Articles tagged with: Videogames

Between work and now enjoying some half disconnected vacations (one week out of Spain, and soon a few more days off to a small village) Fallout New Vegas came out and I have just installed it but not even launched yet.

The reasons, mainly two apart from the vacations:

First, I want the game to become stable. Looks as it is plaged of bugs and I don't want them to spoil the experience if it is near as enjoyable as Fallout 3.

And second, because I wanted to finish all Fallout 3 DLCs and at least one or two more side-missions. I've finally done so and reached level 30 (with around 50 hours of playtime), and while I won't give my thoughts at the official DLCs here, I'll just say that if you don't own the game go run for the Game of the Year edition (which contains all of them), because they "fix" some things and offer some variety in quests.

Many people disliked Fallout 3 becoming an RPG FPS, but I've loved the setting. Ok, is not perfect and probably far from the depthness of the previous ones, but still has some magic touch that made me feel really inside that wasteland. Plus I've lived some really enjoyable quests and situations much more elaborated than in Oblivion.

I really think it is a great game, one that I will probably reinstall in the future and keep discovering new places and fullfilling new quests almost like the first day. In the end, what matters most is not what everybody says but what you feel when you play a game.

Fallout New Vegas, I hope you're up the expectations!

Posted on 2010-11-12

To describe peroperly Minecraft is a difficult task. It can be described as "a construction sandbox", but it wouldn't make justice.

Think better of Minecraft as a digital version of LEGO. Think of Minecraft as what Oblivion would have wanted to be in terms of exploration.

The game presents with randomly generated infinite worlds. You can dig, hold and use objects, and craft things. At day there are animals, at night zombies and other terrible monsters (so you better hide!). Oh, and the world is full of different blocks/materials.

With this simple basics, an amazing world appears. Before I continue check this small but great trailer:

Now you know how it looks, and some things you can do. You can actually make it more appealing, but the blocky-retro look is unique and part of its beauty.

Surely there are other games that hook you for hours, but with Minecraft I feel like when I was a child playing with LEGO blocks and imaging them in motion, alive. This is the same but in first person.

Want to build a castle in an island? Go ahead!

I'm building mine :)

And it feels as rewarding as if you were really placing each block during the day, hiding from the monsters in the night. Days are rough, a pure survival until you are able to build a decent house/stronghold/whatever.

The world feels alive: Chickens leave eggs, animals can drown if you create deep water flows, lava slowly expands, you can see what time aprox. it is for the height of the sun or moon... And the crafting system has already a lot of objects, with some amazing things like electric circuits and logic gates.

Oh, and you can also setup your own multiplayer server. I'll probably setup one if any of my friends grabs the game.

Believe me, games like this make me feel there's still hope of innovation and quality on this gaming world full of crappy remakes or ultra-short games with "astonishing visuals".

Posted on 2010-09-20

This last years, computer RPGs are becoming more and more "soft", probably because of the mainstreaming of the genre, but probably too because of the desire to sell as much as possible. And as we know, geeks have a market share, but is not as big as normal videogame players one.

Let's analyze some videogames...

Mass Effect was much like Star Wars Knights of the Old Republic: arcade combats, semi-lineal main quest plus secondary optional quests, and dialog choices to affect your alignment.

But the second part has become a Mass-Effect themed Gears of War clone, with conversations between battles. Is not that the story is bad (although it destroys the first part story) but is much much more an action-rpg than a RPG with action.

Or let's take Fable II, a game that promised almost a virtual life, and delivered an action game with a beautiful setting but less roleplaying than the Diablo series. It was also so easy you could finish it without a single death.

Dragon Age Origins too was recent, and is maybe the only case of not so much softening. In some ways it is less RPG than old titles, but in other aspects (multiple starting places, different outcomes based on your choices, alignments, hidden quests and places...) even improves from the past.

Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion, Fallout 3, The Witcher or The Last Remnant are other titles that appeared more or less recently. And that in general, have RPG elements and are considered as such, but none has for example tried to create a multiplayer experience so close to pen&paper games like Vampire: The Masquerade Redemption did, empowering the figure of the dungeon master.

And with MMORPGs the state is similar. Ultima Online had isometric 2D graphics, but allowed to farm food, forge weapons, have your own house and even build it wall by wall. In World of Warcraft you have to pay to change your hairlook and the concept of housing is just a dream. Crafting exists and is much more user-friendly, but even counting thousands of quests most of them are repetitive and so similar that Ultima Online's "pure freedom" mode gave you much more "roleplaying power".

One thing is true: The graphics are improving a lot in general. Fable II has incredible daytime changes, bloom effects and in general playing it is like watching a faery tale. Mass Effect 2 is one of the best looking videogames out right now (in PC at 2560x1600 is gorgeous). Even Dragon Age with it's not so impressive close-up graphics, has improved way far since Neverwinter Nights 2 (specially the faces of the humanoid creatures).

But graphics are not all, at least for me. You can deceive the eye but not the brain. Let's see how the RPG trend progresses this year...

Posted on 2010-02-25

This week Mass Effect 2 launched worldwide, and I've had to leave on hold my Dragon Age gaming until I finish it (I'm around 16 hours of ME2 playtime).

While I will leave my judgement of the game, it's RPG softening for the masses, it's incredible narrative (being simple doesn't means it can't have deep transcripts) and a small screenshots gallery I'm taking as I play for a later post, today I wanted to comment something that happened to me and I've finally fixed (thanks to the ME2 community, but I can't find the exact post).

If you have a Dual-Core or Quad-Core CPU, there seems to be an Unreal Engine 3 bug that causes some incredibly long loading times in Mass Effect 2 and Dragon Age (I suffered it only on ME2, but I will try in Dragon Age to see if speed improves too). A 5 seconds loading screen in an affected computer takes easily 20 to 30 seconds!

The solution is easy but a bit boring because each time you launch the game you have to repeat it:

1. When the game is running, ALT+TAB from it or minimize and open the Windows Task Manager
2. Go to the Processes tab, right click on masseffect2.exe and select Set Affinity.
3. Uncheck all CPUs and check only the first one (CPU 0).
4. Close Task Manager and get back to the game again.

Loading times should be much much faster!

Posted on 2010-01-30

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!

Posted on 2009-11-11