Anjasaurus

Pokémon SoulSilver

I thought I’d add a bit more about Pokémon Soulsilver, since I’m so caught in it. I’m not sure what makes Silver/SS so different from the other Pokemon games, but there is something about it. Maybe it’s balanced in a better way, or a way that suits me better?

In any case, the remake is quite true to the original, but as I said before, the graphics are better and it’s rebalanced too. They also introduced a new Safari Zone, at least I can’t remember such a cool system for Silver. It’s huge and has customizable areas, kind of. One of the things I enjoy the most in the games is catching new Pokemon, so Safari Zone is naturally one of my favourite areas :)

So far, I’ve played through most of Johto. Between Johto and Kanto there’s the Elite Four, and I’m not looking forward to it. It has been stopping me in the last two or three Pokemon games, I just don’t feel like training as much as I need to in order to win. But this time I might :)

If you’ve not played Pokemon in a while, or haven’t tried at all, I would definitely recommend getting Heartgold or Soulsilver!

Gamer rebirth

I think my love for gaming has been resurrected lately, which makes me really happy :)

First, my sister bought me Pokemon Soulsilver. Silver was and still is my favourite Pokemon game, so I’m really enjoying playing it again. The graphics are nicely remade, staying true to the Pokemon theme but still a bit more colorful and pretty than the original. I think they’ve balanced it slightly too, it feels even more streamlined. I’ll write more in Pokemon later :)

Secondly, I’ve bought a Wii. Since I worked a lot this spring, I got a quite nice pay. So I decided I deserved something fun and a black Wii was my decision. It came in a bundle with the two sports games plus Super Mario Galaxy 2. I thought Galaxy might be too much of an adventure game for me, but I really enjoy it so far :)

Yay games!

Guild Wars and Guild Wars 2: The elementalist and repetition

This is the third and final part of my “series” of Guild Wars posts. I’m sure there will be lots more about GW2 as soon as more information is revealed, but this is a summary for now. I’ve discussed the skill system and the weapons and combat, and I’m both positive and negative about GW2. Some things feel new and fresh, some feel like natural developments of earlier techniques and details, and some things feel like a (tiny) step in the wrong direction. This last post will be about another step where I’ve felt ANet has moved in the wrong direction, or rather, not moved at all.

The first article detailing a profession described the elementalist. A well known profession for GW enthusiasts and a standard in role playing games. That’s one negative right there. There’s nothing new and exciting about the elementalist, it is a mage attuned to elements of nature, in this case fire, air, earth and water. Just like GW1. It is disappointing that the elementalist profession hasn’t evolved in over 250 years, as one would imagine Asura elementalists would be common, and the Asura seem to be very keen on development and experimenting. How does this work, lorewise? Are the elements the same they have always been, is that it? We can’t know ANet’s reasons (at least not at this time) but it is odd.

What is even more odd is how the use of elements has not changed a single bit, and even the skill names and functions are similar. Fire is high power, area of effect, while water is movement control… Where did I hear this before? In every role playing game you say? Of course, that could be called a reason to stay with it. I call it a bad reason, because there is nothing stopping you from being innovative. I don’t want to “know” how to play the elementalist right from the start, I want to learn.

What is added though, is the effect your attunement has to your surroundings. A very nice detail, showing how attuned you are to the element, but it is not enough to kill the feeling of boredom I get when reading about the elementalist. Oh, and the lack of clothes for the human female while the male character gets a robe is very original.

ArenaNet, I’m not impressed. Bring on some more interesting professions now.

On a less negative note, some links

Guild Wars and Guild Wars 2: Weapons and combat

Last time, I wrote a bit about my hesitation over the new skill system ArenaNet will introduce with GW2, and I ended with a wish that they will somehow remove my doubts before launch. On the topic of combat and weapons, on the other hand, I’m much more positive.

The first article, which mainly detailed the skill system, also discussed some parts of the combat system, mainly skill effects and how they interact with eachother. What I found really interesting is the idea of putting up a fire wall, and then shoot your projectiles through this fire wall. Tadaa, burning projectiles. This makes the magic feel more real, even though I’m sure your own team will never be affected by the wall. This example is unfortunately repeated throughout both articles, so we never get to see other versions of this environmental combat change, but I trust ArenaNet to have nice surprises in store for us.

What is also very positive is the goal that the area of effect of a skill should be visually obvious, and every skill should be identifiable by it’s visual animation. GW1 had some issues, mainly with area of effect, where you had to learn exactly how many millimeters of your aggro bubble each skill covered. Of course, the visual effects will also be appealing because they are beautiful, but every new game strives to be more beautiful than those before, so the actual function of the visuals is more interesting. A skill effect in GW2 will be more than a pretty animation, it seems, and I think it’s a good… I shouldn’t say change, but move.

The second article gives more detail about the weapon types available in GW2. Included are of course the standard axes, hammers, swords, bows and staves. What stands out though is the inclusion of more “modern” type weapons like pistols and rifles. I’m not sure this is a good move, but it’s too early to say. Bringing in modern weapons immediately brings the game closer to our world, and a bit out of the fantasy realm, at least in my book. Guild Wars is many things, and it has a really nice story, but I have never considered it a game or universe where human modern weapons would fit. The development is mainly driven by the Charr and the Asura, while the humans are engaged in a civil war. Why would these non-humans develop rifles, and decidedly human invention? While I’m sceptical, it might also add variation and fun elements to the game, and the lore and explanations behind the use of guns might be better than I expect.

Even more intriguing is the use of environmental weapons. This is nothing new of course, but it seems to have been developed from GW1′s quite uninteresting carrying of a magic torch (and similar) to actual weapons, and the possibility of several uses for each item. I imagine being able to infuse magic onto an item as an elementalist and then being able to use this item in combat, and this sounds interesting! As long as we don’t need to buy stones by the hundreds at merchants to power the best elementalist skill, like ammunition.

In conclusion, I feel a lot more positive about the weapons and combat than about the skill system, even though the guns cloud the sky a little. I think ArenaNet are heading in the right general direction here. :)

Links

Guild Wars and Guild Wars 2: Background and skills

ArenaNet has started a viral campaign, meant to link Guild Wars with Guild Wars 2. In short, it involves the White Mantle and the Shining Blade competing for power over Kryta. (For more information on the story and campaign itself, wiki is a good source.)

As I loved Guild Wars, naturally this campaign has sparked my interest. We have talked about, longed for and discussed Guild Wars 2 for ages, it seems, and finally things are starting to happen. We see parts of the events leading up to the sequel, 250 years after we “leave” Tyria and Guild Wars, and we also get to see what the developers are capable of.

I guess I don’t have to tell you I’m overexcited and I can’t wait to get to try out Guild Wars 2 for real! But, of course there are buts. I’ve been reading the articles posted about GW2 over the last week, and I have mixed feelings. The design goals for GW2, mentioned in interviews and in the Design Manifesto posted on the ArenaNet blog, are not what puts me off. Instead, it’s the specifics mentioned in the more detailed articles posted on the GW2 site, especially the ones on skills, weapons and the elementalist. This post will mainly be about skills and the skill system, as I would otherwise end up with Postus Giganticus.

The skill bar will be expanded, from the eight skill slots of GW1, to ten. But, only five of these are “players’ choice”. The first five are determined by your weapon and your profession. This is probably to help us, so we will be able to use more than one weapon without having to rework our entire skill bar during combat, but it also limits our choices. We have yet to see how this works out, it might be well thought through and there might even be choices to make in these five slots. But saying “we give you a skill bar of ten skill slots, although five of these the game picks for you” is weird. Why not give us a skill bar of five and use som other term for the first five.

Secondly, out of the five that are supposedly the player’s choice, one slot is a dedicated healing slot, and one slot is a dedicated elite skill slot. Yea, this will probably help new players a lot, no doubt, but where is choice? Out of ten skill slots, we actually have a real choice for three of them. Yay?

Guild Wars was famous for its builds and skill sets, and some might say infamous. The community has been very good at finding odd combinations and perfecting them, and sometimes exploiting game mechanics while doing so. It was the team’s choice to bring a dedicated healer, or let everyone bring a healing skill, depending on the environment or just the flavour of the month. Now, ArenaNet has chosen to force a healing skill onto every skill bar. I’m not sure this is a good choice, it will streamline and introduce the game better to new players, but it will limit creativity in a way Guild Wars never did. There are other ways to help new players, I’m sure. And the same is true for elite skills. In GW1, some builds didn’t even need an elite skill to work perfectly. Sure, those builds were few, but they existed.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m still excited about GW2, I really am. I’m just not as excited as I could have been, and I will elaborate more in coming posts. Hopefully, ArenaNet will be able to turn my doubts into excitement before the beta arrives :)

Links

Anno 1404

My sister has been talking about this new game she loves, Anno 1404. I didn’t think much about it until I saw her playing when we were both home for Christmas. It looked a bit live Civ, but less strict and more fun.

I got to try it on her laptop, and I was hooked. It is so addictive! It’s not very innovative or anything, it’s just simple and fun. You build your own “empire” starting on a small island building resources and expanding as you need new resources and more space. There are two areas, the Occident and the Orient. The Occident is like Europe or North America, and this is where you start. Later you can expand into the Orient, and this is needed to develop your empire.

It was really cheap on CDON (Swedish web music/film/game shop) so I ordered and it arrived this Friday (8/1). I’ve been playing over 10 hours since then. Simply addictive!

Gaming and reading

My interest for stories, reading and gaming has been renewed, I think partly due to discussing it more with friends. I also had a bit of a dip in my Aion experience, feeling left out of my guild. I gathered up some courage and posted on the forum about it, and voila!, everything is fine, more or less.

Aion is grindy, there’s no point in denying it, but I’m trying to find my place in the grind and enjoying it in my own way. I enjoy the social parts way too much to drop the game, the community and chat is 50% of my gaming. Hopefully I’ll find good friends in this guild, and find a wiki-like community to join in with.

I’ve also tried Dragon Age recently, and it has a play style I’m not really used to from any other game (I know I’m a bad geek for not having played Baldur’s Gate or NWN). The first tutorial is including a lot of information and I got confused and tired quite fast. It will get another chance though, once I can convince myself to take time off studying and Aion.

One of my friends just bought the New Super Mario for Wii, and it sounds great! Every now and then I really wish I had a Wii. But on the other hand, I am a social gamer and I would never play it without friends.. I’m frustrated, there are so many games I want to play and so little time!

Fan art for games

The winners of the Halloween Art Contest for Guild Wars were just announced, and I’m amazed. People are so creative, dedicated and skillful. Art is not something I generally care about, it’s pretty but I don’t know much more, but art revolving around my favourite games, stories and film are something special, since it also ties to something familiar and known. And something I love.

Just look at this amazing piece:

Leon Of Troy
Art made by Leon Of Troy.

Impressions of Aion, three weeks after release

Aion was officially released on 25 September in Europe, with the headstart for the preorderers starting at the 22nd already. So, depending on if you preordered or not, we have now been able to play Aion for a full three or four weeks.

I must say, Aion has not made a great first impression. Not because it’s a bad game, not at all, but the queues and lag makes the gaming experience less than optimal. For the first two weeks it was more or less impossible for a casual gamer to play, since the queues ran up to 2 hours as early as 18:00. This has now been solved by adding new servers, and the queues definitely seem to be gone. Instead, last week, we were given sick lagspikes of 30-60 seconds. It came to the point where you would kill a monster, go into town and by the time you reached your warehouse (storage/bank), then you would start taking damage. Luckily, this lag wasn’t around for too long, and the problems seems to have disappeared now.

Reading all this, you would probably assume I don’t like Aion. But I do. My evenings are usually quite busy, but since I’m studying, I have odd times off when I can play. This means I could play off peak time, and avoid some queues. I also want to give Aion the chance it deserves, and not discard it because of server problems at release, a lot of good games had that.

I’ve only reached level 21 so far, with most of my legion (guild) being in the 30s-40s, so no group play for me yet. I’m sure they would join and help me with the earlier group quests if I just asked, but I am mainly a solo player who loves group/legion chat. The path to lvl 21 has been quite enjoyable so far, in a stereotypical MMO way. Aion really feels like a stereotypical MMO, but really there’s nothing wrong with that. Not for me, I’ve never played one seriously. Crafting is quite unexciting, the usual “buy mats and grind” type, it’s the kind of items you can make that might make it stand out a bit. You can actually make useful stuff, as long as you spend money and time on keeping up with your level. Leveling is killing monbs and questing, so far. Not until level 25 can I join what is so typical for Aion, the Abyss with PvP and PvPvE questing, hunting and fighting. This is my next goal, and I need to reach it before I can fully evaluate Aion. :)

A new Aion Beta

There’s a new Aion Beta weekend coming up, starting tomorrow night at nine (CEST). This time the level cap will be 30 (I will never reach that..) but the biggest change is that they’ve added English voices. This means that tutorial videos, cinematics and NPC voices will be available, which is awesome. I didn’t think it would make a big difference, but when I’ve listened to the different voice samples posted on twitter, I feel the game will feel more alive and real with those voices. So I’m really looking forward to beta testing this weekend!

Since I’m an armor nerd, I’ve spent some time at forums trying to find armor screenshots, and there really is a lot to see. Aion’s armor system is a bit similar to Guild Wars’, in that you can combine looks and stats in a way that you want, instead of being forced to wear one kind of armor due to its better stats. I like this, since it means you can find your favourite looks and then strive to find the stats for it, which are copied from items you find.

Just look at some of the armor screenshots :)

Asmodian Robe Elyos Robe Asmodian Chain Elyos Leather
(found at Aionsource)