Recently in Games Category
Well, today, after nearly 52 months in the Reserve, I resigned my commission. Probably the hardest thing I've done in a long time; despite the fact that I've never met most of these guys in person, I still consider them to be good friends. Unfortunately, I'd sort of fallen out of love with Eve the last few months, and I think part of that was CAIN going off into nullsec to join the 0.0 wars and the my disappointment with the way things have gone in the way of roleplaying for me the last year or so. Rather than be an absentee member, which isn't fair to CAIN, I thought it best to cut the cord and move on.
What I plan to do now is a little exploration on my own to try and get me back to the right headspace where I can enjoy the game and Svetlana can find her destiny again. A bit of a walkabout, if you will. I've purchased a ship for the purpose, one that should see me through the darkest parts of the cluster (hopefully) and I'm gathering the last things I need to head out. As part of this, I think I'm going to be doing some stories or diary entries for Svetlana as she goes out, accompanied by screenshots from my travels. I know I've talked about a lot of writing projects and never really followed up on them before, but this time...well, I hope it is different. Svetlana has come to mean a lot to me over the last four years, and I don't want to see her end her career by just fading away into nothing.
I'm not sure how soon these will start up -- I'm thinking of starting this weekend, but I have some other stuff I need to take care of tomorrow (and I just started Arkham Asylum too) so I'm not sure if that will happen. I'd like to get it started this week for sure though, and it will go on as long as it has to. It's only fair to a character who has become a big part of me.
What I plan to do now is a little exploration on my own to try and get me back to the right headspace where I can enjoy the game and Svetlana can find her destiny again. A bit of a walkabout, if you will. I've purchased a ship for the purpose, one that should see me through the darkest parts of the cluster (hopefully) and I'm gathering the last things I need to head out. As part of this, I think I'm going to be doing some stories or diary entries for Svetlana as she goes out, accompanied by screenshots from my travels. I know I've talked about a lot of writing projects and never really followed up on them before, but this time...well, I hope it is different. Svetlana has come to mean a lot to me over the last four years, and I don't want to see her end her career by just fading away into nothing.
I'm not sure how soon these will start up -- I'm thinking of starting this weekend, but I have some other stuff I need to take care of tomorrow (and I just started Arkham Asylum too) so I'm not sure if that will happen. I'd like to get it started this week for sure though, and it will go on as long as it has to. It's only fair to a character who has become a big part of me.
...but they're having a giant sale this weekend that seems well worth checking out. There's something new on sale every day, supposedly -- but today has, of note, Dragon Age, Arkham Asylum, and a few other big titles, as well as the THQ complete pack for just 50 bucks, which has something like 10 games in it (including all the Dawn of War and Company of Heroes titles, Saint's Row 2 and a bunch of other stuff). Just thought I'd give people a heads up -- you can see the deals here.
Looks like CCP has posted video of one of the coolest parts of FanFest -- DJ Margeir and his 16-piece symphony orchestra. I tried taking a few pictures of this while I was there, but they didn't come out super-great. This is well worth listening to.
Well, after a very long day of travel yesterday, starting at 0330 Iceland time and ending at 2100 Chicago time (well, at least until my drive down to Champaign this morning), I'm back home. Many apologies for not really blogging about anything during FanFest (having been a bit busy) and my thanks to Marc for picking me up from the airport and Sam and Gracie for putting me up for the night -- I don't think driving home after that would have been such a good idea.
FanFest was as good or better than last year (Caldari theme = win), but the highlight of the trip was definitely the 4x4 tour, which was amazing -- it was great to get out of Reykjavik and see the rest of Iceland, which was gorgeous. I took over 100 pictures I think, and I'll probably put them up on a Picasa album or something, since posting them in the blog would be a bit cumbersome. However, standing on the same rock where the Althing was first held was a pretty awe-inspiring experience (even if it's not particularly much to look at right now -- just a big rock with an Icelandic flag), and the natural wonders of Iceland -- from the Golden Waterfall (Gullfoss), crystal-clear waters and glacial ice to geysers and steam vents -- are beautiful. The true power of the planet's natural processes is fully on display in Iceland like I've never quite seen elsewhere, though places like Mt. Rainier (pictures of which I'll also post one of these days) certainly show limited aspects.
Highlights from FanFest itself for me were the various presentations by the content team, where I heard a lot of very good stuff about what they see needs to be done with Eve -- especially fleshing out the backstory and a significant amount of world-building, something I've been waiting for for a long time. When they get around to uploading those videos to CCP's YouTube channel, I highly recommend checking them out.
Most of the information on the upcoming expansion -- Dominion -- wasn't too much of a surprise, since informaiton has been coming out in dev blogs pretty regularly over the last few months. In this case, a wise move from CCP since the systems being changed are pretty core to the game for a wide swath of the player base. The big thing people were waiting for was news on Dust 514, which came during the big presentation on Saturday. To be fair, I am not especially excited about it, since I am not the target market, and the presentation didn't really do that much for me. It looks like an FPS (and a serviceable one at that), but the truly innovative or interesting part of it isn't really graphics or physics effects but how it fits into Eve and how it works -- and the presentation didn't really have much about that.
The party Saturday night was good, though I preferred last years, really -- this year, they'd moved the lounge areas inside the party area itself, which was annoying. I don't dance, really, as anyone who knows me will attest, and I much preferred sitting around and talking with people -- pretty much impossible when you're being bombarded with loud music. They also made the decision to let in the locals for the party, which led to a very strange clash of crowds -- the women's bathroom, empty most of the weekend, was packed with women in clubbing outfits, many of which seemed confused as to why this party was filled with internet spaceship nerds.
Overall, a fun experience, and I wish I had more to say -- unfortunately, the last week is a bit of a whirlwind for me, especially with everything being rather hectic back home here, and I'm looking forward to getting back into my routine. I wanted to get this post up though, and I may revisit this again when CCP puts out videos from FanFest and I can refresh my memory. In the meantime, I'll leave you with this....
I think Oveur as Technoviking is the best part.
FanFest was as good or better than last year (Caldari theme = win), but the highlight of the trip was definitely the 4x4 tour, which was amazing -- it was great to get out of Reykjavik and see the rest of Iceland, which was gorgeous. I took over 100 pictures I think, and I'll probably put them up on a Picasa album or something, since posting them in the blog would be a bit cumbersome. However, standing on the same rock where the Althing was first held was a pretty awe-inspiring experience (even if it's not particularly much to look at right now -- just a big rock with an Icelandic flag), and the natural wonders of Iceland -- from the Golden Waterfall (Gullfoss), crystal-clear waters and glacial ice to geysers and steam vents -- are beautiful. The true power of the planet's natural processes is fully on display in Iceland like I've never quite seen elsewhere, though places like Mt. Rainier (pictures of which I'll also post one of these days) certainly show limited aspects.
Highlights from FanFest itself for me were the various presentations by the content team, where I heard a lot of very good stuff about what they see needs to be done with Eve -- especially fleshing out the backstory and a significant amount of world-building, something I've been waiting for for a long time. When they get around to uploading those videos to CCP's YouTube channel, I highly recommend checking them out.
Most of the information on the upcoming expansion -- Dominion -- wasn't too much of a surprise, since informaiton has been coming out in dev blogs pretty regularly over the last few months. In this case, a wise move from CCP since the systems being changed are pretty core to the game for a wide swath of the player base. The big thing people were waiting for was news on Dust 514, which came during the big presentation on Saturday. To be fair, I am not especially excited about it, since I am not the target market, and the presentation didn't really do that much for me. It looks like an FPS (and a serviceable one at that), but the truly innovative or interesting part of it isn't really graphics or physics effects but how it fits into Eve and how it works -- and the presentation didn't really have much about that.
The party Saturday night was good, though I preferred last years, really -- this year, they'd moved the lounge areas inside the party area itself, which was annoying. I don't dance, really, as anyone who knows me will attest, and I much preferred sitting around and talking with people -- pretty much impossible when you're being bombarded with loud music. They also made the decision to let in the locals for the party, which led to a very strange clash of crowds -- the women's bathroom, empty most of the weekend, was packed with women in clubbing outfits, many of which seemed confused as to why this party was filled with internet spaceship nerds.
Overall, a fun experience, and I wish I had more to say -- unfortunately, the last week is a bit of a whirlwind for me, especially with everything being rather hectic back home here, and I'm looking forward to getting back into my routine. I wanted to get this post up though, and I may revisit this again when CCP puts out videos from FanFest and I can refresh my memory. In the meantime, I'll leave you with this....
First off, an apology for the lack of updates recently. I've been working on some writing and my personal life has been a bit of a mess lately, so I let the blog slide for a couple weeks while I got my head together. There's some big Eve news this week though, so I can't really stay silent for too long. I'll be talking about Apocrypha 1.5 later this week after it is deployed on the 20th (both storyline and gameplay aspects), but today's big news is obviously Dust 514, announced this morning at GDC Europe by CCP Hellmar.
Bits and pieces of Dust 514 have been leaking since last FanFest, when a short bit of gameplay video was used during CCP Oveur's presentation. A few weeks ago, the trademark was registered and that leaked out. When I saw it last year, I suspected it would be a standalone game using the Eve IP. However, it sounds like CCP has something considerably more ambitious in mind. According to the GDC Europe presentation, Dust 514 will be an MMO for consoles that is tied into Eve's sovereignty system (though Hilmar was very coy about a PC version, which makes me suspect there will be something to tie in to the Eve client announced at FanFest). The game certainly looks very slick from his presentation, and it's supposedly been under development for 3 years already, so it may coincide with the changes to sovereignty supposedly being announced for the winter expansion this year.
I have a very mixed opinion about the game at the moment -- on the one hand, this kind of vertically integrated gameplay is something I've sort of been wishing for for a long time -- it's what Star Wars Galaxies should have been (if you fold in ambulation). To see CCP embracing that concept is pretty impressive, and it's extremely ambitious -- something I am pretty excited to see. Eve was a big gamble -- a niche product that is very different from the other MMOs out there. It's reassuring that they are still willing to take that kind of chance. An FPS/RTS has a lot of potential just as a game on its own too.
However, the integration with Eve -- and the focus towards consoles -- has me a bit worried. I admit I'm a PC gaming snob, so I'm already a little iffy on consoles as a rule, but setting that aside, I do not think major Eve alliances are going to be very happy about the fact that their well-being may, at least partly, be in the hands of people they have no direct control over. It's already stirring up controversy on Scrapheap Challenge. Even if there are other components to the sovereignty game, people are notoriously unhappy with gameplay elements that are out of their control. That's certainly a strike against it.
Second, while I may be a PC snob, I also admit that there are some games that work much better on consoles -- driving games, platformers, party games, and many others (they just don't happen to be genres I generally enjoy). However, there are games that I think play far better on PCs -- FPSes and strategy games. Even the console gamers I know tend to agree on that point. Here we have CCP releasing a game that is an FPS/RTS hybrid on a platform that doesn't seem to be particularly suited to it.
For me personally, I don't know that a persistent FPS/RTS holds much promise for me. One of the things I like about dropping into a game of TF2 or CoD4 is that I can suck as much as I want in that half hour or hour and start fresh the next time I come back. Honestly, the experience system in CoD4 is about as close as I want to get to a persistent FPS. Admittedly, I'm obviously not the target demographic then (even if it comes out on PC), and no one says the game has to be for everyone, but that does color my perceptions somewhat.
The last issue I have with it is a storyline issue -- something about "cloned troopers" which has a lot of issues in the Eve context. Cloning is supposed to be extremely expensive and restrictive, which is why only capsuleers and the insanely wealthy have access to it. In addition, we've been told for the last year (at least) that life in Eve is cheap. So why have expensive cloned troopers if just having a ton of conscripted rabble is just as good and half as expensive? Supposedly this is tied into the next Eve novel, which also makes me worried -- but I'll withhold judgement until we learn more.
I'll definitely be looking forward to hearing more about it at FanFest (and hopefully seeing more than a 60 second teaser trailer), so until then I'm not sure there's much more I can say.
Bits and pieces of Dust 514 have been leaking since last FanFest, when a short bit of gameplay video was used during CCP Oveur's presentation. A few weeks ago, the trademark was registered and that leaked out. When I saw it last year, I suspected it would be a standalone game using the Eve IP. However, it sounds like CCP has something considerably more ambitious in mind. According to the GDC Europe presentation, Dust 514 will be an MMO for consoles that is tied into Eve's sovereignty system (though Hilmar was very coy about a PC version, which makes me suspect there will be something to tie in to the Eve client announced at FanFest). The game certainly looks very slick from his presentation, and it's supposedly been under development for 3 years already, so it may coincide with the changes to sovereignty supposedly being announced for the winter expansion this year.
I have a very mixed opinion about the game at the moment -- on the one hand, this kind of vertically integrated gameplay is something I've sort of been wishing for for a long time -- it's what Star Wars Galaxies should have been (if you fold in ambulation). To see CCP embracing that concept is pretty impressive, and it's extremely ambitious -- something I am pretty excited to see. Eve was a big gamble -- a niche product that is very different from the other MMOs out there. It's reassuring that they are still willing to take that kind of chance. An FPS/RTS has a lot of potential just as a game on its own too.
However, the integration with Eve -- and the focus towards consoles -- has me a bit worried. I admit I'm a PC gaming snob, so I'm already a little iffy on consoles as a rule, but setting that aside, I do not think major Eve alliances are going to be very happy about the fact that their well-being may, at least partly, be in the hands of people they have no direct control over. It's already stirring up controversy on Scrapheap Challenge. Even if there are other components to the sovereignty game, people are notoriously unhappy with gameplay elements that are out of their control. That's certainly a strike against it.
Second, while I may be a PC snob, I also admit that there are some games that work much better on consoles -- driving games, platformers, party games, and many others (they just don't happen to be genres I generally enjoy). However, there are games that I think play far better on PCs -- FPSes and strategy games. Even the console gamers I know tend to agree on that point. Here we have CCP releasing a game that is an FPS/RTS hybrid on a platform that doesn't seem to be particularly suited to it.
For me personally, I don't know that a persistent FPS/RTS holds much promise for me. One of the things I like about dropping into a game of TF2 or CoD4 is that I can suck as much as I want in that half hour or hour and start fresh the next time I come back. Honestly, the experience system in CoD4 is about as close as I want to get to a persistent FPS. Admittedly, I'm obviously not the target demographic then (even if it comes out on PC), and no one says the game has to be for everyone, but that does color my perceptions somewhat.
The last issue I have with it is a storyline issue -- something about "cloned troopers" which has a lot of issues in the Eve context. Cloning is supposed to be extremely expensive and restrictive, which is why only capsuleers and the insanely wealthy have access to it. In addition, we've been told for the last year (at least) that life in Eve is cheap. So why have expensive cloned troopers if just having a ton of conscripted rabble is just as good and half as expensive? Supposedly this is tied into the next Eve novel, which also makes me worried -- but I'll withhold judgement until we learn more.
I'll definitely be looking forward to hearing more about it at FanFest (and hopefully seeing more than a 60 second teaser trailer), so until then I'm not sure there's much more I can say.
