On the ground & on the town

Just hit the ground in Tokyo. Very tired, need sleep, busy busy days for the next little while. Updates soonish.

Welcome to Arkham, Enjoy Your Stay

Two things from the weekend.

Why so serious?

First, The Dark Knight. I was skeptical at first, with the amount of hype the movie was getting, especially how everyone was saying how phenomenal Heath Ledger’s performance was. It made me nervous, because it really seemed like Hollywood trying to pump up another flop with hyperbole.

But I was wrong. At least in this one case, they were right. Ledger’s performance was incredible. He managed to create a Joker that perfectly fit the gritty, realistic universe of Batman Begins. Rather than the affable Joker, portrayed by Jack Nicholson, who seemed a little too cheerful and comedic to be taken seriously, the new Joker was dark, psychotic and frightening. He still giggles inappropriately and cracks jokes, but now it’s more graveyard humor than bad puns. And yes, Ledger should definitely be in the running for an Oscar.

Which is not to say he was the only star in this movie. Everyone delivered a great performance, with Christian Bale showing more and more he was born to be Batman. Let’s hope he sticks around for another few movies at least. The only real sore spot was Gordon’s cheesy speech towards the end of the movie which had eyes rolling. Otherwise, a superb movie that I’m disappointed I’ll only get to see in theaters once.

Stay awhile, stay forever!

On the gaming side, finally got the gang together for a game of Arkham Horror. Since we’d never played before, we didn’t use any of the expansions, which is probably a very good thing. At first, this game is insanely complicated. The first turn alone took us about an hour. But like most games, with each turn that went on, we got better and better at it, until things became second nature. In no time we were slaying abominations, closing dimensional gates and reading ancient tomes like nobody’s business.

All in all, I enjoyed it. Though it became clear toward the end we were going to win, it didn’t feel like that for most of the game, and that was fun in an, “oh god we’re all going to die”, kind of way. There were some places were the rules did not seem very clear, so we had to make things up on the spot; I certainly hope they’re covered in a FAQ somewhere. Also, the event decks for the various neighborhoods seemed very small, but I know the expansions add more cards to them, which I think would keep things fresh. Right now, I just want to play again, and I’m sort of depressed I won’t get to for a long time.

Updates will be few and far between for the next few days or weeks, since I’m leaving on Thursday. Ave atque vale.

It’s a Mad, Mad World

Heads up, this is not for the young or squeamish.

Okay, so here we have Madworld. I have to say, that’s looking pretty brutal there. I love the art style, and the black/white/red palette is a pretty interesting direction. Reminds me of Frank Miller’s Sin City comics, right down to the sound effects, only the violence is more over-the-top. The quasi-cyberpunk setting and “gladiatorial game show” plot don’t seem terribly original, but the unique look more than makes up for that.

The gameplay (at least in this early look) seems like it will be an evolved brawler, maybe like God of War. Since it’s coming out for the Wii, I’m assuming it will incorporate motion controls for the combat. That idea both thrills and terrifies me. Imagine the thumb-punishing Ninja Gaiden, only now your entire body will be crying out in sheer agony within ten minutes.

Summary: looks awesome, chainsaw arm, OH THE PAIN. Verdict: Make the pre-order bonus a jar of Tiger Balm, and you’re golden, Nintendo.

This is gonna hurt.

Metal Militia

I just heard about this. Well played, Square, well played. I joyously await the day my deathless metal hordes march before me, burning a fiery swath across the landscape as they sack and pillage to the shrieking chaos of Bolt Thrower’s “As the World Burns“.

In other words, I’m excited.

A Game of Thrones

Interesting discussion going on over here. I’d like to make a prediction, if I may.

Free games? Hardly. I would think that anyone with even basic knowledge of capitalism would know that just because something can drop in price, doesn’t mean it will. A supplier won’t cut out a potentially lucrative revenue stream for any reason, they’ll just keep charging the same price until it’s no longer profitable, then lower the price. Or they will raise the quality and the price, making sure the price increase outstrips the quality. I’m not saying I agree with this process, but it is a good business practice.

However, I do think what we are going to be looking at in years is a major shift away from the current model; that is, going to a store and picking up a copy of a game and paying an exorbitant amount for it. As digital delivery becomes more commonplace, and Internet penetration more prevalent, we’re going to see a far greater proportion of “casual” games being released. Because any game is now far more visible to its potential customers than before, this will turn into a larger audience, which will create a demand for broader appeal (read: less in-depth). Those sort of titles generally go for a lower price, and a boom would pull the average price down significantly.

This will be fed by the growing realization, at least in the West, that games are now

1. Not necessarily for kids
2. Cool

Yes, these are things that we gamers have known our entire lives. Yes, it does annoy me that it took some 30 years for the cultural morlocks of our society to realize these same things. To summarize Penny Arcade, they are selling off our heritage to the same guys who used to beat us up in PE class. But this is not a time to be bitter, because more games is always a good thing.

The interesting point, I think, is that this is what will finally begin to curb piracy, not DRM or increasingly stringent copyright laws. Since you don’t have a physical copy of a game, there’s nothing to pirate. The game is free, you are effectively paying for an account to play it. We can easily divide these games into two categories; the games for which you pay a one-time or monthly fee to have an account, and ad-supported games. In the latter case, there’s no point in pirating, since you’re not saving anything; you still have to look at the ads. For the former, well, piracy is one thing, credit card fraud is quite another. I really doubt little Billy Smacktard in the basement of his parents’ house is going to go to that much effort.

We’ve already seen the beginning of this, with Steam, Xbox Live, Battlefield Heroes, and a plethora of MMO’s. It really seems like just a matter of time. I don’t think hardcore games are going anywhere, thankfully, but they are going to be eclipsed by the teeming masses.

Now if they could just do something about the immaturity of the average Internet gamer, we’d be all set.

I Am The Bat

Batman: Gotham Knight drops today. Between this and The Dark Knight theatrical release in a fortnight, I’m catching superhero fever again. Pirates and dragons may be interesting, but a man who dresses up like a bat ninja so he can beat up criminals? That is my dream.

Geek Log, Supplemental

An interesting point I heard today, regarding the differences between 3rd and 4th editions. To quote:

“In 3E you maximized your character’s abilities, but in 4E you maximized the party’s abilities.”

Now that I think about it, that does describe a major difference between the newcomer and the old guard.

Older players are used to tweaking their individual characters to make them as powerful as possible, which sometimes leads to the detestable practice known as “being a munchkin”; making a ultra-powerful character at the expense of the other players’ enjoyment of the game. I understand that this is always a sticky situation when you allow players to customize their character. The problem with this behaviour in older versions was that it was self-fulfilling. The tougher your character, the better the chances of surviving; it’s simple math. A super-character didn’t need teammates to beat the bad guys by himself, because there was always some loophole a clever munchkin could exploit.

So, there was no real reason not to munchkin, to a certain degree. Well, other than annoying the hell out of your fellow players. And when you cater to that particular group of players, those with no real social skills and a burning desire to exploit a system, rather than those who are interested in actually playing the game, well, things can get ugly. The problem is not customization; it is, I think, more intrinsic in the nature of the mechanics, and in, sadly, human nature.

But 4th seems to have changed that. Other than minions, monsters are no longer “one-hitter quitters” who typically get off one attack and then explode into pools of reeking slime. Combats have become tactical, requiring planning and strategy instead of a bigger sword. How well you do is determined by how well you work with your party members, not how much damage you alone can dish out.

Setting up a nasty combo with an ally is far more effective than just standing there and hitting the bad guy over and over. Many of the classes synergize with each other to become greater than they would be alone. The fighter’s knockdown powers can set the rogue up for some hefty sneak attack damage. The rogue can use his powers to push the enemy in the rear closer to the paladin. The paladin can punish the enemy with his divine challenge for daring to attack the warlord, while the warlord inspires the fighter to jump back into the fray.

With the way healing works now, this only reinforces the team player aspect. Yes, you can heal yourself, so no more actual need for a dedicated healer. But you can only heal yourself once per combat for about 25% of your hit points, healing potions aren’t that great anymore, and in-combat healing is much more scarce now. A cleric or warlord can only heal twice per combat, for slightly more than that standard 25%. The essential question in combat is no longer, “How long can I stand here and just pound on my enemy before I need a heal spell?”, but has become, “How can I minimize the damage we take and maximize what the enemy takes?” The answer to that question is simple now: teamwork.

The removal of insanely powerful spells and magic items does a great deal to level the field as well. Without the sort of grandiose and over-the-top abilities that would make even Stan Lee say, “Now, that’s just silly”, players actually have to try and think about problems. No more relying on deus ex machinas to get your character out of trouble. Similarly, the simplification of the non-combat rules can only help the game. While some detractors say it will kill role-playing, I think this will actually foster a better environment for it. Less room for abuse means less time wasted on it; more roleplay, less rollplay.

There are some valid criticisms of 4th out there, and that is perfectly acceptable. That’s how the developers find out what needs to be changed. But I think the majority of 4th Edition hate is coming from longtime munchkins who have suddenly discovered that, in the new system, they can’t pull their shenanigans anymore.

And that thought alone warms my evil, evil little heart.

4th Edition: Part Deux

Well, we had our second attempt at being heroes this weekend, and frankly, my opinion on 4th has not shifted either way. I’m not sure if this is good or bad yet, but I guess it’s still too early to form any concrete impressions of the new D&D.

Two more combats, still no skill challenges, a few close calls and the discovery that the pre-built paladin isn’t very well designed ruled the evening. Also, we made it to level 2, but only after the final combat so we didn’t have a chance to play with our new abilities.

The battle inside the waterfall cave went better than we were expecting; with talk of TPK’s in our ears we tried the stealth route and managed to take out a significant number of defenders early on, making things easier on us later on. Unfortunately, by the time the dastardly Irontooth showed himself, we were running low on resources. But in true heroic fashion, we charged in … and promptly had our asses handed to us by a single goblin. Luckily, no one died, or even went negative. It was a narrow victory though, with almost everyone ending the fight with hit points in the single digits. The discovery that the paladin’s lay on hands could only be used once a day, rather than at will, also meant that we were technically cheating, although the character sheet didn’t mention that little tidbit. So perhaps the rumours of heroic sacrifices were not unfounded.

All in all, the epic fight took about 2 to 3 hours, which seemed a little long for a moderate size encounter. The second combat was smaller, but went much faster. I think at this point we started to get into the groove, with most of the choices and calculations that go with tactical combat starting to become second nature. We began to get a hold of how we could use the terrain and our abilities to our advantage; my rogue (unsuccessfully) attempted to knock someone off a cliff, the wizard threw down a sleep spell on a cluster of enemies to slow them down before they could act, and the fighter made good use of cleave to thin out minions before using his teleport racial power to menace a bow-wielding enemy up on a cliff.

Once again, I found a few things to nitpick about:

1. Lay on hands – It already burns the paladin’s healing surges instead of the target’s, why is it also limited per day by their Wisdom? And since it is, why did they give the pre-built paladin such a low wisdom?
2. Sneak attack – Why can sneak attack only be used with light blades, crossbows and slings? I agree that backstabbing someone with a halberd is a little ridiculous, but is there really an epidemic of rogues running around with claymores?
3. Tieflings – I still feel their abilities are not balanced against the other races. Fire resistance is not that great, and their other abilities pale in comparison to, say, humans or eladrin.
4. Warlocks – I understand why, in a flavour sense, warlocks only have 3 paragon paths. But every other class has 4. Come on guys, you could have easily added a generic fourth path for warlocks.
5. Saving throws – Yes, making it a flat 50% (well, technically 55% using standard probabilities) simplifies things a great deal, but it also means powers that have effects a save can end are somewhat unreliable. Maybe luck was just against us that night, but no enemy missed a save and it made things painful. Perhaps later on we’ll have ways to add penalties on the save?
6. XP table – 3rd Edition made calculating how much XP you needed very simple. Now we’re back to the old 1st/2nd edition joy of looking it up in a table. Oi vey.

At least we got to try out some skills this time; Stealth to sneak up on the bad guys, Streetwise to pull some useful info out of the townsfolk, and Insight which failed to detect a very obvious ambush because we’re terrible at it. I still want to see how the skill challenges work, but according to the DM the first is coming up soon. And it happens to be a trap, which means my rogue will the first one to be punctured, poisoned and pureed because of a botched skill check. Since I will be in Japan if and when the next session happens, we’ll have to see if I get to experience the true joy of being the thief.