Dungeons and Dragon Online! Deadly Dice!

Name:  Dungeon's and Dragons Online: Eberron Unlimited, DDO for short
Developer: Turbine
Year: 2006 
Platform: Pc.
Genre: Massive Multiplayer Online, (MMO)
Time Spent: Endless fun!


Intro: Ever since Uniflame told me I should play pen and paper DND with her I never regretted my choice. I play in 1 3.5 setting campaign and I am a Dungeon Master myself in a 3.5 campaign. I was really surprised when I heard there was an MMO for DnD and thus I started playing.
Although I have been playing for 3 years now (beeing online every now and then) I started playing more 6 months ago, and I am currently the proud owner of a lvl 20 character. Because of that milestone I decided to finally write a review


Story: Because this is an mmo it doesn't have a big story. After the character creation you start out as a shipwrecked person. Apparantly you were a mercenary, on your way to the famous city of Stormreach for riches and fame. However, an ice dragon made short work of that. After you get rescued by someone named jeets you regain some of your abilities and make it to the village of Korthos. Once there you try to save the villagers so you can continue your journey to stormreach.

Gameplay: Expect a huge chunk of info here!  Although DDO is based on DnD it has several differences. Although the main list can be found here. The main difference is that dnd takes place during turn of either a player or an npc while in DDO everything is realtime. You also encounter more enemies then in a regular campaign. Spellcasters aren't stuck with an amount of spells they can cast a day but use SP instead. Also, due to the fact that there are more enemies you have more HP then a PnP character.
You start out with character creation, races have several bonusus on the stats such as Dexterity, Intellegence or Charisma. So some races are better for for a certain class then other, although you can make whatever you want and make that crazy build you always wanted. Classes you can play are divided into 3 types.
1. Melee, these classes include Barbarian, Paladin, Fighter and Monk.
2. Caster, Wizard, Sorcerer, Cleric and Favourerd soul fit into this role
3. Specialist, Special characters such as Rogue, Ranger, Bard and Artificer.
To compensate for the 20 playable levels as a character ranks are implemeneted into the game. for every level you get 4 ranks and action points to spend on several nifty enhancements. These can incluse passive abilities such as extra hp (racial thoughness for instance) or nifty skills which can be used every time ( human versatility). The enhancements also contain the prestige classes a class can take. Rangers can become tempest Rangers this way and Wizards can become either an archmage or a palemaster. This gives you more options on your characters.

Ingame the most common rules that take place in PnP DnD also apply here. Barbarians run a bit faster. Someone with a high Charisma is a better haggler. For everything you do in a dungeon or quest you have to roll a dice or D20. This means that the damage you do might be random but overall I think the RNG in this games doesn't screw you. If you stick to your role everything usually will be fine since you picked the right skills for your class.... you did... didn't you?

One of the best things of this MMO though is the way it gives you quests. People claimed that this is a WoW clone and I have to disagree. Instead of 1 giant overworld with monsters everywhere you have dungeons. The entrance of a quest is marked and you can choose the difficulty yourself. The higher the difficulty though, the more exp you get. Once inside, most quests aren't even the standart instance you see in other MMO. Quests also contain puzzles you have to solve, traps that can only be disabled by a rogue or artificer. And runes that can only be used by caster types. Or even a door that is stuck that can only be opened with a bulky barbarian. You might not be the best damage dealer in the game but every class has its uses. Whatever you pick, in some quests you are NEEDED and WANTED. This gives the game a nice balance.

Audio/Visual: I am going to be shorter here, for the obvious reasons. Since this is a PC game graphics can be set as high or low as you want. But of course, if you don't have a high end PC like me, the higher the graphics, the lower the performance and unfortunately even the change from very low to low takes A lot of performance. If the graphics are turned to medium or higher you start to see a huge difference but it's too bad most people can't enjoy that. This game isn't very colourfull, but rather more realistic. Building's aren't all new and shiny, crypts have lots of dust and smudges and spider webs. The details are good in this game.

The music for this game isn't something spectacular. They fit the theme but get boring after a while of hanging out in the same area. However, this game has something special in store for you. A DM voice, yup. There is a dood or doodette that narrates you while you walk trough a new area or enter a quest. Although I mute the music and sometimes even the battle effects I always keep the DM voice on. "The Catacombs are slightly obscured by the murky water..." You just read that in an epic deep voice. A real nice addon to this game.


Verdict: Like I said before, I have been playing this game casually for a long time before I started to play more, and the reason for that is because it unfortunaly not very noob friendly. Building your character without information is hard. Grabbing the basic's, even with your PnP knowledge is hard and although people can be helpfull  you really need your own experience to really get it. It takes a while to get used to but once you are in it is great.
Gameplay:

Advanced with lots of options to choose from. Although hard to learn
Story:

Small stories per quest or quest chain but no overall line from lvl 1 to 20
Audio/ Visuals:

Nice graphics, but only for the people with higher end pc. Music also somewhat disappointing. DM is nice


Fun Facts: DDO...
... is free to play. You don't get acces to every race or class. And some later quests aren't available but
    you can become a lvl 20 character without paying once.
... has a favor system. If you do enough quests you get favor which can be used to unlock certain races
    or classes, play enough and half of the paid content is yours without paying a cent.
... can be played as a VIP with a monthly fee to gain content to everything. Want only 1 race/class
    or quest chain? You can also just buy that part standalone and it is yours forever without paying
    a monthly fee.
... has a build in voice chat. No need for teamspeak to chat with your friends.
... has no multiclass penalties unlike PnP DnD. Want to combine Rogue with Sorcerer and Paladin?
    Be my guest.

If this game seems interesting to you and you want to play. I play on the Khyber server, and I play in the awesome Shadow Crusader guild.

Uniflame Writes! A shopkeepers Tale, Recettear

Name: Recettear – An Item Shop’s Tale
Developer: EasyGameStation
Year: 2007
Platform: PC
Genre: Action Role Playing Game, Simulation Game

You know all those item shops you run into in various RPGs to get your food, gear and whatnot? Well this game is played from behind the counter of such an item shop. Recette is a naïve, easy going, optimistic but a bit of lazy girl who lives alone since her father left. She hasn’t worked a single day in her life, living from edible
herbs she found until a fairy named Tear notifies Recette that she will lose her house if she isn’t able to pay back her father’s debt. Because Recette has no income at all, Tear offers her to help set up an item shop so Recette can work, and earning money to pay the debt. That is as far as the plot goes, basically. The rest is all based on character interaction and the game is full of funny sketches.

In game you control mainly Recette. You go out shopping for items in the village, stock your shop and sell your items to meet your weekly payment. This may sound boring, but it is strangely addicting. You have many interactions with people and the will all try to haggle with you. Some people will pay more for your items than others and because items increase and decrease in value or popularity, running your shop efficient isn’t as easy as it sounds.

You can also hire several adventurers to explore dungeons for treasure, which you can then sell in your shop. In a dungeon you control the adventurer instead of Recette. You see all the monster on the map and you just kill them as you go. There are several dungeons and they are all full of traps. This is a nice addition to the game, but in my opinion you lose too much time compared to what you gain, and this will make it harder to reach the mark for  your weekly payments. If you happen to fail to make your weekly payment, you have to start again from the beginning, but you will keep all your items you own that moment and your current levels. This is the case for your level as a seller and the levels of your adventurers. If you have finished the game there are several more options. You can play in free mode, just running the shop without weekly payments, or start a new game plus. Before you know it you will be hooked and have spent many hours playing.

Fun facts about Recettear!

... Alouette, your rival, comes to investigate your shop in a carton box that came from amazon.

... Recettear uses many French names for characters and places.

... The news announcements usually also contain a random statement at the end that makes no 

    sense at all.

... Recette has some unexpected skills. Like herbalism, sewing skills, and knowledge of anatomy, 

    psysiology and nutrition.

Stab into the past. Assassin's Creed

Name:  Assassin's Creed

Developer: Ubisoft

Year: 2007

Platform: Xbox360, Playstation 3, Pc.

Genre: Action Adventure

My year started real busy... and also really broke. So no new game for me yet. Instead, a collegue and a friend of mine who attended my new years party brought me a nice package I could borrow. Assassin's Creed 1,2 and Brotherhood. Since I was also kind of a Prince of Persia fan I thought I would like this, thus I started with 1.

Assassin's Creed is a game that takes place in 2 timelines. The first one you get to know about is the timeline of Desmond. This guy is part of some assassin's family and has been captured by a research facility. It seems our main character has dna which has the memories of his ancestors who were all Assassin's. One of his ancestors apparently has something they need and you need to play trough all the memories of your ancestor to find what they need. In order to acces that memory they use machine called the Animus.

Once you go into the Animus you play trough a specific memory in order to learn what happened during your ancestor's time and to get closer to the memory our doctors need. Once you control your ancestor, called Altair, you are an assassin with all it's skills and weaponry. With those tools you need to assassinate several people, in order of the Brotherhood. This Brotherhood says they do this in the name of peace. However, as you progress the game you discover a dark secret.

Once you are logged in into the animus you can see a few things on the screen. On the bottom left you see a small square with some symbols, these correspond to directions on the D-Pad. Up selects the Hidden Blade, a small weapon used for stealth assassinations. Right selects the sword, your strongest weapon during combat. Down selects fists if you need to beat someone up but not kill them yet. Left selects the short blade, a small weapon which is quick in combat but not quite as strong. Also, if you are not in combat, you can thrown small throwing knives to end a life from a distance. 

Next to this you also see a bar at the top right. This is your synchronization bar and shows how well Desmond is in synch with Altair. If he takes too much damage you lose your synchro and thus need to start from the last (auto) savepoint. Your health goes up if you do more missions and side missions. In short, it is just your health bar.

Finally left from the synchro bar you can see the Abstergo logo. When it is white, you are anonymous and can practically do whatever you want. However, the logo changes colour in different situations. When you are being chased or noticed by the guards, it is red. When Hiding it is blue and so on. 

Finally the bottom right displays the minimap where you can see all missions and sidemissions.

Graphic wise I think this is a great game. It takes place in the middle east and thus you don't see lot's of colours in this game. However, every person/ building/ environment has been made in great detail, almost showing no flaws in designs.

This game doesn't have any music. Instead ou mostly hear the murmering of every citizen of the 4 places you visit. At first it is interesting what every citizen has to say but it gets real repetitive after a while. Almost everyone has the same line and after 2 or 3 hours in game you know every line of what a citizen is going to say.

Overall this game is a nice way to spend your time. But if you are a completionist like me you are going to have a hard time. Not because it becomes impossibly hard to do all side missions but because everything is exactly the same. Only your normal missions include something new or important to the storyline. Next to that, there is no real reward in doing all side missions except for some lousy achievements on the Xbox version.

And last but not least, although it isn't hard to complete all side missions, you are annoyed to death by every drunk /beggar that walk around town that seem to only target their annoyance to you instead of every other frigging citizen. It just really ruins the overall feeling of this game

Fun Facts: Assassin's Creed...

... has some similarities with Prince of Persia, which isn't strange since it is made by the same team.

... takes place around 2010 and 1190 respectively.

... has main characters who are based on real people from around that time. Only a couple of people 

    are imaginary.

... has some hints about the apocaliptic year 2012. It seems the Templars will do something to us in 

    that year.

... beggar's should DIE!

The Apocalyptic takeover by Fhant: a review of Borderlands.

Hello? Is anyone here? Nick?!
Hello?! Hmm… comfy chair…

Oh, hello! My name is Fhant. I’m a blogger just like Nick. But since he’s not showing himself…

Time for some anarchy with a semi-new First person RPG that’s called: Borderlands.

Name: Borderlands

Devoloper: Gearbox software

Year: 2009
Platform: PC, PS3, XBOX360 and MacOSX.
Genre: RPG/FPS.

So what’s in store?

You play a fortune hunter (One of four classes, we get to that later) who is searching for the Vault on Pandora. An alien planet that is pretty much desolate and filled with critters and people who are up to no good.  You as a fortune seeker needs to complete quests in order to get closer to the Vault.

Classes.

The fortune hunters are pretty much based on 4 classes. Tank, Rogue, Hunter and Heavy damage.

At the start of the game, players select one of four characters, each with a unique special skill and with proficiencies with certain weapons. The four characters are: Roland the Soldier(Heavy damage), Mordecai the Hunter, Lilith the Siren(Rogue), and Brick (a Berserker) "as himself".

Brick has the most HP and his special ability is the Beserker fury. He can punch the lights out of anyone in this mode and kick ass and take names in this mode.

Lilith can “Phasewalk” as a rogues stealth ability. This makes it very easy to bypass people or even lead them in a ambush.

Mordecai has his pet Bloodwing (A hawk-like creature) he can send in to kill people.

Roland has a turret with shield he can hide behind to deal more damage from the front.

Style.

The game is cell-shaded and is a First person Shooter. This means you do not get to clearly see your character. However, in multiplayer, other people can see your character that has a other color scheme.  You can upgrade your character with certain trees such as a Medic Tree for Roland and a Assassin tree for Lilith.

Gameplay.

Since I only played it on the PC, the controls are simple.  Aim with mouse, click to shoot.

But this game throws in something special. Upgrades! Not just any upgrades, Elemental upgrades. You got Fire, Explosive, Shock and Poison bullets for the gun you use.  Other than that, the game has a rating system in gray/white, green, blue, purple and orange to mark the value of the guns (Grey being the most common and orange the most uncommon).

Also you do not gain any stats with a level up but after level 5 you have access to a special skill tree for your class to play with. Here you have 3 options that differ between the Fortune Seekers.

Of course you are being guided in the game by a quirky little Robot called CL4P-TR4P. Yes, Cl4p-tr4p. At the start he will help you out and inform you on things, like where to get ammo and weapons and where to heal up. After that you follow a Voice. It is unknown who she is, but all she can tell you is that she will help you.

Final verdict.

You could see this as a game that had a head-on crash with Science fiction with Steam-punk elements in the tail. But is has some funny jokes and a smooth gameplay. Even the 4 DLC’s that are out now, are pretty enjoyable.

If you are interested in this game for the PC, it’s obtainable via Steam for €29,99!!

Oh, I hear him coming!! Err… Bye!! And don’t tell him I sat in his chair okay?

Rhythm is just a click away, OSU!

Name: OSU!
Devoloper: Peppy
Year: 2007
Platform: PC
Genre: Music Game

Due to my new job, I did not game as much as I wanted to this week. Due to the job I don't have HOURS of spare time, and half an hour of one game isn't appealing at all. If I have a couple of free minutes, I spend them om games which don't require a lot of time. Music games like these are the way to go then. Out of the few music games I played, this is my favorite. It is called Osu!

The concept of Osu! is actually quite cheap, since it is copied of Osu! Tatakae! Ouendan! A music game for Nintendo DS, also known as Elite beat agents. Osu! is different in the aspect that you can download a lot of songs to play with, whilst Ouendan only has about 20 predetermined songs. Osu! also features multiplayer, although Elite Beat Agents also featured that with a maximum of 4 players, Osu! can support 8. If you don't desire multiplayer, you can just play alone, but your score will always be ranked. You can see in what place you would finish if it was multiplayer. Or just compare your overall score with the world. Finally, in Osu! you can change skins of the overall layout. This isn't possible in Ouendan!.

Osu! can be played with every pointer device you have. This being a tablet, a normal mouse or even a touch screen (which makes it really easy all of a sudden). The point of the game is to match your gameplay with the beat of the song. You do this in 3 ways

1. The Hit marker. A button appears with a ring surrounding it. The ring gets smaller over a short timespan. As soon as the ring touches the button, you are supposed to click it. If it is a good beatmap this will be at the time time as a beat in the song. This may sound easy, and it is easy... on easy. On hard the timespan between buttons gets real short, clicking several times in a second. And not all buttons are on the same place on the screen. Thus you need great accuracy to click and aim at the same time. Is on of these wrong, you will get less points or none at all!

2. The slider marker.It uses the same approach ring as the Hit marker. Yet once you clicked it you have to hold down the button. In the meantime you have to use the pointer to go trough the slide. This also requires timing in order to get full points.

3. The spinner. Once it appears you have to use the pointer to spin around the circle fast! The approach ring returns again, this time displaying how much time you have left to spin. In the time that you have to spin you need to fill up the gauge on both sides of the spinners. If you complete it before time runs out you gain bonus points for every spin.

The screen you see features more the the things you have to click or move. In the top left you have a life bar. Fail to hard and you... well ... fail! The top right displays your score, kinda obvious. Underneath that you see a pizza slice, slowly filling up as the song progresses. Here you can see ho far you are into the song. Right from that you see a %. This displays your accuracy. The lower left corner has a multiplier. Every hit gives you 1 more combo point. This means that if you don't miss, every marker you DO hit is worth more points.

The fun thing about Osu! is that you can play all the songs you like. No, of course not every song you ever heard has a beatmap. But I find it hard to imagine that in the great library of beatmaps there isn't a single song you like. You can find a great deal of old skool video game music, anime music or random pop music... and lots of touhou... and even more touhou. Not to mention the touhou music T_T (seriously, from every music track of touhou there are at least 15 approved beatmaps!) If you truly want a song to be playable, you can also create one yourself.

If you are a lazy DDR player or want to test your aim in a music game I can recommend Osu! to you. It can entertain you for hours or for a couple of minutes. About anything you want.

Also, this time I am not going to end this post with fun facts. Instead I want more views on my youtube account by linking some video's of my gameplay. Enjoy!

Ps, I should note that I play this with a regular pc mouse. Not with a tablet or anything.