There are currently a lot of tabletop games available for play via the various quests and general classroom use, so I figured I would write about the ones I have played (which I believe is all of them).
Battletech: I have not played this one for years and I did not have the opportunity to play it too much. However, my impression of it was that, while fun, it would not stay that way for long. To me, it felt like there was a very obvious optimal build to use for your mechs, and at that point it was all about positioning and luck on the dice rolls. To me there was not quite enough openness to it and I felt that took away from it.
Pathfinder: I have not actually played this particular variant before, but I have years of experience with D&D 3.5. I absolutely love how open and utterly unrepeatable the experiences in this game are. Because the story-line somewhat alters how your character develops (if you have a good DM, anyway) any two characters cannot be the same. Of course, you can get two characters to be quite close to one another through classes, feats, etc. More than anything, though, is that I love how anything can happen since there is no board and it is purely imaginative. I have not had the chance to play D&D for about 2 years now, but I still love it.
Arkham Horror: I actually got introduced to this game very recently (after the class began) but before Jon offered it for a quest. Right from the beginning, I felt that the game was terribly easy. As long as people are not stupid, it is really hard to lose at this game (unless you get Cthulhu as your boss and are not prepared enough). I have been told that the expansions help this problem out a lot and as a result I really want to give it a try. But until then, I am unimpressed by this game.
Twilight Emperium: I have only had the chance to play this game once (and we did not even finish) but I enjoyed how expansive it was. I particularly enjoy game boards that are player created per session. It makes the experience much better versus other static game boards. There is a lot to be had in this game though, making it particularly overwhelming on one's first play. I really want to give this game another go now that I am more versed in its objectives. Despite that, I still enjoyed this game.
Settlers of Catan: I just had the chance to play this last class and I must say this game is awesome. It also has a game board that is created per session and is not static, which is an immediate plus for me. It is quite simple in nature, so there is not a lot of thinking to be had. Apparently the expansions make it far more rich in diversity though, so I really want to try those. Only played it once, but I thoroughly enjoyed this game. I especially want to play again now that I know the rules thoroughly.
That is my take on the currently offered games via the class. I do not believe there are any more games than these that have been offered via the class. If there have, I am not sure I have played them anyway.
Monday, April 29, 2013
Sunday, April 14, 2013
My Take on World of Warcraft
Since we had to play World of Warcraft for class this week, I thought it would be fitting that I did this week's blog post on my opinions of the game.
Many years ago I tried WoW before. And I played for an entire month before quitting, as I could not find it within myself to justify paying the monthly fee for the game (the first month came free with the battlechest). That being said, I rather enjoyed my time that I spent on the game. I just did not like it enough to justify the continual spend of money on it.
Flash-forward to present day when we had to play it for class these past 2 weeks. My verdict on the game is now as follows: it is an abomination. I honestly have not a clue how I ever stomached this game before. It is infinitely worse than what I remembered from years ago.
Since playing WoW I have played Ragnarok Online for 3 months (was not a terribly big fan of it either, thus why I did not stick with it for long) and Tera for over a year now, which I still play currently. Playing these, in my opinion, superior MMOs, has obviously made me realize that WoW is even worse than I originally thought. In all honesty, I find that remarkable.
The combat is not actually all that terrible (though I have been spoiled by Tera's Real Action Combat System). In fact, I was rather floored with how unique some of the bosses were when we played this week. A fair amount of them had more than just the hack and slash element to them. That being said, most of them died rather quickly, which was terribly disappointing. Going along with combat, I thought it was not very user friendly either. The bosses tended to move around quite a bit. This means that so was your party. This made it rather complicated to track where all of your members were.
Particularly on the one boss my group faced (some goblin bomber, he was the second boss of one of the dungeons), who hopped on your party members' faces while other goblins came in and started attacking. You had to either be really focused and attentive as a group and stick together and make sure to keep on top of him, or you ended up running around like a bunch of headless chickens because it was not exactly intuitive what you had to do. Naturally, my group did the latter because we did not expect it. It felt so clunky and terrible and I thought it was highly stupid despite the rather unique mechanic used by the boss that I thought was interesting and enjoyed somewhat strictly because of its uniqueness.
All this being said, the reason I find this method of combat to be clunky and not user friendly is because of how much bosses moved. As a tank, having to move to the boss constantly instead of maintaining aggro is a burden, not to mention that if you lose aggro he could run across the entire room after one of your members, and you have to run the entire way over there. As a dps, having to re-position yourself constantly instead of focusing on dps is a burden. As a healer, this is a nightmare. With all your members constantly moving, not to mention on top of one another constantly, it becomes nigh impossible to get your job done right. It becomes hard to tell who needs healing and who is fine, not to mention it becomes hard to actually heal them with everyone moving around on top of one another, making clicking them nigh impossible to provide the necessary healing. Essentially, I think the combat is a tad too fast-moving.
Another gripe about the combat, I hate how when you are trying to level and you accidentally aggro two enemies, you better start running immediately or else you are going to die. You are leveling a battle-hardened warrior who is going to try and save the world, and yet you cannot take on two merfolk fish people at the same time? I am sorry, but what the fuck. That is retarded. It was infuriating the first time, and it was infuriating the 100th time. Especially considering it is nigh impossible to 100% avoid it.
One other thing that was really frustrating was that icons only function on your mini-map, and nothing is displayed on your world map besides area names and quest markers. It becomes much harder to find NPCs, such as equipment repair NPCs, and other tools affiliated with the icon system.
Not so much a gripe, but I found the death system to be very weird. Why do I have to run all the way back to my dead body? Why do I not just resurrect like in every other MMO forever? Granted, it allows you to easily get back to where you were, without penalty, to continue questing That is why this is not a gripe. I just did not get it. And even though it was for your convenience, I found it annoying every time. Why? Because you were required to. If you did not, you were not doing anything because you did not have an actual body anymore. Making your users have to do something that they are not naturally willing to do: bad.
Anyway, that is what I have to say about WoW. Needless to say, I will never be playing this game again. I am going to continue to enjoy Tera and the FFXIV:ARR Beta.
Many years ago I tried WoW before. And I played for an entire month before quitting, as I could not find it within myself to justify paying the monthly fee for the game (the first month came free with the battlechest). That being said, I rather enjoyed my time that I spent on the game. I just did not like it enough to justify the continual spend of money on it.
Flash-forward to present day when we had to play it for class these past 2 weeks. My verdict on the game is now as follows: it is an abomination. I honestly have not a clue how I ever stomached this game before. It is infinitely worse than what I remembered from years ago.
Since playing WoW I have played Ragnarok Online for 3 months (was not a terribly big fan of it either, thus why I did not stick with it for long) and Tera for over a year now, which I still play currently. Playing these, in my opinion, superior MMOs, has obviously made me realize that WoW is even worse than I originally thought. In all honesty, I find that remarkable.
The combat is not actually all that terrible (though I have been spoiled by Tera's Real Action Combat System). In fact, I was rather floored with how unique some of the bosses were when we played this week. A fair amount of them had more than just the hack and slash element to them. That being said, most of them died rather quickly, which was terribly disappointing. Going along with combat, I thought it was not very user friendly either. The bosses tended to move around quite a bit. This means that so was your party. This made it rather complicated to track where all of your members were.
Particularly on the one boss my group faced (some goblin bomber, he was the second boss of one of the dungeons), who hopped on your party members' faces while other goblins came in and started attacking. You had to either be really focused and attentive as a group and stick together and make sure to keep on top of him, or you ended up running around like a bunch of headless chickens because it was not exactly intuitive what you had to do. Naturally, my group did the latter because we did not expect it. It felt so clunky and terrible and I thought it was highly stupid despite the rather unique mechanic used by the boss that I thought was interesting and enjoyed somewhat strictly because of its uniqueness.
All this being said, the reason I find this method of combat to be clunky and not user friendly is because of how much bosses moved. As a tank, having to move to the boss constantly instead of maintaining aggro is a burden, not to mention that if you lose aggro he could run across the entire room after one of your members, and you have to run the entire way over there. As a dps, having to re-position yourself constantly instead of focusing on dps is a burden. As a healer, this is a nightmare. With all your members constantly moving, not to mention on top of one another constantly, it becomes nigh impossible to get your job done right. It becomes hard to tell who needs healing and who is fine, not to mention it becomes hard to actually heal them with everyone moving around on top of one another, making clicking them nigh impossible to provide the necessary healing. Essentially, I think the combat is a tad too fast-moving.
Another gripe about the combat, I hate how when you are trying to level and you accidentally aggro two enemies, you better start running immediately or else you are going to die. You are leveling a battle-hardened warrior who is going to try and save the world, and yet you cannot take on two merfolk fish people at the same time? I am sorry, but what the fuck. That is retarded. It was infuriating the first time, and it was infuriating the 100th time. Especially considering it is nigh impossible to 100% avoid it.
One other thing that was really frustrating was that icons only function on your mini-map, and nothing is displayed on your world map besides area names and quest markers. It becomes much harder to find NPCs, such as equipment repair NPCs, and other tools affiliated with the icon system.
Not so much a gripe, but I found the death system to be very weird. Why do I have to run all the way back to my dead body? Why do I not just resurrect like in every other MMO forever? Granted, it allows you to easily get back to where you were, without penalty, to continue questing That is why this is not a gripe. I just did not get it. And even though it was for your convenience, I found it annoying every time. Why? Because you were required to. If you did not, you were not doing anything because you did not have an actual body anymore. Making your users have to do something that they are not naturally willing to do: bad.
Anyway, that is what I have to say about WoW. Needless to say, I will never be playing this game again. I am going to continue to enjoy Tera and the FFXIV:ARR Beta.
Monday, April 1, 2013
Visual Novel: Kira Kira
As a supplement to Kevin's massive composition of Visual Novels, I decided to do a blog post on Kira Kira, which is my #1 Visual Novel. I decided to do this because, first of all, I have a lot to say about it, and secondly, Kevin has not read it himself yet and was not able to compose a personal opinion of the game as a result like he was able to do for many of the other Visual Novels he has listed.
Kira Kira is a Visual Novel about music and, more particularly, about bands, making a band, being in a band, etc. I mention this now so that I can provide a bit of a background as to why this Visual Novel matters so much to me.
When I was going through Elementary and Middle School, I was suicidal. I had been bullied to the point of mental breakdown and destruction and killing myself was the only out my younger self could perceive. This period of time lasted for roughly two to two and a half years. I will spare the details, but this was a really critical point for me in my life. I did not know how to overcome these challenges: the bullying, how to cope with the bullying, and, most importantly, how to overcome myself and my mental state that suicide was the only salvation available to me. However, towards the end of this period of time, I started discovering music to which I could relate emotionally.
Particularly, Red was the most impactful to me at this time, having just debuted. Stone Sour also played a part in this and helped as well, having also just debuted back then. My favorite English band to this day, Five Finger Death Punch, debuted a bit later than these two and thus only helped after I had overcome a large portion of my obstacles, but they also played their part in helping me. Needless to say, I can honestly attribute a large portion of my being alive to this day to music, particularly these bands. Their music became a vital coping mechanism for me back then when I needed something onto which I could cling. As a result, music has become a rather meaningful hobby in my life.
Now then, back to Kira Kira. Kira Kira, as I said previously, is a game about music and the bands behind the music. So it is pretty obvious to see that, unless the game was really terrible, this was already going to be quite a read for me. Needless to say, I was not disappointed.
Kira Kira starts with a traditional high school setting and at first, minus the intro, the involvement of music is not readily see-able. Eventually the plot gets rolling and the involvement of music presents itself, but the characters in the Visual Novel are not as into the music scene as one would first expect. They have to learn along the way and get taught the 'tricks of the trade' so to speak. There is a large learning experience for both the reader and characters simultaneously. That being said, as this 'learning' is happening, there are a large number of embarrassing events that occur that quite honestly made it painful for me to read at times (I suffer from second-hand embarrassment to a rather extensive degree). At this point, my expectations had dropped for the potential of the Visual Novel. I did not know where it was going to go, but given the start of the game, I was not sure that I wanted to know. I had to push through the game and, to some extent, force myself to keep going. But once I finally started to see the 'innards' of the game, so to speak, I realized that, yes, I do want to keep reading. From there it was quite a ride all the way to the end. Once again, needless to say, I was not disappointed.
This game uprooted the very foundation of everything music for me. How I listen to music, how I appreciate music, how I think about music, how I care about music, everything. Literally everything music was turned upside down on me by the time I was done with this Visual Novel. I had a whole new level of appreciation and understanding of music that I did not consider possible before I had read Kira Kira. The amount of impact that that Visual Novel has had on my life is immeasurable. To this day, I listen to music differently than how I used to listen to music. The same applies for appreciation, thinking, caring, etc when it comes to music. The impact that Kira Kira had on me will undoubtedly be forever lasting. It has changed my life permanently and I would not have it any other way.
Kira Kira is not single-handedly responsible for this, however. The company that made Kira Kira, Overdrive, did another Visual Novel titled Deardrops. What little bit of foundation Kira Kira Kira did not manage to uproot for me, Deardrops supplemented it and did just that. That being said, Deardrops was not nearly as groundbreaking in terms of its impact when concerning music; Deardrops is #5 on my personal list of favorites (out of 22). Regardless, it is another Visual Novel with high recommendation from me.
So if anyone out there has a remarkable interest in music and Visual Novels, Kira Kira (and Deardrops) are for you.
Kira Kira is a Visual Novel about music and, more particularly, about bands, making a band, being in a band, etc. I mention this now so that I can provide a bit of a background as to why this Visual Novel matters so much to me.
When I was going through Elementary and Middle School, I was suicidal. I had been bullied to the point of mental breakdown and destruction and killing myself was the only out my younger self could perceive. This period of time lasted for roughly two to two and a half years. I will spare the details, but this was a really critical point for me in my life. I did not know how to overcome these challenges: the bullying, how to cope with the bullying, and, most importantly, how to overcome myself and my mental state that suicide was the only salvation available to me. However, towards the end of this period of time, I started discovering music to which I could relate emotionally.
Particularly, Red was the most impactful to me at this time, having just debuted. Stone Sour also played a part in this and helped as well, having also just debuted back then. My favorite English band to this day, Five Finger Death Punch, debuted a bit later than these two and thus only helped after I had overcome a large portion of my obstacles, but they also played their part in helping me. Needless to say, I can honestly attribute a large portion of my being alive to this day to music, particularly these bands. Their music became a vital coping mechanism for me back then when I needed something onto which I could cling. As a result, music has become a rather meaningful hobby in my life.
Now then, back to Kira Kira. Kira Kira, as I said previously, is a game about music and the bands behind the music. So it is pretty obvious to see that, unless the game was really terrible, this was already going to be quite a read for me. Needless to say, I was not disappointed.
Kira Kira starts with a traditional high school setting and at first, minus the intro, the involvement of music is not readily see-able. Eventually the plot gets rolling and the involvement of music presents itself, but the characters in the Visual Novel are not as into the music scene as one would first expect. They have to learn along the way and get taught the 'tricks of the trade' so to speak. There is a large learning experience for both the reader and characters simultaneously. That being said, as this 'learning' is happening, there are a large number of embarrassing events that occur that quite honestly made it painful for me to read at times (I suffer from second-hand embarrassment to a rather extensive degree). At this point, my expectations had dropped for the potential of the Visual Novel. I did not know where it was going to go, but given the start of the game, I was not sure that I wanted to know. I had to push through the game and, to some extent, force myself to keep going. But once I finally started to see the 'innards' of the game, so to speak, I realized that, yes, I do want to keep reading. From there it was quite a ride all the way to the end. Once again, needless to say, I was not disappointed.
This game uprooted the very foundation of everything music for me. How I listen to music, how I appreciate music, how I think about music, how I care about music, everything. Literally everything music was turned upside down on me by the time I was done with this Visual Novel. I had a whole new level of appreciation and understanding of music that I did not consider possible before I had read Kira Kira. The amount of impact that that Visual Novel has had on my life is immeasurable. To this day, I listen to music differently than how I used to listen to music. The same applies for appreciation, thinking, caring, etc when it comes to music. The impact that Kira Kira had on me will undoubtedly be forever lasting. It has changed my life permanently and I would not have it any other way.
Kira Kira is not single-handedly responsible for this, however. The company that made Kira Kira, Overdrive, did another Visual Novel titled Deardrops. What little bit of foundation Kira Kira Kira did not manage to uproot for me, Deardrops supplemented it and did just that. That being said, Deardrops was not nearly as groundbreaking in terms of its impact when concerning music; Deardrops is #5 on my personal list of favorites (out of 22). Regardless, it is another Visual Novel with high recommendation from me.
So if anyone out there has a remarkable interest in music and Visual Novels, Kira Kira (and Deardrops) are for you.
Subscribe to:
Comments (Atom)