Alabastra

"So welcome to Alabastra!  It shall be the death of you once more."

This is what Gadflow said to me after I freed the House of Pride.  How charming!  Of course, that name makes me immediately think of Alabasta from One Piece.  (Do not bother looking up One Piece.  Do you really think you'd enjoy a Japanese Anime where the main character is named Monkey D. Luffy?  I thought not.)

But back on topic, and the topic is KoA.

First of all, you'll notice a lack of videos in this post.  Mostly that is because I'm better at writing about games than I am making videos about games.  And mostly because I'm not particularly that -good- at playing video games.  And let's be honest here -- you weren't watching them anyway.  I'll leave the videos to the experts.  Not to say I'm an expert at writing, either -- but I would like to think that I am able to keep you relatively beguiled with the magic of words.  Otherwise, why are you here, anyway?

So where did we leave off?  Well, I'd just defeated the Balor at Mel Senshir, which was a pretty big deal.  The Tuatha have been attacking the city for a whole ten years, and I sent them fleeing.  Not bad for a day's work.  It's here that I'm going to actually point out something that KoA does -better- than Skyrim, albeit for a price.

After the Battle of Mel Senshir, I went into a new area called Klurikon.  It's that swampy area I mentioned before, filled with quite an impressive display of immersion -- the sounds of insects, soothing music, and enemies that are quite a bit tougher when compared to the nasties I had just fought on the other side of the wall.  More noticeable, however, is how the denizens of Amalur treat me now.  Their eyes are filled with awe as I approach, and they greet me as the "Hero of Mel Senshir".  This is something that Skyrim hardly achieved -- the sense that you actually made a difference in the world.  It's like only -you- know that you saved Skyrim, and everyone else inhabiting the cold north is rather oblivious.  Sort of like Canada!

But it's not done without a price, as I said.  Klurikon is inaccessible to you until you defeat the Balor.  Do you see?  It's quite simple for KoA to do this because if you're in Klurikon then of course you're the hero of Mel Senshir.  Skryim doesn't prevent you from going anywhere -- you can walk anywhere you choose.  It would take a considerable amount of coding to change the reactions and greetings of the NPCs.  It's a trade-off.  Fully open-world?  Or a changing world?

I challenge someone to do both.

Moving on, let's talk about what happened after Mel Senshir in regards to the main storyline.  To do this, I first have to explain Gadflow's ultimate goal.  It's quite simple really.  He wants to wipe mortals off the face of the planet.  He's a Fae -- a twisted Fae worshiping some kind of new god.  All the Tuatha are Fae turned evil.  (If you missed it in my previous posts, the Fae are basically the elves of this story.  Immortal beings of magic.)

Since comparisons are abound, Gadflow is not unlike Sauron.  Alabastra is not unlike Mordor.  The only difference here is that currently, I don't know of any "One Ring" weakness to exploit.  Gadflow controls an army that only gets stronger as each soldier in it dies.  I can only assume that my ability to manipulate fate will have some bearing on the outcome.

In any case, after getting to Klurikon the order of business is finding a way into Alabastra.  Do you remember the Black Gate that barred the entrance into Mordor?  Think of Alabastra as being just as inaccessible.  But, instead of finding a secret, winding alternate path inside, I'm going right through that front gate.  It's guarded by another group of Fae.  They have not turned into Tuatha, but they are sided with Gadflow because they do not want mortals corrupting their realm.  They are the Fae of the House of Pride.  I defeated their leader, and their people were convinced that mortals were not all that bad.  So, they joined the mortal army, even lending their mages in the effort to stop Gadflow.  I'm slowly building an army.

So now, with my army behind me, it's time to infiltrate Gadflow's bastion.  That's pretty much where I left off last night.  I stepped into Alabastra and was impressed by it.  The terrain isn't fiery with lava like Mordor, but it gives you a sense of foreboding.  It's a bit dark, and the structures are jagged.  Also, the music is very good there.

I did a few side quests then to finish off my evening, and one of these was actually pretty cool and worth mentioning.  On the Caeled Coast, there were two royal families that ruled before the Tuatha came and conquered them.  I found the castle for one of these families, and inside was one of the servants.  He desired to bring the castle back to its old glory, and asked me if I'd be it's new inhabitant.  To make a long story short -- I know have my own castle!  It started out as a dark hunk of ruin filled with rubble and junk.  Each time I'd do one of this guy's quests, he'd improve it.  At the end, I had red carpeting, furniture, seven bedrooms, a garden, a merchant, forges, alchemy tables, sagecrafting tables, and just about everything else I could possible need in the game.  It was brilliant.

What I've learned about this game is that if you're in the mood to just immerse yourself in a fantasy world for a bit with no real desire for a story constantly driving you forward, this game is the perfect choice.  However, if you're looking for an engaging story that keeps you wanting to play more and more, you'll find yourself feeling restless at how slow the game moves along. Last night, I was in the perfect mood to play KoA, and it worked out quite well for me.  

When Is Long Too Long?

And if your mind went into the gutter as soon as you read that title, congratulations.  You think like me.  However, that's not what I'm going to talk about here.  Sorry to disappoint you!

I'm 46 hours into Kingdoms of Amalur, with still no end in sight.  Typically, I never complain about a game being too long, and I guess this is true because either I don't like a game and stop playing it before I finish it, or I love a game and I finish it with a feeling of wanting more.  It's rare that I find a game that sort of falls in-between that, but KoA might be one of those games.

When it comes to Skyrim, there are still side quests that I haven't done.  Probably not very many at all, mind you, but there are still some.  That's not necessarily a bad thing, and I will certainly take care of those at some point.  (Probably when the DLC comes out and I have renewed interest in playing the game.)

It's different with KoA.  I'm finding myself getting bored, actually.  The last two nights I've tried to make progress in the game, I've ended up dozing off at my keyboard, and just stopped and went to bed.  The game was literally putting me to sleep.

Perhaps the problem is that I know I have other games I need to playthrough that I'm not getting to play through because I haven't finished this game yet.  Or maybe the game is just boring!  Heh.

In any case, the other problem I have is that I really can't just say, "Alright, so the side quests are boring, I'll just do the main storyline and finish the game!"  The reason I can't do this is because I need to get to a higher level so I don't get my ass kicked.  Therefore, side quests.  After the battle of Mel Senshir, the game got really difficult again.

Speaking of the battle of Mel Senshir, I owe you a conclusion to that, don't I?  Righto then.  The following video will show you the appearance of the Balor, and the fight with Malwyn.  He's the Tuatha who is leading the forces that are besieging the city.



After defeating Malwyn, there was only one other thing to do, of course -- kill the Balor.  Oh boy.



I haven't done any of the main storyline after this battle, except one little part.  It seems that we're going to try and get the Winter Fae on our side, so that's interesting.  Aside from that, I've only been doing side quests, because I've discovered that the difficulty level of this new area I'm in is quite high.  I sort of feel that I need to level up a bit more with side quests before I do anything else in the main storyline, to prevent myself from getting my ass kicked.  

I'm Awake Now

I've been wanting to use that as a blog post title for a while now, and just never had a way of doing so.  Seems appropriate now for a post about the end of Alan Wake.  If you're wondering, it's the title of a song by the Goo Goo Dolls.  It's one of the first songs of theirs that was mildly successful -- I'm talking about the days before Iris, Black Balloon, and Slide.  The song actually appeared at the beginning of A Nightmare on Elm Street 6, better known as Freddy's Dead: The Final Nightmare.  And now that I think about it, it's actually a VERY appropriate title for a blog post about a game that's all about being awake, given the fact that the Nightmare moves are about just that -- nightmares.

Anyway, before I get utterly and irrevocably off-track here, I finished Alan wake in a little over 8 hours on Tuesday night.  The ending wasn't the best, but quite honestly it's rare that I like the ending of a game.  Take the Half-Life series, for example.  Both Half-Life and Half-Life 2 had shitty endings.  (Don't get me wrong, the final PLAYABLE bits of those games were brilliant.  But story-wise, which is what I'm referring to here, they sucked.  It didn't make me feel any different about the games as a whole though, and that's the case here as well.)

I honestly wasn't expecting a good ending, anyway.  The game was an homage to old science fiction TV shows, and those NEVER end well!

So now that I've played through the entire game, I'm prepared to summarize the things I liked the most, and the things I liked the least.  I think most of all I enjoyed the overall flow of the story and gamplay.  The story moved along at a very good pace (until the very end), and it kept me wanting to play and wanting to see how everything turned out.  That's how a story should be.  The gameplay likewise moved along quite well, and the stakes kept getting raised.  Pistol to shotgun, shotgun to flaregun, flaregun to hunting rifle.  Standard procession of more powerful weapons.  Same with the flashlight, which I mentioned before.  Also, flares to flashbang grenades.  Same principle.

I think the thing that I disliked most of all was the movement.  It felt clunky. It felt...well, it felt like it was designed for a console.  (Shock horror.)  Dodging axes with those controls was probably one of the most frustrating things I've ever had to do in a game.  Sometimes Alan just wouldn't fucking move.  It was like he had a load of shit in his pants.  The other thing I hate was how the game enjoyed being a dick to me.  Sending enemies from every single angle and giving me zero escape is not fun.  Stop doing it.  Dick.

The bottom line is that this game is well worth the time and money.  I highly recommend it.  

Time to Wake Up, Part 2

Now that I've had sleep and have a bit of caffeine in me, I'm prepared to tell you more about my experiences within Alan Wake.  This morning, I'm going to be making a couple of comparisons.

The first is a bit of an obvious one.  There are parts of this game that remind me very much of Max Payne.  This is obvious because the original two Max Payne games were developed by Remedy, the same developer of Alan Wake.  (They're Finnish!)  Specifically:

• "Bullet Time" shows up on several occasions throughout the game, which of course was basically invented in video games by Max Payne.  This shows up as a piece de resistance at the end of each conflict with a group of "Taken" -- a slow motion 180 or 360 degree spin to highlight the cool thing you just did in the game.
• The sound effects are giving me a major case of nostalgia.  Some of them are identical to the sound effects from Max Payne, such as a lot of the footsteps, and most of all the sound of a locked door.  I was really thrilled to hear them again, and it brought back a lot of good memories for me.
• The overall style of the storytelling is also very reminiscent of Max Payne.  Max Payne was presented like a graphic novel or modern day comic book.  Alan Wake is presented like an old science fiction television program, but the feel of it is very similar in nature.  It's a focus on story.  It's structured and presented very methodically.  And it's brilliant.  The narration that Alan gives while you play the game is very similar to the narration you get from Max, although Max was a bit more melodramatic and noirish.  (Noirish is now a word.  I have made it so.)
• Vikings.  It's developed by a Finnish company, don't forget.  Max Payne featured a drug called Valkyr, a night club called Ragnarok, a corporation called Aesir, and a -lot- of other references to vikings.  The references in Alan Wake are more scarce, but they are there.  The biggest so far has been the two crazy old rock stars Odin and Tor, and their farm called Valhalla. 

The next comparison may surprise you.  Sometimes this game reminds me of Half-Life 2.  That's probably the greatest compliment I could ever give a game.  Specifically:

• The game is linear but doesn't feel like it.  Exactly like Half-Life 2 feels.  "Hey I'm going to go over HERE because I feel like it...oh a cave!  Oh look, goodies!  OH CRAP MONSTERS!"
• Weapon caches.  The paint marking where they are is even the same color as the Half-Life lambda insignia.
• The thing that really made me go, "This is like Half-Life 2." was when I was driving in a vehicle, noticed a house, and stopped to investigate it.  It had nothing to do with my current objective, but it had stuff in it.  This sort of goes along with my first point about the game being linear but not really feeling like it, but it's a specific thing worth mentioning on its own.
• Basic gameplay made infinitely more interesting by adding another mechanic to it.  Half-Life 2 gave us physics -- the gravity gun.  Alan Wake gives us a flashlight.  

So what we have here is a game that reminds me of two of my most favorite and cherished games of all time.  Would I call Alan Wake as good as Max Payne or Half-Life 2?  No, I would not.  The gameplay is a bit clunky at times, the save-game system is ATROCIOUS, and sometimes the game is a DICK.  All of these things take the game down a few notches.  But, so far, it's a very enjoyable experience that I recommend to anyone.  

Time to Wake Up, Part 1

I've been playing Alan Wake.  It's that game that came out on consoles over a year ago.  The same game that just came out on PC less than a week ago.  Oh, and I should also mention how the PC version paid for itself in less than 48 hours.  Score.

I'm going to talk about this game in pretty considerable detail, but probably not in this post.  It's 1:30 AM and I'm tired.  The things I want to say before I go to bed tonight is that this game is something different.  For one thing, it's actually rather difficult at times.  I've never had a game own me so often.  I've gotten frustrated a few times, and I've cussed at my monitor plenty.  Sometimes the game is a total dick!

But when the game -isn't- being a dick, it is doing one of two things quite well: Either telling me a fantastic story, or scaring the mother-loving poo out of me.

I consider Amnesia: The Dark Descent to be the greatest horror game ever made.  Alan Wake is a different kind of horror -- it's more of a making-you-jump kind of horror, rather than the slowly building dread that permeates through the entirety of Amnesia.  Alan Wake gets your heart pumping and your adrenaline rushing.  It's a horror-adventure game, really.  Or even a horror-action-adventure game, if you really want to throw all the genres together.  (Use ALL the genres!)

That being said, I would think a lot less of this game if the story was weak.  It would just be a rather bland game that sometimes made you jump.  But the story is fantastic.  It's something right out of a Stephen King novel (who is mentioned several times throughout the game).  And let's face it, you're not going to get a better horror story from anyone else.

There are so many other things to like about this game.  It's separated into episodes, with each one ending in a song and the start of the next beginning with a "Previously on Alan Wake" montage of events, summing up everything quite nicely for you.  It makes me feel like I'm playing an interactive TV show, and that's just the fucking cat's meow.

One other thing sticks in my mind as I'm writing this.  As you may or may not know, the whole "hook" of this game is that you must use light to defend yourself.  There's a darkness chasing you, and the light weakens it.  You use your flashlight to weaken the enemies before shooting them.  It's a cool mechanic, and the stakes keep getting higher and higher as you go along.  I've just finished Episode 4, and I now have a "High-Powered Lantern", which I upgraded from my "High-Powered Flashlight", which I upgraded from my normal flashlight.  I've also used lamps, work lights, car headlights, and even a FIREWORKS DISPLAY to fight the darkness.

To my point, however, there was this absolutely brilliant part of the game where I was running from the FBI.  (Don't ask.)  I had to stay out of the light of their flashlights to avoid getting shot at.  The game utterly turned the tables completely around on me.  Now -I- was the one who had to stay out of the light.  It was as if the darkness was now laughing at me saying, "Ha!  How's it feel, bitch?"

There is oh-so-much more I have to say about this game, but I really need to go to bed.  Expect more on this game in the coming days.  Until then, good night!  

KoA Stories: Part 1

Even through I'm 37 hours into Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning, I'm still figuring out exactly how I'd like to present the story.  Because, y'know, it's a good story.  It's hard for me to tell you that, because there's a LOT of content to go through, and the story admittedly moves quite slowly given how much of this game I've played.  That's fine for me, but might not be so fine for other people.  So what I'm going to do from this point forward is kind of provide videos that highlight really important bits, and just tell you about the rest.

When last I left off, I had two quests in the main storyline.  The first was to help the gnome from the start of the game.  I've decided to leave that be for the time being, and instead focus on the other quest with General Tilera.  So, for her, the first thing I needed to do was activate a bunch of stones that were spread out all over the map.  This would allow met to access a cave that she would never be able to -- because Fate determined that she never would.  Since I can change fate, though, I can.  All of this was to retrieve a weapon -- a spear -- that Tilera would use to slay the Balor. After a long and winding journey through the caves, we came to the room with the spear.  And, naturally, had one hell of a fight on our hands. 





So now that we have the spear, it was time to act.  The Tuatha have been laying siege to Mel Senshir for a decade now, and it would not be much longer before they finally do take the city.  But perhaps I would be able to help Tilera stop it?

After some convincing, the leader of Rathir agreed to make a counter-attack on the Tuatha laying siege to Mel Senshir.  It was time to go!



It occurs to me that this still might not make any sense, so I'll summarize it pretty simply.  When the Tuatha first appeared, they laid siege to Mel Senshir.  The city has been basically in stalemate with them now for ten years, but their forces are weakening.  During that time, Tilera has been sitting at the entrance to the cave where the spear rests, unable to enter.

With me so far?  Right -- so then I appeared.  I can help Tilera get the spear, because unlike her, I am not bound by Fate.  It is Fate that kept her from breaking the seal on the cave.  That spear is what is needed (again, according to Fate) to defeat the Balor that Maelwyn (the leader of the Tuatha forces laying siege to Mel Senshir) will use to destroy the city.

That's probably the most confusing part.  The rest is pretty simple.  The forces at Mel Senshir are running right out of the front gates of the city to meet the Tuatha head-on.  It's a distraction so that Tilera and I can hunt down and defeat both Maelwyn and the Balor.

In the next post:  The battle against Maelwyn and the Balor.  Trust me -- it's epic. 

The Definition of Insanity

Doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result.  That pretty much summarizes my sleep regimen.  I was so tired this morning that I couldn't even open up my eyes all the way.  That's some hardcore tiredness right there.  It's funny, because my desire to sleep is utterly BACKWARDS.  When it's a reasonable time for me to go to bed, I'm wide awake.  When it's time to get up, I'm tired as fuck.  Body, y u suck at sleeping correctly?  

Here, this graph will explain it:

Just ignore the horrible grammar in the image.  I didn't make it.

I trashed a whole evening's worth of KoA main storyline recordings because, well, it was boring.  I'll just summarize what happened, instead:  I tracked down Hugues and agreed to help him out.  I also tracked down the General and agreed to help her out.  That's basically it.  I was tired and cranky when I was playing anyway, so trust me when I say you don't want to hear that.

Damn it's difficult to type when my fingers won't move the way my brain tells them to.

So, it shouldn't be any surprise that as I was driving to work this morning, I had a seething hatred for every atom of the universe.  But right before I got into work, the most wonderful thing came onto the radio.

"Happy Friday, people!  It's the Friday before the long President's Day weekend."

Long.  Weekend.

EVERYTHING IS SO AMAZING.