I don’t think this really deserves a full post, or screenshots. It’s freemium, though I don’t know why you would actually pay money to do anything in it (though there are plenty of things to blow your money on…). The game isn’t really an MMO, it’s basically a lite social platform with a bunch of mini-games. If you’ve been to a flash game site, you basically have played all these games. A few are actually pretty decent (I liked the racing game) but many are even much worse than their free, flash game cousins out on the web.

If you’re really bored, or a kid — that’s really bored, you might be able to burn an hour or two checking it out.

Unlimited free trials are wonderful things in the MMO genre, they give you time to really try the game out and get a feel for whether you enjoy it or not. Global Agenda (the sci-fi-ish third person shooter) just started theirs and I’m sure you’ve heard about it and thought about giving it a try. I sure did.

I’ll be frank with this post, I downloaded and played GA for a few hours last night — haven’t paid a cent or given any credit card info to do so. I’ve played through the tutorial, several low security PvE missions (low level ones, essentially) and one mercenary map (what seems to be the biggest PvP combat you’ll go through, think point capture game type) while playing a medic class character. For those that don’t have any clue what GA is about, you’re in a futuristic society where an oppressive world government is trying to take over the last remnants of free society — so you must fight them in instances, or something. The storyline isn’t really what this game is about and it doesn’t really matter — you’re here to shoot things and blow stuff up. There are four classes to choose from: Assault is your tanker/heavy weapons guy, Recon is your stealthy assassin/sniper, Robotic is your defensive support guy with force field walls and robots (think Engineer from Team Fortress 2, sorta like them), and the Medic is your healer. Each class has some skill trees and numerous pieces of equipment to use as you level up. Should give some variety. There is crafting that involves buying (possibly finding?) blueprints and crafting it at stations with scraps that you pick up (possibly just from PvE missions). It’s pretty simple. You can purchase different looking pieces of armor from NPC merchants (the crafting might just be for upgrade items that you slot, without cosmetic differences). That’s about it for the general stuff, I think.

The game play in GA is pretty simple, it’s a third person shooter — use your hotkey row to swap between weapons, use items, etc. All the weapons have primary and alternate fire modes, so look at those and get used to them. (For instance, my melee weapon has a shield that blocks melee attacks as the alt fire, my rifle has a scope for alt fire, my healing beam gun thingy has primary fire that heals my target and myself for a little bit while alt fire just heals the target for a lot more — the healing is done just like the medic in TF2.) Everyone has a jet pack which they can use for short bursts of speed or to get to higher areas, you can’t use weapons while using it and it drains energy pretty fast. Speaking of energy, your weapons don’t use bullets and there’s no clips or reloading to worry about — you just have an energy bar that gets drained when you use stuff. It’ll charge over time.

PvE, for low security missions at least, was a random mission from a small batch of pre-made missions (I remember doing about three different ones, then repeating those over a few times) which consisted of NPC bots that you have to blast through till you reach an end boss and kill it. There’s a checkpoint about half-way through the map that let’s you re-spawn there. Players dying a lot (total of 4 deaths possible) will lower your score and overall rewards. Having a balanced team and competent players makes the experience easier but isn’t necessary.

The mercenary map was a bit more interesting, but it wasn’t anything new. It consisted of two teams, roughly 6-8 players per team, fighting over control points on a map. Holding a point gave you victory points and after accumulating enough of those you’d win. I’m sure you’ve done this before. While it certainly wasn’t anything new, the game was pretty fun. The classes act a lot like those in TF2 in many ways, so if you enjoyed that you should have some fun with GA. The only downside was the polish — TF2 is simply better at this stuff than GA in almost every way. Which makes paying money for GA a lot harder. AvA is certainly the point that could make a difference, but I haven’t tried that yet and I’m not sure if it’s even available to trial members.

From a trialer’s stand point, the game was fairly fun but lacking.

It’s been a busy past few weeks, what with the release of three good shooters — Mass Effect 2, Bioshock 2, and Aliens vs Predator. I’ve gotten all three and tried em all out.

Mass Effect 2: Solid game all around. If you want to compare it to the first, it improves on nearly every aspect of the game and removes some of the former standard RPG elements (inventory, lots of skills, etc). Simplifying it might not be everyone’s favorite thing, but the rest of the game was polished enough that you wouldn’t notice. If there’s one game you get this quarter — get this one.

Bioshock 2: If you’ve played the first, you’ll know what you’re in for. It’s Rapture again only this time the underwater dystopian city is a few years into the future and more twisted. You play as a big daddy (known as Delta, one of the early BD’s it seems) and can use weapons and plasmids simultaneously. If you think this would make the game easier… well, it does. The game doesn’t feel as dark as the first, but it certainly is more twisted. Even the splicers look like they’ve been through hell. The game feels like the first, with tweaks, and that’s not bad at all. If you enjoy this series — get it. (if you’re just looking for a fun shooter, that’s a bit twisted, get it too)

Aliens vs Predator: This is the one that I’ve had the least experience with so far, only having played through most of the single player campaign. It’s pretty clear the single player mode is practice — it’s not terribly long or deep, it’s fairly mediocre. The multiplayer mode(s) seem to be where the bulk of playtime will be with this game. I did try the multiplayer beta out, but the company went with FFA deathmatch which was a poor representation of the game — one with three way combats. It’s not as good as the first two games (I just talked about), but it’s still a fun shooter. I will say that the combat takes a bit of getting use to and is likely best on consoles. It involves blocking, punching (light and heavy attacks) and such in a sort of rock, paper, scissor type of action. With guns, of course. (unless you’re going Alien, then no guns) Verdict: wait for it to go on sale.

Apart from computer gaming I have gotten to work a bit more on my RPG, changing the rules to be a modified Savage Worlds and other(s). It’s hard for me to really tell where some of it came from since I’ve read through so many different systems over the past several months. SW is certainly the biggest influence though. Also, alternate setting created using the base setting I had. Post-Apocalyptic Zombie Modern Fantasy. Yeah, I know.

I thought I’d have more time to game once the harvest season was over, and I guess I do. But, I’ve started on quite a project… Making a tabletop RPG from scratch with a friend.

This all started with us wanting to try some RPGs on Google Wave (me pushing it, of course) to see how viable it would be. Well, when deciding on a system to use it got fairly difficult — didn’t want the usual fantasy or sci-fi (we get enough of that in video games) so modern-ish something was the general genre to look for. There really wasn’t that much that appealed (that could be found, easily) and we both wanted something that wasn’t going to be combat heavy or crunch heavy. We probably could’ve found something sooner or later, but who wants to read through dozens of books and thousands of pages to find that something?

So, we decided to go in another direction and make our own (though I think I was pushing it again, but my friend jumped on it soon enough and started adding content like crazy). I have to say — it’s a heck of a lot of work.

We’ve got over 20 pages worth on basic character creation and play. Information on the world is still quite bare, likely just a few pages for it, but it’s set in present-day Earth — so that takes a chunk of the work out (when compared to an entirely different world setting).

Once the rules are close to being as ‘set’ as they’re going to be, and the world info is better detailed, I’ll likely be posting a PDF copy of it all on here or somewhere — completely free, of course. (and waiting for criticism)

Looking to donate a bit of cash and wouldn’t mind some good incentive to do so? (as if donating wasn’t good enough incentive!) Drive Thru RPG (http://rpg.drivethrustuff.com/index.php?) has a $20 donation bundle on their site — lasting through the end of January.

In the bundle you’ll find over $1,000 worth of various tabletop RPG supplies and rule books — mostly from small/indie publishers. There’s a ton of great stuff in it that I’ve found so far, and all of it is worth looking it. With this much stuff it’s quite possible to find that one, certain ‘thing’ that just adds a real kick to your gaming.

It’s in open beta now and I guess I can talk a bit about it — I will say that I played it for a few days, but never got that far into it. I played enough to form a basic opinion though.

First up is the tutorial — it does a pretty decent job of explaining everything needed. You start out on the ‘ground’ — more like a space station but either way it covers the ground combat and movement first. This stuff is pretty simple and if you’ve played an MMO before it should be largely familiar. The exceptions would come with your away team, which adds several NPCs to your ‘team’ — largely dumb NPC pets, which at the time I played were not the best of help nor seemed intelligent. Also of some difference, you can equip your away team members with items much like any other character, and you have ‘kits’ that give special skills and such. It’s to help differentiate the ‘classes’ (of which there are three).

Once past the ground bit you find yourself in space, yay! If you’re familiar with Pirates of the Burning Sea then you should fairly similar with how space combat works here. You have a throttle which you can set and your ship moves, change directions using arrow keys, line up enemies based on how you want to hit them (torpedoes from the bow, phasers on the sides/back/front, etc) — their position around your ship determines which attacks you get to use (like PotBS). For those not too familiar with the mechanics, you essentially float around and change speed till you can get them, and try to keep them, on the side that lets you deal the most damage. If one side of your shields gets too low — turn around and put a different side to them, divert energy from speed/weapons to defense and such. You also have three officer slots (they also join your away team if you want) that you equip officers to — they have special abilities that you can activate to boost your spaceship. After you learn what to do it’s basically fly around and blow crap up. Then land on a planet.

After the space section you’re back on a planet and doing more ground work. This is something you’ll swap between — space and ground. If you don’t like one or the other… tough.

It’s pretty easy to write off this game, it is going to be niche. If you’re a Star Trek fan and want something Trekkie flavored — you’ll probably enjoy it for a bit. If you’re a die-hard WoW fan — you’ll probably be heralding its death all over gaming forums (for no apparent reason). And, if you’re just an MMO fan in general — you might want to wait to try it out, either through this open beta or some free trial down the line. The plain customization in the game is fairly good and something I liked (items for yourself, your away team and your ship — lots items and lots of possible combinations) but the missions seemed pretty repetitive and bland. Even after only doing so many. I will say that this might be a personal opinion tainted by too many missions in general (as concerns MMOs).

My Bottom Line: It’s not a terrible game, but it doesn’t exactly stand out and shine either.

Can’s say too much has happened lately on the computer game front — I have nearly (level 48 as of writing) maxed a character in City of Heroes. Finally, after having the game for some 6 years (coming up) I’ve got a character almost maxed… Without getting bored and going off to another game (AE PL type missions, those saved the game for me).

In other fronts, as the title depicts, I’ve been looking into RPGs on Google Wave more closely. Even beginning to create an RPG from scratch with a friend. We’ve got some 25 pages of material on mechanics and such written out by now, but it’s still very rough.

One question I have for anyone willing to answer: Would you consider a game, that has you entering combat situations knowing you likely have a 50-50 chance of dying, fun?

As for Google Wave and RPGs in general — there’s enough gadgets and bots to turn the program into a real Virtual Tabletop. It’s awesome.

The major holidays are over and we only have one more to go (and the funnest one of all!). My gaming time is slowly creeping back up, and I’ve been making the most of it. If you watch Steam regularly you’ll notice they’ve been having tons of deals lately — that’s pretty awesome (my bank account disagrees).

So, as far as gaming goes I trialed DAoC with a friend which led to playing WAR again and finally CoH. WoW is still going, though after hitting 80 and not really knowing what I want to do it’s fallen to the wayside for the moment, and EVE is falling behind — probably going to take a break from it. STO should be going into open beta sometime soon, I might have something on that, and Allods Online should be starting up the next wave of testing (today?). It’s a busy time in MMOs.

On the darker side of things my NCSoft account was hacked to get to my Aion account. No clue what has happened to it. The account is back under my control and I get to see what happened tonight — the account wasn’t active so they did reactivate it for me. If they leveled my characters a bit I wouldn’t mind….

Lastly, CO — like most of the MMOs — has it’s winter holidays event going and it’s a grind just like the Halloween one… Boo! Cryptic: make your events fun and less grindy, please. I’ve killed that damned bear 40+ times and haven’t gotten an unlock — I don’t want to kill it again. Ever.

Work is finally slowing down, gaming time is almost ready to begin creeping up again, but first the holidays — here to create one final interruption. Well, I hope everyone has a good christmas and New Years.

As for gaming, finally got my STO beta invite (I guess that’s what I get for getting the lifetime sub at the last minute, eh?) and I can’t talk about it — yet. So there goes that writing material.

With WoW I’m still working my Death Knight up — hit 70, got my Blacksmithing up ahead of my leveling so it’s actually useful. I’m really, really glad to be on Cobalt ore — soooo much better than the ending classic and BC crap. Having a matching set of gear is also very, very nice.

I’ve been playing a bit of Borderlands here and there since I got it in the Steam sale, but there seems to be a memory leak of sorts. The game runs fine for awhile, then it starts lagging badly. None of my other games do this — even those with better graphics, or higher settings. Strange.

Lastly, tabletop RPGs are still cool to me — no surprise — and I’m going through the Pathfinder rules now. Partially to try and enter their contest, and also to see how it looks compared to 3.5/4.0.