#BlackFriday: Games

Update: 28 Nov, 2009 - Removed links as Black Friday is over. Cyber Monday is next!

Happy Thanksgiving!

Borderlands Playthrough 1 Complete

I just finished my first playthrough of Borderlands. It will take a few days, but I do plan a fairly in depth review. To put it simply, I don't complete many single-player games, so for me to finish this game says something.

For anyone that has played the game, the ending is weak and I'm not talking about the story part. For the fight, all I had to do was stand there and fire. The damn thing never hit me and then it dropped only basic weapons. Totally robs any cool points for all the hard work.

Aion May Be A Grind, But It Looks Good Doing It

Aion has released a "vision of the future" video and it looks fucking amazing.



Aion may get booed out of the stadium for being a grind, but everything I've seen about Aion makes it look like a great game. If this video is any indication of what's to come, I will still stick by my statement that Aion is the ! of Diku. Player housing? Epic (and I'm not talking Star Wars: The Old Republic epic here) battles? Cannons? Looks good to me.

Dragon Age Respecs

Rock, Paper, Shotgun has posted a "hack" to go ahead and reset a character's settings in Dragon Age: Origins. Better yet is this mod that accomplishes the same thing:

Of note: using the toolset may fuck up your game. Instead, use the really well-done and non-buggy Raven respec mod: http://social.bioware.com/project/469/ It refunds all talent/spell, skill and stat points, even taking into account those gained from a certain quest or from manuals.

But, here's my opinion. Why is this not a part of the basic game? Its 2009, haven't game developers learned that players hate to be locked down to choices that could potentially turn out terribly?

Initial Impressions: Left 4 Dead 2

Left 4 Dead 2 does the word sequel justice and delivers everything that was great about the original while adding to the experience in its own unique way. Left 4 Dead 2 is bigger, better, and badder. For some players, it is probably too much. For others, like myself, its exactly what we were looking for.

The immediate difference between the two are the main characters and the campaigns. The new characters and settings have no cross over to the original other than they exist within the same zombie apocalypse. The new characters are not as immediately lovable as the original, but they grow throughout the game. However, the campaigns are pure genius.

L4D1 had fairly mundane campaign settings and outside of one interesting moment on the tarmac at the airport, the game was all about the zombie killing. L4D2, building on epic moments, has included some great show stoppers. One level will have the survivors lighting up a stage at an abandoned rock concert to signal a chopper, while another will have the survivors retreading old paths now flooded by recent storms.

The brilliant part is that its not just the climaxes to the levels. Throughout each, there are a ton of great moments. However, words can not do these campaigns justice. They have to be played to be understood (or for a close runner-up experience for the Dark Carnival campaign, go watch Zombieland).

Also included are new weapons, the obvious additions being melee weapons. After a few hours of L4D2, its hard to think back to a swarming-zombie moment where I didn't have a katana or chainsaw sitting in reserve for that unfortunate moment when my ammo runs out. Sticking with movie references, see Shaun of the Dead for the importance of melee weapons during the zombie apocalypse.

With new campaigns, also comes new gameplay modes. In addition to the classic VS., co-op, and survival, a couple new game modes join the fray:

Scavenge: This is a VS. mode where the survivors have to collect gas cans to fill a generator while the Infected players attempt to stop them. The teams swap each round and the team with the most emptied cans wins.

Realism: This game mode will quickly have players hoping that a real zombie apocalypse doesn't occur anytime soon. There is no returning from death in this mode and everything is hidden from view (no glowing lines pointing out the ammo stack). This mode makes hardcore look carebear.



With the VS. game modes, come new infected, outlined below:

Charger: A hard charging brute that can grab and pound a survivor into the ground. A very much needed "speed" addition to the Infected team.

Jockey: An annoyingly small son of a bitch who can jump onto a survivor and control their movement. There is nothing like walking a survivor out the window of a 30 story building.

Spitter: A much needed, closet-camper punisher, the spitter lays down a pool of acid spittle that damages all survivors in its area of effect. The spitter is what L4D1 needed.

Boomette: A female version of the Boomer from L4D1.

There is no doubt that VS. mode in L4D2 heavily favors the Infected side. Fortunately, this is a good move. It adds bragging rights to finishing a campaign as the survivors and this time around the scoreboard actually feels like a competition. I never paid attention to the VS. score in L4D1, but since almost every L4D2 VS. match comes down to a few points, I constantly keep an eye on my progress trying to run a few more feet when all hope is lost (the farther a team makes it as survivors, the more points they get).

My only complaints with L4D2 so far are outside of the actual game. Some servers seem to suffer horrendous lag, even when they were able to run L4D1 without a hitch. Secondly, the matchmaking doesn't seem to have improved much as many of the games don't fill with players or in the case of VS. games, the sides become lopsided. The fix, as always, is to play with friends.

I plan to spend many hours playing L4D2, probably more than I spent with the original. At some point, I want to see the new infected and weapons integrated fully into the original campaigns and have everything accessible from launching a single version of L4D. I'm ashamed that I even thought about not playing this game. Its fucking awesome.

Left 4 Dead 2 unlocked on Steam

But I have to go to work :(

5 Years of Change

As a gaming geek, I can't imagine my day to day life without World of Warcraft or Firefox. A little over five years ago, neither one existed. This month, both celebrate five happy years of existence.

Five years ago today, Mozilla announced the official release of Firefox 1.0. The open source Web browser has come a very long way since then and has achieved a level of popularity that few would have imagined possible.

Its amazing how things come in twos on the Internet, this quote paralleling with WoW perfectly. Five years ago, NO ONE imagined the level of success that WoW has achieved. MMOGs went from communities of thousands, to millions in one giant leap.

With WoW's five year anniversary coming up later this month, The Escapist is running an interview with Rob Pardo:

World of Warcraft turns five this month, and we sat down with Blizzard VP of Game Design Rob Pardo to chat about the biggest triumphs and biggest mistakes of the mega-MMORPG, and why he's not worried that their new MMOG will kill it.

The full interview is worth the read. It covers the casual vs. hardcore debate, without pulling any punches, which is quite amazing coming straight from a game developers mouth. Its not often we see questions like this levied in an interview:

If you weren't a designer, but a hardcore WoW raider, do you think you would think the game was too "casual" these days?

Quite possibly. I have this theory that, when you're a really elite hardcore gamer, what you really want - what drives you - is that sense of competition; really having that gap between you and the less skilled, and more casual. That's what drives you, and that's not different no matter what game you're playing: WoW, Counterstrike, Warcraft III, games like that. You strive to make the gap as big as possible.

My commentary can't do the interview justice. Catch the full transcript here.

Mighty Big Teacup: Modern Warfare 2 Sells 4.7 Million Copies in 24

I guess Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare 2 is sitting in a pretty big teacup. The game sold 4.7 million copies within the first 24 hours, which is flat-out insane.

"MW2" sold 4.7 million copies and racked up $335 million dollars in sales in the US and UK alone when the eagerly anticipated title made its worldwide debut this week, according to publisher Activision.

I am not one of the 4.7 million, but I'm wondering if I should be. Since WAR launched, I've been wrong about pretty much ever game I've followed.

I thought Spore was to be the greatest game ever. I didn't even buy it and good thing, because it got tore up in reviews.

I thought Free Realms was trash. Millions of users later, I think I was wrong.

I thought Borderlands was going to be great, a true Diablo with guns. Its a good game, but not great and NOT a Diablo with guns.

I thought Dragon Age: Origins was try too hard to be cool. After EVERYONE told me I was crazy and EVERYONE I know was playing the game, I kind of wish I had a copy.

However, with all of this said, I still don't think most of the games on this list are worth the $50 - $70 price tags for new copies. Borderlands, which cost me $35, was the only purchase that presents value to me.

Gah, ending this post now. I fail.

Veteran's Day: Pirates of the Burning Sea FREE For 6 Months

While Flying Labs Software did not make this announcement on veteran's day, I wanted to talk about it:

Military personnel that can verify their status through a .mil e-mail address will be able to partake in an interesting promotion announced by Flying Lab Software this week. The promotion offers six months of Pirates of the Burning Sea to military personnel, however, in order to continue playing after the free six months you will still have to purchase a copy of the game.

I've run the full gambit of decisions on Pirates of the Burning Seas. From almost joining their core audience as a player community liaison to the announcement of SOE publishing the game crushing my dreams, eventually I decided to skip the game's launch.

It turned out that the launch did not go so well and the game was quickly written off as a niche "failure". In my opinion, the game is right where I anticipated, a niche game with a niche audience. Fortunately, this free offer for military members gives me a proper 6 months to evaluate the game (and at $7 for a copy of the game, I may be tempted to just take the plunge down the road).

I started my journey into the game last night. The download and setup was a breeze, but that is a requirement for me these days. Any hiccups at that stage and I tend to dump any free game in a heartbeat.

Character creation was pretty awesome and I feel I've created a unique French Naval Officer, named Captain Heartless Gamer. With a Captain, a ship, and the tutorial complete, I set out for some adventures. The game can really be broken down into four areas: ships, avatars, economy, and PvP.

As I only played for an hour or so, I've only experienced ship and avatar combat. Ship combat is pretty solid and enjoyable. It can be slow at times, but I suspect it will get better as my ship gets better. Avatar combat is a cheap attempt to introduce a little classic diku-inspired MMO into PotBS. It works, but I wouldn't hold it up as a strong point.

At the end of the day, I'm playing for the open seas, the economy, and eventually some PvP. Good thing I have six months to feel the situation out!