TallGuyCalif's Computer Gaming and Entertainment Site

Tag: PC

  • Finished Uncharted 3, Loving Borderlands 2, Wondering About Torchlight II Co-Op

    I finally finished Uncharted 3 and enjoyed it quite a bit. It really is like playing in a movie, where everything is very scripted and you need to do exactly the right thing to get to the next cutscene, but while you’re playing, none of that feels constraining at all. The game looks good, and the 3D is quite well done (perhaps not quite worth buying a 3D TV for, but almost). Since I’m probably the last PS3 owner on the planet to finish Uncharted 3, I won’t recommend you go get it, since I just had to catch up on the pleasures of the game.

    I’ve really been enjoying Borderlands 2! The action is great, the guns are awesome, and the enemies are fun to shoot, incinerate, blow up, etc. The plot is fair at best, but they have a tongue-in-cheek way of reminding us how lame the ending of the previous Borderlands was and explaining it away. Pretty cute.

    I am playing as a Siren, which means I can hold an enemy in the air, which is handy, but I tend to forget to use that skill and just blow heads off with the sniper rifle! To that extent, playing the Siren seems pretty generic, so I’m tempted to try playing as one of the other classes, particularly the Assassin. I played the Commando in Borderlands, so am happy to be trying something different, but my playing style isn’t as different as I’d like (which I admit is likely my fault).

    There have been a couple of instances where I simply could not complete a mission because the boss was too tough. In both cases, I went away, did some side missions to gain a couple levels, and came back to take care of business. Some of the missions are quite a challenge, but there’s always a way to figure it out.

    For such a new game, there are remarkably few bugs. One annoyance is that the recorders that expose history keep reappearing in the same places, so I can’t be sure I’ve heard them all, so keep picking them up and hearing the same story over and over. I hope that’s a bug that will be fixed rather than a feature.

    I also bought Torchlight II this weekend in hopes of playing co-op with a friend. If I were cynical, I would suggest that the co-op system for Torchlight II is just a nasty scheme for Runic Games to build their customer database so they can market to us or sell it for the same purpose. If I weren’t cynical, I’d just say it sucks. In order to play online, you need to register your account with Runic’s website, then connect it with Steam’s login (which concerns me right there), then log in within the game, having to remember your password each time. I don’t know what the online lobby/matching scheme is like, because when I tried it, I wasn’t able to connect. Great! Why can’t they do something simple, like what Borderlands 2 did: show your friends who are playing the game on the start screen? Really, why complicate it and make it us jump through hoops just to play with our friends?

    So the jury’s still out on Torchlight II’s co-op scheme, but the game looks fine, if carpal-tunnel inducing. It’s a fixed-perspective action RPG, like Diablo, and involves clicking a lot, also like Diablo. I couldn’t find any support for game controllers or anything else for those of us that would like to keep our mouse fingers from cramping. I only played it for a few minutes, but it seems kinda fun.

  • Borderlands 2 is great fun!

    I got Borderlands 2 yesterday and played it for perhaps an hour and think it is great! The PC version looks good, is fun, and has lots of guns, even at the start! My only complaint is that the inventory/equipment screen is awkward. Instead of the obvious PC-centric approach of dragging equipment (guns and shields) from the backpack to their equipment slots, they chose a console-centric approach where we need to select the gun, select the (presumably occupied) slot, then swap. Pretty damn annoying. There does seem to be an auto-equip mechanism where holding down the use-key (“E” in the PC case) will replace the current gun with the one you are picking up. I’m not sure if it only does it for better guns or any gun, but it could be handy or it could surprise you by accidently  replacing a gun you liked. Overall, Borderlands 2 seems like it will be great!

    On the other hand, I think I will not continue playing it for a bit. I need to finish Uncharted 3 (I think I’m nearly there) and Kingdoms of Amalur. Speaking of Amalur, it has to be one of the best values in gaming, especially now that it no longer commands a $60 price. In terms of gameplay per dollar, it is fantastic. And it is a fun and attractive game, so check it out if you’re even remotely interested in single player RPGs!

  • 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…

  • 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.

  • 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.

  • Fighting the plot in Mass Effect 3

    I’ve been mostly enjoying Mass Effect 3, but like so many Bioware games, including Mass Effect 2 and Dragon Age 2, I am feeling excessively constrained by the plot the writers have constructed. Though I have done all the side missions, I don’t have any feeling of making a difference in the universe. Sure, all the NPCs I meet know Shepard, but none of my actions are making any difference in the plot, which is smothering and oppressing me.

    In the game so far, I have had the choice to kill or save the Rachni (I chose to save them, though I don’t know whether that will be a good idea in the long run), cure the Krogan genophage or not (I did), and I had to make a choice to kill an entire race. At the end of a long and nasty fight that someone should smack the Bioware devs for (more below), I had a choice to either kill off the Geth or the Quarians. In either case, Legion dies, but in the latter, Tali kills herself because I sacrificed her entire race. I call bullshit! The great Commander Shepard should have been able to separate the two forces and broker a peace rather than having once side wipe out the other. Not knowing the consequences, I first chose to support Legion and the Geth, which ended badly for the Quarians. Hating that outcome, I redid the horrible Reaper boss battle and tried the other way, which was better, but not much. I read from the IGN walkthrough that if I had certain criteria met in my imported save file, perhaps I could have saved both sides somehow. Again, what a stupid design?!? You mean doing the side missions to save the Quarian general and their fleet from the fighters didn’t give me enough pull to make them see reason and back off? Come on!

    I have a hunch this is just the beginning of me not liking the stupid either/or plot choices, and I know enough people have complained about the ending that I’m sure I won’t like that. I’m just at the point where I am about to be funneled into the final sequence of missions, which is another characteristic of Bioware games that I don’t like. And if this one, like Dragon Age 2, only gives me bad choices, I’ll be pissed (and yes, I’m prepared to be pissed).

    So back to the Reaper boss battle on the Quarian/Geth homeworld: Did anyone actually think that was fun? In the battle, you need to keep a laser target designator on a certain area of a huge reaper that is shooting at you and if it even comes close to hitting you, you die and start the whole thing over. And you need to do that for several weapon strikes, so even if you manage to stay alive through a couple, you can still be killed and have to start over. Sure, once I figured it out, it wasn’t terribly hard, but it was never actually fun. This is why I don’t play some of the old console games, like the early Metal Gear games – the penalty for even a small screw up is huge and therefore, I don’t see it as fun.

    That being said, there are a couple of very clever sequences the Bioware devs included that they should be commended on. Getting onto a Geth dreadnought through a damaged entry tunnel and being able to use magnetic boots and move all the way around the tunnel was very cute. The mission where Shepard virtually treks through a Geth server was also very creative and unique. So someone had a spark of creativity when doing those missions, but they made up for it and fell back to lazy design when I had to choose to wipe out the Geth, which depressed me.

    So I will soon be done with ME3 and will not play multiplayer, I’m sure. The lousy experiences with this game have even made me wary of Bioware’s Star Wars MMO, though if it ever goes free-to-play, I may need to try it.