FFXIV: ARR - Part One (Character Creation)

I decided to divide my FFXIV:ARR review in several smaller topics so they can be enjoyed as bite size snacks rather than full blown dinner.

And here is the first course: Character Creation

So without further delay, I shall jump to the matter at hand.
There are 5 different character types you can choose from and from there you can choose whether you want to play female or male and you can choose "the clan" they belong to:

Hyur (humans) Midlander/Highlander

Mi’qote (catlike creatures, in FFXI they were called Mithras) Seekers of the Sun/Keepers of the Moon

Roegadyn (Big, bulky creatures – female version looks like amazon women!) Sea Wolves/Hellsguard

Elezen (Who are we kidding, THEY ARE ELFS!) Wildwood Elezen/Duskwight Elezen

Lalafel (The tiny folk that bite your ankles, the male version looks like a kid with fake mustache) Dunesfolk/Plainsfolk

There are some stat changes depending which clan you choose, but they are quite miniscule so I would just concentrate on what look you like the most. It doesn't make a difference in stats whether you play female or male.

The character creation in FFXIV:ARR is actually a lot of fun. I could have spent two years going through all different variations that you could have for your character’s hair, skin, tattoos and so on. 

Having said that though, I still think there are some things that could have been added, like size of your body (i.e. if you wanted to be fat, skinny, wide shouldered, hunchback etc.) and I also would have liked to see more long haired options for female (and why not male as well) characters.

There however are things like “bust size” and “length of your tail” (for mi’qotes – which are the cat characters of the game).

As you can see from the pictures above, you can preview your character in different environments and also how you will one day look like when you have managed to get your artifact gear. I really like this feature because there is nothing worse than giving that cool silver hair to your character and when you actually play the game it’s plain old grey... 

When you have decided what you look like, the hard part begins. You need to choose which god you will be worshiping. The god you worship influences your elemental resistances.

After this you choose your job. Do you fancy wielding an axe or maybe casting some spells? In general there are the tanks: Gladiator and Marauder, the damage dealers: Lancer, Archer and Pugilist and the magic casters: Thaumaturge, Conjurer and Arcanist.

If you choose a job you end up hating, it is not a problem. Once you have leveled your character to level 10 you can change your job freely anywhere in the world. 

You don't get to choose which city you start in. Every job class has its own starting city that ties you to the story line that starts from there.

....

SO... back to the character creation.

I created my Mi'qote and ended up spending a lot of tine fine-tuning all the little details. I am quite satisfied with the end result.

Here she is, in the character login screen with the rest of my characters that I used to play with. You don't really need more than one as you can play all jobs on one character, but I had friends on different servers so I have a few.

Sorry about the granny gear, it's an ugly robe I received from a quest... already looking to find a new one.

....
And if I end up hating this model, I received one time "make-over" item that lets me change my character completely. I believe this is a gift for everyone who plays the game more than 30 days.

Adios, until next time!

Final Fantasy XIV: A Realm Reborn - Early Access is tomorrow!!!!

So, here I am at work, where I am supposed to be working, earning money and keeping the wheels of the world turning.
But I am not working, I am surfing all the websites in the world that has letters ARR in it. I am a websurfer junkie who is looking for that small fix that will keep me going until tomorrow morning.

What's special about tomorrow morning then?
Well, nothing more than... the game I waited impatiently to come out in the autumn of 2010 is actually finally coming out (again) and by what I have experienced in several Alpha and Beta sessions, I can say the game is pretty damn awesome.

So yes, this is why I can't work right now, I wonder if that would pass as valid reason for my boss?

I will write a proper review of the game sometime next week, once I have had a chance to play it more than few hours here and there. Also, I am in the middle of getting myself a new PC, so it will be interesting to see how the game is now on my average laptop compared to the beast that is coming home hopefully as soon as possible!!!

Thanks for reading and see you in couple of days, or better yet, see you tomorrow on Excalibur server in Final Fantasy XIV: ARR early access launch!!!

Aliens: Colonial Marines - in depth review

This game is crap... That is all.

Live Long and Prosper

So today I am not going to write about any games.

I have been trying to cut down playing games a bit for the past week or so because I think Mass Effect 3 had a a MASSIVE EFFECT on my sleep which led me to sleepwalking (I think I was running away from the husks). I am not going to go too much into it but lets just say Vivid imagination + gaming until 2am + side of the bed + head = a lot of blood, dozen stitches and a week off from work.

Instead today I am going to rant a bit about SCI-FI series… and the lack of.

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Star Trek (Mainly Voyager and Deep Space Nine for me personally), V, Farscape, Babylon 5 and Stargate SG-1 were the best TV series I was lucky to grow up with, they really created the Sci-fi geek out of me that I am today.

In fact I would even throw X-files to the group… I think Fox Mulder probably was my first TV crush.

Then in the beginning of this millennium something happened and all the sci-fi series either turned into total garbage or got canceled before they even reached any kind of “cult” status.

I was forced to watch stuff like Roswell and Dark Angel. Not saying that either of the series were particularly bad but I can’t put them even in the same sentence as the ones mentioned above. These were bubblegum sci-fi which mothers and fathers sit down to watch with their kids… not the awesome geeky sci-fi that makes grown up men dress up in tight space suits and go meet fellow enthusiasts.

I never fell as low as Angel and Smallville though, I watched them a few episodes and decided they were not worth the time of the day (for me at least).

  

I was so happy when I found out that there was going to be a new Star Trek series (Enterprise). I followed it regardless it being a bit tedious at times and was really gutted when it was cancelled after the 4^th season.

I was also over the moon when I found out that they were making a new series for V. It was a big surprise that ABC decided to cancel it as it was doing pretty well. It was left in such a cliffhanger as well that I was almost tempted to join the protests people had against ABC for canceling it. There are still several websites and petitions by the fans to revive this TV series so I am hoping one day we will see what actually happened to humankind (https://www.facebook.com/ProjectAliceV and http://geek-news.mtv.com/?p=22544).

Does Lost make it to the Sci-fi category?

I have been thinking about this as to me Sci-fi always have to be about space and great adventures to the galaxies far far away, but some people claim that LOST definitely is sci-fi… and I guess with all the gizmos, time travelling and the such, it kind of goes to that genre. I quite enjoyed Lost, so much that I have watched the series twice. The 1^st time around I found the ending extremely boring and felt the series was a bit of a flop but when I recently watched it again with my boyfriend, James (who had never seen it before!!) I actually paid attention to different things (as I already knew what was happening sort of) and found it quite brilliant.

I do hope they bring something as mind bending to the TV again sometime soon as Lost was.

Now, few days ago we started to watch Stargate: Universe (Which in our household first was Stargate: University - don’t ask me how I got that - and then in my sleepy state one morning I asked James if he wanted to watch the Star Trek: University....[srsly wtf, I MUST have hit my head]).  I quite liked the pilot and I was sold from the word go as it had one of my favorite actors in it (Robert Carlyle). Regardless the fact he plays a bit of a psycho scientist in it, I really liked his character which caused some heated debates in our household.

Now 10 episodes later I unfortunately feel the series has nothing new to offer to the sci-fi world.

The main storyline is like Star Trek Voyager (stuck on the other side of the galaxy trying to get home) and the character profiling is like Battlestar Galactica (grazy science dude, strong leader, rebelling civilians who come across like morons, a love triangle and a few political issues to deal with).

The episodes are individuals (i.e. there is no real storyline to follow, except that they are trying to get back to earth) and usually follow the same pattern: There is a problem, someone gets hurt while trying to fix it, everything is fine in the end.

I am really desperately hoping they would come across some enemy that would follow them throughout the whole series (like Borg in Star Trek, Cylons in Galagtica and Goa’uld in SG-1) but so far the biggest thread they have had was some disease they got from the water they brought to the ship from some alien planet… LIKE SERIOUSLY!?

Well, I went to Wikipedia today and found out that this series as well only lived as far as the end of 2^nd season… So I might as well stop watching now because I bet nothing that interesting is going to happen.

It is a sad world we live in…

Now my question is, am I missing something big that I should be aware of?

I feel that all the Sci-fi series I start to watch let me down in one way or another.

The only slightly positive sci-fi experience I have had in the past year was Battlestar Galactica, which was great for the 1^st and 2^nd season (So good I actually watched them in one week), but even that got worse and worse the further it went and when I finally reaced the final episode I couldn't wait it to be over.

I feel that there is nothing worth watching in TV anymore (unless it’s comedy, as I quite like stuff like Big Bang Theory and surprisingly the New Girl – don’t judge me until you watch a few episodes, I would go as far as compare It to Friends!).

Like… I can’t believe there are boring soaps, crap like Jeremy Kyle shows, “scripted” reality shows like Made in Chelsea, a dozen different vampire series, another dozen different crime investigation shows that gets recycled in the screens year after year but not a single good sci-fi show that is worth to actually watch.

If you go to TV.com and check out the Most popular Science Fiction shows on TV the number 1 is WALKING DEAD!!!! Which is about Zombies… 2^nd is Doctor Who, which quite frankly deserves its place even if it is just for the long history it has (I never got into it, maybe because I only heard of Doctor Who when I moved to UK), 3^rd is some series called Grimm which is a supernatural crime drama (really now?!) and 4^th is FRIGGIN DRAGONBALL Z!

Like what the hell world?!

I wish I could write to the mighty TV God a complaint letter for neglecting this massive group of tights wearing sci-fi fans as it really is time we got something good to our TV screens!!

Star Wars: The Old Republic (PC)

In a galaxy far far away, a year ago (almost exactly) BioWare released a game called Star Wars: The Old Republic.
(Ok, yeah it was a year and 3 months -I know someone would have corrected me on that eventually, but you get the point... )
Amongst friends, this little MMORPG is called SWTOR.

It has been speculated that SWTOR was the most expensive MMO ever made and you can actually see why (the brand, the voice acting on EVERYTHING to name a few) but regardless it went free to play within the first year of its life.

The Saga Begins

The story takes place thousands of years before the events in the Star Wars films (which was a bit of a disappointment for myself personally because I really wanted to have Darth Vader as my companion! :P) The Republic and the Empire are at peace (kinda) after centuries long war but the whole galaxy is divided in two.

So you get the point, good versus evil - pretty much what Star Wars has always been about.

When you start the game, you get to choose your side (Dark Side for me all the way!) as well as your race and your job. There are 9 races and 4 classes to choose from (and all classes have 2 different choices to specialize in).

I chose to play a Sith Sorcerer (Oh what a surprise that I choose a class that can cast magic...well in this case USE THE FORCE). My boyfriend went for the Bounty Hunter.

I actually bought this game (Collector's Edition with all the geeky bits, like the Darth Malgus statue!!) already around this time last year.
Back then  the game felt more like offline single player game rather than a MMO. There was hardly anyone ever in the fleet (an area where everyone supposedly gathered) and you were able to progress in the game on your own without any trouble.
The storyline was good and it kept me interested for a good month or two, but that is relatively short time for a MMO which is supposed to keep players paying for subsciptions for years.

So, few weeks ago I decided to dust off my security token and log on my character to see if it REALLY had gotten that bad that BioWare felt the need to end the subscriptions and let everyone and their mother come and swing a bit of lightsaber.

I logged on and I was really surprised to find the fleet full of people:

Gaining Levels

Just like in all RPGs you start as a level 1 noobie who doesn't know how to equip a weapon and basically gets oneshotted by the first monster that comes across your way (In my case, I was a slave dreaming of becoming a Sith Lord).
Soon enough however you are running from one quest to another, gaining some levels and learning new abilities and spells.

In SWTOR there is no such thing as "grinding for exp" - well I mean I guess you could do that, but the quests give you more than enough exp to level your character. In fact I found that if you do all the quests on your way, you will soon be "too high" for the storyline and you can just fly through them - even as a squishy sorcerer.

You can also gain exp by doing warzones. It's like a PVP (player vs. player) area where you have different tasks, like for example take over the turrets before the enemy does, or play spectator sport called Huttball where you need to co-ordinate your team to take the ball across the opponent line. Naturally you also kill other players while you do this... or in my case get killed and be the easy pray everyone goes after for extra points...

Huttball Arena

Aaaand then there are the spacebattles which before used to give ****loads of exp but now hardly any, however they are still fun! (Not quite like the king of retro spaceshooters R-type, but you still feel pride at your mouse clicking skills when you finish a battle succesfully)

Ok, so it's safe to say I am quite enjoying playing SWTOR again, running around, doing missions for the storyline, however I am not 100% convinced if I will continue playing once I finish the storyline. The cap level at the moment is 50 and I am 47 - so I don't have that much to go.

ANYWAYS, moving on...

Free to Play

Like I said earlier, the game went free to play (In November 2012) but because I was a paying customer before I had something called "Preferred member" account, which meant that I still had access to some of the cool things, like sprint at level 15 and cargo bay when I finally got my own ship, two things I would not be able to play the game without.
However some other things weren't free to even the preferred members anymore, which made me pretty sad, afterall I had paid quite a bit for the game AND I had paid several months for subsciptions.
I soon noticed that everything that was even remotely handy or cool looking cost extra money. You had to pay extra to be able to hide your headgear (because lets face it, some of the headgear can be pretty damn ugly...) you had to pay extra to customize your crew members appearance, you had to pay extra to be able to sell more items in the markets etc... So after only one day of playing I decided to become a subscriber again (to a free to play game) because buying all these things on their own would have ended up costing a lot more than 1 month subscription.
Plus what's the point playing a MMO if you cant customize your gear to look awesome????

Shall I recommend this?

If you have never played SWTOR before, buy it from Amazon for £7.22 with free delivery. You would spend that money on beer or junk food anyway, so no harm done!

(UPDATE: I think you can actually download the game for free at: https://account.swtor.com/signup - So go get the beers after all!)

The game is fun for a while until you get bored doing the quests.
Protip: When you buy the game, remember to order a 2nd copy for your gamer friend and make them create a character with you!
The game is a lot more fun with someone else and quite frankly I probably wouldn't log on if I had to do all the quests on my own. Not because they are hard but because it's just simply more fun with someone else.
If you don't have any friends who play games (or who don't admit to play games because even though it is 2013 gaming in some societies is considered lame :P) then at least try to get into a guild and befriend the people who are already playing the game.
And by the way, the best reality check is to join a guild which is run by a 13 year old kid... I do feel old sometimes!

Regarding end game... I have no idea unfortunately. If I get there and decide to do more than one raid, I will let you know what I think about it. But there are so many games coming out and only so little time in a day (especially when I work as well!!) that it might be that once I become the new emperor I might let my Sith go rogue and rule the galaxy on her own.

Oh and my character's name by the way is Ig'Alima Ningirsu - anyone know where that name comes from?

My Boyfriends Bounty Hunter

I might be alone with this, but I can imagine Meg popping out from that as a massive Sandworm....

My Ship!!

THE list (and a few lines about LoveFilm)

My list of games to come from LoveFilm (they all didn't fit in the screenshot but you get the idea)

LoveFilm is actually great way to get a bit of an idea of a game before you buy it. Only downside is that you never know what you are going to get... Like now, they sent us Mass Effect 2 AND 3 in the same patch... well, I guess I know what I will be doing over the weekend :D

Simpsons: Tapped Out (Android iOS)

Monday to Friday my alarm goes off at 6:45... Way too early if you ask me, especially if you have been up until 1 am playing games or usually watching Family Guy (Damn you BBC3 for changing the times for your shows!!)

I have created a bit of a ritual for myself to wake up my brain from the fuzz. I play with my phone for a bit, check my facebook and email. Usually by the time I delete the last junk email (the only kind of email that seems to arrive to my email inbox) I am ready to get up and face the world.

The games I play on my phone change quite frequently (mainly because I get bored of them!) - at the moment I waste a few minutes everyday of my life building a little Springfield in the latest EA game made for smartphones and Ipads called Tapped Out.

Now before I go any further, let me just say that I do play other than building games and no I am not a EA fan, it's simply a coincidence, I didn't realize Tapped out was a EA game until just now, when I started writing about it.

So let's talk about the game a bit.
It's again one of those "here are your tools, build a road, add a house" kind of games.
The player is tasked to rebuild Springfield through a number of missions that involve various characters from The Simpsons cast. At first you only have Homer but as you progress further you unlock more characters and places you recognize from the show.
To build a new house or unlock a new character takes absolutely forever (24h on average) so it really does feel like a massive waste of time. However, I seem to be weirdly addicted to seeing what I can get once I build the Springfield Elementary School, Moe's Tavern, Kwik-E-Mart... and when do I get to see Marge? What about Reverend Lovejoy? There are also some funny things (which you would expect from a Simpson's game) here and there that has made me chuckle occasionally.

The game is free to download from the Android shop (I assume it's the same for Iphones) but as with all free to play, time management games there is the option to speed up the progress and buy additional items by purchasing donuts with real life money.
(I was actually reading from Metro this morning how some kid had spent £1000 on donuts in that game...). Personally I wouldn't bother with it, just because you choose to waste your time on this game doesn't mean you should waste also your money!!!

Verdict: If you are a massive Simpsons fan, go ahead and download it to your phone, I am sure you will enjoy it. It has original voice actors (!!) and from all the free to play, build a town games for your phone, this probably is the best one I have played so far.
Sadly....
EA doesn't seem to have a very good month, because Tapped Out, just like SimCity which I reviewed few days ago has had massive server issues. You have to always connect to the internet to be able to build your Springfield and more often than none I have received this on my screen: