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.

One Last Shot

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I bought Prototype today, but it was taking forever to download from Steam, so in the meantime I started up Crackdown to get me in the right frame of mind.

I also had another motive for returning to Crackdown: that one last damn agility orb that I’m still missing. I’m up to 498 of 500, I know where one is (and want to make it the very last one I pick up), and now there’s just one left. Damned if I know where it is, though. I’ve considered following guides to all of the orbs, but that gets tedious quickly, so I just ran around listening for the orb-nearby sound.

Alas, by the end of the evening, the agility orb still eluded me. I did pick up a good 15-20 more hidden orbs though, putting me at 283 of 300 of them. I don’t think I’m going to waste any more time on that agility orb, though — congrats orb, you’ve beaten me.

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.

Rock On

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I’m trying to catch up in Rock Band, since for some reason I kept buying a few song downloads here and there but didn’t play them right away, and now I’ve accumulated a bunch of them.

I can’t even remember which ones they were though, so I’m going through the whole list of downloaded songs and playing any that don’t have scores against them. It’s odd though, since I know I’ve played some songs that don’t have scores already, and I’m not sure why it didn’t get recorded, and it just makes it harder to tell which ones are really new.

Oh well, I’ll get through them all eventually, and I’m up to Foo Fighters so far.

No Suicide This Time

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Whoops, I’ve been falling a bit behind on updates, so these are going to be quick ones…

I finally got around to starting Persona 4, and I think it’ll be my main RPG for now (Drakensang just hasn’t really hooked me enough). It’s a lot like Persona 3, except that you enter the shadow realm through a TV and use cards to summon your personae instead of shooting yourself in the head. Once inside, there are multiple dungeons instead of one large tower, you can control the other party members directly, and they don’t end your run by getting fatigued. Instead, you’re limited by your spell points running out, since they no longer fill up when you return to the entrance.

The random card game at the end of fights is also different, and I think it’s a lot more annoying now, and it’s much harder to get the card you really want. It’s also much harder to sneak up on shadows and get in a first strike.

I’m not too far into the story yet — people are getting sucked into the TV world and then dying on foggy days, and the first few bosses I’ve faced have been the shadow halves of people I then recruited into my group. I’ve fused a few personae, including a Lilim with three elemental attacks, but there’s still a lot of experimenting to go.

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.