Tyranny of Heaven [ToH]

Sadly, I really haven't had much time to play MMOs. Been spending a lot of time doing other things — reading books, watching movies, playing console games. Yeah, yeah, blasphemous idea coming from an avid PC gamer.

I never heard of Prototype until a week before its release, when I saw some news about it on Steam. After watching a trailer or two, it really sparked my interest. However, instead of buying it on Steam, I opted to buy it for the PS3. For one thing, I didn't really want to download it as it would probably take a day or two. (It would also mean I'd have to back it up if I didn't want to download it again in the future.) Another reason is that for certain classes of games, I much prefer a gamepad/console controller. RTSs, FPSs (and other types of shooters) are games that I usually must insist on playing on a PC, but Prototype, being an open-world urban sandbox type game (like GTA, Assassin's Creed, etc.), is best played on a console, I felt.

Anyway, I finished Prototype in a few weeks. I had a lot of fun and the story was pretty engaging. I still play it once in a while to unlock more stuff. I'm also trying to finish it in hard mode, though I doubt I could do it. (Some of the boss fights were pretty tough at normal... I guess I haven't figured out the secret to them yet.)

I bought Assassin's Creed yet again for the PS3 this time. I got utterly bored by it on the 360. It won't be any different on the PS3, but at least this time I'm just not going to bother with all the side missions. The AC2 trailer got me excited and I felt I had to finish AC, or at least know how it ended. So I spoiled myself by reading about it at Wikipedia... but that only made me want to actually play it to finish it.

As I mentioned, I've barely touched EVE and WAR. All my characters in EVE are doing some long training. (And sadly, like a noob, I managed to lose my miner's battleship in a mission. At least it was relatively cheap...) My industry character has been busily inventing/building stuff — but not in the weekly volumes that she used to.

WAR has been boring me, but that's probably because I don't really dedicate much time to it. But as I've mentioned before, PvP as endgame only really works if there's a sizable population and if the factions are relatively balanced. Open RvR has died down a bit, probably because Destruction is always getting dominated. But the future might be brighter since our low-pop server was effectly merged ("highly encouraged" transfers) to a new server. I tried it out a few nights ago and it was pretty crazy.

And then there's the new class balance in the upcoming patch. It might make things a bit more enjoyable. Or maybe it won't. I'll see. I had high hopes for WAR... and though it didn't disappoint me technically, I am disappointed that none of my friends play/enjoy it and that it suffers from population problems. And as I tell my friends, MMOs aren't monogamous relationships. If WAR dies down, I'll happily move on. I had my fun, and hopefully WAR's innovative ideas live on in future MMOs.

And sadly, all the summer MMOs I was looking forward to trying were pushed back to at least September. Jumpgate Evolution, Champions Online. I also ended up trying out Aion beta, and as little as I saw, I wasn't that impressed. (WoW and WAR made really big impressions on me like within the first 10 minutes.) There doesn't seem much that sets it apart. It touts itself as a PvP game, but PvP didn't seem accessible to lowbies. (WAR has me spoiled there.) Oh well. The art and graphics are nice though.