Month: February 2009

A Farewell to War (Warhammer)

Posted on by Nimgimli

I got a notice today that my 60 day time card for Warhammer has run out, and my account is now closed.

My reaction, frankly, was a huge sigh of relief. No more guilt over not playing a game I’d paid for a subscription to. Followed by a touch of sadness. I still have a Warhammer Online Poster on the door to the office (yes, I am still 12 in some ways, plus it covers a hole in the door!) I have Warhammer novels strewn all over the house. I have a head full of memories of all the great times I had in beta and those early days. I have a tag cloud on this blog that still features Warhammer most prominently.

But it just never clicked with me. It was like one of those “love at first sight” encounters that fizzles as you get to know the other person on a deeper level. You try to cling to that early passion, but you know that things just aren’t working out. And yet you hang on, go through the motions, hoping for…what? The world to flip on its axis or something? Nothing is going to change, so finally, you have The Talk.

So Warhammer and I have had The Talk. I can’t visualize ever going back to the game, unlike so many others that I do return to every now and then: City of Heroes, Guild Wars, WoW, EQ2, etc. With many MMOs I go back to see what’s changed and sometimes I end up staying a while. But with Warhammer, I’ve come to like the Mythic Message less and less over the months. I’ve come to like the community less and less. When I joined CoW I was naive enough to think those good folks represented what the Warhammer community would be like, but over time the testosterone-fueled e-peenery that always follows PvP seems to have taken over.

That sounds pretty hostile. Well heck, I guess it *is* pretty hostile. But everyone deserves a place where they can gather with like-minded individuals, and that extends to the testosterone-fueled e-peeners of both sexes. So, hostile or not, I’m glad they have Warhammer Online because quality PvP games are few and far between.

So, farewell, Warhammer Online! I’m really sorry things didn’t work out for us, but I know you’re going to be OK, because you have plenty of enthusiastic fans. As for me, first I have to eat a huge helping of crow because I was a fierce defender of the game back at launch (but I swear, the beta really *was* fun!) Once I choke that down, I’ll be OK because I have a skillion other games to choose from, and now I don’t have the ever-present guilt of “I really should be playing War…after all, I paid for it.”

Freedom!!

Too Human First Look Pt 1 (XBox 360)

Posted on by Nimgimli

When Too Human released to pretty horrible reviews last summer, it seemed there was more talk going on about Silicon Knight’s Dennis Dyack trying to socially engineer scores than there was about the game itself. I remember downloading the demo, feeling pretty “Meh” about it, and then forgetting all about the game.

Over the past week, someone I follow on Twitter (http://twitter.com/SAGExSDX) has been playing and enjoying the game *a lot*. Whenever I see someone really enjoying a game that got bad reviews, I get intrigued. And it so happened that I’ve been casting about looking for a good loot-centric hack&slash action-rpg to play, and that’s exactly what Too Human is. And the nice thing about picking up a poorly reviewed game 6 months or so after release is that you can get it for cheap. Target has it in the discount bin for $20, but I couldn’t find it in my local store and didn’t want to wait to mail order it, so I hit Best Buy and picked it up for $40.

At this point my played time is around 6 hours and my first character (a Berserker — melee focused, low armor) is level 17 or thereabouts, and so far I’m in SAGExSDX’s camp: I’m having a good time playing this game. I’ve gone back and read some of the reviews and they all feel pretty vague to me when it comes to explaining why they gave it such low ratings, and I can’t help wonder how much the controversy and expectations shaped the review rating landscape.

But again I’m only 6 hours in.

Gameplay is a nice combination of Diable-style kill/loot/level and a fast paced action game (think Shinobi, or if you don’t remember that one, Devil May Cry). Melee attacks are mapped to the right thumbstick; push the stick towards an enemy and you’ll charge it and attack. If you push it towards another enemy before you reach the one you’re sliding towards, you’ll combo off to that next enemy. Pretty soon you’re a human pinball of death. Or you can leap into the air and come crashing down. Or double tap the stick to juggle the enemies into the sky. Pushing both sticks in the same direction unleashes a “fierce” attack, which is, oddly enough, a ranged attack pulled off with melee weapons.

The trigger buttons are used for firing ranged weapons. You also have a little spider bot “pet” that you can use as a debuff, and a Ruiner attack that trades combo level for a potent area-of-attack, the style of which depends on the weapons you have equipped.

I’d be lying if I said combat was all about pin-point precision. The controls are more visceral than precise, but since fights tend to be about 10+ enemies vs you and some wimpy underlings, that doesn’t matter too much. Too Human is about wading into swarms of baddies and sending them all flying.

And these baddies (all of which are robots, which pleases me — I’m not a huge fan of over-the-top gore and body parts flying) are definitely monster pinatas. Looting is automagic…stuff just kind of gets sucked into your backpack. At any time you can “Salvage” gear, turning it into Bounty (the game’s currency) so there’s never a need to head home to sell vendor trash. In fact, you can set an ‘auto-salvage’ setting so that a particular level of item you pick up gets turned into Bounty, or use a “Smart” setting that will salvage the worst gear you’re carrying if your inventory fills up. These are really nice features that keep you focused on the action and not on inventory space.

When you die, rather than having to reload a saved game, a Valkyrie floats down to whisk you off to Valhalla. But then I guess she changes her mind because you’ll respawn close to where you fell. I’ve heard a lot of complaints about this system, but I love it. As an MMO player, I really don’t like save/load systems; they break me out of the world I’m playing in. But the rebirth cut-scene is long enough to feel like a death penalty (your gear also takes an endurance hit and will have to be repaired if you die often enough — I speak from experience) without being overly onerous.

If you find you’re dying just a bit too often, you can head back to your HQ (that’s a menu option, you can do it from anywhere) and from there, teleport to an earlier level to replay it and level up a bit. These earlier levels seem to scale somewhat. So at character level 15 I went back to the first game level for a bit of grindy fun, and it was still a light challenge for me, vs the total walk-through that I’d expected it would be. Again, the focus is on keeping you gaming, earning new gear and new levels, and not about a lot of pointless running around.

Anyway, I’ll say for the third time, I’m only 6 hours in. But so far I’ve been having a blast. In my next post I’ll look at some of the downsides. I’d like to get to 12-15 hours before I post again, so it could take me a few days.

The Last Wish (Book Review)

Posted on by Nimgimli
The Last Wish
Rating: 4 of 5 stars

The Last Wish by Andrzej Sapkowski

I first discovered Geralt the Witcher via the computer game The Witcher. Some of the mechanics of that game bothered me enough that I still haven’t played a lot of it, but I played enough to become intrigued by the main character.

I knew he was the creation of Polish author Andrzej Sapkowski who was a bestselling author in his homeland, but it was only recently that I found this translation to English. As far as I can determine, this is his only work readily available in English, though a second volume (Blood of Elves) is on the way.

Anyway, to the book itself. Once again we have a selection of short stories woven into a novel; this seems to be a trend in my reading lately! In The Last Wish, this mechanism isn’t hidden though. Instead we have one ‘meta story’ that introduces and launches the various stories in a manner similar to The Canterbury Tales (I’m using that example to compare frameworks, not authors). This wasn’t immediately obvious to me; hopefully if you read this review before you read the book, I will have spared you a bit of confusion.

Geralt is a Witcher; an individual who has been mutated by magics and alchemy into something more than human, and who has been trained from a very young age to fight monsters. Geralt’s world is an interesting melange of magic and science, but not of technology. We never see machines at work, but scientific knowledge seems to be more advanced than what we normally see in a pseudo-medieval fantasy world. This gives Geralt’s world a unique feel.

It took me a while to realize that Geralt was traveling through familiar fairy tales with a dark, adult and slightly modernized twist. For example, we see Sleeping Beauty as a banished princess who becomes an outlaw during the struggle to reclaim her rightful place on the throne, while those who would oppose her spread rumors about the debauched lifestyle she shares with seven gnomes.

As a Witcher, Geralt lives a mercenary life. He kills monsters for money, not for glory or fame. He tries not to kill sentient monsters if he can avoid it (that description extends to people) but violence has a way of following him. Witchers tend to be reviled in this world (until such time as they are needed, when suddenly they are sought out with much enthusiasm), so his is a mostly solitary life, though later in the book we meet his unlikely friend, the troubadour Dandilion.

Reading the The Last Wish, I feel like I was peering at a fantasy world through a narrow slit. What I saw was wonderful, but there’s the sense that the world is much, much bigger than what we see through Geralt’s eyes in this one volume.

A final note; if you pick up the book and open it to page one, the first thing you’ll read is a sex scene. It isn’t exactly explicit, but it’s reasonably steamy, and it is not indicative of the book as a whole. Geralt does have his fair share of intimate encounters, but they’re not the focus of the book and I think in some ways that first two page chapter sets an inaccurate tone for what’s to come.

View all my reviews.

Game freeze

Posted on by Nimgimli

Has this ever happened to you?

You’ve had a long week with little to no free time, and you can’t indulge in your favorite hobby. Sometimes the only thing that gets you through the day is thinking about all the fun you’re going to have when you finally get some time.

And then you break through and find yourself standing in an open field of gaming potential, the sun streaming down around you, birds singing, a soft breeze caressing your face, and games, Games, GAMES beckoning to you from every direction. All you need do is pick one to play.

And you can’t. Instead you spin in place, looking from one to the other. Thinking about how much time you have before the work comes crashing back in, and how precious this time is, so you’d best use it wisely. Thinking Game A is great but if I play it now and can’t get back to in until next weekend, I’ll never remember what I was doing. And Game B works as a short term game, but I’ve already played it and I want something new. Game C is supposed to be fun, but I need to download and patch it and that wastes my precious time. Game D is great in multiplayer but by the time I find a good group to play with, my time will be over. And so on and so forth, and in the back of your mind you know that none of these ‘excuses’ is really all that legit — the real problem is, you have Game Freeze, the gamer’s equivalent to Writer’s Block!

Game Freeze is a very real disease the affects over 2 million gamers in the US alone. Most Game Freeze victims suffer alone, not seeing the disease for what it is. This is why we’ve formed Game Freeze Alliance Worldwide (GFAW), a non-profit institution devoted to researching a cure for Game Freeze as well as reaching out to those afflicted with the disease in order to bring them the tools they need to live with the disease.

If you, or someone you know, suffers from Game Freeze, contact GFAW today about getting a FREE Combat Game Freeze Kit, which includes a helpful 16 page pamphlet outlining the progressive steps of the ailment and how to recognize them, as well as the official Game Freeze hat, made of 100% recycled tweed, a year’s supply of slips of paper, and a GFAW ball-point pen, ideal for writing the names of games on the slips. This FREE kit is available now for $99.99; a small price to pay in order to ease your suffering. All proceeds go to furthering the search for a Game Freeze cure. So call today!!

Ever thought of trying EQ2?

Posted on by Nimgimli

Now could be a good time, because Sony has introduced a new “Invite a Friend” feature that can get you lots of bonus exp, and a cloak that gives you +25% run speed, and a lot of other goodies.

And why am I telling you this? Do I want to recruit you? Nope, I’m not playing. But Angela (my lady) is, and she’s looking for recruits! She’d be a great one to get this offer from, because she plays *all the time* and is extremely well versed in the game. She’s also running a level 50+ guild, which (if you join in — that’s optional) gets you all kinds of perks.

Check out her blog for details.

Moonlighting

Posted on by Nimgimli

A few people have asked, here and elsewhere, what this new freelance gig is, and I realize I was being unintentionally mysterious about it. Basically I wanted to get a couple of posts done before I shared much, just in case I totally botched something and made a fool of myself (which is bound to happen sooner or later).

The site is ITWorld.com. The ‘beat’ is pretty open…anything related to IT or tech that I feel comfortable writing about. My goal is 1-2 posts a day, and they know I have a 9-5er, so the expectation is (I hope!) pretty modest as far as length and so forth.

I think I said I was blogging, and I initially thought I was going to be, but that’s not really how the site is organized. Which kind of opens up a whole question of “What is a blog?” To me, a blog is a blog because of the organization of the posts as much as because of the content of those posts. Your definition may vary. But I feel like I’m writing blog posts, but not for a blog. Confused yet? LOL

You can, however, easily find all my posts here. Though I’m not sure they’ll be very interesting to most of my Dragonchasers readers.

Why I <3 my PSP

Posted on by Nimgimli

Let’s face it, the Sony PSP doesn’t get a lot of love out there in the blogosphere. And there are excellent reasons for this: game selection is fairly thin, having only one analog stick makes for some wonky controls, battery life could be better and it really isn’t quite as portable as a handheld should be.

But I still love mine. I just forget that I love it for long periods of time. Then I fire it up and swoon all over again. I forget how awesome the screen is, how light it is (mine is a PSP-2000) and how many cool things it can do besides play games. But most of all, I forget about its Suspend function.

As I mentioned in my last post, gaming time during the week has become very rare. Last night, it was after 11:30 by the time I felt like I’d done “enough” and could do some gaming. So already it was really past my reasonable bedtime, but the itch to game was strong. I figured I could play for 15 minutes and get away with it. That totally ruled out any MMO, of course. And for that matter, anything on the PS3 or 360. By the time I turned everything on and got settled, it’d be time to quit. Nothing I had on the PC really was fine-grained enough to offer 15 minutes of satisfying gameplay.

Then I remembered the PSP. And it isn’t that the games on it are satisfying in 15 minute chunks either, but it’s the fact that I can just hit the Suspend button at any point, and come back to it later, pretty much instantly. So I restarted Final Fantasy: Crisis Core based on the fact that a Twitter pal had just finished and really enjoyed it, plus I’d recently read an interesting article (Opinion: Crisis Core’s Quiet Redefining Of The Gameplay Narrative Divide) about it at Gamasutra.

I didn’t get very far before my 15 minutes were up; the opening FMV intro and the first training battle. And then, right in the middle of a dialog, I hit Suspend. And I know tonight if I have 15 minutes to play games, I’ll spend 14:40 of it actually playing the game, since it’ll take no more than 10 seconds to unsuspend and resuspend the title. Getting in and out of a suspended game is faster, even, than loading and saving a DS game (though granted, that’s pretty fast too, and I also love my DS).

I realize that to some extent, lauding the Suspend function of the PSP is damning with faint praise. But so be it. Last night, I was *really* happy that I’d invested in the PSP. And I suspect I will be again tonight.

Dragonchasers slows down even more…

Posted on by Nimgimli

I realize my posting has been getting pretty infrequent here at Dragonchasers. Sadly, it’s going to become even more so. As of today, I’m writing for ITworld.com, and I’m committed to a post a day for those good folks, which is going to leave even less time for personal blogging (and for that matter, less time for gaming).

For me personally, this is great news. My writing has been getting sloppier and sloppier over the past several years since I have no one to answer to. Now I have to start disciplining myself and sharpening up my skills again. And of course, the money never hurts!!

Hopefully people will still have room in their RSS feeds for those days when I can squeak out a DC post (or on weekends). Adding to the weird scheduling is my full-time job. I think I may have mentioned here that we had some layoffs in December, and at the same time all the survivors had their pay & hours cut by 10%. I opted to work 4×9 hour days, so Monday-Thursday I’m getting home pretty late. An extra hour doesn’t sound like much but it really has impacted my schedule quite a bit. So most of my gaming and consequently, personal blogging time is happening Friday-Sunday these days.

As always, thanks so much for reading Dragonchasers!

Koster, pinball & the weekend wrap-up

Posted on by Nimgimli

I spend an interesting hour+ this evening watching Raph Koster’s Keynote from the Living Game Worlds 2008 Symposium. Direct link to the video is here, but get comfortable because it does run 85 minutes or so (I’m so glad the PS3 has a robust enough web browser that I can watch stuff like this on it). He has a lot to stay about changes in the industry of virtual worlds and MMOs, and what was pretty interesting was that at the end, someone called him on his apparent pessimism, which was good because it gave him a chance to clarify that he didn’t really feel pessimistic about the future of virtual worlds.

I dunno, he sounded kind of — I wouldn’t even say pessimistic so much as dismissive — towards a lot of products that bring great joy to millions of people. But of course bloggers tend to be just as dismissive, so maybe that’s just part of the critical thinking and future speculation process. We almost have to knock the current products or else why think about changes. Maybe? Anyway, it was definitely an interesting talk and worth listening to. There are slides but you won’t miss a lot if you just listen.

As for me, this is the second weekend in a row where I spent more time reading and playing with guinea pigs than I did gaming. I get into these gaming slumps from time to time. I’m still struggling with feeding that urge to create rather than consume.

I did jump into Warhammer a couple of times, playing it as a pure PvE game. Got my Witchhunter to level 20. I picked Warhammer mostly because it’s still active for a few more weeks more than due to a burning desire to play it. Use it before I lose it and all that. Now that I’m using two pairings to level, it’s a much better PvE game (than when I tried to stick to one pairing) but it still isn’t $15/month good for me.

I also wandered around Middle Earth a bit, played some Valkyria Chronicles, and, laugh if you will, but I played that freebie Amazon casual game BuildALot for a long time. 🙂

Oh, and after reading an article about Bill Budge and Pinball Construction Set, someone linked in the comments to Future Pinball. This is a modern version of a Pinball Construction Set, totally free (though donations are accepted) and while I didn’t get around to trying to build anything yet, I did download some pretty amazing tables. Here’s a video of one of ’em in action (I picked this video because it best showed off the system, but this particular table is a bit seedy in theme.)