The Whitehawk

I’m currently writing a draft of the best/worst things about 2009, (I should probably try to publish it before 2010 ends) and one of the things I couldn’t decide for sure was which game. So instead of making that call, I asked some of my friends to do it.

Roberto’s game of the year goes to: Demon’s souls

What he said: “awesome multiplayer, even for a single player guy, awesome atmosphere, awesome combat, awesome opponents, awesome design, awesome difficulty”

At which point I asked: “can you try to say something other than ‘awesome’”, to which he replied: “I could, but then I wouldn’t do it justice”.

David’s game of the year goes to: Uncharted 2

What he said: “sceneries, graphics and the most cinematographic, maybe the most cinematographic game I’ve ever seen.”

Amilcar’s game of the year goes to: Ar Tonelico 2

What he said (after gobbling up his words many times about making a choice): good and refined old-style turn-based rpg, set in a very unique setting.

I pretty much agree with them on all choices, because I’ve played either a bit (in the case or Ar Tonelico 2) or through the whole game in the other cases.

If I had to pick the game that was most “defining” to me, that stands apart from other games by being something other than just great, but also different, I would have to go with Demon’s Souls. I’m all for games where your hero waves an too-big-to-be-realistic bad ass 2-handed sword and cuts everything in half, but this is the first game where yielding such weapon in a bad occasion can have dire repercussions on your gameplay. It’s the first medieval RPG I played that made me really go “maybe I don’t need to be such a bad ass against this enemy… maybe I’ll just go with this big tower shield and try to just survive”.

If I had to pick the game that I enjoyed playing the most, that was fun, thrilling, felt like a roller coaster ride, it would be Uncharted 2, like I said to most of the people I talk to about it and quote myself “It’s the best action movie I’ve seen in years”.

And then there’s the quirky nostalgia of Japanese RPGs. Although I played very few  hours of Ar Tonelico 2, I was very impressed with the first game which is, in many ways, inferior to the later version. The game is set in an imaginative world, a cross between fantasy and sci-fi setting, with some dating simulator features baked in.
It’s weird and confusing as hell, but if you’re into Japanese humor, or Japanese RPGs in general, it’s certainly a game you should try out, though I recommend you start with the first one.

Honorable mention to Dragon Age (kudos to Tyme for her quest for Alistair’s flesh), and I’m sad that I probably won’t ever finish that game, but that’s Bioware’s own fault for releasing it so close to Mass Effect 2.

Valve is responsible for some of my favorite titles of this decade. They made the brilliant Half Life, which shot them sky high, and thanks to a lot of community support, and some great mods, they were able to stay lucrative and milked the first game of the franchise as much as they could.

And milking a franchise is perfectly fine as long as there’s reasonable quality control *cough*Lucas Arts*cough*Kotor2*cough*

After many years of wait and speculation, Half Life 2 is released with a breathtaking engine that tries to mimic real physics. What followed Half Life 2 was an episodic adventure. Valve decided to proceed try out episodic releases in order to maintain a steadier revenue income.

The first of these episodes was successful, but the reception was only lukewarm, while the second episode, which came with the incredibly fun Team Fortress sequel and the innovative Portal, is considered one, if not the best, game bundle I can think of.

They seemed to do no wrong, but then came…

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When we think about great gaming companies (nowadays) three names come to mind: Sony, Nintendo and Sega Microsoft.

But lately we saw the joining of another potential competitor to those three: Apple. With their incredibly hyped cellphone and it’s great touchscreen interface game companies seized the opportunity to try and grab some of it’s increasingly-bigger market share and develop games for it. » Read the rest of this entry «

There’s no point in beating around the bush. Divine Shield is getting nerfed.

With Wotlk most of our DPS stopped depending on our melee combat swings and seal damage, and more on skill damage. With that said, and given that roughly 70% of our damage comes from our spells and special strikes, it just didn’t make sense to give us full invulnerability and full damage during it’s duration.

Although I’ve used Divine Shield in the past as an offensive spell, it’s very clear that Blizzard doesn’t want it to be an offensive spell anymore. So what can my fellow Retri palas do about it? And I’m talking about the ones that cast the bubble instantly and faceroll on the keyboard after.

1. Don’t let your enemy gain too much distance – Switch to Seal Of Justice, continue running after your enemy and judging Light or Wisdom, depending on what stat you need at the time. If you let your enemy recover too much when you used the Divine Shield you might as well have let him kill you to start with
2. Depending on what type of enemy you’re fighting, it is usually after the DS that you should blow your cooldowns, but not your trinket. Your bubble should be your first or second trinket, depending on what spell landed on you (remember to keep your Hand of Freedom hotkey very handy)
3. Save your trinket and stuns for when you find an opportunity to burst the enemy down. Don’t waste it out of desperation. If you don’t find a proper opportunity to use it, don’t. What’s the use of trinketing out of something to survive some spell or skill if you have no stun to immobilize your target

Rule of thumb is, if there’s a way for you to avoid taking damage do it. And in most cases, if you’re blowing your cooldowns before your target is, you are on your way to a defeat, even if you take him down.

Retribution paladins really shine in burst damage and short combats, but if your fight starts lasting more than a couple of minutes and you blew all your cooldowns before your adversary did you’re already in a bad situation. Exceptions to this rule are, of course, when you have more than one opponent and have to try to quickly burn one down.

And don’t get two upset if you’re taken down in less than 10 seconds. RNG is a big part of this game, and some fights are simply not meant to be won. Then again, the same goes both ways. What distinguishes a good player from a mediocre is what you can do to counter the odds when the RNG is against you.

If you lost a combat by a small margin and your enemy chose to run away than to reduel you then I wouldn’t consider it a complete loss. Just make sure you take note of his nickname and let him have second chance at proving what he’s worth when the odds are equal to both.

As some of you may know, the thing that keeps me the most occupied after work is the popular roleplaying game World of Warcraft. Given that my Ragnarok Online posts always proved to be a little popular, I’ve decided to start talking more about the game I play, and namely giving suggestions and a personal opinion about what is going on in the game and in my guild.

I am not a theorycrafter, nor do I understand the full mechanics of the gameplay. All that I understand is what specs affect me for the best, and which affect me the least. When I see players with my class, choosing the silliest gear combinations they can, just because it’s accessible to them, I feel really sad.

So all my posts go out to those out there that chose to play my class, and every now and then I’ll even give some insight about other classes, from what I learn from my guildies or friends.

First of all, to all Retris out there, even the newcomer Holy Paladins who got tired of spamming two buttons and re-specced. This is (more or less) the proper order that you should choose when picking Retribution gear:

STR/AP > HIT (only until you’re capped at 9%) > CRIT/AGI > ARMOR PENETRATION >  HASTE

Yes, Haste is one of the stats that scales our DPS the least. Most of our DPS depends on our Physical Weapon Swings and our Judgements, and everything else is below that. The best thing to boost our DPS is to have a very slow weapon, and gear that stacks on STR, HIT and CRIT. Those are the ideal stats for us.

If you happen to get the Sword of Justice from heroic Halls of Stone, whatever you do, do *NOT* trade it for the Colossal Skull-Clad Cleaver from Halls of Lightning. Yes it’s epic, but you’ll see much better DPS and results with that ugly green fork I have than with these three glued-together axes. Get it only if you don’t have the Sword.

Not all epic rewards are necessarily better than their Blue counterparts. A good example of that is the Wyrmrest Accord exalted plate pants reward which lack hit and crit. They are probably awesome for a DK that relies on diseases or so, but for Retribution paladins, it’s once again a case of “take them if you don’t have better”, even my crappy Legplates of the Oculus Guardian, and I’m in a dire need of geting rid of them for something like Staggering Legplates or a random  DPS plate pants from Naxx…

But that’s enough gear comparison for now. On the next chapter I’ll give my opinion about the Divine Shield nerf which a lot of people (who aren’t paladins) are happy about.

Yesterday, I talked about the things that first struct me about this new Playstation 2 RPG. Today, I bring you some second impressions on it, more specifically, how the game looks after the “honeymoon” is over.

I’m not the type of game who will dedicate himself to a single game and never stop playing it until it’s finished, unless it happens to be something which I find amazing, like Shadow of the Colossus.

When I loaded the savegame yesterday, I was given a Star-Wars-like text, explaining what was currently happening with this story while the game was loading. And I think that this small feature is excellent, because I can sometimes stop playing a game for several weeks and then forget where I was or what I had to do when I resume it.

That used to happen even in great games like Zelda: Link’s Awakening, but, thankfully, the latest versions have a subtle way of reminding you of what you have to do. Rogue Galaxy is no different from that.

Another thing which I found nice about Rogue Galaxy, is that it motivates you to use different weapons, even if you already have stronger ones. The synthesis system that the game uses, requires that you use the weapon you want to upgrade for quite a while before you can upgrade it. The time you need to use the weapon isn’t exagerate, but it isn’t too quick either, it feels just right. The way that you synthesize weapons is also very funny, but I won’t spoil you on how it’s done

The storyline also seems to become more interesting as you move from planet to planet. The first two seem to be for you to get accostumed to the game, but from the third one onwards, the story really starts developing, and you start to get a better idea of what your purpose will be, rather than just doing random adventures throughout the galaxy.

And another thing I found out, and found excellent, is that you can change your character’s costumes throughout the story! When you change your “armor”, you completely change the look of your character. The same goes for when you change your main or secondary weapons, and you can see them when you walk around.

Like in Jak and Daxter, the load times are almost non-existant. You don’t have to load a room everytime you enter a new building, and you don’t have to load the same map multiple times. It all seems seamless, and helps to improve the experience.

In short, it’s definitely worth playing, even after the honeymoon, and I can’t wait to finish it.

Yesterday I had the chance to try out one of the games I had been eagerly waiting for, Rogue Galaxy. As a Sci-Fi and One Piece (a funny pirate action Anime) fan, I couldn’t help but to have high expectations for a game that blended the two things. The trailers also helped rise my expectations

Story-wise, the start of Rogue Galaxy didn’t impress me very much. But it seems that Rogue Galaxy imitates a lot of famous Sci-Fi stories. The first planet where you start off is a desert-like planet which is governated by a tyrannical government. A young bounty-hunter lives there and is mistaken by a legendary hunter. Sounds familiar? Yeah, I thought so too.

Graphics-wise, the games is as good as it gets in terms of cell-shading graphics, and I was very impressed with it in that aspect. The second world, more than the first, shows you the real “power” of the engine they used, and in some parts of the game, I felt that the graphics were even superior to those of Zelda: Twilight Princess (although some people might contest that opinion).

In terms of playability, when the battles start, they are a mix between Final Fantasy XII, Kingdom Hearts and Devil May Cry. But it’s easier than it sounds! Let me explain…

The battles are all done in real-time, you attack in real time, and move around and jump like in Kingdom Hearts. You have a main, and a secondary weapon, being the first a sword, and the second a pistol. There is a limit to how many times you can fire your secondary weapon, and a limit to how many times you can strike with your sword, after which there is a period in which you can’t attack.

Unlike Final Fantasy XII, in which you can only do one attack and then wait for the next turn, this method makes the gameplay more exciting without making it unbalanced, unlike what happens in Kingdom Hearts near the end of the game.

The difficulty of the game is also surprisingly high. If you’re not carefull, even in normal encounters you can bite the dust. Although that might seem a bit frustrating in the beginning, when you start to grasp the gameplay better it becomes much less of a nuissance. And it’s nice to play a roleplaying game in which you are an over-powered hero all of the time.

So far, I’ve only reached the second planet, and I reckon that I’m a third of the way through it, therefore I don’t know that much about the game. But I definitely enjoyed what I saw so far. If you already finished Final Fantasy XII, and want another RPG to hack-and-slash at, then I think that Rogue Galaxy is an ideal choice.

Yesterday, I told you about one of the newest classes in Ragnarok Online, the Gunslingers, however, I didn’t actually tell you much about that class. But thanks to a friend, pointing that fact out, I decided today to write a short guide about the Gunslinger with the things I know, and the references I have. So, let’s get on with it

Skills

Unfortunately, at the time of writing, my reference site for the skills descriptions is offline. But, since I know most of them by heart, at least the ones related to Guns, I’ll give you a brief description of the best skills for each build.

There are 4 main types of weapons you can use as a Gunslinger: Guns, Chain guns, Shotguns and Grenade Launchers. When leveling up a character, you can choose to create a build that takes advantage of those weapons in pairs, in other words, you can create a Guns user that can also user Chain Guns efficiently, or you can choose a Shotgun user that can also user Grenade Launcher.

But please take in consideration, that when you’re level reaches a certain point you can equip any of the said weapons above, however, you won’t be allowed to have many, if any, skills for it.

First thing first, before leveling up any job skills, regardless of which build you’re going to use, there are 3, or 4, skills that are absolutely obligatory to level up before any others.

The first, and most important of those skills is Snake’s Eyes, which increases your Accuracy and Hit Rate. At the beginning of the game, and at the very end, it is very crucial to have great Accuracy, and when you’re fighting against mobs the more range you have the better, obviously.

The second most important skill, to help you increase your accuracy, and your attack speed, is Single Action. At Level 10 this skill gives you HIT (accuracy) +20 and aspd +5%.

The third and fourth most important skills will depend on what type of build you’re going to use. If you’re going to use a Shotgun, you need to choose “Flip the Coin”, which allows you to gain +3 damage for each coin you have (you can have up to 10 coins). But if you’re choosing to use a Guns build, like myself, you can also choose Chain Action, which is exactly the same as the Thief’s Double Attack skill.

If you’re using a Guns / Chain Guns build, basically you need to choose the skills that depend (mostly) on Chain Action, according to this Gunslinger skill simulator. If you’re choosing a Shotgun / Grenade Launcher build, you need to choose the skills that depend on the “Tracking” and “Dust” skills.

If you choose Guns / Chain Guns, you get superb Attack Speed and damage per time.

If you choose Shotguns / Grenade Launcher you get superb Damage, and great weapons for mobbing (killing various monsters at the same time).

For guns, Rapid Shower and Desperado are the most important skills. For shotgun, there are similar ones on the bottom line, but since I don’t have access to their descriptions right now I can’t really give you a better detail on which ones.

Stats

As for the stats you should choose, the most important ones are AGI and DEX for Guns / Chainguns, and for Shotguns / Grenade Launchers they are DEX, LUK and AGI more or less in that order of preference, depending on what you want to achieve.

If this article becomes popular enough I might do a sequel for Shotgun builds, and the various equipments you can choose for a Gunslinger, but, right now, my time is short so I must leave it at this. I hope you find it helpful in any case.

[tags]Ragnarok Online, Ragnarok Gunslinger, Gunslinger, RO Gunslinger[/tags]

One of the games I’ve been playing again lately is Ragnarok Online. Ever since a new job (class) came out for it, that I had been waiting for, I’ve found myself playing the game 2, or more, hours per day.

What’s funny, and fun, about this new class, is that when you think of Ragnarok you think of anime-style graphics, some would even call them childish. But with this character, it seems like the game is more violent somewhat… because you use real fire arms to kill them. As an example, here is my Gunslinger character: ClintEastwood snipping a monster in the middle of a bush.