How I Got It
I did not pre-order this game. Sometimes you can get some cool items as part of your pre-order, most of the time this is not true. So, as my personal past experience has proven to me, if you just look around for highly anticipated games on release day, you can find some really cool deals out there (especially when many retailers will carry the game).
I had seen in the Sunday ad (thanks to my girlfriend Sarah) that Target was having a deal where you purchase the game for PS3 or 360, and you get a $10 giftcard (for free!).
So immediately when I got out of work yesterday (Tuesday March 9), I stopped at the nearby Target and purchased it (and of course before I left the store, I purchased some necessary food items with my newly acquired $10 giftcard).
Opening Scene
Now, I don't have a nice setup or anything, but I ended up watching the opening sequence on my 19 inch CRT TV. I know, it's terrible that I can't use the PS3's graphical powers to the fullest extent, but I'm more about story and gameplay anyway. Besides, there's one benefit to having a CRT anyway (see my video about why one would need a CRT here).
You open up with beautiful flowing cliffs and waterfalls and then "fly" into a city. It almost feels as though you're with the birds. It's a huge difference when compare to FFVII where you would still be able to see adjacent polygons get clipped because of overlapping each other (my friends and I used to called this "polygon fighting" because two adjacent polygons would "fight" to see which one came out visibly on top). Anyway, the range of motion with the characters throughout the intro are very fluid and look humanly natural. This has been evident in games as of late, but it still does not diminish the technical obstacles that need to be overcome to create something as impressive as that (being in the software industry, I have a great appreciation for this sort of thing).
The First 4 Hours: story/plot
I had read a few articles about this game and there are many varying feelings and some general overall gameplay opinions out there.
First I would like to say- the gameplay itself so far seems like a scripted RPG (similar to Uncharted/Uncharted 2). The plot advances very structurally and doesn't lend itself to world roaming. If there is a world to roam, I haven't gotten to it yet. But I sense that there won't be based on what I've read/heard.
The story takes place on Cocoon. The first hour or so you play as an able young woman named Lightning, a tough looking dude named Snow and an optimistic girl called Vanille. We also find out about a girl named Serah, comic relief character Sazh and a punk kid ironically named Hope (Hope, in all honesty, on several occasions in the beginning of the game, needs to grow a pair).
It introduces you to this world where fantasy and hard sci-fi intermingle (something that Final Fantasy VII and VIII fans longed for the franchise to come back to), and reveals the evil entity known only as the fal'Cie. It goes on to explain that there are fates worse than death, and individuals can be marked l'Cie- where the implications are realized immediately upon a certain plot point that I will not reveal.
Needless to say, I am deeply interested and enthralled in the story. I will definitely continue to play it through to see where it goes.
The First 4 Hours: character mechanics
First things first, you typically control only one person in battle, so you don't get the usual strategy of various characters. However, you learn quickly that there are various roles that all the characters can perform (Commando, Ravager, Sentinel, Medic, Synergist and Saboteur). Each role has its own strengths and weaknesses.
Each character increases his or her abilities by earning CP (I'm not 100% sure what it stands for, but it's probably Character/Customize Points or something similar). You augment skills, attributes and abilities- but the "track" you can augment is based on the role you wish to enhance.
You can actually upgrade all of your characters this way even though you can only control the "Leader" in battles (typically assigned, but I imagine later you can choose who will be the leader).
I think the coolest customizable options are Paradigms. It's basically a "mindset" for all your characters. For each paradigm you can set the role that each character will play, and usually for a a general overarching strategy. The AI is fairly diligent when you apply a Paradigm, so I'm excited to see how many interesting combinations that people come up with. You can see how the FFXII gambit system provided a lot of insight for a system like this.
The First 4 Hours: combat
FFXIII uses ATB (for those not familiar with it, it stands for Active Time Battle). Essentially it allows you to attack after a time bar fills up. However, in this game, they took it one more level. There are various commands that you can chain together for an entire attack. Attack takes one bar. But if your ATB bar is 3 bars long, you can do a 3-hit attack. But it give the flexibility to the player to attack with various hits and/or abilities by redeeming part of the character's ATB bar. I think it will come in handy when there are more advanced enemies that require chaining spells with attacks.
A new part of combat is the Chain Gauge. Each enemy has one and it increases typically when you hit the enemy more. Once it fills up, the enemy "staggers" and the bar drains. A lot of damage can be dealt to it in that state, and stagger wears off when the bar empties.
The pacing of the "normal" speed of battle is actually very fast and action packed. There's battle that looks like it would have been FMV cut scenes back in FFX, so there's always something pretty to look at. The ATB bar fills up quickly, and if you are the kind of person that likes to optimize, you're going to be in for a treat.
Conclusion
This is a nice start to the Final Fantasy 13 game. I will definitely continue playing it to see how it progresses. I hoped this initial review proved useful/interesting.
Thanks for reading!
Showing posts with label game. Show all posts
Showing posts with label game. Show all posts
Wednesday, March 10, 2010
Tuesday, February 23, 2010
Starcraft 2 BETA: my story and initial review
DISCLAIMER: Note, this is a BETA. Any and/or all of the observations made here may or may not be included in the final release. Starcraft and all references herein are owned by Blizzard Entertainment.
How I Came Across a BETA Key
Shortly after Blizzcon '08, I was feeling a little down for reasons related to my personal life (and odds are it had something to do with women too). Luckily for me, I had some awesome friends who went to Blizzcon and they gave me a feel better present.
"Here Nam, this should make you feel better," and he hands me a card and I look at it. It's a card with a BETA key for Starcraft 2. At the time, it made me feel a little bit better, but the reality didn't hit me yet. I would like to thank my friend Zubes for giving it to me. Thanks man.
It was the same when some of my other friends gave me a pre-order copy of SC2 for my birthday... in '08. It's actually been on pre-order for so long that I changed some of my verification information since then.
BETA Starts
I got word from my Starcraft enthusiast brother (7 years younger than me- but stays way more informed on SC happenings than I do) gave me a phone call to notify me that the SC2 BETA was live last week on Wednesday (2/17/2010). Awesome! It was confirmed by my friend who works at Blizzard later that day. That night I pulled out my BETA key card and registered my key and created a new battlenet account.
The tense part was the wait. After you register your key, you had to wait until Blizzard sent you a SC2 code to download the client. I waited 48 hours and finally decided "they'll send it to me whenever they'll send it to me."
Needless to say, I was not disappointed. Not more than 5 days later, I got an email on 2/22/2010 at 8:47pm saying "Congratulations, this is your invitation to the beta test for Blizzard Entertainment’s StarCraft® II: Wings of Liberty™!" Unfortunately I was out that evening and didn't get the email until about 11:15pm.
At that time, I immediately used the code to download the client. It was over one and a half GB and downloaded at about 1 MB every 3-5 seconds. It took over 2 hours. It was a weeknight and I needed to go to sleep so I could go to work the next day... but I wanted to see if I could play one game before I went to sleep. I started the install, and that took more than an hour- at which point I gave up and went to sleep (it was well past 3am).
I planned to wake up the next morning early so I could go to work early so I could leave work early to go home and play SC2. I told some co-workers about it and they told me that I had "some discipline." I went to work, thought about it all day (except for when I was thinking about my girlfriend of course!), and then drove home.
First Impression: GUI
I logged into the game and found the GUI to be pretty clean and smooth. I actually missed some of the old sound effects because I've played SC for probably a decade now, but the transition between screens is less jarring/sudden.
I feel like the buttons respond as expected. They are stylistically thinner, longer buttons than in the first game, but they work well.
The in-game control pane is very similar to the previous game and intuitive to anyone who has played SC before. The observable menu gives you game options and help. The most useful part for strategizing is actually included in the game menu. It has a chart of each race's tech tree and a list of units all the units (with counter unit strengths and weaknesses). The only thing you seem to be missing is the upgrade/ability list.
The New Battlenet
Don't take my word as the end-all be-all, because I really only briefly looked at it. But the new battlenet system seems really good. Joining a game is a heck of a lot less hassle. Creating a game is easy as 1-click-2-click-3-click (there are a limited number of maps included in the BETA, but I imagine the map pools in the future will change the meta game as they are created and released).
For the BETA, they gave you practice games before they start rating you for "placement." Which I assume they would put in a group/bracket with people your own skill level. I think this is a great system because then you eliminate the gradient in skill level. Let's hope it actually works the way I think it does.
When creating a game in the BETA, I found out that you could wait for a human to join, or add a computer AI. If you added AI, only "Very Easy" difficulty was available. There were several speed settings, but the relevant ones seem to be "Fast" and "Faster". I am unsure of the 1v1 or 2v2 games can be created in the BETA. Once in, you may choose your race (as always), color and a handicap percentage. Everyone starts off at 100%, so I imagine if you choose a lower percentage, you will have more difficulty, however that percentage translates into the game (I did not experiment with it at all). As the game loads, it will show you a map preview with indicated spawn point and you can briefly plan your strategy.
First Game
Before the first game I played, I did not know that I could play a single player game against a computer. So I ended up playing against a human. It was a TvT on a 2 player map. I tried to do an early contain with a bunker contain outside of the enemy's natural expansion. I seemed to hold back the enemy pretty effectively. I applied pressure with Siege Tanks and eventually lost my hold. However, I took that opportunity to expand with a second CC.
After gaining the economic lead, the rest of the match was quite elementary as I just overran the opponent with a variety of units.
After it was over, I figuratively jumped for joy and looked at the statistics. Some of the same statistics from the first game are there, but the most notable addition (to me) was the build order tab. It allows you to compare any two players' build orders with time indicator up through the first few minutes. This will prove greatly important for hardcore strategists, pro players and SC/RTS enthusiasts.
General Gameplay Observations
Things that are similar to the original SC.
The races are the same. Some of the units are the same. There are units and buildings and you try and use it to defeat your opponent.
Things that differ than the original SC.
Instead of depending on just sounds alone, there is a text list that shows up on screen that notifies you of what has just finished (construction, research, unit creation, and other game notifications such as "Nuclear launch detected"). Very, VERY useful.
Many hotkeys have been changed. Some are no longer intuitive, but I understand what they were trying to do. If you get the chance to look through all the hotkeys, you'll notice that they are all mostly on the left side of the keyboard. I think this is done to reduce overall movement across the keyboard for speed and efficiency. Once you learn the hotkeys, I think your play will be better overall.
The F1 key helps you find idle resource gatherers. Other RTS games had this functionality already, but the first SC did not. They finally put it in, and it's useful.
Vespene geysers when depleted no longer yield any gas. This changes the economy of the game quite a bit. Cost of units and buildings have been scaled to be a multiple of 5 because resource gatherers now carry 5 resources (as opposed to 8 in SC) each trip.
"Smart" rally points for resource gatherers have them auto-mine when the rally point is set to a mineral patch or vespene geyser (with appropriate gas structure atop it).
Multiple building select- allows you to hotkey many buildings to one hotkey. You're probably wondering how they curbed the hotkey advantage for certain buildings with certain races? Well, I think their solution will take some getting used to, but the best situation that they could have come up with. If you want to me 5 units, you have to hit the hotkey 5 times. Even if you have 5 buildings selected, you must tap the hotkey 5 times to create 5 units (it does intelligently distribute production to idle buildings).
Cloaked/hidden/burrowed units are no longer detectable. You will not see a distortion where the hidden unit is. It is purely hidden from view without a detecting unit. There are still 2 detectors per race: one static structure and one mobile flying unit (as before).
One of my favorite new mechanics: you can queue up many actions in a unit's waypoint. In the first SC, I wanted to build buildings in a waypoint to queue them up (like scouting/evading patterns) but I could not. Now you can! Make plopping down 5 pylons all at once immensely easier.
Things that I thought were really cool additions.
The game will tell you when it thinks your computer is causing slowdown in the game! It suggests to close unnecessary programs and applications. AWESOME. You will no longer accuse everyone else of latency. It'll just freeze and everyone just waits.
When you're playing a game against a computer AI and you clearly defeat it- it will auto chat "gg" to you to indicate its surrender before you destroy every building!*
* For those of you unfamiliar, GG is an acronym for "Good game" usually messaged at the end of a game to informally signify the end of it. In Korean e-sports, this tradition eventually became the official signal from a player to indicate conceding of the game.
The Races
Luckily for you guys, I enjoy playing as all three races. I believe it helps get a better overall understanding of the game, and eases future strategizing. However, I was only able to play 6 games (3 VS "very easy" computers just to explore the tech tree of each race, and 3 practice games against humans).
I do not believe I can review the differences of each race yet, but give me some time and I should be able to. Let me just say that there are a TON of different units for each race, a TON of different upgrades and a TON of ridiculously crazy abilities.
I sense where this game is trying to take the Starcraft franchise to a place where it is less dependent on macro skill than micro skill. The abilities seem to play more of an important role in this game than before. But macro is still important because the change in economic momentum seems to differ enough that the economics I feel are more sensitive to harassment and tempo. I predict that many will find this game very fun, albeit different than the first one.
Whether it'll be as big as the first SC, no one knows. That's speculation. I decided to leave the decision for years down the line, after they patch it to make it perfect. Until then, it seems as though it's decently balanced enough for the casual player for now. I can't wait until the Koreans get a hold of this and show us how it's really done.
I hope you enjoyed. Thanks for reading.
How I Came Across a BETA Key
Shortly after Blizzcon '08, I was feeling a little down for reasons related to my personal life (and odds are it had something to do with women too). Luckily for me, I had some awesome friends who went to Blizzcon and they gave me a feel better present.
"Here Nam, this should make you feel better," and he hands me a card and I look at it. It's a card with a BETA key for Starcraft 2. At the time, it made me feel a little bit better, but the reality didn't hit me yet. I would like to thank my friend Zubes for giving it to me. Thanks man.
It was the same when some of my other friends gave me a pre-order copy of SC2 for my birthday... in '08. It's actually been on pre-order for so long that I changed some of my verification information since then.
BETA Starts
I got word from my Starcraft enthusiast brother (7 years younger than me- but stays way more informed on SC happenings than I do) gave me a phone call to notify me that the SC2 BETA was live last week on Wednesday (2/17/2010). Awesome! It was confirmed by my friend who works at Blizzard later that day. That night I pulled out my BETA key card and registered my key and created a new battlenet account.
The tense part was the wait. After you register your key, you had to wait until Blizzard sent you a SC2 code to download the client. I waited 48 hours and finally decided "they'll send it to me whenever they'll send it to me."
Needless to say, I was not disappointed. Not more than 5 days later, I got an email on 2/22/2010 at 8:47pm saying "Congratulations, this is your invitation to the beta test for Blizzard Entertainment’s StarCraft® II: Wings of Liberty™!" Unfortunately I was out that evening and didn't get the email until about 11:15pm.
At that time, I immediately used the code to download the client. It was over one and a half GB and downloaded at about 1 MB every 3-5 seconds. It took over 2 hours. It was a weeknight and I needed to go to sleep so I could go to work the next day... but I wanted to see if I could play one game before I went to sleep. I started the install, and that took more than an hour- at which point I gave up and went to sleep (it was well past 3am).
I planned to wake up the next morning early so I could go to work early so I could leave work early to go home and play SC2. I told some co-workers about it and they told me that I had "some discipline." I went to work, thought about it all day (except for when I was thinking about my girlfriend of course!), and then drove home.
First Impression: GUI
I logged into the game and found the GUI to be pretty clean and smooth. I actually missed some of the old sound effects because I've played SC for probably a decade now, but the transition between screens is less jarring/sudden.
I feel like the buttons respond as expected. They are stylistically thinner, longer buttons than in the first game, but they work well.
The in-game control pane is very similar to the previous game and intuitive to anyone who has played SC before. The observable menu gives you game options and help. The most useful part for strategizing is actually included in the game menu. It has a chart of each race's tech tree and a list of units all the units (with counter unit strengths and weaknesses). The only thing you seem to be missing is the upgrade/ability list.
The New Battlenet
Don't take my word as the end-all be-all, because I really only briefly looked at it. But the new battlenet system seems really good. Joining a game is a heck of a lot less hassle. Creating a game is easy as 1-click-2-click-3-click (there are a limited number of maps included in the BETA, but I imagine the map pools in the future will change the meta game as they are created and released).
For the BETA, they gave you practice games before they start rating you for "placement." Which I assume they would put in a group/bracket with people your own skill level. I think this is a great system because then you eliminate the gradient in skill level. Let's hope it actually works the way I think it does.
When creating a game in the BETA, I found out that you could wait for a human to join, or add a computer AI. If you added AI, only "Very Easy" difficulty was available. There were several speed settings, but the relevant ones seem to be "Fast" and "Faster". I am unsure of the 1v1 or 2v2 games can be created in the BETA. Once in, you may choose your race (as always), color and a handicap percentage. Everyone starts off at 100%, so I imagine if you choose a lower percentage, you will have more difficulty, however that percentage translates into the game (I did not experiment with it at all). As the game loads, it will show you a map preview with indicated spawn point and you can briefly plan your strategy.
First Game
Before the first game I played, I did not know that I could play a single player game against a computer. So I ended up playing against a human. It was a TvT on a 2 player map. I tried to do an early contain with a bunker contain outside of the enemy's natural expansion. I seemed to hold back the enemy pretty effectively. I applied pressure with Siege Tanks and eventually lost my hold. However, I took that opportunity to expand with a second CC.
After gaining the economic lead, the rest of the match was quite elementary as I just overran the opponent with a variety of units.
After it was over, I figuratively jumped for joy and looked at the statistics. Some of the same statistics from the first game are there, but the most notable addition (to me) was the build order tab. It allows you to compare any two players' build orders with time indicator up through the first few minutes. This will prove greatly important for hardcore strategists, pro players and SC/RTS enthusiasts.
General Gameplay Observations
Things that are similar to the original SC.
The races are the same. Some of the units are the same. There are units and buildings and you try and use it to defeat your opponent.
Things that differ than the original SC.
Instead of depending on just sounds alone, there is a text list that shows up on screen that notifies you of what has just finished (construction, research, unit creation, and other game notifications such as "Nuclear launch detected"). Very, VERY useful.
Many hotkeys have been changed. Some are no longer intuitive, but I understand what they were trying to do. If you get the chance to look through all the hotkeys, you'll notice that they are all mostly on the left side of the keyboard. I think this is done to reduce overall movement across the keyboard for speed and efficiency. Once you learn the hotkeys, I think your play will be better overall.
The F1 key helps you find idle resource gatherers. Other RTS games had this functionality already, but the first SC did not. They finally put it in, and it's useful.
Vespene geysers when depleted no longer yield any gas. This changes the economy of the game quite a bit. Cost of units and buildings have been scaled to be a multiple of 5 because resource gatherers now carry 5 resources (as opposed to 8 in SC) each trip.
"Smart" rally points for resource gatherers have them auto-mine when the rally point is set to a mineral patch or vespene geyser (with appropriate gas structure atop it).
Multiple building select- allows you to hotkey many buildings to one hotkey. You're probably wondering how they curbed the hotkey advantage for certain buildings with certain races? Well, I think their solution will take some getting used to, but the best situation that they could have come up with. If you want to me 5 units, you have to hit the hotkey 5 times. Even if you have 5 buildings selected, you must tap the hotkey 5 times to create 5 units (it does intelligently distribute production to idle buildings).
Cloaked/hidden/burrowed units are no longer detectable. You will not see a distortion where the hidden unit is. It is purely hidden from view without a detecting unit. There are still 2 detectors per race: one static structure and one mobile flying unit (as before).
One of my favorite new mechanics: you can queue up many actions in a unit's waypoint. In the first SC, I wanted to build buildings in a waypoint to queue them up (like scouting/evading patterns) but I could not. Now you can! Make plopping down 5 pylons all at once immensely easier.
Things that I thought were really cool additions.
The game will tell you when it thinks your computer is causing slowdown in the game! It suggests to close unnecessary programs and applications. AWESOME. You will no longer accuse everyone else of latency. It'll just freeze and everyone just waits.
When you're playing a game against a computer AI and you clearly defeat it- it will auto chat "gg" to you to indicate its surrender before you destroy every building!*
* For those of you unfamiliar, GG is an acronym for "Good game" usually messaged at the end of a game to informally signify the end of it. In Korean e-sports, this tradition eventually became the official signal from a player to indicate conceding of the game.
The Races
Luckily for you guys, I enjoy playing as all three races. I believe it helps get a better overall understanding of the game, and eases future strategizing. However, I was only able to play 6 games (3 VS "very easy" computers just to explore the tech tree of each race, and 3 practice games against humans).
I do not believe I can review the differences of each race yet, but give me some time and I should be able to. Let me just say that there are a TON of different units for each race, a TON of different upgrades and a TON of ridiculously crazy abilities.
I sense where this game is trying to take the Starcraft franchise to a place where it is less dependent on macro skill than micro skill. The abilities seem to play more of an important role in this game than before. But macro is still important because the change in economic momentum seems to differ enough that the economics I feel are more sensitive to harassment and tempo. I predict that many will find this game very fun, albeit different than the first one.
Whether it'll be as big as the first SC, no one knows. That's speculation. I decided to leave the decision for years down the line, after they patch it to make it perfect. Until then, it seems as though it's decently balanced enough for the casual player for now. I can't wait until the Koreans get a hold of this and show us how it's really done.
I hope you enjoyed. Thanks for reading.
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