Saying that Darksiders 2 is a balance act wouldn't be false, it tries to be so much at the same time, improving in some ways over tried and true staples of the genre but lacking in other parts of it's systems. I haven't played Darksiders 1 but I assume that the sequel is higly iterrative with some ideas from the original. A side effect of me not having played the first one lies within the fact that I was surprised how Zelda-esque it was (A realisation that most people who played DS1 knew all about by then) and how it added so little over the classic formula.
This game is so much like Zelda, N64 Zelda even
I'm really surprised how derivative some elements are. You could be making a checklist of everything that zelda and DS2 have in common and it would be quite long. It's not a bad thing by itself but as I was playing it, I tried to figure out how I liked it, was it old-school gameplay in a modern packaging or where they only reusing core concepts and leaving more modern ideas inside the control and feel of the game. You need to find keys to open locked doors or activate switches (even with the a little jingle), you have the equivalent of a bow and arrows, bomb flowers are there as-is, you collect tome pages instead of skultulas, each dungeon or so you find a new piece of equipment that lets you explore different parts of the world and there is also a great tree (of life).
Setting-wise, this is nothing like Zelda but in many other ways, it's painfully similar. For people that never played the Zelda games, this might be something new and interesting and there might be some enjoyment out of the nostalgia, but I can't help but feel this is a cheap way out. There's even a navi-alike in the form of a raven that points where you should go next.
How I would fix this
Change some items and systems in place so they behave a little bit differently, bomb flowers for instance didn't need to be literally bombs growing in specific spots that regrow after you threw them. At least they made the bow and arrow a gun. Also they made "statue" puzzles be rolling rocks instead, makes it more easy to move them around.
Some improvements are made.
Of course, I'm not saying that DS2 is only a cheap Zelda knockoff, many things that bothered me in Ocarina of Time are fixed here like the horse being instantly summonable and dismissible, there's more traversal stuff and it feels more natural than the clunky movement of Zelda games, you can easily parkour around the environment to find hidden things and proceed to the next areas, combat is much more interesting and there are more options with skill trees and loot systems. You gain quests to add more content to the game, you can fast travel really easily between maps and various other system are improved.
As a action adventure game, DS2 would be perfect - even tho maybe a little thin in content - because it does most of the same thing as old games of that genre, but it does them better. The setting is interesting, the characters are too, the gameplay feels good and the puzzles are fairly challenging at times.
But then it tries to be another game
Most of the RPG elements in Darksiders 2 should go away or be modified enough to make the game flow better. An annoying thing in the Zeldas of time past was to go into your inventory to equip/unequip certain items (Such as the iron boots in the water temple), it stays true here that it's annoying to keep going to the same subscreen to compare items you just picked up with ones you have equipped. The fact that they give a lot of items as DLC also ruins the game in some capacity because it trivializes battle content.
Fixing this first thing
Why not just display the stats while you're picking up the item? Also letting you loot + equip at the same time, that would help a lot. Also, giving better items is fine as DLC as long as it doesn't make the game as easy as regeneration did in DS2. No need for potions anymore when you get to full life just standing around.
The skill tree is interesting even tho I wished the skills lasted longer, I took the summoning/spells tree and having to recast my ghouls every six seconds is kind of annoying, especially playing on the PC. That reminds of of another problem this game has, there are so many buttons mapped to individual specific things. All the number keys are used for something and most of the right side of my keyboard also.
Fixing this second thing
You simply need to add wheels or quickslots or something. You move between your spells using a key, you cast your selected spells using another, no need to hit the 7 key too summon ghouls or the 6 key for a magical shield, you just select it then cast it. Mapping things to the middle mouse button is not the most elegant solution for the gun, especially because it's quite a fun weapon to use.
Darksiders 2 didn't need to be an action RPG with tons and tons of different inventory slots and stats and skill trees, it would've been a neat zelda clone instead (Probably like Darksiders 1 was). I understand that it's not possible to make AAA 'zelda clones' and that people always want more, but in DS2's case, what they added upon the formula didn't do much good.
Monday, December 31, 2012
Monday, December 24, 2012
Look at 2012!
Hey let's look at 2012 also don't mind the parts where I mispronounce things and/or say dumb stuff!!! Happy christmolidays everyone!
Monday, December 17, 2012
Look at Terraria
Terraria isn't just a 2d version of minecraft, it's much more than that. In some ways, I could say that Terraria is a metroid-vania with minecraft elements sprinkled here and there, there are similitude between the two games but ultimately, the progression and sense of discovery in terraria make me prefer this over Minecraft. This is not going to be a Terraria versus Minecraft review, but if I find apt comparisons, I will certainly make them.
There is a progression in Terraria, goals to work towards
I suspect that most games of Terraria will go like this: Make a small house, mine, dig, explore, find some decent equipment, fight the skeleton boss, explore the dungeon, find a black key, dig more, explore more, find hell, open chests, get better equipment, fight the wall of flesh, break orbs, break altars, get better and better equipment, craft awesome chainsaws, grind in the corruption and the hallow, fight bosses, win the game. This might sound like a bad thing, but it's not. Of course, the actual process of doing these things won't be as straightforward, you'll want to mess around with your world between each of these steps and sometimes some steps will take longer than others.
Randomized loot is a big part of this and it's great that you'll find items that enable new abilities and powers as the game goes on. You get tiers of armors, some with set bonuses, some without, you can have random modifiers on your items to make them better or worse. The loot game is interesting but not core to the Terraria experience, what is core is the metroidvania part of it, the way you do certain actions then come back to do other stuff that you couldn't do before. The world evolves as you beat certain bosses so items that weren't there once will appear. Floating islands will be populated, enemies will become tougher and you'll add powerful ores to the grounds of your world. Always working towards a better upgrade is a good way to keep the player interested.
That being said, the frustrating part is the randomness of the requirements for some of the next steps. Ore that appears randomly on the map in tiny chunks makes the player search for a needle in the haystack and if you need one more bit of adamantite but can't find it, you're going to use a map viewer or something to find yourself some of it. Trying to find certain items is also frustrating and again makes an argument for using external programs.
How I would fix it
Add some in-game items that serve as dowsing rods that you can tune to find certain items. Maybe a treasure hunter NPC that tells you where some items are in a vague way? That would help a lot, especially in huge maps because you would know where to go.
The game doesn't know what it's trying to be
Terraria is full of hands-on, stat boosting items, things that make you double-jump, guns that shoot 33% less ammo, spells that launch fireballs and crystal shards, armors, horseshoes with special immunities, etc. etc. You gather materials to create crafting stations to create better items to defeat more enemies. Yet you still can craft bowls, chairs, lamps, decorative items with no purpose other than decorate. I get why Minecraft does it, because you want to build the most gigantic goomba out of dirt you can or a crazy pyramid made of diamonds for no reason, because you can do just that, but terraria is full of goals and places to explore and enemies to defeat, why is the game also trying to be a sandbox where you jump around, trying to make the prettiest decorations ever?
To make matters worse, enemies are legion in Terraria, zombies and slimes at first, then werewolves and unicorns and floating balloons that shoot lasers, then invading goblin legions and ghosts and other undesirables. Sometimes they'll sneak in your houses, fall on your head, generally be nuisances. At least there are no monsters such as the creeper from Minecraft, but why so much decorative stuff? The list of items I can craft is pretty long but I'll never want to make some candles or a statue nor will I make gold and silver bricks. The sense of scale is also different in 2d, you can't really run far away and look at your creations in all their glory.
When the fight is on, it's on, you'll get to hell and immediately you're attacked by teleporting fire imps and massive bone serpents and the first boss will kill you instantly if you don't defeat him by sunrise. Status effects are many and the enemies have annoying patterns, warping around, flying, swimming, always homing like a missile on your location. Fall damage can be brutal at first, lava is always deadly and you can drown pretty easily if you're not careful.
How I would fix this
Either split creative mode with adventure mode or make the 'decorative' items crafted using different stations. That way you still allow all that stuff but split it well enough that you won't be hindered by one or the other category. In creative mode there would be no monsters
The biggest problem with Terraria is how closed it is
Minecraft and Terraria are comparable to a point, there are tons of things to do in both of them, exploring dungeons, jungles, oceans, hell and the like, but when you're done with the original content, Minecraft is far from being over, there are tons of mods that add incredible content such as machines, magic and everything in-between. Terraria's modding scene is less impressive and it must be because the game was released without much support a long time ago. Minecraft is still evolving with new things coming out every so often while Terraria is "done". A console version was announced with new content so that might fix some of my issues, but I really wish the game was more open to modding, then I would see the crazy Industrialcrafts and Thaumacraft of this world. The systems and settings behind Terraria are perfect for such mods.
Otherwise Terraria is great, there's so much to do, so much to explore and so many enemies to kill, after a while you really feel like you've got somewhere and that's always great to convey through gameplay.
How I would fix this
Well, I would probably make some mods if I could, all of my issues with the game (Including some I haven't touched because they are quite small such as how you travel in the world and things like that) could be fixed by some mod or another.
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| Humble beginnings |
There is a progression in Terraria, goals to work towards
I suspect that most games of Terraria will go like this: Make a small house, mine, dig, explore, find some decent equipment, fight the skeleton boss, explore the dungeon, find a black key, dig more, explore more, find hell, open chests, get better equipment, fight the wall of flesh, break orbs, break altars, get better and better equipment, craft awesome chainsaws, grind in the corruption and the hallow, fight bosses, win the game. This might sound like a bad thing, but it's not. Of course, the actual process of doing these things won't be as straightforward, you'll want to mess around with your world between each of these steps and sometimes some steps will take longer than others.
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| Friendly NPCs |
Randomized loot is a big part of this and it's great that you'll find items that enable new abilities and powers as the game goes on. You get tiers of armors, some with set bonuses, some without, you can have random modifiers on your items to make them better or worse. The loot game is interesting but not core to the Terraria experience, what is core is the metroidvania part of it, the way you do certain actions then come back to do other stuff that you couldn't do before. The world evolves as you beat certain bosses so items that weren't there once will appear. Floating islands will be populated, enemies will become tougher and you'll add powerful ores to the grounds of your world. Always working towards a better upgrade is a good way to keep the player interested.
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| Discovery |
How I would fix it
Add some in-game items that serve as dowsing rods that you can tune to find certain items. Maybe a treasure hunter NPC that tells you where some items are in a vague way? That would help a lot, especially in huge maps because you would know where to go.
The game doesn't know what it's trying to be
Terraria is full of hands-on, stat boosting items, things that make you double-jump, guns that shoot 33% less ammo, spells that launch fireballs and crystal shards, armors, horseshoes with special immunities, etc. etc. You gather materials to create crafting stations to create better items to defeat more enemies. Yet you still can craft bowls, chairs, lamps, decorative items with no purpose other than decorate. I get why Minecraft does it, because you want to build the most gigantic goomba out of dirt you can or a crazy pyramid made of diamonds for no reason, because you can do just that, but terraria is full of goals and places to explore and enemies to defeat, why is the game also trying to be a sandbox where you jump around, trying to make the prettiest decorations ever?
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| It gets unfriendly at night, even for the NPCs. |
When the fight is on, it's on, you'll get to hell and immediately you're attacked by teleporting fire imps and massive bone serpents and the first boss will kill you instantly if you don't defeat him by sunrise. Status effects are many and the enemies have annoying patterns, warping around, flying, swimming, always homing like a missile on your location. Fall damage can be brutal at first, lava is always deadly and you can drown pretty easily if you're not careful.
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| I think I'm not well equipped for Hell yet. |
Either split creative mode with adventure mode or make the 'decorative' items crafted using different stations. That way you still allow all that stuff but split it well enough that you won't be hindered by one or the other category. In creative mode there would be no monsters
The biggest problem with Terraria is how closed it is
Minecraft and Terraria are comparable to a point, there are tons of things to do in both of them, exploring dungeons, jungles, oceans, hell and the like, but when you're done with the original content, Minecraft is far from being over, there are tons of mods that add incredible content such as machines, magic and everything in-between. Terraria's modding scene is less impressive and it must be because the game was released without much support a long time ago. Minecraft is still evolving with new things coming out every so often while Terraria is "done". A console version was announced with new content so that might fix some of my issues, but I really wish the game was more open to modding, then I would see the crazy Industrialcrafts and Thaumacraft of this world. The systems and settings behind Terraria are perfect for such mods.
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| Discovery, again. |
How I would fix this
Well, I would probably make some mods if I could, all of my issues with the game (Including some I haven't touched because they are quite small such as how you travel in the world and things like that) could be fixed by some mod or another.
Monday, December 10, 2012
Look at Hotline Miami
Does Hotline Miami really need to be that gory and messed up in a graphical and auditive sense? Not really, I'm quite sure it would've worked as any other kind of game with different aesthetics and another theme but the weirdness of it mixed with great gameplay systems, customization and an interesting story that reminds me of the Killer 7 and the No More Heroes of this world; A story weird enough you want to know more, enough to play through any bad gameplay there could be. Luckily for HM, there's not much bad in here.
It's difficult and can feel unfair
The game loop of HM is quite simple. You enter a level, try and get a good idea of your environment, kill some enemies either by doing melee attacks or shooting them, then you die, either because you weren't precise enough with your melee swings, or someone came out of nowhere and killed you, or you were careless. You respawn, try the same thing, make it to the next room, get killed by something or another, restart. You respawn, try yet again the same path, maybe you get further, maybe you die for some reason in a room you've been twelve times so far. It can get frustrating when you clear out some floor flawlessly but get shot by some random person at the end, but that's how Hotline Miami rolls.
After a while you get the hang of things and you can beat any level if you put your heart to it and retry enough times, it's a bit like Super Meat Boy, it's brutal and unforgiving but you snap into the action so fast that it doesn't matter - except when a three second cutscene starts the level, in that case you're going to hate seeing it over and over. Of course, I'm not to say that the feel of the game is perfect because it feels unfair when you attack but still die or when you get killed without warning and then it's time to redo the level. The checkpointing is fairly good between floors but otherwise the puzzle action is there every time.
How I would fix it
Either add manual checkpointing during levels - to balance it out it should have an impact on your score when you use it - that way you can save when you're in a room you've cleared and can continue on with the story. That's the thing with games like that, you play it to see what the hell is going to happen next. Another thing that could be done would be to make this less frustrating is a way to see all the map at the beginning or see when enemies are coming into a certain range. Maybe a mask that does this?
You can mostly play this game how you want
The great thing in Hotline Miami is that there are multiple ways to play most of the game, at the beginning of each stage you get to pick a mask that confers you various passive abilities such as having more guns in the level, not being attacked by guard dogs or surviving bullets. It's interesting because the way you want to play the game can probably be done. All melee? Sure, maybe not easily but it's certainly doable, all guns? That's how I usually rolled, there are drawbacks to everything, having silent gunshots is a godsend for the way I played Hotline Miami but it made "aggroing" enemies harder because they weren't alerted when I shot on purpose.
However, some parts can't be played your way and they aren't the best parts of the game. A sneaking mission where your movement is impaired and everything is out to spot you gets really frustrating when you just get caught over and over. These missions aren't optional either, you do them to progress through the game or you don't. Some people might be turned off by these missions and stop playing what would otherwise be a very fine product. The end-game also features a completely different set of missions where you don't have any guns and can't use the masks you're used to, they didn't feel that great to me, but they were important to the story, I suppose.
How I would fix this
The sneaking mission could be fixed by letting you kill everyone if you get spotted, that's a way games make sneaking tolerable - by giving you an out instead of having you redo the whole level if you get caught. Maybe in Hotline Miami's case, I would also have made the sneaking level start off with something else than a cutscene because it gets frustrating to have to wait 2 or 3 seconds each time.
The segment with the different character would've been fine if you could have used guns, or maybe have different masks with similar abilities than the old ones, anything to make the gameplay feel as similar as it did in the rest of the game. It's not a bad thing to introduce change, but doing so that late in the game isn't the most elegant way to do it.
Some of it can be confusing
Two things confuse me in HM, the boss battles and the scoring system. There are a few number of boss battles (3 maybe) and they aren't simple shootouts, you need to do very specific things in order to beat them. In all of them you are stripped away of your weapons and need to use items in the room and figure out how they're supposed to be used. After five times this gets annoying and after ten you might be tempted to check on the Internet what you were supposed to do.
The scoring system is how you unlock new weapons and some masks in the game, on the surface it's well presented and explained but I can't help but feel like I'm not getting any idea of how to improve my playing style. I get points for killings, boldness probably refers to how much risks you take, combos is easy to understand, time bonus also, flexibility and mobility are two ratings that I don't get and it's not explained in game. On most stages I got B minuses even tho I was sure I did alright, what could I have done to get a better ranking?
How to fix this
This is easy, surface a little more information in-game. After dying ten times in the boss fights, maybe more hints would be a good way to get the player to progress, explaining somewhere what the criteria for good ranks are would be another great addition to an already very interesting game.
It's difficult and can feel unfair
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| And it's not my first try either. |
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| Not a fan of this guy, I've seen him maybe 20 times |
How I would fix it
Either add manual checkpointing during levels - to balance it out it should have an impact on your score when you use it - that way you can save when you're in a room you've cleared and can continue on with the story. That's the thing with games like that, you play it to see what the hell is going to happen next. Another thing that could be done would be to make this less frustrating is a way to see all the map at the beginning or see when enemies are coming into a certain range. Maybe a mask that does this?
You can mostly play this game how you want
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| I used this mask for a good bit |
However, some parts can't be played your way and they aren't the best parts of the game. A sneaking mission where your movement is impaired and everything is out to spot you gets really frustrating when you just get caught over and over. These missions aren't optional either, you do them to progress through the game or you don't. Some people might be turned off by these missions and stop playing what would otherwise be a very fine product. The end-game also features a completely different set of missions where you don't have any guns and can't use the masks you're used to, they didn't feel that great to me, but they were important to the story, I suppose.
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| Sneaking missions with binary fail states are not fun, Hotline Miami is no exception. |
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| I killed these guys with a machete because I didn't have a choice. |
The sneaking mission could be fixed by letting you kill everyone if you get spotted, that's a way games make sneaking tolerable - by giving you an out instead of having you redo the whole level if you get caught. Maybe in Hotline Miami's case, I would also have made the sneaking level start off with something else than a cutscene because it gets frustrating to have to wait 2 or 3 seconds each time.
The segment with the different character would've been fine if you could have used guns, or maybe have different masks with similar abilities than the old ones, anything to make the gameplay feel as similar as it did in the rest of the game. It's not a bad thing to introduce change, but doing so that late in the game isn't the most elegant way to do it.
Some of it can be confusing
Two things confuse me in HM, the boss battles and the scoring system. There are a few number of boss battles (3 maybe) and they aren't simple shootouts, you need to do very specific things in order to beat them. In all of them you are stripped away of your weapons and need to use items in the room and figure out how they're supposed to be used. After five times this gets annoying and after ten you might be tempted to check on the Internet what you were supposed to do.
The scoring system is how you unlock new weapons and some masks in the game, on the surface it's well presented and explained but I can't help but feel like I'm not getting any idea of how to improve my playing style. I get points for killings, boldness probably refers to how much risks you take, combos is easy to understand, time bonus also, flexibility and mobility are two ratings that I don't get and it's not explained in game. On most stages I got B minuses even tho I was sure I did alright, what could I have done to get a better ranking?
How to fix this
This is easy, surface a little more information in-game. After dying ten times in the boss fights, maybe more hints would be a good way to get the player to progress, explaining somewhere what the criteria for good ranks are would be another great addition to an already very interesting game.
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| 26550/17500 might sound like a lot |
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| But I still got a B- |
Monday, December 3, 2012
Look at Dungeons of Dredmor
Dungeons of Dredmor is a roguelike with a good sense of humor and tons of customization options to give you incentives to try again over and over. While I feel the items are overwhelming and the maps are too full with stuff, I think it's one of the best dungeon crawlers I've played.
You start with many skill branches, perhaps too much.
Whenever you start a game of Dungeons of Dredmor, you choose 7 skill branches out of 35. Skill branches range from weapon mastery, passive-type abilities, magic schools and crafting abilities. Each skill branch comes with about 5 to 7 skills you can gain when leveling-up in the game. Some of these skills are passive, some grand a chance to do something when you attack, some modify completely how your character works (Such as vampirism, making you stop regen health naturally but instead by killing enemies), all and all because this is a roguelike you probably won't max out a single tree during your playthrough (Because you will probably die) So I'm left wondering, why can you pick up that many skill trees if you're not going to get far most of the time?
I'm playing a melee character so I decide to focus in swords. I take sword fighting, dual wielding, dodge, berserker rage, perception, assassination and armor mastery. All of these things improve melee fighting capacities in their own way and if I die and want to try melee again, odds are that I won't have seen everything in those branches so I'll be compelled to pick the same ones again (Maybe I'll switch the weapon type or add shields) but chances are, I'll still go with these. It's not a great thing to have that many choices if you have too much of them to make and you won't see the result of these choices.
How I would fix this
I have two ideas in mind, either you allow a smaller number of skills to be chosen from (Like 4 or 5) or you separate it into categories. You can select one weapon skill, two passive skills, one magic branch skill and one crafting skill. That way you'd see a bit of everything!
Everything feels so overwhelming
The sheer number of stats in Dungeons of Dredmor is staggering. You have your basic levels (Fighter, Rogue, Mage) and then six main stats, 18 sub stats, resistances, damage types, it's hard to keep track of what's useful and what isn't. Then again, this is a roguelike, it's normal that things always seem out of hand, that being said, I'm not too critical of the stat system, they are well explained and well represented.
Maybe it's with the items I have more issues, you get tons of items in Dungeons of Dredmor and they have various impacts on your stats. Most of the time they increase some of them but they also can decrease them dramatically (Having 0 mana regen instead of 1 makes a lot of difference). It's never clear why things are going some ways, are you getting killed because of that item? Are the enemies doing special types of damages that you're weak against? What stats are affected by your skills and what should you focus on?
There are different item types, crafting items, food, wands, equipment, accessories, bolts, misc items... It's all very confusing. Food regenerates your health (or mana) over time, potions have various random effects such as killing you or making you do fire damage when you attack.
How I would fix it
The game already knows how you're playing your character (With your Warrior/Wizard/Rogue levels) so it wouldn't be impossible to show red borders around items you can equip but that aren't as good as the ones you have and green borders on better items. Maybe better split the items by categories or add more ways to get rid of useless item.
Such as the crafting system
Also the crafting system is too much for me, you have lists of all your recipes and what they do, and you have eight different branches crafting, from alchemy to smelting to wand smiting. There's so much to craft and since there are so many items, it's difficult to only carry what you need for the recipes you want to make. Also you find hidden recipes in bookcases through the game. Some of your stats and skills influence crafting in some way, although I'm not sure how (Beside you needing a high skill rating to craft high level items).
I proceeded to never craft anything because you find items everywhere and it's hard enough to know what to keep already, I'm not going to bog myself down trying to make every little thing in the game as it might or might not be useful. You might die from a trap in five seconds, what's really the point of a deep crafting system? It's well realized and you can go at it for long if you want, but I didn't regret not crafting anything when I just explored the dungeon, getting items from the ground.
How I would fix this
Any way to make the whole process quicker and more streamlined would help, having more simpler recipes where two items will only mix together to create a third item would help (So you just see if you can do that one recipe with any given item) or even add a separate inventory for your crafting items so you know what's used for crafting and what's just random junk.
And all the roguelikeness of it.
But that's not a complaint, DoD is a great roguelike and it gets crazy at times, there are traps, random monsters everywhere, shrines, pools of acid you can drink, locked chests, eyeball altars, the whole roguelike nine yards.
Combats are fast-paced and confusing sometimes, you're not sure what's hurting you and why, is that a poisonous gas cloud? Did it come from a trap or an enemy? Can you run away? Where? When you see a bunch of text explode on screen (Overhand! Haywire! Critical! Block!) you're not always sure if you're being dealt damage or if you're killing the enemy faster.
The humor is funny, the maps are well designed and there's variety in the location and enemy types, you also have quests where you need to kill specific enemies or destroy certain items. They add to the progression of your character and I would recommend doing them before going to later floors where enemies get tougher.
Dungeons of Dredmore is the roguelike I play when I want to play roguelikes even tho I feel there's too much I can't get to see.
You start with many skill branches, perhaps too much.
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| The skill branches you can start with |
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| Plenty of skills to choose from |
How I would fix this
I have two ideas in mind, either you allow a smaller number of skills to be chosen from (Like 4 or 5) or you separate it into categories. You can select one weapon skill, two passive skills, one magic branch skill and one crafting skill. That way you'd see a bit of everything!
Everything feels so overwhelming
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| STATS |
Maybe it's with the items I have more issues, you get tons of items in Dungeons of Dredmor and they have various impacts on your stats. Most of the time they increase some of them but they also can decrease them dramatically (Having 0 mana regen instead of 1 makes a lot of difference). It's never clear why things are going some ways, are you getting killed because of that item? Are the enemies doing special types of damages that you're weak against? What stats are affected by your skills and what should you focus on?
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| So many items! |
How I would fix it
The game already knows how you're playing your character (With your Warrior/Wizard/Rogue levels) so it wouldn't be impossible to show red borders around items you can equip but that aren't as good as the ones you have and green borders on better items. Maybe better split the items by categories or add more ways to get rid of useless item.
Such as the crafting system
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| Alright, let's make potions |
I proceeded to never craft anything because you find items everywhere and it's hard enough to know what to keep already, I'm not going to bog myself down trying to make every little thing in the game as it might or might not be useful. You might die from a trap in five seconds, what's really the point of a deep crafting system? It's well realized and you can go at it for long if you want, but I didn't regret not crafting anything when I just explored the dungeon, getting items from the ground.
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| You find new recipes along the way. |
Any way to make the whole process quicker and more streamlined would help, having more simpler recipes where two items will only mix together to create a third item would help (So you just see if you can do that one recipe with any given item) or even add a separate inventory for your crafting items so you know what's used for crafting and what's just random junk.
And all the roguelikeness of it.
But that's not a complaint, DoD is a great roguelike and it gets crazy at times, there are traps, random monsters everywhere, shrines, pools of acid you can drink, locked chests, eyeball altars, the whole roguelike nine yards.
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| Maybe I wish you could see more of what's happening |
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| What's going on in this monster zoo |
Dungeons of Dredmore is the roguelike I play when I want to play roguelikes even tho I feel there's too much I can't get to see.
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| I really love maps like these |
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| I died |
Sunday, December 2, 2012
Some housekeeping
Hey there guys. Sadly, my look at the whole Mass Effect trilogy isn't going well because I can't play Mass Effect 2 at all right now (Technical issues, mostly) and I don't want to just jump into 3.
To make matters worse, my backlog is going dry. I'm not sure I can talk about X-Com because I can't see anything 'bad' to say about it and I don't want to go to very old games because all of my suggestions would be probably translated into changes already made to more recent games. Maybe this week I'll look at the Path of Exile beta, maybe I'll look at some game on my steam library, I'm not sure. I really wanna fix the Mass Effect 2 issue because I feel like reviewing the whole thing is an interesting idea.
Oh well.
Monday, November 26, 2012
Look at Diablo 3
I've waited years for diablo 3. Since they announced it in 2008 I've been following its development with growing interest. I've watched community websites, participated in the beta, even made a few small web tools that were re-used by a few random Russian websites. I bought the Diablo 3 strategy guide three days before the game came out and read it all. I also played a metric ton of Diablo 2. And some Diablo 1 back in the day. I also enjoy Torchlight, Titan Quest, even Darkspore. I'm looking forward to Grim Dawn and Path of Exile. I really love Action RPGS. Make items drop, add numbers when I hit things and give me multiple levels of progressions to look forward to and I'll be hooked. With that in mind...
Diablo 3 is a great ARPG that does good things differently.
Not to say that it's perfect but D3 does some things really well. I'm going to dissect the thing it doesn't do well in a few paragraphs but I wanted to start with the things I love about the game. First of all, they removed the stats system. If you've read my Torchlight 2 review, you know what I think about them. Having to decide where points should go is often a zero-sum game: Either you know where they go or you don't and there aren't that many possible viable options. Diablo 3 removes that whole system by placing stats automatically (Not unlike World of Warcraft) for your hero when you level up. You still can add to your stats by equipping different items but you don't have points to maul over. Not to say that there are no stats in D3. There are tons, critical hit chance/damage, melee damage reduction, life per hit, life per kill, life steal, magic find... Everything is surfaced to the player this time around, in Diablo 2 you barely knew what your magic find was.
The skill system is also done without using the points mechanic. You unlock all of your skills in the 1-30 range and then you unlock runes to customize the effects of your attacks. This can go from adding damage too increased range or splitting projectiles, freezing meteors, poison hydras and you can change almost at anytime what your skills are. A 30-seconds cooldown here, a removal of a magic find/gold find buff there, it's all very well implemented. You can try pretty much every build you want, no need for special items to make any of this work like some things did in Diablo 2.
The stats are maybe too superficial.
Since you can't place points directly into stats, your equipment defines how you're customizing your character. The problem is different in which there is no confusion or no situation where you know or don't, but instead you need to get the items that increase your core (DPS, HP, Defense to some extent) values. It's not a bad thing by itself, but what's the point of there being Intelligence, Dexterity, Strength, Vitality when all I'm going to get are Vitality/Intelligence items with my witch doctor or Vitality/Dexterity with my monk? The classes are well rounded and diverse, but they are all using the same stats. Vitality for everyone. Then Strength for barbarians, dexterity for demon hunter/monks and intelligence for witch doctors/wizards. In no situation will you find an item that lowers your core values but nets you ton of a useless stat (Let's say you have 100 intelligence and find a useless item that gives you 900) that you will want to equip. Needless to say, this is not a critical issue since you can give your items to other characters.
How I would fix this
Give good reasons for any stats to be there. Maybe there could be passives that turn unused stats into viable additions to any build. Maybe strength could be the stat to boost your summoned creatures as a Witch Doctor, maybe a wizard's armor skills could be improved by dexterity. Not to say that all stats should change whole systems for each character, but adding some reasons why someone would want strength that badly on a hand crossbow.
And the items, too random.
I love loot games, I love finding random stuff all the time. I remember in D2, I found a unique mace once from a physical immune swarm of bugs in act 2. I also crafted myself a nice runeword armor. I found many set pieces in diablo 2 as well! I've now played Diablo 3 for more than D2 I'm sure, and I've found nothing. Not a single piece of legendary equipment, not a single set item. Diablo 3 is skewed towards the end-game. Anything below level 60 isn't probably worth it (A friend of mine found legendary level 3 boots, while neat in theory, they would be useful for 4-5 levels) and even if you find anything remotely rare, if the stats aren't great, it won't be useful to anyone. Itemization in diablo 3 is not perfect right now, most of the legendary items are basically a huge list of random possibilities, some are good and some aren't. I suppose Diablo 2 didn't have all of the crazy stuff at launch, but I hope we'll see truly unique legendaries with interesting properties. I also hope the new Paragon system will help me find good items randomly in the world. You can also find items that are plainly useless. Mage helms with bonuses to monk skills and the like.
Crafting is also painful, you spend materials and money to create random items with random properties. With all the stats in this game, it's not hard to make a level 60 armor with 5 things on it that are completely useless. With the prices related to this process, selling the items on the auction house instead of breaking them down into materials then taking the money to buy better items seems like the way to go if you want better equipment. You also need to find higher-level recipes and I have found none of them either.
To make matters worse, in my opinion, everything is going on at the auction house. You can buy legendaries for insanely low sums. I took half of the gold I had and bought all legendaries for my character. What does this mean? Some people play much more than I do? They're luckier? They use bots? How can there be so many legendary items on the auction house while I've found nothing? Otherwise, I'm not a fan of auction house-type systems, so I'm staying away. I sincerely hope the game isn't balanced around level 60 players buying items from other players. Then again, I'm still not sure around what diablo 2 was balanced.
How I would fix this.
Add the enchanters from Torchlight or the system in World of Warcraft where you can transform your stats into something else. If I found a really good weapon that gave strength as a wizard, I could transform the strength into intelligence. Or remove that magic modifier and re-roll it. As I understand it, the difference between an average item and a really good one is most of the time because of one sub-par modifier. As for the items themselves, I would add more legendaries and set items of all levels and make them drop a bit more, maybe. I have nothing bad to say about the auction house, it's a neat experiment if anything else, just don't balance the game around the idea people will play forever and get enough gold to buy everything they need.
Some lost potential with the enemies
Enemies in Diablo 3 are interesting. They come in all sizes and varieties with their own inherent abilities. Then you have champions and elites that come with 1, 2, 3 or 4 modifiers such as molten (Fire burns where they walk and then they explode), avenger (When they die, all other enemies become stronger) and missile dampening (All your projectiles are slowed in time then kill the monster instantly) and you have unique enemies with some special powers, then bosses. The challenge ramps up pretty quickly in Inferno because the enemy's stats outmatch your own by a fair margin. I have nothing against the normal enemies and the bread-and-butter nature of action rpgs, what I have some beef with are the bosses. I remember being disappointed the second I looked in the D3 strategy guide, days before the game launch.
All bosses are like you see in that picture. Their HP and XP (And other stats I'm sure) increase at each difficulties but their attacks and other special characteristics never change. It's true for the first and last boss of the game. Why then, surface that they do the same thing at all difficulties? Was it planned at some point that bosses would do different things later on? I remember in diablo 2 on nightmare difficulty, Andariel was green! That's different, right? There's so much variety in D3 and they couldn't make the bosses tougher besides obvious numerical increases of their stats?
How I would fix this
Adding modifiers to the bosses could be funny but maybe some custom tailored new attacks would be the way to go. Nothing prevents the skeleton king from summoning ghosts or zombies or whirlwinding for much longer or teleporting differently on higher difficulties. I understand the desire to not add resistances - and immunities - because there's no such thing as a "fire" wizard versus an "ice" or "lighting" one, but adding variety would make replayability that much enjoyable. As a side note, I've read that the special quest to get the good item faces player against tougher versions of the bosses, I'm looking forward to that.
The story is taking away from the game.
Normally I wouldn't maul over the story because in terms of game design, whatever you tell is fine as long as the game plays well. I just feel that stories in ARPGs should be as small and unnoticeable as possible, they shouldn't span through big cutscenes that pop in your face and full-screen videos of your character telling you how they defeated the demons. Blizzard has always relied on the same tropes - corruption, betrayal, cow levels, staying a while and listening - so I'm not going to kick dirt their way for making the story kinda bad and unbelievable at best. In diablo 2 the story was told through text bubbles that you could close instantly. You can also close them quickly in D3 but they still break the momentum a bit.
How I would fix this
Easy, add an option to automatically skip all cutscenes and speeches after you beat the game. I know what the story is now after I've beat it once, I don't want to watch it again, I just want to click-click-click-click.
Diablo 3 is a great ARPG that does good things differently.
Not to say that it's perfect but D3 does some things really well. I'm going to dissect the thing it doesn't do well in a few paragraphs but I wanted to start with the things I love about the game. First of all, they removed the stats system. If you've read my Torchlight 2 review, you know what I think about them. Having to decide where points should go is often a zero-sum game: Either you know where they go or you don't and there aren't that many possible viable options. Diablo 3 removes that whole system by placing stats automatically (Not unlike World of Warcraft) for your hero when you level up. You still can add to your stats by equipping different items but you don't have points to maul over. Not to say that there are no stats in D3. There are tons, critical hit chance/damage, melee damage reduction, life per hit, life per kill, life steal, magic find... Everything is surfaced to the player this time around, in Diablo 2 you barely knew what your magic find was.
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| You see everything in Diablo 3. From your main stats to the small ones you maybe didn't know about. |
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| 6 skill buttons, 3 passive slots, that's a lot of choices. |
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| You also get 6 runes per skill, some of them don't matter to me, but most of them are fun. |
Tons of other little things like Nephelem Valor, the Paragon system and the newly added quests where you defeat tough bosses to get nice items can't really be covered here because they're part of future patches and I haven't played much with that content. Needless to say, they're nice ideas and I look forward to future patches.
The stats are maybe too superficial.
Since you can't place points directly into stats, your equipment defines how you're customizing your character. The problem is different in which there is no confusion or no situation where you know or don't, but instead you need to get the items that increase your core (DPS, HP, Defense to some extent) values. It's not a bad thing by itself, but what's the point of there being Intelligence, Dexterity, Strength, Vitality when all I'm going to get are Vitality/Intelligence items with my witch doctor or Vitality/Dexterity with my monk? The classes are well rounded and diverse, but they are all using the same stats. Vitality for everyone. Then Strength for barbarians, dexterity for demon hunter/monks and intelligence for witch doctors/wizards. In no situation will you find an item that lowers your core values but nets you ton of a useless stat (Let's say you have 100 intelligence and find a useless item that gives you 900) that you will want to equip. Needless to say, this is not a critical issue since you can give your items to other characters.
How I would fix this
Give good reasons for any stats to be there. Maybe there could be passives that turn unused stats into viable additions to any build. Maybe strength could be the stat to boost your summoned creatures as a Witch Doctor, maybe a wizard's armor skills could be improved by dexterity. Not to say that all stats should change whole systems for each character, but adding some reasons why someone would want strength that badly on a hand crossbow.
And the items, too random.
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| I wonder if I'll be able to craft one good item with all this stuff. |
Crafting is also painful, you spend materials and money to create random items with random properties. With all the stats in this game, it's not hard to make a level 60 armor with 5 things on it that are completely useless. With the prices related to this process, selling the items on the auction house instead of breaking them down into materials then taking the money to buy better items seems like the way to go if you want better equipment. You also need to find higher-level recipes and I have found none of them either.
To make matters worse, in my opinion, everything is going on at the auction house. You can buy legendaries for insanely low sums. I took half of the gold I had and bought all legendaries for my character. What does this mean? Some people play much more than I do? They're luckier? They use bots? How can there be so many legendary items on the auction house while I've found nothing? Otherwise, I'm not a fan of auction house-type systems, so I'm staying away. I sincerely hope the game isn't balanced around level 60 players buying items from other players. Then again, I'm still not sure around what diablo 2 was balanced.
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| I'd be losing money not to buy this! |
Add the enchanters from Torchlight or the system in World of Warcraft where you can transform your stats into something else. If I found a really good weapon that gave strength as a wizard, I could transform the strength into intelligence. Or remove that magic modifier and re-roll it. As I understand it, the difference between an average item and a really good one is most of the time because of one sub-par modifier. As for the items themselves, I would add more legendaries and set items of all levels and make them drop a bit more, maybe. I have nothing bad to say about the auction house, it's a neat experiment if anything else, just don't balance the game around the idea people will play forever and get enough gold to buy everything they need.
Some lost potential with the enemies
Enemies in Diablo 3 are interesting. They come in all sizes and varieties with their own inherent abilities. Then you have champions and elites that come with 1, 2, 3 or 4 modifiers such as molten (Fire burns where they walk and then they explode), avenger (When they die, all other enemies become stronger) and missile dampening (All your projectiles are slowed in time then kill the monster instantly) and you have unique enemies with some special powers, then bosses. The challenge ramps up pretty quickly in Inferno because the enemy's stats outmatch your own by a fair margin. I have nothing against the normal enemies and the bread-and-butter nature of action rpgs, what I have some beef with are the bosses. I remember being disappointed the second I looked in the D3 strategy guide, days before the game launch.
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| What's the point? |
How I would fix this
Adding modifiers to the bosses could be funny but maybe some custom tailored new attacks would be the way to go. Nothing prevents the skeleton king from summoning ghosts or zombies or whirlwinding for much longer or teleporting differently on higher difficulties. I understand the desire to not add resistances - and immunities - because there's no such thing as a "fire" wizard versus an "ice" or "lighting" one, but adding variety would make replayability that much enjoyable. As a side note, I've read that the special quest to get the good item faces player against tougher versions of the bosses, I'm looking forward to that.
The story is taking away from the game.
Normally I wouldn't maul over the story because in terms of game design, whatever you tell is fine as long as the game plays well. I just feel that stories in ARPGs should be as small and unnoticeable as possible, they shouldn't span through big cutscenes that pop in your face and full-screen videos of your character telling you how they defeated the demons. Blizzard has always relied on the same tropes - corruption, betrayal, cow levels, staying a while and listening - so I'm not going to kick dirt their way for making the story kinda bad and unbelievable at best. In diablo 2 the story was told through text bubbles that you could close instantly. You can also close them quickly in D3 but they still break the momentum a bit.
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| "We're sick of the recent trend towards bright, cartoony RPGs." |
How I would fix this
Easy, add an option to automatically skip all cutscenes and speeches after you beat the game. I know what the story is now after I've beat it once, I don't want to watch it again, I just want to click-click-click-click.
Monday, November 19, 2012
Look at Dungeon Defenders
Dungeon Defenders is a great take on the tower defense genre, I really enjoy playing it. I bought it on iPod (And it was a terrible experience all over) and waited maybe one year then I bought it on Xbox360 (Split-Screen Coop is not great and the griefing options were many) then on PC with all of my friends. Dungeon Defenders mixes action-rpg with loot mechanics and tower defense systems to create a nifty little game with some flaws that I'm going to look at in the following article.
A side word on DLC...
I haven't played any of it. There are about 6 new classes and about twenty levels and new modes in the game that get added by buying more things. I'm not a big fan of buying content for a game post-launch so it's not a point against Dungeon Defenders, however the way it's presented could be more elegant. When you boot up the game, you get two screens of DLC and "BUY NOW" buttons, when you get to the character select screen, all the extra content is shown but if you want to access any of it, it pops out a store page. I know you want me to buy your game, but if I haven't played since about a year and I see a new "Nightmare" difficulty added after "Insane" and want to try it, I expect it to work, not tell me that I have to buy that feature that appears right there as if it was unlocked. I know, minor gripe with the way publicity works.
How I would fix it
Make everything dlc-related clearly shown as such. Add a red overlay over the things you can't use before you pay, add a symbol, make the text another color, make a separate menu to buy these things and don't show them in the main game where I think I own that content.
All classes aren't created equal
The four available classes at launch were the Squire, Apprentice, Huntress and Monk. If you plan to play alone, do not go with archer or monk, you won't be able to progress in the game at all. This is because the Squire and Apprentice can summon towers that will prevent enemies from reaching directly your crystal (You must protect a crystal in each level against waves of enemies), Monk and Huntress cannot. The monk has auras with various effects such as slowing down enemies and killing them in some fashion and huntress can lay down explosives but they won't be as effective as barricades and barriers that can be put up by the squire and apprentice.
If you're playing with friends, a monk or a huntress can be a good addition to the team if they don't plan to use their traps, for balance reasons all defenses cost a certain number of points and they are shared amongst player. You can also specialize your character in different ways such as making your towers better or your regular weapon attacks better. If a monk or a huntress leveled up their attack and speed, it only makes sense that another played would put the towers up while you focus on killing enemies. It's kinda frustrating if you want to level-up a monk or huntress tho. You can always switch to another character so you put towers with your squire and then switch to your monk... But that will create another problem, as I will explain in the next point, so it's out of the question for me. Why make two classes that can't reasonably solo the game well?
Even then, the Squire is way better at putting towers up than the Apprentice is. The apprentice's towers have elemental attributes (fire and electricity) which means that some of your towers will deal 0 damage to any fire or electricity attuned enemy, which means that you'll have to put more than one tower even if it's strong enough to take care of the enemies. Squire towers are great, they cover any situations and they deal full damage to all enemy types, one could say that the mage towers have more diverse powers but that's not exactly right, the chain lighting tower and the harpoon tower have similar usages, idem for the bowling ball tower and the fireball one.
How I would fix this
Add one tower that blocks enemy movement and one tower that shoots ranged projectiles for all classes and that solves pretty much everything, now you can solo the whole game with any characters and you can still have the weird auras or explosives for the Monk and Huntress. For elemental towers, maybe lower their base damage, make it so elemental attacks deal more damage to opposite enemy types - make it a rock-paper-scissor system - but not 0 damage to enemies of the same time. Maybe half, maybe full, but having a part of your arsenal doing nothing against random enemies is frustrating, so that has to be fixed.
The game feels too slow
Between enemy waves you will have time to go around the map, open chests, pick up mana crystals and build towers. If the characters moved fast enough, if the maps were small enough, if the chests and defensible positions where nearby enough, this wouldn't be a problem. The maps get bigger, the chests are placed at very far positions and if you didn't put any points in movement speed - which you shouldn't if you want good towers or good weapon damage/health - you're going to break down the action pretty hard between enemy waves because you'll slug along the map trying to go and gather resources, place towers, upgrade towers, etc. Especially when you're playing alone, this becomes a problem in that it ruins momentum.
While you're fighting, moving around to tackle enemies and collect mana to upgrade your towers is fine because you already move around to kill enemies but when there's nothing else to do except walk around some huge maps doing nothing, you're not having fun. After playing all of Orcs Must Die 2, I noticed that while that game had some flaws, the action seemed more fast-paced because you didn't have to walk all over the maps to collect things between waves - also the timer between waves was close to 10 seconds, not 70 like in Dungeon Defenders.
How I would fix this
Stop putting chests randomly on the map, just make them closer to the things you're supposed to protect. Or award the mana automatically. Or just give a tactical view between waves when you're building so you can build anywhere you want on the map. Why would you physically need to move your character to a spot so you can build a tower? I understand why you would do that in the battle phase, but during the peaceful building phase? You should be able to just place your towers with the mouse and just get your mana and items that way.
I really like the stats/item system
Dungeon Defender is part tower defense, part action-rpg. The loot game is neatly implemented, you gain items from defeating enemies or in chests, some special challenges also give you unique things and you can buy them in stores. You also can upgrade your items with mana, choosing what stat to level along the way. That leads to really powerful customized items with the stats you want to fit your play style. Personally I like the magic staves that shoot multiple projectiles. You also have familiars with different abilities such as killing enemies or boosting your towers in different ways. That whole part of dungeon defenders is great - except when you get to the endgame where you need insane amounts of mana to upgrade anything, but I won't hold it against the game. I know how I feel about stat points allocation but since this game is about towers and defending spots, it doesn't matter too much how you spec your character. I like how different classes have different stats such as the huntress being able to upgrade how many times her traps will explode.
Another little thing they added since I started playing is "Pro Mode", basically it makes leveling-up your items faster. A nice idea over the regular "You have to fill up the mana bar before you can put your points" system.
Tons of content, even if it could be displayed some other way
The campaign spans over 15-something missions, you get about the same number of challenges (special missions with very specific conditions such as being unable to build any towers or goblins raining down on you) and there are four difficulty settings to complete them. You could play Dungeon Defenders for a while, but I wish they'd surface the data better. It says you need to be level 40 to do such or such challenge, is it on Normal difficulty? How about on Insane? What kind of level would I need? Why is the interface for the level selection kinda bad and too busy like that? I'm sure there are better ways to display the same information while showing more of it in a clearer way. (Also like I said in the first point, don't show me all that stuff I won't be able to play, thanks.)
A side word on DLC...
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| I understand advertising but I don't have to like it. |
How I would fix it
Make everything dlc-related clearly shown as such. Add a red overlay over the things you can't use before you pay, add a symbol, make the text another color, make a separate menu to buy these things and don't show them in the main game where I think I own that content.
All classes aren't created equal
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| Mao the level 0 monk and pals |
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| These towers have various and interesting effects, none of them will help you win the game alone. |
Even then, the Squire is way better at putting towers up than the Apprentice is. The apprentice's towers have elemental attributes (fire and electricity) which means that some of your towers will deal 0 damage to any fire or electricity attuned enemy, which means that you'll have to put more than one tower even if it's strong enough to take care of the enemies. Squire towers are great, they cover any situations and they deal full damage to all enemy types, one could say that the mage towers have more diverse powers but that's not exactly right, the chain lighting tower and the harpoon tower have similar usages, idem for the bowling ball tower and the fireball one.
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| First level with a monk, I almost failed. |
How I would fix this
Add one tower that blocks enemy movement and one tower that shoots ranged projectiles for all classes and that solves pretty much everything, now you can solo the whole game with any characters and you can still have the weird auras or explosives for the Monk and Huntress. For elemental towers, maybe lower their base damage, make it so elemental attacks deal more damage to opposite enemy types - make it a rock-paper-scissor system - but not 0 damage to enemies of the same time. Maybe half, maybe full, but having a part of your arsenal doing nothing against random enemies is frustrating, so that has to be fixed.
The game feels too slow
Between enemy waves you will have time to go around the map, open chests, pick up mana crystals and build towers. If the characters moved fast enough, if the maps were small enough, if the chests and defensible positions where nearby enough, this wouldn't be a problem. The maps get bigger, the chests are placed at very far positions and if you didn't put any points in movement speed - which you shouldn't if you want good towers or good weapon damage/health - you're going to break down the action pretty hard between enemy waves because you'll slug along the map trying to go and gather resources, place towers, upgrade towers, etc. Especially when you're playing alone, this becomes a problem in that it ruins momentum.
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| That's not a huge map but getting around to the chests between wave is annoying even then. |
How I would fix this
Stop putting chests randomly on the map, just make them closer to the things you're supposed to protect. Or award the mana automatically. Or just give a tactical view between waves when you're building so you can build anywhere you want on the map. Why would you physically need to move your character to a spot so you can build a tower? I understand why you would do that in the battle phase, but during the peaceful building phase? You should be able to just place your towers with the mouse and just get your mana and items that way.
I really like the stats/item system
Dungeon Defender is part tower defense, part action-rpg. The loot game is neatly implemented, you gain items from defeating enemies or in chests, some special challenges also give you unique things and you can buy them in stores. You also can upgrade your items with mana, choosing what stat to level along the way. That leads to really powerful customized items with the stats you want to fit your play style. Personally I like the magic staves that shoot multiple projectiles. You also have familiars with different abilities such as killing enemies or boosting your towers in different ways. That whole part of dungeon defenders is great - except when you get to the endgame where you need insane amounts of mana to upgrade anything, but I won't hold it against the game. I know how I feel about stat points allocation but since this game is about towers and defending spots, it doesn't matter too much how you spec your character. I like how different classes have different stats such as the huntress being able to upgrade how many times her traps will explode.
Another little thing they added since I started playing is "Pro Mode", basically it makes leveling-up your items faster. A nice idea over the regular "You have to fill up the mana bar before you can put your points" system.
Tons of content, even if it could be displayed some other way
The campaign spans over 15-something missions, you get about the same number of challenges (special missions with very specific conditions such as being unable to build any towers or goblins raining down on you) and there are four difficulty settings to complete them. You could play Dungeon Defenders for a while, but I wish they'd surface the data better. It says you need to be level 40 to do such or such challenge, is it on Normal difficulty? How about on Insane? What kind of level would I need? Why is the interface for the level selection kinda bad and too busy like that? I'm sure there are better ways to display the same information while showing more of it in a clearer way. (Also like I said in the first point, don't show me all that stuff I won't be able to play, thanks.)
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| Challenge: UI Crush |
Monday, November 12, 2012
Look at Orcs Must Die 2
Part tower defense, part action RPG, orcs must die 2 is a compelling package at first, there are tons of traps, weapons and trinkets to collect and upgrade and there are also tons of level to try and perfect. After playing with it to completion, twice, my desire to play it again is greatly diminished for various reasons regarding map and item systems design.
Right this way Mister Orc
The maps in OMD2 are ranging from mines to castles to ice caves and lava-filled structures. All maps have spawn zones where enemies appear and rifts where enemies try to go and die. They did a great job of adding more environmental hasards this time around such as minecarts that roam maps, killing orcs for you, or chandeliers ready to fall on enemies. The maps never are simple; sometimes they have multiple levels and they also might have up to 4 doors where enemies come out of. Sometimes there are natural chokepoints where you can dump all your towers, but must of the time there aren't and you need to place them at multiple spots, this gets harder in single player where you have enemies coming out of two different ways most of the time. I love chokepoints in my tower defense games, making huge piles of towers on one spot is a great way to have silly, senseless fun.
Another thing I have against the map design in OMD2 is the fact that it doesnt allow the use of your favorite turrets. I really love most of the turrets that come out of the ceiling and some of the wall-based ones. It's really a frustrating experience when after level 3 or so, there is no spot anymore to place ceiling turrets. After a while the corridors become so wide that it's not really useful to place traps on the walls either! Floor traps and guardians (NPCs that either block the enemy's path or attack them from range) work pretty much everywhere, so they're the go-to in terms of versatility.
How I would fix that
A small amount of level design changes would fix my issues with the maps in OMD2. Add more chokepoints, lower the ceiling at places, tighten some hallways, funnel the path the enemies take... That seems like it would fix both this problem and part of my other one.
Swiss Army Traps Knife (Or how often do you use the corkscrew)
There are TONS of things to use for your character in OMD2. Almost 20 weapons, traps and trinkets, it's enormous. You can also upgrade them with skulls gained from beating levels under certain conditions such as not letting a single orc pass or finishing under a time period. The upgrades are interesting, most items have a general upgrade that you can purchase multiple times and increases a base stat for that item, such as attack or reducing cost. Most items have unique upgrades where you need to choose between two things. In theory this is a neat idea, in practice one of the choices is superior to the other no matter how you see things. For example, archers can either regenerate health or shoot fire arrows. Archers are fragile and can't take a hit, they really die in one or two attacks. The health regeneration is so slow that they still die all the same, while burning enemies with their attacks is great and adds a bit of crowd control (Because enemies on fire run around). Other items have special upgrades such as being able to place floor traps on the walls and the like.
Weapons are varied and interesting, from a wand that shoots mind control bolts to a ring of polymorph, you can really select something that suits your playstyle. Except if you want to attack all the time. Or not have to click constantly. Or if you want to deal any kind of damage. I bought many weapons to try them out before realizing that most of them require mana to attack and will stop doing anything before your mana goes back up. Most weapons need you to click repeatedly to attack, I know it's a small thing but it gets tiresome after a while. The default attack for the sorceress's wand is really low so you kind have to spam charged shots. Trinkets are fine since they have passive effects (and an active one that you activate with mana). They would matter more if the game was about you killing all the orcs instead of your traps doing most of the job,
Another problem with this system is that there is zero incentive to try any of the weird stuff. I've beated the whole game with the default sorceress weapon, a trinket to regenerate guardian health, a trinket that increases the gold you make, archers and paladins. Never I lost and had to rethink my strategy to change things around and approach the enemies in a different way.
How I would fix this
This is not easy, but a way to give meaning to all items and traps is to give a reason to use them. What I would do is add another upgrade for all items that would be multi-level and would go up when you kill enemies with that item. To make it worth trying, this upgrade would improve items greatly such as removing mana costs or increasing damage in a significant way. Maybe tie-in achievements to specific weapon usage? Have some levels require you to use specific things to 5 skull the map? Upgrading your items to the maximum level could give you part of a golden key, when you get them all you unlock a special challenge map! Anything!
Right this way Mister Orc
 |
| With four spawn points and no chokepoints, this map is not fun. |
Another thing I have against the map design in OMD2 is the fact that it doesnt allow the use of your favorite turrets. I really love most of the turrets that come out of the ceiling and some of the wall-based ones. It's really a frustrating experience when after level 3 or so, there is no spot anymore to place ceiling turrets. After a while the corridors become so wide that it's not really useful to place traps on the walls either! Floor traps and guardians (NPCs that either block the enemy's path or attack them from range) work pretty much everywhere, so they're the go-to in terms of versatility.
How I would fix that
A small amount of level design changes would fix my issues with the maps in OMD2. Add more chokepoints, lower the ceiling at places, tighten some hallways, funnel the path the enemies take... That seems like it would fix both this problem and part of my other one.
Swiss Army Traps Knife (Or how often do you use the corkscrew)
There are TONS of things to use for your character in OMD2. Almost 20 weapons, traps and trinkets, it's enormous. You can also upgrade them with skulls gained from beating levels under certain conditions such as not letting a single orc pass or finishing under a time period. The upgrades are interesting, most items have a general upgrade that you can purchase multiple times and increases a base stat for that item, such as attack or reducing cost. Most items have unique upgrades where you need to choose between two things. In theory this is a neat idea, in practice one of the choices is superior to the other no matter how you see things. For example, archers can either regenerate health or shoot fire arrows. Archers are fragile and can't take a hit, they really die in one or two attacks. The health regeneration is so slow that they still die all the same, while burning enemies with their attacks is great and adds a bit of crowd control (Because enemies on fire run around). Other items have special upgrades such as being able to place floor traps on the walls and the like.
 |
| Guess how many of these things I've used. Answer is not much, and there are two more pages of these things. |
 |
| Archers are good but they go down really fast, fast enough that regenerating health wouldn't matter. |
How I would fix this
This is not easy, but a way to give meaning to all items and traps is to give a reason to use them. What I would do is add another upgrade for all items that would be multi-level and would go up when you kill enemies with that item. To make it worth trying, this upgrade would improve items greatly such as removing mana costs or increasing damage in a significant way. Maybe tie-in achievements to specific weapon usage? Have some levels require you to use specific things to 5 skull the map? Upgrading your items to the maximum level could give you part of a golden key, when you get them all you unlock a special challenge map! Anything!
Monday, November 5, 2012
Look at Cook Serve Delicious
I've been playing a ton of Cook Serve Delicious over the past two weeks and boy is it fun. In its most simplistic form, Cook Serve Delicious (Henceforth referred to as CSD) is a stressful microgame collection glued to a restaurant management sim game. It's also very indie, not sold on steam yet and programmed in Game Maker, I suppose that taking a look at smaller games should be made with a more forgiving mind, but the ideas and designs can still be judged on the same level.
Restaurant Tychoon
The game is a loop of alternating cooking and management sequences. In the management section of the game, you purchase, upgrade and choose foods to be on your menu, you buy equipment to help your restaurant run smoothly and you read emails - flavor text and useful info from the game, sometime with money bonus or little side missions. The goal of choosing properly your foods is to stuff your restaurant with high-paying foods that you get used to make.
All foods have different 'micro-games' associated to them. For very simple foods such as the Corndog, it might be to press K for ketchup and M for mustard. Some more complex ones such as Soup require you to memorize multiple key sequences for different recipes. The chicken soup is K W U then Shift, then Y then the down arrow key three times. You also pick up menu items that will generate Buzz for you. Buzz represents how much people will come to your restaurant which translates to more money.
Some foods have to be phased out of your menu every two days, some are staple and will be popular forever, some are healthy and generate more buzz, some create more chores for you to do. There are five chores in CSD and they happen during the cooking hours. Cleaning the toilet, washing dishes, hauling out garbage, setting up rat traps and catching burglars. Your restaurant upgrades will make these chores easier, you can also buy a tip jar to get extra money and some items to make your customers wait longer before you serve them.
A problem I've encountered with the whole management aspect of the game is that every restaurant upgrade is available really soon. I manage to buy the upgrades that made my chores easier really quickly, I even got the gun control upgrade (Reduce chances of theft) before I ever saw a burglar in my restaurant! When you've upgraded everything in your restaurant, you're left with food upgrades and these get trickled down as the game decides.
Food upgrades are interesting because they raise the price of your food items but they most often then not increase their complexity. Some recipes are the exception, such as chicken (The minigame is always to tenderize the chicken exactly six times then season it and cook it) where the upgrades only increase prices, but things like Salad add new ingredients and new recipes, making these foods harder to prepare. You need to upgrade your foods if you want to rise to higher star ratings, so at one point you're going to make more difficult meals.
How I would fix this
Adding upgrades to help you prepare specific foods would be helpful and interesting. With about 25 different food items there are still more ways to prepare them. The upgrades don't need to be spectacular, for instance the Wine item is served by tapping the Up arrow key until you pull the cork out of the bottle. Why not add a corkscrew? You'd press C to use it then hold Up instead of taping it. Or maybe items that stop the cooking process of meats when they're done? Automatic ice dispensers for the soft drink machine? By adding restaurant upgrades to more items besides the basic chores there will be a sense of progression towards unlocking things to help the player.
Another neat upgrade idea I've had is a list of recipes cards you could hang around somewhere on-screen for a quick refresher at your most used items. I've had to memorize all soups and I dread upgrading them, for it will mean having to learn even more soup patterns. KWSP Shift Y down down down L down down down anyone? Is this the konami code or soup?
Delicious?
When you're in the cooking portion of the game, it's a restless free-for-all of action where people line down in your restaurant and ask you for things. You start with 4 cooking stations which means you can serve 4 people at once (This number gets upgraded whenever your restaurant rises in star rating) and it becomes quite stressful to deal with everything. Rush Hours make people come in droves to your establishment and by then you really need to calm down and process each order masterfully. Some need to cook for a while, some are complex key presses (Lasagna), some rely on memory (Steak) and others on precision (Beer).
If you mess up an order a little, you'll get an "Okay" rating instead of Perfect, if you mess up alot, you'll get a "Bad" rating, which generates negative buzz for the following day. There is something frustrating about the binary nature of certain decisions in the cooking process. I understand that serving the wrong meal by pressing a different key that you intended is an honest mistake that can only be blamed on the player but what I can't understand is the fact that once you've messed up an order, you have to serve it bad. This is especially frustrating because you get multipliers for each perfect orders you make and you get a money prize each day you complete with 100% perfect orders.
As an example, the process of making salad is complicated by the fact that you have 8 ingredients with similar starting letters, Thousand Island Dressing, Vinaigrette, Ranch, Cheese, Bacon and croutons, onions and peppers, greens and carrots, tomatoes and mushrooms. If someone asks for a salad with ranch, cheese, tomatoes and mushrooms and you hit R C T, you've messed up, tomatoes and mushrooms is linked to the "M" key, so you've messed up this salad. And you have to serve it. You know it's a bad order but can't do anything. Wine is also pretty finnicky, when you upgrade your wine, you actually add new wine selections to your menu. If you have wine A, B and C and someone asks for wine B and you tap the up key ever so slightly on the wrong bottle, that's it, you have to finish the job and serve the wrong wine even tho all you did is start popping the cork about a millimeter.
How I would fix this
Allow the player to trash any messed-up order. Maybe add a cash penalty so it's not inconsequential or just leave the time wasted preparing the wrong order as the downside. Some parts of the process can't be rolled back, such as giving the wrong order to a customer (I'm not advocating for a 'Are you sure you want to give this order to that client?' prompt every time you serve someone, that would ruin the flow of the game) but I sincerly doubt that chefs go "Oops, dropped two pounds of beef in that chicken soup! Oh well, gotta stick to it!". I know, this is not a simulation game with realism cranked up to 11, but having players make frustrating actions is not a fun thing.
Restaurant Tychoon
The game is a loop of alternating cooking and management sequences. In the management section of the game, you purchase, upgrade and choose foods to be on your menu, you buy equipment to help your restaurant run smoothly and you read emails - flavor text and useful info from the game, sometime with money bonus or little side missions. The goal of choosing properly your foods is to stuff your restaurant with high-paying foods that you get used to make.
 |
| That's the menu I usually run with. Very healthy stuff. My backup menu isn't as good. |
 |
| So far most of my buzz is generated by healthy foods, I take a small hit for selling wine tho. |
 |
| A page of (mostly) useless upgrades. Mail filter? Really? The spam is kinda funny. |
Food upgrades are interesting because they raise the price of your food items but they most often then not increase their complexity. Some recipes are the exception, such as chicken (The minigame is always to tenderize the chicken exactly six times then season it and cook it) where the upgrades only increase prices, but things like Salad add new ingredients and new recipes, making these foods harder to prepare. You need to upgrade your foods if you want to rise to higher star ratings, so at one point you're going to make more difficult meals.
How I would fix this
Adding upgrades to help you prepare specific foods would be helpful and interesting. With about 25 different food items there are still more ways to prepare them. The upgrades don't need to be spectacular, for instance the Wine item is served by tapping the Up arrow key until you pull the cork out of the bottle. Why not add a corkscrew? You'd press C to use it then hold Up instead of taping it. Or maybe items that stop the cooking process of meats when they're done? Automatic ice dispensers for the soft drink machine? By adding restaurant upgrades to more items besides the basic chores there will be a sense of progression towards unlocking things to help the player.
Another neat upgrade idea I've had is a list of recipes cards you could hang around somewhere on-screen for a quick refresher at your most used items. I've had to memorize all soups and I dread upgrading them, for it will mean having to learn even more soup patterns. KWSP Shift Y down down down L down down down anyone? Is this the konami code or soup?
Delicious?
When you're in the cooking portion of the game, it's a restless free-for-all of action where people line down in your restaurant and ask you for things. You start with 4 cooking stations which means you can serve 4 people at once (This number gets upgraded whenever your restaurant rises in star rating) and it becomes quite stressful to deal with everything. Rush Hours make people come in droves to your establishment and by then you really need to calm down and process each order masterfully. Some need to cook for a while, some are complex key presses (Lasagna), some rely on memory (Steak) and others on precision (Beer).
If you mess up an order a little, you'll get an "Okay" rating instead of Perfect, if you mess up alot, you'll get a "Bad" rating, which generates negative buzz for the following day. There is something frustrating about the binary nature of certain decisions in the cooking process. I understand that serving the wrong meal by pressing a different key that you intended is an honest mistake that can only be blamed on the player but what I can't understand is the fact that once you've messed up an order, you have to serve it bad. This is especially frustrating because you get multipliers for each perfect orders you make and you get a money prize each day you complete with 100% perfect orders.
 |
| Rush hour, more like fish hour. |
How I would fix this
Allow the player to trash any messed-up order. Maybe add a cash penalty so it's not inconsequential or just leave the time wasted preparing the wrong order as the downside. Some parts of the process can't be rolled back, such as giving the wrong order to a customer (I'm not advocating for a 'Are you sure you want to give this order to that client?' prompt every time you serve someone, that would ruin the flow of the game) but I sincerly doubt that chefs go "Oops, dropped two pounds of beef in that chicken soup! Oh well, gotta stick to it!". I know, this is not a simulation game with realism cranked up to 11, but having players make frustrating actions is not a fun thing.
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