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snakeeyes327

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Hearthstone Beta Impressions

By snakeeyes327 0 Comments

Today started out as any other Monday, with me usually stressing over what I had to do for class. But then something magical happened. I looked in my inbox and found out that I had been invited into the Hearthstone beta. Lucky me.

For the uninitiated “Hearthstone” is the brand new, free to play collectible (read: not tradable) card game based on the WarCraft universe. When the game was first announced at PAX East, it got a rather lukewarm reception from a lot of people. I wasn’t among those. I consider myself a fan of Blizzard’s products, flaws and all, so I went into this beta with an open mind. I expected to get a solid card game with a lot of polish and style. After about an hour of play time, I think I might have developed a bit of an addiction to the game.

The game starts off simple enough, the first stack of cards you are given is the Mage deck. Fans of the WarCraft universe and those who keep up with the lore will notice the Mage hero is Jaina Proudmoore, in her Theramore style, take-no-prisoners persona. After watching some other streams and now having played the game for myself, I can agree with the consensus that the Mage deck is the best well-rounded out of the 9 classes and is the easiest to get going with. It has a lot of minions to summon, it has a good balance of crowd control and board clearing cards. The mage comes with several direct damage spells. Basically, the Mage has all the tools you need when you first start the game to get rolling.

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The game begins with a six step tutorial, guiding you through very basics of the game. The tutorial has face off against some of the more famous characters in the WarCraft universe. Anybody who has played WarCraft for any amount of time is sure to recognize these faces: Hogger, Milhouse Manastorm, Hemit Nesingerwary. Each fight starts to pile on the mechanics before finally ending in a confrontation with Illidan Stormrage himself.

Once you finish the tutorial, “Play” and “Practice” modes become available. “Play” lets you go up against your friends or random people online, and “Practice” is where you go to play against the AI and unlock the other 9 heroes. Yes, nine heroes. Sorry fans of Death Knights and Monks (myself included), you guys will have to sit this one out for now. Each class is represented by an iconic hero that encapsulates said class. The nice thing though, if you are a fan of the lore, is that they chose heroes that some of the general public might not know, either because they don’t read quest text or just haven’t bothered to learn the backstory of WarCraft. Current players will no doubt recognize staples like Jaina Proudmoure as the Mage hero, Thrall as Shaman, Malfurion as the Druid or Garrosh as the Warrior.

But then Blizzard went back into the history of WarCraft and picked some heroes that might not be around anymore. The hero for the Paladin class for example is Uther Lightbringer, a character that was killed in WarCraft 3 and only mentioned in the story of WoW here and there. The hero for the Hunter class is an old fan favorite, Rex’xar, who, when you are first starting out is an asshole. Seriously, fuck that guy. But he perfectly demonstrates the hunter play style though. Lots of critters, traps, pet buffs, companions and rush down. And that can be said for every single class in Hearthstone. Each deck plays exactly how you would expect their in-game counter-part to play as.

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After unlocking all of the classes, you unlock the Arena mode where you build a deck and go up against online opponents. Unlike in Play mode, in Arena you create a new deck and then have 3 strikes against you before you can rebuild it again. You also unlock the Expert difficulty for the 9 heroes in practice mode.

When it comes to the actual cards, you can unlock the basic set of 10 for each hero just by playing practice mode. Each set unlocks individually, so you’ll have to get each hero up to level 10 to unlock all of their basic cards. You can also buy a pack of cards. And here is where the business model comes in. You can buy a single pack of cards for 100g, which you earn by doing daily challenges, like getting a character to level 10, winning a certain number of matches with a particular hero, etc. If you want to increase your library even more, you can buy the cards for real cash. 2 packs of cards will run you $2.99, 7 packs is $10 dollars, 15 packs is $20, and 40 packs is $50 bucks. Each deck is guaranteed to have at least one rare card. Since you can only carry 2 of each card in your card stock, any extras can be disenchanted and into arcane dust. Get enough of them and you can craft any card you want. The rarer the card, the higher the cost though.

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Deck building is handled nicely. You can have 30 cards total, including doubles. The game has a nice recommendation engine that will help you build a deck, taking you through class specific, high and low cost cards, and minions to complete your deck. Of course you could simply ignore it and build a deck on your own, filling it with whatever cards you want. As of the beta, you can have 9 custom decks which you can delete, save, or edit at any time.

After playing the beta for 2 days now, I am certainly eager to jump back in and play some more.

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Are purists a problem to the growth of franchises?

By snakeeyes327 1 Comments

This is my response to the RE series and it's divided fans, but I think it can be applied to almost any series in the industry. Switch out the names and complaints with something else and you can basically get an idea of what I think of purists for and their ideas of how things need to remain the same to preserve an essence or whatever bullshit they want to call it.

After reading up and going to some of the prototypes of RE4, and then seeing people who wanted that direction, I can't help feel they're being hypocritical in some way. Inventory tetris aside, the three biggest complaints I hear from fans are:  
  •  1. The controls 
  • 2. The camera, but the biggest one...
  • 3. Is the zombies. 

The thing is, those two prototypes of the earlier concepts of RE4 never showed any zombies or many of the other conventions outside of prerendered backgrounds and Leon as the games's protagonist and maybe the gothic mansion (castle in this case) setting. But you also had a flying fortress and yet...nobody said shit.

Then we got a bit more in 2003 with Capcom introducing the over the-shoulder-aim, Puppet Master-like dolls with knives, and a reject from the Clocktower series chasing Leon around with a hook or something. And while the chasing was more traditional in an RE3 sense, everything else started going into more SIlent Hill/Alone in the Dark territory, with a bit of Eternal Darkness sprinkled over it.

And I'm sure that if that was the way the game came out, we'd start hearing fans piss blood and whine how it's trying to be too hard like the games mentioned above. Plus it'd make Mikami look more like a hypocrite because he has always kept away from the supernatural, as well as anything cerebral. RE games tried to deliver scares,  but all they ever really managed to do was startle. Still, nobody said shit. Not even when they showed that the camera would switch to a shoulder cam when firing.

So, we get a third look at  what we now know is RE4. And it wasn't until fans found out the game didn't have zombies that the shit storm started to swirl, with fans wanting the prototype version, despite the fact that zombies were never promised for those either. And then those cries eventually evolved into complaints that the game is still being beaten over the head for, and the same thing we see with RE5 with the addition of the multiplayer complaint. (To those people in particular I say look at the Outbreak games)

I'd say half the fanbase of this series are nothing more than shallow minded purists who think that because the game has now found a much more mass audience (despite the fact that RE4 sold not that much more across 3 platforms and the PC than RE2 did) it's been dumbed down. The arguments usually going along the lines of too many weapons, and too much ammo making for a much more action oriented game. But, how does changing genres mean that it's being dumbed down? Some would add the lack of puzzles. But personally I think outside of the original mansion which had a hidden lab, I always thought the puzzles never made much sense in context. (Why would anybody stuff a key into the vase of statue in a police statue?)

And they weren't very difficult to begin with so calling them puzzles is kind of a stretch.

Attentive fans could see that the series was heading towards an action/adventure style ever since RE2 and slowly pulling away from survival horror. RE5 is really just the culmination of all that. 

But regardless, fans will still cling to ideas they think the series was always about yet still remain hypocritical of necessary changes, like the camera or the ammo amount. Purists to the series simply just don't know what they want out of it. So we'll wait and see what they have planned for RE6. And I'm sure I'll read my fair share of pursits who cling like las plagas parasites still trying to change the series back to what it used to be. Which is ironic because despite the fact that each successful RE game sold in the millions, people have this weird idea that it was somehow a niche title that only the hardcore played. When really it was always a wide spread and regarded franchise. 

What kind of sums it all up for me though, is argument of Mass appeal is the cancer of the series, when really it already had that, it's sticking to old and tired conventions thats the real cancer. Thank god the RE games went in for chemotherapy with RE4.



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