Ravens Forums

Hiding from Zombies in the Kingsmouth church (the plaque with the numbers up there is actually the solution to a puzzle).

The entrance to the second dungeon (the door on the right).

Hey Brigh,

PS2 looks good, really enjoyed the first one, but the subscription was a bit much. Good to see PS2 won't have that, just hope they won't make all customization payable, let alone some weapons. It does indeed look they aren't changing all that much (not necessarily a bad thing).

It's an interesting game, the setting and the lore is really cool (modern day setting with occult events happening).

Combat is okay, it looks good, but it isn't anything amazing. The skill system is interesting though. There are no character levels, but instead exp gets you skill & ability points. Skill points are used to be able to equip better gear and ability points are used to buy abilities. There are 3 'Weapon' groups: Melee (which consists of Blades, Hammers & Fist Weapons), Ranged (which consists of Assault Rifles, Shotguns & Dual Pistols) and Magic (which consists of Blood Magic, Elementalism & Chaos) and 3 Misc groups (tanking, healing & pvp). It's a 2-tiered system and you need the first tier to unlock the second tier. First tier has 2 ability trees (made up of 7 skills each), second tier has 6, for the Weapon groups at least, the Misc groups only has 1 ability tree. You can actually buy any ability, but you're limited to 7 active skills & 7 passive skills, but afaik you can setup profiles to switch between for example tanking & dps. You can also have 2 Weapons groups active (each is represented by a weapon and you can have 2 equipped).

The game looks really good though needs a decent system to run. It runs okay on my old Core 2 Duo 3Ghz & GTI 560 Ti at 1920x1200 on high settings (fps is 40-ish average which sometimes goes into the low 20's, but for an MMO it doesn't matter as much). The character generator is fairly good, though the full game will have more options (apparently the closed beta has more options). The characters themselves look really good and so does the rest of the game (what I've seen of it at least).

Questing is rather interesting as there are some puzzles included as well (they've not been hard so far and they have an ingame browser available . There is an overarching story quest for the zone you're in, NPC's also give you story based side missions and you can also get side missions from stuff lying around. You can have several quests (5-6 or so) at once and switching the active one is easy. A negative point is that your character never speaks at all, not even during cutscenes, which makes them very weird and unnatural.

There is less guidance/handholding than in wow or swtor, which I find refreshing. You still have indicators where to go etc, but once there you have to look around and sometimes solve some puzzles (for passwords and such). Crafting has me stumped though, it's a rather strange setup.

Not sure if the 3 factions mean much or not as after the tutorial you're sent to the same quest zone and do the same quests. There is persistent PvP (not done any), which does grants some small bonuses.

There isn't anything which is particularly outstanding (there was in swtor and it only lasted 3 months anyway ), but it's a really polished (apart from crafting) & stable game. I've had fun so far, so I'll certainly buy it. I'm sure to get my money's worth as it's an entertaining game and I'll see what happens once I'm past the free month.

Here's my thoughts on the ending.

[spoiler]I went for the Synthesis ending as it meant an end to the 'Reaper cycle' and I didn't kill billions in process (just rewrote everyone's DNA ). Couldn't go for the Destruction ending after ending a 300 year war between the Geth & the Quarians (with Legion becoming a full individual, yet sacrificing himself) and bringing Joker & EDI together. And controlling the Reapers after I've tried to dissuade the Illusive Man from controlling the reaper during all of ME3 would be silly. I didn't feel bad about the synthesis ending in itself as it's basically Shephard sacrificing herself to save everyone else and end the Reaper threat once and for all.

But what was irritating was the end movie which didn't make much sense: Why are my last thoughts with Joker, Andersson & Liara and am I not thinking about my love interest? How did Garrus, who was with me on Earth, get onto the Normandy all of a sudden and why are they running away making a jump? So Joker, EDI, Samantha Traynor (my love interest) & Garrus leave me back on Earth and just try to run away? That makes no sense at all and goes against everything that's happened before.

Another irritating point is that you cannot discuss with the Catalyst at all, you don't mention the Geth & Quarians who finally get along, nor Joker and EDI, ... I wouldn't have minded not being able to convince him (he's millions of years old and thye Reaper you kill in Rannoch already tells you we can't comprehend their actions), but my Shephard wouldn't just accept his discussion and not even try to argue. I did try another way out, but couldn't kill the Catalyst, nor commit suicide. And all I wanted to know was where the off-switch for the Reapers was .[/spoiler]

The fact that people come up with stuff like the dream or indoctrination theories show how bad the ending is, they'd rather believe something far fetched than the actual ending.

Melt Banana sorta reminds me of Sonic Youth, but even harder and with more noise.

Learned to appreciate music with grunge (Nirvana, Pearl Jam, Soundgarden, Alice in Chains, Stone Temple Pilots, ...) then got more into metal, switched to hip-hop and now it's a bit of everything (no opera though ). Lately listening to some female singers (Adele, Lana Del Rey, Amy Winehouse, Duffy, ...) and really like Duffy - Rockferry, great song.

Another song I really like is Faithless - God is a DJ, got it as my ringtone and it's real funny at work as every time I get a call my colleagues all put their hands in the air .

But let's try to add some Belgian songs (hard to choose) of different genres

Arsenal - Salvegam

Daan - Victory

dEUS - Suds & Soda

Goose - Synrise

Hooverphonic - Eden

Selah Sue - This World

Starflam - Ce Plat Pays

Stromae - Alors on Danse

The Black Box Revelation - High on a Wire

And to get in a holiday mood, the French/Cuban rap group Orishas with A lo Cubano.

I'll stop here for now .

Actually forgot one I really have to add, Scala, an all girl choir accompanied by piano doing covers of rock & pop songs, amazing stuff. For example Scala & Kolacny Brothers - Engel (cover from Rammstein) & Scala & Kolacny Brothers - Nothing Else Matters (cover from Metallica) for Las .

And how could I forget Gorky - Mia, a song constantly voted as best Belgian rock/pop song.

If you ever get that time machine working, tell me not to choose a Furbolg please, but go human instead.

As for the holy trinity, City of Heroes has shown it can be done differently by giving some classes debuffs and/or CC that really matters. But since EQ1 you've basically had the tank, healer, dps trinity (though I think it also included a mezzer) and almost every MMO since then has implemented it.

It also feels like the developers push us in speccing a certain way, the previous talent revamp in WoW basically killed hybrids and SWTOR seems to go the same way with patch 1.2. Plus the way talents are set up it's obvious which ones are for PvP & which are for PvE, so there really isn't much choice.