Category: Pointless Ramblings

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.)

Theme Tweaking

Posted on by Nimgimli

If dragonchasers is displaying wonky, please do a shift-refresh and see if that fixes things. I asked Angela to tweak the theme a bit, removing the left sidebar so the text isn’t so narrow, and it seems like the old stylesheet is cached or something. Rather than fix it, I’m taking the lazy way out and asking readers to refresh. 🙂

Hopefully the new layout will give me a bit more freedom when it comes to laying out posts with images, as well as cutting down on all the scrolling the old version required. Next time, I’ll take the designer’s advice and get things right the first time!! 🙂

Link Love

Posted on by Nimgimli

I was doing a bit of blog surfing tonight and happened to notice someone who had Dragonchasers in their blog roll. Someone who wasn’t in my blog roll.

I fixed that now.

But please, I don’t want to be what Ysh an unnamed blogger calls a link leech!! If you’re linking here and I’m not returning the favor, just give me a shout. You can comment here or nudge me on twitter.

Mount & Blade

Posted on by Nimgimli

I’ve been playing this kinda neat RPG/Strategy game called Mount & Blade. Really, I haven’t put a lot of time into it (just a few hours) and I wouldn’t normally be “reviewing” a game so early on, but this one is on sale on Steam this weekend for just $7.50 US (75% off).

Landscapes look pretty niceI’ve heard the game described as “Pirates! on land” and that’s a fair description. You start as a lone wanderer with some basic armor and weapons, and what you do from there pretty much is up to you. You can be a trader, or a mercenary, or a bandit. You travel an extensive and dynamic world, going from tiny villages to cities and castles, talking to Lords and tavern keepers (and the conversations are very well written, I might add), finding jobs, hearing rumors and recruiting mercenaries to fight beside you.

It definitely has that “indy” game tang to it. The landscapes are pretty good looking, but the character models are a bit rough and in places the interface gets a little clunky. At the same time, the world is sprawling and complex, and as you ride back and forth across it you’ll see other parties going about their own business, including looting villages (the bad guys) or riding down bandits (the good guys). It’s “alive” enough that Angela looked over and asked if those were other players, but no, this is a single player game. I can’t imagine an “AAA” publisher producing something as complex as this game; it will take you a while to get the hang of things.

Character models are so-soWhen battle is joined, you can sit back and order your troops around, or charge in. Thus far, I haven’t tried the former because the latter is pretty awesome. I’ve never seen mounted combat done this well. Your horse handles..well, like a horse. It doesn’t stop on a dime and it can’t do a 180 degree turn at full speed. Riding at full gallop, leaning down to swing a sword at an on-foot bandit…it feels “right” (even if it looks a little wonky). Shooting a bow or crossbow while at speed is a real skill, both for you and your character. Very tough. And the one time I encountered enemies on horseback, after I sent one to his grave, his horse continued to roam around the battlefield in a panic.

Overland mapAs I said, I’ve just barely scratched the surface of the game, but I thought it was worth the risk to spread the word this weekend while it’s only $7.50. I’ve already got my money’s worth out of it (and there is a demo available). Apparently there’s a pretty healthy modding community for the game, too, though I haven’t dug into that yet.

RPG conversations

I need a project

Posted on by Nimgimli

This idle lifestyle of being a Gamer is starting to wear me down a bit. I’m feeling a real itch to create something, but I don’t know what. I need a personal project of some kind. Something fun to build (and, duh, I should point out that when I say “build” I really mean “code”; it’s not like I have a workshop with a table saw and drill press any more!) but small-scale enough to be manageable.

Anyone have any ideas? I’m thinking game-related but it could be something to do with blogging or other aspects of community building, too.

Dragonchasers goes Free2Play!

Posted on by Nimgimli

This being a new year and all, I sat down with the budget today, and things are not looking good. I’m still not entirely sure what the 10% salary reduction will look like after taxes, but we were playing it pretty close to the bone to begin with. Just a few posts ago I was idly wondering if I could swing a Station Pass so I could play EQ2 and Vanguard, but after looking at the numbers, not only was the answer “no” but in fact I had to cancel EQ2 as well, at least for a couple months. I need to get some regular freelance income rolling in (or have things look up at work and have my full salary reinstated) and until then a monthly game subscription isn’t really in the cards.

I still have almost a full month of EQ2 paid for, over a month of Warhammer Online, and until Jan 31 in Vanguard’s “Come back to Vanguard” promo, so I’m not going to be feeling any kind of a sting for a while (and who knows, by then maybe another source of income will have made itself known). And I’m patting myself on the back for springing for the Lifetime membership to LOTRO, because I’ll have at least that one AAA title to play.

But rather than be glum about this turn of events, I’m looking at it as a challenge. Free-To-Play MMOs are getting better all the time, and micro-transactions rock in that they’re a) micro and b) one-time expenses. So I’ll be looking at a lot of F2P MMOs, and watching for other gaming deals, and getting the most fun I can for the least money. (Right now I’m downloading the ad-supported version of FPS Area-51… about 2 days after I said I’d never play a FPS again… but I figured its FREE so why not give it a try.)

Hopefully I can keep things semi-interesting around here, though I acknowledge it’ll be a challenge when I’m playing some obscure game about sand gardening while everyone else is playing DC Universe Online or something. But I’ll try!!

Valkyria Chronicles First Look, Part 1

Posted on by Nimgimli

As mentioned, I received Valkyria Chronicles for the PS3 as a Christmas present this year. So far I’ve put 4-5 hours into it, and my initial reaction is very favorable indeed.

This game is probably classified as a Strategy-RPG but I’m going to coin a new genre here: Storybook Strategy. A Storybook Strategy game is a strongly narrative-driven game that uses strategy battles to move a story forward. In the case of Valkyria Chronicles, the term applies literally since rather than a world map or other device, you literally move through the game via a book.

The book tells the story of the small country of Gallia, caught between two super-powers in an alternate-world World War II (called the Second Europa War here). The Empire in East are the ‘bad guys’ while the Federation to the West are…well, less bad anyway. The Empire were the initial aggressors. Gallia sits on the coast of the North Sea roughly where Estonia and Latvia are in our world (geography isn’t exactly the same as the real world) but the little country feels more western than that. At the start of the story, the Empire is invading Gallia to get at the Ragnite that lies unmined under Gallian soil. (Ragnite, in this world, is the chief energy source; kind of oil and coal and dynamite — even medicine — wrapped into one resource.) The story revolves around Squad 7, a rag-tag militia squad doing their best to contribute to the defense of their country.

Anyway, back to the book, which looks like a richly illustrated history book, where each illustration or map triggers a cut-scene or battle (the actual text surrounding these panels isn’t readable). So you turn pages and work your way through chapters uncovering the story via cut-scene, and moving things along by winning battles. The ‘watercolor’ art style is very bright and peppy, but already there are some dark themes manifesting. The Empire has no qualms about killing civilians, even shooting them in the back as they flee. And among your squad there are issues of extreme racism and hate between members. Quite different from the usual “Good guys are GOOD” angle that most games take.

In Part 2 of my First Look, I’ll get into the RPG aspects of the game, which are fairly unique in a number of ways. I know that “linear” is a bad-word in the gaming nomenclature, but I really enjoy a linear game if it tells a compelling story, and so far Valkyria Chronicles’ story has me hooked.

I wish you a Merry Christmas

Posted on by Nimgimli

Sorry the blog has been so empty lately, and when it hasn’t been empty it’s been depressing. I’ve had a couple of bad weeks, job wise, health wise (nothing serious there, just a miserable lingering cold) and personal wise. That’s left very little time/energy for gaming or blogging.

But today is Christmas Eve day, and when I leave work I won’t be back until Jan 5th, 2009! Woot! Plenty of time to de-stress, rest up, and play some games.

I actually don’t consider myself Christian but I do celebrate Christmas, not as a religious holiday but as a holiday of Good Will. I’ve been trying to keep up my Christmas Spirit over the past weeks, listening to carols and intending to watch Christmas specials (but never quite getting around to them)!

Tomorrow will be the first Christmas Angela and I spend together, and she’s surprised me by voicing the desire to do up a Christmas feast. My traditional Christmas dinner for the last few decades has been Chinese take out, in honor of A Christmas Story and since the last time I spent Christmas with someone was probably somewhere around 1993. My tradition (by choice, mind you) was to spend Christmas peacefully alone; a day to reflect on life and play some games. But tomorrow it’ll be Angela and I, accompanied by roast turkey, potatoes and all the fixins, or so I’m told. Woot! And a tree! And presents under it! It’s like I’m 8 again!

Anyway, the point I’m rambling towards is that I hope you all have a very nice holiday and I hope you’re all as fortunate as I am. Good food, warm shelter, and company you enjoy, even if it is only your own (nothing at all wrong with that). Merry Christmas, everyone!!