Category Archives: Wall of Text

Diablo 3, a month later.

  June 5, 2012 - 12:14 pm | Diablo 3, Game Reviews, MMO, Wall of Text
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-=Author’s note=- If you have not played the game yet, or are unsure about purchasing it, please read to the end – I have 3 keys to give away.

-=Author’s note 2=- All the guest passes are already given away, but feel free to continue commenting. I’m also working on a prize within the next month or so, drawn from a random person who “Likes” the MisGuilded Facebook page.

It’s almost a month since Diablo 3′s original release, so I thought I’d share my experience so far, as well as a bit more insight to those that haven’t purchased it yet. I had taken 3 weeks off work to concentrate solely on D3, but unfortunately a wedding and a few birthdays got in the way of me getting to the level cap in the top percentage. Oh, and an early warning – this review contains no screenshots and is the longest game review on this site.

Anyway – my experiences: On first installation I was greeted with, as could be expected from a Blizzard title, a patch download. Thankfully this was nowhere close to the size of your average pre-expansion WoW patch, so I was quickly up and playing. After a few “The server is busy” errors I was in and heading in to New Tristram. For fans of Diablo 2, the first thing you notice is how well the game feels. Instead of reinventing everything, they stuck to the original formula where they could. The playstyle is immediately identifiable as Diablo, something that they could have gotten wrong so easily.

The main differences come with how health is regenerated. Instead of the original usage of belts with tons of health potions of your choice that can be used as rapidly as you can press buttons, there is a single “quick heal” button with the currently selected health potion. This is further hampered by the fact that, like the way they changed WoW in early Burning Crusade, there is a cooldown on the potions. No more spamming potions while facing a difficult boss. This, along with other changes I’ll be going over a bit later, are all part of the push toward more e-sport orientation – the PVP balancing element. Thankfully the health potions are supplemented with health globes that are periodically dropped by creatures as you kill or damage them. These are not inventory items; instead you run across them and they heal you for a certain amount. This has its own pros and cons, mostly in the fact that you usually accidentally pick three or four up at the wrong time as you’re fighting a big creature.

The skills have also been simplified – gone is the old skill tree, to be replaced by a set of skills for each class, with runes unlocked as you level up. These runes change the way each skill behaves – some will grant you additional health on usage, others will change the area of damage or the amount of damage, or add a stun effect or the duration of the ability. This change also makes sense from a balancing point of view. With less skills to worry about, Blizzard can tweak them to perfection for use in PVP, or nerf (as they so love to do) skills that are too popular and  cause the PVE gameplay to be too easy.

Another new addition is that, along with your left and right-click abilities, you now also have four skills that are assigned to the buttons 1-4 on your keyboard, a selection previously reserved for all those extra health potions.

A fourth difficulty, Inferno, was also added. This is a super Hell difficulty, and definitely adds replayability to the game. Compared to Inferno, Normal, Nightmare and even Hell seems like a cakewalk. My Diablo-killing gear in Hell was not even close to the level that was needed to defeat the first pack of rare mobs I encountered in Inferno. And this is where the Auction House and new crafting abilities come into play.

The blacksmith allows you to craft new items, but the only problem is that the gear is crafted with random properties. The chances of crafting a piece of gear that will actually suit your character perfectly is small. You might craft a new two-handed mace for your barbarian, only for it to appear with +80 to Intelligence and +3 to Dexterity. Not exactly what you need. Instead, why not go to the Auction House, set the stats that you’d like and the price you’re willing to pay and see if you get any results. Gearing just became easier.

And a good thing too. With a level cap of 60 which is reached about halfway through hell if you’ve just been playing through without extra grinding, skills and personal growth stops way before the challenges of Inferno. Once you’ve chosen the ultimate killing combination of skills, the only growth is through gear, gear and more gear.

The world, characters and story are all stunningly done. There was a big uproar in the development stages that Blizzard was making Diablo 3 too colourful, but the end product really came out nicely. The colours suit the different environments – bright where it should be and dark (and I mean REALLY dark in some places) where it fits. Fog and weather effects further immerse you in this world, and the new companions add their banter to the tedium of grinding away at mobs.

A lot of the current players of Diablo 3 are people who recieved the game free with their annual pass for World of Warcraft, I’m not one of those. These same players are also for the most part the ones that will easily drop the game to return to WoW, especially considering the numerous errors the servers have been having over the last week, making the game totally unplayable even in single-player mode. Personally, I can see myself (and my significant other, who up to now has shown no interest in gaming) playing this for a long time, so the little bit of problems that there were will in no way put me off. Speaking of which, if you haven’t got a copy of Diablo 3 yet and wish to try it out, I have 3 guest passes available, which will let you experience the first half of Act 1. Leave a comment below and I’ll mail a key to you – first come, first serve.

Pros:

  • Blizzard kept as true as they could to Diablo 3′s predecessors.
  • Advanced crafting and auction house.
  • Easy multiplayer interaction with RealId and friends integration
  • Superb world and story.

Cons:

  • No offline single player or LAN multiplayer – if the server’s down, you can’t play.
  • A little too much focus on the upcoming PVP events.
  • Limited skills to go with the level 60 cap, I miss the old skill tree.
  • Teething problems with login and world servers.

Final score: 4.5 our of 5 stars – this game will definitely be played for years to come, as Diablo 2 was and still is. Oh, and there is no cow level ;)

Need for Speed: The Run

  March 20, 2012 - 10:42 am | EA, Racing Games, Wall of Text
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There’s a ton of words that can be used to describe the new Need for Speed. If I had to choose one, it would be “frantic”. The latest installment in the franchise drops the track action that the last few have seen and kicks us back to the days of NFS 3, 4 and 5 – the good old days. It’s you, the car, and a long stretch of road.

You play Jack Rourke, who’s on the run from the mob (or something like that) and you get given an exit ticket by an old friend – race from San Francisco to New York in a Cannonball Run-type event. The stage is over 3000 miles, of which you see about 300 miles, still a mighty chunk of road to cover, and the speeds are insane. On the way you’ll have rivals trying to knock you out of the race, cops trying to catch you and that unknown mob trying to kill you. You start the game by escaping the mob and racing off in one of their cars, dodging bullets and SUVs. You then meet up with your friend, where the action really begins. Pick a car from the unlocked selection and hit the road.

The Run has no money system, no real manual tuning or upgrade system, instead going for a model of either stealing a car in the next tier or stopping at a gas station along the road and somehow having the ability to choose (and change the bodykit and paintwork) a new car. Changing vehicles is hardly ever an issue in single-player though – I managed to play the entire campaign using only the cars chosen at the mandatory changes in tier.

The cars and scenery are absolutely superbly crafted – with a price. The stunning scenery and lighting tends to slow the game down on both PC and Playstation, subtracting quite heavily from that feeling of speed. In the sections where everything goes smoothly though – it’s a beautiful thing. You almost feel sucked into the game, weaving through traffic like it’s real. The handling model is perfect for the game -yes it is arcadey, but then this is not a simulation. The Run is the closest you can legally get to taking an exotic car and blasting across the US coutryside. It’s fun and never tries to be anything other than fun. The storyline hints at seriousness but it’s soon forgotten as you get sucked into the next stretch of road, then the next, then the next.

Oh yes! The way the levels are loaded on top of each other is addictive. You don’t get much of a menu between screens – instead the next level loads as soon as you pass the finish line and the experience counter gets added. You have to force yourself to manually open the menu and press Quit. All sense of time seems to drift away as you push toward the next town.

Apart from the racing there are also a few interactive cutscenes – the usual rubbish where you have to mash buttons to jump fences, punch cops and sprint. In my opinion it doesn’t really add anything to the game and could just have been standard videos. The true gameplay comes in one of a handful of challenges – make up time between stages, pass X amount of other racers or beat an elite rival. The last stage in the single player campaign is an absolute humdinger which you absolutely HAVE to see, and also sets up events for a sequel.

To summarise a review that’s getting way too long – The Run is great fun. The multiplayer elements and challenges add a bit of replayability to the extremely short (4 or so hours) campaign. With this installment I believe that EA has returned to what made Need for Speed great all those years ago. It’s a pick up and blast game. No technical details to daunt you, just take your car and drive, drive, drive. It scores high on the graphic elements, barring the slowdown glitches. The music suits the scenery perfectly. The gameplay is spot-on for what it’s supposed to be. I score it 4 out of 5 – an almost perfect masterpiece, screw the other critics.

Adventures in Nethack

  November 7, 2011 - 3:43 pm | Bored!, Retro, RPG, Wall of Text
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Basically I’ve gone utterly off 90% of the games that I own, and pretty much not looking forward to anything that’s on the shelves or coming out in the near future. The only thing that gives me a glimmer of hope at this point is Diablo 3, and that’s been set back by another few months again.

So I’ve returned to an old nightmare – Nethack. It’s one of those games that looks utterly simple on the surface yet has so many ways to kill you, so many different items, so many different ways to play that no two games ever pan out the same. I have to admit that I’ve not ever been any good at it. I’ve never ascended, I’ve never seen the Amulet of Yendor. I’ve never even gotten past the Oracle or Dwarf Town. This time is going to be different – and here’s my story:

I started off as a Chaotic Human Barbarian. I figured this would give me the biggest chance of survival. Things were pretty standard at first, with me only finding a Lawful altar and a fountain on level 2. Much to my surprise though, quaffing from the fountain gave me a Djinn, a friendly one at that. One wish later and I had a greased silver Dragon Scale Armor, albeit only +0. This would be my fighting chance! Bravely I ventured forth, clearing level 3 with ease. Sadly my wand of detect hidden doors failed to find the entrance to the Dwarf Mines, but I did manage to find a hidden vault. I let the guard escort me out, but I took note of it for the future. As soon as I find a pickaxe that gold is mine! Considering my axe is corroded, the gold will come in handy when the shop finishes taking inventory.

I descended to level 4, where a swarm of Hill Orcs made quick work of my kitten. With no time to mourn, I retreated to a tunnel and tried to take them one at a time. One of the Hill Orcs happened to have a wand of digging though, wreaking havoc on the room I had entered from. I dispatched of the Orcs (finding a cloak of invisibility in the process) and continued exploring – just to find the ghost of a previous adventurer – more specifically the highest level adventurer I’ve had. I kicked that ghost till he begged for mercy. Now I’m sitting with all his inventory, and boy was he a hoarder. Now to carry everything back up to level 2 to check for cursed items and then equip myself further, and give my hitpoints a time to regenerate.

Part 2 to follow!

In other news: My WoW account that’s been dormant for almost a year got hacked… No idea how – I’ve ignored every email from Blizzard or the hackers pretending to be Blizzard, I didn’t even have WoW on a hard drive that was plugged into my machine. Anyway, got notified about it on Facebook, quickly changed my RealID password, downloaded the MASSIVE patches and logged in. Damage wasn’t too bad, I didn’t have much to start with. The bot did leave me with a ton of ore and much more gold than what I started with, and a 30 day timecard loaded so I didn’t bother reporting it. Right after this, Blizzard sends me a “Hey, we’ve missed you, here’s 7 days free playtime” email, which turned out to be legit.

This was last week. How much have I played? A total of 7 minutes. Yup, the drug has worn off, it’s out of my system. I’m no longer driven by the WoWmachine.

You bought the wrong tank!

  April 28, 2011 - 11:23 am | MMO, Other games, Wall of Text, World of Tanks
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Firstly, I’m playing around with some new themes today. The old one was a little too cheerful for the direction of my blog. I’ll be chopping and changing until I find something I like. The current one (Jarrah by Templates NeXt) is nice, although it lacks some of the features I had on the previous one, but I’ll try to live with it for a few hours. Oh, and some of the WoW stuff and links will slowly start disappearing…

I’ve also been playing quite a bit of Recettear lately. It’s quite fun, a totally different approach to the RPG angle – instead of being the brave adventurer, you’re the vendor! Give it a try, it’s on special at the moment (download the demo first of course). No Minecraft updates because I just haven’t had the time lately.

In the World of Tanks department it’s been a busy Easter weekend. I got all my beginner tanks to elite status and then sold them. I bought the M2 Light tank, moving away from the German front that I had pursued in Beta. I of course also had to get myself a T57, artillery just adds another dimension to the game that’s quite relaxing. I was happily working myself up to the M3 Light when my brother walked in and pointed out something interesting…

The path of the light/medium tanks

Ya see, if you look at the American tech tree ingame (The one on the WoT website as to the left is vastly different, a better layout really), the shortest route seems to be through the M2 and then working down through the rest of the lights. However, as my brother pointed out to me, if I were to go for the medium route then I’d unlock the heavies quite soon and as a bonus also unlock the latter lights, effectively giving me a broader spectrum to play around with once I’ve progressed…. not to mention saving me a ton of coin in the process.

So I stopped my saving for the M3 Stuart and instead bought a T2 Medium. Mind you I still love the M2 Light – it’s fast, just as fast as the dreaded (in T1/2 categories anyway) BT-2 and has a nice range of weapons. In fact, I still get my best scores with the M2 Light and will probably work toward getting the crew to 100% status, but my progression focus will be with the mediums for a while.

I’m about 3/4 of the way toward the M2 Medium now, with the T2, M2 Light and T57 all already on elite status. Tonight should get me past that point, then we’ll see how much hurt the T3 tanks are gonna dish out.