TallGuyCalif's Computer Gaming and Entertainment Site

Category: Games I Like

  • Finished inFAMOUS 2 and really enjoyed it

    I played the “good” side of inFamous 2 and finished it last night. I really enjoyed it and even think the ending was appropriate. The fighting was great and the game looks good and is fun.

    I played the good side because I’m not a big fan of hurting innocents, even if they are just bits in a machine. I’m told the evil path ending is very different from the one I saw and that it also is fun and appropriate. After I finished my ending, the game put me back to before I made my choice for the final battle. I hoped that I could then select the other option to see the other ending, but no story missions were available. I’m afraid I’m not willing to play the game again on the evil path just to see the evil ending.

    In short, I enjoyed inFamous 2 and recommend it to anyone with a PS3!

    Now on to finishing Amalur and Uncharted 3 and Final Fantasy XIII-2 and more Star Trek Online and Lord of the Rings Online. Way too much stuff to do and no time…

  • On mudcrabs in Amalur

    As a side note on the last post regarding Kingdoms of Amalur, I am happy to report that mudcrabs in Amalur are not hostile. Unlike the annoying mudcrabs in Elder Scrolls games, like Skyrim and Oblivion, the mudcrabs don’t attack you and aren’t edible.

    I presume they were included as sort of a poke at Bethesda and the damn mudcrabs, to which I say: Bravo, Amalur devs!

  • Enjoying Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning

    When last I wrote, I had just finished inFamous. Since then, I finished Dungeon Siege 3 and enjoyed it. If you can get it for a good price, I recommend it, but don’t pick the gun girl unless you want a big challenge.

    A friend loaned me inFamous 2, but it didn’t grab me as much as the first one. Everything is more polished than the original, but somehow, it doesn’t seem as fresh and fun. But, everything I’ve read says the 2nd one is better than the first, so surely I will get into it.

    I picked up Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning from Amazon for something like $16, and have really been enjoying it. The game is an Action RPG, so the combat is fast and fun. The skill tree is split into Might (melee stuff), Finesse (daggers and archery), and Sorcery (staffs and magic), and it is possible to level in all three trees, though it seems to make sense to concentrate on one, at least at the start. Weapon types include longswords, greatswords, hammers, daggers, staffs, bows, scepters (ranged magic weapons), and chakrams (fast medium range magic), and you can use any of them, though you need bonuses from the skill trees to use them well.

    The plot of the game is, so far, not as compelling as Skyrim’s or Oblivion’s, but both the main quest line and side quests are usually bite-size chunks, which makes them quick and fun. So far, my character hasn’t died, though I’ve come close. The level matching is very smooth. In the starting area, killing wolves was easy, but now they have rogue-like fast attacks that make them a serious challenge. There’s no grinding required, so just doing the quests is good fun!

    Other good points include useful maps, including the mini-maps, and an excellent fast-travel system. There are some bugs in a couple of quests, and my quest text is no longer showing up in the list. It’s a shame 38 Studios shutdown. The game is good and, apparently, sold well, so it’s disappointing that they aren’t around to make more good games and to support this one.

    Upcoming, of course, is Borderlands 2. I loved the original, except for the lame ending, so I hope the sequel is as good or better. The co-op mode sounds fun, if I can convince any of my friends to buy it. I bought a new NVIDIA card (yes, I swore them off because they kept failing, but this was a good deal), and it included a coupon for Borderlands 2. At least I don’t have to pay the confiscatory $60 being charged right now, which sets a bad precedent for PC games!

  • Enjoyed inFamous, trying to finish Dungeon Siege 3

    At the end of last week, I finished inFamous and really enjoyed it. If you have a PS3 and haven’t played inFamous, pick up a used copy for cheap or get it on PSN (maybe$20? I forget). The powers are great and it is tremendous fun to blow stuff up! Even the story line is fairly interesting and is certainly well done.

    I pulled Dungeon Siege 3 out of mothballs and am trying to finish it. It’s pretty fun, looks good, and I am mostly enjoying it. There are only 4 possible characters, and you choose one at the start as your player character, and all the others can eventually become part of your party. The problem is, I picked the gun girl, since I was interested in playing an RPG with guns. The guns are neat, but she is the weakest character, apparently, so I die a lot. It turns out that the player character tends to attract all the aggro (or almost all), so the companion character can kill things as I run around a lot (kiting, I think it is called). This isn’t always true, but when the baddies are fast melee attackers, then if I don’t run and dodge all the time, I’m dead fast. The problem is that it takes long enough to turn and fire the guns that the baddies are upon me before I can get a shot off, then I take some hits and end up with low health. There doesn’t seem to be a way to switch to a different character to control, which is a bummer. I’m somewhat stuck in what I think is the final boss fight, so I hope I can figure out a reasonable strategy to survive it…

    After that, perhaps a change of pace back to Gears of War 3, which I’ve started several times and never finished. Or a friend has loaned me inFamous 2. And Borderlands 2 is coming out soon, though I will likely wait until a game of the year edition goes on sale…

  • Busy enjoying inFamous

    I haven’t posted in ages, mostly because I haven’t had too much to post about.

    I have been playing inFamous on PS3 for the most part, and enjoying it a lot. It’s a pretty fun game with a fair story, lots of action and cool abilities to blow stuff up, and good controls. The controls are particularly important on PS3 games, because aiming with a controller pretty much stinks. With inFamous, aiming is still a bit tricky, but there are enough wide-area attacks (grenades, lightning, and more) that you can still kill the baddies without too much trouble. There is also a very nice zoom/aim/slow time ability that is great for headshots on baddies.

    There is a moral choice system in inFamous that unlocks special abilities and levels of attacks if you max out either as good or bad. These are useful enough that you shouldn’t play down the middle. Either be a good guy or an asshole – make the choice.

    inFamous is interesting, because you play as Cole, and you can’t customize his looks, change his gender, choose his clothes, or any of the things other games let you do. As a guy, I’m okay with that, though I don’t know how well women would be attracted to the game, which is a shame, because it’s a fun, easy to pick up game, though it has many challenges.

    I played a few minutes of my Minstrel in LOTRO last weekend, but sadly haven’t played Star Trek Online in more than a week. Luckily, LOTRO and STO are comfortable and easy to pick up where I left off, so I can and will jump back to them soon.

    I started Final Fantasy XIII-2, which is fun and perhaps an improvement over FF-XIII, but will not continue with it for the moment. Until I finish inFamous, there’s no point in starting sometime else. I have way too many half-finished games that I will probably never get back to, including Dungeon Siege III and Witcher 2, and that makes me sad.

  • My current games: Started Final Fantasy XIII-2, Stopped DDO, Playing STO

    My gaming life has been fairly hectic recently because of work and real-life issues (don’t you hate it when those get in the way?). So this will be a brief update on my meager gaming recently.

    At the urging of a friend, I started playing Dungeons and Dragons Online. It’s a fairly neat game, and certainly has potential, but somehow, I wasn’t enjoying it. I tended to leave every play session a little stressed, which is not ideal when I’m trying to have fun. So for the moment, DDO is on the shelf.

    I’ve played a little bit of Star Trek Online. I have 2 active characters, a Federation Tactical guy and and Klingon Engineer. I am impressed with the changes they’ve made to the Fed missions, and generally think the game has significantly improved since the open beta when I started playing. On the other hand, I still think leveling is too fast. I’m already a mid-level Captain and have had do to very few side missions, cluster explorations, or other things typically associated with MMO grinding. I think the rate of progress would be better if it were perhaps 20% slower, to give us more incentive to explore and do all the patrol missions and such. I’m also pleased with the Klingon story line so far, though much of it mirrors some of the Federation stuff. When I last tried a Klingon, there was no story, just PvE and PvP battles.

    Both my primary STO characters are in fleets. The Klingon fleet is large, well established, and working hard on building an awesome fleet starbase. The Federation character is in a much smaller, younger fleet, so my character is leader in fleet projects to build the starbase, though a couple others sometimes take the lead. I used one of my established characters, a level 50 admiral, to help someone create yet another fleet, but I haven’t done much with that fleet yet. Maybe someday.

    I started Final Fantasy XIII-2 on the PS3 last night and it’s okay. It is surely a pretty game, as one would expect, and so far, the combat is easy. They have added cinematic action, in which you have to hit certain buttons or move a stick just at the right time to land attacks, which is somewhat annoying. Some of the other features appear a little simpler than FF XIII was, plus now they’re trying to sell lots of DLC for companions and costumes and such. Pretty annoying. I’ll probably continue playing, but not very often.

  • Kinda liked the Mass Effect 3 ending!

    Even though I haven’t played any Mass Effect 3 multiplayer, nor the iPad game (though I did buy it when it was a dollar a week or so ago), I finished the Mass Effect 3 story line and didn’t mind any of the 3 endings I tried. There are some spoilers below, so if you still have plans to finish ME3, stop reading now.

    Because I didn’t do all those extra things mentioned above, my galactic readiness level was stuck at a miserable 50%, so there was no hope of Shepard living happily ever after. The final sequence begins after a fairly brutal cutscene where all the troops are wiped out (well, except for a gravely wounded Shepard who soldiers on, plus a couple of others, whom I won’t reveal so you can still have some sense of wonder when you play it. After Shepard opens the Citadel, he is confronted by an AI (the Catalyst) that says he needs to choose between controlling the reapers or killing them. There are a couple of other choices that I’ll describe too. I had read that there was a choice to merge organic and machine, thus creating a hybrid lifeform, but I must not have met some criteria, so that wasn’t presented.

    Annoyingly, there is no way to save the game during this sequence, so to see various endings, you should play the whole 20 or so minute sequence again and try a different choice. This is disappointing, since the one thing that denotes Bioware games is the good writing, yet they want to make us suffer. Instead, we should be able to save to explore all the possible options and get all that good writing and story. Anyway, after the first playthrough, I learned my lesson: the game autosaves at various points, so Alt-Tabbing out and killing the game, then copying the Saves folder allows easy restoration to the previous point.

    The first time I tried, instead of choosing to destroy the Reapers or control them, I shot the AI. That pissed it off, so the reapers went ahead and destroyed all life. But, Liara left a time capsule for the next epoch so they could fight the Reapers and the epilogue scene shows that someone managed to do so 50,000 years in the future. OK, so I made a difference.

    Next, I decided not to make a decision, which also pissed off the AI and resulted in the same ending as above.

    So then I destroyed the Reapers, killing myself in the process. The Normandy was pulled out of the Mass Effect system and crashed, but they survived. EDI, the ship’s AI was killed by the same effect that nuked the Reapers, since she was a machine. So the crew survived and I stopped the Reapers. Not bad…

    Lastly, I decided to control the Reapers. In this case, Shepard became an AI, replacing the Catalyst, and converted the Reapers to be good. The Normandy still crashed, but EDI survived and the Reapers helped rebuild the Mass Effect gates. Not a bad ending at all – eternal “life” and the Reapers on our side.

    So, while Shepard didn’t get to live a long and happy life chasing women and aliens or alien women, in the end, it wasn’t nearly so depressing as all the stories I had read. A fairly good ending to the series.

  • Great iPad games on sale! Civ Rev and Pirates

    I just noticed that a couple of very fun iPad games are on sale for $1 so check them out in the iTunes store! I don’t know how long the sale lasts, so check that the price hasn’t gone back up.

    First is Civ Rev, an iPad version of Civilization Revolution that was released for consoles. It is a simplified version of Civilization, but maintains the elements of exploration, managing cities and resources (though tends to be more forgiving that Civilization games normally are), research for new technologies, and, of course, conquering your rivals. I had foot surgery last weekend and had to keep my foot elevated, so I couldn’t play PC games. I enjoyed a couple of games of Civ Rev – it’s a fun and engaging game that is well worth getting!

    The other game of interest is Sid Meier’s Pirates. I first played this game on PC years ago, and it was fun, but then I got it for PSP and was totally enthralled. I haven’t played the iPad version, but if it is even close to the PSP one, it is great. This is a pirate game, full of ship battles, exploration, land skirmishes, treasure hunting, diplomacy, and dancing. Yes, I said dancing. There is a nifty dancing mini-game in which you must impress the Governors’ daughters in order to gain favor and eventually find one or two to marry! It sounds corny, but it’s quite a challenge towards the end of the game, and pretty fun. The game is clever and fun, so check it out!

  • My ship in Star Trek Online

    My Constitution class cruiser in Star Trek Online is very conventional, but still looks pretty good.

    USS Hermosa Beach

    The NX designation, rather than the usual NCC, is because I am a lifetime subscriber or played the beta or some such thing. The ship’s name, Hermosa Beach, is because I used to live in Hermosa Beach and still miss it.

    I played one of the PvE (player vs. environment) multiplayer instances last night, Starbase 24. I’d played it with my other characters, but they’ve changed it a bit. There used to be ship combat, then ground combat in the station. Now it’s just lots of ship combat with a group of other players. Something interesting was the courtesy shown in the loot drops. For high quality loot, it gave a choice of “Need, Greed, or Pass.” In LOTRO, most people choose Need for everything, which is annoying. In STO, people chose Greed for non-essential goodies and some folks even passed on things they couldn’t use. So does that mean STO has a better class of player? Maybe…

  • Coming to terms with how my Mass Effect 3 game will end

    I’m well along in the final mission sequence of Mass Effect 3 and should be able to wrap up the game in the next few days. I hear that there are hours of cutscenes left, so perhaps they will exceed the remaining game play.

    Yesterday, I read ahead in the IGN walkthrough and read about the endgame options. I didn’t read the details of the fights to get me there, so I will still have the joy of exploring and learning how to manage the tough enemies between me and the Citadel. It turns out that because I haven’t played multiplayer or the iOS game, I have no hope of getting the best ending in which everyone lives. In fact, though I did all the side missions and gained as much support as I could, it looks like I will have to pick an ending where Shepard dies, the Earth is devastated or destroyed, and probably the whole crew will die. But at least I should be able to stop the Reapers.

    Yesterday, I was pretty depressed about it, but I’ve decided that I will put up with it and finish the game. Perhaps if the iOS game goes on sale for $1 again, I’ll buy it and retry the end game if I can boost my readiness level to see if I can do better. I can’t imagine spending much time playing multiplayer to boost the galactic readiness level, but I may try and see.