Change follows Change

kris-ether:

Hey there,
Today I’m going to talk a little bit about the Beta for The Secret World.

Firstly, woah! I have been waiting for this game for a long time, ever since first seeing some concept art of someone fighting some giant cthulhuiod entity on the top of a ruined car in the center of some giant city. The fact that it is almost here is very exciting.

The missions in secret world have quite a bit of variety, I haven’t encountered any “collect 5 bear buts” quests. There are a smattering of kill quests in game but they generally don’t take too long and are usually part of something larger. Most quests offer something interesting to do, whether it be making a supply run for a group of survivors or testing out some homemade explosives to keep the zombies at bay. You can only have a limited selection of missions at one time and certain missions mean you have drop others, it keeps you more focused but can be annoying when you are blocked from moving forward because you can’t figure out the next step of a mystery.

The most interesting quests are the research/investigation mission that task you to figure out the next step by following clues, I’ve had a chance to attempt running through one of these with a friend of mine and it was a genuine pleasure to be talking through the clues and making the leaps of logic required to find the next step of the mystery. These missions make Secret World feel like a cross between X-files, Supernatural and Warehouse 13, tracking down a monster and researching how to kill it is an amazing feeling.

Players equip up to two weapons and can select 7 active and 7 passive skills. Activated skills are linked to which weapons are equipped but you can take passive skills from anywhere, this allows you to create a skill set to fit any situation and you can quickly gain ability points to pick up new abilities to play around with.  Combat is largely movement and positioning based, abilities mostly effect areas so you often circle round opponents to dodge or line up opponents. Attacks can shift opponents into states such as Weakened and Inflicted which then enables bonus effects on other attacks. This makes improving your character and designing a setup like an exploration or possibilities instead of a relentless drudge towards max level like in many MMO’s, on that note I am impressed with the level less system that Secret World uses but it does make it difficult to judge how tough a monster is in relation to yourself. Then again, this kinda works for me, I look at a monster and have to figure out if it looks tough and plan an exit strategy in case of an emergency.

It’s still in Beta so there are some things I am still hoping that they fix, character faces deform strangely during quest introduction sequences and some animations need serious work *cough*jumping*cough*. We’ll see what happens when it goes live and the full feature set is introduced but I’m excited.

It’s certainly worth looking at if you are a fan of MMOs or a mordern day mysteries, legends & conspiricies. I’m enjoying sleuthing around in The Secret World and I think one of the heartiest recommendations I can give is that when I finally though to go to bed on my first evening playing I glanced over and saw my clock said it was 6am. I can see it being the cause of many long night and I’m feeling quite alright with that ^_^

Okay, I liked this film. I want to get that out of the way before I say some stuff about it, I enjoyed it and it’s good fun. Very goofy and also kinda troubling to watch in some parts.

A big problem was that the trailer basically told everything that happens in the story, so much so that there is never any doubt where it is heading. Ever.

It was a fun ride though, I liked seeing how the dynamic worked between the group and liked the hints that the powers came as a part of a whole. I also felt there was a hint at something else in the film, there are some points that are never really explained and one of these felt like it was desperate to say something. As a massive nerd watching how the group dealt with their problems gave me ideas for pen and paper roleplay games and that I think highlights it strength. It feels like these are people making choices, not perfect moral compasses pointing to Evil or Good.

Chronicle always feels like a film about normal people who get powers, they don’t become knights of justice or instant uber-villains. They are still people, their actions just reach a little larger than most.