DownloadRSSSubscribe on iTunes
This week: Kyle, Matt, Mark, and Amer discuss 18+ Rating in Australia, Bioware forums toxicity, Funcom layoffs, Skylanders reaching $500 million, Kickstarter games reaching $83 million, Microsoft Illumiroom, and more!
I played skylanders with my kid brother. It plays surprisingly like a simplified Marvel ultimate alliance. Still money grubbing, but I gotta admit much more effort was put into it then expected.
I played Skylanders recently with my nephew, and I found it to be excruciatingly boring and dull.
I had to compare it to the previous Spyro games, and even the latest one (which was shit) was still more interesting. This was just running around and collecting coins with some weird non-functional minigames (cannon-targeting was completely fucked up with the Wiimote.)
Oh BTW, some misinformation about TSW since I’m playing it right now.
Not all quests give you quest markers or region markers.
There are essentially 4 quest types in TSW:
-Story (blue)
This is the main storyline progression, it can have all sorts of quest goals from research to exploration over combat and stealth. Full VA.
-Action (red)
These are combat-focused missions, sometimes fetch-quests with combat or pick-up and combat. Full VA
-Evasion (yellow)
Stealth missions about avoiding enemy contact or enemy alarm systems (they are quite frankly not so good, the game isn’t really designed for stealth) Full VA.
-Item (dark green)
A collection quest following events, sometimes combined with research and investigation, might involve combat when solving riddles. Usually no VA
-Investigation (light green)
A pure investigation mission focusing around solving puzzles, riddles and exploration. Can have VA.
-Dungeon (purple)
A combat dungeon/world raid 5 man or otherwise
-PVP (orange)
PVP missions (defend/attack facilities, etc.)
Investigation missions almost never give you any quest markers while Action missions give you straight instructions.
Its up to the player to decide what they want to do most. There are enough missions in a zone to propel your character forward and you can’t stack missions in the first place.
You can have only one story mission, one action mission, one dungeon mission, one investigation mission and 3 item missions active at the same time.
The zones and quest-flow are designed in a way that lead you in circles and since quests don’t need to be “turned in” at the quest-give like in wow (you just send your “mission complete” to your faction and get the rewards granted directly) the questing has a very different flow from other MMOs.
An investigation mission might take you around the zone and you will pick up other missions as you go and complete them “casually” while focusing on your main quest.
Although I have to agree that some of the investigation missions were severely scaled down from BETA, however they are by no means “easy”.
One mission had me learn musical notation the other one morse-code, another one needed my in-depth knowledge of christian scholars that translated the bible.
Well obviously I can just look up guides and ready-made solutions for all that stuff, but thats cheating.
TSW does play like part adventure game, and thats the part I enjoy most. The only -real- flaw in it is the -solo- dungeons that pop up from time to time, breaking up my group of friends into their own solo instances.
Whoever came up with that crap needs to get fired.
Solo instances in an MMO, what is this, SWTOR?
I feel I should sit in on one of these just to exist as the hardcore Pokemon/Zelda/Nintendo/handheld fan counterpoint. I listen to these while EV training my teams in Pokemon White 2 with my Wii U idling in the other room. With a bookmarked stack of Halo novels next to me. In my Mario pjs. And my Zelda 3DS.
Now I feel like most obtuse one of us.
Yeah you’ll be the Nintendo fan in this podcast, then I’ll be the Sega fan where I say absolutely nothing because of how much fail Sega is for the past years.
After, we can get others and this podcast will be complete.
I’d sign the guestbook.
@Mitch – (Laughs)
@ AdamTM and serpen1 – Interesting. The idea has its merit, but its potential for money grubbing and the fact its made by Activision makes me wary from the get go.
Pokemon, PMD, Fire Emblem, Monster hunter, Dragon Quest… It’s finally time to buy a 3DS.
I swear to god I should recognise the intro and outro music this time but I just can’t place it! Ahhhh