Fallen London, one of the best games of last year, is mostly a text adventure. But now the developers at Failbetter Games are experimenting with pictures. They’ve just launched a Fallen London comic book, but they’re only releasing two pages a day. It’s an odd way to read a comic book, but I guess it recreates the experience of playing Fallen London, where you only get a certain number of turns a day. And like the short snippets of narrative in the game, this comic book is only six pages long.
It starts here, but if you wait until Wednesday, you can read it all at once.
Now that Guild Wars 2 developer ArenaNet is committed to a schedule of new content every two weeks, I’m committed to working (i.e. playing) extra hard to keep up. Today is the start of the Bazaar of the Four Winds, which I presume means the end of the Dragon Bash festival. At least that’s what I was worried was going to happen as I was looking over the achievements for the festival and I noticed I wasn’t far from earning the Holographic Shattered Dragon Wings, which you can attach to your armor for a cosmetic effect. I’d seen several people running around with the wings. Naturally, it had occurred to me they’d look pretty nifty on a necromancer’s frilly outfit. Like princess faeries wings, but edgier. However, I wasn’t about to grind the achievements to earn them. I don’t care that much about looks. I mean, sure, I’ve colored my blouse and skirt with a tastefully coordinated combination of heather and strawberry cream. And I had to consider carefully whether I wanted the trim to be sea breeze or summer thistle. But I only did it because I had some time to kill while shopping for town clothes on the trading post.
So, sure, why not grab the wings before the Bazaar of the Four Winds started. To earn the last few achievements, I scarfed down a bunch of taffy, pausing occasionally to vomit, and finished the backstory dialogue with the members of the Ship’s Council, who were helpfully lined up in a row in the center of Lion’s Arch. All that was left was 18 more matches of Dragon Ball, which isn’t so bad. It could be worse. It could be 18 matches of keg brawl, which is like rugby, but with spells so that you spend even more time knocked down. But Dragon Ball is a straightforward Unreal Tournament style team deathmatch. You play on a simple map strewn with jumping pads and powerups. You start with only a single attack. Grabbing powerups earns you up to four more attacks. 18 matches would be easy enough. On the 14th match, I noticed that the wiki said Dragon Ball doesn’t apply to your wings achievement.
And that’s how I ended up running all over Guild Wars 2 to track down 41 dragon effigies that needed burning. Because it was either that or betting on moa races, and there’s no way I’m going to burn 50 silver a bet on something that’s probably rigged anyway.
If you watch Defiance, the Syfy sci-fi show, you might see a wanted poster in the background. If you peer closely, you might see the image of the character model of a player who won a contest in the online game. That’s not really much of a prize. By my count, that contest winner still has 14 minutes and 58 seconds of fame coming to him. If you want that coveted spot in season two, what are you doing reading this post? You’ve got your work cut out for you:
The ten Ark Hunters who complete the most Major Arkfall events between July 8 (10am PDT) and July 30 (10am PDT) will compete for a chance to have their character written onto the show. These ten semifinalists will be fleshed out with a backstory written by the show’s writing staff, which will be featured on Facebook, where Defiance fans will choose their five favorites. From this pool of five finalists, a member of the Defiance team will select the final winner to appear in season two of Defiance.
Never mind that the writers of the show are going to come up with the backstory for someone else’s character, and that it’s going to be consigned to Facebook. And never mind that appearing on a wanted poster is a pretty poor excuse for crossover. I certainly didn’t believe any of the transmedia bill of goods we were sold about the game affecting the show in any meaningful way. That’s just not how TV works.
What bothers me about this whole thing is the actual contest. There is no way on God’s green earth that you or I stand a chance to be among the top ten players who do the most major arkfalls before the end of the month. I simply don’t have that kind of time and I seriously doubt you do either. This contest is only for hardcore fans with hardcore catass levels of commitment. Major arkfalls are time-consuming exercises that involve standing in a mob of swarming players all shooting at a massive bag of hit points until it pops, at which point you get not much of a reward. It’s one of the least interesting ways to play Defiance.
If Trion had instead framed the contest as a drawing among people who completed major arkfalls, I could see myself popping online to do arkfalls a few times in the next month. More importantly, the committed but not quite hardcore enough fans might actually care about the contest, because they would have a chance of winning. There’s a reason people play lotteries, buy raffle tickets, and enter drawings. Whereas the best contests sell hope, Trion simply demands grinding.
In a desperate bid to avoid seeing The Lone Ranger, we backed up a few weeks to see the apocalypse stoner comedy, This Is the End. One of us liked it! Then this week’s 3×3 is about prostitutes in movies. It starts at the 43-minute mark in case you want to avoid This Is the End spoilers.
Next week: Pacific Rim
Podcast (movies): Play in new window | Download
Subscribe:
As the staff of Quarter to Three goes home for the long holiday weekend, we’ll leave you with a touch of our own fireworks in the form of an annual half-year list that may or may not include The Last of Us. Why else would there be a picture of it up there?
After the jump, the ten best games of the year so far. Continue reading →
Among the many useless things in Guild Wars 2 is the above pet I found during the Dragon Bash ceremony. It popped out of one of the dragon chests that normally has candy and fireworks. He’s a sort of winged reptilian holograph thing that I enjoy watching flap around at my heels. He’s called a “knight”, but he looks like a dragon to me. He doesn’t do anything, but that doesn’t stop me from liking him.
It’s the same with Guild Wars 2’s score system, which is a running tally of points for all the achievements you’ve completed, like your gamerscore on Xbox Live or your trophy level on the Playstation Network. The score doesn’t do anything, but that doesn’t stop me from liking it. Especially since my score is so much higher than Jason McMaster’s or Nick Diamon’s. That doesn’t necessarily mean I’m a better person than either of those guys, but it does mean I’m a more committed Guild Wars 2 player. Actually, in some circles, that probably does mean I’m a better person. Fair enough.
However, the era of your score in Guild Wars 2 not doing anything is nearly over. From this official post:
In the upcoming release, we’re adding a reward structure to achievement points. As you complete achievements and increase your achievement score, you’ll unlock new, exclusive rewards for your account. Don’t worry — the system is retroactive! Every point that you’ve earned while adventuring across Tyria will count towards exciting rewards…
The rewards includes consumables, titles, exclusive armor and weapon models, and account-wide boosts for earning resources. The reference to “the upcoming release” means the July 9th Bazaar of the Four Winds updates, at which point my score of 1390 will mean something new.
Tom Chick talks with State of Decay designer Richard Foge about the past, present, and future of Undead Labs’ brilliant zombie apocalypse game. We discuss the combat, the scavenging, the stealth, the character builds, the economy, the storytelling, the march of offline time, and more. And what’s the deal with co-op plans? What are the challenges Undead Labs faces with the upcoming sandbox mode? And in the event of a world culture reboot, find out which three movies Foge would pick to preserve zombie mythology for future generations.
Podcast (games): Play in new window | Download
Subscribe:
The problem with ragequitting is that it’s hard to sustain rage, which makes it hard to sustain the quitting part. Especially when you’re trying to quit a game you really like. For instance, I had no problem quitting SimCity. I didn’t even like it enough to ragequit it. I sadquit it. Sadquitting is easy to sustain.
I ragequit Marvel Heroes because of an ill-timed server rollback (ill-timed in that I lost a rare drop). But two things brought me back in last night, both announced in an email insidiously sent to those of us who’ve played the game. The first thing is the beginning of rebalancing for almost all the characters’ skill trees. Initially, this means boosting defensive powers so characters bear up longer under attack. I’m playing Iron Man and it’s like I’m tanking. Which, frankly, feels kind of right. The patch notes include plenty of details, but since the rebalancing is an ongoing thing in its early stages, the notes convey a slightly insipid “pardon our dust/work in progress” vibe with “design notes” such as:
The Punisher has many improvements this patch and will continue to get improvements until he is extremely fun, has multiple builds and is the ultimate killing machine!
And:
Wolverine has been training in the Danger Room and has come out much stronger. He will continue to train until he has reached the max level of fun and powerful.
Also, speaking of tanking with Iron Man, he went on sale. That was the second thing mentioned in the email. All the characters in this free-to-play game are on sale to varying degrees. It’s about time. The only thing more ridiculous than Gazillion charging $20 for Iron Man is some sucker paying $20 for Iron Man. But now that he’s on sale for $15? Heck, I spent that much seeing Iron Man 2, and I didn’t even like that movie! So now, as the owner of a level 12 Iron Man who sits inside an energy shield and lets rip with a repulsor barrage that gratifyingly melts away the bad guys, I’m keenly aware ragequitting and sheepishreturning often go hand-in-hand.
Crying Game director Neil Jordan is back in fine form with Byzantium, a vampire movie that manages to do a few things you haven’t seen in other vampire movies. We’re all pleasantly surprised. Then we hurtle into this week’s 3×3 at the 50-minute mark to discuss trains in movies.
Next week: This Is The End
Podcast (movies): Play in new window | Download
Subscribe:
If you’re like me and you’ve been waiting for the patches for State of Decay to finally come through Microsoft’s certification process, you’re now cleared for some zombie apocalypse this weekend. The latest update adds a whole mess of fixes and revisions, including the ones from the first patch fumbled in a previous update that also went through Microsoft’s certification process.
Of course, if you haven’t been playing while you waited, you might have trouble in store. The simulation in State of Decay runs in real time, whether you’re playing or not. Your characters will go on missions, eat your food, expend your ammo, and sometimes come to dire straits. When I started the game today after applying the update, nearly half of my survivors had gone missing. So far, I’ve found one of them. Marcus, my most powerful character, is still AWOL and I don’t see a mission yet to recover him.
I adore this game, but I am absolutely mystified about a design decision that punishes players for not playing. That should be the exclusive domain of subscription-based MMOs.
In the latest update for Guild Wars 2, developer ArenaNet saw fit to make necromancers more awesome. I’m not complaining. I might complain if I was playing a boring old warrior or ranger and I saw in the patch notes that boring old warriors and rangers were just as boring while already awesome necromancers got even more awesome. But the last people to decry the rich getting richer are the rich.
After the jump, tainted shackle love Continue reading →
This week, we have a very special guest. Tom Chick from the Future joins us to elaborate on drama that was defused immediately after the podcast was recorded. We also talk about what you’re going to do if you need to take pictures with your Playstation 4 and which games people in Australia can’t play. One of the guys on the podcast says mean things about Marvel Heroes, another one says nice things about Guild Wars 2, and another doesn’t have much to say yet about The Last of Us. Also, listen to learn how to talk like a World of Warcraft pro.
Podcast (games): Play in new window | Download
Subscribe:
As a deck building game, Shelter is pretty simple. Before an encounter, you take your pick of any twenty cards from your collection. You also get to pick a survivor to accompany you, which adds a few extra cards to your deck. The riot cop gives you some nifty stunning equipment to buy you free turns, but are you sure you can do without the soldier’s bad-ass L22-A2 carbine? As for the girl with the construction equipment, she spends a lot of time on the sidelines. Sorry, miss.
At the beginning of every turn, draw your hand up to five cards. Spend your action points putting cards on the table or using the ones you’ve already played, which is usually a matter of firing your gun cards at zombies. The hunting rifle pierces armor, but the Baretta gets off more shots. Do you use your hollow point rounds yet? Which gun gets the reload card? At the end of your turn, you can put a single card at the bottom of the deck if you want to get rid of something you can’t use yet or if you just want to cycle your deck faster. Simple.
Then the zombie player gets to play his deck. He’s not really a player, though. The zombie side of the table is a face-up dummy hand drawn from this encounter’s zombie deck. The zombies on the table follow simple rules — basically they crowd forward and attack — and then new cards are played from the zombie hand by rolling dice. Shelter is a solitaire game that uses cards, dice, and a simple deck-building concept to present zombie sieges.
After the jump, did I mention that it’s an iPhone game? Continue reading →
Playing a necromancer with a menagerie of writhing freakish beasts tagging as I saunter through exotic landscapes reminds me of another game by the same lead designer. Klaatu barada Flannum. Group three, guard me!
Another month, another Sims 3 add-on. Island Paradise adds houseboats and beach resorts. Intriguing, but that doesn’t necessarily make me want to jump back into The Sims 3. This, however, does:
…players can snorkel and scuba dive beneath the sea where they will discover an aquatic world filled with sea life, collectibles, caves and sunken treasure. Underwater explorations can lead to many new adventures including befriending mermaids, spotting legendary sea monsters and potentially life-threatening encounters with sharks.
Island Paradise is out today for $40. Yep, $40. With that kind of money, you could buy both Spiderman and Iron Man in Marvel Heroes. You could download about half of the DLC available for Company of Heroes 2. You could buy a copy of XCOM for the iPad and still have a little money left over. I’m downloading Island Paradise as I type this.
