League of Legends

Tags

dota, free to play, heroes of newerth, hon, league of legends, lol

Back in my days as a game developer (don’t think anything big, I was just moving sprites one pixel at a time) there were rumors of this thing called DOTA that everybody was playing. So, tired of getting my ass kicked in Warcraft 3 multiplayer, I’ve decided to give it a chance. I’ve even convinced some of the people that made me cry in War3 to give it a chance. This led to a four player coop versus bots. And the game was not half bad. If you have no idea of what I’m talking about, this is what the game is all about: there are two bases and you have to destroy the enemy base. To do this you can choose one of n heroes, level him up, cast spell and all that stuff. There are three paths leading to the enemy base, there are some turrets along the way, and minions (called creep) are spawned along the way. So you kill creep, level up, buy items, destroy turrets, kill enemy heroes, cleanse and repeat. It’s pretty fun while you’re winning, and against bots that’s pretty doable. And then, one night…

We were in the office and people around were asking for DOTA players, since they had open spots. Hey, I played some DOTA, why not. What I didn’t consider was that these people were really passionate about their game. But it’s just a game, right? We entered the game, random hero pick, so I ended up with a thing called Magina (or something else that rhymes with vagina). Now, in case you didn’t notice from the Dungeon Siege post, I’m not impressed with spells unless they properly state that they turn mother fucker to ash. That’s my definition of a good skill/spell: using whatever elements borrowed from Mother Nature or designed by humans, it can turn mother fuckers to ash; or dust; or just a rotten corpse. You get the picture. Guess what – Magina was not an ash creating person. He was more of a sissy that offered support, somewhere in the back casting his fairy spells while the other guys did all the other work. Even more, he was an overpowered (I think the actual term is “imba”) sissy. How did I found out? Because while I was thinking “Negate magic power of enemy? Neah, let’s just cut them up!” the rest of the hall was screaming “Who’s the idiot that’s playing Magina?! Negate their magic!! Stop fucking around with your knives!” Which is not that bad unless you end you phrases with “If I catch that idiot I’ll beat the shit out of him! Learn how to play, noob!” I haven’t even though about DOTA since.

This might happen when you're tired of bots.

League of Legends, also known as LoL, is a DOTA game. I started playing it because this sort of games started to hit the press since Valve announced they were working on Dota 2. But until that comes out, its main competitor is Heroes of Newerth, and I chose LoL because the internet said it was more casual (and playing the tutorial for HoN I then to believe that – they don’t even tell you what spells do, they just show you an icon and rtfm).

First of – it’s a very nice implementation of Free to Play. Every week you get about ten heroes that you can play for free. If you do get attached to a hero, you can buy it within game points. From what I noticed so far, you only have to take money out of your wallet if you want different skins for your hero. Everything else – play and unlock it.

It has a coop mode that sets five players against five bots, which can actually win a match if you aren’t careful (and this on the easy mode, I haven’t tried intermediate). You don’t want any drama from PvP – killing bots is the way to go.

Some of the playable heroes (champions).

It has a lot of heroes, and I’m always a sucker for a lot of heroes. And its matchmaking system should theoretically place you in matches with players as dumb as you. I only played two PvP games, in one I murdered everything, in the second one I spend 20 minutes respawning.

Not much to say – it’s free, it’s the DOTA recipe, it has lots of heroes. Give it a try and let me know of your id. If you can settle playing alongside someone who’s not that good at computer games, see you in the arena.

PS: A very nice article about the history of the Dota genre can be found here.

Dungeon Siege 3

Tags

diablo, dungeon siege, hack'n'slash, obsidian

There’s nothing to write home about in Dungeon Siege 3. It’s not even a great sequel (which comes as a surprise, seeing that it’s developed by Obsidian) – maybe because it was launched after so much time has passed since we played the first two. That doesn’t mean it’s a bad sequel, just that it’s a different game, which just shares the same name as the old Diablo clone/contender. For those that remember, the first DS were technically superior to Blizzard’s games, they just didn’t have that “wow” factor that the classic hack’n’slash game has. DS3 on the other hand is an action button masher, and a pretty decent one. And if you’re wondering what the difference: hack’n’slash means mouse destroying clicks, and it feels at home on the PC, while button masher is more pleasant on consoles – you don’t click, you just point your character in a direction and start pressing buttons like crazy.

So, since there’s nothing impressing, and you’ll hear that a lot in the next lines, here are some ideas about the game, in no particular order:

- Level design is actually quite good for a leisure game. It’s linear, but quite diverse and looks good. You’ll be taken from forests to frozen wastes, to a castle cave and some sort of tower. Maybe there aren’t that many locations, but those that exist are well made.

- Speaking of – this game is short. It took me somewhere between 10 and 15 hours to reach the end. Not what I expect from an Obsidian RPG. But, then again, this was more of a cash cow than a true Obsidian game, so between two deaths in Demon’s Souls, it fits pretty well.

- It uses its own engine, and it does its job well. It looks nice, moves well and I haven’t had any bugs, not even a small one (or maybe I had but I didn’t see it). It seems Obsidian can make bug free games. Or maybe just bug free cash cows.

The old dude exists in this game because he always knew how to run from the action. But boy, does he complain.

- Story is… well… there. It has a story, cliché, and you’ll not remember much of it since it’s boring. What’s nice about it is that you have choices, and the game end with a Fallout-like style slideshow explaining the consequences of your actions. I guess Obsidian couldn’t help trying to fit some dept into the game. You won’t remember much, but you’ll wonder what would have happened if you would have chosen the other thing, that you can’t quite remember right now.

- Characters are awful. Not the classes, I’ll get into those later, but the characters. You have a warrior, who is retarded and nice; a sharpshooter witch, who is retarded and nice, but she looks good and walks around half naked, so who cares about the fact that she better not say anything (but, in dialogues you just see here from the back, and while she does have a nice neck, a lot of the “nice chick” factor is lost); a mage that looks bad ass as hell, but he talks like a retarded monkey, and, instead of setting things on fire, is concerned about understanding the world around him and the essence of good and evil… what? And finally, a spear wielding, ass kicking, fire spitting half-demon girl. She’s just retarded and boring. Easy to guess that I chose the “nice chick” and kept the warrior as side-kick, since he could take a beating and I could run around avoiding enemies.

Gay mage. Retarded demon. Wimpy warrior. Nice chick.

- The classes and the RPG elements – they start from a nice idea, and they feel very good on a console. You have two fighting stances: one huge weapon (like rifle or giant sword) and two weapons (two pistols or shield and sword). Each fighting style has 3 skills, and there are also 3 defensive skills (heals and some buffs). So, 9 skills in total, with the only problem that at least 6 of them are boring. For example, two or three of the mages skills are about setting traps, and not spitting fire from every pore. Come to think about it, this game is anti fire mages. At some levels you choose a new skill, but you’ll have all nine in the end. Next, you tweak your skills – there are 5 or 6 squares on a bar and you have two options to fill them. Do you want your pistols to spit nails or life steal? That sort of thing. And finally you have some generic skills that you can update (increase pistol damage with 1% per skill point invested). The problem with the last to screen is that they have that MMO syndrome – they don’t sound impressive. This is not a competitive game, having 1% more damage is not that impressing. Why not make fire go out of my heels instead. Now that’s exciting!

- Finally, the loot – there’s a lot of it, with the usual coloring, but the bad thing about it is that there are about 4 skins per character, and one of them you’ll get in the last hour of the game. It’s a bit frustrating to pick up 50 shirts, and when I put each one of them on, I continue to look the same.

Cute girl. Ask her for directions to the "cave". That makes sense.

There’s nothing to write home about in Dungeon Siege 3. But it’s not a bad game. It’s a decent action game for those brain dead moments when you want to just kill hordes of stuff.

PS: I wonder what Obsidian is working on now, besides New Vegas DLCs.

Bulletstorm

Tags

3d shooters, bulletstorm, epic games, gears of war, painkiller, people can fly

I have never finished a game before in just one day. It’s just not something that I do – either I don’t have the time for this, or I get bored with it, or it’s just that sort of a game that encompassed 50+ hours of gameplay. So, having finished Bulletstorm in just one Saturday, one has to ask himself the question: how come? Was the game too short? Was the game really good that I couldn’t step away from the controller? Was I that bored? And, to each and every question, the answer is yes.

Bulletstorm is a first person shooter developed by People Can Fly and Epic Games. It’s very important to note these two names, as you’ll be hearing about them a lot as you read this. It puts the played in the body of a space pirate with an army background, and your purpose is to fight your way through murderous mutants and lunatics and put some bullets into the confederate bold head of a general that once betrayed you. It uses Unreal 3 engine and looks very pretty; so I’ll guess we still have a lot of U3 games to see, as the engine matured very nicely (and it will be getting some polish when the new Gears of War is out).

Now, what separates this game from all the other shooter is its subtitle: “Kill with skill”. This means that you are awarded point for every degenerate you murder, and the more complicated the kill, the more points you are going to get. Just watch the trailer to see what “complicated murder” means.

And this is where People Can Fly steps into the picture – these are the same guys that brought us Painkiller, and I wouldn’t expect anything else from them than to give them a shotgun and an impaling gun and to let me loose on the new incarnation of hell’s army. They pretty much managed to do this: weapons are interesting, although not all of them as that useful ( I ended up using just 3 out of 8 for the most encounters, the other five I just equipped when I was bored and needed explosions). The levels are well design and changed scenery from chapter to chapter. And enemies splatter in the most satisfying ways. For example: you take a shotgun, wait for one of the mutants that has exploding bits on him to get closer, then blast him in half, sending the two pieces left into a wall of spikes. Does this sound like fun time to you or not?

On the other has, this is also an Epic game. Even without reading the game’s box, you realize this pretty soon: main character looks like Dom and sounds line Marcus Fenix (which bring to mind the fact that Dom kind of looks like Marcus), it’s a story about space marines, everything has to make sense in some explainable/realistic manner (you see, you don’t kill mutants for fun, the points are used to upgrade your weapons), pressing A makes you jump over walls, you can’t carry all your weapons on you and so on. In fact, this is the same sort of action packed game of the summer that Gears of War 2 was, just with less marketing and a lot more swearing.

So, yeah, Bulletstorm is not the old school shooter that Painkiller was. It doesn’t have one minute of cinematic and then sets you lose in a cathedral filled with zombies. It’s more of a story focused game, with the “just shoot” elements integrated into how AAA shooters have to look these days in order to sell. But that doesn’t make it a lesser game – it might be just 8 hours short, but I didn’t get of my couch until those 8 hours passed, and that should say something about it.

Fallout: New Vegas

Tags

bethesda, fallout, new vegas, obsidian

For some reason I never got into Fallout 3. I think there’s a whole drama with my relationships with both Fallout games and Bethesda games. So let’s do a little bit of history…

I got my first home PC way back in ’98, and before getting it I played games at internet cafes and read alot of gaming magazines. Starcraft and Quake 2 used to rule those days, and we were blowing each others heads almost daily, but, reading about games, something else caught my attention: first off, a game about wizards an warriors and rogues, whose adventures span over 5 discs; second, a game about some post nuclear apocalyptic stuff, with turn based combat and alot of bugs. I loved Fallout 2 just by reading its review and seeing some screenshots of it (although I didn’t quite get how you exactly play it). So, with this in mind, I started looking for it. Now, back in those days if you had a modem and internet connection you were pretty rich, original games were unheard off, and the only way you could actually get games was from pirates. They weren’t very cheap for a highschool kid, and there were usually RIP versions (it took me a year or so to find out that games have movies and music and voice acting). But, as fate would have it, going with some guy to fix his PC, the “repairman”, had one piece of pirated Fallout 2 on his shelf, and had no problems selling it to us. So, to shorten the story: insert disk, install game, run, get hooked on it.

What made Fallout 2 a great game, and what got me into RPGs was the story and the atmosphere. And by story I don’t mean what it says but how it says it: lots of interesting characters, lots of quests, twists and spins and so on. Everything in it had soul and everything had a meaning and, while the game and its content were huge, everything tied nicely together.

That’s exactly what I felt was missing from Bethesda games: soul. Their worlds are huge and beautiful, but I just never felt any connection to the characters in their games. That thing lacked and I could only play so much of Morrowind and Oblivion before going “meh”.

But it was great for them that they didn’t let the franchise die. Although I got bored of Fallout 3 (but I’m planning to replay it now), it brought people into the universe I grew up with and, their best decision yet, decided to leave the sequel to Obsidian. For those that don’t know, Obsidian are the champions of great, although buggy, sequels: they outdid BioWare on both Knights of the Old Republic and Neverwinter Nights (hated the first one, loved the sequel). Also, they have people that worked on the first Fallouts and, my all time favorite games, Planescape Torment. So, to summarize, old school RPG developers that build them like they use to back in my days.

Fallout: New Vegas? I absolutely love it. In short – it’s Fallout 2 with 3d graphics. And not just any Fallout, but it’s second coming: you’ll re-meet the NCR, there’s alot of talk about the Enclave and how it was taken down by some tribal (I giggled here) and Marcus takes care of a mutant village. Its huge, it has factions and each and everyone of them has its own agenda.

What’s funny is that I started playing it because there was nothing else interesting in my library, and I had avoided the open world games right up until that moment. But after 5 hours in it I had to see what’s after the next hill, and then the next and so on. After 20 hours I had a pretty good idea about how I wanted things to be in the Mojave desert: NCR should prevail, Caesar’s Legion would fail. Then, I meet Mr. House, the ruler of New Vegas and his masterplan was maybe the right choice for the new world. But he sent me to have a chat with Caesar and, although he rad a bloody mob of degenerates, he did have some point about bureaucracy and the power hungry mob that was the NCR senate. My world was turned upside down and I would have to take a decision soon. But I avoided it, picking up side quests, meeting new factions and new followers, helping them or shooting them in the head if they were drug crazy fiends. I had my trusty rifle for hostiles and my slick tongue for reticent personalities and everything went smooth, as a .308 caliber bullet through a geko’s head. I met my old friends, the Brotherhood of Steel, but they were weak and perhaps a bit too obsessed with their ideology. Even so, they welcomed me as a brother, and at that point I knew that we went though too much together (remember Fallout Tactics?) and I had to see them survive this game.

Finally I made my decision – even though Caesar had a point, his ways didn’t appeal to me at all. Without spoiling too much: what I though I wanted meant I have to off the Brotherhood so that was out of the picture and I changed my mind again. Then one of my companions pointed out maybe this would not be the best for New Vegas, so in the end I chose something that might seem a bit selfish but, in my defense, I did it all for the good of Vegas.

In total I had about 50-60 hours of gameplay, and I’m pretty sure I missed alot of thins (like companion quests that you can’t activate if you already did some other quest). But at the end of it all it felt short and I wanted it to never end. Fortunately enough, there are 3 DLCs so far and I should be getting them some time.

In the end, all I can say is: Thank you Obsidian for bringing one of my childhood friends back to life. You already did this once by reviving Baldur’s Gate though Neverwinter Nights 2, so all that remains is for you to make another Placescape and I will be forever grateful.

Mojave, mo’ problems…