A Gaming Diary
Archive for January, 2006
Final Fantasy XI Beta
Jan 14th
Well, I’ve checked the Internet for guides to the two tasks I had. (I normally wouldn’t, but, well, it seems okay because this is a beta, somehow.) For the mission, I was being an idiot – I’d completely forgotten to check one part of the city, which – obviously – turns out to be where I need to go. The quest, though, really needs the Internet FAQs. There’s no way in-game of knowing that it’s actually a level 20 quest – and after the initial conversation, there’s no way to know that it’s set in a mine that isn’t the one that’s in the town where you get the quest.
Maybe that’s been purposely been designed to get people to work together, but it just seems like rubbish game design to me.
But then in MMOs I’ve generally been a lone wolf who teams up with people now and again when the circumstances fit, but who generally likes exploring alone. (Mainly because I often have short play sessions and need to leave at a moment’s notice.) So I sense that FFXI might not be the game for me, which is a shame. Okay, it does seem to do some things very wrong (from my point of view) but there does seem to be a nice game there.
Final Fantasy XI Beta
Jan 14th
I’m a bit annoyed right now.
Partly because there aren’t enough monsters to go round, but mainly because of the way quests and missions are recorded.
I decided not to run for miles when I started the game again, so I talked to some more people in Bastok. I got a quest and a mission.
The quest was immediately annoying, because it wasn’t recorded decently in my quest log. It gave the location of the quest giver, but not the name or location of the person I was meant to talk to next. Which, as I forgot within seconds of walking away from the person who I got the quest from, was very annoying.
The mission was better, telling me in the information who I should talk to and where they were. So I found them – more or less by accident – and then got told to take the report they gave me to the president’s office. The only problem being that, according to the map, there isn’t a president’s office in Bastok.
Oh, and going back to the woman who gave me my quest gave me the name of the person I had to talk to and a rough location – the mines. Now, hopefully, there’s only one mine. If there are more, I’m fucked. The only niggle is that I talked to everyone I came across in the mine… and nobody was the person says I should talk to.
Not wishing to be entirely negative, I did manage to get up to level two, which was nice.
I’ve had to stop playing for now, annoyingly, because I don’t like leaving things like this hanging. I’m really shocked by the lack of information in the quest log, though. Unless I’m missing a way to expand it.
There doesn’t seem to be a mini map, either, while I’m complaining.
Final Fantasy XI Beta
Jan 14th
Well, I’ve played it now. I’m some kind of big Hulk-like fucker with white hair. And I’m a Red Mage, which means “jack of all trades”, as far as I can tell. Anyway, I started off in some town called Bastok, where the game immediately played a terrible trick on me. There was a cut scene of some woman not being allowed out of the town because it was too dangerous and she didn’t have a bodyguard. So I assumed, as one would, that she’d ask me to accompany her for a while and our mini adventure together would be a neat tutorial in the ways of the game. Instead she just ran off, saying she would like to show me round but that that she was too busy. Oh.
So I wandered around town and gave an adventure coupon to a nice lady who gave me some money. Wandered into the residential district and found I had a house, staffed by a friendly Moogle. Kupo. Baffling, but friendly. Kupo.
Anyway, I wandered off and talked some random NPCs until one of them gave me some supplies to deliver to an outpost in another region. Seemed a bit much for a level one quest… or mission… but I decided to do it. (Missions and quests are different in FFXI, somehow, and though the supplies appeared in my inventory, the mission to deliver them didn’t appear in my mission list. Or in my quest list. Very confusing.)
I ran out of town and killed a couple of hornets with a combination of my Dia spell and my Onion Dagger. Go me!
After that I ignored monsters and just ran to find this outpost. After about fifteen minutes I passed one, but I was still in the starting region, so I didn’t think that was it. I needed to go to the next region to the north. Found myself in a nice area with windmills, but no outpost. So I went further north to some dunes and discovered I didn’t have a map of that area. But I decided to run around anyway.
By this point my suspicions had been confirmed. This wasn’t a mission for level one characters. This is probably something high level players do inbetween riding chocobos and sipping champagne and laughing at the antics of newbies from their heavenly cloud palaces. Or something. All the monsters were, to quote the game, “incredibly tough”. Luckily, they didn’t seem to care I was there… until a goblin assassin decided he didn’t like my lovely white hair and killed me in one hit as I ran past him. So I respawned… back in Bastok, where I’d been forty-five minutes earlier.
I think I might just go and kill hornets for a bit while my pride recovers. Those supplies can sit in my inventory and rot for all I care.
Final Fantasy XI Beta
Jan 14th
I’ve not played it yet.
It’s been installing on my 360 for an hour or two and there’s still half an hour to go.
I’ve had to sign up to Sony’s Play Online service, too, which seems absolutely horrible.
I bought a keyboard this morning, too, more or less just for this game and the registration process. Taking into account the cost of the magazine with the game disc it’s becoming very expensive for a free beta.
Animal Crossing: Wild World
Jan 14th
So Curt, Big Top and Dotty sang me tunes. I love all three animals, but I had to go with Dotty’s tune. It seemed to mean more to her than to anyone else. At least, I think I’ve done what I was meant to. I told her she was hired. It’s odd, not as organised as I’d expect. Ah well.
Curly’s packed to move out today. I’ve barely talked to him since he moved in, so he’s welcome to go. I’ll miss his flowers, though.
Frobert needed medicine for the second day running. He must be really sick. I hope this doesn’t throw his training regime off too much.
And, finally, I hope there’s no limit to the number of new trees that grow each day, because I planted hundreds of them today. None were in old tree places, but I hoping a fair few of them will survive.
Auto Assault Beta
Jan 14th
Well, the performance issues haven’t gone away overnight, but the repair pads work now.
I went back to the Proving Grounds to mop up quests that I’d missed. Did a few and then tried my first PvP mission. Well, sort of PvP. I wasn’t shooting other humans, but racing them. First up to the top of a mountain won the race… or wouldn’t have done if the end point hadn’t refused to respond when I got there. I should have won, but in the end I had to just abandon the quest. Gah. I filed a bug report about that one, you can be sure of that.
Then I did another mission where you were meant to kill enemies round a house, but they weren’t unique, so you could kill the same type of enemy elesewhere on the map and complete the mission in relative safety. Not sure if that’s a real bug or just an odd consequence of the design, so I didn’t file a report about that one.
Did a few more missions until I just couldn’t take another. I’m running out of missions, too. I’m getting tons of equipment I can’t use for another four or five levels and after the mission I just took I’m not sure if there are any more I’m ready for. The “main” mission I’ve got is for level eleven players and I’m only level four.
I suppose I should say something else nice. Well, I like the way that though all your weapons are ranged you can do melee damage by driving into enemies. You are in a big armoured car, after all.
Auto Assault Beta
Jan 13th
Well, I’ve played it some more.
It hasn’t changed much, except that I’ve run into some horrible framerate issues. Really, really bad stuff. Very odd. It first happened when I went into the first town and I could hardly move around because I was getting about one screen update per second. And then back out in the field I had some issues – mainly when driving a long way very quickly. I think the game just can’t keep up with the amount of streaming it must be doing. Or something.
Also, the repair pads don’t seem to be working, which meant a lot of down time until I discovered I could get fully healed for two, er, whatever the currency they use is called.
All the quests are very standard “kill N of X” or “deliver O to Y” things. And I’ve done the main line of quests too quickly and am now on one where the enemies I’m meant to kill are impossible for me to hit. (I thought something was up when I got a quest reward that was two levels too high for me.) So I’m going back to find some subquests more suited to my level.
Something odd happened, though. I enjoyed myself. I killed a load of enemies. I had a very quick conversation with another player. I customised my car a bit. I used some skill points to get some healing and defensive abilities. I even got an apartment. And despite the lazy post-apocalyptic generic look of it, despite the frame rate issues, despite the non-working repair pads and despite the standard MMO combat I had a very good time.
I can’t explain it and I find it slightly worrying, because I feel like I should be slagging it off as lazy, uninspired rubbish. But I can’t help it. I enjoyed it.
Best Games Ever
Jan 13th
I just had to make a list of my top ten favourite games of all time. It looks like this -
10. Animal Crossing: Wild World (DS)
Online and girlfriend loves it and we can play it together. Which makes it special. And I’ve played it every day since I got it.
9. Mr Driller: Drill Spirits (DS)
Best (English language) Mr Driller. Drill Land might take the spot if it was out in English.
8. Resident Evil 4 (GC)
Well, just because it’s ace. It’s as good as all the other RE games are bad. Put together. Which is very good indeed.
7. World of Warcraft (PC)
Because it’s given me some of my best gaming moments ever… And I just realised today how much I love the graphics.
6. ICO (PS2)
Haunting, atmospheric, etc. Colossus might challenge it, but I’ve not finished that yet. Maybe next year.
5. OutRun 2 (XBOX)
I hope this will be chucked out of the top ten soon when Coast to Coast is released. But for now, this is the best racing game in the world… by a fairly long way. (It was a very long way before PGR3 came out.)
4. Mario 64 (N64)
Loved it then. Love it still. But it’s losing a place a year (roughly) because it’s not aging very well.
3. GTA: San Andreas (PS2)
Best setting, best map, best features, best everything.
2. Elder Scrolls: Morrowind GOTY (PC)
Life eater.Played the Xbox version a lot, too, but the PC version is better. Could be another game to be replaced soon by a sequel. But Oblivion could be broken and shite, so maybe not.
1. Doom (PC)
Genius that hasn’t aged in anything but graphics. Gameplay, level design, feel… it’s still all there. BEST. GAME. EVER.
Right yes. Something like that… maybe. But I want Giga Wing in there, too. And Halo 2. And a Castlevania… And the GC 1080. And KOTOR… And…
Auto Assault Beta
Jan 13th
Well, first impressions after ninety minutes of play. It’s very… brown.
And it just feels like GENERO-MMO-293.94… but in a car! It looks like the combat should be proper Twisted Metal style shooting, but it’s really just normal MMO style ranged fighting with a cosmetic twist. Lock on to target and hold down fire, watching it say -4, MISS, -2, MISS above your target until one of you dies. And occasionally pressing a number key to use a special ability if you’re still awake.
It’s not that I didn’t enjoy… It’s just I didn’t… er… really… feel much of anything. It’s not bad, but based on that quick play (I’ll try more later) it’s something I might drop fifteen quid on, but not something I’d pay a monthly fee for. Maybe there’s more to it later…
Animal Crossing: Wild World
Jan 12th
More online goodness.
It ate yet another evening.
Glory be its name.
