My Life as a Gamer #19

This is mainly going to be a follow up from #18 talking about Tribes some more and my Dragon Age 2 play through. So lets get to it.


So literally right after I wrote my last blog Hi-Rez Studios, the guys behind Tribes: Ascend released a patch fixing tons of things. The main one that caught my attention (and was a major point to the Tribes part of MLaaG 18) was the fact that there was a skiing speed cap. With this new patch they removed the speed cap, but completely revamped how the physics work. At first I did not see much of a difference until I actually started to get better consecutive skis. It now punishes more for bad skiing which may be a bad thing for newer players as you will see a lot of slower moving players now but in the long run it brings back more of the skill to it. There still seems to be a cap but it seems to be harder to hit. I can't test this completely as I only have the two default classes unlocked I would either have to play 50 games per day to get enough tokens or buy gold coins (would cost about half a normal game for full unlock, seems fair to me). I am not a fan of the heavy classes personally but I'd love to give them a try and see how they feel. Same with the light classes too I guess, I love the feeling of going fast. 


As I load up the client now to see if there was anything else I wanted to talk about, once again they try and pull a fast one and there will be an update later today (Nov 17th). The main thing I see besides even more awesome optimization is that they are allowing you to try out whatever class you want on a private, solo server no matter if you unlocked it or not. I got my wish I guess. They are also adding another map into the free servers. If I recall right this was the snow map that was in the alpha build that I loved. I will try and get some streamed, maybe a little class introduction video. We'll see this coming week. If you want to see some CTF action here is a little vod.

Now onto Dragon Age 2. I'll say that I absolutely LOVED Dragon Age: Origins. It was my favorite fantasy rpg. I was pretty excited when I heard this was coming out but I had some concerns. I heard that the main character was going to be human only. I could deal with this it's just going to be less customization than what I was looking for. I then saw CatsPajamas' demo play through on youtube and I lost even more hope for it. Sure they refined the combat so it's more fun and interactive but everything else just looked terrible. Now onto my actual experience. I played as a rogue as they were severely gimped in Origins, only modding fixed it. Within rogue I went archery as I thought it'd be nice and fun. Turns out I did not have much fun with the game at all. Half the game I decided to do every side quest, the other half I got sick of it so I rushed to the end. There was only one part in the whole story like (which was broken up into three parts, mildly linked together) that I really liked and within ten minutes I hated it again due to story action. It wasn't even more conversation choices that changed it, just how everything ended up. One thing I extremely disliked is how they changed the Hurlock's (most notable enemy from DA:O) looks. They were very demonic, monster looking creatures before, now they look like humans with sharp teeth and a weird padded, stitched skin. I know that this might be just my thoughts but I feel as most of the game should focus on the darkspawn, even though the blight is over. They are still a major threat. You do not face them much, mainly in the prologue. If anyone else played through it, I would really like to know what you thought of the game and if you had played Dragon Age: Origins before as well. Here is my full play through for you guys though.


Part: One Two Three Four Five Six

The last thing I want to talk about is I have been doing quite a bit of Fortress Forever mapping. I've juggling around four to five maps at the moment which is bad, I should really just focus on one to finish then quicker. At the moment I'm trying to finalize my main map Fiddle, work on SpiderCrossings, remaking Conc_Strafe a skills jump map, fix problems in Hollow and work on my prototype Deathmatch rotating objective map. I'll be streaming any one of these a lot hoping to get at least one completely finished. Stream Link

My Life as a Gamer #18

It's been so long and so many different games I've played where do I start!?!? Well I guess I'll start with more recent games and go down my vod list.

First off is Tribes: Ascend, the new Tribes installment that is Free to Play. I got into the pre closed beta, which I guess would be late alpha. I have to say compared to older Tribes games it is pretty modernized. First off you only carry two weapons. Now it's not all bad since they implemented a class system which works just fine. Each class has a specific armor type (light, medium, and heavy) and a few different weapons, grenade (can get more with unlocks) and a special belt powerup. Another thing I didn't like compared to the old games was the issue of acceleration/speed locking while skiing ( a technique used to gain and maintain speed upon going down hills over flat land). The main reason they put this in was to stop Heavy Armor from going as fast as Light Armor with tons more health. If you do not have a weapon that can damage Heavy Armor really well then you'll realize it'd be a big problem. This wasn't a case in the old games since you chose what weapons you carried, had more than 2 weapons and could go whatever speed you wanted (depending how good you were). One thing people complain about it is the majority of the weapons implemented are hitscan weapons.  Now hitscan for those who don't know are what developers use for weapons that use bullets generally. It sends out a scan as you shoot and it determines if it hits by lag. Say you are playing Team Fortress 2 with about 100 ms lag as a Heavy, you are firing on a Scout but your aiming a little behind him (slower mouse sensitivity). If he has a lower ms count (say he has 20) you will not hit him regardless of the bullet spread because of that lag. This can be a problem for that exact reason when you have those "I should have hit him" moments. I have playtested it on 3 different days and never noticed any real big issues with it. Other than all that I have to say the new engine is amazing. It feels really smooth and learning how to ski on it is really nice. I'm not completely sure if they made this engine on their own but if they did I like the game even more. I highly recommend this game to anyone who has a FPS itch that other free shooters do not give. You can apply for beta here. Here are some vods if you are interested.

One Two Three Four 

I did a full play through of RAGE when it first came out. I have to say even with the game's glaring graphical glitches (the texture streaming ) the game was GORGEOUS. The story was pretty lacking being 8 hours but I did not play through all the side activities. I started playing through it again and realized that if I had done the rest it would have added maybe a couple hours. For instance there is racing you can do to upgrade your vehicle. There is also a task board with various quests. Last are random sewers scattered around the wasteland (it's dlc) which after you clear them out become an extra quest at the task board. The guns feel really solid and the enemy AI is unbelievable. I have to say though the COOP missions are a blast, I kind of liked them better than the single player story. I am a true id software fan boy and would suggest this game to anybody as it is a blast. The one thing that bothers me most is the price, $60 is too much for what they give unless you wanted the textures alone. I personally would only pay about $40 tops unless they put in more DLC now. It is a fun game, not much replay ability as of right now though. Hopefully they release some DLC soon so I can play more of it. 

Part : One Two Three Four Five Six

I have started to do play through of S.T.A.L.K.E.R. and Dragon Age 2 I will post those vods when I am done with them. Other than that I played tons of random stuff where you can view here. I have been on a pretty sporadic schedule with streaming but I will be early this week with some mapping for Fortress Forever. Hope to see you guys join me when I do ^^.