Respec Yourself Before You Wreck Yourself

On 02/17/2014 at 11:30 PM by KnightDriver

Linked to Article Series: Blog a Day (BaD) 2014

I got the free game from Xbox Live today, Toy Soldiers: Cold War. I’ve played the demos for both Toy Soldiers games and they are ok. They’re like 3D tower defense games.

Captain Scarlett

Lots of Borderlands 2 Captain Scarlett DLC today. Playing as an Assassin is incredibly frustrating. After I respeced my stats to favor defense for the achievement, I noticed my sniper skills were noticeably worse with less damage, slower reloads, and lots of annoying recoil. It made it hard to hit anything; so I respeced myself back to where I was originally and had fun with ultra smooth sniping. However, I was still getting bull rushed by anything and everything, and found it really hard not getting killed. After a while I let my co-op buddy run ahead and mow down most of the enemy while I searched for weapon chests and mission objectives. It got kinda boring to tell the truth. I do love exploring the game world though.

I gave up trying to read the incredibly small text in the back of Dark Souls Design Works. It was a long interview with the developers, and I wanted to read it. What do they think we are, Owls? It’s too small even for someone with 20/20 vision, which I think I still have. They save on pages, but it’s very uncomfortable to try and read. The Valkyria Chronicles Design book did this too. Well, at least the art was interesting.

okamiwm

Okami world map

I read a bit of Okami Official Complete Works. I noticed the map of the island that makes up the game world and began thinking of how design differs from East to West. A lot of Japanese games seem based on Islands, just like Japan, and a lot of Western games seem based on huge continents like Borderlands 2 with its desert canyons and wide open plains, just like America or Europe. Our concepts of fantasy worlds seem not too far removed from our real world experiences.

Super Step Contributing Writer

02/17/2014 at 11:54 PM

Interested observation about how fantasy worlds tend to mirror aspects of our realities. Also, I liked clicking through all the photos in that Captain Scarlett Flickr thing you posted. That's cool.

KnightDriver

02/18/2014 at 02:23 AM

Linking to flickr gives you a whole slide show of my pics there instead of just the one pic. I'm not sure why it's done that way now.

Joaquim Mira Media Manager

02/18/2014 at 07:01 AM

I think islands are better for games because you can make landscapes that much more detailed and close to you. Not to say that a bigger, flatter mass of land ain't fun to frolick about. Back in my teenage years I had designed a world of my own (a whole planet), and it has both big, small, and weird land masses. I lived between Portugal, and Canada, so I don't think where I lived had anything to do with my creation. If anything it was all to my imagination.

02/18/2014 at 03:34 PM

Islands are better because you can sail the seas between them as well as climb high mountains. I like that.

I did some fantasy world creation once and I started with a coast line of a large interior continent. I wasn't aware that I was just creating the same place that I lived, the east coast of America. I like coasts though, because of all the fidley bits along the edge are fun to draw and having rivers, inlets, and sea ports add interest. A new character can just arrive aboard ship at any time.

goaztecs

02/18/2014 at 01:33 PM

I downloaded that Toy game, haven't tried it, but since you mentioned it's like a tower defense game (not a fan) I might just remove it from my 360.

02/19/2014 at 01:52 AM

I think you can also play it as a third-person aciton game.

C.S.3590SquadLeader

02/18/2014 at 05:07 PM

If that's the case, I wonder why most of these artbooks don't come with a magnifying glass of some kind.

02/19/2014 at 02:39 AM

Seriously. I want one.

BrokenH

02/19/2014 at 01:56 AM

That's a beautiful map. Reminds me of the first time I looked through the full color manual of Zelda: Link's awakening and was likewise impressed by the Hyrule country-side rendered in loving detail!

02/19/2014 at 04:22 PM

Maps are so cool. I don't know why I like them so much. I could draw them all day. I feel like SlartiBartFast in Hitchhiker's Guide who loves to draw all the "fiddly bits" along the coastlines.

NSonic79

04/08/2014 at 02:55 PM

Funny story. I don't care much for the first Toy Soldiers game but I love my free copy of the cold war game. Not enough to buy the DLC yet but still fun to take on the red commie bastards.

Also I thought the term was "Chec yo self before you wrec yo self"....

04/08/2014 at 03:49 PM

My reference was from the trailer to Due Date. At the end, Zack says the line but not as it is in the Ice Cube rap song, which I only just found out about.

PixlBit