In my Blockbuster spending spree I picked up three different xBox 360 games all of which are sequels to games I loved. What is my Final Fantasy marathon if not rolling around in sequelness? If you look at the top selling games it's pretty much sequel after sequel. (360 - Halo, Call of Duty, Gears of War, Grand Theft Auto, Fable PS3 - Gran Turismo, Call of Duty, Uncharted, Metal Gear Solid, Final Fantasy Wii - Mario Kart, Super Mario Bros, Smash Bros, Mario Party) The Wii has a few new entries on the list (including the original Wii Sports if you count bundled games) but they all also have sequels up there as well. Sequels are a big market. But what do people want from a sequel?
Personally I've been trying to figure out what I want from a sequel to try to quantify how good the new games I got are objectively before I play all of them. It's difficult, because I think about previous sequels that I've really enjoyed and the ways they evolved has been very different. Is it even fair to call Final Fantasy VI a sequel to Final Fantasy V or Final Fantasy IV? If not is it actually fair to call Final Fantasy X-2 a sequel to Final Fantasy X? A couple characters carried over between games and it's set in about the same world but from a gameplay point of view they're drastically more different than FFVI and FFIV are.
When I was a teenager I used to buy every version of EA's NHL series. The games didn't really change much. You get new rosters and maybe a new feature each year but pretty much you're just playing hockey. Shouldn't I have been content with playing NHLPA 93? Did I really need NHL 94, NHL 95, and NHL 96? Maybe not, but if I enjoy a game in the first place then a couple minor tweaks to shake things up a little and a new coat of paint in terms of updated rosters is great. It's a little new and refreshing but it's still the same game at the core. This is the safe way to do a sequel and the Madden franchise in particular has made an absolute fortune pulling it off.
On the other hand you have games that use the same name but go off in a completely different direction. Super Mario Bros 2, for example. (This actually was a different game entirely that just had the Mario theme painted on top near the end of development.) It has some familiar characters and features but plays like a completely different game. Most of the Final Fantasy games fall into this category as well. You may choose between attack, magic, and item. You may cast Lit, summon Shiva, and ride a chocobo. There's a dude named Cid and he just wants to fly. Possibly there are crystals and fiends corresponding to the 4 elements. But the story lines, the combat systems, and the way you level up change drastically from game to game.
So what do I actually want from a sequel? I still don't know. Mostly I want a good game that I enjoy playing. An easy way to pull that off is to basically release the same game with a couple tweaks. This can be seen as a cash grab by some people especially if the game doesn't change much but I'm pretty ok with it. Going with a completely different game with some similarities certainly can work but it still needs to stand on its own as a good game. Super Mario Bros 2 certainly got some people to buy it because it had a Mario theme but if it wasn't actually a good game at its core it wouldn't have made it.
I feel like I want Dead Rising 2 and Portal 2 to basically be the same games as their predecessors. Those games had an interesting hook at their core and I just want more of the same. All I want is more ways to kill zombies and more puzzles to solve with spatial reasoning. Overlord 2 I actually want more out of. A completely different but good game with the same basic theme. I'm evil! Run with it!
Tuesday, May 31, 2011
Monday, May 30, 2011
Petrifying Pair
I've reached level 30 on my RDM in Final Fantasy XI which means I can now fill an important role in some of the level 30 restricted boss fights. The ones that drop an item worth a million gil. Big bucks! There's one in particular that seems particularly well suited to the small group we have now: Petrifying Pair.
The basic idea behind the fight is there are 2 lizards in the middle of the arena. They attack faster than a lizard normally would but are otherwise pretty much just 2 highish level lizards. They're immune to sleep but can otherwise be hit with crowd control effects. Lizards in general are weak to wind and ice and it just so happens that gravity is a wind spell and bind is an ice spell. This means you have a pretty decent chance of landing these debuffs on the lizards despite them being high level. Gravity is a movement speed reducer and bind is a complete root so it's pretty reasonable for someone capable of casting both of those spells to take one of the two lizards completely out of the equation. Then you just need the other two people to be able to kill the other lizard with only a little outside help.
Gravity is a level 21 RDM spell so the only people who can cast it are red mages or anyone who is level 42 with a RDM sub job. This fight is capped at level 30, so the only people who can do it at all are red mages. Hence, having leveled RDM I can now fill this role. But what about the other two people?
Well, in order to kill the lizard those two people either need to avoid all the hits, or be able to heal through them, or do such outrageous damage that they can burn the lizard out first. Ninjas or beastmasters are needed for the first option. Dancers, paladins, and blue mages are good for the second. Monks are needed for the third (and even then they can only do it once every 2 hours). The other two people I know who are leveled up to 30? Tmiv who has a bunch of jobs but particularly a dancer and Aidan who is a monk. So we'd have a great shot at winning at least once and probably can win with a little practice over and over. The one trick? The lizards have an AE petrify that hits anyone looking at them so you need to be quick about turning around when they start to cast it in order to avoid the spell entirely. (Unlock your camera and then just hit the back button supposedly works.)
The remaining question, assuming we can actually win, is what to do with the drops? The two methods people typically use to split drops from BCNMs are "your orb, your loot" which means whoever spent the 30 beastman seals for the run gets all the treasure and "pool it all, sell it, and split the loot" which works a lot better should you not win every time but has the added hassle of having to track who was in the group to split the proceeds with and also prevents anyone from actually getting stuff they want. On the other hand "your orb, your loot" means people with tons of seals can run the event more often and get more stuff as a result.
I like the idea of selling what drops and splitting the cash, possibly with some sort of rider about letting someone pay something like 20-30% of market value to the other two people to use the drop themselves. But then, I have enough money to buy what I might want from the drops and like the idea of a 333k windfall from selling Utsusemi:Ni. If I actually wanted that spell maybe I'd prefer another method though. (Though with this way you'd be certain to get the third one as long as you saved the 66% profit from selling the first 2, so it would work out in the long run assuming we did the fight over and over and over again.) Your orb, your loot is certainly the simplest but it sucks to have your run be the one that fails (or even to have your run be the one that drops the Absorb:Agi spell which is worth .1% of the Utsusemi:Ni scroll.
Why not run need before greed like in WoW? Well, the scarcity of beastman seals coupled with the fact the items aren't BoP. In WoW if we don't roll need before greed on the great gear that drops we simply can't have it. You can't get Nef loot any way other than by killing Nef and you can always kill Nef once a week. Here you can get a pair of Leaping Boots simply by building up enough cash to buy them from someone else, and you may not have a source of beastman seals to run all the bosses you need loot for. By always liquidating the drops you let people use their seals in the most economical fashion for them and everyone can always build up for the drops they do want by accumulating cash.
The basic idea behind the fight is there are 2 lizards in the middle of the arena. They attack faster than a lizard normally would but are otherwise pretty much just 2 highish level lizards. They're immune to sleep but can otherwise be hit with crowd control effects. Lizards in general are weak to wind and ice and it just so happens that gravity is a wind spell and bind is an ice spell. This means you have a pretty decent chance of landing these debuffs on the lizards despite them being high level. Gravity is a movement speed reducer and bind is a complete root so it's pretty reasonable for someone capable of casting both of those spells to take one of the two lizards completely out of the equation. Then you just need the other two people to be able to kill the other lizard with only a little outside help.
Gravity is a level 21 RDM spell so the only people who can cast it are red mages or anyone who is level 42 with a RDM sub job. This fight is capped at level 30, so the only people who can do it at all are red mages. Hence, having leveled RDM I can now fill this role. But what about the other two people?
Well, in order to kill the lizard those two people either need to avoid all the hits, or be able to heal through them, or do such outrageous damage that they can burn the lizard out first. Ninjas or beastmasters are needed for the first option. Dancers, paladins, and blue mages are good for the second. Monks are needed for the third (and even then they can only do it once every 2 hours). The other two people I know who are leveled up to 30? Tmiv who has a bunch of jobs but particularly a dancer and Aidan who is a monk. So we'd have a great shot at winning at least once and probably can win with a little practice over and over. The one trick? The lizards have an AE petrify that hits anyone looking at them so you need to be quick about turning around when they start to cast it in order to avoid the spell entirely. (Unlock your camera and then just hit the back button supposedly works.)
The remaining question, assuming we can actually win, is what to do with the drops? The two methods people typically use to split drops from BCNMs are "your orb, your loot" which means whoever spent the 30 beastman seals for the run gets all the treasure and "pool it all, sell it, and split the loot" which works a lot better should you not win every time but has the added hassle of having to track who was in the group to split the proceeds with and also prevents anyone from actually getting stuff they want. On the other hand "your orb, your loot" means people with tons of seals can run the event more often and get more stuff as a result.
I like the idea of selling what drops and splitting the cash, possibly with some sort of rider about letting someone pay something like 20-30% of market value to the other two people to use the drop themselves. But then, I have enough money to buy what I might want from the drops and like the idea of a 333k windfall from selling Utsusemi:Ni. If I actually wanted that spell maybe I'd prefer another method though. (Though with this way you'd be certain to get the third one as long as you saved the 66% profit from selling the first 2, so it would work out in the long run assuming we did the fight over and over and over again.) Your orb, your loot is certainly the simplest but it sucks to have your run be the one that fails (or even to have your run be the one that drops the Absorb:Agi spell which is worth .1% of the Utsusemi:Ni scroll.
Why not run need before greed like in WoW? Well, the scarcity of beastman seals coupled with the fact the items aren't BoP. In WoW if we don't roll need before greed on the great gear that drops we simply can't have it. You can't get Nef loot any way other than by killing Nef and you can always kill Nef once a week. Here you can get a pair of Leaping Boots simply by building up enough cash to buy them from someone else, and you may not have a source of beastman seals to run all the bosses you need loot for. By always liquidating the drops you let people use their seals in the most economical fashion for them and everyone can always build up for the drops they do want by accumulating cash.
Sunday, May 29, 2011
League of Legends: Season One Regional Qualifier
I woke up this morning around 1pm and booted up League of Legends. Someone in the game was commenting in all chat about a game they were watching live, seemingly showing more interest in that game than the one we were playing. It turns out Riot (the company which makes LoL) has been running a big qualifier tournament this weekend to send people to Dreamhack in Sweden to play in a $100000 tournament. They've been streaming all the games live so I opened that up. There's a fair amount of downtime between games while they ban heroes and draft and such. So, I figured I'd go craft in FFXI. Only problem is I last logged out with my 100% xp buff up and I'd lose a lot of free experience if I just stood around crafting. So I threw up my looking for group flag and almost instantly got a group. (Turns out a level 21 RDM/WHM is in high demand since they can be synched down to and they can heal or they can do damage or they can do anything you want because they're awesome.) At any rate I used up that buff and didn't see a reason to stop so I put up another. And another. But then that group fell apart and I had a buff up... So I had to find a new group. When everything was said and done I'd gained 14 levels up to 35 and am now well positioned to try some of the BCNM fights assuming I go buy new spells like gravity.
Saturday, May 28, 2011
Blockbuster Redux
I got up 'this morning' at 4:30pm, played a couple games of League of Legends, and then headed out to the Blockbuster on Lawrence to see if they had anything interesting to pick up. It turned out to be about a 35 minute walk away so it was decent exercise on top of finding lots of good deals. I also noticed that I appeared to be walking through a Jewish neighbourhood (look at me, reading the names of schools!) and was reminded of a conversation on Facebook about getting Coke made with sugar instead of glucose/fructose and decided to hit the Metro beside the Blockbuster as well. They ended up having both Coke with sugar and packets of Kool-Aid so that part of the trip was a resounding success. (The cashier was a little quizzical when she saw the stack of 60 Kool-Aid packets...)
Blockbuster was a big success too. For some reason it turns out that Blockbuster also sold books. I think they're all books that had been turned into movies (or vice versa) but they had a couple I'd been thinking about reading. Still 30% off! So I now have The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo and The Girl Who Played With Fire. I also got the second season of The Mentalist (I guess I should find the first one now?). For movies I got Final Fantasy VII: Advent Children to fit into my marathon, Zombieland because Andrew keeps telling me I have to watch it, Braveheart because it's awesome, Independance Day on Blu-Ray in case I get my desktop fixed for July 4th, and the sweetest find of all time (or at least of today) Ocean's 11. The first one, with Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin, and Sammy Davis Jr.
I also got a game, Dead Rising 2. Now, the original Dead Rising is the game I came closest to getting every achievement for. (I even killed the 53,594 zombies in one playthrough.) My roommate Mark's 360 red-ringed on him before I got the last couple and I never got around to finishing off the last 6 achievements I needed. But the game was awesome and I've wanted to play the sequel. So cheap price plus 30% off? How can I go wrong? The only real problem is I now have 3 new 360 games I want to play that aren't Final Fantasy games.
Blockbuster was a big success too. For some reason it turns out that Blockbuster also sold books. I think they're all books that had been turned into movies (or vice versa) but they had a couple I'd been thinking about reading. Still 30% off! So I now have The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo and The Girl Who Played With Fire. I also got the second season of The Mentalist (I guess I should find the first one now?). For movies I got Final Fantasy VII: Advent Children to fit into my marathon, Zombieland because Andrew keeps telling me I have to watch it, Braveheart because it's awesome, Independance Day on Blu-Ray in case I get my desktop fixed for July 4th, and the sweetest find of all time (or at least of today) Ocean's 11. The first one, with Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin, and Sammy Davis Jr.
I also got a game, Dead Rising 2. Now, the original Dead Rising is the game I came closest to getting every achievement for. (I even killed the 53,594 zombies in one playthrough.) My roommate Mark's 360 red-ringed on him before I got the last couple and I never got around to finishing off the last 6 achievements I needed. But the game was awesome and I've wanted to play the sequel. So cheap price plus 30% off? How can I go wrong? The only real problem is I now have 3 new 360 games I want to play that aren't Final Fantasy games.
Friday, May 27, 2011
Blockbuster Bankrupt?!?
I found out today that Blockbuster has apparently gone bankrupt. In an attempt to get back on their feet they're closing down about a fifth of all stores in Canada and liquidating all of their stock. I went to a nearby location which is closing down over lunch today and everything in the store is 30% off. Old movies, newer movies, TV series, candy, video games... You name it, they're selling it. The one I went to had a new Wii down at something like $130.
Now, Sky will say that buying things just because they're on sale is silly and I had to hold myself back from picking up all sorts of things in the store but I did end up getting a bunch of stuff regardless. I picked up 3 of the movies used in The World's Greatest Treasure Hunt book. I'd been actively looking to get National Treasure 2 in movie bargain bins and getting it for less than $5 seems good. (The other two were National Treasure and The Da Vinci Code.) I also went shopping in their video game section. I got a new PS2 controller (I bought my PS2 used and the controller it came with is functional but a little gummy.) I picked up Portal 2 which I would have bought at full price if I'd been to a store recently since Portal was just that good. And I got Overlord II which I have heard nothing about. I really enjoyed playing the original Overlord though, and it was cheap before the 30% off, so probably a worthwhile purchase.
My only worry there is I think a lot of the enjoyment from playing the original Overlord came from living with Pounder and Mark and watching them play it at the same time. Living on my own has removed that aspect of console gaming (seeing how other people approach the same challenges in a game) which I think is probably a big part of why I've slowed down playing games on consoles.
At any rate if you live in Canada you should consider clicking the link to see if any nearby Blockbusters are liquidating near you. You may find a great deal on something you want. Or you may just find a 'deal' on something you don't need but get convinced to impulse buy... Woo?
Now, Sky will say that buying things just because they're on sale is silly and I had to hold myself back from picking up all sorts of things in the store but I did end up getting a bunch of stuff regardless. I picked up 3 of the movies used in The World's Greatest Treasure Hunt book. I'd been actively looking to get National Treasure 2 in movie bargain bins and getting it for less than $5 seems good. (The other two were National Treasure and The Da Vinci Code.) I also went shopping in their video game section. I got a new PS2 controller (I bought my PS2 used and the controller it came with is functional but a little gummy.) I picked up Portal 2 which I would have bought at full price if I'd been to a store recently since Portal was just that good. And I got Overlord II which I have heard nothing about. I really enjoyed playing the original Overlord though, and it was cheap before the 30% off, so probably a worthwhile purchase.
My only worry there is I think a lot of the enjoyment from playing the original Overlord came from living with Pounder and Mark and watching them play it at the same time. Living on my own has removed that aspect of console gaming (seeing how other people approach the same challenges in a game) which I think is probably a big part of why I've slowed down playing games on consoles.
At any rate if you live in Canada you should consider clicking the link to see if any nearby Blockbusters are liquidating near you. You may find a great deal on something you want. Or you may just find a 'deal' on something you don't need but get convinced to impulse buy... Woo?
Thursday, May 26, 2011
Walking Like An Egyptian
One of the things I really like about the DDR games on the xBox 360 is they have the actual music videos for the 'real' songs. DDR Universe 2 has two in particular that I really like. Safety Dance and Walk Like An Egyptian. Walk Like An Egyptian is the fastest song in the game (at least that I've unlocked so far) and is 8 feet on expert. I finally managed to pass it today, and even got a B rank. Woo!
DDRU2 has a 'calorie tracker' feature where it uses some undoubtedly non-scientific function to turn your weight and the steps you entered into a number of calories burned. Now, I remember watching Bung and Tmiv play DDR back in University and while they may have been making the same steps I'm pretty sure Bung was burning more calories with his unique way of stomping to Boom Boom Dollar. So the number from the game needs to be taken with a grain of salt. If anything my number is probably higher since I tend to flail around a bit while I play. At any rate, the claim is I burned 400 calories today. But what does that even mean? Apparently that's about an hour of high impact aerobics. Perhaps an hour of pole jumping! A little less than an hour of tennis. 2 hours of throwing a frisbee around. 45 minutes of ultimate. An hour and a half of golf! So, a decent enough workout I guess. Hmm, maybe I should take up golfing again...
Wednesday, May 25, 2011
Jack of All Trades?
There are many, many heroes in League of Legends. Quite a few of them are fairly interchangeable but fill a specific role. (Annie and Veigar cast very different spells and play quite differently but when it comes right down to it they're both characters who specialize in doing burst magic damage.) Right now I haven't purchased any of the heroes so I'm stuck playing one of the rotating free ones every week. I can't specialize in a single hero but I could specialize in a hero type if I wanted to. Do I want to?
The advantage to doing so is I might actually get good at doing that one thing. Last week I played a lot of games with Warwick. He's a hero who fills the 'jungler' role on a team. Junglers don't gain experience the normal way. Instead they run around in the 'jungle' and kill neutral monsters that spawn. This means your team as a whole gains more experience and thus should outlevel the opposition. In big fights he can either be a tanky melee DPS or a straight tank who lacks a taunt. I was starting to get a good feel for how that worked and think I was doing pretty good by the end of the week. I just played a game today where I was laning like normal instead of jungling (Warwick is gone, after all) and I did a terrible job of it. I'd lost the feel for last hitting the creeps properly. I'm sure I'll pick that back up in a game or two but it does show the advantage to specializing. If I'd found a jungler in this week's lineup I could have continued doing similar things as last week.
The disadvantage is I get stuck playing a select few heroes. There's a lot of variety and I'd like to try them all. Also, what happens when my randomly selected teammates want to jungle instead? Do I say screw the team and play what I want anyway? Having the ability to fill in the gaps around the heroes they pick is very useful.
Maybe if I had a preset team I normally played with I'd be happy specializing in a couple heroes that fill the same role but for now I think I need to spread out. So this week I'm probably going to play Ashe and Annie and see how they work out.
The advantage to doing so is I might actually get good at doing that one thing. Last week I played a lot of games with Warwick. He's a hero who fills the 'jungler' role on a team. Junglers don't gain experience the normal way. Instead they run around in the 'jungle' and kill neutral monsters that spawn. This means your team as a whole gains more experience and thus should outlevel the opposition. In big fights he can either be a tanky melee DPS or a straight tank who lacks a taunt. I was starting to get a good feel for how that worked and think I was doing pretty good by the end of the week. I just played a game today where I was laning like normal instead of jungling (Warwick is gone, after all) and I did a terrible job of it. I'd lost the feel for last hitting the creeps properly. I'm sure I'll pick that back up in a game or two but it does show the advantage to specializing. If I'd found a jungler in this week's lineup I could have continued doing similar things as last week.
The disadvantage is I get stuck playing a select few heroes. There's a lot of variety and I'd like to try them all. Also, what happens when my randomly selected teammates want to jungle instead? Do I say screw the team and play what I want anyway? Having the ability to fill in the gaps around the heroes they pick is very useful.
Maybe if I had a preset team I normally played with I'd be happy specializing in a couple heroes that fill the same role but for now I think I need to spread out. So this week I'm probably going to play Ashe and Annie and see how they work out.
Tuesday, May 24, 2011
Consolidating Power
I got a game of Battlestar Gallactica on the weekend. Typically the same characters get used every game so Byung and I wanted to shake things up by doing random by class. We got vetoed but put our own twists on getting new characters into the game. I've been rewatching the show recently and chose my favourite character from the show despite him being very weak in the game... Colonel Saul Tigh! He rarely gets played since he's pretty low on the admiral chain of command. Normally I'd be afraid someone would take Adama afterwards to have an actual good character as admiral and I'd be sitting around with no title and no ability to fly in space. I decided I didn't care this time and it turned out no one else took a military leader anyway so I got to start as admiral. Now, Tigh's once per game ability lets him give the president title to the admiral and one turn before the mid point of the game I had absolutely nothing good to do. Possibly I should have tried to throw Duncan out an air lock but instead I decided to grab more power and declared martial law. Duncan then revealed as a cylon and threw our CAG in the brig, knocking that title to Byung who was playing Boomer. Then we jumped and made it to distance 4, causing Byung to be thrown in the brig by his character's drawback. Next in line for CAG? Saul Tigh. So I managed to be Admiral President CAG Colonel Saul Tigh. Woo!
We ended up losing on the final die roll (50-50 chance!) but it was fun regardless of outcome. At one point we had something like 14 cylon raiders attacking Byung in space without managing to hit him. (Turns out we had a lot of reroll cards saved up!)
We ended up losing on the final die roll (50-50 chance!) but it was fun regardless of outcome. At one point we had something like 14 cylon raiders attacking Byung in space without managing to hit him. (Turns out we had a lot of reroll cards saved up!)
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