Game OVERLOAD!

Wow, what a rough week. I'm swimming in games with no time to play them! Ever since July, when my wife and I played, fell in love with, and subsequently purchased a Wii, we've had more games than I know what to do with, and it just keeps getting worse! (or better, depending on how you think about it) And now this week I've had guests in town and done practically NO gaming. I feel so dirty...

But I have a few minutes of quiet now, so I thought it might be fun to do a rundown of all the games taunting me.


PC

EverQuest 2: Well duh. It doesn't take much time looking at this blog to know that EQ2 is my primary game of choice. Between the monthly fee and being a guild leader, I always feel like EQ2 should be where I spend most of my gaming time, and thankfully, spending my time there is also great fun! Kunark is due out soon, which means a ton more to explore and consume. I'm at once excited while very much mourning my sleep schedule.

Legends of Norrath: I'm actually a little bit afraid of LoN. Much as I do hate the pricing scheme for virtual-pseudo-property, I love the game so much that I bought a bunch of cards anyway. I'm done now - I have enough cards to build decent, fun (not min/max) decks - but someday they're going to bring out expansion sets, and that's where the fear comes in. I may eventually have to give up LoN just so I don't wind up in debt with nothing to show for it! Still, this is kickass game that everyone should try out. As a big fan of turn-based strategy games, this one is already up there with my all-time favorites.

Oblivion: I haven't played this game in ages, but it's an awesome game and I never finished the main storyline. Phooey.

Wii

Wii Sports: When we bought the Wii, I intended to do at least a little bit of Wii Sports every day, because it's a lot of fun and it's better exercise than we'll see out of MMORPGs until they go fully virtual reality on treadmills. This not-too-lofty goal hasn't panned out, however, because I have too many other games to play.

Ravin' Rabbids: I'm happy to say I actually did win the story mode of this game, but darned if there doesn't appear to be a whole bunch more to unlock via the score modes. This is, however, likely to collect a lot of dust until and unless we have visitors over for a Wii Party.

Wario Ware: Easily in the top 10 crack-addled games I've ever played! I think I'm about 75% through the main game story-ish mode, but haven't had time for it in quite a while. I really should try to finish it, though, because only when the story mode is completed can you finally see what the multiplayer options are. (this, for the record, is a really lame design choice)

Boogie: My kid still loves it, and I think the karaoke mode can be fun, but for the most part this one has been a real dud, as pretty-well explained in my previous Boogie review. This is on the list because we still have a lot to unlock, but it may be a crazy long time until this one gets marked "Complete."

Big Brain Academy: I really believe that this game could function as advertised and make your brain more agile with daily use. I don't have time for daily use, so my brain isn't progressing as it should. Much like Wii Sports, I haven't made this into the workout it should be.

Super Monkey Ball: This was a birthday present (not from me) to my wife, and I admit I haven't really touched it. But it's there, waiting for someone to start monkey-balling like crazy.

Elebits: This was a birthday present TO me. Excellent game! Some of the controls can be a bit difficult to get the hang of (opening doors, for instance, which I suck at), but I LOVE LOVE LOVE the world. In the spirit of Katamari games, Elebits features what is more-or-less a fully-interactive world. In theory, any object you see can be picked up and manipulated if your "capture gun" is strong enough, and the physics model - though poor at damaging things that collide - is great for chain reactions of objects smashing into each other as you toss them around.

Twilight Princess: Another birthday present to me, this one is turning out to be a nice family game. My daughter doesn't want to trying playing it, but there's a lot of cut scenes and dialogue, and she just loves watching. She even helped me figure out a couple puzzles, which either speaks highly of her or poorly of me ;) I'm sure I've only barely scratched the surface of this one, but I look forward to discovering more and more of the plot!

Link to the Past: Yeah yeah I know, this game is ANCIENT. I downloaded it a while back because it's supposed to be one of the best adventure games ever made, and yet I'd never played it. The Wii Virtual Console helped me correct that, but now I find myself 2/3 of the way through, and distracted by tons of other games. I can definitely see the appeal, however, and fully understand why Link to the Past has been raved about for so many years.


Board Games

Descent: I can't tell you much about this game because I've NEVER played it. It was a very nice gift, and it looks like a lot of fun, but I haven't had folks over for a board game night in forever. I really, REALLY need to explore this one someday!

Talisman 4th Edition: Ohhhhh, sweet sweet Talisman, how I adore you. Thanks to another very nice gift many years ago, I have Talisman 2nd Edition with a few of the expansions. Then, I also bought the Talsiman 3rd Edition reprint that was made a few years back, which is severely stymied by Games Workshop's jerkwadly decision to refuse to reprint the expansions. But a brand new 4th Edition - no doubt already selling like hotcakes - is highly likely to get the full treatment, so I'm in, and desperately awaiting the package to come in the mail. This will likely get a column of its own someday.

Soooooo, yeah. Not counting future games that I really want - like the new Simpsons game later this month or the TBD-release of the Wii version of Beautiful Katamari - that's only 14 games I own vying for my attention. This is bad.

On Whining and Entitlement

I am so proud to be a gamer, and yet frequently so disappointed in the behavior of certain members of my ilk. What we often seen on the forums that is expressed in whiny rants appears to be a form of steadfast tunnel vision that renders people totally incapable of forming reasonable conclusions about many topics. Legends of Norrath is scheduled to launch today, last I saw, and I'd like to hit a particular issue that's been driving me batty.

What I want to talk about are LoN's "Loot Cards." These are the rare-ish cards that occasionally show up in your booster packs that give you the ability to redeem and claim spiffy little items in EQ1 and 2.

The whining takes different directions, but they generally boil down to a few arguments:

1. People getting special access to items that should be available in EQ without playing LoN
2. People spending real life money for in-game items
3. The items are overpowered

#1 actually crosses over to another thread I noticed yesterday, regarding a cloak in EQ2 that's only available to attendees of the recent Fan Faire.

The notion is that people who invest money in Trip X or Game Y are getting perks that others feel entitled to. I could understand the "unfair" argument if the special prizes involved Fabled equipment, Master 3 spell upgrades, or the like, but they don't. They involve TOYS. In almost every case, the prize-factor of the items gained from attending events or participating in LoN are based on visuals.

For instance, you can get a cloak that gives you a featherfall-type ability and, depending on which cloak, lets you breathe water, turns you into a box (illusion), or a couple other things. Featherfall and Water Breath are handy powers, but nothing that can't currently be obtained in game, just on different items. Turning into a box is a very unique illusion that can't be obtained elsewhere (yet), but it's JUST an illusion, and therefore a toy.

You can get a few different mounts that have 50% runspeed boosts. This equals the fastest mounts currently available in EQ2, and anything coming out with Kunark isn't likely to be more than a couple percent faster if faster at all. At worst, people who aren't in Level 60 guilds can RARELY pull a card out of LoN that lets them get a Guild Level 60-quality mount. Once again, the only distinguishing factor about these mounts is that the graphics are currently unique to LoN rewards. These are very nice toys, but toys nonetheless.

The most polarizing of the Loot Cards seem to be the items (one in EQ1, one in EQ2) that give/gave a whole ton of mana/power back to the user, but could only be used about once per REAL LIFE day. These aren't toys, and they certainly aren't visual, but with a 20-24 hour recast timer, AND being extremely rare, you wouldn't think they'd be that unbalancing. But we'll come back to that...

Argument #2 has a bit of feasibility to it. Yes, I can spend oodles of RL money to increase my chances of getting a cool EQ2 item. But there is a difference between spending a set amount of cash to get UberItem Q transferred directly to me, versus spending potentially infinite amounts of cash and possibly never getting the item I want.

And alternatively, there WILL be a few lucky punks who never play LoN, one day stumble upon a booster pack drop while adventuring, and redeem it only to find one of the most sought-after items out there. That'll totally happen, and because it can and will, I think #2 loses its steam. Spending money is for the impatient who "need" their cool items NOW.

The impatience factor is, as a general rule, the same factor that drives the RMT market, but with three key differences: You're mostly getting toys, you aren't guaranteed to get your toys, and the toys you get don't come from exploits/duping, theft, scripting, accounts funded by stolen credit cards, etc.

So as much as I'm against RMT, and even though I feel the purchasable card packs are way overpriced, I still don't see a problem here.

But that leads us to Argument #3: Are the items overpowered? Firstly, anyone who argues the illusion items or featherfall toys are overpowered can take a flying leap. Toys toys toys.

The 50% runspeed mounts - Overpowered? I don't deny I'd love to get one, but because of the visuals, not the power! My guild did recently hit Guild Level 60, so I have 50% mounts available to me anyway, and in a plat-to-dollar conversion, it'd be cheaper to buy the mount directly than to buy pack after pack looking for one. While it's true that this mount allows players to skirt the normal guild level requirements to get the top speed mounts, this is, once again, a very rare item. Besides, there's lots of high level guilds that accept members of wide level ranges, so it isn't really that hard to use a guild just to get a mount if you don't mind being a twerp about it. I've certainly known quite a few people that have done just that!

The big item causing controversy, as mentioned earlier, are the power/mana recovery items. In EQ2, this item has already been nerfed, but did it need to be? In EQ1, the item sounds to have retained its original form, which should be more or less a full mana heal once every 20 hours. What this has led to - amazingly - is raiders complaining that these items are destined to become standard, required gear for raiding guilds.

Will a power heal make a raid easier? Sure, of course it will. Will it make impossible raids possible? Once in a long while maybe, but not commonly! There's two main steps to raiding that we need to consider:
Step 1 - Get the baddie under control.
Step 2 - Sustain healing AND DPS until the baddie is relieved of his burden of life (or unlife).

Step 1 is extremely important, very difficult, and all the power heals in the world won't save you. This is the step where most aspiring raiders fail. Pulling, placing, and setting-up a raid encounter requires a great deal of patience and timing, NOT mana.

Step 2 is the tactical phase. Keep your DPS up without falling to AE or adds, and keep your tank alive without running out of mana. Here is where the LoN recharge items can help you. YES, if you have a team of 6 healers and all 6 have one shot 100% power recharges, that can win a raid for you.

But for gods' (plural 'cause it's Norrath) sakes, that's ONE bit of victory assistance PER DAY. If you use it help you clear a zone, then you won't have the oomph to beat the boss. If you use it on the boss, congrats, but you still did all the hard work to get to him in the first place!

At worst, you could use the new persistent instance rules (EQ2 only, so far as I know) to have these power refills help you on 5 nameds in a zone over a 5 day period, but that dooms your no-doubt amateur raid force to one really SLOW, BORING week. Is it worth it? You still need the pull and setup, you still need the tactics, ALL this item does is get you over a hump that's probably caused by not being equipped or tactically-prepared for the raid you're trying.

Was it really worth all the bitching and moaning that led to a nerfing on the EQ2 side of things? Had I gotten one of these items in my boosters, it might have been nice in my non-raid, casual play once in a while, you know. Nothing to imbalance the game, just an occasional get out of jail free card. Not that the nerfed item isn't still useful, but not quite the same level of emergency lifesaver. Thanks for ruining it for the rest of us, whiners. Have fun protecting your elite raider status.

Legends of Norrath - First Week Thoughts

Well, I've got to say, I'm impressed. When I learned about Legends of Norrath at the recent Vegas Fan Faire, I was, frankly, kinda ticked. I haven't played a collectible trading card game in probably around a decade, and I hadn't been missing it. Not that TCGs were always bad - the strategy aspect is very appealing to me - but they got awfully expensive back in my college days, and they never seemed worth getting back into.

Now we have this new wave of ONLINE TCGs. Online? What the hell? This isn't like solitaire, where I'm playing with the same "deck" over and over, and at worst the computer version keeps me honest. This isn't like video poker, where once the deck is "shuffled" via randomization, the play-the-odds aspect is exactly the same as regular poker.

No, the idea behind a trading card game, and one of the defining aspects that made it so much fun to begin with, was the rush of opening a pack of cards and seeing what's inside. You take your cards, file them away, and they're collectible, so maybe you take the rare ones you don't absolutely need and place them in protective sleeves to retain their value - like a baseball card collection only geekier. So to collect virtual cards in this same manner seems....wrong. To me.

I can't say I necessarily would have given LoN a fair shake had I not attended the Fan Faire. But since I get to try it early, free (optionally), and - even if the game turned out to suck - got some chances at making server item discoveries (of which I amazingly have ZERO, despite playing EQ2 non-stop since beta), I figured I should take advantage of the offer :)

I always said about EQ2 that the graphics were great, but had nothing to do with why I have yet to find a game to take me away from it. The gameplay is what's most important! LoN gets major kudos in a similar regard: I may not like the notion of an online TCG, but so far I'm very impressed with the gameplay!

LoN offers a really interesting dynamic that I never got out of TCGs a decade ago. Magic: the Gathering, for instance, was all about building an army and slaughtering the other guy. Star Trek's TCG had combat between cards you laid down, but winning was focused on completing missions. (It was also terrible - just the fact that the Red Alert mechanic ever existed means someone should be shot)

LoN offers you a choice of paths: Try to slaughter the other guy, represented by an avatar with personalized stats (unlike MtG, where everyone starts with 20 health points and no stats), or be the first to complete 4 quests of increasing difficulty. You can choose to build a deck focused on one tactic or the other, or make a balanced deck that can flexibly take either path.

I spent most of the last week on tutorials and scenarios. The scenarios are a sort of short, single-player campaign not unlike other computer strategy games, wherein you must use the resources available to you to tackle opponents who have various themes, tactics, challenges, and special abilities.

A few of the scenarios are amazing, while others are amazingly frustrating. Droon was the first such bastard. ANY fight he gets into, he gets 4 points of damage absorption, which makes him extremely hard to EVER hurt (doing more than 4 damage in a combat is tough), and nearly impossible to kill. Beating him by questing isn't impossible by any means, but you still have to build an army to hold his army at bay, so you can't just go with a 100% questing deck. The best thing I can say about Droon is that he made me learn all the ins-and-outs of the deck builder utility!

There were some other tricky scenarios, some more fun in their challenges than others, but the worst has to be the last one. Ok ok, the last scenario in a campaign SHOULD be the hardest - I'm aware of that - but Miragul's ability to resurrect (at no cost) ANY unit out of his graveyard once per turn makes him just god-awful. It isn't hard to start the game accelerating faster than Miragul and get a couple quests under your belt, but once he gets up to 6 power and lays down Mayong Mistmoore, there's pretty much no stopping him. I'm going to have to try making an all-combat deck of extremely cheap creatures and see if I can just out-attrition him.

Frustrating as some scenarios may be, however, they really are fun, and definitely help get your brain buffed-up for when you take on other humans.

Speaking of humans...I finally played against another human last night. Good times! I managed to win, but it was close - both our avatars were down to 1 hitpoint when I finished him off with a Kick, for which I felt kinda cheap. I'm very much looking forward to more matches, and especially some tournament action. I hope there'll be a test of the tournament system near the end of beta, too, so we can see how it works (and maybe win a sweet carpet? ;)

So, what are the downsides of Legends of Norrath? Well, as I said, the gameplay is very engaging, and of course there's bugs, but bugs get fixed. The only thing that really bothers me about LoN is tangibility. I accept that, at this point, I'm just some old coot who only looks back fondly on how things were "back in my day." That said, it still bugs me!

I think it's the way the cards are marketed and "packaged" more than anything. The Legends of Norrath store (link here***) shows booster packs in little tear-open plastic sleeves and starter decks in colorful, art-laden boxes. But that's not even that bad compared to the "case of booster packs' you can buy. There's actually a little picture of a store display box full of booster packs, and you get a small discount for buying 36 at once. ($2.75 per pack instead of $3)

I used to pay $3 per booster pack for Magic cards, Star Wars cards, and any other TCG I once fiddled with. But had I kept those cards, I could still go to them 20 years from now and they'll be there, waiting for me to get nostalgic. I could invest hundreds of dollars into LoN, and 20 years from now they'll be so much digitized dust in the wind.

Simply put, $3 per booster feels like way too much for virtual property, and what makes me REALLY mad is that I like the game enough to have already bought a few anyway. Grrrrrr.

There'll be free boosters that drop off of mobs in EQ1 and EQ2, but we won't know how rare they'll be until LoN goes live. Mayyyyybe it'll turn out that they aren't terribly rare, and perhaps even that LoN will prove to be a dandy, lower-profit marketing tool to get more EQ subscribers rather than the other way around. I'd LOVE that, frankly. IF, in fact, those dropped boosters aren't very rare after all, I'll quit my bitching about the price for purchasing extras, I promise ;)



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