Dispatches from the Eccentric Frontier
Recent Entries • Archive • Friends • User Info • Tags • LJ Messages • LJ Status • Home Page
Below are the 20 most recent journal entries recorded in the “Max Kaehn” journal:| ⇐ Previous 20 entries |
11:48 ※ Sam & Max Hit the Wii
We finished Sam & Max: Season One last night; we got the version for the Wii, though Windows users can get the episodes faster by downloading them as they come out. It has the same zany humor that infuses the rest of the Sam & Max line of comic books and computer games; because each episode is its own self-contained storyline, it doesn’t build up as impressively as the original Sam & Max Hit the Road game from LucasArts, which showed a twisted mirror of the entire nation through its roadside attractions. We were able to do two episodes a night on vacation; I expect that someone showing up to their day job could do one per night. The game is well worthwhile for people who are already fans of Sam & Max; if you want to get someone hooked on them, start them with the comics, and then see if you can get the LucasArts game to run on your modern system (possibly via ScummVM).
Current Mood:  pleased |
(My 2¢) |
| Tags: computer games ⁎ | |
16:51 ※ ’Tis the season for console RPGs
![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif){kind=small}
rhylar and Mimsy lent us Jade Empire, another Bioware game with Drew Karpyshyn writing. This one is Oriental fantasy, with plenty of inspiration from classic wuxia tales; one of the supporting characters, Black Whirlwind, is very faithful to Li Kui the Black Whirlwind from Outlaws of the Marsh, and has enough hilarious anecdotes that I’m certain that the shades of those teahouse storytellers from centuries ago were applauding when the game came out. John Cleese also does some fine voice acting as Sir Roderick Ponce von Fontlebottom the Magnificent Bastard, who shows up on one of the side quests.
The story is quite engaging, enough that obsessivewoman hardly found any time for reading books while it was on screen. The engine itself is clearly the same as that of KotOR, right down to the too-small palette of faces for NPCs and a continuous-spectrum alignment indicator (ranging from Open Hand— emphasizing harmony and understanding your place in the world— to Closed Fist— emphasizing ambition and discord). There are some definitely PG themes in there; the onscreen action is on a par with a high-fantasy Hong Kong action film, but one can talk with courtesans, including one who is in a rather unpleasant situation.
It took me 33 hours to play through (on Student difficulty, which made almost all the fights quite easy), following through on all the side quests. There are some minigames where you pilot a flying machine (kind of a glider with gunpowder-rocket assist) that are somewhat reminiscent of Galaga, but one can skip most of them if your videogame reflexes aren’t up to the task.
| Current Mood: pleased |
(My 2¢) |
| Tags: computer games ⁎ | |
22:08 ※ What I Did On My Thanksgiving Vacation, part 3
rhylar and Mimsy lent us their Xbox 360 and the game Mass Effect, whose lead writer Drew Karpyshyn also created the scenario and dialogue for Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic. I’m impressed: the game has a good overall plot (with enough different choices you can take that there are at least two ways to experience the plot— as a Paragon or a Renegade— and three different love interests you can follow, depending on your choice of gender and supporting character to flirt with, so there’s plenty of replay value there), several interesting supporting characters, and a large number of side quests that aren’t crucial to the plot, but usually provide interesting exposition for the universe. Having played through all of the side quests, I got nearly 60 hours of enjoyment out of the game by the time I finished it. (Most of the time was while obsessivewoman and I were on vacation; we might have finished it, but we took a very pleasant side trip through Avatar: the Last Airbender.)
The gameplay is pretty good; I played on the default difficulty setting and didn’t have to spend lots of time learning the combat system in order to survive the combats. Based on the available character skills in-game, it could be possible to do combats through stealth and sniping like in Deus Ex, but I never figured out how one would go about doing it; there are sniper rifles in the game, but combat is usually pretty close to melee (though I never had to figure out how to get into hand-to-hand, either, for which there is also support).
I was quite impressed by the amount of work they did on the planetology. One of the things you can do as you race around the galaxy getting into or solving trouble is survey planets and asteroids that you pass, and every planet has both artwork and a matching description that goes into an impressive degree of detail, explaining such details as a gas giant’s color being related to the amount of sulfur or methane in its atmosphere. Someone with a side interest in astronomy would definitely enjoy that aspect of the game.
| Current Mood: happy |
(My 2¢) |
| Tags: computer games ⁎ | |
18:58 ※ What I Did On My Thanksgiving Vacation, by Max Kaehn, Grade 32
Finished Star Wars: the Force Unleashed. I picked up the PS3 version after reading the review in Wired; I had originally planned to get the Wii one, but that would only have been worthwhile if they made the Wiimote control the lightsaber directly.
The story is almost entirely linear: it plays straight through from beginning to your choice of which boss to fight at the end to determine if you’re going to wind up on the Light Side or the Dark Side. Once you complete a level, all the FMVs are playable as extras, which makes it possible to show other people the vast majority of the story. The one thing I’d like to add is being able to replay some of the more extravagant scripted battle scenes (which, like God of War, kick in when you’ve done enough damage to a bad guy and then put an icon on screen of which controller button to push now to advance the sequence of impressive moves); that would make it possible to show the most impressive stuff, and for the player to be able to appreciate the scripting instead of waiting for the next button to show up on the screen.
The game play is pretty reasonable; I played on the default (difficulty level 2 out of 4) and was able to handle most of the boss fights without getting killed too many times. It’s a third person shooter with some occasional platformer aspects— not as much as Ratchet & Clank. It gives extra points for using button-mashing combos that you unlock as you gain experience, as well as for creative use of the default powers, and the carnage of the Dark Side does have a good deal of visceral fun as the awards go by: Crush bonus. Frenzy bonus. Long way down bonus. The Penny Arcade comic is pretty accurate (hat tip to cmccurry for pointing it out to me): telekinetic mayhem, Force Lightning mayhem, lightsaber-throwing mayhem, and blaster-bolt deflecting mayhem (which obsessivewoman particularly enjoys for its karmic-retribution qualities). I never managed to figure out half of the combos and was still able to play through the whole thing.
Picking up all the goodies can be quite tricky without a walkthrough telling you where they’re all hidden, but you can go back and replay any level you want as many times as you want to, with all of the powers you picked up playing at higher levels. Unlocking both endings requires playing through the final level twice. I’m looking forward to going back and playing through the game again when I finally get an HDTV.
| Current Mood: pleased |
|
| Tags: computer games ⁎ | |
18:40 ※ That hyperkinetic rabbity thing is back
The Sam & Max adventures from Telltale Games are coming to the Wii.| Current Mood: pleased |
|
| Tags: computer games ⁎ | |
14:51 ※ My current morning workout
A few Sundays ago, obsessivewoman encouraged me to camp out in the early morning to pick up a Wii Balance Board and Wii Fit. (Went to my local Best Buy with a good book, got their at 8:30 and there were already half a dozen people ahead of me in line. More people trickled in after a while, and the line was around the corner by the time the employees came out at 10:30 and handed us tickets. The store opened at 11:00 and people came in to ransack their entire supply of 28 Wiis and 27 Wii Fits.)
Wii Fit is a very different experience from yourself!fitness and Eyetoy: Kinetic. The other games give you an entire workout, with warmup, exercises, and cooldown; you can exercise a bit of control over what you’re getting at the beginning, but once you’ve started, you’re committed to it. Wii Fit is more the buffet style of exercise: it gives you a collection of four categories of exercise (yoga, strength training, aerobics, and balance), and exercises that last from 1–3 minutes (which you can gradually increase up to 10 minutes as you continue to play the game and unlock more exercises and extended play). It’s up to you to handle your own warmup and cooldown. I usually start with yoga until I feel like I’ve limbered up everything I’ll be using in the aerobics exercises.
The buffet style is very good at getting the “just one more turn” syndrome to make you apply your gaming addiction to exercise. Every exercise has a score, even the yoga (which is usually grading you on how well you kept your balance through a pose). Do you want to go back and try again to better your score? Or that of someone else who’s been using your Wii and has their name on the high score list?
The yoga and strength exercises are correlated, so if I do Warrior in yoga, it’ll suggest I do Lunges in strength to match. Doing workouts in one category will tend to open up new options in others; when you start Wii Fit, it only has about a dozen exercises, but over a couple of weeks it’s easy to get it to make most of them available. The aerobics have a good variety as well: a couple of hula hoop games, a couple of running games, a couple of stepping games, and a rhythm boxing one that uses the Wiimote and nunchuk.
The place where it really shines is the balance games, which put the most fun into the gameplay. They’re just minigames, but they’re still a good deal of fun, with things like a ski slalom, a “tilt the board to drop balls through a hole” game, and even a whimsical one where you tilt an iceberg to make a penguin slide around catching fish. There are plenty of Balance Board games in development, and We Ski is already available.
It also encourages you to weigh in every day and take a balance test to see how well you’re doing, and it calculates your “Wii Fit Age” based on how well you do in the balance tests. I recommend doing this after a few yoga exercises and a balance game, but before doing the aerobics; this gets your brain into the mode of controlling a Wii Balance Board, but your muscles haven’t gotten tired yet.
Current Mood:  tired |
|
| Tags: computer games ⁎, doin' the darwin dance ⁎, nifty ⁎, tech ⁎ | |
19:05 ※ Burning calories while avoiding boredom
Being Slothman means being easily bored by repetition. This is an advantage for recognizing places to make software more efficient, but makes it challenging to find an exercise routine that captures my attention— and being lazy doesn’t burn many calories. Aikido is great when my schedule permits, but sinceobsessivewoman needs to get to bed early and get up early, being out until 8 in the evening doesn’t work well for having much time together during the week. I tried yourself!fitness for a while, which was pretty good, but a workout video that changes the routine daily is still just a workout video. My latest routine has been EyeToy: Kinetic. This is a workout game for the Playstation 2 that uses the EyeToy, which is a USB-based camera that plugs into the PS2’s front panel. EyeToy games recognize motion and map it onto the screen, where you can interact with virtual objects. In the case of EyeToy: Kinetic, it has three kinds of games that give you a workout: cardio, combat, and “mind and body”. Cardio games last ten minutes and keep you moving around, dodging some objects and touching others. Combat games last three minutes and require more intense strikes and ducking, and can be exhausting. “Mind and body” games work more on balance and smooth motion, and are the only ones that don’t leave me drenched in sweat.
It also has some modes that put three windows on the screen, one showing the EyeToy view and two showing different angles on your virtual trainer demonstrating the exercises you should be doing; these are not interactive. The system always puts you through warmup and cooldown sequences from this repertoire, and it also has ones for working out your upper body, lower body, and abdominals, and some yoga, tai chi, and meditation sequences as well.
The nice thing about the workout is that live interaction is much more engaging than just trying to match up with a virtual trainer on screen. (It also grades you on your performance, A–F, as a source of motivation.) The EyeToy isn’t very smart about image motion recognition, though; it can’t distinguish between your own motion, that of your shadow, or of a ceiling fan in the background. It needs fairly high contrast, too; I changed my workout outfit to a white shirt and light grey sweatpants so I’ll stand out against most of the background of the living room, but wear a black biking glove on my right hand to stand out against the white wall. Direct sunlight will completely white it out; during early morning workouts, I need to put a black banner in front of the peaked window in my east wall. (That was a fairly cheap solution involving PVC pipe, a couple of yards of duckcloth, and a hot melt glue gun.)
Overall, I’d say it’s good value for $45 (including the game disc and the EyeToy camera). It runs just fine on the PS3 as well.
| Current Mood: tired |
|
| Tags: computer games ⁎, doin' the darwin dance ⁎, nifty ⁎, tech ⁎ | |
11:44 ※ Mmmm... game tech...
The Bodypad is a game controller that works by strapping sensors onto your elbows and knees to determine your body movement, and holding a pair of handles for hand movement. It’s mostly used for fighting, dance, and sport games. It just recognizes arm and leg movements and pulling triggers on the handles, and movements on each side can be mapped to the four action buttons on a standard game controller; this means you can hook up leg movements to “kick” and arm movements to “punch”, but you can’t make your left leg control the onscreen character delivering a left-legged kick unless that’s a separate button in the game. There’s a directional pad on the left handle for movement and L1-L2-R1-R2 on the right handle, but no equivalent of the analog sticks. It’s only around $70, including shipping.Now, something that can recognize things like crouching, ducking, leaning, turning, and jumping would be really interesting, as that would let me play games like Ratchet & Clank using relevant body motions, but that’s probably a little ways off. Question for video gamers out there: do any fighting games for the Playstation 2 have an interesting storyline (more than just “I must defeat a bunch of enemies in a tournament so I get the prize I want to save my family/the world/etc.”) that would draw someone into a fighting game?
Current Mood:  curious |
Current Music: Synaesthesia - Desideratum |
(My 2¢) |
| Tags: computer games ⁎, doin' the darwin dance ⁎, nifty ⁎, tech ⁎ | ||
10:17 ※ Machinima can be used for webcomics
I’ve never played Half-Life or its sequel, and I still find Concerned: the Half-Life and Death of Gordon Frohman quite funny. I wonder what the folks at Valve Software are making of it? I’d hope their marketing department is happy for the free publicity.| Current Mood: amused |
(My 2¢) |
| Tags: computer games ⁎, nifty ⁎, wild weird world ⁎ | |
14:56 ※ Katamari Damacy 2 coming up
Found on ![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/syndicated.gif){kind=small}
boingboing_net that the sequel to Katamari Damacy is at screenshot stage already.
| Current Mood: anticipatory |
Current Music: Tangerine Dream - Soundmill Navigator | |
| Tags: computer games ⁎ | ||
10:21 ※ A game I'd like to see
So while using responDESIGN’s yourself!fitness, it occurred to me that it would be entertaining to create a version of the game using characters, settings, and music from the Ratchet & Clank games. The main thing to add to get the Ratchet & Clank feel would be to have multiple characters on the mat doing the exercises, occasional banter between them, and the camera work to support it. (It’d be entertaining to see a Lombax do yoga... and even more entertaining to watch Captain Qwark collapse in a heap during the endurance parts.) Insomniac Games’ FAQ says “For legal reasons we are not allowed to take ideas or suggestions from outside the company. (We can't even read them, actually.) As a developer, taking ideas isn't really what we do. A publisher is who you would want to talk to.” Anyone know the most effective way to suggest a Helga!fitness partnership without causing them to ignore the idea due to potential legal entanglements? All I want is the game... I couldn’t care less about any rights going with this (rather obvious) idea.Current Mood:  creative |
Current Music: Kaya Project - Walking Through | |
| Tags: computer games ⁎, doin' the darwin dance ⁎, nifty ⁎, tech ⁎, where's my venture capital? ⁎ | ||
23:00 ※ Oddworld: Stranger's Wrath
Just finished playing Stranger’s Wrath, the latest Oddworld game. Unlike the previous Oddworld titles, this is not a puzzle game; it’s more like Ratchet & Clank Go To Oddworld (though with a much shorter plot than you’d expect from a Ratchet & Clank game). This is a first-person shooter with an entertaining variety of ammunition types, each one a small creature that has a particular effect on its target when launched from our hero’s crossbow.The good stuff: the usual deranged Oddworld sensibilities are there, this time with an Old West theme (though the frontier has the occasional laptop and animated marquee). Our hero, Stranger, is a bounty hunter; in addition to a crossbow, he also has a device for vacuuming up disabled opponents (which is very satisfying). The opposition tend to have lots of explosives lying around, which makes for an amusing way to dispose of opposition that’s impractical to knock out and grab for bounty. Halfway through the game, you even get serious sniping capability (sadly, with a fairly small clip). The interaction with other characters in the game is pretty one-track for advancing the immediate plot goal; this is no Deus Ex where it’s worth talking to everyone you meet to hear what they say.
The not-so-good stuff: the game shifts between a first-person view (like Doom and Deus Ex) and a third-person view (like Ratchet & Clank), and it’s clumsy at times, as you can only engage in melee effectively in the third-person view and only shoot in the first-person view. This makes combats quite tricky when the opponents that are immune to gunfire show up and you need to punch them out. (The controls for melee in first person mode are different from the ones in third person mode, which just adds to the confusion.) The boss fights aren’t my cup of tea, as they don’t reward the sneaking and sniping I enjoy. The game is in the habit of using cut scenes that deposit you at a particular spot— often taking you from a position of tactical advantage to a position of tactical disadvantage, and at one point teleporting across a river (which made it really difficult to figure out how to get back!). And at a major turning point in the game, all the money and gear acquired in the first part of the game just goes away; there’s no more use for the money, as there’s no further visiting civilization and general stores, but it’s frustrating to suddenly lose the improved ammunition capacity. (The game makes up for this somewhat by using the bounty vacuum to turn targets into “ammo chow”, which makes it easier to reload without access to nests of the critters you use for ammunition— including the sniper wasps, who can only be bought in stores or found in crates.)
This portion of Oddworld only has a few creatures in common with the previous portions we’ve seen; you see plenty of fuzzles and one vykker, but there’s no followup on the overall story from the first three games.
If you’ve enjoyed the Oddworld series of games and have the reflexes for a first-person shooter, this is worth picking up as another fun view on Oddworld. In terms of overall entertainment value, you’ll get more bang for your buck from Ratchet & Clank; if you’re on a budget, you might want to wait until the game has been out for a while to pick it up.
| Current Mood: pleased |
(My 2¢) |
| Tags: computer games ⁎ | |
16:24 ※ Katamari da Vinci
I discover the most deranged things on boingboing_net.
| Current Mood: amused |
Current Music: zerO One - matriX | |
| Tags: computer games ⁎, wild weird world ⁎ | ||
18:47 ※ Escaped gaming meme: Nanotech Revolution
( Spoilers for Deus Ex: Invisible War )| Current Mood: creative |
Current Music: Steve Roach - On This Planet | |
| Tags: computer games ⁎, escaped gaming meme ⁎, transhumanism ⁎ | ||
18:03 ※ Deus Ex: Invisible War
I finished playing Deus Ex: Invisible War, the sequel to Deus Ex. The game isn’t quite as good as Deus Ex— the story felt a bit rushed in how it revealed the conspiracies involved, as if there were a chapter or two cut from the script— but it was still my style of first person shooter. I don’t have the reflexes for Doom and its ilk, but a game where you can sneak around with a silenced sniper rifle and hack into the computers controlling security cameras and weapons turrets is more my style. The constraints of telling a story set 20 years after the previous game probably made it difficult to include as much real-world conspiracy theory as the original game; the sequel doesn’t have the same level of Fortean delight as the original.The game allows play at varying levels of morality: you can choose to knock out (rather than kill) nearly every opponent you run into, except for the guys in powered armor, who explode when defeated. (This is what you get for putting a concentrated enough power source to run powered armor into one spot.) I was surprised at the lack of feedback for the choices one makes in doing so, though; the character never builds up a reputation for what kind of trail of bodies are left behind, nor is there even a summary at the end of the game.
Of course, I have Fable to look forward to for getting feedback on the good/evil meter. I hear the game keeps track of the greatest distance you’ve ever kicked a chicken. :-)
| Current Mood: pleased |
Current Music: Steve Roach - Atmospheric Conditions | |
| Tags: computer games ⁎ | ||
13:16 ※ Up Your Arsenal!
Under the tree fromobsessivewoman this year was Insomniac Games’ worthy successor to their first two Ratchet and Clank games, Ratchet & Clank: Up Your Arsenal. It has many satisfying weapons (such as the Rift Inducer, which sucks enemies into small black holes) and deranged ones (such as the Quack-O-Ray, which turns your opponents into ducks— the first upgrade makes them into ducks that lay explosive eggs, and it gets weirder from there until you have flaming ducks that fly into enemies). Sadly, the Suck Cannon has lost one of its features from the original game: it no longer allows indirect fire. Saves from the first two games come in handy in this one, dropping the price for weapons from those games to zero. The titanium bolts in this game aren’t as compelling as the gold and platinum bolts in the last two since all they do is unlock skins for Ratchet, most of which are complete disguises rather than interesting outfits. (I play with the tuxedo skin; it adds to the demented quality of the game to have Ratchet wearing formal gear while blowing up everything in sight.)
| Current Mood: delighted |
Current Music: Shulman - Soundscapes and Modern Tales | |
| Tags: computer games ⁎ | ||
13:46 ※ And the Weird Videogame of the Year prize goes to...
...Katamari Damacy, a surrealistic treat from Namco. sandpanther gave me a copy this Yuletide, and told me she’d heard the developer who invented the original idea was thoroughly drunk at the time, and seeing the game, I can believe it. The King of All Cosmos (who doubtlessly last manifested on Earth in 1967 and was mistaken for a promotional for Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band) went on a bender and smashed all the stars in the sky; to deal with the complaints, he sends his son, the Prince, to roll up big balls of miscellaneous stuff on Earth (depending on the size of the ball, it can include anything from thumbtacks to baseball stadiums) so he can hang them in the sky as replacements for the constellations. (The constellation Cancer is restored by rolling up lots of tasty crabs, for instance.) I find this is a particularly amusing game for the season, as it has a certain demented parallel to Christmas: “And He was so annoyed by the complaints from the world, He sent His only son to roll up random objects and replace the stars He smashed on his drunken rampage...” If you don’t believe me, check out the review at Gamespot, or the fan site.
| Current Mood: delighted |
(My 2¢) |
| Tags: computer games ⁎ | |
22:05 ※ At least I can get vicarious vacations
One thing you can do in Kingdom of Loathing is go on vacation. (Any other MMORPGs that support vacation? You prefer being attacked by cows wielding halberds, don’t you?) The three vacation spots are the Distant Lands Dude Ranch Adventure (which usually increases your Muscle), the Tropical Paradise Island Getaway (which usually increases your Mysticality), and the Large Donkey Mountain Ski Resort (which usually increases your Moxie); any vacation can also result in picking up interesting souvenirs. Each vacation costs 3 moves and 500 meat, and provides an entertaining narration of how you spent your vacation. These are my favorites:You arrive at the tropical island and decide to try your hand (and feet) at surfing. You rent a surfboard and paddle out into the ocean, only to find that surfing is really, really hard. Try as you might, you can’t get the hang ten of it.andAs you’re heading back to the hotel exhausted and defeated, a tall man with dark hair and darker sunglasses beckons to you from the shadows. “Duuuude.... duuude.” He whispers. “I can totally teach you how to surf. Excellent!”
You follow him to a small shack by the beach. He teaches you to understand that the beach and the waves are all created in your mind, that you’re not really breathing air, and that you know kung fu. You learn how to see the reality of the world that has been pulled over your eyes.
And of course, you use those godlike powers to be the best surfer ever. The next day, you’re not only shooting the curl and gleaming the cube, but at times you’re surfing three or four feet above the waves. And occasionally surfing along the beach.
Whoah.
After a few days at the Distant Lands Dude Ranch, you decided to take a load off, and head on down to the local saloon.and a couple of related encounters on the mountain:As you enter, a burly cowboy turns from his place at the bar, looks you straight in the eye, and says “I reckon this town ain’t big enough for the both of us.”
“I reckon you’re right,” you reply. “So what do you reckon you’re gonna do about it?”
“Well, I reckoned I’d go buy some lumber and some tools, and make the town a little bigger. Wanna give me a hand?”
“Sure,” you reply.
You spend the rest of the evening building additions to all of the buildings in town. Carpentry is quite a workout, you reckon.
You’re shushing down the slopes of Large Donkey Mountain, looking stylish and half-frozen, when you’re distracted by a sexy ski bunny. I mean, who knew bunnies could ski? And why are they so very sexy when they do? These are the thoughts that run through your mind as your body runs through a grove of trees, eventually colliding with one.Fortunately, this is a grove of sentient trees overseen by a friendly hipster Ent known as ForestGoatee. He takes you back to his cave, gives you some java and Quisp cereal, and lets you check your mail on the Enternet. You leave refreshed and feeling more hip for the time spent in his company.
You’re cross-country skiing through the forests around Large Donkey Mountain when you run into ForestGoatee, the hipster Ent.“Hooom, man,” he says. “Cross-country skiing? No snowboarding? No Xtreme Downhill? Do you have any idea how dorky that is?”
“Yup,” you reply. “It’s about as dorky as wearing mesh trucker caps and thick plastic-frame glasses.”
“Exactly,” he says, and pats you on the back (knocking you over in the process, but then thoughtfully setting you back on your skis). “For a hasty one, you’re pretty hip. I believe you are a new species - a half-hipling. I shall have to discuss this with my fellow hipster Ents. Here, take this - it’s been a while since anybody even half-hip came to visit me.”
ForestGoatee hands you a bottle of Ent Cider and sends you on your way.
| Current Mood: amused |
(My 2¢) |
| Tags: computer games ⁎ | |
15:38 ※
I’m finding Kingdom of Loathing rather addictive. Despite being web-based, the game is much closer to Nethack than a MMORPG. (You can trade items with other players in the game, and form up into clans that can attack each other at a clan level without endangering individual players. You can also choose to participate in player vs. player attacks.)There’s just something delightfully surrealistic about a game where one builds a Meat Engine from a Cog, Spring, Sprocket, Empty Meat Tank, and Meat Stack, and can proceed to combine it with Dope Wheels (created from Sweet Rims and Tires) to build a Bitchin’ Meat Car, with a Frilly Skirt (obtained by defeating a Gnollish Crossdresser in combat) to create a Clockwork Maid that can clean up your campsite and give you four extra moves per day, or with a Gnollish Plunger (obtained from defeating a Gnollish Plungermaster) to create the dreaded Gnollish Autoplunger, one of the more powerful weapons in the game, which uses a Meat Engine to repeatedly plunge your opponents to death with a plumber’s friend.
Some of the best info sites for the game that I’ve found are Kol Trance and KoL Helper.
If you play, make sure to read the descriptions on everything. (“Double Bacon Beelzeburger: This is at least the second most evil hamburger you’ve ever seen. Maybe even the single most evil. Looks pretty tasty, though.”)
| Current Mood: jonesing | Current Music: Steve Roach - Atmospheric Conditions |
(My 2¢) |
| Tags: computer games ⁎ | ||
13:57 ※
Finished Eternal Darkness: Sanity’s Requiem. A fun game for fans of H P Lovecraft and puzzle-solving games. The big drawback of the game is the combat UI, which rewards for precise targeting but often doesn’t give you the camera angles you need to actually perform said targeting. The game does a really good job of providing the kind of dark ambience that the subject matter deserves; the spellcasting alone is worth watching. (And it’s very amusing to watch the viewpoint character wandering around with a big glowing mystic rune twirling above their head, surrounded by little glowing lights, and brandishing a lethal weapon dripping with eldritch energies, and no one seems to notice.)Current Mood:  sleepy |
Current Music: Shpongle - Are You Shpongled? | |
| Tags: computer games ⁎ | ||
| ⇐ Previous 20 entries |
Powered by LiveJournal.com