The entire VIPER fortress, and everything in it, heroes included, has been physically transported to the Qliphothic Realm, a dimension of chaos and destruction. The heroes must protect their only link to Earth while searching for evidence of survivors of Operation Demonflame. Locating these poor souls may answer some questions, but the biggest one remains: How do they get home?
Fort Lantern has been violently transported into the Qliphothic realm, the damage causing the underground bunker to collapse. The radar antenna fell onto Ripper’s cell, releasing him though he is still damaged enough that UNTIL soldiers are holding him captive with his VIPER team. Major Okonkwo is able to see the structure where the portal used during Operation Demonflame is located to the south of the fort. Drayvin heads to check it out.
The spirit of Juan Ramirez meets Drayvin at the structure. He informs Drayvin that shortly after the final UNTIL troops retreated through the portal after Operation Demonflame, the portal was sealed, presumably by Witchcraft using her powers from Earth’s side of the portal. Turns out Ramirez is a psychic, which is why he was assigned to Major Boudreau’s unit during Operation Demonflame. He’s very much alive, and is projecting himself in order to communicate with us. Before being able to continue, someone approaches his cell, forcing him to break his psychic projection. Drayvin returns to Fort Lantern to report to Major Okonkwo, but is followed by several groups of flying horrors. Lookouts at each corner of the fort arm the defense turrets. Nice thing about having NPC’s at each turret is they are able to not only target individual mobs for maximum damage but also put the turrets into repair mode, like Drayvin had to manually do during Issue 1.
Ripper uses the distraction of the attack upon the fort to attempt an escape with his VIPER squad. There is a one transport vehicle that was undamaged in the fort’s transport to the Qliphothic realm, and they make their way toward it, grabbing weapons from fallen UNTIL soldiers and blasting any horrors who come near. Drayvin breaks off his attacks on the horrors to deal with VIPER. There are too many of them to fight single-handed so the remaining choice is to eliminate their escape route: destroy the transport before they reach it.
While blasting the transport with his concussor beams, Drayvin completed the “Sub-Atomic” perk for dealing out 1 million particle damage! Bonus! With the transport gone, VIPER has no escape and the horrors aren’t being picky who they attack so Ripper agrees to surrender again after the horrors have been dealt with.
Ramirez projects himself into the fort to speak with Okonkwo. A cut-scene plays as he tells his story of being captured a week ago by servants of the Kings of Edom. They were taken to one of the nearby towers and tortured. Ramirez explains he tried to use his psychic abilities to shield the minds of himself and the other survivors but was not strong enough. The torture finally broke Robinson; he went insane allowing his captors to further ravage his mind to use it as a conduit to his team on Earth in Fort Lantern, forcing Qliphothic energy to the other side where it drove those men insane as well and warped their physical appearance. Those were the tortured troops Drayvin fought in Issue 2 as he worked his way through the fort’s bunker.
Ramirez is both happy to see us and hopeful of a rescue but also terrified because the fort’s transport to the Qliphothic realm was caused by a ritual — the Kings of Edom want us here for some nefarious purpose, and have succeeded in bringing us to their dimension.
He continues to explain that the survivors were too weak to fight so decided to split up into three smaller groups to be able to hide better and also give the other groups a chance to survive should one group be captured. Major Okonkwo insists on an immediate rescue. Ramirez gives the location of two of the three caves the survivors are holed up in but is forced to break his psychic projection before he can divulge the third cave’s location. The Qliphothic energies are beginning to worm into Captain Urqhart, who is growing depressed and hopeless. Drayvin snaps him out of it for now, and Urqhart offers to fly the osprey for aerial support.
Urqhart tells Drayvin to grab a set of smoke grenades to signal him. Red smoke to attack, and blue smoke means it’s safe for the osprey to land to pick up the survivors. Drayvin and Urqhart fly together to the first waypoint. A horde of horrors is outside the mouth of the cave, so Drayvin tossed a red smoke grenade into their midst, signalling Urqhart to make a strafing run in the osprey then Drayvin went in and cleared out the remaining horrors. As the first survivor made his way out of the cave, Drayvin placed the blue smoke grenade in a clear area so Urqhart could land. Soon, however, more horrors showed up and began attacking the osprey and the survivors attempting to board it. After the final survivor was loaded, Drayvin and Urqhart flew to the next cave to repeat the rescue attempt then flew the survivors back to Fort Lantern. Additional bonus: Drayvin completed the “Unpronounceable” perk for defeating 100 Qliphothic horrors!
Back at Fort Lantern, Urqhart lands and drops off the survivors who are happily greeted by Major Okonkwo. Then Ramirez appears again. The reason he had to suddenly break contact earlier was that he was captured again in the tower and was tortured to reveal the location of the third group of survivors. An army of horrors is on their way now and Ramirez has been unable to psychically contact them to warn them of the horrors or even inform them that help is on the way.
Out-manned and out-gunned, Captain Urqhart suggests asking Ripper if he and his VIPER team will assist in the rescue. After all, they’re in the same boat as UNTIL as far as being at risk from the denizens and energies of this realm. Since we’d worked so well with Captain Jarvis in Issue 2, he’d told Ripper that Drayvin can be trusted so he agrees on the condition that he and his men will be freed afterward.
The osprey is low on fuel and ammo so we can’t use it as transport there and back, but Urqhart has an idea for the osprey to play a final role. All over the realm, geysers spew forth chaos energy. If we can load up enough into the osprey, she’d go out with one helluva bang! It was an optional objective but the chance to make things go BOOM in a big way? Are you kidding me? Drayvin isn’t armed with force bolts, concussor beams and a shoulder-mounted mini-gun for nothin’, ya know! Of course we’re going to blow stuff up! Drayvin grabs a set of canisters then flies to geysers, filling them with chaos energy before loading up all the canisters into the osprey.
The motley band of heroes and villains set off for the third cave, finally spying the horror army. There are more than we’d thought, so having the osprey will certainly help! Drayvin sets the coordinates and engages the osprey’s autopilot and watches as she goes down in a furious blaze of glory! More horrors still survive and make their way to the survivors so Urqhart signals to advance and engage!
We lost several UNTIL and VIPER soldiers while making our way to the cave but we succeeded. A sole survivor made his way out, telling us the horrors had entered the cave through a back passage, grabbed the other survivors and took them to one of the nearby towers.
A final cut-scene plays showing another portal opening and two VIPER members coming through. Ripper meets them — he apparently knew they were coming and where they’d be! — and the commander wants to reach that tower before UNTIL does. Back-stabbing villains…
Final thoughts: I still enjoyed Issue 2 more than this one. I just thought the pacing was better, even though the Qliphothic realm environment is cool with all the purple lighting and particle effects from the energies given off. Drayvin did suffer a defeat or two from some of the flying horrors. I’m thinking it may have been an incidental line of sight (LoS) issue because he seemed to completely stop attacking each time, while all 3 or so of the horrors were still able to nail him with their nasty damage over time (DoT) energy blasts. Next time, I had Drayvin use his jet boots to engage them in the air and that worked out much better. There were a few mobs of Master Villain level or so that could have been more of a problem, but I was careful to clear out any surrounding mobs so I could engage them solo. When Drayvin achieved level 20 last week, I chose Lock and Load as his new power, which is a major damage buff, so being able to activate that plus only having a single target to focus all Drayvin’s attacks on made the tough mobs go down pretty quickly. Big damage numbers and quick defeats has a way of making one see the fun in playing dps characters, no?
Once again, I really enjoyed the cut-scenes this week. I’m looking forward to seeing these towers up close. The one cut-scene that scrolled near one made it seem like a pretty large structure. Not as big or cool as the Vault from Star Trek Online‘s Series 3: Cloaked Intentions, but close enough to make me want to ogle it and beat up some Qliphothic bad guys, especially the archmage-looking ones who were torturing Ramirez’s team.
The plot twist at the end was not entirely unforeseen, though I wasn’t really thinking that far ahead when it happened so I’ll chalk it up with: “Ah! Curse your sudden but inevitable betrayal!”
[Note: I started this post last week. Reading it today, it seems a bit "train of thought" and perhaps rambles a bit; I'm not sure if it even gets to the point I set out to make. But I'm posting it anyway.]
It’s no secret that I’ve become a fan of, shall we say, alternate pricing arrangements for my entertainment. MMOs in particular, I find more and more difficult to justify a $15 monthly subscription simply on the basis that I know I won’t “get my money’s worth” out of any particular MMO in any given month. I’m in the travel industry, therefore I’m only home a couple days a week. Totaled, I am away from home roughly 8 months of the year.
The unfortunately-named “Free To Play” or F2P model is attractive to me at this point in time because, in theory, in allows me to play at my own pace and toss the devs a few bucks here and when I see fit if I decide their product is worthy of my dollars. I say “in theory” because we’re all-too-familiar with years of F2P systems that either routinely gate content behind a mandatory pay wall, or gouge players for mandatory consumables.
Guild Wars is my favorite model, and one which in another sense is similar to my experience on Xbox Live: buy the software once, play forever at no additional charge, and buy DLC for continued adventures. I am very interested to see how often Arena.net issues content updates for Guild Wars 2 which will also be using this model.
SiriusXM ran a promotion recently where they gave everyone two weeks of free satellite radio, along with a promotion to signup for $25 for 5 months, equating to $5/month compared to the normal $13/month. As I just mentioned above, I’m not home enough to justify $13/month for radio, no matter how many stations they offer. The longest I’m in my car is driving to and from the airport, twice a week, 30 minutes each. Otherwise nearly everything I need is within 10 minutes of my home. But for $5/month? That’s the cost of a Frappucino at Starbucks, so I can justify that to have a few months of new radio stations I couldn’t otherwise experience.
Bringing that back to MMOs, at this point in my life with not only limited time for gaming but so many gaming choices, both within and outside of the MMO genre, I feel developers or publishers need to continue their pricing experiments, perhaps offering a time-limited access for a substantially lower fee if they insist on subscriptions. I could foresee spending $5 to $7 (which is what a streaming-only Netflix subscription costs) per month for say, a block of 50 hours per month tops?
I look at everyone on Twitter playing RIFT and I can tell just from the scenery graphics I would enjoy the game (or at least the scenery) for awhile, but at the end of the day, it’s just another “level up, gear up” game that has and/or will have all the same problems every other vertical-progression MMO has. I may not have played RIFT‘s sub-systems but, to paraphrase Bartle, I’ve already played RIFT countless times and can’t justify $15/month on it when I consider the other MMO’s I’m already invested in plus all the other games I play in my limited time.
A lot of this falls in line not only with my limited gaming time but also the notion that the subscription is a “game as a service” which is where the unconscious “need” to get your money’s worth comes in. Currently, I don’t have any MMO subscriptions. I casually play three MMO’s — Lord of the Rings Online, Star Trek Online, and Champions Online — all of which I have Lifetime Memberships for. Aside from the convenience of never having to update my account page doing the Re-sub/Un-sub dance, lifetime memberships allow me to change my outlook from “game as a service” back to the normal “game as a product” that I grew up with and continue to experience with non-MMO games. I can pick up or walk away from any of those three at any time, never having to concern myself with my account status, never worrying about getting value out of a single month. Are they a gamble? Certainly! One has to look no further than Hellgate: London to see how short a game’s lifetime can be. But I figure $200 is roughly equal to four full-price games for my Xbox 360, which would be $240 (plus taxes or shipping) or six PC games at the $50 that seems to be the average these days. I currently have a stack of 58 games for my 360, only a few of which are “finished,” and my Steam library shows 26 games installed. Add to that all the MMOs I’ve bought, the non-Steam PC games at home, and so forth. Even though a good chunk of those were pre-owned from Gamestop or purchased during a Steam sale, that’s still a large chunk of money set aside just for my gaming hobby. So when I look at the total gaming library I’ve already invested in, $200 doesn’t seem like that much of a worry anymore. The two Cryptic games are pretty much the only chance I have to play alongside certain people like Blue Kae, MMO Gamer Chick and a few others, so I can easily place the “reward” of that over the “risk” of the lifetime membership as part of my own justification process.
Similarly, I bought Call of Duty: Black Ops and both it’s map packs ($60 for the disc plus $15 for each map pack) strictly so I could play online with Aaron and Oakstout (even Genda jumped in twice as a bonus). I’m not sure if I’ve ever ranted here on PI.net about my utter frustration with Call of Duty games, though both Aaron and Oakstout are well-versed with my oft-profane-laden outbursts of vitriol towards the multi-player game. During my worst tirades, Oak usually breaks out into giggles and I have a suspicion Aaron mutes me momentarily if I enter territory that offends his Catholic upbringing. I’ve had a neighbor knock and ask if things were OK, so yeah, to say Call of Duty pisses me off is an understatement, but it’s also a testament to what I’m willing to put up with for the sake of having fun with online friends. I don’t necessarily approve of the steep price of the map packs, but in a sense the model itself falls in line with Guild Wars where I buy the game and play for free, then buy DLC on top of that to continue support. (Don’t even get me started on Call of Duty: Elite, however…) The only difference being that Call of Duty is a “game as a product” and will be replaced in twelve months with the next annual edition of the franchise as opposed to the continuing growth of something of the scale of Guild Wars 2.
Back in the pre-internet days of GEnie we had to pay hourly for the service itself then an additional hourly fee to play online games like Air Warrior or Islands of Kesmai. That adds up way faster than any F2P game that I have deigned to play, believe me. I don’t want to go back to those days, but I also feel that for myself and others who participate in the myriad gaming choices available, subscriptions just don’t cut the mustard any longer. I don’t want to feel psychologically “locked into” one game to the near-exclusion of others because of the full-price subscription.
Funny thing is, and perhaps this is a whole other aspect of psychology, even a few years ago I was all about the subscription games even as more viable choices began to appear, diluting my overall gaming value or perhaps making me spend more on multiple subscriptions. Money was tighter then, too. Now that I’m in a better financial position where I can easily pay for essentially three Frappucinos per month (roughly the same as an MMO subscription) I am more loathe to do so knowing I won’t get the same value from it as I did back in the earlier days where I had to consider the finances, but also had more time to devote to my one (or precious few) choice(s).
Cryptic’s teaser for Aftershock: Issue 2: Hang On reads:
The investigation of Camp Lantern revealed that dark and powerful forces are at work here. A force so evil that the VIPER commander has ordered his own men sealed inside the fort’s bunker to prevent its escape. Major Okonkwo and a handful of UNTIL troopers are fighting for their lives. Beset by VIPER and UNTIL troops possessed by an otherworldly force, their chances of survival are slim. It’s up to the heroes to enter the bunker and ensure Okonkwo and her men make it out alive!
After defeating Ripper then hearing Major Okonkwo call for backup while she and her team were locked underneath Camp Lantern in last week’s Issue 1: Dead Air, UNTIL rounded up all the VIPER bad guys at Camp Lantern. Ripper was none to pleased to be placed in a secure containment field and paced about, yelling threats. Captain Urqhart had his men re-open the door to the fort’s lower levels that Golden Nest Leader had sealed earlier, then Drayvin went inside to make his way to Major Okonkwo.
Once inside the fort’s upper level, Drayvin eventually finds a locked door. A computer terminal nearby allows us to talk to Major Okonkwo, who explains a power shutdown locked up some of the systems. She will ping the security servers to put them into diagnostic mode. Drayvin has to repeat to her the diagnostic sequences so she can access the server to restart it and open the door for Drayvin. Three sequences in all, and a fun little Simon-like memory game.
Once inside, the further we progress into the fort, occasionally a purple-glowing ghostly soldier appears. He apparently thinks Drayvin is someone named “Jim” and he’s very displeased, asking why Jim allowed him to die and so forth. VIPER has a few baddies stationed in here, including a few Draysha Enforcers to defeat.
Eventually, Drayvin comes across another door to unlock. Inside is a VIPER team commanded by Captain Jarvis. He’s not happy to see a hero but will take any help he can get at this point. He commands his men to stand down, but one of them misunderstands and starts shooting. Jarvis shoots his own soldier then presents Drayvin with the possibility of allying with them against the UNTIL soldiers who appear to be zombified or otherwise turned into some type of warped monstrosities. A dialogue box appears offering the choice to accept the alliance terms or not. I figured that’s how the story was intended to play out Drayvin agreed, under the condition that they would only fight the UNTIL soldiers who were “turned” and the VIPER team would be allowed to leave the fort afterward. Fair enough. How about that? UNTIL and VIPER cooperating? What next? Dogs and cats living together? Mass hysteria?
Once in combat, it turns out Captain Jarvis has a handy trick up his sleeve. Actually, on his sleeve. He activates a device on his wrist which summons two additional companions! One is a Munitions Bot that fights along with us, the other is a super-sweet Drone which flies around and heals the team! Cute little guy, eh? I want one! The healing effect is a green pulsing beam that reminds me of the Medic in Global Agenda. From what I could tell the Drone prioritized the players, then the other NPC’s. With the addition of these three NPC’s to the team, combat gets stepped up half a notch or so from here.
After defeating several groups of possessed soldiers, we speak to Okonkwo from another computer terminal. From running sensor scans, she’s found a lab with several Qliphothic artifacts and guesses there is a connection between that and the current happenings. Her men confirm: all the now-zombified UNTIL soldiers were also veterans of Operation Demonflame. She will continue searching for information while Drayvin and his VIPER allies make their way to where Okonkow and her men are holed up. She asks them to also pick up repair parts for their two generators to get them back online.
After several more encounters against the zombified soldiers, we find the room Okonkwo and her team are secured in. They let us in, and we repair the generator then Okonkwo relays more information she’s found. In the Operation Demonflame personnel files, a Sergeant James Collins is mentioned often, and it is presumed he is the “Jim” the purple-glowing spirit we’ve met is angry with. Collins was also treated for depression and night terrors following Demonflame and blames himself for the death of his best friend, Carl Robinson while the UNTIL team was in the Qliphothic realm. She also notes that Collins had scored unusually high on psychic aptitude and was highly sensitive to the moods of others nearby but UNTIL files indicate he never learned to develop them to consciously control them. She believes Collins is a victim of Qliphothic entities who are using his mood sensitivity to influence and control him. She said Collins was indeed one of the soldiers she saw entering the lab where Qliphothic artifacts are contained, so Dravin sets off to get inside that lab! Along the way we see the purple-glowing spirit of Robinson still angry at Collins, but a red-glowing spirit zooms down the hallway towards — then through! — us yelling in in his best Admiral Ackbar voice, “It’s … a … trap!”
Opening the laboratory door, another cut-scene plays. Collins is in a chair facing a dais with the Qliphothic artifacts and the spirit of Robinson speaks to him, trying to manipulate Collins into opening his mind and trading places with him, since Collins believes it’s his fault Robinson died. Suddenly the red spirit appears again, apparently another of their team named Ramirez, warning Collins that the purple spirit is not really Robinson. It’s too late, though, Collins is too far gone in his depression and influence of the “Robinson” spirit, who destroys or absorbs the essence (I’m guessing?) of the Ramirez spirit. Collins breaks down and opens his mind to “Robinson” who absorbs Collins’ essence as well, using the power to open a portal to the Qliphothic realm then finally transforming into its true identity: Despair Incarnate!
Three Harbingers of Woe also fly out of the newly-opened Qliphothic portal and the fight is on! The Harbingers of Woe are only henchmen level enemies but if they are defeated, three more fly out of the portal to take their place. Despair Incarnate, however, is Super Villain level! I thought Ripper was tough last week, but he doesn’t hold a candle to this guy. He hits very hard, and has a few special attacks such as creating some dark mystic cloud-looking thing over your head that places a heavy DoT and his “absorbing” attack seemed to strip Drayvin’s shield and health extremely fast. He also has a special attack that he cues with a voiceover which slows time to 15% normal. Everything switches to slow-motion, which is super-cool to watch, though I’m not sure it provides him with any bonus since he is slowed as well. Regardless, it’s an awesome effect and really showcases some of the cool animations and attack effects. Back to the fight though, even with the additional help of Captain Jarvis and his two bots, this demon ripped Drayvin to shreds at least seven times. Badly. Saying Drayvin got his ass kicked is understating things. One negative is that if you’re defeated once, the demon kills Jarvis so all future attempts are fully solo, which is probably the biggest reason Drayvin was defeated so handily the other times as he had no heals or additional dps. If I broke combat to try to heal, the demon instantly went to 100% health again. It finally took some creative use of terrain, retreating further back through the fort, and putting priority into keeping Drayvin’s Protective Shield up with only carefully planned use of his two heavy dps attacks to finally defeat Despair Incarnate. I was starting to think I’d have to exit the mission and go craft some healing items then come back and replay the mission when I finally got him, so defeating the demon was very rewarding for me!
Once Despair Incarnate is defeated, the entire fort starts shaking. Walls collapse, parts of the ceiling drop, and so forth. There is no specific reason we can see for this to be happening other than B-movie style cliche, so maybe something more is going on that we’re unaware of? Regardless, we need to quickly escape this bunker before it comes down on our head! As Drayvin tries to run out the emergency exit halls, more Qliphothic portals open, streaming demonic enemies in groups of five or so with more coming out every few seconds. Drayvin suffered several more defeats during this sequence simply from being overwhelmed while he was trying to shut down the portals.
Finally reaching the exit, a final cut-scene plays. Drayvin steps outside the bunker in relief only to see everything now has a purple hue to it. “Uh oh…” he says, as the camera begins to zoom out, finally showing the true reason for the bunker shaking and collapsing: the entire fort has been violently transported into the Qliphothic realm!
Final thoughts: just like Star Trek Online‘s Featured Episodes where each week improves upon the last, this is no different. Even though this time everything took place inside the Camp Lantern bunker, all the environments were very well done compared to the few warehouse or sewer hideouts I’ve done in the standard Champions Online missions so far. The layouts, terrain features, and especially lighting and particle effects were great, as was the story and combat. The cut-scenes were also very well-done as also being well-placed just when I felt I was ready for a brief respite from the action and ready for the story to progress. In other words, “Hang On” nails the pacing. Also the issue last week of the NPC’s out-dpsing me did not exist this time. There were a few times when the VIPER NPC’s would have aggro but it was easy enough to get it back so that Drayvin got credit for the defeat, and therefore the loot. During the Ripper fight last week, there were just so many NPC’s hitting him there was no way I was going to out-dps them all solo. Perhaps in a team the players would have enough dps to turn the tide and get the boss drop?
Anyway, while I loved “Dead Air” last week, for me it pales to the layers of pure awesomeness of “Hang On.” I enjoyed every second of it and if I was looking forward to more last week… now I am figuratively quivering in anticipation for next week’s issue!
I embedded Digital Foundry’s World in Motion timeplapse of Red Dead Redemption last August in my post on immersion and linked to to the actual article describing the tech used in both the timelapse and the game.
Now, Digital Foundry has turned their recording systems to Team Bondi and Rockstar’s latest masterpiece to present L.A. Noire: World in Motion, again with full details on the game itself, the tech used in L.A. Noire compared to Red Dead Redemption and Grand Theft Auto IV, and also details on how they went about doing the recording.
As they say in the article, even though Team Bondi (intentionally?) limited the weather and NPC interactions, L.A. Noire is perhaps the best example yet of constructing an organic virtual environment.
Here’s the YouTube embed, but if these tech videos really interest you, may I recommend watching their 720p version on the Digital Foundry?
Meant to post this a couple days ago but, work ya know?
Anyway, remember CCP’s DUST 514? Their console shooter that is supposed to tie-in with EVE?
The DUST 514 site is currently counting down to E3 so I guess it’s safe to assume CCP finally has some type of announcement for the game this year. A launch date would be nice… though I am still extremely skeptical of CCP’s chances of success in the pewpew-infested seas of the Call of Duty, Battlefield, or Halo series.
The latest DUST 514 rumor is that it may potentially be a PS3 exclusive, according to a Kotaku article. With PSN being a far more open network than XBL, I can unfortunately see this coming true since no one has yet managed to get Microsoft to agree on any type of pricing agreement. On the other hand, unlike PS3′s DC Universe Online, DUST 514 was never going to be subscription-based anyway, so special pricing agreements with Microsoft may be a moot point for this title. Guess we’ll find out in a couple days.
Cryptic’s Champions Online team launched their first Comic Series yesterday, which will be weekly episodic installments of story-based content similar to what the Star Trek Online has been doing for their Featured Episodes.
Series 1 is entitled Aftershock, and Issue #1 is Dead Air, and is apparently a follow-up of sorts to the Serpent’s Lantern Adventure Pack, which I have not played yet. The Comic Series is scalable for any character at least level 11, and also scales based on number of people in your team.
The official teaser for Dead Air reads:
Something has gone horribly wrong in North Africa. Camp Lantern, the UNTIL base created to sift through the wreckage of the Temple of Nama, has gone dark. All attempts to contact the camp have failed. Scouts sent into the area have not reported back. It’s up to the heroes to investigate the ruins of the camp and determine what became of the garrison.
I played Aftershock using my main (freeform) hero, Drayvin, who is level 19. He begins by speaking to UNTIL Liason Bradley who is next to Defender in the Renaissance Center (Ren Cen) of Millenium City, who tells us to head to the UNTIL building where we hop a transport to Africa. A cut-scene shows the transport landing near an UNTIL camp that has been decimated. UNTIL soldiers lie dead all over and everything in the camp is destroyed. We’re told over a hundred soldiers were stationed here, yet less than a dozen bodies are found. We search the camp for clues as to what caused the destruction and hopefully the whereabouts of the other UNTIL soldiers.
While searching for clues, suddenly mortars begin raining down on the camp! This makes getting a few of the clues interesting while you try to stay out of the mortar’s target area (there’s also a blast radius outside the target reticule where you can still be damaged and knocked down). VIPER has sent mortar teams to take out the UNTIL camp — and you! — so we have to locate the mortar teams and their spotters.
After searching the humid jungle for all the VIPER mortar and spotter teams surrounding the camp, Drayvin heads to Camp Lantern to eliminate the final VIPER teams. Another cut-scene shows Golden Nest Leader ordering his men to seal a door. We don’t know why or what is inside, but they seal some of their own men inside as well, so it can’t be good!
There are four teams of VIPER henchmen, then the team that includes Golden Nest Leader, who is a villain, and finally an enforcer-level mini-boss Draysha in the center of the fort. Draysha is placed far enough away from the other groups that I thought I could just fight him. Nope! He called the other VIPER teams still in the fort for assistance and they readily handed Drayvin his ass on a silver platter. Next time we came back, we circled the fort and eliminated all the VIPER teams before engaging Draysha.
After defeating Draysha, we’re supposed to close the fort’s gate. Captain Urqhart provides us with a security code to override the fort’s defense system so we head to each corner of the fort to turn on the turret defense systems before VIPER Air Cavalry units arrive. I wouldn’t say this sequence is a “tower defense” mini-game per se but we can choose to leave the turrets on automatic where they will target any enemy nearby and fire away, or we can assume manual control and set a single target for all turrets to fire on. In manual mode, once an enemy is defeated the turrets will not select another target on their own. One bonus to manual mode is we can have the turrets enter repair mode whereas in automatic they will never repair themselves. There are a total of 12 VIPER Air Cav teams (3 or 4 per team) and all are villain-level so this entire sequence can get tricky at times. I’ve done it three times now, it went silky-smooth once, another time there were a handful of touch-and-go moments, and the third time the VIPER Air Cav teams destroyed a couple turrets so I had multiple groups converging on Drayvin and the remaining turrets. That was a helluva fight and Drayvin suffered several defeats. After eliminating the VIPER Air Cavalry, another cut-scene shows armored vehicles approaching the fort with Ripper — apparently a popular villain from the Champions IP? — leading the charge.
Love the UNTIL soldier bound to Ripper’s vehicle! This looks like Big Trouble for Drayvin but Captain Urqhart sends in a fighter jet who bombs Ripper’s location. Ripper himself survives, albeit heavily damaged, but all his VIPER reinforcements were killed in the blasts. Ripper runs to the fort and beats down the gate Drayvin closed earlier and challenges us to battle! Ripper is a legendary-level boss so he’s no pushover. He has several very strong attacks and I spent so much time blocking and recovering from a few defeats that the NPC’s (Captain Urqhart sends in some UNTIL Air Cav teams to assist us) ended up doing more damage than Drayvin. The “problem” with this is that in Champions Online the loot is distributed to whomever does the most damage (that’s the easy way of saying it, anyway; there’s more to it than just that) so in this case, since the NPC’s did more damage (and this was true all three times I played through Dead Air) Drayvin did not get the boss’ loot drop. This is apparently an issue anytime there’s an encounter where the heroes also have NPC support and something the developers are still working on a solution for.
After defeating Ripper, Captain Urqhart lands his transport and congratulates Drayvin then a final cut-scene begins, centered on the communications terminal behind us, which is next to the door that Golden Nest Leader sealed earlier. UNTIL’s Major Fuloni Okonkwo calls for help; she and 20 of her men are trapped in the basement. We hear the sound of gunfire and screams. Major Okonkwo says they’re being attacked by their own men!
With that cliffhanger, Dead Air comes to an end — to be continued in Issue 2!
I also posted the full Issue 1 in screenshot format as a Picasa gallery if you want scenes of the story in the order they occur, including some cut-scenes.
All in all, I really enjoyed Dead Air. I’d never been to that zone since I haven’t played the Serpent’s Lantern Adventure Pack yet, so that alone was a cool experience. Some of the fights were challenging and I enjoyed searching for clues at the beginning (probably because I’m also engrossed with L.A. Noire at the moment) and the Issue did manage to exude a feeling of tenseness. There are a few glitches with the cut-scenes still. On the first play-through where Ripper drives up, his vehicle was not rendered so he’s just floating in mid-air and the UNTIL soldier was tied to nothing, which really confused me until my second play-through where that part went fine. Both second and third play-through only the final cut-scene glitched where once Major Okonkwo begins talking, the communications terminal disappeared. And of course, the NPC’s “stealing” the boss loot was disappointing and was the main reason I played it three times, thinking it was a glitch until I finally learned it is an ongoing problem in the game with NPC’s helping players during boss fights. But just like I love Star Trek Online‘s Feature Episodes, I enjoyed this first Comic Series as well. It’s not often we get full-blown story-oriented game play in MMOs but for all their other faults, Cryptic’s games are able to pull off story content in a way nearly on par with single- or multi-player games and eliminating a good deal of the “MMO tedium” we see even in Lord of the Rings Online‘s Epic Book stories with hours of traveling and mundane tasks separating the few bits of story.
Two weeks after Infogrames Atari announced it was divesting itself of Cryptic Studios, this morning’s Big Announcement was that Perfect World Co. Ltd. would be acquiring 100% equity in Cryptic for a cool $50 million USD. After their breakup with NCsoft, Cryptic was acquired by Infogrames Atari in 2008 for $28 million.
Naturally, MMO gamers immediately organized their Short Bus Army, driving by forums everywhere screaming the Chinese were taking over, all Cryptic games would be converted to a “pay to win” item shop and Star Trek Online would be converted to Free To Play (“F2P”).
Perfect World Entertainment developed and operates several Eastern-style MMOs, starting with Perfect World International, Jade Dynasty, Ether Saga Odyssey, and others, including their latest entry, Forsaken World.
The majority of the titles PWE developed have indeed been unapologetically Eastern in style, game play, and business model; a very particular style which does not go over nearly as well for Western audiences. PWE has been trying to expand its reach into global markets. Forsaken World is its first in-house title that PWE did research and made design decisions specifically to target Western consumers. I haven’t played myself (just finished installing FW but it’s updating while I write this) to have any personal opinion how well that turned out for them.
However, as part of their global expansion, PWE is not only developing and publishing their own in-house games, but are looking at publishing other studios’ work. PWE published Runic Games’ popular Torchlight last year, then ended up acquiring Runic Games. PWE has maintained a “hands off” approach for Runic, who continues to support Torchlight and are busy at work finishing up Torchlight 2 with a Torchlight MMO also on the back burner. This is an important consideration! To date, PWE hasn’t declared themselves automatic experts on Western gaming success (only 10% of sales of PWE’s games are from non-Eastern consumers) and so has left its first Western studio to their own devices. So much so that there is no mention of Perfect World on the Torchlight website and only a single text-only mention in the “About” section of Runic Games website. Compare that to pretty much any other video game — MMO or otherwise — where you’d see the publisher’s name and logo in several spots. I don’t recall Torchlight fans whining for the past year, do you? But no one whines and cries like the oh-so-self-important MMO Gamer.
More factoids to throw into the puzzle:
The original May 17 announcement from Infogrames Atari stated that Cryptic Studios was considered a “discontinued operation” as of March 31. That announcement wasn’t any sort of “up to the minute” news at all; it had been effective with full knowledge of all parties for over six weeks.
In the May 16 — the day before the Infogrames Atari divestiture announcement! — edition of Star Trek Online‘s Engineering Report, Executive Producer Dan Stahl made the following note which, at the time, no one picked up on: (emphasis mine)
STO continues to get great support at Cryptic and the strategic partnerships they are working on for our near future will be a huge benefit for our game. Together we are working on ways to ensure STO has many season to come.
Again, all this was in-the-know at Cryptic for some time. Buying a corporation isn’t quite the same as simply placing an order at a drive-through, paying at the window then driving off with your prize. It takes time, during which meetings take place. If Cryptic is happy with the solution that PWE presents — as Runic Games has been — I see no reason to immediately join the Short Bus Army and proclaim “d00m!” as if the sky were falling.
Cryptic has hired developers after March 31, apparently already knowing more money was heading to the studio:
We also have new blood starting in June as the team adds a new character artist, a new software engineer, and a new content designer. We’re still looking to hire an additional systems and content designer as well. I don’t know about you – but that has me really excited. Anytime our team grows like this is means more awesome is on the way.
Perfect World CEO Michael Chi made the following statements:
“This strategic acquisition will add attractive game titles to our portfolio, which will help us further penetrate into the U.S. and global online game markets. More importantly, Cryptic Studios’ highly reputable development team and its technology platform will further strengthen our well-established R&D capabilities. We deem this as another noteworthy achievement of our global expansion efforts.”
Again reinforcing their strong desire to break into Western markets. PWE’s in-house titles might be big in the Eastern market (I seem to recall Perfect World International having something like 22 million players?) they just don’t cross the gap to Western sensibilities, so it makes zero sense to think PWE will force Cryptic to adopt an Eastern style of microtransactions. Additionally, Mr. Chi makes it very clear that PWE is happy to have Cryptic’s technology in their fold. The Perfect World Engine isn’t a slouch but it’s certainly got its glitchy spots and rough edges but also caters to a different type of game environment than what we’ve seen the Cryptic Engine used for. It is possible PWE could wish to use the Cryptic Engine for their own in-house games? It’s also possible PWE could want to translate Cryptic’s games and bring them to the Eastern market, and that is where it’s not only possible, but very likely, that an Eastern business model could come into play.
Simply going off the satisfaction that Torchlight players have had over the past year of being published then acquired by Perfect World, I see no indication that any harm would come to Cryptic and their existing games. If anything, PWE has the funding to ensure continued development — and therefore continued market expansion– which Infogrames Atari did not, considering they’ve spent the past decade in a perpetual state of financial woe.
The Champions Online team still needs to work on their communication (compared to the Star Trek Online team, nearly every MMO’s Live Team pales, however) but the (new?) Producer is working on it. The May 2011 edition of Ask Cryptic came out a couple days ago (20 days after the STO version…) and answered, to various degrees, thirty-four question presented by the Champions Online players.
Some nice tidbits?
Vivox integrated VOIP will be going onto both CO and STO test servers in June.
As rumored, Champions Online will be starting story-based content updates called “Comic Series” similar in nature to Star Trek Online‘s “Feature Episodes.”
Our first Comic Series is called Aftershock. I am not going to give the story away but I can give you some ideas about the size and rollout of the series. Aftershock has a total of 6 issues. The first issue is scheduled to release Wednesday June 1, 2011 and each subsequent issue in the series will be released each Wednesday of the following weeks. Each issue will be available to play following its debut along with any previous issues. You will need to complete any previous issue in the series before you can play the latest in the series. Aftershock will wrap up the first week of July and once the entire series is out it will be playable as a complete adventure. Each issue targets about 30 minutes of gameplay, however, that time can be affected by a number of factors.
The Comic Series will be free for Silver (ie. F2P) players also!
The Foundry will be coming to Champions Online at some point but not in the next update.
At this time there are no solid dates for The Foundry for Champions Online. There are a few Foundry features I would like to see get wrapped up before we start porting The Foundry to Champs. Getting The Foundry working in Champs is actually easier than getting Champs ready for The Foundry. When we have a solid plan or an update we will be sure to let you know.
Both teams have their animators working on new run animations, though it sounds like STO’s may arrive before CO’s do. Hideouts are still coming along with shared storage. I’m not in a SuperGroup yet so I don’t know if there’s already the equivalent of STO’s “Fleet Bank” or if they just mean that currently in CO your characters have independent banks whereas in STO your bank is automatically shared between characters?
No news whatsoever from the Neverwinter team itself, just the occasional blurbs from the CO or STO team about importing (and exporting) tech to and from Neverwinter and some of the Foundry stuff they’ve added there. With Atari owning the license to D&D products, Neverwinter may be in a bit of a pinch. Atari claims they want out of the development side, so I’m not sure they would essentially “buy off” the Neverwinter team and spin it into its own mini-studio or not, especially since it’s using Cryptic’s tech (unless Atari by default owns all Cryptic assets?). I have high hopes for Neverwinter; an online co-op RPG is right up my alley after years of same ol’ same ol’ MMOs, especially if it uses a decent F2P model.
I also say it would be a good candidate for Cryptic to finally get a product onto the consoles as well, if it’s not an “MMO” and if it uses microtransactions, well, that’s what we’re accustomed to anyway over in console land. Buy the game, it connects to Cryptic’s dedicated servers, play for free and purchase content updates, fluff items, and they could have Avatar costumes and props as well. Think outside the box!
I spent some time last night catching up on some older missions that I didn’t take the chance to play while leveling, and one of the developers was chatting and answering a few questions about the upcoming Season 4, specifically the overhaul to the ground combat system.
I wish I could have stayed on to get more than just these few bullet points, but just from reading the dev talk about the changes and what the team is play-testing on their internal test server, I’m even more excited!
The pace of ground combat is sped up dramatically. All weapons and ground devices have been re-tooled. I didn’t catch if ground abilities have been tweaked for the new system as well, unfortunately. Positioning and line of sight is important but there is no cover system. Also no advantage to aiming for a headshot in the current code, but they are not ruling out building that in sometime in the future.
Pulse rifles have been outright re-designed and will now become (in the developer’s words) short- to medium-range “energy shotguns” that do a lot of blast (conical?) damage and a chance to knock your target down.
The update is slated to hit the Tribble public test server on June 7 and go to the Holodeck live server on July 7, per Dan Stahl.
While in “shooter mode” you can hotkey which enemy you want your away team to attack. I don’t know if this is a new function or just re-working the way the current “attack my target” function works, which is currently on the Away Team UI or by pressing the ‘Y’ key (default). The current default for toggling “shooter mode” and “RPG mode” is the ‘X’ key.
In “shooter mode” you can also strafe-fire to hit multiple targets.
Science officers running the Medic kit will want to be in “RPG mode” to heal. Probably due to difficult targeting teammates? I think this runs contrary to what was said in a recent Ask Cryptic though, where I thought they said we could easily aim at a teammate and click a heal ability?
Can’t wait to hear more about how the system will work, along with the Duty Officer system and more things coming in Season 4!
Oh, and despite the Atari vs. Cryptic financial situation, Dan Stahl also announced that Cryptic hired a few more developers onto the STO Team, and they will be reporting for duty in June!
Everyone has their personal “wishlist” for any game which reflects their current playstyle. Mine in Star Trek Online is very casual. I just recently got my Science Officer to Vice Admiral (ie. level cap) and running a handful of daily missions for Emblems (the Vice Admiral-level barter currency) and also working up my Tactical Officer, who is up to Lt. Commander 7 now. I still feel I’m behind the power curve when it comes to learning the real ins and outs of the game, and have not used any Respec Tokens to optimize my Science Officer to best use her abilities yet. I very much want to get into end-game Special Task Force (STF) missions, but since there are only a handful currently in-game, no sense rushing things. So my current STO Wishlist is reflective of what I’ve been doing and what I’d like to see assuming I do not alter from my current playstyle.
As expected in anyone’s MMO wishlist, the overall theme is “MORE!”
More Diplomacy
It’s great that STO has a diplomacy mechanic, but its current implementation is poor. Vanguard is the only other MMO that comes to mind with a diplomacy system, and it was neat in its own right as a mini-game but I’ll admit I’m not interested in a card game to influence conversations. There are only five dedicated Diplomacy mission series, some of which are quite good, while the rest are doled out from the Federation Diplomacy Corp contact NPC as either Diplomatic Investigations or First Contact Missions. There are set templates for each mission type and they seem to be crunched into the “Genesis System” (ie. random content generator) that STO uses quite a bit. Diplomacy and exploration are both core values for the Federation, even in times of war such as STO’s timeline has us in. The problem is most video games are about combat and solving problems through killing and destruction of one’s opponents. Combat is fun, combat sells video games, combat is what we spend the majority of our time in MMOs actively doing. I don’t see an MMO doing very well where the majority of the playtime is spent role-playing with the AI or occasionally *gasp* with other players to progress character and story development, which is where most time was spent in every Star Trek episode ever.
Currently, there are four ranks in the FDC: Attache, Consul, Envoy and Ambassador. The only real benefits are a title we can display over our character’s head and the ability to transwarp to other Federation starbases. Envoy unlocks the First Contact missions and Ambassador gives a diplomacy uniform, otherwise the system isn’t utilized to its potential. The previous Feature Episode had a few instances where diplomacy could be used to alter the flow of conversation, but only for Ambassadors, as it turned out. Why not beef up the dialogue system so that each rank could affect the conversation’s direction to some degree? Ambassadors should be able to get the most information or perhaps resolve situations with no combat whatsoever, but let the lower ranks at least get in there and have some say. Leveling is supposed to be fun, and part of that fun is seeing an increase in “power” accompany the increase in “level” yet with STO’s diplomacy there is effectively no difference at all for the first three ranks because they cannot have an input to the conversation.
More Exploration
I’ve mentioned a few times that I did the majority of my leveling doing the repeatable Exploration Missions. Probably because they usually go fast and give a ridiculous amount of Skill Points and I geared up my crew and ship with the Badges of Exploration. There are a total of six templates the Genesis System uses to generate missions. Four are for space, two for ground, and two in each category may include combat, depending on whether that variable is parsed by Genesis or not.
One problem that all explorations are Genesis-created instances which disappear once we leave the instance. If our crew actually discovered something of importance for the Federation, we can’t come back to that system for future storylines and content, so the Exploration Mission treadmill is definitely a shallow system. On the other hand, this is an MMO we’re talking about, and a single player “exploring and discovering” new areas just doesn’t happen. Ever.
I know the new STO team is planning to expand or revamp the exploration system in the future but they don’t have concrete plans on how to do so yet. A start would be to simply add more templates (mission types) and dialogue options (which alien race left artifacts for us to scan, etc.) for Genesis to chew on. With only six mission templates and limited dialogue options currently, it doesn’t take long before you start repeating the same missions in the same bases or same planets. More templates. More options. And more maps!
I’ve heard there’s a great exploration mission in the Foundry called “Conjoined” but I’ve not played it yet to comment myself. It sounds like it’s longer and devoted to story, though, so in addition to simply adding “more” templates how about some templates with “more” to them, allowing Genesis to create branching mini-stories with (hopefully) less repetition?
Edit: I played Conjoined after posting this, and it was a very well-written exploration/diplomacy mission! It played out very similar to your typical TNG episode, traveling to a distant Federation world to assist with technical problems and a looming mystery which your crew discovers. The majority of the time you’re learning about the culture and history of the Gameptians, then assisting them with a test of the transwarp aperture being built near Deep Space 14. There is some brief space combat then as you unravel the mystery you learn the battle was an unfortunate misunderstanding as two civilizations who had been living side by side but out of phase from each other suddenly learn of the others’ existence.
How about rare random content? Ground missions in particular are very limited in that other than completing the mission parameters, there’s nothing whatsoever to do. In some of the Deferi daily missions, there is a rare chance for a Breen capital ship to spawn and patrol outside the normal mission area. There are three named Breen capital ships and destroying all three awards an Accolade. What about taking that idea and giving a rare chance for some additional content or mission to spawn on the ground map if we find it? It could be something as simple as a named “elite” mob that we’re used to from our fantasy MMOs (or I suppose the aforementioned capital ships would be essentially the same thing) to doing something similar to exploration deeds from Lord of the Rings Online where finding a certain number of special locations awards a new title.
More “Immersion”
In every non-Cryptic MMO if you run up against an object or terrain that is impassable, your character stops running. In Cryptic’s game’s he stops moving but remains stationary, stuck in whatever part of the running animation loop he was in. Really, is it that difficult to place the character in its standing pose if it can’t move? Along that same train of thought, I usually complain in MMOs that overly restrict character movement over certain terrain. LOTRO comes to mind for not letting me walk up what appears to be shallow incline, for example. For a change, I actually complain about the opposite in STO: terrain has to be darn near vertical before the game decides it’s too steep to run up or down. Perhaps a little more restriction, or better yet take a page from Age of Conan where running uphill slows you down a bit. Running through shallow ponds of water gives neither splashy sounds nor water ripple effects. Objects are motionless. Trees don’t sway in the breeze, yet they do in Champions Online. Some exploration missions have us scanning carnivorous plants but once we find them they’re simple 3D models with no animation. I got the same feeling playing Dungeons & Dragons Online as well where all the trees, etc. in Stormreach and surrounding areas were still and motionless, adding to the overall “dead” or static feel. The Class M planets we transport our away teams to rarely, if ever, have any indigenous life nor ambient sound to suggest any life. The ground maps are very small while Champions‘ zones shows the Cryptic Engine can indeed handle larger and more populated areas. Not only do STO’s ground maps need more to do there, they need more “there” there.
In space, sometimes I wonder if the sector’s couldn’t be larger. The “problem” is perhaps one of perspective, though. When Turbine describes a new zone they’re adding to Lord of the Rings Online they often compare the new zone’s size to the North Downs, one of the largest original zones the game shipped with. The thing with zone size on a ground-based game is terrain. You’re traveling up and down and side to side to traverse the terrain in that zone. In space, however, you fly more or less a straight path to your destination waypoint so it’s a much faster journey. Every time I think I want larger space sectors I log into my much lower-level alt with a much slower starship and change my mind. However, I do think some things could be improved to enhance our sense of “immersion.” Our ship’s bridge for starters. How many episodes of Trek have key scenes on the bridge of the starship? Responding to distress calls, engaging in diplomacy or hostilities with alien factions, or receiving assignments from Starfleet Command. All these are currently handled in the Mission Log, but could be just as easily transferred to the forward viewscreen while on our ship’s bridge. How about missions with classified instructions where Starfleet Command asks us to accept their transmission privately in our ready rooms on a secure channel? That was done countless times on television, and would make for an entertaining addition to the standard mission delivery system in STO. Then there’s the viewscreen itself. If we step into our ready room and look out the window, the stars are not moving but at least it’s a 3D environment. The bridge viewscreen is a simple 2D texture that is not only not animated, it screams “cheesy” more than anything this side of The Original Series ever could. It would be nice if there were more reasons to visit our bridge other than to display trophies or access the mission replay feature. Plenty of “content” occurred on the decks of the starships while traveling on television; it’s a shame there’s no content there in the game. Activities to keep us occupied while warping from place to place or additional means of storytelling and mission-giving would be welcome.
More Factions
If I recall, in addition to building more content for the existing Klingon Defense Force (KDF) faction, Cryptic is also working on a playable Romulan race which will likely be a third faction as well. The Federation has multiple playable races, reflective of the many civilizations who comprise the Federation. While we’re accustomed to simply thinking of Klingons alone in their own right, in the game the KDF faction is seven playable races. My personal preference is rather than just having Romulans alone as a third faction, introduce the Typhon Pact, which the Romulans are a key member of (and which they wish to dominate and rule over). This allows for not only extra playable races, including the Breen. Cryptic already mentioned they are working on the Breen costume system so we can roleplay certain missions as our Breen (and other) bridge officers rather than our normal characters. However, the Breen are a very xenophobic society comprised of many races and in public they all try to look and act alike, not showing any sense of individuality, which is why they’re totally covered up in their outfits and use the mechanical voice masking. That might clash with players’ natural desire to play “dress up” with our characters to avoid looking like a clone of every other character we see. Additionally, the Gorn are currently part of the playable KDF faction, though in Trek fiction the Gorn are another of the six races that formed the Typhon Pact. I’m no Trek expert by a longshot, but I thought the Klingons and Gorn were at war? Anyway, it might take a little playable race shuffling but having the Typhon Pact as a playable faction would not only give the game more variety and replayability but as any Dark Age of Camelot or Starcraft player will tell you, when it comes to PvP three factions can really make the game. If Cryptic ever gets their “PvP Conquest System” implemented in the game, having three factions vying for territorial expansion would make for a more interesting scenario than the generic Red vs. Blue we see too often. Throw in the additional NPC factions of the Borg and Undine to keep the PvP players off-balance and to provide additional content for the PvE-only players, and that all sounds like win-win to me.
More Music
Star Trek has been around for 45 years now and, while personally I could do without the psychadelic “bad acid trip” music from The Original Series, that still leaves music from all the films and television series from 1979 through the 2009 reboot movie. Yet it seems like there are only three or four tracks that repeat in the game. C’mon Cryptic, get CBS or Paramount to open up their soundtrack libraries for use in the game already. And while you’re at it, the deejays at the various starbases could use some variety to their playlists. Does one song in an infinite loop even equate to a playlist?
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