Category Archives: PC

I Suppose It Was Inevitable…

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As if I haven’t wasted enough of my life in MMOs yet, I couldn’t resist picking up EQ2 this weekend. Mainly because it was only $10 on Steam for the entire latest bundle, and I figured I should at least satisfy my curiosity for that price, even if I don’t stick around past the free month.

The intro video was pretty cheesy, but I guess this was from around the “It’s time to slay the dragon!” era of terrible EQ marketing. Character creation drops racial restrictions on classes, so I took a kitty illusionist, with a home city of Qeynos.

A lot of the mechanics were instantly familiar, but the one big change is in how quests are handled. They’re voiced, and follow a select-your-response interactive menu instead of using keywords, and a lot more stuff is automatically tracked. It’s especially nice how quest items are automatically picked up and held separately from your regular inventory, so there’s no wasted space on them.

Combat is also more WoW-like, and introduces something called “heroic opportunities”, which sound complicated though I haven’t bothered to look into them much for now. I could chain-cast spells in the middle of combat, and mana regens fast enough that there’s little downtime (at least for now).

So far I’ve just finished the tutorial area and picked up a few starting quests in Qeynos. I still have to look into things like crafting and diplomacy.

What Do I Look Like, A Savior?

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I finished off The Pitt in Fallout 3 today, though it didn’t take very long. Some easy arena fights, some talking to people, some other minor fights…and that was about it. I wound up siding with the slavers, since it didn’t really seem to matter which side would ‘win’ in the end.

After that I wandered around to previously unexplored areas (I took the Explorer perk along the way, so I at least have all the map markers now) and did some quests, most notably finding a violin for an old lady and screwing around with the election results in the Republic of Dave. I’ll probably keep wandering and polishing off old quests before finishing the main plot again and starting the Broken Steel part.

They Just Need A Union

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Back in Fallout 3 tonight, I started working on The Pitt, an area filled with slavers and their slaves, pressed into work at a big industrial plant. I didn’t really get too far into it though, instead getting distracted by an initial task to collect some steel ingots. That turned into a search for all of the steel ingots I could find. It took a couple hours, but in the end I found 93 of the 100 ingots on my own and managed to find the remaining 7 with a guide (fortunately they were all ones near the start of the guide).

That gives me some decent unique equipment to finish off the rest of the area, since all of my regular equipment had been stripped away by the slaves. Now back to rescuing something-or-other…

Feed Me

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I was able to play around with Prototype for a bit today. It definitely has the open-world feel, though it’s a bit empty right now since I’m still fairly close to the start. There isn’t really much to do except a few races, starting the next mission, and causing some minor havoc that’s not really worth the effort in terms of xp earned. Stuff should be opening up soon though, as I can ‘consume’ certain people, gain their memories, and open up parts of the story and new people to meet.

The premise is a bit overwrought — you’re the product of some experiment gone wrong, an infection is spreading, and you’re out for revenge, blah blah blah. The movement isn’t as precise as Crackdown, and probably deliberately so, and there’s no stopping to contemplate how to reach a particular point — you just run straight up the side of a building. The controls while sprinting and wall-running are a bit awkward, and I’m constantly overshooting the tops of buildings and falling off the other side, but apparently there are upgrades that will help refine the controls.

And for someone who’s wanted so desperately by the military, it’s kind of odd how I can run up a wall, leap off a building and land in the middle of the street with a big concrete-breaking thud, or sprint through traffic and bounce off the roofs of cars, and nobody wandering around seems to think it odd.

Another Blast From The Past

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I know, I have too many games going already, but tonight I couldn’t help but reinstall Wizardry 8, spurred on by a whole bunch of discussion on a forum. I’ve always wondered how far I could get with a solo character before hitting a roadblock or losing interest, and after a few hours so far, I have a faerie ninja up to 91 stealth off the starting crabs. That gives her a base AC of 11, which is going to be rather critical since there’s barely any armour she can wear.

It’s getting pretty tedious to raise it at this point though, so I’m not sure if I should soldier on to 100 or make do with one less AC point and let the rest build up naturally as I go along. Once you hit around 60 stealth, the crabs start retreating from you, which actually helps since you can now heal up without using up potions, but chasing them down and getting them to resume attacking you gets really annoying.

The short term goal for now will be to make it to Arnika, switch to bishop, and grind the hell out of the magic schools, with the eventual goal of switching back to ninja with a (near) full set of spells and the Cane of Corpus.

Dance My Puppets, Part 2

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I intended to continue the same RPGs as yesterday, but got swept up in The Sims 3 instead today. I never played any of the previous Sims games, but figured I should see what all the fuss is about.

I created some characters based on me and my friends, but haven’t really done much with them yet. Instead I recreated the Odd Couple, with Felix (traits of Neat, Neurotic, Frugal, Grumpy, Unflirty), and Oscar (traits of Slob, Absent Minded, Couch Potato, Charismatic, and Friendly) and mainly played around with them today. They’ve actually been getting along fairly well, even if Felix does have to do all the cleaning and fixing. Oscar is the main breadwinner though, with a fairly good journalism career so far.

I’ve tried to be as hands-off as possible since they’re supposed to have a high degree of independence in their own actions, but you have to intervene in some cases in order to ensure things get fixed, wishes get selected and fulfilled, which mode they should be in at the office, etc.

Clean Those Pitts

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It was an RPG-themed day as I first dropped into Persona 4, where I finished off the first dungeon and rescued another classmate that joined our group, fused some more personae, and raised a few s-links and stats, as usual. The number of choices about what I can do in my spare time is opening up a lot more, with clubs, part-time jobs, and other hobbies now.

And later on I finally got back to Fallout 3, where I still have to catch up on some DLC. I started heading northwards to where the starting point of The Pitt section is, but got distracted by a few map markers on the way, including Fort Constantine and some antenna array. I did finally reach the Pitt contact, so I’ll kick that part off next time.

Population: Tiiiiiiire

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I played the first chapter of the Strong Bad adventure games, Homestar Ruiner, and it maintains the style of the original fairly well. It’s an adventure game just like the Sam & Max ones, but it has a few more minigames to it (another hallmark of Homestar Runner), and the solutions to the puzzles are a bit more obtuse (also somewhat appropriate).

Particularly nice is the ability to look at the map and move between locations quickly, and I hope they merge that feature back into any other Sam & Max games they do.

Anyway, it was a decent little time-waster, even if I did need a bit of help finishing some puzzles.

Deadly Rooms Of Redundancy

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I finished off a few more quests in Howling Fjord in WoW last night, but nothing too exciting. I think I’m close to finishing off the HF area, so maybe I’ll at least get to go somewhere more interesting soon. I’ve also started to make more room in my packs for a second set of equipment, now that the recently patched-in equipment managed makes it easier to switch back and forth between tanking and DPS gear.

But I spent most of my time in another game I just bought, called DROD: The City Beneath. Despite the fantasy-like trappings, it’s actually a turn-based puzzle game, where you have to make sure you fight monsters, flip switches, use potions, etc. at just the right time and in the right order in order to get past each room. I’ve made it through the tutorial and a handful of rooms in the city’s library so far, none of which were very hard, but the game has a reputation for really cranking up the difficulty later on…

I also caved in to another bargain and bought the Alien Shooter collection on Steam. I only had time to try one of the games, Zombie Shooter, and it’s a kind-of-fun three-quarters shooter with RPG-ish upgrade options, kind of like a blend of Crusader and Shadowgrounds.

My Love For You Is Like A Truck

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Last night I took a bit of a break from EQ by playing…EQ. I’ve been saving up bits of equipment picked up along the way for some of my alt characters, and I figured I’d get away from spell-slinging for a while and played my kitty Berserker.

Unfortunately he’s only level 10 so far, and melee is still fairly boring at the low levels, since there aren’t very many special attacks yet. I took a healer merc, but he doesn’t need all that much healing even against yellow opponents, so I should probably switch over to a tank merc just for the extra DPS, to make leveling faster.

I’m not sure how much I’ll actually play him, or if I might switch over to my SK or mage instead, but it’ll be a nice diversion once in a while.