videogame – Merit Coba

Rise of the Tomb Raider:A quick guide.

23/02/201616/03/2016Posted in videogameTagged adivse, casual, game, gamer, guide, lara croft, quick guide, rise of the tomb raider, skills, Tips, tomb raider, Tricks, videogameLeave a comment

Edited version: 28-2-2016: cleaned up some text, added more.

Index

Intro
Flow of the game
Do resources respawn?
Can I go back to an area I already visited before to explore more?
Are there enough Byzantine coins in the game?
Do I need to buy equipment?
Do you have any thoughts on the weapons?
How about skills?
Your thoughts on equipment?
Things to watch out for while underway
You thoughts on gear?
Are optional tombs profitable?
Pointers on combat and enemies
Hunting
Places to stock up
Extra fun

Intro
Rise of the Tomb raider is the second installment of the reboot of the Lara Croft series. It is a neat game that impresses by visuals and most of all, by Lara Croft herself. When I played Rise of the Tomb Raider I had questions and many of these were answered on the internet when I went looking for them(and some where not), but often I had to sit through lengthy YouTube movies or walk-troughs before I got the answer I was looking for. Some of these questions were so basic that I was amazed that answers were so hard to find. But perhaps this is just my ineptitude.
So I figured I make a kind of quick guide, say a kind of Q&A in which I answer my own questions and hope that this will help you to answer yours.

Before I start I need to tell you some things, such as that this post is aimed at the (experienced) casual player. The casual player is someone who will play through the main story line, with some digressions, can handle a weapon, but isn’t a pro( a pro is someone who can pull off head shots while jumping about) , and will not aim at a 100% completion of the game, although he or she might. The casual player isn’t someone who will power build, but might welcome some pointers on what to do and not to do and who will probably play the game on a standard level, in this game called tomb raider.
Also I will tell you that I think this game is well done. It smartly combines a well told story with with an open world to explore. It makes possible to follow your own way, either by following the main story only or by exploring the world. How well this is done is for instance by the fact that almost all dungeons are optional. Yet each come with a reward. A reward not necessary for the main story line, but something that makes things easier, specifically for exploring the world.

Perhaps the greatest aspect of this game is Lara herself. The animations are so well done that is feels like a movie. And the game smartly ties her in with a few persons, like Jonah, Ana, Sofia and Jacob, thus making her more convincing.

ROTTR 2016-02-16 22-26-33-22 — Lara and her friend Jonah,

I also would have applaud the makers of the game for listening to the players by elimination all Quick Time Events. Yes, they got rid of these pains: the ones where you have to smash an arbitrary set of buttons. Well.. almost. Two are still in there. One early into the game and another at the end. I can hear them laughing. And it is forgiven because it is funny.

Flow of the game
The game changes during progression. So when you return to an area you will notice it has changed. An example is the first play area, the Siberian wilderness, which will change overtime as day turns into night and the otherwise peaceful area gets more dangerous because after a while enemies will make an appearance.

Do resources respawn?
Yes they do, but this is dependent on the progress of the game. Initially the respawn is very slow and you will feel the lack of resources as make your first few arrows and first few kills. Which is a good thing as it make the tension all the greater the rewards all the bigger. When the game progresses you will find that eventually that you have more than enough resources to do most of the things and when you lack them, you can always get more.

Can I go back to an area I already visited before to explore more?
All areas that are important will remain accessible throughout the game. In fact this is almost required as some places will only become available after you have gotten special gear such as the explosive arrows and some things you can only get after you read a monolith, which is dependent on your language skill, or when you find a map or a satchel. In other words: don’t worry about having skipped something, you can always return later.

Are there enough Byzantine coins in the game?
Byzantine coins are used to buy equipment at the supply shack. There are more than enough coins in the game to buy everything. I ended with 138 coins more than I needed after I had bought everything in the shack. However, these coins have to be found and to find all the coins you have to explore the world far and wide and areas, hence coin stacks, open up only gradually during the game.
I did a second run through the game on the hardest mode survivor, skipping a lot of areas and only picking coins that were withing easy reach. It allowed me to buy the grenade launcher (120 coins) and some the pistol silencer(25). I had about 80 spare after that. So you follow only the main story line, be prepared to have far less. But read on for more advise about equipment.

Do I need to buy equipment?
The answer is no. None of the equipment you can buy at the supply shack is essential for the game although it makes life easier. The more you buy, the easier things get, but only marginally so for each piece of equipment, so don’t expect anything shocking. In fact buying things partly means you to get some things earlier in the game. An example is the shotgun. I ended the game with the full auto shotgun that I found, because I preferred that one above the one I bought. The most important reason was rate of fire and reload time.
Here are my observations:

Laser Sight
A laser sight is pretty superfluous if you are a decent shot as you already get a reticle. There is no sniper sight in the game. People seem to recommend this, I don’t see why.

Pistol silencer
I find the pistol class the weakest in the game, especially on survivor mode, and rarely use one. So why waste money buying a silencer for it? You bow is silent and a much a better weapon. And for speedy damage the silence assault rifle or smg works much better.

Combat Shotgun
Unless you want a shotgun early into the game the combat gun seems mostly pointless at isn’t much of an improvement on the full auto shotgun. Also the basic pump action shotgun, which is story given, is a decent weapon when you upgrade it.

Assault Rifle
This is a slightly improved version on the SMG. Again it is only a slight improvement.

Grenade Launcher
I prefer this one as it allows your rifle to lob grenades. While your bow will be able to do the same eventually, this is in addition too it. You get it earlier in the game and this will help you with a certain threat in the story line. Overal I find grenades in this game under powered. Lobbing one among a group doesn’t what you expected. You need to actually target an enemy and then it will take usually only that one out. Exploding barrels don’t require a grenade.

The refinement tool
This one is needed to unlock 4th level upgrades for all your weapons. While that makes it a worthwhile thing to buy, it is also the most expensive in the game. The upgrades aren’t very spectacular and require a lot of salvaging and hunting to upgrade the things so it has its drawbacks. Probably for someone who just wants to follow the main story this might be too expensive and too much salvaging effort

Combat gear: nothing useful here. It just looks cool.

My views is that the only worthwhile buys in the game are the grenade launcher and the refinement tool unless you are a shotgun buff. If you like shotguns then buy it so you don’t have to wait until you get one later.

Do you have any thoughts on the weapons?

The game has five weapon types. Bows, pistols,rifles, shotguns and the climbing-axe..
Five weapons are a given as part of the story-line. The climbing-axe you get from the start and is the only weapon of its type. The makehift longbow you get when the game really starts in the Siberian Wilderness and will be replaced by the recurve bow. The revolver, the assault rifle and the pump-action shotgun you get as part of the storyline. The other weapons you need to find/
This finding is done by finding strong boxes that will give you 1 out of 4 parts of a specific gun. I have seen sites telling you where to get what part, but when I redid the game, I found that this didn’t fit. Either the parts are more or less random or dependent on your difficulty setting. As an example: on tomb-raider level I managed to get the bolt rifle early into the game while in survivor mode I got the required part much later into the game.

Bow
My experience is that the bow is the one that gets the most benefits in the game and gives you the most varied options, from a fast weak shooter to a very powerful slow one. Eventually you can use it to launch fire arrows, explosive arrows and poison cloud arrows and even those can be upgraded. The disadvantages of the bow are that you need to draw it, that the arrow needs to travel the distance and that is doesn’t have upclose stopping power. This sounds like it’s the worst of the weapons, but it isn’t. In fact it is probably one of the best weapons in the game and I wager you can win most battles with it.

It just depends on how you use it. You find different types of bows during the game.Specifically I found the poison cloud to be the most deadly in the game. When you aim it right and have the cloud upgrade you can take out groups of enemies in one go and they count as stealthy so they give extra points.

My favorite bow is the compound bow, which does a lot of damage per shot, but at a low rate of fire. I like my arrows to score hard when they hit.

Pistol
Personally I found the pistol type the most useless and I used it mostly as a stopgap until I got a decent rifle. You might consider to equip it with a silencer that can be bought from the supply shack for a small amount to extend its usefulness. As remarked above, why spent money to silence a weapon that you rarely use? After I got a decent rifle I hardly used it, especially after you get a silencer for the rifle.

Rifle
The rifle is a category that holds the SMG, a weapon that compensates weak damage with a high rate of fire, the Assault Rifle, more damage, less rate of fire, which you get as part of the story line. I prefer the Assault Gun to the SMG because it deals out more damage at a lower rate of fire, thus saving you bullets. The bolt action rifle is in a class of it’s own, coupled with the silencer it is an awesome weapon to kill animals and small groups of enemies, but is too slow in full scale battles and if you like single shotting people you might as well use the bow.

Shotgun
Shotguns are awesome because nothing satisfies more than seeing the charge of a fully armored warrior stopped in his tracks by a shotgun blow or two. It is an mightily effective weapon up to about 10 meter(30 feet). It couples a lot of damage in a short amount of time, but only in close quarters. Hence it is the weapon of choice for any enemy trying to close combat you. It’s main drawback is the lack of enough shells to win every battle with it.

If you don’t want to spend time and resources on upgrading all the weapons then you probably need to concentrate on two, one if which is the bow and the other I would suggest to be either a rifle, which you then probably need to buy the grenade launcher for, or the shotgun, in which case you might consider buying it early on.

My preferred weapon on the hardest level is combining a bow with a shotgun. The bow for distant work and taking out groups of enemies with poison cloud and the shotgun for anyone trying to come close.

Ice-axe
The ice axe is an awesome weapon if you upgrade it and sink points in close combat. Lara can eventually kill even fully armored enemies with just the axe, if you know how to counter and hit at the right time. The disadvantage of the ice axe is that it comes with a finisher animation that might look cool but isn’t really handy when fighting multiple enemies.

How about skills?

Lara has no less than 54 skills to choose from. That sounds impressive, doesn’t it?
Actually almost all skills only marginally improve her performance. This is well considered as no skill will suddenly make her superhuman, but a series of successive skills will. There are many opinions about skills on the internet, but for a normal person most of the skills will not be very useful.
Also, even with a casual attitude you will be able get at least half of all the available skills so don’t worry about it.
Some skill you certainly should consider to take are:
Avid Learner: gets you extra experience when reading things.
Lightfoot: falling distances are greatly increased: saves the annoyance of reloading.
Arrow Retrieval: get arrows back from you victims.
Naturalist: allows you get more natural resources.
Survivalist: even more important than Naturalist as non natural resources are harder to find.
Thick-Skinned & Heart of Stone & Iron Hide makes you less vulnerable to gunfire, fire, explosions and melee attacks. Some people do not see the point of this, but it helps when you are being swarmed by enemies.
Breath Control & Nerves of Steel: allows you to have a more steady aim with the bow.
Crafting Mastery: allows for larger ammo and resource pouches and increases ammo created.
Death Cloud Arrows: increases the poison cloud effect. A certain way to wipe out large groups of enemies and animals. Also buy the upgrade:
Grenadier: when you buy the grenade launcher, you have to get this one too otherwise you have to find grenades.
Scavenger: this isn’t of much use on normal level, but on survivor level might be.

Dubious skills(in my opinion)
Any skill enhancing close combat such as dodge counter, deadly force and dodge kill.You don’t want the waste points on this unless you are going for close combat or have points to burn. These are pro skills, who can use them effectively because you need to be a pro to pull these dodge counters off in a full scale battle.
Incidendary Bombs & Demolitions Expert. This sounds really cool until you realize that you can create bombs from the start without it and this skill just adds to it to allow you to make bombs from fuel cans and phones and gain extra expertise when you use them to kill people. If you are lucky you might even do it once a battle. Far better is using the phone to toss it someplace which will attract all enemy soldiers and the poison cloud them. This counts as a stealth attack and earns you the same amount of experience without buying the skill and spending precious resources. Even more: the fuel can will explode anyway when you shoot it.
Animal Instincts and Master of the Land: unless you really need to serious help to find wildlife to hunt you really don’t need this one. Mostly you will know where they are, even if you need to die for it once:P
Hollow Points and Dragonfire shells.
Hollow points are a special bullet that can be added to the pistol. I used them a few times, but didn’t find them worth the trouble.

Errata:

Cluster bomb arrows
An upgrade of your explosive arrows that is as underwhelming as the explosive arrows. It looks and sounds impressive and seems ideal for crowd control but doesn’t seem to do anything at all but to the one you aim the arrow at. Most of the time the addition explosions miss. The poison cloud arrow is much better and even the napalm arrows make your enemies flap about this forgetting to fire at you.
Update: later in the game they do get effective just like the dragonshell shells.

Dragonfire shells Originally I found that these didn’t improve my shotgun as it looked like armored enemies seemed not to stagger when shot by these but did with the normal shells. However on a second play through later in the game, they apparently do. So I revised my review accordingly. It might be that enemies crouching behing their shield don’t stagger at all.

Your thoughts on equipment?

Equipment can be very helpful and you need to spend resources on. I personally priotorize the satchel and the rucksack as it allows you to carry more resources which you will need for upgrades and creating ammo, bombs and the like. A small and large oil sack might also be interesting.

Things to watch out for while underway
Danger!

Whenever Lara is closing with hostiles, her stance changes to a crouch and the music changes to an alarming drum. You know that enemies are near. Unfortunately for the more experienced player who doesn’t need or want those warning signs. It can’t be switched off.

Glow on the ground usually indicates a survival cache. Get it.

Your thoughts on gear?
During the game you collect a lot of clothes. Almost all are just for changing Lara’s looks. However tow I deem to be special, which is the Sacra Umbra and the Siberian Ranger. These outfit increases your special ammo types for all weapons dramatically. The poison cloud arrows go from 3 to 7. Fire arrows go from 8 to 17. Grenade arrows go from 5 to 14. And so on.
The Sacra Umbra is a reward for finishing all 9 optional tombs, and this not only awards you all the extra skills that you get from these tombs, but also an extra amount of byzantine coins and the sacra umbra. But then: you need to finish all 9 tombs, talk to the lady below in the geothermal valley and cash it in with here.
I don’t know where I got the Siberian Ranger. When I found out I post it here.

ROTTR 2016-02-21 23-12-49-60 — Gold can buy you equipment

Are optional tombs profitable?

ROTTR 2016-02-20 22-28-09-46 — Optional tombs give special skill: nothing superpower full, but handy at times.

Almost all of the optional tombs give you a skill as reward. None of these skills are earth shattering, but they might change your game play a little bit for the better. Some are easy to solve, others are harder. All optional tombs give you additional byzantine coins when you cash them in with the lady at the geothermal valley. If you cash them all in you get a great outfit: the sacra umbra.

Pointers on combat and enemies
Lara will only encounter mundane enemies such as humans and animals. Early in the game humans are unarmored, as the game progresses people get to be more armored which prevents especially the bow from instant killing enemies with head shots as they start wearing helmets. Later on you run in full armored enemies which makes it more work to kill them, but then you also get better arrows to compensate.
All enemies, except one type, can be instantly killed with poison cloud arrows, so stock up on that. The only exception is a guy who wears a fully armored suit that has it’s own oxygen supply apparently. He also comes equipped with a flamethrower. And is impervious to arrows and bullets. Just so you know.

Combat
Enemies almost all come in groups running from 3 to 6 individuals. In special cases it might be even more. Some battles feed more enemies into it as you kill them to keep the pressure on.
Enemies tactics follow a certain pattern. There are three types. There are the close combatants who will close with you. They might even shoot at you but their purpose is to kill you up close and personal. The second type is the one who hangs in the back and fires at you. Usually the first and the second are mixed.
The third type resembles type 2, but he doesn’t hang back but instead tries to flank you.
This is no sitting behind cover and taking out enemies game. From the start the enemy will throw grenades and molotov cocktails at you, flank you and send in close assaulter. It is also not much of a stealth game in my opinion as a lot of encounters shove you right in. Perhaps an expert at sneaking can do it stealthy, I found it isn’t easy or actually virtually impossible at times.

Hunting
You hunt animals for their skin to upgrade your equipment and your weapons or just to gain experience or complete missions and challenges. Dear, razorbacks and the like will run away the moment they spot you and are often hard to find once they do.
Wolves, bears and tigers will attack you the moment you fire at them and non of them can be taken out with one shot(except for wolves later in the game). They close with you very fast and especially wolves are dangerous as they come in packs.
Wolves do not attack you directly but flank you.
A bear barrels into you and swipes at you with its paws. I wonder if anyone has every been able to kill it using the ice-axe.

Places to hunt
The Siberian Wilderness will have 1 to 3 dear often when you return. If you return too fast there might be non. The bear in the cave will re-spawn after a time and is probably the easiest bear to kill in the game, which doesn’t say a lot as even this one is extremely dangerous. The seem to be highly resistant to bullets as I tried to kill one with an assault gun and it took a lot of bullets. Thus poison cloud it and fire arrows at it.
Lucky you can get bear hides just by finding survival caches.There are also bunnies.. if you like to kill them.
The Soviet Installation has two places where wolves hang out. Both to either side of the saw mill in the middle. There is a kind of plain next to it with dear remains scattered about where often three wolves linger. You can poison cloud them from the saw mill. And climb up if you miss and they attack you. If you kill one wolf they also might bolt for a cave.
The other group of wolves are always two and they are in front of a cave across a bridge from the saw mill. When you shoot one, the other one runs away. If you approach they might attack you or run. Poison cloud might be an option.
Geothermal valley has a few places that might be profitable. One is near the sea where razorbacks abide. They come in groups of three or even four. The won’t attack you if you shoot at them, which I found interesting as I thought that a razorback might charge you. There is a tiger in one edge of the map. When it is there it is up in a tree and you can shoot at it from the house near the river.. but it will come at you as even shooting with a gun won’t kill it. If you retreat into the house it will run away.

Places to stock up
Some places re spawn resources at times. For ammunition I either visit the gulag once it is open. Usually there is a group of soldiers surrounded by ammo caches. The soldiers themselves give you addition resource to improve your equipment with. Another place is the Siberian Wilderness which is also a good hunting place. The Siberian Wilderness has usually 4 soldiers later in the game which re spawn most of the time.
I tried the remnant bazaar at times, but I found it yielded nothing as often as it did.

Extra fun

One of the charming aspects of the game is that it isn’t just about shooting stuff, but one of the fun part is the collection of items. Each ‘relic’ or document gives you some extra experience points, I just collected them because I found the stories behind them nice.
So I bore you with some fun examples in another post.

More to follow…

A game review: Dead State(a tale of errors, a chicken, a murderess and a ghost.. and lots of zombies too)

15/11/201419/02/2015Posted in review, videogameTagged apocalypse, end of world, game, role play game, rpg, turn-based, videogame, zombie, zombiesLeave a comment

(Note: This review is about the Early Access version and not about the full release. I have not had the opportunity to replay the full release game. )

Welcome to my review of the game Dead State, which is about to hit the market on the Fourth of December, according to their press release. I have to excuse myself for making a rather long post, but I have to because I initially made a review based on wrong assumptions and now, after playing, this game for about 70+ hours I feel that I can make a better judgement of the game.

First an introduction:

You are in restaurant. The waiter asks what you would like to eat and offers you the opportunity to select the ingredients yourself. In fact, you are invited to visit the kitchen and point out what you would like to have, to tell how much of it you think is sufficient and to describe how you like it to be prepared. After doing so you return to your table to await what must be a memorable eating experience.
Some time later the waiter enters the room holding aloft three plates. He walks over to you, puts one plate in front of you and then tosses the ingredients of the other two on top of the first plate and then shuffles the heap of food. He leaves Then wishing you a most enjoyable meal.

This then, is the condition of Dead State at the end of early access: full of things that would make for a memorable gaming experience, but the overall result is a mess.

But first let’s get you an idea about what kind of game this is.

Dead State is an isometric role play game set in the zombie apocalypse where you take charge of a group of survivors holed up in a school in Texas. The game has two parts: one part is managing your group of survivors, the other part is heading a party of up to four characters to scavenge for supplies, do quests and deal with the various enemies.

Those who are familiar with fallout 1 and fallout 2 should be at home with the mechanics of this game.The game has two map modes that each come with a different way of movement. There is a strategic map that you use to travel from one location to another in which time progress as you move. This movement can be done in three ways: on foot, on horseback or with a car. Each mode has advantages and disadvantages: foot is slow, but cost nothing; travelling on horseback gets you there faster, but requires food for the horses and the car is the fastest of them all, but costs fuel; a resource that is scarce.

deadstate-2 — The strategic map…early game(left) and late game(right)

The other map is the local map. Local map movement occurs on a tactical map and is real time until combat is imminent. In combat mode you move turn based. As far as I can tell there is no progression of time on the local map.

deadstate-3 — Local map movement: real time(big picture) and turn based in combat mode(insert)

During combat mode actions cost action points. Walking cost one point for instance, fighting with a small weapon three, shooting a handgun perhaps four, up till complex attack movements which cost perhaps eight points. Therefore, the more action points you have, the more you can do in one turn and the more powerful you become, provided you have other good fighting statistics as well.

Characters have varied attributes and varied skills. Your main character can be customized at the start and can be developed further during the game. Other characters also develop, but you can’t control that directly. They grow over time on their own, although it seems as if you can steer this progress by assigning them to do jobs that require a certain skill which they will thus improve.

You can improve your base by building various upgrades like a wall, a watch tower, a science lab and a recreation room. These upgrades often enable other upgrades or give the ability to create new objects, like the science lab, which allows you to create such things as improved armor, antibiotics and ammunition for guns.

deadstate-5 — The job board where you assign jobs such as building upgrades for your shelter. To the right an overview of various upgrades you can build.

The game has a kind of flow.. At first even a single zombie is a challenge, but gradually as you and your companions get better equipment and advanced skills they become less of a threat and you deal with looters, gangs, rogue cops, militia and finally the military. This shift in enemies means also a shift in weaponry. At the start you deal with you enemies with melee weapons, later on you start to depend more on ranged weapons.

I would like to special mention is that the game has implemented that people killed by zombies become zombies themselves. Which is a great idea. In addition the game also makes zombies appear when you make a lot of sound and especially gunfire, most notably shotgun fire draws in zombies. This is also a nice aspect of the game.

One important aspect of the game is handling the community of survivors. You become the leader and thus you have to deal with various challenges, like recruiting more survivors, getting to know your fellow survivors, assigning them jobs, bolstering their spirits, handling conflicts, dealing with community politics and making decisions, including those concerning life and death. It is up to you to deal with the situation.

Now doesn’t this all sound great?

Well, here is the other side of the game…

The game is beset with many issues. Just a list of random examples: a character dies, but her avatar stays on the map the rest of the game; doors return to undamaged state when you reload a game and you haven’t bashed them open; the fresh food you gathered on the day is not preserved when you restart the game; some doors allow no entrance after being opened; locations are unfinished; you have to reassign jobs to your characters every day even if you just want them to prolong the job; your fishing rod is removed from your inventory and put in the storage every time you enter the shelter and thus has to retrieved again when you want to go fishing again; somehow the fourth party member is afflicted by bad pathing which could make him/her run the other way and right into enemies.

deadstate-6 — My four avatars facing off a group of zombies . There are plenty of zombies on this map, but nothing else. Note that one of my party members is Fiona.. We will have a special part about her further down.

A rather annoying aspect of the game is that there is no log of conversations so you can’t find out what you have heard the other day: you have to write it down yourself. Sometimes a character tips you on a location, this location might or might not appear. There is no check if a location has already been found nor does the location offer new things..
And more: you can build a chicken coop, but that requires a chicken, when you bring a chicken, it is slaughtered automatically because there is no chicken coop. There is quest where someone offers you to trade medicines for food, but you can’t bring food from the shelter as any food that you take to your shelter disappears into an inaccessible storage. Some quests are broken: like one where you are asked by Aggro to pick up her friend Alan at the Dublin bar: he never shows up. There is one where I got a tip to go to Eden next to the Wicked Lily. Whatever Eden is remains unclear and I could not find it.

deadstate-7 — The chicken and egg problem: to make a coop you need a chicken, to bring a chicken to the shelter you need a coop.

One of broken story line is the story of Fiona Parks. At some point during the game Davis, the wheelchair guy who is your sidekick, comes up and told me how sorry he is about what Fiona did. I was left to wonder what he was talking about, but I through she was killed or commited suicide. But whenever I checked Fiona, she was alright and could be assigned jobs and taken along with parties, just like all the other party members. From that moment onwards Davis kept telling me every morning the same thing: that he is sorry about what happened to Fiona or was she did.

deadstate-8 — Davis telling me about Fiona.. the same story every morning.

Then one time I am told she has killed someone. A trial is organized and after the trial I had her expelled, and just after the trial has finished, I am told another murder has occurred: Fiona had killed again!. After a second trial Fiona is expelled again!Then the next morning Davis approaches me yet again to tell me how sorry he is about what happened to Fiona or what she did, and the morning after that one and the morning thereafter:basically every morning I have this same conversation.

deadstate-10 — Funny detail: Fiona is a supporter of Sandy, who votes to have her killed…

After a while it becomes clear that there is no progressing storyline and there seems to be no finish to the game. There is a conflict brewing between the militia and the military, but you can’t do anything with it.. They even have accessible headquarters, but I never get the ability to talk to their leaders and even killing them outright doesn’t seem to do much. It for instance doesn’t even make the rest of the militia angry when you shoot their fellows at the militia hq. It seems like this part still needs to be worked upon.Just like for instance the suggestive skill of Karen. She can fly a helicopter and at one point this is brought up in a conversation, which seems to imply that it is something important. but what it is, has still to be revealed.

Now all of this and much more needs to be looked at(just another bone: the dogs in the game can only be attacked from the front and the back) and fixed, but we are to believe that game has entered Beta in Augustus and should be in state that will allow it to be released to market on the 4th of december. It could be that all these issues will be solved around that time, but it is strange that they haven’t been solved in the current version and I have my doubts if all these issues can be fixed in that time.

The final straw that makes me give this game the thumb down is simply the price. The developers asked to be funded via kickstarter and got more than double the money they asked for. In addition they ask a whopping 27 euro for an early access indie game(compare that to state of decay: 18 euro’s). Yet the game is not finished and I wonder in what state the game will be released. There is a lot of fixing to do and we have to believe that all this fixing is done at the time of the official launch.

Some random things that need to be looked at:

deadstate-11 — Some errors: at Coleman(left side) you can walk right through this barricade. Items still need icons(top middle). The interior of that shop is on the move(top right). And sometimes you are blessed with a random 5th party member(lower right). The door is no obstacle for this soldier(bottom middle)

deadstate-13 — The ghost that haunts the shelter: Elaine killed herself early in the game, but her presence lingers on. Even the sun won’t chase her away.

State of Decay ten tips for playing the DLC Lifeline.

02/08/201402/08/2014Posted in videogameTagged addon, dlc, game, lifeline, playing, State of Decay, ten tips, videogameLeave a comment

Some time ago the game State of Decay got a new addon called Lifeline and it has a few changes that are surprising interesting given that this is only a small addon. One of the changes even carries back into the game and the first addon Breakdown DLC and is certainly an improvement on playing the game. It basically saves you a lot of to and fro driving. Now this post is not a review. I wrote a review that I published on another blog, which I might move to this one, but in the mean time you can find the link here. The purpose of this post is to give a few game playing tips that have worked very well for me and you can apply to. Note that this might make the game relatively easy to play and this might be considered a spoiler.

Now for those who like a puzzle you can look at the picture abive. It shows the basic ingredients for beating the game. The only thing for you to do is to apply it.

For those who hate to puzzle I have below a few tips for making the addon a bit more easier to play, provided you need to.

But fist a few lines about what is typical about this addon. I assume you already know the basic game, so I will not explain the game mechanics here. The game mechanics is the same in the addon.

First, most obvious, the map has changed. The map is that of the city of Danforth. But the map is for a large part inaccessible. In fact the map consists basically of the road around the city and a about seven areas branching of the central road. There are therefore far less buildings to explore unlike the basic game, that had a lot of places to explore and to scavenge.

Second, the addon has only one base and thus there is no reason to try and look for another one. This base has only a few option to builds. Basically you have only four slots to build something.

Third, the addon story is interspersed with attacks on your base at set intervals. The attacks by zombies increase in ferocity. The first attacks will see normal zombies, more zombies and more special zombies will join in the attack as the game proceeds. To deal with attacks you will recruit soldiers, artillery support, mortar support , air strikes and static defense around the base. I never use them since I found another way to deal with the attacks.

Fourth, and very handy, change is that vehicles now can carry equipment and especially resources. This mean that you can now drive to a shack and transport the resources in that shack in your car instead of having you to drive back and forth between your base and the shack for each resource. This change also works in the basic game and in the other addon Breakdown.

Fifth, the cap for influence is 10.000. Which is different from the basic game and addon Breakdown, as there the cap very low and slowly rose throughout the game based on your performance.

Six, the price for hiring a soldier to come with you is twenty influence, which is very cheap as compared to the 100 you need in the basic game.

Seventh, you can summon supplies from your base.

Eight, munitions shop now make munitions.

Nine, you will be pressed for time as you have to do quests within a short time and there is little time left to do other things until the story lines have finished.

And lastly: this game revolves mostly around doing missions to either save people or to gather supplies.

Now we come to the tips.

Tip one: disobey the first order you get.

The first order you get is to head over to the base at one as it is under attack. Instead of going directly to the base you are better of to use the moment to establish some out posts and gather resources. The reason to do this is because at this moment in the game the zombie threat is the lowest and you have two companions with you. Also, unlike in the basic game, you can already establish outposts and you need to establish outposts to drop off the weapons that you find. Also you have ample time to scavenge as there is no deadline on the first quest.

Tip two: Build outposts, but build them to destroy hordes and make areas safe.

Hordes get to be a serious menace in the game as they are the cause of infestations and infestations will make quests harder to do as. The only way to effectively deal with them is having outposts destroy as many as you can get. To do that you need to place outposts at place where hordes pass and this is in contradiction with placing outposts at satellite uplinks, artillery and drone sites because these are almost all on the edges.

Tip three: forget about the latrine.

There is a latrine in the game and it is suggested that not having it will make your soldiers sick. Well, I have had times where half my soldiers were sick, but that is a rare occurrence. The soldiers will still help defend your base. The disadvantage of having a latrine is that it uses up a slot that can be put to better use.

Tip four: take a soldier with you.

Asking a solder to come with you cost twenty influence, which is cheap as compared to the hundred influence in the basic game. So take a soldier with you. In addition this is an important way to make them playable characters and you want to make them playable to equip them.

Tip five: don’t hesitate to use your car and Molotov to save people by driving into a group of zombies.

In the basic came driving a car into a horde of zombies attacking a refugee or survivor would cause you to loose influence. In this game you can do that unpunished and you need to as the zombies get tougher and can easily kill a refugee and survivor later in the game. So throw that Molotov cocktail and drive a car into them.

Tip six: don’t worry about supplies.

With the exception of materials you do not need to worry about supplies because you will get resource when you keep the gather supplies function on all the time. Materials you need at the start of the game to build your facilities. Once they are build they aren’t so important. You can break down all other resources.

Now follows four more tips that can be seen as game spoilers.

Tip seven: gather rocket launchers.

In almost all the games there are around five rocket launchers These are your key weapons to use in your defense as outlined below.

Tip eight: build a munitions shop.

You need to build a munitions shop to make 40 mm grenades. It might even be advisable to use a second slot for making another munitions shop so you can spent building your ammo on making more 40 mm grenades.

Tip nine: Make as many 40 mm grenades as you can.

Make as many 40 mm grenades as you can. If you don’t have ammo for 40 mm grenades make either silencers or flame fougasse.

Tip ten: don’t recruit soldiers.

You have only about 5 rocket launchers. So you need to keep the amount of soldiers low. Preferably not more than you have rocket launchers, but this is hard as the game will give you just a bit more solders then you want. Around two more on average.

The tactics that you now can use is equipping your small crew of soldiers(best is around six or seven) with grenade launchers. Because your npc never use and run out of ammo you have made yourself free artillery. The 40 mm grenades you make are for your own use as during most of the addon Sasquatch will be at the north gate and you can’t equip him and you will need to use the grenade launcher. In addition your npc grenades do little damage to Big Ones so you need to take them out yourself. In addition you have no control over how the soldiers will be positioned and this it might be you need to fill in the gaps.

Now go out and play.

lifeline-wide-borders-1 — Zombie slaughter.

lifeline-wide-borders-2 — Taking out a Big Un.

A game: The cat lady

18/07/201415/07/2014Posted in review, videogameTagged game, graphic story, indie game, interactive story, pc, storytelling, telling, the cat lady, videogameLeave a comment

Starting a post by writing that I like a game counts probably as a spoiler and it certainly would be -I think- if this post was meant as a game review, but this isn’t mean as such. The reason I write about the game the cat lady is because it is one of those small little games that linger in the dark recesses of steam(the online game shop) and is likable, even though it might not be a good game according to many standards.

So doesn’t that mean the game isn’t worth the money you pay for it?

Not at all.

First off, the game isn’t that expensive, I bought it for just a few euros so based on the cost you don’t need to set your expectations high. But the most important reason is that it combines pictures, music and voice acting very nicely into a neat story.

So what is the story about?

The cat lady is a story of Susan Ashworth, a 40 year old single woman, who is called the cat lady because she feeds the neighborhood cats, who has had some pretty nasty experiences in her past and who commits suicide, she then gets send back by a rather strange(and creepy) lady to take care of the ‘parasites’; people who prey on other people up to the point of killing them So that is basically what you are expected to do: stop the parasites. The story will see you move between realities, between death and live and back and forth between then and now. And your most powerful tool? You can’t be killed. Well, you can be killed, only you come back to live in a short while.

2014-06-17_00005 — Death is just the start of the tale and will be one of the ways to solve the mysteries.

The story is a bit morbid, and certainly gruesome at times. Most of the scenes are set fixed scenes that you look at from one side. There is a little bit of animation to the scenes, but not much. At various points sounds are used and music. It is all used sparingly, but properly and to the point.

So instead of seeing this game as a game, you might also see it as a kind of interactive narrative. Sometimes you are allowed to make different choices, although I don’t think the choices will ultimately result in a dramatic different story. I didn’t explore alternatives, but considering the price and the smallness of the game, I doubt they would have spent a lot of time and effort on exploring alternative story lines.

What I most like about this game was the imagery and therefore I took some screenshots, killed about sixteen of my darlings and show you the remains below.

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