OK this is more like it! This is what I remember playing adventure games feels like…
So I made it to Chapter 2 of The Book of Unwritten Tales: The Critter Chronicles. Chapter two switches focus to the Critter who doesn’t speak English (though some of his friends do). While I do have what’s essentially a ‘quest’ so I know what to do, I’m finding playing as the Critter a lot less entertaining than playing as Nate Bonnett. His constant gibberish gets on my nerves a bit, honestly. That might be the frustration talking, though. He’s animated well and is oddly cute in a Muppet kind of way. Mostly it’s the voice that bugs me.
I know what I need to do, and I even know basically how to do it, but I’m missing one link in the chain. The first thing Critter has to do is pick up an object that is protected by another character. The steps for doing this are long and random and this is when I started to lose interest. I did get past that though, mostly by just futzing with things until something totally unexpected happened, allowing me to get said object. I know my next goal, and I know the parts that I need to use to get it done — there’s some logic to this puzzle — but there’s just this one step I’m stumped on. I feel like I’ve gone everywhere I can go, tried using everything on everything else, “talked” to everyone until they’re repeating themselves… I’m just stuck.
I’ve started solving, I assume, the next puzzle since I’ve jammed random things together and done things that I can’t undo. I’m hoping the game doesn’t support ‘dead ends’ that require a re-load because I haven’t been saving except at the end of a session.
I think I need to put the game away and come back to it in a few days. Sad though, since I so enjoyed my first evening of playing and aside from 1 hint I looked up, I solved Chapter 1 quickly enough that it never felt like the game was dragging. But now I just feel like I’m running around in circles and I really want to get back to Bonnett and his dilemma.
This shouldn’t be seen as a knock on the game, which still seems to be a solid adventure. I just felt like I needed to share this in case other adventure-wary gamers read my first post and thought maybe this game would be a great ‘starter’ adventure, but so far Chapter 2 isn’t as easy (for me at least) as Chapter 1 was.
[Update: Right after finishing this post, I fired the game up again and found the one object I hadn’t tried using on the one hotspot, and got moving forward again. So that’s typical, right? As soon as you complain about a problem, it goes away. Like taking your car to the shop because it’s constantly stalling but when you get it there it runs perfectly!]
Tonight’s plans got somewhat derailed by a bunch of excitement in the G+ community, and then I had to d/l a new patch for BG:EE, so I didn’t start playing until nearly 11.
Traellan’s new friends want him to travel to some gods-forsaken place to investigate the metal shortage but before we went anywhere we had to sort out our gear. Which meant I had to dredge up ancient knowledge of D&D rules, leading to a stupidly enjoyable conversation with Angela (who used to play D&D — I never did outside of computer games) about what THAC0 stood for and whether THAC0 20 was good or bad, and if lower AC was better than a higher AC, and things of that nature. (I did get a manual but of course I haven’t read it.)
Finally we were ready to set off. We spent a bit more time exploring the area around the Friendly Arm Inn, and found a priest who charged us the unholy sum of 100 gold to identify a magical belt we’d taken off…well, someone we’d fought. (Almost spoiled the surprise!)
100 gold! Can you imagine? And I thought it was the cut-throats who were out to rob us.
Just outside the Inn we encountered a pair of hobgoblins in foul temper. I must confess I was worried but Khalid and Traellan stood shoulder to shoulder battling the creatures while Imoen filled them full of arrows. It turned out not to be much of a fight. Not like that Dire Wolf…
And then it hit me. The metal shortage could wait. I had to go take my revenge on that pesky Dire Wolf. So back we went to the area outside of Candlekeep. It took a bit of time to find that wolf but when we did, we dispatched it in relatively short order, though I has happy Jaheira had a couple of healing spells memorized.
And that was about all of our adventuring for this evening. We’d been traveling for over 16 hours, night was upon us. Jaheira needed time to remember how to cast her magics, so we decided to make camp. More adventure awaits us tomorrow!
I don’t like adventure games. Let’s get that right out in the open first thing. I wish I liked them. I want to like them. I ought to like them. I like narrative driven games, and adventure games (most of them anyway) are strongly narrative driven. My problem with adventure games is that basically I suck at them. My mind is just not good at solving what I call “passive puzzles.” In order to work a problem I need to be able to fiddle with it. To try different things in different ways. Fiddling with parts of a puzzle keeps my mind working. When I get to a point where it’s just time to stop and stare at the puzzle pieces in order to come up with a solution, my brain just locks up and starts thinking about pizza or something.
And now along comes a traditional point and click adventure game, The Book of Unwritten Tales: The Critter Chronicles, which is a prequel to the well-regarded The Book of Unwritten Tales. I fired this one up last night, feeling a bit resentful about the whole process because I knew I was in for a lot of frustration. I’m sure you know where I’m going with this: I was up until almost 1 am playing and even then it was an effort to tear myself away because I was enjoying myself so much.
I wish I could tell you what the game is about, but so far I’m still in the opening scene. I’m Nate Bonnett, a roguish fellow who fancies himself a sky pirate, and I’ve won a ship by cheating in a game of cards. Now the ship’s owner has sent a bounty hunter (a female orc with an inexplicable accent that I pegged as Scottish but Angela says is Mancunian – what do I know, ugly American that I am, and I apologize in advance to my British readers) to bring both ship and myself back. My task is to evade this bounty hunter. Thus far this task has eluded me but I’m making slow progress.
Eventually, I presume, I will encounter the titular critter.
So what makes this adventure different? Well part of it just may be me changing. In truth I haven’t actually tried an adventure game in years. But in terms of game mechanics, the game’s developer (KING Art, with Nordic Games as publisher) has kept the number of possible actions low enough that when I get stuck I can sort-of brute force my way through a solution. I have a finite number of ‘hot spots’ to interact with (shown by holding down the space bar) and a manageable number of inventory items to attempt to use on these hot spots. When logic fails, just trying every combination (in other words, ‘fiddling with the problem’) can jar something loose. That’s still not to say the game has been easy for me and in one spot I did get stuck and had to head to the Internet for a solution. In that case it turned out I’d just missed a combination.
The game is intended to be funny and Angela (who was sitting next to me playing EQ2) and I were both laughing from time to time. Humor is really subjective, and while many of the jokes worked, some of them just died on the computer screen. They jokes are kind of all over the place and include lots of pop culture staples (references to how fast the ship can do the Kessel Run, for example) and some self-referential 1-offs (Bonnett suggesting dressing up as a game developer and re-writing the first chapter as the solution to a puzzle). The voice talent so far is good but not great; it’s certainly doesn’t get in the way of enjoying the game.
One detail I really want to make note of. In the first chapter there’s a lock-picking puzzle and I have to say that it is by far the best lock-picking puzzle/mini-game I’ve ever encountered. It really feels like picking a lock, at least insofar as my experience as an honest and upstanding citizen (ha!) has taught me about lock picking.
If you played and enjoyed the first game I’m sure you’d enjoy this one as well. If like me you didn’t, then this one could be a good place to start. It’s a shorter game (roughly half the length of the original) but cheaper as well, listing at about $20, but available for $16 until December 12th. There’s a demo available as well.
I hasten to add that you shouldn’t consider this a full review (I get some confusion about what is and isn’t a review sometimes). I’ve only spent one evening playing and I haven’t gotten very far. I’m just sharing the fact that (so far at least) I’m enjoying an adventure game for the first time in years (maybe ever?). For all I know the difficulty ramps way up in Chapter 2 and I’m going to need a ton of help, but that’s where you come in. I’m selfishly hoping some of my adventure-playing readers will pick the game up so they can give me some hints!
[Disclosure: I was provided with a review copy of THe Book of Unwritten Tales: The Critter Chronicles.]
Beamdog sent over a patch to the PC version of Baldur’s Gate: Enhanced Edition tonight. Unfortunately the client doesn’t give you much info, but over in the forums are some patch notes. Looks like it’s almost all bug fixes, but while I was there I noticed a warning: Intel Integrated Graphics are NOT supported in BG:EE. That’s going to be a bummer for a lot of laptop users and I hope they can find a way to make them work.
As for me, firing up the game for Day 2 was quite enjoyable now that the initial learning curve is behind me, and I am already used to the graphics. Mind you I’m still learning things but tonight was more playing and less figuring stuff out, if you know what I mean.
Our Hero, Traellan of Edgewood, and his childhood friend Imoen were en route to the Friendly Arm Inn when I realized there was a lot of unexplored area that I was leaving behind. “I always explored the whole map.” Angela noted and me, ever curious, had to concur that this made good sense.
It made good sense until we encountered a hungry Dire Wolf, anyway. Thrice the foul beast slaughtered our merry, but much too small, band. I’m still getting the knack of things. Imoen has a wand of magic missile but using it tended to draw the wolf’s attention and she’s a slight thing that can’t take much punishment (Thief – she has 8 hit points!) Even though Traellan wears the badge of a Fighter he’s still not all that tough either.
After the Gods of Reload brought our heroes back for a third time, I decided to leave exploration for later, and we pressed on, sticking to the relative safety of the roads.
Although we met a few odd individuals along the way, the trip was more or less uneventful, though Trae’s head was spinning with fatigue by the time they staggered through the gates leading to the Inn. Inside were a motley bunch of revelers and it didn’t take us long to decide that the skulking half-orc Dorn was best avoided, and that the Druid and Fighter who were old friends of Traellan’s father made for better traveling companions. With introductions made, Traellan rented Merchant’s Rooms so that he and Imoen could get some much-needed rest before setting out in the morning.
And thus ended tonight’s session.
More than this happened, but I’m trying to leave out certain surprises for now, in case others like me who haven’t played wind up reading this. I actually think I’m already farther than I’ve ever gotten in the game in the past!
Also apologies in advance for switching from “he” to “I” and back again. I do that kind of “internal role play” thing when I play a game like this, so in my mind, I am Traellan and vice versa.
I have a confession to make. I never played much of Baldur’s Gate when it came because I, uh, didn’t like it very much. ~ducks the incoming volley of rotten vegetables~
Honestly it was so long ago that I don’t even remember why I didn’t like it. I just know I tried to get into it a couple times and never did. I admitted as much when I was offered a review copy of Baldur’s Gate: Enhanced Edition for the PC, but the marketing person I was talking to and I thought it might be interesting to see if anything about the game can change my mind. Also I have Angela hanging around me and she adored the game when it first launched (and she’s waiting anxiously for the iPad version to release).
So the first thing you need to know is where to buy it. As far as I can tell you can only get it via Beamdog which is yet another PC digital distribution service vying for your dollars. The PC version costs $19.99. The good news is that if you don’t want another digital service client installed on your machine you can just download the game the old-fashioned way, or so I’m told. I used the client.
The game should be out on iPad later this week, and Andorid and OS X in the weeks and months to come.
So what’s Enhanced? Well the game runs full screen on modern machines, for one thing. I believe there was a patch to allow Baldur’s Gate II to do that but it was never made for the first game, at least not in a way that made things easy for casual players. They’ve added a new tutorial which stands apart from the game, and there’s now a kind of endless dungeon mode if you just want to practice your combat. There’re a few new NPC characters to potentially join your party. In the tablet versions these are DLC but they come included with the PC version. You have Rasaad yn Bashir, a calishite monk from the far south and the first Monk NPC in the game. Then there is Neera the Wild Mage, a half-elf from the High Forest. She’s the first Wild Mage NPC. Last up is Dorn Il-Khan, a half-orc Blackguard bent on revenge. Blackguard is a new ‘kit’ for the Enhanced Edition and the player can choose to go that route as well. Blackguards are apparently kind of anti-paladins.
The old 3D cut scenes are gone, replace by hand-drawn animations. There’re new portraits and a couple of new voices to round out the Enhanced Features.
I decided to run through the tutorial first. I’m going to be honest with you; even though the game is “Enhanced” it does still look dated, and it took me a while to get past that. If you don’t have at least some tolerance for ‘retro gaming’ you might struggle with this one. The tutorial is fairly long and for the most part not very exciting but it does use a bunch of NPCs you’ll be meeting up with later. You can create a custom character for the tutorial and if you save your game, you can later Import that character into the main campaign and with the character comes a bit of gear you’ll pick up while learning to play. Every little bit helps; Baldur’s Gate is one of those games that reminds us how much easier games have become over the years. I managed to die in the tutorial!
I’ve barely gotten started on the real game; I spent most of my evening running around CandleKeep doing odd jobs for people. Baldur’s Gate is a huge game and kind of slow to get going. On the other hand I found myself being bothered less and less by the dated graphics and started to really enjoy reading all the lore sprinkled throughout the game. When you right click on a shortsword to get it’s stats, you don’t just get some numbers; you get a few paragraphs about the weapon as well (you can ignore these of course).
What made it even more fun for me is Angela’s reaction to a lot of the quips from NPCs. Heck even I remembered some of them. The Innkeeper proclaims: “My hotel’s as clean as an elven arse!” and half-way through his comment she’s quoting along with him.
I took a first tiny step on what will be an epic journey if I stay with it; a journey not only though the Forgotten Realm but through the history of gaming. Baldur’s Gate: Enhanced Edition feels old, but that’s not necessarily a bad thing. We’ve gained an awful lot in the gaming world in the years since the original was published, but we’ve lost some things as well. I really enjoyed the feeling of rediscovering a piece of gaming history.
I’ll see how long that feeling lasts, and I’ll try to document my travels through the game here at Dragonchasers.
We got our Wii U on Tuesday night, but tonight was the first time I got a chance to sit down and play the one “real” game I got for it: ZombiU (we also got NintendoLand as a pack-in and Scribblenauts Unlimited for Angela, which I guess is a real game but not one I’ll be playing).
My first gaming experience on the Wii U went like this: after a few cut scenes a narrator (“The Prepper”) told me to enter a subway station to find a safe house. Suddenly I noticed zombies coming at me from three directions. I started to run but the Tablet Controller felt clumsy in my hands and I hadn’t inverted the Y axis yet. I stumbled around like a drunk. The Prepper told me to climb a ladder. I got to it and the screen prompted me to hit X to climb. WHERE IS X!!? I looked down at the controller but I was playing in the dark and couldn’t see the labels, but trial and error helped me find X. I got on the ladder just as a zombie grabbed my leg and pulled me down. I jumped up, spinning wildly, grabbed the ladder again just as another zombie leapt on me, dragging me to the ground to become a Zombie snack.
Fade to black, Game Over.
Or not! Suddenly I was another survivor, tucked snugly in the Safe House. After listening to more advice from The Prepper (who is your disembodied mentor/boss throughout the game), and adjusting some options, I crept out of the safe house. I scrounged around a bit, finding a few odds and ends that might come in handy. Then I found a machine gun turret! How fun is this? I used it, saw a zombie in the distance, sighted down the barrel and fired. The zombie dropped like a sack of potatoes. Then it got back up and started running at me, and not far behind him were a bunch more. They came surging up a flight of stairs and I strode forth to meet them, wielding my mighty Cricket Bat. I swung and hit! A zombie staggered back, then surged forward. I hit it again and again it was staggered, but by now 3 more were beside it. Seconds later there was another well-fed batch of zombies and I was waking up in the Safe House as a third survivor.
By this time I had the idea of the game. I snuck out of the safe house, crept up to where the previous survivor had died. And there she was, staggering around, moaning, with a backpack full of goodies. Taking her on 1 v 1 with the Cricket Bat wasn’t too much of a challenge. Whack her a couple times until she falls than smash her head in. I know how to do this from watching The Walking Dead on TV. Then I grab her pack and now I’m geared up and ready.
That survivor lasted a good amount of time until I opened a door that had an alarm set. As soon as it went off (and there was no way to know it was rigged) I was swarmed and quickly died.
Survivor 4 got back to the same location and found 3 or 4 cop zombies milling around with the undead version of Survivor 3 and all my gear. I found the safety of some scaffolding and used a pistol to thin the herd, then finished them off with the Cricket Bat when I was out of ammo. Got the backpack and pressed on. This guy died when he left a building (zoning in doing so) and found himself facing a punk zombie making a huge racket and drawing a horde from all over the area. Dead again.
And so on…and so on.
So far I really like ZombiU except for the ‘cheap’ deaths it throws at you, like alarms and zombies on the other side of zone lines.
It’s a relatively complicated game since there’s stuff you have to do on the tablet and other things you have to do on the TV screen, and you tend to want to keep half an eye on one screen while you’re focusing on the other. Looting stuff in particular can be really annoying. You loot on the tablet where you have to drag and drop each item from the container it is in, into your backpack. The Wii U tablet in general isn’t very responsive, so you have to drag and drop with INTENT. I keep mis-dragging things, believe it or not; I’m just not used to pushing that hard on a tablet screen. There are also annoyances like finding a few rounds of ammo but not being able to pick it up because your inventory is full. So you have to close the container, open your backpack, drop something, then loot the bullets, then equip your pistol and hit the Reload button (Y) to load the ammo into the gun, and then pick up the item you’d dropped. Remember that while you’re doing all this on the tablet, the game isn’t frozen and at any moment a zombie could jump you on the TV screen.
Your tablet also works as a scanner. You hold it up, press one of the shoulder keys and move it around to scan the environment around you (you can use an analog stick too, if you prefer). It’s a neat little mechanic that helps immerse you in the world a bit. You can also see messages from other players in a way similar to the system in Demons Souls and Dark Souls. One of the first messages you’ll find is from the Developers congratulating the people who’ve recently beat Survival Mode (where you only get 1 life). Pretty neat!
In order to like ZombiU you need to like that sort of Rogue-Like vibe of losing a lot of progress every so often. It’s a challenging game, at least for me. When a survivor dies the next one does pick up the same quest, so it isn’t like you’re starting the whole game over, but you are starting the ‘leveling’ of the character over (you get better with guns as you use them, for example).
I’ve only had one session but I think I’ll be chipping away at this game for a good amount of time. I had to quit after a couple of hours because it does get pretty intense and after a string of deaths the frustration level builds a little.
But yeah, I like it a lot. I’m looking forward to putting more time in it and I think it’ll get somewhat easier just as I become more used to using the Wii U tablet. I’m very happy with the purchase so far.
Planetside 2 is here, yay! I played the beta of this one a bit and liked it enough to know I’d be playing the released version (it’s “free to play” so that was no bold decision) so I opted to not play the beta very much so the game would be ‘fresh’ when it launched.
That might have been a mistake because Planetside 2 can be brutal to newbies. I seem to remember that when I played beta you first spawned in some central hub that was a safe zone. Not in release. In release you’re dropped right into a firefight. I opened my settings menu to check things out and BLAM! Headshot. Dead. Oh well, it gave me time to look through the settings.
But damn is this game fun! I am absolutely rubbish at it but I generally play a medic. No one hates a medic. If I die 19 times but the 20th time I get to you to heal you up, then I’m OK, right? I just need to go into the game with a light heart and not get angry and frustrated at dying a lot while I’m getting used to the game controls and such. There’ll be time to be competitive later and remember, it isn’t costing me anything to play.
What I love about the game is the scope of it. When you’re running across the field and there’re like 20-25 other guys and gals on foot, plus a few tanks and troop transports rolling along beside you, and fighter planes screaming over head, and suddenly the tank off to one side goes up in an explosion from a direct hit from somewhere.. it just feels like what would be the opening cut scene in any other game. But this is all real gameplay.
Of course other times things are a lot quieter. You gotta take the good with the bad.
Unfortunately tonight their servers are slammed. I keep winding up in a Queue that never moves…never even manages to give me my position in the queue. I finally created another character on a West Coast server with only a “High” population just to be sure the game was actually working. While I was in there I grabbed some video using the in-game video capture tools. It doesn’t do a great job, and then once I upload it to YouTube I fear it’s going to look even worse (it’s uploading as I type this).
I didn’t pre-order a Wii U. It didn’t feel like a system I needed to have on Day 1 so I decided to wait and see how things go.
But the other day I was playing the Need For Speed: Most Wanted demo, and more than once as I was racing around the city I glanced down at the radar in the bottom of the screen and that lapse in focus was enough to cause me to crash. I just seem to have a very narrow field of focus for whatever reason (I’m assuming this doesn’t happen to most people) so I’m really wary of having to glance all the way down at the tablet controller while playing a game. If I can’t keep track of something in the bottom corner of my TV screen, how am I going to keep track of something on a separate piece of hardware!!?
So to anyone who did snag a launch Wii U, is that at all an issue for you? Just curious.
* * *
The other reason I’m holding back is because a lot of what early reviewers are loving about the system wouldn’t really impact me. Being able to play your game on the tablet instead of the TV because someone wants to use the TV is a family-friendly feature but we have 2 people and 2 HD TVs in this apartment so it’s not a big issue for us. Also the multiplayer aspects where one person uses the tablet to do 1 thing and 4 others use Wii Remotes to do something else sounds really fun, but I’m a solo gamer; I don’t have people over to visit to play video games and it’s just me and Angela here and she’s not much of a console gamer.
I think these ideas are neat and I think the Wii U will be an awesome console for families or people who often have company over.
I’m still sticking to my plan of purchasing a Wii U when there are 4 games we really want for it. Scribblenauts is one (for Angela), so we’re waiting for 3 more…
[Update]
And yet another reason for caution, for me. I thought of this when I was watching TV today, couldn’t identify an actress, and grabbed my tablet to look her up on IMDB. I didn’t just grab my tablet, I grabbed my tablet and my reading glasses, which I have to wear in order to see my tablet clearly. That made me realize that if I was on a Wii U I’d have to, I guess, where my progressive bi-focals which I hate. I can see the TV fine without glasses but with the prog. bifocals on I have to make sure I’ watching the TV through the proper ‘band’ in the glasses.
Again, I’m a weird case. I actually have 3 pairs of glasses. Drugstore (non-prescription) reading glasses for reading books, magazines and tablets, a pair of “computer glasses” optimized for reading at arm’s length away (ie, computer screens) and then the progressive bi-focals which I basically wear while driving. I can read with those if I peer through the very bottom of them, usually having to tilt my head back in order to do so. I hate ’em though. If your optometrist every tries to sell you these things, say no. They’re stupid expensive and annoying as hell.
Most of us gamers hit YouTube when we’re scrounging for the latest trailers or what not, but now Hulu wants to get in on the action. They’ve just added a Videogames section to their service.
In addition to trailers, they have content from Canada’s The Electric Playground and G4’s ExtendedPlay (which is destined to end soon with G4 rebranding itself).
They promise release info, reviews and more. For now this content is limited to the PC client but in the coming months it’ll make it’s way to the various Hulu Plus apps for smartphones, tablets, smart TVs, gaming consoles and set-top streaming solutions.
We’ll see if Hulu can attract marketshare from YouTube or even outlets like Twitch.TV!
I’m seeing a lot of comments around the social networks from people who seem really passionate in their hatred for Windows 8.
I’ve been running it on my laptop since it launched and on my desktop (which I use for probably 12 hours a day) since last weekend, and I’m really quite pleased with Microsoft’s new OS so far. I find it to be much faster in terms of UI response, and I think the Start Screen is a huge improvement over the Start Menu (finding things on my system is way faster with the Start Screen than it was with the Start Menu, and popping open the Start Screen feels faster then opening the Start Menu), though I can still just use Fences on my Desktop if I prefer. I also am thrilled that I can have different task bars on each of my two monitors, and though this isn’t really critical, I’m happy to be able to run different desktop wallpaper on each monitor.
What’s really odd is I find I use the mouse less than I did in Windows 7. Sure Windows 8 works great with a touchscreen (well, I’m assuming that…haven’t tried it myself) but there are enough keyboard shortcuts that navigating around has me using the mouse less than I ever did (it could be many of these keyboard shortcuts always existed and I never bothered to learn them).
Anyway, like I said I see a lot of “Windows 8 sucks!” level comments but few of them with actual reasons why. I’d love to hear why people are switching to, or threatening to switch to, Ubuntu (good choice!) or Mac (awful choice!) because of the new OS.
OK this is more like it! This is what I remember playing adventure games feels like…
