Persona 3 FES

This was my first foray into the Persona Universe. Let me say 2 things up front about this game First it is Dark  As you know I like dark. Second - while I would call this a Mature Game, it is not Leisure Suit Larry or even GTA. The game deals with death. people die, people you like, people you do not like. Do not give this game to anyone under 16, you will scar them for life.

That said : on with it. Yes Another one off the stack - almost.

Start up and synopsis:
     You are a second year transfer student to Gekkoukan High School. You also happen to be an orphan and there is no explanation of You arrive late at night at the station on April 1st and head to the dorm.  As midnight strikes most people are suddenly replaced with coffins. You continue on listening to your headphones. It seems you have seen this before. Or just do not care. Upon arriving at the dorm, you are greeted by a creepy kid and have to sign some sort of contract. OKAY So you sign and suddenly there are people in the lobby, one of them has a gun!  They are both acting a little odd but the girl with the gun shows you to your room (Could I have an escort without a gun please?)
     You get up the next morning and a seemingly normal High School rpg begins. There is a lot talk about Apathy Syndrome sweeping the nation. People just stop and stay where they are. You hear students gossiping at the gate about it. You find your class meet some people and the game at this point does not really allow you to make many choices, this is one long set up.
     Then they come, shadows attack the dorm drawn there by Akihiko, one of the dorm residents. You head for the roof with the girl with the gun  you have found out her name is Yukari. I call her annoying.  Sh points the gun to her head and is unable to pull the trigger.  You grab the gun, point it at your head and know instinctively what this is, it is not a gun but an evoker. You utter the word Persona and the first of your persona's appears and kicks the Shadows' ass.  End of basic game set up and tutorial. Ok so it's a little strange that you have to shoot yourself in the head.


     The truth comes out that these Shadows attack people,  and their nest is is the location of Gekkoukan High School. But it is only accessible during the dark hour.  that weird time at midnight when most people are in their coffins. The few that are not are Persona Users. The students at the dorm have formed SEES - "Specialized Extracurricular Execution Squad".  You the player are special user in that you can use multiple personas.   So of course they wanted you to join. Eventually you find out there is an opposing group - Strega led by a nihilist prophet -Takaya. They use the dark hour to carry out assassination requests they received through their Revenge Website.  You are told you have 1 year to get to the root of the problem. Once the truth about Nyx is revealed, they become the center of a cult wishing for her arrival and the annihilation of society and of course they try to thwart your plans to save the world.
     In being special you find there is a door in Tartarus that none but you can see.  Behind it is a room with a man, Igor who gives you advice concerning social links.  He has the contract you signed and reminds you of it periodically. He also allows you to fuse personas (DO NOT DO THIS YET) to form new ones. His odd sidekick Elizabeth can store them and makes some odd requests of you.  Most of which are fun. 
     As the plot thickens there are lots of betrayals, revelations and some deaths.  It turns out there is a reason you are special. There are people who help and some who hinder. but eventually it boils down to you have to save the world from the eventual coming of Nyx the mother of all shadows and her desire to wipe the slate and start over. You have to make some hard choices and that is part of the fun.


Gameplay:
 Somehow the game manages to combine a card fighter with a High School RPG. It does so well and with minimal annoyances.  By day you attend classes and clubs, hang out with your friends, work on social links or stat increases through various activities. and  do some of the side quests given to you by Elizabeth. By night you have the option to  fight shadows in Tartarus, increase your courage by singing Karaoke, increase knowledge by studying, there are some social links that are available only at night as well. The stats you can increase affect your ability to get some social links started.  The social links affect the types of Persona you can fuse. It is better to complete a social link than to have multiple ones almost complete.  Only completed ones count in the end.
   Battle in Tartarus is easy enough each persona has different strengths and weaknesses. Like any RPG of this nature, you gain more party members. You can bring 3 into Tartarus with you and each has their strengths and weaknesses as well.
With a little forethought you can have a party ready for almost anything. The more time you spend in the Shadow's nest, the more tired you become. If you are too tired you are forced to leave the dungeon. If you stay on a floor too long death comes after you. Eventually you must fight him.  Do not try it before you are ready.
  Each character in addition to have a persona also has a weapon type. Some shadows have the ability to block Junpei's slashes but not Akihiko's punches.  This becomes important especially in the higher levels of the nest as you hit more and more shadows with only
    The daily grind is broken up by Boss battles that take place somewhere in town.  Each boss appears at the full moon and the completion of the battle reveals more of the story.Sometimes party members get ill or you do  on those days you may not be able to form a party to fight. And your other life intrudes in the form of exams holidays and school functions so time management is necessary.
     However there is still the grind of leveling and gaining money so that you can store and unstore persona. If you get to the goal in Tartarus early, you get the bonus of gonad. Harder mobs no death to stalk you, it was fin but not needed. So no sweat if you are cutting it too close to the deadline.
   
Technical:
Some loads take a while. When I completed the game, it did not save the completed version. So if there is anything to unlock I cannot do it. Other than that no technical issues.

Complaints:

• The party sometimes gets in each other's way.  
• I really hate cutesy stuff.  The dog story is cool the dog in the party is not. 
• What is it with robot girls in these things. This one actually has a story plot but you know, this is just getting old. 
• The music wears on your ear after a while thank goodness for my ZEN Mp3 Player. Celldweller and Five Finger Death Punch worked well as background music in the dungeons when grinding.
• Speaking of wearing on you, so did Mitsuru's and later Fuuka's words of encouragement. Let us lose them please.
• Having to enter the velvet room to save persona, leave to dismiss persona then come back in to take others out of the compendium.
• The final boss battle. COP OUT. I wanted an epic battle. But at least if you were going to do it like that you did not make me waste hours. 
• Sometimes the forced  story portions went on too long. I needed places to break or save. Sometimes I got them, usually I did not. 
  
   

 
Likes:

• The story does not pull punches. I like that it is dark and while things turn out ok they do not for everyone on a personal level.
• The social links and their stories were interesting and varied. The nice answer was not always the best depending on to whom you were speaking.
• The gameplay was solid and consistent. No technical issue (except perhaps that the end.
• Lots of slots for saving. I like this in an RPG lets me branch decisions.

 Upshot:
 I liked the game. I will play it again in hard mode. Easy is too easy BTW. This time I will work on the social links and stats more. I highly recommend it. Out 10 I give the Journey portion of this a 9.

FES
Ok so the Answer is a second game on this. It takes place after the events above on March 31st.  The last day of your year. I will not review that here.  As a matter of fact I MAY not finish it, it is shaping up to be a major grind with no social links
and less of a story to hold my interest.

Paper Tiger Games - Smooth Site

This is just a quickie to let people know about Paper Tiger games.  I have been talking lately about casual games that are run on Face book.  Most of these games are simplistic. many are brain teasers or action flash ones, but the thing is most of them on Facebook cost money or are extremely limited.

Paper Tiger games is basically a kid's site chock full of casual games. All I found are free to play even to download.  When school is in session, the site can be busy, in the summer months there is peace and quiet.  The site boasts 316 games. I will be honest, I did not try them all.  I used only Opera and Firefox on the site. Guess what, not one was broken, not one over drove my fan or coprocessor, all were fast to load and all were free.

So if you are looking for checkers, connect 4, connect 2 (a sort of solitaire majong variation) reversi or even a fps, check out this site. It gets a thumbs up from me!

Farmville The Cash Cow

Zynga has many other games as of this writing in this same format and using the same structure.  Alas I could not take any more excitement. So I jump straight to the game Zynga seems to put the most time and money into and that seems to be the most popular - Farmville. And why not at last estimate (April or thereabouts) Farmville had an estimated 80 million people playing it worldwide. Think about that is 9 New Yorks. THat is the entire population of the coutry of Germany. Needless to say  employers are up in arms about employees playing it on their time and people have claimed addiction much like the WarCrack games.

Premise:
You are a farmer. You plow the field, plant the crop, harvest the crop. You add things to your farm, expand it, visit neighbors farms and partake in monthly collection contests.

Game status:
Beta (aren't they all?)

Game play
Yeah you guessed it : Clickety Click Click.  Recruit players. Spend real world money for in game decorations and perks.

Technical
Of all the games of this design this seems to be the smoothest running. Yes things still disappear from the gift boxes.  Yes it is still a HOG and graphics take forever to load sometimes so that your farm looks partly green and partly white space. Yes the moving of the toon from one place to another is INCREDIBLY slow and tedious, so much so that most players have trapped the spawn point. Yet people seem to like this game.

Appeal
I am not certain WHAT the appeal is, perhaps the ability to  do virtually nothing except click, move up the ladder of your friends and watch the crops grow?

So now that I have taken all I can of the clickety click I can stand I would like to point out that Before Farmville there were other apps on Facebook that basically did the same thing.  So I put it you readers to explain, Why is Farmville more appealing than MyFarm or any other sim like game? Why is it now included on xfire? Something I once thought was a semi-reputable gaming site. Anyone? Is anyone reading or is it time to harvest your soybeans?

Cafe World - Needs more Spice

Now for the one that was tied with Fishville for next to last.  The reason Fishville won was basically lousy coding and poor communication as well as being the last of the games Zynga Games of that design to update to code to match the others. This one is just damn slow and stupid.

Premise:
You own a Cafe, you cook dishes sell them and people eat them. The more you sell the more profit you make, the more profit the bigger the Cafe can be. You can and make dishes and hire more employees. Oh wait this is sort of like Fishville Oh well.

Gameplay
Clickety click click. Click on stove to select recipe click on stove 3 more times to 'add ingredients (all hard coded, no choices here), click on the stove to serve the dish, click on the stove to clean it, click on the stove to repeat. - Ho Hum. Unless of course you get the special stoves by either recruiting an army of friends and begging them for stuff or paying Cafe Dollars (Yep bought with RW money) The it is just clickety click. Faster Ho Hum. Oh and can anyone tell me why it takes 9 hours or more to make eggs sunny side up. Denny's would be out of business if their short order cooks took that long!

Technical
It takes FOREVER to load. It is nice the little green bar shows that it is loading greenstuff (whatever that is) but why does the game run in the background? People get up come in leave, wait, but the player can do nothing until game load is complete.  I thought the purpose of a game was for someone to play it, not for it to play itself.  Here is an idea, stop eating up the ram by having the toons do stuff and use it to load stuff faster. Things disappear from the gift boxes, special features to be completes hang about and the graphics load is awful.  For example, the floor in a cafe done with 2 different tiles alternating loads one set of tiles then about 3 minutes later (No exaggeration : it timed in at 2:53.). Last but not least down time seems to be frequent with suggestions to play from the Zynga site or another of their games instead (which is probably down too.)

So All in all this is just another beta that IS a beta (unlike Fishville or Treasure Isle which seem to be in alpha stages.) If you are into clicking and voyeurism this is for you, If however you are a gamer looking for a time fill on your lunch break, try solitare.

Fishville Fry

It took a while for me to decide what the next worst game in the Zynga pool is. I have come to the conclusion it is Fishville Ok so maybe it is stress management thing. THEY say aquariums are relaxing. I maintain THEY either want to sell you more stuff or never actually ran one, but it is relaxing to watch. This game however is anything but relaxing.


Premise:
Again the premise is about as difficult as any on the Neopets site or any other kid's site, only this is for adults?? Basically you raise sell and keep some fish.and decorate the tank. Watch the fish grow, fight the fish, feed the fish, watch the fish die if you forget to feed them.

So you have your aquarium and you can chose some gravel and backgrounds for free or pay RW money to get some others. Then you do the same with fish and decorations. Surprise surprise. The next step is ts to drop the fish eggs - if they work that is and of course recruit neighbors to play because well you know this is a game that REALLY requires a multi-player environment. You feed your fish and then come back when they say to feed them again. Rinse, repeat till full grown then either keep or sell. Oh and you get mastery points for each sale as well as money and .. well if you read the previous blog you know how it works, only instead of digging you feed fish.

Now for the exciting difference! You can fight your fish! Yep just like the arena in Neopets only not. There is no actually live interaction involved. You click say fight pick an opponent. You win or lose based on stats only and that is it.

Next comes the visiting neighbor's tanks and feeding their fish. And of course yours. 
 


Game play:
Clickety Click Click once in a while you may click and drag something.
 Technical

First when you mouse over or click on a fish it should tell you how long till next feeding - except their 13 hours must be equal to my 5. And sometimes the fish return to their same level of hunger. Perhaps they have sustain cast on them? The game takes a long time to load, some items do not work, others disappear after placing or on the way to the gift box.  Fishville seems to be the red-headed stepchild. It gets the updates LAST if at all. This may be due to it's lack of profitability or due to other issues. I do not care, I do care that it seems that they want me to pay for a game that they do not maintain at the same level that they do others in the look and feel. 

While we are on the subject of paying ALL these games have BETA on the splash screen. Most sane people will NOT pay to be BETA tester, It used to be beta testers were paid or at least given a free copy of whatever it was they were testing.



Zynga games seem to come in two basic formats the * Wars one or the *ville one. All have the same basic look and feel. There is very little strategy or even mathematical prowess required for Fishville. So, if you want to wade through a boring game with lots of non functioning functions be my guest. Perhaps it will ease your stress.

Zynga - the new Amway

Once in a while I step back from MUDDING, console games and PC games and look at what is considered casual gaming. Zynga has lately been one of the names that is splashed all over such games - much as EPIC and IGN was in the past. They have become a staple of social sites such as MySpace and Facebook and have developed (I use that term loosely) multiple Flash games. Yet they leave something to be desired as a game developer. Perhaps it is a sense that gamers or even coders are developing the games instead of the accounting department. So over the next few weeks I shall take each Zynga game and critique it here - starting at the bottom.

Ah what IS the bottom - that is a good question. There are several games that vie for this position in my mind in the Zynga list of games. I think though Treasure Island maybe the winner. You begin this game on your own island with a hut. a shovel and little garden plot in which to grow fruit. Oh and a gem tree which grows a certain color of gem.

The basic game premise is that you travel to islands on a map and dig to find treasure. Each island has 3 treasure collection types hidden on it. Each collection contains 5 items to collect. The idea is that digging uses energy and returns fruit, experience points,a treasure chest, a special or nothing. Eating fruit restores a certain percentage of energy. Gaining a level restores it all and increases the max. So you click on a picture of a map, click on an island on the map, click on a spot on the island and watch your basic low grade toon go through some lame animation. Tinse and repeat till out of energy, eat fruit, go again.

Not boring enough for you? But wait there is more! See you can travel to friends' islands click on a button to chase off sea gulls or clean it or something and gain xp. Then get a gem from their tree. They may have a different color gem tree and this becomes important because you NEED these gems to unlock Tiki heads to gain access to certain parts of some of the islands. How exciting! Of course this means you must recruit friends to play the game and they have to agree to be your neighbors.

So what is the problem with this game other than the Ho Hum factor? Well, first if you do not have enough friends who cannot sleep at night and need something tedious to do, you are unlikely to get the gems needed to proceed. Unless you purchase, find or earn 'Island Cash' see Island cash is used for in game items. Like most Zynga games this is a lame excuse to get real world money out of its players.

As if that were not enough, the collections are so few that the RNG for any collection chest discovered returns the same items over and over. Figure 21 chests on an island 15 possible items to fill 3 collections, so why do i get 6 of the same
two items OFTEN and few of the others even to the point of obtaining NONE of one of the collections? Perhaps they are all behind the Tikis i cannot unlock because most of MY gaming friends have at least some taste

The final thing that makes this the bottom of the list, other than the stereotyping of islands and their dwellers, is just lazy coding. Performance is awful. Why does EVERY Zynga game kick my fan off into high on my machine? It is not like any real processing or even hardcore graphics are going on. I think most of the artists at Zynga use children's coloring books as templates for items and characters. Why can't pop ups for actions wait their turn? Why do they interfere with each other? And most of all I want to know why it is you can track how long since a neighbor logged in but cannot return a different message than you have already collected this from this neighbor today. How difficult is it to make another object to return upon that if statement? here let me GIVE you logic zynga -

Check neighbor gem counter //max number of gems that by be collected from island
Check last neighbor login //last login of island owner
Check PC obtained time //date and time of last gem obtained from this island by pc
Check

on command get gem from basket
secure pc
IF neighbor login > 24 hours //island owner not played in over a day
return "Sorry your neighbor.name has not been around to harvest any gems. Suggest
neighbor.name come play with you on Treasure Island."
goto fail
IF neighbor gems <= 0 // max gems distributed
return "Sorry, neighbor.name's gems have all been claimed."
IF pc obtained time gem <= 24 hours //player got one from here already today
return "Return later you already got a gem from this basket today."
ELSE //valid collection condition
PC gems = pc gems +1
neighbor.gem counter -1
PC obtained time reset to server time
endif

FAIL
unsecure pc
end

Ok sort of messy psuedo code but when a game is about the intelligence level of a 3rd grader on a site that requires you be 13 or older to have an account. I figure there is a serious lack of basic understanding of logic in the coding team. Even Neopets has more exciting games than this and they are MEANT for kids. So as far as casual gaming goes this one FAILS.

Gaming Social sites

This was written for a class I am taking

There are several networking sites of which I am member. I have discovered that I prefer sites that are focused on one aspect or another such as tech support, writing, business or as in the case of these two sites, gaming. The purpose of the gaming social sites is provide a means of communication outside of the games so that players who have formed relationships over the course of a game may communicate.

Two such sites are WGFriends and GamerDNA. Both started with very focused intentions. They were a means for people who play online games to keep in contact. Both have evolved very differently.

GamerDNA began as a site known as GuildCafe. Its main emphasis was a way for Guilds members in Guildwars to communicate and share information when not in game. Its features include a free forum/website for the Guild with some predefined graphics or the ability to upload your own and to set security levels for your members so that Guild officers had places to plan before announcing to the general membership any changes or raids. The site also has general forums for discussion about games and gaming and a news feed on the gaming industry. The site also allowed the creation of other games' guilds and clans and the users could add the games to the database. While this was great from a user standpoint, it lent itself to other issues such as the duplication of games in the database, for example Valhalla MUD and ValhallaMUD.

Then EVERYTHING went online, not just PC games but consoles and even mobile devices. In an effort to support all of these the site evolved into what it is today a Facebook/Twitter clone with a gaming and marketing emphasis. It now also features things such as live Twitter feeds, information of who is playing what game provided though other sites such as Xfire, PS3 online, Wii Online and other live console and game interfaces. This is provided the game is in their database which now features mainstream commercial games and very few independent efforts. True industry news is buried in marketing hype press releases and they have shifted the emphasis from the general gamer to "the male, 18-34 demographic." Many of these features are useful - most are not to all players and development seems to have halted on the older features. Many visually impaired gamers have complained that the site is no longer as accessible as it was in the past.

WGFriends on the other hand started out as a way for those who follow independent and smaller games. They began as a MUD rating site and have expanded to include Twitter and Facebook feeds as users' options. They are lacking the comprehensive newsfeed and security levels within user made forums, but as they are expanding they are constantly polling all of their users as to the functionality and usefulness of each feature. They keep in mind the W3 standards and while their growth is not as explosive as other sites have been there is steady growth that the owners address regularly.

Of the two sites I am presently leaning toward preferring WGFriends not so much for the features it presently provides, but rather the service that the owners provide.

FU2 Codemasters

I purchased OVERLORD 2 because I liked the first one. Then I hit some issues with the installation. Yeah it was copy protection stuff. As usual a 3rd party company created it. So I muttered a lot and started sending e-mails copying Codemasters to the to line so they could be aware of the issue. After a day the company responded. It was an easy fix. But, Codemaster's also responded with they did not think the game would run on my machine as my video card was too old. Sigh. It is not THAT old, but ok.

It loaded, the registrations went through so I had hope. The cut scene started fine, but when the game went to start, it turned out Codemasters was right. It was a no go. The game still sits on my shelf laughing at me.

So sometime, not so long ago I got a survey request from Codemasters to tell them what I think of Overlord II. THey noticed I registered the game. COOL! A chance to let them know why I was disappointed. A chance to let them know I love their games but cannot afford to upgrade every year just to play a game. So off I go to the site to fill in the info. A site run by another 3rd party company.

The survey starts out with the usual qualifying questions. (Yeah i did that for a living for a while too) Do I work in any of the following industries - no, Do I own this game, yes. What age and sex am I? I answer. Suddenly the screen pops up and and get Sorry you do not qualify. So first i have to ask myself. Why send the email inviting me to the survey when you got that info off the registration? Did they not share that infor with the survey company?

Then I get more annoyed. You see, since I did do that for a while I sort have an idea of how a company decides who to survey. They base it on who they perceive their market to be. Which means that they are not reading the refistration infor or at least not querying it before they contact the buyers of the game. That or they just do not like females that are older to purchase and play their product. In speaking to other gaming friends it seems many companies do not like males over 30 either. So I got some news for ya CODEMASTERS. PEOPLE OVER 20 PLAY GAMES AND GUESS WHAT SOME OF US are *GASP* FEMALE. So deal with it.

Sound and Fury

Another disappointment this week. Assassin's Creed was originally slated for this month for the PC. So I saved my 60.00 and went off to the store to see if this machine can handle it. It is not out. It is now due out in March of next year.

So instead I spent 35.00 and reassessed my desire for the game. Of course now it will be bigger, better and require more hardware. And that is the state of gaming. Gone are the days of companies that came out with great games like Thief, Eye of the Beholder and Lands of Lore. Beautiful graphics, great story and good game play. Instead everything must be online, interactive and require more hardware, different o/s's and twenty tweaks. I sit here with games I would love to play but in this economy cannot justify upgrading the machine just to play a game. What starts out as a 60.00 purchase becomes 260.00 or more by the time you get the latest graphics cards, sound cards, and RAM needed for this generation of games. Games that in my opinion are no more exciting than those mentioned previously that ran on less of a machine.(2MB ram, 486 processor or less and 1MB or more hd space.)

Why? Perhaps that should be the big change made in the industry. Set machine specs before the project starts and hold the developers to them. Set them so they run on a machine that is one back from the state of the art. Why? Because delays in the production of a product point to issues in the industry which means low profits. Low profits mean people are not buying games. If the industry is losing money perhaps they need to poll their player base and not rely on the propaganda put forth by marketing sites and what they claim. Sure I would love a 7,000.00 machine just for games, but honestly it was a chore getting a 600.00 one.

Yes I am one voice. One buyer one gamer. But I plan what I will buy and save for it. So do others. When it turns out I cannot run it on the equipment I have, I move on. Even Guild Wars seems to have made changes to the old game so that now some areas lock and freeze due to graphics issues, areas I made it through before on this machine on dial up even. Overlord for the Wii pushed the limits of the machine. That still blows my mind. It was MADE for a console with very definite specs, yet there were still points when the graphics overwhelmed the machine.

So if anyone in the industry truly listens, which I am doubting more and more. Here is a suggestion. Go to the gaming sites incognito. READ and I mean READ the forums regarding installation and issues with games. See what people truly complain about. Look at what they are really running for a machine. Not what they want, not what they drool over, but rather what they have now.

Delays are acceptable if it results in a good game that anyone can run on their system. Delays are fine if the game is worth it. But tell your marketing group to lose the hype. We are tired of all the sound and fury about airware. Too much hype leads to disappointment and disappointment leads to money going elsewhere.

Oh and on what did I spend my 35.00? 2 games - Trine for the PC and a used copy of Baroque for the Wii. Sorry guys someone else got the money I had planned for Assassin's Creed, because they had the games in the store for systems I have.

Overlord: Dark Legend

Let me start out with a little background on this. I already own Overlord for the PC. I like the game, it is fun. I plan on getting Overlord 2. So when it came out for the PC I went to my local Gamestop to purchase it. They were out of stock. So I asked price 40.00 within my acceptable budget for a PC game I want. Since they are a local store and know us and what systems we buy for and been listening to me complain about the lack of Wii games for me, they pointed out Overlord Dark Legend.

My first thought was how fun! I can use the wand to sweep my minions around. Then i saw the price 50.00 hmm. So Chaos wanted a copy of Persona2 for the PS2 we got that and I decided to do something I have never done before. I rented a game. This means I had a time limit so I did something I rarely do. I played the fame through in less than a week. That means I missed some stuff and did not go searching for everything. Keep this in mind as your read.


Start up:

I almost did not play this game. Imagine this, you rent a game from your local Blockbuster. You bring it home and put it in the system . The first screen that comes up in your less than 6 month old system is that it needs to upgrade the system to play this game Yes or No? No detail, no explanation of how - nothing. I should add that I have no Internet connection on this system. It is not an option where I live. No cable, satellite is cost prohibitive so I was doubly unsure if it would even work. With a lump in my throat I selected yes expecting it to fail.

Start up:
It started the update bar and stopped around 30%. After a while (probably less time than it seemed) I had decided it has frozen I put the controller down to go restart and WHAM it finished. I guess Codemaster and Nintendo have been taking lessons from Microsoft. Information would be nice guys!

Usual historical cut scenes start. The game is presented as a bedtime story told to a young Overlord about another young Overlord on his 16th birthday. The upshot is this:

Once this was a great evil family with the Black Duke who built the area up from scratch. Over subsequent generations the family frittered away the fortune and the present Overlord is absent a lot. His wife ran off with a hero and the older siblings are either frolicking with Elves or cavorting with Dwarves leaving the youngest alone on his 16th birthday. The cook gives the young master his birthday present. Which leads him (eventually after a bit of tutorial type running around) to the throne room that has been sealed. Now the fun starts. Yep it is a Cinderella story with a slight difference.

Gameplay:
I am still playing the first version of Overlord on my PC. I missed having as many buttons to use to get to things. A few things are a bit difficult with the controller (like selecting default spell). On the other hand after you get used to it, it is actually a pretty natural feel to use the wand and nunchuck on this game. I liked it more than I thought I would. Fairly good job Codemasters you get get a B+ on that.

The story romps right along and a lot of the old favorite stuff is there. Yep nasty hobbitses, tricksey elves and drunken dwarves. All are there. Over all the game is pretty easy and any RPG player can see where the plot is going, but it is fun enough to follow along. (I still LOVE my minions! Those and the imps in Dungeonkeeper have to be my favorite support characters of all time)

There were only two things I found annoying. The first was the repetitive phrases uttered by NPCs when you venture near them. If I hear that phrase "The way you cut through those plants.." one more time I may engage in a little Overlord activity against the television. Give us a repeat or ignore option PLEASE. The second was along the same lines but was a bit more frustrating and that was the Bard kept telling me about the bug that needed squishing after I had completed that side quest. The cook did the same about the posters in town. I went back to each and checked my journal to ensure I HAD completed them. I had. That needs to be revisited

I wish there had been more cut scenes with the Minions, I may not have found them all though. The ones that were shown I liked.

The two final bosses are a pain (as they should be) But the Elf may have had other issues. See next section for that. So I will not address that until I figure out what was technical difficult and where it really was. The game is rather short it came in at 16 hours or so. I am not complaining about that. I enjoy a game based on its story and difficulty. Parts are difficult but nothing was impossible. However it ended faster than expected. I expected a confrontation of some sort with my siblings or a final battle of semi epic proportions. At least the townspeople throwing rotten veggies at the siblings. I do not mind the way it ended it just seemed a bit abrupt as if the coders were told "ok that's enough now tack on something to end it."

Technical stuff:
Ok already mentioned the update. I had locks and freezes as I approached endgame. They occurred after I got the side quest with the gnome statues and continued until I defeated Erasmus. I suspect memory issues from the way it acted. It would lock at a loading screen for the town of Meadowsweet and for the Elven areas both at load of area and during battle. Once I was past the elven areas it ran fine again. The issue MAY have been a scratch on the disk, but I think not. Locale and actions performed for locks was too varied. I considered trashing the game more than once due to this.

Some graphic weirdness ala old Sonic games. i.e.: something did not load then finally did. Usually it was an obstacle or background but still I noticed it.

One area kept telling me there was a mana device present even after I picked it up. I wasted time and locked up several times looking for it.

Fun factor:

I liked the game. I was prepared to not based on some other gamers' feedback. I would definitely replay it. So that ranks high. The minions are hysterical and the jester is fun. The missions are doable in a reasonable amount of time. I like that I do not have to spend 4 hours to get 1 mission done.

Upshot: I like it. It is great little game and immensely enjoyable. I give it a 4 or 4 and half out of 5 (provided the tech issues were a bad disk and not bad programming otherwise drop it .5 for that.) I encourage you to try it. However, I will not pay 50.00 for it. Sorry guys that is too much 40.00 MAYBE if I feel flush. 30.00 probably, 25.00 definitely. Maybe your pricing structure needs to be revisited.

Gaming Backlog: Devil May Cry (PS2)

Ah HA! I finished one. Fr those of you who do not know I have a gaming backlog like you would not believe. But at last I finished Devil May Cry. Game play was good. I did not do a completest game. So impressions are from a first play through without annoyances.

Start up and synopsis:
The game starts out with a cut scene of Dante sitting in his office as a long willowy woman comes crashing through the window. Interesting way to get some one's attention. She proceeds to try to kill him, then when that fails she hires him. All normal for Dante.

So off they go to a Castle on an island and now things start to get strange. First Trish as we have been told her name is goes vaulting up to the top of a cliff leaving Dante to walk up the long way. This theme runs through the whole game. Yep, that's right Dante can't jump for shit. So off he goes walking.

Several hours (game play time), a few platforms and some cool weapons later, he finds Trish again and guess what? She is working for the bad guy. Shock! You mean the woman that looks a LOT like Dante's mother who just happens to come into his office through the window and can jump sheer cliff-faces in a single bound is a DEMON? (or are they devils? Still fuzzy on that.) So now it is time for her to deliver Dante to her boss and guess what, yep she fails.

Now comes the weirdness. Dante is starting to clue into what is happening (never mind the PLAYER is smarter than the supposed professional in this and has figured it out LONG ago.) Dante goes for the big guy. Big guy almost gets him but guess what yep the woman saves him (why? Dante gets all emo over it (Talk about picking the wrong women) Goes off fights some more and guess what? Yep, Trish shows up able to function in spite of being deaded a while ago by her ex employer. OK Then comes the REALLY stupid stuff. Starfox/Sonic Adventure style flying of a museum relic that Dante just HAPPENS to know how to fly and a last minute getaway before the bad guy's corpse and any remaining minions are supposedly buried under a ton of rubble.

Well we will see about that there are 3 sequels after all.

Gameplay:
The moves are fun to do, not annoying ones that you have to contort your fingers into pretzel shapes in order to accomplish anything and even auto mode is playable. Except once it is on, you cannot turn it off. The biggest complaints I have are lack of the ability to change my camera and Dante can't jump. Look I do not mind the occasion engine controlled jump from the correct spot but I should be able to jump BACK. Not fall down and have to climb all over.

Game is mission oriented grades applied to mission upon completion based on object collected, NPCs whacked and time.

Technical:

Don't know if it is my set, the switcher box or what but at times backgrounds and graphics were too muddy. Had to turn it up all the way on the game to see things like ladders against the wall. I do not have to do that on other games so suspect it is the overall clarity of the graphics in the game. Dark is good, muddy is bad.

No locks, no bugs, no issues Good solid coding. Great job on that.

Fun factor:
Overall the game was good. Dante definitely earns the title of Badass. Missions for the most part go fast with a few exceptions caused by the difficulty seeing and getting used the inability to turn the camera to get in the right spot for a jump. Will probably replay it at least one in Dante Must Die mode.

Upshot:
Bosses in the game on Normal Mode are hard, but for the most part not impossible to beat even first time through. The story line is acceptable and only gets ridiculous near the end. The female character, Trish, is rather lame. There are major holes in the RPG plot. But hey for a shooter it has more plot than most. Give it 4.5 out of 5
The ending was a too stupid to warrant that last .5.

I started DMC 2 Can anyone tell me why Dante now reminds me of the Prince in PoP Sands of Time? Hmm

WTFM

Ok so, here is what happened. After years (ok maybe not years, but a corrupted card and a restart, I FINALLY finished Fire Emblem Path of Radiance on the GameCube. It was not my best game, being my first play through of it and I rushed through the parts I had already done the second time. (Could they have made those ending sequences ANY longer? I was falling asleep.)

I HAD to finish it because my daughter wanted to see me port the gamecube came over to Fire Emblem Radiant on the Wii that the family Holiday present. So I go to port the Path of Radiance data to Radiant Dawn. I follow the onscreen instructions and lo and behold, frozen Wii at the port point. Sigh, technology is great when it works.

Being a big RPG gamer. I have many branch points and saves on the card. I figure perhaps they are the issue. Having learned my lesson when the card corrupted the first time on Darkened Sky RIGHT BEFORE THE BOSS BATTLE. I made a backup card. Realizing I have bee slacking about keeping the backup up to date and thinking maybe it was the unfinished games on there that were the issue; I decide to back up the whole shebang and delete all but the finished game off the real card. It is not able to be copied. OK that just pisses me off.

So off I go to the game sites to see who knows what. Fire Emblem site has nothing about this where I can find it. Wii site has nothing about this where i can find it. So I start checking Gamespot, GamerDNA, and their ilk. Gamespot paid off.

It seems that If you have any game that is saved in easy mode on the card, it will not copy or transfer. It will NOT allow you to copy the game blocks onto another. Ok that is just kinda lame. I deleted the easy branches and Presto it copies onto my back up and is able to be ported over to the Wii. Now the rant moves to the old style I would RTFM if there were any entries in FM about this! DOCUMENTATION IS NECESSARY WRITE IT AND INCLUDE IT PUBLISHERS.

One Answer

I have been ranting about games going to the marketeers I mean dogs. Well J. Radoff had one answer over at Gamesutra. He mentions a lot in the article that is from a marketing point of view, possibly because he IS a marketeer and not a designer, but a many of the things he says holds true.

First and foremost Gamers talk to each other. In any given week 2 or 3 of my gaming friends will pass on a website or a game to me to check out. Some are flash in pan interests for us, some retain our interests. Let me add to Mr. Radoff's list of things that make a game virile as he calls it.

1. Accessibility - people who are visually or hearing impaired or have other needs are a large minority of gamers. Make certain the game can be played by anyone. This includes making a game that you do not have to squint to read the fuzzy font or that you have to be a contortionist to get the move needed to complete a level out of the controller (think fighting games)

2. Cross platform. Over 50% of my gaming friends run some form of *nix. Many games are still too Microsoft dependant. Not all console gamers are on a cable modem. Do not make the game require the latest hardware just to start. We will put up with slow if it does not crash. I liked Cutthroats. Too bad it fragged my hard drive to hell and back every time I ran it. I still liked it enough to run it off a dedicated drive so that i could defrag every time. But as the game progressed it became unplayable. OPTIMIZE the game for a lower end machine.

3. Cross browser I do not use I.E. Most of us do not use I.E. Firefox is the favorite. Opera is up there, Safari, to name a few.

4. Affordable. Make the core game affordable. Guild Wars is a good example. The core game is cheap in comparison to many other games. Pay for stuff is 10.00 per item (pretty much). The mud I play starts at 15.00 per item. That we can probably afford off a paycheck; anything we have to save up for is probably not going to generate as much overall income.

5. Even playing field. It really irks players when someone buys a character in a game. When items are bought make them useful, in game attainable or status items. Extra storage in Guild Wars, the spell pack that saves the player from having to spend 3 years on line to get all of the spells.

6. Humanize the staff. In an online game let the coders owners admins marketing people be seen sometimes. It lets the players know the developers are still involved.

7. Make the game a challenge but not impossible. Skies of Arcadia was fairly easy but people come back to it over and over because of the way the game was put together, the character interaction, the graphics and the storyline. Toy Commander was hard DAMN hard but the story, graphics and sheer strangeness kept that one going. And I swear one day I WILL beat the Lands of Lore series, I even keep an old machine around so I can play it.

8. The above leads to the most important. Your players have to LIKE the game. Something has to keep them interested during the XP grind periods. Character interaction, other player interaction, quests and storyline. In Guild Wars the what will happen next kept me going. In Zork, Lands of Lore, Eye of the Beholder, Doom and even Descent little surprises along the way, red herrings, sub plots and character interaction are all things that kept my interest. These days Overlord, Devil May Cry, Titan Quest and the Fire Emblems are my interest holders. Eldar Scrolls and Assassins Creed beckon to me, but what I would not give for another good game like the Thief series (in no kill mode) or almost any game put out by the old Westwood Studios.

Game makers by all means listen to Radoff. But the thing he says that rings the truest is that gamers talk to other gamers. And if you are not hearing what they say then you need to get out of the business. Because the best games are those made by gamers for gamers.

Is the Gaming Boom Going Bust

For the past 3 years or so games and gamers have been high profile. Yet this year it seems that some of that is falling off. I have some theories as to why.

First and foremost is oversaturation. Everyone and their brother has gaming blog, podcast, or whatever. Non gamers have stopped being curious about the sub culture and started being annoyed.

No diversity in L&F. Bartle said it when he said he had played Warhammer, it was called World of Warcraft. The games are starting to all look alike. Many years ago the trend was to look like EOB then it moved to the Diablo look, now it is Warcraft look. Very little in the design or the functionalty makes a game stand out within its genre.

Economy. Yes it is hitting the gaming market. People are starting to think about what game they are going play next and count their pennies. People are returning to titles and online games that are safe or at least that they know they like.

The morph of the craft into a business. Game coders used to be the renegades of the programming world. They were the true geeks, they did not work for deadlines. They worked to make it good. This was not always the utopia some make it out to be. Games did not work or worked only on some systems or with some co processors, games went way over cost and were outdated when they came out. Or they never came out. Many companies went under, suffered from hostile takeovers or were flat out bought out. The pendulem has swung too far in the opposite direction now. It has become big business and markleting rules all. Game companies announce release dates and are held to them. Too much structure stifles creativity.

More in a day or two.

What does an admin do all day?

The other day I was on Guild Wars. Players as usual are standing around talking in Ascalon. One was trolling for flames. People got upset by his or her verbal abuse of others and started trying to report and get an admin to respond immediately. When they did not, players immediately began complaining about the admin staff.

Ok so, you have a favorite game that you play online. Suddenly something happens or is not working as you think it should be. So what do you do? Maybe you look for an admin. But while one shows as around, they are not responding. What DO they do all day anyway?

Well first let's start with some information. Some games have 1 admin (most likely the owner/designer whatever) while others have 20. Specific tasks differ according to the game, but here are some of the tasks that are assigned to admins on any game.

Read and respond to mail sent to admin.
Check bug reports sent to admin.
Check reports of cheating sent to admin
Prioritize both of the above for action
Ban proven cheaters
Check with other staff members as to actions they have taken
Check change log
Recover/reset passwords
Read complaints about game balancing
Read ideas for game balancing
test and monitor new areas and areas reported as having issues
perform copyovers or reboots as requested by builders or other staff
(and sometimes by the players)
And be visible at times so the players know that the Admin are around.

Getting the idea? Now places with multiple admins split up these tasks, but 10 to 1 they add more such as Play testing, Code review, implementation, coder/builder liaison, etc. Unless it is NC or Blizzard, you can bet that the Admin does all of this unpaid. Some places even ban the admin staff from playing the game they admin. (though this is an unwise move on so many different levels that companies that do this are far and few between.

So please remember before you throw a fit that the Admins on your favorite game are never there, that it may be true - but most likely they are just busy trying to make the game a little more fun and or enjoyable.

Why is there always the need to blame something?

First read this blog about another homicidal student. And here is the article on the shooting.

Now when I was growing up Rock and Roll (specifically Jimi Hendrix and The Beatles) were blamed for Son of Sam's and Charles Manson's killing sprees. By the tome I was in college violent television and movies were the cause. Now it is video games. The fact is there is something WRONG with the people that do this. Outlawing violent TV or video games is NOT going to change it. Outlawing comic books or graphic novels or even fictional accounts are not going to change it. People like this find something to obcess about and as a result to justify their violence. YES, they need help, yes they need monitoring by their parents, keepers whoever. BUT stop blaming an outside source. Rant over

Games used to be fun

First read this MMOs vs the World Part II and if you did not follow the link to the Bartle interview there read that as well.

I know I have pulled back on my gaming so that I basically play one in each genre type. Why? because like Bartle I have seen most of them before. Unlike Dr. Bartle, I still enjoy playing games, but then I do not design them for a living. That is basically where I am right now in gaming, I want something to grab my attention and suck me in, but nothing does really. Well nothing that hasn't already that is. So, yes the design DOES matter as does the game itself. But one thing that I think Dr. Bartle is missing because of his proximity to the Industry is also a coherent story. Why am I going in here and blowing away these monster? Where did they come from? Why me?

Games that have stuck with me do so because of the story as well as the mechanics and the blood fountaining in slow motion. The characters matter. I have to want to save the world. Add to that what I call the creator's fun factor. Did they have fun making this game. Are there things in there just because? What about easter eggs? Does anyone remember what Zork replied when you typed in Fuck you! out of frustration? Those things stick in my mind to this day. Maybe when gaming companies start having fun creating games again I will find one that sucks me in again. Until then I will continue to play the others that never let go of me in the first place- that is good game design!

Old skool vs New Skool

So this evening I am on the MUD doing the usual stuff when one of the older players (in time on the game not in age) logs in. He has been playing pretty regularly for about a year now after a hiatus for a couple of years. He was in a less than happy mood. Perhaps the weather, perhaps he was feeling his age, but he began to echo some of what I have been going off here for a while.

The conversation started off with a discussion of players he suspected were botting. For the few of you who may not know the term, that consists of logging into a game and farming or leveling by using a script to perform repetitive actions. Most online games from WoW to MUDs deem this as illegal and will delete or ban any player they catch doin this. The problem is it is sometimes difficult to catch someone. In a mud environment heavy xp means heavy spam. This means lots and lots of text scrolling so a player may miss a tell from an admin checking on scripters. Add to this a myriad of scripts out there that you can set to respond to a tell and you have a difficult time discerning a scripter from a slow responder.

Now, the question arises why would anyone bother to do this? Well back in the day of door games it made some sense usually you got only so many moves or so much time per player. Many helpers or scripts existed. When MUDS began to spring up and allow unlimited play time, it was logical that some things were moved over. Except, now there were other people around with whom a player could interact. So the game had another dimension of enjoyment added like meeting and talking to people, roleplaying live in an environment and ganging up against a big boss. Now you could work with other people to solve quests or explore the world and you had plenty of time to do this! But there were always the few who felt that they had to be the biggest, best or get to the top fastest. They scripted and when caught they paid for it.

FAST FORWARD
MMOs. Now there is WoW and there are thousands of people online at the same time. People do not know you unless you stand out in someway. So.. again for those who feel the need to impress or think people will be impressed by such things, there are those that spend lots of time online to get to the top. Fine, except, most people have real lives, real things to do and cannot spend a lot of time online. So what is the easiest thing to do? Find one of those big boys make 'friends' with them and get them to lead you to the top. Except where is the fun in that?

This is the point of the conversation WHY play a game if you are not going to play it? Once you are the top dog, why ridicule others that are not anywhere near your level of play for not being higher than you? Most of all why let them use you to get there? You learned to play the game and enjoyed it enough that you wanted to be seen as the best. Help others - yes, add to their enjoyment by challenging them to something they CAN do. But that does not see to be the present mode of thinking. So can anyone tell me why?

Titan Quest

Last night my ISP decided I needed a break from online gaming. So I fired up Titan Quest to wait for the connection to return. It had been a while since I had played so, there were some things I had forgotten. Like you cannot pan back. I have gotten spoiled in games being able to scan into the next area or pan back and look ahead. Again a game allows it's npcs to attack you from offscreen, but you cannot see them to do the same. This is just plain bad design.

But that was not the thing that annoyed me and that made me put the game aside for now. It is set up like a lot of RPGs. You got through an area, defeat a boss, etc. If you fail you are rebirthed at a local shrine with a minus. That is fine. Except, if you do not have time to complete, you are sent back to the start of the chapter. So the 2 hours you just spent playing to fight through the area and get to the boss's lair has to be done all over again. WHAT is wrong with SAVE points?

This is what keeps casual gamers from becoming hardcore. many people just do NOT have 4 - 6 hour blocks of time to put into a game. They become discouraged and stop playing. So add more save points guys. If I have the time I can ignore them. If I do not then at least I have the option of getting back to where I was without having to redo some pain in the ass level that does nothing to advance the story and is there just to level up the character through the grind.

Where's My PoP?

Many months ago, nay even two years ago there was a huge to do about Prince of Persia moving to Wii, Except Ubisoft released the newest title on xbox, Mac and PS3 only. They even scrapped the PC verson. Now, I love the Prince series and have since I first saw it back in 89. The Cube version rocks, so while what I saw of the upcoming title looked good so far I waited. I wanted to try it on Wii.

Alas Someday my Prince MAY come, but not today. Only the two evil empires in gaming were able to get the tiele on their consoles. So I ask Where's my Prince Ubisoft?