status 2015 October

2015.10.01

Random Steam sale, Minerva's Den DLC for Bioshock 2 for $4.99. It reviews really well, and I liked Bioshock 2 well enough. And its short, so maybe I'll just play it now.

The Tomb Raider reboot from 2013 is also on sale for $3.99, also reviews really well. I'll take 'em both.

2015.10.11

So, Minerva's Den was scarcely a minor diversion.

I should note that I've been watching the Teens React: Gaming series for The Last of Us. For some reason their mix of reactions is compelling, even though its technically a lame playthrough. It comes out every couple of weeks, has been running for 8 months, and I guess has another month or so to go. I wonder if this game will ever be ported to PC, and if so, will it be a good enough port to care about.

I'm still looking up at the stars on clear nights and thinking about Mass Effect. Like poking a fire the next day and still finding coals glowing under the ash, my anger at the ending of ME3 is still there but going away slowly. All that work, all those carefully made decisions over three games, and the ending boils down to a simple A, B, C choice no matter how you got there.

I watch "ME3: Extended Cut Analysis + Leviathan DLC". Good conclusion that if that was the original ending, most of this controversy could have been avoided.

2015.10.12
It is remarkable that as I read various game sites and forums that Planescape is still coming up. Someday I might revisit the mods.

The weather is starting to get wintry. Soon it will be RPG time, specifically Fallout New Vegas.

2015.10.18
Checking in on Steam occasionally, I see some promotion for Grey Goo. Looks interesting, getting back to the roots of Starcraft and Command & Conquer. I've been increasingly disappointed in where Starcraft is going (action per minute, rock paper scissors, no walls or base defense etc.), and this looks hopeful.

A few things I've been thinking of the past few weeks, but haven't written:

I've been listening to the Retronauts podcast, and I just caught up to where they're talking about video game magazines. I have boxes of such old magazines in the attic, but haven't thought of them in a while, let alone looked at them. They didn't mention Dragon magazine, something I especially payed attention to when they mentioned a game.

I recent installed and showed World of Warcraft to someone. I kept telling myself that I'm not really playing this, I'm just demoing, then I'm moving on. Like an alcoholic wistfully spitting out the mouthwash, I uninstall and feel relieved. Not that the grapes are sour (or even fermentable), but what I saw wasn't all that intriguing. WoW is a riot of blocky colors, a place as noisy, crowded and empty as a shopping mall.

That got me thinking of why MMORPGs give me the shakes - my dormant mud addiction from the 90s. I wonder if I should post about Mystic Adventure here, or make its own mini-shrine. I'll probably just start another blog.

2015.10.24
Still slowly going through videogame withdrawal. I miss the light and the noise, Real Life is too slow, too quiet.
Thankfully, I don't have to decide anything right tonight, as Teens React: Gaming The Last of Us: Part 18 is out. These kids barely understand stealth play, listening, or inventory management, let alone searching every last pixel of the screen for resources. But they seem to be getting better.
Checking for any news of a PC port... no, and extremely unlikely for console exclusivity reasons. But you never know, Halo eventually got to PC.

2015.10.30
GTA V on sale for $40, something that rarely happens. So tempting, GTA would be perfect right now. Time to check video card requirements: 9800 minimum, GTX 660 recommended. Right now I'm using a GTX 460. I found a chart, and my card is right at the bottom, better would be a 780, or even better 970 or 980. My cpu and ram are OK.
What's the best card I can put in my aged Dell XPS 730x? A quick look and there is some trouble getting a 780 to to work. Looking at prices, it seems like around $300 at minimum, not including whatever extra I need to do for power.
I'm finally beginning to see the end for this computer for new games. But I have so many older games to play, I shouldn't run out any time soon.

Speaking of old games that won't stress my video card, there's a big Steam sale right now. Vampire The Masquerade Bloodlines and Grim Fandango for $5 each, and there's a lot more single digit priced games to check out.

2015.10.31
Let's not give up so quickly - what does YouTube have to say on the video card question? I watch a video of someone running GTA V on a GTX 460 with 2GB VRAM, running at decent size display with at least normal settings. Frame rates are not high, but they are acceptable for driving, and that's what you need.

I grab a few other sale items, and a recent discovery, and its time to go back to San Andreas.

2015.11.27
Checking out the Steam sales, I check out the Saint Row series again. It looks like a mod of GTA from several versions ago, yet highly produced. As a completionist, I find it highly annoying that Steam starts with game two in the series, yet some reviewers say its actually good to start the series here. Also that the GOG version is better than the Steam version, checking GOG, there are many contradictions to this. Since this series looks about as silly as the Borderlands series, I'll probably continue to ignore them both.

status 2015 August

I should have never started the Mass Effect series this spring, I should have just worked outside in Real Life, and come back to gaming during the winter. I feel like I've struck out twice in a row now with series that should have really delivered, but turned out to feel like a waste of time in the end.

Bioshock and Mass Effect series both started out interesting, had a strong middle, and fizzled out into an insult at the end. I would really like to start Fallout: New Vegas now, especially since Fallout 4 has been announced, but that will be another enormous time black hole, that would be better saved for the cold and dark winter months.

I wish I had a casual action game I could jump in and out of like Team Fortress, but that has slowly turned into something I don't like over the years, and I rarely play it.

Maybe video games and I need to take a break for a few months.

2015.09.06

It's a month later, and I think about Mass Effect less and less. For a few weeks I thought about writing a long post on how the ending to Mass Effect might have been saved, but the details of the game are getting hazy now. I'm also getting over the sad insult of that ending, and don't want to re-open a healing wound.

I think I'd really like to play Fallout New Vegas now, but there's so much Real Life calling. Maybe I could just play some Age of Empires III or Starcraft 2 to take off the edge while I wait for better (worse) weather.

status 2013 December

Nothing much going on.

Stopped playing Starcraft 2 a while ago.

Occasionally I still think about the story of The Last of Us.

Tried Plants vs Zombies 2, got bored, got sickened by the money grabbing 'pay to play' model, didn't go back.

Played a round of Left 4 Dead, just the first map No Mercy, got a little nostalgic, but mostly bored.

Paged through my nearly 500 Fallout 3 screenshots. Got a little more nostalgia, but mostly I'm glad to be done with it. I sure would like to crack open Fallout (3) New Vegas, but Real Life won't allow that level of commitment right now.

I've lost the plot, what was I supposed to be doing, playing from oldest to newest?

I read back through the blog, following my bread crumb trail, fixing typos. Sometimes in my daily life I think about some aspect of gaming I really should write down. I am relieved to see I have already written many of these things down, sometimes even more completely than I am thinking about them now. I've been wondering if all this blogging would ever amount to anything, and now I know it has, at least for my memory continuity.

Age of Empires II : Age of Kings - done

As the weather improves, I spend more time in the Real World. This is not a good time of year to play a several hundred hour RPG, so having a game that holds your interest, but that I can come and go from, is valuable. I chip away at AOE as time allows, and that's OK.

I finished Age of Empires II : Age of Kings, and am about to start the followup, Age of Empires II: The Conquerors. Such unwieldy names, but the games are good and are still interesting, despite the years. There's a lot of good grinding here, if you like to play turtle as much as I do. I love to build a good base, hoover up all the resources, secure a trade route to a market, then start building castles and towers everywhere. Its slow, but invincible. And if I ever get pushed too hard before I can get set up, I can always make a dozen priests, and convert enemy units until I get bored of it.

*spoilers*, if you haven't finished AOE2: AOK yet. Considering that the game has been re-issued in HD, you may have missed it first time around.

I like how AOE2 turns history into a story, and puts you right into it. I'm sure it distorts the accuracy of the history to make the story more appealing, but I don't think they go too far. And there are sometimes poignant little reminders that bring you back out of the game, that even as you are marching little chess pieces around a board, these wars really did happen, and real people lived and died for them. Then you go back into the game, and it seems a little more serious. Its a rare game experience that can knock you out of the game, and into a bit of reality, and yet strengthen the game experience by doing so.

I like the sudden shifts between campaigns, where your heroes are now someone else's enemies - your enemies. Its a little jarring, but its actually a fairly quick transition. It helps that the next narrator is a fallen knight, who comes to know and understand his captors, and eventually sympathize with them. The writing is brief, but good, and the voice acting really helps sell the weariness and futility of the Crusades.

The Mongol campaigns... not so much. The writing and voice work were weakest here, and even the campaigns felt off. Also, all of our heroes thus far seemed to have some sort of cause, and the Mongols were basically just the Borg of the old world, except more conquering and less assimilation. The AOE games are usually pretty good at putting you in the shoes of whoever you are supposed to be playing, but it never really clicked here. This could have been a good opportunity to explore the Mongols motives, but it doesn't really happen.

The Barbarossa campaign is the best. Every one of its surprises is well telegraphed, but it doesn't matter because the story telling is just that good. The narrator does some good (over the top) voice work, and while the writing is still measured out like a story, its tempered with all the wacky twists and turns that real history is made of. And I love the final reveal of the fate of Henry the Lion; its like the cherry on top.

ZERGGGG!!!!!!

I just happened to catch today's release of the cinematic opening of the next Starcraft expansion. I usually miss releases, because that's just part of this whole vintage gaming thing. But today, a beautiful video done as only Blizzard does it, with crazy attention to detail, emotion, and story.

First, a quick view of the dense gray capital, evocative of a future New York City, and perhaps even invoking recent real-world tragedy? A bit of a stretch, but I felt it, and its a great way to instantly raise a sense of danger.

Then, a lovely bit of detail as water droplets streak upwards on the cockpit canopy of a Viking in flight through a rain cloud, and some small charm dangling where the rear view mirror would be. Then suddenly, through the clouds, the source of this mounting dread - an alien invasion.

Other details abound, wondrous in their brevity, like the sacrifice of a Viking, rapidly transforming to ground mode to delay the enemy advance, and getting swept aside before it could even fully bring up its guns. Then the long tension builder of the enemy advancing through a great open public square; the defenders lined up and waiting. Not a single face is shown, but you can guess what's going on under those helmets.

OK, the Wilhelm scream as a Nydus Worm crushes a marine? That was goofy, and broke the mood a little. I've heard from multiple sources you need that sort of thing to keep breaking the tension, so you can build it up again. Annoying, but forgivable. Before you digest the reality and metaphor of Mengsk's statue toppling, there's a dying battlecruiser falling nose-first onto the city. A beautiful way to underline the scene, but also a little risky to the storytelling. After all, if a giant space ship is just going to crash into a city, wouldn't it leave a giant crater, rendering the whole invasion and battle moot? You need to remember that battlecruisers can fly through deep space, but they tend to also be used in close ground support (at least in Blizzard's way of use), and are usually hovering just above a battleground. So, bad times for whatever neighborhood that battlecruiser hit, but its hardly a city killer. And I know its excessively geeky to even mention it, but if you care about this sort of thing, this is what goes through your head.

After that, its just some stuff about the plot but who cares, let's just watch that battle over and over again.

Fallout 3 New Vegas : coming soon

It's there on the horizon, like a mountain range I know I will some day climb. I spent a few hundred hours on Fallout 3, and I expect to spend the same on Fallout New Vegas.

Much like the "GTA 3" is succeeded by "Vice City" ('GTA 3 Vice City'), I think of Fallout 3's successor to be 'Fallout 3 New Vegas', even though they just call it "Fallout New Vegas". I hate it when a series mixes numbering and naming systems (like Windows).

Anyway, soon. Just a little bit more Real Life crap to flush, then we're going to be at the base of that mountain range, looking up.