Category Archives: Specific Games/Series

Come Back, Braking Line!

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A couple days ago I felt like playing a driving game, but I’m still waiting on the next Jalopnik pack for Forza, so I fired up GRID instead. I’d never actually put much time into it past the initial day or two for some reason, and over a few hours I managed to complete all of the first-tier events in the American and European leagues, and a couple in the next tiers.

It’s a lot harder than I remember it being, though. Even on the easiest setting, AI cars would constantly be riding my tail right until the finish, making me vulnerable to small mistakes. And since I almost always start towards the back of the pack, working my way past all the AI cars inevitably feels like a game of bumper cars, only rarely emerging unscathed. It’s still fun, even if a bit more frustrating than I’d liked when I was hoping for a bit more of a relaxing cruise to victory…

I also popped into EQ2 for a bit. I’d almost forgotten that it was a double-xp weekend, and although I didn’t get any adventuring done, I did gain five tradeskill levels each on my provisioner and jewelcrafter. These bonus weekends are about the only time I work on tradeskills anymore, as it gets too grindy otherwise.

And speaking of MMOs, last night I loaded WoW for a little while, partly to test the RealID chat with a friend, to check the oracle eggs (nothing good yet again), and to do some new quests around Sen’Jin village related to the upcoming Cataclysm release. They weren’t particularly difficult, but they did grant some nice rewards like an illusion-granting token and a unique cloak graphic.

Not-Yet-Made Man

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It’s been a while since the last update, but I haven’t really been playing a lot either. Well, I’ve played a bunch of games, but haven’t really put much time into each one…

I probably played Picross 3D the most, picking it up and knocking off a puzzle here and there to kill time, and a couple days ago I finally finished the last tier of the hard puzzles. I didn’t get 100% of them though, as you have to be some kind of savant to finish enough of the hard ones in time to get three stars. And I’ve still got a bunch of downloaded puzzles to keep me busy for a while yet.

I picked up a game called Puzzle Dimension on Steam out of sheer curiosity, and it’s kind of interesting. You roll a ball around a tiled map (it’s actually turn-based, with discrete moves), picking up the flowers on the level, and getting to the exit. Complicating things are squares that can only be traversed once, icy blocks that you slide on, fire blocks, gravity effects, jumping, etc… I’ve completed the first couple of ‘worlds’ so far, but there’s still plenty more to come.

I caved in and bought Victoria 2, though I haven’t really played a proper game of it yet. I did my usual introductory game as Hawaii, watching how the rest of the world unfolded, and it was actually a bit more challenging to keep things together as you couldn’t just set up the sliders and then do nothing the rest of the game. There were weird things afoot in the rest of the world, too, as Britain wound up swallowing up all of China, Egypt got picked on by nearly everyone and eventually eliminated, the US never even tried to get California back from Mexico, the UK never released any of its dominions… There’s still a lot of rough edges to it like the rebel hordes that run amok and the crazy ways that capitalists (mis)manage factories, so I’m putting this off until another patch or two.

Not much has happened in EQ2 as people have continued to be unavailable. I did at least hit level 55 and can finally use the nice reward charm I got for finishing all of the Lavastorm collections (20 to all stats, 100 health and power, and a healing proc).

Worms Reloaded was released, and I figured I may as well give it a shot. It seems to be a decent successor to Armageddon so far, though it’s a bit disappointing that teams and players are limited to 4 each. Some nice new weapons though, and I’m about halfway through the single-player campaign, though I haven’t tried multi yet.

I started playing Mercenaries 2 as my potential next game, but it’s still kind of early to judge. The graphics are a bit poorer than I expected, and the interface a bit awkward, but I’ve only done a few missions so far. I’ll give it a bit more of a chance to grow on me, at least.

And when I finish that, or it doesn’t work out, I think Mafia 2 will be next after that. I never played the first one, but it got decent reviews, and word-of-mouth on this one is pretty good so far. It’s apparently not as open-world as, say, the GTAs, but I’m okay with it being somewhat more linear and shorter. I’ve still got plenty of other games waiting…

No Saunas, Though

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I just realized that I haven’t written about EQ2 in a while now, and in short: Steamfont. A couple weeks ago one of our party members was going to be a bit late, so the rest of us goofed off doing some quests in Steamfont for a little while. When he arrived, we figured that since we were already there, we may as well just keep on doing them and go check out the Klak’Anon instance as well.

It turned out to be more of a challenge than expected, with some spots where you encounter a ton of roamers, or waves of spawns, of things ^^^-rank and equal-level. I actually died a few times in there, and it took long enough that we had to spend this last week in there as well. We’ve still got one quest that’s sending us back in there, but hopefully it’ll be quick to finish off next week.

I’ve also gotten my illusionist up to level 54, mainly just farming and doing quests in Lavastorm. With his help, I’ve actually completed the Lavastorm collections and gotten a fairly nifty charm item…which I can’t wear until I hit level 55…

Well That Makes It Easier

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It’s been a while since the last update, but not a lot is really new.

We had our EQ2 group and finished off getting the teleport stone for Sundered Splitpaw, but it turns out that the quests at the ends of the chains are raid events, way beyond our abilities. So, we’ve headed back to Sinking Sands and turned leveling back on, completing a handful of generic quests there and I hit level 51 soon afterward.

I also spent a bunch of time on alts on Saturday. I got my monk from 14 to 24 in Antonica, with the help of the vitality bonus and turning in some collections that had accumulated from leftover bits. And I got my ranger from 8 to 14 almost entirely on collections. I doubt I’ll really put much more time into them, but it was something different to do.

I’ve also been playing a lot of Forza 3 again. I discovered that the achievement for getting gold in all events doesn’t actually have to be done in season mode, even though the text says it does, which will make it a lot easier since I won’t keep getting interrupted by the R1 championship. So far I’ve done all of the drag strip events and the first three endurance events, which normally don’t seem to come up in season mode at all.

Stupid Gnolls

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We finally got our EQ2 group going again on Sunday, and finished a few of the quests in the Sundered Splitpaw content, getting the stone that lets us teleport back there whenever we want.

Well, except for one group member, who got killed during one instance and couldn’t get back in and get credit for the quest. We’d already exhausted the group quests that contribute faction, so we tried to do a solo quest for him, but it turns out that it really does force you to do those solo — you wind up alone in your own instance even if you’re in a group. It’s a rather unfortunate design consequence, and hopefully we’ll be able to work out some way to help him out.

We’re getting a bit restless being stuck at level 50 though, so I think sometime soon we’re going to flip the AA switch and get back to leveling up in new areas.

So Lonely

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Our weekly EQ2 group got delayed again, but I hung around and played my illusionist alt for a while, getting him from 48 to 50 and completing a handful of quests for the Sootfoot goblins in Lavastorm. The same ones I already did on my mystic, but I don’t really want to get too far ahead on an alt and spoil upcoming surprises.

I also farmed my good friend Fire Toad whenever he spawned, and got a number of decent items for my other alts. I was surprised to have an Ornate Chest spawn when I killed a plain, non-named enemy though, as I’d only ever seen them on ‘special’ monsters before. I guess it’s possible for any drop, but just ultra-ultra-rare.

WTT FBSS 4 SMR

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We skipped the usual EQ2 night on Thursday since people were tired, so we moved it to Sunday instead.

We quickly finished off the Flowing Black Silk Sash heritage quest and although the item isn’t useful for me, that bumped the guild to level 24. We then headed off to the Splitpaw Saga content, which involved working our way through a couple of dungeons until we reached a quest hub. We only had time to do one of the quests though, and apparently we need to do three before we get the item that’ll let us teleport back there.

The entry dungeon was at least a bit more interesting in most in that getting through it involved some simple physics puzzles and blowing up cracked walls, rather than the usual old ‘kill N gnolls’…

But In The Meantime…

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We had our usual Thursday EQ2 group, and wound up finishing off a handful of the longer quest series in the Everfrost zone. We’ve still got the final step to go in one of them though, since it requires clearing an area until a named goblin spawns, and it was getting late and we knew it could take a while and be rather boring. Maybe next time.

And I also picked up a little indie game called Eversion on Steam, based on the word-of-mouth on some forums. It’s a Mario-esque platformer, but the twist is that you can trigger certain ‘eversion’ points on the map to alter the atmosphere of the level, which affects how the enemies behave, which barriers become passable or impassible, and how you need to go about collecting gems on the level. It’s really short and I already got the basic and third endings for it, but it was a decent amount of fun for the cost. There’s a second ‘good’ ending if you collect all the gems, and I’m at something like 201/240, but some of them are tricky enough that I don’t really feel like spending a lot of time trying for them.

New

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Wow, there’s a whole bunch of new stuff to catch up on.

I picked up Blur for the 360, since it looked interesting and I’m winding down on Forza 3. It’s basically like a Mario Kart-style racer, with powerups you pick up and fire at other racers, but on realistic cars and tracks. You can also use powerups to block incoming attacks instead. So far I’ve found the single-player game a bit frustrating since it seems like so much depends on random luck; I can come in second place one race, and then 18th the next, and I can imagine it getting frustrating trying to hit the specific advancement requirements.

In online multiplayer though, Blur is a blast. It doesn’t even really matter where you eventually wind up placing, with 20 players in total there’s plenty of action going on no matter where you are. There’s a level-based progression system that unlocks new cars and ‘mods’ that affect the rules slightly, and I’m up to level 13 (of 50) so far.

While picking up Blur, I noticed that Picross 3D was out. I played the hell out of the original DS Picross, so I had to pick this one up. It’s the same basic idea, expose the image within a grid by carving out unwanted blocks, but this time it’s a sculpture in a 3D block. The information you use is fairly different though, as you’re only told the total number of blocks to keep in a given row, how many groups the blocks are broken into, and not all rows are numbered. There’s a fairly lengthy tutorial that explains it all though, and I’ve perfected the Easy puzzles and just started in on the Normal difficulty.

And it’s not so new, but a fair bit of stuff has happened in EQ2 as well. I played my illusionist around the Everfrost area for a while last weekend, getting him 5 levels and burning up all the saved-up vitality xp. My mystic cleared out a bunch of the monster-farming quests in his log and then in the weekly group we went and finished off the Golden Efreeti Boots quest. Or the rest of the group did, anyway — I screwed up and missed a turn-in when we were in the Temple of Sol Ro, and then got wiped out by a level 70 dragon while trying to get back to it. I didn’t want to waste their time, so I told them to forget it and I’ll finish it myself at some later point, when everything’s lower-level.

Junkie No More

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I just got around to changing my Xbox Live gamertag and shall now be known as HalibutBarn instead. MS has been rather oversensitive lately about ‘inappropriate’ names, so I figured I’d better change it before I suddenly wind up suspended for being a drug reference or something.

I finally started Bioshock 2 a little while ago, and this time I’m playing on Hard and going for the achievement for not using any Vita-chambers. So far the main struggle has just been to avoid running out of ammo and money, which are in scarce supply. Otherwise, it’s still a pretty familiar-feeling game and that’s perfectly fine considering how good the first one was. I’ve only made it to Pauper’s Drop so far, but I’ve fought one each of a Big Daddy and Big Sister, and the fights were fairly tense. The Big Sisters in particular are going to be tough, being as quick as they are.

In EQ2, we’ve mainly just romped around Everfrost some more for the last couple weeks, finally reaching the NE and NW corners and finishing a handful of quests, including the HQ for Tobrin’s Mystical Eyepatch. I also did a bit of soloing on my own to clean out some of the simpler quests and pick up collection items.

The city of New Halas was also finally released, and I immediately moved my shaman there to be with his barbarian brethren. It’s a really nice city too, with almost everything within fairly easy reach (the dock is a bit farther away though) and the tradeskills all clustered near the bank. The housing is really nice, and I finally upgraded from the starting apartment to a five-room house, which feels a bit sparse even with 160+ items in it now. I also started up a new dwarven warlock character, but haven’t gotten very far into the Halas newbie zone with him yet.

And I’ve played a bit more of Forza 3, but I’m not as enthusiastic about it as I was before, as now I’m pretty much just trying to grind credits and fill out the event chart. Maybe I’ll look at something like Blur next…