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Jan 8th, 2011 at 21:50:17 - Darwinia (PC) |
Darwinia is a neat little game. If I have to pick a game that it reminds me of most, it's Lemmings, and if I have to pick a genre, it's RTS, yet it's very unique and only vaguely resembles the above. The goal of the game is to destroy these computer viruses that are taking over Darwinia, a computer program with little digital living beings called Darwinians. The scientist who created Darwinia guides you through the game, offering help and telling you what you need to do to help the Darwinians and eliminate the viruses.
Basically, it's a game about troop movement and capturing points on the map. Right now I can create 3 unit types: squads that shoot stuff, engineers that capture stuff, and generals (or commanders or something) that lead Darwinians to points on the map. The viruses are little Snake(the phone game)-like creatures, and then there are beefier ones that are like Centipede and some giant spider-like ones. You can tell the scientist to work on upgrading things like laser gun range, number of units in a squad, or number of "programs" you can run at once. When you begin a level, you run "programs," which are your units or groups of units. So at the beginning of the game, you have three available programs, and might choose two squads and an engineer. You run around the level and kill viruses with the squad, and the engineers can collect their souls, which are the souls of devoured Darwinians, and can turn the souls in at a particular building to produce Darwinians, which you then usually have to save by moving them somewhere using a leader-type Darwinian. The path-finding in the game can be annoying sometimes when units get stuck on some piece of geometry or walk into death walls and explode...but all other AI seems good so far. Using the general leader types to rally the Darwinians is also slow and boring because you have to move the leader near to the Darwinians to get them to move to the rally point, and Darwinians naturally drift apart, and running up mountains is slow, so you can spend a lot of time trying to grab the Darwinians, get them all moved to a certain point, and then by the time you do that, they've began drifting again. But I imagine I'll get faster at it.
So your squad goes and kills things, and your engineers come behind to capture power buildings. These will power satellites, the soul generator things that spit out Darwinians, and warp gates. If you open a warp gate, it opens up a new level. Satellites allow you to transport around the map. Then you can also pick up Research, which so far has netted me the ability to toss grenades and assign the general role. That's really about it. It's basic, but engrossing. I hope there will be some puzzles or something difficult that makes me think how to move forward.
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Jan 7th, 2011 at 23:20:39 - Super Columbine Massacre RPG (PC) |
I played this about two weeks ago and never made an entry, but have been thinking about the game, mostly because I keep getting these creeping feelings daydreaming about the shootings. I imagine games, movies, books, etc. about a specific event in time and place elicit all kinds of different responses depending on the biography of the person interacting with it. When Columbine happened, I was in high school. I remember watching news footage the day of. I remember the school intruder drills we started having. Code for a shooter in the building was that the principal would come on the intercom and tell the teachers "Teachers, please bring your red folders to the office." There were other codes for like green and yellow, but I remember those drills. It's one thing to have a practiced drill for natural disasters, but quite another feeling knowing you're preparing for the event of a rampaging person. Anyway, simply being a high school student at that time made Columbine a salient event for me. Then also being a high school student who wore baggy clothes and long hair, looked different than most kids, listened to some of the music the shooters did, all made me somewhat empathize with them. I mean, I always thought they were crazy, but I always hated how the news portrayed the kids as such products of their media consumption. I could go on and on, but this all set the tone of the game for me.
I downloaded this after having read a whole lot of entries here and having read about it various other places online. It's pretty much what I expected gameplay-wise and story-wise, but what hit me like a freight train was after you plant the bombs in the cafeteria and go wait on the hill for them to go off. The bombs don't detonate, so the two boys go into the school armed. When I entered the school and saw the students and staff walking the halls, I had this moment. Nothing in the game was happening except NPCs moving and me standing in the hallway. The only way to advance is to open fire. I thought, woah, I am supposed to kill these people. If I want to play the game, I have to kill a bunch of kids and teachers. And I thought that I didn't want to kill them, and I wonder how someone could reach that point where they walk into a school and say, yes, I want to kill all these people, and I have the means, and I'm going to do it. I mean, imagine it. There's no way I could ever think that.
So the game does a good job of showing hypothetically and from stories and journals and things snippets of the boys' everyday lives, their hanging out, their jobs, their planning, their hatred, their hobbies. This is what I felt the game did best. It brings the boys down to earth. But it can only go so far before delving into pure speculation of the insides of their heads, where it doesn't go, which is good. News media never bothered to go as far as this game did in presenting the boys. It stops at, oh, they listen to Marilyn Manson and play Doom. This is violent media. This is anti-religious media. This is evil media that corrupts our youth and causes them to shoot up their school. Simply not true. There's a really good interview he gave with Bill O'Reilly on him and his music and his outlook on his influence on people. Snoop Dogg also has a good one in that series too. The music in the game was fantastic, the 8-bit Nirvana and such. The conversation between the boys I felt was really well done. I don't know what was from journals and what was made up, but I feel like it's a hell of a lot more representative of them than any news outlet would try to be. And this goes a lot farther than just Columbine of course. The same ideas this game presents, its argument for re-evaluating claims of media influence and such, are applicable to anything else that gets blamed on media, other shootings and violent acts, teen pregnancy, drug use, ADD, all the more believable and the more bizarre correlates.
Say you blame Marilyn Manson and Nirvana and Rammstein and whatever for this violence. Really, most people aren't aware that there are a million worse things out there that anyone can easily get their hands on. I listened to some of that in high school, Korn and Limp Bizkit and Marilyn Manson and whatnot, and thought that that music was the most badass heavy stuff available. Later I discovered all kinds of metal and hardcore music, and now I listen to a lot of black metal, a lot of which is satanic and certainly anti-religious, and other death metal or grindcore which is over-the-top violent and disgusting. That stuff doesn't get on the radio and so people aren't aware of it! While the news is busy talking about how bad Nine Inch Nails were (I remember this segment) saying "I want to fuck you like an animal," Cannibal Corpse was and is talking about necrophilia and other seriously messed up stuff. Which is worse? Is either one even bad? Is it okay to sing about this stuff? Does it corrupt youth? What does that even mean? This is one thing I think about whenever I hear someone railing on Marilyn Manson or whoever on the radio, and I think about how ignorant that person probably is of the vastness of media.
I'm glad this game was made. I don't find it insensitive. I find it a useful entrant into the conversation of media effects and violence in particular, angry youth, religion, gun control, all kinds of stuff that people should be thinking about. Think about how this game could be an argument for gun control laws. Those two boys have all the power because they have weapons. This is reflected in the battles that are so easy. You just blast your way up and down the halls. The jocks don't have a chance, the teachers don't have a chance, and the religious kids just pray. You can read about how the boys acquired all their weapons, and if you should think that's problematic. No one should be able to acquire and stockpile weapons like that. What need? Manson has a part in some interview, I can't remember which one, where someone asks him what he would have said to the Columbine shooters. He says something like "I wouldn't have said anything. I would have listened to them because that seems like the problem. No one listened to them."
Super Columbine Massacre is not a great game, but I find it important nonetheless. I quit playing after I got to the hell level because it actually got hard. The end.
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Dec 12th, 2010 at 03:41:10 - World of Warcraft: Cataclysm (PC) |
Cataclysm is awesome. I had planned on not buying it until after winter break, but I ended up caught up in the fervor of release, and I was there when the servers all flipped. Patrick and I left work early to see it. One of James' employees took a WEEK of hard-earned vacation time for release. I'm sure there are far crazier stories.
It's hard to describe the mood of a virtual world on the eve of such an important event like an expansion release. Imagine a thousand players in several capital cities, all together, all are as excited as can be, talking, yelling, some just in game chat, some on VoIP with their friends and guilds, many having parties at their houses, riding elephants and dragons and motorcycles and flying carpets through the virtual cities, and all waiting, waiting for the server message that Cataclysm is now live. I was downright giddy. When the 3:00 server time passed without event, some people started calling doomsday. Some got even more excited that something unexpected would happen. Some logged off and went to bed. I couldn't get up from the computer. I had see what an expansion going live was like. The best way I can sum it up is like there was a mania on the servers.
As soon as Cataclysm went live, most people took off with their favorite level 80 character to the new zones, Vashj'ir and Mount Hyjal, to sprint the road to 85. Some people took off to master archaeology. Some took off to simply fly around the newly destroyed and refashioned old world. Some started new Goblin or Worgen characters to experienced the new starting areas and the entire rest of the revamped Azeroth. Some logged off and went to bed.
I went straight out to Hyjal with some guildies and me and every other player were cruelly reminded of life on a PvP server. On Boulderfist, the Horde outnumber the Alliance something stupid like 7:1, but this is the reason I enjoy playing Alliance here. I'm always outnumbered, which makes everything feel like more of an accomplishment. And it really is too, when you can successfully quest in an area with 10 Horde and live, avoiding being attacked, sticking with your friends, playing smart. I'm reminded of what I love about PvP servers. I've listened to a lot of people bitching in chat the last week about how it's so unfair and that Blizzard fails to make good server balance and that Horde are jerks and on and on. Most peoples' response is "you rolled on a PvP server. If you don't like it, transfer to PvE." The time immediately post expansion is the best for PvP servers because you're forced into close proximity with players from the other faction and it is damn exhilarating. I like knowing that I could be attacked any second. I like watching my back and feeling like I'm in a dangerous area. To me, that's the point of a PvP server. You can be attacked anywhere, any time, and you need to be ready. As such, I'm leveling my paladin with Patrick's warlock. Then for solo, I'm leveling my rogue. It would kind of suck to level anything alone and that couldn't go invisible. Suffice it to say, I've been having a blast playing with so many people.
I'm going to be sad once everyone's all 85 again and everyone's back to farming raids and people are more scarce out and about. I expect that will be more the case when I come back from break in a month. The road to 85 is a short one. The world first took 5 hours only, and our server first was within 18. I'm 100% confident I could level 80-85 in one day. For reference, I leveled my priest on a PvE server just to feel the difference from PvP. She was rested and I went from 80-81 in an hour and 15 minutes. So yeah, it's fast. The thing is though, I don't want to burn all my characters through because I don't want to be stuck at 85 farming forever. This is what I've come to realize over years of playing this game, and now after two expansion packs, having done the two end-game activities extensively. I don't want to raid the same instance over and over, and I don't want to run the same battlegrounds over and over. It gets old and it's a lot of time spent. When I think back at how much time I spent raiding this last expansion pack across four different characters, I realize a lot of that I didn't really want to be doing. I ended up doing a lot of raiding just to see things from another class's point of view, which really isn't necessary anymore because I've done it now. The same thing with PvP. I've done it. What am I going to do at 85 this expansion pack? I've no desire to do anything 'hardcore' ever again on more than one character. But this paragraph has taken a turn from its purpose...which is that all the endless raiding and farming makes the world a dead place because everyone is in instances chasing gear, something I'm tired of doing.
So what's left? My natural response is to say, well I'll pick one raiding character and then just play casually with the rest. It'll take some dedication to ONLY playing the one raid character because I tend to like to help my friends out when they need a character for this or that role in this or that dungeon or raid, but I don't want to wind up spending so much time doing the same thing slightly differently as I don't feel that the different experience is worth the time invested. I've got other games to play, work to do, places to go, people to hang out with, etc, etc. Basically, WoW ate a lot of time in the last year and a half especially that I should have reigned in. I recognize this looking back, and want to just streamline my play in the future.
To try to plan it out, I spent some time outlining who to level and what to do with them. Since leveling has turned out to take no time whatsoever (relatively), I'd like to bring up at least 3 characters to play around with at 85. The paladin will definitely be my raider. The rogue I definitely want to get good at PvP with. Then I had a choice between warrior, priest, and druid. The druid is at 70, so would have to go through Northrend again, which I won't do any time soon. I played with the other two some, and the priest is a good choice because she's ranged, and Patrick wants to play with her, but she needs a server and faction change, which costs $$ that I don't have. The warrior is tempting just because dual wielding 2-handed weapons is sick and you can turn yourself into a dragon that another player can mount if you're an alchemist, which she is. I already will have 2 melee classes and 1 of them that dual wields though, so I may pass. The key to reigning in play time is just figuring out what I need to do to play the game I want to play it and do the things I want to do in it, and then not ending up doing a ton extra. I can do it!
It's only been 5 days and I've been having a blast. I'm glad the new zones are so much fun. Vashj'ir in particular is very innovative. The whole zone is under water, which sounds like a bad idea, but they somehow made it awesome. This is immeasurably improved by the ability to ride a seahorse mount. PvPing underwater is a new experience too. They should totally make an underwater battleground. It reminds me of this game I played, Shattered Horizon, where you're in space and players can fly around you 360 degrees. Being under water is like that. If someone attacks you, the first thing you figure out is from where. Hyjal is cool too. Pacing of quests and quests themselves are improved and more fun, and the mini-stories that tie them together are more interesting than ever. The new archaeology skill is boring to do, but it's neat to piece together artifacts, and the curiosity I feel to see what I discover at higher levels will keep my interest for a while. The new dungeons are pretty fun, especially the Vortex one. There are some neat new boss battles, like this dragon who randomly speeds up or slows down the party as the 'winds' shift direction. I've been healing a few on the paladin, and healing is still really fun, made more so by several new paladin heals, which means I'm no longer just pushing 2 buttons all the way through an instance. I have to think a lot more about which spell I'm casting, on whom, and where I'm standing now. I like it a lot. I'm sad that all my ICC epics are getting replaced so quickly. All the time and effort people put into raiding the last content tier was fun in and of itself, but the tangible rewards are going to be almost all gone by 85. I think I've replaced about half my gear by 83. This reinforces for me that people who raid just for loot are somehow misguided. The loot goes away. The guilds and relationships don't (as much).
Guild levels are my favorite new thing. When you do quests and other things, you are rewarded with guild reputation, and this all goes toward a massive guild experience pool. Once the guild collectively gains enough experience, it levels up, and at each level, there are guild-wide perks. Most guilds are level 2 now, which means everyone in that guild gets a +5% bonus to experience for faster leveling. At level 3, it's +10% mount speed. Level 4 I think is +5% reputation gains for factions. And on and on to 25. It's a very cool system, and you get reputation with your guild that goes toward purchasing rewards that the guild as a whole unlocks through obtaining levels and guild achievements, which are like regular achievements, but gotten collectively, such as running dungeons as a guild or winning rated battlegrounds as a guild. It really promotes people working together and forming relationships in-game, but I could see how people who just enjoy playing alone could feel screwed out of rewards just because of play preference. Just join a guild and don't talk to anyone, I say. GW is almost level 3, probably will be by the time I play next. I do hope that it takes a reasonably long time to get to 25 and that guilds aren't 25 in just a few months. I think it should take like a year on average because it should be a really big deal for a guild to get achievements.
So, yes, Cataclysm is awesome. I've had my crazy amounts of play time for the past few days and now it's time to cut it out so I can finish the semester in style and then go hang out in the US for a month. I will see you again, Cataclysm, for another round at the end of January.
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Dec 5th, 2010 at 09:39:51 - Resident Evil 5 (PC) |
Resident Evil was short. The game clocked me just over 11 hours. Batman didn't have a clock but I'm pretty sure I got another 5 or so out of it, like 15-20 total. So two short but excellent games this week. I will never understand why people buy these at full price for like $50-$60. That's like paying $5 an hour to play. Unless you're a person who plays the same game over and over, unlocks every single thing (I finished Batman with 84% completion and RE5 with 25%!), or just has to have it now, why pay so much? Wait and grab it for $10 or less a year later. Batman's replay value is fairly limited as shown by my 84% in one playthrough. RE5 must count multiple plays toward 100% or something. It has a New Game + feature to start over with all your current equipment. I've got to play something that lasts longer next time, which will be approximately 1.5 months from now. I doubt I'll start anything new before then, just play around with some online games and go through some demos I have. Cataclysm comes out this week and I'll play some of that before I leave. It was fun to burn through these two this week though. I'm glad I got two good ones. They made for a good week of gaming.
So RE5 was an edge-of-your-seat action/shooter game. It really never lets up and I am not surprised I was able to sit and play it in two sessions because I was totally into it. The story after 5 RE games and countless little spinoffs was fairly straightforward in the standalone, but you can unlock backstory files and read some documents throughout the game, and man, there are just tons of characters and events and places spanning like 50 years of fiction. It's a lot. So luckily you don't need to know everything about RE to understand what's going on. They did a good job with story-telling. After 5+ games, you'd think they'd be good at it.
The boss battles were sufficiently epic and creative. One involved calling down a satellite laser beam to strike this giant mutated girlfriend of the bad guy who turned into a sea monster on a giant ship. Another one involved manning machine guns and rocket launchers. Another involved using a flamethrower to torch a monster. Another involved a little bit of stealth to cut power to lights and keep the boss in the dark so he couldn't dodge your bullets (and rockets). I very much enjoyed the bosses, and only kind of got stuck on one. Turns out I wasn't doing it very efficiently and ran out of ammo, but you couldn't finish without ammo. Some fights are very memorable.
RE5's regularly set up battles are great too. It generally starts with an enemy noticing you or you opening a door or gate or something that triggers it. The music picks up and enemies come swarming out of ceilings and doors with ever more deadly weapons. It's great because you can't just go crazy with your best gun. You've got to conserve your ammo by getting close to melee sometimes or using that weak gun over the strong one to save for a tough enemy. I usually loaded out with at least a shotgun and a sniper rifle, and I gave my sidekick a pistol and a machine gun. It worked pretty well as I good blast from up close and afar, and she handled the midrange. There's a nifty cover system that appears later in the game once the mutants get armed. Popping out to snipe is always fun.
RE had a surprising amount of puzzles, especially in this ruins level. They weren't too hard, but adding waves of enemies made them fun. The one I remember most involved mirrors focusing sunlight. You have to make your way through the labyrinthine level to find 3 pieces of a key to open the door to the next one, but there are all these sun mirrors that will regularly fry a section of the level. You've got to plan your running so you don't get caught in the sun beams. It wasn't so much a puzzle, but it was probably the most complex level in the game, and my favorite that I went through. I'd often walk into a giant room with multiple stories, ladders, crates, obstructions, and go "Yes, yes, yes" because it's like a mini-level. You know bad guys will come, you know you're going to have to take them all out while moving from point A to point B, finding goodies along the way, finding switches, lifts, doors, exploding barrels, and so on. Each little area was just exciting to play through.
I'm really glad, though I thought it would be lame at first, that it's co-op with the AI. The AI wasn't bad, no worse than the enemies. She kept up, sometimes led me ahead, followed orders without a problem, and was downright handy to have along! I usually hate sidekicks in games, but I was pleasantly surprised, and in fact, she made the game a lot better. I felt like I had a buddy playing with me. And you can do that online actually. You can play through an 'open' campaign where anyone can just jump in as the second character, or you can jump in someone else's. I'd play this with a friend, but don't care to with a stranger online. Shooting zombies together is a bonding activity.
What else...Ah yes, the only thing I didn't like about the game were some of the controls. The camera view was slightly awkward third-person off to the left side, and coupled with the camera swinging you around was a little uncomfortable at first. I did get used to it. What continued to suck was the context commands. I can deal with pushing F or V to run, duck, jump, etc. in action sequences. What I had trouble with was pushing A+D at the same time to do something. What I had even more trouble with, and what I don't know how made it in the game, was holding F+V to do action maneuvers. F+V? Really? So try this. Push F really fast to run! Now push A+D to dodge some rockets! Ok now quickly push F+V to climb! It's super awkward, especially while trying to WASD move at the same time. WASD and having to mash F+V on command is nigh impossible before doing it a hundred times. And you have about 2 seconds to mash the buttons before you die, and it doesn't always register that you pushed them either. V is also the command to tell your sidekick to come here, so F+V a lot of times turned into "Come over here!" *dies* Besides some control issues, I don't have any other gripes.
I'd totally recommend this game to anyone if you find it on sale for cheap. It's short and unless you have a tendency to replay games, there's not a lot to it. But it's incredibly polished, incredibly intense from start to finish, and just a ton of thrilling fun.
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