Two days with Warhammer: Age of Reckoning

Two days and no update? You assumed correctly, WAR is amazing. Instead of my curiously named Orc I started a little Goblin shaman called Garklargak on a role playing server, it’s not flawless but considering the game has just been released it is in a very polished state and in a simple manner I will take you through the good and bad points I have encountered over my two days with the game.

Garklargak launched by catapault

The Good

-Public Quests are an area of the map in which all present players are pushing towards the same objective regardless of playing solo or as a party, once the first objective is complete the area moves onto a second timed objective and then a third, once you complete the mission you are rewarded with a nice experience bonus and hopefully some loot. These quests work because they have significant and fun events to be a part of and because players help each other and interact instinctively upon finding them rather than forcing you to be part of a group.

-Character development is a deceptively deeper aspect here than in other MMOs, while the competition all use brancing tech trees to seperate their players WAR has simple specialisation options, after level eleven you can start putting points in one of three areas, but deepens the proceedings with a seperate tech tree which you use your player vs player rank to upgrade. This means that being better in PVP nets you helpful rewards but not game breaking ones like Warcraft’s method of ‘You’re awesome at PVP here, have some armour to make you even better!’

A public quest in action

-The Tome of Knowledge is a fantastic way of keeping all the essential info in one easy to navigate place. Click the icon and this book lists your quests, achievements, Bestiary, Lore and Story, Rewards, and anything else you might want to look up.

-The game throws experience at you to help alleviate any grind, unlocking new entries in the tome gets you experience as well as taking part in PvP combat. Then there are secret achievements and parts of the Tome that all net you a couple hundred experience which may not seem like much considering it takes roughly 40,000 to level but as that lovely Tesco’s slogan says, ‘Every little helps’.

-Guild have their own levelling system which unlocks certain features as it plays, this includes being able to hold a battlement and defend it from attack.

-Characters actually touch when they get close which, aside from being good aesthetically, means players cannot bunny hop around you in PVP.

-I can dye my armour! Purple warrior go!

lighting is one of WAR's nicest visual touches

The Bad

-Animation on characters at a distance is jerky and while it isn’t a bad thing it is intrusively noticable at times, apparently Mythic will be fixing this however.

-The game world feels more linear and enclosed than WoW, your preferance will affect if that’s a good or bad thing, and there are less flight paths which mean you’ll be doing a lot of legwork.

-There is a lack of emotes, the addition of /Warhammer doesn’t make up for the omission of essentials like /sit, /sleep, and /dance.

In conclusion

Warhammer continues to impress me and while it lacks the polish of Warcraft right now Blizzard have been scrubbing that trophy for four years now. I entered WAR expecting a better PVP game than WoW but what I’ve found is one that can also hold itself high as a players vs environment game thanks to helpful quest markers and the fantastic public quests.

So if you don’t mind, in the words of my character, ‘Garklargak off ta kilt sum mor stunties! Hehehe!’

Some quests ask you to perform grusome actions

On the 15th… We WAAAARGH!

As you may well be aware early access for Mythic’s new online epic, Warhammer Online, starts on the morning of the 15th at 8am CET, which to my workings is 7am GMT. The game is installed and ready to be patched up so that I can start my Black Orc ‘Groin Squeezer’ within the first few hours and proceed to, well, smash things in the face… Probably Dwarves. I intended to share my day one exploits with you at the end of the day alongside my impressions, expect a heavy helping of screenshots and plentiful comparisons to that other MMO that Warhammer looks like, but of course everyone knows that MMO looks like Warhammer, or so Mythic’s PR man says. Regardless of the two franchises past, Warcraft is the best MMO available now and Warhammer is in direct competition with it so comparison is a necessity.

See you on the battlefield… WAAAAARGH!

Too Human, a lesson in wasted potential.

My biggest disappointment with Too Human is how much it has in common with a certain title from a couple of years ago and how it isn’t like that game when it so obviously should be. Let’s think about this for a second, a hub world with shops and many high ranking ‘good guys’ that could hand out quests, linking from this is a selection of four massive levels with hidden secrets and more loot than your local pawn shops back room, give up? Phantasy Star Online had a similar layout except it let you jump online and interact in the friendly area, party up with three buddies or strangers and knock the stuffing out of enemies through large levels completing quests and building your body count.

And what does Too Human offer for a multiplayer mode? Two player co-operative with the story taken out. It’s still fun but for a game that offers five classes and RPG progression through multiple tech tree with an emphasis on buffs, aggro, and thousands of loot drops the game openly says ‘hey! I’m like an MMO, but if you only have one friend!’

The biggest issue with this? I’ve found the commando near unplayable as a solo class but I know that if I was online with some buddies his gun is the perfect back up. Is it enough with one other player? No, because unless he is a defender he won’t be able to keep the hundreds of Goblins that swarm off me, but if we were a proper group I could be firing in while our defender and berserker deal with aggro and a bio engineer is concentrating on healing, the games potential writes itself. I realise that four player co op was removed scant months before release, but why? Ten years in development and it was promised up until the last minute, what went wrong?

The game needed a lobby system where you can openly interact and inspect players gear, because right now I find there is no way to show anyone my cool new chest and shoulders when that is half the point of these Diablo style dungeon crawlers, you spend ages getting the beastly greatsword of gutting because you can wave it in ChuckNorris2008’s face and you feel a glow of pride as he says ‘wow! That’s awesome!’. Perhaps the game could also have included some four vs four arena matches as well as the ability to go with a few buddies to smash some goblins around for an hour or two, perhaps the designers could constantly have added quests that give players new reasons to revisit levels as new locations are made open, but we got bog standard two player co op.

I guess I’m so annoyed by this because I like Too Human’s style, the locations are varied, large, and pretty to look at, and the armour sets and weapons look great while the sheer amount Silicon Knights crammed into the game is staggering, I wouldn’t be surprised if half the games development cycle was spend designing them.

If Microsoft was to look at its available franchises with a mind for making an MMO, while not the most financially sound option I think Too Human has the blueprints already on the table, blueprints that are languishing as a single player adventure when the game could have been so much more. Here’s hoping Too Human 2 does it right.

Rate the Pinata pictures, don’t just look at them.

How hard is it to click a star rating? Looking at www.vivapinata.com you’d think it was harder than learning your seven times table, the hardest times table of them all. Looking down the list there is a screenshot with 411 views of which fourteen people have voted, another has been looked at 347 times and only two people could think up a star rating while a third has been rated 18 times after 300 people have cast their eyes over it.

What do you think this does when people sort by highest rated? It’s not a very accurate list when people can’t be bothered to rate pictures and considering the calibre, or lack of in some screenshots there are some that deserve to be seen but are lost under overrated pictures. As you may have gathered from the title of a previous post I see the camera tool much like the curious N64 game Pokemon Snap, in which you were graded on the framing of the subject, the objects in the frame, and the pose of the subject, and as such I take these ideas into account and I have been trying to grade every photo on the site so that those that need to be seen are and those that don’t aren’t. This isn’t malicious, it’s merely a wake up to the photographer that they need to be a little more creative.

If you’re bored now or anytime soon I recommend you head over to the site and do some rating, it will help the community see the best and most creative snaps and might encourage you to make use of the feature, if you own the game of course.

Here is my rating guide if you’re struggling on a system:

1 Star = Basic, not much happening in the shot or too cluttered, lacks focus.

2 Stars = Well framed, standard rating. Likely uninspired or has a lot of clutter behind Pinata.

3 Stars = Usually has something about it, either a quirky position or good use of multiple features for example, but lacks the focus of a better shot or perhaps has clutter around such as seeds that aren’t planted.

4 Stars = Good use of Pinata and surrounding area, little or no unnecessary features in shot.

5 Stars = Use of outside features such as created stage for shot, use of lighting, perfectly timed, no clutter at all, or just looks spot on.

And to conclude this moan here are some of my favourite screens I’ve found while rating pictures (not all rated five by me), original photographer is credited.

Poncho Dude

dannyb1071

Midimew

Super Sproutman

MadMax 4Q2

The next best game in the world is… Banjo Kazooie: Nuts & Bolts.

Look around the next time you step into a game store, alongside the piles of Guitar Hero boxes there are likely to be a lot of games that tell you to shoot or kill lots of enemies or test your brain with simple maths and english puzzles. But why do you play games? High on my list is personal expression, the way a game lets me loose in a designers world with my thoughts and intentions is what gives me the biggest thrill. Can I do that? How about if I try this? The way I interact with a game is the most important thing and Rare’s evolution of the Banjo series looks to be offering exactly what I want.

Many people have been lashing out at the vehicle emphasis saying that it betrays the franchise’s platforming roots, claiming that it has become a boring shadow of its former self, these people have obviously never played with LEGO and have no creative inclinations whatsoever.

For those who don’t follow every bit of news to come out a PR man’s mouth, the new Banjo has you creating vehicles to help Banjo navigate the mammoth levels of Nuts & Bolts, adding a spring to jump high or wings to fly. These vehicles replace Banjo’s old move list and give the player complete freedom over how they are constructed, meaning one persons route to a jiggy could be in a bi-plane with which they launch an ejector seat to land while another could mount the biggest spring available onto a three wheeler and launch Banjo at the jiggy with more force than Mario between planets.

It’s this unrestrained freedom that will push Banjo beyond other platformers, instead of giving players a list of solutions to puzzles Rare are letting players be mechanics by giving them a selection of tools and letting them create the solution, this makes it more of a game than any platformer before it. The bold and beautiful art style doesn’t look too shabby either.

Look out for Banjo in November and don’t forget to grab the XBLA release of his first, more linear adventure at the same time, which is free if you pre-order Nuts & Bolts.

What games are left for September?

September has started the end of year rush with more ferocity than Chun Li at her time of the month with  Viva Pinata, Spore, and the entertaining Mercenaries 2 but what is left in this month of returning to education and receiving student loans? Below are the games I’ve personally got a sneaky eye on and why, it’s in no way a comprehensive list but maybe you’re with me for one or two of them.

Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning – 18th September

I am a Warcraft player and so with a few months before we all journey to Northrend and get new haircuts the urge to play has dwindled. Enter Warhammer, an experience much the same but subtely different, it has a respectable mythos and the lure of deep PVP combat is shiny enough for me to bite. Yes it looks like a strange middle ground of Warcraft and Guild Wars and sure, it’s just another MMO in the growing mire of grind fests but I think for a few months this could be more than entertaining.

Star Wars: The Force Unleashed – 19th September

Force pushing Stormtroopers and Rebel troopers is fun, as can be sampled in the demo available now on XBLA and PSN. Length issues aside this should provide a fun slice of force filled pie with an interesting story and a planet of Wookies, even if the Apprentice’s model is rubbish.

LEGO Batman – 26th September

LEGO games are fun, Star Wars and Indy have cemented their position at the top of ‘family/girlfriend friendly fun’ and Batman is looking like the best yet. Free from the trappings of a concrete story Travellers Tales have taken every liberty with Gotham city letting players run around as a large number of recognisable, if blocky faces. A million miles away from the gritty Daily Mail upsetting Dark Knight, LEGO Batman just wants to have fun while playing its usual tune of fun satire and acessibility. And of course, Danny Elfman’s original score, fantastic.

Wario Land: Shake Dimension – 26th September

Remember how amazing Wario Land was on the Gameboy? That’s why this has got me excited. A 2D game that looks like an animated cartoon while in motion Shake Dimension appears to take most its cues from the GBA outing Wario Land 4 with a health meter alongside the ‘reach the end of the level, get the treasure, run back to the beginning while shortening your fingernails’ gameplay. Throw in some unobtrusive remote shaking and you’ve got a promising looking title.

There are plenty of other games out in September, these are just my picks. What are you looking forward to?

Pinata Snap

There’s something to be said about being able to snap personal pictures of games, while it’s something PC gamers have been doing for years consoleites got a glimpse of it (well, a full on and fully developed stare if we’re being honest) with Halo 3 last year, snapping shots from replays and sharing them with friends. And now we have Viva Pinata: Trouble in Paradise, a game about cute papery critters that allows you to immortalise their random meandering about your garden and these pictures can be uploaded to www.vivapinata.com where you can download them and share with friends.

If there was one big thing missing from the 2006 Pinata it was the ability to easily show others your garden and thanks to the lovely camera option it’s a candy coated reality, and just snapping them in nice locations and positions is an addictive mission in itself. Below are my favourite efforts and this will probably be a regular update over the coming weeks as the game is rather amazing.

Do you have any pictures to share?

Space Marine of War May Cry Gaiden.

A video detailing a new third person shooter set in the Gothic dystopia of Warhammer 40k has weaseled its way onto the Internet and while it looks good there is something eerily familiar about it…

Watching the video feels more like a round of ’spot the influence’ as our lonely, balding, bulked out hero shoots at things, hacks them with chainsaw combos and goes in for kill animations.

The game looks similar to Gears of War, combo gameplay and chaining hits on multiple enemies could be from any hack and slasher and those close quarters instant kills could be straight from the recent ball busting Ninja Gaiden 2.

But that’s not the problem, pinching ideas from good games is common practise, Gears itself borrows heavily from the seminal Resident Evil 4, it’s the way the footage never seems to gel with the space marine clumbsily standing around absorbing bullets, lumbering from one enemy to the next firing a gun that may as well be ejecting used tissues, if anything it could have done with robbing Gears cover system along with everything else and forcing the player to hide away from bullets and move intelligently from one enemy to the next stunning them with a gun that actually works.

Possibly the most important question is what the spotty communions of Games Workshop stores will think of a lone Space Marine making mince meat of anything and everything. As an ex socially handicapped dice rolling patron of plastic models small and large I would have thought the game would be a guaranteed squad endeavour, possibly in first person with less combos and more meaty melee attacks ala Halo, but I’m not a decision maker and merely an observer, so I’ll just have to get what I’m given.

Perhaps it will be good, but as of this video I am getting less the feeling of Space Marine and more the feeling of a hack and slash with pretty gothic architecture in space… If it wasn’t for the in space part that could be describing Devil May Cry…

p.s. Door QTE? Honestly, why bother? Also, showing enemies arrive in a cutscene is just lazy when you could let the player see it in real time as they run down the stairs.

Back for real.

That’s right, I’m back for real. After saying I would be back over summer, I got distracted by the following things:

-My Girlfriend who lives at home, while at University I rarely see her so summer is the greatest time ever, because she is amazing.

-Working for those slave drivers at Tesco, because I need money to buy all the games I want, and food.

-Writing for www.dpadmagazine.com

-Writing content for www.aboutmmorpgs.com (which reminds me, sorry Luke, I’ll write some new stuff soon I promise)

-New PC, Team Fortress 2 is really addictive.

So yes, a new term at uni and I will vow to update my blog more frequently with things that interest me, not necessarily you, and I’ll try and keep it interesting and occasionally funny where possible.

-James