Monthly Archives: June 2008

Oh Right, That Other Music Game

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I got back to Guitar Hero 3 for the first time in quite a while today, mainly to check out some of the free songs released recently. I Am Murloc is silly, but fun, and the Dropkick Murphys pack isn’t really my kind of music, but was still interesting to play.

I also retried a handful of other built-in and downloaded songs, and improved on my old scores on all of them, so at least I’m getting a bit better. It did drive home just how much harder GH3 is than Rock Band, even on medium, as I didn’t even come close to 100%-ing any of them.

So Much For Cross-Platform Cooperation

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I played a bit more of HC Diablo 2 today, but not on the necro. Instead, I just killed a couple hours in order to make a mule character permanent, managing to get him to the outer cloister in the process. Mules will be particularly important in HC, since otherwise I’m going to lose a ton of other stuff stored in the stash should a character die.

I was going to install D2 on my Mac and use it to do the transfer, since I have a second set of CD keys for it, but I ran into a bit of a snag. Apparently the OS X 10.5.3 update broke a bunch of older games, including D2, and it just plain won’t run at all now. Oh well, I instead resorted to drop-muling the items I had, even though it’s a bit riskier.

But I Still Have A Negative Number Of Fans

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I spent a bit of time over the last couple days rocking out, or at least an approximation thereof. First, I picked up the Pixies album recently released for Rock Band. A lot of the songs are really short (some are even less than 100 notes, on medium) and not too difficult, but there’s a decent amount of variety to them, at least.

I then finally got to try out co-op mode with a friend, and it worked fairly well, though it’s still disappointing that you can’t do the world tour mode online. Something to hope for in Rock Band 2, I guess.

And this afternoon I spent a while on my HC necromancer in Diablo 2, getting him through the rest of Act 2 and all of Act 3. No real difficulties so far, though I’m going to have to watch out for the Stygian Doll monsters in the nightmare and hell difficulties. Their suicide explosion will be powerful enough then that I’ll run a very real risk of instant death. I should probably start thinking about the bone armour skills before that point…

No Fire Yet

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I played my elemental druid build in D2 a bit more today, and he’s managing to survive so far despite not being able to spend any more skill points for a while yet. I just need to make it 6 more levels before I can start pumping the Dire Wolf skill… Then I’ll have to rely on them for a while until I get the fire skills up in levels.

Longest Gaming Session Ever

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I’ve also been “playing” another game recently, and at the office, even! For just over two months, I had ProgressQuest running in the background, and my goal was to see just how far my character could get in a single launch of the game. After 66 days, I was finally forced to reboot my workstation to apply the usual monthly security patches (the previous month’s patches hadn’t required a reboot, fortunately), and his glorious career came to an end, though he’d managed to get a decent ranking, at least (3674th out of over 27,000 as of this writing). His final stats (click to biggify):

April 12, 2008 – June 16, 2008, RIP

I’m sure I’ll have many cherished memories of ProgressQuest, like the time I clicked on a window edge but got the PQ window instead of the mail client, or the time I had to move it upwards a bit so I could see the output in a terminal window…

Is This A Race Or A Destruction Derby?

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I finally got around to putting some time into GRID tonight, creating my own team and participating in a couple championships of the career mode. One of those actually was a destruction derby, but even the regular races felt a lot like it at times. I don’t know if I just suck at it or if it’s intentional, but it seems almost impossible for me to complete a race without a lot of bumping and crashing into other drivers, even in the open wheel races. The AI is aggressive enough that they’ll regularly bump into each other, not just me.

I also took a shot at a Le Mans event, where the entire 24 hour race is compressed down into a shorter time period of your choosing (24 minutes by default, I think), but still takes you through the whole day-night-day cycle. It made the rubberbanding of the AI really obvious though, as I could blow past some cars on the Mulsanne straight only to suddenly have them caught up and tailgating me shortly after, when I haven’t lost any time.

Sure is pretty, though…

As If I Didn’t Have Enough To Play Already…

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I figured it was about time to catch up on the latest XBLA games, so I grabbed a handful of demos of those that looked interesting. Aces Of The Galaxy was the first, and it looks pretty good and plays pretty well, but I’m not terribly good at these kinds of rail shooters.

Penny Arcade Adventures Episode 1 has a fairly nifty character generator in keeping with the art style, which actually works fairly well in 3D. It’s also good that they didn’t try to use voices for the characters, since that rarely works out well for established characters. The mechanics are rather Paper Mario-ish, except that you have to switch between characters and initiate their attacks in real time, which I found a bit annoying. That aside, it looks to be fairly well-written and funny though, so it might be worth it after all and I’ll probably eventually pick it up.

And finally, Roogoo is cute, but weird. You have to save the home planet of these little creatures by…dropping blocks through discs that you rotate to match up the right block shapes? With various twists thrown in as you progress, of course. Cute, but I don’t think I really have time for it.

Hehe, Fire!

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Yesterday I tried out another build in D2 that I haven’t done before, a fire elementalist druid. Unfortunately this looks like it’s going to be one of those builds that’s a real pain in the ass to play at low levels since you need to save nearly all your skill points for higher-level skills and synergies, leaving you extremely weak early on. This one might wind up on the Pile O’ Abandoned Characters.

Rarr, I’m A Kobold

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Today I just needed to kill some time while waiting on some OS upgrades on another system, so I got in a bit of Hellgate: London, finishing off a couple more quests but not really getting anything interesting or moving anywhere new.

I also popped into EQ and fiddled with monster shrouds for a bit. They’re kind of neat in that they let you transform into a monster, of a level of your choice between 5 and whatever your character is at. It lets you quickly try out different classes at various levels, but it’s not a full replacement for your main character — you have barely any equipment, can’t wear regular armour and weapons, you don’t get the same spells as the real class, you don’t earn xp, and you have to unlock other types of monsters by killing a whole bunch with ones you’ve already unlocked. It’s an interesting momentary diversion, anyway.

Yes, That’s Why I’ve Been Hanging Out At Graveyards

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As I suspected, I could not resist Diablo II’s clutches for long, and now I’m trying a ‘skelemancer’, focusing on amassing an army of skeletons. I’m also playing it on hardcore mode, where death is permanent, for a bit of extra spice. It does really affect the way you play, since now you have to focus on survival above all else, but the necro is a pretty easy class for that to begin with. Still, one careless moment is all it could take…

I’m up to about halfway through Act 2 Normal so far, at level 20, and I’ve managed to find three uniques so far. I’m only actually using one of them, an amulet that adds a lot of fire resist. One other was a sabre that isn’t useful to me, and the third was a voulge that my merc could use, but won’t, because it has the annoying make-enemies-flee effect on it. I’m going to have to start making mule characters soon…