Another Day, Another Level

Posted on July 2, 2008 by heide

Using my list of optimal zones, I hit level 48 in Hellgate: London tonight. Though it slowed down a bit, I think I could still easily do a level a day until I hit 50. Now I just have to decide whether to do that grinding before or after the rest of the main quest…

I have to think about upgrading my equipment a bit, too. I only just realized recently that I could have a separate set of armour and weapons for buffing purposes, since the stats of the drone depend only on what skill and equipment modifiers (Minion Armour +x%, Minion Health +x%, etc.) were in effect at the time it was summoned, so I don’t have to keep them on after that. I’ve got some half-decent equipment modifiers at the moment, but I still need more skill point bonuses.

Another Trip To The City, What’s Left Of It

Posted on July 1, 2008 by heide

I was lured back into an old friend today. It’s not really a great game, but there’s still something addictive about the type of gameplay Hellgate: London has, as seen in the far-too-large number of hours I’ve put into Diablo 2, Titan Quest, etc.

I complained about slow leveling before, but since then I’ve discovered that the trick is to be hunting enemies three levels above you for the maximum amount of xp per kill. Following that guideline, and making a list of zones by the level of monsters found therein, I managed to gain two whole levels today. That’ll let me get a bit further on the main quest, and there’s only three more levels until I hit the cap at 50. I’m not really sure where I want to spend my last few skill points, so I’ll hold on to those for now…

Oh Right, That Other Music Game

Posted on June 29, 2008 by heide

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

Posted on June 29, 2008 by heide

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

Posted on June 28, 2008 by heide

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

Posted on June 27, 2008 by heide

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

Posted on June 27, 2008 by heide

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?

Posted on June 26, 2008 by heide

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…

Posted on June 24, 2008 by heide

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!