PC Video Game Review 7/10: Lord of the Rings Online - Shadows of Angmar

Lord of the Rings: Shadows of Angmar has been out for a few months but I haven't had the opportunity to pickup this game until now. I loved MMORPG's and have a couple of high level characters in World of Warcraft. However, I've been bored of Warcraft lately and so I decided to try something new.

If I were to sum up the game, I'd say it's very good, but there are a few major points which when combined, make a very good game, unfortunately a very flawed game.

My main gripes include the lack of instances and the game's economy. The economy is in short, broken. The repair bills, unprofitable trade skills, and expensive travel system/training profession combine to suck a lot of the fun out of the game. As for the instances? You'll find yourself soloing or two manning a lot of the early missions. And there aren't enough random quests to send people back into instances over and over, making partying a pain. Most of the time, people only go into instances to work on their epic quest and a couple of side quests.

I started my character as a "Guardian", which is inherently a tank. As all tanks from other mmorpgs know, it is standard for tank to have a higher repair bill because he or she wears the heaviest armor. However, LOTRO goes above and beyond other mmorpgs by literally making an instance run suck 10-30% of a tank's savings. This is because your armor detereoriates quite quickly as you will be the one taking the brunt of the damage. And if you die, forget about it.

The travel system in the game is also broke. Instead of costing a fraction of your gold, travel systems usually cost early level players 5% of there cash for a trip from one town to the next. The travel level keeps getting more expensive as players get higher level to scale with the higher incomes. And if you do manage to save anything, expect to spend all your money at the trainers.The only respite for players are in the gathering half of the crafting professions. Miners, lumbersmiths, and people who gather raw materials can make some money from the auction house. However, this is ultimately unfulfilling as most players would rather concentrate on their crafting profession. The downside is that the crafting professions take a very long time to upgrade and create armor/weapons/jewelary that is almost unusable by the crafter of the same level. In short, crafting in the game is a huge disappointment and utterly worthless.

On the bright side, the game recreates and improves upon many of the addictive features that make mmorpgs so popular. For one, you'll always have endless quests. Add to that a reputation system where you can increase your character's abilities by doing repeated quests in a region or a faction, and you'll find the typical grind is actually a lot more fun.

The story line in the game is also reflective of the time and effort the designers spent on the game. While games like Warcraft have random heroes pop up in certain places, or have long quest chains that rare tie into the story, LOTRO makes you a more integral part of the LOTRO story arc. You'll find yourself speaking to Stryder and Gandolf on a regular basis and even getting quests from them. The "Epic" quest line is also a great way for players to work together. Unfortunately, the servers are somewhat underpopulated so it'll take a while to find somebody on the same chapter as you.

Overall, I give the game a 7/10. I'm also dinging it for having slow load times, a poor fog of war map, and an ineffective party group system when compared to other mmorpg's of today.

BREAKING NEWS; STARCRAFT II RELEASE DATE ANNOUNCED FOR NOVEMBER 6, 2007

Behold ye gamers and nerds who have never talked to women without a credit card, your salvation has arrived. As Blizzcon wraps up, our man on the floor (Tron - me) received exclusive breaking news that Starcraft II will officially launch in November 6, 2007.
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NOT

Haha, you idiots. I bet if I said "first 100,000,000 preorders get a date with Jessica Alba" you'd believe that too.

The truth is, we're all going to be in a new decade before Blizzard finally releases Starcraft 2. So why the hell did they announce their game 1 year before the unofficial unannounced pre-lease date? By the way, that silly EBGames date will definitely get pushed back into 2009. (Anybody remember Diablo 1.10 patch, World of Warcraft release, etc.,?) For you see, Blizzard does not release games during Xmas times. They wait till after Xmas to say "Screw you other game companies, we don't wait for no silly holiday season and WE STILL outsell the competition"

You know what I hate about Blizzard? They thought that everyone of us would be rock hard and salivating from the mouth, waiting for a game that won't come out for at least another year....And it's true. Bastards.

Seriously, have they ever accidentally swallowed 4 viagra pills and had a hard on for a 2 days? Probably not. But I have, and it hurts. Except now I feel like I've swallowed 800 pills, since I'm going to be having a raging hardon from now until we finally get to taste the glory juices that is Starcraft 2.

Tron out

Wii Video Game Review 0/10: Warioware Smooth Moves

This game sucks. I have not played a worse game since I loaded up my kid sister's version of "Barbie: Makeover High School Edition". People who buy this game should punch themselves in the face, burn their hair, and cut their ligaments to redeem themselves.

Why do I hate this game? I hate this game because it is not a game. To charge players $50 bucks for this piece of garbage is criminal. The game is filled with cheap graphics and cheaper gameplay, most of its "200 games" require you to make slight movements with the wii remote. What's worse, you have to play hours in single player mode before you can even "unlock" the multiplayer mode.

The reward for progressing through Warioware's pathetic minigames are stupid skits and less pathetic minigames. Except the less pathetic minigames require a lot of time committment without much payoff. The "skits" are badly rendered cut scenes which the player cannot skip. There's no synchronicity between the scenes themselves. Perhaps if I got completely stoned first, and / or drunk, I'd enjoy playing this game.

UPDATE: As of last night, I went over to my friend's house completely obliterated and tried Smooth Moves again. The game still sucks.

Flow

In my last review, I talked about the concept of flow. I'll just ruminate on this concept for a minute or two and explain why I think it is the most integral component of a video game.

Flow is actually a term from psychology in which the person undergoing flow experiences “is the mental state of operation in which the person is fully immersed in what he or she is doing, characterized by a feeling of energized focus, full involvement, and success in the process of the activity”

It’s what writers, musicians, and other artists experience during the process of creation. It’s what athletes describe as “being in the zone”. And it’s what a every gamer hopes to find underneath a $50 dollar shrink wrapped plastic disc. It’s in short, “fun”. Yet, only a handful of games every year produce flow within the gamer. Instead, developers and publishers choose to focus on graphics (sucks to be you ps3/why EA sucks) or SFX or MORE levels, or BIGGER GUNS!!!!

According to the psychologist Csikszentmihalyi, a person experiences flow when some of the following conditions are met.

1. Clear goals (expectations and rules are discernible and goals are attainable and align appropriately with one's skill set and abilities).
2. Concentrating and focusing, a high degree of concentration on a limited field of attention (a person engaged in the activity will have the opportunity to focus and to delve deeply into it).
3. A loss of the feeling of self-consciousness, the merging of action and awareness.
4. Distorted sense of time - one's subjective experience of time is altered.
5. Direct and immediate feedback (successes and failures in the course of the activity are apparent, so that behavior can be adjusted as needed).
Balance between ability level and challenge (the activity is neither too easy nor too difficult).
6. A sense of personal control over the situation or activity.
7. The activity is intrinsically rewarding, so there is an effortlessness of action.
8. When in the flow state, people become absorbed in their activity, and focus of awareness is narrowed down to the activity itself, action awareness merging (Csikszentmihalyi, 1975. p.72).

Recent games that come to mind that achieve this for me include: Civilization, Comapany of Heroes, the new C&C Game, Half Life 2, Guitar Hero, Starcraft, World of Warcraft, (basically any MMORPG or any game from Blizzard). Look at Diablo 2, atrocious graphics for the time, and yet addictive and fun.

Game developers, please start concentrating on creating flow. Then we’ll buy your games. This is why crap games companies go out of business, nobody wants to buy their games if its not fun. Stop with the graphics evolution already.

Here’s an example of a free game with a lot of FlOw

Wii Video Game Review 8/10: Trauma Center Second Opinion

So I was able to finally get my hands on a wii the other day and this was one of the first games I purchased. If you're going to buy a wii, you might as well go with the flow and get the unique games that come with the system. The system wasn't intened for shoot'em ups with 1 billion pixels.

Trauma Surgeon is Japanese import where you play as a young, idealistic, and (sometimes) careless surgeon, going under the knife nip tuck style. It has the same game mechanics as that old board game operation. Missions consist of two objectives, completing goals and completing them within a time limit.

What are my impressions? Good, addictive, gaming. Trauma Suregon Second Opinon feels like a classic from the 90s. Trauma Surgeon has a very short learning curve and everytime you finish a mission, you get that need to hit "next". In short, the game has flow. You know, that trance like state you enter when you concentrate so much on what you're doing you lose track of time. All the best games do this. It's when you meet a perfect mix of difficulty with fun. In fact, the game even features a special move where the surgeon gets into his own supernatural "flow" and the time limit slows down.

The game sports anime graphics, which is a good stylistic choice considering the processing power of the wii. The controls took me an hour to figure out (since real gamers don't read instruction books, except for the car ride back from the store) and are accurate for the most part. The story line's pretty much like a soap opera, so you don't even mind the silly translation as it adds to the overall charm of the game.

The only problem so far is that I'm stuck on a stage where the "disease" multiples if you don't kill it in the correct pattern. Now I like to zone out a bit when I play games and that whole thinking thing, yeah I do that all day at work. It sucks being stuck on a level. I even checked gamefaqs and none of the walkthroughs know how to deal with this level since it changes.

Overall, good game and and a suitable game for the wii

Final Score: 8/10

Welcome! Bienvenue! Ni Hao!

Because I'm Bored at work. And realize that I'd much rather play video games. But since I can't play them, I'd rather write about them. Will this lower my productivity? Sure. Do I care? Not so much. So let me officially welcome my faithful readers of 0 (so far) by saying that I will be writing about my love of all things video game related.