Back to the Grindstone

Everquest has been described as an "Endurance Test". This is true. Levelling up can be very hard work, and extremely time consuming. In fact, it is for this reason, that I have abstained from EQ for a number of months. My EQ gaming was also put on hold due to the arrival of Phantasy Star Online for the Dreamcast.

Well, I am desperately trying to find reasons for me to continue with Everquest. The characters I have are all level 20 or lower. I would like to get them higher - but this involves vast amounts of playing time - and without new places to go and explore or new mobs to kill - it just becomes tedious.

The worst of it is that you have to battle for the mobs that do spawn. Most of them are camped, particularly when playing at peak times. This is not fun. Not only is it painfully slow to make progress with a character, but now your progress is made even slower due to the sheer numbers of people online.

I enjoyed Everquest because it gave you a 3d environment in a fantasy setting to explore worlds and battle creatures in a team. The pioneer spirit that once spurred me to put in 3 and 4 hours at a time, has dwindled. In fact the game is so slow in making progress that 3 to 4 hours are just not enough! The higher your character the more difficult the progression becomes. Now verant might argue that this is to make the game suitably challenging and gives a dedicated player something to aim for. The truth is probably to keep your monthly paying userbase from completing the game and moving on. Apart from the *real* die-hards, most people just haven't got the time necessary to invest in their characters to gain high levels.

Perhaps I will go back and find the servers have quitened down enough for my character to progress. Perhaps the new expansions planned will draw characters away to new lands whilst those long-sufferers of camped mobs can get a sword or arrow in edge-ways. Perhaps I'll deliberate about playing the game again for another month and Verant can have some more of my money, for free, just to keep my characters alive.

Quest for Questing

I am on a roll at the moment. A swords and sorcery kick. I've become totally fixated with a particular genre of gaming and I am wantonly sucking up all alternatives until I am spent.

I think the main cause for this wanderlust is Phantasy Star Online. The game combines both action and roleplay in a very addictive format. I must've clocked well over 200 hours on that game, by far the most I've spent on any game EVER!

Lodoss kicked me into a beserker frenzy, which forced a Baldurs Gate II and Icewind Dale purchase, this then lead me to Diablo II on the cheap, which seems to be directing me towards Ultima Online. I know I should take a deep breath and play games currently purchased, through to their logical conclusion - but my lust for new thrills is just too strong. The only thing stopping me from sweeping up all vaguely related D&D products is the fact that I simply can't afford to.

I can't seem to focus on the traditional Japanese RPG's like I normally do. I want action based isometric's and I want them now! Keep your Grandia II and your Skies of Arcadia - give me action and give me roleplay - but make sure theres plenty of action.

So as I twitch here in my chair and wonder what road shall be next, the elven path to Ultima Online? or the dwarven cave back to Everquest? please spare a heal for a very sick man. A tortured addict. An aging gamer.

Dazed and Confused

Online gaming sux0rs! The trouble with online gaming is that the game mechanics rely on the gamers being mature adults and wanting a good gaming experience out of it. The truth is, the online gaming world is populated largely by insecure over-confident and over-explicit teenagers. For someone who takes his gaming very seriously, I enjoy being immersed in a world where fantasy becomes reality. It's the ultimate escapism and it really does give a higher buzz than most other toxic substances. However, the best buzz, is often found when playing alongside "real people", in these fantasy worlds. Mainly because their actions are not dictated by a particular algorithm or routine. The most unfortunate thing is that along with "real people" come the disruptive/corrupt element of society and online gaming seems to afford them anonymity and the courage to be complete assholes! They will actively ruin a particular games mechanics - if they think it boosts their ego - or if they can brag about it online to other players. They will hinder and spoil any game in progress, and actively try to scupper other players for the sadistic pleasure gained.

Most of the disruptive gamers tend to be adolescent schoolboys. Where games cross continental boundaries - racism oftens plays a big part in the disruption. These teenagers should be stopped! Maybe the only way to do so is to apply a pay-per-play system so that you have to have enough money to play - to invest time and effort reaping the rewards from a game? I dunno?

Phantasy Star Online has been scuppered with Gameshark cheaters, dupers and theives. Other games such as Tribes and Diablo/Diablo II are plagued with scriptkiddies, character hackers and just plain childish behaviour!

What can we do about this?

Online gaming is where the ultimate thrill is at - it is also where most of the socially inadequate toss-pots hang out.

I want to achieve the "Nirvana" that can be online gaming, I wish there was some way to filter out the spoilers, cheaters and hacks and just allow in the serious, polite, and non-cheating adults.

Perhaps, the only way is to establish an online community of people you can trust and then set up each game you play as password protected. What a sad reflection on the gaming community. But, I suppose gaming IS associated with adolescence and therefore the majority of gamers are maybe not mature enough to handle online communication. I hope to see more online games with closed mechanisms to keep the disruptive rabble out. Long live the password protected game!

Swords and Sorcery

Although I have played Diablo before on both PC and Playstation format. It has taken me a while to get round to trying out the second installement in this hack n slash extravaganza. I was directed to Diablo II by my current passion for Record of Lodoss War. It seems once a game really impresses me I have to seek out other games in a similar genre to fully appreciate the scope of variety on offer. This quest often goes cross platform. And Lodoss, led to Baldurs Gate II and now Diablo II.

I must say, this product is extremely polished. I suppose I should expect that coming from Blizzard. But stepping across the puddle blood from Biowares Baldurs Gate II to Diablo II the difference is quite noticeable. The game installed without a hitch. The FMV was of much better quality, sharper, clearer - quite stunning actually. The in-game graphics are larger and much more pleasing to the eye. The player-control mechanism, battling and spellcasting mechanism fits comfortably and is almost transparent - without reading the manual or having a led-by-the-hand tutorial. You can basically get on with the questing minutes after the game is installed without havig to wrestle with the interface to your avatar.

I'm not trying to take anything away from Baldurs Gate II as it is undoubtedly much more complex in nature (following AD&D rules and taking party based combat) but Diablo II is RPG killing for the masses. Baldurs Gate II is RPG killing for the hardcore stats and dice folk.

Shenmue: I am Japanese!

Shenmue is a game that you will either love or hate - there'll be no middle ground. You are submerged in an *almost* real-time japanese town. You have to chat with the folk living there to try and find out who murdered your father and seek your revenge. The game progresses in daily cycles. In the morning, its bright and chirpy. At lunchtime everyone goes and gets some grub. Evening time settles in and the you can be dazzled by the neon twinkling through the dusk. Weather changes too! People open shop and close shop at the appropriate times indicated on the front of their shop! If you ever wanted to go to a small japanese town and mull around for a while then this game is for you. You can spend all your time and your savings on the toys dispensed from a street corner vending machine, you gotta collect 'em all! Or you can spend all your time and savings in the games arcade playing button-bashing boxing or other retro favourites. Or you can follow the story plot through and investigate the murder. The plotline information is served up by various characters giving you snippets of information. Invariably the key character to further the plot will be found at a certain place, at a certain time. You can idle until then. In the games arcade. As all gamers probably would in real life.

ZOE: Eva Substitute

From the moment I booted this game up, I just knew I would fall in love with it. From the haunting music that greets you to the visual feast that is served up as anime-rendered FMV. The two things that tugged at my gaming heart strings were, you get the opportunity to pilot a mechanised frame and you can swoop gracefully around urban landscapes unleashing your destructive cargo - in the most elegant way. It almost seems as if each battle was a carefully choreographed ballet.

The similarities between ZOE and the anime, Neon Genesis Evangelion, are evident throughout. Both are stories are about a tormented unwilling pilot with an unfortunate gift from mechanised combat. For a long term fan of the anime, this game is a wet dream.

The game is only let down by the fact that it is quite short. Even with my sloth-paced gaming approach I only clocked 9 hours or so to complete it.

http://www.zoneofenders.com/

Opening the Baldurs Book a little Wider

This game comes and goes, it hooks me in, the storyline is suitably complex and interesting, there are plenty of skill/ability tweaks to play with, however I'm turned cold by a party control mechanism that is fiddly in combat and a click-heavy inventory system. The whole world does capture your imagination, and you do get a sense of how big and complex the story can get. The sheer number of townsfolk who want your help to begin can be overwhelming. I'm used to one quest at a time, not a request for three different ones from people in the same inn! As I play through some of the refinements to the game shine through, the ability to assign and script up different AI for each of your party members still leaves me impressed. Sometimes it takes a couple of party wipeouts to fix in your mind the correct AI needed for you raggle-taggle group to gel together as a mean fighting machine. The wealth of different spells can amaze and bewilder at the same time. Hard study is required if you are to master the spellcasting in Baldurs Gate II. I wish the character graphics were a little more defined and solid. The backgrounds are superb, obviously labors of love. But the characters are too sketchy when that small. There is also no fluidity to their movement - like wooden dolls clip-clopping around awkwardly. I guess I have been spoilt by the beauty that is Record of Lodoss War for the DC - but I just expected more from the PC title. They give you workable representations of your party, the spells and other effects are not all that spectacular - but as long as get the general idea of fantasy combat and spell casting then they serve their purpose too. There is a lot of dialogue. Maybe too much. I find (when I'm getting tired) that I skim over the several options you have in reply to a lengthy question. And I just try to pick one that seems most appropriate. There is some humour wrapped up in the dialogue that will catch you unawares. Although I'm not so sure about the 'trick' questions that are sometimes used to make sure you are still awake when answering. I suppose, given the epic nature of the game, you should immerse yourself as fully as you can, reading absolutely everything so that you can capture the atmosphere of the game, the way Bioware intended.

The more I play the game, the more I'm pleasantly surprised by further revelations in both story and interface. The ability to save often is very much welcomed. Especially for a gamer like me who likes to try several approaches - just to see if I can get away with it.

Baldurdash

"My first venture into Biowares epic. I was undecided as to where to start - do I go for the original Baldurs and begi my quest at the start? or do I jump in with the latest version and see if it floats my boat? There also is the niggling doubt that I have previously dabbled with Planescape Torment, having shrugged it aside when I found the going too tough, will Baldurs be any different?

I opted for Baldurs Gate II. Mainly because the collectors edition included a T-shirt. Also, I thought I may as well appreciate the latest and greatest, rather than my view be tainted with an older less sophisticated product. So, I uninstalled Black & White to make room for the extremely large install. At first I could not believe the full install wanted nearly 2.5Gb!!! I bit the bullet, and cleared up some vidcap stuff from my overburdened hard disk. After the install, a lengthy operation involving four CD's, I darkened the room and started it up. I thought I would pay my respects and run through the tutorial, since I hadn't the patience to read the manual. My initial reaction was one of disappointment. Mainly because I was expecting cleaner, crisper graphics with much more detail and definition. Still, I soldiered on, blaming my high expectations on a gluttony of super slick Dreamcast console graphics. I was just getting the hang of various simple tasks, when I noticed something odd. I could not successfully cast a spell, without taking too long. Moving the character became a chore in itself. One of the action buttons, usually turning the undead, or guarding another started to rapidly flick on and off! There was nothing I could do to control or stop it. The constant activation prevented access to the spell list sub-menu, and movement required at least three or four clicks for the command to take hold. I checked all the settings. I tried saving and loading the game. I even tried several different characters. All had the same problem, after a few seconds with a single character selected, this insane button twinkling began! I presumed it was a mouse problem. My Microsoft Optical Intellimouse had served me well over the past year or so.. but it was USB - so I thought I'd try a bog standard serial one. No change. I unhooked the USB hub altogether. No change. Ok, manual time. The message was loud and clear. INSTALL THE LATEST GRAPHICS DRIVERS!!

Before I chanced my arm, I'd bought Icewind Dale (another Bioware RPG romp) at the same time - so I thought I'd give that a look-see. Since Icewind and Baldurs use the same Infinity Engine, not surprisingly, Icewind was struck with the same ""flickery affliction"".

I downloaded the new ATi drivers, spent an eternity going through the complex ritual of exorcising my machine of its previous graphics drivers and installing the new ones. It was recommended that you re-install Baldurs. A man could grow old whilst waiting to play this game.

Started her up. New character, no tutorial. Same old flicker. I've spent 50 quid on two Bioware games, a whole night installing, configuring and re-installing - with about 15 minutes play on the tutorial. My first real quest began. To try and get this game to work.

I scoured the 'net for anything and everything I could find about the problem. I stumbled upon a posting on the Black Isle ""official"" Icewind Dale messageboards, it had the topic ""Annoying Problem"". Basically several folk had exactly the same problem, all the Bioware games suffer from it, except Planescape Torment. But no-one including the Black Isle Studios moderators could offer any advice other than... INSTALL THE LATEST GRAPHICS DRIVERS or TRY A LOWER GRAPHICS SETTING (disable OpenGL/3d acceleration). It was obvious several folk were frustrated by this problem, the game almost works... but this small nagging gripe renders the whole game (all 2.5Gb of it) unplayable. I was convinced the problem must be my USB mouse. I was blinkered. I began removing the drivers for some of my other USB peripherals. Luckily, the first one I uninstalled was my Cardport Swift Smartmedia card reader, for my digital camera. Removed the card reader from the USB hub, rebooted and tried Baldurs. It was fixed! No flicker! My mouse was free of blame.

Now in total it took me a good three nights to get to this point. My love of gaming was the only thing preventing me from marching back to GAME with Baldurs and Icewind and getting a DC/PS2 replacement. This episode just re-inforced my decision to play console games. Anyway, the problem and solution is logged on their message boards. The majority of people who posted to that thread had similar card reading devices and can now play the game. I feel I did my bit, and it was something of an acheivement. My first quest over, my reward, to take on my next quest in-game…"

Addicted to Lodoss

"Did I mention Lodoss was brilliant?

Good session today, took on the Giant Zombie King. Rooms full of headless walkers swarming around me, my two-handed Falks blade not making much progress into their hp. Chugged down half of my green fluid keeping me alive whilst downing a medium ogre guard with a combination of slashing at entrance of door and setting bonfires in corridor. Anyway, a swift re-animate to bring his lifeless corpse back under my persuasion. And I'm using him as an ogre-shield whilst he pounds the headless fodder with his pike. I still need to slash at their tails because there smackdown attack makes even this ogre fall flat on his arse at times. Using this heal and shield technique I clear the two main headless rooms.

We head off (pun intended) into the main Zombie King room. Now this is where my ogre friend meets his fellow ogres. He has a tough time. I cannot get deep enough into the room to help with slashing - without losing most of my hp and landing on my arse. We put up a brave fight, but I simply haven't got enough juice to keep him healed. Out pops three large ogres with mallets as big as me. Slamming them onto the ground causes visible shock waves that renders anyone close by useless (and on their arse!). My ogre bud is history. And I am followed into the corridor mallets smashing at my heels. I last only a moment longer to hear to whistle of the air expire from my lungs as the mallet crushes my chest. I tried varying tactics, my main goal was to get one of these mallet wielding maniacs under my spell. But my juice was loose. And the pounding was too much for any mob I could animate. Four attempts. Four crushings.

I went back to my smithy, to discuss the problem. He reminded me of a rune I'd got early on, that I'd not taken much notice in. Holy Photon I believe it is called. Seems its got a range attack, one that is good on undead and demons. So I spend a little mithril and my oriental gets a new engraving. This is my pride and joy very expensive oriental sword that has high chance of a critical hit! The range attack allows me to charge the sword, and direct a beam of light-based missile shards towards an enemy. So pulsing these things down the corridors is ideal. Flash a few, animate an ogre. Now he pounds em at the door, I'm at the back firing light-beams - and they are doing considerable damage, not only that but they also heal any animated mobs that they pass through! And I'm not using any magic points for this! It was precarious at first to get the aiming right, but this proved a valuable tactic for taking those ogres and zombies in the final room. In fact, it worked so good that I managed to re-animate a mallet pounding ogre! He was still taking a hell of a beating. My juice was still in short supply - but by carefully positioning myself behind the pounders, my mallet ogre took all the flak, and in fact was doing NO damage himself (he was on his arse all the time). I could burst my light through them doing about 600 dmg at a time, whilst healing my ogre with 200 hp. It took what seemed like an eternity to dispatch them this way - but the tactic paid off in the end.

After all this needless banter, it was to just highlight how involved and surprising some of the tactics can be. With the weapon/armour tweaks and the various attack and defence spells, not to mention the clever use of a re-animated patsy, this seemingly tedious diablo-hack-and-slash-clone hasn't ceased to amaze me. I'm level 20 with 12 hours on the clock. I've seen my first dragon, although I'm in no shape to take any on.

Did I mention Lodoss is a cracking game?"

Lodoss Discovered

Not having the heart to start PSO up today, I was gonna fire up Grandia 2 but I thought I'd squint at a game I bought at christmas but never played much. Record of Lodoss War. Diablo-esque. Slammed it on the DC VGA style - lovely. Just fancied seeing what it was like. 5 hours later - I love it!

The whole levelling up is diablo - but the weapons and spells system is much more involved. The storyline is furthered on from the anime, but after the initial tutorial battles, turns out you get to search for, meet up with and fight side-by-side some of the original characters from the anime (Parn, Deedlit etc). You collect ruinic words and get the smithy to engrave them onto your weapons/armour/shield to enhance their properties. The spell system is nice, you collect spell books, learn a spell, but before you can use a spell you have to prepare it by pressing a set combination of buttons. As you become more efficient I think you do away with the need for this. Vials and bottles are collected and healing potion is topped up in them from a well. Plenty of kit to mess with, the full monty like EQ really. Even different coloured armour for that fashion conscious barbarian. The maze like dungeons can be a bit tedious to navigate at times - although they are enormous on some levels the high level map is a necessity. Theres always a save before any bosses. And the first spell you get is one to take you back to your wizard friend and top up on health juice. Which is nice.

I'm really impressed by the weapon/engraving mechanism. Gives you plenty of scope for tweaking your character's abilities. Also you can transform one weapon into another with the right amount of mithril - you can duplicate weapons and lockpicks etc, you can turn weapons into mithril and even get the smithy to make you a super-special weapon (a long oriental sword) - if you pay him enough. Luckily, as I was wading into a dungeon thick of goblins, I found a 'Goblin Killer' rune that I engraved onto my long sword and it gave it one swipe one kill loveliness. Culling the green beggars became a formality. The FMV scenes are nice. 3d rendered animey. The only thing that lets it down a bit is that 30+ goblins on the screen some casting some throwing axes makes it chunter a bit giving obvious slow-down.

I saw Lodoss going for 19.99 in Game. Might be worth a look for those PSO fanatics who need a break from the power-levelling.

http://dreamcast.ign.com/reviews/15717.html

With its excellent customization features, a huge assortment of items to find, and a good story to keep things interesting, fans looking for some meaty story for their PSO action will find Record of Lodoss War a very refreshing gameplay experience... and yes, there is actual closure to the ending as well, though you might have to play through it again.