I loved the IDEA of a modern, casual update to the classic Infocom adventure game, Zork. The devious puzzles, the humor, the sense that something wondrous (or at least hilarious) was right around the corner, but mostly the puzzles. We’d get together in UNH’s McConnell computer cluster and try to figure them out – for HOURS. Then try out our guesses on that creeky old VAX up in the engineering lab. ...
After reading Pete of Dragonchasers go on and on about the wonderfulness of Dragon Age: Origins, I couldn’t let pass the opportunity to make my own character in the recently-released character creator and get some sort of feel for the game. The character creator not only asks you to define the look of your character and the class, but also your story. Yup, this is a Bioware game. You don’t enter the world without a history. Perhaps you come from a high family and your brother is already at war, commanding the armies of the South. Or a street grub who stumbles on an opportunity for greatness. Or a mage who soon must take the test of Harrowing to determine if they are a danger that must be destroyed, or someone who can control their power and use it for good. ...
Awhile back I gave the renowned homeless family whose story is chronicled in Alice and Kev a lot of their own in my Sims 3 town. I check in on them now and again, thinking of excuses to visit their lot. Alice never wants to visit, but I have the Party Animal ability to force people to come to my parties and have fun. Handy little ability, that. Anyone I invite, has to attend. ...
Actually, the folks at Jolt claimed to have fixed group quests for this hands-off browser RPG weeks ago, and maybe they did, but my first couple experiences with it were just our group wiping to every single monster and coming out of the whole thing missing a lot of action points and with no xp or loot. I was invited to start another one yesterday, and the experience (pun unintended) is so much better – here’s the log from our first session: ...
This will go down in history as the day when Scottie Dog defeated Captain Jack Sparrow. In My Brute, anyway. (PS – click here to roll up a Brute and become one of A Dire Bear’s pupils). Finally got to level 10 with A Dire Bear, btw, and made a new clan, Clan Nostalgia the Clan. So that’s ANOTHER game we’re in :)
The thing about “rogue-likes” is, they aren’t for everyone. Let’s face it – you will probably never, ever win a real rogue-like, no matter how long you play. The only question is, how far will you get before you die, lose everything, and have to start over from the very beginning? It’s about the heroic struggle, not the happy ending. ...
I knew I wasn’t crazy! Okay, back up – I knew I had really seen this! Jury’s still out about the whole “crazy” thing. Since I am soon to join the iBorg iPhone iCollective, it’s time to start adding iPhone games to my beat. When there’s an iPhone game coming out from prolific MMO publishers Aeria game, where you can find virtual items hidden in the real world using your iPhone 3G that can be used or redeemed in game – well – that’s just kinda cool. ...
I linked to a wonderful post by Jennifer of Girl, Unplugged today wondering why it was okay to have dumpy-looking male heroes but the female ones had to be hypersexy and … damn, in my hurry to get everything done on time this morning, I forgot to actually put the link in so —- Meet the Newer (Sexier) Team! Read it! It’s great AND funny! Now I gotta run to Snowhill to see the Dares in concert!
Out of nowhere, I was invited to take part in a weekly online gaming group as they explore the world of Neverwinter Nights 2 (which, it turns out, is an entirely separate game from Neverwinter Nights Platinum). I’d originally bought NWN2 to play with its level editor, but I never really learned it well enough to bring it all together. The levels seemed a lot smaller, for example, than I’d have liked. Smaller than in Neverwinter Nights, even. ...
Yeah, I know Legends of Zork is a “ProgressQuest”-like achiever game where you grind meaningless combat again and again to earn gold for gear that you will wear so you can return to the grind to replace it. But aren’t most RPGs like that? Just because you know there’s a man behind the curtain, doesn’t mean you can’t enjoy the show. It’s like five minutes a day to kill my thirty monsters… um, plus the half hour to make spreadsheets analyzing the various combinations of weapons, spells and armor to be most effective. ...