Post by Head Mutant on May 6, 2005 8:40:01 GMT -5
Such a frustrating time to be both a devoted gamer AND a new husband... such as spending three hours last night putting together our new bed (one of those fancy sleep comfort dealies) instead of getting in some serious gaming time with the tons of games out there (Jade Empire, City of Heroes, Silent Hunter III are all on my currently-playing list). I suppose it's worth the sacrifice, but still... maybe I'll clone myself.
Anyway, it's just a bad time to get hooked on a new game, so of course Guild Wars had to come out. Picked it up last Friday and have been playing it a bit here and there. Since your character can contain two of the six professions, trying out all the combos (30 in all) was a must for the first few days of play -- I must've gone through the opening quests at least a dozen times until I found a character I wanted to stick with.
The two frustrating things I found were (a) not being able to jump, which makes you feel more confined in-game, and (b) the beginning newbie area is boring and very typical in its RPG quest system. I had to push through that to get to the REAL game, which not only contained typical exploration and questing, but also PvP arena battles and (I did one for the first time last night) co-op missions. The missions we did were a blast: heavily scripted small party quests which, as a bonus, had numerous cinematic cutscenes starring your party. The first mission was memorable toward the end -- our party had been fighting through this area, la de dah, and we get to the final gate... which is bashed down by a horde of enemies, far too many to kill. Running at you full tilt. Suddenly, the mission objective changed to "Run like your butt's on fire back to safety"... we did, as party members were cut down left and right. Very fun!
I'm really enjoying this game so far... I love the freedom from typical online RPG conventions. Such as having a TON of skills to choose from (you can only have 8 active at any one time), which makes combinations of skills a strategy. Also, you have attribute points gained each level to pump into various fields of skills, which can make a so-so skills in the same field super -- and the best part is, the game makes it easy and encourages you to reapply those attribute points elsewhere pretty much whenever you like, as another part of your strategy.
GameSpot gave it a really good score:
www.gamespot.com/pc/rpg/guildwars/review.html
Anyway, it's just a bad time to get hooked on a new game, so of course Guild Wars had to come out. Picked it up last Friday and have been playing it a bit here and there. Since your character can contain two of the six professions, trying out all the combos (30 in all) was a must for the first few days of play -- I must've gone through the opening quests at least a dozen times until I found a character I wanted to stick with.
The two frustrating things I found were (a) not being able to jump, which makes you feel more confined in-game, and (b) the beginning newbie area is boring and very typical in its RPG quest system. I had to push through that to get to the REAL game, which not only contained typical exploration and questing, but also PvP arena battles and (I did one for the first time last night) co-op missions. The missions we did were a blast: heavily scripted small party quests which, as a bonus, had numerous cinematic cutscenes starring your party. The first mission was memorable toward the end -- our party had been fighting through this area, la de dah, and we get to the final gate... which is bashed down by a horde of enemies, far too many to kill. Running at you full tilt. Suddenly, the mission objective changed to "Run like your butt's on fire back to safety"... we did, as party members were cut down left and right. Very fun!
I'm really enjoying this game so far... I love the freedom from typical online RPG conventions. Such as having a TON of skills to choose from (you can only have 8 active at any one time), which makes combinations of skills a strategy. Also, you have attribute points gained each level to pump into various fields of skills, which can make a so-so skills in the same field super -- and the best part is, the game makes it easy and encourages you to reapply those attribute points elsewhere pretty much whenever you like, as another part of your strategy.
GameSpot gave it a really good score:
www.gamespot.com/pc/rpg/guildwars/review.html
