A few days ago the final episode was released in Telltale’s brilliant game adaptation of The Walking Dead series of graphic novels. I’ve had a chance to bring my own story of Lee and Clementine to a conclusion, so now seems like a great time to look back at the entire season. And what a season it was… I could regret calling this early if Ubisoft’s Far Cry 3 turns out to be as good as some media are saying it will be – but for me The Walking Dead was easily the best game of 2012.

With Feeling

I felt something when I played The Walking Dead.  Wait, scratch that. I felt many things: anger, sorrow, grudging trust, panic, camaraderie, aching loss, dark humour, regret, shock and of course the extremely strong desire to protect someone weaker than myself. That range of emotions is so broad, and so completely unique compared to other games I played this year – or maybe ever. To put this in perspective, let’s have a look at a few examples of recent very good games and the emotions their narratives evoke:

Borderlands 2 – power-hungry introspection, anger, humour

XCOM – dread, aching loss (though a reload fixes that!), panic, satisfaction

Guild Wars 2 – power-hungry introspection, confusion fading to boredom

Perhaps you can think of a game with a similarly broad emotional scope? I can’t. If you can, let me know in the comments – I’d like to play it!

Interactive Narrative

The Walking Dead also goes beyond emotions evoked by traditional linear media like TV, books and movies. The reason for this is player agency (whether or not this is real or illusory is something I’ll tackle later). I cared about each character in The Walking Dead more than almost any character in linear media because I made choices for The Walking Dead characters that made a difference. Sometimes the difference existed on the most base level – whether someone lived or died. That’s extremely powerful. When my Lee said or did something hurtful to someone else and got called out on it, I felt legitimate regret.

The combination of skillful writing, excellent voice-over, and player agency is what makes The Walking Dead’s story so compelling. This combination is extraordinarily rare in video games. I do have hope that with a new standard in interactive storytelling now set, that we’ll see developers other than Telltale build on what The Walking Dead has started.

Smoke and Mirrors

The Walking Dead has received some criticism lately from some who have determined that the player agency I mention above is false – that actually players have very little control over some of the major story beats. But does it really make a difference? I don’t feel like it does.

With the aggressive timetable and (probably) relatively small budget Telltale was working with, obviously they could not create a game with a massive spiderweb of choices pointing to hundreds of different endings. That’s just being realistic. But it also seems like this lack of total control fits perfectly with the narrative itself. Let’s look at an example (careful, mild spoilers in the next paragraph).

At one point, two characters confront each other – with Lee in the middle of the argument. Lee can attempt to defuse the situation neutrally, or side with one of the characters. Either way, its been revealed by Telltale staff that the outcome is the same – one character attacks the other. At first, the thought that my choices didn’t mean anything to the outcome of this situation was infuriating! But the more I examined my feelings, it dawned on me what the developers could have been trying to accomplish. The world does not revolve around Lee. We are allowed to make his choices, but sometimes those choices don’t amount to anything. As in real life, in The Walking Dead we do not have the control we’d like over every single event. Some events will always be outside of our control. This is part of the realistic, grim reality of The Walking Dead world.

With Character

The last aspect of The Walking Dead I want to call out for praise is the cast of characters. I’ve already mentioned how the writing and the voice-over is spot-on. But really the relatively large cast is special for a more basic reason. It exists and its real.

Many of the games we play are solitary, with NPCs only playing the role of quest-givers, or radio contacts. So just the fact that The Walking Dead groups you with other humans for the entire game, and allows you to create relationships with them is extremely unique. Even compared to other adventure games, this is something out of the ordinary. Think about Monkey Island, Full Throttle (some of my favorite classic adventure games) – these are solitary tales with little in the way of relationships. Characters are puzzle-pieces in these games.

The genre of game where gamers are most often grouped up and form relationships are RPGs. But often in these games, relationships with your party members has a really minimal impact. Let’s take Dragon Age as an example.  Yes, this is a game with relationships and well-written characters. But the other characters motivations are only very rarely at odds with your own. For the most part, secondary characters in RPGs are ‘tag-alongs’ who occasionally engage the player in conversation.

In The Walking Dead, the characters and your relationships with them is simply everything. That is the game. How refreshing!

Season Two Hope

It would be easy to read my article above and think “Sounds cool but that isn’t that a niche experience?”  No. Telltale has already stated The Walking Dead is their biggest commercial success to date. And they’ve confirmed Season Two is in the works.

My hope for Season Two is to continue building on the solid foundation that Telltale has already created – but with a higher budget and longer story arc. The main weakness of the first season is technical – The Walking Dead is running on Telltale’s engine that was intended for Monkey Island, Sam and Max etc.  Even though Telltale did an admirable job shoehorning the game together, its not an ideal solution for season two. A next-generation engine would be extremely welcome.

If you haven’t yet played The Walking Dead, there is absolutely no reason not to. The game is available on all major platforms – PC, PS3, X360, and iOS. And its very inexpensive. On PC its regularly priced at $24.99 for the entire season, but its possible to pick it up much cheaper during Steam sales and the like. Currently the game is $18.74 on Steam during the Thanksgiving sale.

Let me know what you thought of the game in our comments!

I’ve been planning on writing some newbie strategies for it, but haven’t had time yet. In the meantime, I found an excellent beginner’s guide you should check out on It’s Dangerous to Go Alone. Its got some great knowledge – like the splash damage patterns of the Gunner/Heavy attacks and more. Definitely worth your time.

(Image Source: Money Energy)

Console gaming in 2012 is boring.  Sorry, but its true.  Sequel-itis abounds, and thus creative new experiences are few and far between.  This is probably caused by a whole variety of factors, but the most obvious is the 7+ year age of this console generation.

Due to Sony and Microsoft’s hesitance to start the next-gen, PC gaming has really risen to the forefront in 2012.  In addition to the technical and graphical advantages to playing PC games over console – there is simply a much better variety of gaming experiences available on PC.   Stuff like Amnesia, Legend of Grimrock, Lone Survivor, Gemini Rue, Machinarium, Diablo 3 and so much more.  Add on to that PC-only F2P games like Blacklight, League of Legends and Tribes and the difference is pretty stark.

Regardless of this, the trump card of console gaming has always been price.  Purchasing a console for $250 that does not need upgrading is considered a huge advantage over the money required to get a decent gaming PC running.  But here is the thing – that simply is not true anymore.  Console gaming is more expensive than PC gaming.  No bullshit.

Gaming costs are obviously more than just buying hardware.  We as gamers buy games.  Lots of em.  I’m going to create a hypothetical scenario that will demonstrate the realistic possibility to save quite a bit of money on PC compared to console.  For this comparison I’m going to use 12 games per-year as an example. That’s a fairly hardcore number but one that I’ve passed quite a few times myself.

Now let’s consider console costs first.  Let’s say $300 for a console + some initial accessories.  Now for the games = let’s say 8 games per-year are purchased new at $60, 2 games purchased at $30 used and 2 games purchased from XBLA or PSN for $15.  That comes to $570 and $870 counting the hardware costs.

For PC hardware, it is certainly possible to build a mid-range gaming PC for $600.  Thanks to Steam and Steam Sales, PC games are hugely less expensive than console games.  If you are willing to take advantage of this, and make the majority of your gaming purchases during the major sales, you can save big money. For discussions sake, lets split up the 12 game purchases.  2 are purchased at full-price of $60, 2 are purchased at a marked down $30 price, 6 are purchased at an extreme discount at an average of $10, and the final 2 are actually F2P titles such as those mentioned above.  That comes to $240 and $850 counting the PC hardware.

Of course, the benefits continue in the following years.  Since the PC hardware is already purchased you’d essentially be saving $300+ per year on games!  You could put that money towards PC upgrades or start saving for retirement.  Your choice!

I do realize its possible to “game the system” in regards to console gaming, by taking advantage of trade-in specials and such to pay considerably less than full-price on certain games.  But even if you save $200 with trade-ins and/or second-hand sales per year (good luck!) on your console games, PC gaming still comes out on top.  And consider the time and effort it takes to accomplish those types of deals.  If you value your time, you will likely not break even on such cost-saving schemes.

In my life lately, it seems like the only thing consoles are good for are split-screen games or watching movies. Everything else, a PC does better and cheaper.  No bullshit.

So the Steam Summer Sale is over. Thank god… With all the new ‘flash’ sales, it was enough to drive a borderline-OCD gamer like me insane! I did exercise some restraint though, amazingly. My final tally is $80.95 for ten games. Let’s have a quick look through, shall we, and see which games were sweet deals and which might be regrettable purchases.

Hell Yeah!

The Walking Dead – $14.99

This was one of the most modest discounts during the sale (40% off I think), but its the best deal I think. If you haven’t heard of it, The Walking Dead is an episodic adventure game by Telltale – of which the first two episodes are currently released. But its not an adventure game in the usual sense of combining items and solving puzzles. For the most part, The Walking Dead is something all-new – a type of interactive fiction that is more focused on characters, dialogue and how that effects relationships. Its a straight-up awesome game and well worth buying even at regular price.

Warlock Master of the Arcane – $6.78

I’m a huge fan of Master of Magic on DOS. So I was super-intrigued by this MoM-inspired 4x strategy game upon its release, but reviews said it was fairly buggy. Well, apparently some patching has been done so I figured it was safe to try at this bargain price. And I was right! This is the game I’ve played the most from the Steam Sale, logging about 12 hours. The first thing to understand is that Warlock doesn’t have tactical combat like MoM did. But once you get past that, much of the spirit from MoM is still there. And the developers are quite active still, just patching in multiplayer as well as artifacts and heroes. The main downside is that Warlock is a complex game, but its not documented very well. I recommend the game, but definitely visit a wiki to figure out some of the more obscure details.

Rayman Origins – $14.99

What a beautiful 2D game! I’d be trying to find a deal on Rayman for console for awhile but its actually pretty rare. So I jumped on this price. So far I’m hugely impressed with the graphics, and the gameplay seems to have lots of variation.

Legend of Grimrock – $5.99

This is an old-school first-person dungeon crawler RPG in the vein of Eye of the Beholder or Dungeon Master. Oddly, I never liked those games back in the day but I’m having a pretty good time with Legend of Grimrock. I think the difference is the older games were really user-unfriendly with impenetrable puzzles. So far after 4 hours of Grimrock I’ve not reached for a FAQ yet!  Good stuff, especially for $6.

Good So Far…

Quantum Conundrum – $11.99

I picked up this Portal-alike game, along with its soundtrack and the first two DLCs (which aren’t yet out) in a ‘Season Pass’ package.  The soundtrack isn’t really to my taste, so hopefully the DLCs turn out ok.  But on the game itself, its a mixed bag.  The dialog and story are simply not funny and borderline cringe-worthy.  But the gameplay is a pretty smart puzzle package.  I’m only about 2 hours in, and I am certainly getting my money’s worth of Portal-esque puzzle-solving.  As always gameplay trumps all else, so I’m feeling positive about this purchase.

Longest Journey – $2.49

Years ago I got part-way through this classic adventure game before losing one of the original disks. So I’m looking forward to going back and starting again without the need to swap CDs. My only regret is that I didn’t pick up the sequel Dreamfall while I was at it. Oh well, there is always the Steam Christmas Sale.

Just Cause 2 – $3.74

I had a blast with this open-world destruction game on PS3 but traded it in for … something … before I could finish it. Avalance actually did a nice job with the PC port. It controls well and looks extremely good.  Blowing shit up is still really fun, so I’m glad to get this one back at such a low price!

Trine 2 – $3.74 

Not much to say about this one.  I’m really enjoying Trine 1 (picked up in some kind of indie bundle I think) but haven’t gotten very far yet.  So I’m waiting to try this one until I finish the first.  But for under $4 I think its probably a safe buy.

Meh

Saints Row The Third – $12.49

I’ve never played a Saints Row game. Why play fake GTA games when you can play the real thing? But I’ve heard great things about Saints Row: The Third, especially from the Giantbomb guys – who’s gaming opinion I really respect. So I took a risk on this and its probably one of the games that falls into the ‘regrettable’ category. It doesn’t run great on my mid-range PC (a contrast to everything else I bought in the sale), and it really follows the GTA formula a little too closely for my taste. Yeah, you can cause a bunch of chaos and that’s fun. But I prefer Just Cause 2 for that type of gameplay.

Insanely Twisted Shadow Planet – $3.74

I liked the look of this game when it came out on XBLA but didn’t like it enough to cough up 1200 points. But the price here was right, so I gave it a shot. I almost lost my shit when I first booted it up and saw it runs on Games for Windows Live! Typically I boycott games that run GFWL due to previous terrible experiences (Red Faction Guerrilla, Dawn of War II to name a few).  And of course, on cue, the game crashed on first boot. Amazingly, the next boot was fine and I didn’t experience any weird GFWL login issues at all. Almost too easy, like GFWL is saving the worst for later. As for the game, initially I’m not liking the gameplay or art style as much as I thought I would.

So that’s what I managed.  How about you?  Hit me back with your Steam Summer Sale successes and failures in the comments.

If you’ve been wondering whether I’ve disappeared or not – fear not!  I’ve just become a father, that’ s all. Eva Marie Janzen was born March 15th, 2012 and its been a crazy ride since then. My free time is rather slim at the moment. Still, GameThought will live on, hopefully with more frequent updates coming soon.

But this article isn’t about me, its about the new Indie Game Music Bundle 3 released by gamemusicbundle.com. This bundle featured 5 albums sold for ‘name your price, and a further 15(!) albums if you paid a minimum price of $10. Bundles like this can be overwhelming, but are also a great way to discover new artists – which I have certainly done.  The album Fastfall by Lifeformed is absolutely amazing and was worth my purchase price all by itself.  Before I get any farther, you should start listening to it right now.  I’ve embedded the album on Bandcamp below.

Fastfall is the OST for a game called Dustforce.  I haven’t played this game yet, but it looks like a Super Meat Boy-esque platformer where you are sweeping up leaves (yes really!).  So I can’t vouch much for the game, but the soundtrack is incredible!  If I had to characterize it in some way, Fastfall mixes chiptunes with chillout.  Its an extremely groovy set of tracks that will get your head bobbing in no time.  And the best part about it is that there really aren’t any throwaway tracks in here – or tracks that are so ‘soundtracky’ that they aren’t really suitable to be listened to on their own.  Its really quite a triumph by Lifeformed.

What I really like about this style is that Lifeformed doesn’t limit himself to only chiptune sounds.  Sure, there are square-waves in there – NES sounds aplenty.  But there are some excellent modern-sounding drums, basses and synths.  Lifeformed says the album was inspired by “chiptunes, IDM and SNES RPGs”, and I’d have to strongly agree.  I get a definite Link to the Past-vibe from some tracks, and Secret of Mana on others.

From the reverb-heavy, melodic chiptune intro Cider Time, to the swing-powered grooves of Frozen Hot Sauce to the beautiful piano arpeggios of Its Not Supposed to Be Snowing – Fastfall is by far the best OST I’ve heard so far in 2012.  In case you missed it in the Indie Game Music Bundle 3, don’t fret – the album is available for any price of your choosing in MP3 or FLAC formats (minimum price just $3.99!).

App Store Link: Hero Academy, Free

Awhile back I posted about Hero Academy by Robot Entertainment, a really great iOS multiplayer strategy game.  Well, as of yesterday Hero Academy is that much better with its brand new 1.2 update.  Click the link for full details, but here are the main updates:

• Hero Academy is now a universal app with iPad support!
• New team available: the Tribe! Led by fearless chieftains, the Tribe is relentless in its pursuit of victory!
• New FREE Tribe-themed playfield featuring Barbed Crystals and Magic Resist premium squares!

For me its absolutely huge that Hero Academy is finally Universal.  Honestly, running it in 2x mode on my iPad 2 was a bit painful on the eyes.  So the first great news is that Hero Academy now looks and plays beautifully on iPad!

Secondly, Robot Entertainment has added a new team called The Tribe.  Think Horde from World of Warcraft and you are 90% there…  Along with the new team is a brand-new playfield with some new Crystals and premium squares.  All in all, it seems like an incredible update!  I started a few new games yesterday and had a bit of trouble since I think the server’s might have been a bit overloaded but its working great today.

Of course, Hero Academy is free, as always.  The Tribe is a $1.99 IAP.  Is it worth it?  Can’t say yet.  I’m planning a bit of a strategy guide and roundup on all the teams, coming soon!

UPDATE: Robot Entertainment has put the Dwarves team (via IAP) on sale for 50% off to celebrate version 1.2!  At 99c I’d certainly be tempted to pick those little buggers up…

App Store Link: Hero Academy, Free

This is the final diary entry in the WoW Me series detailing my experiences in the first 20 levels in the Starter Edition of World of Warcraft.  You might want to go back and check out the previous days before starting on this one.  If not, just read on!

The first thing you’ll probably noticed is that this diary is condensed from two different days.  There is a good reason for that – Day 3 was fucking boring, and just writing about that would make for a crap article.  Instead, the following two paragraphs will encapsulate my Day 3 experiences.

For Day 3 I quested a whole bunch, while still not seeing pretty much any human players.  Almost all of the quests were the same-old stuff, kill xx/xx, fetch xx/xx etc.  There were a few standouts that broke the mold: one quest had me flying on a bat over an island, dropping bombs down on fishmen; another had me manning a cannon on shore while Worgen (think WoW werewolves, but they play for the ‘good’ side) mindlessly swam through the water towards me.

Other than that, there is really not that much to tell.  Basically all that kept me going through this was my desire to try one of the dungeons before ending my WoW trial.  Once I finally did get to level 15 (the pre-requisite for entering the easiest dungeon) I attempted to use Blizzard’s auto-grouping tool to join a dungeon.  This tool searches the entire population of WoW, trying to find a mixed bunch of players (tank, healer, mage etc) and group them together automatically.  Since many players are probably trying to play dungeons at any one time, I was slotted into a queue.  20 minutes later, no joy.  So I gave up and logged off an extremely boring and anticlimactic Day 3.

A few days later I decided to try again.  I figured that instead of trying to join a specific dungeon, I’d use the random dungeon button in the tool and hope for the best.  And indeed, 5 minutes later I was automatically whisked away to the Wailing Caverns to begin my dungeon experience!  Upon joining I saw 4 other players (its really amazing to see other human players still!)  and greeted them in chat.  I mentioned something about it being my first dungeon.  No response whatsoever – instead the tank runs ahead and starts fighting monsters.  Ok, well by this time I’ve mastered Flogalish’s limited moveset and just head into the fray and attempt to backstab our foes while our tank distracts them.  Nothing special in terms of gameplay, but it felt great to be actually playing a multiplayer game finally!

The Wailing Caverns themselves are a dark and dreary place.  And I don’t mean that in terms of just atmosphere, but really in terms of style and graphics.  I truly hope this is one of the ugliest and least interesting of WoW’s dungeons because the Caverns are the definition of visually bland.  Its just a big cave with very few unique features and little style.

To be victorious in these shamefully bland Caverns, my party needed to find and kill 3 bosses.  As well, there were some optional bosses we ran into and defeated such as the one below.  While doing so, I hit the milestone we’ve all been waiting for – level 20!  At this point, I was not gaining any more XP and thus it was a bit of  a waste to carry on with the dungeon but I didn’t plan on abandoning my party.

We continued on, killing what felt like hundreds of dinosaurs (?), and shape-shifting vampire druids.  No one ever died, and really no one was ever in trouble.  I’m not sure if we were just too powerful for the dungeon or if it was pure skill.  My guess is the first dungeons are dumbed down quite a bit.  After killing the 3rd boss and taking the quests back to the NPCs at the start of the cave, I basically said “Peace Out” and started to get ready to leave.  The tank in our party told me to wait, the ‘big event’ was yet to come.  Ok, a surprise quest – just when you think you’re done with WoW!  Clever, Blizzard.

The final quest in the Wailing Caverns consisted of us protecting a Troll Shaman as he purified various areas, altars or whatever.  Eventually we got to a small circular area surrounded by water.  The Shaman babbled nonsensically and then cast a spell over a vampire druid on an altar.  The final boss then appeared – basically an ugly fishman, which looks like an enlarged version of the enemies I dropped bombs on from my flying bat during Day 3.  We destroyed him easily, and I got a pop-up letting me know I got some very powerful gear.  Yay!   The Troll Shaman then disappeared, and my party members followed very quickly.  I left the dungeon and was automatically teleported back to my previous location where I took a final screenshot of Flogalish posing with his new gear for posterity.   My time with the Starter Edition of WoW was over.

So, after all that how do I feel about WoW?  Well, I can tell you that I’m certainly not addicted.  When I got that final shiny bit of gear in the last dungeon, I could feel the psychological pinprick of “Cool!  If you keep playing this you’ll get more shinies!”, but that was a short-lived feeling.  I don’t anticipate returning to Azeroth anytime soon.  You hear that Blizzard?  I won!  Well, until Diablo 3 anyway…

I can respect the world that Blizzard has built with WoW.  Its quite well-realized.  But I have a real problem with the lack of interaction with other players, as well as the lack of players in general.  It doesn’t really matter how compelling the environment is, if WoW is essentially a single-player subscription RPG.  That’s not fun and not a good value for $15/month either.

I can’t really respect anything about the questing in WoW though.  The questing is so incredibly basic its almost confusing in the sense that millions of users have played through this content without much complaint.  In fact, apparently many of the starter areas have been redesigned with Cataclysm – so there is no excuse for such a bare-bones experience.

Finally, in terms of gameplay I don’t feel like there is a ton of depth to WoW.  Of course, I can only speak for the experience up to level 20, but to me 15 hours is enough time to put into a game to unlock at least some of its depth.  WoW spoonfeeds features and character powers at such a slow rate that I almost fall asleep thinking about it.  By level 20 my Rogue used nearly the exact same set of 3 powers that I had at level 5.  Perhaps other classes are more complex, but playing a Rogue for the first 20 levels has as minuscule progression.

I’ve talked to Dan about most of these points, and his response is mostly that the game really hits its stride at high-level end-game – when many different raids/dungeons are open to you and PVP consists of more interesting battles.  That may very well be true, but its just not worth it to put 100 hours into a game before reaching the interesting portion.  I feel like the only way I’d play a MMO long-term is if the entire experience started off very fun and just continued that pattern right to the end.  Is that even possible?  Or is the genre just too stale?  I can’t say yet.  But I will say that WoW has certainly piqued my curiosity about current MMOs and I’m wondering whether another game out there might better fit my tastes.

That brings us to the end of the WoW Me series of articles.  I hope you liked journeying with Flogalish and myself through Azeroth.  Don’t forget to leave me some feedback on the series.  You can look forward to some articles in the future exploring my experiences with other MMOs!

Flogalish the Undead Rogue and myself are back to relate some experiences from day two of WoW Me – my World of Warcraft Starter Edition trial diary.  In case you missed the first day and intro pieces for WoW Me (go back and read ‘em, I’ll wait!), the gist of it is that I’m looking to explore what makes WoW so compelling – from the perspective of a MMO newbie.

Last time we left Azeroth, I’d just reached level 8 and decided to take a break in the town of Brill.  Upon my return, I was again greeted with an abandoned MMO landscape.  Its safe to say from levels 1-10 in the Undead starter area, you are very unlikely to find other players.  So I basically treated the next 3 hours or so like a single-player RPG – questing around and seeing the sights of Azeroth.  Who needs other humans in a MMO?  Flogalish just needs his two daggers.

I would describe the questing during these 3 hours, except it would be redundant.  It was essentially identical to WoW Me Day 1 – with the exception that I was venturing much farther across the map to get stuff done.  Keep in mind there is no fast travel in WoW (well at least not for a level 8 Undead Rogue!).  However, I did take a faster form of travel, hitching a ride on a giant bat and flying into an underground tunnel which eventually descended into a deep chasm that holds the Undercity.  The scale of all this was very epic.  While the detail graphically is still pretty ragged, flying through this enormous underground city was a bit humbling and more than a bit impressive.

Unfortunately, my visit to the Undercity was shortlived as I was too low a level to actually find anything to do there.  So back to Brill and questing…  Some fetch-quests later, I’m directed to the Silverpine Forest to meet our Dark Lady master Sylvanas.  This quest triggers a fairly-impressive in-engine custscene that depicts Sylvanas arguing with a giant Orc general (Warchief?) and some dark angels doing something very evil to a meadow full of human corpses.  I have no clue what any of that was about, but it looked really cool!  And it was fully voice-acted too – a nice change of pace from skimming quest text.  As an aside, can you imagine if there was 1/4 the amount of quests in WoW, but they were 4x better – with voiced cutscenes and interesting setups?  I suppose there wouldn’t be enough grind content to keep people playing for hundreds of hours then though…

By this time I’ve hit level 10.  That means a few things: apparently there is now a death penalty (not sure what it is), and now I need to choose a Rogue specialization.  The choices are combat, stealth or assassination.  I chose stealth – which I’m already regretting.  I’m not sure if I’d need to create another character if I want to change to combat?  Its unclear.  I haven’t seen any information about respec’ing characters.

Also by this time, I’m completely sick to death of questing.  Yes, the world is interesting to explore visually – but the total lack of other players and the frankly awful quests are sapping my will to continue.   I think I’ve put in enough time to say questing – at a low level and in the Undead starter areas – is lame.  I’m still interested to check out the other aspects of WoW gameplay though, like raids/dungeons and PVP.  Apparently while at level 10 I’m high enough level for certain dungeons, I haven’t found any dungeons on the map and nor do I yet have access to the auto-dungeon finder in WoW (that’s level 15).  So, off to PVP then.

I started a PVP match by clicking a menu button and choosing a map.  The first time I tried, WoW says I am in a queue and the anticipated wait time is 15 minutes!  Yeah, I dont want to try PVP that bad.  I tried another map and am instantly teleported into a game that’s already started.

As near as I could tell, I was on a team with around ten teammates.  There was no instruction or tutorials given other than that we need to capture the flag.  Sounds simple enough.  I figured I’d hang back, and try to play my character properly by using my stealth ability and backstab any magic users who are silly enough to stray away from the main enemy group.  I ran up behind a level 13 Gnome Mage, used my Ambush skill and was instantly fried by his magic.  Umm, ok?  The rest of the round goes pretty much like this.  I ended up with a Kill/Death score of 1/9 and our team loses 0/3.  I messaged my team and asked why we seemed to be getting destroyed so easily and am told that the other team “all has boa items and we have none”.  I don’t know what boa is, but it seems crap that its possible for teams to be that unbalanced in PVP.

At the end of the match, I was given no gold, no items and no XP.  Instead I received 50 Honor Points.  No explanation for what they are, or what they do was given.  I checked out a WoW Wiki and it seems they are used to buy PVP-only items.  I’m confused by this whole experience, honestly.  The PVP match was interesting, even if it felt like I had no hope.  It was cool to see the masses of players in battle, after my long run of solo questing.  It also got me thinking – where the hell are all these level 10-15 characters from my match when they aren’t in the PVP arena?  Certainly not in any of the Undead starter areas!  On the positive side, the PVP map featured extremely beautiful art – basically its a vertically sloped forest with two bases at either end.  That sounds basic, but it sure didn’t look that way.  Once again the scale of Azeroth impressed me today.

After the this humbling PVP experience I headed back to the inn at Brill and logged off.  Flogalish is now level 11 – leaving me 9 more levels until I hit the level cap of 20.  I’ll be honest, my interest in WoW is not being held very well at this point.  I still want to give the dungeons a chance, but I’m feeling like my will for questing is pretty much played out and I’ve only played for about 8 hours total so far!  I’m having trouble understanding how the millions of WoW players can slog through this stuff – some people multiple times for multiple characters!  If you fall into this category, let me know in the comments how you deal with the boring questing of WoW. Or maybe if you see it differently, let me know what you enjoy about WoW questing.

Thanks for continuing to follow WoW Me.  I’ll be back with Day 3 soon.  Remember to follow GameThought via RSS if you like what you are reading!

The State of Video Pinball

Pinball is a game that I’ve never felt has translated well to video form.  Part of it is the visceral, physical experience of a good pinball table – the other part is the form factor or aspect ratio of a pinball table (which is much taller than it is wide).  While in the last few years video pinball has come a long way in terms of realistic physics, there is still the aspect ratio issue.  Most of us play games on a widescreen monitor or TV which is the exact opposite of what is best for video pinball!  Is pinball best left to the real arcades?  Well, not anymore.  Video pinball has launched a renaissance on iOS.  With Zen Pinball, and now Pinball Arcade as well (which I hope to try soon), iOS gamers are now spoiled for choice to get their pinball fix.

iPad’s aren’t well-suited to many types of arcade gaming.  Fast-action stuff with virtual d-pads is almost never satisfying.  But pinball only requires 4 inputs – two flippers, the plunger and tilt.  That’s no problem for a touch-screen.  And the iPad’s 4:3 ratio 1024×768 pixel display is perfectly suited for pinball action in portrait mode.  So with Zen Studios porting their console game Zen Pinball to iPad, its an absolute perfect match.  Zen Pinball was originally released on PS3, but it has a very close cousin in the Xbox 360 Pinball FX2.  Dozens of tables have been released on these console platforms, but so far Zen Studios has only brought 6 of these to iPad.  The App Store download is completely free, and comes with the Sorcerer’s Lair table.  5 additional tables are available as in-app purchases – Thor, Epic Quest, Wolverine, Captain America and Excalibur.  These tables are 99c each upon release, rising to $1.99 after a certain amount of time.

So this is a free app?  Yup, and definitely one of the best free iPad games out there.  Let me give you a shortcut to the article conclusion if you are short on time – download Zen Pinball today!  The rest of this article is going to examine each of the tables in detail and give some recommendations on what are the best buys.  The tables will be ranked in order, starting with what I feel are the very best.

1. Epic Quest

Epic Quest is an extremely innovative table, and to my knowledge there simply is nothing else out there like it.  This table is a fusion of pinball and a Diablo-esque RPG.  Insane?  Maybe, but also incredibly fun and addictive.  This table should be your first Zen Pinball table purchase – without a doubt!

Basically, the table works like this: you’ll find a monster to fight in 3 different places – the forest, the dungeon, or the Ocanium.  The fight requires you to hit different lanes and ramps to either dodge, block, hit or cast spells.  As you’d expect from a RPG, each enemy has different hit points and damage stats, as well as elemental resistances (yes its that complex!).  The enemy also has a countdown timer that repeats, and each time it hits zero the monster hits your character.  Of course, its possible to interrupt the timer by blocking or dodging.  Once you beat an enemy you gain XP and can hit a target to collect your loot.  Loot is just what you’d expect, random weapons/armor with different stats and elemental properties.  Did I mention there is even purple Epic gear!

If that was all there was to Epic Quest, it would be an interesting idea.  What puts it over the top is the fact that your XP and gear persist between games!  This means you can ‘grind’ Epic Quest and level up your character and gear.  Trust me, its addictive!  Beyond what I’ve described there are a variety of other high-level modes, skillshots and targets.  All in all, Epic Quest is a truly amazing pinball table that any pinball fan will fall in love with – whether they are new to pinball or a veteran.

2. Sorcerer’s Lair

Sorcerer’s Lair comes packed free with Zen Pinball, but don’t let that fool you – its far from a throwaway freebie.  Initially I was pretty skeptical about Sorcerer’s Lair due to this free nature and also the ‘rated-G’ style of the table.  But none of that matter’s when put up against the really excellent layout and gameplay that this table showcases.  In addition to its many game modes and complex layout, Sorcerer’s Lair is also pretty newbie-friendly and forgiving.

The game modes in Sorcerer’s Lair are controlled by hitting the hidden ‘altar’ in the center of the table.  Many of these modes, such as the one pictured on the left above, take you to completely new playfields.  Clearing these playfields will earn you a Obsidian Stone.  Getting these stones is important for high-scoring in the final Midnight Madness mode.  So there is a clear progression of play in Sorcerer’s Lair, and its easy enough that even beginners can get a few stones and perhaps to the final mode.

3. Wolverine

Wolverine was my first Zen Pinball purchase and I certainly don’t regret it.  Visually its an amazing table, showcasing detailed character models of Wolverine, Silver Samurai, Sentinel and Sabretooth.  The tables ramps and lanes are nicely spaced and not overly complicated.  Soon you’ll learn how to rack up impressive scores.  The flipside of that is that perhaps Wolverine doesn’t have quite as much lasting power as some of the other more complex tables.  I should also mention I found some of the voice effects on this table a bit more annoying and repetitive than some of the others.  Still, its an awesome table to pick up and play without needing to go into the table guide and figure out all the inner workings.

4. Captain America

Captain America is certainly the most advanced of all the current Zen Pinball iOS tables.  There are a massive array of multi-step modes (including many choices to make on the LCD), as well as a very complex layout of ramps, lanes and targets.  Personally, while I appreciate all the effort that has gone into the table, I’ve had a hard time coming to grips with it.  Yeah, I’ll admit – I suck at it…  I would say this is a must-buy for pinball veterans, but others with less pinball skill might want to buy some of the other tables that are easier to handle first.

For an example of some of the impressive complexity that’s gone into Captain America, check out this amazing table strategy guide.  Its an incredibly deep pinball table!

5. Excalibur

Excalibur is my most recent purchase, and I’m still learning it.  Its packed with mini-games, such as jousting and dueling.  But the controls of these mini-games aren’t as tight as I’d like.  The jousting in particular I have absolutely no clue how to succeed at, and the table guide wasn’t much help either.  I do really like the layout and graphics though.  The multi-step mode to break into the castle is awesome in terms of both visuals and gameplay!  I’m sure once I get a bit more time with the table and the mini-games I’ll start to appreciate Excalibur more.

Also, there is a third flipper on the right side of Excalibur that I’m having trouble making any decent use of.  One of my pet peeves in pinball games is when a 3rd or 4th flipper is very rarely used – it seems like a waste.  Leave me a comment if you have some advice on that!  Or a link to a PDF table guide perhaps, as I haven’t found a good one yet.

6. Thor

Thor is an incredibly beautiful table.  The voices and sound effects are quite polished as well.  But I’m not sold on the gameplay.  The first problem is that many of the modes require hitting the exact same lane or target, many, many times.  Its just not varied enough, as well as being quite difficult.  And further, on some lanes you can trigger a ‘boost’ – sending your pinball off to other parts of the table.  That’s fine in theory, but you trigger the boost by touching a check mark on the screen (as seen above).  This doesn’t work well in the heat of action, and worse, the timing of the boost trigger is very tricky.  If Zen Studios patched this problem I think Thor would be much easier to enjoy.

Zen Pinball Summary

Since I purchased all tables shortly after they were released, I’ve spent a total of $5 on Zen Pinball.  The amount of awesome pinball gameplay for a five-spot is pretty incredible.  The fact that its a completely portable experience on the iPad is just gravy.  Even though the table graphics aren’t quite as polished as their console counterparts, the form factor and convenience of the iPad make Zen Pinball the definitive video pinball experience today.

You may also be wondering how Zen Pinball matches up on iPhone.  On my iPhone 3GS, there are some framerate issues but its playable.  The bigger problem is the small screen – which makes seeing smaller table details very difficult.  Of course, the higher-resolution screens of the iPhone 4 and 4S may alleviate this somewhat.  But I still feel the iPad is the best way to play Zen Pinball.

As more tables are released for Zen Pinball on iOS, I hope to cover those in separate article so stay tuned – subscribe to GameThought via RSS!

App Store Link: Zen Pinball, Free

Welcome to Day 1 of WoW Me.  In case you didn’t read the intro article – this is a diary that follows me exploring Azeroth through the World of Warcraft Starter Edition.  Will I become an unrepentant MMO addict?  Or just bored of the grind?  Only one way to find out!

Installing World of Warcraft is a painless but time-consuming process.  You initially download a 30mb setup file, which then installs a ‘downloader’ which downloads the entire game.  The cool part is that you can actually start playing after only a small percentage of the 10+gb are downloaded.  Its possible because WoW will then download ‘on-demand’ the files you need for whatever area you are in.  Well done, Blizzard!

After installing I was treated to a CG intro movie.  I happily skipped it and moved on.  Perhaps if I somehow become invested in the WoW story I’ll go back and watch it later.  Now I needed to create my character and choose a server.

Following Dan’s advice I began by creating an Undead Rogue.  Each race has its own ‘starting area’, and I’ve been told that the Undead area is one of the better starting points.  As for class,  Dan actually recommended a Hunter, but the Rogue’s intriguing ability to build up combo points and ‘unleash finishing moves’ pushed me towards the Rogue at the last second.  Hence, Flogalish was borne (yes, its a randomly-generated name!).  I am playing on the Frostmane PVP server, which means apparently I can be killed at any time by high-level characters.  What can I say, I live life on the edge, baby!

Once character creation was done I was treated to an in-game cinematic fly-over a creepy forest, while a voiceover explained backstory mythology that was completely incomprehensible.  If the narrator assumes I remember one single fact from Warcraft 1-3, he’s way off!   The camera finally settled on a graveyard filled with zombies and dark angel-like creatures, one of which proceeded to cast a spell which raised poor Flogalish from his grave.  I was then told that I’ve been raised to serve in Sylvanas’ army – who I assumed is the leader of all these undead forces.  Immediately I had the impression that this little scene would have been much better if the dialogue was voiced instead of text.  Its odd that the narrator was given voice for the useless flyover but the actual dramatic scene of raising your corpse is done in mostly silence.  I suppose if Blizzard started by voicing stuff here, our expectations would already be too high.

The controls for moving my character are a little strange.  By default the mouse is meant for clicking stuff on the screen, not changing the camera angle.  It took me awhile to delve into the settings menu and change this up to something I’m more used to from other 3rd person games.  While I was in the settings, I was overwhelmed by how much room for customization is in there.  Its safe to say you should be able to configure the interface of WoW to your exact liking.

Graphically, WoW looks like 2005.  I’m sure its been upgraded since the initial release but its still a 6-year old game for the most part.  Some of the textures are shockingly low-resolution.  On the plus side, it runs absolutely butter smooth with max detail on my mid-range system.  Even though the visuals are basic technically, somehow the art style and the way everything fits together visually really works and is appealing.   I think I need to explore the world a bit more to see other sights though – since the dark, dreary Undead forest can only offer so much visually.

Alright, so now I’m off!  I was told I needed to find a gravedigger who would have some useful information for me.  I searched around the graveyard briefly before finding a pasty fellow with a bright gold exclamation mark above his head.  He let me know he needed some needles and embalming fluid from somewhere, and of course I’m the one for the job.  After I returned with the goods (which were literally only a few dozen steps away), I got a few choice words of encouragement, as well as some gold and XP.  Well, its the first quest – have to start small, right?

On to quest two.  I talked to the gravedigger again and he told me he needed some unruly undead taken care of.  Kill 8 of the buggers and come back.  I’m playing a Rogue, but at this point all I could do is run up to the shuffling walkers and left-click, while occasionally hitting an icon for a quick stab (which seems barely better – if at all – than my default attack).  I killed all 8 and returned to the digger once again, and was treated with more gold and XP.

WoW continued on like this for some time.  Some quests have slight variations but most boil down to:

• Go here, kill X number of Y monster
• Go here, kill X number of Y monster and pick up Z number of items from their corpses
• Go here, talk to this person
• Find X number of Y plants and return them somewhere

There were a few exceptions.  One quest had me using a special snare item to trap a half-man/half-fish creature and bring it home to a lonely aristocrat zombie for a pet.  He named the creature Sparky. Another quest started by killing a Crimson Zealot (soldiers that hate undead from what I can tell), and finding a letter on his body.   The letter led me to the top of a tower where a zombie girl who refuses to accept she is no longer human was caged.  A cutscene ensued that was pretty cool.  This questline also tied into earlier quests, which an encouraging sign that not everything will be meaningless one-off fetch/kill quests.

One aspect of the game that surprised and confused me was how empty WoW is.  Even though the Frostmane server lists its population as Medium, for the first 2 hours or so I did not see any other human players, anywhere.   This led me to believe that maybe I was playing in a separate area to all other players, just for newbies?  Finally I did see an Undead Priest, and though I attempted to strike up a conversation, the Priest killed a group of shambling undead and ran away.  He was all business.   I’ve since asked Dan about it and he says the new areas are fairly barren because there just aren’t many new players!  You can’t think that’s good news for Blizzard…

I managed to reach level 8 in the 2-3 hours I played today.  I stopped my game in the town of Brill, which seemed like a larger hub, at least because I saw about a half-dozen other players running around.  It was almost shocking to see that much activity in WoW after my inital solo trek through the first areas.

Overall, on face value today was about what I expected from the intro WoW experience.  I knew that its wasn’t going to be a deep RPG experience by any stretch.  But the polished atmosphere of the game somehow makes the experience more compelling than it really should be!  Thanks for reading, I’ll be back soon with more adventures from Azeroth.