Strategy Guide Reviews

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Monday Gaming Diary: I don’t like playing Final Fantasy without a strategy guide

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feature-final-fantasy-type-0I was fortunate enough to get a review copy of Final Fantasy Type-0 HD for work, and I played it most of last week and over the weekend. The whole time I played it, I couldn’t shake the feeling that something was off, and it wasn’t just because the story is as convoluted as FF games come. I felt unsure of myself, unsure of what I was supposed to be doing, where I should go to explore, who I should talk to to get the most out of the game, and which tasks should I bother completing for the best rewards. I felt naked, as if I wasn’t wearing a ring that I normally wear every day.

Then it hit me: I was missing the strategy guide.

No wonder I was so stressed about where to go and what to do! I’ve never, ever played a Final Fantasy game without a strategy guide of some sort holding my hand along the way. I constantly glanced over at my review table for the guide, knowing full well it wouldn’t be there.

Obviously I was able to get through the game on my own intuition and “talent,” but I can’t help but feel I’ve missed out on a lot. Well, in looking at my trophies, I know I missed out on a lot of Knowing Tags, for starters. Or is it that they can only be fully collected if you play the game multiple times? What chocobo breeding combinations did I miss to get the super rare chocobos? Where can I find certain colored phantoma?

I HAVE SO MANY QUESTIONS THAT ONLY THE GUIDE CAN ANSWER.

I should be getting a review copy of the Final Fantasy Type-0 HD strategy guide this week, and I’m honestly looking forward to seeing what I was missing and how I could have improved my game.

In other news, since I liked the game, It’s been recommended that I look into Final Fantasy XIV, because I don’t have enough FF to fill my plate. Maybe after I finally finish Dragon Age Inquisition…

The Corner of Randomness: Gaming with Friends

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Diablo_3_Reaper_Of_SoulsLast weekend I went to Texas to visit Keri. While I might say I did it to take some family photos for her, I really did it to have some drinks and hang out. It was a ton of fun to say the least! It also made me realize just how much I miss LAN parties, couch co-op, and just getting together with friend to play video games…in person…like in the same room!

When I arrived, we had to setup for a podcast. While we were podcasting, I was busy doing things such as playing Elite: Dangerous and Diablo 3: Reaper of Souls. Keri looked over and commented how pretty Elite: Dangerous was. She also got to see just how easy it was to make oodles of money in D3.

Where things really get fun is when I played Dragon Age: Origins. I hooked my laptop up to her television so we didn’t have to hunker down around a smaller laptop screen. As we sat on the inflated bed, she got to see just how deadly I am to the inhabitants of Ferelden. It was humorous to hear/see her reactions to various aspects of how different my experience was going versus hers.

Being in the same room and sharing the same experiences led to something unexpectedly handy. Keri was able to use the strategy guide and help me out. She was able to easily tell me if my chosen courses of murder were going to make my life worse, or if my killing spree was just another day in the life of Vlad the Heartless. This wouldn’t have been so easy had we not been in the same room and sharing this experience.

Things became even more interesting when her husband and another friend joined us. Suddenly there were jokes going around about how cool Vlad was. As I was a few drinks in, there was a bit more back seating going on, and that was totally cool. By the time I finished my quest, we all had some good laughs at the misfortunes of the peons of the land.

As Keri drove me to the airport, we talked about how it would be fun to live closer to one another so that we could both just play this game in the same room and compare our stories. It also made me realize just how much I miss having friends over to play video games. To talk smack at someone else’s failure. To be in awe after a friend brings down a difficult boss. To just share in the enjoyment that is exploring a virtual world together while sipping on an adult beverage and consuming junk food.

Monday Gaming Diary: Witnessing Vlad the Heartless

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Alistair is not amused.

Alistair is not amused.

SGR editor Chris came in town this weekend to 1) hang out, 2) drink beer, and 3) take family photos. While he was here, he hooked his PC up to my office TV to show me just how awful Vlad the Heartless is to Ferelden and everyone who falls in his wake.

I promise I didn’t backseat game; well, I did after I had a few beers in me, but that’s to be expected.

What’s most amazing to me is not how awful of a Grey Warden Vlad the Heartless really is, but how different our games were in so many ways. Everyone reacts to him so differently, he has different dialogue options pop up, and holy cow I didn’t know Alistair could be so mean. Since I worked toward romancing the guy, of course he was always nice to me, so I never witnessed the side of him when he hates someone like he hates Vlad. It was chilling. Even more chilling was seeing what it was like when Morrigan likes someone. She hated me because I was such a paragon, but apparently when you give a fuck about no none except yourself and your mission, she finds that hot.

Vlad was running through the Temple of Andraste’s Ashes to obtain a pinch of ashes to cure the Arl of Redcliffe (although he would have let the Arl die if he could have) when I started my viewing session. Vlad’s MO is to kill anyone he is able to kill. If the option ever pops up to attack a person, he will, whether he’s talked to them first or not. The amount of dead bodies he left behind was staggering. First he chased off Brother Genitivi, then he told the cultists he’d defile the ashes, defiled the ashes, and then he killed the cultists after they brought him into their order and praised him. He killed Zevran as soon as Zevran tried to join the party. He didn’t try to talk Leliana into staying after he defiled the ashes. When he went to the Circle of the Magi, he honestly debated killing all the mages and he would have if the idea of having a healer in his party didn’t appeal to him so much.

I was either in a state of shock at how awful the game could get or laughing really hard at the responses to his choices. It also made me want to start another playthrough or two of Dragon Age: Origins. God that game is just so amazing. I truly wonder if Inquisition will have that kind of hold on me where I’d want to see how different choices affect the outcome. DAO just seems to have so many more moving parts than DAI.

I kind of wish I could watch Chris play the rest of the game. I can’t wait to hear what he chooses at the end of the Circle of Magi and the Orzammar main quests. I’m dying to know how his endgame is going to go. It’s going to be so vastly different from my own.

The Corner of Randomness: Forging Your Own Story

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Why must you be so addicting?

Why must you be so addicting?

If you happen to listen to the SGR Coffee Break, then you know I am addicted to Elite: Dangerous. The addiction runs deep, and I have no intentions of fighting it or trying to rid myself of this disease. Over the weekend, I was chatting with a friend about it and started to realize just why this game is so fun for me.

Elite: Dangerous doesn’t have a story. It doesn’t hold your hand and point you where to go. You get some basic flight tutorials, and then the game releases you into the black and you decide what to do next. You make your own story. You decide how the game will play out during your stay. It is up to you to utilize the mechanics that the developers have put in place. It is this freedom that keeps me hooked.

This isn’t the first game to really do this, however. Minecraft is a game I still play and I still deeply love. It is much the same ordeal as well. You make your own story. You do what you want with the tools provided to you. Heck, even Demon’s Souls/Dark Souls/Dark Souls 2 are fairly open in such a way that you forge your story. Sure, the souls games do have a story, of sorts, but these games allow you to find it. It’s more of a stretch, but that same freedom to roam the virtual world and not be told what needs to be done at a specific point is what really makes that series so mind-numbingly fun for me.

Then we get to today. Here I am, playing the bejesus out of Monster Hunter 4 Ultimate. Like so many games on this list, this game provides me some tools and a world, but it is up to me to make my story. Yeah, it can be a bit grindy to have to constantly go farm for materials, but I still do it and I have a lot of fun while doing it.

I understand that these types of games are not for everyone, yet I am so thankful that they exist. Dare I say, they are probably my favorite genre of games? There is just something about being able to talk to other players and realize everyone has had a different experience, a different story, and a different view of how best to play these games. Hmmm, I think I need to go kill a few monsters to farm some pelts now!

Monday Gaming Diary: This is Why I’m Not a PC Gamer

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10887364_804141632980986_9096888888711947381_oI was supposed to review Homeworld Remastered for work. I received some lovely hands-on time with the games at PAX South, I got pumped, and I was even more excited when I learned I would receive a review code. However, I couldn’t get the Remastered games to work.

During the preview/beta phase, I assumed it was part of some of the glitches with the setup on Steam. I didn’t reach out to tech support as I was busy trying to review other things, including The Order: 1886. Once the full game was unlocked for reviewers, I sat down and got ready to enjoy some old-school RTS greatness.

Yeah, not so much.

My game would crash every time I tried to load it. I could play the Classic version with no problems, but the Remastered version is what I needed to review. I talked to tech support, but the only thing they had info on was problems with AMD processors, something I do not have. After crying about it to Chris, he tapped into my PC via remote access and tried to sort out my issue.

Diagnosis: old graphics card is old. Gearbox tech support confirmed the same thing in far more words. Everything else on my PC is okay, but the graphics card was never meant for games of this caliber.

See, this is exactly why I’m not a PC gamer. I like slapping in a disc into my console and having everything work by magic. I have zero interest in constantly trying to maintain my PC to keep up with today’s demands in gaming. I sadly assumed that since my PC can handle Dragon Age Origins and several modern indies, why wouldn’t it be able to assume an RTS game from 1999? Okay so it’s been remastered, but I fail to see the difference. I’m not asking my PC to play The Witcher 3, FFS.

Chris has helped me find a decent graphics card that will work with my old PC and allow me to play some new games, such as Homeworld Remastered and Pillars of Eternity that releases this month.

Did you know that Pillars of Eternity is getting a strategy guide? SO MUCH EXCITEMENT.

So I guess I can’t put off the graphics card for too much longer. But if I have to start looking into uninstalling and reinstalling DLL files or DirectX updates or reconfiguring drivers for one PC game, I’m done. I’d rather replay The Order: 1886 where I have to watch all of those unskippable cut scenes again and again than deal with that crap.

You PC gamers are nuts. You can keep your Master Race.

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