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Affilliation
There’s fraggin’, and then there’s puzzle fraggin’
The past week was filled with rave reviews on Left 4 Dead. Since I already got myself a steam account last week, and since I’m assuming you’ll need Steam anyway to play Valve games, I was considering purchasing Left 4 Dead online so I can finally get my feet wet with multiplayer FPSs.
Two things gave me pause:
- My PC is a bit on the old side (around 4 years now).
- FPSs aren’t friendly to lag. Half a second delay could get my ass handed to me.
I wish the L4D demo was still available so I could test it on my system, but alas, I can’t find it. The game currently retails at around US$50, so if I’m gonna fork out the dough, I better make sure I can play it immediately. I do have plans on upgrading my PC, but I’m waiting for Starcraft 2 to come out before I do it.
Fortunately for me, a nice little option came along.
Last week, gog.com started adding Unreal and Unreal Tournament stuff. I remember Unreal Tournament as the first shooter I really liked because it wasn’t as frantic as Quake was, and it was the 1st shooter that didn’t make me dizzy after prolonged hours of play. Delighted at the prospect of a shooter my system could handle, I decided that the cheap price is acceptable even if the ‘net multiplayer doesn’t work. I can accept US$10 for just fragging a few bots when I’m in the mood. If my ‘net connection can handle the lag, then the ‘net play would be a welcome bonus.
So I made the purchase and started the download. 2 gig don’t download all that fast, though, and I had to redo the download due to a silly thing I did. So while waiting, I decided to check-out what the other digital distribution sites had to offer.
I ended up being intrigued by the new stuff Greenhouse had. Hitherland was added a week or so ago, but the demo was available only recently. Puzzlegeddon was the new game, and it already had a demo available. I downloaded both.
I installed the Puzzlegeddon demo and played a few rounds. I wasn’t expecting much, but it ended up engaging me for quite a few rounds!
Puzzlegeddon’s core mechanic is basically sliding blocks in a square grid to make sets of at least 5 of the same color. The cool thing is that this core mechanic is used as a means to fuel a competitive game between 2-6 players! Making sets fills a meter of that color. The meter is used for various special effects like attack, defense, buffs, and disruptions. Also, you can select among several avatars which give you special bonuses like more powerful attacks, more efficient meter filling when chains are made, etc.
[pic above] A game against 5 bots. Me (12 o’clock, the castle) and Bit Bot decide to simultaneously fire missiles at Probot Hector. The wormhole above Probot Hector is an interrupt I cast, and the ephemeral flexing arms is due to a buff I cast.
One thing that bothers me a tad, and it’s not the gameplay. For some reason, Puzzlegeddon take a while to load, and it eats-up q big chunk of resources. Given the game, I was expecting it to be snappy, but it actually takes longer to load than OtRSPoD:E2! This has nothing to do with gameplay, though, and hopefully an update comes along to speed this part along. In terms of multiplayer, the lobbies aren’t that full right now, but if others like the game too, this will probably fix itself.
The whole concept, along with the fun and quirky art, and the possibility of multiplayer just gave me a nice warm feeling, enough to get me to purchase the thing!
And so, I now have two new competitive games, a nice old game where I shoot people, and a nice new puzzle game where I shoot people! 
Get Half-Life 1 for US$0.98! Today only!
I’ve been wanting to try Steam out (and ImpulseDriven too, actually) for quite a while now, mainly to see for myself what the concept is like. I’ve been hearing about it being much better than when it first started out, and quite a few seem to prefer it than purchasing video games from retail. I almost got Portal, but I keep stopping short of going for it somehow.
Now, I got my excuse.
Getting wind from GamerDad, I learned that until Friday, 2008.11/21 12:00 PST, the original Half-Life will be avaliable in Steam for a measely US$0.98! This is apparently in celebration of the game’s 10th year (it was released for the PC in 1998.11/19).
An old game considered by many as one of the best for a buck? Now there’s the excuse I was looking for! I signed-up and got the game.
Depending on when and what time you read this post, you might still be able to get this deal! So hurry up!
Tags: SteamWhat I’ve been up to…
So, what’s been eating my spare time lately:
- Penny Arcade Adventures: On the Rain Slick Precipice of Darkness Episode 2 - Got it from Greenhouse. Finished the game at “difficult” setting. Now I’m going for “Insane Mode”.
- World of Goo - Got it from Greenhouse too. I play it as a filler. It’s definitely a ton of fun and worth the purchase for me.
- Battlestar Galactica - When I watched the 1st episode of the reimagined series a week or so ago and I couldn’t stop! I’m working my way through the 3rd season now, trying not to rush it so I can savor the story. (side note: Was that the same Lucy Lawless as the one in Xena? She looks very different from what I remembered.)
- After being benched due to other books, The Elegant Universe: Superstrings, Hidden Dimensions, and the Quest for the Ultimate Theory
steps back to the plate. I wanted to review my basic physics. Regardless if you believe in string theory or not, the book does have a reasonably good recap of a bunch of physics theories.
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. 
I’ve never joined a social-networking site until “D&D: Tiny Adventures”
I’ve never been one to get into these “social-network website” things. Every time someone asks to add me to their friends list, I say I don’t have an account, and I get a look of confusion. I have a ton of respect for the social-web thing, I think it’s a great platform and still has a lot of untapped potential, but I just never found a compelling enough reason to get into the bandwagon.
Until I heard abut Dungeons & Dragons: Tiny Adventures (D&D:TA).
I honestly don’t remember where I first read about it, but as I scoured the internets for a regular dose of RPG news, I slowly noticed the words “Facebook” and “D&D” increasingly being mentioned together. I also noticed that the few comments I ran into weren’t all scathing remarks. They say the servers are often down, but then that might indicate that it’s getting more popular than they expected.
So, I thought it might be worth a closer look.
Here’s the official announcement from WotC’s VP of Digital Gaming Randy Buehler (Digital Insider #3):
Yesterday we launched a Facebook Application called Dungeons & Dragons: Tiny Adventures (note: you must be pre-logged in to Facebook). It’s basically a free game that we’re giving away to Facebook users in an effort to draw more attention to D&D in general and to the D&D Insider free trial in particular. The game lets you choose a character and then send that character off on adventures. You can just check in on your character periodically and read updates (I think of them as postcards from the road) or you can spend lots of time fiddling with potions and inventory. In addition, you and your friends can buff and heal each other so it pays off to get all your friends to play too. We’re pretty happy with it – I think it’s a fun diversion for hard-core D&D players and it’s also a fun introduction for newbies.
…
“‘… choose a character, send on adventures, check periodically, friends can buff and heal…’ OK, interesting enough. I’ve never played real tabletop D&D before, so what the hey?! I’ll give it a shot!”
And so I was finally convinced to join a social-network and see for myself what all the fuss was about.
Generally speaking, Randy Buehler’s description above already describes the experience very well. You pick a pre-made character based on the current D&D 4th Edition Classes and Races, then choose “adventures” (missions) to send your character to. Adventures are composed of several story points called “updates”, which occurs every few minutes (usually 10 minutes) from the time you start the Adventure.
At each Update, your character gets into a situation which requires a skill-check on your stats. For example, your character sees something shiny at the top of a mountain. D&D:TA will make a strength check (the game will roll your dice for you) to see if you can successfully climb the mountain, and the narrative text will reflect the results accordingly. If you passed the skill-check, you might find that the shiny object is an item you can equip, if you fail, you might fall and take some damage. Either way, you get eXperience Points to move your character closer to leveling-up, though you obviously get more XP on successful skill-checks. Although you can fail an Adventure, you don’t really die, and you character will regain HP over time to try for another Adventure.
If you don’t leave your character on her own, you can actually change re-equip her based on what she has or what she’s found so far, or you can make her drink potions (that have to be equipped prior to the Adventure) to heal or buff her-up in-between Updates.
Supposedly, your Facebook friends can help you out by healing you or giving you buffs, but I haven’t gotten around to trying this feature yet. I also wanted to provide some screenshots, but I can’t:
Due to events beyond our control, Dungeons & Dragons: Tiny Adventures will be down until 12 pm PST, Monday August 25. We expect that even when we are able to restore the application to working order that we will have lost some of our data in the process. While we are working hard to prevent this it is likely that we will have to roll back to our stored data from Friday, August 22nd. Thank you for your patience.
And so, after several Adventures (some successful, some failed) and reaching level 3, the adventures of Trifle, my Eldarin Wizard, came to a halt.
To prevent you from being disillusioned by what D&D:TA can do during each Adventure, you can’t really make choices other than in the equipment and timing of drinking potions between Updates. Also, you can’t really cast Spells or use Skills, it’s really just the game rolling dice against your character’s stats to determine the outcome of an event. C’mon people, it’s a Facebook app! You weren’t expecting a full-fledged D&D game, were you?! (That’s D&D Insider.)
Regardless, from the little time I’ve had in trying it out, it’s a fun time-waster and (more importantly) it appears to do what it was set out to do. As someone who doesn’t play tabletop D&D, this little app gave me a small, casual slice of the experience (which could perhaps be enough to interest others in the hobby).
I think Greywulf’s post about Dungeons & Dragons: Tiny Adventures describes what slice of D&D is captured by this little app.
If any of this managed to spark your interest, log-in to your Facebook account and send your character off to a Dungeons & Dragons: Tiny Adventure! (assuming the server isn’t down)
— 2008.08/26 18:08 update —
Server’s back up! Trifle was reset to… nothing (I didn’t have an account yet last Aug22), so I’ll have to build him up again.
Unfortunately, Trifle’s rolling pretty bad right now. ;_;
Tags: D&D, opinionPirates Respond to Positech Games’ Cliff Harris
I first read Cliff’s post addressed to pirates of his games early last week, he was trying to gather information on why people would pirate his games. As expected, a lot of the people who commented on his blog wrote about piracy in general (even though he specifically asked for pirates of his games). “It seems a lot of people have waited a long time to tell a game developer the answer to this question,” Cliff later wrote. Regardless of being specific or general, the comments (as well as the other related comments in the other boards) provide enlightening insights.
What surprised me was how fast Cliff consolidated the comments he got ‘coz he already posted the consolidation and his response last Aug 13 (I’m pretty sure the comments are still coming).
The responses, and the consolidated results are all interesting reads, I highly recommend reading them if you have any interest at all in the causes of game piracy (which may also apply to other forms of software piracy).
I hope that Cliff’s response to the results of his “survey” will improve the revenue he gets from his games.
Links:
- Genuine call for emails from pirates
- Response to pirates: Talking To ‘Pirates’
