Fallen Earth

This screenshot pretty much sums up the game for me as of this writing.  Just riding through the wilderness and exploring the world, as desolate as it may be. 

Okay, first, what is it?  Fallen Earth is a post-apocalyptic MMO with a huge focus on crafting.  That’s a very generalized overview.  A bit deeper, however, and you have this game that is not completely combat oriented, and is actually very, very complex. 

Now, make no mistake — this game is NOT for everyone.  I will say that if you are a casual gamer, you will MOST LIKELY not like this game.  It’s very time consuming, and it requires a lot of patience.  But if you’re willing to give it time and appreciate it for what it is, you’ll come to love it. 

First, let’s go over what I don’t like about this game.  To start with, it’s VERY complex.  This is both good and bad.  It’s good because I like complex.  I like having to think before I place that advancement point or choose a skill.  I like having to do a bit of research before I figure out how to craft a certain item or find an ingredient I need.  And in this game, where the main focus is NOT on combat, it works.  But, sometimes it’s just TOO complex.  It’s borderline intimidating.  Next, you can’t respec yet, although they are working on a way for you to do so.  So once you assign your advancement points, that’s the way they are.  Forever.  Good God that’s horrible.  And finally, why the fuck do I get stuck on every little dinky ass tree branch and railroad post in the fucking game!?  Argh!  Fix your clipping, dammit!

That’s about all I have to complain about.  The rest is pure enjoyment, but again, let me say that this type of game IS NOT FOR EVERYONE.  Let me explain to you the type of gamer you will have to be to like this game.  I will do this by explaining why I like the game. 

It is incredibly open ended.  You’re going to have no idea what you’re supposed to do, and you’re going to have to figure it out for yourself.  You will have to examine every little thing that you find, because you will most likely need it later.  Spider leg?  Keep it.  Weak antiseptic?  Keep it.  Tainted water?  Keep it.  Bruised green pepper?  You bet your ass you’ll need that later.  Almost EVERYTHING can be used to make something else, which contributes to the fact that this game is 95% crafting.  You will make your own gear.  You will make your own weapons.  You will make your own food.  You will make the ammo for your weapons.  Hell, you’ll make your own HORSE!  And everything that you need to make these things can be found out in the world.  In a garbage pile.  In a mining node.  In a plant node.  On something you just killed.  By skinning something you just killed.  It’s all out there. 

And if the item is useless…guess what?  The tooltip tells you so!  “A useless broken claw.”  Things are labeled VERY well.  And they make sense.  Hm, I need cotton.  Where do I get it?  Oh look, a plant called “Cotton Plant”.  Maybe I should pick it! 

The bottom line is, a majority of your time is spend riding around the world, exploring, scavenging, and then organizing what you found so you can make things.  That is relevent to my interests. 

We’ll see how long it holds it. 

Now playing: Linkin Park - The Little Things Give You Away

There’s a project I need to work on.  It’s going to be a major pain in the ass, but it must be done.

Now playing: Hot Hot Heat - This Town

First Impressions of STALKER Shadow of Pripyat

The first term that comes to mind is “open-ended”.  Maybe even a little TOO open ended.  But hey, some people really like that.  It’s impossible for me to not compare this game to Fallout 3 right from the start, because the two games are so very similar:  They are both set in a post-apocalyptic future, where the world is now full of the effects of severe radiation.  Both are shooters with many aspects of RPG. 

So, I find that I must try and quell a lot of these comparisons, because Fallout 3 is such a great and polished game.  STALKER is not polished.  This game feels very rough around the edges.

And surprisingly, this sort of works in its favor a bit.  A lot of people, expecially hard core RPG lovers who want to customize every facet of their experience, will relish how BARE this game is.  And by bare, I mean that you really don’t get much in terms of help, or guidance, or anything like that.  The minimap is atrocious.  The backpack looks like something out of a 1995 dungeon crawler.  The large scale map is a confusing set of gridlines and white circles.  All of this leads to one thing:  If you want to play the game, you have to figure things out for youself.  And some people will love that.  Admittedly, I sort of like it myself. 

Now, for its strengths — at least those that I’ve seen so far in just a few hours of game play: 

The best thing is the atmosphere.  Here is where I notice the most significant difference from Fallout 3.  To me, Fallout 3 is more of an adventure game.  Sure, there are some gross and disgusting creatures.  Sure, there are some places that are dark and spooky.  But it’s really nothing compared to the atmosphere created in STALKER.  Walking through a dark cave is an exercise in not peeing your pants.  Mutants jump out at you all over the place, and what adds most to their creepiness is that you hear them loud and clear before you’re able to see them.  And you don’t know which direction they’re coming from.  Also, being out in the open countryside in the middle of the night with your dinky ass flashlight is just a beatifully rendered destruction of your nerves. 

I will continue playing this game — at least until either my PS3 comes or I get Metro 2033.  There’s a hell of a lot of games demanding my attention right now. 

Oh, and here are a couple of screenshots for STALKER.  Enjoy. 


The open areas look a bit bland and empty.  I guess the emptiness is to be expected, considering this is supposed to be a nuclear wasteland.  But the trees look crappy and the colors suck.  Not nearly as impressive as indoor areas. 


I was out in the middle of the countryside, and suddenly alarms start going off.  Lights start flashing.  A big, booming voice in the distance announcing that I need to find cover…NOW.  I’m like, “WTF?”.  So I do as it instructed, and soon every square inch of the countryside is engulfed in some kind of red, fiery apocaplypse.  This is just another example of the atmosphere of the game.  I can’t explain how cool this felt — being holed up in an abandoned warehouse while the firestorm raged outside. 


Fellow STALKERS are actually scattered about in impressive numbers.  The human population is definitely a lot larger than what I was used to seeing in Fallout 3.






This thing scared the fucking hell out of me.  See the circle of light created by my flashlight?  That’s all I see.  The dark you see around it?  That’s the rest of my screen — utter and complete darkness.  Now imagine that thing jumping out of that darkness into my dinky beam of light.  Yeah.  Atmosphere.  It’s a wonderful, panties soiling thing.

 

Now playing: Silversun Pickups - Lazy Eye

This is an interesting time of year.  The holidays are over, and all of those games that either weren't finished by Christmas or just "weren't BIG enough" are starting to be released.  It's this time of year where you'll find a lot of really decent and good games to play. 

Obviously, the biggest of these was released back in February:  Bioshock 2.  Totally lived up to its expectations and is an incredibly good game.  Mass Effect 2 was there also.  I'm sorry, but I'm meh on the ME franchise.  I do not question the quality of the games, though.  It just bores me. 

I tend to want to focus more on the smaller releases at this time of year, because I enjoy getting surprised by games in a positive way, rather than in a negative way.  For example:  Modern Warfare 2.  Totally overhyped.  Everyone wanted it.  And it was meh.  I hate that.  


Now, the first smaller release that I focused on was Aliens vs. Predator.  I played through the entire Colonial Marine campaign and loved it.  It was bascially like I was thrown into the middle of the movie Aliens.  Lovely.  King Arthur was an interesting surprise as well.  I was not expecting an RTS game to incorporate so many RPG elements into itself. 

In any case, there are a few more games on the horizon which could prove to be entertaining.  Namely:  the new STALKER game and Metro 2033.  Both of them are basically ripoffs of the Fallout franchise, in that they are shooters in a post-apocalyptic world.  However, both of them try to be slid more towards the horror end of the spectrum, instead of the more adventuring/questing form of Fallout.


Still, they could prove to be interesting.  I've already purchased and installed STALKER, so we'll be giving that one a go first.

But how will I get everything done?

The massive 8.8 earthquake that struck Chile may have changed the entire Earth's rotation and shortened the length of days on our planet, a NASA scientist said Monday.

The quake, the seventh strongest earthquake in recorded history, hit Chile Saturday and should have shortened the length of an Earth day by 1.26 milliseconds, according to research scientist Richard Gross at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif.

No wonder we can't get back to the moon or land on Mars. 

Low Tech Gaming

I find it fascinating how low tech games are becoming MORE popular as time goes on, instead of the other way around.  For the most part, I guess I shouldn't be too surprised, since the simplicity of browser based games appeal to a wider variety of people.  It's not just "gamers" who play these games, since they are so easy to get a grip on without a lot of the complication or huge learning curve.  At the same time, even the "gamers" play them because they are...games.  And that's what we do.  We play games.  I think a smaller part of it is that most of these browser based games are designed to really not take up too much of your time.  A lot of them only give you a limited number of turns or energy per day before you have to stop and come back tomorrow to continue.  It's actually a good system for people with addictive personalities, and it's a smart way for the developer of the game to ensure that while even the most casual person will be able to play it, none of them will be able to resist coming back day after day.


I think the games on Facebook are the biggest indication of just how popular these "low tech" games can be.  I'm not using the term low-tech in a derogatory way, either.  I'm simply pointing out that one of the most important things a gamer looks at is how pretty a game is.  It's all about the graphics.  But these games such as Farmville, etc, sort of prove the point that if you make a game where the gameplay is fun, it really doesn't matter what your platform is.  It can be in a simple internet browser.  


I play these games myself.  They encompass probably a total of 10 to 15 minutes of my time per day, and that's it.  But I play them every day because they are fun.  


The point of this post, actually, now that I've gotten through that bit of a tangent, is to point you towards this "zombie MMO":  http://www.deadfrontier.com/


The only reason I'm bringing this to your attention is because I have wanted a zombie MMO for YEARS now.  Literally, years.  And now, finally, thanks to how simple it has become to create your own computer game within a simple internet browser, I finally have it.  Low tech or not, at least one exists now.  (Technically, there has been Urban Dead for YEARS, which I have and still do on occasion play.  But it's even lower than low tech.  There's also Zombie Wars on Facebook, but it's just bad.)  Dead Frontier has the MMO elements and also some side-scroller shooting action.  


I still want a real zombie MMO though.  Do you hear me, game devs?

I have my concerns...

...though I admit they are negligible.  


First, I will provide a short description of why I have played World of Warcraft for so long.  In it's simplest form, the enjoyment I get out of the gameplay is being that tough, badass, hard to kill son of a bitch that leads his friends into places filled with more evil than a current session of congress.  Parallel to this, I enjoy fulfilling a role that is unique and different, and also a role that either not many people WANT to fill, or not many people CAN fill.  This last statement is the beginnings of my concerns.  


This post has been triggered by the first glimpse of the stat changes that Blizzard is announcing for their next expansion, Cataclysm.  

First, they are telling me that as I tank, I should expect:

You’ll have as much Stamina as you’re used to, though you may notice your tanking plate has a bit less Stamina than a comparable piece of DPS plate, since we tend to take the gem budget out of your most attractive stat.

So, you're telling me that DPS plate wearers will have more stamina on their gear than I will?  Ok.  I'm one sentence into your expansion and I don't like it already.


Next:

Bonus Armor on gear will go down slightly.

So you're giving my DPS counterparts more stamina than me, AND you are giving me less armor?  Ok.  Now I really don't like your expansion.


Next:

Tanking classes should expect to become uncrittable versus creatures just by shifting into Defensive Stance, Frost Presence, Bear Form, or by using Righteous Fury.

While I do like the thought of not having to worry about getting to "the cap" when I level to 85, I do not like the idea of any plate wearing buffoon thinking he can tank something simply because he can go into "that stance".  I would like to believe that by stating "tanking classes", that Blizzard intends to mean a class IN THE PROPER SPEC.  This would suggest that in order for your stance, presence, form, or aura to make you uncrittable, there would have to be some talent deep in the class's tanking tree that makes it so.  


But I have a sneaking suspicion that this will not be the case, and you'll see a bunch of fury warriors and ret paladins slapping on a shield and declaring they're a tank.  (And apparently having more health than a real tank, since the DPS gear is apparently going to contain more stamina than tanking gear.)  


I guess I have to main concerns.  The first is that right now, I thoroughly enjoy someone being able to look at me and go, "Whoa, look at that tank!", because they see my health pool.  It seems that in soon, it will be like, "Oh look, a warrior...I wonder what spec he is?".  But more importantly, just like they did in Wrath, it seems like they are trying to add tanks to the game once again.  You know what?  I like that tanks are usually hard to find, and good ones are even harder to find.  That's one of the main reasons I am one.  It gives me a tremendous sense of fulfillment to satisfy a role that is always and sometimes desperately needed.


They need to stop trying to take that away.  Otherwise, it's game over for me.  I'll leave my job to the bunch of know-nothing wannabes who erroneously think they can do what I do.  That being said, I'm sure the final product won't be anything like that. 

On the other hand, it's been a blast watching the forums explode today.  When they say Cataclysm is going to be the "end of the world as we know it", they meant that in more than one way.