Roll credits

Today is a sad day for me, I’ve just finished Fallout 3. When I originally started playing the game, my intention had been to stretch things out and see as much of the map as I possibly could, but alas my enthusiasm for the main storyline got the better of me. I finished the game with a level 15 character, 5 levels below the cap of 20.

I will miss very much the game’s ambiance and it’s peculiar form of humor, which made the whole Fallout 3 experience feel quite unique. It’s been a while since an RPG has engrossed me as much as this tile has and I think I will be going through some form of withdrawal symptoms in the coming days. That’s how much I enjoyed immersing myself in Fallout 3’s setting.

Here’s hoping for an expansion pack or three in the near future!

Neverwinter Nights 2 : Storm of Zehir

After roughly 20 hours of play, I’ve just finished Obsidian’s latest expansion for Neverwinter Nights 2, called Storm of Zehir. I’m writing literally minutes after reading the closing credits. The experience is still  fresh in my mind and so I think that now would be a great time to give my brief impressions on some aspects of the game.

Continuity : This title is not a direct continuation of the Original campaign and Mask of the Betrayer. It has some tenuous links with them but overall it is a fairly self-contained entity story-wise. After reading the official game forums, I learned that this seems to have bothered a lot of people, who I guess were hoping to pick up where MotB had left off, and were looking for a similar experience as the one they had had with NWN 2 in the past. Personally, I feel this new storyline is quite refreshing, although it is not as epic and grandiose as previous offerings, I still think, in it’s own low key way, it is just as compelling. Bigger is not necessarily always better where story telling is concerned. The whole mercantile and economic struggles backdrop to the SoZ campaign was for me a very refreshing departure from the standard fantasy RPG fare, indeed quite an original take on the genre. I would welcome more of this kind of atypical approach to storytelling in an adventure game.

The Overland Map : Another bone of contention on the forums. I liked it very much. It adds another layer to the game and points back to the overland travel component that featured in such classics as the Ultima series and Baldur’s Gate. It definitely pushed some old school nostalgia buttons for me. I also appreciate how it made a variety of hitherto more or less useful character skills a lot more valuable to a party. I think SoZ made rangers and druids shine, justifying their status as an adventuring class, which was not something that was easily done in a pure dungeon crawl type of game.

The small dungeons : I loved these ! Short, sweet and to the point ! A great many of the explorable dungeons that are found on the overland map would more properly be classed as ”interior encounters”, taking up about 10-15 minutes of playtime to complete for a well balanced party. I love this direction in game design. I admit to having over the years gotten a bit tired of some of the bloated, stretched-way-too-long, dungeons found in past Forgotten Realms games. Good on Obsidian to have moved away from this!

The music : Absolutely fabulous ! A few people on the official forums have commented quite positively on this aspect of the game and I have no qualms in following their lead. The soundtrack to the game is fantastic and very atmospheric, with nods to a plethora of adventure movie music scores. One forum poster mentioned a certain Indiana Jones vibe to SoZ’s score and I think that this person is spot-on. A standout for me as far as game music is concerned.

So that’s pretty much what stood out for me after playing SoZ. I think that I may have enjoyed SoZ more than other people have simply because I came to it with no preconceived notions and expectations about it, having only read one preview of the game. When I picked it up, I was simply looking for a little diversion from the MMO grind burnout that is starting to afflict me this holiday season and SoZ hit the spot quite nicely. I would recommend it to anyone just looking for a good DnD 3.5 fix.

I don’t want to set the world on fire

Can’t get that song out of my head since I’ve started playing Bethesda Software’s Fallout 3. In fact, I’ve pretty much got all the old time tunes that feature in the game on permanent rotation in my head. The Galaxy Radio play list is by far my favorite part of the game ( yes I need help ).

I’m a big sucker for atmosphere in a game. A well conveyed setting, that adeptly lets you experience various moods and feelings, really scores points with me, which is why I think Fallout 3 may well be my game of the year. Age of Conan had the same effect, with it’s rich Hyborian tapestry. I play computer RPGs mainly for reasons that center on a need for escapism, and games like Fallout 3 and AoC hit that particular button well as far as I’m concerned.

Before playing Fallout 3, I had a;ready played all the Elder Scrolls series games from Bethesda, including their famous Oblivion offering. That being said, I was never a huge fan of the game mechanics in those titles, the first person twitch-based combat system and improve-as-you-use character advancement they featured never having been a hit with me. But I always managed to overcome these obstacles to enjoyment by immersing myself in the rich world the games were set.

It’s the same with Fallout 3, but to a even higher degree. This time the game mechanics for me are even less of an obstacle than was the case with oblivion. The change from the isometric turn-based combat of previous fallout titles to Bethesda’s first-person hybrid turn-based / realtime system has not demanded that big a level of adaptation and I am glad that they kept the S.P.E.C.I.A.L. stats system and the perks of previous Fallouts. I think Fallout 3 is a very smooth transition from the old Fallout to the new. I now realise that all of the the misgivings I had about the new direction in game-design Bethesda’s takeover of the franchise would bring were for nothing. Even if Fallout has been ”Oblivionised” to a large extent, this is not necessarily a bad thing.

I’m still relatively early into the game, my character is a level 8 talker / scientist type guy, but so far I am very happy with Fallout 3 and would recommend it to anybody who enjoys old time music and truly atmospheric RPG gaming !

Mass Effect

Well, I just couldn’t resist, I picked up Mass Effect for the PC the day it came out. I had told myself I would buy it and lay it aside till my subscription to TR ran out but what can I say, I am weak. I miss single-player games now that I am heavily into MMOs, I miss the pace and the isolation as well as their non-competitiveness i.e. no race to level cap, keeping up with the Joneses gear race, maintaining good PvP skillz, etc…

I am really taking my time to savour this title. I read everything, go everywhere and talk to everyone. I am letting myself get engrossed into the story with no rush to finish. I set the combat difficulty to the lowest setting so that the game flows seemlessly on with no hitches, I am not going to let the twitch based combat in this title ruin the fine storyline for me. Anyways, I’m getting my dose of adrenaline playing TR, so with Mass Effect I’m allowing myself to go back to my “Lazy gamer” ways.

Dawn of War, Soulstorm

Well, my time in PotBS just went from great to bad in about two days. With the server merges the society I was in decided to transfer a month before the agreed upon date without telling me, which I think is kinda rude but whatever, and I just lost my hard earned ship to a level 50 who ganked me while I was in transit to another port. I know being randomly killed in PvP is no big deal, get over it, hell I’ve jumped noobs in Lotro Monsterplay for the easy infamy plenty of times, so I can’t really claim innocent victim status. But in Lotro, when you get killed, you lose a bit of rating and get ported to the rez circle, that’s basically it. In PotBS you lose your ship and all the hard earned loot you were carrying, which really pissed me off.

So I decided to take a break and play some single player Dawn of War Soulstorm, the last in the series before Dawn of War 2 comes out. What I love about this game is the voice-acting, which is absolutely first rate and very atmospheric, not to say quite hilarious at times! My favorite is the chaos marine range of voice-emotes, which features gems such as  ”Do you hear the voices too?”.

I guess I’m just a bit burned out on MMOs and need to take a step back. An RTS like Dawn of War provides just the gaming diversion I need and I would recommend it to anyone remotely into this genre.

For the Emperor!

The Witcher Enhanced Edition and the Wait and See syndrome.

While Multiplayer RPGs are by far my biggest time-sink, I have not forgotten my single- player RPG roots and still do indulge these types of games from time to time. Hence this post about the recently announced Witcher Enhanced edition, that you can read about here.

This new version, coming out in May, promises to add about 5 more hours of gameplay and also furnish much needed performance improvements, particularly on some of the insane load times.

Now as an relatively savvy MMOer I, like many others, know that immediately jumping into a newly released title is often asking for trouble since by doing so one often ends up beta testing the game. I also follow the “wait six months before trying it” axiom oft-mentioned by many gamers. A little patience allows me to play a better polished and balanced product as well as have access to all of it’s features ( that rarely make into initial release ).

From this Witcher Enhanced edition announcement I gather that I will also have to adopt the MMO Wait and See methodology with single player RPG titles because frankly, although I do enjoy the game, I will not replay to see the extra features that will be added to it in May, although I am really bummed out about missing out on them. This trend of re-releasing games in a better / improved format is nothing new I know, but it seems I never really had been consciously aware of it till now.

I guess I will be playing the PC release of Mass Effect in somewhere in 2010 then.