Posts Tagged ‘review’

Planetside 2 Review

26 November 2012 | 6 Comments » | Mike

When Planetside 2 launched last week, like many MMO launches, it was a bumpy one with the majority of players unable to log into the servers for hours, myself included. However by the end of the day the bugs were fixed and I was ready to deploy, I just didn’t know I would be deployed straight into a warzone.

My first life was unfortunately a short one being killed within 5 seconds of deployment and my second life wasn’t much longer. For some reason SOE thought the best way to teach players how the game works was to put them directly into a active combat zone. After a few more respawns and a few more deaths I got the basics of what was going on and managed to get to a safe area where I could finally figure out what the hell I was doing. The controls are very similar to any other FPS you might have played, but the UI is very overwhelming with lots of icons all over the screen. I couldn’t tell if the icons were pointing out allies or enemies so I had a few incidences of friendly-fire in the beginning, but soon figured things out.

After about an hour of examining the classes, item shop, upgrades, the map and everything else, I got a pretty good feel for the game and was on my way.

For those wondering why I skipped character creation it’s because there is none. You’re character is covered in armor, which can be customized in-game via the item shop and unlocks, so there’s really no reason to have a character creation.

Planetside 2 is pretty much exactly what you would think it is. Take any FPS game, increase the map size 100 time, add a few thousands players and make it persistent and that pretty much sums up the game. Outposts and command centers are scattered around the map allowing factions to control them and gain resources from them, although this system seems to be flawed.

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Guild Wars 2 World vs World Review

29 October 2012 | No Comments » | Mike

Having hit the level cap almost two weeks ago, my focus, aside from the on-going Mad King Halloween event, has been World vs World. I touched upon it a bit in my Guild Wars 2 review, but it really deserves it’s own review since it’s a completely separate system then PvE. So here we are.

As I stated in that review, my currently relationship with WvsW is a love/hate one. It solves a lot of problems other MMORPGs have with RvR, but doesn’t get in quite right and makes a few errors itself.

I’m going to start off by talking about map size as I feel everything is in some way influence by it. The World vs World area is split into four deceivingly large maps and while they feel and appear to be large at first, they’re actually very small and the source of many of WvsW woes.

Currently the primary, and really only successful tactic, is to form massive armies to attack structures around the map and while this type of tactic is expected, it ends up being the only tactic used. I’ve tried soloing or running with smaller groups, but they don’t last long; you’ll run into a massive army after taking a camp or two and will be forced to retreat. The problem is that maps are so small, these zerg armies are able to go after small bands of players while on their way to larger structures. There’s no decision to be made whether or not to take a camp as it’s only a few seconds off the path and players that separate can quickly regroup with the zerg in a few mins.

If you expand the size of the maps, these zerg armies will be forced to break into smaller groups to go after small hold points or bands of players. Creating a greater variety of combat other than massive scale.

Moving on, lets discuss towers, forts and castles. Towers require small armies to take over, while castles are the crem della crem of massive PvP combat, with forts being somewhere in the middle. Sound good, right? Well the problem again comes from the small map size. While towers should be objectives taken by smaller groups of armies, it ends up being large scale combat most of the time. The problem is that 2-3 defenders can successfully hold off a group of 10-15 attackers fairly easily to give enough time for reinforcements to arrive. So what ends up happening is people get discouraged, join the zerg, then attack the tower. The problem again stems for small map sizes. While a group of 10 attackers might eventually overwhelm the defenders, they can’t take over the structure in the speed required to avoid reinforcements.

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Guild Wars 2: Ding Level 80 PvE Review

17 October 2012 | 5 Comments » | Mike

From the moment World vs World was announced my interest in Guild Wars 2 PvE dropped to zero. During the beta’s I spent maybe 30 minutes to an hour in PvE, just to try it out, which didn’t impress me, and the rest of my time in WvW. However due to the massive WvW queue times after launch I was basically forced into PvE. At first I was a bit upset, but assumed the queue times would diminish after a few days or perhaps weeks, but almost two months after launch, I still find myself sitting in the WvsW queues.

I have to admit I gave up pretty quickly on PvP, as a new dad, I just don’t have the time to sit in queue for 1-2 hrs, then spend another 1-2 in WvsW. So my attention turned to PvE, which not only grew on me surprisingly quickly, but is probably the best PvE I’ve every played in a MMORPG.

To understand where I’m coming from, let me give you some background; I hate questing, can’t stand it. I hate running to NPC quest hubs and having to run back; I hate the mindless quest grind; I hate that everything is marked on the map and there’s absolutely no challenge, exploring or surprises. I also hate that quests hubs turn MMORPG into linear games, which they were never meant to be. While I’m not saying Guild Wars 2 solves all that, I am saying that is how horrible the last decade of PvE games have been.

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Guild Wars 2 PvE First Impressions

28 August 2012 | 7 Comments » | Mike

As impressive as people believed Guild Wars 2′s PvE was going to be, I’ve never had even the slightest interest in it, for me the game was all about World vs World PvP. During the beta’s I barely touched PvE, however because of the massive queue times during the headstart weekend I was left with no choice but to dive into PvE.

Off the bat I was impressed with the direction ArenaNet took with quests; there were no quest NPCs to talk to which meant I’d never have to run back to turn-in a quest. Perfect, I hated running back anyway.  Everything was laid out on the map for me, so I began checking off the map achievements one by one. After a little while it hit me that this was extremely similar to Assassin Creed’s system. The Vista jumping game replaced the Eagle-eye climbs, public quests replaced the city quests and all points of interests are already marked on the map.

I completed the starting area map and the city map along with the storyline quests bringing my grand total of world achievements to about three or four percent before I moved on to the next map location.  Here I completed a few more quests and achievement, but ultimately it will be where my PvE journey ends.

Sadly my first impressions of Guild Wars 2 PvE will be my last as I saw nothing that really separated it from any other PvE MMORPG. Making all the quests public is nice, but it doesn’t solve the problem of having boring quests and I have no interest in completing hundreds of them before I get to some good ones.

I don’t know if the vast majority of GW2 fans are in a state of euphoria over the launch of the game, but the PvE system is the same thing as every other MMORPG out there. I love that ArenaNet took a big leap with PvP in World vs World, I had a blast in beta and for the short period of time I was actually able to get in during the weekend, but PvE is no different.

Instead of quest hubs were you gather 5-10 quests at a time, the quests are all already marked on your map; then add a few random dynamic quests along the way to increase the quest count. The only difference is the delivery system, which is definitely an improvement, but it doesn’t change the fact that your still just doing boring quests.

I’ll give it to ArenaNet that their quests aren’t as bad some some games, cough*TERA*cough, but they’re certainly not exciting enough to get me to change my mind on PvE. I’m sure the endgame dungeons are fun and perhaps even a few along the way; I just don’t want to go through 50 hours of boring quests to get to them.

TERA Review: What Could Have Been The Next Big Thing

25 June 2012 | 11 Comments » | Mike

If I had to quickly describe TERA to someone, I’d say it was a grindy, standard MMORPG with great combat, unbelievable graphics and lots of potential, but since I’m writing a full review, I’ll dive in deeper.

Let’s start off with what I mean as a ‘standard MMORPG’. TERA has all the features you’d fine in any MMORPG today, linear questing system, so-so character creation, decent crafting and skill systems and or course a story-line. Nothing here is terrible, but nothing stands out. As far as story goes, even though I’m in my mid 40′s I still couldn’t tell you what’s happening, nor do I care.

Instead of talking about all the standard features, none of which make or break the game, I’ll talk about the features that do. However, before I begin, I want to say how impressed I am with En Masse for not only launching an extremely polished game, but a game that’s filled with features that many recent MMO games, months after release, still don’t’ have; a fully functional auction house, group/dungeon finder, fully customizable UI, customizable gear (dyes) and world events. Kudos to En Masse for pushing the bar with a fleshed out set of launch features.

I’ll begin with what TERA does right and that’s combat. En Masse advertised the hell out of its combat system and for good reason; it’s extremely fun and addictive. While there are other games out there that feature action combat, I’ve experienced none that are as good as TERA’s system. It’s a completely different way of playing when skill is the predominant factor instead of number crunching as with tab-targeting. Having had to go back to tab-targeting, even Guild Wars 2′s hybrid system during the beta weekends was painful. Going forward, tab-targeting for me is a deal-breaker for any new MMORPG after GW2 as I already pre-ordered it.

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TERA: Not Quite Our Review Yet

24 May 2012 | 3 Comments » | Mike

It’s been a few weeks since TERA launched and while I’m not ready to post my full review just yet, I’m only level 41 with my archer, I do want to talk about my experience thus far. For those of you not familiar with the game, you should check our my first impression TERA review, since I won’t be discussing much of that here.

When I wrote my first impressions of TERA I ended it by saying, “I could just be under that “new mmorpg” spell that seems to make every new MMO game better than it actually is“. Well I must still be under that spell because I’m still having a blast with the game.

Once you hit level 30, the speed at which you level begins to slow down and the mobs begin to get harder. This is actually a great thing, not only because it puts greater emphasis on acquiring better gear for your level, but also because it takes some of the grind out of the game.

Up until about level 30, you’ll rarely die from mobs, but after, they get tougher and are closer grouped together, combined with TERA’s very quick respawn rate, you will get caught and respawned on many-a-times.

While this can be frustrating for some, I love it. To me grinding is the most painful when you can’t lose and you’re just going through the motions, but when the game makes it difficult, it changes from a grind to a challenge, which to me is much more enjoyable, even though I’ll be swearing up a storm when I die.

PvP is still missing-in-action. You’ll get ganked once in a while, but for the most part players won’t bother since there is currently no stat system to record kills or rewards for PvPing. Guild vs Guild is still there, but I haven’t participated in it much, as I never seem to see anyone from the enemy guild during the times I’m on. I also play during off-peak hours, so that’s probably why.

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TERA First Impression Review

3 May 2012 | 3 Comments » | Mike


It’s only been two days since TERA official launched, but really, the game’s been live for almost two weeks (when the unofficial open beta head-start began). Since then, I’ve managed to level my Popori Archer all the way to level 27, allowing me to get a better feel for the game than I did during the closed beta phase.

To begin with, I went with the Popori race, which is sort of like an Ewok, but cuter. Not because I enjoy being a two foot tall cuddly bear, but because TERA‘s all about action combat. My idea was to pick the race that was the smallest, so my hit-boxes would be smaller, making me harder to hit.

Once I customized my character, I was off to the Island of Dawn, which is the starting area for all characters. This entire island is an intro to the game, and sadly, there wasn’t anything noteworthy that I saw. Once I reached the main city of Velika, the fun finally began.

I’m sure you’re already familiar with TERA‘s action combat system, but what you might not have heard about is its combo system. TERA features a nifty new combat system that allows you to instantly follow up an ability move with the next one in the chain. These chains are completely customizable so players can pair up any moves they want, although some abilities do give bonuses when they follow another ability, so that’s something to take into consideration.

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The Dungeon Master: Tangleroot Gorge

10 April 2012 | No Comments » | Randy Denosha

The Dungeon Master is going to take a look at the fourth Adventure Pack for DDO, Tangleroot Gorge , a pack for characters between levels 3 and 7.

This pack consists of ten quests and includes a new wilderness area to play around in. The quests revolve around a plot line involving  a friendly tribe of hobgoblins, who want the player’s help to get rid of another, not-so friendly, hobgoblin tribe that also inhabits Tangleroot. Every quest is located inside a base that the hobgoblins have called Splinterskull. In the start, the player will weed out the forces inside the fortress before finally confronting the boss, Chief Yarkuch.

The wilderness area has 9 rare spawns to kill, 8 different slayer bonuses and 13 explorable areas. Each giving a nice bonus experience. Continue Reading