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Italy has no shortage of Churches, Wine and Italian Food.

All the travel has shifted my gaming to more mobile pastimes. I've spent some time working on my 4E Eberron campaign, and I'm really excited to get back to playing. I was one of the great holdouts on moving to fourth edition, but now that I've made the switch, I'm absolutely hooked. They have put so much thought into making the game easy to run while making it your own. In 3.5, it was almost impossible to come up with custom creatures or items without worrying that you were going to break the balance of the game. 4E has made all of that so much easier that it's actually a lot of fun to come up with your own custom stuff (not to mention that digital tools like the Adventure Tools help a ton).

Speaking of digital tools - if you run a D&D game, you have to check out Masterplan. It is an amazing free application that lets you map out your entire campaign. You can build it out in flowchart mode, map out all of your encounters and experience (so you can see at any point how much XP your party will have earned, making planning level progression a breeze), and keep track of all those little details with the encyclopedia function. It also integrates with WotC's D&D Compendium, so you have all of that information at your fingertips from within the application, making encounter building fast. You can even export handouts or even entire modules at the click of a button. It is by far the best roleplaying tool I have found.

Other than that, I've been playing a ton of Tomb Raider: Anniversary on the PSP. I picked it up to play on the long plane rides, and I've found it completely addicting. Normally, I have a hard time getting into portable games, but I can't seem to put this one down. In fact I've spent the last few nights at home playing that instead of Mass Effect 2. Weird, I know.

Instead of playing Mass Effect 2 on a 42' HD LCD, I'm playing this.

I think I'm back in town for a while now, so I hoping to get back to at least a little more of a routine. I dug out my Warmachine stuff last night and started working on a Khador Decimator. I know this isn't a secret to anyone, but red is really hard to paint well. It just looks so obnoxiously bright while you are working on it, and those Khador 'jacks have such big flat spaces. If I get him done tonight, I'll post some pics. My FLGS is having a 15 point highlander (1-1-1-1) format event in a few weeks, and I'm thinking about playing the Reds in that... I like the occasional small point event - it makes trying out new factions very feasible. I'll keep you posted.

Labels: Dungeons and Dragons, Eberron, miniatures, roleplaying, RPGs, video games, Warmachine

After playing 750 point games, the smaller size was really challenging to build a list for. The game itself was a rough one... We played a "Mosh Pit" type scenario using this roundish piece of hill terrain to define the mosh pit. I pushed ahead fast, but forgot that you can't run and shield wall on the same turn (I told you I was rusty). When the Houseguard Riflemen started shooting up my Precursors the next turn, I was starting to fear that I had seriously overextended myself.

Round 2 I moved up a little further, and this time I shield walled. Temporal Barrier would assure I didn't eat a charge this turn, and would force the 'Ferret to advance cautiously. I did manage to shoot some lightning around and take out a few enemies, which made me feel better.

Moments before the last of my infantry get wiped out by Rayvn's Thresher attack...

Round 3 was the money round: Haley pops her feat and throws Deadeye on the Stormblades. We wade in and manage to kill off most of the infantry. Suddenly things are looking up. I've got most of Ravyn's infantry dead, and a huge pile of troopers standing in front of her to gank her next round. Unfortunately, I don't know Ravyn very well... She casts Vortex of Destruction and then dives in and threshers my pile of infantry, killing most of them. My Defender (which has had it's heavy barrel destroyed by the Hydra in prior rounds) gets picked up an chucked at Haley, and they both get knocked down.

The assassination attempts drag on for a couple more rounds, both of us unable to get the job done. I finally get off a lucky damage roll to take Rayvn down, but by this time I'm down to Haley, the Defender, the Journeyman, 2 Stormblades and the Lancer. Bobaferret is down to Rayvn, the Hydra, 2 Halberdiers, 2 Riflemen and a Ghost Sniper. A brutal but good game. We were both fighting tooth and nail to stay alive, and it showed.

In other news, I picked up Darksiders on the XBOX 360 yesterday. I've seen this game at PAX for the last couple of years, and both times I knew there was something special about it. The visual style and polish is so far very impressive, and the game is a blast to play. Has a very visceral, Devil May Cry sensibility to it, and the controls are smooth like butter.

Also, went and saw Sherlock Holmes last night, and liked it much more than I expected to. It had a nice blend of steampunk and occult horror, and if you are a fan of either one, there is likely something here to enjoy... I was entertained the whole time (a rare thing these days, especially for movies over a couple hours long.) I approve.

Labels: miniatures, MKII, video games, wargaming, Warmachine, XBOX

I finally got my Precursor Knights completely painted and sealed today. They have been sitting on my painting table and taunting me for over a month now, and it's good to have them finally finished. They are a unit I really enjoy playing, and I think I'm going to be using them even more frequently now in MKII with the reduced power of the Sword Knight.

The gang's all here. Zombies everywhere be a'feared.

For my color scheme, I went with a GW shadow grey and P3 Menoth White Highlight. I wanted them to fit well with my Cygnar army, and yet still stand apart as something different, and I think I've accomplished that. I made liberal use of a Menoth White Base-colored wash to give the whites a very antique ivory look. The white stripe across the bottom of the robes was an afterthought, but I thought it tied the whole scheme together nicely.

The unit leader and the UA. Nice models.

And that pretty much wraps up Christmas vacation for me. I'm planning on setting a new painting and playing goal this year, and hopefully I will do better than last. After taking on a whole unit, I want to take a break and paint some single models - I'm behind on epic warcasters and I need to get my Thunderhead (and soon a Cyclone) painted. Once I've recovered I'll probably tackle the Long Gunners or the Gun Mages. I'd like to get caught up on what I already have before the new wave of trencher stuff hits.

Of course, to acomplish any of this will mean that I have to shake the horrible Dragon Age addiction that current has a hold of me. I loved Mass Effect, and I had high hopes for Dragon Age as well - and I'm happy to say that so far it is living up to those expectations. I'm about 30 hours in and well on my way to saving Ferelden from the Darkspawn hordes. Of course, Mass Effect 2 drops at the end of January, so I'd like to have saved the world by then. At least January won't be boring!

Labels: miniatures, roleplaying, RPGs, video games, wargaming, Warmachine, XBOX

Well, my hopes of blogging real-time from the convention haven't quite played out like I wanted it to. One, we have been super busy, finding far more to do than last year, which has been awesome. Two, the wifi at the show has been terrible, and I've already lost two posts to connection drops when uploading. (My blogging app probably deserves some of the blame for that.)

Anyway, what a great show this year! I'll post more detail on this stuff later, but at a high-level, here is what's happened (along with random sights from the show floor):

We played in a couple of Living Forgotten Realms RPGA games. One was a "convention special," which means it was a more difficult dungeon-crawl type game. The other was set in Cormyr, and involved dealing with a ton of NPC and a bunch of skill challenges with only a single, short combat. It was a blast and totally made me rethink the way I run my games. (I'll probably throw up a more complete post on that one sometime in the future.)

The expo hall is even bigger than last year! Privateer Press has a booth right as you walk in, and they were stocking all the October Retribution releases. I picked up their army book and the new No Quarter. I need to swing by today and see if they have the Extreme Juggernaut on hand...

On the video game front, all the big stuff is here and playable - StarCraft 2, Diablo 3, the new WoW expansion, Mass Effect 2 and Dragon Age, Left for Dead 2, Guild Wars 2 and tons more. The most surprising to me was an MMO called Aion, which looks really amazing.


For Panels, we caught the keynote with Ron Gilbert (who wasn't as funny as I thought he should be), and a Q&A with Gabe and Tycho (who are far more funny than they have any right to be).

We went to a "The Art of the Dungeon Master" panel with all the big names from WotC, and I decided that Chris Perkins (the DM for the Penny Arcade guys) scares me just a little. It was a good panel, and it sounds like the DMG 2 is going to be an awesome book for helping people to run better games.


Right now the "Beyond D&D panel is about to start, so more later.... Loving PAX!!!


-- Posted From My iPhone

Labels: Dungeons and Dragons, miniatures, PAX, PAX09, video games

The Cygnar Case - the Black 13th in front, and Thorn in the background.

While I was in PP's booth, I also got a demo of the Infernal Contraption card game, which was a lot of fun. So much fun, in fact, that I bought it, and we ended up playing it late into the night on Saturday, actually cutting into time we had planned to play minis. It's non-collectable, really quick to learn, and definitely worth a look if you also like casual games. Monterpocalypse was also there, and generating quite a bit of interest - unfortunately not from me.

The Cryx Nightmare. Muhahahaha!

Wizard's had a booth that was basically Magic on one side and D&D on the other. The big news here is that they had several computers running the D&Di character generation and visualization tools, both of which appear to be coming along nicely. The models and textures in the character visualizer are still a bit rough, but at least it looks like the necessary tech is coming together. Now they just have to polish it up. I was disappointed that the map editor or Virtual Tabletop were nowhere to be found, making me wonder if we aren't still a long ways off.

Folks rolling 20s right in WotC's booth.

Upper Deck was there, showing off the World of Warcraft miniatures game and the WoW TCG. The Wow miniatures look nice, but somehow the game just doesn't seem that appealing to me. Very small scale and skirmishy. I didn't demo the game, but probably should have (That is one of my resolutions for next year: I'm going to demo more stuff...)

The World of Warcraft CMG

Notably absent was Paizo Publishing, which made me a sad panda. I love those guys, and Seattle is their home town, so I had hoped they would have some presence, either in the expo hall or running their new Pathfinder Society organized play in the tabletop hall. I'm a huge fan of everything they are doing right now, and would have liked the opportunity to get closer too it.

Now, as promised, here are my (admittedly poor) pictures of the killer Warmachine diorama from the PP booth (click on any one of them for a better look):

Labels: Dungeons and Dragons, miniatures, RPGs, video games, Warmachine

I picked up Lost Odyssey about a week ago, and I have to admit, I’ve been more than pleasantly surprised with the amount of enjoyment I’m getting out of it. I wasn't sure what to think at first, as it is only putting up scores in the mid-70s on MetaCrititc, which isn’t usually a good indicator. But, after finishing Mass Effect I found myself still very much in the mood for good, story-driven gameplay, so I decided to give it a shot.

I’m about 11 hours into the game, and judging on the fact that I just finished disk 1 of 4, I’ll estimate that I’m only about a quarter of the way through it. So, keep in mind that whatever opinions I have, they are based on that much exposure. The game might go completely to hell from here, and I just don’t know it yet. That being said, I like what I’ve played so far very much – so much in fact that I find the reviews the game is getting a little bit bewildering… I have some theories as to why we are seeing the scores that we are, and I’ll touch on them as I go.

At its core, Lost Odyssey is a Japanese-style RPG very much in the vein of Final Fantasy X – not surprising considering that the game’s developer, Mistwalker was founded by Hironobu Sakaguchi, the creator of the Final Fantasy series. The game follows all of the conventions of a solid, old-school J-RPG: a turn based battle system with an emphasis on special class skill and leveraging elemental strengths and weaknesses, a large cast of characters that grows as you move through the game, and a deep, plot full of politics and intrigue that drives the game along. For me, this was fantastic, because I haven’t particularly been a fan of the shift to the real-time combat systems we’ve seen in the more recent j-RPGs, still preferring the tried and true turn-based combat and all of the rock-paper-scissors gameplay inherent to it. At the same time, my guess is that the game is losing point in reviews for not doing enough “innovation” inside the genre. Too bad really, because what Mistwalker did create is very well executed for what it is trying to be.

Graphically, the game looks great. Built on Unreal Engine technology, the world is well detailed, with the kind of striking panoramas we have all come to expect from the genre. The game world is in the middle of an industrial-magical revolution, and “magic engines” are the foundation of technology in the world. It gives the game an everpresent mystical steam-punk flavor that I find really cool.

I wasn’t too sure how I felt about the character designs at first, but they began to grow on me almost immediately, thanks to their expressive animations and the excellent voice acting. The characters are distinctively Asian-flavored, both in dress and facial features, and have a more “mature” bent to them than past J-RPGs. It is definitely nice to play a leading character that isn’t either effeminate, pre-pubescent or has spiky blonde hair (or in the case of FFX and FFXII, all three.)

As you can tell, I really like the game at this point. I’m a little disappointed at the lukewarm reception it’s getting, but at least it seems to be selling well. If you’ve been on the fence about picking it up, I’d say it’s definitely worth the play time, and there is enough solid gameplay there that you will definitely get your money out of it, especially if you are a fan of the older-style turned based combat systems.

Labels: consoles, RPGs, video games, XBOX

I've been wrapping up games like crazy on the XBOX over the last week. Nothing like a couple of snow-bound sick days to help a guy finish off games.

I finished Mass Effect, which only seemed to pick up momentum all the way to the end. It's been a long time since I have finished a game and immediately found myself wanting more. It's a great game - it just doesn't get any better for me. I'm glad to see that rumors of a sequel are already boiling.

With Mass Effect done, I turned my attention back to Bioshock. I picked it up back in September, and I have been working my way steadily through it for the last few months. For a shooter, this game has more story and setting than most roleplaying games. The decision to set the game at the bottom of the ocean in the 1940's was a brilliant move, giving the game a look and feel that is completely new - something we don't get enough of these days. In a time of cookie-cutter settings and licensed crap, it was a breath of fresh air. It makes me happy to see a developer take a risk and have it pay off.

I picked up The Orange Box right after Christmas, and ended up killing an afternoon playing Portal. Part of the Orange Box collection, Portal is basically a mini-game based around a gun that allows you to open portals all over the environment. You play the role of an andriod who is guided through a series of test chambers by an insane artificial intellegence. You are forced to use this portal technology to defeat a series of puzzle-rooms, each requiring more clever and complicated thinking than the last. The game itself is amazing, and despite being very short, it still manages to tell quite an intriguing story. The AI, GLaDos, ends up being the star of the game, with some fantastic dialog that manages to be both humorous and ominous. The game is worth finishing for the end song alone.

If Portal was a great appetizer, for me, the main course has been Team Fortress 2. I'm not a huge fan of online shooters, but TF2's class and objective-based system is a lot of fun, and you don't necessarily have to be a great twitch-gamer to be successful in the game. Classes like the medic, engineer and heavy gunner all make a good alternative choices for those of us who are "twitch-impared." The gameplay is well tuned, and the game has a great, campy style that makes it all the more fun. For a taste of what I'm talking about, check this out:

You can find all of the game's trailers here. The "Meet the.... " entries are all hillarious.

A friend from work just loaned me Assassin's Creed and Call of Duty 4, so the parade of A-list games doesn't look to be ending soon. I also really want to finish Final Fantasy XII, but after months of playing the XBOX 360 in HD, going back to the PS2 is like leaving the new hotness to go back to the old and busted.

Labels: consoles, RPGs, video games, XBOX

I’ve been completely sucked into Mass Effect. To be honest, it has been a time since a video game has this kind of effect on me – in fact, it you may have to go back to the original Baldur’s Gate to find a single player game that sucked me in like this one has. I only got the game just under a week ago, and I have already put almost twenty hours into it, which is unheard of for me.




After you complete the first of the three missions, you are introduced to the idea that the galaxy is really a pretty big place, and you can roam all over, surveying worlds and taking on side missions. These are typically far less intense than the plot missions, and they help to advance your charter, both in terms of level and equipment. They also make for great short session if you only have a half-an-hour to play. After you bulk your party up a little bit in these side missions, everything starts getting quite a bit easier. It’s almost a shame that the game design doesn’t do a better job easing you into the combat portions by introducing you to the side missions earlier. A little attention up front would have saved me a lot of frustration later on.

Labels: consoles, RPGs, video games, XBOX

A late Merry Christmas to everyone out there!

Every year around this time, I take a bunch of time off from work. It is one of my favorite breaks – not a lot is going on at the office, so I’m not worried about getting behind, and it’s the only time that I get to take time off and just stay home and just relax. We had company for the first half of the week, but the last of them went home this morning, leaving me next five days to relax and revel in geekish pleasures.

Knowing the break is coming, I laid out a laundry list of dorky activities I wanted to get accomplished. Of course, I wouldn’t be a true hobbyist if that list wasn’t several times larger than anything I could reasonably to hope to accomplish in the time allotted. Still, it’s my intention to give it a good effort. Here’s what I’ve got:

Wargaming: Warmachine Army

Since I got hooked on Warmachine over Thanksgiving, I’ve decided to put my Chaos Space Marine army on hold for a bit and focus on getting a full-fledged Warmachine army painted up. I have a significant amount of both Cryx and Cygnar pewter, but for now I decided to focus on Cygnar. I want to:

Finish my Trenchers. I’ve got three of ten trenchers painted now, and so far they look great. I think for the rest of them I’m going to experiment with a quasi-production line approach. I’m going to lay down the base color coats on all of them at the same time, and them probably shade and highlight them individually. As far as the models themselves, they are really beautiful and just ooze character. I am constantly amazed at the amount of detail Privateer Press puts into each model.

Finish my Stormblades. Okay, to be fair, the Stormblade unit is actually all finished, but I’m also working on the unit attachment. The Captain is done, but I still need finish the standard bearer. I’d love to leave the holiday break with two fully painted units.

Assemble my Sword Knights. I bought the Sword Knights unit boxed set along with an extra blister a while back, and then promptly stowed them away in the closet. After listening to the Pod Thralls list their “500 pts for 100 bucks” Cygnar list, I pulled them back out and decided they would be next up. Then I open the blister and looked at all the little parts. And then I puked a little in my mouth.

Roleplaying: Eberron Campaign

In my last post I talked a little bit about how much I like the Freeport setting. Over the last few weeks, I’ve spent a bunch of hours working on integrating it into my Eberron game, as our party will be spending a great deal of time in the Lhazaar Principalities. If there is any interest in seeing how I’m tying that all together, let me know, and I’ll post it. Beyond that, I’m “redeveloping” a significant portion of the Eyes of the Lich Queen to better fit our campaign and play style, so I’ve got a lot of work to do.

Video Games: A Cornucopia of XBOX Goodness

There is so much good stuff out on XBOX 360 right now that it is almost mind-numbing. I’ve been working through BioShock and Oblivion: The GOTY Edition, all the while playing through the Halo 3 campaign co-op over XBOX Live. To add to that already impressive list, my wife bought me Mass Effect for Christmas, and I used some Best Buy gift certificates to pick up The Orange Box. How I’m going to get through these and still take care of everything on the list above, I’m not sure, but it should be fun trying. That many A-List games at one time is truly remarkable, and that list still leaves CoD4: Modern Warfare and Assassin’s Creed waiting in the wings.

We live good lives.

Labels: consoles, Dungeons and Dragons, Eberron, miniatures, podcasts, RPGs, video games, wargaming, Warhammer 40K, Warmachine, XBOX

I'm back, after a long hiatus. And you know what, I'm not even going to try to explain. Fuck it.

I've been tearing through Crackdown for the past week, and for the most part, I like it. Let's dispel the idea right up front that Crackdown is nothing more than a Halo 3 Beta delivery mechanism. The game itself is solid, with nice presentation and plenty of action. On top of that, I could care less about playing the Halo 3 beta. So have no doubt, gentile reader, my intentions are pure as new-fallen snow.

I think Crackdown is going to be one of those games that you either get it and you have a ball, or you miss the point entirely. If you think it's a Grand Theft Auto III clone, you are well on your way to missing it. While the similarities abound, in the end, the two game play very differently. At it's core, GTA was a driving game. At first glance, Crackdown appears to be a driving game as well, but after your character powers up a bit you begin to realize that the core mechanic is really much more of a vertical, platformer-type of game. You will soon find yourself bounding from rooftop to rooftop with Matrix-like agility. Once the game started to head in that direction, I pretty much lost all interest in the cars that populate the vast sandbox city.

That being said, I'm probably having as much fun trying to collect all of the agility orbs (usually perched in hard-to-reach locations on the very tops of building) as I am playing the main storyline of taking down the three crime syndicates that plague the city. As your hero's powers grow, you can complete even more amazing feats of strength and agility. At one point, I couldn't find the offramp into the city, so I got out of my car, picked it up, and threw it off of the elevated highway onto the suburban streets below. Then I jumped down, flipped the vehicle back onto its tires, and sped off.

While the mechnaics are fun, the game definately could have used a little more structure. There are basically 21 crime bosses scattered through the city that you must eliminate, and then you're done. There are some vehicle races and foot races across the tops the building as additional diversions, but truem scripted story missions are lacking. Even with these shortcomings, it remains a well done game, and big enough that I don't feel bad shelling out the cash for it. It's definately worth at least trying the demo on Xbox Live marketplace if you're not sure.

I also picked up Fable. I had played it once a while back on the PC, but I found the controls sloppy and crude, and I just couldn't get into it. On the console it's a blast, and I've been plowing through it a few hours each night. I won't talk much about it, because I realize that it's old news, but I will say that I'm now seriously excited to see what Fable 2 has to offer.

PODCAST WATCH

If you have any interest in table-top gaming or the RPG industry in general, check out this interview on Fear the Boot. Fear the Boot is a great podcast on pen-and-paper RPGs, and now they are starting a new interview series with industry luminaires from both the table-top and video game industries. They started the series with Ryan Dancey, who is a pretty interesting cat to listen to. This guy basically brokered the deal for WotC to buy TSR, and also had a formative hand in the creation to the d20 Open Gaming License. He has years of industry experience, and tons of interesting demographics on gamers in general, and I found what he had to say facinating. Check it out.

P.S. It looks like they just posted the second interview in the series, this time with Mike West of Lionhead Studios. It's like the knew I needed something to tie into bringing up Fable this many years late.

Labels: podcasts, video games, XBOX

I’m still having a blast playing NWN2, and my dwarven cleric/warpriest is cruising right along. I’ve only played a little bit of FFXII, just to check it out, and while it looks amazing I seem to only have the attention span for one RPG at a time. Vaan and company are going to have to wait for me to finish saving The Realms before they get much more attention. With so much gaming goodness, I made myself a promise that I wouldn’t buy anything new until I get some of this backlog out of the way.

Unfortunately, I failed my Will save vs. Gears of War. This game is phenomenal. It’s the kind of game you just can pile enough adjectives on top of to express the sheer amount of bad-assery contained within. It is pretty rare these days to find a game that is truly firing on all cylinders: the graphics are the best yet on the next-gen, the gameplay is tight and polished, the characters have just enough depth to be interesting but not intrusive, and the setting and story are captivating.

The game takes place in a kind of post-apocalyptic earth, opening 14 years after the invasion of the alien-like Locust. Only, in this world the aliens did not come from outer space, but emerged from the bowels of the earth itself. You fight amongst the rubble of neo-gothic buildings and through interiors that evoke the same sense of crumbling elegance that was present in many of the interiors from The Matrix. The game uses a third-person tactical shooter mechanic, where you find yourself (and your team) moving from cover to cover and throwing down in hellacious fire-fights. Within the first few minutes of playing you get the sense that this is how G.R.A.W. was supposed to work. I haven’t played multiplayer yet, as I don’t have an Xbox Live Gold account – although this is the game that will make me get one.

In other news: I’ve been a fan of the Mechwarrior CMG for a long time, so I was sad to see the open letter to players that basically says the game is on the ropes. That’s too bad, as it’s a great little strategy game. I’ve been buying boosters since Age of Destruction, and it seems like WizKids has become a little over-dependant on reusing old sculpts and just giving them new paint jobs and assigning them to new factions. There are already too many factions in the game, and just getting the same old mech for a faction I don’t really care about won’t keep me buying.

They claim they are suffering from a loss of consumer interest… I think the interest is still there, but the product has just gotten increasingly boring and convoluted. Add to this the quality issues that have dogged them since Annihilation, and it’s not surprising that they are having issues. Want to save the game? Cut back on the factions and give us some nice new sculpts. Hopefully they can figure it out, because I still love the game.

One last thought: It was interesting to see people camping out in tents this week to get a shot a buying a PS3 or a Wii. That's no small feat in Idaho's climate. Just for the record, I wasn't one of them. That's waaaaay too much work for an over-priced system and a bunch of lackluster launch titles. Call me after the first round of "greatest hits" games hit and the price drops.

Labels: consoles, video games, XBOX

I picked up Neverwinter Nights 2 this week, with a great amount of anticipation. I couldn’t help feeling some nostalgia for the good ol’ days, when D&D-based games sallied forth in abundant legions. Sneaking out of work at lunchtime on release day to pick up the latest installment brought back fond memories of the glory days. I think there is a tendency to think of the old “Gold Box” era as the heyday of D&D video gaming, but in my mind nothing compares in quality to what we saw out of the Infinity Engine era of games. I put over 100 hours into the original Baldur’s Gate, and another pile of hours into the Icewind Dale series, not to mention the superb Planescape: Torment. Needless to say, it is an impressive tradition for any game to live up to.

I’ll admit up front, I wasn’t a very big fan of the original NWN campaign. In fact, I had this weird relationship with the first game where I ended up liking it much more in concept than I did in execution. If it wasn’t for some of the great content that came along later in the form of Bioware’s premium modules, I probably wouldn’t have had a good opinion at all. Everything about the original campaign just felt boring and contrived, as if the designers had come up with a ten hour campaign and then wrapped it in thirty hours of filler just to meet marketing’s expectations. I only made it through the first two chapters, but they both shared the same mind-numbing structure: start in hub area, explore area to north, south, east and west retrieving an item from each area. Once you’ve found all of the required widgets, you advance to next hub area just to start the entire process over again. It may have gotten much better later in the game, but unfortunately, I will never know.

The good news is, so far it appears that the latest installment is living up to the fine tradition of D&D gaming much better than it’s predecessor did. So far I’ve found the story to be dynamic, engaging and very focused. The dialog is sharp and well written, and I’m impressed with the lengths that the writers have gone to take into account your race and class. I’ve already seen comments like “A cleric like you can certainly understand,” or “What do we have here? Two Dwarves traveling together…” Little touches like that make all the difference to me. My only complaint so far is that it falls back on an all-too-cliché mechanic of the forces of evil searching for an item of mystical power, and (of course) you get the duty of taking said item away from you village and search of a solution. I’m guessing it will take a turn away from this later, but still…

Anyone who plays D&D understands that at the end of the day, it’s all about your character, and the developers at Obsidian have done a fine job of providing a full arsenal of character options, and at a much deeper level than any game before it has attempted. It’s truly a full meal deal: All of the Forgotten Realms races are there, including the sub-races. You don’t just choose to play a elf – you choose between sun elves, moon elves, wild elves or drow. Plane-touched are even available as a race choice. The full Forgotten Realms pantheon is also represented for use as patron deities, each with their related domain powers. All the base classes are there (they even through in the Warlock for good measure) and a huge sampling of prestige classes makes an appearance. I hope the fan module community is as active for NWN2 as it was for the original, because it’s going to take a lot of adventuring to try out all of these character options.

Visually, the game looks pretty sharp, barring some technical issues that I’ll talk about in a minute. One of the biggest changes is the move from tile-based to height-mapped outdoor environments. The end result is much more organic looking outdoor areas, with rolling hills and natural grades. Indoor environments look phenomenal as well, with lots of small details and realistic “clutter.” The level designers really took their time to make sure everything looked nice.

Unfortunately, this improved visual quality seems to have come at a disproportional performance price. The game can run somewhat sluggishly, especially in outdoor areas. Anti-aliasing is appears to be forced off, and no amount of jiggery-pokery in my video drivers can get it back on again. It’s no secret that Obsidian was under the gun to get this game out, and it looks like video and performance optimization may have suffered for it. The good news is that that game is still very playable, and if you are willing to turn down a few of the shinier options it can run great. I’m guessing we’ll see most of these issues cleaned up in a series of patches and new drivers, and we’ll get to the point where we can turn on all the whiz-bang and enjoy the game the way it was meant to be enjoyed.

I’m hoping to get into the toolset soon and give that a spin. I spent countless hours playing in the original toolset – unfortunately this time around I’m enjoying the game too much, so it might be a little while longer before I get in there and try and build something. In a moment of weakness I also picked up Final Fantasy XII, although I haven’t played any more than the intro tutorial. At least I should have no shortage of things to blog about for the next few months!

Until next time, game on.

Labels: Dungeons and Dragons, PC games, RPGs, video games

I can't believe how quickly the weeks are going by! It's almost November at this point, which means the deluge of Christmas titles is about to hit! And what does that mean? It means I'm going to break the bank buying games for the next two months, and half of them won't even get around to being played until sometime in the middle of next summer. Hell, I still haven't broken the shrink-wrap on F.E.A.R., and it's been in my game drawer since spring.

Most importantly, we are weeks away from Neverwinter Nights 2 landing in my hands. D&D in videogame format is drug that I have no natural resistances to. I failed my save long ago. The fact that the old Black Isle guys (now Obsidian) built the game is icing on the cake. To this day, Planescape: Torment remains the best story-in-game-form I have every played. I just can't wait.

In the mean time, I've been playing quite of bit of Guild Wars: Factions. To be honest, the whole Guild Wars thing was kind of lost on me the first time around. I bought the game and tried to play it a couple of times, but it just never made sense. Not that it's a particularly complex game, but it definitely has its own conventions. The Prophecies campaign (at least the pre-searing piece) was gorgeous but just felt completely empty to me. The skill system seemed limiting, and I never could figure out the crafting/item system. To make matters worse, just about the time I started feeling vaguely comfortable with the game's basic mechanics, they threw The Searing at me, completely pulling the rug out from under me again.

Needless to say, factions came and went with little interest on my part. Finally, a few weeks back, I started to jones for some MMO goodness, but with NWN2 and FFXII on the horizon, I wanted MMO without the long-term commitment. So, I decided to pick up Factions, figuring that I could play for a bit, and then put in on hold while I dove into the aforementioned titles. Luckily, I ended up much more impressed with Factions than I ever was with the original. While the core mechanics remain mostly unchanged, the new player experience has improved by leaps and bounds. Things like classes & subclasses, skills, attributes and item crafting are all explained much more directly, and the chain of opening quests are entertaining while doing a great job of leading you through the game's core mechanics. I suddenly got it, and now I'm fascinated with the whole meta-game of skill collection and selection. The game has so many levels of strategy and nuance that I can suddenly see why it has it has such a huge following.

Within just a couple days I had my Ritualist/Mesmer up to level 15. I look forward to finishing this campaign and going back and playing the first campaign now that it all makes sense. Nightfall looks impressive as well, adding an entire third campaign with a decidedly middle-eastern flavor. Compared to the first game, I've also like the addition of more utility-type classes. I was a big fan of the Paladin and Shaman classes in WoW, and it was nice to see the same type of support classes appear in Guild Wars. I can't wait to try out the new Paragon class from Nightfall. Too bad you can use the new classes to start the earlier campaigns. That would have been a really neat feature...

I am a little confused that I'm already level 15 in a game that level caps at 20, and I've just gotten out of the starter area. I'm guessing that most of the missions are ran after you have already capped out? This would mean that the real focus of the game is coming up with strategically useful and synergistic skill combinations, as well as the out-and-out PVP battles - which I'm okay with. I'm already starting to feel my computer-controlled henchmen become less effective, and I'm wondering if the the game is trying to push me out of the nest into real grouping... Either way, I'm having fun with it, and it's nice to see a sequel that not only focuses on adding lots of new content for the hardcore player, but also tunes the game's presentation to bring in new players. The experience give me high hopes that Nightfall will continue this trend, and might just be be the most polished Guild Wars yet.

Labels: Dungeons and Dragons, MMORPGs, PC games, RPGs, video games

I'm back, baby. In a way, the last few weeks have been somewhat of a renaissance for me. For two months I've been transitioning between jobs at work, a process which taught me that "transitioning" is apparently corporate speak for "two jobs for the price of one." It has been a process that has been both exhausting and frustrating, and has kept me from pursuing much else (including this blog.) It is also a process that is now, thankfully, over.

With time freeing up again, I'm easing my way back into my hobbies. (For me "easing my way" into something is a process akin to cliff-diving.) We've fired up the D&D game again, which seems to have benefited all around from the brief hiatus that it's had. It's good to be back in Eberron again...

Not much has happened on the videogaming front, but once again we stand of the precipice of the holiday season deluge. As an avid RPG fan, these are heady times, with the next installments of both Neverwinter Nights and Final Fantasy looming on the immediate horizon.

Bioware has released another one of their premium modules - this one actually being set in the Forgotten Reams. Figuring it would be a good way to while away the time while I pine for the arrival of the sequel, I picked it up. So far I'm very impressed. It's got me it's hooks into me deeper than the original campaign ever did. It seems to have just the right balance of story and adventure, along with some much needed editions to the aging toolset (rideable horses!)

Other than that, my time has been pretty evenly split between Chromehounds and Final Fantasy XI on the XBOX 360. I've fallen in love with Chromehounds, and at this point I'm convinced that it's a game that is just misunderstood. If you were a fan of the old Mechwarrior 2 era games, you'll like this one. It's all about big, stompy mechs bristling with weaponry plodding about and blowing the hell out of each other. No more, no less. The single player campaign is only there as a trainer for online ass-whooping. Know these things, make peace with them, and you too can learn to be one with the 'Hounds.

Final Fantasy XI is another matter all together. I don't know why I like this game, because by all standards, I shouldn't. World of Warcraft is, in fact, a better game by almost any measure. FFXI has grueling character progression which leads to a massive grind, very little story-driven gameplay, a whole lot of camping, and heavy grouping requirements. So why play? Because when you get a perfect group, the battles just sing, and they are somehow so much more rewarding. Plus, the Mithra are hot.

It’s good to be back. See you around.

Labels: Dungeons and Dragons, Eberron, video games

I am truly ashamed. It's been almost a month since I've posted last, and a whole lot of shit has gone down in that time. First, I finally got my nasty gall bladder out, which is a big part of why I disappeared for a month. The upside of that turned out to be that I had it removed the week of E3, which gave me an excuse to lay in bed and watch show feeds from Gamespot and IGN all week long.

On E3: Interesting show this year - it had a very different vibe. You could almost feel a perceptible power shift from the normal hierarchy: the powerhouse Playstation, the scrappy underdog XBOX and the retarded cousin Nintendo. The only thing that seemed to be a constant is that Nintendo remains as retarded as ever. In fact, by naming their console the "Wii", they chose to revel in it. They should have just stayed with Revelation, or better, go with something like "tits" - at least something like that would make me want to buy one. And I don't want to hear the usual line that they are the last truly creative company, and all about how bold they are for doing everything different. Lesbians do everything different, but it still doesn't make them useful to me.

Sony's press conference left me cold. Kaz Hirai was his usual arrogant self, espousing the virtues of his mythical console, building to the mighty crescendo where they unveil that the PS3 would be available for a mere five hundred and ninety-nine North American Dollars! Then there is this strange pause where all of the little mental calculators are doing their fuzzy math, followed by a tremendous psychological shockwave which said (at least what I heard in my bed 1,ooo miles away from E3) "Fuck you, Hirai!" Somewhere in the middle of all this, they also showed waaaaay tooooo muuuuuch footage of the next version of some racing game that I quit caring about the first time I played Burnout 3, and some footage of a geriatric Solid Snake which miraculously made my give-a-shit meter for all things Metal Gear Solid actually go negative. Oh, and before I forget - where there hell was Killzone 2?

All of this left Microsoft in the enviable position of being the only major player extolling the virtues of the next-generation gaming who actually has a next generation console on the market. As you can imagine, this was pretty fun for them, and it showed. Microsoft was finally able to drop all of the aformentioned "scrappy underdog" posturing, and stand as a success in their own right. Also, the Vista preview was interesting, and it's good to see that PC gaming isn't officially dead - it just remains terminally ill.

As far as games, there wasn't that much I came away excited about... Of what I did see, BioShock got me the most excited. System Shock 2 is still in my top five favorite games of all times, and BioShock appears to be a fitting spiritual sequel in every way. Gears of War looks amazing, and I like the look of Assassin's Creed. Heavenly Sword is one game that looks every bit as good in action this year as the trailers did last year. It was nice to finally see a lot more about Neverwinter Nights 2, which I am very excited about. I was hoping to finally get some info on Bioware's Dragon Age, but that was a no-show.

Labels: consoles, PC games, video games, XBOX

I'm broken. I'm not sure what's wrong with me yet, but I'm broken. I've had horrible pains in my guts all week. My doc thinks it's either some kind of stomach problem or my gall bladder. In my mind, the smart money is on the gall bladder. Anyway, the upshot of this is that I haven't been playing mych of anything, so I'm going to pad the void by just posting a round-up of the things I found interesting this week. Who knows, this may become kind of a weekly affair.

First off, Kingdom Hearts II is out, and after a long period of introspection, I've come to the conclusion that I don't give a shit. I bought the first one, and it never made a damn bit of sense to me. Still, anytime one of these "big" games comes out, I have a horrible propensity to get all caught up in the hype that surrounds it. Hype is apparently the fuel that feeds my eldritch machine, so to speak. This typically ends with me buying a game that isn't really my cup of tea, and then grudgingly realizing that within the first hour of play. It is through this very mechanism that games like Grand Theft Auto, Splinter Cell, and anything Metal Gear Solid have found their way to my shelf. Yes, I get that all of those are widely considered great games - just not to me.

There is more news, or at least speculation, on the Bioware story from a couple days back: Gamespot posted a rumor that LucasArts is considering pulling the Star Wars license from SOE, and giving said license to Bioware, who just happened to announce an MMO studio in the same damn town. This would be phenomenal news in my book. SOE clearly botched what should have been the easiest money-printing operation in history, so my sympathy is rather low for them. Bioware, however, is responsible for Knights of the Old Republic, which was more Star Warsy than any of the last three films. It's hard to loose in this situation.

Gamespot also has an interview with J.E. Sawyer, the Lead Designer on Neverwinter Nights 2. To be honest, I was never as impressed with the original NWN as I was impressed by it's potential. NWN2 sounds like it's going to fix a lot of the original game's shortcomings. In particular, the two things the article talks about that excite me the most: fully controllable henchmen and heght-mapped terrain. Once again, I'm finding myself far less excited about the game, and far more excited about the toolset that the game represents. Oh, and they finally put up an official NWN2 Web site.

IGN had news that Starcraft Ghost has been cancelled. I'm not sure how to feel about this one - I was excited to play in the Starcraft universe from the ground level, but at the same time this game seems to have had a hard time coming together. It's been through a couple of different developers, and each time it's shown it looks just a little less impressive than the last time. You could almost see the compromises starting to show through. When Ghost was first announced, stealth action was the darling genre - Splinter Cell and Metal Gear Solid 2 were both wowing people with their brand of sneaky gameplay. Now, the whole category is starting to feel a bit played out and oversaturated. Considering the reputation Blizzard has garnered to this point, the decision to cut it loose is probably for the best.

A couple of good demos are coming out this week: The Galactic Civilizations II demo is already out, although I haven't had a chance to play it yet, and the Rise of Legends demo should be out today. Gal Civ II is a old school, turn-based strategy game in the same vein as Master of Orion. It's getting fantastic reviews, and in theory it sounds like something would enjoy (especially the custom ship creation) but I've been waiting for a demo before I buy it. Rise of Legends, on the other hand, is pretty much a sure thing. The original Rise of Nations may just be the best designed strategy game that I've ever played.

Labels: RPGs, video games

I've been playing Oblivion in almost every free hour I've had since I bought it. It's been years since a game has grabbed me like this. The game itself is an amazing accomplishment - the world seems to live and breath on it's own, even moreso than the "persistant" worlds of MMOs. Days turns to night, storms come and pass, people go about their business. If you spend a couple of days in one of the towns and you will actually start to get to know the residents, their patterns, where the live. The amount of detail is staggering.

Oblivion sports a brand of open-endedness that makes Grand Theft Auto feel like it's on rails. I'm just over 10 hours into the game, and I have yet to complete the first step in the main quest. In the meantime, I've explored half a dozen dungeons, been arrested for petty theft (and unfortunate misunderstanding), liberated a town from its oppressive head-of-the-watch, freed a painter from within one of his paintings (a high point so far), and rescued an entire hamlet that had been accidentally turned invisible. There is definately no lack of things to do in this game.

Instead of picking one of the game's standard classes, I chose to build my own custom class. Basically, it's a variation of the Crusader class, modeled after a D&D-style Paladin. The game uses a simple system of major skills and favored attributes that lets you effectively put together almost any classic high-fantasy architype you can think of. I've dropped in a little screen shot below, so you can see my build. He's an Imperial (for the speechcraft bonuses) and born under the sign of the Ritual (for the big heal spell and the turn dead ability).


There are so many potential ways to put together and advance a character in this game, that I would love to see some of the way other players would put together the same type of character. Drop me a comment if you have a particularly cool build.

Anyway, it's pretty clear that I'm impressed with the game. Hell, I'm more than impressed. This is the type of game that transends "gaming" as a hobby, and becomes a hobby all it's own. If anything is going to lay down a challenge to Warcraft's stranglehold on RPG gamers, this is it. And, I'm apperantly not the only one who thinks so.

Labels: MMORPGs, PC games, RPGs, video games

I rented BLACK on the PS2 over the weekend just to take a look. So far the reviews have been luke-warm, with the general consensus being that the game was a solid, if uninspired, shooter. Based on this, I went in with only the shallowest of expectations. What I found instead was a great looking game that did a fine job of balancing the best aspects of the fast action shooter with more tactical games like Ghost Recon. This isn’t an all out run and game – situational awareness and judicious use of cover (as well as the extraordinarily abundant exploding vehicles) are the keys to your survival. The few maps I played were nicely varied and all flowed well. The only real drawback for me was they absurdly durable heavy-armor shotgun guys. (Tip: don’t waste bullets on these fuckers – rush ‘em and wail on them with the butt of your rifle.) Other than that, what I saw was shiny.

In other news, I saw that Bioware is opening a MMO studio in Austin, I assume to take advantage of the large number of talented folks who have been left adrift by a nasty string of corporate implosions. What can I say – more Bioware can’t be a bad thing. Ever. Baldur’s Gate is still probably my favorite game of all time (if you are wondering, StarCraft is a close second). While I think their last few games have been a little flat, they are still better than most of the shit out there today. Beyond that, Co-CEOs Greg Zeschuk & Ray Muzyka just seem like good, savvy dudes, who are doing things for all the right reasons. I hope they kick some asses in that space, because right now Blizzard is the only shop that even kind of gets it, and frankly, they probably get it just a little too well for the good of the market.

On that note, tonight marks my exit from the lands of Azeroth. I’ve been playing World of Warcraft since about a month after retail, and I have to admit that it’s been one of the most amazing gaming experiences I have ever had. The depth and breadth of the world Blizzard has created is astonishing. But, as with all things, there comes a time to move on, and for me, this week is it. At this point, the high-level content is just too much of a time sink. Between work, wife, and kids, I just can’t find a continuous three to four hours to get a decent group and run an instance. Still, the game is a masterpiece, and it’s hard to leave behind a character and a group of people that you’ve grown so attached to. It’s been fun.

Now, it’s onto Oblivion. I picked up the Collector’s Edition last night (a nice package by the way) and dove in. I haven’t made it too far yet, because I spent over an hour in the insanely detailed character generation. The game itself looks amazing (even if there is something somewhat disturbing about the character's faces) and it has the same epic, wide-open feel that made Morrowind so great. I can’t wait to dig in deeper.

Labels: consoles, MMORPGs, RPGs, video games