Erathoniel's Musings

Ok, I'm actually reviewing four things this week, throwing caution to the wind and leaving absolutely nothing for next week.

Need for Speed World is my first victim. Well, my first review at least, because I actually liked it. Admittedly, I approached it as a F2P racing MMORPG, rather than a Need for Speed game. It borrows heavily from my favorite, Need for Speed Underground, with at least a good portion of the game world included (my memory's bad, but some of the more memorable parts are the same). It felt very familiar, but had enough unique stuff to keep me playing for a while. The car customization isn't quite as overblown as in some of the more recent games, but it's enough that you can tweak both the performance and look of your car to be unique.

Brink is probably the only reason I stopped playing Need for Speed World. It's really fun, even if it's uncomfortably short. My only hope is that the free DLC adds a few hours onto Brink, because while I love the gameplay, it lacks heavily in variety of maps. Admittedly, the maps are more deep than I had hoped, but would it kill Bethesda to put in Capture the Flag or King of the Hill or even a deathmatch? I know it would "break immersion/storylines" or whatever, but it'd add a ton to the replayability if I didn't have to do the exact same objectives on every map every time I played it. Why not have multiple possible missions per map, and just add them as "What If" options to the campaign, or even just freeplay? Lord knows that in this day and age such a thing is possible.

Ok, just a quick announcement before I put up a review, there's a contest going on at DriveThruRPG called "Tell Us About Your Character". In the off chance a real human should be reading this, you may wanna enter. You'll have a chance to win a tablet and an illustration of the character you submit, as well as a potential to win gift cards for money!

Ok, other part now, Drakensang: River Of Time. Now, as you may have realized, I'm a huge fan of tabletop games, and River of Time is heavily based on a German game that, as far as I know, has never been released Stateside in English, so I can't really vouch for similarity to core material. However, it's still an awesome game, with perfect art and music to create a feel in a wonderful fantasy world. It's different enough not to be another Dungeons & Dragons game mechanically and setting wise, so it's worth a shot for fans of the genre. Also, it's really, really awesome.

Ok, this week's been a "slow" one for me because I re-read Eclipse Phase in honor of its third printing, a feat which I finished yesterday, meaning that I haven't had time to look for any video games to review. However, I did review a tabletop game supplement, Tome of Monsters for Pathfinder RPG.

Ignoring my usual digs at the d20 system (seriously, people still use that?), Pathfinder is the best implementation of it I've seen, and Tome of Monsters has a lot of unique new content, as well as some old favorites. It's $10, but comes with lots of art and typesetting that doesn't make me cry. Check it out at DriveThruRPG via the link above!

Ok, this is a week of quite a few things happening, and I'm just getting back into DDO, so I'm gonna be a little crazy and terse here.

First, we have Caves of Qud. I'm a roguelike guy, a fan of games like GearHead, ToME and ADOM (though I never got far in ADOM), so I love it. Basically picture Dwarf Fortress's adventure mode (only a little more polished since the game focuses exclusively on it), in a mix of Fallout and The Mutant Epoch (no, it's not exactly the same, but I'm actually kinda poorly read on my post-apocalypse, so that's the most well known similar example I have), with all sorts of crazy mutations and fun combat, with loads and loads of survival (for instance, finding food and water) tossed in there.

Second, Eclipse Phase apparently released their third printing, as well as updating their pdf's. As Eclipse Phase is incredibly awesome, I recommend checking it out.

Third, Section 8: Prejudice released for PC. It's awesome. The co-operative swarm mode is great, though I haven't gotten far in the campaign yet (courtesy of my insistence of playing it through on hard difficulty the first time). The only downside from its predecessor is the lack of locational damage for armor (at least as far as the HUD goes it's been removed, though I can't be quite sure without a fair deal more testing than I've had time to do), but it's still the same great game, now with reduced price.

Fourth is Stellar Wind, which I somehow missed reviewing when I first got an offer to. Given that it looks like it was sent to me during April, which was pretty busy, I'm not too surprised, though I do wish I had reviewed it, since it's pretty awesome. If you like sci-fi, and Eclipse Phase is too dark and harsh for you, Stellar Wind provides an Asimov style game that's got lots of good