If you like Diablo well, Diablo III is certainly another one of those games, and easily one of the better ones. The systems within the game have been streamlined in very thoughtful ways, the gameplay is as compelling as it ever was (which will vary based on your tastes), and the game looks great. As a game, I highly recommend it.

As a complete package I’d still recommend it, but somewhat less. Here’s the thing: Diablo III is all about the co-op. And the co-op is very, very good. I was playing today, trying out the wizard, when my friend Irven dropped right into my game and started playing with me. Co-op is well put-together in a lot of ways: lots of great interface touches, easy trading, and individualized loot (meaning that, if you see it on your screen, it’s yours). So what’s the problem? The problem is that, even if you’re playing single player, you’re playing co-op.

What do I mean by that? If you’re playing by yourself, nobody else in sight, you still have to connect to the servers (which sometimes go down), you still have to log into Battle.net (though this is a minor annoyance), and you still have to deal with latency (though the latency isn’t bad most of the time). It’s most irritating when all you want to do is play single player but the servers are down for maintenance; when this is the case, you can’t play. Period. It’s frustrating.

Having experienced the co-op, I can understand why they designed it the way they did. The game is better in co-op, and everything about the game facilitates co-op in the best ways possible. If that’s not your thing though, be prepared to get annoyed from time to time. That said, the experience (again, if you like games like this) is worth putting up with some irritating qualities for.

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There are two models of video game distribution that are working with varying success levels that have piqued my interest recently.

Episodic games, like The Walking Dead by TellTale, use a model where you buy the game in two-hour chunks or pay for a “season” beforehand and get a new two-hour chunk every X weeks. In The Walking Dead’s case, drop $25 and you get one episode per month for five months.

Another interesting model is free-to-play, where you download the game for free and play it for free, but you can buy items or other content using microtransactions. You pay for the content you want, and spend what more-or-less what you think the game’s worth.

These two models are interesting by themselves, but I’m waiting for some enterprising game company to combine the two. Most free-to-play games are multiplayer-only. I think this is a good thing because I don’t want to have to buy items in my single player game with real money; I feel it would pull me out of the experience. However, I like the idea of a multiplayer game with microtransactions for multiplayer items and content that also allows you to buy single player episodes of content if that’s what you’re interested in.

Just something I’ve been kicking around.

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I’m going to talk about the ending for Mass Effect 3 a little bit because, frankly, the Mass Effect series is probably my favorite video game series ever. Over the course of the series I’ve grown extremely attached to the characters and the universe, and the relationships between the various characters have become important to me. I’m emotionally invested in Shepard’s story.

Since I’m going to be talking a little bit about the ending specifically here, I’m not going to try to avoid spoilers; I’ll just speak frankly.

First, I liked Mass Effect 3. A lot. I felt it brought closure to a lot of story threads and it was filled with scenes that alternately made me choke back tears or say “holy shit”. I feel that it delivered on the promise of the series, and that includes the ending.

Here’s where the spoilers start.

In the end, you’re given three choices: destroy the Reapers along with all synthetic life and all machines, everywhere; try to control the Reapers but die in the process; or merge yourself with the energy of the Crucible in order to create synthesis between synthetic and organic life, ensuring lasting peace (but again, sacrificing yourself in the process). Note that you’re on the Citadel when this happens, which is in space; even if you make the choice that doesn’t explicitly require self-sacrifice, you can be sure that Shepard isn’t going to survive long after the Citadel is destroyed along with all the other machines out there. So no matter what you choose, Shepard’s story ends permanently.

I can see why so many people are upset about this ending. Shepard’s story is one we’ve all become incredibly invested in, and we all want to see him or her beat the Reapers and live happily ever after. That’s not this story, though. I could tell from somewhere in Mass Effect 2 that Shepard wasn’t going to get her happily ever after (she’s a woman in my story). I still hoped, though. I had grown to care about so many of her companions that I really hoped she’d be able to grow old with them. When I chose to sacrifice myself for the greater good, it was a hard choice. I agonized over it. I wanted her sacrifice to mean something, and I wanted it to be for the right reasons. I feel that I achieved that, but it was still a bittersweet ending. It left a mark on me that will likely linger for a few days.

Do I feel cheated? No. Realistically, I knew where the series was going; I knew how Shepard’s tale would end even if I didn’t know the specifics. How could she not sacrifice herself for the ones she loves, for the galaxy at large? That’s just who she is. What she was born to do. I found the ending emotionally powerful and immensely satisfying, if melancholy.

And that’s really it. I just wanted to get my thoughts down, share how I felt about one of the most important fictional stories I’ve experienced. It wasn’t exactly what I wanted in the end, but I wouldn’t change a thing about the journey.

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Some of you may have read the Gizmodo post that has become infamous in geek circles on the Internets. I won’t link to it here, because I don’t want to feed the nerd-baiting any more than I already have. Here’s the thing, though: something good has come of it. Namely, Speak Out with your Geek Out. The idea is simple: rather than turning to nerd rage and negativity, let’s light up the Internet for a week with positivity, and talk about all the things we love about our nerdy hobbies. I think this is a great idea. So, without further ado, and in no particular order, here are some things I love about my chosen flavors of geekitude.

Social Acceptance
This may not be a universal, but in my experience, geeks are really friendly, accepting people. All of my best friends are geeks (which shouldn’t really surprise you), and many of us are friends because of that common ground. When I finally found a game store in my area, they welcomed me with open arms, and now it’s a place where everybody knows my name (as the saying goes). GenCon, too, was a revelation; here was a place with 35,000 nerds all converging to revel in our shared passtimes. Everyone I met was friendly, helpful, and accepting of the people around them. It was a place where you could really be yourself, which was awesome.

Going along with this, I recently made a new friend via Twitter, through this shared culture of ours. He’s a really cool guy who is fun to hang out with and seems to like a lot of the same kinds of games that I do. What realy flabbergasted me (in a good way) was his willingness (and his wife’s) to come and help me and my wife out of a tight spot, after only knowing us for a few weeks. I’m not saying that something like that is specific to geeks, but I think it’s a great geek meets geek story that illustrates what I like about being a geek.

Shared Culture
Admit it: you love making obscure references to nerdy media and having other people laugh. It’s fun and energizing when that happens, and it’s unlikely to happen anwyere but around other geeks. I make these same jokes at work, and get blank stares back. I walk into my FLGS with a new nerd shirt on, and everyone applauds. It’s awesome.

Creativity
It seems like all of my friends are aspiring game designers (or game designers for real) these days. Everyone in the hobby wants to contribute back to the hobby, to make it better, richer, fuller for everyone else. That’s incredibly energizing and encouraging.

The Games
This list would be incomplete without mentioning the games, themselves. I love playing board games, role-playing games, video games; I’ll expand this to watching nerdy TV shows and movies, too, because it’s all part of the same culture. Withou these trappings of geekdom, I would likely feel out of place in this world; these things give me a subculture to belong to, they give me something to be passionate about. These things are why I do a lot of what I do.

So what about the rest of you? What do you love about gaming and beeing a geek? Sound off! Let’s see how much positivity we can get out there!

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It’s been a little while since I posted, so I figured I’d do one of those “random things on my mind” posts.

The Demolished Ones is humming along nicely. We’ve got a Kickstarter going up on September 1st, so be sure to check that out; if you’re interested in the game, it could really use your support. In the mean time, if you’d like to learn about it, there’s a teaser page on Rite Publishing’s website. This features some basic information, some teaser text by yours truly, and some artwork by Hugo Solis and the final logo by Claudia Burgos. It’s all very cool.

Seeing this project develop has been kind of a surreal experience for me. I’ve been freelancing for a while, so I’ve gotten a little bit used to seeing my words in a finished product, but The Demolished Ones is the first project that I’ve had so much creative control over. I’m normally the guy writing the stuff that someone else wants me to write, but with this project, I’m choosing the direction the project goes in, I’m telling the artists what the art should look like, and so forth. It’s bizarre, but in a good way. I’m really excited about this project and I hope it gets green-lit so we can actually publish. I think it’s going to be a pretty awesome game.

On the electronic side of things, I’ve been playing Deus Ex: Human Revolution lately. I was a big fan of the first Deus Ex, and I even liked Deus Ex: Invisible War enough to play it all the way through (though I readily admit that it wasn’t as good as the first). Human Revolution feels very much like the first game, but so much of it is better from a mechanical standpoint. The stealth and gunplay is better, the augmentation system offers more freedom to customize your playstyle, the environments are more complex and convincing, and the hacking minigame blows the original Deus Ex’s hacking system out of the water.

My avatar in the game is a sneaky special ops type who kills when necessary, can cloak himself, and is great at hacking through obstacles. My friend Chris is playing the game non-lethally, and seems to be focusing more on augs that give him access to interesting locations. I like that there’s enough game there to support both of us. Highly recommended.

Finally, Bulldogs! is doing really, really well. It’s been in the top 15 on a number of sites where it’s sold since its release, and I’m hearing nothing but good things about it. Unfortunately, Hurricane Irene prevented me from running my planned demo of it this past Sunday, but I plan on rescheduling it. This is a game that I am really proud to be associated with; it does so many things well, and running it is a crazy amount of fun.

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Lately, I’ve been playing a couple of games on Steam.

The first, and arguably the better of the two, is Magic: The Gathering: Duels of the Planeswalkers 2012. I played the first Duels game and liked it quite a bit. The second surpasses the first in just about every way. There are more decks available (and some of them are just plain awesome), lots of unlocks to get, and three separate campaigns to play. One of them, the Revenge campaign, is just a harder version of the main campaign, where your enemies have better cards available. The third, though, is the Archenemy campaign, which allows you to play with a whole new, cooperative style of Magic. In addition to the campaigns, you can also play custom games. I haven’t experimented with that yet, but I would imagine that’s where a lot of my time will go once I’m done with the campaigns. If you like M:TG, I highly recommend this game; it’s only $10.

The second is Dungeons & Dragons: Daggerdale, an awkward name if ever there was one. This is not what I’d call a particularly good game. The graphics are ugly, the gameplay is repetitive, there are a number of bugs and balance issues (the most glaring of which is that the rogue kills more stuff and therefore levels up faster than anyone else), there’s no real voice work to speak of (the NPCs talk with text boxes accompanied by grunts). Despite all this, I’m having a great time playing it with my friend Mike, and I’m enjoying it for what it is: stupid, cheap fun. So, while I can’t really recommend the game, if you have friends keen on playing it, there are worse ways to spend $15.

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Games, whether you’re talking about electronic games, role-playing games, or tabletop games, are generally thought of as products. That is, a boxed product or book is put on a shelf, you buy it, and that’s more or less the end of it. There are indications within some of these industries, though, that things are shifting toward a service-based model rather than a product-based model.

Wizards of the Coast has already partially converted to this system with D&D Insider, a system whereby you pay a monthly (or yearly) fee and gain access to new content on a regular (and frequent) basis, as well as online tools and updates for the physical products they sell. Similarly, Valve has shown leanings toward this model with many of their games; games like Team Fortress 2 or Left 4 Dead are discreet products, but once you buy them you become the recipient of various content updates throughout the life of the product that keep you coming back, and keep you happy with your purchase (Valve provides these mostly free of charge, which is nice).

Things could go further, though, and current trends indicate that they might, at least in some cases. Valve would very much like video games to go service-based, I’m sure. Imagine if, instead of buying Half-Life 3 for $60, you paid $5 or $10 per month for it. This might give you access to the full game, as well as gauranteed content updates for the game throughout its life. It would be a shift, to be sure, but it might be a welcome one. Taking it further, what if you subscribed to a particular developer or publisher, or simply paid a subscription to Steam, in order to get games and game updates on a regular basis. Instead of games being an item that you had to splurge on from time to time, they would become a service you pay for like your cable or your Internet, or Netflix.

I can similarly imagine a future where Wizards of the Coast does away with physical books altogether, instead integrating their Insider service into devices like the iPad, Nook, and other tablets and e-readers. You pay your monthly fee, and any D&D content that comes out that month is yours. Download articles, get access to full books in electronic format, get digital tools; best of all, as long as you keep your subscription current, all of your content remains current, too.

It’s likely that not everyone sees this with the same rose-colored glasses that I view this possible future with. Many people would likely resist such a model, afraid of what would happen when they stopped paying, or if the service ceased to exist at some point. There are ways around these fears, but that’s not really within the scope of this post.

I’d very much like to hear what you think about all of this. Is this a trend that should continue? Is it something you’d be open to? Why or why not?

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My wife sent me a link to a little indie game called Desktop Dungeons, and I’ve been obsessed with it since I downloaded it.

Let me back up and explain what it is. Desktop Dungeons is a Rogue-like game, for those of you who know what that is. For those who don’t, the idea is that you pick a race and class and fight your way through a randomly generated dungeon for treasure and XPs. Rogue-likes tend toward the difficult side, and most games will end with your character’s death; also, you can’t save your game. However, completing an entire dungeon takes maybe ten minutes, and it’s pretty easy to get caught up in it and just play a new dungeon once you’ve finished (or been finished by) the current one.

There is a sense of progress in the game, despite the disposable nature of your characters. Whenever you successfully complete a dungeon (which I’ve done exactly once so far), you are rewarded with unlocks in the form of new classes, new races, and new types of dungeons to explore. Stores within the game will also start stocking better items, and different monsters will start showing up.

The game is a turn-based affair, with an almost puzzle-like quality as you decide what order to tackle your opponents in and what parts of the dungeon to explore, and to leave unexplored. That actually brings me to one of the more interesting elements of the game: exploration. The entire dungeon is covered by a fog of war-style darkness that recedes as you progress through it. The interesting thing is that every tile of the dungeon you explore restores some of your health and mana. This leads to an interesting dynamic where you want to explore the dungeon to find monsters you can kill and loot you can pick up, but you want to leave sections of it unexplored dungeon so you can heal and get back mana.

Oh, and I forgot to mention the best part: it’s free. Sort of. You can download the alpha of the game (which is extremely polished and complete, for an alpha) for free, and you’ll always be able to. However, QCFDesign, the people behind Desktop Dungeons, do plan to release this game for pay, on Steam as well as iOS and Android. My suggestion: go download the alpha and give it a whirl. If you like it, buy the game when it comes out (or pay for it now, to help fund the project). That’s my plan, at least.

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Well, we got a whopping three entries in the Mass Effect 2 contest. Presumably most of you already own it, or hate fun. Either or.

In any case, I’ve decided that the song lyric that seemed the most apropos to me came from mbeacom, though the Firefly theme was a close second (though ultimately passed up because, well, I kind of expected someone to use it).

Mbeacom, expect a download code for Mass Effect 2 in your email shortly.

This will be my first ever contest on this blog, to my recollection.

I’ve been given a download code for BioWare’s Mass Effect 2 (an excellent game if ever there was one), and though this would normally overjoy me, since I’ve already purchased, played, and finished the game, the code does me little good.

That’s where you come in, good reader. I’m going to be giving this code away to one lucky reader tomorrow, Wednesday the 6th, at 7:30pm, Eastern Standard Time.

If you want the download code, here’s what you have to do:

1. Comment on this post.
2. Include a song lyric that you think is particularly appropriate to this contest and the game being given away.
3. Remember to credit the artist!
4. Do so before 7:30 pm on Wednesday, April 6th, 2011 (Eastern Standard Time).
5. If you’re feeling generous, and you haven’t already, subscribe to the blog!
6. Whichever song lyric strikes me as the funniest, most poignant, most apropos, or whatever other arcane criteria I decide to use, will win.

If you win, I’ll ask for your email address, if I don’t already have it. Once you give it to me, I’ll email you the code.

Disclaimer
It’s entirely possible that this code won’t work for you. As far as I know, it will; however, it might be somehow tied to my EA account, and non-transferable. If that’s the case, you’ll get a public apology on this blog, but not much else. Sorry. I suspect that it will work just fine, though.

Let the competition begin!