Diablo

If you follow me on Twitter (and personally, you do, because how the hell would you know of my blog if you didn't), you'll know that I had been playing Diablo recently.

Diablo is a dungeon crawling RPG created by Blizzard Entertainment, the company now famous for World of Warcraft.

Deep beneath the small town called Tristram, the Lord of Terror, Diablo, is awakening. With all hell breaking loose, it is your job to search throughout the labyrinth and destroy Diablo.

There are three classes to choose from. The warrior, the mage and the rogue. Apart from maybe the rogue, each class is self-explanatory. The warrior has high strength, and low magic, the mage has high magic and low strength, and the rogue is more or less a jack of all trades, thriving in dexterity. Furthermore, each class has a unique innate ability. The warrior can repair equipment, albeit lowering the max durability value, the mage can recharge staves, also lowering the max amount of chages, and the rogue can detect and disarm trapped doors and chests.

There are 16 floors in the labyrinth. The first four floors consist of the cathedral which is the entrance to the labyrinth. The architecture loosely resembles that of a cathedral or church I guess. There are many shrines which can potentially boost your base stats. Many of the monster found here are of the undead variety, with some minor imps thrown about.

Floors 5-8 are the catacombs beneath the cathedral levels. There are many rooms with ancient tomes in these floors which can provide you with spell books. The monsters are still predominantly undead, but more and more lesser demons can spawn here as you go deeper. Some of these foes can be invisible right until they materialize right in front of you.

9-12 are the subterranean caves. Lava flows freely here, which can be both an advantage or a disadvantage, provided archers a way to shoot down enemies on the other side of the rivers, but also letting ranged demons attack you from afar as well. The foes here are much different from the previous areas. Large lava demons can hurl balls of magma at you. Other smaller demons will spit globs of acid that will remain on the floor for a short period, causing continuing damage if you stray too long.

Finally, the deepest parts of the labyrinth reside in Hell itself! Expect the fiercest demons and hellspawn in these dark recesses. Most notable are the succubi, with their magic that can drain your life and replenish their own.

Much of the story of Diablo II is learned through the various quests, and talking with the villagers of Tristram. Furthermore, there are tomes in the labyrinth that will tell of backstory of the world of Sanctuary. Also, throughout the various quests you can learn more about the villagers themselves. Like how Wirt lost his leg to the demon called the Butcher, or what caused Farnham to sink further and further into a drunken stupor, and finally the true identity of Cain himself.

There are four basic stats. Strength, Magic, Dexterity and Vitality. Strength increases your damage value, and allows you to equip heavier armors or weapons. Magic allows you to learn more powerful magics, and furthering you skill in already known spells. Magic also increases you mana pool, alowing you to cast more spells. Dexterity ups your hit rate, and can increase you damage and defense values, as well as increase your block rate should you use a shield. Dexterity is required to equip more powerful bows. Vitality increases you life, allowing you to take more damage from foes.

Every time your character levels up, you gain Life and Mana, as well as 5 stat points in which to put into whatever stat you desire. However each cap has a max value per stat. In addition to leveling up, you may find shrines inthe labyrinth that can be used to enhance your stats. Be warned however that some shines will add points to one stat, but take away points to another. Further, starting in the Caves, monster may drop Elixirs that will add 1 stat to whatever stat the Elixir is of. These Elixirs can eventually be bought at the merchants in town for high prices.

Unfortunately, there is very little to no music in the game. The only real music is the memorable Tristram village theme. In the dungeons its mostly just ambient music. Regardless what music there is does fit the theme of the game.

All the villages are fully voice acted and have very memorable voices. From Griswold's Scottish-like accent to Adria's sing-song voices. And the classic voice of Cain, which sounds like Sean Connery. The player characters are also voice acted, although to a lesser extant.

All in all, Diablo is a solid game, and worthy of its sequel. And with a third game in the making, its lived it legacy and will continue on for times to come. Diablo itself may not be as popular as it once was, but that doesn't mean it's obsolete. Diablo's sequel, the aptly named Diablo II is still growing strong over the years. If you've ever played Diablo II and never played Diablo, I suggest checking it out to see how the series starts. And if you've never played either, now is as good a time as any.

Bioshock

Just finished playing Bioshock. I know, Bioshock 2 is out, and I finally get to the first one. Whatever. I won't get to Bioshock 2 until Bioshock 3 is out probably...

Anyhow. The game was fun, well worth the 20 dollars I spent on it. The game wasn't too hard, but I did play it on Easy Mode, because I remember the demo being fairly hard. And my friend kept telling me that ammo is hard to find in the game.

Setting/Story
The setting of the game is what interested me the most. The city of Rapture is basically a whole self-governed city underwater in the 1960's. It has the feel of an old Sci-fi movie. I believe that is why I like the game so much. All the technology is similar to what you would expect in the 50s/60s. Every so often you'll here a radio or Jukebox playing music of the era.

Andrew Ryan is the creator of Rapture, and basically what he says is the law. Apparently everything was all peaceful until a new technology was discovered: ADAM. ADAM is a mutagen extracted from a special type of sea slug. Using ADAM, Plasmids were created. Plasmids rewrite a persons genetic code, giving them special powers. For instance, the first Plasmid you encounter in the game is the Lightning Plasmid, allowing you to shoot lightning from your hand. The side of effect of ADAM is that a person must be take regular injections of ADAM or go insane. But ADAM was in short supply. Thus the fall of Rapture. Soon everyone was killing for more ADAM.

Gameplay
One thing I have to nitpick is the walking speed in the game. At times it just seemed so slow. Fortunately there's a Plasmid that increases walking Speed. Once I got that, it was smooth sailing.

The Plasmids are an interesting feature. Basically adding a feel of Magic in a genre thats all about headshots and blowing stuff up. Sometimes you'll need to use Plasmids to solve puzzles, other times, just to kill enemies. The game totes you off with the Lightning Plasmid and a wrench. When you bast an enemy with the lightning, it stuns them, then you can run it and smash their heads in. While they are fun to play with, I found myself mostly relying on the weapons instead.

The game can be slow paced, more time looking for something than actually fighting things, but honestly, thats in my opinion a strong point. I love sneaking around the environments, not knowing when an enemy is gonna come pop out around the corner. But when action comes in, the game really picks up its pace. Especially if theres a big room with Splicers and a Big Daddy and you accidentally shoot the Big Daddy.

Weapons:
The weapons is Bioshock, are pretty much standard issue: Pistol, Machnegun, Shotgun, RPG, Flame Thrower, and a less standard, Crossbow.

Each weapon however has 3 different ammunitions to use with. For instance, instead of using Napalm for the Flame Thrower, you can get Liquid Nitrogen to freeze enemies with, or even use an "electric gel" that will shoot electricity at the enemy, stunning them.

The shotgun, my personal favorite weapon, can use special buckshot rounds charged with electricty, or an explosive round that will detonate on impact, causing an enemy to burst into flames.

The Crossbow can be equipped with electric trip wire arrows, to create traps for your opponent. These mght be useful, but frankly I didn't use them because I figured it'd backfire, and I'd accidentally run into the wire.

While there is a vast arsenal of different types of ammo for almost any occasion, I found myself using the same weapons throughout the game.

Difficulty:
I can't really rate the difficulty, as I already stated above I played on Easy Mode, which is pretty damned easy. Though the game really did ramp up the difficulty around the halfway mark, when the game started shelling out "Elite" Splicers. Even the Big Daddies weren't very hard if you used the right ammunition.

Conclusion
Overall, the game is definitely worth picking up if you haven't already. And with Bioshock 2 already out, and a third game planned, now is as good a time as ever.

Megacon 2010

Yesterday my sister and I went to MegaCon in Orlando.  Orlando is about an hour away from where I live, but we made perfect timing and got there right as the floor opened.  Unfortunately we parked at the Northern Concourse parking lot, and the convention was in the Western Concourse, which, of course, is on the entire other side of the damned convention center.  Fortunately there was a shuttle bus that takes you between concourses.  As we made our way through the lobby of the Western Concourse we see cheerleaders.  Yes cheerleaders.  A few years back there was apparently a cheerleader competition held at the same time as MegaCon, and apparently it fell at the same time this year.  So there they are, the clashing cultures.  The preps and the nerds. Interestingly enough, they started taking pictures of cosplayers.  Captain Jack Sparrow was especially a hit for them.

And without further ado, the pictures.  First the non-cosplay pictures:

For the last two years, there has been a Lego display at MegaCon.  Mostly taking scenes from movies and such and recreating it in Lego.

In this instance, I'm guessing theres an homage to Jurasic Park, with all the dinosaurs in the left hand section.  At the top you can sort of see Spiderman swinging from the skyscrapers and at the bottom you can see the Batmobile.  Both the trains are actually running around the track.  The Amtrak in the back on the left actually has people in them.

Here you can see a Lego Drive-in.  The creators I guess used a portable DVD player for the drive in screen.  The movie playing is Space Balls, the scene is when Dark Helmet's ship turns into a maid.  And outside the movie theatre, the world is being destroyed by giant robots.  In the very back, you can see a Lego Stay-Puft Marshmellow man, which I apparently completely missed, so this is the only picture of it.

Next up are Star Wars related stuff.  Which is kind of hard to judge on a coolness factor, since all these are pretty much from actual Lego sets.  Still they are pretty neat.  The Death Star is pretty cool, and I liked the Lego Star Wars chess in the back.

More Star Wars.  These ones I'm pretty sure just came from the Lego sets.

 

Still more Star Wars.  Droids versus Jar Jar Binks army.

 

Munchkin-land from the Wizard of Oz.  With a literal Yellow Brick Road.  I think the huts are pretty neat.

The Taj Mahal being attacked by an alien skull or something.  The carouselis cool, but I dunno if it actually spins or not.  Also its kind of weird to see a Lego man made out of Legos.

These two pictures didn't turn out too well.  But its still neat.  

No more Lego.  Moving on to other non-cosplay images.

Starting off with the Stay Puft Marshmellow man statue from Ghostbusters.  He was about the size of a DVD case, since it was right beside a DVD display.

Go Speedracer! Go Speedracer! Go Speedracer! Go!

This was kind of disturbing in a weird way.  I dunno the Ghostbusters are cool and all, but I don't think they should be viewed on the same level as divinity.

Ghostbusters Proton Packs.  Pretty cool, but the picture is kind of bad, so you can see when one ends and the next begins.

And now, on to the cosplay pictures. 

Alright, I lied... But first here's an overhead shot of the MegaCon floor.  This was taken as I was leaving the convention, and, as far as I know, at the peak attendance for the day.  Now, where's Waldo?  No, seriously.  There was a Waldo cosplayer.  I dunno if he really is in this pic or not though. 

Now seriously on to the cosplays.

I thought this pic was pretty ironic.  The two guys are dressed from like Assassin's Creed or something, and one of their daughter dressed as Sailor Moon.  It just clashes in a bizarre way. Behind them you can see Domo-Kun.

 

I honestly have no idea what this guy is supposed to be, but I thought it was a pretty cool cosplay.  Turns out the guy was actually someone famous, cause I saw the costume hanging on a rack behind one of the people in the autograph-signing area.  Forgot what his name was though.  Inb4 Nerd-Rage for not knowing who this was...

Hasta la vista, baby!  I love the makeup and details of the skin damage and showing the machine body underneath.  And, of course, the disgruntled look.

This image didn't turn out so well, and I have a better picture of her from MetroCon from last year, but I can't find it at the moment.  Anyways, she had some spiffy steampunk angel wings, and thats what I was trying to get in this picture.

Cross-play Kuja!  One of the few characters you're glad its a crossplay of.  This is by far one of the best Kuja cosplays I've seen.

Also, haha, I found Waldo!

Ariel from Disney's The Little Mermaid.  The hair is actually nice, and not obnoxious like most cosplay wigs/dyes.

This guy ran the T-shirt Bordello booth.  He's a zombie, with a chainsaw stuck through him.  I bet he kept crashing into things.

Megaman!  He was posing for another person who wanted his son in the picture.  I tried cropping the kid out, but his head is still there.

Some Star Wars Jedi.  I forget what race the blue people are.  I totally didn't realize the guy on the left was with them when I took the picture. 

On the right you can see an actually semi-attractive classic Tifa from Final Fantas VII.  There was about 4 of them this year, and none of them were really that good looking.  Surprisingly, I didn't see Black-Tifa, and I've seen her at each convention since I've started going to conventions.

I'm guessing this is a Final Fantasy 11 Black Mage?  Well, regardless, its a Black Mage.  Even though he's not ugly or anything, Black Mages just shouldn't have faces.  Its like a fundamental rule in the Final Fantasy universe.

Random soldier people.  I snuck this photo since they were posing for another person.  Figured why not?  They were right there and I had my camera out.

Dunno if this is supposed to be someone.  Pretty cool costume though.  And when he talked the mouth moved, in a somewhat over-exaggerated way.

Green Army Men!  They were pretty cool.  They saw my sister's Pokemon bag which had a Pikachu on the side, and pointed there guns at it.  I didn't get a picture of that though.

More Star Wars.  Han Solo and Princess Leia.  This is actually the first Princess Leia I've seen that isn't scantily clad Leia from when she is imprisoned/enslaved by Jabba the Hut.

Anthropomorphication of the Companion Cube from Portal.  There was a Chel with her, but she ran off.  Oh well, I had gotten a picture of Chel at MetroCon last year, and to be honest, the MetroCon one looked better.  Its kind of neat how her clothes match the Companion Cube.  Also, this Companion Cube can talk!  I wonder how hard it would be to throw it down the incinerator?

There was a guy who came to take a picture of her and had no idea what she was supposed to be.

Random Gothic Lolita.  Not much to say.

This is probably the closest thing to furry that I will take a picture of.  Fox Mcloud from Star Fox and a Night Elf from World of Warcraft.  Too bad the Night Elf's bow is covering most of Fox.

Anubis and a radom Pharoah from Egyptian mythology.  Anubis' eyes are awesome.

I never really played Fire Emblem, so I have no idea if this is anyone in particular, or just a generic Fire Emblem cosplay.  Honestly, all the characters look the same anyways...

White Mage girl from a Final Fantasy.  I like the staff.

Ragnarok Online character.  From left to right, a High Priest, a High Wizard, and a Blacksmith/Mastersmith.  The things they are holding up are in-game emoticons, which is a nice touch I think.

Dark Helmet and some whatever Storm Troopers are called from Space Balls.  There was a whole group of people taking pictures of them, and I had to take two, because right as I took the picture Dark Helmet had turned his head, so I had to retake the picture.

Skeletor from He-Man and the Masters of the Universe.  This guy was cool and stayed in character.  He had the Skeletor's laugh down pretty good.

A Plague Doctor.  Most likely an /x/phile from 4chan, though I didn't ask.  I kind of want to cosplay as a plague doctor, but I'm too lazy to make the mask.

Jill Valentine from Resident Evil.  I dunno if Jill ever gets to use a gun as powerful as that though...

This is the only picture I've ever taken of a Narutard, and I only took it because Wolverine was in it.  But its kind of neat since the father was dressed as Naruto, and so was his son, and the son probably watches Naruto and thinks its cool that he and his dad are dressed as him.

This was kind of unique.  A Star Wars Stormtrooper impaled on a lightsaber.  I didn't realize there was an Imperial General(?) taking a picture of it as well until I looked at the picture.

A mecha made from cardboard and duct tape.  Alongside a cowboy or something.

The Boogey-man from Nightmare Before Christmas.

Inspector Gadget.  He had a reflector-light on top of his hat, but it didn't get in the picture.

Random steam-punk girl.  The crossbow was neat, but it didn't turn up too well in the picture.  I thought the potions were a nice touch.

Some Pokemon.  I never watched the show, or played the games, so I dunno what its called.  I thought it was kind of neat, even though its dangerously close to furry.

I dunno what she's supposed to be, but I know its from something.

Iron Man and Proto-Iron Man.  I kind of pissed them off, because they had just taken their helmets off from posing for another picture when I asked for the picture.  Interestingly enough, the Proto-Iron Man was really a black guy.

This was the last picture I took.  Its all the Mario Princesses, Peach, Rosalina, and Daisy.  We were leaving and they were arriving at the convention.