As evil returns, so do I

Hello again everyone, it's been a while. I apologize about the lack of posts recently, it's been a while since I last posted. As everyone most likely knows, Diablo 3 came out on the 15th of May, and just like ever other PC gamer I decided to pick it up.

Having never played a Diablo before other than a quick blast on Diablo 2, I had no idea what to expect. I have to say I am really impressed by what I have found. While there are quite a few problems with the game right now, such as itemization been the key one for me, and a few issues with some abilities the core game play is fantastic.

I plan on returning to blogging, and will return to posting daily however this time I will be focusing on Diablo 3 mainly and will be doing a lot of theory crafting. It's been some time since I played any sort of RPG but one of the things I have missed was the theory crafting. Yeah it sounds a bit nerdy, but I actually love doing maths. Crunching numbers and formulas to try and find that perfect DPS sweet spot, or the correct way to stack my defensive stats. 

I am currently playing mainly as a Monk (level 52), so my first theory work will most likely be based on this once I hit Inferno. I am also leveling one of each of the other 4 classes, and have them all around level 20ish except for the Wizard. Once I start progressing through Inferno, expect to see videos as well as theories. It's all good an well to slap some figures in front of someone, but it's also nice to see the idea in action. 

It's only a short post today, but I plan on doing more in depth ones very shortly, and at some point over the next couple of days I should have one out discussing dodge and it's unmentioned diminishing returns. 

exaVolt 3 CTB First Impressions

I had my first chance to catch an exaVolt tournament yesterday, and was fully impressed. exaVolt is a series of tournaments for Microvolts, and yesterdays match-ups featured some of the top teams in the game.

In the Stream I followed I managed to see Shank (21st seed) upset 2 teams, and nearly upset a third, only for them to invite an extra player into observer mode which got them disqualified. This was quite a shame as they did well in their second game. The first one they were 4-1 down, and Death Valley (12) seemed to just give up, then 2 of them left the server almost thinking they had won. This gave Shank the chance to grab a cap back, and after that they just steamrolled. In the second match, we saw them playing Crazy Toys (5). The match was played on PVC Factory, and was extremely evenly matched throughout the course of the game, with Shank surprisingly managing to pull off yet another upset.

Match 3 was Exordium (1) vs Nordic (8), and was certainly one of the most entertaining matches I have seen in eSports for a long time. Both teams were very evenly matched, and the game went back an forth for ages. In the final few minutes of the game Nordic were one capture up, and no matter how hard Exordium pushed they just couldn't manage to capture. They had 2 pulls in the last minute, with the final one getting within a few feet of the flag, only to be stopped as the timer ticked down to about 3 seconds to go. Nordic managed to hold on to the lead, but sadly lost out to inHarmony (4) in the next match.

inHarmony originally lost to Shank, but they were allowed to advance through as this was the game that Shank got disqualified. The game seemed to be in inHarmonys favor all game however every time they seemed to go anywhere AngryDay would step-up and make a seriously clutch play. Out of all the players, he impressed me the most as some of his kills were incredible and really kept his team in it. As we moved onto the Semi-Finals where inHarmony knocked out Nordic, we saw Forbidden (2) vs BlackBox (3). This was meant to be a grudge match since the two teams appear to be rivals. However the map it was played on (Neighborhood) is far to big for 4v4 and the majority of the game teams we just sat back in their base. There was very little action so overall it was a disappointing match.

The final took place on PVC Factory, and was between Blackbox and inHarmony. The game was over far faster than expected, with Blackbox picking up some quick captures and ending the game fairly quickly. Forbidden managed to defeat Nordic in the 3rd place match-up which was played off stream.

The commentating was fairly good as well, and was from a player known as Chipz. He was fairly new to the commentating game, as you could tell sometimes he wasn't sure what to say. However his energy when something big happened was incredible and was certainly entertaining to listen to which the matches were being played. With a few more weeks practice he will defiantly be a great caster to watch, and will offer a lot to the games being played.

Overall I was really impressed by the quality of matches being played, and the stream was fairly good quality. It was slightly lagging frame rate wise at times, but certainly watchable. The community was also hanging out on IRC, and I learnt quite a bit from them during the evening. I would like to also put a thanks out to Bacon, who is a Mod over on the MV site, for sticking behind after the tournament and explaining quite a bit more of what goes on within the scene. It was interesting to learn about it, and for such a small community there is a lot going on!

Microvolts round-up now online

Just a quick update to let everyone know, the Microvolts round-up video is now online. Next week I will be planning a couple of shows that I will be streaming during the week, stay tuned for more information.

Microvolts and Microtransactions

As part of this weekends series on Microvolts, I will be starting by discussing the market and it's transactions. I will be uploading a first impressions game play later on this evening, so I will use todays blog to discuss the customization available.

As is the norm with free to play games, you can purchase items for varying duration's. If you choose to purchase an item for an unlimited duration you can then use a third currency in game to upgrade the item. You have a chance when killing someone in game for them to drop energy which is used to upgrade. So far I haven't found any set pattern as to when you receive this, so I can't recommend easy ways to farm it. Each weapon has 5 available upgrades for it.

In terms of real money purchasing, the game is fairly cheap to play. If you choose to purchase a weapon with real funds it will cost you just short of $10. The power increase on weapons between free and real money is around 3-5% increase, so these aren't required. Purchasing armor however has quite a bigger increase available on it. The bonuses from armor, either health or run speed and on the accessories extra ammo, is usually double. The increases on health for example are 20 on free, and 40 on the purchased items. If you purchase a full kit for 90 days (The maximum duration), it will set you back around $15, which works out at $5 a month. Not bad at all when you think the game is free to download, cheaper than any MMO going.

As I stated, later on tonight I will be having a video go live, and I am currently trying to get a stream going as well. Just a note to the Nexiuz fans reading this, don't worry I haven't forgotten about the game I am just waiting on the PC release before I go really in depth into it.

If No Cliché made a third person shooter

The original Dreamcast cover.

The title will most likely bewilder most of my readers, and certainly most of todays gamers. No Cliché  was a developer for the Dreamcast, and sadly only ever had the chance to make two games, one of which was a cheap game for the purpose of people testing out DreamArena their online service. The game I am speaking about is non other than Toy Commander.

Toy Commander is now regarded as some what of a cult classic. With the Dreamcast not doing so well in sales, it never got much coverage, especially with the idea that you were just essentially playing with toys. However beyond the toy skin lay one of the most entertaining gaming experiences I have ever had. The story behind it was how Guthy (Called Andy in the US version) had received new toys for Christmas and he neglected his old toys. Because of this his older toys decided to rebel.

Now I know this sounds like a crazy story-line, however it worked really well. You played in 8 different levels, all based on a room in his house, and upon completing a room you unlocked the next. You played as different vehicles which split up into three categories, ground, air and helicopter. Where Toy Commander shone though was it's game play. The levels and missions were vast and different, most of them required you to do varying objectives and the only mission that seemed to be a recurring theme was how each room had a race mission. Unlike how you might imagine, the game was actually fairly difficult and to beat the final boss you needed to defeat every other boss in the game to stand a chance. When you beat a boss you unlocked the ability to use it in the final battle, something you really needed to be able to do.

This ties us in nicely to the game I am playing this week, Microvolts. Like Toy Commander you are again playing as the role of toys in varying domestic environments, however this time it's a third person shooter. So far I've spent a few hours on the game, but the first impressions are solid. The graphic style is fantastic and the game play is unique for todays market as it features a variety of weapons available on spawn. These weapons are more like what you would find in an arena shooter however, with this such as gattling guns, rocket launchers and grenade launchers being the flavor of the day. You can purchase new weapons with typical free to play style, but the real money weapons seem to have higher stats. They don't seem like a giant increase from what I have seen, usually around 2-5% damage increase which I doubt will break the game. You can also dress your character cosmetically, with each item having either extra HP or movement speed.

Splash art for Microvolts.

The game is available at www.microvolts.com and I will be playing it over the weekend with the ingame name of Nood1e. I certainly recommend every to try this as the game is a huge amount of fun and I plan on doing a lot more content for it. There should, sound codecs permitting, be a first impressions video for it going online tomorrow evening with more written and video content over the weekend.

Are social games finally starting to move forward?

Social games are something that have started to explode over the last few years. Games such as Farmville and Bejeweled gained huge popularity through the medium of Facebook, and as a result Zynga, Farmvilles creator, is now worth over $1 billion. With Facebook having over 800 million members it's certainly starting to attract the attention of game developers.

While the games are often played by thousands of people, it's an area I haven't really payed much attention to. It seemed to me like every game released was either a game similar to Farmville, or something along the lines of Evony. Imagine my surprise when browsing online today and I discovered Überstrike.

Überstrike is a first person shooter developed by Cmune Games and is played directly through Facebook in your browser. While I have usually just passed over social games I decided that this was certainly worth a look. When first loading the game you are met by a tutorial as with most games. The only downside I have with this during the tutorial you are unable to change any of your settings during it. This includes both your graphics options and controls, so if the sensitivity is wrong there isn't much you can do, also if your PC is struggling to run the game then you have to wait until after the tutorial to change it. With there being no indication that you can change options this could put players off early as a lot of people on Facebook don't have amazing systems.

Being a Facebook game, it is free to play and allows for purchases with both in game and real money currencies. The cost of purchases with real money are quite extreme. I was taking a look at weapons and found a Sniper Rifle that costs $30.00 to buy, sadly it also one-shots enemies players if they don't have armor without hitting them in the head. The weapon was only available to be purchased through real money as well.

The game play is quite decent, however being a browser game it seems to suffer from some input lag, which affects the play of the game. Some of the maps are pretty poor too, one of them I played just seemed to be random boxes and jump pads thrown into a giant room, and when I say Giant I mean giant. The only way to tell which team the player you are shooting at is on, is by a health bar above their head. This is only visible when you are quite close, so on the previously mentioned map you couldn't actually tell who was on your team even when zoomed in with the sniper. At max range on the map the cross hair on the sniper is the size of a player, meaning an accurate shot of the head is difficult. This is a problem as all other weapons just seemed useless on the map unless you ran around the bottom of the map hoping for someone to spawn near you.

Overall the game is fairly average, and appears to be a pay to win shooter. This is something I would expect to see on a Facebook game, however it is good to see the platform finally starting to evolve. I will keep checking back on social games to see if anything else is changing within the market. At over 800 million users on Facebook it makes sense that people are starting to move towards the platform, and we already see a lot of integration with Facebook among games right now. Ijji already connects with your Facebook account and uses it to log in to their games. Combining games with Facebook and the mobile platforms is something I expect to see a lot of in the future, even if it's not the full game but something similar to Warcrafts auction house application. The future is looking good for the social platform, and it's also looking interesting for gamers too.

Blacklight Retribution video now live

I must apologise for the late uploading of this video, I planned on having it done yesterday. However I was having some issues with the sound codecs so it took longer than planned.

The video is now live and I would love some feedback on it. I will be starting to do videos more often now I understand how to get it done quickly, and I will be returning to regular blog updates tomorrow.

Here is the video;