Rift

Rift is a new fantasy MMO from Trion Worlds, with all the usual PvE, PvP, quests and crafting, as well as some nice world events in the form of the rifts, which open to release elemental invaders into the world.  There are two playable factions: Guardians and Defiants, both trying to save the world, but opposed to each other as well.

There’s a brilliantly unique system in place in this game for character classes – rather than simply picking one of a few classes, you choose a calling: Warrior, Cleric, Rogue or Mage, and then specialise by attuning with a variety of Souls, the first of which you get for the first quest in the tutorial area.  This allows a vast array of customisation, and hopefully means a lot more variety amongst players than in WoW, where choice gives way to ‘optimal’ specs.

There’s a Riftwatch video here, which shows the Guardian’s starting zone.. there’s also a detailed explanation of Callings, Souls and the use of spells 🙂

A friend and I started off as Guardians, since he was determined to be a Dwarf, and they are only available to the Guardian faction.  I also picked a Dwarf Warrior, then a Beastmaster soul, which gave me a pet to help me in combat 🙂

After a few more quests.. enough time to try out the initial abilities.. I was asked to pick my second soul.  One of the suggested pairings for the Beastmaster was the Champion, a specialist in charging into battle with two-handed weapons..

This was where the confusion came in.
The second soul gave me a second set of abilities, which seemed very similar..  I just didn’t know which I should be using at first.

The abilities are similar in terms of the amount of damage dealt and amount of power they use, but the Fierce Strike increases pet attack ability as well as causing damage.. so it made sense to use that rather than the equivalent Champion ability.  I also took the Bull Rush ability as my opener.. having seen my friend charging in at mobs I wanted to be able to do that too.

From my third and final soul, Riftblade, I took the Storm Blade ability – a buff which could be applied to increase melee attack, and which I could apply and then forget about as it lasts an hour.  Less mess; less stress 😉

The quests seemed very easy, especially with friends.  By the time there were four of us, it felt too easy in places.. enemies don’t stand up very well to a mob attack 🙂

The rift events were more chaotic and a lot more fun.  Spawning at random, the rifts throw out elemental type enemies until players have killed enough of them, at which point the rifts close again.  Once a rift is open, a button appears at the top of the page for you to join a public group, should you want to.  The really cool thing is that everyone can get involved.. there are no level restrictions, although if you are much lower level than the invader, you might find you miss rather a lot 😉

While talking about the game with a friend, he said that his character didn’t feel powerful.. or as powerful as he should.  It hadn’t been something I’d considered to that point, but thinking back, I realised that my character hadn’t felt all that powerful once our group had split up..

I had been fighting goblins which were a few levels lower than my character, and therefore should have been going down fast, yet it was taking a while to kill them even with Cuddles biting and clawing at them too.  In WoW, when I charge in with my Warrior and take something on, it goes down fast.. and it feels powerful, especially considering he’s doing it alone rather than having help from a pet.  When I think about that, Orola doesn’t feel powerful at all, despite being a warrior hero type character.

Maybe we shouldn’t be trying to compare games.. maybe it’s just that generally, mobs are tougher in this game and you’re not meant to feel powerful until you’re a much higher level..

I decided to take a look at the Defiant side, creating a new character: Zaaliah, the Eth Mage.
New characters on this faction start off on the last day of Telara, with the tutorial area having you prepare for a trip back in time to try and stop the destruction of the planet.

My first soul was the Pyromancer.. woop, fire!   I’m loving my fire mage in WoW at the moment, so wanted to see how this works in Rift.

While the fireball spell had a great animation.. swirling the staff with the fireball being created and then flung at the end, it had a really long cast-time.  As soon as I got some points they went straight into Ignition, which decreases the cast time of all fire spells.

My second soul was the Elementalist, which gave me the ability to summon a Lesser Earth Elemental who I named Lumpy.. he’s a rather grumpy-looking guy 😀

The other ability from this soul was Crystalline Missiles: this time round, I was able to see it as comparable to my Fireball ability straight away and rather than be frustrated by it, I simply ignored it.

My third soul was Warlock, taken mainly because I liked the idea of healing myself by draining health from the enemy.. although I had considered the Necromancer, you can only have one pet at a time and I wanted to stick with Lumpy 🙂

The early quests included the usual tasks of talking to a person, killing so many of an enemy type, or collecting things.. but I quite enjoyed one particular travel mission when I found I was to be escorted by a Wraith Battle Construct.. a huge thing!

I enjoyed watching him punt the enemy mobs out of the way! 🙂

As per the story, I was to travel back into the past to I can help stop the world from being destroyed..  which brought me to what I think is the same time period as the Guardians end up in after they complete their starting zone and go forward in time.  Nice idea 🙂

Dead Island Announced

I checked Twitter this morning to see a few comments about an amazing trailer for Dead Island, visually and emotionally stunning, with some suggesting it might be the best trailer of the year..

Dead Island is a game being made by Techland and published by Deep Silver, and is an open-ended survival horror first-person shooter with RPG elements.. and zombies.  Zombies?  Count me interested..

I watched the trailer expecting to see hordes of zombies, some sort of survivors, maybe some guns, definitely some gore.  My initial amazement at the trailer, and the close-up of the dead zombie child, turned towards horror as I realised it was all in reverse chronological order..

(Trailer from IGN).

After watching, I felt really, really bad for the family.. but no less interested in the game!

It seems there’s quite a range of views on the trailer, with some condemning it for portraying a child’s death.. and some going as far as to say this sort of content is ‘wrong’.  I think the trailer does a great job.  You’re meant to feel the despair and horror of all those lives lost.. that little family ripped apart..

I really hate the pro-censorship types who have been parading their views around the web recently.  There are far worse things shown on the news.. things that are happening to real people.. but this lot would rather try to stamp on the games industry.  Pfft.

Stacking

I just got my hands on Stacking, a puzzle adventure game based around the use of Matryoshka dolls, created by Double Fine.

The game is quite simple to pick up.. there are five sizes of doll, with each able to stack into the next size up, and when stacked, you are able to use the ability of the largest doll.  Every doll has an ability, some which you’ll need to use to solve the puzzle at hand, and others which I think are just there for atmosphere, such as the little lady who sips tea.  There are also plenty of hints in case you get stuck, though so far it looks as though you can find out all you need to know just by talking to everyone you meet.  Each puzzle also has multiple solutions, and there are also some unique dolls to find as well.. reason to explore, which I love.

I absolutely adore the silent film effect used to tell the story too..

You play the role of Charlie, the smallest doll in the family.  Times are hard.. your family have no money, and the evil Baron comes to take all your older brothers and sisters away to work in child labour camps..

Heading out to look for your siblings, you arrive at the Train Station where your brother Albert is being forced to shovel coal.. to free him, you need to stop the strike.. and to stop the strike you need to get the members of the Train Guild out of the Royal Lounge and down onto the platform to talk to the strikers.

There’s a guard blocking the doors to the Lounge, and he tells me that I can’t go in, or the host will throw everyone out.  Well, that’s exactly what I want.. so how to get rid of the guard?

It turns out there’s a pretty doll here, The Widow Chastity, who has a rather effective ‘Seduce’ ability..

What I found funny was the reaction I got while trying this ability out on the nearby dolls..  another female let out a “Hmmph!” sound, and her top half tilted away as if in disgust! 😀

This doll isn’t just for looks though.. she is part of the first solution..

The guard is a sucker for beauty, and I draw him away from the door before unstacking with Chastity and jumping straight into the guard instead.  After having him unlock the door, I go in and march right up to the host, who is suitably unimpressed and boots everyone out.  Success!

The three members of the Train Guild are all quite happy to go and talk to the strikers now, so I stack into them all in turn.  Engineer Ulysses has the ‘Full Steam Ahead’ ability, which lets me race through the platform like a little steam train..

Another doll I found wandering around in the Train Station was the socially unacceptable Meriwether Malodor.

His ability can clear a room.. and in fact, does!  For another solution to the first puzzle, you can place Meriwether by the air vent leading to the Royal Lounge and ‘Flatulate’..

After clearing the Train Station, you can proceed to the Gilded Steam Ship, where your sister awaits rescue.

Surprise Mechano-Hog

After the success I found in making money to get my Mechano-Hog, we came up with the idea of getting a Mechano-Hog for our other friend.

This meant a lot more herb farming, as my ridiculous stash of glyphs had run rather low, and as we wanted it to be a surprise, we had to avoid suggesting dungeons in case he came on and spotted my achievement via the guild page, or in case he caught me riding the bike.

There were a few close calls, but eventually we had all we needed.. we chased him down to hand it over in person, all wrapped up with a nice red bow.. for the Horde, of course 😉

I think it went down fairly well!
There was certainly a lot of jumping around, and a few moments of silence 😉

The Mechano-Hog also comes with a side-car, useable by any party-member.
When I asked for the bike I hadn’t realised it came with a side-car as standard, so this was actually a surprise for me too 🙂

Having seen how easy it is to get the money together, I might just be saving up for the Sandstone Drake next 🙂

Sol Survivor

I’ve been badge-chasing in Survival Mode over the last few weeks, aiming for all the gold badges for lasting 20 minutes, as well as going for a few others requiring the use of a specific Commander or to kill off a certain number of enemies.

Should you upgrade your towers or not?  The cost per firepower seems to suggest that a fully-upgraded tower does more damage than multiple level 1 towers, but having more towers means you can be hitting more enemies at once.

For a while I was unable to quite make it to 20 minutes, being finished off around 18 or 19 minutes in.  I eventually made it on the Cwm map by going mad with level 1 towers, with plenty of railguns for their massive range.

Mechano-Hog

I’ve saved up all week, and finally got together the money for a friend to make me the Mechano-Hog.  Actually, when I say I saved up all week, that means that I farmed herbs and sold them for stupid prices on the Auction House, presumably to people who want to level without going to the effort of collecting ingredients.

My character does look a little odd, being unable to actually see over the top of the fairing, but never mind 😉

Personal World Destroyer

Engineering pet.. fortunately – or unfortunately, depending on your outlook – unable to actually destroy the world 😉

This is Magicka!

Magicka is an action-adventure game by Arrowhead Game Studios and published by Paradox Interactive.  The game is set in a fantasy world with magic, goblins and trolls, a quest to help the King, a rogue wizard, and a heavy dose of parody.

In the single-player story mode, you put on your robe and wizard hat and combine elements to fire lasers, throw boulders and shoot lightning at your enemies!

There are eight elements to play with: water, life, shield, cold, lightning, arcane, earth and fire, and each of these can be directed straight at the enemy, applied to yourself, used as an area-of-effect spell, or even applied to your weapon.. doing this means you can use it on the enemies later, or just run around with a sparkly colourful sword 😉

One of my favourite defensive spells is a fire, earth and shield combination, applied as an AOE – this places a circle of fiery mountains around me which knock back and burning enemies.  Or friends, if they’re standing too close..

The game allows up to four-player multiplayer, in which you can play through the story or just blow your friends up.  Friendly fire is most certainly on in this game, and we ended up ignoring the story at the beginning of our session to just try and kill each other.

There is also challenge mode, which is survival mode with waves of increasingly difficult enemies.  On your own, you really don’t last long, but when playing with friends, so long as one person stays alive they can revive you with a quick spell.  I’ve not yet attempted Versus mode.. one for a little later maybe!

I think this would have been a good game without all the jokes, so the fact there are so many is a bonus.  Some of the achievements themselves are also jokes, such as the “This is Magicka!” achievement for pushing a soldier down a hole 😉

Fallen Earth

Sometimes I think I’d like to try more MMOs, but I’m not comfortable with the payments and subscriptions that would require, especially right at the beginning when I feel like I’ve spent enough buying the game, never mind paying again to actually use it..

I know that running servers costs money, but I can’t help but look at the sub money going out each month, imagine how much it adds up and think what else I could have spent it on.. and I also feel that once I’ve paid for my sub I really do have to play, otherwise that money is wasted.
So, I’d rather only subscribe to something I’m really going to put serious hours into..

Lucky that there are trials and betas, then 🙂

First up was Fallen Earth, which I tried out after hearing mixed comments about the game from friends.

Screenshot from the Fallen Earth website.

The game is set in a post-apocalyptic world, where a virus and nuclear war has wiped out much of the population; the location used for the game is the Grand Canyon.  Radioactive storms and mutated animals prevent any contact with the outside world, and so a variety of different factions are vying for control of this area.  You can join any faction, and switch later if you wish.  Thumbs up for player choice 😉

Rather than choosing a class to begin with, you develop your character by assigning points to various skills or attributes, with points being gained as you level up.  You can choose a role, such as Melee or Rifleman, and then the system will suggest where you should place your points, but the choice is left up to the player.  I like being given the freedom, though without knowing which skills and attributes to improve, it’s possible to waste points, and unfortunately there is no way of re-assigning points.. a big problem if you decide later on that you’d rather play a different way.

There’s also a decent amount of character customisation with facial features, choice of hairstyle, colours, tattoos and piercings.. but not quite enough to make up for the dodgy underwear..
All the options for pants on females left jagged, painted on thong lines visible above the waistband!  Personally, I think if you can’t make something like this look good you really should just leave it out..  I’m guessing they wanted to go for sexy, but this just looked rough.  I’d also have liked the option to not have my underwear on display too 😉

Once you’ve set up your character you start off in the tutorial area, with points being explained as you go along, although I found some explanations seemed to come after I’d actually figured them out for myself.  The last part of the tutorial area was fun, though, with some combat, a vehicle, an explosion, and subsequent revival by the Lifenet team.

While all the customisation is a huge positive, I noticed some fairly large let-downs too, the first of which was the animations.  In particular, the running animation made it look like I was gliding across the floor rather than actually running.  While the animations in something like WoW are fairly simple, they don’t seem out of place with the style of the game – but when I’m in a realistic-looking world, I do expect more realistic-looking animations.

Another annoyance was the combat mode, which you have to enable to shoot or hit your target.  This didnt seem so bad until I realised that I couldn’t do any other action, such as looting, without first coming out of combat mode.  Once out in the wilds and getting jumped on it got really annoying as the first instinctive attempt to hit the mob failed; being attacked doesn’t enable combat mode, instead you have to stop and press the combat button first.. urgh.

More player choice came in the sheer number of available quests which seemed capable of having you go off in any direction at all.  For getting around, I was given a horse.  The starter horse was slow, but definitely useful as there was a lot of ground to cover.  I ended up losing my horse around town a few times, but if you leave the horse behind somewhere, you can  have it summoned back for a small fee.

Vehicle mounts were available through crafting.. though I didn’t get far enough into the game to see for myself.
I grabbed this from the wallpapers section of the site.. if I’d seen this earlier I might have been tempted to push on with the game as this might have been fun..

While player choice is often lacking, Fallen Earth went a bit crazy and gave us loads..
However, too much choice can be a bad thing.. especially when it’s not clear what you’re choosing.

The professions were presented all at once and before I’d really seen anything beyond the tutorial area, so I didn’t have any idea what might be a good choice.  I’d much rather have had them introduced to me one or two at a time, once I’d been out in the world and seen what was going on.

Worse than this though: I was shown how to collect what seemed like every item which may ever have a use in the game.

For me, the ability to collect everything is bad as it means I do collect it, and this just resulted in my bags getting full very quickly.  As almost every item I’d collected or looted was marked as a “tradeskill components”, I couldn’t tell which were useful or valuable, and which I should just vendor.

Hmm, either break my immersion in the game by reading a webpage, carry a massive pile of useless ‘useful’ stuff around, or sell the lot and ignore the trades completely?  Instead of marking all the items as “tradeskill components” it would have been much more useful to leave something in the description to indicate what it might be for.. icons for the relevant professions maybe.. or just leave that particular note off and save the hassle.

I didn’t get too far into the game.. partly put off by this, and partly because I got my hands on the Beta for another game which I’ll post about soon.

Battlefield Bad Company 2

I picked up EA’s Battlefield Bad Company 2 through Steam, after another too-good-to-miss offer.  Tim already had it, and though I could have just borrowed his PC to play the singleplayer, I tend to prefer having my own copy anyway.

After installing.. and a painful sign-in to EA.. I attempted to join multiplayer with Tim and some friends.  However, having been dumped on the opposite team to the guys I found myself without any direction as to where to go, and then quickly became frustrated when snipers kept picking off the few targets I managed to see on the radar.

The next attempts at multiplayer were much better as we were able to form a squad of our own, meaning we were always on the same team.  I liked the ability to respawn onto a squad-mate too, as that meant getting straight back into the action, rather than getting killed after paying more attention to finding a friend than what you’re walking past..

Playing while not in a frustrated mood allowed me to recognise how nice the game looks too 🙂

After starting on the regular soldier type class, I tried out the recon class, and surprised myself when I managed to get on quite well with the sniper rifle..  Normally I’m too impatient to sit still and wait, but there wasn’t too much waiting around at all.  Marking up a target or assisting in a kill also gains points, so if I wasn’t able to actually kill somebody, I still got credit for marking them.. bonus! 🙂

The tanks felt rather slow and too easy for enemies to surround.. although you can repair them, it seemed easier to jump out and try to run for cover.. or be blown up in the explosion!

I didn’t like my first few helicopter encounters, as they seemed impossible to take down and the crew were able to hit quite hard.  However, they’re great when they’re on your side, especially when you have friends you can communicate with!  Our group had one person fly while the other two looked after the mounted guns.. and they were a lot of fun to use 🙂

Flying isn’t easy though – I guess this is to balance out how strong they are on the field.  My turn at flying ended in disaster: I started to tip forward as soon as I got the helicopter off the ground, then my attempt to bring the nose up then resulted in flying backwards and crashing!  Maybe one to try out on an empty server sometime..