The Elder Thoughts

Of Torchlight, Borderlands and Dragon Age Origins

Kartones — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 08:08:49 GMT

Many Real Life™ tasks lately, so I haven’t had time to paint miniatures, play Space Hulk or enjoy videogames, until last weekend. A lot of awaited games are out, so it’s RPGing time!

I still have to finish the two last DLCs for Fallout 3, but I became a bit tired of it so I’m focused on other title, but first, two small deceptions:

Torchlight

A game that while didn’t aimed to be something better than Diablo 2, ends up being so similar to Diablo. It improves over a lot of small details, the graphics are beautiful, but the story is very dumb and the game can become easily repetitive.
It features random dungeons, though, and multiple difficulty levels which can help avoid that, but its a pure hack’n slash action RPG.

Borderlands

Another deception… Announced as a first person action-RPG, the result is not much more than a cartoonish, Fallout-themed Quake FPS with experience levels and a stupid, terrible save and enemy respawn system that punishes casual players that don’t pump hours into the game without quitting.
If you quit the game, you will restart at the beggining of the area, having to kill again all the foes (like in Diablo); this is fun the first minutes, but after a while you end up tired of killing “the same guys around the corner” for the 5th time.

Main plot like seems to be quite fast to complete, but I grew up tired on the fourth zone. Maybe with the 4-player coop mode is better, I haven’t tried.

Dragon Age Origins

At least this one is really nice :)

A real and nice Bioware “creature” and a proud descendant of Neverwinter Nights. Fresh setting (no longer settled in Forgotten Realms), vastly improved graphics (not as impressive as Fable 2, but still really good ones), and the promise of tons of play hours…

The interface is very similar to Neverwinter Nights 2/The Witcher, with some improvements, and Mass Effect’s dialog selection system. Recommended on PC for the better mouse handling, but available also in consoles.

Three races, three classes, six backgrounds and hundreds of quests, the game looks like the best RPG out there at the moment along with The Witcher.

I’ve played only a few hours and I’m hooked, as are all of my friends and colleages. Go grab it!

Not Convinced: Risen

Kartones — Mon, 12 Oct 2009 09:30:23 GMT

Last week, I spen’t one sitting of 5 hours playing Risen, a new RPG that looked very cool from the screenshots and that was just released. And because of the results, I’m starting a new tag that I will use sometimes in the future, not convinced.

Risen looks very beautiful, yes, and in fact the game world is pretty: weather effects, day-night cycle (you will get used to carrying torches), well chosen color palettes, good overall world design and lots of vegetation visible (a-la Oblivion).

But playing it feels a bit clumsy. Jumping is… strange, trees at close aren’t that beautiful, combat is very basic (and there are bugs, sometimes just attacking will keep enemies from doing anything until they die)… After playing Fable II Risen looks unpolished in comparison.

I haven’t gone too far in the game (I didn’t finish the first chapter), but simply I didn’t want to spend more time playing this.

The quests are too similar to World of Warcraft ones (kill X enemies, collect Y items), you have freedom to go to two or three places at once but this is not Oblivion, you have ranged and close combat weapons but you will have to rely on close combat ones for any non trivial enemy…

Sometimes those quests are not too clearly stated, and as the NPCs will just stop talking with you until you finish them, looks too unreal.

Heck, even the “professions” look like World of Warcraft ones (prospecting minerals, lockpicking, skinning dead animals), except here that means “see but don’t use yet” along your path, not “stop killing monsters and act like a real miner searching the world for minerals”.

Leveling is very basic too: Each level you get 10 "learning points, then you search for trainers to spend them on stats (strength, agility, etc.) or skills (swords, lockpicking,…). Apart from some extra life and mana points, nothing else.

Risen looks like an unfinished ambitious project. It has tons of elements but so rough, so simply implemented and displaced away by the more important lacks or problems, that you forget them and notice more the terrible combat system, or the almost useless world map.

Too bad because it has potential, it might get better later but at least with me its too late, it failed to engage me in the first hours.

Gears of War Comics #1-#6

Kartones — Sat, 03 Oct 2009 10:47:48 GMT

In Spain I’ve found a one issue compilation, but I’m going to talk about the first 6 comics of Gears of War (#1, #2, #3, #4, #5 and #6).

They serve as a nexus between the two videogames, or sort of, because the truth is that they don’t add too much.

We’re given small hints of the four characters, both of their motivations and their past, but nothing ‘revealing’, just small details.

The scenarios are mostly new, but as in the game, with a similar theme and the same post-apocalyptic aura.

There are no new enemies, but almost all from the videogames appear. My disagree with this is that some of them are too forced inside the comic, just appear for a few pages and do almost nothing apart from “hey, I’m another foe from the videogame, just in case you forgot this is GoW!”.

That said, the comic is not bad. It has fantastic drawings, the locust are frightening and Marcus looks even more badass than in the game.

It’s just the feeling of “really I’m not being told anything, I’l just watching a collection of references to a game with pretty drawings”… But maybe it’s only my perception.

Mouse Guard Vol. 2: Winter 1152

Kartones — Tue, 01 Sep 2009 22:31:11 GMT

A comic book that arrived recently to my home (it has just been released) is Mouse Guard Volume 2: Winter 1152, second part of Mouse Guard: Fall 1152.

Continues the story of the mouse guardians, one season later than the first book. And in fact everything is very similar to the first book: Characters (not all, but a lot reappear), ambientation (apart from the logical season differences), situations, and general theme (I won’t make spoilers, but could be more varied, truth said).

The drawings are, like the first book, really well drawn. Being “humanoid” mice, the gestures, clothes, and faces of the characters are really well achieved, so is the lighting and color in general.

It is both brigther than the first book (many whites and greys because of the snow) and darker (again no spoilers, but there are indoor fragments).

And once again, you can read the whole comic in one seat, and it lefts you eager for more.

But the next time, please change a bit more the theme before we get bored of it ;)

Space Hulk Limited Edition

Kartones — Mon, 17 Aug 2009 23:22:00 GMT

They had it so perfectly planned that I first new about this via an official email than in any website (even being held the Games Day). Games Workshop has officially announced the new Space Hulk limited edition.

There were rumors (even talking about a fully plastic version), and seems that part of them were true. The game will feature the following plastic units:

11 Space Marine Terminators,
1 Space Marine Terminator Librarian
22 Genestealers
1 Broodlord
3 plastic mission objectives: a dead Space Marine on throne, a Blood Angels artifact and a Cyber-Altered Task Unit.

Plus corridor sections, doors, markers, counters, dice, a sand clock (seems that they are keeping the “real time pressure” turns), the rulebook and a mission book.

Having a librarian, a captain and the broodlord looks like the rules will be a mixture of the original Space Hulk plus parts of the expansions. I’m eager to chech the new rules and test them!

Having more terminators and genestealers I hope rules can be adapted for more than two players (and I can switch to the old ruleset anyway).

The miniatures look amazing (alhough I’ll probably convert and paint them into Deathwing Terminators, to join my existing army). The genestealers look fantastic too, and will add more variety to the dozens I already have (I’m actually thinking about doing some imperial guard conversions to create genestealer hybrids).

Ahh, I can’t wait for the 5th of september (well, a few more days until the order arrives home).

Comic Book: Legion of Monsters (Marvel)

Kartones — Sun, 16 Aug 2009 18:31:16 GMT

Legion of monsters is a small compilation of 8 comics about monsters in the Marvel universe.

The 8 tales featured are:

The Werewolf
The Frankenstein
The Man-Thing
The Zombie
The Vampire
Dracula and his daughter
Satana
The Mummy

Some of the tales (all feel quite short and maybe lack some more deep) are quite empty, like Morbius (the vampire) or the Werewolf. You read them and feel like “and that’s all? nothing else?”.

Others like the Man-Thing, the Zombie or the Mummy are more frightening. The one of the mummy is very interestingly drawn, sets apart from traditional comics for the better.

The drawings are good in general (except for Satana which I didn’t liked too much), different styles but overall nice results.

As I said, some of the tales are good but others are not very interesting.

Comic Book: Warhammer 40k: blood & Thunder

Kartones — Fri, 31 Jul 2009 23:46:21 GMT

Recently I’ve read (in one night, as usual with most comic books) is Warhammer 40.000: Blood & Thunder.

It’s another comic book set in the Warhammer 40.000 universe (like Warhammer 40.000: Damnation Crusade), but this time telling another battle and almost from the oppositve perspective: The ork one.

Specifically, the story is told by an imperial guard captain, who is taken prisioner by the orks (thinking he is a rare snotling).

I won’t make spoilers, but I can tell that it is even funny sometimes, and gives an insight of how the ork societies (well, more specifically the clans) work.

The drawings are nice, with the orks being quite detailed and different.

Maybe I could complain of the lenght. While not short, the amount of dialogs is smaller than in other comic books (given that orks speak less and quite badly), so you can finish it in a few hours at most of reading…

The Deathwing Story (from Space Hulk’s Expansion)

Kartones — Fri, 17 Jul 2009 20:47:49 GMT

I read a while ago on a Warhammer 40k blog that people were trying to find the original Dark Angels Deathwing Chapter original story, only published inside of the rules of the Deathwing expansion of Space Hulk.

Well, I have something that might interest you. Specifically, that story scanned in PDF.

All the 19 pages (including a cover) containing that original story, in english. It’s a full page scan (no OCR) and it looks a bit worn of on the borders, but it is perfectly readable.

I hope you like it!

Book: The Zombie Survival guide

Kartones — Mon, 13 Jul 2009 18:35:36 GMT

Another finished book about zombies, The Zombie Survival Guide (from Max Brooks). It was written before World War Z so I have been able to compare things on both books in inverse order (I’ve readed first WWZ).

This book tries to be a “serious” guide to defend yourself from zombies. As simple as it sounds :D

It is sometimes funny, and has a bit of black humour on it, but mostly tries to be as serious and applied as possible.

It gives all sort of advices, from how to defend your home to how to establish a contingency plan, how to “attack” and raid zombie-infested zones, tactics, and some historical zombie attacks (backgrounds for the supposed guide ;)

So basically we can say the book is 85% a manual of “how to live fighting zombies on a daily basis” and 15% a collection of zombie short-stories themed in the past.

The guide is really well documented, so much that a movie director wanting to do a zombie movie could use this guide as a manual of “how to make a zombie movie”. Some tactis explained are funny but clever ones.

Some of the stories are really well thought and even scarier than the future depicted in World War Z (the one of the slaves ship is my favourite), and look like the seed that Brooks planted for WWZ (or maybe was a “playground” to see how well could he tell small zombie tales?).

If you enjoyed World War Z, or just like zombie movies, go grab this book before the apocalypse comes!

My DS is burning of playing RPGs

Kartones — Mon, 06 Jul 2009 18:51:06 GMT

On this holidays my Nintendo DS has been my night companion for when it was too hot (or too early) to sleep, and I’ve been playing three RPGs quite a few hours.

Final Fantasy III

I’ve talked previously about this game and how difficult it is, but I’m very persistant so I’ve progressed some in the game.

I’m not probably yet even halfway it, but it's really fine. The Jobs stuff is a bit hard at first (you have to level each job for each character if you don’t like to stick to just one specific job per char), but after the first levels it pays off when having a good party.

I don’t get stuck on what to do next (I just sometimes need to level up a bit before progressing), the story up to now is simple and typical, and the GFX and controls are nice and do their job perfectly.

I will keep playing it until the end probably…

Final Fantasy XII: Revenant Wings

This has been a small nice surprise. A mixture of realtime RTS with action-RPG, with 3D scenary and beautiful 2D pixel characters and creatures game…

It continues the story of FFXII and the adventures of Vaal, converting the espers to troops to command, invoke and use to fight enemies, conquer magic sources and destroy resurrection crystals.

The game is very tactical, highly dependant on the weaknesses and natures of each level enemies (you can be easily defeated if you don’t take into account it, or easily win in just 5 minutes on some battles if you do so). It is like playing Magic The Gathering with a Final Fantasy theme.

I will write a full review for other of my blogs, but being more than halfway of the game I see one important problem: The formula that works marvels for the first time, great for the 10th, and ok for the 40th, starts to be too repetitive and boring nearing the 100th time…

All the battles tend to be very similar and I’m becoming tired of it, so I’ll set it aside for a few days before finishing it (I’m on chapter 6).

Orcs & Elves

The same game I played more than one year ago on a mobile phone, this time on the Nintendo DS.

The game is pretty much the same as the J2ME Orcs & Elves 2 version, but with a heavy visual tweak and some polygons. The upper screen always shows the first-person view of the character, having the touch screen for inventory handling, automaps, shopping and options.

The game features a bunch of weapons, some enemies (with slightly different patterns, like “fire and hide”, “keep distance”, etcetera) and around 5 hours of gameplay for your first run on normal difficulty.

The engine itself is not bad. Not only combines 3D scenery with 2D sprites (with good amount of detail), but also implements a lot of the typical "Eye of the Beholder” era map tricks: hidden rooms, teleporters, triggers for events or enemies, special objects…

The downside is the short duration: 5 hours for non-random maps means you might give it a second run to become even stronger (you will already have the full range of weapons at the end), but not much more. Also, the story is a bit silly sometimes, but you can live with it.