WoW: Icecrown Citadel and more!

It's been over a year since I first wrote about WoW's Wrath of the Lich King, and a lot has happened since.

Dungeon Finder

The most revolutionary feature since the expansion would have to be the Dungeon Finder system added in Patch 3.3.0. Using it is completely effortless. You click what you want to do, the system automatically throws a viable group together to do it. In most cases you wait less than 20 minutes, during which you can continue questing/farming/auctioning, then when the group is made you are whisked to your dungeon.

The flaws, as usual for Blizzard, are few. Bad players can still ruin the experience, but it is fairly easy in my experience to replace most of them with the Vote to Kick option. The queue to join, however, is completely driven by the shortfall of tanks (and sometimes healers) using the system. Due to this, you can usually get in instantly if you play these support roles. One of my tank alts hasn't moved away from the auction house in 12 levels, since there's no need to quest if I don't want to. There were some issues with loot fairness, but Blizzard is acting quickly to seal the gaps.

Ulduar

After the initial set of raid dungeons came the addition of Ulduar. A huge, sprawling, multi-themed work of art, Ulduar featured 13 bosses and a semi-secret ultimate boss for the very elite. I think the most creative fights currently in the game are all in Ulduar. Let's talk about a few.

The first encounter, Flame Leviathan, is a vehicle-based gauntlet clear followed by a vehicle boss. You are given a set number of 3 different vehicles, each with 2 seats, that must work in concert to earn victory. For example, the Demolisher's driver is responsible for dealing the bulk of the damage, but the player in his gunner chair is responsible for shooting down from the sky and collecting crates of the ammo he needs. The gunner can also be catapulted onto the Flame Leviathan to disable the boss for a short time.

This fight is the first example of a variable difficulty encounter. Up to Four different towers can be left standing during the gauntlet approach to the fight, each making the fight more difficult in a new way. One will shoot a trail of deadly fire into the playfield. Another spawns an unholy number of monster plants you must deal with. Each tower left up increases the rewards you get.

The last (non-secret) encounter, Yogg Saron, is completely insane. The flavor revolves around it, in fact. Yogg and his minions do their best to destroy your 'Sanity' (a special counter that appears at the start). If they succeed, you turn on your friends and cannot be saved. However, you don't actually engage Yogg himself directly until the very end of the fight. His mind tricks manifest in several ways, forcing you to dance around a circular frogger-style pattern of moving clouds. Then he summons several different types of tentacles, all with various treatments, all while your melee players should be teleporting to hallucinations of Azeroth's past... It's too crazy to explain, but very, very, cool. This fight also has 5 difficulty settings. 2 dungeons later, with far better gear, my guild has yet to beat the last 2, and my guild is pretty good. The very elite could win before the extra gear, which says a lot about how great the best players are, and how well Blizzard pushes the limit for these few.

Trial of the Crusader

A shorter, one-room raid, Trial has 5 bosses, and only 2 modes each. I'm bummed that they seem to be moving away from the Ulduar style of multi-stage hard modes, which you engage by behaving differently. Now you just flip a switch in the UI. Less cool, to me.

I enjoyed all the fights in Trial, but there's nothing too fantastic or new here. Even the boss models are recycled from other content. That combined with the tiny loot table left my guild feeling burnt on it quickly. I was pleased that we mastered the hard modes before new content came out (unlike with Ulduar), but I'm betting that means better guilds were even more bored.

One fight of note is another 'fake-PvP' encounter, Faction Champions. Your party of 10 faces 6 NPC enemies, which behave similar to players in PvP. They use CC, dispel and heal each other, seem to pick on the weak characters together, and generally murder your face with scary unpredictable stuff. They follow the player rules for CC duration and a special AOE damage reduction rule. I'm mostly impressed by the realistic appearance of the NPCs, even though they cheat and have 20x your health, they feel pretty smart. I'm guessing there's not really a lot to them other than a bigger ability list than usual, and some random target switching code. MMO PvP bots might be easier to make than I thought.

Icecrown Citadel

The end of this expansion's story, you face Arthas and his army on the way up his multi-story ice fortress. Icecrown Citadel feels very big, but the theme seems less fantastic to me than Ulduar. There is less color variety, and really very few notable set pieces. I was somewhat let down after the build up that was Icecrown the overworld zone. I expected a bit more phasing play. Involvement outside with the armies of the Alliance was what I expected. Instead, the King (Varian Wrynn, not Arthas) just stands at the doorway giving you encouraging words.

Some of IC's fights are very good. Mostly, they are very hard. I'm okay with that, personally, but Blizzard has obsoleted older content through aggressive badge upgrading, so there's not much to do other than bang on whatever fights your guild can do here every week until new stuff comes out. I expect quick guild burnout and lots of attendance problems for us and many other guilds until the next expansion.

The fight against Arthas is notable in difficulty. Tanking takes a step up, with several phases that require very active performance from one or both tanks. I haven't tried healing or dps this fight, but both appear to be just as dire. A few nasty movement challenges may put this fight out of reach forever for any guilds with a few keyboard turners. In the end, it's very exciting to win. Killing a WoW icon is definitely satisfying. My only complaint is the lore that could have been. Where's Jaina? Sylvanas? King Wrynn or Thrall?

Bionic Commando

Bionic Commando is an interesting game. I'm going to spoil the plot, so be warned.

The main character, Nathan Spencer, is a complete douchebag. He looks like a douchebag, he laughs maniacally when he murders people, and he speaks to everyone with an insufferable snorting growl. The story tries to justify this by his being unjustly imprisoned for 5 years, shortly after he saved the world, shortly after his wife vanished mysteriously. We learn eventually that she was sacrificed to create his bionic arm (flashback quote: "I'll always be by your side, Nathan!"), because these superpowered limbs require BLOOD.

The game opens with a massive terrorist bombing of a major city. The radiation this leaves behind kills everyone, and it form the rails of the levels. Avoiding invisible walls is good, but the radiation kills you very quickly, making exploratory mistakes far too punishing. Spencer is freed from prison by his 'friend' in the government, given back his bionic arm, and sent to go punch in some faces.

The terrorist group, BioReign, are "pro bionics", and thus they call you "The Traitor!" as you murder them. For once, a mob of villains is actually likable. However, knowing the price (in BLOOD) of a bionic limb, it stretches credulity that they'd be common enough for an army of radical supporters to form. Regular prosthetics aren't acceptable?

Much praise should be given to the voicework and AI of the common BioReign grunts. As the game progresses, their idle dialogue changes from unaware, to paranoid, to misinformed, to angry (yet terrified). At first they believe a squad is advancing through their territory. When they learn they're being decimated by just one man, this unnerves them. As you hack into their systems, you find them researching you. Then they hurl insults, and yell "DAMN YOU, SPENCER!" as you pick off their friends. I also liked that when you take cover, they'll radio in to update command with your position.

Other enemies were less enjoyable. There are a variety of mechs that I didn't relish fighting. Some could be cheesed by using terrain, others just involved hucking grenades at them. They did not play very well with the bionic arm. They also tended to be used in the middle or end of long segments, where their ability to quickly kill you means you'll be running through all the tedium again and again. Enraging.

The arm itself is very fun. Swinging around becomes a blast once you learn it, although the learning curve may be a bit steep. Once you unlock the Kite and Throw attack, mowing down troops and mechs in many segments can be a joy. There are only a few portions of the game with instant death below you if you foul a swing. But, the first one of these was very early (imo), and I was about ready to quit playing after the 10th death. So, you may want to practice at it a bit more than I did early on.

Bionic Commando suffers from a long loading time. The stunning art detail means level changes are fairly often, but I accept transition loading times. I don't accept long loading times when I've died. What are you loading? I'm already there! And yes, the art is amazing. This shattered cityscape begs you to slow down and enjoy. The interiors are less fantastic, but rare. Some characters and their cinematics are bad, others are decent.

Overall, I liked the game. Not sure I'd recommend it unless you're interested in swinging around a gorgeous city and can put up with some annoyance. I certainly feel a bit saddened by the news that it's sales are so poor the studio is in trouble, because they clearly have talent.

Wrath of the Lich King

WotLK is the newest addition to the massively successful World of Warcraft. Most of the new zones are good, the new quests include their best ever, and the art continues to be amazing for their tech budget. But, what really excited me was that Blizzard can be seen trying new things in this expansion.

Displaying the world in varying states depending on your quest flags (which Blizzard calls Phasing) is a somewhat subtle new feature in WoLK. The largest example is the final quest zone, Icecrown. You battle through the zone following directives from major plot NPCs, opening up new quest hubs as you conquer enemy areas and your allies pour in to build new bases. You only see players in the same phase as you within that area. It sounds simple, but it added much more depth and fun to the experience than I would have guessed.

Phasing isn't completely new to MMOs, or even WoW. Blizzard had at least components of the tech all the way back at release, seen in Scholomance as a city of ghosts you could only see when wearing a special item. Along with the world-changing story in Icecrown, they use the tech to send you to flashback scenes with Arthas (and sometimes even as Arthas!) or other major story events. Some quests even pop you into a pocket dimension and litter the area with ample targets for one of the new vehicles.

Vehicles are another new tech addition in WotLK. Tanks, planes, and creatures are given to you to control. Vehicles replace your abilities with their own (i.e. breathe fire, shoot cannon). Some of the time, they feel like a gimmick. Other times, brilliance shines through and you will be amazed by an epic battle. The vehicles are a fun way to give you a new game to play briefly. One quest resembles Shadow of the Colossus in its strategy. Another forces you to burrow underground as a worm when your prey charges up his attack. The encounter with the raid boss Malygos ends in a great aerial showdown where you and your friends must master a tricky battle on the backs of the Red Dragonflight. This fight is pretty complicated, so they even made a quest to practice it.

Achievements, now generally understood to be a fun addition to any game, make their splash in this expansion. Points are given out for old-world achievements, but the true fun lies in the newer content. Group and raid content seems to be balanced a bit easier in WotLK, but new level of challenge appears in a huge variety of difficult feats to be performed. Found that boss to be too easy? Next time try letting him impale your whole group before taking him down. Think you've got content on farm and it's time to take a break? You still haven't beaten this boss in under 3 minutes. Is your guild too amazing to find a challenge in this raid dungeon? We'll reward you if you can do it without anyone dying once!

All these achievements add to a point score, and some of the toughest give other rewards. I personally have my sights set on an amazing undead dragon mount that's only given for mastering ALL of the 10 man raid achievements. It could take some time before we manage that! In the meantime, tons of easy to accomplish tasks are laid out in front of me, potentially keeping me busy for months to come. I'm not obsessive enough to go for them all, but I have a few friends who are.

The raid content in WotLK is fun, if a bit of a cop-out. The major cornerstone at the launch of the expansion is Naxxramas, a revamped dungeon from level 60. Few players had ever seen it, so it is effectively new content. The other existing raid encounters are simple dragon lairs. Challenging fights, but not ample eye candy for the explorers like myself.

Classes underwent a few major changes in the big 3.0 patch. All damage-dealing specs are theoretically equalized (with the pure DPS classes still given a small advantage over hybrids). Buffs have been homogenized and balanced some to prevent stacking of shamans and other oddities. Tanking has been made easier and more fun, with a big threat jump for all tanks, gearing for crushing blows made unnecessary, and more damage dealing potential in general. Healing seems to be a bit more balanced, with some weaker specs from before being given a place at the raiding table. Healers still do very little damage, so levelling a healing build is still torture.

I chose to abandon my previous character, a mage, and now play a paladin. One of the few hybrids able to tank, deal damage, and heal, I greatly enjoy collecting gear for all three tasks and stepping into whichever role is needed. The paladin underwent major changes in 3.0 to make their damage dealing spec viable, and I found it fun levelling him from 60 to 70 while he was very overpowered for a bit, before they were balanced.

Blizzard also added their first expansion class, the Death Knight. Available to play starting at level 55, you can quickly get a feel for the class by playing through their amazing intro quest line. I found it a bit annoying to manage, too many resources and states to juggle at once. Not a hard class, though. They generally smoke through solo content. They seem to be a bit nuts in PvP.

My opinion on PvP in WoW is that it still sucks. Damage is too high, survivability too low, and there's too much crowd control. Casters tend to get mowed down by my paladin in DPS mode, with rogues, druids, and death knights also overpowering most other players. Playing a healer particularly can feel very futile when any spell with a cast time is worthless against skilled players. WoW should take tips from Warhammer, and work on slowing combat down. Frontline soak and snares provided by Warhammer tanks give its PvP a 'press' that WoW lacks. The slower pace and fewer CCs give players a chance to press a few buttons (usually) before they get brought down.

Despite the abundance of achievements, great quests, dungeons, and new loot, the WoLK expansion is already running out of entertainment for the hard-core. Players more aggressive than me and my friends are already chomping for the next raid zone addition, and we will be soon. Blizzard, despite their resources, does not seem to be able to keep ahead of its voracious players any better than less powerful MMO companies.

WotLK is a good expansion with some fun new features. But hopefully Blizzard is still scrambling to add more.

Gears of War 2

Pure, shameless, guy-movie, action fun can make it a bit embarrassing to be a gamer. Gears 2, particularly the cooperative parts, is a great game. As juvenile as it is, there's no denying it's a good time.

Gears of War 2 is made by Epic, the keepers of the Unreal Engine, and they always seem to be a step ahead of their licensees. Detailed actors, almost painterly backgrounds, and tech that pushes the 360 beyond known bounds all deliver a visual treat. The monochrome art direction from the first Gears is left by that stomped-upon curb. This game is vibrant, varied, and amazing to look at. The grime and 'destroyed beauty' theme remains, but this time there is emphasis on the beauty.

Gears 2 gameplay is the same cover mechanic from the first. It's been nicely refined with better controls, a few more solid weapons, and some neat monster additions that play well with it. This installment frees you a bit more from absolutely needing constant cover by offering more flanking opportunities with your partner. Level design is very good. Somehow they manage to keep a very simple mechanic fresh. Without this, the game would be more whack-a-mole feeling, something the devs expressed concern about in the first.

There is a story, and a plot, but it doesn't matter. Epic attempts to add a bit more drama and character development, but for me it all fell flat. It's irrelevant, because that's not what the game's for. It was surprising to me that the quality of the in-engine/machinima character drama bits were so poor. Valve really had it nailed with HL2 (4 years ago!), so I'm surprised Epic let something out the door that was vastly inferior to their competition. Although, to be fair, it probably does take practice as a studio to get machinima right. Maybe next installment it will be better

The online gameplay, currently under attack by exploiters (as was the first), is reportedly very good in some modes (i.e. Horde). I rarely attempt to milk the online portions of these console shooters for what they're worth, though. If MS had an option for age bracket matchmaking, it would improve my enjoyment of XBL stuff immensely.

If you have a friend, a 360, and enjoy action, there's no reason not to play this game.

Dead Space

This game seems linked to Mirror's Edge due to them both being creative new IPs by EA (whoa!) put out in 2008 that reportedly underperformed in sales, leading us all to wonder if EA will feel burnt and go back to the sequel churn (I don't think so). Dead Space was more critically successful, but I'd say Mirror's Edge was my favorite of the two.

I recommend Dead Space if you like action, sci-fi, or horror. I think most of the things that bothered me about it are intractable because I'm no lover of the survival horror genre. The game was good enough to let me work past them.

Dead Space looks great. I loved the movie Event Horizon, and the concepts here evoke the same stark, quiet feel, mixed with the majesty of space and a great ship. I think it's just a common horror contrast. Big, beautiful place with a creepy vibe? There are some magical moments when the game gives you a look at the planet below.

You and your buddies arrive as a repair crew after things have gone to hell, and the few living people you meet are either plot characters with unrealistic survival powers, or nameless madmen that tend to put on a little suicide display in front of you to show you just how SNAFU it's all become. I found that a bit in bad taste.

The ship itself, a massive mining ship called the Ishimura, offers enough character to get the job done. It brings all the expected trappings such as vents, airlocks, locking doors, and quarantines to deliver horror gameplay. Audio logs left behind by various crew do a semi-decent job of evoking the ghostly vibe of a place once crawling with happy humans going about their everyday work.

The sound work is good. Playing with surround can enhance a creepy experience, but I thought the ambiance was a bit overused, making scare noises approach silly and nonthreatening. The weapons, monsters, and environments were all very nice. The vacuum scenes were incredible, as they only give you muffled bits in contact with your suit. Once a few (normally chattery) monsters snuck up on me in a vacuum, I became wildly paranoid in them for the rest of the game.

The story is a bit strange. As the game goes on you become more and more aware of a cult that had quite a bit of control over the ship. The beliefs and actions of the cultists are used to explain away some of the common horror plot holes (i.e. why didn't they just FLY AWAY?!). The player's character, Isaac, is apparently involved with one of the Ishimura's crew, an angle that is used in some fun ways.

Isaac himself is fairly dull. Another game character too cool to talk, which makes all the dialogue with your fellow rescue crew super awkward. It's time for games to stop doing this. I'm looking at you, too, Gordan Freeman. Your engineer's suit is a very neat design, and the upgrades you can earn to it are as visually rewarding as gearing up in an MMO.

As an engineer, Isaac's weapons are almost all based on the concept of tools. Instead of a pistol or chaingun, Isaac uses a Plasma Cutter and a gravity-field-suspended buzzsaw called the Ripper. Later in the game, you can pick up mining tools such as the line cutter or contact beam. The only 'traditional' gun in the game is the plasma rifle. All these weapons do 'shaped' damage. Usually a line of varying length and angle.

The shaped damage is in service to the key combat innovation in Dead Space. "Dismemberment" as they call it encourages you to aim for the limbs of the monsters. It's cool looking, fun to do, and a nice change from other shooters where maybe the head is a nice place to favor. My favored weapon in the game was the Ripper, which hovers in front of you dealing horizontal damage. The resulting combat felt sort of like I was swinging a sword around, panning my camera to try and chop off limbs.

All the weapons and your suit must be upgraded by spending Power Nodes. This is done by unlocking nodes in the upgrade grid, where you would make a path to whatever attribute you wanted to improve, like damage or reload time. Sort of FFX style. I disliked this system, since it encouraged me to focus mostly just on my ripper and plasma gun. All the other weapons were very cool, but I did not have the nodes to support them.

The inventory system also annoyed me, as it effectively just limited the fun you could have with various weapons. You can only keep 4 guns, and ammo shares space with lame crap like air canisters and stasis rechargers. I would have been happier with no inventory management. The various stores throughout the ship gives you a place to bank ammo or guns you want to play with later, so there's really little point for the space limit in the grand scheme.

In the end, I would have liked this game more if it were simpler. The limited resources and storage space that make a game a 'survival' horror just drive me nuts. But, it was still really fun, very cool looking, and I look forward to the many many soulless EA sequels.

Mirror's Edge

Mirror's Edge for 360 is one of my recent favorites. (Full disclosure, I currently work for EA, but not this studio.)

The story mode is short, maybe 8 hours? I find this a great length, because I like to play a lot of games, but it was a frequent negative found in criticism. I think that's unfair, because the time trial and race modes probably offer another good 20+ hours for the true completionists. Those harder challenges didn't hook me, though, as I rarely have patience to practice at a game any more.

Helpful tip for the story mode: try to listen to the first advice given about combat. Run away! There's a cool achievement if you can manage to never fire a weapon. I think this makes the game easier and way more fun. There was one scene, a large spiraling stairway, where trying to kung-fu my way to the bottom was getting tiring (20+ deaths). I started just sprinting past the cops, and made it to the event trigger no problem. Was a tad strange, as the cutscene after shows you casually strolling away once you've gone through that door. Funny.

Also, on my first play through I accidentally shot a gun I'd taken away. Worried about the achievement, I let the cop beat me down and went back to the checkpoint. The flag wasn't reset and I didn't get the achievement on the playthrough. Much anger. A couple days later I forgave the game and ran through it again on Easy in about 2 hours. That time, no problem getting the points. What have I become.

The sense of speed, and the nimble first-person perspective gave me no nausea, another common critique, but I have a pretty iron stomach. Most fun I've had running around since... EverQuest? (Interesting realization.) The effects to enhance the sense of motion are very nice. The visual falling effect is also very creative and fun. The bone crunching sound at the end is both amusing and cringe-inspiring, so misleaping to your death rarely got aggravating. I didn't much like the red/dim-out effect from taking damage as it interfered with the aesthetic, and a bit with the visual info you needed.

The key interface innovation is Runner Vision, which basically involves coloring where you should go red. When sprinting through the concrete jungle, this is a great aide in keeping up the flow. My one complaint about 'runner-vision' is that I wanted more. Show more of possible pathways, and color them permanently. They don't do this to make you discover the optimal route on your own in the advanced content (time attack, which has no runner vision), but I think it weakened the core experience.

Runner Vision led them to create an innovative art style where the majority of surfaces are white, and only one or two other hues are used in most scenes. So, you see lots of orange, and some bright red in the background, but little else. This hyper-clean art style is definitely one of my favorites. With the fantastic music, it all worked to make a great atmosphere. The story seemed mostly atmospheric as well, being a very thin affair revolving around the government having become a police state.

Don't let me make you think the art was mundane, though. Lots of beautiful ideas, well executed. Being stingy with color made it very visually rewarding when a new one was used. I also just love cityscapes. But, the level design itself could have used more variance. There was a little too much of being stuck in vents and other dark, damp places. I started getting a bit of a Half-Life 1 vibe. The pacing was also a bit monotone, too much run-for-your-life strung together with not enough safety beats in between.

Faith, the lady you play as, is a great character. I wonder if the game could have sold more copies with a 'hotter' female on the box, but I'm happy they went with such an nontraditional character design. Skimming through some of the bonus materials, the concepts for many other characters in the game were fantastic as well, particularly the good cop. But, you really don't see him or the others (or yourself) in actual play for more than a few seconds, so it didn't dawn on me how neat he was until I saw the drawing. They used a 2D cartoon style, Samurai Jack-esque, for almost all the cutscenes and story, other than what you hear in your ear while running. I enjoyed the style on it's own, but I don't know if it was a fit, and it didn't bring through enough of the important detail in the character designs.

The combat is attacked in reviews. Like I said, if you're playing it right, you need to actually engage maybe 4 fistfights. The concepts, such as the jump kick being powerful only if you run fast, or just disarming your foe with kung fu at close range, are good. But, it's too hard on Normal. I'm an amazing acrobat, but I can't actually connect with more than one-in-five jump kicks I try? Jump/slide kicks also made me hate the bizarre controls a little. A should be jump, not LB, wtf.

Overall, I was very hyped on the aesthetic, the character, the gameplay, and the tech by the marketing. Great marketing risks a stigma of missing the mark, which I think sticks to this game a bit. But, other than the combat, which was cool, but just too hard, I think the game was great.

Buh?

Various smart guys encourage blogging, but I've never liked the idea. Here we are.