Posts Categorized: Videogames

Videogames

Join the A DRIBBLE OF INK Diablo III Community!

By Aidan Moher May 18th, 2012
Diablo 3 Boxart

To continue with my endless stream of Diablo III-related posts, I thought it would be fun to gather together the community of readers who follow A Dribble of Ink and try to organize together a group of like-minded gamers to tackle the demons and dungeons of Diablo III. I’ll be spending a lot of time playing it this weekend, and in the coming weeks, and there’s a good chance you will be, too!

So, leave your Diablo III BattleTag below. And hollar at me, I’m SpaceDonkeys#1966 on Battle.net. When you add me, let me know that you read A Dribble of Ink!

Videogames

Diablo III Review Round-up

By Aidan Moher May 17th, 2012
Diablo III Review Round-up

I was hoping to post some Diablo III impressions today. Instead, my entire experience with the game can be summed up with a simple meme. Actually, scratch that, I can log in, but my character (a monk) is booted from the server and unable to log back in. The 30 minutes I’ve spent with the game have come over 12-15 different sessions. Frustrating, and I’m not alone (but, unlike some trolls on the Internet, I have many other ways to occupy my time instead of stewing over a videogame.) So, in lieu of my own impressions, here’s a round-up of some of the review of Diablo III from around the web.

Diablo 3 screenshotMike Anderiesz, The Guardian:

Once in the game, it’s clear that the new 3D engine has been put to work on rendering a level of detail we haven’t seen in the series before. Superb lighting effects make even Act 1’s formulaic dungeons seem more atmospheric, but once you reach Act 2’s Caldeum and beyond, more spectacular locations and draw distances emerge. Enemies may have a tendency to swarm mindlessly towards you, but they come in large numbers and reasonable variety.

Not every improvement pays off, however; there’s far too little destructible scenery and context-sensitive traps – such as falling chandeliers or rolling logs – sound like a great idea on paper but require such careful lining up of enemies you won’t be troubling with them after the first few attempts.

There’s improvement as well as innovation, particularly with the UI. With a permanent Portal spell to take you back to nearby towns and a much smarter way of choosing and comparing items, you can now focus on the important task of killing things.

[…]

So the key question remains, was Diablo 3 worth the 12-year wait? That depends on how you play it – for single players, it’s an entertaining and gorgeous-looking dungeon hack but it’s a bit short, extremely linear and hardly pushing any boundaries. Playing online (and Blizzard isn’t really giving us a choice) makes it a better balanced and more compelling challenge, with all the potential to be the kind of lifestyle substitute that Diablo’s legion of hunter-gatherer fans should relish.

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Videogames

Tidbit of the Day: I slayed, then became, Diablo

By Aidan Moher May 16th, 2012
Diablo for PC

So, last night, like millions of other cool, socially well-adjusted people nerds, I went out and eagerly purchased Diablo III. And then, like millions of other nerds cool, socially well-adjusted people, I also ran into immense frustration when my single-player experience was halted (in fact, never begun) because of various server issues. That’s a topic for another day, but I did run across a pretty cool bit of trivia while waiting for Diablo III to install. While the installation process was happening, eager gamers can read a short illustrated primer that details about the stories in Diablo and Diablo II. You remember this guy?

Warrior from Diablo

Of course you do. His name? Aidan. Yep, that’s right. The Warrior from Diablo, that game that stole hours-upon-hours-upon-hours of my teenage life, had the same name as me. Little did I know that when I created a new character a gave him my name, that I was only following the true canon of the series.

My hidden and tragic past, from the Diablo Wiki:

Aidan lived with his father as he grew up. The earliest information we have about him is that he served in his father’s army and was under the command of Lachdanan when he led the assault against Westmarch prior to the events of Diablo I. Upon returning to Tristram and seeing his father raised from the dead, his younger brother missing and Lazarus gone, he journeyed into the depths of the labyrinth under the Cathedral.

As he journeyed deeper and deeper into it he not only found and killed his own father as the Skeleton King, he also killed Lazarus and his own brother who was at the time possessed by Diablo.

The further down he’d gotten however, the larger Diablo’s influence over him had grown. The Lord of Terror recognized what a fine host Aidan would make, and so slowly crept into his mind. Once Diablo was slain, Aidan had become convinced that in order to contain Diablo he had to shove the soulstone into himself, and so Aidan became the Dark Wanderer.

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Videogames

Mistborn: Birthright announced for XBOX, PS3, and PC

By Aidan Moher March 26th, 2012
Mistborn: Birthright logo

The full press release:

Little Orbit revealed today that they will be bringing best-selling author Brandon Sanderson’s epic fantasy series Mistborn to games late next year for PlayStation®3 computer entertainment system, the Xbox 360® video game and entertainment system from Microsoft, Windows PC and Mac.

Mistborn is set in a dark world of ash, mist, and gothic fantasy creatures, dominated by a seemingly immortal villain known as the Lord Ruler. It also follows individuals who use a powerful rule-based magic system known as Allomancy that allows them to temporarily enhance their physical and mental abilities by ingesting and “burning” flakes of metal. Those who have the ability to burn a single metal are called Mistings, and those who can burn all metals are known as Mistborn.

The upcoming RPG video game will feature an original storyline created by Sanderson, set several hundreds of years before the first Mistborn novel, and will focus on a unique combat system that puts Allomancy into the hands of gamers. Players will suit up as Fendin “Fiddle” Fathvell, an arrogant young nobleman who must quickly master his newfound Allomantic abilities before forces at work can destroy his entire family.

“I’m a huge fan of the series, and I cannot wait to get this into the hands of gamers,” said Matthew Scott, CEO of Little Orbit. “Between the distinctive magic system, the story twists Brandon has planned for the game, and the rich depth of character skills, we’re creating something very unique for players to enjoy.”

Sanderson is no stranger to video games. He recently completed story development on the Infinity Blade II video game including the accompanying Infinity Blade: Awakening novella. In between writing his popular Mistborn and Stormlight novels, he is also finishing work on the final novel in Robert Jordan’s Wheel of Time series. Sanderson has been labeled “one of the most popular new fantasy writers to emerge in the last ten years.”

“As an avid gamer, I’m extremely excited by this opportunity,” said Sanderson. “The chance to write the story for a Mistborn game while working with a team of talented developers is, quite literally, living a dream.”

I caught some hints of this when I had dinner with Sanderson a few months ago, though I suspected at the time that the announcement would come from from Chair Entertainment, a division of Epic Games that is responsible for Shadow Complex (based on a universe created by Orson Scott Card) and Infinity Blade, a popular iPhone/iPad series that Sanderson has been involved with (including a novella he wrote set in the universe, bridging the stories between the two games). I’m unfamiliar with Little Orbit, the publishers of Mistborn: Birthright and, given their meagre 48 ‘Likes’ on Facebook, I expect you are, too. Mistborn: Birthright is being developed by Game Machine Studios.

The Mistborn universe is ripe for a videogame adaptation, so let’s hope that this relatively unknown development team can do justice to Sanderson’s creativity and vision. It makes sense that they’d choose to develop this game as a ‘prequel’ to the novels, allowing gamers to explore the Mistborn world that they’re familiar with from the first novel, The Final Empire, rather than what it has become in The Alloy of Law, and Sanderson’s involvement in the creation of the storyline is encouraging. What do you hope for from the game?

Mistborn: Birthright is set for release in Fall, 2013 for the Xbox 360, PlayStation 3, PC, and Mac. For more information, visit the official website of Mistborn: Birthright.

Videogames

An Aside | My thoughts on the GAME OF THRONES MMORPG

By Aidan Moher March 2nd, 2012
Game of Thrones MMORPG screenshot

I blogged about this over at Suvudu, so head there for the details, but I just wanted to chime in here with some more detailed and persnickity thoughts about the recently announced MMORPG based on George R.R. Martin’s A Song of Ice and Fire.

The gist, from Venturebeat:

Martin and HBO spilled the news about the game last year, but Bigpoint hasn’t had a chance to show off its work until now. Bigpoint’s new web site for the game offers you the chance to sign up and “die for your house.”

Bigpoint grew big as a browser-based game publisher in Hamburg, Germany, but in the past couple of years it has expanded into the U.S. and moved its headquarters to San Francisco. The company will show a sneak peek of the game, a browser-based massively multiplayer online role-playing game (an MMORPG that doesn’t require a long download) at the upcoming Game Developers Conference next week in San Francisco.

The game will be set in the fictional medieval world of Westeros and its Seven Kingdoms, where summers can last for decades and winters can last a lifetime.

First of all, it’s nice to see Martin’s series continuing to get recognition and attention from the videogame world, but doesn’t he deserve better? The MMORPG is being developed by BigPoint, the illustrious developer of such legendary titles as Drakensang Online, Lord of Ultima and, most convincing of all, Zoomumba. Now, I know George has to eat, but wouldn’t it behoove him and Bantam Spectra to do a bit of quality control before licensing out the IP to just anyone? Is a browser-based MMORPG really the best fit for the series? And does this move to (probably) free-to-play browser-based model suggest that the Game of Thrones MMORPG will be adopting a more socially-driven nature (as seen in many of BigPoint’s other games), as opposed to a more solid, deeply considered structure like the other MMORPGs that gamers actually give a damn about? Why not look towards Turbine’s successful MMORPG adaptation of J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings for inspiration? At least BigPoint’s other browser-based MMORPGs look good, regardless of how they might play.
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