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

Mass Effect 3: A marvelous gourmet meal, until you reach the dessert.

The final part in the trilogy of Mass Effect, ME3 has been long awaited and speculated about. Bioware, being the coy little strumpet it is, has been very tight lipped about the story. Only dropping the occasional hint at a grand amazing finale that will be customized to every Shepard and every story.


“There are many different endings. We wouldn’t do it any other way. How
could you go through all three campaigns playing as your Shepard and
then be forced into a bespoke ending that everyone gets? But I can’t
say any more than that…” ~ Mike Gamble, Associate Producer.

"At this point we’re taking into account so many
decisions that you’ve made as a player and reflecting a lot of that
stuff. It’s not even in any way like the traditional game endings,
where you can say how many endings there are or whether you got
ending A, B, or C.....The endings have a lot more sophistication and
variety in them.” ~ Casey Hudson, Director.


Mechanically, the game is wonderful. They found that magical sweet spot between Mass Effect one and two that brings both of the game's strengths together. You are able to customize your characters equipment in wonderfully diverse ways that also gives you a reason for exploring beyond looking at the beautiful set pieces. Finding upgrades that can be attached to your weapons is great fun, and adds a great bit of strategy. For example: A pistol melee stunner that is essentially a tazer duct taped to the underside of your pistol, makes it a much better close quarters weapon. Instead however you may opt to add the armor piercing modification, allowing your weapon to penetrate cover and do more damage to heavily armored enemies.

Each weapon has its own brand of potential upgrades, and each weapon is distinctive in its capabilities. Giving each weapon a personality all its own, and no weapon ever becomes truly obsolete. This is much harder than it sounds, as you feel the need to continually give the player bigger and better weapon as the game continues, but no weapon truly becomes useless as you play. It all comes down to what your style is. From the original generic Avenger rifle, dedicated solely to spewing lead at relativistic speeds in the general direction of the bad guys. To the Mattock, a semi-automatic rifle that vaguely resembles a P90 and is a mixture of a sniper rifle and an assault rifle. Finally to the Talon, a pistol that functions as a shotgun instead of a highly accurate single shot. Each gun has its balances, its pros and its cons and experimentation is very much a part of the game, even going so far as to give you a shooting gallery to test out combinations.


The RPG elements are back adding in a bit more choice than in Mass Effect 2 in regards to what you want your character to be able to do. As well as not overwhelming the player with so many choices that ultimately boil down to having three different ways to do the exact same thing as in the first Mass Effect. Some would argue it is dumbed down, I would more suggest that its been streamlined. In the original Mass Effect 1 the skills aren't very distinct and many of them are redundant. Streamlining allows you to better understand what you can do and makes it much easier to understand.

The story is well written, even though it occasionally dips into cheesy moments. The characters here are very consistent with what has been established prior, giving you the feel that this is much more than just a character in a video game. Making you feel that they are a real person with wants, dreams, and needs. The story is a grand epic of a tale that will suck you in and toy with your emotions like a toddler that enjoys throwing his things across the walls to see what kind of noises they make when they break.

When I heard about the addition of Multiplayer, I feared that it would be like many games where Multiplayer is thrown in. Basically taking attention away from the single player to appease people who want all games to be like Halo, whereas I buy games for their single player first and their multi-player aspects being a minor concern. Thankfully my fears were unjustified, as they did an amazing job. All multi-player games are co-op, using up to four players to fend off attackers and perform missions such as capturing targets, killing key enemies, or defending a certain area while data is uploaded. Its great fun, very well done, and I'd argue one of the best multiplayer games out there. Its a wonderful game, I'd wager its the best game I've played in a long time.

EXCEPT FOR THAT FREAKING STUPID IDIOTIC ENDING.

The writing takes a nose dive within the final five minutes of the game, the ending is one of the stupidest things I have ever seen in my life. It doesn't manage to entirely taint the rest of the game, but the ending can't even really be called an ending. It just stops short of actually accomplishing anything. Even then, remember the quotes up above in this review? I'll direct you to one in particular, and bold the part that is a complete and utter lie.

"At this point we’re taking into account so many
decisions that you’ve made as a player and reflecting a lot of that
stuff. It’s not even in any way like the traditional game endings,
where you can say how many endings there are or whether you got
ending A, B, or C.....The endings have a lot more sophistication and
variety in them.” ~ Casey Hudson, Director.

There are essentially three endings. I won't spoil them, but I will say this. You have no feeling of accomplishment, what is answered is answered in a manner that will make you wonder what happened to the writers at the last minute. Was it that they just lost intrest? Was it that they didn't give a crap? Or was it more likely that they wanted to sell DLC?

Considering after you watch the writing equivillant to a soiled diaper the first thing you see is a "BUY OUR DLC" message, I'd wager its the last one. The ending has no substance, it might as well just be a generic 'You win' text scroll straight out of the NES days for all it accomplishes or how much of an impact it makes on you. Supposedly it is meant to cause 'speculation', which is among the worst ideas that Bioware could have had, considering how the only things the playerbase can use to fuel said speculation say that everything that Shepard did, everything you accomplished over three games and over a hundred hours of gameplay, is essentially undone.

I'm not going to bother writing an article explaining it as there are already countless articles debating it and explaining why everyone is so pissed off. I can only say that I personally prefer Angry Joe's list of reasons why the ending pisses everybody off. (Massive spoilers.)

There has been announced recently that EA will be releasing the 'Directors Cut' of ME3, possibly altering the 'Ending' so its an actual ending and not something spawned from the fevered dreams of a madman. Amazingly and potentially a sign that the apocalypse is nigh, it will be free. Hopefully this will repair the damage done to this game, and make it much better. I somewhat doubt it, as Bioware seems to have said that this ending is what they intended, and is even upset that the players didn't like it. My pessimism aside, we'll just have to wait and see.

First review: Terraria!

Released by indie game developer Re-Logic, Terraria as a game took a lot of inspiration from Minecraft, which in turn took its inspiration from Infiniminer. However, it is arguably deeper than Minecraft. Giving you goals to reach beyond simply just throwing you in a sandbox and saying "Build to your heart's content." I will admit, when I first was given it by a friend of mine (Thank you Chocolate Donuts), I expected it to be just that. A Minecraft ripoff in 2D. I was very very wrong.

It has a rather novel way of allowing you to visit other worlds. Each character is its own save, and you are able to enter any world you like with said character. This means you could bring your brand new created character into the world of someone who has been playing a long time. Or you can bring your older character with all his overpowered goodies to your friend's world to give him a helping hand.

After choosing the appearance and color of your hair, shirt, and pants. You are dropped into a randomly generated world of varying size. You can choose small, medium, and large. The smallest worlds are very compact, and while you can grow in strength quickly, you're also forced to confront more enemies and monsters in a shorter amount of time. You also pick your difficulty. Softcore, where you drop half of the money you're carrying at the time. Mediumcore, you drop everything you are carrying at the time. As well as Hardcore, if you die once, you are dead forever. The character is deleted, and s/he drops everything s/he had.

I will do my best to outline generally what you can expect from the game without spoiling anything. If I don't speak on something, assume I'm trying not to spoil.

Your character begins with two tools, a pickax and an ax. As well as one weapon, a short sword. These are more useful than you would imagine. The first few upgrades do little more than increase the speed at which the tool works, and how much damage the weapon does.

There is also an element of chance, as the majority of your crafted equipment will have a title assigned to it. This can run from very bad to very good. The worst being to my knowledge 'broken' and the best being 'legendary' or 'godlike'.

Even though the game is 2D, against Minecraft's 3D approach, the game itself offers a lot more crafting options. Unlike Minecraft however, you are given a guide who helps you learn how to survive, and how to build what you need. By speaking to him and placing ingredients into his hands, he'll tell you what can be made from it, and what else you require in the recipe.

                                 (The guide showing us what we can build with lumber)


Yes, there are other people in this world, and they offer varying skills, including a merchant, nurse, demolitions expert, and more. Attracting them requires two things. First, certain pre-requisites must be met. The merchant for instance requires you to have saved up at least fifty silver coins. After all if you don't have the money to spend, why should he come to you? They also require their own living space. Living spaces comprise of a building with walls, ceiling, and a floor. As well as furniture to liven the place up. You need a chair, table, light source, and door for it to be considered a proper residence. There are some items that do double duty as a table and as chairs, but they are harder to make, due to having rarer ingredients. If you want NPCs early, you're going to have to settle for sticking to generic wooden chairs and tables. At first, at least.

The NPC's have their own personalities which color their occupations. Many of them offer items for sale, and all will buy items from you, at a discount of course. Even if you are the only thing standing between them and a horrific demise, you get No Hero Discount. Oh yes, you have to buy, sell, and hunt down enemies. Fortunately the majority of them have the old RPG staple of somehow carrying money in their stomachs.

The monsters are much more varied than Minecraft. The starting enemies will be the slimes, a valuable source of flammable ooze to make torches, and make several normal objects into sticky variants. Such as sticky bombs and sticky glowsticks to make impromptu lights while deep underground. As night falls, zombies will rise from their graves with a hunger for the living. Floating eyeballs, optic nerves and blood vessels trailing behind them, swarm through the air. What a horrible night to have a curse. There are even boss creatures, that upon their death, drop rare items and ores all over the place. Be cautious however as these creatures are more dangerous than they usually appear.

Multiplayer is just marvelous, better built than Minecraft's. It functions on IPs, and doesn't have a server browser, but considering you generally are only going to play with 2-4 people on one server, this can be excused. There is very little lag, which makes this a wonderful game to play with friends.

For this review, I am going to rate the game based on the price point it is currently retailing at of this writing. The prices are in US($) Dollars.

As of this writing, the game can be purchased and downloaded in roughly 5-10 minutes off of steam, for $9.99. This includes all future patches, as there are no plans to my knowledge of any DLC with a price tag.

Honestly, for what you get, this price is a bit low. Knowing about it, and knowing how much fun I've had with it, I'd gladly pay up to fifteen dollars for this enjoyment. Twenty would be stretching it, but depending on how much you like playing with your friends, it'd easily be worth it.

~
E-Tank