Trainer Battle! Wild Gamer vs. Dragon Age 2 Demo

                Ok so I want to discuss with everyone my thoughts on the curiously strong Dragon Age 2 demo. Highly anticipated sequel to a well liked RPG, Dragon Age 2 seems to have potential to be better than its predecessor. Of course, comparing a whole game to a demo is ludicrous so I’m just going to comment on the potential of the second game. So without further delay let’s get into the thick of it.

                First thing I want to go over is story. The one thing that actually is disappointing to me is the fact that you’re not creating your own tale. It looks like your story is being retold by one of your own team members. This takes away some of that epic feeling I get in story base games because usually I’m blazing my own trail through the thick and thin of battles and confrontations. When the game is being told through the eyes of another it makes me feel like that the decision has already been made and you’re just reliving the events. I’m hoping this is just part of the demo and not, in fact, part of the game. I don’t want to comment any further just because the demo has a very abrupt moment where they jump you ahead a few hours and a few levels later.

Not often you see a smart mouthed dwarf

                Next thing I want to discuss is the graphics. Now this a good leap from the last game but it still feels like it’s a step behind its space faring counterpart Mass Effect 2. I’m not complaining though, its better then the last game and that makes me pleased. I was surprised by the change to the darkspawn and how drastic the new baddies are from the last ones. The Hurlocs look much less like Orcs and more like undead skeletal creatures with skin still on them. And those towering Ogre’s get a nice face lift, though still ugly as sin. Overall character models look better, but the female that you get to choose reminds me of Morrigan of the last game. Maybe it’s just me.

Oh and yeah, romance is coming back

                 Now let me discuss controls with you. Combat in the demo is some of the most satisfying fighting I’ve had in any game. Instead of before you pressed the attack button and you slowly auto attacked you now repeatedly press the button and you see instant results as you start tearing through hordes of creatures, unless you’re a mage at which point you twirl your staff around as you conjure fire to harass enemies. This is combined with special abilities that work more like that last game, where they sit through a cool down after use.  However if the very early bit of the demo is any sign of the battle prowess  you obtain later in the game every battle will become obscenely bloody, but by now that’s what you expect out of the series. The only issue I’m having with the controls is the camera. It seems to be stuck at a certain angle when I’m fighting and it drives me nuts some times when I’m trying to see behind me.

With certain attacks enemies just explode into a pile of blood and guts

                So what’s my overall take on this demo? Well let’s just say I’ll be scrounging up some extra cash to get this when it comes out. Here are my hopes for the full game: that the story won’t be told through another character, that there are more graphical upgrades, and that the battles get more intense. Since the demo is pretty close to the release of the final product I’ll probably only be a little disappointed. If you haven’t played this demo yet get off your computer (Or stay on it if you are a PC gamer) and download the demo now. If you’re not satisfied, well, then may I suggest a brain scan?

Random Encounter 2/28/11

                Yes! It is the return of AWGA! If you are wondering why I didn’t update this weekend it is because I have a life and I plan on fully enjoying it. Weekends means no work, unless I’m scheduled at work. So let’s get down to business. I’ve been gone for two days and there might be some delicious updates to be had!

                Another fan favorite RPG is heading its way to the Playstation Network. Vagrant Story is coming out this Tuesday for all you role play fanatics. The fact is though that the ESRB had kind of given it away when they listed its rating for the game. Not that I’m complaining of course,  I exalt the ESRB for when they give us gaming news unintentionally. If you desire to learn more head over to this IGN page for more information.

Remember the old days of RPGs, when they were still good.

                Kotaku has a little teaser trailer for Ninja Gaiden III on their website today. The game already appears to bring back plenty of the blood and gore that its fans have come to love and adore. One thing that caught my attention (which I’m pretty sure will capture everyone’s attention) is that the masked protagonist of the series, Ryu, starts to pull off his infamous mask at the end of the sneak peak.  I must say this is a bold move by Team Ninja. Check out the Kotaku page for the little preview.

Wrong person to mug today buddy.

                If you’re looking for something to laugh at today might I suggest “Hey Ash, Watcha Playin?” This series follows the antics of Ash, a crazy super hyper out of this world gamer and her family. The humor of this series goes from random to outright disturbing in some episodes. Yes it is a slow news day so I had to come up with something. Watch it or be bored, it’s on GameTrailers website.

Probably another person you don't want to mug.

                I’m going to be working on some overviews so hopefully I’ll have some more Trainer Battles for you tonight and tomorrow. Till then, stay safe and for the love of all that is good stop beating that Magikarp. It will come back to kill you one day.

Trainer Battle! Wild Gamer vs. World of Warcraft!

            Warning! The following article contains World of Warcraft talk and you run the risk of seizures, foaming at the mouth and the insatiable urge to pick up a weapon and proceed to beat your fellow man. (This in some cases can be a good thing.)

            Tonight I wish to discuss with you about the class that I have the most experience with. I admit that I’m not in a top raiding guild, or that I have any real experience in raiding period. However, I’ve played this class the most and I feel the need to share with other players my Talent Build and the reasons behind it. I am of course talking about the one class I’ve gotten to 85 and the one class I’ve enjoyed the most. Yes it is indeed the Death Knight! The destroyer of lives, the deliverer of plagues and all around not so nice people, The Death Knight is a power house.

            I also want you to be aware of the fact that not only is this the only class I play as; I also don’t use two of the three specs. I choose one spec so that, in theory, I become much better with the one tree I specialize in. The Unholy tree of the Death Knights has been my one choice ever since they came into play during Wrath of the Lich King. I fell in love with the ability to keep the minion and have stuck with it ever since. (Not the best reason to pick a class or talent tree but hey I had fun.) And the few years playing as an Unholy Death Knight I learned more than just about being a DPS role in groups, but finding ways to ever increase my overall performance as a WoW player. I just want to break down my talent choices for my character and why I feel it makes for an effective damage dealer. (As a side note this is a PVE spec not a PVP. Just as I focus on one class I also focus on one area of the game)

            When you choose the Unholy Tree there’s two things you need to remember. First and foremost, without that minion your damage will be minimal. It’s not an option, if the pet dies in the middle of a fight you better pray to your GM that you can bring it back quickly. Second, your diseases are just as important to your damage as any of your attacks and one of your strongest attacks is amplified by your diseases. If any of your diseases dissipate from your enemy, re-apply immediately.

            So let’s jump into the actually specs. This is what your first line should look like:

Unholy Command: 0 (As a DPS fighter Unholy Command is useless. You’ll never want to use this move unless you want to make the tank angry)

Virulence: 3 (Increasing the damage of your diseases are vital to your overall damage output, yeah you want this)

Epidemic: 3 (Increasing the duration of your diseases helps you focus more on dealing damage then having to worry about refreshing the diseases)

Now we hop on down the tree to the second line:

Desecration: 2 (This is almost kind of a throw away but it has its purpose. If you need to kite while in a dungeon in can help slow the advancement of the mob. Though there are better moves)

Resilient Infection: 0 (This is more of a PVP option. Rarely will a boss or mob remove your diseases)

Morbidity: 3 (Your mostly going to want this for the 15% increase in damage for your Death Coil. As a DPS you’re not going to want to use Death and Decay unless you’re destroying weaker normal mobs in dungeons.)

And as you finish with that line we move down down down to the third line:

Runic Corruption: 2 (Making your Death Coil cost less Runic Power is great because it allows you to have more Death Coil for your buck and the 100% power generation can be devastating if you play your cards right)

Unholy Frenzy: 0 (This is a terrible talent. If you use this on any member of a party during the middle of the fight not only will you anger the player but you’ll more than likely tick off the healer.)

Contagion: 2 (This is a great way of increasing your damage and also helps out the group by weakening a group of enemies as the battle goes on)

Shadow Infusion: 3 (This is a necessary talent not just for the damage increase to the minion, but for what it does for you later on down the talent tree)

Speaking of going down the talent tree, let’s get to line 4:

Note: At the time I took this screen capture Death's Advance talent picture wasn't there

Death’s Advance: 2 (This talent isn’t going to buff your damage, but in Dungeon and Raid situations there will be times where enemies will drop a void zone that not only hurts like mad they also slow you down so you soak up more damage. Death’s Advance will allow you to escape from these damage hell holes faster, making the healer like you much more)

Magic Suppression: 0 (This talent is mostly a PVP talent to help fight against magic users.)

Rage of Rivendare: 3 (A 36% damage increase in your three most used physical attacks is a great boost. Without this your DPS will be affected)

Now that we took care of those lets jump over to the fifth line:

Unholy Blight: 1 (This is a nice damage boost to one of your strongest abilities. Say your Death Coil does 6k damage, you’re looking at a 600 additional damage over time. And with the Unholy spec, it’s about the DOTs baby.)

Anti-Magic Zone: 0 (If you follow this guide then you won’t be able to put a talent in here since Magic Suppression is a prerequisite. Just to be clear though, you won’t need this ability if you’re in a good group, or unless your PVPing and you want to piss off the magic users.)

Improved Unholy Presence: 2 (That additional 5% haste is useful especially when you have all death runes and unholy runes, allow you to dump scourge strike quickly onto a poor defenseless enemy)

Dark Transformation: 1 (This is the kicker. You know all those shadow infusions you’ve been injecting your minion with? When you activate this it puts your minion on steroids. It doubles the damage increased from 40% to 80% and his special abilities change to be more devastating. This is where a large portion of your damage is going to come from.)

Now that’s it for the fifth line. I’m going to group the next two lines together since you want what’s in them both.

Ebon Plaugebringer: 2 (This is a free disease that not only increases the damage of your other diseases and increases magic damage, but since it’s considered a disease it amplifies the damage of your Scourge Strike by another 18%)

Sudden Doom: 3 (This talent is great because it can give you a free Death Coil and if it pops up at the right time you can use the free one in conjunction with runic power to get your pet’s Shadow Infusions up to five)

Summon Gargoyle: 1 (This is the last talent on the Unholy Tree and is useful when it comes down to the wire on boss fights, especially with those in raids where the enrage timer is about to run out)

So that’s it for the Unholy Tree. However, you are still left with eight Talents when your 85. The next step is to branch into the other trees. This is how I went.

Blood: 5 total points

Butchery: 2 (The fact that while in combat your constantly building runic power is excellent, especially in times when you run out of runes or runic power. Also if you happen to land the killing blow on an enemy it grants you 20 extra runic power. You can’t beat that.)

Blade Barrier: 0 (This is primarily a tanking talent so it won’t do you much good. As a DPS role you want to find the talents that help you do more damage.)

Bladed Armor: (As a plate wearing class, the Death Knight receives plenty of armor, even as a DPS role. Having a boost in attack power just on how much armor you have is like free death for everyone.)

That’s all you want in the Blood tree because going further down the list there’s really only tanking talents at that point, and you don’t have enough talents to spend to go down further than that. So for those last 3 points you’re going to want to through it into Frost.

Frost: 3 Total Points

Runic Power Mastery: 3 (The ability to hold more runic power is awesome because if you are trying to build up to a point where you want to unleash enough Death Coils to get your pet to Dark Transform then having 130 Runic Power instead of just 100 can allow you to throw 4 Death Coils give or take instead of just 3)

            And now to take a gander at the finished build:

That there my friends is my Unholy Death Knight talent build. If you would like to check out my character just go into the Armory and look up Cadabis on the Perenolde realm. Soon I plan on releasing a short rotation guide for the Unholy Death Knight so if you interesting then keep checking back. If you’re not interested? Sucks to be you I’m doing it anyway.

Cadabis says hi

Random Encounter! 2/25/11

Good afternoon everyone. Today we have some interesting little news bites that are sure to satisfy. Yes, I know I say almost food related words constantly, but I’m hungry so let’s move on!

                Our friendly neighborhood IGN reports today that Final Fantasy III will be finding its way to the iPhone in the not so distant future. This isn’t just the NES port; however, this is in fact the DS remake that came with fancy graphics! With touch screen controls like touch combat and the ability to place the digital joystick where ever you put your finger, this is sure to be a nice addition to any owner of an iPhone. (The iPhone itself is questionable) Take a look over at the IGN page.

Yup, just an average day in Final Fantasy

                Before you might remember I mentioned that you should go try the new WoW Patch on the test realms. Just so happens that there’s some old dungeons making a comeback. The official World of Warcraft site has details on what’s coming in with the changes including two Troll-tastic dungeons returning with a vengeance. Zul’gurub and Zul’aman are both returning as level 85 heroic dungeons, each with the possibility of dropping some delicious 353 item level equipment. They also have listed a bunch more of the changes over here on the official page.

He may only have one arm, but I wouldn't turn my back on him

                Now this isn’t going to be gaming news, but it’s intriguing none the less. Astronomers believe that they might have discovered a planet it its early stages of existence. Just about 350 light years away from earth, a young star T Chamaeleontis (or T Cha as her friends call her) is still surrounded by what’s known as proto-planetary discs. This material is pretty much the backbone for creating planets and various other things which I forget at this time. If you want to read up on some space news check out the ESO website.

When you wish upon a star...

                Thanks for tuning in again today. Tonight expect another exciting Trainer Battle! Also I am currently working on getting a logo in place for the blog. Stay tune I’ll post an update as soon as it’s up. Until then I need to find my Abra. Thought I would take it for a walk, turns out they can teleport out of leashes…

Late Night Training! 2/24/11

                Another round of late night goodness coming at you! Earlier today I felt my last post was fairly lacking. Even though it was still awesome I want to crank it to 11 tonight! So let the hunt begin! Who knows? Maybe I’ll find some delectable morsels of tasty news… Oh crap, flock of Spearows!

                Everyone’s favorite bloody brawler, Mortal Kombat, might not be seen by the unlucky souls in Australia. According to IGN (well according to a reliable source, so they say) the Australian Classification Board (Our version of the ESRB, of course) has refused to give it a rating, therefore keeping the game from being released. IGN’s source also claims that game retailers have to remove marketing for the game and even cancel reservations. Now this isn’t probably the end of Mortal Kombat for Australia, I mean look at San Andreas. After the discovery of the Hot Coffee mod it almost had to be taken off shelves, but Rockstar took action and removed the content and had the game re-rated. So don’t give up hope mate! If you want to learn more visit the IGN page.

Ouch, hospital bill is looking pretty bad this time

                In yet another Zelda birthday escapade, Kotaku has put out an interesting article. When you think of Nintendo you think of super happy go lucky characters that don’t even let the kidnapping of their precious princess get them down. What you don’t think, however, is that they’ve also created one of the worst nightmares in gaming history. The Redead. These undead creatures freaked me out for several reasons. The main reason for my fright is discussed on the Kotaku article so I don’t want to spoil the fun for you. (Actually yes I do, but I’ve been told that’s why no one watches movies with me anymore) Check it out right here.

You still haunt my dreams

                Over at 1UP.com they took a trip of discovery, to Arkham City. They posted an article about 20 different tidbits that they just recently discovered and boy there are surprises abound! Voices from the past are gone, Alfred gives Oracle the boot, and something about a Rainbow Beast… I would rather not ask… So head over to 1Ups lovely page and do a little reading. It’s good for you. Oh yeah, click this

He's going to throw him, TO THE GROUND!

                Ok so this is going to make me sound lazy but I’m delaying the WoW content till tomorrow. I’ve decided that I could make it more accessible by adding some extra’s to it. Don’t whine about it just have patient. To hold you over go test out patch 4.1 on the Public Test Realms. Till next time kiddies, sleep tight. Don’t let the Redeads bite…

Random Encounter 2/24/11

Hello and welcome back to another wonderful episode of A Wild Gamer Appears! Sorry for not updating earlier… Nah, I lie. So let’s get down to business…

                Big update today! Bethesda has unleashed unto us some Skyrim tastiness with a new trailer featuring some game play. Really excited for this entry into the Elder Scroll series with the updated look and the promises to the overall redesign of the menu and fighting system. If you want to see this beauty in action head over to GameTrailers for some dragony goodness.

                Looks like the folks over at IGN have put up a preview for Deus Ex: Human Revolution. The latest entry into the series has everything a gamer wants. Guns, blood, and punching through walls! Personally the blades coming out of my elbows would be pretty weird for me. If you’re interested in going bionic then check out IGN’s page for more info.

                Now I know there have been a few reviews up already but if you want to get a second opinion on Bulletstorm then you might want to check out Total Biscuit’s YouTube page to check out his latest episode of “WTF is…?” Even if you’re not a big fan of his World of Warcraft content (If you aren't then you could use a lobotomy) you should check out his little over view of this crazy shooter at his YouTube channel. (I shouldn’t really call it little its 30 minutes long.)

                Now I’ve been getting some feedback on my page and I am listening. I’m going to try and start implementing more changes into the blog to make it more interesting. Also if anyone has an antidote for Beedrill stings? It’s starting to itch real bad…

Late Night Training! 2/23/11

Good evening boys and girls! Sorry about the late post, but just like you average Joes I too have a job. I just probably work much less then everyone else. So to make up for the lack of update I’ll see if the gaming industry has produced anything interesting while I was gone.

                For you MMO junkies out there, there is a potential drug is coming out on the market by the name of Rift: Planes of Telera. With the very limited time I had with the beta I found it kind of fun. A complex talent system for those who love min/maxing their characters and with a darker art style then WoW it could make a name for itself. The one issue I had was the starting area of the Renegades. A resurrected “ascendant” that they bring back to life just to ship out to the past makes me fear that the time police is bound to come up to me and proceed to beat me with batons and electric prongs. If you desire to learn more about this game check out the official site here

                In yet another Legend of Zelda birthday tribute, Game Trailers has a special Pop Fiction episode of Ocarina of Time. The myth this time around? Gamers claim that in the earliest versions of the game, the Fire Temple music had chants in the background that resembled those of Muslim prayers. Is there any truth to this? (Probably not but it’s fascinating anyways) If you want to find out head over to the video with this link

                The crazy nuts over at Kotaku have a review up for the MvC3 360 fight pad up! Normally I wouldn’t care about controller reviews but I’ll be honest with you, I got to play around with one and I must say I am impressed. What I really like is that not only the buttons have a satisfying click to them, but the joystick does too. This is great for someone like me who can’t tell if the normal joysticks or even the d-pads are responding to my finger movement. With this joystick you get audible confirmation that yes, you pressed down to right instead of down down whatever. Check it out over at the review page

                And now, because I can, I’m going to drown you in the pure testosterone and win that is called Duke Nukem Forever. Merry Christmas, I’m done for the night. By the way I’m done with the World of Warcraft article, so it’ll be up tonight or tomorrow morning. Let’s see how I feel.