2013 A Year In Games

2013 was a turning point for me. My interest in MMORPG's dwindled. I have not returned to Guild Wars 2 in any meaningful way. I dabbled in ninja panda land in WoW and lost interest after one week. I even installed the clinically sterile FFXIV which left me even more jaded towards the MMORPG treadmill genre.

I stopped playing World Of Tanks. The changes to that game during 2013 left me in no doubt the developers are more interested in money than developing an interesting clan-based tank game.

Some games I enjoyed and played the most during 2013:

• War Thunder - great action based WWII fighter simulator without an obnoxious cash shop.
• Kerbal Space Program - still the best Minecraft in space.
• Minecraft - I still frequently play this game since the early 2009 alpha.
• Tomb Raider - magnificent reboot of a very old game series.
• EVE Online - joined a pirate corporation this year. The game is so much more user friendly than when I first started playing it back in 2006 when it was a confusing mess.
• Assassin's Creed IV - best pirate simulator I have played since Sid Meiers Pirates. I've also started enjoying ACIII which uses the same graphics engine as IV. Hoping Ubisoft will release a full blown open world pirate simulator and remove all the Assassin's Creed nonsense.
• Planetside 2 - the best squad based action online game.

I am closely following the Star Citizen project which I firmly believe will inject some excitement into the space game genre.

The Death Of SWTOR

What a difference four months makes. It seems in MMO terms this is an eternity. The current state of SWTOR is somewhat sick and according to the latest reports players are leaving not in the hundreds but in the hundreds of thousands.

Our SWTOR guild has been steadily losing players during this time. The reasons are numerous but probably the prime reason is lack of content and disillusionment with the "endgame". One other catalyst for player dissatisfaction was the Guild Wars 2 Beta weekend. After it was complete we gathered together on TeamSpeak and wondered how we will get through the coming months until the full game is released.

Who would have thought a simple beta weekend would have highlighted with crystal clarity the deficiencies of another MMO.

The Death Of Blogging

When does a blog cease being interesting and merely becomes a portal for angry bloggers disillusioned with their favorite gaming genre? Maybe it is time to move on and try something else? The mass outpouring of hatred for SWTOR around the blogosphere is breathtaking.

In other news my SWTOR guild has just completed Eternity Vault. Our guild of 200+ people is still going strong and 80% of them have decided to subscribe and gain the Founder title. People are engaged and looking forward to logging in each day. Funny that!

I have you now!

Sith Inquisitor class

I have spent two glorious days this past weekend playing the SWTOR beta. The game appears fully baked, combat systems are working, graphics seem to be in place, and the companion system is up and running.

Playing an MMO with fully voiced quests definitely helps engage the player. The quests themselves have been very interesting to say the least. Bioware has spent time finely crafting storylines and if I had more time I would have created one of every class to experience the class quests.

The UI needs some work. It desperately needs more customizable options to allow resizing of windows and text sizes and also window placement. Even so apart from this minor annoyance I can not wait for full release!

Adult RPG's

Yet another infrequent update to my blog. I have just completed a marathon session of The Witcher 2. This is a deep adults-only CRPG with superb production values and a cracking storyline. It merits a second playthrough as the storyline can completely change depending on the path you take within the game.

It's not a crime to cancel WoW

There has been a lot of press recently in the blogosphere about people being unhappy with WoW and the latest Cataclysm expansion. Blogs are filled with thousand word rants by players who are unhappy with raids, grouping, archaeology, reputation, iLevel gear requirements, other WoW players, and the WoW developers.

Did it ever occur to these people they may simply be burned out on the game? Quite a few of these unhappy players have been playing since WoW was launched. That's Nov 2004. A long period to be playing the same computer game now heading into it's seventh year of operations.

Cancel the game and try something different. There are other great MMO's out there with excellent communities and great gameplay. Take your WoW blinkers off and move on to something else!

You use a PS3 for what?!

A friend of mine recently gave me two PS3 games as a gift for my birthday as they knew I owned a PS3. Yesterday they asked how I was enjoying the games. I sheepishly admitted I still had not unwrapped the packaging.

I explained to them I mainly used the PS3 as a media center and rarely used it for playing console games. In fact I have only purchased one PS3 game this year - Red Dead Redemption - simply because it is not available for the PC and I really wanted to play this game.

It's more than that though. I simply hate the awful controllers required to play games on consoles. I've always been a WASD-mouselook guy and that won't change anytime soon. Even a relatively forgiving game like RDR is a pain for me to control.

Resurrection!

Rediscovered my old blog today. Time has definitely moved on. Back in 2004 I was buying computer games in stores. Now in 2010 I am exclusively buying my PC games through Steam, Impulse, and Good Old Games. It is so much more convenient than heading into a retail store. Even consoles are heading towards digital downloads.

Who would have thought I would be playing a retro game in 2010. Yes I have turned into yet another Minecraft junkie and feeding my latent lego block addiction.

We live in amazing times ..

The Sims 2

The Sims 2 is almost here. I did try the demo of the original Sims four years ago but for some reason I could not muster much enthusiasm for the original. This new version has a lot more meat. I particularly like the fact that if a couple has a child the child will inherit traits from the parents DNA. This should make for some very interesting experimentation.

Add the new 3D graphics and this is going to be a very addictive sandbox game.

There are many great PC games being released over the next six months - Port Royale 2, Rome Total War, Pacific Fighters, and Silent Hunter III. It's a great time to be a PC gamer !

Farcry Redux

I have restarted Farcry from scratch. What a glorious graphical game this is. The gameplay is no less fun during repeat sessions. Combined with solid weapons and sound effects Farcry is a great all round experience.

In many ways Farcry is a much better game than Doom III. Doom is the current supreme technical champ but is let down by its repetitive gameplay and the ever present closet monsters. But as we all know id is not known for producing games with deep gameplay or story.