No Game New Year part 8: Fable 2

Fable 2

Fable 2 was one of the first games I ever bought for my Xbox360. Indeed, this was one of the reasons I chose the Xbox360 over the Playstation 3; I’d enjoyed the first Fable game and was eager to continue the story. It took me nearly two years to get from one side of the game to the other, purely because I kept getting distracted by other games. To be honest, this happens almost every time I play any role-playing game, and more is the pity because it means that I’ve only ever finished a couple of them. (Before now, that would be the first Fable Game, both Knights of the Old Republic games and Final Fantasy 1.)

I’ve heard a lot of publicity of from Peter Molyneux that Fable was supposed to be a unique role-playing experience. And I guess in many ways, he’s right – but not for the usual reasons. Here are some significant differences:

 

Character Classes and Development

Usually with Role-playing games you create your character at the start of the game based on how you want to play the game. You would normally choose ‘classes’ based on how you wanted your character to deal with certain situations, and they would normally be variations on the Dungeons and Dragons-style archetypes of Fighter, Wizard or Rogue, (but not very often Cleric, funnily enough. I suspect this is to do with the Cleric being a supporting character, and with no party to support, this class would be a bit redundant in most games!)

In Fable, this doesn’t really happen. Your character always starts in the same way, with a basic set of attacks, but evolves over time based on how you play the game. They can be upgraded based on Strength, Skill and Will. But here’s the thing: You can’t just pick one. If you’re going to make an effective character, you have to take at least some elements of all three.

For example, say you’re making a Rogue character. (This was my choice, as I wanted to create an evil assassin-like character, more on this later.) You would think that the Skill abilities would be the best ones to upgrade, and they are – but they’re not the only ones. The game doesn’t really have a stealth system, so most of the Skill-based abilities concern the way you shoot your ranged weapons, and one of them gives you a dodge roll (I think.[1]) However, if you want your hero to be any good in melee combat at all you need to at least give them the Strength upgrades that gives them access to the combat moves, and investing in Will points isn’t a bad idea either as it gives access to a ‘time’ spell that can be used as a teleport. So, you can’t make a pure or ‘mono’ class. Apart from anything else, if you sink all your experience points into one path, you will find that you’ve run out of things to improve long before the game ends! I’ve not really tried playing through the game with a massive focus on any of the other classes, but you can’t for example make a pure Fighter as certain sections of the game do require you to cast spells, and you need at least some way to aim a ranged attack for the last boss. And being a pure Will user is not much use either because you won’t develop any extra hit points or any means to avoid damage, so as soon as the enemy breaks through you will be very vulnerable indeed. So the game almost forces you to take at least some measure of all three.

Incidentally, the archetypes are covered by the supporting cast, who do seem to be purely one kind of hero.

 

Alignment

I played the game to the end with an Evil character, for little reason other than in the three files I have saved onto my Xbox, the Evil character is the one where I’d made the most progress through the game and I wanted to wrap this up reasonably quickly...

This is probably one of two games where I’ve played an evil character and looked for the so-called ‘bad’ ending. I don’t usually like doing this because I hate being chided for my actions that I know are wrong, or ‘evil,’ during the game. However, because Fable 2 doesn’t take itself too seriously, and the consequences of evil actions are often quite comical (try sacrificing someone to the Temple of Shadows and listen to the guy’s reaction and you’ll see what I mean,) this time I didn’t mind playing an evil character too much. I ended up with a character that looked for the entire world like a Demon; grey skin, veined lines and horns, and people ran away from her[2] in terror when she approached. There were some foolhardy enough to marry her, and then she sacrificed them to the Temple. I won’t say it didn’t make me feel a little bad – immersion in the game is one of the reasons I play games, after all – but in general, this is one of the games where I didn’t mind being the evil character.

Incidentally, the other one was Star Wars: Jedi Academy. That was only because no matter how you play the game all the way though, the decision you make that gives you the ‘bad’ ending comes right at the end of the game and you’ve only got to do one more level anyway.

I did find it a little odd that the game doesn’t force one particular ending on you. Without spoiling any of the individual endings, at the end of the game you basically get to choose how it all turns out from a choice of three endings. One is obviously the good ending, one is the bad ending and one is the neutral ending.[3] Now, I’m glad it lets you choose at least the latter, because playing a neutral character in any game is surprisingly hard to do. Having vastly different motivations within the same character makes the game feel a little unbalanced; most quests that have a degree of morality in them have either a good or evil ending, and if you’re not consistent with your choices you might find playing the game a rather strange experience. However, Fable 2 seemed perfectly happy to allow me to choose the ‘good’ ending, even though by that point I was about as evil as you can get.

 

Voice Acting

Most games these days use voice actors to one degree or another, especially RPGs. And with enough talent, some of those voices can be stellar performances; I’m thinking mainly of Jennifer Hale here because nothing she’s ever lent her voice to came out badly, that I’m aware of. And I keep seeing her name coming up in voice-acting credits, so she seems like a pretty big name!

Fable 2 differs from this in the sense that its supporting class are people I’ve actually heard of. I’m not sure how famous the British actors are in America, but Zoe Wanamaker was very good as the sage-like-but-slightly-creepy seer Teresa. People from the UK would recognise her as Susan from the TV Sitcom My Family, and our friends in America are more likely to remember her as Madame Hooch from Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s (Philosopher’s) Stone. Julia Sawalha was a surprising choice for bulky fighter Hammer, but she did a very good job. I’ll always remember her as Saffy from the TV Sitcom Absolutely Fabulous, but if you’ve ever seen the film Chicken Run, she performed the voice of Ginger. Ron Glass (I think he’s American) put in a good performance as the Will User Garth, and I’ll always remember him as Shepherd Book in the brilliant Firefly. However, the best character for me is undoubtedly Reaver, voiced by the always-excellent Steven Fry. It would have been so easy to make the evil rogue a shadowy assassin in a cowl, but they really gave the character its own lease of life and Fry’s performance was incredible. I’m told he appears in Fable 3 which I also have but have never played; I’m looking forward to seeing how he’s developed in the later game!

So, Fable 2 takes itself less seriously than other role-playing games, and for that reason I think I had a lot more fun with it than I had with, say, Skyrim and Dragon Age. Not that those are bad games, but Fable’s pacing just made it a little bit more fun. I’ll keep the game for now as I’d like to finish it with the other characters, but I’ll put that on the back-burner as I might try something a little different for next week

---

[1] At the time of writing, the Fable Wiki was either so poorly coded or had such a lot of traffic on it that it froze up the moment I tried to take it past the first page. This makes research for this game a little bit more difficult than I would have liked, so you should be aware that I am making educated guesses for some of this.

[2] Don’t ask me why, but where there is a choice, I generally prefer to play female characters. It’s just my ‘thing.’

[3] The same was the case in the first Fable game as well, except that there was no ‘neutral’ option.

No Game New Year: Space Jam

Space Jam

Space Jam was a game I bought about 5 or 6 years ago. It’s a PS1 game and I played it on my sister’s PS2. However, I first played it I think in 1998 at my friend Matt’s house; for some strange reason I loved it at the time, and I wanted to play it every time I went around. It is of course a game based on the Looney Tunes film of the same name that I don’t think I’ve ever actually seen. And in hindsight, I realise that it’s not very good at all…

The basic premise of the game is that it is a 3-on-3 basketball game between the Looney Tunes and the Monstars. In a friendly game you can also have Michael Jordan, who features in the film. The game functions, but nothing more. The graphics are cartoon-y, as you might expect, but quite low-res. The sound is a few different samples and some very repetitive commentary from an announcer. And the game play is what I can only describe as ‘arcade-y.’

To be fair, it is a Looney Tunes game and was never going to take itself too seriously. And the game was published in 1996, when games were still being published for the previous generation (SNES/Megadrive,) so maybe I shouldn’t be expecting too much in terms of the game’s content. Perhaps it hails from an era where it was perfectly acceptable to have two modes in a game. Perhaps the fact that you couldn’t save your progress – or have any real reason to do so – wasn’t so unusual back then. And perhaps the fact that I don’t actually know anything about Basketball other than how to score means that I actually prefer the arcade style of play over a simulation (I certainly had more fun with this than when I tried EA’s NBA game in 2004.) But it still had to be fun, and knowing a lot more than I did before about video games, I don’t honestly feel justified in trying to defend it after all this time.

The gameplay itself presents very little challenge. The main rules for basketball apply, what few of them I know, anyway! I didn’t actually know what goal-tending was until I’d been caught out by it a few times, and I still don’t know what rebounds are. You just pick up the ball, run from one side of the court to the other, and attempt either a two-point or thee-point shot depending on how high your character’s Shooting skill is. Some characters can handle three-point shots as long as there’s no-one in the way, but with some others, you’re better off heading for a slam-dunk. Scoring is pretty easy, and if the Monstars have the ball, it’s simply a case of hammering the X button and stealing the ball away from them. Apart from the fact that the graphics style sometimes makes it hard to see what’s actually going on, there’s really not a lot to it. The only time I so much as went into a quarter with a lower score than my opponents was the very first game when I was still working out the buttons.

The two modes available are ‘Play game,’ which is a single match, and ‘Intergalactic Tournament.’ The latter is nowhere near as good as it sounds, but it is the ‘campaign mode’ for the game so this is where I focussed my attention. It does at least involve some strategy, if not very much: You have to win five basketball games in a row, which purport to increase in difficulty but I didn’t notice. And you have to do it without Michael Jordan, as the main staple of the film doesn’t actually appear in the main part of the game. Who knew? At the start of the game you pick a Team Captain, and he (or she!) participates in every game. You want a good player for this, and the best ones are either Bugs Bunny or the Tasmanian Devil. You then pick two other players, but – and here’s the strategic part – you can only use them once. So if you use your best players in the first game, you might find some difficulty in the later games when you’ve only got your weak characters left. I tried to have a nice balance of abilities, which consist of Speed, Shooting and Rebounds and are assessed on a scale of 1 to 3, but I didn’t find it made a massive amount of difference other than the aforementioned shooting ability. In the end, you get through all 11 Looney Tunes characters, which for the record are: Bugs Bunny, the Tasmanian Devil, Lola Bunny, Sylvester, Wile E. Coyote, Foghorn Leghorn, Elmer Fudd, Yosamite Sam, Daffy Duck, Pepe Le Pew and Porky Pig. When I won the tournament, the ending sequence was some minor Looney Tunes characters whose names escape me throwing Bugs Bunny (my team captain) into the air while he holds the cup, and a zeppelin goes across the sky congratulating him. The comment specifically relates to Bugs Bunny so I would imagine if I’d have done it with one of the other characters it might have said something different, but that’s really the only replay value in this – and let’s be honest, do you really want to hear what it says about Pepe Le Pew?

In between quarters you can take part in mini-games based around certain characters that will increase some of your team’s stats if you succeed. There’s a Micro-Machines style space race, a shootout, and a shooting gallery. Also, at half time, you can search the locker room to find some special water bottles (I’m assuming this relates to something that happens in the film?) and I have never, EVER managed to win this one. It does a lot to improve the pacing of the game, but the only one that I found makes a difference is the racing level, which if you win increases your speed substantially.

Incidentally, I think part of the reason why I found so little challenge in the game, and remember that I don’t really know anything about Basketball, was that when I inspected the options menu afterwards, I found that the game defaults to Easy. I’m not entirely sure why it does this, given that most games either make you choose before you begin or defaults to the middle difficulty level. Perhaps if I went through the game again I might see a bit more of a challenge, but to be honest, it’s taken me sixteen years to get from one side of the game to the other, so I doubt I can be bothered to go through it all again.

One good bit about the game is the soundtrack. It’s limited in content – this is a mid-90s game after all – but I quite like the background music for Playstation games. I think it’s to do with the fact that CD quality audio was a pretty new thing to be able to put on console games back then. The Playstation was the first console to really get it right with CD-based games; earlier attempts had fallen flat on their faces simply because the technology wasn’t quite there yet. Later generations did a lot to meld the soundtrack in with the activities going on in the game, but with a much wider scope available for the soundtrack in terms of hardware capability, many PS1 developers took it upon themselves to make some very memorable background music. Space Jam was an example of this, as some of the tunes – the Space Race and Shootout games in particular – were actually quite good.

To conclude, I doubt I’ll be playing this one again, and in the spirit of the No Game New Year challenge, I shall be saying goodbye to it at some point. Not sure what I’m going to do with it yet as I’m not confident in selling things on Ebay and I can’t think of a great many people who still own a machine capable of playing it – but you never know.

No Game New Year: Finished GTA 5, Cheating and a Week Off

Ado guys, here with my weekly update.

Week Off

First thing's first: Don't expect to hear from me next week or the week after, or if you do, it will be significantly shorter than usual. Reason is my girlfriend's going to be staying with me for all of the week after next so I won't have time to write my blog.

Now, when I put it like that, it makes the relationship seem a lot more arbitrary/under the thumb than it actually is, so for the benefit of the No Game New Year guys who probably don't know this, I think I'd better explain the situation:

First, yes, she is the girl in the photo. Amy is her name. We got together three and a half years ago, and for most of that time have lived 90 miles apart. This means that we don't get to see one another anywhere near as often as we would like; at the moment we see each other once every two weekends. Amy is not a 'gamer' in the usual sense; she'll play some games now and again if she's in to the intellectual property (any of the Lego games, and Lord of the Rings!) but she wouldn't do what I do and sit down with a game for hours trying to finish it. As we see so little of each other, I don't want to take up too much of the time we do get to spend together writing blogs into which she can't have any input. The reason she'll be staying with me all week next week (beginning Feb 17th) is because we both work in schools; we're not usually allowed to take time off during term, but in the UK we get 3 'half term' breaks every 6 or 7 weeks and we generally stay with one another during that week. We might play some games, in which case I'll write about it at the end of the week after - but it won't be anything major.

Cheating (sort of:) Open R.A.

So I've downloaded a new game onto my laptop, Open R.A. which stands for Open Red Alert. I've come across some Open games and they're basically remakes and free downloads of so-called 'Abandonware' - games that you can no longer buy from the publishers. I've also got Open T.T.D, which is Transport Tycoon Deluxe, which I downloaded several years ago and hope to tackle again during the challenge. I downloaded Open R.A. under recommendation from TotalBiscuit, who did a video of it last week. I've really wanted to have a go at Command and Conquer again so this seemed an ideal way to do it.

Now, in the spirit of the No Game New Year challenge, I probably shouldn't have done this, but I think I can get away with it for the following reasons:

1. It was a free download so I didn't spend any money on the game, and I've been downloading games off Xbox Live from my Gold membership since September so it's about as legal as that;
2. I actually already own Command and Conquer: Red Alert, so I guess you could look at it as replacing a game I already owned. Why does it need replacing? Well, the version I've got was designed for Windows 95, so I really can't see it working on Windows 7. It also comes with mods to play Tiberian Dawn and Dune 2000, and I never owned either so perhaps this doesn't count - but again, I didn't play any money for them.
3. I'm really not sure for how long you're going to be able to download this. Correct me if I'm wrong here, but I thought the rule for Abandonware is that had to no longer be possible to buy the original game for it to count. You can still buy all the Command and Conquer games from the Command and Conquer website, so Red Alert is not abandonware, therefor I'm not entirely sure that an Open version of the game is legal. I may have only had a very limited window of opportunity to get the game, so I took it.

I haven't played the game yet so I haven't got a clue how it works; that will wait for a future video.

Finished GTA 5. Finally!

I think last Tuesday I finally got to the end of Grand Theft Auto V. Or at least, I completed all the main story missions. Didn't quite manage all the Strangers and Freaks missions, and the game reckons I've still only finished 79% of it. Some of it I found impossible; Trevor's missions where he has to locate various people based on segments of the map that are shown in photo-form on his phone are horribly difficult simply because I don't know what part of the form it refers to. But as the plot thickened towards the end, I found myself wanting to play the story missions more and more to see where it was going.

*SPOILER ALERT*

I have conflicting opinions about the last few missions of the game. After being put in a significant amount of danger from the story's main antagonist, the three characters Michael, Trevor and Franklin decided to deal with him once and for all - and also, three other characters that have antagonised them along the way. Interestingly, they decide to kill the characters that have antagonised not themselves, but one of the others, to keep suspicion off each other. So, Michael kills Franklin's antagonist, Franklin kills Trevor's, and Trevor kills Michael's. They then capture the main antagonist and kill him

This was interesting enough given that the three assassinations required different approaches - Trevor has to be uncharacteristically careful, while Franklin has to do his from a vehicle - but given the scale of what the characters get themselves into earlier on in the game, the whole thing seemed a bit anti-climax. The earlier Heist missions, and even the shootout at the foundry that lead to the situation, were bigger in scope and a lot of fun to play out, and given some of the things you can do in Multiplayer mode - air combat, for one thing - it's a bit disappointing to never get to do those things in the main game.

That having been said, story-wise it was the best possible ending for all concerned and the scenes that followed were brilliant; the story could pretty much end there and I'd be happy.

*SPOILER OVER*

So, do I keep it or move it on? Well I'm going to keep it. For one thing, it would be nice to 100% it - however long it takes me. There's quite a bit of mileage left in the multiplayer mode as well and I would be very interested to see how it's developed in the future, I'm up to level 18 now. And I've still only got about a quarter of all possible achievement points, so I could look for some of those if I so wish - I could very well return to GTA V again.

But not now. It's time to move on. To what, I don't know - it's been a long game and I might look for something a bit light-hearted to play next!

See you all soon!

Matt

Dnd Next: Is it any good? Part 5

This week, my blog focusses less on the actual rules, most of which have been covered, and more on the way some of those rules can apply.

Before we kicked off last week's session, one of my players who's playing the Human Fighter asked if we could come up with a way of using a rope as a lasso. The concept was that she'd spent some downtime between adventures on a ranch, and learned how to do it. There is no specific rule yet that covers this sort of thing, but thankfully I found that the rules were flexible enough to make it work:

What I decided to do is to run it as a modified grapple attack. Usually this would work with a contest between the Attacker's Strength and his target's Strength or Dexterity, whichever was higher. I decided to do the same except that the attack was ranged (didn't decide on a maximum range but I reckon half the length of the rope ought to do it) so the contest would start from the attacker's Dexterity. So, in effect, using the rope in this way is a ranged grapple. This gives my player less chance at success - his DEX is lower than his STR - but he can attempt to do it at a range.

I also said at the time that if the target's Dexterity bonus was higher or lower than the player's, then I'd apply an advantage or disadvantage either way. On reflection I don't think I'll be doing this as the advantage caused by the different attributes would be represented by the contest.

And that's about all I've got to say on that subject this week! Short, I know, but not much else came up as it wasn't a particularly combat-heavy session.

See you next week!

Matt

No Game New Year part 5: GTA Online and a better Blood Bowl competition...

Hi there!

GTA Online

So, with GTA 5 being the huge game it is, I'm still going through the story - roughly 80% of the way through it now - and I find myself with very little to say about it that I haven't already covered in previous blogs.

I have, however, been enjoying GTA Online a lot more as I've been looking to break out of the story mode from time to time. I've played quite a few multiplayer modes on the various games that I own and I'm really finding a lot of fun in this one now that I've got a better idea of what I'm doing. I'm still not all the way there and I'm constantly learning but hopefully I'll get some more hours out of it while I finish the story. After that I probably won't bother too much about it. My copy of the game is physical, so it runs off the disk, which means if I've got anything else in there it's not like I can go on the Xbox Dashboard and boot it up for a few death matches. I'd have to put the game in again, and while I write this, I am astonished at how lazy I'm getting with it!

So, two main things I like about GTA Online:

I think my favourite thing about the game is the variety of activities on offer that you can do at pretty much any time. Most games that have multiplayer has various modes that offer a different take on the core mechanic of the game. Gears of War, for example, is all team-based, and most of the variation in the multiplayer mode depends on who and how you kill. Whereas with GTA Online, you can go from a Deathmatch, Team Deathmatch, Last Man Standing, Racing, Parachute Jumping, Air Combat, Bike Racing, Tennis - and all of those games work really really well. It's actually hard to get bored doing any of those things because even if you do, you can go ahead and play somewhere else. And you can even just drive around the city if you prefer.

I also like the Level Up system. This is something I've come across in a number of games and most of the time it only serves to show how long various people have played the game. There are ways to level up more quickly but if all I did for a week were to play Far Cry Two online I'd be level 30 pretty much by default and it would make no difference to how I play. I'd still be rubbish. In GTA Online, it really does make a difference because certain missions, or 'jobs,' weapons and I think cars as well only become available when you go level up. For example, I'm currently at Level 12, and the game has only just decided I'm ready to use a SMG (Sub-machine gun.) Up until now my best weapon was a Micro-SMG. So I'm looking forward to seeing where I go in the future and what weapons will become available to me.

You can also increase your character stats but the only way I've found to do it is to run around all over the gaff until your stamina increases. That being said, bearing in mind it's got to take you all the way up to Level 100, perhaps the stats weren't increasing as quickly as I was expecting. But I see players who aren't much higher than me with significantly higher stats, almost maxed out in some situations.

Some highlights:

• Interrupting a fierce gun battle in a 4-player Death Match and taking both guys out before they realised what was happening,
• A 'you're a dick' moment where a guy pretty much let me win a race for 5 out of the 6 laps then rammed me off the road,
• A well-matched game of tennis that really could have gone either way but I managed to win.

Blood Bowl

Hoping for a better competition than last time, I entered the No-Game Nihilists into the Orc Toof cup. I levelled Hector the Weeper up and gave him Block. I also levelled up Dur Head-Wrencher the Ogre and gave him Grab, which allows him to move his opponents to pretty much any square he likes after a tackle except the one directly behind him. It was not until I tried to use this that I realised just how useful this would be...

• Game 1 vs Dwarf Anvils (Dwarf) Detlef Doolist got us off to a good start with a score after a fight, but then got injured in the following turn. Dagonet Huppert got another one in during the early part of the 2nd half thanks to a sweeping passing play from the two throwers. A counter-attack from the backline resulted in another pass from Gawain Rosluver and another point from Dagonet. Nihilists Win 3-0, and Woras the Mad levelled up; I gave him Block as ever.
• Game 2 vs Warpstone Wanderers (Skaven) The Skaven team started with a LOT of mercenaries. After a massive fight across the whole pitch and most of the first half, Skaven got one in just before halftime. Dagonet got a goal in halfway through the second half after a handoff from a lineman, but the Skaven team got another try from a pass play. We tried a desperate play to pull it back and force a draw, but for some reason our ball carrier was struck by lightning. Nihilists Lose, 2-1. Griswold the Punisher levelled up and was given Block, but Serange the Storyteller suffered a broken neck.
• Game 3: The Witches Fury (Dark Elves) After a long and bitter fight, the Nihilists scored at the end of the first half. A handoff between the two Catchers resulted in another try for us in the second, giving the Nihilists a Win 2-0. More remarkable was the ferocity with which we managed it; we achieved 4 Knockouts and 4 Casualties! Ardtrai the Boss-Eyed levelled up and was given Block, and the Thrower Arne Rolf levelled up as well; I gave him Accurate, hoping to improve my passing game for future competitions.

This was enough to get us into the playoffs, where for some reason there was only a final match between us and the Warpstone Wanderers...

• As this was the only team we lost against in the first round, we approached this with some trepidation. However, after forcing their ball carrier into the sidelines, Viscount Lutolf picked the throw-in up to score. After a gruelling battle, Skaven got a try, but Arnulf Ottman ran the ball up the wing and scored in the last moments of the match. No-Game Nihilists win 2-1, and that also meant that we won the Orc Toof Trophy!

See you next week...

DnD Next: Is it any good? Part 4

This week's entry focuses on the rules that relate to what happens at 2nd level, as this is what came up the most often during our session.

Wizard Feat: Sculpt Spells

This one caused some confusion amongst our Wizards, but once we'd worked it out we thought it was a pretty good rule. How it works is this:

"When you cast a spell that affects other creatures, you can choose a number of creatures equal to the spell’s level + 1. The chosen creatures automatically succeed on their saving throws against the spell, and they take no damage if they would normally take half damage from the spell."

Nice function but we struggled to find its application, since the whole point of casting spells that affect creatures is to do damage. Then we figured out that it's actually so that you can cast an Area-Of-Effect spell into a combat and avoid damaging your allies. This is a tactic I have seen employed in some coverage of video RPGs, where the player puts the Fighter forward to take on a horde of low-level monsters, and the Wizard casts an area-of-effect spell on the Fighter - who can take it - and kills the monsters surrounding him. It's not one I've ever seen put to use in a pen-and-paper RPG, and I've never been tempted to do it myself. I'm used to Warhammer and 40K where you can't usually deliberately target an attack of any kind at your own units, so it's never even occurred to me to try. Suddenly I'm now aware that it's a legitimate tactic to deliberately damage one of your allies for the greater good of further damaging the monsters surrounding him, and with this new rule Sculpt Spells, we might avoid even that. It's looking pretty good for Wizards!

Fighter Feat: Action Surge

I think this might have been a 4th Edition Feat at some point, where a fighter would get a bonus for burning an action point. As Action Points no longer exist in this edition of DnD, I guess Wizards had to come up with some way of making Fighters both interesting to play and having a reasonably large effect on Combat. I don't know about you, but when I've played Fighters in the past, they've rarely been the powerhouse of the party, instead taking the rather spongey role of soaking up as much damage as possible and keeping the heat of the Wizards and Rogues.

This new version of the feat Action Surge allows the players to take an additional action in one turn. There are a number of potential applications for this, not the least of them the notion that fighters can now attack twice in one turn. They can also use Hustle to close the distance between the enemies and follow it up with an attack, plus they can disengage if need be. I'm looking forward to seeing some creative use of this rule in future sessions!

Levelling up and Customisation

One problem that I have run into is that the beta rules as published don't allow for much customisation when it comes to levelling up. The players are on a track of feats and class features that they automatically get when levelling up, and there's no room for things like multiclassing and copying spell books (both were suggested to me during the session.)

I think this is more to do with the way the Ghosts of Dragonspear Castle adventure and rules were designed, rather than a flaw with the game, as I'm hoping the full game will allow you to do both of those things and much more. The problem is that this adventure was designed to be run at GenCon over a weekend, not an 8-week rotation at a roleplaying club. In terms of character design, taking a linear track in any kind of mid-long term environment is not going to entertain people for long.

It seems to me that what a lot of people are looking forward to seeing are the rules for character generation and the level-up progression. As they almost always take up the better part of just about every RPG rulebook I've ever read, I wasn't the slightest bit surprised to find that the part of the PDF that relates to the actual rules is about 10 pages long. What comes out of this remains to be seen but I can't imagine there won't be at least some space for customisation, given that this is what most people find the most interesting about their games - creating their own characters...

See you next time!

No Game New Year part 4: Progress with GTAV, an awful Blood Bowl competition and temptation...

Todays post may come across as a little negative but if it does it's not because of any ill feeling towards the challenge or anything like that, it's just that the balance of things that have happened this week won't necessarily come across too well when written down.

Temptation 1: Dust: Elysian Tail

So this week I had my first real temptation to jack it all in and buy a new game. You see, I've recently become a fan of TotalBiscuit, and in my quest to try and watch every single video the man has ever made (or at least, all of his WTF is... series,) I occasionally come across a game I want to try. This doesn't happen very often as TB is a PC gamer first and foremost, and I don't own a PC that even comes to within a country mile of being powerful enough to run most modern games, but sometimes he covers games that have come out on the Xbox360 as well, and depending on what he's said about the game, sometimes I feel compelled to give it a go.

The video I watched in this case was the one where he covers Dust: Elysian Tail. The game looked really good and I'd love to have a go with it. One of the great things about TotalBiscuit is that he often covers indie games. I love it when reviewers do this because there's tonnes of the things out there and I can't be bothered to trawl through all of them to find one that's any good. Don't get me wrong, I'd love to support indie developers. I think a lot of the time you get Triple-A games that have had huge development teams, massive production companies backing them and a large potential audience, and somewhere between the initial idea for the game and it's fourth or fifth iteration (I'm looking at you, Tony Hawks Pro Skater) they lose sight of what the game was trying to achieve in the first place. So if the indie developers have a small enough gig going on that they can maintain their vision for the game, AND make enough money to support themselves, I'm very happy to support them - if they come up with good games. If they don't, then I don't want to buy them, simple as that, so I'd like to thank TB and anybody else who covers indie games for being a part of the process of sorting out the good games from the bad ones.

By the way, just so we all know, I bought Brothers: A Tale of Two Sons on Total Biscuit's recommendation back in November, and Rad Raygun on the Happy Videogame Nerd's recommendation late last summer. I've finished both games so they probably won't come up again in this series. In the spirit of the challenge, I did not buy Dust: Elysian Tail, and I saved myself £9.99 (about $15). But I'll put that on the list of games I might buy next year, and see how it all looks then!

Grand Theft Auto Five

There isn't much I've got to say about this game in the rather major terms of storytelling and game mechanics that I've been talking about up until now, simply because I haven't had that much time with the game so there's not really all that much to say. The plot, as they say, is thickening, and I'm getting a lot more missions now that are conducive to the metaplot of the whole game now rather than 'filler.' It's a great, compelling story, but to be honest I'm at the point now where I'm looking forward to playing another game, and wondering what the next one is going to be. But I'm choosing to be hopeful that my victory over GTAV will be all the more sweeter for all of this.

That being said, there are still some aspects of the game that are fantastic and worth commenting on:

• For the longest time I didn't realise that you could reply to some of the emails that you are sent! I've already commented on how much Michaels issues resonate with me, and seeing the emails between Michael and his daughter Tracey were quite poignant for me because it reminds me that Michael's issues with his family aren't going away just because you're playing a game.
• I did, for the first time in a long time in any game, a bit of exploration that wasn't on the map, by which I mean there's no towns, missions, any reason for me to go there. I was, in fact, on my way to somewhere on the North side of the map (I forget the name of the town) and I tried to see if I could do it by driving an all-terrain vehicle up the mountain range blocking the most direct route. I didn't manage it in the end, but I'm determined to come back at some point and try again on a dirt bike. There's not many games in which I find entertainment by trying to traverse a difficult piece of ground! 
• Having now done several missions in a plane and/or helicopter, I have to say the flight mechanics of this game are superb and the best I've seen in any game in a long time. I don't really play air combat games anymore so this isn't saying much, but given that the controls for them the last time I tried (early 00's, at the latest) were either naff or overly complicated, it's nice to see that they're finally getting it right.

I don't remember playing much multiplayer, but the one time I did, I'm going to have to call out the douchebag who, on the Saving Ryan's Privates level, took it upon himself to climb into a tank, and destroy all the vehicles on the level so that nobody else could use them. Thanks for that, it was re-he-hearly good fun playing with you. Ass.

Blood Bowl

Oh dear Lord I've had a bad run of games this week. I took part in The Aerial Cup, and managed to lose every single game I played. This was partly due to my lack of tactical acumen, partly due to the fact that in any game where you can get screwed by the dice, you WILL get screwed by the dice, but mostly because the other teams were just better than me. Here's how it all went down:

I began by managing my team. The catcher Detlef Doolist went up to Level 3, and I gave him Diving Catch, which allows him to attempt a catch from both his square and all surrounding squares. Given how poorly this can turn out in games of Blood Bowl, I wanted to make sure he had as easy a time of this as possible. I also levelled up my other catcher, Dagonet Hupper, and gave him Sure Feet which allows him to re-roll Go For It rolls.

*Go For It: The last two possible squares of movement for any player are Go For It squares, where the player is expending a little more energy and taking a risk in making the manoeuvre. You have to make and pass a 'go for it' roll, or he will fall flat on his face and the turn will be over. I usually ignore it but twice last competition it was the difference between winning and losing so if I'm going to rely on it, I might as well give them a little something extra!*

Given that I rated my catchers and blitzers but didn't think much of my linemen, I signed a new player: Griswold the Angry. He was a Level 5 beast with Strip Ball (if you push the ball carrier he will drop the ball, whatever else happens) +1 armour and +1 strength, and sure hands. I also sacked Arnul the Beloved, as I had yet to use him and he wasn't doing me much good on the sidelines.

So, on to the games:

• Game 1 vs The gur'klash Murderers (Chaos) We got off to a promising start with my blitzer, Arnulf Ottman, benefitting from training and gaining +1 Strength for the match, but they had a Star Player, Grashnik Blackhoof (I think. My handwriting is bad to the point where even I can't read what I've written...) After a huge fight including several KOs from both sides and my other blitzer, Viscount Lutolf, suffering a  gouged eye, Chaos scored a well-deserved try. In the second half, the team busted through my appallingly leaky defence to score a second try. A good passing play from Arnulf Ottman to Detlef Doolist got the Nihilists a try, but it wasn't enough to save the game. No-Team Nihilists Lose, 1-2.
• Game 2 vs Da Spitgob Dribblerz (Goblins) There were no trys in the first half of the game, partly due to a scrappy set of passes from the goblins, and partly due to my linemen's complete inability to pick up a ball. In the second half, the goblins scored a point right before the end, we didn't manage to respond and Nihilists Lose, 1-0.
• Game 3 vs Noxious Nibblers (Skaven) Unfortunately for us, our training failed and the recently levelled-up Dagonet couldn't play. And if that wasn't bad enough, a pitch invasion knackered most of my team before the starting whistle had blown. The gutter runners got an early point - Christ, the Skaven are fast! We tried for a point near the end of the first half but the blitzer failed his Go For It roll. In the second half, the Skaven scored another easy, slippery try. Serange the Storyteller got in a late point, but it was purely to improve his stats as it was too little too late for his team. Nihilists lose, 2-1. Serange and Jek the Anti levelled up, and Block was given as a skill to both of them as this would in theory sort out a lot of what was going wrong with the dice.

Because of the way the competitions at this level work, we weren't out of the runnings yet, though our sponsors were not going to be happy:

• Playoffs: Noxious Nibblers This game got off to an absolutely appalling start when my throwers shoved a gutter runner into a clear path to the goal! They snuck another one in towards the end due to a mis-placed tackled. After one of my linemen narrowly escaped death, the gutter runners scored again. Enan the Applauder got one in after a huge fight, but with Skaven scoring again in the dying moments, we never had a chance. Nihilists Lose, 4-1.

However, Arne Rolf, one of my throwers, did win Best Passer of the game, so it can't be all that bad, can it? Well, let's hope it gets better for next time...