I don’t really do formal reviews, mainly because I’m not paid to do so, but here’s a few bullet points on my likes and dislikes about the game from my 10 hours in beta:

Thumbs Up:

• It was easy to pick up and play.  I thought the learning curve for doing missions wasn’t very steep at all.
• Believe it or not, the PVP is consentual.  You can only attack players that have accepted a mission or backup call against you.  Once the mission is over, no one can attack.  If you don’t feel like fighting, ignore the mission and backup calls.
• The customization is beyond fantastic.  Customize your physical character, their clothes, your car, your music…and more.
• Driving is a chaotic affair, just getting from point A to B without blowing up is its own meta game.  Learning to drive is fun, and driving well is a challenge.
• You can catch some major air if you know where to find the ramps and hit them right.
• Enforcers can kill.  They don’t have to arrest criminals, they can just be vigilantes and kill them.
• The matchmaking was nearly flawless.  I got put into groups consistently and was almost never alone.
• Aiming takes a steady hand and can be challenging.  Prepare to die.  Alot.
• Calling for backup often works like a charm.
• Teamwork pays off.  It is awesome to get a kill because the enemy is distracted by a team mate, or they kill them before you get ganked.
• The mix of different mission types was refreshing.  Some times I was guarding an area and the clock was my friend, sometimes I was racing to catch a guy with a critical item in a hectic car chase with the clock working against me.  I never knew what I was gonna get.
• The game has true crafting.  Make your own shirt decals, theme songs, you name it.  And you can sell it in the marketplace for cash!
• There are many unlockables to keep achievers busy.  Many of them help your character stand out in the crowd.
• Unlimited action district time for $10 bucks a month.
• Creating a clan (guild) was painless and easy.

Thumbs Down:

• Performance was iffy.  In two long sessions my system locked up and had to be rebooted 4-5 times due to the game crashing.  Not good, but the game is solid otherwise and can recover if this is stabilized soon.
• Only 80 players per instance might not be enough, but the city map size still kept things pretty action packed if all the car crashes I had with other players was any indication.
• Adding players to my clan was confusing.  What I tried either didn’t work, or I wasn’t doing it right and had no clue how.
• Being limited to only 5 hours of action district time stunk, and there was no way that I could tell to increase it.
• This isn’t an every day type of game (yet) like World of Warcraft .  Right now it feels like doing missions over and over will get repetitive like the early days of City of Heroes.
• What’s the end game?  Getting the best weapon and vehicle?  Then what…more missions?  See the item above this one…
• $10 bucks a month for unlimited action district play will likely not keep many people paying when they can continue to unlock hats in Team Fortress 2 and new prestige emblems in Modern Warfare 2 for free.  Even doing a pay as you go style with rollover minutes may not do the trick.  Can’t beat free in online play where shooters are concerned.
• It lacks mass appeal simply because it is a shooter.  Many people just won’t enjoy getting killed all the time because they can’t aim and shoot fast enough to compete.

With some more depth added to the action style of play, I could see myself committing more time to APB.  I had alot of fun running missions, and at the end of the day games are supposed to be fun.  APB delivered that, and I pre-ordered the game.  It has potential and I’d like to see where Realtime Worlds takes APB in the future.

© Posted by br3ntbr0 for Im Talkin Games with 2 comments on 06/14/2010.
Posted in: Beta, Commentary, Featured, Impressions, Opinion, Reviews, Video Tags: All Points Bulletin, Realtime Worlds

Every Planet is a Choice. Every Choice has a Consequence.

The lack of high quality strategy games from the Indy sector is pretty sad, especially considering that most of the big names seem to be going a stale route and reusing the same conventions over and over again. Thankfully, the folks over at Arcen Games have jumped into the arena with both feet and brought us this gem in the rough: AI Wars Fleet Command.

AI Wars takes the generic RTS formula (economy + base building + force buildup) and adds many new dimensions – it takes cues from 3 genres in total (and adds to them all): RTS, 4X Space Sim, and Tower Defence. Where most RTS games have an AI that you can usually figure out easily, the AI in AI Wars can be quite intuitive… hitting you where you are weakest and leaving you wondering ‘What the heck just happened?!’. Like the little catch phrase in the title says, every choice has a consequence in this game – you can go the standard RTS route and conquer everything in your path, but you will pay the price for it… believe me.

Broad overview out of the way, lets get down to some particulars:

Graphics

The graphics in AI Wars are not spectacular, but that is part of its charm (for me at least). If graphics make or break a game for you (no matter the other content) then this game may not be up your alley. There is a method to the madness though, and it will be apparent when you start having humongous ship battles. In a full 3D game you would probably take some spectacular performance hits during large battles – during AI Wars battles it is not uncommon to field a fleet of over 2,000 ships against an AI fleet of over 2,000 ships. With the weapons firing graphic effects, shields, hardened defense spots, etc you would be looking at a major FPS hit if the game was full 3D.

For me the graphics fit the game, thus I give them a 5/5.

Audio

The music in AI Wars is spectacular – I truly mean it when I say that too. Arcen Games has its own music producer on staff and he has managed to come up with tracks that fit the mood of the game perfectly. There is no over the top orchestra, but the music in the game will please anyone with a tiny sense of style.

Weapon effects and other sounds are well done too and are not overstated to the point of being annoying. The game focuses on actual play so the way the music and sound effects are intertwined are perfect in my opinion.

For me the score would have to be yet another 5/5.

User Interface

The user interface can be a sticking point for a game of this style, too much information and the user drowns – too little and they are fumbling to figure out exactly what the heck they are doing. AI Wars has a happy medium where tons of information is available to the user – but it isn’t all shoved in your face at once. Many functions are hot-keyed so a single keypress will bring up the desired menu, there are summary bars that tell you important details like how many builders, science labs, etc you have and where they are. I do find that sometimes the interface can be a tad… odd. I use the word ‘odd’ because I don’t know what else to put there – It is responsive and useful but sometimes I find that it just doesn’t like me for whatever reason.

The interface gets a 4/5 from me – a pretty good score for an indie title with this much value.

Story

Story is not a huge facet of the game, but there is a story believe it or not. It isn’t told in CGI cut scenes, or in voiced over dialogue… but there is a reason why you are starting out with a single planet and going against an AI that has an impressive advantage over you. Heres the gist (full story can be found in the manual or on the games website): In a terminator-esque fashion, Human created AI have taken over and killed just about all humans in existence. You start out as a lone human colony hell bent on reclaiming humanities dominance over the machines… and now is the time to do so, as the AI seems to be focusing on something outside of the solar system. Yeah, it seems a bit bland.. but believe me, the actual story that has been written in the manual sounds much better than my mediocre writing can make it out to be.

It really isn’t fair to rate the story in a game that isn’t about the story, but since it does play a role in the why and what of your actions I would have to give it a 4/5.

Replay Value

The short of it? There are literally TONS of options for replay value. You can tweak the game in a myriad of different ways (system size/type, AI difficulty/type, etc) and can make each game play session completely unique. Add in a multi-play system that supports multi-session gaming and you have a gold medal winner!

Definitely gets a 5/5 in my book. No questions about it.

Overall Personal Score: 5/5

Yeah, I like this game THAT much. The game has so much going for it that its amazing such a tiny development team put it out. The developer isn’t content to just sit back and let it go at that though, since Launch there have been constant updates to the game including bug fixes, gameplay tweaks, user suggestion implementation, and much more. Arcen just released its first expansion (Zenith Remnant) for the game and with it came even more tweaks (for the base game too) and the addition of NPC ‘factions’ that add some spice, some AI neutrals that don’t care whos planet they are on… they will try to devastate anything in their path.

The development cycle isn’t over yet, the developer (Christopher M Park) has said that bug fixes and updates will still happen on a regular basis, with a new expansion possible every 10 months or so. Right now Arcen is slowing down the AI Wars engine a bit to focus on other games in their lineup, but AI Wars will never be forgotten.

Keep an eye on Arcen Games folks – they are going to be a force to be reckoned with in the future. Customer communication + suggestion implementation + awesome bug fix rate + good company ethos = a shining diamond in the rough.

If you haven’t tried the game yet you can get the demo from Steam, or from the Arcen Games website. The demo is unlimited for the tutorial levels, and has a 3 hour play limit for normal games (more than enough time to get hooked, not nearly enough time to think about beating the AI). Once you try it I am sure (as long as you are a fan of a good strategy) that you will consider it worth a purchase.

AI Wars can be purchased digitally on Steam, Direct2Drive, GamersGate, Impulse, and the developers website.

~Carlosjuero

Obligatory Disclaimer:

I have not been monetarily compensated to write this review, nor do I have a material relationship with Arcen Games, or any of the employees/developers therein. I have not received any free materials (promotional or otherwise) to write this article.

© Posted by carlosjuero for Im Talkin Games with One comment on 01/15/2010.
Posted in: Featured, Opinion, Reviews Tags: Arcen Games, Indie, Opinion, Reivew, RTS, Strategy

I’ve been in Global Agenda’s closed beta for a few months now, and I must say that the game has progressed nicely in that time.  The starting tutorial went from being something very short to one that is very well fleshed out and can take about half an hour to get through.  I recently went through the tutorial as the Recon class and took the video below.

Shown here is the class selection screen, facial customization, opening story and most of the training mission with me playing a Recon character.  I took the liberty to chop out some very boring parts of me progressing through the mission to speed things up and give a bit more condensed version:

But will I buy it?
Global Agenda is not a bad game.  Ultimately, I can’t see that I will be playing it much though and am going to wait on this game.  I already own Modern Warfare 2 and Team Fortress 2 and get all the FPS style play I can handle from those two games.  I almost feel bad because I really do support indie developers like Hi-Rez, but I just don’t feel drawn to this game as I initially hoped I’d be.

The PVP plays a bit like Team Fortress 2, but without the wacky style that TF2 brings to the table.  Class selection is a bit limited, although it brings the MMO-like quality of being able to specialize through talents.  Its awesome that there is no subscription fee required, but this game may have gained more benefit from a free to play model with an item shop.

Global Agenda brings many MMO style features to the game that give it more depth than Team Fortress 2 or Modern Warfare 2.  However the core game play, animations and visual style of the game just haven’t grabbed me in the months I’ve been in beta. I never felt motivated to level up so that I could unlock things and see how the conquest campaign might play out.

Global Agenda is still doing enough things right for me to keep an eye on it, but in a crowded gaming landscape it just didn’t have the fun factor I’d hoped for to this point.  Between MW2, TF2 and the upcoming Mass Effect 2, I’ll have all I can handle and don’t feel like I absolutely must put Global Agenda in that mix somehow.

Here’s a thanks-but-no-thanks to Hi-Rez Studios.  I know that comes off as a back-handed congratulations, but the game is solid…just missing something for me.  I know many others will like the game and I wish the studio all the good fortune in the world with Global Agenda.

~ br3ntbr0

© Posted by br3ntbr0 for Im Talkin Games with 2 comments on 01/15/2010.
Posted in: Beta, Commentary, Featured, Impressions, Reviews, Video Tags: Global Agenda, Hi-Rez Studios

In a previous blogging life I’ve ranted and raved about Valve’s digital distribution platform Steam. I truly think this is one of the best things to happen to gamers since…well, ever…and I’ve come up with 5 reasons why I think Steam should be every PC gamer’s best friend. Now, I realize this may come across as a bit of promotion for Valve and looks alot like what they’ve already said about Steam, but trust me I’m not paid by anyone. I’m just here to say that it is my opinion that Valve is right. Steam does the things they say it can do, and it does them well. Here are 5 reasons I think they are right, and why Steam is a critical tool in The Gamer’s Toolbox:

Deals, Deals, Deals!
I think there are few places that you can find an entire studio’s games bundled in to a 20 dollar sale price other than on Steam. 5 dollar MMO’s, half price sales, free weekends and all other kinds of great gaming deals are to be had on Steam. This alone is enough reason for most people to love Steam, since Valve’s digital distribution platform allows for quick and easy impulse buying. Steam allows game developers to lower their prices since their overhead for getting the game to you is much lower than creating boxes for store shelves.

Patches, DLC and VAC
Steam powered games get patched easily since the updates and patches to them can happen in the background while you are playing another game, or simply away from your machine. Patches occur very often and keep you game up to date as developers squash bugs, fight exploiters and improve their games. Speaking of exploiters, what is VAC you ask? It’s short for Valve Anti-Cheat, and comes built into Steam to prevent cheating in Steam powered games. Personally, I like that it’s there and that it is another tool that developers can use to try to catch hackers, cheaters and aim-botters. It doesn’t always work, but having it there is better than having to rely on yet another tool to try and handle game security. Sadly there aren’t a whole lot of non-Valve games using VAC, and you’ll have to hope that whatever game you just purchased has something on it in lieu of VAC.

Convenience and Ease of Use
In 5 minutes (after downloading) you can be playing a new game and you never had to get out of your chair. If you buy a new machine, no worries as your games can get still be accessed on that new rig. You can set your machine to download all of your games to your new computer as your games are tied to your Steam account, not your PC. Migrating your games to a new machine is made substantially easier with Steam. If you are thinking about upgrading to the newest version of Windows, just go for it (if your games are Steam powered) as it will be pretty straightforward to get back in the gaming action. After years of development, Steam works very well and is unobtrusive to most gamer’s play experience.

In Game Tools and Social Networking
Steam also has some very nice features built into the platform. With Steam you get friend lists and notifications, groups, voice chat, chat rooms and in-game web browsing. When you launch a game, your friends can know what you are playing, and if applicable, join you in that game. You can create groups and invite people to those groups. You can schedule events for the groups, like “Team Fortress 2 Friday Fragfest” and invite everyone in the group. While it would be great to see some integration with other social networks like Twitter, Facebook, Xfire, Raptr and the like, Steam has some great tools in it’s own right.

The iTunes Effect
iTunes changed the way that people buy and manage their music. People do not purchase entire CD’s the way they used to, all packaged up on store shelves. Apple single-handedly destroyed the music distribution methods of old with iTunes and the iTunes store. Valve is on its way to fundamentally changing how gamers buy and manage their games as well, since Steam’s digital distribution platform brings so much to the table. It is a great way for game developers to bring their games to market and make a higher percentage of profit on each sale, all the while leveraging all the tools that Steam brings to the table, should they choose. Potential conflicts of interest aside, Steam is a great tool for the entire gaming community.

Am I just a Valve fanboy, or do you like Steam as well? Why or why not?

Happy New Year.

~br3ntbr0

© Posted by br3ntbr0 for Im Talkin Games with 11 comments on 12/31/2009.
Posted in: Analysis, Featured, Impressions, Opinion, Reviews Tags: Steam, Valve

Dungeons and Dragons is definitely a cool game that is free to play. The starting zone is simple and instructional in the basics of playing the game, but fun enough to keep you interested. You start out ship wrecked on the Island of Korthos, and a rogue named Jeets (who isn’t necessarily there to help anyone as much as he is their to pick up floating loot and treasure) starts yelling at you and asking you questions and proceeds to give your first quest. You have to follow him up a hill to his friends camp site, where you get a weapon based on your class. Next you are asked to find Cellimus in the Grotto, your first of many instanced zones.

The really nice thing about DDO is the PVE is great! I’ve never said that about any MMO I’ve played before.  The graphics are stunningly good for a non AAA MMO and the game has a Voice over of each NPC (hoping SWTOR’s will be like this) and a Narrator that will often voice out what a major NPC is saying; mainly in dungeons. It’s a really nice feature that (for me) keep me really immersed in the game play. Here’s a video on the starting zone just after you meet Jeets. There’s more here as well.

Once you go through the Grotto you come to the Village of Korthos where you have bunch of instanced dungeons waiting for you. Now the best/worst part of this is that while the game dungeons have 4 different modes (solo, normal, hard, elite) it’s good that you can solo all the stating-Korthos Island dungeons on the first to settings of solo and normal.  You can repeat them for a little xp boost in the beginning with the exception of the Grotto and Shipwreck shore, as these are not repeatable quest lines. The bad thing here is that you don’t have to get to know anyone in the start zone because of this feature. I played through all of Korthos and never even said “Hello” in general chat.

Combat:
Combat in DDO something reminiscent of the current MMO market infused with that musty ancient practice of rolling a 10/20 sided die from the late 80′s and early 90′s RP-games. Think original Dungeons and Dragons and Vampire: The Masquerade, with pencil and a character sheet and some dice.

As far as the combat is concerned, its not to much different then what we are used to now. In most MMO’s you never see the numbers behind the actions. This is known as RNG (random number generator) which is essentially what rolling dice is in real life. You have your set rules of  plus(+) or minus(-) and x (being a stat) + numbered die = hit/miss etc. In games like World of Warcraft we rarely ever see the action of these numbers in a visual sense other than the which would be “CRIT” or something in WoW. Well in DDO you have an actual virtual dice that will roll as you manually auto attack? Yes, manual auto attack or commonly called “slashing” in DDO, a dice will roll while you Left click your mouse to slash, determining weather you hit or miss.

General UI/Stats and abilities:
The Action bars have your buffs, abilities and spells that you can use to make more powerful attacks or boost your stats to help you get more: hit, dodge or health and mana. Here’s a look at a friends Character sheet just so you can get an idea. Basic stats are your: Strength,Dexterity(agility),Concentration, Intellect, Wisdom and Charisma(outlined in red). Next at the very top (orange box)of the Character sheet you have 5 tabs where you have access to your Skills, Feats, Spells, and Enhancements. Below that (yellow box) is your basic Character name, class, level, path, Alignment, and gender. There in blue we have your stat layout optimizer which shows you how much of + this or – that you have to an particular stat. In green at the very bottom of the CS is were you can see your damage reduction and resistances.

Every thing is pretty well organized and easily found. Mousing over any of the abilities or spells and stats will give you brief description of what they do. There is an also a neat tab off to the side of your CS labeled “Bio”. This was something new to me as I have never been involved or had wanted to be much of a role player, I decided to check it out.

When clicking on Bio tab, its just a blank space where you can type in stuff about your character. This is a neat little feature to help you feel immersed in the game and invested in your character. To view a bio on someone else you simply just right click them and press Z. This will bring up the inspection window. The inspection window isn’t as well laid out or done up the way I thought or would have liked to see it. There is no layout of the character your inspecting or his/her gear, talents or spec(path). Instead its very simple information on the class, level and bio.

One interesting thing about DDO is their option to Multiclass or really pull some nice features form other classes and mix then with your class. Here is a link to the forums on Multiclassing and general discussions. It looks really interesting, but I’m not sure how useful it is in the lower tiers of leveling.

Leveling:
In leveling on DDO, you will notice that as a level one you have the word “rank 1″ right next to “Level 1″, along with xix bubbles to the far right. Once you reach 1/2 through the 5th bub, you can seek out your trainer and ask to be advanced to the next level.

The Xp seems to be a bit on the low end for single killing mobs in a zone or instance, but if you group a lot or have a few friends and can run through multiple instances you can level pretty fast.

Questing:
Is pretty much all instanced zones at this point. I just finished Korthos Island, which seems like an open area, but is a large instance leading to other adjacent instances.  You enter Korthos Island by clicking on a gate.  You then load to a new instance and you are immediately granted 3 quests. As you wander around you will come upon an additional quest giver and some dungeons that quests from town have you going to.

In some dungeons you will have little puzzles to solve, much like a game of aligning pictures/blocks to get the full image or allow a path of energy to flow to something. It’s a really cool feature and something different than just kill X mobs.

DDO Store:
It’s not like what I’ve heard of other games/MMO’s doing micro-transactions at all. I have yet to set up my account or buy anything, but once I do I will write about that experience.

Final thoughts:
Its really been a fun experience so far. I’ve never actually enjoyed the pve content from Wow or Warhammer, but in Dungeons and Dragons it “feels natural” to quest and instance. I just reached the 2nd zone called Stormreach harbor. Which is a very nice huge sea-ship town. Lots of NPC’s and players running around all the time and beautiful scenery. Well thats all for now, hope you can try out this amazing F2p game, and enjoy it.

As far as the PvP is concerned, I tried a small 1v1 with my friend, and the concept-seems- great!!! We did a CTF (capture the flag) match and although it was just the 2 of us, the map was great, big and fun to explore. I have read on the forums that pvp is dead, but I believe that’s mainly because a lot of Pve players are drawn to the title of Dungeons and Dragons… hopefully I can stir up the pot a bit and get some good matches going. Hopefully is key word here.

Game On!

~Kaldeem

P.S Here’s some pics of random instances and places… enjoy!

© Posted by Kaldeem for Im Talkin Games with No comments on 12/04/2009.
Posted in: Featured, Impressions, Opinion, Reviews Tags: DDO, Dungeons and Dragons, Dungeons and Dragons Online: Eberrron Unlimited, Turbine

Borderlands from the viewpoint of an FPS Zero (PC)

Borderlands has been out for a few weeks now so I figured I would give a perspective on the game from the view of an FPS zero.

A quick summary of my views:

Borderlands is a good ‘pick up and play’ game, it has a nifty loot system and nice graphics. The replay value, however, is pretty low – and some parts of the PC UI are lacking. A good game to pick up for some fun, but it lacks the depth needed to keep me going for long periods of time.

(...)
Read the rest of Borderlands from the viewpoint of an FPS Zero (PC) (1,236 words)

© Posted by carlosjuero for Im Talkin Games with No comments on 11/14/2009.
Posted in: Featured, Impressions, Opinion, Reviews Tags: Borderlands, Gearbox