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Metro 2033: S.T.A.L.K.E.R. on rails

2010-03-20T09:16:00.000-07:00

The short version of this review is as follows: If you enjoyed the gritty post-apocalyptic Russian setting of S.T.A.L.K.E.R. and you enjoyed the mutated creatures constantly trying to kill you in S.T.A.L.K.E.R. and you enjoyed the humans who ironically also constantly try to kill you in S.T.A.L.K.E.R. and you liked the plotline wherein you play a silent hero who is heroically(?) chasing a MacGuffin composed of 99% pure handwavium, but you did not like the open world or RPG elements of S.T.A.L.K.E.R., then this game is for you!

Speaking for myself, I really enjoy the look-and-feel of S.T.A.L.K.E.R., so Metro's strong resemblance to its predecessor in that regard does not bother me a bit. The game engine used in Metro is significantly better than that used in S.T.A.L.K.E.R., and even with the game's default graphics setting of "very high," it ran on my computer with very little slowdown and looked like a million bucks. There are some nits I can pick about the graphics, but most of them are about the uncanny-valley-lookin' dudes you're always hanging around in the game. The world looks good, the monsters look good, light looks great, it all hangs together quite nicely.

I can't be quite so positive about the story and the storytelling, however. You play a silent hero (with the exception of one f-bomb, but given the circumstances it takes place in, anyone would break their vow of silence) who apparently communicates telepathically whenever anyone asks him a question. His silence is played for laughs a few times in the game but it mostly just served to make me not give a crap about the hero, Artyom.

At the start, the story has potential: about 20 years prior to the game's setting, nuclear war broke out and Moscow was obliterated. About 40,000 people survived by taking refuge in the subway system, which was improved over time into a series of fortified underground villages connected by the subway tunnels, and people get along in a fair approximation of business as usual if you discount the mutants roaming the tunnels and the several factions of humans who are engaged in open war in the tunnels.

Then, at Artyom's home station, a new threat surfaces: the Dark Ones, mutants who kill by telepathically shattering the minds of everyone they come into contact with. Danger! Panic! Then, the Dark Ones enter Artyom's mind, and speak to him in a way which can be interpreted as non-threatening. And so, we have the standard moral dilemma on the table: are the bad guys really bad? Like for reals? Spoiler: no. And yet Artyom, in a stunning display of non-genre-savviness, does not see the obvious telegraphing of the "misunderstood monster" punch in the very first cutscene, and he neglects to inform anyone else of the numerous times he is in contact with peace-seeking Dark Ones. Because the character of Artyom is not developed and every one of the major scenes in the story (excepting the contacts by the Dark Ones, of course) take place off screen, it never felt like I was part of the story. There was never a scene where Artyom sits down with someone and talks out the question of peaceful Dark Ones, there's never a scene where Artyom explains why he feels compelled to continue on his quest to see the Dark Ones destroyed in spite of their communications... the story is the part of this game that feels the most "on rails," just careening towards the ending without explanation or detour, and that's a shame because it had so much potential.

Not to mention the many, many times the player is subjected to the "omg guyz something haz blocked teh path and I iz separated from teh NPC homies so I iz gonna pew pew sum monsters until I findz themz againz lolololorafl" device. I realize writing friendly AI is hard so you want the player away from his buddies as much as possible to make things harder on the player and easier on the programmers, but surely the writers could have thought of some other plot device to separate me from my escorts, just to change things up once in a while.

The combat is both good and bad. Good when you're fighting humans and in a few mutant-fighting set pieces, and entirely mediocre when you're fighting mutants. When you are fighting humans, stealth has a role: with silent weapons, you can strike from the shadows and often manage to avoid notice so that you can do it again. When you are fighting mutants, stealth never matters, because they detect you anyway. Every mutant fight is a stand-up slugfest where you burn through huge amounts of ammunition (a precious commodity until near the end of the game) to waste the pile of mutants that the designers throw at you, then once you've killed the magic number of mutants, the fight ends.

You fight a single kind of mutant, called a nosalis, throughout the entire game except a bare handful of set pieces. Which is not bad, because most of the set pieces where you are dealing with other mutants are among the low points in the game. I'm looking at you, Library levels, with your invincible Mutant Du Jour and your loading screen tips to "move when they can't see you" and your enemy placement that ensures that it is impossible to avoid being seen by nearly all of them. This section pissed me off real quick, because having to figure out where to run in a dark room when my only guide is a compass arrow which I can't stop to check because I need to keep running at a sprint to stay ahead of the invincible monster chasing me is not fun. I wound up playing this section by running a bit further than I ran last time, then being clawed to death while checking my compass so I could figure out where I need to go on the next try. That is one definition of "the opposite of fun."

The boring and/or crappy mutant-fighting action (which is, unfortunately, the majority of combat in the game) was made up for by the several entertaining people-killing sections. Using a silenced, scoped revolver to shoot a man in the back of the neck between his helmet and his body armor was enjoyable every time I did it, as was clearing a room with a shotgun, as was throwing a lit pipe bomb into a room filled with enemies.

Speaking of the weapons, the weapons are a lot of fun, although poorly designed in the context of the game. For mutant-fighting, there's really only one weapon worth using: the semiautomatic shotgun. Everything else burns through too many bullets per nosalis. When you're fighting people, your options are somewhat broader but still come down to the several silenced weapons, because once the enemies know where you are, they are alert and watchful and are very good shots, so stealth kills are the smartest tactic for much of the game. Metro has a couple of very cool and unique weapons, the two pneumatic weapons. These are air-powered guns, one of which shoots crossbow bolts, and the other one shoots 5mm balls. The game has a nifty pumping mechanic; the damage dealt by the projectiles is directly related to the air pressure in the gun, so you need to keep it topped up. Both the pneumatic guns count as silenced weapons, and both are pretty accurate. The crossbow gun is a guaranteed one-hit kill on a mutant, and the bolts can be retrieved from the bodies. Unfortunately, it is not a guaranteed one-hit kill on a person, because the human enemies wear body armor. Thanks to that, and to the fact that the pneumatic weapons share the same inventory slot as the shotguns, I gave up on using the pneumatic guns despite their coolness.

The world of Metro 2033 didn't feel as developed as it could have. Each time the story dragged me into a station (that is, a town), I was able to explore less of it than the last station, so that the last few stations you're in are one-room affairs where you buy ammo and then get frog-marched towards the next leg of the story. This was disappointing to me, because I was hoping to have some of that "plot development" stuff happening, but no such luck.

Overall, I liked the game, although I feel that it is not worth full price, being a competent but not great single-player FPS with a lackluster story, fairly short playing time and no replayability. Once it is on sale on Steam you should jump on it, because there's more good than bad in this game, and really, who can ever have enough of post-apocalyptic Russia?

LostWinds: A Two-word Game Title Smushed into One

2010-03-14T18:59:00.001-07:00

Pros: Exploding with potential
Cons: Nobody was around to clean up the mess

That, my friends, was an ejaculation joke. If I were starting this article in a more serious manner, I may have written:

Pros: gorgeous visuals, innovative take on the puzzle-platformer, genuinely good use of motions as the primary means of control
Cons: only two environments and one of them kinda sucks, music was clearly written by a "special needs" six-year-old, combat is pointless and annoying, shorter than the attention span of the composer, easy enough for the composer to beat

Actually, that just ended up being me making fun of retarded people. But my main points are all there, once you wade through the Sea of Reckless Disparaging.

LostWinds is a game whose title is formed by taking two words (a transitive conjunction and a semiadverb) and putting them together while retaining the original capitalization. This accomplishes absolutely nothing besides raising a whole slew of questions from me.
What is the part of speech of the new word?
Why is the W in "winds" still capitalized?
Is "Lost" pronounced very quickly, like the "Mc" in "McDonald's"?
Speaking of McDonald's, did you know that there's now a difference between the classic "Double Cheeseburger" and the new "McDouble"?
It's a piece of cheese.
If the title were "Lost Winds," I'd assume that this game were about some winds that were lost. Oh, wait, that is what this game is about. What the fuck, then?
Obviously, I was furious at this game before I even played it. I thought that perhaps the game would answer all of these questions — even the one that's a statement about cheese — before I reached the end, but I was wrong. Though the game is persistently about "lost winds," the concept of "LostWinds" is mentioned only once, as the final word in the ending. As far as I can tell, it simply means "lost winds." Lame.

LostWinds, a Frontier Developments game, was one of the May 2008 launch titles for Nintendo's WiiWare, the service that forces developers to insert horribly unusable motion controls into their games in order to get paid. Before I get into the meat of the review, I proffer this surprise: the game is not shovelware.

The player is greeted by a title screen and musical number that basically says, "THIS GAME HAS A JAPANESE SETTING." A panflute over plucked strings sounds a poignant tonic to subdominant (or maybe tonic to a seventh built on the supertonic but look I'm not gonna load up the game just to listen for a fucking F-sharp and they function the same anyway okay?) while an adorable homeless child with a severe case of cranial elephantiasis sleeps under a cherry tree blowing gently in the wind.

It turns out that this diseased homeless child is unwitting protagonist Toku, and the game begins with him being awoken by the wind. Eager to get away from this sudden minor discomfort, Toku hops down a mine shaft or a bridge collapses under him or something and he ends up in a cavern below the Earth's surface, where he soon meets Enril, the game's other protagonist.

It's worth mentioning at this point that you've now seen (more or less) 100% of the environments in LostWinds, and you're about nine seconds into the game. The portions of the game that take place above ground are absolutely idyllic. Like, heart-wrenchingly idyllic. It reminds me of a cartoony version of the farmlands of Shing Jea Island in Guild Wars: Factions, a game location with which everyone is very familiar. Though the game plays completely in two dimensions, the background shows a fair amount of depth: above ground, you'll see everything from running waterfalls to a farm town populated by people that stand around and stare blankly at nothing all day (they're boring). Below ground, you'll see a shitload of dull-colored rocks and fluorescent mushrooms. Every now and then, the underground scenes surprise with something like an oasis, or enormous, abandoned mining equipment, but generally it's just rock, mushrooms, and crippling banality.

Returning to the story: Enril is a chef-and-television-personality-turned-wind-spirit. She explains to Toku that she once trapped fellow (but EVIL) spirit Balasar in some crystal (because his HATRED was flaring up), but Balasar (using the powers of MALICE) trapped Enril in with him. But then Balasar got bored inside the crystal (not enough FURY in there), so he just up and left (HOSTILITY, anyone?) without even saying "goodbye" to Enril (overflowing IMPOLITENESS). The game uses key words like "bored" and "goodbye" to communicate to you just how naughty Balasar is.

Ever-silent Toku agrees to help Enril free herself from the confines of the crystal, where "the confines of the crystal" apparently means "being a cursor," since that's her function. Technically, you control two characters at once in this game: with the Nunchuk, you move Toku left and right and interact with various objects; with the Wii Remote, you control Enril in all of her...gusty...glory.

And so the duo travels, out into one of the most confusing game worlds I've ever seen. As you enter the more populated part of the world, you'll see plenty of townspeople going about their daily business of staring blandly in your general direction. Everything seems to be vomit-inducingly bucolic (in a good way, I swear), but when you are given the opportunity to chat with some of the townspeople, they all seem shaken up despite their "get out of my face, kid" nonchalance. They worry about Balasar corrupting (CORRUPTING) the land, and they complain about tremors and other environmental frights. I say the game world confused me because it appeared that the NPCs were lying to me: there is one tremor (close to the very beginning, no less), no visible corruption of the land, no blood-smeared patches of grass with little organ chunks in them.

As you progress through the game, Balasar's corruption does visibly grow, however, by making the land appear just as heartwarming and friendly as ever. Trust me, you've never seen more menacingly gorgeous cherry blossoms.

The entire game consists of unlocking three new powers for Enril and unlocking four pieces of fellow wind spirit Deo's memory, which he hid in treasure chests in order to make the game longer than thirty seconds. Each of Enril's abilities can help Toku access new areas. The Gust ability allows you to push Toku in any direction by holding A and dragging Enril through Toku in the direction you'd like him to be pushed. You can Gust up to three times in one period of Toku's being airborne, and you'll need to, to reach higher and farther areas. The Slipstream ability allows you to write naughty words on the screen by holding B and moving Enril around. Calling Balasar a "fag" or pretty much any racial slur is the only way to hold back the corruption! Slipstream also has the side effect of making fire, water, and some objects follow along the path you've drawn, so that you can hurt Balasar's feelings in style. Finally, the Vortex power allows you to draw circles around stuff so that you can curse about how unpredictably inaccurate it seems to be. If it ends up working the way you wanted, you can use a Gust to throw the object at a very high speed.

Aside from Vortexes being a bit unpredictable and a late-game item that allows you to move Toku with Slipstreams getting you caught on the environment, the motion controls are superbly implemented. It's important to note that when Enril is "active" — so when you're holding A or B to use a wind ability — time slows to a crawl in order to allow you to make accurate movements. This was weird for me for the first few minutes of play, but I got used to it almost immediately and now can't imagine being able to maximize height and distance without that mechanic.

LostWinds is meant to be a platformer-puzzler hybrid, and it succeeds at that if you take "puzzler" to mean "rock-mover." The puzzles in this game are not challenging whatsoever — if the solution to something isn't immediately obvious to you, you're probably retarded and should toss your Wii in the garbage and start lamenting the fact that you paid money for it and this game. The most challenging part of this game is trying to position rocks onto platforms. I probably spent 85% of my playtime watching my tiny gusts throw a boulder halfway across the screen, then watching my huge gusts make the boulder move in a completely unintended direction, causing my Wii to overheat and catch on fire. Positioning rocks works a little better after you get the Slipstream ability, but you'll still sometimes want to use them to smash Toku's disproportionately large skull to a less "kawaii" (^__________^) size.

Scattered about the world are 24 collectible statues that I guess are supposed to be challenging to locate and obtain. I used them as a means of determining how far along into the game I was. LostWinds is short. Like, really short. I collected 23 of the statues and beat the last boss (oh, yes, there's combat) in just under three hours. I did not rush through the game, but I did not spend a lot of time searching for the statues — the ones that I found were very obvious and required little backtracking. After I finished the game, I went back to search an area that I suspected contained the final statue. I was correct, and had obtained 100% completion in three hours, eighteen minutes. Unfortunately, completing the game with all of the statues does not offer a different ending, rendering them about as useful as every single power Enril possesses when faced with the monumental task of positioning a rock on a platform. This also means that all of your hard work earns you the same HAY-GUISE-PLZ-BUY-TEH-SEEKWEL ending. (It's worth mentioning here that I played the game a second and third time, and was able to finish with all 24 statues in as low as 45 minutes.)

All right, let's talk combat. Combat is the God damn worst part of this game. All of your foes are Dots candies onto which a blue ink pen accidentally burst. They're called "Glorbs" (exasperated sigh) and they're apparently manifestations of Balasar's EVIL, or something. Actually, I can't remember the game's explanation, but mine's probably better anyway. Glorbs (hearty grumble) come in roughly three flavors: annoying, boring, and fuck this. There's a lot of overlapping there. Combat seems to be tacked on in an effort to give you something to do when you're not getting pissed off at moving rocks. There's no real purpose to it, and there's only one boss battle, at the very end of the game. And once you figure out how to defeat the boss, you can do the entire fight in considerably less time than it takes the monster to make his entrance.

You kill Glorbs (fuck) by — you guessed it — strangling them to death. Or throwing them into walls using wind. It brings me no (and by "no" I mean "a positively tremendous amount of") joy to say this, but the death throes of the Glorbs (...) sound a lot like how I imagine strangling a retarded child to death might sound. To increase the amount of unbearable aural bombardment, the background music is harshly interrupted by an annoying kid wailing on some Japanese drums every time you're within forty-one screens of a foe, including the "final" boss, who doesn't even get his own music.

Speaking of background music, this game's enjoyable title theme turned out to be very misleading: once you're actually in the game, the music degrades into this tuneless ambient crap that's a mix between silence and little phrases played on the same gentle Japanese instruments. It's nice while it's there, but it's unmemorable, way too thin, and too quiet (compared to the blaring combat music).

If Toku loses all of his health, which can happen in a surprising number of inconsistencies, you can rouse him by having Enril give him a gustjob. GET IT? IT'S A WIND JOKE WITH SEXUAL CONNOTATIONS. Reviving Toku costs one icon on your spirit meter. You can easily refill these icons by moving Enril over these little blue floaty things that appear out of wind-disturbed plants, dead enemies, and Toku's bodily waste. This allows you to enjoy the game without really having to worry about death at any point, although it makes me question even further the need for combat. Toku can still get his huge head clobbered in a number of other ways. For example, sometimes you'll fall six feet, slowing your descent with wind, and you'll take some damage. Sometimes you'll jump down a huge ravine, not bothering to slow your descent at all, and you'll be fine. Sometimes you'll accidentally throw a rock straight at Toku's head (this will actually happen a lot) and he'll shrug it off; other times he'll turn around and shocked by an unmoving boulder and crumple to the ground in a heap of giant skull and stupid outfit.

I've done a lot of LostWinds-bashing here, but, frankly, there's a lot fundamentally wrong with the game. I'd like to see non-boss combat completely removed; puzzles become more difficult; a few motion controls tightened up; and more content, more environments, and a true musical score added.

As I wrote at the start of the article, LostWinds is exploding with potential. I will say that, flaws aside, I genuinely enjoyed the experience. I played the game in three sittings of about an hour each, and I looked forward to each one. It's relaxing, innovative, and not entirely linear. With a ten-dollar price tag, you can't really regret making the purchase. In October 2009, sequelLostWinds: Winter of the Melodias was released, and I definitely enjoyed the first game enough to make a second purchase.

Metroid: Zero Mission

2010-02-13T18:59:00.000-08:00

A classic Metroid experience without constant, overwhelming disappointment

Pros: Near-perfect remake of the original Metroid, extremely crisp controls, fantastic world design
Cons: Remaking annoying music with higher-quality sounds doesn't make it less annoying, too short, built-in hint system isn't completely optional.

Have you ever played any installment of the famous Metroid series of games? If not, here's a pseudocode walkthrough of more or less every game in the series:

while (the game is not beaten) {

run around

collect shit

if (the game is not Metroid Fusion*) {

get stuck

look online for help

get unstuck

swear never to look online for help again

}

find boss

kill boss

}

hope for nekkid pix of Samus

*Okay, I picked on Metroid Fusion in particular, but, let's face it, Metroid fans, its linearity is even more face-smashingly awful than that of a game from the Prime trilogy with the hint system activated.

I'll be honest: even though the Metroid series is quite possibly my single favorite series of games, the formula is essentially the same today (with the series' most recent entry, Metroid Prime 3: Corruption) as it was in 1914 (the original Metroid). Samus's breasts may have grown significantly over the past ninety-six years, but her arsenal of weaponry and powerups really hasn't. Sure, every installment seems to have some variant on the classics or an extra thing here or there, but we're basically looking at a few beam upgrades, a few suit upgrades, the morph ball, bombs, missiles, and various other sundries. I think the only thing keeping every game fresh and enjoyable is ingenious world design, and 2004's Metroid: Zero Mission on the Game Boy Advance may very well be the series' zenith in that respect.

MZM is not an "original" game, so to speak: it's a complete rehash of 1933's Metroid, the NES classic that introduced the world to gaming's most badass heroine, bounty hunter Samus Aran. It's also the NES classic that completely sucks ass. It may have been revolutionary when Franz Liszt and pals gathered 'round the screen for some alien-blasting action, but today it's clunky, difficult to traverse, and quite unforgiving. MZM's world heavily resembles that of the original, but it's now much more cohesive. Excessively repetitive rooms have been tightened, the flow within areas and between areas is perfect, and two new areas are integrated seamlessly with the old as a means of adding content beyond (both spatially and chronologically) what the original title offered.

MZM takes place on the planet Zebes (rhymes with "goulash"), just like the original. Fans will also know Zoulash from 1994's Super Duper Metroid, the series' only SNES installment. In the depths of the caverns below Zebes, you will discover such varied scenery as rocks, fiery rocks, bubbly shit, maybe some disused technology, and obviously-not-yet-disused technology. Yeah, the differences between environments aren't really that impressive, but the graphics are crisp and the presentation is great, because they've been completely overhauled: for a GBA title, the game is lookin' fine. The game looks quite comparable to (if not a bit better than) Metroid Fusion, the only other GBA Metroid title. Everything's pretty detailed, and the animations are smooth and impressive.

Control has been impressively overhauled as well. Pontius Pilate often complained about Samus' lack of abilities in the original Metroid — you can't crouch, shoot diagonally, wall jump, or order crucifixions, among other things. In MZM you'll be able to crucify the shit out of things, then crouch, shoot diagonally upwards into their faces, and then wall jump off of their crotches. The game feels a lot like what lead analysts have determined Super Metroid would feel like if it were Metroid: Zero Mission. Everything's extremely responsive in MZM. "Shinesparking," single-wall wall jumping, and infinite bomb jumping, three of the more advanced techniques in the game (assuming that your definition of advanced is "I'm completely hopeless at games and should throw my Game Boy or DS which I still call a Game Boy when talking to my girlfriend because it's easier not to have to explain the diference into a wood chipper"), always work as expected.

In true Metroid fashion, the world is chock-full of secrets. Some of these have obvious locations and are easy to access; others will require meticulous searching to find and may require repeated usage of the "most difficult maneuvers in the game" to access. For example, this early Missile Expansion can be exposed simply by shooting the sentence "Please allow me to obtain this Missile Expansion" in Morse code.

That was difficult and these screenshots are necessary!

But this late-game Energy Tank requires repeatedly executing the aforementioned "Shinespark," a staple 2-D Metroid techinque. By running until your Speed Booster kicks in then pressing down, you can store up a charge. The charge wears off after a few moments, but you can unleash it by jumping, which sends Samus shooting off uncontrollably in a chosen direction until she hits an unbreakable wall. If you Shinespark horizontally and hit a sloped surface, you will continue running and will be able to store your charge again. This technique is required to obtain not only the Energy Tank shown in the video below, but also to unlock the series-first "nude Samus" mode (which is MZM's update to 1412's Metroid's "clothed" mode).

This guy kinda sucks at the game, but this was the only video I could find in under fifteen seconds illustrating just the one short segment.

The game is very thin, story-wise, which is almost an expectation of a 2-D Metroid title: Samus basically says, "Zebes and me was tight, but now they monsters there and I fightin' 'em." Then the game begins, and the next time you see any story-related text is after defeating Mother Brain (the final boss of 2010's Metroid). Your escape vehicle is shot down by Space Bandidos, and, as Samus explains that she's about to infiltrate their mother ship armed only with a butter knife and a rape whistle, you stop reading and find yourself wondering why she needs so much lipstick. The entire mother ship sequence is the big new addition to the game, content-wise. It's a great addition, and you get to play half of it wearing the form-fitting "zero suit." It should be noted that most women can complete this segment of the game in under four minutes of the game clock while most men take an indeterminately large amount of time (the game clock does not go over 99:99:99). You figure out why. Or go hop in a wood chipper.

The Metroid community knows that the best way to play a Metroid game is to horribly, horribly break it. There's a large emphasis on sequence breaking (using advanced tactics or exploiting glitches to obtain items early or out of order) and speedrunning (completing the game as quickly as possible). Because I plan on writing a separate article about breaking MZM, I'm not going to go into the specifics right now; I merely want to touch on the fact that this game offers some fantastic opportunities for the speed-conscious gamer.

My only real complaints about the game are that it's too short (the world record "any% complete" times are 99:99:99 for a male and 00:27:40 for a non-male; the world record "100% complete" times are 99:99:99 for a male and 00:56:11 for a non-male) and that the overhauled versions of the generally terrible music tracks from 1889's Metroid are still generally terrible. But I've never cared for the series' music. There's also a hint system integrated into the game in the form of Chozo (this race of birds that learned how to use Macintosh computers) statues that show you where to go next; bypassing these statues is not always optional, which took some of the fun out of my very first playthrough by somewhat reducing that classic Metroid feeling of being completely disoriented.

Metroid was a big hit in 2003; I don't know why they decided to completely remake the game just a year later, but I'm glad they did: Metroid: Zero Mission easily makes it into my list of all-time favorite games.

New Super Mario Bros. Wii: The Best Excuse to Scream Profanities in a Long Time

2010-01-06T12:57:00.000-08:00

Pros: incredibly high production values, music isn't bad, rife with nostalgia
Cons: unmemorable level design, difficulty created through frustrating rather than clever means, some powerups poorly implemented, ultimately anticlimactic, overly rife with nostalgia

I'll start by saying that I consider Super Mario World and Super Mario 64 to be the pinnacle of Mario platforming games. This is because the level design in each is fantastic, and, more importantly, memorable -- I know every level in each game inside and out, and that's not because I've spent any obscene amount of time playing them; it's because they commit themselves to memory so easily. Donut Plains 2? Yeah, I remember Donut Plains 2 -- it's underground and scrolls automatically. That's where the exit to the Green Switch Palace is. It's got those rising and falling gold platforms, buzzy beetles, the little green bat/bird things. Tick Tock Clock? Hell yeah, I know Tick Tock Clock! You can alter the speed of everything depending on the position of the clock's minute hand when you enter. You turn around at the start and climb up the wall to get the red coins. You can go alllll the way up to the top to where the giant Thwomp is to get a star.

Let's try the same with New Super Mario Bros. Wii (what a catchy name, by the way). Level 6-2? Uh...World Six was the mountainous one, right? Level 8-4? ...Something fiery, I guess. You get the picture. Every level in NSMBW (shit, the initialism is just as good) is just kind of...there. They're all anonymous, and they're generally indescribable past the setting.

Speaking of setting, the settings (there are nine) in NSMBW are very predictable and boring. There's grass (how bucolic!), desert (now with more sand!), ice (shocker -- it's slippery!), water (annoying!), the fifth one (memorable!), mountain (boring!), clouds (I hate visibility!), volcano (volcanic!), and rainbow (gay friendly!). Okay, I went back and looked up "the fifth one": it's a jungle. There's not much to say about the settings past naming them -- you swim in most of the water stages, there's plenty of lava in the volcano stages, et cetera. Gone seem to be the days of inventive settings. SMW's Chocolate Island, anyone? Granted, very few attributes of chocolate, other than its delightful poo-brownness, were represented there, and the area was definitely a peninsula at best, but, still, it was different!

Bland environments aside, the design of the levels themselves seems very restrictive. I suppose it's worth mentioning that levels follow the standard 2-D Mario formula -- head right or up until you reach a flagpole. Although you can move in two dimensions, most levels scroll through only one. In nearly all horizontal maps, your explorable vertical area is limited to what you can see on your screen, and vice versa. Nintendo compensated for this essential removal of exploration by removing clipping from certain areas of certain walls, creating "secret areas" in which are often (but sometimes aggravatingly not) hidden important items or alternate level exits. So instead of exploring a level thoroughly, you end up humping every single flat surface in the level until you find one that's skanky enough to let you inside without you even buying it dinner first. Often the game gives you a small hint that you may be able to pass through a wall, like an indentation, or the lack of a true border along the edge, but sometimes (especially in ghost houses) you get absolutely nothing, hence the wall-humping.

You know a level is poorly designed when, upon completing it, your very first thought is something along the lines of: "oh sweet baby Jesus, I never have to play that level again." The only time that that thought doesn't indicate poor level design is when a level is excruciatingly difficult. There are no such levels in NSMBW. That's not to say that the game doesn't get pretty difficult at times, but the manner in which difficulty is achieved is more through annoying means than clever ones. For example, there are some levels in which the dominant mechanic is obstructed visibility. Sometimes it's darkness; sometimes it's heavy clouds. So you spend the entire level creeping forward at a snail's pace, because if you essay a bit of running, there's undoubtedly some kind of death in store for you. When you reach the end of such levels, you feel like you've just slogged through a chest-high pool of Miyamoto's excrement, and, sadly, in a way, you have.

Ennessembeedubz's other means of achieving difficulty is through the tried and true "how much shit do you think we can fit onto the screen at once?" mechanic. Plain and simple, the farther you progress into the game, the more harmful things per square inch you'll find. In some of the very last levels, it's rather frustrating. Part of the reason that it's so frustrating is because there are all kinds of abilities that you have -- wall-kicking, picking up and throwing various things, this little spin-thingy that can increase the distance of your jumps -- and, unless you're going for 100% completion of the game, you never need to use them. Ever. Running and jumping are all you ever truly need. Hell, you might even be able to get away with walking most of the time! It makes it feel like these abilities were thrown in; I would really enjoy it if some of the levels were built around the use of these abilities. It would offer a deeper play experience.

All right, I've thoroughly bashed the level design, but before I get on to bashing all sorts of other things about NSMBW, I will say that not every single one of the game's 70+ levels is terrible. I may not remember any of these mystical levels, but I do remember having some fun while playing through the game, so there are a few gems hidden there.

Let's take a step back and have a broader look at NSMBW. The story is classic Mario: Princess Peach is having a birthday party. But wait! Why is there so much fantastically colored hair sprouting from her giant birthday cake? Oh, shit! It's a rape cake! The seven Koopalings you know and love and their assistant (to the?) regional manager, Baby Bowser, pop out, have their way with the princess (why can't the Wii have HD support?!), and run off with her limp body. Meanwhile, Mario, Luigi, and two nameless Toads, who I will refer to as "Blueberry Muffin" and "That Yellow One," are standing around circle-jerking to the show. Once they clean up, they rush off to save Peach. I have no issues with the story; it sets up the classic Mario formula perfectly.

If you'd like to watch the video (NSFW), you can find it at: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GZYPIGNYD9E

I think thirteen-year-old YouTube user GWRStation summed it up best with his insightful comment:

PEACH! LOOK AT THE CAKE! HOW CAN YOU LIKE A CAKE IF IT ANI"T MATCHING there bowtie ling gerrn ! ALL THOUGH I did like how Nentando ( sorry I'm a bad speller to say)

Well said, GWRStation. Well said, especially concerning the "bowtie ling gerrn." Most people don't catch that on their first viewing.

That was a fun diversion. Back to the review. How has Nentando improved the 2-D Mario formula over the years? Well, I'm not sure that they have. It feels very retro. You can walk, jump, run, pick up and hold items, throw items horizontally only (seriously, Nentando? I was throwing items vertically as a five-year-old in SMW). To break us out of the eight-bit era, we have those techniques I mentioned a few paragraphs up: the wall kick, the spin jump, and the spin..."thing." As I said before, while not entirely useless, these techniques are completely unnecessary. The wall kick works great for reaching higher areas and for saving yourself when you're about to fall down a pit. The spin jump seems to do nothing more than shove clouds out of your way. The spin "thing" is a repeatable aerial maneuver (literally just a quick spin) that adds a slight bit of horizontal distance to your jumps.

NSMBW offers seven powerups; some are very familiar, and most of the others are pretty bad ideas. You already know the series staples: the super mushroom, the fire flower, and the super star. The four newcomers are the mini mushroom, the ice flower, the penguin suit, and the propeller suit. The mini mushroom (inherited from New Super Mario Bros. on the Nintendo DS) makes you mini (wow!): it offers super-high jumping capabilities, the ability to fit in tiny areas, and it lets you walk on the surface of water, a blatantly pro-Jesus message, as far as I'm concerned. However, in practice, the fact that you're essentially weaker with a mini mushroom than you are sans powerup makes the mini mushroom universally hated and used only when necessary to access a special area. The ice flower works just like a fire flower, except instead of throwing fireballs, you throw snowballs. While your foes writhe uncomfortably from the snow running down their backs, you can safely stand on them, pick them up, and throw them. The penguin suit is the same as the ice flower, except it makes you look really gay. The propeller suit is the retarded, inbred cousin of the far superior raccoon suit (Super Mario Bros. 3) and cape feather (SMW). It allows you to perform one very high jump and then float slowly back down to the ground. There's no way to remain airborne, and your maximum total air time is considerably less than the raccoon suit allowed. The only upside to the propeller suit is that you don't have to get a running start to unleash its full potential.

The game's control scheme is infuriating. In order to feel as much like you're playing a NES game as possible, you are forced to play holding the Wii remote sideways. You'll have to remove your Wii MotionPlus accessory (and, thus, the Wii CondomPlus) for this to be relatively comfortable. Because the only easily accessible buttons on the Wii Remote when held sideways are "1" (run/throw [fire|snow]balls) and "2" (jump), some actions need to be performed by -- you guessed it! -- a motherfucking motion. Want to pick something up? Hold "1" while standing next to it and shake! Want to do a spin jump? Shake while on the ground! That midair spin "thing"? Shake while in the air! Shaking is a very imprecise motion, so if you shift on the couch or move the controller to one hand for a second to pick your wedgie, you're going to execute the shake motion inadvertently.

That's not where the motion controls stop, though: some levels have (annoying) mechanics that require you to tilt the remote to tilt objects, spin objects, or move platforms. This all feels gimmicky, and in levels where you want something to be tilted at a constant angle, you end up looking like a retard, holding your controller at a stupid angle for forty-seven minutes. I'd like to take this opportunity to make the following important statement:

Just because you can put a certain technology into your games does not mean that you need to, especially when the end result feels tacked on and could be better (and more comfortably) achieved by another means.

For example, they could've added classic controller support to NSMBW and left the current control scheme for poor players that hate having disgustingly excessive amounts of white plastic in their houses. That would've allowed for four face buttons, two shoulder buttons, and two control sticks for the "tilting" functionality. I suppose that would've been way too much work for a huge-budget project, though. I hear that there's support for the Wii remote and Nunchuk, but it's so uncomfortable that it's not even worth mentioning.

Well, I've delayed this long enough: let's get to the multiplayer mode, the real selling point of this game. The multiplayer is this game's saving grace. Playing with up to four players at once (Mario, Luigi, Blueberry Muffin, and That Yellow One are your choices -- Miyamoto openly admitted in a Nintendo Power interview that the reason for having two anonymous, palette-swapped toads instead of four unique characters was more or less sheer laziness^*) makes things exponentially more fun and does add a bit of depth to the game. You can pick each other up, use each other to reach new heights, and, most importantly, you can use the bubble. Ah, the bubble. The bubble is NSMBW's ultimate cheap trick. In multiplayer, when one player dies, the level doesn't end; rather, a second or two later, that player floats slowly back onto the screen in a big bubble. That player can shake (fucking YES!!) the remote to float in the direction of other players. Touching another player or getting hit by another player's projectiles will break the bubble and put that character back into play. While bubbled, players are invulnerable; however, if all players are dead or bubbled at the same time, you do fail the level.

Obviously, this means that you can chain your deaths throughout a level to accommodate the fact that you suck ass. You can also lose a lot of lives very rapidly. But wait! There's more! During multiplayer, any player can bubble up at any time by pressing the "A" button (which is frustratingly easy to press accidentally). This means that those pesky star coins (large, special coins of which there are three to collect in every level) that actually require a bit of thought or risk to obtain are now a complete yawnfest:

Player A nabs star coin via some kind of risky means: apparent sacrifice, blind leap into terrifying danger, etc.;
Player A presses "A";
Player A enters bubble mode and pretends to jerk his Wii remote off until he's safely back with his friends.
Trivial. Furthermore, if you missed something and can't go back, then just have everyone bubble up! You'll all lose your current powerups, but failing a level while bubbled does not result in the loss of a life (so it's a great technique to use to save a life if you're the last one alive and are about to die).

All that said, multiplayer is great fun: you're going to love the craziness that arises from cramming up to four players into very tight situations. You can't take it too seriously, though, because I can guarantee that you are going to get very frustrated from time to time, and you just need to blow it off. There's going to be a lot of deaths, a lot of people ruining things by being the last one alive and accidentally bubbling, a lot of accidentally and intentionally being dicks to one another, and a lot of people screaming the word "fuck."

Now that I've said something halfway to praise about one aspect of this game, I'm going through some serious negativity withdrawal, so let me wrap things up with some more low notes. The game is horribly anticlimactic. In World Eight, you have your big showdown with Baby Bowser, which is so exciting that I can't even remember anything about the fight. It was probably disgustingly easy, like all the boss fights. After that, Grownup Bowser comes out of nowhere, and you kill him by going downstairs to get a cup of coffee. When you come back, the fight with Grandpa Bowser should be starting; you kill him by sipping on your coffee until he breaks a hip and whines himself slowly to death. Seriously. You never touch the elderly Bowsers at all. Then you find Peach swinging from a gibbet or something, and she probably just gets out on her own, because Bowser always keeps her locked up through sheer will alone. Then she and Mario smile cordially at one another, and she says, "hey, Mario, have you unlocked World Nine yet? The developers decided that this ending wasn't anticlimactic enough, so get on that, would you?"

For every world in which you have collected all three star coins from each level, you unlock a level in World Nine, the rainbow world. These levels are "the hardest in the game," don't have a rainbow setting despite the overworld appearance, and offer absolutely nothing except for more star coins. No bosses, no more story, no extra ending: nothing. But more star coins is good, right? You've been accumulating them throughout the entire game, so they must be used for something eventually, yeah? Don't fret! You can spend every single one of them on awesome new levels, new playable characters, and sweet new features! And by "awesome new levels," I mean videos detailing how to obtain tricky star coins; by "new playable characters," I mean videos showing the locations of secret level exits; and by "sweet new features," I mean (admittedly cool) tool-assisted videos of speed and trick runs through levels. That's right -- once you finish World Nine and collect every star coin in the game, you are treated to nothing more than the ability to unlock more videos and a popup ad that says, "Congratulations! You have completed everything in New Super Mario Bros. Wii! Please take this opportunity to register at Nintendo.com and earn a chance to win free natural male enhancement for one year!"

And now, finally, I must berate this game for committing an unforgivable sin. This is a game that prides itself on an excellent multiplayer experience. Why, then, does it not have online functionality? Why can't I hook up with three remote friends, or three random people? It's two God damn thousand fucking ten. There is absolutely no excuse for a lack of online support in a title whose best selling point is the multiplayer game.

Despite this three-thousand-word rant against nearly every facet of this game, I will submit to the fact that if you have real-life friends to play with, it's definitely worth it for the great multiplayer experience. If not, I'd pass, honestly. I know that it sounds insane to recommend passing on a Mario title, but if you've played Super Mario Bros. on NES, you've pretty much played this game in a more archaic form. I don't know what it is about "retro" games becoming more and more popular in spite of technology growing more and more advanced, but Nintendo really needs to take a risk every now and then. Yeah, we love Mario and we love Zelda, but we can only play the same game so many times. Nostalgia, nostalgia, nostalgia. With the Wii Virtual Console offering so many old classics and the GBA and DS sporting so many remakes of classics, I have all the nostalgia I need. Take our favorite heroes in new directions! Or create new heroes for us to love. We'll never have new favorites if they're never created and developed.

^* Nintendo Power, Vol. 249, p. 81.^**
^**Miyamoto's statement on why you can't play as Peach: "I originally thought it would be nice to have Princess Peach as a playable character, but the Toad characters have a physique that is a bit closer to that of Mario and Luigi. And if we were to have one character out of the four wear a dress, we would need special programming for how the skirt is handled within the gameplay, and that's really the only reason why Princess Peach isn't playable. And, of course, if we had Wario in there, we'd have to program it so he could fart. [Laughs]" Fucker.

LoTRO: So You Want To Be A Warden

2009-10-03T23:46:00.002-07:00

As I have played through The Lord of The Rings Online as a Warden, I have noticed that the Warden as a class is largely misunderstood by Wardens and non-Wardens both. The excellent site LoTRO Info does not have any post-Moria class guides (the two classes added in the Mines of Moria expansion were the Rune-Keeper and the Warden, for those not aware), so I am writing this guide with the intent of disseminating some information about the class.

The Warden's primary role is as a tank, the party member who stands on the front line of combat and takes the hits (and the repair bill) so that the squishies don't have to. The Warden has secondary roles in corruption removal (corruptions are buffs that monsters in Moria apply to themselves, and Wardens are the best class in the game at removing them); interrupting monsters' skill inductions (Wardens are not quite as good at this as Champions are with their Clobber skill, but it's a near thing); and off-off-OFF-healing with the late-game Conviction gambit, which provides a small but useful bit of extra healing for the group.

Pluses of the Warden class:

Nigh-invulnerability, thanks to good armor value and very high evade/block/parry ratings, combined with extensive self-healing abilities.
The best solo class in the game (see previous point)
Excellent tank class, capable of being a party's primary tank in any situation.

Minuses:

The lowest DPS of any class in LoTRO, making soloing a slow process.
Class requires memorization and thought to play well (this may be a minus for some people, heh)
Because of our need to build threat-generating gambits, Wardens cannot generate instant threat on a target the way that Guardians can (Warden threat is fast, but not instantaneous).

Wardens are unique in LoTRO (and to the best of my knowledge, unique among MMOs) in having "gambits" instead of skills. Wardens do not get the dozens of skills that other classes get. Instead, Wardens get a small set of skills to build gambits, as well as several stances and a couple of cooldown skills, and that is all their skills. Wardens use their three main skills to add icons to the "Gambit Panel," then a fourth skill to "release" or "trigger" the gambit that the icons add up to. Wardens eventually learn 35 individual gambits which range from two icons up to five icons in length.

The gambit system and the necessity of memorizing a large number of icon combinations means that playing a Warden is less like playing an MMO and more like playing a fighting game. I have found that playing a Warden requires a much higher degree of attentiveness to combat than other classes. When playing a Champion or a Hunter, for example, it's easy to "phone in" the combat, just cycling through a handful of skills in a preset order. When playing a Warden, that is nearly impossible, as well as highly impractical. Because gambits are not built instantly, a Warden must be constantly paying attention to the flow of combat, predicting what gambit will be needed next, and what gambit will be needed after that, while watching the Gambit Panel to make sure that the gambits are being built correctly (a bit of lag can really wreck a gambit if you're not paying attention), and on top of all that, the tanking Warden needs to be paying attention to the group to make sure that any adds are being handled, that the healer isn't taking aggro, and all the other various and sundry duties of a tank.

Unlike the Champion's Fervor, the Hunter's Focus, or the Rune-Keeper's Attunement, Wardens have no mechanical limitations on what gambits they can throw at what time--the choice of which gambit to build is purely tactical. This gives Wardens a tremendous degree of flexibility and the ability to "change gears" very quickly to respond to changing combat conditions.

How Gambits Work

Wardens learn four gambit skills:

Gambit Default, the gambit "trigger" skill, which changes its name and effect to the gambit you have built.
Quick Thrust, a basic melee attack, which adds a Spear icon to the Gambit Panel.
Shield Bash, a melee attack which deals a flat amount of Common damage, has a small chance to apply a short-lived block rating buff, and adds a Shield icon to the Gambit Panel.
Warden's Taunt, which deals a small amount of Light damage and a small Light DoT, has increased threat, and adds a Fist icon to the Gambit Panel.

With those four skills, Wardens build and then release all their gambits. A bit of terminology: gambits which start with a Spear icon are called "spear gambits" (I know, whodathunkit) and are the damage-oriented gambits. Gambits which start with a Shield icon are "shield gambits," and have to do with healing or buffing. Finally, "fist gambits" are threat-generating gambits.

In spite of all the earlier talk about memorizing a mess of gambits, most of the gambits are organized quite logically and tend to build on each other in a reasonable way. For example, the two-icon gambit The Boot (Spear, Shield) interrupts inductions and has a chance to daze the target for a few seconds. Add another Spear icon to The Boot, and it becomes Onslaught (Spear, Shield, Spear), which still interrupts inductions but trades the daze chance for three attacks (which deal a percentage of your weapon damage). Now add another Shield Icon to Onslaught, and you get Wall of Steel (Spear, Shield, Spear, Shield), which still interrupts inductions with its three full-weapon-damage attacks, and gains a hefty but short-lived parry rating buff. You see patterns throughout the gambit list: the healing gambits are representative, with (Shield, Spear) being a small heal and working up to (Shield, Spear, Shield, Spear, Shield) for the biggest heal.

There are a handful of oddballs which do require memorization, but much of the list can be derived from patterns rather than memorization.

The Short List Of Gambits To Remember

DPS: Despite the big numbers on the tooltip for late-game damage gambits such as Warden's Triumph, the best choice for reliable damage output is Wall of Steel. WoS is quick to build, being a four-icon gambit with no Fist icons (Warden's Taunt, the Fist icon skill, has a long animation associated with it, so Fist icons cost a disproportionate amount of time to add to a gambit), and because WoS has three attacks, you have three separate chances to hit the target, rather than the all-or-nothing of Warden's Triumph's single large attack. Additionally, the parry buff from WoS is virtually always useful: remember, Wardens survive by not being hit.

Threat: The Warden's main tool for reliable threat generation is the two-icon gambit Precise Blow (Fist, Spear), which has "increased threat" and "increased threat over time." Being a two-icon gambit, it is eminently spammable and costs relatively little power. Using nothing but this gambit, I have held aggro off Hunters in Strength Stance and off of Guardians (in other words, Precise Blow pumps out some serious threat). It is your best friend when it comes to single-target threat generation.

When it comes to multi-target threat generation, you have two useful tools: War Cry and Exultation of Battle. War Cry (Fist, Shield) is another gambit which generates threat over time, and has a large range of effect and affects up to ten targets. However, it is mostly useless unless you are wielding a Legendary Weapon which has a War Cry Threat Up legacy on it, because the threat generation of the unaugmented War Cry is nothing to write home about.

Exultation of Battle (Fist, Spear, Shield, Fist, Shield) is the Warden's best friend in situations where you are engaging many enemies at once. EoB generates threat over time as well as having a morale drain effect: every four seconds, the enemies affected by EoB lose a small chunk of health and the Warden gains all the health the enemies lose. Obviously, when you are surrounded by many enemies, that morale drain effect can be a significant heal. Like War Cry, Exultation of Battle requires a Threat Up legacy on a Legendary Weapon in order to generate a useful amount of threat.

Wardens have several gambits which transfer threat from other party members to the Warden. Two of those in particular are useful: Dance of War (Shield, Fist, Shield, Fist), which transfers a significant amount of threat from each member of the party to the Warden and also applies a hefty buff to the Warden's evade rating. Add one more Shield to Dance of War and you get the far more useful Conviction (Shield, Fist, Shield, Fist, Shield), which transfers the same significant amount of threat, but trades the evade buff for a smallish heal over time for the entire party, including the Warden. Note that Conviction is the only non-selfish thing that Wardens can do (generally speaking, we're a bunch of selfish jerks).

Buffs: As previously mentioned, Wall of Steel (Spear, Shield, Spear, Shield) has a very nice parry rating buff attached to it. When you're a bit over your head and need to add to your defensive ratings, Shield Mastery (Shield, Spear, Fist, Spear) applies a buff with a duration of one minute which provides a hefty bonus to your evade, block, and ranged block ratings. Combine Wall of Steel and Shield Mastery, and a high-level Warden can max out his defensive ratings across the board.

Healing: Start with Persevere (Shield, Spear) and just keep alternating Shield and Spear. The longer the gambit, the bigger the heal, so just build as long a gambit as you can afford to (before whatever is making you require healing gets around to making you dead, I mean), then throw that gambit and start building another, different, one. The heal over time buffs from each of the healing gambits stack with each other, so a Warden who is concentrating solely on healing can keep multiple HoTs ticking away at all times. When fighting multiple targets, the morale drain gambits Fierce Resolve (Fist, Spear, Shield), Resolution (Fist, Spear, Shield, Fist), and Exultation of Battle (Fist, Spear, Shield, Fist, Shield) can be thrown into the mix and stacked with each other to keep the Warden healthy while dealing a bit of damage to the enemies.

Corruption Removal: There's only one gambit for this. Reversal (Spear, Fist, Shield) hits the target for a smallish amount of damage and also removes one random corruption from the target.

Power Restore: Again, only one gambit does this. The Dark Before Dawn (Spear, Shield, Spear, Fist, Spear) can only be used when the Warden is below half health. It deals two moderate weapon attacks and restores a goodly chunk of power. Because gambits do not have cooldowns, Dark Before Dawn can be spammed as long as your health is below 50% to keep restoring power. This gambit is often essential in long fights when you do not have a Lore-Master in your group to pass you power, because Wardens can burn through their power reserves at a staggering rate.

Stances: These aren't actually gambits, but as long as I'm talking tactics, I feel it's appropriate to mention them. Wardens learn three stances (and an optional fourth stance gained by slotting a Legendary Trait):

Determination: This stance does only one thing, but it does it well. When in Determination stance, the Warden's in-combat morale regeneration (ICMR) is increased tremendously, well above what any other class can achieve.
Conservation: This stance does for in-combat power regeneration (ICPR) what Determination does for ICMR, and it also provides small bonuses to the Warden's evade and block ratings. This is the most common stance for Wardens to be in, because Wardens often have power issues.
Recklessness: This stance is the odd man out, because it is focused on DPS. In Recklessness, the Warden's attack speed and melee damage is increased, but his evade and block ratings are reduced. This stance is very rare for Wardens to use, because Warden DPS is laughably bad (so the stance's buffs aren't exactly working miracles) and there are few occasions when a Warden is in a party and is not tanking.
Way of the Warden is the stance which is earned by slotting a legendary trait of the same name. Unlike the other stances, this one has a cooldown (15 minutes), and can only be turned on during combat, and only lasts until combat ends. It is excellent for long and/or hard fights, because its effects are taken from all of the other stances. When in the Way of the Warden stance, the Warden gains enhanced ICMR and ICPR and an increase in attack speed and an increase in melee damage.

Traits, or Being All The Warden You Can Be

All classes in LoTRO have three trait lines, which are different for each class. In the case of the Warden, the three lines are Way of the Fist, Way of the Spear, and Way of the Shield. As you can probably guess, the traits within each line affect Fist gambits, Spear gambits, and Shield gambits, respectively.

As I've mentioned previously, Warden DPS is a grand joke, so traiting for extra DPS by slotting the Spear line is a pointless endeavor (with that said, slotting the Spear line during the low levels is not an unreasonable choice, because even the weak offensive ability of a Warden can make short work of the weak monsters which populate the early game).

At level 60, with all seven of the class trait slots available, a common trait setup among skilled Wardens is five Shield traits and two Fist traits; another common build is five Shield traits, one particular Fist trait and one particular Spear trait. I'll discuss what those "particular traits" are in a moment. First, why five Shield traits? Because the Shield line's set bonus is the most desirable of the three trait lines. The Shield line's set bonus is as follows:

2 equipped: adds a level-dependent bonus to the Warden's block rating.
3 equipped: adds a level-dependent bonus to the Warden's evade rating.
4 equipped: all heal over time skills heal 10% more per pulse.
5 equipped: the legendary trait Way of the Shield can be equipped.

The legendary trait Way of the Shield has the following effects:

All heal over time effects last for two additional pulses (for most Warden HoTs, that is a 50% increase).
All HoT effects heal 10% more per pulse.
The Conviction gambit (that's the threat-transfer-and-party-heal one) heals 30% more.

As you can see, going five deep in Way of the Shield and slotting the legendary Way of the Shield trait significantly increases the Warden's healing ability. Wringing the most out of your self-heals can be critical to success in many situations, because Wardens are less tough than Guardians--pound for pound, we take more damage each time we are hit than a comparable Guardian. With a good healer at your back, that extra damage makes no difference. With a less-than-good healer at your back, or if things are simply getting out of hand and the healer cannot attend to you immediately, the ability to recover your own morale with robust self-heals is invaluable. Thanks to their healing ability, Wardens can also tank many things acceptably well even without a dedicated healer in the party.

Now, about those two "particular traits" I mentioned. There is a trio of incredibly useful traits called Master of the Shield, Master of the Spear, and Master of the Fist. When any of those traits is slotted, the Warden gains two new in-combat skills which instantly add two gambit icons to the Gambit Panel, without requiring an attack. For example, slotting Master of the Shield adds the skills "Shield and Spear" and "Shield and Fist." As you can probably deduce, using the "Shield and Spear" skill adds a Shield icon and a Spear icon to the Gambit Panel, in that order. Likewise, slotting Master of the Spear grants the skills "Spear and Shield" and "Spear and Fist." These combo skills have a cooldown of fifteen seconds, and they do not share their cooldowns. This means that a skilled Warden can build gambits nearly instantly by combining these two-icon skills in the correct order, which gives an amazing ability to respond rapidly to changing battlefield conditions.

Let me provide some examples by way of illustration. The gambit Exultation of Battle (Fist, Spear, Shield, Fist, Shield) takes some time to build, thanks to its two Fist icons. As I mentioned previously, the long animation of Warden's Taunt (the skill which adds a Fist icon) means that gambits with Fist icons are slower to build than gambits without. The two-icon combo skills have no animation associated with them. When you trigger one of the combo skills, its two icons simply appear in the Gambit Panel with no muss and no fuss. So, a Warden who has slotted some of the two-icon traits could build Exultation of Battle by using the following skills: "Fist and Spear" followed by "Shield and Fist" followed by "Shield Bash" (the Shield icon skill). Rather than executing five attack skills--including two of the slow Warden's Taunts--this Warden has built the Exultation of Battle gambit with only three skills, no Warden's Taunts, and only one attack skill.

Another example: The Boot (Spear, Shield) is the shortest gambit which interrupts inductions. Many monsters in the game can use healing skills on themselves or other monsters, and some of those heals are truly staggering in how much health they restore. Therefore, interrupting those inductions can often be the difference between an easy victory and a long, costly battle. When a monster begins a healing induction, the Warden must finish whatever he is doing at the moment (such as being in the middle of an attack animation), then clear his Gambit Panel and build The Boot, then trigger The Boot. For some monsters which have short inductions, that could easily be too long, and allow them to complete their heal. Now consider a Warden who has the trait "Master of the Spear" slotted, giving him the skill "Spear and Shield." In other words, that Warden can build The Boot with the push of a single button and without waiting for even one attack animation. The usefulness of that cannot be overstated.

Slotting five-deep in the Way of the Shield trait line (including Master of the Shield), then slotting Master of the Spear and Master of the Fist is a build which gives you all six two-icon skills for maximum flexibility. The tradeoff is that you lose the set bonus for having two Fist line traits slotted, which is that all aggro-generating gambits produce 10% more threat. In the big picture, 10% more threat is not a necessarily a dealbreaker, as Wardens can produce a staggering amount of threat even without that bonus. Either choice of trait build is perfectly viable.

Summary

Wardens are a very interesting and engaging class to play, but the style of play that they require is not for everyone. In the hands of a player who enjoys the Warden's playstyle and is willing to take the time to become fluent at it, the Warden is the most versatile tank in the game.

Other Resources

Warden: Tanking Guide from the LoTRO Lorebook. An in-depth look at what makes Warden threat tick and various tanking techniques.
Doc Holiday's Warden-centric blog. A good source for useful tidbits of information about the class.
The Warden section of the LoTRO Forums. Rife with drama and whining, but also excellent information and knowledgeable people. Think of it as offline glff. ;D
A ridiculously awesome chart of every gambit.

The Lord of the Rings Online: Through a Captain's Eyes

2009-07-16T13:25:00.000-07:00

The bottom line: Although the Captain does not do any one thing exceptionally well, his ability to simultaneously fill multiple, much-needed support roles makes him a consistently welcome addition to any fellowship.

Discounting my brief stint in LotRO's open beta years ago, the Captain is the first class in the game that I played, and the first class with which I reached any challenging content. On the surface, the class doesn't seem to have much going for it: as a Captain, you're not going to be dealing out nearly as much damage as a Hunter or a Rune-keeper; you're not going to be able to take hits like a Guardian, despite your heavy armor; and your self-healing is very limited. On top of that, you have no crowd control, debuffs, or area-of-effect abilities worth mentioning. Basically, soloing isn't your thing (you'll do all right, especially later on, but other classes will far surpass you in this area).

So what does the Captain have going for him? The game itself defines the Captain's role as "Buffer/Pets," which, when taken as a very broad overview, is true. Most of the Captain's buffs are applied to the entire fellowship, and the ones that aren't can be applied to each member individually. The pets themselves are sentient buffs -- the Captain summons a standard-bearing herald that gives everyone nearby a healthy boost to either offensive ability, maximum morale and in-combat morale regeneration, or maximum power and in-combat power regeneration. The heralds participate in melee combat, but their attacks are pathetically weak. They can take a surprising beating, though, so they're worth having out for solo use. Later on, most Captains will -- in group play, at least -- opt to replace their heralds with a plantable standard that gives the whole fellowship the same buffs as a herald while bestowing additional melee damage and morale to the Captain.

There's a lot that can be said regarding heralds versus standards, and, naturally, there are a lot of severely mentally crippled people on either side of the argument. Since the argument is about as boring as each side's proponents are retarded, I'll share my own views only very briefly. From my own experimentation, I've found that, during solo play, a herald is great for fighting multiple mobs at once. For group play, stick with a standard. You need to focus too much on the rest of your party to be worrying about one more body. If your herald dies in combat, his buffs are lost to the group until combat's over; a standard cannot die and can be replanted in-combat an indefinite number of times.

Despite the Captain's being a melee class, when I'm playing, I find myself on the outskirts of combat just as often as I find myself on the front lines. Selflessness is what separates the good Captains from the bad. And it's easy to be selfless -- you'll score some big hits swinging away with your two-handed weapon, and a lot of Captains fall into a pattern of spamming melee skills while becoming oblivious to the status of the group. A good Captain will break away from melee to pull mobs off of the healer, remove fear debuffs, and do some off-healing. In times of need, a Captain can quickly take a group from "oh, shit!" to "oh, hey, we're fine!" with an incredible duo of skills that allows him to direct half of the group's incoming damage to himself while he renders himself immune to death for (if traited properly) a full twenty-five seconds. This takes immense pressure off of the healer and allows the rest of the group to recover.

Extended group combat (let's say against a single boss mob) as a Captain is going to go something like this:

Buff the fellowship and select a Shield-brother (a single group member to whom the Captain can bestow extra damage output and healing)
Plant your standard
Engage the mob, but attack lightly, allowing the tank time to establish aggro
Focus on melee combat for a bit -- if you get the opportunity to use your fellowship attack speed buff, do so
Check the status of your fellowship -- remove fear debuffs, and do a bit of healing, if needed
Be the first to engage adds (if there is no Champion or Warden)
If the healer or tank dies, resurrect him as quickly as possible and get him buffed back up
Return to melee if things are going swimmingly
Listen closely to voice chat for a violent outburst containing either the word "shit" or "fuck" -- it's probably time to start absorbing damage and using your death immunity

Obviously, you'll have to improvise some on this order, but the typical rule of thumb of combat is that things rarely get better over time -- "from bad to worse" will be your experience during most rough fights.

By now, the Captain's role should be pretty clear, and deciding whether or not to play a Captain is a simple process. If you answer "no" to either of the following two questions, don't bother playing a Captain:

Do you prefer to play in a group?
Do you enjoy constantly checking the status of your fellowship to know when to offer support?

If you answered "no" to either of those, you'd be better off with a more selfish class that's geared toward soloing -- a Hunter, Champion, Rune-keeper, or Warden would be perfect for you.

At the bottom of it all, the Captain, while boring to play solo and failing to truly excel in any area, is immensely important to the well-being of a group and is essential to almost any group build.

S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Fallout with a Russian accent

2009-07-15T02:57:00.000-07:00

Pros: Brilliant despite its flaws.
Cons: Very, very flawed.

Let's get it out of the way right up front -- S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Shadow of Chernobyl is, mechanically speaking, a bad game. It is bug-ridden, the engine is poorly-optimized, the AI has a tendency to break at random intervals, and all that and more add up to the opposite of a good game.

And yet... and yet, it has a certain something that lets me overlook its many (many) flaws. The post-apocalyptic, radiation-soaked setting is teeming with ambience (if ambience can be said to teem). The little atmospheric touches are wonderfully realized: the howls of strange and threatening beasts in the distance, the gleam of a bandit's flashlight through the tall grass, the sudden, howling gusts of wind that batter themselves against the crumbling remains of blasted and abandoned buildings... it adds up to a world I am willing to suspend my disbelief for, even when I enter a settlement and the guard who warily greets me resumes his patrol by walking straight into a wall, or when the group of bandits who ambush me spend most of the fight running in and out of the same door, trying to figure out how to path to me.

I believe I mentioned the flaws.

I have played almost to the end of S.T.A.L.K.E.R. several times, and each time the bugginess has finally outweighed the world, and I have quit. But I find myself going back, months later, when I remember the gaping mouth of a charging, mutated boar as my flashlight beam finds it in the pitch blackness, or the feeling of being one man against the world as I leave the light and warmth of a trading camp deep within the Zone and step once again into the creature-infested wasteland. At times like those, I load the game back up and allow myself to be immersed one more time.

It is not a game I would recommend that anyone buy at full price. However, if you find it in a discount bin, or can catch it during a sale on Steam, it easily contains ten or fifteen dollars worth of enjoyment.

As there are for Oblivion, there are many mods available for S.T.A.L.K.E.R., several of which fix scripting and other bugs, and some which add more depth to the game by tweaking the enemies and world. If you do pick S.T.A.L.K.E.R. up, I highly recommend searching out the mod sites for it.

Left 4 Dead: Rawr, Brains

2009-07-14T13:07:00.000-07:00

Pros: Zombies + shotguns = fun!
Cons: Only four campaigns.

When I first learned about Left 4 Dead in a preview article in Game Informer magazine, I was giddy as a schoolgirl. Four-player co-op? Zombies? The ability to play as the zombies? Glee! My enthusiasm remained undimmed through the intervening months, and as soon as the pre-order option became available on Steam, I plunked down my money and set myself to wait.

According to Steam's stats, I have logged 422 hours in L4D since that time, so I consider myself qualified to talk about the game.

For those unfamiliar with the story of Left 4 Dead, let me bring you up to speed: HOLY CRAP THERE ARE ZOMBIES OUT THERE WHERE IS MY SHOTGUN!

Valve isn't really one to tell an overt story. Some of the backstory of the zombie plague is filled in by way of graffiti scrawled by other survivors in the "safe rooms" at the start and end of each level, but how our four plucky survivors gathered together? What they were doing when the apocalypse hit? How they survived on their own before they met each other? As far as all that, we get nothing. Not that it really matters. After all, there are zombies to kill.

The cooperative experience of L4D is top-notch, one of the finest co-op games I've ever played. Up to four players, with reasonably smart bots filling in for missing players, play through one of four campaigns of five levels each, culminating in a dramatic rescue which whisks you away from the teeming zombie hordes. Four campaigns may not sound like much (and let's be honest, it's not), but the game has that certain something which keeps it fresh and new even after dozens of times running through the same campaign. Part of that something is the AI Director, Valve's very spiffy system which monitors the players' progress and stress level and dynamically adjusts the difficulty by spawning in more or fewer enemies and more or less health and items.

Versus mode is where the game really shines, and is what has kept me playing L4D for hundreds of hours. Two teams of four players alternate playing through each level in a campaign, once as the Survivors, and once as the Special Infected. The Special Infected are the "elite" Infected types which appear in waves throughout the co-op campaigns, and are different than the Common Infected, which are the run-of-the-mill zombie hordes.

The specials come in four playable flavors: the Hunter, a fast-moving aerial attacker who leaps on and pins his victims to the ground before tearing them to bloody shreds with his claws; the Smoker, whose grossly elongated tongue lets him grab and drag the survivors over long distances, strangling them all the while; the Boomer, a hugely obese walking bomb whose projectile vomit attracts dozens of common infected to attack the hapless survivors who are coated by it; and the Tank, a wall of meat and muscle who can punch a car over a building. There's a fifth special, the Witch, who is not playable and appears (usually) no more than once per level to harass the survivors.

Because versus takes place in the same levels each time, and the survivors follow the same path through the levels each time, it takes only a matter of days to memorize the levels. What happens after that is what separates the good from the bad, because each level is complex enough, and there are enough variables in the game, that both teams are forced to make rapid decisions dozens of times during each level. The infected team is striving to combine their forces effectively to catch the survivor team off guard and deal significant damage, while the survivors are striving to not be caught off guard and make it to the end of the level as quickly and safely as possible. The subtle variations in tactics and execution of those tactics from game to game keeps versus fresh for me even after almost a thousand games.

Recently, Left 4 Dead was updated to allow custom campaigns to be created and played, and the number of those campaigns is steadily increasing, although from what I hear, most of the campaigns which are available at present are best described as "bad." Hopefully the wheat will fall away from the chaff sooner rather than later, because four campaigns really isn't enough.

Lord of the Rings Online, First Impressions

2009-07-14T00:53:00.000-07:00

Pros: World design, Warden Gambits
Cons: Broken crafting system

I've now been playing Lord of the Rings Online (LOTRO) for a bit over a month. My main character is a level 57 Warden, while my other six character slots languish in Lowbieville. I have a while yet to go on my Warden before I hit the level cap of 60, because leveling is slow in LOTRO compared to many MMOs, specifically WoW.

I have tasted the endgame, and it seems satisfying. Indeed, to my surprise, I am even looking forward to the endgame, which has never been the case in any MMO I've played. I think that the reason for this is the exquisite world Turbine has put together for my enjoyment. Yes, the game has its share of bugs and interface issues, and I have some major complaints about the crafting system... but the world, oh, the world. Damn near everyplace I've been in LOTRO has been enthralling, interesting, beautiful, rich in ambience, and on and on. From the mountain crags of Evendim to the desert wasteland of the Lone-Lands to the bucolic homeliness of The Shire to the towering Dwarf stonework of the Mines of Moria, every environment has its own flavor, and each one is crafted with a level of care that I've never seen in another MMO.

In short, world design, check.

The quests are, on the whole, engaging and well-written. They mostly do a good job of maintaining the illusion that there's a reason you're killing the mob du jour other than the quest reward. Some of the writing is downright funny, especially in Forochel and parts of the Mines of Moria, which I suspect were written by the same person. Aside from the writing, there's nothing to differentiate the quests in this game from the quests in any other MMO. Go somewhere, kill X of Y, come back. Go somewhere else, gather X number of body parts from Y, come back. As I said before, it's the world that holds it together, because each new quest hub feels fresh, like a new game unto itself.

The many instanced quests I've done and the handful of instanced content that I've run have been uniformly excellent. The LOTRO dev team has made stellar use of instanced content to tell stories with a level of quality that no other MMO I've played can touch. The endgame instances I've run have been only small three-man instances, designed to be bite-size content, and they have been highly enjoyable, tightly-crafted little areas with just the right amount of challenge. If the instances which are designed for larger groups are up to the same standard, this may well be the first MMO I continue to play past the level cap.

The classes are very satisfying to play as and play with. Because there is no PvP in LOTRO apart from sparring, the classes benefit from being balanced exclusively for PvE, which means, for example, that Hunters, the archer class, can be actual, honest-to-God archers, because there isn't a melee class standing on the other end of the arrows pissing and moaning about how OP Hunters are. Each class has its own role to play, and each class is very good at its role. There is a bit of trouble in Paradise, however. I did not play the game before the Mines of Moria expansion, so I only have hearsay that the two MoM classes, the Warden and the Rune-Keeper, unbalanced the class structure. I believe it, though.

Wardens are a light tank class, unique in my MMO experience. Rather than surviving by damage mitigation and massive health and armor numbers, Wardens survive through Evade/Block/Parry and a robust ability to self-heal and to drain health from their attackers. Wardens also have something else unique in my experience, the Gambit system, which I'll go into in more detail in a bit. Wardens stole some of the tanking glory from the Guardians, although Wardens and Guardians are different enough that each can still find work in the endgame.

The problem child of the Mines of Moria expansion is the Rune-Keeper, who took the "primary DPS class" title from the Hunters, and also can heal well enough to give the primary healing class, the Minstrel, a run for their money. The only thing that keeps Rune-Keepers from being the ultimate class is that they cannot DPS and heal at the same time, due to the clever "attunement" system. In a nutshell, every time an RK casts an offensive spell, he becomes more attuned to the damage side of the scale, unlocking more powerful abilities and giving boosts to his damage output. The opposite is true for healing spells, which attune the RK to the healing side. Most of the RK's most powerful abilities require a certain level of attunement on one side or the other, which means that an RK cannot change gears instantly. Instead, he must use some of his pool of attunement-neutral skills to reduce his attunement level to a point where he can begin using the other set of skills. In spite of the attunement system, Rune-Keepers are pretty much the uberclass, meaning that there are far too many of them in the game, to the detriment of class balance.

Now, on to a subject close to my heart: the Warden's Gambit System. Now this? This is cool. Playing a Warden is a lot like playing Massively Multiplayer Fighting Game Online, which keeps me from getting bored during the grind. Wardens don't have "skills" like a normal MMO class. Instead, they have gambits. Wardens are equipped with a trio of skills which perform basic attacks and also add an icon to the Gambit Panel, a line of five empty boxes which fill with gambit icons as you use your basic skills. Gambits are composed of at least two icons and up to five icons, in particular combinations. When a valid combination of icons is present in the Panel, the name of the readied gambit is displayed on the Panel, and the Warden can use his special trigger skill to unleash the gambit in question. Gambits come in three flavors: Spear gambits deal damage and/or give offensive buffs, Shield gambits heal and/or give defensive buffs, and Fist gambits generate threat and/or drain health and/or deal damage over time.

There's quite a bit of variation within each of the three types of gambits, however. By way of example, take Dance of War, a length-four Shield gambit (shield, fist, shield, fist). Dance of War applies a hefty bonus to Evade for 20 seconds, and also transfers threat from every member of the group to the Warden. Compare that to Surety of Death, a length-four Fist gambit (fist, shield, fist, shield), which deals direct damage initially followed by damage over time, and generates increased threat. The ins and outs of the Gambit System make the Warden a very engaging class to play, and the wide variety of tricks they have up their sleeve makes them one of the best solo classes in the game.

The one major problem I have with the game is the crafting system. LOTRO uses the WoW-style crafting system, wherein you gather your materials and click "make." That's boring but acceptable. The problem is that the crafting system was clearly designed before the Mines of Moria expansion added Legendary Items, a special class of endgame item which have potentially powerful class-specific bonuses and which gain experience points and level up to become more powerful. Legendary Items are a really cool idea. Unfortunately, they rendered large swaths of the crafting system moot in the endgame, because you can't craft anything that can compete with a Legendary. Sadly, the crafting system in LOTRO is useful for outfitting your alts, and very little else.

LOTRO has a ten-day free trial and doesn't require purchase of the game on disk. If you're an MMO player, it's worth your time to try it.

Resources:
LOTROInfo, the single best source of advanced info I've found.
The LOTRO Wiki

First Post!

2009-07-09T19:51:00.001-07:00

Opening the site with a bit of good, old-fashioned internet trolling. Welcome! There will be more to come soon as we get things under way.