Dungeon Crawling Fools

It happened so that we have started a fourth edition party with a fistful of friends, with me taking the role of Adventure Maintenance Manager. The role of telling tales suits me, however, I've not had the chance to implant my player's head with tales of mistrust and terror as of the first two session. As it is the way with pen and paper games, a couple hours of our first conclave were spent stringing up the marionettes and setting the stage of their faith, one that endured two whole sessions afterwards. The sessions were brightened by fireballs and acid traps falling upon the inexperienced, ending in a climatic fight with a not so bright individual of reptilian origin. Ah yes, and of course, there were shining kobold bodies falling into a lake of doom, due to efforts of a wizard and our jolly minister of faith.

My reflections on our two sessions are quite clear. I must talk with some of my fellow players on the topic of knowing their powers and features by heart. Not the numbers, but their use in context. Combats were extremely slow due to players looking up power-cards and source books on combat mechanics, and I was not all that prepared to answer every question that sprang up, either. We obviously need to speed up combat, which can get very long with 6 players and several enemies on the scene.

I hope to present a complex and thrilling adventure further on, something that I'll keep a log of on this blog. I realised that once the party has made it out of the tutorial dungeon, my possibilities story wise are endless. It can be really staggering, as I want to involve as much hooks and interesting elements as possible, without the slightest feeling on the players' side about being railroaded into anything.

Mecum omnes plangite!

Coffee, Irish and a pain in the chest.

I tend to get emotional on things people shrug off easily. While moving an Icewind Dale compilation to my Wind, I've randomly googled around and found an interview with John Deiley about the closure of Black Isle Studios back in 2003 and the cancellation of the original Fallout 3. As I've gone through the interview, I realised that I was on the verge of sheding a tear for this game that never was, a skeleton that will most probably always remain an unfinished engine with a half-baked world. Now, you see my dearest reader, it is such a silly thing to get the blues because of a game, that one might laugh at my juvenility. It is only if you consider, that I've been a gamer for more years than I have not, will you understand my woe. I have, so far, not played Bethesda's child, a game I dare not to call on it's given name as I find it irreverent to BIS and their sisyphean work. I, instead, mourn quietly, daring not to look at what my Judy Jones has become in years of separation. I wish to live my summer dreams as long as I can, before the inevitable winter comes along, probably in form of massive multiplayability.

Poetry time!

Remember, remember the End of November
Research notes, essays and fail.
I know of no reason, why this entire season
Should ever end this way.

But it does, and I'm quite busy these days with mostly the literature oriented subjects. I still do not have the faintest of ideas how I will get done with these things AND study for my end term tests, as those are coming along at the very beginning of December.

Autumn has officially ended today, as Nature decided to jerk some snow off the skies this afternoon. I hope for heavy snowing this season, I cannot wait to build snowmen in front of elementary schools, and leave them and their giant penises to be marveled by those less fortunate or aged. Also, some Calvin & Hobbes kind of snowmen would make sweet surprise around our place.

Meh of the Lich King

For all those years of reading webcomics, I never came up on a post as personal as this. The past weeks, I've been feeling the peer pressure caused by friends suckling on Blizzard's newest udder on the milking cow, and ever since the release, the pressure rose significantly. As I have at least a dozen people on the realm Outland EU, I was thinking of rolling up a paladin to tank with, Sandra on my side. We had so much fun at Alonsus that way, reaching 40 in one month of casual gaming. However, I must attribute that to the lack of friends at that realm, whose pressure of simply being at the endgame would have told me to sit in one position until I hit the level cap. So why should I get back to Outland? Playing our rogue-shaman combo seems to be a bad idea, as I am not willing to take the old and dusty hat of the healing bitch off the hook. Been there, seen it all. It was degrading. On the other hand, elemental was one of the best fun-yielding session of my WoW career. The option of going back to a realm where there are no friends of ours playing sits on the side of uncomfortable as I am not the person idly willing to listen to people talking about their raiding experiences when I am not included. I couldn't care less, one might say.

So in case of purchasing the expansion, I have the option of playing with our lv40 horde characters, for whom the content of Lich King is still far off, yet within reasonable reach, or roll up two characters with Sandra from 1 on a realm I left for a reason.

The third option is that I leave the game be, observe it from a distance while claiming to have done more with my life that those miserable enough to be sucked in, still or again, in this whirlwind of decadence and waste of time. I will go with this one for now.

Why Can't Wii Be Friends?

I have been given complains lately, about never writing a thing and being a douche, one from someone I care for, least I try, the other from random stranger on the street; Anyways, after conversing with Sandra on the topic over and over again, I figured spoken word is as good as a fart in the wind, so here we go.

Sandra has been given the option to purchase a PS3 for half the money it costs and about the double it's worth, a scenario failed and forgotten due to the console not hackable and the money retailers and game publishers ask for the new-gen remake of Doom-esqe shooter model is unreasonably high taking into consideration the creativity and effort put into these games, not to mention the economical sub-standard that Hungary is. The past week, she has gone through several layers of dirt and crap, that what the games mostly are nowadays, unable to decide between the Xbox 360 and Nintendo's money-shitting child with Down-syndrome. As she currently mentioned, her decision tilts towards the 360, for reasons not described. I personally have been through this the past days as well, looking around for good games for the so called seventh generation of consoles and came to the realisation, which later I revealed to Sandra, that while I am unable to come up with but 10 titles for the Xbox 360 and the PS3 TOGETHER, which would be both good to play and have not yet been released for the PC, there are a shitload of games, party- and single-in-nature alike, which were fun to play with when we had a Wii at her apartment for a couple of days. In favour of the purchase of a 360, the only reason I can come up with is Sandra's brother-complex, an exigency to be adequate in eyes of her brother, who thinks of consoles of lower graphic complexities as quartz games and child's play. You must know, my dearest reader, that Victor was dislocated as an exemplar from her life due to problems with their father, and Sandra could not live up to his expectations in their childhood separation, nor ever since. However, this brother of her still requires, absolutely inconsequentially, I daresay, the position of a leading figure in her life, which drove Sandra to unconsciously tilting towards standards of another person and having doubts whether she would truly be happy with the console she has so much fun in the past.

I Miss 2006

Do you remember your first game experience in any MMO you played? I do recall my first day in WoW, rolling Maetel, a female dwarven rogue, along with a such good friend of mine, whose gnome mage kept me company for over a year. We've been at the very first steps of our epic adventures in the world that awaited us with open arms, when a red named monstrosity, an undead on a skeletal horse rode up to us. Covered in purple flames, he stood above us. Not knowing anything about the game, we stood there, amazed at the character, who smiled and waved at us. Fond memories indeed, beating Deadmines for the very first time, stealthing past a group of horde characters in Loch Modan, who naturally saw through my disguise, but who was unable to gank me that time. Later, moving to Menethil through gankers and crocodiles, the first steps upon Arathi Highlands and battlegrounds, trying ourselves in friendly duels outside of Stormwind.. He got so fed up with me going for pvp specs and beating him 8 out of 10 that I do not think he ever accepted to duel Maetel on his mage ever again past level 40 or so. 'Freaking cookie-cutters, all of you!', he said. I liked that. Sandra, Zsan and I travelled all around Azeroth together, the three of us doing instance runs and quests like crazymen who thinks there is no tomorrow. There is, however, always tomorrow, even if some are not to see it. At first, I took a four months break from the game. Around that time, we rarely played together anyway. All three of us split up to different guilds, me chasing endgame, Sandra's job not allowing her to play as much to be able to, and Zsan not wanting to. Later in rolling horde, he accompanied us, with Aelem on our side, but later as their raiding schedule changed, he quit that alt to commit his gametime to his guild, friends and alliance characters. I do understand it, even if it hurt a bit. Guess it was my fault to begin with, wanting to restart our game experience at another server, another side. That is the thing I really wanted all along - late nightly runs or the three of us, beating the crap out of pirates of Tanaris and Stranglethorn Vale. Those times were the best I can remember. Even if it was fun to play in Tabula Rasa, I didn't make any longterm friendships with anyone. I got to know some of them better, but noone new at the table.

Will I ever be able to play a game with friends of mine, all brought together? I don't think so. Even if I tried, I do not think that I can put up with the crap of Hungarian people of whom Awakening consists of. It is mainly their choices of names that gives me the chills. Secondly, being around Hungarian people leads to rapid deterioration of my language skills, both English AND Hungarian.

Bionic Commando Rearmed

Ever heard of an old NES game with cool-for-that-era game play, where you're posing as a military killing-machine, bearing nothing but a gun and a bionic arm? No? Good, neither did I until recently. Guess I'm too young, huh? Well bug off! If I remember correctly, a Kotaku article about the Xbox 360 game Bionic Commando mentioned the Rearmed version of the old platform game, a 2d scroller where you kick some ass and do not care about bubblegum. So I took a look at the official site of the game to check trailers and such. This starts quite boring; running, some more running... O SNAP! Did he just deliver a kick in the guys face Tarzan style? He freaking did! The clip is well edited, with an intro, climax and a nice ending, cool music and generic attention grabbing. It's mostly game play footage, which I prefer to 3d stuff that gives no info whatsoever about the game itself. So I took the privilege to pirate the game off Piratebay, and while it is not such nice thing to do, I could care less. The game is a marvel.

You play as Capt. Spencer, a soldier on a mission to save Super Joe, military ace, who's status changed to 'lost in action' not long ago. Spencer manages to pull off some of the worst lines in computer-game history, changing his early bad-ass aura into 'whacky macho with a gun'. The dialogues between communicational officers, boss encounters and our 'hero' create a real retro feeling, humorously, not melancholically. Graphics are beautiful. It is a simple 2D shooter managing to give me a greater satisfaction when looking at how smoothly Spencer whizzes from platform to platform, than some 3D new-age stuff did. Game play is rude and spits you in the eye at the beginning, and so on later, as the game is designed so the player will learn by trial. You got three lives, some hit points for each, and off you go! You die before a boss encounter, oh well, cry some more! You'll be back anyway. By this, I do not mean that levels are impossible to beat but you should get to know the map as well as the boss fights. Least you get your share of satisfaction after each level you finish, something I've been missing from quite a lot of games the past years - most of the time, you do have these feelings when beating the game, but not in-between start and finish.

All together, Bionic Commando Rearmed is a game with graphics, music and game play elements in almost perfect harmony. They rearmed old maps while creating new ones as well, reformed gameplay from not only Bionic Commando, but it's predecessor, Commando, and remixed some old soundtracks so that your experience would be perfect. Unfortunately, I couldn't give the multiplayer beat-'em-up and the co-op modes a ride so far, as there was no one to play with. I should get Sandra get used to the keyboard and the game itself, so I can stick to my Logitech game pad. <3

And So the Sun Shines Still

And so begins the last week of summer, at least for me. Yeah, I know, I said the same last week as well, however, some problems occurred at the university, and they had to delay the beginning of the semester a wee bit. Cool with me, got to make up for all the wasted weeks I promised myself to practice. I also have some work to do, as always, I am once again late with translations. Today shalt be a prosperous day! So shalt the rest of the week.

I'm expecting little Winston to arrive this week, a gift for Sandra's 23rd birthday. That, along with the digital copy of Team Fortress 2 she got should make up for some anniversaries I fucked up in the past years. I'm really no good at remembering irrelevant things such as birthdays, name days, anniversaries and what-not. One day is just as fine to celebrate as any other, so I see no reason to keep neither dates in mind, nor the wish list of those involved. In fact, Moulin Rouge was not all that good to worth the money it would cost to buy it on dvd, even if that is what she asked for years ago. A cute plushie makes much more of a present, imo. It was quite a refreshing summer for Sandra, I think. She bought new furniture, fridge and some kitchen stuff, half the names of which I can't even recall. Her flat looks tidier, well equipped. Something she always asked for, but never got around to do by herself. Sometimes, all you need is a broken, unfixable fridge to roll the first snowball which later becomes an avalanche of remodelling.

What I would ask for, currently, is a two month EVE pass, as I figured, after speaking with a pal of mine from the game that I missed quite a lot of the features everyone's space MMOG has to offer. Faction warfare is something I should have done, yet avoided due to some illusions of piracy and playing alone. Well, screw that! Thing is, though, I know myself very well, and should I spend money on a game time code, I'd waste all my free time in front of the computer, squishing every last juice of my paid playtime I can. Last time I found myself scanning and checking solar systems for 8 hours straight, looking for people to yarr at. Now that was radical. Instead, if it is not my money spend on the time code, I always take the games more casually, slacking an hour or maybe two in a virtual world. Ah well, I'm nearly spent, and a GTC would mean spending half the money I have on my credit card. Crap… :S

I gave the Perfect World MMO beta a try, it is your good old Lineage 2 copy-paste product, only with a much worse interface and less diversity regarding races and classes. Same goes for Rohan, only the controls are even worse, wasd movement is out of the question. I do not recommend any of these wishy-washy Asian mmos. They are not meant to be played by people outside the yellow palette.

Mount and Blade First Impressions

I gave Mount & Blade demo a try after a glance at the history of the game and how it is closing publication, and found it quite fun to play. The army-band management lacks any kind of sandboxing seen in not-so-recent war games such as Warhammer fantasy and 40k titles, which are fun for freaks collecting and painting miniature figures of plague-bearing skavens and chaos mongler crazy-men, but would make little to no sense in a game where you operate a band of hessians, who tend to fall in battle, only to be substituted by others seeking adventure and a couple of denars. Combat is intuitive, giving the player the feeling of swinging a sword from top of a horse, right into the face of that bloody brat enemy of yours. I'm considering buying the game as soon as I have money to waste on games. Should Darkfall's combat give us the same feeling, I'll be in deep trouble managing my time. :] Ah yes, Darkfall's trailer is out, check it at the official forums along with beta applications. I sure hope I get in and can give the game a try before release, as well as a preview for you guys, all seven of you (three of which is me). I have mixed feelings about the game, as the gameplay video seems oldish, both animations and graphics. Now, I am not the graphics-fanatic guy, but I have to admit that the age of Ultima Online and Manic Miner is gone forever. Today's players would like to see epic graphics along with their epic adventures, and so you should either present a graphic engine and layer of paint that appeals to target audiences and holds the world together as in World of Warcraft, one that is good to look at in case you play on reasonable client settings, or one that is beautiful from the first wolf you kill to the last spell you cast before loggin out late at night. Computers can take those graphics, and so can our eyes.

Good Afternoon!

I woke up at 2 in the afternoon to realise that someone had stolen my carpet. Also, food spawns on the kitchen table. In other news, summer vacation is coming to a gruesome end, lending the stage to the bitch we call autumn term, last one of them, if all goes well. Least I got around to do some thing this summer, not all I had in mind though. Parents are coming home more often each week, and my only hope it to sleep over so I do not have to meet them. I'll have enough of them once it is primetime of the year to fail at managing my free time between university, hobbies and girlfriend. I hope once I'm out there, in the huge cesspool of life, I manage to find a job that is either 13-19 PM or has flexible work schedule. But hey, I have no right to cry, some people have it worse than I! :D