TERA: The First 20 Levels

This past weekend, I played through the first 20 levels in the online MMO TERA.

Despite the fact the game came out in May of 2012, this was my first time playing.  TERA has gone free-to-play and I wanted to give it a try since I was excited for the game when it released but never picked it up because I didn’t feel like paying any more monthly subscription fees for online games.

 

The first thing anyone will notice about TERA is that its combat doesn’t feel like a tradition MMO.  Sure the quests that you collect are very much like games like World of Warcraft: go to a quest giver, get quest, kill 10 creatures, turn quest in, repeat indefinitely.  But the way combat works in TERA makes killing the indigenous life forms a lot of fun and I found myself eagerly hunting things just to experience the combat system.

 

Combat in TERA feels like an action game.  Unlike games like World of Warcraft where you click on an enemy, press a button, wait for attack to automatically hit, and repeat; TERA has no lock-on system.  All of your abilities have to be manually aimed and it is very possible to miss your attack if the enemy jumps out of the way. Many of my bezerker’s blows have connected with nothing but thin air as an enemy jumped around and stabbed me in the side.  It’s an intense system and the knowledge that every fight can result in you taking no damage if you are good enough and paying enough attention is a driving force that makes each fight a thought-provoking challenge.  This was the first MMO where I didn’t zone-out while slaughtering hordes of creatures.  Its combat actually made me focus out of necessity.

The combat system is what has had me glued so readily to my monitor but there are some other features that I have experienced so far in my brief time with the game that I feel are worth mentioning.

 

First, leveling has been pretty quick. I reached level 20 in about 5 or 6 hours and I’m still moving at a fair pace towards the level cap of 60.  It’s possible leveling may slow down at some point, but so far there hasn’t been a moment where I felt like I was slogging through the game trying to fill my xp bar.  It’s a nice feeling and I prefer it to Wow’s level grind.

Another feature I really like is the Player-Killer system.  To my knowledge, this system is only present on the pvp servers. Every player receives a skill at level 11 that turns them into an outlaw.  While you are an outlaw, you can kill any player freely.  The catch is that it turns your name red and lets any other player attack you.  I have met a few players who have chosen to be an outlaw and have killed and been killed.  I also have to admit, that I have killed a player while as an outlaw. In my defense, it wasn’t intentional.  I was trying the system out with another new player and we were attacked by a third party who saw our names in red as we quested. It was self-defense but we learned quickly not to leave our names in red unless you are ready for a fight.

The last part of TERA I’m excited about is feature I haven’t gotten participate in but is something that effects every player in TERA.  TERA has a political system where guilds run for election for the right to govern one of the provenances that make up TERA’s continent.  Every three weeks there is a new round of voting where all players get to participate. The winning guild masters becomes the Vanarchs, or rulers, of a region for a three week term.  Vanarchs can set tax rates, give out special quests, or police the district in addition to more options.  There is also a way to challenge a current Vanarch and take their territory over by force but I don’t know the specifics of that system at this time.

 

Overall, I have been having a lot of fun in TERA.  There is a lot that feels similar, like the questing system or the standard tank, dps, healer trinity required for beating dungeons; but the combat makes the whole game feel more like an action game than an MMO and both the pvp and the Vanarch elections add enough of a spice to the core game play for it to feel like a unique product.  Top all that off with gorgeous graphics, an optimized game engine, and a free-to-play subscription model, and its hard not to recommend the game to friends.  It’s a solid MMO title and if you have been thinking about trying TERA out, there is no better time to jump in and give it a try.

I’m playing on the Mount Tyrannas pvp server as the Popori bezerker, Otemmo.  If you want to play, just message me in game or leave a message below and I’ll be glad to kill some native species with you.

Binary Domain Demo Impressions

Binary Domain was a game I had heard nothing about, seen nothing about, and knew nothing about.  So when I was searching through the demo section of the PSN and saw the name, I almost didn’t download it.

But I did, and it was an interesting experience.

Binary Domain is an action game that takes place in futuristic Tokyo.  In this setting, human looking robots called “Hollow Children” are causing problems and it’s up to you and your team of gun toting soldiers to stop them. Where is John Connor when you need him?

In terms of game play, Binary Domain is a cover-based shooter at it’s core.  It’s mechanics are solid but nothing you haven’t seen before.  You can carry four weapons but two slots are dedicated to your pistol and grenades.  The third weapon slot seems to be only for your starting assault rifle, which is a pretty good weapon, and a fourth slot for whatever weapon you pick up along the way.  As you play, you earn money, which can be used to buy and upgrade items at terminals you come across as fight your way through Tokyo.

The two levels in the demo are short, but do a good job differentiating themselves from each other.  They are both very intense affairs as robots attack from all angles and bullets whiz around you as you crouch behind cover. A neat thing I noticed was the level of environmental destructibility.  Several times, I found my cover suddenly gone as it crumbled beneath a wall of gunfire.  It was a nice touch that changed the flow of combat nicely.  Another nice touch was the way your robot enemies crumble and break.  Their outer shelling shatters as you shoot them and reveal their circuits.  All damage is location specific, so if you only shoot a robot in the legs, the torso will fall to the ground and try to crawl after you and kill you.  It startled me the first time I was seized by a crawling enemy and had to fight the thing on my leg.  It was a memorable moment.

Binary Domain also has two feature not commonly seen in games.

The first thing that really interested me was the” Consequence System”.  This system  is designed to build trust with your teammates.  Shoot a teammate in the back while playing and they are less likely to follow your orders  Although this system wasn’t highlighted in the demo, it is said to affect  both the story and how your AI teammates react to you.

The second feature requires a headset to enjoy.  Similar to Mass Effect’s  voice order system, Binary Domain includes voice command system within the game that lets players direct their squad to move and provide cover. The voice system worked surprisingly well, and I think that more shooters need to incorporate this in the future.

In closing, I think that Binary Domain is a demo people should defiantly try out.  It’s it’s interesting  and solid, but nothing particularly revolutionary.  The game launches February 28 on both the PS3 and Xbox 360.

Rahr and Sons: Iron Thistle Scotch Ale Review

I tried a Rahr and Sons brew for the first time Monday and loved it.  I had the Rahr Iron Thistle brew and it was fantastic.  Iron Thistle is a Scotch Ale, so it was a little sweeter than most beers, and paired wonderfully with the rack of lamb I cooked.  It was rich and flavorful and one of the more enjoyable beers I’ve had in some time.  The only flaw to it was that it made me extremely thirsty, and I had to drink water to counter-act this.  Rahr and Sons only distributes their products in Texas, but they are slowly expanding.  Should you ever seen this little beauty on a shelf, I recommend that you pick it up.  You won’t regret it.  I promise.

Appearance: It has a thick, creamy head while the body was a dark ruby color.

Smell:  Smells of deep malts and rich caramel.

Taste:  You will taste notes of caramel, chocolate, coffee, roasted barley, and several spices.

Aftertaste: The aftertaste is warm and has a long-lasting ‘smoky-sweet’ taste to it.

Soul Calibur 5: The Story, the Terrible, Terrible Story Review

I really enjoy the Soul Calibur series.  I really enjoy the fighting and have many, many memories of smack talking my friends.  Soul Calibur 5 has an enjoyable multi-player experience, online or on the couch.  But I have nothing good to say about the single player story other than it’s the easiest way for new people to learn how to play.

Cheap is the word that immediately comes to mind when I think back on my time with the story.  In this modern age of cut scenes and superior graphics, Soul Calibur 5’s story is told through a small handful of cuts scenes and, wait for it, storyboards.

That’s right, storyboards. The ancient, almost archaic  practice of storyboards is here and really, really hurts the story.  Not to say that the story is very good to being with.  The standard, anime archetypes are all present, and the voice acting and written dialogue is simply terrible.  I found myself laughing and making fun of the story as it rolled along through it’s short three hour duration.

It’s a real shame that the story is so weak because the game play is solid and more of what we love about Soul Calibur 5.  I have been playing online and have been really impressed by the lack of lag present in the online fights.  I applaud the developers for polishing the system so well.

In closing, the game gets a 4/5  for game play because of its solid combat and great online experience.  Its overall score is reduced to a 3/5 though because of a terrible story mode and a rather sparse single player experience.

Overall, 3/5

400 Pound Monkey IPA review

400 Pound Monkey an India Pale Ale is made by Lefthand Brewing company.  Overall, I really liked the beer.  It’s now one of my favorite American made IPA’s.  On a scale from 1 to 5, with five as the best, I would rate it a 3.8, and definitely encourage you to try it.

Apperaence: When you see the drink, its an orange color with a white foam head.

Smell: You will smell orange marmalade,  lemon, and malts.

Taste:  The first thing you taste is a mild nutty/caramel undertone.  After a moment the usual IPA taste of grain and sweet hops mix with the hints or orange and nuts.

Aftertaste:  The after taste his heavy and a little bitter.

Dungeon Defenders: Opinion

Today, a friend of mine sent me a copy of Dungeon Defenders on Steam.  I was a little hesitant.  The videos I had watched hadn’t just “wowed” me and I felt that it had the appearance and feel of a generic castle defense game.  But he had bought it for me for Christmas and he wanted to play so I sucked it up and dove in.

I’m glad I did.

Like most tower defense games, Dungeon Defenders is divided into waves, or rounds, where enemies pour out it great hordes from various doorways.  The player is tasked with preventing these enemies from reaching a crystal.  Between waves, the players are able to spend money they acquired by killing enemies to build defenses to help fight the hordes.  These defenses can range from towers that fling fire to deployable walls that re-route the enemies or halt their progress.

Dungeon defenders adds a bit of strategy to this standard formula by giving players a choice of four classes to pick from, each with their own strengths and deployable armament. My wizard character can build some of the best towers in the game, but his physical attacks and defensive barriers are rather weak.  Meanwhile, my friend’s warrior can carve through waves of enemies with his sword, leaving  massively strong barricades behind him to cut off the enemies’ path of advancement.  To add further depth to the game, Dungeon Defenders allows you to level up and customize your character as you play.  Currently, my level 19 wizard is a jack-of-all trades character while my friends wizard has the constitution of a flower but whose towers can lay waste to the hordes with impunity.

Also, there is loot. Oh, there is SO MUCH LOOT!  All sorts of equipment drops.  Every equipment piece has bonuses to stats that allows for even more customization.

On the game play side of things, the action is fast, frantic, and fun in a lighthearted way.  The levels can normally be beaten in around twenty minutes.  The controls are very simple and, if you are playing on ps3, you can play with four people on one console (up to four people online for pc players.)

Overall, Dungeon Defenders doesn’t redefine gaming or the Tower Defense genre.  But it is fun.  A lot of fun.  It’s easy to get into, easy to understand, and a blast to play.  It’s the kind of game you could easily play forever, and have a blast so long as you have people to play with.  If you would have to play this game solo, I would recommend passing  simply because this game is ALOT more fun with other people.  But if you can get a chum to play, or know a friend who already is, I highly, highly, recommend it to you.  You’ll be hard pressed to find a more enjoyable multi-player game for $15 dollars this holiday season.

Warhammer: Dark Heresy Role Playing Game Review

“Sinking into Darkness” or “Why I prefer Fantasy Flight’s Dark Heresy to any other role-playing game on the market.”

I’ve been an on and off table top role-player since middle school. My first encounter with role-playing games was with a little game called “Imp” during a hiking trip in the sixth grade.  The game was fun, simple, and a great way to distract us from the fact that the freezing temperatures were making it difficult to drink water.  I remember “Imp” fondly, and anyone looking for a role playing game that is very simple and easy to get into, here is the http:       http://synsynister.tripod.com/imp/id1.html

During high school, I read a few rpg books.  I didn’t play any of them, but I found myself fascinated with the rules and how each world worked.  During these four years, I became acquainted with Exalted, Legend of the Five Rings, and the Warhammer Fantasy rpg game.  All had unique systems, and each worked differently. I remember that even back then, the Warhammer Fantasy rpg struck me as the most appealing because of its simple rules and unique career system for player characters.

I didn’t pay much attention to table top rpgs until my senior year in college when I came across a beginners box for Dungeons and Dragons fourth edition at the store where I worked. This was during the summer, and I had free time after work so I decided to buy the box.  I invited several friends over and we all had a fairly fun time making characters.  We decided to get into the game and I ended up dungeon mastering (the title awarded the poor saps that try and run table top games and play the monsters the others fight) for the next eight months.

My group and I had a lot of fun with DnD fourth edition.  But as time went on, myself and another member of our group became dissatisfied with one element of the game: the combat. The higher our level, the longer and longer the fights became.  When we first started playing, a fight might last forty minutes.  But as we reached the eleventh level, the fights began to drag upwards of an hour-and-a-half; sometimes longer for particularly intense engagements.   It became harder and harder for me to keep people interested in what the enemy was doing, let alone what their teammates were doing.

Disheartened, I was looking around the internet when I heard about Dark Heresy. A long time fan of the Warhammer 40,000 brand, Dark Heresy caught my eye when a review mentioned how swift and dangerous the combat was.  Intrigued, I purchased the book from Amazon and fell in love with it.  What follows this lengthy introduction is why I believe the Dark Heresy rulebook to be one of the best products on the market for those looking for a new role-playing experience.

The Book:

The Book itself is very sturdy, well written, and well edited.  The woodcuts on each page add a nice sense of immersion.  The language is comprehensive yet simple, and anyone will be able to learn the game’s rules in a few minutes.

The only note I must add, though, is that Dark Heresy is not something young children should be reading.  Playing the game is one matter.  You can very easily turn the content into a pg or pg-13 style affair, but the book is not “child friendly”.  Some woodcuts are downright disturbing and the game deals with matters involving daemons, insanity, corruption, and the true nature of evil.  Now evil and daemons don’t have to be included into the game.  In fact, my campaign involved the players fighting against an alien swarm for most of the campaign.  But I must advise parents that this material is present within the book itself.

The Setting:

For those unfamiliar with the universe of Warhammer 40,000 in which Dark Heresy is set, let me sum up.  Humanity spans countless planets and galaxies. and is constantly under assault from multiple dark threats at any given moment.  Part of the draw of this setting is the huge diversity of worlds.  Some worlds are still medieval cease pits with black powder, while others are massive city planets with flying cars.  This means you can constantly change the setting, tone, and sort of environment your heroes are encountering.  Or they can stay on one planet if your players really enjoy a particular world.  The variety is awesome.

Magic is another thing I like and all my players did too.  Magic in Dark Heresy is a tool, but it is akin to using a massive torch while you are covered in gasoline.  It’s useful, but one wrong move and you could be devoured in hungry flames.  Playing a caster is dangerous.  Every time you cast a spell as a caster, if you roll a nine, you have to roll on the “Table of REALLY Bad Stuff”.  That’s not the actually table’s name but bad things happen.  These bad things can range from instantly curdling milk to being sucked into hell.  As I said, being a spell caster in Dark Heresy is dangerous, but immensely rewarding.

Speaking of character creation….

Character Creation:

The classes in Dark Heresy are a bit different.  There is scholar, arbitrator (tank), assassin, soldier (he just kills things), Psyker (spell caster), scum (think a rogue), and Tech-priest ( a cyborg. No, they don’t heal).

Each of these classes is surprisingly customizable.  For example, in my game we had two scum characters: Ida and Rykar the Intergalactic Hobo. (The title was used in game ) Ida was a refined debutante with a gift for persuasion and poisons.  Meanwhile, Rykar was a shotgun wielding drunkard who was very good at sneaking up behind you.  Both were the same class, but both were extremely different and I liked how there could be so much variety.

I also enjoyed how swift the character creation process is.  On average, it only takes twenty minutes to have a character made and playing.

The Mechanics:

I think Dark Heresy’s D100 system (It’s not really a hundred sided dice. You role one dice with ten sides for your “tens” and a second for your “ones”) is the most simple but versatile system around.  You simply roll your two dice and try to role under the “Target Number”, which is usually a character’s attribute number.  Example, if your agility is 43 and you want to jump to a ledge, you roll your dice and try to get under 43.  If you roll under, you succeed, if you go over, you fail.  Pretty simple.  To express various conditions, you can easily mod this number to represent various hazards. If it’s raining or a small ledge, there might be a penalty because it slippery meaning you would have to get a 33 or lower.  Conversely, if you had a short jump, the ease of the action might mean you had to roll a 63 or lower.  It’s very easy to adjust the numbers for the tests.

I also like how you are testing against yourself by trying to roll under your character’s attributes.  In games like DnD, the enemy’s “To be Hit Number” determines whether you hit or not.  You could be the best warrior in the land and still not harm an enemy because the enemy’s “To hit Number” is simply too high.  In Dark Heresy, your own ability to shoot a gun determines whether you hit or not, and I think that such a system allows you to feel a greater sense of reward for having focused your character into shooting a gun. Plus, it allows for a sense of greater planning.  If you sneak into a tower, prop up your rifle, and spend several turns aiming, you should be more likely to hit because you are helping yourself be more accurate, not helping yourself  hit an enemy’s  “To Hit Number”

Overall, I feel this system is great for people new to role-playing games, and makes combat very easy to understand but hard to master.

The Combat:

Combat in Dark Heresy is fast, brutal, tactical, and EXTREMELY deadly.  VERY DEADLY.

Part of what makes combat encounters in Dark Heresy so fast is just how lethal the system is.  Most characters, player and foe, have 9-13 hit points.  Most guns do 1d10 (that’s a ten sided dice for those unfamiliar with role playing) plus 3 damage.  Potentially, that’s thirteen damage for one bullet.  And when you have things like fully automatic guns that can discharge ten rounds a turn, you have a system that can quite literally turn a player’s character into Swiss cheese in moments. Now, sure, armor factors into the equation for reducing damage. If you took seven damage from a bullet but have an armor with a rating of four, you only take three damage .  However, damage has a nasty habit of piling on fast and you would be simply amazed how that changes the way people play.

This isn’t Dnd where a party of heroes can kick in the front door of a bandit compound and come out with only a few scratches.  Such an act in Dark Heresy is suicidal in the literal sense.  For an example of just how lethal the combat is, I can think of no better time to use as an example as when the infamous Captain Bugbear (yes that was the character’s name) saved his two comrades.  His two allies where hunkered down behind a smoldering wreck while four cultists took pock shots at them.  Both players were wounded and not going to last long when Bugbear kicked open a door, trained his fully automatic weapon on the cultists, and fired.  His hailstorm of bullets killed all four of them in a single turn.  That is the kind of combat you can expect from this game.  A game where a single action could turn the entire tide of a fight.

Now, some of you may be thinking that this game is stupid because you would need to make a new new characters almost constantly, but that isn’t the case.  The creators at Fantasy Flight games created a brilliant system call “Fate Points”.  This system acts exactly like lives from a video game.  If you were about to die, you may spend a fate point to somehow survive.  For example, one time our dashing scoundrel hero Ida was walking across a causeway when the causeway exploded.  She failed her tests to grab hold of something or leap to safty and went plummeting into the space below.  She would have been dead if she hadn’t spent a fate point.  Thinking fast,  Ida’s player decreed that as Ida fell, Ida’s belt snagged on a wire suspended between buildings.  Not the most original or realistic thing in the world, but we went with it.  Players only have 1 to 3 fate pointes and must spend them wisely because once spent, they are gone and they are incredibly hard to get back.

Fights can also be run in one of three ways.  Running an engagement without a battle map is totally viable and flows very well.  The rules work very well for this abstract method of simply using words to describe the battlefield.  You can run combat on gridded boards if you prefer.  Also, the game allows someone who own a lot of Warhammer 40,000 strategy minis to run a fight using models and three-dimensional terrain.  I’ve tested every method for combat and have found that  all work very well and no one method is superior to the others. Though, if you use the boards, expect your fights to be a bit longer. (Though most fights can be wrapped up in thirty minutes or so.)

In Closing

In closing, I think that Dark Heresy is a great game with a well balanced system that allows for a lot of improvisation and freedom.  It never restricts you in anyway, allows you to change things up on the fly, and is easy to learn.  Combat is  intense, and the setting is one of a kind.  There are some dark themes to the book, but players can chose to cut such elements from the game without impacting the game in the slightest.

I hope this review has been helpful.