Category Archives: Digital Playground

From 8-bit to whatever-the-hell-bit we are in right now, plug in and take a ride with us.

Currently Playing…Vol.2

September 3, 2014 Blond Leave a comment

Dragon Quest IX (DS): I’m a sucker for a good JRPG so I picked this one up a couple of years ago. Being a collector/game hoarder, I didn;t actually start playing this game until about a month ago and immediately kicked myself for not doing so sooner. It’s just really, really well done and is massive to boot. It;s absolutely worth every penny in my opinion. There are tons of side quests to do, hidden dungeons to find, you can use alchemy to create weapons, and the vocational system is really interesting. I’m almost 60 hours in and I made it to the last boss. This is without doing any side quests and only completing one random dungeon. Although, I did spend a good chunk of that 60 hours level-grinding. So realistically, I’m willing to bet that if you did all of the side quests and completed all of the random dungeons, there is probably 100+ hrs of game play. I highly recommend this game to anyone who is A) A fan of JRPGs, B) A fan of getting their money’s worth or C) All of the above. If you do take my advice and pick this gem up here are a couple of helpful tips. Alchemy is not something you should look past. Don’t skip finding the items necessary to cook up the best weapons in the game (there are tons of recipe guides online), because against the last boss, Corvus, you WILL need them. All of my characters’ levels are in the low to mid 40s, and while I didn’t really have much trouble actually getting to Corvus, he absolutely beat the brakes off of me. It was embarrassingly bad. Aaaaand really frustrating as everything was going swimmingly before I fought him. Also if you want a way to do some quick leveling up, go to the 3^rd floor of the Bowhole and hunt the Liquid Metal Slimes. These little bastards give you an insane amount of Exp points when you take them out. Use Metal Slash to do the most damage to them as normal attacks miss in most cases and also know that they like to run. A lot.

Karnov (NES): Yup, Friggin’ Karnov. The fat Russian guy who spits fireballs. Yes, that game. You run, you jump and you shoot things (Isn’t that the premise of most Nintendo games?). Simple enough, but strangely still really fun even after all of these years. I picked it up on Ebay a few years ago mainly because it was the first Nintendo game I had ever played. I absolutely loved it back then and I still do now. The only difference being that now I can beat it without the use of a Game Genie. Yes! Ia’m no longer a pansy! Shower me with your applause! (crickets)”ahem” and that brings us to the end of this week’s Currently Playing.

Digital Playground

Dateline Hearthstone: Was Naxxramas worth it?

September 1, 2014 Noob of All Trades Leave a comment

(Note: I will put the TL:DR at the beginning because sometimes I can get wordy.)

TL:DR: No.

Let me start with a confession. I have a love/hate relationship with Hearthstone. I love the animations, card emotes, and connection to World of Warcraft, a game that I have spent way too much time playing. Seriously, while my /played isn’t as depressing as some of the people that I’ve met in game, for a married father of three children, I’ve spent a lifetime in that game. I hate the seemingly excessive random nature of many of the cards, the ridiculous amounts of copied decks that make the PvP environment boring, and the complete lack of a PvE environment that forces me to play against those boring net decks.

Blizzard has stated on several occasions (and reinforced that statement with their actions) that they don’t consider the randomness a problem and that they actually consider it to be part of the skill element of the game. Ooooooo-kay, then. However, they have tried to address the latter two complaints with their first “adventure” for the game, The Curse of Naxxramas. I will not argue whether or not they were successful with this post. Hunters are back, though, and “zoo” warlocks still run wild, so in my opinion, the answer to that is “no”, too.

The question that I’ve read and asked myself more is, “Was the expansion worth it?” I purchased the whole thing with gold saved by doing my daily quests, but Blizzard also gave the option of buying the whole thing for $19.99 with the first wing free (Blizzardsoon TM to be $24.99 and no free first wing) to unlock the whole thing or $6.99 for each wing.

So, what do you get for your hard earned cash? You get a four wing “adventure”, with 15 bosses in total, that is basically just a glorified version of their practice mode. You pick a boss to fight, pick a deck, the head boss of the adventure threatens you in the form of a terrible pun, you defeat the boss, and you get two versions of a new card. Defeating the last boss of each wing gets you a legendary card based on that final boss. A class “challenge”, which is a boss fight with a specific theme deck for each class, offers a special class card to collect. Finally, there is a heroic mode for each boss, that takes strategy or skill (or Hearthstone’s version of them-remember the statement above about randomness?) to defeat. Alas, no cards here, but slogging through this frustrations will net a card back to add to the “collection”.

None of the regular bosses take more than one try to defeat and the only class challenge that I found truly challenging was the Paladin one. Being the noob that I am, I net decked to defeat the heroic bosses. All in all, I got about an hour to maybe an hour and a half of new “content” plus the cards.

Admittedly, some of the cards are useful in a variety of decks and it can be fun to see how they affect old cards and decks, but again a majority of the decks being played are the latest flavor of the week and that’s boring for me. That isn’t necessarily Blizzards fault and not pertinent to my argument, but if you stopped playing because of a lack of variety, then there’s no reason to come back now. It may take a while-if it ever happens-for there to be the variety of cards available and playable that are in more established games.

Again, I paid gold that I received over a couple of months from simply playing the game to prove that filthy casuals like me don’t have to fork over the money to get the cards. Hell, I even dropped 2100 gold on packs about a month before release and still got everything without paying a penny. But, let’s face it. If you’re paying, you’re paying for the cards because the content sure as hell isn’t worth it. You get 30 new unique cards, that are all digital and completely the property of Blizzard even after the transaction, and maybe an hour and a half of playtime against brain dead AI. I don’t value money very much, but I can think of many other uses for your $24.99.

Pros: New cards.

Cons: New content is underwhelming, to say the least. Cards are digital and if Blizzard decides to shut down the servers, *poof!* goes your collection.

The Verdict: Be a filthy casual like me and do your dailies. You should be able to get the gold for each wing with a weeks worth of play time.

What do you think? Did you spend the money? Do you have any regrets?

Digital Playground

Currently Playing…Vol.1

August 28, 2014 Blond Leave a comment

Phantom Brave: The Hermuda Triangle (PSP) – This game, made by NIS America, the same company that created the Disagea series, is a cross between Final Fantasy Tactics and Disagea. I was initially hesitant about trying this one out, due to being intimidated by the battle system and all of the stats and their meanings..Now, I understand that sounds fairly unintelligent (I promise you that I’m a pretty smart guy), but sometimes in an RPG, the customization is a little too over the top. Phantom Brave is like a slightly toned-down version of Disagea. Although loaded with stats, percentages, and mechanics like combining characters, combining weapons, combining characters with weapons, combining items with..well, you get the idea, the game is actually not that difficult to wrap your head around. Long story short..you play a young girl named Merona who can summon phantoms to fight alongside of her as she tries to make a living helping out townspeople on different islands. You create your own group of phantoms (they can be fighters, mages, hell, even little rabbits or slimes), you equip them with weapons and you confine them to objects on the battlefield. Confine a mage to a flower or tree and their magical power increases dramatically, confine a fighter to a stone block or column and their attack and defense increases. My only complaint is the turn limit for each phantom; after a set number of turns, your phantoms disappear. The game can be pretty unforgiving as far as difficulty goes at certain parts but not to the point of making the game completely frustrating. Well, as long as you are ok with backtracking and level grinding that is. =)

Super Street Fighter IV (360) Yeah! That’s right! Super! Not Arcade! Not Ultra! Friggin Super! Screw you, Capcom! Actually, I’m a huge fan of the entire Street Fighter series. I just really wish that Capcom would cut back on the different versions of basically the same game with a couple new characters added into the mix. I think that if they held off on releasing Super, Arcade and Ultra, they could have combined all of the new characters, stages, and mechanics into Street Fighter V. Anyways, this game has been a staple of our nerd nights for a couple of years now and will probably continue to be going forward. I think that Shawn secretly likes to play it because it causes me to throw tantrums and curse uncontrollably at the TV like no other game. I’m on to you, you rat bastard.