Thomplog Retrospective - Week of 5/13/13

The Preamble

Well, The Thomp has been dilly-dallying a bit as far as beating games goes, so I figure it's a good time for a good 'ol Thomplog Retrospective.

I've played some excellent games and some games I wish I had never heard of. Let's see what was on the docket this week...

League of Legends

That's right, that nasty beast reared its head up once more. Like most people, I'm sure, I harbor a certain kind of hatred toward League of Legends and its player base. A truer, more steadfast hatred than I hold for the typical competitive multiplayer video game.

Despite this loathing, I consistently get roped back in to the trap that is LoL. This game, while appearing fun on first sight, becomes the bane of my well being. This bit of Python is able to describe the cycle best I think...

 def thomps_evening_routine( time ):  
    game_of_lol = new GameOfLoL()  
    game_of_lol.exec()  
    if game_of_lol == "win":  
      emotion = "This feels amazing! I can't wait to play another!"  
      life_time -= time  
      return thomps_evening_routine( 30 )  
    else:  
      emotion = "That was horrible. I have to play another to redeem myself!"  
      life_time -= time  
      return thomps_evening_routine( 30 )  

It's a recursive algorithm that results in nothing more than me wasting my life. This is why I have, once more, uninstalled this toxic game and cast it aside.

Sanctum 2

I picked up Sanctum 2 on a whim over the weekend as I was reading good things and I'm pretty fond of a good tower defense game.

Sanctum 2 is an FPS, co-op, tower defense game. This has been a popular genre over the last year or two (Dungeon Defenders, Orcs Must Die! 2) and I have to say, I'm diggin' it. It's a nice mix between strategy and FPS action, and it allows you to play with your friends in a constructive manner (i.e. not blindly button mashing or shooting everything that moves).

I've only played this a few hours so far, and have yet to play with anyone I actually know in real life, but I'm definitely enjoying it. You can be sure you'll see more on this title once I've gotten to spend some more time with it.

GRID

I can't explain it, but there's something that draws me to driving games. I would love to try racing in real life, but it's an expensive and dangerous hobby. Thankfully, we've got video games for stuff like that!

I've tried a fair number of racing games over the past month, but GRID has come out on top for me. Massive car selection, fun sponsorship meta game, and tons of fast-paced action. GRID surpassed my hopes for a fun driving game, and with GRID 2 nearing release, they're practically giving away the first game. I would highly recommend this to any racing game fan that's on a budget.

Roogoo

As I mentioned in the last retrospective, I've been dabbling in some of the many indie titles that I've acquired through the plentiful "bundles" available to gamers today.

Roogoo is sort of a spatial and timing based puzzle game. I'm not sure how much I enjoyed the bit that I played, but I really didn't give it too much of a chance. It was interesting, but not all that fun. As all puzzle games do, I'm sure it gets far more complex as you go on, but as it stands, there wasn't enough to keep me going. Have a look at a video...

  

Zombie Shooter

In the same vein as Roogoo, Zombie Shooter is another indie title I picked up in the recent Bundle Stars bundle (Zombie Shooter and 3 other games for a whopping $0.98!).

Zombie Shooter is an action RPG in which you level up 4 basic characteristics, and blast your way through hordes of zombies using a wide variety of upgradable weapons. 

Detailed art, crazy amounts of zombie gore, and a ton of weapons to play with all contribute to Zombie Shooter being a fun and addictive little game. Here's some footage of one of the early levels (4, I think?)...

Neverwinter Online

Neverwinter Online is now in open beta and, as I mentioned on Twitter a couple weeks ago, this game has already taken a good deal of my time. You'll hear me go both ways on MMO's, but this one is pretty damned good. So good, I've already sunk well over 20 hours into it.

Meet Rodg. A half-elf Cleric, rife with resentment of the real elves that populate the world around him.

I'll likely write up a full length piece on NWO, so I won't write too much now. In short, the combat is a great (compared to any other MMO, at least), user generated content provides essentially endless replayability, and the co-op mechanics are really polished and well done. On the flip side, PvP seems wildly unbalanced, and there's a pretty fierce nickle and diming free-to-play model at work here ($5 for an inventory bag!?!).

Anyway, more on this later, it's worthy of discussion. 

Tomb Raider

I started Tomb Raider recently, sinking a good 3 or 4 hours in, but haven't gotten around to picking it up for nearly a week now. 

Meet the new Lara Croft!

This has nothing to do with what I think of the game; it is excellent in every respect so far. It's one of the most polished, visually stunning games I've played all year, and am looking forward to diving back in deep. This will be a main focus for me in gaming over the next couple of weeks, so you can expect to see a review on this one in the near future.

The Conclusion

Lots of gaming, but not much beating of anything. That's the way it goes sometimes, I suppose. But there's a lot coming down the pipe here, as you can see from this post. Keep an eye out for some reviews and more thorough first impressions of these games!

Thomplog Retrospective - Week of 4/8/13

The Preamble

Welcome to the first of many Thomplog Retrospectives! The purpose of these posts is to give me a chance to tell you what I’ve been playing on a week to week basis (because I know you are dying to find out). Many of the games I like to play are too long to finish in a week (at least when working full time), so rather than go on with month long review droughts, I thought I’d give a weekly update on what I’ve been playing, and current thoughts on the games.

My general approach to reviews is to not start writing them until I’ve completed the game, so this kind of thing will be nice for games that can’t be “beaten” in the traditional sense (i.e. MMO, Multiplayer, etc), and also for games that are beatable, but I likely won’t officially “beat” them (i.e. Racing, Simulators, ARPG, etc).

The tl;dr of it is, this is a facade for allowing me to ramble and share my experiences with games some more. Hopefully you’ll enjoy these extra (questionably relevant) nuggets of gaming goodness.

Defiance

I spend most of my weekday evenings gaming, and last week, that time was almost entirely spent with Defiance. You can read my first impressions of the game here, if you haven’t checked them out yet.

Since I posted my first impressions, I’ve sunk close to 20 more hours into the game. In this time I’ve been leveling up (or EGO’ing up, in Defiance terms), getting a better feel for the game, and exploring more of what it has to offer.

I spent a good deal of time running co-op missions, which are about 20 minute long, instanced events that you play through with 3 other people. There are bosses at the end that pose a significant challenge and upon defeat, drop some nice goodies for the group. These are fun, and it’s nice that Trion implemented the “queue” for this out of the box so you can find a group quickly (especially since chatting in-game is impossible).

I also sampled the PvP scene, trying out the Deathmatch mode. I only played a few matches, so it’s hard for me to judge too much, but my cursory conclusion is that the matches net you a ton of XP (even when you lose), but you’ve really got to be on top of your game as far as skill and weapon choices go. Also, lag sucks...

As I mentioned in my post last week, I’ll likely do a Defiance Part 2 post outlining my experiences with co-op and PvP in more detail, as well as the effect of the TV show (which premieres tonight!) on the game and vice versa.

Far Cry 3

I dove into this game right after I finished BioShock Infinite and immediately loved it. Far Cry 3 provides a bright, beautiful island to play around on, along with a surprisingly compelling main story line. I don’t know how long that sentiment will hold, but for now, it’s been keeping me going.

You come across many beautiful sights throughout the island.

I’ve put about 21 hours into Far Cry 3 so far and I think I’m about halfway through the story line. The time might sound inflated and that’s because I started out doing every single side quest and collectable. I stopped doing that this weekend, as this is a very time consuming thing to do, and honestly, gets old after a while. In Defiance, there are a similar number of extra things to take part in (side quests, challenges, dynamic content) but there’s a more measurable reward for your time (XP, currency, gear), where in FC3, there’s barely any incentive aside from the fun of actually carrying out these tasks. I don’t want to discount that fun either, because it is fun, but it’s fun that I feel like I can go revisit any time. With that, I’ve decided to go full throttle on the main story missions in the game, and leave the side stuff for a later date... or maybe even never.

Long story short, I’m enjoying Far Cry 3 a lot so far but there’s an immense amount to do. I’m going to focus on the main story line now, and hopefully get a review out to you within the next week or two.  

Torchlight 2

I ended up booting TL2 back up this weekend for an hour or two. Recent interest from my roommate and the new support from Steam Workshop is what compelled me to do such a thing.

Torchlight always benefited a lot from the modding scene, and it appears TL2 is no different. Steam Workshop wasn’t super populated with stuff yet, but I did check out a sizable mod called Synergies Mod which adds a TON of stuff, including respec potions, fully functional Necromancer class, and two nearly finished classes: Paladin and Warlock, just to mention a few. I think I will be diving back into this game once I finish up some of the other stuff I’ve been playing.

The Necromancer class in action. Did I mention they upped the difficulty?
This is one  of the first encounters I ran into at Level 3...

SynergiesMOD

Steam Workshop

Chains

Basically, since the Humble Bundle group released their first uber successful bundle of indie games with the ‘pay what you want’ model, there have been a plethora of bundle sites that have popped up, all with amazing deals. I, for one, have a terrible time resisting the urge to pick these up. A dozen games for $5? SOLD! So now I have hundreds of these indie games, most of which I’ve never even touched.

I’m attempting to at least try out one of these games every week to evaluate if it’s something I want to sink more time into. This week, I chose Chains.

The gist of the game is that you link together bubbles together by their color... and that's really about it. It sounds simple, but mixing physics and speed tests into the mix can make for some very tough challenges. I don't want to talk too much about it because I've only played 5 levels or so, but at the very least, here’s a video of one of the early puzzles (this level made me realize that this game is going to kick my ass).

When I first started I was pretty skeptical, but with each new level, it revealed new and interesting challenges. I'm not confident I'll be able to beat it as it seems to have a fairly steep learning curve (I had to retry the above level from the video at least 10 times before beating it), but I think this will be one I stick with, at least to the point of being able to give it a real review.

Stay tuned for more info on this one.

Check out the BundleStars Catnip Bundle to get your hands on Chains now!

Fire Emblem: Awakening

I started this back in March on my way to PAX East and have been slowly making my way through it. My save file says I’ve logged 15 hours, but I think it’s probably been more like 20 or 25. For those who aren't familiar with Fire Emblem games, they're tactical turn based strategy RPGs. Sort of like the most recent XCOM, but with ridiculous anime characters, and its own set of kooky rules and quirks.

I decided initially to go with the permadeath mode of the game. Meaning, if any of your squad dies during a battle, they are gone forever (in regular mode, they revive at the end of the fight). There’s one way around this, and that is to shut off your 3DS, and retry the battle from the beginning.

Seeing as this is my first Fire Emblem experience, this was tearing me up at the beginning as I was figuring out combat strategies and how to play the game in general. I was shutting down my 3DS left and right, retrying missions 4 or 5 times before completing it without losing my most vital characters.

At any rate, I finally got the hang of it, and am now in a position where my squad of Shepherds are unstoppable. I’m now enjoying this game a ton and consistently look forward to playing it, which I normally do before I go to bed.

I’m looking forward to writing a review for this one, and it will likely come alongside the Far Cry 3 review in the next couple of weeks, though it may not be until later (15 hours in, I’m not even halfway through yet, you can do the math).

Pending

I finished BioShock Infinite 4 days after it released and I still haven’t posted a review yet. I’m working on it! The review has been in progress for a long time now, but for some reason I have not felt compelled to work on it. I think it’s partly because of the massive amount of hype the game has gotten since it came out. You know what my review is going to say... The game is amazing. It’s not hard to figure that out. Surprises aside, I plan to post that review for you this week sometime.

Lastly, the PAX East 2013 Day 3 post! I’ve been a little slow on getting these out (there’s too much gaming to do!) but the wait will finally come to an end this week. I will post Day 3 this week, I promise!

To whet your palette for the BioShock Infinite review...