Company of Heroes - First Impression
Today was a big game-spending today: I picked up Company of Heroes, Valkyrie Profile 2, and Okami. So what was the first thing that I played when I got home? World of WarCraft, of course! Actually, to be entirely honest, I did play about a half hour or so of Valkyrie Profile 2 before diving into WoW. After a couple of hours of WoW, I installed and geeked out on Company of Heroes. Sadly, Okami hasn't been put into the PS2 yet.
First I'd like to comment a little on Valkyrie Profile 2. Holy freakin' cow is the artwork in that game ever impressive. It sure looks sweet, although the town and dungeon exploration does feel somewhat limited due to the inability to adjust the camera angle. The combat system seems neat but I haven't played nearly enough of it to make a fair assesment, and ditto on the storyline. In a lot of ways I wish that the game had more of a traditional RPG format like Final Fantasy X or Suikoden V, but on the other hand, what is there seems like it could work.
Speaking of Suikoden V, I haven't quite decided yet if it will be pre-empted in favour of Valkyrie Profile 2. One major problem with Suikoden V is that I've played a few hours of it now, and there's only been about 45 minutes of actual dungeon exploration and combat. The vast majority of the game so far has been town exploration, talking to people, and story sequences. I'm trying to be patient for the game to pick up and become a
game, but it's frustrating--especially compared to something like Disgaea 2 where I can fire it up and be bashing skulls within a few minutes.
Alright, enough RPG talk. Company of Heroes is
fucking awesome. I knew that the game would be pretty, and I was hoping that it would help to justify my recent (and fairly hefty) investment in new computer hardware. What did somehow manage to escape my attention is that CoH is developed by Relic, the studio that brought us Dawn of War. And as you may already be aware, I've been on a major Dawn of War kick lately.
On the one hand, CoH is DoW++. It uses a lot of the same mechanics, particularly in terms of the squad-based infantry system, which I'm now convinced is roughly the only sane way to conduct an RTS game these days (having said that, I still play WarCraft III and Age of Empires III and have a great time.) The interactions between squads have become much more sophisticated, however, largely because terrain plays such an important role in the game.
In CoH, terrain is king. This game is all about finding cover, seizing buildings, setting up covering fire, and all of that good stuff. Setting up a machine gun unit in this game actually reminds me of Hightway to the Reich, except that now you can actually
see the little guy with the MG hammering away and watch hostile units scramble for cover. It's quite the experience, and it feels very strategic.
I'm not sure if this will change as I get more into CoH, but so far I've found that I don't tend to rely on groups of units as much anymore. I'm fairly comfortable to jump around the map adjusting the front lines as necessary without assigning CTRL-# shortcuts to major task groups. By contrast, when playing DoW, I rely heavily on shortcuts and groups of units to accomplish tasks--often having as many as five different groups of squads and vehicles that I jump between by double-tapping the number keys. Perhaps the mini-map in CoH is simply that much better, or perhaps I just need to get more streamlined in CoH before I start employing more frantic methods.
So far, it feels to me that CoH and DoW are different enough games that I'll continue to play DoW even though I now have CoH. That's a lot of RTS to handle, of course, but Relic's creations really are that much of a joy. I've sung a lot of the praises of Blizzard lately, and now I have to point out something fairly negative: they've allowed Relic to completely steal the ball from them in the RTS genre. Dawn of War is everything that StarCraft 2 should have been, and now Company of Heroes is pretty much the single best World War II themed RTS ever made. Hell, CoH may even be the best WW II themed game ever made, period. And while WarCraft III remains a solid game, it's quite ancient now. Relic's only real competition this last while has been from Rise of Nations and Age of Empires III (those crazy Microsoft studioes RTS games, which have been a guilty pleasure of mine these past few years), and I think it's fair to say that Rise of Legends is not stealing any attention away from Company of Heroes.
In the end, it's funny because I don't consider myself much of an RTS fan at all. My main gaming focus for PC games is on RPGs followed by RTS and turn-based strategy games. But as something of an all-inclusive gamer (well, there are a few bases that I don't cover much of, such as sports games), I do find myself often drawn to whatever is getting the most critical acclaim regardless of the genre. Rise of Nations appealed to the Civ fan in me, and I got swept up in AoE largely because of hype. But Dawn of War and Company of Heroes are making a more genuine RTS fan out of me. I find myself loving these games without reservation, as purely as I would love any RPG or FPS game. Company of Heroes stands poised to be to RTS games for me what Half-Life 2 represents in FPS games. Let's just hope that the appeal is lasting.
Tomorrow I hope to scope out some Okami. I'm really excited about that game too; one review that was quoted on Metacritic described it as "like Zelda, only better." I've been meaning to add some quest game to my diet, as it turns out.
Finishing Up on the New PC
My new Corsair RAM came in today and I installed it promptly. Perhaps not surprisingly, the speed of my new computer surged. I also picked up a Creative 1010 "Fatal1ty" gamer mouse, which seems to be a pretty solid product. I neglected to mention this earlier, but I realised where the drive rails for the DVD drive are (on the inside of the front panel, duh), so I properly installed those. I still haven't upgraded the power supply, which is currently a 450 W supply, but I may put that off for a little while.
Sunny, Matt, and myself played some Unreal Tournament 2004 today, which was cool--Sunny and I on the LAN, and Matt connecting in (Sunny used the new computer and I used the old one.) It worked out really well, and we're hoping to make a semi-regular thing out of it. Of course, I still want to play Counter-Strike with Matt regularly, especially now that I have the new get-up.
I went looking for Valkyrie Profile 2 today only to find that it's sold out around town. I'm assuming that this is no big deal; Disgaea 2 sold out on release week as well, and now it's quite easy to find. It's not like I really intend to start playing Valkyrie Profile 2 right away, but I would definitely like to play it in the near future.
I was hoping to get back into Digital Devil Saga soon, after a long break, although it's definitely being squeezed out by Disgaea 2 and World of WarCraft. My WoW kick is still going fairly strong: my Priest just hit level 31, which means that I definitely need to start setting money aside for a mount. I'd like to hit level 40 before the end of October but that's probably too short a timeframe--then again, we'll see. Having this new computer sure makes WoWing pleasant.
I also went to install F.E.A.R. this evening and realised that I can't find my CD key for it. I do have a pre-existing install, so maybe I can pull the key out of the Windows registry or something--I'll need to research that. The other option is to clean out a bunch of old stuff from my apartment and hope that I find the box for F.E.A.R. which I could have sworn that I kept. I did manage to find the manual for it and there's no CD key in there, which is unusual. I can't remember where the key was printed in the first place.
Anyway, keep on gamin', you gamers.
Updates on the New Computer
It's a funny thing having a computer with a GeForce 7900 and a measly 512 MB of not particularly fast RAM. I've played some Counter-Strike: Source and World of WarCraft on the new rig as it is currenly assembled, and the general experience is that as long as the scene isn't changing much, the frame-rate stays very high. Counter-Strike, for instance, is silky smooth as long as I'm standing in one spot and looking around, but when I start moving there are regular skips and jumps every few seconds. With World of WarCraft, the phenominon is most noticeable when using a flight path. Everything is really smooth until you take to the air, at which point there are some obvious choppy spots. I guess the problem could be due to network latency or something, but it seems similar to the Counter-Strike situation, and I was running CS locally.
I told a friend of mine (Phf) that World of WarCraft was an example of a game that would not benefit much from the new computer. I was fairly wrong about that. The jump from what I figure was about 20 fps to roughly 120 fps (disclaimer: I don't actually know how to check the framerate in WoW, so I'm just tossing these numbers off based on my naked eye estimations) is definitely noticeable and pleasant.
The process of getting a replacement for the OCZ memory is underway. NCIX.com issued me an RMA number (Return Merchandise Authorization) and the OCZ is now in the mail back to their returns department. I should be getting a $300 credit from those guys which will be applied against the cost of some similar RAM that will hopefully work with my annoying motherboard this time. I have my eye on Corsair RAM.
Also the noise problem is not as serious as I had first thought. Once I got the motherboard drivers installed, some sort of "AMD Cool & Quiet" feature apparently kicked in, and now the CPU fan is a lot more quiet. I'm assuming here that the idea is that the rps of the fan adjusts automatically depending on how hot the CPU is running, or perhaps the driver just reduced the rps to an arbitrary value. Either way, as long as my computer doesn't overheat, I'm happy with how things are running now.
My cold took a turn for the worse last night, but the worst of it seems to be over now. I'm still very tired and my head is plugged up. I'm light-headed and can't concentrate, but I've been taking the time to do some easy quests in WoW. Overall, it's not a bad way to pass the time while you're waiting for an annoying illness to pass.
OCZ + Asus M2N = No Good!
The parts for my new PC arrived today and I spent the afternoon assembling the thing. The first minor issue that I ran into is that my Antec Sonata II case doesn't seem to have come with any drive rails for the 5.25" drive bays. That's annoying, but not really a show-stopper; I put my DVD drive in the bottom bay and used a screw to "sorta" secure it in place.
Then I hit a real show stopper: one long beep followed by two short beeps when I tried to power up. It turns out that my Asus M2N-SLI mobo is not playing well with the OCZ ram kit that I got, which appears to be a
common problem. I stuck some generic 240 pin 533 MHz memory in there for now just to confirm that the rest of the system is working, and so far, so good. I'm going to try and exchange the OCZ memory for some Corsair stuff.
There are two other minor kinks with the rig. Firstly, I've noticed that the 450 W power supply that my Antec case came with is actually kinda meager for a big GPU like the BFG GeForce 7900. I will likely upgrade that to a 600 W power supply in the near future. Secondly, there is a fan somewhere in that case that is making a hella lot of noise. I'm not entirely sure if it's the CPU fan or the GPU fan, but I've ruled out the case fan at least. I may end up buying a better socket AM2 fan in an attempt to quiet things down a little.
For now I'm going to work on getting software set up. I also have a pretty nasty cold at the moment, which is slowing down the computer setup process a great deal. Still, I'm making hefty progress here; let's just hope that the problems I've encountered so far are the bulk of the trouble that I end up going through. Jinx!
I did it!
Well, after a couple of years of putting it off, I finally bought a brand new PC. I've talked a bit about various specs and stuff before, so for comparative purposes, here's the final count of what's going into the new box:
Case - Antec Sonata II (ATX, 450W PS included, "Quiet")
Mobo - ASUS M2N-SLI Deluxe NForce 570 Mobo (AM2, SLI, PCI-E16, SATA2)
CPU - AMD Athlon 64 X2 4200+ Dual Core AM2 Windsor 2.2GHZ 2X512KB
GPU - BFG GeForce 7900 GT (PCI-E, 256MB 256BIT GDDR3, SLI)
RAM - OCZ Platinum XTC PC2-6400 2GB (2X1GB DDR2-800)
HD - Seagate Barracuda 7200.10 320GB SATA2
Sound - Creative Sound Blaster Audigy 4 SE PCI 7.1
Altogether, the above lot cost me no more than $1350 (Canadian dollars). Of course, shipping with insurance and sales tax added a lot more, plus I bought a keyboard with it and some other stuff... you know how these things tend to add up when you're buying a PC. :) At least I have the monitor already, and a sweet monitor it's been too.
I'm really excited about the hot RAM--it's one of the most expensive components in the system, and all I've ever used before were cheap $65 sticks of Samsung RAM. Also exciting, of course, is the graphics card. Matt recommended BFG as a brand, which seems like solid advice, and a think that a GeForce 7900 will be more than enough for my purposes. The SATA2 HD should make a seriously noticeable difference as well.
I did cheap out a little on the case, but I think that it'll be okay. This isn't a crazy powerful rig, and I generally don't bother with overclocking, so I think the 450W power supply will be able to handle it. Buying a separate case with a nice power supply tends to cost a lot more than the $120 price tag of the Antec Sonata II; often as much as $300. My current PC has a much older Antec case and I'm happy with it overall.
In a couple of weeks this new PC should have arrived and be assembled, so I'll be sure to post more about it then. As for the release for Windows Vista (should I have waited for that to come out before upgrading my PC?), I'm planning to wait at least a year before switching up from Win XP anyway--just to give them extra time to work out various issues in the OS. I was a relatively early adopter of Windows XP (not at home, but at the office, where I did play games including Neverwinter Nights, Battlefield 1942, and WarCraft III), and I remember that there were various issues that came up and were resolved over the course of the first year of that OS's lifespan (and then, of course, there was the dreaded Service Pack 2...)
At any rate, this new PC will definitely help tide me over until the Wii is released in late Nov. I believe the date that they're saying now is Nov 19th, and I've heard that the PS3 is two days earlier--the 17th, I suppose. Part of me really is tempted to buy a PS3 right away, but I'm just not convinced that the offerings of the first year of the PS3's lifespan will be worth the investment. I'd rather wait until at least the following summer to see what games become hits and whether or not a price drop gets announced before I dive in. The Wii sounds pleasantly affordable, though, and as discussed earlier, I am intending to get one of those on launch day if possible.
I should probably clarify here that I am not expecting the Wii to be "better" than the PS3--that is not at all why I am figuring on buying the Wii first and waiting on the PS3. It's just that most consoles aren't very appealing in their first year of existence, simply put. I know that there's a lot of appeal in being on the bleeding edge and on experiencing the excitement of launch titles. I did miss out on some great early PS2 experiences such as Metal Gear Solid 2, Gran Turismo 3, Final Fantasy X, and Grand Theft Auto 3... except that I didn't
really miss out because a got to buy and extensively play all of those games eventually. There's something to be said for not always jumping in with both feet, if you see what I mean.
Consider, for instance, that so many people were so hyped up over the Nintendo 64. On launch day, it was almost unimaginable that the N64 would bomb--people loved Mario 64, and both Pilotwings 64 and Wave Race 64 were considered great games, although they were a little shorter than people were expecting. But if you didn't rush out and get an N64 right away, it became clear within a few short months that N64 games were being plagued with delays and that several key titles (eg. Star Wars: Shadows of the Empire) were decidedly lack-lustre. The N64 had an okay run overall, and it eventually produced classics such as Goldeneye 64 and Zelda 64. But being one of the very first kids on your block to have a N64 really didn't add all that much value; because the best games were so few and far between, you could have bought an N64 two full years after the launch date and gotten just as much out of it in the long run.
All I'm really trying to say is that you can't know for sure that a new console is going to be awesome. Some people are still telling themselves that the XBox 360 is awesome, for example, and I am thoroughly unconvinced myself. There is no doubt that the hardware for the Wii will be weak, and if the PS3 manages to launch with Devil May Cry 4 and Metal Gear Solid 4, those two titles alone are enough for me to say that the PS3 will almost certainly have a stronger launch line-up. The real question, though, is whether or not the PS3 is worth as much as what Sony is going to charge for it. Maybe it'll be worth all that and more, and maybe it'll just be kinda frustrating to have one. I know that Fritzkrieg was frustrated with his PlayStation 2 (he got one at launch) for the first year that he had it. And what if the PS3 is plagued with the sort of first-run hardware issues that some XBox 360 owners saw? I think it's safe to say that if you choose to wait on getting a PS3, you can feel good about that decision. And if you choose to get one on launch, don't let guys like me make you feel any less pumped about it--I wouldn't want that.
Woah, that turned into quite the little rant. I guess I'm just excited about November. Hmm... what I really should be excited about is the hot new PC that I just ordered, which is more costly (and powerful) than a PS3 and Wii combined. And, of course, there are plenty of awesome Nintendo DS titles just around the corner too.
World of WarCraft
As I just mentioned in my previous post, I've finally discovered the joy that is World of WarCraft. Don't get me wrong; I've always known that it was a truly amazing game, and probably the best video game that's ever been made at this point in history. I've just never been as deeply hooked on it as I am right now, and I've learned a lot more about the true nature of its appeal in the past week.
What's really remarkable about WoW is that no game has managed to take the throne from it so far. The game is about three years old now, making it fairly ancient as far as popular video games go, and it has something like 6 million subscribers each paying subscriptions of $15 USD per month. It doesn't take much mental math to see that that means WoW is currenly en route to gross over $100 billion in one year. Given that WoW has already been running for three years and could even continue to be profitable for another three years (Blizzard may be able to keep it going with new expansion packs, like the one coming out this November), it's not hard to see the immense scope of market penetration and profit that we're talking about here. No single video game has ever come anywhere near that kind of prevalence. There's even that
well known article where Brian Sullivan (the creator of Age of Empires) suggests that WoW's popularity is responsible for an overall decline in the PC gaming industry--presumably because gamers are so busy playing WoW that they can't be bothered to play anything else these days.
I've also played some Guild Wars, and damn that was a good game. It's very similar to World of WarCraft, and if you didn't know better you could say that it's just as good. A really important bit is that Guild Wars costs only $60 as a
one time fee to play; it's a MMORPG without the subscription fees! Of course, it's also not exactly like other MMOs in that you only see other players in cities and the whole rest of the game world is instanced, but it does have PvP and other such WoW-like features. So given that Guild Wars is so much cheaper than WoW and seemingly almost as good, why haven't WoW subscriptions dropped off? Why hasn't another game like Guild Wars come forth to claim the top spot? Why haven't PC gamers gotten sick of WoW and retreated into something like The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion?
I've been pretty sure all along that the real reason is just that WoW is so fucking good. What I hadn't really thought through before is just why that is. Partly, it is a cultural phenominon--this much I've known for a long while now. World of WarCraft isn't just a game: it's like the current youth generation's woodstock. It's also a game mature enough to appeal to 30-something year old gamers while still being fast and furious enough for those hyperactive 10-14 year olds. There's such a large place carved out for it in our society and such a large community behind the rolling ball already that in that respect it's not surprising for it to have maintained itself for this long.
But there is also a blatantly obvious truth staring me in the face that I've ignored for years and years: Blizzard is one amazing video game company. Part of me has always felt that they were over-rated. I remember loving WarCraft II immensely for about three weeks, at which point I'd finished it and seen every new unit type and promptly got sick of it. After that I only played scarce multiplayer matches over modem (you know--dial-up, from back in the day.) When StarCraft came out my attitude was along the lines of "yes, this is awesome, but it's just WarCraft II in space with some extra features." When Diablo came out, again my attitude was that it was over-rated. Neither Diablo II nor WarCraft III excited me either, although in hindsight I see now that I was far too dismissive of them. The simple fact here is that Blizzard has basically made nothing but awesome games up through WarCraft III, and some of their work has revolutionized the gaming industry. That's not counting World of WarCraft at all.
And today it dawned on me: the real reason that Guild Wars didn't upset WoW, none of SOE's MMORPGs have upset it, and Oblivion or other single-player RPGs haven't upset it, is simply because World of WarCraft has the strength of Blizzard behind its design. All of the greatness that went into designing games like Diablo II and WarCraft III to be so amazingly addictive and balanced to the point where they appeal to total noob players and elite LAN party masters alike was put into World of WarCraft. What great stratetgy games or RPGs has SOE made? None at all. Aside from SOE games and WoW, most other MMORPGs are a lot like "get rich quick" schemes launched by companies that want to cash in on the phenominon. And while Guild Wars is a great game in its own right, the one thing that it doesn't have is a full fucking decade of legend-making quality game design behind it.
Simply put, World of WarCraft was assembled by some kind of amazing RPG design dream team that rivals what you'd get if you crossed the design team from Final Fantasy X with the game design ingenuity of Id Software circa 1995-1996 when they made Quake. What the core creators of World of WarCraft represent is a gathering of creative force and experience besting anything that the video game industry has ever seen before, and it is the sort of local maximum that may not be topped for years to come.
I've heard a lot of gamers gripe in the last several years that the gaming industry has lost a lot of its magic--that things have become too commercial and that the influx of the mainstream has washed away a lot of the flavour that made gaming so great back in the day. I've dealt with this topic before in saying that there are still great games out there--like Disgaea and Shadow of the Colossus--and you simply have to sift through more cruft to get to them these days. I now have a new answer: look at World of WarCraft. This is undeniably the single greatest video game experience ever made, and it was made in this decade, at the height of "the sucking."
And my attitude towards Blizzard has been entirely transformed. I used to think of Blizzard with the same part of my brain that dealt with monstrosities like Eidos and Rockstar Games--popular game companies that have done next to nothing to deserve their fame, and who ultimately squander their day in the sun by demonstrating their incapacity to repeat their success. I now think of Blizzard more along the same lines as Squaresoft (the mid-90s Squaresoft, even, well before the Enix merger) or the developers of Konami games. The employees of Blizzard are fucking heroes, and I've just been too snotty and elitist before to see that. And I don't just love World of WarCraft--I now love WarCraft III, Diablo (which I've barely even played before), StarCraft, and even WarCraft II. Hell, I love WarCraft II now more than on the day that I bought it, and in terms of loving Blizzard, that was certainly the old "high score."
So having had years to reflect on the matter, and having recently gone through a phase of rediscovering old joys like RPGs and anime, I now realise something that was simmering beneath the surface of my being all along: World of WarCraft is my all-time favourite video game, and the first video game that I can proclaim as being superior to Final Fantasy VI without hesitation since FF VI first came out over 10 years ago. It touches on a level of perfection in game design that moves me very deeply.
Disgaea 2 - Early Impressions
I'm roughly 6 hours into Disgaea 2, and quite addicted to it so far. That's about 14 main character levels and four game chapters worth of progress. As mentioned previously, I am a big fan of the original Disgaea game, and I've found that my familiarity with the original has made Disgaea 2 that much more enjoyable. Whereas there was a constant and significant learning curve throughout the original Disgaea, with Disgaea 2 I've been able to jump right in and know a lot of useful tricks and tips right from the very beginning.
Because of the increased ease of play, I'm finding that Disgaea 2 is much less tiring than the original was. This is partly because the game's creators did manage to improve on the game system in the original game, but it's mostly because of my immediate familiarity with everything. For this reason, Disgaea 2 has taken on a delightfully fun and casual feel, like I'd expect from a Final Fantasy game. I very much doubt that this experience resembles what most newcomers to tactical RPGs would think of the game, however.
You've probably heard, and it is true that Disgaea 2 is very similar to the original game. You could almost consider it to be more like a stand-alone expansion pack with major updates to the game system--a sort of Disgaea 1.1 if you will. I don't think that it's reasonable to slam the game for this fact, though; if anything, Disgaea 2 should be praised for not mucking up a perfectly good formula.
If there's one thing that does bother me about Disgaea 2 is that the characters don't seem as good as they were in the original Disgaea (so far.) Adel and Rozalin are hard-pressed to fill in for Laharl and Etna as a protagonist/sidekick pair, but what is really harsh is the fact that Adel is basically a "good guy" whereas Laharl was delightfully wicked. Laharl's home was a castle filled with demonic minions ("vassals"--how I miss that word) and Adel's home is, well, a happy green village. I could go on, but I think that my point is solidly made.
And where the characters falter, I'm left feeling that the writing is lacking too. It's not bad at all for an RPG, and it's very much along the same lines as the other Nippon Ichi TRPGs I've played (La Pucelle Tactics, Disgaea, and Phantom Brave), but because this is a Disgaea series game, I was hoping for the same kind of humor that the original game benefitted from, and so far it's been lacking. Disgaea 2 tries to be softer and mushier--like La Pucelle Tactics and Phantom Brave are--instead of having the amusingly sarcastic tone of the original game. I used to crack up at jokes made about Mid-Boss, or how little Laharal cares about someone else's dramatic moment. Disgaea 2 is a true Nippon Ichi game, sure enough, but it doesn't quite have the same flavour as Disgaea did in terms of writing.
That having been said, the gameplay is an absolute joy, and this is basically the most fun that I've ever had playing what has been my favourite game genre this decade: Tactical RPGs. Disgaea 2 will easily go down as one of my all-time favourite PlayStation 2 games, but at this early stage, I seriously doubt that it will be able to surpass the original Disgaea due to the criticisms that I've already made.
On an entirely different note, I played a whole lot of World of WarCraft last week up through today. I took my level 14 undead Priest, Xzi, all the way up to level 22. That's a lot of WoW. I can't see myself maintaining that pace over the next week, but if I can even manage to play half that much every week, I'll make it to 60 sooner or later. It really feels as though after well over two years of owning the game, I've finally discovered it.
Sunny still plays WoW, of course. She's working on an alt--a human Paladin--and is currently at level 26. When The Burning Crusade comes out, I'm sure she'll take Chala (her lvl 60 Warrior) to level 70 in due time.
