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  • Finished The Last of Us and now addicted to Diablo III on PS4

    I finished The Last of Us on PS4 and think it was overall very good, but I’m pretty disappointed in the ending. It’s not that it wasn’t well done, but that I didn’t have a choice in how it went. I may have even made the same choices Joel made, but it is possible that I would have wanted to choose differently. Frankly, in the end, Joel turned into a selfish a**hole. I haven’t played the DLC mission yet, because I was so disappointed in the main ending, but I will get to it sometime when I’m done with Diablo III.

    Yes, I’m playing and am addicted to Diablo III on the PS4. Note that I’m calling it Diablo III, but there’s all sorts of additional crap in the name, just like with The Last of Us. Since my interest is in the games, not helping their marketing, I won’t bother with superfluous words in their titles.

    I played Diablo III when it first came out for PC (and had to deal with the annoying Battle.Net authentication crap and always forgetting who I was). I finished the game with a Wizard and enjoyed it, but the mouse-based UI was a carpal tunnel-inducing nightmare! So I waited for the PS3 version, which I bought so I could play with my wife. We played for a few hours, but my wife didn’t enjoy it as much as I did. Now this new version for PS4 looks great, includes all the content from the DLC, and has a great control scheme using the controller. The game hasn’t crashed on me, but has done so for a friend. It also has a few annoying bugs/omissions. The first thing it did was ask me to join my Battle.Net account to my PSN account and they would give me a gift (at least I’m pretty sure that’s what it said). I did that before creating a new character, but then, when I created a character, it asked me to do it again. Well, once I logged in, the accounts were connected. But as far as I know, I didn’t get any goodies because of it. Not a big deal, but an unsatisfying experience.

    The game itself looks great. I’m playing a crusader this time and started on Hard mode, but quickly bumped up to Expert. The Crusader is a serious butt-kicker and none of the bosses have given me much trouble. I died twice in the main campaign and not yet in the Resurrection of Evil expansion missions. Once I finish, my wife promises to play with me, so I will suggest she create a Crusader and I’ll play some other class that I haven’t played.

    The co-op aspects of the game are great! It supports couch co-op, so my wife can pick up a controller, select her character, and join my game. Loot is separate, so we’re not competing for gear, which is a huge improvement over most RPGs that support co-op. Additionally, it is easy for friends to join your game over the Internet. I’ve had a friend join me a couple of times, and it works very well. In couch co-op, both players remain on the screen, so it limits how far apart we can be. Network co-op players have their own screens, so they don’t have to be near each other or even enter dungeons together. It is pretty flexible.

    Two other interesting co-op aspects make this game shine. Sometimes you find gifts for your friends who play the game. You can’t do anything with it other than send the gift to your friend. These are usually legendary items, so it is worth sending and receiving gifts. In addition, if a monster kills your friend, it may pop into your game world as a mini-boss, almost always at a bad time, like when you’re in the middle of combat with a big mob. If you kill the “nemesis,” then you get nice rewards as well as a gift for the friend that was killed. If the nemesis kills you, it may appear in another friend’s world to try to kill them. It is a nifty mechanic that keeps players on our toes.

    I highly recommend Diablo III for the PS4. It is a terrific package that has the potential for many tens or even hundreds of hours of fun. The Last of Us is an extremely well done game with engaging gameplay, but a disappointing ending.

    And while we’re talking about disappointing endings, I’ve given up on Far Cry 3. While the free-form gameplay is the best shooter I’ve played maybe ever, the scripted stuff was pretty awful. I’m now in the middle of the end of the game, and it is all scripted. As I was looking for hints on how to survive the helicopter mission, I saw that there is no more actual game play before the end and you get to make a choice from two lousy options. This isn’t much better than The Last of Us, in that here you are, the greatest warrior on the island and able to do pretty much anything, yet your only future is disappointment or death. I play games for fun, so these crappy endings are not making me happy. I know real life doesn’t have happy endings, nor do many movies, but games are escapist fare and should have happy ending possibilities. Even Mass Effect 3 had happy-ish possibilities if you worked hard enough and made the right choices.

  • I’m not enjoying The Last of Us

    I recently started playing The Last of Us on PlayStation 4, and I’m not enjoying it. I’m captivated by it and it gives me sleepless nights and I can’t wait to see how it ends, but I’m not enjoying it.

    The Last of Us is pretty grim, much like Tomb Raider is, but it is all of humanity that is screwed, not just Lara Croft and her wacky band of buddies. While Tomb Raider started out pretty grim, before long, Lara had lots of weapons and skills and was an ass kicking machine. In The Last of Us, there are no scenarios that I’ve found where I felt completely confident and able to control the situation.

    The writing is extremely well done, and the plot twists and turns make certain the player is never quite sure what’s coming next. The Last of Us is a very linear game, but they’ve done an amazing job of making you unaware of it. There are often multiple choices of where to go, but they all put you exactly where you need to go without making you feel that you’re forced to go that way. The areas are masterfully done and often creepy as hell. Walking through the science building at the fictitious University of Eastern Colorado is as tense a time as any other part of the game so far.

    There are a number of plot holes in the game, but they’re easy enough to ignore. For example, the infected are quite stupid, so they should have all died out of starvation or in the cold of winter, since they can’t light fires to warm themselves. But that would have made a boring game, so the infected are present in places like Colorado where one winter should have taken them out. And the amazing coincidence of bad guys showing up every time you reach a plot point and need to move on is a little tedious, but again, needed to make sure the game doesn’t turn into just a movie with little interaction.

    The Last of Us is great and well worth playing, but there’s not much fun to be had, as far as I’ve seen. The banter between characters is good and sometimes amusing, but the overall mood is somber. The combat is satisfying, but not rewarding. When you finish a battle, you are relieved, not exhilarated. There is never enough ammo nor crafting materials to be found. And if your pack is full, events will come shortly that will make you use much of it. The game is a constant struggle, yet one that will keep you playing for just one more checkpoint even after you should have gone to bed. Then, when you go to bed, the game will filter into your dreams and give you stressful, restless nights. And then you can’t wait to get back to playing.

  • Enjoyed Destiny Beta, but the Moon mission blew it!

    I played the Destiny Beta on PS4 both solo and with friends and had quite a blast. My initial thought was that while I enjoyed the game, I wasn’t excited to buy it, because the co-op missions were a little too fast paced. What I mean is that as we would clear an area, members of the team quickly moved on, so I had to follow. I would have preferred to explore at my own pace, rather than be dragged from fight to fight. I felt the same way in the Isengard 3-man instances in LOTRO – it was all just running between fights.

    Then I played more games with friends and really enjoyed the interaction and the team play, so I was considering buying the game. In fact, I was convinced I would buy it and was even scoping out the GameStop version so I could get their pre-order exclusive. And I would get the $90 package instead of the $60 one, because it included the expansions that would cost $35 separately.

    Then, on Saturday at 2PM, during the server load test, they opened up the first Moon mission. I flew to the Moon, excited to see how the low gravity and no atmosphere would affect gameplay. It didn’t! The gravity was the same as Earth’s, so I couldn’t jump super far. And the roars of the baddies and gunfire and all the other sounds carried perfectly through what should be a nonexistent atmosphere. So the gameplay was exactly like on Earth, but with different scenery. I was and still am floored at this kind of mailing it in. Surely Bungie knows about the physical characteristics of the Moon, but didn’t want to take that into account for the game.

    Admittedly, this was a Beta test, so this could change before launch, but it certainly felt reasonably polished. If they were going to change the physics on the Moon, you’d think they’d want to have tested it to see how people compensated.

    So now my interest in buying the game has waned again, mostly because of the moon, but also because I’m hearing speculation that the game will contain not too much content. I can see that the game has lots of potential, but I’m not going to make a $90 bet on that potential.

  • Playing Far Cry 3 and enjoying it!

    In between getting my Risa starships in Star Trek Online and getting my Rune Keeper his war steed in Lord of the Rings Online, I’ve been playing and enjoying Far Cry 3.

    Far Cry 3 is an open world first person shooter/RPG game, in which you take out bad guys and wild animals on an island or two after you and your friends are captured by very bad guys. It is RPGish in that you gain skills and and crafting abilities with experience. Crafting is everything in the game. When you start, you can carry nearly nothing in your loot bag, ammo bag, syringe (for healing and buffs) bag, etc. You kill animals to craft better gear, which is mostly great, but sometimes frustrating. The animals in the game are not pushovers, either. The dogs attack in packs, the tigers and bears are tough, and snakes bite you while you’re sneaking through dungeons.

    Guns, on the other hand, are plentiful, and more unlock as you climb radio towers to scope out the landscape (much like synchronizing in the Assassins Creed games). Combat is fun, but not always easy. Many side quests require you to kill your target with a knife, so sneaking is important.

    A feature of the game I really like is that you actually have an impact on the world. As you capture enemy strongholds, the friendly islanders occupy them and the area around them becomes less dangerous.

    The checkpoint system is hit and miss. Usually, it doesn’t take you too far back when you die, but there have been a couple of missions (so far) that were very frustrating because of how far back the checkpoint took you.

    An unfortunate part of the game is that you kill the first boss (Vaas, the guy on the cover of the game, and a really bad dude) in sort of a drug-induced haze/dream sequence, so I didn’t get the satisfaction of putting a bullet into him and knowing he’s dead. I keep expecting him to pop up again at some inopportune time. During the first half of the game, he always has the jump on you, which was quite frustrating. I’ve just started the second part, which aims to kill Vaas’ boss, so we’ll see how that goes.

    But if any of this sounds fun, get Far Cry 3 (it isn’t too expensive these days) and play it. It’s pretty great!

  • Finished Battlefield Bad Company 2

    Yes, I know Battlefield Bad Company 2 has been out for quite a while. I had to wait until it was on sale to buy it, which I did a few months back, and finally got around to playing it. I’m very glad I bought it on sale, because it certainly isn’t worth a full-game price. I’ve seen in on sale on Steam recently for as low as $5, so that it totally worth it. Even $10 is worth it.

    Battlefield Bad Company 2 is a first person shooter that has the reputation as having the best single player story of all the Battlefield games to date. While that may be true, it’s a very short story and not a very good story, so “best” doesn’t actually mean good or great.

    That isn’t to say everything is bad about the game. The combat is good fun, with lots of guns to choose from. The banter between your squadmates is well done and funny and sets the mood well. The graphics are okay, particularly for an oldish game. The destructible buildings and scenery are great – you can’t hide behind cover forever, because the enemy weapons may damage or destroy your shelter. So the combat, gun selection, and game mechanics are good, and it is lots of fun to take out enemy held villages and such. There are even occasions where the player drives tanks, jeeps, quad bikes, and is a helicopter gunner (the latter is fun, but only happens once and is too short. It also isn’t quite as great as the door gunner part of Halo Reach).

    Sadly, the game uses a checkpoint system, which isn’t done very well. Most of the checkpoints are fine, but there are a few where you need to wipe out a bunch of baddies, then when you move to a certain spot, helicopters or other very deadly enemies are triggered. The problem occurs if you die in this latter stage, the checkpoint was before the initial fight. This only serves the purpose of being frustrating and dragging out the game (possibly intentionally, because it is so short). Some games have good checkpoints. The Gears of War series never put me too far back after a death. I just started play Far Cry 3, and it also seems to have a very good checkpoint system (although a save-anywhere feature would be better).

    I didn’t play the multiplayer, which is the big draw for Battlefield games, but if I were going to play multiplayer, I’d play it in Battlefield 3 or 4, not Bad Company 2.

    In summary, Battlefield Bad Company 2 is pretty fun, but has a short single player campaign. If you’re primarily a single-player person, get it on sale.

  • Oops! I may have made a mistake buying X Rebirth

    I’ve been a big fan of Egosoft’s X series of space games. I first played X2:The Threat many years ago and loved it, logging hundreds of hours building stations and fleets. Then came X3: Reunion, and that was good too. I also played X3: Terran Conflict, which I thoroughly enjoyed. I skipped X3: Albion Prelude, but I have it in case I want to experience that universe again.

    I may want to step back to the older games, because I bought X Rebirth on sale on Steam a few days ago, and it isn’t too fun, so far. When X Rebirth came out, it got horrible, scathing reviews. But, all Egosoft games are barely playable at launch, and Egosoft is very good at patching and adding content to make them whole and competent and fun. All Egosoft games also have atrocious voice acting, so that didn’t bother me one bit – in fact, I laugh whenever I hear terrible intonation or pronunciation, so it’s what I have come to expect. So I figured that since X Rebirth is up to patch 2.1, then it is likely to be pretty much fixed up and OK. Well, maybe…

    The game looks pretty good and makes reasonable use of my Xbox 360 c0ntroller (the earlier games were best played with a joystick), but it has a very different idea of space than the earlier games (or pretty much most other space games). Space here is crowded, with just kilometers between space stations and asteroids and battles and such. The usual terrible Egosoft collision avoidance is still present, so other ships collide with you in the fast lane highways that let you zip between regions quickly. The old jump gates seem to have crapped out, so we’re stuck with these express ways to get around.

    As with the other X games, you can trade, build, or fight your way to success. In this game, you get a bit of money to start, but you spend most of that hiring crew for your freighter that hasn’t done anything other than follow the player ship  around like a  puppy. In the old games, you could fly your freighters and, eventually, managed a fleet of freighters trading for you as you fight pirates and Xenon and whoever else needs their butt kicked. Of course, it takes a long while to build up those resources, and I’m still early in the game, so things may make more sense eventually.

    I’ve done a tiny bit of fighting so far, and it seems competently done, though without the flexible loadouts we had before, but again, that may come. In the earlier games, sectors had stations in them that bought and sold goods that you could trade (or use). In this game, a single station has multiple modules, each of which has products or people or docking ports, and you need to scan the modules to figure that out. It seems that we need to fly from module to module to trade, but as I haven’t done much of that, perhaps there are easier ways.

    So how is X Rebirth better than the other X games? Docking is much better. It used to be that docking (or doing anything on autopilot) in a fast or large ship had a reasonable probability of smacking you into the  station and killing you. Now, it happens safely and quickly, as far as I’ve seen.

    So I’m not far enough into X Rebirth to recommend it or not. If you are looking for great space games and haven’t played X2 and X3, get the X3 Gold Box from Steam and be assured of a fun, challenging, and open-ended space game experience several times over. In the meanwhile, I’m going back to finish Battlefield Bad Company 2 and will put X Rebirth on standby. I will also continue with the Horga’hn hunts in Star Trek Online and getting my LOTRO Rune-Keeper to Rohan to get his warsteed.

  • Star Trek Online: Making a Fat Bajoran on Risa. Adventures of Lt. Cmdr. Fatass

    I decided to experiment with the character editor to make my Bajoran Female character look more like the reality of myself and many other ‘Muricans with a little (or a lot of) extra weight. Unlike all the other avatars I see in their tiny swimsuits on Risa, Lt. Cmdr. FatAss here has as large a belly and legs and torso width as I could make. It makes her more representative of most of us playing the game, I’d suspect, and I couldn’t stop laughing as I flew her around Risa and compared her to all the petite lovelies that everyone else uses. I’m surprised her floater was even able to lift her! That being said, she’s at the limits of the fatness scale of the editor, so she looks stout, but not enormous like the stereotypical fat person we all know or see on TV. Admittedly, it is a game, so we don’t want it to reflect reality too much, but it sure was fun being different from everyone else on Risa!

  • Star Trek Online Graphics Bug: Flying Without a Floater

    Even with yesterday’s patch, my studly Joined Trill Admiral in Star Trek Online is so badass that he can fly in the Risa events without a floater. Or at least he’s pretty good at hiding his floater (the jetpack thing used on Risa). The video below shows it. I think it is the outfit he is wearing, because when he was in his boring old uniform, the floater was visible. But now that he’s trying to relax from his stressful job as an Admiral in Starfleet, he changed into relaxing off-duty robes (and, no, he won’t say if he’s wearing underwear, ladies), and his floater has become a fancy stealth unit.

  • Star Trek Online Swimsuits on Risa

    I’ve been enjoying the Star Trek Online Summer Festival on Risa, working towards the “pearls” needed for both the Risian Corvette and the Risian Cruiser. I’m also busy earning “favors” to get swimsuits for my two female captains. Now that I’ve achieved that (see below), I will look into better jetpacks and even shorts for my one or two male captains that are participating.

    My Bajoran female captain looks pretty good in a swimsuit:

    screenshot_2014-06-10-19-58-28As you can see, the STO devs have done a nice job lovingly modelling her curves and how well her bikini fits. All the pictures here are 1920×1080, so click them to zoom in for a better view. She looks good from the back, too:

    screenshot_2014-06-10-19-58-43

    The only problem with seeing her in a swimsuit is when she’s flying around in the jetpack. In this state, she is viewed from behind and often slightly below, particularly when climbing. I don’t like the angular and exaggerated calves visible in the next picture.

    screenshot_2014-06-10-19-58-07

    I bought a different swimsuit for my Klingon female captain. It looks pretty good on her:

    screenshot_2014-06-10-20-35-50

    Interestingly enough Klingons apparently have a strange-looking ridged spine, perhaps to go along with their brow ridges. It is clearly visible in the picture below (again, click to zoom in).

    screenshot_2014-06-10-20-35-13

    While I admire the attention to detail by the STO devs, I don’t think that spine is very attractive. If I had know about it, I would have considered a swimsuit that has more of a back on it to hide the ridges. But you may like it, and now you are aware of it.

     

     

     

     

  • Replaying Mass Effect with a FemShep

    After I finished Assassin’s Creed IV, I was looking for a new game to play. I’ve played all the Mass Effect games, but always as the stock male Shepard. I’ve been told that playing as a FemShep (female Shepard) opens up new dialogs, and the “sex” scenes may be different, etc. So I decided to give it a shot and have been having great fun!

    I played Mass Effect when it came out last decade. I’d forgotten most of it, but I remember it being a fun experience. While the graphics are quite dated, it still looks pretty good (except for the prehistoric textures – BioWare seems to have a problem with textures in the Mass Effect and Dragon Age games: the figures are modelled perfectly, but they wear very lo-res, jagged textures). The gameplay is good, and I chose to be an “Operative” so using pistols, sniper rifles, and tech, but no biotic powers.

    I’ve been busy doing all the side missions, so haven’t progressed too far into the plot missions, but it is still very compelling. I even like the bouncy planetary rover missions a lot better than the terrible scanning mechanic of ME2.

    I owned Mass Effect well before EA’s Origin existed. Origin discovered my other ME and Dragon Age games, but didn’t have a clue about the original Mass Effect. I tried entering the key, even tried installing the game so it could find it. Nothing worked until I tried again a few months ago, and suddenly Origin agreed that I own ME and would let me install it via download. So despite all our hatred for EA, they are improving things, and I’m thankful I can get rid of the case and DVD now.

    So if you have Mass Effect laying around, get it into Origin, and give it a go if you get bored. It’s still a great game.