• 25Dec 12

  And the winner is...

  Happy Holidays to all. With everyone's Game of the Year lists slowly manifesting, I thought I'd share with you the game that touched me the most this past year. It's by no means a surprising winner, but the decisive manner in which thatgamecompany's wonderful downloadable title Journey rose to the top and never struggled to keep that position throuhout the year, was impressive.

  

  Journey is a game that does so much with so little. It's mechanically simple, all you do is walk and jump. Yet, never has a game made the simple act of walking around its vast landscape such a joy as Journey. Whether you're intently climbing a dune of sand or playfully sliding it down, floating up strands of fabric, dangling in the wind or swimming through a sea of light. It's amazing how often I found myself actively thinking just how fun moving was in this game.

  Without any lines of dialog and nothing but a few engraved murals and visions of a civilization long gone, Journey also managed to touch me deeply with its story. Its themes leave room for interpretation, yet they aren't not vague enough to be confusing or shallow. The tale of a once great society running out of whatever godly or earthly resource they had once discovered serves as a warning to our own lavish ways, yet there is a deeper meaning to what the game and your hooded character represents. Is it a metaphor for the cycle we all pass through in our lives? A symbol of hope? A little nudge to make us appreciate the beautiful things we might take for granted in this world? It can be whatever you want it to be.

  When I first played Journey, it was a good week or two before release and I played it a number of times before it was officially available. The downside was not having experienced its sublime integration of multiplayer yet, that connects you to other people more strongly than any voice chat or squad mechanic ever could. The moment you first realize that another player has joined you is a magical experience and the desperation felt when you lose sight of your companion can be soulcrushing.

  When I finished the game for the first time with a companion at my side and the game tells you the name of the people you met along the road, I immediately sent that person a message, telling him how much I enjoyed his company. Today, on Christmas day, I played through the game again, and for the larger part of it, I managed to stick with another traveler. I again felt how we silently forged a bond, how there seemed to be a deep understanding of what each other wanted to do. At the very end, I had suddenly lost track of him or her, and I panicked, not knowing if I should wait for my friend to catch up or if I had been the one who had fallen behind. I couldn't find him.

  At the very end, just below the final ascent, I stopped to soak in the beauty of the game one last time, when I suddenly heard a chirping behind me. I felt genuine relief and happiness and after we ascended into the blinding light and the credits had rolled, I received a PSN message, thanking me for the company and wishing me a Happy Holiday.

  This is that playthrough

  • Posted Dec 25, 2012 4:37 pm GMT
  • Category: Editorial
  • Tag
  • Print
  • Email
  • Facebook
  • Digg
• 11Dec 12

  League of Legends: Basic Tips

  With GameSpot's month-long celebration of League of Legends and Synthia embarking on her quest to become a LoL-pro, I thought I'd offer a few pointers for anyone willing to jump into what has been my much beloved past-time for the last two years or so (with a one-year absence.)

  The point here is to start things slowly and concentrate on a few core ideas of the game, before going too wild with strategies and high-level play, so if you already know what you're doing, this isn't going to be for you. If you are, however, fresh off the tutorial and not yet tainted by the toxic community LoL (and MOBAs in general) are known for, I hope you can take something useful with you.

  
  1. Pick a Champion

  

  There are more than 100 champions in the League right now and ideally, you'd want to know what each and every one does to know how to play them AND play against them. This task is overwhelming for any beginner, so the best we can do is to know at least what our heroes do and get better with them. Riot will cycle through free champions each week, so you'll have the chance to find one that fits you, without spending too much influence points or, god forbid, Riot points. A personal recommendation would be Morgana, as she is a strong farmer with easy to understand mechanics, yet a very strong champion even in high level play. But again, this is about what you want to play, so pick whatever type you like best, as team constellation will not be a consideration during your early levels.

  2. Last-hitting And Sustaining In Lane

  As you may notice, your champion will gain experience while standing nearby dying enemies, minions and jungle monsters, however, only when you deal the killing blow will you be rewarded with a hefty sum of gold (sidenote: you also gain assist gold if you help fell an enemy champion.) The concept of last-hitting, i.e. dealing that final hit, is one of the most integral parts of any MOBA, since it is one of the main ways to gain the advantage over your adversaries. The folly most new players will fall for is spamming their abilities in order to get this gold which can be an option for certain champions at later stages of the game, but should be avoided for the first few levels.

  Why? You start each match with very limited "resources", such as money, health and mana (if your champion uses mana) and expending it will soon leave you with no other option but to go back to base, which in turn will make you miss experience and potetial gold while giving your opponent the oppportunity to gain an early advantage. Expending your spells can also leave you vulnerable to harass by your enemies without any means for retaliation. If you are a mana-less champion such as Katarina, Shen or Rengar, you're of course free to harass or use skills to secure last hits, however, be mindful of your cooldowns and play more defensively (except Rengar, he's OP )

  The more economic way to grab gold is to use your basic attacks, which is indeed hard and requires a lot of practice (for instance getting a feel for how much damage you can deal, how the attack animation of your champion works out and what your range is.) While this is more painful, it leaves your spells up for harassing the enemy champion, keeping them from getting last hits or at least costing them a lot of health in the process, forcing them to go back early and in turn fall behind in gold and experience.

  2.1. Shoving and freezing the lane (advanced tactics)

  While I promised to keep it light, this subject ties neatly into all that last-hitting business we were talking about. It may not be all-important at lower levels, but it's a good thing to keep in mind for later (as jungler and ganks become more important.)

  Anyway, what most unexperienced players will do is go to their lane, stand behind their minions and blast away, occasionally getting a last-hit in. One prominent effect that will set in, especially if you are using an area of effect spell, is that the enemy minions will die faster than yours, making them push closer to their tower. This can have both positive and negative repercussions:

  a) If your minions get in tower range, there is a high chance the tower will get the killing blow in due to its immense damage early on. Keep in mind that good players will know how to last-hit under towers, not losing quite as much. The second benefit to keeping your lane pushed against their tower is that the enemy can't afford to roam, or his tower will take a lot of damage from your minions (this is called "applying pressure.")

  b) You have to move away from the safety of your tower, leaving you more vulnerable. This is especially true once you reach a level of play where teams will have "junglers", dedicated players who will roam the forest area between lanes to kill monsters and gank unexpecting lanes.

  Some champions such as Morgana or Anivia are known as pushers, as they can erradicate an entire wave of minions in a very short time, keeping constant pressure on their enemies while giving them time to shop at the base or roam towards other lanes.

  3. Try Not To Die

  League of Legends is not a game of killing the enemy champions, it's a game about not dying. Death is the ultimate crowd control, knocking you out of the action for a long, long time. While dead, not only will you miss out on experience and gold from dying enemies, even worse, you will give your opponent even more gold and time to get ahead further, only to have him return with stronger items to kill you even faster next time.

  
  Don't get me wrong, dying a couple of times is not the end of the world and in certain situations, a noble sacrifice can net an advantage elsewhere. Still, die as few times as possible, especially early into a match and if you ever fall behind, don't get over-aggressive unless you get help by an allied champion.

  Random Facts

  • You can press the "S" key to stop moving, which will make your champion not attack even if enemies are in range. You can use this to properly time last-hits.
  • With most champions (depending on your basic attack damage early game), a full health melee minion can be last-hit by 2 turret shots followed by one basic attack while ranged minions are best dealt with by one basic attack, followed by a turret shot and executed with another basic attack.
  • Basic attacks on enemy champions will draw aggro from nearby minions, casting spells on them however, will not.
  • You can de-aggro from minions by running away or breaking line of sight by hiding in a brush for a moment.
  • Posted Dec 11, 2012 3:01 pm GMT
  • Category: Editorial
  • Tag
  • Print
  • Email
  • Facebook
  • Digg
• 20Jun 10

  Mandatory E3 Wrap-Up Blog

  Hey, what's up. Haven't done this blog thing in a while, so I thought I'd use this past week's E3 as an excuse to give anyone who cares a little gaming sitrep.

  $$$Major Gaming Purchases$$$

  Guess what, the guy who is absolutely against motion-controls bought himself a Wii. Well, I kinda bought it for my mom as I got a bundle with EA Sports Active because I once saw her eyeing WiiFit in a store and she's been wanting to excercise for years without any tangible results. It was also pretty cheap (given what an (imo overpriced) Wii costs here. I got the Wii, WM+, Wii Sports, Wii Sports Resort, EA Sports Active plus New Super Mario Bros Wii and Super Mario Galaxy (1) seperately, all new, for less than what the system launched for (so less than $249 if you're in the US.)

  

  Consensus: I still hate motion-gaming, enjoy Mario. Granted, I didn't play Resort, but I fired up Wii Sports to play a bit with my mom and test the fidelity of the Wiimote. Of course I tried to grief the thing as much as possible, laying down on the couch and just flicking the wrist instead of properly moving the arm or anything. To the game's credit, she beat me handily in bowling, although I laughed at her for actually standing up. When it came to baseball, I dunno, after I got the timing down, I batted like 5 consecutive home runs and it seemed to barely mimic how I was holding the damn thing. Ultimately, it's not quite the scam Just Dance pulls on the millions of idiots who bought that thing, but if you strain a muscle from playing Wii Sports, you give this technology too much credit.

  Playing New Super Mario Bros Wii felt familiar but satisfying and definitely a lot better than the disappointing DS game that probably ranks up there with Super Mario Land as the worst (but still alright) Mario platformer. Super Mario Galaxy seems awesome so far, although the camera can be less than ideal, but what are you gonna do with those crazy level designs. We'll talk about future purchases in a later segment of this entertainment broadcast, but I'm definitely thinking about getting Muramasa, Zelda, Metroid Prime Trilogy and a couple of GameCube titles. Let it be known though that if my mother is a representative of the casual crowd, two buttons are too much to handle for them. In Galaxy, she ran out of lives before the first save point after the tutorial while she made it to 1-2 in NSMB before getting a game over. It was painful to watch, but she won't read this anyway.

  We Require More Vespene Gas!

  Also, let's talk about Starcraft 2. I pre-ordered the game a few months back which of course gets you a free beta key. What do you know, this game is pretty damn good. They made a lot of intelligent changes and adjustments particularly to the early game. Each race has different means to increase their economy for example. Terran can call down "Mule" robots that harvest minerals extremely efficiently, Protoss can chronoboost the production of units and upgrades while the new Zerg queen acts as both a base defense and can spawn additional larva. What makes the game great more than anything though is that it's totally Starcraft. There's a welcoming simplicity to the basic concepts and graphics while the game strikes a perfect balance of building up the right units AND controlling and surveilling them at the same time.

  

  I didn't really notice how much I was enjoying the game until the beta went down in June. I didn't even play all that much, usually just a couple of games until I would inevitably lose and get annoyed. Now though (and also while the beta was still going) I find myself on YouTube multiple times a day looking for new Starcraft 2 commentary videos. Two guys who have been very prolific in popularizing the game and its already vivid tournament scene are Husky and HD, two players/commentators who constantly provide new videos, even during the downtime, as well as hosting their own, epic tournament a while back. Not only is it fun to watch pro-players, but you might learn a thing or two. If you're interested in watching a couple of pre-recorded games, there's actually going to be a live stream with analysis of a couple of show matches today, Sunday, on 1:30 pm PT.

  That said, my major concern with the game is Battle.net 2.0. A lot of people have already voiced their opinion on the service and the lack of LAN support caught a lot of flack early on. The biggest issues for me though are (as of now, i.e. end of the beta in early June) the lack of chatrooms and no cross-realm play. As far as I know, the only means to communicate with people in B.net is to add them to your friends list and whisper them / invite them to a party chat. That's just bull****! There's no easy way to meet people, no sense of a community, needless to say it's a huge step back from Brood War, Diablo or Warcraft. As for the lack of cross-realm play, how am I to play against hazel? How Blizzard?

  On To More Current Events

  
  

  The Triple-E's came and went this week and I finally caught up with most of it after working, being sick and being sick while working. There's not too much need to recap the big three press conferences in detail since there is enough video evidence out there, but I'll give each one a quick run down. Microsoft was first out of the gate with strong openings by Black Ops, Gears, Halo and MGS: Rising which looked great (well, Halo looked like Halo, so whatever.) After that though they started to lose me with their needlessly long ESPN announcement and Kinect. Hooray for Skittles, but the rest was a pretty embarassingly stilted performance.

  Nintendo had a rough start with a Zelda demo that didn't quite work. After the last few years of middling showings though, Big-N brought the big guns this year and for the first time I actually got a sense that their talk of "caring for the hardcore audience" meant something. Between Kirby, Epic Mickey and the 3DS stuff, they had a ton to share and most of it seems outstanding. Funny enough, Zelda was probably the biggest letdown for me. After they talked so much about wanting to change the formula, at least at first glance this looks pretty much like Twilight Princess with some refined controls due to WM+.

  Sony yet again had a strong showing of software this year (and no talk about numbers or pie charts.) Killzone 3 looks fantastic if a little too much like Killzone 2 to a fault, as did LittleBigPlanet 2 and Dead Space 2. Gabe Newell showing up was probably the closest to last year's shoulder-tapping Yoichi Wada and from what I hear, Portal 2 will be fantastic. The two big faults of the press conference were their stubborn push of 3D as well as the Move stuff (coming from me, of course.) They also didn't have too many new titles to show, so I did find it curious that they would announce LBP 2, KZ3, MotorStorm 3 inFAMOUS 2 right before E3 rather than keeping them under wraps. Tell me what you want, Twisted Metal doesn't have the same prestige anymore. Still, Kevin Butler making an awesome appearance circumvents the downsides of Sony's show.

  As for the game I've been most excited about after E3, I have to give it to Journey from thatgamecompany, the people behind flOw and Flower. Very little has actually been shown from the game and I haven't been able to find any video of it, but it sounds like a game right up my alley. Basically, you're a wanderer on a journey (hence the name) through a vast desert to a far off mountain. However, you're free to go and explore the world and with online integration, you may even join others on their way, albeit with singing being your only means of communication. I get a very Demon's Souls vibe from the online mode while the game itself reminding me of Shadow of the Colossus with a little bit of ICO.

  

  Battle of the Inferior Controllers?

  After playing the Wii and seeing more of Move and Kinect, I'm still not thrilled about the prospect of motion-gaming. Fact of the matter is they take away much precision and make a lot of aspects of regular games less intuitive. They may be good at mimicking one specific motion, but taking away analog sticks and buttons along the way makes the games I like to play a lot worse or at least, it doesn't make them better. As for the Move vs Kinect battle, I think Microsoft has the better technology hands down, but they haven't really shown a game working with it that I would want to play. Sony seemed at least dedicated to bringing the Move to "real" games with integration in SOCOM 4, Killzone 3 and LittleBigPlanet 2, even though I much rather play them with a DualShock.

  As for pricing, it's kind of an interesting reverse situation from the console battle. Kinect, as far as the technology goes, more than justifies its price (I'm gonna stick with $149 US), just as the PS3 justified its $599 price tag. With the Move on the other hand, there's a lot of hidden costs since you'll only get one controller whereas Kinect works with multiple players. Then again, if you have the empty space to get multiple people frantically waving around in front of your entertainment hub of choice without hitting each other, money probably isn't an issue (or such a huge issue that you shouldn't worry about consoles.)

  The Golden Raspberyl

  

  Let's end with the worst press conference of the week, which infamously so goes to Konami (at least from all the one's I've seen.) There's always an unbearable awkwardness when listening to someone struggling with the language when presenting (seriously, there's no shame in getting a translator on stage), but these are certainly some of the weirdest things to happen at E3. Also, very, very excercise.

  Song of the Now

  Listen - Ho-Kago Tea Time (Drum Cover by Senri Kawaguchi)
  

  • Posted Jun 20, 2010 2:17 am GMT
  • Category: Games
  • Tag
  • Print
  • Email
  • Facebook
  • Digg

See Previous Blog Posts »