TallGuyCalif's Computer Gaming and Entertainment Site

Category: Games I’m Playing

  • Currencies and Store Integration in Star Trek Online

    Having been a Star Trek Online player since the beginning, I’ve seen the evolution of currencies and stores in the game. Initially, there were energy credits that were used to buy things in in-game stores, like weapons and gear for your characters. There were also Cryptic points, which were bought with real money to buy goodies, like ships and things. There were also other special purpose currencies, like ship tokens that you got when you earned a new ship through leveling up, and medals for PvP stuff that I had no familiarity with because the PvP mostly sucked.

    Now, the developers have somewhat simplified currencies and stores, though they’ve added some. There are still energy credits, earned for missions, and they can be used in the Exchange (like the Auction House in LOTRO) where players buy and sell excess gear, as well as for most stores in the game for weapons and gear. The medals and such have now been replaced by dilithium, which is earned by doing daily missions, PvP, and in other ways that I don’t know about yet. Dilithium Stores tend to have higher quality gear that can only be bought with dilithium. There are also some Ferengi crystals that show up from time to time. These are fairly rare, but allow the purchase of nifty and rare items, though I don’t yet have enough crystals to buy anything, so I haven’t done so.

    The most impressive thing is the seamless integration of Cryptic Points into the stores in the game, particularly the clothing and new ship stores. Now, when you want to equip your Bridge Officers or yourself with a new outfit, the store shows lots of items that are only available if you pay with Cryptic Points, the real-money currency. Same with ships: if you want a niftier ship, you can get one if you pay with Cryptic Points (you still can’t go above your level range, though). Very nicely done and a clever way to exploit (and I mean that in a good way) the Free-to-Play model that Star Trek Online has adopted.

    Overall, the currency and store integration in Star Trek Online is well done and should serve as a model for other games in the future.

  • Star Trek Online, LOTRO, Saints Row 3, and Infamous – lots of gaming, little time

    I finished the main plot of Saints Row: the Third last week (as noted here), and even did the other version of the ending (which killed Shaundi, yet I still seem to be able to call her up when I need Homie support, so it’s all good). Therefore, what am I still doing playing the game?

    Well, the game is so fun that I am enjoying collecting all the collectibles, wiping out rival gangs, doing all the side missions, etc. I did some of those things, especially the collectibles, solo, but the others are best with a friend. I had a great time doing co-op missions with friends, and will keep the game handy so I can continue to do so!

    I also played a bit of Star Trek Online and am enjoying it. The early missions are mostly unchanged from what I did more than a year ago, but the game is generally more polished. There is a new Duty Officer system, which adds complexity, but may provide some bonuses, though I haven’t quite figured it out. The crafting is still pretty bad, though is better than it was at game launch. The biggest issue is lack of clear explanations of where to get blueprints. I presume some are for sale from the vendors on Memory Alpha, but in the tutorials, everything is given to you, so it doesn’t exactly make it obvious.

    I also played a bit of LOTRO and was very pleased to find some of my kinship-mates online. I did some missions with my level 40s Minstrel and my 75 Lore Master. LOTRO is a very comfortable game to play, though playing with my Minstrel in the North Downs reminded me of the slow and annoying travel system in many areas (though it is better in the new areas). There must be a fine line for the developers: they want us to spend as much time in-game as possible, yet don’t want to piss us off so we quit.

    I also spent a short time in Skyrim, gathering the Crown of Barenziah and killing a dragon or two.

    Finally, I spent some time playing Infamous on the PS3. I like the game mechanics and am very intrigued with the story, but aiming stinks (at least for me) and the penalty for dying is pretty high. I will likely continue to play the game occasionally, so I can figure out the story line.

  • Star Trek Online Videos

    I’m enjoying Star Trek Online so much that I made a couple of videos. I bought the Constitution class cruiser upgrade, so I wanted to show it off, too.

    The first clip is sector space leaving Sol and heading to the Delta Volanis cluster.

    The second, much longer, clip shows one of the random encounters that occur in clusters. In this case, I got to fight some Orion pirates. You can see that the cruiser is not very maneuverable, but gets the job done. You can also see me pick up some of the “anomaly” crafting materials, including the frequency matching minigame.

    If driving starships around and blowing stuff up sounds like fun to you, try Star Trek Online.

  • Impressed by Star Trek Online improvements, but new bug annoys

    I played a bit of Star Trek Online yesterday and an mostly impressed with the improvements since I last played more than a year ago. Since STO is now free to play, there is no reason not to try it if you are a Star Trek fan. It looks like the strategy may be working, because space seemed more crowded than I remember it.

    The interface has been cleaned up a bit and made more shiny. The mission log is nicer than I’ve seen in other games, MMO or otherwise, so that’s an improvement. There are a few things that I’m sure used to work and don’t seem to now: dragging items into your bridge officers’ inventory doesn’t seem to work well, but I will keep experimenting. It certainly isn’t completely intuitive and obvious.

    For those not familiar with STO, bridge officers (BOFFs) are your helpers that you can train and upgrade. They provide abilities both on your starship and in ground combat and are generally a good thing. You earn BOFFs through some missions and as you level, so in the end, you can have a significant cadre of helpers. Most ships only have a few BOFF slots, so you can use skills from 3 or 4 of them on the ship. You can also take 4 BOFFs with you on away missions, so pick ones that can heal you or provide buffs or combat abilities. Because you can eventually have lots of BOFFs, it is possible to have a completely different group in the ship’s stations from the ones you bring along for away missions. This lets you allocate skill points among more of them so you can promote them as you rise in rank.

    Then you get a BOFF, you can customize the appearance. Well, at least you could a year ago. Now that mechanic is broken, so when I got a new BOFF, it showed the appearance of the last BOFF I got (or in some cases, my first one). That is a nasty bug that is unfortunate, since changes in MMOs are permanent – you can’t just reload a save file if the game has a problem. I hope they fix that bug soon, or else many teenage players will not be able to give their BOFFs huge boobs and skimpy outfits.

    Because the game is free to play, the money grubbing is more apparent than ever. There are now several forms of currency: Energy credits, which you earn in game; Dilithium, which you apparently also earn in game and is new since I last played, so I don’t know what it is for yet; and Cryptic Points, which you buy with real money and is the way to get cool ships and such.

    I have managed to recover most of the XBox 360 controller settings for the space missions, but am still working on the ground ones, so I’m a bit hampered there.

    Overall, the game has continued to get better since the beta version and is now a pretty polished thing. I’m disappointed by the BOFF customization bug and not sure how the developers haven’t caught it, but I’m sure it will be fixed sometime. So try STO – you’ll probably like it!

  • Enjoyed Saints Row the Third

    I thoroughly enjoyed playing Saints Row the Third! This is the first Saints Row game I’ve played, so I wasn’t quite sure what to expect. I did expect something like GTA IV, but with wackiness, and that’s essentially what I got. The plot isn’t terrible, but you can do lots of other things besides the plot, as this is an open world game. As you get reputation and money, there are many helpful upgrades to your health, your weapons, your vehicles, your Homies, and your cribs and strongholds. The driving in the game is nearly as annoying as in GTA games, but you seem to be able to get away with a lot before people start shooting at you. As you buy up shops, crack houses, apartment buildings, etc., your income and control grow, but the added benefit is that you can run into a shop that you own to get rival gangs and the police to stop following you. This becomes important, as there are endless supplies of enemies.

    I played some of the game in co-op mode, which is great! A friend could join me (since I was the newbie, she joined my game) and help me through missions. The joining player keeps their abilities, including weapons and vehicles that the hosting player may not have earned yet, so my friend was able to summon VTOL jets for us to kick butt in. Co-op vehicle are great, because one of us drives and the other can target enemies and shoot them. Solo vehicle play is more of a challenge, because one player has to do both. Therefore, to compensate, the game makes the missions a little harder when playing with a partner. Since I played on the PS3, voice chat was seamless and worked perfectly.

    In the game, you fight several rival gangs, each identified by colors (red, green, and blue) that are visually different from the purple color of the Saints. You also fight the police and a military group called STAG. Most of the time, rivals don’t attack you on site, though if you wander into one of their gatherings, watch out! If you hit one of their vehicles or do something too naughty in front of the cops, people will start shooting at you. When driving, usually you can bump cars and pedestrians with immunity, but sometimes, an enraged motorist will chase you for miles, occasionally ramming you. The best bet in this case, is to stop, get out, and shoot the bastard.

    Though I made a previous post about morals and not enjoying killing innocents, Saints Row the Third didn’t give me many qualms. For the most part, hitting pedestrians doesn’t kill them, and mostly the people who you kill intentionally need killing. Yes, the game involves drugs and hos, but you don’t see anyone using drugs, and only the baddies abuse their hos, and in many missions, you rescue hos.

    There are a number of very funny surprises that happen later in the game, so I won’t divulge them here, but there are many laughs in the game. The music is great too, from the music as you are doing missions to the radio stations in the vehicles. Very well done!

    So I finished the plot mission, but that doesn’t mean I’m completely done. I haven’t finished all the upgrades or neighborhood takeovers. Besides, since co-op play is so great, I will keep the game handy so I can play it with my friends.

    Saints Row the Third is wacky fun and well worth playing!

  • Finished main quest in Skyrim – Time to Move On

    Gaming has been odd for me lately. Many of the people in my kinship in LOTRO have dropped out of playing, as grinding for gear at level 75 gets old really fast. I have been on LOTRO a few times in the last couple weeks working on my lower level characters primarily, but my heart isn’t in it.

    Meanwhile, I’ve been enjoying Skyrim a lot. Mostly… There is a huge amount of content in Skyrim, some of it dynamically generated, so I could go on playing for ages, but it gets a little tedious. So I finished up the Skyrim main quest line over the last couple days. I’m already the leader of the Companions, the Mage school, and the Dark Brotherhood. I saved the Thieves Guild and fixed up the Bard guild. I haven’t chosen a side in the war yet, mostly because both sides are scumbags, so neither appeals to me in any way.

    So I’m going to step away from Skyrim for a while. I see there is a new update (1.6) that will allow mounted combat, which sounds kinda cool, but is only beta for PC, so I’ll wait until it is final. I also had the thought of trying a speed run through Skyrim to see how how low a level I could be to complete the game. I imagine it could be done at level 20, but am not sure. Could be fun to try. But not just yet. And, of course, when Dawnguard comes out, I’m sure I’ll have to send even more money to Bethesda (via Steam) to check it out, though I don’t really have any desire to be a vampire.

    I think next, I will try to finish Uncharted 3, then maybe move on to either Saints Row 3 or Final Fantasy XIII-2, all on the PS3. And I also think I will get back into Star Trek Online. I haven’t jumped back into STO because I lost my gamepad setup file when I rebuilt my PC (oops, forgot to back it up, because it was buried in the Program Files folder of STO), and I have been reluctant to spend the time to figure it out again.

    I will keep LOTRO on the back burner for now. I may end up buying the next expansion dealing with the Riders of Rohan, but not until release date nears.

  • Are Fantasy Game Developers all Conservative?

    I’ve played many of the most popular fantasy/RPG games and I’ve noticed a very common theme: the past was always better than the present. So does that mean all the game developers are conservative? I don’t mean political conservative, which I’m sure most aren’t, but believing the past was better and it’s too bad it changed and got worse kind of conservative.

    In so many games, the past was “more powerful” and otherwise better than now, so the protagonist has to run around lots of ruins and find powerful ancient artifacts and secrets to fight the current evil. In Dragon Age, the Wardens were powerful in the past and rode flying mounts. In Elder Scrolls (Skyrim, Oblivion, etc.), the Dwemer had amazing technology and the heroes of the past had amazing powers. In the Lord of the Rings, Men and Elves of the past were greater and could make rings of power, an art long since lost. Even in the Harry Potter universe, the witches and wizards of the past could make artifacts well beyond what could be made today. There are many more examples, but I don’t want to bore the reader. Think about the games you’ve played – if they were set in a fantasy world, wasn’t the past better and now the ruins of the past hold the secrets that will solve the current problems?

    Sure, there has to be some sort of goal in the game, and it is easy to come up with some powerful artifact from the past that will solve the problem. But that doesn’t reflect real life, so why would it be appropriate in a fantasy world? In real life, technology advancements make things better than the old ways, so how about a game where the player has to invent new powers or abilities based on old abilities? Sure it could all be scripted out and such, but wouldn’t it be better for the protagonist to come up with something new that nobody had ever seen rather than “oh, you’re a Dragonborn. Go talk to those guys and they’ll train you up…”?

    So, game developers, the past is typically NOT better than the future, so quit pining for the old days and make games that properly look to a brighter future (as appropriate to the period setting of the game). Then we will all be shocked and surprised about an original plot!

  • Steam makes Skyrim mods easy

    Adding “mods” to games is a distinct advantage PC gamers have over console gamers. Sony and Microsoft wouldn’t want to allow modding of console games unless they found a way to make money from it. So, many PC games have active mod communities, and the Elder Scrolls series are no exception.

    Mods can be anything from new looks for weapons and armor to new user interface elements to new quests and regions. Many mods involve skimpy outfits and female followers to satisfy horny gamer males, but others are extremely valuable and helpful. To be honest, when Oblivion was new, I tried some of the “better bodies” and skimpy clothing mods, and promptly turned them off. I didn’t do this because I am opposed to nudity and hot bodies, but it was disturbing to kill an enemy and loot her to see a smoking hot body and bare boobs and more. Particularly if it was a female orc you just killed. Perhaps it humanized the enemy too much or something, but it made me feel creeped out. So out those mods went.

    In Skyrim, I am taking a very cautious approach to mods and only using a few, at least until I beat the main mission. I have one frivolous mod, which is the Asteria, an abandoned dwarven airship that can be an awesome player home. It has all the crafting equipment and looks great, and doesn’t seem to interfere with anything else. I am using a mod called Lockpick Pro that helps with lockpicking by showing a bar that lets you hit the right zone for the pick to work. This is a cheat, but frankly it saves a lot of time and I was pretty good at lockpicking before it, so this just eliminates a bit of frustration. I’m also using a mod that shows markers for my house (I only have one) and other important halls on the map, making them suitable for fast travel. This isn’t a cheat, because they only show up after you have discovered them. Finally, I am using a better map, since the original doesn’t have the roads drawn on it. What were the Bethesda folks thinking?

    Steam makes dealing with mods easy, because of Steam Workshop. This lets me pick the mods I want, then they are automatically downloaded and kept up to date, like Steam games. This is very handy and is the primary reason I wanted to buy Skyrim from Steam rather than on a disk. There are some problems, though. Steam Workshop has been extremely unresponsive at times, which is frustrating. The search function is terrible. I tried to search for the map mod by typing the word “map” into the search box. Nothing resembling a map mod showed up, but a bunch of texture mods and other things were shown (presumably they used words like “mipmap” or something). So I had to click through a few more pages to find the one I chose. I think the benefits of Steam Workshop outweigh the problems, and hopefully those problems will be fixed over time. So Steam Workshop is good and worth trying for Skyrim!

  • Observations on Skyrim

    I have been enjoying Skyrim very much. My character is level 14 and is slowly progressing through the story missions and other quests. He has joined the Companions and completed their ritual (no spoilers, but if you’ve gone through it, you know what I mean), bought a house in Whiterun, and has started wide exploration of the world. He has been concentrating on one-handed weapons as well as destruction magic, though has recently learned the advantage of conjuration magic (try calling your familiar into being over a trap/ward – it kills the poor spirit wolf, but prevents the player from taking damage). Last night, he started with the mage school and had a nice time in the mountains. He has completed his shout training with the Graybeards, and has even discovered a few other shouts by himself.

    I have picked up a few companion offers along the way, and have adventured with 2 of them: a woman who fought me in a bar in Whiterun and my “housecarl” Lydia, also from Whiterun. My problem with these companions is that they can die. Most of the time, they fall in combat and get up when the player has resolved the situation, but sometimes they are killed. Since I don’t want to have them die, I reload and try the fight again.

    Another problem with companions is that they often get lost (or choose not to take the same path the player does). Most of the time, I can just fast-wait for an hour and they will magically appear. Sometimes not. There should be an indicator on the compass showing where your companion is.

    I also bought a horse so I could get around faster. Horses are more expensive than in Oblivion, but apparently smarter and hardier. It was a common occurrence in Oblivion to leave your horse outside a cave only to come out and find it had been killed by something. So far, that hasn’t happened in Skyrim. Horses often run from fights, which is good, though sometimes they will join in. I fought a dragon last night when the horse was nearby and even though the dragon attacked it sometimes, it survived. The problem with horses (other than the fact that they aren’t that fast and look funny when you’re riding them) is that you can’t get rid of them! Whenever you fast travel, there’s the horse. Even if you are going into a dangerous place, it comes with you. At least with companions, you can tell them to go home or wait somewhere. There doesn’t seem to be an option or sell your horse or keep it in the stable.

    Because of the problems keeping my companions alive, I’ve stopped using them for the moment. I don’t know what to do with the horse. I don’t want it to be killed, but I don’t always want it with me when I’m out exploring. I’ll have to look for a “mod” solution.

  • Skyrim and its hardware requirements

    I bought The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim because it is on sale on Steam. I have wanted it since it came out and skipped a couple of previous Steam sales, but then regretted skipping them when it remained it its confiscatory retail price for months on end. I wasn’t too upset, as I had plenty of other things to do and games to play, but every day, I checked Amazon and Steam for a sale.
    Now that I have Skyrim, it’s pretty great, even though I haven’t played it long. I have been experimenting with all the different damage types and am dressed in heavy armor, mostly using mace and shield, but becoming more attracted to magic all the time after frying a bunch of skeleton dudes way faster with magic than I could thump them with my mace. I remember that heavy armor inhibited magic in Oblivion, so I will see if the same effects apply. I really wanted to use a bow, but even with a nifty bow that is better than the starter bow, it doesn’t do damage that fast and is slow to shoot. So I’ll probably become more of a magic user than a melee fighter, though will keep some nice weapons handy just in case.
    On my home machine, which is a high end machine, Skyrim runs beautifully at 2560×1440 with ultra-high settings (though I did turn down the anti-aliasing a little from the recommended level, because I don’t think AA adds that much at super high resolution). The game is smooth as silk and looks pretty good, though not quite as amazing as I had hoped. I killed a bunch of bandits in a snowy hideout and the snow-covered floors looked like plastic (and this was with the high-res texture pack) and the falling snow was cartoonish.
    As a comparison, I installed Skyrim on my laptop, which is a pretty good laptop. It has a quad-core mobile i7 processor, though it is only 2 GHz, rather than the 3.4 GHz of my gaming PC. Both have 8 GB of RAM, and both have AMD graphics cards (because of the bad luck I have had with NVIDIA cards). The home machine has a 6970 GPU, which, at the time, was the fastest available, while the laptop has a 6770, both with 2 GB of graphics RAM. The laptop is 1920×1080 resolution, while the gaming PC is 2560×1440.
    When Skyrim launched, it autodetected the settings for the laptop and chose Medium with some AA. I took its advice, launched the game, and after waiting nearly forever, the game started with a frame rate in the maybe 5 FPS region. It was a slideshow. So I quit, turned off the AA, disabled some of the reflections, etc., and tried again. It got better, maybe 10 FPS, but not playable. After switching the textures down to medium, it may have been 15 or 20 FPS, but still horribly disappointing.
    I would imagine I could do some of the things in the various tweaking guides, and make it playable, but it is sad that I should have to. This laptop is much better than most people’s gaming rigs and is certainly miles faster than what I played Oblivion and X3 and most other games perfectly well on. So how is it that a game can look perfect on my gaming rig and look horrible on a machine that is at least 50% as capable, even at reduced settings? And does that mean that the majority of Skyrim players either had to buy a new machine for it or suffer with crap frame rates?
    Since I have a good machine that I will play it on, I’m not particularly outraged by this, but it is concerning. I remember when Crysis came out and my machine at the time was as fast as could be (and certainly way faster than anything that had been using in the game’s development), I had to reduce some of the settings a bit to make it smooth. At least in Crysis’ case, that worked and I got a smooth and good looking game. With Skyrim, I would probably have to reduce the resolution to make it playable on the laptop. Game makers should try a little harder to make things playable with reasonable, but not great, hardware.