A place for things and stuff
They are making a Tetris movie! Penny Arcade made fun of this notion way back in 2003, but they are doing it for real! I am not sure why, but they are. It might be crazy enough to work, but I am pretty sure this is going to be flaming pile of garbage. We will see though.
So last night I decided that I wanted to play some Destiny, but instead Lizard Squad decided that they would go and DDoS (distributed denial-of-service) Activision, so instead I got to play a screen that said I couldn’t connect to Bungie’s servers, and that I should look up the error code “cattle”. Now this is Lizard Squad’s fault, but really if Activision wants give me always online games they need to be prepared for guys like this coming to take them down. A lot. Because these guys love ruining people’s day, or night in this case.
As more and more games try and deliver always online experiences the more stuff like this is going to happen. Now if Destiny had allowed an offline mode that let me play single player I would have had a lot of fun, but no, this new MMO style setup let people like Lizard Squad rain on my fun. The more we rely on the cloud and services like Xbox Live and PS+, the more power we give jerks with a bunch of malwared-up computers. So developers are either going to need to do a better job of protecting their servers from these guys, or give us more ways to play their games.
I hope they are going to do both that way I don’t have a lot of wasted Sunday nights watching loading bars and disconnection screens. Those are not very fun games, though I might be more willing to play them provided they gave me loot for it!
What is Destiny? This is a question that I think that the developer Bungie should have asked themselves more. Because this game lacks a clear focus. Before I get too far in to this, I would like to say that I do actually like this game it just has several odd oversights that hold it back from being truly special. If you had told me Bungie was going to merge Halo and Borderlands, and then add in a little Guild Wars I would have been ecstatic, but the problem is that they don’t do any one of those games enough.
The game starts like any good MMO does with character creation, and this is one of the best character creators in recent memory. You can create your character fast, and they look great, but then it doesn’t matter since you will have a helmet and power armor on that will make you look like everyone else. So everyone plays as androgynous power armor person.
The helmet comes off in “The Tower” which they call the “social area”, so you would think that you would then be able to socialize with people, but you would be wrong. You can dance and wave at people, but you can’t do anything else. So if you want to chat with someone you need to quick remember their name go in to the menu and try and invite them to your Fire Team. This will then make them reload the same zone, and then you can talk with them, but by the time you have done all the menu navigation they will have left. So pretty much The Tower is were you complete quests, buy stuff, and get items identified.
Speaking of items, this game wants you to think it is like Borderlands with tons of cool loot, but it is not. Sure you do get new items, but they are all pretty much upgrades of the stuff you had before, some have skill upgrades, but they really aren’t super cool. It is just better than your old stuff. Which is nice, but there is rarely that “Awesome Thing!” moment.
Similarly while you do level up and gain skills, there is no tree. You don’t get to make a lot of choices. Something like the grenade skill you get to choose which grenade you want active, but there is not a lot more to it than that. Every player of the same type will have the exact same skill set as you. It is a shame because that is half the fun of leveling up.
Then there is the story. Man it is lame. Dark versus light, The Fallen, I think they thought that being super in your face with the names of stuff would be cool, but instead it is just boring, and all the actors seem to think the same thing. They are all phoning it in. For such a large scale game it is pretty amazing they didn’t get someone with some real skill to write this game.
Like other MMOs this game has the ability to let you out and explore and do random quests, but the problem is that there is nothing to really explore. You go through everything in the story mode, so you can pretty much just wander around in the same places again, but this time with crappy fetch quests. Huzzah!
The PVP feels like a watered down Halo. It kind of controls the same, but since you bring in your weapons and skills it lacks that needed to rush to get the cool weapon, and then the more leveled up characters will have a major advantage since they have access to all their skills. Sure they do make all the guns do around the same amount damage, but if you have a cool gun that has a five round burst instead of three, the gun doesn’t loose that ability. You just get that advantage.
I like this game, and it is fun to play, but it just fell short in so many areas. I was hoping for the next best thing, but instead what I got was a well polished generic shooter. I am pretty sure that generic shooter wasn’t what Bungie was going for when they asked themselves “What is Destiny?”
I haven’t had much time with Destiny yet, but I have a couple of amusing things to point out. If you buy the Xbox 360 version of Destiny you get the Xbox One version free, likewise if you buy the PS3 version you get the PS4 version free, so of course I had to fire up the 360 version to see how it looks, and after playing the Xbox One version it is hard to look at.
It has jagged edges all over the place, the textures show seams, it is hard to go back. Still it is nice to have another place to play Destiny if I need to, and the characters move back and forth between the versions flawlessly. It is just impressive with all the flack that we give the Xbox One for not being “truly” next gen just how much better it looks than the 360, at least in Destiny’s case.
What is also fun, is that if you play between the versions you get the achievements twice with no extra effort. All I had to do was log in to the 360 version and I got all the achievements I had earned in the Xbox One version. I don’t know if they are going to close that loophole, but besides just being a better deal to buy the 360 version it is also super easy to pad your Gamer Score.
Other than that this game is very similar to the beta, but it seems to look and play a little better. I will do a proper review later, but I thought I would share my current double console experiences.
I already touched on Fortnite by Epic Games a little bit in my PAX wrap-up, but I thought I would go a little more in depth for the three of you that read my blog. Well okay all two of you (sorry I included myself), but I love you guys!
Fortnite is as mash-up of Minecraft and a third person shooter. You start off with a stick and you run around hitting things to break them apart for their materials. Things like cars give you metal and gears, houses and trees give wood, and so on. Unlike Minecraft there is no mining. You can only harvest what is above the ground. However, just like Minecraft you use the materials that you gained to build better stuff. Like pick axes and guns, and of course the titular forts.
You will need to build goods forts too because when the zombies come, they come in force, and they destroy everything in their path. They will make you pray that you built enough bullets (Build a lot of bullets!). There are a good verity of zombies: there are the standard walk up to you and start to bite ones, ones that throw bombs, ones that explode, and even ones that throw other zombies. They will attack from all sides and above, so if you built a crappy fort, you will loose.
The game is fast paced and visceral meanwhile the graphics are fun and cheery. If I had one complaint it is that it looks a little too much like Team Fortress 2. Still that is a very minor complaint, and since this game is still in Pre-Alpha to Alpha, that may change. The other thing that I am worried about is how the Free-To-Play mechanics are going to work. It would be lame to come up against a team that just bought all the resources to win without trying.
The base of what they have now for Fortnite is fantastic, and I really hope that I get in to the upcoming closed alpha, because I really want to play some more. You can sign up for the alpha here. Keep your eye out for Fortnite because it may become your new video game addiction!