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Cult of the Malformed Fork Posts

How I Spent my Summer Vacation

Published August 1, 2012 by Leprekawn

I recently found myself with a bulk of vacation time and so escaped from work, turned off my email and stocked up on hot pockets. What follows is a rough accounting of my journeys through the gaming landscape and my occasional stops.

Kingdoms of Amalur: the Reckoning

I’m something in the order of 40 hours committed to KoA:R with an end in sight far down the road.  If I had to guess, I believe I’m another 10 or 20 hours shy of the end by the way I’m playing which is doing roughly 70% of the side quests that get offered to me before getting bored and moving the plot along.  So far, I’ve really enjoyed KoA:R and would definitely recommend it to my Fable-playing friends.  The combat mechanic gets a little frustrating at times, as I can’t dodge around enemy swings and often get ‘juggled’.

There’s a definite order to the quests and a progression they don’t illustrate very well.  I nearly skipped over an entire region of the game styled after some rocky badlands.  It was only by nature of my curiosity that I followed a side-quest through the mountains and into the arid countryside to discover this area.

It’s a large game, varied in colors and styles and easy to pickup and play.  I’ve enjoyed my time with it but by Wednesday evening I’d had just about enough for a bit.

EVE Online

I don’t play often, largely I keep my account active to maintain skill training so that when I do play I’ve cleared 33 day training humps.  I played a fair bit, 2 or 3 hours at a time through my break.  I made money, I lost money.  Tried my hand at marketing.

I found I’m only really good at PvE combat.  That is, I can fit a ship, shoot stuff and generally advise new players on skill progression and ship selection for what they’re looking for.

To date, I’ve lost every PvP encounter I’ve entered.

EVE is a Sandbox MMO, what you do is more a matter of imagination than anything else.  If you’re tired of the Theme Park MMO (of which World of Warcraft and many others are part) then you might give EVE a spin.  Drop me an email and I’ll send you an invite and can give you some rudimentary advice on where to start or what to look at.  There’s a lot of resources and frankly, much of it is rampant with biased opinion.  malformedfork (at) gmail

League of Legends

A friend of mine talked me into trying it out.  Free to Play, you’re offered a selection of Champions from various worlds each week and given the chance to throw down with other humans or against a limited AI.  By Limited, I mean you’ll wind up fighting Trundle Bot more often than you care to count.

A neat game with a built-in progression in the form of talent-like ‘Masteries’ and Runes.  Fights earn you points, points you spend on runes or permanently unlocking Champions.

The only downside to the game in general I found is that if you like say Lulu (this adorably random fae sorceress with her faerie companion) and want to play her all the time you can buy her either with points purchased from real money or with earned points.  But if you enter a match with another person who has Lulu and wants to use her, it’s first-come first serve and you’re likely out of luck.

The upside is that you can usually find a range of Champions that meet your play style or interests.  It does require some research both in-game and out.

I like the game and I’d recommend it to a few of my friends, but I’m hard-pressed to begin comparing it.  That’s the problem with cornerstone games.  You use them to describe other games, but how do you sum up quickly the game that forms the corner?  Try it, it’s free.  Also one of these premises where if you note me as your referrer then I get bonus points.  I never turn down bonus points.  EgoProvince is my handle in-game.

Portal 2

Went from “Haven’t played at all” to “Fully beat the multiplayer portion” inside of six or so hours.  Not terribly long, the puzzles tricky but not impossible in complexity.  A fun romp and fortunately if you want more there are some quality user-generated maps out there.  Not a game I’d recommend to everyone, as this game has the power to induce motion sickness.  It did to me the first time I watched.

Crimson Alliance

I picked this up last summer during XBox’s Summer of Arcade or there abouts.  A cheap little arcade excursion you buy access to the game through purchasing one of the class packs.  For 10 bucks I got the three classes available.  After that it’s a skill-based button smasher with 4 or 5 hours of content.  I’ve given it more than that, as I pursue higher scores and try to perfect my technique.  It really shines when you have more people and are able to employ strategies beyond dodge, slashslashslash, dodge.

City of Heroes

I’m eagerly awaiting Guild Wars 2 and at present CoH is the only game I have access to that really scratches a particular adventurous itch I have.  But I haven’t played since around January this year and though the game is Free to Play I haven’t felt the interest.  I was reminded at the end of my vacation as I tried to login several times and was turned away by the low-grade textures and the stiff animations.  It’s showing it’s age.  If I weren’t looking at prettier, smoother, more refined games in my near future I might look past the failings.

I do eke out some measure of reward from CoH, it’s not without it’s merits.  It’s one of the few places you can build a team of -anyone- and get stuff done.  Full team of Blasters, check.  Totally doable.  Full team of Tankers? Yeah, slow but manageable.  Full team of Controllers? Yeah, I hear of those regularly.  It’s been descibed to me as MMO on training wheels.  And I rather agree to a point.  There’s room for deep technical builds in the mechanic they use, but right out of the box it’s the easiest MMO I’ve ever played.  Yes, even easier than WoW.  Not to say faster, but certainly easy to pick up a character and ride all the way to 50 without knowing what you’re doing.

Unfortunately, for all my time with City of Heroes I’m afraid I may be soon for retirement and never going back.  Only time will really tell.

EPIC SPELL WARS OF THE BATTLE WIZARDS: DUEL AT MT. SKULLZFYRE

Ridiculous and quick to play, this is a card game I picked up a month or two ago and it took me this long to find someone to play with.  It’s great.  I’m just going to say that.  It’s easy to play, the mechanics are simple and it goes fairly fast once you have the basics under your feet.  Much like Robo Rally, you can lose your footing pretty fast as I had to give up a precious artifact to my opponent what cost me the game.  Sad times, but such is the way of things when you bargain with dark powers and throw hastily constructed spells back and forth.

Totally a beer and pretzels game and easily increased fun as you add additional players.

Hunter Prey

A movie in the style of Enemy Mine about some aliens tracking an escaped prisoner after their ship crashes.  The audio is tricky at the start as they were helmets and are semi hard to understand.  Don’t fret, you aren’t missing much as I was able to keep up with the plot through to the end.

Conan: the Barbarian (2011)

I like it, but I’ve been a fan of Conan since the original movie with the Governator.  My only complaint against the movie is that the evil witch-daughter really needed to use more of that magic she was huffing earlier in the film.

Sneakers

A relaxing film about some computer nerds and espionage.  It’s relatively quiet and I spent Monday night curled up on the couch nursing a headache while I watched this for my third or fourth time.

Closing Comments

And that concludes my Summer Vacation.  Seven days of games, pizza, soda and sleepless nights.  See you all next time!

-Mercator

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Personal Journal

Published July 19, 2012 by Leprekawn

I had the dream again.. I was standing in a desert, sand as white as snow and sparkling under the noonday sun.  My mouth parched from thirst, my feet sore from walking, my mind tired from the journey.

In the distance I could see a city who’s name I knew not.  Surely, this was the Crystal Desert yet no cities were known within it’s depths.

And it ends as quickly as it begins but I’m left with a terrible thirst each time.

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On Superheroes – DC Comics

Published July 17, 2012 by Leprekawn

I commented recently on my preference regarding Batman yet I find I failed to illustrate my higher ranked alternatives.  I claimed three of them and three I have.

Wonder Woman

Metaplot discussions of DC heroes can’t go far before you start comparing them to Grecian Heros and Gods of which WW is part and parcel.  A Wonder Woman movie would be an adventure of empowerment and general ass-kickery spared the glamorous sparkle of outrageous special effects.

Green Lantern

But none of this Hal Jordan trounces the Yellow Curse crap.  No sir.  I want the post-recruitment Hal Jordan, making a name for himself and saving the day.  Give us the showdown between Sinestro and GL, a knock-down, drag-out fight between two ring packing dudes with serious Alpha Dog attitudes.  Save the Yellow Curse for another movie.

Super Man

One of those characters you can’t help but have heard the background for about a dozen times.  I never read Superman comics, I thought he was boring.  What I did appreciate was the few comics where he’s battling other brilliantly evil badasses from other planets/dimensions.  Give us the Brainiac story, or perhaps Darkseid.  We -know- where Superman came from, we know his weakness.  We KNOW Lex Luthor is evil.  Give up, those stories are done.  We need to see one of the less discussed and showcased villains get some screen time.

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Shadowrun, a GM perspective

Published July 17, 2012 by Leprekawn

I love being a GM.  I truly do.  I enjoy playing on occasion, but if you ask my girlfriend I make a horrible Player.  I much prefer to run things.

Very few things satisfy like the ability to incite panic and mayhem.  A well coordinated team will have a plan inside of 10 minutes and follow through.  A less-coordinated team will fiddle with the details for a while before eventually falling back onto the Run and Gun approach.

We’re taking a brief hiatus from the plot and the game in general while one of my players is out of town.  During this time I’ve offered them a chance to change characters.  Having planted the seed of possibilities, I wait to see what kind of wondrous options arise.

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Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning

Published July 12, 2012 by Leprekawn

I have an unusually hard time verbalizing the name of this game.  As though the mashing of words is an archaic tongue-twister.

As I play I keep making comparisons to other games it seems to have borrowed from.  Many good ideas revised slightly and remixed into an interesting RPG experience.  If i had to compare it to three games in particular I’d have to say: World of Warcraft, Fable and Darksiders.

The art style is bright and varied, the faerie forest is vibrant while the obligatory spider forest is darker.  It has an animated styling reminiscent of cartoons much like World of Warcraft or Darksiders which I prefer over the hyper realistic styling of Dragon’s Dogma and other games.  There’s only so much gritty grey and brown I can stare at before I start to long for flowery fields and brightly decorated dungeons.

You take the role of the ever-silent protagnist in talking scenes as you ask questions and persuade uncertain villagers.  While your opponents appear to have full voice dialog, you are sadly silent through any of the exchanges.  Rarely a cry of pain or a grunt of exertion.  One place I thought this could have been a lot better and likely would have been given more time.

The plot if fairly contrived as are most games, where the protagonist is that one person ruled by exception.  Though not as bad as some games <cough> Fable 3 <cough>.  Though it’s not nearly as linear as other games and so I was able to wander in the woods for nearly three hours last night before I decided it was time to move on.  In that time I completed five quests, joined a Fae house and enlisted in a mercenary company.

Combat isn’t as fluid as I’d love to see, but still varied enough that I can blend magic and swordplay around a bowyer, should i like.  Personally I’m banking on the Battlemage as I’d like to see this “Blink” power they’re advertising in action.  Combat is largely driven by conventional attacks, special abilities and spells.  Varying your attacks can net you bonus experience and periodically you can unleash a ‘fateshift’ where you move faster than your foes and can eliminate them in a Finisher that provides bonus xp.  I just use the power to put the hurt on particularly hard bosses.

The world is expansive looking with little nooks and crannies filled with loot, hidden chests, secret doors, pickable flowers for alchemy and a host of side quests.  Some of the quests come from a discarded note you might find in the town graveyard and another from a wandering wolf-turned-man.

KoA:R (as it’s known) is an interesting gem worthy of giving a play through.  I’d immediately recommend it if you like RPGs and need something to do with the rest of your summer.  It doesn’t appear to be a brief adventure, though I’m having fun.

 

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Secret World

Published July 3, 2012 by Leprekawn

The Secret World launched today, July 3rd.  I don’t plan on playing what with Guild Wars 2 around the corner and other reasons.  Those reasons being a standing World of Darkness game on Friday nights with my girl and a friend.  Though, if i didn’t have a running WoD game, I’d largely view Secret World as a great analog to some of the ideas.

If i do play, it will be after a requisite 3 months.  This is the minimum bar for any MMORPG that comes out.  This clears several key problems in new MMO properties: The Wave, The Bugs, The Game.

The Wave – Every MMO gets played by a number of people.  The question is how fast they digest the content and move on.  Ever been to a new restaurant in your area?  Even something as rudimentary as Krispy Kreme can draw lines for days on end leaving you with very rare opportunities to visit the new operation.  You see the same phenomenon in MMO’s where hundreds or thousands of players will assault the hapless rats gathered at the gates of the newly envisioned castles and will proceed to pick clean the questing fields of their native berries and wolf pelts.  If you wait a week, you see less of them.

The longer you wait, the smaller the number of people dwindles to a mere shadow of it’s former chaos.  World of Warcraft is a prime example.  Even in this day, some ten years after it’s release you’ll find people rolling new characters or progressing through the quest content at their own speed.

The Bugs – Every game, console or PC, suffers from bugs at launch.  It’s inevitable.  What surprises me is the Beta-Version experience.  Many games are left in a semi-unfinished state left for the eager fanbase to discover what game breaking imbalances or bugs ruin the experience.

It almost never rewards a player to pick up an MMO in the first two weeks.  My first week with EVE Online was met with frequent crashes.  I docked, crash.  I undock, crash.  I could fly around for minutes or hours without issue, but the moment I touch a station to escape or enter the cold vacuum of space – BOOM – Down goes the client.

The Game – Every game comes out with a laundry list of visions and ideas they hope and hoped to achieve.  Almost no MMO achieves the full list.  This gets whittled down over time and development, changed from broad strokes to smaller more precise ideas.

In some cases classes get rebuilt, powers redefined, environments revised.  Few games do this often, World of Warcraft one of the few that regularly changes how the various classes play and one of my chief arguments against playing for any lengthy period of time.

The Solution – So my solution in all it’s simplicity is merely to wait.  I wait roughly 3 months, see what comes down the line.  See if a game falters radically, collapsing under the weight of it’s lofty but unmanageable ideals.  A significant number of players will pick up a game for it’s included complimentary period, a commitment of purchase but not one of subscription.  I’ve done this myself, interested to see how a game pans out but disinterested after the experience.  Much like a trial period only significantly more expensive in the case of new games.

So in this endeavor I dodge a horde of new players competing for the same resources, I escape game and character breaking bugs and I get to see what gets added in post-launch.  It’s not foolproof.  City of Heroes radically altered power structure several months after launch.  Enough so that while I like the new changes, I’d rather have not been around before hand.

With all that in mind, I -will- be playing Guild Wars 2 at launch and I welcome anyone who cares to come join me.  Send me an email and I’ll coordinate server/guild information.

-Mercator

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Last of Us

Published June 29, 2012 by Leprekawn

Once upon a time I didn’t have a PS3.  I didn’t care for Sony’s elitist objectives of owning whatever market they delved into.  I watched them sink Betamax in favor of their cheaper VHS, they suckered me in with the failed Minidisc and frankly I still think HD DVD should have won the war.  I mean, where Porn goes the world follows right? Right!?

Anyways, I didn’t have a PS3, I didn’t care.  Some games came out, some were hailed as ‘good’ and others less-so.  I still didn’t care.  And then something changed.  What was it.. oh right, I played Little Big Planet.  I fucking loved it.

So I got a PS3, my first game? Little Big Planet, of course.  But my second was Uncharted less than a month before Uncarted 2.  This is where i’m going to tell you Uncharted is a great series and worth playing or at least watching.  There’s a labor of love in how they made the game with all the little details that we’d normally take for granted.

Naughty Dog, the developer, is hard at work on the next project which I understand is carrying along a lot of the finer details they learned in their first few games.  Telling the story of a world post-apocalypse through two characters: An older seasoned man and a younger inexperienced girl.

Unfortunately there isn’t much to see or read at this stage, but that doesn’t mean what they’ve produced isn’t good.  In fact, what I’ve seen is quite excellent.  With an excellent track record I easily rank this one as a must have.

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Here we are, one year later..

Published June 28, 2012 by Leprekawn

So.. it’s been a year.  I find myself in a strange level of contemplation.  My domain renewal comes up and while I fully intend to renew I have begun to wonder if perhaps I’m not advertising enough.  But do I post enough to advertise?  Do I care enough to post?

Aside from renewal several other events have appeared on my radar in just the last week or two.

July 3rd – Amazing Spider-Man.  An excellent looking reboot taking us to Peter’s science background and the Lizard.  I really appreciate them trying to reboot the series and give us a different spin.  Hopefully it works, Spider Man 3 was terrible.

July 20th – Batman: The Dark Knight Rises, fully on my radar but a solid ‘meh’.  I’ve never been the biggest fan of the Bane storyline and Batman falls a solid fourth on my list of DC heroes I’d love to see filmed or even serialized in television.

August 28th – Guild Wars 2 releases.  I’ll begin my character-driven writing project found elsewhere on this site.

September 18th – Borderlands 2, which I’ll be pre-ordering any day now.

My summer is a vast desert of time dotted with moments of Awesome before being swathed in emptiness while I wait for my precious games to release.  Meanwhile I’m watching companies crank out bad media left and right.

SimCity Social is like all the other Facebook Social games where you don’t actually play a game.  You just click along every x minutes to collect money/resources.  I play them as much as I play any of them, for a few weeks before I get frustrated at a walled progress behind a limit of actions per hour and social impetus.  Most my FB friends don’t play the games and what few games ‘they’ play, I mostly don’t.  C’est la vie.

EVE Online continues to catch my attention and receive my token subscription.  All I’ve done in the last few months is train skills, something I might change up here in a few weeks, if only to stretch my spacing legs and do a mission or two.

I’m still playing Dragon’s Dogma, having started for a third time and settled on Mystic Knight, i’m happily taking my time with quests and various monster hunting pursuits.  Soon as I finish it this time I’m going to settle in for Dead Rising 2: Off the Record.  I’m probably over a year behind on playing through but I find some things are better savored at the right time.  I need to put some time with Batman: Arkham City, I haven’t spent more than 4 hours with it since it came out.  I’ve been shamefully neglectful.

What little fanbase I have, I appreciate you.  All of you.  I don’t look at my metrics because I don’t believe knowing who or how many people visit would alter my perspective.  Until next time friends.

-Mercator

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Fez (the game, not the hat or the country)

Published June 13, 2012 by Leprekawn

Googling this game can be rather challenging.

Fez is a platform puzzle game unlike any I’ve encountered yet.  You have a 2D perspective on a world you can rotate to walk around walls or circumvent the distance between platforms.  This leads to some devious maps and objectives I’ve yet to complete.

This is a game I’m taking my time with, the map is expansive, the locations sprawling and the design beautiful.  There isn’t a monster to stomp on, no boss fight to mark my passage.  Just spinning golden bits to collect.

And to top it off, there are hidden puzzles that don’t immediately present themselves to you or offer suggestions to their key.

It’s casual, it’s involved and I find it an excellent intellectual alternative to any of the more violent games at my disposal.  In fact, when the challenge and death involved in Dragon’s Dogma start to rub me raw, I swap games and let my brain wind itself around the puzzles in Fez for a while.

A great game for anyone looking for a brain-involved platformer.

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