Today is a new day. A day of sparkling water flavored with natural ingredients, as opposed to trashy, corn syrup ridden, MSG bullshit Dorito flavored Jet Fuel.
It’s all about La Croix Prince.
When I googled this name I got a character from Vampire the Masquerade. He is not from that game. This character was created from the sparkling water product. That’s what that whole bit was about. Calm down you basement dweller.
No I don’t have a picture of this creation from a Dark Souls game. Maybe next time.
So I’ve been busy. Busy with many things. I finished reading Part 4: Diamond is Unbreakable of JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure. That was cool. I’m about to begin reading the comic book series Preacher once again so that I can finish that up in anticipation of the new AMC television series based on the comic. I’m very excited about this, as I read many issues of Preacher years ago. It’s a gigantic riot full of badass characters and as a person who normally cannot get into western comics I strongly recommend reading Preacher.
That’s comics from the west. Not comics about cowboys.
Kinda. Preacher has some southern, cowboyish characters.
Anyway.
I’ve also been playing lots of shit. Dynasty Warriors has been a thing with me, and I’m slowly creating everyone I know in the character creation suite offered in DW8 Empires. This creation suite is staggeringly easy to use, while offering enough options to create characters that look startlingly like their real-life counterparts. I’ve always loved creating characters in good editors, making wrestling games a joy for me on a purely creative stand point. This game does it better because you are required to spend less time in the editor while getting, oftentimes, better results than you would in a wrestling game. My proudest accomplishment in this editor is creating a character that looks like my girl friend Marie if she were a warrior from ancient China. I will probably show you a picture.
[eventually]
I’ve also been playing a lot of Alienation. I even streamed the game, and plan to do so soon, when I’m not sick anymore. The game is an isometric shoot-em-up, or shmup, about murdering hoards of aliens on sizable maps. Players are spawned onto maps and they carry out missions. You can ignore the mission to explore the whole map for chests and to grind on aliens too. Though I don’t see much of a reason to do that. You get good rewards accomplishing missions, since this is also a loot game like Diablo. The gear that drops is all weapon based, rather being equipment like grenades and mines, primary weapons which are restricted to one of the three classes the players chooses, secondary weapons like shotguns and revolvers, heavy weapons like flamethrowers and rocket launchers, or upgrade materials that can be slotted into rare weapons. Rare weapons have blue lettering. Rarity is distinguished in a color-coded fashion, again like Diablo, with the hierarchy of white, green, blue, purple, and orange. Oranges are legendaries, and they all have unique elements about them.
The co-op in this game works better than I’ve ever seen co-op work in an online environment. There is no microphone chat, which makes sense because you probably don’t want to hear strangers breathing and eating Doritos. Also, if you’re playing with your friends, you’re already in a party with them so you are chatting with them anyway. Before starting a mission you are greeted with a list of games people have already started. You can then drop into someone else’s game for a co-op experience of up to four players. This raises the drop rates and alien spawn rates. It is also completely seemless with relatively no impact on the games latency. Players also choose which difficulty they want to play, with differing drop rates and alien spawn rates tied to whichever difficulty they choose. It’s often necessary to replay missions on higher difficulties to gear up, because later missions get very hard. Aliens spawn randomly throughout the level, and they do this throughout the mission, meaning when a player dies and respawns more aliens will have spawned in areas players have already progressed. There is no quiet time in this game while in a mission. It’s always tense, because you’re constantly alert, looking for waves of aliens to spawn.
Checkpoints can be destroyed like in Shovel Knight for higher rewards. You can destroy up to three checkpoints, and if you survive to the end you will be granted with a much better reward. So far, I have not been able to do this without dying, so I haven’t yet experienced the value of this method. Upgrading your weapons is simple and fun, allowing players to easily reroll the stats of their weapon until they get the best version of the gun they got. There are also skill trees that players can respec before starting missions with no cost. It’s a smart, intuitive system, though it may be a bit too simple. The are only three unique skill trees tied to each class, of which there are only three. Every class has the same set of passive skill trees, and when a player levels up they get either an active or passive skill point. I hope more classes, or more skill trees, are introduced in the future. Otherwise, I’m greatly enjoying this game, and plan to play much more in the future. Keep your eyes on my twitch channel for future streams. If you’re interested in seeing gameplay, you can go to my twitch channel to watch a video of a past broadcast of the game. Sick.
Also–Overwatch. I got a beta key a while ago, but I didn’t really get into it until the open beta. I’m playing on PC and I’m loving it. It’s like Team Fortress 2 with more characters and faster gameplay. At times it becomes so chaotic that when you come from a fight alive you’re both surprised and impressed with yourself and your team.
Yet, that doesn’t mean the game doesn’t control well. The game feels good. Once you wrap your mind around the class you’re playing as, and their unique abilities, you can start doing really, really cool things. And at the end of each match, the game shows the best play of the match, meaning the best thing accomplished by a player. When the game chooses something you’ve done, you feel really good about yourself. It’s like getting the last kill in Call of Duty, only it feels better because the game is saying “This thing you did was the best ever good job.” Sometimes this doesn’t make any since, like that time I was rewarded with play of the game when all I did was kill myself to kill an enemy player trying to capture my point, but most of the time the game picks something actually impressive, making players feel rewarded.
Leveling only gives players cosmetic upgrades obtained through randomized chests, so you never really feel outclassed by another player based solely on better equipment, like you would starting a Call of Duty game. Players are outclassed by skill, and familiarity of the game.
Each character feels different, from how they move, to their abilities. Some of them carry similarities to classes in Team Fortress 2, like a flying Valkyrie with a rocket launcher, or a grenade launching explosive specialist. They all feel different enough warrant playing this game, so don’t worry that this is a Team Fortress clone. It’s certainly inspired by that game and its game play style, but it’s definitely something unique to experience.
Games last somewhere between ten to fifteen minutes, so you never feel robbed of your time. Changing classes is easy, though you might want to wait until your ultimate ability charges before you change. Even as a class you don’t like, or gel well with, ultimate abilities can totally change the course of the game. There’s a guy named McCree, and he is Clint Eastwood. He uses a revolver which does high damage but is slow to fire and reload, making him somewhat of a challenging character to use. His ultimate is called ‘high noon,’ and it allows him to deliver multiple fatal shots to enemy characters. You can wipe out an entire team if you do this at the right time, though you’d also have to survive. I often find myself switching between characters throughout the match rather than sticking with one the entire time. It becomes necessary when trying to fight enemy teams throughout evolving objectives during a match.
Coordination is helpful but it is not absolutely critical to winning a match. The game feels mostly balanced to me, although other players loudly complain that certain characters are broken, I have found counters to every character and their ultimate abilities. Most people seem to complain about Bastion and his torrent ability, which makes him a sentry that melts enemies like a laser. It’s powerful, don’t get me wrong, but if you detect a Bastion’s location you can easily blow him up with some grenades from Junkrat. Or, you can get int here with Genji, who is a techno ninja. He can deflect bullets with his sword, often killing enemies with their own weaponry. It’s really not that broken!
Games are set up with defenders and attackers in mind, with a few neutral maps thrown in for variety. It’s point captures and payload for just about every map, with some maps starting as a point capture and ending as a payload. Classes are set up so there are five attackers, five defenders, five tanks, and five support characters. So you’re extremely likely to find at least one character you like in each roll. At this point, I have yet to find a character I do not enjoy playing.
Today’s the last day of open beta for now. The full game comes out on the 24th and I’m sure I will play the fuck out of it, so look forward to reading more about what I have to say about this sentence is really dumb hahahahahahahahahah lololol xdxdxd trololololololoolololololkjasdlkgjlkjer;lwedsgdytrerwerwetew
I also beat Dark Souls 3. Just a few minutes ago, before staring this piece, I did it. Yep. Go Me.
I’ll write about that later.
So that’s about it, I don’t know what else would possibly matter in the world today except Vote Donald Duck, but hmmmm…it feels like there’s something…
How DARE you say that about MOUNTAIN FUCKING DEW?!
Uhhhh… is that?
THAT’S RIGHT.
YOU THOUGHT YOU COULD RUN? YOU THOUGHT YOU COULD HIDE? I’M TAKING OVER. I’M CALLING THE SHOTS. CALL THE COPS. CALL YOUR MOM. NO ONE IS SAFE.
I’m afraid I’ve unleashed something terrible, and citrus flavored, to this galaxy.
Sorry.
Not really.
bastard of green goo
5/9/2016
hail to the king
firstdraftinthetrashblog 