Required Reading: Chrono Trigger

EatMyBomb, a blog I found through Technorati, has a great article up about the SNES RPG, Chrono Trigger. It is one of my all time favorite games!

Link to the article.

From the article;

"The most ingenious part of the game is the combat system. Chrono Trigger uses an Active Time Battle system. It’s a great combination of Turn Based and Real Time combat giving you both detail and fast paced excitement. Each combatant has a time bar that must fill before they can carry out an action. Higher levels and speed upgrades allow your time bar to fill faster, while magics like Haste and Slow can temporarily change its pace. The combat keeps you on your toes. If you spend too much time deciding what to do, your enemy’s time bar will fill and they’ll get another attack. Once your time bar is full you can attack, use items, or use tech which can be magic or special moves. There are also combo moves called double techs and triple techs which two or three characters can use together. You acquire these combos when certain characters spend enough time together in combat. This adds extra replayability to the game if you want to acquire all of the combos between all the players. The tech animations are exciting to watch, but never slow the action down like they do in some of the Final Fantasy games."

Update: 10 Nov, 2006 - Edited post and applied labels.
Update: 7 Jul, 2008 - Edited label.

TotalBF2.com discussion thread

TotalBF2.com thread on my 1.03 commentary post. Enjoy!

Update: 6 Nov, 2006 - Updated post and applied labels.

Battlefield 2 Patch 1.3

So what is so good about this patch? Well it fixes a lot of things... and by fix I mean changes that were needed! First and foremost the requirements for each rank have been reduced SIGNIFICANTLY! I logged in and after a few kills I was awarded three new ranks.

This allowed me to finally unlock some more weapons instead of the pansy medic weapon I had already unlocked. I can't tell you how insanely unbalanced the ranks were... it would of taken me years of gaming to get the rank that I have with the 1.03 patch. A very good change indeed!

Next you won't be running anyone over by just touching them with vehicles anymore. You actually have to hit them full force! This is great considering how ultimately lame it had been to get killed anytime a vehicle so much as grazed you.

Commanders no longer get teamkills for artillery strikes. Good for pick up games, but probably will be abused in organized matches. It still kills your own team, but no punishment.

Many improvements to the in-game server browser. Still pissed off that the server browser was released in such a crappy condition. Also the patch broke the Xfire and other server programs ability to launch into a server. There is a fix... here.

Various other changes in the patch also and the addition of a new map, Wake Island. It is a remake of the BF1942 classic map and is the first map I ever played any BF game on :) Sadly the new version seems to be getting mixed reviews. I have yet to play it much.

Overall I am happy with the patch, but still have some requests for *changes* to make the game even better.

1. Vehicle vs Infantry kills should only give the driver/shooter one point for the kill. I am sick and tired of matches where the gold/silver are just tank/aircraft whores.

2. Sniper rifles still feel horribly inaccurate 50% of the time and still are extremely weak. A shot to the chest or head area should = death.

3. Increase accuracy of support machine guns. Bullets should drop off at a shorter distance to prevent long range sniping.

4. Tanks should be easier to destroy... fewer AT rockets required.

5. Map balance... give infantry more damn places to hide so we stop getting raped by the vehicle whores.

Rank 6!

Finally hit rank 6 in WoW tonight. Tanglefoot is now a Stone Guard. My new goal is Rank 7, but I doubt Arathi Basin will still be going strong in a few weeks. Without Arathi Basin I will have literally no access to a decent, quick, and fun battleground :( We will see what happens!

Movie Review: A History of Violence

What a movie! I am fully aware that a lot of critics have a joking response to this movie. IMHO, this movie is full of comedy that sticks oddly in your throat. It is uncomfortable in the way that it makes you want to watch it. It drags you in and throws you around.

In essence the story is of a small town man, Tom Stalls (Viggo Mortensen), who when faced by a pair of murderous robbers in his coffee shop performs in a way that lends the viewer to believe there is something else behind this man. To tell you more would be to ruin the movie.

Some people will not understand the ending... the purpose... or why it ends where it ends. Honestly, I don't see why it ended where it did. The story felt cut off... at a point where I was really drawn into the movies core. That core is Tom's family and how it dealt with the situation at hand.

Like Stephen Kings masterpiece, The Shining, it is about the degradation of the family under extraordinary circumstances that interests me. The movie version of The Shining failed to deliver on the family aspect, but the book does not fail.

In a strange way I caught myself thinking back to The Shining and how A History of Violence sort of completed the family aspect. How do families respond when their entire world is flipped upside down? Sadly A History of Violence will leave you sitting on that thought, but it goes a long ways to answer some of it with graphic scenes all around.

The violence is graphic, in a way where that makes you feel for the characters and what is happening. Eerily, it compels you to watch. This movie has actors that filled the parts they were cast in. Not one stands out from another. All are believable.

A History of Violence is an outstanding movie for those that care to watch it. If you want cheap thrills then I am sorry... Stealth has already flopped a month ago.

A post... on Azgalor of course

Just bored and after a long night of BG fun.... I had to post. Thursday night / Friday mornings are my power game time. 555 HKs and I think 11 Arathi Basin wins. Should be enough for rank 6 this coming week :) WIN!

Taozu = Tactics .... a WoW video

Update: 5 Nov, 2006 - Removed post, but this will be kept as a placeholder.

This post contained a video of a fight against Taozu who I battled in World of Warcraft. Later Taozu switched to the Horde and we have begun fighting together instead of against each other.

The last video card you will ever need...

Update: 5 Nov, 2006 - Removed post, but this will be kept as a placeholder for historical value.

This post originally linked to an article at Gamergod.com (now defunct) about video cards. No copies of this article exist.

I hath been challenged...

Seems my rousing of the Azgalor WoW.com forum has produced a brave knight that wishes to challenge me. His name... Mav.

Who?

Exactly what I was thinking.

Hopefully he is man enough to come here and set it up. We will see.

Hoping for rank 6...

But I'm not to optimistic that I will get it. Not that I had a bad week in WoW, but just because I didn't get to play during the weekend battleground holiday that "increases" honor gained in battlegrounds. Sadly the increase is HUGE... nearly 1,000+ extra honor in an Arathi Basin win. Sorry I do not have the real number with me at the moment because I'm at work.

It pretty much slaps you in the face for playing during the week in the battlegrounds. Players can dedicate one or two days to all day battleground runs and get just as much honor as I do in five days of trying. This means the players that already have too much time to play can do their MC, BWL, ZG, and Onixyia raids during the week and still catch up on the PvP ranks on the weekend.

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However that skill is mute when it is displayed against weekend warrior pick up groups.
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Blizzard brought this about to bring more people into battlegrounds and it has. Problem is it has attracted the arranged PvP groups that completely utterly destroy a pick up group in literally ten minutes or less. They have pretty much moved weekend dungeon raids into organized battleground raids. This has proven that there is at least some skill to PvP in WoW. The skill lies in organization and communication within a group. However that skill is mute when it is displayed against weekend warrior pick up groups.

In turn this pretty much kills the battlegrounds for the casual crowd. PvP ranks are UNACHIEVABLE by most, if not all casual gamers. You will get to rank 5 and hit a literal wall. Even though I spend 90% of my in game time in the battlegrounds I have not made a rank in weeks. With Arathi Basin out now gaining 60,000 or even 100,000 honor will not get you anywhere at rank 5 or higher. That is just unacceptable in my book.

I won't pretend to understand how the ranks work. All I know is that before battlegrounds people with 2,000-4,000 HKs were rank 8+. People gained 4 ranks a week with 20,000 honor. I gained ranks 1 and 2 in my first week... then rank 3 and 4 in my second week... and then rank 5 the next week and never broke 10,000 honor. I saw rank 5-8's all over the place. Then I went on summer vacation and came back as rank 4 (from rank decay) AFTER battlegrounds was released. I have not been able to make it past rank 5... I am at a wall and I am gaining 40-70,000 CP a week... which obviously is not enough. I see a handful of rank 5-8's and usually I see mainly rank 1-3's.

Blizzard has stated they are looking at how it works... honestly I feel its been broken since battlegrounds with some sort of change being put in that wasn't mentioned.

Of course I need to offer some sort of fix... and honestly this is what I believe. Make ranks 1-9 easier to achieve. Don't make them super competetive... leave that for ranks 10+. 1-9 gives you a full set of blue PvP gear... which IMO you deserve if you put hard work in every week. Right now you have to be in battlegrounds 5-6 hours a day to compete past 5... which I hope was not Blizzards intention. If it was... these PvP rewards better become equivelant to MC or better gear. However this is just minor... not fleshed out... Blizzard needs to do something.