Wednesdaily Update

Grind out some Gold Eggs

Hey guys welcome to my mid-week update. I took some time away from writing blogs over the Easter period and concentrated on completing some of the games in my XBLA backlog. As such I have a bunch of reviews I now have to write and will be rolling out throughout the week. Thus the time off from writing has, perhaps obviously, resulted in a major backlog of writing to be done.

Since last update I haven't played any more DC Universe Online, so no long rambling stories from Metropolis this time. I did however finish Dungeons & Dragons: Daggerdale, which you can read my review of here. Grinding the last 30 000 gold I needed proved to not be too laborious of a task, and I finished within an hour of starting.

Since completing Daggerdale I went on to finish with a duo of Sega Saturn fighting ports. Virtua Fighter 2 and Fighting Vipers. While both are from the same era, they have quite differing levels of quality. I'll be publishing my review of Fighting Vipers along with this blog entry so you can read that here. You will have to wait to read what I have to say about Virtua Fighter 2, which I will be rolling out tomorrow. Gotta keep 'em wanting more.

Point and Click again, I dare you!

While I do enjoy a fighting game here and there, I usually tire of them quickly. After grabbing all the achievements in the Sega fighters on I went to play through both the Sam and Max seasons on offer on the Xbox Live Arcade. Having never played a Sam and Max game I wasn't too sure what to expect but I ended up enjoying my time with the duo. Reviews of both games will be up in the future.

Writing all this content and not posting it is hard, as I'm not the best in delaying gratification, however knowing that there is something guaranteed to go up the next couple of days, even if I do nothing, gives a sense of security. I don't want to write too much about all that as I'm still writing them and I don't wan't everything to just be repeated across multiple pages.

Onto the present, I have started NiGHTS into Dreams... another Sega title. I know a lot of Sega fans have a bunch of love for this franchise but personally I'm not seeing it yet. I've only played the first 2 levels and I don't have a great handle on what it is I'm doing yet but rest assured I'll keep playing until completion and have a review about that some time in the future.

That covers everything and you all are up to date on my gaming goings on. Keep watch for a bunch of reviews and more updates in the future.

Dungeons & Dragons: Daggerdale XBLA Review

Hope everyone had a great Easter break and baby Jesus laid you all a bunch of chocolate eggs and/or other assorted goodies. I tried to stay away from most things chocolate this Easter but I couldn't resist all of it. I spent most of Easter where I spend most of the time I have free - in front of my trusty Xbox.

All this free time has resulted in an unprecedented amount of content to write about, which I will be working on and rolling out over the upcoming week/s. Normally I try to set aside an hour or so to write an entry every day, but starting with this piece I think I'll marathon a few to be rolled out in future so I don't forget pertinent details. Enough about future plans, on with the real reason this entry exists.

Overview

Mum, can I borrow some eyeliner?

Dungeons & Dragons: Daggerdale is a standard, pretty-much-top-down action RPG loot-em-up. The valley of Dagger, or Daggerdale if you will, is being threatened by some sort of Wizard/Necromancer, named Rezlus, who's nefarious scheme is to kill or enslave the various races that live in Daggerdale. So far so good, if a little vanilla, sadly, for Rezlus anyway, he decided to take dress tips from the "cool" Emo/Goth kids that hang out behind the Daggerdale shops. As you might have guessed I didn't find him to be all that threatening and the only real reason I personally wanted to kill him was because he looked so damn annoying.

Daggerdale also seems to be a little bigoted as the different races there never seem to inhabit the same maps, even though the whole game is just working your way through one big cave. It seems all the races support this self-imposed segregation as when they do cross paths near the end of the game no one is all that happy about it and it's more of a we'll-just-deal-with-this-to-save-Daggerdale thing.

Rational

Finding better loot is rare.

As the overview might have clued you into the fact that I thought the story was total crap, I don't remember anything specific about it at all. That's fine, in that it's just an excuse to delve into this cave and get all kinds of loots and levels. The loot however leaves quite a bit to be desired. There doesn't seem to be that big of a range of differing items, and the intervals between finding the next exciting bit of loot for your character seems to be too long.

Another negative is the lack of character customization, upon starting the game you have a choice between 4 differing but set character/class combinations. Want to be a Dwarven Fighter? Too bad, Cleric is what you're stuck with. I didn't think the Dwarves were known for their magic, but then again I don't really know squat about D&D. There's no visual customization to mess with either, and maybe I'm expecting too much from an XBLA release but one of the most entertaining parts of the RPG's I like to play is messing with the character customization to get them more or less how I want. I mean if I'm going to role play a character, I'm going to role play the guy I want, if the preset characters don't hold my interest I end up bored. Which is more or less what happened here.

No you can't be a Human Rogue! Dwarven Fighter?! Who do you think you are?

The last thing I'll say about this game is it is short, especially for an RPG. it only really has 4 different maps to explore and the whole game takes place inside the one mine/cave which makes the environment rather bland and samey. The original Diablo is the shining example of an action RPG that takes place in one location done right, and had Daggerdale paid it more attention it could have been a better game. I busted through Daggerdale in 5 or 6 hours, which felt long enough because I was over it by the time the game ended. Six hours to see the whole of an RPG (and I do mean all of it, I did every side quest I could find) is minuscule, and further shines a light on how little there really is in the game.

Summary
I can't recommend this game at all. In fact the only people I can fathom getting anything out of this game might be D&D enthusiasts if the Daggerdale region holds some intrigue for them. Again I know nothing of the D&D universe so I'm not sure these people even exist.

It bares mentioning that to fully complete this game you have to run through it and get all characters up to level 10 for an achievement. This turned a game that I was done with after 6 hours into something I struggled through for over 24. The story and interactions with NPC's don't change at all depending on your character and the game essentially plays the same every time. Play Diablo instead, it's this game but better, longer, more varied and challenging and it came out in 1997.

Thursdaily Update

Also starring Bat-Nipples.

Hey all, sorry about not publishing an update yesterday, time just seemed to slip away from me. In truth I was just too engrossed in DC Universe Online and only played a couple of hours of Daggerdale. The upside is Gotham is safe once again from the evil exploits of Bane and Scarecrow. Batwoman was quite happy, I never knew she was a red head! I guess my only Batwoman experience is that of Alicia Silverstone in the thoroughly average movie Batman & Robin. Now that I think of it she may have actually been Batgirl... I digress.

TheDonMega is now level 11 and has taken down his fair share of villains, learnt a new ice power that encases him in ice and heals a lot of health quite rapidly and finally learnt how to fly faster. Getting around the world with only the base level flight was quickly becoming tiresome. I will say that I am enjoying the change of setting a lot, as all of the MMOs I've played in the past have all been in a fantasy-ish setting. This is the first time I've played in a PvP server, which has made it a lot more fun. Minding your own business trying to complete a mission only to have some villain drop in unannounced to battle you has kept things interesting, turning the rote MMO fetch quest into something unexpected.

TheDonMega

Me and my buddy (Badgeros), who convinced me to play a bit with him, have been flying around together for the most part and we've had a lot more success than failure when it's come to villains dropping in unannounced. One of the best times I've had so far is when 3 villains tried to jump us as we were searching for some fetch-quest MacGuffin. Badgeros took the brunt of the onslaught and concentrated on the highest level attacker while I danced around dodging a lot of damage while trying to deal my own. He managed to take out his main assailant but his health had dwindled too much and as he got caught in another attack he collapsed, leaving me and 2 damaged but still dangerous attackers. After a flurry of ice and bullets it turned into a duel between me and the remaining perpetrator, and after a tense couple of minutes I had him on the ropes. As he went to take of TheDonMega gave chase, wanting to avenge the fallen Badgeros. As I chased the villain around the corner of yet another skyscraper I froze. There I was facing 12 odd villains forming a group for a raid, before I could even turn around TheDonMega was sent crashing into the pavement. Flying through a city, popping caps in fools with guns, experiencing PvP and a different genre to MMO my way through might just hold my attention for a while.

Enough PC talk, this blog has Xbox right up there in the title. Since I last updated everyone I have finally leveled everyone of my Dungeons & Dragons: Daggerdale characters to level 10, which took a lot longer than expected due to me losing my concentration and dying every second run through of the last boss. Only just moments before starting this entry I finally struggled my way through beating the last boss in Coop with myself. Having to babysit a level 1 character through the last boss while simultaneously trying to deal as much damage as possible to get it over as quickly as possible is something that took more tries than I'd like to admit. A hint for those going for it, don't think that if he goes down and you get to the boss in time before he bleeds out that you are safe. I found out the hard way that his timer is still ticking down during the last long diatribe he has to get out of his system before finally croaking it.

Spoilers: The last boss is a dragon. Now you don't have to play Daggerdale, you're welcome.

One more achievement to go, and that's grinding my way to having 100 000 gold. I should be done by the end of today and will therefore be posting a review of Daggerdale next time I blog. I'm not sure if I'll be writing an entry over Easter, so I'll take this time to wish everyone a happy Easter. Try not to engorge yourselves too much on chocolate and whatever else you'll be eating during the festivities.

Tuesdaily Update

Hack and/or Slash

So we finally get to a more typical update post. Shorter and to the point, though in the past any blog I've started by saying that has been anything but. I'll try to buck the trend, but first I hope everyone's had a fine day full of gaming and/or achieving. All of my gaming time has been spent with Dungeons & Dragons: Daggerdale lately. I'm closing in on finishing the game a forth and final time, however I will still need to put in some time afterwards.

One of the achievements requires you to get all characters up to level 10, which will be a bit of a grind seeing as you finish the story at around level 8, even if you complete all the side quests. This is the first action RPG where I have actually enjoyed playing a spell caster. Usually I find playing one tedious, my Dwarven Cleric and Halfling Wizard have both been the most fun to play. Historically I've been more of a warrior type, but I have to say the Human Fighter just didn't grab me at all.

I'm about 3/4s the way through with my Elven Rogue, which is the last of the characters you can play as, and about to jump back in kill off a whole bunch more goblins and hopefully finish the game. Other than getting all characters to level 10 the rest of the achievements are easy.

Daggerdale is very similar to the original Diablo in that it all takes place in the one dungeon. You work your way through the floors completing quests until you reach the bottom/end and face off against your nemesis. I won't go into too much detail on the game as that's not what these updates are for, I expect to finish it soon however and will write up a review.

Today was a Good Day in Metropolis

That's all that has been happening on the Xbox 360 front. On the PC, however, I have been playing some DC Universe Online at the behest of a friend. This is the first MMO I've delved into since World of Warcraft, which I lost 3 months to years ago. I usually peter out on MMO's fairly quickly, though I will say DC Universe is now free and has a cool character creation tool that has allowed me to squash injustice as Ice Cube with both my gats and ice powers. You might find me flying around the PvP US Server. My hero's name is TheDonMega, drop me a line if you play.