I thought I'd continue off my Batman vs Bane video since I just watched Dark Knight rises. In this episode, I'll share my thoughts about the new movie as well as go over Freeflow Combat tips for Arkham Asylum. 

My review is within the video above, but here are the ratings to be consistent with previous movie reviews:

Action: 7

Acting: 8

FX: 8

Durability: 7

DC Universe

Shadowdragon & Batgirl @ JLA Watchtower

POV: 3rd
Graphics: 9
Controls: 6
Difficulty: 5

I think this is the MMO I'm looking for! It's not the medieval fantasy D&D setting that I want, but everything else works so well that it doesn't matter. Oddly enough, it's the only RPG that has character creation options for me to make my main character, Shadowdragon.

Character Creation
The character creation, while not as detailed as Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning (KOA), Dungeons & Dragons Online (DDO) or Dragon's Dogma is really fun. There's not a lot of variety on facial features since it's a superhero game. All of the details are on the costume/armor. There are various character types and combinations of power. The limited palette options also prevents less artistic people from making a bad looking character. For my character, Shadowdragon, I naturally chose Batman as the mentor. His powers are fire-based and he fights with 2-handed weapons. Shadowdragon's weapon, Dragonsaber is a 2-handed sword, but in DCU 2-handed fighters start with a hammer. I checked out the weapons list and they do have swords later in the game. So I made a medieval themed character for a contemporary game!

Story/Quests
I haven't gone too deep yet, but the quests have been fun so far. Many of them involve a coop with one of the Justice League legends. When you first wake up in Braniac's ship, you get to fight side-by-side with Superman. As a student of Batman, you're guided through by Oracle, which is reminiscent of Batman: Arkham Asylum and Batman: Arkham City. There are battle royales all the time on the streets where you fight along side other players who are logged on. I didn't see that in DDO.

Combat
This is one of the few MMOs with a decent combat system. It's not limited to 2 moves like DDO. Your regular attack has a short combo and you also have special attacks. While it's not (as good as) KOA... it's also far from DDO. The biggest selling point is that they made a conscious effort to make the game control pad compatible. Because of the graphics and setting, this game feels like Batman: Arkham City, so I'm often hitting the buttons for that game. I have to get in the habit of not holding X to run... which I did in both Batman games and KOA.

Loot
Treasure comes at an OK pace in this game. Your character already starts out with basic armor in the beginning, so it's kind of OK. The money comes in slowly, but I don't disagree with the pace. A lot of dropped items are weird, but I think it just takes more playtime to figure out what everything is used for. Any armor piece you pick up adjusts itself to your character's color palette, again preventing mismatched looks. This is such a simple feature, but I wish all RPGs had. All modern RPGs seems to split armor into 5 or more pieces. And with a random drop system, you're more than likely to have a mismatched suit. So it's nice to be able to adjust the colors to match. I would have loved that in KOA!

DCU is also free to play with purchasable add-ons and upgrades. Also noteworthy is you have to endure an initial 15 GB download. It's worth the wait though as this is a great game.

Dungeons & Dragons Online

POV: 3rd
Graphics: 8
Controls: 3
Difficulty: 5

With the downfall of 38 Studios, I started looking for other RPGs and MMOs since hopes of a Kingdoms of Amalur 2 single player RPG and Project Copernicus MMO died along with the company. Dungeons & Dragons Online (DDO) was the first MMO I tried out because I thought I would go back to the basics... back to where it all began.

Character Creation
I had a really good impression of the game from the start because DDO has the best character creation of any game I've played. It has the most detailed options for your character's face. I think if you spent enough time, you could make just about anyone you wanted. It falls a little short on hairstyles, but that's OK. I made myself with hair that was 2 weeks overdue for a cut! Kingdoms of Amalur (KOA) also had a good character creation process, but not as many face options... and most of the male combos look too similar. I played through that game as a female partly because I could only make a combination that looked like my female Dragonlance character. Dragon's Dogma probably has the most options of any game, but somehow I didn't like the art style. If you randomly make a character in that game, he/she will likely look messed up. Very few of the thousands of combos yield a nice looking character. DDO is the best overall here.

Story/Quests
DDO is the most RPG of the modern RPGs. It keeps all of the classic D&D stats and die rolls. So a lot of the weapons and attributes will be familiar. Like all modern RPGs, you have main quests and side quests. There are quests that involve NPCs or you can form a party with friends. This is comparable to KOA, but probably more vast since it's an MMO. Some of the dungeons have puzzles to solve, which was something that wasn't accented in KOA.

Combat
This is where DDO is lacking. It has a very simple combat system. It's hardly the free-flowing combo system of KOA. All you do is hack, block and move. There are 2 animations for the longsword... forehand and backhand. Had I played this game first, I'd probably be OK, but I was totally spoiled by the revolutionary system in KOA. And now I crave that in every RPG! I almost wish DDO went full classic RPG and just had no action at all. I'd love to play the classic D&D PC games again with the 6-character parties. A major negative to DDO is there's no native support for a control pad. You could rig a programmable one up, but it'll take some work. Take that with a  grain of salt though. I'm not an MMO player, so I prefer a control pad.

Loot
Forget the storyline. RPGs are all about nice looking armor and weapons now! Like most games of this type, you start out in underwear. So the first thing I did was loot every treasure chest and crate lying around. The chest drops, unlike KOA seem to be mostly fixed items. I played through the first segment twice and got the same exact crap. The armor in the game looks good in general. It has a realistic look to it and is very detailed. The weapons on the other hand could use some more detail. While the textures look nice, the models lack complexity. The longsword looks like a flat steel ruler with texture pasted on top. KOA got crazy with their weapon detail. Dragon's Dogma also had plain looking weapons.

I'm going to keep this game installed because I like the characters I created and will try to hack a controller setup one day, but I don't think I'll be playing it too much immediately. The MMO shopping will continue! Oh... one more important thing... DDO is free!

GT5: 1995 Mitsubishi Eclipse

The Eclipse is my benchmark for how accurate GT5 is since I drive it in real life. When I use it in this game with the Logitech steering wheel, it really feels like my car. I rarely make mistakes when using this one in the game. It's too bad the model was built with "standard" details though. I would have liked to give it black rims to match my real life one. 

I've purchased this car in all of the GT games as soon as I could afford it, typically starting with a Civic or FC3S to earn cash.

Batman vs. Bane

Replaying the Batman vs Bane part of Arkham Asylum in honor of opening weekend for Dark Knight Rises. Check it out and then check out the Christian Bale movie... for @#$%^ sake!

Loot Manipulation Theory (Part 2)

This second part brings us back to an earlier game save where much more unique items are available in the loot table. While my gold drops theory worked for non-unique items, I'm putting it to the test against low level uniques here.

SriPraPhai (Long Island)

Location: 280 Hillside Ave., Williston Park, NY 11596
Cuisine: Thai
Hours: SUN (12am-9pm); MON-THU (11:30am-9:30pm); FRI (11:30am-10pm); SAT (12am-10pm)
Website: www.sripraphairestaurant.com
Prices: $20/person
Credit Cards: All major

Food: 8
Service: 7
Value: 7
Environment: 8

Frequency: Unique

I didn't know there was another SriPraPhai until Uncle Bock & Auntie Kim mentioned it. I thought it was a strange location for a Thai restaurant, but it does pretty well out there. We went early to beat the crowds and there was a line by the time we left, though not nearly as crazy as the Elmhurst one. That one needs an electronic display with ticket number for the people waiting on the sidewalk!

The important thing about the Long Island restaurant is that the food is the same quality as their original. So if you factor in wait times in both places, it's actually worth it to drive to Long Island! The space is less congested as well.

Here are the links to previous posts:

- SriPraPhai Elmhurst 2008
- SriPraPhai Elmhurst 2009

Loot Manipulation Theory (Part 1)

It took me 2 attempts to get this one up on YouTube. They mention that the upload limit is 15 min. Until now, I've followed that requirement, but I've noticed other users videos going way over. So I tried it out myself and it got rejected. So the way it works is you have to do a mobile phone verification to lift that restriction from your account. I did that after and had to re-upload, but here it is finally...

This is a small sample of my theory that the "gold drops" stat improves items dropped. It consists of 4 farming runs through Haxhi Dam... 2 with no gold drops bonus and 2 with a 50% bonus.

Niskaru Challenge

Here's a challenging battle with the Castaway's Cove Niskaru Tyrant (locked at max: 40?). As usual, this is on the hard difficulty mode. Weapons used are an azurite greatsword with sockets and the mid-level chakrams, Crafter's Hands.

Kingdoms of Amalur Quest Count

It didn't seem like anyone out there truly completed Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning from a completionist's point of view. I surfed around looking for other player's quest counts and no one on the message boards had numbers close to the 274 I counted. So I decided to shoot a video of the list from my game save.

Math of Amalur

On a video roll today!

In this video, I'm adding up all of the Twist of Fate, Lorestone and DLC bonuses and estimating how damage bonuses stack. I'm also playing through a high level zone with weak equipment to demonstrate how the bonuses impact gameplay.

Invincible Root Golem Glitch

It's another glitched monster in Kingdoms of Amalur, but this time, I have an idea of what causes this cool bug. Check out the video above for the answer as well as anti-root golem techniques.

1st of July