First off, character creation. See that list of races? Pick one. No, it really doesn’t matter. Elin and Popori have pretty freakin’ bad racials, but everyone is a valid pick. Next, pick a class. Again, it really doesn’t matter here, but if you’re looking for a recommendation, then it’s going to be Berserker, Slayer, or Archer. Why those three? Honestly, Lancer is a fantastic pick for new players, but the class has a very low (though very consistent) damage output. Both Lancers and Berserkers wear plate armor and have a block mechanic you can use to mitigate damage, so if you like that and want to go tank, you can find out early. Slayer is basically a higher dps warrior and is capable f teaching you how to dodge enemy attacks with finesse. A friend of mine plays this class and says it’s also an excellent one for getting into modifying the chain skill mechanic, so look into that! Finally, Archers have lots of little tricks to avoid melee like traps and skips, so they’re a great intro to ranged combat. They also have medium armor, and so aren’t as squishy as mages. But ultimately the choice is whatever you, the player, thinks will be the most fun. Dying is pretty hard early on the Isle, so go nuts!

Hardest part of some quests are just tagging the mobs.

Next off is the questing. Aside from the infuriating habit of the game vomiting up quest rewards you can’t even use yet, nearly all of the quests are very straight forward. However, there is also a different type of quest located on the Isle outside of the normal “Go collect 10 bear asses for me!” type. Repeatable quests are ones that can be taken, handed in, and then immediately taken again. Sort of like dailies, only without the reset timer. Now, while this might sound infuriating, it’s actually not a bad mechanic. As far as I’ve gotten in the game, repeatables are always given only for the area you’re already in. The first one you encounter has the items you need starting two feet away from the giver. It’s easy enough to just grab a few as your killing before handing it in with the rest, soaking up a little bonus exp. And if your going to stay in that spot a little longer (grinding, more quests, etc.) then grab it again to boost your exp gain!

A short side note, one of the quests will lie to you. Blatantly. The first time you get a quest that requires you to go back to the main hub, you will be required to use a teleport scroll. After that, the next time will “recommend” using one. Unless you’re finding them off monsters, don’t bother wasting them just yet. There are quests later on the Isle that need more walking than before, and those scrolls will be a time saver.

There's even a quest to do... this of all things.

Speaking of the main hub, this is where all of the merchants are located. Yes, that means you’ll have to hoof it every time you want to pawn off crap or shop. Yeah, I know, it’s horrible. You’ll probably be investing in a lot of new shoes on the Isle. All this walking is just murder on the feet. Anyways, there are three merchants of note. If you use a weapon for physical damage, you all go to the same trainer, same for magic damage. So you don’t have to run around looking for your specific class trainer on the Isle, which is nice. The weapon merchant is also important to note, but sadly for another reason: all of the weapons she sells are near-instantly outclassed by default quest rewards, sometimes from the quest hub before you even make it to the town. Finally, there is the gem merchant, who’s one of the most important!

2 of my 4 health regen gems at work

This is the merchant who introduces you to the gem system, and fairly early on you’ll start finding gear that has slots in both armor and weapons. Red slots for Weapons, Blue for Armor, and each does various things. Honestly you can pick whatever, but there are some considerations. If you aren’t knocking monsters over frequently, those gems will be somewhat of a waste. You also heal too fast on the Isle, so getting those nice, fat damage-up gems for when you’re under 50% health won’t help much. For weapons, I’d recommend buying, at most, four of either the flat critical or bonus mp. Criticals to boost your damage output directly, and the more total mp you have, the more skills you can squeeze out once you’re mana bar is full. For armor, I can only really recommend buying health per 10 seconds to boost your natural recovery time. Keep in mind these also work in combat! So while you’re not recovering a massive amount, you are recovering all the time until that bar hits 100% again. It is also very noticeable, since the system will tell you of a heal. So in combat, you’ll notice a cluster of “+10″ appearing frequently. Your money at work! A good back up if you don’t like the healing over time is just flat health blues. And remember if you’re the “tank” in your group of friends, then pick up a red threat gem. You can only slot one of these, so you won’t need more than that. Make sure to come back before you leave the island and buy the upgraded version of what gems you use! Four of each, so you can always have enough to pull out of your old armor and slot into the new.

Hopefully, that’s given all you new ones to the closed beta tests an idea of where to start and what to look out for to make your life in Arborea as simple as possible. Good use of repeatable quests can make leveling up a breeze without being just ‘grind X of mob Y’ forever, and gems provide a fun, noticeable way improve your character, even so early in the game. Happy hunting!

Alright, I lied. First let's look at the Big Daddy.

(Passive) Staggering Blow: Nautilus’ basic attacks bind the target in place and deals bonus physical damage. Effect can not occur more than once every 12 seconds on an individual target.

Dredge Line: Nautilus throws his anchor in a line pulling himself and the first enemy hit together. Dredge Line can also be used on terrain, quickly pulling Nautilus along and reducing the cooldown by half.

Titan’s Wrath: Nautilus creates a shield around himself, scaling off of bonus health. While the shield holds, Nautilus’ basic attacks inflict a short damage-over-time effect on the target and near-by enemies.

Riptide: Nautilus sends out a pulsing shockwave, dealing damage and slowing anything caught in the pulse. Subsequent hits from pulse dead reduced damage and slow less.

(Ultimate) Depth Charge: Nautilus sends out a pulsing shot that seeks out a single target. As the charge travels, it will knock up any enemy it passes under, finally knocking up and stunning the target.

The first, most noticeable thing  is how simple his skill kit looks at a first glance, but also how it can be used by various players. A new player might use Riptide and Depth Charge to deal damage straight up, while a more experienced player might use Depth Charge to knock up as many people as possible, or to shut down an enemy carry with a little crowd control. Dredge Line ups the ante even more by allowing players to choose what they’re going for. You could use it to hit an enemy and yoink them back… or you could hookshot the wall and use Riptide to slow as they run pass, while Dredge Line is now on a much shorter cooldown, possibly short enough for you to get a second hook out in a single fight. There’s a lot of depth to the character, and you’ll just have to dive in and experiment to find everything out.

Oh, those puns were bad.

On to play style, there are two distinct ones, and it varies along with build path depending on where I am. Personally, I’m finding Nautilus to be an absolutely fantastic jungler, but with his gap-closer and multiple cc effects, both hard and soft, he can lane and support or top insanely well too. Starting with jungle; Start at wolves and then run to blue. Starting with Riptide and then grabbing Dredge Line will allow for quick, powerful ganks right at the start. Once you have all 3 skills though, focus on leveling Titan’s Wrath for jungle speed and damage, then Riptide whenever available. Gank hard and gank often to keep pressure up on any lane you can. For items, I’ve been going for Wriggles, boots of your choice, and Frozen Mallet as a core. This gives life to boost your shield, and a nice little bit of raw attack damage along with making all of your attacks inflict some form of control. For runes I run Attack Damage Reds/Quints, Armor Yellows, and Attack Speed Blues. Yeah, it’s weird, but give it a shot. By the time your damage begins to fall off, you can easily switch over to just building tank items like Banshee’s Veil and Sunfire Cape to boost your lifepool and get some resists building.

For laning, I try a different build. Starting with a rushed Catalyst for lane sustain, I then grab… Sorc Boots. Yeah, you read that right. Same build as jungling for skills, max Titan’s Wrath, Riptide, then Dredge Line, grabbing Depth Charge whenever it’s available. Almost all of his skills actually have pretty good scaling, and the one that has the worst, Titan’s Wrath, splashes a heavy-hitting short duration DoT on anything nearby his melee target. Riptide has almost as bad scaling… but pulses out and can hit multiple times in a single cast, especially if someone is running. Depth Charge and Dredge Line both hit ludicrously hard once you get some Ability Power rolling. Because of that, after boots comes Rod of Ages and then Rylai’s Crystal Scepter. Now that you’ve got enough HP to survive in melee (and some nice bonus for your shield), it’s easy to start stacking some more ability power. Deathcap will turn you into fast-moving magic bomb while Will of the Ancients gives insane sustain and harass in a 1v1 enviorment.

Overall, Nautilus can run almost any kind of build and still eat face when played properly. You can build him Attack Damage and use his skills to slow and force opponents to stay in melee while you pummel them to death, or build Ability Power and burst anything silly enough to stand against you with a quick-firing of your skills, letting the bleed from Titan’s Wrath drain out their last as you just sit on them with that shield, or build him as a tank and use his skills to bring the maximum amount of disruption and chaos to the enemy team. However he’s played, he’ll have plenty of tricks to learn and a great depth for learning. Always remember though, if you try an AP build to always use his Abyssal skin. If you’re going to give in to the darkness and play him like a mage, might as well go for Chaos, right? Now if only he had a line praising T’zeench…

Eh, good enough.

Character Creation:

So, as you know there are a wide variety of races and classes, and all of those races are very distinct from each other. However, half the races have problems differentiating individuals from the race. There is very, very little you can do to make your Elf or Human look different from the next Human or Elf, outside of tweaking the face. Which is the thing people will almost never see unless they specifically zoom into your face to check. Even then, your options are limited. While you can change the color of your hair, skin tones and eye color are completely static. You can’t change any of it to try to stand out more. Even worse though, what you can use to differentiate yourself still falls flat, because the animal ears for the Elin and the horns for Castanic are tied into specific hairstyles, so you can’t put, say, fox ears and long hair together. It will always be the one style and one ears/horns.

You're going to see these ears a lot from me.

In a similar vein, the amount of voices to pick from are fairly restricted. You get a total choice of four. There might be more for male characters, but I’m used to having a wider vocal range for my female characters. Pretty sure Monster Hunter Tri gave at least 12 options of varying pitch. While I’m talking about it and it’s related to character creation, I’d also like to profess my extreme disappointment at the Elin racial skills. Not only are they the exact same as the Popori, word for word with only ‘Popori’ subbed out for ‘Elin’, they have the same image too. So you have an entire race that has zero racial identity in their skills, because everything has an image from a completely different race. As great as TERA is, the dev team phoned in a lot of crap. This is just pure laziness.

On a final note, the naming system in TERA is completely bizarre. When you name your character, you are not allowed to use spaces… but you can use periods. What on earth was the point of this? It just squashes a name together and makes it look just as bad as if you had been forced to write the name as one word. Would it really have been so difficult to give use spaces instead of periods? Outside of very specific names, like Mr.Kittenbottoms, the period just looks out-of-place. A space would have been much cleaner and presented better immersion for role-playing.

Quests:

Questing in TERA is… weird. On one hand, En Masse did go out of their way to make sure that you don’t have to grind to get further into the game. On the other, the game is horribly optimized for this, since quests still reward grinding far more than they should. Let’s take the first quest of the game on the Isle of Dawn. You have to go out and slaughter a bunch of sentient bipedal trees that are terrorizing… the grass? It’s never really clear what they were doing wrong since the worst they do is stare at you for coming to close. Also their names are ludicrous to pronounce.

These things.

So you go out and slaughter a few of the poor trees, and hey, look at that! You even dinged up a level for your genocide trouble. Bubbling with absolute joy, you run back to the quest giver and turn in your quest, gaining some gold, a smattering of experience points, and a brand new pair of boots. Excitedly, you open up the bag to check the size on your new boots since the old ones are now stained with sap (or whatever trees use for blood) only to find out the boots require level three. A level you aren’t close to getting without grinding out a half-dozen more trees, or just ignoring it and moving on to other quests, the boots sitting in your bag.  Taunting you as the squish of sap and furby blood remind you of the low blow the game just played. And you might be thinking, well, that’s fine, it’s only level three stuff! And you’d be right, it is only level three. Only the game keeps doing this. Multiple quests that award gear will often vomit up stuff you can’t even use until the next level, which gets progressively more frustrating as the game goes on. Getting to level three for those boots takes a few minutes. Getting to level 15 to use that new axe from 14 is going to take significantly more time. Half the time I simply vendored all the upgrades I couldn’t use now just out of spite. Why should I carry a bunch of crap I can’t even use, especially when bags are frequently full?

Speaking of, your bags will be full of crap, because for whatever reason there are almost never any merchants in any of the quest hubs outside the main hub for a zone. So the further away the questing takes you, the longer back you’ll have to run to vendor off all the gunk filling up your bag. That’s not even counting the bizarre weapon drops you can get. Going back to the intro area, I found a handy little axe at level two that was a pretty hefty upgrade. So I sling it on my back and move on. That axe was better than the next 4 or 5 axes I ran across, and almost all of those were quest rewards. I didn’t replace that level two axe until I got a reward from a level nine quest. It took that long for the gear to catch up to something I lucked across while killing trees.

Seriously, where does a tree hide that?

The worst part is, that’s about half of the problems I ran into the game just getting to level seventeen. Not even gotten into the problems with random-number generators acting as ridiculous gold sinks, or prices on varying functions and mechanics being set up to completely screw low-level characters out of even trying any of the fun things, or the strange choices like not implementing any kind of ‘Report Bug’ feature for beta. And yeah, call it a ‘preview event’ all you want, there are bugs. A friend and I stumbled across several in just two days of playtime. But that’s a post for another day. So remember, while I may gush praise at the game (and there will be more gushing as beta events come along), the game isn’t perfect.

Well, as we covered before, the combat is absolutely amazing. I’ve gone through and played 3 classes so far (Lancer, Berserker, and Archer) and each has a distinct, noticeable play-style. Some happen to be very slow burners, like the Lancer. If you happen to pick the good ol’ tank, keep in mind that it won’t really pick up until around level 10ish or so. However, as the game rolls along you steadily get to the point where bloody near nothing in a 1v1 environment can kill you, just by virtue of the absurd block rating on the Shield itself. Other classes like the Archer are pretty much set to go the second you log in to the game. You have a bow, and you have a jump back. Go nuts. Skills added along the line add to the fun, but the same core style remains the same.  Combat is also extremely fluid, with monsters having noticeable, but not blatant, tells so the observant can try and time out the last second of a block or dodge when the less-sure can easy just block or evade earlier, losing a bit of damage but staying safe in the process. How does combat look in TERA? Well… (Audio is kind of borked, Trying to sort it out for future videos)

Which brings me to the next point, this game does an amazing job at setting a story in motion. Between short-and-sweet cutscenes that show all they need too and a list of quests that revolve around a single plot-line, the entire starting zone is a testiment to what story telling in an MMO should be, instead of a bunch of disjointed quests in a similar themed area. Rift did this as well, but the starting area was rather limited there and could be blown through fairly quickly. My recent go through was an attempted blitz and it still took me over a couple hours to get through the whole thing. Second zone is also shaping up to be as good as the first, but we’ll see if it carries through. A downside to the combat though, beta being beta means duels can be broken to high heaven. I’ve seen (and fought) in a duel that was perfectly fine, and then another where the other player consistently pummeled my lancer through her shield without any mitigation. Later found out the player was standing behind me, while on my screen was still in front. I’d hold off on playing any pvp in crowded areas to minimize lag.

Another great point for the game is just how amazing it looks. That video up there really doesn’t do the game justice. The view is stunning and landscapes are well designed, frequently breathtaking. They can be somewhat linear earlier on, but some of the later zones appear to be much more open and up for exploration. And while we’re talking about the world, gathering in the world of Arborea is insane. I had over 50 basic ingots by the time I left the starting zone, and I wasn’t even going out of my way to collect them. If there was a node in close proximity, I grabbed it. The system is also very forgiving for parties, if someone begins harvesting a node of plants or magic or whatever, anyone else can come over and click on that same node before it completes, also grabbing the resources before it vanishes. Only works with people in-party, so fighting for reasource nodes with strangers is still an issue when servers are over-populated.

On a final good note for an MMO, questing is extremely streamlined. Story quests offer nice little bonus of having “Yes sir!” or “I’m on it.” instead of the bland ‘Accept / Decline’ block at the bottom of the text. Mobs that you are required to kill will have a little ‘!’ next to their name, but you still have to get over to them. Makes it much, much easier to see what’s going on rather than a tedious grind of whether or not ‘Slimebottom Naga’ counts for the same quest as ‘Siltbottom Naga,’ which can save more than a little frustration as the quest chains go on. EXP rates so far have been great and prevent any unnecessary grinding. You can, and it’s still good exp, but it’s not the best way to do things. Now, on the flip side of things…

Character creation is somewhat… limited. Several of the presets just look hideous, and while there is no way to manipulate your body outside of a few race types. Popori, Elin, and Aman all have some amount of diversity because of the racial bodies. Elin and Popori can change animal types or color schemes and Aman have a variety of horn styles to pick from… but outside that, there isn’t that much to differentiate from other players. Absolute worst for Human and High Elf who can’t really change all that much besides their face, making distinct character models a little difficult. Just a little height variation on top of a few more noticeable traits would help set individuals from each race apart.

Finally, and pardon my little slip here, what in the hell is wrong with your art team, Blue Hole? I have never seen such blatant hack-job and agressively insulting armor variation ever. Depending on the race, one in three armors can look like something the dev team threw together in 5 seconds because they somehow got the message that “looking like a skank” is the exact same thing as “looking sexy.” It’s like some talentless hack with no skill decided to take the easiest method possible of “showing more skin” and then bindged on that to the point of absurdity. This isn’t even getting into the utter retardation of the exact same armor looking like a literal chain mail bikini for the female model (and utterly stupid) while the male version looks like the guy is wearing half a tank.  Come on BHS, if you’re going to go with stupid design, as least take a note from Castanic and make both genders look like a cheap call.

Outside of that glaringly stupid flaw, TERA online has held up as a remarkably amazing game. It’s got great, fluid combat, and an absolutely fantastic world. The weapon preression relies too much on luck for my taste, but I’m wanting to get more into it before I start chewing in to it visciously. If it tends to be on the side of, say, Phantasy Star Universe, then I’m not going to be too happy. If it’s more rewarding like Monster Hunter, then I’ll be alright with a little RNG dictating how soon I can get my upgrades rolling. If you like what you’ve seen/read, sign up and give it a shot. There are closed-beta invites going out all the time, and pre-ordering the game gives access to all beta events. If you want to try and can wait, open beta is in late April. See you on the other side!

Today I wanted to cover something a little different from game mechanics. Going to go over a few of the basic mechanics of League of Legends and how you, the play, can interact with them to improve your game. Going to covering a decently wide range of topics so we won’t dive into too much detail, but if there are questions I can always expand on them later.

Zone Control:

First, watch that. Yes, the video is old, but it’s still every bit as accurate now as it ever was. Zoning has the effect of controlling your opponent through what are essentially mind games. What you want to do is bully the enemy lane (most effective if it’s 1 enemy in the lane, but it can be done against 2) until they have to retreat, then moving into position to prevent them from farming. Even better, if you can hold them well while only last hitting minions, your minions will only push very slowly. For every minion of yours that dies in the middle of the field, as opposed to the enemy tower, is another bit of experience you can deny, gaining more of an advantage. Some champions have insane innate zone control; Ziggs can completely lock out an enemy mid just by using Hexplosive Minefield, though the large radius will probably wind up pushing the minion wave bit by bit.

Last Hitting:

This is ‘light’ concept that is very, very helpful to remember. When you auto-attack farm, you run the risk of losing a minion kill (sometimes referred to as ‘creep score’, or cs for short) and all the gold you could have gotten from it. Just as bad, once you begin auto-attacking, your minions will easily win the fight and begin pushing, building up a wave that won’t stop until it’s reached the enemy tower for a while… which can put you in the perfect position for the enemy jungler to wreck your day. The concept of ‘last hitting’ is simple, just don’t touch the minion until it’s almost dead, then shoot it. Or stab/pummel/explode/slice/etc. This keeps the minion wave fro pushing too strongly in any one direction and keeps you from  over-extending.

Don’t be afraid to pop skills if your opponents are, it can be hard to last hit under a tower, just be careful in the location of the skills, to prevent too much pushing. Smack something a few times and watch the red number that pops up per hit, and remember it as how hard your auto-attack hits. Once the minion falls under that amount of hp, smack it! It can be somewhat difficult for casters to last hit because of their low damage, but there are some single-target or small AoE skills that can be used to great effect. Take ‘Lay Waste’ from Karthus, it’s his main damage spell, but used correctly will make last hitting a breeze.

Vision:

BUY WARDS. You may think it’s not worth it (it is) or that it can be expensive (it can be), but trust me when I say it’s worth it. There have been games were I did utterly terrible and we still won. Why? I spent a large chunk of my income on Wards. Vision is one of the most important and most underrated benefits in League to date. Here, an example. I was playing duo’d with a friend, and I was playing a then-favorite of lane Udyr. I did absolutely garbage. I was 0/10/2 by about the 20 minute mark. Couldn’t live in team-fights, couldn’t win in a 1v1 fight. So what I do? I warded everything. You think that is an exaggeration, it’s not. Every time I went to base, I picked up at least five. I could grab up to 10 if we’d had a good team-fight. And all of our team-fights were good. They literally had no sight on us, while my obsessive ward spam had revealed their entire jungle and all of the river. If they stepped out of their base at all, we saw it. We could always get ganks or insane initiation just because they never knew where we were, or what we were doing. Even after the game, no one on our team was upset with my score. They knew the importance of vision, and how much gold I put into map awareness.

Now, that’s a bit of an extreme example, but a good show of how effective wards can be. No one is saying you can’t go back to base unless you can buy 7 wards at once or whatever, but it can be massively in your favor to pick up just one every time you go back to base. If you are bottom or top lane, throw it in the river. For the next 3 minutes, you’re basically immune to jungle ganks. You can see it coming and back off safely. Warding Dragon and Baron Nashor can keep enemies from getting those ad gaining an advantage over you. Even better, if you splurge a little and grab the more expensive pink ward you can see other invisible things. Like enemy wards. For about 50 gold more, not only do you grant yourself vision, but you deny your opponent’s sight.

Assisting Junglers:

Not really much I can add to what you’ve seen in there. A lot of times I see mid lane botch a pull by staying too long, costing me valuable time and eating up the healing from a potion since I’m now tanking more of it. Also the hilarious fail of top and mid underestimating their combined AoE, taking some of the wolves after I’ve hit ‘em. Fairly simple stuff (outside taking golems), but doing it right will make your jungler happy and healthy, while doing it wrong will probably make them die a little inside. Or punch a lane for revenge.

And that’s that. There are a lot of other things you can do to better your game, but these are the most basic ways to get the biggest increase. I’d like to thank Stonewall and Shurelia for putting together great videos on the topics of Zone Control and Jungling Assistance. Keep everything in mind, and go pummel your enemies!

Ziggs is a ranged mage with an ungodly amount of zone control, however he is lacking in any short of hard crowd control outside a single small knock back (For comparison, it’s a little bigger than Maokai’s). He is extremely squishy, and lacks a reliable escape as well, so once you close the distance he’ll go splat real quick. However, unlike most other mages, Ziggs is amazing at area-denial and psychological attacks, keeping enemies from moving in specific directions, or even from leaving specific areas at all. For starters, let’s look at Ziggs’ kit and how it all ties together.

(Passive) Short Fuse:

Every 12 seconds, Ziggs’ basic attacks deal bonus magic damage. Every spell cast lowers this cooldown by 4 seconds. In all honesty, this is probably his most “meh…” skill, it just doesn’t match the sheer, unabashed joy blowing someone up. Handy for early game for getting a bit of extra damage. It can hit deceptively hard, but the longer the game goes the more lethal it is for Ziggs to stay in auto-attack range. If you’re feeling gutsy, or safe, toss out some empowered bombs, but the safest way to play is behind your allies. I will give it credit for that risk/reward factor, it can make for interesting choices for damage output, it’s just not nearly as fun as the rest of his kit. Maybe if the empowered-auto had a bigger explosion animation? He is hurling bombs you know!

Bouncing Bomb:

The bread and butter of your damage, and one of the highest skill-cap abilities in the game. Unlike other skill shots, the bomb will fly to it’s target area and then bounce, traveling a shorter distance before bouncing again. On the third landing or first contact with an enemy, the bomb will explode dealing a moderate sized Area-of-Effect damage.  The bomb will also bounce further/faster the further away it is, and will bounce over walls (ignores terrain, so don’t be trying to bounce off a wall), making it possible to bounce a bomb over a minion wave and right into a champions face. Getting the bounces just right at the varying distances can be a challenge, couldn’t begin to tell you how many times I’ve screwed up and had a bomb bounce into a minion rather than the champion behind them. Still, there are a lot of tricks to be had, and it hits like an absolute truck.

Satchel Charge:

A pack of C4 (shush, that’s what it is) with a small area of effect, and the only source of hard control Ziggs has. Enemies inside the blast radius are knocked back, and Ziggs can use the pack to launch himself much further. The cooldown is fairly restrictive, so it needs to only be used at the perfect time to maximize it’s effect or to save your life. This can be used to launch Ziggs over terrain, but there isn’t any indication how far he’ll go from the skill itself. Try using it in a custom a few times to get an idea of how far you’ll go and what you can/can’t jump over. It’s damage is alright, but not good enough to justify leveling over Bouncing Bomb or Hexplosion Minefield. Speaking of that last one…

Hexplosion Minefield:

Ziggs hurls out multiple proximity mines that damage and slow any enemies walking through. Mines do less damage if a single target detonates multiple mines, but the slow amount will remain the same. This is, by far, my absolute favorite skill from Ziggs. The minefield is big enough to completely lock down entire pathways, restricting how enemies can engage. Honestly, the bombs individually don’t do that much damage, but they make for absolutely amazing mind games. It’s like tossing out Lux’s Luminescent Singularity, no one actually wants to go through it. Minefield lasts even longer than that, but unless you have 40% cooldown reduction and a ton of mana, you won’t be able to keep the Minefield up 100% of the time. A well placed minefield can trap half the enemy team on the other side of a wall, or set up an easy kill with the slow in conjunction with your other skills and allies.

(Ultimate)  Mega Inferno Bomb:

Ziggs hurls a massive inferno bomb, dealing massive to anything caught in the middle of the explosion and 75% to anything in the outer reaches. And when it says “hurls” that means you can litterally almost bomb top or bottom lane from Mid. Yeah, it’s a skill shot with the range of a Pantheon or Twisted Fate teleport. Landing the ult at that range requires a measure of skill, but for every time an enemy is blue-pilling out from their tower with 200 life, you can bomb them long before the 8 second cast time is done for them. Has a nasty problem of flying straight up for a couple seconds if you try and drop it on top of yourself, so don’t try and use it as damage right now or it’s possible the enemy will simply run out of the explosion radius before the warning even displays. And there is a massive warning to go along with the insane explosion radius, but it only appears about a second and a half before impact. Unless they were already moving, that’s usually a sign you’re about to be melted into nothing. Can be used as another form of area denial, but that’s wasting the cooldown when your could just use all your other skills for that. Since it has a massive range, it also gives the ability to snipe things like buffs from enemy junglers (especially when they’re trying to hand off the buff to the enemy mid) or Dragon/Baron from the enemy team.

On the upside, Ziggs has excellent harass, and what he lacks in hard control can easy be made up with mind games and the large radius on his Minefield. His ultimate has ludicrous range and his jump and bouncing bombs have a high skill ceiling to get perfect use out off. Honestly, I can think of a single thing I’d want to have improved. He’s got a great kit and plenty of ability to reward both new players and expert players. I’d put him in the same category as, say, Lee Sin or Orianna, fun champions that can do amazing things in the right hands. Of course, he also has several weaknesses, very low life and defenses, and no escape besides his little C4 pack, which can be easy to misplace when you’re running for your life.

If you’re on the fence about grabbing the little bomb maniac, he gets a heart-felt recommendation. Now go out there and blow crap up!

Right then, BioShock 2. Now, before the caustic hate goes out, let’s start off with some caustic love. BioShock 2 was very much what I was hoping for in many ways, and being back in Rapture was a blast. Voice acting could have been improved, but I’m biased on account of having to hear southerners every time I walk outside. The whole experience was still as visually stunning as I had expected and immersive as I’d hoped. All in all BioShock 2 was a great game by itself and probably going to be one of ‘Games of the Year’. But there is the problem, BioShock 2 isn’t a stand alone game. It’s a sequel to BioShock. This is where things start to fall apart, and BioShock 2 falls much farther than before.

BioShock was a fantastic game that drew me in and never let me back out until the credits started rolling, and considering how decrepit and insane Rapture was, that was no small feat. I felt like I wasn’t some gamer, but that I was inside the city, just trying to survive long enough to get the hell out. That I was caught up in the battle between Ryan and Atlas not because I wanted too, but because I had too as a means to escape. And because Ryan was a jerk. But that was later on. BioShock 2 on the other hand, you know exactly what you are doing and where you are. There is none of the chaos and decay of before except for that you leave in your destructive wake. You were often in touch with Atlas, but he was more of a guide, either suggesting where to go or begging for help to save his family. Atlas, not Fontaine, stick with me people. He was a human in need, also caught up in the madness of Rapture’s fall. Sinclair on the other hand is hardly hurting for anything, he’s been loaded from the plasmid business and wants to go to the surface just to exploit them too. Hardly a sympathetic character. Tenembaum makes an appearance for all of two levels at best, before disappearing and all but saying ‘This is Sinclair, he is my replacement. I’m on vacation now.’ The good path I took didn’t even have Tenembaum talking to me, it was Elanor instead. The very person I’m supposed to be rescuing.  That was another thing, plasmids/ADAM aside, Elanor just talks way too much. It’s hard to think she’s ever in trouble when she’s shooting something off every time you do something. Would have been more believable if a Little Sister had been waiting for you to tell you a little bit, maybe even team up with you. There was a lot with the characters that either went against how we were supposed to feel about them or just flat out replaced it. Time for a few examples;

-Sinclair; Not very sympathetic until the end. This guy was pretty much a tame Fontaine. Why did Tenembaum simply vanish and expect us to save all the Little Sisters without any word from her? Heck, the only incentive you get at the very beginning is from Sinclair and hes wanting you to waste them all for adam.

-Elanor;  Less talking. Seriously. Yes, your my little one. I get it. I want to save you. I want to hurry less when you seem fine just because you can talk directly to me at every moment. Her ability to take control of Little Sisters could have easily filled this better, giving us the impression that something more was involved with the Sister in question, but not actually letting us on until later when Elanor revels it was her. Speaking of Sisters…

-Big Sister; Too. Many. Period. And they suffer the same problem as Big Daddies in the first game, they are simply too easy later on. It would have been a scarier encounter if you never killed one until the very end at least. Having to fight off some unstoppable force of Rapture would have been better than killing them over and over. And they just spawn too much. When ever you turn in your Sister, one spawns in. Why are we being punished for playing the game? Outside Electrobolt and Insect Swarm I almost never used any other plasmid except for giggles or experimentation. Make them unkillable (Large hitpools, run at a fixed % or time limit), but able to be knocked around and stunned. It’s a fight of survival, a Big Sister is the personification of Rapture, of its power. You can’t kill Rapture, you can’t win. You can only survive. You have to survive the Big Sister longer if you play evil paths, maybe almost kill one before she runs, stealing satisfaction. Maybe Big Sister spawns more often when you play a dark path. There was a lot of potential for the Big Sisters as well, but most of it went into the ‘Big Daddy Replacement’ department as our main killable enemy. She just existeded as a badass enemy to kill for some paltry loot and progress the story. Thats not to say one Big Sister is all you get, there could be several as long as they A) Are running place to place or just did something like kidnap your Sister and booked it, screeching the night away or B) Be watching you from outside or somewhere unreachable. Either one to give you a sense of dread and get you ready for a fight, even if the fight never comes. Rapture is always watching you, are you ready when her anger boils over?

-Alex the Great; Alex is no Sander Cohen. Hes not really relatable, nor do you interact much. Except for his cameras flying around screaming at you. Now, he was a blast to fight against, since to him you are just some errant employee. That was fun, but you never get to really interact with him. And no, flowers don’t count. The Quadtick was fun, if slightly disturbing, as it should have been. Alex didn’t really have much, and seemed to be in the dark about what he himself had said before. By the time I was done with the whole thing, Gil had asked for death enough that I just flipped the switch and walked off. Bring characters closer to home, not sitting in a jar eating pudding and yelling at us while hardly knowing what it is we’re doing. Especially when he said it in the first place, and he had control over much of the security systems at first.

-Sofia Lamb; *sigh* Now I have to be nice. Sofia. Lamb. Hands down one of my favorite people in Rapture. She is the root of it all. Bringing a religion to the vacant city, turning everyone into her own cult to support her dreams of utopia, but at the same time taking the brief moments to talk to you. Not as an enemy, but a simply misguided soul. Of course everything falls apart later, but until  the end, she was entirely well done. Side note- If there is now some state sponsored religion in Rapture, why did all the splicers stop singing the ‘Jesus Loves Me’ song? That really brought home how much Rapture had fallen in the first one. A little more than cultist shrines would have been nice. Or maybe they still sang it but I just couldn’t hear it over the melodious sound of *drill*.

The other major problem with Rapture was… well, Rapture itself. This place was cracking leaks and colder than a witch’s tit 10 years ago. Why does it look the same? Rosies aren’t that good at keeping it together. The place should have been more decayed, fused more with the ocean around it. One of the best moments is when you fall through several floors in a building until you hit a flooded pipe system you can walk through. The whole city just seemed too… clean. Which should have been hard for Rapture to pull off overall. Being outside was put up as being one of the highlights in BioShock 2, being with the ocean that surrounded you in BioShock, but that only happens once, maybe twice. When an angry Big Sister knocks the windows out, and when you come over a hill to view Rapture in all it’s splendor. Other than that, the ocean felt entirely interchangeable with a damp hallway. Nothing of significance, but it could have been so much more.  A little more freedom would have really opened the ocean. Even if you end up in the same place, two or three paths would have broken up the monotony and given a bit more replay value. Also more of the adam slugs. Randomly. Flooded building would have also put you and the ocean together, while showing how far the city has and is falling. Decay and death is a good thing here, and the little pockets of life you find around the Lamb Religion serve to highlight that darkness.

Those are the two main things that would have really sent BioShock 2 flying high, even as a sequel to BioShock. As it stands BioShock 2 was a great game, but a bit of a disappointment compared to the predecessor. The only character who really lived up to her ancestry was Sofia Lamb, the new version of Ryan and Fontaine combined. Well, she was better than what that sounds like. There was so much potential, couldn’t fit everything in one post, maybe more about the Big Sisters and Splicers in another post.

First and foremost, what is ambient noise? Simply put, it’s the sounds the world makes. Bugs creaking in the night, the winds rustling through the trees, the groaning of stressed metal. Dozens of little things that come together to truly bring the world to life, that make it feel like it’s in motion, as opposed to stuck in permanent stasis until the protagonist comes along and sets off something nearby. Some games do use ambiance to bring in the player, but it’s almost always a calculated move for that specific area, and will usually stop as you move away from the event trigger.

Hello? Anything there?

Some of the worst offenders of this are MMOs, that can rely almost exclusively on music to set the “mood” for a zone, rather than trying to use ambient noise. Sometimes this works, for areas that are dead and desolate, the silence (until the music kicks in for whatever reason) works to bring home how dead the world is at that moment. Occasionally, you’ll find MMOs (and other games) that do use ambient noise, but is almost always on a short track that becomes obvious the longer you play in that area. Even worse, there can be events triggered that call attention to the noise, rather than letting it build up, then immediately cease once the event is over. F.3.A.R. had a nasty habit on one early level of having the player run over a set of ladders that were strung about, using them as bridges for the most part. Stepping on the ladder caused your camera to sway and the ladder to creak and groan as if it was about to break. Problem is, you can jump up and down forever on the things and they’ll never break, but constantly make the same groan.

The ladder issue could have been improved by having the pitch change if the player remains on the ladder, having the groan sound more and more stressed. A lot of outside zones could be improved by having crickets and birds in the background. Have a few tracks that randomly cycle depending on the time of day and the zone. One weird example is probably Dead Space where the ship actually sounds, for the most part, like a ship, but the ventilation system only makes noise when it’s trying to scare you/warn you of impending Necromorph attack and not really any time else.

Hear clacking, get to reloading.

Another game that really does ambient noise well has been Metro 2033. Playing the game with my surround sound headphones really puts a whole new level to the horrific tunnels. You can hear the wind flowing through the tunnels from time to time, dripping of water from busted pipes, even a light groaning of metal throughout the tunnels. Oddly, the hand carts don’t exactly sound like what you’d imagine, but I’ll forgive that for the game actually making me take off my headphones from time to time, just because living in wrecked metro tunnel in creepy as hell. Pretty sure the dev team lived in a metro tunnel for a while just to get every diabolical sound just right.

A final good example of sound that people over look, League of Legends has had several recent champions that actually have the noise of a sword swinging through the air, weapons impacting against varying enemies. Easy to miss, but once you hear it, it’s easily noticeable and adds a fun little detail to the combat.

So that’s that, my plead to developers to make their worlds just a little more life-like. Give it a greater momentum, have sounds that travel beyond 4 feet, have the little things that we all take for granted in the real world. Or things we find absolutely infuriating, like those crickets in my backyard that just won’t shut up in the middle of summer. It’s the little things that count.

Seriously, they just won't shut up.

If you’d like to know more about how damaging SOPA can be, or even just WTF it is, TotalBiscuit did an excellent video. Take a look, pass the word, and keep the internet open for us all.

Terran Republic:

One of the more common in promotional materials (that I’ve seen), the Terran Republic are loyal to the Earth government that has been cutoff ever since Auraxis lost it’s connection with Earth. The TR weapons and vehicles focus on speed above all else, whether it is vehicle speed or rate of fire, the Terran Republic can’t be matched in terms of speed. They are also more reliant on numbers than the other factions, needing more people to fill the air with as many bullets as they possibly can. Their designs also tend to be fairly fluid and slender. Good choice if you want to be group oriented, to bring the most out of your Empire’s strengths.

New Conglomerant:

The New Conglomerant are the second of the three Empires, and are a group of misfits ranging from massive corporations to thieves and terrorists. Their weapons may not be as state-of-the-art as the Terran Republic’s, but don’t let that fool you. In terms of raw power, nothing can beat the NC. Their weapons and vehicles pack the biggest punch and will hurt like hell if you happen to be caught by them. They also tend to be more armored than what you’d expect, but all that firepower and armor comes with a cost, and they aren’t the most mobile of the empires. Their designs tend to be extremely bulky and have more than a few sharp angles. Good for more solo (relatively speaking, you will still need backup) players, giving a bit more punch to make up for a lack of numbers.

Vanu Sovereignty: 

The third and favorite Empire of mine, the Vanu Sovereignty. The VS are a group of transcendentalists who believe the ultimate evolution of humanity can only be achieved by incorporating more of the ancient Vanu technology. As a result, their armor and weapons tend to be the most out there, having lasers and plasma where other empires might use bullets. While the Vanu Sovereignty aren’t the hardest hitting or quickest of the Empires, their mobility is second to none. While the Terran Republic may be quicker, the VS have greater mobility with anti-gravity technology. While the New Conglormerant hit harder, they can’t match some of the utility the VS bring to the table. Though, I could be biased about this. Maybe. Vanu design is more out there, with triangles and overlapping metal plates. Also, their color is purple. Whats not to love? Good faction for players who want to abuse the greater mobility of the vehicles or use the different weapons the Vanu have at their disposal.

And those vehicles are incredible.

And those are the three factions. Regardless of who you pick, every faction has access to common pool vehicles. Things that don’t really differentiate, and only really have varying color schemes. Other vehicles like the Scythe for the Vanu Sovereignty, or the Prowler for the Terran Republic, are unique to each faction and not available to the others. So if you want a Mosquito, you’ll have to go Terran. Want a Vanguard, time to go New Conglomerant.

Expanding off the vehicles, some have differing equipment you can add to change how the vehicle functions. Sadly, you can’t turn a jet into a tank with transformer tech, but you can shift your role. For instance, the Scythe is a light attack air-craft unique to the Vanu Sovereignty. It can be configured as a support air-craft, with Anti-Air weaponry to support the slower moving planes in the Vanu fleet, or to protect ground troops and vehicles from air attacks. However, it can also be configured with weapons specializing in ground targets, switching roles from protector to a hunter-killer plane, scouring the battle-field and showering troops and vehicles with death from above. It can also be fitted with both, taking on both roles as the need arises, but won’t have the specialized armaments needed to really excel. So you can choose to specialize in one area, and do excellent, or become a jack-of-all-trades, master of none if utility suites your preferences. Not all vehicles can be configured to fit different roles, but don’t be surprised if certain tank shells fire off napalm to burn down infantry while others are simply massive hunks of lead for punching into armor. You can decide what role you want to specialize in, within a reasonable field. Don’t count on becoming an Anti-Air tank with your main cannon, no matter how satisfying it may be to blow a buzzing little Mosquito out of the air. You have support gunners for that.

Though looking at it, NC may already have Optimus as an ally.

On the topic of specalization, if you played PlanetSide, you may remember how your character could be built back then. Virtually any way, as long as you got the CERT for it. Well, that system is now (somewhat) gone, and instead a class system has been put in place. So while you can’t build an ubermensch of a soldier, you can pick an area to excel in at the cost of something else. Infiltrators will make great assassins and snipers, but that light armor isn’t going to help you in the slightest if you try to take a machine-gun to the front lines. CERTS return as skills and weapon-prerequisites, allowing you to advance in a chosen path. Some CERTS may also have prerequisites, but you can train anything that suits your fancy. If you’ve ever played EVE Online, CERTS now function like skills in EVE. You can only be training one CERT per account at any given time, but CERTS continue to train even if you’re offline (though some will train faster if you’re online and pursuing that skill). So you can, say, train up a CERT as a pilot, but hop on to some ground warfare while your CERT is training and not worry about it. Just remember to pick something else to train once you’re finished. Hopefully a Queue system will be implemented like in EVE, but we haven’t heard anything about it yet. There is also a Battle Rank system, which is basically a Level Up by a different name. Higher Battle Rank will open up higher level CERTS to train, so don’t think you can afk CERT up to the best stuff. You’ll have to get your boots dirty and that gun well-worn before then.

As a final note, for a free to play game PlanetSide 2 looks absolutely incredible. How incredible? Well, check this out for a moment…

Seriously, that is being given away for free? That’s stunning. Especially of note are the Day/Night cycles. Auraxis has a complete cycle, so planning attacks around what time it is adds a whole new level to the complexity. Imagine it, sitting around a base at night, chatting with friends or looking at what CERTS you want to train up when a shadow crosses the moon’s light, a fleet of light attack aircraft gunning down into the courtyard as a line of half-dozen tanks roll over a hill, safely hidden in shadows while the fleet got in to position, opening up on the base as the ambushing strike force runs for the base, a fierce and chaotic battle breaking out as the defenders finally forms up and gets to the defense, their own vehicles rolling out to protect their hold.

Now imagine that happening all over the world. Welcome to Auraxis, where war is never-ending, and there are never a shortage of battles to be fought, of resources to be taken and defended from the other Empires. What will you become, a fearless pilot, or a walking tank, commanding your legions across the battlefield? The options are limitless for what role you can take in Auraxis’ future, so gear up and prepare to fight.