Guild Wars 2: The Guildening

An MMO focused around guilds and grouping players together, Guild Wars was a smash hit mostly due to the fact that it did not require a subscription. You bought the game and that was it, you owned it and could play it whenever you liked. It claimed to require skill in the game itself instead of just grinding levels until you were the most powerful. The skills and abilities you could unlock were many and all served a different purpose.

Guild Wars 2 follows the same line of thought, instead focusing on small microtransactions that can make things easier without breaking the game difficulty over its knee. This isn't a game where you can pay to win, or get to max level with a wave of your magic credit card. Most purchases seem to be simply cosmetic as the only thing I've seen so far that isn't strictly your characters appearance is the ability to swap servers. Being able to swap servers seems kind of unneeded unless you've somehow managed to piss off an entire server's worth of people, and if you've managed to do that maybe multiplayer games aren't your thing. ArenaNet is intending to add functionality into a 'guesting' system allowing you to temporarily load into another server to play with your friends, and making the server swapping seem even more useless.

The controls are very tight allowing you to evade attacks with just the quick double tap of one of the WASD keys or triggering a skill simply by hitting the quick key. The only complaint I have so far is that half your skills are based on your current weapon, but you soon get the ability to swap between two sets of weapon loadouts at will.

                                                                       
                                           A monstrosity from the underworld rears its ugly head.

The stories feel suitably epic, although the human stories are generally against bandits plaguing your  hometown. Also, each of your characters is going to be a great hero. There are no 'evil' side quests nor any real ability to try and ruin things for fun or profit. Lack of evil options aside, the stories do their job well in bringing the world alive and the characters are well written and fleshed out.

                                                         The creation of a Necromancer. 

Character creation is easy and you can create just about any character type imaginable. They do have a tendency to lean towards the 'bishonen' character types if male, but you can easily fine tune your character to your hearts desire. In the human creation alone you choose a backstory based on your station in life and what your characters biggest regret is. Unfortunately there are only three choices in both options; Noble, commoner, or street rat for your station. For your biggest regrets; Don't know your real parents, never recovered your sister's body, or turned down a chance to perform at the circus. These two set up your main story missions and continue throughout the game, giving you epic missions of bravery and skill wherever your daring do takes you.

                                                                              
                                      A Sylvari Mesmer, exploring the gorgeous world around her.

Side quests are run a bit differently than most MMOs, you find an area where someone needs help and do simple jobs for them. This can be from watering crops and feeding cows, to killing giant worms that burrow through the ground. Each person in the area contributes to the quest. if one person does something to help around the area, everybody gets closer to completing the quest. One of my favorite things to do is actually just exploring as you gain XP upon finding grand sweeping vistas or places of interest. Completionists are even rewarded, as once you finish all possible quests, find all places of interest, and find and mark each vista, you recieve a bonus chest filled with special items that are not easily found.

I have not yet been able to play enough to see any endgame content so this is still just a first impressions, but I think its a very good first impression. I love the game and how it all fits together and I recommend it to anyone and everyone.

E-Tank

Slender 0.9: HE JUST STANDS THERE MENACINGLY

Slender 0.9 is a beta indie horror game based around the meme/creepy pasta known as the Slender Man. Sadly while the creators say it is in beta, it seems to be more in alpha. The game itself has a lot of potential that just isn't being used, and it needs a lot more polish. The skeleton of a great game is here somewhere, it just needs to be fleshed out more.

You find yourself entering a dark forest, hopping a fence and wandering around the dark and silent woods. your viewpoint is through a camcorder with a flashlight, aiming to find the pieces to someone's journal. Eight pages in total, and each one covered in the mad scribbling of someone being stalked by the Slender man.

There is no music until you find your first journal page, instead the forest is filled with the sounds one might hear in a dark forest in the middle of the night. Crickets chirping, birds tweeting, and your footsteps as you move through the underbrush of the forest. Once you pick up a journal page however you suddenly hear a soft dull drumming sound. Almost as if its your heart pounding in your ears as you keep having that strange feeling of being watched.

The Slender Man is an unearthly being who's presence distorts and twists reality, which is mostly shown in the various stories and blogs as static and problems with electronic devices. Keeping true to the stories your camcorder will emit static whenever the Slender Man is nearby, warning you to get to safety. He can and will kill you if you don't run away. His teleportation skills are clearly on display, as he only stands still as long as you're looking at him. Look at him too long however, and he'll simply grab you and that's all she wrote.

Your one goal is to find eight journal pages. You're never told what led you here, or why you need to find the pages. I'm hoping the story will be expanded upon when the game is fully released, and will be fleshed out properly. The mechanics serve their purpose, although the sprinting mechanic needs a bit more work. Instead of letting you sprint for a short while and then having to wait until you can run again, you can sprint for much longer but every time you sprint you lower your maximum stamina bar. Meaning if you run now, you won't be able to run away quite as far or fast next time. I can see where they were going with it but with the game having no way to recuperate your stamina bar, it gets annoying. You see the Slender Man, and wonder if you should run. If you run now, you might not be able to get away later once you've gotten further into the game. If you don't run now though, will he get you?

Now then, having said all the cold hard logic of it, I have to say I love this game. As a fan of the Slender blogs, of all the stories, all the creepy pastas, I love this game. They've taken some creepy places from some of the more famous slender blogs/ARGs and rebuilt them in the game. This ends up making you creep through them while hoping you won't turn around and find Mister Slim about to give you the wedgie of a life time. The game I'm seeing in my mind could be so much more than a 'find eight objects in the dark spooky forest' simulation with a bit of eldritch abomination thrown in to spice things up. I'm thinking about a video game written like a slender blog, maybe some ARG style puzzles with codes, hidden clips, and anyone could be an indoctrinated spy.

As it is now the game can be startling, even scary. The atmosphere is perfect, and the lack of a HUD, pause button, or even a main menu is very immersive. I myself haven't been able to complete the game because its scared the hell out of me. I was walking along a small building, looked like an abandoned bathroom. I saw the Slender Man peeking at me from around a wall, so I ducked inside. I finally peeked back out, trying to see if he was still there. I breathed a sigh of relief as I saw he was gone...I wandered through the bathrooms, looking for a piece of the journal inside...Finding nothing, I turned and headed towards the exit. I turned a corner, only to find myself face to face with HIM! I literally screamed and in a panic tried to pause the game using the ESC button, which only shuts the game down.

The game itself can just be so much more, I only hope that the developers will take the time to flesh it out even more.

Slender can currently be downloaded for free from here.

Now excuse me, there's this strange tall man next to me. He won't shut up about the look on my face when he did that.

~E-Tank

Mass Effect 1: Blue Alien Space Babes.

Since we're all reeling from the monumental disappointment that is ME3's ending, I decided to perform a bit of a Mass Effect retrospective. The first Mass Effect was released in 2007 to great acclaim and fanfare, leaving the fans waiting impatiently for the next part in the epic trilogy. Chronicaling the adventures of Commander Shepard, an alliance soldier who will soon be making choices that affect the entire galaxy, and his choices will have consequences.

The character creation is incredibly complex, and while it comes with several pre-sets to work off of, it usually makes your character much more 'yours' to customize your Shepard from the ground up. Is he an older gentleman with wrinkles starting to crease his brow? Should he be torn up from his various fights with scars crisscrossing over his face? A fresh young soldier, his hair still cut in the military style and a youthful look? The choice is yours and the choices are many.

The classes are pretty well defined, most of the differences coming down to how much the class dips into each of the three kinds of skills. Such as Biotics, the 'mage' of the setting. These skills will heavily influence how you fight, but generally you'll always have at least one weapon skill, even if its just a pistol.

The leveling system is incredibly confusing, demanding you choose between a multitude of bars that aren't very well defined. There are even three skills that ultimately do the exact same thing. Namely the hacking, electronics, and decrypting skills. Each skill allows you to open chests and devices that are locked, but each container requires a different of the three skills. So if you want to keep finding better equipment, either you need to take one of the classes that have all three of the skills, or make sure your party members have them.

The inventory system can also be a bit confusing, as you have a maximum number of items at one hundred and fifty. You fill this up faster than you'd think, as it covers every little piece of equipment. If you fill up on items and open a container with more stuff, you're forced to destroy it without knowing what exactly what you're destroying. It could be that super awesome rare item that can blow anything away in one shot! Too bad you have to destroy it because your inventory is full.

The story is well written, an epic space opera that follows the three chapter rule magnificently. The characters are well written and you get a real feeling for each character's hopes and dreams. From the quarian space Gypsy (or romani) Tali, to the brash rebellious turian Garrus Vakarian, to the brutish yet shockingly intelligent krogan Wrex. I'd only call the other human squadmates bland due to comparison. I'm sure they'd be interesting characters on their own, but when they have to be compared to the other companions there is no contest.

The mechanics are well done, having a unique overheating system in regards to gunfire. Through the lore, you basically have no need to ever reload, but as you fire, the gun will start to overheat. So you either fire in bursts, or blow through the entire heat meter, and stay in cover until it cools off. Generally burst fire works better, as you can still fire up until the heat meter maxes, but once its hit the red you have to wait for it to cool all the way down, but it makes for an interesting system beyond the generic reloading system.

Overall, Mass Effect is a wonderful game, taking chances and experimenting to try and mix things up. The story is nice, and fully contained, while allowing for expansions on the overall universe. For all the things I've complained about its a great trip to another universe, even if its in the same old Milky Way.

~ E-Tank