Over this long weekend I had some extra gaming time, which then led to me commenting out loud (to no one) about the games I was playing as well as games I was reading about.\u00a0 Talking to myself is bad enough, but not recording the conversation so I can listen to myself at a later date is just wasteful.<\/p>\n
So, I decided it was time to once again put my thoughts on to virtual paper.<\/p>\n
First up: My dead Xbox 360.<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n It went sort of like this:<\/p>\n Yes I could have repaired the old one, but it was going to cost $100+ and I would have still been left with a 1st gen 360 with a puny 20gig HD, and loud DVD drive.\u00a0\u00a0 I would have easily been able to wait if not for the upcoming Halo Reach, and Dead Rising 2.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Which leads to …<\/p>\n Dead Rising and Dead Rising 2: Case Zero<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n I did not play much of the first Dead Rising back when it launched. I borrowed a copy from a co-worker and played a couple of hours over a vacation, before giving it back.\u00a0 I had fun, with it but not enough to drive me to pay full price for it.<\/p>\n Fast forward to last week.\u00a0 Dead Rising 2: Case Zero (DR2:CZ)\u00a0 launches on XBLA.\u00a0 I downloaded the trial and after making and deploying the “Drill Bucket”, I was begging to pay the $5 for the full version.\u00a0 This prequel DLC is a wonderful little game that severs as a great demo for the full DR2.<\/p>\n You can get all the details about the game on other sites, but as a summary:<\/p>\n The size of the town, and the time limit imposed by the game mixed with the horde of zombies, hidden paths, and possible survivors work to create a wonderfully tense gaming experience.\u00a0\u00a0 This game not only sold me on buying the the full Dead Rising 2, it prompted me to buy a copy of the first game.<\/p>\n Alas while the first game has the same sort of zombie “charm” and tension as DR2:CZ has, the controls are much worse and the UI \/ Save system are clearly a generation behind DR2:CZ.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 I was entertained by DR1, but I found myself instead wanting to play more CZ or even better the full DR2.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 So while I probably wont play a lot of DR1, since I was able to pick it up for super cheap I don’t feel bad.<\/p>\n My weekend was not all Zombies, I also dove into a bit of the…<\/p>\n Final Fantasy 14 beta.<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n This was quite an experience, and not particularly a ‘good’ on.\u00a0\u00a0 First I want to say, I really want to enjoy this game.\u00a0 I have been trying very hard to play with a positive attitude, since\u00a0 it has a few game systems that I was interested in trying out, such as:<\/p>\n The cutscene heavy story driven quests. I enjoy how they integrated cut scenes into FFXI, it was something other games at that time were not doing, and I was interested to see if FFXIV was doing anything new here.<\/p>\n The new Class system.\u00a0 Characters can change class simply by changing what they are holding in their main hand.\u00a0 Sword – Gladiator, Axe – Marauder, Bow – archer, Mining Pick – miner, Needle and thread – tailor, etc.<\/p>\n The guildleves system.\u00a0 I don’t understand all the inner workings yet, but I like the idea of having monsters spawn just for me or my group, and I like the idea of being able to turn the quest in right where we were fighting.<\/p>\n The forced NPC interaction.\u00a0 I was curious if the old school mechanic of having to interact with NPC to know what they “offer” was still feasible.\u00a0 What I mean is there are no icons above NPC heads to indicate if they have a quest for you, if they are merchant, or if they at this time only offer flavor text.<\/p>\n The Player Driven Economy.\u00a0 My understanding was that most of the items in game would be produced and sold by players and I am always interested in seeing how such games play.<\/p>\n Unfortunately the game seems designed to be purposely obtuse and drive people away that are not fanatical FF fans.<\/p>\n Don’t get me wrong, the Game does have some charm, particularly if you are or were a fan of FFXI, and I really want to like this game.\u00a0 Alas there are far too many other games on the market for me to have to pay full price + sub, to have the time to learn how to really appreciate FFXIV’s quirks.<\/p>\n Not Free to Play Games<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n Lord of the Rings Online is about to go to Free to Try-Store Driven Pricing Model (F2T-SDPM) and EQ2 recently added a series of F2T-SDPM servers.\u00a0 I am a big fan subscription based games converting to\u00a0 these models, as long as they offer a path back to a subscription setup.<\/p>\n What I mean is giving me a game for free to install and play with heavy limits is great. It gets me to install and keep the game on my computer, allowing me to pop in whenever I get an urge.<\/p>\n If you then provide me options to lift some of the limits for a price, then that’s fine too.<\/p>\n But if you don’t also provide me a way to remove all the limits in exchange for a subscription, just as you had before your conversion, then I don’t want to bother with your game.<\/p>\n I like what from what I am seeing in Lotro’s F2T-SDPM pricing structure. It looks as though\u00a0 I will be able re-subscribe and be right where I was before the conversion, or I will be able to pop back in with hard limits, but without paying anything.\u00a0 Oh and the conversion happens across all servers for all players.<\/p>\n EQ2, offering does not look so good.\u00a0 This is not a conversion at all, and instead is an additional offering.\u00a0 If you want to take part in the F2T-SDPM then you are shunted off to separate servers without the ability to subscribe with the same level of services as the normal subscription servers.<\/p>\n In my eyes the inability for the F2T-SDPM players to join with friends that might be full subscribers is\u00a0 a HUGE failure.\u00a0 Why offer a payment model that encourages new players to try the game, if they can’t join up with friends that currently subscribe?\u00a0\u00a0 Oh I know why, because if you didn’t do it this way you could also offer two different subscription models. *sigh*<\/p>\n Sorry EQ2 Extended I am not buying into your marketing, and I will not be encouraging my friends to spend money on this version of your game.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 I will tell people to use EQ2X as a throw away demo to allow them to experience your world, and I will evangelize the original Pay To Play subscription.\u00a0 But I will steer people away from spending a “micro transaction” on EQ2X.<\/p>\n Upcoming Games<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n And finally it looks as though this is going to be a busy fall for gaming.\u00a0 With games like; Halo Reach, Civilization 5, Dead Rising 2, Fallout New Vegas, Fable 3 ,Call of Duty Black Ops, Assassins Creed Brotherhood,\u00a0 DC Universe Online,\u00a0 and possibly WOW Cataclysm\u00a0 I doubt I will be able to keep up.<\/p>\n Over this long weekend I had some extra gaming time, which then led to me commenting out loud (to no one) about the games I was playing as well as games I was reading about.\u00a0 Talking to myself is bad enough, but not recording the conversation so I can listen to myself at a later […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[61,89,20,9,11,55,88],"tags":[91,62,90,114,111,105,118,51],"class_list":["post-952","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-everquest2","category-final-fantasy","category-free2play","category-games","category-lotro-games","category-musings","category-xbox360-2","tag-dead-rising","tag-eq2","tag-ffxiv","tag-free2play","tag-games","tag-lotro","tag-musings","tag-xbox360"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.xenopulse.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/952","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.xenopulse.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.xenopulse.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.xenopulse.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.xenopulse.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=952"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.xenopulse.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/952\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.xenopulse.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=952"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.xenopulse.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=952"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.xenopulse.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=952"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}\n
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