Varric Tethras goes home, sleeps, eats, and easily gets through his dailies including praising the tastes of two customers and paying his taxes. Now our hapless merchant is flat broke. So much for bargain hunting in the village. Perhaps we’ll try playing fishmonger once the quest is back on track. For now there’s a missing peasant to find who might have some answers about the mysterious fountain that’s been haunting our hero.
After the jump, you won’t believe what Hawke is doing in the palace Continue reading →
I’m not sure I should admit this, in fact I’m pretty sure I shouldn’t, but I’m going to anyway. The last couple of nights my dreams have been dominated by Pokemon White.
Last night was the worst. Generally the dreams have just been rather hazy and generic replays of various fights. Actually, that’s not even accurate. It’s not like they are actual replays, but rather just the feeling that I’m playing the game constantly. That I’m being challenged, mainly by wild Pokemons, and having to throw out moves over and over again all night long. I blame grinding for this. Grinding is for the birds, and dreaming about it, even in the abstract, does not make for a restful night’s sleep I find. Last night, however, it got specific.
After the jump, infested and infected Continue reading →
It’s time to convert my wizard into a rare and powerful spell caster known as a lich. I did some research on how to pull this off, having encountered one in the game, as well as reading about them on various forums. It takes commitment, but I know I can pull it off.
The first step is to acquire a rare item known as the Ring of the Dead which can only be found in the 115-level dungeon called — fittingly enough — the Palace of the Dead. Specifically, there are some floors on which it will show up randomly. Such as floor 33. This is the first floor where you can find the Ring of the Dead, which means I’ll be battling through 33 levels to get to it.
After the jump, wait, what? 33 battles just to get a ring? Continue reading →
Varric’s hung up his crossbow, Bianca, and grudgingly taken up honest trade as a merchant in Sims Medieval. Perhaps there would be profit eventually but for now drinking is his primary pursuit and fatal flaw. Lo, a quest has appeared that promises redemption! There are rumors of a legendary fountain which can cure the imbiber of all ills. Imbibing is what Varric does best.
After the break: A drunken dwarf? Now, that’s something you never see. Continue reading →
The German crossing of the Dnepr River and the subsequent battle for Smolensk has been the subject of relatively few wargames. Probably the best-known among people who know about that kind of stuff is PanzerGruppe Guderian, published by Simulations Publications Inc. (SPI) in 1976 and republished by Avalon Hill in 1984. It had some interesting innovations in game mechanics: untried units on the Soviet side were flipped over to reveal their strength only at the time of their first combat, which could be a surprise to both players and made exact odds calculation impossible. The slashing armored tactics on the German side were modeled by very generous overrun rules, which allowed attacks during the movement phase at very low odds differentials, unlike any other game to that date. No rules were included for bare-chested fighting.
On the computer, SSG released Across the Dnepr in 2003 as an add-on to its excellent Korsun Pocket. It had terrible balance issues, and I haven’t tried the second edition, released in 2010 as an add-on to Kharkov: Disaster on the Donets. I’m curious to see how the new version works, so that’s now on the list. The first Panzer Campaigns game from HPS and John Tiller was released in 1999 and entitled Smolensk ’41, and happens to have been the best one of the series. Draw your own conclusions.
I’m about to find out how the War in the East version stacks up, because at the beginning of Turn 5 I’m at the Dnepr, and don’t plan on stopping.
After the jump, Guderian’s not all that Continue reading →
What the hell just happened?
I just want to say that my parents tried to prepare me for this. They did. They sent me to a school where I was taught that the world was six thousand years old, but when I got home they endeavored to set me straight. It was the best school choice for them at the time, but they weren’t idiots. My stepdad was a public school science teacher and an intelligent man, so he would reteach me that evolution was all a part of God’s Plan. I accepted that.
Until now.
After the jump, how I stopped worrying and came to prefer intelligent design Continue reading →
I’m in a huge battle to take the capitol city of Heim, using all of the skills and powers I’ve cultivated to this point, only to find I’m out gunned. Having a low level warlock, dragoon, and iron golem slowed my main character’s leveling progress. Because when a battle is won, all the XP is pooled and distributed. But not evenly! Low level units get the lion’s share.
It takes many battles to go from level 1 to 18, which is where most of my units are at this point. So for many battles my main troops would get a paltry 50xp while a level 7 Iron Golem would get 400xp and hit…level 8. Consequently, I’m now up against units that can (literally) bring the the judgment of God down on my head.
After the jump, ouch Continue reading →
On the kingdom screen you can select one from a number of quests. Once the quest is selected you can chose an approach: each hero might have a different way of going about it. If Varric the merchant took up the case of the lost boy then he’d clearly throw gold at the problem. Sebastian the monk would look to The Watcher (god, you, same thing) for guidance. Our good King Hawke will solve the problem through diplomacy. The first step is to talk to his advisor for guidance.
After the jump, the game is afoot! Continue reading →
The battle for Leningrad was one of the more horrific episodes in a war full of horrific episodes. At the same time, it’s a fascinating drama, full of intriguing angles. There’s the Finnish angle, where the Finns first declared war and then Carl von Mannerheim’s army basically stayed put for three years north of the city, resisting German pressure to launch an assault. The whole “Road of Life” across frozen Lake Ladoga is a ready-made movie script, and was the subject of numerous Soviet films. And the siege itself is an amazing catalog of events of both heroism and barbarism. So of course the most important philosophical, ethical, and historical problem this battle raises is: what kind of tires did the Russian ice trucks use, and are they properly modeled in the game?
After the jump, Leningrad or bust Continue reading →
Yesterday I told you that Dragon Age II didn’t have a soul, and that was why I thought it would always be in the shadow of its predecessor, Origins. I’m not entirely sure how far I want to take this analogy, but even if Dragon Age II has no soul, it has plenty of heart.
After the jump, I let go and learn to love again Continue reading →
And I’m on the pavement thinking about what the hell happened.
I just got my ass kicked for the first time in Pokemon White. And right properly. I feel my jaw clamp down. Now what?
In the previous entry I mentioned a tipping point. A point of no return. I was talking about building my team in that entry, an entry that was written in a time I like to call ‘the salad days’. We are past that now. Back then I was waxing cute about builds and choices and forgetting and whatnot. Back then, yesterday, I was winning every battle easily. And I mean every battle. Wild Pokemons. Trainers. Etc. Winning them all. I figured that’s what the game was about. Winning. [Don’t you dare go there Christien. I’m serious. Don’t you dare.]
After the jump, is you is or is you ain’t Continue reading →
Tactics Ogre features a very powerful and unique system called World, which lets you travel back in time to previously experienced events, giving you the chance to do them all over again.
Did you get to a battle early on where a unit was being attacked by brigands and you didn’t have the skill or tactical savvy to save it, so you let it die and moved on? Use World to travel back to that map later and try again! This time he or she just might join you…
After the jump, ripping the fabric of space, time, and saved games Continue reading →
“I’m busy!” Seriously. I am. I’m walking around, eating, sleeping, washing, looking at art, practicing strategy and swordplay, or pursuing daily work goals to keep my moodlets up. And if I have time between all that, I’m chasing after quest goals or chatting up a potential bride-to-be. She’s a pointy-eared druid. Hawke’s getting over his fear of elvish waifs with magical tendencies at long last.
What any of this means, after the jump Continue reading →
In the interests of continuing to keep it real, I am going to be straight-up honest with you and admit that I have no idea how the part of the game we’re going to talk about today works. At all. I’m not even going to pretend to understand by finding some scholarly quotes and then systematically demonstrating that War in the East does this particular thing better than some game no one has ever heard of. Instead, I’m just going to throw up my hands right now and say that if anyone can help a comrade out, I’d be grateful.
After the jump, anyone? Anyone? Glantz? Continue reading →
Try as I might, I can’t make myself love Dragon Age II the way I loved Dragon Age: Origins. Dragon Age II does almost everything right, hits almost all of its marketing bullet points, but never grabs you and refuses to let you go. Origins was buggy, sprawling, clunky; an old school paean to the glory days of Bioware and Black Isle and Infinity Engine RPGs. It suffered from the tired, played out Bioware formula of prologue, four quest hubs, and finale, yet never seemed boring or repetitive. For those of us who played the early days of computer RPGs, it was a promise to keep that style alive. Then Dragon Age II changed the formula, and as a result lost its chance to eclipse its predecessor long before it hit the market.
After the jump: Do games have a soul? Continue reading →
