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Marvel Heroes Early Impressions

June 6, 2013 by 9 Comments
Marvel Heroes Video Memory Fix

Crashes make GRAEV SMASH!

After only a few hours in Marvel Heroes, I find myself experiencing mixed emotions. On one hand I like how well Marvel fits the action rpg genre, similar to the Marvel Ultimate Alliance style.  On the other hand, Marvel Heroes is really unoptimized, and suffers from a ton of performance issues;  Graev is experiencing a ton of crashes, and we’re both getting a lot of lag when there are lots of players on the screen at once.

I’m also torn by the ‘MMO’ aspect of Marvel Heroes.  Imagine playing Diablo without joining different games.  Instead, the entire game is simply lobbied.  In fact, think about the way SWTOR handles their world, make it an isometric action rpg, and you have Marvel Heroes.  It works from a ‘hey cool I have people to play with’ point of view, and there’s a certain comfort I get from having other people playing around me, but I also hate seeing 30 Hawkeyes running around, or watching as it takes 50 heroes to take on Venom.  I think I would have preferred a traditional action RPG where I make a room and people can join.

Gameplay is fun.  I like the talent trees, unlocking abilities, and smashing tons of street thugs who explode with loot has always satisfied me.  We’re still so early in the game that it’s hard to comment much further.  I think I’ve played enough to know that there’s enough fun to keep exploring if any only if Graev can overcome these issues he’s having with the game running out of video memory. If anyone finds a Marvel Heroes video memory fix please let us know.

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Neverwinter Impressions

May 2, 2013 by 35 Comments

Neverwinter officially entered public “open beta” yesterday.  It might as well be called launch because everyone can get in, and characters won’t be deleted.  I jumped in and began my foray into the Sword Coast as a Half-Elf Devoted Cleric.

Neverwinter Sword Coast

The world is traversed by clicking on a new location and instantly traveling there.

I’m disappointed by the gameplay.  Everything feels like it boils down to mass mob slaying.  Everywhere I go there are clusters of 3-5 mobs a level above me that I just nuke down in seconds.  AoE’ing packs of mobs and doing nothing but slaughtering bandits, rats people, skeletons, etc., eventually (read: quickly) gets old.

So far leveling has been a quest grind.  Kill 12 mobs, sample the sludge, go burn some crates, go to this sewer and slaughter your way through it mindlessly until you get to the end then come back for some experience and silver.  Killing the mobs is fun at times; I like the aiming mechanic, although I hate my cleric’s spear spam ability. Playing one of the 2-handed warrior guys was a lot of fun swinging my axe around.  There’s no auto attacking, and everything is ability/click activated. Combat feels solid. really connected, and smooth.  If you can find a class you like I can’t imagine there being many reasons to dislike combat.

Neverwinter MMO

Player-made content, group content, and events make Neverwinter a content-rich experience.

The world is really truncated/disconnected because of the instancing.  That’s not to say it visually looks bad, or that it doesn’t have a nice atmosphere.  All of the zones I’ve been in are really pretty, and the art style is pleasant.  I don’t like being in City 1 or 46, or clicking on a door and teleporting to a location that I wish I could walk to and see a world.

Battlegrounds are average.  I’m not a fan of them in any game, but I think WoW does a better job creating a ‘battleground-like’ experience. Neverwinter isn’t a game you play for PvP.

The cash shop is… well, a cash shop.  There are mounts, bags, potions, clothes, companions, progression items, and the typical F2P offerings.  I don’t have an opinion of the cash shop other than my own personal belief that with a cash shop no game can ever exceed the limitations imposed upon it by having one.

Neverwinter Keen

AoEing mobs on my Cleric.

One feature that I really, really like is the player-made content.  In a game like this, being able to run quests made by other players is a nice touch.  I ran a few quests earlier which had like 10,000+ reviews.  Players can rate the content and even leave a comment.  I think this makes perfect sense for a content-grind game.  The content integrates nicely with Neverwinter, and coming in at 20-30 minutes each (the ones I did) they were a really nice change from the 1-5 minute quests I grind from NPCs.

I can see some fun clearing dungeons with friends, and as I said before the combat is fun, but it feels more like an Action-RPG or a game that shouldn’t be called a MMO.  Suddenly when I think about Neverwinter as a game that isn’t a MMO, I can forgive the disconnected world.  After all, Neverwinter Nights is the same way.  Action-RPG’s are all about slaughtering massive waves of mobs.  But it’s not being marketed as an Action-RPG, and there is an extremely tedious and generic quest grind.

Neverwinter isn’t a horrible game, but I can’t see it being more than a short-term, generic jump-in for free and kill some time game.

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Soul Sacrifice Demo – How Demos Should be

April 23, 2013 by 4 Comments

Soul Sacrifice DemoRecently the last bit of my willpower eroded away and I found myself with a brand new PS Vita. There were several different factors that drew me to the system but chief among them was Soul Sacrifice. The game doesn’t actually release until the 30th but there is already a fantastic demo available that shows off several of the game’s key features.

Soul Sacrifice is Action RPG where you take up the role of a Sorcerer and run through various missions killing monsters. That kind of makes it sound like Monster Hunter, but it really isn’t. There are several different kinds of spells that you can utilize and they can do anything from shooting projectiles, shielding you, healing you (and others), and onto more basic combat stuff like combo attacks, dodging, etc. Say you pick the Giant’s Arm spell… After you active it your right arm turns into a huge fist and you get to pummel guys. There is lots of cool stuff like this.

One of the more fascinating aspects of the game comes from the title itself — Sacrifice. When you defeat a creature or boss you can choose to either save it or sacrifice it. Doing the former raises your Life level (defense) and while the latter raises your Magic level(attack). The max level in the game is 100  (I think. It’s 20 in the demo.) and you can get there with any combination of the two. People that want to play a support role might go more into Life while others may opt to be more of a glass cannon and pump Magic. In addition to sacrificing monsters you can active black rites which essentially sacrifice parts of your body to perform powerful magic attacks. In the demo you can perform Infernus and offer up your skin to blast the area with a huge fire attack. The downside to doing this is that now you’re body is scorched and your defense it halved. It’s a really neat system and I can’t wait to see how it gets further utilized in the full game.

In addition to single player offerings you can do various online missions. The demo contains four and pits you against some of the game’s fascinating monster bosses. The saving and sacrifice system also plays an important role in online games. When you or a teammate is on the ground dying you get the choice to either save the person by offering up some of your own life, thereby getting them back in the fight, or sacrificing them to perform a powerful attack. If you get sacrificed you stay as a spirit of sorts for the rest of the mission, but you can still be of help.  You can see the health of the boss and by utilizing the touch screen you can boost the attacks of your allies or lower the defense of the monsters. Sure some asshole might sacrifice you even if you don’t want him to, but what can you do? Actually, opting to be sacrificed makes sense in a lot of situations. Say the boss is on his last leg… Getting sacrificed can do a lot of damage and finish him off. Plus, getting sacrificed also nets you some bonus points and martyr rewards at the end of a mission so it isn’t as bad a thing as you’d think. I’ve actually asked to be sacrificed more than once.

It’s a fascinating game and I can’t wait to get my hands on the full version. The demo completely sold me on the game and I think that it has to be the best demo I’ve ever played. Not only does it contain the first chapter of the game but also 4 online missions. You can get up to a combined level of 20 and collect and upgrade the spells available and transfer all of your progress into the full version of the game. Regardless of how you feel about Soul Sacrifice, this is how all demos should be done.

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To be, or not to be, MMO

March 26, 2013 by 11 Comments

This past weekend I spent my time playing in a couple of beta tests for upcoming MMOs.  I kept having the same recurring thoughts: Should these be called MMOs?  Should they be marketed as MMOs?  Wouldn’t they do so much better and garner more public favor if they were presented to players in a different light?

Take Defiance for example.  I think it’s a really fun game.  Trion is billing Defiance as a massively multiplayer game.  Sure, Defiance could be construed as an MMO, but I think calling it something else may be better.  The console market doesn’t really like MMOs all that much, and the MMO market doesn’t really tolerate games which loosely conform to their impossible-to-meet standards.   Defiance feels more like an online version of Borderlands 2.  Just the feel of the game alone resembles an action game, a shooter game, and coop experience.

Neverwinter is another example.  Neverwinter feels like an action-rpg closer to Diablo than a MMO.  The combat is action packed.  The gameplay reminds me of a dungeon crawl experience I might find in Baldur’s Gate Dark Alliance or, like I mentioned before, Diablo.

There may be a lot of players running around alongside me when I play a game like Neverwinter or Defiance, but those players aren’t what make the experience for me.  I could be playing with a group of 5 or 6 people tops and get the same satisfaction.

Not being MMO isn’t a failing; my gosh it might even be a compliment.  Marketing Defiance as a typical MMO, instead of the next evolution of RPG shooters sorta sets the wrong expectations.  The MMO crowd gets confused, and the RPG shooter crowd avoids it.  Neverwinter could be a more persistent evolution of the action RPG instead of a highly instanced, shallow MMO.  Change nothing about either game, but simply alter the way they are presented to set the right expectations.

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