TallGuyCalif's Computer Gaming and Entertainment Site

Category: Games I Like

  • New Star Trek Online Content

    The folks that run Star Trek Online are doing their best to keep us from becoming bored and to draw gamers in. Now they have added some new weekly episodes, plus some daily repeatable missions that involve fighting the Breen. On the ground, the Breen use freeze grenades and things to slow or freeze you, while in space, they are tough cookies. They are also introducing each episode with a Star Trek-looking title as you warp into the system. Pretty nice! The first episode is up now, and I’d guess the next will pop up in a few days, so I’m looking forward to it!

    I also has a fun mission against the Borg last night with lots of fun ground combat. Somehow, fighting the Borg in ground combat seems more fun than fighting Romulans or Klingons. Perhaps it’s that they keep beaming in more to fight!

  • More Epic Citadel

    The tech demo looks pretty awesome even on my iPhone 3GS.

  • Epic Citadel Demo

    The new demo of the Unreal Engine running on the iPad and iPhone is pretty amazing. It competes with engines like that of Morrowind and Oblivion for detail and the reflections seem even better. Take a look.

  • Dragon Age:Origins

    One of my favorite games of the last year was Dragon Age:Origins. It is a tremendous RPG with good graphics and a great story (to be expected from Bioware games). It is almost an old-school RPG, like Neverwinter Nights, but simplified and not using D&D rules. In the game, you can choose your origin, whether you are a mage, dwarf noble, dwarf commoner, wood elf, city elf, or human noble. Each of those six backgrounds has a deeply compelling origin story that is universally sad and filled with unjust death (and more) that sets the stage for the game. The origin story and some of your subsequent actions make various interactions later in the game very different (i.e., you really want to kill Arl Howe if you’re a human noble).

    You control a party of yourself and 3 others that are controlled by the computer (or you can choose to control one of them and let the computer control your character). Each character has a simple set of customizable rules that you can set to make them a healer or ranged or a magic damage dealer, for example. Battles take place in pausable real-time, so you can pause, issue commands to your party, then resume very intuitively. The battles are immersive and great fun.

    I played each of the origin stories at least once, and played the game through three times as different characters (it’s much faster the 2nd and 3rd times, because you don’t have to watch all the cutscenes). I made different choices each time, some of which I regretted later, but that’s part of the fun. I think mages are the most powerful, particularly when they get to be Arcane Warriors. The scout/assassin class is also really good once you level up a bit, with regular insta-kills and the ability to avoid damage through dexterity. Warriors are just boring…

    Highly recommended for great fun!

  • Star Trek Online

    A game that I’ve been playing on and off for a few months is Star Trek Online. Because it is Star Trek, I signed on early, during the beta period, and even bought a lifetime subscription. Even back then, the space combat was quite good, though it is only partially 3-axis. Remember that these are big starships, not little fighters, so they turn slowly and it is really a game of “facing” (which weapons can be brought to bear on the target). The ships can’t roll over or flip upside down, which is different from many space games, but consistent with the Star Trek universe, where ships are always facing “up” unless they are drifting.

    Because it is an MMO, some missions are played with other players, so together, you can split targets or gang up on one. Each player only has a single target at a time, so half the weapons may be idle because of facings (certain Bridge Officer powers allow multi-target firing). All in all, the space battles are fun and look good.

    In the early days, ground combat was horrible. Since then, it has vastly improved, but is still much weaker than the starship battles. In ground combat, you and four of your computer-controlled Bridge Officers (BOs) go up against groups of enemies spread throughout a mission area. You fight Klingons, Jem Hadar, Cardassians, Romulans, Borg, and more, and each has their own characteristics that affect how much damage they do and how much damage your weapons do. The ground battles can get quite frantic and are sometimes fun, but are usually a chore. But they are somewhat Star Trek-ish, so it’s okay.

    There are also a few large group battles both on ground and in space, and, as with other missions, the space ones are mostly fun, while the ground ones are a pain. The exception is a mission to defeat a Crystalline Entity (remember that from TNG?) – this is a terrible space mission that I have never succeeded in. Just stupidly hard, particularly when other players make mistakes that heal the damn thing.

    Overall, I like Star Trek Online and think it is good fun. If you have any interest in Star Trek, check it out. The price on Steam and elsewhere has dropped to only $20, I think, then there’s a monthly fee after the first month.

    You can look my characters up in the game. My captain page is here: http://www.startrekonline.com/character_profiles/user_characters/TallGuyCalif

  • Still Enjoying Star Ocean

    I am quite enjoying the plot of Star Ocean: The Last Hope. Edge has just met up with his old pal Crowe and things are starting to get even more interesting. My party seems filled out and Faize has just left (which is okay – I worry that he may not be a good guy by the end). The cut scenes are incredibly long, but mostly okay. The really slow voice acting of Sarah is quite annoying. Someone should give her a cup of coffee.

    I’ve never played a game with cut scenes as long as this one, though I hear Metal Gear Solid 4 also has long ones. I’m beginning to appreciate the artistic style of the game, and some of it is rendered beautifully (particularly the charaters), but other times, the blockiness and aliasing hurt my eyes. The music is very good and sets the mood well.

  • New start in Oblivion

    A couple days ago, I did a new start in Oblivion. But wait, TallGuyCalif, you were playing Star Ocean! Why switch?

    With the scarcity of save points in Star Ocean, sometimes I need to play for a couple hours before coming to the next one (I’m in the Purgatorium dungeon where there are few save points). Since I’ve been busy working, I don’t have hours to spare. Therefore, Star Ocean is out and Oblivion is in. With Oblivion, I can play for 20 or 30 minutes and save wherever I want so I can do crazy things like eat dinner or go to bed.

    Besides, Oblivion is good fun.

  • Star Ocean movie

    I got a nifty HD capture device (more on that later) so I can upload game videos. Here is the first: a short battle in Star Ocean: Last Hope. You can easily see that some of the artwork is well-done and looks great, but other bits, particularly when zoomed out in the battle are lo-res and horrible.

  • iPhone Game: Solebon Solitaire

    Probably my favorite iPhone game is Solebon Solitaire, a huge collection of card games in one iPhone app. It has the usual Klondike in two variations, as well as tough ones, like Demon, and many others. It is very high quality, yet quite inexpensive (I think I paid $0.99 for it shortly after the App Store opened). I wish it were updated for the iPad, but it looks good enough on the iPad even at 2x zoom that I sometimes play it there. If you’re looking for something that can give you quick card games or long, complex ones, I highly recommend Solebon Solitaire.

  • More Star Ocean thoughts

    I’m still enjoying Star Ocean: The Last Hope International, but it is clearly a family (and player) unfriendly game because of its stupid save system. In order to save, you need to find a save point, which is a pink/purple glowing floating sphere thingy. From there, you can save into one of 20 save slots, overwriting as needed. I’m sure this sort of thing evolved back when consoles had no built-in storage and users had to buy overpriced memory cards to save their games. Now we all have big hard drives in our consoles (except for the crazy Xbox 360 Microsoft is coming out with with only 4GB of Flash memory), so let us save whenever we want! Anyway, the problem is that some areas don’t have any handy save points, so it could be hours before a save is possible. This means things like eating dinner and going to bed are problematic if you can’t get away to do them. I’ve had to leave the game paused during dinner because I couldn’t save when I needed to. Bloody annoying.

    On the other hand, the game has a huge amount of content. I have clearly gotten my money’s worth, particularly since I only paid $30 for the game from Amazon. The game has so many aspects that I haven’t really explored yet, like crafting. It is funny to see the Japanese influence (it is a JRPG, after all), with all the Japanese food items rather than pizza and burgers. It’s a bit incongruous that the voices are all Americanized (at least the English voices are). And, yes, the voice acting is as bad as you would expect, but that’s okay, because the game is fun.

    Oh yeah, another annoying save issue: after you save, it writes “system data” (whatever that means), then it asks you if you want to continue saving, at which point you can save again. But I just saved, why do I want to save again? Seems crazy, so I always say “no,” but surely the developers had something in mind…