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Week of March 25th: Dauntless Closed Beta First Impressions/Review

March 25, 2018 | No comments

Hey guys, I’m back from a long hiatus since school started getting busier. I had the opportunity to get a closed beta key from Epic Games for Dauntless, an upcoming, free-to-play co-op RPG game similar to Monster Hunter. Dauntless pits players against monsters called “behemoths” in an attempt to keep the frontier safe for colonial expansion (at least that’s what I got from the story). Keep in mind I’ve only played up until earlier tier 3 stages, so my knowledge is incomplete.

Anyways, without further ado, let’s get right into it.

– The Good:

– The game follows a traditional Monster Hunter formula. Monster Hunter fans will find it very easy to understand the hunt system. Dauntless is very minimalist, so there isn’t anything super complex to worry about, feeling like a barebones tech demo for a Monster Hunter game. Fans of similar games will be able to transition easily into Dauntless.

– The Weapons Are Fairly Unique. Currently, Dauntless has 5 weapons: The balanced Sword, the slower Axes, and (Gun)Hammers, Fast Chainblades, and Flashy War Pikes. Each weapon has it’s own strengths and weaknesses, which when combined can result in an efficient, and effective monster hunt with others. For beginners, swords are a great way to learn the boss patterns without getting stuck into long animations of other weapons. War pikes can play a more utility role in parties, opening wounds for others to attack with increased damage. Chainblades are available for those looking for more mobility and fast paced action, whereas more patient, slow players can utilize axes and hammers for breakoffs and staggers as long as they know the boss patterns. Epic is continuing to add more weapons into the game, so expect more than just the 5 they have now.

– It’s fun with friends. The co-op, social aspect of the game is one of the biggest advantages Dauntless has. Nothing beats teaming up with 3 other people to take down a monster 20 times larger than oneself. It doesn’t feel like forced ability cycles like in most MMOs, but isn’t completely free to combo like MH or Vindictus. It can be a fun distraction for you and friends if you all get a beta key if you’re looking for a casual game to play together. There are very few, if any, games like Monster Hunter on PC, so we’ll take what we can get.

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– The Bad:

– It can be VERY clunky. Getting stuck in an animation will screw you over eventually. Heavier weapons like the Axe and Hammer are punished greatly for inexperience. Knowing a bosses patterns and attacks helps, but some attack animations are longer than the behemoth animations, which will certainly be a turn off for most players. You’re forced into using generic combos for each weapon rather than Monster Hunter’s mix and match combinations. Most MH fans might see Dauntless as a very simple game because of this, and not worth the time(which is exactly the community this should be targeting), but it’s still early access.

– The environments are stale. Each place is the exact same layout, with a few minor changes. Sometimes it’ll be stormy and rainy. Sometimes it’ll be snowy and icy. Regardless, there are only minor changes, like different fauna/resources. There aren’t any super unique environments Dauntless has that other games don’t. There aren’t any sinkholes into caves, high hanging bridges over lush valleys, or crystalline structures to jump off of and air attack monsters from.

– The game runs poorly. Even on the lowest settings, including the resolution scale (OH GOD MY EYES), the game rarely reaches 30 frames per second. The nature of the game itself is slower paced so this isn’t as big of an issue as you’d expect, but it does leave much to be desired. It’s a pretty GPU heavy game currently, so that might be part of it as I’m running an older rig for gaming, however, take into account that performance is one of the last things to complete in an early access title, and with Epic Games’ reputation, this will likely not be an issue for the final release.

– The Camera Can Be Jarring. One of the biggest things you’ll notice is just how zoomed in the camera is, especially in town. Motion blur can helps with this, but the camera is not for those who get motion sickness easily. In town, the camera zooms in further, causing your character to take up a good portion of the screen. There’s no minimap to help you get around, just a few compass icons at the top, and you have to learn where everything is on your own. While not the worst issue with the game, it will turn a few people off from the game.

– It can be underwhelming. One of the nicest things about Vindictus/Monster Hunter is that it actually FEELS like you’re hitting a giant monster. Your character slows down upon contact, you see blood gushing out, or your sword breaks against a tough hide. Dauntless’ hit effects are VERY underwhelming. They create tiny little sparks which don’t appear to do much damage. You can’t see monster health and monsters slow down, though not noticeably so like in Monster Hunter(limping monsters). This is one of the biggest issues with this game, and if it’s trying to be more like Monster Hunter, it must remedy this.

 

Overall, I wouldn’t recommend the game in it’s current state. If you get a closed beta key(try asking on the subreddit!), by all means go for it and give it a shot, but for diehard Monster Hunter fans, you’ll be better off waiting for the PC release, or playing on console/handhelds until then. It’s not a bad game by any means, but it does feel like it’s lacking a lot (like an actual early access game from a major developer, surprise surprise) of content and quality of life changes that keep it from becoming great. I think if Dauntless adopted a system more similar to Vindictus, but with an updated game engine, and support, there could be HUGE success.

Week of January 14th: Refunct Speedrun 3min 5seconds

January 24, 2018 | No comments

Hey guys, my friend FINALLY decided to start playing again to beat my record, so here’s me beating him back again. For those who are looking to get into some speedrunning, Refunct is a game that’s super simple, cheap, and easy to optimize. It’s a great intro to a great community.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nh04Dzfo4QM

Week of December 31st(New Years!) : Vindictus

January 3, 2018 | 1 comment

Hey guys, to start off the new years after taking a winter break from school, we’re gonna do a review of an old classic mmorpg I used to/still play. This week we’re going over Vindictus, a game by Devcat under Nexon’s licensing. Note I won’t be doing as many posts for this blog now that it’s no longer a class requirement, but I’ll make one post every 2 weeks minimum!

– The good:

– The combat system is simply one of the best, if not the best in any MMO, and even better than some single player oriented games I’ve played like Dark Souls and The Witcher. The hitboxes are clean, the action is quick (and even faster once you get some attack speed), and the bosses have a lot of variety in the mid to late game that keeps you on your toes, and stumbles even some of the best players from time to time. The hack and slash elements here are very well done. I would entirely recommend someone to play this game simply for the combat system(but to be aware the early game is very muchly a grind and a faceroll until about the ainle missions, or even the polar bear if you’re new to this type of game).

– The character classes are very diverse and unique from one another. Nearly every single character plays entirely different to the other characters, even between their weapon types if they utilize more than one. You want safer, consistent ranged combat, you pick your xgun or bow Kai. You want to get off a huge burst of spells and gtfo, you pick your staff Evie. You want to get in the face of the boss all the time, and stay there. you pick your Pillar or Cestus Karok, or Greatsword Hurk. You want to play reactively, you pick Twin Sword Vella dancing with ease at the bosses attack patterns, or a sturdy shield maiden in Fiona. And there’s still others who fall on both ends of the spectrum. Find the character you like, and stick with them till 40 to see if you like the game(follow AP guides early on so you don’t get screwed later).

– The character customization is amazing. The armor sets can be mixed and matched however you want for the most part(be aware of set bonuses). There’s an entire outfitter shop with all sorts of different hairstyles, tattoos, inner armors, etc. The bad part is that most of it costs a LOT of money. I’m talking $5 for a single head, armor, leg, glove, or boot customization, but for overall variety, and in such an old game engine, it certainly is vast and very customizable down to some of the colors of the armor pieces themselves.

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– The bad:

– The game is pretty much entirely peer to peer hosted, so whoever’s the host needs good internet or no one can play properly. While not usually a problem with the earlier missions that only accompany up to 4 people, it gets a bit hairier with the 6 or 8 man raids, or when huge masses of mobs start spawning in and the host’s computer can’t keep up. On the flipside, it does allow people to play on other servers with friends if they live nearby with relatively low ping and consistency, so that’s nice.

– The game is VERY much a cash grab at this point. The only thing keeping it afloat are the whales, but most of them only stay simply because of the time invested through sunk cost fallacy. In a free to play game, the community needs to be alive enough for the game to be commercially successful, but eventually even the whales will quit eventually. It’s been very sad seeing the community slowly dwindle over the years and now hardly seeing anyone in even the first 10 channels.

– The game is poorly optimized. It’s built off a very old engine from more than a decade ago, and rarely, if ever, reaches 60fps for even the best gaming rigs. Sure it looks pretty on higher settings, but the game is all about functionality. This can be improved by turning off UI elements(the buff indicators and their tooltips in particular are resource heavey due to their updating every single second, if you want better functionality for this game I’d recommend turning off any UI elements you deem unnecessary for the fight itself.) but will still have a few issues occasionally.

– Progression in the game can be heavily RNG based. For earlier levels it doesn’t matter that much for what weapons and other things you use as long as they’re appropriately leveled. If you’re an experienced player you can easily get to the late game within 20 hours of gameplay, especially when you know when to upgrade things, or just the weapon, etc, and how to play the game itself effectively. For new players, however, it can be very confusing and grindy when they try to farm for things they could just buy on the market for dirt cheap that’s the correct level for progressing through the game. This is also a problem with the enhancing and enchanting systems in the game which can be seen here:

http://vindictus.gamepedia.com/Item_Enhancement
http://vindictus.gamepedia.com/Enchanting.

This can make it hard to progress in the game after a certain threshold where it’s required to be useful in any way during raids or other battles. They’ve since remedied this now that you get free gear at level 90 that lets you get near the attack cap.

– Nexon NA’s support is ABYSMAL. The community mods are mostly just people ruling with an iron fist over anything that goes against their own preconceived biases, and Nexon has issues with fan made sites outside of their own forums or wiki. Dealing with the support team is mostly just rehashed, premade messages that get you nowhere.

eSports: A Primer

September 15, 2017 | No comments

What are eSports (also written e-Sports, or electronic Sports) you might ask? In a nutshell, eSports refers to competitive video gaming. While many would agree this simple description doesn’t even scratch the surface, we’ll begin with using that for the purposes of this blog.

eSports basics here.

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