Like a good little gaming consumerDroid, I ran right out and bought AC2 when it was released, even though I’d been in the beta and had been unimpressed. It wasn’t any better after commercial launch, so once my free month ran out I stopped playing.

The other day I got an invite directed to people who’d cancelled their accounts, inviting us back for free for 2 weeks. Since I’m between MMRPGs I figured “What the heck” and went back to check it out. I spent more time updating than I did playing. It’s still “ick” to me.

And I still can’t put my finger on why. Continue reading “Asheron’s Call 2”

Well, there I was, breezing along, loving life as I unravelled the puzzles behind why this Darkness is Eternal and what the heck am I supposed to do about it anyway, when BAM! it turned into a combat-based game. Honestly, I preferred having to find gold necklaces to make stone statues happy and would’ve been pleased if the game kept on that track.

Not that this new phase is bad…it’s just different. By now I have an arsenal of spells and so have few worries about dying or going mad unless I’m up against a boss. This means boldly striding through the levels whereas I used to timidly creep, cringing at every pebble tumbling down an incline, every floorboard squeaking.

I did resort to a walkthrough at one point (ok, a few points) when I returned to the game, since after 6 months I’d basically forgotten what I had the capacity to do, and in doing so noticed how many chapters there were, so I know the end is near…I’m just hoping that it doesn’t totally spike up in difficulty at the very end.

With the leviathan Xenosaga behind me, it was time to press on. I needed something engaging but not too long (after a 60 hour game, it takes me a while to recharge my batteries enough to take on another monster). Eternal Darkness (Gamecube) called to me from the shelf. I’d played it about half-way through some time back and got distracted.

Eternal Darkness is one heck of a creepy game. You need to play this one in the dark. It’s a bit like Resident Evil with better controls, more magic (I think…I’ve never played very far into a RE) and really varied environments. It is not for the kids. We’re talking human skin lampshade stuff.

The idea behind the game is that you’re a girl investigating her familiy’s history, and in doing so, you keep ‘flashing back’ to different places and periods of time. So far I’ve been back to Persia, circa sometime BC and as far forward as 1952. You tend to visit locations several times, hundreds of years apart, which brings a neat “been here, but wasn’t able to do that” feel to the game.

Of course, the big hook was the whole way the game tries to scare you by breaking out of the box, so to speak. Sadly, this has been so publicized that it probably won’t scare anyone now. If you’ve heard about it, you know what I mean (most of the things that happen rely on you being taken unawares). If you haven’t heard about it, I’m not going to spoil it for you. Suffice to say the game plays with your head pretty effectively in the early stages. Once you get deeper into the game, you have ways of controlling your sanity, plus most of the games ‘tricks’ really only work once.

Anyway, so far, this is a really good ride. Sound and graphics are great, level design is really neat. A real sense of claustrophobia in some dank dungeons. Lots of “Indiana Jones” style trap avoidance, and most of the puzzles are easy enough that they’ll make you think for a few moments, but won’t stop you in your tracks. This allows the engrossing story to keep its talons in you. Oh! And you can save almost anywhere so it’s a good game for short sessions. While it might fall all apart in the endgame, I rather doubt it. But I’ll be sure to let you know.

Well, 58 hours or so since first slipping the disk in, I finished Xenosaga (ok, more like 70 or so hours if you count restarts). It still dumbfounds me that the game is getting so many average reviews. This is easily my third favorite PS2 game so far (1st is Ico, 2nd is FFX). Sure, there are some annoying aspects to it, but any game you play for 60 hours is going to have something that eventually starts to grate on you. But I really enjoyed the ways you could build your characters up, the mini-games, the graphics, and especially, the storyline. I’ve heard the storyline referred to as highly deriviative, but I didn’t get that. Yes, there were some scenes that were very evocative of certain scenes from various movies, but the plot, as far as I could follow it (heh) didn’t seem at all derivative to me. Well, with the caveat that certain common anime themes were included (giant robots and all that).

When I hit the end, I had enough emotionally invested in the characters that I had a few real ‘lump in the throat’ moments, which is always the mark of a good game for me.

All in all, a great game, in my opinion.

Here’s a MMRPG I haven’t played but that has me curious: A Tale in the Desert. While this isn’t the first MMRPG with no combat (I suppose The Sims Online earns that title), it does seem to be the first one with goals and things to do that don’t revolve around combat. To learn a little more, you might want to read this Gamespy Interview with lead designer Andrew Tepper. I plan on giving this one a go sometime in the near future.

So it’s after 1 am and I just managed to tear myself away from Galactic Civilizations. Back in the day I was a huge fan of “4X” games but as I grew older I found I didn’t have the patience for them anymore. GalCiv seems to somehow pack in that “grab you by the throat and never let go” gameplay with a sleek enough play mechanic that you don’t get bogged down, at least in the “small” galaxy maps. Part of this is probably because you only have a handful of planets to look after.

Add to that alternatives to the basic “Nuke ’em into the stone age” victory conditions and you’ve got a game well worth playing. Or at least, that’s my “initial reaction” determination. It remains to be seen if the game has legs.

Find out more about Galactic Civilizations at http://www.galciv.com.

Anyone who reads this blog must be a bit bemused by the subtitle. I certainly haven’t done much searching for adventure as of late.

But over the past week or so, I’ve fallen back into love with Dark Age of Camelot. I started a new character in a (more or less) new realm for me, and everything old is new again. It doesn’t hurt that my Merc is growing up in a generation of fellow role-players, and on a good day, logging into Camelot is like going to a RennFaire. Wonderful stuff indeed. I just lose myself in the world of Albion now, completely becoming my character…

OK, I’ve been nagged about a lack of blog entries, and as per the comment from the g/f below, I’ll have to admit that I’ve been addicted to G4TV, the new ‘gaming channel.’

It’s a really strange mix, this channel. Sometimes, I cringe, fearing someone will come in and see me watching this channel designed for 5 year olds. Other times, it gets hip to the fact that there are a ton of gamers in their late teens and beyond.

As best I can figure, they have two writers. One of them is a girl of about 19 (Tina Wood, I believe), and the shows she writes are pretty ok. The other shows are written by some faceless fellow (Tina is actually the host of one of the shows, too, which is how I know how old she is) and he’s really bad. Lots of jokes so corny they make your stomach lurch, lots of over-active hosts, as if the writer though the games were just a gimmick to get people to watch the host.

But what makes it all worth watching is tons of video footage of the games in action. After watching G4 for a weekend, reading a review and looking at screenshots ain’t going to cut it no more…

That ranger woman is starting to vex me greatly.

Here’s to a great game like Warcraft III being released just in time for a long weekend! Woot!

A Tale in the Desert is a MMRPG that just crossed my radar for the first time. It seems to be a lot different than most of the incoming MM games (The Sims Online being the exception). There is no combat in the game; it seems to be more about politics and social constructs. GameSpy interviewed the Andrew Tepper, president of eGenesis, the developers of A Tale in the Desert. The article is worth a read.