Today's post will be short, it's about a new remix I composed for the grand maverick remix battle in the OCRemix forums.
It's a remix of Chill Penguin and Storm Owl's themes from Mega Man X and Mega Man X4. Enjoy!
So last time I talked about my favorite software synths, and as you may have noticed I mentioned some of them were completely free, and pretty damn good too. So I thought I'd make a post about how you can start and set up a producer environment for cheap, and even for no money at all.
DAW
First, you'll need a DAW, or Digital Audio Workstation. It's the program you'll use to write your arrangement and host your instruments and effects. There are several options out there, all of them pretty expensive. But there's one that I recommend for being incredibly cheap, light and amazing to use. It's Reaper:
Reaper's interface is based in Cakewalk's Sonar, which is my favorite DAW that supports VSTs (I will get into VSTs a bit later). Reaper comes with a set of intruments and effects but no sound libraries which is no problem since I will give you links to tons of free sound libraries anyways. Most importantly to this guide, Reaper costs only 60 US dollars. That is almost nothing if you compare it to other professional DAWs like Sonar and Reason which cost 500 dollars or more. With Reaper you will get everything you need and it's even better than some of the popular DAWs out there.
You can even download Reaper from the official site and try it for as long as you like! yeah that's right you can try the full version for a year if you want and not pay anything at all, but seriously I recommend just paying the modest price they are asking because these guys are incredibly cool and they are giving you an amazing piece of software for a discounted price and no strings attached at all. Not many people do that.
VSTs
Now that you got your host set up and ready you need some VSTs. Well, if you got Reason you can skip this section since Reason doesn't support VSTs, but then again, why are you reading a budget guide anyways?.
First you need some instruments and I mentioned a few of my favorites in my last post: they are synth1, Tal-u-no 62, Tal-Noisemaker, GTG JP-1, among others. These I mentioned are pretty professional sounding and a good start, but there are tons of free VST instruments out there that you can get and you can find them on this website: kvraudio. KVRaudio hosts thousands of free instruments for you to try, and you can also check commercial instruments there as well.
After you got some VST instruments you need effects. Basic effects you should get include Reeverb, Delay, Compression and distortion. These effects are found in most modern music, no matter the genre. I have some suggestions:
For reverb, you can get Ambience or Tal-Reeverb. Both are amazing, professional sounding reverb effects. You can use tal-reverb for most cases, but if you want more complex or detailed reverb you can use Ambience.
For delay effects, Tal-Dub(1,2 or 3) and Karma Dee-lay are both pretty good.
For distortion, there are several options. Tal-tube, Tal-bitcrusher, FreeAmp, Cyanide and The Glitch all offer different flavors of distortion that should be adequate for most genres.
For compression and/or Limiting I suggest jsCompShaper, ThrillseekerLA, Blockfish or Classic Master Limiter. Again, all of them offer different flavors of compression. Compression is a complex topic and a bit daunting at first, so if you can start with the Classic Master Limiter as it offers a very simple form of compression that works in some cases, and work your way to more complex compressors like the jsCompShaper.
If these aren't enough for you, you can always search the KVRAudio database for hundreds of other effects.
Soundfonts
But say, you want real instruments instead of synthesizers, no problem, you can find hundreds of soundfonts (collections of samples of real instruments) on the web, and also for free. You can try Hammersounds, Darkesword's soundfont database, and even findsounds.com. This thread at OCRemix.org has some links too.
Drums
What's a good EDM song without a punchy beat? Beatproduction.net has tons of sample packs you can use for your song, and Dorumalaia also has tons of drums samples along with unique ethnic sample packs. But when it comes to drum samples, a good google search is also your best friend! free drum sample packs are all over the web.
With all of this together you're ready to start your music production hobbie. I've been using these tools for years and they've served me well. They're proof you can make decent music for free nowadays. Have fun!
As some of you might have noticed, I make music as a hobbie. Of course, it's all via software, although I do have some hardware tools. But this post is about my top 5 favorite synths (at this time!). If you've heard one of my songs, the instruments were probably created with one of these.
Although I use presets from time to time when i feel lazy, I'd say 95% of the time I create my sounds from scratch, which is a big part of the enjoyment I get from making music. So when I pick my favorite synths, how much fun I have working with them is a huge point I take in consideration.
5-Lennar Sylenth 1
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| Analog Fidelity! |
It's also got some awesome presets for those who want to work quickly, and its also pretty cool to work with too!
4-Synth1
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| Old School Goodness! |
I've literally made entire songs using ONLY this (like some of my Italo-Disco Remixes). It's a really great synth, and you can also use it for other purposes outside of just old school sounds, I can get some really warm pads out of this one.
Another great thing about this one: it's completely Free!
For another great old school-style soft synth check out the Tal-U-No-62, which I also use pretty often.
3-SubTractor
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| Simplicity. |
The SubTractor is one of the synths that are native to Reason. Actually the first synth in reason, it's incredibly simple, yet you can get SO MUCH out of it. Until recent versions of Reason this was my main go-to synth.
What I love about SubTractor is its simplicity, 2 oscillators, 2 filters, a couple of LFOs and envelopes. But once you start fiddling with it you realize how rich the sound can be. One SubTractor alone maybe won't blow your socks off, but due to how Reason can route everything, you can start layering them, and then you start hearing the amazing stuff. It has tons of ase waves you can use on your oscillator, which can give you a wide range of sound.
SubTractor might not be as versatile as other synths but it's one synth I know by heart. I know what sound I can get out of it and exactly what to do to get it. It's a great synth if you're learning how to create your own sounds too.
2-Massive
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| Truly Massive. |
It's modular too, so you can link any parameter to anything. It's a beast and certainly not beginners friendly. But I fell in love with it since the first time I tried it. There's not much to else say about it, only that it can do everything you ever want and do it better than a bunch of other synths combined. If I had to use only 1 synth outside of Reason, it would be this one, because with a bit of work I could probably get the sound I wanted in my other synths, and with a bit of extra work, make it even better.
1-Thor
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| The god of Thunder....ing sounds? |
Well for starters, in my opinion it's easier to use than Massive. So although I can get bigger sounds from massive I like the workflow of thor a bit better. Then there's the fact that its a Reason machine, so I can modulate any parameter from outside using cv inputs. And finally, you can even use it to resample and reshape other sounds by using its audio inputs.
Most people think that Reason synths are a bit limiting because they're inside of reason and you can't use VSTis like Massive in there, but I think it's quite the contrary. Because Reason emphasizes routing so much and so well, it empowers synths like Thor in ways that no other VSTi can. So that's a big part of what makes Thor so great in my eyes (and ears!).
Other Great Software Synths I use often:
-Tal-U-No: An awesome free synth. Get it ASAP!
-Tal Noisemaker: Another great sounding synth from TAL. Also Free!
-SQ8L: Great free old school synth
-Malstrom: Comes with reason, you can get tons of interesting sounds from it.
-GTG JP-1: Similar to Synth1, sounds a bit more Raw, which is good sometimes! Also free.
I've been meaning to post something here for quite a while so here's some new music, all megaman related.
First a blizzard man remix:
And a Chill Penguin/Armored Armadillo Remix:
Both were made for different Mega Man competitions.
Now I've been reading up a lot on production lately and polishing my skills to start making new music again, and I'll probably be posting it here. Diablo 3 and other games kind of separated me from this hobbie but I'm getting back into it again.
I'll be posting a few other entries on some topics I've been wanting to write about for a while too. See ya then!
I rarely use this blog for pimping out my music (well, rarely use it at all) but I think I'm gonna start doing so, since I have some neat stuff coming up and I've been more active in the remixing community.
First, I want to share one of the mixes I'll be contributing to the Street Fighter 25th anniversary Music Tribute. It's a Dubstep-like remix of the Cammy and Ken themes in Super Street fighter 2.
Second, I'll share this Chiptune-style Remix of the Battlefield 3 theme I made some time ago. People seemed to enjoy it:
I will be doing a couple of mixes more for the Street fighter tribute, and I will be sharing them soon. In the meantime, enjoy these.
A few months ago, I decided to go and beat every classic mega man in order. I gotta, say it's amazing how Capcom nailed the Mega Man formula so early. Really, it only needed minor adjustments (which were made in Mega Man 2) in order to make it the perfect platforming experience.
Anyways, I wanted to reiterate my view on Mega Man's difficulty. People were crying about Mega Man 9 when it came out and how hard it was. Well I'll tell you this: after playing through every single Mega Man there is, I find Mega Man 9 to actually be one of the easiest in the series, no joke.
And this actually was my first thought when playing the game for the first time, and I couldn't understand why people were crying so much about it. They whined so much that capcom even introduced an "easy as pie" mode for Mega Man 10.
Mega Man 9 is about as easy as Mega Man 2 (which is one of the easier ones, although my personal favorite). Go play some Mega Man 3, 4, or 6 and tell me with a straight face that Mega Man 9 is ZOMFGHARD. And i won't even mention Mega Man 8, which took the difficulty to ridiculously high levels.
Gamers nowadays seem to have been spoiled by extremely complacent modern games. Nowadays most games don't even really have a game over screen, you can just always start form the last save point or some crap, which is like 10 feet from where you died. I mean, yes some old school games were ridiculously hard with one hit deaths and no continues, etc. But I think games like Mega Man have the right difficulty that makes you play again even if you're losing, because you know you aren't losing because of cheap deaths or bad controls. You're losing because you suck and need to play to get better at this game.
Anyways, it was a blast.
So, Final Fantasy 8 is better than 13. There, I said it.
That's this post in a nutshell, since I started my re-play of FF8 just to compare the two while they were fresh in my mind.
Anyways, I will sum up disc 3 and 4 in one post since not much happens in the last disc other than utter insanity and ridiculousness.
We start disc 3 with yet another Laguna flashback, nothing of interest happens in it besides a few lame attempts at comedy. We cut to Squall who suddenly realizes he cares for Rinoa. yes, after being annoyed by this bitch he realizes he cares for her. This scene is done so badly, the way Squall's personality just flips the switch from asshole to caring carebear, you will have a hard time not laughing your ass off. Anyways we're supposed to look for Ellone now. A lot of stuff happens before you can find her, most of it random and uninteresting. Then you find out that Laguna is the leader of the most advanced civilization on this world. Yes, this poor man's Forrest Gump is the leader of guys that have a huge space station and technology beyond belief.
So after all that nonsense sinks in you are tasked to getting Rinoa to the space station. then the monolith from 2001: a space odyssey attacks everyone for some reason. Then Rinoa wakes up from the coma and she's now possessed by an evil sorceress FROM THE FUTURE!. Then you find out the moon is the home of like a billion monsters and then these monsters cramp up in a spot in the moon and attack the earth through space then you find a dead evil sorceress from the past that is being kept in the station and the evil sorceress from the future who also possessed the sorceress from the present wants to possess her now and then the space station gets attacked and then BANG BOOM KABLOOIE everything goes to shit and then squall and rinoa are left drifting away in outer space!
Did you get all that? and that's only part of the nonsense, stupidity and incredibly rushed and poorly thought-out events that happen from now on. You might be asking how can they top this? well you can bet your ass they can top it just keep on reading.
So now Rinoa and Squall, drifting in outer space, with a limited supply of oxygen. They are about to die, and you sit there, wishing the oxygen runs out and they die a painful slow death. But we're out of luck since what follows is about AN HOUR of Rinoa and squall moving at the speed of half a pixel per minute across the screen in the empty space. Now seriously I know it doesn't lasts and hour, BUT IT SURE AS HELL FEELS LIKE IT. It probably lasts around 10 minutes which is ridiculous for a scene where basically nothing happens. This scene is beyond ridiculous.
Now to my not-so surprise, people who like this game actually think this scene has some deep significance about the relationship between Rinoa and Squall. And well all I have to say to those people is that you should go watch movies with ACTUAL stories about relationships to find out how a real relationship between two people work, so you won't get all teary-eyed about this shitty and utterly ridiculous scene. And no, watching Twilight doesn't count.
Anyways there's a ship conveniently drifting nearby (I don't really think I need to point out how absurdly convenient this is, since everything that happens from now on is beyond common sense) so our "heroes" are safe for now. While in the ship Rinoa and Squall get it on and stuff. Squall sure changed his mind didn't he? he's now all mushy mushy and in love with this whore. Well that doesn't last for long because when they land on earth some guards take her away because they fear the sorceress from the future might possess her again. So much for Squall showing he cares uh.
So speaking about the sorceress from the future, I think it's about time to point out what's going on about these sorceress. See, Sorceress Edea wasn't really bad at all. She was possessed by a sorceress from the future named Ultimecia. why did she do that? well apparently she's slowly creeping her way back through time using the sorceress as hosts till she can get to Sorceress Adel, from the past, which was in suspended animation in space.
All of that sounds really interesting at first, until you realize what Ultimecia's plan actually is. Ultimecia lives in a world far in the future where apparently there's not much left because she rules all. But she isn't happy with that, oh no. See, what this idiot really wants is to trigger "time compression" She compresses time and the universe goes to shit so our heroes and everyone else dies. But here's the thing, in the future, which is Ultimecia's present, everyone is ALREADY DEAD. So what she is doing is a convoluted plan to kill the people that are already dead for her, so she can become the only living being left or some retarded shit. I mean, really?
In her time, there's not much left so she can just use this awesome power she has to obliterate what's left and be the last living being and stuff. Even then, WHY WOULD YOU FUCKING DO THAT? I mean, Kefka wanted to destroy everything, but Kefka was obviously coocoo for cocoa puffs. kefka was completely insane due to the magitek that completely messed up his mind and made him into a nihilistic maniac. That I can understand. But what are the motivations for Ultimecia for doing what she's doing? and again, WHY KILL PEOPLE THAT ARE ALREADY DEAD? She's not insane shes just "evil", so... why?. WHY? It Boggles the mind. I could go on ranting on this for hours on end. The levels of stupidity in this plot just bring my piss to a boil and I think I've nerd raged enough so I'll just say this:
Stupidest villian plot ever.
ANYWAYS, back to our "plot" Squall, in another show of bipolar disorder realizes he loves Rinoa again and goes out to free her. Now our heroes go to see Laguna to make a plan on how to take on Ultimecia. Laguna proposes that we let her compress time and destroy the universe, and if you were expecting a genious, well thought out plan from this guy then you haven't being paying attention.
For the final nail in the coffin of this game's story, we get to hear Laguna's reason for wanting to let Ultimecia fuck everything up. Since they can't travel to the future, the only way to beat her is to let her compress time so they can be in the same timeline. But how are they going to survive time compression if that's exactly why Ultimecia wants to do it, to destroy them?
Well, they will be able to survive it WITH THE POWER OF FRIENDSHIP.
And I mean literally.
No, really, literally. I'm not kidding or interpreting some metaphoric idea, no. Laguna states that the power of friendship will make them survive a catastrophic event that will destroy all time, physics, the universe as we know it. Literally, the power of friendship. All they have to do is think about each other and how much they care about their friendship. And so they do.
And if you're wondering, yes, the power of friendship worked.
I guess My Little Pony had it right, Friendship is Magic.
So that wraps up this mess. Ultimecia is defeated by LITERALLY the power of friendship and all is well in the world.
Final Thoughts
When you think about the reasons Square did the changes they did for FF8, it's obvious they were appealing to a more mature audience, with the realistic graphics instead of the cute models, and with a clear emphasis on a love relationship between the heroes. With that said, it's amazing how they botched this one up and failed so miserably in producing a good story, and it's also unbelievable how childish it turned out to be. The power of friendship saved the universe, literally. And i can't stress that enough because I just can't wrap my head around it.
In Final Fantasy 6 for the final battle with Kefka, our heroes realize that what brought them so far was that they stuck together and cared for each other and that friendship inspired them and gave them strength to fight. That sounds familiar to what we have here, but in this case, their friendship just INSPIRES them, it's not a literal power they can use against Kefka, that would be absurd. It's just some extra motivation. Also, the friendship that develops between the main cast is pretty strong and believable unlike in this game. I could go on comparing this to better RPGs, but I think my point is clear enough.
Back to my first statement, FF8 while still a pretty bad RPG, is still leagues ahead of FF13. I've actually come to appreciate FF8 more now, and while I still hate the most stupid aspects of it, i now appreciate that it still had some good thing going for it, things that we come to expect in a Final Fantasy game. bad game, but good music, good graphics for the time, and a system that while still the most exploitable system I've seen in any RPG, still lets you take choices and offers you options. And I'm talking about junction, not the drawing system, which is still completely fucking retarded.
All in all, I wish Square would go back to this style of games instead of insisting on MORE final fantasy 13. One can only dream...
So here we are at disc two. The last time we saw our hero Squall, he was being impaled in the chest by a 6 foot icicle and free-falling about 4 stories down to the floor, surely this means he must be dead, or perhaps in a very complicated coma, or worse maybe he... OH NEVERMIND HE JUST GOT BETTER.
Disc 2 is where all the plot holes in this game's story begin, and it's because it's where the game begins developing the story, which is a giant plothole in itself. For example, no reason is given for Squall's survival from this incident. He doesn't even have a scratch or a contusion, he's just fine and dandy in disc 2.
But anyway in disc 2 is where we get to know better another character named Laguna. Quite frankly he's the best this game has to offer in terms of character development. Laguna is a guy in the galbadian army and your party is constantly passing out and having dreams about him. He has two other friends, Ward and Kiros, who are with him in all his adventures.
Laguna is kind of a Forrest Gump in this game. You see his story through flashbacks, and he's also a complete idiot, but he's also likeable. He goes through a lot of tough stuff but is always optimistic about the future, and cares for those around him. It's no wonder why everyone thinks he's the best character in this game, he's got a decent story and is not an asshole like our friend Squall.
I'll go as far as to say this game SHOULD have been about laguna and not about the idiots from SeeD. Would've made for a better story with better characters and better emotional moments.
So in the recurring dreams you find that Laguna has moved to the quiet town of winhill and is kind of making a life there with his love interest Raine and a little girl called Ellone, while still having his dreams of adventure and of being a journalist. The moments you see in the dreams with him are very touching, But most of his story has nothing to do with the main story in the game so most of these dreams are filler and useless.
Anyways a lot of stuff happens in this disc to our dear group of dumbasses. They get thrown in jail, then escape, then their homes get bombarded by freakin' ICBMs! Love how this world is hi-tech but also full of monsters and magic weaving retards. You get your first "ship" which is the whole Garden you used to live, which is basically a town, that can lift off and fly using the power of... magic? technology? who knows, it's never explained.
What follows is one of the most infamous scenes from FF8, and the point where everyone (well, mostly those with a working brain) gives up on the story of this game and just says "welll fuck it im gonna finish this up anyways". Turns out all the characters in your party were together when they were kids, on the same orphanage, which was owned by sorceress edea herself, the same you're going after, but they don't remember any of it till now. This moment went down as the most ridiculous plot twist in gaming history and with good reason. Why can't they remember all that? well, MAGIC DID IT. Why? well who knows, maybe the GFs they use make them forget, nobody knows it's never explained clearly. Just like most of the important things in this game.
After you manage to get ahold of yourself after laughing histerically for ours on end by reading all the ridiculous dialog that happens in this scene, you notice our heroes have decided to go and kill what can be considered as their own mother. Well that's nice isn't it? So there we go! We fight Seifer, which is now the sorceress' Knight and is also a huge pushover through the entirety of the game, and then we fight the sorceress. After we beat those two, Rinoa falls unconscious into a coma, and it's the end of disc 2!
A lot of ridiculous stuff happens between all that, like a concert where your characters play instruments, and well Squall treats Rinoa like the whore she is all the time in this disc. This is important to know because what comes next is comedy golden. See you later for Disc 3!
I almost forgot to post about this but I got a new Remix published up at OCRemix. It's a megaman 9 Remix of the Concrete man theme, I did this remix for the Concrete Man EP, a sort of companion for the recently released Mega man 9 Album.
You can grab my remix over here, also check the complete EP from where it came from, and also check the Mega Man 9 album recently released by OCRemix.
So after watching the AWESOME reviews of FF8 by Spoony I decided to revisit Final Fantasy 8 again and see if its as bad as I remember. Why you ask? well after playing through the horrible vomit-inducing shitfest and sorry excuse for an RPG called Final Fantasy 13 I realized that 8 would be a masterpiece now.
So Final Fantasy 8, the previous worse Final Fantasy in my book, actually had some stuff going for it. The graphics were amazing for its time, and the way they mixed CG Movies at key moments while you could control your character through the movie was pretty impressive. I also like the art direction in this game, it's pretty cohesive and the characters don't look too ridiculous. Also, Final Fantasy 8 had some amazing music in it. Some of the best songs in the whole series are in this game. The music just got worse from this one on.
aaand that's about it.
So here's my experience disc by disc. Today, Disc 1:
In the first disc you are introduced to one of the worst aspects of FF8, if not the worse. The Draw and Junction system. In previous Final Fantasies, you could obtain magic by buying it on a store, or from espers, by obtaining materia or simply learning it from different jobs. Here you obtain magic by "drawing" it from monsters. Which sounds interesting until you realize that you will spend hours on end just drawing magic from a monster to stock them.
You want to stock magic because you can "junction" it to your stats. By Junctioning magic to stats you make the stats grow, so you want to have a lot of different types of magic, all stacked to 100, to get the most out of it. for at least 3 characters. Believe me, thats A LOT of drawing. Lots of hours just drawing and drawing from monsters. It's tedious as hell. (please watch this. That gentlemen, is final fantasy 8 in a nutshell. You can stop reading this and just watch that video)
After you get all the magic you want, you just save it there and never spend it. Yep that's right, you don't want to spend your magic because it will reduce your stats, which makes the point of obtaining it pretty useless. This game also has another fatal flaw, the monsters level as you do, so in this game, you DON'T WANT TO LEVEL UP. That's pretty backwards to everything we know about FF, right?
Since I know all the exploits you can do to this system, I can get amazingly powerful (which I did) without even ever fighting. Since I can obtain an ability that nullifies random encounters, the only fights I do are the mandatory bosses. I'm actually on the 4th disc right now, and I'm only level 18.
No other final fantasy allows this kind of bullshit. This is the most broken system of ANY RPG I've ever played. It's completely retarded that the best way to get powerful in this game is through a card minigame called triple triad than by fighting. That you want to AVOID fighting at all costs to maximize your returns.
Let me empathize this: the best way to play final fantasy 8, is by NOT FIGHTING, instead it's best to play a completely retarded card game to obtain the magic you need. Also, NEVER use the magic you obtain. Just limit break or attack the mobs all the time. It's useless to level up because the monsters will just level up with you.
You also get GFs which are the usual summons from Final Fantasy, but again, you don't want to use them except for special cases because you do more damage by just using your normal attacks anyway. The serve more as a meatshield than as a powerful attack.
Anyways that is all I have to say about the drawing/junctioning system but if you are still not convinced, please watch spoony's review. He explains in detail how broken this system is.
I got sidetracked, lets go back to Disc 1:
So after a rather impressive intro where we are led to think that Squall is actually a kickass character, we are introduced to two of the main Characters, Squall, the hero of the story, and Quistis, who has the hots for Squall and is also her instructor in this mercenary complex which is more like a japanese high school from the future.
Disc 1 is basically about introducing the main characters of the story. These are:
Squall, as I previously mentioned, the hero of the story, and one of the precursors of the emo movement. Seriously this guy is beyond annoying, but I gotta say that after replaying this shitfest my opinion on Squall has changed and I don't hate it that much now, because I realized that the poor guy is surrounded by idiots and a whore. I can now relate to him not caring about his teammates, and ignoring the huge whore that is Rinoa all the time. I would be pissed off if I was surrounded by dimwits and dumbasses.
Actually Squall isn't that much of an emo, he's more of an asshole, and yes he gets pretty emo at several points, but as I said he's more of an asshole most of the time, which I can relate.
Rinoa oh by all hells I hate this skank. This woman is a complete whore. Picture this: you are in a party minding your business and a girl you're obviously not attracted to comes to talk to you and the first thing she says is that she has the hots for you. Not only that but she forces you to dance with her. That my friends is what we call a whore.
Most annoying is that for some explainable reason all the dumbasses Squall has to hang out with are trying to force him to be with her. He even says so in a scene. Yeah, not to mention this girl is devoid of any personality other than wanting to bang Squall. Did I mention she had the hots for Squall and for another guy named Seifer at the same time? yeah... whore.
Quistis is Squall's instructor. At first she wanted to fuck with Squall REAL BAD. But then after Rinoa appeared and she saw she couldn't compete with that level of whoriness she just called it quits. We get almost no backstory on her so we don't care for her most of the time. I do pick her as a party member because well, compared to the rest, this is the less annoying character in the game and the only one that doesn't make me want to stab babies.
Zell.... oh Zell you little rascal. I so hate this idiot. This guy acts like a child and is ALSO devoid of any personality. If you ask me to describe this guy, all i can tell is that he wears silly shorts, likes to punch things and has the mind of an 8 year old kid.
Selphie is this final fantasy's mandatory jailbait. Contrary to all the other supporting cast, she does have a personality, and an annoying one at that.
Irvine what can I say about this guy. He's a cowboy stereotype, a complete pussy and always find new ways to dishonor the gun-wielders in final fantasy history. Also devoid of personality.
I guess the makers of this game wanted to focus on Squall and Rinoa's "Love Story" (I just laughed out loud at that concept) and thats why the supporting cast of this game feel like cardboard cutouts. I'm going to hell for this but hell, even Final Fantasy 13 at least TRIED to develop all their characters. Oh well.
So Disc one is about getting accustomed to the systems of this game, and meeting your team and the main villian, the sorceress. For some reason she wants to destroy the world (oh my what a surprise) and you are sent on a mission to stop her. She also has allied with Squall's school rival, Seifer, which also gets laid with Rinoa. more on that later.
Anyways in the mission Irvine pussies out, Quistis' almost fucks up her part and everything goes to shit. In the end Squall has to face the sorceress, and he gets STABBED IN THE CHEST BY A GIANT ICICLE. and we are left at that cliffhanger until Disc 2.
A lot of unimportant things happen, between the beginning of the story and that, but again, it's just filler. Except for the recurring dreams your party has about a guy named Laguna. And Laguna is the saving grace of this game.
More on that the next time, where I talk about my experience with disc 2.
Well color me surprised. The new Mortal Kombat is actually good and fun.
What's different this time? well for instance, it isn't trying to be something it isn't. In previous games they tried to do stuff like going for 3-d movement, or adding changeable fighting styles, or weapons, and other gimmicks. My response? a profuse yawn.
What this new Mortal Kombat is, is just what makes Mortal Kombat good. Loads of blood, Gore with a touch of ridiculousness, a 2-d plane, and simple but fun mechanics. This MK isn't trying to be Soul Calibur, nor is it trying to have the depth of gameplay of street fighter 4. It's just good old fun MK.
They did add a couple of new toys. The Special Bar allows to power up special moves, to brek combos, or to perform a devastating X-ray move. The X-Ray moves are completely awesome, they pack a lot of hurt, and you can do them over and over again and never get tired of seeing those bones crunching or those internal organs exploding.
The Fatalities are the best the franchise has seen since MK2. Gory, splashy and satisfying. Also, this game boast one of the best Story modes I've ever played in a fighting game besides some of the soul calibur games.
Some of the characters I felt they could have done away with, like that stryker who looked like a dumbass back in MK3 and still does, or Sheeva who always was a pushover and still is. But for the most part, all the characters feel good and fun to play.
If this is the new road MK has decided to take then I see a bright future for it. This game isn't on par with SF4 or MvC3, but it is close when it comes to fun factor. Worth a try.
So after the frustration and disappointment that was beating FF13, I decided to go back and beat FF12. I never beat it back in the days, I don't remember why cuz I did get very far in the game.
Anyhoo, I'm having a blast with it. After ff13 I guess even the worst RPG will seem like heaven, but I think ff12 gets right what ff13 tried to do and failed.
As i said in my post-mortem, the FF12 battle system is similar to that of FF13, only that in this one you actually can stop and think for a while. You can issue specific orders to you party members, or let them go by themselves and act as configured by their gambits.
The world is Huge, it's also a bit linear, but never just a straight corridor with no turning back. You have exploration, backtracking, sidequests that don't necessarily involve KILLING something, etc.
It's as if Square took the great things about FF12 and disfigured them into some Frankenstein monster for ff13.
Anyways I'm hoping to actually beat it this time around, if my time with this borrowed PS2 allows.
In other news (but on the same topic) I watched the trailer for FF13-2 yesterday. "Shaking my head and sighing for one minute" sums my reactions.
Now I raise my coffee mug , here's to the old days where a new FF used to interest me.
So where do I start. Since this will be a long, looooong write, I will put it bluntly: Final Fantasy 13 is bad. It fails as a game on its own, and fails miserably as a final fantasy game.
Of course, it's not all absolutely terrible. Only most of it. Some of it is plain terrible, other things range from mediocre to bad, and the rest is garbage. But let's start with the bright side:
The Good:
Graphics:
The graphics are beautiful. They are simply stunning. The animation is very good for the most part, and the cutscenes are very elaborated. Sometimes too much, but eh I've come to accept that if there aren't 10,000 things happening on the screen at once in an action scene nowadays, be it videogames or movies, then it's "Boring".
Voice Acting:
The voice acting is top-notch, and the casting is perfect for all the characters. If only they were used for telling a good story...
The Mediocre:
Battle System:
Why are people praising this battle system, is beyond me. The battle system seems interesting at first, and I bet that the battles look awesome for someone watching another person playing the game, but the truth is that the battle system takes too much stuff from your control.
I know what they were trying to do here. They wanted to make the battles feel hectic, and fast. But this shit is going too fast to actually think of what the fuck is going on besides watching your green bars and the enemy's life and stagger bar.
This battle system in a nutshell: You go into a battle. You start beating on the mob, or buffing/debuffing, whatever the battle requires. As you do this you're hitting the x button for autofight/autoheal/autobuff/debuff or whatever it's all auto. When your life bars go down, you change to your healing paradigm, when your enemy is staggered or is about to stagger you change to your "GO ALL OUT" paradigm. You just keep changing paradigms, watching those bars and hitting that damn X button REAL GOOD.
Don't you miss those days where you actually had time to select which ability you wanted, or analyze what item to use, without the mobs beating the shit out of you in no time? Well I do. You want to customize your attack pattern? well you can select your abilities one by one, while the enemies turn you into a splatter of meat on the ground. After a while, you realize that it's useless to do this so you just hit that fucking autoattack button till your fingers bleed and let the cpu pick the abilities for you, because it's always going to be faster than if you did it yourself, the enemies WON'T STOP BASHING YOU while you pick them, and square-enix thinks you're too damn dumb to do this yourself.
Don't you miss the good old days where you had to actually THINK in a battle? I do now. This battle system does it all for you, and that's not fucking fun if you ask me. You get new abilities, new spells and stuff, but it's as if you didn't get them because you will probably never have to pick one. Remember how awesome it felt when you got Ultima for your first character in final fantasy 6? well, in ff13 I never noticed when I got my last spell. It's all the same.
So now you ask "Hey Mike, if you have so little control on your character, how about the rest of the party?" Well my dear reader, let me tell you how much control you have over your party members: ABSOLUTELY NONE.
Let's go back in time for a moment, and let's remember that Final fantasy that no one played, that a lot of purists hated, but was actually pretty good: FF12. In FF12, the cpu controlled your party members, that's true. However, you could take over at any moment, and that wouldn't give the enemy an advantage. The "Cruise control" was only there for the grind, which is part of every final fantasy truth to be told. Besides, you also had the gambits, and with gambits you could customize how your party members would react to ANY situation. You were in control all the time.
Now back to the present, in FF13 you have absolutely no control other than telling them to attack, or debuff, or buff, or defend, or heal, etc. That sounds like a lot, but in every role there's a lot of shit you can do and they don't let you control that. You can't tell the guy in charge of buffing "Oh, here, don't buff with haste first. Instead, use protect". Or tell your healer "Prioritize dispelling over healing on this battle". Oh no no no; That dumbass will always cast haste first, and your idiot healer will always heal everyone to 90% or more until he starts dispelling. It will drive you batshit insane, and it will make some battles harder than they should.
Another thing that will absolutely make you wanna stab someone in the face is how cheap some of the battles are, and most specially, how its game over when your party leader dies. Why can't they just transfer leader to one of the other party members when the leader dies? WHY CAN'T I JUST CHANGE LEADER MID-BATTLE? It's mind-buggling. In a game where there are enemies that can insta-KO you with a spell, it's fucking bullshit that you have to retry if that insta-ko falls on your leader. (BTW The last boss has one of those fancy Insta-KOs. LULZ)
Oh but you, you beat this game and you know there's an item that gives 80% insta-ko prevention. Well I know that too, but to get this item you have to buy it for a lot of cash and then upgrade it to the max by investing impossible amounts of cash that can only be attained by grinding for hours on end. Yeah NO THANK YOU GTFO.
The only reason I don't think this battle system is absolutely terrible, is because it actually manages to keep you on your toes most of the time. But that's also its downfall. It's too damn stressful to have your attention 99% of the time on the battles in fear of getting roflpwnt. Oh and believe me, if you falter for a while, you bet your ass you will get killed. For a game that requires 30 hours of grind before you can beat the final dungeon, the battle system is too needy.
The Characters:
This is more of a subjective aspect, but I didn't think much of the characters in this game. The looked interesting, that's for sure, but because the script and story is so bad, you never get to like them, or care about them. Lightning is kinda cool, I'd admit. She's tough, and she's never a crybaby. OH BTW NO CRYBABIES IN THIS FF THAT WAS GREAT. No one is emo for no reason here. I thought that was nice of them.
Snow tries to be cool, and well, sometimes you just want to punch him in the face (lightning did it like 3 times, that makes her cool in my book), but he's nice. Sazh is.. well, for me he felt the most real, but again, the story and script didn't help. He had a couple of shining moments though.
Hope is annoying at first, interesting for like an hour, and after that I completely forgot he existed. Vanille is annoying in every aspect, but not quite as annoying as the "token annoying character" in every FF game. Fang looks cool but she's.. meh.
The main bad guy? well visually he's a mix of the pope and Colonel Campbell. Personality-wise: I finished the game a few hours ago and I can't remember his name, that speaks volumes on how memorable he was.
The secondary characters came and went and they were all meh.
The final Boss looks completely ridiculous. the BAD ridiculous.
All that said, the cast isn't bad, but also isn't as good and memorable as they could have been if they had a good story going on for them. At least they weren't annoying, or emo.
The Bad:
The Character Progression:
The crystarium system is an epic failure. People compare it to the sphere system from FFX, and that's an insult to that system. The sphere system offered true customization of your characters. But due to the extreme hand holding that ff13 takes you through, you can't get to the customization part until the last part of the game, where you have to invest insane amounts of points to deviate from each character's set roles. What, you wanted to turn Vanille into a tank? well, have fun with your 40+ hours of grinding those gazillion points. Tell me if it was worth it.
Back to FF12 again, you had the license board, in which you could diverge into any path you wanted right from the start. It was awesome. But this crystarium bullshit... this is another thing in FF13 where you have no control whatsoever. Just keep hitting that X button, just like in the battles. Watch the spark slowly move through the lines while your hopes of customization fade away.
The Crystarium system is, in a word: Useless.
The Terrible:
The Music:
I know, I know. It's getting repetitive by now but: remember when Final Fantasy Had good music? You know, those awesome songs that stay with you after you play the game? Yeah those were the good days. Nowadays? well it seems that Square-enix thought that what a boring and terrible game needs is some boring and forgettable music.
This game has the most pathetic battle theme of all the Final Fantasy games. Enough said. You won't remember a single song, not even the fanfare. It's completely forgettable. Hell even bad FF games had some awesome music, like FF8. There's some great music in that game. Makes up for all the badness.
The World:
Never has been a FF so void of life, never has been a world so boring. Even when you reach populated areas, they feel completely fake because you can't go anywhere but where the game takes you.
This dead horse has been beaten before, but it's worth mentioning again: NO TOWNS.
The lack of towns kill this world. Gran Pulse is just a vast, hollow digital world which never feels real. The world from Final Fantasy 1 felt more real than Gran Pulse. Getting anywhere in gran pulse is a pain in the ass. Between loading times, no airships, sparse teleport points, Chocobos that you get too late in the game, this world is not only void but also stupid hard to navigate.
I remember playing chrono trigger. That was one world which changed dramatically depending on the year you were in. It could be said there were several different worlds, one for each time period. But you know what? after a while, you could remember these worlds like the palm of your hand You knew where in the map the millenial fair was, or where was lavos. These things you learned without even knowing because you were invested in this world.
That never happens in FF13. I found myself lost and looking at my map more than usual. Would 20 or 30 more hours of gameplay would have helped? perhaps. But I remember learning FFIV's maps on my first playthrough, as a natural thing. The lack of towns or important landmarks to identify each section makes the world feel static and hollow, and thus you never clearly learn any location by instinct.
Plus: NAMES. Oh Lordy.
In FF6, you could remember where was Figaro Castle located, and what was figaro castle. It's an easy name: Figaro. Easy to learn. Like Narshe, or Maranda, or ZoZo. Easy, recognizable names. Now in FF13, what do we get? we get this kind of bullshit: "Yaschas Massif – Tsubaddran Highlands" WHAT? say that 3 times really fast. Hell, try to say it once. How do you even pronounce that, let alone REMEMBER that? "Archylte Steppe – Haerii Archaeopolis", "Paddraean Archaeopolis", "Archylte Steppe"? what? no, FUCK YOU.
This game fails on so many basic aspects. Even in naming things with simple names people can hear, interpret and remember.
The Absolute Garbage:
The Story:
So I beat FF13 a few hours ago, and if you ask me what this game was about, I don't have an answer. And It's not that kind stories which are good but leave you with ambiguous meanings. No, this is a simple story, very simple compared to other FFs, it's just that I can't make sense or understand what the fuck was going on most of the time.
The game spends 30 hours throwing names like fal'cie, l'cie, ci'eth, and a lot of unrecognizable garbage at you mercilessly without explaining what the fuck they were or what the hell was going on about them. And even when they explained, the explanation didn't make much sense. Is as if they expected you to know all this shit beforehand, like all this information was was found a prequel, or a book or something that they expected you to have read. Seriously I have no idea.
So this doesn't even deserve a spoiler warning because I am saving you from this mess by telling you beforehand: The story is mainly about lightning's sister which gets transformed into a... something that you ALSO get transformed by a... semi-god/monster.. being which seems like exist in the world you live in and transform people into this things to do things for them or something I DON'T KNOW. Anyways she later gets transformed into crystal and then you start your quest to save her and sazh's son which had the same luck.
It seems that there are 2 worlds with their own gods thingies (they are called fal'cie, I think) that do this things to humans and the humans who fail to do what they were transformed for (they don't get told what they are meant to do) are transformed into monsters so the party is in a run against time. In all this mess there's something about some factions called sanctum and.. some rebels which I NEVER understood, and there's the main bad guy with the stupid and long name (bartholomeous or something like that) who is trying to destroy the world by bringing ragnarok through one of your friends, or so I think.
Understand all that? no, right? well I don't blame you because I didn't tell it very well, or took care to explain things right, JUST LIKE THE GAME. Final Fantasy 7 has a pretty complicated story, but I think that everybody who played it never felt confused about the basic premise, or the twists. But this story is just a huge mess and is told in the worst way possible.
Storytelling and character development in this game is absolutely terrible. There were absolutely no memorable moments of storytelling in this game. I still remember FFVI's Opera act, and subsequent meeting with setzer. Or how Kefka Destroyed the whole fucking world! that was badass, and unexpected. Everybody remembers the death of aeris, the transformation of cecil, those are some memorable moments there, and you will find none of those in this game, not. even. close.
Good stories about characters usually show the characters going through events that change who they are. It's the basic premise of a character tale. You can tell how Terra, Squall, Cecil, and Steiner went through a change since the beginning of their stories. But here, Snow is the same person he was at the start, he learned nothing, and pretty much every other person in your party was the same at the end, except for maybe hope and lightning. They learned nothing, this story changed nothing for them. There is no emotional investment in a story like this.
Tutorials, Tutorials, Hand holding... oh look another tutorial!
This is a HUGE issue with this game. The first 30 hours of this game consist of the game hiding features from you while hand-holding you through the environments and the fights. They stop you in your tracks for tutorials about EVERYTHING. Why did they do this, what were they THINKING?
You can't even change party members until you are 30 hours in the game. yes you read that correctly, it's unbelievable. You can't use the magic command till a few hours later when you do the tutorial for it. You can't use the crystarium until you do the tutorial. You can't use items till you do the tutorial. You can't wipe your ass until you do the tutorial. Tutorials, tutorials, TUTORIALS. Square-enix thinks we gamers are fucking dumb. 30 hours of tutorials and hand holding. 30 FUCKING HOURS!.
I don't remember this hand holding being so silly in FF7. There were a couple of tutorials for the materia system, which was pretty complicated and needed to be explained. But here, they have to explain the AUTOATTACK function. WHY? It's ridiculous. It's another of those aspects of the game which square enix stubbornly doesn't let you have control over, but taken to the extreme.
World and dungeon layout
Final fantasy 13 has 13 chapters. 10 of those are just one huge tutorial. But not only that, but you never get to an actual WORLD in those first 30 hours. Let's look back again: Final Fantasy 1? You talk to the king, mess around Corneria, and BAM, out world. How awesome. Final Fantasy 6? You do the intro, get out of Narshe, and BAM, beautiful, lovely outworld.
Final Fantasy 13? it's just one huge, long corridor where the only option is to go forward. You plunge through it for hours on end, straight corridor after straight corridor. Who playtested this and thought this was awesome? I really want to know.
all you can do in this game is move forward and fight, and watch boring cutscenes with characters blabbing about stuff you don't understand and ultimately won't care about.
After those grueling 10 chapters, you finally arrive to the "outworld" of Gran Pulse. And you say to yourself: "now the fun starts". But you are wrong. What starts now, is THE GRIND.
The Grind
The last part of the game is a bitch. You can't beat but the weakest of creatures, which you have to grind to be able to kill the next set of creatures in the food chain. Oh but you get SIDEQUESTS! Which are all about finding a monster and killing it. This part of the game does not forgive, it's merciless. The only way to advance is to grind, grind, and grind.
The grind has been present in every final fantasy but honestly, did you ever need to get to max level and deck everyone with ultima in ff6 to be able to beat it? of course not. After you gather your party and do some exploring and sidequesting, you were probably ready to go at Kefka, it wouldn't be easy, but you could probably beat him.
Not in this game. To be able to beat the final boss, you absolutely have to max out everyone's main crystarium roles, and deck them with fully upgraded weapons. Imagine that you had to max everyone's level and espers in FF6, and deck them with the best weapons and ultima to be able to have a fair fight with kefka. And he still manages to beat you twice or so.
You know what's that right?
It's BULLSHIT.
For all the tutorials in the game, the game never fully explains how the upgrading works. So if you end up selling your components, well tough luck. Grind away more. Also since the game gates your crystarium progression you might at some point max out your main roles and think "well, I'll invest the points I get from now on in the other roles". Only that maxing out the other roles is more costly than doing the main roles and you get meager returns for it. So you might end up like doing what I did, spending all my points on other roles, then getting an unexpected final crystarium expansion, and not having points to invest in the main roles which give me the massive bonuses I need to progress through the rest of the story.
It's ridiculous and shows how poorly thought out was everything about this game. I need the points to progress, but I can't kill the enemies to get the points.
Anyways, the game goes from a tutorialfest to a brutal grind on a whim, and it seems like there were two separate teams working on each part of the game. BTW, there are no minigames at all.
Conclusion
Final Fantasy 13 sucks ass. It's definitely the worst final fantasy ever made, and took the throne of worst final fantasy from FF8 without much trouble. FF8 is light years beyond this mess of a game. I'd rather hear Rinoa annoy squall and squall say "meh" and "whatever" over and over and over instead of playing this game ever again. Fuck this game.
It's been a long time since I posted anything here.
Mostly because what I usually talk about over here are new movies I've just seen (and I haven't been to the theater in ages) or new stuff in World of Warcraft (Which I haven't played with any kind of consistency in ages as well).
What have I been doing then? well, catching up to some Wii titles, sick at home because an incredibly resilient flu, and playing League of Legends quite a bit. The game is excellent, really. Check it out.
So I heard activision was remaking Goldeneye. Activision is a company that has been famous lately in the industry for being the "new EA". Churning out sequel after sequels, milking out franchises dry until they are a carcass of their former self. This made me think this game was going to be a quick cash-in, and yet another desecration of something that has a lot of nostalgic value for some people. But, turns out it wasn't that way at all.
A little backstory: I was a n64 kid. I didn't have a playstation, so most of the games I played on the n64-saturn-playstation generation were n64 games. Some of them, I played for hours on end. Beating them from start to finish countless times. Mario 64, Zelda Ocarina of time, Star Fox 64, and of course, Goldeneye.
I gotta say, I wasn't expecting a game that was EXACTLY like the old goldeneye. But if you're expecting something even closely resembling it, you will be disappointed. This game is just not goldeneye. The feel of the game, is certainly not goldeneye. The story is different, the layout of the maps is completely different, the characters are different, the weapons, etc. You can't shoot enemies in the hand and see them grab the wounded hand in pain, or the foot, or the groin. You can't see blood stains in the part of the enemy that you shoot. There are no trip mines, remote mines, laser watch, or ANY gadget from goldeneye. You can't dual wield.
This is not Goldeneye. Not the movie, not the old game.
This is Call of Duty with a James Bond license. The weapons feel like call of duty, the engine is call of duty's engine, the enemies act like call of duty enemies, The cinematics are clearly made by the call of duty team. Seriously, if you've ever played any call of duty game, you will see through the James bond cover right away.
However, this is a really good shooter.
And it's on the Wii, which REALLY lacks good shooters. The feel of a james bond movie (not goldeneye tho!) is there. The missions are fun, the weapons too, it's all very fun. The melee takedown system is really, really fun, and I was trying to sneak through the enemy lines using takedowns as much as possible because it was so darn fun.
This is a great game for the Wii. DO NOT EXPECT IT TO BE GOLDENEYE. It's just not. It was all a marketing ploy, which is to be expected from Activision. However, I didn't expect them to deliver a fun game, but they did, and that makes up for trying to fool us using nostalgia as an excuse.
A 4/5 game for me. Give it a chance.
Initially I wanted to do a lot of updates on the beta, but things change so radically every week that a lot of the things I write here are obsolete in the next patch, or simply M.I.A. (For example, the power auras implementation is gone in the last patch. Bummer) But aside from the constant changes, I haven't played the beta a lot lately, this is mainly because a few reasons:
-Some quests are broken, impeding me to continue key questlines. For example, the goblin questline has been broken since I joined the beta, I still haven't been able to get a goblin out of the lost isles.
-I am not very interested in testing the level 80-85 content at the moment. I am an altaholic, and thus I am focusing on the different and new experiences provided for the players in the new and revamped Azeroth.
-Last but certainly not least, League of Legends and Minecraft.
League of legends is, simply put, the best free-to-play game on the internet. I'm sure tastes will vary, and not everyone is into PvP-oriented games, but the polish and quality found in this game is simply not found in any other F2P game out there.
This game has made me a hater of WoW PvP.
I wasn't too keen into WoW (or any other MMO) PvP from the start. I did play quite a lot of PvP back in Burning Crusade, but after the complete disaster that was Wotlk PvP balance, I decided to stick to the PvE part, which was, for the most part, as entertaining as ever, and in some cases it even was the best PvE ever found in WoW (Ulduar).
Now, League of Legends is not a MMO. It's based on the Defense of the ancients style of gameplay. You can pick a Hero out of more than 60 (!) found in the game, each with its own completely unique style of gameplay and unique abilities, get into a team of 3 or 5 people and play the game, which consists on, basically, destroying the enemy's Base.
Sounds simple enough, but the game requires a lot of strategy and coordination, and everyone in the team must contribute to the team fights. What I like the most about this game is that a good player can make the difference for the team, and not necessarily which character you're playing, which is something games like WoW haven't achieved yet, where flavor of the month or cookie-cutter comp wins the day everyday (lolroguemagepriest roflpwntrain)
You are able to customize your character with runes and a talent tree that you start to fill up as you gain levels, which are independent from the levels you gain in-game. You also gain IP, which are used to buy champions and runes. Each week gives you 10 free champions to try out, but as you play matches and gain IP, you are able to buy the champion you like and stick with it, or also buy other champions.
The game is free, and there's a store where you can buy skins (which are all very cool for the most part), IP and XP boosts(boost the XP and IP gain from games played), and also buy new champions which come out every month. You can do this with IP or riot points which are bought with real money. Whichever way you choose, it doesn't really give you and advantage. The store doesn't give a gameplay advantage if you use real money or not, and that's something I really really like.
The most important thing though: the game is FUN. The game is addictive, and many many times more balanced than WoW. It's lightyears away. There are certainly tiers of champions, but as I said most of the time it matters more if you're a good player or not, rather than what you play. There are no set comps that everyone uses to win. It's really cool to have more freedom on what you want to do rather of what works. All the champions have a weakness that you can exploit, and comps are based on the type of job you do (Tank, support, dps) than exactly what class you play.
So yeah, this game is great, and it's been very successful so far. It gets updated all the time, and new champions are added every month. Riot initially had some server issues, but those are being resolved and for the most part the servers are up and stable.
I recommend all my friends and whoever happens to read this to give this game a try. It's keeping me away from Cataclysm Beta, and that is an achievement all in itself.
Time to take a break for a while from the spoilerrific posts of the new starting areas. I'd like to talk about one of the features I like the most that are coming in cata.
The vast majority of those who take raiding seriously (well, as seriously as you can take a game) know of a little addon called Power Auras. This is without a doubt the most useful addon for raiding. It's the addon that will help you the most at being great at what you do, no matter the role.
What exactly is Power Auras, you ask? Well, to explain why Power Auras is so good and what it's used for, I first need to make a point: WoW's UI is really, really bad. It's functional, but when you want to track ANYTHING useful with it, it shows that it comes from a time where everquest was king and raiding wasn't as difficult as it is now.
WoW's UI comes from simpler times, where keeping track of everyone's HP in a raid didn't matter much because you didn't have to make split-second decisions. The life of the tanks didn't depend of wether you could use a macro to bring him up from 10% to full health in 2 seconds or the Raid wipes. It comes from a time where it didn't matter if you knew that a proc was up so you could capitalize on it and maximize your dps. Bosses weren't balanced around 40 people maximizing their performance. They were balanced on 15 people maximizing their performance, 15 more doing decent to mediocre performances, and 10 more afking for half or the whole fight.
What power auras does is to give you a visual cue of your choice, exactly where you want in the screen, and triggered by anything in the game. Still don't get it? well, let me give you an example: As a Holy Priest, you must keep track of a buff called Serendipity. Now, Keeping track of this buff in the default UI is a pain in the ass, because this buff stacks 3 times and in the default UI that's almost impossible to see, and also the default UI throws this buff along all the other 30 buffs you'll have in a raid, in a frikken corner of the screen.
With power auras, you could configure this buff to show up as a semi-transparent graphic of your choice that appears AROUND your toon, so you always know when it procs. You could also add a counter on its side so you know how many stacks you have, or you could make it less transparent as it gains more stacks. You could also add a timer nearby so you know when it will expire.
Useful eh? Not only this, you could track when a trinket is ready for use, when your target has certain buff or debuff, when you have low mana, low health, combo points, runes... WHATEVER! you can track anything and everything and display it on the screen however you want. That's why this Addon is so Valuable for anyone that wants to be as best as he/she can in a raid.
This addon is, in my opinion, even more valuable than Deadly Boss Mods, because after you know the fights, it's pretty much redundant in most cases. This addon however, will always be helpful, and is helpful for everybody.
Now, the real reason I am talking about Power Auras, is this:
Yes, that's me in the beta, and no, that's not Power Auras. That's Blizzard's own implementation of power auras in-game.
Blizzard's version is much simpler than Power Auras. It just tracks certain critical spells for different classes (In this case, Arcane Missiles procs for Mages) and you can't change or modify the graphic displayed, at the moment. I don't expect it to become as complex as power auras, but this is a REALLY good implementation of the addon. I hope you can have some control and customization in the final version, because right now everything is set in stone and you can only toggle it on or off.
Anyways, for those who love power auras this is something to look forwards to. For those of you who never heard of Power Auras before, shame on you. Go get it right now and learn how to use it, it's guaranteed to make you a better player. Or you can wait till cata and check out the "Official" version. Either way, this was a really neat surprise.
(Damn this was longer than originally planned. TL;DR!)
The Beta is kind of a mess right now. This must be one of the buggiest beta patches, because a lot of critical quests - quests that block advancement - are broken, some mechanics are broken as well, and.. well, it's hard to keep record of anything because it's impossible to see an entire zone, and in some cases, you can't even get to see any of it.
But that's what beta tests are for, right? I'm very grateful I got a beta key and I try my best to report bugs and suggestions every day. With that in mind, I'll keep posting my impressions so far, but unless we get a new (and more stable) patch things will be kind of incomplete.
Also, I was playing on a server that doesn't shows up on my list anymore, so I lost all my characters. Time to start anew, I guess!
Time for some Shen'dralar goodness.
A little lore background: You can now roll Night Elves Mages because the Shen'dralar came back to the night elves and wanted to join them again for the sake of surviving against the forces that threaten Azeroth in cataclysm. So basically if you roll a night elf mage it's either a Shen'dralar or a young night elf that is being taught arcane magic by them.
The night elf starting zone is almost the same as before. The quest haven't changed much regarding what you have to do, but they have changed a lot regarding WHY you are doing what you do. The story is much better now, it's very well told and everything has a purpose.
Some things have changed, to make some quests easier. Everyone that has leveled up a nelf remembers the quests inside the Imps cavern, or the quests in the barrow dens. Those were some really annoying quests, but now the devs changed them and they don't seem much of a hassle, and are in fact fun now.
For this quest, now you get an item that roots and kills the imps, so you are free to explore the cave and complete the other quests without worrying for respawns on these annoying fucks.
One of the biggest surprises was the change to the Barrow Dens quest. This was one of the most annnoying quests because that place is a mess and the mobs were kind of unforgiving. Now, after I entered the dens, a night elf sentinel came to my aid! but the best part is, you could ask her for directions to the 4 quest items you need from here, and she would create a green mist that would flow in the direction of the item! that right there improved this place by 1000%. They could have made the sentinel not attack the mobs with you and this quest would have been vastly improved by the green mist.
I really hope they implement this new tech in some other confusing quests and dungeons. I can see this working in The Wailing Caverns, one of the most confusing dungeons in the game.
I also found a whole new line of quests in teldrassil, along with a new area. This quest takes you to a path up the mountains inside of teldrassil to free some druids of the talon controlled by a furlborg. It was nice to see new things added to this zone.
Finally, the zone seems to end in an EPIC quest where you combat the remaining corruption on teldrassil (which is an army of demons and satyrs) by being infused with power by Elune herself. Your actionbar changes to different abilities that sound totally epic. Alas, this quest is bugged, so I can't really say how it ends, or how it goes, or take screenshots. From the looks of it and the buildup, it seemed to do justice to the zone.
I glossed over this zone but as with the human zone the experience here has been vastly improved. This zone used to be very dull and pointless, but now it's very interesting and not annoying at all. The new flight points in the zone cut down the walking you have to do, and overall it's very well tuned. I can see myself leveling up my night elves in this zone again.
By the way, I visited Darnassus, and with the changes to some of the architecture and the new graphic improvements it looks prettier than ever. Also, there's a new zone, the Howling tree, and it seems to be where the worgen will hang around. It's very beautiful.
I will leave you with a slideshow of some of the pictures I took. Enjoy!
As the 90% of beta testers, I created and leveled up a Worgen when I got in the beta. It's the first thing most people do, besides checking out the post 80 content. I will probably not talk about it much because the information about the worgen quests are avaliable everywhere.
After the obligatory worgen roll, I rolled a human hunter, and that's what I'm going to talk about today.
Compared to the other revamped zones, the human starting zones (Northshire Abbey/Elwynn Forest) haven't seen nearly as much changes. Anyways, as I rolled my hunter I got dropped in the same place you start right now on live, except there's a new recruiting booth nearby. Once you get your first quest, you see King Varian aproaching. Yes, now humans get recruited by King Varian himself!
Anyways the quests are mostly intact. Kill wolves, go for the troggs, "YOU TAKE NO CANDLE", etc. The only change is that there are no more Defias around. The Defias are completely gone (Or at least they make you think that!), and instead you get the Orcs from the burning steppes that are attacking the Abbey. They burned down the grape farm, btw.
After you get out of Northshire you are sent to Goldshire just like in Live. Again, the quests are the same but they have been somewhat reorganized so you don't have to walk as much as before. But you have the same quests in the Saldean farm, and well you get the point, it's mostly the same but better streamlined.
Something they changed though was adding Flight points in both Goldshire and Eastvale logging camp. This makes the questing in this area MUCH better. I remember hating that dreaded walk from Goldshire to Eastvale. I didn't find new quests in the logging camp though, it's again mostly the same as in live, only not as annoying. All of the annoying quests were removed as well, so that's a plus.
As far as I've seen, all the zones now have a theme that leads into a couple of final quests that are the climax of the zone. Elwynn doesn't have a real theme, you run around helping people and handling the trogg, gnoll and murloc problems. There's a final quest though, and it was kind of epic, and surprising!
Everyone remembers Hogger. It's one of those WoW memes that everyone inside of the game knows, and even people outside of the game know as well. Well, Blizzard saw the chance to capitalize on this and they gave Hogger his own hill in the gnoll camp. When you engage him, the fight seems like normal, but this time around, he calls minions when he's low on health, and also runs off to his hill and eats the carcasses to regain his health! Badass.
After I dealt with him, to my surprise, General Marcus - warden of the stockades, appears along with 2 mages, and takes him as a prisoner to the stockades! what's even more fun is when you turn the completed quest to Marshal Duggan and he complains about the implications of having a powerful gnoll in a jail with a lot of other gnolls.
Below I am posting a slideshow of the whole thing:
View all
Overall, don't expect a whole new experience for the humans and their starting zone, Elwynn Forest. although it changes dramatically once you get to Westfall, the experience in Elwynn is mostly unchanged. However, it is much easier to level up here now, and the experience is less of a hassle and definitely more fun.
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