1, 2, 3 . . . it's Vader Immortal!

As per typical Marketing demands, the entire Vader Immortal suite of VR games was on sale when May the 4th was being with us. I obliged of course because, dude, getting 3 highly rated VR games for 15 bucks is totally worth it!  Of course, finding time to actually play said games amidst everything else I'm committed to is a bit more difficult.

That said, there's really only about an hour of game play in each of the three games, which for most games out there would be a death nail in the game, but this is VR we're talking about.  I'd lay down $60 for all my kids to have a VR experience at some random vacation resort and that'd be for a half hour of play at most. And that's the thing, when it comes to Vader Immortal you're paying for the experience of standing there right next to a life-sized Darth Vader holding his lightsaber menacingly right above your head.  It's awesome.

Nothing quite like big life-size characters standing right next to you

Vader Immortal is not a difficult game in any of its incarnations, and they don't need to be.  Just playing in VR can be difficult enough at times. I was reading a really great article the other day that talked about how much slower people actually move in VR, and I totally agree:

Even simple concepts need to be redefined for VR. For instance, players take things much slower in VR than they do in a flat screen game.

"People slow down so much [in Half-Life: Alyx]," says Valve's designer and writer Sean Vanaman. "That's in contrast to how fast your character moves in Half-Life games traditionally. You're very, very, very fast in those games, and at the furthest end of the bell curve on the other extreme is how slow people go [in VR]."

To those ends, when Darth Vader is training you to be his apprentice and is throwing giant rocks at you while you're learning to catch them with the force, you may take "damage" and he may insult you as being pathetic when you duck instead of catch the rock, but you'll never die and have to restart the chapter. 

This makes the whole experience very much like living inside a Vader Immortal Movie in three parts. The only thing that sucks is they leave the whole series with a cliff hanger, so no . . . there's no Vader Immortal 4.

Vader listening in to my great great great grandma telling me not to trust him

Outside of the hour of gameplay there is also a lightsaber training dojo game inside each of the Vader Immortal games, and that definitely increases the value of the games. The dojos are a good work out and each of them is slightly different than the next.

• The first dojo in Vader Immortal 1 really concentrates on the remote training droids made famous in the OG Star Wars with Luke Skywalker.  You'll be deflecting shots back at the droids and slicing them in half.
  
  
• The second dojo you'll find everything you found in the first dojo PLUS wield force powers and use a saber throw that is incredibly satisfying.  Chucking your lightsaber out and having it boomerang back to you is super fun.
  
  
• The third dojo is the most challenging of the bunch. You'll get training droids AND stormtroopers armed with blasters. Once you strike down a stormtrooper you can use the force to pick up his blaster and shoot things, so you end up shooting with your left and slashing with your right.

Let's go, training remotes!

There were a lot of fun moments in these games, and at some point I may return to play through them again . . .just like I'd watch one of the star wars films all over again. 

I captured some fun footage yesterday while escaping a tunnel system deep below Mustafar. I have to say, it's really fun to force choke storm troopers and throw them into each other.

Happy Dueling!

Happy May 4th -- Knights of the Old Republic

I took some time yesterday to look back at an old classic, Knights of the Old Republic (Kotor). It felt like the time was right, seeing as:

1- Yesterday was national "May The 4th Be With You" day.
2- The original Knights of the Old Republic game was on sale for super cheap at Steam.
3- Jack Nightingale from Twitter had already asked me if I was interested in playing a little of the old Kotor series.

Why wouldn't I play as the guy with the soul patch and a scar over one eye?

Funny enough, I love Star Wars, but I've never even touched these games, which honestly seems like an oversight on my part. 

Anyway, I chose to play as the loveable scoundrel type of character, and . . . be still my heart.

*whistles* HEY THERE SEXY!

Oh yeah, I'm a charmer alright. Those 2003 graphics never looked finer. 

The first part of the game was a little bit of tutorial hell, and it seemed a little strange that the ship I was on was literally plummeting out of space, but the guy who came to check on me spent a good 10 minutes talking me through how to use the WASD keys and check my inventory.

Hurry to an escape pod, but first . . . let's talk about how to move your legs!

After finally making it to the escape pods, the real game started to unfold. I was crashing down on the planet Taris. Taris is one of those big city planets that Star Wars absolutely loves. (Coruscant, am I right?) The top layer of Taris is where the wealthy peeps chill, and as you go down into the lower levels, people get poorer and more authentic -- or "mutanagenic" as the case may be.

The Sith are in charge on this planet, and wouldn't you know it: a Jedi that was on the ship with you, and she had also jettisoned down to the planet in an escape pod. It was probably because the famous "Bastila" the Jedi was on board with you that y'all got blowed up.

The game let me know that Bastila had a history with one Darth Revan, who, by the way, used his/her evil Sith powers to cause a ruckus last week on Twitter because a Star Wars fan was using the name of Darth Revan as a gate check into the Star Wars community. 

Before you knew it, I was out and about running the streets of Taris like a madman on a mission!

Not a bad looking city scape!

It's not weird at all that I'm the only one running around here . . . let alone with two swords in my hands. Not at all! Things *did* get a little weird though when I took on a side quest to help a dancer in a cantina who just wanted to get hired there.

Super Awkward . . .

Apparently my incredibly smooth moves worked and she got the job.

Eventually I went deeper into the underground and the sewers only to encounter a pretty difficult string of encounters that required me to stop and save the game often.

An all together too familiar sight

A life spent hunting for trapped Wookies and stolen swoop pod parts is not easy, friends.  Eventually I warped back up topside and spent some of my hard earned cash on a double-bladed sword and some health packs.

Darth Maul eat your heart out

I'm not sold on this weapon being all that good, but it certainly looks cool!

So despite all the old oddities and quirks, I am having some fun playing this game! In fact, it's the oddities and quirks that seem to give it its charm. Back in 2003 I think I was too busy playing Everquest to give games like this a shot.  Glad I get to change that now.

Thanks again, to Jack for the great game suggestion! It was a really fun way to celebrate good old May the Fourth.

Happy Dueling!

Tom and The Dings!

(Tom and the Dings should be my next band name . . .) You blink your eyes and a month has gone by since your last post. HOW DOES THAT HAPPEN?!

I just wanted to catch you up a bit on my gaming life here and let you know I'm all good . . . I didn't die in a turkey explosion over Thanksgiginv. :)

So, let's talk gaming shall we? We shall! First up . . . Star Wars The Old Republic.

Several weeks back someone from the Marketing team said, let's all play Star Wars together! And surprisingly five of us were like . . . I'm in! Well, it didn't work out so good.  Half of us subscribed and half of us didn't, and the disparity in levels caused most to fizzle out and stop playing after a couple of weeks.

I kept playing since I had never really given the game a fair handshake. I mean, I had tried the game, got a few quests into the tutorial, sent a child off to his death as a sith, and said . . . nope nope nope . . . I'm done. It disturbed me, and I didn't want anything to do with the game.

This time I played a good guy making good guy choices, and my experience was much different. This here is Pokétom the level 65 (max level) Smuggler (Scoundrel sub-class) and his wookie companion, Bowdaar. He's a rogue with a heart of gold ala Han Solo. ;)

Oh, he's a joy and a pleasure to look at, my friends. *whistles* Strangely enough he's not wearing his banana pants anymore. (Thank you to my friends who showed up to watch me play SWTOR a few weeks ago over Twitch. The joke is in the link. ;))

Now, as with most MMOs, the "real game" starts when you hit max level, but I'm not heavily invested enough and don't really have the time to build my gear profile and raid and all that, so . . . I'm officially unsubscribed.

I enjoyed my time playing Pokétom to max level, and it was an entertaining story. There were plenty of opportunities for me to make light and dark choices, but I'm definitely a light side of the force type of guy. Between my time in SWTOR and rewatching all the old Star Wars, I will be sufficiently hyped for December 18th when the force awakens and all that. YESH!

~~

Next, I have to talk about Rise and Destroy! I beat level 60!

Wootah! I had so much fun playing Rise and Destroy. I'm still playing it to collect gold and power up my monsters. I was more than happy to provide a couple of play through videos for a couple of my Twitter followers. I don't think I'd spoil all the levels for everyone, and there's more than one way to finish a level, but in case you'd like to check the game out . . . here you go:

I pretty much have to play this game on Bluestacks unfortunately. A few people at my work tell me that's cheating, but listen . . . I can't even play the game on my iPhone 4S. This game is optimized for play on larger and more powerful devices, and I don't have one. I would prefer to play this game on a tablet, but Santa has a long wish list from me and I don't think an iPad is in my near future. ;)

As far as cheap tablet emulators go, I've been pretty happy with my Bluestacks experience.  Good stuff as far as I'm concerned.

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Finally, let's talk Wizard101!

I'm late to the party here, but Polaris has released and that means Thomas Lionblood's progression to level 110 can begin again. Last night, Thomas Lionblood with the assistance of my Russian buddy, Boris the OP Storm wizard (and his Glowbugs), hit level 101 in Wizard101!

Per standard Wizard101 play, I'd blade up Boris, feint the boss a few times  . . and BOOM! Zdravstvuyte to the damage, and do svidaniya to the enemies.

I also got a chance to spend some time as our lady Morganthe.

I loved those fights in the Chamber of the Mind! Those were extremely fun, and I loved playing as Morganthe.  Gotta say, my ninja pig healing pet was a super star for me in that final fight. :) Go LADY DEXTER!

I'll be joining you all in Polaris as soon as I can. :)

~~

Hope you're all doing well and having fun with what you're doing. Drop me a note in the comments below and let me know what you've been playing lately and how things are going for you.

Happy Dueling!

We win! Azteca finished! Ding 90!

TADA!

(insert screenshot of final battle between the Undying Malistaire and his minions and me, uber wife, and two random strangers that were pretty cool)

Why do I not have this screenshot readily available? BECAUSE SILLIES, I WAS ON THE LAPTOP AND NOW I'M ON THE MAIN COMPUTER!

Ok, I'll see if I can dig up a really cool screenshot on our computer. here you go:



Woot! Bailey and I are looking hawt caught there between a fire bridge and a volcano!

So, here's the deal with Azteca, it was pretty epic. Plenty of people have completed it before us, and plenty of people will complete it after us. I really have nothing much to add (strategy-wise) beyond what the amazing community has done with strategy guides and advice already:

Xibalba info from Mercenaries for Hire.
Belloq in Azteca.
Cipactli info.
Ponce de Gibbon strats a plenty.

Mercenaries is always a great place to visit for strats. Yup. What I can tell you is that--it was "uber" fun! What made it most fun of course was that I was playing side-by-side with the "uber wife" Bailey the whole way . . . sure she ditched me with her Storm Wizard and caught up to me AGAIN with her Fire Wizard mid-way through the whole thing, but that's too be expected when I was busy leveling a couple pirates up to 50, right? The important thing here is that we FINISHED! TOGETHER! AND LIKE I SAID . . . it was fun!!

There was a point in time about three-fourths of the way through when I started to go a little nuts on Bailey and started talking in baby talk for a couple hours straight while we were playing, but other than that my sanity is still in check. There was also a moment where everything became centered around yolo:



And during Xibalba we were happily watching Star Wars I and II since it was May the fourth (be with you), so lots of jokes about Yoda and the force were to be had.



Hmmm, what else . . . OH YEAH . . . Gotta say once of my favorite moments was pretending my mount was saying "ow ow ow ow hot hot hot hot ow ow ow ow" as we were running up the lava steps to Xibalba.

. . . and before we knew it it was all Malistaire hates us poof the end!

To be honest, I feel a bit out of the loop as to what to do next with Thomas. I imagine at this point is when I would try to find some gear to replace my Waterworks gear and farm and/or craft the heck out of the top instances in Wizard101, hunting for exactly the right piece of class specific gear.

Suggestions?

I know Bailey is going to craft the Azteca gear for her Fire wizard and will be working on her pets a bit more (as well as working in her new gardening farmhouse), but that's about it for now . . .

Thanks for reading!

Happy dueling!

The Star Wars Wizard101 Connection?

haha! So I was watching the Clone Wars Cartoon yesterday with my kids for Saturday Morning Cartoon Time, and I was shocked to hear them say that the conflict was happening on "Planet Malistaire." *jaw drop* Oh that's awesome! I made them rewind the "Planet Malistaire" part over a few times just to make sure I had heard that correctly. As it turns out, it's "Planet Malastare," not Malistaire. I found that out over on the episode guide for the latest Clone Wars. Also during the episode, they kept advertising this clone wars web game where you can build your own area. My kids were all over that! They had to go there IMMEDIATELY! So we went and came up with a game level. (Just use your arrow keys and remember to press X and Z to use your weapons.) Next, I just had to bring the Wizard101 to the game, so I made this level. OH YEAH. GO WIZARD101! :-) Happy Dueling (even if it is with a lightsaber and laser guns instead of cards)