Category Archives: Games

Been busy for the last 4 days–Fallout 3!

Well, actually, I worked for most of Wednesday, but this week has seen my work… my very pressing, time-sensitive work… put on hold while I play Fallout 3.I told Gray I wouldn’t play until the end of the month, too.. but, no, the wasteland called.

It’s a highly engrossing game. Feels a lot like Oblivion meets Half-Life meets.. well, meets Fallout, minus some of the campy humor. I miss that campy humor, though.

Replacing the humor is lots of emergent (in other words: spontaneous, unplanned, somewhat different every time you play) behavior and events in the game. It makes for a very dynamic world. But a lot of what you see is out in the big open world map. This replaced Fallout 1/2’s random encounters while traveling from poi to poi. Maybe I didn’t travel enough in this new game to find the funny easter eggs…

Anyway, I finished my first play-through about 2 hours ago. I’ll write up more in a week or so after some of my friends have had a chance to finish.

Meanwhile.. I guess I should restart my writing.ย  Oh, and Obama won! ๐Ÿ™‚

Ah sweet! New DS to come out!

Nintendo announces DSi with dual cameras, “DSi Shop” content store [update] – Engadget

Two cameras, an SD slot, internal memory, faster wifi, (slightly) bigger screens, no GBA slot, a bit thinner.

Drool.

Spore meets Starcraft!

Just check out the screenies!ย  ๐Ÿ™‚

(via a guildie)

Games I’m playing now

(All images from Wikipedia!)

The collector’s edition headstart for Warhammer Online started yesterday. I’ll start playing on Tuesday, probably. Same servers as Michael Zenke [Edit 18-9-2008: for some reason I thought it was Mike Sellers’ blog, but I am wrong… unless Zenke and Sellers are the same people]:

  • Destruction: Volkmar
  • Order: Averheim

Except that he chose regular servers and since I’m partial to RP servers, I also started on an RP server, Ostermark – Order. [Edit (Tuesday): Lucas Gillispie sent me a note that his RP guild is starting on Phoenix Throne, so I started there instead. Order side.]

Spore came out over the weekend to some crazy low reviews on Amazon and other user-based review sites due to its onerous (draconian) DRM. I tried it out yesterday and decided that it was not for me. I mean, it’s kind of fun for a while, but it gets rather tedious. And it seems unbalanced in that the first few stages go by quick and then the last space stage is humongous. Like way too detailed. The first stage is almost a clone of but not as good as the Flash game flow. The other stages remind me of other games, too. Namely Populous in the tribal stage. [Edit: At first I thought this made sense since I thought Populous was made by Maxis and Will Wright, the person behind Spore, but it turns out that it was made by Bullfrog and Peter Molyneux. We’ll see how his game Fable 2 plays in a few…]

While everyone else has been hyping about Spore, I’ve been more interested in Mercenaries 2. It’s fun so far. Blowing shit up is always fun I guess. Basically, think GTA but you start with an arsenal from the get-go, and your missions involve making money for destroying stuff for various factions. You get the missions GTA style by going to a contact’s location as marked by a little circle beam of light.ย  ๐Ÿ™‚

And finally, I would be remiss if I didn’t mention that I’ve been playing World of Warcraft (in prep for the expansion due out in a couple of months) using two accounts at the same time! Basically, on the first day I had my laptop open next to me with one character following my main guy on my desktop. But then I read that you can actually run two (or more) copies of WoW at the same time, and since I got a new monitor last month, I decided to do that with each monitor showing a different WoW window. Then I installed an app (HotKeyNet) that lets me send keystrokes to both windows at the same time. So on one screen I hit 2 for Sinister Strike and on the other screen, 2 triggers a macro that targets my main’s target and casts Sinister Strike (yes, two rogues :p) Check out wowwiki and dual-boxing for helpful details.

All quiet on the western front…

I haven’t been posting much lately since I’ve been busy at a new temporary month-long job down here in sunny California.

Been meeting a ton of people and making new friends, as well as visiting my mom (my dad is in China right now), brother, sister, and high school friends.

Eating some good food:

  • Pizz’a Chicago — mmm good deep-dish!
  • that place on El Camino that used to be Senor Taco — sopas con carnitas!
  • Dynasty for dim sum — pretty good…
  • In-N-Out — double-double animal style
  • some new Szichuan place for really red broth beef noodle soup, scallops, etc.
  • quite good catered breakfasts and lunches at the job, too!

Playing some games:

  • Ra — Aaron doesn’t like this game.ย  That’s okay because it was just me and Chris and new friend Jessica.ย  ๐Ÿ™‚
  • Carcassonne — Jessica kicked Chris and my asses.
  • Fury of Dracula — the 1987 version.ย  Dracula was totally pwned.
  • Hearts — fun, old school game
  • D&D 4th Ed. — really brief intro to combat pretty much through a one-shot adventure run by Chris.ย  Not entirely sure how I feel about it now, as each class doesn’t seem as distinct as in 3.5, but there’s definitely more balance I think.
  • dodgeball at Jump Sky High — hella tiring!ย  I’ve gone before so I was prepared but damn.

Gonna try to meet up with Chris, Grey, and SG again this weekend to play Chris’s new game Pillars of the Earth and maybe War of the Ring or something.

GLS 2008: Dinner for reals and LAN party!

Okay, turns out we just waited 30 minutes and then all bussed over to Tenney Park.ย  The rain did a pretty number on the park, though, and we were pretty much standing in a watery lawn the whole time.

But it was pretty cool.ย  I talked with Debbie Fields about our respective research.ย  I met someone working on a project for native american youth in Washington.ย  I talked with Shawna Kelly and Lisa Galarneau (ironic ๐Ÿ™‚ ) a bit.ย  Met up with Brett Shelton (who was also at ICLS).

Dinner was catered by a local taco place.ย  It was pretty good.ย  The queso was good, as was the fish taco and tamale.ย  I thought the beans and rice tasted funny but it was probably some spice I’m not used to.ย  Seemed middle-eastern a bit, though…

After dinner we wished Kurt Squire a happy birthday with cake!

Then there was a karaoke band but I had to take off on the first bus with a bunch of TrN folk to meet up with Thomas Malaby, and Eric Ellis and Linda Polin (from Pepperdine).ย  They were our rides over to the Union Building (not sure that’s the right url for it) for hella fun LAN raiding.ย  We went to AQ20 and blasted through those bosses like they were queso succumbing to our crunchy tortilla chips.






A real life Myst-like game!

Mystery on Fifth Avenue

(via NYTimes.com)

This is totally awesome. Check out the slideshow!

An adventure game with stolen art assets from other games

Limbo of the Lost or Oblivion?
via GamePlasma.com

Man, this is crazy! I wonder if they hired a contract artist who did it or if the developers fully knew what they were doing or what…

World of World of Warcraft


‘Warcraft’ Sequel Lets Gamers Play A Character Playing ‘Warcraft’

from The Onion – America’s Finest News Source

via Terror Nova

Mass Effect Review

Mass Effect Review // PC /// Eurogamer

Nice review that considers Mass Effect from a higher level regarding its story and immersiveness, as opposed to basic review of the gameplay since it’s pretty much the same as the Xbox 360 version.