After several days cloistered in Beta, I'm excited about spending more time with Rift in the future. The play is engaging and varied. There are interesting lore-based dynamic events which utilize a public grouping system that gets your nooby level character raiding straight out of the starting area. I particularly like how NPC chit chat seems to generally relate to whats happening in the world events. The class system is extremely flexible and practically begs for hybrid character builds. Despite my compy being below recommended specs, the game is running surprisingly smoothly. Even with all the eyecandy turned off, graphics are pretty. While the game is sometimes slow in the middle of crazy battles or crowded areas, the amount of lag is better than I've experienced in other games. Maybe mmorpg again?
Imminent Releases at the Top of my Personal Playlist:
Dragon Age II
Alice: Madness Returns
Diablo III
Rock of Ages
From Dust
Cargo
In the Works, or Games to Also Consider:
In tandem with eagerly awaited Game of Thrones HBO series, an RTS game by Cyanide.
Carbine Studios unannounced offering that looks eerily similar to Avatar.
Neverwinter Online. Sweetening the bitter aftertaste of Final Fantasy XIV.
Project MyWorld. May be too much social media for me, but I'm curious to see how this concept pans out.
Stellar Dawn Online
Captain Morgane
Bastion
Darkspore
Mass Effect 3
For 2012:
Bioshock: Infinite
Dragon Age II
Alice: Madness Returns
Diablo III
Rock of Ages
In the Works, or Games to Also Consider:
Neverwinter Online. Sweetening the bitter aftertaste of Final Fantasy XIV.
Bastion
Mass Effect 3
For 2012:
Bioshock: Infinite
Recent revisiting of classic games = things I now belatedly know about Capitalism.
1. Monopoly
In trying to help a fellow player with property and funds against a third stronger player, both of us were having excess resources eaten by Chance and Community Chest options as the bank double taxed both of us to death. Meanwhile, we were getting knocked by the Park Place/ Boardwalk Hotel gauntlet of doom and picking at our own corpses with each other's rent. Our resources ended up being tied up in mortagages and we were spiraling into a slow excruciating death of insolvency. Solution? One of us had to sell out and let the other person take control of all assets entirely. Sorry, there's no sharing when you're playing for survival.
2. Sim City
Tired of high income tax? Property tax? Eco-taxes on manufacturing? Well, that's just government telling you they don't want you in their town. They wan't someone with more education, more money to spend. They wan't clean businesses that offer higher paying jobs and pricier services. Where do all those low income wage earners and employers go? They shape up (through education fueled by their tax dollars) or ship out, hopefully to some far unknown horizon rather than some less desirable place in the city. For the bureaucrat: Use those taxes to control growth and govern infrastructure. Regulate the heck out of services. But don't forget to build those meta connections so pesky menial workers can commute from "Elsewhere, Sim Nation" to "Yourtown, Sim Nation", taking all that garbage back with them.
1. Monopoly
In trying to help a fellow player with property and funds against a third stronger player, both of us were having excess resources eaten by Chance and Community Chest options as the bank double taxed both of us to death. Meanwhile, we were getting knocked by the Park Place/ Boardwalk Hotel gauntlet of doom and picking at our own corpses with each other's rent. Our resources ended up being tied up in mortagages and we were spiraling into a slow excruciating death of insolvency. Solution? One of us had to sell out and let the other person take control of all assets entirely. Sorry, there's no sharing when you're playing for survival.
2. Sim City
Tired of high income tax? Property tax? Eco-taxes on manufacturing? Well, that's just government telling you they don't want you in their town. They wan't someone with more education, more money to spend. They wan't clean businesses that offer higher paying jobs and pricier services. Where do all those low income wage earners and employers go? They shape up (through education fueled by their tax dollars) or ship out, hopefully to some far unknown horizon rather than some less desirable place in the city. For the bureaucrat: Use those taxes to control growth and govern infrastructure. Regulate the heck out of services. But don't forget to build those meta connections so pesky menial workers can commute from "Elsewhere, Sim Nation" to "Yourtown, Sim Nation", taking all that garbage back with them.
I'm barely into 20% of the content according to ingame stats, but already Dragon Age feels epic. The scope of this strategy rpg is massive, with a well devised story and game structure. The two interact with each other quite well, interspersing game travel, combat, puzzles and cutscenes to move plot yet still allowing the freedom to travel willy nilly. While the game uses a lot of rpg/tactical tropes familiar to Neverwinter, Baldur's Gate, Diablo etc, they've never been executed quite this cinematically or paced as well. At times the controls are finicky but certainly not worse than what came before and sometimes my load times suck. As a whole however, Dragon Age is a really well crafted and worth the time finding all the Easter eggs. Here I am with my assembled crew. I'm so done with WoW collection quests.
Machinarium is a great game to play for solving little puzzles and traversing a twee landsape of tinky tonk mechanical creatures. Sometimes the tasks get repetitive or drag a bit , but they are for the most part arranged very cleverly within the plotline. The music and atmosphere of this fairly modest game are the real treat, however.
Machinarium is a great game to play for solving little puzzles and traversing a twee landsape of tinky tonk mechanical creatures. Sometimes the tasks get repetitive or drag a bit , but they are for the most part arranged very cleverly within the plotline. The music and atmosphere of this fairly modest game are the real treat, however.
Most of my seconds these days between the spare moments between actual hours of work have been spent micromanaging resources in Ikarium. The drudgery of banking resources in topical Greece gets tiresome when you aren't a blood thirsty war monger like some, but the casual real-time browser game is good for keeping time.
However, to save the unemployed masses from despair and sure boredom are the spate of videogames with highly awaited release dates for this year. Below is my personal shortlist in order of anticipation.
Machinarium - October 09
Dragon Age: Origins - Nov 09
Starcraft 2
Star Trek Online
Diablo 3
Bioshock 2
Meanwhile, a couple of interesting demos will tide me over.
Auditorium
Majesty 2
Anno 1404
Sins of a Solar Empire
However, to save the unemployed masses from despair and sure boredom are the spate of videogames with highly awaited release dates for this year. Below is my personal shortlist in order of anticipation.
Machinarium - October 09
Dragon Age: Origins - Nov 09
Starcraft 2
Star Trek Online
Diablo 3
Bioshock 2
Meanwhile, a couple of interesting demos will tide me over.
Auditorium
Majesty 2
Anno 1404
Sins of a Solar Empire
