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Affilliation
2008’s Personal Halloween Horror
People around me are prepping assorted horrors to scare the kids trying to scare them off their hoarded candy.
The only horror I’m experiencing now is that 11 hours after purchasing Penny Arcade’s On the Rain-Slick Precipice of Darkness: Episode 2, I still can’t download it! T_T
[update]
I noticed that the Nitrogen icon near my avatar doesn’t show up. I also noticed that when I switched to my mobile internet, it showed up! I was able to download the game by using my cellphone as a modem, which isn’t exactly as fast.
I don’t get it. Why didn’t the download work on my DSL (I used the same computer)? I got the game, and am enjoying my fist few hours of it, but I still want to understand why the download didn’t work for the same computer.
Tags: Penny ArcadeSpectromancer, World of Goo at Greenhouse
Been quite a while since my last post. A lot of stuff ate my time to write posts, but fortunately I was still able to look into a thing or two. One of those is the stuff at Greenhouse.
I’ve been monitoring Greenhouse the past while for updates regarding Penny Arcade’s OtRSPoD:E2 (it’s supposed to come out this week), and in the process I got to try to interesting games: Spectromancer and World of Goo.
Spectromancer is a fantasy themed card game created by Alexey Stankevich (creator of Astral Tournament and Astral Masters), Richard Garfield (don’t tell me you don’t know who HE is!) and Skaff Elias (original MtG playtester, Harry Potter TCG / D&D Minis designer). Gameplay uses parts of basic MtG concepts but has randomized decks (if you can design a deck, I havent figured it out yet), default constant “mana” increase across all mana sources, limited cards per deck, fixed slots for placing summoned creatures, and some positional considerations based on those slots (similar to Monsters’ Den: Book of Dread). Single player campaign is available, as well as multi-player. Gameplay is interesting enough, but I’m just learning the nuances so strategy is just now being revealed to me. Yes, you can make combos, but if there is no way to to custom design your deck, card synergy is a bit of a hit and miss. This game should appeal to MtG/card game fans, and plays quite decently (though I’ve encountered quite a few bugs in the demo), but I can’t recommend it broadly (niche gamepaly)
World of Goo is a physics based puzzle game where you manipulate blobs of goo to create structures that allow you to complete objectives (in the demo, it’s mostly getting from point A to point B). Graphics are slick and well done, and the puzzles are very interesting, though I’m kinda stuck in what could be the last level of the demo (I don’t know where I have to go / build to). You’ll easily figure out how to play on the get go (though perhaps the objectives per level won’t always be obvious. Like I said, I’m stuck), so I can make a rather broad recommendation on this as it should appeal to a lot of people.
I’m currently playing through the demos to determine if I should purchase them or not. Currently, I’m leaning on getting World of Goo, I’m still deciding if the Spectromancer’s gameplay will be appealing enough for me to be worth a purchase.
You can find download links to the demos at the developer’s website of each respective game and of course at Greenhouse.
[edit]
Crap! I looked around for a hint on the last demo level for World of Goo. Either I missed a clue (I checked again, none of the signs seem to clue me in) or it just didn’t occur to me that some of the environ items are actually usable! Demo is officially over. Now it’s time to consider if I enjoyed it enough to be willing to shell out some coppers for the full thing.
Tags: has demo, has downloads, MtG, Penny ArcadeGrab Good Ol’ Games from gog.com!
After installing Freespace 2 yesterday afternoon, I spent the rest of yesterday just having a blast (or rather, several blasts)! I’ve never really played much shooters and space sims, but my experience with Freespace 2 has been generally good. The action is fun, the controls take some getting used to but are workable, but you really do feel like you’re in a spacefight with wingmates. I haven’t gotten very deep in the story yet, but it’s quite intriguing even if I haven’t played Freespace 1.
The astute reader would have noticed that this post was written on 2008, and Freespace 2 was released pre y2k (1999 actually). You’d be hard pressed to find this game around, and even harder pressed to figure out if it’d still work in this era of XP and Vista.
So how come I’m wasting my time on a game that’s almost a decade old? Basically ‘cozI’ve been hearing some space sim fans say it’s a “good old game”. Incidentally, that’s where I got it.
gog.com stands for “Good Old Games”, and that’s what they serve. The site aims to be the Steam or TotalGaming.net for the old stuff that a lot of geezers would still want to play, and what younglings of today should seriously take a look at. In those years, my rig was never up to snuff, so I missed a lot of those “good stuff”. Pretty much any average modern PC these days can play the games they offer, in fact, there’s a bigger probability that the game is so old it won’t work with the newer Windowz…
… but they worked on that too! The good people at gog.com reworked the games to make sure they work in our modern operating systems, and they’ll probably try to keep it working for future ones. You can pretty much rest assured that your old childhood companion Fallout will work. If in the off change it doesn’t, gog.com or it’s community should give you a hand.
Perhaps you’re leery of how much you’ll have to pay for a trip down memory lane. Fortunately, it’s not much, everything they offer is pretty much dirt cheap as far as video games go. I got Freespace 2 for US$6 (technically, it’s US$5.99, but c’mon, who are we kidding?). Fallout costs the same. The most expensive items are US$10 (US$9.99), around the cost of the cheapest games at Steam.
Currently, the site’s in beta, so you’ll still have to signup for a beta key before they open-up to the general public. After creating an account, you choose a game and select your payment methond among the supported credit cards or through PayPal. After purchase, the game will be avaliable for you to download, either as a typical download, or via the gog.com Downloader (which uses Adobe AIR, don’t know why they decided on that). Aside from the game itself, which is already patched to the last stable version, you’re also treated to a number of extras like wallpapers, soundtracks and manuals (depends on the game, I assume).
How about games that require a CD to play, or games that phone home to check your installation? What if I want the game on my laptop which isn’t always online? You won’t have to worry about that ‘coz all the games they offer are DRM free! Yep, you heard me… they be DRM free, folks! The gog.com guys talk about it here and here. Coming from a country with its share of problems regarding piracy, I believe that the gog.com approach is the way to go.
Give yourself a dose of nostalgia and head on over to gog.com! If you weren’t old enough to have enjoyed these games before, now is your chance! You might get pleasantly surprised that your old man was right when he yaps about the things he played in the good ol’ days.
As for me, I’ll enjoy Freespace 2 for a while. Afterwards, I’ll probably go find out for myself why people were raving about Fallout 2 back in college. 
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