Gem Games: Kingdoms of Amalur Reckoning

Hey hey folks! Yayy game review! Finally trying to make myself take a break from playing to write this up, hahaha.

Awwright! So where to begin, there’s just so much to talk abooout!

Kingdoms of Amalur Reckoning was released, to my shock and awe, February 2012. I haven’t been paying as much attention to new releases lately, but I feel like this game should have gotten muuuch more advertisement. Although it did come out in the wake of Skyrim which, of course, as part of the Elder Scrolls series had sooo much anticipation and publicity. Now I don’t know if this is blasphemy to say this but… I loove and enjoy playing Reckoning soo much more than Skyrim! I had such a hard time getting into Skyrim, for various reasons, that I actually didn’t get very far at all.

Reckoning is just so different and dynamic. I didn’t play the demo, though I’ve read that the demo left much to be desired and actually didn’t impress a lot of people. So I guess the demo really did not do the game justice. I’m also surprised to find out the lead designer of Elder Scrolls III and IV acts as such for this game. No kidding, huh? Upon looking at the game box itself you couldn’t tell unless you know who Ken Rolston is. I also had high hopes for the games storyline as the world and lore is written by renowned fantasy author R.A Salvatore.

Originally the game, rather the Kingdoms of Amalur universe was originally being designed as an MMO, but turned RPG as an introduction to the world. Which if they do come out with an MMO, I’m definitely going to be interested in that!

Moving onto the game itself. You are the Fateless One, the first and only individual to be brought back to life by the Well of Souls. You are not bound to any Fate, and it appears you can change the Fate of others. Now go kill stuff! Woo!

Combat is pretty fun from the get-go and only continues to get more dynamic and fast paced as you continue on. This is one aspect I find this game wins over Skyrim. It’s fast, it’s fun and it’s pretty seamless. You have a primary and secondary weapon, respectively bound to X and Y so it’s super easy to use one or the other. You aren’t limited as to which weapons you use, neither or both can be long-ranged or whichever. There’s an array of weapons to choose from; daggers, swords, hammers, staves and FREAKING CHAKRAMS. CHAKRAMS ARE AWESOME. (I immediately jumped on those, being that my main character in most Dynasty Warriors games was the one that used chakrams.)

ANYway, so once you find your favourite weapon you can start to choose what Abilities you’re interest in. You have 3 class trees; Might, Finesse and Sorcery. You can pretty much guess what kind of classes they are. The weapons you want to use can get upgrades and bonuses, as well as special attacks and all kinds of cool abilities. With that you can bind 4 to the ability wheel for quick access. Health and Mana pots are automatically bound to left and right on the D pad. (By the way, I’m playing on the 360 derp.) Which is a simple detail that trumps Skyrim again, I’m sure whoevers played knows how annoying it in to go into the Menu, inventory, searching for health pots while in the middle of a fight. It completely halts the battle just so you can drink your 10 potions just to get back to get slammed again by another attack. Not in Reckoning! You’re pretty darn mobile with dodging and running around in a fight.

You can plow through dungeons and exploring with the fast action combat. There’s also some quick time events with the ‘reckoning’ mode where you can mash the random button it tells you to for more experience. Along with HP and MP you have a Fate bar that fills up during combat. You’re actually encouraged to mix up your fighting style between melee, magic and abilities to quickly fill it up and enter this god-mode state where you’re attacks are beastly and strategically kill as many enemies in the time in takes the bar to run out and attack the boss with a type of finisher move. I gatta say, you feel pretty badass. So that’s my quick gist of the combat, hopefully you get the idea.

Oh man there’s just so much to talk about! Along with just that, there’s so much loot in this game is crazy. It really appeases any horder gamers out there that just love picking up everything. (Thankfully inventory deals in slots, and you can buy backpacks that increases your inventory by 10.) Gold isn’t hard to come by in this game either, especially if you invest in the Mercantile and Detect Hidden skills. Skill points are granted along with ability points when you level up.  Alchemy, blacksmithing and sagecraft are your crafting skills you can choose to put points into. Along with persuasion, lockpicking, dispelling, stealth and whichever else I’m forgetting that you’ll be putting to use during your time in Amalur.

Quests are in abundance in this game. It really puts my need to complete everything 100% to the test. Your usual kill this kill that, those things kidnapped my daughter go save her, etc etc. Personally I don’t find it tedious at all, and I’m someone who has to pick up every single quests  and complete it. The only problem with that, and one of my few complaints of the game, is you cannot drop quests. So you either have to ignore some useless ones, or you have a packed up Quests list. Which isn’t so bad because they are organized into categories and you can hide some of it. It also keeps track of all your completed quests which is cool.

I have to also mention the sound effects in this game are so satisfying. Is that weird? I like the lockpicking and opening chests effects and the slashing and hitting enemies  especially with a fire weapon, just feels so powerful! I’m all about the details.

Graphics are not incredibly impressive like in Skyrim, but honestly I’ve always been a firm believer in gameplay over graphics, every time. Some complain that it’s too cartoony, but really if you judge the quality of a game by the graphics shame on you.

As I said I’m all about the details, right? Well Reckoning really hit the spot with some of the details. In your inventory you have the option of throwing items into ‘Junk’. When you visit a shop to sell, you can hit one button to ‘Sell all Junk’. Voila! Inventory all clear and you’ve just made yourself a nice sum of money! I feel silly for having been so excited over this feature, but it’s just awesome! You can periodically go through your inventory while questing and keep it more or less organized. My OCD is pleased, thank you so muchhh.

Maann okay I think I’ve gone over most of the main points I wanted to, I feel like I’m leaving so much out though! I can’t remember the last time I’ve enjoyed a game this much. The map is expansive, I’m something like 48 hours in and I’ve only finished half of the map it seems. You can fast travel to areas you’ve discovered, so you don’t waste too much time running from place to place. The map is big, but it’s not exaggerated either, you can easily spend some time running to every little corner making sure you picked up all the treasure and loot, and there’s definitely some there!

so GG Reckoning, you are a gem game and a good one at that!

(Ahh there’s still so much more I can say ; ;)

Ta for now!

League of Legends Lulu Patch

http://na.leagueoflegends.com/news/lulu-fae-sorceress-revealed

Preeetty excited.

Riot community has been asking for new support champion f.o.r.e.v.e.r

I’m tired from work though, I will try to make a proper post for this sometime soon. Though if it’s not by Tuesday I’ll probably be busy playing this new character. :D

L.A Noire review

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Hey there guys! So I’m trying to force myself to at least do a little bit of writing everyday. So for this evening I’ll be doing a little review on L.A Noire (what I remember of it…)

I played this game sometime last year and I really enjoyed it! Which is odd because it really didn’t seem like my type of game at all. I’m definitely a CSI and Criminal Minds buff so upon loading up the game it did tickle my fancy as you’re already on the search for evidence right off the bat. Just like any rookie cop you hit the ground running. This game has a fantastic old 1950s detective novel feel.

This is also a very challenging game as it tries to really make you feel like a detective. You gather evidence and take testimonies so you can track down and question suspects. Interrogation is one of the most challenging parts of the game. You really have to pay attention to the story, circumstances and clues you find to properly interrogate someone. At first I really didn’t know what I was doing and couldn’t figure out how to get it right but you get the hang of it after a while. What’s good is after you finish the storyline you can go back and redo cases to get a 5 star rating on it. (I think I still don’t have 5 stars on everything, even though I know I’m pretty darn close.)

Actually just going through the booklet to jog my memory and MAN wouldn’t it have been helpful to read this BEFORE I played the game! Haha but who reads the manual? I like to just jump right in. It definitely gives some good tips though, like how a person who is lying may often avoid direct eye contact. Body language is pretty crucial in this game, which I find pretty incredible cause it just parallels to real life. I’m someone who observes people a lot so I definitely enjoyed this part of the game, how observant am I really? It was a great test.

As you progress through the storyline and close cases you move up in rank and deal with different types of cases. From traffic to homicide you get to do it all! I find the storyline itself does kind of waver and feel weak once the main character starts having some sort of affair with a suspect, or she was involved with a suspect I forget. I say it’s weak because I don’t find they really explained why it happened, I mean it seems like the guy was happily married and all but I suppose it wanted to reflect that even cops in Hollywood get to be frivolous and make bad judgements. I could have done without that part though, I don’t think it offered much to the storyline other than you have to save the stupid bitch later.

Continuing on I’d have to say one of the most frustrating things in this game though (other than the annoying crackhead singer lady that ruins the guys marriage) is the driving! The driving mechanics were so weird and awkward, I hated driving the car. Anytime I had to do a chase scene it would take me forever to get it right. I admit I suck at racing games overall but the driving in this game was just impossible; even my brother agreed.

I did enjoy all the fancy classic cars you could find on the map though. There’s a whole bunch of them and at one point I did actually take the time to chase some of them down just for fun, and for the achievements of finding so many cars. I specially liked finding the classic muscle cars!

Alright so I don’t quite remember much else about the game at the moment, I might add stuff later if I go back to finish off some of the achievements. (Which I probably won’t, I almost have perfect achievement score in Tenchu Z which I was AWESOME at practically 4 years ago now and I’ve never gone back to do like 2 missions LOL)

Either way I got a good amount of achievements done in this game, and I enjoyed it a lot. It really felt like you were in an old black and white detective movie. :)