写在D3公测之际的D2怀旧贴

上周末终于玩到了D3的公测。进游戏的那一刻真的挺激动的。从D2开始算的话那是12年的等待。离D3公布都已经四年了,时间过得好快。

刚玩D2的时候在西单那儿没窗户的小游戏房从一个角色的beta版开始玩,一个小时一个小时的续,一玩一下午。后来在那儿一个人打任务,游戏房老板还过来看,跟别人说这小孩打的任务多,估计是因为他们看不懂英文不知道去哪儿做任务……后来高中几个同学一起去联机玩得热火朝天,成天讨论技能搭配角色强弱什么的。上网的时候还经常上游戏论坛看别人讨论战网的事儿,看着各种pvp的战术贴,牛逼装备意淫,虽然那会儿连个能自己玩的电脑都没有。感觉那会儿最大的梦想就是能上上战网了。

后来大一的时候发现学校里面还很流行这个,有zixia和pku的战网。但那会儿没电脑也没什么机会玩,直到第一个寒假跑去北大机房跟同学通宵玩了几次,发现这战网上玩好像就不是一个味儿了,一小会儿就升到六七十级,然后就来来回回的k那几个boss。同学都在上面做着倒买倒卖的生意,言谈之间都是谁谁有多少“财产”,各种装备的行情价。我在run了一晚上m之后就突然失去兴趣,寒假回来买了电脑也懒得玩了。

本科上到中间好像有一个假期在家很无聊的又捡起这个来玩,因为出了毁灭之王的资料片,于是拿了个刺客自己单机打到六十多级,hell打到一多半,变得难打起来就放下了。

到了大四下学期,宿舍几个人保研出国都定了,于是还联机玩了一阵,大概玩到个三四十级吧。就记得上自习的时候riki在QQ群里喊什么“暗黑是我家,练级靠大家”,然后就纷纷回宿舍开始玩……

再后来就是认识xw之后惊闻她没玩过这游戏,于是就一人开了一个号从normal一直玩穿hell。那还真是我打得最完整的一次了,我用德鲁伊她用女巫,就老老实实一路打到最后,没刷boss没卡关没修改,感觉这就是Diablo应该有的体验吧。

我觉得D2对我的游戏观影响还是挺大的。这个游戏让我确立了很多游戏方面的态度:比如修改是破坏游戏乐趣;比如我enjoy的是开荒的时候捡到个蓝色装备也要鉴定一下的感觉,而不是在战网上trade一身极品装备来搭配的感觉;又比如我非常反感重复劳动来积累财富的游戏玩法,以至于以后只要遇上需要重复练级的游戏我基本就敬而远之;最后就是我对和很多陌生人玩网游有了抵制的态度,最多只会和认识的几个人联机玩。

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My Experiences of GameFly

After moving to US I bought a new XBox 360. Then I became a “legal” gamer from a pirate. Basically there are 3 reasons:
1. It’s not easy to crack a console in US. I don’t want to buy devices for cracking console. And such service providers are in the dark and may be caught by cops.
2. Games are relatively cheaper here, 60$ is 3~4 lunches in US and over 10 lunches in China.
3. XBox live connection speed is much more faster. By my experience, it was a torture to use XBox/PS3 network in China.

I bought a few XBox games in last Thanksgiving season. Then Skyrim occupied my game time for over a month. I traded it in to Amazon after getting all achievements. I got that game for 60$ and traded it in for 20~30 bucks. Skyrim was a really long game. But some games are really short, like CoD if you don’t play online. And some games may turn out not to be my dish after trying it out. Dark Souls is a good example… So I decided to give game rental services a try. There are not many choices so I picked GameFly easily.

I started with a one-game plan, which means I can keep one game in my hands. Then upgraded to 2-game plan for a month. When the 2-game plan was about to end I tried to cancel, but GameFly website said they could give me one extra free month. OK, why not? So I enjoyed one more month 2-game plan then cancelled it…

So here are Pros and Cons of GameFly, by my personal experiences.

Pros:

  • As I said above, it’s a very nice service to try “short games” and “potentially bad games”.
  • The system is pretty transparent. You can view game availabilities. New titles are available on time, though you need to be very lucky to get it at the first time.
  • Lots of promotions: the introductory price and the extra month before you cancel made me feel guilty..
  • Good if your gaming style is one by one. Not good if you like to play a few different games in parallel.

Cons:

  • Shipping time is long for NYC. It’s surprising that they don’t have a shipping center in NYC. Most of my games were from Pittsburg. Usually it took 3~5 days to arrive, and 3 to 5 days to return. Well if you’re on a 1-game plan, that means 1/3 of your money may be wasted.
  • The “GameQ” is tricky. If you put lots of games in it, you may never get the game you really want. But if you only put several your really desiring games in it, you may need to wait for a few days if they’re hot.
  • Usual prices are still expensive. 15.95 for the 1-game plan and 22.95 for 2-game. It would make more sense if the shipping is as fast as Amazon Prime.
  • It somehow makes you want to rush because you’re “renting” the game. At least I don’t want to spend a month to get all achievements of a game I rent.

Anyway I have to say console games are fading out. There are a few super titles and some great titles which still have lots of fans. But the whole market has been sliding down so much in the past 10 years. Mid-tier and independent productions are totally moving to mobiles. This market is now much less prosperous and lack of creativity compared to the golden era of console games. Coming back to game rental services, I found there are actually very few games I wanted to rent. My queue was never more than 5 games and only 2 or 3 when I cancelled the service. I may consider to restart the service when the summer or Christmas game season comes, but not now.

FFXIII-2

Beat FFXIII-2 last night. About 50 hours game time. It was a nice journey with old friends from FFXIII.

FFXIII-2 to FFXIII is kinda like FFX-2 to FFX, a mission oriented continuation of a story oriented origin. I gave up FFX-2 after 1 hour because I didn’t like Yuna’s costume in that game. On the contrary, Sarah in FFXIII-2 is very lovely, even better than Lightning , who is a little bit “neutral”. And the bikini DLC pushed the joy to a new level…

FFXIII-2 is a typical time travel story. Heroes jump among different eras, save people, prevent disasters. Not very interesting, you may even say it’s stale. So the whole attraction of this story is what happened to Lightning/Snow/Fang. Therefor, it’s VERY annoying to see “To Be Continued” at the end of this game! I know there are some more plots scattered here and there, after finishing the main story. But the main story still feels way too incomplete. Or let’s put it more directly: the ending CG is too SHORT! Come on Final Fantasy, where is your 5 minute ending CG??!

The fighting system is quite close to FFXIII. It’s fun to collect and grow monsters. However most fighting fun is probably left to the after-ending play, because when I beat the game, most monsters I used are “Early Peaker” style. It requires some farming to feed those cool “Late Bloomer”s. I don’t really like a Japanese RPG that requires you to farm. Well, maybe I’ll get back to it some day.

Music of this game is definitely a wonderful part. Lots of woman voices are well used. My favorite track is the Dying World theme.

In sum, I would recommend any FFXIII player to play this successor, any Japanese RPG fan too since there are very few good Japanese RPG games today. It’s not a good choice if you’re neither of the 2 types above.

CoD:MW3 and FFXIII-2

These games have really long names, ha.

MW3 single player campaign is as short as it was criticized. I started it around 1pm and finished it at 1am. Total play time should be less than 8 hours. In fact it was a very nice experience, to fight in NYSE building, watch Eiffel tower collapsing and shoot enemies with super modern weapons. I can imagine some player would be pissed off if they bought this game for single campaign. This is a game designed for online play.

I tried it on Xbox live the next day, and found it wasn’t a game for me. It is so easy to kill or be killed in this game, 3~5 bullets, less than 1 second. Usually even before you realize which direction you’re being shoot, you’re gone. It’s very different from GeoW3, in which those “Gears” are much more tough and can eat more bullets. I’m not a CS lover so I’ll just return this game and continue my FFXIII-2.

I’ll talk about FFXIII-2 later after I beat it. So far it’s better than I expected. Time travel plot is always attractive to me, though I’ve prepared for a broken ending because it’s quite difficult to make a time travel story logical.. The battle system is OK, and Sera is good-looking. What else do you expect from a “FF*-2”?

Super Mario 3D

最近通了3ds上的mario,总的来说相当失望。个人认为是敷衍之作,跟ds和wii上的mario正统作品比相差太远。

手感应该说还是保持了水准,3d操控方式,视角转换也没什么问题。致命的缺点就是几乎毫无新意。依靠3d特性做出来的机关都相当无聊,关卡里面视觉效果是更加3d了,但玩法没什么变化,感觉就是在玩一个有3d效果的旧mario。而且由于3d的原因画面还没有以前的作品亮丽,我感觉是得不偿失。

再说游戏内容,整个游戏几乎只有狸猫和乌龟两个变身,远逊于ds的巨人和小人变身的乐趣。马银里面奇思妙想的关卡和boss战也不见踪影。更不要提wii上的多人配合。3ds上第一作正统mario只有这个水平实在让人失望。我要考虑把3ds出掉了。

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