A week or so ago I decided to actually start playing one of those single player computer games. You know, like they used to make back in the old days before the Internet and MMOs and Farmville. For this bold adventure I chose Dark Messiah of Might and Magic, a slightly older title I had picked up for a pittance ($2.49) during last winter’s Steam sale.
I set all the controls to my personal and wacky preferences, then dove in. The opening level serves as a tutorial, instructing you on the basics of fighting (tip: kick, a lot), climbing ropes, mantling, using your handy night vision and so on. At the end I am treated to a cutscene in which the wizard Phenrig (who narrates your journey through the tutorial area) instructs you on your task, which is to journey to the city of Stonehelm and deliver a magic crystal because Plot Device {magic crystal}. Accompanying the protagonist will be a slinky spirit named Xana because this is a video game and the designers are obligated to include a ‘sexy babe’. As long as she doesn’t get in my way, I’m good.
I have not saved at this point because it’s just the tutorial. I expect the game to auto-save after the cutscene, when the story begins proper.
Instead the game crashes.
I have not tried playing since.
This is one of the reasons my backlog of single player games is immense.
Way back when I started what I didn’t know at the time was called a ‘Let’s Play’ I blogged about my first experience with The Sims 3 and the sim I had created, Ferris Wheele. After three posts I got sidetracked by work and a billion other things. I recently (and finally) completed the LP on Broken Forum, which is hosted by Scott ‘Lum the Mad’ Jennings. BF was revived in January 2012 as a refugee camp of sorts for people who had been banned from Quarter to Three or disagreed with the way the admin ran things there. One of the things Lum did differently on BF was to break up the games discussion more discretely. There are dedicated subforums for PC/console games, MMOs (understandable given Lum’s work in that particular area), traditional (board) gaming and the most recent addition was a Let’s Play section after several requests went out to have the few LPs gathered in one place.
The LPs took off, in no small part to Angie Gallant’s pigeon dating sim LP. This has brought out a veritable flood of people posting their experiences, largely in Japanese dating sims — but you can find everything from Master of Orion 2 to Minecraft, X-Com, Morrowind and even big rig and train simulators (with zombies!) It’s really quite neat and has given BF a distinct flavor to set it apart from Qt3.
I revived my Sims 3 experience and carried it through Ferris Wheele’s entire life. You can read the thread here. I’ll eventually bring it back over here. I’m planning another LP soon and it will also go to Broken Forum first then make its way back here. Have a look in on Ferris’s wacky life.
Here are a few more shots of some of my many City of Heroes characters.
Katanatron is a Katana/Ninjitsu stalker and has had many previous incarnations using different secondaries as a scrapper. Even though I have remade this character more often than most would change their socks, I’m confident this version is the one that will endure.
For now.
The previously linked Mint Laser, a Beam Rifle/Electric Manipulation blaster, now has a second more minty costume. Compare below!
And here’s an example of how ragdoll really isn’t working right in the game at the moment. That is one twisty torso.
GoG is not the only site having a sale as Steam rolled out its annual holiday offering yesterday. The sale runs until January 1st. Either my tastes have become more picky or I’ve already bought every damn game I want because two days into the sale and I have purchased nothing save for the DLC for Dungeons of Dredmor. It was on sale for 75% off, resulting in a price of 74 cents. Yes, 74 cents, less than the price of a cup of coffee (the go-to item for comparing how cheap something is).
There are a couple of titles I have my eye on that I will consider if the price is right but I’ve already passed on a lot of bargains. Who knew that Duke Nukem Forever would actually be released in 2011? Who knew that it would be such a crappy game that even a price of $4.99 isn’t low enough for me to check it out? Well, it’s possible some of the more honest developers who worked on the game had an inkling as to its relative value. I might bite at $2.49 (probably next summer’s sale price).
Other notable bargains I’ve passed on include Amnesia: The Dark Descent (by all accounts an excellent adventure game but also scary as all get-out and I play games to relax, not wind myself up), Quake 4 (wouldn’t mind having this on Steam but not for $9.99), The Witcher (already own it), various Half-Life 2 titles (own all of ’em, still haven’t finished Episode 1) and as they say, many more.
It’s clear people like their bargains, though, as the Steam store is still having intermittent issues and was mostly down over four hours after the sale started. Peak users was over 4.4 million. That’s a lot of people mulling over whether or not to buy Duke Nukem Forever at $4.99 (apparently quite a few did as it’s listed at #6 in today’s top 20 bestsellers).
Good Old Games is in the midst of its 50% holiday sale and I took the opportunity to pick up a game I had on my first PC back in the olden days of 1994 when PCs still came with floppy drives and monitors were massive 14 inch wonders.
That game is Lands of Lore: Throne of Chaos and when I first had it I made it all the way to the climactic battle against the evil Scotia but never quite finished the game. I’m not sure why. It may have been that I ended up getting a new PC and moving saved game files was sometimes a tricky thing back then. Or it could have been an obscure, game-stopping bug that was never patched (that was also a tricky thing back then. I still recall 1998’s Baldur’s Gate as being the only computer game I owned that truly and utterly defeated me. It would consistently crash 10-15 minutes in no matter what I did. I eventually gave up and shipped it off to a friend who, of course, played it without issue). Whatever the reason, I didn’t complete the game and used this as a handy excuse to justify the nostalgia in picking it up, knowing full well the chances of me completing it now were pretty darn slim.
Much to my surprise, once I set the game to windowed mode and shrank it down to 800×600 it ended up not looking too bad. The pixelated graphics are quite acceptable when shrunk down appropriately. Even better, the actual game is is easy to pick up. The interface is clean and straightforward and the copious voice work helps to compensate where the graphics falter. For example, most signs are just a bunch of VGA scribbles (unreadable) but clicking on one results in your party leader reading it aloud in a crisp tone. Handy!
I still don’t know how far I’ll get. As you can see in the shot below I am just starting out and only have one of the eventual three party members. At this point I’ve solved one simple puzzle, beat up an attempted thief, beat up a mean boar and had the castle guards tell me to get lost. Not bad but not exactly saving the world — yet!
I’ll follow up within a month’s time to report on whether the purchase (a whopping $2.99) boiled down to an hour or so of play or whether I’ve actually made real progress. Odds are it will be the former but every once in a while you can go back.
Combined, these threads add up to somewhere around 10,000 or more posts. That is a lot of words for one game. It currently rates 94 out of 100 for the PC version on Metacritic (96 and 92 for the Xbox 360 and PS3 versions, respectively) and has spawned no less than two annoying memes, making it the Portal of 2011 (even moreso than Portal 2, which also came out this year):
Do searches on these phrases, if you dare. The Internet will obligingly turn up many examples for you to enjoy(?).
The game is still listed at $59.99 which is way beyond my current gaming budget, plus I know that I wouldn’t do more than piddle about with it if I got it now, anyway, as I have a gaming backlog that stretches nigh unto infinity as is. Still, as a pop culture event, there is no denying Skyrim has left an impression. And made moneyhats for Bethesda.
I recently jumped back into City of Heroes as it’s gone free-to-play and my vet status meant most of the game’s features were unlocked right up front. CoH is an MMORPG that launched in April 2004 and as anyone who has played one of these games will tell you, MMOs are designed to be massive time sinks. It gets even worse because the typical $15 monthly fee makes you feel obligated to login and do something even if you don’t particularly feel like it because, dammit, you’re going to get your money’s worth! That’s what’s nice about free-to-play (F2P) — you can play as little or as much as you like and saunter along at your own pace. There are usually some things you can’t do without paying (obviously the publisher needs to generate revenue somehow) but it’s easier to fork over $5-10 whenever you feel like it instead of being on the hook for $15 every month or no super hero (or villain) for you!
The best part of the game is probably still the character creator. Here are a few I’ve made recently, as making endless alts is pretty much a required part of the CoH experience. I’ll elaborate a bit on the game’s current incarnation in another post.
Punch Bull
Punch Bull continues the fine tradition of names based on terrible puns. He’s a level 20 super strength/willpower brute. His specialty is punching things really hard. As you can see, his main costume is a boxing outfit, a raging bull, if you will. His tail wags.
Mint Laser
My latest in a series of robot-like characters, Mint Laser is a level 20 beam rifle/electric manipulation blaster. His specialty is shooting things with extremely loud beams of energy. If those things get up in his grill he can switch to punching them with glowing fists of electricity.
His second costume will be something delightfully retro (and extra minty).
Frank Lee Feathered
Finally (for the moment) there is Frank Lee Feathered, a level 14 plant control/earth assault dominator. I originally had given him wings but I found them a bit distracting, so while he looks like an eagle he acts more like an ostrich. Further underlining that is the fact that most of the earth powers require him to be on the ground to work. His second costume will probably have wings.
More on how these kooky characters play and what the game is like with the hybrid F2P/subscription model soon™.
I’m a sucker for random name generators and came across one that can convert your real name into an authentic* Star Wars one.
Below is the handy code/link the site provided by the site for my name. Yes, I am Giantdream Atotos. Atotos has a pleasant ring to it but I’m not convinced yet on Giantdream. And a clone? I wanted to be a bounty hunter. Bounty hunters are cool. Clones are not. Unless it’s a cool clone, in which case all of them would be cool.
This is cribbed from a couple of posts I made in this Quarter to Three thread but I may expand my picks further here.
Best Game that Works With a Gamepad But They Actually Mean an Xbox 360 Controller and Good Luck with Emulation and All the Voodoo Required to Get It Working With Your Logitech RumblePad and Oh Yeah Even With no Gamepad Connected it Flashes ‘Press Start’ on the Main Screen: Renegade Ops. Bonus: the keyboard/mouse controls are awful, too.
Best Alpha Game Investment This Year: Minecraft
The Why Do I keep Playing This Stupid Game, Anyway? Award: Bejeweled 2, which I play nearly every night on my iPhone when I go to bed.
I Never Knew I Could Get so Sucked Into a Portable Game Award (not counting Bejeweled 2): Dungeon Raid
Best MMORPG I Downloaded the Trial for But Never Actually Played: RIFT
Favorite Class in a Beta Test of Diablo III Before They Wiped All of My Characters *Again*: Monk. Huge electric kick to the face!
Blandest MMO Test That Still Has me Slightly Interested: Star Wars: The Old Republic
Lifetime Achievement Award for Worst-Looking Human Males in Any MMO or Possibly Any Game Ever: World of Warcraft
The You’re a Big Fat Liar Because You Promised Not to Add More Games to Your Backlog in 2011 and Did It Anyway Award: Me
Fuzziest Warm Feeling for Supporting An Indie Dev and the Game was Pretty Good, Too Award: Dungeons of Dredmor, made by the local Gaslamp Games.
Indie Game With the Name Most Likely to be Misspelled Award: Dungeons of Dredmor (not Dredmore/Dreadmore)
With the release of Minecraft 1.0 our little multiplayer group has started over on a new world based on the number 3. After establishing a main base of operations beneath a floating island we set out on individual projects. Circuit is building a giant house surrounded by Minecraft’s patented Wacky Water®, Q has been making rail lines in the sky in every direction, Postal is making his usual assortment of towers and castles and elf has burrowed underground where he has constructed a fiendishly efficient monster grinder. I’ll document all of those in a later post but for now, here’s my first big project.
I was inspired by Q’s pyramid on the last world so I built my own on a 64×64 grid on the desert not too far from our main area. When it was done I decided, like an unsatisfied Pharaoh, that it was too small, so I built another one beside it on a 128×128 grid. Having completed the second and massive pyramid I am beginning to understand why it too the ancient Egyptians twenty years and thousands of men to build these things — and mine was only made of pixels! On the other hand the ancient Egyptians never had to face creepers, either. The pyramid’s outer shell was completed with only two creeper incidents causing minor damage.
This is the view from the high point of the sky rail line that comes out to the pyramids.
To the left you can see a stone bridge and path connecting to the main base, with the rail line in the center of the shot. Next up will be the pyramid interiors and everyone else’s kooky stuff.
Minecraft is strangely soothing as you work out the most efficient ways to build silly things. And smiting creepers is always good fun, too.
Tonight I went bowling for the first time in a million years. Jeff, Jason and I went to Dell Lanes in Surrey (whose slogan sounds like a parody — “The future starts here”). Dell Lanes is part of the Dell Shopping Centre and features Dollar Giant, Al’s Vacuum Superstore and a check-cashing outlet among its retail jewels. Like most bowling alleys, Dell Lanes is below ground where the sound of pins being constantly knocked down will not upset the neighbors.
This was to be five-pin or sissy bowling, as I call it. I knew that such advance mockery would later come back to haunt me.
For some reason the interior of the bowling alley is done up like a disco. I mean, there are actual disco balls, colored lights, black light, everything you’d expect to see from Saturday Night Fever. And music, though not necessarily music. There was instead a digital jukebox, which looks somewhat like an old-style jukebox except it has an LCD screen, no records and probably costs a dollar a pop (I didn’t check). The maker of the jukebox was advertising on the screen to like them on Facebook and follow them on Twitter. Yes, I’m going to do that straight away. It also showed popular choices and it seemed the local folks favored “Jessie’s Girl” and a whole lotta country. We got to listen to Willie Nelson and Clint Black (the latter identified by Jeff). Yee and haw.
I bowled about as expected. Some gutter balls, hooking to the left so often I ended up overcompensating and hooking to the right. I think 5-pin may actually be tougher than 10. The balls are lighter and there are fewer pins but the pins are spread apart further and it seems easier to knock over just one without convincing any of the others to follow along.
Jeff, who said beforehand that he might get one strike per game, opened with a strike. This proved not to be beginner’s luck as he went on to amass an impressive score of 187 in the first game. I managed 110 and Jason was right behind with 108. I should point out that Jason is eight years old. Yes, I was almost beaten by someone who was born the same year Iraq was invaded.
First game scores:
Jeff – 187
Me – 110
Jason – 108
Jeff and Jason cooled off for round 2 while I improved a statistically insignificant amount:
Jeff – 153
Me – 116
Jason – 33
Once the official games were over, Jason improved remarkably, getting several strikes. He nearly threw the ball about a half dozen times while the pins were being reset, though. To his credit, his reflexes were fast enough to stop (except once, but the speed of the ball was just right, so the pins reset just as it arrived).
Jeff, meanwhile, seemed to favor a ‘launch the ball into the air and let it crash onto the alley’ approach. It actually seemed to work, too. None of us managed to go down the alley with ball in hand, so I consider the evening an overall success.
The pizza was entirely decent, too.
I’d like to think I’d do better at ten-pin (more stuff to knock over) but I know I’d probably goof up on that as much as with the 5-pin. No matter, bowling is silly and fun and that’s all that matters.
