Tag Archives: Star Wars: The Old Republic

Wars Among the Stars

Other than my semi-regular Oblivion updates and my Wing Commander review it seems like it’s been awhile since I’ve discussed any real PC gaming, and outside of a few dips back into World of Warcraft, I think the last time I really discussed spending a lot of time on a semi-modern PC game was when I reported my adventures in Rust two years ago. The biggest reason for that, besides my mighty backlog of console games, was that my PC was approaching relic status and not really up to some of the more demanding new games coming out, to put it mildly.

Back in Black!
“Back in Black!”

In late July I finally had enough reasons to justify building a whole new machine. Beyond gaming, I was planning on going back to college and needed a machine capable of running multiple VMs for labs. I also had plans to virtualize one of my servers which was running on even more ancient hardware than my old desktop was. Outside of the additional challenge of building something stout enough to run at least one VM fulltime and handle a modern game simultaneously, the build was quite easy and a lot of fun. It also happened to coincide with the release of Nvidia’s Geforce GTX 10 series, and I managed to score a nice overclocked 1070 early into the chipset’s life.

So what did I played with my hot new gaming rig? The latest AAA games? Did I hook up an Oculus Rift or an HTC Vive? Nah, I actually decided to play some older games that I had wanted to revisit, for one reason or another.

First was Planetside 2. Failing to resist my own monumental hype for this game, I managed to download and install the massive client on my old machine. Performance was beyond terrible and I couldn’t even play it long enough to get a feel for the flow of the game. They did some major performance patches shortly after that but by the time I went back to try it again they had removed support for Windows XP so that was the end of my tour of duty.

On the losing end of a firefight.
“On the losing end of a firefight.”

Since giving it another shot on my new machine my time with Planetside 2 has been largely fantastic. For a free-to-play MMO that feels, for the most part, quite polished, I can’t believe more people aren’t playing it. It has some issues, sure, and I was definitely skeptical about some of the design changes from the first game, but all in all I was pleasantly surprised with how close the spirit of the gameplay experience is to the original. The same type of absolutely epic combined arms battles still happen constantly, though, as with the first game, I often find myself enjoying some of the smaller battles than following the zerg, using the open nature of the battlefield and numerous options for classes, weapons, and vehicles to give me far more tactical choices than typically available in most normal FPS games.

Anti-aircraft duty is a dirty job, but someone has to do it.
“Anti-aircraft duty is a dirty job, but someone has to do it.”

Unlike playing a 25-40 minute Conquest game in Battlefield, the always-on nature of the PS2 battlefield and the various ways of quickly dropping into existing battles and skirmishes makes PS2 a great “gap filler” game too – just have 15 minutes to play? Not a problem. 2 hours to play? Where’d all of my time go? I spent quite a while ping-ponging between roles – at first I fell in love with the Lightning tank, then spent a lot of my time as a Combat Medic or Heavy Assault, then I dabbled with the Stalker cloak Infiltrator, then I discovered the majesty of the Engineer’s wire guided anti-vehicle, then spent a bit of time running various type of MAX units, and as of my last few sessions, I’d finally really clicked with the Light Assault class. Between all of that I had some amazing moments. The first few times I watched a gunship get blown out of the sky, spinning out of control before violently crashing, I had to pick my jaw off the ground. As with the vaguely similar Battlefield series, SOE managed to really nail something about the sound design and, despite the style being somewhat divisive, the graphics of the game, that helps keep me deeply immersed in the action.

My only real regret is that, unlike my time with the original Planetside, I’ve been playing PS2 mostly solo. Despite being a very easy game to pick up and play solo, I have absolutely no hesitation in saying that games like this are a thousand times funner when playing cooperatively with friends. The best way to leverage the combined arms style of combat is to, well, combine arms, and the few times I’ve grouped up with some random organized outfit squads were highly memorable.

Guarding a bio lab landing pad.
“Guarding a bio lab landing pad.”

I’ll almost certainly keep dabbling in PS2 from time to time in the future, but for now I think I’ve just about had my fill and will probably spend more of my meager amount of gaming time on other games. That said, if I ever had any friends interested in playing it I’d be back in a heartbeat. If you liked the original or like games like the Battlefield series and this looks interesting, definitely check it out. There are still plenty of people playing and the game has a surprisingly good out of game community, with tons of YouTubers uploading new content on the regular and an active Reddit community, for instance.

Exploding the local wildlife.
“Exploding the local wildlife.”

The next game I went back to was Star Wars: The Old Republic, BioWare’s infamous Star Wars MMORPG. My trajectory with this game has been fucking weird. Loving Knights of the Old Republic and being both a Star Wars and an MMORPG fan in general, I was completely hyped for this game but once it got closer to release and I discovered just how much of a World of Warcraft clone it was I was definitely let down. Then I got into the open beta and opened my mind a bit. Sure, it’s a WoW clone, but damn if it isn’t the best one I’ve ever played. By the time release hit, however, my free time was non-existent and between that and the group of friends I had guilded up with losing interested (like most of the rest of the subscriber base) I ended up bailing after only a month or so of infrequent play. Coincidentally ALSO about two years ago I came back once and played just a bit, as detailed here, but I decided to put the game down until I had a nicer gaming rig to enjoy it on.

This time I immediately scrapped my poor level 20 something Sith Inquisitor to go all-in on one of the classes I had tried out last time: a Bounty Hunter. This wasn’t really my favorite class or anything, but I liked the idea of playing a cold as ice female Bounty Hunter and, as usual with SWTOR, I quickly felt attached to my character through my dialog choices and the headcanon I filled in the blanks with. After I committed to playing again my mission was simple: play through the entire 1-50 class storyline and as many side quests as I could handle, and then move on to the next class. I wanted to play them all!

Bounty Hunters are prone to frequent Dirty Harry moments...
“Bounty Hunters are prone to frequent Dirty Harry moments…”

Of course, it’s been a few months now and the end of just now coming into sight, and this doesn’t even include venturing into the various expansion storylines, which also interest me, so maybe my plan was a little ambitious. Maybe not too ambitious though, as one oddity about SWTOR these days is that they drastically increased XP rewards so my new main, as it were, was max level long before I got into the last chapter of my storyline. In theory they’ve tuned this so you only need to do your character’s story missions, and each planet’s story missions so if you do all of the side quests, like I’m doing, you’re going to be way over level. The flip side is that when I finally do get around to playing some alts I can skip all of the side content and breeze through the story, which is greatly appealing to me.

My pet Jawa and I taking on a Jedi.
“My pet Jawa and I taking on a Jedi.”

I’ll admit I’ve also been distracted by playing with the cartel market, the auction house and, particularly, the new stronghold system since coming back. Ever since Ultima Online I’ve always love having a house I can customize and/or decorate which included chasing down expensive decorations, and SWTOR’s Galatic Stronghold system scratches that itch. I’ve also spent some of the “cartel coins” I had been building up while unsubscribed on various random loot packs and made a tidy sum auctioning them in game. It’s been kind of an addictive mini-game, one that I’m sure makes BioWare quite a lot of money. At first I was concerned that playing around with auctioning these items might not be viable given how dead the auction house was, but then I paid to transfer my characters to a much more active server and my experience has been great ever since.

Like Planetside 2, despite being free-to-play (now) SWTOR has impressive production values and a lot of meaty gameplay available, and the fans that are still into the game are rabidly into it. In fact BioWare continues to release new items into the cartel market, new patches, and even new major expansions. Maybe it’s more the Star Wars nerd in me than anything else, but I absolutely love this game. The fact that it has kept my interest this long, and that I still want to play some of the other classes, really says a lot about this game though, especially with World of Warcraft: Legion out there constantly tempting me to drop everything and head back to Azeroth.

Lightsabers and Labyrinths

I haven’t really sat down and attempted to complete anything new but I’ve definitely played some odds and ends on PC lately that I feel are worth a quick mention.

First, let me step back in time to something I forgot to mention several months ago which incidentally happens to me a lot with my blog – I randomly decide to pick something up for a few hours and put it back down without it ever earning a mention here. Anyway, I was feeling the MMORPG itch and since I hadn’t touched my old World of Warcraft account in quite a while I decided to make a brief incursion back into the galaxy of Star Wars: The Old Republic. You might recall when I mentioned the game originally that, despite being kind of a cookie cutter WoW clone in so many ways, I was actually quite fond of it and planned to go back. While I really wasn’t truly ready to return, having long since decided that this would be a game best played in all of its graphical glory after I build a new gaming rig, I still somehow ended up getting sucked back in.

The perks of dogfighting in an asteroid field.
“The perks of dogfighting in an asteroid field.”

I played my my Sith Inquisitor through a whole new planet and got my first taste of the on rails space combat which was surprisingly fun and appropriately Star Warsy. Most of all, the game is still mainly most satisfying because I like my character which is to say I like the way I imagine my character. Make no mistake, this is a twisted amalgamation of the imaginary image of him I have and my head the very wrote and scripted ways he behaves (no matter what choices I make) in his storyline dialogs and cut scenes. This is still very refreshing to me and gives me a much greater sense of attachment to my character than I’d normally have in an MMORPG, or even a lot of single player games.

I got so into it, in fact, that I ended up rolling some new characters in some other Sith Empire classes just to get an idea for the other characters and storylines at my disposal. I played a ruthless female bounty hunter pirate and a goodhearted but dutiful imperial agent somewhat based on the titular character from the Rogue Trooper comics and enjoyed the hell out of both. While I intend to stick it out with my Inquisitor (when I return to the game sometime later) I can definitely see why some people with far, faaarrrr more free time than I opt to level up each of the classes in the game.

An audience with Nem'ro the Hutt.
“An audience with Nem’ro the Hutt.”

Moving on, I got a bit of an itch to play a classic hack and slash action RPG. I’m not quite sure what inspired this but I decided to warm up the original Torchlight. Although I got fairly close to the end (or bottom of the dungeon, as it were) in my first playthrough as a Vanquisher I had never actually beaten the game. You may recall from a 2012 blog post that I was considering replaying it on Xbox Live Arcade and actually played around with an Alchemist at the time to do a little theory crafting, so this time I went through on Hard mode with a brand new Alchemist. It was fairly fun, though I more or less breezed through the first two thirds of the game until I reached somewhat of a difficulty spike in which my character switched from an iron cannon of doom to a wee delicate glass cannon and I suddenly found myself relying quite heavily on my potion stores. I started to feel a bit burnt out by the repetition and lack of good loot upgrade options but forced myself through to the end anyway. While I still standby my words of immense praise for the game I’m definitely curious about whether or not the team at Runic managed to fix these issues with Torchlight 2.

Ember Lightning and Ember Shield all day long!
“Ember Lightning and Ember Shield all day long!”

While the loot system (and the rest of the systems, really) are essentially refined versions of those from Diablo 2, I felt like I so rarely ever got loot that was actually better than what I had that it made the whole looting, identifying, and selling cycle more of a chore than anything else, and it isn’t like this was because I was already wading through the dungeon in some exceptionally awesome, epic gear or anything. One thing that isn’t lifted from Diablo 2 but rather Diablo is the mission and story structure. Torchlight takes place in one town, in one large, somewhat randomly generated dungeon, and has a simple main plot and even simpler side quests. Diablo made up for this by having an amazing and compelling atmosphere and while Torchlight’s isn’t bad by any means, it doesn’t really hold a candle to that of the Diablo series.

So, after beating Torchlight (the final boss was bullshit, by the way!) I dusted off my last playthrough of Diablo 2 which I had also started all the way over a year ago in 2012 in anticipation for Diablo 3. I have to say, the Paladin isn’t my favorite class and act 5 (the expansion act) isn’t my favorite act either, or perhaps the dreaded ARPG repetition is simply in full effect by then, who knows. Regardless, I flailed Baal to a fiery grave.

Flinging flaming flails at foe's frozen faces...
“Flinging flaming flails at foe’s frozen faces…”

While playing back through again my above statement about Diablo’s atmosphere was reinforced without question, and then some. I simply love the dark, serious, gritty feel of the world of Diablo and Diablo 2. The music and sound effects are particularly affecting – I ended up turning off the otherwise excellent music in Torchlight and listening to some podcasts and audiobooks while playing it but in Diablo 2? No chance! I’ve got to hear that eerie score and the those freaky ambient noises and sound effects! After this playthrough I’m now foaming at the mouth to finally load up Diablo 3, providing it stays true to those aspects of the series. My only hesitation besides the impending launch of the expansion pack is sending myself into some kind of horrible ARPG overdose but I don’t think I can resist, especially after the major pre-expansion pack patch that just dropped has renewed so much interest in the game again. Ugh!

Shadowvan Complexia

It’s been months since my last proper Game Log update and there’s good reason for that: I haven’t been gaming much!

I’ve continued to play some Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 online here and there until relatively recently. I think I finally reached that “eh, I’m good enough at this now…” stage of burn out which I also reached before max level in the previous two Modern Warfare games. Interestingly though, my load outs are fairly different. In MW2 I had developed a mean hyper-aggressive, hip-firing shotgun build and would even occasionally whip out a pretty effective sniping build on certain maps. In the original MW I had several assault rifle builds but one of my favorites was a hip-firing, fast reloading, high rate of fire sub-machine gun build. Coming full circle back to MW3 I found myself most effective with a pretty similar sub-machine gun build again. Great game, for what it is. Expect me to talk more about it (and probably more negatively about it) sometime when the future when I get around to playing through the single player campaign.

Oh yeah, I also briefly revisited my Minecraft addiction as well when a friend of mine put up a server… still a ton of fun! I didn’t do much cooperative building but I did carve out a little niche of my own and do plenty of exploring.

I built this seriously huge canal before remembering that they changed the way water physics worked online and I couldn't actually flood it properly. :/
“I built this seriously huge canal before remembering that they changed the way water physics worked online and I couldn’t actually flood it properly. :/”

Star Wars: The Old Republic quickly came and went from my roster as well. Great game! I’ve definitely never felt so attached to my character or so drawn into the story of an MMORPG before, yet at the end of the day it is still a fairly cookie-cutter MMORPG and despite really enjoying it I decided that, at least for now, I would get more (and cheaper) enjoyment out of sticking with single-player titles. I’ve got such a huge backlog and tons of planned reviews for this blog and whatnot as it is, and with me spending so little time gaming lately, it just doesn’t seem worthwhile to invest so much time into yet another MMORPG. I do expect to return to this and finish out my main character’s story eventually, but for now… cancelled!

I actually modeled my Sith Inquisitor after my old UO character.
“I actually modeled my Sith Inquisitor after my old UO character.”

Speaking of my backlog, I just finished Shadow Complex on XBLA. Yes, I know this came out in 2009 and I’m massively late to the party (as usual) but wow, what a game! It’s no wonder so many people were raving over it at the time. For the uninitiated, the game takes the classic “metrovania” formula (probably an understatement: it is very much a direct rip-off of Super Metroid’s gameplay) and throws it into a slick, modern setting with a nice 3D engine to back it up. Don’t let the mention of it being 3D scare you – it’s still very much a 2D side scrolling platformer like the aforementioned Metroid and Castlevania games, though Chair did at least have the sensibility to use the more modern engine for things like in-engine cut-scenes and 2.5D environments. Let me explain the 2.5D thing: it means enemies can be in the background rather than only on the same plane as your character which may sound confusing but it generally works pretty well even with the occasional targeting oddities. It’s used pretty effectively, allowing for a lot more enemies on screen without cluttering things up and just greatly enhancing the perception of depth in the environment in general.

If you can't explore it, shoot it.
“If you can’t explore it, shoot it.”

While the 3D graphics are nice and the polished presentation much appreciated, probably what impressed me most were all of the tiny little updates to the Super Metroid formula. Just little things, like using a flashlight to see what objects and doors were accessible/useable with what items, color coding those same doors on your mini-map for later reference, highlighting the route to your next objective, etc. Perhaps some of those intelligent tweaks aren’t new to the genre, as other than playing the DS Castlevania games I really haven’t played anything like this recently, but they’re all here and all work exceptionally well. Some of the item and weapon additions were quite cool as well and despite the game always highlighting your next goal there could be a lot of flexibility in what paths and methods you used to reach it if you want to explore and use your imagination a bit. I’m quite thankful for all of this as I was a little concerned before I got started that this would be one giant, tedious slog through backtracking hell… but no, it’s very easy to keep track of where you have and haven’t been, what secrets you have and haven’t unlocked, etc. and it only gets more and more fun to play as you progress.

Judo chop!
“Judo chop!”

Highly recommended if you were a fan of Super Metroid, Castlevania: Symphony of the Night or games of their ilk or, hell, even just a fan of 2D platformers in general. I definitely got my 15 bucks worth and I’ll probably play it again at some point in the future to go after more of the map secrets and challenges. Now if only they’d develop a new Metroid or Castlevania in this engine… *drool*