Legend of Grimrock

I heard about Legend of Grimrock through Internet chatter, and picked up a copy on GOG. There was an equal value Steam sale, but I didn't want to have to be online, since my Internet had flaked out a few times before.

Legend of Grimrock is a RPG dungeon crawler. It’s like Eye of the Beholder, with a heavy emphasis on puzzles. There are a few you can skip and miss out on some neat items, but the majority of the puzzles are mandatory. They're also painfully clever. This is my cup of tea, so I loved the game from the start.

The story takes place entirely in the dungeon on Mount Grimrock. Your group was "forgiven" similar to how Spartans forgive stupid messengers, by kicking them into a pit. This pit just happens to be the start of a dungeon.

The controls of the game are quite easy to pick up, but difficult to do when you have to move, shuffle potions, drink potions, cast a spell, and attack all basically at the same time. The game starts you off against slower and fewer enemies, but it gets crazier and crazier as things progress. There is a quick save/load feature, which you should use extensively.

The graphics are very nice; the enemies have smooth animations and look really good. The lighting looks great, and reacts to changes in the environment. Yes, you will need to carry a light with you, unless you think you can fight enemies in the dark. You'll be swapping your torch for one on the wall quite often, because torches burn out if you hold them for too long. If they're on the wall or in a bag, they're perfectly fine... no risk in putting something on fire into your bags... right next to the explosives...

The sound is very good, and extremely useful. Many times you will hear enemies coming from a direction before you can see them. Also, when you hit switches that open secret walls, you can use the sound direction to find where the secret is. Enemies have unique sounds as well, so you can tell what kind of enemy is coming your way. This can actually be a little unnerving, when you hear them through a wall and they’re nowhere near you...

My party was a Human Fighter (Swords/Armors), Human Rogue (Unarmed Combat/Dodge), Minotaur Rogue (Missile Weapons/Dodge), and Insect Mage (Ice Magic/Spellcraft). I got this build from trolling the Grimrock forums, and picking what worked good for people who had already played the game.

A few tips for some things that weren't clear when I started playing the game.

1. You can put notes on the map.
2. You can only heal by resting, or drinking potions.
3. Dodging is much better than armor (no damage vs. reduced damage)
4. If you're not using an item or plan to use an item, drop it. There are no vendors in the game and you can only carry so much (bag item limit, and weight limits). I cried a little when I put down an absolutely awesome dagger...
5. Throwing weapons and missile weapons never miss. Missile weapons will do more damage later on, but you won't find a missile weapon for a few dungeon levels. Missile weapon "ammo" and throwing weapons don't go away; they drop to the ground when the enemy dies.
6. Your mage can cast any spell their magic level allows. The scrolls in the game are for people who refuse to use the Internet to find out the spell combinations in the game.
7. Potions work the same way as spells. All you need are the ingredients and the mixer. The speed potion and healing potion were about all I used, but I'm extremely conservative with potions.
8. Food is important; if you're starving you won't recover health or energy. Make sure you stock up. Later on, there are places where edible enemies spawn infinitely. So don't worry too much about running out.
9. Make sure you always have a few spare rocks and throwing knives for solving puzzles. And always have a few spare torches for light.

I would highly recommend picking up a copy. I couldn't put this game down once I picked it up. I finished it in 15 hours of playtime, but that included a lot of backtracking and solving every puzzle. Including the one I missed 3 floors back.

Useful links:

• List of mage spells (good for deciding which tree you want)
• How to cast any spell
• How to make any potion
• Magic level determines spell damage

inFamous

So a friend at work reviewed my entire purchased games list. The top of his list was inFamous for PS3. I was surprised I hadn't played it yet, since it came with my PS3 when I first got it. I suppose it's not too mysterious that games sit on my shelves for months or years... but still.

The game is a sandbox third person brawler/shooter with RPG elements. Your powers start out quite simple, giving you the ability to zap things, and will likely wear out your trigger finger if you spend too much time doing that. Progressing the plot will open up new powers and I highly recommend crit-pathing the plot for a while until you get some powers that will spare your trigger finger the pain. Doing the missions and taking out enemies with weak powers is just not fun and might lead you to putting the game down.

The story takes place in a city that's been mostly destroyed by a huge explosion, so it has a bit of a post-apocalyptic feel to it. Your character, Cole, was at the epicenter of the blast, and somehow got electricity super-powers as a result. As you help to restore the city, you are confronted with moral decisions that lean you toward the ambivalent hero, or feared bad-ass. Either way, you're helping the town, but people will either love, or fear you. Going with good deeds gives your powers generally more pacifying qualities, while the evil deeds give you more damaging bonuses. It's quite neat to see the civilians react to your good karma and start cheering for you as well as throwing rocks at thugs. I don't know what they do if they fear you, but I assume they would just stay away from as you run by. The story progresses well, but can get a bit monotonous with repeating the same type of quests. This is alleviated by having cool new powers to blow up enemies with, while doing these quests. Following the story to completion actually surprised me with how good it was.The ending literally blew me away.

The controls of the game are quite easy. Move the stick to run around, jump with X, punch with square, the standard hold L1 to switch to third person shooting view, and press other buttons while in this view to shoot various powers at enemies. The only slight frustration with the controls happened for me, when attempting to jump onto a truck underneath a bridge, and Cole did everything in his spider-monkey powers to grab onto the bridge instead of going under it. For every other situation in the game, this is the ideal behavior.

I do have to mention though, it's easy to accidentally attack a nearby civilian. I had multiple situations where I was shooting and beating the crap out of a thug, and suddenly Cole decided I was targeting a nearby cheering civilian, and decked them in the face. It's all okay though, because you can give downed civilians a healing jolt for an easy 3 experience, and some good karma. So yes, punch civilian in face + healing jolt = net good karma. You will probably also heal a bunch of civilians when the easiest way to take down a bunch of bad guys is lobbing 10 grenades into the crowd.

The graphics were really good. You could occasionally see mip levels popping in when traveling around really fast, but otherwise I never noticed it. The audio and sound effects was good, and the voice acting was quite good. The animation on the character while voice acting wasn't top notch, but it got the job done.



Anyways, if you haven't picked it up yet, and own a PS3, do yourself a favor and pick it up. It's on the greatest hits list, so it should only be $20, and is easily worth double that.

Super Robot Taisen OG Saga Endless Frontier

Yep, that's seriously the game name. It's ridiculously long, but a great JRPG overall for the NDS.

The overworld is simple, and allows you to get from A to B. It only gets slightly tricky when they mention you should go to C, and you forgot where C was. I seriously spent at least 30 minutes trying to Google a solid map for this game to no avail. For some reason, the only map on the entire internets had all of the places labeled incorrectly. W.T.F.

The combats are a great blend of tactical planning and skill timing attacks. When it's your characters turn, you can cast as many spells as you want, so long as you have SP. You also have HP, and COM. COM is spent like time units, as far as how many things you can do in your turn. Each attack chain you use costs a specific amount of COM, and you only get 50 COM a turn, with a cap of 100 COM. Simple enough, but it gets really fun when you have to time your attacks and chain attacks with other party members to keep the enemy in the air, and do the most damage. Quite fun! You can also cancel your combos early to put extra points into the frontier gauge, which allows you to do a special attack once it's full.

Regretfully, the combats get a bit repetitive, and so I found that I could run away from most battles so long as I killed the bosses with a special attack, granting me an addional 30% experience. It also helped me explore the dungeons without spending 5 hours in random battles.

The characters are drawn well, and have their own personality and skills/attacks. I personally was using a party of Sazuka, Haken, Reiji, and Kaguya. Kaguya and Sazuka did most of the damage, while Haken and Reiji just fueled up the frontier gauge.

I'd highly recommend picking this up to play in your spare time, but take notes somewhere on where you're supposed to go, or you can easily spend your first while trying to remember, or literally wandering the world map. This is really only an issue in the later game, when you're backtracking, but still.

Infinity Blade

A while back I finished Infinity Blade, but forgot to blog about it. Overall the game was quite simple to learn, harder to master, and a great RPG to spend a few minutes on between other things. Took it on a trip and played it easily for a few  hours in bed, delaying my much needed sleep cycles.

The combats are everything in the game. Dodge is the easiest way to avoid getting hit, you can also block, which takes away your armor points, and you can also perry an incoming attack. Blocking is only useful for punches, which are un-dodge/parry-able. When you do a awesome dodge/block/parry, eventually they give you an opening, and you get to smack them back. Ideally with a 3 or 5 hit combo.

When your character levels up, you get 2 stat points you can spend on armor, health, magic, or attack damage. I spent all of my points in attack damage, because the harder I hit the enemy, the faster they dropped. This basically required me to spend all my time dodging, as my lack of skill in parrying attacks was all to apparent.


Eventually you fight the God king, who starts out level 50, and completely wipes the floor with you. That's okay though, because apparently he sends all of your equipment and levels to your next of kin and you repeat the process. What a nice guy! Eventually you will be strong enough to trod down the road paved with dead ancestors, and beat him for a change.

The main reason I forgot to post about this when I finished the game was because I had gotten myself into a RPG-grinding groove of killing enemies as fast as possible to die at the God king's hand and restart the process. Trouble is, I accidentally killed him on one of my run-throughs. Oops. Well, I guess that was the purpose, but it just kind of felt off to me. After you defeat him, he goes up by 50 levels and you repeat the process. Yeah, I'm good, next game!

Overall, I'm still glad I played it, and it was definitely worth the money spent. So far, this has been the most enjoyable game I've played on the iPad yet.

Diablo III

I just finished Diablo III this weekend. It was a whole lot like Diablo II, except they fixed just about everything I found annoying about Diablo II.Inventory space is ample, picking up gold is super quick, gold is actually used for something, skill selection is progressive and non-permanent, and the graphics are amazing.

The story is what you would expect, but they did an amazing job of keeping things directed in the quests, while still giving the normal feel of a randomized dungeon crawl. I won't spoil anything about the story, but if you haven't figured it out by now...

They also added a neat system where killing larger hordes of creatures gives you an experience boost, so it doesn't feel like as much of a chore. I actually spent about ten solid minutes letting the enemies spawn new mobs to kill just to get a huge boost at the end. I don't remember the number, but it was well over 100.

I would recommend quitting out of the public channel, and can only assume this will become a preference option in the next patch, as opposed to being changed logged into chat by default, which was the last change made to it

Would I recommend picking it up? Yes. Would I recommend playing with your friends? Yes again, although... it does allow your friends to skip dialog and cutscenes by hitting Escape for some reason. So I tried to play through the first time by myself, since after that I would be skipping all cutscenes and other slowdowns on my way to the phat lewts.

Bullet Storm

Bullet Storm is exactly what Duke Nukem was supposed to be. Then it picked it up, kicked it in the dick, and blew it's head off. Yep, that kind of game.

The weapons are brutal, gritty, and fit the game perfectly. The sniping mini game is fun, but can get a bit monotonous if you do it too often, so remember to switch back to the various other ways of killing people. Pulling them into spikes, kicking them into electrified walls, slide kicking them and blowing their head off, kicking them off cliffs, thumping them in the air then shooting them like skeet, etc.

The exposition is really well paced. Everything you do is built right into the environment, and interactive in an immersive way. The sound just makes the game come alive. The only thing that I've seen so far that seemed just a tad off was the animation when I first saw Trishka beat some ass. It was good, but the timing seemed off. Not horrible, just slightly off, like when sound and video gets de-synced by half a second when some streaming video players mess up.

The multiplayer was fun. A friend and I played it for a few weeks solid before I even started on the main campaign. It's more of the same thing you get in the main game, without the story. So it helps you figure out how to do combos and such.

The ending was good, the typical going-to-leave-room-for-a-sequel type of thing, but still wraps up the story. If you watch to the end of the credits, that's where the wrap up happens.

Overall, I'd definitely recommend it. I don't think I'd play through it again, but I might give the sequel a shot if they make it.

Mass Effect 3 - Collector's Edition

So I finally finished Mass Effect 3. I have no idea how much time it took to beat this, but I've been playing it since I got my copy -- the day it was released. I got the collector's edition, so it came with the From Ashes DLC, which includes a jerk Prothean for a teammate, who aside from giving some excellent back story, did not play much of a role in my party. He stayed in his room that I visited once after each mission, and did not get to come out and play for the most part.

Sorry to say it, but unless you're an awesome character that I want to hear kick some ass, I will not choose you. You will be in my party firstmost if I think you have something personal to contribute in banter for this mission, or if I think it applies to you (if you haven't manually butted in already), or if you have awesome powers that may help fight what we're going up against. So typically - sorry Kaiden, Ashley, Jacob, Zaeed, and now James Vega, and Javik.

The story was stellar. Pure amazing. The impact of what decisions I made in Mass Effect 1 and 2 were painfully apparent, and made me carry those decisions (good or bad) forward to the end. The cutscenes were great except for the occasional character's eyes following something offscreen, or even turning their head in some inhuman way. Aside from that, the voice acting was awesome.

The combat was good. They tried to keep it non-repetitive by varying the enemies and making the objectives vary, which was a nice touch. I found playing an infiltrator quite fun. I would like to complain about one fight in particular near the end. Oh my sweet baby Jesus. No other fight before that came close to the level of ridiculous I had to claw my way out of there... The fights in particular are fun enough that I've been delaying writing this review because I've been playing so much multiplayer.

To talk a bit about multiplayer - it's awesome. I will try my hardest not to put money into this, but it has been very, very difficult. Seeing your characters progress, playing with your friends, spending points on packs with random goodies, what's not to love? Simple, cookie-cutter fights have never been executed so well. It gets predictable, but never boring. It's always intense, and friends always want to play. Which as I said, delayed this review. Oh, they also recently gave out a free map pack and added characters. This really didn't help me finish the game...

With multiplayer I have to talk a bit about Origin. It was tough for me to make the switch from Steam to Origin, and I lost almost all friend-awareness when playing Origin - not necessarily a bad thing... That said, the interface is a little clunky, but it gets the job of click-button-play-game done. There's definitely some room to polish it up, so I hope EA throws some polish at it.

Finally, the ending. I can understand why people are upset, but they're coming at this the wrong way. Sure, I wanted more too. Did I feel like I got screwed over? No. Did I feel like they left things unresolved? No, I made my decisions, and saw what became of everything because of it. I would love to see more, and apparently I will.