So recently I have been sinking a ton and a half of time into Terraria.
For those of you unenlightened about this game I'll explain.
Terraria is a little indie game by Re-Logic. People call it a Minecraft clone but it really isn't, this a little beast all in itself.
You play the game in a 2D side scrolling fashion, you can mine almost all the blocks you see and pick them up as an item and the place them back into the world. In this way you can fashion castles, houses and villages if you wish it. You can mine deep into the earth and uncover minerals and metals that will allow you to craft better weapons and armor. At night the world is invaded with zombies and flying eyeballs.
The graphics are deliberately retro but the aesthetics of the game are immensely pleasing, with diverse biodomes and more then a hand full of different enemies and npc's.
But that's probably where the similarities with Minecraft end. Terraria is a true RPG, the entire point of the game is to develop your own character. You can build all you want but that's not what the game truly revolves around.
Terraria has a early game, a mid game and an end game. During early game you are just trying to get by, build a house, get some potions and get a sword. Slowly you start expanding, making more houses and attracting NPC vendors to your little village or castle. Then as you expand more you can start to see the late game coming closer and closer.
During mid game you upgrade your gear further and further, you get better weapons and if your the adventurous type you can probably find a few hearts and stars to permanently upgrade your health and mana.
But as with all RPG's, end game is where it is at. Once you got yourself kitted out there are a couple of options, you can go down below the earth, farther then you should and you'll land yourself in a hellish underworld filled with demons and rare epic items. If you'd rather stay above ground you can go to the very edge of the world and find a dungeon with bosses and more loot.
Unlike Minecraft, Terraria has a clear ending the player can see, you know that once you've finished looting the dungeon and exploring the under world you're more or less done. It gives one a goal to work to, sure you can stay after you did all those things and create a bigger city, but that's in the same way you can continue playing Oblivion after you finished the main questline, there is little challenge in the whole endeavor.
Where Minecraft has no clear plot beyond mid game, Terraria has a more purposeful drive to it, a more action adventure then simple crafting, and that has made it all the more addicting to me.
So I've been hard at work on my Let's Play of Dead Space 2 which you can still find over here.
I'm not going to post each set because that would get spammy. Especially since I'm not a youtube partner and I record 40-45 minute sessions every time.
But I do want to spew a bit, rant a little, get some bile out of the system.
Since it's my first let's play, I learn allot while doing them, and I feel the need to share. Whether you would like to read about it or not, is not one of my concerns.
First of all. Talking while playing, is hard. I'm a man, I can barely chew and walk at the same time, and now I'm trying to talk while playing, in a different language then my own no less.
Also, finding people is hard. I know it's my first Let's Play, and I'm not doing it for subscribers or money or all that nonsense but just because I like making them, but seeing 0 views for the first day and a half is slightly depressing, I'm perfectly cool with it mind, not like I need an audience, but still, I'd like it if people found some entertainment in them.
Isaac Clarke, 50% engineer, 25% psychotic, 25% mental patient, 100% a total boss.
Thirdly, I've played Dead Space 2 a few times and I always liked playing through the game, however. I am starting to see the cracks, I'm slowly falling out of love with the game as I play through it, this final time.
I'm also finding it absurdly easy to contradict myself. Dead Space 2 is not a scary game, but at the same time it puts me on edge. But it's not the kind of scary that you take to bed at night. The moment the game is off, the fear is off. Unlike say Silent Hill, which haunted me even after the Playstation was off, in fact sometimes I can still hear the other world sound ringing distantly in my ears. Meanwhile I've gone on record saying it's not scary, and still get scared by the game, to a certain degree. In my video's I call it irked. It's more irritated yet simultaneously tensed by the situation and the prospect of the upcoming inevitable jump-scare.
And finally, I've been watching Let's Players for a while. Guys, heroes in my opinion like Deatheven13, Helloween4545, ScottishDuck17 and last but in no means least AgentJR who kindled my love for Let's Plays and I found a new level of respect for these guys.
Let's Playing has 1 thing in coming with writing at least; to edit yourself is to crush yourself. If you look back at your own creation you will always nitpick because you see what could have been, not what has become, and those two rarely line up. To publish a piece of writing (genuine writing, not this blabbering) takes a bit of courage, and so does publishing a Let's Play, to a lesser degree. Secondly, before I first recorded the first set, I spent literally hours fussing over which game to play and doing test drives.
I think I might have more recording that's botched on my hard drive then on my channel to be honest. Sound to silent, sound to high, can't hear voice, voice overpowers everything, mic scratches, desyncs, screen tearing, odd resolutions (1920x1078??) making editing impossible.
Then there's the starting capital involved, legally you need FRAPS and at least some form of video editing, now iMovie might work, but my Mac doesn't like Dead Space 2 so I opted for Pinnacle. Those two alone would have set me back 140 ish euro, if I didn't work in retail.
Then there's the raw time involved into recording and knitting all the pieces fraps poops out together. As a side note; 45 minutes is close to 90 GB in hard drive space.
The above mentioned Let's Players have literally hours upon hours of videocontent on their Youtube accounts. And granted most of it isn't in HD, but all of it has had considerable amount of time required, not only to record but to polish and edit afterwards. And they do this all free of charge, for the enjoyment of others. And make no mistake, what I put out is garbage compared to them, who put out genuinely entertaining content.
The second set went much better considering my skill. At the end of it I was seriously considering upping the difficulty. Sadly my skill as a gamer wavers and changes on a daily basis. And at the end of this set I realized I better not touch it for a while.
I still love Dead Space 2, but this being the fourth play though I'm starting to see it's cracks.
I recently stumbled upon a topic on a forum that broke into heavy arguments about the fast travel system in Oblivion, Fallout and Fallout New Vegas.
There were two fronts, the pro and the anti.
First to explain the whole system, 'Fast Travel' lets you open your map at any point in the game your not in a dungeon or encircled by enemies and you get to click on a settlement/city/landmark on your map, and you'll be instantly teleported to that location.
Now the anti-fast travelers, or the RPG puritans as I'd like to call them, make a strong case; once you travel you skip allot of content. You miss out on adventures, and you miss out on exploring the wonderful world created for you. It's too easy to 'abuse' the fast travel system.
The pro-fast travelers make some interesting points as well. Firstly, fast travel is an option, you can choose to ignore it, which is entirely viable. Secondly it's not fun to travel, especially after you already seen all that the game has to offer. And after I spent roughly a year in Oblivion I can definitively see that point.
Now the fast travel system is not a bad system. I feel it has just been wrongfully implemented in all the games.
Now say theoretically I was to create a travel system for Skyrim. I would play it out something along these lines.
Remove it from the map screen entirely.
Create a teleport spell, and make it have a cooldown. A long one, maybe an hour at the start, but have it retain the function of the fast travel system. So you cast the spell, a map overlay appears and you click on a location previously discovered. And as long as you are not surrounded by bad guys and you are not in a dungeon the spell will teleport you, and the cooldown will start running.
The reasoning behind it; It's too easy to abuse, but it can be such a drudgery to travel, cutting it entirely from the game would be a loss too great. Both sides make strong points, so consider this a compromise of sorts.
But wait there is more!
Skyrim introduces perks for the player to choose at every set levels. Make teleportation one of the skills your able to invest these points in. For those who have seen all that the game has to offer cutting the cooldown by half might be more interesting then taking a perk in a combat related skill. But why stop there? Add a perk that makes it usable in combat situations, a long cooldown get out of jail free card. And add a perk to make it usable in a dungeon.
If the spell tree doesn't allow this sort of implementation then use it in Dragon Shouts and make rare stones that allow you to upgrade that shout.
They could have implemented this in Fallout as well, keeping intact any sense of immersion the player has. Add it as a function to the PIP-Boy. Have the player encounter a piece of long lost pre-war technology that allows him or her to teleport to cities they have visited, but the ability drains the battery on the PIP-boy and it requires time to recharge. Add specialty vendors that allow you to upgrade this aspect of your PIP-boy for caps/money. Now you have a great money dump, and a form of travel that doesn't break the game or impedes on the players sense of immersion.
Well the second set is up for viewing. I did manage to fix the audio levels a bit but I'm thinking it's still too quiet, so the next set will have it's audio raised.
It did go better, sadly I forgot how much space FRAPS takes when recording in full HD, and my hard drive got full before the end, hence the abrupt stop. Not much footage was lost however, only a bit of me using the shop, buying a pulse rifle and forgetting to purchase medkits. I have a feeling the next set is going to be harder because of that, but I'll see how it works out.
My very first Let's Play. I spent allot of time thinking about what game to play, I wanted it to be completely blind, but there aren't any interesting games I could think of, or Steam offered that I didn't already owned/played through. I was torn between Dead Space 2 and Alice: The Madness Returns.
I still haven't finished Alice, so it was my first choice, but I had a ton of trouble recording, and since I lack a HD capture card for the Xbox, and I'd hate to release crap resolution footage, it's been postponed.
Production wise it went pretty horrible, and I'm not satisfied with the end result at all, but the start is there I suppose. For the next set I'll be lowering the game audio ever so slightly so my voice doesn't get drowned out. I also need to stop mumbling to myself, but I'm finding it a real challenge to commentate in English, given Dutch is my primary language. I think it's reflected more heavily in my speech then in my writing tho I imagine it's noticeable in both.
Dead Space 2 is probably one of my favorite games of all time, it's full of cheap scares and the plot is sorta not really there, but I like the games setting and Isaac as a character actually displays some growth during the game.
The next set should be uploaded tomorrow-ish, unless my internet craps out again.
Our first attempt at recording gameplay, well actually it's more like our 40th attempt but the first one that we made without microphone's going under or over the game sound. It was trickier then we assumed, we recorded it and commentated on it in one go with two microphone's on the same couch. The first half of the attempts were met with reverb, or one microphone overshadowing the volume of the other. Then there was one that went horribly out of sync at the end. This one does go out of sync ever so slightly at the end, but it did turn out decent enough to release.
With Skyrim coming on 11-11-11, I thought this would be the perfect time to do a little history on the series. The publicity on this game will surely attract allot of new players to the series and not all of those will be familiar with the setting.
The Elder Scrolls series takes place in the world of Nim, specifically on the continent called Tamriel, which consists of nine provinces.
Tamriel
Ten races share this continent with each other. They are; Bretons, Orsimer, Redguard, Nords, Dunmer, Argonians, Khajit, Bosmer, Altmer and the Imperials.
In the previous Elder Scroll games these races have all been playable, as such it can be assumed they are all once again playable in Skyrim.
A quick rundown on the races.
Altmer - High Elves.
Tall fair skinned elves hailing from the Summerset Isle, these elves call themselves the Altmer after the first elves that came to Tamriel. A proud gold skinned people that consider themselves as the most civilized of the races on Tamriel, and with some justice. The common language of Tamriel is based on their language, and science and arts have always been a part of Altmer tradition. High Elves are intelligent, deft and strong willed making them exceptional magic users.
Argonian.
Coming from Black Marsh, which, as the name suggests is very march-like. Humanoid repitles, extremely agile and speedy, in the previous games they were able to breath underwater, they also received boons on cunning. Making them excellent rogues and thieves, as well as alchemists and merchants, and even though many do take this path, they have the potential to make for great mages. Argonians are by their very nature reserved and are slow to trust. However, once they have considered someone a friend they make for extremely loyal companions. They have a strong rivalry going with the Khajit though, and in the previous games rolling a Khajit will have you start with a low disposition towards Argonians and vice versa.
Bosmer - Wood Elves.
Living in the forest province of Valenwood. They are the Legolassas and Legolillies of the Elder Scrolls, good with bows, very agile etc. They are related to the Dunmer and Altmer, though are considered lesser by both. The Bosmer live in perfect harmony with the forest and nature. In the games this related to special perks towards animals and alchemy. They can make great melee and magic characters but they excel at archery.
Breton.
Bretons come from High Rock, they are tall dark and handsome, very cultural, intelligent people resulting from crossbreeding Altmeri and humans, though they are technically still considered humans. Bretons are often eccentric and flamboyant. They have a very strong affinity with magic, especially restorative magic and are highly resistant to magic themselves.
Dunmer - Dark Elves.
Dark Elves make their home in Morrowind, the location of the third Elder Scrolls game, and are heavily featured in the game. Dunmer have a dark blue skin and red eyes, they are quick, strong, inteligent and highly versatile warriors. Opposite of the Altmer who almost flaunt their superiority, the Dunmer keep to themselves, they are reserved and generally appear to be in a dark mood.
Imperial - Humans.
Yeah humans basicly, they come from Cyrodiil, where Oblivion took place. Diplomatic and natural born leaders, most of the true seats of power on Tamriel are occupied by Imperials.
Khajit.
Khajit are the residential cat people in the Elder Scrolls, as to be expected they are quick and ferocious, agile and tough. Related to an anchient race of cat people that lived in Tamriel long before the first humans and elves arrived. Notably in Oblivion they had the very handy benefit of being able to see in the dark.
Nord - Humans.
Yes, moar humans, cause we love ourselves in fantasy games. These are the Vikings of the Elder Scrolls minus the whole pillaging part. They come from Skyrim and it's to be expected that the game is going to be fillid with them. They are tall and blonde. Hardy people famous for their resistance to the cold that is prevalent in Skyrim and they make for highly durable warriors.
Orsim - Orcs.
Ugly and green. As expected of Orcs in fantasy they aren't too bright, but they make up for that with sheer strength and brutallity. Fond of heavy weaponry and disdainful of magic and sneakiness. They share their homeland with the Bretons of High Rock. Although people think they are related to goblins, they are actually closer related to Aldmer (first generation of High Elves) after they got back stabbed by Boethiah the Daeadric Prince (sort of like a god) of ... backstabbing and deceit. Who'd have thunk right?
Redguard - Humans.
Two is not enough kinds of humans. The Redguards come from Hammerfell, they excell at close combat and melee, making for skillful warriors. Most of the Redguard absolutely despise magic in the lore, considering it to be for weak and cowardly.
All races fit into one of three categories. Mer (Elves), Human and the Beast Races. Humans make up the bulk, elves are usually, in their provinces higher classed then the humans, and at the bottom of the pit are the beast races. The beast races, Khajit and Argonians are oft used as slaves and beasts of burden, they generally have the toughest times in Tamriel.
There are ofcourse more races on the surface of Nirn but these are the playable ones (without mods) and the most common ones in the games. There is one honorable mention I have to make when touching the subject tho.
The Daedra.
The focal point of Oblivion were these creatures. They are considered Divine and take on a wide variety of forms, from beautiful angel like creatures to giant beasts and demons.
Daedra are governed by Daedric Princes that are much like the gods of ancient Greece in how they represent a certain aspect of life on Nirn. Per example; Hircine the Daedric Prince of Hunting or Shegorath, Prince of Insanity (more on him later).
Daedra come from the planes of Oblivion, a separate dimension tied to Nirn and unlike the impression the game gave they are actually incredibly diverse and exotic.
As opposed to this brown and fiery plane of boredom.
The planes of Oblivion range from hell to heaven, literally. There are those that look like the inside of a volcano and those that rest high in the sky on islands a midst the clouds. It all depends on which Daedric Prince rules the plane in question. The one we came to know and hate furiously in Oblivion was the plane of Mehrunes Dagon, the Daedric Prince of Hell, war and really really mean things basicly.
That's it for this post, which took longer then expected because Blogger doesn't like me trying to format something in a neat and tidy fashion, next time we'll have a look at some notable people and factions in the Elder Scrolls series.
So I quite like shooters, they tickle my fancy and peak my interest and so on.
It might be that I am getting old, but shooters don't feel like shooters anymore. It used to be about fun and exploring and monsters, and now it's about 'realism' where the ammo count of your Assault rifle has to be exactly UND EXACTLY the same as it's real life version else the fans have a ragefest, meanwhile the player automatically regenerates bullet wounds while crouching behind a impenetrable wooden crate.
Personally I had more fun with the totally unrealistic weapon below then I ever had with any gun in recent shooters.
Cookie if you remember it.
Rise of the Wolverine.
Before regenerative health we were forced to explore every nook and cranny to get medkits and health vials. If a fight went ugly you had to backtrack for minutes to gather enough medical supplies before opening the next door. This created reasons for developers to make huge elaborate levels with hidden rooms and secret stashes for the player to discover. Easter eggs weren't found on FAQ's just to get that achievement, they were stumbled upon as a player tried to find another pair of rockets for the upcoming boss fight.
With regenerative health, you can just huddle in a corner and wait till your back to full. Aside from taking away the need to explore, it also broke up the action. Did you remember standing still in Unreal Tournament? Or Quake? No? Because standing still got you killed. The action was fast paced and brutal, strafing and jumping were needed to stay alive, encounters were often and fast, if your health got low you bashed the button for the med kit and continued shooting.
Now you sit behind a car, pop off a few shots till the screen goes red and then resume sitting behind the car till the 'realistic' blood-blur dissipates. Regenerating shot off limbs and headshots like your Wolverine from the X-men.
Thanks. Dick.
Enter the Hoarder.
In the golden days you could carry 9 weapons, or more. Basicly as much as you had number keys, sometimes with subcategories. There have been games that even let you carry as much as 26 weapons, at once.
This, was, FUN. You hoarded weapons and ammunition for all these weapons and you used them whenever you wanted and wherever you wanted. You could pick off someone with a sniper rifle, switch to a mini-gun to thin the oncoming horde, then pick off the stragglers with your shotgun, and nobody stopped you.
This created a problem for developers. We all hoarded the ammo for all the powerful weapons, so by the time we reached a boss the whole encounter was made trivial, we just pulled out the Devastator with full ammo and unloaded it on the giant creep and be done with it. And if the Devastator wasn't enough we still had a full ammo RPG in our backpack, next to the maxed mini-gun and the plasma rifle we saved up for such an occasion.
And after I shot all 67 rockets up his nostril, I'll throw some pipebombs, then shoot off every rocket form the RPG and then the chaingun and then the...
For a game developer this was annoying. Some tried to take all your weapons away before a boss encounter, or forced you to use a specific gun, but none of these helped.
Enter 'Realism'
It's not realistic to hoard weapons and mosey around with enough armaments to make the U.S military blush. So fun made way in favor of realism, as did the environments trade places from lush colorful scenery to bleak brown washed 'realistic' scenery.
Graphics improved, game developers wanted desperately to show how 'realistic' they could make their game. It started with the water effects, it was sort of an unsaid e-peen of developers to make the most realistic rendition of water. It started with splash effects, then rippling then splashing sounds, all the way to wet pants.
Realistic was becoming synonymous to good. But it wasn't. Far Cry was a nice looking game, sadly you spent 90% of it inside grey bunkers trying to find X keycard for X door. Before we even realized it, fun was being sacrificed to realism on a day to day basis.
It's sad that only now after 7 'Call of Duty' and just before number 8, we are slowly seeing the return of shooters that spit in the face of realism and walk the way of mindless entertainment once again, and though they forgot how to do it after all these years, they are remembering.
Yeah, just let me come out of the closet here right now.
I am a massive Warhammer 40k nerd, I don't play the tabletop but I devour the books, the lore and any snippet I can get from the Warhammer 40k universe, I probably read every page of the lexicanum.. twice.
So when THQ came out and told us that Relic, one of my favorite developers, was making another Warhammer 40.000 game, I was pretty happy, when they announced it was a third person game I was ecstatic and when they showed us that the player was going to be following Captain Titus of the Ultramarines I passed out, and regained consciousness a day later with a smile from ear to ear and in dire need of clean pants.
Needless to explain any further, I am a fanboy, and my views should be considered as such. This probably isn't objective, it is biased. You are considered warned.
It's going to be LEGEN -wait for it- DARY.
The premise is this. You are Captain Titus of the Ultramarines Chapter, you lead a small squad of battle hardened Space Marine veterans onto an Imperial planet beset by Orc's.
Note, this isn't your typical "Space Marine" these are the big daddy Space Marines, the one everyone else (Read: Halo, Starcraft, Gears of War) tried to imitate and fail at it. These are the quintessential superhumans in power armor. They aren't some kind of steel biting testosterone filled macho males, these are warrior monks, who lived for centuries and have been bred and genetically modified for war, so far in fact that they are only human in superficial comparison, they are taller, their skin is different, they have 13 more organs then we have including a second heart, a solid bone plate covering their vital muscles and an organ that helps them regenerate wounds on the fly, or at least close off open wounds so they can continue fighting.
Per example: The Ultramarine Leader.
The game focuses heavily on combat to be as visceral as possible and as most engaging as possible, per example, there is no cover system, under the motto that a Space Marine does not hide from the enemy (debatable but let's swing with it for now) instead you execute enemies to regain fury and health.
The environment will mostly consist of the planet, which could be detrimental but for what I have seen so far they are being true to the books and lore, and if that's the case it shouldn't be a problem. The Warhammer 40.000 universe humans live in a sort of high Gothic cities, with large cathedral like structures. Their electronics and machines are so advanced they themselves have forgotten the exact workings of them, they are inhabited by 'Machine Spirits' and are adorned with skulls and brass idols.
The factory planets in the books are planets completely covered with factories and machine shops, literally every square inch is inhabited, they are bleak desolate planets whose only function is to supply ammo, weapons and armor to the Imperial war machine.
The weapons shown off so far are part lore and part fabrication by Relic, though all weapons so far seem to be of lore true strength. The main weapon of a Space Marine is his Bolter, a gun unlike anything we have, it fires shells that are actually miniature rockets that bore into their targets and then explode, reducing their targets to a fine red pulp.
Combat seems to revolve around massive hordes, and that's where the difficulty comes from, it's not so much a one on one battle, but more the danger of being overwhelmed by mooks, which again is pretty much spot on lorewise, as a Space Marine is a warrior few can stand toe-to-toe with and survive.
Recommended system specs have been announced for PC, but Space Marine will be released for all platforms.
Recommended Configuration
* OS - Windows 7
* Processor - Any Quad-core AMD or Intel Processor
* RAM - 1GB (XP), 2GB (Vista), 2GB (Windows 7)
*Hard Drive - 20 GB space free (10 GB free after install)
* Video Card - 512MB Video Card using Shader Model 3 & DirectX 9.0 or better (Performance equivalent to an AMD Radeon 5750 or NVIDIA GeForce GTX 260)
* Online Steam account
As announced on the Space Marine forums, the only thing that worries me slightly is that last line.
Not that I don't like Steam (I really really don't, but it's tolerable) but I fear the game won't get full exposure possible if only available on digital distribution. And some people will even go as far as refuse to install a game that requires steam.
When I heard Obsidian was back on the playing field my heart skipped a beat. Then New Vegas happened, and Obsidian showed they know the what and the where, but fail to execute.
Dungeon Siege III is further proof of this. A hack'n slash that feels like it knows how to be epic but comes short in the end. It's hard to describe, they know what makes a hack'n slash fun, they know what makes RPG's fun, but they still manage to botch it up.
Dungeon Siege III, is available on all platforms, features co-op, and on the PC it can be played with a gamepad aswell as keyboard and mouse. I recommend the gamepad as of time of writing, the keyboard and mouse control is cumbersome at best and Obsidian even acknowledged it's horribleness (somewhat).
It's a classic hack'n slash reminiscent that can be played from a top down view or a more intimate third person view.
The Combat.
It's is nice and visceral, for my first play through I picked Anjali. She is an Archon, lore aside she's a firemage lady that uses fire in everything. And it feels right, she has two stances, like all characters. One for melee, and one for ranged combat. Her kicks are augmented with fiery effects, and her staff swings look like they make a righteous impact. Dungeon Siege does the combat sounds spot on as well, this is something allot of games do wrong, whilst if done right it can breath so much more life into the combat. When firing a fireball in a bandit's face, the animations look powerful, and are accompanied by a mighty rich 'Oomph' sound on release. It reminds me a bit of God of War's sound effects, how the sound perfectly conveyed Kratos's strength and the power he puts into each bone shattering smash.
Fiery Lady using lot's of Fire: almost an understatement.
Sadly the combat is hampered severely by the lack of skills, 3 offensive skills per stance, and 3 defensive skills caps the total skill count to 9, there are 'empowered' versions of these and you can customize the effects, but there is absolutely no choice in skills. By the end of the game you will have picked two or three skills you genuinely like and the rest are left ignored and unused.
The defensive skills are simple yet effective, one regenerates your health, one empowers your attacks and one shields you. Sadly there is little in the ways of clear indication when these buffs are up. The only visual indicators are on the characters themselves, in Anjali's case her hands light up when the weapon buff is active, sadly in her fire form, with the talents I gave her, she has allot of fire around her already, and especially from the isometric view in the midst of firestorms and balls it is nigh impossible to make out if the buff is still active.
This normally doesn't need to be a problem were it not that in my game I upgraded that spells so it would give me health back based on damage done, it was my primary method of healing, and the few times I did die, it was because I did not notice in time the buff died out.
You power these abilities by expending focus, a blue bar reminiscent of mana, but unlike mana in traditional games, focus is regained primarily by hitting things, repeatedly, it is a good thing, it means you rarely have to stop to take a breather or to regenerate and it allows you to keep active in the fray.
For my play through with Anjali it was the summon skill that was left unused, not because it is useless but more because it's buggy. Pets tend to wander off and aggro nearby mobs, while in the case of the fire dog you get as Anjali, it makes a horrible sound as well. Which iterates the point, the sound of the combat in general is right, but some sounds are so annoying they just stand out.
Leveling, Lewt and Companions.
Leveling works as you'd expect it, you whack people over the head with your staff, they keel over and you are awarded with delicious experience. When you level up you are given a point to spend on upgrading an ability and a talent. Each ability can be augmented in two specific ways that add unique functionality to the spell, with the most points spent in either way giving greater benefits. The talents provide buffs on kill, or general passive buffs. Again nothing too shocking. Every so often gaining a level will grant you with an spell point which you can use to purchase a spell, though it is rendered moot because at the end you will have each spell available anyway, so it only really serves as another carrot to keep playing.
As with any RPG worth it's salt there is loot galore, plenty of armor and weapon upgrades are found throughout the game and you will unlikely be wearing the same pair of trousers for long. Another thing Obsidian did extremely well is the inventory system, it is quick and comfortable, even with a controller. It is easy and intuitive to scroll through your armor and there is a side by side comparison to the item highlighted and the item equipped in that slot. The stats are bit obfuscated in their purpose, but a quick look at the help section fixed that for me.
Inventory space is, spacious and your character can carry an unrealistic amount of armor weapons and trinkets of which I thoroughly approve, and when it inevitably does run full, you don't have to hike back to the shopkeeper or discard items, you can simply mutate the undesirable items into money.
Whilst you are thumping people over the head and searing off their eyebrows you occasionally run across loot not meant for your character, and with occasionally I mean on a near constant basis. There are 3 companions for you to choose from and whether they have been discovered yet or not the game does not care. The game will hurl copious amounts of pistols and undergarments at your head designed for people you haven't even heard of.
In the beginning I kept the best piece of armor for each character I hadn't yet encountered but the charm of that soon wore thin, so I started selling them off, worried that I made a big mistake when I first encountered my second companion I was both disappointed and relieved that my selling had little to no impact. Dungeon Siege only allows a single companion to be out at any given time. It is possible to switch out your companion, but as you travel and build up your companion there is little incentive to do so. I personally switched out 4 or 5 times just to see what the other companions abilities were like, I eventually settled on the companion I first got and completely and utterly ignored the others, and the game was perfectly fine with me doing so.
In this I feel Obsidian should have looked at their BioWare brothers and learned from Dragon Age, the companions are very thin and offer little in personality and they can be largely bypassed and ignored. In Dragon Age each character is at least interesting and oft vital part to the story, in Dungeon Siege the opposite is true, your main character is the central coil of the planet and your companions are just troublesome mooks your forced to put up with. There is no need for a certain setup for a certain encounter, as on normal you can pretty much steamroll the content with any companion at your side.
Speaking of difficulty, Dungeon Siege is not a hard game, it does not require tactics, the mooks are mooky and can be cut through with little to no effort, the bosses are nice, and sometimes offer quite a challenge, but in the end it's just all in the tells, the boss will at some point wave his arms in the air in a big elaborate "I SHALL BE ATTACKING YOU!!... soon.. ish." and as long as you dodge out of the way once his attack does come you should be alright, the difficulty comes from learning which wavy arm motions signals which attack.
Quest and Plot.
The quests are meh. Honestly that's all I can say about them. It's been two days since I played Dungeon Siege and I'm struggling to remember examples, the only one that comes to mind is something with a spider, with someone captured and there's a spider behind them, and the conversation goes like this 'You have to cut me down please! There's something here! Hurry!' to which your character responds 'Let me guess, a big white hairy spider?' and the guys goes 'How did you know? Oh it's right behind me isn't it."
That's it, that's literally it, the rest of my mind just blanks, which isn't a good sign. I can perfectly remember the quests of the Dark Brotherhood in Bethesda's Oblivion, that's a good sign. Dungeon Siege just hurls generic baddies at you and collect this, talk to this and kill these quests, which is sad, there has been a veritable drought in hack'n slash games and they could have truly innovated in the genre, sadly they did not.
As for the story, I could for the life of me not remember anything specific, it is the most generic generated story of cliche's, your a member of an organisation that was vastly powerful but has been all but eradicated, you need to find the person that started the crusade on your kin, that person is mad and has awakened something dark and evil which you have to go stab with pointy things. The end. No twists, no surprises, that's it. Everything in the plot is spotted a mile away.
The NPC's and conversations use the classic 'zoom to face and blank stare' as patented by the Bethesda RPG's, except the NPC's don't just stare, they look around, roll their eyes around in a very creepy way. At least it does have the option to have group conversations which is nice, would they have a smidgen of realism mixed into them. You control the conversation with a classic Mass Effect wheel minus the Paragon/Renegade options.
Conclusion.
The game has no replay value to mention, and the co-op is, well. The other person in your game receives 0 xp, 0 gold, 0 items, starts with a naked new char moment they join, and gain absolutely nothing from playing with you. The only cool thing is when there is a conversation you both get to decide what option to take.
Though I don't like rating games or giving points, I'd still recommend this game if you have a few hours to spare, it's an easy going game that plays perfectly reasonable, it is the gaming equivalent of a B horror movie, it's watchable, doesn't require too much investment and it's over before you know it.
