The Honest Gamer's Lament

So in the last month I've finally been polishing off Divinity II.  I hit my stride and, thanks to playing the patched, newer version, no longer got mired down in game-breaking bugs.  In short, I was able to reach the stretch of game that was fun, and I enjoyed mindlessly tearing through Rivellon, discovering nooks and crannies and one-shotting monsters.

The first time I tried to play Ego Draconis I encountered a huge bug on my way into the Hall of Echoes (the final boss area).  It's a dragon-form only, no-land, flight-only zone but I got stuck in my human form  and was therefore physically unable to advance.  This time, though, I was able to complete that section of the game with only mild swearing, and to advance to the "Flames of Vengeance" expansion content.  I enjoyed Aleroth (and how it's changed since the early days of the Divine who, no matter what the canon says, is a lady), and enjoyed maxing out my armor, skills, and stats.  In short, I was a completely overpowered badass covered in pointy bits, but sometimes that's fun.

Seriously, look at how pointy armor gets in this game. You'll put your eye out, Rhode!

I advanced to the final mission, bearing fully charmed and enchanted armor, a deliciously deadly sword, and with all my skills and regenerative potions (as if I needed mere potions anymore) neatly arranged on my hotbar.  And lo, the final mission is: a zeppelin escort in dragon form.

It's a dirty job, and no-one should have to do it.

Dragon form, despite being the selling point of Divinity II that's meant to set it apart from other, similar RPGs, really sucks.  It's hard to master, and all of the time that you've put into upgrading armor and skills no longer matters.  For this mission the game hands you a full set of maxed-out, top-level dragon skills and it still... doesn't really matter.

In short, I spent 35 hours of game time creating a really top-notch, unbeatable character who then doesn't feature at all in the finale.

I expressed rather vocal frustration with this turn of events, employing a number of unprintable words.  My husband shrugged and suggested from across the room: "So... install a trainer."

I paused.  "Um,"  I responded tentatively,  "do they even have those for this game?"

He gave me a withering look, perhaps pitying my naivete.  "Of course they have them."  He typed something into his laptop and within 20 seconds was reciting me a list of options.

What I realized the next morning (in the shower, of course, because that's where epiphanies happen) is that I've been playing so honest for so long that I literally can no longer remember how to cheat.  Oh, I know where to get mods for Fallout games and I know how to create and edit maps for a bunch of classic titles, and I'll admit that in fifth grade I used to stack the Uno deck before dealing to my (not very bright) classmates.  I lay no claims to having been eternally honest.  I just realized that it's been a long, long time.  In no small part I suspect this is because these days I often game on the PS3 and on my Droid, but also it's because games now have things like "difficulty settings" and "actual learning curves."

So, Divinity II awaited.  Obviously, the answer was Google and in five minutes I'd sorted the problem by myself in a way that seemed at least 60% likely not to include malware.  I installed the trainer and it all worked, without putting anything else on my PC (nasty or otherwise), and so I cheerfully booted up the game and got ready to move past this horrible section of doom.

Except trainers only work in human form -- which I had already neatly overpowered (and how) just through thorough gameplay.  Dragon form is still exceptionally vulnerable.  And this mission is the only time in the entire Flames of Vengeance content expansion that you use it!

So the hell with it: the last section of Divinity II: Flames of Vengeance is going to remain unfinished.  You know what happens at the end?  Good triumphs over evil, because it's a Generic RPG.  And because the main game ends with evil triumphing over good, which is a trick they seem unlikely to repeat in the "satisfying conclusion."

I'm out.  "Fun" certainly isn't everything, as I've recently been discussing with another writer.  (Aside: I think he and I will both be blogging on the topic in the not-too-distant future.)  But consistency, satisfaction, and playability are pretty damn important to a game and Divinity II just fell right down on its ass there.  I don't need this brick wall to bang my head against when the world is full of others.

Larian, I am disappoint.  You're capable of really good, if quirk-filled and derivative, game design.  I'm still recommending Divine Divinity to anyone who just wants to sit down at the PC and suddenly look up, 6 hours later, amazed how long they spent hacking at orcs.  But if I'm going to spend hours trying and retrying the last section of a game, I need to have a reason.  I need it to have tactics I can learn, skills I can improve, methods I can change, and a motivation for me to keep going.  Divinity II is giving me none of the above, so back onto the virtual shelf it goes, 70 hours of my total time (I had to play the main game twice, after switching from disc to Steam) ending without conclusion.

----------------------------------------

The current playlist here at home includes Fallout: New Vegas - Honest Hearts, L.A. Noire, and Chrono Cross.  I've / We've only just begun the latter two so despite me having two "finished" games in one week to complain about, it'll be a while before there are any new ones. ;)

The RPG and Me

Despite my uneven record with RPGs, I've recently installed and started two 2009 releases on my shiny new PC: Dragon Age: Origins and Divinity II: Ego Draconis.  And my conclusion is this:

No, seriously, I really hate party-based gaming.

I'll admit that I had an irrational love for Divine Divinity.  It was, and remains, one of the worst names ever given to a game.  But oh, what fun!  I'd never have picked up this isometric Diablo II look-alike on my own, but in July 2003 I had a brand-new gaming-capable desktop for the first time in seven years (sound familiar?) and a friend brought DivDiv for me as a gift.  I installed it at something like 9:00 p.m. and became vaguely conscious, some time later, that I was both thirsty and needed to pee, and also that it was after dawn.

That summer I was unemployed and transitory, between college and grad school, so I had some time on my hands.  I must have poured at least a hundred hours into DivDiv and I still can't say why except, and this is important, that it was fun.  The story was fairly derivative, the translation errors (Larian is a European studio) were occasionally painful, and the mechanics were simple... but I loved it.  The game had hooked me and I was bound to see it through to the end, and to replay it on occasion as the years went on.

All the games I've loved through the years have hooked me in that fashion.  I've played and enjoyed games that didn't, but anything on my Top 10 or even Top 20 list has generally made me completely lose track of time at least once.  So it's an experience I welcome.

Dragon Age had piles of rave reviews behind it.  I managed to end up with a free (gifted) copy and looked forward to playing a for-really-MODERN game on my new machine.  So I sat down to play.  Went with a City Elf, Female.

I'll give them credit for writing; I liked her origin story.  And I'll give them credit for graphics; the world is gorgeous and a couple of the male characters around were indeed attractive and fun enough that I wanted to play until I got to a romance stage.  But something just didn't click.  Nothing hooked me.  And so I put in a few 30 - 90 minute sessions out of obligation, and haven't been back since.  I'm maybe five hours into the game but every time I see that icon I think, "I could, or..." and end up firing up EQ2 or Fallout 3 or Solitaire.

But then, last weekend, I managed finally to get my hands on Divinity II.  It's far less well-loved, and to many it suffered from the ill-timed comparison to Dragon Age, as both were RPGs released near each other.  But to me, Divinity II is massively more entertaining.  I wandered, slightly disoriented, for a few minutes but then old memory and gamer instinct (thank goodness for the standardization of WASD) took right over and I was in a game I'd loved seven years ago... only better.  I'm old enough now to tear myself away at bedtime rather than staying up until dawn (being married helps with this), but I got cranky doing it.  I want to keep playing!

The only way I've been able to describe why I love Fallout 3 but not Mass Effect, why I'll play Divinity II but not Dragon Age is this: I seriously hate party-based games.  I play a rogue, a thief, an assassin, or even a warrior -- but I play alone.  Summoned creatures and NPC allies are too much trouble.  They get themselves killed, they blunder in the way, and they need controlling.  I'd rather strategize on my own time.  Whether that strategy is to stealth-and-snipe (how I played Bioshock or Fallout 3) or to hack-and-slash (the easiest and occasionally most entertaining way to play, well, anything), I like doing it my way and not accounting for others.

The odd counter to this is that I enjoy time spent in an MMORPG.  Admittedly, I spend more time solo than grouped, but I like grouping and I used to enjoy raiding.  I think it's because players in an MMO (theoretically) do their own thinking, and I don't control any character but my own.  And I never play pet-summoning or charming classes.

So Mass Effect 3 will be a game for my spouse only, and that's cool.  I'll be Kratos, going solo, in God of War 3 and we'll both be happier for it.

New Hardware

I haven't been gaming for a couple of weeks; first I was on vacation, and then I had to find the time to build a new PC.

I love my new PC.  For the geeks and other PC gamers out there, the rough specs:

• nvidia GeForce 480 (EVGA)
• Intel i7-930 quad-core CPU
• 6gb triple-channel RAM
• 1 TB hard drive
• Blu-Ray reader / DVD-writer optical drive

Windows 7 rates all parts above 7.5 (the GPU it rates 7.8) except for the hard drive, which brings the system down to 5.9.  This is why solid state drives exist... hopefully it's also a reason for them to get affordable in the next couple of years.

If anyone's curious for the actual parts list, here's the NewEgg list.  (I didn't actually buy all of the parts through NewEgg.)  And I really strongly recommend the case and motherboard I used to anyone doing a new build; that case has years of home-builder thought behind it and is just great to work with.  Also pretty.

Now that I can run games newer than 2007 releases, I'll be picking up Divinity 2: Ego Draconis (I loved playing the first one when my old PC was brand-new, in the summer of 2003, so it feels like an appropriate new-PC purchase).  Also on the playlist is Dragon Age: Origins, which we've actually had for a few months but I couldn't run on the old machine.

Also in EQ2 I just managed to get over 60 FPS in a zone that my old PC ran at 4 - 13 FPS.  Woohoo!

Weekly Playlist

I'm going to try to keep track of what I'm playing in any given week.

1.) Ace Attorney Investigations: This is my commuting game. I've been a fan of the franchise for quite a while, and really loved Trials and Tribulations and Apollo Justice in that way you really love watching a soap or movie that you kind of know might be terrible but is just oh-so-good. Edgeworth's game hasn't grabbed me that way yet, but it's still fun.

2.) EQ2: Can't help it. I've been playing on and off for over five years and I'm "on" right now. Test Server... it's like an addiction, man! Plus they just gave us another big patch. Mmmmm, patchy. Though I don't have any character slots left to roll a toon in New Halas. Maybe I'll relocate one. I love playing on Test, but that's a post for another time.

3.) BioShock: I know, right? Sadly, I don't mean Bioshock 2 and I don't mean "replay." I never finished it the first time, because I started playing it at a friend's place, on his 360, and then I took my ancient gaming PC and total lack of consoles and moved 300 miles away. I won't be building my new gaming rig until June so I'm playing it on my husband's PC.

Maybe I need to start a Backloggery account like he has. But it would be very long indeed... it's astonishing the number of games I've played half of.