Diablo III - Review

I've been able to spend the last week fighting my way through Diablo 3 monsters and servers alike, and have started coming to some conclusions about Blizzard's latest release.  While I'm only on Act 2 of Nightmare difficulty, I can reasonably say that Blizzard has given us a great reason to explore the new world of Sanctuary with randomly generated areas and items, but can the rest of the game hold up to what makes a Diablo game a Diablo game?

The story starts with your character investigating a fallen star that has crashed through the Tristram Church from the original Diablo.  You will eventually find out what it is and why it's causing the undead to stir, but the story doesn't feel super fleshed out.  Many of the story points feel forced, and maybe a little too convenient to actually happen.  A common example being quoted is that a warrior who has lost his memory and his sword needs to start remembering fast, so the conclusion is drawn that since he also lost his sword, if we find his sword, we'll find his memory.  Yeah.  The story is not compelling, as much as it wants to be with all of the optional dialog that you can experience in the game.

But we're not here for the story, right?  That's what we're telling ourselves to say that this is all ok?

Diablo isn't really about the story, though.  It's about exploring an area and running into random monsters with random abilities, and earning random items that may or may not be better than the last random item you got (spoiler - it probably isn't).  There's some talk and complaint that the item drops aren't very good so far, and that the Act bosses, who provided the majority of the best loot in the previous games, now purposefully drop items that are under leveled.  This is meant to stop people from farming bosses over and over and instead go out into the world and hunt down the randomly created elite bosses.

The actual game play shines.  The outdoor areas are interesting and varied, the indoor areas are cramped and maze like.  This is a huge improvement over Diablo II, in which the outdoor areas were horrible, and the indoor areas too far apart to be remembered.  Each time I play an area, I know that there's some static bits that will appear, but where they are and what's populating them are exciting to find out and interact with.

There is also a feeling of genuine power while playing, something that I did not experience in previous Diablo games.  I rolled a Witch Doctor as I had the most fun with him in the Beta, and feel as though I can not only take on the hordes of monsters, but feel very confident in doing so.  This has changed briefly as I run into Nightmare level monsters with Vampiric and Shielding, but the fights are enjoyable and feel fair.  The end of act Boss Fights, in particular, feel epic and MMO-y, even without the improved loot drops.

In all seriousness, enjoy the Dire Bats while you can, I feel like they're going to get nerfed

The game requires an active internet connection, but no subscription.  Blizzard is having you plan on their servers for free.  What this means is that you have to be always connected to the internet with a decent connection, and that if their servers go down, you won't be able to play your game. 

But what are the odds of th... oh.

The servers were very unstable for the first few days.  Some players were not able to login for extended periods of time, and others were not able to earn in game achievements as they played.  Blizzard is working on these issues, and assures players that everything will be fine and thank them for their feedback.  While these types of issues are annoying, they are necessary for the Real Money Auction House that Blizzard is putting up in the next couple weeks.  The RMAH will allow players to post their in-game items and money on an Auction House that will sell them for actual currency.  There's speculation as to how this will have an impact on the game, but we'll see as that happens.  It's an interesting system, and I'd personally love to be able to supplement my income by playing a game.

In the end though, there's only two companies that I would trust to do something like this:  Valve and Blizzard.  So while the launch was a bit rocky, things are already stabilized and soon we'll have tweaks to the game.

The game doesn't end on a cliff hanger, but leaves lots of doors open for a sequel.  There's things that don't get addressed in the story that really should have been, and it's my thinking that we'll see these in a Diablo III Expansion in the next couple years.  There's one or two very prolific zones that the players do not visit in the game that I can think of that can be used, and at least one character we'll need to hunt down to face.  Maybe the Templar can finally find his books, too.

All in all, I'm a big fan of the Diablo series, and this one is going to keep my interest going for a long time.   If you're new to the game, you're not missing out by not experiencing the other games.  If you're a long time player, there's subtleties to interactions that will mean more to you.  I'd recommend picking this one up, for sure. 

The Ones to Watch - May 2012

Spring is in full swing, and with it comes some really decent launches, as well as one that's going to be more the memorable.  Let's dive in and see what's going on this May!

Tera Online - PC - 5/1/12

Tera is Atari's latest MMO attempt with EnMasse Entertainment and Bluehole Studio, and promises MMO combat outside of a point and click interface where positioning matters.  With two big MMO's out right now, Tera has its work cut out for them, and Atari hasn't been very successful in the non free to play MMO market.  The interesting quirk to combat makes it one to keep an eye on, though.


Max Payne 3 - Multi Platform - 5/15/12

Max Payne came out back in 2001 to critical acclaim.  It was the first game to do Matrix's bullet time in any kind of fashion that was well done and entertaining.  It's gritty noir style and comic book layout told a tragic story, and not one person who has played the game will forget following trails of blood to the tune of a crying baby.  So when I see a bald, aging Max hidingbehind cover, and the colorful cover painted here, I worry a bit.  Ok, I worry a lot.  Rockstar isn't one to disappoint, though, and I'm really curious to see how they're taking Max into the latest generation of game. 


Diablo 3 - PC - 5/15/12

Diablo 3 is the Big One for May.  Blizzard has been teasing fans with this game for several years now and we're just a couple short weeks until release.  Blizzard is one of my top game companies, due to their attention to detail, replayability, and quality of product they put out.  This is the one to beat, everyone.  If it falls flat, Torchlight 2 is close to being released, but really, are we expecting anything but greatness here?

That's it, those are the Ones to Watch for May in the world of video gaming.  Keep checking back with us to see what we're looking forward to at E3, and Gencon!

Mass Effect 3 - Review

Most of this will be old news, as the entire internet has already been up in arms about the endings to Mass Effect 3, but I wanted to make sure to give my take on the situation after finishing it off about a week ago.

Mass Effect 2 was one of the best games made for this generation of consoles, so Bioware had a lot to live up to in creating this title.  I believe that for the most part they succeeded in telling an "against all odds and hope" story, but fail miserably in a few key components.

First, when starting the game and attempting to import my character from ME1 and ME2, the game was not able to import the character graphics.  So I had lost the face of my Commander Shepard.  This was disappointing, but not horribly detrimental to the game.

R.I.P. Commander Creepy Face

So after adjusting to the shock of having a new Shepard, I forged through the game with a key point of curiosity in my mind.  When I had played the demo, Wrex and Mordin were rescuing a Krogan female.  Well, in my games, both of those characters had died.  So I wanted to see how they would fit it into the story.  I'm happy to say that they moved forward without missing a beat.  The substituted characters felt right and I wouldn't have questioned them being there had I not played the demo.

The rest of the single player game was pretty great.  Stories made sense, I actively tried to seek out every possible side quest and mission item, I was driven by the game to amass as large and destructive of a force as I could, and it made me want to keep playing.  This is the sign of the great writing, game play, and storytelling that Bioware is known for.

The fights were epic, especially towards the end

As I neared the end, however, I noticed that my fleet was only going to be attacking at half power.  Puzzled by this, I did some spoiler free searching online to see why.  As it turns out, you can only bring your single player fleet up to full force by either playing multi-player, or interacting regularly with EA's mobile apps.  This is BS.  Tacked on multi-player that has a direct consequence in how your single player campaign ends is bad form.  Additionally, the readiness rating degrades over time, and has reduced impact the higher you get up, so let's say you brought it up to 70% and didn't play multi-player for a week, it would drop to somewhere in the neighborhood of 63%.

BS, BS, and more BS

Alright, so by this point I've taken my non-ME1 or ME2 Commander Shepard, went through an amazing single player experience, was forced into Multi-Player (which was ok, but nothing to write home about), downloaded an app to help keep degradation in check, and is on the way to the final epic ending.  The culmination of three games of build up and background lore.

**SPOILER ALERT**  - The following paragraphs are spoilers for the game's horrible ending, and have been written in black text, highlight to read.

I don't think in any of my game reviews have I spoken directly about how an ending happened, but I wanted to add my voice to this.  The ending is terrible.  My squad of Ashley and Liara had made their way through the battle field and launched missiles to destroy a Reaper guarding a teleport type lift into the now Reaper controller Citadel.  As we advance, another Reaper fires a massive laser into the group, scorching everything, and leaving Shepard to limp his way on board with a pistol.  Here's strike number one, a squad based game has just destroyed your squad.

As you get on board, you discover another person made it, Anderson, who was making the push with you.  You reunite on board the Citadel, and meet with the Illusive Man.  There is no explanation for how he was able to get in there by himself when a small military company led by the two greatest soldiers the universe had ever known couldn't get in without massive casualties.  Strike 2.

After a bit, the Citadel shows itself to Shepard as an image of a child that only he has seen through the entire game, once getting blown up in the beginning, and then several times in his nightmares.  This has opened up lots of discussion as to whether or not the child was real in the beginning, or if the Citadel was somehow taking his mind and forming something he could understand and just so happened to pick what was haunting him.  We then get to hear from the child that potentially everything that we did in three games might not matter, because we can either destroy all machines (thus killing anybody who relies on machines to live), control all machines, or create a magical new DNA that integrates machines and living beings.  For the record, I went with magical, or "green" as it's being referred to.

The universe then turns into a color, and chases after the Normandy, which for some reason is going through a mass relay at the time instead of fighting in the skies.  Joker eventually lands the ship on a new world, and somehow everybody is smiling and happy about it, not knowing exactly what it is that just happened.  Shepard is dead, but miraculously Ashley comes out of the ship just fine.  This is interesting because Ashley was blasted by a giant Reaper laser back on Earth.  Strike WTF.

**END SPOILER**

There's a lot more that Bioware could have done to wrap up this story better, and the one (yes, one) that was offered to us was just inconsistent with the rest of the game series.  They've since promised to go back and rework the ending, but it took an internet mob to make them realize that we weren't happy with how things were going here.

So, the final word.  Should you play Mass Effect 3?  Yes.  Should Bioware and EA change how the game works so you don't have to play multi-player to get the full benefit of single player?  YES.  Does the ending need to be changed?  Maybe, maybe not, but it really needs to be polished to the quality that we've grown to expect from Bioware.

Why I Canceled My Old Republic Account Today

For the past few years, I kept a not so close eye on Bioware's Star Wars: The Old Republic.  Watching the development of any MMO can be maddening, so I feel that you can only fall into into one of two camps - the die hard need to know everything players, and the people who just want to play the game.  I clearly fell into the second.  As someone who played WoW as an end game rogue from Vanilla through Wrath of the Lich King, I just wanted to enjoy the universe on this one and not pour over spreadsheets figuring out which gem was going to boost my DPS.

Whichever I needed was going to cost 2,000 apiece, anyway

I'm also a big fan of the Knights of the Old republic and 90% of the Knights of the Old Republic 2 games (why only 90%?  That's because that's all Bioware actually finished).  So it came as no surprise to anybody that not only did I hop onto the Old Republic bandwagon, but also got several friends to join in and even joined up with a fairly laid back but put together guild.  This is a big deal because we had all sworn off of MMO's back when we burned out on WoW.  But Bioware was making this one, it's based off of a franchise that I already know and love, why not give it a shot.

I'm happy to report that I'm not sorry that I did.  The Old Republic is probably the second most well put together MMO that I have played.  The only thing better than it is World of Warcraft, but it's not because of anything that could be considered bad.  WoW has had time to listen to player feedback and implement features that we now take for granted. 

Unfortunately, it's these features that Blizzard has managed to put in are what The Old Republic really needs.  Things like queueing for a dungeon with a random group, or an auction house with a very intuitive interface.  Add-ons that allowed players to figure out things in the game like what the best rotations are, and which classes are more suited to getting past obstacles in the late game. Cross realm battle grounds and instances.  These relatively minor things are what kept me playing, because it wasn't a huge hassle to find something to do.  That isn't so in The Old Republic.

To LFG in TOR, you add a comment to yourself so people can look at the LFG list and not know anything about you or what you want to do

A final item that players are complaining about is what they perceive to be "Dead Servers".  What had happened was in the initial player rush, many servers filled up and created long (30+ minute) queues to sign in with.  That's very exciting for a launch, but now that many people have gotten their fill of the game and left, the remaining players are scattered across 170 or so servers.  There are reports that at peak on the Republic side fleet that there are only about 25 players logged in on some servers.  Things like this just make it more frustrating to get anything done in the game.

And here's where I come in.  I had the extreme fortune of being on the Imperial side, which hosts considerably more players.  Unfortunately, I play in the later evening hours, so I still got to feel the Republic's pain.  It is impossible to find enough people to do anything with.  I had specced as a tank class, knowing from my days in WoW that Tanks and Healers are always needed, and instead find myself unable to do anything because there's nobody around to do anything with.  While finishing up my class quests, I had to turn down every Heroic quest since there was only seven people on the entire planet.

Though they may all have been on Illum destroying the Republic 10 - 1.

I know there's other things that I could have been doing.  I could level up other characters, except the Legacy system isn't implemented yet.  I could PvP, but it was unappealing because of the lack of design in the levels that didn't offer coordination between players who didn't know each other.  I could frustrate myself with finishing what are essentially platforming puzzles in an MMO and collect Holocrons that you essentially have to have a guide to know where to get.

People like 45 minute spawns for a 30 minute balloon ride that randomly despawns, right?

SWTOR does a lot of things right.  The story, the environment, and especially the dialog are all just fantastic.  When I went off to do a quest, I knew why I wanted to do it.  But there's enough missing from the current offering that makes me not want to play anymore.  I think Bioware can pull itself together and get a lot of this fixed, and as many have said before, WoW was a pale shadow of what it is now.  I think SWTOR can be a real powerhouse game, and I'm glad I got my character up to 50 and finished my story.  But for now, I am going to have to see what they've got in store to make their game a bit friendlier.  Good luck guys, drop me an email when you've got something a bit more magical.

The Ones to Watch - March 2012

After a much needed break, VG30 is back and ready to look into the future of 2012.  We have a lot of plans, and a lot of news that will be happening this year, as well as some expected announcements from the big three.  Before we get too far ahead of ourselves, let's take a look at what's coming out in March.

Street Fighter X Tekken - 3/6/12 - Multiple Systems

Capcom continues to beat its cash cow by crossing over with Tekken in a something that fighting game fans should probably be excited about.  Controls for both sides are designed to work for their respective games, meaning that playing as Heihachi won't be a bastardization of the Tekken scheme.  One note of warning, however.  Based solely on Capcom's track record, there's very likely going to be an "Ultimate Edition" by the end of the year for $40, so if you're just curious about it, save your money until then.


Mass Effect 3 - 3/6/12 - Multiple Systems

The sequel to VG30's 2010 Game of the Year is about to come out, thus heralding the 2012 age of gaming.  Oh sure, there's been some news in the past few months, the Vita came out, Kingdoms of Amalur wasn't too shabby, but let's face it, there hasn't been a block buster yet this year.  Mass Effect 3 is very likely to be that blockbuster.  There's lots of controversy going on right now in regards to EA's Origin system, and some rumors that the source of the Xbox Live account hacks are tied directly to it, but I'm willing to bet many people will choose to forget about it for a little while while Mass Effect 3 shows us what games are supposed to be like all over again.


Mario Party 9 - 3.11.12 - Wii

The franchise that will never say die, Mario Party 9 returns to us just in time to watch the Wii get sunset without anybody ever officially saying it's being sunset.  A new mechanic allows the players to all move together, creating some questions on how useful the board design is at that point.  Time will tell if the masses will accept it into their collections.


Silent Hill: Downpour - 3.13.12 - Multiple Consoles

The latest Silent Hill offering is about to be released, likely disappointing fans everywhere.  For newcomers to the series, somebody is inexplicably drawn to the foggy town of Silent Hill in which their nightmares come to life along with various other unsettling creatures inhabitants.  The last couple of Silent Hill games have been met with less than stellar reviews, can they bring it back into the lime light with this one?


Resident Evil: Operation Raccoon City - 3.20.12 - Multi-Release

Capcom's latest attempt to bring the action back to Zombies and the T-Virus as well as the backdrop for the second best Resident Evil game, Resident Evil: Operation Raccoon City is a "3rd Person Team Based Shooter".  There hasn't been much success with this formula in the past for them, and with Resident Evil 6 on its way, this feels like a way to placate fans for little while.