31 March, 2009

Game Journal: Heart of Evil

written on Wednesday, March 25, 2009

GAME JOURNALS CONTAIN SPOILERS. DEAL WITH IT PINK BOY.



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30 March, 2009

Game Journal: Heart of Evil

written on Wednesday, March 25, 2009

GAME JOURNALS CONTAIN SPOILERS. DEAL WITH IT PINK BOY.



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29 March, 2009

Game Journal: Heart of Evil

written on Wednesday, March 25, 2009

GAME JOURNALS CONTAIN SPOILERS. DEAL WITH IT PINK BOY.



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28 March, 2009

Game Journal: Heart of Evil

written on Wednesday, March 25, 2009

GAME JOURNALS CONTAIN SPOILERS. DEAL WITH IT PINK BOY.



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27 March, 2009

Keepalive: Heart of Evil, Blood, BioShock, Assassin's Creed

written on Friday, March 27, 2009

I finished posting the Heart of Evil walkthrough (really more of a playthrough) on Wednesday. You'll still be seeing them here every day for another week, but just spending a day letting the uploads to YouTube and MediaFire happen was good. Dragging it out by only recording and uploading ten minutes of video a day was too tedious.

My plan is to record a playthrough of Blood next. But I'm feeling a little iffy about that. On the technical side I haven't tried using my game video capture software (Fraps) with DOSBox yet. Also, the game has movies that switch the screen resolution and I have no idea how Fraps would handle that. And finally, my PC is way overdue for a reformat. I've got less than 10% free space, and that slows everything down.

On the gameplay side, I'm not sure if the pacing of Blood is as conducive to a video playthrough as Heart of Evil (which wasn't perfect, by any means). Also, Heart of Evil provides notes with back story. With Blood, what you see is pretty much what you get. I could point out some of the horror movie references, but that doesn't take long and isn't very interesting.

Long story short, it'll be a while before the Blood playthrough gets underway.

I finished BioShock. Again. I was much less of a pack rat than in my original run through and felt good about that. Maybe I'll use BioShock as therapy and run through it once a year until I can downgrade my hoarding tendencies from pathological to prudent. The game holds up. The art design holds up. I got to play with some plasmids I hadn't used before. Shooting out bees was lame, but the cyclone traps were super handy.

Oh, and I still saved all the Little Sisters. I will always save all the Little Sisters.

There was a one day sale on Steam, so I picked up Assassin's Creed for $10. Early on, I felt I'd slightly overpaid. I was bored with the game before the end of the first assassination. Unlocking more combat abilities has made the combat marginally fun. And I'm getting enough story outside of the main game that I'm curious to see where it goes. Now I'm feeling $10 was the perfect price. Who knows, maybe I'll like it enough to feel like it was worth even more by the time I finish it. Then again, maybe I'll be so sick of doing the same activities over and over I'll wish I never bought it. But it's the uncertainty that keeps life interesting, isn't it?

Game Journal: Heart of Evil

written on Wednesday, March 25, 2009

GAME JOURNALS CONTAIN SPOILERS. DEAL WITH IT PINK BOY.



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26 March, 2009

Game Journal: Heart of Evil

written on Wednesday, March 25, 2009

GAME JOURNALS CONTAIN SPOILERS. DEAL WITH IT PINK BOY.



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25 March, 2009

Game Journal: Heart of Evil

written on Tuesday, March 24, 2009

GAME JOURNALS CONTAIN SPOILERS. DEAL WITH IT PINK BOY.



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24 March, 2009

Game Journal: Heart of Evil

written on Monday, March 23, 2009

GAME JOURNALS CONTAIN SPOILERS. DEAL WITH IT PINK BOY.



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23 March, 2009

Game Journal: Heart of Evil

written on Friday, March 20, 2009

GAME JOURNALS CONTAIN SPOILERS. DEAL WITH IT PINK BOY.



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22 March, 2009

Game Journal: Heart of Evil

written on Friday, March 20, 2009

GAME JOURNALS CONTAIN SPOILERS. DEAL WITH IT PINK BOY.



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21 March, 2009

Game Journal: Heart of Evil

written on Thursday, March 19, 2009

GAME JOURNALS CONTAIN SPOILERS. DEAL WITH IT PINK BOY.



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20 March, 2009

Game Journal: Heart of Evil

written on Thursday, March 19, 2009

GAME JOURNALS CONTAIN SPOILERS. DEAL WITH IT PINK BOY.



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19 March, 2009

Game Journal: Heart of Evil

written on Thursday, March 19, 2009

GAME JOURNALS CONTAIN SPOILERS. DEAL WITH IT PINK BOY.



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18 March, 2009

Keepalive: Heart of Evil, Boredom

written on Tuesday, March 17, 2009

I've been playing Heart of Evil, but I haven't recorded the next walkthrough segment yet. Episode E is pretty sprawling, and I don't want to have to backtrack a lot. Plus there are a bunch of NPCs. It's risky, but I'd like to take more of them with me. Not Barney. If he dies it's game over. But the modders went to a lot of trouble to give the player AI commands. I'd like to play with them more.

I'm pretty uninterested in gaming audio shows lately. Maybe it's just a function of there not being many games I'm interested in being at the stage where the press is excited about them.

Prototype is upcoming from Radical (who made the excellent Hulk: Ultimate Destruction). But I'm hearing so little about it, I'm guessing it's going to miss June and be pushed back to a holiday release.

I think The Godfather II may be some good vacuous fun.

I'd love to see Ghostbusters turn out really well and sell like crazy, if only to spite Activision.

The new Bionic Commando could be good.

And there are a few other games I'm at least holding out some hope for.

But mostly it feels like people talking about games I just don't care about. I suppose part of that is Noby Noby Boy and Killzone 2 getting a lot of press. They're PS3 exclusives, which is good for Sony. But I don't see me buying a PS3 for years, so I really don't care. Plus there's a lot of coverage of iPhone games. The idea that they aren't "real games" makes people want to talk about them more to defend them. :P

17 March, 2009

Keepalive: Mafia Wars, UT3, Tribes 2, BioShock, Heart of Evil, Blood

written on Monday, March 16, 2009

I finally got tired of Mafia Wars. A recent update let rivals destroy my income generating buildings. @#*& that. I'm a gangster, not a contractor. Plus they weren't even showing who was doing it in the news ticker. I'm not huge on reprisals, but the game seems less fun and kinda broken.

I logged into UT3 just to check that I still couldn't add a friend. I wonder if they have to actually be logged in to UT3 to add them. That would be pathetic, and that's the best case scenario.

Also, if you'll allow me a moment to grump like the grumpy old man I am, I still don't like AltDeath. AltDeath was a type of DeathMatch added to DooM in a patch. It allowed the weapons and items to respawn. UT3 does it better than DooM did. A dominant player can't just run around picking up all the weapons and completely shut the other player down, but the final match of UT3 is all about the 100 armor belt and double damage power up. It doesn't make me feel like the better fighter when I have twice the armor and damage output of my opponent. And it doesn't make me feel like I lost in a fair fight when they have it. Weapon choice and tactical positioning is enough, in a well made game.

I also did download Tribes 2. There are extra controls to learn, and even the tutorials will kill you. (I should probably have left them on easy instead of turning them up to medium.) They spent a lot of resources on rendering terrain, so the models and animation are pretty hard to look at. There's a certain age between DooM and Half-Life where 3D looked worse than sprites to me. Tribes 2 came out two years after Half-Life, but still looks pretty terrible. More importantly the game feels janky. I'll keep trying and see if I can get the hang of it. Joint-Ops was janky, and I loved the heck out of that game.

For no particular reason, I'm finally playing through BioShock again, roughly a year after my first playthrough. I try to experiment and use different tactics, but I love the scrounger upgrade! The idea of not being able to take a second roll of the dice when a foe leaves crappy / no loot makes my skin crawl. The same goes for invisibility. Being invisible is AWESOME. I am using more telekinesis this time. And I'm not bothering with hacking as much. But considering I turned on the Vita Chambers this time (infinite respawners) just to give myself room to fail, I find my old habits are still dying very hard.

There are only two more episodes (of the game, which will probably take ten or so videos to get through) in the Heart of Evil walkthrough. As I recall, episode "e" is basically a sprawling military encampment. More armed super zombies show up, but overall it's pretty straightforward. But episode "f"... that's where the crazy hits the fan. I hope it's still as bizarre as I remember. I'm thinking I'll have to do a walkthrough for Blood next. The demo for Blood was awful, so many people (myself included) dismissed it as "another cheesy DooM clone" at the time. But Blood, once properly patched, played fine and had more character than Duke Nukem 3D, Shadow Warrior, and Hexen put together.

16 March, 2009

Game Journal: Heart of Evil

written on Sunday, March 15, 2009

GAME JOURNALS CONTAIN SPOILERS. DEAL WITH IT PINK BOY.



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15 March, 2009

Game Journal: Heart of Evil

written on Saturday, March 14, 2009

GAME JOURNALS CONTAIN SPOILERS. DEAL WITH IT PINK BOY.



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14 March, 2009

Keepalive: Unreal Tournament 3

written on Friday, March 13, 2009

Dear Blog,

UT3 was good and original. But like someone once said, the parts that were good were not original, and the parts that were original were not good. The campaign had fewer levels and game types than the 1999 game. And the new one has some nice ideas that don't actually improve the experience. If I ever get the urge to play UT again, I promise I will bust out the old CD and install the original. I will not buy the new version which will always be worse.

Sincerely,
Blain

P.S. I should probably try Tribes 2. I heard it was free and old and awesome.

13 March, 2009

Keepalive: Unreal Tournament 3

written on Thursday, March 12, 2009

I finally caved and bought UT3 on sale on Steam. I don't regret it. But I both rue and lament it.

They have an ugly and awkward partnership with GameSpy that makes playing online, which is the entire point of the game, a pain in the butt. And for some functions it simply doesn't work. I tried to add a "friend" from the PA boards in the game, and it wouldn't let me. It gave me an error message. I tried a few more times to see if I could "get through" somehow. No dice. I tried a couple hours later; still nothing.

I don't know how much money GameSpy kicked in, but I'm glad UT3 sold so poorly. I mean, having to log into GameSpy to play on the internet is a large step backward from what was offered in the original Unreal Tournament in 1999. But between GameSpy, Rockstar Social Club, Games for Windows Live, Relic Online, and Steam, it seems people are so eager to get you in their system that they don't care if it makes your very first impression of their games an annoying one.

UT3 hasn't really overcome that initial negative impression yet. It's mildly entertaining as nostalgia. Some of the maps are exactly the same as ones from the 1999 original. And there really aren't that many maps. The single player campaign involves a lot of repetition. The main difference is the glossy paint job. And by glossy, I mean the standard complaint that often things seem a little too shiny. Plus some of the character designs have gotten so Gears of Wars-y that the game seems to have lost what little identity it had.



Ah well. The worst day shooting stuff still isn't a bad day.

12 March, 2009

Game Journal: Heart of Evil

written on Wednesday, March 11, 2009

GAME JOURNALS CONTAIN SPOILERS. DEAL WITH IT PINK BOY.



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11 March, 2009

Death vs. Monstars

written on Tuesday, March 10, 2009

Rock, Paper, Shotgun pointed me at a lovely Flash game, Death vs. Monstars.



It gets to be a bullet hell shooter, which I normally hate. But it's fairly forgiving and has really smooth mouse control. Seriously, if all bullet hell shooters controlled this well, I'd probably be a fan of the genre. I didn't even bother using slow motion. Ever. And at one point I let out a fully voiced "Woohoo!"

That is not normal for me and shooters.

10 March, 2009

Game Journal: Heart of Evil

written on Monday, March 9, 2009

GAME JOURNALS CONTAIN SPOILERS. DEAL WITH IT PINK BOY.



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09 March, 2009

Game Journal: Heart of Evil

written on Sunday, March 8, 2009

GAME JOURNALS CONTAIN SPOILERS. DEAL WITH IT PINK BOY.

I'm going back to the small size. I like the sidebar to be visible. :P



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08 March, 2009

Keepalive: Perfect World, Mafia Wars, Vampire Wars, Mortal Kombat: Shaolin Monks, Lost Planet: Extreme Condition, Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines

written on Sunday, March 8, 2009

And that is why I often abbreviate game titles. I haven't stopped gaming just because I'm working on the Heart of Evil walkthrough.

I have mostly stopped playing Perfect World. It's nice if I want to take a break. But I'm getting back into gaming, so I don't really want a break.

I also tried Ether Saga Online, thanks to a beta key from What They Play (a web site targeting parents). ESO wasn't my cup of tea. But I will say this about What They Play, John Davison knew what he was doing. Every time I hear about the average age of gamers, it's my age (35 at the time of this writing). And normal people my age have families.

I also am dinking around with the ten day trial of Warhammer Online. I like it better than WoW. Just the fact that PvP matches are limited to 15 minutes, win lose or draw, makes it a far superior PvP experience. And the public quests are also pretty cool. Basically, once you enter a certain area, a quest appears. It's usually something like "kill 35 fire monkeys". But everyone in the zone is on the quest, and as they kill, they each earn points. They get XP, they get influence in the region (which can be exchanged for gear), and if they're one of the top contributors, they can win some extra loot, as well. It's a welcome change of pace from standard questing.

All that said, it's still not nearly good enough for me to pay a subscription fee. I like action, and at the end of the day, Warhammer Online is still mostly math.

If I want math, I can play Mafia Wars of Vampire Wars on Facebook. They're boring, but I just log on, press some buttons and feel like I accomplished something. Well, in Mafia Wars I do. I'd put money on Vampire Wars being a much earlier effort as it's very poorly designed. But I was invited by someone on Facebook, so I'll waste a couple minutes a day on it.

When I call something a waste of time, that should get your attention.

Enough math. More pummeling.

Thanks to not having rehearsal the past Tuesday night, I got to play some co-op Mortal Kombat: Shaolin Monks. It's basically a brawler, but with more air combos and fireballs than most. It's probably my favorite Mortal Kombat game, as I'm not into spending the time it takes to get good at fighting games and always considered the Mortal Kombat games shallow, poorly animated, and tacky compared to Street Fighter. But shallow and tacky are par for the course for brawlers, so it works fine, there.

Shallow and tacky are also par for the course for $5 games, hence me buying Lost Planet during a recent Steam sale. The game is pretty much nothing but running through icy wastes, shooting alien bug things. But at $5, I found it quite satisfying.

I also played a bit of VtM Bloodlines. I ran into a gamer I don't see very often who said he likes FPS with a lot of exploration. I decided to play some Bloodlines with a ranged weapon build to see if it was feasible. It was a strange coincidence because I was listening to a podcast a couple days later where some people were saying they'd play Stalker again, but not Bloodlines. I always intended to go back to Bloodlines. I still haven't played through as the shape changer, sewer dweller, or crazy ass vampire types and would like to. I found Stalker so monotonous I wouldn't even play the sequel.

Well, maybe for $5. :)

07 March, 2009

Game Journal: Heart of Evil

written on Saturday, March 7, 2009

GAME JOURNALS CONTAIN SPOILERS. DEAL WITH IT PINK BOY.



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06 March, 2009

Game Journal: Heart of Evil

written on Friday, March 6, 2009

GAME JOURNALS CONTAIN SPOILERS. DEAL WITH IT PINK BOY.

At the moment of this being posted (6:02), the YouTube video is processing, and the MediaFire upload is about half an hour from completing. You might be surprised to know how long it takes to create and upload a seven minute video. :P



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05 March, 2009

Game Journal: Heart of Evil

written on Thursday, March 5, 2009

GAME JOURNALS CONTAIN SPOILERS. DEAL WITH IT PINK BOY.



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04 March, 2009

Game Journal: Heart of Evil

written on Wednesday, March 4, 2009

GAME JOURNALS CONTAIN SPOILERS. DEAL WITH IT PINK BOY.



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03 March, 2009

Game Journal: Heart of Evil

written on Monday, March 2, 2009

GAME JOURNALS CONTAIN SPOILERS. DEAL WITH IT PINK BOY.



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02 March, 2009

Game Journal: Heart of Evil

written on Sunday, March 1, 2009

GAME JOURNALS CONTAIN SPOILERS. DEAL WITH IT PINK BOY.



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01 March, 2009

Game Journal: Heart of Evil

written on Sunday, March 1, 2009

GAME JOURNALS CONTAIN SPOILERS. DEAL WITH IT PINK BOY.

At the risk of making the page too wide, I thought it would be better to embed the video at full size.



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