Guild Wars 2 Release Attribute System for PAX East

Over the development of Guild Wars 2, the attribute system has evolved over many different courses. The first set of attributes was very stereotypical for the fantasy game.

• Strength—increased melee attack damage.
• Agility—increase ranged attack damage.
• Intelligence—increased magic attack damage.
• Vitality—increased health; increased defense against melee attacks.
• Perception—increased critical strike chance for melee and ranged attacks; increased defense against ranged attacks.
• Willpower—increased critical strike chance for magic attacks; increased defense against magic attacks.

This brought along it's own set of problems. The interface for Hero attributes was very confusing to look at, and made it hard to determine what skills and spells had their damage buffed by what attribute, so they changed it.

• Strength—increased melee attack damage.
• Agility—increase ranged attack damage.
• Intelligence—increased magic attack damage.
• Vitality—increased health.
• Perception—increased critical strike chance.
• Willpower—increased energy.

However, this brought about problems with choosing weapons. Basically, no matter what you chose, it would limit your weapon options greatly. A warrior couldn't carry a sword and a bow, and be good with both of them, even though that's a fairly common combination to want on your person.

Finally, the dev team came up with an attribute system they were happy with.

• Power—increased attack damage.
• Precision—increased critical strike chance.
• Vitality—increased health.
• Toughness—increased defense/armor.

Using this set of attributes, it didn't limit weapon choice, but it also simplified the UI and made it much easier to discern what attribute translated into what you wanted, whether that be damage or health or what have you.

I find this a great move for the better, although it's going to make it difficult to discern between individual players, I feel. The simplification also takes away some of the customization. I suppose most of the individualization of characters will come from the weapon they use, though, since the weapons are what will decide skills for the characters.

In either case, PAX East starts in just 18 hours! I'm not going, but I'm looking forward to all the game news that will be coming out of this.

An Update on Things...

So, folks. There are a few things that will probably be happening with this blog soon.
For starters, quite possibly expanding it beyond just the realm of video games. My brother mentioned some interest in potentially authoring some posts about movie reviews. I don't want to delineate this blog too much and lose focus with what's being done on it- being about gaming is pretty straightforward in and of itself. However, it would be kind of neat to expand it into something more about general entertainment with a focus in games rather than just games.

Readers, what do you think?
-Keep this blog just about games
-Games and the occasional Movie review is fine
-Or expand it to entertainment as a whole, including things such as music

Nostalgia: Legend of Zelda

Back in the day of cartridge gaming, my friends and I were young diehard gamers. Many hours were spend on the mere 15 inch television in the basement, sprawled on plush blue carpet from the eighties, just trying to keep cool in a dark room on overbearingly hot days of summer, as well as cold days and nights of winter.

Chrono Trigger may have been the first plastic cartridge to offer us refuge from the elements and our world for a much more colorful one, but it was far from the last.

The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past was another wonderful game that we spent a lot of time playing. Some would argue too much time. I, however, wager that it was another one of the best RPG's known to the world, if not one of the best games known to the world.

Original game box

I've always been a fan of sword and magic sort of games, but this one spoke out a lot to me. It was one of the first RPG's I had played, but the world changed as you progressed in the game. After a certain point when you went to the Dark World, it completely recreated the world as you knew it. Some similar things were in the same spot as their light world counterpart, but overall it was a complete redesign of the world.

In the end, I think me, my brother, and our friend ended up playing through this game three or four times in one summer, just because of how awesome it was.
Various dungeons kept us busy with puzzles and badass bosses that were tough to beat, the game kept us enthralled with it's storyline. I particularly enjoyed the bit with the dude in the woods with the animals around him.

Also, we must not forget about the chickens!

SO MANY CHICKENS, RUN LINK RUN

Call of Duty: Black Ops

Love it or hate it, this game is notorious for zealot-faithful players, much rage, and many angered girlfriends. Long story short, it's a modern warfare first person shooter, with a plethora of guns and weapons of all sorts, mostly known for its multiplayer capabilities.

Personally, like Minecraft, I avoided this game like crazy at first. Namely because these sort of games dirty the name of gamers and games everywhere- most of these games don't have anything different from the next, and the biggest difference between them all is the six to ten month delays between their releases. This makes me mad because they're namely made to keep money flowing into their major companies.

Black Ops, specifically, is guilty of being an overly milked cash cow for it's parent company and publisher Activision. The single player campaign has an odd storyline, punctuated by drugged-up interrogations between various missions. Nothing too noteworthy. However the multiplayer is what these games are known for. Also not too noteworthy. Shoot, kill, die, respawn, repeat. For the Xbox 360, this is no problem. For the PS3 and PC, this is a major issue. The game was ported to these severely lagged and glitchy, almost unplayable inherent lag in multiplayer, and was just a disaster. So bad, in fact, a UK group, Gamers' Voice, reported Activision to the UK Office of Fair Trade.

Anyway, in spite of all this, I ended up playing this after my brother got it. This past day has been spent adrenaline rushing over killing countless people in multiplayer. The game itself isn't really phenomenal, but it is insanely fun. As far as I'm concerned, the game isn't worth $60 in the slightest. Luckily, I didn't spend the money on it, though. So I'm perfectly okay with spending time playing it. :D

Long story short, it isn't worth the money, especially considering a new modern warfare first person shooter will be released in a few months without a doubt, and all of the players will swarm to that game. However, if you can get a copy for cheap, or are at a friends house who has it, feel free to play the hell out of it. Theres nothing quite like the rush of a high kill streak. Definitely makes one feel like a badass.

Nostalgia: Chrono Trigger

Back in the yonder days of gaming, there wasn't anything fancy about game design. No Anti-Aliasing. No shading. No 3D for that matter, even. What made a game fun was not how realistic it was when you gutted your enemy, it was the creativity and uniqueness of the storyline.

Chrono Trigger was, and still is, one of my favorite games ever. You play Chrono, in a slightly anachronistic "present" world as you go to a fair. Events get you mixed up with a disguised princess, and you get thrown back a few hundred years.

Long story short, you jump around time ("present?" times, medieval ages, prehistoric ages, and distant future) to defeat an end-all creature named Lavos from destroying the planet.

Chrono was a silent protagonist, and the game was very much so plot-driven. The art may seem familiar. The "dream team" that worked on Chrono Trigger had the 3 people who worked on various Final Fantasy games, as well as the Dragon Quest games and manga. It was truly a game to behold.

It did so well, it was even re-released for the DS a couple years ago. That made me quite happy to see the game make its way to modern times again. There was a 3D version of the game being made by a fan, but that got canned by Square Enix sending them a cease and desist letter, which made me very very sad.

In either case, this game was a major part of my child hood. My older brother, when he moved out, left to me and my twin the SNES and all his games, and we idolized it. We spent many summers with our best friend from down the street playing this game, as well as a couple others. While one of us would play, the other two of us would watch and be amazed with the story line. We did this and still do it today, albeit with different game systems. But this game is what got me into video games to begin with.

Do any of you readers have a game you hold this dear?

GDC- Minecraft and Amnesia Win Big

Yesterday, Frictional Games' Amnesia and Mojang Specifications' Minecraft dominated at the Independent Games Festival Awards.

Amnesia slaps you in the face with a whole new level of brick-shitting scare tactics

In Amnesia, you play a man in a broken down castle, trying to regain his memories. All while being chased by netherworldy creatures. Did I mention you can't fight them at all? That's right. All you can do is run and hide from these hell-beasts trying to kill you. Oh, and darkness makes you go insane after a while.
Basically, you're boned in every possible direction. Can't fight, so have to hide. But if you hide, you lose your mind. Fun stuff.


Amnesia won awards in Excellence in Audio, Technical Excellence, and the $10,000 Direct2Drive Vision award. Frictional Co-founder Thomas Grip, as he accepted an oversized $10,000 check, said "I think that we need to buy another bag or get more luggage. After three years of thinking we're not going to make games anymore and hating everything and living on noodles... it's totally getting done... and getting awards for it, that seems like too much.”

 Minecraft  won the Seumas McNally Grand Prize, as well as the night's Audience Choice award, recieving over 5,000 e-mail-verified votes on IGF's website.

Both are fantastic games, but they weren't that night's only winners. Gamasutra has the full list of the 2011 IGF Award winners:

Best Student Game:
Fract by Richard E Flanagan

Excellence in Design:
Desktop Dungeons by QCF Design

Technical Excellence:
Amnesia: The Dark Descent by Frictional Games

Best Mobile Game:
Helsing's Fire by Ratloop

Excellence in Visual Art:
Bit.Trip Runner by Gaijin Games

Excellence in Audio:
Amnesia: The Dark Descent by Frictional Games

Direct2Drive Vision Award:
Amnesia: The Dark Descent by Frictional Games

Audience Award:
Minecraft by Mojang

IGF Nuovo Award
Nidhogg by Messhof

Seumas McNally Grand Prize:
Minecraft by Mojang

 [via  Gamasutra]

Steam is good for colds, right?

Today continues the ongoing attack of a cold on our blog's author, ThatGuy. Sleeping half of the day for the past few days, however, has revitalized ThatGuy enough to post this. It also helps that it is now Spring Break at ThatGuy's college, marking a week of free time to post post post!

Steam recently announced a new security feature they plan to implement soon- Steam Guard. With the implementation of Steam Guard, it locks Steam accounts to a specific computer. Attempts to edit the account outside of that single PC can't be completed.

Steam Guard will be able to be implemented in other games through the use of Steam Works. Steam Guard uses Intel's Identity Protection Technology, which uses encryption that is tied to the individual 2nd gen Intel Core T and vProT processors.

Frankly, I quite like how this is going. I had my Steam account phished before, and almost lost my email account out of it, too. It was a horrible event, and it was rather dumb how it played out. Someone got a hold of my password and signs in, so it boots me out. So I log back in, boots them out. It goes back and forth like this a total of 5 times, but because of the limit on that, it boots me out, and I can't attempt to do that again. So, phisher won, and I had to get a support ticket, which was also almost ruined by the phisher, too. I was rather frustrated with how the situation played out, but in the end, I got my account back. It taught me a lesson, sure, but that shouldn't have happened in the first place.

Audience, whats your thoughts on Steam Guard?