Free to Play, Every Day: Tribes: Ascend

Do you like shooters? Do you like sci-fi? Do you not want to spend $60+ on a console game? Do you hate the angry children on Xbox Live so much that you want to punch them through the internet?

Have no fear, because Tribes: Ascend is here.

Tribes: Ascend is a free-to-play first-person shooter on Steam (where else would I have found it?), and I'm quite enjoying it. Compared to something like Halo or Call of Duty, Tribes is very intriguing because of how well it performs graphically and gameplay-wise, considering it's FREE. Unbelievable? I think so.

Many game modes you find in AAA shooters can be found here as well. Capture the flag seems to be one of the most popular, and there's also a "Slayer" type mode where two teams battle over a flag and have a limited score. Scores go down when members of your team die, but if your team is holding the flag, the enemy team loses their score twice as fast. King of the hill and Territories can also be found, though I haven't tried them myself.

There are a couple of reasons why this game interests me so much. First of all, there is a unique mechanic referred to as "skiing". With the absence of snow in most of the maps in this game, you'd think that would be difficult, but take note of the image below:

Each class (which ranges from glass cannon to tank and everything inbetween) is equipped with a jet pack and hover boots. The jet pack gives you a relatively short elevation boost, and using the hover boots appropriately with the slopes and terrain will allow you to slide across the huge maps with no friction, just like if you were skiing. Combined with moderate jet pack usage, you can climb almost any hill and speed down any mountain to fly across maps at blistering speeds. It's a really cool mechanic and it's core to playing the game, so I highly suggest looking up video footage or tutorials for it, because not only should you learn how to ski properly if you want to play this game, but it's really cool and fun too.

Secondly, Tribes uses a very similar currency system to League of Legends. Just for playing games, you will earn experience that you can spend on new guns, new classes, upgrades, usable items and augments, and more. All of those things are also purchasable with another currency (whose name escapes me at the moment) that you buy with a credit card, in addition to other premium content available only through this method.

It's amazing to me how a game like this exists in light of other games like Call of Duty and Halo. While I have nothing against either of those game franchises, the Tribes series came out before either of them. The original Tribes shooter released 11 years ago was critically acclaimed, and while I haven't played it, I think I can safely assume that this free game is a great successor, and I think anyone who enjoys shooters would love this one.

Short but Sweet

Wish I could make a longer post, but I didn't have a lot of time today because of work and the incoming school year that I'm working on not sucking at.

I currently have mixed feelings towards consoles right now. The nostalgic and comfortable feeling of holding a controller (that doesn't blow chunks *cough* original Xbox *cough*) will never go away and there's just a general feeling about sitting in front of your television that seems right.

The advent and growth of PC gaming, with the advantage of mods and intelligent programmers, can open up new windows and create new content themselves, as well as possibly fix or improve upon things that the developers may not have gotten right.

I think you can see what I mean. I'm not saying I prefer one over the other, because I like video games and I'll play either a console or a PC game with no hesitation. While it may be true that some game experiences fare better on consoles or the PC more than the other, I have no personal preference. To be fair though, because of this feeling of unease, I am playing more games on my PC currently. Steam is still kind of awesome.

The proof is in the players. See for yourself.

The Tribunal

The game that I'm hooked on now is League of Legends. With a community that outsizes World of Warcraft and has more players to boot, it's clear that LoL is a very popular game, and it keeps getting more popular every day.

One thing I can admire about the staff at Riot Games is their seemingly vast kindness they show to their players through effective communication. They aren't perfect by any means, but when they screw up, they come right out and admit it. When they think we, the players, are unsatisfied, they offer an explanation and maybe even compensation. They even start and play games with us on a regular basis! Not all game developers can say they play games with their player base every day and have their players know about it.

What I love the most about Riot though is how they trust their community to do the right thing. This is proven in the Tribunal, a system made for fully-leveled players (read: people who have played enough to understand the team-based gameplay) to judge their own peers on their behavior.

You read that correctly. People read about, judge, and decide the fate of other people based on their behavior. I have NEVER seen anything like it before, and I think it's amazing.

It's honestly a little more simple and a little more shallow than it looks. Basically, if you get reported enough by other players in the games you play, you're more likely to show up in the Tribunal. Players then read the in-game chat logs and other general information about the champions you played during the matches where you were reported. A majority vote is cast among everyone that reads over your case and decides whether you receive punishment or forgiveness. I'm honestly not sure what the punishment is, but I'm assuming it's a temporary ban, with multiple Tribunal trips resulting in more severe punishments.

How cool is that? Players get to decide how they want to shape their own community, rather than leaving it up to moderators and administrators. The majority of the cases you'll find in the tribunal are punishable too, at least for what I've found, so I'd think it's safe to say that the system works, but unfortunately participating is entirely optional. Still, those that play League that aren't taking advantage of this are probably insane, because you get paid small amounts of in-game currency for correctly voting, and they stack up week after week considering you can judge 15 cases every day.

To be fair, the Tribunal isn't perfect. With the knowledge of it existing, people can unjustly threaten others with reports in games in order to follow their rules. There's also the probability that the selected population of players that judge a case could consist of the same players that deserve judgement themselves, such as those that consider calling out and harassing poor players part of the game. There are also those who may not read entire cases and could unjustly punish people, and there's also the possibility of the one single person who was in the right being reported by a bunch of people who were in the wrong. These are considerable issues with the system, and while they can and probably do exist out there, Riot staff have data readily available for any account that is banned by the system, and while I believe that they do keep track of each case themselves to weed out the possible incorrect judgements, for those that are unjustly banned could send a ticket to the Support department and plead their case. This is especially true considering that you are now emailed a "report card" with evidence as to why you were banned. I'm fairly certain that there's no way that this sort of notification system could pass without having some kind of overlooking from Riot staff.

Overall, I love this game, and I love the developers that run it. Their near-constant attention to the game they make and the community surrounding it shows that they really care about it and the direction it drives gaming in. With a little more than 2 years under it's belt and having become so popular, League of Legends is one of the games that drives video games (and eSports) today, and I'm eager to see where it takes us into the future.

Chen Stormstout is a Badass

The above video is the official opening cinematic that players will see when they first install and play World of Warcraft: Mists of Pandaria.

If there's anything I immediately miss about WoW, it's the fully-rendered cinematics. The fine animators over at Blizzard are incredible with their work on these, and they never cease to amaze everyone under the sun and then some. I honestly wonder how much time is spent making just one of these cutscenes, let alone the six that are in Diablo 3. If you do some real digging, there are even cutscenes with this sort of quality from Blizzard games from ten or more years ago as well! How do they do it?

This cinematic does seem to focus more on the "Alliance vs. Horde" conflict, and the part that the Pandaren are playing in it in sort of a "big picture" kind of way. Some may choose sides, but overall, the two factions must learn to fight for their common purpose and understand why their petty war is pointless (at least to me it is).

I had quit World of Warcraft because of the boredom that rose within me from raiding and finding nothing new. With waning subscribers at the moment, this expansion might just be an important crossroads in the game's history, solely judging by the trailer and it's premise. While I do not plan on returning to World of Warcraft in the immediate future, things like this trailer will always fill me with a sense of nostalgia...and maybe, I admit, a single, tiny, unfortunate drop of regret.

Return to Midgar

Sometimes there's a game that comes along that just steals everyone's hearts away. It compels you to keep playing it, despite it not having a lot of replay value, just because it's so much fun. While it may not have aged well as graphics, gameplay and ideas evolved, this one single game holds a special, nostalgic place in your soul, and without it, you are nothing but an empty shell of a gamer with unrefined tastes and no direction.

For me, this game is Final Fantasy VII.

I played the absolute balls out of this game through grade school. While I may have been too naive to use the internet for guidance or clever enough to acquire and defeat everything, I put countless hours of my childhood into this game. Honestly, even if you don't know what the Final Fantasy series is all about, if you haven't heard or seen anything from Final Fantasy VII and have no idea what I'm talking about, you really, honestly need to fix that. I'm not just being a smart-ass this time around. At the very least, you can watch someone play it on Youtube, but if you want to be even more awesome, you'll just buy it for your PC from Square Enix's online store, like I'm going to do, because it was recently just re-released.

Granted, this is a Playstation 1 game we're talking about here, so back in the days when Sega was meeting it's unfortunate fate and Nintendo was still putting games on cartridges, graphics weren't all that impressive and stories weren't all that compelling either. Yet, as I played through this game, every character was so compelling and the gameplay was just so ridiculously fun that I couldn't care less about how well the game has aged. I'm a sucker for the fantasy-esque, magic-infused games with monsters and swords, and while this game isn't necessarily "medieval", the setting and world it creates is just amazing enough to want you to find out more about what lies beyond the horizon (that is, after you get out of the city of Midgar, which sort of takes a while).

I deeply encourage anyone who passes over this text to at least watch or try out this game. Try your best to ignore the stereotypical fanboy cry-outs of "being overrated" or "it's just another fantasy game" or "OMFG HD RE-RELEASE ON PS3 ZOMG" (Granted that would make Square Enix a literal dump truck of money, but I digress). I'm fairly certain that you won't be disappointed.

Finally, as a personal confession, I have never beaten Sephiroth. Nope. Not once. My younger self was petrified of the damn crater and going deeper and deeper into it.

Games On Steam You Should Be Playing (4)

It's time once again for the games you may not know but secretly love, and therefore you should hand them your wallet before they get second thoughts.

The Binding of Isaac

A bit disturbing, but still stupidly fun and addicting, The Binding of Isaac is a dungeon crawler that will either give you nightmares or make your dreams come true (if your dreams consist of killing monsters and flies with your own tears). You can see many similarities to dungeons from the old Legend of Zelda games from bombs to items that you can use. The gameplay is very similar to that as well except you have a ranged attack all the time and that attack consists of you literally shooting your own tears off your face at them.

To be fair, I haven't played a whole lot of the game yet, but I do love Legend of Zelda, especially the older ones with the top-down dungeons. If addictive dungeon crawling is your thing, this little chunk of humor is rightfully yours.

Poker Night at the Inventory

It's exactly what it looks and sounds like. No, really. Poker Night at the Inventory is a game where you play poker at a club called The Inventory. Plain and simple ehough.

What? Oh, those characters from other famous games and websites? Those are just your opponents. Awesome, right? Gabe from Penny Arcade, Max from the Sam & Max games, Heavy Weapons Guy from Team Fortress 2, and Strong Bad from Homestarrunner.com all sit down at a table and play poker, all while having legitimate conversations with each other. When I say legitimate, I mean they will talk to each other and behave in a manner where their personalities clash or syncronize. Impressive to say the least, but it doesn't even end there. Unlockables for the game and items for other games lie in store for the Hold'em master that can best all their opponents. A really great time waster if you like card games.

Magicka

This is another game where I'm not quite sure why I didn't mention it earlier, because it's probably the best thing there is in gaming for 4-player spellcasting combat as well as griefing the hell out of your friends. 

Similar to a dungeon crawler, Magicka is a top-down adventure game where you play a wizard. You have 8 spell elements that you can combine up to 5 of any order or amount and then proceed to destroy monsters (and/or your friends) with whatever spell you come up with. It's not a bad buy for the price of ten dollars, but there is a LOT of DLC. A LOT. For good reason too, because the gameplay behind Magicka is so wonderful that you will probably replay it over and over despite the prospective boredom. There are tons and TONS of different spell combinations to discover and try as well as an equal amount of ways to gain glory in PvP/ destroy the hell out of your comrades.

There's never a shortage of great games on Steam, and soon, there might not be a shortage of software in general. Intriguing? Damn right.

The Unfortunate State of Sanctuary

When I first started playing Diablo III, I genuinely enjoyed it. I still enjoy it, and I continue to play it every once in a while. There's plenty to do in the game, from hunting for loot to running the auction house to grinding for achievements.

Why am I so bored?

I was talking to a friend of mine recently about how I became bored with D3, and he told me that the game may not have been the exact type of game to satisfy your time-sink needs. While that may partially be true (I like to spend loads of time in other games as well), I have to mostly disagree. The loot hunt was nothing new to me because I can compare it to being similar as the loot hunt in WoW. As you defeat harder foes, they drop higher quality loot to help you kill even harder foes which will drop even higher loot and so on. However, WoW separates it's leveling experience from it's loot hunt experience, while D3 does both at the same time. I suppose there's nothing inherently wrong with that, but we must as a result play through the story multiple times in order to reach level 60 on separate difficulty levels. Not that big of a deal to some, but by the time you reach that maximum level, you're grinding on Inferno difficulty for the best loot through parts of the game you've been through several times before, so not only is it repetitively boring, but it's ridiculously hard too, so you're going to be going even slower through parts you've already been through.

Players on the forums and everywhere else have been citing problems too, ranging from the auction house to the story itself. For me personally, I enjoyed the story, but that might be because I hadn't played a Diablo game before this one, and while it was all intriguing, I can see where people are coming from. They say the beginning is nice at reintroducing us to the realm of Sanctuary, and there aren't a whole lot of complaints other than some digressions that don't make sense, like the part where the sword piece just so happened to be making the goatmen go mad ("Of course!" Deckard Cain exclaims). By the time you reach Act III though, the story is stagnating to your long trips across ramparts and battlefields, and Act IV has you just clicking through some hollow text spoken by ghosts and a few lame minibosses because you want to get to Diablo already.

At the same time, the auction house is there to help you retrieve loot for money or gold to help you get that item that just won't drop, but then the "item hunt end game" becomes pointless because you can just buy everything by earning all the gold necessary. The personally acquired item drops are more than enough for you to complete Normal, but you better have saved some dough for Nightmare, because continuing on through the new difficulty will prove difficult without grandfather Auction House's core advice and assistance.

My point is this: It's not that I'm bored with the vast amount of things that I have available to do in front of me. I am bored with how the game is more about the calculation-heavy meta involving the auction house and it's almost-necessary use for higher difficulty. I've heard from friends that previous Diablo games were fun because finding that one item you've been searching for forever was a wonderful experience. Now, we can just look up the closest thing in the auction house, and most of  the items we actually find ourselves either end up being not worth wearing or vendored, with a select few being good enough to auction off.

The game is no longer about the fun of dungeon crawling for awesome items. It's more about thinking and bartering and making gold. Color me disappointed for wanting to go on an adventure.

Why Didn't I Find This Earlier?

Seriously, why?

I don't believe I've mentioned anything on television on here yet. Normally I don't bother because people usually have very distinct tastes in the shows they watch and not every channel is available to every person, and I find that, among gamers especially, that their tastes in TV shows vary a lot more than the average population.

However, I'll now go against my above statement and say that Game of Thrones could be the one exception.

Game of Thrones is a series that airs on HBO on Sundays in the evening (Eastern timezone), and while there aren't new episodes airing at the moment, I have recently finished the Season 2 finale. Each episode is an hour long, so it was a bit of a time investment, but every minute was worth it, because personally I have never seen such a show such as this. It is set in a medieval-esque fantasy world, complete with magic, knights and kings, and the expansive world. While that may not be entirely appealing to every single person out there, there is something different about this one that I don't believe I've seen elsewhere.

First of all, everything is very serious. Serious might be a vague term, but let me put this into perspective for you: Through the two full seasons, I have seen men having their throats slit open and their guts run through with swords, their blood and entrails on mostly-full display. I have seen both men and women completely nude, sometimes in sexual situations and sometimes even performing sexual intercourse. I have heard very coarse and foul language from nearly every character in the show to the point where the censors would probably piss themselves.

Yet, this realistic, serious tone is what makes the show so wonderful, despite what many have claimed otherwise. It breaks the boundaries of what you would expect from your typical television show, let alone a medieval fantasy.

Aside from that, the actors are ridiculously good at what they do. The world and characters that are created for this show seem like they actually existed at some point in the past, if not today in some sort of parallel universe. This is no "search for the Holy Grail". This is a war, being fought on many, many sides. This is drama being caused through seemingly countless storylines that are all exciting and interesting to follow, always wondering what is going to happen next to the characters you know and love.

This is Game of Thrones, and I think anyone reading this would genuinely enjoy it in its entirety. I look forward to Season 3 next year on March 31st.

Oh, and the opening theme, which not only is the most catchy thing I have heard in a long, LONG time, but every episode's opening is just slightly different than the rest. Awesome.

You'll find yourself whistling this everywhere you go and it will never leave your head. I'm warning you right now. :)

P.S. - Thanks for 2000 pageviews everybody! :D

Breaking Gamer Stereotypes: Gender Distribution

Every time I visit Xbox Live to play online, I hear a lot of crap. Unwanted crap. Needless crap. The kind of crap that you would find in a toilet or a sewage plant.

That said, I'm here to notify those that are unaware that we gamers are not your typical homophobic, basement shut-ins that many media sources make us out to be. We are intelligent, and we are not afraid of you or anyone else who tries telling us otherwise.

Anyway, this is a new series of posts where I bring up a common stereotype amongst gamers and disprove it outright, followed by a quiet burial of said stereotype where afterward it will never be spoken of again, lest we unleash its zombified wrath.

To kick this off, and I apologize if this seems short because this stereotype is very baffling and simple to understand why it's incredibly false, let's state that only guys play video games. They are a man's way of relaxing and entertaining himself, while our wives, sisters, and female companions are off playing with dollhouses, cooking, and cleaning.

Yeah. No.

According to the Entertainment Software Association , 47% of gamers are female. 47%! That is literally almost half of all gamers on the planet. Xbox Live can go suck on that for a while.

If you honestly think that girls are unable to be gamers, then there is something seriously wrong with you. Get off of your "manly" high horse and go back a handful of decades, because there's no place for you here in the gaming community. It's obvious enough that they deserve to be viewed and treated with respect and courtesy just like any other gamer, or person for that matter.

Again, there really isn't a whole lot more to say on this matter. It's a painfully obvious stereotype that some idiots unfortunately believe in and needs to be killed off.

For the record, I typed all this, and I'm male. Grow some balls Xbox Live. Jackasses...