Catch-up Post

So... since I'm the only one really posting here... periodically... shut up, you know what I mean.

Anyways, here are some quick-reviews for what I've been playing of late.

Saints Row: The Third
I am a child.  I enjoy spending most of my time in this game doing running melee attacks.  They are all sorts of gratifying.  In fact, I plan on getting the unlimited sprint JUST to do that.  Speaking of upgrades, you buy them in this game.  Yeah, money has a better purpose in SR3 than SR2.  In my current Saints Row 2 file, I'm sitting on half a million dollars, and nothing to spend it on but property and ammo.  In Saints Row: The Third, you buy your upgrades with money.  Things like More ammo for guns, more grenades, followers, more sprint/health, etc. The catch is, you still need a required Respect level before you can purchase these unlockables.

Gun play is a bit different.  Your radial menu replaces the dedicated grenade slot with the specialty weapon slot (like my attack drones).  The upside is that the d-pad now selects which one of the four grenade types you have equipped.  The button layout is different, but the new layout allows you to aim down the sights easier (helpful), and have a dedicated grenade button (which I accidentally hit instead of the "shoot fiery lead based projectiles very fast" button).

DC Universe Online

Anybody remember when Sony charged you to play this game?  Financial bust is a term for that plan.  Now that it's Free-To-Play though, I hear it's doing decent financially.  So there's that.

Now enough business talk... how does it play?  Fun.  Fast frantic action.

You can play as either a hero or villain.  Then you choose your type of power from a pool of things like Nature, Mystic, Gadgets (wheeeeeeeeeeee), Fire, Ice, and a few others.  You then choose a Mentor.  If you're a hero, your choices are Batman (gadget-type), Superman (meta-type [ice, fire, general genetics mutations]), or Wonder Woman (Mystic powers).  The villain's line up is the Joker (Gadgets, my current mentor), Lex Luthor (Meta) and Circe (Mystic).

After you choose your powers, you choose your weapon of choice (Bow, brawling, martial arts, dual pistol, assault rifle, dual wield, hand blasts, one handed weapons, two handed weapons, and a few others).

So, with powers and weapon and costume picked out, you begin your adventure.  In this game, you'll be fighting against the opposite faction (both PvP and PvE) as well as a common enemy in Braniac.  So as a Hero, you may end up fighting against the Joker or Penguin at some point.  And as a Villain, you can expect Batman or The Flash to show up on your mission log.

Movement is broken down into three choices.  Super Speed, ala the Flash, Acrobatics (climbing and scaling buildings with gliding and a slightly faster than normal run speed), or Flying.  I chose Acrobatics, since you don't need to fight with a camera and it's fun for exploring.

one last game to throw in...

Dragon's Blade for the WP7.

It's a throwback to early Final Fantasy games.  You grind, you try to earn money, you learn spells by buying them.  You start with a party of 4 characters that you make by selecting from about 7 classes.  The bonus is that you can create new characters at the inn (3 of them), but they start at level 1.  So my starting line-up was Porshe the Templar (Hybrid between a healer and a tank, Mystic Knight for those who've played FFV), Singarith, a Warrior (standard tank), Dave an Archer (Can attack all enemies in a line from him, but more enemies he hits, the less damage the arrows do), and Carde the Mage.

After playing a bit, I realized that the Archer and the second tank didn't fit how I wanted to play, so I remade Singarith as a Juggernaut, a light armor wearing Brute who uses two handed weapons for massive damage.  And then I replaced the archer with a Cleric named Kat for healing.

Now combat is fairly simple, but what's interesting is that whatever character is at the front of your order, is more likely to be attacked.  So the top two are the targets of most attacks.

Another interesting thing is that each class has their own innate chance like thingies.  Example: the Templar has a chance to protect allies, Archers occasionally produce a "hail of arrows" when they attack, which attacks the enemies again, and slows them down, Mage sometimes recovers mana and boosts damage of spells for a turn after casting a spell, the Cleric sometimes can heal the whole party a small amount when they cast any of their spells, and the Juggernaut has a chance to hit all enemies after attacking one enemy.

For a free phone game, it's a good time kill.  I play it on the bus to and from school.