I guess it’s rather official.  I am way too busy with life during the summer to make even moderate attempts at a blog entry.  With a cottage about an hour’s drive, I’d much rather be on the lake, with a fishing rod in one hand, and a beer in the other.

Still, life does go on, and the squirts have both started school today.  We’ve put them into a few sports programs to keep them as active as possible. Getting all that sorted out is it’s own mess of fun, but will pay off in the end. My own winter hockey starts up next week, so that should be fun to get back out with the guys.  All told, I think we’re in a good enough spot for the fall rush.

Final Fantasy 12 TSA

I picked this up in the summer sometime and put in a few spots here and there. 12 has been a go-to version for me for some time, as I find that both the mechanics and story work.  Zodiac Age is a bit harder since it’s based on the earlier re-release.  You can’t all be super-human, instead you need to pick 2 of 12 jobs per character.  I would guess that it would be hard to mess that up unless you were willingly handicapping yourself (say, everyone white mage) but there are optimum spreads.  The rest of the game (gambits, loots, gear, bazaar) all seem intact.  There are a few minor tweaks and balances, but it seems mostly intact.

There are 2 massive quality of life boosts though.  First is the auto-save feature whenever you zone.  There are some parts of FF12 that are absolute death if you’re not paying attention, and then can string together.  This is compounded by the best feature – double and quad time.  With quad time enabled, everything goes 4x as fast.  Everything.  That makes for some interesting battles where you really should be paying more attention to the minutia rather than just watching it happen.  It works great for most level grinding spots, or farming a specific item.  It is near death on bosses and hunts.

Diablo 3

Fits and spurts.  It didn’t take too long to get my DH up to snuff and clearing T10 with ease, and T13 with effort.  Multishot has a cap it seems, and I need to move into impale to go farther.  So.

Necro is ok geared, clearing T10 but barely stepping foot into T12.  Where a DH is a glass cannon, a Necro is a wet tissue/nuclear bomb.  Either you one-shot everything, or you die.  It’s a weird class compared to others, as at top levels it’s much more about the mechanics than it is about movement and target placement.  Where some classes get by with passive boosts that increase overall damage, the necro needs what seems like every piece to work with another, and a specific skill setting to get the best results.  It reminds me a bit of the EP monk way back, where math was very important.

That said, he looks neat, the skills are interesting, and there’s a nostalgic bit thrown in as well.  I can fit in bits of game here and there, but the concept of eternal grind is not at all appealing.

Back from the dead.  Or rather, back from the cottage.

I was lucky this year, in that I was able to spend a long time working remotely from the cottage, with the odd trip back to down to meet some VPs.  It meant that I woke up, took 5 minutes to make a coffee and then I was off to the races.   When work was done, I was 2 minutes away from the boat in order to de-stress.  During the working hours, I stared at the water; a different type of clock watching I suppose.  All of that with the family around me.  It was a good month.  The downside is that I won’t get any summer vacation, and I’m truly feeling it.  Without the ability to fully wind down, it feels a bit like treading water some days.  But the big project date is at the end of September and I’ll take some time after that.

I should also mention that my beer diet went well.  There is something magical about having a cold one on a boat, or around a fire.  Now to shed that excess!

Diablo 3 – Season 11

I usually go back at the start of every season, run a few folks up to 70 and get to T10 or so.  I’ve been playing a monk since the start, and they are always a solid go-to each season.

This season is different, as a necromancer is available to play.  I am not a big fan of pet builds, and from 1-70, I don’t think any of type of build is actually viable.  Anyhow, I took one from 1-70, all natural (no paragon, or gems) to get a feel for it.  It feels a whole lot like a Witch Doctor, but with Corpse Explosion.  I am just not far enough in the gearing to try out other types of builds, to get a proper feel for the interactions between skills.  It’s certainly nostalgic, I’ll grant that.

In the meantime, I got a DH up to 70 and T4.  He’ll farm what needs to be farmed in order to kit out the necro.  Usually I set up a monk for farming, but a DH is a decent alternative due to their clear speed and sheer ease of use.  I’m thinking another 10 hours or so and that should be more than enough to get back to the necro.

Related, there’s a good article from Jason Shreirer on how D3 was saved by Blizzard on Kotaku. Now, I’m not going to outright say that getting rid of Jay Wilson was what really saved the game, but it’s pretty clear that the majority of the game design decisions for the first iteration were approved by him, and subsequently thrown out when he left.  It almost makes one forget Error 37.  Almost.

If I were to say that EA was developing a Destiny clone, most people would consider that reasonable.  EA and Activision have been cloning each other’s games for years.  They are big for a reason, and that means breadth of choice.  They each have  game of pretty much every type.

Now, if I were to ask which dev shop within EA would develop a Destiny clone, who would you pick?

• Criterion
  • Racing games, Battlefield and Star Wars Battlefront 2
• DICE
  • Every FPS from EA for the past 15 years
• Ghost Games
  • Need for Speed
• Visceral
  • DeadSpace, Army of Two
• BioWare
  • Mass Effect, Dragon Age, SWTOR
• Motive
  • Brand new, working on new IP

Pretty much anyone but Ghost and BioWare, right?  This Forbes article (I know) covers a lot of points.

• Anthem looks like a neat idea, and great visuals
• A 3rd person shooter could work…Gears has shown that
• The multiplayer aspects sound a little too good to be true after.  We’ve been burned on a lot of those promises over the years (Division, I’m looking at you).
• Story could work… but not for repetition.  SWTOR has shown that to an extremely large audience.

But most importantly, BioWare?  The studio that prides itself on story-first games?  The one where actual combat mechanics and fighting have always had rough edges?  It’s sort of like if Bethesda decided to enter the MOBA market, just a whole bunch of “what?”

On the good side however, EA uses a single engine (Frostbite) for all their games now, and they have a whole pile of shooters to leverage.  Dead Space was a 3rd person game, so there’s certainly something to use from there.  Maybe this is just a continuation on the Shadow Realms IP – there is certainly a whole pile of overlap.  Maybe this game ends up being good, and reverses the trend of BioWare overreaching for the past 5 years.  I would certainly hope for that, given the history of that developer.

That said, I think it pretty much means that BioWare is out of the true RPG business. Which really stinks, since it was BioWare that really established what RPGs meant for the west for the past near-20 years.

Fingers crossed.

This is going to be a gripe post.

I’m nearing the end now, or at least it feels like it.  I’ll have a summary post at that point, but the general themes so far have stuck through.  There are bits and pieces that work, and others that don’t.  The ones that don’t are unfortunately systems/mechanics.  The things that work are the small story bits, but it’s highly inconsistent.

Truth and Trespass is the most perfect example of this.  There are some spoilers here, be warned.

This quest happens after you find the Salarian ark.  Seems that there’s a possibility that the Salarians sabotaged themselves.  This is a very cool premise, given that the lore of Salarians is that science >>>> reason.  So, there’s potential!

What happens next is you running across 5 locations.  Moving between locations takes 2-3 minutes, depending on the loading screens.  Then you need to get to the quest locations, which is another 2-3 minutes.  Often times you have to run through a small set of enemies once there.  Not challenging in any shape, just filler.  Then you either scan or talk to an NPC.  There are no options presented, it’s just reading dialogue.

The final step does have a decision point.  You find the truth of the matter and are given the choice to exact justice or exchange freedom for information.  This is one of the few times where I thought about it for more than a few seconds.  The information is presented as being extremely valuable, and the damage is already done.  So you’re not actively preventing something, it’s simply a “justice” question.  I therefore opted for the information path.

I was rewarded with a codex entry of 3 paragraphs with information that I had already gathered through other means.  Well, that and info that 2 other races existed (but not meet them in this game).

So, nearly an hour of running around, what appears to be a difficult decision, and I get a codex entry.  This is bullshot-level quest design.

History

ME:A’s largest issue is history.  ME:2 & 3 were good games, with good writing.  The ending of ME:3 is a separate discussion for this point.  When we quested in those games, there was impact in the decisions.  Changing the leadership of the Krogan, reversing the genophage, freeing the Geth.  Those were big deals.  The actual quests were in rather unique, isolated locations, that were thematically appropriate.

ME:A does little of this.  Many quests span multiple planets for no reason.  Aside from three quests (Krogan, Primus, and Exiles) there doesn’t appear to be any decision point that has any in-game consequences. When there are no consequences, then why bother making a choice in the first place?

There is a pile of breadth here.  Lots of stuff to do.  Piles.  There’s just no depth.

The sad part is, if this was a new IP, it would be somewhat acceptable.  The fact that this game carries the Mass Effect name, there are expectations that are simply not met.

I really like these 2 pals.  They are opposite ends of the spectrum, but both are incredibly naive when it comes to the world around them.  Makes for some interesting dialogue, where is has nothing to do with the game.  Plus, their combat abilities are pretty solid.  I’ve not really found a reason to swap for anyone else.  Some spoilers below, but they are minimal.

Jaal

I finished up Jaal’s personal quest, a small sub-zone in Havarl.  The concept is that there’s a leader of an anti-alien group (Roekar) and Jaal’s family has been indoctrinated.  That last part happens off screen, and you get an update that lasts about 15 seconds.  There’s a final standoff at the end, and you make a choice.  I was doing something else at the time, and there was one of those quick-input options that popped up.  By not selecting it, things turned out much different than I had expected.

(as a side, it would seem that nearly all those decision points provide better results if you don’t do anything.)

The combat in that section was against low level enemies, or rather, I ended up clearing it all in half the effort of “open world” combat.  The story ended exactly like I thought it would, which was disappointing.  Felt like another opportunity that was missed, on a much larger subject.

Did I mention that the majority of this quest’s progress is unlocked through emails?

Peebee

More bugs.  This time on Havarl.  There’s even a few posts on it as well.  I ended up moving on through the quest, but a portion will be stuck in my log forever it seems.  There’s something wrong with the pacing of this particular quest line, I think.  The game introduces the heel early enough, then tries to shoehorn another bad guy (that’s only in datapads), then it turns out to be the original bad guy after all.  She all but says “I am Peebee’s rival” the first time you meet her too.

I really like Peebee’s thinking in this line though, and her dialogue is solid.  Clear that she has goals, and what they mean to her.  It’s just too bad that the quest is supported through “fetch quests” and a poorly executed storyline.

Liam

I had mentioned I had completed his quest line.  I don’t understand his character at all, or his motivations.  He has a lot of police/threat training and makes absolutely horrendous decisions that put people’s lives at risk, with no real plans to help them out.  I’m sure if they had unfrozen the cook he would have been smarter.

That said, his last mission was pretty neat in the mechanics and overall story.  Felt like a Lethal Weapon movie to be honest.

Forward and Back

It seems like for every neat item, there’s an equally dumb item behind it.  The more annoying part is the inconsistency of these two things.  Sometimes it’s the writing, sometimes the delivery, sometimes the quest structure…

Good golly there is so much potential in this game.  All the pieces are there.  It just feels like the overall producer took a long lunch at the tail end and let the peons make the calls.  I cannot recall the last time I was left so confused by a game.

We opened our cottage this weekend.  Hoping to get a couple days without rain (5/7 now, over the past 3 weeks) in order to stain the deck.  We got through Saturday, but Sunday was a downpour.  Fingers crossed the stain stuck!

I also spent over 2 hours getting the water pump to work.  Hunched over under the cottage.  In the cold.  I had eliminated everything I could over that time and was left with one option – the foot valve.  That’s the bit that hangs at the end of the line, deep in the water.  The water that was ice last week.  Sure enough, the valve was the culprit and 10 minutes later we had water.  We expected an up and down, but it turns out after 8 hours of work, we were burnt.  A good night’s rest at the cottage is something I had forgotten I missed.  I am looking forward to the next run up.

Mass Effect 4

Not a whole lot of time for this, though I’ve now completed Eos, Voeld, Havarl, and Kadara (missing an outpost).  I’ve crafted a super level 5 sniper rifle.  I’ve unlocked Liam’s final skill.  I guess that’s a fair chunk?  75%?  Anyhow, the game still has some interesting bits mixed with some not so interesting.  On PS4, I’ve encountered a half-dozen game breaking bugs – either falling in the world, the game freezing, random teleports, and some of those weird animations.  The most obvious one is that the Nomad (the car) frequently stutters in it’s movement (every 2 minutes or so) and loses sound (every 15 minutes).  The frequency of these last 2 makes me question the effectiveness of QA testing, in particular given that I spend so much time in that car.

I mentioned before the busy work. Given that the main quests have narrowed down, I’m chocked full of side quests/tasks.  I had about a dozen or so to clear out on the Nexus.  One of them ended with “go check your email on your ship”.  I have a holographic gizmo that can turn into a sword, but I have to go to a specific physical location, and email?  There’s also a lot of “go to this planet, and then this one, but only spend enough time there that the loading screens are longer”.  Ugh.  I feel like a ping pong ball, always being hit from one end to the other.  The talking bits are good, but the combat/explore portions are horrible repeats of existing gameplay.  Liam’s last quest was in a unique zone, so that was good.  Hoping the others are the same.

The upside is that the individual quest stories are interesting.  There’s one that deals with an anti-AI faction, which could have been a neat exploration of what being human means.  You fake losing your own AI (SAM), and track them down.  They are planning some EMP attack on the main Nexus, so you track those down.  The final scene has you asking 1 question, then ordering a sniper hit in a cutscene.  I am disappoint.  So much potential!

It’s that potential that keeps me coming back.  Like pulp fiction… if you look beyond the rough edges, there’s some good stuff to find.

Gloomhaven

Plain and simple, I put down some cash on Kickstarter for it.  I am usually against these types of services, but in this particular case, it’s a re-print.  The risk here is that the printing factory goes down in flames and shipping gets delayed.  I  can live with that.  You can take a look at a game review on Ars Technica.  I really love coop games, and one without dice sounds quite interesting.

Kickstart (and similar services) are a great space for board games.  I picked up Shadows of Brimstome, Galaxy Defenders and a few others in the past couple years.  The neat thing about boardgames is that the money is near entirely related to production costs, not development costs.  The game has already been tested and refined ad-nauseum with simple stand-ins, like any true D&D player would do.  Compared to PC games, where the development costs far outweigh production.

Cause that’s what ME gives you.

It could be rose-colored glasses, but Biotics used to be more powerful than what I’ve seen in ME:A so far.  All the way back to KOTOR, force powers were a great way to take out massive groups of enemies, assuming you had the points invested.  Sure, the melee super saber strikes ended up killing even the Tarentareks in a couple of rounds, but force powers were more fun.

Right now, I’m finding that there are only 2 useful powers – pull and throw.  If they are unshielded/unarmored, then that combo kills anything.  Full biotics usually means “tissue for armor”, so the melee-ranged skills aren’t much use.  That leaves Singularity or Lance as options.  The first is a remake of the black hole skill that sucks people in, and the latter is a bolt of ranged damage.  None of the skills have much effect on shields.

So what ends up happening is that my space wizard uses Singularity on the first set of enemies, to set up a wall of sorts.  Weak enemies get snared, and I throw in something to blow them up.  A separate Pull is used on the enemies outside of range.  It’s a solid build for clearing trash.  That leaves the big guys.

And the only thing that works on those buggers appears to be guns, and companion skills.

Not all companions seem to be built equally. Their weapons don’t see to have much effect, at least not compared to mine.  Their skills though, woo.  Some of them seem like steroid users with the punch packed.  Drack is something.  Jaal too.  I’m a little disappointed that I can only have them focus on a target, rather than select from a skill profile, or prioritize the skill usage.  If I just let them go without direction, then things can go sideways.  If they focus, then things seem to work out well enough.

Anyways, back to space wizards.  On console I only have 3 skills that I can slot for use, and while useful, they seem somewhat limited as compared to other profiles.  Maybe I’ll respec into an Infiltrator with a robot pet…I’m using sniper rifles anyways.