TallGuyCalif's Computer Gaming and Entertainment Site

Category: Games I’m Playing

  • Free MMORPGs for all!

    I’ve been enjoying two free-to-play MMORPGs a lot recently. Lord of the Rings Online is a terrific MMORPG for the PC with good combat, skills, and even crafting. I’ve been working on my prospector and jeweler crafting in order to be able to make good stuff for my kinship. I joined a pretty terrific kinship that supports each other and helps those of us that get stuck sometimes. One member loaded me up with good armor and a staff that was way better than what I had collected. I went on a fellowship quest into the Great Barrow with several of my kin yesterday. It’s a good thing. Join LOTRO and find a good kinship.

    I’ve also written about Pocket Legends a bit. It’s an iPad (and iPhone) MMORPG that is easy to pick up and quick to get into the quests and find a group to play with (okay, it’s pretty much automatic, if you let it choose for you). It’s pretty darn cool to play with people from all over the country or world while just tapping away on the iPad. Very nifty!

    Now I see that Champions Online is going to go free-to-play. I’ve heard very good things about CO, but I think I will hold off, since I’ve already got way too many games and not enough time.

    Finally, I’m enjoying Star Trek Online’s weekly episodes. They have some pretty tough ground battles against interesting opponents. I know STO isn’t free, but I already paid for the lifetime membership, so it seems that way to me. It is still a bit annoying with the Cryptic Store where they want you to buy ships and more, but the hustling for money isn’t quite as acute as in Pocket Legends or LOTRO. I did put some money into LOTRO to buy some quest packs and some inventory space, so I’ll have to see if I continue to enjoy Pocket Legends before I put much money into it.

    By the way, I saw a tweet that said the closed beta for the Android version of Pocket Legends has started, so it will be available to even non-Apple folks. Of course the lack of consistency in the hardware (resolution, speed, etc.) may make the UI more challenging, but I’m glad they’re making the effort.

  • More Pocket Legends

    Though I have managed to fix my gaming PC’s power supply, I’ve been playing a bit more Pocket Legends, the iPad and iPhone MMORPG, because it is fun. I’m also posting some pictures so you can see how good it looks on the iPad screen (though for some reason, the less-than-helpful WordPress iPad app resized the images to 640×480 when I selected the “Large” size – apparently they’re still living in 1987 when 640×480 was respectable, though not good).

    In the first picture, I’m in my zombie costume having talked to Halloween Hal and being told I need a costume to participate in the Halloween activities. Isn’t the zombie costume a costume? Apparently not, as old Hal wants me to buy a costume in the store for 5 platinum, which is tough, since I don’t have any platinum pieces and not too many gold either. So that’s a bummer.

    So I gave up on Halloween and went back to my quests, which are more fun anyway. The great thing about Pocket Legends is that it is very easy to get to your quests. In the quest description, there’s a button to take you there. So I zapped back to the dungeon to find some things and kill a particularly nasty zombie. As you can see from the image below, there were 3 other players there, and we all worked together to beat the quests. It was somewhat hard, because the tough zombie was really difficult and wiped us all out once or twice, but we finished the quest and got through.

    Playing with a group is good, and this was a good group (you can see from the chat in the image below that one of my compatriots thought so as well). We had a couple fighters, an archer, and a magic user, which is a great mix. Having a magic user is key, because they can do group heals, which is essential with the fast zombies. You can see my health is low, so I needed the healing help.

    Pocket Legends is good fun and well worth a look on both iPad and iPhone. I’m thinking of trying a magic user character next time…

  • Pocket Legends

    Because my main gaming PC is still down for the count because of power supply problems, I started playing Pocket Legends on the iPad. This is a pretty interesting MMORPG that looks very good on iPad (and is playable on iPhone too). The user interface is very simple, with a tap to designate a target, a tap to commence attack, and other tap buttons to for special powers or attacks. Swiping sideways rotates the camera view (I would like to be able to reverse the direction, as it seems a bit unintuitive the way it is, but there doesn’t seems to be an option).

    I started as a warrior, which is usually the safe way to go. I had armor, a sword, and shield to start. After a few cakewalk solo training missions, the game puts you in a town where other players gather. Once you get a quest, you can transport to the start of the quest. The first quest started off really easy, but the difficulty level got brutal, as some very tough and fast zombies appeared. Luckily, other players are around to help thin the enemy, but they are all at different stages of the mission, so may have different goals, so player groups tend not to be coordinated. A few levels in, even though I had better gear, I was regularly being wiped by zombie hoards. I stopped there, so I don’t know if it gets better. I do know that I saw magic users doing huge damage and healing, so perhaps that would be a better way to go. I will have to revisit it.

    In short, if you are interested in an easy-to-pick-up MMORPG that looks good on iPad (and iPhone), try Pocket Legends. It’s free and really nifty.

    As an update, I just checked out PL on the iPhone. The same character is accessible there, since it’s in the cloud. Since the screen is so much smaller, navigation is done by a virtual joystick, but otherwise, chat and actions are available. Kinda cool, but I think I’ll stick to the iPad version and its larger screen size.

  • Enjoying Lord of the Rings Online

    I’ve been playing LOTRO when I get a little while between being busy with other things, and I’m enjoying it (mostly).

    The crafting system is pretty nifty and I’m working my way up as a prospector, cook, and jeweler.

    I also finally managed to buy a horse. In order to get said horse, I had to buy the riding skill for Turbine Points (real money) and then use 500 silver (in-game money). Once I raised the money, I went to the horse farm north of Bree to get my horse, bought it, then couldn’t find the action to use it. Instead of putting the horse icon in your inventory, like all the FAQs and guides say, it hides it away in a tab on the character sheet. Once I found the thing and dragged it to my action bar, I’ve been riding like crazy.

    I also got invited into a kinship. Seems like a nice bunch of folks who are helpful and reasonable, unlike the fleet I was recruited into for Star Trek Online. So far I haven’t seen any of them in-game, not even the one that recruited me, but I’m sure I’ll need their help with a few quests shortly.

    Anyone who isn’t playing LOTRO, get it. The cost is nothing, so even if you don’t like it, you’re not out more than a few GB on your hard drive.

  • Lord of the Rings Online Character Page

    Like Star Trek Online, Lord of the Rings Online has a personal character page that shows your characters and progress. Mine is here. It looks like the LOTRO one is even more capable than STO’s one, as it shows details about completed achievements and seems to allow users to add their own commentary. Not that I will likely use those features, as I’ll put pictures and commentary here.

  • More LOTRO pictures

    More LOTRO pictures

    I have been playing a bit more Lord of the Rings Online and am mostly enjoying it. I started a hobbit hunter, but after a quick meetup with Frodo and Sam, he ended up in the same introductory quests as the human character. So then I started an elf lore-master, and that had a completely different intro quest that (I think) was a lot more fun.

    Now for some pictures: The water looks very nice, as does the night sky.

    The elf starts out in the snow.

    Finally, sunrise in The Shire looks really good (and my elf looks a bit effeminate in his hat).

  • Lord of the Rings Online

    This weekend, I signed up for the newly free-to-play Lord of the Rings Online. It is a fairly generic sword and sorcery massively multiplayer online role playing game (MMORPG). Its hook is that it is set in the Tolkien Lord of the Rings universe (okay, Middle Earth) and you play a role (insignificant for the moment) in the upcoming war to destroy the ring. You get to visit places from the book (or movie for those that don’t read), like Bree. As a human player, I am near the Shire, but unsure if I’ll get to go there or not. If you start as an elf or dwarf, you start in Thorin’s Halls to the west of the Shire, which should be cool, so I may have to start another character sometime. You also get to ride horses, which could be nice.

    The game looks pretty good, though the textures are not up to the standards of my 2560×1440 monitor. The water effects look very good, however, as you can see from the following screenshots.

    The combat is quite standard, with swords and shields and occasional class abilities. I’ve seen people using magic, so I’ll have to try that sometime. So far, I’ve been killing spiders (why do all these games love spiders?), wolves, boar, and some bad guys.

    The quests are simple, so far, and I’ve been able to do them alone without dying. On the other hand, some of the higher level quests will probably need a group (called a “Fellowship” in this game). Unfortunately, LOTRO doesn’t seem to have henchmen, like Guild Wars does, so I’ll probably have to join with actual people. I know that’s the point of MMORPGs, but I don’t particularly like joining with other people, though I’ve done so a number of times in Guild Wars, Eve Online, and Star Trek Online.

    The game seems pretty good and is free to play, so everyone with a reasonable PC should check it out. The download was 10GB and took hours, which is a bummer. I will probably put it on hold while I try to finish Halo Reach and Star Ocean, but I’ll be back in Middle Earth soon!

  • ElementZ HD iPad game

    Elementz is a fun iPad match the objects game. I got it for free, but I don’t know if it is still free. As with all of these games, match 3 objects in a row and they disappear. When these balls disappear, they make a particularly satisfying crashing noise and have a nice falling away animation, a frame of which is shown below.

    This one is special, because if you match 4 balls in a row, one remains, but is powered up. If you can match the powered up one, you get a special elemental burst that takes out a lot of nearby balls. The “elementZ” are fire, water, wind, electricity, earth (yes, a clod of dirt is this elemental burst), and plants. You can see a frame from a flower burst below and a fire burst below that. The music is pleasant and relaxing. Overall, a fun, easy, and compelling game. In fact, the worst thing I can say about it is that I hate the stupid name with the “Z” at the end.

  • Halo Reach Turning Ugly

    Things are getting pretty ugly in Halo Reach, and I don’t mean the graphics, which are pretty good.

    ***Spoiler Alert*** Do not read if you don’t want spoilers

    One of the unique features of Halo Reach (at least compared to the other Halo games I’ve played) is the presence of your Noble Team comrades. They were helpful in keeping the enemy’s attention off you for a bit so you could kill some baddies and even the odds. Well, now all my Noble Team mates have been killed off, so I am left to face the hordes alone. Cortana has been taken to the Pillar of Autumn, yet I’m left behind, so I’m guessing my character will die by the end. Fighting alone as the world is coming to an end is somewhat depressing.

    *** End Spoilers ***

    Unlike other games where you get more powerful weapons towards the end to help against large numbers of enemies, Halo Reach has always had all (or at least most) of the weapons available. Some of the more powerful weapons, like the Spartan Laser and the Sniper Rifle, take sufficiently long enough to aim and fire that they’re not too useful. A very annoying thing about Halo Reach (and all the other Halos, if I remember) is that if someone even farts in your general direction while you’re zoomed in, you get zoomed back out and lose your precise aim. That really makes it hard to use the sniper rifle when things are hot and heavy. Tough Spartans should be able to maintain zoom even when shot (perhaps not being blown up, however).

  • Pocket Frogs on iPhone

    I took a look at Pocket Frogs on the iPhone, just to see if it is as nice looking on iPhone as on the iPad. It sure is. You can see from these images that it looks very much the same as on the iPad. I will likely not play any more on the iPhone, because it doesn’t make sense to have two stables of frogs. But at least it looks like it is not only possible to play on the iPhone, but it should be great to play on the iPhone!