Have Clue - Will Travel - Gaming

Cowboy Bebop, the Game

dhankins@mercenary.net (David W. Hankins) — Fri, 09 May 2008 10:45:57 -0700

I started playing EVE Online again, which for the two of you that don't know is very much like a Freelancer MMO (but without space-flight-sim controls), or as I prefer to think of it, like Cowboy Bebop - the game. For those that don't even get those references; it's a space game. You fly ships around, blow stuff up, trade, research, mine, build, upgrade, all that.

They've got a promotion I guess where they hand out 14-day free trials to friends; if you convert to a paying customer then I also get 14 free days. So let me know if you want to give it a shot.

It's cool because I can log in for just 30 minutes and get something done and get out without a lot of fuss. It's good to hang with people, but not people you don't know/trust, so the game is very lenient on 'solo' play...no wasting hours trying to find a 'party' just to get something done. Most missions really assume you're playing alone. There are, as with many games, some frustrating points, but nothing overly tiresome for me. The learning curve is rather steep, and there are a great deal of 'kids' hanging around to be ignored.

But for example one day I might be running missions, cleaning up the galaxy one bad guy at a time, and another day I might be psuedo-afk-mining an asteroid field while watching TV or whatnot. The other day, I was poking around the market, and found a guy buying some stuff called "Kernite" for 500 ISK (the game currency) per, and usually (these days) sells for more like 260-300 ISK...so I made the trip and cleaned up 4 mil. ISK...quite a good haul for just a few short jumps.

PVP is permissible in the entire game world, but you can avoid it effectively by just sticking to the "high security" solar systems.

The biggest advantage to the game, and the best design decision, is that there is no XP, and no classes. The analogue are skill points, which accrue even when you are not in the game towards some skill you've selected to improve (or train anew). You sort of make your own class by training the skills you want/use. The wonderful side effect of this is that "playing the game more" does not "speed up progression." So the usual disease I have with MMO's - where I find that I want to stay online for multiple hours to get "the next level" - is vapor. I can stay logged in, I can log out, and either way I get the next level on the same schedule. So I have less trouble logging out. Playing the game more does get you more cash, but cash becomes markedly less useful without skills to use the stuff you might buy.

One more subtle design decision is that everything in the game is made out of some number of minerals. So unlike other MMO's where better stuff comes out in patches and drives prices of old gear down to nothing, you retain a lot of the value of your purchase (but there is still a supply/demand curve). You're always guaranteed that your equipment will be worth as much as you can recycle it back into minerals, and as everything, even new gear in new patches, are made from these minerals, there's always a good demand for them (in fact, it's what makes mining profitable).

Anyway, I'm having a lot of fun with it.

Sins of a Stardock Empire

dhankins@mercenary.net (David W. Hankins) — Mon, 11 Feb 2008 10:56:30 -0800

There's this 4x game, and I'm sort of a 4x genre guy, but I find instead of really wanting to go and buy what looks like an excellent game that I'm showing remarkable restraint against their pretty graphics, their promises of galactic conquest in real time.

The reason is: Stardock is its publisher. I don't want to give them my money if I can help it.

That's a strange opinion to have, so let me see if I can explain it. Once upon a time, Stardock were the champions of the PC gaming culture. They shook off the reigns of their oppressors and deigned to sell their products without the assorted viral hangers-on which promised to safeguard video game profits. I'm talking about copy protection. Stardock never had any, or when they did, it had a builtin expiration date. They said into the microphone, "We seek customers whom we will not affront.", and it rang around the world.

There was applause. There were lots of game purchases. There were more than a few parties.

And life was good, and the games were great.

Until I got a piece of unsolicited commercial email...spam, I'm talking about spam here...sourced from their headquarters, but not referring to any one of their products. I can't even remember if the advertised product was computer related. Evidently by buying one of their products, at a time when they did not have a checkbox that said "sign me up for spam", I had been automatically entered to win periodic spam emails from them on behalf of other companies that were paying them for the service. This is in 2005! There is no excuse of unawareness anymore. Nor did they think so either. There were apologies, there were excuses ("it was the new guy"), and there were promises it would never be done again. There were assurances ("we've sent someone over with weapons to 'sort them out'").

And then when they created a new 'free newsletter' category for "3rd party games promotions", they elected to sign me up to some opt-out mailing list without asking. Again. This time without apologies, nor excuses, nor promises. This is now de rigeur, it seems. But opt-out is just as spammy as the regular kind. Worse on many levels.

I cannot justify lubricating these engines of war by patronizing its architects, no matter how aromatic the bait.

Prince of Persia: the Rival Swords

dhankins@mercenary.net (David W. Hankins) — Wed, 07 Nov 2007 18:47:04 -0800

I nearly thought this game was one to buy...I played it two days ago on the Wii and was most impressed. I liked the way the prince was stealthy, and light on his feet, it was entertaining to put him through his paces...

I was convinced this was a game I had to own, but as usual wanted to check the value poposition; 12-15 hours the reviewers say, to complete this game. That's under my 'rental' threshold, so I held the game a few days to play it through.
Continue reading "Prince of Persia: the Rival Swords"

Manhunt 2

dhankins@mercenary.net (David W. Hankins) — Thu, 01 Nov 2007 08:13:59 -0700

Watchdogs are going a little nuts over Manhunt 2. I have a few friends and coworkers who might be a bit sensitive to the subject, so I wanted to do my part to keep this in perspective.

What you need to know is, "These aren't the droids you're looking for. Move along."
Continue reading "Manhunt 2"

A loss in our Console Family

dhankins@mercenary.net (David W. Hankins) — Fri, 26 Oct 2007 11:37:40 -0700

The Red Ring of Death

I regret to report that last night at 7pm, our XBOX 360 received the "Red Ring of Death" so commonly reported in the media.

It is survived by Chromehounds, Ridge Racer, Crackdown (which was with it when it died), and 30% of our old original XBOX games (the other 70% were estranged and now live in exile in the garage, along with grampa XBOX, due to reverse compatibility problems).

It would have been funny, on a different day I guess, that I wound up watching television...where I was entreated to an advertisement for the 360. "We have the games you want to play." Evidently.

Microsoft has informed me that funeral services will commence anywhere between 10 and 15 business days from now. At least they provide the coffin free of charge. The services will complete anywhere from 2 to 4 weeks after the commencement.

They really know how to drag this sort of pain out.

We're just content that it died happy - it was summoning a Crackdown agency car when it froze up.

The Evils of MySims

dhankins@mercenary.net (David W. Hankins) — Thu, 27 Sep 2007 09:53:43 -0700

I haven't spent any 'quality time' with our widescreen TV ever since MySims was released. Every night, Yifun is on it, building houses and castles, collecting essences which are kind of like paint patterns, and assembling furniture from wooden looking blocks (using the Wiimote to point it all out, like some kind of motion sensing AutoCAD, except very very cute). Then doing it all over again with new blueprints, color patterns and combinations, and sims to move in to harvest their 'quests' for blueprints, their 'conversation' for different essences, and their 'friendships' for clothing.

You'll all have to let me know if there's been anything good on, or how the next episodes of Doctor Who and Torchwood go. I guess we've Tivo'd the NCIS season opener, which will be good to see after last season's cliffhanger. Don't tell me, I want it to be a surprise when I get around to seeing it in 2012.

Gamefly just got a lot better in my eyes - evidently when they get a notice from the post office that the return envelope is in the mail, they send out the next game right away (before they receive the old one) sometimes. So Two Worlds is winging its way to us, which I might play sometime when the Wii finally gives up from sheer MySims exhaustion...did I say 2012? Darned solid state gizmos. If Gamez'n'Flix did that, and reliably, it might have made the difference for keeping us. At least then we'd get a game every weekend, even if we didn't play one every weekend.

I'm on Chapter 8 of 11 of Brave Story: New Traveler, so I guess I'll be putting that to bed soon, and with all three consoles and the TV "spoken for" at this juncture, I guess that means I'll be looking for a new DS or another one of the rare breed of PSP games that have decent loading times.

Brave Story: New Traveler

dhankins@mercenary.net (David W. Hankins) — Mon, 24 Sep 2007 13:18:07 -0700

My wife has a brand new PSP-2000 (or "PSP Lite" as it has been called), a purple one, coming home to roost this week sometime. She rationalizes our having two PSP's by suggesting that the second one, that is the old "non-lite" one, is now mine. This is the way of things.

Brave Story: New Traveler is a PSP game we got through Gamefly this week. I spent the weekend playing it... and I'm hooked. First, I have to explain that this is the first PSP game I've ever seen that doesn't have a hideous load time introduced every five seconds. This is probably because I haven't played any PSP games, entirely because of suspicions of similarly hideous load times which were visited upon us in some of this handheld's earlier titles. Second, it has to be said that somehow the people who wrote this game were targeting not just me specifically, but my whole family, as a demographic. It's really spooky.
Continue reading "Brave Story: New Traveler"

Resistance: Fall of Man, Chromehounds, Midway

dhankins@mercenary.net (David W. Hankins) — Thu, 13 Sep 2007 15:29:26 -0700

Resistance: Fall of Man on the PS3...I didn't actually complete this title...I just got far enough into it that progressing felt like a death march. I tried all the weapons. I wasn't terribly impressed. The sniper rifle was quite a lot of fun tho. It's been a long time since I've played a game that didn't do the 'head bobbing' thing with the sniper rifle. At the same time, there weren't a lot of opportunities to stand out, in the open, and take careful shots. There was this moment, tho, when the game moves you through a kind of auditorium. You're at one entrance, the enemy are running down the stairs at the far entrance, and there's nothing but hiding spots. It's you versus seven of them or so. Out comes the sniper rifle - you zoom it up, pop out from behind cover, engage the 'bullet time', and take out 2-3 enemies in super slo-mo, watching their shots fly towards you, then pop back behind cover just as they spray the wall behind you. I don't know if it's fun or not, but it was certainly satisfying.

With our 360 hooked up to the Intertubes finally, I tried a bit of Chromehounds online. I think this game had a lot of potential online. I don't know if it would have been better back when the game was new - but now everyone playing has these ultra cheap hounds, with the spacers used to make crazy bendy twisty turns so it's impossible to land a hit, and impossible to survive more than three hits. I wouldn't complain normally, it's just game mechanics, but in this case these kids are making hounds where the 'cockpit' of their mecha is totally hidden by weapons. Hows their crazy little monkey supposed to see out to drive? It just ruins the sense of immersion for me, and turns it into Quake except with designer armor. I'd rather fight an epic battle against mechs that...look like mechs.

This was a bit more of a letdown than normally, since my other serious mech game, Steel Battalion, can no longer be played. It's that old Xbox game with the crazy two-joysticks, lots of buttons, and footpedals controller. There's no backwards compatibility for it with the 360. Retiring this title to our garage, where the Xbox now lives, I took some time to go through our Xbox games. 70% of our games are now out in the garage. Of them, I'm probably most broken up about Robotech: Invasion. This was an Invid Invasion timescale Robotech game (running around in a Cyclone armor - fun!), that played a lot like Halo or Star Wars: Republic Commando. Fortunately, Republic Commando is on the compatibility list, so at least I still get to toy with that.

So I spent the rest of my downtime last night playing the new Midway multiplayer demo on Xbox Live. It was great fun - the controls are so byzantine that new players can't figure it out. I had great fun with this, tearing up newbies, until that is they figured out how the controls worked and faught back. Possibly won't be a favorite title of mine, but the demo is at least engaging.

Resident Evil 4 for the Wii just shipped from our Gamefly account. Can't wait to see how that plays. I just sent Resistance back, so we'll see what ships next from that...if it's not Metroid Prime 3, I may have to break down and buy that title.

Wii Friend Codes

dhankins@mercenary.net (David W. Hankins) — Tue, 11 Sep 2007 14:33:04 -0700

Our Wii's friend code should be on the right sidebar of this blog, but I'll go ahead and paste it here anyway; 3964 7647 5445 6160

Leave a comment here with your code and put our code in your addressbook. If we know who you are, we'll add in your code too.

No sooner...

dhankins@mercenary.net (David W. Hankins) — Wed, 05 Sep 2007 09:10:41 -0700

No sooner have I written a glowing review of Gamez'n'Flix, than we have canceled our subscription. They shutdown the west coast distribution center, so now our games and movies take weeks (2!) to reach us after we return them.

Back to GameFly we go.

Where's the fun in that?

dhankins@mercenary.net (David W. Hankins) — Tue, 28 Aug 2007 08:59:08 -0700

I was marveling, recently, at the gyrations of an Obsidian Entertainment employee, who was trying (again) to quell public outcries that their line of games - rooted ancestrally in Baldur's Gate and leading through "Neverwinter Nights" 1 and now 2 - are on the decline. BG was fun! Everyone who played it, loved it. Its "spiritual successor" NWN 1 did not seem to meet it. NWN 2, did not even meet that poor showing.

It's kind of sad to watch. A community, in love with an original Intellectual Property like BG. A developer, trying their damndest to live up to those expectations...and failing...and then blaming the community for failing to assess their gyrations as "brand new games" rather than sequels. All the while, it feels like the worth of the original property is diminished with every iteration of the machine.

So what's going on here? Why isn't NWN fun?
Continue reading "Where's the fun in that?"

State of the Games

dhankins@mercenary.net (David W. Hankins) — Fri, 17 Aug 2007 09:00:00 -0700

Here's a brief rundown on the state of my gaming - what I'm playing, what's queued, what I'm looking forward to. I'll also do a "what's worthwhile on the Wii" bit, for friends and family that have just acquired one.
Continue reading "State of the Games"