Getting a decent screenshot in today’s level, Eternal Abyss Platformer, was difficult. It’s a study in browns and dark textures, which is part of what I love about it, but also what makes it tough to capture in a picture. One of my favorite moments in the level, a timed jumping puzzle, ends up looking like a bunch of darkish rectangles. This is perfect for the sense I get from the level that my sackboy is working his way through the rotting wood of an old galleon, but not so good for making colorful post images.
I’m not really complaining. I like the design, in particular the sound design, and I’m never going to be able to capture that in a screenshot.
Sound design. I’m talking about sound design in a community level of a silly little puzzle platformer. It’s tough to convey how grateful I am for this fact. I can imagine, if I think about my experience in the story levels, how playing community levels might seem tedious to an aficionado of this genre. For folks with heretofore little more than a passing interest and scant experience, these levels serve as a welcome gateway drug.
Once again…grateful might seem a weird word choice. But there it is.
Someone named Reala (not his/her real name?) runs a blog focused on Holy priest healing in World of Warcraft. His latest entry includes a badge (pictured) you can stick on your blog to show solidarity with his cause. The cause in question?
For fun (but also I mean it) I’ve made a little badge you can put on your blog to certify it a RIFT Free Zone, as seen above. I know there are a few bloggers getting pretty frustrated with the amount of Rift talk on WoW blogs lately…WoW may be the lumbering behemoth of the MMORPG sphere but we bloggers are not, damnit. Many of us are experiencing tough times in WoW, we have lost friends, guildies, entire guilds have crumbed and fallen. I don’t begrudge Rift the shelf-space, but when there are more Rift posts on a WoW blog than WoW posts… well… I don’t like it.
I love his sense of frustration. The “but I also mean it” is great, but you really can’t top the apocalyptic devastation conveyed in “we have lost friends, guildies, entire guilds have crumbed and fallen”. It’s like the End of Days!
FYI, don’t be alarmed by the image of the badge. Quarter to Three is not a Rift free zone.
(Thanks Katie Uhlman!)
I have another confession: I’m a goodie two shoes when I play RPG’s. The first time I run through an RPG, I feel compelled to be the world’s biggest ass-kisser, suck up, do gooder, and holier-than-thou moralist. I don’t know where the habit started. Possibly as far back as the original Baldur’s Gate, though I don’t recall a morality system beyond influencing your party members. But it has stuck with me. It has so permeated my playing style that even when I try to play RPGs a second time as an evil take-no-prisoners jerk, I usually end up choosing at least a few good options to ease my conscious. This would likely make for the world’s most boring game diary though, so I decided that I was going to pick every bit of dialogue based on how I thought it fit with the game world. No reloading, no second thoughts. The first thing that came to my head was the right choice.
After the jump, that’s not what I meant to say Continue reading →
Turns out the bad guys are Russians and Ukrainians. There’s some fluff about how Georgia (the former Soviet republic, not the US state) joins NATO and Russia decides to invade and such. Which is a bit odd, because Eagle Dyanmics is a Russian company, but I guess if you’re making a combat sim about an American aircraft you can’t make the Americans the enemy. Whatever, it’s the cold war gone hot twenty years too late, and that’s fine by me. Newly confident after having successfully completed the tutorials, it’s time for me to dive into a combat sortie.
After the jump, I pick out the first campaign mission, and away we go. Continue reading →
I really can’t get over how much Pokemon White does not want me to play it.
I’m trying to get past my early frustration with how much this game is about reading and hand-holding. I really am. I’ve never played a game like this, and my nature is getting in the way as I navigate this world. Wow. Look at that sentence. It’s only been a couple of days and already the game is starting to dictate the way I construct sentences. Conspiracy alert.
Here’s the thing. I had a moment a few game-hours ago when it seemed like Pokemon White was going to force me to think. A moment when I literally sat up in my chair and focused on my DS fully. My feet came down off my desk and everything. This moment came when I finally found my first gym leader. It took me forever to find that guy, and when I finally did he dismissed me by saying, basically, that I had chosen the wrong Pokemon as my first Pokemon. I had chosen a fire-type Pokemon, and that was going to mean trouble for me in matching up with him in the gym. Match-ups? Whoa. It’s bracket-time, ladies and gentlemen. You start me thinking about match-ups and you’ve got my attention. The possibility of having to strategize quickly wiped away my earlier frustration.
Now the game is going to challenge me. I smile, thinking to myself, It’s on. It’s on like Donk–
After the jump, it’s off Continue reading →
