Field Report #23 - Dragons and Dinosaurs

I was hoping to be able to do a review of Grandia today, but the game turns out to be slightly longer than I anticipated. Not that that is a bad thing, I am already feeling a bit sad that I'll have to part with the characters before long, after having spent almost 40 hours with the game so far. So instead here is a little bit of this and that I've been gaming lately;

Endless Sky
I got the recommendation to check out Endless Sky after having ranted about how much I like Escape velocity yet another time. And it is definitely very much like Escape Velocity! In fact I'd say it is almost an identical copy in style, albeit it seems the story is somewhat different. It's difficult for me to say since I haven't really encountered much story in Endless Sky yet, but it presents itself in the same manner that it does in Escape Velocity. Endless Sky, much like Escape Velocity, is a pretty slow-start game. You don't get much of a ship to work with early on, but there are fairly easy ways to make money. It does require a lot of "mindless" flying back and forth to do escort and shipping missions however, but this is just the way it was in Escape Velocity. I haven't really got the hang of how to battle in Endless Sky yet, and I didn't do much of that in Escape Velocity either, but in both those games it is clear that if you want to enter the fringe areas of space you will need to be able to stand your ground in combat. At the moment I am still mostly doing delivery service in the centre, and safe part, of the galaxy (ie close to the Earth Solar system) and waiting for a story arc to present itself, but overall it is proving to be much of the same simple fun Escape Velocity was.

This picture does not capture the danger of these zones.

Dragon Age Origins
After a rough start where I didn't have much fun with the game things are starting to look a bit better. I've got a squad I am fairly happy with but I still feel a bit lost in the bigness of it all. Dragon Age Origins suffers from the same problem a lot of more-or-less open world games do - they give you a main story arc to follow, often a very urgent one, yet also gives you free hands to ignore it. What's the problem, you might think? Well, it makes the main story arc less believable and immersive if I can just choose to ignore the imminent threat of death and destruction at any time. In DAO I've got characters that remind me of my main task at hand, and that get annoyed when I choose to dilly-dally. Eventhough I like the touch, their nagging personality actually grates on me and to have someone sigh everytime I want to save a child from trolls got on my nerves. So goodbye Morrigan. So far it's definitely not a bad game and I find combat quite enjoyable most of the time (targeting with aoe's is so broken though), but I have yet to feel immersed in the world or stories and the whole Fade business is verging on being more obnoxious than fun or interesting.

He might sound like an Antonio Banderas-wannabe, but he's my favorite character so far.

Yoshi's Story
Not that I have been playing it much, but the son has made great progress! I am so proud. And a bit surprised seeing as he really has not played the game much. Probably not even ten times in his whole life. I am still far from promoting gaming to him since it really is more hassle than it is worth, as far as I am concerned. Personally I think he can have just as fun with a train set or something, and then there is a lot less worry for me that he will break something. He did have a bunch of friends over the other day and at one point they wanted to play some video games. They knocked my n64 twice in the floor before I said it's time to go play something else. Lesson learned, consoles with cables should be on floor level.

Yoshi's Story is great though because it really has a very gentle learning curve. It allows my son to take his time and just jump and walk around for a bit if that is what he wants to do. There is no time limit to worry about and the first stage has very simple enemies. But he's already learned to jump obstacles, eat enemies and fruits, shoot down fruits and get eggs. It's eerie really.

No Man's Sky
I am actually still having fun with NMS. I say that like it's some sort of miracle, but it's gotten so much scorn people seem to treat it that way. It really requires that you make your own thing of it and try to forget the hype. Just like I said in my Initials Thoughts on it, there is a fairly entertaining game in there, it's just not what you might expect.

World of Warcraft: Legion
I am pretty sure I am going to buy this sooner or later, but I really haven't decided when. I knew that I wasn't going to get in from the start because I really don't have the time to stand around with a hundred other players trying to click the same quest giver and getting kicked out of the server over and over. I've done that, no more, thanks. But maybe in a month or so, we'll see.

And that's about it for now, but I'd love to hear what you all are gaming at the moment. I'm guessing it's mostly Legion though!