Day Twenty-six

Aaaaaaaaaaaaand I'm back. Had some stuff come up that made this endeavor more difficult than I wanted to put up with, so I took a break for a few days. I still played games, but didn't feel much like writing about it afterwards.

I purchased an Xbox 360 controller today with some Best Buy gift cards I had sitting around. I own several games that play well with a controller, but the old Microsoft Sidewinder game pad I own hooks up to a game port. Yes, kids, a game port. Look it up on your fancy digital encyclopedia.

I played Shatter for a bit with the controller and while it was different than playing on the keyboard, I don't think it was necessarily any better. Then I switched over to Beat Hazard. This game takes your music and dynamically generates levels based on it. And by dynamically generates, I mean rapes your eyelids off with a thousand rainbows of pure fusion power. The game starts with a warning for epileptics and it's clear after about .037 seconds why that is. Good times on the Xbox controller though. If you're in the mood for mindless, shoot the living bejesus out of everything on the screen before it kills you sort of arcade action, you should pick it up.

Games Played: 
Shatter
Beat Hazard

Achievements:
Perfect
1st Track Cleared
Tug of War
Boss Dance
Boss Slayer
Brutal Boss Kill.

Day Twenty-five

DID NOT POST

Day Twenty-four

DID NOT POST

Day Twenty-three

DID NOT POST

Day Twenty-two

Another evening spent with SpaceChem, which has now taken second place in my Steam games list for hours played. While I've probably spent more time with Half Life and Half Life 2 than SpaceChem, Steam didn't used to keep track of time played.

I went back and finished an optional level tonight to earn the achievement. This game has an unusual take on bonus levels in that they exist within each of the various larger worlds, but you can skip right past them. The game has no points other than comparing your score to the score of others, so they're really just there as out of sequence harder levels.

I was off the charts slow on this bonus level. Usually I at least fall in withing the graph for cycles, but this one I was way slow. But that was more or less by design since I wanted to keep the logic easy so I could beat it and move on. There are large pauses in the last reactor so I didn't have to deal with keeping track of two bits running around at once. A fun challenge of a level though.

SpaceChem introduced some new controls in the world I'm on now, but interestingly the first two levels don't require that you use them. I was able to easily pass them using older game play elements that have been around for many levels. Maybe they're key to driving better efficiency on those levels, but unlike the bonus level, I was within normal ranges for both symbols and cycles. Oh well, I'm sure I'll be forced into them soon enough and wish I hadn't asked for it.

Games Played: 
SpaceChem

Achievements:
Junior Permutation Technician.

Day Twenty-one

Ahhhh. Then end of the terror that is Ravenholm. Only to be replaced by the terror that is another fucking driving level. A driving level with much more on foot than the airboat driving level, but there's still way too much driving for my taste. At least there's the treasure of the bridge level.

The more I play Half Life 2, the more I'm seeing that I'm only remembering the parts of the game I really like or perhaps only hiding the parts of the game I didn't like. See, had you asked me about Half Life 2 before this replay, I would have fondly recalled playing through the section I'm on now. You're forced out of the damn dune buggy and made to cross a huge railroad bridge on foot. It's a wonderful mix of a little bit of puzzle and a lot of shooting bad guys with the guns you've racked up. Tossing a grenade in, hearing the Combine soldiers react and then ending their lives with two well placed shotgun rounds. A thing of beauty. I would not have recalled the tedium and grind of the airboat and dune buggy levels. Forced to play a shitty driving simulator instead of a shooter. Several years on, Half Life 2 was much more perfect before I was reminded of its flaws.

Perhaps that's just the mark of a good game, convincing the player to delightfully recall the highlights of the game and neglect the defects by virtue of the positive dramatically outweighing the negative. Nah, I think that's just the case for Half Life. I'd much rather just have a great game from stem to stern, without the need to jump into a vehicle.

Games Played: 
Half Life 2

Achievements: 
Hallowed Ground
OSHA Violation
Targetted Advertising
Where Cubbage Fears to Tread

Day Twenty

Tonight brought a return to Fallout: New Vegas. According to Steam, I hadn't played it since May 10th, so it's been a good while. I picked up the Honest Hearts DLC during the Summer Camp Sale because it was so cheap. Based on the reviews I wouldn't have picked it up for $10, but $3 seemed like it would be hard to go wrong.

I'm not sure what went wrong, but once I got into the DLC level, the group I was with was attacked right away. Everyone but me was killed. From there on out, every faction in the level was automatically hostile. This makes for a pretty shitty RPG, since there was no dialog other than to start the mission. I'll probably start the whole damn thing over again, since I'd like to play the story, but tonight it was just a shooting fest with the .50cal sniper rifle and the riot shotgun. By the time I started killing named NPCs I didn't feel like starting it over tonight. I killed the main character within about 20 minutes, but because I couldn't start dialog with anyone, I didn't miss any of the story.

Just did a bit of reading and it turns out I either got trigger happy and shot a Tribal I wasn't supposed to or there was a glitch early on. Apparently if you shoot this guy, everyone in the whole level is hostile for the duration of the DLC. That's a pretty shit piece of game design right there, especially since this friendly guy looks like the dudes that were just attacking you and there's no auto-dialog with him so clarify that he's friendly. There's just so many ways it could have been better handled by the designers. Oh well, for three bucks I guess I'm doing OK.

Games Played: 
Fallout: New Vegas

Achievements: 
When We Remembered Zion

Day Nineteen

As I've mentioned before on this blog, I don't understand why some people criticize Team 17 for putting out new versions of Worms that don't really change the game play all that much. I have no problem having more of something I really enjoy without the need to instill forced novelty upon it, when the novelty of simply having new levels would suffice. I can think of two recent games, Dragon Age 2 and Crysis 2, that felt the need to add crap in that prevented me from buying the games.

Dragon Age was a fantastic game. A lovely RPG that I'll likely play through a second time one day. When I finished it, I was quite excited to learn that Dragon Age 2 was a near certainty in the future. I was dismayed to learn that the second installment was taking a much more Diablo style "action RPG" approach to it. At first I trusted the developer to use this to improve upon the original in small ways. The more I learned the more I felt this was not going to be the case. Then when the demo was released, I confirmed that it wasn't going to be the case. They had monkeyed with the game beyond the point that it felt like the game I had enjoyed in the first installment.

Whether the changes in Dragon Age 2 are an improvement or detriment are clearly up to debate. I did not enjoy them and wished they had stayed true to the original and explored the new game mechanics in another game. Most of the time if I really enjoy a game, when I'm done, I simply want more of the same thing, with new content. A good example of this would be Fallout 3 and Fallout: New Vegas. Loved the first one. Loved the second one. While there were changes between the two, Fallout: New Vegas was really not much more than a second helping of Fallout 3. Same game, new content == win.

While some would argue that Fallout 3 is a prime example of what I'm whining about, those people are wrong. Fallout and Fallout 2 were excellent games with Fallout 2 being an excellent follow on to the style and content of the original. Fallout 3 was released 10 years after Fallout 2 and it would have been ridiculous for a major studio to publish a 2D isometric RPG in 2008. Using a great universe to make a new game is awesome. Using a great game to make a crappy game sucks.

Games Played: 
Worms Reloaded

Achievements: 
Not so much

Day Eighteen

It does me precious little good to know that "We don't go to Ravenholm" when that's precisely where I have to go. I'd rather have taken my chances with Dog against the Combine attack, but noooooo. Let's traipse through the place you just got done telling me we don't go anymore. <shudder>

When I first played Half Life 2, this level was the second time I recall feeling genuine terror from a video game. The first was the green tentacle monster in the missile silo from the first Half Life. Ravenholm is much worse. The whole level is designed for terror. It even goes so far as to violate fundamental laws of zombie attacks by including not only your standard shambling, slow, stupid zombies; but also really fucking fast ones that run at you like and animal and devour your face. Not cool. I'm not even to that part of the level yet and they're already scaring me because I know they're coming.

I have been terrorized by other video games since first playing this level, such as while wandering the wasteland at night in Fallout 3, but this one is still the worst (in a good way). I stopped playing 20 minutes ago and I still have the creeps. I know what's going to happen next and it still messes with me. The good news is, I'm not piloting that fucking airboat any more, having passed that stupid level, and good ole Padre Grigori gives me a shotgun in this level. No weapon satisfies me more in an FPS than a shotgun and this one is chocked full of shotgunny goodness.

Games Played: 
Half Life 2

Achievements: 
Revenge!
Blast from the Past
Zero-Point Energy

Day Seventeen

A few weeks ago Valve converted Team Fortress 2 from a $9.99 game to a free to download and play game. Being a cheap bastard, this is right at my price point. I'd considered picking up a copy before, but I haven't played multiplayer FPS since way back in the old days when I was on a Quake 2 CTF clan, so I figured my skills probably weren't up to snuff in a multiplayer only game.

After playing TF2 tonight, that seems to have been an accurate assessment of my skills. I didn't even get into playing against other humans yet, just the tutorial and one round of bot populated "Offline Practice" mode. I set the bots on Normal difficulty and my feeble play was enough to lead my team to a 6 to 1 loss in Dustbowl, a map centered around defending and capturing control points.

To be fair, I spent a good bit of time trying several of the nine classes available, so I didn't expect to come out on top. Sniper was tolerable, but I don't know the maps well enough to find a good camping spot. The Spy was entertaining, but I enjoy shooting people more than that that class is designed for. The Scout class was entirely useless. This might have been that I simply don't know how to play the class, but it seemed I was dying about two seconds after my first glimpse of the enemy. This was mildly disappointing since in Quake 2 CTF I played offense and thought that perhaps my weaselly skills rocket dodging skills would translate. Quake 2 CTF was unclassed though, so I was used to having the same setup and abilities as the other players. Demoman seemed to suit me well since I can't aim for shit and the sticky bombs help make up for that fact.

T'all you fine dandies so proud, so cock-sure. Prancin' aboot with your heads full of eyeballs! Come and get me I say! I'll be waiting on ya with a whiff of the 'ol brimstone. I'm a grim bloody fable....with an unhappy bloody end!     -- Demoman

Games Played: 
Team Fortress 2

Achievements: 
Ready for Duty