S.  I originally heard of Anodyne from Indie Games Magazine.  They've got this great little Android App that I use to read about games while waiting in lines.   I picked up Anodyne from a recent Humble Bundle.  If you aren't hip to the Humble Bundles, I suggest you check them out.  I've already given you a starter by embedding a link in the previous sentence.  Also, they have a very intuitive website address, and if you ask google about Humble Bundles, I'm sure it will help you.  Humble Bundles are a big part of why I started gaming again, after taking a many-year break.