1: Plot the death of your father. In this game, you plot the death of the main character's (an unhappy child) father. As the child grows up to hate him more and more, more "execution" options will be available to set in place for the future. Once the stage is set, watch him die. Quote from a certain White dragon named 'Tymofarrar' stating a riddle about revenge: "Sweet as blood, rich as flame, rarer than gold this deadly game."
2: Learn how to sail a dinghy and BOSS LEVEL! SURVIVE A HEAVY UNFORESEEN THUNDERSTORM!! CAPSIZE!!! AND DON'T F***ING DROWN!!!! BONUS LEVEL OMG!!: You tell your father about the perilous experience you had from the boss level, but he doesn't give a shit, he is a complete apathetic first class A-Hole. Select a piece of equipment of a dinghy (the rudder, the ropes, whatever you can get your hands on) and let Lieutenant Aldo Raine teach him a lesson in humanity.
3: You are a student, you dropped out due to a godawful school and your stupid ass father suggests homeschooling. You've yet to realise that homeschooling only works for the rich families who's family members are really really close to each other (otherwise known as a dream family, which is something you obviously don't have) so you go ahead with the idea, not knowing what you've gotten yourself into.
Objective: Discover the key to successful homeschooling (at least for the game's main character's point of view. Through the gameplay, you will receive various hints for the answers you seek.) This is basically some sort of philosophical puzzle game. I like puzzles and philosophy.
4: Get dragged along by your gung-ho father to go explore a Malaysian forest, it's a very long trek and he has forgotten/refused to feed you lunch. Throughout the game, you must endure the journey all the while following this A-hole, and try not to get a fever. Something like a sinister Pitfall Harry Co-Op game?
Game concepts 1 to 4 are pretty effed up aren't they? I put them here because they're all true stories of my life as a child growing up. The only things that aren't true are the parts where I eff up the father. I put those in there because that's the kind of game I'd like to try.
And now for something completely different.
5: RC Airplane Flight Competition. Build a remote-controlled toy aircraft from scratch, use basic materials (carve balsa wood into plane components, things like that) to build the hull, install various types of electronic gadgets (weight applies here due to weight of certain electric components eg. Motor, game physics programming required here) compete against AI competitors and their crafts. At some random points during the competition, your craft, despite your good workmanship, encounters unforeseen problems and you have to use your pilot's instincts to pull through.
Sunday, May 15, 2011
Monday, May 2, 2011
NWN2 (when compared to NWN1) is pretty much doomed
At the time Neverwinter Nights was released, it was a big hit earning several well-deserved awards, literally thousands of active multiplayer servers, and a large online community full of fans dedicated to further improve gameplay experience. BioWare's later addition of its expansion packs, premium modules, and official patches kept the fans' interest at its peak and their love for the game grew.
No game is without it's bugs, and NWN was no exception, having several bugs affecting its gameplay in many ways. BioWare fixed them at an efficient rate via its patching system. About 22 patches were distributed, each patch fixing a good number of bugs, and as of their final patch version 1.69, NWN was approximately 95% bug-free. Through patches 1.67 and 1.69 they even gave players well over 600 free in-game content such as new armor, music, areas, characters and even furniture, as well as a whole new character class to play as, and best of all, the ability to ride and fight on horseback for the first time in NWN history (Up till now, you still can't ride horses in NWN2).
Truthfully, I played both games for only a fortnight. If you think 2 weeks of experiencing 2 games is too short a time to give a fair review, don't blame me, but instead blame my father who hates video games with so much passion as to not even make any sense out of his already retarded little mind. I'll have you know that I played these games against his wishes whenever he was away at work. One day he found out about my deception and broke the discs. But that's another story.
In any case, I was new to RPGs at the time, and common sense led me to play NWN before its sequel. I was immediately enchanted by its wonderful music, graphics, and gameplay, and the in-game tutorials were easy enough to learn from, thus turning a 'newbie' like me into an intermediate roleplayer/NWN addict. I knew that I hadn't much time left before father found out about my charade, so I decided to put all my NWN quests on hold and try out NWN2.
At this point, I thought that since it was a sequel, I could use my knowledge of NWN to help familiarize myself with NWN2. I was greatly mistaken. It turned out that NWN2's user interface was completely different from NWN's. The simple yet efficient radial menu of NWN had been replaced with a very ugly pop-up box which was difficult to use.
The various icon sizes of items from NWN had been replaced with equally sized item icons of 1cm square each, which killed the fun of having to organise the stuff your carrying. On the left is NWN's inventory window, on the right is NWN2's inventory window. Personally I prefer the design of NWN's window.
NWN2's in-game tutorial was too complicated to follow. You see, NWN's in-game tutorial was easy to follow because it was set in a pretty much linear fashion, hence teaching you new things one at a time at a pace you're comfortable with, whereas the tutorial in NWN2 tries to cram all the lessons up your ass (and it's literally a painful experience). As a result, I managed to complete NWN2's tutorial after several attempts, and I still wasn't sure of how to play. I was still a newbie then, mind you.
NWN's story was pretty simple to follow and yet throughly enjoyable. Basically (no spoilers here, don't worry) it's about an evil ancient race of imperialists which used to rule over humankind. Apocalypse happened, and the imperialists went into a self-induced hibernation in order to preserve their kind. Their absense led to ancient humankind gaining freedom and eventually became the civilisation they are today, forgetting that their tyrants ever existed. And now after all these millenias the imperialists have awakened for no reason whatsoever and want to establish control over humankind once again. Your job is to stop them and save humankind. Doesn't that sound lovely?
NWN2's story, however, is not as simple, and not as enjoyable to boot. Frankly I haven't had the time nor the interest to finish the story, so if you're interested to hear it, click this spoiler alert. The reason I hate it is because you lose a dear friend so early in the game. The tutorial gets you together with your NPC 'best friends' and you have a great time with them during this tutorial (they're the only things that made the tutorial enjoyable) and then in chapter 1 one of them dies. I lost the will to continue playing after that.
Now, I did say that NWN2 had some general improvements over NWN. It's the graphics I'm refering to. Although NWN utilizes low poly 3D models, the overall graphics is still amazing thanks to ingenious texture designs. Why, you wouldn't even notice/mind that it's all low poly. NWN2, however, uses 3D models which consists of damn large amounts of polygons to make it all look realistic, removing the need of good textures. Sounds good? Actually yes, but this results in unreasonably high requirements in terms of graphics. It's almost certain that you can't avoid lag in NWN2 single-player modes without reducing graphical display to a bare minimum.
Now about those bugs in NWN2, I'm not sure if I personally noticed any, since the game was so confusing that I couldn't tell the difference between a bug and so-called 'normal' game behavior. But I've heard people say things like "NWN2 is flooded with bugs", "patches are too difficult to install", "auto-patcher not working" and things like that. I've seen a list of all the official patches for NWN2, and it's a damn long list. Worst of all, NWN2 is still buggy even now. Why couldn't it be as quick and efficient as NWN?
Maybe it's because Obsidian handled NWN2 instead of BioWare? Probably.
No game is without it's bugs, and NWN was no exception, having several bugs affecting its gameplay in many ways. BioWare fixed them at an efficient rate via its patching system. About 22 patches were distributed, each patch fixing a good number of bugs, and as of their final patch version 1.69, NWN was approximately 95% bug-free. Through patches 1.67 and 1.69 they even gave players well over 600 free in-game content such as new armor, music, areas, characters and even furniture, as well as a whole new character class to play as, and best of all, the ability to ride and fight on horseback for the first time in NWN history (Up till now, you still can't ride horses in NWN2).
Truthfully, I played both games for only a fortnight. If you think 2 weeks of experiencing 2 games is too short a time to give a fair review, don't blame me, but instead blame my father who hates video games with so much passion as to not even make any sense out of his already retarded little mind. I'll have you know that I played these games against his wishes whenever he was away at work. One day he found out about my deception and broke the discs. But that's another story.
In any case, I was new to RPGs at the time, and common sense led me to play NWN before its sequel. I was immediately enchanted by its wonderful music, graphics, and gameplay, and the in-game tutorials were easy enough to learn from, thus turning a 'newbie' like me into an intermediate roleplayer/NWN addict. I knew that I hadn't much time left before father found out about my charade, so I decided to put all my NWN quests on hold and try out NWN2.
At this point, I thought that since it was a sequel, I could use my knowledge of NWN to help familiarize myself with NWN2. I was greatly mistaken. It turned out that NWN2's user interface was completely different from NWN's. The simple yet efficient radial menu of NWN had been replaced with a very ugly pop-up box which was difficult to use.
The various icon sizes of items from NWN had been replaced with equally sized item icons of 1cm square each, which killed the fun of having to organise the stuff your carrying. On the left is NWN's inventory window, on the right is NWN2's inventory window. Personally I prefer the design of NWN's window.
NWN2's in-game tutorial was too complicated to follow. You see, NWN's in-game tutorial was easy to follow because it was set in a pretty much linear fashion, hence teaching you new things one at a time at a pace you're comfortable with, whereas the tutorial in NWN2 tries to cram all the lessons up your ass (and it's literally a painful experience). As a result, I managed to complete NWN2's tutorial after several attempts, and I still wasn't sure of how to play. I was still a newbie then, mind you.
NWN's story was pretty simple to follow and yet throughly enjoyable. Basically (no spoilers here, don't worry) it's about an evil ancient race of imperialists which used to rule over humankind. Apocalypse happened, and the imperialists went into a self-induced hibernation in order to preserve their kind. Their absense led to ancient humankind gaining freedom and eventually became the civilisation they are today, forgetting that their tyrants ever existed. And now after all these millenias the imperialists have awakened for no reason whatsoever and want to establish control over humankind once again. Your job is to stop them and save humankind. Doesn't that sound lovely?
NWN2's story, however, is not as simple, and not as enjoyable to boot. Frankly I haven't had the time nor the interest to finish the story, so if you're interested to hear it, click this spoiler alert. The reason I hate it is because you lose a dear friend so early in the game. The tutorial gets you together with your NPC 'best friends' and you have a great time with them during this tutorial (they're the only things that made the tutorial enjoyable) and then in chapter 1 one of them dies. I lost the will to continue playing after that.
Now, I did say that NWN2 had some general improvements over NWN. It's the graphics I'm refering to. Although NWN utilizes low poly 3D models, the overall graphics is still amazing thanks to ingenious texture designs. Why, you wouldn't even notice/mind that it's all low poly. NWN2, however, uses 3D models which consists of damn large amounts of polygons to make it all look realistic, removing the need of good textures. Sounds good? Actually yes, but this results in unreasonably high requirements in terms of graphics. It's almost certain that you can't avoid lag in NWN2 single-player modes without reducing graphical display to a bare minimum.
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| Neverwinter Nights in all its low poly glory |
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| NWN2 in its overpowered graphical glory |
Now about those bugs in NWN2, I'm not sure if I personally noticed any, since the game was so confusing that I couldn't tell the difference between a bug and so-called 'normal' game behavior. But I've heard people say things like "NWN2 is flooded with bugs", "patches are too difficult to install", "auto-patcher not working" and things like that. I've seen a list of all the official patches for NWN2, and it's a damn long list. Worst of all, NWN2 is still buggy even now. Why couldn't it be as quick and efficient as NWN?
Maybe it's because Obsidian handled NWN2 instead of BioWare? Probably.
Sunday, May 1, 2011
Playtest: Neverwinter Nights
When I first started playing Neverwinter Nights, I was immediately engrossed in the character creation process. Due to the vast range of portraits, classes, skills, spells, voicesets (the voice talents did an amazing job) and several pets to choose from if you chose to be a ranger, druid, wizard, or sorcerer), I took several hours just trying to decide what I wanted to play as. Character creation can be tedious, but it's pretty fun, especially when you come to the part where you choose your character's physical appearance such as head models and skin color.
And then finally, I begun playing the Prelude chapter.
The Prelude has step-by-step tutorials for Interface Usage, Shopping, Journal Checking, Melee Combat, Ranged Combat, Creature Examining, Spellcasting, Theft, Vandalism, Healing, Party Leadership, and Leveling Up. All which makes learning to play easy, even for those like me who've never played RPG games before.
After finishing the Prelude, I was redirected to Chapter 1, which took place in Neverwinter's city core. The number of quests kept piling up on me by the hour, but the Journal system kept track of my available quests and could organise them according to name, priority, and date commenced. Pending and incomplete quests appear in the Quests tab, and once a quest is complete, it'll disappear from the Quests tab and a summary of it will appear in the Completed Quests tab. There's a third tab called Notes where you can write anything you want. Unlike the other two tabs, your notes will not be erased even if you finished the game, which is great especially when you want to remember general rules and tips useful in any game.
There's also a crafting system for weapons, armor, and traps. In order to craft something successfully, the character must have a good score (perhaps about 30) in his 'Crafts' related skills, and he must have enough gold and the necessary materials on hand to craft. For example, if I wanted to make myself a longbow, first I'd need to acquire raw materials such as plank of Elm wood and a leather hide, and refine them into a Elmwood bow shaft and leather string respectively, and combine the items together to make a longbow. In truth, I haven't made much use of the crafting system, since I do all my crafting on the Toolset. I do, however, craft wands out of large bones and imbue them with my magic, and sell them for a good price. It's one of the easiest ways for spellcasters to make money.
And then finally, I begun playing the Prelude chapter.
After the cutscene, I found myself wondering how and what I was supposed to do. Luckily, the Prelude was also a step-by-step tutorial, and got me familiar to the controls and interface after a short period of time. I admired the simplicity of NWN's radial menu system, which at this point in the game, had very few buttons relating to my character's abilities and skills, and were very well organised. (Up till now, I have never seen an RPG game whose interface was as neat as NWN's) Since I was playing as a sorcerer, I had chosen to have a Faerie Dragon as my familiar/pet. I summoned it, had a chat with it (dialog with familiars are quite limited), played with it, petted it, fed it (although they didn't need feeding) and possessed it. Possessing my pet faerie dragon was pretty fun, the ability forces me to leave my character immobile and vulnerable while I fly around biting random academy students and flying off to cause more mischief. Good times.
The Prelude has step-by-step tutorials for Interface Usage, Shopping, Journal Checking, Melee Combat, Ranged Combat, Creature Examining, Spellcasting, Theft, Vandalism, Healing, Party Leadership, and Leveling Up. All which makes learning to play easy, even for those like me who've never played RPG games before.
After finishing the Prelude, I was redirected to Chapter 1, which took place in Neverwinter's city core. The number of quests kept piling up on me by the hour, but the Journal system kept track of my available quests and could organise them according to name, priority, and date commenced. Pending and incomplete quests appear in the Quests tab, and once a quest is complete, it'll disappear from the Quests tab and a summary of it will appear in the Completed Quests tab. There's a third tab called Notes where you can write anything you want. Unlike the other two tabs, your notes will not be erased even if you finished the game, which is great especially when you want to remember general rules and tips useful in any game.
Because the areas in travelled through were pretty large, I had to make use of the Map system to prevent from getting lost. When I explore unknown territory, the map will mostly appear as a translucent box, with a small portion uncovered around my current location. The more I walked into unknown territory, the more parts of the map I uncovered. And if I found/bought an actual map for a certain area, it will completely uncover the entire area, allowing me to better plan my routes.
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| Left Panel: Character Sheet displays tactical information about me. Center Panel: Journal shows my completed quests. Right Panel: Spellbook shows which spells I know as a Cleric. Bottom Left Panel: Chat log records any conversations I've had or overheard and displays battle analysis during combat. Bottom Right Panel: Compass displays the direction I'm facing, and tells the date and game time. |
Throughout the game, I'd find and pick up lots of things, from salvaged weapons to books and loads of other random stuff. All items come in different sizes and it's important to pack them together without leaving too many gaps. Otherwise, you're wasting valuable space. If there isn't enough space after thoroughly packing everything, containers can be purchased to increase space. However, containers are rare pickups.
There's also a crafting system for weapons, armor, and traps. In order to craft something successfully, the character must have a good score (perhaps about 30) in his 'Crafts' related skills, and he must have enough gold and the necessary materials on hand to craft. For example, if I wanted to make myself a longbow, first I'd need to acquire raw materials such as plank of Elm wood and a leather hide, and refine them into a Elmwood bow shaft and leather string respectively, and combine the items together to make a longbow. In truth, I haven't made much use of the crafting system, since I do all my crafting on the Toolset. I do, however, craft wands out of large bones and imbue them with my magic, and sell them for a good price. It's one of the easiest ways for spellcasters to make money.
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