Drawing diary: March

Star Wars: the Old Republic launched a new update (including a long expected new operation boss) and Lord of the Rings Online started off its tenth anniversary event this week, so what am I going to write about? Neither, apparently. I have plenty to say about SWTOR's 5.2, but I want to take the time to write it all down. You can expect a post early next week, and of course I'll talk about it on Corellian Run Radio Saturday. With all that's happening, I still need to set foot in LOTRO to try out the anniversary event, but that should happen somewhere next week as well.

Meanwhile, my drawing diary of March is way overdue, so I'll write that instead. I usually try to write these entries at the start of the month, but back then the Developer Appreciation Week (DAW) took up all of my time. I also may just have put this diary off because there was so much to scan. I made so much!

All the feels of Life Is Strange: how a video game helped me cope with life

So this is another post in which I come out as a lover of non MMOs. This one is dedicated to Dontnod Entertainment, the French game studio that developed Life Is Strange.

There are many praising words about originality and beauty that befit Life Is Strange. But for me, the game stands out because it helped me through a difficult period of my life. I've been meaning to write about it for a while now, but never managed because it's an emotional thing (although I did mention the game in my Steam Awards article). It's now more than a year since I played, so I will give it a try.

Standing firm in the wake of progress: a tribute to Standing Stone Games

Somewhere during the course of 2016, news reached me that Turbine was transitioning into a 'mobile game studio'. For us, the fans, this came out of nowhere and didn't make much sense: after all, thusfar the studio had been working on MMOs. It sounded ominous for the many Turbine developers that were working on MMOs such as the one I've been playing for almost ten years now: Lord of the Rings Online. After the short announcement, things went on as usual and the worried feeling retreated into the back of my mind.

Fast forward a couple of months (December 2016) and we hear that the developers that worked on LOTRO and Dungeons and Dragons Online for Turbine are starting their own 'indie game studio': Standing Stone Games. The gaming community is blindsided: nobody saw this coming. Some people preach doom and gloom, others regard it as a liberation from the shackles of the 'evil' corporate Turbine. Myself? Somewhere in the middle. I don't believe Turbine is evil; that's a product of gamers having the tendency to blame unpopular decisions on corporate greed.

The heart and soul of Stardew Valley

As this year's DAW initiator, it's about time to post a developer appreciating post of my own. Seriously, mere hours after I posted the DAW announcement, people had already written and published their contributions. Some people are even writing one DAW post a day. Teach me, senpai!

Meanwhile, I am having start up problems with this post. Which all by itself already proves I don't do this enough. (Serenading developers, I mean.) Gotta up that blogging APM! I may have to settle for less perfectly balanced pieces of art and just hit that publish button. And I should definitely spend less time contemplating whether this or that dev needs my appreciation more. I'm just gonna hug them all.

The power of memories: a quest for the essence of MMOs

 Last week, I was chatting to my friend Rakuno. He was reminiscing why he was going through this "long, weird streak of burning out on MMOs": "after playing MMOs for a while it kind of feels like the road is the same no matter the game", he said. And he has a point. Other than artistic, visual differences and varying lore settings, all MMOs boil down to the same formula: gather experience (level up), gather gear, gather currency... maybe fight some challenging bosses, craft stuff, dress up or decorate your house. There is no definite end goal, no satisfying "You WIN!" button at the end; in fact, there is no end, there are seemingly always more things to do. Indeed, MMOs would be shitty, grindy RPGs, if not for that single defining element: the other people with whom you share this virtual world.

My Steam Awards nominations

Valve organized something new this year: the so called Steam Awards. I would probably have totally missed it if a friend wouldn't have asked me for advice on who to nominate for the Villain That Needs a Hug category (I'm a terrible advisor by the way, I had no clue!) and I would probably have skipped it if it wasn't such a nice thought experiment to fill in those categories.

Only when I read Jeromai's and Izlain's nominations, it occurred to me that this was a perfect topic for a blog post. Not only do you get to compare choices, you also get to find out about people's interests beyond MMOs and may even discover some new titles you want to play. So, without further ado, here are my Steam Awards nominations.

Why do we like to pew pew from range?

Last week, a really interesting article caught my eye. It was called When starting a fight in video games, cautious long range is most popular, but men like to rush in and was based on scientific research by Quantic Foundry on 1266 gamers. The news was picked up by Massively OP, but remained unnoticed in the blogosphere. Which is odd, because it addressed a question that is on my mind a lot: what makes us play MMOs the way we do? Perhaps I'm alone in this; either way, it prompted me to investigate why (almost) everyone loves to play ranged in MMOs.

Review: Cashtronauts

Once upon a time, I won the game Cashtronauts on a super awesome giveaway by Gamerwife. As I was too distracted by MMOs (story of my life) I must admit that it stayed dormant in my Steam library for a while (bad Rav!) until I finally got to try it out. Here's the verdict by an absolutely clueless gamer girl.

Six times gold

Today I'm doing two photo challenges in one: 6 on 6 and IntPiPoMo. Win-win, right? Only this month's colour, gold, was hard. Really hard. On the positive side: by having to dig deep through my screenshot library, I found some pictures from games I don't usually write about. Enjoy!

Six times orange

Put mildly, orange is not exactly my favourite colour. Once upon a time, when the internet was young, I even initiated the "Orange club", a website dedicated to loathing oranges and everything that shared the same colour. Every once in a while an orange lover would accidentally join and be hugely disappointed.

So you can see that I truly love you guys, because I decided to endure the pain and stomach finding six suitable pictures for this month's issue of 6 on 6 gamer style!

The games I love to play

F.l.t.r.: Valiant Hearts: the Great War, SWTOR, Guild Wars 2, Pokémon Emerald, LOTRO

This week's Fandom Friday* challenge was themed "the five games you love to play". Now for me this was a bit of a problematic challenge, as the only things I talk about are games, so most of you guys will already know what games I play (also, the text underneath "About this blog" to the right sort of gives it away). However, I play my games in different manners: for me there's a game for each time and mind state. So in addition to providing you with an overview, I'll look into what I get out of these games as well. When do I choose to play them, and why is that so?

Assassin's Creed: How I came to play

I haven't been able to play any Star Wars or LotRO lately, simply because the gaming laptop has been away for repairs, I think for over 4 weeks by now. I know, AARGH. So instead, Tiger's been sharing his PC with me and we've been playing some single-player games: mostly Mass Effect and Assassin's Creed.

Now Assassin's Creed (written as AC in the title since I'm just that lazy) was a series I've always thought wasn't for me. In ancient times, my now ex-boyfriend had let me try Assassin's Creed I, and I didn't like it at all. The controls were weird and I'm not really the conspiracy theory and assassination type of girl. But Tiger has been playing it a bit when I've been studying and I may have accidentally made some remarks about how awesome the game looks. Now Tiger set off on a missionary path. It went sort of like this.

"What don't you like about it?" I explained what I found last time I tried it. "Well, if you look further than the conspiracy thing, the storytelling is actually quite good. You usually like these sort of things in games." 

Me: "But you have to assassinate people. It's evil. Look, there you did it! He didn't do anything to you!" "He was just a city guard..." Me: "He was innocent!" "Well, he worked for the wrong person." "Does he know? I mean, he probably has a family to take care of. A wife and kids. Who wouldn't take an easy job of patrolling the city roofs. I mean, roofs. What's the odd chance...?" Tiger: "You don't have to kill them. You can also just knock them unconscious, you know. Or sneak past them." Me: "So why didn't you...?"

*flying property*

Now Tiger was pulling out the heavy gunnery. "But I understand. You didn't like the controls. I guess you're not too good with controllers." Me: "What?! My first XBOX game was Ninja Gaiden. And I've played it until the end!"* "Hmm, that game is pretty hardcore. Well, if you can play that, Assassin's Creed should be a cakewalk." Sigh. I didn't like where this was going.

"Besides, the controls are indeed a bit clunky in Assassin's Creed I. It gets much better in the later games."

Okay, that was that then. Tiger: 1, Rav: 0. I guess there was only one option: I actually had to start playing Assassin's Creed.

---

* I quote from its Wikipedia page: The Ninja Gaiden games gained a reputation throughout the gaming community for their difficulty and attention to detail. Although they appealed to gamers who (...) wanted a "bloody hard, but also bloody good" challenge, it was feared that casual gamers would find the learning curve daunting. IGN warned that gamers with lesser skills might not "get as much out of this game as others due to [its] incredible difficulty"." I can concur, this game was really challenging.

First glance at the Elder Scrolls Online

I watched this live stream of the Elder Scrolls Online the other day, when the beta version of the game was played in front of public for the first time. Being a fan of Skyrim, I'm really curious what this "Skyrim MMO" is going to turn into and watched the whole thing in excitement.

From the video, it didn't really become clear to me if I should think of the Elder Scrolls Online as an "Elder Scrolls MMO" or as "Elder Scrolls with a multi-player option" in terms of gameplay experience. The world looked nice enough from what I could see, Skyrim-quality but then without the mods. When I started watching the stream (14 mins into the video), the player was just using a group finder option and ported to a dungeon ("Fungal Grotta"). The dungeon was also very much in the Elder Scrolls style, including the impending darkness that I hate so much in the games, albeit realistic or not. I do hope not all 'dungeons are literally dungeons', if you get what I mean. In previous games I always got bored from exploring dark caves and tried to stay in the daylight to explore the beautiful surroundings as much as I could. But as I am a group player by nature, I'll want to play dungeons as well.

We got to see the group fight in a cave full of goblins. There were several things that came to my mind. First of all, much of what we saw was from first person perspective, the familiar Elder Scrolls look with your hands holding your weapons on the sides of your screen. I guess it's a love or hate thing. For me it's a hate thing, though. I find first person view more stressful and less visually appealing with your weapons taking a prominent spot of your screen. It has always bothered me that I have to switch loads between the two views on my elf archer Ravereth because you just need first person perspective in order to aim, but perhaps this has to do with the interface feeling a bit clunky in Skyrim on PC. I hope all gameplay is equally viable in third person view, but I'm not getting my hopes up.

 Try getting this view in reality and you'll end up with sore arms.

Other things that came to my mind was that the graphics look very much like Skyrim, but that this highly realistic environment also made it hard to distinguish friend from enemy. In Skyrim it's easy enough as you're the only real player around and basically everything around you in dark caves is evil. I guess the fact that goblins and creepy insects were being fought helped a bit in this case, but this might be a challenge and possibly an annoyance elsewhere. The developers did think about this, as mousing over an enemy gives it a red glow, indicating it's an enemy. Before you mouse over it's just a guess, though. This might just be something one needs to get used to. I must admit that I am fond of a very realistic view in games.

I'm not sure how difficult the gameplay was. Having no damage numbers float around does make fights look very immersive, but it also makes it hard to guess what exactly is going on. I guess the inner MMO player in me yearns for mental control over a situation. I had no idea I was such a control freak! I didn't see any special game mechanics apart from using an artifact at a certain point in the cave from whereon the goblins would fight for you. The fights looked pretty hank-and-spank and the combat animations weren't particularly impressive either. Sure, new hard-to-see enemies were introduced in the badly lit cave, but I must admit I got a bit bored as the video continued.

There's so many things we don't know yet. What will the class balance be like? Will mages be overpowered, as they quite frankly are in all the other Elder Scroll games? Will archers have the highest player skill requirement, having to put the most effort in fighting by zooming in and aiming? At this point, the game is of course still very much under construction. It was announced to get released in the spring of 2014.

During the stream, a live chatbox to the right showed a duality in comments. On the one hand MMO players were leaving extremely negative comments about how the game seemed 'just the same as <insert game they were currently playing> but then fantasy' (and these were the most eloquently put messages, the most were a lot shorter and less friendly of nature). The blunt nature and lack of nuance in these sort of comments make me feel ashamed of the MMO player base of which I too am part. On the other hand there were the Skyrim fans, leaving super positive exclamations of fandom. I find myself somewhere in between.

I hope the developers don't get set off by the negativity of the spoiled self-entitled brats that sadly enough seem to represent the average MMO player online. Yet I also hope they do listen to some of the critics that were given: group gameplay didn't seem that interesting to me, although it might of course be different when playing yourself. Collecting skill points to become better is good, but what is the goal? Many players hope for an MMO that will be a change from what they're used to. I hope the developers make the Elder Scrolls - MMO combination work and look very much forward to the game's release, however far away it may be.

Pictures in this article (apart from the video and the logo) are taken in Skyrim, not in the Elder Scrolls Online.

Back from the mud, living on a tree

Catching steam

So I'm back from my holiday, which turned out to contain a lot of wet feet, dirt, rain and mosquitoes (why did nobody tell me it was going to be a Neeker-breeker marshes kind of re-enactment?), but it was a lot of fun nonetheless. The first game-related thing I did when I got home was something I had been planning for a long time: I installed Steam on my computer. For those who don't know the program: Steam is a platform wherein you can buy games, and connect with friends. Remember back when we used to be online on MSN all the time? Well, much like that, but then it's even more awesome, because you can talk to each other while being in-game, even if you're playing different games. It has an overlay that's very neatly done. Anyway, I should stop advertising for Steam, I'll just conclude with saying I wish I'd started using it a long time ago.

To be able to add friends in Steam yourself, you need to own at least one game (protection against spammers etc, I think). It so happens there's a summer sale going on (some games are 80% off, really, ridiculous prices), and I suddenly found two games gifted to me by my boyfriend: Myst V and Botanicula. Such a great surprise! And it was the latter game that I tried out first - it immediately stole my heart.

Botanicula

Botanicula is a game about... yeah, what is it about, really? It is a game without spoken words, a game of images and sounds only, and I love it. You need to explore and discover yourself what's going on and what you need to do through these images and sounds only. Everything feels very intuitive, though (apart from the weird shit that happens after you've solved something). Base story? You live on a tree and need to save the beautiful and special treelife from some sort of evil black spider creatures. I think. To be honest, playing this game for the most part creates the impression of being on a magic mushroom trip and there's no end to it.

Like:

• Awesome animations, with all sorts of funny and, above all, super cute creatures.
• Fun music and great sounds, of which almost all are made by voice.
• There are many 'easter eggs', funny animations of species to discover that have no use to the main story but are just, well, fun.
• Overall: playing this game feels like looking at art, not just like playing a game.

Dislike:

• Getting 'stuck' and spending time running around, clicking everything left and right in frustration before you find out how to proceed. It's a game rated for 7 years and older, so I guess that explains a lot about me...! Luckily this doesn't happen too often.

Overall, I think this is a great game to play in between other games. It keeps surprising you. You shouldn't play it for too long, though, as you'll start to feel a bit dizzy (at least I did). It's typically a game that you'll either love or hate.

Bestiary

One of the most fun things in Botanicula are the many different creatures you encounter on your tree, of which many are not really interesting for the level continuation, but do add a lot of fluff. Their only use is a spot as a card in your collection book, which I'd like to get as complete as possible. Here are some examples from screenshots I took:

Top left: Soukac

Third from the left, second row: Dzin

Bottom left: Zio A

As you can see, the names of many of these creatures are unknown, but the ones that do have a name have an alien one that sounds a bit Czech (the nationality of the game developers). I thought it would give some sort of impression of what weird stuff you'll encounter.

Curious?

Check:

• More screenshots at my Botanicula gallery 
• Free demo with the first level playable online at Botanicula.net
• "WTF is Botanicula" - a hilarious video review:

Change of scenery: planting plants to shoot zombies

I had to live several days without internet connection (hence the low amount of posts), but luckily have it back now. Having no connection makes you think though: you realize how dependent we've all become on it. I'm just old enough to remember the days without internet and it totally changed all our lives. I don't think I'd be able to explain that to someone who grew up with internet all around them.

Apart from these philosophical questions, the practical question remained: what does a gamer girl do without internet? My favorite games were out of reach. I've played a lot of Mass Effect II with my boyfriend (to the extent that I've now already completed half of the game's content), but he does the shooting and at a certain point it's nice to do something by yourself. I looked around in my house for the Sims and Myst II: Riven, but they had somehow disappeared. I could only find shooter games and Grand Theft Auto - everyone who's seen me in a car knows this is a bad idea. Eventually I searched my boyfriend's pc for games and resorted to... Plants vs Zombies. It actually was fun, too!

You played what?!

Now don't tell me that you don't know Plants vs Zombies. It's been the Game of the Year and all, it was really hard to miss. Perhaps you like to pretend you don't know Plants vs Zombies, but that's another story. In short: In Plants vs Zombies you have to stop zombies from reaching your house by planting plants. That's right, plants. You can get the game here - the free online version is already nice enough to start with.

Don't pea in the pool

I had this brilliant idea of putting garlic in the water so the water zombies would go out of the pool and suffer a long and painful death (if you can speak of 'death' when already dead) walking over spikes. It was less brilliant of me that I didn't realize the water zombies didn't want to come out of the pool at all: they would just zigzag from garlic to garlic. Which did look brilliant, by the way, I was laughing my ass off. In the end I apparently had completed the achievement for not using any peashooters in a pool level ("don't pea in the pool"). Not the best way to do it, but nevertheless very much fun! 

My favorite garden

After defeating quite some zombies, I determined the Walnut is my favorite 'plant'. Those things are so OP! I'm also very much a fan of Spikes, Venus flytraps, Firewood and the 4x Peashooters. Yes, I realize those are not the correct names, but I'm still a noob, as you will find out soon. Anyway, below my favorite garden setup. I got rich from it, too! The zombies were falling all over, it didn't really matter what type they were. Huge firepower for the win! When I proudly showed my garden to my boyfriend, he told me I had done it all wrong, though. The blue slowing peas turned into normal peas when going through the firewood, so I could better have used the watermelons that shoot over the firewood. Hey, nobody had told me this game contained a sense of realism! Ah well, I guess it's not that bad to be a noob in Plants vs Zombies. I don't really want to know what people would think of me if I would say I'm pro at this!