Games

A Collection of Games that I Write Posts About

Robots Made Me Keys

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Good morning you happy people.  I know it’s a bit of an odd greeting, but it feels like my brain is struggling to boot this morning.  Here is hoping that the coffee in my cup with help along the process.  I may have to wiggle the power cord or something, but I can’t seem to find it…  Last night I finally successfully completed a server move, so that is a huge weight off my shoulders.  Maybe this grogginess is just the afterglow of that success.

Adventures in Locksmithing

So far this morning is going a bit better than yesterday.  After writing up my blog I went downstairs to get ready, and attempted to leave the house.  The door would not lock, neither by the pushbutton on the back of the door or by the key.  I texted my boss to let him know I would be late, and that I would likely have to call a locksmith.  I just did not feel comfortable leaving my house without a lock on the door.

Then I remembered… once upon a time…  when we first moved into our house back in 1999… the real estate agent had given us a new set of locks as a house warming present.  Lazy happened… and we never actually installed them, but they should be around the house somewhere.  After rifling through the laundry room cabinets…  that tend to be the catch all for that sort of thing…  I found the package.  Inside were in fact two nice bronze colored keyed doorknobs.

I scurried around to gather up the necessary tools, and changed the front door lock as quickly as I could.  Unfortunately in the process I got grease all over my shirt… so I had to go change that.  But all in all I rapidly changed out the front door lock and was on my way in not much time at all.  I purposefully left the back door the old lock, just in case for whatever reason my wife needed to get in before I had a chance to get her keys.  I managed to make it into work only thirty minutes behind my normal schedule.

Robots Made Me Keys

At lunch I decided that I should probably go make some keys, since both myself and my wife need one, and our neighbor down the street as we care for each others animals when either goes out of town.  Normally I tend to just go to Wal-mart to get keys made, but I needed to run a few more errands and Lowes was in the shopping center I was going to.  I thought I had remembered in the back of my head seeing one of those little grinder stations, so I charged ahead assuming surely I could get keys made there.

Upon entering Lowes, I was pointed towards a little automated Kiosk.  The system prompted me to put my key in the slot, in a specific orientation.  I could hear servos whirring as it clamped down on my key and evaluated the shape.  On the touch screen I was able to place an order for what kind of key blanks I wanted, and the quantity.  I started off only planning to make 2 keys, but the third was free… and the fourth was half off…  so I ended up putting in an order for 4 keys for $7.

The machine sprang to life, going through a process of grinding the key, polishing it… and then spitting it out into a little receiver tray with a very satisfying ka-thunk.  All the while there was a little progress bar telling me what key I was on, and how long an individual key was likely to take.  The whole process was pretty amazing, but I may or may not be old… and just not used to this concept.  I collected my keys and went on my way, overly amused by the entire process.

Always in the past I had made way more keys than I ever needed, because when you got them made at Wal-mart… at least half of them didn’t actually work.  I am guessing robots trump some random kid with some random machine in some random store… that maybe had a 5 minute talk on how to use the thing… because all four keys work perfectly, no scraping or anything of the sort.  I hail our new robot overlords…  the future will be amazing.

Gorilla in the Room

So the big news of yesterday was that Rift would be going “completely free” in their words, and involve “no trials, no tricks, no traps”.  I am of mixed emotions myself about the news, but overall the community seems to be taking it very badly.  Personally I like the subscription model, it feels just and equitable and provides support for the company.  Whereas the free to play model tends to involve “going whaling”, and looking for some mega consumer to subsidize the gameplay for a bunch of folks who will likely never actually spend money on the game.

My opinion is that if you are not actively supporting a game, you are actively harming it.  Additionally my brain makes a sort of calculus of…  if a game is not worth paying for… is it really worth your time?  But that ultimately gets into the equation of why these games work.  For me personally, my time is worth more than my money to me.  As a result I am willing to spend extra to avoid having to spend time doing boring things.  This is what the free to play model counts on, is that someone will buy extra stuff to make up for the fact that a large number of players are spending nothing.

My big hope is that it will make it more likely for players to try the game.  Right now it is extremely hard to get anyone to try Rift, because a good chunk of my friends have WoW inertia.  Hell during the Raptr promotion, I got a free copy of the game, free expansion, and 30 days of free playtime… gave it to a friend of mine who is interested in Rift…  and after a couple of weeks he has yet to even create an account.  If knowing that it won’t cost them anything ever, helps players try the game…  I am all for whatever actions cause that.

On top of that, I continue to still subscribe, which means I will begin to get premium “Patron” access to the game.   Usually games paywall off features, but Rift in their infinite wisdom seems to be giving Patrons some huge and very tangible benefits to keeping their subscription active.  The two big ones for me are that all of my mounts will travel a base 10% faster, and that all money drops will increase by 15%.  Those alone would be enough to get me to keep subscribed.  However they are also adding in all sorts of xp bonuses, and token bonuses that just sweeten the deal.  The whole thing begins June 12th, so in less than a months time we will just have to see what it ends up being like.

Another Shitty Morning

So this morning has turned out to be far worse than yesterday, but it a totally different way.  Roughly halfway through writing about Rift, my wife yelled up and told me to “get outside now”.  I of course am freaking out, wondering what has happened…  turns out that once again we forgot and left our cars unlocked, and once again someone had rifled through them.  We live in a pretty decent part of town, in a super quiet neighborhood, but this has happened to us 3 times since 1999.  This is why I did not want to leave the house yesterday with the door unlocked.

Essentially we have nothing of any value in our vehicles, we have stock radios and keep no electronics in them.  There is nothing of value that can be gained by them rifling through our stuff, but it feels so damned violating.  This time they look to have taken one thing…  my prescription sunglasses.  You have to be pretty damned dumb to steal prescription sunglasses.  They didn’t even get the current set of sunglasses out of my jeep, they got my old set out of my wife’s vehicle.  I mean my eyes are complete shit, so they are thick as the bottom of a pop bottle… so it is completely obvious even looking at them that they are not normal sunglasses.

I am not really sure what they were looking for, but they obviously didn’t find much.  But the frustrating part is having to stuff everything back in their cubbies that were tore out.  In my jeep this means gathering up a bunch of wow tcg cards from my habit of picking them up every now and then, and stuffing the paperwork back in my glove box.  If I had to guess they were likely looking for prescription drugs, money or electronics.  They didn’t grab anything from the back of either vehicle, and in my wifes there were a few items neatly boxed up.

Anyways. this makes another shitty start of the day.  I sincerely hope yours goes much better.  Hard for me to muster my attempt at a cheery greeting right now.  Need to be finishing this up and getting on to work.

Late to the Dance

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Yesterday for whatever reason was extremely rough.  I felt like I spent the entire day sleep walking, so when I finally got off work I came home and took a nap.  Naps are such glorious things at times, I wish I had known that back as a child when I tried to actively evade them.  When I got up I cooked dinner and while still extremely groggy settled in for a bit.

Elite Ready

One of the things I have been attempting to accomplish over my lunch time gaming break is to finish all of the Ashora and Steppes daily quests in Rift.  Usually I manage to chew through Ashora, but rarely do I make a significant dent in Steppes.  However yesterday for whatever reason I seemed to be able to do both without much issue.  This put me fairly high on the daily infinity stone count, and creeping close to that piece of gear that would tip me over 300 hit. 

After all was said and done, I was sitting at 2 stones away from the gauntlets.  Last night I went back out to the Steppes and wandered down along the coastline.  I knew I had left a carnage quest partially finished down there, and as a result I pushed through those last few stones rather quickly.  Still feeling pretty worn out, I decided to go ahead and port back to Tempest Bay and purchase my upgrade.  While I knew I did not have the juice to do any random elites last night, I at least was Elite ready for the grouping tonight.

Late to the Dance

Since redoing the loft I have found myself playing around on my PlayStation 3 a good deal more.  Quite honestly, the loss of my gaming loft as viable space pretty much marks the end of me regularly playing console games.  I simply did not have a TV that was dedicated to gaming, and I never wanted to monopolize the tv downstairs in case my wife wanted to watch something.  So as a result I have essentially been a non-console gamer during this current generation of systems.

As a way to catch up, I went ahead and signed up for a years subscription to PlayStation Plus, as this gives me around a dozen games immediately to play around with.  Namely there were a bunch of titles that I had wanted, but never really had picked or played… namely Sleeping Dogs, Darksiders, The Cave, Ratchet and Clank All 4 One, and Little Big Planet 2.  Since they release new titles for free over the network on a regular basis, I figured it would be an excellent way to passively acquire titles.

Darksiders

I knew this game would be right down my alley, but for whatever reason over the years since its release I have never actually played it.  Big dude, in bigger armor, carrying an even bigger sword really is my ideal game archetype… and this game does not disappoint.  Everything controls extremely well, and it feels a lot like a modern golden axe at times.  I had heard this in the past compared to Legend of Zelda, and I can kind of see the similarities but to me it feels more in line with the old school final fight style fighting games.  I played this for quite awhile last night before my ADD kicked in, but I am sure I will be devoting many hours to running around as a badass horseman of the apocalypse.

Ratchet and Clank: All 4 One

Since I was pretty tired still, my gaming wanderlust was in full effect… also I had a whole stack of games I was wanting to try.  The next on the list was Ratchet and Clank: All 4 One.  I remember being a big fan of the Ratchet and Clank games on the PS2, so this was pretty much a no brainer for me to try out.  I went into it knowing that this was basically a streamlined experience designed to be played with four players.  I was okay with this, and while the world was not nearly as intricate as the ones I was used to from the PS2, it still retained all of the enjoyment of the earlier titles. 

My only takeaway is that the game seemed really easy with Ratchet and Clank as an AI controlled bot.  Clank seemed to always be targeting and taking out the mob types that were difficult for me to get with my wrench.  All of the controls were essentially the same as before, so I regained my ability to play the game rather quickly.  I did not play terribly far but I thought the “driving a space taxi” sequence was extremely fun, with me steering by moving to one side of the taxi platform or another.  Should be a great game to return to and give it more time.

The Cave

The last game I went on a tour of last night was The Cave, and I did so on a very cursory level.  I fired it up, and selected a team of the Knight, the Monk, and the Twins.  Each character feels extremely interesting and has some special ability… that I have yet to really figure out what it is for.  Right now the game seems like it is going to be a puzzle and exploration game.  Essentially you have three characters to control, and various puzzles will require one or more characters to solve.  It has the interesting and humorous writing that is trademark of Double Fine games, so given the time I am sure I will get into it.  Having not played it terribly long, all I can really say is that the world is gorgeous and full of interesting visuals.

Crashing

At this point I was past going, so I decided I needed to head to bed.  I still have Sleeping Dogs downloading as well as a couple others.  Having access to a fresh font of games will definitely make the ps3 feel more useful.  Also having access to a place to set it up, on a dedicated tv… with a comfy love seat to sit on will make it that more likely to get used on a regular basis.  It was absolutely glorious sitting up there with a fan on me happily playing away in our newly renovated loft.  I am going to have to try and resurrect my long red-ringed xbox 360 and get started back playing those games as well.

I have a ton of things to deal with, and today is trash day… so I bid you all goodbye.  I hope you have a great day, and that you survive the rest of the week.  I will be heading downstairs myself to take out the trash, and try and deal with the front door that appears to not be wanting to lock.  It is always something…

Almost Elite

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This morning has already started off to be super amazing…  and I am trying to say that with as much sarcasm as I can muster.  In my gathering of breakfast, I had to go to three QuikTrips to find 2 jalepeno sausage rolls.  On top of that I had another wonderful night of NDA restricted activities, so there is not a whole lot that I can really talk about today.  However in keeping with my promise to myself I am going to make something happen anyways.

Almost Elite

I did manage to play a little Rift over lunch yesterday afternoon.  Essentially there are three of us at work that bring our lunch, and laptops and go find a quiet conference room in which to relax and play games over the noon hour.  I think it’s a pretty awesome plan, and it gives us all that mental break we need during the day.  Since our work wifi is laggy as shit, I try my best to do something pretty relaxing.  Traditionally this is some EQ2, but since I have most recently reignited the fires of Telara…  it was some Rift.

While I am loathe to do them for long, I have been focused on getting as many daily quests as I can both of the adventuring and crafting variety.  They are good money, and also give me the sweet sweet infinity stones that I crave.  Yesterday it feels like I made real progress, as between crafting three new items and obtaining another infinity stone item I have replaced all of my greens and pre-60 blues.

Essentially by swapping out two items with infinity stone items, I will be able to get my hit rating up to the suggested 300 for doing elite dungeons.  I am really looking forward to doing some random elites.  As much as I dislike pugs, that reaction seems to be reserved for when I am tanking.  If I am playing a DPS, like I am right now… I seem to be able to just blend into the background and watch the events of the pug unfold around me in a completely stress free fashion. 

I guess when I am dpsing, I no longer feel responsible for the success or failure of the instance.  I am hoping over the next week I can get in enough adventure dailies to be able to start running the instances.  Our little four man team I believe is getting close to being elite dungeon ready as well.  The more gear I can get before that point, the easier it will be for us to break into elites as a team.

Double Fine Bundle

Every so often Humble bundle comes out with an unbelievably good deal.  This time around it is all of the double fine games in one neat and price what you want package.  Essentially they are offering Psychonauts, Costume Quest, Stacking, Brutal Legend and contributor access to Broken Age their kickstarter game.  The kickstarter game requires a $35 dollar donation to unlock, and brutal legend $8 but for 10 bucks you can easily walk away with four really good story driven games.  Definitely worth checking out if you are so inclined.

Backyard Blues

Over the week we managed to get really good deals on two televisions.  One is now hooked up in the bedroom and the other is awaiting us to finish setting back up my game loft.  As a result we will be focusing on that today… since tomorrow will be entangled with mothers day madness.  We are starting out in the backyard first to clear a space to start piling up the old furniture.  Since my wife is now pacing back and forth, I need to cut this short for the day.  I hope you all have a great morning and afternoon and if so inclined an awesome Mothers Day.

Player Taxonomy

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This is the sixteenth post in my experimental “post every morning” scheme, and it represents the first true roadblock.  Up to this point, I had been posting about whatever was happening in my life, and namely whatever games I played the previous night.  The problem I have right now is that while I have plenty of awesome things to talk about from last night, I can’t speak a word about any of it.  I may or may not be under a pretty sizeable NDA.  So as a result I will be trying to find interesting things to talk about otherwise.

Player Taxonomy

I was having a discussion the other day with a good friend and we got into the whole dividing players into groups concept.  We often times have this notion that players are either hardcore or casual, and depending on which side of the divide you are on that other term becomes a slur against what you don’t enjoy.  He presented an interesting take on the divide, in that players are made up of multiple parts of different drives.  He broke things into 3 drives, but I have since expanded it into 4.

  • Casual – These players tend to play games on a very peripheral level.  They may play multiple titles, but not really get heavily involved in any one game.  They do not perform large amounts of research, even if it is a game they play very often.
  • Core – These players tend to get extremely invested in one or more games.  They may play multiple titles, but are more likely to dig into the theory and gameplay of one specific game.  They are likely to do large amounts of research on technique and related information.
  • Social – These players tend to be focused on the social aspect of gaming.  They are in games because their friends are playing them.  Their gaming experience revolves around interaction with their friends, and if enough of a critical mass of their community leaves the game they are likely to do so as well.
  • Solo – These players tend to prefer to do things alone, and while they may associate with communities they do so mostly for the benefits that being a member provides.  They will participate in group activities if there is a large benefit to doing so, but afterwards they often wander back off to doing solo content.

Essentially the theory is that we are all made up of these building blocks.  For example I tend to be Social-Core by nature in online games, but I will have large periods of being Solo-Core depending on if I am playing a game with a preformed community or not.  I crave the social connection of a community in an online game, however in the absence of it I tend to withdraw and not reach out to strangers.  I have tried to be Casual about games in the past but it rarely works, as I almost always end up digging deep into the minutia, figuring out mob spawn patterns, what the best drops are, and which areas I should be hunting.

There is a line of thinking that says that labels in gaming are a bad thing.  I agree to some extent, because the old social versus hardcore debate only really tells part of the story.  However the truth is that different kinds of players are motivated by different forces.  We need some kind of judgment free taxonomy to help understand what kind of a player someone is, and what they are looking for out of the online gaming experience.  I cannot claim the above is a new idea, as I got it from a conversation with a friend… and he cannot claim his ideas are new either because this is something that has been kicking around in the marketing side of the industry for several years.

I feel these building blocks do a pretty good job of modeling opposing forces, namely social tendencies versus solo tendencies, and casual tendencies versus core tendencies.  All that said I feel it is totally viable for someone to be social-casual-core striking a balance between really digging into a game and playing them on a superficial level.  The thing I have noticed over the years, is that most of the players that claim to be casual… myself included really dig deep into whatever game they happen to be playing.  They just may play lots and lots of games at the same time or serially.  I think it is an interesting discussion at least, and as a guild leader I have always tried to understand the drives of the people that I am trying to mold towards a specific goal.

Journey to Coldharbour

 

With all my personal posts and game log type posting, I have not had a chance to really mention this.  At the beginning of the month Zenimax released this video about Coldharbour the domain of Molag Bal.  I have to say right off the bat the footage from the video looks amazing.  I think it is awesome just how vastly different Coldhabour looks and feels from Deadlands the Oblivion plane belonging to Mehunes Dagon we experienced in Elder Scrolls VI: Oblivion.  It seems like the Dark Anchors that are mentioned are going to be similar to the Mehunes Oblivion gates.

I really look forward to seeing how all of this will really work in game play.  It seems like the anchors drop down from the sky, so I am wondering if they will be “Rift like” events that occur around the map, or static spawns.  The Elder Scrolls games have always had a certain measure of dynamic content, so it would be cool if the Anchors were this games answer to “Rifts”.  There really isn’t enough in the video to really make a call one way or another, but it is a super cool concept.  Every time they release one of these videos, I just want to play ANY Elder Scrolls game I can get my hands on.  Why hullo there Skyrim!

Wildstar: Devspeak Movement

 

So I am still on the fence about whether or not I care about Wildstar.  Firstly I have not had a great track record with me trying to get deeply involved in any Science Fiction based MMO.  They are awesome for awhile, but they seem to lack the stickiness with me that fantasy MMOs have had.  Secondly no matter how hard I try, I cannot seem to view this as anything other than a much higher resolution World of Warcraft.  There is a moment in this video that I immediately thought the guy was falling into Area 52 out in Netherstorm.  All of that said, the game does look much nicer in every department than WoW.

Range of motion in a video game is a huge thing.  If the combat animations feel clunky, the combat itself will feel clunky… as goes with the jumps, rolls, running animations etc.  This is a beautifully animated game, and the video really showcases that.  The big take away I always have from one of these videos however is just how amazing their Marketing and Communities are at engaging the public.  They do a phenomenal picture of painting a picture of the game and setting up an attitude that makes you want to play it.  I feel like this is going to be one of those titles that I will need to play before I can decide if I am going to look into it very seriously.

Aatrox, The Darkin Blade

Another nifty tidbit of information from yesterday, is that Riot games announced their next champion for League of Legends.  Basically it looks to be a badass AD melee character with life draining abilities.  Similar to Mordekaiser he uses a health spending mechanic to cast abilities.  You can click the picture, or this link to see a full breakdown of his abilities.  At first glance he kind of feels like a fusion of Mordekaiser and Zac, so will be interesting to see how he plays.

Initially I thought… hell yeah, badass demon dude with a molten sword and wings!  But ultimately I am really not sure if this is a “Bel” character or not.  So far I have not really enjoyed playing Mordekaiser, because his mechanic feels super “fiddly”.  I don’t really like champions that are very “do this one thing, so you can do this other thing or you die” in their ability set up.  I admit it, I am totally a barbarian and like simple gameplay…  think Garen, Wukong and Darius.  When I play a game, I am about as subtle as dropping a piano on someone.  I feel like even though he looks awesome, and I like his abilities (other than the health spending mechanic) he will definitely be a “try before I buy” character.

Adventures in Legally Viable Posting

So I have managed to weave together a post this morning after all, and this makes me happy.  I was afraid that my certain restrictions would dry up the well of rambling, but I have managed to grab a few things I thought was cool out of the air and cram them into a single posting.  Not that my nightly rundown posts are all that exciting in the first place, but hopefully folks won’t mind these posts every now and then when I am bound not to talk about the previous night.  I hope you guys have a great Friday, and that it is the gateway to a really amazing weekend.  We are going to be super busy this weekend finishing up the game loft, so wish me luck!