Wednesday 4 June 2014

A Week in Gaming - Wildstar: Day 1

Greetings friends!

So today I am going to try something new for this blog; a rolling review of the game Wildstar where for every evening I play the game I cover my experiences.

You see the problem with MMO reviews is that they tend to miss the point of MMOs and summarising a week to a months gaming is often carpeted over with some quirky summary.

Note: This week sees the release of Tokyo in TSW, so I will not be playing this every day and therefore won't be able to report back every day.

********************

Day 1: Monday
So yesterday being launch day I decided to stop faffing around with character creation and settled on Yaroslav the Mordesh Spellslinger for my current main.

This was a big decision for me as there are a number of items on my account which are one use only as a result of being in the Beta Weekends & Open Beta and once redeemed they are locked to that character. I didn't want to do this only to delete the character.

Pictures to follow in time.

So I awoke from Cryosleep and proceeded to follow a half blind space cowboy around a falling to pieces spaceship to try and save his wife from Cryo-Sickness. All around me were the frozen bodies of others who had not been so lucky, and I caught myself thinking about how defective the Exile Cryo systems are.

Once again as has been the case with every time I play this game I am amazed by the fluid of movement. I really felt like my character was 'in' the game, and not just something superimposed 'on' the game. There was a weight behind my steps and a swagger in my step that other games like Rift and Warhammer Online never managed to grab.

So in order to get started I did the usual starting area for the Exiles, your generic "go here, click this, go there, click that affair" which I've done more times than I care to count. What I had not done before was the zone that followed it, a lush forest zone that was occupied by a gigantic robotic tree (previously I had gone to the generic 'Exile' zone following the space cowboy and the tragic events that follow).

This was one of the times that I really enjoyed the game, as in really enjoyed the game.

I think part of the reason for this enjoyment comes down to the pacing. The missions feel well spaced out, the travelling doesn't feel like a chore and you don't really feel like you're just going through the motions.

En route to perform tasks for my superiors and the giant tree-mech I bumped into another player who was following the path of the soldier and was trying one of their special encounters. In this encounter they had to survive while swarms of bug like creatures spawned in waves. Naturally I wanted in on this and without so much as a team invite I was fighting alongside the other player, getting joint credit for kills including XP and mission kill counts. Let me repeat myself, this was without joining a party!

Yup, those awkward moments of joining a party with randoms just to get a party quest done are gone and replaced with organic group forming. All you need to do is turn up and start firing away at the enemy to get joint credit for the kills.

After this I then carried on into a cavern system located beneath the tree-mech. These caverns have been infested by the before mentioned giant bugs and it was up to me and the other players to remove them and kill their queen.

Whilst inside the cavern I saw a strange looking door with a convent 'science' symbol floating above it. This symbol was only viewable to those of the Scientist path such as me, which meant there was something pretty cool on the other side!

So first things first, I sent Sunni my analysis-drone to scan the door, Sunni was able to detect a faint power signal connecting the door to a series of three statues and so hypothesised that the statues may have been a key lock for the door and if manipulated in the correct order would open the door.
- Sunni is smart like that.

So after clicking each statue I figured out that I needed to light them all up at the same time, ie: click in the right order. Done!

As the door slid upwards I was left with a feel of awesome, I had come in, hacked the system with a logic puzzle and the bounty that waited on the other side was ours for the taking! Untouched by living creatures for centuries!

I suppose in a way it was like a super-lite version of TSW in how rather than just 'click the big glowy button' I had to figure out a small puzzle. My only hope is that the science missions carry on in a similar way as the game progresses (alongside the usual "Scan X of Y" that I've already seen).

Anyway, after all of this there was an epic moment where [SORRY, SPOILERS AND I WONT REVEAL!!] and it was awesome!

The fight that followed had me slaughtering evil gerbils by using Sunni to hack their tech to use it as a weapon against them before unleashing the hell of nature on their base and taking a ride back to our own new base in style.

It was here I reached level 7 and was able to unlock my first costume and I encountered my first bug in the form of disappearing and bugging out costume items within the head slot.

I am hoping the items can be restored as they are pre-order and deluxe items, but if it's not possible then it's not really a big deal; especially as the deluxe head piece is fugly as hell!

So a quick bug report later, followed by an automated reply giving me tips on possible fixes based on keywords I used in my ticket I logged for the night.

Like I said, I hope that gets resolved, and it was a bit of a downer to end my gaming evening on, but as that was the ONLY problem I encountered I don't think I can really complain.

*********

Tonight looks like I'll be set for another night on Nexus (the world where Wildstar is set) so you should expect Day 2 tomorrow, complete with screenshots this time!

Until next time, stay safe and I'll see you Cryptside!

- Your friendly neighbourhood Doctor Loxley

No comments:

Post a Comment