Tag Archives: video games

Advantages of F2P + TSW Theme Builds

Posted on by
Reply

The psychological advantages of free to play:

For my latest article at WhatMMO, I analyze some of the psychological advantages offered by the free to play business model — ways in which free games feel more welcoming than subscription titles. I’ve come to the conclusion that my preference for free to play titles has far more to do with the way it affects how I feel about and interact with games than it has to do with saving money.

My rogue taking on an early dungeon in RiftIf you’re curious why free to play has become so popular so quickly, I hope this article will provide some illumination.

The Secret World: Theme Builds

I’ve talked a lot in the past about the power of The Secret World’s ability wheel. Mastering it is a crucial skill to allow you to adapt to new situations and survive the more challenging content in the game. But it can also be a lot of fun. With nine weapons and the ability to wield two at any given time, there are countless playstyles out there for those willing to experiment.

Today, I’m going to list some of the possible theme builds one could do, inspired by pop culture and mythological figures. These aren’t necessarily the best builds around, but they’re worth checking out if you like to venture off the beaten path when designing your character.

Note that I won’t be making precise builds with all abilities planned out. Just general concepts.

The Thor build:

Thor was the most revered of the Norse gods, a mighty warrior who rode around the heavens, creating thunder and lightning when he hurled his hammer at his foes.

The Norse thunder godYou can emulate the slayer of Jormungandr by combining hammers and elemental magic. Focus on the lightning abilities within elemental, and you have a thunder-flinging, hammer-smashing warrior that will send giants fleeing back to Jotunheim. In fact, elemental magic even has a finisher called “Thor’s hammer,” which allows you to fling a giant, electrified hammer at enemies.

There’s actually a fair degree of synergy to this build, too, since both hammers and elemental magic make heavy use of strike abilities and a high critical chance.

The Neo build:

Also known as the Matrix build, this one combines chaos magic and dual pistols.

Chaos magic is essentially magically empowered martial arts, allowing you to move faster than the eye can see to dodge enemy attacks and deliver punishing flurries of punches. Anyone who’s seen Neo battle Agent Smith will find it a familiar fighting style. Add in some pistols, and it’s the next best thing to a revival of The Matrix Online.

For best results, combine with a long leather jacket and dark sunglasses.

The Leha build:

This may be a bit narcissistic of me, but I couldn’t help but imagine how to emulate the savage fighting style of Leha, the star of my World Spectrum books.

One of my novel characters, recreating via the MMO AionFor this build, you want to combine fist weapons and chaos magic. This gives you a set of claws, as well as the superhuman speed to dodge enemy attacks and deliver blindingly fast attacks.

For a little extra authenticity, you can use hinder passives to slow enemies, simulating the energy of Sy’om, and using the “Giddy Up” ability from the whip auxiliary weapon provides a passable imitation of empowering your allies with Tyzuan power.

The interesting thing about this build is that chaos and fists are actually a pretty good combo. They have good synergy around burst abilities for high damage, and between the tanking skills of chaos and the healing of fists, it offers a high degree of survivability.

This build should only be used by female characters with short brown hair and the height slider set to minimum.

The vampire build:

Unfortunately, it’s impossible to perfectly recreate the iconic vampire with The Secret World’s weapons since the health-stealing abilities are all related to assault rifles, and you don’t exactly see Dracula carrying around an AK-47. But you can do your best.

A particularly spooky scene beneath London in The Secret WorldMy idea for a vampire build in TSW would be based on blood magic and assault rifles. This is a build that manipulates life and blood like a master, allowing you to drain health from your enemies with rifle skills and then put it towards empowering your own damage with blood’s health-draining skills.

This could be used for a solo build based on self-healing or as a group healing build. You could maybe make it work for group DPS, but I don’t think blood and assault rifles have much synergy on that front.

Make your own!

Do you have any ideas for theme builds that can be created in The Secret World? Share them in the comments. I’m sure there are plenty of possibilities out there that haven’t occurred to me.

Mass Effect: Better Late Than Never + New Article

Posted on by
1

If you’re a longtime reader of this blog, you’ll recall that I bought the original Mass Effect many moons ago but was unable to play due to compatibility issues with Windows 7. This enraged me and nearly soured me on Bioware’s games permanently, but I did finally get around to playing the later games in the series.

Saren Arterius in Mass EffectThat left me wondering what the original was like, so when I got my new computer, I decided to see if I could get it working. And to my surprise, I was able to.

I’m not sure why I wasn’t able to on the old computer. The fix I used was a little convoluted to execute, but it was not hard to find, and I can’t believe I wouldn’t have found it before. Maybe the fix to get it working on Windows 7 hadn’t been released yet when I looked the first time?

Anyway, the point is I was able to play through the original Mass Effect without issues.

I’m not quite sure how to rate this game. If I had to describe it in a word, it would be, “wonky.” Not bad, per se. Just wonky.

Firstly, the game reeks of “console port” in the worst way possible. It’s blatantly obvious the control scheme was not originally designed with the PC in mind, so it’s sloppy and awkward at the best of times.

There are also a lot of weird mechanics that just… don’t feel right. For instance, the overheat mechanic just feels weird in comparison to a more traditional reload option. And why the bloody hell does Shepard move so slowly?

The Prothean ruins of Ilos in Mass EffectThe pacing is all over the map, too. Much of the character development and optional content is front-loaded onto the first half of the game. As a result, the early parts of the game feel too slow, and the last half feels too rushed.

Mass Effect does feel a bit more like a game, and not a “choose your adventure” novel, than the later installments, but not necessarily in a good way. The gameplay of later ME titles may be shallow and minimalistic, but at least it’s functional. Aside from the issues I’ve already mentioned, the original is bogged down by a lot of what I like to call “RPG BS.”

For instance, this time around, I rolled a class primarily based on fighting with a sniper rifle. But it took me until at least halfway through the game to train up my sniper rifle skill to the point where it was actually useful for anything.

I can’t believe idiotic mechanics like this ever existed in the first place, let alone that they didn’t die the death they so richly deserve back in the ’90s.

I do try to make allowances for the game’s age, but even so, there’s a lot about Mass Effect that just feels awkward and… indefinably wrong somehow.

It was disappointingly short, too. At least the later games were pretty meaty in the content they offered. I blew through this one in just a few days.

My new Shepard in Mass EffectBut don’t let all those complaints give you the impression I didn’t like the game. It still had a lot going for it. The story, while occasionally inconsistent, is pretty good, and it has all the great character development I’ve come to expect from the Mass Effect series.

I found it interesting to see how the characters had changed and evolved since the beginning. I’m inclined to say that Tali and Wrex changed the most as time went on, while Garrus changed the least. Shoot ’em all and let the spirits sort ’em out, eh, Garrus?

Liara actually displayed some personality this time around, even if it was just that of the blushing damsel in distress waiting to be swept off her feet by Shepard. She’s still easily the least interesting squad member, in my view.

Some missions suffered from pacing issues, but a few were very fun. The Virmire mission is definitely going down as one of the better moments from the entire trilogy.

This game feels a bit more organic than the later installments, too. The maps are a bit bigger and less linear, and I much prefer the elevator rides to endless load screens.

I’m going to do a full play-through of all three games in order, making all different choices this time around. I’ve only played one class and made mostly the same choices so far, so I’m going to try to be as different as possible this time. For instance, I’ve only ever played the later games with Ashley, so this time I chose to save Kaidan. Turns out he’s a pretty cool guy, but I still think I might like Ashley slightly better.

The Battle of the Citadel in Mass EffectI feel like I should go full renegade this time since I only ever play paragon, but I just never enjoy being the bad guy. I also considered being a male Shepard this time around, but I still really dislike that guy’s voice acting. And it doesn’t really make much of a difference anyway. Male Shepard gets better romance options, but it’s not worth putting up with his monotone for three games.

I’ll probably do another post on my thoughts on the series as a whole once I complete the play through.

New article:

My latest article at ADANAI is Gamer Demographics Dispel Stereotypes.

Yes, girls do, in fact, play video games. In large numbers.