Category: Games

Reckoning: Kingdoms of Amalur

Prasad AjinkyaLeave a comment

While playing Skyrim, I found out that there is a very active community on Reddit. It’s a good source of laughter and frustration that players share while playing the game. One fine day, I noticed that the Skyrim Reddit was sporting an Ad … of Reckoning: Kingdoms of Amalur.

Another RPG. Hmmm, tell me something new!

Well, what grabbed my attention was that the game was the creation of Todd McFarlane, the creator of the hit cartoon character Spawn. Add to that the game sports Ken Rolston as its executive designer, the one who is famous for The Elder Scrolls series. Initially, I made the mistake of thinking that the game is going to be an MMORPG, pitting itself directly against leaders such as World of Warcraft and the fast catching up series, Rift.

Normally, I would ignore such games, however the superb online marketing that the good folks from Reckoning were doing ensured that I try out the demo of the game. A massive 2.8 GB download of the demo later, I started playing this game.

Immediate things to note is that Reckoning: Kingdoms of Amalur is made by Big Huge Games (also the creators of Dungeon Siege III). A lot of the game play and cut scenes seemed a mix of Mass Effect series (also an EA title) and DS3 (which flopped due to bad controls). A lot of artwork and creatives seem to be simply lifted and reused from these titles.

Having said that, the demo was a good experience. The story was riveting (good lore!), game play wasn’t cumbersome (I could easily shift from melee fighting to spell casting) and more importantly, I was having fun playing the game (2 runs so far and about to start my 3rd!). One good thing about EA titles is that they have differential pricing, so the game priced for USD 59 in the US is available for a cool INR 1000 in India. Finally a company which values India as a definite revenue generating segment!! Kudos EA, my congrats to you :-)

Getting Rid of the Blocky Display in Skyrim

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I have been complaining about the block display in Skyrim in my previous post. This always happened with WinXP and not with Win7. To switch OSes for one game seemed unjustifiable, so I decided to look into this issue.

The real reason why the blocky display is happening is because the video driver is not able to generate ambient lighting effects in the game. I noticed this because the blocky display would be either around sources of light in the game (such as fires), or in the open (when the sun is shining). The driver was working fine when it came to rendering textures on objects … but how to render ambient light?

Fortunately, Nvidia had come out with a video driver update just for Skyrim. This is the 285.58 driver version, and it addresses this ambient lighting issues. So no more blocky displays in the game!

Curse: A Gamer’s Blessing

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If you are into games as much as I am or if you are either into World of Warcraft of Skyrim, then this post is definitely for you! One of the things that differentiates a good game (such as Torchlight) from an awesome one (the ones I have listed above) is the developer community.

Not the folks who make the game, but the folks who add to the game. Add-ons, additional content, these are the things which make the game experience even more unique for the gamer. The game itself becomes a custom-fit for the player.

The problem of having the community develop add-ons for you is the installation and customization part. Why should the game developer’s support that? Well, that’s where Curse comes in.

Curse is a add-on client which allows for easy browsing and installation of add-ons of your favorite games. You do not have to be techie to do this … in fact installation of an add-on is now simply a click away! I remember in the days of Morrowind when the player has to put the additional game content in a particular folder … well, it still works the same way, but now Curse provides the user friendly abstraction required for mass adoption.

The wow-factor is the fact that whenever the add-on developer releases an update, Curse notifies you of the same and you can update your favorite add-ons within minutes! If you like mods, then this application is definitely the one for you!

Skyrim: Bethesda’s Redemption

Prasad Ajinkya3 Comments

The History

The first time I heard of Bethesda, was when I was playing The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind. The game is an open RPG where the player can freely roam about in the world completing quests and adventuring. Throughout the game, there were indications that there is a theme bigger than the game running through … yes, you are the chosen one. Yes, you will do great things, but there is some story thats bigger than you … what will it be?

Then came Oblivion, or The Elder Scrolls IV. This game takes place in the same world, but a different land. I was curious and started reading more of the lore available in the game (there are literally hundreds of books that you can read, NPC’s that you can talk to, etc). There are 9 different major kingdoms, all of them ruled by the Emperor, and each of these kingdoms has a story of its own.

The Mistake

After Oblivion, Bethesda launched Fallout 3, a remake of the classic Fallout series. Sadly, the game was so badly done and so full of glitches, that the company received a lot of flak for this game. Fans wanting to play the remake were pissed, Bethesda fans were disappointed in the low product quality … you don’t just buy a game and not play it do you? You either want your money back, or you endure the glitches and go through the main quest at least!!

In comes Skyrim

Bethesda has been hitting the right notes with Skyrim. Right through the trailers, the launch, the in-game lore, the superb artistic detail of the game. It’s a treat for the eyes, any fan of the The Elder Scrolls (TES) series would be happy with this game. Ohh … and did I mention that there are dragons :-)

Graphics

skyrim_new3 The game itself starts in the northern region of the kingdom (a lot of Nordic inspiration has been considered). The terrain is rough and mountainous, but Bethesda has literally crafted a beautiful landscape often forcing the player to stop and locations and look at the view from certain locations. This is probably the best looking game I have seen, literally forcing the user to take screenshots at various junctures in the game. The game looks good, and does require a bit of hardware to do it justice.

One problem I faced was that the game does not properly render on Directx 9 – WinXP combination. The rendering was patchy and I could not enjoy the game at first. Fortunately, I also have a triple boot (WinXP, Win7 and Ubuntu), allowing me to switch between operating systems as per the need. The game runs beautifully on Directx 11 – Win7, without any lags. I would recommend having a 1GB graphics card and at least 3GB RAM. For those who do not boast of such hardware, there is an add-on on Curse to make it run smoothly on DX9 here.

 

Skills to pay the Bills

Skyrim_SkillsMenu

Some of the game mechanics have been changed (the skill system has been simplified in terms of no. of skills, but the player is allowed to add nuances to certain skills which he/she intends to major in). The one good thing about Skyrim is that unlike Oblivion, you are not restricted to a specific set of skills to level your class.

The class creation is more open than the previous versions, allowing the user to customize their skillsets and specialize one particular style of playing. I have been playing two characters for roughly 40 hours now and it has been a very intense experience with you completely immersed in the world.

Gameplay

The game itself handles itself pretty well, but its not free from glitches. Certain quests which expect the player to hit certain waypoints simply wont proceed if you digress from the waypoints. The monsters scale up pretty well, and unlike Oblivion where the monsters scale up with you, there are certain monsters which you need to stay away from in the early stages of the game.

The game also has some pretty cool effects whenever you score a critical hit/killing blow. I particularly love these slow cut scenes when finishing off targets while being a sneak. Certain character customization elements (such as the star sign under which you are born) have been nerfed, and changed to shrine stones, which allow you to shift the benefits depending on which shrine stone you offer your prayers to. These stones are strewn across the land, where the player is encouraged to explore the world. Another such encouragement are the Dragon Words, which give you access to similar powers that the dragons have.

All in all, Bethesda has silenced all its critics and given faith to all its fans. They have shown that it is still possible to create games without having on online multi-player component built into the game (Blizzard, are you listening?). Plus, I think with the launch of Skyrim, the niche audience which used to play the TES series has really gone mainstream. Kudos folks!

Crawl tips

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Earlier this year, I had blogged about a new Rogue-like game by the name of Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup. Better known as Crawl.

The appeal to this game, is that it’s not a simple grind-based game and it is definitely not meant for n00bs. To them, I would suggest World of Warcraft, which has a simple learning curve, and is currently loosing support due to the ever increasing nerfs to the game dynamics.

The game is not easy, and a n00b can easily die if not cautious. Here are some tips for beginners –

  1. Do your research on the races – It helps if you are aware of each races pros and cons. Pick one which suits your style, for e.g – if you are a melee type of person who likes to be at the fore front of a battle, then it would be foolish to select a magic affine race such as Deep Elf, or a stealthy race such as Spriggan.
  2. Know your classes – The race + class combination is absolutely essential. Certain classes work well with certain races. A Spriggan berserker is asking for trouble, is it not? Even more disastrous would be a Troll Wizard.
  3. Know your skills – There are certain skills which you will be better suited for with your race + class combination. Exercise more of those skills, and become better at them. It helps your attack power and can help you down the largest of the lot.
  4. Worship the Gods – There are lots of Gods to be worshipped in Crawl. Select your God wisely, since there are melee-based gods and magic-based gods. You do not want to be a caster and worship Trogg for example, he prevents magic use. Similarly, you do not want to be a necromancer and worship the Shining One who forbids the use of necromancery.

A list for beginners is here.

I personally favor Melee-based characters, but have done good with casters as well. What about you?

WoW on Wine

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No, I don’t drink and raid :)

I recently have taken a lot to playing World of Warcraft during my free time (I think this also reflects pretty well on the blog :-)). I also have bought a good powerhouse of a desktop, and had dual booted it with WinXP and Win7. The problem with Win7 is that I have the 64-bit trial distribution and it hangs a lot, it has driver issues. The problem with WinXP is that its WinXP :-)

I am not that much of an operating system nazi, but the machine slows, down, the wireless network card that I am using is not fully utilized (WinXP sucks when it comes to driving the wireless interface!!). All in all, when it comes to playing an Online RPG, the environment does not deliver it’s 100%. Thus, I tried to give Ubuntu a try.

  • I already had the 11.04 distro with me, so the first thing I did was update all the repositories, include the third party repositories, and install Wine. Wine stands for WINdows Emulator. You can read more about Wine here.
  • After Wine, I went for installing Winetricks, which is a third party software. It’s used to easily streamline commands via a wizard which otherwise I would have been forced to use the console.
  • Somehow the Wine commands that get integrated into the shell (the right click menu of your explorer) are a bit different from the wine that got installed. So at first the program refused to run giving some obscure access management errors.
  • So, refusing to be let down, I went and searched for third party alternatives. You can skip this step, and definitely do not install the Crossover Games application because its just a trial, however, the PlayOnLinux (POL) application is recommended here, since after installing that, at least the icons of the .exe files will be visible
  • However, when I ran the Launcher.exe of World of Warcraft via the custom command console (by right clicking on it and selecting Open with Other Application, and then simply typing wine in the command box)
  • That’s it. Now the World of Warcraft launcher will run, and the game runs seamlessly

Since the game does not use the latest DirectX drivers, instead it replaces them with its own set, the textures and the games will be slightly different. I noticed a different texture for the water in WoW for example. But otherwise, the game is perfect for running. The network card works better, so I get a faster ping rate.

Diablo 3: Updates

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I have been waiting for almost three years for this game to release. Along with me thousands of other Diablo fans are waiting for Blizzard to announce the public beta launch date. Truth be told, it’s going to negatively impact the subscriptions of the other Blizzard games, especially World of Warcraft. Perhaps they are working out on when to announce the launch of the 4.3 WoW patch, and when to announce the Diablo public beta. Here’s a list of all things that I have heard about the game.

  • The private beta has been released last week, and is open to all the friends and family members of Blizzard employees. Not only is it a way to find beta testers ;-), but also it’s a brilliant HR ploy.
  • The game will fear an Auction House (AH) like the WoW series, but this time players will have an option to use real money in the AH. This is going to be a game which will somehow impact the economy, at a micro level albeit, but interesting to note that no other game has the balls to try this out. Then again, this idea might just backfire.
  • The solo game will require the player to still be connected online. I guess the online part is made mandatory due to the ease of operations. The game can be updated later on, DRM issues are resolved, piracy goes down, instead of a one time purchase a player can be made to pay the subscription amount month on month. Most of the game houses are trying to include this concept (even Microsoft with X-Box live).

Having said all that, the game is still widely awaiting and you can start checking out the game play videos of Demon Hunter, Monk, Wizard and Witch Doctor. With the private beta now live, you can always hope to see a lot more content and videos on youtube.

Here’s hoping that the game releases before 2012!!