I’m currently playing Fallen Earth, plus I’m poking in and out of Champions Online and Left 4 Dead.

Champions Online

For Champions, I’m basically waiting for Cryptic to settle down with their balancing. The initial release balancing is still going on and now that they’ve thrown the Celestial powerset into the mix, they’re bound to be fiddling with all the powers for awhile. I don’t want to relearn my character every week, so I’ll wait and then return. Having the lifetime subscription makes that an easy and casual thing to do.

My biggest concerns are related to that. I hope Mr. Roper is not into perpetual balancing, that would keep me away a lot. I also hope that Cryptic adds more content for initial subscribers. I totally accept and would even appreciate a paid expansion down the road, but there needs to be more base content first and foremost, especially considering us lifetime subbers.

Fallen Earth

Fallen Earth really surprised me with how compelling it is. I’ll probably be playing it for awhile, even though I’m pretty sure it’s not going to be a permanent home. Nelg is loving it too, although I don’t think it has grabbed onto Sakkara as strongly.

I’m a little torn on Fallen Earth’s combat, it’s good to have an FPS-lite MMO that actually lets you aim (auto-aim IMHO in any shooter = huge fail), but there’s a fun-to-tedious ratio that gets upset whenever I have to click on additional abilities on my bar.

Ultimately it’s the crafting and the related scavenging (for crafting supplies of course) that I enjoy in Fallen Earth. I’m still relatively low level (18 currently) and I’ve done most of that leveling via crafting (barely any questing). It’s a big “we’ll see” if the crafting scales all the way up throughout the game and that’s going to be what makes me stay or leave in the long run.

Coop Games

I got into MMOs in the first place to explore and even find a home online within huge virtual worlds, but as it’s been lately the worlds are shrinking smaller and smaller. Even Fallen Earth, which has huge open spaces, does so by reducing the variety in those space (it’s more / less one big desert).

I often wonder what I’m paying subscription fees for. It’s all just coop now, isn’t it? I’m definitely feeling the coop urge. I miss the great pulls and related team efforts required for WoW’s original release (before every encounter became scripted) but more and more I doubt I’ll find that level of coop PvE fun within another MMORPG.

Left 4 Dead and Borderlands both deliver a much better team combat experience for me, I just wish they had more content too. I’ll definitely be picking up Left 4 Dead 2 soonish. I still boggled that coop is so often ignored in games when it’s clearly so freaking popular.

Don’t even get me started on PvP. It’s mind-boggling to me how much better Team Fortress 2 and UT3 are compared to the zerg bullshit that passes for PvP in MMOs.

On the horizon?

I am so Diku burned out, I’m completely meh towards TOR and other upcoming games that appear to be putting zero effort or imagination into their base combat.

That said I’m leaning toward a pre-order for Guild Wars 2, if anything just to support the “you bought it, you own it, just play it” model. Their presentation is really compelling too, visually it looks great.

Secret World looks interesting. I get the feeling it will outdo TOR when it comes to story-driven experience. I suspect tho that it’ll have a limited amount of content, but that may be okay because it doesn’t seem like a game to make a home in, just one to play through the story.

(note: F2P and DLC section removed, I’ll make a separate post).

. . .

Overall, I’m usually an optimistic guy when it comes to the games industry, but lately I cannot help but feel there’s this dark corporate storm that’s been taking over development. I wonder how many game designs are being made based on charts of shareholder interest, or via reiterative design in attempts to capture Blizzard’s success.

I’d much prefer games developed by passionate designers with singular visions.

And that’s pretty much the sum-up point. I’ve been posting less, because the nature of my enthusiasm in games is shifting. I find myself less interested in the latest big AAA titles with nifty new explosions and I’m more intrigued by the independent developers producing games that look “good enough” but don’t have that extra layer of the latest tech. I’ve always been a bit empathic toward the developers, games as art is compelling to me.

I’m going to end this post before I ramble on. There are enough ponderings here to cover a month’s worth of blogging.