Life, dungeons, star bases, whatnot
Hey, where'd that April go? Seems like just a week or so ago I was blowing the whistle on Kermit's drug-fueled debauchery. Now it's May. You're probably thinking, "Damn, that frog must've had some good shit!", but let me assure you that I didn't rip Kermit off. Only a fool would risk the retribution of Dr. Teeth & the Muppet Mafia. The Velvet Hand. Not me. I like to keep my marionette rods in one piece, if you get my meaning.
It wasn't like I decided to take a month off from the blog, or that I wasn't in a blogging mood. It's more that it didn't really occur to me to post for a few weeks. There are a couple culprits behind this. You can blame my absense largely on the following:
I'm not usually a big fan of RPGs, but every once in a while I give one a shot. It doesn't usually take me long to abandon them. Oblivion is the rare RPG that holds my interest and doesn't get bogged down by repetitive gaming mechanics. There's a core story, but you're free to explore the large game world and take on any of the dozens (maybe hundreds) of side quests. Usually games that attempt this dual nature end up with side quests that provide so little reward (or are so boring) as to make them useless, but in Oblivion rushing through the core missions without taking significant time between them to flesh out your character makes things a lot more difficult. Complementing this is a pretty unique character leveling system that gives you experience for improving (through use) your character's seven primary attributes, instead of giving you points for killing monsters. No more mindless hacking & slashing just to level up! In fact, because of the intricacies of the leveling system, using repetitive actions to quickly level is a sure path to a weak character. (Oversimplified, the amount you can raise each of your primary attributes when you level is directly affected by how much you use skills related to those atrributes. No practice, no improvement.) This makes the role playing element especially deep, and this trait is further enhanced by the variety and depth of the optional side missions. When you find yourself standing in the shadows of a city street, wearing a ring of shadows, surveiling a game character's house from dusk 'til dawn as part of a purely optional side quest, you know the game has sucked you in. Combat is pretty simple, but it's quick and enjoyable, and since you won't be slogging your way through waves of wandering monsters in search of the almighty XP, it stays reasonably fresh. The graphics are gorgeous but exact a tremendous toll on your hardware. Oblivion is easilly the most graphically taxing PC game on the market, and the only recent game I've played that has made me drop the resolution from my standard 1600x1200 to 1280x1024. At the higher resolution outdoor sequences dropped down into slideshow-like frame rates and were essentially unplayable. It's less a complaint and more a point of pride, because even at the lower resolution the game looks great. Oblivion is a great RPG if you've got the hardware and the time. You'll need an abundance of both. After a month of play I've barely advanced the main storyline and have merely scratched the surface of everything else there is to do. Oblivion just may take home the prize for Biggest Timesink of 2006.
...and first runner-up for that timesink award would definitely go to Galactic Civilizations II. About three years ago a small company named Stardock put out a game called, you got it, Galactic Civilizations. A turn-based sci-fi strategy game, it capably filled the void when the highly-anticipated Master of Orion III turned out to be a dismal failure a few months prior. Much like the terrestrial Civilization series, GalCiv was about as addictive as crack coated with Swiss chocolate, and it won the hearts and minds of those who played it, pretty much all of whom still had a bitter taste in their mouths after the aforementioned MOO3. A little more than a year ago I was contacted by
Stardock with the offer of pre-ordering GalCiv II, which would get me access to the ongoing beta test. Having more expendable income than I do presently I accepted, and paid the full $40 price tag for the new game well in advance. The early beta of GalCiv II wasn't much different than the first game, so I lost interest and forgot about it until Stardock contacted me this past March to say that GalCiv II was out, and since I'd already paid for it a year previous, come an' get it! Nothing beats downloading a game you paid for a year ago and discovering that you've just been handed one of the best games of the year. GalCiv II retains the sugar-coated-crack quality of the original and improves on the gameplay in virtually every way. One of my favorite things about the GalCiv games is not actually the games themselves, but how Stardock chooses to address the issues of piracy and copy protection. Both games, whether you downloaded them from Stardock or purchased a physical CD from a store, ship with no copy protection. It's common for games released by big studios/publishers to feature overly aggressive copy protection methods that attempt to verify that you have a valid retail game CD in your drive. Sounds good on paper, but these methods have been causing an increasing amount of problems for legitimate owners of the games; they're also all cracked, so if you want to pirate a "protected" game badly enough, odds are you'll find a way. Instead of treating its legitimate customers as though they were criminals until proven innocent, Stardock rewards you for having a legal copy of the game. Legitimate game owners can download patches and updates, while those playing pirated copies can't. This may not sound like a big incentive, but with the GalCiv series it is. The first game received regular and numerous updates, not just to squash bugs, but to add significant amounts of new content. Imagine that--game designers who give out cool new updates to their customers...for free! In fact, the first such update for GalCiv II has already been released and has greatly expanded the customization options when starting a new game. The standard thinking is to lump all non-bug-related improvements into an official "expansion pack" and charge the people who already bought your game an additional 60-70% of the original purchase. It's refreshing to see a software company that treats its users as valuable customers instead of potentnal thieves. Great game, great company. If it sounds like the kind of game you'd like, you will. Go get it.
And that's what's been distracting me from my blog for a month. My apologies if you were waiting to hear something scandalous, or titalating at least. Dancing bisexual lesbian midgets did not abduct me and restrain me in a local hotel room for a month as their sex slave. If that happens I'll get video. And underpants.
Girl's underpants!
It wasn't like I decided to take a month off from the blog, or that I wasn't in a blogging mood. It's more that it didn't really occur to me to post for a few weeks. There are a couple culprits behind this. You can blame my absense largely on the following:
I'm not usually a big fan of RPGs, but every once in a while I give one a shot. It doesn't usually take me long to abandon them. Oblivion is the rare RPG that holds my interest and doesn't get bogged down by repetitive gaming mechanics. There's a core story, but you're free to explore the large game world and take on any of the dozens (maybe hundreds) of side quests. Usually games that attempt this dual nature end up with side quests that provide so little reward (or are so boring) as to make them useless, but in Oblivion rushing through the core missions without taking significant time between them to flesh out your character makes things a lot more difficult. Complementing this is a pretty unique character leveling system that gives you experience for improving (through use) your character's seven primary attributes, instead of giving you points for killing monsters. No more mindless hacking & slashing just to level up! In fact, because of the intricacies of the leveling system, using repetitive actions to quickly level is a sure path to a weak character. (Oversimplified, the amount you can raise each of your primary attributes when you level is directly affected by how much you use skills related to those atrributes. No practice, no improvement.) This makes the role playing element especially deep, and this trait is further enhanced by the variety and depth of the optional side missions. When you find yourself standing in the shadows of a city street, wearing a ring of shadows, surveiling a game character's house from dusk 'til dawn as part of a purely optional side quest, you know the game has sucked you in. Combat is pretty simple, but it's quick and enjoyable, and since you won't be slogging your way through waves of wandering monsters in search of the almighty XP, it stays reasonably fresh. The graphics are gorgeous but exact a tremendous toll on your hardware. Oblivion is easilly the most graphically taxing PC game on the market, and the only recent game I've played that has made me drop the resolution from my standard 1600x1200 to 1280x1024. At the higher resolution outdoor sequences dropped down into slideshow-like frame rates and were essentially unplayable. It's less a complaint and more a point of pride, because even at the lower resolution the game looks great. Oblivion is a great RPG if you've got the hardware and the time. You'll need an abundance of both. After a month of play I've barely advanced the main storyline and have merely scratched the surface of everything else there is to do. Oblivion just may take home the prize for Biggest Timesink of 2006.
...and first runner-up for that timesink award would definitely go to Galactic Civilizations II. About three years ago a small company named Stardock put out a game called, you got it, Galactic Civilizations. A turn-based sci-fi strategy game, it capably filled the void when the highly-anticipated Master of Orion III turned out to be a dismal failure a few months prior. Much like the terrestrial Civilization series, GalCiv was about as addictive as crack coated with Swiss chocolate, and it won the hearts and minds of those who played it, pretty much all of whom still had a bitter taste in their mouths after the aforementioned MOO3. A little more than a year ago I was contacted byStardock with the offer of pre-ordering GalCiv II, which would get me access to the ongoing beta test. Having more expendable income than I do presently I accepted, and paid the full $40 price tag for the new game well in advance. The early beta of GalCiv II wasn't much different than the first game, so I lost interest and forgot about it until Stardock contacted me this past March to say that GalCiv II was out, and since I'd already paid for it a year previous, come an' get it! Nothing beats downloading a game you paid for a year ago and discovering that you've just been handed one of the best games of the year. GalCiv II retains the sugar-coated-crack quality of the original and improves on the gameplay in virtually every way. One of my favorite things about the GalCiv games is not actually the games themselves, but how Stardock chooses to address the issues of piracy and copy protection. Both games, whether you downloaded them from Stardock or purchased a physical CD from a store, ship with no copy protection. It's common for games released by big studios/publishers to feature overly aggressive copy protection methods that attempt to verify that you have a valid retail game CD in your drive. Sounds good on paper, but these methods have been causing an increasing amount of problems for legitimate owners of the games; they're also all cracked, so if you want to pirate a "protected" game badly enough, odds are you'll find a way. Instead of treating its legitimate customers as though they were criminals until proven innocent, Stardock rewards you for having a legal copy of the game. Legitimate game owners can download patches and updates, while those playing pirated copies can't. This may not sound like a big incentive, but with the GalCiv series it is. The first game received regular and numerous updates, not just to squash bugs, but to add significant amounts of new content. Imagine that--game designers who give out cool new updates to their customers...for free! In fact, the first such update for GalCiv II has already been released and has greatly expanded the customization options when starting a new game. The standard thinking is to lump all non-bug-related improvements into an official "expansion pack" and charge the people who already bought your game an additional 60-70% of the original purchase. It's refreshing to see a software company that treats its users as valuable customers instead of potentnal thieves. Great game, great company. If it sounds like the kind of game you'd like, you will. Go get it.
And that's what's been distracting me from my blog for a month. My apologies if you were waiting to hear something scandalous, or titalating at least. Dancing bisexual lesbian midgets did not abduct me and restrain me in a local hotel room for a month as their sex slave. If that happens I'll get video. And underpants.
Girl's underpants!
posted by Yomper at 10:37 AM
1 comments
