Category: 3DS

Backlog Battle Report (2nd Oct 2017)

Astute observers may notice a lack of Right Click to Zoom from this Friday. I’m hoping to have that up tomorrow, but I was in no state to be writing on Friday or during the weekend thanks to work related drama that I had to resolve. If all goes well I’ll be back on schedule this week. In the meantime, here’s the list of games I tackled this week.

Elder Scrolls Online (PC) — Keep Scroll-ing

Another week has passed but I’m still firmly entrenched in the universe of the Elder Scrolls. In fact, I don’t think I played anything but it and Heroes of the Storm until halfway through the week. That in itself is probably telling of how much the hooks are in, given how quick I am to jump between games at the drop of a hat.

Nonetheless, I’m still playing through. This week has seen me still playing my Templar, reaching the mid-30s in level. I’ve spent a lot of that time working on different skill trees and varying my action setup as much as possible, both to create variety and facilitate later progress. Since the aim is to eventually be a healer on this character, quite a few healing skills have been picked up and kept on hand just to make the transition as painless as possible when the time comes.

Beyond that, it’s mostly just been questing through the world of ESO. Since I’m sticking to the primary Dominion faction’s questlines, this sees me almost permanently locked in some variety of forested areas as I plumb the depths of the Valenwood, home of the Wood Elves.

Continue reading “Backlog Battle Report (2nd Oct 2017)”

Backlog Battle Report (25th Sept 2017)

I was a little less diverse in my gameplay time this week and instead was more focused on just a couple of titles. Some decent progress made in what I did play, but nothing to cross off the list since Samus Returns last weekend. With my new job and potentially a second one in the wings, game time might be slightly reduced, but that shouldn’t stop me from still having some opinions to share as I go. So here’s what I’ve been up to.

Elder Scrolls Online (PC) — The current MMORPG of choice

As stated last week, I ended up attempting this one again and getting far more invested than I had previously. Couple a number of friends playing alongside me, and it has remained compelling enough throughout the week to quickly become the game I gravitate towards most when I have a few spare minutes. Again, that will probably change once the next Final Fantasy 14 patch drops in about a fortnight, but the subscription-free system of ESO means I can comfortably drop in and out without issue.

Regardless, I’m fully wrapped up in this one now. The game has continued to provide me with a good mix of content and variety, with even the more basic and genre-standard stuff still proving entertaining to keep me focused. I’ve healed dungeons with friends, gone exploring solo in the public dungeons, tried out the opening zones of all three factions (the Dominion still seems my best fit), and otherwise just gone wandering and questing through the world. My internet and general game lag makes me disinclined to try PvP, but I might end up doing that eventually.

I wasn’t here for the launch of the game, but what I initially saw following ESO’s announcement and from beta footage left me completely disinterested. It’s really impressive to hear and see how much it’s turned itself around. With the removal of level and faction restrictions on so much of the content, it really does provide a huge world to go exploring in, with all sorts of compelling and interesting quest chains that I literally just stumble into.

There’s also a lot of versatility in how one builds a character. Effectively, every character has a variety of skill lines that they can choose to invest points in, ranging from armour and weapon types to guild or faction specific abilities to class skills. You gain skill points every time you level up, by completing certain quest chains, or finding collectables in the world. The actual skill lines level up through use as they do in regular Elder Scrolls games, which unlocks more of their abilities and passive bonuses.

So as well as all the universal skill lines based on quests and weapon types, each of the four classes has three unique trees that you can go into. You also gain a single stat point when you level up which you can drop into Health, Magicka or Stamina and upgrade relevant abilities that way. What’s really interesting is that there’s no set ways to build these classes; a Dragonknight might typically be a heavy armour wearing tank, but I’m building mine as a full magic damage type.

At the moment, I’m juggling three characters but primarily sticking with my Wood Elf Templar tank. Currently I’m in the late 20s for level with them (level cap is 50 but with further progression afterwards) and looking to push ahead, but there’s no real rush. Absolutely everything in the game gives experience, so I’m just exploring, crafting, doing quests or faction objectives as I see fit and having a good time.

It’s been a while since I’ve just been able to completely lose myself in a world like this. Plus, for all its pros and strengths, Final Fantasy 14 doesn’t really make much use of its actual world after you finish the main questlines. There’s less to discover and accomplish just by wandering as this game incentivises, and it’s wonderful. Definitely will be chipping away at this for some time to come.

Continue reading “Backlog Battle Report (25th Sept 2017)”

Right Click to Zoom — Fans vs. Funds; A Comparison of Project AM2R and Metroid: Samus Returns

Welcome to this week’s iteration of Right Click to Zoom, the more in-depth article side of this blog. Today, I’ll be looking into both Project AM2R and the newly released Metroid: Samus Returns, and comparing their different game design choices.

As far as I can tell, this is quite possibly a unique situation to have occurred in video game history. The original Metroid 2 was released on the Game Boy in 1991, and now decades later it has received two full remakes within a year of each other. It’s a rare opportunity to study how different developers and game design decisions can impact the delivery of what is effectively the same game, not to mention what elements of the original source material they keep or discard. Let’s give a brief synopsis of the two first for those not familiar.

Project AM2R (short for Another Metroid 2 Remake) was first begun in 2007 and released in August 2016, coinciding with the 30th anniversary of the Metroid franchise. The game was largely the work of Milton “DoctorM64” Guasti, who maintained the AM2R site with a blog of his development updates and design choices. Over the years, he was very thorough in explaining his decisions, ambition, and scope of the game, showing a remarkable amount of professionalism. The process was understandably ongoing, but the end result was an incredibly high quality fan-game incorporating features and updates from the entire Metroid series to that point.

You can still read this development blog on the AM2R website. Sadly, a DMCA claim by Nintendo means the game is no longer officially supported or available for download on the site, but is nonetheless on the internet and easy to find. In fact, just this month an update was released by a dedicated team of fans using the game’s source code, implementing both a New Game+ and Randomizer modes that I will likely try out in the near future.

Metroid: Samus Returns, on the other hand, is the first official “true” Metroid game in the series since Other M in 2010 (the exception being Federation Force, which takes place in the same universe but is a Metroid game in name only). Back in 2015, developers MercurySteam pitched a remake of 2002’s Metroid Fusion to Nintendo for the Wii U/3DS. While the pitch failed, the prototype impressed series creator Yoshio Sakamoto enough to see the team hired to develop their own official Metroid 2 remake instead, and Samus Returns for the 3DS is the result.

Having just played through Samus Returns and completing it the weekend it came out, I believe that MercurySteam did a fantastic job in delivering their vision of the series. At the same time, so did AM2R, so now it’s time to look at what they both did.

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Backlog Battle Report (18th Sept 2017)

This week saw very little in the way of console activity, instead seeing long stretches of me glued to my 3DS or else tinkering with settings on my PC to get specific old games working. Monster Hunter Stories, Witcher 3 and Yakuza Kiwami are all surprisingly absent from this week’s report, but that’s almost certain to change in the coming days. I’ve also got the new Prey, the first Warhammer Total War, and a number of recent RPGs I never played through properly on my agenda. Let’s go through it, shall we?

Pokemon Shuffle (3DS) — A puzzling time filler

Match 3 games have been a guilty pleasure of mine forever, usually filling the void when I wasn’t regularly playing Tetris. It’s a simple and addictive concept, though some games take the concept and run with it in interesting ways. Puzzle Quest turned it into an RPG, 10000000 and its sequel You Must Build A Boat merged the genre with endless runners, and HuniePop had dating sim aspects.

Pokemon Shuffle does none of these things, really. The idea is that you have a limited number of turns to inflict damage on the target Pokemon, then get a chance to catch them. You can level up the Pokemon caught through these puzzle battles and make them stronger. It’s RPG-esque, but it’s pretty basic. Still, it’s an addictive way to fill in time when in game queues or some other situation.

It’s also free to play, meaning small time brackets are the only ones you’ll get anyway without tossing money at Nintendo. I have other products to give money to however, so for now it’s just something to do.

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