Next game on the list is Super Street Fighter IV Arcade (yay!), followed by Unreal Tournament 3 (meh). Not sure what we've got planned after that, maybe some UT classic or Quake Live or some shit. I dunno, maybe we should try Worms at some point. Or Tron and Tetris. :P
Speaking of trying out games - I had another look at Path of Exile (PoE) a year or so after I reviewed the closed beta for buffed magazine. And it's quite easily the best, fairest F2P game I've ever played and quite possibly the only one that actually deserves to be called "free to play". The cash shop offers animations, dances, cosmetic pets, FLUFF and nothing but. You can't buy power. Heck, you can't even buy power through shady 3rd party websites, because the game features no currency. There is no gold. And no goldspam. I know it sounds strange, but it really works and it's actually pretty fun when you can't just buy your way to victory like you could with a certain other hack'n'slay title until just recently. Sure, they probably just sell the items directly now, but the whole thing works remarkably well without any real form of currency. Helps the dark, semi apocalyptic setting, too.
Of course the real fun lies in PoE's multiplayer mode, where I get to team up with Claire. Like so:
I've just finished my normal difficulty playthrough and am about to get started on 'cruel' difficulty. And for the most part, this game is pretty fucking awesome. I love the class system. Sure, you start out being a clever witch or an agile duelist or a hulking marauder and what have you, but nothing stops your stealthy character from picking up a few spells along the way. And the witch may very well pick up a sword or even a warhammer. In fact, that's exactly what I did - I tried to create a somewhat unique and unlikely character. Or so I thought, but more about that later.
The problem with spellcasters is that they're squishy and they prefer to attack from a safe distance like cowards. So I ditched the robes and the fairy wand and went for full plate and the heaviest fucking maul I could find. In the little video above you can see me combining elemental melee attacks, fireballs, lightning, as well as countless minions. I get to turn fallen enemies into spectres and zombies, summon skeletons and animate weapons. Yes, with the right skills you can turn weapons and armor dropped by monsters into companions, which float around and beat the shit out of your enemies. How cool is that?
I know it has been said countless times, but it's true that this game is everything Diablo 3 should have been - and so much more. And that goes for the setting, as well. Look at this (spoilerific if you haven't played it yet):
This is the kind of stuff that made the first two Diablo games great - and then some. You know, before Diablo 3 turned the antagonist into such a girl. Literally. Which, admittedly, made for some interesting fan-created porn drawings, but the whole thing was just so damn... I dunno, tame? Harmless? I mean, compare the final act of Diablo 3 to this gory mess up there.
There are rivers of blood. Mountains of corpses. I'm not even exaggerating. Screams echo through the countless winding corridors of that dungeon and grotesquely disfigured creatures attack you with tentacles made of their own spines and intestines. Also noteworthy: Nudity! Yaaay! Some of the baddies and statues have boobies and peepees. Finally! I mean, for fuck's sake, we have M-rated games out there, everything is mega violent, but god forbid if there's a nipple! Everything on here is tiny and pixel-sized, but it's there, as it should be. I'm a fucking grownup, so lemme rejoice over full-on digital nudity like a twelve year old, dammit!
Of course, nothing is ever perfect, which is good, because I get to do my fair share of bitching. First of all, the seemingly endless possibilities to develop your character really boil down to just two or three viable options for most of the classes. Those minions I've used in the first video, during the game's earlier stages? Yeah, good luck using those after the first 30 or so levels. As you can see in the second video, I've ditched most of the minions, the fireball and most of my other casty stuff for a tanky melee build. And while the majority of witch players I've bumped into so far were traditional casters with robes and (sometimes dual-)wands and stuff, the whole tanky witch thing still wasn't exactly rare.
Of course there's some blue car effect involved here. You know, like when you get a new car and it's blue and suddenly everything you see around you is fucking blue cars. People play all sorts of characters and the item system theoretically accomodates all skills and play styles. There's gear for strength, intelligence and dexterity-based characters as well as hybrids and everything is viable in a way. Unfortunately, difficulty picks up so rapidly after the first two thirds of the game, some builds just can't solo the last bit without some serious grinding and over-leveling. And that's my biggest, my only real problem with PoE.
See, I don't mind difficult games. I'm tired of all that casual crap and handholding seen in all the blockbuster titles today. What I don't like is a sudden jump in difficulty from mildly challenging to "inch forward or die in a split second without ever knowing wtf just happened". Alright, it's not that bad. At first. But by the time I got to the final boss battle, or the buildup thereof, going from full to zero HP in under five seconds, capped resistances, 50% damage mitigation, shield, ton of life and everything, I couldn't help but wonder what the fuck those guys were thinking when they came up with that on the starting difficulty level and decided it was "just right".
Yes, sure, you can just join a group of players and everything gets a lot easier. But I wanted to solo that shit. Which worked out in the end, but caused much more frustration than it was worth. Two useless yellow items, a bunch of blues and the ending credits to a story, which made no sense whatsoever. Interestingly enough, going back to act 1 on my freshly unlocked cruel difficulty level feels like the proverbial walk in the park in comparison. You know, during the day, without the drug dealers, rabid hobos and drunk teenagers around.
Some other, smaller issue I have is repetition. First off, there simply isn't much variety when it comes to baddies. Undead guys, bandits and beasts, that's about it. Okay, add a few living statues and ribbons (I don't even fucking know), but fighting entire legions of bandits and monkeys in act 2 gets old fast. Zone size is another one for the repetition department. Having areas three to five times the size of your average zone in Diablo 2 may sound awesome on paper, but spending an hour or so fighting the same three monsters over and over again whilst looking for a waypoint or a fucking map transition isn't really all that fun. Most of all, though, the game recycles items even more than Diablo 2 does. Got your awesome shiny endgame battleplate at the end of your first playthrough? Well, prepare to replace them with a bunch of the same fugly old rags you wore during the first ten levels of the game, but with a slightly different name and a much higher item level. Every piece of equipment gets reused at least four or five times, so you go back and forth between knight of gold and medieval hobo a lot.
On an unrelated note: Check the balls on that soft collie, falalalala... tree! It's as crude and 'special' as everything else in this house, so we're satisfied.
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| "My ass hurts..." |
-Cat
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