Tyler F.M. Edwards's Blog, page 53

Defiance Revisited

One of the many reasons I am coming to like Shomi more than I liked Netflix is that it has the first two seasons of Defiance in their entirety. I’ve recently finished rewatching them, and I have to say, I enjoyed it a lot.

With the benefit of hindsight, the first season of Defiance is actually a fair bit better than it seemed at first blush. There’s so much foreshadowing and intricacy that I didn’t pick up on the first time.

And of course the second season was always awesome. I do find it very hard watching the scenes with Pottinger knowing what I know now, but I comforted myself with recollections of his ultimate fate.

I’m also struck by what a visually beautiful series Defiance was. The video quality on Showcase’s website was terrible, but Shomi plays it in crystal clear HD, and the special effects turn out to be incredibly good. The Gulanee, in particular, is far more beautiful than I ever realized.

It all got me rather sad about the show’s cancellation.

As I said when the news broke, it’s not so much the show I miss as the world. The show was good, but sometimes hit and miss, and I really don’t agree with the direction they took in the third season.

But the world of Defiance is outstanding. I’m a huge fan of world-building, and Defiance boosts some of the best world-building in the sci-fi genre. There is such unbelievable breadth, depth, and richness to the world of Defiance and its history, from the majestic cruelty of Castithan culture, to the savagery of the New Frontier, to the murky political machinations of the Votanis Collective and the Earth Republic.

I can live without Defiance the show, but Defiance the world is dearly missed.

Yet in this case all is not lost, for the world of Defiance lives on. So at last the time came for me to do something I’ve been talking about for years.

Homecoming:

Yes, I started playing Defiance again. Yuke Liro represent, yo!

At first, it was a joyous reunion. I was really surprised how good it felt to back among the familiar sights and sounds, sniping Dark Matter and blasting Hellbugs again.

One of my biggest regrets from when I played the first time was that I never earned my charge blade. A Castithan without a charge blade — truly I had brought shame upon my Liro.

So my first destination was the Thorn Liro Arena. For some reason I had a reputation booster in my claim items, so I activated it and set about grinding. The arenas were a bit of a baptism by fire after so long away, but it was a good way to relearn the game, and in a short time, I had completed the Thorn Liro story and earned enough reputation to buy myself an epic charge blade.

Let me tell you, charge blades are crazy fun.

Oh, sure, they’re not the most practical weapons in all cases. They’re not recommended for major Arkfalls or other tough content, and there are a lot of bosses where they’re just plain useless, but for everything smaller? Prepare to be a tempest of bladed death, leaping, slashing, and laying waste to all around while reveling in your own reckless fury.

The first thing I did when I got my blade was find a Hellbug event and basically reenact the dinner party scene from season one, with me playing the role of Datak.

Charge blades add a surprising amount of depth to the game, too. They have three separate attacks with different uses, and being melee in a shooter requires a kind of agility and tactical thought that you otherwise wouldn’t need.

After earning my blade, I then became hooked on chain-running Arkfalls. This lasted for a few days. Repetitive or not, Arkfalls can be addictive. Run in, slaughter everything, hoover up loot, and drive off to the next alongside a swarm of other players.* It’s a rush.

*(With San Fransisco by the Mowgli’s playing in my head the whole way, due to the game’s setting and my fondness for headshots.)

Nothing says “I’m a badass” like bringing a knife to a Volge fight

In the space of less than a week, I wager I killed more Volge than Yewll did with the Terrasphere back in the pilot.

Along the way I began to wonder if I hadn’t given Defiance enough credit when I first played. The enemies have more variety and more complex tactics than in most other shooters I’ve played, and the dizzying variety of different weapons keeps things fresh.

The free to play model also remains fairly painless, though they are a little more in your face about advertising the cash shop than they used to be. Also having only two loadout slots did start to get a little bothersome, so I bought another, but it’s not like those are expensive.

At last, the Arkfall train began to lose some luster, so I started to move on to new content. I began with the remaining DLCs, which I bought when I decided to return to the game.

Thus began my troubles.

Hitting the wall:

The Arkbreaker storyline went by well enough. Basic story, but enjoyable.

I did make the mistake of trying to take on an Arkbreak solo afterward. This is not recommended. In this case I was reenacting the Gulanee story from season two, with me playing the role of Churchill. Eventually another player showed up, and we managed to slog through, but you really want to bring a lot of friends for those.

Then came Gunslinger Trials. That DLC’s story arc revolves around a series of arenas, and I simply could not beat the first one.

You see, Defiance is an incredibly grindy game with an absurdly high level cap. However, I had never known it to take its vertical progression very seriously, so I ignored the more dull content and the grindy leveling and just played through the story. And it worked fine. I never had any problems.

Somewhere along the line the developers’ philosophy must have changed. The Gunslinger arenas are clearly tuned around endgame players, and I remain a very low level player. I tried leveling up more and experimenting with different builds, but I was still very far off the mark.

Along the way of trying to improve my character, I also learned expeditions are another thing you’re not meant to solo. The game doesn’t tell you this, of course; if you queue for one in matchmaking, odds are good you’ll be placed into one solo. And don’t let the easy mobs at the start lull you into false confidence. It ends with you exhausting your library of swear words as you spend an hour endlessly kiting an entire Ekaru Kome death squad.

This is what you should not do, so let this be a lesson to you.

So I moved onto the free story updates since I left, which seemed far more interesting and relevant than the Gunslinger arc anyway.

This is where it gets ugly.

The story was great. Defiance’s storytelling is totally unsung, but it’s really among the best in the MMO world. Not The Secret World quality, but still quite strong. The characters are fun and colourful, and there’s no shortage of intrigue, mystery, and excitement.

This story spent a lot of time delving into the history of EGO implants. It turns out to be quite disturbing, and I have a totally different perspective on the perky girl chirping in my head now. Totally different.

I’d never seen EGO mad before. You don’t want the chip in your brain to be mad.

Again, I can’t stress enough — I love the story. It’s not entirely a substitute for season four of the show, but it’s pretty damn close.

Which is why what I have to say next is so painful.

The gameplay of these newer missions is awful. Indescribably awful.

Most of it is just driving back and forth between the same few locations, occasionally fighting mobs along the way. Over and again. Yet even that was ultimately the highlight. There are after all worse fates than driving around the California wilderness in a souped up hotrod, and the new Silicon Valley zone is quite pretty.

The instanced missions, however, are a horror show. Like Gunslinger Trials, they are clearly tuned around endgame players, and would probably be pretty challenging solo even for them. We’re talking dozens of enemies of the strength you’d see in a major Arkfall, all coming at you at once, and in most of these missions you can’t even refill your ammo. That’s nuts.

In the end the only way through most of them was to just accept constant dying and focus on doing some damage in the brief window before each death, gradually wearing the enemy down through constant kamikaze runs. That is precisely as fun as it sounds, which is to say not even remotely.

Yet the story intrigued me enough that I was willing to put up with event that, but as of this this writing, I have finally hit the wall for good. One of the bosses of the final season two mission is simply unbeatable for me. I’m not even close; I die within the first few seconds of the fight, and it heals up whatever little damage I was able to do during the run back.

I simply cannot continue.

It is, again, arguably my own fault for never bothering to level properly, but I simply never had a reason to before now. I feel like I’ve been the victim of a bait and switch.

So I am now left with the choice of giving up on Defiance’s story or grinding a tremendous amount of fairly repetitive content, potentially for weeks.

I really don’t know which I’m going to do. Neither option appeals.

It is the same situation as with the show. Defiance the game is something I can readily live without, but this would mean letting go of Defiance the world for good, and that would be a shame.

Filed under: Games, Misc. Tagged: Defiance, epic nerd rant, sci-fi, TV

The Secret World Resumes Free Trials + Beginner Tips

After doing away with the buddy key system a few weeks ago, The Secret World has now launched a new free trial program. Rather than requiring a referral from someone, anyone can sign up for the new trial immediately, and it now lasts for ten days.

I don’t think you will still get additional free days for completing thirty missions, but you should still get the $10 worth of cash shop points for doing so, I imagine.

I’m posting about this because, in typical Funcom fashion, they have decided to basically not advertise this at all. Increasingly I am convinced that their marketing department consists of a thousand monkeys working at a thousand typewriters — though I doubt they’d spring for that much staff, honestly.

And as I have said countless times before, TSW is an absolutely brilliant game that everyone should try. It has the best story in the MMO world (possibly in all of gaming), unmatched mission design, beautiful graphics, and near limitless build customization.

Beginner tips:

Since the new trial will hopefully lead to more people giving The Secret World a try, I now present a brief list of beginner tips.

You should always have two separate weapons equipped — two different swords, for instance, offers no benefit. Nearly all resource builder abilities generate resources for both equipped weapons, so you should have a resource consumer for each weapon to maximize your damage. Beyond that, you can feel free to focus on a single weapon if you choose. My main’s build is entirely blade abilities save for one blood consumer.

Most active abilities only function if you have their corresponding weapon equipped, but most passive abilities will work with any weapon. You can and should begin unlocking abilities from weapons you don’t use just to access their passives.

Unlock the passives Lick Your Wounds (fist weapons) and Immortal Spirit (blades) as soon as possible. They’re the simplest, easiest way to add survivability to your build early on.

Attack rating is the most important stat for leveling builds. You need only a small amount of health. One to two minor talismans with healing rating can be worth it if your build uses self-healing or leech abilities. For secondary stats, penetration and hit tend to be the most valuable early on. Defensive secondaries are never worth it unless you plan to tank dungeons.

Do not attempt to blow through story missions, such as Dawning of an Endless Night, all at once. You’re meant to slowly work through them while doing other things. If the story mission sends you to another zone, make sure you’ve finished the content of the current zone before moving on.

That said, TSW’s leveling curve is fairly forgiving, so you can afford to skip the occasional mission if you wish. Just try to at least do a majority of the missions for each zone.

TSW does not have a “respec” feature in the traditional sense. You cannot refund spent skill or ability points. However, you will never stop receiving new points, and unlike most RPGs, you actually level faster in TSW the farther you progress, so if you’re unhappy with your current build, it won’t take long to unlock e nough points to change to something new.

Spend your skill points on all three talisman lines and whichever two weapon types you favour. Each weapon has two skill lines, but you only need to advance one to start. The damage line is usually preferable. Skills determine the level of gear you can equip, and in the case of weapons, only the highest line matters for what you can equip, hence focusing on one.

Do not post anything vaguely resembling a spoiler or hint in general chat. Trust me on this. The Mission Hints channel is open season, however.

Filed under: Games Tagged: fantasy, guides, The Secret World

Things I Love About Things I Hate

As promised, I now present the second half of my series attempting to bring a nuanced view to my passions. Previously, I looked at the terrible flaws of things I otherwise enjoy. Today, we’ll be looking at unexpected strengths of things I otherwise dislike.

To be fair, not all of these are things I actually hate. Some are just things I’m indifferent to or underwhelmed by.

Deep Space Nine: Sisko and Dax

It is no secret I have no love for Deep Space Nine. It is by a wide margin my least favourite Star Trek spin-off.

Yet even this debacle of a series has its strengths. Namely, Sisko and Dax.

Even despite my dislike for the series as a whole, I would rate Sisko as my second favourite Trek captain, only narrowly behind Picard and significantly ahead of Archer. He has nearly the same level of strength, dignity, and grandeur as Picard while also embodying a great deal of warmth and humanity.

Dax, meanwhile, stands as a breath of fresh air compared to how bland Star Trek’s aliens usually are. Too often Trek treated aliens as either humans with bumpy foreheads or else bland, one-dimensional archetypes with no real personality.

Dax stands as a rare case of a character who feels convincingly non-human yet also like a complete and multifaceted person. I find the blending of personalities found in joined Trill endlessly fascinating, and I deeply regret that the only way for me to learn more about them is to wade through the misery that is Deep Space Nine.

To be fair, Bashir ain’t half bad, either.

Star Wars: The universe

Star Wars is definitely not something that I hate, but I think it’s clear by now I’m not a fan. Yet there is still much about it that appeals.

The setting of Star Wars is fascinating. It’s a mythic story, essentially a fairytale, transplanted into a gritty sci-fi setting. That’s a very odd idea, yet it works incredibly well. Everything about Star Wars has this wonderful, exotic grandiosity, and there’s incredible potential in the depth and scale of the universe that has been built for it.

In fact, much of my gripes about Star Wars stem from how poorly they make use of that potential. It could be so much more than repetitive, shallow conflicts between one-dimensional hero archetypes and even more one-dimensional caricatures of evil.

And lightsabers are just about the coolest thing ever. Well, next to Elves.

Marvel Heroes: The voice-overs

Marvel Heroes has the dubious distinction of being one of the very few MMOs I’ve tried that I found genuinely unpleasant to play. Just slogging through enough of it to be able to write an informed article was a horrid chore.

But credit where credit is due: That game has great voice-acting. Much like Heroes of the Storm, it’s full of incidental dialogue, and it adds a lot of fun and flavour to the game. I particularly liked Storm and Thor trash-talking each other over who could command thunder better.

And the voice-overs are of a pretty high quality. All of the actors nail their parts quite well.

WildStar: Housing

My feelings toward player-housing in MMOs are at best lukewarm, but if every MMO with player housing treated it like WildStar does, I might change my tune.

To my view, there are two fatal flaws that tend to afflict most player housing systems. One is that they’re too much work, being limited to endgame characters and/or requiring a lot of effort to build the house you want, and the other is that they rarely provide any significant practical benefit. What’s the point of spending hours designing your virtual dream home if you never have a reason to visit it?

WildStar neatly solves both those problems. It allows players to earn their own homes very early on, and it doesn’t take much effort to get enough items to give your home your own flair. It also makes housing useful by offering crafting nodes and other bonuses for having an in-game abode.

And of course it does all this while also offering incredible customization potential to make the home you’ve always dreamed of.

Mine was full of books. Whoda thunkit?

Orphan Black: Felix

Orphan Black is one of the things on this list that I definitely don’t hate, but the fact remains it wasn’t interesting enough to keep me watching past the first season.

I do miss Felix, though. Man, Felix was the best. I still often think back on many of his scenes and smile. Particularly that time he was bumming drugs off Alison in the bathroom.

“Sharesies?”

Brilliant.

Abramsverse Trek: Zachary Quinto’s Spock

I think my feelings on what JJ Abrams has done to Star Trek are well known by now. I deeply regret paying to see the first one in the theater.

But there was one saving grace to the experience: Zachary Quinto.

I’ve never been fond of the image of Vulcans as soulless automatons. I much prefer Enterprise’s take: a simmering cauldron of furious passion barely held in check.

Zachary Quinto captured this masterfully. Much as I disliked that movie as a whole, the scene where he finally snaps and tries to strangle Kirk was absolutely brilliant.

And I’m not just saying that because I spent the whole movie wanting to strangle Kirk.

Diablo II: Ambiance

Diablo II is the source of a lot of my long-running gripes with the RPG genre, but if there’s one thing that game nailed, it was ambiance.

From the music to the sound effects to the voice acting, everything about the game was just so eerie and spooky. It was a game where venturing forth into the wilds took a genuine degree of courage.

I really wish more games could offer this level of creepiness. It allows the player to feel so much more heroic.

Well, there’s always The Secret World.

Filed under: Misc. Tagged: Diablo, fantasy, Marvel Heroes, Orphan Black, sci-fi, Star Trek, Star Wars, WildStar

TSW: Hello, Players

Look at your main. Now look at me. Now back to your main. Now back to me.

Sadly, your main isn’t me, but if they stopped playing a lame sauce faction and rerolled Dragon, they could sow chaos like me.

Look down, back up, where are you?

You’re in a boss fight with the toon your toon could play like.

What’s in your hand? Back at me. I have it. It’s a loot bag with two of the augments you need. Look again. The augments are now purple signets!

Anything is possible when your faction is badass and not Illuminati.

I’m on a horse.

Doo da da doo doo doo dee doo.

* * *

I bought the new horse mount just to make this joke.

I have no regrets.

Filed under: Games Tagged: fantasy, humor, The Secret World

SW:TOR: Consular Story Complete

I’m always surprised when my plans in MMOs actually come to fruition.

Yes, my plan had been to replay the base content of Star Wars: The Old Republic as a Jedi consular in order to see the Republic side of things, and somehow that’s actually what ended up happening.

I now bring you my thoughts on the class, its story, and the Republic.

On the consular:

Having played it all the way through, I’m still not getting why the buzz around the consular story is so negative. While it’s definitely nowhere near as spectacular as the agent story was, I still enjoyed myself quite a lot.

What I like most is how well they sold the class fantasy. The consular story is all about delving into ancient lore, healing the sick, and diplomacy. I’m not the biggest fan of the Jedi (even relative to my already lukewarm feelings toward Star Wars as a whole), but the consular story captures the essence of what it is to be a Jedi incredibly well.

It’s also a welcome change of pace from the more bombastic stories video games tend to focus on. Of course, the game mechanics still involve no end of combat, but story-wise, the consular story is far more focused on making peace rather than war.

You do start to feel like a true paragon of virtue and enlightenment. That appeals very strongly to me — it may not for everyone.

I also thought it was very interesting to have so many diplomats and envoys on your ship, in addition to the usual companions, many of them compelling characters in their own right.

Though it does make me wonder where they were all staying, considering there are only two beds on the ship. Pity the poor soul bunking with Qyzen; he’s awfully spiky, and he’s cold-blooded, so you know he’d be a blanket-hog.

And once again I was struck by how very much SW:TOR does not feel like Star Wars to me. The names are the same, but the style of storytelling in this game bears no resemblance to the movies, and it’s almost hard to believe they’re nominally part of the same franchise.

Coming from me, that’s a compliment.

I do have a few complaints about the consular. One is that chapter three is by far the weakest. The unique class flavour is mostly thrown away for a very standard “save the world” story, and the one big twist is very easy to see coming.

Also, while the agent story easily could have stood alone as a solid game in its own right, the consular story does feel very much like a side-quest (albeit an unusually good one). It feels tangential to the main game, and not terribly important in the greater scheme of things.

Finally, the class itself just isn’t that fun to play. Button bloat is a big problem for SW:TOR in general, but the consular, at least as the sage sub-class, is an especially egregious case. How many different “throw sparklies for moderate damage” spells do I need? My agent had too many buttons, too, but at least they all flowed together into a natural and somewhat satisfying rotation. They all had a clear purpose within the greater whole. Sage is just playing whack-a-mole with a dozen barely distinguishable short cooldown abilities.

Companions were also at times a source of frustration.

On companions:

The consular story once again had me frustrated by how slowly you unlock companions in SW:TOR. It took me an incredibly long time to unlock any companions I actually liked.

I also found it strange — though also somewhat amusing — how unbelievably out of place the first few consular companions are. I’m playing the game’s most peaceful and virtuous class, yet my first three companions are a fanatical lizard monster who hunts sentient beings for sport because he thinks life is a game and he’s trying to get the high score; a weird, creepy pervert who is accompanied everywhere by his self-aware holographic sex doll; and a homicidal, megalomaniacal terrorist.

Qyzen, at least, did grow on me a bit, though it’s still hard to look past the “murders innocent people in the name of his bloodthirsty goddess” thing.

Tharan makes my skin crawl, though. He comes across as the sort of guy who’s going to get caught installing hidden cameras in a middle school bathroom at some point. And Zenith just seems to be the Twi’lek version of Arcturus Mengsk. I can hear him giving the speech now:

“I will not be stopped. Not by you, or the Sith, or the Jedi, or anyone! I will rule Balmorra, or see it burned to ashes around me!”

Thankfully, they were just saving the best for last.

Felix is a pretty basic character, and his arc never really went anywhere, but he’s a likable enough guy, and he’ll always be welcome on my ship, no matter how scrambled his brains are.

Nadia, though, is the one who was worth the wait.

I gather Nadia is a character the community is somewhat divided on. I certainly grant her eagerness and naivete can at times be a little abrasive.

But in the end I was won over. Her joy and wonder are just too infectious. Surprisingly, even despite the severe limitations of an MMO, I’d rate Nadia as one of my favourite Bioware romances to date; it’s a sweet story, and it plays out well.

I particularly liked how in this case it was more a case of Nadia pursuing the player character than the other way around. Normally in Bioware romances the NPC doesn’t display any interest until the player does. It’s like a switch goes off in their head and suddenly they like you.

Which is of course exactly what happens, but the artificiality of it is painfully obvious. By making her the aggressor (for lack of a better term) in the relationship, Nadia comes across as a lot more real.

I also thought it was interesting how Nadia appeared in the story long before she became a companion. I am left to wonder why they couldn’t just make her a companion right away,* but at least it gives the player plenty of time to get to know her, even if they can’t adventure with her until near the end of the game.

*(I understand there’s nominally a story explanation for it, but it feels a bit flimsy.)

On the Republic:

This was of course also my first time seeing the Republic side of things.

I don’t like it.

Now, I’m not sure exactly why I find the Republic so uninteresting. Part of it is definitely that the moral choices are a lot easier. I really agonized over a lot of the Imperial choices, but bar a handful of exceptions, the Republic choices are usually between “do the obviously right thing” or “be a petty, evil prick for no reason.”

But even beyond that, the Republic just feels so colourless and bland. Maybe everyone is just so nice the faction doesn’t feel real. Maybe it’s how dorky their uniforms are. Maybe I just like British accents a little too much.

I may still play Republic classes, but it’s clear my heart lies with the Empire. And that’s pretty out surprising, because I never like playing the bad guy in games.

On the future:

Against all odds, I’m still enjoying SW:TOR, even if a few of the game’s bad habits are beginning to wear heavily on me — like the lengthy travel times enforced by its sometimes wonky quest flow, and its ludicrous over-abundance of trash mobs. I don’t see myself leaving it behind any time soon.

Right now I’m still thinking I’ll finish the inquisitor storyline at least before moving on to the expansion content. Maybe a few other classes, too — we’ll see. I do want to finish at least most of the class stories eventually, though I can’t guarantee my interest will last that long.

One thing in my favour is that nearly all my characters were created during a double XP event, meaning they’re all a fair bit ahead of the leveling curve. I can afford to skip quite a lot of the non-class content, which should keep things from being too much of a grind.

My plan is still to return to my agent whenever I finally move into the expansions, and I don’t currently expect to play any other characters after finishing their class stories, but we’ll see how it goes.

I may be taking more detours into other games along the way, as well. Right now I feel a strong, sudden call from a old flame… a wild frontier where a young Yukifyo woman can make a name for herself…

* * *

By the way, I finally figured out the issue with images on my blog, so you should now once again be able to click screenshots for full-size versions. Which I certainly hope someone is going to do, since I am unjustifiably proud of my screenshoting skills.

Filed under: Games Tagged: sci-fi, Star Wars, Star Wars: The Old Republic

Retro Review: Jade Empire

Origin regularly offers up games simply for free, which is the one thing that elevates it above being merely the poor man’s Steam. One recent offering was an old martial arts-themed RPG from Bioware called Jade Empire.

Jade Empire was never really on my radar, but hey, free is free, and I did like later Bioware games.

Took me until now to finally get around to playing it (unfortunately this means you’re too late to pick it up for free if this blog makes you curious about it). Ultimately the main trait it shares with more recent Bioware titles is that it’s a game that leaves me with mixed feelings.

The biggest surprise about Jade Empire is that its combat is actually pretty good, not something I expected to say about a Bioware game, especially one of this vintage.

It’s an unusual but interesting system. Essentially, you have three main options at all times: a quick, usually high DPS attack; a slow, heavy attack to break enemy blocks; and an AoE attack.

However, the effects of each of these three attacks changes radically based on your current style.

The best analogy I can draw for styles is that they’re a bit like the different guns you might have in a shooter. They’re bound to the number keys, and you can instantly swap between them at any time for no cost.

Each style has different strengths and weaknesses, and while some merely amount to slightly different ways to punch people, others have far more unusual effects. Spirit Thief Style deals no damage but restores your chi (mana). Dire Flame Style allows you to hurl fireballs (at the cost of chi), offering an analogue to a mage playstyle.

Weapons also count as individual styles, and there are even transformation styles that allow you to shapeshift into a variety of strange creatures for powerful bonuses.

My favourite was Toad Demon Style, which transforms you into a giant, lumbering toad who slaps people into submission with its flippers for massive damage.

That is exactly as fun as it sounds.

That’s not to say the combat is perfect. In the greater scheme of things, it’s still not an especially exciting system compared to the best examples of RPG combat out there, and it has some minor quirks that can be annoying, such as some occasionally awkward camera angles

Still, on the whole, I’d count Jade Empire’s combat in the “win” column.

However, just as Jade Empire succeeds where many of its successors failed, it also lacks some of their strengths.

As you’d expect from a Bioware game, Jade Empire features a large cast of colourful characters who serve as your companions. However, they’re not nearly as well-written as their descendants in Mass Effect and Dragon Age.

A few of them still won my affection, notably the haughty but heroic Silver Fox and the roguish but lovable Sky. The biggest exception of all, however, was the conflicted Sagacious Zu; he alone stands with the great characters Bioware would later create.

However, the fact remains that if you go into Jade Empire expecting Mass Effect or Dragon Age quality character development, you’ll be disappointed.

The romances are especially confusing. As in later games, several of your companions can become romantic interests for your main character, but these romances are, well, a bit broken if you ask me.

I had intended to romance Silver Fox, but there never seemed to be any dialogue options to support such an effort (I only know she’s a romance option from reading about it elsewhere). Meanwhile, there didn’t seem to be any option but to romance Dawn Star (not without treating her with outright contempt, anyway). It seemed I was doomed to end up with her even though I was merely trying to be basically nice, a sensation like sinking into quicksand.

However, the romance never amounted to anything, leading me to wonder if I’d misinterpreted all that talk of “true feelings” earlier, or if I somehow ended the relationship somewhere along the line (without any blowback from Dawn Star?), or if the romances in Jade Empire are just that anticlimactic.

On the plus side, the fact that Jade Empire’s romances ultimately left me only confused and alone does make them a remarkably good mirror for real life, at least where I am concerned.

One twist that I did find interesting is that there are a few segments near the end where you will control some of your companions and make use of their unique talents. Although I grant it could become tiresome if overused, I’d like to have seen a bit more of this throughout Jade Empire — and maybe in later Bioware games, too.

Also mirroring later Bioware games, specifically Mass Effect, Jade Empire has a morality system based on two extremes, the Way of the Open Palm and the Way of the Closed Fist. These are pretty much just paragon and renegade, right down to my maxing out my score for paragon/Way of the Open Palm.

The morality doesn’t seem to affect gameplay much, though given my dislike for rigid morality systems I’d count that as a positive. The biggest impact is that there are a handful of styles and quests that are only accessible to followers of a specific moral path — and really “handful” might be generous. I can recall only one quest and one style I was locked out of by not following the Way of the Closed Fist.

As for the main story in Jade Empire, it’s… okay, I guess? It’s a bit of an odd mix. The first 70% or so of the game is very slow and feels very predictable, but the remainder is breakneck and full of unexpected twists.

I feel as though I should have enjoyed the story more than I ultimately did. It left me feeling cold, but I’m struggling to understand why. The twists surprised me; the ending was a bit abrupt but mostly satisfying.

Perhaps there was just one too many big boss fights in close succession. Perhaps the relative lack of strong characters sucked some of the heart out. Perhaps the sheer oldness of the game began to wear on my jaded tastes after a while. Jade Empire’s graphics and gameplay have aged very well all things considered, but they’re still not up to modern standards.

Overall rating: 6.9/10 It might have warranted a better rating in its day, but it doesn’t shine as much as it could compared to modern games.

Filed under: Games, Retro Reviews Tagged: fantasy, Jade Empire, review

Things I Hate About Things I Love

I think nuance is important in life. It’s always good to remind yourself nothing is entirely good or bad, to see the flaws even in things you enjoy. Blind devotion is never a positive trait.

To that end, I have compiled a list of things I truly hate about things I truly love. None of these things are enough to turn me off my passions, but that doesn’t mean they don’t really get under my skin.

This is by no means a comprehensive list; it’s just the things that stood out to me as I was writing.

And just so you know, to continue the theme of balance and nuance, I will also be doing a post on things I love about things I hate.

World of Warcraft: Mandatory subscription

There’s no shortage of things I could have picked where WoW is concerned. It’s a game with much that I love, but also much that I would gladly purge with cleansing fire.

I settled on the subscription. I’ve said it all before; I don’t like subscriptions and the psychological pressure they create.

In WoW’s case, I find the subscription is having an increasingly toxic impact on the game’s design. More and more the overriding thought behind Blizzard’s decisions seems to not be “How can we make this more fun?” but “How can we make this take longer?”

Star Trek: Enterprise: Gratuitous T&A

Enterprise’s infamous decon scenes and other acts of shameless fan service have received much criticism, and while I think it’s a bit unfair to act as if this was something new to the Star Trek franchise (mini-skirts — just sayin’), it does deserve to be criticized.

Yeah, it’s sexist. It’s also silly, ridiculous, and unnecessary, and it cheapened what was otherwise a fantastic piece of intellectual science fiction.

I mean, I was going through puberty when Enterprise was on the air, and even so, I still didn’t enjoy the decon scenes.

Much.

Seriously, though, even then I was like, “This is dumb. Why are they doing this? I mean, I like seeing Linda Park in her underpants and all, but really, this is dumb. Get back to the plot.”

At least they made some small effort toward being equal opportunity. Trip did spend an awful lot of time in his underwear and/or sweaty and covered in dirt.

Fun fact: TrekUnited’s “let’s drool over Connor Trinneer”  thread was roughly ten to twenty times longer than the equivalent threads for Jolene Blalock and Linda Park combined.

This is not an exaggeration.

Battlestar Galactica: Season four

I have a lot of love for Ron Moore’s Battlestar Galactica reboot. My autographed photos of Katee Sackhoff and Aaron Douglas sit proudly next to my computer desk. My pilot’s wings pin occupies a place of honour on the headboard above my bed. One of my first major writing projects was a massive BSG fan fic up that ended being nearly novel length. BSG produced three of the best seasons of television ever made.

And then season four happened.

Sigh.

I mean, there was still some really great stuff in season four. I loved the mutiny arc. The acting and character arcs were fantastic until the end. “Revelations” was possibly the best episode of the series.

But most of season four was defined by random drama and shock value for the sake of drama and shock value. It killed off beloved characters for no apparent reason.

Worse still, it became clear that, despite what the opening credits said, they did not have a plan. The writers were clearly making it up as they went along, and in the end, the show “collapsed under its own weight,” as an old friend of mine aptly put it. The ending was a nonsensical mess that boiled down to two hours of “a wizard did it.”

The first three seasons of BSG were so brilliant that season four cannot diminish what they accomplished. But that’s not for lack of effort.

These days I mostly try to pretend season four ever happened. Though not as hard as I try to pretend Blood and Chrome never happened.

Stargate: Universe: Montages

I loved SG:U. After its shaky first few episodes, it evolved into one of the great sci-fi shows of all time. But there’s one nasty habit it never quite shook off.

Those damn musical montages.

Nearly every episode had to conclude with five minutes of the cast staring off into space and looking depressed while some crappy song plays in the background. It never stopped being irritating.

Take that time and come up with some proper opening credits instead. Would be as useful.

Mass Effect: Asari

With a few notable exceptions, I’m not fond of the alien races in the Mass Effect franchise. It feels like very little effort was put into them — they’re almost entirely bland archetypes the likes of which you could find in any generic sci-fi story.

The Asari stand out as the worst, though. They’re basically an entire species of adolescent sexual fantasies — gorgeous, bisexual alien girls. Considering how progressive Bioware tends to be, shameless fan service such as the Asari sticks out like a sore thumb.

I find it ironic that the games try to make it this offensive stereotype that Asari are defined by sex, but the games spend more time stereotyping them than any of the characters. There’s next to nothing unique or noteworthy about the Asari culture or temperament other than their sexuality, nearly all Asari plots revolve sex or relationships in some way, and Asari strippers are utterly ubiquitous.

Admittedly, my view has perhaps been skewed by the fact Liara is the most prominent Asari in the franchise. Her entire personality boils down to, “Gee, Shepard, you’re so awesome; wanna feel my boobs?”

In fairness, Samara is pretty cool.

Heroes of the Storm: Dragon Shire

I was going to mention the amount of filler in Bioware games, but then I remembered how much I hate Dragon Shire, and there wasn’t room for both.

Heroes of the Storm’s map variety is one of its great strengths… unless you get Dragon Shire.

I hate this map so very, very much. It’s just endless back and forth — you can easily go ten to fifteen minutes into a match without either team winning the map objective. It’s so slow, and so tedious. It’s also really easy to get screwed over by your team composition in quick matches because you need a very specific set of heroes and roles to hold all three shrines effectively.

It also seems very snowbally compared to other maps. Winning the dragon is such a massive advantage, and there’s no “consolation prize” for the team who doesn’t capture it. It’s agonizing to spend half a match fighting over the damn thing, only to have the enemy team cap it and wreck half your forts because your team made one mistake.

Oh, and it has the most boring visuals and the dullest announcer of all the maps.

I have my highest win rate on Dragon Shire, but even that does nothing to quell my hate for this awful, terrible, no good map. I have at times (briefly) considered quitting Heroes because of Dragon Shire — I’m not kidding.

Fantasy in general: Lack of diversity

This isn’t necessarily something I hate, but it confuses and disappointments me.

Science fiction has a pretty rich tradition of showing a future where humanity is more united and giving us diverse casts composed of a good balance of sexes, races, and even sexual orientations.

Fantasy, for whatever reason, isn’t like that. The vast majority of fantasy novels are about straight white guys. If an author is feeling really daring and progressive, it might be about a straight white woman.

There are a few exceptions. Ian Irvine and Glen Cook have made at least some effort toward racial diversity in their casts, Mercedes Lackey gives good representation to LGBT characters, and… that’s all I got.

I guess Dragon Age could merit a mention, too. Good balance of sexes and sexual orientations, at least.

StarCraft II: Too much macro

StarCraft II is one of the great RTS games of all time, and the countless hours I’ve sunk into prove my love for it. But it always bothers me how much of the game boils down to macro, to economy.

If you run your economy well, you can all but ignore what happens on the battlefield, at least until you reach the highest levels of play. I remember hearing a guy saying he made it from silver to platinum league by giving up on commanding his army and just devoting all his attention to macro.

That’s pretty messed up.

And it’s just boring. Way too much of every game is spent churning out workers, and pylons, and overlords, and so forth. “YOU MUST CONSTRUCT ADDITIONAL PYLONS” is a meme for a reason, but it’s not necessarily a good reason.

Everything: The fans

“It’s not the band I hate. It’s their fans.”

The sad truth is I have yet to find anything that can’t have the fun sucked out of it by its fans. The worst part of playing WoW is the other WoW players. The worst part of being a Trek fan is the Trekkies. And so on and so forth.

That’s not to say you won’t encounter nice people in fandom. Some of the best friends I have were made through fan communities. But on the whole, I’ve found my every attempt to engage in the fan community for any game, TV series, movie franchise, etcetera has ultimately proven frustrating and lessened my enjoyment of the original product.

Filed under: Games, Misc. Tagged: Battlestar Galactica, Blood and Chrome, fantasy, Heroes of the Storm, Mass Effect, sci-fi, Star Trek, Starcraft, Stargate, World of Warcraft

Overwatch Beta Impressions

There’s a lot of comparison to be drawn between Overwatch and Heroes of the Storm. Both games from a company I love in genres I dislike. Both games that had me torn between excitement over what they could be and concern over whether I could get into the gameplay.

With Heroes, I was lucky enough to get into the alpha early, and there I was able to determine it was a game I enjoyed playing after all. With Overwatch, there’s been a lot more waiting, but I finally got an invite to this weekend’s stress test. I spent two days playing it heavily, trying to learn the game and get an impression of whether it’s something I want to invest in.

Sadly, it seems Overwatch has less in common with its MOBA cousin than I would have hoped.

The good:

First, the good news.

Overwatch is a gorgeous game. The maps are beautiful, colourful, and detailed, and the character models are second to none. Most of the game’s cast seem to be in some competition to see who can be more instantly lovable and huggable. Is it Mei with her adorkable glasses, Tracer with her boundless enthusiasm, Bastion and its tweety bird, Lucio with his easy-going charm?

As with any Blizzard game, everything about Overwatch just overflows with colour, personality, and vibrancy. It’s a really good example of what I find so compelling about Blizzard.

I was also impressed by the variety of playstyles the game’s many heroes offer. Shooters are at their core very simple games, but Blizzard still managed to make every character feel very distinct. Mercy and Lucio, for example, are both healers, but they play very differently.

The diversity of the cast also continues to impress me. You don’t realize just how homogeneous video game casts are until someone breaks the mould and offers a game that isn’t totally dominated by beefy white guys.

Playing Overwatch is a bit like living in Toronto: Everyone is a different colour, and half the time they’re speaking something other than English. It’s awesome. IDIC!

Even putting aside all high-minded liberal ideals, the diverse character design is refreshing purely for being a change of pace. How many action games let you play as an adorable Chinese climatologist?

Finally, I was pleasantly surprised to see no toxic behaviour whatsoever during the entire weekend. I think the game is so frenetic people don’t have time to nerd rage.

The bad:

Going in, I was of the impression Overwatch, like other Blizzard games, was meant to be a fairly accessible game. Easy to learn, and welcoming to newbies, much like Heroes is.

Yeah, no.

Overwatch’s learning curve is brutal. There’s a very basic tutorial which tells you nothing beyond the basic controls, and then you’re pretty much thrown into the deep end.

Yes, you can play versus AI, but even that can be fairly stressful if you have no experience with these types of games, and it still doesn’t do much to prepare you for play against other players. It’s better than nothing, but…

The lack of a good way to learn map layouts is one of the biggest problems. So much of the game is based around positioning and flanking, so knowing every map inside and out is crucial. But there’s no way to experience them outside of live matches, so it’s very much a baptism by fire.

It took me most of the two-day test to learn the map layouts well enough to play decently, and that was with the map pool limited to just three maps. I can only imagine how hard it would be in the full game.

While the variety of characters is one of the game’s biggest strengths, it also makes the game even harder to learn. Between the hero swapping mechanic and the fact you can’t pick your hero until you’re already matched with a team (who might have already picked all their heroes), you can’t just focus on learning on one character. You can’t have a “main” like you would in a MOBA or RPG. If your team needs a healer, you’re healing — like it or not.

You need to learn at least four heroes (one of every role) just to reach the point where you’re not a liability to your team, and to actually be good, you’d need a solid mastery of at least a good chunk of the game’s twenty-one heroes (and counting).

If that sounds daunting, that’s because it is.

So needless to say I spent most of the weekend alternating between sucking and blowing.

At least I think I sucked. It’s actually hard to tell, because Overwatch gives you no adequate way to measure your own performance.

There’s a personal stats screen at the end of each match, but it’s just a spew of seemingly random statistics, overwhelming in its scale and completely lacking in any context. To make matters worse, you only have a very brief window to study it before being automatically hurled into the next match.

In other words, the stats page is completely useless.

Really makes me appreciate how clear and helpful Heroes’ stats screen is, even after all the ways Blizzard has made it worse since alpha.

Finally, there’s just too much damage flying around in this game. Half the time, you’ll be dead before you even have a chance to register that you’re under attack, let alone react. That’s just not fun.

Now, by the end of the weekend, I did finally start getting the hang of things. I even earned Play of the Game once or twice, and I started enjoying myself quite a bit more. My final match featured an epic holdout where we managed to halt the enemy payload on Route 66 just inches from its destination, surviving for five full minutes to somehow win the match against all odds.

But it was an incredible effort to reach that point, and I’m a fast-learner. It’s also worth remembering that I’m a massive Blizzard fanboy who really wanted to enjoy Overwatch. If anyone else had made this game, I’d have given up within the first hour or two. This game is not at all friendly to people who aren’t already FPS pros.

Hero impressions:

I wasn’t able to try every character over the weekend, but I tried to sample as many as I could.

As I expected going in, Pharah turned out to be my overall favourite. I like that she rewards precision aiming while still being somewhat forgiving if you can’t perfectly nail every single shot. I also love her backstory, aesthetics, personality, and voice-overs.

And she can fly. Nuff said.

Her ultimate is a bit frustrating, though. It seems to take a very long time to charge considering how easy it is to counter.

My picks for other roles were more surprising.

I expected Lucio to be my favourite support, but while I like his style, his gamelay turns out to be very dull (IMO). Zenyatta felt awkward to me, but much to my surprise, I fell in love with Mercy, enjoying her only slightly less than Pharah. She seems very powerful, I love how mobile she is, and her ultimate just feels awesome to use.

“Heroes never die!”

I also had a lot more success with Mercy than any other hero. She’s probably the only one I can say I’m actually good at. Probably a good hero for newbies.

Symmetra was just strange. The one time I played her against other players, we won handily, but I can’t tell if I contributed to that. It felt like I hardly did anything. I just ran around building turrets, and there’s no easy way to tell if those turrets are actually doing any good.

My first rare unlock was a Mercy victory pose. Clearly it was a sign.

My choice of tank was also a surprise. Zarya was the tank who most appealed to me on paper, but again, I found her quite dull in practice. Instead, D.Va won my affection. It’s just hard not to enjoy piloting a giant killbot.

I can’t seem to figure out how to play her outside of AI matches, though. I’m not sure I’m cut out to be a tank in this game.

Given my love of both sniper rifles and archery, you’d think I’d have taken to Hanzo or Widowmaker, but the game is just too frenetic for such precision play to be workable, at least for me.

I like Mei, but to be blunt, I’m really bad at her. Just can’t seem to figure out her playstyle.

So Bastion became my preferred defender. Not the most exciting hero around, but its positional play is interesting, and going all Saving Private Ryan on a charging enemy team is satisfying.

As for everyone’s favourite time-traveller, Tracer can be fun, but she’s just so insanely frenetic it makes my head spin. I think you need an IV drip of Red Bull to play her properly. Thank God I don’t get motion sickness.

Conclusion:

On the whole, Overwatch has disappointed me. There’s so much potential in this game, but it’s just so over-caffeinated, hard to learn, and unforgiving of any kind of mistake or weakness.

It’s a very repetitive game, too, with nowhere near enough variety in its game modes. I long for a single-player campaign, but even a decent co-op mode would work wonders.

I may play some more during open beta, but I don’t see myself buying the game at this point. It’s not that it’s not a fun game. For all my complaints, it does have a lot to like, and it can produce some awesome moments.

But is it fun enough to justify a ~$50 price tag? Definitely not.

* * *

Also, thanks to the limited map pool, I had this stuck in my head all weekend.

Filed under: Games, Reviews Tagged: epic nerd rant, Overwatch, review, sci-fi

There’s Something About Tracer

Not a particularly clear point to be made with today’s post, but this is something that’s been fascinating me, so I thought it was worth discussing in brief.

Blizzard appears to have somehow stumbled upon some magic formula of character design with Tracer, the poster girl for their upcoming Overwatch.

Everyone loves Tracer. Go anywhere where there’s a discussion of Overwatch, and you’ll find no shortage of excitement and enthusiasm for her. There’s already fierce anticipation of her launch in Heroes of the Storm (which will ironically have her playable by the general public in Heroes before her own game).

I’m not immune either. I made sure to bank at least fifteen thousand gold so I can buy her in Heroes immediately upon release, and it has a lot less to do with her playstyle or unique designs as it does with oh my God Tracer! *Flailing*

And even being swept along in this tide myself, I’m hard-pressed to explain it. I don’t understand why I, let anyone else, is so excited about this cocky time-warper.

We’ve seen almost nothing of her. The enthusiasm around her springs from little more than a single cinematic released sometime ago. Most of us haven’t played Overwatch, and even if we had, it’s not a game that really allows for a lot of character development.

I can even think of a few good reasons not to like Tracer. Her voice acting is what I’m going to generously call less than ideal, for instance. Her dialogue tends to be spectacularly corny.

And yet here we are.

Personally I really enjoy her powers. There’s a definite cool factor to her lightning quick fighting style and ability to treat time and space as her plaything.

I also know a lot of people find her attractive (I’m not exactly immune to her charms myself). Which is kind of ironic because she’s certainly not the archetypical video game babe; Blizzard made a point to not sexualize her the way they often do with their female characters.

It really goes to show you how pointless the demeaning over-sexualization of female video game characters is. People are going to drool over them regardless — and there’s nothing wrong with that. Everybody wins.

But video games are not short of characters with awesome powers or sexy women, and yet Tracer nonetheless stands out. So we’re back to Blizzard apparently having stumbled across some magic formula of character design that instantly and fundamentally appeals to people.

I don’t understand it. I can’t explain it. But it’s clearly there.

It’s fascinating.

Filed under: Games Tagged: Overwatch, sci-fi

StarCraft II: Utter Brutality

Regular readers will know that, as a rule, I’m not much interested in achievements in video games, but that I make an exception where StarCraft II is concerned.

To that end, I have shed much blood, sweat, and tears completing each of its installments on the highest difficulty setting, aptly called brutal.

It wasn’t until two years after the game’s release that I earned my brutal completionist achievement for Wings of Liberty. I might have done it sooner, but technical issues forced me to repeat several missions — a very frustrating setback. It was a long, hard-fought effort, and very gratifying once complete.

Prior to the release of Legacy of the Void, I did a second play through of Heart of the Swarm to refresh my memory of the story, and I decided to do it all on brutal. It proved easier than Wings of Liberty had been, being barely more difficult than playing on hard.

And now we come to the present. Over the last few weeks, I have done a complete play through of Legacy of the Void, the final expansion, on brutal, and now, at last, I’ve completed it.

The journey is over, and I stand victorious.

Victory against all odds:

Let me tell you: After going a bit soft in Heart of the Swarm, they meant business this time.

I knew things would be different by the second mission. All I can make are zealots and stalkers with no upgrades of any kind, and they throw ultralisks at me.

You have to respect that level of evil.

There were still a few “easy” missions (I use the term loosely), like Templar’s Charge and Purification, but on the whole, Legacy of the Void on brutal was an incredibly nail-biting experience from beginning to end, perhaps exceeding even the challenge of Wings of Liberty. Probably didn’t help I made it harder on myself by trying to get as many achievements as I could along the way.

Last Stand, in particular, is a mission I would be happy to never repeat again. I learned the hard way that I am not able to complete that mission on brutal while also completing the bonus objective. I was forced to complete the mission on hard for the sake of the solarite, then repeat it on brutal via the archives, that time ignoring everything but survival.

There were other harsh challenges along the way, as well. Brothers in Arms proved tremendously difficult, and only a last ditch run to the Keystone during a disruption wave saved me. Even then, it took multiple tries to pull it off. But a win’s a win.

The greatest challenge of all, though, came from the final mission of the main campaign, Salvation.

It nearly broke me.

After many reloaded saves and trying everything I could think of, I just could not make it past 90% completion. So I returned to the Spear of Adun, selected totally different units and abilities, and tried again.

That time, I never even got past 75%.

To my shame, I was forced to turn to Team Liquid and read what players there had attempted. One odd but popular strategy was to simply mass corsairs and Dark Templar. Not something I ever would have considered, but I resolved to try it, lacking better options.

And amazingly, it worked. I wouldn’t call the end result easy, but it wasn’t as bad as Last Stand, that’s for sure. Because there are so many chokepoints on that map, the enemy can’t escape the corsairs’ disruption webs, and they’re just target practice for your army at that point.

I also heavily abused the mothership’s black hole ability, and I kept a small cohort of arbiters in reserve to put enemies in stasis when I needed to buy time. This mainly came in handy during the last few moments of the mission, when my defenses at last broke under the onslaught.

Finally, I tried to erect strong static defenses at all three entrances, though I could never quite get the Purifier base’s defenses to last. I still managed to preserve their base, though.

For Spear of Adun abilities, I picked chrono surge (for upgrades), solar lance, orbital assimilators, call down Talandar, time stop, and guardian shell.

I can’t tell you what a relief it was when the achievement finally popped up.

All in all, it was a rollercoaster. It’s a strange experience; at times, working through these missions was incredibly frustrating and stressful, but it could also be spectacularly thrilling, and sometimes even the frustration was in and of itself a sort of thrill. Each mission becomes a puzzle to be solved.

At times you really do start to feel like a real battlefield commander. I found myself spending much time planning my strategies even outside the game.

“I’ll reinforce the Nerazim base with static defense, and station the mothership there as further insurance. I’ll fortify the Purifier encampment, and keep a squad of arbiters in reserve. Meanwhile, the bulk of my forces will hold the Tal’darim front, sending out sorties to the other fronts as needed.”

I had initially planned to do the epilogue campaign on brutal, as well (as I did with Whispers of Oblivion), but there’s no achievement for that, and frankly, my strength is spent. I have completed the main campaign for each race and each expansion. I have defeated seventy-one missions of one of the modern era’s most challenging games on the highest possible difficulty. I think my mastery has been proven.

Achievement addiction:

Of course, while working on completing the campaign on brutal, my lust for achievements rose full force. I tried to get as many campaign achievements as I could along the way, even repeating a few missions via the archives to grab specific achievements, but even that was not enough.

I also worked on bolstering my achievements for the multiplayer and co-op missions categories enough to unlock the tier one medals for each. Along the way, I learned that I find most of the co-op commanders fairly dull, but surprisingly I kind of like Zagara, despite my usual dislike of Zerg. Vorazun remains my favourite by far, however. Love playing as her.

This all seems a bit strange at face value, given my usual disinterest in achievement-hunting. But StarCraft is special.

Too often, achievements are merely participation trophies. They’re measurements of how much you’ve played the game, not true accomplishments. It rather cheapens the whole concept.

But in SC2, achievements tend to more often be, well, achievements. And perhaps more importantly, it is a game that is both quite challenging, and challenging in a very pure way.

In StarCraft, there is little element of chance, no grinding for more power, and rarely any way for other people to directly help you. You can’t just level up a few times, come back, and faceroll something that was once challenging, nor can a friend carry you through.

When you think about it, there aren’t many “pure” gaming experiences like this left. The proliferation of RPG-style progression and multiplayer support have a lot of positives, but they do rather cheapen the challenge of gaming, I think.

RTS stands as one of the few remaining bastions of games that are purely tests of skill. I suppose shooters sometimes are, as well, though they often feature a fair bit of RPG-style progression these days, but shooters are mostly tests of twitch reflexes and agility.That’s all well and good, but RTS games test reflexes, agility, multi-tasking, planning, strategic thinking, and more.

RTS titles are also a little less “all or nothing” in their challenge than other genres. Eventually things can cascade to the point where you just lose, but there’s a lot of gray area. You can lose battles but not the entire mission or match. You can recover from mistakes. Whereas in most RPGs, for example, you die, or the boss does, and there’s no middle ground.

Nor is there any special punishment for failure. If you lose, just start over and try again. No repair costs, or corpse runs, or any of the other unnecessarily punitive measures you tend to see in, say, MMORPGs.

This is why, even if I enjoy playing other genres just as well, RTS remains the genre of gaming I most respect.

And this is why StarCraft has me addicted to achievement-hunting. Alone among the games I play, SC2’s achievements feel like true accomplishments. I normally scoff at the idea of taking pride in one’s gaming accomplishments, but considering the test of wits, reflexes, planning, and multi-tasking that StarCraft represents, I will allow myself a small measure of pride in what I have achieved.

* * *

By the way, if you’re wondering why I haven’t mentioned the new Nova DLC yet, I’m waiting until all three parts are out to play it.

Filed under: Games Tagged: sci-fi, Starcraft