Too Tense

Not much to say for today so here's an amusing screencap from one of my recent escapades in ESO:

If I had a heart I could love you

So I visited my battle.net account on a whim and what should I find but one of Blizzard's earlier games, The Lost Vikings, being given away as a free download.

I remember the Lost Vikings from 1993-94. It was something of a big deal as everyone played and talked it up a lot. I (eventually) got around to playing it and was won over the game's charm, sense of humor and baffling puzzles. I never did quite complete the game but hey - at least having the game now within easy reach will remedy such a problem.

Looking back at this game twenty years later, I'm surprised just how well it still holds up: The graphics still look great and the humor still inspires more than a few chuckles. Indeed, with hindsight it is funny to see this game from a humble company that would eventually provide the monstrous behemoth that is World of Warcraft.

Funny how things turn out, eh?

Nothing worth talking about

Lets harp on about Quiet some more.
Sure her dress sense may be anything but practical but I find it funny in that she looks very much like characters I was drawing when I was in high school. Is Hideo Kojima constantly driving past my past in thought-reading surveillance van? But what happened to me is that in the years since high school I've grown out of the mindset of a teenager - unlike, it seems, the makers of Metal Gear Solid 5.
I do hope that Hideo Kojima may have something up his sleeve for Quiet (as he seems to claim) but  the more interviews I read, the more Hideo Kojima comes across as being incoherent.

Still I have to give Quiet credit: The game she's in has yet to released and already she's inspiring cosplayers. So she must be doing something right.

Roam Around the World!

Recently I've been having a crack at Rome: Total War.

Funny story: I purchased this game back in 2006 but it is only now that I've been actually playing it. Why the change of heart? Well I found out that if you enter retail codes of certain games into Steam, the games will recognized and added to your Steam account. And for a game a decade old (at time of writing) it is reassuring to know that Steam will make it work - as opposed to hunting down some patch.

Whilst not my first time playing Rome Total War, this is the first time I've tackled the Imperial Campaign. And I have found that this is the first time in a long time that I've been completely absorbed in a game - even to a point where I've lost track of time completely. Clearly I must be playing something good.
And the campaign itself (Julii) is a challenging one. I've made three attempts at it and each one has been different from the last. There have been unexpected developments and times when I have been going well only to have everything fall in spectacular fashion.

Needless to say, this is one game I shall be playing more of in future. Watch this space!

Enjoy the Silence

I've got nothing better to talk about for today so lets talk Metal Gear Solid.
Whilst I resent the presence of the Metal Gear Solid sequels, this is a series close to my heart and one I make an effort to keep tabs on.
So lets talk about The Quiet: She appeared in the trailer of the upcoming Metal Gear Solid 5 and has been creating a stir ever since.

Personally, as a writer who enjoys creating characters and seeing how they interact with each other, I like the idea of a mute sniper. As as my understanding, the role of a military sniper is one that is vital, dangerous and psychologically demanding - therefore a silent sniper has indeed potential. They can't express their thoughts about what they do or the people they kill so they just sack up and do their job regardless. And being unable to interact with their comrades creates a detachment from them - much like that of a military sniper itself.
And as the saying goes, constrictions inspire creativity (or words to that effect). A silent character then must rely on facial expressions and hand gestures to establish what they're thinking. And it would be a change for an NPC to be a silent character for a change.

But as for The Quiet's outfit, My God... Granted what I've typed in the last paragraph may sound like it has potential but somehow it is undone by the Quiet's odd taste for clothes. Would anyone in a war zone wear that - and in a desert?! Okay so maybe I'm treading ground that has been covered elsewhere but somehow the character designer could've done a lot better than this.

It would've been nice to have a design that reflected the character's occupation as a sniper and allow her expressions and actions to develop The Quiet as a character. But instead her character design seems more a desperate grab for attention.

All of this however is all speculative: The game itself has yet to be released. Granted it will be nice to see MGS5 defy the preemptive criticism and actually prove them all wrong by delivering a character of actual substance but what ate the chances of that happening?

Don't you love you any more?!

Following on from an earlier post, there is something I find strange about my attempt to uninstall Gothic 3- only to have it fail for some reason.
One can only imagine how this is.
Is the game really offended that I want to remove it?
Is the game annoyed that I want to remove it when it's no longer available on GoG?
Is the game insistant that I play it that it refuses to budge?
Or is it crying in corner burbling the words "I thought you loved me...."

Rise of the Goths

I recently obtained Gothic 2+3 from GoG - somehow having them both removed from the catalog for good seemed a good enough reason to grab them both.
However Gothic 3 has been giving me some headaches: Okay so there were some flaws on release? Well I'm all for modding so I don't mind hunting down some mods to fix this.
Okay so now there's some more quests? Well I'm fine with that.
And now there's some additional content? Well I'm willing to wade through some German to get there so why not?
And there's an increase for screen resolution? Well i have recently increased my RAM so hell yeah!

Oh wait the game doesn't work now. Damn. And after all the effort of finding and downloading these mods!

And and now I can't uninstall the original game?! FFFFFFUUUUUUUUUUUUUU-

Cursed

Earlier this week, I managed to get the classic Pool of Radiance working again. I dug up my old save game from 2009 and reacquainted myself with the party I used for countless hours. Having spent so much time with these guys I certainly had a sense of attachment to them and it;s been fun seeing them progress.
That progression however won't be going any further: try as I might, I can not make Curse of the Azure Bonds work in Dos-Box. It is indeed frustrating but nothing i can do can make the game work. So I need to type out some complex commands? Pardon me but isn't that the reason why we originally abandoned DOS?

This is not the first time Curse of the Azure Bonds has failed me. When I played it on the Commodore 64, I kept getting stuck in the Fire Knives guild. When I revisited the game in 2009, I made significant progress before a software failure put an end to that. And now, the game has let me down again, meaning I am unable to see my party progress and see how they go facing tougher monsters.

How fitting it is then that I should such problems with a game that has the word 'Curse' in it's title.

Mech it so

I recently had another go at Mechwarrior 2 - only to be reminded of why I haven't played it in a long while: The graphics look bloody horrible!

True I've said in the past that it's the gameplay that makes the game, not the visuals or the sounds but at the same time I've also said that the more a game tries to look as what the time deemed as 'cutting edge' the more swiftly it will date. And that certainly is the case here.

I wonder who has the rights to the Mechwarrior series. Perhaps it is time to dust it off and give it the HD remaster that it so richly deserves? I mean if the likes of Shaq Fu and Night Trap can get a crowd-funded remaster then there's no excuse why classic games should be outdone by turkeys...

Why don't you come join my party!

Here's something I've been pondering on recently: At what point did RPGs drop the player being in sole control of a party of adventurers?

Granted I can understand that RPGs are designed to be purely played through the eyes of a singular character and people would rather prefer an investment (both time and emotional) into one character rather than having such an investment spread across multiple characters. But I do miss the days when you can create a bunch of characters and take them across a journey spanning many, many hours of game time.
It's just like being a father guiding one's children: You create characters, you stay with them through thick and thin, you get worried when they get knocked out, you grind your teeth when there's this one guy who can't hit a barn door (there's always one) and you cheer when your dudes complete the game triumphant. They are six guys you created who each need care and attention to get anywhere and it;s your job to get them there.

I can't think of when the idea was dropped. Baldurs Gate may be last game I can think of that employed the traditional D&D six man party and even that had a structure that required participation from NPCs - well you could create a complete six man party but only one will be required to carry the narrative all the way through.
And whilst there have been party-based games like Mass Effect, Dragon Age and the Final Fantasy games they don;t really count because you have a selection of party members available - if you don't like someone you can not choose to use them. Its not the worse idea but there's something satisfying about having a character start out useless only to eventually turn out awesome.

Considering the processing power of gaming machines these days it does raise the question of whether this idea will be revisited. Both MMPORGers and Divinity Original Sin has proven that RPGs can work with multiplayer and people will eagerly embrace such an idea.
Besides, who wouldn't want to create multiple characters and go with them on every step through an incredible journey?

The Doctor is In!

Seeing as Dr Who has been a big deal for the past ten years here's something from the classic era!:

Original video located here. Accessed 5th September 2014

This is Dalek Attack - a game that appeared on home computers in the early nineties. I never got to play it as I, much like a lot of games in that period, could only admire it from afar.
Watching this video it's hilarious though to see the Doctor implemented into an action game. The Doctor is, after all, a character who would rather use his wits than a weapon to solve a problem. So what do we have here? The Doctor is throwing grenades and shooting Daleks & Orgrons - and with the sonic screwdriver at that!
Still I do like the idea of the player being able to select one of the (at the time) seven incarnations of the doctor to use as a PC. Whilst I have little hope for future Dr Who games in the near future, I do hope that this idea is taken into consideration. Who wouldn't want to charge into the action as Jon Pertwee? 

Loops Horrific

Recently I've seen the footage of the new Silent hill game that has been floating around.

I suppose this is the next step in the evolution of the Horror genre of gaming. Whereas horror games have relied upon building the horror by sowing seeds of doubt within the player's mind, the new Silent Hill game expands upon this by forcing the player through a loop with small changes added with each run through and thus creating a sense of unease within the player that only increases.

But if this is the next evolution in horror games I wonder how long it would be before there's a horror game that builds up the tension but presents no pay-off. I can see it now: The player is placed in a situation where it's made clear that something horrible is going to happen but as they end up dreading what's around the corner nothing happens. As such the player is slowly going crazy trying to find something that ultimately won't arrive.

And like they say, it's what you don't see that's more terrifying....

Not as forgotten as we thought

I've heard that, in the wake of the success of the Baldurs Gate Enhanced Edition games, another game from the Forgotten Realms will be given the same treatment.

Now when I hear the words 'Forgotten Realms' I immediately think of the Gold Box - the RPG series that appeared on 8-bit and 16-bit computers in the late eighties and early nineties that pioneered D&D for the home computer. Pool of Radiance, Curse of the Azure Bonds, Secret of the Silver Blades, Hillsfar, Pools of Darkness - all associated with the Gold Box and very fondly looked upon by veteran gamers such as myself.
So could this be? Has someone decided that a revamp of Pool of Radiance and it's successors was in order? Did someone revamp these games so modern gamers can experience what their older comrades did years earlier? Does mean I play through this massive saga of games with the same party and complete it this time?

Oh wait, the game in question is Icewind Dale.
Oh well, never mind then.