Baldur's Gate: Dark Alliance

I've been a die-hard dungeon crawler fan for as long as I can remember. My games back in the day were Ultima and Diablo over at a friend's place till the wee hours in the morning killing baddies, grabbing loot and selling it off for better stuff. Those were the games I would play on the PC until consoles took over my life starting with Sega. To this day though, I have been looking for good dungeon crawlers. On PS2 I played Baldur's Gate: Dark Alliance and Dark Alliance 2 on Xbox. Then I got into Champions of Norrath and Return to Arms. All of these games have quenched my thirst for dungeon crawling on a console. However I had been playing these games well into the current generation and it seemed like there was a neglection of good dungeon crawlers.
Now we have Sacred 2: Fallen Angel, which has answered my prayers on almost every front while also leaving something to be desired. Sacred 2: Fallen Angel is a good looking game in terms of the landscapes. Otherwise, it still looks fine as long as the camera is not too close up. The learning curve for the game is easily one of the steepest I have ever endured. I have never had to look up the instruction booklet on any game as much as I have had to in this game or look online just to get more details about what certain things in the game do or even mean. Tutorials would have been a godsend for this game. There are also a lot of bugs in this game. TONS of pop in, lots of loading when you are in town. Sometimes if you teleport when you are on your mount, the game freezes. Things like that.
Regardless of the bugs and steep learning curve, the heart of the dungeon crawler is still there and delivers on all fronts. With nearly 600 quests, character specific mounts, the ability to teleport to any previously visited towns (as long as you have activated the teleport in that town), and character specific quests, this is definitely a successful port from PC to X360. There is plenty to do in this game and grinding to the level of 200 may be the most difficult to accomplish. However, that's not going to stop me from trying.
If you are a fan of dungeon crawlers at all, this is definitely a game to experience on the X360. The bugs in the game are not so bad that it hampers the gameplay fortunately, and I would venture to say that this is the closest that console gamers will get to a World of Warcraft contender.

It's not a game wither of us have been looking forward to, but it was Friday and neither of us had anything to do so we picked it up at our local Gameswap. Normally I never buy a game without reading a few reviews and seeing a game play video, but I just went ahead and took a gamble on this one.

The game play wasn't bad, it was pretty much another (PS2) Baldur's Gate game with pretty graphics. The biggest downfall of the game, by far, is the difficulty. We started on two star difficulty (I forget what they call it) on a scale of five. At about level two we realize we have taken absolutely no damage, including after fighting the first mini boss. We restart on the second highest difficulty (four stars) and it seems harder for a few levels. However, it soon becomes mind numbingly easy again.

We trudge our way through the game, eventually hitting a glitch at the max level that apparently every character gets where we regain our full health and Mana after every kill we get. At first I thought this was awesome as I could spam my favorite spell; blackhole. However, this made the game even easier. Once we got to the boss of the game, he pretty much wiped us out in a few hits. We were max level with (probably) some of the best equipment in the game and he kills us before we really even have a chance to hit him.

We ended up killing him by loading up two level 1 scouts. Somehow a level 40 warrior and a level 40 wizard get killed, and yet two naked scouts and kill him with ease. Maybe the physics of their breasts distracted him.

Since the whole community drive started, I've been trying to get involved with other users a lot more. Last week, my influence within the Giant Bomb community didn't stretch any further than a few posts in the forums and reading the occasional blog post. Now I'm using the Giant Bomb IRC, participating in the Let's Play events, listening to the community podcast and just generally trying to have more of a community presence both on and off the site. I've been at Giant Bomb since the beginning, and it's been really interesting watching it grow into this community, filled with interesting users. It's also been great to see new site content springing up, and last night marked probably the biggest change since launch back in July.

Last night, I stayed up til around 2am waiting for the new content to go live. I knew what to expect - a white skin for the site, a new homepage design, and the long-awaited guide function. Thanks go out to all the guys in the IRC last night who helped me to stay awake, especially Jeff for his unofficial BradFeed. I've got to admit, it was well worth the wait to see the new stuff. I'll break down my opinions in more detail below. What really excites me, though, is that apparently this is only the tip of the iceberg. If the inclusion of the Guide function is just a taste of what's to come, then I daren't even hazard a guess as to what's coming in the future.

So, on to the new content, and I'll start with the white skin. I had a brief session with it last night, and I don't think I'll be having another. It's just not for me. That being said, I think it's great that other users who wanted a white version now have it. The new homepage, on the other hand, sits very nicely with me. The new layout is great, and the wiki section near the top is awesome (try hovering over the different categories, if you haven't already!). It seems to offer about ten times as much information as the old homepage but in the same amount of space, without looking cluttered.

Then there's the guides. Giant Bomb's guide system is phenomenal, I really can't put it in any other way. It makes you wonder why GameFAQs has rested on its laurels and treated the wall-of-text FAQ format as if it's the pinnacle of online guide creation. Giant Bomb's guide function is all about pushing the boundaries. Images, videos and tables can be effortlessly included, allowing for guides that cater for everybody's needs. The ability for multiple users to work on a guide is also a brilliant idea, which I foresee will only serve to further enhance the community-driven nature of this site. To sum it up, it makes GameFAQs look incredibly outdated, and as soon as guides start pouring in it'll only further assert Giant Bomb's place as the definitive online gaming encyclopedia.

Right now (literally, right now) I'm playing some Baldur's Gate: Dark Alliance. I'm nine and a half hours in and still enjoying the mindless slaughter of fantastical creatures as much as I was a week ago. I'm also playing Pokémon Gold, which I'm eight hours and four badges into. I'm going to do a blog write-up on it soon, but it won't be the conventional Discovering Gaming Greatness kind, so keep an eye out for that one. Then there's Final Fantasy Tactics: The War of the Lions, which I'm still plodding on through, and I've restarted Jak 3 with the intention of writing a guide for it. If anybody wants to get involved in the creation of a Jak 3 guide, leave a comment or PM me and I'll get back to you. It'd be nice to work with somebody else, seeing as I don't have enough time to get a guide done quickly by myself. I've already laid out an outline for the guide, and I'll be gradually working on it over the coming months.


DanK

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Currently playing - Baldur's Gate: Dark Alliance (PS2)

Greetings to my readers. I thought I'd just offer up an update for anybody who cares what the situation is right now. I'm off to the University of Essex in a few weeks to start an English Language and Literature course. I can't believe how quickly it's come around, and I'm starting to get anxious about it. That's not to say I'm not looking forward to it. Quite the opposite, actually, I'm really looking forward to going, meeting new people and gaining a little more independence. I'll probably be moving down there on Sunday 28th September, so I really need to think about getting all my gear together, ready for when the time comes. Of course, I'll still be gaming. I intend to take my PS2, my PSP and my DS with me, which will hopefully be plenty to keep me busy. My 360 will be staying behind, though. Naturally, I'll still be frequenting Giant Bomb, updating this blog and listening to the Bombcast to keep up with all the important news.

On the subject of games, I'm playing a few things at the moment. Currently in my PS2 is Baldur's Gate: Dark Alliance. It's a hack-n-slash action RPG with an emphasis on dungeon crawling, recommended to me by fellow Giant Bomb user Kush. I'm about five hours in and, despite a pretty slow start, I'm really getting into it now. The combat is simple but satisfying, with some interesting boss battles thrown in. There's also something really compelling about hoarding loot, warping out of a dungeon to sell it in town, and purchasing a bad-ass Morning Star of Disruption +1 before warping back to the dungeon and continuing the endless slaughter. If I have to criticise it at all, I'd have to say it lacks any real depth, but more the most part it's a lot of mindless fun and the perfect way to unwind.

I've also dusted off my old GameBoy Pocket to get acquainted with Pokémon Gold. It's actually nice to be able to say that without feeling ashamed, as I've come to embrace the Pokémon franchise as a series of great RPGs in their own right. I have it on good authority that it's the best generation of the franchise, and from what I've played so far it's certainly superior to Pokémon Blue, which I wasted hours on as a ten-year-old fanatic. On the other hand, there's Diamond, which is graphically superior to Gold and also has a pretty good story as far as the series goes. I'm only two badges into the main quest of Gold and I'm already addicted to the simple formula. I won't go into too much detail about it, as I anticipate writing a Discovering Gaming Greatness entry for it when I'm finished with it.

RPGs are pretty much the order of the day right now, considering the vast number of them I own but haven't yet finished. I'm still grinding through Final Fantasy Tactics: The War of the Lions on PSP, and still loving every single second. Given my DS has been neglected recently, I've decided to get stuck into Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles: Ring of Fates. I'm a huge fan of Final Fantasy, and Square Enix games in general, but I honestly wasn't expecting too much from Ring of Fates when I slotted the cartridge into my DS and turned on the power. The first half an hour was an almost intolerable series of sequences featuring annoying kids, a Lilty who talks like an annoying kid, and a smattering of clichés (how many times must games tell us "You can do anything if you just believe"?). I was very, very tempted to give up on it there and then, but I decided to grin and bear it, and I'm very glad I did.

From the first dungeon onwards, I forgot all about the terrible set-up, and after a couple of hours I didn't have to worry about anything like that (except the annoying Lilty. Sadly, that doesn't change). The reason I cast all my apprehension aside is because of the gameplay. Ring of Fates takes everything that was great about Crystal Chronicles on the GameCube and adds more depth and more fun to it. At its core, you could argue that the combat isn't too dissimilar to games like the aforementioned Dark Alliance: you can just hit the A button and wait for things to die. However, you can do a lot more besides just swing your sword. You can jump onto enemies and stomp on them, pick them up and throw them at walls, cling onto flying enemies and damage them with punches... there's a lot more going on here than it may initially seem. There's a magic system, too, which is just as important in puzzle-solving as it is in battle. You can also switch between characters on the fly by tapping the touch-screen, and each character has their own race-specific set of skills only they can use. It makes for some really deep, really fun tactical combat, and completely goes against the cutesy image given by the game's opening.

So there you have it. That's what's going on, what I'm playing and what I think about it. Stay tuned in the next couple of weeks for a War of the Lions-related Discovering Gaming Greatness, and my thoughts on Uni life.


DanK

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Currently playing - Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles: Ring of Fates (DS)