Let’s clear something up to start with: I use the word ‘review’ tenuously at best any time I write a ‘review’ blog. I’ll at least try and keep this vaguely cohesive for a change!

By now you should already have read my post on the Dante’s Inferno: Death Edition special features DVD (and if not, why not?!) Since writing that, I’ve played through the game not once, but twice (thanks to the achievement whore in me wanting to explore the New Game + — or ‘Resurrection Mode’ as it is called — options and max out my Trophies).

Length and Replayability

The first time through, DI took me approximately 11-12 hours to complete, searching all the nooks and crannies I could find, on Zealot (normal) difficulty. This didn’t feel too short or too long, but just right for the type of game it is. For anybody who just wants a fire-and-forget game, then this may not be the best value for money you can buy, however. There are much longer games for a similar asking price.

The beauty of DI’s longevity, however, is in its combat and upgrades system. I’m relatively certain that you simply cannot upgrade everything on both Holy and Unholy sides of your customisation trees on your first playthrough. The Resurrection Mode enables you to take your character you finished playthrough one with and send it into Hell a second time, complete with all your upgraded abilities and the Relics that you have collected along the way. This doesn’t quite double the length of the game, though unless you’re using a walkthrough to find everything, it may actually take longer to play through the second time to collect the lot.

Gameplay

It’s God of War, but without Kratos. The controls are ever so slightly different, but not enough to adapt to within minutes. Anybody who has played GoW1/2 (or 3’s demo) will know what to expect here. And, contrary to a lot of the reviews floating around on the net, I can’t say it has an inferior combat system in any way. Animations were fluid and easy to control, the attacks were brutal and had serious weight behind them, and there were some lovely kill attacks.

My only criticisim in the gameplay variety is a criticism that a lot of games share: the bane that are Quick Time Events. QTEs aren’t as prolific in Dante’s Inferno as they have been in other games and, thankfully, they tend to have a preset pattern rather than be completely random in which button you have to press like GoW’s earlier versions do. I still think GoW3 has it right here, though: if you absolutely positively have to have QTEs, at least put the relevant icons on the side of the screen appropriate to the button press. Something that simple really cuts down on the frustration for those of us who can’t always remember which way round Circle and Square are on the controller.

Presentation and Sound

I had an issue with the darkness of the game — an issue I have with a lot of ‘atmospheric’ games: yeah, I’m lookin’ at you DOOM 3 — so I had to turn the Brightness setting up a notch, but on a whole I’m very impressed with DI. The creature design is generally excellent, the sound has the ecclesiastic bombastisism you’d expect from a game about religion and Hell, and the lighting effects and texture work are mostly top notch.

Special mention must be made about the four CGI movies in the game: they’re beautiful pieces of cinema, so well lit and rendered that at one point I actually thought they’d switched to live action for a couple of bits. The final movie especially has some absolutely stunning anatomy and texture referencing, and the lip syncing is spot on.

There is a mix of cutscene styles in the game: from pre-rendered footage using ingame engine, realtime footage using ingame engine, some stylised animated bits in a couple of very visceral styles, plus the CGI movies above. I can’t say I was let down by any of them, though the pre-rendered ingame stuff was occassionally witness to a few rendering artefacts, but nothing to pan the game for.

The music and voice acting is generally spot on. Dante himself doesn’t sound like an all-American action hero, which I thought was a nice touch. Admittedly, he doesn’t sound like a Tuscan either, but that’s a minor niggle I think a western audience won’t care a jot for.

Achievement/Gamerpoint/Trophy Whoring

I assume both XBOX360 and PS3 have the same achievements, but I haven’t looked at the 360’s list to check. Dante’s Inferno is nice in that it doesn’t have that annoying “And now play the game on the hardest difficulty” achievement that so many games have these days. Most of the Bronze and Silver trophies are obtainable on the first runthrough as 80% of them are related to the story, or killing a certain number of a specific monster that you’ll naturally fight over the course of the game. There’s also trophies for getting a 50 and 100 point combo (both very easy) as well as one for the unsurprisingly 666 point combo (which took a bit more work).

Add to this “collect all the unholy relics” and “collect all the holy relics”, maxing out either side and then both of the Holy/Unholy trees and Absolve/Punish all 27 shades of the Inferno, there’s quite a bit for you to find and work at (I admit, I used a walkthrough for this final bit, as there were a couple I simply couldn’t find, and with no “mission select” feature, if you miss something, you have to play it ALL again).

Of special mention is The Guide trophy, which I would have got on my first playthrough, if I’d realised that you have to keep on talking to Virgil until he disappears for it to register for the achievement. D’oh.

Final Thoughts

I like the God of War series. That style of game is the reason I own consoles in the first place (well, that and Final Fantasy XIII). So when a game that isn’t quite God of War comes out, its still worth a shot for me. If you have GoW up on a pedestal, and aren’t willing to challenge your preconceptions, then Dante’s Inferno is not really the game for you. If you’re like me, however, and have a thing for mythology and neat artistic design, then you could do a lot worse than give Dante’s Inferno a rent from your nearest store.

Just don’t buy the Death Edition. Seriously. Not value for money!

The Verdict

8/10 – Good

(Hey look, I managed the whole review without mentioning Lucifer’s fully rendered CGI peni….gah, ALMOST HAD ME!!)

Back when I was at university doing my degree in English Literature (with a heavy emphasis on medieval literature) I stumbled upon a translation of Dante Alighieri’s Comedy, known today as the Divine Comedy, an epic poem divided into three parts. Inferno, the first of the three, is the basis for Visceral Game’s Dante’s Inferno, an incredibly loose adaption of the poet’s descent into the nine circles of Hell. A lot of creative license is taken in the motivations of the main character, and he is fleshed out into a scythe-wielding badass for the game with no real apologies on the game designers’ parts. Nor should there be. This is not supposed to be taken as a direct adaption of one of the finest pieces of classical poetry, but rather an homage to it.

Now, I don’t actually wish to talk about the game itself in this post. I will offer some form of review or critique of it at a later date, but I haven’t actually finished the game yet. No, what I want to write about today is the Death Edition of the game, for which I paid an extra £15. Why the extra cost? Well, it is because of these special features listed:

• Making of the Game documentary (I always like to watch these and learn more about the design processes)
• Dante in History documentary (To see just how well the designers researched the source material)
• Full Game Soundtrack (You know me well enough by now… Though more on this in a moment)
• Scoring the Inferno documentary (Not only the music, but finding out how it was composed. Excellent!)
• Wayne Barlow Digital Artbook (Concept art is always something I like to look at and draw inspiration from)
• Scene from the animated Dante’s Inferno (Had no idea what this was about, but hey, I like animated stuff)
• Digital Reprint of the Full Poem (I don’t actually own a translation, so why the hell not!)

Quite a few special features. Easily persuasive enough to get me to put out a few extra English Pounds to own. Of course, this is the part where everything goes horribly wrong.

You see, as I’m in the car on the way home, I’m reading the small print on the back of the box. The first thing I notice is that for the Soundtrack there’s a little, obscure asterisk that states “Soundtrack can only be accessed through software included on the enclosed Bonus DVD and is not able to be transferred to any other media.” Hrmmm, I think. That sounds a bit dodgy. But it was in fact even worse than I expected.

You see, all of the above special features save for the digital poem reprint are on the DVD. And I can’t for the life of me get it to work in my DVD drive. Joy. So I fish out my old laptop just to see if it is a problem with my drive and yeah, it is. I should really replace the old thing at some point, but I don’t normally have much in the way of use for it anyways since I tend to buy games digitally these days, and most other DVDs work on it fine anyways.

But I digress, my issue here lies within the “enclosed software”. Because there isn’t any. This isn’t an “Install the Soundtrack on Your PC” type of operation. This is an “everything runs through your normal dvd-playing software” option. That is, quite frankly, abyssmal design. Especially as you have to click on every pair of songs to play them, rather than it running through the list. Sure, the sound quality is lovely, but that’s way too fiddly to be worth its while.

So I load up the “Wayne Barlow digital artbook” only to find that it, too, uses the same basic dvd-player software. No independent browser or anything. Every single thing on this DVD is designed to work in a DVD player. I mean sure, that’s great for people who are going to use their PS3 to experience the footage, but seriously, you advertise “digital artbook” and “soundtrack” and people are not going to think about playing it on their PS3 straight away.

Oh, and about 90 seconds into the digital artbook — which is actually a documentary, by the way — the whole thing crashes and locks up my laptop. I hard close my DVD software and sigh “One more try!” and load up the Digital Reprint of the Full Poem.

Which takes me to a static page with a web address and a password that I’m sure 99% of the people who bought this game will share online…

So let’s recap my disappointments.

1. Documentaries that crash a couple of minutes in both times I’ve tried them.
2. A soundtrack that I can only play using DVD/Media Playing software
3. A digital reprint of the poem that anyone can access on the web for free.

I haven’t tried accessing the other features yet. Still hoping to get my PC’s DVD drive to recognise the disc so i can at least watch the documentaries on a proper screen, but so far I am hugely disappointed.

As for the game itself, it’s okay. There are some irritating quick time events (QTEs) in places where you thought you were watching a cutscene, some instant death situations that are incredibly unfair, some jumping/swinging bits that I’ve had to replay several times because it isn’t always clear if you’re going to make the jump right or not and, most gravely, some little minigames which are fun in and of themselves, but don’t count as checkpoints so if you die straight after, you have to do them all over again.

BUT there are several positives too: the sound is great, the cinematics are very pretty, the monster and character designs have a lot of weight, and considering how it is adapted from the poem, it does a surprisingly good job. I think that, if I hadn’t just played Darksiders, Mass Effect and Mass Effect 2, I’d have much more praise for the game, but it does seem to fall a little flat after those.

Anyways, I still have three circles of Hell left to fight my way through and, if nothing else, there are some nice PS3 trophies to unlock on my way, so it is by no means a wasted purchase but, considering my issues with the bonus content above, I’m not currently feeling it was worth the asking price.

See, I got through my whole article without saying “God of War” onc—-aah crap!

While I have no problem with painting myself as “A GAMER” to most people – I feel the stigma attached to “gamers” is pretty unwarranted for the most part – I must quantify what I mean by this. I game, certainly. But when most people think of gamers these days, they fall into one or two camps, the camps that have the greatest mass market appeal or media hype.

1) The World of Warcraft player: I have no problem admitting I have played WoW since release, to varying degrees of involvement. I’ve made very good friends in the game, whom I talk to on a regular basis and – contrary to the popular belief that they are ‘just people on the internet’ – I’ve met several of them in person. I got into WoW because of the storyline that carried over from the Warcraft III and Frozen Throne RTS games, which themselves I only played because of the story. I am not very good at RTS games, apart from the original Settlers.

You’ll notice the key word here is story. As a writer, reader, and generally creative person, that’s what I’m into. WoW appeals to me because of The Lore – that huge wealth of background detail shared across an epic fantasy universe. Sure it goes a bit wonky in places, its retconned in places to allow for new ideas to be bought in, and some of it is beyond cliché, but there’s a lot of imagination gone into tying this universe together so that, thematically, it all gels in a fantasy/steam-punky way. (And, as an addendum, I am also quite fond of Blizzard’s art style and direction, so from an artistic point of view, WoW also has appeal.)

2) The FPS player. Considering the hype that the Call of Duty games get, it isn’t so surprising that when people think of gamers, they think of some teenage kid sat in his bedroom playing Modern Warfare 2, or some such stereotype. With mostly realistic graphics, albeit with some creative license taken, the MW2-type multiplayer game is often branded as the kind of game most likely to turn your child into a mass murderer by the press. Well, that and the Grand Theft Auto games which, having not played after GTA1, I’m not going into due to lack of knowledge on the subject (if only the media could do the same eh!)

Now even while I like both types of games, I wouldn’t say that either are my favourite genres. I can talk a lot about what kinds of games I don’t like: sports games (yawn), racing games (yawn), RTS games (because I suck at them), lightgun games (because I’ve never had one that works properly in a home environment)… you get the idea, and you can probably see the trend too. These games lack, for the most part, that one essential element that I play games for: story.

Thus bringing me to my point.

Mass Effect 2 is BioWare’s latest storydriven roleplaying game, and I shall be upfront in saying that I believe it to be one of the most rounded, well-paced storydriven games I’ve ever played. Considering my actual background in gaming comes from such titles as Planescape: Torment, Baldur’s Gate and Knights of the Old Republic, you might not be surprised at this. After all, these titles are pretty much all made by the same team: individuals who value story as much as they value action.

The premise of ME2 is very straightforwards. It is the second in a pre-planned trilogy. It is, much like The Empire Strikes Back, the dark middle section of that trilogy, and thus obvious comparisons to that film abound. I’m no stickler for dark games: the average survival horror game mostly bores me, and the gruesome gorefest of the SAW films just sickens me to the point that I’m paying to not enjoy myself.

The ‘dark’ elements of ME2 involve the idea that the series protagonist Commander Shepard, is assembling a team to go on what is likely to be a suicide mission, passing through the Omega Four Relay to territory unknown in an effort to stop The Collectors from abducting more human colonies from the fringe of galactic space. Not the most original setup, but what in science fiction is truly original these days. The crafting skill is shown with how BioWare deals with this setup.

If ‘assemble a team of loyal individuals and save the galaxy’ sounds familiar, it is because it is, in effect, the exact same basic premise for Mass Effect 1. The difference is in the execution. Where ME1 was ponderous, full of inventory issues, dodgy cover systems, and hundreds of menus, ME2 is pacy, cutting out most of the inventory entirely, with a more reactive cover system, and a streamlined menu system that lets you work with the essentials.

Changes to any formula in a series of games is always likely to cause outcry from fans. I know from first-hand experience that any time Blizzard change the way a character class works in WoW that thousands of crybabies descend on the forums like locusts to “QQ” about how Blizzard are ruining the game. ME2 was a comparable shakeup compared to the first, but anything more I can say on the issue is obviously pure personal opinion. At the end of the day, what it boils down to (for me) is this: did I enjoy ME2 more than ME1? And the simple answer is YES, A WHOLE LOT MORE.

Now there are reasons for this, and they boil down mostly to games systems rather than actual storytelling. ME1 had, in my opinion, a slightly better story, with better reveals, but was let down by its encumbering menu-driven inventory management. This isn’t to say that ME2’s story is bad. Far from it. It just feels ever-so-slightly samey because of the nature of the experience.

Basic plot structure aside, however, the sheer depth of characterisation in ME2 is stunning. Each of the ten characters you can pick up to join your squad is a fully-fleshed out individual, with motivations, background, flaws. They’re the kind of characters I try to write for myself because, as human beings, we can’t associate with those perfect characters you used to see on TV, in films or games.

Each of ME2’s characters has a unique visual identity too, from the hulking krogan Grunt, to the lithe and deadly Thane, to the overly buxom blue-skinned asari justicar, Samara. It is interesting to me how BioWare have really tried to give these alien races suitably alien personalities and motivations, yet keeping within them traits that to us seem distinctly human. And I suppose that is essential, since as I’ve already stated, if we can’t relate, we can’t engage; if we can’t engage with a character, we don’t take them with us for the ride, and everybody loses.

So what, for me, is the success of Mass Effect 2? It boils down to two things:

1) Characterisation and storytelling: simply the deepest interactive experience I’ve ever played.

2) Music and sound: voice acting is generally excellent (I’m looking at you, Generic Male Shepard voice actor for bringing the standard down), and the musical score is perfect and cinematic for the experience the game creates.

And I must point out that the game does indeed create an experience for you. It doesn’t drag you kicking and screaming in the direction it wants. Throughout the game there are many many paths that you can take, choices that you can decide, that alter the course of the narrative in (usually) subtle ways. And all of these come to a head in the last forty minutes or so of the game, where you finally head through the Omega Four Relay and take the fight to your enemy. The decisions, the tension, and the musical accompaniment all come together there into, for me, what is one of the best and most engaging endgames I’ve ever seen.

If somebody ever makes a film of my novels, this is the way I want my audience to feel once the climax is reached: a cast of characters that they care about and can engage with, despite the lack of humanity some of my characters (by their very nature) embody, sacrifices and decisions that the audience can relate to, and a musical score that gives you that tingly adrenaline-fuelled feeling in your chest that BIG THINGS™ are going on.

Yes, I liked Mass Effect 2. Can you tell?

Here’s Broken, a scene from late in Chains of Memory. I won’t spoil the situation for anybody, but its supposed to be a fairly emotional moment for the character in question.

So I received four emails from Blogger today. Four identical emails, in fact. All explaining that towards the end of this month, Blogger would no longer be supporting custom ftp-based blog-updating. Since I’ve used that particular service of theirs for nigh on three years, I finally decided that this would be the impetus I needed to change my blogging habits, and do a bit of website maintenance, as I have neglected both for some time now.

So, initially, I have installed a wordpress blog. I have several blogs bookmarked, and almost all of them seem to use wordpress. I tried it once before, a couple of years ago, and I found it unwieldy to say the least. However, this version that I have installed today seems smooth and robust and very professional, which is an edge I am almost certainly going to need soon as I try and break into the publishing industry.

I need to change links and stuff on the main page of http://www.demajen.co.uk but by the time anybody reads this, that should already be done and dusted.

I have a blog coming up about Mass Effect 2, which I got last week and completed yesterday. That doesn’t sound like very long, but I have played it for 35 hours. One could say I got absorbed. But more on that soon.

Also coming soon is a bit about Final Fantasy XIII’s official soundtrack, as well as a new piece of art for February (which I will quite possibly display WIPs of on here to see how Wordpress deals with that.)

Keep on rockin’ \m/(-__-)\m/

I picked up “The Left Hand of God” in a half price sale in WH Smiths. It seemed like my kind of book. And thus, a good idea at the time.

Sadly, now I’m not so certain this was the case.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m all for books that don’t follow convention. I’m all for stories that have surprising twists. What I am not for is books that seem to change their tone 15 pages from the end and end completely differently to how they have been set up.

The book was good. I’m not knocking that. It has a dark, brooding tone. Its portrayal of a violent, religion-fuelled fantastical and fanatical alternate history was gripping, and the fact that I read the whole lot in one sitting shows that Hoffman can tell a good yarn.

But there’s just something so very wrong with it in places that I actually feel more frustrated than entertained at turning that last page. There are so many things foreshadowed but never explored later on; there are numerous changes in tone in the middle of the book completely at odds with the grim start; important revelations arrive with no actual foreshadowing at all; the final battle is described with a clinical detachment that deadens any sense of emotional investiture in the wellbeing of the individuals involved; and the final betrayal ruffled my feathers considering two thirds of the book is spent cememting a relationship only to have a parenthetical exposition in the last three pages explain why it just wouldn’t work.

Anyone who has read any of my previous blogs knows I’m a sucker for a happy ending and relationships that work out – isn’t that why we read fantasy? to escape from the harsh, soul-crushing reality that real life usually thrusts our way? – but it is less well known that I actually have admiration for writers that break conventions, throw away our expectations. I fully expected some big revelation towards the end of the novel. Unfortunately, the revelation that I got was one that hadn’t been hinted at elsewhere, and there was too much sense, looking back with the book fresh in my mind, that the story had been pieced together from multiple plots, rather that one coherent whole right from the start.

The ending ends with hints that there is a sequel to follow: and I suppose if Hoffman is to follow convention, a trilogy is a likely outcome. It is highly likely that I will pick up a sequel, simply to find out if any of the seeds laid in this plot but not allowed to blossom within its pages are actually of importancw, or merely red herrings designed to throw the reader off which is, in my eyes, poor writing.

While thinking of something more to say on the matter, I googled the book and found this review which I am inclined to agree with.

So yeah, not a bad book by any stretch. I have read far worse. I’m just glad I didn’t pay full price for it.

Writing

For a start, there’s that ‘writing’ thing that I, as a writer, do. My first trilogy is now planned out: the first novel is pretty much finished, the second is well underway, and I wrote a couple of scenes for the third one the other day as they were banging about in my brain and distracting me from important stuff, so that is going well. Novel 1, “Chains of Memory” (working title) will be complete by the end of January, so I can then get it printed and sent off to a shortlist (really very short actually) of agencies in the hope one can get me signed up for a three-book detail with a major publishing house like Orbit. I’m expecting “Chains of Time”, the second novel, to take me up until the end of summer, possibly the end of the year (depending on things in the next section) to write, and then “Chains of War” will round out the trilogy within the next eighteen months or so.

Obviously this is writing time. People actually seeing them on the shelves may take many months, even years to pan out, depending on how lucky I am with publishers. Kids fiction is the big thing at the moment, and this is definitely not written for kids in the same way that Harry Potter or Twilight is. Regardless of how long they may take to see the light of day, I am very much enjoying writing them, even despite the sleepless nights having several complicated plots and subplots tangled round in your brain can cause.

Games

The STEAM sale over Christmas was a disaster for me. I was doing so SO well with paring down my Games-To-Play list to something manageable, and then all of these good games were made cheap and I couldn’t resist. D’oh!

I recently finished the excellent “Darksiders” which I really enjoyed for its mix of God of War fighting and Zelda-esque dungeon exploration and collecting (as well as its visually distinct art style and storyline), and finally — a good two years after everyone I know finished it — I completed the main storyline of “Mass Effect”. Just in time, in fact, for the end of January when “Mass Effect 2” is released. “Darksiders” took me about 35 hours to complete 100%. “Mass Effect” took me maybe 12-15 hours, but that was with skipping 80% of the sidequests. As much as I like sidequests in games, I really just wanted to see how the main story played out in “Mass Effect”, and I definitely wasn’t disappointed.

Also on my list of games that I already own and need to complete are:

• Modern Warfare 2 (Which I bought hoping I’d like it more than the first one. Wrong.)
• S.T.A.L.K.E.R. (In the STEAM sale, so no rush to play/complete this one. Looks interesting though.)
• Jade Empire (Also £3 in the STEAM sale. Not got time for this at the moment.)
• Dragon Age: Origins (More on this below)
• Batman: Arkham Asylum (Finished in storymode. Want to 100% this though.)
• Dead Space (Great ideas, but atrocious PC port. Sad. Might get the PS3 version cheap.)
• Trine (Awesome ‘hop in and play’ puzzle game when I have little time.)
• Uncharted (I got this to work my way up to Uncharted 2. Sadly I suck at it.)
• Zelda: Spirit Tracks (almost done with this now.)

That’s quite a few games, some of which I’m barely into. Dragon Age is the prime example. I was really psyched for this when it was announced, and I got the deluxe edition with all the bonus content. Thing is, Spence has been playing it, and after 40+ hours he’s only 45% of the way through the game. Now admittedly he DOES have a thing for sidequests (It’s unhealthy, UNHEALTHY I SAY!) but still… So that number looming over my head and, and I hate to admit this, the unsexy female character models have kind of put me off getting into this one. It’s really a shame, but in some ways I’d forgotten the reasons I never actually completed Baldur’s Gate 2: Shadows of Amn — it’s just too effing long for a completionist like me to play in a reasonable amount of time.

And, as well as this, there are OTHER GAMES on the horizon. Oh, and Bayonetta, which is so screwed up crazy I just have to get it after already renting it for a week, just so I can see how the ‘plot’ pans out.

These include:

• Mass Effect 2 (The continuing adventures of Cassiel Shephard… more alien sex?!) Jan 29th.
• Dante’s Inferno (Sure it’s basically God of War, but I like GoW. It’s why I have a ps3). Feb 5th.
• Bioshock 2 (As I loved the first one. Not desperate to play this at release though.) Feb 9th.
• Final Fantasy XIII (Oh my god, my life, it will disappear…) March 9th.
• God of War 3 (It’s like God of War but…oh, wait…) March 19th.

Now you’ll notice something about a couple of those games: namely “ME2” and “FFXIII” — they’re both likely to be fucking long! (See my point above in the Books bit about why I might not finish reading them all by the end of March.) I’ve been looking forwards to “FFXIII” for over two years now, so I’ll definitely be getting it on the day of release and then locking myself away for a week or two to make some headway into the game before emerging to do some actual work. I wasn’t hugely excited for “ME2”, but having now just realised what all the fuss was about with the first one (yeah, I’m a tad slow) it is now high on my list of things to look forwards to.

Art

And finally, I’ve renewed last year’s Resolution to ensure I paint at least one piece of art per month. January’s is actually already done, but I haven’t updated my gallery with it yet. I’m considering changing the gallery format slightly for 2010. We’ll see.

Release the Kraken!

There are also some films I want to watch this year. That’s my excuse for getting a release the kraken reference into this blog anyways.

Next time I’ll possibly talk about tits and fucking, since Spence wants me to. Also, this may help people forget just how geeky this blog has been.

BAI! =^.^=

It has come to my attention that I have been utterly rubbish at updating my blog. There are several reasons for this, chief amongst them being that I am lazy. Really, really lazy.

And, also, not a huge amount has gone on since October 17th, when I last blogged.

Well okay, stuff has happened, but it was all school/work-related, and let’s be honest, it would be pretty unprofessional of me to blog too much about working in a school. Child-protection and all that jazz.

So instead I shall start 2010’s blogging by going through things that are important to me: namely books, music, games and art.

Reading

Back when I was doing my Masters in Creative Writing, I often commented that I didn’t read anywhere near enough. Looking at my bedside table now, I have a pile of books that will go some way to rectifying this for 2010.

I’ve got through a couple of the shorter works already, but currently the list of Books To Read stands at:

• Percy Jackson and the Lightning Thief (Read, in anticipation of the upcoming film release.)
• Percy Jackson and the Sea of Monsters (Read, because I like sequels.)
• Percy Jackson and the Titan’s Curse (Because I got a boxed set of the first 3. Bite me.)
• The Stone of Tears (Sequel to Wizard’s First Rule, which I enjoyed greatly.)
• Blood of the Fold (Third in the Sword of Truth series.)
• The Left Hand of God (Which was half price and looked interesting.)
• Extraordinary Engines (A steampunk anthology.)
• The Difference Engine (One of the defining steampunk novels.)
• Assassin’s Creed: Renaissance (Book of the game. Sometimes these are good.)
• Wormwood (Second hand, 20p buy. Fantasy alternate history.)
• Pride and Prejudice and Zombies (Because I’m not a fan of the original.)
• The Ghost King (Which I got before Christmas but haven’t touched yet.)

And those are the ones just on my table or at hand. I’m 2/3 of the way through “The Titan’s Curse”, which I am enjoying greatly. Yeah I know that the Percy Jackson books are really for young adults rather than almost-29 year olds, but I’ve always been a Greek mythology buff, and I have a thing about urban fantasy fiction (since, y’know, I write it!) even if it is supposedly for ‘kids’. I’m a big fucking kid and proud of it, alreet?

I actually started “The Stone of Tears” before Christmas but, like pretty much all of Terry Goodkind’s books it seems, it’s about 900 pages long, and I need to invest some serious time in it, which — because I like to read books in one or two sittings — I don’t currently have. I’ll get there. Already it is shaping up to be an interesting follow-up to “Wizard’s First Rule”.

These should last me a good while: probably till the end of February and into March if I decide to read the two Goodkind books back to back as I suspect I might. Saying that, however, there are OTHER THINGS that may ensure this stack of books last even longer.

And those are… In the next part!

In the words of CLAPTRAP, “Ha haaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa!”

The Aion Experience: My Impressions So Far

A lot of people who I’ve played MMOs with have been asking about Aion, knowing I play it, and wanting to know my opinions of it. As I am a man who likes to talk a lot about things he enjoys, I decided to create this brief summary of my impressions.

Firstly, this is not a review. As anybody who has played Aion will tell you, the game has a hefty PvP-centric approach post level 25. As my highest level characters are a level 21 Elyos Spiritmaster and a level 22 Asmodian Chanter, I cannot comment on the PvP aspect of the game. But bear in mind that it is there, and it is a big chunk of the game’s premise.

Secondly, most of the ‘reviews’ of Aion that I have seen compare it to World of Warcraft. This is inevitable, it having the greatest market share with — at its height — over 11 million consecutive subscribers. Aion does a lot of things better than WoW, I shall say that now, but I don’t just write from this one perspective.

My actual MMO background starts off with Final Fantasy XI, probably one of the most hardcore of all MMOs in its heyday. I still believe FFXI does some things better than WoW and more modern MMOs, but that is by the by. The reason I stopped playing FFXI as much and went to WoW is the issue of time, and how long things take to do in the game, and that is my first point.

Aion is a game that will take you considerable time to play. By level 21/22, I am already up to around 1.6 million xp needed to hit the next level. Bear in mind that the level cap is 50, and the xp per level curve increases quite dramatically per level, and you can already see that it will take a lot of hard time and effort (based on my current experience with the game) to hit the level cap.

One of the things that I both liked and detested alternatively about FFXI was the enforced partying system. Without a party, you couldn’t do a whole lot past level 10. Which meant 65 levels of partying, pulling mobs, killing them, moving onto the next one, and so on. It was grindy. Very grindy. And yet, thanks to this enforced partying system, the community on Pandemonium server where I played FFXI was very tight. You really did feel like you were playing a massively multiplayer game.

WoW had the opposite effect, sometimes. With so many classes able to solo all but the hardest of “group” quests, WoW often felt very much like a single-player game with the odd grouped instance run thrown in should you be bothered. Even then, you never really had to group to get stuff done. This was more casual, and coupled with something as simple as giving xp for quests (something that FFXI has only really recently caught onto), was the main reason why I spent so much time levelling up characters in the game. Nevertheless, I feel that — apart from the few guildies and friends I made on Shadowsong EU — the WoW community is one of the worst communities I’ve ever met. And as a secondary school supply teacher, I’ve worked in quite a few dysfunctional communities.

Aion, then, puts a bit of the massively multiplayer back into MMORPG. I’d say about 80% of the content between levels 1 and 20(ish) can be soloed. Quests give (usually reasonable) chunks of XP, but there are significant benefits to grouping.

For a start, there are no hybrid classes in Aion. Your Templar is the tank, your Cleric is the healer. Rangers, Assassins, Gladiators are your dps. Sorcerers are dps and crowd control. Spirit Masters are dps through DoTs. Chanters are the class with the party-enhancing buffs. Yeah, Chanters can heal a bit. Yeah Gladiators can tank a bit. And yes, you can customise your character a bit through Aion’s Stigma system, which is the closest thing to talent points that Aion seems to have. But ultimately the class you play chooses your role. Don’t play a cleric if you want to frontline dps. Don’t play a Templar if you want to dish out massive damage.

This isn’t to say that you have to group constantly. For Templars and Clerics, it is certainly the case that it is beneficial and faster to kill stuff in a duo or trio or group, but it isn’t forced down your throat. You can solo. You just have to choose your targets carefully.

However, you WILL have to group at points. Around level 18 for both factions, there are a series of group quests: Black Claw Village for Asmodians, Tursin Outpost (I think) for Elyos. These areas contain elite mobs, who have far more hitpoints and hit far harder than your average normal mob, just like your Notorious Monsters in FFXI, or your Elite mobs in WoW. You WILL need a group to bring these down. A trio can sometimes work, but for maximum killing power, a full group of six is needed.

I like this. To the best of my knowledge, it is practically impossible to solo these quests at the level you get them. Now, it IS possible to get to level 20 and move on to the next zone WITHOUT doing these storyline quests but a) you miss out on a huge chunk of xp (the elite mobs give tons of xp, even in a full group) and b) it would mean a chunk of grinding out xp with boring repeatable quests (sure beats FFXI’s system mind you!)

So if you are an unsociable MMO player, Aion isn’t likely to be for you. There are dungeons in the game, and a massive flight-based PvP area which you pretty much need to group up for to survive — safety in numbers as it were.

Moving on. The classes seem pretty well balanced. They all have some interesting abilities, they all get fairly unique combinations of equipment to use, and the amount of visual distinction between them is pretty high. I’ll not beat around the bush: Aion is a beautiful game. Colour me shallow, but I take great joy in exploring a new fantasy landscape and taking in the details. WoW had me hooked on exploring for a long time, and while Aion’s game world is smaller in size that the multiple contents in WoW, its level of detail is breathtaking at times. I have a folder full of screenshots that is rapidly expanding in size, though I will say that many screenshots simply don’t do the game justice. Not only is everything pretty, but the special effects are awesome and the animations are really lovely and fluid. Check out youtube for some examples of that stuff.

The combat system is fun. And it has to be, because it takes slightly longer than you might be used to to solo kill mobs. On average it takes me between 10 and 20 seconds to kill stuff, but I admit I am not playing the main DPS classes so it may well be all over much quicker for others. Unlike WoW where you basically spam abilities as soon as they’re off cooldown, it is actually beneficial in Aion to weave your auto-attacks in between your abilities. Aion’s abilities work on a Chain Skill system. Here’s an example from my Chanter’s repertoire.

Hallowed Strike (level 1 chain) > Heaven’s Judgement (level 2 chain)

Or

Hallowed Strike (level 1 chain) > Booming Strike (level 2 chain) > Incandescent Blow (level 3 chain)

As you can see, using a level 1 skill opens up the option to use one of two level 2 skills. Heaven’s Judgement has a short-term stun effect, while Booming Strike opens up the possibility to add a third chain skill into the mix. This keeps the combat fresh, interesting, and quite tactical I’ve found so far.

Plus with the wonderful animations, I imagine Aion is actually quite fun to watch. Again, check out any HD videos you can find on Youtube to get a better picture of just how dynamic combat is.

The question, therefore, is “Should I play Aion?” and my answer to that will really depend.

Firstly, if you are a big crafter in MMOs, Aion has a very robust crafting system. It is easier than FFXI’s ludicrously irritating crafting system, but no way near as easy as WoW’s. It is, however, more rewarding. It creates gear that is up to 10 levels ahead (in terms of stats) than what you will be getting from mobs of the same level as you. It is, however, painfully slow at times to level, and it will cost you a big chunk of monies.

Secondly, do you like having a well-defined and rounded role for your character? If yes, you might also enjoy Aion (as well as a ton of other games on the market!)

Thirdly, do you like playing games that really push the boundaries of visual experience in the MMO genre? If yes, Aion is definitely worth a look.

I’ve really enjoyed my time with Aion so far, but as I’ve mentioned in past blogs, I’m not really a competitive PvP-style player, so my opinions of the game might change dramatically come level 25 and my first forays into The Abyss, the game’s major PvP hub.

Check back for (hopefully) a followup to this at a later date.

So, the latest school term has begun and my week has been busy busy busy for several reasons.

Firstly there is all the kerfuffle surrounding new timetables and the like. (Also, am impressed that Word’s spell checker recognises ‘kerfuffle’ as a real word…) This week I managed to do the work of about three people through no real fault of anyone in the department’s: that’s just what has had to be done in order to get ourselves off the ground. Now we finally seem to have a fourth member of staff in the department, things will hopefully get a bit easier. Tuesday was especially horrendous given the second item on this list and the fact that I did a full day’s teaching. 5x 1hr lessons with all new classes and one bad lot amongst them could certainly have been worse, but yeah…

The second thing kinda informs number 1 and subsequent items. Several weeks ago I had a flu-like thing that left me really badly roughed up. Horrendous cough coupled with sore throat, runny nose, headaches, and constant tiredness thanks to lack of sleep due to coughing, which took a good two weeks to clear. Unfortunately I passed it on to Dad and, this last week, he managed to pass it back to me. After a seven week holiday in which I did zero shouting of any kind, being back at work has taxed my immune system somewhat and by 4pm on Tuesday I could do little more than croak. I spent Wednesday and today feeling clogged up and coughing and sneezing on a regular basis, making me feel horridly filthy and unwell, but at least it has eased off somewhat by the constant imbibing of water. My throat is still swollen, but I can at least talk now, and I just hope this holds up for tomorrow.

The third thing was the most financially ruinous. While I get paid tomorrow for the two days I did last week, a grand total of probably slightly under £200 after tax/admin fees, I have managed to spend £926 in the last 7 days. This is a lot, even for me, but in many ways it needed to be paid. Several bits on my PC were making noises that I’m certain they shouldn’t have been making, and the machine was starting to stutter and crash more. Having had a good listen in to the case I gathered it was the CPU itself that was starting to go, and if I was gonna have to replace the processor, chances are I’d have to replace the motherboard as well. Rather than wait for the thing to melt, potentially destroying data in the process, I decided to go the preventative route.

Browsing scan.co.uk I managed to snag myself a couple of deals on components, beefing my system up from an AMD 64 X2 5600 processor and 4gig RAM on a 3-year old MSI motherboard with a GeForce 8800GTX to the following:—

Intel i7 quad-core Nephalem processor at 2.6ghz
Gigabyte EX58-Extreme Motherboard
XFX GTX285 graphics card (with free copy of Assassin’s Creed and Batman: Arkham Asylum)
6GB Corsair XMS3 DDR3 RAM

The new bits arrived yesterday at around 8am, waking me up from a fitful sleep. In fact, I’d probably only managed a couple of uncomfortable hours, but the thought of tinkering with technology spurred me on.

By 10:30am I’d got the case stripped out, the new motherboard, processor, heatsinks, graphics card et al installed, and I came to connect the final PSU-to-Motherboard connector and discovered that instead of a 4-pin connector, the motherboard needed an 8-pin.

Well shit.

Phoned up our local techstore and enquired about this new-fangled 8-pin whatsit. Apparently the higher end motherboards from the last 8-12 months have them instead of the old 4-pins.

“Do I just need an adaptor?” I foolishly ask.

“No Sir!” they reply. “It actually takes twice the juice as before.”

“So I need a new power supply?”

“Yeah. But we don’t carry the higher end ones in stock.”

Sigh. So in the end I had to phone round all the local stores to get one, and even then the earliest they could get it to me was today. Fortunately it was delivered early today so everything was, thankfully, up and running by about 1pm.

So add 1x Coolermaster M700 700watt modulated PSU to the above list.

In the end I’m very happy with the machine, which is running faster than ever; I’m just a bit miffed that I ended up paying so much for it because I didn’t wanna wait 3-5 working days — no computer over the weekend would have made for a very sad Jon, especially as I doubt going out on the town like this would be a very smart idea. Don’t want to give anyone what I’ve got (apart from the kids at school, but most of them deserve the pain! ¬_¬)

While I may be out of pocket for the next few weeks, I’m happy with my financial security; I’m also happy with my re-mastered PC, as well as for some of my friends who have had positive changes to their relationship statuses over the last couple of days.

Me next, I beg of thee! :-/

~Jon