Guild Wars 2: What I think after the first beta weekend

Take a look at this:

I know, I know, looks horribly laggy, performance is rather underwhelming when I'm recording, but ignore that for a bit and look at the gameplay, the visuals... then have a look at 5:15. This pretty much summarizes everything I'm about to say in this post. I come across two friendly players, who are about to get skullfucked by two enemy players. One of them dies before I get there in time (dramatic speech bubble and everything), the other one gets ganged up on by the two bad guys. Until I whip out my rifle and start shooting one of them.

It takes a while until he notices me, he jumps me and starts attacking, so I switch to my stereo swords, beat the crap out of him for a while until he decides it's probably best to gang up on the other player again, hoping to get at least one kill out of it. So I switch back to the gun, kill him, then focus the remaining baddie with my new friend, kill him as well, loot some tokens of honour and revive his fallen team mate. Awesome!

Melee AND ranged!

Now, before I get to explaining why I never had so much fun playing a warrior on any other MMO: If you're one of those people who still have to ask why everyone compares every new game to WoW, you're a fucking moron and I don't even want you reading my blog! Okay? Marvelous!

Let's turn back time a bit, somewhere roughly 8 years ago. It's the closed beta of WoW. I'm a warrior, I'm fighting trogs in Dun Morogh, I whack one of them within an inch of his life bar and the little shit runs. And I click the 'shoot' hotkey. My warrior whips out that massive old blunderbuss, there's this incredibly satisfying click, followed by an even more satisfying BLAM! and the trog is history. I'm in heaven.

I fucking loved the guns in that game! I pulled absolutely everything using only a gun and I finished off all the baddies who ran away by shooting them in the back. But as time went by, guns became (even) less relevant to warriors and with Pandaria on the horizon, they're gonna take them away from me, completely. Boo! Big, fat, fucking BOO!
I'm a warrior. By definition, that should mean I'm capable of using just about any kind of weapon, as well as select furniture, to kill an opponent. In Azeroth it just means I'm able to spin around in circles at high speeds without throwing up.

Now there's Guild Wars 2. I can use all kinds of one and two-handed melee weapons and on top of all that I get to use longbows and rifles. And unlike WoW (or most similar MMOs, for that matter), GW2 actually allows me to do more than just fucking pull a baddie with ranged weapons or try and deal the killing blow with them. I get to kick ass. You have no idea how fucking cool this is!

One thing that always bothered me about large-scale pvp in WoW is how the classes are generally good at one thing or another, not both. Melee or ranged. As a warrior, I'd have to charge head-on into a bunch of enemy players, pull off some burst-damage macros and hope for a healer to keep an eye on me. As a hunter, I'd do super awesome damage from a safe distance and get my ass kicked as soon as some melee class gets too close and I screw up when trying to shake them. And let's be honest here for a second: If you look at the killboards on one of the longer Alterac Valley sessions, you'd always and exclusively see hunters on top, because it's just a tad easier to rack up tons of kills from a safe distance, shooting people, who are already fighting somebody else.

On GW2 I start attacking from a distance, shoot them until they notice me, build up adrenaline points with my attacks, then charge in with melee-attacks, spending all adrenaline on an extra powerful flurry. Works the other way 'round, too, of course. Beat the crap out of some unsuspecting thief and when he runs away I grab my gun and shoot the sucker. Makes it sooo much easier to deal with all those annoying pillar-huggers. And there's no infinite, super-annoying mega invisibility to save their lives.
Being able to equip two weapon sets and to switch them at the push of a button whenever you feel like it allows for an incredible amount of flexibility. One of my friends alternates between greatswords and longbows for massive AoE goodness and I have seen Mesmers (robed spellcasters) whipping out greatswords when I invaded their personal space in pvp. And when an elementalist summons lightning-flavoured war hammers for his team mates to swing, you know you're in for a fucking good time!

Simple and fun

Another thing I really enjoy is the trait system. Instead of going for the proverbial cookie-cutter build that some elitist forum-nerd has parsed to generate the highest DPS, you go for something that matches your personal taste and play style. Switching between weapon sets a whole lot, I started off with a trait set that raises my adrenaline and provides certain bonuses whenever I switch weapons in combat. As a neat side-effect, these traits raise my overall crit damage. In the long run I'm planning on complementing this with another trait-line, which raises my actual crit-rate as well as adds bleed damage to certain attacks. Towards the level cap I'll round it up with some defensive traits to boost my armor rating a bit. Of course we're still far away from the official release and an actual cap of level 80, but the system is intuitive and simple enough to plan ahead without much trouble or number-crunching.

I wasn't sure about the combat system at first. 9 hotkeys is all you get, half of them buffs, utility-skills and a self-heal, which are all situational and not part of any rotation. My entire attack "rotation" consists of two or three buttons, the rest is situational (riposte, harmstring, you get the idea) and I spend most of my time dodging attacks and trying to hit enemy players without getting hit too much in return. It's a little easier in pve, since baddies generally don't do a lot of running around, but as a rule of thumb, it's always a good idea to anticipate and doge attacks instead of just standing there to soak them up. As a warrior, I do get a larger pool of health than Claire's thief and I do get the heavier armor, but in a tricky situation, this usually means I just might be able to survive a really nasty ambush with a leftover HP or two and I get to revive Claire. That's as good as it gets. I don't get to stand in the middle of a dozen enemies and just laugh at them as I shield-bash my way across Tyria. If I get hit, it fucking hurts!


Everybody is capable


I wasn't too thrilled when I saw that Claire rolled a thief. The first thing I thought was "rogue" and what Blizzard has done to that class in just about every fucking MMO ever since. Rogues are all about griefplay, about being a dick, about fucking up the fun for everybody else. Spend 20 minutes in the arena waiting for the enemy team to come out of stealth? Thanks a lot, rogues! And by WoW's definition of "fun" it's perfectly okay to get sapped, stunned and disabled an infinite amount of times in world "pvp" when you're just trying to get somewhere. Usually by a complete and utter trolling pussy, who has absolutely no intention of fighting you. And every random dungeon group needs at least one dumbass rogue, who always, without fail, attacks his own bunch of bad guys and ignores the tank completely. If he dies, it's generally the fault of the tank or the healer and everyone is a noob.

Sure, everyone does identical DPS these days, everyone has identical HP and armor doesn't even fucking matter anymore - and everyone just stays hidden in the arena for an eternity now. Hunters, mages, druids... oh the variety!
But as a rule of thumb, rogues were annoying glass-cannons, played by even more annoying assholes.
So that's what I was expecting to see from Claire on GW2. Poke, stealth, disappear for a fucking half hour, come back, one-shot a baddie with obscene amounts of damage done by some grey 2dps dagger, stealth again. And now my significant other was playing a thief, which I was fully expecting to be the exact same thing.

Well, to cut a long story short, I'm absolutely in love with her character! Thieves aren't dicks. They're very stylish swashbucklers. Okay, I suppose you don't really swash and buckle a lot using dual daggers, but watching her charr rip bad guys to shreds with some insanely cool combat animations is just so much more satisfying than the same old slow-motion poke and stab mega crit bullshit on that other game. We think she's doing slightly more damage than my warrior, while my health and armor are slightly higher than hers, but once again, the difference is relatively small and while it does affect gameplay and the overall feel of the class, there are no extremes here. No insane DPS or insane defence, no having to choose one or the other - everyone can do damage, everyone can survive a few hits, everyone can self-heal, but nobody is a specialist at any of those things and completely sucks at everything else.
It's unbelievably cool when she whips out her dual pistols, I ready my rifle and we take down the first 2 or 3 baddies from a whole pack of bad guys, then switch to daggers and swords, respectively, charge in and hack them to bits. And both of us have to keep an eye out for enemy spells and projectiles, we gotta keep moving, dodging and evading hits or we're toast. But that's another sweet thing about how it all works: If one of us screws up and dies, the other one gets to use their revive ability. Everyone can revive fallen teammates (or any random fallen player or NPC).

World vs World (vs World)


Entering the smaller-scale pvp areas (think WoW battlegrounds) immediately boosts you to level 80 and puts legendary pvp gear on your toon until you go back to pve. You get to pick all kinds of runes, sigils and gems (think enchantments), choose your favourite weapon types and try out every single ability and skill, including all the stuff you haven't even unlocked outside of the staged pvp. So there's no need for character planners and theory crafting - just go try out any combination of weapons, upgrades and skills you want, join a battle and make adjustments as you see fit. Until you know exactly what you like best and focus on unlocking exactly that outside of pvp.

Of course the real meat and potatoes lies in the Eternal Battlegrounds, aka WvWvW. The inhabitants of three different servers fight over territory. Think Alterac Valley, but it lasts two weeks rather than ten minutes, with hundreds (!) of participants and with working siege engines, trebuchets and battering rams. Once again, every player will be upgraded to level 80 whilst taking part, but you keep your original gear and skills, meaning you don't get access to endgame stuff and every single ability for free. You gain experience and item tokens whilst playing there, so it's perfectly possibly to ignore most pve content and exclusively level up and get stronger in the eternal battlegrounds.

It is safe to assume that a player, who actually leveled his character to the cap and has access to powerful abilities and items will have an edge over a level 10 player, who gets boosted to level 80 in wvwvw. That said, even an inexperienced player will have the power and the stats to fend for himself, to help make a difference for his side or at the very least, to try and make a run for it without getting one-shotted. There is no ganking here, no other players one-shotting you regardless of personal skill, simply because they're fully kitted out in purple stuff and you are not. The deciding factor in every fight will be player skill. So if you get your ass kicked a lot, it's not because of the other guy's class being overpowered or because he has farmed tier 328 conquest gear - you probably just suck.

Work in progress


The usual login-problems and server crashes you see in every hyped MMO aside, the GW2 beta felt pretty solid and stable. The game only runs on DX9 right now, performance isn't super-smooth so far and while the game looks nice, I have still encountered the occasional blurry, muddy texture even on ultra detail settings. That said, I didn't have any crashes, except for one graphical lockup with screen-shattering of proportions I haven't encountered since Age of Conan. Friends have reported hardware and overheating issues, as well. Apparently there are some graphical glitches with ATI cards and anti-aliasing - Claire's ATI card caused occasional black screens, while my Nvidia card was fine, which is consistent with forum bug reports.

There were constant hiccups with the auction and item shop system as well as the ingame mail system. The actual game, however, was near-flawless. On some very rare occasions, voiceovers would fall silent or the characters would read out what seemed to be an entirely random line of text. But we didn't encounter any actual crashes, there were no missing items or NPCs, everything just worked! In fact, the beta is already more stable and finished than a fair few other MMOs have been upon release. I'm looking at you, Star Trek Online, Final Fantasy XIV, Age of Conan... the list goes on and on and on.

It looks alright


I know, I know, some of you will want to jump me for saying 'alright', but come on now. GW2 has beautiful landscapes, the characters look great and some of the higher level gear looks fantastic. I'm not denying that. That said, the game isn't setting any new standards, there are no graphical milestones here and technically, the game doesn't do anything you've never seen in any other game. That said, there is a lot of love and detail in everything. GW2's capital cities actually feel like fucking cities and you get the impression that people actually live there! Most role playing games give you a bunch of houses and a few NPCs, who seemingly live on the street and that's it. If you ever want to feel completely absorbed or maybe even at home in a virtual world, the new Tyria is probably for you. It feels huge and varied, offers lush, green forests, sandy beaches and snowy hills and while they might not be as jaw-dropping as Skyrim, they're all pleasant to look at.

My personal highlight is character creation. See, I love the Tauren and Worgen in World of Warcraft. I really do. But no matter how you fiddle around with their fur, ears, horns or whatever they get - they all look exactly the same. If you see a Worgen wobbling by on all fours in his heavy armor, you're not gonna pay attention to whether he's missing the tip of an ear, what his eye colour is or whether he has grey or black fur. The beast race on GW2, the Charr, can be anything from big and hulking, well-trained, fat, tiny, skinny, they get all kinds of different fur tones and patterns and you can make them resemble tigers or hyenas or cheetahs or just about anything wild and beasty you could possibly imagine. Of course, thick layers of armor will hide most of your appearance on there just as much as it does on WoW, but playing around with your size, body shape and proportions alone allows for lots of variety and it's easy to stand out. Besides, you get to dye your armor. Yes, some of you cringe at the idea of a hulking Nord warrior in spiked pink battle plate, but it's all in the name of variety and individualism.

The music is... well. How you like the music depends entirely on how you feel about Jeremy Soule. To me, every single soundtrack he has ever created sounds exactly like the next one, some admittedly brilliant theme tunes aside. So when I'm exploring Tyria and kill stuff to GW2's background music, it almost sounds like I'm playing Morrowind or just about any other game where he was in charge of the music. It's not a big deal, I'm sure most of you don't really pay much attention to that kind of thing, but I'm not a fan of Jeremy Soule. It's entirely possible that I am simply jealous of how he sells the same pieces of music over and over again and gets away with it.

Retail yes, beta not so much


It took me a day or two to warm up to Guild Wars 2. Turns out the Charr starting area is relatively weak both regarding the actual landscape and detail as well as the levels and placement of quests and baddies. I found the game incredibly hard at first (I was recording every step of the way, so crappy performance might have been part of the problem) and I simply wasn't having a lot of fun. But once I got used to the fast-paced combat, started unlocking traits and learned new abilites and - most importantly - discovered the joys of wvwvw, I was hooked. I am seriously in love with this game, I can't wait for the retail version and while I have absolutely zero plans regarding a Pandaria purchase, there is absolutely no way around GW2 for me. I didn't regret my pre-purchase, I just wanna get into it now and I want to spend as much time in pvp as somehow possible.

That said, I don't think I'll be participating in many beta events from here on out. First of all, I'm not a big fan of experiencing the first 20 levels over and over again. That's fun once, twice, maybe three times, but if I keep on doing that, I'll be sick and tired of the game before it's actually released. Besides - beta characters get wiped. It's their fate to get deleted, only to be reborn as complete level 1 noobs again, time and again, until the next inevitable wipe. And I get too attached to my characters. So it's easier for me to have a quick look at everything during future beta events, maybe have a quick peek at the other races and classes, but I won't do any intense gaming until the retail product goes live and I get to create my real, actual Charr warrior. I can't wait!

-Cat

The online noob diaries - Mount & Blade: Warband

I was wrong. Holy fuck, was I wrong! After my first day of Warband I had decided that the combat system was about as simple as Rune. You know, left mouse button to attack, right mouse button to defend, direction will change the flavour of your swing a bit, end of story. I was wrong.

When Steam finally activated multiplayer access for my copy of the game, I didn't mess around with large battles for 400 people, I didn't join any sieges - I wanted to learn how to fight, so the only logical consequence was to participate in duels. I didn't win one of them. Not a single one. It seemed that, no matter how well I believed I had timed my swings, no matter how often I dodged and parried, my opponents would always attack faster, kill me with just one swing and kick my ass with zero difficulty whatsoever. Which was true to some extent, simply because I didn't understand the combat system.

I'm starting to figure it out now. After watching several videos, guides and how-tos, I'm starting to understand just how brilliant the whole thing really is. There is as much strategy and wit involved as fast reflexes and you can actually outsmart an enemy, no matter how fast they are or how big their sword is, if you can read them and anticipate and counter each and every move. I don't wanna bring up the ancient comparison to chess, since I don't usuall pick up the board in order to beat the shit out of my opponent when playing chess. I've felt the urge on several occasions, though.

Simplified, there is really just three things you need to know about combat in this game:

- Basic attacks: You can swing your sword left or right, thrust it or try and land a massive overhead blow. Obviously, the whole thing varies a bit if you use different weapons. Each type of attack has its own speed, damage and accuracy.

- Blocking: A basic block works exactly like attacking. Left block, right block, overhead block, thrust block. If you raise your sword to block an overhead attack and your opponent decides to thrust, you're fucked, of course. If you're really good, you may parry and counter an attack instead of just blocking. The whole thing works by attacking a split second after your opponent - if they swing left, you counter by swinging right, if they thrust, you do a counter-thrust and so on. If you time it just right, their blow will be deflected and you'll either do instant damage or you get a chance to have another quick swing at them. Or be a pussy like me and use a shield. Shield blocks are a lot easier to pull off, but they're less offensive than parrying, you don't get the damage or reach of a massive two-hander and if your shield gets smashed, you're armed with nothing but a toothpick.

- Feigning: Most fights usually follow a sequence of sorts. Attack-block-attack-block etc. where your opponent waits for you to strike, then lowers their defense to attack back. You may, however, cancel your attack in mid-swing. This will usually trick your opponent into believing your attack is done, so you get to land a blow the second they stop blocking. Of course this also works the other way 'round and if you keep feigning, the other guy will eventually stop falling for it and keeps on defending until your swing actually connects.

Sounds like a huge load of horsecrap? It sure did to me. If you know me, then you're aware of the fact that I like to make fun of things. I want to make fun of how people treat combat in this game as some kind of science. I wanna make fun of the guys who talk about it like it was more than just simple button mashing. But the moment I started paying attention to the attack patterns of other players, how, when and where they were swinging their weapons, when I started timing my feigns and counter-attacks, I started to win.

I'm still crap at blocking and parrying with a sword. I heavily rely on shields, usually along with a bastard sword. The moment an opponent smashes my shield, I can two-hand the bastard sword and sometimes get a lucky one-shot that way. I'm not great, I still need loads of practice and I don't think I'll ever start running around with no shield at all, even though that seems to be the most popular strategy in most battles, where people swing nothing but greatswords.

I think I'll try a large-scale battle server next, see if I can kill a few people there, then have some more duels for practice. Stupid, stupid addiction!

-Cat

The noob diaries - Mount & Blade: Warband

The Mount & Blade games have been on 75% off special offer on Steam last weekend, so I finally got my copy of Warband. The game seemed incredibly shit, then okay, then shit again, then awesome. Here's a bit of a summary.

In the beginning there was light head trauma

Originally, I purchased this game for its online multiplayer mode alone. And that's exactly the part of the game, which is refusing to work for me right now. There was an overwhelming amount of Steam-purchases this weekend, they ran out of digital keys, I didn't get mine and I'm still waiting for a response from their support crew, so I got stuck with the offline campaign for now.
Character creation starts off with a little note saying that, while you do get the possibility to start out as a male noble, you may get a much more interesting and challenging early game experience with a female member of the common riffraff faction, so that's what I ended up going with. It's a pretty realistic setting after all. Middle ages. The dark, 'shit anywhere you want' kind of middle ages, where it sucked to be female. That kinda thing.

My character is the daughter of a legendary warrior (yawn), she trained to be a smith and eventually left home in search of revenge (YAWN!). Revenge for what? Fuck if I know. I can't tell whether any of these background choices really had any significant impact on the actual gameplay. I suppose they affected my starting stats a bit, but that's about it.
So my angry blacksmith chick, who seeks revenge for no particular reason found herself in some alley, with a guy charging at her, sword drawn and stabbing the crap out of her. I had a crossbow. The guy ran at me, I was loading my crossbow. The guy was right in front of me, I was still loading my crossbow. The guy started hitting me with his sword, I was STILL loading my FUCKING CROSSBOW! At that time I had no fucking clue how to fight, but playing around with the mouse wheel made me draw a shield. Turns out I had no melee weapon, so I punched the guy in the face and blocked his attacks with the board. Which seemed to work out okay at first, but the baddie had increased punching resistance and he just shattered my shield, so I was back to loading my damn crossbow and getting beat up.

The whole thing ended in me getting my ass kicked and waking up in the middle of some tavern, where an NPC told me he just got there in time to drag me away. He turned out to be a real joker: "Since you're handy with a blade, I need to ask you a favour." Dude. You just watched me as I got the shit beat out of me. You had to save my ass. Now you need ME to do YOU a favour that involves swordsplay?
So far, so generic. He told me I had to kill a bunch of bandits that like to hang around in the outskirts surrounding the village. Big fucking surprise.

Day 1 - LFG!

Since I was going after a whole bunch of bandits, I was told to hire five men before fighting anyone. I figured the place to hire people would be the tavern, since that's how it works in most games. I bumped into some oriental-looking dude, scimitar and all, telling me he's a super legendary mega warrior and up for hire, so I grabbed him and two generic caravan guards, then I was out of cash and two guys short of starting my quest. I went to the marketplace to sell that stupid crossbow and a fish. Why the hell was there a fish in my inventory? Away with you, fish! Still didn't have enough money for more people, so I went to the arena.
The arena is weird. Basically, 40 people beat the crap out of each other with wooden weapons. Naked. Combat was fun, though. Block attacks with the right mouse button, beat them up with the left button, directional attacks depending on how you wiggle the mouse. I've read some articles about how the combat in Mount & Blade is incredibly realistic. It isn't. It's no different from ancient action games like Rune, it's fun, it's solid, but there's no way in hell it feels like actual sword fighting. I defeated 10 guys, defeated 20 guys, made some money, looked for more recruits, but couldn't afford anyone. Eventually, I got another quest to deliver a message to some nearby castle.

Day 3 - Peasant Power!

I was fully expecting to get eaten by bears or some shit the moment I leave the city walls' safety, but nothing happened when I looked at the world map, so I clicked on the nearest village on the way to my delivery destination. And hey - I could actually recruit random peasants into my warband there for just a few coins! Boy did I feel stupid for hiring those expensive guys at the tavern!
So with my fair band of merry farmers I went to the next village and people there refused to join me. In fact, the dumb fucks wanted nothing to do with me. With great disappointment I moved on to that castle where I was supposed to take the message and the local count asked me to collect some taxes for him. Right. I'm a complete stranger. And he's asking me to run around collecting money in his name. Sounds totally believable. Ahem, anyway - the peasants refusing to pay up happened to live in that annoying little village where nobody wanted to help me, so I signed up to play sheriff of Nottingham. And they were seriously pissed off at me when I went there to ask for their money! So pissed off in fact, that after a while they gathered an angry mob and charged at me with their pitchforks.
After beating the crap out of them, not only were they willing to pay up, but some of them even agreed to earn back some of their cash by joining my warband. Ahh yes... the salty smell of cheap labour! With thousands of coins in my pockets, I considered keeping all the tax money to myself, but after having a close look at the hundreds of soldiers scouting Count Whatshisface's castle, I decided it would be a bad idea to make him my enemy, handed in the money and got a cut fo 20% for a reward. Not too shabby.
I was now ready to head back to my starting city to inform the quest guy that I had gathered enough men to fight the bandits. On the way home my troops bitched about hunger. Didn't I have a fish in my inventory? Where the f... oh right. Well, I just made a nice profit, so I stopped at the next village to stock up on pork. Celebrate the day and all that.

Day 5 - Rotten Swine!

Mounted combat is hard! Horse behaviour is semi-realistic: If you tell that horse to run, it will do exactly that! It won't just stand still once you let go of your W-key - it keeps on running till you slow it down and eventually stop it using the S-key. I kept galloping across the battlefield like an idiot whilst my army of peasants beat the crap out of the bandits. Turns out the default difficulty setting is ultra-low, which is okay for the time being. Still learning how everything works on here.
I got a nice reward for defeating those guys and made my first big mistake: Spend it all on some shiny item. I got myself this really cool winged helmet. Then I got a quest to get rid of the bandits once and for all by raiding their hideout. By the time I got there, my first virtual week had come to an end and my troops demanded their wages. So now I was without a penny in my pocket and it also turned out that stocking up on lots of pork was a stupid idea. After several days of sitting in my inventory, the stuff was getting a little rank and the troops weren't too happy about it.
The actual raid was fun, because the place couldn't be reached on horseback. And combat on foot is that much easier! I looted every last bit of their possessions and made enough money to afford my troops for the coming week. Everyone had gained lots of experience, so I could upgrade my peasants to basic infantrymen and hunters. There were still wielding farmer-grade toy equipment, but it was a start.

Day 8 - Why won't you hold my hand?

The game keeps sending me on stupid errands. Deliver a cask of ale here, deliver a letter there, pay is shit, there's no fighting involved and most villages and castles don't need a helping hand. With anything. At day 10 I have finally bumped into some small settlement with raider problems, so I agreed to help train a local militia. Once again, I beat up peasants with sticks. The whole thing lasted three days, then the raiders came back. I ended up leading a bunch of stick-wielding farmers against them, most of them got killed, but at least a handful lived to see another day and, more importantly, lived to reward me for my efforts. Yay!
My small band was growing into a bit of an army, some of the more experienced men were beginning to resemble soldiers with actual weapons and armor and while everyone started growing sick and tired of cabbage, it kept them well-fed, it lasted long in my inventory and it was cheap. Eat cabbage, fuckers!

Day 12 - Prison Break

Upgrading my troops means having to pay and feed them more. I was out of cash again, but now I had finally realized that acquiring lucrative quests was as simple as asking any tavernkeep about quest NPCs. Some count was being held prisoner in a nearby castle and I was supposed to get him out, no matter the cost. So I walked into the castle, talked to the prison guard and when I couldn't afford the bribe, I beat the keys out of him and dragged Count Douchenbach out of the dungeon. He stood in the middle of the castle courtyard, refusing to go anywhere. Assuming he bugged out, I went ahead alone and found myself surrounded by half a dozen angry guardsmen. I ran away, left them behind, only to realize my quest had not updated, because the stupid Count never escaped with me. So I reloaded my savegame and had to free him all over again. This time around, I ran back to the count when the guards chased after me and forced him to fight them with me.
We beat the crap out of them, I brought the guy home to his lady, got a nifty reward and spent it on a new horse and some troop upgrades. Rawr!

Day 13 - More Bandits

Entered a new area that day and kept running into bandits. One of their groups had a pair of female slaves with them, so I had them join my ranks after killing the bandits. They had little more than sticks and stones on them to protect themselves, but I had room for more people, they were practically free and free fodder is good fodder. The local ruler tasked me with wiping out yet another bandit camp, but this time they didn't actually give me their location, so I had to spend ages chasing after random bandits until they finally revealed their stupid hideout. On the plus side, the slave girls actually survived one fight after another and slowly advanced in ranks from lowly camp guards to huntresses to sword sisters, clad in full heavy metal! Mounted combat was a little less awkward now and it was actually fun riding into battle, whacking bandits left and right and chasing after that one poor fucker who tried to escape the massacre as I slashed him whilst passing him at top speed. Riding back to my cheering and roaring soldiers only made it more fun. It looked like this:

I'm starting to realize that the key stat to winning this game must be charisma, as it powers up leadership. And leadership raises maximum army size and lowers their overall wages, so that's what I should have powered up from the very beginning. Oh well.

First Impression - Whee!

Warband is so very, very flawed. The stupid game tells me that I need to talk to the count of Castle Suchandsuch, but the stupid bastard isn't home. In fact, he's a pillage-happy, war-mongering asshat, leading his troops from city to city with me trying to keep up, just to deliver something for a stupid errant quest. The game also likes to crash a lot. The characters look shit. Don't get me wrong - the actual gear looks nice, but the character models have the lowest polygon count since Counter-Strike. Of course that also means I get 400 of them on one battlefield without any significant amount of graphical lag. The micro-management is downright tedious: Forget to buy food and the troops will start bitching. Buy too much food and the stuff will go bad. Spend too much cash on food and you can't pay your troops' weekly wages. Neglect to upgrade your troops and they will suck. Upgrade them too much and you can no longer afford them. Neglect to gear up your unique units and spend their talent points and they'll lag behind. There's an actual "enable cheats" checkbox right on the launcher, but I wanna play this game fair and square.

All my bitching aside, this game feels incredibly fun and satisfying to play when it works. Ride into battle, lead a bunch of screaming, blood-thirsty warriors, beat the crap out of the enemy hordes, cut them down as you pass them on your horse, loot all their stuff, upgrade your troops, rinse, repeat. And I have only scratched the surface of what you can do on there. Maybe I'll rule over my own kingdom at some point, maybe I'll end up raiding and pillaging and burning random villages - after all, I'm out for revenge, right? Most of all, the fighting activities on there feel surprisingly varied: Break a guy out of prison, train peasants for battle and help them fight off some raiders, raid a bandit camp... sometimes I get ambushed right inside a tavern or whilst trying to shop for some stuff and I have to fight back a bunch of guys all by myself, without my troops or my horse. And there's always the arena. Of course I could also give up on all the warring and just become a merchant. Harhar!

My main problem right now is finding the proper balance. Steady income vs. warband upgrades. I need a stronger, bigger party to fight tougher enemies and make more cash. At the same time, all that extra cash will be spent ten-fold to support these upgrades. And I'm still waiting for Steam to give me a proper key for online play. This might become a whole new addiction. And if it does, there's also the Napoleonic Wars expansion. Holy crap. I just got back into Modern Warfare 3 with my clan, I'm hooked on Patapon, I love Warband and the Guild Wars 2 beta weekend is starting this Friday. I'm just glad I don't have a regular 9-5 office job.

-Cat

Patapon, Guild Wars, Lizards 'n' shit

The other day I have dusted off ye ol PSP, checked out some of the new custom firmware and emulators, relit the old spark. I won't lie to you - I'm a lazy fucker and I don't ever leave the house when I can somehow avoid it. My home is my office, I no longer need to sit on a train for god knows how many hours each week, so mobile gaming devices have lost a great deal of their former appeal to me. Hell, I haven't touched a mobile phone in two years now. I used to be crazy about every portable techno-gadget I could possibly get my hands on, but now that I get to spend every waking minute with my desktop PC, the need for mobility has somewhat abated.

That said, I have always been a big fan of PSP homebrew applications, which let you do cool shit like turn the whole thing into a stationary home console. While I'm writing this blog, my PSP is hooked up to my computer, I get to see all the games on my huge screen and I can play them using my wireless Xbox 360 gamepad. Sound and music coming right out of my surround system - only in stereo, mind, but it's an improvement over the console's tiny speakers.

Now, if you're the kind of person who would furrow their brow at the mention of oh-so evil custom firmware:

1. Fuck you.
2. I don't need to download and pirate PSP games. But until Sony finally fucking support Homebrew, I'm gonna use CFW.

My PSP plays C64, Master System, (S)NES, Mega Drive, TG16 and god knows how many other games, all thanks to the power of custom firmware. Yes, the system also comes with a handful of nice and exclusive titles including God of War and Soul Calibur, but you can only play them for so long until you get bored. CFW expands that library by literally hundreds of games.

That said, I do love some of the PSP's original games for their online multiplayer. Patapon 3 is easily one of the most entertaining games I have ever played and it gets that much better when played with a bunch of people over the 'net. Bang your drums at the rhythm of the music and make your character dodge, jump, attack, collect epic loot, unlock new classes... it's a weird-ass combination of rhythm game and RPG. Sounds completely stupid, but damn is it fun!

In other news, the first Guild Wars 2 Pre-Purchase Beta Weekend is coming up! Rawr! We've just ordered a brand-spanking new pair of USB headsets, so the Clairebear and I can video our first steps into the game on Friday night, comment the whole thing on voicechat and probably bitch at each other and have burping contests. With any luck, people will find that kind of shit entertaining and click us a couple times on Youtube. Or maybe no one is gonna give a fuck whatsoever, but I'm still excited to give it a go.

Also, lizards:

Chompy, our bearded dragon, has got herself a brand new tank mate. She's fat, ugly and has creepy, bulging eyes, so we named her Bakara, after the female Krogan on Mass Effect 3. As you can see in the video, Chompy isn't really a huge fan of the whole idea. We're racing both of them across the living room, which is all the more fun when you add our cats to the whole thing. Considering they only eat 2 Pounds worth of salad and shit about once every week, they're probably the easiest pets we've ever had. Well, aside from our royal python, of course.

That thing must have had about a half dozen mice since it moved in and hasn't crapped once. I wish all pets were like that. Claire wants to name her Nova. I told her to shut up.

I'm having some very strange dreams, lately. The other night, I dreamed up one of my friends in Germany wanting to visit me. There was a fat chick in a pink jumper coming along with him and they all played football on the parking lot in front of my house. Which is odd, considering there is actually no parking lot. I also dreamed about going on a holiday trip with Claire. The guys in the hotel room next to us were listening to fucking Abba all night and day, somebody took a massive shit right at the beach and the sea didn't seem all that nice and clean, either. I'm not entirely sure what the fuck my subconscious is trying to tell me.

Thing is, I'm having a hard time going to sleep at all. I was wide awake for two hours the other night, wondering what I'd write in my will and testament. I'd probably have to add a whole paragraph about the pornographic material on my PC alone. And on how writing porn-fiction earns me nearly as much money as my work as a games critic. I figure Claire just gets all my stuff when I die. She's so lucky. If she dies first, I'll get nothing but girly clothes and some old Star Trek novels. But I'd save a shitload of money that I'm forced to spend on crisps and chocolate every week.

-Cat

Aw boohoo, we didn't want an extended cut. Eat a dick, whiners!

We all knew it was coming, it had been announced for a while, now there's finally some detail: The ME3 extended cut. So there's gonna be some added cut-scenes and CGI to give a proper explanation to what's going on in the controversial ending of the game.


Now, let's not get into the whole thing all over again. I found the ending alright, I wasn't insanely happy with it, I still think ME3 was the best part of the trilogy and I don't really need and extended cut. But fans wanted closure, they hated the plot holes, they demanded action, so now they're getting some free DLC this summer.


And seeing how they react makes me want to throw up. In fact, I've already thrown up three times. Once, because you morons make me sick, a second time because that mushroom pizza had been in the fridge for two weeks and a third time to freshen it up a bit when the mess started to dry up and get crusty.


Hell, everybody knew there would be complaints, no matter what Bioware would decide to do. Change nothing, create an entirely new ending or do what they decided to go with and create an epilogue. People always complain, it's what they do. That said, I wasn't expecting such a massive virtual mob, angrily waving their virtual pitch-forks, saying things like: "The ending of Mass Effect 3 has scarred me for life!"


I'm not making this up. This is an actual quote. You know, if the ending of some fucking video game has scarred you for life, then I am well and truly jealous. You must have the most wonderful, careless and sheltered existence a dumbass teenage gamer could possibly imagine. So what are you gonna do if they stop running Jersey Shore or, god forbid, remove ponies from the internet? Are you gonna spend the rest of your life in a weeping, sobbing, fetal state? Boy am I glad they came up with suicide hotlines. You poor thing, you.


Donating 80,000 bucks to Child's Play was incredible. Stating your concerns about the ending in a friendly, eloquent manner was a nice thing and I salute you for that. But this is just pathetic. They're working on a fucking epilogue right now. They said they were gonna give you more explanations. Heck, for all you know, the epiloge will be influenced by your actions and choices throughout the trilogy. And what are you doing? You're bitching about it. You have zero clue whether the whole thing is gonna be good or bad. It's months away. It's fucking free! It's a gift, a god damn peace offering, something to show they do care about the concerns of the fans and you're complaining about it.


You're a bunch of asswipes. You didn't like the ending. You don't like the idea of an epilogue. You wouldn't stop complaining in the meanest, dumbest ways possibly imaginable until they hand-crafted that one perfect, personal ending that suits you and you alone. "My 120 hours of play time were for nothing!" Another quote. Yeah, I bet you had to fucking force yourself to play this game for 120 hours, because all you cared about was the ending sequence and you were disappointed with it. Fuck all the action, the great dialogue, the story, everything. None of it matters, because Joker was flying around for some weird reason. Idiot.


Ah well. At least I'm getting some small amount of sadistic satisfaction out of all this: The whole thing is a big, fat FUCK YOU to all those weirdos, who kept clinging on to their indoctrination theory. 


I like personally adressing every single stupid moron in the comments sections and forums all over the internet, as though any of them actually gave a fuck about my blog and came here to read it. Nobody will. I can stand on my virtual soapbox and openly hate people for voicing their stupid opinions and get away with it. The internet is fun.


-Cat