Flashback Special: MMO's and You- What you Need To Know About 2 Big Titles

So, I’m not much of an MMO guy, at least, I wasn’t when I had written my Animal Crossing blog last week. But, I was needed more material, so I though and thought. And thought. So, I went out, and looked for some new games, and almost bought a N64, but because of a lack of money, and one car crash, it didn’t end up happening.  So, on Saturday, I was talking to my friend and lo and behold, he was playing Runescape. That old game.  So I thought, well, maybe this could be fun. Bad idea, it brought me back in, not soon after, I came back to the other game that was the epitome of my childhood, but that’s for Friday. For now, I’m going to talk about Runescape, its history for me, and what it can do for you.

RS is the best free MMORPG ever. Seriously. Just about out of anything ever made.  It allows you to make a cute little character and train them in a medieval  setting. For there, it’s up to you for making money, training your combat, or completing quests. But, when you find life to be a bit too boring, you can throw $5.95* (per month) and do everything you could literally imagine. I have been playing Runescape for about 7 years now, on and off, and I have had my account hacked 3 times, been a member 4 times, and have committed genocide on trees by selling them for profit. I still enjoy every moment of it.

Let’s get into the finer things of RS: Money. Currently resting in my bank is 500k, full rune, and various other tools that I have acquired over time, like a snow globe that spawns infinite snowballs and a chicken suit.  Runescape, although not always serious, has many features that I have always loved. One is pest control, where you kill interestly themed monsters to fitting music, the point of which is to protect your shaman, who is keeping you in the fight. You win by destroying all of the portals that are letting the pests in.

So, believe me, Runescape is a fun game, and is one of the major parts of my own childhood. I put many, many hours into this game, but coming up, I’m going to talk about the most influential game to me of all time, and I’ll give you a few hints, it’s an MMO, and it’s not WoW.

TF2: Why Did I Sell My Buds?

Yeah, they're still alive. I was getting worried, no post from the TF2 team in almost a month? Preposterous. Even though Robin Walker (creator of the original Team Fortress) can sometimes go onto hat filled tangents for months at a time, even he comes out and gives us something new. Usually hats. No, they were saving up. They released a whopping universal update in honor of my all time favorite update, the Mannconomy update. A few days ago, trading turned 1 year old, and to celebrate: they added a few goodies that I’ve been wanting for awhile now.

First off, they added new hats! (I know, calm down!) But, they also improved the features of uploading hats as well. just follow THIS to see. (This covers the whole update, be warned there is a Baby Saxton Hale exploding out of a bear's chest.) But, that’s not the point; the point is a new miscellaneous slot. That’s right. If you thought wearing earbuds and glasses at the same time was impossible, YOU WERE WRONG! You can also add custom decals to your weapons, and try out weapons from the store, oh and give people high-fives (If you pay for the “taunt”). Re-plays now come with Slow-Mo, and of course, a few new maps. One is for testing your new hats, and one is for playing.

With this update comes what I feel is more attention to what the players have been wanting, even though I now have the chagrin of knowing that Earbuds have skyrocketed. But, I’m okay with that, even though my horrid computer still can’t play games with anymore graphics properties than Toontown (coming up in a future blog!) without crashing. Team Fortress 2 shows that not only the community can play, but can actually play, too! Over this year span, over $2 million have been payed in royalties to hat/ weapon creators, that’s pretty cool. But TF2 continues to do what I love most: be itself, which isn’t what it was in the beginning of it’s life so many years ago. TF2 is the only game where a human of unknown gender can go around with a monocle and hair taped to its face, listen to earbuds through its mask, and of course, wearing a quite nice fire brigade’s helmet while setting people on fire. Yeah, it’s a bit brutal, but it’s so, creative. I do know that they do sell out to Major game developers, but it does fit within the actual game, or it at least feels that way. So, until the day that Hat Fortress 2 doesn’t launch on my computer anymore, I will continue to play, perhaps not every week, but I do love the game, and of course, all of the features it brings with it.

Dominating Has Never Been So Rewarding

League of Legends is one of those games that can really make an impression on everyone who plays it, from the lores to the vast amount of character abilities that you can have, and control. But, the main point is always in the game, which as I found out, Dominion completely changes up. For all of you gamers out there, its like Modern Warfare 2's Domination tied up with the fast action of a good game of Dustbowl on TF2. League of Legends is quickly pulling me back in as a very powerful and addicting game, and Dominion is the main cause of it.

For those of you who like a visual representation of the map, click this! It shows the entire map, and'll give you a good representation of how the game works. Once again, you get to be on one of two teams, blue or purple, and spawn on their respective sides. But, you start out at level 3, more gold, and gaining xp and gold over time, and at a rather fast pace. This pushes gameplay a lot faster, and lets you get a larger grasp on your abilities. Now, you get one minute or so to talk shop with your team, and decide which of the 5 towers you want to capture, or "cap." There are 5 points of interest all around the map: The windmill, the quarry, the refinery, the drill and the boneyard. Capturing 3 of these points will swing power in your favor, and hurt the enemies' nexus. Since you can't hit the enemies' nexus, it now has an odd form of hit points, which are damaged when you have 3 or more towers, one of the champions die, or you complete an objective, given every 10 minutes or so. The Nexus has 500 hp, and although it may seem like a lot, it only takes about 15-30 minutes to finish one game of Dominion, packing all of the intensity of the original gametype into a faster paced game. 

But, LoL isn't all about the fighting; it's also about finer things, like how you can kill people faster at the beginning. In LoL, you are a Summoner, a magician who controls your champion through magical powers. And you have 2 spells that you can cast to help your team, or yourself, and runes, which affect only yourself. Both of which you unlock as your summoner level goes up. Spells are free, but runes must be purchased, and at levels 10, 20, and 30, you unlock Quintessences, which are like super runes. Runes do everything that items can do, but can also grant the abilities to gain more experience, or build better over levels. You also get Masteries, similar to runes, but free, and not quite as powerful. Masteries come in 3 different slots: Offensive, defensive, and utility. All of these can give powers to your champions before you even enter battle, but be warned, as not all of these powers will help every champion and playing style, try to experiment!

Seeing to the fact that I believe that seeing can really impact, I thought I would showcase two of my favorite characters in League of Legends. First up is Gangplank, that swashbuckling pirate. Yes, he says just about every single stereotype you can think of, he is a drunkard, a brute, and inappropriate, but he's also quite fun to play, and my first champion. Gangplank is a carry, making him quite strong later on in the game, and is a melee character. Gangplank has two unique things about him, one is his main ability "Parrrley" yeah, it is a bad joke. But it is special. Gangplank fires his Ye Olde pistol, and deals around 20- 70 damage (depending on its level) and however much attack damage you have, too. To put this in perspective: Gangplank gets around 200 attack damage by the time I hit level 15, so, 270 damage, that's also with pretty good range. This ability can also critically damage (for 200 or 250% if you get Infinity Edge, a very nice weapon), and apply effects like slowing and whatnot. Gang's ultimate attack is cannon barrage, which allows him to take his ship's cannons, and fire anywhere on the map. Literally anywhere. I can fire right on their spawn if I want to be that big of a dick. My usual build for Gangplank goes for attack speed, critical strike, and attack damage. I can get gang attack twice a second critting every time, and deal 800 damage per hit. He can be a very scary guy. 

Now, you your immediate left, you will see a giant insectoid. He is wearing a suit, top hat, and monocle. He also has a bottle of champagne and a pipe rubber banded to his claws, yes, this is the greatest skinned champion of all time, Gentleman Cho'Gath! Now, Cho'Gath does not usually come in his greater, cockney accented form, I had to buy him like this. He is the epitome of human eating Praying Mantises, as his ultimate allows him to eat enemy champions. If he successfully eats them (essentially killing them) then he will gain a feast stack, making him grow larger, and giving him more health. Cho'Gath also features a scream that can stop enemy champions from casting abilities, spikes that he can shoot from his back, and the ability to stomp on the ground, and fracture it. While Cho'Gath may require more grace than Gangplank, he is also much more, how do I say it, civilized, and hi famous catchphrase: "Let us Fight Like Gentlemen" is even printed on one of Riot's T-Shirts, showing him sitting in a nice chair. I bought that shirt, and I am currently wearing it. What can I say? I can be quite the fan boy.

For the rest of you hanging on the fence about joining this League, do it. It is a large download (not quite the size of TF2, but it comes close) and snazzy things such as skins can't be bought without throwing money into the game, but, you do earn champions with IP, given out at the end of each game, and Riot also goes through the free champion rotation, giving you the chance to sample before you buy. So, if you need to kill a few hours, or maybe just one, try out the league, Riot is always trying to out do themselves, and as Dominion has shown, they're always coming up with something new.

Legends Are Made, Not Born (LoL pt. I)

So, on Sunday I was thinking (Since I didn't have many ideas at the time to blog about) and thought "Self, what can you cover today? Team Fortress 2 hasn't had an update in weeks, you haven't played enough of Minecraft 1.9, and Fallout: New Vegas doesn't run very well on your computer," (I sold my earbuds for New Vegas, can you believe that? And mother used to tell me that sitting and doing "nothing" would never get me anywhere. Now sitting down has fueled my addiction, minus the fact that I have a horrid computer.) Then I came up with it, a game I hadn't played in a long time. So, I opened it, and set out on its download, and to my surprise, it had some new features, but still greeted me like an old friend, today I start discussing League of Legends.

For all of those whom may not of heard of this astonishing game, just head on over to this cute little thing and check out Riot's webpage just for LoL. This game flows perfectly, now whether or not it flows how you want it to depends on your teamwork. As LoL is based on teams, it becomes a lot more fun when you have some friends to play it with. Riot says they may eventually implement a voice-chat feature, which would help more than my method than to use conference over Skype for easy game play ideas. The entire point of the game depends on your map, I'll start out with Summoner's Rift. You can either play 3 x 3 or 5 x 5, and I almost always go for the latter. The 5v5 map is larger, and allows for a more intense gameplay.

To start, you spawn on a symmetrical map, and are either on blue (bottom left) or Purple (top right). The point of Summoner's Rift (the name of the map) is to destroy your enemies’ nexus. Their nexus is on the other side of the map, in the enemies’ base. Next you have the inhibitors, which spawn your cute little minions, known as creeps. From there you can choose one of three lanes, which are protected by turrets, which fire at you when you go all alone, or will fire at creeps first, unless you attack an enemy champion, then it will select you. Turrets fire for high damage, and do more damage over time, so it’s risky to attack your enemies under a turret, but you can attack back, destroying it, turrets have a good deal of health, and take half as much damage as most champions, it’s wise to attack it with the waves of your minions, and will probably take more than one wave of their scapegoating to take it down. There are two turrets in each lane, one protecting the inhibitor of each lane, and two protecting the nexus. When you get to the enemies inhibitor, and destroy it as well (it can't defend itself after the destruction of its guardian turret.) Its destruction puts one minion in your wave on super steroids, giving it around 3,500 health, more than most characters. But, inhibitors do respawn over time, just as a note.

Destroying the nexus ends the game, but you may wonder how you will do this? At the beginning of every game you start at level 1, advancing to 18 with the gaining of experience. Every level you can power up one of your abilities, and getting to use your 'ultimate' move at level 6. You can also buy items at the store to increase your attack and move speed, physical and spell damage (known as AP), critical chance, defense, and so on. You can gain experience, and gold from the killing of creeps, killing of enemy champions, or "jungling" in the land in-between lanes, which has creatures of all shapes and sizes, some which rant magical abilities to yourself, or your entire team, if you can kill them.  But, what makes LoL special is its array of characters.

There are over 80 characters in LoL, and Riot adds about one each week, allowing for vast types of strategies and gameplay, most classes fall into categories, and can fit into more than one, you have:

Carries: Characters who are weak at low levels, but will roll into higher powered characters as the game progresses

Tanks: characters with high health, but usually low attack

Ranged: this character can attack from far away

Melee: this character attacks with a melee attack

Assassins: this character is usually stealthy, and can deal high damage quickly

Pushers: characters who can bully others in a lane

Mages: characters deal more magic damage

Fighters: characters deal more physical damage

Supporters: have lower attack and AP, but have higher attributes to help the team

These characters come in all different shapes and sizes, click to see more. With all these combinations, LoL gives not only the power of choice, but the feel of control that many other games don't give you. LoL allows for a really close team experience while only taking about 45 minutes to an hour, which can be its greatest problem too, it takes a long time for one game, but, Riot may have made a solution. In part 2 I'll cover a new gametype, and more customizable powers you can have.

 

Flashback: Building the Future

As a child, there were very few games I played, most of which were on my GameCube. I lead a very protected video game life, not playing any games with guns until 12. But, before any of these events, I was a hardcore Nintendo fan. My favorite game was anything that had a Pokémon in it, and I thought a computer was something that had the internet on it. This changed when I turned seven, and I got an unexpected gift, Rollercoaster Tycoon 2.

Chris Sawyer, one of my all-time greatest  heroes, created the successful series about building your own Amusement park, and as any kid can tell you, they would die to own one. As I had never left the confines of the local ‘Adventureland’ I was amazed to see such rides from the Six Flags Park. I still remembering the shivers of excitement build the Great American Scream Machine in my first park. The entire point to the game was to build the greatest thrill park of all time, in different locations with different challenges. RCT 2 has a tiered system for challenges, starting with the easy parks going up to the EXTREME parks. There are also the options to control pre-made Six Flags parks, or even build your own Six Flags Park, with a very large amount of control: from placement of rides, to building them from scratch, many types of food stalls, and the ability to check with your park guests, seeing how they think of your park. Your park is given a rating, from 0 to 999, based on the happiness, amount, and overall build of your park.

You can get awards for best food, best rollercoasters, or dirtiest park in the country. While you run your park, you hire Employees (paid a monthly salary) to do your bidding, there are Handymen (the ones who clean, mow, and clean up the eventual spew from everyone riding your intense rides too much) Engineers (who fix your rides, and can check up on them to keep them in top condition) Entertainers (who keep your park guests happy by wearing humiliating costumes) and Security Guards (who make sure the snot nosed brats in your park don’t break the benches you just put in.) The next point of the game is all about layout, and debt management. As most rides cost millions of dollars, Sawyer lowered the costs of rides from multi-millions to multi- thousands. For example, you can build a giant, looping rollercoaster, built with thousands of tons of steel and stretches over two miles for around $45,000. You can either charger per ride, or charge a flat fee for entrance. You also get money from your sales of food, souvenirs, and various other objects. You can also choose to take out a loan, set to a pre-determined amount, and use that to build your offering to the amusement gods, but remember, you’ll owe a certain percentage of that back per month.

RCT 2 is the perfect example of how you can get sucked into a game for an entire day, and then wonders why you haven’t blinked in 4 hours. Its playability is similar to the Sims, where you just keep going and going, not knowing where to stop, and what to do next.  And when the tens of thousands of dollars in your pocket, and just can’t think of where to put your next great hit, you can just start anew, coming up with new designs, and coming up with new ways to entertain yourself for hours. In the end, I’ve found myself keeping this disc safe for almost a decade now, installing it onto 4 different computers, and probably logging more hours on it that I have spent all my time combined on the Wii. If your ever in the mood for a retro-feeling bit of building nostalgia, try this one on for size, and download it off most sites for about ten bucks.

A Look Into the Greastest Game Of All Time, Part II

To start where we left off, the defense classes, starting with the Heavy, the lovable Russian. The Heavy has a mini gun named Sasha, is the slowest class, and likes sandwiches. General Heavy strategy is to stick close to a Medic, keep his mini gun ready, and general crowd control, since he has the most health; he also has the most longevity.


The Demoman is Valve's "Black, Scottish cyclops," Tavish DeGroot He is an alcoholic with a taste for explosive ordinance. He comes standard issue with a a grenade launcher, and a sticky bomb launcher, which allows for you to detonate at will, but can be destroyed by shooting. The special thing about the Demoman, however, is his melee capabilities, as he has multiple sword, and shield unlocks.


Last in the Defense category, and my all around favorite class, is the Engineer, also known as Dell Conagher. The Engineer, a soft spoken Texan, has 11 PhD's, all used to destroy anyone who opposes him. He can build items, such as a Sentry gun (Which has 3 levels, one being a simple gun, 2 having duel machine gun, and 3 adding a rocket launcher), Teleporter, and Dispense, which heal teammate. Then Engineer is one of the classes with the lowest class, but makes for it with the Gunslinger, a robotic fist which grants Dell more health, and gives him a fast-building, expendable mini-sentry.


First on Support is the Medic. The Medic is the greatest support character, giving health to teammates in the middle of battle with his medigun, a portable hospital on his back. The medic, after healing for a few moments, build up an Ubercharge, allowing him to turn himself, and his patient to become invulnerable for 7 seconds using an "Invulin." There are other mediguns, with different purposes, but the Invulin comes standard, and is best for general use.


Mr. Mundy, otherwise known as the Sniper, has a rather obvious job. Hailing from the Outback down-under, he got his skills from years of hunting big game. When he isn't killing people from 5 miles away, he's living in his van, or training for his strict "Jarate" regimen.


The last class, and most elusive, is the Spy, the illustrious French lady killer, or to be more accurate, man killer. With the power to become invisible, feign death, and kill with a single stab of a knife, the spy is one of the most dangerous classes. He can disguise himself, giving him unlimited access to your team, can place sappers on Engineer's buildings, and can be a general pest to somebody unlucky enough to walk by.


What ties all of these odd characters is a battle royal between two companies, Reliable Excavation and Demolition (RED), and the Builder's League United (BLU). This gives the reasoning for team colors and the building styles, BLU being more industrial and RED being rough. The TF2 team releases comics to build an intricate web of connections between characters, their pasts, and how the war has been raging for 100 years. TF2 has become the largest lore in the Valve universe, what really sets it apart from most other games for me. You get a feel for the characters you play, and have feelings for them, and the fun continues through an easy to use server system, where there are more game types than I could make in one post. If you ever get the time to, and have the space on your hard drive, hop on Steam, and start the download, TF2 is now a free game, and while you can't trade on the Free to play version, you can still receive items, and get item drops. The one drawback is the download size, which currently rests at just below 10 gigabytes, and with all the mods I’ve downloaded, I have 20 gigabytes worth of Team Fortress goodness, this game isn’t for the faint of heart, it does have gore, blood, and your characters do have the tendency to explode into giblets, but, it is a very good way to spend an hour or two, in my case, over 700.

A Look Into the Greastest Game Of All Time, Part I

Ladies and Gentleman, this is going to be an opinionated post, for those of the faint of heart, you may want to close this now, for I have found the greatest game of all time, and to put it a step above, its free. That's right, ladies and gentlemen, for a whopping $000 and 000 cents, you can now start to play Valve Software's greatest accomplishment: Team Fortress 2.For those of you whom may not have heard of this accomplishment in gaming, you can quickly run over to their blog: http://teamfortress.com/ for their new updates, most of which I will cover on this blog, but onto the main point, the game itself, a synopsis, and its versatility, this will be my first review of a game.


Team Fortress 2 is the child of Valve Software's creative team, headed by Robin Walker, the creator of the original mod for the Half-Life engine. The game is a class-based, cell-shaded, war game based on 1950's era art style. The game play is fluid, the artwork is fluid, and enough jokes and references to shake a stick at. But, best of all, Valve constantly updates the game, adding weapons for their nine characters (whom I will get to very shortly) which have various effects, from flamethrowers to mini-guns rocket launchers to shovels. Team Fortress 2 adds the idea of using everything but the kitchen sink as a weapon, some in the original style, some in a new futuristic style from other games, making TF2 a truly unique system.


To acquire items you can wait, receiving an item from the randomized drop system every hour or so until you hit the weekly cap of items. You can craft items, as newer items have a "blueprint” for crafting it or you can trade. But, trading's true value lies in one of TF2's greatest strength: customization of your character, in the form of hats. Hats range from a humble fedora for the spy to a Max's head (from the Sam & Max series) for all 9 classes. Some hats also have unusual effects, like an orbiting heart, sunbeams, and of course, flames.
For the main event, you have the classes. You have 9 classes, covering all of the forms of combat you could ever want, broken up into 3 categories: Offense, Defense, and Support.


On support, you have the Scout, first and foremost, a fast little guy from Boston. Out of all the classes, he runs the fastest, and has the biggest egos.  His greatest advantages are for “capping” the Intel, a variant of Capture the flag, capping control points, where he counts as two people, and generally annoying all classes, although he can’t take as much of a punch as most of the other classes, he still has the ability to be strong in a fight.


The Soldier, also known as Mr. Jane Doe, is slower than the average class, but a bit stockier in return. He comes with a rocket launcher, and the ability to be a game changer. The soldier’s primary objective is to destroy building, built by engineers, and to break up medics from their healing targets, (both of which are to be covered later.)


The Pyro, a mostly unknown class, has the power set things on fire with a fairly large ranged flame thrower, another item that he can get is the flare gun, giving him the power to shot flares, and cause burn damage, allowing the Pyro the chance at the kill even if the target gets away. His main objective is mostly checking for spies, general offense in war, and to be a watchdog for Engineers. Int part II, I'll finish the explanations of all classes, and get into the multiple game modes and user-made content.

11-11-11: Soon To Be the Greatest Day Ever

About 3 days ago, I was sitting at my desk, watching EpicMealTime on YouTube, when my friend came over. He asked me if I was following the update feed for the Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim and I just blankly stared at him.  For whatever reason, I didn't think that Bethesda had put out any information, probably from how they had treated Fallout: New Vegas, leaving me wondering more about the items they DID release rather than did not, but, to my amazement, there was more than just a snippet out. The Elder Scrolls Series is one of the longest running, and well-known, series in Video Game history. From Morrowind (Elder Scrolls III), to Oblivion (Elder Scrolls IV), Bethesda has become well known for their series that has a vast, open world, large character creation features, thousands of quests, and of course, the medieval feel. But now, quite possibly the greatest lore of all times is coming to Skyrim: Dragons

Looking into a new 20 minute demo released by Bethesda on the 12^th, they showed off most of the new mechanics, the highlights being the new duel wielding features. I have to admit, the idea of having an Ebony Long sword in one hand and a fireball spell in the other is just about enough to make pass out. The new fluid motions of game play, (making 3^rd person look like a viable way to play the game now) and Bethesda’s great knack for detail has made for putting icing on sweet rolls to clues on the bottom of keys. The inclusion of Dragon words gives you the power to make thunderstorms with the lightning targeting your foes to breathing fire. Bethesda took the game play mechanics of Bioshock 2, the attention to detail of Crysis, and its great charm from Oblivion and put it into a snowy world.

This new and exciting world fill me with questions, most of them revolving around wanting to have a dragon to ride, and whether or not the guards will tell that they’ve fought Mudcrabs fiercer than me. My biggest worry is that we’ll see a lot of what made Oblivion special, like floating paint brushes, will be gone. But in a world as large as Skyrim is set to be, there should be plenty of occasions where odd things happen. I can only hope that November 11^th comes faster than it feels like, I’ve spent more than 500 hours playing Oblivion, I can’t wait to spend another 500 on Skyrim.