Last updated on March 4, 2013
EDIT: Also, the Forums are officially open! Check the tab up top, should be working fine. And another article for GameChurch can be found here, dealing with Mark of the Ninja.
More of a “Sunday Update” than anything else, it’s Monday Update once again to hear me rattle on about things you may have little to no interest in reading!
Warioland: Shake It! – Back before Blockbuster became a defunct company (well, in terms of brick-and-mortar stores), I found this game in mint condition within a local branch for 14.99. Considering that Nintendo game rarely decrease in price, there wasn’t any reason NOT to take the leap.
Warioland: Shake It! isn’t anything other than a traditional platformer in the vein of 8-bit and 16-bit classics. Like earlier Wario games, there’s a greater emphasis on puzzles and the joy of discovery in rather large levels (for this genre, anyway). As far as Wario goes, I’ve always thought the Wario series came from a bizarrely experimental director who wanted to differentiate themselves from other games of the same type. Shake It!, unfortunately, doesn’t strike that endorphin gong quite enough to make solving the puzzles worth your time.
See, the only thing required to beat the game is coins. As Wario only desires wealth, the non-altruistic nature of the bizarro Mario plays out in game mechanics. You want to find treasure, not princesses; coins are a commodity to be spent, not used for extra lives. Wario can even buy health power-ups that extend the life bar far beyond any challenge he’ll face in the entire game (other than the last boss, which requires pattern memorization to survive). However, only coins remain a necessity; replaying levels for coins, though a rare occurrence, may happen because new levels require you to “pay up”, so to speak. This, to me, is not a taut or clean system and requires multiple playthroughs of levels with quick coin totals.
Furthermore, treasures aren’t use for much of anything. You can collect them to contribute to an arbitrary “percentage” complete, but I cleared the game without even bothering to find them all. That’s pretty disheartening overall, because Shake It! contains a fun, if derivative, platformer. I only wish Good Feel (the developer) cut out all these useless convoluted systems just to fit the the character. Couldn’t treasure gathering work more directly? If jumping and reflexes are a non-issue (death is rare, if it ever happens at all), why not go to the adventure game route? It’s a game of confused systems that never gel. Apparently it’s a direct copy of Warioland 4, although I’ve never played that.
Brewmaster Monk – As a WoW player, I’m a sucker for classes with tanking abilities. Usually, I obtain a quick indicator of their style, play it extensively, and then decide to take that character to level cap or not. I’ve played every tanking class, and the stand-out of the bunch is the warrior, if not in strength and power than in just pure fun for people like me (i.e., needs a shield).
The Brewmaster specialization, however, presents a particular difference from the norm. Most tanks in World of WarCraft base their defensive measures on what we call “avoidance” stats. Tank classes usually use dodge and parry, and tank classes with shields (warriors and paladins) also use block. Most tanks, then, stack these stats and stamina (to increase their health, take more hits, etc). All other stats are secondary to survival and increasing your effective health (that is, the ability to survive blows from raid bosses of value X. There’s equations, but the system’s quite simple).
Monk tanking doesn’t do this. Rather, your survival depends on your abilities. One ability, Blackout Kicks, gives you 20% parry for 5 seconds. Another, Elusive Brew, gives 20% dodge up to 15 seconds, starting at 0 and gaining 3 seconds for every critical strike your character performs. Obviously, monks don’t use shields, so block’s out of the question. Plus, monks and their gear don’t give out traditional tanking stats nor huge amounts of stamina. These all contribute to making a poorly played Brewmaster seem like a total waste of time.
Unlike other tanks, monk tanking depends on the PLAYER’S abilities to manage their abilities correctly and keep their avoidance buffs up. All monks convert 20% of damage taken into damage over time, which can be removed by Purifying Brew for a low resource cost. Monks also have several “cooldowns” (that is, abilities that usually give big stat bonuses temporarily but prevent using them again until their timer has run out – hence, we call it a “cooldown”) One gives you a damage shield; another, based on the primary monk mechanic, turns an additional 20% of all damage into a damage over time. These are just the start of the monk’s various abilities, and there are lots of them. To add to that stress, attacks must hit your enemies, or you won’t have the Chi necessary to use said abilities – hence, death. It’s a delicate balancing act and one that requires 1. good play and 2. a patient healer who understands how squishy you might become at one slip of the rotation/priority list. In other words, it’s high risk for high reward.
Blizzard’s new model for tanking, “active mitigation”, works best in the monk’s case. Threat (aggro or hate from monsters, usually generated from attacks on your part) isn’t and hasn’t been a problem since early Cataclysm. Cataclysm’s tanking came down to stacking the absolute best stats for your class and waiting for DPS to kill enemies. In most cases, this wasn’t boring because, after all, most DPS don’t know what is happening and place tanks in interesting, unpredictable new situations. Their horrible mistakes became my masochistic gain, but most runs became smooth as butter as long as I performed my few tasks. Brewmaster doesn’t let up with your concentration; even at level 52, I find myself monitoring several different problems at once, notably survival. It’s an interesting change, although it may not be a boon for all tanks; that many different buffs, debuffs, and abilities/resources to monitor taxes your multitasking skills, but an eight year old game needs a shakeup every once and a while! I imagine other tanks skew the same way, although I hear my precious warriors remain squishy.
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That’s it for Monday Update, which was written way too late (4:02 AM, to be exact) so forgive my typos. I love my fans, and couldn’t bear to miss a day.
