Dungeons and Dragons, 4th Edition
by Jeremy Crawford, Mike Mearls, James Wyatt
Published by Wizards of the Coast
Released March 17, 2009

So, the last time I told you about the Second Player’s handbook, this time I’m going to go into what it feels like to play a game of Dungeons and Dragons in it’s new style, that we like to call 4th edition. I’m also going to go into what you need to start a game of your own, and where the best resources are, and if there are any good places I don’t mention, feel free to leave a comment, because I can always use them myself.

The first thing you’ll notice when actually playing a game of 4th ed is the strategic and board game elements that have been added to the game. This is the first time that the D&D miniatures game has been fully integrated into the game-play of the RPG, and I kind of enjoy it, but I can see the problems. Gone are the days when you had to picture the entire scenario of battle in your head, and then move and attack according to that picture. Now all the players have a pseudo-3D representation of where the enemies are, exactly how many there are, and where they are in relation to the players. You might say that half of the fun of the game was the imagination you put into creating the environments in your head, and I’d be forced to agree with you. However, what you get for more reliance on the miniatures is an increase in strategic elements for battles. Positioning has become very important as there are many bonuses that come from being certain distances from characters, bonuses for flanking enemies, you have to be aware of how many spaces you are away from enemies, and so on. If you’ve ever played a collectible mini-game such as Heroclix or Mage Knight, you’ll have a good understanding of what battle looks like now. Getting back to the player’s use of imagination to establish the action, I’d say you still use it to a certain degree, just that some of the heavy thinking has been removed. This is going to be a recurring element in 4th edition.

The second thing to tell you about is the actual combat system. The game designers have stated that they meant this edition to appeal to a wider audience, specifically the wider audience that plays World of Warcraft, and you can tell that right off the bat. Combat powers are broken down into three main categories: At Will, which can be used as often as you like, Encounter, which can be used once per fight, and Daily, which can be used only one time between rest periods. Players of WoW are used to these terms; in fact I confused Dave3 one time by using the term Daily in regards to a D&D session, which he took to meant I was playing WoW. Again, you no longer have to spend a lot of energy describing exactly what your character is doing, but you don’t get the creative juice of describing some awesome attack you just thought of. The game has done the heavy lifting for what your character can and cannot do, but they have taken away some of the more creative elements that used to determine combat. The advantage is that when combined with the map system, you can get great bonuses to attack, and you get the giddy thrill when you pull off your daily attack for spectacular damage. I personally have a good time with the new system. It can be a blast to work in concert with the other players and take down a room full of monsters, and the Dungeon Master our group has is great with adding flavor text to the attacks, so even if it’s an At Will that I’ve done a million times before, it still feels brand new. The system allows you to do as much with it as you put into it, so if you just say you’re going to use your Piercing Strike, it can get boring, but if you say you’re going to use you’re Piercing Strike to lunge at that Orc aiming for the chink in his armor that your parties archer just opened up, you can add more fun to the game. It’s like pretty much any RPG, you get out as much fun as you put into it so while some may complain that it’s become too simplified, or that the creators stole too much from WoW, if you put some effort into it, you’ll find a very enjoyable game. And of course, in the end, it all comes down to how the dice are treating you that day. Believe me, there’s nothing worse than going into the final encounter of an adventure, and the whole party can’t role a hit to save their (characters) life. It can make for a long night, but when you get those nights when your team is always hitting and the DM is rolling critical misses, you’ll be jumping and cheering and making some fun memories.

So how do you get started? Well there’s a couple of different ways to go. If you’ve never played a table top RPG before, or you’re an old D&D player who doesn’t want to spend a lot on a new system you may or may not enjoy, the best place to start is the Starter Kit. What you get in this is a small booklet containing a short three encounter adventure, some pre-made characters, some maps, and some pieces to represent monsters and characters. I would suggest this product to anyone playing for the game pieces alone; at $16.99 it will save you a lot in having to buy minis for the monsters your players will be fighting.

If you have a good time with that short introduction, you’ll want to move onto the 3 core rulebooks; the Dungeon’s Master’s Guide, the Player’s Handbook (Player’s Handbook 2 also available now) and the Monster Manual. Each book does pretty much what the title describes. The DM’s Guide shows any prospective DM how to create the adventure that the player will participate in, from creating the over-arching story, to balancing the individual encounters, and how to rule the whole game. The Player’s Handbook gives the actual player’s all the info they need to make the heroes they will be in the game. The first PH features 8 races and 8 classes, while the second PH offers and additional 5 races and 8 more classes. The Player’s Handbook also features the basic rules of combat and advice on how to play the characters. The Monster Manual is largely a supplement for DM‘s, and features information on the monsters that the players will be fighting. A second volume of this is to be released in May.

If you get those and start a game, and find you enjoy it, there’s a multitude of products you can pick up. The first recommendation I would make for players would be to pick up the “Power” series of supplements, of which two are out now, Martial Power and Arcane Power. These books provide a wide range of abilities and information on fighting type classes and magic users, and I’ve personally found the Martial Power book to be well worth the money. On the DM side, there’s any number of books to choose from. There’s at this time 10 published adventures for DM’s to use that tell a full fledged story, and a new one comes out every other month or so. Then there are books that give more treasure possibilities (Adventurer’s Vault), in depth info on dragons (the Dragonomicon), and special focus on undead creatures (Open Grave). Wizards of the Coast has been very good at releasing a book a month for either player’s or DM’s and the line up continues this year.

Of course, if you want to fully appreciate the combat system, you’re going to need maps. There’s a couple of ways to do this. There are nice dry erase maps that you can draw, erase, and redraw any number of rooms you want, just make sure you don’t use permanent markers. They’re a very nice tool, but a bit boring. Another tool available is the dungeon tile sets available from WotC. These run about $10 a set and contain cardboard tiles that you can combine together to make various locations. These look great and play very well, and can be found for not too much money, but you’re limited to the tiles they provide, so there might not be a particular tile you need to make your game complete. There are also more expensive 3D dungeon sets, which look even better than the dungeon tiles, but there get rather hard to set up and take down, and God forbid you set up a huge room, and you’re player’s decide to go in a different direction.

Other than that, all you need is some paper, a table, a bunch of weird looking dice, a gross of 2 liter Mt. Dew, maybe some chips, and four or five friends who have a couple hours to kill, and the skies the limit. Next time, I’m going to take a more in-depth look at Martial Power, and it’s recently released brethren Arcane Power and what they bring to the player’s table. Until then, keep those dice warm.

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Bioshock 2
Platform: Xbox 360
Developer: 2K Games
Publisher: 2K Games
Release Date: February 9, 2010

The opening of 2007′s Bioshock is one of the best — if not THE best — introductions to a video game we’ve ever seen. Crashing into the ocean, swimming to a mysterious nearby lighthouse, progressing cautiously as you put yourself into the game and wonder where you are. And then, to have your mini-adventure into the city of Rapture viciously halted by the cruel realization that you are not in a friendly place…it was all just so amazing and unforgettable, and there was still twenty great hours of gameplay to come!

The first game was so good that many fans felt that a Bioshock 2 was completely unnecessary, but we were told that one was on the way nevertheless. For me personally, this was fantastic news, and I’ve been excited and anxiously awaiting its arrival. See, when it comes to video games, they’re a platform of entertainment that is perfect for sequels. Yes, a second, third, or fourth game may not be as good as that original, but that doesn’t matter here; games all have to be their own creature. Whether you love or hate Bioshock 2, the original will still always be there to play; but if you love it, then that’s all the more time you get to hang out in that crazy world of Rapture. For me personally, I loved my second visit to the city hidden under the depths of the Atlantic Ocean, and I hope that I get to go there many more times in the future.

Click over for more and to see a trailer. Be careful not to drown.

This time around, you’re inserted into the shoes of one of the hulking Big Daddies. Only instead of being just any Big Daddy, you’re the first ever made — a sort of prototype who was built to be able to wield big weaponry in one hand, and unleash the fury of plasmids in the other hand. The story begins with you and your own Little Sister, Eleanor, with whom you share a great bond and she refers to you as her Daddy. Then comes along Sofia Lamb, a psychologist in Rapture who decides to put you to sleep (so to speak) and take Eleanor with her. It’s not until ten years later that you somehow wake up and set off on a path to discover what’s going on and where Eleanor is.

Along the way, you will have many of your regular objectives, as well as a few new ones. Hidden all over the place are audio recorders, just as they were in the original game. This is where you’ll become more acquainted with enemies like Dr. Sofia Lamb, allies, and perhaps even some old friends. The voice acting is top-notch as usual, but I can’t honestly say that anyone could possibly top that back-and-forth between Andrew Ryan and Atlas in the first game.

A new objective that you have being as that you’re THE Big Daddy, is adopting Little Sisters. Each section of the game has a certain amount of them, and you will have to throw down with another Daddy in order to get to them, of course. Once the Daddy has fallen, you once again will face a choice with each child: adopt her or harvest for Adam. If you adopt her, she will lead you to Angels, where you will have to protect her as she extracts Adam from corpses. This is one of the most insane parts of the game; Splicers come from everywhere when the Sister is harvesting so you have to set up the best perimeter using the traps you possess and fight them all off. These moments were so intense that I often found myself taking little breathers beforehand just to gather my nerves. Once you’ve collected the Adam of two Angels, you must return your Little Sister to a vent, where once again you’re face with the choice to harvest her (of her now much-greater amount of Adam) or save her, which means free her from her curse as you did in the first game.

By no means do you have to deal with this onslaught of Splicers, but if you want to really arm yourself with the best Plasmids and helpful tonics, this the best way to obtain the Adam necessary. And when you do have the best Plasmids and you are heavily protected, it’s a hell of a lot of fun to go into battle with Splicers and others — very few of which will be able to dance toe-to-toe with you.

I can confirm what many have said already: this isn’t better than the first game. The great part is that it doesn’t NEED to be better and they don’t even bother trying to outdo themselves. That’s how you make a great sequel: take what worked so well, add some new things here and there to shake things up, craft a solid storyline, and you will absolutely make most who care about the integrity of the game happy.

I could immediately tell that I would like Bioshock 2, but now having played it, I can say that it was so much better than even my positive expectations assumed it would be. The three most important elements of a Bioshock game in my opinion, is the visuals, the sound effects, and the superior voice acting talents that they find. All three are alive and accounted for here. The settings and visuals were haunting and horrific while still having some semblance of beauty to them, and all of the audio dialogue that you listen to was masterfully performed by the cast, once again.

This time around, it was the sound effects specifically that blew me away. Everyone knows the best way to make anything in the realms of the Horror genre, is to perfect the lights and sounds that create that incredible suspense and tenseness. Maybe they were just as good as the first game — it’s been a while since I’ve played that one straight through — but all of the sounds were crucial to the tone of the game. I especially dug when you’re standing under dripping water and you can hear the sounds of the drops of water splashing onto your metal helmet. Little details like that are what allow you to completely submerge yourself in a great game.

The design team was able to expand the visuals even more in Bioshock 2 thanks to yet another new addition to the game that allows you to explore the ocean floors. Being as how you’re a Big Daddy and wearing an old school diving suit, there are multiple occasions when you will find yourself out in the open ocean — sometimes forced, and sometimes just along the way. These sections are unfortunately not open world and don’t allow you to venture wherever you wish, but the ability to take a break and look around at Rapture from the outside is a very cool thing to do. While in the ocean, there is no combat, so these are the times when you can relax and not have to constantly watch your back for once, which in a game like Bioshock is so very helpful to creating a wholly entertaining game experience. Don’t get too comfy, though, there are still plenty of sights and sounds out there that will cause your hair to stand on end.

People who loathed the method of hacking in the first game will be happy to know that pipe-twisting days are long gone. The new hacking system is a basic meter with red, green, and blue sections. Stop the needle in the green to hack, stop it in blue for bonuses, and set off an alarm if you hit the red. I actually set off more alarms with this type of hack than I did in the first game, even though it is easier overall. And worst case scenario, setting off the alarm allows you to pick up a couple of flying bots as added protection!

There were only a few issues that I had with this game, and they are by no means big enough to damage its success at becoming another awesome installment in the world of Bioshock. Even so, they should be noted to you the consumers.

The biggest problem I had with the game was the now infamous fonts of new games. This isn’t just a Bioshock 2 flaw, but a general flaw to many of today’s games. For some reason, developers are making the font so infuriatingly small, that people who play them on a regular TV have to literally squint to read, and even then it’s not easy. Mass Effect 2, Assassin’s Creed II, and this game are all recent titles with this issue. I’m sure there’s probably more as well, but these are the ones I know of for sure. I threw the first Bioshock in just to be sure and it was the greatest font size my eyes had ever seen, if that tells you anything.

I can understand that a lot of people have high definition televisions these days, but there are still a hell of a lot who do not have them. Then there’s places like where I live, where there is an HD TV, but it’s not the one I play my Xbox 360 games on, and so I had to suffer through this issue as well. Multiple times did I go to find a saved game to reload and I couldn’t read the dates, or had trouble with other item descriptions. Usually I would play a game with subtitles on just to be safe and make sure I catch every word, but the lack of legibility was too unbearable to bother with, and I shut them off. To be fairly honest, I don’t even care if it’s a proven fact that every TV on the planet is in HD, it’s not that complicated to make the font a little bit bigger and ensure that anyone who buys your game will have no issues reading what needs to be read. This type of error is mind-boggling to many gamers lately, and we can only hope that whoever decided to drop the font size a couple notches will remedy that quickly.

The other much smaller issue that I did have came toward the end of the game, and it doesn’t appear that I’m alone. There may be a reason for it that I’m unaware of, but it wasn’t explained. In the game, you have your own video camera — much like the camera you use in the first game — which allows you to research different splicers and enemies. The more you research, the more little goodies you can get in return.

At one point, I received a special tonic for my research, which allowed me to become invisible while standing still. It was a little annoying at first due to the fact that every time that you stopped the whooshing sound of you turning invisible would ring out, which is more often than you’d think. Eventually I realized that aside from the annoying sound, this was a majorly effective tool in getting the upper hand on your enemies.

The issue in all of this is that for some reason, this invisibility tonic stopped working for me. No matter how many times I removed it, replaced it with another tonic, re-equipped it, or even reloaded my game and entire system, this thing wasn’t working anymore. Eventually, it started working again in the next section of the game, so I don’t know if 2K had it deactivated for a certain part of the game or what. Either way, something wasn’t right about the way it was done.

While we’re on the subject of research cameras, I personally think they should do away with it in the third game, if we’re so lucky as to get one. It’s just far too aggravating to have to set up a weapon, and then pull out your camera like a Big Daddy from Canada who’s vacationing in Rapture and try and get all of this research. The overall game experience would have been a hell lot better if you could just concentrate on the combat you’re facing and not worry about anything else.

Again, these are by no means problematic enough to negative effect the game’s fun-factor, they’re just a tiny handful of cons in this vast ocean of pros.

Jumping back to the good stuff — Bioshock 2 partially made a video game dream of mine come true. Ever since playing the first game, I’ve wanted so badly to see and walk around Rapture before everything went straight to the core of Hell, and I was semi-able to do that here. I’m not sure if it’s just some sort of Titanic fetish or what, but they could make a game just walking around and exploring pre-apocalyptic Rapture and I’d be first in line to buy it. This part of the game was very short, and not exactly what I was hoping for, but it was enough to be happy…for now. I want a major Rapture flashback level in the third game that is all about investigation, not combat! I do hear there is something like this available in the multiplayer options as well, but sadly, I don’t play on Live.

I won’t get into details about the ending as to avoid spoilers, but I will say that I was quite satisfied with how it closed out. With the first game, the part that we thought was the end — when you’re walking up to the office of Andrew Ryan — gave us some of the most insane moments in a video game to date, but as we all know, that game kept right on going after that. The rest of the game was still awesome, but the final battle with Fontaine never really sat well with me. Even the cinematic after you beat him is touching and great (depending on how you played; I went good), but the fight itself felt too much like fighting Dr. Manhattan and I’d much rather they just had a psychotic-but-normal-ish plasmid-ridden Fontaine come at you.

The ending hours of Bioshock 2 were also a little misleading; I thought for sure I had reached the end, but in fact found myself playing much more game. And though I didn’t expect the game to go on that much further, it was this additional time playing where this game solidified itself for me. The compelling storyline with Lamb, Sinclaire, and Eleanor, all finally coming together in those last few hours was truly amazing…and the final battle was just flat out absurd.

And as for the game overall? No, it isn’t better than the first game as I did say before. However, if you can believe it, I do think that it could be considered by many players to be equally as good! It really just will depend on who you are and your own game experience. Personally, I think I still have to pick the original based only on how mesmerizing it was to first lay eyes on Rapture and the Andrew Ryan and Atlas characters, but I also really have to praise 2K Games and all who helped develop it for their job in following up an insurmountable game with an equally worthy adventure. This game far surpassed my hopes and expectations, and I really hope they have more stories up their sleeves sometime soon.

Well THAT ran a hell of a lot longer than I thought it would. If you’re still here, many props to you my friends.

Trailer

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Battlefield: Bad Company 2
Platform: Xbox 360
Developer: EA Digital Illusions CE
Publisher: Electronic Arts
Release Date: March 2, 2010

When it comes to console online first person shooters, most people fall into two camps. You have your diehard Call of Duty fans (Modern Warfare in particular) and you have your Battlefield fans (let’s ignore the Halo fanboys for the sake of argument).

Ever since the launch of the Xbox 360 I’ve been in the Call of Duty camp. Call of Duty 2 was a launch title and it ushered me into this current generation of consoles with an engaging experience that made me fall in love with the franchise. With the introduction of modern weapons in Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare I fell even deeper in love. COD4 became the measuring stick of quality for all other first person shooters in this generation for me. When the first Battlefield: Bad Company was released I was eager to give it a shot but it ultimately fell short of my Call of Duty standards. So I was curious to see what changes would be made in the sequel and if those changes could get me to put down the Modern Warfare and enter the Battlefield.

The biggest change to the sequel is the implementation of destructible environments. No longer are you safe behind a wall or standing next to a barrier. Grenades, bullets and bombs will shred through the environments like paper rendering any type of cover system useless. This totally changes how you have to approach firefights in both multiplayer and single player campaigns.

Single Player Campaign:
Much like the original, you are accompanied through the single player campaign by your “Bad Company” of Haggard, Sweetwater, and the Sarge. Don’t expect them to be much help though as most of the time they are utterly useless. I was really surprised at how unhelpful they were in the campaign. Many times I would have to kill enemies standing right next to my teammates, which left me frustrated many times. Speaking of enemies, they are really easy to pick off in the game, rolling in with mind numbing wave after mind numbing wave. This really gave the single player campaign an empty feeling to me. You can easily breeze through it in about 7 hours, which will make some players happy and some players frustrated but really the replay value is found in the multiplayer so I don’t feel any sympathy for anyone whining about the single player being too short. The campaign does contain a number of little shots at the Modern Warfare games, from snowmobile references to a final level on a plane, which I didn’t think were particularly funny nor clever. The game kept me entertained for the most part with big explosions but I found nothing particularly exciting about the narrative.

Online Multiplayer:
You can tell the multiplayer side of Bad Company 2 got significantly more attention during the development process than the single player did and probably rightly so. The real meat and potatoes of the game is in the multiplayer. Fans of the first game will definitely appreciate the new modes found here. Conquest mode, (an add-on for the previous game) is stock now. Squad deathmatch mode features four teams of four players who each fight until one squad gets 50 kills. A mode called squad rush plays like a speed round of the standard rush mode for up to eight players. In squad rush, the attacking team only gets 20 tickets, but there’s only one point to destroy at a time. If the attacking team can destroy two such control points, they win. It’s a great mode for players who might not always have time to play through a full rush or conquest match.

Many will purchase Battlefield: Bad Company 2 for the multiplayer rather than the campaign, and I don’t think those gamers will be disappointed here. The experience system has been expanded beyond the standard procedure of leveling up an overall rank and unlocking cross-class weaponry. Each kit type has unique unlocks earned by using that kit successfully, as well as a vehicle XP track that awards bonuses for in-vehicle kills. I found it strange that a lot of what you unlock early on isn’t as good as a lot of what you start with. Also odd is the decision to force non-VIP players to actually unlock basic tools of each kit’s function, like the engineer’s repair gun and the medic’s first aid kit (anyone who purchases the game gets a VIP code included). As I said earlier, the biggest change to the game is the destructible environments which really change the way you think about and play the game.

If you were a huge fan of the first Battlefield: Bad Company, then you’ve probably already bought the sequel and you’re only reading this as a break from a multiplayer gaming session. To those curious, I would recommend this game to anyone who was either a fan of the first or to someone who is looking for an alternative to Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2. I personally find the gameplay, narrative, controls, and multiplayer to be more rewarding in Call of Duty: Modern Warfare but I enjoy the change of pace the Battlefield series provides.

The Geek: Vast multiplayer that will keep you coming back again and again.

The Weak: Slow and unintuitive control system.

Vactor’s Verdict: a 4 out of 5

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