Puzzle Quest 2 Review
So I've started playing Puzzle Quest 2 on my Xbox 360. I loved the first Puzzle Quest, but didn't feel like it played well on the Xbox, so I played it on the PC instead. This time, I decided to play it on the 360, since I want the achievement points (yeah, I don't know why either).
I'm going to start this little mini review with some peeves and I'll finish up with some positives and more or less let you decide if you want to play the game or not.
So I start playing the game. The intro quests are pretty easy (the troll fight is kinda cool), then you get into the real game and your first encounter is with a "Rat swarm" or something. A bunch of rats that do rather puny amounts of damage. Seems easy enough, right? It's then that the game introduces a mechanic that lets opponents block attacks an insane amount of the time. This rat thing has a defense of like 52 (which I presume means he blocks 52% of the time, though I'm still not sure if that's correct - but it seems close). So my sorcerer does like 1 point of damage on a 3 skull match. And maybe 5 on a spell attack at this point. The rat wipes the floor with me. And here I am thinking - this is retarded. So, instead I make the Paladin type character (a tank essentially - doesn't do a lot of damage, but a lot of mitigation so he's hard to kill). And it's a lot easier. Fights take a while, but there are long stretches where I don't even have to match tiles. I can completely control the battlefield. I just steal his action points and hit him with my sword - 9 hit points at a time adds up after a while. So, in summary - the game has some really irritating combat mechanics (especially blocking - though I understand why they put it in there).
The next thing that bugs the crap out of me are the quests. Not the quests themselves, they are as varied as they can be for a match-3 type game. But after you complete a quest, you gotta wait like 10-15 seconds while it rewards you xp, gold, items and then completes it; before you can even move again. It's silly and pointless. Needless delays like that are just frustrating. Leading me to the next point...
The combat animations are cute at first, but why do I have to keep watching my guy swing his sword for the millionth time? A way to turn that off would be nice. Yes, it does 9 hit points. Sometimes it criticals for 18. I know. I know. I also know it'll inevitably be blocked and do 4 hit points.
The looting of treasure chests and piles is stupid. Another match 3 game here, of course. If you get a "heroic effort" you get a random chest to spawn. If you match 3 of those, you'll get a "rare" item. Rarely is it worth the effort (see what I did there?). Yes, it's an item - not gold or some sort of material - so theoretically it could be helpful. But probably won't be. Also, it's always fun when those "rare" chests spawn at the bottom of the grid, then the grid eats it before you even have the chance to match it up.
Upgrading items. You cannot see what the end result of your "upgrade" is before spending the materials. I guess it's predictable if you use it enough; but really it would have been a simple mechanic to add to the game.
Monsters seem to get lucky in their "drops" WAY too often. Sometimes, you can catch the AI knowing what is coming next when it makes a play that makes no sense (IE skipping a match 4 to get 3 reds instead) which then produces a huge heroic effort. There is no way that move gets made unless the AI knows what gems are in the future rows that you can't see. It happens way too often to be a coincidence or random chance. That is the main source of frustration in the game too, unfortunately. I think that's the "challenge" I guess. If the AI played straight, it'd be a cake walk.
That's quite a list. A lot of it comes down to randomness in the game, but other parts are simply lazy coding. But really the game has a lot of fun features too that make it better than the first.
The combat is a lot more dynamic. You have a lot more abilities that you can swap in and out between battles to see how your toon performs. You can also learn new spells through quests - and that is very cool. Though most do not seem to be made for a Templar. That's okay.
The dungeon exploring is fun. No more just pretending to enter a cave and kill a rat. You actually explore an entire dungeon, going room to room (not freely of course, it's guided) and killing stuff.
The quests are pretty varied (keeping in mind every one of them is a match 3 game). Putting out a fire (blue matches put it out, red matches hurt you), freeing captured goblins from their chains, etc etc etc.
The use of items is a lot nicer. In the first Puzzle Quest, I wasn't sure half the time what I had equipped, now it's all very obvious and the inventory is handled pretty well. You can shop for items at vendors that are in town or sometimes in the dungeons and upgrade those items as well (with the previously mentioned caveat).
The game offers some intense challenges. The first "Greater Challenge" is a Yeti that is just insane. Requires good board management to win. And some luck - sucks when he gets 81 red gems on his opening turn and kills you immediately (if he gets 65 red gems, he does a 999 hp instant kill attack). Ended up winning that one with 7 hps left. The second one is a bit easier, a Cave Ogre - which was not that bad on the Templar once I played to my strengths - not matching tiles and using action points for weaker hits. Ended up winning that one with 33 hps left. After fights like these, the normal fights almost seem boring.
I haven't finished the game of course, but you can see I've listed what I think are pretty fair pro's and con's about it. I'd recommend it - if you like match 3 games and can tolerate some really frustrating fights. If you don't and can't - then don't get it. It's pretty simple, I think.
Borderlands XBox 360 Review
Borderlands is a new game for the Xbox 360 that continues the trend to an open environment "sandbox" where you can pretty much do what you want - with a limitations based upon level.
I started playing it last night and have some thoughts on it. If you've read my previous reviews (which you probably haven't) of Two Worlds and BioShock, you know I skip the graphic stuff and the technical mumbo jumbo and get to the stuff about what I care about.
Here's the quick summary of Borderlands thus far: Have you ever wanted to pay World of Warcraft. With guns. Alone?
Well, that's what this is.
You have a leveling bar. You have quest objectives that are similar (find 8 plants, kill 8 bandits). You have skill points that you assign to skills to make your guy a little more unique. Even the weapons have the same color coordination system (white - normal weapons, green - uncommon "better" weapons, blue - rare "good" weapons, purple - epic "awesome" weapons). Playing the thing, its obvious what group of gamers they are going after. There is even an arena system where you can battle your buddies.
From the second I started playing, I was thinking - man this is WoW with guns. Yes, it's a first person shooter type game, but still. It is what it is.
There is a vehicle system - but it's awful. Steering the car is near impossible. Or I'm an idiot. The second option is very possible, but it's certainly not intuitive, that's for sure.
The shooting is fun. And get used to it, cuz there is just a ton of it. Even after level 11 or 12, you will still constantly be wasting time on level 2 monsters that die in a single hit. It's weird. And given that you can only carry so much ammunition at a time, it's a little stupid as well.
The first boss fight of the game is insane. Granted, if you read my BioShock review, I'm not good at first person shooter type games, but I manage. The first boss fight is 1 main dude and 2 adds (using a WoW reference, of course). The 2 adds do the bulk of the damage and jump you from great distances. I assume you are supposed to dodge them or whatever, but man, for the level it is really difficult. I think I'm 2 bosses past there now and I've gotten better and the hit and run tactics needed, but still...that was rough.
The environments are nice, the graphics are very good and the speech is decent enough. But really if you've played WoW, just accept the quest and read it later. Who cares what's going on. It makes no difference, really - you already know the game's objective (find stuff and kill things) so, it doesn't seem, you have any real choice in the outcome. I wish games were more open ended like that, but anyways ...
For me, it's unfortunate that this game is released so close to Dragon Age Origins, which is the one I really want to play. I feel like this will be back burnered really quickly cuz I find it more frustrating than fun. If there was only one game I wanted to play, I'd deal with it. But there are two. So I probably won't.
I'd probably give it 7/10 if I were really rating it.
The Problem with JRPGs
IGN has an article on the problems with Square Enix and how to fix them. As usual, I think the article misses the point entirely.
The goes through 5 problems with the JRPGs (Japanese Role Playing Games), in particular Square Enix. But many of these problems are common to JRPGs. This is an abbreviated list. Read the article for their points.
- Unreal Engine
- Presentation
- RPG Elements (cities and characters)
- Gimmicks
- More/Longer RPGs
Each of these miss the problem of the theme entirely.
The primarily problems, in my eyes with the genre are: no in game combat and no choice.
Let's take Fallout 3, Fable 2, Star Wars: KOTOR, etc. All great RPG games. What do they have in common?
You see something you want to kill. You go over and kill it. No loading a combat screen. No battlefield creation. Nothing. You point your gun or sword at it and go at it. No loading. No time wasted.
The last JRPG I played, Final Fantasy 9, I believe..every time you entered combat, you had to go to a load screen, get your party to have some sort of lame "go get em!" shout then boring turn based combat ensued. After a while, I wanted to avoid combat entirely. It got tedious.
I just finished Fallout 3. Totally different. You see a group of guys to kill. You aim your gun and kill them. Take their loot and move on. The whole game existed in the same engine.
The difference is huge and important.
Another problem with JRPGs is their linear nature. You go here, then you go there, then there and there. I don't want to be led through the game.
All the good RPGs these days happen in a sandbox. You do what you want, when you want. Oblivion let you take on tons of side quests and go just about anywhere and let you tackle the main quest at your own volition. Being led around by the nose through a game isn't fun. When a game does that, it feels like it was programmed 20 years ago. Leave me alone. Let me play how I want.
If those two things were fixed or changed with JRPGs, I'd consider buying one. But if I see a game video that includes a combat load screen, I know I won't be buying or playing it. If game programmers want to restrict movement to new areas before certain quests are done; that is easy enough if they follow the GTA model. Just make the access points to new areas "broken" until the proper point in the game.
On the flip side, I see a great way for game makers to cash in on the new era of downloadable content. I got the idea after finishing Fallout 3.
By the end of the game, I had 100 in most major/important skills (100 being the maximum skill level you can achieve and be "perfect" at something) and had enough powerful weapons to kill anything in the game with just a few shots - a few helpful perks to make it easier as well. (As a brief aside - there should not be an alien blaster in the game. The space alien is totally out of theme with anything else in the game - given that there are no real hints of aliens elsewhere. Unless that's a future expansion pack)
Fallout 3, in a post nuclear world, makes it possible to have tens, if not hundreds, of expansion packs. Imagine New York in the Fallout 3 universe, or Chicago, San Francisco, even Paris or Moscow.
With the powerful character you have at the end of the story, any of those areas are not going to fun or challenging with a super skilled and totally leveled up guy. So, in the initial game, it makes sense to limit the maximum skill level you can achieve - by either giving you less skill points/level or making skills harder to upgrade as you raise their level (1 skill point/level up to 25, 2/level up to 50, etc) so that if you want to have 100 in "small guns" you'd really have to sacrifice your lockpicking or repair abilities.
That way, when future packs come out and the level cap is inevitably raised, you have something to work for. While exploring new areas as well. Thus, adding value to future expansion packs. If you have achievements that are only possible with either multiple playthroughs (10 points for 100 in small guns, 10 points for 100 in lockpicking etc) or playing through the expansion packs, you are more likely to get buyers for those expansions as well.
In short, I think - these days - that in the end of the game, you should not have a super powerful character, but an adequate one that can finish the game - even if you do every side quest available. That way, when future packs come out, you can improve your character more and become that super powerful guy, if you do all the expansion packs. That's a future of gaming that I'd be glad to embrace.
Too Human Xbox 360 Review
After my last successful review of Two Worlds, where I believe I correctly predicted that a lot of online sites would review game at about a 7 on a scale of 10, I haven't been using my Xbox so much. But I did get Too Human, despite some mediocre reviews from the bigger online sites. Since everyone wants to know my opinion, I thought I'd share.
I just finished the first chapter of the game earlier today. I'm about 1/2 way through the second mission. The graphics for the game are great; the characters all look cool, the monsters have great detail and the landscapes are all nicely drawn and detailed.
But, I'm curious why the developers decided you can't actually look at any of them? The inability to control the camera is the main problem with the game so far. It makes it hard to see the monsters you are fighting - this was a particular problem during the first boss fight, Grendel. Also, it makes it about impossible to just stand there and look around the world - so you don't quite the to see the impressive design to it. And that's pretty sad.
Another problem with the game is the non-responsive controls. Unlike most games, where you hit A to fire your weapon or swing your sword, in this game it is handled with your thumbsticks. The control is very imprecise and sometimes makes you feel like you aren't even in control of the action. It also sets you up for a lot of counter attack cheap strikes if your attack misses. It's pretty frustrating.
Good thing dying doesn't matter, though. When you die, your character is almost immediately brought to life nearby where you died. By almost, I mean, that you have to watch some way too lengthy animation before coming back to life. Besides there, there is hardly any effect to dying at all. Which is also nice, because you have no real way to heal yourself - healing things appear randomly - so sometimes it's best just to walk in somewhere, knowing you'll die and just come back later with full health. Silly. The game is highly focused on loot drops, a la Diablo, but they couldn't think to add stim packs? It is supposed to be in the future, right? I mean, come on. I think the developers are a little too proud of their death animation.
There are some cool features in the game. Killing the trolls is very fun. They have a big hammer they smash on the ground to attack you. You need to jump or the shock wave will do damage. But if you use your gun and target the hammer, you can cause the troll to not have an attack and it just roams around till you finish it off. This also betrays a problem with the game as well. You fight a similar creature, a spider like robot that also has some sort of smash attack. But jumping over that shockwave is useless, you have to roll through it. How that makes sense? Who knows.
My major gripe for the game comes with the unbalanced fights. You have a few guys who follow you into each level, but they are next to worthless. And you'll end up fighting 30-40 monsters at once. Death is inevitable. Especially with the non-responsive controls, poor camera angles, and just massive amount of fire power coming your direction. It really takes away the fun. All of these creatures on screen creates noticable lag as well, so your character responds slower usually resulting in death.
Overall, I'd say it's a good game until Mercenaries 2 and Fable 2 come out. But in the long run, the game really needed more development time to fix some of these issues, that you'd think were fixable in Beta.
Hidden Object Game Review: Can You See What I See?
Can You See What I See is a hidden object game that you can download at Big Fish Games. All of these types of games are essentially the same; but what sets this game apart is the graphics. This has, by far, the best graphics of any of these game types that I've ever seen. i'm not sure if the locations are shot with actual items or if the artist is just the best ever, but either way the game has wonderful scenes.
See image for an example:
The downside to these backdrops is that, generally, objects are very easy to find. And most of the time they are. After visiting the same drawer a few times, you can locate items almost instantly. This problem is most apparent on the stuffed animal and dinosaur ones - where the game does a very poor job at hiding things.
The game also features a memory mini game to progress to the next level. The game has no time limit, so you can essentially click around until you finish. The game would really lose nothing by just getting rid of this entire debacle. Time limit would have at least made it challenging.
The game also hides "rare" items in the scenes from time to time. They are all historical in nature and give a nice spoken lesson about them after they are found. These objects require you to find them in a time limit and some are near impossible to find, not only because you aren't exactly sure what you are looking for, but because the object is obscurely hidden somehwere in the scene.
Overall, the game features tremendous graphics and a cute story line. I enjoyed it and for $6.99 (more if you don't join the Big Fish Games club), it's a pretty good bargain.
I've downloaded several of these hidden object games over the past week or so and I'll review others coming up shortly. Some good, some bad.
Cash Call Follow-Up Post
This comment came in today and deserved its own post. I can't vouch for its accuracy; but it's not unimaginable, that's for sure:
I have had a loan with tem for over 2 years. I originally borrowed 2500 but 2 years later my balance is only at 2450 so you make the call whether or not I am being ripped off. Everytime I up my payments to get a little ahead they raise their interest rates, which apparently they can do individualy based on your state of residence. This company is nothing more than a legal version of borrowing money from the mob. They just ruin your life even worse. I would gladly let them break my legs to get out from under them but they would rather ruin my life instead. I have sold my car and moved to a crappy apartment in the ghetto just to survive mainly because of them. And yes they do target and prey on people who really don’t need to be getting these loans. I myself had no choice. It was either get it and have heat and food for my kids or go without. No one would even look at me for a loan after my divorce. All you high and mighty bastards who say its our own fault for being in this situation should try walking in my shoes for just 1 day. I guarantee you won’t make it through, might even be institutionalized after you have to get your pretty little hands dirty and do an honest days work. You make me sick. Try making an honest person of yourself instead of putting others down to feel better. When you wake up tomorrow look in the mirror and ask yourself if you are proud of the person who you are. for those of you who won’t lie to yourself you might not like what you see.
Here's a link to the original Cash Call post that has been pretty popular on my little blog. The comments keep pouring in - usually as horror stories about using Cash Call or other similar services.
American Idol: Microcosm of What’s Wrong
So American Idol is back again this year. And each year, it becomes more and more clear that American Idol is a microcosm of what is wrong with this country.
You get people auditioning who come in and totally suck. It's obvious to even a tone deaf person like me that these people cannot sing. Yet, they thing that they are great singers - all their friends think so! So it comes down to Simon to tell these people they suck. And he's the bad guy. But, the reality is, is that their friends and family who have told this person "oh you are great" "you sound wonderful" all their life are to blame for the crushing dose of reality.
So they come into the audition and are incapable of accepting legitimate criticism, because they've never heard it before, that they explode and Simon is the bad guy. When he's the best friend they have. Clearly their "real" friends have abdicated their role of being honest and truthful with them.
Then again, without these self delusional people, why would we watch? Yay, delusion!
Good Analytics Software
In desperate need of a good analytics program - but needing to satiate by desire to not let big brother (Google) get all my data for free - I opted for a program I found while searching online. It's called the Stuffed Tracker apparently programmed by a company in Russia. The software is amazing - let's you track users, track sales, create ad campaigns, split tests. Everything. It runs through a simple javascript at the bottom of your pages, like most do and does not seem to impede page load times. I had to email them with some minor issues and the tech guys helped me out immediately - even though our time difference is probably 8 hours apart. It's all very impressive. I'm very glad I signed on with this company and their software. The admin side itself runs a lot of its stats and data through AJAX, which makes it all look very nice and allows for instant refresh of data and quick page loads. 3.0 is a substantial improvement over 2.5.2, but there are a few bugs to work out, which I'm sure are being worked on.
Too bad Yahoo isn't as easy to deal with. Yahoo stores are notoriously difficult to get data from and this time was no different. Getting the order total was a complete bear and forced me to migrate over to Yahoo's new Checkout Manager (ugh!) which I'd hesitated to do for over a year. Anyways, we finally got it fully running today (getting data out of our Yahoo Stores is a pain in the butt - Thanks Don for working on that for me!).
The one thing to be aware of is that it can really eat up your server time if you aren't careful. Originally, we had installed it on the same server which we processed our inventory, orders, customer service etc. It drove the CPU up to 90% on occasion, which made everything drag very slowly. So, we had to purchase a new server instead and did so through Rack Force. The server is working out very well. CPU usage never approaches 4% (helps to have Dual Quard Core Xeon processors and 2 gigs of RAM, I'm sure) so I'm very happy with everything over all.
For $99, I don't think I could ask anything more for an analytics program. Finally, we have a way to reliably check our web sales to see what channels are working for us and which ones aren't.
Brother HL-4070CDW Printer Wireless Laser Printer Review
In desperate need of a new laser printer, I found the HL-4070CDW printer on Amazon on sale for like $420 with free shipping. My last laser printer was a free one from Dell that I got with a new computer. Stupid thing always sucked but lately it's been sucking more than normal.
So I check out the specs on this thing. Color laser. Eh? I remember when color laser printers were like $5,000. Built in wireless? This is even possible? Man, I'm old! Sounds to good to be true but I order it anyways. Free shipping. How can I lose.
So I get the thing out of the box. It's pretty large and heavy. I install the 4 toner cartridges (3 color, 1 black) and turn it on. It is a little noisy when it's powering up and when it's printing something. But totally quiet in sleep mode.
I get the printer working from my primary computer, then I remember it has a wireless feature. Oh mama, I gotta try that. So I follow the instructions - which are a little confusing as most Brother products are but the wireless setup happens within minutes, working with my wireless router. I get an IP address on it, the computer finds it on the network and it prints. No real delay in printing either so now I can quickly give any computer access to a printer without having to use cables. It's the 21st century around here!
The printer is pretty fast, I'd guess it around 20 pages per minute or so. There isn't much of a delay when it prints either. You send the job and it's printing in seconds - unlike my Dell, which took about 3 minutes for it to wakeup and start its job.
I'm very impressed with the printer. A very good buy, I believe, all in all. The noise while printing is a little much but expected from a printer. Looks like I can also buy a lower paper tray so it can hold 1,000 sheets instead of 500 sheets of paper. Very nice.
I'd definitely recommend this printer to anyone looking for a new laser printer. Very impressive.
Google Loves Low Quality Sites
As a follow-up to yesterday's Google rant, I wanted to follow-up and show you how Google is breaking it's own definition of quality scoring. And filling its natural results with sites that it wouldn't even accept for Adwords bidding.
Let's go through this slowly.
According to Adwords help:
The following website types will sometimes merit low landing page quality scores and may be difficult to advertise affordably. If you choose to advertise one of these website types, be particularly careful to adhere to our landing page quality guidelines - especially the rule about offering unique content.
- eBooks that show frequent ads
- 'Get rich quick' sites
- Comparison shopping sites
- Travel aggregators
- Affiliates that don't comply with our affiliate guidelines
So, google is saying that if you are a comparison shopping engine and you want to bid on Adwords, your money isn't welcome because the site is of "low quality" to searchers. But apparently, the main index falls under no such restraints. This usually involves paying about $10 per click instead of 30 cents or whatever as punishment for having a "low quality" site. Hence the fact that not many of comparison sites buy keywords any longer.
Let's take a search for a product I carry - Flip Flop Stepping Stones - since I carry about it. I do not pretend to be the #1 search for the item but if someone is searching for "flip flop stepping stones" - I carry them and sell them and always have them in stock. Also, apparently do many other sites (copycats! LOL)
But let's see what Google think. You'll need to click this picture to get the full effect, I'm sure:
As you can see, more than half of the google results for this relatively minor product search are comparison shopping engines. Does Google really think that people use their engine to go to other engines to find what they want to find? Or does Google think that searches use them to reach the most relevant results - and buy their product or get the information they requested? Judging by this search, Google thinks people love searching without finding any actual results. I suppose, next, we'll have Google indexing MSN results and Yahoo results as an attempt to further "improve" the results.
Well, yesterday we did discover that Google just recently realized that people talk out of their ass most of the time; so I guess we can forgive them of not understanding the internet or its users; again.
Also, what this tells me is that Google is putting more thought into their paid listings than their natural listings; which it continues to pretend is their number one priority. I think these types of searches tell us that this is not even close to the case.
I, for one, do not believe that: Amazon, E-Bay, Walmart, Target, etal should ever appear in search results. People know these brands - and will go right to them first, anyways. Google should be profiling smaller sites when it comes to many non-academic and non-informational searches. But, let's say that Google disagrees and thinks that comparison shopping searches are relevant to their users. 10 out of the 16 entries here are comparison sites (or EBay) - each, I'll guarantee you - are 90-95% similar to each other.
Once more, Answers is #1. Answers uses Dealtime's data for the page. So it's content isn't even unique. It's ripped off of Dealtime. Even the main site of Answers rips most of its content from Wikipedia and other sources as well. Yet ranks #1, while providing nothing unique to the world at all? Is this what Google has come to? The site which Answers gets its content from is buried at 17 or something, while it ranks #1? Shame. Google. Shame.
These sites wouldn't even pass a quality control of your Adwords program, yet are perfectly acceptable to your natural listings. Shameful. Thanks for a further understanding as to where your priorities lie.