Found this on Intelligent Artifice by (he found it on Japan Probe), and OMG, I am such a nerd. The sketch goes on much longer than I thought possible… It’s funny in that innocent, sometimes hilarious, weird as hell, Japanese way.
Category Archives: Games
Zelda piano Medley
I dunno what it is.. but this medley almost made me tear up. Tons of Zelda fans participate in a shared experience. Think about it… While everyone may have varying degrees of attachment, it’s still true that millions of people around the world know what it is like to play Zelda.
Ace is easily the best addon suite for WoW
http://wowace.com/wiki/Main_Page
Their site is a little hard to navigate, but to make things easier, just click on the WoW Ace Updater on the left there… or actually, to make it even easier, just download it here. Then run it and see all the cool addons you can pick!
Must haves are FuBar, Cartographer, either agUnitFrames or PitBull, and, if you do raids, oRA2 and Big Wigs.
What’s funny is that two different people recommended the Ace Updater on the same day. Hooray for viral networks!
LotRO
Yep… I’ve been playing Lord of the Rings Online this past week and think it is pretty awesome. My subscription to WoW runs out in June… not sure if I will be renewing.
Part of the reason I am finding it fun is that a couple of my WoW guildmates are playing, and I enjoy hanging out with them. Not sure yet if our social network will sustain the game, but I pre-ordered so will be playing for at least a month.
divided loyalties in WoW?… and Jade Empire and papers!
So, two weeks ago I worked my ass off to get a key made in World of Warcraft so that I could go with a group of people from an allied guild to a 10-man dungeon known as Karazhan. I was invited because apparently the server was lacking in 70 rogues at the time (who the people in the guild like… ). Anyway, after many hours working on it, we finally went for the first time last week (Friday and Sat nights). And it was fun!
But to get there, I basically had to outrun some of my own guildies who were also working on getting keyed and solo/stealth some of the steps instead of waiting for them. Now a week later, some of them are still working on it and more are catching up to where they are. In a few more weeks, there should be enough people in my guild to go. Then I’ll have an interesting decision to make. Do I ditch the allied guild for my own guild? How permanent was my invite to the group, anyway? How will players from both guilds take my seemingly loose loyalties? Or is it a non-issue given that I was available and helped our allies and have always said that I prefer in-guild raids? We’ll see…
The past couple of days, I’ve also been playing a lot of Jade Empire. I’ll write a review soon. But I’ve also been writing papers and such for the end of quarter and now need to work on a book chapter with Lisa!
Look Around You – Computer Games
YouTube – Look Around You – Computer Games
Funny parody video about the rise of computer and video games… retro!
Lots of things….
1. I hit level 70 last week and got a flying mount. I used to play flight sims once in a while because I like the feeling of flying… now I can do it in WoW! I’ve also been making huge amounts of gold… well, huge amounts for me who never could afford an epic mount… This week, I’ve completed all the quests I could without grouping with others. Now I wait around for more guildies to catch up so I can party with them and get those quests done. 😛
2. Apparently, there are a bunch of irate students in the class I teach (a technology class for the masters in teaching program). Problem is that no one has told the instructors (me and another) about it directly. Now that we’ve heard about it, we really want to accomodate and address some of the issues. I mean, we’re probably the most flexible instructors these guys will ever have, willing to meet their demands and try to work with other instructors to make sure tech is integrated into the rest of the program. Each quarter, this varies a bit since some profs are more open to collaboration than others… So anyway, yeah, we can change. Too bad there’s only two more weeks in the quarter. Sheesh. One of the issues we’ve heard is that what we’re teaching them has no relation to the classroom. This is true, except that we’re just introducing them to some tools this quarter with the idea that in the rest of the program they’ll start using these tools for practical applications. We have to start somewhere… Last year it was pretty clear that students needed more time familiarizing themselves with the tools before jumping into a project. So we changed the course this year. Every year the new cohort complains but they have no reference to how it used to be… Still, the class is improving every year from their feedback. But a huge problem is that the course is taught by PhD students, so every 2 or 3 years, whoever is teaching it has to start over relearning the same stuff about what and how to teach. Ah well.
3. I’ll be going down to Portland this weekend with a couple of guildies to visit some more down there. Fun!
4. I played three games that I hadn’t before: Hey, that’s my fish!, Savannah Cafe, and Taj Mahal. The first two are really quick games and pretty fun in a light sort of way. Not much table talk in the first one but more in the second. They are both zany games with animal themes. 🙂 Taj Mahal was quite good, but I want to play it more before considering buying it. The level of complexity I think is about the same as Puerto Rico… nice and meaty.
Oblivion for mobile phones?
So, I heard over the summer that Oblivion was available for mobile phones. I found some screenshots and a review online.
But let me warn you… not all phones were created equal and apparently the game doesn’t look like those screenshots on older phones. I don’t know about the gameplay, but on my old phone it is essentially a hack n slash. All the story elements have been boiled down to 3 sentence paragraphs shunting you from one dungeon to the next. Argh. How can they even call it Oblivion? A text adventure would have been way better so long as it had some interesting RP choices like the *real* Oblivion does.
Windows Vista and edutainment
I was browsing the latest issue of the new magazine Games for Windows and saw in an article on Windows Vista that parents now have complete control over which games are blocked for their kids (assuming parents are the ones setting up their computers and know how to get at the parental controls and then understand ESRB ratings, etc.). The screenshot showed that parents even have control over exactly what kind of content should disallow access to a game, be it drugs, sex, crude humor, or what have you… One of the checkboxes was “edutainment.”
Hahahahaha! What’s more sad? The fact that edutainment was included on the list or the fact that I completey understand why, given the sorry state of edutainment, a gamer would want it blocked?
Here’s a screenshot I grabbed from bleepingcomputer.com
Neverwinter Nights 2 isn’t really multiplayer friendly…
Well, at least, the main campaign sure isn’t. It works but the game forces all players to sit through dialog events initiated by anyone. This makes sense for plot-moving dialog, but doesn’t make any sense for dialog that is needed for shopkeepers, etc. What’s worse is that during these forced pauses, no keyboard or mouse entry is allowed, so there is no way within the game to discuss dialog choices with your party members. That kinda sucks.
Ideally, any plot-moving dialog (or dialog which is not repeatable) should have some way where all players could vote for which choice to make. Simple checkboxes or something… Something. Anything.